THE “NESTORIAN” (JINGJIAO) MONUMENT AND

ITS THEOLOGY OF THE CROSS

Charles M. STANG*

1. INTRODUCTION

There was no reliable testimony of an ancient Christian presence in

China until the seventeenth-century discovery of the so-called “Nestorian”
or jingjiao monument.1 It was then, in 1623 (or 1625), that workmen
were digging near the modern city of Xian in western China, the ancient
city of Chang’an and capital of the Tang dynasty, where they unearthed
a great black limestone monolith: three meters high, one meter wide, and
half a meter deep. The text of the monument consists of 1800 Chinese
characters, running top to bottom and right to left, ringed by Syriac pas-
sages in Estrangela script. Atop the main body of text sits a titular block
with nine large Chinese characters, which read “A Monument (Com-
memorating) the Propagation of the Daqin Luminous Religion in the
Middle Kingdom”.2 Atop this titular block is a small triangle with a
faintly inscribed cross with flared arms, emerging from a bed of flowers

* Harvard Divinity School.

1
There are ancient Western testimonies of Christians in China, but they are question-
able. For example, a certain Arnobius the Elder, writes in the seventh volume of his
Adversusnationes (c. 304-310) of Christian missions to the “Seres.” Likewise the sixth-
century Byzantine historian Procopius tells of a delegation of Indian monks who promised
the Emperor Justinian the secret of silk production, which they had learned in Sêrindia.
Both authors use a Greek word for China, sêr, which probably derives from the Chinese
word for silk, si. But most scholars do not believe that Arnobius’ missions are to, nor
Procopius’ monks from, China proper, but rather somewhere in Central Asia, to the west
of China. The so-called “Thomas Christians” of South India have a breviary that credits
the apostle Thomas with evangelizing not only India, but also Ethiopia and China. But this
breviary dates from the thirteenth century, and may have resulted from Indian contact with
Nestorian Christians in the court of the Mongols. See Ian Gillman and Hans-Joachim
Klimkeit, ChristiansinAsiaBefore1500 (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan
Press, 1999), 265, 267. See also Hidemi Takahashi, “China, Syriac Christianity in,” in
GorgiasEncyclopedicDictionaryoftheSyriacHeritage, eds. Sebastian P. Brock, Aaron
M. Butts, George A. Kiraz, and Lucas van Rompay (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2011),
94-96.
2
The English translation cited here and throughout is one prepared by Max Deeg
and myself, based on his forthcoming translation of and commentary on the jingjiao
monument.

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 108 C.M. STANG

and clouds. This small, easily overlooked feature of the monument has
received very detailed attention, from the seventeenth century up to today
(and to which I will return below). Framing the titular block on three sides
is a relief that cannot be captured with the paper rubbings from which
most facsimiles are made. The relief is of two long, intertwined dragons.
The monument dates from the year 781 and commemorates the appear-
ance and spread of Christianity almost a hundred and fifty years earlier.
In the year 635, a certain Aluoben entered Chang’an, the capital of China
during the Tang dynasty (618-907). In 781 the East Syrian Christian
community — which called itself jingjiao or the “luminous religion” —
erected a monumental inscription in Chinese honoring the community
and its leaders, and articulating a distinctive theology heavily influenced
by its host culture.3 Ever since it was unearthed in the seventeenth century,
this monument has been often known in the West as the “Nestorian”
monument.4 From the perspective of its Western readers, the inscription
and the community for which it speaks are heterodox — heirs of the
so-called “Nestorian” heresy of fifth-century Antioch and its environs.5
Generations of readers have attempted to interpret the inscription’s dis-
tinctive theology by appealing to these earlier, intra-Christian Christologi-
cal controversies, and sometimes faulting these ancient Chinese Christians
for their persistent heterodoxy. More recent scholarship on the inscription
(especially that of Max Deeg, and before him the great sinologist Paul
Pelliot) has enabled us to see that the distinctiveness of the inscription’s
theology owes less to the East Syrian background and much more to the
influences of Chinese religion and literature.6 It is now clear that the

