Page:Nestorius and his place in the history of Christian doctrine.djvu/79

Rh the Logos, to which in addition to its own characteristics those of the imperfect human nature were attached.

Nestorius was as strong an opponent of this Apollinaristic doctrine as any other Antiochian. Regarding his zeal in opposing it, it is characteristic that he almost always named Apollinaris in the same breath with Arius and Eunomius or placed the Apollinarists and the Arians side by side. He had a right to do so; for the Arians were the first who looked at the incarnation, like Apollinaris, in a—I do not say serious—but mythical light. The pre-existent son of God, so was their teaching, really changed into man, taking the body from the virgin as his body so that he himself became the soul of this body and the subject of all experiences which are told of Jesus: he hungered, suffered, died. Hence the Arian Eudoxius expressly said that there were not in Christ two natures, the whole being one combined nature. Nestorius knew of course that Apollinaris, differing from the Arians, regarded the pre-existent Son of God, following the decree of the Nicene synod, as, and, at least in the second period of his development,