Nestorian soteriology

Perry Robinson writes to correct my comments about Nestorian soteriology early this week: “Nestorius didn’t underwrite a synergistic soteriology in his Christology since he explicitly advocated a monothelite Christology. The divine used the human and produced a single appearance which was used by the divine will. See Cyril Hovorun, Will, Action and Freedom: Christological Controversies in the 7th Century, Brill, 2008.”

He adds, “Nestorius kept the divine and human separate in terms of each hypostasis,that is essence, but the single prosopon that was produced from images of the two hypostases was single, monothelite and monergistic. The humanity was therefore a tool of the divinity, related through an extrinsic act of will. This seems very close to the Extra Calvinisticum in so far as the person of Christ is more than the person of the Logos. Or as the WCF puts it, the  person of Christ is both human and divine (8.2).”

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