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What kind of Philosophy does Nestorius have?
Nestorius (born about 386 – died about 451), a Syrian, once entered the Antioch monastery as a monk. Also known as Nestorius, Nestorius or Nestorius in Chinese, he was Patriarch of Constantinople from April 10, 428 to June 22, 431. He is considered the founder of Nestorianism.
One said that he was born in Syria. He proposed the “two natures and two persons of Christ theory”, believing that the Virgin Mary only gave birth to the flesh of Jesus, rather than receiving the divinity of Jesus, so he opposed worshiping her as a god.
He is considered to be the figure who started Nestorianism. In 428, Neritri became the Patriarch of Constantinople, causing a fierce attack by the Patriarch of Alexandria, Cyrillus of Alexandria. During his tenure as Patriarch of Constantinople, he opposed the Arian view of Christology, but he himself put forward another view, that the divinity of Jesus was separated from human nature.
In 431 AD, after the Ecumenical Council of Ephesus was convened, although the conflicts of several sects were mediated, at the meeting, his views were identified as heresies, and his sect was also designated as a heresy, Nestorius. He was dismissed from the bishopric and eventually died in Egypt.
Philosophical Claims
Eutycus (378-454 AD) emphasized the oneness of Christ: the mixing of two elements to produce a new thing or attribute. His identity can be likened to a mixture of hot and cold water; the result is neither cold nor hot, but an intermediate product. For Jesus, he said, the divinity and humanity were somehow combined so that there was a humanity in his divinity and a divinity in his humanity. Therefore, Jesus is neither truly God like God nor real like man. It is a kind of ‘mixture’ of God + Man = ‘God and Man’.
Unlike Eutycus, Nestorius (who became bishop of Constantinople in 428) taught that the two natures of Christ were completely separate. According to him, the person of Jesus is (and always will be) composed of two completely different persons, one human and the other divine. His person is like oil and water in a container. Just as oil and water do not mix, oil floats on the water and remains oil, and the water below the oil is always water. So he said, God and man do not mix. Nestorius said that the Son of God dwells in the body of Jesus, as in the temple. So, Jesus is made up of two separate persons: one is God and the other is man.
After a period of struggle and confusion, the Church refuted both of these views at the Council of Chalcedon (451). The congress developed a new creed, which reinforces the content of the Nicene Creed, emphasizing the one person of Jesus Christ, who is true God and true man: not mixed, but unchanging, indistinguishable, non-splittable. The Athanasian Creed further reflects this idea.
Chinese Influence
As early as the 7th century AD (Tang Dynasty), a type of Christianity that was introduced to China was “Nestorianism”. Nestorianism was the Chinese translation of the Nestorian sect, a sect of early Christianity. The integrity of both sexual and human nature was designated as a heretic in AD 431. But the sect was extremely popular in Persia and spread to many parts of central Asia.
In 635 AD, the Syrian bishop of the sect, Aroben, went to Chang’an, the capital of China at that time, and was warmly received by the Chinese emperor. The emperor also let him stay in Chang’an to translate the Bible. Three years later, the emperor allowed him to preach again, provided financial support, and built a church for him, which was called the “Persian Temple” at that time, thus starting the first 200-year period of Christianity in China.
