Coptic Church

The Cop­tic Ortho­dox Church

“…On one hand, its the­ol­ogy is based on noth­ing out­side the scrip­tures. On the other hand, the doc­trines agree in all parts with those of the Early Church i.e. the tra­di­tion which has the proper inter­pre­ta­tion and appli­ca­tion of the teach­ings of our Lord and the Apos­tles as under­stood and prac­ticed by the Chris­tians and the lead­ers of the Church dur­ing the period of the One Uni­ver­sal Church until the divi­sion of 451 A.D.“
Bishop Athana­sius of Ben-​Swef and Bah­nassa (1977)

The Cop­tic Church was estab­lished in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ by St. Mark the Evan­ge­list in the city of Alexan­dria around 43 A.D. The church adheres to the Nicene Creed. St. Athana­sius (296−373 A.D.), the twen­ti­eth Pope of the Cop­tic Church effec­tively defended the Doc­trine of the Lord Jesus Christ’s Divin­ity at the Coun­cil of Nicea in 325 A.D. His affir­ma­tion of the doc­trine earned him the title; “Father of Ortho­doxy” and St. Athana­sius “the Apos­tolic”.

The term “Cop­tic” is derived from the Greek “Aigyp­tos” mean­ing “Egypt­ian”. When the Arabs arrived in Egypt in the sev­enth cen­tury, they called the Egyp­tians “qibt”. Thus the Ara­bic word “qibt” came to mean both “Egyp­tians” and “Chris­tians”.

The term “Ortho­doxy” here refers to the preser­va­tion of the “Orig­i­nal Faith” by the Copts who, through­out the ages, defended the Old Creed against the numer­ous attacks aimed at it.

The Cop­tic Ortho­dox Church believes that the Holy Trin­ity: God The Father, God The Son, and God The Holy Spirit, are equal to each other in one unity; and that the Lord Jesus Christ is the only Sav­ior of the world. Less changes have taken place in the Cop­tic Church than in any other church whether in the rit­ual or doc­trine aspects and that the suc­ces­sion of the Cop­tic Patri­archs, Bish­ops, priests and Dea­cons has been continuous.

Intro­duc­tion

“Blessed is Egypt my peo­ple” (Isa 19:25)

God’s promise to His peo­ple is always ful­filled; He fore­told that He would ride on a light and upon a swift cloud and come to Egypt (Isa 19:1); and in that day there will be an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pil­lar to the Lord at its bor­der (Isa 19:19). This promise was ful­filled by the flight of the Holy Fam­ily from the face of the tyrant Herod to find refuge among the Gen­tiles. Thus our Lord Jesus Christ came dur­ing His child­hood to Egypt to lay by Him­self the foun­da­tion stone of His Church in Egypt which has become one of the four pri­mary “Sees” in the world, among the churches of Jerusalem, Anti­och and Rome, and joined later by the “See” of Constantinople.

The star of the Egypt­ian Church shone through the School of Alexan­dria which taught Chris­ten­dom the alle­goric and spir­i­tual meth­ods in inter­pret­ing the Holy Scrip­ture and was the leader in defend­ing the Ortho­dox faith on an ecu­meni­cal level.

The Chris­t­ian monas­tic move­ment in all its forms started in Egypt, attract­ing the heart of the Church towards the desert, to prac­tice the angelic inner life. This hap­pened at the time when the doors of the royal court had been opened to the clergy, and this con­se­quently endan­gered the church, as the quiet and spir­i­tual church work was mixed with the tem­po­ral author­ity and pol­i­tics of the royal court.

The Egypt­ian Church car­ried our Lord Jesus Christ’s cross through­out gen­er­a­tions, bear­ing suf­fer­ings even from the side of Chris­tians them­selves. She con­tin­ued to offer a count­less num­ber of mar­tyrs and con­fes­sors through­out ages. Some­times the peo­ple of towns were mar­tyred and many strug­gled to win the crowns of mar­tyr­dom hap­pily and with a heart full of joy.

Our Church is ancient and new at the same time: ancient in being apos­tolic, founded by St. Mark the Evan­ge­list and tra­di­tional in hold­ing fast to the orig­i­nal apos­tolic faith with­out devi­a­tion. She is also new through her Liv­ing Mes­siah who never becomes old and through the Spirit of God who renews her youth (Ps. 103:5).

