The See of Alexandria: St Mark, Cyril, and the One Incarnate Word
As taught in the Coptic Orthodox tradition
The Church of Alexandria: St Mark, Cyril, and the one incarnate Word
The Coptic Orthodox Church understands itself as the ancient Church of Alexandria — the Christian community of Egypt that, by its own tradition, traces its founding to St Mark the Evangelist, who is remembered as preaching the Gospel in Alexandria in the first century and as the first in an unbroken line of patriarchs of that see. From this self-understanding flow the distinctive features of Coptic Christianity: a theological inheritance shaped above all by Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria; a Christology summarised in the formula of the one incarnate nature of the Word, fully God and fully man; a confessional centre of gravity in the first three ecumenical councils, culminating at Ephesus in 431; and a spirituality forged in the Egyptian desert by St Antony and the Desert Fathers and carried into daily life through fasting and the liturgy.
By the end of this lesson
- Describe the Coptic Orthodox Church as the ancient See of Alexandria, traced by tradition to St Mark and the patriarchal succession after him.
- Explain the Miaphysite Christology of the one incarnate nature of the Word, fully God and fully man, as taught by Cyril of Alexandria.
- Identify the role of the Council of Ephesus (431), the title Theotokos, and Cyril’s Twelve Anathemas in the tradition’s confession.
- Distinguish the Alexandrian (Oriental Orthodox) confession from Chalcedonian (Byzantine and Latin) Christianity descriptively, without polemic.
- Connect the desert monasticism of St Antony and the discipline of fast and liturgy to the tradition’s lived spirituality.
Scripture
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