NESTORIANISMO — NESTORIUS
A história e o significado dos termos de Nestorius
Excertos de “Nestorius and his teaching”
The history and meaning of the terms
To express any kind of real existence two terms were in common use among Greek thinkers, viz. ousia and hypostasis, the former the noun of the verb ” to be ” (” being “), the latter the noun of a verb of similar sense ” to subsist” or ” to exist” (“subsistence”, “existence”). Subtle shades of difference of meaning may be detected in these two terms; but in practical use they were synonymous, and Greek writers who well knew the values of words declared them to be so. Their equivalents in Latin were essentia (or entia) and substantia, ” essence ” (or “entity”) and “substance”: but the equivalents of ousia were never domesticated in the Latin language; substantia alone was taken into use, and “substance” is thus the English representative of the original sense of both the Greek terms. We must be on our guard against attaching any “materialistic” sense to this word ” substance And if the term is not now commonly used in discussions as to ultimate realities and the objects or process of cognition, and if ” modern philosophy ” tends to repudiate the idea that anything exists or can be known “in itself” apart from, or in any other way than in virtue of, its relations to other things and the perceptions of minds or persons—we must yet remember that throughout the period in which Christian doctrines assumed their form a very different conception of existence and of knowledge prevailed. According to the dominant theory there were ultimate realities, whether they could be fully known or not, and whether they were conceived as in some sense material or as immaterial. And to these realities the term which we render “substance” was applied. Everything that existed was a “substance”.
To this “substance” attached all the attributes or characteristics which as a whole were always associated with it, though some of them might characterize other substances as well; and these were called, by a general term, the ” nature ” of the thing. Different substances might have attributes in common, and so their natures might be similar; but they themselves remained distinct, and in thought at least could be distinguished from their natures: while the natures, too, of different things might have much in common with one another, but yet remained distinct, and could be spoken of almost as if they were real existences in themselves. This however was only a loose mode of speech—the reality was always the “substance” to which the nature belonged. The “nature” was not conceived of as being the “substance”, nor the “substance” as being the “nature”. “It” was not “it’s nature”, nor was it’s nature “it”.
It was usually, no doubt, quite enough to speak of the nature”. It was the more popular term and expressed all that was wanted. The idea of the “substance” was more technical and could be left to experts, whether in philosophy or in theology. So it is that in popular usage we commonly speak of our Lord as “of the same nature” as the Father and as taking “our nature” upon Him, though we still retain the accurate rendering of the — Greek and Latin terms in the clause of the Nicene Creed “of one substance with the Father” and the very un-English “con-substantial” of our hymns; while the translation of the Athanasian Creed carefully preserves not only “substance” but also the corresponding words “Godhead” and “manhood” rather than “Divine” or “human” nature. There is such a thing as “Godhead”, and there is such a thing as “manhood”, and there is a real distinction between them. If we use only the vague term “nature”, we run the grave risk of confusing two distinct realities, because they may have some attributes in common. In the interests of clear thought, and of the practical moral issues that ensue, it is earnestly to be desired that exponents of the Catholic faith would use the genuine English words “Godhead” and “manhood” rather than “Divinity”and “humanity” of our Lord. Nestorius knew very well what he was doing when he insisted on the recognition of the “substances” as well as the “natures” in the Person of our Lord. To express the conception “substance” he used either of the two Greek synonyms ousia and hypostasis, the latter more frequently than the former; and, inasmuch as the term “substance” is almost as strange in this connexion to English ears today as are the Greek expressions, we have usually kept in the translation the original terms. The Syriac translator himself simply transliterated ousia, except in a few cases in which the Being of God Himself (rather than the Godhead) is meant; and in these he used a Syriac word (ithutha) which was commonly employed of Divine beings. But hypostasis he always rendered by a native Syriac term (q’noma). For “nature” also he had a Syriac word at hand (k’yana). In speaking of two “substances” in the Person of our Lord Nestorius was employing an expression which had been recognized in ecclesiastical usage from the times of Melito in the East and Tertullian in the West—that is to say from the earliest days of formal theology. The phrase was simply the technical expression of the Christian faith in the Godhead and manhood of the Lord, and its constant recurrence in the passages cited from the writings of Nestorius calls for no further comment.
In like manner, in treating ousia and hypostasis as equivalent terms, Nestorius was simply carrying on the old traditional use of the words, reflected in the anathema appended to the Creed of Nicaea, in which the two terms are placed side by side, and in the assertion of Athanasius in one of his latest writings “hypostasis is ousia”.
But in connexion with the Being of God, in order to express the Christian conception of Trinity in Unity, a new and artificial sense had been put upon the word hypostasis by some of the chief Greek theologians in the latter half of the fourth century. The word had been narrowed down from its wider meaning ” substance ” and forced to do duty for the conception of the particular “modes of existence” of the one God which constituted God a Trinity. In connexion with the doctrine of the Trinity this use of the term had probably won wide acceptance by the time of Nestorius. He himself recognizes the usage. But it must be doubted whether this conventional sense had established itself universally even in regard to the modes of existence implied by the three names Father, Son, and Holy-Spirit ; and I am not aware of any clear evidence that such a usage had been extended to the Christological problem or that this sense of the term would have seemed at all natural in a discussion of the relation of the Godhead and manhood of our Lord. Cyril’s own use of the term hypostasis (and its adjectival form hypostatic) is certainly not consistently, if ever, the same as that which became established at a later time. Marius Mercator in translating Cyril renders it sometimes by substantia (“substance”) and sometimes by subsisfettfia (“subsistence”) as if he felt some shade of difference in its significance in different connexions’; but he never renders it by the natural Iatin equivalent of its Trinitarian usage, viz. persdna (“person”). And if it seems incredible that a word which had acquired a definite value in the statement of the doctrine of God should be used in a different sense in the statement of the doctrine of the Person of Christ, it may be well to remember that this very word “person” of ours cannot possibly bear the same sense when we apply it to the three Persons of the Trinity as it has when we speak of the Person of the incarnate Word, both God and man.
