is apart from the very natures which are united here. I know, he says, nothing which would suit a union of different natures except a single πρόσωπον by which and in which the natures are seen, while they are giving their characteristics to this πρόσωπον[1].
For the detailed explanation of this thought an idea is important which Professor Bethune-Baker has already noted[2] in the Treatise of Heraclides, viz. the idea that in Christ the manhood is the πρόσωπον of the Godhead, and the Godhead the πρόσωπον of the manhood[3]. Reading Professor Bethune-Baker's book one could think that this idea appeared only once or at least seldom. Really, however, it recurs again and again[4]. It is the leading idea of Nestorius that the natures of Christ made reciprocate use of their πρόσωπα[5], the Godhead of the form of a servant, the manhood of the form of God[6]. In this sense in the one πρόσωπον of Christ, according to Nestorius, a union of the πρόσωπα
- ↑ B. 230 = N. 138 f.
- ↑ p. 97.
- ↑ B. 144 = N. 168.
- ↑ Comp. e.g. B. 78ff. = N. 50 ff.; B. 289 = N. 183; B. 305 = N. 193 f.; B. 334 = N. 203, etc.
- ↑ Comp. e.g. B. 341 f. = N. 219: Pour nous, dans les natures, nous disons un autre et un autre, et, dans l'union, un prosôpon pour l'usage de l'un avec l'autre (ou: pour leur usage mutuel); B. 289 = N. 183: l'humanité utilisant le prosôpon de la divinité et la divinité le prosôpon de l'humanité; B. 307 = N. 195: Ils prennent le prosôpon l'un de l'autre; B. 334 = N. 213: Elles (les natures) se servent mutuellement de leurs prosôpons respectifs.
- ↑ e.g. B. 81 = N. 52; B. 90 f. = N. 59; B. 241 = N. 145.
