Eastern Lessons for the Church in the West

Holy Scripture, Baptism, Holy Communion and Fasting are the Centers of the East Syriac Christian Tradition

By Bp. Joseph 

The Ancient Faith Preserved by the Holy Spirit within the Apostolic, Catholic and Orthodox Church of the East as a Testimony to the Other Apostolic Churches

The indigenous Far Eastern, Indian and Mesopotamian Churches are commonly called by the titles “Assyrian,” “Chaldean,” “Mar Thoma,” “Malankara” or simply “The Church of the East” today. They are extremely important points of contrast and frames of reference through which we can understand Western Christianity, both Byzantine and Roman. By the ancient definitions of the pre-imperial Church of the first four centuries, the Church of the East is an equally Apostolic, Catholic, and fully Orthodox Church. They are Apostolic, founded by Apostles Peter, Thomas, Thaddeus, and Mari, with an unbroken apostolic lineage of bishops until the present day. They are "Catholic," with a complete episcopal, local, and representative form of Church governance. They are Nicene, accepting the Creed of Nicaea as their statement of faith, which was declared by the 318 Holy Fathers who affirmed and sealed the Apostolic Gospel that had been taught to them. They accept a Chalcedonian understanding of Christ as fully God and fully man in two natures (formally declaring Chalcedon to be an ecumenical council twice in their synodal history) and affirm the "Tome of Leo,” the ancient definition of universally affirmed Orthodox Christology.  They are "Orthodox,” in that they preserved the teachings of Christ and His Gospel, faithfully, from the beginning in a holy mission of transmission of Christ's Saving Grace and Authority in His Body, the Church. They are Trinitarian, believing in the Father as Origin of the Godhead, Christ the Eternally Born Son, and the Spirit-Ever-Emanating from the Father. They are Antiochene, literalist, Semitic, and focused on the work of the God-Man, Jesus Christ, who was Fully God and Fully Man, and who contained the fullness of both natures, without mixing or confusion. Christ is God, of one nature with the Father, and man, of one nature with his Mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. He did not derive His Divinity from His Mother, and therefore they call his all-honored, loved, and cherished Mother the "Mshiha Yaldath," "the Mother of the Messiah, Our God," not the "Mother of God" which would be to infer the Father and the Spirit, who are all God, were also born of the Virgin (Syriac only having the biblical term for God, "Alaha" or "Elohim", which means "God the Father," and, therefore unable to say that a generic "divinity" like the Greek "Theos" was born of her blessedness). They are liturgical in worship, biblical in language, Eucharistic in understanding of Church experience, and restorative in vision (not “Ecumenical” in the modern sense, but desiring a restoration of communion between sister churches that hold the truth of the Nicene Creed, unbroken Apostolic Succession, Seven Sacraments, and a right belief in the double nature of Christ). 

“One is Christ the Son of God,

Worshiped by all in two natures;

In His Godhead begotten of the Father,

Without beginning before all time;

In His humanity born of Mary,

In the fullness of time, in a body united;

Neither His Godhead is of the nature of the mother,

Nor His humanity of the nature of the Father;

The natures are preserved in their Qnumas (Outward reality of inward nature),

In one person of one Sonship.

And as the Godhead is three substances in one nature,

Likewise the Sonship of the Son is in two natures, one person.

So the Holy Church has taught.” 

- Teshbokhta of Mar Babai the Great

The Genealogy of the Churches in India, Showing the Initial Founding by Saint Thomas and the Continuity of the Christian Community in the Church of the East, before Portuguese Colonialism Broke the Indian Christians into Different Blocks and Rites and Contributed to the Proliferation of Various Denominations Today (Wikimedia Commons)

The Seal of the Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East, Showing the Tigris and Euphrates and the "House Between the Rivers", Beth Nahrain, the Home of the Assyrian People

The Church of the East holds a place of honor amongst the ancient Churches as the greatest missionary Church in history. While they stress correct doctrine and fidelity to Christ, they believe that doctrinal knowledge is not what saves man, since these are mysteries that can only be approached from afar with human terminology, but humility and submission to the "Faith Once and For All Delivered to His Saints" but be followed for the sanctification and salvation of souls! They therefore do not deny the Holy Spirit to those who disagree with them over definitions or cultural conceptions, but they humbly insist that the Church of the East has been faithful to the Apostles and Early Christian teachings that were delivered to it by God and preserved within the Aramaic language and culture.  

