I still don't have a lot of time to blog, so instead I'm going to re-post (with some modifications & updating) a comment I made in response to a question about alternative Christianities in the early centuries of the church (e.g. Gnosticism, Docetism, Arianism, etc.) and why "orthodox" Nicene Christianity eventually won out. I've been studying this stuff even more thoroughly in recent seminary classes (especially my "Early Church and Roman Society" class where we're actually reading a lot of the primary texts from way back then), so I have even more insight to this than I did then, though for the most part what I said has simply been confirmed.

Anyway, based on these studies, my feeling is that the prominence or legitimacy of alternative early Christianities is sometimes over exaggerated. I've often heard it presented as if groups like the various types of Gnostics or their collections of books were merely alternate but equally legitimate interpretations of the Jesus tradition - as if the difference between them and what became orthodox Christianity was no more significant than the difference between say, Methodists and Baptists.

In reality however, many of these sects were not just alternate Christianities, but really radically different religious belief systems that merely borrowed certain Christian texts and terminology and combined them with other mystical philosophies or religions. For instance, when I read the Nag Hammadi texts I am struck by their utter dissimilarity from anything you find in the Hebrew scriptures or the canonical New Testament writings. The closest analogy I can find is the difference between Mormonism and mainstream Christianity these days (though even that's not perfect since even the Mormons are probably closer to mainstream Christianity than most of the Gnostics were). Maybe an even better analogy would be some of the New Age-y cults out there that try to paint Jesus as some type of Higher Consciousness guru or swami, but with almost zero connection to the Jesus of history.

The other point to remember is that many of these early sects are much later developments. While all of the canonical gospels and the letters of Paul, John, and Peter can easily be shown to have been written in the first century, and usually within a generation or two of Jesus' ministry; most of the Gnostic gospels and other non-canonical texts cannot be shown to be any earlier than the mid to late second century (i.e. over 150 after Jesus) and most from he third or fourth century. It is for this reason primarily - i.e. the historical proximity to Jesus and the first apostles - that the canonical writings were preferred by the early church and were listed as such by many early Christian writers.

Of course, groups like the Gnostics, whose theology was so far different from orthodox Christianity as to be a different religion entirely, are somewhat different than early Christian groups like the Arians, Nestorians, or Copts (to name just a few) who were not outside of the mainstream of the Christian church, but who had differing ways of understanding the divinity and humanity of Christ. While I wouldn't say that these differences are unimportant, I would say that the disagreements between these groups were more akin to the denominational differences we have today, than they were to the radical differences between gnostics and Christians.

So why did the Nicene view triumph? I'm not entirely sure. There is the traditional answer, which is that it is the correct view, so the Holy Spirit directed the church to accept it.

Then there is the cynical, DaVinci code type answer, which is that political pressures by Constantine and powerful bishops conspired to suppress alternative views. While there is some truth to the fact that political interests had some influence over the process (especially in regards to the Emperor's desire for uniformity among Christians), this answer also conveniently ignores the facts that 1) Constantine himself preferred Arianism, and 2) that there really weren't any such thing as "politically powerful" bishops at the time of Nicaea, as Christianity had only recently gone from being a persecuted minority religion to being at least permitted (though not yet officially endorsed) by the Edict of Milan.

Personally I take a different view than either of these, which is simply that this is how the church decided things back then, through these sorts of ecumenical councils, and this is what they decided. There was a lot of argument and disagreement but in the end they reached a statement that most, if not all, could agree to. In fact, much of what was agreed on at Nicea (and at later councils like Chalcedon) was a kind of both/and compromise position that did its best to reconcile varying opinions. Since almost all currently existing churches today are descended from those who accepted the creed formulated at Nicaea, that statement is still held in high regard today. Though I suppose if someone wanted to make an argument that the Arians or Nestorians or whomever actually had a better way of looking at the dual nature of Christ than Nicene Creed does, and suggest that we ought to adopt that instead, they could certainly attempt to do so.

Indeed, that's my approach for all of these early "Christianities". I don't just engage them just on the historical level, trying to figure out who believed what, when. I also consider them as "live options" for my own belief. In other words, the question for me is not just whether Gnosticism was or was not an authentic expression of Jesus' teachings, the question is also whether or not Gnosticism is a persuasive view of the world to me. Would I want to be a Gnostic? Do I agree with their beliefs? Likewise, with other Christological views, do I think any of them are more right than the one expressed by the Nicene Creed? Nicaea isn't unquestionably right just because it's what became dominant, but it's not necessarily wrong for that reason either. As much as possible I want to evaluate each of these theologies and worldviews on their own terms and see which make the most sense to me. Speaking personally, when I do that, more often than not I do find myself landing on the "orthodox" option in the end. But I'm also glad that I've arrived there by my own effort and not just because I felt compelled to blindly accept some creed (nor compelled to disbelieve it simply because I can see the historical/political factors that influenced it).

