Before I go on, I promised back in the 2nd of this series that I’d talk about the problems of the early Catholic Church. I hope I have spent enough time discussing the Enlightenment era and the flaws in Western philosophy in general. But there are good reasons why I still choose them over Christianity. There are a few things that started gnawing at me about Christianity and the more I looked into them, the more I realized they were foundational problems that could not be solved. That is, they weren’t just cracks in the foundation of Christianity; they were demonstrations that there is no foundation.
The first is the consensus on the existence of Jesus. That’s it really. That is, the entire extent of the scholarly consensus on Jesus is that he existed, and maybe that he was crucified. The dates of his life are disputed, his name is in dispute, everything he said is debatable, let alone what he meant, his family life, if he was a spirit or a man who was inhabited by spirit or if he was born God. All of these questions are played out in the scriptures and some of them have led to wars and schisms (John 14). Holy wars are not cool as they used to be. Claims about what someone did in the past are expected to come with data that can be confirmed and facts that are agreed upon by a number of experts. Part of the statement of the consensus on Jesus is that we can’t recreate any of these details from the documents we have, not the four gospels or with the help of the apocryphal documents.
They spent centuries trying to work back to some original theme and what they discovered was there isn’t one. Instead, we get Peter arguing with Paul (Acts 10), Thomas painted as an unbeliever who repents (John 20), and a fourth gospel that is out of sync with the other three. This was expected and normal at the time the scriptures were written. Authors added to and reworked the stories to bring their new insights to them. But now we have modern history which is expected to be accurate and to let us know when something is uncertain. This leads to a confusing mixing of these two different genres. A historical fact like “Jesus existed” is used to claim that everything written using the name “Jesus” is also historically true. It may be true that Jesus died at the hands of the Romans but that says nothing about how that death washed away sins or the details of how he rose or who found him or who saw him later. The truth of one historical fact has very little effect on the truth of most of what is found in the New Testament.
This leads to the second thing, the order of the New Testament. If that collection of books was simply reordered to the order in which they were written, I think we would all have a very different view of the meaning they are attempting to convey. The first book in the New Testament, Matthew, begins with a birth narrative, connecting Jesus back to King David. That makes sense if you are attempting to tell a story that you think is real. But many believe the story of the virgin birth was concocted later to sell people of that time on the idea of Jesus being God. Gods of that time were born of virgins, so Jesus should be too, so you need a story.
If you want to follow how the stories began and were copied and embellished, start with the Book of Mark. It was written first. It has no birth story. It doesn’t have a resurrection story either. Maybe I should say it didn’t have a resurrection story. Many Bibles have footnotes telling you that the last verses of Mark were added on later, to harmonize it with the other gospels. Matthew and then Luke were written after Mark, sometimes copying, sometimes changing stories slightly, sometimes adding a new story. The gospel of John was written decades later.
To further correct the chronological order, all of the works of Paul need to be shuffled to the beginning. All of them were written and its author died before the first gospel was even heard of. Acts talks about Paul, but it was most likely written by the same author as the Book of Luke. Making sense of the different stories and contradictions is hard enough, but if you were to be presented first with a story of a man who only met Jesus in a vision and mentioned virtually nothing of a family or any earthly travels, it would be disconcerting indeed to then find out about Kings hearing of a virgin birth, to read of encounters with priests, of a man having meals, and telling parables. Was Paul unaware of all of this? For me, it’s led me to consider that this is a legend that developed, not a history that was poorly documented.
This project of ordering the books chronologically is complicated by the difficulty of assigning dates to the writings. That is an inexact science, and the authors sometimes attempted to mask who they were and when they were writing. The complete reordering might begin with the “undisputed Paulines”, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. These would be followed by Mark, Matthew, Luke/Acts then John. The job would get more difficult after that as we would need to sort out the psuedepigrpaha (like 2 Thessalonians), the works that were falsely attributed to Paul or other figures of the time. These were either assigned authorship in error by people who didn’t know any better, or deliberately claimed to be an author other than the actual one as a way to legitimize the message.
This is not just a New Testament problem either. Deuteronomy is the fifth book in the Old Testament, but is now known to have been written much later. Maybe most significant is the story of Eve tempting Adam with the apple. Besides simple facts like no apple appearing in the Bible, the story itself might not be a creation story. It may have been written earlier but it was given its place in the Bible by the people who assembled it, not some original author attempting to write a coherent narrative. It’s a folk tale, probably not intended to be an account of the first man and woman. So the entire reason for Jesus, to save us from the sin that got us kicked out of the Garden of Eden, is a mistake of some scholars in the centuries around the Fall of Rome who received a text and did not question its authorship or authenticity. They were told Moses wrote it and that was good enough for them.
With all of these competing narratives and a lack of scholarship, we arrive in 381 AD at the third thing. In that year, soon after Theodosius became emperor of Rome, he declared that he knew the correct version of all of this. Rather than honor other ancient traditions and allow for freedom of expression of a plurality of religions, it was time to get everyone under one system. To do that would require enforcement of these Catholic ideas using his military power and in many cases, the burning of anything and anyone who didn’t agree. This included not just pagan or Jewish places of worship, but Christian churches that didn’t preach the correct doctrine.
“In January, 381, the prefect had orders to close all Arian chapels in the city and to expel those who served them. The same severe measures were ordered throughout Theodosius’s dominion, not only against Arians, but also in the case of Manichaeans and all other heretics.”
It tries to soften exactly what these “severe measures” were but that’s why you shouldn’t get history from only one source, and especially from a source that is biased. By the way, “Arians” here have nothing to do with Nazis. The big problem with them was they were not Trinitarians. They said Jesus was subordinate to God, not part of him. My problem is no one can explain what the Trinity is. Instead of discussing it that though, Theodosius just said he was bored with all the talk and started killing people.
This wasn’t just an establishment of a strong military rule or just a wedding of religion with government it was a closing of minds that had been developing philosophies of democracy and science for centuries. In his book, Confessions, from around 397 AD Augustine wrote, “There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn.” Granted I’m taking this out of context in this short piece. He was confessing his thoughts as a young man and how they led him away from a more pious life. However, from archaeology we can see that technology stopped advancing around this time and we see less works of literature over the next few hundred years. I’m not blaming the Fall of Rome on Christians, but they didn’t prevent it and didn’t even seem troubled by it.
You should check all of my facts here and draw your own conclusions. Nothing I said here necessarily cancels out everything the Church has ever done. It shouldn’t change your relationship to your favorite parable or the community you consider your spiritual home. For me, it led to questions and it was the reaction to those questions from church leaders that eventually led to my lack of a belief in the divinity of Jesus and ultimately anything supernatural.
I came across this meme the other day while looking for something else. It's from a local Lutheran church. It's a nice church. I have friends there. They do good things. I don't know who put this up or how many of them would just agree to it without thinking. Hopefully not too many.
