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Brian Chilcote

Jesus Under Construction: A Church Full of Heretics

Pope Francis recently (September 2024) made an offhand theological observation that evoked consternation right on down the hierarchy of the church. In a laudatory address to a group of Singaporean teenagers, Francis graciously appreciated his audience for their capacity for interfaith dialog. He also reminded them of the destructiveness of arguing about the importance of one religion over another. Before comparing religions to languages, he said "Tutte le religioni sono un cammino per arrivare a Dio." ( See the Catholic World Report and the official Vatican transcript)

 

The cause for alarm? In English, the statement appears to affirm religious indifferentism, or the idea that all religions are equally efficacious or true. For any Catholic in good standing, this is nails on a chalkboard.

 

Apparently that can be translated into English a number of ways, all of which the Vatican experimented with in an effort to avoid heresy at the highest level:

 

"All religions are pathways to God."

"Every religion is a way to arrive at God."

"All religions are seen as paths trying to reach God."

 

In brief, the spin doctors creatively morphed the Pope's words to mean something like, "All religions can be seen as ways we try to find our way to the one true God in the end."

 

Though Pope Francis will probably not exile or excommunicate himself, the kerfuffle is not entirely unlike the ecclesiastical debates in the second and third centuries. One bishop might preach a sermon that other bishops found to be theologically "off" resulting in charges of heresy. Most of the controversies that got people exiled had to do with christology- the set of principles describing the divine or human natures of Jesus and his relationships to God the Father and the Holy Spirit.

 

Long before there was a centralized authority making doctrinal decisions for the entire church, rogue bishops could dig their dogmatic heels in and pursue any number of christological directions. For a time, it was an ecclesiastical wild west out there. 

 

Language has a Breaking Point

 

As in the example above, trying to express the inexpressible in language is always fraught with peril. How does one begin to think about a human-god hybrid who can suffer, die and rise again? How can a transcendent God, bound by neither time nor space, "send" a Son to our plane of existence? And for many involved in the struggle to capture the truth about Jesus, the stakes were extremely high. Meanings of words became battlegrounds for both church combatants and Roman politicians as the centuries progressed.

 

Straining language to the breaking point, ecclesiastical stakeholders attempted to explain the puzzling New Testament material that attributes deity to three different entities while maintaining a commitment to the oneness of God. The list of questions has always outstripped attempted answers, especially in the early centuries of the church but also up to our own day. Christological disputes aren't usually at the forefront of church quibbles in modern times, but there are plenty of others to perplex and divide us. 

 

What were the burning questions facing the nascent Christian church?

 

Here's an abbreviated list

 

  • How could an authentic human being accomplish a sacrificial death for sin? By being blamed while blameless?

  • Was this human Jesus exalted by God at some point, or was he a pre-existent divine being that took on a human body at birth? If so, what kind of being did he have to be in order to fulfill the role of Messiah or "Christos?"

  • Isn't it true that the only being who is perfect and holy is God? Doesn't that mean that human Jesus had to also contain divine perfection? How then can perfection be embodied in a non-divine and therefore non-perfect human being?

  • And what do we make of this business about God the Father sending his "Son" and then Jesus sending an "advocate" called the Holy Spirit?

  • Can we pray to any or all three? When we worship one, are we worshipping all three?

  • How do we reconcile the apparent monotheism of the Hebrew Bible with the idea that Jesus was some kind of human version of YHWH?

  • How is a person actually rescued from God's wrath at the last judgement?

  • How can this be explained without resorting to modalism or subordinationism?

 

With the intellectual tools available to thinkers at the time, church leaders did their best to frame both questions and answers with their own intellectual vocabulary and analytical categories (not ours!). Today, we face the layered problem of identifying Hellenistic / Jewish conceptual frameworks in both the questions and answers, and differentiating them from our own.

 

Before we address the difficulties of landing on answers for these and other questions, let's look at WHY these questions mattered so much to our ancestors.

 

Why all the Arguing?

