«Ecumenical Scandal»: The argument of
Nestorius that the mother of
Christ should be called only Christotokos and not Theotokos and its rebuttal
by Cyril of
Alexandria
Eirini Artemi, Athens
Abstract.
Cyril of Alexandria was not only one
of the finest Christian theologians of his day, he also stands out in the ranks
of the greatest patristic writers of all generations as perhaps the most
powerful exponent of Christology the church has known. Nestorius was enthroned
as archbishop on
In Nestorius’ letter to Cyril, he
argues that Cyril was right to teach the two natures were united in one person,
and right to say that the divinity cannot suffer in itself, but that when he
goes on to speak of the deity «participating in suffering» he undoes all his good work. Cyril insists that
while of itself human nature is not powerful but passible, in its union with
the godhead, as in the dynamic act of Incarnation, the human nature of the
Logos thereby becomes an instrument of omnipotent power and thus, in a real
thought paradoxical sense, an omnipotent
instrument. It is at once powerful and fragile, majestic and humble. One of
his favorite phrases is:
«The Logos suffered
impassibly».
Christ had two natures. Jesus Christ was both fully
human and fully divine. Cyril insists that Mary, the mother of God, should be
called Theotokos. If Jesus was only human, Cyril argues, and God was elsewhere,
the Incarnation, the Word become flesh, would be meaningless. Cyril plunges into
the debate with sharp invective, addressing one document «To Nestorius, the new
Judas».
Instead
of Prologue
We start
with the «Hymn of Praise» for St Cyril composed by St Nicholas Velimirović
(1880-1956):
Saint Cyril, unwavering
By his faith, amazes the universe,
With the honourable Cross, the hero encompassed
himself against the enemies of the Church, took up arms,
Against the Jews, arch-enemies of the Cross,
And attacked the Novatianists,
Who took pride in themselves
To mercy, they placed a boundary, Condemned
sinners, prior to the Judgment,
To the power of God, they denied miracles.
But Cyril, shown the most
When he rose up against Nestorius,
The destroyer of the Orthodox Faith
The blasphemer of the Mother of God,
Cyril, the Mother of God, helped,
So that he overcame every diabolical power,
Holy Church cleansed of chaff,
All with the help of the Virgin Mother of God.
Cyril was a knight of Orthodoxy,
That is why the Church glorifies Cyril
And to him, prays without ceasing,
From diabolical uprisings, to protect us,
O Cyril, star among the stars,
By your prayers, help us.
INTRODUCTION
The historic environment
of the presentation of the
Nestorian Controversy.
St.
Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, glory of the Eastern Church and celebrated
champion of the Virgin Mother of God, has always been held by the Church in the
highest esteem. Ηe was defined by
Eulogios of Alexandria as ‘the guardian of the exactitude’([1]). the guardian
of the true faith. Anastasios Sinaita called him as ‘ the seal (Sphragis)
of the Fathers’([2]). These phrases
describe the characteristic feature of Cyril, the Bishop of Alexandria constant
references to earlier ecclesiastical authors (including, in particular,
Athanasius), for the purpose of showing the continuity with the tradition of
theology itself. He deliberately, explicitly inserted himself in the Church's
tradition, which he recognized as guaranteeing continuity with the Apostles and with
Christ himself. Venerated as a Saint in both East and West, in
If
the name of Cyril, patriarch of
This
essay presents the Nestorian controversy which was fundamentally Christological.
The main sources of this essay are the letters which were sent from Cyril to
Nestorius and the opposite.
But who were Cyril of Alexandria and Nestorius
of Constantinople?
1. THE LIFE OF ST. CYRIL OF
Cyril, one of the great
theologians and Fathers of the Church, was born at
After
living for several years as a monk in the Nitrian Mountains ([7]),
he succeeded his uncle Theophilus on the patriarchal chair of Alexandria, on
the 18th October 412, but only after a riot between
Cyril's supporters and the followers of his rival Timotheus ([8]).
He began to exert his authority by causing the churches of the Novatians
in the city to be shut up, and their sacred vessels and ornaments to be seized;
an action censured by Socrates, a favourer of those heretics. He next drove the
Jews out of the city, who were very numerous, and enjoyed great privileges
there from the time of Alexander the Great ([9]). In 428-430 Cyril became embroiled with Nestorius,
patriarch of
The
patriarch of
Cyril was the
most brilliant theologian of the Alexandrian tradition. His writings are
characterized by precision, accurate thinking and great reasoning skills. If
elegance, choice of thoughts, and beauty of style be wanting in his writings,
these defects are compensated by the justness and precise
exposition with which he expresses and underlines the great truths of
religion, especially in clearing the terms concerning the mystery of the
Incarnation. He died on the 9th or the 27th of June,
444, after an episcopate of nearly thirty-two years. Fr. John McGuckin
called him «one of the most important theologians on the person of Christ in
all Greek Christian writings» ([12]).
Fr. George Florovsky compared his significance «in the history of Christian
thought with that of
2. THE LIFE OF NESTORIUS, PATRIARCH OF
Nestorius
was born at
When he ascended his Episcopal
throne for the first time, he told Emperor Theodosius: ‘Give me
your empire purged of heretics and I will give you the
As we referred before,
Nestorius refused to give to Mary, Mother of Christ the predicate Theotokos, God – bearer, Mother of God. The reaction to this sermon—and in particular to the condemnation of the
Τheotokos—was immediate and unfavorable: ‘He
disturbed many of the clergy and all of the laity in this matter’ (πολλούς κληρικούς τε καί λαϊκούς ἐν αὐτῷ πάντας ἐτάραξεν) ([17]).
