East of Byzantium

December 07, 2014

East of Byzantium

By Joseph Boyd

As many of you already know, I have been struggling for years with understanding Christian history in a way that is cohesive with both Biblical studies and the cultural/historical realities of the Roman State. These problems wouldn’t bother most people, but my concern for China, the legacy of Mahayana Buddhism’s inception from Christian cosmology and doctrine, and the apostolic roots of the Chinese inheritance has also been foremost in my thought. As I waded through the massive number of Orthodox histories, Patristic texts, canonical decisions of councils and doctrinal catechisms required by the St. Stephen’s Course of Orthodox Theology and my own studies of the Church of the East's Ancient Chinese missions, I was forced to come to some very uncomfortable conclusions. On the surface, these conclusions may seem to distance me from the vast majority of Eastern Orthodox brothers and sisters, and Protestant converts to Ancient Christianity in general, but, hopefully, my actions will eventually be understood as my firmly-felt desire to repent of my own arrogance, create unity and inspire mutual love and submission. It is only within this process of personal and corporate repentance that Eastern Orthodoxy and the Church of the East will find a "way forward" as a whole - which is now haunted by the ghost of a long-gone Byzantine Emperor, and consequentially, harnessed as a ethnocentric and totalitarian form of State religion by oppressive and unethical governments. It is only within this process that China will hear the Apostolic Gospel in its own context and appropriate its truth as a part of its own heritage.

My studies have revealed that simple answers are hard to come by - some Orthodox recognize the Church of the East as being equally apostolic and of the same faith, but politically estranged due to their historical position outside of Rome (it's hard to remember that all the other Churches occurred under Roman rule, and that all of the Western Churches still operate and administrate with a legal system that is based in the Roman State context), but most of the Slavic writing that has been published about Far Eastern Christianity over the last three hundred years has denounced it as heretical and Nestorian - not because the Church of the East disapproves of the Chalcedonian Christology, because they officially endorse its "two natures, one person" stance, but because they held a council in Selucia of Persia in AD 410 that rejected the role the Roman Emperor in calling councils, affirmed the independent but mutually respectful status of local churches, and effectively rejected the confusion between Church and State that would plague Roman and Byzantine Churches for the next thousand years. By rejecting the emperor as the temporal head of the earthly Church, it also rejected everything else that followed in the West, based on these canonical grounds - Theodosius, Justinian, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, and Vladimir Putin!

I also find that the COE was the only Church that mandated a release of slaves by its adherents, resolving one of the questions that I raised years ago about the Christian contribution to the topic of human rights. The Church of the East did so based on their unique faithfulness to a biblical vision of salvation - maintaining that salvation was not acquired by works, merit or contemplation - but by our repentance and submission to the Spirit and the Glory imparted through Christ's manifest and merciful presence upon man. This is Christ’s work of mediation as the Second Adam, enabling us to bare the "Presenced Image and Likeness" which was before shattered by Adam’s Fall, and now made available through the Incarnation, Life, Death and Resurrection of Christ. Therefore, the only valid path to salvation was through a strict adherence to Christ’s Presence, the Grace of the Holy Spirit, which forms the "Law of Love" as a relational dynamic, rather than a legal category! Through repentance, the human person is fully realized, and through Christ’s Mercy it held in relation with the Will of God, the Word, by God’s Love - Love being the active principle of creation and sustenance in the world. Humanity, therefore, can not save or be saved if other humans are abused, forced against their wills (the will holding a true Image of God), and therefore Christianity must not coerce or persecute. To do this it had to maintain a strict separation from the governance of the Kingdoms of the World - and rather function as a prophetic voice for Christ’s Kingdom to Come. Therefore, Gnostic and Legalistic elements which insisted on the Pre-Eschatological Deification of Person or upon theories of Moral Reform, and Christian manipulation of Governance and State through the Power of the Church, rather than through faithfulness to the Return of Christ (which would survive to a greater or lesser degrees in all the other Apostolic Churches, insisting on a process of catharsis and kenosis to instill worthiness and holiness), were preempted by this solid, biblical thinking. This is seen by scholars as mainly due to the fact that the Aramaic-speaking Church never used Greek texts or cultural philosophy, drawing directly upon the Hebrew/Aramaic Tradition that was already firmly in place within the Mesopotamian Jewish community. It was also because of this strong connection between the Early Persian Church and Jewish Synagogue practice that the COE retains the Ancient Hebrew Prayers used by Christ in the worship of His Father (the Qaddish/Angelic and Priestly Prayers, the Barakoth/Consecration of Bread by Thanksgiving and Blessing of God, and the Toldoth/Retelling of the Faithfulness of God as a Genealogy) that have been lost in all other Christian Traditions, and maintained the continuous corporate reading of the Old Testament and Psalms (the Greek and Roman Churches lost the Old Testament readings in the 3-4th centuries).

