鲍默《东方教会：亚述基督教图史》第六章：东叙利亚神学与灵修面面观（中英文对照版）

Aspects of East Syrian

Theology and Spirituality VI

The dispute with Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism

Buddhism to China)2 it was so severely repressed by the sanctions of Kartir that it played only a marginal role during the spread of the Church into the eastern province of Khorassan. Never- theless, Buddhism was known to Christian theologians such as Bardaisan, Origen, Clement and Cyril of Alexandria.3 As far as the ‘pagans’ living south of the Caspian Sea were concerned, the Church had an easy time of it in terms of theology but not in terms of practice, as the people of Dailam and Gilan surrendered their nature deities and idols only reluctantly and after the demonstration of miracles.

Within the Sassanian Empire, Christianity had relationships and rivalries with several religions. In Mesopotamia it first built on the basis of the Jewish communities, which logically led to tensions between the two religious communities. In contrast to Marcion, who fundamentally rejected the Jewish Old Testament heritage, the early leading East Syrians, such as Aphrahat (†c.350), tried to argue that Christianity represented the logical continuation, perfection and finally supercession of the Jewish religion. Without striking anti-Semitic tones, Aphrahat, following in the wake of his predecessors, criticized Jewish formalism and legalism – that is, the maintenance of the Mosaic laws of conduct, as well as the disregard of Christ as the messiah promised in the Old Testament. Aphrahat’s Demonstrationes interpret the Old Testament in such a way that Christianity is the apotheosis of Judaism, which has now lost its right to exist. Additionally, the Mosaic religion applies only to the Jews, while the Good News is relevant to all people.1 The Acts of the Martyrs also suggest that, during the time of the persecutions under Shapur II, certain groups of Jews denounced Christians to the authorities.

The real theological opponents and, simultan- eously, missionary fields of the Church of the East were the dualistic religions of Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism. The strategies for each, however, had to be different. Beginning in 273 Manichaeism was absolutely suppressed by the Sassanian civil authority, which, despite severe persecutions, did not apply to Christianity. Thus Christian missionaries were permitted to convert Manichaeans. Conversion of Zoroastrians, however, brought the death penalty.

One of the basic themes of religious thought concerns the frightening and omnipresent question of the origin and nature of evil. In the Jewish-Christian tradition, evil appears as the result of the disobedience of the creature towards its creator. A dualistic world-view, on the other hand, proceeds from an unbridgeable opposition

With regard to Buddhism, which had expanded into Iran (it was Parthians who brought

between good and evil; God, understood as good, cannot be the creator of evil. The origin of evil lies not in God but, rather, outside God, whether in dark matter in Manichaeism or in the ‘anti-God’ Ahriman in Zoroastrianism. It is the relative value each attributes to matter that radically separates Manichaeism from Zoroastrianism. According to the teachings of Zarathustra, Ahura Mazda, in his omniscience, knew of the existence of Ahriman and foresaw his destructive attack, so he brought forth creation and human beings. As has already been discussed,4 Ahura Mazda created both the spirit and the body of the human being; unlike in Manichaeism and, in part, Christianity, the conceptual pairing of good and evil in no way corresponds to that of spirit and matter, but rather to that of existence and non-existence. The material world, with the exception of the works of certain demons such as serpents or vermin, is of divine origin. In Manichaeism, however, all material creation and the corporeal human being are the product of the powers of darkness, and only the immaterial light-soul can free itself from the clutches of evil matter. In Manichaeism the body is the tomb of the soul, in Zoroastrianism its vehicle to perfection. On account of these contrasting starting points, different disputes arose between Christianity and Zoroastrianism and between Christianity and Manichaeism. unintelligent beings such as the sun instead of the one God. They also condemned the Zoroastrian moral code, insofar as it allowed polygamy and the marriage of blood relatives, in addition to permitting animal sacrifice. For Christians, however, the drinking of blood and the eating of the flesh of sacrificed animals was expressly forbidden. Conversely, the Zoroastrians disapproved of the Christian marriage regulations, celibacy and monastic asceticism, as these limited the preservation and generation of life. Seen from the Zoroastrian perspective, Christian monks and the Manichaean elect, with their ascetic removal from the world, each hindered the struggle of Ahura Mazda in equal measure; asceticism amounted to an insult to Zoroastrian ideals. The Zoroastrian clergy accused the Christians of failing to worship the Zoroastrian symbol of divinity – fire – and of disregarding the laws of purity regarding the elements by burying their dead.

While these Zoroastrian accusations concern the ethos of ‘right action’, a polemical work tested the ‘right thought’ of Christianity. The work in question was the Skand-Gumanik Vicar, a ninth-century Zoroastrian apology written in Pahlavi, whose author, Mardan Farrukh, criticized the monotheism of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as well as Manichaeism. In the first chapter Mardan described the principles of the Zoroastrian religion: ‘Ahura Mazda created the omniscient religion like a great tree, with a trunk, two main limbs, three branches, four twigs and five shoots. The trunk is the measure [truth], the two main limbs are action and renunciation, the three branches are good thought, good speech and good behaviour, the four twigs are the four natural classes of priest, warrior, farmer and craftsman [note the resemblance to the Indian castes], and the five shoots are the five religious superiors.’5

A Zoroastrian apology

No genuine dialogue was able to develop between Christianity and Zoroastrianism – it was a con-versation between doves. As we can gather from the Acts of the Martyrs, Christian apologists accused the Zoroastrians of failing to understand the transcendence of Christ and his all-encompassing salvific power, as well as of worshipping mortal entities such as fire and

Mardan then presented the argument that the finite nature of creation presupposes the

Aspects of East Syrian Theology and Spirituality | 107 involvement of a principle opposed to the creator God. For him, the concept of salvation necessarily implied a deviation – undesired by the creator god and caused by another power – from the course of a full development, which he must again balance out. Thus Mardan concluded that only a dualistic model could separate evil from the good creator god, while Christian monotheism mixed evil with God, making impossible any delimitation of good from evil. From this premise, Mardan argued polemically against the sacrifice of God’s son with the approval of God the Father: ‘[As the omnipotent and only God] he brought forth all creation, including even his own opponent, out of nothing and led his son’s executioners into error. But, insofar as God himself created each executioner and his adversary, without reason or motive, and must have foreseen their deeds, one cannot disagree that he himself was the executioner of his son.’ Using the same argument, Mardan continued ‘that the Jews killed the messiah by the will of the Father’, or, playing on the image of the Good Shepherd, ‘It is also the will of the Father that the wolves kill the sheep, for he created the wolves as well.’

The Zoroastrian apology focused primarily on the impossibility of considering the problem of evil within a monotheistic position without encountering contradictions. Another attack concerned the incomprehensibility of a virgin conception and suggested that Mary kept dubious company.7 Then Mardan tried to play out the idea of a trinity ad absurdum. If three was equal to one, then nine was equal to three, etc. And if the Son was not less than the Father, then the Father is not more than the Son, which is impossible if the Son is said to have been begotten by the Father.8 Here Mardan reiterated the argument of Arius, according to which there must be a substantive and hierarchical distinction between begetter and begotten. Finally, Mardan asked rhetorically how it was possible ‘that this great God, who rules and sustains both worlds, handed over his body to be beaten and crucified’.9 The author was also aware of the various understandings of the death of God: ‘The talk of the Christians about their Messiah Jesus, whom they consider God’s Son but also equal to God and therefore God himself, [is] inconsistent. One sect [Jacobites and Melkites] says that this messiah died, the other [Nestorians] that he did not.’ 10 In contrast to Islam, which shares important fundamental assumptions with Christianity and was able to develop a meaningful dialogue with East Syrian Christianity in the eighth and ninth centuries,11 the conceptual premises of Zoroastrianism and Christianity were too different.

To the anticipated response that God granted human beings free will, our author replied, ‘If sin is the result of free will and God gave human beings this free will, then God is also a sinner, insofar as he made sin possible in the first place.’ Jesus’s temptation by the devil also offered Mardan the opportunity to demonstrate that there are, in fact, two antagonistic principles or that the Christian God must of necessity be both good and evil: ‘If there is only one principle, without an adversary, how can Ahriman be powerful enough to tempt the son of God? And, if God created this evildoer, then it is God himself who tempted his son.’ Then he asked rhetorically, ‘And why did he not redeem the adversary like the rest of creation?’6 Marcion certainly would have agreed with Mardan’s argument!

Mani – the self-proclaimed Paraclete

The dispute between Christianity and Manichaeism, a world religion which has since vanished, developed along entirely different lines. It took place over a period of more than a millennium, not only in Iran but also in Egypt, North Africa, Rome, Syria, Central Asia and, especially, China. The range of this dialogue ran

from curt disapproval to the extraordinary coexistence of a Nestorian community with a Manichaean group under the leadership of a single shared bishop in south-eastern China in the early fourteenth century.12 During the period of the second Uigur empire (c.850–1209), as well, Buddhists, Manichaeans and Nestorians lived together in peace. The last bastions of Manichaeism collapsed in the sixteenth/ seventeenth centuries in China.13

Manichaean manuscript on paper from the early tenth to mid-eleventh century, Kocho, ruin α. Kocho (Gaochang), which lies in the province of Xinjiang in north-western China, was from c.844CE the capital of the empire of the Uigurs, whose élite were from 761 to the late tenth- or early eleventh- century Manichaean. The miniature presents a lesson. Above, two electi sit on a lotus throne, with the one on the right speaking and the one on the left holding a book. Below them sit six hearers, three women on the left and three men on the right. The headdress of the four people behind, two on each side, marks them as members of the royal family.33 (Museum of Indian Art, Prussian cultural property. Fragment MIK III 8259, fol.1r.)