3
The fact that these Christians are East Syrians is made clear by the fact that the
inscription dates itself, in Syriac, to “the day of our Father of Fathers, my Lord Hananisho,
Catholicos, Patriarch.”
4
See Michael Keevak, The Story of a Stele: China’s Nestorian Monument and Its
ReceptionintheWest,1625-1916 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008).
5
East Syrian Christians (also called the “Church of the East”) were labeled “Nesto-
rians” by their both orthodox and miaphysite opponents, who figured Nestorius of Con-
stantinople as the founder of the heresy (or “heresiarch”). See Sebastian P. Brock, “The
‘Nestorian’ Church: a Lamentable Misnomer,” Bulletin of John Rylands University
LibraryofManchester 78:3 (1996), 23-35.
6
See Paul Pelliot, L’inscriptionnestoriennedeSi-Ngan-Fou,EditedwithSupplements
byAntonioForte (Paris: Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises, 1996).
See also Max Deeg, “Ways to Go and Not to Go in the Contextualisation of the Jingjiao-
Documents of the Tang Period,” in HiddenTreasuresandInterculturalEncounters:Studies
onEastSyriacChristianityinChinaandCentralAsia, eds. Dietmar W. Winkler and Li
Tang (Berlin, Vienna: LIT, 2009), 135-152; idem, “The Rhetoric of Antiquity: Politico-
Religious Propaganda in Nestorian Stele of Chang’an”, JournalforLateAntiqueReligion
andCulture1 (2007): 17-30; idem, “Towards a New Translation of the Chinese Nestorian

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 “NESTORIAN” (JINGJIAO) MONUMENT AND ITS THEOLOGY OF THE CROSS 109

monument draws heavily from classical Chinese literature and the koine
of other religions in China such as Buddhism and Daoism, not only in
their expression, but also in their very concepts and content. In this regard,
the jingjiao monument is an important example of the Syriac Christian
tradition in a multi-cultural context, engaged in a complex and creative
dialectic of inheritance and innovation. Based on recent scholarship, this
paper will revisit the question of the monument’s distinctive theology and
attempt to appreciate its views of such central Christian themes as crea-
tion, Christ, salvation, and especially the cross.7
The author of the inscription is named Jingjing, in Chinese, or Adam,
in Syriac. He refers to himself in Chinese as a seng and in Syriac as a
mšamšānā (deacon). We can glean little knowledge of him from the
inscription itself, other than by observing that he is learned in the Chinese
classics and that the history and theology of the inscription is very much
in their idiom. Thankfully, however, we know of this Jingjing/Adam from
an independent source, a Buddhist sûtra catalogue by Yuanzhao, where
we learn that Jingjing/Adam worked with the famous ninth-century
Indian monk Prajña in translating the satparamita-sutra (“Sutra on the
Seven Perfections [of a Bodhisattva]”).8 That catalogue offers a sharp

Documents from the Tang Dynasty,” in Jingjiao:TheChurchoftheEastinChinaand

Central Asia, eds. Roman Malek and Peter Hofrichter (Nettetal: Steyler Verlag, 2006),
115-131; idem, “The ‘Brilliant Teaching’—The Rise and Fall of ‘Nestorianism’ (Jingjiao)
in Tang China”, JapaneseReligions 31.2 (2006): 91-110.
7
For the best overview of Christians in China during the Tang dynasty, see Nicolas
Standaert, ed., HandbookofChristianityinChina.VolumeOne:635-1800 (Leiden: Brill,
2001), 1-42. For the best survey of the most recent scholarship, see the volumes produced
from the recent conferences on “The Church of the East in China and Central Asia,”
hosted by the University of Salzburg in 2003 and 2006: Malek and Hofrichter, Jingjiao:
TheChurchoftheEastinChinaandCentralAsia; Winkler and Tang, HiddenTreasures
andInterculturalEncounters.
8
The catalogue says that in 786 Prajña “with the help of Ching-Ching [=Jingjing],
a Persian monk of the Ta-ch’in [Daqin] Monastery…translated the Lu polo mi ching
(Satpâramitâ Sûtra) from a hucopy, dividing it into seven chapters. Since at that time Prajña
(Pan-jo) was unfamiliar with the hulanguage and did not yet understand the speech of T’ang,
and Ching-Ching did not know Sanskrit nor understand Buddhist doctrine, though they pro-
fessed to have made a translation they had not caught half the gems. They were seeking
for vain glory with no thought of doing good. They composed and presented a memorial
with the intention and hope that [their work] would be published. His majesty, endued
with learning and intelligence and reverencing the law of Buddha, examined their transla-
tion. The doctrine was obscure, the style indifferent. Since a Buddhist convent and a
monastery of Ta-ch’in monks differ in customs and are wholly opposed to one another in
their religious practices, Ching-Ching must preach the teaching of Messiah and the Buddhist
monk make known the sûtra of Buddha. We wish to have religious teaching well defined
that men may have no uncertainty. Truth and error are not the same; the Ching and the Wei
[rivers] are not alike.” Cited in Gillman and Klimkeit, ChristiansinAsiaBefore1500, 282.

