3. Christian doctrine
Most Christian theologians, following the culture and habits of their day,
used the general term man to cover both sexes when referring to human beings.
The literature on the subject consistently refers to anthropology in theology as
"the doctrine of man," but it must be understood as that of
"human" or "human being." The starting point for the
Christian understanding of what it is to be human is the recognition that humans
are created after the image of God. This idea views God and humans joined with
one another through a mysterious connection. God is thought of as
incomprehensible and beyond substance; yet God desired to reflect the divine
image in one set of creatures and chose humans for this. Man as the image of God
belongs, therefore, to the self-revelation of God in quite a decisive way. God,
being reflected in the human creature, makes this being a partner in the
realization of the divine self; there is constant interaction. God and humans
belong so closely together that one can say that they are intended for each
other. For this the statements of the great mystics are of significance. Man
finds fulfillment in God, the divine prototype, but God also first comes to the
fulfillment of the divine essence in relation, in this case, with the human.
The idea of the human being as the creature created according to the image of
God was already being interpreted in a twofold direction in the early church.
For one thing, man, like all other creatures of the universe, is a creation of
God. According to human nature, the creature is thus not divine but at the same
time is not created out of nothingness; as creatures human beings stand in a
relationship of utter dependency on God. They have nothing from themselves but
owe everything, even their being, exclusively to the will of the divine Creator;
they are joined with all other fellow creatures through a relationship of
solidarity. Later, this idea of the solidarity of the creatures among one
another almost completely receded behind the idea of the special position of
humans and their special commission of dominion. The idea of solidarity with all
creatures has been expressed and practiced by but few charismatic personalities
in the history of Western piety, such as by Francis of Assisi in his
"Canticle of the Sun": "Praised be Thou, my Lord, with all Thy
creatures, especially with our sister sun."
The second aspect of the idea of the human being
as a creature operated very much more emphatically: the superiority of humans
over all other creatures. God placed humans in a special relationship to the
divine. God created them in the divine image, thereby assigning to humans a
special commission vis-à-vis all other creatures.
Under the influence of the dualistic philosophy of Plato, Christian theology
attempted for some time to regard the image of God in human beings as restricted
simply to their intellectual capability and faculty of perception. In his work De
Trinitate, Augustine attempted to ascertain traces of divine Trinity in the
human intellect. Christian mysticism confronted this dualistic view of humans.
It understood humans in their mind-body entirety as being in the image of God.
The image of God is stamped all the way into the sphere of human corporeality.
The idea of human creation according to the image of God is already based upon
the intention of the Incarnation, the self-representation of God in
corporeality. Even according to their somatic (bodily) condition, humans are the
universal form of being, in whom the powers and creative principles of the whole
universe are combined in a personal unity of spirit, soul, and body. (see also Index:
dualism)
The Christian understanding of evil is also linked with the idea of human
creation according to the image of God. Evil cannot, in the Christian view, be
derived from the dualistic assumption of the contrasts of spirit and body,
reason and matter. According to the Christian understanding, the triumph of evil
is not identical with the victory of matter, the "flesh," over the
spirit. Such a dualistic interpretation has frequently been furthered by the
fact that for many centuries the Christian understanding of sin, even among many
of the church's teachers, was influenced by the philosophical assumptions of
Neoplatonic dualism. Moreover, in Augustine there are still the aftereffects of
Manichaeism, which--out of the dualistic conceptions of Zoroastrian
religion--ultimately viewed the main motive force of sin in
"concupiscence"--i.e., the sex drive. (see also Index:
good and evil)
The only genuine departure point for the Christian view of evil is the idea
of freedom, which is based in the concept of the human being as the image of
God. The human is person because God is person. It is apparent in Christian
claims that the concept of the human as "being-as-person" is the real
seal of that human as "being-as-the-image-of-God," and therein lies
the true nobility that distinguishes human beings from all other creatures. If
the Christian faith is differentiated from other religions through the fact that
for the Christian God is person, then this faith takes effect in the thereby
resulting consequence that the human being, too, is person. (see also Index:
free will)
God at the same time entered into a great risk in creating the human as
person. The real sign of God as personal being is freedom. When God created
humans according to his image, he also gave over to them this mark of nobility--i.e., freedom.
This alone constitutes the presupposition of love. Only through this freedom can
the human being as partner of God offer free love to God; only in this freedom
can God's love be answered through free love in return. Love in its fulfilled
form, according to the Christian understanding, is possible only between
persons; conversely, the person can be realized only in the complete love to
another person. Humans can use this freedom to offer God, their Creator, their
freely given love.
Yet, in the gift of freedom itself there also lay enclosed the possibility
for humans to decide against God and to raise themselves to the goal of divine
love. The event that is portrayed in the Mosaic creation story as the Fall of
man (Genesis, chapter 3) is essentially the trying out of freedom, the free
decision of humans against God. This rebellion consists of the fact that human
beings improperly use their God-given freedom to set themselves against God and
even to wish to be "like God."
This special interpretation of sin likewise renders understandable the
specifically Christian understanding of human redemption, namely, the view of
Jesus Christ as the historical figure of the Redeemer--i.e.,
the specifically Christian view of the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ.
Members of Asian high religions have found it difficult to understand the
fundamental Christian idea of the incarnation. The religious person of the East
is inclined to understand the Christian idea of incarnation as an analogy to the
Hindu concept of the avatara(best rendered as incarnation). The starting
point of the latter is that the divine descends to Earth ever again and is
constantly clothed anew in a human figure, in order to reveal the heavenly truth
to every era and all people in a manner comprehensible to them. Thus, it was
natural to understand the figure of Jesus Christ also as such an avatara, as
a form of descent of the divine to mankind. In the realm of Hinduism ever-new
attempts are found to comprehend Christology in this sense.
