Psilanthropism

Psilanthropism (from the Greek psilos, “mere” or “bare,” and anthropos, “man”) is the position that Jesus Christ was, in his own nature, only a human being, possessing no divine nature of his own. Reformed theological literature groups this position, in each of its historical forms, under the label “Humanitarianism”: the view “that Christ is a mere Man.”¹ Denying Christ’s deity in this way also carries with it a denial of his personal pre-existence before his human birth.

Historical Origin

Psilanthropism’s earliest instances appeared among first-century Jewish Christians. The Ebionites held Jesus to be an ordinary man distinguished only by exceptional holiness, and the Alogi likewise denied any divine Logos in Christ; A. A. Hodge classes both under the “Humanitarian” label, noting that “in the Modern Church they are known as Socinians.”¹ A distinct but related figure, Cerinthus, active around the turn of the second century, taught that Jesus was “a mere man born of Mary and Joseph,” on whom “the Christ or Logos came down … in the shape of a dove at his baptism,” raising him “to the dignity of the son of God” and enabling him to work miracles, only for the Logos to withdraw and leave “the man Jesus to suffer alone at his crucifixion,” a position that also denied the resurrection.²

In the third century, the Dynamic Monarchians, led first by Theodotus of Byzantium and then more influentially by Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch, taught along similar lines that Christ “was a mere man, honored by a special divine influence,” admitting at most “an apotheosis or relative deification of Christ consequent upon his earthly achievements”; a synod meeting at Antioch deposed Paul of Samosata for this teaching in AD 269.² No party within the church openly denied Christ’s deity through the rest of the patristic period and the Middle Ages. The position revived at the Reformation through the Italian Lelio Sozzini and, more consequentially, his nephew Fausto Sozzini (Socinus), whose followers organized a church at Racow in Poland and in 1609 produced the Racovian Catechism as Socinianism’s doctrinal standard.³

Core Tenets

Across its historical forms, psilanthropism’s shared claim is that Christ possesses no divine nature of his own; A. A. Hodge places this as the first article of the Socinian system’s Christology, alongside the denial of “any personal distinctions in the Godhead” and the reduction of the Holy Ghost to “an impersonal divine influence.”⁴ Its adherents differ chiefly on how Christ came to be so honored. Some, from Cerinthus through the Dynamic Monarchians, locate his elevation at his baptism, when a distinct divine power or Logos “descended” upon an otherwise ordinary man and later withdrew; others grant his miraculous conception while still denying any nature in him beyond the human it produced; and some deny the supernatural element altogether, regarding Christ as “a mere man naturally endowed with a very superior moral and religious genius.”¹ Socinus’s own version went further still: he held that Christ had no existence “prior to his being born of the Virgin Mary,” that he remained “peccable and liable to be tempted” though in fact sinless, and that the “all power in heaven and in earth” Christ now holds was not his by nature but was committed to him only after, and because of, his resurrection and ascension.⁵

Confessional and Biblical Response

The confession states the doctrine psilanthropism denies at its root: the Son is one of three subsistences “of one substance, power, and eternity, each having the whole divine essence, yet the essence undivided,” “the Word or Son … eternally begotten of the Father.”⁶ It states his deity and humanity together in the next chapter:

“The Son of God, the second person in the Holy Trinity, being very and eternal God, the brightness of the Father’s glory, of one substance and equal with him who made the world … did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon him man’s nature, with all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof, yet without sin.”⁷

Scripture attributes to Christ both an existence prior to his human birth and full deity, exactly what psilanthropism in each of its forms denies: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God … And the Word became flesh” (John 1:1, 14); Christ himself claimed to exist “before Abraham was” (John 8:58); Thomas addresses the risen Christ as “My Lord and my God” (John 20:28); and Paul calls him “our great God and Savior” (Titus 2:13), in whom “the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col. 2:9). Bavinck argues that the resurrection glory on which Socinus’s account of Christ’s authority depends cannot substitute for this prior, personal deity: “a deity or divine attribute that is purely a ‘potentiality’ is inconceivable, and a human being who by development appropriates the divine nature ceases to be a creature. Such a being cannot be the mediator between God and man since he is neither” (1 Tim. 2:5).⁸

Modern Forms

A. A. Hodge traces a direct line from Socinianism to the Unitarian movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, quoting the historian Farrar’s assessment:

“Its last form is a modification of the old Socinianism formed under the pressure of evangelical religion on the one hand, and of rationalistic criticism on the other. Priestley, Channing, and J. Martineau are the examples of the successive phases of Modern Unitarianism: Priestley, of the old Socinianism, building itself upon a sensational philosophy; Channing, of an attempt to gain a large development of the spiritual element; Martineau, of the elevation of view induced by the philosophy of Cousin.”³

Related Doctrines

References

Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), chap. 9, “The Holy Trinity,” Q. 97, 195-196. ↩ ↩² ↩³
Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), chap. 6, “A Comparison of Systems,” Q. 11, 102-103. ↩ ↩²
Hodge, chap. 6, Q. 11, 104. ↩ ↩²
Hodge, chap. 6, Q. 13, 105. ↩
Charles Hodge, “Chapter III. Person of Christ.,” in Systematic Theology, Volume II (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1872), 417-418. ↩
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 2, “Of God, and of the Holy Trinity,” para. 3. ↩
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 8, “Of Christ the Mediator,” para. 2. ↩
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 14, “The Only Begotten Son of the Father.” ↩