Page:Nestorius and his place in the history of Christian doctrine.djvu/119

Rh victory, and since there existed now in the East a theology which was able to master difficult formulas by means of scholastic distinctions and arguments.

Also the Occident, as far as it belonged to the East-Roman Empire, Rome included, had had to accept the Cyrillian-Chalcedonian orthodoxy of the council of 553; and Rome led the young nations of the mediaeval world in the same direction. When in the Adoptianism of Spain old western tradition, not consistent with the Cyrillian-Chalcedonian orthodoxy, emerged once again, the Carolingian theologians with the agreement of Rome rejected them, and Alcuin in conformity with the Cyrillian-Chalcedonian orthodoxy contended: in assumptione carnis a deo persona perit hominis, non natura.

There cannot, therefore, be the least doubt, that Nestorius was an exponent of a doctrine which even if not through the decree of Chalcedon, at least through the decisions of later time, was condemned by the church. Hence, measured by the standard of church-orthodoxy, Nestorius—in spite of all Professor s attempts to save him—must be regarded as a heretic.

Nevertheless his doctrine has more historical right than the Cyrillian orthodoxy. That is what remains for me to show.

Nestorius was a pupil of the Antiochian school; all