Apollinaristic teaching. The chief cause of offence for him is, that the Logos appeared here as capable of suffering and dying and, therefore, his divine nature as altered in itself. In opposition to these thoughts Nestorius held by the Antiochian doctrine, afterwards also acknowledged by the council of Chalcedon, that the two natures in Christ were each perfect in itself and unaltered.
This was also conceded by Cyril. In his epistola dogmatica to Nestorius he had written: The natures which are brought together into a true union are different, but of the two there is one Christ and one son, the difference of the natures not being destroyed by the union[1], and in contradiction to Apollinaris he, too, contended that the Logos took on a perfect human nature, not only body and animal soul, but also an intellectual soul or a human intellect[2]. Where then was the difference between this Alexandrian exponent of the two natures and Nestorius? Cyril's formula, also in the quotation which I have given, was: one Christ out of both, out of two natures. This formula is at the first glance unintelligible, since Cyril would not assert a mixture of the natures and, apart from some incautious utterances[3], really did not do so; but it
- ↑ ep. 4 Migne, 77, 45 c: διάφοροι μὲν αἱ πρὸς ἑνότητα τὴν ἀληθινὴν συναχθεῖσαι φύσεις· εἶς δὲ ἐξ ἀμφοτέρων Χριστὸς καὶ υἱός· οὐχ ὡς τὴν τῶν φύσεων διαφορᾶς ἀνῃρημένης διὰ τὴν ἕνωσιν κ.τ.λ..
- ↑ l.c. p. 45 B.
- ↑ Comp. e.g. de recta fide ad Theodos. 40, Migne, 76, 1193 b: Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς … εἰς ἕν τι τὸ μεταξὺ συγκείμενος.