The Christian understanding of the incarnation, however, is based upon a
fundamentally different idea, which is enclosed in the simple saying of the
Gospel According to John: "The Word became flesh" (chapter 1, verse
14). Whereas the avatara concept assumes that the divine appears in the
cyclic lapse of time periods--continually occurring, now in this, now in that
earthly veil--the incarnation of the divine Logos in Jesus Christ is, according
to the Christian view, a definitively unique happening. One might say that the
Christian view of incarnation has an extremely material, even materialistic,
feature. In Christianity, it is not a transcendent, divine being that takes on
the appearance of an earthly corporeality, so as to be manifested through this
semblance of a body; instead, God himself as human, as member of a definite
people, a definite family, at a certain time--"suffered under Pontius
Pilate"--enters into the corporeality, carnality, and materiality of the
history of mankind. In the midst of history God creates the beginning of a
thorough transformation of humans that in like manner embraces all spheres of
human being--matter, soul, and mind. Incarnation so constituted did not have the
character of veiling God in a human form, which would enable the divine being to
reveal a new teaching with human words. The incarnation is not the special
instance of a cyclic descent of God always occurring afresh in constantly new
veils. Instead, it is the unique intervention of God in the history of the human
world. Therein God took the figure of a single historical person into the divine
being, suffered through the historical conditions of being, and overcame in this
person, Jesus Christ, the root of human corruption--the misuse of freedom. God
thereby established the dawn of a transformed, renewed, exalted form of human
being and opened a realm in which love to God and to neighbour can be tranquilly
fulfilled.
Here is raised the decisive question of the place of suffering within the
Christian anthropology. Christianity's opponents have ever again reproached it
with glorifying suffering instead of overcoming it. This reproof seems to many
to be not entirely unjustified. There have in fact been eras in the history of
Christian piety in which suffering as such underwent a frankly ecstatic
glorification. This was especially so in several periods of the Middle Ages, in
which the Christian Church was convulsed by the severest inner and outer crises
and Christ appeared predominantly in the figure of the man of suffering.
The starting point for the Christian understanding of suffering is the
messianic self-understanding of Jesus himself. A temptation to power and
self-exaltation lay in the late Jewish promise of the coming of the Messiah-Son
of man. The Gospel According to Matthew described the temptation of Jesus by
Satan in the wilderness as a temptation to worldly power. Jesus himself deeply
disappointed his disciples' notions aiming at power and exaltation, in that he
taught them, in accordance with Isaiah, chapter 53: "The Son of man will
suffer many things." Already in Jesus' announcements of suffering the
Christian understanding of suffering is brought clearly to expression: suffering
is not the final aim and end in itself in the realization of human destiny; it
is the gateway to resurrection, to rebirth, to new creation. This idea receives
its clarification from the Christian understanding of sin. Sin as the misuse of
human freedom has led humans into total opposition against God, who in return
delivers them over to death. Turning to God can therefore take place only when
the results of this rebellion are overcome in all levels of human being, all the
way to physical corporeality.
In the early church the sign of the cross was not considered a glorification
of suffering but a "sign of victory" (tropaion) in the sense of
the ancient triumphal sign that was set up at the place where the victorious
turning point of the battle took place. The cross was likewise considered the
"dread of the demons," since as a victory sign it struck terror into
the hitherto ruling demonic powers of the world. An ancient church hymn of the
cross spoke of the "cross of the beauty of the Kingdom of God." Christ
generally appeared upon early church representations of the cross as the crowned
victor, who in such figures is represented as the lord of the new eon, the new
age promised in the coming of Christ. The emperor Constantine thus fastened to
the standards of the imperial legions the cross, which was considered the
victory sign for the community of Christians hitherto persecuted by the Roman
Empire, and elevated it to a token of military triumph over the legions of his
pagan foes that were assembled under the sign of the old gods.
In the Christian understanding, suffering also does not appear--as in
Buddhism--as suffering simply under the general conditions of human existence in
this world; it is instead coupled with the specifically Christian idea of the
imitation of Christ. Individual Christians are called to become imitators of
Christ; incorporation into the body of Christ is granted to those who
subsequently are ready to carry out within themselves Christ's destiny of
suffering, death, and resurrection. The early church's characterization of the
Christian was that of Christophoros--"bearer of Christ."
Suffering was an unalterable principle in the great drama of freedom, which was
identical with the drama of redemption.
Just as clear, however, is the real, indeed materialistic, significance that
lies in the Christian understanding of the resurrection. A dualistic
understanding of what it is to be human, which assumes an essential difference
between the spiritual and the material-bodily sides of human existence,
necessarily leads to the idea of the immortality of the soul. According to this
view, imperishableness belongs to spiritual nature alone. The Christian hope,
however, does not aim at the immortality of the soul but at the resurrection of
the body. Corporeality is not a quality that is foreign to the spiritual.
Everything spiritual presses toward corporealization; its eternal figure is a
corporeal figure. This hope was expressed by Vladimir Solovyov:
What help
would the highest and greatest moral victory be for man, if the enemy,
"death," which lurks in the ultimate depth of man's physical, somatic,
material sphere, were not overcome?
The goal of redemption is not separation of the spirit from the body; it is
rather the new human in the entirety of body, soul, and mind. It is appropriate
to say that Christianity has contended for a "holistic" view of the
human. The Christian image of the human being has an essentially corporeal
aspect that is based in the idea of the incarnation and finds its most palpable
expression in the idea of the resurrection.
