This is a stimulating and in some respects important book which will evoke discussion inside and outside the fellowship of scholars. Copts and Syrians of East and West, if they read it, may take special comfort from the author's conclusion that the ‘essence’ of Nestorius’ teaching was declared orthodox at the Council of Chalcedon, that being a conviction that they have always upheld. Doctrinal theologians can argue over what the ‘essence’ of Nestorianism is; and fellow historians of the period will take account of some fresh evidence and alter their lecture notes accordingly. George Bevan is a pupil of my dear and much respected friend Timothy Barnes. The book bears witness to many of the master's virtues: some important lines of interpretation and many smaller details were, as Bevan faithfully records, contributed by Barnes who will take pleasure in the work of his accomplished pupil.

Let me pick through the book (it is too long and too packed to do more) with added comments of my own. The first chapter is on the sources and the scope of the book. The former, at least when we reach the Conciliar records, abound but have problems of their own including tantalising gaps which conjecture must fill. As for the latter, it is, in effect, a church history for the years in question. A vignette of Nestorius’ death prepares the reader for the little surprise which is to come in the last pages almost as high point of the tale. Exhausted by years of exile, the wretched former archbishop of Constantinople is presented to us toiling towards Nicaea on his way to a grand council where the emperor has planned his vindication. Nestorius fell from his donkey and died. The grand design was thwarted. Instead the Council of Chalcedon, by its doctrinal decisions, achieved Nestorius’ vindication in another way. How and why this is supposed to have happened is a good part of the subject of the rest of the book. The next chapter places Nestorius in his intellectual context within the tradition of Theodore, and I should add as a conservative adherent of that tradition. (I cannot imagine Nestorius interpreting Thomas’ ‘My Lord and my God’ as a simple expression of surprise – as it were ‘Oh dear me’ – as Theodore is supposed to have done). A good and balanced account of Nestorius’ years at Constantinople follows including a convincing explanation of Nestorius’ promise to the emperor of the Persians in exchange for a heresy-free Empire. Included here is a shortish section on his baptism of a son, Arcadius, of the emperor, an interesting fact if it be such. I have my doubts but Timothy Barnes believes it which makes doubt unwise. The postulation of an otherwise unrecorded royal person on the basis of a line in a speculatively re-attributed sermon and a mosaic now disappeared does seem to demand a certain leap of faith. Fortunately the point is immaterial to the narrative. The role of Pulcheria is subjected to justified reassessment and the picture usually presented of Theodosius modified. He is shown as proactive, certainly not as deliberately standing aloof from ecclesiastical affairs including doctrinal deliberations. The causes of the outbreak of the Christological controversy with Cyril are examined. This involves Bevan in some reconstructive surgery since Nestorius’ account is found to be more ‘spin’ than fact. Interestingly he interprets Nestorius as starting the controversy over Theotokos, Cyril only being drawn in when he had sounded out Rome. The portrait of Nestorius is well drawn (he gave up too easily) and the account of his teaching fair. As for the Council(s) of Ephesus, he views the Antiochene party as the ultimate victors and the Formula of Reunion of 433 as conceding the argument. Nestorius would, it is argued, have been content. The intervening period, with its flurry of deposed bishops, is covered in fair detail and a programme hatched by the court, after the affair of Eutyches, to recall Nestorius and permit the court to imitate Constantine and Arius and achieve the reconciliation of a former heretic. The plan did not work because Nestorius died but the Council of Chalcedon had much the same effect, if I get the author's point correct. I find all this last bit frankly daft, groundless speculative inference of which the book contains rather too much.

As I indicated at the beginning of this review this book will inform, tease and irritate: not necessarily bad things, virtues indeed, rousing us from our dogmatic slumbers by questioning what was taken too easily for granted. The subject has been fought over so often that every detail, every footnote almost opens up into a debate. It is good that someone has sought to take a fresh and unprejudiced view of it all. There is much to praise and though I think that in many respects Bevan is wrong in others he is entirely correct. And at least this must be said for him: there would have been no Fifth General Council if plenty of people had not largely been in agreement with him.