An Introduction to the History of the Assyrian Church

Description

The Assyrian Church of the East (often misnamed as the "Nestorian" church*) is one of the most ancient churches of Christendom. In this book, the Rev. William Ainger Wigram, head of the Mission of the Archbishop of Canterbury to the Assyrian Church, gives an introduction to the history of the ancient church, covering its Christology.

*cf. p. vii (PDF p. 8):

The writer has throughout used for the Church in question the name "Assyrian." There is no historical authority for this name; but the various appellations given to the body by various writers ("Easterns," Persians, Syrians, Chaldeans, Nestorians) are all, for various reasons, misleading to the English reader.

& pp. 104-5 (PDF pp. 105-6):

But—putting aside the point that much of the growth took place before Nestorius was heard of—the explanation that a form of Christianity that has failed must have been heretical does not seem to cover the facts. Admitting for argument's sake (we must deal with the point more at length in a later chapter) that the Church of the Assyrians did teach what we mean by "Nestorianism," the fact remains that it is not the only great Church that has gone down before Islam […]

Casey Dudek, Sun Jul 5 22:26:11 UTC 2026:

The non-Chalcedonians have been called Monophysites for the longest time, but recently they have stated that they are in fact Miaphysites. The Nestorian Church may have been misnamed for similar polemical reasons. The Assyrian Church did split from Rome following the Council of Ephesus, which also might explain the name. Apparently Syro-Malabar and Chaldean Catholics have an anaphora attributed to Nestorius but reject his errors. One of my patristics professors also noted recent scholarly attempts to redeem Nestorius and assert that he didn't actually profess the eponymous heresy (the former academic from my program has a similar thesis on Honorius based on texts he translated). While calling the entity the Babylonian Church doesn't seem flattering, it is noteworthy that the biggest enemies of OT Israel – Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Rome – became not only ingrafted into the Messianic Kingdom, but sees that were bastions of the Faith. It's also noteworthy that historians who praise the Orthodox in the Balkans for resisting Islam for 300+ years often ignore the Oriental and Assyrian churches, who did the same thing for five times as long.

See: Early Christian Remains of Inner Mongolia, ch. 1 "On the term ‘Nestorianism’ and the early Chinese terms for Christianity", pp. 3-12 (PDF pp. 34-43).

contributed by Arthur Rosh