This alliance of Rome and Antioch could have led perhaps – we don’t know – to a full victory of the Antiocheans over the Alexandrians. But this did not happen. And it did not happen because Rome had no direct theological interest. It had only a political interest – not political in the state sense, but in the Church-state sense. Rome was the great (center of the Church’s movement) and as such it did not want to surrender Christianity because of a theological formula.
One of the members of this school for (whom) we should have great (respect), is Nestorius. He preached in 429 against the theotokos doctrine, that Mary gave birth to God. Mary gave birth to a man, who became the organ of Divinity. Therefore not the Divinity but the humanity of Christ has suffered. Therefore one could even say, as he does, that Mary is Christotokos. But if this is the case, that Christ is Christotokos – and only indirectly, later, did he accept that Mary can become theotokos – this was not really meant; he really meant that here is God, the Logos, coming down; there is Mary giving birth to a man: and they are united. But it is not a divine being coming down and becoming; a man, in terms of a transmutation myth.
The two natures preserve their qualities in the personal union. They are connected in the humanity of Jesus, but He is not deified in it. The unmixed connection of the natures: that is what he teaches. He who terms Jesus or Christ the only begotten or the Son, he means the one person. The term “man” describes the one nature in Him; the term “God,” “Logos,” the other nature. But these ideas brought him into heresy. They were consistently in the Antiochean school, but with him the Antiochean school became suspect and finally rejected. . . . . Nestorius actually was a victim of the fight between Byzantium and Alexandria.
