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.

    [1] See Blunt, “Dict. of Relig.,” article on Adoptionism.

    [2] Neander, v. 223.  Blunt (1.1.) says just the contrary.

    [3] Neander, v. 220.

    [4] Alcuin contra Felicem, iii. c. 8.

[5] “Elipand. ad Albinum,” sec, 11.  Adoptio assumptio ([Greek:  analepsis]) occurs (a) in the Missa de coena Domini:  adoptivi hominis passio; (b) in the prayer de tertia feria Pascha:  adoptionis gratia; (c) in that de Ascensione:  adoptionem carnis. The Council of Frankfurt (794) branded the authors of the liturgy as heretics (so also did Alcuin) and as the main cause of the Saracen conquest!  See Fleury, v. 243.

    [6] Enhueber, “Dissertatio,” sec. 26.  Neander, v. 217, has the
    same remark in other words.