Theological Term of the Week: Nestorius

Nestorius
“[A] famous preacher at Antioch,” who reacted against Apollinarius’s teaching by emphasising “the completeness of Christ’s human nature and its distinctness from His divine nature.”1 He also rejected the title theotokos (birth-giver of God) for Mary. He lived from 381-451 and became patriarch of Constantinople in 428.

• From 2000 Years of Christ’s Power by N. H. Needham, page 272: 

Nestorius rejected the title theotokos for Mary. This was not because he was protesting against the exaltation of Mary, which was then only in its very early stages. He protested because he was a committed Antiochene. Nestorius made a sharp distinction between Christ’s human and divine natures, and tended to speak about Jesus as a man with whom the divine Son had united Himself. According to Nestorius, Mary gave birth to the human person Jesus, not to the divine Son Who joined Himself to Jesus. Nestorius therefore rejected the title “birth-giver of God” for Mary. He suggested that Mary should be called Christotokos, “birth-giver of Christ”.

Learn more:

1. Got Questions: What is Nestorianism?
2. Ligonier Ministries: Cyril and Nestorius
3. Banner of Truth: The Great Heresies:Nestorius and Eutyches

Related terms:

• Ambrose of Milan
• Apollinarius
• Athanasius
• Augustine of Hippo
• Basil of Caesarea
• Cappadocian fathers
• Gregory of Nanzianzus
• Gregory of Nyssa
• Hilary of Poitiers
• Irenaeus of Lyons
• Jerome
• John Chrysostom
• Justin Martyr
• Monica
• Origen
• Pelagius
• Sabellius
• Tertullian

Filed under Christian History

1From 2000 Years of Christ’s Power by N. R. Needham.

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