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 110 C.M. STANG

rebuke to this case of inter-religious translation, and insists on the strict

separation of the two religions. According to the cataloger, Buddhism is
truth and Christianity — error, and so the latter is like the muddy Wei
river which can only pollute the clean waters of the Ching. This critical
assessment of inter-religious reading and translation comes at the end of
the eighth century, shortly after the erection of the jingjiao monument
in 781. It is tempting to see this assessment as heralding a change in for-
tunes for the jingjiao Christians, for indeed the ninth century was to be
much less kind to them and other “foreign religions” in Tang China than
the seventh and eighth centuries had been.
Be that as it may, according to the jingjiao inscription, there are no dark
clouds yet gathering over their community. On the contrary, Jingjing’s
text provides a triumphant history of the church across the seventh and
eighth centuries, one bursting at the seams with confidence, although a
history (and a confidence) of which we should be somewhat suspicious.
Braided into this chronicle we find a robust, if at times cryptic, theology
— especially a political theology that finds expression as an intermittent
meditation on the relationship between the “Way” (dao) and the “Sage”
(xian). The inscription can be divided into three parts: (1) a theological
introduction; (2) a history of the Christian community told through the
framework of the successive Tang emperors; and (3) a eulogizing post-
script.
I will focus on the first part of the inscription, the theological introduc-
tion, which itself falls into three parts: (i) a creation story, which reads as
a sort of Chinese midrash on the first chapter of Genesis; (ii) an abbrevi-
ated Christian salvation history; and (iii) a description of jingjiao practices
of piety. Throughout this tripartite theological introduction runs a thread
— not a very prominent one, but nevertheless one that I wish to draw out
and discuss in more detail. To put it bluntly, the inscription forwards a
distinctive theology of the cross.
But I wish to distinguish my interest in the monument’s theology and
especially its theology of the cross from some previous attempts. First,
as I mentioned already, some scholars have tried to discern whether there
are distinctively “Nestorian,” that is to say, East Syrian influences on
the theology of the inscription. For example, does the inscription betray
a strongly dyophysite or “two-nature” Christology for which the East
Syrian tradition is, justly or unjustly, (in)famous?9 Second, as again I

9
For example, Samuel H. Moffett, AHistoryofChristianityinAsia(Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis, 1998), 306-307: “Furthermore, the Christology of the [jingjiao] documents is

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 “NESTORIAN” (JINGJIAO) MONUMENT AND ITS THEOLOGY OF THE CROSS 111

mentioned earlier, some scholars with certain confessional commitments

have also examined the theology of the monument with an eye to pin-
pointing exactly what went wrong. The reasoning here, among scholars
with confessional commitments to the success of Christian missions in
Asia, is that since the jingjiao mission “failed” — in so far as the com-
munity seems to have won over few Chinese converts and to have disap-
peared by the end of the tenth century10 — then we should look carefully
to see whether this failure can be attributed to some theological error.11
I wish to distinguish my interest from these two earlier approaches. First
and foremost, I am not interested in evaluating, but rather in understand-
ing the distinctive theology of the monument, and its possible sources
and well as its aims and purposes.

2. A THEOLOGY OF THE CROSS

Let us begin where the inscription itself begins, with the creation of the
world, a passage that Max Deeg has called a “sinisized Genesis I”12 and
what I have called a Chinese midrash on the first chapter of Genesis:

