How does the Anglican Church view such churches as Coptic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Catholic Church, and Nestorian Church? Also how do they relate to other protestant churches
My understanding of the Articles is that they view them as in error but part of the Church nonetheless. Same with most Protestant churches
I think Joe is right on some of these, but the Nestorians deny some aspects of the Creed (afaik) and therefore would be beyond the pale for us in terms of being viewed as Christians... Like, we don't view Jehova's Witnesses as Christians
If by Nestorians you mean the Assyrian Church of the East, they accept and use the Niceno-Constantinopolitan creed (one of several legitimate textual variants thereof*) and historically have had good relations with Anglicans. In particular, during the period before and after the genocide, when the Assyrians were probably the most impoverished Christians on Earth, Anglican missionaries made comtact with them, translated their service books into English, and altar guilds in the UK donated vestments, et cetera, which were greatly appreciated. The Assyrian Church of the East probably isn’t bona fide Nestorian either; the emerging consensus is that the Christology of Mar Babai is compatible with Chalcedon. Nestorius for his part in the Bazaar of Heraclides praised the Council of Chalcedon and claimed their doctrine was in agreement with his, which strikes me as disingenious since the main thrust of Nestorianism, the bone of contention that caused the intervention of St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Council of Ephesus, was Nestorius denying that St. Mary was the Theotokos, and insisting she was merely Christotokos; the Mother of Christ but not the Mother of God. And today I have encountered many non-denominational types who are uncomfortable with Theotokos terminology and yet who consider themselves Chalcedonian based on the fallacy that Chalcedon merely decreed that our Lord was completely human and completely divine (this is something everyone agreed on, including the Nestorians and the Oriental Orthodox, except for some radical Eutychians who might have argued, ala Apollinarius,* that his humanity was partially or entirely swallowed up in divinity. We later encounter a repeat of this defective approach to Christology, which started with Apollinarius in the fourth century, in the sixth century with the gross error of Monothelitism, the idea that our Lord has a divine will but no human will (which is almost a precise restatement of Apollinarianism, in that Apollinarius taught that our Lord did not have a human soul). It was for denying this heresy that St. Maximus the Confessor had his tongue cut out by the Emperor in Constantinople. And this also gives us Pope Honorius I, who was a proponent of it and thus a rare example of an ancient Roman bishop who was also an heresiarch. Most of the Roman bishops before Leo I were extremely theologically conservative and traditional. The related Christological controversy about whether or not our Lord is a human person and a divine person in a union of will (accorded to Theodore of Mopsuestia) or the Nestorian position that our Lord has a human and divine hypostasis in personal union (versus the Chalcedonian position that our Lord has a human and divine nature in hypostatic union, and one hypostasis, or the Miaphysite / Oriental Orthodoc position that our Lord has one theandric nature in which his humanity and divinity coexist without change, confusion, or separation, or the bona fide Monophysite/Eutychian position that His human nature dissolved into His divine nature “like a drop in the ocean.” * Virtually every Apostolic church has its own slight textual variant on the creed if one does a literal translation, but most of the Eastern churches use the BCP translation with the filioque removed. The Copts and Armenians use variants withna few extra words, what one might call farcing, for example, the Copts say, “Yes, we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,” and so on. The Armenians add some details from the Council of Ephesus. The Syriac Orthodox use the standard text. The Assyrians use a textual variant which is slightly abbreviated but is obviously the creed of 381; it should be stressed that at all times, communication between the Church of the East in the Persian Empire, modern day Iran and Iraq, and India, and the Roman Empire, was minimal, so this has the effect of validating the Apostolic faith, since it was preserved independently in both the East Syriac and Roman Imperial spheres of influence.q **One element of Apollinarianism was Chillianism, which the early church had tolerated, and we see it in the writings of Sts. Irenaeus and Justin Martyr, but by the Council of Constantinople, it was ruled out; the line in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed “whose kingdom shall have no end” is written with chiliasts in mind. So premillenialists ought to make a point of using the Nicene Creed of 325, because if they inadvertantly use the creed of 381, they are engaging in self-contradiction. One thing I love about traditional Anglicanism is the focus on using all three of the ancient creeds in the course of the liturgical services. In the East the Apostles Creed is not used, but it is agreed with, however, there is a textual variant of the Athanasian Creed which appears in the back of Greek service books and Russian psalters, which lacks the filioque but is otherwise unchanged.
This blog, by a friend of mine, Fr. Ephrem, who has since returned to the Assyrian Church and presently is in charge of their ecumenical relations with the Russian Orthodox Church, is a very good resource explaining the Orthodoxy of the Assyrian church: http://eastmeetseastblog.blogspot.com/ Of course Fr. Ephrem while having no problems with Syriac Orthodox tends to get on the case of the Copts and regards Pope Shenouda, memory eternal, as a heretic (and to be fair, so do some Copts, as he denied salvation via theosis at one point). But it would be fair to say that Copts and Assyrians tend to distrust each other and view each other with enmity; I met an ethnically Assyrian member of the Antiochian Orthodox Church who warned me never to trust Copts, and I have met Copts with an equally cynical attitude about Assyrians. But fortunately, it has never been more than that; there has not been a war between the Assyrian and Coptic people since several centuries before the birth of Christ (on a few occasions the Assyrians conquered Egypt, and vice versa, if memory serves).