Adoptionism is the Christological heresy of 8th-century Spain: around 783-785, Archbishop Elipandus of Toledo taught that Christ, as man, is not the natural Son of God but only His adoptive son — homo adoptivus. Christ-God would be Son by nature and by eternal generation; Christ-man would be so only by adoption and by grace. Two filiations, then: one natural, the other adoptive.[1]
The affair was no academic quarrel: it tore the Church of Spain apart for some fifteen years, mobilized Pope Hadrian I, drew in Charlemagne and his theologians — foremost among them Alcuin of York — and ended with five successive councils, from Narbonne (791) to Urgell (799), by way of Ratisbon (792), Frankfurt (794) and Aachen (799).[2]
The stakes went beyond Visigothic Spain: under an unprecedented formula, the old Nestorianism was reappearing — to divide Christ into two sons is to divide Him into two persons. The Church answered once and for all: filiation belongs to the person, not to the nature, and Jesus, even as man, is the natural Son of God.[3][4]
This article takes the neighbouring dossiers for granted, referring to them without duplicating them: The heresies of the early centuries for the panorama of Christological errors, the Nestorian crisis and Nestorianism for the mother of all divisions of Christ, Arianism for the earlier great crisis over the divinity of the Son, Docetism for the opposite error which dissolves His humanity, Gnosticism and Marcionism for the other falsifications of Christ in the 2nd century.
What Adoptionism asserts: a Christ in two sons
The formula: natural Son according to divinity, adoptive son according to humanity
Put plainly: imagine being told that Jesus would somehow be two children at once — one truly begotten, the other merely taken in. That is exactly the thesis of Elipandus and Felix: there would be in Christ two filiations. As God, Christ is the Son of God by generation and by nature; as man, He is Son of God only by adoption and by grace. And the consequence follows: the man Jesus — homo Christus — is the adoptive, not the natural, Son of God.[5]
The formula has an appearance of piety: it seeks to exalt the transcendence of the Father and the gratuity of the Incarnation. But it cuts Christ in two. For filiation — being a son — does not belong to an abstract nature: it belongs to a person. To posit two sons is to posit two persons in Christ: an eternal Son on one side, an adopted man on the other. That is precisely the error of Nestorius, condemned at Ephesus in 431 — four centuries earlier and at the other end of the Christian world.[6]
"Just as the Nestorian impiety divides Christ into two persons because of the two natures, so your ignorant recklessness divides Him into two sons, one His own, the other adopted." — Alcuin of York, Against Felix, book I, ch. 11[7]
Where the argument came from: the Scripture brandished by Felix
Felix of Urgell, the scholar of the duo, did not invent without evidence: he piled up scriptural texts. Christ Himself says: "the Father is greater than I."[8] St Paul writes that Christ is "the first-born among many brethren."[9] If the man Christ is inferior to the Father, if He is the eldest among brethren adopted like us, is He not Himself, as man, an adopted one among the adopted?[10]
The Church had already answered the first objection at the time of the Arian crisis: when Jesus says that the Father is greater, He speaks according to His assumed humanity, not according to His eternal divinity — the inferiority is one of condition, not of divine nature. As for the second text, it speaks of our adoption, not of that of Jesus: it is we who are adopted in Him, the first-born; He is nowhere in the Bible called the adopted Son of God. On the contrary, Scripture attributes to the man Jesus all the titles of the eternal Son.[11]
"He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all." — St Paul, Epistle to the Romans, 8, 32[12]
"No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known." — Gospel according to St John, 1, 18[13]
The Mozarabic liturgy and the Fathers: words taken out of context
Felix also rummaged through the old books: in the Mozarabic liturgy of Spain, he found expressions such as adoptio or homo adoptivus applied to the mystery of the Incarnation; in certain Greek Fathers, the formula adopted son (υἱὸς θετός); and several Latin Fathers used the verbs adopt, assume with regard to Christ.[14]