At all events it does not appear that exception was taken to Nestorius’s use of the word hypostasis as practically synonymous with ousia. The difference between the controversialists went deeper than technical terms: it was concerned with the manner in which the union of Godhead and manhood was conceived. The word hypostasis in this connexion did not mean to Cyril exactly ” person as it certainly did not to Nestorius.
To express the idea of personality Nestorius always uses prosdpon (which the Syriac translator transliterates parsopa)—a word which has the same history as the Latin persona; meaning originally an actor’s mask, or face,—the part which an actor played, the dramatis persona—role or function in life in general —the character or aspect in which some one is conceived —and so some one regarded in a particular relation, a person. The words were current simultaneously in all these senses: no one of the possible meanings drove out the others. Latin theologians used the phrase tres personae of the Trinity and una persona of Christ, though more often they seem to have avoided the word and to have been content to speak of “Three” (tres) and “One” (unus). Neither in Latin nor in Greek was a defining noun needed as it usually is in English. For Greek theologians the word prosopon was tainted by the Sabellian use of it to express the conception of the One God assuming different roles and playing the part now of Father, now of Son, and now of Holy Spirit; and therefore they had no unequivocal term to use in this connexion (of the doctrine of the Trinity) until the conventional distinction between ousia and hypostasis was established. But though they avoided the term prosopon in stating the doctrine of the Trinity, they do not seem to have shrunk from using it of the incarnate Son in connexion with the doctrine of the Incarnation. And when Nestorius insisted that he believed our Lord Jesus Christ, in His Godhead and His manhood, to be “one prosoponit was not that they suspected the term prosopon of any hidden heretical meaning, but that they did not believe that he really believed what he said that he believed. They, too, were quite ready to use the term to express the ” Person ” of the Lord, and even in the Chalcedonian definition ” one person ” is joined with ” one hypostasis preceding it to define the sense in which ” hypostasis ” was then used, just as at an earlier time in the Nicene anathema (before this new usage of hypostasis was recognized) ousia and hypostasis were used together as synonyms. Distrust of the term itself in expressing the doctrine of the Incarnation is of later origin than the time of the Nestorian controversy and mu«t not be allowed to colour our consideration of it.
The problem of the union of Godhead and manhood in a single subject or being is one that perhaps defies solution. It had not been seriously faced in earlier times. Cyril was no doubt feeling after a more ” substantial” unity than he thought the teaching of Nestorius allowed, and was content to guard the distinction between the ” substances ” in word and to ignore it in fact. To Nestorius Godhead and manhood, God and man, were much too real to be able to lose themselves in one another: the unity must be found in something other than the ” substances ” in themselves.
A lover of epigram might be tempted to settle the question by saying that the supreme realities were to Cyril persons and to Nestorius things. But the epigram would not, I think, be true, while it certainly would have been unintelligible to Cyril and Nestorius. Nor was the one a nominalist and the other a realist. Nestorius can poke fun at Cyril because he speaks of a “nature” when the ousia which the “nature” presupposes is wanting; but Cyril meant the ” nature” to be as real as the ousia. As far as precision of terminology goes, Nestorius is more definite than Cyril. Cyril does not seem to have had a clear conception of the difference between the terms ” substance”, “nature” and “person “. But he used them all, and his language is really as elusive as Nestorius found it, though it supplied the Church with phrases to which a conventional value could be assigned, so that they might become the standard expression of the Christian faith in the union of Godhead and manhood in our Lord. The fugitive phrase was captured, and acclimatized. But in reading the words of Cyril and Nestorius it must be remembered that the hunt for the proper term was still going on, unconsciously rather than of purpose; and though we cannot avoid consideration of the terms themselves, it is to the arguments of Nestorius rather than to the technical terms he uses that attention must be paid, and to these we may now pass.
As the meaning of the terms employed by the modern Syriac-speaking ” Nestorians” has been uncertain, and the Syriac translation of the Bazaar of Heraclides shews beyond question what the theological usage was at the time when the translation was made, and earlier writers used the words in the same sense, the English translator of the Bazaar has prepared a statement setting out the history of the Syriac terms as an Appendix to this volume.
In the citations of the words of Nestorius in these pages it must be understood that ” person ” represents the Syriac parsopa or the Greek prosopon. In translations from the Greek, ousia and hypostasis are rendered alike either “being” or “substance”: but in the translation of the Bazaar of Heraclides, in which ousia is simply transliterated, the transliteration ousia is preserved, while hypostasis or “substance” represents q’noma. The Greek physis and the Syriac k’ydna are translated “nature”, though “physical” is often used for the adjectival forms in accordance with common theological usage. The idiomatic Syriac rendering of (homoousios) means literally ” son of the nature of “, and as there is no doubt about the original term it is either transliterated “homoousios” or translated by “consubstantial” or some equivalent phrase.