2. EPHESUS. 427-433
The crisis of 403-408 had centred around questions of ecclesiastical discipline. All those concerned in it, Theophilus, St. John, Atticus, St. Innocent I, had been united in Faith. There had been no repetition of discussions such as those which the Council of 381 had closed. But within twenty years of the death of St. John, and when all the personalities of that crisis had passed away, the peace of his see was troubled more violently than ever by far-reaching discussions on a fundamental point of faith. In the fourth century Arius had striven against the tradition that the Logos is truly God. Now the discussion shifted to the question of the relations between the Divine and the Human in Jesus Christ. Was there, for instance, a real distinction between the Human and the Divine, or had the Divine absorbed the Human? If the Divine and the Human are really distinct in Him what was the nature of His earthly activities? Was it God acting, or the Man mysteriously and wonderfully united to God? or was the activity sometimes divine and sometimes human?
The practical effect on Christian life of divergent reasoning here cannot, of course, be exaggerated. If the activity is not divine then the gospel loses its chief claim to a hearing, the ecclesia its one claim on the absolute attention and obedience of mankind. It becomes straightway nothing more than the masterpiece of human idealism, in life and in moral teaching. If the Divine and the Human are distinct how can the activity be divine? And if the Divine absorbs the Human how can our vitiated humanity be reintegrated by the mysterious Incarnation of the Logos? Such reintegration demands a full complete humanity in Him Who is thus to restore it. Such a full complete humanity there cannot be in Our Lord if, in Him, the Human is not distinct from the Divine.
One school of theologians, concerned to safeguard the all important truth of the real distinction between the Human and the Divine, pressed the distinction so far that in Our Lord they were inclined -- some of them -- to see two realities, united truly enough, and harmoniously one in action, but united with a union that was no more than a moral union. This was the teaching of the so-called school of Antioch.
The Alexandrians, approaching the problem from its other pole, anxious above all to safeguard along with the Divinity of Christ the unity of His activity, and especially of course the Divine character of His action as Saviour of mankind, stressed the union of Human and Divine in Him, until in some cases, the two seemed for the thinker united in such a fusion that the Human reality ceased to be real. In God the Son incarnate, they urged, there was but one incarnate physis.
This, in words at any rate, was flat contradiction of the thesis of the Antiochians, for the Antiochians used this very term physis to describe each of the realities whose real distinction they were so concerned to defend. In Christ, they taught, there were two physes -- the Human and the Divine. Physis, for this school, meant what the Latin theologians were to call Nature; while the same word, with the Alexandrians, was equivalent to the Latin Person. Both schools thus used the one term physis, and they each used it to express a different reality. The matter of the debate was, then, fundamental. More fundamental matter of debate between members of the Church there could not be. Those who debated it were only too well aware of their subject's vast importance. Each school had worked out its theory as a defence of truth against a particular heresy -- and as the heretics differed, so the viewpoint of the defenders differed too. Hence high feeling and passion in the polemic. Again they were debating the matter for the first time, and without an agreed technical terminology to express even their common ideas, much less their individual differences. Hence, not infrequently, misunderstandings and confusion. A final point to note is that the disputants were, almost all of them, Easterns; Greeks by culture, Egyptian or Syrian by blood, subtle of speech with a subtlety far beyond that of anyone then bred west of Alexandria, and endowed with a tropical luxuriance of rhetoric in the expression of their passionately held ideas, which sometimes did little to help on the work of agreement.
Another factor, too, quite untheological this, played its part in the event, influencing the circumstances of the great decisions if it left the decisions themselves untouched. This was the rivalry now traditional between the three great sees of the East. Alexandria, until the unhappy exaltation of Constantinople in 381, had been unquestioned leader of the East. Her bishop it was who, for nearly half a century, had held fast to Catholicism while Antioch and Constantinople had fallen to the Arians. Then, at the council which organised the restoration of orthodoxy, Alexandria had seen her prestige sacrificed to the profit of Constantinople, parvenu see as parvenu city, creature of the Court, heretic and Catholic by turn as the emperor chose. But the council’s decision was law for the East, and Alexandria had had to bow to the fait accompli. And as the years went by after 381 another interesting development had revealed itself. The predominant influence in the new imperial see was Antiochian. From Antioch, and not from Alexandria, were its bishops taken, and Antiochian theories rather than Alexandrian usually guided its teachers. Alexandria, for the fifty years that followed the restoration council of 381, was, despite its ancient prestige, its services to orthodoxy, and its wealth, decidedly out of the fashion.
In the history of the next two general councils all these elements play their part. The traditional faith is asserted, -- each time by the see which, ever refusing to philosophise, reserves to itself a role of decisive authoritative teaching -- but asserted after a strangely complex exhibition of passionate contending humanity. The story is simple enough, so long as the traditional faith and the traditional procedure for resolving doubts are alone in question. The story only begins to be involved when there enter in these extraneous elements, rival systems of theology, hereditary rivalries of the great sees, the novelty of appealing to Caesar to assist the settlement -- this last above all, for as a result of such appeals, Caesar is fast becoming to the Church in his dominions as omnipresent and paralysing as was ever the old man of the sea.
Atticus, the intruded successor of St. John Chrysostom, died in 425, his peace with Rome made long before. To him succeeded Sisinnius who reigned only for a year and ten months. Whereupon, to cut short the intrigues of interested parties in the capital itself, the emperor, Theodosius II (408-450), decided, like his father Arcadius in 397, that the new bishop should be chosen from outside. And once more, as in 397, it was a priest of Antioch who was elected. His name was Nestorius and already he had made a name for himself as a man, of ascetic life and a notable preacher. He was a pupil of the most celebrated of all the Antiochian theologians, Theodore, now ending his life as Bishop of Mopsuestia.
Theodore, a friend of St. John Chrysostom, had with the saint been the pupil of Diodore of Tarsus (394) whose ideas he had developed, making for himself a name that quite eclipsed his master's. Diodore had been in his time a mighty controversialist. His especial foe was Apollinaris, the Alexandrian Bishop of Laodicea (360-377). Apollinaris, a powerful opponent of Arianism, insisting on the unity of Our Lord's salvific activity, and its divine character, had resolved the main difficulty in the way of his theory by teaching that the humanity which the Divinity associated to itself was incomplete -- a true human body indeed but lacking a human soul. Against these theorisings, condemned often, and condemned most solemnly at Constantinople in 381, Diodore insisted on the truth they denied, namely that in Our Lord there are two natures, really distinct, complete, true natures. Unfortunately he so isolated them that a duality of nature, as he conceived it, was not compatible with any unity of personality. Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia (392-428), developing his master, speaks of the two natures as though they were each complete persons, failing, like Diodore, to understand all that is implied in the notion of "one person, " and that a duality such as he constructs is not compatible with that unity.
