Church of the East
The Church of the East or the East Syriac Church, also called the Church of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the Persian Church, the Assyrian Church, the Babylonian Church, the Chaldean Church or the Nestorian Church, is one of three major branches of Eastern Nicene Christianity that arose from the Christological controversies in the 5th century and the 6th century, alongside that of Miaphysitism and Chalcedonian Christianity.
Having its origins in Mesopotamia during the time of the Parthian Empire, the Church of the East developed its own unique form of Christian theology and liturgy. During the early modern period, a series of schisms gave rise to rival patriarchates, sometimes two, sometimes three. In the latter half of the 20th century, the traditionalist patriarchate of the church underwent a split into two rival patriarchates, namely the Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East, which continue to follow the traditional theology and liturgy of the mother church. The Chaldean Catholic Church based in Iraq and the Syro-Malabar Church in India are two Eastern Catholic churches which also claim the heritage of the Church of the East.
Background
The Church of the East organized itself initially in the year 410 as the national church of the Sasanian Empire through the Council of Seleucia-Ctesiphon. In 424, it declared itself independent of the state church of the Roman Empire, which it calls the 'Church of the West'. The Church of the East was headed by the Catholicos-Patriarch of the East seated originally in Seleucia-Ctesiphon, continuing a line that, according to its tradition, stretched back to Thomas the Apostle in the first century. Its liturgical rite is the East Syrian rite that employs the Liturgy of Addai and Mari.The Church of the East, which was part of the Great Church, shared communion with those in the Roman Empire until the Council of Ephesus condemned Nestorius in 431. The Church of the East refused to condemn Nestorius and was therefore inaccurately called the "Nestorian Church" by those of the Roman church. More recently, the "Nestorian" appellation has been called "a lamentable misnomer", and theologically incorrect by scholars.
The Church of the East's declaration in 424 of the independence of its head, the Patriarch of the East, preceded by seven years the 431 Council of Ephesus, which condemned Nestorius and declared that Mary, mother of Jesus, can be described as Theotokos "Mother of God." Two of the generally accepted ecumenical councils were held earlier: the First Council of Nicaea, in which an Assyrian bishop took part, in 325, and the First Council of Constantinople in 381. The Church of the East accepted the teaching of these two councils but ignored the 431 Council and those that followed, seeing them as concerning only the patriarchates of the Roman Empire, all of which were for it "Western Christianity."
Theologically, the Church of the East adopted the dyophysite doctrine of Theodore of Mopsuestia that emphasised the "distinctiveness" of the divine and the human natures of Jesus; this doctrine was misleadingly labelled as 'Nestorian' by its theological opponents.
Continuing as a dhimmi community under the Rashidun Caliphate after the Muslim conquest of Persia, the Church of the East and its largely Assyrian members played a major role in the history of Christianity in Asia. Between the 9th and 14th centuries, it represented the world's largest Christian denomination in terms of geographical extent, and in the Middle Ages was one of the three major Christian powerhouses of Eurasia alongside Latin Catholicism and Greek Orthodoxy. It established dioceses and communities stretching from the Mediterranean Sea and today's Iraq and Iran, to India, the Mongol kingdoms and Turkic tribes in Central Asia, and China during the Tang dynasty. In the 13th and 14th centuries, the church experienced a final period of expansion under the Mongol Empire, where influential Church of the East clergy sat in the Mongol court.
Even before the Church of the East underwent a rapid decline in its field of expansion in Central Asia in the 14th century, it had already lost ground in its home territory. The decline is indicated by the shrinking list of active dioceses from over sixty in the early 11th century to only seven in the 14th century. In the aftermath of the division of the Mongol Empire, the rising Buddhist and Islamic Mongol leaderships pushed out the Church of the East and its followers in Central Asia. The Chinese Ming dynasty overthrew the Mongols and ejected Christians and other foreign influences from China, and many Mongols in Central Asia converted to Islam. The Muslim Turco-Mongol leader Timur nearly eradicated the hitherto large Christian communities in the Middle East. Church of the East Christianity remained largely confined to ethnic Assyrian communities in Upper Mesopotamia, Southeast Anatolia, Northwest Persia and Northeast Levant, and the Saint Thomas Syrian Christians of the Malabar Coast in the Indian subcontinent.
