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The Success of “Christendom”: The Failure of Christianity
What has Jerusalem to do with Athens?
-- Tertullian
In his famous Attack Upon Christendom, the Danish philosopher and theologian
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) distinguishes between “Christianity” and
“Christendom.”1 For him, the former is the truth and the latter is a perversion.
Christendom has become so widespread, so mainstream, that by the middle of the
nineteenth century, Kierkegaard claims, “the Christianity of the New Testament does not
exist at all.”2 In fact, he argues that it hasn’t existed since the Apostles walked the earth:
Christendom has supplanted it. By “Christendom,” Kierkegaard does not only mean the
collective body of Christians around the world. Christendom, more precisely, refers to a
kind of Christianity tainted by the power and philosophy of the state.3 During the second
and third centuries, Christianity defied the odds, going from a religion practiced in small
“house churches” to a religion of nearly six million adherents.4 The things that
contributed to Christianity’s success—the “might” of the Roman Empire and the infusion
of Greek philosophy into doctrine—are the very things that separated it from its historical
roots. We can say, therefore, that what survived into the 21st century is not so much
1
See Kierkegaard’s Writings, XXIII: The Moment and Late Writings (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1998), 237-242.
2
Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers, 1845-1855 (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1978), 544.
3
Kierkegaard, The Moment, 153.
4
Keith Hopkins, A World Full of Gods (New York: The Free Press, 1999), 84.
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Christianity as it was originally conceived but the kind of “Christendom” of which
Kierkegaard speaks.
Succession Crisis
Following the death of Christ, the Apostles were commissioned to “make
disciples of all nations.”5 What was less clear was, once these nations were baptized into
the House of Israel, how would they be organized? Early Christianity seemed to operate
within two distinct and irreconcilable paradigms. One was the paradigm of prophets. On
the road to Damascus, the Apostle Paul experienced a blinding theophany, in which the
resurrected Christ spoke to him. We learn, in the Acts of the Apostles, that, in these last
days, many will be filled with the Holy Spirit and, as a result, will “speak in tongues,”
“dream dreams,” “see visions,” and “prophesy.”6 Out of this paradigm came a
charismatic convert from Phyrgia named Montanus. He believed, along with his
followers (and his two assistant prophetesses), that he spoke with the voice of God, and
by 177 his brand of Christianity had spread to Rome.7 The paradigm of prophets is
especially threatening to hierarchy and to church order because it is premised on the
egalitarian notion that prophecy is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is
available to all faithful believers.8
5
Matthew 28:19.
Acts 2:3-18.
7
L. Michael White, From Jesus to Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 2004),
6
413.
8
Hopkins, 97: “Christianity…for long preserved its early egalitarian sense that
God’s messages had come as an inspiration directly to all believers, who can therefore be
equal in their faith and common humility, as fellow slaves…before the majestic glory of
God.”
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The second—and later—paradigm is the paradigm of Apostles. Ignatius of
Antioch was a strong proponent. As early as 53,9 Paul advised, in his first letter to the
Corinthians,10 that Apostles take precedence over prophets, but evidence suggests that
Paul’s was not the majority view in the church until at least the end of the second
century.11 The Didache, for example, an early second century document, shows no such
hierarchy. Fundamental to this paradigm of Apostles is the idea that the teaching of
Gospel truth, following Christ’s death, ought to be reserved exclusively for those with
apostolic authority. The Apostles knew Christ the best, and so, in His absence, only the
Twelve could be trusted for orthodoxy. Apostolic authority in a given church, then, came
not from birthright but from being taught by the Apostles themselves. It was a custom of
early Christian bishops to trace their authority all the way back to the teachings of an
Apostle.12 This paradigm, at least in theory, ensured “correct teaching” and an orderly
church. It is easy to see why the charismatic revelations of Montanus, revelations that
bypassed apostolic authority and claimed direct authority from Christ Himself, were
deemed heretical by Eleutherus, bishop of Rome at the time.13
The second paradigm laid the groundwork for later Roman intervention. Within
this paradigm, local bishops determined what their churches believed and how they
practiced. It is one thing, however, to teach orthodoxy and orthopraxy and another thing
9
White, 180.
1 Corinthians 12:27-28
11
Everett Ferguson, Encyclopedia of Early Christianity (New York: Routledge,
1999), 94-95. Philip Jenkins, Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two
Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years (New York:
HarperOne, 2010), 78. Jenkins also notes that arguments for apostolic succession carried
much less weight for Eastern Churches because they “knew that the apostles had actually
visited countless small and undistinguished centers.”
12
Hopkins, 81.
13
White, 413.