His heretical teaching led to a dispute about his conception of the
unity of the human and divine natures of Christ. When Cyril was informed about
his teaching, he tried to explain to Nestorius why Mary should be called
Theotokos. Unfortunately there was no success. A correspondence with Nestorius
followed in a quite moderate tone. The Bishop of Constantinople insisted on
refusing the term Theotokos for the mother of Jesus. An Ecumenical Synod was
called by Theodosius II, at
Chapter 1.
THE THEOLOGICAL
CONTROVERSY OF CYRIL OF
AND NESTORIUS.
1) The beginning of
the Christological controversy between Cyril and Nestorius
The
Nestorian controversy was fundamentally Christological, but Mary the mother of
Christ figured large in this dispute between Cyril and Nestorius ([18]).
The bishop of
The Catholic doctrine of the
Incarnation, the manhood united by God the Son to His own self, was to
Nestorius, Apollinarianism or heretic mixture. Nestorius said so. In his letter to Pope Celestine he told of the «corruption of orthodoxy among some» and thus
described it: ‘It is a sickness not small, but akin to the putrid sore of
Apollinarius and Arius. For they mingle the Lord’s union in man to a confusion
of some sort of mixture, insomuch that even certain clerks among us, of whom
some from lack of understanding, some from heretical guile of old time
concealed within them .are sick as heretics, and openly blaspheme God the Word
Consubstantial with the Father, as though He had taken beginning of His Being
of the Virgin mother of Christ, and had been built up with His Temple and
buried with His flesh, and say that the flesh after the resurrection did not
remain flesh but passed into the Nature of Godhead, and they refer the Godhead
of the Only-Begotten to the beginning of the flesh which was connected with it, and they put it to death with the flesh, and
blasphemously say that the flesh connected with Godhead passed into Godhead» ([25]).
Same thoughts were expressed in the
second letter of Nestorius to Cyril: ‘But to use the expression ‘accept as its
own’ as a way of diminishing the properties of the conjoined flesh, birth,
suffering and entombment, is a mark of those whose minds are led astray, my
brother, by Greek thinking or are sick with the lunacy of Apollinarius and
Arius or the other heresies or rather something more serious than these’ ([26]).
It is obvious that behind the
delineation of Mary as
Theotokos, he professed
to detect the Arian tenet that the Son was a creature, or the Apollinarian idea
that the manhood was incomplete. When Cyril read it, he realized that he had
found the scandal that he was looking for. Cyril felt a great disappointment
about the Nestorius’ teaching. Initially, he tried to refute Nestorius’([27])
heretic teaching about the mystery of the Word's Incarnation by sending letters
([28])
to the bishop of
2)
The rejection of the term Theotokos by Nestorius Constantinople
and
the refutation of his teaching by Cyril of Alexandria
2.1) The first Cyril's letter to
Nestorius and the answer of bishop of
When Cyril was informed that during in the
Divine Liturgy the Bishop Dorotheos in front of the Patriarch of Constantinople
Nestorius, cursed those who accepted Mary, Mother
of Christ as Theotokos and Nestorius stayed silent and co-communicated with
him, he decided to react. This occasioned so much disturbance in the thoughts
of some of the Monks of Egypt that Saint Cyril wrote a Letter to them, pointing
out that the Incarnation meant, that God the Son united to Him His own human
nature which He took, as completely as soul and body are united in each of us,
and in this way His Passion and Death were His own, though He, as God, could
not suffer. This Letter had an extended circulation and reached
Initially, Cyril wrote this letter([29])
in an angry style against Nestorius. His explanation about the letter to the
Monks of Egypt was that it was written in order to counter the turmoil on
doctrine caused by Nestorius’ preach or Anastasius’. Anastasius, a presbyter whom Nestorius brought to
The Christological argument was
mainly about soteriology, redemption and worship, and this was why Cyril
reacted so strongly against Nestorius’ teaching. Cyril believed that Nestorius’
teaching epitomized in his attack on Theotokos, presupposed a merely external
association between an ordinary man and the Word. From this point of view the
Incarnation was not a real fact. It was a simple illusion, a matter of ‘appearance’ and ‘empty words’([34]).
If Christ’s passion, sufferings and saving acts were not those of the Word
incarnate but of a mere man, there was no redemption for mankind race ([35]). Nestorius’ refusal of the term Theotokos was a ‘scandal’ for the whole Christian world. For
this reason Cyril said to him that the Pope of Rome Celestine had been informed
for his heretic teaching ([36]).
Finally, Saint Cyril
asked him to heal the confusion by the use of the one word Theotokos, of the
Holy Virgin.
Cyril had an excellent knowledge of
church history, so he had realized that the heretic falsehoods of Nestorius
would not be solved through discussions or letters between him and Nestorius.
It should be convened a Regional Council or even an Ecumenical. Patriarch
of
This holy doctor emphasized that the
rejection of the term Theotokos was tantamount to a refutation of Christ’s
divinity and a falsification of the Divine Incarnation. Then, Christ would not be true and ‘perfect’ God and ‘perfect’
man at the same time, he
would be a mere tool of the Deity, a God-bearing man ([39]).
