Tradition · 451

Oriental Orthodox

The family of churches that accept the first three ecumenical councils but not the Council of Chalcedon (451), and hold Miaphysitism.

Its members are the Coptic Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo, Eritrean Orthodox and Malankara (Indian) Orthodox churches. They are in full communion with each other, but each is self-governing, with its own patriarch or catholicos, liturgical language and calendar. Estimates of their combined membership vary widely, from under 60 million to the churches’ own claim of about 87 million; one 2020 estimate gives 72 million, most of them in Ethiopia and Egypt (summary, secondary).

History

Roots

The family’s theology begins with Cyril of Alexandria and his fight with Nestorius. Against a Christology that seemed to set the divine Word and the man Jesus side by side, Cyril insisted that the one who was born of Mary, suffered and died is the eternal Son himself. His formula was “one incarnate nature (mia physis) of God the Word,” a phrase he believed came from Athanasius. The Council of Ephesus (431) backed Cyril and deposed Nestorius, and Cyril’s Third Letter to Nestorius with its twelve anathemas became a touchstone. Two years later Cyril made peace with the Antiochene bishops in his letter to John of Antioch (433), accepting language about a union “of two natures.” Both sides of the later split would claim that letter.

Causes

The break came in two steps. In 448 the monk Eutyches, a fierce Cyrillian in Constantinople, was condemned for teaching that Christ’s humanity was not of the same substance as ours. Dioscorus, Cyril’s successor at Alexandria, restored him at the Second Council of Ephesus in 449 and deposed Flavian of Constantinople. Pope Leo I, whose letter to Flavian (the Tome of Leo) had not been read at the synod, called it a robber council (overview, secondary).

A new emperor called the Council of Chalcedon in 451. It deposed Dioscorus, formally for disregarding the canons and refusing three summonses rather than for heresy (sentence). Its Definition of Faith confessed one Christ “in two natures, unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, inseparably,” and endorsed Leo’s Tome. To Cyril’s heirs in Egypt and Syria, “in two natures” and the Tome’s line that “each form does what is proper to it” sounded like Nestorius returning by the back door. Large parts of the Egyptian and Syrian churches refused the council.

For more than a century the emperors tried to repair the split. Zeno’s Henotikon (482) condemned Nestorius and Eutyches, affirmed Cyril’s anathemas, and passed over Chalcedon in silence; it pleased neither Rome nor strict anti-Chalcedonians and caused a schism with Rome until 519 (overview, secondary). Severus, patriarch of Antioch from 512 to 518, gave the anti-Chalcedonian position its fullest theological statement before being deposed under Justin I; he died in exile in Egypt in 538 (letters, tr. E. W. Brooks). When persecution left the Syrian anti-Chalcedonians almost without bishops, Jacob Baradaeus, consecrated in the 540s, travelled the East ordaining clergy and built a separate hierarchy (overview, secondary). That is the origin of the old nickname “Jacobite.” By the late sixth century there were two churches in Egypt and Syria, each with its own patriarch.

Armenia took a different road. Its bishops missed Chalcedon, since the country was fighting Persia that year, and the Armenian Church later rejected the council at synods held at Dvin in the sixth century. The Ethiopian Church, which received its first bishop from Alexandria in the fourth century, followed Alexandria.

Influence

The Arab conquests of the seventh century ended Byzantine pressure on Egypt and Syria and placed these churches under Muslim rule, where they have mostly stayed. They survived as minorities with their own languages (Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Ge’ez) and a strong monastic tradition. The Syriac church carried its rite to south India, where a long dispute between Indian Christians loyal to the Syriac patriarch and those who formed an independent catholicate (1912) produced two churches, the Jacobite Syrian church and the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church. Indian Supreme Court rulings from 1958 onward have repeatedly sided with the 1934 constitution of the Malankara church (overview, secondary). The Ethiopian Church received its own patriarch in 1959, and after Eritrean independence the Coptic Pope Shenouda III granted the Eritrean Church autocephaly (overview, secondary).

The modern sense of a single family dates from the conference of the heads of these churches in Addis Ababa in 1965, opened by Emperor Haile Selassie, where the name “Oriental Orthodox Churches” was formally adopted (summary, secondary). Unofficial consultations with Eastern Orthodox theologians began at Aarhus in 1964 and continued at Bristol, Geneva and Addis Ababa (records). Twentieth-century persecution, from the Armenian genocide to the wars in Iraq and Syria and attacks on Copts in Egypt, has also made these churches better known in the West.

Key ideas and contributors

One incarnate nature. The family’s central claim is Cyril’s: after the union, Christ is one nature of God the Word incarnate, divine and human united without confusion and without division. “Nature” here is used in Cyril’s sense, close to what Chalcedon called a hypostasis: one concrete living subject, not a blend of two essences. This is Miaphysitism, and the churches reject the label “Monophysite” because it suggests that the humanity was absorbed. They condemn Eutyches as firmly as they condemn Nestorius. The Ethiopian name Tewahedo (“made one”) states the same idea (overview, secondary).