Nestorius was not so clear as his master. Like Theodore, while he admits in theory the unity of person, he speaks of the two natures as though these were two independent persons. Again, for Nestorius, the one person is not conceived as the active divine person of the Logos associating with itself the created humanity, but the personality is taken as the result, the effect, of the union of the divinity and the humanity. The Logos and the humanity, anterior to the union, have each their proper person; in the union there is still but one person -- the person of Christ, to which the person of the Logos and the person of the humanity are in a kind of subordination.
Such intricate and involved theorising might have gone the way of much other like speculation had not Nestorius worked it out to the practical conclusions of everyday spirituality, and attempted to impose it as the true tradition of faith upon his clergy and people. What brought the Bishop of Constantinople to this, was the need, now become urgent, to provide in a popular way, some refutation of the many heresies about the divinity of Our Lord that troubled the peace of the capital, and especially a revival among the Arians and Apollinarians. Constantinople was indeed, at the moment, full of militant heretics. Nestorius had had much to say about this in the inaugural address that followed his appointment to the see in 427. One result of his zeal was a new imperial law against heretics (May 30, 428) and a great campaign to convert them or drive them out. In that campaign the truth of the faith was to be set out cleared of the misrepresentations of it circulated by its enemies. And so it came about that one of the bishop's intimates, the monk Anastasius, announced the " new theology " of the Incarnation in a popular sermon on the Mother of God. "Mother of God" she had always been to the ordinary faithful. It was a title consecrated by long usage and it expressed succinctly the traditional belief that He whose mother she was, was not merely man but also truly God. But the monk, Anastasius, explained that this title " Mother of God, " Theotokos, should only be used with the greatest care, had better in fact not be used at all. Mary was " Mother of Christ " rather than " Mother of God. " The ambiguity of the new teaching, its implication that somehow Christ was not fully divine, were not lost on the audience. A tumult began, a noisy appeal to the bishop to depose the preacher. Nestorius, however, not only refused to do this but took the opportunity himself to preach against the traditional cult. The monks and many of his clergy objected and he excommunicated them, deposed them, even had some of them scourged and imprisoned. Whereupon they appealed to the emperor (428).
But before the emperor acted another power had intervened. This was the Bishop of Alexandria, St. Cyril. Among the excommunicated at Constantinople were monks. Egypt was still the centre of monasticism and its chief bishop the patron and protector of monks wherever found. The news of the excommunications and of the novel teaching in whose name it had been inflicted was, then, not slow in reaching Alexandria. It roused against the unhappy Nestorius the great man of the day. It was not merely that St. Cyril, like his uncle and predecessor Theophilus, disposed of vast material resources, and a highly organised and well-disciplined following of bishops, nor merely that he was a capable organiser gifted with tremendous energy. He was the most powerful theologian the Greek-speaking Church had yet known, a thinker whose subsequent effect on the definition of doctrine was to be greater than that of any other eastern, except perhaps his predecessor at Alexandria, St. Athanasius.
St. Cyril, informed of the difficulties, studied the whole matter systematically and wrote to Nestorius (February, 430). He wrote also to the emperor and the empress. He wrote, in the third place, to Rome (Easter, 430). To the pope he communicated the whole dossier of the case: the sermons of Nestorius, his own letters to him, a catalogue of the alleged errors, another of extracts from the Fathers that bore on the matter, and a Latin translation of all these. "The ancient custom of the Church" he wrote "admonishes us that matters of this kind should be communicated to Your Holiness. " The matter was too grave for him to act on his own authority. "We do not openly and publicly break off communion with [Nestorius] before bringing these things to the notice of Your Holiness. Deign therefore to prescribe what you feel in the matter, so that it may be clearly known to us whether we must hold communion with him, or whether we should freely declare to him that no one can remain in communion with one who cherishes and preaches suchlike erroneous doctrine. "
Rome's reply was startling, not in its acceptance of the appeal, but in the peremptory arrangements it made for judgment. The pope, St. Celestine I (422-432), already knew something of the controversy. Nestorius himself had sent him some of his sermons; and one of the deacons of the Roman Church, Leo, had had them examined by John Cassian. Only one verdict was possible. The new theories were not in accord with the traditional faith. When the dossier from Alexandria arrived, the pope called a synod and the whole matter was carefully considered: not only St. Cyril’s letters, but also the letters which Nestorius himself had sent to the pope enclosing extracts from his sermons to illustrate his theories. After which the pope wrote to all the parties concerned -- to Nestorius, to St. Cyril, to the other eastern patriarchs and to the church of Constantinople: but to the emperor, from Rome, not a word. Nestorius was told that St. Cyril’s faith was in accord with the tradition, that St. Cyril’s remonstrance should have been a warning to him. This was his last. Should he not, within ten days of being notified by St. Cyril, renounce his impious theories, St. Cyril had it in charge to dethrone him. The Catholics of Constantinople were congratulated on the stand they made against the heresy, consoled for the persecution Nestorius had inflicted on them, and bidden to trust in Rome, always the refuge for persecuted Catholics. All the sentences of Nestorius were annulled, and finally it was announced that since, in so grave a matter, the pope himself must judge, and since the distance forbade his personal presence, " we have delegated our holy brother Cyril in our place. " To St. Cyril himself the pope sent detailed instructions. Acting in the pope's name he was formally to summon Nestorius to recant, and, should he not do so within ten days, to excommunicate and depose him. All these letters were sent through St. Cyril. The emperor the pope had ignored, or overlooked. A decision in a matter of faith, a dispute between bishops was, by all Roman traditions, matter for episcopal action exclusively. But east of the Adriatic another tradition held. Nestorius had appealed to Caesar, and on Caesar's action much would depend. Much also would depend on the manner in which the Roman commission was executed by Rome's Alexandrian commissioner.
The Emperor Theodosius II was still a young man, thirty years of age, cultured, pious, amiable and vacillating, his judgment always very much at the mercy of his last adviser. The monks and clergy excommunicated by Nestorius had appealed to him. St. Cyril had written from Alexandria in the same sense. But in the end it was Nestorius who prevailed; and before St. Cyril’s ultimatum had arrived -- what delayed it all this time, August to November, 430, we shall see presently -- the emperor had decided that the whole affair should remain untouched pending the meeting of a general council which he now [1] convoked to meet at Ephesus on the Whit-Sunday of the following year 431. This council, Nestorius wrote to Pope Celestine, would deal with a number of charges brought against St. Cyril and his administration. Had Nestorius, by now, heard something of the Roman reaction? We may well think it, for in this letter he begins to qualify his objection to the expression Theotokos.
