Nestorius

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Nestorius : biography

386 – 450

Nestorius ( in Greek: Νεστόριος; 386 – 450 Ecumenical Patriarchate) was Archbishop of Constantinople from 10 April 428 to August 431 (when the emperor Theodosius II confirmed his condemnation by the Cyrillian faction at Ephesus on 22 June). His teachings included a rejection of the long-used title of Theotokos ("Mother of God") for the Virgin Mary, and were understood by many to imply that he did not believe that Christ was truly God. However, Nestorius actually was concerned that the "Theotokos" cult was dangerously close to venerating Mary as a goddess. This brought him into conflict with other prominent churchmen of the time, most notably Cyril of Alexandria, who accused him 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 (that is, the Church in eastern Mesopotamia and Persia, under Sassanian rule) never accepted his condemnation. This led later to western Christians giving the name the ‘Nestorian Church’ to the Church of the East (the modern Assyrian Church of the East), even though it never regarded him as an authoritative teacher. The discovery and publication of his ‘Book [or Bazaar] 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 impius letter of Iba that affirms that Nestorius was condemned without the due inquiry.Anathematism XIV, Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta

Life

Nestorius was born around 381/386 in Germanicia in the Roman province of Syria (now Kahramanmaraş in Turkey).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; states 386. Both are based on Socrates Scholasticus 7.29, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf202.ii.x.xxix.html. He received his clerical training as a pupil of Theodore of Mopsuestia in Antioch and gained a reputation for his sermons that led to his enthronement by Theodosius II as Archbishop following the death of Sisinnius I in 428.

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 work 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).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), p349There 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.

Legacy

Though Nestorius had been condemned by the church, including by Syrians, 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.Henry Hill, Light from the East, (Toronto Canada: Anglican Book Centre, 1988) p107.