While they never anathemized Nestorius, who was unfortunately belligerent and shockingly forceful in his debates with the Western Church, The Church of the East is not “Nestorian,” nor have they ever espoused the doctrines that the West associated with him (with supposed duality of persons within Christ), they prefer the biblical language to describe the theological mystery of Christ, not the doubtful language of Stoics, Gnostics, and Greek Philosophers. While Greece has contributed much to the world, they cannot assume that its place of honor and use to be higher than the Holy Scriptures, inspired by God, infallible, and preserved for His Church in the Ancient Tongues of the Hebrews and Chaldeans by the Prophets of Old, and the Aramaic Language which proceeds from these, which was the original language of Christ and His Disciples. 

Where their Tradition began to diverge from the Western Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches is rooted in one term, “Ecumene,” which, to the Romans was the “Totality of Civilization United Under Roman Rule.” This political concept, when confused with the “Completeness of the Local Church" and the “Universality of Christ's Saving Gospel" (Two definitions that are hotly debated by the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox), and in so doing exaggerated the place of the emperor (and later the pope) to a central and irreducible capacity within the process of Christianity’s definition of doctrine and secular enforcement of right practice. This term, when confused, makes true, cross-cultural communication unnecessary, and made the councils of the Roman Church far less than “ecumenical.” 

The Church of the East was never a State Religion, and was freed of the tendency to use Christianity as a mechanism for economic and social negotiation between classes and cultures. They hold our “Catholic” status to be the same as the ancient Church, which was the “complete” order of the local lay faithful, deacons, presbyters, and bishops, who are all equal and able to hold one another accountable as pastors and shepherds of the Church. Now, with the passing of the Roman Empire, the tendency is to reduce the importance of secular rulers in the Church (like the Greek Orthodox), recreate a Church-State economy (like the Russian Church is attempting to do), or underplay the whole issue and argue for liberalization and rapid evolution of Church doctrine (like the Anglican Church did in the 20th Century and the Roman Catholic Church is currently doing) has become a new mode of operation - forgetting that Western Church doctrine is the result of political power struggles, more than any other factor in her history. All of these approaches to the State are untrue to the experience of the Early Church, and are untrue to the experience of the Apostolic Christian Community outside of Roman Hegemony. The Church of the East testifies that the State was never necessary for the preservation and propagation of the Gospel and Church, and that God has chosen His Church to shine in the persecution and difficulties of this world, and to be glorified with Him in the next! While all may rejoice in the conversion of emperors and princes, their concerns can never be confused with the Kingdom to Come, and never should these worldly rulers have charge over doctrine or the headship of the Church. 

The Original Scope of the Church of the East in Asia

For the Early Church in Edessa, Nisibis, Seleucia-Ctesiphon and the Persian Empire, Rome’s political claims to universality were not only untenable, but impossible to recognize. Rome was NOT universal. More than half of the world's population lived in China, India, and Persia during the time of Early Christianity. Therefore, as Theodosius I through Justinian I increasingly saw their role in the world as the “Protector of Faith” and the “Bishop of Bishops,” their brothers in the East, who agreed with them in Nicaea I and Constantinople I on the definition of the faith (which was the faith of the WHOLE Church, and was preserved by all in the face of persecution and chaos in both the Roman and Persian Empires), and continued to assent to most of the beliefs of the Orthodox world through Chalcedon and Nicaea II (with the rejection of Ephesus I and II absolutely necessary due to uncanonical status and the dismissal of the entire Eastern Church from Roman Communion, and the cessation of invitation of the Persian Christians to council after the disintegration of Imperial Orthodoxy into the warring factions of Monophysite and Chalcedonian Orthodox), but eventually grew apart and lost connection as the Roman Government and the Sassanian and Caliphate Governments continued to fight each other throughout history. They could not, as members of the Persian Empire, be subject or loyal to the Roman Empire! 

