THE APOSTLE SAINT THOMAS
FOUNDED THE CHURCH IN CHINA

What could have been the scoop of the year of the Olympic Games of Peking was intentionally hidden by both the Chinese and Western “right-thinking” milieus, which such a discovery disturbs: archaeology proves beyond a doubt the founding of the Church in China by the Apostle St. Thomas between 65 and 68 a.d. Thus China takes her place among the first countries in the world to be evangelised, and her Church can take pride in the title of “apostolic”.

This has been spoken about for several years now, and the “People’s Daily”, the official organ of the Chinese Communist Party, echoed it by announcing a veritable « earthquake », if the fact proved to be true. It has been today, thanks to Pierre Perrier, a former researcher for the Dassault Aviation group and a universally known specialist in the oral transmission of the Gospels, at the end of a thorough enquiry that he relates in his book “Thomas founds the Church in China” (éd. du Jubilé, September 2008).

Such a discovery rehabilitates the tradition of certain Churches, in particular that of the Chaldean Church (Iraq) and of the Church of the Syro-Malabar rite in Southern India called the “Christians of St. Thomas”, who have always considered the apostolate of the Apostle and the Christian establishment in China in the first century of our era as facts. In the Chaldean breviary, for example, one can read: « By St. Thomas, the Kingdom of Heaven took wings and flew all the way to the Chinese. »

Until recently, it was considered good taste to smile at such an assertion, and to regard it as a “legend” of bygone ages. Well, no! It is not a legend, but an historical truth that is written in rock, and its impact is considerable for present-day China. You are incredulous, as the Apostle was? Come and see…

EVIDENCE THAT IS UNIQUE IN THE WORLD.

In order to see and to touch, you have to debark, at the end of a long journey in the Apostle’s footsteps, at the port of Lianyungang, – “Port-touch-cloud”. It is located at the former mouth of the Yellow River, Huang-he, since diverted towards the Gulf of Bohai. This port, which still exists today, marks the end of the road that linked the successive capitals of the Han Empire, Chang’An (today Xi’an) and Luoyang, to the China Sea (see map).

At the edge of Lianyungang, in the area around this ancient road, you pass alongside a rock face called Kong Wang Shan (Kong Wang Cliff) on which were rediscovered, in the beginning of the 1980s, sculptures in bas-relief on a background lightly outlined with a chisel. There are three main figures, two standing, and a third, a little higher up, seated. They are surrounded by other figures of smaller dimensions, some of them more recently sculpted (see our plate). These vestiges were the object of an historical re-evaluation by Chinese scientists who advanced their dating to the year 65 a.d.

Who are these figures? Before answering this question, a brief historical reminder is necessary.

CHINA IN THE FIRST CENTURY OF OUR ERA.

The Chinese Empire was created in 221 b.c. by the king of the Ts’in, Qin Shihuangdi. This Chinese Caesar succeeded in imposing his authority on the internal factions and containing the invasions of the Turco-Mongols, the Huns, against whom he had the Great Wall built.

The famous Han dynasty succeeded him and held supremacy in China for four centuries. This was the great era of the Middle Kingdom, to which the Chinese refer when they call themselves “sons of Han”. Trade routes had been opened: the overland “Silk Road”, passing north of the Himalayas and, through Persia and Syria, supplying the Roman Empire with the precious fabric; by sea also, following the “Spice Route”, beginning on the Chinese east coast, bypassing the Indochinese Peninsula by the Strait of Malacca, then ascending in a direct line to the Ganges delta, taking advantage of the winter and summer monsoons.

In China at that time, two philosophies ruled over the world of spirits: one sought individual perfection, Taoism, and the other maintained the order of human society, Confucianism.

According to the former, the sage must divest himself of his personality, of his individual self, of his intelligence even, in order to identify himself with the rest of the Universe. This is the Tao (or Way). Needless to say, the Taoist sage scarcely concerns himself with the salvation of the people. Furthermore, it is not with such principles that civilisations are built!

On the contrary, Confucianism is meant to be a school of wisdom which, without seeking to innovate, is based on respect due to “Heaven” and to ancestors, preaching filial piety extended to all the relationships of a harmonious society: children-parents, wife-husband, subject-sovereign, man-“Heaven”. For Confucius and his disciples, the good governance of the people is guaranteed by the harmony of the virtues of the prince with the order of “Heaven”, the source of all power. It is, however, a “Heaven” that is hopelessly empty…

Only Mo-tseu, a wise Confucian (400 b.c.), invoked a personal and all powerful “Lord on high”, but his doctrine, which might be considered a preparation for Christian revelation, was rejected as deviant by his peers.

According to Legge, the well-known translator of Chinese classics, « nothing hindered the religious, social and political reform of China as much as the attachment of the government and Chinese scholars to Confucius » (quoted by Fr. Van Straelen, S. V. D.) L’Église et les religions non chrétiennes au seuil du vingt et unième siècle, Beauchesne, 1994).

