Apollinaires

Apollinaires refers to the followers or doctrines associated with Apollinaris of Laodicea, a 4th-century bishop and theologian. Apollinaris developed a Christological view that sought to explain the union of the divine and human in Jesus Christ. His primary concern was to uphold the absolute divinity of Christ and the unity of his person, arguing that the divine Logos took the place of a human soul and intellect in Jesus. He believed that a complete human soul, including its rational faculty, would have introduced a second, independent principle into Christ, compromising his divine unity and sinlessness.

This doctrine, often termed Apollinarianism, proposed that Christ possessed a divine mind and a human body and soul, but not a fully formed human rational soul. Instead, the divine Logos served as the animating principle of the human nature. While Apollinaris intended to safeguard the uniqueness and divinity of Christ, his views were eventually condemned as heresy by several church councils, most notably the First Council of Constantinople in 381 AD. Critics argued that Apollinarianism resulted in an incomplete human nature for Christ, failing to fully redeem humanity because Christ had not truly taken on a complete human being. The condemnation of Apollinarianism was significant in the development of orthodox Christology, emphasizing Christ's full humanity and full divinity.