The Formation of the Marthoma Church

To understand the tragedy of the Marthoma schism, one must first appreciate what was lost — or rather, what was willfully abandoned. The Christians of Malankara, Kerala, traced their apostolic origin to St. Thomas the Apostle, who, according to unbroken tradition, arrived on the shores of Malabar in 52 AD, founded seven and a half churches, and established in India the very first Christian community on Asian soil. This is not mere legend but the living memory of a people who have preserved it through centuries of liturgy, prayer, and martyrdom.

These ancient Indian Christians maintained their faith within the sacred bosom of the Syriac Orthodox Church of Antioch — the mother church founded by the Apostles Peter and Paul in the city where disciples were first called Christians (Acts 11:26). The liturgical language of the Malankara Church was Western Syriac — the language closest to the Aramaic spoken by Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Their theology was that of the great Syriac Fathers: St. Ephrem the Syrian, St. Jacob of Serugh, Mor Severus of Antioch. Their anaphora — the Liturgy of St. James — was the most ancient eucharistic prayer in Christendom, going back to the Jerusalem church of the first century.

For over fifteen centuries, these faithful Christians worshipped in this apostolic tradition, venerating the saints, praying for the departed, celebrating the Holy Qurbono with reverence and sacred awe, and maintaining their communion with the Patriarch of Antioch as their canonical and spiritual head. They were, in every canonical sense, a part of the one holy, apostolic, and catholic Church — the Syriac Orthodox Church established through the succession of the blessed Apostles.

It was into this ancient, sacred, and living tradition that the winds of Protestant revolution were to blow with devastating force in the nineteenth century.

The early nineteenth century witnessed the aggressive expansion of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), an Anglican evangelical organization founded in 1799 in England, into the territories of the ancient Eastern churches. The CMS missionaries who arrived in Kerala were not, as they sometimes presented themselves, mere educators and friends. They came with a theological agenda shaped by the Protestant Reformation — one that was fundamentally incompatible with the ancient Syriac Orthodox faith.

The key figures in this missionary enterprise included Colonel John Macaulay, who facilitated early contacts, and later Benjamin Bailey and Joseph Peet, who established educational institutions in the Kottayam region. They printed Syriac and Malayalam scriptures, established the Kottayam College, and trained a generation of Syrian Christian clergy — all the while quietly instilling Protestant theological ideas antithetical to the Orthodox faith.

To a Syriac Orthodox scholar examining this history, the CMS strategy is transparent: they identified that the Malankara Church, weakened by internal disputes and geographically distant from the Patriarchate of Antioch, was vulnerable to theological penetration. Rather than confronting Orthodoxy directly, they offered the gifts of education and literacy — and in return, expected a gradual transformation of belief. It was a methodology of spiritual colonialism, no less destructive for being dressed in the language of Christian brotherhood.

The CMS missionaries taught their students to view the invocation of saints as "superstition," the prayers for the departed as "unscriptural," the veneration of the Cross as "idolatry," and the authority of the Patriarch of Antioch as "foreign domination." In short, they systematically dismantled — in the minds of impressionable young seminarians — every pillar of the ancient Syriac Orthodox faith. One of those seminarians was Abraham Malpan.

Abraham Malpan (1796–1845), born into a respected family in Pallom, Kottayam, was a gifted scholar and a teacher at the Kottayam Seminary. His intellectual brilliance was undeniable, but his prolonged association with the CMS missionaries led him down a path that the faithful of the Syriac Orthodox Church must regard as one of the most tragic betrayals in the history of Indian Christianity.

Abraham Malpan was deeply influenced by the Protestant theological framework absorbed through his engagement with CMS missionaries, particularly through his reading of the Bible through a Protestant hermeneutical lens that rejected the authority of Holy Tradition, the magisterium of the Church, the intercession of the saints, and sacramental theology as understood in the Orthodox and Catholic traditions. He came to believe that the ancient practices of the Syriac Orthodox Church — practices preserved faithfully for fifteen centuries in Kerala — were corruptions requiring reformation.

From the perspective of Syriac Orthodox theology, this was not enlightenment but apostasy. Abraham Malpan was a Malpan — a teacher — within the Church. He held a sacred responsibility to transmit the faith as he had received it, not to reshape it according to foreign Protestant ideas. When he began to modify the Holy Liturgy — the Qurbono — removing the invocations of the saints, the prayers for the departed, and other elements central to the ancient Antiochene eucharistic tradition, he was not reforming but vandalizing the sacred inheritance entrusted to his care.

