Abstract
In this talk, I put aside the usual Eastern or Byzantine Orthodox clichés about Assyrian christology and I listen to what the Assyrian Church of the East says, especially in its official statement on doctrine. Accordingly, I consider the statement, highlighting the obvious agreement between its content and what my own Church tradition believes. The only exception is the Greek concept of “assumption,” borrowed by the Assyrian tradition from the fourth-century theologians of Antioch. Otherwise, there is nothing “Nestorian” with the statement under consideration. I then turn to the appellation of Saint Mary as “Mother of Christ” and “She who gave birth to God (incarnate),” showing what these mean for the two traditions. I also make a foray into the Romanian Orthodox devotional phrase “the Lord’s Mother,” which echoes Assyrian terminology. I continue by suggesting the usefulness of dissociating the traditional Assyrian christology from the dualistic or metaphysical Greek christology of Antioch’s theologians. This would make possible the assessment of Assyrian christology in its own terms. I end by reflecting upon Mar Aprem’s theology of mystery, in the light of which our christological speculations and phraseology appear as semantics gone mad.
I begin with a caveat: In what follows, I am not claiming to speak on behalf of my Church tradition; what I’m sharing here are my personal views. Now, one does not have to dive deep into the tradition of Eastern or Byzantine Orthodoxy to discover its attitude towards the Assyrian Church of the East. Assyrian Christians are not welcomed around the Byzantine chalice. That sums up the situation. What causes disunity, apparently, are our different ways of articulating the God incarnate’s mystery—rather, how each one thinks the other one does it. But the real cause of disunity is that we ignore each other. This is why, instead of parroting Byzantine clichés about Assyrian christology, I’m here to listen to you. Accordingly, in what follows I reflect upon the Assyrian Church of the East’s statement on doctrine.[1]
This is how it begins: “The teaching of the Church of the East is based on the faith of the universal Church as set forth in the Nicene Creed. The mystery of the Holy Trinity and the mystery of the Incarnation are central to its teaching.” So far so good; Byzantine Orthodoxy believes the same, while it also reveres six later councils. I take this opportunity to draw your attention to the word “mystery” in the above lines, essential for what I mean to say here. The statement further affirms the Church’s faith that “the Only-begotten Son of God, God the Word, became incarnate for us human beings and for our salvation and became man.” I replaced the plural “men” by “human beings,” but I fully agree to this sentence, which paraphrases the Creed.
The statement goes on to speak of Christ’s eternal birth from the “Father before all worlds without beginning, according to his divinity,” and of his historical birth “of a mother without a father in the last times, according to his humanity.” Christ’s mystery is irreducible to either of the two natures, divine and human. The statement then turns, logically, to the Lord’s historical birth “in a body of flesh, with a rational, intelligent, and immortal soul which He took from the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary and united to himself, making it his very own at the moment of conception.” He who is Son of God and true God has become a true human being, experiencing as his own our very condition, the stuff of which we all are made. And so, paradoxically, the eternal “God the Word” has become, through the incarnation, “the personal subject of the divine and human natures” by “assuming” our humanity. The mystery deepens, for Christ’s “divine and human natures retain their own properties, faculties, and operations unconfusedly, immutably, undividedly, and inseparably.” These four adverbs, “unconfusedly, immutably, undividedly, and inseparably,” which qualify the union of the two natures within Christ’s single person, show that no simplistic approach can give us a round picture of who and what the Lord is. Significantly, these adverbs are acknowledged by my own theological tradition as hallmarks of the apostolic faith.
The statement then emphasises that “the Church of the East rejects any teaching which suggests that Christ is an ‘ordinary man’ whom God the Word inhabited, like the righteous people and the prophets of old.” Again, I changed the plural “men” into “people.” What the Lord lives as Word of God incarnate is not what the saints experience. The person of Christ is a mystery without equivalent in heaven and on earth. The statement continues by dismissing groundless accusations coming from my own tradition and from others, that the Assyrian Church is “Nestorian.” As we read, “The Church of the East further rejects any teaching that explicitly or implicitly suggests that there are two Sons, or two Lords, or two Christs in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, but we confess one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. The same, through his passion, death, burial, and resurrection, redeemed humanity from the bondage of sin and death, and secured the hope of resurrection and new life for all who put their faith in Him, to whom, with His Father and the Holy Spirit, belong confession, worship, and adoration unto ages of ages.”