essentially orthodox. There is one possible exception. A phrase in the inscription of the
monument can be translated either ‘divided by nature,’ or ‘divided Person.’ If the former
is correct, it would be orthodox. ‘Divided by nature’ does not contradict the Chalcedonian
formula ‘two natures in one person.’ But ‘divided Person’ favors the Antiochene Nestorian
emphasis on separation of the two natures, which their opponents interpreted as heretical
denial of the unity of the ‘person.’ In Chinese, however, the distinction between ‘person’
and ‘nature,’ so crucial to the controversialists at Chalcedon, is virtually impossible to
translate.” On this very same phrase, see also Max Deeg, 42 (104): “Theologisch mag
hinter der nestorianischen Bildung mehr Gehalt verborgen sein, als es auf den ersten Blick
scheint: als ‘Teilungskörper’ (fenshen) der Trinitas (wo-sanyi) mag hier sowohl auf die
unteilbare göttliche Natur als auch auf die Menschwerdung Christi als Emmanation aus
der gesamten Trinitas verwiesen warden.”
10
See Gillman and Klimkeit’s section, “The Decline of Christianity in T’ang China,”
in ChristiansinAsiaBefore1500, 282-285. The Arab writer al-Nadim tells in his kitab
al-fihrist of meeting in 987 a Christian monk from Najran who had been sent by the
Catholicos to China to minister to the community there, and how that monk had found
only one Christian left in China.
11
Perhaps the most (in)famous spokesman for this view is James Legge, who regarded
the theology of the Nestorian monument as “swamped by Confucian, Taoist and Buddhist
ideas, a certain degenerate, nominal Christianity”; and furthermore wrote that “we cannot
but deplore the absence from the inscription of all mention of some of the most important
and even fundamental truths of the Christian system” (cited in Moffett, A History of
ChristianityinAsia, 305, 311).
12
Deeg, “The ‘Brilliant Teaching’—The Rise and Fall of ‘Nestorianism’ (Jingjiao) in
Tang China,” 99.

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 112 C.M. STANG

(Lo), thus it is pronounced: eternal and truly still (he was) at the very begin-
ning, (but) without origin; abysmal (as) the universe (he will be) to the
ultimate end of transcendent existence. Ruling over the central point (he)
created (the world), the one who has animated the Saints (who) venerate
(him) from the very origin: (who could) this (be) except the sublime body
of our trinity, (the one) without origin, the True Lord, Aluohe? (He) meas-
ured out the character “ten” [+, a cross] and thereby fixed the four (cardinal)
directions; (he) set in motion the primordial breath and originated the two
basic principles. Darkness and void transformed, and heaven and earth
unfolded; sun and moon started to move, and morning and evening were
created.

Two general comments are in order, before we turn specifically to the

theology of the cross. First, notice that the Christian God is mentioned in
Chinese transliteration: Aluohe from Syriac Alāhā. Second, notice that
the inscription describes, in Max Deeg’s words,
[A] primordial situation of the cosmos before God starts to act, a situation
which is very [much in] conform[ity] with the traditional Chinese cosmo-
logical or cosmogonic scheme of chaos which has not yet developed into
duality and not brought forth the concrete phenomena. The creative function
of God then is first restricted to the extension of space in which the original
energy, the qi, is able to develop the two polar principles which is made
concrete by the separation of heaven and earth.13

The opening thus recalls the creation of the world from Genesis 1 — a
creation that also involves “a formless void and darkness” and an order
wrought from that chaos by means of duality (light and darkness, day and
night)14 — and one conforms to classical Chinese cosmogonies.
There is of course no cross in Genesis 1. But in the jingjiaomonument
the cross appears in the cosmogony as the instrument of forging order from
chaos. The inscription says literally that God “measured out the character
‘ten’” — which character in Chinese is a simple cross: +. In fact, this
character is so simple that even someone such as myself, who cannot read
Chinese, can easily scan the inscription and find mention of the cross. By
measuring out the cross, God in effect imposed an ordered grid onto pri-
mordial chaos, and thereby “fixed the four cardinal directions”.

13
Ibid.
14
Gen 1:1-5 (RSV): “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,
the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind [or
spirit] from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’;
and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light
from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there
was evening and there was morning, the first day.”