For a long time Christian anthropology in academic theology was dominated by
static thinking. The human appeared as a complete being, placed in a finished
world like a methodically provided-for tenant in a prefabricated, newly built
residence ready for occupation. Redemption was understood just as statically:
salvation appeared in the teachings of church dogma as restitution and
restoration of the lost divine image and often in fact more a patching up of
fragments through ecclesiastical remedies than as a real new creation.
Although it is not an uncontroversial point, there is in the New Testament,
in the observation of many, a progression of salvation in history. Indeed, there
is a progress of both the individual human being and of mankind as a whole, what
might be thought of under some terms and conditions as a potential for the
progressive perfection of the human being. This characteristic stands out
already in the proclamation of Jesus. He promises his disciples: "Then the
righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father. He who has
ears, let him hear." (Matthew 13:43). In the Gospel According to John,
Jesus promises his disciples an increase of their divine powers that is to
exceed even the spiritual powers at work in himself (John 14:12). Similar
expectations are also expressed in the First Letter of John: "Beloved . . .
it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we
shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is" (chapter 3, verse 2).
The idea of the Christian "superman," which was expressed by
Montanus, is a result of this view. In connection with the breakthrough of the
idea of evolution through Darwin in the areas of biology, zoology, and
anthropology, the tendency asserted itself--above all in 19th-century American
theology--of interpreting the Christian history of salvation in terms of the
evolution and expectation of future human perfection in the form of reaching
even higher charismatic levels and ever higher means of spiritual knowledge and
communication.
In and after the mid-20th century a number of theologians, some of them of
schools called "process theology" and some in evolutionary camps, have
used these biblical clues to develop new understandings of Christian
anthropology. These understandings challenge old orthodoxies, and it cannot be
said that any of them have securely been worked into the development of
classical thought. Yet these schools, influenced by thinkers such as the British
philosopher Alfred North Whitehead or the Jesuit paleoanthropologist Teilhard de
Chardin, see the human progressing toward later stages of fulfillment "in
Christ."
In such forms of Christian natural theology, Christ is not only a past
reference point through the incarnation and a present experience in worship and
devotion but also a focal point of the collective salvation of the world. In
Teilhard's term, this is the "Omega Point" toward which creation is
striving and in respect to which it is unfolding. Such Christian naturalists
refer to the New Testament Letter to the Ephesians, where the goal of Christian
motion is described: "until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of
the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the
stature of the fulness of Christ." (Ephesians 4:13). It must be said that
evolutionary theology also met reaction and resistance from many more
traditional Christians who operated with other (some would say more scholastic
or more static) metaphysics, or who found fault with the thought of Whitehead or
Teilhard. At the same time, it is safe to say that through the centuries of
change in scientific thought, and with the enlarged cultural experience of
Christianity apart from the Western world, ways of thinking about God are
certain to be altered. (see also Index: Ephesians, Letter of Paul to the)
Since the Reformation of the 16th century in the West, the Christian
anthropology of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin has been oriented primarily toward
the schema of justification. The Christian is the one to whom the righteousness
of God is ascribed in faith for the sake of the merit of Jesus Christ, which he
earned for himself through his expiatory sacrifice on the cross. In the 20th
century, however, the schema of justification seems less understandable as the
starting point for a Christian anthropology, because Jewish law and the Roman
Catholic concept of penance based on Roman law (against which the Reformers
fulminated) are scarcely found any more in religious consciousness. Paul only
speaks of justification when he becomes "as a Jew to the Jews," but if
he speaks to Gentile Christians, then he becomes "as a Greek to the
Greeks" and talks to them in ideas and images that are more suitable to the
Greek ways of thinking in terms of the mystery religions: the new being, the
freed and ransomed human, the new creation, the resurrection with Christ, the
process of human transformation and supra-formation, and the Sonship and
friendship of God.
Probably no idea and no sentiment in the early church dominated the Christian
feeling for life so thoroughly and comprehensively as the consciousness of the
newness of the life into which persons viewed themselves transposed through
participation in the life and body of Christ. The newness of the Christian
message of salvation not only filled the hearts of the faithful but was also
striking to the non-Christian milieu. The new humans experience and recognize
the newness of life as the life of Christ that is beginning to mature in
themselves, as the overwhelming experience of a new state already now
commencing. In the New Testament statements about the new man, it was not a
settled, complete new condition that was being spoken of, into which people are
transposed through grace, but rather the beginning of a coming new state, the
consummation of which will first take place in the future. The new human is one
who is engaged in the process of renewal; new life is a principle of growth of
the Christian maturing toward "perfect manhood in Christ." The new
situation of human beings, for their part, works anew as fermenting
"leaven" within old humankind, as "fresh dough," and
contributes to transforming the old form of humanity through its fermentation
into the state of the Kingdom of God.
"Rebirth" has often been identified with a definite, temporally
datable form of "conversion." Especially the pietistic and revival
type of Christianity has contributed to a certain leveling of this concept. In
the history of Christian piety a line of prominent personalities experienced
their rebirth in the form of a temporally datable and also locally ascertainable
conversion event. Fixation upon a single type of experience, however, is
factually not justified. There are numerous other forms of completion of that
mysterious event characterized with the expression rebirth. The mode of
experience of rebirth itself is as manifold as the individuality of the person
concerned, his special intellectual or emotional endowment, and his special
history. The different forms of rebirth experience are distinguished not only
according to whether the event sets in suddenly with overwhelming surprise, as
when one is "born again" or "sees the light," or as the
result of a slow process, a "growing," a "maturing," and an
"evolution." They are also distinguished according to the psychic
capability predominant at the time that thereby takes charge (will, intellect),
the endowment at hand, and the personal type of religious experience. With the
voluntaristic type, rebirth is expressed in a new alignment of the will, in the
liberation of new capabilities and powers that were hitherto undeveloped in the
person concerned. With the intellectual type, it leads to an activation of the
capabilities for understanding, to the breakthrough of a "vision."
