Libellus contra Nestorium ad Sporacium

Theodoretus Bishop of Cyrus Against Nestorius to Sporacius. Since the whole world was gradually decaying and hastening toward the dissolution of this universe, everyone thought himself a competent teacher of piety, because the arrogance born of ignorance allowed no one to learn from another. No longer did the man-slaying demon, the father of falsehood, the sower of tares, arm himself against the Church with external and open enemies; but having found an instrument that received, so to speak, all his craft at once, under the pretense of orthodoxy he introduces the denial of both the divinity and the humanity of the Only-begotten, confounding the simple and artless character of our faith with Greek sophisms. You have surely heard of Nestorius; for the man is notorious. He, hailing from the little town of Germanicias, nurtured from the beginning in pursuits of whatever sort, changing from one region to another like an Egyptian plague, fell upon the great city of Antioch. In that city, having partaken moderately of liberal studies and trained his voice to be most beautiful and powerful, he insinuated himself into the Church of God, and having been enrolled in the list of presbyters and entrusted with teaching the people of God, he showed at once from the outset what he would be throughout his entire life. For he did not emulate the noble and fruitful character of discourse capable of cultivating human souls.

But inclining toward what pleases the crowd, and becoming a hunter of applause that dissolves into air, if ever anyone was, he summoned the motley and fickle multitude to his own desire, wearing a gray cloak, walking with a gloomy air, shunning the clamor of the marketplace, seeking the appearance of self-control through the pallor of his body, spending most of his time at home with books, and communing with himself in quiet. With such poses and pretenses he lured the many, and advanced far in age, pursuing the reputation of being a Christian before actually being one, and preferring his own glory to that of Christ. But since, as the Lord said, "Nothing hidden shall not be known, nor anything secret that will not come to light," and "Good deeds are evident, and those otherwise cannot be concealed," by the inscrutable abyss of God's judgments, Nestorius also, by the decision of those around the palaces and thrones, and of the one then holding the scepter of the inhabited world, was entrusted with the presidency of the Catholic Church of the orthodox in Constantinople, and no less of the whole world. Here, then, for me are the dramas, of which soon every land and sea was full. For when he had taken that greatest throne, having seized the primacy of the high priesthood like some tyranny, he could no longer contain within himself the labor pains of impiety, but, having gained from his authority a shameless boldness, he brings forth and sets before all the blasphemy against the Only-Begotten which he had long conceived.

and openly chooses war against the apostolic doctrines, and attempts to cast out the teachings of the holy fathers who have guided the faith of the orthodox since the Gospel was proclaimed, disturbing the Church of the imperial city and disturbing the whole world, paying no heed to the cry of the divine Paul: "He who disturbs you will bear the judgment, whoever he may be." But upon the lampstand of the divine tribunal of the high priests, he places not the lamp of truth but the darkness of impiety. The first undertaking of his innovation is that the holy Virgin, the mother of the Word of God according to the flesh, should not be confessed as Theotokos, but only as Christotokos, although the heralds of the orthodox faith from long ago and from very ancient times, according to the apostolic tradition, taught that the mother of the Lord is to be named and believed as Theotokos. Come then, let us bring forward his blasphemous artifice and an observation known to no one before, into the open. The appellation "Christ," he says, is indicative of the two natures, both the divinity of the Only-begotten and the humanity; but the word "God," spoken absolutely, represents the simple and incorporeal essence of the Word of God; and the word "man" indicates only the human nature; therefore, he says, it is necessary to confess the Virgin as Christotokos, but not Theotokos, lest we inadvertently say that the Word of God took the beginning of his existence from the holy Virgin, and thus be compelled to confess, as a consequence, that the mother is older than the one born from her.

Lest I should seem to accuse the man with empty slanders, I will make him himself a witness to his own impiety by what he said. For having banished from his mind the apostolic teachings and the memory of every saint, he cried out many such utterances in the Church of the orthodox: "Mary did not give birth to God, good sir, but she gave birth to a man, an instrument of divinity." And again in other foolish statements: "An irreproachable Greek, introducing a mother of gods." Let these few from among his many words be said by me for now, as the discourse hastens to what follows. Hence, since lawless men perish by an extraordinary death, he was cast out from the high priesthood by the divine vote of the holy ones gathered at Ephesus, and condemned by imperial decree to dwell in the Oasis, receiving from here the preludes of the future punishment of the impious, becoming a casualty of his own madness, and fulfilling in himself that apostolic saying: "The sins of some men are manifest, leading to judgment." But these things, as they have been examined by many others, must be passed over. Let us proceed to what follows, and let us turn to the confession of the holy Fathers.

We, persuaded everywhere by the evangelical and apostolic teachings, according to the tradition of the holy Fathers, believe that the God Logos, the Creator and Lord of this universe, the only-begotten Son of the Father, the pre-eternal one, the one unmixed with body and with all things of body, the one who is everything that the Father is except for one thing alone, that of being Father, was moved by his own love for humanity in the last days, with the good will of God the Father, took flesh consubstantial with the woman giving birth from the holy Virgin and became man, was born God with the assumption, not casting off what he was (for the divine is free from every change), but having taken on also the being man. This one, according to the apostolic word, experienced the human passions in all respects, according to likeness and the human law, without sin; for hungering, and laboring, and weeping, and all such things, manifest the truth of the human nature; and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and died, and was buried, and rose on the third day, and was taken up into the heavens, being worshipped together with his own Father and glorified together by every intelligible and sensible nature; and he himself will come again to judge the living and the dead, the divine nature in no way diminished by the form of a servant; but one only-begotten God and Lord of the universe, with his own flesh, confessed and forever worshipped; for this reason, O most excellent one, the Virgin is proclaimed Theotokos by those who worship Christ as God.