The imperial couriers carrying to Alexandria the announcement of the forthcoming council crossed a deputation coming thence en route for Constantinople, and Nestorius. They were four of St. Cyril’s suffragans, deputed, by the synod he had called, in November 430, to carry to Nestorius the letters of Pope Celestine as from the pope's commissioner. [2] St. Cyril had chosen, before acting, to summon a council of his suffragans and to give the papal decision the setting of their support. Whence, from the bishops of Egypt, a synodal letter admonishing Nestorius, and attached to it twelve propositions for him to sign and accept. Whence a certain delay, and, because of these twelve propositions, a new source of discord. At the outset let us note that for the consequences which followed from the accidental setting in which Rome's ultimatum was presented, none is to be blamed but the author of that setting, not St. Celestine but his commissioner.
The twelve propositions were the work of a skilful theologian drawn up to provide against any chance of equivocation on the part of the man who was to sign them, and whose sincerity was naturally suspect. Whatever hope Nestorius might have had of retaining both his see and his heresy by a simple acceptance of Pope Celestine's demands, would not survive his reading of this formidable requisitory. Unfortunately, with all their wealth of detail and distinctions, and despite their evident usefulness for nailing down a slippery opponent, they were an addition far beyond what the pope himself had demanded. Nestorius might be well within his rights in ignoring them. More seriously still, as compromising the pope's action, they presented the papal decision about the faith in St. Cyril’s own special terminology, a terminology which could be explained in an heretical sense as well as in a Catholic sense, a terminology very like what had been condemned in Apollinaris [3] and what was again to be condemned in Eutyches, a terminology by no means beyond criticism and one to which no Antiochian, Catholic or not, was likely to give assent. That the Roman decision should have been presented in what appeared as the trappings of party theology, at the very moment when party feeling ran so high, was a great misfortune. Rome apparently knew nothing about the twelve propositions. St. Celestine never mentions them. They were designed as a personal test for Nestorius, and for that only. Unfortunately they raised the whole Antiochian school against their author, the Bishop of Antioch leading the denunciation of St. Cyril as himself a heretic -- an Apollinarian who believed that in Our Lord there is but one nature. At the request of John of Antioch another great man took up his pen to criticise the twelve propositions, Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus, a greater scholar than St. Cyril and almost as great a theologian.
So the winter passed and the spring (November, 430-May, 431). The pope agreed to the council (beginning of May, 431) and appointed legates to represent him. They were the bishops Arcadius and Projectus, and the priest Philip; and the pope, in their credentials, wrote to the emperor that the legates would explain his decision, to which he made no doubt the council would adhere. The legates themselves he instructed to co-operate with St. Cyril and to follow his lead throughout. To St. Cyril himself, who had written asking, logically enough, whether Nestorius was to be considered already excommunicated since the ten days of grace had long since run out, the pope wrote a reminder that God wills not the death of the sinner but his repentance. It is the salvation of Nestorius that now concerns the pope. Let not Cyril be numbered with those of whom Sacred Scripture speaks "swift to shed blood. "
The council was summoned for Pentecost, June 8, 431. Nestorius had arrived, with his supporters, by Easter. St. Cyril came just before the feast, accompanied by fifty bishops from Egypt; the shifty Bishop of Jerusalem five days later. They sat down to wait for John of Antioch, whom the emperor had appointed to preside, and the bishops of his " patriarchate. " They waited a full fourteen days -- two weeks for both sides to organise, and for their supporters to battle in the streets of Ephesus -- and then, thanks to St. Cyril’s urgency and despite numerous protests, on June 22 the council opened with something like 159 bishops present. St. Cyril presided, no doubt in virtue of the commission of 430 deputing him to judge Nestorius. After a formal protest, from the Count who represented the emperor, against the council’s meeting before the arrival of the Antiochians, the assembly passed immediately to the business of Nestorius and his theories. The notaries read the charges and Nestorius was formally summoned to appear, summoned three times as custom required, and, of course, he refused. The council proceeded without him. The creed of Nicea was read and hailed as the profession of orthodox faith. St. Cyril’s letter to Nestorius [4] was read too, and approved as conforming to the creed of Nicea. It was then the turn of Nestorius' reply to St. Cyril. This too was read out, and when the question was put "Whether or not it accorded with Nicea?", the bishops, by acclamation, unanimously anathematised the letter and its author. Next, at the demand of the Bishop of Jerusalem, Pope Celestine's letter to Nestorius was read out, the letter of St. Cyril to Nestorius which contained the twelve propositions, and the report of the four bishops sent by him to Nestorius. Extracts from earlier writers to show the orthodoxy of the term Theotokos were presented, and after them the passages from Nestorius to illustrate his theories. Finally the council "urged thereto by the canons and by the letter of our most holy Father and colleague Celestine, Bishop of the Roman Church, " declared Nestorius deposed for his contumacy, and for the errors publicly proclaimed in his sermons, his letters, and his speeches even here at Ephesus. A report was drawn up for the emperor, and the bishops dispersed to their lodgings, escorted by the enthusiastic populace, through a city illuminated in honour of the victory of truth over heresy, of the Theotokos over her would-be traducer.
But the history of the council does not, by any means, end with the story of its first laborious session. Nestorius, for example, appealed from its sentence to the emperor, alleging that the council should not have begun while so many of the bishops had not yet arrived. And the emperor, irritated by the bishops' independence of his lieutenant, the Count Candidian, lectured them for their disregard of his orders and ordered the council to sit once more and not to disperse until it was unanimous in its judgment (June 29). This perhaps was a reference to the hitherto absent Antiochians, who had arrived (June 24) two days only after the great opening session, and before even the report of this had gone in to the emperor. Upon hearing what had already taken place these bishops had straightway formed themselves into a council apart; the Count Candidian, reporting the events of June 22, renewed his protest before them; and the bishops excommunicated the other council and its president: the council for proceeding in their absence, St. Cyril for his twelve " heretical " propositions. So far had events progressed when, finally, there arrived the legates from Rome. They joined themselves to St. Cyril and on July 10, in their presence, the second session of the council opened -- nearly three weeks after the first. There were present the bishops who had assisted at the first session and those only, St. Cyril still president, still "holding the place of the most holy and venerable archbishop of the Roman Church Celestine. "
It was the Roman legates who now took the initiative. They demanded that there be read the letter of Pope Celestine to the council, the letter of May 7 which narrates the pope's decision and invites the council to adhere to it. More, when the bishops broke into acclamation of the agreement the legates were careful to interrupt them and to stress the point that, less important than the fact of the pope's decision being in agreement with that of the council, was the pope's demand that the council should execute his decision. The council having reached that conclusion in its first session, it remained only for the legates to confirm what it had done. First of all they must examine the minutes of its proceedings; and the council adjourned to give them the necessary time. It reassembled for the third session the next day, and one of the legates, the priest Philip, in a striking speech notable for the assumption of the Roman primacy that underlay it, declared the proceedings of the famous first session valid and good in law. The minutes were then formally read, and the sentence decreed against Nestorius.