With others it leads to the discovery of an unexpected beauty in the order of
nature or to the discovery of the mysterious meaning of history. With still
others it leads to a new vision of the moral life and its orders, to a selfless
realization of love of neighbour. In the experience of Christian rebirth, the
hitherto existing old condition of humanity is not simply eliminated so far as
the given personality structure is concerned--a structure dependent upon
heredity, education, and earlier life experiences. Instead, each person affected
perceives his life in Christ at any given time as "newness of life."
The condition of "fallen" humanity is frequently characterized in
the New Testament as "slavery." It is the slavery of human willfulness
that wants to have and enjoy all things for itself: the slavery of alienated
love, which is no longer turned toward God but toward one's own self and the
things of this world and which also degrades one's fellows into the means for
egoism and exploitation. The servitude of people fallen away from God is much
more oppressive than mere slavery of the senses and of greed for life. It is the
enslavement not only of their "flesh" but also of all levels of their
being, even the "most spiritual."
In a bold reversal of the language of Platonic dualism, Luther expressed it
thusly in his commentary to the Letter of Paul to the Romans: "The entire
man who is not reborn is flesh, even in his spirit; the entire man who is reborn
is spirit, even when he eats and sleeps." Only from this perspective do
Martin Luther's words about the "Freedom of a Christian Man" (1520)
receive their true meaning. The freedom that Christians receive is the freedom
that Christ, spoken of by Paul as the new Adam, gained for them by fighting. The
freedom of Christians is the freedom reattained in Christ, in which the
possibility of the misuse of freedom is addressed and overcome.
In the initial centuries of the church a special significance fell to the
evangelical schema of liberation--and to the corresponding schema of ransom--in
a society that, in its social structure, was constructed entirely upon the
system of slavery. On the one hand, wide strata of the population lived in the
permanent state of slavery; on the other hand, on the basis of the prevailing
usage of war, even the free population was constantly exposed to the danger of
passing into possession of the victor as a slave in case of a conquest. The
schema of liberation could therefore count upon a spontaneous understanding.
Freedom alone also makes a perfect community possible. Such a community
embraces God and the neighbour, in whom the image of God confronts human beings
in the flesh. Community is fulfilled in the free service of love. Luther
probably most pertinently articulated the paradox of Christian freedom, which
includes both love and service: "A Christian man is a free lord of all
things and subordinate to no one. A Christian man is a submissive servant of all
things and subject to everyone." Christian freedom is thus to be understood
neither purely individually nor purely collectively. The motives of the personal
and the social are indivisibly joined by the idea that each person is indeed an
image of God for himself alone, but that in Christ he also recognizes the image
of God in the neighbour and with the neighbour is a member in the one body of
Christ. Here, too, the evolutive principle of the idea of freedom is not to be
mistaken; in it, for example, lay the spiritual impetus to the social and racial
emancipation of slaves, as it was demanded by the great Christian champions of
human rights in the 18th and 19th centuries and, through great efforts, pursued
and achieved.
Friedrich Nietzsche summarized his critique of the Christians of his time in
the words of Zarathushtra (Zoroaster): "They would have to sing better
songs to me that I might believe in their Redeemer: his disciples would have to
look more redeemed!" The critique is to the point. In the New Testament
testimonials, joy appears as the characteristic mark of distinction of the
Christian. It is the spontaneous result of being filled with the Holy Spirit and
is among the main fruits of the Holy Spirit. Joy was the basic mood of
congregational gatherings and was often expressed in an exuberant jubilation; it
has its origin in the recognition that the dominion of evil is already broken
through the power of Christ, that death, devil, and demons no longer possess any
claim upon believers, and that the forces of forgiveness, reconciliation,
resurrection, and transfiguration are already effective in humankind. This
principle of the joy of the Christian is most strongly alive in the liturgy of
the Eastern Orthodox Church.
The roots of a specifically Christian sense of
humour also lie within this joy. Its peculiarity consists of the fact that in
the midst of the conflicts of life the Christian is capable of regarding all
sufferings and afflictions from the perspective of overcoming them in the future
or from the perspective of victory over them already achieved in Christ. In
Christian humour, freedom and joy are combined. The Christian does not let
himself be confused and tempted through cross and suffering but already
perceives in the cross and in suffering a foretaste of eschatological triumph
and joy. At one extreme the humour of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard
is too dialectical and too bitter to exhaust the entire fullness of the
Christian joy. More of it is found in the "hallelujah" of black
spirituals. (see also
Index: black American)
In the New Testament the Christian is depicted as the person who is filled
with the powers of the Holy Spirit. The view of the gifts of the Spirit stands
in a direct relationship with the understanding of the human as the image of
God. For the believing Christian of the original period of the church, the Holy
Spirit was the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is already now made manifest
in his body, the community of the faithful, as the miraculous principle of life
of the new eon. Throughout the centuries the Holy Spirit has remained the
ferment of church history--all great reformations and numerous foundings of new
churches and sects stand under the banner of new charismatic breakthroughs.
The demand for perfection is frequently repeated in the New Testament and has
played a significant role in the history of Christian spirituality. In the
Gospel According to Matthew, Jesus directs the demand to his disciples:
"You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect"
(chapter 5, verse 48). This demand seems to exceed by far the measure of
reasonableness for man. Yet, it is meant literally, for it is asserted again in
the writings of the New Testament. The meaning of this claim is recognizable
only from the understanding of the human as the image of God and from the
apprehension of Christ as the "new Adam." The perfection of believers
is the perfection with which they reflect the image of God. They have, to be
sure, disfigured this image through willful alienation from the original, but in
Christ they recover the perfection of the image of God.
