Editor’s Note: The political unrest in Armenia has grown since the recent war with Azerbaijan, in which the government in Yerevan effectively surrendered to Azerbaijan in return for personal favors for Nikkol, the Armenian strongman who effectively rules Armenia as a dictatorship. Ardent Christian nationalists such as Archbishop Ajapahian, of the Armenian Apostolic Church — not in communion with Rome — have been calling for the toppling of the undemocratic regime since 2024. Nikkol has responded by strongly criticizing leading clerics, such as Catholicos Karekin II, demanding his resignation, for having sired a child contrary to his vows of celibacy.

The Armenian Apostolic Church

In the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Catholicos is the title of the supreme ruling Bishop of the entire ecclesiastical order. The Armenian Apostolic Church is the oldest national Christian Church founded before the edict of Milan, issued by the Emperor Constantine in 305 A. D.. They trace their apostolic succession through the Apostles Bartholemew and Jude Thaddeus. The Armenian Apostolic Church officially broke communion with Rome in 610 A. D., at the third Council of Dvin, where their bishops rejected the Christological profession of “one person in two natures” (ένα πρόσωπο με δύο φύσεις) defined at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 A. D. and accepted by both Latins and Greeks. This disagreement is founded on philosophical terminology, since the Armenians regard the term for  “nature” (physis) in a broader sense of “being” and “existence”, as Saint Cyril of Alexandria used the term, and not merely as a principle of being in act, as the Greeks and Latins use the term in the stricter sense. — In modern times, the Armenian Apostolic Church has signed doctrinal agreements with the other Churches of Apostolic origin, clarifying their position as one which does not reject the Chalcedonian definition according to what it signifies, even though the believe the terminology employed to express it is unacceptable due to its implication of a division in Christ’s being.

The Catholic Position on Christ

In this, it helps to understand, as Saint Bonaventure of Bagnoregio explains, that in God there is neither difference, division nor separation, but only distinction of each Divine Person from one another. So also in Christ, there is neither division nor separation of Divinity and Humanity, but only distinction, from the first moment of His conception in the womb of the Virgin. But not all languages can so easily express the signification of the terms, “difference”, “distinction”, “division” and “separation”. A “difference” is that which bears two things apart; a “division” regards the breaking of what was formally one; a “separation” regards two things existing apart; but a “distinction” does not require difference, division, or separation, since it only implicates the individuality of non-identical principles. Thus, when we confess that in Christ Jesus, there is one person in two distinct natures, we affirm the unity and unicity of the Divine Person of the Son of God, Who from the first moment of His conception in the womb of the Virgin, embraces in His one Person, two natures, Divinity and Humanity, but not a human nature created apart, separate, or divided, but one which has no existence in time part from His Person and Divinity, though it remains distinct in nature. Thus, when touching Jesus Christ’s Human Body, we touch a true human body, but simultaneously also touch the Divine Person and His Divinity, which otherwise, are untouchable, in the physical sense. Thus understood the definition of Chalcedon does not imply disunity, division, or separation in Christ, the God man, as the Armenians and Copts have for centuries feared.

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The Book on the Trinity, every faithful Catholic priest would love as his next present

This is Br. Bugnolo's English Translation, of Saint Bonaventure's encylopedic book of theology on the Trinity: With this book, your priest will always have something intelligent and awesomely inspiring to preach to you about God the Father, God the Son & God the Holy Spirit!

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