Deviations of all sorts (magic, sorcery, etc.), the rigid formalism of the official rites and above all the absence of transcendent answers to the mysteries of human destiny: the meaning of suffering and death, life in the beyond, knowledge of the plans of the “Lord of Heaven”, had created in the souls of the Chinese people and their elites a cruel void.

It is Jesus Christ and not Buddha who should have fulfilled their expectation.

BUDDHIST MONKS OR APOSTLES OF CHRIST?

When Pierre Perrrier was made aware of the existence of Kong Wang Shan, through the instrumentality of a priest from the “underground” Church – this detail is not insignificant –, he took advantage of a colloquium at the University of Nanking to enquire at the Department of Studies of Popular Religions about these bas-reliefs:

« They showed them to me, while affirming to me that these figures were the confirmation of the traditions relative to the arrival in China of the Buddhist religion in the first century of our era. Then they gave me the precise date of their arrival, a date specified by written traditions [Chronicles of the Later Hans]: 65 a.d. Furthermore, these traditions evoked the arrival of two Buddhist monks who had come from India in this first century, following a request by the reigning emperor, who wanted to understand the meaning of the apparition in a dream in the previous year (in 64), at the foot of his bed, of a tall person – he was thus not Chinese and came rather from the West – with his head encircled with a halo of light. » (p. 31)

This is in fact the official interpretation that is found in all the books dealing with Buddhism in China. « According to a widely held legend, Buddhism officially entered China during the reign of Emperor Mingdi of the Han dynasty (58-75 a.d.) Following a dream in which he saw Buddha, this emperor sent a mission to the Yut-che [in Northwest India] that would return three years later with the text of the “Sutra in forty-two chapters” and that also brought two missionaries. For them, he built the first monastery: the Temple of the White Horse in Luoyang. It has been more or less proven that this story is a pious legend, which was only invented around the middle of the third century. On the other hand, Chinese historical documents attest the existence, already in 65 a.d., in Pen-tch’eng, of a Buddhist community sponsored by the brother of the emperor. This community was composed of foreign missionaries and Chinese faithful. » (François Houang, Le Bouddhisme, de l’Inde à la Chine, coll. Je sais, je crois, Fayard, 1963, p. 47) We will see further on what is to be thought of it.

What a surprise it was for Perrier, examining one of the photos of Kong Wang at his disposal, to make out a cross, held at chest height by the tallest of the two figures, wearing a turban, itself ornamented with a cross (Perrier thinks that the upper arm of the large cross has been effaced. It is also possible that it was originally represented in this way, as was the practice in the early Church). The clothes of the person in question are not Chinese, neither are those of his companion. The latter, who is smaller, presents his right hand, the palm open, in the attitude of someone attesting the truth, and carries in his left hand an unrolled scroll, as far as the sculpture worn away with time allows it to be made out.

You did say: « 65 a.d. »? Here our French researcher leaps, because his research on the Malabar Christians in the south of India have led him to bring to light traditions concerning the evangelising of India by the Apostle St. Thomas, and « there is no reason, he writes, not to base ourselves on the traditions of the ancient apostolic Churches when they are coherent and complementary among themselves, in accordance with the rule for discerning heresies that St. Irenaeus laid down and that must prevail over every doubtful result of research with a “secular” presupposition. In research on Church origins it is tantamount to depriving oneself of reliable sources, when traditions have been retained in the liturgies. » (p. 83)

Ah! This calm challenging of “secular” and “rationalist” presuppositions is certainly pleasant to read! All the more is it so because Pierre Perrier concludes: « To date, we have never observed noteworthy or rationally inexplicable discrepancies between these reliable traditions and archaeological discoveries or analysis of available exterior texts: research in China fully confirms it. » (ibid.)

According to the tradition of the Church in India relative to St. Thomas, the Apostle finished his mission there in 64 a.d., and left from Meliapouram (near Madras) for China at the beginning of… 65 a.d. The Indian and Chinese sources agree. There is thus a strong possibility that the two figures of Kong Wang represent the Apostle himself with, at his side, his acolyte-interpreter.

THE DREAM OF EMPEROR MINGDI

Let us, however, come back to the dream that is related by the Chinese chronicles, represented at Kong Wang by small figures (on the drawing, above right).

« Mingdi had a dream in which he saw a tall blond man, the top of whose head was encircled with a halo […]. He was eight zhang tall [close to two metres]; he was of golden complexion [or “like gold”]. »

Upon awaking, the emperor questioned those who were charged at the Court with interpreting dreams. They told him that the man that he had seen in the dream did not originate from either China, or the North, or the South or the East, but that it was necessary to turn towards the West, where « tall, blond » men could be found.