A report of this new session was sent to the emperor, and, an effect no doubt of the more independent Roman spirit, it contained no reference to his recent edict, no apology for the flagrant contravention. Five days later, after repeated unavailing summonses to John of Antioch and his followers to appear before the council and explain their conduct, the council excommunicated them also; to the number of thirty-four. And once more they sent to the emperor an official report, and to the pope an account of all that had happened since June 22.
The emperor in his reply took a truly unexpected line. He declared his approval of the condemnation of Nestorius, and also of the sentence passed by the Antiochians on St. Cyril. To assist in the restoration of unity he now sent one of his Ministers who could explain to the bishops "the plans our divinity has in mind for the good of the faith. " The day that saw the new functionary arrive with this letter [5] saw also the arrest of the excommunicated leaders -- St. Cyril as well as Nestorius was in prison. John of Antioch had called in Caesar, and Caesar had acted.
The history now becomes a confusion of protestations and counter protestations, of intrigues at the court, of backstairs influence and bribes to officials. St. Cyril knew the court, knew the only means which at times influence those whose influence in such places is paramount. He had the means to influence the influential: he made lavish use of them. The emperor slowly gave way. In a joint conference at Chalcedon (September 11, 431) he received delegates from the two councils, and although he refused St. Cyril a hearing, he refused equally to listen to suggestions that the famous twelve propositions were anti-Nicene. He accepted moreover the deposition of Nestorius and he allowed the return of St. Cyril to Alexandria. The council he declared at an end, the bishops might now return to their churches. Nestorius was to go into exile.
But between the rival deputations the division was as wide as ever. The Antiochians the emperor had been powerless to win over, yet " because before us none has been able to convict them" he would not condemn them. The council ended, then, with Nestorius condemned and isolated, but with a new division between Alexandria and Antioch and the bishops of the two "patriarchates". "For all the tactlessness of Cyril, and the obstructions of John of Antioch, it was with the solution which Rome had from the beginning prescribed that the conflict came to its end. It was the Roman See, and that alone, which came through the violent and confused crisis that we call the Council of Ephesus with its prestige undiminished, nay even greater than before. " [6]
But far more than to the mistakes of St. Cyril and John of Antioch, the responsibility for the confusion is to be laid to the general willingness of the Easterns to make Caesar the arbiter in the things that are properly God's. The monks and clergy persecuted by Nestorius appeal to him, and Nestorius appeals too. The simple ecclesiastical procedure of the Roman See, the traditional procedure for charges against high ecclesiastics, is disregarded again by the emperor, when, to settle between the contending parties, he summons the council. Again he intervenes -- at the demand once more of a bishop, John of Antioch -- to quash the council’s proceedings and to order a re-hearing (June 28, 431) and if, at the end, he accepts the solution first proposed by Rome, his acceptance is no more than an act of grace. The emperor's interference had simply increased the confusion and magnified the bitterness in which the affair was conducted, and his interference had been sought and welcomed by all the ecclesiastics concerned, turn by turn, excepting, only and always, one, the Bishop of the Roman Church.
With the meeting between the emperor and the delegates at Chalcedon, in the September of 431, the history of the council ends. Not so, however, the history of the relations between Alexandria and Antioch, and of the theories associated respectively with each. When Pope Celestine replied to the synodal letter of the council he necessarily made reference to the council’s condemnation of John of Antioch. He is most anxious that John, too, shall subscribe to the council’s decision, although he evidently looks upon him as a Nestorian in his views. He does not, however, endorse the council’s excommunication, that matter being too weighty for any authority less than his own to decide. But before Pope Celestine could proceed further with regard to the Antiochians he died, July 27, 432. His successor, Sixtus III, was however of the same mind and, in a letter to the Orientals, he insisted on their submission, since it was to a decision of the Apostolic See that submission was demanded. John of Antioch was not a Nestorian, but he looked askance at the Cyrillian terminology in which the orthodox faith offered for his acceptance was formulated. Before he could accept St. Cyril as a fellow Catholic, St. Cyril and he must mutually explain themselves. In a happier atmosphere than the antechambers of any council could have provided explanations were made and an accord reached, both parties signing the formulary which expressed in terms acceptable to each the faith they had always held in common. John, the formulary signed, accepted the definition of Ephesus, the orthodoxy of the term Theotokos, and the deposition of Nestorius (433).
The celebrated formulary was the work of Theodoret. It is important because it sets out the points of the faith both parties held in common, and is evidence of the sacrifices of individual preferences in terminology, sacrifices made mutually for the sake of peace. The sacrifices were chiefly on the side of St. Cyril. His favourite phrase, "one incarnate nature of God the Word, " disappears, and in its place he consents to use the Antiochian term, "the union of two natures." Also, by this time, he had explained away the difficulties occasioned by his twelve propositions, especially the phrase " a natural union " used to describe the union of the Divine and Human in Our Lord. Theodoret had criticised this especially, for it seemed to leave loopholes for the theories which considered the union as an absorption of one nature by the other. St. Cyril explained that "natural” was used in the phrase in contradistinction, not with “person,” but with "moral" or “virtual.” Nestorius had taught that the Divine and Human were, practically, distinct existences, only united morally. To make his heresy clear St. Cyril, in the third of the propositions, asked him to say the union was real, not moral merely. The word to which Theodoret objected was simply chosen to express the union's reality. It has to be allowed to Theodoret that St. Cyril did not make very clear the distinction he drew between “ nature”, (physis) and "substance" (hypostasis), and while what St. Cyril called " a natural union " was, in his mind, something very different from an Apollinarian and Monophysite use of the words would have conveyed, there was certainly room for misunderstanding.
For the moment, however, misunderstanding was at an end, although Theodoret seems never to have been convinced in his inner man of the sincerity of the Alexandrian explanation, or, to speak more truly, of the Alexandrian terminology's being patient of such explanation. St. Cyril as long as he lived could explain to objectors, and decide between the rival interpretations of his terminology, and he could keep his own followers loyal to the agreement of 433; as long as he lived there was peace. He died in 444. John of Antioch had predeceased him, as had Pope Sixtus. Of the chief actors in the drama of 431, three alone were left, the emperor at Constantinople, Theodoret in his great diocese of Cyrrhus, and, away in the distant oasis of the Thebaid, almost at the limits of the known world, Nestorius his friend. The peace endured yet three years longer, and then, in a fiercer heat than ever, the old rivalries flamed yet once again.
