What Is the Heresy of Apollinarianism?

The heresy of Apollinarianism may be an old problem, but it is not a bygone problem. In today’s world, where many churches are becoming more worldly, orthodox-centered Christians tend to ask, “How did we get here?” The sad fact is that embracing heresies is almost as old as the church itself. The Bible goes from the book of Acts describing the Day of Pentecost, which occurred 50 days after Christ’s resurrection, to the epistles written a few years later, featuring the apostles writing against heretical teachings.

For the next two centuries, many heretics would challenge the church from the inside. Many of the councils in the third century wrestle with defining doctrine to avoid these beliefs.

For example, we may have heard about Arianism (the belief that Christ was not co-equal with God the Father). One particularly messy heresy is Apollinarianism.

So, where does this belief come from? Why is this a big deal? Should we still know about this heresy today, centuries later? 

Here is why understanding its claims really matters even today in our modern day.

What Does Apollinarianism Claim?

Apollinarianism is the belief that while Christ was fully divine and fully human, his mind was divine rather than human.

The problem is that Apollinarianism doesn’t fit the Bible’s image of Christ being fully divine and fully human all the way. As Clarence L. Haynes Jr. explains:

“A good place to begin to understand what the Bible teaches about hypostatic union is to look at the gospel of John. In these three verses, we are confronted with the dual nature of Jesus Christ. First, we see he was in the beginning, he was separate from the Father, yet he was equal to the Father. This verse highlights Jesus’ eternal nature and his complete deity. However, when you jump down to verse 14 we see that the Word took on human flesh. The one who created it all became like the one he created. When he took on human flesh, he didn’t stop being God he simply became both God and human.”

In other words, it is the belief that Jesus was fully and fully man, meaning that neither one could reign supreme over the other. This is not just Christ’s body but Christ’s mind and soul. Apollinarianism discredits this idea, arguing that Christ’s mind had no humanity in it.

Who Came Up with Apollinarianism?

Apollinarianism is named after Apollinaris, the Bishop of Laodicea (modern-day Turkey).

He had several eccentricities even before he began teaching Apollinarianism. He reproduced the Old Testament in the poetry style of Homer (Author of the Iliad and The Odyssey) and the New Testament in the dialogue style of the Greek Philosopher Plato, known as Platonic dialogue. This is key because while all truth is God’s truth, and church leaders like Paul quoted Greek ideas in their teaching, there is a difference between recognizing good things in pagan culture and conflating them with Scripture. In Apollinaris’ case, it doesn’t seem a coincidence that his primary heresy is based on the classical Greek idea that the spirit is divine and doesn’t need the body: he sees Jesus’ most important part, his mind, as pure spirit.

Ironically, Apollinaris was initially a strong advocate for orthodox Christianity, particularly as it was defined at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD. Eastern Orthodox priest Fr. Chris Margaritis explains the goals behind the Council of Nicaea in an interview with Christian YouTuber Matt Whitman:

“In the Nicene Council, everyone got together and forged it out as best as they could. [They] hammered it out through consensus, which is pretty much what science does. It belongs to everybody. You can’t take it too far because everybody won’t go too far, but then when it goes places you don’t want it to go, you can fix it.”

I bring up this quote because it predicted what happened to Apollinaris. The council was partly called to address Arianism, and ruled in the resulting Nicene Creed that Jesus was “consubstantial with the Father,” meaning he had the same substance (in Greek, homoousios) as God the Father. Apollinaris supported this idea and fought against Arianism alongside early church fathers like St. Athanasius, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Nicholas of Myra. However, Apollinaris went too far with his claims. Arians denied Christ’s union with the Father, which would make Christ more like a demigod, therefore lessening his divine status and authority in the process. Apollinaris went too far in the other direction: he claimed that Jesus’ mind was fully divine while Jesus was fully man. To have a fully divine mind and soul is to separate the human mind and soul. In other words, it made Christ’s divinity superior to his humanity.

Eventually, the church declared Apollinarianism was a heresy at the Council of Constantinople in 381 AD. Swinging too far to the other extreme put Apollinaris in the same position as people he had fought.

What Heresies Are Similar to Apollinarianism?

Let’s return to what we originally discussed: hypostatic union. As this discussion showed, it is important to balance out Christ's nature. Why, you may ask? Apollinarianism and Arianism are not the only Christological heresies.

As J. Warner Wallace explains, some of the oldest Christological heresies predate Apollinarianism, such as Adoptionism. This heresy believed that Christ’s divinity did not exist before his birth in Bethlehem, but he was given divinity and power from God either after baptism or the temptation in the wilderness. In other words, Christ was adopted into the Godhead rather than always part of it. This heretical belief can be found in Mormonism and Jehovah's Witnesses.

Another heresy that predates Apollinarianism is Docetism, which claims that Jesus only appeared to have a body but didn’t. Thus, he was not truly incarnate. Heretics of this belief went so far as to deny the death and resurrection of Christ. How could a spirit be persecuted without a body?

Wallace points out two more heresies: Eutychianism (better known as Monophysitism) and Nestorianism. Monophysitism resembles Apollinarianism: it holds that Christ’s divinity absorbed his humanity, thus giving Christ only one nature. Nestorianism believes that the Virgin Mary only gave birth to Christ’s humanity and that his divinity came afterward.

How Can We Watch Out for Apollinarianism Today?

So, is Apollinarianism still around today? Yes, but often other names.

At different times, different Christian groups swing close to Apollinarianism in response to others’ views. Progressive Christian groups often emphasize Christ’s humanity by emphasizing his stance for justice (i.e., the woman caught in adultery, the Samaritan woman, the lame and the sick, etc.). Sometimes, this comes at the cost of lowering Christ’s divinity so that authority and obedience (i.e., confession and repentance) are lowered. In response, some conservative Christians emphasize Christ’s divinity so much that they go close to Apollinarianism and similar views, where Christ’s divine side is seen as far more important than his humanity.

This means we must understand heresies because they will rise and fall and reappear as culture changes and the church responds to the culture.

We also see ideas similar to Apollinarianism in offshoot religions and sometimes in churches led astray from orthodox theology.

We must remember that heresy is tricky to combat because it isn’t merely an opinion that someone develops. Heretics often use Scripture to state their case. They may not seem as weird as you would expect. They will explain their ideas in ways that sound like orthodox Christianity but move outside biblical teaching. So, we must know what Scripture teaches to distinguish between orthodox ideas and ideas that stray from Christianity’s historic teachings.

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