George Kalantzis: Passibility, Tentability, and the Divine Οὐσία in the Debate Between Cyril and Nestorius

This short communication focuses on the trinitarian implications of the two distinct conceptions of the communicatio idiomatum in Cyril and Nestorius. The paper argues that at the background of the debate on οὐσία was also a deep anxiety concerning the trinitarian implications of the phenomenological expression on passibility and tentability in Christ. Nestorius’s concretio κατ᾽εύδοκίαν allowed the Antiochene not only to avoid ascribing tentability (and by extention passibility) to the divine οὐσία, but also to maintain the triune relationship as simple. Nestorius feared Cyril’s Christology in abstracto and emphasis on single subjectivity threatened trinitarian simplicity by introducing an irreducible duality to the divine self as a (perhaps, “the”) logical outcome of the henosis.