Fourth in a series
Re “How the Coptic Church Responded to Disagreements”
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Father Cyril Gorgy
The fourth century A.D. heresy that sparked convening of Christian church ecumenical councils related to perhaps the most complicated subject in the universe, the nature of God, Father Cyril Gorgy of St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church, Pico-Robertson, was saying.
“When you look at the nature of God, he was Jesus on earth, he was fully divine and he was fully man,” Father Gorgy said, as he continued to trace the history of Coptic Christians. “He felt our pains. There is a verse that says Jesus wept when his friend Lazarus died. Before raising him from the dead, he wept.
“His humanity never intermingled. Our teaching is he never was confused or altered for even the twinkling of an eye. This is from one of our prayers at the end of the liturgy. We call this The Confession.”
“In general,” said Father Gorgy, the streams of Christianity that participated in the ecumenical councils “believed the same things,” except for certain specificities.
“From the point of the Chalcedon Ecumenical Council, there came division. There was the Chalcedonian Church and the non-Chalcedonian. The Chalcedonians were the Church of Rome, and that is where Catholics were.
“We (Coptic Christians) are in communion with the Armenian Orthodox Church. We are in communion with the Indian Orthodox Church (aka Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church) and also the Syriac Church and the Ethiopian. The Greek Orthodox Church came from the Chalcedonian Council.”
Question: Theologically, would Father Gorgy be more comfortable with Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox philosophy rather than Protestant?
“Let me tell you some of what we have in common and some of our differences.”
(To be continued)
