The Council of Ephesus

        The Council of Ephesus (431) was convened to resolve the difference in Christology between the Antiochene clergy led by Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople and the supporters of the Alexandrian school of thoughts led by Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria. They were ecclesiastical rivalries in the early fifth century. The theological controversy started with Nestorius’ preaching against the Theotokos, the title “Mother of God” as applied to Mary since the early Church days. In his sermon against the Theotokos, he asked the congregation, “Does God have a mother?” In the Letter to the Hebrews, it was said of Christ, “without father, without mother, without genealogy (Heb 7:3),” he added. Because of this, “Mary did not give birth to the Godhead” since “a creature did not produce the Creator, rather she gave birth to the human being, the instrument of the Godhead,” he concluded (Norris 124-125). Here, it brings us to the nature of Jesus Christ. Let’s first take a look at a little more background.

        The Council of Nicea (325) had already confirmed that the nature of the Son is homoousios (consubstantial) with the Father. In the Nicene Creed, the term homoousios denotes a dogmatic truth: “what is said of the Father is also said of the Son, except that the Son is Son and not Father” (Davis 71). The Council condemned Arius, the Alexandrian priest who claimed that the Logos was a creature of God the Creator. However, the Council had not fully settled the humanity of Christ, while confirming his divinity and the consubstantiality between the Father and the Son as well as the eternity of both. Church leaders and theologians thus began to attempt to give a satisfactory answer to the question on how the divine and human natures can coexist in Jesus Christ. Apollinaris, Bishop of Laodicea in the late fourth century addressed the question by adopting a “logos-sarx” (i.e., divinity united with the flesh) framework by claiming that the Logos replaced the human soul. He said, “So Christ, having God as his spirit – that is, his intellect – together with soul and body, is rightly called ‘the human being from heaven’” (Norris 108). In other words, Jesus is not completely human because he lacked the rational element of a human being – the soul. There are soteriological drawbacks for this approach. Salvation would no longer be “the healing but the destruction of humanity because the human freedom of Jesus is eliminated. Humanity is not healed by the Incarnation but replaced by the Logos” (Lecture Notes for Lesson 5).

        This “logos-sarx” framework was not the framework adopted by the Antiochene School. Instead, Nestorius was trained in the “logos anthropos” school of Christology, which placed heavy emphasis on the humanity of Christ. This tradition started with diversity of the two natures in Christ and then tried to explain how they came together. They used to call “Mary Anthropotokos or Mother of the man” instead of Theotokos or Mother of God (Lecture Notes for Lesson 5). For Nestorius, the term “Christ” is “an expression which signifies the two natures, and without risk he applies to him both the style ‘form of a slave,’ which he took, and that of God” (Norris 126). As a result, Nestorius called Mary Christotokos or Mother of Christ, which he considered it a more accurate term than Theotokos that could be construed to be Apollinarianism, i.e., “the manhood of Jesus was completed by the presence of the Word” (Davis 145). In explaining the two natures of Christ, he insisted that each of them was “a prosopon,” i.e., a person or an individual; and “each was a hypostasis or concrete subsistent being.” The two natures, according to Nestorius, are “conjoined in one who combined in himself two distinct element, Godhead and manhood, with all the characteristics proper to Word and man, complete and intact, though united” (Davis 146). Based on his Christology, it would be incorrect to say that the Logos suffered, died and resurrected because it was the Son of Man (i.e., the humanity of the Son) undertaking these. Similarly, the Son of Man would not be eternal but it is just the Logos who is eternal. The divine nature is “immutable, the Incarnation could not have involved the Word in change or suffering.” As for the birth of Jesus, one should not say that “God was born of the Virgin because it is to attribute a human activity to the divinity.” More accurately, one should say that Christ, the prosopon of the two persons conjoined into one (or a “third” person), “was born of the Virgin.” Therefore, Christotokos was considered by Nestorius a more accurate term to call Mary (Davis 147).

        On the other side of the rivalry was the Alexandrian clergy led by Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria. In February 430 AD, Cyril wrote his important Second Letter to Nestorius stating his position. In the letter, he agreed with Nestorius that the discussions about the nature of Christ should be based on the Scripture, the Council of Nicea, and the tradition of the Fathers. However, he asserted that the Logos became flesh not by changing his nature or transforming into a human being, but in an “unspeakable and incomprehensible way, the Logos united to Jesus, in his hypostasis, flesh enlivened by a rational soul, and in this way became a human being and has been designated ‘Son of man.’” There is therefore only one Son and not two, who is also the one and the same Christ. This only Begotten Son of God, “although he existed and was born from the Father before the ages, he was also born of a woman in his flesh.” It is therefore entirely proper to call Mary “Mother of God.” While Cyril agreed with Nestorius that the divine is incorporeal and impassible, it did not mean as Nestorius suggested that the human body of the Son of God could not undergo suffering and death. “The body that had become his own underwent suffering, he is – once again – said to have suffered these things for our sakes, for the impassible One was within the suffering body” (Norris 134). Cyril was essentially also employing a “logos-sarx” framework despite his disagreement with Apollinaris that the Logos replaced the human soul. He was a strong defender of the unity of Christ and “used the term mia physis (one nature) to express the fact that Christ is only one concrete individual (Lecture Notes for Unit 3). Nevertheless, he recognized the full divinity and humanity of Christ, and on this point he converged with Nestorius (despite that Cyril did not use the term “two natures in one person and hypostasis” as declared later by the Council of Chalcedon (451)). The primary difference between the Christology of Cyril and Nestorius is that the former could “bring within the framework of a single, clearly conceived personality of the two natures of Christ,” while the latter tried to distinguish the two natures but ran into problems (created three prosopons, i.e., Logos, Son of man, and Christ as a result) when doing it (Davis 148).

        Cyril was more aggressive than Nestorius in defending his Christology and attacking his opponent’s views. He successfully convinced Pope Celestine to subscribe to his beliefs and also persuaded Emperor Theodosius II to depose Nestorius and send him into exile. Quite unfairly, Cyril ended up addressing Nestorius as the “new Judas” when notifying him of the decision of the Council of Ephesus run by the former that the latter would no longer hold any rank in the Church (Davis 156). It may be said that Alexandria had triumphed over Constantinople in this ecclesiastical dispute. But it also comes at a price: “Nestorianism itself had a long future ahead of it.” “The Persian Church officially accepted Nestorianism in 486.” Even today, “it is estimated that some 80,000 Nestorians live in the Mid-East, 5,000 in India, and 25,000 in North and South America. They refuse to accept the title of Mary as Mother of God and revere Nestorius as a saint” (Davis 167). Ecumenical dialogues are ongoing but the road to reconciliation and full communion is long.

Bibliography

Davis, Leo Donald. The First Seven Ecumenical Councils (325-787): Their History and Theology. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1990. Print.

Hammond, David. Lecture Notes for TH 530 Lesson 5 – Ephesus.

Norris, Richard A. The Christological Controversy. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980. Print.