Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years Read Online Free PDF Page B

the Christian message in terms which would make sense to people in this alien culture. From their first arrival in China, Christians seemed to have realized that it would be a good strategy to use language familiar to Chinese from Taoism, as the stele from 781 now at Xi'an witnessed. Taoism, after all, had a vision of the original goodness of human nature which was congenial to Dyophysites emphasizing the whole humanity of Christ's separate human nature alongside his divinity. Yet Dyophysite Christians were also ready to model themselves on another faith which the Chinese recognized as having come from beyond their borders, but which was by now well established and widely respected: Buddhism. So Alopen and his successors presented their faith in the form of sutras, discourses in Buddhist style, and they had no inhibitions in presenting Buddhism as a form of truth, albeit one which needed extending. So Alopen, drawing on the specialized titles of honour of the Buddhists, had written in his Jesus Messiah Sutra :
All the buddhas as well as kinnaras and the superintending-devas and arhans can see the Lord of Heaven. No human being, however, has ever seen the Lord of Heaven . . . All the buddhas flow and flux by virtue of this very wind, while in this world, there is no place where the wind does not reach.
    Here, there seems to be a real attempt to suggest that the teachings of Buddhism are in a literal sense inspired by the Holy Spirit. Elsewhere in his Discourse on the oneness of the Ruler of the Universe , Alopen observed that, thanks to the Devil, '[i]t has become impossible for a human being to understand the truth and attain "liberation from sorrow" ' - the latter phrase simply being a Chinese Buddhist term which in turn translated the Sanskrit for liberation, one of many such familiar terms which the missionaries deployed to arouse recognition in their audiences. And in his Lord of the Universe's discourse on almsgiving , Alopen could warm to the Lord of the Universe's chosen theme so much that he raised the real possibility of salvation beyond those who recited the creeds of Christianity:
Therefore, you who have already embraced the faith, OR you who do all kinds of meritorious deeds, OR who will walk in his way with an honest heart, shall all enter heaven and remain in that abode of happiness for ever and ever. 28
    All this suggests a faith which, to a degree highly unusual in Christian history, allowed itself to listen to other great interpretations of the divine. Perhaps this was inevitable. Christianity's previous encounter with ancient, sophisticated wisdom had been with Plato and Aristotle; and that encounter had transformed it in the second century CE. Now, for the first time, it was meeting a variety of highly developed religious systems, in a situation where it had no power of coercion. Moreover, the Church of the East pushed forward its frontiers through Syrian merchants, who were renowned throughout Asia for their bargaining skills. Can it be any surprise that the result was a form of Christianity which delighted in theological give and take?
    The problem for the Dyophysites of China was that integration into Chinese society also meant dependence on power within it. As so often in the history of the Church of the East, the years of good fortune were comparatively brief. During the mid-ninth century the Emperor Wuzong turned against all religions which he regarded as foreign and the Church suffered accordingly. When the Tang dynasty finally collapsed in 907, the western trade routes which remained the lifeline of the Church were closed and the possibility of renewal through missions for the time being came to an end. But only for the time being. Three centuries later the accidents of history nevertheless offered a second chance for the Church of the East in China, because of its persisting ancient presence in Central Asia, and maybe in China too. Once more the Church came close to achieving what Islam was able to