Debate on adoptionism

Background of the controversy

The teaching of the Hispanic bishops is usually referred to as adoptionism, but this is actually a misnomer. The epithet goes back to a second-century sect, whose adherents held that God adopted the man Jesus as his son at the moment of his baptism. The label ‘adoptionism’ has been used since then to stigmatize different groups of Christians, who believed (or were thought to believe) that God the Father was superior to the Son.

A mosaic in the Arian baptistery in Ravenna, built around 500 by King Theoderic the Great, shows the baptism of Christ. The fact that Christ is depicted as a young and beardless man is meant to convey the Arian stance that Christ the Son is inferior to God the Father and not ‘of one substance’ with him.

Elipand and Felix, however, did not teach that Christ was the adopted son of God. Rather, they held that Christ had adopted a human body when he became man. When they used the word ‘adopt’ they meant ‘accept’. Yet for the Franks, the very word adoptio or adoptivus set off alarm bells. It reminded them of heresies of the past. The conflict between the Frankish and Hispanic scholars ultimately sprang from a divergence between two cultural traditions. The theology and terminology of Elipand and Felix had grown from Hispanic conciliar traditions, in particular from the acts of the councils of Toledo.2 This manuscript from the tenth century (Codex Aemilianense, San Millán de la Cogolla, Biblioteca del Monasterio de El Escorial, D. I. I.) features an illustration that represents the Council of Toledo, or to be precise: it represents each Visigothic council held in Toledo in the sixth and seventh centuries.

The terminology of the Franks, in turn, was shaped by the ecumenical councils of the East, in particular by the council of Ephesus of 431. At this council the doctrine of Nestorius of Alexandria (d. c. 450) was examined and condemned. Nestorius was another teacher who had been labelled an adoptionist. In the eyes of the Franks, Elipand and Felix were reviving Nestorius’ heresy. Here we see an illustration representing the Council of Ephesus of 431 that condemned Nestorius. The illustration is part of a series depicting the early ecumenical councils in a canon law collection (Biblioteca Capitolare of Vercelli, ms. 165) dated to the late eighth or early ninth century.

The Council of Ephesus produced a dossier of texts that provided a source of inspiration for the Frankish disputants. They borrowed arguments against Nestorius from this dossier to combat their Hispanic opponents. Nestorius had made use of the language of Aristotle’s categories to define his doctrine. He had argued that Christ had two natures (ousiae), human and divine, which corresponded with two masks (personae). Since Frankish scholars interpreted the teaching of their Hispanic opponents through the lens of Nestorius’ teaching, Aristotelian language and logic also resonated in the eight-century debate on adoptionism.

The debate

In an attempt to solve the controversy, King Charlemagne (r. 768- 814, emperor from 800) convoked a council to examine the teachings of the Hispanic bishops. At the council of Regensburg in 792, Felix was questioned by one of his most vociferous critics, Bishop Paulinus of Aquileia (d. 802). The assembly at Regensburg rejected and condemned Felix’s doctrine, and so did the council that was held two years later in Frankfurt. This illustration from the Utrecht Psalter (Utrecht, UL, Ms 32) dated to c. 820 is believed to represent the council of Frankfurt of 794. It has been suggested that the man in the middle, flanked by two other figures, is Felix of Urgell or his colleague Elipand of Toledo.3

The council of Frankfurt that condemned Hispanic teaching is commemorated in the tenth-century Chronicle of Moissac, written in the Catalonian monastery of Rippol, some 150 kilometres to the north-east of Urgell, Felix’s territory. The chronicle is preserved in ms. Paris, BnF, lat. 4886, dated to the eleventh century. On folio 48v, next to the entry to the year 794, a note in the margin says: “heresim elipanti toletane et felicis urgelletane episcopis (con?)uicta et erradicata”; “The heresy of bishops Elipand of Toledo and Felix of Urgell conquered(?) and eradicated”

Yet the doctrine of Elipand and Felix was hardly eradicated at these councils. Once back in Urgell, Felix continued to teach his old doctrine. In 799, Charlemagne summoned Felix to his palace in Aachen, to engage in a public disputation with the court scholar Alcuin of York (d. 804), to settle the matter once and for all. This is a reconstruction of the palace at Aachen, where the debate was held, as archaeologists think it must have looked in the ninth century.