Three councils. The churches accept the Council of Nicaea, the Council of Constantinople and the Council of Ephesus, and nothing after. They read the Nicene Creed without the Filioque. Their structure is Episcopal Polity under patriarchs, and their authority is Scripture read within Holy Tradition, with the liturgy as a main witness.

Severus as the systematic voice. Severus of Antioch argued, following Cyril, that after the union the two natures can be distinguished only in thought, while the properties of each remain real. He also defended the real humanity of Christ against Julian of Halicarnassus, who taught that Christ’s body was incorruptible from conception (overview, secondary). That dispute shows the mainstream of the family resisting the very Eutychian drift it is often accused of.

Saints the other side condemned. Dioscorus and Severus are venerated as saints, and Leo and Chalcedon are rejected. The Coptic Church traces its line of popes back to Mark and treats the persecutions after 451 as part of its martyr story.

Ancient practice. The churches keep long fasts, a seven-sacrament life close to the Eastern Orthodox pattern, and very old liturgies such as the Coptic Liturgy of St Basil and the Syriac Liturgy of St James. The Ethiopian Church keeps a larger biblical canon that includes 1 Enoch and Jubilees.

Modern contributors include the Coptic Pope Shenouda III, whose pamphlet The Nature of Christ is a popular statement of the Miaphysite view; the Indian theologian V. C. Samuel, whose The Council of Chalcedon Re-Examined (1977) argued that the split was mainly about words; and the Armenian Catholicos Karekin I (Sarkissian), a leader of the early dialogues.

Key controversies

Was it ever a real difference? Modern dialogue says largely no. In 1973 Pope Paul VI and Shenouda III confessed together that in Christ “His divinity is united with His humanity in a real, perfect union without mingling, without commixtion, without confusion, without alteration, without division, without separation” (Common Declaration). In 1984 John Paul II and the Syriac Patriarch Ignatius Zakka I said the old schisms “in no way affect or touch the substance of their faith,” and allowed their faithful to receive penance, the Eucharist and anointing from each other’s priests when their own were unavailable (Common Declaration).

The official commission with the Eastern Orthodox went further. Its Second Agreed Statement (Chambésy, 1990) said that both families “have always loyally maintained the same authentic Orthodox Christological faith … though they have used Christological terms in different ways,” and that the natures “are distinguished in thought alone.” In 1991 the Antiochian Orthodox and Syriac Orthodox patriarchs agreed on shared pastoral practice in the Middle East (statement).

The later councils. The agreement leaves the councils themselves unresolved. The 1990 statement records that the Orthodox read the four councils after Ephesus as teaching the agreed faith, while “the Oriental Orthodox consider this statement of the Orthodox as their interpretation.” The Oriental side found the seventh council’s teaching on icons in basic agreement with its own. Neither side has asked the other to adopt its councils outright, and critics on both sides say that is where the problem lies.

Lifting the anathemas. The commission proposed in 1993 that each side lift its condemnations “on the basis that the Councils and Fathers previously anathematized or condemned are not heretical” (proposals). That would mean the Eastern Orthodox ceasing to call Dioscorus and Severus heretics and the Oriental Orthodox ceasing to condemn Leo and Chalcedon. No church has carried this through. Traditionalist Eastern Orthodox critics, including a memorandum of the monastic community of Mount Athos (collected with other critiques), argue that the non-Chalcedonians remain heretics and that the dialogue sacrifices the authority of the councils. Some Oriental Orthodox voices make the mirror-image objection about Leo.

Chalcedonian criticism of the theology. The classic Chalcedonian objection is that “one nature” cannot avoid confusing God and man, or at least cannot say clearly that Christ has a full human will and operation. Defenders of Chalcedonian Christology point to the seventh-century fight over one will (Monothelitism) as evidence. The 1990 statement answers by affirming that the natures keep “their proper energies and wills.” The Church of the East, at the other end of the spectrum, has long charged the Miaphysites with mixing the natures, and its own position is set out under Church of the East Christology.

Relations with Rome since 2024. Catholic–Oriental Orthodox dialogue had been warm: in May 2023 Pope Francis announced that the 21 Copts killed in Libya in 2015 would be added to the Roman Martyrology (summary, secondary). On 7 March 2024 the Coptic Holy Synod suspended theological dialogue with the Catholic Church pending review, after the Vatican’s declaration Fiducia Supplicans allowed blessings of same-sex couples (summary, secondary). The Coptic statement did not name the document, but it was widely read as a response to it.

Internal divisions. The family has its own unresolved splits. The two Syriac churches in India have fought over church property and authority for more than a century, in the courts and sometimes in the streets. The Eritrean church’s break from Ethiopia followed national independence, and the deposition of Patriarch Antonios (2006) was denounced by the other Oriental Orthodox churches, which refused to recognize his successor (summary, secondary).

What remains unresolved

The theologians on all sides now largely agree that Cyril’s heirs and Chalcedon’s heirs meant the same thing by different words. What they have not settled is what follows. Accepting that agreement would require someone to change the list of saints and councils that their liturgy celebrates, and churches change their liturgy much more slowly than their theology. Ethics and church practice, not Christology, are now the likelier sources of new distance, as the 2024 Coptic decision showed.