The Cross, the Resurrection, and Salvation in Oriental Orthodoxy
As taught in the Oriental Orthodox tradition
Oriental Orthodoxy confesses the one incarnate Word who died and rose to conquer death
The family of churches called Oriental Orthodox — the Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Malankara communions — confesses salvation as the work of the one incarnate Word of God who personally united human flesh to himself, suffered in that flesh on the cross, and rose again to trample down death. This lesson describes how that tradition reads the cross and the empty tomb, drawing on the Christology fixed at the Council of Ephesus in 431 and especially on the letters of Cyril of Alexandria, whose teaching these churches regard as the touchstone of orthodoxy. It also marks, descriptively, where this tradition's account differs from the wider Chalcedonian mainstream of both Eastern Orthodoxy and Western Christianity.
By the end of this lesson
- Explain why Oriental Orthodox soteriology insists the saving subject of the cross is the one incarnate Word rather than a divine Word and a human Jesus acting in concert.
- Describe how Cyril of Alexandria's rule of appropriation lets the tradition confess that the impassible Word genuinely suffered and died in his own flesh.
- Show how the tradition reads salvation primarily as the conquest of death and the healing of human nature, citing 1 Corinthians 15 and Hebrews 2.
- Account for the doctrine that the flesh of the Word is life-giving and trace its link to the tradition's Eucharistic and baptismal understanding of salvation.
- Locate the historical fault line at Chalcedon (451) and articulate, descriptively, why this tradition prefers 'miaphysite' to 'monophysite'.
- Contrast the tradition's death-conquering, participatory account of the atonement with the penal and forensic emphases more prominent in Western Christianity.
Scripture
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