Church of the East

Grew from

The apostolic communities

From

431 AD

Origin

Mesopotamia and Persia

Separated after the Council of Ephesus over the language used of Christ's natures. Carried Christianity along the Silk Road as far as China and India, and survives as the Assyrian Church of the East.

What marks it out

A church that grew up entirely outside the Roman empire, under Persian and then Islamic rule, and so never had a Christian state and never wanted one. Missions along the trade routes to India and China, recorded on a stele erected at Xi'an in 781. Bishops and priests may marry. Its two-natures language, long called Nestorian by others, was declared a matter of terminology by a common declaration with Rome in 1994.

Bodies that grew from it

• Assyrian Church of the East

Alongside it

Also from The apostolic communities.

• Eastern Orthodox
• Roman Catholic
• Oriental Orthodox (451 AD)

In the record

1. 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.

2. 600–1300 AD Migration

   Christianity along the Silk Road

   The Church of the East planted communities as far as Xi'an, where a stele of 781 records its presence, and in Kerala where they survive.

This body appears in the history but does not carry recorded doctrinal positions here, so it is absent from the comparison panels.