What was at stake in the Nestorian Debates? Was it Fair?

“What was at stake in the debate between Cyril and Nestorius? Do you consider the condemnation to be fair? Give reasons for your answer.”

When approaching the question of what is held at stake in the Nestorian debates, it is important not to forget the centuries of Christological development that precede them. After three centuries of Christian thought, Christological debate reached a climax in the Ecumenical council of Nicea. Although it offered no solution to the Christological problem, it did, however, offer certain affirmations as orthodox. The council defined that, “the relationship of Jesus Christ to God the Father and any orthodox attempt at solving the problem of Christology must accept as a postulate that Jesus Christ is God in the sense conveyed in this creed” Moreover, although the later council of Constantinople confirmed what had been formulated at Nicea, it submitted a slightly modified version of the creed: the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed. The Nicene Creed had established that Jesus Christ is God, but had left certain questions unanswered; namely, how can Jesus, being truly God, also exist as a man? Thus, the council of Constantinople put emphasis upon the aspect of the humanity of Jesus.
Yet in this regard, both Nestorius and Cyril could not be more unanimous. Both held to the teaching of both councils, seeing themselves as orthodox and affirming both the humanity and the divinity of Christ. However, the Christological debates had moved on and the problem that Cyril and Nestorius were seeking to resolve involved the configuration of the two postulates of Christology in concord: the humanity and the divinity of Christ. In other words, what was the nature of the union between the divine and the human within the individual Jesus Christ?
Although it may seem innocuous, the catalyst behind the debates referred to just this union, although not as obviously as it might seem. Around the year 430, Nestorius preached a sermon defending a priest who denied the appellation of the term theotokosto the Virgin Mary. Lying beneath this sermon, a Christological concern festered. “In effect the question was whether it is proper to say that the divine Logos was born of a human mother – whether, in short, the Logo is the ultimate subject of the human attributes of Jesus.” This idea that the divine Logos can be the subject of human attributes and the idea that the humanity of Christ can receive the benefits of the Logos was known as the doctrine of communicatio idiomatum – the communication of properties. Thus, for example, the writer of Acts could refer to “the blood of God” (Acts 20:28) even though it is known that it cannot be possible for God to have blood.
Nestorius reacted against this idea of communicatio idiomatum in principle. But why was this so? Nestorius belonged within the school of theology which was known as Antiochene theology. In opposition to those who insinuated the idea of communicatio idiomatum, “it was the question of divine impassibility which took more of the attention of the Antiochenes” . This idea of divine impassibility is vital to the Antiochene soteriology; the Church had so long rejected the pagan gods as possessing human passions and weaknesses, that to suggest that the divine Logos was born, suffered and died was utter paganism. For Nestorius, any communicatio idiomatum was to confuse between the divine and the human natures within the person of Jesus Christ. To do so would result in a tertium quid – an third ‘something’ – neither properly man nor properly God. This is what Nestorius accused Cyril of doing:
You do not confess that he is God in ousia in that you have changed him into the ousia of the flesh, and he is no more a man naturally in that you have made him the ousia of God; and he is not God truly or God by nature, nor yet man truly or man by nature.

Thus, Nestorius had a clear view of the boundaries of Christological formulations of the relationship of the two natures – what it should not look like – and upon this built his idea of what an incarnational union between the two natures should resemble.
This distrust of any ontological union, which inevitably would lead to a confusion of the two natures, meant that Nestorius had to reschematize the traditional model of the incarnational union. In accordance with the traditional model, Nestorius affirmed that there were two natures. However, the existence of a nature implied a substance, and thus each nature possessed a hypostasis and each nature had an ‘external appearance’ or prosopon Thus, for Nestorius, there were two natures, two substances, two hypostases and two prosopa. Any union involving the natures would result in ontological union and so to avoid this, Nestorius does something unparalleled within the Christological debates: he talks of a union of prosopa. Therefore, in his own mind, Nestorius has avoided the creation of a tertium quid whilst still maintaining a union of the natures in Christ.
The idea of prosopon within the Nestorian texts is far from certain. Although it referred to ‘external appearance’ , it also carried with it a notion of will. “To be the prosopon of God means to Nestorius to be the Image of God, and to be the Image of God is first and foremost to will what God wills, to have the will and purpose of God.” Thus, Nestorius writes:
As the image of God, he should have preserved himself for God without blemish or flaw, so that whatever God wills, he should will, because he had the prosopon of God. For the prosopon of God is this: that whatever God wills, he who has the prosopon should will.

Consequently, Nestorius could never formulate anything more than a moral union of the prosopa in Christ, successfully circumnavigating the problems caused by an ontological union and yet offering a union between the humanity and the divinity of Christ.
So where does Nestorius fall foul of Cyril? On the one hand, Nestorius has grasped a knowledge of what problems can beset Christological thought and on the other, he has formulated his own response to these problems. However, for Cyril, the idea of communicatio idiomatum is vital for any form of incarnational union and cannot be brushed aside so easily as Nestorius manages. Thus, Cyril could proclaim:
Whoever does not acknowledge God’s Word as having suffered in the flesh, being crucified in the flesh, tasted death in flesh and been made first-born from the dead because as God he is Life and life-giving shall be anathema.

