1- Introduction

The nature of Christ is a very important subject that caused a serious dissension within the Church in the fifth century, in 451

AD. When the theological dialogue started as an effort towards the unity of churches, the subject had to be discussed. Therefore, our Orthodox Church found it necessary to issue a book which presents its concept in this regard in a language fit for theological dialogues.

This subject (the Nature of Christ) was taught by me to the students of the Seminary "St. Mark Theological College" in 1984 in the form of lectures which I delivered to them in St. Bishoy Monastery, Sheheit Desert, as part of the courses of comparative Theology. The lectures were printed merely for the use of the students.

The same lectures were afterwards translated into English in Ottawa, Canada, in 1980 and became available in English only for six years...

We had to print them in Arabic for the students of the Seminary and its branches and for the benefit of those who are interested in theological studies whether ministers or ordinary individuals.. and whoever has the desire-from other churches to be acquainted with our concept of Christology.

The first theological dialogue we attended on this subject was in Vienna, Austria in September 1971 AD convened by the Pro-Oriente Group, as we have discussed this issue before here on st-takla.org in other sections. In this dialogue we reached a theological formula that was accepted by our Catholic brothers and those in the old Oriental orthodox churches: the Syrians, Arminians, Ethiopians and Indians. It was an important dialogue indeed, for the dissension that occurred in the fifth century had distorted