My doctrinal position has not really "changed" and still consider myself fully “Big O Orthodox" by Early Church definitions. From a doctrinal perspective, however, I've come to see the situation as "both/and." The Church of the East is the Orthodox Church outside of the Roman Empire, cut off from the West by Islam, but never anathematized or rejected the West. They accept Orthodox practice, and fully acknowledge Orthodox baptism and chrismations, accepting EO rites as valid. Many of its patriarchs in the 6-9th century Concelebrated with Orthodox patriarchs, and the Byzantines who eventually made it to China joined their mission in Xi'An, instead of setting up rival missions. It is the historical church of China, evidence of which God has providentially preserved and has been revealing more and more, and is a church that has never supported colonialism, persecution or pograms. It is also a Church that the EO needs to learn from, because it very successfully resisted the temptation to amass worldly power and wealth, and rejects the idea of a worldly kingdom representing the Coming Kingdom. They do recognize Chalcedon as a local council, and thus cannot be termed an "Oriental Church," and they do not teach "Nestorianism" or the "Two Person Christology." Greek Metropolitan +Kallistos Ware says in the last chapter of "The Orthodox Church, "There is nothing that keeps the COE out of communion with Orthodoxy," and the Russian Metropolitan +Hilarion Alfeev in his book of the same name says almost exactly the same thing in his first chapter on the reception of councils within local churches. I believe that this is the only legitimate form of Orthodoxy for East Asia, because of its historical legacy and its rejection of the Western political solution. With the papalism of the Greek Church (Prima Sine Partibus, insisting that they determine Orthodoxy and communion with their patriarch is necessary for Orthodoxy) becoming increasingly evident and the aggressive thuggery of the Russian Church, I feel that this is the only principled decision I can make right now, hopefully, for the good of our family and all of our Chinese friends and family.

The Church of the East formally re-affirmed communion with the Orthodox in the late 500's (after their rebuking the West for its unfaithfulness to early practice, in its introduction of the confusing terminology, Theotokos, which the COE argued broke with biblical tradition, and which had caused such tension at Ephesus I), with concelebration of Patriarch's Yeshuayab II, Sergius I, and John of Antioch in the 580's. After this, the Church of the East never "went out of communion" with the Orthodox. The Orthodox, though, for many political reasons, ceased to recognize the Church of the East - even though the doctrinal issues that had been resolved between the two Churches were never thoroughly discussed again. The East merely faded out of the Byzantine political consciousness after the rise of the a Bagdad Caliphate. Conversely, the Orthodox waffled back and forth between Chalcedonian and Monophysite Patriarchs for several hundred years, and ended up in schism between their own Patriarchates, and with Rome on two occasions, well before the Great Schism. The Church of the East still holds to the oldest doctrines, the oldest liturgy, and the oldest inter-church agreements.
Orthodox scholars and liturgists cannot deny this, and had to admit as much to me over my Balamand University residency. I hate to say it, but the historical accuracy of the Orthodox story and claims start to break down at this point. Those who know this history and are honest about Orthodoxy's own historical narrative, and its inner conflicts, are more open to an wider perspective, as were the Greek Orthodox patriarchs well up into the 17th century. Russian monastics and Athonites monks, pressured by Rome and the need for a response to their failing parishes and growing Uniate presence, developed a narrative that is convenient, but historically untrue. "Theosis" does not impart perfect knowledge (this is a gnostic assumption that plagues the Church with entropy and the ornate addition of new and unnecessary tradition, a cancer of the Pharisees) and it is perfectly possible that the later Orthodox saints who warned against ecumenism were not knowledgable about the whole context of the Church or its true history. I do not think that this is just an issue of semantics - it is what we believe about Grace, Salvation, the Church, and the World. The Church of the East does not invalidate the Orthodox warnings against Roman Catholic heresy or Protestant Ecumenism, it confirms them, but it does expand their definition of the Church beyond what they knew in their own place.
St. Isaac the Syrian, the most important of all "Eastern Orthodox Saints," whose thinking underlines almost all issues of heaven, hell, monasticism and prayer, was a Church of the East bishop, during the period when the Eastern Church had already been forgotten by the Romans. But the Eastern Orthodox "adapted" him and expunged his true affiliation, all the while, our "Theosis" concept and the "essence/energies" distinctions go back to Church of the East theologians, particularly St. Isaac and St. Ephraim! "There are no Saints outside of the Church" is a wonderful saying to remember at this point.

