Liturgies Eastern and Western (Hammond)

substituted. The Liturgy of Saints Thaddaeus and Mari original: "SS. Adaeus and Maris" is the primary Liturgy of the Nestorian Church. This church is now confined to the province of Kurdistan, but it once spread across most of Asia. It has been separated from the Orthodox Church since the Council of Ephesus (431 AD). The Coptic Liturgies in Egypt and the Syriac Liturgies now all belong to the Monophysite Monophysitism is the Christological position that Christ has only one nature, rather than two (divine and human) Churches of those two countries. Since the sixth century, the Monophysites have been commonly known by the name of "Jacobites." They are named after James Baradaeus, the Bishop of Edessa, who was one of their principal leaders. They have remained separate from the Orthodox Church since the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD), which condemned the error of Eutyches Eutyches taught that Christ’s humanity was absorbed into his divinity. The Monophysitism of the sixth century was merely a refinement of Eutychianism.

That the Armenian Church has also been separate since this same era seems to be due partly to accidental circumstances and partly to a lack of certain philosophical terms¹ in the Armenian language. This led them to misunderstand, and consequently reject, the decrees of Chalcedon. It is very difficult to define the exact way this church diverges from orthodoxy, and The primary Liturgies of these separate communions are not unorthodox. their position seems to be one of schism a formal split or division rather than heresy. In any case, there is no trace of unorthodoxy in their Liturgy, nor in the principal Liturgies of the Nestorians, Copts, or Syrian Jacobites.

This does not apply to the later, secondary liturgies of these groups. Just as the orthodox, when new errors were introduced, inserted expressions into their Liturgy to explicitly refer to and contradict² those errors, so did those outside the orthodox church use some of their later liturgies to emphasize and express their specific views in direct language. However, they did not do this in their principal Liturgy, which was their inherited possession from the period before their separation. In these main texts, they were for the most part more conservative than the Orthodox Church, preserving the language of the old rituals unaltered. The reason why they would do so is not difficult to find. Until

¹ See note 3, page 145.
² For example: "of one substance" original Greek: "homoousios", "indivisibly" original Greek: "adiairetos", "unalterably" original Greek: "atreptos", etc., of which the Greek Liturgy of Saint James provides many examples.