02 — The Church of the East Question

The hinge of the whole collection: the historical fact that Isaac belonged to the Church of the East — the East Syriac communion historically called “Nestorian,” which never received the Council of Ephesus and which honored Theodore of Mopsuestia and Diodore of Tarsus — and yet is universally venerated as a holy father across Chalcedonian Orthodoxy. How this came to be, how the tradition and the scholarship have received him, and why this is a matter of reception rather than adjudication.

Files

File	Description
a-saint-across-the-divide.md	The flagship treatment: Isaac’s Church-of-the-East belonging; the transmission into Greek that carried him across the Christological divide; Brock’s and Alfeyev’s scholarship
reception-not-adjudication.md	How the Orthodox tradition receives a saint it did not canonize and cannot fit into its own conciliar map; the methodology of reception

See Also

• 01 — Foundations — the historical life behind the question
• 03 — The Ascetical Homilies — the Mar Saba translation that was the practical means of his crossing
• Master README — the collection overview