Nestorius and the Eastward Spread

Roughly coinciding with the partition of the Roman Empire in 293, a new dynasty began to rule Persia (beginning in 224). The Sassanids, named after an early family member called Sasan, ruled Persia until 642 when the Muslims defeated the Sassanids in the Battle of Nahavand; some five years later the last Sassanid emperor died in flight from Persia’s Muslim invaders; the Muslims completed their conquest of Persia in 651.

Lest the Sassanids produce a blank, it might be well to put them in context. The first Persian Empire was the Achaemenid (550-330 BC); they had a war with Greece and got beaten in the Battle of Marathon (490 BC). The next was the Parthian (247 BC - 224 AD), the longest-lived. The Sassanids came next (224-642).  Five other dynasties ruled after the Sassanids; the last of those, the Pahlavi, ended in 1979 with the expulsion of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, whom we know as the Shah of Iran.

While in full control of Persia, the Sassanids were not only expansionary—acquiring territory from the Byzantine Empire—they were also expansionary in a commercial sense. They developed trade relations with the Sui and then the Tang Dynasty and had significant influence and trade relations with India’s ruling dynasties as well, reaching well into South India. The map shows  the extent of the Sassanid rule at its greatest extent. The Striped areas represent regions the Byzantine empire lost to the Persians.

The Sassanid history is useful background for my subject today, namely the eastward spread of Christianity.  In this period already, Christianity reached all the way to China, deep into India, and regions in between, as shown in the following map. The version of Christianity that reached these lands, however, was loosely of the Nestorian variety—called that, in fact, until recent times when the term “Church of the East” has come to be applied, a part of Eastern Christianity, but, at this time not yet the Eastern Orthodox Church. That split did not take place until 1054. The Sassanids’ defeat by Muslims is also an early introduction to the event that would eventually formally end the Middle Ages, the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet in 1453.

What I’m after here is the grand pattern. It might be described as follows. Early Christianity was closely tied to major, meaning imperial, rulers. Of these we’ve already met the Byzantine emperors and  Charlemagne and his successors. Associated with the first is Orthodox Christianity, with the second Catholicism. But there was also a third empire which also functioned as a protector of religion. It was the Sassanid Dynasty. And it became the protector of  Nestorian Christianity.

In early Christianity, the most prominent centers were Rome, Alexandria in Egypt, and Antioch in Syria (but in a region that is now Turkey). With the rise of the Byzantine empire, Constantinople also became such a center, second only to Rome. Constantinople and Rome would later part in  what is known as the Great Schism (1054), Within the Byzantine Empire itself, tensions grew between Antioch and Constantinople. During the later Sassanid period, thus by 651, Antioch came firmly under the sway of the Persians. And it is in Antioch that two versions of Eastern Christianity flourished, Nestorianism and Monophysitism, the latter a theological view originating in Alexandria. And it is these two that spread Christianity into the East. The common saying, “Follow the money,” may here be applied to Christianity by saying: “Follow the ruler.” The Sassanids came to occupy both Antioch and Alexandria.

Nestorius (386-450) was a monk born in north-western Syria, now part of Turkey, in a town today called Kharamanmaraş. He was a pious sort and travelled to Antioch, some 157 miles away, to be educated in theology. He became a dedicated and ascetic monk there, famed for his preaching. On a trip to Antioch, the Byzantine Emperor, Theodosius II, met Nestorius and was evidently much impressed. Later he named Nestorius as the Patriarch of Constantinople. Nestorius travelled the 647 miles to the north to take his new office in 428.  In the map that I show, the southernmost circle was the location of Antioch, corresponding to today’s city of Hatay in Turkey.

The rise of the Nestorian heresy, and its presence in Christianity’s eastward spread, may best be summarized as follows:

·        Antioch adhered to a slightly different theological view on the nature of Christ than did Rome and Constantinople. Alexandria held yet another view.

·         In his somewhat zealous actions to rid the church of heresies, Nestorius came in conflict with Rome as well as Alexandria. The clergy of Constantinople, furthermore, viewed Nestorius as an unwelcome intruder who suddenly had the top religious office in that city.

·         In that conflict Theodosius ultimately sided with Cyril of Alexandria. He deposed Nestorius in 431, stripped him of all his titles, and sent him back to Antioch.

·         Eastern Christianity, in Antioch, being under Sassanid protection, became separated from Western Christianity (which then still included Constantinople). It embraced the Nestorian and the Monophysite theologies (of which more below). Eastern Christianity spread to the East following the inroads created by the Sassanid political and trade relations developed with China and with India. The secular world paved the way you might say.

