Nestorian Christianity, shut off from its mother land by the rise of the Mohammedan powers in between, proved unable to resist the inroads of ignorance and superstition and changing political affairs. It degenerated and disappeared
Even then, Islam was wielding power.
3) Nestorius and His Theological Influences
- Nestorius, a Syrian monk from Antioch, was elected Patriarch of Constantinople in 428, possibly because he was a popular preacher.
- Prior to his election, he had been a relatively obscure priest.
- Upon election to his new position, he embarked on a campaign of persecution against Arians and other heretics.
- He had been influenced by the Christology of Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, under whom he probably studied.
- Diodore presented Christ as having two natures, human and divine; the divine Logos indwelt the human body of Jesus in the womb of Mary, so that the human Jesus was the subject of Christ's suffering, thus protecting the full divinity of the Logos from any hint of diminishment.
- Theodore, the father of Antiochene theology, taught two clearly defined natures of Christ: the assumed Man, perfect and complete in his humanity, and the Logos, consubstantial with the Father, perfect and complete in his divinity, the two natures (physis) being united by God in one person (prosopon).
- Theodore maintained that the unity of human and divine in Jesus did not produce a "mixture" of two persons, but an equality in which each was left whole and intact.
- Diodore and Theodore were considered orthodox during their lifetime, but came under suspicion during the Christological controversies of the fifth century.
- The Syriac Fathers (including Diodore, Theodore, and Nestorius) used the Syriac word kyana to describe the human and divine natures of Christ; in an abstract, universal sense, this term embraces all the elements of the members of a certain species, but it can also have a real, concrete and individual sense, called qnoma, which is not the person, but the concretized kyana, the real, existing nature.
- The Greek word prosopon (person) occurs as a loan word parsopa in Syriac; thus, the Syriac Christological formula was "Two real kyana united in a single parsopa, in sublime and indefectable union without confusion or change."
- Whereas Antioch taught that Christ had two natures (dyophysitism), Alexandria interpreted their position as teaching that he had two persons (dyhypostatism).
- Whereas the Syriac Fathers were willing to leave the union of Christ's humanity and divinity in the realm of mystery, the Alexandrians sought a clear-cut doctrine that would guard the church against heresy.
The contemporary nestorians are found in the Chaldean Catholic Church.
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