The Unauthorized Alterations to the Holy Qurbono

The gravity of Abraham Malpan's actions cannot be overstated. The Holy Qurbono — the Divine Liturgy of St. James — was not merely a set of prayers composed by human ingenuity. It was a living sacramental act given to the Church by the Holy Spirit, refined through the prayerful wisdom of the Fathers, and preserved as a sacred covenant between God and His people. Every word, every gesture, every silence within it carried the accumulated prayer of twenty centuries.

Abraham Malpan, influenced by Protestant discomfort with any form of prayer that did not conform to their Sola Scriptura principle, began conducting the Liturgy with significant omissions. He removed the commemoration of the Theotokos — the Ever-Virgin Mary, Mother of God — and the saints. He deleted the prayers for the faithful departed. He altered the invocatory prayers in ways that reflected Protestant sacramental theology rather than Orthodox understanding.

To the faithful Syriac Orthodox believer, this was an act of sacrilege. The Church had never given any single priest, teacher, or theologian the authority to alter the sacred Liturgy unilaterally. Such changes could only be made — if at all — by a canonical synod under patriarchal authority, guided by the Holy Spirit and grounded in patristic tradition. What Abraham Malpan did was place his individual Protestant-influenced judgment above the accumulated wisdom of the entire Syriac Orthodox Church and above the canonical authority of the Patriarch of Antioch himself.

The Response of the Church: Canonical Rejection

The canonical leadership of the Malankara Church was not silent in the face of these innovations. The Malankara Metropolitan, Pulikkottil Joseph Dionysius, and other canonical authorities recognized the danger posed by Malpan's Protestant experiments. The faithful clergy and laity who remained true to their Orthodox identity resisted these changes vigorously. Abraham Malpan was effectively functioning outside the canonical boundaries of the Church he claimed to serve.

The Patriarchate of Antioch, once informed, viewed Malpan's activities with deep alarm. These were not minor liturgical variations or local adaptations but a fundamental theological departure from the Syriac Orthodox faith — a departure that aligned the reformers with Protestant ecclesiology rather than with the apostolic tradition of Antioch.

The year 1836 marks the formal beginning of the schism that would eventually produce the Marthoma Church. In that year, a document known as the Mavelikara Padiyola was drawn up and signed by Abraham Malpan and his associates. From the perspective of Syriac Orthodox canon law and ecclesiology, this document constitutes one of the most significant acts of schism in the history of Indian Christianity.

The Mavelikara Padiyola expressed the intention of the reforming party to sever their dependence on the Patriarch of Antioch and to reorganize the Malankara Church along Protestant lines. This was not, as the reformers presented it, a mere "purification" of abuses — it was a deliberate act of canonical separation from the mother church of Antioch, under whose authority the Malankara Church had canonically existed for centuries.

The Canonical Gravity of the Padiyola

In Syriac Orthodox canonical tradition, the bond between Malankara and the Patriarchate of Antioch was not a mere administrative convenience but a fundamental expression of ecclesial unity. The Patriarch was not a distant foreign ruler but the canonical head through whom the apostolic succession of the Malankara bishops flowed. To sever this bond unilaterally — without the consent, knowledge, or blessing of the Patriarch — was, in canonical terms, an act of schism.

The reformers, however, did not present it as schism. They argued that the practices they were abolishing were later accretions not found in the original Christianity of St. Thomas. This argument, seductive on its surface, reveals a fundamental Protestant misunderstanding of how the Church preserves and develops its tradition. Holy Tradition is not a static archive to be judged against the New Testament alone but a living river of the Holy Spirit flowing from the apostles through the Fathers and Councils to the present day. What the reformers called "accretions," the Church recognizes as organic developments under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

CMS Influence Embedded in the Document

A careful historical reading of the Mavelikara Padiyola reveals how thoroughly Protestant theological categories had penetrated the thinking of the reformers. The document's critique of existing practices mirrors almost exactly the objections raised by CMS missionaries in their correspondence and publications. The emphasis on Scripture alone as the rule of faith, the rejection of any mediating role for the saints, the dismissal of prayers for the departed — all of these are hallmarks of evangelical Protestant theology transplanted into a Syriac liturgical context.

