Assyrian Church of the East
- Grew from
- Church of the East
- Origin
- Mesopotamia, now Iraq
The continuing body of the Church of the East, which declined to accept the condemnation of Nestorius at Ephesus in 431 and developed outside the Roman empire under Persian and later Islamic rule. A schism in 1552 sent part of the church into communion with Rome as the Chaldean Catholic Church. The twentieth century was severe: massacres during the First World War, and the flight of most of the remaining community from Iraq after 2003.
What marks it out
The Holy Leaven, a tradition that a portion of the bread is carried forward from the Last Supper itself. The Liturgy of Addai and Mari, among the oldest in continuous use, and unusual in having no explicit words of institution — which Rome nevertheless recognised as valid in 2001. East Syriac Aramaic remains the liturgical language.
In the record
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431 AD Division
Council of Ephesus
Condemned Nestorius over how Christ's natures should be spoken of. The Church of the East did not accept it and went its own way.
This body appears in the history but does not carry recorded doctrinal positions here, so it is absent from the comparison panels.