Nestorius

NESTORIUS : UNDERSTANDING INCARNATION
PROF. M. M. NINAN
faith or performed the formalities of a ritual sacrifice to the pagan gods, under the pressures
of the persecution sanctioned by Emperor Decius, in AD 250. The Novationists were declared
heretical.
As a member of the Semi-Arian party, Macedonius came to support a view that while it
generally supported the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed rejected the Divinity of the Holy
Spirit and did not consider Holy Spirit as a person. The doctrine developed into a sect that
after his death carried his name: Macedonians. The sect was also referred to as the
Pneumatomachi.
He then turned his attention to the Macedonians. For his treatment of this sect there is more
excuse. The bishop of Germa, on the Hellespont, had treated them with such severity that, driven
to desperation, they had sent two assassins to murder him. For this rash act they were deprived of
their churches in Constantinople and the neighborhood.
Evidently he was over enthusiastic about his opponents whom he considered as heretics.
With all his new ventures, Nestorius humiliated the monks of Constantinople, outraged the
aristocracy, and belittled the emperor’s sister. Thus within a few months of his patriarchate he
made all these powerful groups as his adversaries. No wonder they were enraged and was ready
to take revenge.
This came sooner than expected. The immediate occasion for the controversey was the sermon
of a presbyter named Anastasius, whom Nestorius had brought with him from Antioch, who
asserted that: (Socr. H. E. vii. 32),
"Let no man call Mary “Theokotos” θεοτόκος, for Mary was human, and it is impossible that God
could be born from a human being."
The problem however was, that by that time this title for Mary as Theotokos (Mother of God) was
popular and was applied to the Virgin by authorities as high as Origen, Athanasius, and Eusebius of
Caesarea, and it was insisted on with some vehemence by Gregory of Nazianzus.
That Spring on the Feast of the Annunciation—the celebration of the incarnation of Jesus in the
womb of Mary—Proclus, the unsuccessful rival of Nestorius for the position of Bishop of
Constantinople a year before, preached in the cathedral at Constantinople before the patriarch
Nestorius at the latter’s invitation. Proclus so firmly asserted the propriety of the epithet Theotokos
in his sermon that Nestorius was constrained to rise from his patriarchal throne during the service
and reply.
A few weeks later, during Eastertide, Nestorius addressed Proclus in three sermons on the subject
and then made his arguments into an Easter letter circular, thus making it official. These official
letters are called “order” as something absolutely to be obeyed and believed. It made clear that
the Patriarch of Constantinople considered reference to Mary as Theotokos to be a heresy. This
ceated a strong organized opposition from those who supported this and began to set up
anonymous placards near the churches throughout the city juxtaposing phrases from Nestorius
with sayings of the old Antiochene heretic Paul of Samosata.
(http://cosolargy.org/spiritual-advocates-nestorius-part-2/)
4