For the Syriac Orthodox scholar, the Mavelikara Padiyola is thus not a document of internal ecclesiastical reform but a manifesto of Protestant influence over a section of the ancient Thomas Christian community. It marks the moment when a group within the Malankara Church formally chose the theology of sixteenth-century European Protestantism over the theology of the ancient, patristic, Syriac Orthodox tradition.

Abraham Malpan died in 1845 before seeing his movement fully consolidate. The mantle of leadership fell to his nephew, Mathews Mar Athanasius, who had been sent to the Patriarchate of Antioch by Malpan himself — ostensibly for episcopal consecration within the Orthodox tradition, but who returned to become the central figure around whom the reformed party rallied.

The story of Mathews Mar Athanasius is one of the most painfully ironic in Malankara Church history. He received his episcopal consecration from the very Patriarchate whose authority the reformers were undermining. He wore the episcopal vestments, carried the pastoral staff, and bore the title of metropolitan — all of which derived their validity from the apostolic succession maintained in the Syriac Orthodox Church. Yet he used this canonically received authority to advance a reform programme that was fundamentally incompatible with the faith of that same Church.

The British Government's Partisan Role

One of the most troubling aspects of the Marthoma schism, from a Syriac Orthodox perspective, is the role played by the British colonial government in supporting the reforming party against the canonical Orthodox hierarchy. This was not coincidental. The CMS missionaries had the ear of British administrators, and the Protestant theological inclinations of the British government made them natural sympathizers with the reform movement.

Mathews Mar Athanasius skillfully cultivated these colonial connections. When the canonical Orthodox party appealed to the Patriarchate of Antioch and received the support of Patriarch Ignatius Yaqub II, who sent Patriarch Ignatius Peter IV to India, the Patriarch found himself blocked and opposed at every turn by British colonial officials acting in concert with Mathews Mar Athanasius.

The use of British royal and colonial power to undermine the canonical authority of the Patriarch of Antioch in Malankara is a profound moral stain on the history of this period. It reveals that the Marthoma schism was not simply a theological disagreement among equals but was carried forward with the assistance of imperial power against an ancient Eastern church whose canonical structures were being deliberately dismantled with governmental backing.

The Final Deposition of Mathews Mar Athanasius

The Syriac Orthodox Church did not passively accept this assault on its canonical integrity. Patriarch Ignatius Peter IV, during his historic visit to Malankara, formally deposed Mathews Mar Athanasius from his episcopal office in recognition of his persistent deviation from the Orthodox faith and his collaboration with Protestant forces against the canonical Church. In his place, the Patriarch consecrated and affirmed Mor Joseph Dionysius as the legitimate Metropolitan of Malankara.

This was not an act of arbitrary power but the proper exercise of canonical authority. In Syriac Orthodox canon law, the Patriarch possesses the authority — indeed, the responsibility — to remove bishops who fall into heresy or who act in a manner destructive to the faith and order of the Church. The deposition of Mathews Mar Athanasius was therefore a canonical act, fully in accordance with the ancient traditions of the Church, and represented the judgment of the apostolic see of Antioch upon one who had abandoned the Orthodox faith.

The canonical restoration of the Malankara Syriac Orthodox Church was definitively accomplished through the Mulamthuruthy Synod of 1876, presided over by Patriarch Ignatius Peter IV himself. This patriarchal synod formally regularized the canonical structure of the Church, affirmed patriarchal jurisdiction over Malankara, established diocesan organization according to ancient canonical norms, and produced the binding Mulamthuruthy Padiyola — the constitutional charter of the restored Orthodox community.

The faithful who rejected the Protestant reforms and remained loyal to the ancient Syriac Orthodox tradition — the overwhelming majority of the Thomas Christian community — rallied around the Patriarch. Over one hundred parishes, 130 priests, and 144 lay representatives signed the Mulamthuruthy Padiyola, reaffirming their canonical allegiance to the Patriarchate of Antioch and their rejection of the Protestant-influenced reforms.

