A learner’s guide
- Christian family
- Ancient apostolic communion
- Historical setting
- Edessa, Mesopotamia, and Persia; organised under the catholicos of Seleucia-Ctesiphon from 410
Historical origin
Where this tradition came from
Christianity reached Edessa and Mesopotamia very early and spread into the Persian Empire. At the Synod of Seleucia-Ctesiphon in 410 the Persian bishops accepted the Nicene faith and organised themselves under the bishop of the Persian capital, the catholicos. The Synod of Markabta (424) declared that the catholicos could not be judged by the “Western fathers”, which made the church independent of the Roman imperial churches. It never received the Council of Ephesus (431) or later councils. Its theology followed the Antiochene school, above all Theodore of Mopsuestia (c. 350–428), whom it calls “the Interpreter”, and was given classic form by Babai the Great (c. 551–628). Its missionaries crossed Asia. A monk named Alopen reached the Tang capital Chang’an in 635, and the Xi’an Stele (781) records the church’s first century and a half in China. Christian communities spread along the trade routes of Central Asia; several Mongol and Turkic peoples, among them the Keraites and the Öngüt, were largely Christian; and the St Thomas Christians of South India received their bishops from the catholicos. Persecution under Timur and his successors in the late fourteenth century left the church a small mountain and village community in upper Mesopotamia and Hakkari. In 1552 a party opposed to hereditary succession to the patriarchate chose Yohannan Sulaqa, who entered communion with Rome in 1553. Rival patriarchal lines moved into and out of union with Rome for three centuries. The Catholic line was consolidated as the Chaldean Catholic Church in 1830, and the Shimun line continued as the Church of the East. During the Assyrian genocide of 1914–1918, which Assyrians call Sayfo (“the sword”), a large part of the community was killed or driven from Hakkari and Urmia. A dispute over the adoption of the Gregorian calendar and over hereditary succession divided the church in 1968, when the Ancient Church of the East elected its own patriarch in Baghdad. In 1994 Mar Dinkha IV and Pope John Paul II signed a Common Christological Declaration, which states that the two churches confess the same faith in Christ.
Authority
How teaching is discerned
Scripture is read within the church’s tradition. That tradition includes the Nicene Creed, the first two ecumenical councils (Nicaea 325 and Constantinople 381), the synods of the Persian church collected in the Synodicon Orientale, the liturgy, and the teachers the church calls the Greek doctors, Diodore of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Nestorius, together with its own Syriac fathers. Bishops teach in synod under the catholicos-patriarch.
Salvation
How God saves and transforms
Salvation is the renewal of humanity through the incarnate Christ. Christ, the second Adam, lived a real human life, conquered sin and death in that humanity, and raised it to immortality, so that believers who are united to him by baptism and the Eucharist share his resurrected life. The church states its Christology as two natures (kyane), each with its own qnoma (its concrete, individual reality), united in the one parsopa (person) of the Son. The Son of God and the son of Mary are one Lord and one Son.
The church
Leadership and belonging
Episcopal and synodal. The catholicos-patriarch presides over the Holy Synod of bishops, with metropolitans, bishops, priests, and deacons below him. The patriarchate of the Assyrian Church of the East was based in the United States from the 1940s; in 2015 the synod moved its seat to Erbil in northern Iraq. The Ancient Church of the East has its own catholicos-patriarch based in Baghdad.
Sacraments and ordinances
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper
Baptism
Baptism is one of the church’s mysteries (sacraments). Infants and adult converts are baptised in the Trinitarian name, by immersion, and anointed with holy oil. The medieval list of ʿAbdishoʿ of Nisibis (d. 1318) counts seven mysteries: priesthood, baptism, the oil of anointing, the Eucharist (the Qurbana), absolution, the Holy Leaven, and the sign of the cross.
Communion / Eucharist
The bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. The Holy Leaven (Malka) is a distinctive mystery: a portion of leaven is added to every batch of eucharistic bread, and it is renewed each year on Maundy Thursday. The church holds that this leaven comes down from the Last Supper. The main Eucharistic prayer, the Anaphora of Addai and Mari, is among the oldest in use and has no continuous narrative of the words of institution. In 2001 the Catholic Church’s guidelines on admission to the Eucharist between the Chaldean Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East recognised this anaphora as valid, and they allow members of each church to receive Communion in the other in certain pastoral circumstances.
Gathered life
What worship may feel like
The Qurbana is celebrated in Classical Syriac, often with readings and hymns in modern Assyrian (Sureth), Arabic, Malayalam, or English. Three anaphoras are used, named after Addai and Mari, Theodore, and Nestorius. Churches are usually plain, and the bare cross, with no figure of Christ, is the main object of veneration. The hymns of Ephrem the Syrian and Narsai belong to a long tradition of sung Syriac poetry, and fasting is kept through the church year, including the Rogation of the Ninevites before Lent.
Distinctive emphases
- The first two ecumenical councils
- Two qnome in one parsopa: the Antiochene Christology of Theodore and Babai
- The Holy Leaven and the Anaphora of Addai and Mari
- Liturgy and hymnody in Syriac
- A mission history across Asia, from Persia to China and India
Read with care
Internal diversity and a common misconception
Where members differ
The Assyrian Church of the East and the Ancient Church of the East share doctrine and liturgy and have held talks on reunion; they differ mainly over the calendar and the 1968 succession dispute. Most members now live in the diaspora, in the United States, Australia, Sweden, and elsewhere, while communities remain in Iraq, Syria, and Iran. The Chaldean Syrian Church of Thrissur in Kerala belongs to the Assyrian Church of the East. Two Catholic churches share the same East Syriac heritage and liturgy: the Chaldean Catholic Church, whose patriarch is in Baghdad, and the Syro-Malabar Church of Kerala. Both are in full communion with Rome.
Do not assume
The label “Nestorian” is rejected by the church and is misleading. Its Christology comes from Theodore of Mopsuestia and the wider Antiochene tradition, and its classic form was set by Babai the Great two centuries after Nestorius. It honours Nestorius as a teacher. It does not teach that Christ is two persons or two sons: it confesses one Christ, fully God and fully human. The 1994 Common Christological Declaration recognised that its preferred title for Mary, “Mother of Christ”, and the Catholic “Mother of God” express the same faith.
Go to the source
Read this tradition in its own words
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