1 November 11, 430
2 The four bishops arrived at Constantinople on December 7, 430
3 Its crucial phrase, which everyone at the time ascribed to St. Athanasius was in fact of the mint of Apollinaris himself ! It is one of St. Cyril’s favourite formulae to express his teaching, " one incarnate physis of God the Word. "
4 i.e. cf. February, 430, cf. supra p. 241
5 Early in August
6 Batiffol, Mgr. Pierre, Le Siege Apostolique, p. 393.
The crisis of 403-408 had centred around questions of ecclesiastical discipline. All those concerned in it, Theophilus, St. John, Atticus, St. Innocent I, had been united in Faith. There had been no repetition of discussions such as those which the Council of 381 had closed. But within twenty years of the death of St. John, and when all the personalities of that crisis had passed away, the peace of his see was troubled more violently than ever by far-reaching discussions on a fundamental point of faith. In the fourth century Arius had striven against the tradition that the Logos is truly God. Now the discussion shifted to the question of the relations between the Divine and the Human in Jesus Christ. Was there, for instance, a real distinction between the Human and the Divine, or had the Divine absorbed the Human? If the Divine and the Human are really distinct in Him what was the nature of His earthly activities? Was it God acting, or the Man mysteriously and wonderfully united to God? or was the activity sometimes divine and sometimes human?
The practical effect on Christian life of divergent reasoning here cannot, of course, be exaggerated. If the activity is not divine then the gospel loses its chief claim to a hearing, the ecclesia its one claim on the absolute attention and obedience of mankind. It becomes straightway nothing more than the masterpiece of human idealism, in life and in moral teaching. If the Divine and the Human are distinct how can the activity be divine? And if the Divine absorbs the Human how can our vitiated humanity be reintegrated by the mysterious Incarnation of the Logos? Such reintegration demands a full complete humanity in Him Who is thus to restore it. Such a full complete humanity there cannot be in Our Lord if, in Him, the Human is not distinct from the Divine.
One school of theologians, concerned to safeguard the all important truth of the real distinction between the Human and the Divine, pressed the distinction so far that in Our Lord they were inclined -- some of them -- to see two realities, united truly enough, and harmoniously one in action, but united with a union that was no more than a moral union. This was the teaching of the so-called school of Antioch.
The Alexandrians, approaching the problem from its other pole, anxious above all to safeguard along with the Divinity of Christ the unity of His activity, and especially of course the Divine character of His action as Saviour of mankind, stressed the union of Human and Divine in Him, until in some cases, the two seemed for the thinker united in such a fusion that the Human reality ceased to be real. In God the Son incarnate, they urged, there was but one incarnate physis.
This, in words at any rate, was flat contradiction of the thesis of the Antiochians, for the Antiochians used this very term physis to describe each of the realities whose real distinction they were so concerned to defend. In Christ, they taught, there were two physes -- the Human and the Divine. Physis, for this school, meant what the Latin theologians were to call Nature; while the same word, with the Alexandrians, was equivalent to the Latin Person. Both schools thus used the one term physis, and they each used it to express a different reality. The matter of the debate was, then, fundamental. More fundamental matter of debate between members of the Church there could not be. Those who debated it were only too well aware of their subject's vast importance. Each school had worked out its theory as a defence of truth against a particular heresy -- and as the heretics differed, so the viewpoint of the defenders differed too. Hence high feeling and passion in the polemic. Again they were debating the matter for the first time, and without an agreed technical terminology to express even their common ideas, much less their individual differences. Hence, not infrequently, misunderstandings and confusion. A final point to note is that the disputants were, almost all of them, Easterns; Greeks by culture, Egyptian or Syrian by blood, subtle of speech with a subtlety far beyond that of anyone then bred west of Alexandria, and endowed with a tropical luxuriance of rhetoric in the expression of their passionately held ideas, which sometimes did little to help on the work of agreement.
Another factor, too, quite untheological this, played its part in the event, influencing the circumstances of the great decisions if it left the decisions themselves untouched. This was the rivalry now traditional between the three great sees of the East. Alexandria, until the unhappy exaltation of Constantinople in 381, had been unquestioned leader of the East. Her bishop it was who, for nearly half a century, had held fast to Catholicism while Antioch and Constantinople had fallen to the Arians. Then, at the council which organised the restoration of orthodoxy, Alexandria had seen her prestige sacrificed to the profit of Constantinople, parvenu see as parvenu city, creature of the Court, heretic and Catholic by turn as the emperor chose. But the council’s decision was law for the East, and Alexandria had had to bow to the fait accompli. And as the years went by after 381 another interesting development had revealed itself. The predominant influence in the new imperial see was Antiochian. From Antioch, and not from Alexandria, were its bishops taken, and Antiochian theories rather than Alexandrian usually guided its teachers. Alexandria, for the fifty years that followed the restoration council of 381, was, despite its ancient prestige, its services to orthodoxy, and its wealth, decidedly out of the fashion.
In the history of the next two general councils all these elements play their part. The traditional faith is asserted, -- each time by the see which, ever refusing to philosophise, reserves to itself a role of decisive authoritative teaching -- but asserted after a strangely complex exhibition of passionate contending humanity. The story is simple enough, so long as the traditional faith and the traditional procedure for resolving doubts are alone in question. The story only begins to be involved when there enter in these extraneous elements, rival systems of theology, hereditary rivalries of the great sees, the novelty of appealing to Caesar to assist the settlement -- this last above all, for as a result of such appeals, Caesar is fast becoming to the Church in his dominions as omnipresent and paralysing as was ever the old man of the sea.
Atticus, the intruded successor of St. John Chrysostom, died in 425, his peace with Rome made long before. To him succeeded Sisinnius who reigned only for a year and ten months. Whereupon, to cut short the intrigues of interested parties in the capital itself, the emperor, Theodosius II (408-450), decided, like his father Arcadius in 397, that the new bishop should be chosen from outside. And once more, as in 397, it was a priest of Antioch who was elected. His name was Nestorius and already he had made a name for himself as a man, of ascetic life and a notable preacher. He was a pupil of the most celebrated of all the Antiochian theologians, Theodore, now ending his life as Bishop of Mopsuestia.
Theodore, a friend of St. John Chrysostom, had with the saint been the pupil of Diodore of Tarsus (394) whose ideas he had developed, making for himself a name that quite eclipsed his master's. Diodore had been in his time a mighty controversialist. His especial foe was Apollinaris, the Alexandrian Bishop of Laodicea (360-377). Apollinaris, a powerful opponent of Arianism, insisting on the unity of Our Lord's salvific activity, and its divine character, had resolved the main difficulty in the way of his theory by teaching that the humanity which the Divinity associated to itself was incomplete -- a true human body indeed but lacking a human soul. Against these theorisings, condemned often, and condemned most solemnly at Constantinople in 381, Diodore insisted on the truth they denied, namely that in Our Lord there are two natures, really distinct, complete, true natures. Unfortunately he so isolated them that a duality of nature, as he conceived it, was not compatible with any unity of personality. Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia (392-428), developing his master, speaks of the two natures as though they were each complete persons, failing, like Diodore, to understand all that is implied in the notion of "one person, " and that a duality such as he constructs is not compatible with that unity.
