Page:PhilipK.Hitti-SyriaAShortHistory.djvu/109

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Syria

while Christ had a true human body and soul, the Logos or Word occupied in him the place of the spirit, which is the highest part of man. Apollinarism links Arianism and Nestorianism by opposing the one and paving the way for the other.

Nestorius was born in eastern Cilicia and lived in a monastery near Antioch. In 428 he was elevated to the bishopric of Constantinople, but three years later his posi- tion was condemned by the Council of Ephesus. The objectionable view he held was that in Jesus a divine person (the Logos) and a human person were joined in perfect harmony of action but not in the unity of a single individual. Nestorius had many followers who constitute the real Nestorians. The so-called Nestorians of Persia, more properly the Church of the East, came later. Cut off from the Roman empire, its adherents evolved their local doctrines and ritual which still survive. Although some of its writers have used decidedly Nestorian language, the liturgical and synodical vocabulary of the church as a whole is remarkably free from it. This is the church which in later times had sufficient vitality to send missionaries as far as India and China.

Next to Nestorianism, Monophysitism was the greatest schism the oriental church suffered. Strictly the Mono- physites were those who did not accept the doctrine of the two natures (divine and human) in the one person of Jesus, formulated by the Council of Chalcedon (451). In the late fifth and early sixth centuries Monophysitism won to its doctrine the major part of northern Syria and fell heir to Apollinarism in the south. The Monophysite church in Syria was organized by Jacob Baradaeus, who was ordained bishop of Edessa about 543 and died in 578. In consequence the Syrian Monophysites came to be called Jacobites. The western part of the Syrian church thus became entirely separated from the eastern. From Syria the Monophysite doctrine spread into Armenia to the north and Egypt to

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