General Council of Ephesus

The General Council of Ephesus, counted as the third ecumenical council of the Christian Church, is not a person but an episcopal assembly held in 431 in the city of Ephesus in the Roman province of Asia, in western Asia Minor. Emperor Theodosius II summoned bishops from across the empire to resolve a Christological crisis that had broken out after Nestorius became bishop of Constantinople in 428. The dispute concerned how the divine and human were united in Jesus Christ and whether the Virgin Mary might rightly be called Theotokos, “God-bearer.” Ephesus, a prominent see already associated in Christian memory with the Apostle John and with Marian devotion, was chosen as the meeting place. Pope Celestine I of Rome, having examined extracts of Nestorius’s teaching, judged it unsound and authorized Cyril of Alexandria to act in the Roman see’s name if Nestorius would not recant.

Nestorius, formed in the Antiochene theological tradition, insisted on the completeness of Christ’s humanity and on a sharp distinction of natures. He rejected the title Theotokos as suggesting that the divine nature itself had been born of a woman, and he preferred Christotokos, “Christ-bearer.” Many of his hearers understood him to divide Christ into two subjects or two sons. Cyril of Alexandria, drawing on Alexandrian interpretation of Nicaea and of Athanasius, held that the one hypostasis of the eternal Word became flesh, so that the one who was born of Mary is the same Son; Mary is therefore truly Theotokos. Cyril’s second letter to Nestorius and the twelve anathemas attached to his third letter became the flashpoint of the controversy. Nestorius and theologians of Antioch regarded the anathemas as veering toward Apollinarianism. The conflict thus joined two theological idioms, Alexandrian and Antiochene, to rival claims of prestige among Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome.

The council opened on 22 June 431 in the church dedicated to Mary at Ephesus. John of Antioch and a large eastern delegation had not yet arrived. Cyril, supported by Memnon of Ephesus and by a majority of the bishops already present, proceeded to try the case. Nestorius, who was in the city, refused to appear before this assembly. The bishops approved Cyril’s second letter as agreeing with the Creed of Nicaea, condemned Nestorius’s doctrine, and deposed him from Constantinople. Papal legates who reached Ephesus shortly afterward confirmed the sentence in Celestine’s name. When John of Antioch arrived, he held a rival synod that deposed Cyril and Memnon. Both sides appealed to the imperial court. Theodosius II at first confirmed the depositions of Nestorius, Cyril, and Memnon; after further inquiry and pressure, Nestorius was removed for good, while Cyril and Memnon were restored. In 433 Cyril and John of Antioch accepted a Formula of Reunion that retained the title Theotokos and the deposition of Nestorius while using two-nature language acceptable to many Antiochenes. Nestorius was sent into exile, eventually to Egypt.

Doctrinally the council defended the unity of Christ’s person and made Theotokos a recognized test of incarnational orthodoxy. It reaffirmed the Nicene Creed of 325 and, in a canon later often cited, forbade the composition of any different creed. Other canons dealt with adherents of Nestorius and of Celestius, thereby linking Ephesus to the earlier African rejection of Pelagianism, and recognized the independence of the Church of Cyprus from the see of Antioch. Reception was not universal. Rome, Alexandria, and, after 433, Antioch treated the council as ecumenical; the Church of the East in the Sasanian Empire did not, and Nestorius remained an honored teacher in that tradition. Later interpretation, especially at Chalcedon in 451, read Ephesus together with a two-nature formula, a reading the Oriental Orthodox churches would reject. The Council of Ephesus thus became both a pillar of classical Christology and a lasting line of division among Christian communions.