Arthur Aston Luce

“The gospels are read mainly as a handbook of devotion; they should be studied as the biography of a hero. The face-value of its incidents is often neglected, while the reader seeks allegorical and mystical interpretations. To form a mental picture of Christ in His environment, to read ourselves back into His world and then into His ways of thought, such efforts are more than ever needed to-day, and they are more than ever absent.”

Here lies a rather interesting arcane little Catholic document of Christology from the 1920s that confronts the Monophysite heresy from numerous angles. For those unaware, monophysitism is the belief that Christ possessed only one nature. Broadly speaking, these can be split into two variants: the Ebionites, who denied Christ's divinity, and the Docetists, who denied Christ's humanity.

Luce takes a stand against both, seeing in them a monism that denies what is most essential to Christ's nature: that he was a man with two natures, both divine and all-too-human. This union, understood by the true Catholic, is of the utmost importance and cannot be understated. Without it, the Passion (Christ's agonising death, which makes Socrates' euthanasia seem rather pleasant in comparison), the purpose of creation, as well as the possibility of man's redemption at the end of time, are all undermined.

Luce is at times as scathing as he is amiable, detailing how these heresies are necessary steps through which every Catholic must contend, suggesting that they are a thing that those who think deeply may assent to at different periods of their journey in faith. But if they lapse, doing so is not a moral fault but an intellectual stepping stone towards the truth. Even so, he does point out that these heresies are far too prevalent in Christendom, and that the clergy's inability to reason through them is the cause of the Church's diminishing power and its failure to capture the imagination of the laity and inflame in them the fire of devotion - so these are serious intellectual stepping stones that must be considered and contended with as much perspicacity as one can muster.

There is a lot to discuss here. Of course a great deal of space is dedicated to the historical Christ, as a man who bore the same faculties of cognition, will and emotion as us, as a man of actual flesh and blood who more than just a synonym for ethical principles (Golden Rule etc. etc.) was an inspirational figure who the man of God should grow a true and personal affection and devotion for. Seeing as I’ve left a lot out, especially when it comes to the utilisation of Bergsonian psychology (God, this really is a book from the 20’s huh?), I’m just going to copy and paste my notes below, good luck deciphering them, but hopefully they’ll serve as a nice little summary for a potential onlooker who wants to leaf through this book.

Chapter I - THE METAPHYSICAL BASIS OF MONOPHYSITISM

- 8 - its significance lies in its universality and that we have a tendency to regard Christ as a monophysite
- 9 - its metaphysical basis/two methods - review life as presented in NT or as mediator between God and man
- 10 - philosophical basis remains in background for theologians when it comes to this issue
- 11 - nestorian, monophysite and catholic - their presuppositions were different hence came to different outcomes
- 12 - from early on philosophy and theology worked at same problem (embodiment of cosmic relation, Logos and Wise One)
- 13 - supreme generalisations of totality of experience, of world and of God - lowest terms and material for the ontological question/god and world then become distinct and polar opposite principles which stand as a challenge to the mind of man, but world and god cannot be thought of without each other, but most be initially thought in negatives and eventually reconciled or united/christology the attempt to think of relation between god and world in terms of personality
- 14 - coexistence/lowest stage of ontological thought/criticism of plato - still find his metaphysical ideas in deism/once god's creation of world finished the relation between the two ceased - useless for religious praises
- 15 - nestorians admit christ meeting point of god and man but introduce dualism into his person/try to express relation between god and world in terms of christ's personality but associate when they should really be united/divine remains external to human/mysterious association of son of god and son of mary - union consists in identity and gradual deepening of association/acquired divinity, not his birthright - such a separation non-christian as it dismisses mediation/has no motivation to find relation between god and man in the being of christ
- 16 - monism sees unrelated principles and invents some mode of reconciling them - craving for unity in thought radical and mind cannot rest short of it/assertion of identity in oppositions, resolve into one/materialist and spiritual monism
- 17 - monism fails to keep prominent idea of relation/To abandon either God or the world is a counsel of despair/Neoplatonism-Plotinus - human spirit and world manifestations of god/acosmism a keynote, world has no true being, tis a sham
- 18 - monism provides the a priori of monophysite thought/monophysitism - only nature in Christ is God the Word/draws conclusion that humanity is not permanent element in higher truth/monophysitism jettisons redemption as it rids Redeemer of all link to what he redeems - incarnation becomes a mere myth
- 19 - struggles to explain human facts of his life in gospel, for them it was just a creation of the senses and his body was a phantom, his human mind simply an aspect of Him - no spiritual attachment or value to be placed on them
- 20 - identity in and through difference, maintains relation of God and world - they both are facts, can only give full value when conceived of both in their oneness/God of world is the key concept to get to truth/aristotle - form and matter, world apart from God is matter without form, becomes actual with form instead of just potential
- 21 - Redemption is the first demand of religious experience; so it is the motive and theme of all Christology/seeks to effect union between world and god as soul feels estranged, needs to retain value of worth otherwise there'd be nothing worth redeeming
- 22 - some thoughts and deeds obviously God and some human within Christ, yet he is never out of character/Orthodox Christology satisfies the requirements of the soul/ that recognises the reality of pain and sorrow and sin, a redemption that redeems humanity in all its phases and in the wealth of its experiences. An Agent that has not shared to the full those experiences is useless for the purpose - to such a touch only can man respond

