Nestorianism

Did Mary bear God?

Nestorius (c. 381–451), a famous preacher from Antioch, became bishop of Constantinople in 428. The teachers of Antioch stressed that Christ was fully human, a man who grew, learned and was tempted. When a dispute arose over calling Mary Theotokos, ‘the one who gave birth to God’, Nestorius preferred ‘the one who gave birth to Christ’. God cannot be born or suffer, he reasoned, so what Mary bore was the human nature in which the Word dwelt as in a temple. He wanted to protect both God's deity and Christ's real humanity.

Cyril of Alexandria saw in this a road to two Sons. The Word truly made flesh his own and became man; it was not that a man was born first and the Word then came upon him, but that the Word himself was born in the flesh and suffered in his own flesh Cyril of Alexandria, Second Letter to Nestorius. In 431 the Council of Ephesus received Cyril's letter and deposed Nestorius, who died in exile. Whether Nestorius himself truly divided Christ into two persons, or was misunderstood through clumsy language, is still debated by scholars.

Scripture and the church's confession

The angel told Mary that the child she would bear is the Son of God himself:

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God.

Luke 1:35

Elizabeth greets Mary as "the mother of my Lord" (Luke 1:43), and Paul says the rulers "crucified the Lord of glory" (1 Corinthians 2:8). Scripture speaks of the one Christ both in divine and in human terms. So the church holds that one may say God died on the cross: not that the divine nature suffered, but that he who is God suffered in his flesh. Theophylact, an eleventh-century commentator, notes that Jesus did not say ‘In Me is the light of the world’ but "I am the light of the world" (John 8:12), so that "He who appeared man, was both the Son of God, and the Light of the world" Theophylact. In 451 the Council of Chalcedon confessed him "not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son" Definition of Chalcedon.

The Church of the East, and us

The Church of the East in Persia, which did not receive Ephesus, was called ‘Nestorian’ by others, a name it considers unfair to its faith. It carried the gospel along the Silk Road and in 781 raised a stele in the Tang capital recording its history in China Xi'an Stele. In 1994 the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East signed a common declaration on Christology, confessing together that Christ is true God and true man in one person.

After the Reformation, Lutherans and Reformed argued over the Lord's Supper and Christ's human nature. Lutherans feared the Reformed separated the two natures too far, and the Reformed feared the Lutherans blended them Formula of Concord, art. 8; both confess Chalcedon. The story and the confession of the two natures are told in Chalcedon: one person, two natures; the opposite error is called Monophysitism.