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A look into history of Incarnation Heresies
About Christmas time1 a sermon was preached in the Church of St. Sophia at Constantinople, in which the preacher said that the blessed Virgin Mary was not to be called Theotocos (Geo'roKos), or mother of God, a title which had been given to her by many of the Fathers, and which meant, not that she was the mother of the Godhead, but the mother of a child who was God as well as man.
This title was thus intended not so much to exalt her dignity (though of course in a sense it did so) as to declare the truth concerning her child, that He was indeed "Emmanuel," God with us, even from the womb. Nestorius, who was present, approved the sermon, and began himself a course of sermons on the subject, in which he taught that it was "not the Word who was born, but the man Jesus;" so he made our Lord to be a deified man, rather than God Incarnate. He would never allow that He who was in the bosom of the Father was also in the blessed Virgin's womb, and thus borne by her as an Infant in her arms. And thus he virtually made of our Blessed Lord two Christs, the man, who was born of the Virgin, and the Son of God, the Word, who associated Himself with Jesus, but was not really one with Him in a strictly personal union; whereas the true doctrine is that "the Son of God took man's nature upon Him in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance, and united in one Person the divine and the human nature." Nestorius denied this, and virtually therein denied the truth of the Incarnation. Such a hymn, for instance, as our Christmas hymn, "Hark, the herald angels sing Glory to the new-born king!" would not have coincided with his teaching. He could not have expressed his faith in such words as these: "Christ, by highest heaven adored, Christ, the Everlasting Lord, Late in time behold Him come, Offspring of a Virgin's womb, Veiled in flesh the Godhead see! Hail, the Incarnate Deity!"
They would have been flatly contradictory of his teaching. The matter became more and more serious, and many great theologians entered the lists against Nestorius. Of these Cyril of Alexandria, and Celestine the Pope of Rome, were the most prominent. Both held Synods, which condemned Nestorius, and both wrote letters to him,—Cyril several, and his letters, particularly the second, afterwards became standards of orthodoxy1. It was now determined to assemble a General Council at Ephesus, which met in the church of St. Mary at Ephesus, A.d. 431, and is reckoned as the Third General Council. To this Council St. Augustine, the great Bishop of Hippo in Africa, was specially summoned, but unhappily he died the year before it met.
We have thus completed our brief exposition of the doctrine of the Incarnation, and the errors which at different times threatened it. And there is a special interest connected with the Nestorian and Eutychian heresies, which we have considered in this Address, as well as with the Monothelite heresy, to which I have very briefly referred, because they afterwards became the tenets of National Churches, which once held an important place in Christendom, and are still in some sort represented in the world.
30.12.2011. 15:39