Nestorianism: Difference between revisions

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=History=
=History=


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.
Nestorius, appointed Bishop of Constantinople in A.D. 428, correctly opposed giving Mary the title “Mother of God,” but in his opposition to this, wrongly held that Mary gave birth to a man who was accompanied by the Logos. Nestorianism, therefore, seeking to do justice to the true humanity of Christ, failed to do justice to the unity of His person and to the union of the Logos with a human nature in Christ. In effect, it made Christ two distinct persons.  Instead of blending the two natures into a single self-consciousness, Nestorianism places them alongside of each other with nothing more than a moral and sympathetic union between them.<ref>Alan Cairns, Dictionary of Theological Terms (Belfast; Greenville, SC: Ambassador Emerald International, 2002), 301.</ref>


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>
Nestorius found formidable adversaries in the patriarch of Alexandria (Cyril) and the bishop of Rome (Celestine I), both of whom convened synods that declared Nestorius to be a heretic. After heated exchanges, the emperor (who favored Nestorius) in 431 summoned the church’s third ecumenical council, held at Ephesus. Before the tardy arrival of the accused’s Syrian supporters and of the papal representatives from Rome, Cyril opened the proceedings. Nestorius was subsequently declared to be deposed and excommunicated.


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 Nestorians held a rival meeting that did not discuss the point at issue but which excommunicated Cyril. It was the latter’s gathering (which Nestorius had pointedly boycotted) that was finally held by the Romans to be valid. The emperor Theodosius, whose vacillations during the dispute did him little credit, banished Nestorius first to his monastery in Antioch and later to Upper Egypt, where he died. Rejected by the Roman Empire, Nestorianism not only persisted but expanded in the East, evincing a remarkable missionary activity that extended as far as China. Modern representatives of Nestorianism are to be found in the Persian or Assyrian Church, located in Iraq, Syria, and Iran.<ref>J.D. Douglas, “Nestorius,” ed. J.D. Douglas and Philip W. Comfort, Who’s Who in Christian History (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1992), 503.</ref>
 
The problem with Nestorianism is that it threatens the atonement. If Jesus is two persons, then which one died on the cross? If it was the "human person" then the atonement is not of divine quality and thereby insufficient to cleanse us of our sins.


=Jesus is God=
=Jesus is God=