Nestorius and Nestorianism

NESTORIUS AND NESTORIANISM. - I. LIFE OF N. - Little is known of N. before his episcopate at Constantinople, because legend has embroidered much upon his name. Born at Germanicia (today Mar'ash) toward the end of the 4th century, he studied at Antioch and entered the monastery of Euprepios, situated in the surroundings of the city. If the Syriac legend is to be believed, he would have followed the courses of Theodore of Mopsuestia, which is not certain, because Theodore was already a bishop in 392. It is certain, on the other hand, that N. knew the famous exegete personally and assimilated his doctrine, especially his Christology. His knowledge of the sacred sciences was serious.

Chosen by Theodosius II to succeed Sisinnius on the throne of Constantinople (d. 24 Dec. 427), he took possession of the see on 10 Apr. 428. At the outset he distinguished himself by zeal against heretics, and induced the Emperor to issue a very severe edict against them (30 May 428). Only the Pelagians were not named in it, and this undoubtedly because they were little known and few in the East. N. spoke out strongly against the laxity of morals and against everything that seemed to him an abuse or an error; but prudent persons could immediately note that the reformer's zeal was often indiscreet. He discovered, in fact, an error in the very appellation Θεοτόκος, commonly given to the Virgin in Constantinopolitan circles. One day, toward the end of 428, the priest Anastasius, one of his friends from Antioch, who had moved to Constantinople in his following, while preaching in his presence, dared to attack that appellation directly (Socrates, Hist. eccl., VII, 32: PG 77, 802), but N., instead of censuring him, approved him publicly, to the great scandal of those present. From that moment the term Θεοτόκος became the object of bitter discussions. N., worried, believed he had found the means of reconciling everyone: he declared that both the expression "Mother of man" (ἀνθρωπότοκος) and the expression "Mother of God" (Θεοτόκος) could pass, provided that the union of divinity and humanity in Jesus Christ was maintained and neither the one nor the other was suppressed. But he preferred not to use those terms, improper and dangerous, and rather to use the other Χριστούκος (Mother of Christ), in which Christ indicated at the same time the two natures, humanity and divinity, closely united to each other. The expedient was ingenious, but it could not be satisfactory for orthodoxy. The discussions on the term Θεοτόκος, which had taken place at Constantinople, were not long in becoming known elsewhere. Their echo soon reached Rome and Alexandria. N. himself thought of informing the Pope about the new controversy, sending him some of his discourses. St. Cyril of Alexandria, on the other hand, well informed of the matter, began, from 429, to denounce the new heresy, at first without naming its author, then writing him directly two letters, which received two contemptuous replies. Then St. Cyril appealed to Celestine I, sending him a whole dossier, with a Latin translation, containing his letters on the matter, some extracts from the writings of N. and a florilegium of patristic texts on the mystery of the Incarnation (spring of 430). Celestine I assembled at Rome, in the early days of Aug. 430, a Council that proclaimed the legitimacy of the title "Mother of God" given to Mary and rejected the confused and tortuous explanations of N. on the virginal birth. At the same time, with a letter of 11 Aug. 430, the Pope threatened the innovator with excommunication and deposition if, within ten days from the notification of the Roman decisions that would be made to him by Cyril, he did not retract his errors. N., who saw in Cyril a personal enemy, instead of submitting, as his friend John of Antioch advised him, believed it a more skillful gesture to ward off the threat hanging over him by soliciting from the emperor Theodosius II the convocation of an ecumenical council to discuss his case. Cyril, suspecting nothing, favored the maneuver, delaying too long in communicating to N. the sentence of Rome; when his envoys arrived at Constantinople, toward the early days of Dec. 430, an imperial decree of 19 Nov. 430 had already appeared, convoking an ecumenical council for 27 Jan. 431, the feast of Pentecost, at Ephesus (v.). N. refused to present himself at the Council that Cyril had opened on 22 June 431, before the arrival of John of Antioch and his followers, as well as the Pope's legates, and despite the protests of numerous bishops and of Candidian, the Emperor's representative. This Council, considered as the true one, launched the excommunication and finally decided the deposition of N.; these acts were confirmed by the three legates of the Pope, in the third session (11 July). This sentence was recognized both by the Emperor and by John of Antioch and his followers, after long conferences between the two parties, into which the Eastern episcopate was divided. N., considering his battle now lost, asked and obtained from the Emperor to return to his monastery of Euprepios, where he remained four years, without changing his mind, seeking rather to spread it as widely as possible, so much so that Celestine I was forced to demand that his exile be fixed in some remote place. The Emperor temporized until 435, in which two imperial decrees appeared: the first condemned N. and confiscated his goods in favor of the Church of Constantinople, the other contained the order to burn all his writings, prescribed very severe penalties for the followers of his doctrine and gave them the name of Simonians, in memory of Simon Magus. From Petra the exile was soon transferred to the oasis of Egypt, then to Panopolis. It was undoubtedly in the surroundings of that locality that N. died around the year 450-51, shortly before the Council of Chalcedon, to which he would have been convoked, according to Monophysite and Nestorian legends. One thing is certain: N., before dying, had knowledge of the acts of the "Robber Council of Ephesus" and of the letter of St. Leo I to Flavian on the mystery of the Incarnation. According to what he himself recounts in his work The Book of Heraclides, he approved the content of that letter and died with the conviction that Leo was of his opinion.