10
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to enforce them. Because bishops controlled the wealth14 of their particular church, they
could safely exercise their authority at the local level. However, it was not enough that
only one church teach correct belief and practice. Churches needed to agree. With Jesus’
words from John 17:20-2315 fresh in their minds, bishops of the third century feared,
perhaps more than anything else, division. Disputes inevitably broke out among churches,
over issues such as liturgy, Christology, the canon…etc. At this point, there was no
ecclesiastical mechanism in place, no patriarchs, to resolve these disputes, and so bishops
petitioned the state to settle disagreements.16 Keith Hopkins argues that episcopal power
was “key to the church’s success,”17 yet even before the legalization of Christianity, in
313, the power of bishops was becoming increasingly allied with imperial power. The
two had a kind of symbiotic relationship.
According to Hopkins, bishops collaborated “manipulatively” with Roman
officials and accommodated their beliefs because of political ambitions.18 One such
bishop was Cyprian of Carthage. Born a pagan, he strengthened episcopal leadership,
centralized it, by aligning himself with the ideology of the Severan Dynasty, which ruled
Rome from 193 to 235.19 Cyprian was a believer in the redemptive power of hierarchy.20
14
Upon joining a local church, Christians would surrender all of their property to
the presiding bishop, who would then redistribute property to all members, at his
discretion.
15
“‘I ask not only on behalf of [the disciples], but also on behalf of those who will
believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and
I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.
The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are
one…’” (NRSV).
16
Hopkins, 104.
17
Ibid., 125.
18
Ibid., 111. White, 368.
19
Allen Brent, The Imperial Cult and the Development of Church Order (Boston:
Brill Academic Publishers, 1999), 139.
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This close collaboration with the Roman state almost certainly affected the teaching of
church doctrine. “One might easily get the impression,” L. Michael White says, “that the
second century saw the Christian movement growing more and more isolated from
Roman culture even as it was growing more visible in Roman society.”21 However, he is
quick to point out the error in this. The episcopate rose to prominence not despite, or
alongside, Roman power, but because of it. On the sidelines, in Carthage, Tertullian was
deeply suspicious of Christian churches collaborating with Roman authorities. He is
sometimes referred to as the “grandfather of Donatism,”22 a Christian sect of the fourth
century, that refused to mix church and state and labeled anyone who did as a traditor. A
traditor was one who handed over sacred things (Christianity—orthodoxy and
orthopraxy) to heathens (the Roman imperial government).
So while White refers to this period of increasing institutionalization, hierarchy,
and collaboration (with Rome) as the birth of “Christianity,” Kierkegaard, and his
predecessors, would have dubbed it the death of “Christianity” and the birth of
“Christendom.”
The Gospel According to Plato
We know from Mark’s Gospel that Jesus spoke Aramaic and from Luke’s and
Matthew’s Gospels that He had mastery of the Hebrew Scriptures. However, the decision
20
Allen Brent, Cyprian and Roman Carthage (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2010), 251.
21
White, 373.
22
M.A. Gaumer, “The Evolution of Donatist Theology as a Response to a
Changing Late Antique Milieu,” Augustiniana, 2008,
https://lirias.kuleuven.be/bitstream/123456789/220347/1/Augustiniana+PDF+Proof%5B
1%5D.pdf
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to render what now constitutes the New Testament in Greek had monumental effects on
the future of the Christian Movement. Christianity, at least in its first two centuries, was a
religion that cut across social classes. Slaves served as bishops and women as
deaconesses, perhaps even as Apostles.23 Much is made of how many early Christians
were illiterate. Hopkins claims that “by the end of the first century all Christianity is
likely to have included…[was] less than fifty adult men who could write or read biblical
texts fluently.”24 He is careful to add, though, that the literacy rate among the larger
pagan population was no different.
It is an interesting choice, then, on the part of New Testament authors, to write
their gospels and epistles in Greek. Throughout the history of the Roman Empire, Greek
was considered the language of culture and sophistication. There are stories of wealthy
Roman citizens using their Greek slaves to teach them and their children how to read
Homer and Plato.25 So it is possible that the New Testament was written in Greek
(though, it is worth noting, not in particularly erudite Greek) in order to lend the Jesus
Movement cachet among the Roman nobility. The Greek scriptures did draw the likes of
Polycarp, Ignatius of Antioch, and Clement of Rome, known collectively as the Apostolic
Fathers. We can assume they were each educated in the Classics,26 but they hardly agreed
on the proper way to read scripture. The Church of the East, to which Ignatius belonged,
had, in general, an allegorical view of scripture: Jesus was, more than anything else, a
23
See Romans 16:7
Hopkins, 83.
25
Scott McDonough, “The Pagan Milieu: Greco-Roman Religion” (lecture,
William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ, May 26, 2015).
26
Ante-Nicene Fathers: Volume 1, eds. Alexander Roberts & James Donaldson
(Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004), 1, 45. For a description of Polycarp, see also
Irenaeus’s Epistle to Florinus.