So, all told, the practical effect of my change is a radical realignment of my historical and political narrative and a change in my episcopal loyalties. Those who recognize Orthodoxy as the doctrinal reception process within local, Apostolic Churches, can (and many already have) accept the COE as Orthodox - and can thereby accept my stance in the process. Unfortunately, both the Greek and Russian political/episcopal machines will continue to see me and the reading of history I now represent as a political threat, and will undoubtedly accuse me of being a heretical Nestorian. I do not, however, affirm Nestorian doctrine, as understood or presented by the West, and I accept the Nicene Creed and the Chalcedonian definition of Christ being "Fully God, Fully Man, in One Person having One Existence (Hypostasis)." Despite this, I will certainly no longer be on the "Becoming Orthodox" short list for radio programming or book tours.

We have, thankfully, found a wonderful community of Assyrians in Modesto, headed by a knowledgeable and Christ-like bishop, + Mar Awa Royel, who is probably the most pastoral and evangelical leader I've met within "Ancient Christianity." We have made great friends with our bishop, his council of presbyters, and several monastics who have started a monastery not too far from where we bought our house. In practical terms, our new situation is much more "real" than when we were within the Greek Orthodox world, surrounded by people who came to the States, not as shopkeepers and businessmen looking for a better life, but by a small refugee remnant of a people that have almost been completely wiped out over the last one hundred years by repeated Islamic genocides. The difference in life, fervor, and love for God is palpable. My sense of urgency is heightened because I see that one of Christianity’s most vital and important links with a doctrinal past that can untangle many of the competing narratives of the Postmodern, Post-Christian world, is quickly fading away and being martyred as the West stands by and looks on in Iraq, Syria and Iran. Don’t forget that the Syriac-speaking Christians have lost thousands to crucifixion and beheading over the last two years of fighting, effectively losing over 80% of their entire population over the last 100 years!

I am also excited about how the COE embraces other Orthodox Christians as brothers (even allowing those who are baptized in the Name of the Trinity and have had the laying on of hands in Chrism to commune at their Eucharist), even as they reject Protestant doctrinal innovation in the same way that most Orthodox would. They are much less interested in trying to restrict the Holy Spirit to their own politic boundaries, knowing that the local church is the complete and catholic expression of the Incarnate Church, and that human knowledge is faulty in areas of theory and philosophy - remaining so until Christ's glorious return. To the COE, an Orthodox communing with them does not imply that they have left their old church affiliation, but merely that there is a recognition of the same faith and the same Spirit at work in our midst! They also, while stressing the importance of art and icons in an educational and psychological role, do not place them upon their altars or chancel barriers for ceremonial honor, desiring that no confusion arise between the worship of the formless Father, and the veneration we pay to the Virgin and the Saints. Thus, it much easier for Protestants to understand and accept the veneration of icons in a biblical context. All of this makes it much easier to work amongst Christians in China from many western traditions, who are already so thoroughly versed in the Old Testament, and explain ancient Christian doctrines in a biblical, rather than Hellenic, context. Instead of rejecting Protestants because of historical and conceptual differences out of hand, there is far greater flexibility for dialogue with them based on the biblical roots of the Ancient Christian Syriac culture.

In no way do I reject Orthodoxy as a real process of faithfulness to original meaning and propagation of spiritual life, and in no way do I think those within the various local Orthodox Churches should leave them for the Church of the East. The Holy Spirit IS present within the faithful, Apostolic local communities of the Orthodox Christian Church throughout the world - and these Churches are, in the fullest sense of the word, "Catholic," in as much as they hold to the Nicene Creed and the Apostolic practices of repentance, baptism, eucharist, and ordination through the laying on of hands. I do, however, want to give those within the various Apostolic Churches a sense of the perspective and doctrinal clarity that comes from within the framework of the Church of the East, which has a unique voice and a special place within Christian history, one that has unfortunately suffered by having its libraries burnt by Islam, Roman Catholics and British Colonialist, and is now being wiped from the earth by the terrible force of the ISIS Antichrist. From within this historical and doctrinal perspective, light is shone on otherwise inaccessible and remotely abstracted points of doctrine that would remain relatively mysterious “unspoken” parts of an otherwise clear Eastern inheritance.

I look forward to the day when the Eastern Orthodox can recognize its brothers within the Church of the East within their communion, as we already recognize and commune the Orthodox, and will continually pray for the eventual reconciliation of all those who embrace the Nicene Faith.