 

Let's start with some of the assumptions held by the vast majority of first century Jews and Pagans. They took it for granted that there was a supernatural realm populated by "powers" of various ranks and inclinations. In contrast to the Roman or Greek pantheons, however, the Jews had arrived at a strong preference for a species of monotheism with YHWH alone at the pinnacle (Henotheism, actually. See "My God is better than your god!" ). Ultimate truth and authority resided with YHWH, contained in the ancient writings of Moses and the prophets.

 

An amalgam of these world-organizing principles carried over into the rapidly growing messianic Jewish sect that honored a teacher called Yeshua who, confusingly, was touted as a universal messiah even though he accomplished none of the things a traditional Jewish messiah was supposed to! Through Hellenistic eyes, Jesus was a revealer of truth, offering relief from the deceptions and corruption of daily life, and furthermore, "the way, the truth and the life" gave the faithful a "Jewish" way to escape YHWH's wrath at the imminent end of the world.

 

What undergirded the passion and fervor of early theological arguments? Part of the answer is certainly the natural human drive to align with a reality that not only explains the world and its evils, but also indicates a solution, a way of salvation. 


In our time, well after science took a seat at the head of the explanatory table, theological controversies have been sidelined to specially trained "religion nerds." But in the second, third and fourth centuries, theological correctness took center stage.

 

Here are a few of the factors that kindled or magnified divisions and fierce debates:

 

Regional power structures

 

It was more than insulting to have one wing of the church call into question your hard-earned doctrine, calling it heresy. This stemmed from more than just ego, although there was surely a bit of that in the mix. The original small synagogues-to-house churches did not all have the same founding documents on which to base their version of truth. Many had the Septuagint in Greek, but there was quite a bit of variation in who had what writings. In one region, churches may have had a couple of Paul's letters, one gospel and the Shepherd of Hermas to use in their liturgy. In another, they might have had a copy of the Septuagint plus Second Maccabees, 1 and 2 Corinthians and Revelation.

 

Sometimes, these regional differences got personal. If a neighboring bishop refuted your bishop's interpretations, it was an affront to God certainly, but also an insult to the sincere believers under your esteemed bishop's teachings. If there can be only one absolute revealed truth, and your "truth" differs from mine, that demands an argument. There was a lot of, "one of us is a heretic, and it's not me!"

 

Theological high stakes

 

Accusations of heresy not only insults a bishop's territorial reach, it might actually insult God. Think about Pope Francis's words at the beginning of this article. Could God take action against a false teaching like his? What if Francis is leading the church astray from the true way? There were plenty of priests and bishops who were accused of unorthodoxy and exiled from their sees for ideas that seemed to lean into modalism, a nuanced but anathematized view that understood the trinity as three "modes" or states of existence that could change as needed. Even worse was any hint of subordinationism- the view that Jesus was in some way a subordinate being unequal with God the Father.

 

While persecution was sporadic and decentralized, Christians could get into real trouble for their exclusivity regarding worship- a very big deal in the first and second centuries. Refusing to burn incense to the emperor or skipping an important pagan festival did not exactly endear them to their communities (See "Paul the Persecuted" for more on this). There were more than a few radical believers who pursued martyrdom as a form of ultimate devotion, which made the correct understanding of doctrine a life and death issue. Differentiating between truth and error makes a big difference if you are staking your life on the superiority of one dogma over another.

 

Unclear Guidance from Scripture

 

If a local church or see had a full collection of codices (documents bound in book form), it didn't mean that they interpreted them the same as everyone else. The gospels are anything but clear on the deity of Christ; James and Paul seem to be at odds over the role social behavior plays in salvation by faith; Hebrews seems to assert that apostasy is permanently damning (chapter 6 was the reason many from late antiquity and on weren't baptized until they were on their deathbed). The fact that so many schools of thought emerged in the early church is reliable evidence of the difficulty of arriving at any agreement on what the Bible actually says.