He underlined with passion that Christ
was not a God-clad man, nor did the Word of God merely dwell in a man, but
rather that He was made Flesh, or Perfect Man, according to the
Scriptures ([40]).
Cyril supported that: ‘the holy Virgin is able to be called the Mother of
God. For if our Lord Jesus Christ is God’, he wondered, ‘how should the holy
Virgin who bore Him not be the Mother of God’ ([41]).
Nestorius avoided answering to Cyril’s letter clearly. He referred to Cyril’s
attitude against him and presented himself as a victim of Cyril’s
misunderstanding and empathy ([42]).
Nestorius avoided exacerbating the already critical ecclesiastical state and at
the same time he gave no apologies to Cyril’s charges on the rejection of the
name Theotokos for the mother of
Christ.
2.2) The second letter of Cyril to Nestorius.
The answer of Nestorius to the patriarch of
The answer of Cyril to the letter of
Nestorius was quite clever. He didn’t make an attack to Nestorius. He explained
to Nestorius that he was accused of doubting Nestorius’ piety, in order his accusers to hide their
wrong actions: ‘hear that some
are rashly talking of the estimation in which I hold your holiness, and that
this is frequently the case especially at the times that meetings are held of
those in authority. And perchance they think in so doing to say something
agreeable to you, but they speak senselessly, for they have suffered no
injustice at my hands, but have been exposed by me only to their profit; this
man as an oppressor of the blind and needy, and that as one who wounded his
mother with a sword. Another because he stole, in collusion with his waiting
maid, another's money, and had always laboured under the imputation of such
like crimes as no one would wish even one of his bitterest enemies to be laden
with’ ([43]). He
took little
reckoning of the words of such people, because at last they
would give an
account to the Judge of all, Jesus Christ ([44]). Also the holy doctor underlined to Nestorius that
their obligation was their teaching as bishops should be in accordance with the
teaching of the predecessor Fathers of our church. They should be in the faith according to that
which is written, and conform their thoughts (Cyril and Nestorius) to their
upright and it-reprehensible teaching ([45]). Otherwise, if they didn’t propose the word of
teaching and the doctrine of the faith with all accuracy to the people, they
would temp their flock. And something like that it would be a great sin,
because the giving of scandal to one even of the least of those who believe in
Christ, exposes a body to the unbearable indignation of God ([46]).
Following this letter, Cyril made a short
reference to the symbol of Nice –
Cyril made use of the words ‘Christ’ and ‘Son’ on
purpose, in order to make obvious to Nestorius that the first one referred to
the humanity of Jesus and the second expressed his deity as the Word of God.
There was a real union of two natures, ‘hypostatic union’.
This term was introduced for the first time by Cyril’s Christological teaching,
in order to Nestorius’ falsehoods ([50]).
As
had been the case earlier with the Trinitarian doctrine, Cyril was fully
conscious of the necessity of positing the union of incarnation at the level of
person, not that of the nature. As in the Trinity there were not three natures
and three persons - which would be tritheism- or one nature and one person in
different three modes
of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit - which would be modalistic
monarchianism-, so in the incarnation there was one person,
but two natures. The bishop of
The
divine Word became true human with flesh and blood ‘not merely as willing or
being pleased’ (‘οὐ κατά θέλησιν μόνην ἤ εὐδοκίαν) ([53]).
On this point Cyril referred to Theodorus’ of Mopsuestia teaching, which had
been adopted by Nestorius. Cyril wrote that it would be ‘absurd
and foolish’, to say that the Word who existed before all ages, coeternal with
the Father, needed any second beginning of existence as God ([54]).
Mary didn’t give birth of a mere holy human, but She gave birth Christ, the one
person of the incarnate deity. In Christ, there was an hypostatic union of
Godhead and manhood. This meant that Godhead and manhood took place dynamically
because there was only one individual subject presiding over the both, the
person of Christ.
Cyril
proposed the concept of hypostatic union to summarise his central objections to
Nestorius’ theories: ‘Rather
do we claim that the Word in an unspeakable, inconceivable manner united to
himself hypostatically flesh
enlivened by a rational soul, and so became man and was called son of man, not
by God's will alone or good pleasure, nor by the assumption of a person alone.
Rather did two different natures come
together to form a unity, and from both arose one Christ, one Son. It
was not as though the distinctness of
the natures was destroyed by the union, but divinity and humanity
together made perfect for us one Lord and one Christ, together marvellously and
mysteriously combining to form a unity. So he who existed and was begotten of
the Father before all ages is also said to have been begotten according to the
flesh of a woman ... If, however, we
reject the hypostatic union as being either impossible or too unlovely for the
Word, we fall into the fallacy of speaking of two sons. We shall have to
distinguish and speak both of the man as honoured with the title of son, and of
the Word of God as by nature possessing the name and reality of sonship, each
in his own way. We ought not, therefore, to split into two sons ([55])
the one Lord Jesus Christ»([56]).
In the second letter of Nestorius to
Cyril ([57]),
the bishop of
The
term conjunction (synapheia) had been
used by the holy Fathers ([66])
and by Cyril himself, but now its meaning was heretic. We must not forget that
the term conjunction was technicus
terminus for Antiochians who supported the two natures of Christ. If the
union had the same meaning with the conjunction, then there would be two prosopa of Christ. This was quite wrong.