The Cop­tic Church is rich with her evan­ge­lis­tic and ascetic life, her gen­uine patri­otic inher­i­tance, her heav­enly wor­ship, her spir­i­tual rit­u­als, her effec­tive and liv­ing hymns, her beau­ti­ful icons, etc. She attracts the heart towards heaven with­out ignor­ing actual daily life. We can say that she is an apos­tolic, con­tem­po­rary church that car­ries life and thought to the con­tem­po­rary man with­out devi­a­tion. One finds in her life, sweet­ness and power of Spirit, with appre­ci­a­tion to and sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion of arts, lit­er­a­ture and human culture.

The Church is well known for her numer­ous saints: ascetics, cler­gy­men and lay­men. She offered many saints through­out ages and is still offer­ing the same today. For she believes that prac­tic­ing the sanc­ti­fied life and com­mu­nion with God, the Holy One, is prior to sat­is­fy­ing minds with solid men­tal studies.

Apos­tolic Age

1. Def­i­n­i­tion of Apos­tolic Age:

The Apos­tolic Age is the time in which the Apos­tles of our Lord Jesus Christ lived and preached the Chris­t­ian faith. It accounts for approx­i­mately 70 years and extended from the foun­da­tion of the Church on the day of Pen­te­cost on 30 AD to the depar­ture of St. John the Apos­tle, 100 AD.

2. Impor­tance of Study of the Apos­tolic Age:

1. It is the ori­gin of the Chris­t­ian Church delin­eat­ing its sep­a­ratism from Judaism. It is the Age of the Holy Spirit, inspi­ra­tion and constitution.
2. It is astound­ing evi­dence of the power of Chris­tian­ity where its preach­ing and teach­ing reached almost every part of the world in a very short period of time as a result of the Mys­te­ri­ous Hand­i­work of God.
3. It reflects purity, effec­tive­ness and the Divine power of Chris­tian­ity and how by a Mys­te­ri­ous Godly Work could renew the cre­ation of every nation, Jew­ish, Roman, Greek ….etc
4. It is well known that the Lord Jesus Christ taught his holy dis­ci­ples many teach­ings and per­formed many mir­a­cles not recorded in the Holy Gospels (John 20:30). Also, the Lord spent 40 days after His Glo­ri­ous Res­ur­rec­tion appear­ing to His dis­ci­ples teach­ing them about the King­dom of God (Acts 1:3) and this also was not recorded in the Holy Gospels. There­fore, the Chris­t­ian teach­ing in the Apos­tolic Age which is known as “Tra­di­tion” is the reflec­tion of such teach­ings and arrange­ments that were given to the dis­ci­ples by our Lord.
5. The Apos­tolic Age rep­re­sents role mod­els of great per­sons in preach­ing, teach­ing and ser­vice who were inspired by the Holy Spirit and sup­ported by the power of the New Cre­ation in bap­tism. Def­i­nitely this was an incen­tive for good deeds.

3. His­tor­i­cal Sources of the Apos­tolic Age:

1. All the Holy Books of the New Tes­ta­ment in par­tic­u­lar the Holy Book of Acts.
2. Teach­ings and laws that belong to the Apos­tles such as the Didache (Teach­ing of the Twelve Apos­tles) and Didascalia.
3. Writ­ings of the Apos­tolic Fathers who are the dis­ci­ples of the Apos­tles such as St. Clement the Roman, St. Poly­carp, St. Ignatius, St. Her­mas and St. Papias.
4. Pseudo-​Canonical Books (Apoc­rypha) which can be used as his­tor­i­cal sources of the Apos­tolic Age although the Church refused them as inspired books.
5. Jew­ish sources such as writ­ings by Philo of Alexan­dria, Jose­phus the famous Jew­ish His­to­rian who was con­tem­po­rary of Jerusalem destruc­tion and wrote “Influ­ences of Jews” and “Wars of Jews”, and Mishna which is the teach­ings of Rab­bis in the First Cen­tury and pro­vides good infor­ma­tion about the Apos­tles, their teach­ings, the rit­u­als and wor­ship in the early Church as a excom­mu­ni­cated group out of the Synagogue.
6. Latin writ­ers and his­to­ri­ans such as Tac­i­tus, Sue­to­nius and Pliny.
7. Writ­ers of the Sec­ond Cen­tury who are the sec­ond suc­ces­sors of the Apos­tles such as Justin the Mar­tyr, St. Ire­naeus, and Hegesippus.
8. Chris­t­ian His­to­ri­ans such as Euse­bi­ous, an early Chris­t­ian writer, who wrote the church his­tory since the Incar­na­tion to 324 AD and was called the Father of Church history.
9. Ancient mon­u­ments such as scrolls of the Dead Sea.

More read­ings:

St. Mark, founder of the Cop­tic Ortho­dox Church

Church Dogma

The Cop­tic Calendar

Monas­tic Movement