The Christian Vanguard

In my previous post, I talked about a disagreement I had with a Coptic Orthodox fellow. The topic may seem a bit out of context if you don't know who they are and how they relate to the rest of Christendom. So I will talk a little bit about that here.  The Coptic people are essentially Egyptian people. It's like an ethnicity, from what I gather. Historically, they are associated with the Orthodox Church(es), though, the exact nature of this relationship is what distinguishes them. You might be tempted to think that because they call themselves Coptic Orthodox, that they are Orthodox in the same way someone might be Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox. But many other Orthodox people will insist that the Coptic Orthodox aren't really Orthodox, and or even properly Christian. This is because they deny one of the ecumenical councils, the Council of Chalcedon.  One of the defining pillars or standards of Orthodoxy are the ecumenical councils, that is, the councils that e...

I've had some exchanges with Coptic Orthodox folk, and though the discussions had can be very technical and abstract, sometimes what they claim can be easily shown to be false (or true). I had the opportunity to show that one claim made to me was clearly false. A Coptic sent me a picture of a footnote that reads, "Even miaphysite expressions of one nature in Christ, correctly used, were now declared orthodox, in Canon 8 of the Council of Constantinople of 553." Here is the screenshot in its entirety, so you may know that I'm not misquoting it, and so that you know that this is published out there somewhere.  So, being an interesting, and easily verifiable, claim, I looked up the Canons. Here is what Canon 8 declares.  If anyone uses the expression "of two natures," confessing that a union was made of the Godhead and of the humanity, or the expression "the one nature made flesh of God the Word," and shall not so understand those expressio...