The idea of the deification of man, which captures the Greek notion of
"partaking" of the divine character, also points in the direction of
perfection. Post-Reformation theology, out of anxiety before
"mysticism," struck almost entirely from its vocabulary this concept
that originated in the techniques of the mystical experience. In the first one
and a half millennia of the Christian Church, however, the idea of
deification--of partaking in God's being--constituted a central concept for
Christian anthropology. Athanasius created the fundamental formula for the
theology of deification: "God became man in order that we become God."
In the theology of the early church these words became the basis of theological
anthropology. Only the idea of perfection makes understandable a final
enhancement of the Christian image of the human--the intensification from
"child of God" to "friend of God." This appears as the
highest form of communion reached between God and human beings; in it love is
elevated to the highest form of personal communication between prototype and
image.
That revolutionizing idea, which constitutes the basis of Christian ethics,
also becomes comprehensible through the foundation of Christian anthropology in
the image of God: in the eye of Christian faith Christ is present in everyone,
even the most debased. According to Matthew (chapter 25, verses 40 and 45) the
Judge of the world says to the redeemed: "Truly, I say to you, as you did
it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me," and to the
damned: "As you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to
me." Another saying of the Lord is cited by Tertullian: "If you have
seen your brother, you have seen your Lord." For the Christian the fellow
human is the present Christ himself. In the fellow, Christians see, under the
wrapping of misery, degeneration, and suffering, the image of the present Lord,
who became human, who suffered, died, and was resurrected in order to lead all
humanity back into the Kingdom of God.
In the self-understanding of the Christian community two tendencies battle
with one another from the beginning of church history. They lead to completely
different consequences in the basic orientation of Christians toward fellow
Christians and fellow human beings.
The one attitude stands under the governing idea of election. God chooses
some out of the human race, which exists in opposition to all that is divine,
and erects a Kingdom from these elect. This idea underlines the aristocratic
character of the Kingdom of God; it consists of an elite of elect. In the
Johannine apocalypse the 144,000 " . . . who have not defiled themselves
with women" (Revelation 14:4) constituted the picked troops of the Kingdom
of God. For Augustine and his theological successors up to Calvin, the community
of the elect is numerically restricted; their number corresponds to the number
of fallen angels, who must again be replaced through the matching number of
redeemed men so that the Kingdom of God would again be restored numerically as
well. The church is here understood as a selection of a few out of the masses of
perdition who constitute the jetsam of the history of salvation. A grave
endangering of the consciousness of community is concealed in this orientation,
for self-righteousness, which is the root of self-love and thereby the death of
love of neighbour, easily enters again via this consciousness of exclusive
election. (see also Index: Revelation to John)
The other attitude proceeds from the opposite idea that the goal of the
salvation inaugurated through Jesus Christ can only be redemption of all
humanity. According to this view God's love of humans (philanthropia), as
the drama of divine self-surrender for human salvation shows, is greater than
the righteousness that craves the eternal damnation of the guilty. Since the
time of Origen, this second attitude is found not only among the great mystics
of the Eastern Church but also among some mystics of Western Christendom. The
teaching of universal reconciliation (apokatastasis panton) has struck
against opposition in all Christian confessions. This is connected with the fact
that such a universalistic view easily leads to a disposition that regards
redemption as a kind of natural process that no one can evade. Such an
orientation can lead to a weakening or loss of a consciousness of moral
responsibility before God and neighbour; it contains the temptation to spiritual
security and moral indolence.
The Christian view of the church was influenced by the Old Testament concept
of the qahal,
the elected people of God of the end time, and by the expectation of the
coming of the Messiah in Judaism. The Greek secular word ekklesia,
the term used for the church, means an assembly of people coming together
for a meeting. (see also Index: chosen people)
In Christianity the concept received a new meaning through its relationship
to the person of Jesus Christ as the messianic inaugurator of the Kingdom of
God: (1) with Christ the elected community of the end time has appeared; (2) the
church is the eschatological gift of the Holy Spirit, which already flows
through the life of the church (Acts 2:33); (3) the community of the end time
consists of those who believe in Jesus Christ--both Jews and pagans; the idea of
the elected convenant people (i.e., the Jews) is transferred to the
"new Israel"; (4) the church forms the body of its Lord; and (5) the
church consists of "living stones," from which its house is
"built" (1 Peter 2:5).
Jesus himself created no firm organization for his community; the expectation
of the immediate imminence of the Kingdom of God provided no occasion for this.
Nevertheless, the selection of Apostles and the special position of individual
Apostles within this circle pointed to the beginnings of a structuralization of
his community. After the community was constituted anew because of the
impressions made by the appearances of the Resurrected One, the succession of
the appearances apparently effected a certain gradation within the community.
The unity of the church, which was dispersed geographically, was understood
from the viewpoint of the Diaspora (James 1:1--the scattered churches of the new
Israel represent "the twelve tribes in the Dispersion"). The Didacheor
the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles (late 1st century), viewed the church
in terms of the bread of the Eucharist, whose wheat grains "are gathered
from the mountains." The idea of the preexistence of the divine Logos
brought into existence the concept of the preexistence of the church, which
included the view that the world was created for the sake of the church. The
earthly church is thus the representative of the heavenly church.
