22 : Christianity in Central Asia

INTRODUCTION

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Let’s start this morning by identifying the area we’re talking about. It’s not as easily defined as most of the areas we’ve discussed. It is neither a single nation nor an entire continent but a region within a continent made up of several nations that over the centuries have gone by several names and been ruled by many different empires.

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Roman Asia

Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary Asia

New Testament refers to a Roman province on the west of Asia Minor whose capital was Ephesus. The Roman province of Asia comprised generally the southwest portion of Anatolia. Its first capital was Pergamum, but the capital was later changed to Ephesus. Asia residents were in Jerusalem at Pentecost (Acts 2:9). Paul the apostle traveled and preached extensively in Asia (Acts 19:10, 22), especially in the neighborhood of Ephesus, but God forbade him to preach there prior to his Macedonian call (Acts 16:6). Men of Asia led to Paul’s arrest in Jerusalem (Acts 21:27). The first letter from Peter was addressed to Christians in Asia. Asia was the location of the seven churches to which the book of Revelation was addressed.

Anatolia / Asia Minor is roughly the modern nation of Turkey.

In addition, as time went on and the church expanded east, other nations came to be thought of as being in Central Asia

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On this map it’s roughly the countries shown here minus, in some people’s minds Afghanistan and Pakistan. In addition, some would include Syria in the mix which this map doesn’t. As I said, there’s not a hard border around what is Central Asia.

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THE EARLY CHURCH IN CENTRAL ASIA

As I mentioned on the front end, much of the New Testament concerns churches in Asia Minor. The gospel likely made it there initially as a result of the events of Pentecost:

Acts 2:5–11 ESV

5 Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. 6 And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. 7 And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? 9 Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, 11 both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.”

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Of the people groups mentioned here many are from the area we’re talking about, among them Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamia, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia & Pamphylia could all be considered from this region depending on how one defines it.

So, why were people from these far-flung areas in Jerusalem?

Pentecost was one of the annual festivals that the Jewish people celebrated and those who could would travel to Jerusalem for Passover and stay for Pentecost. We see in verse five that we just read that Jews from all over the world were there.

Many of those Jews are what’s called the “diaspora,” Jewish communities outside of Palestine, many of which had their origins in the Assyrian and Babylonia deportations hundreds of years earlier.

At any rate, many of those at Pentecost seem to have been from these communities and many were likely among the 3,000 converts that day who then took the gospel back to their home countries.

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Later we see churches in Asia Minor, many started by the Apostle Paul, in places like Ephesus, Pergamum, Laodicea, etc. In fact, all the seven churches mentioned in Revelation are in the more westerly part of this area we’re talking about.

One of the key themes of the church in Central Asia that we’ll see is its nearly continuous minority status as a persecuted faith. The church in central Asia never became culturally ascendant like the church in the west. Which, of course, was the experience of these Christians even in New Testament times. Paul seems to speak of his experience in modern-day Seljuk in Turkey in 2 Corinthians 1:8… when he writes, For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.

If you remember also from our earlier lesson on the persecution of the church under the Roman Empire, the martyr Polycarp was bishop of the Church of Smyrna which is modern day Izmir, Turkey. So, the church of the east, as it will become known, always had rough going.

Short video on the Church of the East.

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NESTORIUS & THE NESTORIAN CHURCH

The church in central Asia is often called the Nestorian Church after the 5th century Bishop of Constantinople, Nestorius.

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He was appointed bishop, of what was then the most important city in the empire, by the Emperor Theodosius II in 428 A.D. However, he only served until 431 because of a controversy that arose from his teaching over the nature of Christ.

It was common then, and still is in the Orthodox church, to refer to Mary as Theotokos, or “the mother of God.” You see this often in Orthodox iconography. This icon is called “Theotokos with the Christ child.”

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Nestorius preferred the term Christotokos, “the mother of Christ” or “the Christ-bearer.”

Why?

He felt is was inappropriate to claim that Mary gave birth to God, God, after all, has no beginning and no end.

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He said:

“Mary bore Jesus, not the Logos, for the Logos was and continues to be, omnipresent, even though he dwelt in Jesus in a special manner from the beginning. Therefore, Mary is strictly the mother of Christ, not the mother of God. Only in a figure can she be called also the mother of God, because God was in a particular sense in Christ. Properly speaking, she gave birth to a man in whom the union with the Logos had begun, but was still so incomplete that he could not yet (till after his baptism) be called the Son of God.” (1)

He went on to say:

“No, my dear sir, Mary did not bear God…the creature bore not the uncreated Creator, but the man who is the instrument of the Godhead; the Holy Ghost conceived not the Logos, but formed for him out of the virgin, a temple which he might inhabit…He who was formed in the womb of Mary, was not himself God, but God assumed him (i.e. clothed himself with humanity), and on account of Him who assumed, he who was assumed is also called God.” (2)

As you can imagine, this raised some eyebrows. Actually more than that, it raised concerns to the point that a council was called. Some felt it was simply a matter of semantics but others saw it as detrimental to the understanding of the nature of Christ as revealed in scripture. It was a Christological issue.

