Fire From Heaven: Studies in Syriac Theology and Liturgy Sebastian Brock From the Preface …… The theological controversies of the fifth/sixth centuries, over how best to describe the interrelationship between the divinity and the humanity in the incarnate Christ, led, over the course of the sixth century, to a three-way split in Eastern Christianity. Subsequently, when the Arab invasions of the seventh century cut off much of the Christian East from the Byzantine Empire, this ensured that it was only the theological policy promoted by the Byzantine Empire and by Rome, namely, that based on the doctrinal formulation of the Council of Chalcedon (451), which has come to be regarded as the norm by both the Latin West and the Greek East. It was only outside the Byzantine Empire, and under Muslim rule, that those strands of Eastern Christianity which were opposed to the doctrinal formula of Chalcedon were able to survive - and are today represented by the various Oriental Orthodox Churches and by the Church of the East. With recent events in the Middle East, resulting in the massive emigration of the indigenous Christians to various countries of the West, it has become all the more important to revisit these ancient theological disputes from a less Eurocentric perspective in order to try and understand what went wrong from their point of view as well. Here, Syriac happens to be in a privileged position for it is only in this language that contemporary theological texts from all three sides in the dispute survive, thus enabling us to perceive something of each of the three traditions speaking with their own voice, and not through misleading excerpts attacked by their opponents. ……