not as if the divine nature of the Only-begotten took its beginning of being from her; for He is God, and He is and will be and was in the beginning, never having taken a beginning of being from anyone; but, already existing, the God Logos made a beginning of the incarnation and of the economy concerning us, the dwelling in the virginal and immaculate womb. And the apostle Paul is a witness of this; and the divine evangelist John is a witness. Saint Paul cries out thus: "God sent forth His Son"—the one who already exists, clearly; for what does not exist is not sent, but comes to be—"born of a woman, born under the law," and so forth. And John, called the son of thunder by the Lord because of the loud and heavenly character of his doctrines, having first said that the Logos was God, and in the beginning, and was with God, and always was, and that everything came to be through Him, and that He is Lord of all, and having shown His being without beginning and consubstantial with the Father, as of the Only-begotten, then, descending to the ineffable words of the economy, says: "And the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us." How then is she not Theotokos, O most wise of all men, as you think, she who bore the God Logos become man, and gave birth, and is necessarily believed to be the mother of the one born? And all the prophets proclaim these things. Have you not heard Isaiah crying out?

Behold, the virgin will conceive in her womb, and will bear a son, and they will call his name Emmanuel; not, according to you and your foolish prattlings, an instrument of divinity, but God with us, having become man like us. And Jeremiah, also theologizing about the Word who became incarnate, says: "This is our God; no other shall be compared to him; he discovered every path of knowledge." And a little later: "After this he was seen on the earth, and he lived among men." And also the mother of the Forerunner, prophetically moved and crying out by the venerable Spirit: "Whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" These things, spoken long before and now said no less, it is necessary to pass over. That the holy Virgin is Theotokos, then, is sufficiently clear to the well-disposed from what has been said. But I will attempt to refute his clever word-craft briefly. A little earlier, he says, the name Christ is indicative of the two natures; the name God, of the simple and uncompounded; and the name man represents the human nature. What are you saying? When, then, the Lord in the Gospels, teaching the more divine things, and as he himself said, the heavenly things, says to Nicodemus (for I will discuss the divine Scriptures with you as one who knows): "No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven." Since he clearly said Son of Man, shall we then say that the human nature descended from the heavens, according to your impious and unwise wisdom? For I will use your own sophistries against you. Away with the blasphemy!

For the flesh of the Lord did not descend from the heavens, nor does it fill all things. But here the discourse concerns the divinity of the Lord Christ; for the one who descended from the heavens, and fills all things, and does not abandon those places from which he descended, is God the Word, crying out through the prophet: "Do I not fill the heaven and the earth? says the Lord." And again: "Who measured the water with his hand, and the heaven with a span, and the whole earth with a fist?" And: "The heaven is my throne, and the earth is the footstool of my feet." Insofar as he is God, he is both in heaven, and descends to us, and fills all things; but insofar as he became man, after his condescension to us, he ascends to the heavens and is glorified together with his own Father. For this is also made clear by what was said by the psalmist David: "The Lord said to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand.'" Behold, an exact refutation of your superfluous wisdom of words is the voice of the Lord. For having set forth the Son of man descending from the heavens, and being in those places from which he descended—for this he made clear by saying: "The one who is in the heaven.

revealed the divine essence that contains all things, descending to us by the word of the economy, and leading our nature in itself to the paternal throne, according to what was said by the divine Paul: "And he raised Christ himself from the dead, and seated him at his right hand, above every Principality, and Authority, and Power, and Lordship, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the age to come." It is not that the divine essence of the Only-begotten is deemed worthy of the glory of the Father after the resurrection from the dead; but then, after the ascent to the heavens, the God Word is honored and worshipped with the glory of the Father together with his own flesh. And elsewhere the same apostle Paul refutes this empty talk of yours. For writing to the Corinthians he says: "The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man, the Lord, is from heaven." Behold, having set forth the appellation of man alone, he added: "The Lord from heaven," interpreting the divine essence by saying "from the heavens." And often the God-bearing prophets and apostles, when speaking of God, set forth the human nature. Jeremiah cries out: "This is our God; no other shall be compared to him." Then, to avoid speaking of each detail: "After this he was seen on the earth and lived among men." It is not that he prophesies that the divinity of the Only-begotten would be perceptible to human eyes; but through the phrase "was seen" he clearly indicates the flesh of the God Word. And the same thought is held by what was said by the divine David in the forty-ninth psalm:

God will come manifestly." And Zephaniah the prophet prophesies the same thing, saying: "The Lord will appear against them, and will destroy all the gods of the nations of the earth." No less does the evangelist John proclaim this ineffable mystery: "That which was from the beginning, he says, which we heard, which we saw and our hands touched, concerning the Word of life." Surely he does not mean that the incorporeal and invisible nature of the Word of God was touched by hands, but he honors the body of the Word of God by this designation. For it is so, and this faith was handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the Word, and by the holy catalogue of all the Fathers after them. That after the Only-begotten Word of God became man like us, while remaining God, and took upon himself our sufferings through the form of a servant, he is no longer separated from his own flesh either in name or in nature; but if one says "man," he means the Word of God; if one names "God," he names him no less with his own flesh. And so much for this. For our purpose is not a display of a multitude of testimonies, but a refutation of the unlearned word-craft and quibbling.