Scripture and God in Christianity

fering in the trial of death, because it was impossible for him to taste the trial of death if [the
Godhead] were not cautiously remote from him, but also near enough to do the needful and necessary
things for the [human] nature that was assumed by it." 674 He further argued that while the
scriptures distinguishes the natures, it at the same time stresses the unity between them. Therefore,
he argued, "we point to difference of natures, but to unity of Person" or in other words "the
two natures are, through their connection, apprehended to be one reality." 675
As we see, Theodore emphatically denies the transformation or transmutation of the Logos into
flesh. He also held that the divine nature did not change the human nature. Jesus, having human
nature, by grace and free will could follow the divine nature. Therefore, one could say that Mary
gave birth to God.
Theodore's opponents opposed this theory as leading to a "monster with two heads", a being with
two personal centers and a combination of two sons. 676 Theodore denied this as mere accusation
but, to McGiffert, "to all intents and purpose he was doing so." 677 Cyril of Alexandria singled
him out for attack and since the Fifth General Council of Constantinople in 533 he has been labeled
as a Nestorian before Nestorius. Modern scholarship vindicates him of this accusation as
Kelly observes: "In modern times, especially since the rediscovery of the relatively innocuous
Catechetical Homilies, there has been a decided reaction against this verdict. It has been emphasized,
for example, that he was deeply concerned, so far as his categories of thought allowed, to
establish the oneness of subject in the God-man....He can write, for example, `Thus there results
neither any confusion of the natures nor any untenable division of the Person; for our account of
the natures must remain unfocused, and the Person must be recognized as indivisible'; and again,
`We display a distinction of natures, but unity of Person'. For these and similar reasons the traditional
estimate has been replaced by a more appreciative one which views him primarily as a
theologian who championed the reality of the Lord's manhood against Apollinarianism and strove
to do justice to His human experience." 678 F. Young observes that "If Theodore stresses the duality,
it is because for him the unity is obvious." 679
Controversy came to a head in the fifth century when Nestorius, a younger member of the Antiochian
school, became bishop of Constantinople (428 A.D.). He protested against the tendency
very common among the masses, especially among the monks in the neighborhood of the capital,
to exalt the Virgin Mary as "Mother of God" or "theotokos". "God cannot have a mother, he argued,
and no creature could have engendered the Godhead; Mary bore a man, the vehicle of divinity
but not God. The Godhead cannot have been carried for nine months in a woman's womb,
or have been wrapped in baby-clothes, or have suffered, died and been buried." 680 H. Chadwick
observes that "Nothing caused so much scandal as a remark of Nestorius that 'God is not a baby
two or three months old.' " 681 Nestorius held that she should either be called 'mother of the man
Jesus' or 'mother of Christ'. His objection was to the transference of human attributes to the divine
Logos. He emphatically denied that the Logos participated in the sufferings of the human
nature of Christ. 682
He believed that Jesus had two natures. He maintained that before the union of the man and the
Logos in Jesus, the man was a person distinct from Logos. Then "He who is the similitude of
God has taken the person of the flesh." 683 After the union these two separate persons retained
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