The Catholic answer distinguishes carefully: when the Fathers speak of adoption, it is the holy humanity that is said to be adopted — that is, assumed by the Word — never the person of Christ. Concrete and abstract were confused: to say that human nature is assumed does not mean that Jesus is an adopted one. The concrete expression of the Mozarabic missal, homo adoptatus, or that of a few Greek Fathers, either does not refer to Christ, or belongs to that ancient usage which employs the concrete for the abstract.[15]
Felix's dialectic: three lines of reasoning that seem unanswerable
Felix also wielded dialectic with a subtlety that impressed his contemporaries. Three arguments above all: first, the title of natural Son of God could not be said of the man Jesus, since He is begotten in time — yet what is born in time could not be begotten from all eternity. Next, the man Jesus is inferior to the Father — yet the natural Son is inferior to no one. Finally, the man Jesus is not related to the Father alone but to the whole Trinity — and the relation would remain the same if it had been the Father or the Spirit who became incarnate instead of the Son.[16]
These lines of reasoning collapse as soon as the principle is firmly held: as St Thomas Aquinas would say, filiation properly belongs to the person. Christ, Son of God by eternal generation, remains Son of God after the Word has assumed and substantially united to Himself the holy humanity. The Incarnation takes nothing away from the eternal filiation, any more than it takes away the eternal personality of the Word.[17]
Toledo under Islam: how the error was born
Elipandus of Toledo, primate of a Church cut off from Rome
To understand Adoptionism, one must look at the map. In 711, the Muslims conquered almost all of Visigothic Spain; in the north there survived only a small kingdom of the Asturias, clinging to its mountains. Toledo, the ancient Visigothic capital and primatial see, now lived under Muslim domination. Its archbishop, Elipandus — an old man of indomitable character — governed the greatest Church of Spain in almost total isolation: Rome's control over these regions was practically reduced to nothing by Islamic domination.[18][19]
And it was precisely in this Muslim Spain that a Nestorian colony had found refuge years before. The combined influence of the surrounding Islam and of this residual Nestorianism had, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, blunted the Catholic sense of old Elipandus. How did a heresy of the East, buried for three centuries in its native land, rise again at the far western edge of the Latin Church? Through this double saturation, which isolation left without antidote.[20]
The spark: Migetius, and the rebuttal that went too far
The spark came from a certain Migetius, a preacher of rash doctrine who maintained, among other errors, that the second Person of the Trinity did not exist before the Incarnation. The better to refute this denial of the eternal Son, Elipandus drew a hard and sharp line between Jesus-God and Jesus-man: the former would be the natural Son, the latter only the adopted son.[21]
The original intention was therefore orthodox — to defend the pre-existence of the Son against Migetius. But the remedy was worse than the disease: to save the eternal Son, Elipandus sacrificed the unity of Christ. Instead of saying that one and the same Son is God from all eternity and man in time, he made the man Jesus a second, adopted son. The reassertion of Nestorianism at once raised a storm of Catholic protests.[22]
Beatus of Liébana and Etherius of Osma: the Asturian resistance
The resistance started in the free north. Beatus, abbot of Liébana in the Asturian mountains, led the Catholics with Etherius, bishop of Osma. Beatus was no obscure little monk: confessor of Queen Adosinda, wife of the Asturian king Silo (774-783), he exercised wide influence and counted among his disciples Alcuin himself and Etherius of Osma.[23] Facing him, Elipandus defended his position with an obstinacy of iron — and had the skill to enrol a weighty ally in his service: Felix, bishop of Urgell, renowned for his learning and versatile mind.[24]
Beatus and Etherius composed against Elipandus a treatise in two books, the Adversus Elipandum (c. 785), refuting point by point the double filiation in the name of the faith of Chalcedon and of the Fathers. It was this Asturian front, well before Rome and Aachen, that prevented the error from passing as the faith of all Spain.[25]
Felix of Urgell, the enrolled scholar who became leader
Felix, bishop of Urgell in Catalonia — a see situated, for its part, under Frankish domination, in the zone Charlemagne had just attached to his empire — first entered the quarrel lightly, to oblige Elipandus. But once caught up in the dispute, he proved a redoubtable ally: where Elipandus placed an indomitable will at the service of Adoptionism, Felix brought it his learning — and, the Catholic Encyclopedia severely adds, his Punic faith.[26] He even became the leader of the new-born movement, which contemporaries called the Hæresis Feliciana, the heresy of Felix.[27]
