In this article I have been sharing thoughts about the Major Feasts of our Church and why they were established. In the last issue I began sharing thoughts about the feast of our Lord’s Ascension into heaven. As a feast concerned with the nature of Christ, the Ascension was potentially applicable to any controversy over that subject.

According to John of Damascus, the Nestorians credited Christ’s more humble actions to His humanity and His more noble actions to His divinity. They believed that only Christ’s separate human nature died and that it was only extrinsically united with His divine nature. Like Arianism, this was a threat to the true doctrine of salvation. Furthermore, the Nestorian denial of Mary’s title “God-bearer” (Theotokos) in favor of the more limiting “Christ-bearer” provoked intense and increasing opposition to Nestorianism from both right-believing theologians and adherents to the growing Marian devotion. Nestorianism was condemned in 430. Pope Celestine gave Nestorius ten days upon receipt of a papal letter to deny his earlier schismatic position and Cyril of Alexandria added 12 anathemas to which Nestorius was to subscribe. Nestorius refused and was condemned by the majority party at the Council of Ephesus in 431, which also affirmed Mary as Theotokos (Mother of God). Juvenal, bishop of Jerusalem (c. 420-458), had his see raised to the rank of patriarchate as a reward for his part in the proceedings.

The Nestorians believed that Christ’s human nature was incapable of the act of the Ascension without the Holy Spirit’s assistance. In fact, according to John Cassian (c. 360-435), they even falsified the account of the Ascension in Acts 1:1-11 so that Holy Scripture would seem to confirm this. Since the Council of Ephesus only condemned Nestorianism but did not eliminate it, resistance to the celebration of this feast by Nestorian bishops and communities may have been considerable in certain areas. So while Nestorianism’s troubled relationship with the “true and orthodox faith” (that confirmed by the Council’s of the Church) stimulated the growth of later feasts it seems to have inhibited the spread of the Feast of the Ascension.

Liturgical experts are of the opinion that the celebration of this feast only became universal in the fourth century. It was extolled by John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa, Epiphany of Cyprus, Leo the Great and others. In the fourth century, Queen Helena erected a church in honor of this feast.

I interrupted this article on the history of the twelve major feasts of our Church with comments on both the feast of St. Michael the Archangel and the Angelic Host and also the Entrance of Mary into the Temple. Having shared that information, I would return to my original task of sharing with my readers why our major feasts came into being.

The last major feast that I was sharing information about was the Ascension of Our Lord. As I shared, it was originally observed as an adjust to the Resurrection and then later came to be celebrated on Pentecost. It then gradually became a feast unto itself. The natural reluctance to do away with established tradition probably accounts for the slower acceptance of the Ascension as an independent feast in comparison with the more rapid acceptance of the Raising of Lazarus and Palm Sunday.

Cyril of Jerusalem was no stranger to the polemical value of religious feasts. In the interpretation of our Eastern Christianity, the Ascension celebrates the transfer of Christ’s human body into heaven and the completion of his earthly mission, an important step in the process of salvation. It is the ultimate expression of His divine and human natures in one person. Because of this, and especially when linked with Cyril’s relationship to the Arians and his treatment of other liturgical feasts, it seems certain that he promoted the feast of the Ascension as a blow against the Arian heresy. In order to derive maximum results from this feast Cyril gave it greater visibility than it had previously had. Its separation from the core feast to which it had long been attached indicates a new interest in the Ascension’s theological significance in the mid-to- late fourth century and a new desire to emphasize that significance.

As a feast concerned with the nature of Christ, the Ascension was, realistically, potentially applicable to any controversy over the subject. And so it seems that in the fifth century the Feast of the Ascension was as much directed against the schismatic doctrine of Nestorianism as it had been in the fourth century against Arianism. In 428 Theodosius II appointed the Antiochene preacher Nestorius bishop of Constantinople. The new bishop soon attracted attention with his views on the nature of Christ and the role of the Virgin Mary. Nestorianism holds that there are two separate and distinct natures in Christ: the one – the Divine Word – chose to dwell in the other – the human, born of Mary.

I shall attempt in the next issue to again give a clearer understanding of the two heresies.