§ 137. THE KESTOKIAN CONTKOVEKSY. 71£
nation tlie idea of an assumption of human nature, or rather of an entile man, into fellowship with tlie Logos,' and an indwelling of Godhead in Christ.' Instead of God-Man,^ Ave have here the idea of a mere God-bearing man ;" and the person of Jesus of ]!^azareth is only the instrument or the temple,'' in which the divine Logos dwells. The two natures form not a personal unity,* biTt only a moral unity, an intimate friendship or conjunction.' They hold an outward, mechanical relation to each other,Mn which each retains its peculiar attributes," forbidding any sort of cominunicatio idiomatum. This union is, in the first place, a gracious condescension on the part of God,'" whereby the Logos makes the man an object of the divine pleasure ; and in the second place, an elevation of the man to higher dignity and to sonship with God." By virtue of the condescension there arises, in the third place, a practical fellowship of operation, '° in which the humanity becomes the instrument and temple of the deity and the eVcocrt? a-^ercic)'] culminates. Theodore of Mopsuestia, the able founder of the Antiochian Christology, set forth the elevation of the man to sonship with God (starting from Luke ii. 53) under the aspect of a gradual moral process, and made it dependent on the progressive virtue and meritoriousness of Jesus, which were completed in the resurrection, and earned for him the uncliangea-
' UpnffXri^is- Theodore of Mopsuestia says (Act. Cone. Ephes. in Mansi, iv. foL /1349) : 'O Se<77roTY)j bihs \oyoT &v b p w tt ov el A 7] (b e t 4 \ € t o y (hominem perfectum assumpsit), instead of (jtvaiv avbpdnrov fi\7](pe, or (rap^ iyevera.
* *EvoLKTjiris, in distinction from ivaapKaiais.
* &fo<p6pos, also ^eoSoxos, from Sf'xeo-^ai, God-assuming.
" Instrumentum, templum, i-ao'y, a favorite term with the Nestorians.
* "EvwaLS Kad' virocrTacriu.
' ^vi'dtpeia, conii-^ction, affinity, intercourse, attachment, in distinction from eVcorriy, true interior union. Cyril of Alexandria charges Nestorius, in his Epist. ad Coelestinum : ^fvyei navraxov rh \fyeiv, r^f eywatv, aAA' ovo/xd^ei rr]v (T v v dp e I ay , Zcnrep icrriy Si e^oo^ev.
* "Eywffis o-xETi/cT), a unity of relation (from (rxfVis, condition, relatior.) in dii< tinction from a eVoio-ts (pvcmcri, or o-vyKpaffn, physical unity or commixtvre.
* 'I5t'i>/J.ara,
'* "Evcc(Tif Kara xdpiy, Or Kar' (vSoKiay. '' "EviiiiTts kot' a^iav, nab' vlo^effiay. " "EvuxTis kut' iuipyeiav.
720 THIKD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590.
bleness of the divine life as a reward for his voluntary victory of virtue.
The Antiochian and ISTestorian theory amounts therefore, at bottom, to a duaUty of person in Christ, though without clearly avowing it. It cannot conceive the reahty of the two natui'es without a personal independence for each. With the theanthropic unity of the person of Christ it denies also the theanthropic unity of his work, especially of his sufferings and death ; and in the same measure it enfeebles the reality of redemption.*
From this point of view Mary, of course, could be nothing more than mother of the man Jesus, and the predicate theoto- JcoSy strictly understood, must a[)pear absurd or blasphemous. Xestorius would admit no more than that God passed through {transiit) the womb of Mary.
This very war upon the favorite shibboleth of orthodoxy provoked the bitterest opposition of the people and of the monks, whose sympathies were with the Alexandrian theology. They contradicted Nestorius in the pulpit, and insulted him on the street ; while he, returning evil for evil, procured corporal punishments and imprisonment for the monks, and condemned the view of his antagonists at a local council in 429.''
His chief antagonist in Constantinople was Proclns, bishop of Cyzicum, perhaps an unsuccessful rival of Nestoriusfor the patriarchate, and a man who carried the worship of Mary to an excess only surpassed by a modern Koman enthusiast for the dogma of the immaculate conce])tion. In a bombastic
' Cyril charges upon Nestorius (Epist. ad Coelcst.), that he does not say the Son of God died and rose again, but always only the man Jesus died and rose. Neatoriua himself says, in his second homily (in Mar. Merc. 768 sq.): It may be said that tht Son of God, in the wider sense, died, but not that God died. Moreover, the Scriptures, in speaking of the birth, passion, and death, never say God, but Christ, or Jesus, or the Lord, — all of them names which suit both natures'. A bom, dead, and buried God, cannot be wor.shipped. Pilate, says he in another sermon, did not crucify the Godhead, but the clothing of the Godhead, and Joseph of Arimathea did not shroud and bury the Logos (in Marius Merc. 78!) sqq.).
* According to a partisan report of Basilius to the eiiiporor Theodosius, Nestoriui struck, with his own hand, a presumptuous monk wlio forbade the bi.shop, a^ an ob.stinate h?retic, to approach the altar, and tlicn made bun over to the officers, who flogged him through the streets and then cast him out ot the ci*v.