Born in 216 not far from Seleucia-Ctesiphon, Mani descended on his mother’s side from the Parthian royal house of the Arsacids, while his father was a member of the Jewish-Christian Baptist sect of the Elkesaites, who led strictly ascetic lives with numerous purifying and baptismal rituals. According to his hagiography, his calling was revealed to him in his first vision when he was twelve years old. Later, when he was 24, he experienced his second revelation and left the Baptist sect because it was concerned only with corporeal – i.e. material – purity rites and paid no attention to the spiritual purification of the soul. In contrast to the Baptists, who considered the body necessary for and capable of salvation, for Mani the material body represented an impediment to be cast off, an obstacle to the salvation of the light-soul. Thus Mani joined the tradition of Jesus, ‘who promoted the purity of the soul instead of the purity of the body and food’.14 Mani understood himself as the Paraclete proclaimed by John, as the twin of Jesus,15 who would teach the world the way to end suffering. In this regard Mani made use of the Acts of Thomas and the Christian Gnostic Song of the Pearl to support his claim to embody the Paraclete.16

I to spread his teachings. Presumably it was the syncretistic character of the new doctrine, which brought together the various religions of the empire, that attracted a shah who ruled over a multitude of peoples. But the pacifistic, ascetic and world-renouncing Manichaeism naturally could not accord with the ideology of an aggressive power. Around 274/276, at Kartir’s instigation, Vahram I had him arrested, after which he died in prison. At the same time, a systematic persecution began, which forced Mani’s followers to emigrate to either Central Asia or the Roman Empire, where they encountered the edicts of Diocletian in 297 and Constantine in 326.17

Mani developed a new universal religion, which he taught first in the south-eastern Sassanian Empire and in the empire of the Kushan in northern India, where he also encountered Buddhism. Around the year 242 or 243 Mani returned and received permission from Shapur

The story spread by his disciples that he suffered crucifixion is a myth and served to

associate Mani as closely as possible with Jesus.18 Since he considered himself the fulfilment of Jesus’s promise, he and his students sought identification with him in external symbols as well. Thus a few of his earliest disciples were called Addai, Mari and Thomas (the names of the East Syrian apostles)19 he was said to have gathered twelve disciples around him, and his church organization included 72 bishops.20 Nevertheless, even though the resemblance of Manichaean text fragments to Christian documents is often confusing and Manichaeism is rightfully characterized as a chameleon,21 he remained true to his two basic principles of the two antagonistic principles and the three ages. The principles are good and evil; the ages are those of the original separation of the principles, their present intermixing and their future separation. In short, Manichaeism is a kind of Christian Zoroastrianism, which incorporated a Gnostic doctrine of knowledge and in Central Asia and China was enriched with Buddhist and Taoist elements.22

Zarathustra, Buddha and Christ, it was legitimate for him to hearken back to their partial revelations and systematically meld them into the ultimate universal religion, relevant to all people. In his view, his doctrine was not plagiarism but rather the crystallization of truths that had been distorted by time, accompanied by the simultaneous rejection of the accumulated errors. In contrast to his predecessors, Mani did not place his trust in unreliable oral tradition, but instead preserved his revelations in writing. He wrote texts for the literate and painted pictures for the illiterate.24 As the crowning apostle of light, Mani claimed absolute truth. Mani’s disciples went still further with regard to syncretism, in that they presented Manichaeism as perfected Christianity when in a Christian environment, as perfected Zoroastrianism when among Zoroastrians, and as perfected Buddhism when among Buddhists.

In contrast to Christianity, Manichaeism proceeded from a fundamental, irreconcilable and unbridgeable dualism between good and evil. Both are unbegotten and eternal. But, while Zoroastrian dualism runs right through the material and spiritual world, Manichaean dualism equates good with the light, the spirit and soul, and evil with darkness and matter. According to a complicated cosmology that is difficult to understand, the two principles were originally separate, but then the powers of evil succeeded in capturing bits of the good light and binding them to matter. From this perspective, the cosmos and humanity are, on account of their materiality, works of evil. The cosmic process of salvation has as its goal the freeing of the light particles imprisoned in matter and the separation of them from the evil matter. Within this cosmic struggle of the powers of light with the powers of darkness, human beings are obliged to take sides. The apostles of light show the path to salvation by teaching humans the gnosis, (that is, the saving knowledge), which awakens the memory

For Christians, especially Nestorians, this alignment of Mani with Jesus was of course disagreeable. As the example mentioned above of the discussion between Bishop Papa and Vahram III shows, there was a danger that outsiders would confuse the two, as happened in China in the seventh/eighth centuries, since both religions from Iran spoke of Jesus Christ. In order to explain this proximity and simultaneously to discredit Mani, the Chronicle of Seert reported that, in his youth, Mani pretended to convert to Christianity and even had himself ordained as a priest by the bishop of Susiana (Khuzistan). After a time, he declared himself Paraclete, gathered twelve disciples and proclaimed his own ‘sinful’ doctrine. The report concluded with the alleged crucifixion of Mani and ‘so did God condemn him and give him what he deserved’.23

Because Mani declared himself the seal of the prophets, of whom he expressly acknowledged

of their own trapped particles of light and teaches them how to free the light from matter. Since matter is evil in itself, the way of salvation does not follow the Zoroastrian model of an active life of right thought, right speech and right action, but rather requires the fundamental denial of all that is corporeal and the renunciation of reproduction. milk, possession of private property, physical labour, the use of medicine and washing oneself or changing one’s clothes more than once a year.27 Worship consisted of purely verbal activities, such as collective reading and singing of hymns, since sacraments, bound up as they were with matter, were of the devil.

Since the people striving for perfection were not capable of supporting themselves, and the vast majority of people could not meet these excessive demands, Mani divided the faithful into two categories: the chosen, the electi, and the catechumens, the auditores, the hearers. If the electi were able to follow all the laws, they could save their light-soul; the hearers, on the other hand, had to serve the chosen, feeding and clothing them. They could hope over a period of many rebirths to accumulate enough merit that they would finally be reborn as potential electi.28 However, anyone who was neither an elect nor a hearer was threatened with eternal damnation at the Last Judgement, for not all the light trapped in matter can be freed.29

Text analyses have shown that Mani’s Christian sources included Tatian’s Diatessaron but also influences from the heretics Marcion and Bardaisan. Like Mani, Bardaisan believed that creation arose from a mixing of good with evil and that the soul could redeem itself by keeping God’s laws.25 Still greater was Mani’s proximity to Marcion, who juxtaposed the evil creator God of matter of the Old Testament against the good God and his saving Son of the New Testament. Like the later Mani, Marcion denied the corporeal birth of Jesus and his baptism; he thus represented, as did Bardaisan, a Docetic position, according to which the humanity and sufferings of Christ were only apparent. The one-time Manichaean Augustine reported, ‘They [the Manichaeans] deny that Christ was born of a virgin. They profess that his body was not real but rather feigned, and thus his sufferings were also feigned. They also believe that the resur- rection did not happen.’26 In this regard it was appropriate that the Manichaeans commemorated the death of their prophet but did not attribute any salvific power to him.

The Marcionite position of Mani, which presents creation as the work not of God but only of evil, fundamentally differentiated him from Christianity and positioned his doctrine in the corner of radical and élite world-renunciation, as Jewish-Christian Gnosticism also taught. For them, as well, the body represented the dark and narrow prison of the soul and had been created by a careless demiurge. The soul required secret knowledge in order to find its way back to its lost and forgotten homeland. Since ‘true’ Christians of the gnosis, who know the gateway to perfect knowledge, could forgo the mediation of the Church, this élitist position called into question the universal validity of the Good News. While Christianity also offered world-renouncing options, open to only a few (of which East Syrian asceticism represents an extreme form) it likewise provided possibilities for living in the world and embracing existence, which were

Because the personal work of salvation included the separation of the light particles from matter, the Manichaean ideal promoted a consistent abstinence from activities that bound the soul to matter. This led to a catalogue of forbidden actions, which went well beyond the purity laws of the Baptists Mani had scorned. They forbade killing, the eating of meat, sexual reproduction (leading to self-mutilation), farming, the harvesting of vegetables (only fruits were considered pure), the drinking of wine and

open to all the faithful.30 A further important difference between the two religions concerned the idea of the resurrection of the body, which was significant for the Nestorian missionaries to Central Asia, while for Manichaeans – and, incidentally, Buddhists – the body represented the greatest hindrance to salvation. For the Manichaeans the body will not be enlightened or transfigured into a spiritual body, but instead it must, because it is burdened with negative energies, be left behind or even destroyed.

The Church Father Ephrem the Syrian (306–373) is recognized by both East and West Syrians, as well as since 1920 by the Catholic Church, as a Doctor of the Church. The deacon Ephrem led an ascetic life and taught at the ecclesiastical schools of Nisibis (until 363) and Edessa. He attained fame for his hymns, as well as on account of his untiring opposition to the heretical adherents of Mani, Bardaisan and Arius. In this miniature from the twelfth century Ephrem holds a scroll in his left hand. (Library of the Syrian Orthodox Patriarchate, Damascus.)

For Christian orthodoxy, represented by, for instance, Bishop Rabbula of Edessa (†435), the Manichaeans were terrible heretics, since they taught the absolute nature of the two principles, denied the salvific work of Christ and rejected the Old Testament, yet nevertheless declared their writings apostolic and canonical.

East Syrian monasticism and the

Manichaean electi

Although Manichaeism and East Syrian Christianity proceeded from very different premises and basic beliefs, their goals and practice of the highest religious ideals were confusingly similar. This unintended resemblance was known, for instance, to Ephrem the Syrian: ‘Their [the Manichaeans’] works are similar to our works, as their fasting is similar to our fasting, but their faith is not similar to our faith.’31 When one moves away from the frequently encountered view that Christian monasticism first emerged in Egypt and spread from there to Syria and Mesopotamia, the question arises of how the striking similarities between East Syrian and Manichaean asceticism came about. first monastery on the upper Nile around 320, Tatian initiated the movement of the Encratites in Adiabene in northern Iraq over a century earlier. These early Christian ascetics rejected marriage, as well as the consumption of meat and alcohol. The first orthodox ascetic hermits were found in the region around Nisibis and Edessa; among them was Bishop Jacob of Nisibis (†338). When he took office, around 301 or 308, he had the reputation of a long-time ascetic. Nearly contemporary with Jacob was Julian Saba (†367), who retreated to a cave to the north of Edessa around 317. Thus, around 300, there was in Mesopotamia an independent monastic movement of anchoritism – that is, living as hermits; the Egyptian influence of a cenobitic monasticism, in which life was lived in

In fact, the roots of Christian monasticism appear to lie within the sphere of activity of the Church of the East. While St Anthony (251–356) first retreated to the Egyptian desert around 270 or 285, and St Pachomius (290–346) founded his

community, first reached Syria and Mesopotamia towards the end of the fourth century.32

Way up to the former Nestorian mountain monastery of Rabban Booya near Shaqlawa, northern Iraq. The founder Rabban Booya is said to have lived in the fifth/sixth century; today more than 2000 Assyrian Christians, live in Shaqlawa.