Chapter II - THE ORIGINS OF MONOPHYSITISM

- 24 - nature of heresies - can now be tolerant as it's position is assured
- 25 - primitive doctrinal errors - docetism (denied christ came in flesh, physical frame an apparition) and ebionitism (christ only a man, jewish humanistic interpretation)
- 26 - hypostatic union - found hard to reconcile both parts and emphasise the unity of his person/Athanasius/Apollinaris
- 27 - attacked view there were two sons, divine logos prior to time and christ after the incarnation/Apollinarianism took Platonic stance, Christ's humanity incomplete and this fact made possible the unity of his person, found union to be composite, hence a form of docetism in relation to Christ's reason
- 28 - nestorianism/antiochians concentrated on ethical aspect of christ whereas apoolinarians focused on redemption - antiochians saw hypostatic union as moral, relative to his teachings (got ever closer to divine) and not absolute
- 29 - cyril - moment of conception the moment of union, yet failed in that he said there were two natures before but one after the union
- 30 - ignores divine self-limitation
- 31 - aristotle's logic, sacrifices depth for clarity of thought when it comes to theology/monophysites have unquestioning submission to the Aristotelian law of contradiction
- 32 - issues of aristotle's material when it comes to rejecting ideas as merely duplicating existents (critique of dualism) - student of aristotle would apply this line of thinking to christology
- 33 - defect of aristotle's psychology is its absence of the concept of personality/summation of his psychology, ascending scale, animal soul and soul of soul (immortal, reason), development of intellect via dialectic of active and passive intellect/immortality only allowed by him to universal reason, psychic elements perish with body
- 34 - without personality they cannot furnish a principle of synthesis/also has mystical roots from neoplatonism and theosophies, not just aristotelian influence
- 35 - gnosticism/menace of neoplatonism/Monophysitism was Neo-Platonism in Christian dress/plotinus and monism - summation of his theology
- 36 - creation effected by series of emanations from God/God's negation of self and the process is creation/neoplatonist psychology - absorption into world reason
- 37 - impersonal trinity/monophysites had manichean suspicion of matter - denigrated divinity of christ in his association to flesh
- 38 - unio mystica/could not see value of christ's real life - more important that he could stamp down and sublimate the lower parts into universal substance

Chapter III - MONOPHYSITE DOCTRINE

- 40 - The heretical formula seems simpler and more natural than the catholic
- 42 - impassibility of deity from aristotle contra popular gods of greece
- 43 - early christians jealous of impassibility when it came to their partially human God/falls into materialism - from spiritual monism it is a short step to materialistic monism
- 44 - attributes and actions recklessly attributed to christ's divinity/monophysite, in his proclamations, reduces god to the passable - he cannot use the term theotokos, he fuses the distinct idiomata together, implies a finite suffering god
- 45 - catholic maintains distinction between ousia and the threefold hypostasis - has correct christology so does not corrupt his theology and make incorrect statements that would lead to contradiction of a dead god/monophysite afraid to give passibility to jesus
- 46 - orthodox doctrine of godhead abandoned/"Was the trinity incomplete when the Son of God was on earth?”
- 47 - islam and monophysitism cut redemption and mediation out of their religion - their only resemblance however relates to their doctrine of supreme deity/sabellianism
- 49 - christ's perfect human life of no consequence or inspiration to them/no import to his incarnation, nothing really changed, Christ just the same Logos that was
- 50 - human nature didn't survive incarnation for them/senses of composition - absorption, transmutation, entire compound made from two things without loss (ie union of soul and body in man)
- 51 - monophysites and proportional thought in regard to christ's makeup/ in whatever sense the word "composition" was taken, it was inadequate to express the hypostatic union;
- 52 - parts of human nature/soul is thought, will, and feeling/the complete human cannot lack any of these faculties/christ's preresurrection body was normal, same as ours
- 53 - catastrophic change at resurrection - difficult to comprehend but after this it wasn't as subject to laws of space, was made of finer atoms/was the entelechy of the human body/body's function is to limit soul and express it/importance of continuity across these changes
- 54 - for docetists divine personality could not use a material medium/resurrection becomes a merely spiritual change - removes hope for human body/aphthartodocetic heresy - christ's body not susceptible to wear and tear
- 55 - to focus on worshipping christ's human nature was both idle and injurious to monophysite
- 56 - different orders of christ's experience that both contain thought, will, and feeling/on some occasions divine intuition superseded in Him the slow and faulty methods of human intelligence, on others he was perfectly human
- 57 - monophysite without hope for redemption and regeneration of highest part of his nature/failure of Apollinaris
- 58 - required a will/Christ had two wills, one able to control forces of nature and perform miracles etc. but had other human will which ranged from motor will to psychic resolve - only difference was that it was free from moral imperfection
- 59 - both wills act in harmony aside from times of crisis such as the agony where human will reaches limit and superhuman has to intervene to perform a superhuman task/Christ in His life showed that human will can work along the same lines as the divine will, source of hope
- 60 - When the God in Christ acted, divine feeling accompanied the act.
- 61 - human and divine emotional states (examples given)