The geographical contrast explains what followed: Toledo was beyond all reach, but Urgell answered to the Franks. It was through Felix, a Carolingian subject, that Charlemagne and the bishops of the North could seize hold of the heresy — and it was upon Felix that the conciliar condemnations fell, Elipandus remaining out of reach behind the frontier of Islam.[28]
| Actor | See | Political situation | Role in the crisis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elipandus | Toledo, primate of Spain | Under Muslim domination | Inventor of the formula, obstinate to the end |
| Felix | Urgell (Catalonia) | Under Frankish domination | Scholar of the duo, leader of the Hæresis Feliciana, alone answerable to the councils |
| Beatus | Abbot of Liébana (Asturias) | Free Asturian kingdom | First Catholic opponent, Adversus Elipandum |
| Etherius | Bishop of Osma | Free Asturian kingdom | Co-author of the refutation with Beatus |
| Migetius | Itinerant preacher | Muslim Spain | His error about the Son provoked Elipandus's rebuttal |
Why the Church says no: the Catholic answer
One person, two natures, a single filiation
The heart of the answer holds in one sentence, which St Thomas would formulate with ultimate sharpness: filiation properly belongs to the person. To be a son is not a quality of a nature; it is the relation of a person to his father. Now in Christ there is but one person — the eternal person of the Word, Son of God by eternal generation. This person, in assuming a human nature, does not become two sons: He remains the one Son, now man as He is God.[29]
From then on, Felix's argument about temporal generation falls: what is born in time is the assumed human nature, not the person who assumes it. And the argument about inferiority falls with it: inferiority to the Father belongs to the condition of man, not to the person of the Son. The Incarnation takes nothing away from the eternal filiation, any more than it takes away the eternal personality of the Word.[30]
"Thou art my Son, today have I begotten thee." — Epistle to the Hebrews, 1, 5[31]
"You who were far off." — St Paul, Epistle to the Ephesians, 2, 13: to us, it is said that we were far off — to Him, that He is Son from eternity[32]
The table of faith: what the Church confesses against Adoptionism
| Question | Adoptionism answers | The Catholic faith answers |
|---|---|---|
| How many sons in Christ? | Two: one natural, one adoptive | One alone: the eternal Son, made man |
| How many persons? | Two in practice (Nestorian consequence) | One alone: the person of the Word |
| Is the man Jesus adored? | No as man (cf. Folmar later) | Yes: the Word became flesh, and the flesh of the Word is adored[33] |
| What does Scripture say? | The man Christ inferior and eldest brother, hence adopted | No text calls Jesus adopted son; everything attributes to Him the titles of the eternal Son |
| What do the Fathers say? | Adoptio, homo adoptivus, adopted son | It is humanity that is assumed, not the person that is adopted |
| Whence comes our adoption? | We would be adopted as He is | We are adopted in Him, the first-born[34] |
The last line is decisive for the spiritual life: if the man Christ were Himself but an adopted one, our filial adoption would lose its foundation. It is because Jesus is truly the natural Son, down to His flesh, that we can become sons in Him. Adoptionism, seeking to exalt grace, was undermining the very source of all grace of adoption.[35]
Chalcedon, Ephesus, Frankfurt: one and the same guard
Adoptionism adds nothing, dogmatically, to what the Church had already settled. The council of Ephesus (431) had condemned Nestorius who divided Christ into two persons; the council of Chalcedon (451) had defined the hypostatic union — one person in two natures, without confusion or separation. Frankfurt merely draws the consequence: to divide Christ into two sons is to divide Him into two persons, and to fall back under the anathemas of Ephesus.[36] The reader will find the detailed narrative of the mother of all these crises in the article the Nestorian crisis.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes this faith today in paragraphs 464 to 469: the only Son of God became man without ceasing to be God, true God and true man, a single divine person acting in two natures.[37]
The condemnation: from Narbonne to Aachen
Five councils in eight years: the chronology of a hunt