The Nestorian Thomas of Marga expressed the vision of East Syrian anchoritism: the saints ‘become gods among men’.33 This vision is based on the goal of a monastic life that imitates the angels, who allegedly abstain from sleep, food and corporeal love, in order to praise God unceasingly. The great exegete of the Church of the East, Ephrem the Syrian (†373), maintained that corporeal self-denial transforms physical being into an angelic existence.34 For him, the conscious ‘destruction and annihilation of the body’ represented the most perfect practice of anchor- itism.35 The renowned Nestorian mystic John of Dalyatha († before 786) lauded the readiness for martyrdom with these words: ‘O what can your love achieve, O God! Because they [the martyrs] have nothing more they can give you, they have joyfully handed over their bodies to death.’36

The monastic life manifested itself in strict celibacy, which sometimes led to self-castration;37 lack of personal property; severe fasting; abstention from alcohol, meat and agricultural products and the consumption of wild plants, fruit and even grass; the simplest possible clothing, made from wool, animal skins or straw, or sometimes complete nakedness; and as little sleep as possible. ‘One hour of sleep suffices for a healthy monk,’ opined the ascetic Arsenius.38 A few slept not lying on the ground but rather standing against a wall or tied to a post, or they tied a rope hanging from the ceiling around their upper body. Like the Manichaeans, the anchorites renounced all care of the body and followed Ephrem’s instruction never to wash themselves.39 This clear ‘care’ for one’s own filth inspired St Jerome (342–420) to remark sarcastically that the East Syrian monks were just as concerned with the dirtiness of their bodies as with the cleanliness of their hearts.40 with iron chains to a rock or the top of a tree, living in a leaky wooden box, or having oneself walled into a tomblike cave for the rest of one’s life. This practice, which included the anchorite’s receiving the necessary food and water through a small hole and the breaking down of the wall only after the hermit had not touched his food for a month, was also widespread among the Buddhist hermits of Tibet. Several of these ascetic practices appear to be of Indian origin and to have reached Mesopotamia through the mediation of Manichaeism. Instead of walling themselves up, a few monks – mostly West Syrian but occasionally East Syrian – opted to stand upon stone pillars as tall as 21 metres and there to wait, exposed to the vagaries of weather and the admiration of pilgrims, until their death.

Other examples of self-castigation included being constantly in motion, chaining oneself

Beginning in the late third century East Syrian anchorites lived in such caves and sometimes had themselves walled in permanently, in which case water and bread were passed to them through a hole. Kitayewo hermit’s cave from the period of the Golden Horde (1227–1502), near Kiev, Ukraine.

Syrian anchorites, encratites and Manichaean electi shared not only an abhorrence of the material world and a genuine hatred of the body – which the Egyptians, incidentally, condemned as an egoistic end in itself and a distraction from the work of spiritual purification41 – but also the condemnation of all expressions of emotional joie de vivre. In the Meditatio mortis, electi and anchorites meditated on their own sinfulness and on death. The corresponding state is also expressed emotionally. And so a Manichaean text states, ‘Keep in mind the trembling, the crying and the sadness’.42 We find exactly the same exhortation in Ephrem, who praised grief, sadness, sorrow and distress as signs of Christian perfection. Since Jesus never laughed but did cry, ‘laughter is the beginning of the destruction of the soul’.43 John of Dalyatha, for his part, wrote, ‘Force yourself always to maintain sorrow, in imitation of Christ.’44 Insofar as the object of sorrow is the passion of Christ, there is a parallel to the sometimes excessive sorrow of the Muslim Shiites over the death of their imam Hussein (†680). That this life-denying attitude was not exceptional is shown by excerpts from a Syrian rule for hermits:

Canon 9: ‘Every satisfaction from eating or sleeping is forbidden for a solitary.’

Canon 10: ‘A solitary shall always be in mourning, sorrowful, suffering and grieving.’

Canon 11: ‘A solititary shall never be glad, laugh and be in a gay mood.’45

For another monk from the early fourth century, named Uda, who Theodoret believed

had been influenced by Mani, laughter was sufficient cause for excommunication.46 As Patriarch Ishoyahb II experienced, the path from world-denying, life- and soul-castigating asceticism to ignorance was short. When, around 630, he sought to open a theological school in the important monastery of Beit Abhe north-east of the city of Mosul, the monks rebelled: ‘We are destined for weeping and mourning while we dwell in our cells. If you build a school here, we shall depart.’ The patriarch had to give in.47 and are married, in emulation of Adam and Eve, whom God ‘in anger’ gave work, tribulation and marriage, since they succumbed to the temptation of the flesh offered by Satan.50 The perfect, by contrast, follow Christ, the second Adam, and take up his cross in the form of asceticism. Like the other writings, the Book of Degrees appeals to the uncompromising words of Jesus: ‘Whoever loves father and mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me’ (Matt 10:37–38). In the imitation of Christ, the cross, which in the Church of the East was generally venerated as a symbol of the resurrection, took on a different meaning, namely that of the mystical crucifixion of the saint in the epitome of suffering. Ephrem declared that the monk should bind himself to the cross in such a way that his ascetic practices become the nails and his obedience to the monastic rules becomes the crown of thorns.51 Thus did the ascetics become martyrs.

Since the monastic life apparently embodied the best fulfilment of the Christian ideal, the question arose of the status of the laity. In light of the radical nature of Syrian monasticism, it is no surprise that its leading representatives in the fourth century divided the rapidly growing Christian communion into two categories or two Churches: the outer Church of the laity and the lower clergy and the inner, true Church of the monks, nuns and the higher, celibate clergy. The real litmus test was the life of celibacy. Early writings, such as the Gnostic-influenced Acts of Thomas, make it unmistakably clear that there is no Christian life outside virginity.48 This meant that married couples had to dissolve their marital bond if they wanted to receive baptism. In his seventh sermon, the Syrian Aphrahat (†350) addressed the candidates for baptism as follows: ‘Anyone who has betrothed a wife and wills to take her let him retreat. Anyone who has set his heart to the state of marriage let him marry before baptism, otherwise he will fall in the struggle [against temptation] and will be killed; let him retreat [from baptism].’49 Anyone who did not want to live celibately remained a catechumen.

After the perfect renounced the world, they become ‘aliens’ in this world and received the paraclete.52 In this regard as well, John of Dalyatha made his views clear: ‘Do you want the pleasure of Christ to remain inflamed in your heart? Then dispel the pleasure of the world. Christ will enter into your heart and reside there, if you have first emptied it of all that is worldly.’53 Between the two worlds, the material and the spiritual of Christ, there was neither compromise nor bridge. Although the Book of Degrees acknowledged the inseparability of the two Churches, it maintained that only external baptism is accessible to the righteous, while the inner baptism was reserved for the perfect. Correspondingly, the external Church represented the protective cloak over all people, but the inner Church is the true Church of the ascetics.

Still more informative is the anonymous Ketaba demasqata, the Book of Degrees, which appeared in Adiabene in the second half of the fourth century. It divides Christians into the righteous and the perfect. The righteous hear the teaching, but they remain enslaved to the material world. They labour, possess property

How closely this separation of the Church resembled the Manichaean dichotomy is made

clear by the ban on labour for the perfect. ‘The Lord does not allow one who is a helper to all humanity to perform work on earth.’ Physical labour done out of mercy for the good of one’s fellow human beings was also forbidden to the perfect. Physical labour, done for the benefit of the perfect, is reserved as the good work of the righteous. ‘Do not be concerned [you perfect], for I appeal to the righteous, who work the land, in order that they might feed and clothe you.’54 The distinction between the righteous and the perfect corresponds to that in Manichaeism between the auditores and the electi. However, the Book of Degrees warns the perfect against arrogance and a one-sided spiritualization: anyone who believes that he, as perfect, stands above the world of the corporeal and thus is able to neglect the physical asceticism will fall quickly back to the level of the righteous.55

Another development counter to Manichaeism was the so-called ‘sons and daughters of the covenant’. They were not monks but individuals who took on the obligation of chastity and lived communally. In contrast to monks and nuns, they devoted themselves to the community by teaching the Gospel, supporting deacons and performing acts of charity, such as running hospitals and houses for lepers. These exceptional groups did not shy away from physical labour. Quite the opposite: they served the lay community with their physical labour.

As a by-product, so to speak, of the religious exchange of the time, the monastic story of Barlaam and Josaphaat, attributed to John of Damascus (c.670–c.749), reached the West. This devotional book, circulated in numerous languages, was, however, nothing more than the adaptation of the biography of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni to Christian circumstances. Here, too, an Indian prince wants to prevent his son, Josaphaat, from converting to Christianity. He tries to protect him, but Josaphaat encounters a blind man, a leper, a frail old man and a corpse. Then the uncertain prince meets the hermit Barlaam, whereupon he leaves his family and palace and from then on lives as a hermit. This legend was so popular in Europe that Pope Sixtus V (in office 1585–1590) canonized Barlaam and Josaphaat and declared 27 November their day of commemoration. The truth came to light only in the nineteenth century. The story was first adopted by the Manichaeans of Central Asia, who later passed it on to Islam, which handed it on to Christianity.57

These parallels between Manichaeism and Syrian monasticism suggest some form of influence. With regard to certain practices, the origin is to be sought among the Hindu ascetics and Buddhist hermits. Since the movement of the encratites of Mesopotamia preceded Manichaeism, the hypothesis might be advanced that the Manichaean vision revived the archaic powers of Christian communities, which had lost importance as a consequence of the rapid growth of the Church. They felt strengthened in their belief that only the ascetic élite truly embodied the spirit of Christianity.

