THE NESTORIAN AND EUTYCHIAN PHASES OF THE TRINITARIAN CONTROVERSY.*

Ar the beginning of the fifth century, the doctrine of the Christian Church, so far at least as the nature of its founder was concerned, was to all appearance finally determined. At one General Council in 325, the Son had been pronounced co-equal, even in substance, with the Father; at the Second General Council in 381, the Holy Spirit had been pronounced co-equal with Father and Son; and thus the idea of a Trinity, vaguely present in the second century to the minds of a Tertullian and an Origen, had taken at last complete dogmatic form. What further controversy was possible? "None," would have been the answer, no doubt, of the actors in each council. In determining the special doctrine which pressed for instant solution, and condemning the special heresy which threatened the unity of the hour, they seemed to themselves, unquestionably, to be uttering the final de

* One of a series of ten lectures on Orthodoxy and Heresy in the Christian Church.

cision of the church. How Athanasius himself regarded the decree of Nice appears from the words which I quoted in my last lecture: "The Word of the Lord which was given in the Ecumenical Council of Nicæa remaineth forever." As a matter of fact, however, each of those early doctrinal decisions simply brought new differences to light, and rendered further and more exact decisions necessary. To put New Testament religion into doctrinal form proved no easy task. The First Council necessitated the Second; the Second, as we shall see, called for a Third and Fourth. The question left unanswered by the first two councils is plain at once. The Son is equal to the Father, said the Synod of Nice; not subordinate, as Origen and the early Fathers, following John and Paul, had said; not of another substance, as Arius claimed, but in all respects God. But what becomes then of the human nature of Christ? He seemed in all respects like a man. He had a human body and mind, human mother, brothers and sisters, was born, lived and died, grew out of infancy and childhood into manhood, increased in wisdom, and was subject to emotion, affection, and suffering. Was all this, as the earlier heretics had declared, only apparent, not real? Or if real, how is this humanity in Christ connected with his Deity? In a word, while the dogma of the two councils had determined, however incomprehensibly, the relation of Christ to God, it had left undetermined the relation of the two natures in Christ himself. In making the Son and Father one, it seemed to be making the Son two.

Such was the question still to be answered; and such the source of the fierce disputes which divided the church during the first half of the fifth century. Extending, virtually, from the Council of Constantinople in 381, to the Council of Chalcedon in 451, and bearing, at different periods of its progress, the several names of Nestorian, Eutychian, and Monophysite, it was in reality one long contest to determine the relation between the divine and human natures of Christ. To use the later phraseology of the church, the doctrine of the Trinity must be supplemented by the doctrine of the Incarnation; and the construction of this latter doctrine was the problem of the fifth century. If the problem seems to us now to have been solved by peculiar methods, and the strife settled by questionable weapons; if the cries of infuriated monks, the

yells of hostile parties, or the arms of Imperial soldiery, seem hardly the arguments for determining the subtler relations or the profounder mysteries of the Divine Being, we can only accept this as a necessary condition of formulating religious doctrines in a halfbarbarous age.

The controversy began in Constantinople about the year 428, taking at first what seems to us a singularly trivial form. When the exact definition of eternal mysteries is once entered upon, however, the most puerile questions must be answered. If Christ was God, said those who were jealous of his Deity, then it was God who was born in Bethlehem of Judæa of the Virgin Mary. Then Mary was not simply the mother of Jesus, she was in literal fact the Mother of God."

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Whether this phrase, when first spoken, had the same grossly anthropomorphic sound which it bears to our ears, we cannot tell. Apparently, it was employed for a long time without exciting any attention; and certainly, at the beginning of the fifth century, the phrase was in familiar use, being especially in vogue in the Alexandrian Church, where the Athanasian spirit still prevailed, and where for a long time the allegorizing and transcendental school of Christian thought found its home. In Antioch, on the contrary, the old abode of Arianism, where a more critical and rationalistic spirit seems to have gained entrance, and a scientific method of Scripture interpretation to have won the day against the allegorical, the phrase gave great offense, and was regarded as a virtual denial of Christ's humanity.*

A verbal controversy over this question had already begun among the Eastern churches, when, in 428, Nestorius, a presbyter of Antioch, in full sympathy with the tendencies of that school, was made Patriarch of Constantinople. Almost immediately after his entrance upon the office, one of his presbyters, alarmed at the spreading heresy, and assured beforehand, perhaps, of his Patriarch's sympathy, took occasion to say in public discourse, “Let no one style Mary Mother of God;' for Mary was human, and it is impossible for God to be born of a human being."† The ex

* Baur II. 108; Neander's Hist. of Chris. Dogmas, I. 325.