This reminds us that precision in thought and word are important when doing theology. Watch out for people who are deliberately unclear about things where clarity is required. And the nature of Christ is one of those things. BTW…we don’t have to be able to fully explain how something is so to be clear that it is so.

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Apologist Matt Slick says:

“The problem with Nestorianism is that it threatens the atonement. If Jesus is two persons, then which one died on the cross? If it was the “human person,” then the atonement is not of divine quality and thereby insufficient to cleanse us of our sins.”

What is the orthodox view?

So, we would affirm what theologians call the “hypostatic union” which says:

“...that Jesus, although he possesses two distinct and complete natures—he is simultaneously fully God and fully man—is nevertheless one integral person, God the Son incarnate.”

And he remains in that state, by the way, seated at the right hand of the Father. (Ephesians 1:20, Hebrews 8:1)

So, it was not simply semantics.

Was Nestorius saying Jesus was not initially God but only became God? Or, at the least, that the divine nature and the human nature were completely separate from one another? It sounded like that to many people. Whether he was or not is up for debate in some people’s minds. Some people say he was misunderstood. But, again, that’s why clarity is important. If you rise to the position of pastor, or elder or bishop, you should be able to explain your theological beliefs clearly.

At any rate, a council was called at Ephesus in 431 A.D. by the Emperor Theodosius II to resolve the issue. The result of that council was that this teaching was declared heretical and Nestorius was told to recant which he refused to do. The emperor removed him from his position as Bishop of Constantinople and exiled him to a monastery Egypt where he died around 451 A.D.

However, his teaching did not die with him.

Several bishops refused to accept his condemnation and after he was labeled a heretic, they fled to the east into the area of Persia, which was outside the borders of the Roman Empire. There they found refuge in the Eastern Church. As a result the Eastern Church, sometimes also called the Syriac Church or the Persian Church or the Chaldean Church, became known as the Nestorian Church as well - mostly by their opponents initially.

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The Church of the East, which was part of the Great Church, shared communion with that within the Roman Empire until the Council of Ephesus in AD 431, separating primarily over differences in Christology. The Council of Ephesus condemned Nestorius (386–451), leading to the Nestorian Schism and a subsequent exodus of Nestorius’ supporters to Sasanian Persia. The existing Christians in Persia welcomed these refugees and thus the Church of the East gradually adopted the doctrine of Nestorianism, emphasizing the distinctiveness of the divine and human natures of Jesus (we would say to a degree that is theologically problematic.)

SOURCE: Church of the East (slife.org)

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The area where these churches were located was outside the boundaries of the eastern Roman Empire in an area ruled by the Sasanian Empire or the Neo-Persian Empire. Because these two empires were rivals, the Eastern Church developed from that point forward separately from both the Roman Catholic Church in the west and the Orthodox Church in the east.

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This was a very missions minded church. If you remember from our lesson on Christianity in China, the Nestorian church was the first to reach China with Christian teaching.

Was everyone in the “Nestorian church” on board with the Christology of Nestorius? (There’s even some question as to whether Nestorius was on board with the Christology of Nestorius, meaning some people believe he was misunderstood.) At any rate, given they existed before his supporters joined them as exiles, probably not but they were at least willing to tolerate the belief which implies they didn’t see it in conflict with Christian teaching. You have to remember too they were a persecuted church almost continually so anyone showing up willing to join with them, it would be easy to justify allowing them to join in.

Remember, we said they developed independently from both the western Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church and so they developed their own creeds and statements of faith.

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I’d like to read from a Soghdian creed, just to give you a sense for what Eastern, or Nestorian Christians believed. This is from around 750 AD. (Soghdia is in the area of modern Iran and Uzbekistan)

We believe in one God, the Father, who upholds everything, the Creator of all things that are seen and unseen. [We believe] in one Lord God, and in Jesus [Christ], the only son of God, [the firstborn] of all beings, who...in the beginning was not created but begotten by the Father; [true God] of true God...by whose hand the [aeons] were fashioned and everything was created, he who for the sake of men and for our salvation descended from the heavens and clothed himself in a body by the Holy Spirit, and became man and entered the womb; who was born of Mary, the virgin, and [who] suffered agony and [was] raised on the cross [in] the days of Pontius Pilate; and [was buried] and ascended and sits on the right hand of the Father and is ready to come (again) to judge the dead and the living. And [we believe] in the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit, who went forth from the Father, the Holy Spirit who gives life.

