ASIA - The Ancient Church of the East in China: A Missionary Perspective

by Gianni Valente

(We publish below the presentation by the Director of Fides at the 2024 Xi'an International Jingjiao Forum, a Conference dedicated to the Syriac Church of the East (Jingjiao in Chinese) held from 5 to 7 July at the Shaanxi Hotel in Xi'an

Xi'an (Agenzia Fides) - In the autumn of 2022 I was lucky to interview Mar Awa III Royel, Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East, in Rome for Fides. This is a Church that is small today, but with a long history, a direct heir of the Ancient Church of the East which in the first centuries of Christianity was the protagonist of an extraordinary missionary adventure. An adventure that brought the Christian message from the Middle East to the Arabian Peninsula, to India and even to China. In the interview, I asked Mar Awa what he thought was the secret of that great missionary adventure. The young Patriarch of the Assyrian Church replied that the missionaries of the ancient Church of the East were a unique “army”, a spiritual army. He recalled that they were above all monks and nuns, who won the hearts of others “with gentleness, and not with the dynamics of conquest”. For them – Mar Awa added – “every urgent matter, every concrete problem of life became an opportunity to do good, becoming friends and brothers with everyone”.

In my opinion, there are several reasons why that extraordinary historical and ecclesial event is still relevant today. In most of the references in my presentation I must thank the rich and profound studies of the Italian sinologist Matteo Nicolini-Zani, a monk of the Community of Bose. I refer in particular to his essay “Monastic Mission in Dialogue” contained in the volume “The Mission of the Universal Church – an Oriental Perspective”, edited by Professor Germano Marani SJ and published by Urbaniana University Press.

Origin and specific features of the Church of the East

The communities of the Church of the East that had been rooted in China for centuries, from the most remote antiquity, are often called "Nestorian" because at the time of the Council of Ephesus (431), which condemned Patriarch Nestorius of Constantinople, they wanted to remain linked to the theological and spiritual tradition of the Church of Antioch, from which Nestorius himself came. This Antiochian tradition placed great emphasis on the incarnation and humanity of Christ, on his human nature, recognizing that through Christ's humanity the mystery of his divinity is revealed.

Since the beginning of the 3rd century AD, the Church of the East had begun to structure itself as an autonomous Church, outside the borders of the Roman Empire, distancing itself from the Church of the Empire. The Christians of the Church of the East had their own Patriarch (Katholikos) based in Seleucia-Ctesiphon, on the banks of the Tigris River in Mesopotamia.

This distancing from the Churches of the Empire and, above all, of the Church of Constantinople/Byzantium was not due above all to theological or doctrinal reasons, but to reasons that could be defined as political, in the broadest sense. As its presence moved towards the East, in the heart of the Persian Empire and beyond, the Church of the East, in order to avoid persecution, had to demonstrate that its Christians did not belong to communities linked to the Roman Empire, which for centuries had been the enemy par excellence of the Persian world.
The communities of the Church of the East progressively increased their presence towards the East through different means and processes. In some cases, this occurred due to the deportations of populations in the territories conquered by the Persian Empire, when among the deportees there were Christians and also bishops.

In less troubled times, Christians moved towards the East following trade routes. In any case, on their way to the East, the Christians of the Syriac Church came across new peoples, new languages, new cultures and new religious communities. For example, when they came to found new episcopal sees in present-day Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, cities such as Samarkand and Tashkent became meeting points with the Sogdians, a nomadic people of merchants, who in part became Christians. To follow the Sogdian merchants, bishops were ordained who embraced their nomadic condition.

Thus, the East Syrian Church is a Christianity that expands following the vicissitudes of history: migrations, deportations, movements along the flows of trade. In their fundamental work on missionary theology, Stephen Bevans and Roger Schroeder recognize that the originality and relevance of this "missionary movement" were linked to two of its characteristics: its monastic connotation and its openness to a dialogical attitude towards all.

A monastic mission

The missions of the East Syrian Church were monastic enterprises
In the new territories, the first communities were always structured around monasteries.

The missionaries sent to take care of the Christian life of the communities and even the metropolitan bishops of the new ecclesiastical provinces located outside Persian territory were monks, formed in monasteries scattered throughout Mesopotamia and Persia. Historical testimonies document that Patriarch Timothy sent monks from the monastery of Bet'Abe, located northeast of Mosul (in present-day Iraq), to China as bishops. The monks were well formed in the study of the Holy Scriptures and theology, and thanks to their faith they were prepared to live in difficult situations.
A letter from Patriarch Timothy reports that "many monks cross the seas to India and China carrying only a staff and a bag."

In the area now included in the diocese of Zhouzhi, a few kilometres from Xi'an, the "Nestorian Stele" was found in 1625, now preserved in the Xi'an Stele Forest Museum: it is the archaeological relic/testimony that attests to the arrival of the first Christian proclamation in China by missionary monks of the Church of the East as early as 635 AD. Built in 781 with texts engraved in Chinese and Syriac, the Stele represents - as indicated in its heading - the "Memorial of the Propagation in China of the Luminous Teaching of Daqin". In the Chinese language, the term Daqin originally referred only to the Roman Empire. Later, the expression was used to refer precisely to the communities of the Syriac Church that had permanently established themselves in China.
The text on the Stele also suggests that there were also monasteries in Chang'an, the former eastern capital of the Empire, today Xi'an.
The Stele describes the Christian community with monastic traits, made up of people who live without being subjected to worldly passions, practice fasting and penance, live liturgical moments, pray 7 times a day according to the monks' office and carry out works of charity.

