But in spite of outbreaks like these we must beware of judging the venerable Elipandus too hardly. Alcuin himself, in his letter to the bishop, written, as he says, "with the pen of charity," speaks of him as most blameless,[1] and confesses that he has heard much of his piety and devotion, an admission which he also makes with regard to Felix, in a letter to him.[2] Yet in his book against Elipandus, he exclaims, not without a touch of bathos: "For all the garments of wool on your shoulders, and the mitre upon your brow, wearing which you minister to the people, for all the daily shaving of your beard[3] ... if you renounce not these doctrines, you will be numbered with the goats!" Another testimony (of doubtful value, however) in Elipandus' favour is to be found in the anonymous life of Beatus,[4] where Elipandus is said to have succeeded Cixila in the bishopric of Toledo, because of his reputation for learning and piety, which extended throughout Spain.

Elipandus, who boasted of having refuted and stamped out the Migetian errors, and who also took up so independent an attitude with regard to the See of Rome, was not the man to endure being dictated to in the matter of what was, or what was not, sound doctrine, and, in the letter quoted above, he scornfully remarks that he had never heard that it was the province of the people of Libana to teach the Toledans. Here, as in the defiant attitude taken up towards the Pope, we may perhaps see a jealousy, felt by the old independent Church of Spain under its own primate, towards the new Church, that was growing up in the mountains of the North, the centre of whose religious devotion was soon to be Compostella, and its spiritual head not the primate of Spain, but the bishop of Rome.

It is now time to explain what the actual heresy advocated by Elipandus and Felix was. Some have held the opinion that Adoptionism was merely a revival of the Bonosian errors, which had long taken root in Spain;[1] others, that it was a revival of the Nestorian[2] heresy, a new phase of the controversy between the schools of Antioch and Alexandria;[3] or that it was an attempt to reform Christianity, purging it from later additions.[4] Alcuin, however, speaks of its followers as a new sect, unknown to former times.[5] Stated briefly, the new doctrine was that Jesus, in so far as His manhood was concerned, was son of God by adoption. This error had been foreseen and condemned in advance by Cyril of Alexandria (348-386):[6] by Hilary of Arles (429-449).[7] The Eleventh Council of Toledo had also guarded against this same error a hundred years before this (675), affirming that Christ the Son of God was His Son by nature, not by adoption.

It is a mistake to suppose Adoptionism to be a mere resuscitation of Nestorianism.[1] It agreed with the latter in repudiating the term "Mother of God" as applied to the Virgin Mary,[2] but it differed from it in the essential point of acknowledging the unity of person in Christ. What Felix—and on him devolved the chief onus of defence in the controversy—wished to make clear, was that the predicates of Christ's two natures could not logically be interchanged.[3] He therefore reasoned thus: Christ in respect to His Deity is God, and Son of God; with respect to His Manhood He is also God and Son of God, not indeed in essence, but by being taken into union with Him, who is in essence God, and Son of God. Therefore Christ, unless He derived His humanity from the essence of God, must as man, and in respect of that humanity, be Son of God only in a nuncupative sense. This relation of Jesus the Man to God he preferred to describe by the term Adoption—a word not found in Scripture in this connection, "but," says Felix, "implied therein,[4] for what is adoption in a son, if it be not election, assumption (susceptio)." The term itself was no doubt found by Elipandus in the Gothic Liturgy;[5] and he most likely used it at first with no thought of raising a metaphysical discussion on so knotty a point. Being brought to task, however, for using the word by those whom he deemed his ecclesiastical inferiors, he was led to defend it from a natural dislike to acknowledge himself in the wrong. "We can easily believe," says Enhueber, "that Elipandus, who appears to have been the chief author of the heresy at this time, fell into it at first from ignorance and inadvertently, and did not appear openly as a heretic, till, admonished of his error, he arrogantly and obstinately defended a position which he had only taken up through ignorance."[6]

Elipandus also seems to have applied to Felix[7] for his opinion on Christ's Sonship; and the latter, who was a man of great penetration and acuteness, first formulated the new doctrine, stating in his answer that Christ must be considered with regard to His Divinity as truly God and Son of God, but with regard to His Manhood, as Son of God in name only, and by adoption.

To give an idea of the lines on which the controversy was carried on, it will be necessary to state some of the arguments of Felix, and in certain cases Alcuin's rejoinders. These are:—

(a.) "If Christ, as man, is not the adopted Son of God, then must His Manhood be derived from the essence of God and consequently must be something different from the manhood of men."[1] To this Alcuin can only oppose another dilemma, which, however, is more of the nature of a quibble. "If," he says, "Christ is an adopted Son of God, and Christ is also God, then is God the adopted Son of God?"[2] Here Alcuin confounds the predicates of Christ's two natures—the very thing Felix protested against—and uses the argument thus obtained against that doctrine of Felix, which was based on this very denial of any interchange of predicates.