Nestorius was not so clear as his master. Like Theodore, while he admits in theory the unity of person, he speaks of the two natures as though these were two independent persons. Again, for Nestorius, the one person is not conceived as the active divine person of the Logos associating with itself the created humanity, but the personality is taken as the result, the effect, of the union of the divinity and the humanity. The Logos and the humanity, anterior to the union, have each their proper person; in the union there is still but one person -- the person of Christ, to which the person of the Logos and the person of the humanity are in a kind of subordination.
Such intricate and involved theorising might have gone the way of much other like speculation had not Nestorius worked it out to the practical conclusions of everyday spirituality, and attempted to impose it as the true tradition of faith upon his clergy and people. What brought the Bishop of Constantinople to this, was the need, now become urgent, to provide in a popular way, some refutation of the many heresies about the divinity of Our Lord that troubled the peace of the capital, and especially a revival among the Arians and Apollinarians. Constantinople was indeed, at the moment, full of militant heretics. Nestorius had had much to say about this in the inaugural address that followed his appointment to the see in 427. One result of his zeal was a new imperial law against heretics (May 30, 428) and a great campaign to convert them or drive them out. In that campaign the truth of the faith was to be set out cleared of the misrepresentations of it circulated by its enemies. And so it came about that one of the bishop's intimates, the monk Anastasius, announced the " new theology " of the Incarnation in a popular sermon on the Mother of God. "Mother of God" she had always been to the ordinary faithful. It was a title consecrated by long usage and it expressed succinctly the traditional belief that He whose mother she was, was not merely man but also truly God. But the monk, Anastasius, explained that this title " Mother of God, " Theotokos, should only be used with the greatest care, had better in fact not be used at all. Mary was " Mother of Christ " rather than " Mother of God. " The ambiguity of the new teaching, its implication that somehow Christ was not fully divine, were not lost on the audience. A tumult began, a noisy appeal to the bishop to depose the preacher. Nestorius, however, not only refused to do this but took the opportunity himself to preach against the traditional cult. The monks and many of his clergy objected and he excommunicated them, deposed them, even had some of them scourged and imprisoned. Whereupon they appealed to the emperor (428).
But before the emperor acted another power had intervened. This was the Bishop of Alexandria, St. Cyril. Among the excommunicated at Constantinople were monks. Egypt was still the centre of monasticism and its chief bishop the patron and protector of monks wherever found. The news of the excommunications and of the novel teaching in whose name it had been inflicted was, then, not slow in reaching Alexandria. It roused against the unhappy Nestorius the great man of the day. It was not merely that St. Cyril, like his uncle and predecessor Theophilus, disposed of vast material resources, and a highly organised and well-disciplined following of bishops, nor merely that he was a capable organiser gifted with tremendous energy. He was the most powerful theologian the Greek-speaking Church had yet known, a thinker whose subsequent effect on the definition of doctrine was to be greater than that of any other eastern, except perhaps his predecessor at Alexandria, St. Athanasius.
St. Cyril, informed of the difficulties, studied the whole matter systematically and wrote to Nestorius (February, 430). He wrote also to the emperor and the empress. He wrote, in the third place, to Rome (Easter, 430). To the pope he communicated the whole dossier of the case: the sermons of Nestorius, his own letters to him, a catalogue of the alleged errors, another of extracts from the Fathers that bore on the matter, and a Latin translation of all these. "The ancient custom of the Church" he wrote "admonishes us that matters of this kind should be communicated to Your Holiness. " The matter was too grave for him to act on his own authority. "We do not openly and publicly break off communion with [Nestorius] before bringing these things to the notice of Your Holiness. Deign therefore to prescribe what you feel in the matter, so that it may be clearly known to us whether we must hold communion with him, or whether we should freely declare to him that no one can remain in communion with one who cherishes and preaches suchlike erroneous doctrine. "
Rome's reply was startling, not in its acceptance of the appeal, but in the peremptory arrangements it made for judgment. The pope, St. Celestine I (422-432), already knew something of the controversy. Nestorius himself had sent him some of his sermons; and one of the deacons of the Roman Church, Leo, had had them examined by John Cassian. Only one verdict was possible. The new theories were not in accord with the traditional faith. When the dossier from Alexandria arrived, the pope called a synod and the whole matter was carefully considered: not only St. Cyril’s letters, but also the letters which Nestorius himself had sent to the pope enclosing extracts from his sermons to illustrate his theories. After which the pope wrote to all the parties concerned -- to Nestorius, to St. Cyril, to the other eastern patriarchs and to the church of Constantinople: but to the emperor, from Rome, not a word. Nestorius was told that St. Cyril’s faith was in accord with the tradition, that St. Cyril’s remonstrance should have been a warning to him. This was his last. Should he not, within ten days of being notified by St. Cyril, renounce his impious theories, St. Cyril had it in charge to dethrone him. The Catholics of Constantinople were congratulated on the stand they made against the heresy, consoled for the persecution Nestorius had inflicted on them, and bidden to trust in Rome, always the refuge for persecuted Catholics. All the sentences of Nestorius were annulled, and finally it was announced that since, in so grave a matter, the pope himself must judge, and since the distance forbade his personal presence, " we have delegated our holy brother Cyril in our place. " To St. Cyril himself the pope sent detailed instructions. Acting in the pope's name he was formally to summon Nestorius to recant, and, should he not do so within ten days, to excommunicate and depose him. All these letters were sent through St. Cyril. The emperor the pope had ignored, or overlooked. A decision in a matter of faith, a dispute between bishops was, by all Roman traditions, matter for episcopal action exclusively. But east of the Adriatic another tradition held. Nestorius had appealed to Caesar, and on Caesar's action much would depend. Much also would depend on the manner in which the Roman commission was executed by Rome's Alexandrian commissioner.
The Emperor Theodosius II was still a young man, thirty years of age, cultured, pious, amiable and vacillating, his judgment always very much at the mercy of his last adviser. The monks and clergy excommunicated by Nestorius had appealed to him. St. Cyril had written from Alexandria in the same sense. But in the end it was Nestorius who prevailed; and before St. Cyril’s ultimatum had arrived -- what delayed it all this time, August to November, 430, we shall see presently -- the emperor had decided that the whole affair should remain untouched pending the meeting of a general council which he now [1] convoked to meet at Ephesus on the Whit-Sunday of the following year 431. This council, Nestorius wrote to Pope Celestine, would deal with a number of charges brought against St. Cyril and his administration. Had Nestorius, by now, heard something of the Roman reaction? We may well think it, for in this letter he begins to qualify his objection to the expression Theotokos.
