Monophysism; he was completely in accord with the faith of Chalcedon. And the technical terms used were ambiguous, understood differently on either side. This theory made some commotion. At first there were only Mr. Baker's deductions from the book as matter of discussion. Now the whole original text is published in Syriac by Fr. Bejān, a Lazarist missionary and recognized authority on Syriac literature,[1] and in a French translation by M. F. Nau, with introduction and notes,[2] so that anyone can test Mr. Baker's conclusions for himself. The conclusion will be, as both Nau and Bejān say, that this new defence of Nestorius is a failure as much as the older ones. The Book of Heraklides shows its author to hold just what his enemies said he held; whatever may be said about the personal treatment of Nestorius by the Fathers of Ephesus, they did not misrepresent his doctrine; if we accept the faith of Ephesus and Chalcedon, then Nestorius was a heretic.
In the first place, it is a mistake to suppose that the whole question depends on what he says in the Heraklides book. That was written at the end of his life, long after Ephesus. We have plenty of authentic earlier works by Nestorius[3] in which his heresy is abundantly evident. The Council judged and condemned him on these; it could not foresee what he would write years later. So, even if his Book of Heraklides were unimpeachable, we should only conclude that he had modified his doctrine at the end of his life. As a matter of fact, it confirms what he had said earlier. Nor is the whole dispute merely a quarrel about words. It is perfectly true that technical words, especially philosophical terms, may change their meaning or be understood by different people in different senses. It is always a mistake to judge a man's theory merely by the technical words he uses. We must study his context, the deductions he draws from them, his own explanations, to be sure of what he means. Nestorius is a heretic, not because he speaks of two hypostases, or even of two prosopa, in Christ, but because he explains this language in such a way as