II. WRITINGS OF NESTORIUS AND NESTORIANISM

By imperial edict his works were destroyed in their original language. They consisted of letters, discourses, and memoirs forming a kind of trilogy, later than the Council of Ephesus, with the following titles: Theopaschites, Tragedy (or History), Book of Heraclides. Apart from a dozen sermons, some letters, and the Book of Heraclides, of N.'s entire literary output only a few important fragments remain in Greek, Syriac, and Latin, which together with the complete parts make it possible to reconstruct N.'s exact thought on theological and especially Christological matters (ed. by F. Loofs, Nestoriana. Die Fragmente des Nestorius gesammelt, untersucht und herausgegeben, Halle 1905). Subsequently the Book of Heraclides of Damascus was published (in Syriac by P. Bedjan [Leipzig-Paris 1910]; in French by F. Nau [Paris 1910]; in English by G. R. Driver and L. Hodgson: The Bazaar of Heracleides newly translated from the syriac [Oxford 1925]). The work seems authentic as a whole, although interpolations may be supposed, and it is divided into three parts: a philosophical-theological introduction on the various heresies, with emphasis on the different forms of Monophysitism; a long commentary on the acts of the Council of Ephesus, in which N. seeks to demonstrate his orthodoxy and his agreement with the Fathers; a mention of the events that followed the Council of Ephesus up to the Robber Council of Ephesus in 449, whose acts he knew. In the course of the treatise he continually repeats his theory on the union of the two natures.

As an appendix to the translation of the Book of Heraclides, F. Nau published a long extract of the letter to the inhabitants of Constantinople, which seems authentic, written after the "Robber Council of Ephesus" and already mentioned by Philoxenus of Mabbug. Three homilies on the temptations of Our Lord, found among the spuria of St. John Chrysostom and added by Nau to the Book of Heraclides, are certainly authentic. However, the 52 homilies that P. Batiffol, relying solely on grounds of internal criticism, had attributed to N., must be considered apocryphal. As for the twelve "anathematisms" opposed to those of St. Cyril, of which Marius Mercator prepared a Latin translation, very many critics (e.g., ed. Schwartz and E. Amann) do not consider them to be by N.

