Belief — The Syriac Orthodox Church

Figures

who it looks to — gods, spirits, ancestors; some rooms are empty on principle All 1 →

M Mor Aphrem — theology in metre. He wrote nothing systematic and everything in verse: hundreds of madrashe on the incarnation, paradise, faith and the church, composed to be sung by women's choirs he trained himself. He worked in Nisibis until the Persians took it in 363 and then in Edessa, where he died in 373 after a famine relief effort. His Syriac has never gone out of liturgical use. Domain theology written as hymn, in Syriac and never in GreekStanding fourth-century deacon of Nisibis and Edessa whose hymns are still sung in the liturgy, and a Doctor of the Church in Rome as well Meet them — context →

Core Tenets

2 — a sample of the center, never the sum All 2 →

The shared center — held across the tradition

One nature, and one finger to say it. Syriac Orthodox Christians cross themselves with a single finger, and are taught from childhood that the finger means the one incarnate nature of the Word. The doctrine is Cyril's and Severus of Antioch's: the humanity is complete, the divinity is complete, and the union is one. Go deeper — context & 1 source →

Jacobite is a word from outside. The church calls itself the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch and All the East. Jacobite comes from Jacob Baradaeus, the sixth-century bishop who travelled in disguise ordaining clergy after the imperial church deposed its hierarchy — a rescuer, not a founder. The church accepts him and rejects the label; in India, where the name became a legal designation, the argument is still live. Go deeper — context →

Cosmos & Afterlife

how reality is built, and what follows death

The nature of reality

God's workmanship, spoken into being by a Word the church still names in its own dialect.

After death

Resurrection and judgment; the dead are commemorated on the third, ninth and fortieth days and at the yearly memorial.