The Abda Option: Temptation and War in the Persian Church of the East

The following post will be interacting with this lecture, and the book it draws from (Richard Payne's A State of Mixing), that discusses the place of Christians (and other religious groups) in the Persian empire from the 4th to 7th century, and somewhat beyond. From it one can discern a tension within the Church of the East over its role within a hostile (non-Christian) empire, while bordering a powerful (and distinctly Christian) rival. To start, I want to engage with a conceptual definition that blogger Protoprotestant developed about the same topic. He calls it the "Shapur effect" (larger context here):

"Like the Christians of Persia who lived peacefully under the Parthian and Achaemenid rulers the conversion of Constantine and the subsequent politicisation of Christianity suddenly made the Christians in Persia look like potential enemies. Due to Constantine's actions they were almost overnight likely to sympathise with Rome and its anti-Persian policies. Even though this wasn't the case, the Persian Shah, Shapur II began to persecute Christians."

This account posits that the persecutions under Shapur, and subsequent Persian shahs, happened because the empire's rival became a Christian power. Persian Christians, who had otherwise been an unnoticed minority, were placed in the cross hairs as potential fifth columnists. However, this concept needs to be developed in accord with greater attention to the history. According to Payne, Shapur did not advance an empire-wide persecution of Christians. Instead, the persecution of Christians was localized to the capital (Seleucia-Ctesiphon) and had less to do with loyalty, rather than integration. Strapped for cash, Shapur pressed the church's bishops into the role of tax-collector. Previously, only the Zoroastrian hierarchy (the established cult of Persia) collected tithes for the empire. Perhaps Shapur was worried about the loyalty of his Christian subjects, but it served an immediate need. Payne considers this event as an issue of state policy (meaning, taxation), not persecution. But such is to be coy with the sources. In his monograph, Payne quotes the Simeon (the main bishop) from Martyrdom of Simeon, appealing to the limits of his authority. As a churchman, Simeon could not exploit his people (and abuse his office) for the emperor:

"I bow to the king of kings, and I honor his commands with all my power, however, concerning that which is required of me in the edict, I believe even you know that it is not my business to demand taxes from the people of Christ, my Lord. Indeed, our authority over them is not in the things which are seen but in those things which are unseen."

In other words, bishops were not tax-collectors, and not agents of the state (even as they remained subjects of the shah). For refusing to adopt this new role, Shapur executed Simeon, along with all who rejected the edict (4 bishops, 97 presbyters and deacons, and an ascetic lay woman). However, clergy who complied were spared. Thus, Christians qua Christians were not included in a blanket paranoia/persecution under Shapur (even during a time of war). However Payne concludes from this evidence that "Simeon and allied ecclesiastical leaders perished in the 340s for failing to cooperate in the extension of the fiscal system, not simply for being Christians." (A State of Mixing, 41-43). The logic here is rather fuzzy. It is equivalent to saying that the Soviet Union did not persecute the Orthodox church because they had only to conform to government policy. If the hierarchy would not become NKVD spies, and openly support the policies of an atheist regime, then they were simply political dissidents. Payne is too overly absorbed in the perspective of the Persian state to strike the right balance (even if he's offering a good and necessary course-corrective to tropes about the despotic orient).

Nevertheless, this episode does not seem to have offered any long term crisis or conflict for Christians in Persia. Shapur's successor, Yazdgird I, was very friendly with the Christians, as close as one could be without conversion. Aware of the doctrinal problems within the church, Yazdgird even played the role of Constantine, convoking the Synod of Seluecia-Ctesiphon (with council from bishop Isaac of the same city). This council not only ratified the Nicaean creed, but it organized the church into a single polity (with bishop Seleucia-Ctesiphon as 'Catholicos', a first among equals role, similar to Roman patriarchates). Yazdgird's official tolerance would be deployed and revoked by successive shahs, but Christians were now a recognized minority within the Persian empire (even as Zoroastrianism remained the established cult, with apostasy from it punished with death). Christians found a workable peace within the "king-of-king's Zoroastrian empire. 

And yet tensions remained and could flare up. Particularly of interest is Payne's account of the 5th c. monk Abda. A fiery reformer of sorts, Abda led an effort to burn down a Zoroastrian fire-temple (and refused to rebuild it), striking a blow against idolatry in his country. Contemporaneous with Abda, several groups of Christians organized to attack Zoroastrianism symbolically. Eschewing physical violence, one bishop led an attempt to storm a fire-temple and put out its sacred hearth (basically the altar in Zoroastrianism). For assaulting the sacred ideology and iconography of the Mazdeist empire, Abda and others like him were put to death.

Payne makes a point to note that the literature between the west and the east connected; Syriac speakers in the Roman empire were not (entirely) cut off from the east. Border towns (like Nisibis and Edessa) saw exchanges of literature (which is how Theodore of Mopsuestia, "the Greek", became so highly venerated as a bible commentator in the Church of the East). Persian Christians were aware of Constantine and reading Roman hagiographies, with efforts to strike down pagan temples coinciding with successful conversion of an entire people to Christ.  Payne cites a Roman historian's claim that Constantine had changed Christians from lambs into lions, becoming eager administrators and advocates of Rome and her empire. Payne notes that the same was applicable to Persian Christians, who could desire the same for their own land and throne.

