The roots of the Maronites

  
 by;  Cedric Ashkar

080422 

The first years of Christianity was a struggle in the storm especially that the framework was a Roman empire in rout. The church was in full conflict with the various worships which appeared during this time. The new religion in consistency was to extend in the Roman influence on the detriment of pagan; and that put the two camps in perpetual conflict. After the victory of Constantine the Great, Christianity became legitimate in the entire kingdom, East and West.

What really complicated the formation, in particular that the Roman empire was in a phase of decline, the brawl between the Easts —Constantinople—and the West—Rome—deepened and it even went to the extent of two divergent fields.

The Christian child who was growing started to ask fully existentialist questions around the trinity; the bond which explains God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, thus that the relation between the divine and human nature of the son of God. It is then that the monophysite and diophysitism divided the congregation in two groups.

The diophysitism is a Greek word which wants to say two natures, and it explains in a theological term the human nature of Jesus Christ who died on the cross, in addition to his divine nature. That was specified officially in the council of Chalcedony in year 451. According to this council, Jesus-Christ is at the same time true God and true man in “only one person and two natures, without confusion”. And then of this fact the church was divided in two camps, the one which accepted the proceedings of this council and others which didn’t, those are the monophysites.

The monophysitism tries to solve contradictions of the faith concerning the nature of Christ. The Christian doctrines were built at the origin around the symbol of Nicée, i.e. the recognition of consubstantiality of the Father and the Son, just like of the human nature of Christ. The monophysites, on the other hand, affirm that the Son has only one nature and that it is divine, the latter having absorbed its human nature. They reject the human nature of Christ. In that the monophysites are opposed to the diophysites.