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.
The single finger is catechesis you can see across a room, and it is the standard way Syriac Orthodox and Coptic Christians distinguish themselves from Chalcedonians in a mixed setting. The theology behind it is Severus of Antioch's, developed from Cyril: out of two natures, one incarnate nature of the Word, without mixture, change, confusion or division. Severus was deposed in 518 and died in Egypt in 538, and the imperial church anathematised him; the Syriac Orthodox church has never accepted the anathema. The joint statements with the Eastern Orthodox in 1989 and 1990 concluded the difference was terminological, and the anathemas have still not been lifted on either side.
The Oriental Orthodox agree that the Orthodox are justified in their use of the two-natures formula, since they acknowledge that the distinction is in thought alone.
Second Agreed Statement of the Joint Commission of the Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox Church and the Oriental Orthodox Churches, Chambesy, Geneva, 1990Published in English by the Department of Syriac Studies of the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchate.
The same ground, other faiths
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