The Eastern Church uses a translation of the Bible called the Peshitta. Which is the Old and New Testaments translated into Syriac. Peshitta means “common” or “simple” meaning it was designed for the common person to understand. They do have a couple of books we don’t use such as one Old Testament book called “Bel and the Dragon” which is a set of short stories in which Daniel exposes the absurdity of two (possibly Babylonian) cults.

They also include the Apocrypha like the Roman Catholic Church.

The New Testament did not originally include II Peter, II & III John, Jude and Revelation but those were added later with some churches being more slow to add them than others. The Eastern Syrian Church did not include these books in printed Bibles until the 20th century.

Under the Sasanians, Christians were a minority religion that waffled between being tolerated and being persecuted.

In a 41 year period in the fourth century, it is estimated that over 15,000 Christians were put to death by the Persian Saasanid Emperor, Sapor II.

The official religion of the Sasanian Empire was Zoroastrianism. This was a dualistic religion named after its founder and chief prophet, Zoroaster. The basic belief was that good and evil both exist and are in a struggle, kind of a Yin and Yang thing. There was a supreme deity name Ahura Mazda on the side of good and an evil spirit named Angra Mainyu with whom Ahura Mazda struggled. It had similarities to some of the Gnostic beliefs in that it saw flesh as evil and spirit as good. The Sasanian Empire encompassed all of what is today Iran & Iraq as well as Armenia. At times they also ruled areas now in Syria, Egypt and even India.

This was the last non-Islamic government and religion to dominate the area that is now Iran and Iraq.

Which brings us to our next topic that impacts the Church of the East

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THE RISE OF ISLAM IN CENTRAL ASIA

As with Christian North Africa, Christianity in Central Asia was overwhelmed by the explosion of Islam that began in the seventh century.

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When Islam began to invade Central Asia, you had Christianity, you had Zoroastrianism, Shamanism, and Buddhism. But from about 800 to 1300, it was Islam that was ascendant. Under Islam, Christians had a restricted minority status. Christians often had to pay a special tax, or wear special clothing, or a particular ornamental sign that identified them as non-Muslims.

They were often restricted from certain professions. But interestingly, the work of educators and physicians was often reserved for these Christians. It’s called “Dhimmitude” where those of lesser status are under the thumb of those of higher status.

As also happened in places like Spain, when the culture became dominantly Islamic, many who considered themselves Christians converted to the majority religion because that made life easier and, frankly, safer, at least from a temporal perspective.

During the earliest period of Islam, Christians where mostly allowed to live at peace within their own communities and maintain their churches. According to a University of Oxford article there were three things during this time that would get you in big trouble and likely result in your martyrdom. So, there wasn’t wholesale persecution and martyrdom always happening but if you crossed the line in these areas you were in trouble:

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Converting from Christianity to Islam then deciding to convert back to Christianity (apostasy was a capital offense). It’s like Hotel California, you can check in but you can never leave.

People born Muslim who converted to Christianity

Christians convicted of blaspheming the Profit Muhammad

Christians were always in danger from these policies.

SOURCE: How did the Christian Middle East become predominantly Muslim? | University of Oxford

So far this church has been under the thumb of the Persian Empire and now Islam but there’s another group coming.

Well, as time goes on, this area changes hands politically again thanks to a man named Genghis Khan.

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THE MONGOL INVASION

As we talked about in our lesson on China, there was a time when the Mongols ruled China. During that same time, they also ruled the area we’re talking about this morning. At its peak, it covered approximately 9 million square miles of territory, making it the largest contiguous land empire in world history.

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For a time, Islam in this area was displaced or at least subordinated to Mongol conquerors.

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The Mongol hordes swept through Central Asia taking control of the Islamic empire in Central Asia and cities like Bukhara and Samarkand around 1220 A.D. They set up their own religion and selectively persecuted religious minorities. Though note that word “selectively.”

Some Mongols had been evangelized by Christian Nestorians since the 600s A.D. Some had Christian wives, some had been raised by Christian mothers, some had been trained by Christian teachers. Eventually, certain Mongol rulers granted some religious freedom in places, perhaps because Eastern Christians had been influential in Mongol circles and were typically good administrators, physicians, and civil officials.

In any case, somehow, many Nestorian Christians survived Mongol invasion and occupation. Samarkand, in what is now Uzbekistan, might be an interesting example of a community that managed to retain its churches, schools, and monastic cells even through the Mongol invasion.

By 1265, when Marco Polo visited Samarkand, he estimated 1 of 10 persons was a professing Christian(3). He even describes the building of a great church dedicated to John the Baptist in Samarkand that was erected to celebrate the conversion of the Chaghatayid khan to Christianity. Polo also mentions finding Nestorian Christians in other areas of central Asia.

