Nestorius

Who was Nestorius?

Nestorius was Archbishop of Constantinople from 10 April 428 until August 431, when the emperor Theodosius II confirmed his condemnation by the Council of Ephesus on 22 June. His teachings included a rejection of the long-used title of Theotokos, "Mother of God", for the Virgin Mary, and were misunderstood by many to imply that he did not believe that Christ was truly God. This brought him into conflict with other prominent churchmen of the time, most notably Cyril of Alexandria, whom he accused of heresy.

Nestorius sought to defend himself at the First Council of Ephesus in 431, but instead he found himself formally condemned for heresy by a majority of the bishops and subsequently removed from his see. On his own request he retired to his former monastery in or near Antioch. In 435 Theodosius II sent him into exile in Upper Egypt, where he lived on till 450, strenuously defending his orthodoxy. His last major defender within the Roman Empire, Theodoret of Cyrrhus, finally agreed to anathematize him in 451 during the Council of Chalcedon; from then on he had no defenders within the empire. But the Church of the East never accepted his condemnation. This led later to western Christians giving the name Nestorian Church to the Church of the East, even though it never regarded him as an authoritative teacher. The discovery and publication of his Book of Heraclides at the beginning of the 20th century led to a reassessment of his theology in western scholarship. It is now generally agreed that his ideas were not far from those that eventually emerged as orthodox, but the orthodoxy of his formulation of the doctrine of Christ is still controversial. This is due to the fact that the Second Council of Constantinople of AD 553 confirmed the validity of the condemnation of Nestorius, refuting the letter of Iba that affirms that Nestorius was condemned without the due inquiry.