Against Apollinaris
For For students of the Christological debates between Nicaea and Chalcedon: his long reply to Apollinaris's denial that Christ had a human mind; technical and polemical, not devotional reading.
Gregory of Nyssa's Against Apollinaris emerged from one of the fourth century's most consequential christological debates. Apollinaris of Laodicea, seeking to defend Christ's unity against Arian challenges, had proposed that the divine Logos replaced the human mind or rational soul in the incarnate Christ. This solution, while preserving divine-human unity, effectively denied Christ's full humanity. Gregory, writing around 385, joined his brother Basil and Gregory of Nazianzus in recognizing the devastating implications of Apollinarian teaching for salvation itself.
Gregory's refutation proceeds through careful philosophical and theological analysis rather than mere polemical attack. He demonstrates that Apollinaris's christology, despite its intentions, actually undermines the very salvation it seeks to protect. Gregory argues that what is not assumed by the divine cannot be healed or redeemed, making Christ's full humanity essential to his saving work. The treatise shows how Apollinarian teaching reduces Christ to something neither fully divine nor genuinely human, creating an abstract hybrid that cannot bridge the gulf between God and humanity. Gregory employs his characteristic precision in distinguishing between nature and person, helping to establish vocabulary that would prove crucial at the Council of Chalcedon. Throughout, he maintains that orthodox christology must preserve both the integrity of Christ's two natures and the reality of their union in one person.
This work represents Gregory's mature christological thinking and demonstrates the Cappadocian Fathers' collective contribution to defining orthodox teaching about Christ's person. While Apollinarianism was condemned at Constantinople in 381, Gregory's treatise provides the theological reasoning that made such condemnation necessary and compelling. His insights about the soteriological necessity of Christ's full humanity became foundational for later christological development.
Who should read this: Students of patristic theology seeking to understand fourth-century christological controversies and anyone interested in how the church's understanding of Christ's person developed through theological debate. This is not introductory material but requires familiarity with patristic theological vocabulary and the broader Arian controversy.
Editions
External off-site sources
Free downloads
- PDF Adversus Apollinarem (lectio-divina.org (McCambly))Trans. Richard (Casimir) McCamblyRichard McCambly's translation from the Greek, a typed PDF on his own site (lectio-divina.org), which says its material is not subject to copyright. The whole Antirrheticus with an introduction and endnotes (92 pages); the only English translation free to read. Plain modern English; for students of the road to Chalcedon.
- PDF Adversus Apollinarem (Internet Archive (Migne PG 45)) PD Greek and Latin1863The Greek text with Migne's Latin translation in parallel columns, in volume 45 of the Patrologia Graeca (Paris, 1863), scanned whole on the Internet Archive; this work is at columns 1123-1270. For readers of Greek or Latin.Much harder than the work: Greek and Latin only, no English translation