« One of them told him that in the West there existed a god called “luminous” [or “the Man-Light”]. The Emperor, desirous of enquiring about the true doctrine, dispatched an envoy to the land of Tianzhu so that he might inquire about the precepts of the visionary. It is beginning from that time that paintings and statues reached the Middle Kingdom and Ying, prince of Zhu, began to have faith in this Way [or in the person who preached it] and thanks to that, the Middle Kingdom received it with esteem. »

With Pierre Perrrier, let us set aside the Buddhist interpretation, or rather appropriation of this dream, according to which this « Man-Light » would be Buddha, called the “visionary”. The famous Silk Road, on which the first Buddhist monks were said to have come was closed at the time, and the first archaeological traces of Buddhism only appear in China in the second century, in accordance with the commercial agreement signed in 158 a.d. with the Kushan Empire, which opened China to exterior religious influences.

Is it not rather a prophetic apparition of Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, such as he showed Himself transfigured to His Apostles on Mount Tabor?

Or perhaps it is a vision of the risen and glorious Jesus, similar to what St. John saw and that he described at the beginning of his Apocalypse.

THERE IS ALSO A WOMAN!

The third figure represented on the Kong Wang cliff is harder to make out than the others. One can distinguish the head of a woman wearing, in the Parthian style, a headband holding a veil in place. She seems to be reclining, or rather seated and leaning on a cushion. Originally she must have been carrying a small child wrapped in swaddling clothes. Unfortunately, the child has practically disappeared, effaced by a sacrilegious hand. Nevertheless, when attempting to reconstruct the original drawing, by comparing it with other bas-reliefs discovered in Christian Chinese tombs, our researcher had the happy and moving surprise of finding a Virgin with the Child, the Child whom she presents to the adoration of the faithful. It is the earliest “Nativity” known in the whole world! The discovery is important.

The Virgin Mary – because it is she! – indicates Her Child with the right hand, while turning Her gaze towards the Apostle who presents the Cross.

The composition of these three figures, Perrier writes, « conforms to the iconographic model (initially pagan) that was currently used among the Parthians in the first century… These artists chiselled bas-reliefs on vertical rock faces, generally representing a couple of priests standing next to a seated divinity. » (p. 55)

The artists who carved the three statues on the rock face of Kong Wang were not Chinese, but Persians from the Parthian Empire. The clothes of the two figures represented standing are characteristic of Chaldea.

There is something even better: a signature confirms the Christian interpretation of the Kong Wang bas-relief.

A JUDEO-CHRISTIAN SIGNATURE

Between the two missionaries who are standing close to the Virgin with the Child, a large cross in the form of an x can be seen, surmounted by a sign that can usually be read on early Christian sarcophagi.

Our author, a specialist on the Church in Apostolic times, sees in it a Judeo-Christian signature in Aramaic. It is not a Greek x-chi but the tav, the last letter of the Hebrew and Aramaic alphabet, represented also as a capital letter by a cross in the form of an x. The tav, which marks on the forehead the community of the elect in the vision of Ezekiel (9, 6), prefigures the Cross that delivers from the bondage of sin.

Likewise, it is not a Greek rho, but a Hebraic qof:

« The qof is a letter sign for Judeo-Christians, Perrier writes; the numerous graffiti from the first and second centuries in Palestine show it. The Judeo-Christians used it alone or with the horizontal bar, under a half-moon and forming a cross. The bar changes this qof into the brass serpent raised on its pole to bring salvation to those who had been bitten by the reptiles. Jesus had taken this image of the temptation of the Hebrew people in the desert to show His disciples how He Himself should be raised up on the cross before the eyes of everyone in order to bring the pardon of sins. For every Aramaic-speaking Christian reader, however, this serpent raised up on the tree of the cross is also the initial qof of the word qyamtha - resurrection. Finally, these Christians also wanted to include a reference to the Trinity as a reminder that it was God Himself in His Son who had suffered on the Cross: thus they added triangles to the ends of the branches of the cross, each of which recalled the presence of the Holy Trinity in the divine sacrifice. » (p. 81)

This is exactly what we observe at Kong Wang on the cross held by the Apostle and at several other places… In front of the Apostle is a rock sculpted in the form of an altar, half of which is embedded in the rock face. This altar is marked with a line that delimits an upper altar cloth with a cross and two circles (cosmic cross) on the left side. On the front side, there is another cross of the resurrection, similar to the larger one represented higher up with the Aramaic qof and the triangular extremities recalling the Trinity. At the foot of this cross there is a leaning figure: « Is it Mary Magdalene or John? » Furthermore, on a flat part of the adjacent rock, something that seems to be a chalice and a piece of bread, the host, under the cross. We thus have a representation of the Eucharistic mystery.

THE VICTORY OF THE FAITH.