 

Another factor contributing to the sea of various interpretations was a tradition of reading biblical texts allegorically. Origen wrote:

 

 "...instances similar to this will be found in the Gospels by anyone who will read them with atten­tion, and will observe that in those narratives which appear to be literally recorded, there are inserted and interwoven things which cannot be admitted his­torically, but which may be accepted in a spiritual signification." Origen, First Principles Book IV. 16

 

This approach drives diversity in interpretation, not consensus. Clement of Alexandria was certain that an allegorical interpretation of scripture was a way to uncover deeper truths about God's nature and our relationship to the divine. Augustine's fifth century City of God is known as a prime example of using an allegorical hermeneutic to understand the relationship of the Old to New Testaments. Parables like the story of the good Samaritan were fertile ground for establishing "facts" about Christ's mercy toward those in need. Others saw radically different lessons or truths in the same parable.

 

Should Christians honor and welcome "the Jews?" Or position them as adversaries? Much in the gospels and in Paul suggest the latter partly because it was a hot button issue for Paul and his followers, and with the possible exception of James's epistle, we don't have much in the way of cogent rebuttal. And remember that Paul's influence preceded the gospels. Paul especially made it clear that even God had rejected his own chosen people for a time. " As regards the gospel they are enemies for your sake, but as regards election they are beloved for the sake of their ancestors..." (Rom. 11).

 

Needless to say there was plenty to argue about stemming from even the most straightforward readings of the Bible. 

 

Survival through Catholicity

 

"Catholic" simply means all-togetherness from the Greek kata (according to) and holos (the whole). In shorthand English, it means a universal and unified faith with everyone believing the same things. It places a burden on Christian adherents to strive for unity among churches for the purpose of overcoming the world and its evil. As Jesus famously said, "no city or house divided against itself will stand" (Matthew 12). We see that reflected in today's Catholic church, which maintains a commitment to unity through its magisterium- the hierarchical arrangement of authority from the Pope on down to local priests.

 

Survival as a religious movement was not guaranteed in the early years, and leaders understood that their messianic Jewish sect had a better chance at life if there was a unified consensus on identity, doctrine and practice. This reality impelled priests and bishops to take action against what they saw as divisive and schismatic; the fate of the entire enterprise depended on unified belief.

 

Greco-Roman intellectual priming

 

Another element that produced a tendency toward factions had to do with the priming of the leading thinkers and writers of the first century. Elites in the Mediterranean region in the first and second centuries were intellectually prepared for pursuing truth through philosophical argument. The Roman world had always admired Greek culture and values, including their habit of truth-seeking. To them, the world was fully intelligible to mankind's reasoning abilities, and it was considered a noble cause to understand as much as possible about how the world works. Debating philosophical schools provided both a model and an organizing principle for accessing ultimate truth in the church. Close reading of scripture reveals a swirl of platonic, stoic and epicurean ideas to name a few. Stir in the principle that contradiction and incoherence is anathema to ultimate truth and you have the conflicts that led to so many creeds and councils to sort it all out.

 

Of course there are many more reasons for the ideological turbulence in the church. And it hasn't ceased in any way. Since the Reformation, doctrinal differences have splintered Christendom into ever more parochial silos, each with its own solipsistic insistence on correctness.

 

What were the contentious questions?

 

For a brief window into many of the ideas being debated in the second and third centuries, here's a shamefully abbreviated list of actual contenders for orthodoxy that Christians once held as absolute truth.

 

The meaning of the biblical data: What did it say about Jesus?

 

Even today, there are stark disagreements at all levels of church polity from the most erudite scholar down to the newest unlearned believer. Why? The Bible is not clear about who Jesus is and what his mission actually accomplished. Almost all of the certainty we hear today is based on a consensus interpretation that can be contradicted by equally convinced people who read the Bible in a slightly different way. Any broad consensus we have in the church is usually the result of some majority settling on certain dogmas and adapting scriptural material to fit.

 

As an example, let's just take a quick look at the gospel of John.

