We continue to endure the uncertainties of the pandemic worldwide. This is a time to cherish the things that are most important to us. The Department of Nestorian Studies continues to assist in developing infrastructure to facilitate research and development on the field of Syriac Christianity, termed Nestorian in the Russian and Chinese academic circles. 

 

Sebastian Brock, in his work "The Nestorian Church: A Lamentable Misnomir" highlights the fact that the labeling of the Church of the East as "Nestorian" is rooted "a hostile historiographical tradition which has dominated virtually all textbooks of church history from antiquity down to the present day, with the result that the term 'Nestorian Church' has become the standard designation for the ancient oriental church." Brock highlights the fact that the tendency, even to the modern era, to disregard the Eastern Church is based upon the example of Eusebius, who was merely concerned with the history of the church of the Roman Empire. 

 

The first church council of the Church of the East - the Synod of Isaac in 410 CE, summoned by the Persian Emperor Yazdgird I, served not only the establish the autonomy of the Church of the East from the Roman Church, but it affirmed the Creeds of the Council of Nicaea of 325. Hence there is nothing to suggest that Church of the East, also called East Syriac Christianity in our context, was anything but orthodox. In their work The Church of the East: A Concise History, Wilhelm Baum and Dietmar W. Winkler note "some were of the opinion that the patriarch of Constantinople, Nestorius, supported the doctrine of two sons, two persons, that is, two subjects. Christ is both fully God and fully man, united only morally but not ontologically. According to the position of currently available sources, one can conclude the Nestorius did not support this doctrine, that Nestorius was himself no 'Nestorian.'"