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 “NESTORIAN” (JINGJIAO) MONUMENT AND ITS THEOLOGY OF THE CROSS 113

Further along, in the second section of the theological introduction, the

inscription turns from the creation story to that of the Incarnation:
“Thereupon the divided body of Our Trinity, the luminous venerated
Mishihe, unfolding his true power, became like a human (and) appeared
in the world.” What follows is a description of the teaching and ministry
of this Mishihe, again a Chinese transliteration of the Syriac mšīḥā —
“anointed” or in Greek, christos. His teaching and ministry eventually
end with his death, although it is described rather obliquely and in a very
peculiar idiom:
(He) fulfilled the “Ancient Law”, that was announced by the twenty four
Saints in order to regulate families and countries by the Great Way, (and he)
invested the wordless “New Teaching” of the “Pure Wind” of the Trinity,
shaped good conduct through true faith. (He) regulated the path of salvation
of the eight areas, purified dust into truth, pushed open the gate of the three
eternities, established life, annihilated death. (He) hung himself (as) a lumi-
nous sun (on the firmament) in order to destroy the realm of darkness, and
consequently all the diabolic lies collapsed. He rowed the vessel of compas-
sion up to the palace of light, and the ones endowed with souls were even-
tually redeemed. (After he) had accomplished what was possible (for him),
(he) ascended to the truth at full noon.

For a reader who is already familiar with the canonical gospel narra-
tives, this is clearly a description of the crucifixion, resurrection, and
ascension (and possible even the harrowing of hell). But we should be
careful about speaking of the “crucifixion” here, because there is no men-
tion of a cross — the Mishihe is said not to have been hung, but to have
hung himself, and not on a cross, but on the firmament as a luminous sun.
There is no torture and execution of a condemned criminal at the hands of
the Jews or the Romans. Instead, the Mishihe is figured as a teacher whose
ministry culminates in his departure from this world as a celestial illumina-
tion, a return to the heavens from whence he came, “the palace of light”,
to be a source of light for his followers, and to dispel the diabolic lies
of Satan that prevail on earth. This “luminous sun” is the founder of the
“luminous religion” or jingjiao. There is no hint of a substitutionary sac-
rifice, and so no hint of an atonement theology. The death of this Christ is
a departure and is not, at least on the surface, a crucifixion.
This same theology of the Mishihe as the luminous sun appears in the
third part of the inscription, the eulogizing postscript, where it reads:
The body of division appeared in the world
To redeem innumerable (beings)
The sun rose and darkness submerged,
(and) the true Mystery was completely manifested.

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 114 C.M. STANG

I wonder whether “redeem” is in fact the best translation here, or indeed

before, because there is no “redemption” in its literal sense of “buying-
back”. The notion of salvation as redemption or “buying-back” makes
sense only against the backdrop of a specific understanding of sin, namely
sin as debt (something owed to God or to Satan).15 While that under-
standing of sin as debt and salvation as redemption is certainly pervasive
in Christianity — starting with the Lord’s prayer (Matthew 6:12 [RSV]:
“And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors”)
— there is no evidence of it in the jingjiao inscription. The Mishihe is
neither buying us back from Satan nor repaying a debt to God by means
of a substitutionary sacrifice. Instead, the Mishihe seems to be saving
beings in the world strictly through illumination, the overcoming of
darkness — which is described as the manifestation or appearance of
“the true Mystery.”
The cross reappears in another section, the description of jingjiao
practices of piety. The inscription says of the Mishihe’s followers that
“They have the character ‘cross’ [+, or the character ‘ten’] as (their) seal
(that) merges the ‘four luminous (directions)’ and unifies (them) without
restriction.” The cross is mentioned once again, but with no connection
to the death or departure of the Mishihe; instead, the Christians’ practice
of sealing themselves with the cross (or the character ‘ten’) presents itself
here as a reference to the inaugural cosmogony, in which the cross is the
grid that brings order to chaos. In other words, according to the inscrip-
tion, when Christians seal themselves they are not recalling anything
specific to the Christ or Mishihe, but are rather recalling the creation of
the world.
To put it bluntly, the inscription forwards a theology of the cross that
seems to have nothing to do with crucifixion. Instead the inscription
capitalizes on the fact that the cross is identical to the Chinese character
‘ten’ and thus both has certain numerological significance in the classical
Chinese context (which Deeg and Pelliot detail) and serves as an instru-
ment of order, a grid that divides and orders chaos. The central Christian
symbol, then, shifts from one of sacrifice and redemption to one of crea-
tion and cosmogony. While the death of the Mishihe is not entirely erased,
but it is distanced from the cross; the death of the Mishihe is instead the
departure of a teacher and his return to the heavens as a luminous sun.

15
On the history of different notions of sin and salvation (and their correlation) in Juda-
ism and Christianity, see Gary Anderson, Sin:AHistory (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 2009).