Establishment of norms for the church was necessary because diverse kinds of
interpretations of the Christian message were conceived under the influence of
the religions of late antiquity, especially Gnosticism--a syncretistic religious
dualistic belief system that incorporated many Christian motifs and became one
of the strongest heresies of the early church. In Gnostic interpretations, mixed
Christian and pagan ideas appealed to divine inspiration or claimed to be
revelations of the Resurrected One. The church erected three defenses against
the apparently uncontrollable prophetic and visionary efficacy of pneumatic
(spiritual) figures as well as against pagan syncretism, which was represented
by a mixing together of many divine images and expressions: (1) the New
Testament canon, (2) the apostolic "rules of faith," or
"creeds," and (3) the apostolic succession of bishops. The common
basis of these three defenses is the idea of "apostolicity."
The early church never forgot that it was the
church that created, selected the books, and fixed the canon of the New
Testament, especially because of the threat of Gnostic writings. This is one of
the primary distinctions between the Orthodox Church vis-à-vis the
Reformation churches, which view the Scriptures as the final norm and rule for
the church and church teaching. The Orthodox Church, like the Roman Catholic
Church, emphasizes the fact that the Christian Church existed prior to the
formation of the canon of Scripture--that it is indeed the source and origin of
the Scripture itself. Thus, tradition plays a significant role alongside the
Holy Scriptures in the Orthodox and Roman churches.
The apostolic rule of faith--i.e., the creed--issued from the
apostolic tradition of the church as a second, shorter form of its
solidification, at first oral and then written. It also served as a defense
against Gnosticism and syncretistic heretical interpretations of the Christian
faith.
The third defense that the church used against both Gnostic and syncretistic
movements and free charismatic movements within the church was the office of
bishop, which became legitimized through the concept of apostolic succession.
The mandate for missions, the defense against free prophecy, the polemics with
Gnosticism and other heresies, the persecution of the church, and, not least of
all, management of church discipline--all allowed the monarchical episcopacy to
emerge as a strong jurisdictional office in the early centuries. The bishop, in
his capacity as leader of the eucharistic worship service, as teacher, and as
curer of souls, became the chief shepherd of the church and was considered its
representative.
The basic idea of apostolic succession is as follows: Christ appointed the
original Apostles and entrusted to them his full spiritual authority; the
original Apostles then appointed overseers (bishops) for the churches founded by
them and passed on to them, through the sacramental laying on of hands, their
authority of office. These men transmitted the office of overseer to their
successors also by the laying on of hands. In this manner, apostolic succession
guaranteed the legitimacy of episcopal church government, episcopal doctrine,
and the validity of the sacraments dispensed by the bishops.
The evolution of the episcopal office followed a different development in the
East and in the West. The Orthodox Church accepts the monarchical episcopacy
insofar as it involves the entire church, both the visible earthly and the
invisible heavenly churches bound together inseparably. The monarchical
principle, however, finds no application to the organization of the visible
church. The latter is based upon democratic principles that are grounded in the
polity of the early church. Just as all Apostles without exception were of equal
authority and none of them held a paramount position over against the others, so
too their successors, the bishops, are of equal authority without exception.
Thus, the politics of the Eastern Orthodox churches have a decidedly synodal
character. Not only the priesthood but also the laity have been able to
participate in Orthodox synods. Election to ecclesiastical offices (i.e., pastor,
bishop, or patriarch) involves participation by both clergy and laity. The
individual polities of modern Orthodox churches (e.g.,
Greek or Russian) are distinguished according to the amount of state
participation in the settlement of ecclesiastical questions.
The ecumenical council, which consists of the assembly of all Orthodox
bishops, constitutes the highest authority of Orthodox synodal polity. The
bishops gathered at an ecumenical council resolve all questions of Orthodox
faith as well as of worship and canon law according to the principle that the
majority rules. The councils recognized by the Orthodox Church as ecumenical
councils are: Nicaea in 325, Constantinople in 381, Ephesus in 431, Chalcedon in
451, second Council of Constantinople in 553, third Council of Constantinople in
680, and second Council of Nicaea in 787. No council since then has been
regarded as ecumenical by Eastern Orthodoxy.
Orthodoxy was divided into various old and new types of churches. Some of
these were "patriarchal," which meant that they were directly
responsible to a patriarch. Others were "autocephalous," which has
come to mean in the modern world that as national churches they are in communion
with Constantinople but are responsible for authority to their own national
synods. This division, plus the fact that Orthodoxy has so often been the victim
of revolutionary change and political onslaught, has served as a hindrance
against any new ecumenical council, even though many Orthodox have asked for
such a council.
On the basis of the joint action of special circumstances, in the Roman
Church the papacy evolved out of the monarchical episcopate. Rome, as the
capital of the Roman Empire, in which a numerically significant Christian
community was already formed in the 1st century, occupied a special position. A
leading role devolved upon the leading bishop of the Roman community in
questions of discipline, doctrine, and ecclesiastical and worship order. This
occurred in the Latin provinces of the church in the West (Italy, Gaul, Spain,
Africa), whose organization followed the provincial organization of the Roman
Empire. A special leadership position devolved upon the Roman bishop after the
collapse of the Western Roman Empire. The theological underpinning of this
special position was emphasized by Petrine theology, which saw in the words of
Jesus, "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church"
(Matthew 16:18), a spiritual-legal instituting of the papacy by Jesus Christ
himself. In the Greek Church of the East (e.g., Origen) and also in
Augustine in the West, however, these words were referred to Peter's confession
of faith; since the time of the popes Gelasius I (reigned 492-496), Symmachus
(reigned 498-514), and Gregory I (reigned 590-604), these words have served as
the foundation for the claim of papal primacy over the entire Christian Church.
(see also Index: Petrine theory)
Christianity, from its beginning, tended toward an intolerance that was
rooted in its religious self-consciousness. Christianity understands itself as
revelation of the divine truth that became human in Jesus Christ himself.
