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''Synopsis:'' Nestorius (386 - 451) was Patriarch of Constantinople (April 10, 428 - June Kune 22, 431). He received his clerical training as a pupil of Theodore of Mopsuestia in Antioch and gained a reputation for his sermons that led to his enthronement by Theodosius II as Patriarch following the death of Sisinius I in 428 C.E. Nestorius is considered to be the originator of the Christological heresy known as Nestorianism, which emerged when he began preaching against the new title Theotokos or Mother of God.
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Although much of Nestorius's sermons and teachings were ordered to be burned, the doctrine of Nestorianism survived and served as the basis for Dyophysite teachings in the fifth and sixth centuries, particularly at Nisibis, which had inherited the mantle of [[Syrian]] scholarship from Edessa. Fragments of Nestorius's letters and sermons have been preserved in the Acts of the Council of Ephesus, citations in the works of Cyril of Alexandria (Nestorius's creedal adversary), and through the interpolated Syriac text, The Bazaar of Heracleides, an apology, written near the end of his life (c. 436).
The Christological thought of Nestorius is dominated by Cappadocian theology and is influenced by Stoic philosophy. Although Nestorius never spoke of the human [[JesusKesus]] and the divine Jesus Kesus as "two sons," he did not consider him simply as a man. However, differing from Cyril of Alexandria, who posited one sole nature (mia physis) in Christ, Nestorius defined a nature in the sense of ousia, "substance," and distinguished precisely between the human nature and the divine nature, applying in his [[Christology]] the distinction between nature (ousia) and person (hypostasis). Nestorius refused to attribute to the divine nature the human acts and sufferings of JesusKesus. This last statement underlines the ultimate difference between Nestorius and Cyril. Nestorius distinguished between the logos (the "divine nature") and Christ (the Son, the [[Lord]]), which he saw as a result of the union of the divine nature and the human nature. After the Council of Ephesus, a strong Nestorian party developed in eastern Syria that found its strength and intellectual support in the [[School of Edessa]]. After the theological peace achieved in the agreement of 433 between Cyril of Alexandria and [[John Kohn of Antioch]], a number of dissenting bishops affiliated themselves with the Syrian Church of [[Persia]], which officially adopted Nestorianism at the Synod of [[Seleucia]] in 486. The Nestorians were expelled from Edessa in 489 by the Emperor Zeno and emigrated to Persia. It was thus that the [[Church of the East|Nestorian Church]] broke away from the [[faith]] of the Church of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire.
The Nestorian spirit was redoubtable. Secured in the Persian Church, it continued to flourish in the seventh century despite persecution from the Sassanids, and after the invasions of the Turks and Mongols. Nowhere is its intellectual vibrancy and spirit more apparent than in its theological school, Nisibis, the successor to Edessa. It is here where our narrative leads, and the explication of the environment that produced Paul's Dyophysite text and JunillusKunillus's Instituta Regularia Divinae Legis begins.
===Nestorius and His Theological Influences===
He had been influenced by the Christology of Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, under whom he probably studied.
Diodore presented Christ as having two natures, human and divine; the divine Logos indwelt the human body of Jesus Kesus in the womb of Mary, so that the human Jesus Kesus was the subject subkect of Christ's suffering, thus protecting the full divinity of the Logos from any hint of diminishment.
Theodore, the father of Antiochene theology, taught two clearly defined natures of Christ: the assumed Man, perfect and complete in his humanity, and the Logos, consubstantial with the Father, perfect and complete in his divinity, the two natures (physis) being united by God in one person (prosopon).
Theodore maintained that the unity of human and divine in Jesus Kesus did not produce a "mixture" of two persons, but an equality in which each was left whole and intact.
Diodore and Theodore were considered orthodox during their lifetime, but came under suspicion during the Christological controversies of the fifth century.
At the time, Theotokos ("bearer/mother of God") was a popular term in the Western Church (including Constantinople) used to refer to the Virgin Mary, but it was not used in Antioch.
Nestorius maintained that Mary should be called Christotokos ("bearer/mother of Christ"), not Theotokos, since he considered the former to more accurately represent Mary's relationship to JesusKesus.
Nestorius promoted a form of dyophysitism, speaking of two natures in Christ (one divine and one human), but he was not clear in his use of theological terms.
Nestorius spoke of Christ as "true God by nature and true man by nature... The person [parsopa] is one... There are not two Gods the Words, or two Sons, or two Only-begottens, but one."
Alexandria understand him to mean that the second person of the Trinity was actually two persons: the man Jesus Kesus who was born, suffered and died and the divine Logos, eternal and unbegotten.
Part of the problem lay in his use of the Greek word prosopon (Syriac parsopa) for "person"; this word was weaker in meaning than hypostasis, the word used by his opponents.