Answers some questions on the official position of the SC on St. Thomas, whether the Apostle made bishops in Kerala, and why bishops came from Antioch:

Q.1. What is the official position of the Malankara Jacobite Syrian Orthodox Church concerning the arrival of St. Thomas in Kerala?

Just as in the case of all Syrian Christians, to the Malankara Jacobite Syrian Orthodox Church of Kerala the arrival of St. Thomas the Apostle in Kerala and the evangelisation of their ancestors in the 1^st c.AD is an integral and irrefutable fact which forms the key foundational narrative of their historical origin.

However, this is refuted by most Church historians especially in Western academic circles, a trend that appears to have originated in the early decades of the 18^th century.  Countless analyses of the Syrian Christian tradition, its rejection, and proposals of alternative theories and their amplifications have been attempted over the past three hundred years.  With the proliferation of books and treatises written in this vein, these have gained strength to the point where these new theories are presented as ‘facts’ by scholars. 

The main argument is that the St. Thomas tradition in India is a ‘myth’, and a product of ‘imagined and artificially created tradition’.  They based this on the ‘evidence’ that long-distance travel at the time was difficult to the point of improbability, that when early Church writers mentioned St. Thomas’ mission field as Parthia, Medea and India, the ‘India’ referred to was not South India but perhaps Afghanistan or Arabia, that according to Eusebius, St. Thomas was martyred in Calamina and not Mylapore, thus placing the Apostle in Mesopotamia to the end of his life,  and that of finding inconsistencies in the account given in the 2^nd century Gnostic book called Acts of Thomas.  They then proceed to put forward many theories on how Christianity probably arrived in S. India, such as that it was introduced gradually by intermittently arriving un-named merchants in the 3^rd or 4^th century.

However, it can be seen that not a single one of these new theories is reliable or standing on good evidence. One of the striking points is that there is no other place in the world that link their Christian origin to the evangelical work of St. Thomas in such detail as that of the Kerala Christians, and no other place that claims this Apostle’s martyrdom and entombment except Mylapore in India.  In fact, after critically examining each of these new theories with an open mind, the reader is compelled to conclude that the new theories stand on even weaker ground than the St. Thomas tradition of S. India.

It is significant that European missionaries and travellers from the 14^th to the 17^th century in their accounts had never doubted or questioned the St. Thomas tradition of South India.  Historians and doctors of the JSOC, from St. Ephrem of the 4^th c. to the late Patriarch Moran Mor Ignatius Yacoub III in 1948, and many others in between reaffirm the tradition of India regarding St. Thomas.

Details and citations can be seen in the following talks:

St. Thomas Part 1: the Blessed City of Edessa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WeK858UTKc

St. Thomas Part 2: A critical evaluation and refutation of Western scholarly arguments rejecting the SC tradition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR_gYZhSTLQ

St. Thomas Part 3: the Kerala Jacobite Syrian Christian tradition. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqXXKbmlH9A

Q.2. Did St. Thomas the Apostle consecrate bishops as his successors?

It is consistently seen in SC histories that St. Thomas conferred priesthood on 4 families in Malankara: Shankarapuri, Pakalomattom, Kalli and Kaliyankavu. (Some histories say two families, mentioning the first two.)  But the Apostle did not appoint a bishop as the head of these priests, and as his own successor. 

In none of the literature available so far, nor in any of the Ancient SC Ballads, nor in the traditions of the Syrian Christians, is there a mention that St. Thomas the Apostle ever made such an appointment. 

Q. 3. Who started sending bishops to Kerala, and by what authority?

In all the available literature of the SC of Kerala, there is no mention of a named successor to St. Thomas, and after the Apostle’s martyrdom there were no bishops in Kerala for the next nearly 300 years, that is, until 345CE. In 345AD, the Patriarch of Antioch and the Catholicos of Seleucia (who was his suffragan bishop, residing in Persia) sent Mar Joseph of Edessa to Kerala.