"I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but
by me" (John 14:6). To be a Christian is to "follow the truth" (3
John); the Christian proclamation is "the way of truth" (2 Peter 2:2).
Those who do not acknowledge the truth are enemies "of the cross of
Christ" (Philippians 3:18) who have "exchanged the truth about God for
a lie" (Romans 1:25) and made themselves the advocates and confederates of
the "adversary, the devil," who "prowls around like a roaring
lion" (1 Peter 5:8). Thus, one cannot make a deal with the devil and his
party--and in this lies the basis for intolerance in Christianity. (see also Index:
religious toleration)
Christianity consistently practiced an
intolerant attitude in its approach to Judaism and paganism as well as heresy in
its own ranks. By practicing its intolerance vis-à-vis the Roman emperor
cult, it thereby forced the Roman state, for its part, into intolerance. Rome,
however, was not adapted to the treatment of a religion that negated its
religious foundations, and this inadequacy later influenced the breakdown of
paganism.
Early Christianity aimed at the elimination of paganism--the destruction of
its institutions, temples, tradition, and the order of life based upon it. After
Christianity's victory over Greco-Roman religions, it left only the ruins of
paganism still remaining. Christian missions of later centuries constantly aimed
at the destruction of indigenous religions, including their cultic places and
traditions (as in missions to the Anglo-Saxons, Germans, and Slavs). This
objective was not realized in mission areas in which Christian political powers
did not succeed in conquests--e.g., China and Japan; but in Indian Goa,
for example, the temples and customs of all indigenous religions were eliminated
by the Portuguese conquerors.
The attitude of intolerance was further reinforced when Islam confronted
Christianity from the 7th century on. Islam understood itself as the
conclusion and fulfillment of the Old and New Testament revelation; from the
Christian view, however, Islam was understood eschatologically--i.e.,
as the religion of the "false prophets," or as the religion of the
Antichrist. The aggression of Christianity against Islam--on the Iberian
Peninsula, in Palestine, and in the entire eastern Mediterranean area during the
Crusades--was carried out under this fundamental attitude of intolerance.
Intolerance of indigenous religions was also manifested in Roman Catholic
missions in the New World; these missions transferred the methods of the
struggle against Islam to the treatment of the Native Americans
throughout the Western Hemisphere and destroyed their cults and cultic places.
Against Protestants, the Counter-Reformation displayed the same kind of
intolerance and was largely equated with the struggle against the Turks.
The idea of tolerance first arose during a series of historical catastrophes
that forced Christianity into self-reflection: the devastating impressions of
the military proceedings of the Inquisition troops against the heretical
Cathari, Albigenses, and Waldenses during the Middle Ages; the psychological
effect of the permanent inquisitional terror; the conquest of Constantinople by
the Turks; the fratricidal struggle among the churches that arose during the
Reformation; and the battles of the Protestant territorial churches against the
sectarian and Free Church groups in their midst.
Thus, for Nicholas of Cusa (1401-64) the conquest of Constantinople became
the occasion to demand, for the first time, the mutual toleration of
Christianity and Islam as the presupposition for a religious peace. When
the Reformation churches asserted the exclusive claim of possessing the
Christian truth, they tried to carry it out with the help of the political and
military power at their disposal. In the religious wars of the 16th and 17th
centuries, Christian intolerance developed into an internal fratricidal struggle
in which each side sought to annihilate the other party in the name of truth.
Only the fact that such attempts did not succeed led to new reflections upon the
justification of one's own exclusive claim to absoluteness.
The intolerance of the Reformation territorial
churches found its counterpart in the intolerance of the revolutionary groups of
the Reformation period, such as that of the German radical Reformer Thomas Müntzer,
which wanted to force the coming of the Kingdom of God through the dominion of
the "elect" over the "godless." In the intolerance of the
ideology and techniques of many modern political revolutions and authoritarian
regimes some see either a legacy or a mimicking of old Christian patterns and
methods (e.g., inquisition or brainwashing).
Among those who first spoke up consistently for tolerance were the Baptists
and Spiritualists of the Reformation period. Their most important contribution
consisted in that they stood up for their constantly reiterated demand for
tolerance not only through their preaching but also through their courageous
suffering.
The victory of tolerance contributed especially to the recognition of the
evident contradiction between the theological self-conception of Christianity as
a religion of love of God and neighbour and the inhumanity practiced by the
churches in the persecution of dissenters. Recognition of this contradiction
even provoked criticism of the Christian truths of faith themselves.
The Roman Catholic Church in the past has consistently opposed the
development of religious toleration. Its claim to absolute power in a state is
still practiced in the 20th century in some Catholic countries, such as Spain
and Colombia, in relationships to Protestant minorities. Since Pope John XXIII
and the second Vatican Council (1962-65), however, a more tolerant attitude of
the Roman Catholic Church has been demanded that is appropriate both to the
ecumenical situation of Christendom in the latter part of the 20th century and
to the personal character of the Christian faith.
The faith of Christendom is present in the confessions of faith and the
creedal writings of the different churches. Three creeds find general ecumenical
acknowledgment: the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (also
called the Nicene Creed), and the Athanasian Creed. The Apostles' Creed is the
baptismal confession of the Roman Catholic community; its original form as a
Greek hymn can be traced back to the apostolic tradition (of the 2nd century).
The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed is the confession of faith of the ecumenical
Council of Nicaea in 325, which was later supplemented at the ecumenical Council
of Constantinople in 381. Its principal use is in the liturgy of the Eucharist.