There were, however, other developments as well. The remaining sermons of Aphrahat and the writings of Ephrem suggest the conclusion that for them the sacraments were accessible to all people, which would prevent the establishment of a ‘two- class Church’. Married people were also allowed to receive baptism.56 Because of the sacrament of penance, the Christian community could further develop into a Church of the masses without losing its identity and avoid the narrow boundaries of a community of supposedly sinless saints.

The goodness of human nature and the question of original sin

A further, more lasting influence of Manichaean thought appears regarding the question of original sin, not in the East Syrian realm but in

the Roman-Latin Church; the Church of the East, however, rejected this idea. The starting point is found in the sermons of the Rome-based lay theologian and ascetic Pelagius (c.354–after 418), in which he castigated the slipshod Christian morality. Here he attacked the doctrine of original sin of the influential Bishop Augustine (354–430) of Hippo (in modern Algeria), since the latter’s belief in a natural sinfulness of humanity and the indispensable necessity of the grace of God served the weak-willed human being as an excuse for loose morals. Against the doctrine of a sin inherited from Adam, which led to immorality, and a predestination of who would receive God’s grace, he placed the conviction of human free will. For him, sin represented a deliberate act, which was forbidden by divine law, but the choice to obey or disregard this law remained within the discretionary powers of the individual. For Pelagius, as for Theodore of Mopsuestia, the original sin of Adam did not result in any universal negative marking of all human beings, but rather in the loss of the original paradisiacal condition. The after-effect of the original sin is not an automatic inheritance but a tendency towards imitation, which the grace of God and the institutions of the Church counteract.58 The conviction that the human being can, of free will, do good and reject evil, forms the basis of an optimistic anthropology, which attributes to the human person a fundamentally good nature, which can, nevertheless, be led into error because of its weaknesses.

Transmission of original sin takes place by means of sexual reproduction, fed by animalistic covetousness.59 Although Pelagius’s doctrine found wide acceptance among the faithful and was confirmed as orthodox by Pope Zosimus (in office 417–418), Augustine’s intrigues succeeded in winning the support of Emperor Honorius. Zosimus had to acquiesce and confirm the condemnation of Pelagius that had been declared in 418 at the regional council of Carthage.

Then Bishop Julian of Aeclanum (380–c.450) objected, lost his diocese around 421 and found refuge with Nestorius in 428. Julian attacked the Augustinian link between original sin and human sexuality – which, eo ipso, condemned the corporeal dimension of the human being – and upheld the moral neutrality of the bodily instinct for reproduction. For Julian, the condemnation of the corporeal as fundamentally bad was a relapse into Manichaean dualism. Julian’s accusation was comprehensible not only factually but also biographically, since Augustine had been a Manichaean auditor for at least nine years prior to his entry into the Church in 386. It was the lectures of Cicero in the Hortensius that confirmed the young Augustine in his pessimistic view of the world. ‘The interpreters of the spirit are not at all wrong [if] they assert that we are born to atone for offences we committed in an earlier life.’ And as ‘Etruscan pirates chained the bodies [of their prisoners] to corpses, each turned towards the other, so are our souls connected to our bodies, as these living were chained to the dead’.60 In fact, the statements of Cicero, the Manichaean belief in the funda- mental reprehensibility of the material body, and the Augustinian doctrine of original sin express the same ideas in different terms.

This view contradicts Augustine’s belief, according to which God is the absolute granter of goodness. Consequently, all the good that we do can come only from God, and we can call only our sins our own. For the Doctor of the Church Augustine, the original sin of Adam and the concomitant fault are passed on to the now mortal humanity, who, apart from the community of the chosen, are condemned for eternity.

Theodore of Mopsuestia and with him the Church of the East represent a different position, which is quite close to that of Pelagius. In his work Against those who claim that human beings sin of nature and not with will,

Theodore presents the opinion that there is no sin bequeathed by Adam to all his descendants. The phenomenon of sin is not a function of the inherently good but mortal human nature, but rather the result of free will. If the human being was born a sinner, he could not be held responsible by God. Sin is not inherited but rather represents the wilful disregard of divine law, which results from human weaknesses in light of their limitations and mortality. The human person has a tendency towards but no compulsion for sin. ‘Death weakened human nature and generated in it a great inclination towards sin.’61 Theodore also emphasized, however, that the weak human being needs the sacraments of the church and the grace of God they grant. ‘Being first judged worthy of grace (by God), [men] are then able to make their own contribution with him, showing their own choices to be proportioned to grace.’ 62 An analogy popular among the Nestorians of Central Asia and China says that sin is an illness, of which Christ cured the faithful with his message and example. mystic] directs all his efforts towards cleaning and polishing the mirror of his soul.’65 It was these aspects of an optimistic anthropology that the Church of the East emphasized during its missionary work in China, in order to engage in a fascinating dialogue with Taoism.66

The renowned Jacobite maphrian Bar Hebraeus also rejected original sin and emphasized the free will of the human person. In his arguments, he objected to both the acceptance of original sin and the Christian and Islamic ideas of predestination. For him, the human being can do both good and evil, since evil is a function not of nature but of law. ‘Otherwise there would be only two categories – that which is necessary and that which is impossible – and there would be no room left over for that which is possible.’67

From the perspective of Nestorian thought, the course of history is not the salvation from sinfulness but, rather, a progressive revelation of God and transfiguration of creation. In this context, Adam is not the cause of original sin and earthly misery but stands instead as the first instance of the then unanswerable question of the difference between good and evil. The Book of the Tower states, ‘God, the king of history, wanted to reveal the glorification of humanity and reply to Adam’s desire for the knowledge of good and evil. He took substance from him [Adam], in order that the messiah would appear in honour and glory in this body. He raised him to heaven and gave him power and royal glory forever. Through the incarnation [of Christ], which led to the apotheosis, he gave [humanity] that goodness and grace he had granted him [Adam] from the beginning.’68

One of Theodore’s contemporaries, Patriarch John Chrysostom, was likewise convinced that human free will must actively support grace: ‘The willingness of the individual is insufficient if he is not also granted supernatural assistance, and supernatural help is of no avail when it lacks good will. Thus I ask you, do not sleep and leave everything to God’.63 The East Syrian Isaac of Nineveh also stressed the genuine goodness of human nature, which regained its original perfection through the death and resurrection of Christ.64 The Nestorian mystic Rabban Yussuf (869–979) expressed a similar view: ‘The soul is by nature rational, mental and spiritual, like a polished and flawless mirror. Through the first sin it was externally polluted, but not in its nature. For the [original] sin was not so severe as to corrupt the nature of the soul; it could only effect an external, inessential staining. [The

Jesus Christ as the Second Adam, the Tree of Life and the Cross of the Resurrection

[Adam and Eve – that is, human beings], on a Friday they were redeemed from its authority.’ ‘On a Friday the door to paradise was closed, and on a Friday it was opened.’ ‘The Messiah became like Adam in all things.’75 Because the cross of the Messiah – which, according to another tradition, was fashioned from the tree of knowledge76 – was erected over the cruciform grave of Adam, he received baptism from the Saviour.77 In his Hymns of Paradise, Ephrem wrote concisely and conclusively, ‘By means of the tree of the cross, Adam again found the key to paradise.’78 The Church, however, as Moses had announced, became paradise on Earth.79 The transformation of the paired ideas of Adam and the tree of knowledge into Christ, the tree of life and the cross corresponds to that of Eve into the mother of God and the Church. In another hymn Ephrem maintained, ‘A man, a virgin and a tree were at the source of death. But another man, virgin and tree defeated death.’80 And so the pairing of Adam and Eve was superseded by another pairing, of Christ and the Church.

The necessary premise for the idea, outstanding in East Syrian theology, of a return to the original state of Adam before the original sin is the role of Christ as Second Adam, which Paul brings out. ‘The first man, Adam, became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.’69 This theme and the related idea of the cross as the tree of life was worked out in literary form by a student of Ephrem in the ‘Cave of Treasures’, a genealogy from Adam to Christ. It begins with the creation of Adam and his entry into paradise and tells of the ‘tree of the violation of the law [tree of knowledge], in which killing death lay’.70 As its twin, so to speak, stood ‘the tree of life in the middle of paradise, [which] is a model for the cross of salvation, the true tree of life’.71 At the time of the expulsion from paradise, God revealed to Adam that Christ would suffer in his place. After the children of Seth, the ‘perfect’ son of Adam, ‘went down’ from the treasure cave to the dark world of the evil descendants of Cain and there joined with them – one can see the motif, reminiscent of Manichaeism, of the unfortunate mixing of the perfect light with evil matter – God carried out a first Judgement Day in the form of the flood. But Noah placed Adam’s corpse in the middle of the Ark, as a saving precursor of Christ. Then Noah’s son Shem went to Golgotha, the ‘centre of the Earth’, and placed Adam’s body there. ‘Then four parts split from each other, and the Earth opened up into the shape of a cross.’72 Later the author interpreted Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac at Golgotha as a ‘representation of the messiah’s death on the cross’.73 Jacob’s ladder to heaven also ‘represents the cross of the Saviour’.74

The cross is an ancient, pre-Christian symbol of humanity, which, as the two-part linking of opposed points, symbolizes the unity of opposites. The Nestorian missionaries explained the sign of the cross in this way to their Chinese catechumens.81 In the Indian and Buddhist cultural sphere, the cross, in the form of the swastika, symbolized the primeval whirlwind or the sun. In Egypt the handled cross, adopted by the Christian Copts, represented life and fertility. The Antonius cross, familiar in Assur, symbolized the axis of the world, and the Maltese cross, surrounded by a circle, represented the sun. The over 6000-year-old crosses on ceramic containers from Elam in south-western Iran are presumably likewise sun symbols. Because in the Mediterranean region crucifixion was an especially shameful form of execution, reserved in Rome for slaves and non-Romans, the early Christian avoided pictorial depictions of the