There is nothing “Nestorian” with this statement—at least not as various theological traditions understand “Nestorianism.” One wonders, therefore, what could prompt Byzantine theologians and others to suspect Assyrian Christians of adopting the Greek metaphysical speculations of Nestorius of Constantinople [2]—who, much like the scholars of today, [3] did not know Syriac and could not possibly account for the subtlety of Assyrian christology.
One thing is clear to me in regard to the statement under consideration: Except for the verb “to assume” (that is, the Word assumed human nature) which originated in the fourth-century Antiochian discourse and was later seen by the Byzantines as insufficient for expressing Christ’s mystery, there is a perfect agreement between the christology of the Assyrian Church of the East and the Churches of Byzantine tradition.
Let me summarise the above discussion and take a step further, by comparing the christology of the Assyrian statement and my own theological tradition. In short, the Church of the East affirms Christ’s two natures, divine and human, and acknowledges that the Lord is one person, the single subject of the two natures. Moreover, the Church of the East refers to Saint Mary as the “Mother of Christ,” Christ being God and man. It is not part of the Assyrian tradition to call Saint Mary, as the Byzantines do, theotokos, which means “she who gave birth to God” and, I would hurry to add, “to God incarnate.” In turn, the Byzantine Orthodox Churches call Saint Mary theotokos—a term they inherited from another ancient Christian tradition, of Alexandria—which they understand in the sense that Saint Mary is the mother of God’s Son incarnate, not Christ’s eternal progenitor. Like the Assyrians, the Byzantines believe in Christ as God incarnate and proclaim him to be one person, or hypostasis, “in two natures,” divine and human. This proclamation does not allow for confusion about Saint Mary’s role in the incarnation, seen as an historical, not eternal, event.
Before I proceed any further, I would like to share something with you, from my own Romanian Orthodox heritage, which is a distinct branch of the Byzantine tradition, speaking a Latin-based language. (Most Eastern Orthodox Churches are either Greek- or Slavonic-speaking.) Thus, in devotional parlance, Romanian Orthodox believers refer to Saint Mary as “the Lord’s Mother” (Maica Domnului), not theotokos. Only our liturgical texts, most of which are translated from Greek, refer to the theotokos, which term, mind you, Romanians do not use even in their liturgy because—centuries ago—they translated this concept into their own language as “Birth-giver of God” (Născătoare de Dumnezeu). In talking about “the Lord’s Mother,” Romanians seem to be more interested in the profoundly personal connection between Saint Mary and her Son, Christ, than in the technical language of the Byzantines. Could this be a foundation for conversations between our Churches? Perhaps. But, please, don’t get me wrong: There is nothing outrageous about theotokos, which means “she who gave birth to God,” or better, “to God incarnate,” even though the Assyrian tradition is not familiar with this term. Likewise, there is nothing outrageous about saying “Christ’s Mother” or “the Lord’s Mother,” as long as we know who Christ is, God incarnate, true God and true man—one and the same Lord and Master of our lives. And we all show Mary the same reverence, agreeing with Mar Aprem, or Saint Ephrem, who movingly refers to her, saying, “Blessed is the one, my Lord, who has become worthy to call you, with great love, ‘Beloved Son,’ just as God Your Begetter calls you.” [4]
At this juncture, it would be remiss of me not to point out that the word that scandalised so much the fourth- and fifth-century Greek theologians of Antioch, I mean theotokos, was adopted by the Byzantines as a pastoral and devotional way of reminding the believers that Christ, while being born of a human mother, is true God. They implemented this term in order to counteract the Arian propaganda that asserted the inferiority of Christ to the Father on the ground that he was born of a woman and seemed to be an “ordinary man.” This is, precisely, what the Assyrian Church of the East means by rejecting the phrase “ordinary man,” namely, to preclude the idea that Christ is not true God incarnate, or God become man. I must also point out that this devotional strategy of the Byzantines is the popular correspondent, for the grassroots, of the intellectual or polemical approach of the Greek theologians of Antioch, who innovated what modern scholars call a “dualistic christology” that emphasises the two natures in Christ. This dualistic christology, which sharply differentiates Christ’s divine and human qualities, was as efficient in defeating Arianism as the popular term theotokos was, affirming that the Lord’s humble condition relates to his historical birth, not his eternal origin.
