After the condemnation of Paul of Samosata, when one generation of time had passed, Apollinaris, bishop of Laodicea, following the blasphemy of the Arians concerning the incarnation of the Lord, asserting things contrary to Paul, preached that the flesh and the almighty Word of God were of one substance, contending most quarrelsomely that the Word was made flesh, or that something of the Word was converted and changed into flesh, and not that flesh was taken and assumed from the Virgin Mary—so that Christ might be acknowledged as without sin, consubstantial with us, and in all things like us, as the Apostle says (Heb. 4:15). Theodoret the bishop in his Ecclesiastical History marks Apollinaris and his heresy thus.
"Apollinaris," he says, "bishop of Laodicea, while he put on the appearance of piety and feigned to preserve the apostolic teachings, after a little while appeared a manifest enemy. For concerning the divine nature he used adulterated reasonings, presuming to explain certain gradations of dignities in general, and to make out the mystery of the dispensation as imperfect, affirming that the rational soul, by which the body rises again, was deprived of salvation. "For if, according to his reasoning, God the Word did not assume a soul, then he neither bestowed a remedy upon the soul nor gave it honor; but the earthly body indeed is set ablaze by the invisible powers, while the soul, made according to the divine image, remained in the lower place, clothed with the reproaches of sin.
In his madness he asserted very many things beyond these. For sometimes he confessed, along with the others, that the flesh was assumed from the holy Virgin; but at other times, that it descended from heaven together with God the Word; at other times, that the Word himself was made flesh and took nothing from us; and he coupled many other empty fables to sacred opinions, which I have judged it superfluous to relate at present. "Saying such things, he not only filled his own followers with the plague, but also made certain of ours partakers of this kind of leprosy. But after a little time, when they saw their own disgrace and the splendor of the Church, almost all returned. They did not, however, lay aside their former sickness, but rather secretly wounded very many of the steadfast.
"From this root, then, there sprang up in the Churches the one nature of flesh and divinity, and that the passion should be coupled to the divinity of the Only-begotten, and whatever other strifes they begot for peoples and priests" (Book V, chapter 3). And after a little: "But Apollinaris, stripped of his bishopric, with open shamelessness preached the novelty of his doctrine in the Church, showing himself the leader of the heresy." Wherefore it appears from all that has been said and brought forward above, that from Paul the Nestorians were propagated, and from Apollinaris the preachers of one nature, such as are the Acephali and the Eutychians.
To his sayings and letters there responded at that time Diodore, bishop of Tarsus, then Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil, and Theodore of Mopsuestia, showing convincingly from the divine testimonies the properties of the two natures in the one person of Christ, as their very volumes prove. It now follows, the authorities of both heresies having been demonstrated, to narrate their acts, as the preface promises. "On Apollinaris." ] See what has been written about him and his heresy in dissertation I to the second part of the works of Mercator; for they avail to refute certain popular prejudices, and to correct Liberatus himself. "One generation of time." ] He used "generation" for "an age."
For Paul was condemned in the year 270. Apollinaris began to teach about the year 360. "The flesh and the almighty Word of God." ] Both Apollinaris and Theodoret protest against this. The latter partly in his Ecclesiastical History, in the words presently to be cited by Liberatus, and partly in dialogue 4 against Apollinaris, which is falsely attributed to Athanasius. The former in his confession of faith: "Let him be anathema who does not say that the flesh is from Mary, and who says that it is flesh of an uncreated nature, and divine." "Certain gradations of dignities." ] See Epiphanius and the cited dialogue of Theodoret concerning bishop, presbyter, and deacon, to whom those heretics assigned the three divine persons.
"Of Nazianzus." ] I wonder why Gregory of Nyssa was not added to the others, for Gregory of Nazianzus never disputed against Apollinaris more expressly than did Gregory of Nyssa. "Authorities." ] Set for "origins" or "authors," not an unusual manner of speaking among the Africans after Tertullian.