Those Other Christians

Throughout this book, I refer to the Eastern Christian churches that are commonly known as Jacobite and Nestorian.  Both names raise problems…. …a reader would not go far wrong by understanding both terms as meaning simply “ancient Christian denominations mainly active outside Europe.”

The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia--and How It Died, by Philip Jenkins

There was once a substantial Christian Church, in lands east of the Greek Church, stretching to today’s Afghanistan and beyond.  I have covered this history once before, briefly, via on chapter in The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, by Peter Frankopan.  But that was merely one chapter in Frankopan’s book.  Jenkins devotes an entire book to the topic, and I will work through it.

In that earlier post, I wrote:

The story of the spread of Christianity from Palestine to the west is well known; the spread of Christianity to the east was far more remarkable and extensive.  Christianity was brought in through the trade routes, as well as through the deportations of Christians from Syria.

Evangelists reached north into Georgia, reaching a large community of Jews who converted.  There were dozens of Christian communities along the Persian Gulf and as far to the east as today’s Afghanistan.

Jenkins introduces the churches of this region – Syria, Palestine, and Mesopotamia – as churches where the early Christians wrote and thought in Syriac, a language closely related to Jesus’s Aramaic.   Passionate debates with the Greek and Roman Churches ensued, resulting in divisions even as early as the Council of Nicea in 325.

Yes, Christ was in some sense both human and divine, but what was the exact relationship between the two elements?  How could someone say that Jesus was both man and God?

A disagreement that would continue until Chalcedon in 451 and even beyond, as examined by V.C. Samuel.  Not to revisit this theological controversy (please keep in mind, I write of these matters to understand the history, not to debate theology), but Patriarch Nestorius – who accepted the two natures – did not accept the mystical sense in which these were united.  Hence, no Theotokos.

Jenkins makes what is an unfortunate error when writing that many in Egypt and the East accepted only one nature – hence “Monophysites.”  As Samuel demonstrated in the aforementioned work, those in these regions did not write in such a “Monophysite” manner.  The two natures were there, the only issue being, precisely how?

The Jacobites held sway in Greater Syria; the Nestorians in what we now know as Iraq and Iran.  However, Jenkins does not intend that by using these labels these groups were anything less than Christian.  I keep in mind, the differences were still being worked out, and, truth be told, it isn’t like there was a solid Scriptural basis for one teaching or another (as long as human and divine were both in there…somehow, as if we are really capable of understanding this or putting this into words).

Many today from the Roman Church or the Greek Church would claim “tradition” as the way by which to settle these differences – differences not made clear in Scripture.  But, as I have often argued, which tradition?  These churches in the furthest reaches of the east had just as much claim to the tradition of the first three or four centuries as the other churches.

Both the Jacobites and Nestorians accepted Nicea, both believed they clung to a faith handed down to them by the apostles.  The Nestorians were cast out at Ephesus in 431. 

Around 800, the Nestorian Patriarch Timothy listed the fundamental doctrines accepted by all the different groups:

All shared a faith in the Trinity, the Incarnation, baptism, adoration of the Cross, the holy Eucharist, the Two Testaments; all believed in the resurrection of the dead, eternal life, the return of Christ in glory, and the last judgement.

A pretty extensive list.  Further, these two strands would have outnumbered the Orthodox in Africa and Asia.  Not a fringe.

Technically, the modern heirs to the Jacobites are “Syrian Orthodox,” which is confusing if we apply the Orthodox name retroactively to medieval conditions. 

The modern version is an Oriental Orthodox Church, a split resulting from the disagreements at Chalcedon.

The Nestorian church evolved into the Assyrian Church of the East, with a questionable emphasis on the Assyrian racial heritage.

There is debate about such a label.  But there is time enough to get into all of this.

Conclusion

Any history of Christianity that fails to pay due attention to these Jacobites and Nestorians is missing a very large part of the story.

Let’s call this the start of an effort to rectify this shortcoming.