I couldn't confirm the exact quote, but it does paraphrase a work by Augustine, The Confessions. Augustine was born after Christianity was made legal by Constantine and contributed greatly to the work of trying to figure out what St. Paul meant and what the gospels were trying to say. Things like the Trinity were still being hotly debated at the time. Unfortunately, the people who won the debates were from some of the worst, most extreme forms of Christianity. The ones we would today call The Fundamentalists.
They wouldn't have called themselves fundamentalists, because they had not yet decided on what the fundamentals were. Today we define fundamentalists by those who call the Bible the literal word of God and consider Jesus to have been a real person, the son of God, who actually died and bodily resurrected . Back then, they were still debating which writings belonged in the Bible and if Jesus was a man, fully human and fully God, a spirit, a man who was born then possessed by the holy spirit, or what. The difference then was, people on all sides of those debates had some degree of power and influence. Today, suggesting that Jesus was not a physical human, walking around and talking to people, will get you laughed at in most circles, even outside of church.
So, why am I bringing this up? Sure, it's from 16 centuries ago. But here it is on a modern "wall". It's posted by a church that was founded by a guy who protested against a church that was corrupt. The Catholic Church claims to have it's roots in communities founded by all those writers from the first few centuries that Augustine was debating about. Those communities were protesting the corruption in the Roman Jewish community in their time. Churches today will often claim that they are challenging the world order, that they are uncovering the corruption of power, that they are symbolically turning over the tables of the money lenders in the Temple. And sometimes they do. But they also will tell you that you are not good.
Whatever other traditions churches might have, the legacy of them telling you that you are not good enough for God has endured throughout all of them. When you do that, when you convince people that there is something they don't know, and they need to keep coming back to you to figure out what it is, you can get them to do anything. In the case of the late 4th century Christians, they got people to burn the scripture they didn't like, tear down the churches that didn't teach the right brand of Jesus, and to do the same to people who sat in the wrong place and read the wrong books or said the wrong things.
This is not some alternate history. It is well known. It is the beginning of what came to be known as "The Dark Ages". I'm not blaming the Christians for this. The Romans started their own downfall when they kicked out Aristotle and gave power back to corrupt rulers instead of promoting democracy. Something would have replaced that, and we could have done worse, but we could have done a lot better.
After about a thousand years, we did start doing better. Instead of reading interpretations to people, we taught them to read. We didn't treat people like slaves, we encouraged each other to work for each other. We found out genius and inspiration was everywhere if you just gave it room to grow. Seems pretty obvious now, but it was a struggle to get where we are. People like Susan B Anthohy, Rosa Parks, Ghandi, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali continue that struggle today.
All of them fought using reason. They read, understood and developed philosophy that valued human dignity and human feelings. They didn't try to figure out some logic that explained why a God who claimed to be ultimately good could allow for evil in the world. They acknowledged that there is good and evil and they tried to find ways to deal with it. They didn't provide simple answers. They asked for the right to ask the question. They claimed the right to participate. If someone claimed authority by referring to someone from the 4th century who said they weren't good enough, that they could never measure up to some ultimate authority, they questioned that authority. It's the basis for the world of freedom we have today.
Keep what's good from religion if you can find it, but get rid of stuff like this.
When I started this blog I wasn't sure what I was looking for, then it became a search for how the philosophy of science began. Lately I have been asking the question about how or even if religion was reformed. What we call the reformation occurred alongside the beginnings of what we call science. It is almost impossible to disentangle the two. On March 24th I went down to Minneapolis to meet Tony Jones and listen to him talk about his new book on the history of how the resurrection has been interpreted. Two days later I went to a lecture on "The True Meaning of Humanism". Tony has been very responsive to my incessant questions, but Randall Poole, the lecturer of that talk, gave me answers without my needing to even ask. He's a professor at a local Catholic college. I wish I'd known about him 10 years ago.
His talk followed a similar arc of history as mine from last November. Although he is coming from a believer's theological point of view, he agreed completely with my theme that the religion practiced today by the fundamentalists is very much like the religion of Augustine in the 4th century and the politics of those two eras also have parallels. Over half way through his talk I was starting to wonder how he was going to get out of it without renouncing his faith. Our themes departed in the Enlightenment era.
He teaches at the College of St. Scholastica and, according to him, it was that saint along with St. Benedict that developed a humanists theology in the early centuries of Christianity. Their teachings survived the brutal, anti-humanist centuries of Roman Catholic rule and began to emerge again in the 13th century.
He mentioned Kant and Locke but did not give them anywhere near the credit I did. In Locke especially, I find concepts and nearly exact phrases that are passed into the Constitutions of the 18th century democracies. I do not find these words or concepts in the Bible. Poole finds human dignity and hope in the words of the humanist Christian writers. That may be true, but I do not see a strong connection to Christ when they write on humanism.
In my talk, I mentioned the myths surrounding Constantine, everything from how he invented Easter to "corporate religion" to writing the entire New Testament. The break from the more egalitarian, inclusive culture of the early Christians to the Church supported by the Roman army actually occurred over centuries. It can be seen in the subtle debates between Peter and Paul and more clearly in the gospel of John. It continued with Marcion and the Arians. Poole points to the debate between Augustine and Pelagius as a pivotal moment.
The problem with all of this is rarely do we progress to higher forms of human dignity via a debate among intellectuals. When Martin Luther King Jr met with President Johnson, they didn't debate civil rights, they debated the timing and political expediency of enacting civil rights legislation. Abraham Lincoln didn't come up with the idea of freeing the slaves, he just knew it was an idea who's time had come. The United States and the French Revolutions weren't invented on paper in a University and then implemented by some sort of international coalition. They were messy affairs involving corrupt people taking advantage of the idealists and the frustrations of a mass of people who were tired of being oppressed by monarchies.
You can see this clearly in the results. The United States, a country founded on freedom, started with classes of people defined by their sex and the color of their skin being denied the right to vote. Many other human dignities were also denied to them that didn't need to be explicitly stated in the Constitution. The difference though, is those founders knew they lived in a changing world. Change was not something invented in the 18th century, although the pace may vary, it is always part of the human experience. They simply recognized the futility of making proclamations that would stand until the end of time. They created a system that has increasingly included more of the marginalized and the disenfranchised with each succeeding generation.
Because of these new ideas, instead of living with the results of power struggles between elites, we actually have a say in how power is distributed. We expect leaders to not only win a debate, but to provide the evidence of how they arrived at their conclusions. We have learned how to study our world so we can better understand ourselves. We can determine what makes it better. We can find and correct wrongs with our systems without needing to go to war or depose a dictator.
Before I go too far down that road, I'd like to finish this installment with an attempt to meet Randall half way. As he said in his talk, in response to an excellent question about inclusivity from a student, he believes he has come more than half way. I see no reason to argue about where "half way" is and plenty of reason to acknowledge that Randall has come further than anyone I know, without leaving his religion.
