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Nestorianism: Difference between revisions
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Nestorianism is identified with Nestorius (c.AD 386-451), Patriarch of Constantinople. This view of Christ was condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431, and the conflict over this view led to the Nestorian schism, separating the Assyrian Church of the East from the Byzantine Church. | Nestorianism is identified with Nestorius (c.AD 386-451), Patriarch of Constantinople. This view of Christ was condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431, and the conflict over this view led to the Nestorian schism, separating the Assyrian Church of the East from the Byzantine Church. | ||
The Nestorians denied the real union between the divine and the human natures in Christ, making it rather a moral than an organic one. Nestorianism holds to no real incarnation—only to an alliance between God and man.<ref>Augustus Hopkins Strong, Systematic Theology (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1907), 671.</ref> | |||
The motivation for this view was an aversion to the idea that "God" suffered and died on the cross, be it God himself, or one of the persons of the Trinity. Thus, Nestorians would say, Jesus the perfect man suffered and died, not the divine Son of God, for such is an impossible thought -- hence the inference that two "persons" essentially inhabited the one body of Jesus. Nestorius held that Mary was the mother of Christ only in respect to His humanity. The council at Ephesus (431) accused Nestorius of the heresy of teaching "two persons" in Christ. | The motivation for this view was an aversion to the idea that "God" suffered and died on the cross, be it God himself, or one of the persons of the Trinity. Thus, Nestorians would say, Jesus the perfect man suffered and died, not the divine Son of God, for such is an impossible thought -- hence the inference that two "persons" essentially inhabited the one body of Jesus. Nestorius held that Mary was the mother of Christ only in respect to His humanity. The council at Ephesus (431) accused Nestorius of the heresy of teaching "two persons" in Christ. | ||