A year ago this week, ISIS beheaded 21 Coptic Christians in Libya. I’m pleased that the president of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod issued this video tribute to these martyrs of the Christian faith. (Note the new icon that commemorates the martyrdom.) But aren’t the Copts heretics? Read my discussion after the jump.
The Copts are considered “monophysites,” teaching that Christ only has one nature, thus violating the Athanasian Creed. The Copts deny that charge, though they explain the two natures of Christ in a different way than the Nicene theologians did.
Lutherans have always been interested in the Copts, as having a similar Christology. Critics of Lutheranism sometimes accuse Lutherans of being monophysites, which Lutherans strongly deny. Lutherans believe that there is a “communication of attributes” between the divine and the human natures. The critics say this amounts to saying Christ has a unique nature all his own, but that is emphatically NOT what Lutherans believe. Copts are apparently accused of the same sort of thing.
Officially, though, the charge that Copts are heretics among Catholics is moot, since an agreement between the Vatican and the Copts recently ruled that their Christology is orthodox after all. (See the link above.) I wonder if that would hold true for Lutheran Christology.
Anyway, Pope Francis has talked about an “ecumenism of blood.” (I recently heard Lutheran journalist Uwe Siemon-Netto talk about the same theme.) ISIS didn’t care about the differences among Christians. They identified them as Christians and so marked them for death. And the 21 Coptic martyrs of Libya died confessing Jesus. So they are among those revealed at the opening of the Fifth Seal: “Those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne” (Revelation 6:9-11).
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In