For my part, I will give him that something extraordinary took place in the first century. Whether it was a single man or a loose collection of authors, a story was created that has endured. In the midst of brutal oppression, it is a story of peace. It's a story of loving your enemies and finding your own power, your own humanity. I mentioned Tony Jones' new book. At his book signing, he read from the conclusion,
What the ruling powers meant for the unclean, Jesus made clean. They threw Jesus over the boundary of
socio-moral disgust meaning to silence him, but instead Jesus pulled
everyone over the line with him redeeming the previously untouchable,
revealing that we're all 'unclean' and tearing down the wall that
religion had erected.
There is no question that powerful symbolism is in the gospels. But that's as far as I can go. There is a lot of symbolism that is not mentioned by liberal theologians, like blood sacrifices and apocalyptic visions. One version of religion may have been torn into but as with most overthrows, the power structures remain and it is only new faces occupying them. Leaderless, Utopian communities don't last because it's hard to find people to clean the streets and maintain the plumbing.
If we're all 'unclean', then no one can be King and no immutable book of law can be maintained. Administrators of justice have to be answerable to everyone else and new knowledge has to be constantly incorporated. Democracy, with all its problems is the best version of that we've come up with so far. Religion never came close to suggesting it as an alternative.
Randall said early in his talk that we should judge any religion on its humanistic values. He then did an excellent job of judging many Christian leaders throughout history, declaring many of them anti-humanist. He gave me the names of many Christians who were early humanists and influenced others. Eventually they influenced the liberal philosophers and then the modern politicians, leaders of civil rights, women's rights, gay rights and religious reform.
I look forward to learning more about these early leaders. One reason we know about them is they maintained their belief in the official religion of the state. Those who did not, were not published. There was no such thing as self publishing. There were such things as lists of books that were anathema to the Church. It is no coincidence that things changed rapidly when writing could be copied quickly and cheaply using a printing press.
I'm sure Randall is aware of all of this and would be able to respond. The talk was recorded and should be available soon. I'll return to it then.
On Nov 5, 2009, Karen Armstrong was the guest on Speaking ofFaith, a public radio show about life’s big questions. Karen was a nun in the
1960’s, but she realized it was not for her. She has remained interested in the
theologies of the world and in 2008 won the annual TED prize which she used to
launch the Charter for Compassion, an examination and promotion of the idea
that there are good ideas shared across all religions.
In this interview on Speaking of Faith, she told a story of
an earlier conference she had been in called “God 2000”. It was an interfaith
conference examining those shared good ideas. Near the end of it, a man
appeared at the back of the room, yelling somewhat incoherently about how
everyone there was a sinner and they would never accomplish anything because
they did not believe in the right god in the right way. They attempted to
engage him but couldn’t and to the time of the Speaking of Faith interview, Karen
still did not know how it was possible to engage such people at all.
A Great Question
I think it is a great question, how do we as modern people,
attempting to live in a pluralistic world, remain in dialogue with those who want
their ways, the ways codified in centuries old scripture, to be the ways that
the rest of the world adopts? Sometimes called “fundamentalists”, they pose a
problem not just for the secular world which has set up boundaries against
them, but for what are sometimes called “moderate” religious people whose
boundaries are not quite as clear.
At the time, I was a moderate Christian, I would say a
liberal Christian. I had joined a liberal church partly in reaction to the
political world being infiltrated by conservative Christians. I had discovered
Liberation Theology and The Jesus Seminar and Reconciling Congregations, but I
still had not figured out how the core concepts of Christianity differed from
the fundamentalists. I knew my politics differed and my fellow liberal Christians
were saying their politics stemmed from their faith. But I couldn’t see how. I
wondered what I was doing wrong.
To understand how to approach this, I first had to
understand what fundamentalism meant. I had heard it was a recent phenomenon,
that they had hijacked the true faith or even that Jesus’ message had been
corrupted as far back as Constantine. But those were claims, not explanations. I
had to start looking for answers on my own.
The Fundamentals
The “recent phenomenon” part is more about the use of the word
itself. Between 1910 and 1916, a series of pamphlets were written anddistributed for free titled “The Fundamentals”. They contained guidelines about
believing in Christ, the Virgin Birth, the Trinity, the truth of prophecies and
miracles, salvation, the Second Coming and other such standard dogma. They were
a reaction to centuries of critiques of the Bible as literature, known as
Higher Criticism, to Darwin’s new theory of evolution and to the rise of
science as a new source of truth and understanding of the universe.
The beliefs they thought were important should sound pretty
familiar. Jesus was born of a virgin. He suffered on the cross and rose again
to provide salvation for our sins. Jesus performed miracles and fulfilled
prophecies. Heaven is real, hell is real. Jesus will come again and reign over
his kingdom. Creation happened as described in Genesis. God is the Father, Son
and Holy Spirit.
Although the pamphlets are recent, there is nothing new in
the above list of beliefs. Some other beliefs commonly associated with
Christian fundamentalists are actually recent, so I’ll take a minute to run
through those before getting back to what I think the heart of the problem is.
Recent Phenomenon
Intelligent Design: This was a theory that began a little
before Darwin to try to integrate scientific discoveries such as dinosaur bones
and plate tectonics with a God created world. It had other names and ebbed and
flowed in popularity. It could not have come about except as a reaction to
scientific discoveries. Before that it was just assumed God created the
universe, so in a way this is nothing new.
Dispensationalism: This is definitely new. It is an odd
analysis of the Bible saying it is divided into phases or dispensations, and
that we are currently in the final one. In some ways it is just a new look at
the old idea of an end of times.
Bible Inerrancy: The first explicit statement that the Bible
is the inerrant word of God was not written into a church doctrine until the 16th
century by a Baptist church. I don’t wish to argue theology, but I think the
case could be made from statements and writings throughout history that it was
a common belief, a belief so obvious, it didn’t need to be written down.
Existence of an actual hell: The Old Testament definitely
does not have a hell and some say the New Testament doesn’t either. The word
“hell” as used by Jesus was translated from “Gihenna” which was a really bad
neighborhood in Jerusalem filled with burning garbage. It also appears to be a
Greek myth that entered the Jewish community in the 1st century. The
modern reference to “fire and brimstone” began in 1670. So, this one is a gray
area.
Government should be based on Christian principles: It was
the French and American revolutions that codified religion out of government, at
least in terms of a declared faith for its leaders or a faith requirement. So
saying that is “recent” would only mean its return since then. Before that,
Kings were anointed by Popes and before that, in antiquity, religion was part
of daily life, so separating the two was not even in the vocabulary.
