Leveraging Martyrdom

Why is it that evangelicals will claim Coptic Christians as martyrs for “the faith” when those same Protestants wouldn’t recognize “the faith” as including Coptic Christianity? Bill Smith explains the question:

The Coptic Christians are not Orthodox, Roman Catholic, or Protestant. They are Nicene, but not Chalcedonian, Christians. The BBC describes Coptic Christology:

The Coptic belief which defined the church at an early stage is called monophytism (technically it would be better called miaphytism, but most documents use the former word).

To put it simply this is the belief that Jesus Christ has only one nature; that his divine nature and his human nature are composite and totally united – the nature of the incarnated Word, as opposed to two natures united in one person.

This single nature was formed ‘from the first moment of Holy Pregnancy in the Virgin’s womb’ (Shenouda III). The dispute over monophytism at the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD) caused the Coptic Church to separate from other Churches. Other Churches also split, and became known as the ‘Monophysite Churches’ or ‘Non-Chalcedonian Churches’. Nowadays these churches are usually called the ‘Oriental Orthodox Churches’.

To be sure, this is an indelicate time to raise this question, but Rod Dreher almost concurred (in response to Southern Baptists who questioned the application of martyr to the Coptic Christians) that it was worth asking:

It might sound silly to many of us that these Southern Baptists do not consider Catholics, Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox (e.g., the Copts) — that is, most of the Christians in the world today — to be truly Christian, but few of us would deny the importance of drawing the theological line somewhere.

In the year 451, the Pope and the other Patriarchs excommunicated the so-called Oriental Orthodox for holding a heterodox Christology. In other words, they put them outside the Church. I don’t know what the status is today among the churches.

Kyrill, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, sent condolences to the Coptic Pope and the Egyptian president regarding the murder of the 21 Copts. Kyrill referred to the dead as “Christians,” and told the Coptic Pope that “we” Christians must stand together. I don’t know for certain how we should interpret that, but it seems clear to me that Kyrill sees the Copts as Christians, however imperfect our communion.

In the Christian past, we have murdered our own for heresy. Think of the Catholic crusade against the Albigensians. The Russian Orthodox hunted down the schismatic Archpriest Avvakum, tortured him, and burned him at the stake. Calvinists burned Michael Servetus at the stake for denying the Holy Trinity.

Was Avvakum a Christian? Were the Albigensians? Was Michael Servetus?

The lack of precision about Christianity does make you wonder if those whose ecumenism is fairly thin run to stories like this to gain the advantage that comes with belonging to a persecuted group. No offense to Collin Garbarino who wants to use these killings to rally all Christians to “heed the martyrs’ example and be faithful witnesses to Christ and his Resurrection no matter what our circumstances,” but why isn’t it sufficient to object to these killing chiefly on the grounds of civil justice?

(Image: Taking of Beirut)