The Gospel According to the East

In the mid 90s Shoujo Magical Girl Warrior Anime Wedding Peach in almost every episode the title character in her proto Team Rocket Motto style speech expressing her disapproval of the monster of the week's actions declares "I will NOT forgive you".  However by the end of the episode that is proven wrong, she is actually very forgiving, even the main big bad is redeemed in the end.  And in at least one episode this alleged refusal to forgive is contradicted within seconds of proclaiming it.

The God of The Bible never expresses a refusal to forgive nearly that unambiguous, but I do think it's a good analogy for how to look at the many passages of The Bible that make people think of Yahuah as some angry God of vengeance.  The passages that make critics of my soterology think Jesus clearly isn't going to save everyone even though several key passages of Scripture clearly say He will.  Yes when He's angry He sounds like no one has ever been angrier at anyone then He is at His children.  But as Psalms 30 and 103 say His anger only lasts for a moment.

This is no where near the only time Anime speaks to my view of The Gospel and God's True Nature.  It shows up elsewhere in the Magical Girl genre like Daybreak Illusion which I talked about in early June, it's in Nausicaa of The Valley of The Wind and SSSS.Gridman and in a post I made about Higurashi.

Soterology isn't the only area where I feel Western Christianity has been corrupted by 15 centuries of mixing with Platonic Philosophy and Roman legalism.  But to critics of what I believe, me unapologetically saying I see the True Biblical Gospel more in the fiction of Japanese Pagans then American Evangleicalism seemingly proves their point.

I also have posts dedicated to proving Universal Salvation isn't Pagan, at least it's not compatible with true Ancient Paganism, (I won't speculate on how Universalist modern Wiccans, Druids, Odnists and Kemites are).  True Ancient Paganism was if anything the opposite, no one is saved, there is no hope of escape from Hades/Sheol.

And actual traditional Shinto mythology is no different, (remember even in Japan Anime is a niche interest).  Izanami and Izanagi are eternally separated with her forever trapped in Yomi.  Otaku Media and also some Shoujo media seem to be the product of a deliberate rebellion against that pessimistic theology even when seemingly working within it.

David Bently Hart in his recent interview with Peter Hiett talks about how a lot of classical Greek plays like Antigone are about a character offering themselves as a willing sacrifice for the good of the community.  He sees the Passion narrative as being like that at first, but the Gospel is the subversion, God rejects the Sacrifice by Resurrecting the Victim.  And that too reminds me of what separates a lot of my favorite Anime from most Western Superhero media.

"Where there is death there will always be Death" is a quote from Men In Black 3.  Everyone knew someone had to die in Avengers Endgame, that they couldn't just undo the Snap without any Sacrifice, I love the film even though I was hoping they'd subvert that and was disappointed when I knew they wouldn't.  The Last Jedi would have actually subverted my expectations if they didn't kill anyone.

But in Anime this is rejected often.  In Magical Girl Anime like Prisma Illya where she is constantly told she can't save both and constantly says NO to that.  As well as in Digibro's Otaku Hero's Journey premise where saying they will fix the world without anyone needing to die is a vital element.  In Steins;Gate the show seemed to be based on saying they can't save both Mayuri and Kurisu and so the character often jokingly called Cristina willingly sacrifices herself, and if it were a normal American show it'd have ended with episode 22, but it didn't.

I'm not saying Western Media never does that, but it's less common and far more likely to be criticized, unless it's Christian media doing it for an explicitly Gospel related reason.  Just imagine what a review of The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe would be like from a critic who didn't know it was a Christian allegory? Aslan's Resurrection would have been labeled a cowardly copout since there were no "consequences".

So the question is, why?  If it's not natural for Paganism to be like this, yet these writers are non Christians often explicitly drawing on Shintoism in these stories.  And according to mainstream history Japan's first and still primary contact with Christianity was via Tridentine Catholicsm.  Why does this one particular subculture keep unintentionally echoing the Gospel?

It could be the same way certain Greek Pagan writings were selectively useful to Paul in places like Acts 17 (Peter Hiett's Acts 17 sermon is pretty good).  That could be the main primary reason and the rest of this post just my wild speculation.

Or maybe it has something to do with the controversial theory that "Nestorian" Christians came to Japan in the 5th-9th Centuries?

The history of the Nestorian schism is more complicated then most Calcedonians and Miaphysites want to make it sound.  It ultimately had little to do with Nesotrius and it was mainly made unfixable by Jusitnian's obsession with condemning Theodore of Mopsuesta, who taught Universal Salvation just as unambiguously as Gregory of Nysaa, but did so from a hyper Literalist rather then Origenist view of Scripture.  Isaac of Nineveh and the Book of the Bee show that this branch of Christianity was where Universal Salvation thrived during the Dark Ages of the Churches West of the Euphrates.

There is no controversy in saying that the Nestorian Church had a strong presence in China during the 7th and 8th Centuries because of the Xi'an Stele, 635 is when they were officially recognized, they likely had presence in the country decades before then.  It is also well known that during the Asuka, Nara and early Heian periods Japan had a lot of contact and cultural exchange with China, for example this is when Buddhism came to Japan (594 is when Empress Suiko and Prince Shotoku issued the Flourishing Three Treasures Edit) as well as the Tanabata festival.  And Christians have a commission to bring the Gospel to the Ends of the Earth, Nippon was as far as they knew the Eastern End.

I don't want to say anything too definitive on any of the specifics of this theory.  It often gets wrapped up in Lost Tribes theories which I'm far more hesitant to endorse.

But I notice that these theories often involve claiming certain figures traditionally viewed as Buddhist to have been actually Nestorians.  The Xi'an Stele used Buddhist imagery like the Lotus Flower, showing these Chinese Nestorians were just as okay with drawing on the local secular philosophies as the Greek Churches were (I do not think all Christian use of Greek Philosophy is bad, I just really dislike Plato and Augustine).  Both religions had a monastic tradition and both claimed to offer "Enlightenment" in some sense.  So I could see reactionary Shinto traditionalists distrustful of any foreign Chinese influence not bothering to distinguish between them.

So is it possible these tendencies of Anime I like are echos of the Gospel of Theodore of Mopsuesta?  I would need a lot more links in the chain to make that argument solid, but it's an idea rolling around in my head.

The Good Gods of Otaku Media are often Goddesses.  That could just be a reflection of Amaterasu as the usual chief Kami in Shintoism.  But I have also argued on my blogs for there being a Feminine side to the God of Abraham.