« If these four figures [the two missionaries, the Virgin and Her Child] and these carved symbols are manifestly Judeo-Christian and offer the most ancient archaeological attestation of a complete whole prior to 70 a.d., showing together the Apostle Thomas and his collaborator-deacon, the Virgin and Her new-born Child… » then, Pierre Perrier prudently suggests, that changes all our conceptions.

« These bas-reliefs, unquestionably contemporaneous with the arrival of St. Thomas in China, offer evidence that is unique in the world. Once the keys to the Judeo-Christian interpretation have been given, there appear: 1° the Apostle presenting the Cross – 2° his deacon with his scroll as a memory aid – 3° the Virgin carrying Her new-born Child. In addition to the deacon, whose written scroll attests the coming of the Messiah whom Israel was expecting, the Mother and the Child who confirm the human birth of the Son of God, and the glorious Cross that represents His death and resurrection, this bas-relief presents the apostolic testimony of the Apostle St. Thomas.

« The most unbelieving among the unbelievers whom the risen Jesus made touch his open wounds where His Heart beat, carried the Cross to the part of the world that was farthest from the empty tomb of Jerusalem and the Upper Room of Mount Sion […]. How could it be possible for him not to testify to this to his Chinese disciples? He had touched Him who is “the Way, the Truth and the Life”. » (p. 84-85)

« TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH »

Before ascending into Heaven, Our Lord Jesus Christ announced to His Apostles: « You will receive a power, that of the Holy Spirit who will come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. » (Ac 1:8) St. Paul would affirm regarding these preachers of the Gospel: « Their voice has gone forth to all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world. » (Rm 10:18)

THOMAS, “ONE OF THE TWELVE”.

« My Lord and my God, how deep they are, the holes in Your feet and Your hands! How terrible is this gash in Your breast into the Heart, still burning with the same sacred love, its beating as strong and regular as eternity, in which my trembling hand feels, palpitating and burning, Your tenderness like that of a mother for her child. I adore and I love You… » (Statues of the Cathedral of Rheims)

Thus, according to the Tradition, St. James went to Spain, to the western extremity of the Roman Empire, while St. Thomas reached the extremity of the eastern lands, at least those that were known at the time.

The Gospels are rather sparing of details relating to this Apostle, except for saying that he was « one of the Twelve », and that he was called Tôma, the Aramaic variant of which, Tâ ma, means “twin”; this is why St. John adds in his Gospel, at the mention of this name, its Greek translation: “didumos, Didymus” (Jn 21:2). Of whom is he the twin? We do not know… His true name is in fact Judah, and it seems that he was a native of Judaea. Before being called by Christ, he was an itinerant goldsmith, decorator, sculptor and even architect. He is the patron saint of builders. Craftsman, manual worker, he needed to see, to touch, in order to realise things…

St. John mentions St. Thomas four times in his Gospel. The best-known episode is that of the evening of the Resurrection. Thomas was not there. What could he have been doing on that evening? On his return, the Apostles told him that they had seen the Lord, but he replied: « Unless I see the mark of the nails in His hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into His side, I will not believe. » Eight days later, the Apostles were once again gathered together,

« Because you see Me, you touch Me, and You kiss Me, Thomas, you are happy, you believe again, truly! Even happier and forever blessed are they who, in your midst, have believed without having seen… My Face now engraved in you, remains in this world of darkness to guide and delight the eyes that are lost there. Bear witness to my Truth! » (Abbé Georges de Nantes, The Kiss of the Disciple)

« Put your finger here and see My hands, and bring your hand and put it into My side, and do not be unbelieving, but believing. »

Then, Thomas fell to his knees:

« My Lord and my God!

– Because you have seen, Thomas, you have believed. Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed! » (Jn 20:24-28)

The hand of the Apostle, our Father writes, following the Fathers of the Church, was then « the hand of the Church that ascertains the truth of the Resurrection of her Lord ».

APOSTLE OF THE INDIES.

According to the Acts of the Apostles and the traditions of the Eastern Churches, the Apostles evangelised first Jerusalem and the other cities of Judaea. Then, after the Pentecost of 37 a.d., they left in groups of two in all directions, some taking sea routes, some taking overland routes (see map).

While Andrew and Phillip went North, following the Ionian coast, Bartholomew (Nathanael in the Gospels) and Thomas decided to take the route to the East, towards China.

Our two Apostles passed through Edessa, founded a Christian community there, which would later form the rear base of all the missions to the East, and at the head of which they left Addaï, one of the “seventy-two disciples”, who accompanied them.

At the beginning of the 40s, they arrived at Nineveh (the ancient capital of the Assyrian Empire, present-day Mosul in northern Iraq). Announcing the Good News, they called on the Ninevites to do penance, following the example of the Prophet Jonas, and prescribing a three-day fast. The tradition of these three days of fasting is still observed today in the Chaldean Church at the beginning of the liturgical year. Their testimony was received, and the Jewish community of the city converted to Jesus Christ, true Messiah of Israel.

