Oriental Orthodox

Grew from

The apostolic communities

From

451 AD

Origin

Egypt, Syria, Armenia, Ethiopia

The Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopian and Malankara churches, which did not accept the formula of Chalcedon. Modern dialogue has largely concluded the difference was of language rather than substance.

What marks it out

One incarnate nature of the Word made flesh — Cyril of Alexandria's formula, held against the two-natures language of Chalcedon, and the reason for the name Miaphysite. Each church is self-governing with its own patriarch and its own liturgical language: Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Ge'ez, Malayalam. Long and frequent fasting. Modern dialogue with both the Eastern Orthodox and Rome has repeatedly concluded that the churches confess the same faith in different words.

Bodies that grew from it

• Malankara / Saint Thomas Christians
• Armenian Apostolic (301 AD)
• Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo (330 AD)
• Coptic Orthodox (451 AD)
• Syriac Orthodox (451 AD)

Alongside it

Also from The apostolic communities.

• Eastern Orthodox
• Roman Catholic
• Church of the East (431 AD)

In the record

1. 451 AD Division

   Council of Chalcedon

   Defined Christ as one person in two natures. The Coptic, Syriac and Armenian churches rejected the formula, becoming the Oriental Orthodox.

2. 553 AD Council

   Second Council of Constantinople

   Condemned three sets of writings in the hope of drawing the churches that had rejected Chalcedon back into communion.

3. 1438–1445 AD Rapprochement

   Council of Florence

   Signed a reunion of the eastern and western churches that the eastern churches went home and repudiated.

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