The theological battles all revolved about the nature of Christ, arising from the seemingly dual natures present in Christ as God and man at one and the same time. The earliest of these was Arianism. In that heresy Christ was thought to be God, but subordinate to God the Father. To give a radically simple view of these controversies—and to show what the battles turned around—I present the following table. It highlights four views of Jesus held by four major schools. Those who held them all debated about Christ’s person, substance (or essence), and nature:

Name	Person “Prosopon”	Substance “Hypostasis”	Nature “Physis”
Dyophysitism	One	Two	Two
Monophysitism	One	One	One
Miaphysitism	One	One	Two in a Single Nature
Chalcedonianism	One	One	Two in Unity

Dyophysitism (literally “Two Natures”) was the view of the Nestorians. Monophysitism (“One Nature”) was the Alexandrian position. Miaphysitism (“Single Nature”) is the Eastern Orthodox position; it is indistinguishable from the next, the Chalcedonian view, except perhaps by wording, in that it asserts, despite the “singleness” of that nature, that that nature is both human and divine. Chalcedonianism (named after the Council of Chalcedon, 451) is the position of Western Christianity in which Christ unity is asserted at the level of essence or substance; hence it is also referred to as the Hypostatic Union; Christ has two natures (“physes”), but they are in total unity; that unity, however, is beyond human understanding.

These battles over words or concepts, which have (to the theologically blind) absolutely no bearing on fundamental faith and practice, illustrate clearly that early theologians might well have been fighting turf battles in the name of theology. There was and is no way really to settle these disputes in any genuine sense.

Much as theology rotated madly over a single word (or even the use of a letter), so also the Nestorian controversy arose over one  such word used to describe Mary, the mother of Jesus. That word was Theotokos, meaning God-bearer. Nestorius, in line with his own studies, preferred Christotokos, Christ-bearer, to avoid the possible scandal of viewing a human being giving birth to God. It was a spark that lit a fire in the vast confusions between faith and power that, alas, forever mark our dwelling place in this dimension.

Much as Arius essentially “lent his name” to a heresy, so also Nestorius may not have personally signed up to Nestorianism or Dyophysitism. But what he thought is not unambiguously clear. After his return to Antioch, he was exiled to Egypt and died there in the desert, to his last days certain of having been misunderstood.

Why didn’t Christianity entirely convert the Eastern cultures as it did the Western? Was it that it taught two distinct if barely separable heresies? Such might be the view of an orthodox zealot. Christianity spread its seeds to the entire world, except the still undiscovered Americas, but the soil was quite radically different in Asia. The culture of the west, in those days, was not quite as suited to those lands as it was in Western Europe where a great civilization had recently died.

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Image credits:

Sassanid realm

Asian expansion of Christianity

Middle Ages Posts:

Attila and the Great Wall

Augustine and the Visigoths and Vandals

Theodoric and Encircling German Arms

Arius and His Converts

Justinian and an Attempted Restoration

Saint Benedict and Western Monasticism

Iberia Absorbs the Visigoths

Saint Lucy and Light in the Middle Ages

Frankish Victory: From Clovis to Charlemagne

The Papacy in the Middle Ages

Charlemagne and the Quest for Order

Women in  the Middle Ages

From Attila to Osman

Plagues: The Other Invaders

The Other Great Institution: The HRE

Coptic Christianity

The death of Shenouda II, Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church, got us wondering again about the origins of this branch of Christianity. I found some old notes of mine dating back to writing the second volume of the Ghulf Genes trilogy (which starts in Ethiopia) where I found the word monophysitism heavily underlined. That brought a vague memory of an arcane theological point, already forgotten again. The world’s too vast, history too deep. Here some notes on this subject. Christianity, like all great things, evolves. Coptic Christianity, it turns out, was the second of many great schisms within this tradition. I found a very useful graphic for it on Wikipedia (link):

The first two of these schisms, producing the Assyrian Church and the Coptic, are rooted in what is called the Nestorian heresy. Nestorius held that Christ was two persons in one, one human, one divine, while the Church asserted, at the Council of Ephesus (431) that Christ had two natures, human and divine, but only one person in which these two natures were present at once and simultaneously. The split-off of Coptic Christians came twenty years later, after the Council of Chalcedon (451) over a variant of the Nestorian heresy, monophysitism. It held that Christ was a single person with a single nature, both divine.

The third great division, which produced the Eastern Orthodox branch, was initiated by ideas of Photius (820-893), the patriarch of Constantinople. His assertion was that the Holy Spirit arose from the Father. The Church asserted, at the Fourth Council of Constantinople (869-870), that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (Filioque, in the Latin of the Nicene Creed, thus this word became the name of the controversy). Photius also disapproved of Leo III’s crowning of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor and openly criticized clerical celibacy. The Fourth Council set the stage for what is known as the Great Schism, the third. It took place in 1054 when the then leader of the Church in Constantinople, Michael Cerularius, shut down Latin churches in Constantinople; he was excommunicated by Leo IV, and the split became history.

The graphic, of course, also shows later separations and, in some cases, reunions of elements of split-off streams with the main stream, Catholicism.

Some will read this and smile, feeling superior. But, alas, in the realm where we are all sojourning, things get very messy—but, as Rumi, the poet, says, “the caravan keeps marching on.”

The Deformation

May you live in interesting times.
     Supposedly a Chinese curse

Monique commented on LaMarotte saying, “I am beginning to get the feeling that ‘times’ are always interesting… Has any human lived an entire life during peaceful, tranquil, times in which rationality and thoughtfulness prevailed? I wonder. Perhaps, only those whose lives have been particularly short...”