Charlemagne would have preferred conciliation: despite his unreserved loyalty to the Roman faith, he could hardly alienate outright provinces so dearly acquired, and his at first overly conciliatory attitude let the error breathe. It took eight years of councils to put an end to it: Narbonne (791), Ratisbon (792), Frankfurt (794), Aachen (799) and the synod of Urgell (799) — not counting the work of the missionaries and scholars, who did more than the decrees.[38][39]
| Council | Date | What was at stake |
|---|---|---|
| Narbonne | 791 (the Catholic Encyclopedia writes 788) | First examination of the error; Felix, present, was not yet condemned[40] |
| Ratisbon | 792 | Felix appeared, retracted a first time, won Rome then relapsed on his return |
| Frankfurt | Summer 794 | Solemn condemnation: synodus universalis, Felix absent and condemned |
| Aachen | 799 | Six days of disputation between Felix and Alcuin; new and final retraction |
| Urgell | 799 | Local reception of the condemnation in Felix's own diocese[41] |
Frankfurt 794: the universal synod
The council of Frankfurt, gathered in summer 794 by the grace of God, the authority of the pope and the command of Charlemagne, brought together the bishops of the Frankish kingdom, Italy, Aquitaine and even England — Alcuin of York took part. Convoked by Charlemagne, it nevertheless sat in full apostolic power, under the presidency of the legate of Rome: contemporary chroniclers called it synodus universalis, the universal synod.[42][43]
Its decrees forcefully affirm the natural divine filiation of Jesus down to His humanity, and reject adoptive filiation as heretical — at least insofar as it excludes the natural filiation. The anathematizing formulas, afterwards collected in Denzinger's Enchiridion, strike whoever would dare call Christ an adoptive son in the exclusive sense.[44] The council also commissioned three doctrinal pieces: the Letter of the bishops of Francia to the bishops of Spain drafted by Alcuin, the Liber sacrosyllabus of Paulinus of Aquileia, and a Letter of Charlemagne to Elipandus.[45]
The two letters of Hadrian I: Rome decides before and during
Rome had not waited for Frankfurt. As early as 785, Pope Hadrian I wrote to the bishops of Spain to condemn the nascent error; in 794, he wrote to Charlemagne to support the solemn condemnation. It is these two letters, with the decrees of Frankfurt, that constitute the official condemnation of Adoptionism.[46]
The champions of orthodoxy: Alcuin, Paulinus, Benedict
What the synods could not do by diplomacy, men of God accomplished by pen and mission. Alcuin of York, the master of the palace school, composed the two great treatises of the controversy: Against Elipandus of Toledo and Against Felix of Urgell — works that will forever remain the honour of Christian learning.[47] Paulinus, patriarch of Aquileia, supplied the Liber sacrosyllabus requested by Frankfurt.[48] And St Benedict of Aniane, the monastic reformer, evangelized the contaminated regions: as early as 800, he announced the conversion of twenty thousand clerics and laymen returned from error.[49]
The end of the heresy: retractions, relapses and extinction
Felix at Aachen: six days facing Alcuin
The fate of Felix is a series of retractions and relapses. At Ratisbon in 792, he abjured a first time, went to Rome, then fell back as soon as he returned. At Frankfurt in 794, neither he nor his partisans appeared: the council condemned in their absence, with Alcuin bearing the doctrinal accusation.[50]
Archbishop Leidrad of Lyons, sent on mission to Spain by Charlemagne, persuaded Felix to appear before a synod at Aachen in 799. There, after six days of disputation with Alcuin, Felix retracted his heresy anew.[51] Placed under Leidrad's supervision at Lyons, he gave every sign of a sincere conversion — and his death, in 818, would have passed as that of a penitent if Agobard, Leidrad's successor, had not found among his papers a retraction of all his retractions: Felix had died in error, in secret.[52][53]
Elipandus dies in his error; Spain returns to the faith
Of the two heresiarchs, Elipandus was the most constant in obstinacy: he died in his error, out of reach behind the Muslim frontier, without ever having retracted.[54] But Adoptionism hardly survived its authors. What Charlemagne had been unable to obtain by diplomacy and synods, the missionaries obtained by evangelization: Spain returned to the faith of Frankfurt, and the error died out at the beginning of the 9th century.[55]
The aftermath: from the Middle Ages to the theologians' debates
Abelard in the 12th century: the neo-Adoptionism condemned in 1177