The problems of neglecting the communicatio idiomatum are two-fold: firstly, as the twelfth anathema states, it is the Son of God who suffers truly as man, and without the communicatio idiomatum resulting from an ontological union, the suffering cannot be experienced truly by God. Cyril is adamant that the phrase ‘the Impassible suffers’ is not incoherent but the heart of the incarnational mystery. Secondly, the communicatio idiomatum ensures that the Son of God experiences true human suffering. For Nestorius, the suffering that the Son of God endures is experienced through the human nature. However, this dilutes the suffering into something less than true human suffering; the Son of God would experience human suffering in a divine manner which is not to truly experience human suffering. Therefore, although Cyril sees the same problems with uniting the divine and human natures in Christ, he cannot brush aside the doctrine of communicatio idiomatum as it is vital to an efficacious Incarnation.
What is at stake in the debates between Nestorius and Cyril? On the surface, not a great amount; Nestorius seems adamant that he does not propose a doctrine of ‘Two Sons’ and is concerned for the unity of the humanity and divinity in Christ. However, Cyril realises that what is at stake is the effectuality of the Incarnation itself. If Nestorius’ model is correct, then Christ cannot fully atone as he is not truly man and God in one person concurrently. To rectify the problem, Cyril had to reschematize the idea of communicatio idiomatum to avoid the problems that Nestorius tried to avoid.
Positively, Cyril grasped and explicitly stated, for the first time, that the attributes were predicated not of the natures, but of the person, for the Incarnation is not the compositional union of the natures but the person of the Son taking on a new manner or mode of existence.

Thus, although the communicatio idiomatum still involved the sharing of the divine and human attributes, they were viewed as being utilized by the person as a unity rather than by natures separately.
However, although the very Incarnation was held at stake in the discussions between Cyril and Nestorius, the question of impartiality remains to be asked: is it right to assume that the condemnation of Nestorius was fair? To approach this issue three further questions must be asked: Was Nestorius a Nestorian? Was Cyril a heretic? And how far did the politics inform the proceedings?
The enquiry into whether Nestorius fell into the trap of the Nestorian heresy has become popular since the discovery of his work, The Bazaar of Heracleides, at the beginning of the twentieth century. In this work, Nestorius argues that he is misunderstood, that he never held to a doctrine of ‘Two Sons’ and was concerned for the unity of Christ. However, this is not without its problems; the book’s date of composition is by no means definite but is generally accepted to have been written around 451 AD – twenty years after his condemnation in 431. Even Anastos, who is perhaps the most staunch defender of Nestorius’ orthodoxy, reminds us that, “it may be, as some object, that the Bazaar represents a Nestorius who had had twenty years since his condemnation in 431 to repent of his errors and make essential emendations.” Nevertheless, even treating the Bazaar as the authoritative text concerning Nestorius’ Christology has revealed shortcomings with his portrayal of the Incarnational union. Nestorius was tentative in using language of unity avoiding the possibility of the humanity and divinity of Christ being lost in the ‘becoming’ process of the Incarnation. However, “a permanently valid doctrine of Christ could only be forthcoming from men who somehow made the unity of His person the ultimate ground for their thought about the duality of His natures, taking their start from what is single, not trying to reduce two compatible concepts to identity.” Thus, though Nestorius could protest his innocence in formulating a doctrine of ‘Two Sons’ and maintain that he sought to explain the unity, his understanding of the union of prosopa within Christ was insufficient and so left him with the original problem – with two natures in one person. Although the stamp of Nestorianism upon his Christology may seem overly harsh, Nestorius did not sufficiently answer the problems he set out to solve. Accordingly, the church councils were right to condemn him as a heretic and on this count, his condemnation was fair.
However, the cries of “heresy!” were not unanimously aimed at Nestorius. Cyril, too, was beset by accusations of heretical doctrine. It would be unfair if Cyril were overlooked at the expense of Nestorius, and that his ruling was upheld in the face of his heresy. Most notably, Cyril was accused of Monophysite tendencies in his Christology, brought about by his insistence that the formula was a vital aspect in Christological thought. For Nestorius and the Antiochene school, Cyril was neglecting the two natures of Christ and was producing a tertium quid. However, is this a fair summation of Cyril’s use of the mia physisformula?
It is important to notice that Cyril’s emphasis falls upon the word mia “Cyril primarily used mia physis to emphasize that Christ is one being or reality – one entity” The Nestorians, and the later Monophysites, misunderstood why Cyril found the mia physisso vital to his Christology. They assumed he referred to a oneness of ‘quiddity’ rather than to highlight the oneness itself. “The comparison is used only to denote the oneness and not the manner of the oneness” Was Cyril suggesting that the two natures in Christ were compacted together so as to be indistinguishable? No! Cyril was concerned to view the two natures of Christ through the one person of Christ and to do this he used the mia physisformula. Again, on this count, the condemnation of Nestorius is fair as Cyril was not a heretic.
Finally, a brief analysis of the politics involved will complete our study on the condemnation of Nestorius. The events surrounding the condemnation of Nestorius were tinged with political power-play, underhand dealings and bad timing. Two councils met simultaneously to discuss the issues; one in favour of Nestorius, one in favour of Cyril. John of Antioch, a supporter of Nestorius, turned his back on his friend after Nestorius was condemned. Cyril had much influence in the proceedings; so much so that Nestorius later lamented:
And I was summoned by Cyril who had assembled the Council, even by Cyril who was the chief thereof. Who was judge? Cyril. And who was the accuser? Cyril. Who was bishop of Rome? Cyril. Cyril was everything.

Thus, it can be seen that the condemnation of Nestorius was not completely fair. Wrong as he may have been, the manner in which the procedures were carried out was unfair. Nestorius was not given a fair trial or a fair chance to present his Christological views. However, the condemnation was justifiable as Nestorius’ view of Christology was heretical and the very efficacy of the incarnation was at stake.

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