 

John 1: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

 

The author invokes a well-known Neo-Platonist idea of the transcendent Logos: the underlying plan or direction of the universe, and applies it to Jesus. This is also a Jewish idea that pops up in Psalms, Proverbs and a number of other places. Jesus is somehow an uttered "word" that was there with God in the beginning and actually was God in some way (and we really wish the author had told us more about how that works). This Logos was the means by which all things derive their existence.

 

Upon reading the first chapter of John, one gets the idea that Jesus is definitely divine, or at least has the necessary characteristics to qualify as deity. Now for the confusing part.

 

Does John 1:1 mean that Jesus is the same as YHWH, the one true God of the Jews? Is he just similar to YHWH? Here you can detect the seeds of the arguments to come. 

 

In our time, we might not see this as a burning question. What difference does it make? For modern churchgoers, it seems largely OK to keep it a mystery. That's partly because the church finally settled on a firm position after a couple of centuries of testing and debating almost every possible permutation of the divine-human nature of Christ.

 

Ours is a very different time and place than the late Roman Empire in which the church was just recovering from actual persecution under Diocletian, when believing the right things was terribly important. Martyrs should have no doubts about their spiritual fate which is tied to knowing the absolute truth about Jesus the Messiah and how to access his offer of escaping the wrath of God and attaining heaven.

 

It was also a time of significant diversity in belief and practice. Entire religious systems collided nonstop with each other from Gnosticism to paganism to emperor worship plus all the various flavors of Christian ideas, especially after Constantine endorsed Christianity as the official state religion. The old Roman Empire formerly applied a tolerant hand to most of the gods and goddesses around the Mediterranean, adding them to their pantheon as each new territory was conquered. One exception was the province of Judea with their insistence on worshipping only one God, but even then for a time Rome allowed the Jews to offer sacrifices and pray for the Emperor instead of to him.

 

Back to the Gospel of John, which instead of helping to add some precision to Christian dogma, only muddied the waters. For brevity's sake, let's look only at John 17.

 

John 17

v. 3 "And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent."

 

  • Jesus is praying to YHWH, or God the Father, requesting that He give eternal life to all the people that YHWH has given to Jesus

  • Then he describes eternal life as a relationship: knowing the only true God and refers to himself in the third person: "Jesus Christ whom you have sent."

  • Jesus indicates that Father and Son are two distinct entities- the one listening to the prayer and the one offering it; one who sends and one who is sent.

  • How can Jesus be the platonic "Logos" yet express ignorance in the form of an entreaty about God the Father's intentions for "the ones given to Jesus?"

 

Vs. 4- "So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed." (and v.24 "…you loved me before the foundation of the world.")

 

Here Jesus acknowledges his pre-existence in God the Father's presence, asking to be restored to the kind of glory he once had (but does not at the moment- that's why he's asking).

 

v. 8 "… for the words that you gave to me I have given to them…"

 

Jesus takes on "words" from God the Father. Together with vs. 4, the implication is that he brings those words directly from heaven, and that they were not in Jesus's possession at some point in the past. A vote for Christ's divinity? But there was a point at which Jesus did not have "the words" for his followers, implying an incompleteness similar to his statement in Mark 13 about his ignorance of the exact time of the final Day of the Lord.

 

v.16  They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world.

 

The author of John wants to emphasize a similarity between Jesus and his disciples- a vote for Jesus's human nature? Has he become like us or will we become like him? And what does it mean for us to "not belong to the world" in the same way as is true of Jesus?

 

v. 21 "… that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us"

 

So there's a oneness between God the Father and God the Son- a vote for Jesus's deity. But… this oneness is also available between humans, and between humans and the God-Son duality. Does that imply eventual deity for human followers? 

 

One or Many?


The gospel of John is not alone in its ambiguity about the big emerging questions of the third and fourth centuries for a simple reason: the authors of those works weren't concerned about the same problems! Hebrews calls Jesus a great high priest, but also superior to divine beings like angels. Hebrews also says-

 

"He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word."