In the earlier patristic tradition, the term conjunction was generally used to
explain the perception of human nature by the Only-begotten Word of God
during the incarnation. It meant the true union of two
natures rather than welding them ([67]).
In Nestorius’ letter it meant the not real, natural union of the two natures of
Christ, so Cyril wrote: ‘One therefore is Christ both Son and Lord,
not as if a man had attained only such a conjunction with God as consists in a
unity of dignity alone or of authority. For it is not equality of honour which
unites natures; for then Peter and John, who were of equal honour with each
other, being both Apostles and holy disciples [would have been one, and], yet
the two are not one. Neither do we understand the manner of conjunction to be
apposition, for this does not suffice for natural oneness (πρός ἕνωσιν φυσικήν).
Nor yet according to relative participation, as we are also joined to the Lord,
as it is written ‘we
are one Spirit in him’. Rather we deprecate the term of ‘onjunction’ (synapheia) as not having sufficiently signified the oneness’([68]).
Nestorius
insisted that each nature had his own prosopon.
In order to avoid consuming that if the Son had two natures, he would have two prosopa too, he referred to the
conjunction of the natures on one person, Christ ([69]): ‘...
division of natures into manhood and godhead and their conjunction in one
person’. He spoke with ironic way about the Word’s second
generation from Virgin Mary ([70]).
He disallowed the birth of Word as a human, because he supported Mary gave
birth Christ not God. He said: ‘Holy scripture, wherever it recalls the
Lord's economy, speaks of the birth and suffering not of the godhead but of the
humanity of Christ’ ([71]).
The
conjunction of Christ’s natures had as consequence the rejection of the title
Theotokos for the Virgin Mary: ‘... the holy virgin is more accurately termed
mother of Christ (Christotokos) than
mother of God (Theotokos)’ ([72]). He
cited biblical passages which were misinterpreted, and were presented to make a
reference only to Christ’s human nature ([73]).
He wrote that Holy Gospels proclaimed only Christ and not God, son
of David, son of Abraham ([74]).
The Son of God was sent by his Father ‘in the likeness of sinful flesh’([75]).
By this phrase he explained that the Son of God had never become perfect human,
but he was only perfect God. Thus, he proved that Christ was a man, in whom the Word of God dwelt.
Consequently if something different was claimed, it would be ‘a
mark of those whose minds were led astray by Greek thinking or were sick
with the lunacy ([76]) of
Apollinarius and Arius or the other heresies or rather something more serious
than these’([77]).
The bishop of
3. The Virgin Mary is Theotokos and not Christotokos.
Nestorius’
fear of confusing the two natures of Christ led him to be very reluctant to
call Mary as Theotokos. He believed
that Mary was a human being and God cannot be born of a human being ([79]).
Cyril denied the rejection of the term Theotokos
for the Virgin Mary and its replacement with the words Christotokos or Anthropotokos.
Mary bore in a fleshly manner the Only-begotten Word of God made flesh
(body and soul). The Logos was united with human nature hypostatically, and
with his human nature (his flesh) is one Christ, Emmanuel, the same God and
man. The disallowance of the term Theotokos
and its supersession only with Christotokos
created problems with the salvation of human race. If Mary bore only human
Christ, in an indirect way there was a denial that Christ was God too ([80]).
In this point Christ would be one more of the saint people of
Cyril used the term Theotokos for the Virgin Mary as the
Great Athanasius, predecessor to the throne of
‘A common man was not first born of the holy Virgin,
and then the Word came down and entered into him, but the union being made in
the womb itself, he is said to endure a birth after the flesh, ascribing to
himself the birth of his own flesh’ ([83]). Βecause the two natures being
brought together in a true union, there is of both one Christ and one Son; for
the difference of the natures is not taken away by the union, but rather the
divinity and the humanity make perfect for us the one Lord Jesus Christ by their ineffable and
inexpressible union ([84]).
By this presupposion, the term Theotokos ([85])
declared the hypostatic union of the godhead and the manhood in one person,
Jesus Christ. Of course he claimed that the Virgin Mary should be called Christotokos only if this term was
related to Theotokos – Christotokos and Theotokos at the same time. Cyril’s letter to the Monks of Egypt
emphasized the unity of Christ as divine and human as justification for
Theotokos ([86]).
Cyril rejected Nestorius’
accusation of not understanding the real meaning of the Incarnation according
to the patristic teaching ([87]). He
stressed him that the Only begotten Word of God, was incarnate and made man ([88]), ‘That
was, taking flesh of the holy Virgin, and having made it his own from the womb,
he subjected himself to birth for us, and came forth man from a woman, without
casting off that which he was; but although he assumed flesh and blood, he
remained what he was, God in essence and in truth’([89]). He
was a perfect man with body (sarx)
and soul (nous) and was born by the
Virgin Mary. So it was obvious that the holy Virgin Mary didn’t give birth of a common man in whom the
Word of God dwelt ([90]), lest
Christ be thought of as a God-bearing man, for all of this the holy Virgin
should be called Theotokos.
