NESTORIUS: J. F. Bethune-Baker's Nestoraus and his Teaching: a Fresh Examination of the Evidence, with Special Reference to the Newly Discovered Apology of Nestorius (The Bazaar of Heraclides; Cambridge, 1908), referred to in the article NESMORlus, was not much utilized in the preparation of the article. The importance of the newly discovered Syriac work, translations of the more important parts of which Bethune-Baker has incorporated in his book, seems to the editors to justify a supplementary article. It may be remarked that Bethune-Baker, an English Churchman, is deeply interested in the Neatorians of Persia, and is anxious to see every obstacle to the union of the Nestorians with the Anglican church removed. He rejoices in the discovery of Nestorius's account of his own part in the great controversy, written in his Egyptian exile near the close of his life when all hope of personal advantage had vanished, and evidently expressing his inmost convictions respecting the relation of the divine and the human in the person of Christ.

The conclusion has long seemed warranted that Neatorius was a victim of malicious partizanship in which Cyril of Alexandria was the chief actor, and the hatred of the monks aroused by Neatorius's objection to the expression "Mother of God" applied to Mary. The Bazaar of Heraclides makes this conclusion certain. His description of the proceedings of the Council of Ephesus (43i), while it manifests a bitter feeling against Cyril, must be regarded as essentially correct. " Was it the synod and the emperor who summoned it that heard my cause, if he (Cyril) was ranked among the judges? But why should I say `ranked among the judges'? He was the whole tribunal; for everything that he said was at once said by all of them as well, and they unhesitatingly agreed with him as the personification of the court. Now if all the judges were assembled, and the accusers were set in their ranks, and the accused also in like manner, all should have had equal liberty of speech. But if he (Cyril) was everything-accuser and emperor and judge-then he did everything, ousting from this authority him who was appointed by the emperor and setting himself in his place, and assembling to himself those whom he wanted, both far and near, and making himself the court. And so I was summoned by Cyril, who assembled the synod, and by Cyril who was its head. Who is judge? Cyril. And who the accuser? Cyril. Who the bishop of Rome? Cyril. Cyril was everything." After giving still further emphasis to the statement that Cyril had managed to equip himself with imperial and papal authority, and had packed the synod to suit himself, he describes the " rabble of idlers and country-folk " assembled by Memnon, bishop of Ephesus, and Cyril, who armed with clubs paraded

570

the streets shouting and yelling against Nestorius and his friends, building fires and burning their writings, and threatening their lives. "Who could refrain from weeping when he remembers the wrongs done at Ephesus! And would God it were against me and against my life they were done, and not in a wrong cauael For then I should have no need of these words on behalf of one who was meet to be punished; but on behalf of our Savior Jesus Christ, the just Judge, for whose sake I have undertaken to endure patiently, that the whole body of Christ may not be accused." Nestorius was deeply concerned to maintain the true and complete humanity of Christ over against Arian curtailment to mere body and Appollinariau curtailment to body and soul, as well as against monophysite absorption of the humanity by the infinite deity. The following clear statement from the Bazaar of Heraclides is significant: " We were discussing whether it was right to understand and to say that the proper things of the flesh and of the reasonable (rational) soul, and the proper things of God the Word, both belong to God the Word by nature; or whether we should say of Christ that the two natures were united in him in a union of one person. And I was saying and maintaining that the union was of the one person of Christ. And I was showing that God the Word certainly became man, and that Christ is God the Word and at the same time man, inasmuch as he became man. And for this reason it was that the Fathers (Nicene), when teaching us who Christ is, about whom there was a dissension, first laid down those things of which Christ consists. But thou (Cyril) because thou wishest that the person of the union should be God the Word in both natures, doat neglect these things as superfluous, and dust neglect to make a beginning from them." He thus charges Cyril with contradicting the Nicene teaching in main taining that after the union the humanity is no longer distinguishable, but that Christ is God the Word in whom there is no distinction between humanity and deity. In his private discussions at Ephesus with Theo dotus and Acacias, Nestorius was reported to have said that he " would not call a two- or three-months old babe God," and much was made of the seeming irreverence of the statement. According to his own account of the matter in the Syriac version, he did not mean to say that he could not bring himself to call a babe God, but that he objected to calling God a babe (see Bethune-Baker, ut sup., pp. 75-77). In his discussion at Ephesus with Acacias of Melitene Nestorius found that the latter " had fallen into two errors. For first he perversely asked a question which laid upon those who were to answer it the necessity of either denying altogether that the God head of the Only-begotten became man, or con fessing-what is impious-that the Godhead of the Father and the Holy Spirit also became incarnate with the Word." When we consider how completely accordant Nestorius's teaching respecting the person of Christ was with that of his predecessors of the Antiochian school and with the Nicene Christology, it seems strange that John of Antioch should have consented

to his anathematization and his banishment. Either John misunderstood Nestorius's teaching, or he was weak enough to sacrifice a great and good man with whom he was in substantial agreement for the sake of peace. The latter alternative seems the more probable.

When Nestorius learned of the proceedings of the "Robber Synod" of Ephesus in 449, at which Flavian, patriarch of Constantinople, was almost beaten to death by a howling mob instigated by Dioacurus, patriarch of Alexandria, he felt that history had repeated itself, Dioscurus having gone beyond Cyril not in principle, but only in the degree of the violence for which he was responsible. He rejoiced exceedingly when Leo of Rome, in his letter to Flavian, adopted almost in toto the statement of the doctrine of the person of Christ for which he had been anathematized, and for which he was dying in exile. Ile considered the symbol of Chalcedon and the endorsement by the synod of Leo's letter, the writings of Theodoret, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Ibas, all of which were in full agreement with his own teaching, as a complete vindication of his orthodoxy, and he was content to die an excom municated heretic now that the truth had prevailed. He naturally viewed with satisfaction the utter dis comfiture of Dioscurus. Nothing was done at Chalcedon or in Rome to relieve the aged theologian of the obloquy that had cost him so much suffering. "° The goal of my earnest wish, then, is that God may be blessed on earth as in heaven. But as for Nestorius let him be anathema . . . . And would to God that all men by anathematizing me might attain to a reconciliation with God; for to me there is nothing greater or more precious than this" (Bethune-Baker, ut sup., p. 190). The concluding sentences of the Bazaar of Heraslides are full of pathos: "As for me, I have borne the sufferings of my life and all that has befallen me in this world as the suffering of a single day; and I have not changed, lo, all these years. And now, lo, I am already on the point to depart, and daily i pray to God to dismiss me-me, whose eyes have seen his salvation. Rejoice with me, O Desert, thou my friend and mine upbririger and my place of sojourn ing; and thou, Exile, my mother, who after my death shaft keep my body until the resurrection cometh in the time of God's good pleasure" (Beth une-Baker, ut sup., p. 36). A. H. NEWMAN.