The Spanish heresy left few traces in the Middle Ages — and it is doubtful whether the Christological errors of Abelard, in the 12th century, derive directly from it. They seem rather the logical consequence of a false construction of the hypostatic union: Abelard came to contest the truth of expressions such as Christ is God or Christ is man. Understanding the hypostatic union as a fusion of the two natures, divine and human — and to prevent this fusion from becoming confusion — he reduced the holy humanity to the outward habit and adventitious instrument of the Word, denying the substantial reality of the man Jesus: Christ as man is not something real.[56]
In such a theory, the man Jesus obviously could not be called the true Son of God. Was He an adoptive son? Abelard personally repelled all kinship with the Adoptionists — as they had repelled all Nestorian filiation. But his disciples were less cautious: Luitolph defended at Rome the proposition Christ, as man, is the natural son of man and the adoptive son of God, and Folmar, in Germany, pushed the thesis to the extreme by refusing Christ as man the right to adoration.[57]
Pope Alexander III, by a rescript of 1177, condemned this neo-Adoptionism at least in its principles: we forbid under pain of anathema that henceforth anyone should dare to affirm that Christ as man is not a substantial reality — for as He is truly God, He is truly man.[58]
Scotus, Durandus, Vasquez, Suarez: can one speak of a second filiation?
The formulas natural Son of God and adopted son of God were subjected to a fresh close analysis by great theologians: Duns Scotus (c. 1300), Durandus of Saint-Pourçain (c. 1320), Vasquez (1604) and Suarez (1617). All admitted the doctrine of Frankfurt and confessed that Jesus as man was the natural, and not merely adoptive, Son of God. But besides this natural filiation founded on the hypostatic union, they wondered whether there was room for a second filiation, founded on grace — the grace of union (gratia unionis).[59]
They did not agree on how to qualify it: some called it adoptive, by analogy with our supernatural adoption; others, fearing that the word adoption would make Jesus a stranger to God, preferred to call it natural. None of these theories contradicts a defined dogma — and yet, since filiation belongs to the person, to multiply filiations in Christ is to risk multiplying persons. A second natural filiation is not intelligible; a second adoptive filiation does not sufficiently avoid the connotation condemned by Frankfurt — for we call adoptive him who is a stranger to the one who adopts.[60]
The common error of these new theories — already committed by the old Adoptionists and by Abelard — is to suppose that the grace of union in Christ, being no less fruitful than habitual grace in man, ought to have the same effect: filiation. It is no less fruitful — but it cannot have in Him the same effect as in us, for to Him it was said: Thou art my Son, and to us: you were far off.[61]
What Adoptionism teaches us today
Adoptionism died twelve centuries ago — but its temptation remains, whenever the man is separated from God in Jesus. Whenever the man Christ is made a mere inspired sage, a prophet among others, a man whom God supposedly took in, Toledo is replayed. And whenever the answer is given with the Church — one Son, true God and true man — Frankfurt is confessed.[62]
For the believer, the stakes are intimate: our filial adoption holds only if Jesus is Son by nature down to His flesh. It is because He is truly the Son that we can become sons in Him. Adoptionism sought to exalt grace by making Christ the first of the adopted; faith answers that grace comes to us precisely from His not being so — He is the Son, and it is in His only Son that the Father adopts us.[63]
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." — Gospel according to St John, 3, 16[64]
To go further
- The Nestorian crisis — the mother of all divisions of Christ: two persons instead of two natures
- The heresies of the early centuries — the panorama: from Gnosticism to Docetism, from Marcionism to Arianism
- Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), Adoptionism — full text on Wikisource
- Hefele, History of the Councils, vol. III — the standard conciliar narrative (Narbonne, Ratisbon, Frankfurt, Aachen)
Notes and References
J. F. Sollier, Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), "Adoptionism", vol. 1, pp. 150-151 (Wikisource): Adoptionism asserts a double filiation in Christ — one by generation and nature, the other by adoption and grace; Christ as God is Son by nature, Christ as man is Son only by adoption; the man Jesus is therefore the adoptive, not natural, Son of God.