† Evagrius Eccles. Hist. p. 258.

citement caused by this seems to have been intense, and the part taken in it by the new Patriarch is best shown by the language of one of the two earliest historians of these events, Evagrius.* "Then Nestorius, that God-assaulting tongue, that second conclave of Caiaphas, that work-shop of blasphemy, in whose case Christ is again made the subject of bargain and sale, by having his natures divided and torn asunder, . . . vomited forth the venom of his soul, avouching, 'I could never be induced to call that God which admitted of being two months old or three months old.'" †

Reducing this excited rhetoric to simple fact, Nestorius seems to have met the emergency with singular moderation and dignity, expounding in several discourses the true nature of Christ, by no means denying his divinity, but distinguishing between the Logos and the man Jesus,|| and declaring, in terms hardly distinguishable from those in which the Orthodox doctrine was itself finally framed, that in Christ were two natures, both Deity and Humanity, united together in closest intimacy. As the best escape from the difficulty, he proposed that Mary should be called neither Mother of God, nor Mother of man, but "Mother of Christ."

To quiet the agitation and close the controversy, the Emperor Theodosius followed the example of the first Theodosius, and of Constantine, by summoning a general council, which met at Ephesus in 431, and was styled the Third Ecumenical Council. The council was not directed, as before, by the Emperor in person; yet, although left entirely to the Ecclesiastics, it bore hardly more the character of a thoughtful assembly, deliberating upon religious themes, than did that at Constantinople or at Nice. The opponent of Nestorius, and leader of the opposite party, was the notorious Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, that zealous defender of a spiritual Christianity whom the church has placed among its saints, but who, before the council of Ephesus, had chiefly signalized himself by levelling all the Jewish synagogues in Alexandria with the ground, and by causing the beautiful Pagan maiden, and gifted teacher of Greek philosophy, Hypatia, to be torn from her chariot and bru

* Writing about 570.

‡ Nean. Hist. II. 447.

Evag. Bohn's Edit. pp. 257, 258. || Socrates, p. 371. § Nean. Hist. II. 452.

tally murdered in the streets of Alexandria. To Cyril's thought, it was equal blasphemy to deny that Mary was "Mother of God," and to teach the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle; and he hastened to Ephesus, with a large following of mariners, slaves, and fanatic monks, to overthrow the Nestorian heresy.* How far he was influenced in his action by the desire to remove a rival who, as Patriarch of Constantinople, disputed with him the primacy of the East, we can only conjecture.

Of the debates in the Council of Ephesus, as in the case of previous councils, we are told little or nothing. The real question at issue, as we have seen, was between making the Logos and the man Jesus two distinct persons, and making the two so completely one that the humanity became a mere name. The course of theological debate on this theme seems to have been the following: John of Antioch, with his attendant bishops, being somewhat belated in his journey, Cyril, who was already on the ground, refused to wait for him, called together those who were present, and deposed Nestorious, condemning his doctrine. Nestorius, denying Cyril's authority, withdrew with his friends, and deposed Cyril. John of Antioch, on arriving five days later, convened his priests at once, and finally deposed Cyril once more; whereupon Cyril summoned his bishops again and deposed John. These results were then reported to the Emperor, who, although no enemy to Nestorius or his doctrine, was yet persuaded to ratify his deposition, and bring about a reconciliation between John and Cyril. Nestorius, although showing a conciliatory spirit to the end, and even offering to accept the disputed term,† yet proved unequal to the combinations made against him in Alexandria, Rome, and Antioch, was finally banished, and died in exile. The Council of Ephesus thus put the stamp of heresy on the doctrine of two distinct natures in Christ, and sanctioned the phrase "Mother of God."

The next disturbance of the unity of the church was caused about fifteen years later by one Eutyches, an archimandrite or abbot of Constantinople. Taking the Council of Ephesus apparently at its word, and so holding Mary to be the Mother of God, he seems to have come to the very natural conclusion, in which he

*Gibbon VI. 21.

† Evag. p. 261; Soc. VII. p. 373.