The imperial couriers carrying to Alexandria the announcement of the forthcoming council crossed a deputation coming thence en route for Constantinople, and Nestorius. They were four of St. Cyril’s suffragans, deputed, by the synod he had called, in November 430, to carry to Nestorius the letters of Pope Celestine as from the pope's commissioner. [2] St. Cyril had chosen, before acting, to summon a council of his suffragans and to give the papal decision the setting of their support. Whence, from the bishops of Egypt, a synodal letter admonishing Nestorius, and attached to it twelve propositions for him to sign and accept. Whence a certain delay, and, because of these twelve propositions, a new source of discord. At the outset let us note that for the consequences which followed from the accidental setting in which Rome's ultimatum was presented, none is to be blamed but the author of that setting, not St. Celestine but his commissioner.
The twelve propositions were the work of a skilful theologian drawn up to provide against any chance of equivocation on the part of the man who was to sign them, and whose sincerity was naturally suspect. Whatever hope Nestorius might have had of retaining both his see and his heresy by a simple acceptance of Pope Celestine's demands, would not survive his reading of this formidable requisitory. Unfortunately, with all their wealth of detail and distinctions, and despite their evident usefulness for nailing down a slippery opponent, they were an addition far beyond what the pope himself had demanded. Nestorius might be well within his rights in ignoring them. More seriously still, as compromising the pope's action, they presented the papal decision about the faith in St. Cyril’s own special terminology, a terminology which could be explained in an heretical sense as well as in a Catholic sense, a terminology very like what had been condemned in Apollinaris [3] and what was again to be condemned in Eutyches, a terminology by no means beyond criticism and one to which no Antiochian, Catholic or not, was likely to give assent. That the Roman decision should have been presented in what appeared as the trappings of party theology, at the very moment when party feeling ran so high, was a great misfortune. Rome apparently knew nothing about the twelve propositions. St. Celestine never mentions them. They were designed as a personal test for Nestorius, and for that only. Unfortunately they raised the whole Antiochian school against their author, the Bishop of Antioch leading the denunciation of St. Cyril as himself a heretic -- an Apollinarian who believed that in Our Lord there is but one nature. At the request of John of Antioch another great man took up his pen to criticise the twelve propositions, Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus, a greater scholar than St. Cyril and almost as great a theologian.
So the winter passed and the spring (November, 430-May, 431). The pope agreed to the council (beginning of May, 431) and appointed legates to represent him. They were the bishops Arcadius and Projectus, and the priest Philip; and the pope, in their credentials, wrote to the emperor that the legates would explain his decision, to which he made no doubt the council would adhere. The legates themselves he instructed to co-operate with St. Cyril and to follow his lead throughout. To St. Cyril himself, who had written asking, logically enough, whether Nestorius was to be considered already excommunicated since the ten days of grace had long since run out, the pope wrote a reminder that God wills not the death of the sinner but his repentance. It is the salvation of Nestorius that now concerns the pope. Let not Cyril be numbered with those of whom Sacred Scripture speaks "swift to shed blood. "
The council was summoned for Pentecost, June 8, 431. Nestorius had arrived, with his supporters, by Easter. St. Cyril came just before the feast, accompanied by fifty bishops from Egypt; the shifty Bishop of Jerusalem five days later. They sat down to wait for John of Antioch, whom the emperor had appointed to preside, and the bishops of his " patriarchate. " They waited a full fourteen days -- two weeks for both sides to organise, and for their supporters to battle in the streets of Ephesus -- and then, thanks to St. Cyril’s urgency and despite numerous protests, on June 22 the council opened with something like 159 bishops present. St. Cyril presided, no doubt in virtue of the commission of 430 deputing him to judge Nestorius. After a formal protest, from the Count who represented the emperor, against the council’s meeting before the arrival of the Antiochians, the assembly passed immediately to the business of Nestorius and his theories. The notaries read the charges and Nestorius was formally summoned to appear, summoned three times as custom required, and, of course, he refused. The council proceeded without him. The creed of Nicea was read and hailed as the profession of orthodox faith. St. Cyril’s letter to Nestorius [4] was read too, and approved as conforming to the creed of Nicea. It was then the turn of Nestorius' reply to St. Cyril. This too was read out, and when the question was put "Whether or not it accorded with Nicea?", the bishops, by acclamation, unanimously anathematised the letter and its author. Next, at the demand of the Bishop of Jerusalem, Pope Celestine's letter to Nestorius was read out, the letter of St. Cyril to Nestorius which contained the twelve propositions, and the report of the four bishops sent by him to Nestorius. Extracts from earlier writers to show the orthodoxy of the term Theotokos were presented, and after them the passages from Nestorius to illustrate his theories. Finally the council "urged thereto by the canons and by the letter of our most holy Father and colleague Celestine, Bishop of the Roman Church, " declared Nestorius deposed for his contumacy, and for the errors publicly proclaimed in his sermons, his letters, and his speeches even here at Ephesus. A report was drawn up for the emperor, and the bishops dispersed to their lodgings, escorted by the enthusiastic populace, through a city illuminated in honour of the victory of truth over heresy, of the Theotokos over her would-be traducer.
But the history of the council does not, by any means, end with the story of its first laborious session. Nestorius, for example, appealed from its sentence to the emperor, alleging that the council should not have begun while so many of the bishops had not yet arrived. And the emperor, irritated by the bishops' independence of his lieutenant, the Count Candidian, lectured them for their disregard of his orders and ordered the council to sit once more and not to disperse until it was unanimous in its judgment (June 29). This perhaps was a reference to the hitherto absent Antiochians, who had arrived (June 24) two days only after the great opening session, and before even the report of this had gone in to the emperor. Upon hearing what had already taken place these bishops had straightway formed themselves into a council apart; the Count Candidian, reporting the events of June 22, renewed his protest before them; and the bishops excommunicated the other council and its president: the council for proceeding in their absence, St. Cyril for his twelve " heretical " propositions. So far had events progressed when, finally, there arrived the legates from Rome. They joined themselves to St. Cyril and on July 10, in their presence, the second session of the council opened -- nearly three weeks after the first. There were present the bishops who had assisted at the first session and those only, St. Cyril still president, still "holding the place of the most holy and venerable archbishop of the Roman Church Celestine. "
It was the Roman legates who now took the initiative. They demanded that there be read the letter of Pope Celestine to the council, the letter of May 7 which narrates the pope's decision and invites the council to adhere to it. More, when the bishops broke into acclamation of the agreement the legates were careful to interrupt them and to stress the point that, less important than the fact of the pope's decision being in agreement with that of the council, was the pope's demand that the council should execute his decision. The council having reached that conclusion in its first session, it remained only for the legates to confirm what it had done. First of all they must examine the minutes of its proceedings; and the council adjourned to give them the necessary time. It reassembled for the third session the next day, and one of the legates, the priest Philip, in a striking speech notable for the assumption of the Roman primacy that underlay it, declared the proceedings of the famous first session valid and good in law. The minutes were then formally read, and the sentence decreed against Nestorius.
