Sebastian P. Brock: The Syriac Orient: a third "lung" for the Church?OCP 71/1 (2005) 5-20In 1980, after his visit to the Ecumenical Patriarch in Istanbul, Pope John Paul II stated that "it will benecessary [sc. for the Church] to learn again to breathe fully with 2 lungs, the Western and the Eastern". Onseveral subsequent occasions he has used the metaphor of the 2 lungs again. The metaphor itself can betraced back to the great ecumenist, Fr. Yves Congar, who in turn seems to have taken it from the Russianpoet, Vjaceslav Ivanov (1866-1949).1 The importance that Pope John Paul II has consistently given to theEastern Orthodox tradition is indeed greatly to be welcomed. In this paper, however, I should like to suggestthat - unlike human beings - the Church is endowed, not just with 2 lungs, but with a third lung as well, fromwhich she also needs to learn to breathe once again.The concept of Christianity as coming to us in the twenty-first century through 2 main streams of tradition,which once can label for convenience as "the Latin West" and "the Greek East", is a widespread one. Thisbinary model for Christian tradition, however, is unsatisfactory and inadequate, since it effectively leaves outof consideration a further important Christian tradition represented by the indigenous Churches of the MiddleEast.2 This third main tradition can, for convenience, be termed "the Syriac Orient".Just as, from a broad historical perspective, the term "the Latin West" serves as a shorthand way of denotingthe whole of Western Christian tradition, Reformed as well as Catholic, and just as the term "the Greek East"covers all the different Eastern Orthodox Churches, so too the term "Syrian Orient", for our present purposes,serves to cover, not only the Churches of Syriac liturgical tradition, but also the other ancient indigenousChurches of the Middle East, all of which have, or have had, close cultural links with the Churches which arespecifically of Syriac tradition. Thus, unlike the ...