Christianity in Syria - Origins

Origins

The Christian communities of Syria, which comprise about 10 percent of the population, spring from two great traditions. On the one hand, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism were introduced by missionaries and a small number of Syrians are members of Western denominations. The vast majority, on the other hand, belong to the Eastern communions, which have existed in Syria since the earliest days of Christianity. The main Eastern groups are:

• the autonomous Orthodox churches;
• the Uniate churches, which are in communion with Rome;
• and the independent Assyrian Church of the East, which in the past, western scholars erroneously labeled "Nestorian". Followers of the Assyrian Church of the East are almost all Eastern Aramaic speaking ethnic Assyrians/Syriacs whose origins lie in Mesopotamia, as are some Orthodox and Catholic Christians. Even though each group forms a separate community, Christians nevertheless cooperate increasingly.

The schisms that brought about the many sects resulted from political and doctrinal disagreements. The doctrine most commonly at issue was the nature of Christ. In 431, the Nestorians were separated from the main body of the Church because of their belief in the dual character of Christ, i.e., that he had two distinct but inseparable "qnoma" (ܩܢܘܡܐ, close in meaning to, but not exactly the same as, hypostasis), the human Jesus and the divine Logos. Therefore, according to Nestorian belief, Mary was not the mother of God but only of the man Jesus. The Council of Chalcedon, representing the mainstream of Christianity, in 451 confirmed the dual nature of Christ in one person; Mary was therefore the mother of a single person, mystically and simultaneously both human and divine. The Miaphysites taught that the Logos took on an instance of humanity as His own in one nature. They were the precursors of the present-day Syrian and Armenian Orthodox churches.

By the thirteenth century, breaks had developed between Eastern or Greek Christianity and Western or Latin Christianity. In the following centuries, however, especially during the Crusades, some of the Eastern churches professed the authority of the pope in Rome and entered into or re-affirmed communion with the Catholic Church. Today called the Eastern Catholic churches, they retain a distinctive language, canon law and liturgy.