Subjugation of women: Although not usually stated that way by
fundamentalists, they do say things about Jesus being the head of the church
and the man being the head of the house. The New Testament has specific
statements about women not speaking in church and although Jesus welcomed women
into his circle, churches traditionally have not. Definitely not new in
principle although new in how it is applied. There is some evidence that the
early Christian communities were much more egalitarian but that ended in the 4th
century. More about that later.
But, who is right?
So putting those few actually recent ideologies aside, the
question remains; did the men who wrote The Fundamentalist pamphlets get it
right? This is a much easier question than you might think. What makes it seem
difficult is that there are 30,000 versions of Christianity, so how can we sort
out what it is right if they can’t? The answer is, that is what Christianity
has always been. There were competing sects from the beginning. That’s why we
have 4 gospels. Peter and Paul argue about how to obtain salvation in their
letters and they don’t settle it. The Book of Revelations was controversial in
the early centuries and some denominations still don’t have it in their Bible and
many don’t read from it. Religion, like philosophy, is defined as a discussion
that is never really settled.
It is not necessary for all us to become theologians and
enter into the fray of arguing about whether or not fundamentalists are right
or not. In fact, it is better to keep some mystery. That is, if you want to
keep people coming back every Sunday. When questions about why God does not
heal amputees can’t be answered, the answer is that God works in mysterious
ways and we can’t know his ways. The most liberal “spiritual but not religious”
person uses some version of that. Most religious traditions have something
about people not being able to know the mind of God, we are supposed to always
only be on a path toward something that we don’t completely understand.
The answer to what is a Christian is very broad. I would put
a minimum requirement of accepting that Jesus did something for humanity. After
that, any argument should only be between Christians themselves. Leave the rest
of us out of it and leave it out of public schools and government. If anyone
brings up that they have a special friend who knows everything, therefore that
friend is right and can’t be argued with, then the argument is over. That type
of absolutism does not belong in the public square and is simply not
reasonable. Unfortunately, for most people who get elected in the US
government, and for many people just getting along in their community, they
have to pick the right special friend.
God is the God beyond God
Karen Armstrong tells the story that the rabbis, when asked
“what is Torah” answered, “it is the interpretation of Torah”. She thinks that
means something about it being good to always be working through these ideas.
She also thinks “God is the God beyond God” means something. She is no more
capable of getting out of the trap of religion than a person who was raised in
a fundamentalist church, home schooled and not allowed to use the internet. If
anything, a fundamentalist has made a deal with God and may at some point
realize that bargain was not made fairly. Their break from religion may be
painful, but it will be clean. A liberal Christian has no such deal and can
continue to find comfort in religion simply by altering their relationship to
it.
I’m thankful that I live in a modern world where there are Christians
who use scripture to support ideals of feeding the poor and being in fellowship
with homosexuals. And it’s great that the government is not arresting them. But
that’s my government. With these modern advances also comes dealing with other
governments and convincing them that it is better to treat their citizens with
the same respect. We’ve tried leaving them to their own devices and that has
not gone well.
When we get to the discussion of human rights, the
usefulness of the religious argument breaks down. The basis of the religious argument
is that God is right. The argument then shifts to who is right about God or
sometimes it is which god. That argument has never been settled and it can be
demonstrated why it never will be. Even if I accept that some god is sending
some people messages, those messages are no more decipherable than the combined
wisdom from all of human history. In my opinion, they are considerably less
decipherable and less useful. We are not going to figure out which religion is
right, we are going to have to figure out how to get along by talking to each
other.
Back to Basics
Getting back to where this came from, the first thing that
made me really question the liberal view of fundamentalists was the Nicean Creed. Very few churches are so liberal as to avoid ever reciting it. It
contains most of what I listed in the above summary of the pamphlets. It goes
all the way back to the 4th century, when Constantine got tired of
those early sects arguing all the time. There are many myths and legends about
what happened at the Council of Nicea, but that motivation for it, to get them
to agree so violence in the kingdom would be reduced, is pretty well agreed
upon.
Often forgotten, is that before bringing the Christians
together to settle their differences in 325, Constantine wrote an edict of
religious tolerance in 313. This allowed Christianity to be practiced without
prosecution from the Roman authorities. Constantine did not make Christianity
the law of the land. That came later. In fact, he at first embraced the Nicean
Creed, but later regretted that. His famous baptism near his death was done by
an Arian bishop. Again, we don’t all need to be theologians and know the
difference between the Arian and Nicean versions of the Trinity, we just need
to know that they were different and that they fought about it.
Depending on who you ask, the fighting either ended or was
taken to a new level in 381 AD. That year, Theodosius, who had come from the
Nicean western half of the Roman Empire to be emperor in the Arian eastern
half, passed an edict declaring Christianity the only legal religion in the
empire. This was fundamentalism on steroids. If you look up Theodosius in theCatholic encyclopedia online, it says he “expelled” Arians from the empire.
Sounds like a nice word, but “ethnic cleansing” would be more accurate.
This was not just a law to support Christianity, it was for
a certain type of Christianity. The details of which involved something about
the Trinity, whether the son comes from the father and/or the Holy Spirit or
some such nonsense (See the link to the Nicene Creed above). Because it was no clearer
then than it is now, enforcing it had its challenges. To do so, the Roman army
was authorized to burn books and the people who attempted to hide them.
Soldiers were not trained in theology and did not spend much effort sorting out
what they destroyed. The next couple centuries were the worst for Catholics
destroying pagan temples and works of philosophy and science.
These are also the centuries when Christianity increased its
following many fold. No wonder, if the empire is not only supporting it and
building churches, but also eliminating your competition. There was descent at
the time that has survived, men such as John Chrysotom, and there are many
today who label this as the time when church was hijacked by “corporate rule”. It
may be true that Augustine used Platonic philosophy to harmonize the gospels
with Roman law and make them acceptable to the elite. But what exactly was
hijacked?
Saint Augustine’s work in creating the final form of the
Nicean Creed has survived all forms of Protestantism. Peter and Paul had
debated circumcision, dietary laws and how to obtain salvation. The more
egalitarian, philosophical days inspired by St. Peter were replaced with the
harsher rules of St. Paul (Note some may argue that the Paul himself was not harsh. I’m
referring the Pauline writings in the Bible that may have had a variety of authors). After a few centuries of
enforcing that theology, common wisdom would be that the Church fathers had
worked out the difficult questions of Jesus’ message for us. A thousand years
later, when more Bibles were printed and in a language more people could read,
that would be questioned.
What you do to the least of these, you do to me
Military force alone was probably not the only factor in
changing Christianity from several small sects meeting in homes, helping their
neighbors and tending to community needs into an integral part of an evil
empire. I think it had to be a flaw in the philosophy itself. There is nothing
wrong with loving your neighbor, a common belief of many successful
civilizations. And the more unique ideas of caring for “the least of these” is
no doubt a reason for Christianity’s longevity. The flaw I believe is that they
kept the idea from Judaism that these moral imperatives were imparted to us
from an absolute authority that could not be questioned.
