April 428-431 A.D. Nestorius—Constantinople’s 41st; Condemned at Council of Ephesus; Theotokos; 2 Upostases Fused; Church Disorders
April
428-431 A.D. Nestorius—Constantinople’s
41st; Condemned at Council of Ephesus; Theotokos; 2 Upostases
Fused; Church Disorders
Wiki-offerings.
Nestorius (/ˌnɛsˈtɔriəs/; in Greek: Νεστόριος; c. 386 – 450[1]) was Archbishop of Constantinople from 10 April 428 until August 431, when the emperor Theodosius II confirmed his condemnation by the Council of Ephesus on 22 June. His teachings included a rejection of the long-used title of Theotokos, "Mother of God", for Mary, mother of Jesus, and were misunderstood by many to imply that he did not believe that Christ was truly God. This brought him into conflict with other prominent churchmen of the time, most notably Cyril of Alexandria, whom he accused of heresy.
Later
events
Writings
Legacy
Bazaar
of Heracleides
Notes
References
External
links
Wiki-offerings.
Nestorius (/ˌnɛsˈtɔriəs/; in Greek: Νεστόριος; c. 386 – 450[1]) was Archbishop of Constantinople from 10 April 428 until August 431, when the emperor Theodosius II confirmed his condemnation by the Council of Ephesus on 22 June. His teachings included a rejection of the long-used title of Theotokos, "Mother of God", for Mary, mother of Jesus, and were misunderstood by many to imply that he did not believe that Christ was truly God. This brought him into conflict with other prominent churchmen of the time, most notably Cyril of Alexandria, whom he accused of heresy.
Nestorius sought to
defend himself at the First Council of Ephesus in 431, but instead he
found himself formally condemned for heresy by a majority of the bishops and
subsequently removed from his see. On his own request he retired to his former
monastery in or near Antioch. In 435 Theodosius II sent him into exile in Upper
Egypt, where he lived on till 450, strenuously defending his orthodoxy. His
last major defender within the Roman Empire, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, finally
agreed to anathematize him
in 451 during the Council of Chalcedon;
from then on he had no defenders within the empire. But the Church of the East never accepted his
condemnation. This led later to western Christians giving the name Nestorian Church to the Church of the East, even though
it never regarded him as an authoritative teacher. The discovery and
publication of his Book of
Heraclides at the beginning
of the 20th century led to a reassessment of his theology in western
scholarship. It is now generally agreed that his ideas were not far from those
that eventually emerged as orthodox, but the orthodoxy of his formulation of
the doctrine of Christ is still controversial. This is due to the fact that the Second Council
of Constantinople of
AD 553 confirmed the validity of the condemnation of Nestorius, refuting the
letter of Ibas that
affirms that Nestorius was condemned without the due inquiry.[2]
Contents Life
Nestorius was born
around 381/386 in Germanicia in
the Roman province of Syria (now Kahramanmaraş in
Turkey).[3] He
received his clerical training as a pupil of Theodore of Mopsuestia in Antioch. He was living as a priest and monk in the
monastery of Euprepius near the walls, and gained a reputation for his sermons
that led to his enthronement byTheodosius II as
Patriarch of Constantinople following the death of Sisinnius I in 428.
Nestorian controversy
Shortly after his
arrival in Constantinople, Nestorius became involved in the disputes of two
theological factions, which differed in their Christology. Nestorius tried to find a middle ground between
those that emphasized the fact that in Christ God had been born as a man and
insisted on calling the Virgin Mary Theotokos (Greek: Θεοτόκος,
"God-bearer"), and those that rejected that title because God as an
eternal being could not have been born. Nestorius suggested the title Christotokos (Χριστοτόκος,
"Christ-bearer"), but did not find acceptance on either side.Nestorian controversy
"Nestorianism" refers to the doctrine that there are two
separate hypostases in
the Incarnate Christ, the one Divine and the other human. The teaching of all
those churches which accept the Council of Ephesus is that in the
Incarnate Christ is a single hypostasis, at once God and man.[4] This
latter doctrine is known as the Hypostatic union. Nestorius's opponents charged
him with detaching Christ's divinity and humanity into two persons existing in
one body, thereby denying the reality of the Incarnation.
It is not clear whether Nestorius actually taught this.