Ibn Battuta, a medieval Muslim traveler wrote in 1332 about a Mongol general who was Nestorian and whose family had Christian names and whose coins were inscribed as follows: “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, One God.” So even with Mongol invasion, Christianity was still holding on. In the late thirteenth century, however, the great reversal began. In Baghdad, Ghazan Khan (r. 1295-1304) adopted Islam, and at once the East Syrian Christian community became the object of ferocious persecutions, including numerous massacres.

Raymond Ibrahim writes:

The Mongols’ religious tolerance (or indifference) disappeared on their conversion to Islam. Whereas many Mongol leaders had originally favored their Christian subjects due to “their modesty and other habits of this kind,” to quote Syriac bishop Bar Hebraeus (d. 1286), “their love has turned to such intense hatred… because they have all alike become Muslims.”

Ibrahim, Raymond. Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West (p. 251). Hachette Books. Kindle Edition.

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Ghazan issued the following decree:

“The churches shall be uprooted, and the altars overturned, and the celebrations of the Eucharist shall cease, and the hymns of praise, and the sounds of calls to prayer shall be abolished; and the heads of the Christians, and the heads of the congregations of the Jews, and the great men among them, shall be killed.”

Ibrahim, Raymond. Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West (p. 251). Hachette Books. Kindle Edition.

When this didn’t intimidate enough Christians to abandon their faith the Kahn ordered that all Christian men be castrated and have one eye put out.

Then, in 1369, the Ming Dynasty came to power in China and instituted a systematic extermination of foreign creeds. The Assyrian Church had soon disappeared. And in Central Asia the rampages of the Turkic Muslim warlord Timur (1336-1405) left no living traces of East Syrian Christianity in their wake.

SOURCE: The Church of the East | David Bentley Hart | First Things

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TAMERLANE (TIMUR)

In 1383, Timur, also called Tamerlane, began his conquest of central Asia and with it came the destruction of the last vestiges of the eastern church in this area.

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Though ruthless and a military genius, Timur was partially lame. The moniker used for him in the west “Tamerlane” is a form of “Timur the lame.”

In 1383, Persia found itself on Timur’s hit list. The once mighty empire was weakened by internal strife and division of which Timur took full advantage. Beginning with the conquest of Herat, he plundered the ancient city of its treasures and destroyed many of its important landmarks. Rumours of such horrific treatment reached other Persian cities and knowing that Timur would soon reach their walls, they had a decision to make. Some places, like Tehran, surrendered without question and Timur allegedly treated them mercifully. Others would not go down without a fight, so they were annihilated. In Isfahan, which rose up against Timur’s hefty taxation, he responded by massacring its citizens and building towers out of their skulls.

SOURCE: Terrifying Timur | All About History (historyanswers.co.uk)

After he died in 1405, he was interred in a mausoleum in his birth city of Samerkand, and the capitol of his empire, in what is now Uzbekistan. The mausoleum is still there.

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The tomb was opened by Soviet archeologists in 1941 where they found the skeleton of a powerfully built man above average height but who was lame on his right side.

SOURCE: Timur | Biography, Conquests, Empire, & Facts | Britannica

What happened to Christians and the church under Timur?

Sivas, in what is now Turkey, came under attack in 1399. The town’s garrison was mostly Christian Armenian soldiers. Tamerlane told the defenders of the city that, if they surrendered, no blood would be shed. They surrendered. He kept his word to the defenders—by burying 3,000 of them alive.

Southern Georgia and Armenia suffered harshly from Timur’s attention. The area was destroyed systematically in 1399, with vast areas being depopulated. More than 60,000 Christian slaves were taken into captivity when Tamerlane overran Armenia and Georgia again in 1400. Timur returned yet again in 1403 to revisit devastation to these Christian lands that were still suffering from his previous visits. The Eastern Church, aka the Nestorian Christian communities of Asia, were virtually wiped from history by Tamerlane, except in Iraq, where some pockets still survive today.

SOURCE: 10 Terrors Of The Tyrant Tamerlane - Listverse

And, by the way, Timur was an equal opportunity tyrant. Muslim and Hindu cities who opposed him were treated the same.

From this point forward, the remains of the Eastern Church existed under the boot of Islam.

However, as the video pointed out there are “diaspora” churches where the Church of the East has a presence in many other places today besides Central Asia, including the United States.

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This is from the website of the Assyrian Church of the East in the United States showing where they have parishes or congregations.

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(1) History of the Christian Church, Vol. III, Philip Schaff, p.717

(2) ibid, p. 718

(3) Meaning there were likely 11,000 believers in the area. [P. 45-6 The Hidden history of Christianity in Asia, the churches of the East before 1500 John C England.