At last, when Cyril had managed
to refute Nestorius’ teaching through his letters and theological works, he
underlined that in Christ his two natures were united hypostatically. And since
the holy Virgin brought forth corporally God made one with flesh according to
for this reason the Virgin Mary should be called Theotokos, not as if the nature of the Word had the beginning of
its existence from the flesh. Cyril required Nestorius to accept the 12 Anathemas, proposed by Cyril and
accepted by the Council of Ephesus.
The first of them was: ‘If anyone does not confess that
Emmanuel is God in truth, and therefore that the holy virgin is Theotokos (for she bore in a fleshly way
the Word of God become flesh, let him be anathema’ ([91]). The
fact that Cyril put as the first anathema
the acceptance of the title Theotokos,
it showed clearly that the term Theotokos
was very significant on the teaching of Christology.
The rejection of the term put on a danger the teaching or the hypostatic –
natural union of the two natures in Christ. If there was not an hypostatic
union of the Godhead and the manhood in Christ, the redemption of the human
race from the shackles of death and sin would be impossible. Also the man could
not come near to God again.
For every Christian, Theotokos Mary is not only the mother of
God but his mother too. For this reason Christians beg her with tears into
their eyes to help them: ‘O all-praised Mother Who didst bear the Word, holiest
of all the saints, accept now our offering, and deliver us from all misfortune,
and rescue from the torment to come those that cry to Thee: Alleluia! Alleluia!
Alleluia!’ ([92]). Finishing this small essay, we will chant: ‘More honourable
than the Cherubim, and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim, without
corruption Thou gave birth to God the Word: True Theotokos, we magnify Thee’.
Conclusions
Through
his letters Cyril explained to Nestorius, why the Virgin Mary should be called Theotokos. He stressed that if Nestorius
refuted the title Theotokos for the Mother of God, it would be clear that
Christ was not God enfleshed (Theos sesarkomenos). Christ would be only a
divine person and no the incarnate God. Cyril declared that Christ was at once
God and Man, and the union was real and concrete event, or we might say ‘a
substantive reality’ not a cosmetic exercise ([93]). Nestorius’
heretic teaching put in a great danger the salvation of human race. The term
Theotokos had been used by Athanasius the Great and Gregory of Nazianzus. The
acceptance of Christotokos for the
Virgin Mary should be in use only if it had related to the term Theotokos. Nestorius denial of the
propriety of the title, Theotokos,
for such a refutation, with its inherent denunciation of the communication of
idioms, negated, for him, an authentic understanding of the Incarnation and so
the efficacy of Christ’s salvific work ([94]).
Mary gave birth Emmanuel (God and man), for this reason she deserves the title
Theotokos.
[1] Fotios of
[2] Anastasios
Sinaita, The
Viae Dux, VII, PG 89, 113.
[3]See Benedict XVI, Pope of Catholic Church, Catechesis - Saint Cyril of Alexandria , www.totus2us.com/...church/st-cyril-of-alexandria
[4] See John A. Mcguckin, St Cyril of
[5] Socrates Scholasticus, The Ecclesiastical History, VII, 7, PG 67,
749C-762A. Theodoretus of
Cyrrhus (Cyrus). The Ecclesiastical History, V, 40, PG 83, 1277D. Nicephorus Callistus Xanthopoulos,
The Ecclesiastical History, XV, 14, PG 146,
1100A- 1104A. Mansi IV, 1464. Ed. Schwartz I, I, 3, 75. Chr.. Papadopoulos, History of the
[6] Socrates Scholasticus, The Ecclesiastical History,VII, 7.
[7] If he is the Cyril addressed by Isidore of Pelusium in Ep.
XXV of Book I, he was for some years a monk in Nitria. See The international cyclopaedia - a compendium of human Knowledge,
revised with large additions, vol. IV,
[8] See, Eirini
Artemi, ‘Saint Cyril of
[9] Socrates Scholasticus, The Ecclesiastical History, VII, 7 : «Cyril immediately
therefore shut up the churches of the Novatians at
[10] Socrates Scholasticus, The Ecclesiastical History, VII, 32 : «... Mary was but a woman; and it is impossible that God should be born of
a woman. These words created a great
sensation, and troubled many both of the clergy and laity; they having been
heretofore taught to acknowledge Christ as God, and by no means to separate
his humanity from his divinity on account of the economy of incarnation, heeding the voice
of the apostle when he said, «Yea, though we have known Christ after the
flesh; yet now henceforth know we him no more» Β΄ Corinthians 5,16 And again,
«Wherefore, leaving the word of the beginning of Christ, let us go on unto
perfection», Hebrews 6,1 While great
offence was taken in the church, as we have said, at what was thus propounded, Nestorius, eager to
establish Anastasius’ proposition— for he did not wish to have the man who was
esteemed by himself found guilty of blasphemy— delivered several public
discourses on the subject, in which he assumed a controversial attitude, and
totally rejected the epithet Theotoκos».
[11] ‘ὥσπερ γὰρ εἴ τις κηρὸν ἑτέρῳ συναναπλέξας κηρῷ, καὶ πυρὶ συγκατατήξας͵ ἕν τι τὸ ἐξ ἀμφοῖν ἐργάζεται͵ οὕτω διὰ τῆς μεταλήψεως τοῦ σώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ τοῦ τιμίου αἵματος͵ αὐτὸς μὲν ἐν ἡμῖν, ἡμεῖς δὲ αὖ πάλιν ἐν αὐτῷ συνενούμεθα’, Cyril of
Alexandria, Ad Joannes, X, B΄, P.E. Pusey, Sancti
patris nostri Cyrilli archiepiscopi Alexandrini in D. Joannis evangelium, Brussels 19652, vol. II, 542: 24-28 (=PG 74, 341D).
