This connection between philosophy and Christology is of early date. From the nature of both disciplines it had to be. Even in apostolic days the meaning of the incarnation was realised. Christ was apprehended as a being of more than national or terrestrial importance. The Pauline and Johannine Christologies gave cosmic significance to His work, and so inevitably to His Person. Theologians made the tremendous surmise that Jesus of Nazareth was no other than the Logos of the Neo-Pythagoreans or the Wise One of the Stoics. That is to say, He stands not only between God and man, but between Creator and creation. He is the embodiment of the cosmic relation. From early days, then, philosophy and religion were working at the same problem; their paths met at the one goal of the Ideal Person who satisfied both head and heart. The systematic Christology of the fifth century was, therefore, a completion of the work begun in the first. THE CHRISTOLOGICAL AND THE COSMIC PROBLEMS The essence of the Christological problem is the question as to the union of natures in Christ. Are there two natures divine and human in Him? Is each distinct from the other and from the person? Is the distinction conceptual or actual? The incarnation is a union. Is it a real union? If so, what did it unite? We have seen that such questions cannot be approached without presuppositions. What these presuppositions shall be is decided in the sphere of a wider problem. This wider problem is known as the cosmic problem. The solution given to it prescribes the presuppositions of any attempt to solve the specialised problem. We shall proceed to sketch the cosmic problem, and to indicate the three main types of answers given to it. It will then be evident that these three answers find their respective counterparts in the Nestorian, monophysite and the catholic solutions of the Christological problem.