WI: Nestorian Success in the Far East

Nestorian Christianity came to China in 635, and was allowed to preach and form monasteries in 638. It had some successes, but ultimately made little headway when it was finally pushed out in 845. Possibly its largest effect on China was its influence on the development of Buddhism in that country: some authors suggest that the Buddhist practice of "masses for the dead" was influenced by the Nestorians.

It had a few advantages. Its missionaries were incredibly motivated activists, as their arrival in a place so far flung as China showed. The Nestorian practice of praying for the dead was very popular among the Chinese, who had deep veneration for their ancestors and liked the idea of the piety of the living benefiting the dead. Nestorian Christianity was Chalcedonian Christianity, which itself had had extraordinary successes in growth that have lead to it eventually becoming the predominant world religion IOTL.

But other than these, the Christian missionaries had little to leverage. Chinese court life was full of religion already, with centuries of Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist presence, all very different from the sort of paganism that Christianity had displaced in the West, and much harder to remove. The first converts were not ethnically Chinese, but nomadic peoples to the north, which did not endear the faith to the Han population. It made little inroads, frequently syncretized rather than allowing itself to be distinctive, and ultimately failed to convert much of the population before its expulsion as a foreign religion.

I am not proposing here that Nestorian Christianity overcomes these obstacles. Ultimately, it seems to have major problems in doing so, and it's not clear quite how it could make its way around them.

Rather, during the same period under which the Nestorians ministered and preached in China, the Japanese were deeply interested in the current situation in China, seeking to emulate the Tang in almost every matter. Many elements of distinctively "Japanese" culture are in fact preserved elements of Tang culture that have survived to the present day. It is not difficult to imagine, then, that the Japanese might have invited a Nestorian mission to their country (indeed, this may have happened historically), and it is more difficult to imagine that such an invitation would be declined by the fervently missionary Nestorians.

Suppose, then, that Nestorian Christianity made its way into the Japanese cultural sphere. Facing up against less stable and venerable religious institutions, a monarchy that was much more vulnerable and willing to innovate, and a diffuse, decentralized population, the Nestorians might have made better progress in Japan. Catholicism, after all, did the best in Japan out of pretty much any non-colonized country in Asia during the age of discovery, and that was after centuries of Buddhist integration.

The exact scenario would, of course, involve huge numbers of different variables that are hard to plot out. My rough outline would be that at some point in the eighth century, the Emperor's wife is converted to Christianity and quietly urges her husband to convert for years; the Emperor gets seriously ill and his wife fasts and prays over him, leading to his recovery and conversion; clever political plays in the aftermath mean that the anti-Christian factions are disjointed and unable to simply assassinate the new Emperor; a civil war ensues between the loyalist and anti-Christian factions, with the latter ultimately losing and the Christians winning out the most with land grants from the seized lands of the defeated parties. Over the next century, Christianity cements a strangehold on the Japanese state and eventually permeates every layer of Japanese society.

Nestorian Christianity was more or less the exact same as Chalcedonian Christianity. Surviving texts from Nestorian missionaries in China suggest that they adhered to the same dyophisite and three-in-one conception of Christ and God that Chalcedon confirmed, rather than a heretical interpretation. The entire split seems to have been more political than theological, and the apparent difference that set things in motion is that Nestorius didn't like calling Mary theotokos and preferred christotokos - though he considered either valid. The Nestorian Monument of 781 suggests that they had pretty much the same Bible as modern Protestants (without cutting up a bunch of books of the Old Testament). As such, we're not likely to see some wildly divergent syncretic religion, but something that's pretty close to western Christianity (albeit with some differences from centuries of separate, largely isolated development).

I think that there would be three major "Japanese" elements of their church. Firstly, the "kami" of Japanese folk religion gradually decline in status from pagan gods to the rough equivalents of European fairies and similar creatures, from gods worthy of veneration to capricious spirits that need to be indulged (and, likely, the Japanese adopt the Aloho/Aloha name that the Nestorians used in China, to further separate their new God from their old ones). Secondly, the Nestorians apparently did not have a clear doctrine of transubstantiation, and the Lord's Supper resembles to some extent the Shinto practice of consuming sacrifices meant for kami; as such, communion is likely to gain an explanation derived from this element of traditional Japanese folk religion. Thirdly, prayers for the dead will be heavily emphasized, as they were the feature of Christianity that allowed its successes in the first place.

So... with all this in mind, what would be the long-term historical effects of a Nestorian Japanese state? How would the European colonial powers react to finding their brother Christians alive and well in the farthest stretches of the east? Would Japan become more or less of a world power than it became historically?
 
I'm not sure what the long term effects would be but I find this idea genuinely interesting so I think you should continue.
 

LordKalvert

Banned
I'm not sure what the long term effects would be but I find this idea genuinely interesting so I think you should continue.

Totally agree here- the POD is awesome and has so many possible angles. I really can't tell what the long term effects would be

Nestor's referring to Mary as "Christotokos" rather than "Theotokos" is actually a rather serious theological disagreement as it gets into the unchanging nature of Christ at least from the Church fathers' perspective

Nestor takes the Council of Chalcedon's acceptance of the Tome of Leo (rejected by the Oriental Orthodox Churches) as vindication but those who accepted the Council specifically reject that interpretation

Transubstantiation is a later Catholic doctrine of around 1200
 
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The eighth century is already too late. By then, Japan has been exposed to Buddhism for some two centuries, and the government has supported Buddhism for at least a hundred years. Additionally, Buddhism is also a fervently missionary faith, whose missionary efforts were far more successful than the Nestorians, whose faith was present but not widespread in China. Buddhism is aided by the fact that China is strongly Buddhism at this time, giving Buddhism prestige and source materials in Japan than Nestorianism does not have, and will not have. It would be probably correct to say that Buddhism as an institution in Japan is weaker than it was in China at the same time, but also wrong to say that Buddhism in Japan was weak.

Suppose, then, that Nestorian Christianity made its way into the Japanese cultural sphere. Facing up against less stable and venerable religious institutions, a monarchy that was much more vulnerable and willing to innovate, and a diffuse, decentralized population, the Nestorians might have made better progress in Japan. Catholicism, after all, did the best in Japan out of pretty much any non-colonized country in Asia during the age of discovery, and that was after centuries of Buddhist integration.

The exact scenario would, of course, involve huge numbers of different variables that are hard to plot out. My rough outline would be that at some point in the eighth century, the Emperor's wife is converted to Christianity and quietly urges her husband to convert for years; the Emperor gets seriously ill and his wife fasts and prays over him, leading to his recovery and conversion; clever political plays in the aftermath mean that the anti-Christian factions are disjointed and unable to simply assassinate the new Emperor; a civil war ensues between the loyalist and anti-Christian factions, with the latter ultimately losing and the Christians winning out the most with land grants from the seized lands of the defeated parties. Over the next century, Christianity cements a strangehold on the Japanese state and eventually permeates every layer of Japanese society.
I see no reason why the conversion of one monarch would have such drastic effect. The Japanese monarchy was never so strong as to impose a top-down religious conversion of the entire country. The succession jumped back and forth, retired monarchs wielded influence behind the scenes, noble families were strong, rebellions were sporadic, and overall authority was very weak. The loyalty of the country to one specific monarch, as opposed to the monarchy itself, would be nonexistent. Suppose a monarch (a ruling emperor or empress) did convert: why would the nobles follow. It's not the case that the nobility and other members of the imperial family would convert because they're dependent on the monarch. Rather, it's the other way around. As was the case with Buddhism in Japan historically, it is the conversion of the nobility that is more likely to make a new religion the state religion.
 
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