§ 137. THE NESTOKIAK CONTEOVEESY. 715
LATER LITERATURE.
Pbtatius : Theolog. dogmatum torn. iv. (de incarnatione), lib. i. o. 7 sqq. Jo. Gaemer: De haeresi et libris Nestorii (ia liis edition of the Opera Mai'ii Mercator. Par. 1673, newly edited by Migne, Par. 1846j. Giubon: Decline and Fall of the R. E. ch. 47. P. E. Jablonski: DeNestorianismo. Berol. 1724. Gengler (R. C): Ueber die Verdaramung des Nestorius (Ttibinger Quartalschrift, 1835, No. 2). Schrockh : K. Geschichte, vol. xviii, pp. 176-312. Walch : Ketzerbist. v. 289-936. Neandeb : K. Gesch. vol. iv. pp. 856-992. Gieselek : vol. i. Div. ii. pp. 131 fi". (4tb ed.). Bauk : Dreieinigkeit, vol. i. 693-777. Dornkk : Ohristologie, vol. ii. pp. 60-98. Hefele (R. C.) : Conciliengescb., vol. ii. pp. 134 ff. H. H. Milman: History of Latin Christianity, vol. i. ch. iii. pp. 195-252. (Stanley, in ?iis History of the Eastern Church, has seen fit to ignore the Nestorian, and the other Christological controversies— the most important in the history of the Greek church !) Comp. also W. Mollee : Article Nestorlus, in IIerzog''s Theol. Encykl. vol. s. (1858) pp. 288-296, and the relevant sections in the works on Doctrine History.
Apollinaeianism, which sacrificed to the unity of the person tlie integrity of the natures, at least of the human nature, anticipated the Monophysite heresy, though in a peculiar way, and formed the precise counterpart to the Antiochian doctrine, which was developed about the same time, and somewhat later by Diodorus, bishop of Tarsus (died 394), and Theodore, bishop of Mopsuestia (393-428), and which held the divine and human in Christ so rigidly apart as to make Christ, though not pro- ^fessedly, y^t virtually a double person.
From tliis school proceeded Nestorius, the head and martyr of the Christological heresy which bears liis name. His doctrine differs from that of Tlieodore of Mopsuestia only in being less speculative and more practical, and still less solicitous for the unity of the person of Christ.^ He was originally a monk, then presbyter in Antioch, and after 428 patriarch of Constantinople. In Constantinople a second Chrysostom was expected in him, and a restorer of tiie honor of his great predecessor against the detraction of his Alexandrian rival. He was an honest man, of great eloquence, monastic piety, and the Sfirit of a zealot for orthodoxy, but impetuous, vain, imprudent
' So Dorner also states the difference, vol. ii. p. 62 f.
716 TUIKD PEEIOD. A.D. 311-590.
and wanting in sound, practical judgment. In his inaugural sermon he addressed Tlieodosius II. with these words: "Give me, O emperor, the earth purified of heretics, and I will give thee heaven for it; help me to fight the heretics, and I will help thee to fight the Persians." '
He immediately instituted violent measures against Ariaus, Novatians, Quartodecimanians, and Macedonians, and incited the emperor to enact more stringent laws against heretics. The Pelagians alone, with whose doctrine of free will (but not of original sin) he sympathized, he treated indulgently, receiving to himself Julian of Eclauum, Ccelestius, and other banished leaders of that party, intercedmg ibr them in 429 with the emperor and with the pope Celestiue, though, on account of the very unfavorable reports concerning Pelagianism which were spread by the layman Marius Mercator, then living in Constantinople, his intercessions were of no avail. By reason of this partial contact of the two, Pelagianism was condemned by the council of Ephesus together with Nestorianism.
But now Nestorius himself fell out with the prevailing faith of the church in Constantinople. The occasion was his opposition to the certainly very bold and equivocal expression mother of God^ which had been already sometimes applied to the virgin Mary by Origen, Alexander of Alexandria, Athanasius, Basil, and others, and which, after the Arian controversy, and with the growth of the worship of Mary, passed into the devotional language of the people.*
It was of course not the sense, or monstrous nonsense, of this term, that the creature bore the Creator, or that the eternal Deity took its beginning from Mary ; which would be the most absurd and the most wicked of all heresies, and a shocking
' Socrates, H. E., -ii. 29.
^ QsotSkos, Deipara, geuitrix Dei, mater Dei. On the earlier use of this word comp. Petavius: De incarnatione, lib. v. c. 15 (torn. iv. p. 471 sqq., Paris ed. of 1650). In the Bible the expression docs not occur, and only the approximate tivr-np Tttw Kuplov, in Luke i. 43 ; but ixrirrip l-qaov, on the contrary, is frequent. Cyril appeals to Gal. iv. 4 : " God sent forth his Son, made of a woman." To the Protcstani mind ^toTOKO'i is offensive on account of its undeniable connection with the Roman Catholic worship of Mary, which certainly reminds us of the pagan n^ others of goda 'Jomp. §§ 82 and 83.