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 “NESTORIAN” (JINGJIAO) MONUMENT AND ITS THEOLOGY OF THE CROSS 115

3. THE CROSS ATOP THE MONUMENT

Sitting atop the titular block of nine characters is a small image carved
into the stone [Fig. 1]: a cross with flared ends, surrounded by clouds
and lotus flowers, and topped with a flaming pearl.

Fig. 1

The image is quite small, and very high on the monument, so it hardly
stands out. For generations, Western reproductions of the cross failed to
represent this image accurately: Martin Keevak has documented how the
very shape of the cross was sometimes changed (presumably to suppress its
Nestorian legacy), its relative size exaggerated (as if out of embarrassment,
or to compensate for the lack of an orthodox theology of the cross), and
it was stripped of the Daoist and Buddhist images that surround it. Only
in the second half of the nineteenth century, when Westerners had regular
and direct access to the monument, did paper rubbings begin to appear,
and with them the chance to see the monument as it really was, rather than
how it was imagined to be (or should be) by invested orientalists.
Besides being subject to orientalists’ imaginations and widely divergent
representations in the West, this cross is also a persistent site for theo-
logical speculation. Take, for example, Peter Y. Saeki, who tells us that
the cloud is the characteristic symbol of the Daoists, as the lotus flower
is of the Buddhists. He concludes that, “the design was doubtlessly used

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 116 C.M. STANG

to denote that ‘the Three Religions are one.’”16 But this sits rather uneasily
with the interpretation he offers of the monument’s inscription as forward-
ing a subtle political theology: “[just] as in politics the T’ang supplanted
the Sui dynasty, so in religion the Nestorians ought to succeed the Taoists.”17
Which is it? Is the monument unitarian or supercessionist, or both? Does
the image of the cross support, or detract from, the political theology of the
monument? Could the image and the text exist in some tension?
I will not answer that question, but I raise it in order to show how
even such a small detail as this image of the cross can be interpreted in
a variety of ways, and, following Keevak, that the modern interpreters’
own theological concerns seem very much foregrounded. Nowhere is this
clearer than in the case of Martin Palmer and his very popular book The
JesusSutras.18 Palmer regards the combination of Christian, Buddhist and
Daoist imagery as “so natural”:
The cross, supported, even embraced, by the forces of yin and yang, firmly
rooted in the symbolism of the Tao, is the very embodiment of atonement —
“at-one-ment,” as Joseph Campbell would say, the reconciling of cultural
worlds (China and the West) as well as temporal and spiritual dimensions.
A universal symbol of the mystery of life, of the necessity of profound choice
at every crossroad of human experience, the cross also represents salvation
and hope. As Saint Paul says of the cross, it is the very reason for Christian
faith. A symbol of Jesus’ life and death, here fixed in a Taoist firmament,
the cross shows the way to personal freedom and spiritual liberation, both
through the human, physical intervention of Christ and the metaphysical
constancy of the Tao. In the cross rising from the lotus, the passion of
Christianity finds its place in the Eastern symbol of being rooted in this
world but rising above it to full beauty and fulfillment.19

Palmer’s book has in fact inspired another, Ray Riegert and Thomas
Moore’s The Lost Sutras of Jesus.20 For example, Riegert and Moore
regard the emergence of the cross from lotus flowers as signaling that
“spiritual awareness” emerges from “the lotus of the body and the sensu-
ous world … the beauty of ordinary life.”21 As such, “the cross inspires
us toward unlimited compassion.”22

16
Peter Y. Saeki, TheNestorianDocumentsandRelicsinChina (Tokyo: The Academy
of Oriental Culture, 1937), 26.
17
Idem, TheNestorianMonument (London: SPCK, 1916), 215.
18
Martin Palmer, TheJesusSutras(New York: Ballantine, 2001).
19
Ibid., 8-9.
20
Thomas Moore, Ray Riegert, eds., TheLostSutrasofJesus:UnlockingtheAncient
WisdomoftheXianMonks(Berkeley, CA: Ulysses Press, 2003).
21
Ibid., 135.
22
Ibid.