 

Trying to map the ideas of a trinity onto Hebrews 1:3 is not easy. What exactly does it mean that Jesus is a "reflection" or an "exact imprint?" Church intellectuals still struggle with the concept of trinity. One major reason is that the biblical material is contradictory and does not submit to normal philosophical categories.

 

The early church eventually lost a significant amount of its Jewish flavor as it enfolded an increasing majority of gentiles, but some connecting strands withstood subsequent theological vicissitudes. One of these, the Jewish commitment to monotheism, is not as simple as we remember it to be. First of all, our modern definition of monotheism does not exactly match what we read in the Old Testament, nor does it consider mainstream conceptions of reality in the first century (see "Why all the arguing?" above)

 

Henotheism is the term that better captures how the ancients perceived the universe. Instead of our contemporary  notion that there is one supreme cosmic creator God, who, from an absolute sovereign position, has allowed a lesser evil being (Satan) and his fallen angel minions to influence the world while keeping him on a tight leash. When push comes to shove, we think there's really just one cosmic power: God. Additionally, many protestant traditions downplay the activity of sentient evil beings in favor of plain old human sin. Ancient "science," in contrast, understood the world to be populated by ranks of invisible supernatural beings sometimes called "spirits," or "powers and principalities" as Paul refers to them. The god of this world has temporary free reign over human existence, as Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 4. God is still powerful, but in the sense that he must pull rank on other deities on occasion.

 

Jews refused to worship Julius Caesar because there was no room for him in their single-God pantheon. Idol worship, a foolproof badge of gentile paganism, was at least strongly discouraged in Jewish homes. One didn't worship or appease gods, demigods or spirits when one could appeal to the one true God at the very top. Side note: while this was the party line recorded as history, there are indications that first century Jewish villagers did engage in some idol worship on the down-low.*

 

Ancient monotheism was a complex and variable worldview. Traces of Mesopotamian polytheism appear in the Old Testament, such as the names for YHWH which include a collective plural: "Elohim" which is a bit like using the verb "are" with a noun that includes multiple parts, for example "team." It's appropriate to use either "is" or "are" with “team,” e.g., "The team is going home;" or "The team are going home."

 

In a few places the old conception of a "divine council" appears, as in Psalm 82. Acknowledgement of multiple gods, each ruling over their respective territories and ethnic groups; and the appearance of humans who are actually "gods" in disguise as humans, one of which turns out to be YHWH himself in Genesis 18.

 

All of this factored into the imagined "monotheism" of the New and Old Testaments, and became a non-negotiable dogmatic principle in the debates of the early church. God is one, indivisible and whole. This implies perfection with no partibility. Purity or holiness depends on this- it requires simplicity. Component parts lead to the question of where and how those parts originated or relate to each other, while the platonic ideal is absolutely singular. Parts also means mixing. If God is eternal, who did the mixing? In other words, was God not complete at some time in the past and needed "one more" part to exist as God? 

 

Logically and philosophically, this seems coherent and valid. So with that immutable truth in the books, what can we do with the claim that Jesus is God?

 

Next time we'll look into the problems and attempted solutions related to what we now know as the Trinity. Why? To make the point that actual Christians of the deepest sincerity believed things in times past that modern mainstream protestant and Catholic forms of the church would find uncomfortable and probably heretical. These Christians went to their deaths by government sponsored persecutions under Diocletian and other emperors without a clear idea of a Trinity, of substitutionary atonement, an inerrant Bible and many other dogmas we take for granted today.

 

Were they saved? Is God OK with what we label as "error?" We'll keep that question in mind as we continue to explore  the circuitous route to the doctrines we imagine are certain 17 centuries later.

 




*2 Maccabees 12:40, and BAS article on Curse Tablets  Also, look into the influence of gods like Helios or Apollo in second temple Judaism and later. One article you can find on JSTOR is: Heaven on Earth: Helios and the Zodiac Cycle in Ancient Palestinian Synagogues by Jodi Magness; Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. 59 (2005), pp. 1-52 (52 pages)

 


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