Talk:Nestorianism

Whoever wrote the basic definition that persisted from 2006-2022 clearly doesn't have even a shallow understanding of the positions being debated. The ideas that "Christ has two natures, one wholly human and one wholly divine" and "that Mary was mother of his human nature" are not contested in Christian orthodoxy but fully affirmed. The first is called dyophysitism, and specifically the two natures are united in the hypostatic union. The second is also affirmed by orthodox Christology. Mary could be no more than the mother of his human nature since she is a creature herself but Christ's divine nature is uncreated. The term Theotokos ("God-bearer") for Mary does not imply more than that she was the mother of his humanity; the term arose in the context of earlier debate about whether Christ was in fact fully divine. The way in which Nestorius was heterodox was in denying the hypostatic union, thus making Christ to have two persons with two natures rather than simply two natures joined in one person. His denial of the term Theotokos was simply a consequence of his seeing a fundamental disunity in Christ (two persons), not a disagreement with orthodoxy about what nature Mary was the mother of. A simple perusal of the Wikipedia article and any number of other resources will bear these things out. Therefore, I will be attempting to change the definition shortly. --172.75.72.202 13:53, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

It's a better stab than what was there before but I've adjusted it again for a few reasons: first, labelling it "heterodox" is out of place in a dictionary definition given that Nestorius isn't considered heterodox by some Christians (i.e. Assyrians but also some Protestants). I also removed the "as opposed to..." part paraphrasing the Chalcedonian definition since it puts the cart before the horse—that definition hadn't been formulated when Nestorius was condemned (and historically was actually accepted by some Nestorian theologians!). Finally, it needed a more explicit connection to the later Church of the East. I've also made it explicit that the "two persons" of Nestorianism conventionally refer to prosopa rather than hypostases, meaning that their denial of a hypostatic union is up for debate. —Al-Muqanna المقنع (talk) 21:47, 11 December 2022 (UTC)