File:Saint Elijah's Monastery 1.JPG|thumb|Ruins of the Monastery of Saint Elijah in Mosul, Iraq, in 2005. The site was destroyed by the Islamic State in 2014.
The Church faced a major schism in 1552 following the consecration of monk Yohannan Sulaqa by Pope Julius III in opposition to the reigning Catholicos-Patriarch Shimun VII, leading to the formation of the Chaldean Catholic Church. Divisions occurred within the two factions, but by 1830 two unified patriarchates and distinct churches remained: the traditionalist Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church. The Ancient Church of the East split from the traditionalist patriarchate in 1968. In 2017, the Chaldean Catholic Church had approximately 628,405 members and the Assyrian Church of the East had 323,300 to 380,000, while the Ancient Church of the East had 100,000.
Inaccurate description as Nestorian
is a Christological doctrine that emphasises the distinction between the human and divine natures of Jesus. It was attributed to Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople from 428 to 431, whose doctrine represented the culmination of a philosophical current developed by scholars at the School of Antioch, most notably Nestorius's mentor Theodore of Mopsuestia, and stirred controversy when Nestorius publicly challenged the use of the title Theotokos for Mary, mother of Jesus, suggesting that the title denied Christ's full humanity. He argued that Jesus had two loosely joined natures, the divine Logos and the human Jesus, and proposed Christotokos as a more suitable alternative title. His statements drew criticism from other prominent churchmen, particularly from Cyril, Patriarch of Alexandria, who had a leading part in the Council of Ephesus of 431, which condemned Nestorius for heresy and deposed him as Patriarch.After 431, state authorities in the Roman Empire suppressed Nestorianism, a reason for Christians under Persian rule to favour it and so allay suspicion that their loyalty lay with the hostile Christian-ruled empire.
It was in the aftermath of the slightly later Council of Chalcedon that the Church of the East formulated a distinctive theology. The first such formulation was adopted at the Synod of Beth Lapat in 484. This was developed further in the early seventh century, when in an at first successful war against the Byzantine Empire the Sasanid Persian Empire incorporated broad territories populated by West Syrians, many of whom were supporters of the Miaphysite theology of Oriental Orthodoxy which its opponents term "Monophysitism", the theological view most opposed to Nestorianism. They received support from Khosrow II, influenced by his wife Shirin. Shirin was a member of the Church of East, but later joined the miaphysite church of Antioch.
Drawing inspiration from Theodore of Mopsuestia, the Assyrian bishop Babai the Great expounded, especially in his Book of Union, what became the normative Christology of the Church of the East. He affirmed that the two of Christ are unmixed but eternally united in his single . As happened also with the Greek terms φύσις and ὐπόστασις, these Syriac words were sometimes taken to mean something other than what was intended; in particular "two " was interpreted as "two individuals". Previously, the Church of the East accepted a certain fluidity of expressions, always within a dyophysite theology, but with Babai's assembly of 612, which canonically sanctioned the "two in Christ" formula, a final christological distinction was created between the Church of the East and the "western" Chalcedonian churches.
The justice of imputing Nestorianism to Nestorius, whom the Church of the East venerated as a saint, is disputed. David Wilmshurst states that for centuries "the word 'Nestorian' was used both as a term of abuse by those who disapproved of the traditional East Syriac theology, as a term of pride by many of its defenders and as a neutral and convenient descriptive term by others. Nowadays it is generally felt that the term carries a stigma". Sebastian P. Brock says: "The association between the Church of the East and Nestorius is of a very tenuous nature, and to continue to call that church 'Nestorian' is, from a historical point of view, totally misleading and incorrect – quite apart from being highly offensive and a breach of ecumenical good manners".
Apart from its religious meaning, the word "Nestorian" has also been inaccurately used in an ethnic sense, as shown by the phrase "Catholic Nestorians".
In his 1996 article, "The 'Nestorian' Church: a lamentable misnomer", published in the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Sebastian Brock, a Fellow of the British Academy, lamented the fact that "the term 'Nestorian Church' has become the standard designation for the ancient oriental church which in the past called itself 'The Church of the East', but which today prefers a fuller title 'The Assyrian Church of the East'. Such a designation is not only discourteous to modern members of this venerable church, but also − as this paper aims to show − both inappropriate and misleading".