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De Lacy O'Leary
Published by Good Press, 2020
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At the Nestorian schism the school at Edessa was the rallying place of those who did not accept the decisions of Ephesus, but in 439 it was closed by the Emperor Zeno on account of its strong Nestorian character, and the ejected members led by Barsuma, a pupil of Ibas (d. 457), who had been the great luminary of Edessa, migrated across the Persian border. Barsuma was able to persuade the Persian king Piruz that the orthodox, that is to say the state, Church was pro-Greek, but that the Nestorians were entirely alienated from the Byzantine Empire by the harsh treatment they had received. On this understanding they were favourably received and remained loyal to the Persian monarchy in the subsequent wars with the Empire. The Nestorians re-opened the school at Nisibis and this became the focus of Nestorian activity by which an orientalised phase of Christianity was produced. Gradually the Nestorian missionaries spread through all central Asia and down into Arabia so that the races outside the Greek Empire came to know Christianity first in a Nestorian form. It seems probable that Muhammad had contact with Nestorian teachers (Hirschfeld: New Researches. p. 23), and certainly Nestorian monks and missionaries had much intercourse with the earlier Muslims. These Nestorians were not only anxious to teach Christianity but very naturally attached the utmost importance to their own explanations of the person of Christ. This could only be made clear by the help of theories drawn from Greek philosophy, and so every Nestorian missionary became to some extent a propagandist of that philosophy: they translated into Syriac not only the great theologians such as Theodore of Mopseustia who explained their views, but also Greek authorities such as Aristotle and his commentators because some knowledge of these was necessary to understand the theology. Much of this work of translation shows a real desire to explain their teaching, but it shows also a strong resentment against the Emperor and his state church; as that church used the Greek language in its liturgy and teaching, the Nestorians were anxious to discard Greek, they celebrated the sacraments only in Syriac and set themselves to promote a distinctly native theology and philosophy by means of translated material and Syriac commentaries. These became the medium by which Aristotle and the neo-Platonic commentators were transmitted to Asia outside the Empire, and so later on as we shall see it was a group of Nestorian translators who, by making Arabic versions from the Syriac, first brought Hellenistic philosophy to the Arabic world. But there was also a weak side, for the Nestorian Church, cut off from the wider life of Hellenism, became distinctly provincial. Its philosophy plays round and round that prevalent at the schism, it spreads this philosophy to new countries, it produces an extensive educational system, and elaborates its material, but it shows no development. If we regard the main test of educational efficiency as being in its research product and not simply the promulgation of material already attained, then Nestorianism was not an educational success: and it seems that this should be the supreme test, for knowledge is progressive, and so the smallest contribution towards further progress must be of more real value than the most efficient teaching of results already achieved. Yet it would be difficult to overestimate the importance of Nestorianism in preparing an oriental version of Hellenistic culture in the pre-Muslim world. Its main importance lies in its being preparatory to Islam which brought forward Arabic as a cosmopolitan medium for the interchange of thought and so enabled the Syriac material to be used in a wider and more fruitful field.
Although Nestorius had been condemned, the Church was left with a problem. The objection was true that, if the Logos and the rational soul in Christ were fused together so that the rational soul or spirit lost itself in its source, the Logos dwelt in an animal body and the full humanity of Christ disappeared. The Nestorian view of a temporary "connection" was now condemned as heretical, but was it necessary to go to the other extreme of "fusion" which was the logical result of the Alexandrian teaching? The Church wished to be philosophically correct and yet to avoid the conclusions which might be drawn from either view in its extreme form. In fact philosophy ruthlessly pressed home was the danger of which the Church was most afraid, feeling in some dim realm of sub-consciousness that the deposit of faith did not quite fall into line with science, or at least with the science then in fashion; and the Church's real enemies were the enthusiasts who were confident that doctrine and philosophy were both absolutely true. Nor have we, even in these days, altogether learned the lesson that both are still partial and progressive. Islam had to go through exactly the same experience in her day and came out of it with very similar results, that is to say both the Christian and Muslim churches finally chose the via media adopting the philosophical statement of doctrine but condemning as heretical the logical conclusions which might be deduced. The Alexandrian school, elated perhaps at its victory over Nestorius, became rather intemperate in the statement of its views and pressed them home to an extreme conclusion. At once the warning prediction of the Nestorians was justified: the teaching of a "fusion" between the Logos and the rational soul in Christ entirely undermined his humanity. Another controversy ensued and in this, as in the former one, neither side suggested any doubt as to the psychology or metaphysics borrowed from the Aristotelian and neo-Platonic philosophies, that was throughout assumed as certain, the problem was to make Christian doctrine fit in with it. Now those who opposed the Alexandrian conclusions maintained the theory of a "union" between the Logos and the rational soul in Christ, so that the complete humanity was preserved as well as the deity, and the union was such as to be inseparable and so safeguarded from the Nestorian theory. In fact this was simply admitting the philosophical statement and forbidding its being pressed home to its possible conclusions. This is described as "orthodox" doctrine and rightly so in the sense that it expresses, though in philosophical terms, a doctrine as it was held before the Church had learned any philosophy, and excluded possible deductions which came within range as soon as a philosophical statement was made. This is the normal result when doctrine originally expressed by those ignorant of philosophy has to be put into logical and scientific terms: the only orthodox representation of the traditional belief must be a compromise.
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