They returned to Jerusalem where the Apostles found Mary, the Mother of Jesus, who inquired, as can well be imagined, about the progress of the evangelisation… Herod, however, had Peter imprisoned to please the Jews. His plan was to put him to death before the Pasch of the year 42. Miraculously set free, Peter then left « for another place » (Ac 12:17), which was none other than Rome, the capital of the Roman Empire. As for Thomas, he left again for the East, determined to go further east, as far as India. It seems that Bartholomew did not accompany him that far, or else he retraced his steps quite soon, because he would soon finish his apostolic journeys in the marches of Armenia, martyred by the Jews who controlled the commercial approaches.

St. Thomas, from then on the sole Apostle, though surrounded by disciples, reached Ecbatana and Rhagae in Northern Persia (present-day Iran), then Herat and Kandahar (today in Afghanistan). Obviously, St. Thomas only passed through – there would, alas, never be Christian communities in Afghan territory – then he crossed the Indus at Taxila in order to evangelise the kingdom of Gandhara, the king of which, Gondephar, he converted. This long contested fact was established thanks to the work of learned Jesuit and Lazarist missionaries. They discovered in present-day Pakistan coins with the name Gondopharès written in Greek and a Parthian inscription mentioning a king Guduhvan, who reigned in the middle of the first century.

In this northern part of India, the Apostle founded a Christian community, which St. Pantaenus of Alexandria visited at the end of the second century, and which sent a bishop to the Council of Nicaea (325).

Perhaps this was when St. Thomas envisaged going as far as China by the overland route, by following the famous “Silk Road”, but the passage was suddenly closed by the war that broke out at that time between the Kushan Empire and the Parthian Empire, in other words, by a Mongolian invasion sweeping through present-day Afghanistan.

THE “MEMORY OF MARY”.

We are in 51 a.d. Pierre Perrier, referring to a very ancient tradition that fixes the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in that year, has the Apostle St. Thomas returning to Jerusalem. He will, however, once again arrive too late for the Event…

He set off again, with in his heart not only the memory of the Virgin Mary who had just been glorified in Her Body, but Her very testimony, gathered by St John and put in writing by St. Luke. It already existed, if we believe the hypothesis of Pierre Perrier, in the form of a written scroll: “The Gospel of the Childhood”, sfar d’talioutha, upon which the Apostle would not cease to meditate during his long peregrinations and which he would preach all the way to China! This work of reconstruction of the passage from the oral tradition to the written Gospels, far off the beaten track of modern and Modernist exegesis (cf. Évangiles de l’oral à l’écrit et Les colliers évangéliques, éditions du Jubilé, 2003) agree with what our Father, the Abbé de Nantes, wrote a few years ago on “the Gospel of the Virgin”, the first and secret source of all the others.

This time, St. Thomas decided to leave by the south, to take the sea route that leads to India, by following the trading posts founded by Hebrew merchants along the Spice Route. He debarked on the Indian coast at the end of summer 52, at Maliankara in present-day Kérala. This is where he founded the Malabar Church, from which was born almost all of the Indian Church of today. He extensively evangelised the whole western coast until Pentecost 62 before passing to the east, on the Coromandel coast, where he stayed from 62 to 64. He had perhaps made a reconaissance trip – in 54 or 55? – as far as Malasia, to the Straits of Malacca, a commercial port through which one had to pass when going from the Indian Ocean to China. In the summer of 64, the year of the dream of Emperor Mingdi, he once more went aboard a ship sailing to China. Taking into account the winds that vary according to the monsoons and after a winter call in Malacca, he only arrived at his destination, Lianyungang, in the summer of 65.

This is what is related in the Chinese chronicles…

APOSTOLIC MISSION IN CHINA.

His mission in China would last three years, the length of time required to train disciples, deacons and elders, to organise a well-structured Church that would subsist after the departure of its founding Apostle. He was accompanied by a collaborator acting as an interpreter, whom he would leave there as resident bishop.

As soon as he arrived, St. Thomas undoubtedly went directly to the capital, Luoyang, where Emperor Mingdi resided. He seems to have given St. Thomas a free hand to preach, and even to build a church, the chancel of which, according to the hypothesis of Mr. Perrier, was the base of a wooden tower reputed to be the first pagoda in China.

The half-brother of Mingdi, Prince Liu Ying, converted at the preaching of St. Thomas. This prince, the Chronicles say, disappointed by the official religion that had become formalist and artificial, was searching for the daô, the true “way” that leads to Heaven. It was not in Buddhism that he found it, but in the Gospel! As he was the governor of the maritime province of Zhu, St. Thomas went to see him at Xuzhou (today Jiangsu), where it seems that the first Chinese Christian community came into being.

