The Oriental Orthodox Churches

The Oriental Orthodox family gathers some of the oldest Christian communities on earth: the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt; the Armenian Apostolic Church; the Syriac Orthodox Church; the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church; the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church; and the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church of India. Each preserves a liturgical language and a tradition of great antiquity, and several have known centuries of martyrdom that continue into our own time. Together they number many tens of millions of faithful.

They should not be confused with the Eastern Orthodox Church — the communion of Constantinople, Russia, Greece, Antioch, and the rest — even though the two share the name "Orthodox," a common early inheritance, and much of the same sacramental and monastic life. The two families have not been in communion for over fifteen hundred years, and the reason lies in a single council.

The Fourth Ecumenical Council, meeting at Chalcedon in 451, confessed that Christ is made known "in two natures" — fully divine and fully human — without confusion, change, division, or separation. The churches that became the Oriental Orthodox could not accept that wording. To them, schooled in the language of St. Cyril of Alexandria, the word nature meant something close to what Chalcedon meant by "person," so that "in two natures" sounded like a division of the one Christ into two — the very error of Nestorius returning. They held instead to Cyril's formula of "one incarnate nature of God the Word," understanding by it one united divine-human reality, not a humanity swallowed up.

It is a matter of simple justice to state what they do not teach. They do not hold, and have never held, the heresy of the archimandrite Eutyches — that Christ's humanity was absorbed into His divinity so that He is no longer truly one of us. They condemn Eutyches as firmly as Chalcedon did. For this reason they describe their faith as miaphysite — from mia, "one," in the sense of one united nature — and regard the label "monophysite," which properly names the absorbed-humanity teaching of Eutyches, as a misnomer when applied to them. Scripture's insistence that in Christ God became truly "like unto his brethren" (Hebrews 2:17) is common ground; the question their existence poses is whether fifteen centuries of separation rest on two faiths or two vocabularies for one faith.

In the twentieth century the two families examined that question together at last. An official Joint Commission produced two landmark texts: the First Agreed Statement at the Monastery of St. Bishoy in Egypt (1989) and the Second Agreed Statement at Chambésy, Switzerland (1990). The Second Statement's conclusion was remarkable — that "both families have always loyally maintained the same authentic Orthodox Christological faith," expressed in different terms; that "both families agree in condemning the Eutychian heresy"; and that the ancient anathemas, aimed it now appeared at positions the other side does not actually hold, "should be lifted by the Churches."

These are the findings of a commission, not yet the settled act of the Church. They await formal reception, some Orthodox voices — including on Mount Athos — have raised serious objections concerning the councils and figures the two families still judge differently, and communion has not been restored. Orthodox Christians are not asked to prejudge what the Church has not yet decided. What is undisputed is this: both families confess one Lord Jesus Christ, true God and true man; both reject Nestorius and Eutyches by name; and both have more reason than at any time in fifteen hundred years to pray for the healing of this ancient wound.