Eusebius, a layman who later
became the bishop of the neighbouring Dorylaeum, was the first to accuse
Nestorius of heresy[5] but
his most forceful opponent was Patriarch Cyril of Alexandria.
All this naturally caused great excitement at Constantinople, especially among
the clergy, who were clearly not well disposed towards the stranger from
Antioch.[5]Cyril appealed to Celestine of Rome to make a
decision, and Celestine delegated to Cyril the job of excommunicating Nestorius
if he did not change his teachings in ten days.
Nestorius had arranged
with the emperor in the summer of 430 for the assembling of a council. He now
hastened it on, and the summons had been issued to patriarchs and metropolitans
on 19 Nov., before the pope's sentence, delivered though Cyril of Alexandria,
had been served on Nestorius.[5] Emperor
Theodosius II convoked a general church council, sited at Ephesus, itself a
special seat for the veneration of Mary, where the Theotokos formula was popular. The Emperor and
his wife supported Nestorius while Pope Celestine I supported
Cyril.
Cyril took
charge of the First Council of Ephesus in 431, opening debate
before the long-overdue contingent of Eastern bishops from Antioch arrived.
The council deposed Nestorius and declared him a heretic.
In Nestorius' own
words,
When the followers of Cyril saw
the vehemence of the emperor... they roused up a disturbance and discord among
the people with an outcry, as though the emperor were opposed to God; they rose
up against the nobles and the chiefs who acquiesced not in what had been done
by them and they were running hither and thither. And... they took with them
those who had been separated and removed from the monasteries by reason of
their lives and their strange manners and had for this reason been expelled, and
all who were of heretical sects and were possessed with fanaticism and with
hatred against me. And one passion was in them all, Jews and pagans and all the
sects, and they were busying themselves that they should accept without
examination the things which were done without examination against me; and at
the same time all of them, even those that had participated with me at table
and in prayer and in thought, were agreed... against me and vowing vows one
with another against me... In nothing were they divided.
But while the council
was in progress, John I of Antioch and
the eastern bishops arrived, and were furious to hear that Nestorius had
already been condemned. They convened their own synod, at which Cyril was
deposed. Both sides then appealed to the emperor. Initially, the imperial
government ordered both Nestorius and Cyril deposed
and exiled. Nestorius was bidden to return to his monastery at Antioch, and Maximian was consecrated
Archbishop of Constantinople in his place. Cyril was eventually allowed to
return after bribing various courtiers.[6]
Later
events
In the following
months, 17 bishops who supported
Nestorius' doctrine were removed from their sees. Eventually, John I of Antioch was
obliged to abandon Nestorius in March 433. On August 3, 435, Theodosius II issued
an imperial edict that exiled Nestorius from the monastery in Antioch in which
he had been staying to a monastery in
the Great Oasis of Hibis (al-Khargah), in Egypt, securely within the diocese of Cyril. The monastery
suffered attacks by desert bandits, and Nestorius was injured in one such raid.
Nestorius seems to have survived there until at least 450 (given the evidence
of The Book of Heraclides),
though we have no knowledge of when after this date he died.[7]
Writings
Very few of Nestorius'
writings survive. There are several letters preserved in the records of the
Council of Ephesus, and fragments of a few others; about thirty sermons are
extant, mostly in fragmentary form. The only complete treatise we have is the
lengthy defence of his theological position, called The Book of Heraclides, written
in exile at the Oasis, which survives in Syriac translation. This must
have been written after 450, as he knows of the death of the Emperor Theodosius
II (29 July 450).[8][9]
Legacy
Though Nestorius had
been condemned by the church, including by Assyrians[citation needed],
there remained a faction loyal to him and his teachings. Following the Nestorian Schism and
the relocation of many Nestorian Christians to Persia, Nestorian thought became
ingrained in the native Christian community, known as the Church of the East,
to the extent that it was often known as the "Nestorian Church". In
modern times the Assyrian Church of the East,
a modern descendant of the historical Church of the East, reveres Nestorius as
a saint,
although the modern church does not subscribe to the entirety of the Nestorian
doctrine as it has traditionally been understood in the West. Parts of the
doctrine were explicitly repudiated by Patriarch Mar Dinkha IV on
the occasion of his accession in 1976.[10]
In the Roman Empire,
the doctrine of Monophysitism developed
in reaction to Nestorianism. This new doctrine asserted that Christ had but one
nature, his human nature being absorbed into his divinity. This doctrine was
condemned at the Council of Chalcedon,
and misattributed to the non-Chalcedonian Churches.