What I'm interested in is the possible link between Abda's arson of a Zoroastrian temple, and subsequent defiance, with what was going on in the Roman world. Payne, very obviously, is enamored with the Persian empire's pluralism, both at an organizational level and at the religious level. This leads him to superficially gloss moments of persecution, but revive an interest in Persia as something other than Orientalism. Thus, Payne finds Christian intolerance and claims of a universal truth intolerable (though he seems to trip over similar pretensions from Zoroastrian hierarchs). He is quite happy to see Christianity put in its place, forced to adapt to a permanent minority status. For him, Abda reflects the natural logic of Christian bigotry, snuffing out false worship in its crusade to convert the world. In contrast, I think Payne (and his rosy gloss) misreads the situation. The limited scope of Abda's actions, as well as their fundamentally non-violent nature (nowhere close to the Hypatia incident), limit what can be said about them. Instead, I don't think Abda was trying to summon a Persian Constantine, but react against a suffocating established cult (one who limited the work of evangelism).

The symbolic nature of the violence drew from Biblical accounts of God defeating the demons and their servants (themes that similarly motivated Roman Christian accounts of destroying pagan temples). Perhaps Abda drew inspiration from his Roman brethren, perhaps Abda saw himself as being faithful to the holy prophets. In either case, I think the biblical imagination drew fire from the fact that the Zoroastrian regime was oppressive. It not only supplied the church with martyrs (not only in the case of Simeon, but several Zoroastrian apostates), but continued to press the shah's government to squeeze the Christian (especially as Christians became present in different rungs of government and the aristocracy). Abda acted against an oppressor, taking a swing at the regime, and rewarding him with a martyr's glory. An impressive feature in all of the above is that no Christian mob or physical violence happened in response (something I think Payne would be keen to highlight if there was proof).

In someways, I support what Abda did. He struck a symbolic blow against the evil ideology that clouded his life. When St. Paul converted several Ephesians, they decided to burn their witchcraft scrolls (Acts 19). Part of the Christian vocation is to cast down all kinds of darkness, and similarly, when I became a Christian, I burned all of the Marine Corps paraphenalia that had been luring me to a life of blood, lust, and service at the national altar. Similarly, Paul's success in Ephesus brought opposition from idol-smiths, who felt their trade threatened if the Ephesians abandoned the temple. Thus, the victory of Christ means the end of pagan temples.

And yet, I question Abda's wisdom in acting. The result of attacking the Zoroastrian cult brought down the ire of the state. It seems that the relaxation under Yazdgird made some Christians seek to roll back their oppressors (he was martyred in 420). Additionally, in the apostolic cases above,  Paul brought about voluntary renunciation of evil. Such was in concert with Paul's admonition to leave the idols of Rome alone, teaching his brethren and sons to ignore the haunt of demons. They had no power over Christians and were nothing. By valorizing and imitating Abda, it may simply create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Lashing out against oppressors in a moment of relaxation, lashes out against it, bringing down greater repression, which creates an even more intense feeling of oppression. Abda may catalyze into a kind of sword-wielding crusade, one that does result in violence, twisting our imitation of Christ into something evil. If you live by the sword, you will die by the sword.

Nevertheless, I don't want to be too hard on Abda. He possessed the self-restraint to only attack the symbols of a persecuting regime. When I previously reflected on these issues, I thought Abda was mimicking Rome, and maybe he did want a Persian Constantine, but there's no proof for that. He stood before Yazdgird when summoned, refused the shah's command, and suffered execution. Abda perhaps misunderstood what faithfulness meant, but he was far away from America's Evangelical political lobby and its whore-pastors who leverage souls for access to power. Abda did not organize an effort to take over or resist the government through political machinations. And yet, like them, he could not stand for the presence of official idolatry (which, in the US case, would be a refusal to say "Happy Holidays" or something). Nevertheless, the two instances are not alike: Abda was not flailing in response to losing power and he did not avoid responsibility for his actions through legal subterfuge. I think it's fair to say he was a prophet heralding the doom of the Zoroastrians and their false god of light Mazda.

Now, if Abda was foolish, it may have very well been foolish to work within the empire. It had not even been a century since Simeon and hundreds of others were martyred for their faith and the integrity of their pastoral office. Tensions must have existed between recognizing imperial law to not abet conversion from Zoroastrian, with the fact that Zoroastrians (both clergy and nobles) did convert. The official coexistence (which survived the Zoroastrians into the Islamic and Mongol periods) allowed the Church of the East an extensive/intensive missionary drive (going as far south as the Malabar coast in India, and as far east as Chang'An in China), not surpassed by any church until after the discovery of the Americas. Nevertheless, perhaps compromise remained appealing. Abda remains a curious mix of both valor and foolishness. At the very least, Abda was a prophetic reminder that the church was in the middle of a spiritual war. Official tolerance and recognition did not mean Zoroastrians were brethren, even if were fellow subjects. One should not become cozy with the powers that be, a message Abda wanted Yazdgird to see with his own eyes. Payne may sneer at this bigotry, but if one has a commitment to the truth, and isn't some sort of irrational pragmatist, then the stakes are really this high. 

Perhaps honoring Abda, even if his vocation is abnormal and provocative, keeps Christians (and all lovers of truth) on their toes. His path (including his willingness to submit to the shah's judgement) is not about power politics. It is not like the Moral Majority, the so-called "Benedict Option", or any other reactionary kulturkampf hysteria. Christians must learn to balance being in the world with the awareness that the powers of darkness (whether Caesar or Mammon) are operative.