The other characteristic of this missionary adventure is openness and dialogue, which can be seen in action in three areas: in dialogue with cultures, in dialogue with religious realities and in dialogue with power and political authorities.

In dialogue with cultures

When they arrived, the missionary monks of the Eastern Church did not put themselves in a position of strength, but acted as humble monks and merchants. And precisely because they were well grounded in their faith and doctrine, they could come into contact with the local culture and literary tradition with an attitude of dialogue, as had already occurred in the encounter of Christianity with Greek-Roman culture.

The Eastern Syriac communities flourished in China during the Tang (618-907) and Yuan (1272-1368) dynasties. Upon arriving in China, the missionary monks encountered a superior culture and, in order to bear witness to their faith, they began a process of adapting Christian theological language to the Chinese cultural context, preserving the heart of the Antiochene faith. In the text of the Stele, many quotations follow the model of expressions taken from the Chinese classics. In this way, the monks began a process of sinicization that was not a flat and mechanical substitution of Chinese cultural data for Eastern Syriac data, but a more gradual and vital process of contamination. Only in this way did the adaptation become true and fruitful.

Mission and dialogue with religions

In the experience of the Eastern Church in China, Christianity took its words from religious forms and doctrines such as Buddhism and Taoism. Even the words chosen to describe monastic institutions, such as the word "monastery", came from Buddhism. Their attempt produced texts in which many key terms belonged to the Buddhist and Taoist religious sphere. And the adoption of this language was not perceived as a loss of Christian identity, but as a means of expounding the 'proprium' of the Christian faith in a pluralistic context. It was an adaptation of the proclamation of Christianity in its essential terms, with words that belonged to cultural contexts other than those of the Greek and Roman cultural world. For example, the mystery of the Trinity is presented by alluding to the salvation granted through the "Three Majesties of the Luminous Teaching."

The effects of this contamination are also documented, for example, in the iconography of the Christian tombs of Zaitun (13th century), where crosses are grafted onto the lotus flower and celestial beings resembling angels are represented according to the Buddhist iconographic mode.

Mission and dialogue with politics and power

Another dimension of the dialoguing approach of the missionary practice of the Church of the East in China is that adopted in relation to the authorities and the political power of the emperors Tang and the Mongol Yuan rulers.
The uninterrupted dialogue with the imperial authorities was accepted as a necessary tool to obtain the recognition of a legitimate and "orthodox" teaching in the sense of the Confucian political meaning. This was the only way with which the Christian faith could be accepted in Chinese society and avoid being associated with cults considered pernicious and perverted and persecuted by law.
The Stele itself attests to the intention of Syriac Christianity to gain legitimacy in the imperial court. The entire Stele is permeated with the intention of showing the connection and harmony between the just actions of the rulers and the presence of the Church in China, which contributes to social order and the common good.
Thus, the Stele also testifies to a process of adaptation to the Chinese way of conceiving and managing relations between communities of faith and political authorities.
Several Christians were officials and officers of the political and military administration of the Tang Empire.

The French Cardinal Eugene Tisserant, an expert and lover of Eastern Christianity, recalled in one of his writings on the Eastern Church that "the Nestorian priests of China voluntarily offered their services to the government, occupying public offices."
Among them was the donor of the Stele, the Battrian Yazdbozid, who in China is called Yisi. The Chinese section of the Stele, in the final part, reproduces his biography and highlights his high positions achieved in the imperial administration, and praises his practice of the Christian virtue of charity.
In this attitude of cooperation and service to the political authorities, the Church finds its legitimacy in a political context very different from that of the Roman Empire.

Christianity, as it is lived and witnessed by these communities in China, becomes a confession that can be embraced because it is not perceived as a doctrine of foreigners or subjected to foreign powers or interests.

The names of Christians who became court counsellors and doctors in China in those centuries show that the choice for dialogue and not opposition was useful in spreading the Gospel and bearing witness to it, in that period of history that was in many ways antithetical to what would happen many centuries later, in the era of Colonialism.

Conclusions

The two scholars mentioned above, Bevans and Schroeder, pointed out that the missionary experience of the ancient Church of the East has much to say to our present. The attitude of openness to encounter and dialogue brings us back to the sources of the mission. And in today's world, it is increasingly evident that dialogue and openness to encounter are necessary skills for every Christian witness. This was also demonstrated by the first Council of the Catholic Church in China, held in Shanghai 100 years ago, in 1924. On May 21, a Conference organized in Rome by the Pontifical Urbaniana University, in collaboration with Fides Agency, recalled that important Council. As Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization (Section for First Evangelization and New Particular Churches), said when speaking of the Council of Shanghai, the proclamation of the Gospel is not identified with a civilization and a culture, and for this very reason it protects and promotes the riches of each people and their cultures. Because the liberation and healing that Jesus brings are a gift for each and every person, as Pope Francis always repeats. (Agenzia Fides, 26/7/2024)

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