III. THE NESTORIAN HERESY

The heresy of N. is commonly presented as the denial of the divine maternity of Mary. This is accurate, but some observations are necessary. The denial of the divine maternity is only a corollary deriving from an explanation of the mystery of the Incarnation, current in the school of Antioch from the second half of the 4th century, elaborated by Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia to combat Apollinarianism. According to it, the human nature taken by the Word, Only-begotten Son of the Father, was a true human person, a true concrete subject, subsisting in itself, autonomous, united to the person of the Word in a manner undoubtedly very intimate and ineffable, but which could only be extrinsic, moral, relative; like that which exists between two intimate friends, having one heart and one soul. This union is comparable to an indwelling (ἐνόλεμος) of the Word in the man Jesus. It is the man Jesus who is the temple (νάδος) in which the Word dwells. It is an adherence, a conjunction, not a true union that terminates in a true unity of being, of the individual, of the subject, of the I, of the person. In Christ there is a true duality of persons: God, the Word, and the man Jesus. Each is the subject of attribution of the operations proper to him and which cannot be attributed to the other except in an "improper" and "abusive" manner because of the close union that exists between the two. This precisely is the case that makes legitimate the title of Mother of God given to Mary. Properly speaking, God the Word was not born of the Virgin. He is begotten only by the Father, from all ages. It may nevertheless be permitted that Mary be called Θεοτόκος, Mother of God, because He whom she brought forth, Jesus of Nazareth, is closely united to the Word, who communicated to him in some manner his personality, his "prosopon", with the divine titles of Lord, of Son, of Christ, terms employed by the Council of Nicaea. In other words, what theologians call the "communication of idioms" (v.) or properties cannot be made regularly either in relation to the name God-Word or in relation to the name Jesus of Nazareth, because the Word indicates only the divinity, and Jesus of Nazareth indicates only the man. This is why one cannot say that the Word was born twice and that Mary is truly Θεοτόκος.

The communication or exchange of properties is, however, lawful relatively to certain denominations which, in usage, indicate at the same time God and the man, closely united, and which mutually communicate their natural personality, their physical "prosopon" (πρόσωπον φυσικάν), as N. expresses it. He in fact distinguished two kinds of "prosopon": the "natural or physical prosopon", that is, the natural personality of each of the united natures, and the personality or "prosopon of the union" (πρόσωπον τῆς ἑνώσεως) which is a resultant of the union, a kind of fictitious and juridical personality, by means of which the divinity makes use of the "prosopon" of the humanity and the humanity of that of the divinity. It is in this manner that N. sought to preserve the unity of Christ: "The natures subsist in their 'prosopon' and in their nature and in the 'prosopon of the union'. As for the natural 'prosopon' of the one, the other makes use of the same by virtue of the union, and thus there is but one 'prosopon' for the two natures" (Le Livre d'Héraclide, trans. F. Nau, Paris 1910, pp. 193-94). Mary may be called Χριστοτέλιος, because the term "Christ" is a name that indicates at the same time the two natures or, if one wishes, the "prosopon of the union".

These are the broad lines of the Christological system elaborated by N. in the Book of Heraclides and in his other writings. It rests on the philosophical principle that every concrete human nature is a hypostasis, a true person. For N., the terms nature (φύσις), essence (οὐσία), physical person (πρόσωπον φυσικὸν), hypostasis (ἀπόσπασις) are synonyms. He did not have the notion of an individual nature abstracted from its suppositum: this is the reason why he employed indifferently concrete terms and abstract terms, the masculine and the neuter. For him the term God is synonymous with divinity. To say of Mary that she is Mother of God is equivalent to saying that she is mother of the divinity. In Jesus Christ, there is not only one thing and another (aliud et aliud), but also one person and another (alius et alius): "God, two natures, and other is he who clothes, other is he who is clothed; he has two 'prosopon', that of him who clothes and that of him who is clothed" (loc. cit.). Such a manner of expressing oneself is irreconcilable with the expressions of Scripture and of the symbols of faith, which speak of one single and unique Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Father, who was incarnate by the work of the Holy Spirit, was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered, died, and rose again. The Nestorian heresy is, therefore, essentially the denial of the true unity of Christ, the incarnate Son of God. It is an unhappy attempt at a rational explanation of the revealed dogma.

IV. NESTORIANISM AFTER NESTORIUS AND NESTORIANISM

The Nestorian heresy did not disappear with N. After the Council of Ephesus, it was not long in spreading among the Syriac-speaking churches and especially in the Church of Persia (v. below).

