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88 The Armenian Church

eternally, shares their glory and partakes of their
creation, having been equal with them in power
5
and in glory."
Armenian pneumatology teaches that the
Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone.
The Father derives His being from Himself
and gives birth to the Son and procession to
the Holy Spirit. A major concern of Armenian
theology has been to maintain the uniqueness
of the Father as the sole principle, the source
and cause of Godhead. The Son and the Holy
Spirit do not derive their existence from a
common essence, but from the hypostasis
of the Father. The Armenian Church, like the
Orthodox churches, does not accept the pro-
cession of the Holy Spirit from the Son
(filioque way). It believes that such an ap-
proach will introduce two causes, two sources,
and two separate principles into Trinity,
leading to ditheism.
3) The Council of Ephesus wrestled with
questions related to the person of Christ.
The name given to the Mother of God,
Theotokos, meaning God-bearing, stirred con-
troversy in the church. The argument was
that God cannot be born from a human
being and therefore St. Mary is the mother
of Christ's human nature and, as such,
she must be referred to as anthropotokos,
meaning man-bearing or Christotokos, Christ-
bearing. Taking this argument further, the
leading figure of this approach, Nestorius,