SSCN Voumes 1-10, 1994-2004

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

Bishop al-Nahwi was one of those learned theologians of his time who, like Philo Judaeus of the Jewish community in Alexandria before him, and the Christian Alexandrian biblical scholars, Clement and Origen, undertook to compose some unity and mutual appreciation between Christian doctrine and Platonic Philosophy. The Bishop is reported by al-Nadim to have "renounced what Christians believe about the Trinity." 3 The Fihrist continues its report as follows. ... so the bishops assembled and debated with him. As he got the better of them, they conciliated him, treating him courteously and asking him to relinquish his point of view and to abandon his declarations. As, however, he maintained his position, refusing to back down, they deposed him. He lived until Egypt was invaded by 'Amr ibn al-As, who, when he went to him, honored him and found a position for him. He wrote commentaries on the books of Aristotle. ...His additional books were: Refutation of Proclus, ... Refutation of Aristotle, ... a dissertation in which he refuted Nestorius; (a) book in which he refuted people who do not profess (their beliefs) ... 4 It seems to be the case that Bishop al-Nahwi found the Islamic invasion helpful in many ways, not only because it got Emperor Heraclius off his back but also because the presence of the Islamic authority created a more congenial community of theological and philosophical dialogue than he was able to establish with his Christian colleagues who held out for Monothelitism, instead of his Monophysitism, or who supported Chalcedonian Greek Orthodoxy instead. Monophysitism held out for the doctrine that Christ had but one ( monos ) composite nature ( physis ), versus the Nestorians who held that he was two persons, divine and human, and versus the Chalcedonian Christianity of the Roman Church with its Christ of one person but two natures. Justinian ultimately adopted Monophysitism but Justin II quietly suppressed it, closing its churches and imprisoning its bishops. Some Monophysites, under the leadership of Bishop Severus of Antioch, agreed with Chalcedon regarding the two natures but insisted that they were "indissolubly united so

that there was only one energy (mia kaine theandrike energeia) of Christ's will." Others from this community of faith, led by Julian, Bishop of Halicarnassus, were sure that Christ's body was so "inseparably united with the Logos as not to be consubstantial with humanity; its natural attributes were so heightened as to make it sinless and incorruptible." The former tended to emphasize the human limitations of Christ as regards his knowledge and his imperviousness to suffering, while the latter tended to think that Christ's humanity is so linked with and enmeshed with divinity that "all creatures are of the same essence with the Creator." 5 The Monothelites attempted to resolve this impass about the divine and human in Christ by holding the doctrine that whatever one might say about his person and nature, Christ had only one will. "The disintegration caused by monophysitism largely facilitated the rapid and easy victory of Islam in Syria and Egypt. ... The controversy had its origin in the efforts of the em eror Heraclius to win back for the church and the empire the excommunicated and persecuted Monophysites or Eutychians of Egypt and Syria. In Egypt especially the monophysite movement had assumed a nationalistic, patriotic character." 6 Al-Nadim reports two remarkable characteristics of the relationship between Islam and Christianity in the ninth and tenth centuries. These two were particularly true, in his perception, regarding the situation in Egypt in the relationship between Coptic Christianity and Islam. First, he was immensely proud and grateful about the congeniality of Medieval Egyptian Islam toward other religious communities. Second, he was impressed and pleased with the high quality of tough minded, but respectful and mutually appreciative, scholarly exchange between the Islam and the Coptic Christianity of his day, a thing one would covet for our own moment in time, as well. This kind of exchange was, apparently, especially focused upon

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

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