26 - Apollinarius of Laodicea, On the Body’s Union with the Divinity in Christ

Summary

The date of this text written by Apollinarius of Laodicea (ca. 315–392) is difficult to determine with specificity.¹ It should simply be placed in the late 360s or 370s. Here Apollinarius lays out his understanding of the communicatio idiomatum, a Latin phrase that refers to the transference of traits in the incarnate Christ. As Apollinarius presents it here, the communicatio idiomatum permits a theologian to both observe and speak of the divinity sharing in the body’s characteristics and the body sharing in the divinity’s characteristics with respect to the incarnate Christ. Apollinarius notes that the conjunction of the two natures in Christ (see 4 below) results in a single, fundamental, undivided, and indivisible union between what is “same-in-substance” with God and what is “same-in-substance” with humanity. This “double consubstantiality,” as it is called – that is, Christ is homoousios with God and homoousios with humanity – is the Christological mechanism, so to speak, that allows for each nature to share in the qualities of the other without the philosophical or theological implications of sharing.