Worshipping Jesus and praying to the Lord most likely did
not entail working out the details of how to distribute resources to both help
the needy and maintain infrastructure to promote commerce. I doubt those early
Christian communities spent any more time discussing exactly what it means to
turn the other cheek than Christians do today. You would think that someone
would have noticed that the Sermon on the Mount says both to “let your light
shine before men” and “do not sound
a trumpet before thee”. I know of no famous theologian who has ever
mentioned it. It was pointed out to me by a famous atheist. For those early
communities to grow, they would have had to work out these details. I know of
no record of them attempting to do so.
Absolutely right
When all of your loyalty is put into a small set of rules,
whether it be certain scriptures or certain charismatic leaders, there is a
danger. If those rules fail, you are left with no system to come up with new ones.
It is particularly dangerous when those ideas survive a generation or two so
the loyalty is passed on to people who no longer need to prove the power of the
ideas, they only need to claim knowledge of the earlier generations and point
to the past successes. Claiming things were better in the past is always easier
than dealing with the real problems of today. Once the miracles of Jesus were
believed by enough people to create a culture, and some good could be seen
coming out of that culture, the leaders were legitimized. Once it became a sin
to question them, anything they did could be considered legitimate.
In the ancient world there was no difference between
religious and secular life. How you prepared your food, how you dressed, and
who you married was all tied into what you worshipped. Questioning what you
wore meant questioning God. The Greco-Roman world was starting to come out of
that when Theodosius and his might reversed it. He did not do this single
handedly. I am only highlighting one of the many major turning points in the
fall of Rome. For Christian history, it was a significant one.
In AD 409, a Roman law states “If perchance any person
should be convicted of having hidden any of these books under any pretext or
fraud whatever and of having failed to deliver them (for burning), he shall
know that he himself shall suffer capital punishment, as a retainer of noxious
books and writings and as guilty of the crime of maleficium.” It only takes a
few hundred years or so of laws like that to destroy intellectualism. It would
be harder today with mass communication. But people are still trying. The 2012
Texas Republican Party platform states:
“We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills
(HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs
that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery
learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of
challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”
But that’s not my
Christianity
I have covered the origins of Christianity and shown how current Christians are still influenced by those early scholars. But most people don't relate to a 5th century Roman emperor and many don't relate to the Texas Republicans. Some details of how those are connected can be found in my links at the end. I also think most people don't want to think about these early influences any more than they want to think about their founding fathers owning slaves. They say they are different, but don't explain how.
The affect that moderate have on all of this as a whole is,
in short, very little. Moderates may be in the majority, but that is a reflection
of how religion has been changed from the outside. When the Peace at Westphalia
in 1648 took away power from the Vatican the Pope was not happy about it. Since
that time the ideas supported by religions have had to compete on an
increasingly level playing field with ideas coming from the whole of the human experience.
That playing field is still not very level, but it is trending that way for
now.
When the power of religion to organize is used to fight for
something like civil rights, the source of the ideas is secondary to the power
of the ideas. An ideal like equality couldn’t’ be claimed to be from a single
cultural source, or by definition you would not be talking about equality at
all. You would be emulating the pigs in George Orwell’s 1984, saying you were more
equal than those others.
When religion is used to organize and fight for political
gains that include religious intolerance they are opposed primarily by the
ideals of equality, fairness, freedom and the rule of law. If the opposition
state their claims in ethnic terms, it will probably be considered a civil war
and building a multi-cultural coalition will be difficult. The rest of the
world is much more likely to come to your aid if you show you support
egalitarian governance rather than simple military might.
When it comes to important social issues, there is no
distinction between a moderate Christian who accepts homosexuality and a LGBTQ
person who wants to marry and have children and has never been to church. When it
comes to how you treat your neighbor, there is no difference between a moderate
Muslim and the guy next door who was born in Turkey and doesn’t practice the
faith, but he does shovel your part of the sidewalk. And here’s the key point,
the moderates are different from the fundamentalist in the same way the
non-religious are different from the fundamentalists.
To the fundamentalist of course, there is a big difference
between themselves and moderates. Moderates are doing it wrong as far as they
are concerned. To some that’s worse than doing nothing. The fundamentalist
standing outside the abortion clinic doesn’t care if you are a moderate
anything. And, the reasons for me wanting that fundamentalist to stop harassing
people going into that clinic are exactly the same as a moderately religious
person. You can attempt to engage them in a theological debate, but ultimately
the discussion needs to be based on moral principles common to all cultures.
Attempting to have the theological debate just legitimates the idea that proper
interpretation of scripture matters to the unique situations of all the
individuals involved.
But that was then, this is now
Rather than descend further into the darkness of how these ideas were past on for 2,000 years, I’d rather shift to some thoughts about what can be done about it. I have written about that if you want to explore more.
I’ve already mentioned that you can bring your special friend to the public square and claim him or her as your source of inspiration, but understand that is not a logical argument. If when you say, “love your enemies” or “house the homeless” you want to give credit to where you heard that, that’s great, I reference quotes all the time. But the idea still has to be weighed by the merits of the idea. If you say, “follow these rules and be rewarded in heaven, open your heart to the spirit of this one man and you will find understanding and guidance”, I’ll ask you to explain how that works and to give some evidence for it.
End on a high note
We can see examples of combining inspirational voices from
the past with practical steps in the present by paying attention to our
leaders. One of the great speech makers of the 20th century was
Martin Luther King. In one of his last at Gross Point High he said “No lie can
live forever” and he referenced it saying “as Carlisle said”. He wanted us to know who his inspiration was and wanted us to look that person up. As we all
know, he also referenced the Bible frequently. But that was a speech, intended
to inspire and rally to action. If we left it at that, it would not be much
different than scripture.
If he were in a more intimate setting, he might agree that
lies can in fact live for quite a long time. Oppressing the truth is a time
tested tradition. It’s also true that oppressing truth takes resources, it
takes constant pressure. And King did not just make speeches to get people to
protest, he negotiated legislation, he gathered data and made a case to
governments to change policies, he exposed the oppression using evidence and
data and helped developed plans to end it. There was much more to Martin Luther
King than great speeches.
I think people who look to the 1st century for
answers are missing 20 other centuries, also full of answers. It’s easy to say
that empires have failed and philosophies have failed but it’s a lot harder to
figure out why. Martin Luther King is not here to tell us if he thought the
answers were in the Bible, but his words and actions indicate he was looking to
other sources of wisdom in addition to that one.
I’m not so sure looking for answers is the right approach
anyway. It may be we just need to get the question right. Perhaps the question is,
how do we build a caring community that seeks justice and lives in peace? Perhaps
the question is not where is God, the question is where are we?