[12] J.Α. McGuckin, ΄Cyril of
[13] Fr. George Florovsky,
The Byzantine Fathers of the Fifth Century, trans. Raymond Miller, et
al., Vol.
[14] Theodore of Mopsuestia
wanted to affirm the perfect humanity of Christ and considered that this
perfect humanity cannot be achieved unless Christ was a human person because he
believed that there is no perfect existence without a personality. Thus he did
not only affirm the existence of a perfect human nature in the Lord Christ but
went further into affirming that God the Word took a perfect man and used him
as an instrument (tool) for the salvation of humanity. He considered that God
the Word dwelt in this person through good will, and that He was conjoined to
him externally only. He used the expression conjoining (in Greek synapheia) rather than union (in Greek enosis). Thus he puts two persons in Christ, one Divine and the other
human, together they formed
one person who is the person of the union (external union) in the likeness of the union between man and wife.
[15] A. Fortesque writes: ‘Nestorius had been a monk at the monastery of Euprepios; then deacon,
priest and preacher at the chief
[16] This is a summary of the life of Nestorius. Material in quotes is from a
Syriac Life supposed by Nestorius himself, which he found in a Persian
manuscript, and of which he says, ‘it was made from manuscript 134 of the
library of the American missionaries at Ourmiah. The manuscript was written in
1558 AD’. Nestorius, The Bazaar of
Heracleides, Newly translated from the Syriac
and edited with an Introduction Notes & Appendices by G. R. Driver, and
Leonard Hodgson, Oxford 1925, in file://Ε: \Nestorius,
The Bazaar of Heracleides (1925). Preface to the online edition.htm
[17] Socrates Scholasticus, The Ecclesiastical History 7.32: "Everywhere he forbade the word Τheotokos." The sermons are preserved in the
contemporary, but probably inaccurate, Latin translations of Marius Mercator {ACO
I, i, 5, 26-46).
[18] ‘A certain presbyter named Anastasius, a man of corrupt
opinions, and a warm admirer of Nestorius and his Jewish sentiments, who also
accompanied him when setting out from his country to take possession of his
bishoprick; at which time Nestorius, having met with Theodore at Mopsuestia,
was perverted by his teaching from godly doctrine, as Theodulus writes in an
epistle upon this subject—this Anastasius, in discoursing to the Christ-loving
people in the church of Constantinople, dared to say, without any reserve, -Let
no one style Mary the Mother of God; for Mary was human, and it is impossible
for God to be born of a human being-’, Evagrius
Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History,
translated by E. Walford, London 1846, I, 2, 4 (=PG 86, 2424A-D). Also see Nikephoros
Kallistos Xanthopoulos, Historia Ecclesiastica, XIV, 32, PG 146, 1160-1164.
[19] ‘
[20] Following the basic patristic
principle that “what is not assumed is not redeemed,” Gregoire of Nazianzus,
(Epist
101, Ad
Cledonium, PG 37, 181D-184A). Theodore of Mopsuestia, as theologians of the Antiochene
school, emphasized the humanity of Jesus Christ, the Alexandrian his deity.
Theodore of Mopsuestia held that Christ's human nature was complete but was
conjoined with the Word by an external union.Theodore maintained against
the Apollinarians that Christ had a real human soul, not that the Word took the
place of the human soul. Only in this manner could the human soul be redeemed. Theodore's Christology exercised a more
direct and eventful influence on the doctrine of his (mediate) disciple
Nestorius. Theodore vehemently refused the use of the term Theotokos,
long employed in ecclesiastical terminology,
because Mary was strictly speaking Anthropotokos, and only indirectly Theotokos:
«It is folly to say that God was born of the Virgin’, he states. ‘He was born
of the Virgin who has the nature of the Virgin, not God the Logos. He was born
of Mary who was of David’s seed. It was not God the Logos who was born of woman
but he who was formed in her by the power of the Holy Spirit. ‘One can call
Mary the Mother of God, or more accurately, Theotokos, in the
metaphorical, non-literal sense of the phrase, just as one can call her the Bearer
of Man — ἀνθρωποτόκος. She naturally bore a man, but God was in the man she
bore, as he never had been in anyone before. It is perfectly clear that under ‘unity
of person’ Theodore understood only die completeness of deified and
grace-impregnated humanity. One must not conceive of perfect nature as being
impersonal — ἀπρόσωπος he supposed.
Consequently, in so far as humanity was complete in Christ, he was a human
being. Moreover, the nature of the Logos is not impersonal. But in the
Incarnation the «unity of harmony» and the «connection of honour» is
established and in the sense of a certain new ΄unity of person’’. Theodore of Mopsuestia, Fragments of De Incarnatione, PG 66, 981BC. Georga Florovsky, The Byzantine Fathers of the
Fifth Century, Paris 1978, 238. See Basilius Stefanides, Ecclesiastical
History,
[21] ‘Τhe disputed title Theotokos
was widely accepted in the Alexandrian school; it followed from the communicatio idiomatum, and expressed the
truth that, since His Person was constituted by the Word, the Inarnate was
appropriately designated God’, John N. Kelly, Early
Christian Doctrines,
[22] Cyril of
[23] III Epistula Nestorium
ad Celestinem, Loofs, Nestoriana, 181-182.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Concil. Eph. P. i.
c. 16.