(b.) Christ is spoken of sometimes as Son of David, sometimes as Son of God. One person can only have two fathers, if one of these be an adoptive father. So is it with Christ. Alcuin answers: "As a man (body and soul) is called the son of his father, so Christ (God and man) is called Son of God."[3] But to those who deny that a man's soul is derived from his father, this argument would carry no weight.

(c.) Christ stood in a position of natural dependence towards God over and above the voluntary submission which He owed to His Father as God.[4] This dependence Felix expresses by the term servus conditionalis, applied to Jesus.[5] He may have been thinking of Matt. xii. i8, "Behold my servant, whom I have chosen;" and St Paul's Ep. to Philipp. ii. 7, "He took upon. Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men."[6] Or perhaps he had in his mind, if the theory of the influence of Mohammedanism is true, those passages of the Koran which speak of Christ as a servant, as, "Christ doth not proudly disdain to be a servant unto God,"[7] and, "Jesus is no other than a servant."[8]

(d.) To prove that Scripture recognises a distinction between Christ the Man and Christ the God, Felix appeals to Luke xviii. 19, "Why callest thou Me good? There is none good, save one, even God;" Mark xiii. 32, "Of that day, or that hour, knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father." Texts such as these can only be met by a reference to other texts, such as John iii. 16, where God is said to have given His only begotten Son to suffer death upon the Cross.

Conceiving, then, that it was logically necessary to speak of Christ the Man as Son of God by adoption, Felix yet admits that this adoption, though the same in kind[1] as that which enables us to cry Abba, Father, yet was more excellent in degree, and even perhaps specifically higher. It differed also from man's adoption in not being entered into at baptism, since Christ's baptism was only the point at which His adoption was outwardly made manifest by signs of miraculous power, which continued till the resurrection. Christ's adoption—according to Felix, was assumed at His conception, "His humanity developing in accordance with its own laws, but in union with the Logos."[2] It will be seen that though Felix wished to keep clear the distinction between Christ as God, and as Man, yet he did not carry this separation so far as to acknowledge two persons in Christ. "The Adoptionists acknowledged the unity of Persons, but meant by this a juxtaposition of two distinct personal beings in such a way that the Son of God should be recognised as the vehicle for all predicates, but not in so close a manner as to amount to an absorption of the human personality into the Divine Person."[3] The two natures of Christ had been asserted by the Church against the Monophysites, and the two wills against the Monothelites, but the Church never went on to admit the two Persons.[4] With regard to the contention of Felix, we are consequently driven to the conclusion that either the personality ascribed to Christ was "a mere abstraction, a metaphysical link joining two essentially incompatible natures,"[5] or that the dispute was only about names, and that by adopted son Felix and the others meant nothing really different from the orthodox doctrine.[6]

The first mention of the new theory appears in a letter of Elipandus to the Abbot Fidelis, written in 783,[1] but it did not attract notice till a little later. The pope Adrian, in his letter to the orthodox bishops of Spain (785), speaks of the melancholy news of the heresy having reached him—a heresy, he remarks, never before propounded, unless by Nestorius. Together with Elipandus, he mentions Ascarius,[2] Bishop of Braga, whom Elipandus had won over to his views. The new doctrine seems to have made its way quickly over a great part of Spain,[3] while Felix propagated it with considerable success in Septimania. The champions of the orthodox party in Spain were Beatus and Etherius, whom we have mentioned above, and Theudula, Bishop of Seville; while beyond its borders Alcuin, Paulinus of Aquileia, and Agobard of Lyons, under the direction of Charles the Great and the Pope, defended the orthodox position.

Felix, being bishop in a province of which Charles claimed the overlordship, was amenable to his ecclesiastical superiors, and suffered for his opinions at their hands; but Elipandus, living under a Mohammedan government, could only be reached by letters or messages. He seems even to have received something more than a mere negative support from the Arabs, if we are right in so interpreting a passage in the letter of Beatus and Etherius.[1] But it is hard to believe that Elipandus was on such friendly terms with the Arab authorities; indeed, from passages in his writings, we should infer that the opposite was rather the case.[2] Neander suggests that it may have been a Gothic king in Galicia who supported Elipandus, but this seems even more unlikely than the other supposition.