Labels: Gnosticism, history, theology

Today is International Women's Day, a day dedicated to the celebration of women’s social, economic and political achievements worldwide, and I'm celebrating by participating in the IWD Syncroblog my wife is organizing. She specifically asked us to write about women in the Bible, and I couldn't help but think of some of the things I've been learning in the "Early Church and Roman Society" class I'm currently taking at Austin Presbyterian Seminary. It's a fascinating class all around, and, fortuitously enough, we've actually just started discussing the roles of women in first-century cultures. Understanding this context is essential, I think, to understanding how the New Testament addresses the role of women in society and especially the early church. We have to know what it stands in contrast to in order to understand how revolutionary the Bible was for its day in regards to women.

First off, it's important to recognize that when talk about the cultures of the New Testament, we're not just talking about one monolithic thing. In our class we actually distinguished four different sets of cultural expectations that could have provided the setting for the New Testament writings about women: Jewish, Roman, Classical Greek/Athenian, and Macedonian/Hellenistic (I was intrigued to discover that Hellenistic - i.e. post-Alexander Macedonian -attitudes towards women were somewhat different than the older, Classical Greek ideals.) We also distinguished between upper and lower class gender norms, as well as cultural ideals versus actual practice.

I can't get into all of these here, but for this post at least, I did want to focus specifically on Jewish attitudes towards women in setting of the gospels. While of course we can't just disregard the Roman, Greek and Hellenistic contexts either since 1) many of the gospels were shaped within those settings, and 2) Roman and especially Hellenistic norms were certainly an influencing factor on Jewish culture in first century Palestine, when we look at the context of Jesus' teachings the Jewish cultural setting is primary and provides the baseline for everything else. The most intriguing thing I discovered in my class discussion was that there was apparently a pretty sharp divide between theory and practice among the Jews of Jesus day. Textual evidence (mainly from the rabbis) rarely talks about women except in regards to cleanliness laws, and, unlike other ancient Mediterranean cultures, there were no special festivals or days dedicated to women, or any specifically female civic or religious societies in first-century Judaism. When women are mentioned by the rabbis, it is basically just to recommend that they be kept separate from the men both in the synagogue and at home, and that they not be seen in public any more than necessary.

Archaeological evidence (e.g. tablets, inscriptions, architecture, etc.), however, shows that most of these rabbinical restrictions were rarely (if ever) enforced in actuality. For example, while the early rabbis wanted to have a separate "women's section" of the synagogue, archaeologists have yet to uncover any first century synagogues with such a partition. Likewise, while the rabbinical writings generally restrict theological training to men, ancient inscriptions indicate that in actuality many women did receive instruction in the Torah. Or consider the gospel narratives themselves. While written norms wanted to keep Jewish women indoors and away from the public sphere, in the gospels we see Jesus frequently encountering women out and about in society. The inevitable conclusion, as my professor pointed out, is that the picture of first century Jewish women as cloistered and segregated is not much more than an unrealized "ideal" created by a small handful of influential (male) rabbis. It may have been what the religious leaders thought "ought" to be the case, but the actual lives of real people were far different.

We also pointed out that a lot of this discrepancy probably had to do with socio-economic realities. Whether we're talking about Roman, Greek, or Jewish culture, the rules that apply to upper-class women are often simply impossible for the working class poor to abide by. When you're barely making it (as most people in this time period were) everyone, male or female, does whatever is necessary to survive. The rabbi can talk all he wants about how women shouldn't be out in public, but when your family's very survival depends on a wife or daughter going and selling your wares in the marketplace, religious ideals are usually going to take second place to economic realities.

Looking at it in this light, I can't help but draw a comparison with the situation in a lot of conservative churches these days. I can recall sitting in very culturally and theologically conservative churches and listening to the pastor tell his rural, working-class congregation that God's ideal for the family is for women to be stay-at-home-moms and for the men to be out working in the world as the breadwinners. And I recall looking around at the wives and mothers actually present as he said this and realizing that the vast majority of them didn't have any choice but to work outside the home. Given the hard realities of a depressed rural economy, most families simply can't survive on a single income anymore. What this pastor was preaching had no relevance to the actual lives of his people, and did little more than create guilt complexes for those women who were being told that they were disobeying God by doing what was necessary to provide for their families.

