Serious rivalries developed during the nineteenth century between the Nestorians and the Kurds, exacerbated by the British and American missionaries who were proselytizing in the region. In 1915 the Nestorian patriarch sided with the World War I Allies. After the war the Nestorians, fled to Iran and then Iraq. A short-lived attempt to resettle their mountain fastnesses was crushed during the early years of the Turkish Republic. Today just a few tens of thousands survive in Iraq, Iran and Syria, with the patriarchate now in Chicago.
Mavi Boncuk |
In 428 Nestorius[1], a monk of Antioch, was made Patriarch of Constantinople, an outsider chosen to avoid inflaming the strong faction spirit prevailing in the capital, which would have been the inevitable result of appointing a local candidate. Nestorius brought with him a brother monk of Antioch Anastasius. Both of these were products of the school of Antioch, trained in the theology of Theodore and Diodorus. Before long a sermon preached by Anastasius was made the subject of a complaint to the Patriarch. The objection laid was that Anastasius denied the applicability of the term Theotokos to the Blessed Virgin Mary, asserting that she was the mother only of the human body of Christ. To some extent the question was one of psychology: Does the soul enter into man at birth, or is it. present before birth? Orthodox fathers have differed in their inswer. If the reasonable soul does not enter into the body until birth, it might be assumed that the Logos, the Divine Person of Christ, would not have entered his body whilst it was as yet only an animal body, not human until the reasonable soul was added. Anastasius teaching was not that of Diodorus and Theodore, for they do not seem to have dwelt upon this point. To the populace the refusal of the title Theotokos to the Blessed Virgin seemed blasphemous and passion was inflamed. Beneath this were the rival tendencies to Antioch and Alexandria. Antioch inclined towards what we may call a semi-rationalist treatment of theology, Alexandria towards an allegorical and mystical treatment, and the Alexandrian school had a strong outpost in Constantinople.
When complaint was made to Nestorius he defended Anastasius and the controversy became embittered. As it raged in the capital city, other churches intervened, opposition to Nestorius being stirred up by Cyril the Patriarch of Alexandria. At length the Emperor intervened and a general council was held at Ephesus in 431 at which Nestorius was deprived and excommunicated. But many Syrians disapproved of this decision, repudiated the council, and separated from the orthodox Church. These separatists were known as Nestorians.
SOURCE
See also: NESTORIAN CHRISTIANITY IN CENTRAL ASIA
by Mark Dickens,
Independent Scholar; Educational Consultant, Canada & Uzbekistan
[1]Nestorius.
According to Socrates (Eccles. Hist., vii, 29) there were two candidates for the see of Constantinople at t. he death of Sisinnius. One of these was Philip of Side who is described as an ambitious writer, the author of a work which he called not an Ecclesiastical History but a "Christian History" (Socrates, Eccles. Hist., vii, 23), and the other was Proclus whom Sisennius had ordained Bishop of Cyzicum, but the people of that city refused to accept him as their bishop (ibid., 28). "At the death of Sisennius, on account of the factions and rivalries of the church as to the episcopate, it seemed good to the emperors to appoint neither, for many strove for Philip, many for Prc>clus, to be ordained. Therefore they decided to invite one from Antioch, for there was, there a certain man, Nestorius by name, called the Germanican, a good speaker and eloquent" (ibid., 29, 1-3). This makes it clear that from the beginning of his episcopate Nestorius had two sets of opponents to face.
"Nestorius brought with him from Antioch a presbyter named Anastasius," and he "preaching one day in the church said, 'Let no one call Mary the Mother of God (theotokos), for Mary was but a woman, and it is impossible that God should be bom of a woman'" (ibid., 32, 2-3). At that time, following the Nicene Council, the accepted doctrine was that Christ had two natures, the human and the divine, both united in one person, and Anastasius apparently intended to say that the Blessed Virgin Mary was the mother of the human nature only. But popular opinion at Constantinople at once represented Anastasius as reviving the reaching of Paul of Samosata and Photinus that Christ was merely a man. Socrates, who treats Nestorius with respect and some degree of sympathy, says that he did not hold that view nor did he deny the deity of Christ, "but he feared the term alone as though (it were) a ghost and he was alarmed at this because of great ignornace" (ibid., 32, 12). "The term" of course means "Mother of God". It seems a logical deduction from the doctrine that Christ was God and man at his birth to give the name of Theotokos to the Virgin Mother, and the term is used by Eusebious (De Vita Constant., iii, 43), by Cyril of Jerusalem (Catech., x, 146), and St. Athanasius (Orat. III c. Arianos, xv, 33), and so must have been regarded as consistent with Nicene doctrine. Hesychius, a presbyter of Jerusalem who died in 343, goes further and calls David the ancestor of Christ "father of God" (Theopator, Photius, Cod. 275). Nestorius' own explanation of his objection to the term is given by Evagrius (Eccles. Hist. i, 7): "he asserts that he was driven to assume this position by absolute necessity because of the division of the Church into two parties, one holding that Mary ought to be called Mother of Man, the other Mother of God, and he introduced the term Mother of Christ in order, as he says, that either might not be incurred by adopting either extreme, either a term which too closely united immortal essence with humanity or one whilst admitting one of the two natures made no reference to the other."
At the Council of Ephesus the charge was brought against Nestorius that he had stated in a discourse that "the creature did not give birth to the uncreated but bore a man, the instrument of the Deity. The Holy Spirit did not create God the Word, but made for God the Word a temp night occupy, from the Virgin...He who was born and needed time to be formed and was carried the necessary months in the womb, had a human nature, but a nature joined with God" (Mansi Concilia. iv, 1197).
The usual view of Nestorius' teaching was that Christ's body was conceived miraculously by the Holy Spirit in the Blessed Virgin Mary, but that he was born a man: the Holy Spirit afterwards descended on Him and then the "Godhead entered into Him. Such is the account given by St. Augustine (Di Haeresibus, Appendix, ch. 91). In favour of this must be cited Nestorius' words as reported by Socrates (Eccles. Hist. vii, 34, 4): "I, said Nestorius, will not call him God when he was two or three months old."
According to the teaching of Muhammad, a Spirit came from God to tell Mary that she should bear a son (Qur. 19, 19), she being then a virgin (ibid., 20), but she conceived without detriment to her virginity (ibid., 28-9). The miraculous virgin birth is asserted, but it is denied that He who was born of her was the Son of God (ibid., 36, 4, 169). The Holy Spirit was given to Him (Qur. 5, 109). His birth is treated as an act of creation: the Virgin Mother said, "How, O my Lord, shall I have a son when no man has touched me? He said: Thus, God will create what He will: when he decrceth a thing He only saith, Be, and it is" (Qur., 8, 42): He is as Adam, created from the dust (Qur., 19, 17-22; 5, 110).