In conclusion, the passion of Christ is presented as parallel to the fall of Adam and Eve. ‘On a Friday, death gained power over them

passion. The first symbols for the saviour appeared towards the end of the second century in the catacombs. Typically these grave decorations showed not a symbol of death but rather one of salvation, in the form of an anchor or a fish.82

Church of the East the cross enjoys the greatest respect, for it is the only Church that numbers the sign of the cross among its holy sacraments. No sacrament can be given and no form of devotion or worship can be carried out without the sign of the cross, since it is ‘the emblem of our salvation’.88 The cross also has a prominent eschatological significance, since at the end of the time it will, as the cross of light of the parousia, announce the return of Christ.89

The vision of Emperor Constantine, which revealed to him the monogram of Christ with the words ‘In this sign you will conquer’, first made possible the transfiguration of the scandal of a crucified God.83 The widespread depiction of a laurel wreath over Christ’s monogram or other representations of the cross without the crucified figure were clearly symbols of the victory of Christ and the hope of the faithful. From the same spirit emerged those images in which Christ sits upon a throne decorated with precious gems, an attribute of the Roman emperors and Zeus-Jupiter.84 The first depiction of a crucifix is, significantly, a pagan caricature from the early third century, which shows the crucified figure with the head of an ass.85 The first cautious approximations of a portrayal of the crucified Christ are an ivory tablet from c.420 and the wooden door of the Church of St Sabina in Rome from c.431. In both cases Jesus appears to be without pain and has a relaxed expression on his face; on the door, the cross is barely visible. The first depictions of the crucifixion date to the late sixth century 86 – that is, from a time when the Church of the East had long been separated from the Western Churches.

Insofar as the tree of life symbolizes the importance of Christ as the Second Adam, it is not surprising that among the East Syrians the leaved cross and the pearl cross predominate, as examples from Mesopotamia and Iran attest.90 In both cases the crosses appearing at the ends or the three pearls symbolize both the tree of life and the Trinity. In China there finally emerged a peculiar interreligious synthesis, as the two forms of the cross were enriched with symbolic elements from Buddhism, Taoism and Zoroastrianism.91

The sacraments in the Church of the East

In the Church of the East, ‘sacrament’ is character- ized as raza, whose etymological roots lie closer to the Greek mysterion than to the Latin sacramentum. Theodore of Mopsuestia wrote, ‘Every sacrament consists in [its] representation of unseen and unspeakable things through signs and emblems.’92 Its premise is the act of faith in divine grace. In the liturgical symbolic action an aspect of the divine mystery of salvation is concretely mediated, in that it re-enacts the salvific work of Christ and simultaneously points towards the coming resurrection. In the sacrament, Christ is the real actor, ‘our eternal High Priest’, whose ‘sacrifice replaces the cultic rituals of the Old Testament’s Aaronic priest- hood’.93 In the sacrament, mediated by a bishop

The Church of the East venerates only the original, bare cross of the resurrection; the crucifix is rejected as a sign of the heretical belief in the suffering of God. In this spirit, Catholicos Mar Shimun XVII (in office 1820–1861) declared to a British geologist and Chaldean missionary in 1840, ‘Christ suffered once and then entered into glory. He will suffer no more and die no more. Such images are the work of unbelievers, who like depictions of the suffering of Christ, and not of Christians, who rejoice that Christ defeated death through his suffering and death.’87 In the

The most important sacraments of the Church of the East are baptism and Eucharist, with priestly ordination representing the precondition for the conferring of sacraments upon the faithful and the sign of the cross sealing them.95 Mar Odisho defined the office of priest as the ‘mediation between God and man in those things which impart forgiveness of sins, convey blessing, and put away wrath [of God]’.96 The candidate must be older than 30 and married and have an exceptional reputation and high moral standards. The value of the priestly office lies in its apostolically founded mediating function between God and the faithful.97 Baptism, occurring in Aphrahat’s day only at Easter and as adult baptism, symbolized the second birth in the communion of the Church. Since baptism freed one from all sins, at first many people of all Churches tended to be baptized only on their deathbeds – that is, at the point when there would be no more opportunities to sin. In the Church of the East it was preferred to grant baptism to young adults, but the uncertain external circumstances often made the public baptism of adults impossible, so it was replaced beginning in the twelfth century with infant baptism.98

Long before sunrise at the start of the Easter Mass, the Syrian Orthodox archbishop Timothy Samuel Atkas displays the cross of the resurrection. On Good Friday the cross was solemnly laid in a coffin, which was placed over the entrance to the church at the end of a procession. All the faithful walked under the laid-out cross and drank a bitter drink in memory of the bitter cup of the crucified one. After the Good Friday worship service the coffin was placed in a niche in the altar and sealed. On Easter Sunday the cross is taken from the coffin, washed with rosewater and wrapped in a red cloth. This is related to the proclamation of the Last Judgement by the Prophet Isaiah (Is 63:1–6). The cross is installed by the altar and ceremoniously carried through the church before the Eucharist. It remains with its red cloth by the altar until Ascension Day. Mar Shmuni Cathedral in Midyat, Tur Abdin. or priest, the believer receives an expression of divine grace through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Just as human existence begins with birth and is sustained by eating, the Christian life begins with baptism and is fed by the Eucharist. Since Eucharist is the logical continuation of baptism, in the Church of the East first communion follows immediately after baptism, which is also directly linked with confirmation.99 In the Church of the East today, as the author has observed several times, baptism takes place in three steps. After the reading of various texts, hymns and the Nicene Creed, the bishop or a priest asks for the presence of the Holy Spirit in the anointing oil, after which the infant is anointed for the first time. This purifying anointing is the first step from the human being of Adam to the new human being of Christ. In the second step the

Like the other Churches, the Church of the East began first to use those sacraments that could be traced back to Christ, without regard for their number. So, for instance, John of Damascus acknowledged two sacraments, Bernard of Clairvaux (†1153) eleven, and Hugh of St Victor (†1142) 30. Bishop Peter Lombard (†1160) was the first to name the seven sacraments that the Council of Trent finally confirmed in 1547. In the early fourteenth century this scholastic debate prompted the Nestorian theologians Mar Odisho of Nisibis (†1318) and Patriarch Timothy II (in office 1318–1332) to define the number of sacraments, with Odisho’s list prevailing.94

Comparison of the recognized sacraments

Council of Trent Mar Odisho Patriarch Timothy II

Baptism Baptism, followed by anointing (2) Baptism, followed by anointing (3) Confirmation Eucharist Eucharist (4) Eucharist (4) Penance Absolution (5) Extreme Unction cp Oil of Unction (3) cp Burial (6) Orders Priesthood (1) Priesthood (1) Matrimony Matrimony (7b) Matrimony (7) Holy Leaven (malka) (6) Monasticism (5) Sign of Cross (7a) Consecration of Church (2) priest uses the holy oil to make the sign of the cross, symbolizing the Trinity, on the baptismal candidate’s breast, calls the Holy Spirit down on the baptismal waters of the baptistery and immerses the baby completely three times. There follows another anointing with holy chrism at the beginning of the worship service, which is held in the nave of the church;100 this is confirmation, the culmination of baptism. Finally, the newly baptized infant receives first communion. In the Church of the East communion is received in both kinds, bread and wine. In the celebration of the sacraments mentioned and in the exclusive veneration of the cross of the resurrection, we see that the Church of the East has preserved several ancient Christian traditions almost two millennia old. entrance to a church and painting small crosses on the lintel with its blood.102 In contrast to the Western Churches, which use unleavened bread for communion, the Syrian Churches use bread leavened with yeast. The holy sourdough bread, called malka, is consecrated by the bishop on Maundy Thursday, and each church of the diocese receives a piece. A part of this piece must be used to produce the Eucharistic bread, since the malka represents the unbroken connection to the bread Christ blessed at the Last Supper. The forgiveness of sins takes place in the form of public penance, followed by general absolution, not as personal confession. Finally, the sign of the cross, because of its power in symbolizing the resurrection and the Trinity, seals all the other sacraments. Its status is also apparent in the Book of the Tower, which characterizes the Gospel, the sign of the cross, baptism and Eucharist as the four pillars of Christianity.103

According to Mar Odisho, Holy Communion, symbolizing the sacrifice of Christ, replaces ‘the old oblations of irrational animals and the blood of their bodies’. For Christ ‘offered His own body [as] a sacrifice to His Father for the life of the world, and hence he is called by John [the Baptist] the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world’.101 This replacement and overcoming of the Jewish scapegoat by the Lamb of God is recalled today in the custom, practised in some remote regions on certain occasions such as funerals, of sacrificing a ram before the

In the Church of the East, neither extreme unction nor marriage is a sacrament. In place of the former, they have the use of hanana, which consists of a mixture of oil, water and dust from the grave of a saint or martyr. Hanana is administered not only to the dying but also to the sick and to barren women. Even though Mar Odisho did not include marriage among the sacraments, he called it a ‘holy estate’. It is

The metropolitan of the Church of the East of India, Mar Aprem, baptizes a little girl in the vestry of the Church of Mar Addai in Trichur, Kerala. Boys are baptized 40 days after birth and girls 56 days after. Confirmation and first communion follow immediately after baptism.

Distribution of holy communion in the Church of Mar Narsai, Trichur, Kerala. indissoluble except in cases of infidelity, insanity, murder or apostasy.104 Today marriage is blessed by a priest within the context of a Eucharistic celebration. the liturgy is called qurbana, sacrificial offering, because it recalls the sacrifice of Christ and his work of salvation. Insofar as the faithful form the Mystical Body of Christ, they are, during the qurbana, both participants in the sacrificial event and themselves part of the sacrifice; they sacrifice themselves.

