The Rise and Fall of Christendom 1B - Church and State

Church and State 

 

An important but often overlooked aspect of Christianity before Christendom is that the church and the political sphere were separate, and this separation, beginning before Christendom, has persisted all through the period of Christendom and out the other side. This requires some explanation, as the reader may receive with skepticism the idea that the church and the political sphere have been separate, so a counter-example may serve best.

     The founder of Islam, Mohammed, was not just a religious leader, but he was also a military and political leader. As a political leader, under Mohammed, there was no distinction between civil law and religious law, but both ran together in what would come to be called Sharia, or Islamic law. In the Islamic world today, tension still exists over whether or not Sharia should be the official law in Islamic countries. Christianity did not develop in this way at all. Jesus and his disciples were never political leaders. The early church established church leaders in the form of deacons, elders, bishops, etc., but those individuals were not political leaders. The church established church laws, but those laws were entirely separate from the laws of civil society. There is no Christian equivalent of Sharia. The separation between civil and church leadership has continued throughout history. Christendom has had kings, tsars, presidents and prime ministers to lead the civil society, while the popes, priests, elders and pastors led the church. The two spheres often got tangled together, sometimes with one more or less dominating the other, but the two spheres – church and state – have always been conceptually separate.

The Rise and Fall of Christendom 1A - Christianity Before Christendom Part 1

Christianity before Christendom

Jesus said “I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). It was about 30 A.D. when Jesus said this, and within a generation his disciples had spread the gospel throughout the entire Roman Empire. By the end of the century, all the books of the New Testament had been written. Churches had been formed, church leadership established, vigorous doctrinal disputes were underway and heresies were growing like weeds. Yet Christendom was still a long way off.

     Although all books of the New Testament had been written by 100 A.D., the church before Christendom did not have a full canonical Bible at its fingers. Jewish believers used the Hebrew scriptures, which contain the same books as appear in a modern Protestant Bible. Gentile believers, who, by the turn of the century, greatly exceeded the numbers of their Jewish brothers, used the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures, but including the apocryphal books that now appear in a modern Catholic Bible. All believers drew on a collection of gospels and apostolic letters to supplement the Old Testament, but there was not yet a full consensus on which books should be part of what we today call the New Testament – that would wait on Christendom. The lack of an official canon may have played a part in the development of additional heresies that developed prior to Christendom.

Early Christian Heresies

The church before Christendom by definition enjoyed no official sanction or government endorsement. Because no Christian doctrines had been codified as “official,” the environment was fertile for the growth of heresies within the faith.

     Christianity was born in a Jewish environment. Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the 12 disciples and the first 10,000 or so Christians were all Jews. As the gospel began to spread to the gentiles, it gave rise to the first major heresy in the Christian faith – that of the Judaizers. This is the one heresy that appeared early enough to be fully described in the New Testament. The Judaizers taught that gentile Christians needed to be circumcised and obey the entire law of Moses – essentially this would mean that a gentile needed to become a Jew in order to become a Christian. The controversy was addressed in the first Jerusalem conference described in Acts 15. The church leadership – all of whom were Jewish – ruled that gentiles who came to Christ did not have to follow Jewish laws and customs, but did stipulate that gentile believers should avoid behavior that would harm fellowship with Jewish believers. Although the error of the Judaizers has long since been abandoned, the erroneous tendency for Christians to believe in a works-based relationship with God has continued to this day and will probably never go away.

     Gnosticism was a second heresy that was addressed in some of the New Testament letters, but it continued well into the 2^nd century A.D. and was responsible for numerous pseudo-Christian writings which are preserved to this day. Gnosticism (from the Greek gnosis, or “knowledge”) may have had pre-Christian roots, but it quickly made an appearance and grew within the church. It took a number of forms, but all generally regarded the material world as evil and the spiritual world as good. Therefore, Christ could not have become a physical man, and must instead have been a spiritual being only. One can see the New Testament writers refuting this with verses like 2 John 7 “For many deceivers have gone out, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.” Gnostics believed that salvation could be achieved through knowledge. The knowledge required was often held to be secretive information not known by the masses, much like modern conspiracy theories often work.  

     Marcion of Sinope (85-160) rejected the Old Testament and taught that the God who sent Jesus into the world was a different and higher God than the God of the Old Testament. Although Marcionism was rejected by all the early church fathers, similar rejection and/or criticism of the Old Testament sometimes still surfaces in Christian churches today.

     Arius (256-336) rejected the concept of the Trinity, teaching instead that Jesus was not fully divine in the same sense as God the Father. Arianism dug in enough to become the leading view in some early Christian lands. The Visigothic kingdom would be Arian in its theology. The famous Council of Niceaea was largely a reaction to the Arian heresy.

The Rise and Fall of Christendom - Introduction

A Definition of Christendom

Many definitions of Christendom are available, and the one I offer is not necessarily a more accurate definition than any other. It is, however, an accurate definition of what once was not, then was, and now is passing away. Christendom by my definition is marked by three characteristics together. (When I say Christendom “is,” understand that these three characteristics are more reflective of the past than the present. The premise of this book is that Christendom is passing away.)

     The first characteristic of Christendom is that a majority of the citizens of the state identify as Christians, even if only nominally. One manifestation of this would be that within Christendom most of the adult citizens of the nation have been baptized. Christendom does not mean a state in which the majority of individuals are what evangelicals would call “born again.” It’s not certain if there has ever been such a nation, and if there was it might even call into question Jesus’ teaching about the narrow gate. Christendom is also not a situation where the church controlled the state – a situation not usually present in the western world even during the height of the papacy’s influence. It is simply a state where most citizens identify themselves as Christians and can point to some external factor to show it.

     Second, there is widespread agreement on religious concepts. For instance, within Christendom, almost everyone will understand what is meant when one says “God.” In Christendom, even an atheist will be what I call a “Christian atheist,” in that an argument between an atheist and a believer will start with the two in complete agreement on who the atheist does not believe in. “God” is understood to be the supernatural creator of the universe and also the lawgiver and judge of mankind. Not all readers may follow this, so counterexamples are necessary. Outside of Christendom, in places like the Hindu regions of India, God is not understood by to be a supernatural being independent of the universe, but is instead part of the universe itself. Preceding Christendom in early pagan religions, the gods were not the source of a moral law, nor a judge of mankind. Also within Christendom, Jesus is understood to be divine. The divinity of Jesus separates Christian from Muslim cultures.

     Third, within Christendom, a society’s sense of right and wrong is strongly bent toward traditional Christian morality. This doesn’t mean that people within Christendom widely practiced this morality – the Bible itself teaches that no one is sinless and emphasizes the widespread depravity of the human heart. Instead, it means that the culture’s general view of right and wrong matches Christian traditional morality. Yes, the governor may take bribes, but the citizens know this is wrong and resent it. Some vices that are common outside of Christendom, such as polygamy, almost vanish inside of it. Within Christendom, helping the poor is understood to be a virtue.

     One feature of this definition of Christendom is where it puts the United States. A good way to start an argument within almost any American church is to ask if the United States is a Christian nation, or if it was a Christian nation and is no longer, or if it never really was. The main reason for the argument is that it is hard to agree on what “Christian nation” means. With the above definition of Christendom, it is clear that the United States was once part of Christendom, but today is mostly not.