Cicirelli 1 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. Cicirelli 2 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.” Cicirelli 3 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 Cicirelli 4 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. Cicirelli 5 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 Cicirelli 6 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 Cicirelli 7 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. Cicirelli 8 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. Cicirelli 9 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.
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