Nestorius and His Place in the History of Christian Doctrine. Friedrich 1858-1928 Loofs
reading the book one has to regret, it is true, again and again, that it has not been preserved intact and in its original language. It would be of inestimable importance for the history of Christian doctrine if we possessed the original Greek of these explanations, so important from a dogmatic point of view.
Nevertheless even as we have it now in the Syriac translation the Treatise of Heraclides of Nestorius remains one of the most interesting discoveries for students of ancient church history. In two respects it is able to awaken fresh interest in Nestorius: by what we hear about his life and by what we learn about his doctrine.
As concerning the first, the Treatise of Heraclides has undoubtedly many relations to that earlier work of Nestorius, entitled Tragedy and only known in a few fragments, in which he treated historically and polemically the tragedy of his life and especially the doings of the Cyrillian council of Ephesus. Also in the Treatise of Heraclides Nestorius writes as one who is conscious of being unjustly condemned and wrongly delivered over to the intrigues of the unscrupulous Cyril. But he does not make pretentious claims for his person or hope for another turn of his fortune. He has no more interest in the world. For e.g. after having said that one might ask him why the bishops of the Antiochian party had given assent to his deposition he answers[32]: Well you must ask him (meaning Cyril), apparently also those (meaning the Antiochians). If you want to learn anything else of me, then I will speak of what is now gradually coming to the knowledge of the whole world, not in order to find approbation or assistance among men—for earthly things have but little interest for me. I have died to the world and live for Him, to whom my life belongs;—but I will speak to those who took offence etc. He writes in exile in the deserts of Egypt and has no prospect but of death. As for me, so he concludes the treatise[33], I have borne the sufferings of my life and all that has befallen me in this world as the sufferings of a single day; and I have not changed all these years. And now I am already on the point to depart, and daily I pray to God to dismiss me—me whose eyes have seen his salvation. Farewell Desert, my friend, mine upbringer and my place of sojourning, and thou Exile, my mother, who after my death shalt keep my body until the resurrection comes in the time of God's pleasure! Amen.
We knew previously that Nestorius had to endure many sufferings during his exile. Evagrius, as I said above, hands down to us fragments of two letters of Nestorius to the governor of Thebais[34]. From these we learn that Nestorius was captured in Oasis by invading bands of barbarians and then, being released, surrendered himself, by a letter written in Panopolis, into the hands of the governor, in order not to come under the suspicion of having fled. But then, so the second letter teaches us, he was sent by order of the governor first to Elephantine and, before reaching it, back to Panopolis, then into the surrounding district and from there to a fourth place of exile. The hardships of these continual removals and severe bodily pains caused by an injured hand and side had brought him to the brink of death. We cannot help being moved when we see him in his first letter from Panopolis, written directly after his release from capture, asking the governor that he should see to a lawful continuation of his exile, lest in all future generations should be told the tragic history that it was better to be captured by barbarians than to take refuge with the Roman Empire[35]. But these occurrences happened soon after 435, for in the first letter Nestorius mentions the synod of Ephesus as a fact of the recent past. Scholars therefore could suppose and actually did suppose that death soon put an end to the sufferings of the banished Nestorius. He feels himself an old man even as early as the time of these letters.
But now the Treatise of Heraclides teaches us that Nestorius was still alive at least in the autumn of 450, for the news of the death of the Emperor Theodosius, who died 28 July 450, had penetrated even to the loneliness of his exile. Professor Bethune-Baker[36] goes even further, thinking—in my opinion without sufficient grounds—that Nestorius must have died after the council of Chalcedon, about 452. During at least 15 to 16 years, therefore, Nestorius endured the hardships of exile. How many sufferings these years may have seen! Nestorius does not speak much of them. But he remarks incidentally, that for many years he never had a moment of repose or any human comfort[37]. Surely the person claims our interest who in spite of all this could write[38]: The goal of my earnest wish, then, is that God may be blessed on earth as in heaven. But as for Nestorius—let him be anathema! Only let them say of God what I pray that they should say. I am prepared to endure and to suffer all for Him. And would God that all men by anathematizing me might attain to a reconciliation with God.
Thus, if we are interested by what the Treatise of Heraclides teaches us about the life of Nestorius, in no less a degree ought our interest to be awakened by what we learn about his doctrine.
As early as about 440 Socrates the church-historian defended, with the impartiality which distinguished him, his contemporary Nestorius against the grave misrepresentation to which his doctrine was exposed. People, as he says[39], thought that Nestorius regarded the Lord as a mere human being, as did Paul of Samosata and Photinus. But, so he continues[40], I read his writings and I will say the truth: he did not hold the same opinions as Paid of Samosata and Photinus nor did he at all regard the Lord as a mere man, only he abhorred the term θεοτόκος as a bugbear.
In a still higher degree Luther did justice to Nestorius. In his book Von Conciliis und Kirchen he confesses that he himself for some time did not understand what the error of Nestorius was, and that he also thought that Nestorius had held Christ to be nothing more than a man, as the popish decrees and all popish writers declared; but that after having looked more accurately at the accounts he saw that this was false[41]. This, too, according to Luther, was wrongly assumed about Nestorius, that he made two persons of the one Christ. Nestorius, Luther says, really does not teach more than one Christ; hence he could not regard Christ as two persons; otherwise he would have said a Yes and a No in the same article, contradicting himself[42]. Nestorius, he says[43], rightly believed that Christ was God begotten of the Father from all eternity and man born of Mary the Virgin; and, he declares[44], it was right, too, that Mary did not bear the Godhead. But Luther thought that Nestorius as a rough and unlearned man did not comprehend the communicatio idiomatum, which in his opinion justifies the phrase that God was born of Mary, just as a mother (although the soul of her child does not come from her) is nevertheless not only the mother of the body, but the mother of the child[45].
Luther had but a very limited knowledge about Nestorius. To the increased knowledge of our day even before the discovery of the Treatise of Heraclides the doctrine of Nestorius showed itself in a still more favourable light. As early as ten years ago I wrote in the Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche: If Nestorius had lived in the time of the council of Chalcedon, he would possibly have become a pillar of orthodoxy[46]. Now the Treatise of Heraclides teaches us that Nestorius lived roughly speaking till the time of that council. Accurately speaking there is no trace of the Chalcedonian synod in the Treatise of Heraclides, and the passages which seem to point to the time following it must in my opinion be explained otherwise[47]. Hence I believe that the monophysitic stories asserting that Nestorius had been invited to the council of Chalcedon, but died a dreadful death on the journey thither[48] are right in so far that Nestorius did not live to see the opening of the council in October 451. But he saw the beginning of the reaction which followed the so-called robber-synod of Ephesus in 449. He even read the famous letter of Pope Leo to Flavian of Constantinople, which was of such decisive importance for the determination of Chalcedon and was acknowledged as a norm of doctrine by this council. What was his judgment about this letter of Leo's? Many times in the Treatise of Heraclides he declares that Leo and Flavian taught the truth and that their opinion was exactly the same as his[49]. He even tells that he was begged by friends to write to Leo of Rome, but he did not do it, lest—so he says—through the prejudice existing against him he should hinder him (i.e. Leo) who was running a right course[50].
Because of all this, Professor Bethune-Baker, in his above-mentioned book, Nestorius and his teaching,