This is the talk version, with questions from the audience
That title is not some double meaning. I’m going to make the case that
the Fundamentalist Christians are right about what Christianity is. That is,
the Christianity that they practice is what most Christians have practiced
throughout history. Those who say they are wrong usually reach back into the
first couple centuries A.D. to make claims about what Jesus meant or what the
early church fathers did. There are theological arguments for both sides, but I
will be focusing more on how the differences are handled because I think that
is what defines fundamentalism.
There are so many theological interpretations of Christianity today, I
don’t think it is possible to choose one that matches the original. The word
“theology” did not even exist then. There were gods (theos) and words (logia)
to discuss them. There were many gods and many ideas about how the world
worked, and these ideas were competing and changing and would continue to
change. An emperor might even declare himself a god, but people knew that other
emperors did the same thing. The idea of one true god having influenced all
generations and all to come had not taken root.
To make my case, I’ll first need to show where the origins of the term
“Fundamentalism” and how it is used today. To understand that, I’ll look at the
liberalization of Christianity that was happening before that and how it led to
the reaction by the Fundamentalists. We’ll see how that liberalization began
with Erasmus and was further promoted by Luther and Calvin and resulted in
several wars and the complete restructuring of the political boundaries in
Europe. The thread of what could be called liberal or humanist Christian has
existed throughout Christian history, but I will be following the Christianity
that was in power. That power structure began in the 4th century,
related to the often cited Council of Nicea. I will, hopefully, clear up some
of the confusion around that.
I should note that I don’t really care what version of Christianity is
right. I won’t be discussing much about the theology, except when pointing out who
believed what when. What I do care about is how everyone deals with their
differences today. Past fights over theological differences have caused
tremendous suffering and we have much more powerful means to create suffering
today than we ever have before. So we need a better to search for a resolution.
If there is anything we need to learn from the past, it is the manner
in which philosophical differences were discussed by the Greeks before the Fall
of Rome. They were developing the methods of discovering what is true then and
we have refined those methods since but they barely get taught to most people.
We have applied them to democracy, curing disease and exploring space. We can
apply them to how we educate the next generation and make a safe world for them
to live in, or we can draw lines and claim our righteousness.
Let’s get started.
Dictionary definitions of fundamentalism vary and even groups that many
consider fundamentalist don’t use the label themselves, so just what it is can
be debated. Here are all of the theological precepts I could find that are
claimed by one or another fundamentalist group:
Belief in:
The Trinity
The Person of Jesus Christ
The Second Coming
Salvation
The inerrancy of Scripture
Dispensationalism; The interpretation of the Bible that includes periods of changing relationships with God leading up to some sort of end times.
Virgin Birth
Substitutionary atonement
Resurrection of Christ
The creation account in Genesis
Miracles, particularly those of Christ
Intelligent Design
Prophecies have been fulfilled and are being fulfilled now
We are saved by faith, not works
Literal Satan, hell, demons, heaven and angels
Do not believe in evolution
The first five appear in the original pamphlets titled “The
Fundamentals” which will be discussed more in a minute. The others vary widely
and some, like dispensationalism, have many variations. Espousing just a few of
these beliefs would not make someone a fundamentalist necessarily. In fact you
will probably note that some of them seem like perfectly normal beliefs held by
Christians. That is why most definitions of fundamentalism will include not
just these “whats” by also some “how” and some applications of the theology,
such as:
Government should have values based on religion
Unwilling to compromise
Presuppositional arguments for the theology
Subordination of the wife, and women in general
Children should be taught faith beginning early
Radical up to and (for some) including violence
The scope of religious life; where it should be displayed, its inclusion in public spaces, part of public school during ceremonies or prayer in the classroom
Religion test for candidates
Rejection of modern scholarship (theological or historical)
Refusal to recognize scientific theories
Value faith over evidence.
These short versions of the beliefs mask the underlying
complexity that result in long theological works going back for centuries. The
differences described in those works have resulted in 10’s of thousands of
Protestant sects. Some variations find harmony, for instance by saying that
salvation is by faith but we must show our faith through our works, or it is
meaningless. Others isolate verses and claim they are the only correct ones.
This debate begins in the Book of Acts between Peter and Paul and as far as I
can tell is not settled by the end of the New Testament.
Some of these are very difficult just to define, like the
Trinity. Biblical support for it is difficult to find. Augustine wrote an
extensive work on it in the 4th century and even he concluded in the
end that it is a mystery. This made for a bit of a dilemma when teaching the
Trinity became Roman law. If you can’t describe what it is, how do you enforce
its proper teaching? This led to more councils, more debates and more unclear
explanations, like The Chalcedonian Formula of 451. Later when Emperor Leo I
asked the Bishop of Melitene if he wanted a council in 457, he responded, “We
uphold the Nicene creed but avoid difficult questions beyond human grasp.
Clever theologians soon become heretics.” A more concise statement against free
thought would be hard to find.
Accepting miracles has always seemed important to Christians
I have known, but some are harder to explain than others. Raising from the dead
can just be a difference in what “dead” means, as we see with increasing
knowledge of medical science. Feeding multitudes could have just been a good
leader who encouraged sharing of resources. Bodily resurrection however should
be considered an extraordinary event in any time. Any mythical interpretation
of it diminishes Christ as a god. I could understand a Christian who refuses to
accept any of the other miracles in the Bible, but if you don’t accept this
one, I wonder how you define “Christian”.
This question of the definition of Christianity seems to be
what some people were worried about in the 19th century. As more
translations of the Bible became available and our ability to translate the
original scriptures improved, scholars, Christian scholars, began to pick apart
the Bible. Primarily coming out of Germany, this was known as Higher Criticism.
It questioned not only the historical accuracy of the Bible, but the very
authorship of its books.
This was too much for some Christians. They reacted with a collectionof pamphlets by 90 authors.
They were distributed for free between 1910 and 1916. They coincided with the
rising evangelical movement. This vocal minority brought their cause to
national attention with the Scopes Monkey Trail in 1925. Although they actually
won that trail, because the law clearly stated that it was illegal to teach
evolution, the fundamentalist movement suffered afterwards. The modernist
movement did not portray itself well either, coming across as somewhat of a
bully in the proceedings.
It seemed for a while that this would work itself out in
academic circles, but as the world began to change rapidly after World War II,
people like Billy Graham and Francis Schaeffer were bringing these ideas back
into the forefront. I’ll pick up there next time. Next in the series
You can continue to follow my commentary on Tony Jones’
series on “Questions that Haunt Christians” if you’d like, although I
understand if you don’t want to continue to torture yourself with that. I’m
finally getting back to my historical research on the beginnings of science.
I’m finding more and more interesting tails from the 13th century
and surrounding eras about how knowledge moved around the Medieval world and
was claimed by various political and religious forces. Each one wants to take
credit for the work of a few courageous individuals who crossed political and
religious barriers to discover what we all needed to advance ourselves as a
species.