This got me thinking that different kinds of “interesting times” have a different “feel”. The sum of evil seems always the same, but the feel of it can certainly be different. Brigitte and I lived through World War II; it had its share of horrors, but the feel of the thing was different. The best explanation for a different “feel” may lie in the relative unity of humanity as it faces its troubles and in the trend of events. If unity is high and the trend is towards coherence, the feel is positive, otherwise negative. The troubles themselves are unchangingly the same.

Contrast troubles in business caused by growth and those caused by disappearing markets. Same problems, different feel. We might see it writ large as well. Herewith a look at Western Civilization.

At the beginning, chaos and a transcendental Inspiration (Christianity). Then in order: Formation (called the Dark Ages), High Middle Ages, the Renaissance (the exploitation of the success of the High Middle Ages), the Reformation, the Enlightenment (product of the Reformation), Modernity (the exploitation of the Enlightenment), and now, finally, we’re in the midst of The Deformation.

Some comments. The Dark Ages are well named because western civilization was then in the womb, and it’s dark in the womb. If cells participating in the formation of an embryo had consciousness, they’d call this period “interesting times.” The Dark Ages were not a period of peace but of turmoil—but the trend, the tendency was toward coherence. That coherence peaks in the High Middle Ages; in the year 1000 AD Europe “clothed itself in the white mantle of churches” (more here); in the thirteenth came its glorious peak. The Renaissance is a period of relaxation, exploitation—and of corruption. Comes the Reformation. It was a bloody—an interesting—time but its tendency once more constructive. The second peak in western civilization is not ours but the Enlightenment, which came to be exploited as Modernity. And now the excesses of modernity are producing what here I call The Deformation. It will end in chaos again—and in that total darkness, perhaps, another Inspiration.

Why not another, a third peak? My own view is that the cycles of Western culture are “lossy,” to use a modern term. At every stage less of the original transcendental Inspiration remains in force, has been lost. The culture therefore becomes ever more material in character. Therefore, if my own “feel” is right, this period, the Deformation, no longer carries anything that will help this culture peak again. And for that reason the “feel” of these times is not a good one—even though all of our troubles are the same old, same old—wars, rumors of wars, plagues, earthquakes, tsunamis, and corruption. But unity is fracturing. The center isn’t holding. It was a transcendental vision. But how many, today, actively share it? At the individual level, of course, nothing is lost. But we’re talking about the great collective.

Bump in the Night

An awesome windstorm rose during the night and filled the sky with an enduring, booming sound. Something woke me at three in the morning—that wind, perhaps, or a bump in the night. A little later I heard a dull clatter. In search of it I discovered our plastic trashcan blown into the street and making orgiastic circles lying on its belly. I set things right and then went back to bed; but this activity had awakened me enough so that for a while I was playing word games in my head; bump in the night; that sort of thing. Eventually the whole verse came back:

         From ghoulies and ghosties
         And long-leggedy beasties
         And things that go bump in the night,
         Good Lord, deliver us!

The verse next reminded me of something I'd read recently, namely that this seemingly amusing chant had once been part of an Anglican litany. Trying to remember where I’d seen that, I drifted back off to sleep. This morning a great high pressure system had replaced the wind and brought searing cold and a bright sun. I got up to discover the origins of this verse if I could.

The first mentions Google brought asserted that this was an old Scottish ditty. Next I found confirmation that it might have been a litany. Last I came across a book by Don E. Post entitled, yes, Ghosties and Ghoulies and Long-Legged Beasties and Things that Go Bump in the Night. The book is subtitled Christian Basics for the Twenty-First Century. To an eye like mine the title and subtitle taken together—and with the Ph.D. following the author’s name on the cover—did not promise enlightenment. I couldn’t be sure, but this sort of pattern suggests a work intended to “update” and to “modernize” Christianity to make it if not hip at least respectable. I proceeded to look at the front-matter and there found, on page ix, a section called About the Title. It says in whole:

An Early Cornish Litany
         Laity: O Lord, deliver us from Ghosties and Ghoulies and long legged beasties and things that go bump in the night.
         Clergy: O Lord, deliver us.
Lest one think I am trying to be funny, this phrase was reportedly part of a 14th or 15th Century Protestant litany, probably Cornish, although sources within the Anglican Church have not been able to locate the total litany. This may seem humorous now, but it represents a world filled with scary creatures. Unfortunately, that eerie world still exists for too many. This superstitious world view hang-over is a good example of what social scientists call cultural lag.

Very well. The commentary seemed to confirm my interpretation of the book's general pattern. Just yesterday elsewhere, commenting on the phrase “moving on,” I mentioned the cult of progress. In this commentary I saw another instance of it. But having gotten this far, I thought it was time to put the kettle on. And while the kettle made its seething sounds, a kind of miniature windstorm, I was pondering the direction in which our time is really trending. Lines formed in my head more or less spontaneously in my honest effort, I think, rapidly to close that cultural lag and to bring us now up to full speed:

          From profs and from pollsters
          And men with huge holsters
          And drones that drop bombs in the night,
          Good Lord, deliver us!