‘The Church across the border’: The Church of the East and its Chaldean branch

The modern history of the so-called Church of the East is marked by intermittent and partial unions with Rome, culminating in the creation of the separate Chaldaean Catholic Church. The theological disputes lying behind this process have now been largely resolved (though the future of the interchurch dialogue that led to this resolution is unclear, as we will see below). The Ottoman Empire had created external political circumstances, which have also now disappeared. Despite its many difficulties over the last 150 years, the Church of the East has continued as the main historic stream of both communions, from which, it can be argued, the Chaldaean Catholic Church has been temporarily diverted. The signs of a breaking down of the barriers between the two churches suggest that one can now imagine a reunited Church of the East with both streams flowing together again, in harmony with and alongside the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox traditions.