THE THEOLOGICAL SCHOOL AT NISIBIS1 GEORGE FOOT MOORE Harvard University THE Arian controversy had led the church to affirm the union of God and man in Christ, but the relation of the divine and human natures to each other and to the personality of Christ was left unsettled. Arius, like Lucian of Antioch before him, had denied that Christ had a human soul; the (created) Logos assumed a body without a soul (oŵμa ă↓vxov). His opponent, Athanasius, in the zeal of his contention for the divine, uncreated Logos, identical in essence with the Father, expressed himself similarly: "As the Logos is from eternity God and Son, so by the assumption of flesh from the Virgin (the Mother of God, EOTÓKOs), he became also man." Marcellus is more explicit: the Logos is the Ego in the personality of Christ; the human nature which is the organ and substratum of the Logos is impersonal. Apollinaris, on the basis of the Platonic trichotomy, taught that man consists of a material body, an animal soul, the principle of life, and a mind or spirit (voûs), the principle of wisdom and self-determination. If then the Logos be supposed to unite with a complete man, there would be in Christ two principles of self-determination, two free wills, and consequently two persons between which no true union exists. Accordingly he held that in Christ the Logos fills the place of the rational soul. Against these theories of a mutilated human nature in 1 The statutes of the School at Nisibis were published by I. Guidi, Giornale della Societa Asiatica Italiana, 4 (1890), 165–195. German translation by E. Nestle, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 18 (1897-1898), 211-229. Chabot, J.-B., L'Ecole de Nisibe, son histoire, ses statuts. Journal Asiatique, Neuvième Série, 8 (1896), 43-93. Kihn, H., Theodor von Mopsuestia und Junilius Africanus als Exegeten. 1880. Christ - Arian or Apollinarian — the Antiochian School contended for a complete humanity, including free will, and gave to the historical Christ a place in theology from which the development of Christological dogma was step by step excluding him. Diodorus of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia laid stress upon the development of Jesus, not only in body but in mind and character (Luke ii. 52); on the reality of his temptations; the evidence of human weakness, fear, and suffering of mind and body; the limitations of his knowledge. They held that he was in fact sinless, but would not admit that it was by the constitution of his nature impossible for him to sin. A human nature without a rational soul and all that that implies is not really human nature. The mode of union, for which the word ovvápela is employed, they admit to be undefinable; but they could only conceive the indwelling of God in Christ as analogous to his indwelling in prophets and apostles and godly men, although in Christ this indwelling was so complete as to constitute a unique being. The divine and the human in him preserved each its full integrity and distinctive characteristics, so that the union was rather moral than physical or substantial, and was thus progressively realized, becoming more intimate with time, and in the end inseparable. The dwelling of God in the man Jesus was neither κατ' οὐσίαν nor κατ' ἐνέργειαν but κατ ̓ εὐδοκίαν. A real transfer or interchange of the predicates of the two natures they would not acknowledge. It would be perfectly correct, Theodore says, to speak, not merely of two natures, but of two persons, in Christ, for a being (vπóσraσis) is not perfect except as a person. Their position here may be better appreciated by contrasting it with a writing attributed to Athanasius which speaks of "the one enfleshed nature of the God-Logos." Their emphasis on self-determination as the essence of personality logically led the * Other opponents of Apollinaris, such as the Gregories, and Athanasius himself (in 362 A.D.), also give Christ a rational soul, but with a manifest trend toward monophysite theories (and in Hilary with a docetic tendency) — taught that the humanity is penetrated by divinity or assumed into it in such a way as to become one with it by a Evwois quoikh (Athanasius). So Cyril, in the Nestorian controversy, maintained that the Logos assumed the human nature into the unity of his being without undergoing change, so that there was one indivisible subject; the union was with the human nature, not with a human individuality. Antiochians to take the Pelagian side in the Western controversy. The doctrine of Nestorius is essentially the same as that of Theodore. When he went to Constantinople as Patriarch, in 428, he found notions of the person of Christ current which logically implied Apollinarian premises and were irreconcilable with his true and full humanity. The conflict was precipitated by a sermon of Anastasius, the private secretary of Nestorius, who had accompanied him from Antioch, in which the preacher objected to the application of the epithet EOTÓKOS, Mother of God, to the Virgin: "She was but a woman. It is impossible for God to be born of a human being." In the commotion which followed, Nestorius warmly supported Anastasius. "How," he wrote, "can Mary be coTÓKOS? Has God a mother? Then the heathen must be right who give their gods mothers, and Paul a liar who says of the divinity of Christ that he was ἀπάτωρ καὶ ἀμήτωρ. Mary did not bear God, a creature bear the uncreated, but she bore a human being who is the organ of divinity." The union of the divine nature and the human implied no deification of the human nature. Cyril of Alexandria became the leader of the attack upon Nestorius. As a result of his