The legitimacy of this action is questioned by 21^st century Indian Orthodox Christians in Kerala.  But this is a tradition that has existed in Christendom for nearly 1500 years, which Church historians accept as true history.  From the time when the Emperor Constantine adopted Christianity and convened the Council of Nicaea in 325CE, we have written records which attest to this. The three chief cities of the Roman Empire – Rome, Alexandria and Antioch – already had large populations of Christians, and a bishop governed them from these cities. We see in Canon 6 of the Council of Nicaea, these bishops were re-affirmed as Heads of these cities, and the surrounding geographical areas were assigned to them to govern. From the Council of Constantinople in 381 when Constantinople was also added to this list, the Patriarchs (or Papas / Holy Fathers) of these 4 centres of Christianity were assigned the regions of the then known world in the four cardinal directions, that is Rome and all the West, Alexandria and all the South, Constantinople and all the North, and Antioch and all the East. Moreover, by Canon 15 of Nicaea, the Patriarchs / bishops were prohibited from appointing bishops or ordaining priests in territories other than their own.

In this manner Antioch alone came to have the governorship of Christians in all the Eastern regions, including India.

Just as there is no ‘Throne’ of Apostles St. Andrew or St. Mathew or any other Apostles, St. Thomas also did not establish a ‘Throne of St. Thomas’ in India.  This is because there is only One Church, and, by the command of Jesus, that Church of the Faithful was established by St. Peter, which for ease of governance was divided into four in the 4^th century.  Naturally, as the people came from diverse places and cultures, their rites, rituals and traditions evolved in diverse ways.  But it is also true that for reasons of politics, wars, nationalistic sentiments and power-struggles, some regions broke away from these four centres, and created for themselves autocephalous Churches. 

While it is the legitimate right of some people in India to break away from the Mother Church and create such an autocephalous ‘Indian Church’, it is illogical to claim that their bishop is seated on the ‘Throne of St. Thomas’ as such ‘thrones’ of individual Apostles do not exist in Christendom.

See:

1. Canons of the Council of Nicaea, Canon 6 &15: https://earlychurchtexts.com/public/nicaea_canons.htm

2. Canons of Constantinople, Canon 2:

https://earlychurchtexts.com/public/constantinople_canons.htm

3. History of the Christian Church, Volume I, by Schaff, Philip, 1819-1893; . Chapters IV, X, XI.

https://archive.org/details/historyofchrist01scha/page/n19/mode/2up

4. History of the Christian Church, Volume II, by Philip Schaff, 1819-1893; . Chapter IV.

https://archive.org/details/historyofthechri009648mbp/page/n13/mode/2up

5. Church history of the first two centuries. by Johann Lorenz Mosheim, 1694?-1755, tr. by Maclaine, Archibald, 1722-1804. Publication date 1847. Chapter II.

https://archive.org/details/mosheimschurchhi00mosh/page/98/mode/2up

Q.4. Why did Antioch send Bishop Mar Joseph of Edessa to Kerala/Malankara in 345AD?

It is a historically accepted fact that in the middle of the 3^rdc., a man called ‘Mani the Persian’, who was a heretic and a sorcerer from Seleucia-Ctesiphon, came to S. India/Kerala.  He introduced a new religion called Manichaeism in Persia and S. India.

Through persecution and forcible conversions to Manichaeism, he and later his disciples were able to reduce the Christian community of St. Thomas Christians in India nearly to the point of extinction.

As a result of this, the final remnant of 64 families of Christians in Kerala had no priests and no teachers to hold the people together in the True Faith.  At this point, the SC’s narrative says that St. Thomas appeared to Mar Joseph of Edessa in a vision and urged him to help the Christians f India, and thus leading to the eventual arrival of Bishop Joseph and 450 people from Edessa, Jerusalem, Nineveh and Baghdad, under the leadership of Knai Thoma.

The SC trace the beginning of an ecclesiastically well-ordered Church with the three Orders of priesthood, a set Liturgy and a set of Rites and practices from this period.  They believe that Mar Joseph and Knai Thoma reinstated the Pakalomattom family as the hereditary holders of priesthood in Kerala, in recognition of St. Thomas’ initial appointment.

From this point onwards, successive bishops arrived in Kerala appointed by Antioch, and this continued for the next 1300 years, that is, until Mar Thoma I was consecrated by bishop Mar Gregorius Ab’d al Jaleel of Jerusalem, in 1665.

(For details, see post: ‘First Syrian Migration of 345AD‘)