Mary is too plainly taught in the above extracts to need any comment. The author of the Khâmees, as quoted in § 6. b. goes so far as to say that "He was borne in the womb according to the laws and peculiarities of nature, and was brought forth by His mother through the … pangs of labour;"[1] and the condemnation contained in § 5. is directed against the different heresies which, in their estimation, go to destroy the perfect humanity of the Saviour. He was everything, say they, that man is,[2] sin only excepted, and therefore, they add, He must have a Person as man has, otherwise He would be man imperfectly. Every nature must have a person in order to subsist, and without which it cannot subsist; so argues Mar Abd Yeshua after Aristotle, "since the Person is the first essence or principle which betokens the reality of the existence of the general essence." And the same author in Appendix B. part iii. c. 5, reasons thus: "The Divine Nature and Person,21 before and after the union, is an eternal, uncompounded Spirit. But the human nature and person is a temporal and compound body. Now, if the union destroys the attributes which distinguish the Natures and Persons in Christ, either the one or the other of these becomes a nonentity, or they become a thing which is neither God nor man. But if the union does not destroy the attributes which distinguish the Natures and Persons in Christ, then Christ must exist in two Natures, and two Persons, which are united in the Parsopa[3] of Filiation." This human Person, however, was so intimately, and after a manner so incomprehen-
- ↑ The idea conveyed in the latter part of this quotation is contradicted by many eminent Nestorian writers, and especially by Yohanan bar Zöobi.
- ↑ They support this by Heb. ii. 24: "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself took part of the same;" and verse 17: "Wherefore in all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren."
- ↑ This term,22 peculiar to Nestorian theology, and the derivation of which is doubtful, though usually derived from πρόσωπον, is often understood to signify "aspect," or "appearance;" but such a rendering is far from expressing the idea which their writers thereby design to convey. The unutterable manner in which the Son is of the Father, and therefore in a certain sense, distinct from the First Person of the Trinity, though ever One with Him, and which manner of being of they express, as we have already shown, by the word deeleita, appears to supply a clue to the idea which they intend by the term Parsopa. They wanted a word to express distinctly that Person of the Trinity,
