c. 360–381

Apollinaris and the Cappadocian response: "What is not assumed is not healed"

Apollinaris of Laodicea, formerly a defender of Athanasius and of Nicaea, understood the human being as body, soul and spirit and taught that in Christ the place of the human spirit (the rational soul) was taken by the Word: otherwise, in his view, there would be two persons. In this way he defended the unity of the Person, the immutability of the Word and the sinlessness of Christ; Christ is "God incarnate", "the incarnate nature of God the Word". Gregory of Nazianzus answered with the formula "What is not assumed is not healed": what Christ did not take from human nature, he did not redeem. For the Cappadocians salvation was deification, and so it mattered that God truly assumed humanity in its entirety. Apollinaris was condemned at the Roman council of 377 under Damasus and at the council in Constantinople in 381.