[26] Nestorius of
Constantinople, Epistle II ad Cyrillum, PG 77, 56A.
[27] According to
Socrates Scholasticus’
Ecclesiastical History, Nestorius was
a proud man without sharp thinking: « Having myself perused the writings of Nestorius, I have found him
an unlearned man and shall candidly express the conviction of my own mind
concerning him: and as in entire freedom from personal antipathies, I have
already alluded to his faults, I shall in like manner be unbiased by the
criminations of his adversaries, to derogate from his merits. I cannot then
concede that he was either a follower of Paul of Samosata or of Photinus, or
that he denied the Divinity of Christ: but he seemed scared at the term Theotokos,
as though it were some terrible phantom. The fact is, the causeless alarm he
manifested on this subject just exposed his extreme ignorance: for being a man
of natural fluency as a speaker, he was considered well educated, but in reality he
was disgracefully illiterate», Socrates Scolasticus, The Ecclesiastical History, VII, 7, 32 PG 67, 81OCD.
[28] Cyril sent three letters to
Nestorius. PG 77, 40C-41D, 44C-49A, 106C-121D.
[29] Cyril of
[30] Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastic History, VII, 32.
[31] Ibid. PG 77, 41A:
‘Πῶς οὖν ἕνι σιωπῆσαι, πίστεως ἀδικουμένης, καί τοσούτων διεστραμμένων;’.
[32] ‘The term Theotokos
— Θεοτόκος — does not mean the same as ‘Mother
of God’ in English or the common Latin translation. In English one must
translate Theotokos as ‘Bearer of God’. The correct Latin would be deipara
or dei genetrix, not Mater Dei. Had Nestorius been more prudent he
would have realized that the term Theotokos had a comparatively long
usage — it had been used by Origen, by Alexander of Alexandria, by Eusebius of
Caesarea, Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of
Nyssa, and Cyril of Alexandria. In the Latin West Tertullian had used the term Dei
Mater in De patientia 3 and Ambrose also used it in his
Hexaemeron V, 65 (Patrologia Latina. 14, 248A). More significant is
that the Antiochene theologian Eustathius (bishop of
If there is a theological
difference, however slight, between Theotokos and Mother of God,
then there is certainly serious theological implications between Theotokos
and the term favoured by Nestorius — Χριστοτόκος — Christotokos.
But there is even a difference between Theotokos and Mother of God.
Why would one want to stress the difference between Theotokos and Mother
of Goal Is it not becoming overly minute, insignificant, something that in
reality is the same thing? But the fact is that there is a grammatical and
conceptual difference between the two terms. If the Greek theologians had
intended the diminished meaning of Mother of God, then they easily could
have completely avoided Θεοτόκος by employing always
the term μήτηρ Θεοῦ, a term readily at their disposal and one, which they did use at times.
But the point is that for them there was a difference between Θεοτόκος and μήτηρ Θεοῦ. The term Mother
of God has no specificity — by and of itself but within the thought world
of Christian Trinitarianism it could grammatically and conceptually mean that
the Blessed Virgin is the Mother of God the Father or of God the Holy
Spirit. But the term Theotokos has specificity because of the "tokos"
— by and of itself it can only refer to Bearing God the Son. The English
term is too abrupt, not precise enough, and does not have the internal
integrity that Theotokos has. Further, the English term has a tendency
to bring into prominence the glory of Mary’s motherhood, whereas the Greek term
focuses attention on the Godhead of him who was born. And the Greek term Theotokos
protects in and of itself the revealed fact that Christ was very God who became
man and, in assuming manhood from the Virgin, lost nothing of the Godhead,
which was his eternally. Conversely, the term Theotokos protects the
revealed fact that he who was born of the Theotokos must have been man
as well as God. The point of the term Theotokos is not as abstruse as
many historians of Christian thought assume». G. Florovsky, The Byzantine Fathers of the
Fifth Century, trans.
Raymond
Miller, ( 1987), 223.
[33] «Καὶ οὐχὶ μᾶλλον ἐπανορθοῖ τὸν ἑαυτῆς λόγον, ἵνα παύσῃ σκάνδαλον οἰκομενικόν; Εἰ γὰρ καὶ παρερρύη λόγος, ὡς ἐπὶ λαοῦ τρέχων, ἀλλ’ ἐπανορθούσθω ταῖς ἐπισκέψεσι, καὶ λέξιν χαρίσασθαι τοῖς σκανδαλιζομένοις καταξίωσον, Θεοτόκον ὀνομάζων τὴν ἁγίαν Παρθένον», Cyril of Alexandria, Epist. I ad Nestorium, PG 77, 41Β.
[34] Cyril of Alexandria, Apologeticus pro XII capitibus contra
Orientales, PG 76, 324AB.
[35] Cyril of
[36] Cyril of
[37] The holy doctor wrote between 424-428 two books in
order to speak about Ηoly and Consubstantial
Trinity. It was called ‘The Treasure’, (PG 75, 9-656) which was divided into
thirty-five titles or sections. The other book of Cyril was ‘On the Holy and
Consubstantial Trinity’, [PG 75, 657-
[38] Cyril of
[39] Ibid.