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 “NESTORIAN” (JINGJIAO) MONUMENT AND ITS THEOLOGY OF THE CROSS 117

What strikes me most about these theological speculations, inspired by

the image of the cross emerging from clouds and lotus flowers, is how
little they engage the distinctive theology of the cross that the inscription
itself voices. Without the inscription, the constellation of symbols (cross,
clouds, lotus flowers) can be arranged and interpreted in any number of
ways: the cross and so Christianity is triumphing over Buddhism and its
lotus flowers; the cross and so Christianity depends on, and is contained
by, Buddhist lotus flowers and Daoist clouds; the cross, clouds and lotus
flowers are interchangeable, and all speak a single truth. These are only
a few examples. One can see that almost anything can be spun out of this
speculative exercise, and that what is spun out seems to have more to do
with the modern interpreter and his or her own theological preferences than
with the ancient inscription and the jingjiaoChristians for whom it speaks.
I suggest instead that we simply attempt to interpret the image of the
cross according to the inscription’s own explicit theology of the cross. We
have seen that the inscription removes the cross from the context of the
death of the Mishihe, and instead imagines it as a cosmogonic instrument,
the character “ten” or grid with which God (Aluohe) renders order from
chaos. We have seen that the Christian practice of signing the cross is
understood, at least according to the inscription, as recalling precisely
this cosmogony (and not the crucifixion). It seems fairly certain, then, that
the image of the cross emerging from lotus flowers and clouds is a depic-
tion of creation, and one that blends the cosmogonies of Christianity,
Buddhism, and Daoism, much as the inscription itself does with its “sini-
sized Genesis I”. It may be that the image has more to say, or to show,
about the relationship between Christianity, Buddhism, and Daoism —
unitarian, supercessionist, or otherwise. But I suggest that we chasten our
theological speculation somewhat, and limit ourselves to interpretations
of the image that can be corroborated in the inscription itself. This may
be less satisfying to many contemporary readers, but it might also allow
us to understand better who these jingjiao Christians were, and what they
believed, rather than simply use the inscription and image, not as a lens to
see them, but as a mirror in which to reflect ourselves.

4. CONCLUSION

But what does this distinctive theology of the cross tell us about the
jingjiao Christians themselves, and the depth and extent of their Chinese
acculturation? To put the matter bluntly, I wonder whether these jingjiao

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Christians actually adhered to the theology of the cross voiced in the

inscription, which would seem a significant departure from their East
Syrian heritage. This raises another general question about the monument
itself, namely whether it is meant to read by outsiders or insiders, whether
in anthropological terms, it is an “etic” or an “emic” text. In other words,
is the monument meant to reflect jingjiao Christians’ theology inward, back
to themselves, or is it rather meant to project jingjiao Christians’ theology
outward, to their neighbors, the non-Christian members of their host cul-
ture? I think most scholars would incline to the second option and regard
the monument’s principal aim as propagandistic, that is, an attempt by the
jingjiao Christians to establish their place in the Tang capital by translating
their theology into the Chinese koine and documenting and celebrating
their participation in the Tang empire over the past one hundred and fifty
years.23 But if the monument is really meant for an audience of outsiders,
then how are we to interpret its distinctive theology of the cross? Is it
merely an accommodation to its audience, an attempt to render Christian
theology into a form that is more acceptable to a Chinese audience familiar
with Chinese sources? If so, then perhaps these jingjiao Christians never
adhered to this distinctive theology that they projected outward. But this
also raises the question of whether one can project oneself to others with-
out that projection coming to change the reflection of oneself in the mirror.
In other words, I wonder whether by describing themselves and their the-
ology in this way to others, they in effect changed how they thought of
themselves and their theology even among themselves. I suspect that they
could not keep these two enterprises strictly separate, that the one, so to
speak, bled into the other. But let me conclude by insisting that this is why
it is crucial for us to have a better understanding of the jingjiao documents
from Dunhuang. One presumes that these jingjiao texts — in contrast to
the inscription on a public monument — were meant to be read by jingjiao
Christians themselves. If we can compare the distinctive theology of the
monument with the distinctive theology of the texts, then we can have
much better understanding of how widely and deeply these jingjiao Chris-
tians acculturated to the Chinese context in which they found themselves,
and whether they thought and spoke in a Chinese idiom not only when
projecting their image outward, but also when considering their own reflec-
tion in the mirror. And such a composite study would provide us with a
crucial case study in the Syriac tradition in its multi-cultural context.

23
See, for example, Deeg, “The Rhetoric of Antiquity: Politico-Religious Propaganda
in Nestorian Stele of Chang’an.”

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