Nestorian Temptation

Forced to choose between Nestorianism and Monophysitism, Karl Rahner once wrote, “I would prefer to be an orthodox Nestorian.” Aaron Riches, who quotes this comment (Ecce Homo, 9), thinks it a revealing admission. But not surprising: “On the one hand, it is a sign of the historical resilience of the Nestorian temptation. On the other hand, it signals a deep correspondence between Nestorian logic and some of the constitutive false dualisms of modernity” (11).

On the latter, he elaborates: “without establishing any genealogical link, we can say that modernity is broadly ‘Nestorian,’ if we take the term Nestorian as descriptive of the normative mode of conceiving the relation of unity and difference, transcendence and immanence, God and the world. According to David L. Schindler, it has become characteristic of the implied metaphysical vision of modernity since Descartes to presuppose that ‘if x is truly distinct from y, x must just so far share nothing in common with y.’ Real difference here ‘precludes a priori any unity between x and y that is inclusive, precisely qua unity, of real difference between x and y.’ Here, ‘difference’ is essentially contrastive and competitive such that an ontological ‘union’ of x and y can only occur if either x is absorbed into y or vice-versa, or a mutual blending of x and y results in z, a tertium quid. In other words, as with Nestorian logic, so with modernity, the difference of x and y is only safeguarded by separatio, a strict autonomy that ensures that no intimacy crosses the basic parallelism whereby each thing remains distinct from its opposite, the one juxtaposed against the other” (11). Modernity thus conceived is a refusal of perichoresis.

According to Riches, though, the Nestorian temptation has deeper historical roots. It is “a perennial temptation of Latin dogmatic theology itself. While Byzantine theology became resolved in a Cyrillian manner against every trace of the homo assumptus theory, Latin theology remained in this regard more dogmatically vague, even at times preferring aspects of homo assumptus Christology.” He offers two reasons for the Nestorian inclination of Latin theology: Because of its split from the East, it “tended to receive, only with reticence, the magisterial authority of the post-Chalcedon council of Constantinople II ” and “during the mediaeval period,in the ‘largely Greekless West,’ the disappearance of the textual evidence of the so-called Christological councils from Ephesus to Constantinople II effectively erased for a time the precise dogmatic formulations and standard by which the homo assumptus doctrine was excluded.” Thus Lombard could offer homo assumptus as an acceptable “opinion.” Because of this “the homo assumptus doctrine and its variants were left to grow roots in the soil of some areas of Latin theology” (11-12).

Riches sees analogies between this tendency in Christology and the notion of natura pura: “The integrity of nature . . . is safeguarded by its natural perfectibility in se, and so in a manner essentially ‘separable’ from the order of grace. The convertibility of the doctrine of natura pura with a quasi-Nestorian logic of separatio lies in the way proponents of natura pura insist on deriving the ‘species’ of human creatures wholly from the ‘proximate, proportionate, natural end’ of a ‘purely natural’ human nature, fully divested from the history of salvation” (13, quoting Stephen A Long).

Riches’s account isn’t all critical. Thomas emerges as a hero: “As the first Latin mediaeval theologian to quote directly from the conciliar documents of Ephesus, Chalcedon, Constantinople II, and Constantinople III, Thomas’s staggeringly important ressourcement led him to a decisive judgment against what he perceived as a widespread factual Nestorianism within Lagin theology.” He worked to “confirm his Cyrillian doctrine of Christ’s single divine esse” which led to “a rich theology of theandric synergy” (16).