Church architecture and liturgy – symbols in space and time

The Nestorian church is traditionally a rectangular building, with one or three naves, built of stone or fired clay. Its ground plan has striking similarities with Sassanian pillar-halls such as those in the palace of Ganzak.105 The choir is oriented towards the east, where the sun rises and whence Christ will appear on Judgement Day (Matt 24:27). In the Old Testament the prophet Ezekiel stated that the glory of God entered the Temple through the ‘gate facing east’ (43:1–4).

The ancient symbolism of the division of space in a church and of the course of time in liturgical worship is still alive in the Church of the East. Church architecture reflects the cosmic axis from earth to paradise; along the axis of time, the liturgy brings to life chronologically the whole of salvation history, from creation to incarnation to baptism, crucifixion and resurrection. In Syriac,

The metropolitan of the Ancient Church of the East from Mosul, Mar Thoma Giwargis, celebrates a wedding in the Church of St George in Hazaneh, northern Iraq.

The entrance doors for the people are found to the side on the southern wall; sometimes there are two doors, one for each sex. The entrance almost always leads over a high threshold, and the lintel is low, so that everyone enters the house of God with a bowed and humble bearing. Additionally, the really small entryways prevented hostile Muslims from forcing their way inside the church on horseback or misusing it as a stable. Some fortified mountain churches can only be reached by means of a ladder, which leads to an entrance about five metres above the ground. Immediately beyond the entrance is an anteroom, in which the faithful leave their shoes and weapons. In some churches, the thrice-daily prayers take place during the week in an open-air forecourt, which has a simple apse to the east and sometimes borders on the cemetery.106

The interior is divided into three parts along both axes. To the east and in the centre is found the holy of holies, the choir, which symbolizes heaven and can only be entered by clergy of the rank of deacon or above. Here the altar signifies the tomb of Christ. Over the altar rises a structure similar to a baldachin, symbolizing the Ark of the Covenant of Moses or again heaven. In comparison to the rest of the church, the holy of holies is raised on three levels. The baptistery lies to the south of the choir, and the sacristy, where the malka is kept and the sacred bread prepared, lies to the north. To the west of the choir is the nave, where the faithful gather; it symbolizes the earth. While in earlier times the men stood in the front of the nave, which symbolized the

Floorplan of a typical East Syrian church of Mesopotamia.

East

South North

(After Fiey: Mossoul chrétienne, 1959. Plate II)

West

Outer door 2 Forecourt, cemetery 3 Well 4 Beth Slutho 5 Baptistery 6 Outer door to the baptistery 7 Entrance door for men 8 Entrance door for women 9 Inner door to the baptistery 10 Credenzas 11 Font 12 Window 13 Choir 14 Altar 15 Beth Razzeh 16 Sacristy 17 Reserve of anointing oil and malka 18 Curtain, choir screen 19 Side door 20 Qostroma, vestibule 21 Shqaqona, straight way 22 Bema 23 Golgotha, credenza 24 Reading desks 25 Martyrium 26 Walled-in relics 27 Part of men, sometimes

Garden of Eden, and the women in the rear, which represented the praised Land of Canaan, today both sexes intermingle in the nave. This is in contrast to the Syrian Orthodox, among whom the women gather to the north and the men to the south. Sometimes an iron grille separates the two groups. Holy relics have been placed in the northern wall of the church, and occasionally there is also a martyrium, in which lie the bones of martyrs or bishops. remained.107 During the week the curtain stays closed because the sin of Adam and Eve broke the immediate connection between heaven and earth; it is also closed during the liturgy, when the crucifixion of Christ is being commemorated. Otherwise the curtain is open during the liturgy, as a sign of the presence of Christ, as he had proclaimed, ‘Where two or three are gathered in my name, I will be there among them’ (Matt 18:20). The opening of the curtain is a symbol of the opening of heaven and the arrival of Christ, for the church’s liturgy is an earthly representation of the eternal divine liturgy in heaven. Thus, during the worship service the ontological unity of heaven and earth is re- established. at the right 28 Part of women, sometimes at the left

A stone or wooden choir screen, with one to three arches, divides the nave from the choir; it corresponds to the iconostasis of Orthodox churches. A curtain stretched just behind the arches of the choir screen conceals the view of the choir; today the choir screen is rarely seen, but the curtain, as in Syrian Orthodox churches, has

qostroma, which means vestibule. From the perspective of the nave, the qostroma is found on this side of the curtain, but, like the choir, it is raised up in three steps. It represents paradise, the bridge between heaven and earth, which is entered by the readers of Scripture, who symbolize the lower-ranking angels, functioning as heavenly messengers between humanity and God. In earlier times in the centre of the nave there was a rectangular or horseshoe-shaped platform, the bema, which symbolized Jerusalem as the centre of Jesus’s life.108 As in the synagogue, readings and the beginning of the worship service – that is, the liturgy of the word – were carried out on the bema. The liturgy of the mysteries, however, took place in the holy of holies. The procession of the celebrating clergy to the bema symbolized the preaching and prophesying of Christ, and their return to the choir, his sacrifice and resurrection. The lay choir who in the case of most sung prayers responded to the angelic choir of the priests and deacons, also took their place on the bema. The bema corresponds to the early medieval ambo, the pulpit jutting out into the nave, which was linked to the choir with a small, slightly raised passageway. In the early Church of the East this passage was called shqaqona, the straight way. The shqaqona, which no longer exists, was small, for it symbolized the narrow path leading between the abyss of fleshly sin and the pride of the spirit to the heavenly realm. In the centre of the bema stands a credenza, called Golgotha, which represents the tomb of Adam, and beside this is the bishop’s throne. The old Nestorian churches had no bell towers, since there were at that time no bells. The faithful were called to worship by someone hitting with a stick one or more wooden planks, called simandron, which were hung from ropes.109

This Gospel lectern, made of stone, stood on the bema and was used during the Liturgy of the Word. The Syriac inscription reads: ‘Keep a good memory of the priest Abraham and John and his mother, who donated this.’ From the Church of Bennawi near Aleppo, today in the National Museum in Damascus, Syria.34 in a church. The Nestorian rite and the rite of its sister Church, the Chaldean Church, which is united with Rome, are the oldest Oriental rites still in use today. They date in their essence from the fifth century and thus are closest to the Jewish-Christian origins. The worship service consists of three main parts. First the celebrant prepares in the sacristy with a piece of malka, the sacred bread. Then, in earlier days, the mass of the catechumens began, during which the priest and deacons remained on the bema. This liturgy on the bema thus took place in the nave. While the faithful sing psalms and hymns, the altar in the choir is censed – the incense symbolizes both our prayers rising to God and the invisible presence of the Holy Spirit. There follow readings from Holy Scripture, the sermon, litanies and the preparation of the bread. The covering of the wine-filled chalice with a white linen cloth

The Nestorians also called their worship raze, the mysteries, since it celebrated the revelation with all its mysteries. It can only be celebrated

symbolizes the placing of Christ in the tomb, and its removal the rolling away of the stone that had sealed the tomb’s entrance. At this point, in earlier times, those who were not yet baptized were asked to leave the church; today the entire liturgy is celebrated in the qostroma and choir, and the bema no longer exists. Since the words for the departure of the catechumens are still sung today, this break remains. and then all the faithful. The anamnesis recalls the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ and is followed by the most important part of the Eucharistic prayer. This is the epiclesis, in which God the Father is called upon to send the Holy Spirit to consecrate the Eucharistic gifts of bread and wine. A hymn to the honour of God concludes the anaphora. The communion of bread and wine concludes the worship service. It is in keeping with the law of hospitality, so important in the Orient, that after worship the bishop invites to dinner select guests and friends – and, on the occasion of special feasts, the entire congregation. As the author has observed several times, for such meals to have hundreds of participants is not unusual. In this way, the aspects of the sacred and the social shared meal reunite, after having been separated in the second century.

The liturgy of the holy of holies follows, beginning with the creed. Earlier, the lay choir remained on the bema, the subdeacons processed only to the qostroma and the deacons to the altar, and only the priest or bishop celebrated alone at the altar. This hierarchical advance towards the altar granted the start of the most important part of the liturgy an especially solemn character. The priest is turned towards the altar, not towards the faithful. As primer inter pares he leads the prayers of the congregation, and in this way takes on a role similar to that of the imam in Islam. Because today there is no longer a bema, the altar represents not only the tomb of Christ but also Golgotha. The creed is followed by a litany, and then the anaphora, the Eucharistic prayer, begins. The Church of the East uses three different but related anaphoras. The first is that of the apostles Addai and Mari, which is used from Easter to Advent. It is followed by the anaphora attributed to Theodore of Mopsuestia, which is used until Palm Sunday. The third Eucharistic prayer, which is said to go back to Nestorius, is used only on special feasts, such as Epiphany.110 It should be noted here that on 6 January the Church of the East celebrates, as originally, the baptism of Jesus, the Epiphany; the celebration of the appearance of Jesus to the heathen, embodied by the Three Kings, began to supersede the commemoration of the baptism in the Western Churches in the fifth century.111

The Church of the East also has a highly symbolic form of the liturgy for the dead. The mass is not celebrated on the day of the burial, which normally occurs on the same day or the day after the death and for which just a prayer is sung in the church. The funeral mass takes place on the third day. As Christ rose on the third day, the deceased, on the third day after his or her death, participates through the Eucharistic celebration in the resurrection of Christ. The extent to which they are marked by a rich and vital symbolism, is always notable in the East Syrian liturgies.