I must point out further that the christology of the Greek theologians of Antioch does not account for either Assyrian cultural sensitivities or the nuances of the Syriac language—a matter His Eminence Mar Meelis discussed in the first of his three recent lectures on Assyrian christology. [5] In short, dualistic christology, especially its “two Sons” variant, is a fourth- and fifth-century Greek metaphysical construct meant to oppose Arian speculative thinking. Nevertheless, it represents a departure from the early christology of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, formulated in his Letter to the Ephesians. [6] Moreover, this philosophical christology relied upon a grammatical reading of Scripture, the signpost of which being—strangely, in that it echoes Arianism—the reference to Jesus as an “ordinary man.” This way of reading was unprecedented in the history of Christian exegesis, ignored the apostolic “rule of faith,” and diverged from Mar Aprem’s theological method and scriptural interpretation. It is for these reasons that, I believe, both Assyrians and Byzantines should take the speculations of the fourth- and fifth-century Greek theologians of Antioch with a pinch of salt—as Saint Athanasius did in Letter to Epictetus, followed by Saint Gregory the Theologian in Letters to Cledonius [7]—and not confuse them with Assyrian christology. The dissociation of dualistic christology from the traditional Assyrian faith would lead to an understanding of the latter in its own terms, not through the lens of foreign categories.
Now, I must confess that, personally, I am bewildered by the reasons why the Assyrians and the Byzantines cannot see eye to eye, doctrinally speaking, and why they cannot meet around the same eucharistic chalice. After all, both believe Christ to be “God and man” and “God incarnate,” affirming the mystery of the Lord as one person, two natures. The fact that they use different words to explain the unity of Christ—such as parsopa or person, as the Assyrians prefer, and hypostasis, as the Byzantines prefer—is not a solid reason for considering each other destined to hellfire. Nor is the designation of Saint Mary as “Mother of Christ” and “she who gave birth to God incarnate,” respectively, sufficient for breaking up Christian fellowship. What seems to be the case, here, is semantics gone mad, especially because of the political circumstances of a bygone era—circumstances we don’t even remember clearly, lost as they are in the mists of legend.
Yes, our disunity originates in and consists in semantics. All boils down to how we interpret three words, physis, hypostasis, and prosopon, or kyana, qnuma, and parsopa. Christ must be very impressed by our linguistic acrobatics—by which we ascribe absolute value to human words that break down at the gates of his mystery. Wisely, Mar Aprem warns: “O you who shoot your arrows at the great mountain: do not think they reach it!” [8] And they don’t. The arrows of our semantic theology, the arrows of our words don’t reach even the foothills of Christ’s mystery. “Insofar as they investigated the truth,” continues Mar Aprem, “they destroyed it.” [9] And we did. And we destroyed ourselves in the process. No wonder the saintly poet invites us to “reveal things without debating and hidden things without investigating.” [10] And he prays, “May I learn beneficial speech; may I acquire discerning silence.” [11] May we all learn the same.
