/christian/ - Christian Discussion and Fellowship

I find Ethiopian Orthodoxy to be the most fascinating and intense form of Christianity that exists today

Though their soteriology is pretty much in line with standard Catholic-Orthodox soteriology, they do continue to practice many of the dietary and purity laws of the Old Testament, and also circumcision, primarily for ascetic purposes as well as cultural reasons since their nation does have a strong link with the ancient Israelites and they even claim to possesses the lost Ark of the Covenant in one of their churches and the emperors of Ethiopia were believed to be direct descendants of a child that the Queen of Sheba bore to King Solomon. Though they are technically Hamites according to the Bible, as a culture they have close ties with the Semites and the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, Ge'ez, is s Semitic language of the southern kind related to other Semitic languages such as Arabic, Akkadian, Aramaic, and of course, Hebrew.

Their Biblical canon is by far the largest of any Biblical canon their is, containing not only the entirety of the Hebrew canon and the deuterocanonical books of the LXX, but also additional ancient apocrypha like the Book of Jubilees and 1 Enoch that some ancient mystical Jewish sects like the Essenes utilized as scripture. Their New Testament is also unique among Christendom containing eight additional books like the Patristic work the Didascalia and also works thought to have been written by Clement of Rome (though these seem to be Ethiopic pseudepigrapha).

As for their doctrines about God and Christ they stand firmly in line with Nicene-Constantinopolitan definition of God, professing faith in the orthodox doctrine of the holy Trinity (whilst rejecting the Filioque like other Orthodox Christians), and the Trinity plays an especially central role in their Church. As for their beliefs about the nature of Christ they reject the Chalcedonian definition due to the fact that they are one of the autocephalous Churches of the Oriental Orthodox Church, and hence the word "Tewahedo" in the offical name of their Church, meaning "Unification" emphasizing a sole nature ("physis") in Christ. However, they reject the label "monophysite" as such a term is often associated with Docetism and Eutychianism, doctrines which they vehemently reject, and instead wish to be called "Miaphysites". This is actually part of a long ongoing discussion as to what Chalcedonians and non-Chalcedonians are really professing when they speak about the nature of Christ and it actually seems that the Ethiopian Orthodox, along with the rest of the Oriental Orthodox, actually agree with the Chalcedonians that Christ does in fact posses two natures (a human and divine nature) united by the sole person of the Son/Logos. However, these Churches have historically followed in the tradition of St. Cyril of Alexandria who does at times in the Council of Ephesus speak of Christ possessing a unified "physis" (nature) so as to avoid a confusion like Nestorianism, which would separate Christ's human nature and divine nature and would thus render Christ's human nature unworthy of worship, which would be complete heresy. The primary reason for their rejection of Chalcedon was mainly over misunderstandings that it bent too close to Nestorius's teachings and also for decisions concerning the excommunicating and reinstatement of certain clergymen that the Oriental Churches did not agree with.