The Nestorian Heresy

For fifteen centuries, the tradition known as "Nestorian Christianity" has been defined by its enemies, condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431, dismissed as heresy, and forgotten as a footnote to the theological controversies of the Greek-speaking world. The truth is far more extraordinary. The Church of the East was, at the height of its achievement, the most geographically extensive Christian institution in the history of the faith, carrying the Gospel from the Persian Gulf to the shores of Tang Dynasty China, from the steppes of Mongolia to the Malabar Coast of India, sustaining communities of extraordinary theological sophistication and cultural creativity across seven centuries of Silk Road mission.

Drawing on the latest scholarship in Syriac studies, patristic theology, Central Asian archaeology, and Chinese Christian history, this book tells the full story of a tradition whose condemnation was built on misunderstanding, whose missionary achievement was unparalleled, and whose survival through persecution, catastrophe, and diaspora represents one of the most remarkable chapters in the history of world Christianity. From the theological genius of Babai the Great to the 1994 Common Christological Declaration that finally acknowledged the injustice of the ancient division, this is the history of a church the world forgot, and urgently needs to remember.