Thus, all the speculations and terminologies we both were able to devise in history amount to imperfect models. Models, we know from the sciences, are but simplifications of reality—in this case, a reality that transcends everything our thinking and vocabulary could come up with. No christological model is better than other models, but certain models work better than others for certain communities of believers. None of us is fully right. How can we, mere humans, claim to be able to dissect the mystery of Christ, to do the anatomy of this most profound of mysteries? May we acquire discerning silence! May we revere the mystery as we should have from the beginning, humbly. Let’s not repeat the sins of our ancestors!
There is more we share in common than what separates us. But we all need to dig deep in order to understand what we uphold as our faith, how we express it, and why do we feel about each other the way we do since the fifth century to date. Thankfully, important steps are being made in that direction, and the release of Mar Bawai the Great’s Book of Union, whose presentation by His Holiness Mar Awa and Dr Parry occasioned this symposium, is one such step. This significant treatise provides crucial information for Assyrians and non-Assyrians alike, but especially for the theologians of my own tradition, who, not knowing Syriac, have been perpetuating “Nestorian” stereotypes that are inapplicable to the Assyrian Church of the East—a Syriac-speaking, not a Greek-speaking Church. Scholarly contributions of this kind are the way ahead when it comes to identifying the root of the problem and to overcoming disunity. And we heard good news today, news that will undoubtedly lead to a better understanding of one another and, let’s hope, to eucharistic fellowship between our Churches. It might take a while for the officials and the diehard ideologists of the Byzantine Orthodox tradition to assimilate this news, but I pray that they will do so at some point, sooner rather than later. Christ demands it. Christian fellowship needs it.
Acknowledgment: This paper was given for the Nisibis Symposium 2024, held under the auspices of the Assyrian Church of the East (ACOE), Diocese of Australia, New Zealand and Lebanon. Western Sydney University, Campbelltown NSW, 2 November 2024.
Notes
[1] See https://www.assyrianchurch.org.au/doctrine-1 (accessed 20 October 2024).
[2] For an analysis of Nestorius’ metaphysical approach, see Doru Costache, “Fifth Century Christology between Soteriological Perspective and Metaphysical Concerns: Notes on the Nestorian Controversy,” Phronema 21 (2006): 47-59, esp. 48-51. For analyses of Nestorius’ christological terminology and thinking, see John A. McGuckin, St Cyril of Alexandria The Christological Controversy—Its History, Theology, and Texts, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 23 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 126-150; Sebastian Mateiescu, “‘In Contemplation Only’: Revisiting the Debate between Chalcedonians and Anti-Chalcedonians on the Reality of Natures in Christ,” Modern Theology 39:3 (2023): 490-507, https://doi.org/10.1111/moth.12871.
[3] There is no reference to Assyrian christology in The Oxford Handbook of Christology, ed. Francesca Aran Murphy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), and the Assyrian Church of the East is mentioned only once.
[4] Ephrem, Hymns on Faith 3.1, in St Ephrem the Syrian: The Hymns on Faith, trans. Jeffrey T. Wickes, The Fathers of the Church 130 (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2015).
[5] Mar Meelis Zaia, “Exploring the Christology of the Assyrian Church of the East,” three parts; part one, min. 33, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybFj7-1Ns9M (accessed 20 October 2024).
[6] “There is one physician who is both flesh and spirit; made and not made; God existing in flesh; true life in death; both of Mary and of God; first passible and then impassible—Jesus Christ our Lord” (Letter to the Ephesians 7.2).
[7] To my knowledge, so far, together with McGuckin’s monograph, the main Eastern Orthodox attempts at understanding these Greek theologians of Antioch are Georges Florovsky’s The Byzantine Fathers of the Fifth Century, Collected Works 8 (Belmont, MA: Notable & Academic Books, 1987), followed by John Behr’s The Case Against Diodore and Theodore: Texts and Their Contexts, Oxford Early Christian Texts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
[8] Ephrem, Hymns on Faith 1.3.
[9] Ephrem, Hymns on Faith 7.1; see also 7.9.
[10] Ephrem, Hymns on Faith 2.9.
[11] Ephrem, Hymns on Faith 1.19.
2 November 2024 © AIOCS
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