Chapter IV - THE ETHOS OF MONOPHYSITISM

- 62 - Monasticism is applied monism - becomes a religious duty to avoid worldly influence and its sham existence and value, they regard worship as the sole worthy activity of the human spirit
- 63 - amor dei - is not the christian ideal of love and duty in the way that the monks wish it to be, for wish to be absorbed into the being which is worshipped/monophysites were mystics
- 64 - resulted in a jaundiced and inhuman outlook on life/worship becomes selfish and sickens into sentiment, if it neglects the inspiring tonic of contact with human need

Chapter V - MONOPHYSITISM AND MODERN PSYCHOLOGY

- 66 - psychology clothes bones with flesh and gives rationale to christological controversies
- 67 - psychology ill-developed back then
- 68 - psychic states interpenetrate, in their own nature they are a continuum/incorrect spatial view of mind (ie conception of experience) - no room for subconscious
- 69 - becomes easy to see interpenetration of two natures in christ
- 70 - view of conscious states as discrete leads inevitably to determinism - no room for creative power as each member of chain determined by predecessor/A function of the divine in Christ is to introduce the element of unforeseen into His normal human experience
- 71 - The stream of man's life contains both current and undercurrent, the current is nature, the under-current personality.
- 72 - contrasts in nature in fellow man
- 73 - noumenal-phenomenal ego in kant/moments of crisis make him conscious of himself as a psychic unity, permanent and of infinite value
- 74 - personality unifies the parts of a man's nature/man is tripartite but cannot be summed up by them/concentrated to a point/personality differs from nature in its relation to environment, affected indirectly
- 75 - nature is superficies of soul/dual personality a la jekyll-hyde
- 76 - man diphysite, contains both human and divine in deep underlying unity/for man divine is not a part of his person, whereas for christ the human element is secondary and his person divine
- 77 - human in christ was a self limiting of his natural mode of expression

Chapter VI - MONOPHYSITISM IN THE PRESENT DAY

- 79 - heresies remain in new garb/individuals pass through heretical stages, an intellectual fault rather than moral
- 80 - lowest rung of religion to recognise christ as god/insulation of Him from world of things and souls is why christianity's grip is now weak/it was beyond fifth century church's power to destroy monophysitism
- 81 - issue of clergy and laity
- 82 - kindle no personal flame of devotion, christ's name a synonym for christian principles/failure of historic christ as term
- 83 - without this there is indifference to christ's suffering
- 84 - haze of unreality/mysticism thrives, but devotion decays
- 85 - ignorance in christ
- 86 - function of brain - to exclude ignorance is to dehumanise christ's cognition
- 87 - connection to objective fact of redemption, monophysitism undermines purpose of creation and humanity's hope
- 88 - redemption reduced to mere subjective process or attitude
- 89 - the survival factor - is reason or beauty or the physical immortal etc.- really each part and the whole are of infinite value as christ assumed them
- 90 - change of emphasis from passion to the incarnation,His death has cosmic significance
- 92 - sacramental monism
- 93 - biography of hero… (altro)

Born in 1882, Dr Luce became Professor of Moral Philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin, where he retired in 1949. He was Berkeley Professor of Metaphysics, being an expert on the philosophy of Bergson and of George Berkeley and in particular on the influence of the monk Malebranche. He was member of the Royal Irish Academy. He died in 1977.

Here is a book that made me re-consider the why of fly-fishing. When I first read it I had an overwhelming feeling that the book had been written for me.

Firstly and oddly, Dr Luce's sequence of topics mapped out very closely my own history in fly-fishing: the mountain tarn (evoking my own beginnings on a mountain tarn in Galloway); the Gillie (the influence of a great gillie in my early quest for knowledge); the Western Lakes (the hours I have spent on Corrib); Dapping and Trolling ( my initial arrogance to these methods) ; Spate rivers and finally the Ethics of fly-fishing (a subject over which I have pondered much in recent years).

Secondly, after reading each chapter, I came away with the impression that all of the questions that I had asked myself countless times, Dr Luce had already asked. Why does the north wind put the fish down? Should one like trolling? Is dapping a "lower form" of fishing? Why and when does a trout come short? And so on! Finding answers to these gave me the encouragement that I was on the "right road" at a time when fly-fishing was shrouded in mystery and secretiveness.

Lastly and most importantly, as the preface to the book emphasises, the book is about Fishing and Thinking, and the Thinking ranges from angling problems to the wider concerns of Living. "Fish and find out"! is Dr Luce's mantra, not only with regards to angling but as an attitude to life, reflecting his interest in empiricism.

It is the final chapter of the book - the Ethics of Fly-fishing - that brings out Dr Luce's best qualities: an honesty and commitment to ask difficult questions. "We need not be sentimental about animal suffering, but we dare not be callous or cruel....Angling need not be cruel". This is not the place to enter this debate, but Dr Luce will be remembered for his courage not to duck the issues.… (altro)