Moreover, the Nestorian error tends periodically to revive in the Church. Spanish Adoptianism of the 8th century was a more or less washed-out Nestorianism. In the 12th century there were scholastic theologians who, following Abelard, concealed a true Nestorianism beneath their philosophical terminology. In the 18th century, the two Jesuits Hardouin and Berruyer elaborated a Christological system that logically issued in hypostatic dualism. The same must be said of the explanation of Günther (v.) founded on the modern conception of the person, which would be constituted by self-consciousness. Although condemned, this psychological theory tends to reappear among certain contemporary supporters of the improper expression assumptus homo. One of these, Léon Seiller, in the pamphlet entitled: La psychologie humaine du Christ et l'unicité de personne (Rennes 1949), which has been placed on the Index, went so far as to affirm that the appellation Jesus Christ indicated, in recto, not the divine person of the Word, but the man united to the Word, the Homo assumptus. Only indirectly, in obliquo, would this name apply to the Word, to whom the man is united. The Homo assumptus would be not only really free but autonomous; it would preserve its human I, its psychological personality, which is meant to be distinguished from its ontological personality. All these innovations in the terminology consecrated by Scripture and by the conciliar definitions are dangerous and lead logically to hypostatic dualism, because, whether one wishes it or not, they separate the man from God, contrary to the definition of the Council of Chalcedon.

V. THE NESTORIAN CHURCH OF PERSIA

Nestorianism, condemned at the Council of Ephesus (431), was accepted by the Church of Persia. The clergy of this Church was for the most part trained in the catechetical school of Edessa, where Nestorianizing tendencies then predominated. There taught Hibâ, who followed the doctrine of Theodore of Mopsuestia. Narsai, an eminent Nestorian, was master of the school of Edessa from 437 to 457; then, driven out of that city, he founded in 457 the school of Nisibis (v.) in Persia, which became the spiritual center of the Church of that country. When in 489 the school of Edessa was closed because of its Nestorian doctrines, many masters and disciples emigrated to Persia and propagated Nestorianism there.

1. History

a) The Nestorian Church under the Sassanids (486-643). — Political factors also favored the penetration of this heresy. The Christians of Persia, in fact, had been suspected of treason against the fatherland and persecuted for their religion, which was identical with that of the Roman enemy. Since at that time Monophysitism was regarded with greater favor in the eastern part of the Empire, the acceptance of the opposite doctrine, namely Nestorianism, appeared the most suitable means of detaching the Persian Church from that of the Empire. A bishop of Nestorian tendencies, Barşawmâ, persuaded the king of the expediency of having Nestorianism accepted by the Christians of Persia. Thus it was received, at the Synod of Seleucia in 486, as the official doctrine of the Persian Church. It is true that the Christological formulas of the first synods, except the very suspect one of the Synod of 486, also allow an orthodox interpretation. But the fact that the Church of Persia venerates as its masters Theodore of Mopsuestia, N. and Diodore of Tarsus shows how the formulas must be interpreted. Nestorianism appears clearly in Bâbai the Great (d. ca. 628).

After the introduction of Nestorianism the Church of Persia generally enjoyed external peace under the Sassanids; but there was the danger of the Church's dependence on the Mazdean kings, and then many internal difficulties and continuous disputes among the hierarchs disturbed its internal peace. Thus from 522 to 539 there was an internal schism. To avoid similar difficulties in the future, the katholikós Abâ I, elected in 540, reorganized the manner of electing the katholikós. In his time the Nestorians endured a new persecution because of the war between Persia and the Empire. New difficulties arose at the beginning of the 7th century. From 609 to 628 it was impossible to elect a new katholikós.

Despite everything, the state of the Church in that first period was flourishing. A very active monasticism prospered, and the clergy was well trained in the theological schools of Nisibis and Seleucia. Missionary expansion had already begun toward the eastern part of the Persian Empire and even beyond the border toward India.

b) The Nestorian Church under Muslim rule (from 634 to the present). — With the invasion of the Muslim Arabs, at first the position of Christians in Persia actually improved somewhat. The Nestorians, being Syrians, were akin to the Arabs; therefore, also because of their monotheistic religion, they were more acceptable to the Muslims than to the Persians. The latter could now freely convert to Christianity. Thus from the beginning to the end of the 8th century Christianity continued to progress. But little by little the burden of taxes and the social inferiority imposed on Christians by the Arab conquerors brought about several defections. Christians not rarely held high offices at the court of the caliphs, established in Mesopotamia from 749 onward, which certainly also brought disadvantages, since influential Christians meddled too much in the affairs of the Church. The Nestorian katholikós under Muslim rule became to a certain extent also the civil head of his community, which increased the internal disputes over his election to the throne, ever more coveted.

