Coptic Orthodox Church

[spyridon]

What exactly is the Coptic Orthodox church,whenever I try and look it up,I get Church websites with no info on there Beliefs????????
Thanks,just for my own info...............

[rightbyyou]

What exactly is the Coptic Orthodox church,whenever I try and look it up,I get Church websites with no info on there Beliefs????????
Thanks,just for my own info...............

A general overview can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coptic_Orthodox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_Orthodox

Hope that information helps. This topic will probably get moved to another forum however. Take care.

[romiosini]

What exactly is the Coptic Orthodox church,whenever I try and look it up,I get Church websites with no info on there Beliefs????????
Thanks,just for my own info...............

Christ is Risen!

Brother Spyridon, forgive my bother!
The Coptic church is the continuation of the Heresy that appeared at the 4th Ecumenical Council of Monophysitism. Monophysitism is the belief that Christ had only one Nature. According to Eutyches, Christ's human Nature was obliterated by the Divine, "dissolved like a drop of honey in the sea". According to Apollinarius, he holds that Christ had a human body and human "living principle" but that the Divine Logos had taken the place of the nous, or "thinking principle", analogous but not identical to what might be called a mind in the present day. Miaphysitism, the "monophysite" Christology of extant "monophysite" Churches, holds that in Christ the divine and human nature become one nature, the natures being united without separation, without confusion, and without change. Technicly the Coptic one today is based on that Christology and on Egypt. Coptic, to what I know, comes from Arab Egyptian dialect, meaning egyptian. So we can presume, Egyptian Orthodox Church. They seem to quarrel a lot with the True Orthodox Church of Alexandria today, that is the continuous Church, the Alexandrian Patriarchate, since Saint Athanasius the Great and Saint Cyril. Forgive my idle talk!
Christ is Risen!

[EkhristosAnesti]

The Coptic church is the continuation of the Heresy that appeared at the 4th Ecumenical Council of Monophysitism.

This is a lie. The Coptic Church is the Church that maintained the Orthodox Christology of St Cyril to it's fullest and without comrpomise or concession, for very valid historical purposes. It is not monophysite, for never has it denied the continuing reality of the existence of a complete divine nature (consubstantial with the Father), nor the continuing reality of a complete human nature (consubstantial with mankind) after the union.

You cannot just throw around terms like "monophysite" which have heretical connotations, and ascribe the term to the Coptic Church which has never subscribed to this title nor the heretical implications that follow from it. If you continue to do so from this point on, after I have corrected you, you will be bearing false witness against the Coptic Church.

The Church has simply affirmed along with St Cyril the great, that these two natures after their union (without mingling, without confusion and without alteration) constituted the One Nature of God the Logos Incarnate – The God-Man - such that the person/hypostasis of the Logos became the subject of all Christ's incarnational experiences.

Monophysitism is the belief that Christ had only one Nature.

This statement commits the fallacy of equivocation. It is like saying “Unitarianism is the belief that God is One”. The fact of the matter is, neither statement is false in and of itself, but rather they are ambigious and can be misleading in their implications. For although Unitarianism does believe God is One; the belief that God is One is not an exclusive attribute of Unitarianism but rather one adopted by Trinitarianism as well.

Hence we need to qualify these statements appropriately; for just as Unitarianism is not the corollary of God's being one, neither is monphysitism the corollary of the affirmation of the One nature of God the Logos Incarnate - or else you should label St Cyril a monohysite as well, as many Protestant scholars today have concluded.

Monophysitism is the belief that Christ has one single nature or essence, which is the result of the confusion between the divine and human essences/nature in a manner that the divine consumed the human, such that Christ was essentially left with a divine nature alone. This is the monophysitism attributed to Eutyches (though whether or not Euyches actually ascribed to this doctrine is debateable – even though he has been anathemized by both the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox Church’s).

Miaphysitism on the other hand, also affirms that Christ has ultimately One nature, but it does not deny the consubstantiality of Christ to humanity, nor the unconfused union between the human and divine (as described above). This ultimate nature/physis, is denoted by the prefix "mia" which has a particular nuance to it, implying a composite unity as opposed to a strict singularity. For thos familair with Hebrew, think of the difference between the words yachid and Echad. In the Massoretic the Jews changed the text such that all the statements pertaining to God's Onesness, employed the term yachid - which denotes a strict singulairty. However we know that the original term used was echad which allows for a compund unity.

The One Nature (miaphysis) of God the Logos Incarnate, is differentiaited from the two natures that constitute it through their unconfused and inseparable union by the fact that the divine and human natures are "essences", where as the The One Nature (miaphysis) of God the Logos Incarnate does not denote a new essence, but rather a new capacity by which the person of The Word operates - i.e. as the God-man. The fact of the matter is, St Cyril was a miaphysite.

They seem to quarrel a lot with the True Orthodox Church of Alexandria today, that is the continuous Church, the Alexandrian Patriarchate, since Saint Athanasius the Great and Saint Cyril.

Sorry to break it to you, but the true natural and continuous succession from St Mark the Apostle is preserved through H.H. Pope Shenouda III. St Cyril was a native Egyptian Copt, and his nephew St Dioscorus was his true successor, and he was in turn succeeded by St Timothy. All of whom affirmed perfectly Orthodox Alexandrian Christology as initiated and developed through the traditions of St Athanasius and St Cyril. The Chalcedonians inserted there own patriarch for the See of Alexandria after the unwarranted schism at Chalcedon, but this means nothing to us.

Peace.

[EkhristosAnesti]

SPYRIDON

Those weblinks to the online wikepedia encylopedia website concerning this issue (as provided for you by rightbyyou) seem like generally reliable and objective overviews on the Coptic Church. If you have any further specific questions, please feel free to ask.

Peace.

[rightbyyou]

SPYRIDON

Those weblinks to the online wikepedia encylopedia website concerning this issue (as provided for you by rightbyyou) seem like generally reliable and objective overviews on the Coptic Church. If you have any further specific questions, please feel free to ask.

Peace.

Yeah, I tried to present an unbiased source for Spyridon as I feel I am not fit to judge anyone. In the grand scheme of things I have barely begun my path to Orthodoxy and I don't want to poison the well for others. That being said, I feel both sides have good points. Thank you for the insightful post you made - it was interesting to read. Take care.