Assyrian Church

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The Holy Apostolic Catholic Assyrian Church of the East, to give it its full title, has a different and rather more illustrious history in Ill Bethisad than it does *here*, being as it is prominent in Central Asia, and also continuing to exist in parts of Persia, India and China, among other places.

See also:

Contents

Doctrinal Distinctives

Nestorianism

The Assyrian Church is often given the name Nestorian by outsiders; this refers to one of the early Christian controversies over how the divine and human natures of Christ fit together in the person of Jesus. See Wikipedia for a full account.

As a matter of record, the Assyrian Church itself rarely uses this label, preferring the term "Church in the East". As far as they are concerned, their doctrine descends directly from the Apostles, particularly Mar Toma, Mar Bartolmai and Mar Andir, and they have preserved it intact ever since. The Church in the East refused to join in the condemnation of the highly-regarded Mar Nestorius, but they feel that the label "Nestorian" does a grave injustice to their doctrine as handed down from the apostles.

It should also be noted that Nestorius is perhaps the only church father condemned as a heretic by one of the early church councils who was not guilty to the heresy that bears their name. The Council of Ephesus (431) which condemned Nestorius was dominated by an ugly political quarrel between Nestorius and his supporters and Cyril of Alexandria, and the condemnation of Nestorius, according to the Church of the East, was politically motivated.

Saints and the Virgin

The Church in the East has a different understanding of sainthood than most of the Western churches. The Syriac honorific "Mar", often translated "Saint", is actually more literally "Reverend" or "holy one", and is used not just for the Apostles and Church Fathers, but for serving bishops and metropolitans and all priests of the Assyrian Church.

The use of this term illustrates the Assyrian understanding of the role of saints. In orthodox Assyrian teaching, one does not pray to a saint; a saint is an example, a leader to be followed, a model to look up to and try to emulate. This understanding is frequently modified by local popular religion, but in general, Assyrian Christians are more akin to Protestants in this regard - the grace of God is to be received through Christ in the Holy Qurbana (Eucharist), not through the mediation of some purely human secondary figure.

Similarly, although the Church of the East highly reverences the Virgin Mary, the title "Mother of God" is anathema to them. This was one of the main points of contention in the Council of Ephesus. To the Assyrian understanding, this title implies the blasphemous notion that Mary was the progenitor of the entire Godhead. They use the alternate title "Mother of Christ" instead. Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox christians often feel that this implies the converse; that Mary's role as mother of the Christ only embraced His humanity, and that Christ was not God while in the womb of His mother.

These, and other theological differences remain unresolved between the Assyrian Church and other churches, and though in the last century there have been tentative steps made towards reunification with both the Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches, the fundamental doctrinal issues remain to be addressed.

Hierarchy

The spiritual head of the Assyrian Church is the Patriarch of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, known as the Catholicos. Below him are the Metropolitans, each overseeing between six and twelve bishops, with priests, monastic missionaries and deacons under them.

It should be noted that the Assyrian Church is less hierarchical than the Roman Catholic Church *here*. The Catholicos of the Assyrian Church of the East is a position of "first among equals", with each Metropolitan more or less independent, but maintaining communion with others in the wider community of the Church of the East. Occasional Synods of all the bishops of the Church of the East communion reinforce the mutual ties.

The ancient Patriarchal See of Seleucia-Ctesiphon is located on the outskirts of the modern Iraaqi city of Baghdaad.

List of Metropolitan Sees

Those in italics are indigenous to IB.

In Persia and Mesopotamia

In Central Asia

In China

In India

In Southeast Asia

History

Early History

The Church of the East traces its origins to the Apostle Mar Toma (St. Thomas), as well as Mar Addai and Mar Mari, two members of the Seventy-Two lesser apostles. From the earliest days, the Church in the East was strong in the Persian Empire,and consequently held in some suspicion by the Sassanid rulers of Rome's greatest enemy, especially after the Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity.

In 424, a synod of all the bishops of the Persian empire declared the Eastern church in the Persian empire independent of the jurisdiction of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria or any of the other Patriarchal sees, with the bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon equal in authority to any partiarch of the Western Church. Consequently, there were no representatives of this large body of the global Church at the Council of Ephesus in 431 which condemned Nestorius as a heretic, and the bishops of the Persian Church did not feel at all bound by the decisions of that council.

Nestorius' supporters were received as brothers by the Church of the East, and helped to bolster the church within the Persian Empire.

Expansion

From the outset, the Church of the East was strongly missionary, and by the year 650, there were already Assyrian bishops in Central Asia, India, China and the Middle East. Assyrian monastic communities did a lot of the initial work; these were more similar to their counterparts in Kemr and Scotland than anything descending from the main Roman Catholic monastic tradition. An Assyrian abbey was a base of operations in the wider world, not a retreat away from it.

The Church in the East promoted study, literacy and learning; from its inception, the Scriptures were meant for the people, not just the priests. Whenever the church penetrated a new area, they would set up a library, a school, and a hospital to care for the sick.

Syriac was used as the main liturgical language; it was a common lingua franca in the northern and western Persian Empire where the Assyrian heartland was located, and the missionaries of the Assyrian Church took the language with them wherever they went.

However, unlike *here*, where Syriac was used almost exclusively, from the 8th Century there was a movement within the Church paralleling the physical expansion towards greater indigenisation. The Church synods began to push the idea of using local languages as the main liturgical languages, retaining Syriac for use in general synods and as a common tongue. The Holy Scriptures and other Assyrian books such as the Diatessaron (a harmony of the four Gospels) and the Liturgy of Mar Addai and Mar Mari began to be translated into the myriad tongues of the Assyrian community.

In some cases this meant the wholesale creation of a new script; the Sogdo-Uygur-Mongolian cluster of scripts were all based on Syriac writing and were largely the work of Assyrian missionaries.

This indigenisation movement would be a factor in helping many of the Assyrian churches to survive later persecutions; in China and Central Asia the use of local languages and scripts helped to persuade later hostile governments that this was not just a foreign religion.

Persecutions and Survival

From its very beginnings the Assyrian Church was persecuted by its rulers: first by the Romans, then by the Persians, then by the Arabs. Unlike the Western church, the Assyrian Church of the East *here* never became really accepted by the secular powers who ruled over them, but remained a disenfranchised minority, at least in the Persian Empire.

*There*, at least one of the major persecution episodes was probably cut short, or didn't happen, and the Church was thus able to concentrate on more than just survival. During the ideological battles between Zoroastrianism and Islam within Persia, the Assyrian Church was able to grow and find its footing because it was considered by both sides to be less of a threat and problem than the other.

It was in Central Asia, though, that the Church was to really find open ground. For a while between the 11th and 14th Centuries, it looked as though the Assyrian form of Christianity would become the dominant religion of the region.

What happened to change this? In a word: Timur.

Timur (aka Tamerlane) was a Muslim. Up until his time Islam had been a very marginal religious group in Central Asia, especially further north into the steppes, where the religion had a very difficult time getting established. However, after the accession of Timur Islam became very much the preferred religious group. Initially at least, little actual organised persecution happened, but many politically ambitious people professed Islam in order to gain promotions.

It did not help matters that the Assyrian hierarchy was going through a weak period, having had a succession of corrupt or incompetent Catholicoses. These two factors combined to weaken the Church in Central Asia and drive the Chinese Religion of Light and Indian Thomist churches towards independence. In the Middle East, Timur's conquests were quite bloody, and according to Assyrian sources, he seemed to go out of his way to destroy the Assyrian Church in that region. Many of the ancient Assyrian metropolitanates went extinct at this time, and the few that remained were never again to reach the heights that they had before Timur.

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