Monasticism and asceticism

The motivation towards ascetic monasticism lay in the ideal of the imitation of Christ and in the necessity, proclaimed by Paul, of conquering the flesh (Rom 8:1–18). Additionally, the rapid growth of the early Christian community diluted the depth of its religiosity, which increased the need for a special way of being Christian. Before

The anaphoras begin with various prayers, which lead to the kiss of peace, which is passed from the priest to the deacons, subdeacons,

Syrian monasticism began to flourish around the turn from the third to the fourth century, the Essenes and the Encratites had already developed an ascetic, world-renouncing and God-embracing lifestyle. The transition from lay to monastic status was akin to crossing a sharply defined, endlessly deep border, over which there was no return without suffering eternal damnation. Anyone who desired earthly pleasures and left the monastic life was threatened with the fate of Lot’s wife: he would be turned into a pillar of salt.112 counsel of Ephrem, these anchorites not only ‘prefer the company of animals to the sight of humans’113 but also lived like wild animals under the open sky or in mountain caves. Ephrem described their lifestyle: ‘Caverns are their palaces, rocks their sleeping rooms, heights their balconies, ledges their habitations; the herb of the mountains is as their dinner table.’114 These extreme ascetics and penitents called themselves, like the martyrs, ‘athletes of the faith’ and ‘fighters and warriors of Christ’, whom they praised as their ‘Holy General’.115

Summer church called Beth Slutho in the Syrian Orthodox Mor Hadbeshabo Church of Ainwardo, Tur Abdin. The summer churches were furnished with stone lecterns, where psalms were sung and masses for the dead were read.35

Early Syrian monasticism had an anchoritic character. It was a conscious rejection of the contemporary civilization and its attributes, such as social contact, education, housing, clothing and the use of fire. To paraphrase a

Beginning around 340, presumably under the influence of Byzantine and Egyptian monks, there emerged in Mesopotamia a concerted effort to return the hermits to the Christian community and integrate them into cenobitic monastic

The famous Nestorian cave monastery of Khinnis in northern Iraq, which was described by Thomas of Marga in 840. Today one may still see 15 cells, which the monks intentionally created out of the stone wall that had been decorated with old Assyrian reliefs and cuneiform texts from the time of King Sennacharib (ruled 705–681BCE). They wanted in this way to reconsecrate the ‘heathen’ sacred site.36 The king stands on a winged lion as the second figure from the left. communities. In the ideal case, hermits were prepared to place their seemingly inexhaustible inner strength in the service of missionary work, to which the rapid expansion of the Church of the East to the east and south attests. While anchoritism was a purely personal matter, cenobitic monasticism is a social institution. This slow reversal is also apparent in the growing criticism of wandering monks and the so-called Messalians. The latter qualified the salvific power of sacraments, meditation and penance, and believed that only continual prayer could defeat the inner demon and thus lead to salvation. The clergy branded them as lazy parasites, who lived only from begging.116 Monasteries, which were located principally in northern Mesopotamia, were founded on sites associated with the execution of martyrs or the caves of famous hermits, or mountain slopes and earlier pagan shrines were chosen.

The leading lights of Greek-Byzantine and Egyptian cenobitic monasticism condemned Syrian eremitism for both its aims and its practices. While John Chrysostom emphasized that it was not the body that should be fought but rather its harmful desires, Basil the Great (330–379) rejected every expression of extreme self-castigation. Seen from a distance, Syrian anchoritism appears to be, in fact, a mutilation of God’s creation – indeed, a blasphemy of the divine work. In light of the alternative between anchoritism and the cenobitic way of life, Basil argued that only the latter could accord with the sacred law of brotherly love; the hermit

loved only himself and disregarded his fellows. St Jerome (342–420) added that the eremitic life led not only to pride and vanity but also to error, since no one is able to be simultaneously student and his own teacher117 – an insight also emphasized by the Tibetan Buddhist school of Kagyüpa. No one besides Buddha Shakyamuni could be his own spiritual teacher and leader.

Although a flourishing monastic life rapidly developed within the Church of the East, the turmoil that shook the Church towards the end of the fifth century led to a relaxation of monastic discipline. The study of Scripture was neglected, and monks left monasteries without permission to pursue private interests in the cities, or even took women into their cells. The founder of the Great Monastery on Mount Izla, Abraham of Kashkar (491–586/588), brought an end to these undignified activities with his reforms. The most important of the rules put into place in 571 were the following:

For its part, Egyptian monasticism emphasized that the external practices of self- castigation and the infliction of pain mattered less than inner attitude. Asceticism must also be guided by the principle of moderation, since ‘everything of excessive measure is of demons’.118 The father of Egyptian cenobitism, Pachomius (290–346), wrote that only the balanced middle way could distinguish between the ‘divine and the demonic asceticism’.119 The goal of achieving a state equal to that of the angels through extreme, even self-destructive, asceticism is nothing other than a sign of a misguided over-estimation of one’s one abilities. In the cenobitic life, by contrast, there was no room for individ-ualistic excesses; common prayer and work took priority. In this regard, a noteworthy tradition tells of a monk called John Colobos, who sought to lead an angelic life and thus rejected all participation in the common life of the monastery. When, after a long fast, he returned hungry from the desert to the monastery, he found the doors closed. To his desperate cry that he was Brother John, he received the reply that Brother John had become an angel and no longer lived among men. Later he was granted entrance, and it was explained to him that he was not an angel but an ordinary man, who, like all other human monks, had to take part in the communal life.120 Although at first a chasm yawned between the moderate position of Greek-Byzantine monasticism and the extreme Syrian ideal, with regard to both aims and practices, the former had a beneficial and mitigating effect on the latter.

Canon 1: ‘Monks live peacefully in their cells and devote themselves to prayer and study or meditation and handicraft. As the fish dies if it is taken from the water, so does the monk who stays outside his cell.’

Canon 4: ‘Monks practise silence and gentleness.’

Canon 6: ‘No brother may move from monastery to monastery or from place to place or enter the city [Nisibis] except in an emergency and with the permission of the community.’

Canon 10: ‘New brothers shall be tested for a given period.’121

In 588 Abraham’s successor, Abbot Dadisho, added the following rules:

Canon 1: ‘[He who] does not accept the Orthodox fathers Mar Diodore [of Tarsus], Mar Theodore [of Mopsuestia] and Mar Nestorius shall be unknown to our community.’

Canon 6: ‘To travel into the cities or along some pathway is not allowed without the permission of the abbot. He who nonetheless dares to go shall wear sackcloth and stand on ashes for three Sundays. If a monk broke this rule three times, the community discussed his expulsion.’ (The once popular wandering life was thus strictly forbidden.)

build themselves cells. If they behave otherwise, they shall leave in peace.’123

View looking out from a one-time Nestorian hermit’s cell near Challick, northern Iraq.

This canon is significant, as it makes clear that, among the Nestorians, the cenobitic communal life served merely as preparation and selection process for suitable candidates for the higher eremitic life. Nonetheless, the hermits no longer lived in remote mountains but, rather, in cells or caves near the monastery complex. They remained subject to the authority of their abbot and were required to participate in certain feasts in the monastery church. In the monastery itself lived only the candidates, ailing and incapacitated monks, and those with admini-strative duties. Rabban Yussuf Busnaya instituted another hurdle in the selection process by requiring that novices, before they were admitted to the cenobitic life, had meekly to perform hard physical labour for 50 days. Then he ordered that, when a monk entered the eremitic life, the cell of the new hermit should be closed with a stone in memory of the stone before the tomb of Christ, for the cell was the tomb of the monk with regard to the world.124 On the other hand, Rabban Yussuf offered one who had completed the three-year novitiate three options, according to his preferences: he could decide on the spiritual eremitic life, be intellectually active as a copyist of manuscripts, translator and preacher, or carry out manual labour in the fields and vineyard and look after the pilgrims in the monastery guest quarters.125 These three forms of monastic life correspond to the Neo-Platonic view, then current, that the human person consists of corporeal, emotional-intellectual and spiritual dimensions.

Canon 7: ‘Every brother who comes to the community to stay shall not be accepted unless he can read the Scriptures.’

Canon 17: ‘Children shall not be accepted into the community.’

These requirements raised the educational level of the monks and laid the groundwork for the eventual work of translating classical philoso- phical and scientific texts. Rabban Yussuf Busnaya also emphasized the necessity to begin monastic life with the study of Scripture and the Church Fathers. ‘Study is both the way to and the teacher of the next step, solitude in the cell. Without scholarship, there is no complete monastic life.’ But study was only the first step. ‘In study the individual purifies his bodily senses until they are perfect. In meditative solitude the spiritual person purifies his inner senses, his intellect.’122

Nevertheless, the great Nestorian monasteries were not immune from excesses in the form of vanity, wealth, spiritual sloth, exertion of political influence, or even willingness to use violence – developments seen in monasteries of other confessions and religions as well. So

Canon 13: ‘That the brothers shall be tested in the monastery for three years following their arrival. If they behave well, they shall be permitted to

Four-metre-high remains of the stylite’s column in the Syrian Orthodox Monastery of Mor Loozor (Lazarus) in Habsus, Tur Abdin, which was, according to the inscription, erected in 792/793 for the stylite Daniel. Early documents confirm that Nestorian monks also practised this extreme form of asceticism.37

Isaac of Antioch warned cenobitic monks of great institutions that they were not to reduce themselves to farmers. He also warned against the fatal involvement in politics and against those abbots who intentionally selected big and strong monks, in order to turn them into gangs of thugs.126 The distressing events at the Council of Ephesus and the Robber Synod of 449, as well as many other incidents, in which questions of dogma were ‘resolved’ with fists, demonstrate that brutal and primitive instincts can lurk even under the habit of a monk. The monastic gangs recall the feared Dob Dob of Tibetan monasteries, who, as trained fighting monks, attacked other monasteries and even set them on fire. In both cases, the aggression and brutality that presum- ably feeds and maintains all extreme asceticism is no longer directed inward towards one’s own body and its needs but, rather, outward against others who think differently. was said not only to have healed the sick and raised the dead but also, ‘at the command of the angel of God’, to have destroyed the villages of sinful Christians with earthquakes and confla- grations.127 This tradition is also very similar to earlier reports from Tibetan monasticism.128 Another unwholesome development concerned the motivations for founding monasteries. Not only monks called to the spiritual life founded monasteries but also prosperous laypeople, acting for the benefit of their salvation or out of vanity. Since such monasteries were often endowed with large landholdings, they had at their disposal considerable financial means and accordingly accepted many novices. As in ancient Tibet, in certain regions of northern Mesopotamia as many as a quarter of Christian men may have been monks.129 When a similar development threatened the civil authority in Byzantium, Emperor Nikiphoros Phocas outlawed all new foundations in 964.130

If the reports of Bishop Thomas of Marga are given credence, there were also monks who had magical powers. For instance, a certain Mar Maran’anmeh (second half of the eighth century)

In the region of the Church of the East, however, no imperial permission was needed to limit the number of monks. The continually

advancing Islamization of the land, the seizure of power by the fanatical Turkish Seljuks in the eleventh century and the systematic destruction by the Kurds reduced the number of monasteries in Mesopotamia, with the exception of Tur Abdin, from several hundred to five by 1960 – three Chaldean, one Jacobite and one Syrian Catholic. There are also still a few monastic buildings, which are preserved but no longer have any monks.131 The last Nestorian monk, Rabban Werda, died before the First World War.132

East Syrian mysticism, exemplified by John of Dalyatha

In comparison with the fathers of Syrian mysticism, Aphrahat and Ephrem, mature Nestorian mysticism departed from the ideals of strict asceticism. One branch opted for the path of love mysticism, and its most prominent representative is Isaac of Nineveh; the other followed a spiritual-intellectual path. In this way, knowledge led to an ecstatic vision of the glory of God, in which every distinction between the knower and the known – that is, every duality – was abolished and the soul, in its transfiguration, experienced God – an approach comparable to the Indian way of Advaita.

