III.
If
anyone shall after the
[hypostatic] union divide the hypostases in the one Christ, joining
them by that connexion alone, which happens according to worthiness, or
even authority and power, and not rather by a coming together
(
συνόδῳ
), which is made
by natural union (
ἕνωσιν
φυσικὴν
): let him be
anathema.
Notes.
Nestorius.
III.
If any one says that Christ, who is also Emmanuel, is
One, not [merely] in consequence of
connection
, but [also] in
nature
, and does not acknowledge the
connection
(
συνάφεια
) of
the two natures, that of the Logos and of the assumed manhood, in one
Son, as still continuing without mingling; let him be anathema.
Hefele.
(
Hist. of the Counc
., Vol. III., p. 7.)
Theodore [of Mopsuestia, and in this he was followed by
Nestorius,] (and here is his fundamental error,) not merely maintained
the existence of two
natures
in Christ, but of two
persons
, as, he says himself, no subsistence can be thought of
as perfect without personality. As however, he did not ignore the
fact that the consciousness of the Church rejected such a double
personality in Christ, he endeavoured to get rid of the difficulty, and
he repeatedly says expressly: “The two natures united
together make only one Person, as man and wife are only one
flesh.…If we consider the natures in their distinction, we should
define the nature of the Logos as perfect and complete, and so also his
Person, and again the nature and the person of the man as perfect and
complete. If, on the other hand, we have regard to the union
(
συνάφεια
), we
say it is one Person.” The very illustration of the union
of man and wife shows that Theodore did not suppose a true union of the
two natures in Christ, but that his notion was rather that of an
external connection of the two. The expression
συνάφεια
,
moreover, which he selected here instead of the term
ἕνωσιν
, which he
elsewhere employs, being derived from
συνάπτω
[to join
together], expresses only an external connection, a fixing together,
and is therefore expressly rejected in later times by the doctors of
the Church. And again, Theodore designates a merely external
connection also in the phrase already quoted, to the effect that
“the Logos dwells in the man assumed as in a temple.”
As a temple and the statue set up within it are one whole merely in
outward appearance, so the Godhead and manhood in Christ appear only
from without in their actuality as one Person, while they remain
essentially two Persons.