Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Vol. 3 (Theodoret, Jerome, Gennadius, Rufinus)

III. — RELATIONS WITH NESTORIUS AND NESTORIANISM.

Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, was bound by ties of close friendship to both Theodoret and John, patriarch of Antioch. In August 430, the Western bishops, presided over by Pope Celestine, assembled in council at Rome, condemned Nestorius, and threatened him with excommunication. Shortly afterward, a council of Eastern bishops in Alexandria, summoned by Cyril, endorsed this condemnation and dispatched it to Constantinople. John then received letters from Celestine and Cyril announcing their joint action. When the couriers carrying these communications reached Antioch, they found John surrounded by Theodoret and other bishops, who were gathered—possibly for the ordination of Macarius, the new bishop of Laodicea.

John consulted with his fellow bishops, and a letter was sent in their collective name to Nestorius, urging him to accept the term Theotokos original: "Θεοτόκος" (God-bearer), a title for the Virgin Mary that was at the center of the theological debate., the term around which the whole conflict raged. They pointed out the sense in which it could not fail to be accepted by every loyal Christian and implored him not to embroil Christendom over a single word. This letter is generally attributed to Theodoret. But while the conciliatory sage of Cyrus was endeavoring to formulate an Eirenicon A proposal intended to establish peace or reconciliation., the ardent Egyptian Referring to Cyril of Alexandria. made peace almost impossible by publishing his famous anathematisms Formal ecclesiastical decrees of excommunication or condemnation.. John and his friends were distressed by the apparent unorthodoxy of Cyril’s condemnation of Nestorius and asked Theodoret to refute Cyril. See the Anathematisms and Theodoret’s refutation in the Prolegomena.

The strong language used in Letter CL conveys the intensity of the enthusiasm with which Theodoret undertook the task, as well as his profound conviction that Cyril, in blind zeal against an imaginary error on the part of Nestorius, was himself falling headlong into the "Apollinarian pit." Referring to Apollinarianism, a heresy that denied the fullness of Christ's human nature. An eager war of words now waged over Nestorius between Cyril and Theodoret, each denouncing the other for supposed heresy regarding the Incarnation. With deep respect for the learning and motives of Theodoret, we may probably find a solution for much of what he said and did in the fact that he misunderstood Nestorius just as completely as he misunderstood Cyril. See Glubokowski p. 98.

Cyril, raised on the synthetic principles of the Alexandrian school, could see only the unity of the two natures in the one Person. To him, to distinguish (as Theodoret’s analysis did) between God the Word and Christ the Man was to come dangerously close to recognizing two Christs, maintaining a sort of mutual dialogue of speech and action. But Cyril’s unqualified assertion that there is one Christ, and that Christ is God, really provided no grounds for the accusation that the manhood was unreal to him. Yet he and Theodoret were substantially in agreement. Theodoret’s failure to grasp Cyril’s drift was no doubt due less to any lack of intelligence on the Syrian’s part than to the overbearing bitterness of the fierce Egyptian.

On the other hand, Theodoret’s loyal love for Nestorius led him to give his friend credit for meaning what he himself meant. While he was driven to contemplate Cyril’s doctrines in their most dangerous exaggeration, he hesitated to see how the Nestorian counter-statement might also be dangerously exaggerated. As Dr. Bright remarks, Dict. Christ Biog. i. 767. Theodoret “uses a good deal of language which is at first sight Latin: "prima facie" Nestorian; his objections are permeated by a misunderstanding of the point at issue Latin: "ignoratio elenchi", and his language is repeatedly illogical and inconsistent; but he and Cyril were essentially nearer to each other in belief than they would have admitted at the time, for Theodoret virtually acknowledges the personal oneness and explains the phrase ‘God assumed man’ as ‘He assumed manhood.’” Cyril, in his letter to Euoptius, earnestly disclaims both forms of Apollinarianism—the notion of a mindless manhood in Christ and the notion of a body formed out of Godhead. In his reply (on Art iv.), he admits language appropriate to each nature.

Probably both the Egyptian and the Syrian would have found no difficulty in subscribing to the language of our own judicious divine:

“There is a kind of mutual exchange whereby those concrete names, God and Man, when we speak of Christ, take interchangeably one another’s place, so that for truth of speech it matters not whether we say that the Son of God created the world and the Son of Man saved it by his death, or else that the Son of Man created it and the Son of God died to save the world. However, as often as we attribute to God what the manhood of Christ claims, or to man what his Deity has a right to, we understand by the name of God and the name of Man neither the one nature nor the other, but the whole person of Christ, in whom both natures reside. When the Apostle says of the Jews that they crucified the Lord of Glory, and when the Son of Man, being on earth, affirms that the Son of Man was in heaven at...