Like Jerome, John was convinced that an experienced teacher must accompany the mystic on his perilous path, along which lurked demons of madness, arrogance and pride.134 In describing the mystical process, most Nestorian authors adopted Origen’s scheme of the three levels of the human being’s relationship to God. The first, physical, level occurs in the form of corporeal asceticism; the second, psychological, as purification of the soul, which then leads to spiritual development, culminating in the vision of Christ as formless light. For John, however, physical purification is not a one-time step but rather, a continual process that ends only with death. In his experience, the purification of the soul is the first step; the enlightenment and blessing of the soul, in which the mystic experiences the revelation of the divine mysteries, the second; and the vision of God, which overcomes all dualism, the third and crowning step.

The Syrian Orthodox monk Yacub returned from exile to his Monastery of Mor Dimet in Zaz, Tur Abdin, in early 2001, after the last Christians had to leave the village in 1993. His headdress bears 13 crosses; they symbolize Jesus Christ and the twelve apostles. Unlike the Syrian Orthodox Church, the Church of the East has had no monks since the start of the twentieth century.

The best-known exponent of this branch is John of Dalyatha, who was born around 690 in Adiabene and died before 786. The writings of John were risky and not uncontroversial; they were condemned on three points at the synod of Patriarch Timothy I in 786/787. First, John was condemned as a modalist, who, with regard to the Trinity, did not acknowledge three hypostases but rather just one, which expressed itself in three different ways. Second, he valued the mystical vision more than prayer; and, third, he made the blasphemous claim of having had a vision of God. No creature could recognize his creator. Timothy’s successor, Isho Bar Nun (in office 823–828), rehabilitated the mystic.133

since he believed that the purified body could participate in the mystical refreshment of the soul. ‘The individual gains union with himself and with the one who unites him. For the powers and sense of the body shall be united with the abilities of the soul and this with the spirit. But the spirit sees in the soul the glory of God.’137 On Dalyatha’s mystical path there sound no discordant notes of the mutilation of the creature but rather the harmony of his holistic purification. John warned, however, that humility and modesty should always accompany the process of purification. ‘But to those who deem themselves holy, the Holy One [Christ] says, “You no longer need me, remain there in your holiness.’’’138 To encourage humility, John recommended prostration on the ground during prayer – an established practice in Tibetan Buddhism as well. Now the mystic stood on the threshold of the inner vision, the vision of God in the mirror of the soul. ‘O Christ, grant that we, through You, might enter the temple of our soul and see You there. O hidden [within us] treasure of life. My brothers, he who has enclosed the view of his spirit within himself will see in the interior of his heart the stars of light shining in ineffable splendour. It will be the vision of the glory of the Eternal One.’139

Bodily and spiritual penance forms ‘the gateway to the realm of light that lives within each of us’. However, it not only establishes the original purity of human nature but also grants the necessary zest for God; it is ‘the mother of the heavenly eagles who soar to the heavens on wings of flame’.135 For this reason, John considered the way of the mystic incompatible with the life of a layperson; the true Christian life required the death of earthly passions. From this perspective, those who had not passed through the gate into the monastic life remained ‘still among the dead’. Love of God and love of the world were mutually exclusive: ‘Christ will enter into your soul and live there if you first empty yourself of all that is worldly.’136 Corporeal asceticism and fasting should be strict but also moderate, for it is not enough to weaken or even destroy the body; rather, one must tame and purify the passions.

Despite its strongly fortified walls, the Syrian Orthodox Mor Dimet Monastery in Zaz, Tur Abdin, where the Christian population of the village had sought refuge, also fell to attacking bands of Kurds in 1915.

In the second step of the blessing of the soul the mystic experiences, through the grace of God, three degrees of illumination. First, mental illumination in the form of conceptual insights that still have intellectual components. In the next step, there follow contemplations of the divine presence in one’s own soul and in all creatures, during which the duality between the knower and the known is not yet resolved. In this moment, deep dismay grips the mystic. Finally, he experiences the divine as pure, formless light, beyond any intellectual perception.

There follow next such states of grace, in which the soul sees itself in its original goodness and simultaneously experiences the presence

On this point John distinguished himself radically from the ideas of earlier asceticism,

spirit, without existing and without perception. No vision, no hearing, only con-sternation [stupor] and deep silence, without any stirring [of the spirit] and without any consciousness. For in the one who knows, knowledge has forgotten itself, [it is] outside knowing.’142 It was these descriptions of the vision of God that prompted Patriarch Timothy to condemn John of Dalyatha, since no creature can look upon its creator. The accusation of the patriarch was not entirely accurate, insofar as John clearly distinguished between the nature of God and his glory. ‘It is the glory of his nature, not his nature itself, that He reveals to those who love him.’143

Way up to the earlier Nestorian cave monastery of St Qayyoma near Duri, from the ninth century. It was rebuilt in 2000 after being destroyed by Saddam Hussein’s Anfal campaign in 1988.

Rabban Yussuf Busnaya described the unio mystica with similar words: ‘In the previous state of grace we encountered Christ in our soul and we considered him our Lord and our God. In the final degree we find that the spirit itself becomes Christ; it is no longer servant and Christ is no longer Lord, but rather it [the spirit] becomes Lord and Christ ceases to be Lord. It [the spirit] is no longer human and God no longer God, but rather it becomes God and God is no longer God.’144

One can speculate that Nestorian mysticism influenced the later Islamic mysticism of al-Hallaj (858–922). He also questioned the absolute transcendence of God, in that he proclaimed his belief in a union of the human being with God beyond all duality. Like John, al-Hallaj described how, during such an experience, the mystic lost the consciousness of his own identity. Al-Hallaj was crucified in Baghdad in 922 after an eleven- year imprisonment. of God. It is the return of the human being to his original goodness. ‘When the spirit begins to pray, he sees the radiance of his essence; the beauty of the nature of the soul appears to him. The soul sees itself as it is; it sees the divine light appear and how it is transfigured into its [the light’s] likeness. And this likeness is removed from view, and it sees itself as the likeness of God, as it is united with the formless light.’140 When the individual is entirely with himself, he is entirely with God, and vice versa. The mystic experiences the unio mystica not only in his soul but also in all of creation: ‘As I [John] thought to have found You [Christ] within myself, I saw that You live in all things.’141 At this point, all duality between the subject and the object of knowledge is abolished. ‘He [Christ] holds me as if without

Likewise, with regard to the interim state of the soul from the moment of death to the resurrection, John’s view differed from the official position. Proceeding from the indivisibility of body and soul and the universal resurrection, the Church of the East likens the state of the soul separated from the body to sleep. Righteous souls enter paradise, and evil souls remain outside, but in both places there is neither blessing nor

punishment. John of Dalytha, by contrast, accepted a partial sleep of the soul: the souls of the unrighteous experience punishment even before Judgement Day, while those of the righteous enjoy states of grace similar to those of mystics, which nevertheless represent but a foretaste of the state of eternal bliss. panton (Greek for ‘the restoration of all’), according to which, in the context of the all- embracing reconciliation of the Creator with his creation, all creation would be restored to its original, perfect state. The most important representative of apokatastasis was Origen (†253); he was vehemently opposed by the father of the doctrine of original sin, Augustine. ‘Thanks’ to Augustine, Christianity was marked by the frightening model of original sin- predestination-salvation for the elect and hell for the rest. But Isaac’s vision was entirely different. ‘God did not abandon the devil and sinners in the moment of their fall. Demons will not remain demons, nor sinners sinners. For God intends to lead them all to the same state of perfection in which the angels already exist.’145

Concerning life after death, the Nestorian mystic Isaac of Nineveh (second half of the seventh century) represented a different view. He believed that eternal punishment and damnation of even the worst sinners was irreconcilable with the all-encompassing and unlimited love of God. He considered the concept of original sin blasphemous. Building on Diodore of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, Isaac concluded that a loving God did not create rational human beings only later to abandon them to eternal suffering, although he knew before their creation that they would sin and created them anyway. God seeks our well-being and not a pretext for punishing us. For Isaac, hell meant the consciousness that the sinner, out of egoism, was not receptive to God’s love. The time in hell, while terrible and agonizing, was nonetheless finite.

Perhaps a reconsideration of the early East Syrian promoters of an optimistic Christian anthropology, unburdened by original sin, as well as an accessible Christology that inspires the imitatio Christi, could help address the current crisis in institutional Christianity. The Church of the East suggests how a Western Church might have appeared without Augustinian pessimism. Isaac’s vision was of a religion of love, while that of Augustine was of one of fear.

Isaac accepted the doctrine of apokatastasis