council at B. Lapat, and issued a confession of faith, the first of several of the Assyrian Church's declaring, that concerned itself with Christology. It does not survive; but there can be no doubt that it was emphatically "Dyophysite," and opposed to the then dominant creed of "the West." Bar-Hebræus declares it to have been "Nestorian," and so it very possibly was, even in our sense of the word. The point is of no great importance as the confession was formally repudiated soon after; but as the council of Chalcedon was "Nestorian" to all good Monophysites, the evidence of this writer (valeat quantum) would rather point to its being orthodox. Next, the council of B. Lapat proceeded to practically canonize Theodore of Mopsuestia, whom they described (truly enough) as having been "honoured in life, and honoured in death," and whom they further added, "all should follow."[1] Another canon, the only one to be regularly re-enacted later, declared the lawfulness of marriage for all Christians, including every grade of the hierarchy, and Bar-soma himself took advantage of the permission thus given. Seventeen other canons followed, which concerned themselves, so far as the few fragments remaining will allow us to judge,[2] with Simony, nepotism, and like matters, which were, in fact, rules highly profitable for the Assyrian or for any Church—if they could be executed.
The council of Bait Lapat was the "high-water
- ↑ This canon is only preserved to us through its having been quoted and adopted by a later council (Gregory, a.d. 605; Syn. Or., 211, 475). It was of course annulled with the other canons when the council was repudiated; but the fact of the canonization of the then uncondemned Theodore, in 484, must be remembered when we come to discuss the attitude of the Assyrian Church toward the posthumous anathema, pronounced on him in 553.
- ↑ Syn. Or., 621.