Today, the major force against science is fundamentalism.
The word is often associated with Muslims but also has Christian roots. It was
a Christian document from the turn of that last century that was titled “The
Fundamentals”. It was, as the word implies, an examination of what essential
beliefs were required to define an individual as a Christian. It has since come
to be associated with more than defining that for yourself, but forcing it on
others, or at least claiming that those who don’t believe like you will suffer
punishment. The most problematic version of fundamentalism is when people who
are alive now believe it is their duty to enforce those beliefs and do the
punishing.
For Christianity, although it was not called
“fundamentalism”, this began a long time ago.
We can see by writings in the Bible that Christianity had
very humble roots. It was denigrated by the government and the religious
establishment of the day. That is the basis of the crucifixion story. You don’t
need to accept any of the Bible as historically accurate to verify this. There
are just a few references to the Christian movement outside of the Bible. Documents
of the early church are scant. The actual authorship of the gospels and the
dates of their writing are in dispute. Discussions of this by Christians can be
found easily, even in the footnotes of some study Bibles.
Christianity was practiced by a variety of sects for 300
years after the historical time of Christ. This was a problem for an emperor.
Emperors don’t like fighting among groups in their kingdoms. Especially when
they decide that they want to be a member of one of those groups. This is the
reason Emperor Constantine called a council of those sects to work it out. It
was called the First Council of Nicea. Christians don’t talk about it much. New
Age writers like to make up all sorts of things about it. Its direct impact can
be argued, but it can’t be argued that the Catholic Church fared much better
from then on.
When a group goes from being illegal to an official group of
a powerful government, that’s gotta be a good thing for them. This was not just
some symbolic statement either. Constantine was declared the enforcer of the
doctrine. He continued to support traditional Roman temples for a while, but
eventually he pillaged them and tore them down. He used public money to copy
Bibles. He rebuilt Jerusalem with a focus on the Christian aspects.
But it was more than just support of a religion that he
loved. The word “catholic” means “universal” and that is the faith Constantine
wanted, one church, with him at the top. Constantine mastered the concept of
combining Church and State. Ceremony and costume surrounded him. He was “God’s
agent on Earth” and an audience with him was the next best thing to talking to
God. As he fomented civil wars and conquered kingdoms he set military and
religious leaders in charge with the lines of authority between the two
blurred.
Such a power hungry system does not end with the death of
its leader. Constantine’s sons continued to battle, including with each other.
Both died in their fight. Constantine’s nephew Julian assumed the throne and
was assassinated by the Persians. This only deepened the resolve to fight. At
the end of the 4th century, laws prohibiting non-Christian beliefs
were enacted. Heresy was equal to treason, a capital offense. Temples were
destroyed, libraries were burned, and philosophers were murdered.
Many people fled. Many to the East, to kingdoms of Persia
and Arabia.Tribal warfare existed there too, but religious persecution on the
order of Constantinople did not. According to legend, Muhammad was born in 570
CE. He initially gained fame as a diplomat between the warring tribes. He
eventually became a leader of an army, and leaders that followed continued to
conquer and expand the Islamic nation.
What they didn’t do was to expel people from their nation
based on religion. That would come much later. They integrated with those
cultures. In Northern Africa, people weren’t too happy with the leaders they
had, so being conquered by someone who let you practice your traditions was not
so bad.
They did tax people they conquered. They did give Muslims
advantages in politics. Caliphs had to be Muslims. However merchants, teachers,
philosophers, researchers of all kinds could draw from any culture or tradition
they cared to. In fact it was encouraged. This allowed them to build much
cleaner cities and better feed their citizens than the kingdoms in Europe. They
brought paper making from the Far East and disseminated their knowledge quickly
across a vast empire.
In Europe, we call this time the Dark Ages while the Islamic
world was experiencing a Golden Age.
Empires don’t last forever. In the east, a new form of the
Muslim religion began to take hold
in the universities and the power structures were weakened. Eventually in 1263,
Baghdad was sacked by the Mongols. In the west, African tribes, who had
converted to Islam, were trying to consolidate the smaller kingdoms in the
Iberian peninsula. As they did, they instituted laws that required Jews and
Christians to convert to Islam. This was the beginning of fundamentalism in the
Muslim world, and where our story will begin, next week.
Time and Newsweek both had Jesus on the cover for Easter. Newsweek's Jesus was a hipster in New York. The article started with something that I hear a lot and is said as if it is non-controversial. It was something to the affect of "Christianity has become more politicized lately". What I can't figure out is when was it not politicized?
Moses was the lawmaker. He negotiated with a King for the release of his people. Then there were a lot of wars, supported by God until they united into a Kingdom and crowned their own King. The prophets continued to comment on policies of those Kings. In Jesus' time, there were various factions that had opinions about how to either ally with or fight against the Romans. Christianity really began to flourish when it got the support of Constantine and for centuries to be the legitimate King, you had to be crowned by the Pope.
This all finally started to break down in the 16th century, causing a lot of wars. In 1868, the 14th amendment to the United States constitution put the end to the debate about the separation of church and state. So for a few decades, at least in America, Christianity was not all that political.
50 Blogs on Disbelief My thoughts on the book, 50 Voices of Disbelief, Why We Are Athiests, edited by Russell Blackford and Udo Schuklenk. Written as I read them in no particular order. The page number of the essay is provided at the top of each entry. p. 226 Peter Agedoke – Kicking Religion Goodbye…
Continuing the multi-cultural theme, Peter is from Nigeria, a very religious nation. He admits his scientific education was stunted. Somehow his creative mind developed skepticism at early age. His cultural bias was strong however and at 19 he went to Pentecostal Baptist Bible College hoping to discover the truth of Christianity. He loved the orchestra of the Apostolic Faith Church, but was disturbed when he read of a woman who died because of birth complications because that church chose divine healing over a medical doctor.
He continued to read and visit other denominations, eventually landing at CAC Theological Seminary. There he had a common experience of 20th century seminary students. He learned the difference of actual church history and what most people think. For example, that there is no “original Christianity”, it did not start as an organized movement, it had “a lot of colorations” and influences from Eastern and Western cultures. It was influenced by the works of Plato and shaped by Constantine.
This and the behavior of classmates and teachers exposed him to hypocrisy. Already frustrated with the classic problem of evil and seeing poverty all around him with no sign of salvation, he kicked religion goodbye.
I can’t say that I blame him. In John Shelby Spong’s book, “Jesus for the Non-religious”, he discusses how seminaries came to this curious situation where they teach things about Christianity that very few preachers repeat to their congregations. Most of this is now freely available although without the context of 4 years of study, I think it causes confusion for many. Spong makes some recommendations on how the Church needs to change its message in a more enlightened world. If it doesn’t, the world will go the way of Mr. Agedoke. Next
Here’s another one from Peter Mayer to enjoy while reading this short entry.