Subsequently the Church suffered greatly under the succession of various dominations and invasions. Under the Mongols the condition of the Nestorians was relatively prosperous, especially in the time of the katholikós Jahballāhā III (1283-1317), of Mongol origin. After him the Nestorian Church declined rapidly. About its further history up to the 16th century nothing precise is known; political upheavals, especially in the time of Tamerlane (ca. 1400), almost completely ruined it. Toward the middle of the 16th century the movement toward union begins (v. CALDEI).

c) The missionary expansion of the Nestorians. - This expansion, as already mentioned, began under the Sassanids. Many Christians fled in the time of the persecutions to the far eastern regions of the Empire, and the fugitives became messengers of the Gospel. In the easternmost regions of Persia, Christian communities and episcopal sees are already found at the beginning of the 5th century. Toward the end of the same century Christianity had already spread as far as among the Turks and the Huns on the banks of the Oxus, and not much later the Good News was also carried into Transoxiana. Missionary expansion reached its peak under Arab rule. Bearers of the Gospel were above all the monks, but also the merchants, among whom there were also married priests; it was they who propagated Christianity along the ancient trade routes into the most distant countries.

Christianity made its entry into China already in the first half of the 7th century. This fact is attested by the famous stele of Si-ngan-fu, erected in 783 (v. reproduction, vol. II, pl. XI). The missionary activity of the Nestorians flourished especially under the katholikós Timothy I (780-823), who sent missionaries into Central Asia. Entire peoples with their kings were converted. In the 11th and 12th centuries various Mongol tribes were converted. The mission in China, which, however, in the 10th century, was resumed in the 13th, when the Mongols, very favorable to Christians, conquered that country. At the same time the first Latin missionaries arrived there. After the collapse of Mongol rule in China in the second half of the 14th century, the missionary work of the Nestorians dissolved once again. On the expansion in India v. MALABARESI.

2. Present situation

Of the Nestorian Church, once so extensive, very little remains today. The majority of the Nestorians returned from the 16th century onward to the Catholic Church (v. CALDEI). Others fell under the influence of American Protestant missionaries (from 1830) or Anglican ones (from 1835, and more intensively from 1886). The "Orthodox" Russians too worked from 1897 among the Nestorians and converted a part of them to "Orthodoxy." During the World War many Nestorians were massacred by the Turks. Others fled from the mountains of Kurdistan to the plain of Mesopotamia, already occupied by the English. Today Nestorians are found in Iraq, Syria, Persia and India.

In Iraq, after the declaration of independence, there were grave excesses in 1933 against the Nestorians, a large part of whom fled to Syria. Their resettlement occupied the League of Nations (Assyrian question). About 30,000 of them remain. The patriarch Mār Sem'ôn XXI, educated at Oxford, had to leave the country in 1933.

In Syria, in upper Qazirah (= northern Mesopotamia), there are a few thousand Nestorians who fled from Iraq; in Persia ca. 9,000, mainly in the territory of Lake Urmiah. In India only 2,000 N. remain, called Mellusians, from Bishop Elias Mellus who, having come from Mesopotamia, led a small number of Malabar Catholics into apostasy.