[40] See a very similar
expression in a little treatise of Saint Athariasius on the Incarnation, quoted
by S. Cyril, de recta fide to the
Princesses Arcadia and Marina, p.
[41] Epist. ad
monachos Aegypti. ‘They say that God the Word hath taken a perfect
man from out the seed of Abraham and David according to the declaration of the
Scriptures, who is by nature what they were of whose seed he was, a man perfect
in nature, consisting of intellectual soul and human flesh: whom, man as we by
nature, fashioned by the might of the Holy Ghost in the womb of the Virgin and made of a woman, made under the law, in
order that he might buy us all from the bondage of the law, receiving the
sonship marked out long
before, He in new way connected to Himself, preparing him to make trial of
death according to the law of men, raising him from the dead, taking him up
into Heaven and setting him on the Right Hand of God’, Cyril of Alexandria, Quod unus sit Christus, PG 75, 1273A-D.
[42] PG 77,
[43] Cyril of Alexandria, Epist. II ad Nestorium, PG 77,
[44] Ibid.
[45] Ibid.,
PG 77, 45A.
[46] Ibid.
Math. 18:
6.
[47] Cyril
of
[48] Ibid.,
PG 77,
[49] Ibid.
[50] Andrew Theodorou, The
Christological terminology and the teaching of Cyril of
[51] St. Luke, vol. 1, serm. 1,i cf
Scholia, 200. Cyril of
[52] Cyril
of
[53] Cyril
of
[54] Ibid.
[55] In this point, Cyril rejected
Diodorus’ of
[56] Cyril of
[57] PG 77, 49-57.
[58] Nestorius of Constantinople, Epist. II ad Cyrillum, PG
77, 49B.
[59] Ibid, PG 77,
[60] Ibid,
PG 77, 49CD.
[61] Ibid,
PG 77, 49D.
[62] Ibid,
PG 77, 52Β. Filipp. 2: 5-8.
[63] Nestorius of Constantinople, Epist. II ad Cyrillum, PG 77,
[64] Ibid
[65] ‘In Nestorius eyes was important that the
impassibility of the God should be preserved, and that the man for his part
should retain his spontaneity and freedom of action. Hence, though speaking on
occasion of a union (ἕνωσις), the term he
preferred was conjunction (συνάφεια), which seemed to
avoid all suspicion of a confusion or mixing of the natures’, J. N. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, (19684), 314.
[66] John Chrysostom, Homiliae
super Johannem, XII, PG 59, 80BC. Gregory of Nyssa, contra Apollinarium, PG 45, 1156A.
Gregory of Nyssa, contra Eunomium, V,
PG 45,
[67] Eirini Artemi, ‘The mystery of the incarnation into dialogues of Cyril
of Alexandria: ‘Quod unus sit Christus’ and ‘De incarnation
unigeniti’’, Ecclesiastic Faros, 65
(2004), 237.
[68] Cyril of Alexandria, Epist. I1Ι ad Nestorium, PG 77, 112BC.
[69] Nestorius
of Constantinople, Epist. II ad Cyrillum, PG 77,
[70] Ibid.
[71] Ibid.
[72] Ibid.,
PG 77, 53B.
[73] Ibid.,
PG 77, 53BCD. Math. 1: 16,18, 20. Math. 2:13. Jo. 2:1. Act. 1:14.
[74] Nestorius of Constantinople, Epist. II ad Cyrillum, PG
77, 53B.
Math. 1:1.
[75] Nestorius
of Constantinople, Epist. II ad Cyrillum, PG 77,
[76] The use of this term makes obvious the Nestorius’
hatred of Apollinarius and his teaching and the fear of Nestorius of any
potential resurgence of Apollimarism.
[77] Nestorius
of Constantinople, Epist. II ad Cyrillum, PG 77, 56A.
[78] Ibid.,
PG 77, 57Α. I Cor. 11: 16.
[79] Cyril
of
[80] Cyril of Alexandria, Quod unus sit Christus, PG 75, 1273A.
[81] Cyril of Alexandria, Epist. ad Succensum Episcopum, PG 77, 236A-C.
[82] Cyril of Alexandria, Epist.
ad Monachos Aegypti, PG 77, 13BC. Prbl.
Athanasius of
[83] Cyril
of
[84] Ibid.
[85] From the time of
Gregory of Nazianzus at least the bishops of the capital seem generally to have
accepted the Theotokos without any doubt. The Theotokos was a
powerfully evocative term which belonged to the ‘language of devotion’, J.F. Bethune-Baker, Nestorius
and his Teaching,
[86] Cyril
of Alexandria, Epist. ad Monachos Aegypti, PG 77, 20D.
[87] Nestorius
of Constantinople, Epist. II ad Cyrillum, PG 77, 49B-57B.
[88] Cyril
of
[89] Ibid.
[90] Cyril of Alexandria, Epist. ΙII ad
Nestorium, PG 77, 112A.
[91] Ibid, PG 77,
[92] Akathist Hymn to the holy
Virgin, Kontakion 13.
[93]J. A. Mcguckin, St Cyril of
[94] Thomas G. Weinandy, Daniel A. Keating, The theology of saint Cyril of
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