It is in this province of Zhu that the most numerous pieces of evidence of a very ancient Christian presence can be found, in particular a tomb dating from 86 a.d., decorated with bas-reliefs that are surely Christian: crosses, biblical scenes and even another representation of the Virgin with the Child. Let us not forget to mention a dish or paten on which are engraved two fish and five round loafs of bread, and the character Yi, which means “to share” in Chinese. It is an obvious allusion to the multiplication of the five barley loaves and the two fishes, related in the Gospel. Other clues, in particular Christian graffiti, bear witness, Perrier writes, « to an extensive and rapid propagation of the Christian Faith » (p. 294).

Another very interesting avenue of research opened by Pierre Perrier: the method of preaching that our two missionaries employed. St. Thomas and his interpreter companion had brought scrolls of Scripture with them, numbering forty-two. Remember this number; it has a certain importance.

Forty-two, i.e. thirty scrolls corresponding to the Old Testament (the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms), plus twelve of what Perrier calls the “Memoirs of the Apostles” (p. 38), constituting their testimony. The use of these scrolls was systematic in the first Christian communities, as it was at Qumrân – St. Irenaeus, Hegesippus, and Papias allude to them – because they served both for preaching and as a reference – the deacon performing the office of acolyte and interpreter could say: Yes, it is as the Apostle stated, it is written here, in this scroll that bears witness – but also for liturgicalcelebrations, constituting a sort of “lectionary” that was used in the early Church.

The hypothesis of our author has the advantage of taking into account and giving full meaning to the scroll unrolled by the companion of the Apostle, herald of the divine Word, on the Kong Wang cliff.

St. Thomas had to leave China after three years. The sculpture of KongWang Shan, which celebrates his stay in China, was probably executed with the consent of the imperial authorities just after his departure in 68-69. Shortly afterwards, however, Confucian Court scholars laid siege to the emperor to have him close this new “way”, and stop this new religion from spreading, because they understood that it supplanted their “wisdom” and would prevent them from dominating the people. Mingdi yielded to their entreaties, and Prince Ying, according to the chronicle, had to resign his office, was exiled and condemned to commit suicide in 71 a.d., as was the custom in China when one had ceased to please the emperor.

His death was the beginning of the first period of persecutions, « one of the effects of which, Perrier writes, was the regression of open proselytism to the benefit of a more discreet if not secretive familial transmission, the withdrawal of liturgies into the underground » (p. 172), which would happen so often subsequently. This is how Chinese Christianity maintained itself for centuries.

DIVINE ORTHODROMY.

In 64 A.D. when, in the Roman Empire, Nero began to persecute fiercely the disciples of the “Way” – St. Peter was martyred in the Vatican circus on 13 October – this same year, at the other extremity of the known world, a tall « Man »whose head was encircled with a halo of light, appeared to the emperor of China, Mingdi, in his palace of Luoyang.

The following year, St. Thomas arrived, bearer of the Message of this incarnate Light, who is none other than Our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary. As a testimony of his visit, the signs of the universal redemption would be engraved in the stone of the rock face: the Cross and the sign of the Resurrection, under the benevolent eyes of Mary, who also has Her children in this immense Middle Kingdom, towards which the entire Far East was turned. It is Divine orthodromy that announces from the beginning of the Church what will be at the end of times, when the entire earth will recognise its Saviour and His Mother…

Nevertheless, we must « pass through many tribulations »…

In China, as St. John wrote at the same time on Patmos in his Book of the Apocalypse, scarcely had the male Child, the Seed of the Woman, been take up to God and His throne, than we see the Dragon, the emblem of China (!), furious against the Woman, wage war on Her children.

Nevertheless: « The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. » (Jn 1:5) During the almost two thousand years that it has existed, Chinese Christianity has always come back to life after the periods of often appalling persecution that it has suffered.

It was able to do so thanks to the fidelity of families. This is a characteristic of the Catholic Church in China, inherited directly from the Early Church: it was in these families that the Gospel message and the Catholic religion with its essential rites, prayers, customs, and traditions were perpetrated, even against the persecuting power, which is Communist today. « How could the Chinese families not have valued the rules of the Early Church? Perrier writes. She is a milieu of oral tradition, directed by priests-fathers, she rests on the responsibility of mothers who are guardians of memory and who transmit it within the natural family as well as the social families, which support one another and render mutual services. » (p. 181)

Chinese wisdom has always been very relational. Without divine grace, it soon turns into gregarious and stifling totalitarianism. Given life, however, by the Gospel and the Sacraments of the Church, it produces excellent fruits.

LIKE A LEAVEN IN THE DOUGH.

Question: Is there an influence of Christianity on Chinese civilisation?