The first council called to consider this question was held by the suggestion of the Emperor and the Pope at Narbonne in 788, when the heresy was condemned by twenty-five bishops of Gaul.[3]

A similar provincial council was held by Paulinus at Friuli in 791, with the same results.[4] But in the following year the heresy was formally condemned at a full council held at Ratisbon, under the presidency of the Emperor. Here Felix abjured his error, and was sent to Rome to be further condemned by the Pope, that the whole Western Church might take action in the matter. Felix was there induced to write a book condemning his own errors, but in spite of this he was not restored to his see.[5] On his return, however, to Spain, Felix relapsed into his old heresy, which he had never really abjured.[6]

In 792 Alcuin was summoned from England to come and defend the orthodox position. He wrote at once to Felix a kindly letter, admonishing him of his errors, and acknowledging that all his previous utterances on theology had been sound and true. Felix answered this letter, but his reply is not preserved. To the same, or following, year belongs the letter of Elipandus and the bishops of Spain to Charles and the bishops of Gaul, defending their doctrine, and asking for the restoration of Felix.

In 794 was held another council at Frankfurt, at which Alcuin and other English clergy were present. Felix was summoned to attend, and heard his heresy again condemned and anathematised, the decree to this effect being sent to Elipandus.[1] Alcuin's book was read by Charles, and sent into Septimania by the hands of the abbot Benedict.

The next council was held at Rome in 798 to confirm the one at Frankfurt.[2] In 799 came out Felix's answer to Alcuin, sent by him first to Elipandus, and, after being shewn to the Cordovan clergy, sent on to Charles. Alcuin is charged to answer it, with Paulinus and the Pope as his coadjutors.

In the same year another council was held at Aix, where Alcuin argued for a week with Felix, and apparently convinced him, for Felix again recanted, and even wrote a confession of faith discarding the word adoption, but still preserving the distinction of predicates belonging to the two natures.[3] Alcuin's book, after being revised by Charles, was published 800 A.D. Previously to this he had written to Elipandus, who answered in no measured terms, accusing Alcuin, among other things, of enormous wealth. This letter was sent through Felix, and, in answer, Alcuin wrote the book against Elipandus, which we now have, and which was the means of converting twenty thousand heretics in Gothic Gaul.[4] But in spite of Emperor or Pope, of the books of Alcuin, or the anathemas of the councils, neither Felix nor Elipandus really gave up his new doctrines, and even the former continued to make converts. Elipandus, though very old[5] at this time (800 A.D.), lived ten years longer, and Felix survived him eight years;[6] and they both died persisting in their error.[7]

We have dealt somewhat at length with the Adoptionist heresy, both from its interest and importance, and because, as mentioned above, there are some reasons for thinking that it was the outcome of a wish to conciliate Mohammedan opinion. It will be as well to recapitulate such evidence as we have obtained on this point. But we must not expect to find the traces of Mohammedan influence in the development, so much as in the origination, of the theory. What we do find is slight enough, amounting to no more than this:—

(a.) That the one point, which repelled the Mohammedan from genuine Christianity—setting aside for a moment the transcendental mystery of the Trinity—was the Divinity of Christ. Anything, therefore, that tended to emphasise the humanity of Jesus, or to obscure the great fact of Christ the Man, being Son of God, which sounded so offensive to Mohammedan ears, would so far bring the Christian creed nearer to the Mohammedan's acceptance, by assimilating the Christian conception of Christ, to that which appears so often in the Koran.[1] There can be no doubt that the theory of adoption, if carried to its logical conclusion, did contribute to this result:

(b.) That Elipandus was accused of receiving the help of the secular arm in disseminating his heretical opinions:

(c.) That the application of the term Servant to Christ, besides being authorised by texts from Scripture, is countenanced in two passages from the Koran:

(d.) That Leo III., speaking of, Felix's return to Spain, and his relapse into error, implies that it was due to his renewed contact with infidels who held similar views:

(e.) That in a passage, quoted by Enhueber, Elipandus is said to have lost his hold on the truth in consequence of his close intercourse with the Arabs:

(f.) That Elipandus accused Etherius of being a false prophet, that is, for giving, as has been conjectured, a Mohammedan interpretation to the Beast in the Revelation of St John.

Something must now be said of one more doctrine, which, though it did not arise in Spain, nor perhaps much affected it, yet was originated by a Spaniard, and a disciple of Felix,[2]—Claudius, Bishop of Turin. Some have seen in this doctrine, which was an offshoot of Iconoclasm, traces of Adoptionism, a thing not unlikely in itself.[3]

Of the relations of Claudius to the Saracens we have the direct statement of one of his opponents, who said that the Jews praised him, and called him the wisest among the Christians; and that he on his side highly commended them and the Saracens.[4] Yet his tendency seems to have been against the Judaizing of the Church.[5]