24
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teacher, and so His life ought to be studied primarily for moral instruction, not for
history. The Church of the West, representing Clement and (in some ways) Polycarp,
tended to be hermeneutically more literal.27 Marcion of Sinope, who also lived in Rome,
disagreed with an allegorical reading and even sought to harmonize accounts of Jesus’
life, mainly by deleting whatever did not coincide with Luke’s Gospel as he saw it.28
From very early on, Christianity faced many challenges from within. However, in
the second and third centuries, the most trenchant attacks on doctrine came from without,
from pagan philosophers, the most famous of which, according to White, was Celsus (ca.
180). “Celsus took aim at the absurdity of certain Christian beliefs, such as the
resurrection,”29 and the Incarnation. How could Jesus be both man and God? Apologetic
literature represents a tendency among early Christians to want to resolve apparent
contradictions in the Gospel record and thus create an internally coherent theological
system: One Christ and One Church. If these contradictions could be resolved, then their
religion would be on solid logical ground, built upon a rock, and their pagan critics might
even become Christians. Tertullian—and much later, Kierkegaard—did not give in to the
temptation of apologetics. For him, the Christian God was a mystery, was “absurd,” and
this was all the more reason to believe. There was no choice but to believe because
27
Donald Alfred Hagner, The Use of the Old and New Testaments in Clement of
Rome (Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 1997), 349-350. See also St. Irenaeus of Lyons
Against the Heresies, trans. Dominic J. Unger (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), 10.
Though Polycarp lived in Smyrna, in the eastern part of the empire, he seemed to have
imparted a literal interpretation of scripture to his student Irenaeus.
28
John Barton, “Marcion Revisited,” in The Canon Debate, eds. Lee Martin
McDonald & James A. Sanders (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2002), 348.
29
White, 375.
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reason could go only so far. And, for Tertullian, this was not far enough. He was,
therefore, labeled by many30 as primitive and superstitious.
At various theological schools across the empire, arguments raged over the nature
of Christ and over His relation to the Godhead. The philosophies of Plato and Aristotle
were brought to bear on the scriptures. At the School of Alexandria, Platonic philosophy
dominated. Central to Plato’s understanding of the world is his notion of the Forms. The
Forms are eternal, uncreated realities, separate (ontologically) from the physical,
changeable world of experience. The Forms, in a sense, bring about the material world in
which we live; reality on earth is but a shadow of the Ideal world above. Because, for
Plato, there was only one true reality, the realm of the Forms, it is easy to see how One
Nature (or Monophysite) Christology emerged in Alexandria. Justin Martyr, for example,
took Plato’s notion of the Forms and used it as a lens through which to read the Logos in
John’s Gospel.31 The Logos was a perfect reality, a Form, whose “shadow” was the
person of Jesus Christ.
In Antioch, apologists preferred the philosophy of Aristotle. From Aristotle, TwoNature Christology developed.32 Aristotle, like Plato (but to a lesser extent), accepted the
truth of an Ideal, uncreated reality, but this Ideal was not ontologically distinct from the
physical world. Rather, the Ideal was embedded somehow in the physical. Ignatius
defended the Incarnation on Aristotelian grounds, claiming that Jesus became Christ, was
30
There is evidence that, leading up to his adoption of Montanism (and perhaps
precipitating the conversion), Tertullian was “abused” by clergy of the Roman church, in
which he was a presbyter. See Ante-Nicene Fathers: Volume 3, eds. Alexander Roberts &
James Donaldson (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004), 5.
31
Martin Eastwood, “Church, God, and Martyrdom, in Ignatius of Antioch and
Justin Martyr,” July 2003, http://earlychurch.org.uk/article_ignatius_eastwood.html. See
also Hopkins, 329-330.
32
Jenkins, 57.
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merged with divinity, at a particular moment in His life.33 Whether this moment was His
baptism or His resurrection does not matter philosophically.
In his anthropological study of Christianity, Hopkins sums up the early apologetic
effort well. He says that by the time Constantine legalized Christianity, “its improved
status was marked by a gradual cultural infusion…of pagan classicism and Christian
theology.”34 In other words, by the fourth century, trying to determine where “original”
Christianity ended and Greek philosophy began was an impossible task. The two had
become thoroughly entangled. What might have begun as exegesis (extracting from
scripture) turned to eisegesis (adding to scripture).
It is hard to say, in the end, which was more instrumental in Christianity’s longterm success: its collaboration with Roman authority or its use of Greek philosophy, for
apologetics. When it came to internal disputes among bishops, it is clear that churches
preferred to use the strong arm of the Roman Empire to resolve disagreements. As the
episcopate grew in wealth, because of increasing membership, it commanded more and
more respect from Roman authorities. With attacks from the outside, from pagan
nonbelievers, theologians appealed to Plato and Aristotle to justify the risen Christ. But in
the centuries to come, the legalized, institutionalized “Christianity” of the empire would
use both philosophy and brutal violence to convert nonbelievers.
33
34
Ibid., 44.
Hopkins, 103.