In these sorts of contexts then Jesus' teachings and example in the gospels is truly liberating. Rather than laying heavy burdens on his listeners by agreeing with the unrealistic ideals of the Pharisaical rabbis, Jesus stepped into the reality of women's lives and affirmed them where they were at. Never do we see Jesus telling a woman to retreat from engagement in society or to simply stay in their place as women. In fact, when Martha rebuked Mary for leaving her feminine role and daring to go receive rabbinical training along with the men, it is Martha, not Mary, that Jesus chastises. Likewise, we see Jesus out in public engaging in theological dialogue with women (e.g. the Woman at the Well, the Canaanite woman, and Martha herself after the death of her brother Lazarus), welcoming their presence as followers and disciples, and enlisting them as the very first witnesses to the resurrection. Jesus countered the dominant ideology of his day by dignifying the roles women were already playing in society and expanding their roles as participants in his mission. Rather than seeing themselves as victims of economic circumstance falling short of God's ideal, women could see their active, productive roles in public society as valuable assets for the kingdom of God. As my own experience in the aforementioned church bears out, this is a message that still needed for many women today.

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Labels: feminism, history, theology

I just finished a really fascinating book comparing the Roman Empire to America (hence the title "Are We Rome?") especially in regards to the factors that led to the "fall" of the Empire and whether we are repeating their mistakes. The author, Atlantic Monthly editor Cullen Murphy, draws several provocative comparisons - the similarity between the capital cities of Rome and Washington, the over-dependence on military power and illusion of military invincibility, the increasing privatization of government functions, the false stereotypes of foreigners and attitude of superiority towards other nations, and the similar struggles with issues of immigration. Of course he points out many dissimilarities as well. Murphy sums up his observations towards the end of the book:

Are we Rome? In a thousand specific ways, the answer is obviously no. In a handful of important ways, the answer is certainly yes. As societies, America and Rome are built on different premises. As people, Americans and Romans cherish different values. But Rome and America share certain dangerous traits - habits of mind and behavior. America and Rome also face similarly fraught circumstances, arising both from inside and from outside.

After reading this book I'm more convinced than ever that America is in fact an empire. The terminology and the structures of government may change, but the fundamental realities are the same. However, I was also struck by one key difference in particular, which has to do with what Murphy said about the difference in values. If I had to sum-up and simplify the distinction I would say that the difference between America and Rome is that America is an "empire with a conscience".

What I mean is that while Rome embraced and even celebrated its imperial status and conquest of foreign nations, the casual cruelty and predatory violence in everyday society, and its glaring socio-economic inequalities, America at least is conflicted and troubled by its own practice of similar realities. We have developed a sense of conscience in the intervening centuries since the fall of Rome. We at least pay lip service to values like equality, compassion, democracy, and common decency, and would honestly be shocked and repulsed by some of the common practices of Roman society (the Gladatorial Games come to mind).

I don't say this to let America off the hook. Caring about certain values is still not as good as actually practicing them. In the end, is it really any better to say "Well, at least we feel bad when we act like every other oppressive, violent empire in history"? In some ways, it only makes us more hypocritical, and perhaps even blinds us to our own injustices. It's pretty easy to get caught up in the great ideals of America and gloss over the numerous times we have failed to actually live up to them.

But it is something. Having a conscience - developing a societal sense of compassion and justice for all - is a major step forward in human history. And while obviously this has been a complex moral evolution with many different influences and causes, I can't help but think this is an example of how the kingdom of God really is the on the move in history. Jesus' commands to "love your neighbor as yourself" and to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" (the bedrock foundations of any social justice or compassion) have planted a seed in the human story that has slowly and gradually born fruit over these many long centuries.

Of course, the last thing I want to imply is that this is a solely American, or even solely "Christian" thing. Obviously this same moral progress has been true for many nations around the world, and obviously many other religions have long been teaching similar truths to those of Jesus (though to me that is simply more corroboration of the truth of Jesus' kingdom message). The frame of reference for this book was "Rome vs. America" but the social and moral changes that have occurred in the past 1500 years affect all societies to one degree or another, not just America, and not just Christian societies.

Anyhow, if anything, the one major edge that America (and other similarly affected societies today) have over Rome is this sense of conscience - the ability to be self-critical and to desire and work for improvement. It's hard to overestimate how important these traits are. But of course, for these traits to bear fruit requires actually listening to our consciences and then acting upon them. It does no good if we simply ignore our faults, or even say that pointing out faults is "un-American or "un-patriotic". (Wouldn't the true patriot want to help her country see its faults and overcome them?) That's why I think it is more important than ever for the church to embrace her role as a prophetic voice to the nations - to call them to repentance for their injustices and point the way forward into the values of God's kingdom. If we don't do it, hopefully others will, but really, we should be leading the way.

Labels: history, politics