1 5J. F. Sollier, Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), "Adoptionism", vol. 1, p. 150 (Wikisource): what Charlemagne could not obtain by diplomacy and synods — Narbonne, Ratisbon (792), Frankfurt (794), Aachen (799) — he obtained through missionaries and scholars. The date of 791 is retained here for the examination at Narbonne after the Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature (McClintock & Strong), art. "Adoptianists or Adoptivi": the error was brought there in 791, Felix present but not condemned, Ratisbon following "the next year" (792), then Frankfurt (794) and Urgell (799) — hence the five-stage list. The synod of Narbonne of 788 was a distinct provincial synod, which Felix attended and whose acts he signed (J. C. Cavadini, The Last Christology of the West, 1993, pp. 71-72); the Catholic Encyclopedia writes "Narbonne, 788" in its list.
2 38 40 41J. F. Sollier, ibid.: since filiation is an attribute of the person and not of the nature, to posit two sons is to posit two persons in Christ — the very error of Nestorianism.
3 6 36J. F. Sollier, ibid.: Felix's dialectical arguments lose all meaning once it is understood, with St Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae, IIIa, q. 23), that filiation properly belongs to the person; Christ, Son of God by eternal generation, remains Son of God after the Word has assumed the holy humanity.
4 17 29 30Alcuin of York, Against Felix of Urgell, book I, ch. 11: "Sicut Nestoriana impietas in duas Christum dividit personas propter duas naturas ; ita et vestra indocta temeritas in duos eum dividit filios, unum proprium, alterum adoptivum" — Latin quoted by Ph. Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. IV (Mediaeval Christianity, A.D. 590-1073), n. 668 (ccel.org); the Catholic Encyclopedia gives book I, PL 101, col. 136 (J. F. Sollier, "Adoptionism", CE vol. 1, p. 151, via Wikisource). The English above is Ignispedia's translation of this Latin (proprium = own, not "natural").
7Gospel according to St John, 14, 28: "the Father is greater than I" — a text already explained at the time of the Arian controversy (answer to the objection of inferiority), via J. F. Sollier, ibid.
8St Paul, Epistle to the Romans, 8, 29: Christ the first-born among many brethren — a text which concerns our adoption, not that of Jesus, via J. F. Sollier, ibid.
9 34J. F. Sollier, ibid.: Felix quoted countless scriptural texts in support of his theory.
10J. F. Sollier, ibid.: Christ is nowhere in the Bible called the adopted Son of God; moreover, Holy Scripture attributes to the man Jesus all the predicates that belong to the eternal Son (cf. Jn 1, 18; Jn 3, 16; Rm 8, 32).
11 35 63St Paul, Epistle to the Romans, 8, 32.
12Gospel according to St John, 1, 18.
