Sunday, November 29, 2020

Nestorius and Transubstantiation

Q. Did Nestorius Advocate the Roman dogma of transubstantiation?


Nestorius, Archbishop of Constantinople (c. 386-450 A.D.):

Is the bread the body of Christ by a change of ousia, or are we His body by a change, or is the body of the Son of God one in nature with God the Word? 

...How is it that, when He said over the bread ‘This is My body,’ He did not say that the bread was not bread and His body not body? But He said ‘bread’ and ‘body’ as showing what it is in ousia. But we are aware that the bread is bread in nature and in ousia. Yet Cyril [That is, St. Cyril of Alexandria] wishes to persuade us to believe that the bread is His body by faith and not by nature: that what it is not as to ousia, this it becomes by faith. 

(Bazaar of Heraclides, pp. 27ff, 326, in [Bethune Baker, Nestorius and his Teaching, [Cambridge: At The University Press, 1908], pp. 145-146.] Here) see also (Darwell Stone, A History of the Doctrine of the Holy Eucharist, [1909], Volume I, pp. 98-99). Here


See Also:

For example, [in] what he says of the bread: 'It is my body,' he says not that the bread is not bread and that his body is not a body, but he has said demonstrably bread and body, which is in the ousia. But we are persuaded that the bread is bread in nature and in ousia. Yet in believing that the bread is his body / by faith and not by nature, he seeks to persuade us to believe in that which exists not in ousia in such wise that it becomes this by faith and not in ousia. If it is [a question of the] ousia, what is the faith worth? For he has not said: 'Believe that the bread is bread,' because every one who sees the bread itself knows that it is bread, nor further does he make it be believed that the body is body; for it is seen and known of every one. But in that which it is not he requires us to believe that this is [so], in such wise that it becomes this by faith to them that believe.

(Nestorius, The Bazaar of Heracleides, trans. G. R. Driver, Leonard Hodgson, [Oxford, 1925., reprinted: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2002], pp. 327-328). Here and Online Here


Eutherius, Bishop of Tyana (c. 5th Century A.D.):

Eutherius of Tyana, a partisan of Nestorius, appears to have taught that objectively “the mystical bread is of the same nature” as earthly bread, but that by faith it subjectively became the body of Christ to the believer. 

(Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, Volume 1, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600), [The University of Chicago Press, 1971], p. 238). Here See: (Gerhard Ficker, Eutherius von Tyana, [Leipzig: Verlag von Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1908], pp. 20-21). Here



~ Soli Deo Gloria



No comments:

Post a Comment