Rehabilitating Nestorius (Part Two)

It should come as no surprise then that the near-immediate result of Chalcedon was major schism, on both sides of the divide: those who could not assent to the condemnation of Nestorius as well as those who judged that Dioscorus of Alexandria had been unfairly deposed. In the latter case, nearly the entire ancient Church of Alexandria, Cyril's former see, would break away from the rest of the Orthodox world. (The Coptic Orthodox Church descends from this break.)

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Rehabilitating Nestorius (Part One): Historical Background

Like the his compatriots of the Antiochene school, Nestorius was a dyophysite, ironically, the position that would ultimately win the day at the Council of Chalcedon (451). Had it been as simple as the question of one or two natures, history might have been kinder to Nestorius, perhaps even vindicating him as the champion of orthodoxy rather than Cyril. But Nestorius's misstep was in the way he went about articulating the dyophysite position. For Nestorius, the two-natures Christology necessitated the reality of two corresponding hypostases or subsistences, each the proper and unique subject of its own nature. But if this were the case then how could a true union of the divine and human in Christ be posited?

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A Theological Narrative of Theistic Evolution

...Given the unfathomable gulf of being, divine grace from a distance can only hope to persuade through imperfect witness, hoping to woo a self-aware cosmos into receiving the divine "in the fullness of time." The biblical record is filled with stories of divine call and human receptivity. Even paganism has its myths of divine union with humankind. Yet each account fails by degrees to be that perfect moment of receptivity until the incarnation of Christ -- a holy mother's fiat -- the mythos of Annunciation -- the cosmos ready to receive the divine seed of its own theosis.

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Rehabilitating Arius (An excerpt from post.catholic project)

Yet, still, there is an element of truth in Arius' statement: "There was a time when he was not." To speak of a "pre-incarnate Christ," that is from a temporal point of reference, is nonsensical. Ironically, such language infuses a degree of Docetism into the Godhead, not in "seeming to be human" but rather in "seeming to be divine." A pre-incarnate Christ, which is to say a NON-incarnate Christ, is at best an abstraction and at worst a demigod waiting (a temporal verb) for a body.

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