13J. F. Sollier, Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), "Adoptionism", vol. 1, p. 150 (Wikisource): in patristic literature and the Mozarabic liturgy, Felix found expressions such as adoptio, homo adoptivus and the Greek υἱὸς θετός ("adopted son"), supposedly applied to the Incarnation.
14J. F. Sollier, Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), "Adoptionism", vol. 1, p. 151 (Wikisource): the expression adopt, adoptio used by certain Fathers has for its object the holy humanity, not the person of Christ; it is human nature, not Christ, that is said to be adopted — that is, assumed — by the Word; the concrete expression of the Mozarabic missal (homo adoptatus) or of certain Greek Fathers either does not apply to Christ, or belongs to the ancient usage of the concrete for the abstract.
15J. F. Sollier, ibid.: Felix's three dialectical arguments — temporal generation, inferiority to the Father, relation to the whole Trinity — and the remark that the relation would remain unchanged if the Father or the Spirit had become incarnate instead of the Son.
16J. F. Sollier, ibid.: such is the theory maintained towards the end of the 8th century by Elipandus, archbishop of Toledo, then under Muslim domination, and by Felix, bishop of Urgell, then under Frankish domination.
18J. F. Sollier, ibid.: Adoptionism was born in the part of Spain where Islam dominated and where a Nestorian colony had found refuge years before; the combined influence of Islam and Nestorianism had blunted the Catholic sense of old Elipandus; Islamic domination reduced Rome's control over most of Spain practically to nothing.
19 20J. F. Sollier, ibid.: there came a certain Migetius, preaching a lax doctrine and maintaining among other errors that the second Person of the Trinity did not exist before the Incarnation; the better to refute this error, Elipandus drew a hard line between Jesus-God (natural Son) and Jesus-man (adoptive son).
21 22Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911), "Beatus": confessor of Queen Adosinda, wife of King Silo of the Asturias (774-783), master of Alcuin and Etherius of Osma; he took an eminent part in the Adoptionist controversy and wrote against the views of Felix of Urgell supported by Elipandus of Toledo.
23J. F. Sollier, ibid.: to maintain his position, Elipandus skilfully enlisted the cooperation of Felix of Urgell, known for his learning and versatile mind; Felix entered lightly into the struggle, then proved a solid ally — Elipandus placed an indomitable will at the service of Adoptionism, Felix added his learning.
24 26J. F. Sollier, ibid.: the reassertion of Nestorianism raised a storm of Catholic protests, led by Beatus, abbot of Liébana, and Etherius, bishop of Osma.
25J. F. Sollier, ibid.: Felix even became the leader of the new movement, called by contemporaries the Hæresis Feliciana.
27J. F. Sollier, ibid.: Elipandus at Toledo under Muslim domination, Felix at Urgell under Frankish domination — hence the possibility for Charlemagne and the bishops of the North to seize hold of the heresy through Felix.
28Epistle to the Hebrews, 1, 5: "Thou art my Son, today have I begotten thee" — a text opposed by J. F. Sollier, ibid., to the thesis of an adoptive filiation of Christ.
31St Paul, Epistle to the Ephesians, 2, 13: "you who were far off" — to us it is said that we were far off, to Him that He is Son, via J. F. Sollier, ibid.
32Gospel according to St John, 1, 14: "And the Word became flesh."
33Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§ 464-469 (vatican.va): the one person of the Word, true God and true man.
37J. F. Sollier, ibid.: if the child of Nestorianism dominated Spain for nearly two decades and even made an incursion into the south of France, the true cause lies in Islamic domination — which reduced Rome's control to nothing — and in the overly conciliatory attitude of Charlemagne, who despite his unreserved loyalty to the Roman faith could hardly alienate provinces so dearly acquired.
39J. F. Sollier, ibid.: decrees of the council of Frankfurt (794) — convoked by Charlemagne, it is true, but in full apostolic power and presided over by the legate of Rome, hence synodus universalis in the words of contemporary chroniclers.
