A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

Ephrem the Syrian

the tradition of the Holy Fool.

Diogenes of Sinope (see

Simeon,

Simeon,

Stylite

Basil,

‘Evagrius Ponticus’),

Caesar Julian,

Eusebius of Nicomedia,

This was Athanasius’s moment of opportunity,

avoid further argument by rallying the Church to a word which differed from homoousios by one iota: so they declared that the Son and the Father are not ‘the same in essence’ but similar in essence (homoiousios).

Athanasius

the Cappadocian Fathers.

Basil of Caesarea

a naval battle fought at night in a storm, with crews and soldiers fighting among themselves, often in purely selfish power struggles, heedless of orders from above and fighting for mastery even while their ship foundered.

Gregory of Nyssa,

Gregory of Na...

the Trinity consists of three equal hypostaseis in one ousia: three equal Persons (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) sharing one Essence or Substance (Trinity or Godhead).

comparing the Greek word hypostasis, ‘that which lies under’, with its nearest equivalent in Latin, substantia.

Emperor Theodosius I.

At much the same time, the creed which came to be known as the Apostles’ Creed was evolved in the West, embodying the same theology in shorter form.

Nestorius

Bishop Cyril, successor to Athanasius

a way of safeguarding Christ’s divinity against Arianism,

he insinuated that those who overpraised Mary were reviving the worship of a mother-goddess.

Defying Chalcedon: Asia and Africa (451–622) MIAPHYSITE CHRISTIANITY AND ITS MISSIONS

All this was thanks to the large number of Eastern Christians who hated the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon and decided to ignore or oppose them.

From now on Egyptian Christianity increasingly worshipped God in the native language of Egypt, Coptic.

A series of popes, increasingly assertive in the Church (see pp. 322–9), took it as axiomatic that their sainted predecessor Leo had said the last word on the subject of the natures in Jesus Christ in his ‘Tome’, delivered to the unreceptive Miaphysite bishops at Ephesus in 449

from 482 until 519, Rome and Constantinople were in formal schism

the Byzantine Emperor Zeno

bishop, A...

it contained fresh condemnations of Nestorius (an easy target), praised key documents from Cyril’s attack on him, but in a manner deeply offensive to Rome remained silent on the ‘Tome of Leo’, which the Mia...

Justin I

not just in Egypt but throughout the Eastern Empire, there continued to be Miaphysites hostile to the work of the Council of Chalcedon.

Christian approaches came not southwards from Egypt but from the east across the Red Sea, via Ethiopia’s long-standing trade contacts with Arabia and ultimately Syria.

Ezana,

Syriac remained the chief medium of instruction in this school.

Dyophysite Christians, and who became doctors first to the shahs and later to Islamic rulers

how little Arabian Christians were inclined to identify with the imperial Church of Chalcedon:

The trade routes to Syria,

brought Syrian theology and worship into ...

One paradoxical trace of that is the presence of a substantial number of Syriac loanwords in the text of Arabian Christianity’s nemesis, the Qur’an; these probably derive from Muhammad’s knowledge ...

By the sixth century, therefore, the Church of the East was fully established, both in its independence of any bishop in the Byzantine Empire and in its firm adherence to the theology condemned at Chalcedon.

the Catholicos, ‘universal bishop’

As much as the ‘Melchite’ Chalcedonians or the Miaphysites, its spiritual life was sustained by a rapid expansion of monastic life.

Abraham of Kashkar,

Abbot Dadisho,

the Sassanian Shah Khusrau II