3. Literature

It can be summarized as follows: a) The era of the Christological disputes. - The first center of literary life among the Nestorians was the theological school of Nisibis, whose founder Narsai (v.), called the "harp of the Holy Spirit," left numerous poetic discourses, which are distinguished by their beauty and elegance of style. The most eminent representative of Nisibene theology is the katholikós Mar Aba (540-52), who founded the new school of Seleucia. Among his disciples Thomas of Edessa stands out. A serious crisis in Nestorian theology was caused by the head of the Nisibene school Henana (d. 610), who sought to introduce Alexandrian and Origenist theology into it. Alongside the theology of the schools, monasticism, with its ascetic works, was another force in the intellectual life of the Nestorians. Its founder is Abraham of Kashkar (d. 588), and the most eminent ascetic writer is Abraham of Netpar (second half of the 6th century). Historiography is represented in this first period above all by Mshiha-zeka, author of the celebrated chronicle of Arbela (ca. the middle of the 6th century). The most important representative of Nestorian theology of the first period is finally Babai the Great (d. ca. 628).

b) The Muslim era, up to the year 1000. - In this period one notes the Arab influence, but also a new wave of Greek influence, which again sought to arrive at a revision of theology in the Alexandrian sense, without however succeeding. The first important figure of this era is the katholikós Isho-yahb III (650-57), known as a reformer of the liturgy. His collaborator 'Enanisho' represents an ascetic monastic literature of a narrative character. Sahdona, an adherent of Chalcedonian theology, is also a contemporary. From the middle of the 7th century onward there takes place a flourishing of historiographical, juridical and exegetical literature. Simeon of Rewardashir (7th century) is the author of a collection of canons, Elijah of Merv (7th century) wrote an ecclesiastical history and a commentary on the Gospels, the katholikós Henanisho I (685-99) published a canonical collection. At the same time lived the eminent ascetic writer Isaac of Nineveh. Important theological writers of the 8th century are the katholikói Aba II (741-51), Henanisho II (773-79) and the bishop Isho-bokht of Rewardashir.

The passage from the 8th to the 9th century represents the moment of the greatest expansion of the Nestorian Church and also the apogee of its spiritual and literary life. As theological writers one should name the great katholikós Timothy I (780-823) and his contemporaries Ephrem of Elam, Theodore bar Koni and Isho bar Nun.

In the era of Timothy I the theological opposition favorable to Alexandrian ideas was definitively overcome. The 9th century, in the field of ecclesiastical literature, is rather an era of epigones who summarize what was elaborated before. One should name in the exegetical field Isho-dad of Merv, in the canonical field Gabriel of Basra and the katholikós John V bar Abgar (d. 905).

Theologians of the 10th century who remained celebrated are Elijah of Anbar, author of a doctrinal poem, George of Arbela, canonist and liturgist, and the anonymous author of a long liturgical commentary: Explanation of the ecclesiastical service.

c) The second millennium. - Nestorian literature too had in the second millennium, although less markedly than the Jacobite, a new flourishing, before the total decadence due to political turmoil. Of great importance for this favorable development of spiritual life among the Syrians was the Byzantine expansion, begun in the second half of the 10th century.

Elijah of Nisibis (bar Shinaya; d. after 1044) wrote a book to prove the truth of the faith. The 13th century brings a new flourishing of poetry of a liturgical and doctrinal character. Its most notable representatives are George Warda and the katholikós Yahballaha II (1190-1222).

John bar Zo'bi wrote in poetic form an exposition of Nestorian doctrine and an explanation of the liturgy. The last great Nestorian theologian of vast culture is 'Abdisho' bar Berika (d. 1318). One should also name the katholikós Timothy II (1318-22), author of a book on the seven Mysteries of the Church. For the individual authors, v. the relevant entries.

4. Doctrine

On the Christology of the Nestorians, v. above. As for original sin, it appears that the Nestorians do not admit that the guilt of Adam truly passes to his descendants; they generally teach at least that the sin of Adam had disastrous consequences for all humanity. As for sacramental theology, they admit that the Mysteries are a divine institution based on the power conferred by God on the Church and on priests to give supernatural Grace to men through sacred and symbolic signs. 'Abdisho' and Timothy II do indeed know the septenary number, but they enumerate in part other rites as Sacraments, omitting some of the true ones. The Nestorians lack Extreme Unction, and perhaps also Confirmation. As for the Eucharist, the Nestorian error seems to empty in a dangerous manner the sense of the real presence. Secret Confession in use in the early times later fell into disuse. Matrimony appears to be considered as a Sacrament.

Guglielmo de Vries