42Catholic Encyclopedia, "Council of Frankfort": gathered in summer 794 by the grace of God, the authority of the pope and the command of Charlemagne (can. 1), with the bishops of the Frankish kingdom, Italy, Aquitaine and even clerics of England.
43J. F. Sollier, ibid.: the official condemnation of Adoptionism is found (1) in the two letters of Pope Hadrian — one to the bishops of Spain (785), the other to Charlemagne (794) — and (2) in the decrees of the council of Frankfurt (794); these documents strongly affirm the natural divine filiation of Jesus even as man, and reject as heretical His adoptive filiation, at least insofar as it excludes the natural.
44 46English Wikipedia, "Spanish Adoptionism": the council of Frankfurt commissioned three pieces — the Letter of the bishops of Francia to the bishops of Spain (drafted by Alcuin), the Liber sacrosyllabus of Paulinus of Aquileia and the Letter of Charlemagne to Elipandus.
45 48J. F. Sollier, ibid.: Alcuin's treatises — Against Elipandus of Toledo and Against Felix of Urgell — will forever remain the honour of Christian learning.
47J. F. Sollier, ibid.: St Benedict of Aniane announced as early as 800 the conversion of 20,000 clerics and laymen.
49Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911), "Adoptianism": at Ratisbon (792) then at Frankfurt — where Alcuin of York took part in the synod while neither Felix nor his partisans appeared —, with the sending of several commissions of clerics to Spain to extirpate the heresy.
50Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911), "Adoptianism": Archbishop Leidrad of Lyons persuaded Felix to appear before a synod at Aachen in 799; there, after six days of disputation with Alcuin, he retracted his heresy anew.
51J. F. Sollier, ibid.: Felix, after many insincere retractions, was placed under the supervision of Leidrad of Lyons and gave every sign of a sincere conversion; his death would have passed as that of a penitent if Agobard, Leidrad's successor, had not found among his papers a formal retraction of all his earlier retractions.
52English Wikipedia, "Felix (bishop of Urgell)": condemned at Frankfurt in 794, exiled from Urgell, died at Lyons in 818.
53J. F. Sollier, ibid.: of the two heresiarchs, Elipandus died in his error.
54J. F. Sollier, ibid.: Adoptionism hardly survived its authors.
55J. F. Sollier, ibid.: Abelard's Christological errors seem rather the consequence of a false construction of the hypostatic union — understood as a fusion of the two natures —, reducing the holy humanity to the outward habit and adventitious instrument of the Word: Christus ut homo non est aliquid sed dici potest alicuius modi.
56J. F. Sollier, ibid.: Luitolph defended at Rome the proposition Christ, as man, is the natural son of man and the adoptive son of God, and Folmar, in Germany, pushed the thesis so far as to refuse Christ as man the right to adoration.
57J. F. Sollier, ibid.: Abelard's neo-Adoptionism was condemned, at least in its principles, by Alexander III in a rescript of 1177 — we forbid under pain of anathema that henceforth anyone should dare to affirm that Christ as man is not a substantial reality, for as He is truly God, He is truly man.
58J. F. Sollier, ibid.: Duns Scotus (1300), Durandus of Saint-Pourçain (1320), Vasquez (1604), Suarez (1617) admitted the doctrine of Frankfurt — Jesus as man the natural, not merely adoptive, Son — but wondered about a second filiation founded on the grace of union (gratia unionis).
59J. F. Sollier, ibid.: a second natural filiation is not intelligible; a second adoptive filiation does not sufficiently avoid the connotation of adoption as defined by Frankfurt — we call adoptive him who is a stranger to the one who adopts.
60J. F. Sollier, ibid.: the grace of union is no less fruitful than habitual grace, but it cannot have in Him the same effect as in us — for to Him it was said Thou art my Son, and to us you were far off.
61J. F. Sollier, ibid., doctrinal conclusion taken up here: the refutation of Adoptionism rests entirely on the understanding of the hypostatic union.
62Gospel according to St John, 3, 16.
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