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According to a very widespread understanding of church history the christological controversies of the fifth century were brought to a happy conclusion with the Definition of Faith issued at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. This definition was accepted as normative by both Greek East and Latin West (and hence, subsequently, by the various Reformed churches of the West). Only a few obstinate Orientals (so this conventional picture would have it) refused to accept the Council's Definition of Faith, whether it be out of ignorance, stupidity, stubbornness, or even separatist nationalist aspirations: these people were, on the one side of the theological spectrum, the Nestorians, and at the other end, the Monophysites-heretics both, the former rejecting the Council of Ephesus (431) and believing in two persons in the incarnate Christ, the latter rejecting the Council of Chalcedon and holding that Christ's human nature was swallowed up by the divine nature. It need hardly be said that such a picture is an utterly pernicious caricature, whose roots lie in a hostile historiographical tradition which has dominated virtually all textbooks'of church history from antiquity down to the present day, with the result that the term 'Nestorian Church' has become the standard designation for the ancient oriental church which in the past called itself 'The Church of the East', but which today prefers a fuller title 'The Assyrian Church of the East'. Such a designation is not only discourteous to the modern members of this venerable church, but also-as this paper aims to show-both inappropriate and misleading. The reality behind the divisions caused by the christological controversies concerning the relationship of the humanity and the divinity in the incarnate Christ was, needless to say, far more complex than the popular caricature suggests. While it is quite true that the Assyrian Church of the East has never accepted the Council of Ephesus, and the Oriental Orthodox churches have, in their turn, rejected the doctrinal definition of the Council of Chalcedon, each had perfectly sound reasons for doing so. In the case of the Council of Ephesus, it was not to any doctrinal decision (the Council issued no definition of faith) but to its irregular

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