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Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
As a community, it was distinguished in part by its disdain of riches. The Christians held all possessions in common, and the wealthy among them were obliged to sell their property to assist the poor members of the community.
The Cappadocian arguments against the Eunomians were many, complex and subtle; but perhaps the most effective was the simplest: if it is the Son who joins us to the Father, and only God can join us to God, then the Son is God; and if, in the sacraments of the Church and the life of faith, it is the Spirit who joins us to the Son, and only God can join us to God, then the Spirit too must be God.
Chalcedon marked the end of an undivided Catholic order. Monophysite communions – the Coptic Church of Egypt, the Ethiopian Church, the Syrian Jacobite Church, the Armenian Church – broke with Constantinople and Rome. So did the Nestorian communion, in East Syria and Persia. Collectively, these are now often referred to as the ‘Oriental Churches’.
The great tragedy of the Christological controversies was that, for the most part, the Churches were divided more by language than by belief. The so-called Monophysites, for instance, never meant to deny the full and inviolable humanity of Christ. The so-called Nestorians never meant to deny the real unity of God and man in Christ. There were, however, powerful political forces at play as well: the division of the ‘Oriental’ Churches from Rome and Constantinople was partly the result of indigenous resentment of imperial power.
History is definitely cyclic…
It was at the end of the tenth century – tradition says 988 – that Russia (or, at any rate, its people, the Rus) became Christian, under Prince Vladimir the Great (c.956–1015), monarch of Kiev and Novgorod, who secured unchallenged rule over his dominions in 980.
Absolutely lame historical claim; its ruth, not rus; its Kyiv not Kiev; In 10th century there was no Russia or russian territories, author is biased.
