Nestorius

Nestorius of Constantinople
Portrait of Nestorius (as imagined by a Dutch engraver in the 17th century)
Archbishop of Constantinople
Born	c. 386 Germanicia, Province of Syria, Roman Empire (now Kahramanmaraş, Turkey)
Died	c. 451 (aged 64 or 65) Great Oasis of Hibis (al-Khargah), Egypt
Venerated in	Church of the East
Feast	Feast of the three Greek Doctors (5th Friday of Denha along with Theodore of Mopsuestia and Diodorus of Tarsus)[1]
Controversy	Christology, Theotokos

Nestorius of Constantinople (/ˌnɛsˈtɔːriəs/; Ancient Greek: Νεστόριος; c. 386 – c. 451) was an early Christian prelate who served as Archbishop of Constantinople from 10 April 428 to 11 July 431. A Christian theologian from the Catechetical School of Antioch, several of his teachings in the fields of Christology and Mariology were seen as controversial and caused major disputes. In 431, he was condemned and deposed from his see by the Council of Ephesus, presided over by his archrival Cyril of Alexandria,^[2] but the counter-council led by John I of Antioch vindicated him and deposed Cyril in return. Nestorius refrained from attending both of these councils and instead sought retirement from the Byzantine Emperor.^[3]

Nestorius himself used the title Theotokos and did not advocate for its ban. His teachings included cautious usage of the title Theotokos (God-Bearer), used for Mary, mother of Jesus, in order that Christ's human and divine natures not be confused, as he believed Christ was born according to his humanity and not his divinity, which indicated his preference for the concept of the prosopic union of two natures (divine and human) of Christ, over the concept of a hypostatic union. That brought him into conflict with Cyril of Alexandria and other prominent miaphysite churchmen of the time, who accused him of heresy:^[4]

If the babe and the Lord of the babe are one and the same person, the suspected phrase "inhabitant of the babe" must be simply intended as a safeguard against identification of the Word with the flesh. So Mary is Theotokos – because the Word was united to the temple ... which is in nature consubstantial with the holy Virgin ... It is in virtue of this union that the holy Virgin is called Theotokos

— Nestorius of Constantinople, Sermon XVIII^[5]

Nestorius sought to defend himself at the Council of Ephesus in 431, but instead found himself formally condemned for heresy by a majority of the bishops and was 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 until about 451, strenuously defending his views. His last major defender within the Roman Empire, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, finally agreed to anathematise him in 451 during the Council of Chalcedon.

From then on, he had no defenders within the empire, but the Church of the East in the Persian Empire never accepted his condemnation. That led later western Christians to give the name Nestorian Church to the Church of the East where his teachings were deemed orthodox and in line with its own teachings. Nestorius is revered as among three "Greek Teachers" of the Church of the East (in addition to Diodorus of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia). The East Syriac Eucharistic Service, which is known to be among the oldest in the world, incorporates prayers attributed to Nestorius himself.

The discovery, translation and publication of his Bazaar of Heracleides at the beginning of the 20th century have 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.