Wednesday, September 24, 2025

Should Nestorius be allowed to return?

Long after Nestorius had been driven away, high-ranking officials, clergy members, and reverent ascetics often came to [St. Hypatius, + 446 A.D.] and asked him whether Nestorius could return to the city of Constantine. This is what he said to them:

If it is time for the Antichrist, then Nestorius must return to the city of Constantine, but if it is not time for the Antichrist, then neither is it time for Nestorius to return to the city of Constantine. For Nestorius’s teaching lays the groundwork for the Antichrist. Really, brothers, I get inflamed at the impiety of those who utter his words and who think his incomprehensible thoughts. “Bold, willful” —speculating about what they haven’t seen—that’s what Nestorius and his partisans are; God’s wrath homes in on them, and “their destruction won’t be asleep,” unless they turn back and repent of their lawless deceit. Would that we are able to walk with the eyes of our mind illuminated upon the true path and keep the faith that the apostles handed down for us, worshiping one God in three hypostases! One will, one power, one divinity, one kingdom of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the true humanification of the Only-Begotten, who was given flesh from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary in accordance with the pious tradition of the fathers, and who was seen by us in the flesh, and who worked divine wonders and miracles, and who, in his flesh, suffered the cross and death on our behalf, and has raised us, who had been broken down by sin, together with himself and guides us up to the primal blessedness.

His listeners rejoiced and embraced him at being taught so well.

 

Source: Chapter 39 of The Life of Our Sacred Father, Hypatius of the Rufinianae, by Callinicus, introduction and translation by Bradley K. Storin, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN, 2025, pp. 127-128.

 

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