Cyrilline / Miaphysite Egyptian Tradition

When the Council of Chalcedon met in 451 and defined Christ as one person "in two natures," the Egyptian church largely refused the wording. Not because it thought Christ any less than fully God or fully human, but because it held to the formula Cyril of Alexandria had used against Nestorius twenty years earlier: one incarnate nature of the Word, a single united reality rather than two things described side by side. To Egyptian ears Chalcedon's language sounded like pulling Christ apart again; to Chalcedon's supporters, the Egyptian refusal sounded like collapsing his humanity. The council deposed the Alexandrian patriarch Dioscorus, imperial authority backed the Chalcedonian side, and Egypt was left with two rival hierarchies — one favoured by Constantinople, and one that most Egyptian Christians actually followed, worshipping increasingly in Coptic rather than Greek. Out of that separation came the Coptic Orthodox Church and the wider family of churches that made the same refusal.