The Oriental Orthodox Churches

The Coptic, Armenian, Syriac, Ethiopian, Eritrean and Malankara churches, which separated from the Orthodox Church over the Council of Chalcedon in 451. They confess one nature of the incarnate Word and refuse Chalcedon's "in two natures". They receive the first three Ecumenical Councils and reject the fourth and the three after it, and the Coptic and Syriac churches venerate as saints Dioscorus of Alexandria, whom Chalcedon deposed, and Severus of Antioch, whom the Sixth Ecumenical Council named beside Apollinaris as impious. The Orthodox Church holds Chalcedon and the councils after it as binding as the first three, and counts these churches as heterodox: St. John of Damascus lists them among the heresies, as Monophysites who cut themselves off from the Orthodox Church on the pretext of Chalcedon, orthodox in all else. The joint commission of the theological dialogue, meeting between 1989 and 1993, found the two christologies agreed in substance, but the Orthodox Church as a whole has never received its statements: the Sacred Community of Mount Athos rejected them, and communion has not been restored.