Well I don’t know much about the Franciscans, but the Coptic Orthodox Church is actually not Christian, believe it or not. They deny that the Holy Spirit is God, I’m not too clear on their understanding of Jesus in relation to God, but nevertheless they deny the Trinity, thereby separating themselves from Christianity.
Someone Please
Correct Me If I’m
Wrong.
The Coptic Catholic Church, I believe, is an offshoot of the Orthodox Church that decided to enter into communion with the Roman Catholic Church, so they are Christian, just a different “rite” so I understand it? Coptic Rite?
The Coptic Orthodox Church accepts the Trinity. The controversy is that people later thought that a mixture of God and man was what was meant when the Coptic Orthodox said one nature. This is not true. They adhere to Doctor of the Church, St Cyril of Alexandria’s teaching that Christ has one nature without confusion or mixture, fully God and fully man.
“…it is also said that in Christ dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily; but we understand that he became flesh, not just as he is said to dwell in the saints, but we define that that tabernacling in him was according to equality.
But being made one in nature [Greek: κατὰ φύσιν], and not converted into flesh, he made his indwelling in such a way, as we may say that the soul of man does in his own body.” - Council of Ephesus, Session I, The Epistle of St Cyril of Alexandria to Nestorius
Hermias: Have they therefore been confused and both become one nature?
Cyril: But who will be thus distraught and unlearned as to suppose that either the Divine Nature of the Word has been turned into what it was not, or that the flesh went over by way of change into the Nature of the Word Himself (for it is impossible)? but we say that
One is the SON and One His Nature even though He be conceived of as having assumed flesh with a rational soul. For His (as I said) hath the human nature been made, and He is conceived of by us none otherwise than thus, God alike and man. - St Cyril of Alexandria, That Christ is One
Hermias: There will then be not two natures, of God and of man?
Cyril: Godhead and manhood are one thing and another, according to the mode [of being] existing in each, yet in Christ have they come together, in unwonted wise and passing understanding,
unto union, without confusion and turning. But wholly incomprehensible is the mode of the Union. - St Cyril of Alexandria, That Christ is One
Hermias: And how out of two things, Godhead and manhood, will One Christ be conceived of?
Cyril: In no other wise (I suppose) than that whereby the things brought together one to another
unto a union indissoluble and above comprehension will be One. - St Cyril of Alexandria, That Christ is One
Hermias: But if we say that the Nature of the Son is One, even though He be conceived of as Incarnate, all need is there to confess that confusion and commixture take place the nature of man being lost as it were within Him. For what is the nature of man unto the excellency of Godhead?
Cyril: In highest degree, my friend, is
he an idle talker who says that confusion and commixture have place, if one Nature of the Son Incarnate and made man, is confessed by us: for one will not be able to make proof thereof by needful and true deductions. But if they set their own. will as a law to us, they devised a counsel which they cannot establish, for we must give heed, not to them but to the God-inspired Scripture… - St Cyril of Alexandria, That Christ is One
Wherefore, we say that the two natures were united, from which there is the one and only Son and Lord, Jesus Christ, as we accept in our thoughts; but after the union, since the distinction into two is done away with,
we believe that there is one nature of the Son, as one, however, one who became man and was made flesh. But if being God the Word he is said to be incarnate and to be made man, let the suspicion of a change be cast somewhere far away, for he has remained what he was, and let the
entirely unconfused union be confessed on our part. - St Cyril of Alexandria, Letter 40:14