A report of this new session was sent to the emperor, and, an effect no doubt of the more independent Roman spirit, it contained no reference to his recent edict, no apology for the flagrant contravention. Five days later, after repeated unavailing summonses to John of Antioch and his followers to appear before the council and explain their conduct, the council excommunicated them also; to the number of thirty-four. And once more they sent to the emperor an official report, and to the pope an account of all that had happened since June 22.
The emperor in his reply took a truly unexpected line. He declared his approval of the condemnation of Nestorius, and also of the sentence passed by the Antiochians on St. Cyril. To assist in the restoration of unity he now sent one of his Ministers who could explain to the bishops "the plans our divinity has in mind for the good of the faith. " The day that saw the new functionary arrive with this letter [5] saw also the arrest of the excommunicated leaders -- St. Cyril as well as Nestorius was in prison. John of Antioch had called in Caesar, and Caesar had acted.
The history now becomes a confusion of protestations and counter protestations, of intrigues at the court, of backstairs influence and bribes to officials. St. Cyril knew the court, knew the only means which at times influence those whose influence in such places is paramount. He had the means to influence the influential: he made lavish use of them. The emperor slowly gave way. In a joint conference at Chalcedon (September 11, 431) he received delegates from the two councils, and although he refused St. Cyril a hearing, he refused equally to listen to suggestions that the famous twelve propositions were anti-Nicene. He accepted moreover the deposition of Nestorius and he allowed the return of St. Cyril to Alexandria. The council he declared at an end, the bishops might now return to their churches. Nestorius was to go into exile.
But between the rival deputations the division was as wide as ever. The Antiochians the emperor had been powerless to win over, yet " because before us none has been able to convict them" he would not condemn them. The council ended, then, with Nestorius condemned and isolated, but with a new division between Alexandria and Antioch and the bishops of the two "patriarchates". "For all the tactlessness of Cyril, and the obstructions of John of Antioch, it was with the solution which Rome had from the beginning prescribed that the conflict came to its end. It was the Roman See, and that alone, which came through the violent and confused crisis that we call the Council of Ephesus with its prestige undiminished, nay even greater than before. " [6]
But far more than to the mistakes of St. Cyril and John of Antioch, the responsibility for the confusion is to be laid to the general willingness of the Easterns to make Caesar the arbiter in the things that are properly God's. The monks and clergy persecuted by Nestorius appeal to him, and Nestorius appeals too. The simple ecclesiastical procedure of the Roman See, the traditional procedure for charges against high ecclesiastics, is disregarded again by the emperor, when, to settle between the contending parties, he summons the council. Again he intervenes -- at the demand once more of a bishop, John of Antioch -- to quash the council’s proceedings and to order a re-hearing (June 28, 431) and if, at the end, he accepts the solution first proposed by Rome, his acceptance is no more than an act of grace. The emperor's interference had simply increased the confusion and magnified the bitterness in which the affair was conducted, and his interference had been sought and welcomed by all the ecclesiastics concerned, turn by turn, excepting, only and always, one, the Bishop of the Roman Church.
With the meeting between the emperor and the delegates at Chalcedon, in the September of 431, the history of the council ends. Not so, however, the history of the relations between Alexandria and Antioch, and of the theories associated respectively with each. When Pope Celestine replied to the synodal letter of the council he necessarily made reference to the council’s condemnation of John of Antioch. He is most anxious that John, too, shall subscribe to the council’s decision, although he evidently looks upon him as a Nestorian in his views. He does not, however, endorse the council’s excommunication, that matter being too weighty for any authority less than his own to decide. But before Pope Celestine could proceed further with regard to the Antiochians he died, July 27, 432. His successor, Sixtus III, was however of the same mind and, in a letter to the Orientals, he insisted on their submission, since it was to a decision of the Apostolic See that submission was demanded. John of Antioch was not a Nestorian, but he looked askance at the Cyrillian terminology in which the orthodox faith offered for his acceptance was formulated. Before he could accept St. Cyril as a fellow Catholic, St. Cyril and he must mutually explain themselves. In a happier atmosphere than the antechambers of any council could have provided explanations were made and an accord reached, both parties signing the formulary which expressed in terms acceptable to each the faith they had always held in common. John, the formulary signed, accepted the definition of Ephesus, the orthodoxy of the term Theotokos, and the deposition of Nestorius (433).
The celebrated formulary was the work of Theodoret. It is important because it sets out the points of the faith both parties held in common, and is evidence of the sacrifices of individual preferences in terminology, sacrifices made mutually for the sake of peace. The sacrifices were chiefly on the side of St. Cyril. His favourite phrase, "one incarnate nature of God the Word, " disappears, and in its place he consents to use the Antiochian term, "the union of two natures." Also, by this time, he had explained away the difficulties occasioned by his twelve propositions, especially the phrase " a natural union " used to describe the union of the Divine and Human in Our Lord. Theodoret had criticised this especially, for it seemed to leave loopholes for the theories which considered the union as an absorption of one nature by the other. St. Cyril explained that "natural” was used in the phrase in contradistinction, not with “person,” but with "moral" or “virtual.” Nestorius had taught that the Divine and Human were, practically, distinct existences, only united morally. To make his heresy clear St. Cyril, in the third of the propositions, asked him to say the union was real, not moral merely. The word to which Theodoret objected was simply chosen to express the union's reality. It has to be allowed to Theodoret that St. Cyril did not make very clear the distinction he drew between “ nature”, (physis) and "substance" (hypostasis), and while what St. Cyril called " a natural union " was, in his mind, something very different from an Apollinarian and Monophysite use of the words would have conveyed, there was certainly room for misunderstanding.
For the moment, however, misunderstanding was at an end, although Theodoret seems never to have been convinced in his inner man of the sincerity of the Alexandrian explanation, or, to speak more truly, of the Alexandrian terminology's being patient of such explanation. St. Cyril as long as he lived could explain to objectors, and decide between the rival interpretations of his terminology, and he could keep his own followers loyal to the agreement of 433; as long as he lived there was peace. He died in 444. John of Antioch had predeceased him, as had Pope Sixtus. Of the chief actors in the drama of 431, three alone were left, the emperor at Constantinople, Theodoret in his great diocese of Cyrrhus, and, away in the distant oasis of the Thebaid, almost at the limits of the known world, Nestorius his friend. The peace endured yet three years longer, and then, in a fiercer heat than ever, the old rivalries flamed yet once again.
1 November 11, 430
2 The four bishops arrived at Constantinople on December 7, 430
3 Its crucial phrase, which everyone at the time ascribed to St. Athanasius was in fact of the mint of Apollinaris himself ! It is one of St. Cyril’s favourite formulae to express his teaching, " one incarnate physis of God the Word. "
4 i.e. cf. February, 430, cf. supra p. 241
5 Early in August
6 Batiffol, Mgr. Pierre, Le Siege Apostolique, p. 393.
