Ecumenical Councils and Schisms of Christianity

 بِسۡمِ اللّٰہِ الرَّحۡمٰنِ الرَّحِیۡمِ

In the Name of Allah, the Rahman, the Merciful

Allah, holy and exalted, says

فَاللّٰہُ یَحۡکُمُ بَیۡنَہُمۡ یَوۡمَ الۡقِیٰمَۃِ فِیۡمَا کَانُوۡا فِیۡہِ یَخۡتَلِفُوۡنَ

So Allah will judge between them on the Day of Resurrection concerning that in which they differed

(Surah 2, Ayah 113)

My master the Holy Prophet Muhammad, sall Allahu alaihi wasallam, revealed that the Jews and Christians fragmented into over seventy sects each. Seventy in Arabic idiom is not necessarily literally the number seventy but may simply mean any large number.

In the world of Christendom there are today countless denominations and churches which have fundamental theological and methodological differences among themselves. It is useful to have a basic understanding of the fragmentation of Christianity, the major controversies over which Christians have disputed among themselves and what the position of Islam is on some of those controversies.

Primitive Christianity had disputes over Christology, or the nature of Christ Jesus. The various ecumenical councils anathematized those theologians, bishops or parties that failed to agree with them.

In the Council of Nicea in the year 325, Arianism, the doctrine that Jesus was created by God and therefore had a beginning, was declared heretical. 

In the Council of Ephesus held in 431, Nestorianism, the doctrine that Christ has two distinct natures and exists as two different beings, one human and the other divine, and that Mary is only the mother of Jesus the man and should not be called “mother of God”, was declared heretical. Today, the Assyrian Church of the East is the surviving Nestorian denomination that did not go along with the Council of Ephesus.

In the Council of Chalcedon held twenty years later in 451, the polar opposite of Nestorianism, known as monophysitism, the doctrine that Christ has only a single divine nature, was declared heretical. The Oriental Orthodox churches today, such as the Coptic, Armenian, Syriac, and Ethiopian churches, dissent from the Council of Chalcedon. They consider themselves miaphysites, believing Christ has a single nature that is both human and divine.

But the majority of Christians today (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and mainline Protestant) are Chalcedonian, believing that Christ has two natures, human and divine, united in a single being or hypostasis.

Yet all three of these branches (Chalcedonian, Miaphysite and Nestorian) subscribe to the doctrine of the Trinity, which is condemned by Islam as polytheistic:

لَقَدۡ کَفَرَ الَّذِیۡنَ قَالُوۡۤا اِنَّ اللّٰہَ ثَالِثُ ثَلٰثَۃٍ ۘ وَمَا مِنۡ اِلٰہٍ اِلَّاۤ اِلٰہٌ وَّاحِدٌ

Those who say Allah is the third of a trinity have surely disbelieved. There is no god except  the one God

(Surah 5, Ayah 73)

In the Trinity, the person whom Christians refer to as “God the Father” is in fact Allah, the one true God. Islam, therefore, teaches that God is a single person, and multiplicity of divine persons is nothing but polytheism. Jesus Christ is human not divine, he was created by God and is a mortal.

As for Arianism, while it is certainly closer to Islam than Nicene Christianity, it still conceives of Christ as a divine being in some sense, while acknowledging him as a creation of God with a beginning. While Arius taught Jesus was the first and greatest creation of God, we Sunni Muslims believe this honor belongs to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him and his family.

In 1054, the Great Schism occurred resulting in the split between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches. Though the schism was essentially ecclesiological, particularly the dispute over the primacy of the Pope (whom the Eastern Orthodox regarded as merely the Bishop of Rome on par with the other Bishops), the controversy regarding the Filioque was central to the theological disputation between the two sides. Catholics, and by extension most Protestants, say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, while the Eastern Orthodox say it proceeds only from the Father. In this dispute, Islam agrees with the Eastern Orthodox position that the Holy Spirit proceeds from God alone and not from Christ Jesus.