Apollinarius, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa

Apollinarius of Laodicea argued that the divine wisdom, in Christ, took the place of a human reason, and so that the human Christ has existed eternally, as part of the Logos’s person. So even the humanity of Christ is in some sense divine, for the Apollinarians, and we are transformed by imitating him or being sacramentally united with him. Against this view, Gregory of Nazianzus came to insist that Christ must have a complete and authentic humanity if he is our savior; his must be a “double” reality, in which creator and creature are mingled” in the actions and consciousness of a single agent. Gregory of Nyssa also emphasized the need for Christ to be fully human if he is to save us. He suggested that human nature is gradually being transformed by the divine qualities Jesus brings into the world. Human changeability is the condition of salvation.