Apollinaris of Laodicea

Apollinaris the Younger (died 382) was a bishop of Laodicea in Syria. He collaborated with his father Apollinaris the Elder in reproducing the Old Testament in the form of Homeric and Pindaric poetry, and the New Testament after the fashion of Platonic dialogues, when the emperor Julian had forbidden Christians to teach the classics. He is best known, however, as a noted opponent of Arianism. Apollinaris's eagerness to emphasize the deity of Jesus and the unity of his person led him so far as to deny the existence of a rational human soul (νοῦς, nous) in Christ's human nature, this being replaced in him by the Logos, so that his body was a glorified and spiritualized form of humanity.

The orthodox and catholic position (maintained by Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, the Church of the East, Oriental Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, and Protestantism) was that God as his Logos assumed human nature in its entirety, including the νοῦς, for only thus could he be humanity's perfect redeemer and prototype. It was alleged that the Apollinarian approach implied docetism, that if the Godhead without constraint swayed the manhood there was no possibility of real human probation or of real advance in Christ's manhood. The position was accordingly condemned by several synods and in particular by that of the First Council of Constantinople in 381.

This did not prevent its having a considerable following, which after Apollinaris's death divided into two sects, the more conservative taking its name (Vitalians) from Vitalis, the Apollinarist claimant to the see of Antioch, the other (Polemeans) adding the further assertion that the two natures were so blended that even the body of Christ was a fit object of adoration. The Apollinarian emphasis on the unity of human and divine in Christ and on the divine element in that unity was later restated in the form of Eutychianism and persisted in what was later the radically anti-Nestorian monophysite school.

Although Apollinaris was a prolific writer, scarcely anything has survived under his own name. But a number of his writings are concealed under the names of orthodox Fathers, e.g. ἡ κατὰ μέρος πίστις, long ascribed to Gregory Thaumaturgus. These have been collected and edited by Hans Lietzmann.

Two letters of his correspondence with Basil of Caesarea are also extant, although there is scholarly debate regarding their authenticity because they record the orthodox theologian Basil asking Apollinaris for theological advice on the orthodox term 'homoousios'. These concerns may be unfounded, as before Apollinaris began promulgating what were seen as heretical doctrines, he was a highly respected bishop and friend of Athanasius and Basil.

He must be distinguished from the Apollinaris Claudius, bishop of Hierapolis, who bore the same name, and who wrote one of the early Christian "Apologies" (c. 170).