School of Antioch

John Chrysostom was the peerless preacher of the patristic era whose golden eloquence earned him the posthumous title 'Chrysostomos'. Trained in Antioch under Libanius and Diodore, his vast corpus of expository homilies on Matthew, John, Romans, and Paul's epistles models rigorous historical-grammatical exegesis paired with fierce pastoral advocacy for the poor.

Theodore of Mopsuestia was the leading intellectual light of the Antiochene School, celebrated as 'The Interpreter' (Maherpgana) by the Syriac Church of the East for his strict historical-grammatical commentaries rejecting allegorical methods in favor of the plain sense and historical scope of Scripture.

Nestorianism arose when Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, objected to calling the Virgin Mary *Theotokos* (God-bearer), preferring *Christotokos* (Christ-bearer) to avoid the implication that God could be born, suffer, or die, which his opponents charged resulted in a loose moral conjunction of two distinct persons (prosopa) in Christ rather than a true hypostatic union.