Christological declarations – the achievement of ecumenical theological dialogues between the Catholic Church and the ancient Eastern Churches

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present the most important doctrinal agreements, reached in the last 30 years of the 20th century, through ecumenical dialogue between the Catholic Church and the ancient Eastern Churches: namely, the Assyrian Church of the East (the so-called pre-Chalcedonian Church) and the Oriental Orthodox Churches (the so-called pre-Chalcedonian Churches). Using the method of analysing published documents of ecumenical dialogues, the context and chronology of work on Christological issues were reconstructed and their main achievement was presented: joint Christological declarations of the Churches involved in the dialogue. It follows from these that the ancient Eastern Churches mentioned above can no longer be considered, respectively, the Nestorian Church and the Monophysite Churches. Theological and historical research has shown that linguistic, cultural and political factors contributed greatly to the emergence of theological differences based on misunderstanding. The end of fifteen centuries of doctrinal dispute is one of the most spectacular achievements of ecumenical dialogue.