I made it on the Bible Geek last month. It’s really not that hard, he gets a few questions per week and answers them with audio. He always gives the question a lot of respect and is often entertaining. Unfortunately, they have cut off posts older than a few weeks, so it’s not there anymore. If it shows up in a archives list, I’ll you know. There was also a really good on called the “Metaphysics of Presence”.
My question was titled “Wanting to know more about ancient myths”. This question started brewing for me when a friend of mine directed me to the movie Zeitgeist. It’s free on the web. Among other things, it discusses the earlier dying and rising God myths that proceeded the time of the writing of the New Testament. Robert M. Price, The Bible Geek, has studied these extensively, and he agrees with the film makers that Jesus is just another myth. Price’s work is a bit more scholarly and a better place to start, IMHO, but the movie can be entertaining and an easy way to get started. Some may find the movie a bit over the top.
I tried to find out more about these other Gods and how they might have come to be mixed in with the Jewish traditions. I still have not found any direct historical links, but I don’t think you would find that with anything that old. I know a little of the stories of Osiris, Dyonisus and others, but not enough to say they do or do not overlap. A Zeitgeist response web site was a little help, but I wanted more. You can listen for yourself, but Robert basically said that these are archetypes, not copies. The earlier stories were “cardboard” characters, analogies of the changing of the seasons. Jesus was a much richer character, with the archetype of a virgin birth and resurrection included, and much more in between, including, in his opinion, new teaching from the rabbis of the time. He also gave me some titles that I hope to get to.
If you are really into philosophy, the “The Metaphysics of Presence” was really great. It’s going to take me a while to digest that one, so I may refer to it again, and hopefully it will be posted again. Among other things he said, no one owns the copyright on a religion. There are over 2,000 divisions of Protestantism, and within each some flexibility in their local churches is allowed, and every member is in a different place on their spiritual path and may be choosing to believe or not believe something that is not exactly in line with the church’s doctrine. So, to say that there is an “essence” of Christianity is a little silly. There are scriptures and teachings, and then there are people experiencing it. How it is taught changes over time, and how it is experienced by us is influenced by our time. Trying to get it right, and force one idea of what is right on others, just muddies the waters in my opinion, or as Prices says, “[Church/Spiritual experience] is helpful and beautiful and enjoyable, not that I think anyone is obliged to have it.”
It’s too much to cover in one blog, so just listen to Peter Mayer, and let all soak in.
The Da Vinci Code combines several of my favorite things in one movie; history, conspiracy, religion, chase scenes, sex, weird guys with white skin, rich guys with cool cars and planes and more. I like all those things in movies, not so much in real life, unless the rich guy lets me have one of his cars. I wish untwisting all the lost, hidden and destroyed history of the world was as easy as solving a few puzzles.
I’m not saying the movie was all lies, or that it was blasphemous, or anything like. If you want to separate the facts from fiction, one good source is “Truth and Fiction in the The Da Vinci Code” by Bart D. Ehrman. I won’t go in to much detail, but here’s one telling piece of fiction. In the movie, Leigh Teabing, the rich guy, refers to the Gospel of Philip, one of the Gospels that didn’t make it in to New Testament, which of course makes it part of the conspiracy, right? He quotes, “The companion of the Savior is Mary Magdalene.” Of this, Teabing says, “As any Aramaic scholar will tell you, the word companion in those days, literally meant spouse”
The trouble with what Teabing says is, the Gospel of Phillip was written in Coptic and the word “companion” is loaned from Greek. An Aramaic scholar wouldn’t do you much good. Either Dan Browne is leaving a huge clue that his book is fiction, or he didn’t do his homework. There are also many misinterpretations of what happened at the Council of Nicea and the role of the Emperor Constantine.
So why did I like the movie and the book? For all the above reasons, and I think it did have an interesting layer of meaning. With any story, I often look for how I can relate to the characters in the story. Not whether or not they have cool cars, but what they are experiencing. In this story, I’m Sophie. Sophie is the innocent one who isn’t aware of the conspiracy. Conspiracy in this case is any truth we are not able or not willing to figure out for ourselves.
Sophie sees her grandfather in a strange ritual and runs away. She cuts herself off from family and doesn’t want to know that truth. There is a consequence to this, she needs to know this truth. She needs to know who her ancestors are. Her parents die before they can let her in on the story of her family. So the movie gets me thinking about what I have cut myself off from. She meets up with someone who knows part of the story, and the two are able to piece together who she is, so it’s a Hollywood ending, but in most real life stories, that doesn’t happen. We are usually stuck with our separateness.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not avoiding all the nasty things done in the name of God discussed in the movie. I am not a fan of the Emperor Constantine, or the 4th century Roman Catholic Church. They did a lot to screw up the teachings of the early Christian church. It was a pivotal moment in history, one that needs unraveling. Claiming that the New Testament was practically written by the Council of Nicea however is not helpful. I doubt Constantine had the conversion experience as it was recorded by Christian sources. If he did, I don’t care for his conclusion that if he became Christian, he would win in battle. This type of abuse of scripture and religion has kept us from the lessons of compassion found in all religions.
At the time, I’m sure many Christians were very happy. The government that had killed their savior 300 years ago was now on their side. More timely, the government that allowed persecution and killing of their brethren now prevented it by issuing the Edict of Milan. I side with those who believe that Constantine’s conversion was a political move. He saw the coming of monotheism, and picked Christianity as a good one to go with. I wonder, if there had been bloggers back then, what they would have said about setting the dates of Easter and Christmas, as well as the meaning of the Trinity, and the deals that were made setting up Constantine as enforcer of the doctrine.
There is more to understanding this than just knowing who did what and what motivated them 1,700 years ago. The abuse by government of words from scripture continues to this day. We need to know our scripture well enough to know it’s happening, and to call them on it. When George Bush says, “The ideal of America is the hope of all mankind” and “That hope still lights our way. And the light shines in the darkness. And the darkness has not overcome it.” We need to recognize that he has taken from the Gospel of John 1:5 “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it” except he put America in the place of God. John 1:3 says, “Through him all things were made”, not just America. (Thanks to Jim Wallis for catching this in his book “Dangerous Religion”)
I don’t care where on the political spectrum you are, if you like Bush you shouldn’t be praising this and if you don’t you shouldn’t be simply dismissing it. We should be saying, “Hey wait a minute, prophets and philosophers have been saying for thousands of years that we are better off if we all work together. No one gets to steal those words and twist them around to say the forces of good are only on one side.”
If you are going to use words like that, then you should also be able to explain which part of “Thou shall not kill” you don’t understand, and where were you when there were 5,000 mouths to feed and there were only a few loaves and fishes to go around.
Well, I didn’t want to get too political in this blog, so I’ll stop now.
