Page 36 - History of Christianity I - Student Textbook

reconciliation. Emperor Theodosius II called a council at Ephesus to settle the question. Working quickly, Cyril
and his allies deposed Nestorius before his Syrian supporters could reach the council site. Rome backed Cyril's
move and Nestorius was stripped of his position and exiled. Theologians who study Nestorius' writings today say
that his opinions were misrepresented and probably were not heretical.

Nestorius' followers did not go down without a fight. In regions controlled by Persia they formed their own
church. At the beginning, it was a strong body which evangelized as far East as China. Nestorian churches
appeared in Arabia, India, Tibet, Malabar, Turkostan and Cyprus. Many exist to this day, especially in Iraq,
although the level of spirituality is often low. Some units reunited with the Roman Catholic Church around the
sixteenth century.

In part because of the Nestorian controversy, the church created a formula to describe Christ's person at the
Council of Chalcedon in 433.

Council at Ephesus 431 - In 190 Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, convened a synod to establish the 14th of Nisan
(the date of the Jewish Passover) as the official date of Easter. Pope Victor I, preferring a Sunday as more
convenient and desiring uniformity, repudiated the decision and separated the rebels from Rome.

In 431 Pope Celestine I commissioned Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, to conduct proceedings against Nestorius,
his longtime adversary, whose doctrine of two Persons in Christ the Pope had previously condemned. When the
Eastern bishops (more sympathetic to Nestorius) arrived and learned that the council summoned by
Emperor Theodosius II had been started without them, they set up a rival synod under John of Antioch and
excommunicated Memnon, bishop of Ephesus, along with Cyril. When Pope Celestine pronounced his
excommunication of Nestorius and ratified his deposition as bishop of Constantinople, the Emperor abandoned
his neutral position and sided with Cyril. Perhaps as a rebuke to the rebels, the council also made the Church of
Cyprus independent of the see of Antioch. This council is known as the third ecumenical council of the church.

In 449 Emperor Theodosius II convened another council in Ephesus to uphold view that Christ’s nature remained
altogether divine and not human (called Momophsite). Flavian, who, as patriarch of Constantinople,
championed the doctrine of two natures in Christ. The Monophysite doctrine of the one nature of Christ was
condemned in 451 during the Council of Chalcedon. (https://www.britannica.com/event/councils-of-Ephesus)

Council of Chalcedon (451) was the fourth ecumenical council of the Christian Church, held in Chalcedon
(modern Kadiköy, Turkey). Convoked by the emperor Marcian, it was attended by about 520 bishops or their
representatives and was the largest and best-documented of the early councils. It approved the creed of Nicaea
(325), the creed of Constantinople (381; subsequently known as the Nicene Creed), two letters of Cyril against
Nestorius, which insisted on the unity of divine and human persons in Christ, and the Tome of Pope Leo I
confirming two distinct natures in Christ; that He was fully human and was also fully God.

The Confession of Chalcedon provides a clear statement on the human and divine nature of Christ:
We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach people to confess one and the same Son,
our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of
a reasonable [rational] soul and body; consubstantial [co-essential] with the Father according to the
Godhead, and consubstantial with us according to the Manhood… the distinction of natures being by no
means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in
one Person (prosopon) and one Subsistence (hypostasis), not parted or divided into two persons, but one
and the same Son, and only begotten God (μονογενῆ Θεὸν), the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ; as the prophets
from the beginning [have declared] concerning Him, and the Lord Jesus Christ Himself has taught us, and the
Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us. (https://carm.org/christianity/creeds-and-
confessions/chalcedonian-creed-451-ad)

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