Ecumenical Trends in the Armenian Church

Levon Ter-Petrossian, an Armenian scholar of the Syriac language, history and culture, has written a revealing study on this very subject in which he concludes:

   In the history of Armenian-Syrian relations, the 12th and 13th centuries
   were a period of direct contacts and close cooperation between the two
   peoples. This was due first of all to the geographical situation of the
   Armenian kingdom of Cilicia and to the cohabitation of the Armenian and
   Syrian populations both in Cilicia and in the neighbouring provinces. The
   long official and religious contacts as well as the everyday relations
   between the Armenians and the Syrians left their imprint on the cultural
   life of the era.(6)

* In the latter half of the 12th century, a deep theological dialogue occurred between the Armenian and Byzantine churches, which proved to have a significant impact on later events. It began in 1165, when one of the most talented and erudite theologians of the Armenian church had a serious conversation with Duke Alexis, a representative of the Byzantine emperor Manuel Comnenus (1143-80). Surprised to find the exposition of Bishop Nerses the Gracious so lucid and convincing, Alexis felt that the Byzantine authorities had somehow misrepresented the Armenian christological position. He asked Bishop Nerses to set down his discourse in writing, which the latter gladly did, in what came to be known as the Pontifical Letter of St Nerses the Gracious.

In Byzantium, both the emperor and Patriarch Michael were deeply impressed by the clarity and soundness of the doctrinal formulation provided by Bishop Nerses. A substantial correspondence between the two churches ensued between 1165 and 1179, with three successive Armenian primates being involved in the discussions. All three -- Gregory III Bahlavouni (1113-66), Nerses the Gracious (1166-73) and Krikor Tegha (1173-93) -- shared the same spirit of theological and ecumenical openness. A tacit consensus was actually reached that when the Armenians spoke of "one nature" of Christ, citing a formulation of Cyril of Alexandria,(7) they were neither confusing the two natures nor accepting one and rejecting the other, but were professing the divine and human natures to be united unconfusedly and inseparably. Conversely, when the Byzantines spoke of "two natures", they were not separating Christ into two entities. As Nerses the Gracious had written in his original doctrinal exposition:

   If one says "one nature" in the sense of unmixable and indivisible union
   and not in the sense of confusion, and if one says "two natures" as being
   without confusion and without alteration and not meaning "division", [then]
   both are within the orbit of orthodoxy ["true faith"].(8)

After negotiations conducted through correspondence and delegations, the Armenian side expressed a willingness to recognize the orthodoxy of the Byzantine church, provided the latter (1) would consider the Armenian position as fully orthodox, and (2) would not insist on the acceptance of the council of Chalcedon and other Byzantine formulations as the condition for such recognition. This conclusion was reached at the Armenian bishops' council of 1179, called by Catholicos Krikor Tegha ("the Young") in Hromkla, where the Catholicate of All the Armenians had settled at the time. But the emperor died before he could receive the official Armenian response. Thereafter, political events in Byzantium took a turn for the worse, and unity between the two churches, pursued so intensively from 1165 through 1179, never materialized.(9)