unscrupulous tactics, with the support of the Bishop of Rome, Coelestine, the Council of Ephesus (431 A.D.) proceeded not only to condemn the teaching of Nestorius, but to depose him. But inasmuch as the teaching of Nestorius was not essentially different from that of Diodorus and Theodore, the condemnation tacitly involved these venerated teachers, and did not readily find acceptance in the Syrian schools, where their influence was greatest. Bishop Rabulas, a vehement champion of the decrees of Ephesus, found himself constrained in 431 or 432 to remove the teachers of the great theological school at Edessa for maintaining, in accordance with the tradition of the school, the views of Theodore; but under his successor, Ibas (Bishop in 435), the school was reopened, and the same doctrines were again heard in its lecture-rooms, until finally, in 489, at the instance of Bishop Cyrus, the Emperor Zeno closed it altogether as a well-spring of heresy. The expulsion of the Nestorian ecclesiastics by Rabulas (431) drove some of them across the border into Persian territory, among them Barsumas, who shortly after became Bishop of Nisibis (435-489). The fact that the Nestorians were persecuted in the Roman Empire was sufficient reason why they should be favored by the Persians; and in the first period of this favor Nestorian Christianity gained ground rapidly in Persia, partly at the expense of the orthodox, partly by conversions from Mazdaism. The closing of the school of Edessa in 489 drove the professors and students to Nisibis, where they were cordially received by Barsumas, and the fame and influence of the school there dates from this time. Its first head was Narses, who had a great reputation as scholar and saint; his successors worthily followed in his footsteps, and at the end of the sixth century, when the school had reached its highest point, it numbered about eight hundred students. Other schools were established, at Seleucia for example, but none of them rivalled Nisibis, which was for two centuries or more the principal institution for the training of the clergy of Persia and of the Nestorian missionaries who carried Christianity to the remotest quarters of Asia. Its decline is coincident with the general decay of Christianity in the East, but only in the ninth century did it yield the preeminence to the school at Bagdad, the capital of the Califate. The statutes of the school at Nisibis at two periods in its history have been preserved; those adopted in 496, shortly after its foundation, and reaffirmed in 530, and new regulations from the year 590. Inasmuch as it is the only institution of the kind with whose organization we are acquainted, these statutes are of considerable interest. The school was a corporation, with various privileges and a considerable degree of self-government, though subject ultimately to the authority of the Bishop. The Superior was chosen from the professors, among whom the Professor of Biblical Exegesis was the first in rank. The administration was committed to a Superintendent elected annually by the convocation of the members of the college, who fulfilled the duties of a steward, dean, and librarian; but in important matters he was required to obtain the approval of a Council consisting of the Superior and the leading brethren. Like institutions for the training of the clergy in the West until a comparatively recent time, the school at Nisibis resembled a monastic foundation. The students, and doubtless the teachers, lived in the college, and many of the rules in the statutes regulate this common life. By the supplementary statutes, non-collegiate students are allowed to live in private quarters in the city when there is not room enough for them in the college. Students were admitted after satisfying the Superintendent and the Council of their fitness and being made acquainted with the statutes - a kind of matriculation; the statutes were also publicly read once a year. The entrants promised to remain unmarried; students who married during their course of study were expelled. The course of theological study lasted three years, with a vacation of three months, from August to October. The instruction was free, but the students had to provide for their living out of their private means or to earn it by working in vacation. Those unable to work might receive aid from the Superintendent so far as he had means at his disposal; begging from house to house was, however, strictly prohibited. In term time students were not allowed to undertake any occupation, lest it should withdraw them from their studies; even tutoring boys in the city was forbidden. During the vacation they might work at an honest handicraft in the city of Nisibis itself; but if they engaged in merchandising of any kind, it must be outside the city, in order, probably, not to infringe upon the privileges of the tradesmen's guilds. Study hours were long. At cockcrow the students took their places in the study hall, and spent the entire day copying books, hearing lectures, and learning to intone the services. After chapel in the evening they were obliged to retire to their rooms. Talking about ordinary affairs or making a disturbance in the schoolroom was punished by removal. Idling was visited with reproof; and if that did not work an amendment, relegation followed. Professors who, without permission of the President or without urgent cause such as illness, omitted their lectures, had their salary reduced and were excluded from the Council. Students had to take their meals in common in their quarters; they were forbidden to eat in bakeshops or inns, to spend the night in the |