Thank you for posting this information from your professor. I'd like to make a couple of responses.
1) Yes, Cyril was a jerk in the way he treated Nestorius.
It is not only Cyril being "a jerk." It is an entire church council following his lead, and writing a condemnation of a man based on Cyril's misattribution of what Nestorius actually said. An entire council ratified, under Nestorius's name, a false witness. And, of course, it caused a huge schism in a church which had not previously been split.
2) But Cyril did not treat Nestorius any worse than Nestorius treated Cyril at the time that Nestorius thought he had the upper hand. In his Book of Heraclidis, written much later from exile, Nestorius seems to have forgotten this fact and he whines incessantly about the way Cyril treated him. But he does not back down on his Christology at all, and he does not seem to remember how badly he treated Cyril.
I am aware of Nestorius's prior reputation of being a self-proclaimed hunter of heretics. In that regard, he ticked off a lot of people, and was not well liked. But I don't recall Nestorius's "whining" getting written into church dogma. Nestorius did not lead armed gangs in the street, compelling people and voting bishops to "see things my way."
3) The way Cyril treated Nestorius would have been inexcusable IF a major truth of the gospel were not at stake.
I don't see how you can say "we accept Cyril's treatment because he defended a major truth of the gospel." And again, it turned out to be a mixed bag in the end. Cyril's Christology at Epheusus was overturned to some degree at Chalcedon and Nestorius's "one person, two natures" formulation did make it into the final definition at Chalcedon. It took "the sword" of an emperor to make all parties sit down and make nice. That, I think, is one good explanation for all the inconsistencies that came out of that council. (For example, Cyril is lauded, but his theology gets whacked; Nestorius is still condemned, but his theology makes it into the definition, etc.)
4) Modern scholars don’t think that a major truth of the gospel was at stake, because they believe Nestorius adequately affirmed the “deity of Christ.”
This is vague. Who are the "modern scholars"? Moffett, whom I've quoted most extensively, cites Loofs, who did most of the "modern" work on Nestorius. I'm not able to find any personal background about him. But he also cites A.R. Vine. Perhaps your professor could be more careful to say which scholars are the "modern scholars," and how precisely how that affected their reading of history. McGuckin is not "modern" by any stretch, in fact, he is a devout Eastern Orthodox partisan.
6) Modern scholars generally speaking hold to a Christology very much like that of Nestorius. Their notion of the “deity of Christ” means little more than some sort of divine spirit dwelling in this man. It certainly does not mean that he was the eternal Second Person of the Trinity. Since the modern scholars believe that, and want that to be acceptable, they assume Nestorius’ thought was acceptable, and they assume that Cyril’s vehemence toward Nestorius was only the result of politics. It wasn’t. Behind the politics and the mistreatment of Nestorius lay the fundamental, correct recognition that Nestorius’ Christ could not save us, because he was not God the Son incarnate.
Moffett clearly says Nestorius's theology was "weak". But Nestorius was not in the category of a gnostic, or a docetic, for example. He adhered to the doctrine of the Trinity as espoused at Nicea and Constantinople. He was from the school of Antioch, which used Scripture in a grammatico-historical way (in contrast with the allegorical style of Alexandria.) In my reading, I'm constantly coming across Nestorius citing Scriptures to make his point.
Even so, this is perhaps the only point of the six that really has some merit; with that said, I'm not convinced that any Reformed scholar has ever given this whole period the thorough kind of treatment it deserves. It was, after all, the occasion of the first and probably the deepest schism in church history.
And it is true that other parts of the theology of Theodore and Nestorius were not what we as Reformed believers would accept. But it was legitimate enough in that day. (In the early church, there were wide variations in what people believed, and the fact that an early believer was orthodox in one area of his teaching was no protection that other things he taught or believed were orthodox.)
7) One of the sad ironies of this is that evangelicals emphatically hold to Cyril’s Christology, but we do not realize that we are doing so. And we often passionately defend Nestorius and defame Cyril, not realizing that in doing so we have bought into a liberal, 19th-century way of viewing the controversy that has nothing in common with our own faith.
We do not hold to Cyril's Christology. We hold to Chalcedonian Christology, which is not exactly Cyril's Christology. In his 433 "formulary" with John of Antioch, Cyril made major concessions. Kelly says, "The anathemas which he had made so much of had dropped into the background, and even his favorite expressions, "one nature" and "hypostatic union" had disappeared. Instead he found himself accepting the Antiochene language of "one prosopon" and "union of two natures," while one phrase emphasized the duality of the natures after the union. "Theotokos" was admitted, but only with safeguards which satisfied the Antiochenes, and it was balanced by the admission of their traditional description of the humanity of the Word's "Temple."
This formulary, along with Leo's Tome, were the primary sources for the definition of Chalcedon. Cyril was an opportunist; in the end, on his "christology", he licked his finger, stuck it in the air, and checked the direction of the wind. (And in the end, he accepted what was much closer to Chalcedon, while his Alexandrian school, steeped in "one nature, hypostatic union" did break off and become the Monophysite, Coptic church of Egypt.)
So where do we really stand?
No Reformed scholar really has looked with the depth needed to produce a study which is mentioned in the same breath as Grillmeier or McGuckin. So we really don't know.
P.S. – Nestorius’ use of Christological language was not the problem. The problem was his view of salvation and the view of Christ that came out of it.
What was his "View of salvation"? He was very careful to keep to the parallel of "First Adam / Second Adam", and follow through the implications of that.
Re. Jenkins, I've not cited him here, except for such things as measuring the size and the scope of the "Nestorian" church.
If your professor's work is available online anywhere, I'd be happy to take a look at it.
