Post-Constantinian Christianity


Confucius said (no, really) that clear reasoning begins by giving things their right names. Let us call the present societies of Western culture post-Constantinian. Constantine, of course, was the emperor who made Christianity the state religion of the Roman empire, beginning the long history of Christianity's concepts and values being intertwined with Western civilization. The influence of Christianity was never very thorough or deep, but biblical precepts did end up being reflected in some of our laws and cultural assumptions.

I, Jean-Christophe BENOIST [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) or CC BY 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons
Constantine
Today things have changed very much. Society is turning indifferent, even hostile, to Christian teachings. Morally significant laws are being challenged and overturned, or rewritten. Churches that have tried to adapt their teaching to these times have gone off the rails. More influenced by the spirit of the age than the spirit of Jesus, they have produced travesty teachings that are incoherent with respect to historical orthodoxy. It is a peculiar syncretism, to think that counter-Christian or even anti-Christian ideas can be harmonized with Christianity. It is a crabbed dialectic in which Christianity can only lose.

You see, dialectic can only be sensible where each side has things it can compromise. It always dooms the side that attempts to compromise core principles. Christianity possesses ideas and beliefs it must not compromise. It is the faith once for all delivered to the saints and has some points that cannot be compromised without destroying the whole.

How, then, should Christianity proceed in such times? I hope the answer is obvious. A nominally pro-Christian society is an anomaly in light of world history, and now that our society is revealing its long suppressed anti-Christian character, we are back to business as usual. We are in a similar position to Christians anywhere on earth, today, who live amid cultures hostile or indifferent to Christian values and ideas. In a sense this is a good thing. Churches in the West are now free of those awkward people who came to church only to be seen, because churchgoing was the expected thing. We are largely (still not completely) free of those who become involved in the church to seek power or advantage for themselves. We, the historical Christian faith, are once again the counterculture.

I hope this bodes well for Christian unity. The nominally Christian West has been the garden soil in which the spirit of division grew, as each group and party and faction presumed to represent a better Christianity than the others. Schisms have been in part political; powerful princes and politicians supported one faction over another as a way to extend or consolidate their power. In part schisms have been cultural, reflecting intellectual fashions. Sometimes they have brought useful truths of the historical faith back into the light after they had become obscured. In that category I would place justification by faith, the importance of scripture, and the reality of present day workings of the Spirit through the gifts. But even when you say the best about schisms they are still schisms. Perhaps we should have gone with the rather Erasmian idea of undermining existing structures from within, rather than starting up a new church whenever we liked.

If the pro-Christian West has been the garden of schisms, is it too much to hope that an anti-Christian West will promote unity? I see some ways that might happen. Hardship seems to draw people closer together and we may face some. Moreover, absent some of the causes that facilitated schism (political advantage, fashions of the day, etc.) we might begin to realize the downside of separate churches for each and all opinions. We will realize the downside because there is no more upside. Christianity, I think, will be poor and struggling, not rich and influential, and the struggle will be to put the essential truths before those who need to hear them. We will realize that we are stronger together than apart: the Bible thumpers, the liturgists, the charismatics, the doctrinal details mavens and all the rest. We may find that we need each other.

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