NESTORIUS.
Life and Writings (§1).
Teaching (§ 2).
Beginning of Opposition to Him (§ 3).
Formal Attack (§4).
The Council of Ephesus (§ 5).
Events till Nestorius' Death (§ 6).
Nestorius, the famous patriarch of Constantinople and the founder of the sect which still bears his name (see Nestorians), was born in Germanicia, not far from the boundary between Cilicia and Cappadocia, and died in exile after 451. Educated
at Antioch, he lived as a monk in a
i. Life and monastery before the city walls. Here
Writings, he won fame as a pulpit orator. In
April, 428, he was consecrated patriarch of Constantinople, succeeding Sisinnius (d. Dec. 24, 427), his election being due to the court, which would not choose as patriarch a resident of Constantinople. The impression which he made on the bishops present at his consecration was extremely favorable, and he quickly manifested great zeal against the heretics, destroying an Arian place of worship in Constantinople on the fifth day after being enthroned. He claimed to be the real inspirer of the edict against heretics of May 30, 428; he proceeded against the Novatians, the Macedonians on the Hellespont, and the Quartodecimanians in Asia Minor. Yet in Dec, 430, Nestorius himself, the firm opponent of all heretics, was anathematized as a heretic by Cyril of Alexandria. Before proceeding to an account of the origin of the Nestorian controversy, some description of the fragments of his numerous writings should be given. Gennadius {De vir. ill., liv.; Eng. transl., NPNF, 2. ser., iii. 394-395) states that Nestorius wrote " a great many treatises on divers themes " while still a presbyter at Antioch, and that after his consecration he wrote a work on the Incarnation. Ebed Yesu (J. S. Assemani, Bihliotheca orientalis, III., i. 35-36, Rome, 1719) mentions, besides " several books " destroyed by non-Nestorians, the following: Liber tragoediat, a history of his controversy; Liber Heraclidis; Epis-
Nestorius
THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
tola ad Cosmam; a liturgy; Liber epistolarum; and Liber homiliarum et orationum. The extant fragments comprise only his anathemas against Cyril as translated by Marius Mercator; twelve other anathemas in Syriac translation; fragments of the " Tragedy "; fourteen letters or fragments of letters; some sermons translated by Marius Mercator; and a number of citations in the writings of Cyril of Alexandria, Marius Mercator, Cassian, Arnobius the Younger, Leontius, the Synodicon, the Acts of the Council of Ephesus, and other sources. The fragments are collected by F. Loofs in Nestoriana (Halle, 1905). P. Bedjan has edited a newly discovered Syriac translation of the Liber Heraclidis (Paris, 1910). The material has been employed by J. F. Bethune- Baker in his Nestorius and his Teaching. A fresh Examination of the Evidence (Cambridge, 1908).
The origin of the Nestorian controversy doubtless lay in the antithesis between the Antiochian training of Nestorius and the Alexandrine traditions, or Apollinarian coloring, which prevailed in his new surroundings. Nevertheless, there were representatives of the two schools in Constanti- 2. Teach- nople before Nestorius came, and it ing. was already a moot question whether Mary was to be called mother of God or mother of man. Nestorius entered upon the struggle with the first of his " Sermons against the 'Mother of God,' " delivered not later than Christmas, 42S. This was quickly followed by other sermons on the same theme. Declaring himself sharply opposed to the epithet " mother of God," he declared: "Mary did not give birth to divinity, but to man, the instrument of divinity." Here his motive was his desire to exalt the divinity of Christ, holding, as he did in his first sermon, that " the creature hath not given birth to the uncreatable." He was also offended by the cult of Mary easily arising from the belief that she was the mother of God, yet he never failed to recognize that the epithet might be employed if the views and tendencies which he opposed were separated from it. Since, however, such a use of the term as he advocated seemed to him to be very rare at the beginning of his patriarchate at Constantinople, he recommended that Mary be called " mother of Christ " instead of " mother of God." This, he held, like the terms "Son" and "Lord," referred to both natures of Christ. Following Antiochian Christology, he yet sought to avoid the charge that it taught two Sons, saying, for instance, " we have not two Christs or two Sons; for there is not with us a first and a second, or one and another, or one Son at one time and another at another, but the same one is twofold, not in honor, but in nature." While holding that most of the statements of the Bible concerning the Son of God refer to the incarnate Word, Nestorius taught that after the incarnation the Son of God was no longer the Logos per se. The immediate basis is indeed purely Antiochian, declaring emphatically that the Son was twofold in nature and that the mother of Christ bore the Son of God as man who was the Son through the Son conjoined, thus distinguishing the natures but unifying adoration of him. On the other hand, Nestorius modified the Antiochian dyophysitism by holding that each nature
worked by sharing in the peculiar properties of the other. His Christology was thus based on the primitive double view of the historic Christ which was the basis of the earliest Christology, saying " we confess the God in man, we reverence the man worshiped together with God Almighty through the divine union." The earnestness of his endeavor, despite his dyophysitism, to see a single God-man is shown in his denunciation as a monothelite by the synod of 680 because he had written " God the Logos was not one and the man born therein another, for there was one person of them both, in reverence and honor distinguished neither in manner nor time by difference of decree or will." *
The condemnation of Nestorius for these teachings was brought about by Cyril of Alexandria (q.v.), though Nestorius had already met with considerable opposition in Constantinople. Nestorius did not fail to return the attacks in kind, securing the condemnation of Philip, one of his former 3. Begin- rivals for the patriarchate. But not-
ning of withstanding all these difficulties, Nes- Opposition torius could write to Pope Celestine
to Him. (Mansi, Concilia, iv. 1022 D, 1024 C), that the church at Constantinople was flourishing. In the latter part of 430 he and his clergy had determined in what sense the term " mother of God " could and should be used, thus retracting his opposition to the phrase, and John of Antioch thought that the troubles in Constantinople were at an end. The complaints of Cyril and the monks opposed to Nestorius, alleging grievous schism in Constantinople, accordingly deserve no credence. While still at Antioch Nestorius seems to have prepared sermons for publication, and after his consecration he united these older Sermons and more recent ones, including several on the mother of God, into a book of considerable size (at the latest by the beginning of 429), afterward circulating other sermons subsequently delivered. Individual sermons, or possibly the entire book, were sent by Nestorius to Rome, and a collection of his sermons also found its way to Egypt, doubtless without the author's wish. Shortly after Easter, 429, Cyril took occasion to write to all the monks of Egypt justifying the use of the term " mother of God " and opposing the arguments of Nestorius without mentioning his name. Copies of this letter were brought to Constantinople, where they strengthened the opposition,
* in Athanasius (II., § 2) a reference appears promising a minute examination of the Athanasian Christology in the article Nestorius. This was probably inspired by the fact that writings usually attributed to Athanasius would make him a forerunner of Nestorius. But Professor Loofs {Leitfaden zum Studien der Dogmengeschichte, pp. 264-266, Halle, 1906) refers to R. Hoss {Studien uber das Schriftthum und die Theologie des Athanasius . . , Leipsic, 1899) and A. Stiilcken (Athanasiana, ib. 1899) as disproving the alleged Athanasian authorship of those writings. This leaves as the salient facts that the Athanasian Christology remained essentially unchanged from the first, that it was the divine side which engaged his attention, that his references to the human side were traditional and never closely analyzed, and that in the historical Christ there was only one subject, the Logos, and that Christ grew, hungered, and suffered in his flesh. No vital connection can be established between the Christology of Athanasius and of Nestorius so far as the human side is concerned. c. a. b.