This massive affirmation by the Malankara faithful stands as a powerful testimony: when given a clear choice between the ancient Syriac Orthodox faith of their fathers and the Protestant innovations of the reformers, the overwhelming majority chose their ancestral faith. The Marthoma movement represented, at its genesis, a minority position within Malankara — a minority empowered not by the organic consent of the faithful but by the backing of British colonial power and CMS missionary resources.

The Malankara Marthoma Syrian Church was formally recognized as an independent body in 1889 and subsequently consolidated its identity as a reformed Syrian church, fully aligned with evangelical Protestant theology while retaining certain external elements of the Syriac liturgical tradition — a combination that Syriac Orthodox theologians have consistently characterized as a contradiction in terms.

Protestant Theology in Syriac Vesture

The Marthoma Church retained the external forms of the Syriac tradition — the liturgical language, certain vestures and architectural features, and the name "Syrian" — while fundamentally rejecting the theological substance that gave those forms their meaning. This is, from an Orthodox perspective, a profound internal contradiction.

The veneration of the Theotokos and the saints, for example, is not an optional addition to Syriac Orthodox spirituality but arises organically from its eucharistic ecclesiology, its understanding of the communion of saints, and its theology of the Church as the Body of Christ extending through time and eternity. To remove these practices while retaining the Syriac liturgical frame is to wear the garments of Orthodoxy while abandoning its soul.

Similarly, the removal of prayers for the faithful departed reflects a Protestant rejection of the Orthodox understanding of the intermediate state, the communion of the living and the dead in the Body of Christ, and the efficacy of the Church's intercession. In the ancient Syriac tradition, these prayers are not marginal piety but central expressions of what the Church believes about death, resurrection, and the life of the age to come.

The Anglican Communion: A Revealing Alliance

Perhaps the most theologically revealing development in Marthoma Church history is its entry into full communion with the Anglican Communion in 1974. The Marthoma Church is today in eucharistic communion with the Church of England, the Episcopal Church (USA), and other Anglican bodies — churches that have in many cases adopted theological positions (on the ordination of women, sexual ethics, and doctrinal definition) that are far removed not only from Syriac Orthodox tradition but from the ancient faith of the undivided Church.

For a Syriac Orthodox believer, this Anglican communion is the logical culmination of the trajectory begun by Abraham Malpan in the 1830s. The Marthoma Church, having accepted the Protestant theological principle that the ancient tradition of the Church is subject to individual and congregational re-evaluation, finds itself in communion with churches that have followed that principle to conclusions that would have horrified even the original reformers. This is the nature of the Protestant principle: once the authority of Holy Tradition is relativized, there is no principled stopping point.

Loss of Apostolic Succession

From the strict canonical perspective of the Syriac Orthodox Church, the Marthoma Church has severed its apostolic succession. This requires careful explanation. The bishops of the Marthoma Church were originally consecrated within the Syriac Orthodox tradition, and the physical line of episcopal ordination may be traced. However, in Syriac Orthodox theology — as in all ancient Christian traditions — apostolic succession involves not merely the physical transmission of ordination but communion in the faith of the apostles and communion with the apostolic sees.

A bishop who severs his communion with the Patriarch of Antioch, abandons the apostolic faith as defined by the Syriac Orthodox Church, and enters into communion with Protestant bodies has — in Orthodox canonical understanding — broken the chain of apostolic continuity even if the physical succession of ordination remains traceable. The Church Fathers are clear: schism and heresy, not physical consecration alone, determine the validity of apostolic succession in its full theological sense.

As a faithful Syriac Orthodox believer and historian, it is impossible to examine the formation of the Marthoma Church without a deep sense of grief for what was lost — not merely to the Church as an institution, but to the souls of the faithful who were led away from the ancient faith of their fathers.

The Loss of the Holy Qurbono in Its Fullness

The members of the Marthoma Church no longer celebrate the Holy Qurbono — the Divine Liturgy — in its ancient apostolic fullness. The reforming hand of Abraham Malpan stripped from that sacred rite the commemorations of the Theotokos and saints, the prayers for the departed, and other elements that bind the worshipping community to the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before. This is an impoverishment of incalculable spiritual magnitude. The Liturgy is not merely a service of worship but the very act through which the Church participates in the heavenly worship of the angels and saints around the throne of God, interceding for the living and the dead. What the reformers removed was not superstition but the very heart of Christian eschatological hope.