« Yes, Pierre Perrier answers, as in the other countries touched by evangelisation, whether or not they recognise it today, the great currents of religious thought, cultural thought, and moral imperatives in China were profoundly and permanently influenced by the arrival of the Good News; it worked in many hearts, in families and provinces, and in the capital. » (p. 15) Our author goes even further when he writes: « The whole history of China can be re-read in the light of this foreign component of wisdom brought, as a leaven in the dough, by Christianity! » (p. 181)

As a contrario proof, « China was able to appreciate it [and suffer from it!] in the twentieth century: to the extent that Christianity was neglected, forgotten, despised, harshness among men and the vices of everyone grew in proportion… » (p. 74)

What do you make of Buddhism?

This is where the discovery of Kong Wang and the interpretation that Perrier proposes for it overthrows a certain number of received ideas. For it was believed up to now that the Christian religion came late to China, in the seventh century, and in the distorted form conveyed by Nestorian communities, as the stele of Xi’an, discovered in the sixteenth century by the Jesuits, bears witness. As for Buddhism, it was thought to have been introduced much earlier in the Middle Kingdom, thus enjoying the advantage of precedence, and priding itself with being « more Chinese » than Christianity.

Error! Not only did it arrive in China afterwards, but it worked furiously at having it forgotten, destroying it, or salvaging the excellent things found in the Christian religion to its own benefit. « It indeed seems that at a certain moment, they even sought to confuse the message », Perrier euphemistically writes. It is worse than that! It is a diabolical caricature and, in fact, antichrist.

THE BUDDHIST HIGHJACKING.

The traces can be seen:

1° on the rock face of Kong Wang. The upper arm of the cross has been hammered, as has the Infant Jesus on the lap of His Mother. Other figures were added, several times the very characteristic figure of Buddha. These Buddhist sculptures, however, are posterior to the bas-relief sculptures of Parthian workmanship. They date from the beginning of the fourth century, when the Northern Wei dynasty, the successors of the Han emperors, adopted Buddhism as the official religion. The dream of Mingdi was the object of a Buddhist reinterpretation, as well as the two figures whom we identified as St. Thomas and his acolyte.

2° In Luoyang there is nowadays a Buddhist temple called Baima Si, which means “Temple of the White Horse”, presented in all the official guides as the cradle of Chinese Buddhism because it marks the site of the arrival of the « two foreigners who came from India » to the court of Emperor Mingdi in 65. Originally, however, it was a Christian church, as Pierre Perrier discovered by remarking the west-east orientation of the underlying ruins, while all the other Chinese pagodas are oriented south-north.

3° In the legend of Buddhist origins in China, we read that the two alleged monks who came from India brought with them a “sûtra”, a sort of popular Buddhist catechism presenting the sermons or moral counsels of Buddha. It happens that this “sûtra” was composed of… forty-two texts, not one more, not one less. This is the number of scrolls of the Christian missionaries! The copying is obvious, right to the very word, because “sûtra” is said to come from the Aramaic souartha, which means “good news” made up of the words and deeds of a given person. Thus it is that the “good news”, no, the Buddhist “bad news”, was substituted for the Catholic Gospel!

4° The worst is perhaps the appropriation and the misrepresentation of the figure of the Blessed Virgin. In Chinese Buddhism today there is the bodhisattva Guanshiyin, – she, it is said, “who pays attention to the voices of the world”. She is commonly known as Guanyin and also called “goddess of Mercy”. She is one of the key concepts that was introduced by the “Great Vehicle”, the broader form of Buddhism, more syncretistic than the “Little Vehicle” of Northern India. This figure of the “goddess of Mercy” experienced an immense popular success that has never flagged.

Now, Perrier found in the name of Guanyin itself its Aramaic origin:

« We have to return to the word of Yahweh-the-One-who-is to Moses by the voice of His angel in the Burning Bush: “I have witnessed the affliction of My people in Egypt and have heard their cry of complaint against their slave drivers.” (Ex 3:7) After the liberation from the bondage of Egypt, there follows the expression of His mercy, by the serpent of bronze (Nb 21:4-9), from the top of which He protects His sinful, punished and soon repenting people. God, however, reveals His full mercy by the Incarnation of His Son in the womb of a Virgin and by His death on the patibulum of the Cross. The “Holy of Holies” is called gawaia dal gou in Aramaic. Combined with the word for mercy, ‘hnan, for the world here below, it becomes gaouaia ‘hnan that the Chinese hear as guan: “to perceive from afar”. To perceive what? Shiyin, news from here below. Here is Guanshiyin, commonly pronounced Guanyin, so often represented as a Virgin with the Child. » The demonstration is irrefutable!

If only Buddhism had invented that before Christian revelation, we would have been able to see a sort of preparation, a mysterious action of the Holy Spirit disposing souls to understand the mystery of divine Mercy, incarnated in the Virgin Mary, but after, and taking the place of our sweet Mother of Mercy preached by the Apostle St. Thomas, it is once again a ruse of Satan, preventing poor humans from having recourse to Her intercession.