Felix was an experienced debater. A text circulated in the Frankish realm (now lost) of a disputation Felix held with a Saracen. In preparation of the disputation in Aachen, Alcuin consulted the Acts of the Council of Ephesus to find arguments against the teaching of Nestorius so he could use them against Felix. Manuscript Paris, BnF, lat. 1572 that was made in the eighth century and preserved in Tours, contains the Latin translation of the acts of the Council of Ephesus that Alcuin consulted. According to Bernhard Bischoff, Alcuin or his assistant wrote s’s and d’s in the margin to indicate which passages should be copied. The s stands for scribe (copy) and the d for dimitte (stop).4 The s’s and d’s are clearly visible here in the right margin of folio 79r.

The disputation between Alcuin and Felix in Aachen is described in the Life of Alcuin, written some 20 years after the event. In manuscript Reims, BM, Bibliothèque de Carnegie, 1395, produced in the ninth or tenth century, the Life of Alcuin is part of a collection of martyrdom accounts (passiones). This is an interesting setting, seeing that Alcuin did not suffer a martyr’s death but died of old age. Perhaps his role in fighting the adoptionist heresy made him a martyr in the eyes of the compiler.

According to the anonymous author of the Life of Alcuin, the disputation between Felix and Alcuin lasted six days and took place before an audience of bishops, in the presence of King Charlemagne. The author depicted the disputation as an armed clash, in which heavy blows were dealt and arrows flew back and forth. On the sixth day, as the narrative has it, Felix was fatally wounded and fled from the blows of Alcuin’s weapons.5 It was not unusual to use military metaphors to describe the public performance of a disputation, as you can see also here: A controversial art?

Certain passages in the Seven Books indicate that both participants made use of Aristotelian categorical logic. Yet whereas Alcuin focussed on predicates that are in a subject, Felix appears to have taken the semantic approach, concentrating on predicates that can be said of a subject. To Alcuin’s mind Felix’s logic is inconsistent:

“‘True’ and ‘not true’ can in no way be one; thus ‘true son’ and ‘not true son’ may not both refer to one son; nor can ‘true God’ and ‘God nuncupative’ (i.e. God in name only) be one God [...] There is no way that both predicates can be in one persona.”7

The terms persona and natura were central to Alcuin’s arguments against Felix. They were also key concepts in the debate on the teachings of Nestorius at the council of Ephesus, the council from which Alcuin drew inspiration. Also Boethius (d. 525) discussed persona and natura in his treatise against Nestorius, and his opponent Eutyches.

Another glimpse of the argumentation strategies Alcuin may have used during his disputation against Felix in Aachen, is offered in a letter he sent to ‘a noble virgin’ at Charlemagne’s court, who was probably Charlemagne’s relative Gundrada. In this letter, written shortly after debating Felix, he gave Gundrada instructions on how to conduct a disputation with a heretic, and offered to teach her the enquiries of the discipline of dialectic ("interrogationes dialecticae disciplinae") or, loosely translated: the method of dialectical questioning. In manuscript Reims, BM, Bibliothèque Carnegie, 385, Alcuin’s letter to Gundrada follows directly on the profession of faith (confessio) of Alcuin’s opponent Felix (upper half of the page). This manuscript (made in the ninth century in the scriptorium of Reims) formed a dossier on adoptionism that was used as a reference file in another debate, which took place in the Frankish realm some 60 years later.

Alcuin presented several examples to Gundrada to illustrate this method of dialectical questioning. This is one such example:

“One should ask whether every man that exists of a body and soul is a proper son of his father. If he says: yes, a proper son, then one should ask whether the soul proceeds from the father just like the flesh. If he says: no, then one should draw the inference: how is a man the proper son of his father if his soul does not proceed from the father, like the flesh?”10

The argumentation scheme that Alcuin presents here is based on the rules of inference. An opponent is led through a series of questions to accept conditional statements, and then ushered to agree upon a conclusion that logically follows from the accepted statements. It is a clear example of a hypothetical syllogism, with an ‘if-clause’ followed by a ‘then-clause’. For the argumentation scheme of a categorical syllogism, which was used more frequently in this period, see here.