Due to the reality of the Persian Church’s inability to submit to the Church as an earthly political organization, the Church of the East proclaimed itself independent in AD 410, while trying to maintain cordial and respectful relations with the Roman Imperial Church, and this independent reality has continued until today. She did so, not as a schism, but as a recognition of the reality. Christ's Church may be broken along cultural lines, and confined to specific locations and nations, but it is never divided. Brokenness is of our sinful, human condition, and not our participation in the Heavenly and Transcendent Mystery of Christ's Body - which is fully realized in Heaven, and is fully present in every local body that has been faithful to apostolic teaching, baptism, chrism, the laying on of hands, and the Lord's Supper. 

For the Persian Church, the questions of Constantinianism and the ensuing tendency to sacradotalize and elevate human rulers was always concerning. This continuing trend can be seen throughout the course of the Roman Church, ending in a collapse of categories and the State sponsorship, use, and ultimate coercion of the faithful. Emperors normally led doctrinal changes, called councils, enforced councils, and did all of this for the political and social unity and stability of the Roman Empire. While this is understandable, the Eusebian tendencies of the Roman Church to confuse Christ’s Kingdom to come with the earthly kingdom of Rome cannot be condoned.  The Church of the East can provide a healthy and doctrinally sound alternative for this compromise, and a way that the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church may continue to understand its role and presence within a postmodern, post-Christian world. Christians everywhere are headed into a reality that has only been understood and faithfully navigated previously through 1500 years of persecution and oppression by the Church of Martyrs, the Church of the East! 

A West Syriac Saint’s Distillation of the Doctrinal Stance of the Church of the East, Redefining Western Categories in the Light of the Early Church’s Semitic Worldview 

Lessons for the Anglo-Orthodox Movement from the East Syriac Tradition

This hidden and often overlooked ecclesial history of the East Syriac Church shows a “Third Way” in theological studies of ecclesiology, which directly undermines Roman Catholic claims to Papal Infallibility and ecclesial centrality, and also rejects the exclusive claims of Eastern Orthodox fundamentalism. It shows that the qualities of catholicity are primarily discerned through biblical categories and practical continuity, and not dependent upon later political developments, the centralization of episcopal power in patriarchates and papal states, and is not, ultimately, even tied to later (non-ecumenically accepted) doctrinal clarifications (such as occurred in both Rome and Constantinople after they fell into schism). The power of the Ecumenical Council is in its reception, not in its declaration, and that reception is dependent upon each, local, Catholic Church, headed by a bishop who is co-equal to all other bishops. The Scriptures, Apostolic Succession, the Historic Episcopate, the Tripartite Office of Bishop, Priest and Deacon, the reception of the Nicene Creed and of the Ecumenical Councils, and the maintenance of the Sacramental Life of the Church. These are the primary qualities of catholicity that mark the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the efficacy of our Sacraments and the validity of ecclesial orders. It is by these standards, and the historic witness of the Syriac Tradition, that we can confidently disagree with Roman and Byzantine scholasticism and fundamentalism, and insist that we are, indeed, rightful members of the Universal Church and One in the Body of Christ without depending on artificial and anachronistic canonical categories to maintain such a claim!

The Nine Ranks of Clergy According to the Church of the East, Which, Although Separated by Empires and Divergent Cultures, Is Extremely Close to the English Patrimony’s Understanding of Ecclesiastical Structure