Today it is condemned as heresy in the modern Oriental Orthodox churches.
Bazaar
of Heracleides
In 1895, a
16th-century book manuscript containing a copy of a text written by Nestorius
was discovered by American missionaries in the library of the Nestorian
patriarch in the mountains at Konak, Hakkari. This book had suffered damage during Muslim raids, but was
substantially intact, and copies were taken secretly. The Syriac translation
had the title of the Bazaar of
Heracleides.[11] The
original 16th-century manuscript was destroyed in 1915 during the Turkish
massacres of Assyrian Christians.
In the Bazaar, written about 451,
Nestorius denies the heresy for which he was condemned and instead affirms of
Christ "the same one is twofold"—an expression that some consider
similar to the formulation of the Council of Chalcedon.
Nestorius' earlier surviving writings, however, including his letter written in
response to Cyril's charges against
him, contain material that suggest that at that time he held that Christ had
two persons.
Notes
3.
Jump up^ Andrew
Louth, 'John Chrysostom to Theodoret of Cyrrhus', in Frances Young, Lewis Ayres
and Andrew Young, eds, The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature, (2010), p348, states 381; Nestorius – Britannica Online Encyclopedia states
386. Both are based on Socrates Scholasticus 7.29, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf202.ii.x.xxix.html.
5.
^ Jump up to:a b c Chapman, John. "Nestorius
and Nestorianism." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 10. New York: Robert
Appleton Company, 1911. 21 Jan. 2014
6.
Jump up^ John I., McEnerney (1998). St. Cyril
of Alexandria Letters 51–110. Fathers
of the Church Series 77. Catholic University of America
Press. p. 151. ISBN 978-0-8132-1514-3.
7.
Jump up^ Andrew
Louth, 'John Chrysostom to Theodoret of Cyrrhus', in Frances Young, Lewis Ayres
and Andrew Young, eds, The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature, (2010), p348
8.
Jump up^ Andrew
Louth, 'John Chrysostom to Theodoret of Cyrrhus', in Frances Young, Lewis Ayres
and Andrew Young, eds, The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature, (2010), p349
9.
Jump up^ There is
an English translation of this work, GR Driver and L Hodgson, Nestorius, The
Bazaar of Heraclides,
(Oxford, 1925), but it is notoriously inaccurate. The older French translation
by F Nau is a better substitute.
References
·
Artemi, Eirini,«Τό μυστήριο της Ενανθρωπήσεως στούς δύο
διαλόγους «ΠΕΡΙ ΤΗΣ ΕΝΑΝΘΡΩΠΗΣΕΩΣ ΤΟΥ ΜΟΝΟΓΕΝΟΥΣ» και «ΟΤΙ ΕΙΣ Ο ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ» του
Αγίου Κυρίλλου Αλεξανδρείας», in Εκκλησιαστικός Φάρος, ΟΕ (2004), 145–277.
·
St. Cyril of Alexandria: The Christological
Controversy ISBN
0-88141-259-7 by John Anthony McGuckin—includes a history of the
Council of Ephesus and an analysis of Nestorius' Christology.
·
Edward
Walford, translator, The
Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius: A History of the Church from AD 431 to AD
594, 1846. Reprinted 2008. Evolution Publishing, ISBN
978-1-889758-88-6. http://www.evolpub.com/CRE/CREseries.html#CRE5—includes
an account of the exile and death of Nestorius, along with correspondence
purportedly written by Nestorius to Theodosius
II.
·
Bishoy Youssef (2011). "Lecture II: The Nature of Our Lord
Jesus Christ." http://www.suscopts.org/messages/lectures/christlecture2.pdf
·
Seleznyov, Nikolai N., "Nestorius of Constantinople:
Condemnation, Suppression, Veneration, with special reference to the role of
his name in East-Syriac Christianity" in:Journal
of Eastern Christian Studies 62:3–4
(2010): 165–190.
External
links
·
"The
lynching of Nestorius" by
Stephen M. Ulrich, concentrates on the political pressures around the Council
of Ephesus and analyzes the rediscovered Bazaar of Nestorius.
Archbishop of
Constantinople
428–431 |
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