As for Perrier, he concludes: « All of this calls for a complementary historical study [in situ, if the Chinese government permits it! Also in Paris, in the archives of the Foreign Missions, if the Fathers are willing also!] We, however, already see how the teaching of the Apostle Thomas regarding Mary the Mother of Jesus-Mercy, allowed, in an elaboration within Chinese culture, the inclusion of a merciful component for all men. »

He does not see the action of the Devil, but he quite rightly adds: « Christian Mercy has its source in God as revealed by the prophets it is totally alien to the Confucian doctrine. It is also far too altruistic in its application to men, according to the model of Jesus, for the Taoist doctrine. » (p. 178) Men would never have been able to invent the idea that the All Powerful is very merciful and compassionate, and that the Virgin Mary is the intermediary of this mercy and compassion. If they integrated it into their system as the Buddhists did, for which they are greatly praised today, they have cut it off from its divine source, for the misfortune of the Chinese people and others.

REHABILITATION OF THE MISSIONARIES OF THE PAST.

Pierre Perrier, who is excellent in his entire inquiry and his demonstration, unfortunately concludes it in a feeble manner and, it seems to us, sidetracked from its object. We see him forced to sacrifice to the Masduist ideology, daughter of Vatican II, of Gaudium et Spes in particular:

« It is a matter of establishing a very humble relationship among men, a relationship which, within civilisations and cultures, leaves as few archaeological traces as do relationships within families, among the scattered brothers of a same mother! We must leave cultures, these attentive mothers [sic!], free to give the best of themselves to their respective children. This restored or re-established liberty (it has hardly fully existed in China for a good thousand years) will permit a discrete leaven of Christianity, which has been in slow action for two thousand years, to work fully on the very generous dough of the immense Chinese people… » (p. 224)

Is this all that he draws from his discovery of Kong Wang? In that case, it is not worthwhile. It could be shown that he renews in his own way the error of the Nestorians of the sixth century under the T’ang dynasty, who were above all careful not to clash head-on with the beliefs of the Hindus, the Buddhists and the Taoists whom they encountered in their missionary expansion towards the East.

Likewise, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, Matteo Ricci and his disciples sought at all costs to find points of agreement with Confucian men of letters. Perrier is honest enough to admit it: this great effort of acculturation had « no popular impact ». He points out that the work among the population would come afterwards, humbly, a work principally carried out by the Foreign Missions or the Lazarists.

These missionaries who went to China to brave all the dangers, persecution and even martyrdom, for the sole purpose, St. Francis Xavier used to say, of « freeing the souls made captives of Lucifer for more than a thousand five hundred years » – he thus went back to the first centuries, to the arrival of Buddhism in China! – were the true disciples, the heirs and continuators of the work of St. Thomas. The discovery of Kong Wang allows us to establish this spiritual affiliation, and to rehabilitate, ipso facto, a whole host of missionaries of past times, so odiously slandered today.

THE APOSTOLIC KERYGMA, STILL RELEVENT!

It also allows us to rediscover the apostolic kerygma in its full purity and radicalism: St. Thomas preached the Cross in China, that is to say, Jesus crucified for our redemption, and the Resurrection, that is to say, Jesus in His glorious Body that he, the incredulous Apostle had touched with his hands. He preached this Heart pulsating with love, the beating of which he had felt, but also the Eucharist and the Holy Trinity, and finally the sweet Virgin and Her Child. The Church of China only has to draw, under the authority of Peter and of his successor, from the message of her founding Apostle, engraved in the stone of Kong Wang Shan.

The Apostle bore witness to this invincible faith that overthrows mountains until his death, because upon leaving China after having founded the Church there, he returned to Meliapouram, on the southern coast of India (present-day Madras-Chennay), where he was martyred on 3 July 72 a.d., his heart pierced by the spear of a furious Hindu. His tomb, ravaged by the Muslims, was restored by the Portuguese. It still conserved, when it was opened in the last century, the remains of his bones and the spearhead that had struck him, as well as coins from the reign of Nero.

Today when « the Chinese people are profoundly disenchanted under the influence of the false doctrines of the past and of the corruption of today », when we see a growing « spiritual void » (cf. Xavier Walter, Was Confucius waiting for Jesus Christ? 2008), it is the moment to resume uncompromisingly, without interfaith or any other invention of Satan, the announcing of this apostolic kerygma, under the standard of the Immaculate, « the Holy Mother » of China and its true Empress.

« Indicating to passers-by her newborn Child, Pierre Perrier writes, She invites with a movement of Her hand the Eastern world and, through it, the whole world to love and follow Our Lord and Our God. Before Him, Thomas and his spokesman for the Chinese Empire remain standing to proclaim His Word and celebrate His mysteries, presenting to it the Cross and the Gospel of Truth, the Good News for yesterday, today, and tomorrow… »

The Catholic Counter-Reformation in the 21st century
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