Coptic Orthodox Church

The Coptic Orthodox Church is the ancient Christian Church of Egypt, and is today the largest Christian denomination in the country. It is one of the constituent Churches of the Oriental Orthodox Church.

According to tradition, Christianity was brought to Egypt by Mark the Evangelist (i.e., the presumed author of the Gospel according to St. Mark), and the Coptic Church is said to have been founded by him in 43 CE.

In the fourth and fifth centuries Christian theologians disputed whether Jesus, as both fully divine and fully human, has two natures, a divine nature and a human nature, each distinct from, but very closely related to, the other (Dyophysitism) or only one nature, a divine nature which in some way includes or absorbs his humanity (Monophysitism). In 451 the ecumenical Council of bishops meeting at Chalcedon condemned Monophysitism as a heresy, and this led to a division within eastern Christianity between, on the one hand, the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Syriac Orthodox Church, and a number of other Monophysite Churches, which rejected the Council's decision, and, on the other hand, those Dyophysite Churches which accepted it. The former group of Churches today constitutes the Oriental Orthodox Church, while the latter group constitutes the Eastern Orthodox Church.

The head of the Coptic Church is the Pope of Alexandria - his full title is Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of All Africa on the Holy See of St. Mark: the current Pope (2015) is Tawadros II (1952-), whose reign began in 2012. The Coptic language, an Afro-Asiatic language which is a descendant of Ancient Egyptian and was extinct as a spoken language by the beginning of the seventeenth century, is still used in the services of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

See further Christian Heresies.