hypostasis. Our Lord's human nature is the garment, temple of the Logos. He will not admit the term θεοτόκος, nor the Council of Chalcedon.[1]
That is still the position of the Nestorian Church. They never allow the word θεοτόκος; it has no place in their liturgy. It is not easy to say when they rejected the Council of Chalcedon. Perhaps it is more true to say that they never accepted it.[2] The present Nestorians reject Ephesus and Chalcedon. This, then, is enough to show that they deserve their name. Further, they honour Nestorius as a saint in their liturgy, together with Diodore and Theodore.[3] So it is clear that if they are to become Catholics they must not only give up their schismatical claim of independence from any earthly authority over their self-styled Patriarch; they must also be converted to the faith of Ephesus and Chalcedon, they must accept the term θεοτόκος, and renounce Nestorius at least, if not Diodore and Theodore. In a word, this unhappy little sect is not only schismatical but heretical too.[4]
We saw that the Greek words used in the Nestorian controversy are sometimes ambiguous and add to the confusion by the fact that we are not always sure what the people who use them mean (p. 68). Much more is this the case when these already ambiguous terms are translated into what are supposed to be, more or less, their Syriac equivalents. There is so much discussion as
- ↑ See the texts quoted by Labourt, loc. cit.
- ↑ Yeshū‘yab II (628–643) declared Chalcedonians to be heretics; see p. 90.
- ↑ See, e.g., Brightman: Eastern Liturgies, p. 279.
- ↑ Let us note at once that in the case of all these Eastern Churches, indeed as a general rule, it is the schism that matters really more than the heresy. It is schism that makes heresy so great an evil. For you may think what you like about theological questions, as long as you do not deny what is a condition of communion with the Catholic Church. It is preferring your own opinion to communion with the Church of Christ which forms the essential guilt of heresy. Heresy is wrong because it causes schism. The schism which results is the root evil of heresy. If there were no schism it would be not heresy but a harmless theological mistake. And the schism is what lasts and is deplorable for centuries. No one now gets hot over prosopon and hypostasis; but the Nestorians suffer still from their tragic isolation, their schism from the rest of Christendom. A convert gives up his heresy because it involves schism: he wants not to be in schism, and for that reason he accepts all that is a condition of communion with the Catholic Church.
