The Church of the East believes what it prays. The Ḥudrā, as the big book of daily prayers cycling over the year, contains our words of intimacy with Christ God. No saint, bishop, patriarch, or synod can match the authority of liturgy for it is the Holy Spirit speaking through and with the people of God, incarnating His Son in their community, in our community of the Church of the East. His Grace Mar Awa, Bishop of Modesto and California, has an excellent article 'A Survey of the Christology of the Assyrian Church of the East as Expressed in the Khudra.' Typical of His Grace, you will find loads of extra material packed into his article. Also, my liturgical translations of Annunciation texts available on this blog are all Christological, and you get two independent translations of the same texts to reference. So, let's look at the prayers of the Church of the East and see what Christ is worshipped.
The first hymn of the year: "God the Word from the Father did not take the likeness of a servant from angels but from the seed of Abraham, and in our humanity he did come in his grace that he save our race from error." Who is incarnate of the Virgin? God the Word who takes his humanity from her and unities it to his divinity. What is incarnate from the Virgin? The humanity of God the Word. This distinction is solid and unmistakable across Church of the East prayers. Who is born of the Virgin? Christ Jesus=God the Word=Son of God. What is born of the Virgin? The humanity of God the Word. It would be heretical to say that a human being was born of the Virgin Mary. The being is a divine person whose humanity is from His mother and whose divinity is from His Father. The 'His' in that sentence is always the one divine person of God the Word incarnate, Jesus Christ.
But don't take that from me. Mar Babai the Great, who was the main force behind two qnomā language wrote in the Kṯāḇā dḥdayuṯā:
Whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Behold here the exact understanding of the union of God the Word in his incarnation, for already he was considered “Lord”, and that one is the Lordship and worship of God and of his temple, unitedly and for ever. As it is written, “God has made Lord and Christ this Jesus whom you crucified...
I used the late Rev Michael Birnie's translation here, so that I am not influencing the translation to my own reading. Notice that God the Word in his incarnation is one Lord, object of Worship, temple of God, messiah, and Christ Jesus whom was crucified. Who was crucified? God the Word, the object of our Worship, the temple of the Word, the Messiah, Jesus.
Here is another example from the same Sunday:
What mind can understand the sea of thy mercy, God? Oh depth of riches and understanding of eternal thoughts that were with God before time and so he desired in his love and his Word did he send us from the holy virgin, a garment of flesh to put on and go out into the world. And from the angels she so learned: Peace to thee, Full of Grace for from thee is born man and savior of the Worlds. Beyond comprehension, Lord of All, Glory to Thee! (ʿuniṯā dLelyā)
Notice that God's Word puts on a garment of flesh and goes out into the world. Who is the agent? God the Word. What is the means of the incarnation? The flesh, carne, taken from the Virgin. Are there two Sons? Clearly no.
Frankly, I've translated enough of the Annunciation, really pre-Nativity, texts that interested readers can simply read them for themselves. Only one hymn I know of might vaguely be picked at, the ʿalām of the mawtḇā of Nativity:
Revealed truth did the Son of God disclose to his betrothed Church for in his love he desired and came to the world and preached and taught his divinity as well as his humanity. + As he was in the bosom of the Father before the worlds, and without beginning, He was truly God. + And he came to us in the end of times and put on our body by which he saved us, He was truly man. + The prophets preached him in their revelation, and the righteous revealed him in their mysteries, He was truly God. + He was conceived in a womb, nine months, and he was born as a man, for he was truly man....
Notice that the who/what distinction is maintained. Who is born? He was is truly God and truly man. The text takes pains to not say that a man was born of the Virgin, but that He was born "as a man." I am providing the most dualistic of texts found in our service books on purpose. It is the one I would use to counter the Church of the East. However, it is hugged by a massive amount of strongly Orthodox (as in the tradition of Chalcedon to Maximus the Confessor) language. There is much of the language of the Schools of Antioch and of Edessa with the incarnation described as indwelling, putting on humanity, or wearing a garment, but that goes back to St Ephrem and is very Antiochian as well.
Notice that I did not mention Christological language yet. That is for the same reason why it is wise not to introduce the liturgical expression Theotókos or 'Mother of God' without first explaining that God the Word is eternally the Divine Second Person of the Trinity who took humanity from the virgin, but Himself is eternal and begotten of the Father. If one does not understand the Christian belief about the incarnation, Theotókos can be mistaken for meaning that the Virgin originates Christ, conceiving him as Hercules or Persus had Zeus as father but a human mother. God forbid and forgive me the example, but I hope it illustrates that it is important to have a sense of the belief system before hyper-focusing on a single word or theological expression. I will go into qnomā and the other Christological terms as well as their use, but this post has its purpose to frame our scope and sense of the Church of the East regarding Christ as fully God and fully man.
A more personal note.
To speak of the Church of the East, one must know its prayer life and whom it worships. It is an easy target today for ridicule because it is a martyred church whose texts largely remain untranslated and whose children are most often spoken of with derision and contempt by their fellow Eastern Christians. Assyrians have gotten used to that. For the non-Church of the East reader, I will share an insider bit of wisdom, like an inside joke. Assyrians know that most Orthodox Christians consider the Church of the East heretical. We expect to be condemned at first glance without a consideration or curiosity to know this tradition more deeply. At the same time, and this is my experience in 100% of my conversations with fellow Assyrians, we also know that God blesses those hated for his name. Honestly, when a Church that is the smallest, most isolated, and most persecuted in apostolic Christian history cannot be given the basic decency of being understood before being condemned by her fellow Christians of the East, this final blow seems more dull than the sword of the Califs, more empty than the legacy of Tamerlane, and more desolate than the heritage of ISIS. The standard Assyrian response is Alahā paḥel-lun, 'God forgive them.' I suspect that what our fathers said to others before.
* Note the attached image is of Patriarch Mar Ruḇēyl Šemʾun and Mar Isḥaq Ḥnanišoʾ, Metropolitan inside Mar Šaliṭa̱ in 1886. These two men are the patriarch and the second most senior bishop in the Church. They are not in an Istanbul palace or cathedral but a mud-brick Church.
Beautiful post Rabi
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