The Loss of Communion with Antioch

The Thomas Christians of Kerala, through their canonical bond with the Patriarchate of Antioch, were connected to one of the most ancient centers of Christian civilization. Antioch was the church of Peter, of Paul, of Ignatius the martyr, of John Chrysostom, of the great theological tradition that shaped the entire Christian East. Through Antioch, the Malankara Christians participated in the universal fellowship of Oriental Orthodoxy. The Marthoma rupture severed this bond, leaving the reformers' community in a theological and historical isolation that no subsequent ecumenical relationship — even full communion with the Anglican Communion — can adequately replace.

The Loss of the Saints' Intercession

In the ancient Syriac tradition, the saints are not merely moral exemplars of a distant past but living members of the Body of Christ who continue to intercede before the throne of God for their brethren still on earth. The invocation of the saints — especially the Theotokos, the holy Apostle Thomas, and the great Syriac Fathers — was not a corruption but a profound expression of the Church's faith in the resurrection and the communion of saints. When Abraham Malpan removed these invocations from the Liturgy, he was not cleansing it of superstition but amputating the community from its living connection with the glorified members of Christ's Body.

History, examined with the eyes of Syriac Orthodox faith and canonical scholarship, renders a clear and unavoidable verdict on the formation of the Marthoma Church.

The Marthoma movement was born not from the organic spiritual renewal of the Malankara community but from the external theological pressure of Protestant missionaries who sought to reshape an ancient Eastern church in their own image. Abraham Malpan, however gifted intellectually, allowed himself to become an instrument of this transformation, betraying the sacred trust placed in him as a Malpan — a teacher — of the Orthodox faith.

The Mavelikara Padiyola of 1836 was an act of schism, not reform. The activities of Mathews Mar Athanasius constituted a canonical rebellion against the legitimate authority of the Patriarch of Antioch, conducted with the support of British colonial power. The subsequent formal establishment of the Marthoma Church as an independent body in 1889 was the crystallization of a schism that had been in process for over half a century.

None of this is said in a spirit of personal condemnation of the individuals involved or of the present faithful of the Marthoma Church, many of whom are sincere and devout Christians who have received their faith in good conscience from their fathers. The judgment is upon the historical process — a process in which the ancient Syriac Orthodox faith of the Thomas Christians of Kerala was fractured by external theological influence, internal ambition, and the power of colonial patronage.

The Church's Canonical Response Was Correct

The Syriac Orthodox Church's response — the deposition of Mathews Mar Athanasius, the patriarchal visit, the Mulamthuruthy Synod, the binding Padiyola of 1876 — was entirely correct from a canonical and theological perspective. The Church did not overreact or act in bad faith. It exercised its canonical authority to protect the apostolic faith and restore proper order — exactly as the canons of the Fathers and the traditions of the Orthodox Church demanded.

The faithful who stood by the Patriarch and the ancient faith at Mulamthuruthy were not reactionaries clinging to comfortable tradition. They were the heirs of the Apostle Thomas, consciously choosing the faith received from their fathers over the Protestant innovation promoted by foreign missionaries and their local allies. Their witness deserves honour and gratitude from all who value the ancient Syriac Orthodox heritage of Malankara.

The formation of the Marthoma Church was not — from a Syriac Orthodox perspective — the beginning of a new and better chapter in the story of Indian Christianity. It was a wound inflicted upon the ancient Body of Christ in Malankara, a wound whose full healing must await the mercy of God and the willingness of all separated brethren to return to the ancient faith.

The Syriac Orthodox Church has never ceased to regard the baptized members of the Marthoma community as spiritually our brethren — children of the same apostolic heritage, heirs of the same St. Thomas, formed by the same land and the same history. Our grief is not triumphalism but the authentic sorrow of those who have seen beloved family members estranged through historical circumstance.

The ancient faith of the Syriac Orthodox Church remains what it has always been: the faith of the Apostles, preserved in the sacred liturgy, the holy canons, the patristic tradition, and the living witness of the saints. The Holy Qurbono still rises each day in the ancient Syriac tongue, the commemorations of the Theotokos and the saints still ascend to the throne of God, the prayers for the faithful departed still unite the living and the dead in the one Body of Christ. This inheritance was not abandoned in 1836, in 1876, or in any subsequent year of controversy — and it will not be abandoned.

"Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent and do the first works." — Revelation 2:5