Nestorius

NESTORIUS : UNDERSTANDING INCARNATION
PROF. M. M. NINAN
it is understood that Jesus was at the same time both fully God and fully human, two persons in one
nature.The body of Christ was therefore subject to all the bodily weaknesses to which human
nature is universally subject; such are hunger (Matt.4:2), thirst (John 19:28), fatigue (John 4:6),
pain, and death. They were the natural results of the human nature He assumed.
Fortunately Nestorius himself has written an exhaustive account of his thesis in a book which was
discovered in the 20 th century which presents a different angle on what he really taught. This book
is known as The Bazaar of Heraclides. This book was written in exile at the Oasis, which survives in
Syriac translation. It must have been written no earlier than 450 AD, as he knows of the death of the
Emperor Theodosius II (29 July 450).
In this book
(i) He denies that the unity of Christ is a 'natural composition' in which two elements are combined
by the will of some external 'creator'.
(ii) He denies that the Incarnation was effected by changing godhead into manhood or vice versa,
or by forming a tertium quid (a third personality) from those two ousiai.
(iii) He denies that God was in Christ in the same way as in the saints.
(iv) He denies that either the godhead or the manhood of Christ are 'fictitious' or 'phantasmal', and
not real.
(v) He denies that the Incarnation involved any change in the godhead, or any suffering on the part
of the Divine Logos who, as divine, is by nature impassible.
(vi) He denies that the union of two natures in one Christ involves any duality of sonship.
(vii) He asserts that the union is a voluntary union of godhead and manhood.
(viii) He asserts that the principle of union is to be found in the prosopa of the godhead and
the manhood; these two prosdpa coalesced in one prosopon of Christ incarnate.
(ix) He asserts that this view alone provides for a real Incarnation, makes possible faith in a real
atonement, and provides a rationale of the sacramentalism of the Church.
It is clear that the crux of the question is to be found in the eighth of these points, and that the
difficulty arises from the difficulty of determining the sense in which Nestorius used the word
prosopon. His own theory can be stated almost in a dozen words. It is this:
Christ is the union of the eternal Logos and the Son of Mary,
the principle of the union being
that the πρόσωπον of each has been taken by the other,
so that there is one πρόσωπον of the two in the union.
As it appear, apparently
Nestorius was not a Nestorian
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