42.
OFFICIAL COMPLAINT DISPLAYED IN A PUBLIC PLACE AND PUBLISHED IN CHURCH
I adjure anyone who receives this
paper, by the holy Trinity, to show it to bishops, presbyters, deacons,
lectors, and laymen dwelling in Constantinople, and further to give them a copy
as an accusation against Nestorius: that he is of like mind with Paul of
Samosata, who was condemned one hundred and sixty years ago by the orthodox bishops.
The assertions of both are as follows:
1. Paul
said: “Mary did not beget the Word.”
Nestorius said, in agreement: “Mary, my friend, did not beget the divinity.”
2. Paul
said: “He did not exist before the ages.”
Nestorius said: “And they put a temporal mother over the divinity who created
time.”
3. Paul
said: “Mary received the Word and is not older than the Word.”
Nestorius said: “How did Mary beget one who is older than she?”
4. Paul
said: “Mary begot a man like us.”
Nestorius said: “The man who was begotten of the virgin.”
5. Paul
said: “Better in every way, because the grace in him was from the Holy Spirit,
and from the promises, and from the scriptures.”
Nestorius said: “For he said, ‘I saw the Spirit coming down like a dove and remaining
upon him,’ giving him the grace of elevation; ‘giving commands,’ [Scripture]
says, ‘to his chosen Apostles, he was lifted up by the Holy Spirit.’ This is
the Spirit which gave such glory to Christ.”
6. Paul
said: “ . . . So that the anointed one sprung from David was not other than the
wisdom, nor did the wisdom dwell thus in another; for it was in the prophets,
still more in Moses and in many lords, still more in Christ as in a temple.”
And in another place he says that Jesus Christ is one individual, God the Word
another.
Nestorius said: “Surely it is not possible for him who was before all ages to
become another at all once, precisely in his divinity?”
Behold, the scoundrel is clearly shown to be saying, “He who was born of the
Father was not begotten of Mary.” Behold, he agrees with the heretic Paul, who
says that the Word is one individual and Jesus Christ another, and [that] he is
not one, as orthodoxy proclaims.
Thus far the official complaint. (Leontius of Byzantium, “An Unmasking and a
Triumphant Defeat of the Unspeakable and Fundamental Impiety of the Nestorians and
the Fathers of his [Heresy] (Book III. Triumphus super Nestorianos),” in
Leontius of Byzantium: Complete Works, ed. Brian E. Daley [Oxford Early
Christian Texts; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017], 501, 503, 505)
Note that this shows that Leontius understood Nestorius to have taught Nestorianism, contra many modern Roman Catholics who wish to rehabilitate Nestorius due to Eastern rite Catholics venerating Nestorius as a saint (!)