The Athanasian Creed is a Latin creed whose theological content can be traced
back to Athanasius of Alexandria (4th century) but that probably first
originated in the 5th century in Spain or southern Gaul. It contains a detailed
formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity and Christology (the two-natures
doctrine), which was influenced by Augustine. All three creeds were accepted by
the churches of the Reformation.
Around central confessional statements about Jesus as the Christ in the New
Testament--e.g.,
"Jesus is Lord" (Romans 10:9); "You are the Christ"
(Matthew 16:16)--are concentrated a series of further assertions that laud his
significance for salvation and concern his suffering, death by crucifixion,
Resurrection, and his exaltation to God. This tradition, through Mark, Luke, and
Paul, was called "gospel," or kerygma (proclamation).
The original form of the creed possessed not a didactic but a hymnal
character and had its locus in the worship service. Regular use of a creed as a
baptismal confession, and, accordingly, in the preparation of candidates for
baptism in catechetical instruction, influenced its fixed formulation. This was
also true of its use in the eucharistic worship service as an expression of the
congregation's unity in faith before receiving the elements of the Lord's Supper
as well as its use as testimony before the world in times of persecution and as
norm of faith (regula fidei) in the altercation with heresies.
Development of confessions of faith into theological didactic creeds, which
began during the Christological controversies of the 5th century, was continued
in the Reformation. The relatively short creedal formulas grew into extensive
creedal compositions, primarily because the Reformers conducted their battles
with the Roman Church as a struggle for "pure doctrine" as well as for
a foundation for the unity of the church. In the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 the
feuding ecclesiastical parties were induced to deliver a presentation of their
faith. Though the Roman Catholics did not accede to this challenge, the
Protestants offered the Confessio Augustana (or the Augsburg Confession). First
planned by Philipp Melanchthon, a follower of Luther, as a creed for union, it
later became the basic confessional statement of the Lutheran Church.
The formation of various Protestant confessions was achieved in the
individual territorial churches and led to the development of diverse corpora doctrinae
("bodies of doctrines"). The differences of the traditional creeds and
adherence to them are still clearly noticeable in the ecumenical movement of the
20th century. (see also Index: Protestantism)
A similar development of doctrinal confessions occurred in Calvinism. The
idea of the completion of confessional writings is missing in the Lutheran
churches but not in Calvinistic churches: the revision of old and the formation
of new creedal writings are permitted and in part are provided for in the rules
of the church. Thus the Barmen Declaration in 1934, against the "German
Christians" and the Nazi worldview, arose primarily from Reformed circles.
The Anglican Church incorporated the Thirty-nine Articles (a confessional
statement) and a short catechism into The
Book of Common Prayer of 1559/1662 (revised in the United States by the
Protestant Episcopal Church in 1928 and 1979) and thereby emphasized the unity
of doctrine and worship. (see also Index: Reformed church)
Of the denominations that arose out of the Reformation churches, most created
doctrinal documents that are comparable to the reformational confessional
writings (e.g., among Methodists, Baptists, and Congregationalists). Some
denominations (e.g., the Quakers, the Disciples of Christ, and some
Baptists), on the other hand, have rejected any form of creed because they
believe creeds to be obstacles to the Christian faith, thus conflicting with the
freedom of the Holy Spirit.
The shifting of the chief emphasis in church life to "pure
doctrine" in the 16th and 17th centuries also obliged the Orthodox and
Roman Catholic churches to formulate their teaching in confessional texts. Thus,
under the influence of the reformational creedal writings, the Eastern Orthodox
Church developed confessional texts. An example is The
Orthodox Confession of Faith(Confessio orthodoxa) of the metropolitan
Peter Mogila of Kiev against Cyril Lucaris, a Calvinist-influenced patriarch of
Constantinople; it was approved in 1643 by the Greek and Russian patriarchs. At
the Council of Trent (1545-63) the Roman Catholic Church countered the
Protestant doctrinal creeds with a Professio
fidei Tridentina ("The Tridentine Profession of Faith"), which at
the end of every article of faith respectively anathematizes the dissenting
Protestant article of faith.
In modern Christendom, creedal formulation is continued in two areas. (1)
Within the ecumenical movement, since the formation of the World Council of
Churches in 1948 there have been attempts to create a brief uniform confession
as the common basis of faith for the Christians in that council. These efforts
have not yet been concluded. According to its constitution, the World Council of
Churches is "a fellowship of Churches which accepts our Lord Jesus Christ
as God and Saviour." In 1960 at St. Andrews, Scot., the World Council's
central committee unanimously accepted an expanded draft of the
"basis":
The World
Council of Churches is a community of churches which confess the Lord Jesus
Christ, according to the Holy Scriptures, as God and Savior and therefore seek
to fulfill that to which they are jointly called, to the glory of God the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
This new version ensued mainly at the instigation of the Orthodox churches,
for whom the hitherto existing form of the "basis" was not adequate.
The movement of Roman Catholicism into the interconfessional orbit after the
second Vatican Council complicated attempts to draft a modern ecumenical
confession. The Roman Catholic Church is not a member of the World Council, but
conciliar Protestant and Orthodox members are reluctant to make major moves
without considering Roman Catholic interests.
(2) There are great numbers of churches--the majority, many would
contend--that are products of missionary endeavours by the West. For a time they
were called "the younger churches" but are now more frequently
referred to simply as Asian or African churches, or churches in developing
nations. Among them the doctrinal disputes and confessional battles of Western
Christendom have often been viewed as alien, imported, and frequently
incomprehensible. The union of churches in South India into the Church of South
India (1947) occurred only on the basis of the participating churches
dismantling their traditional creedal differences. The Church of South India's
scheme of union substitutes biblical revelation for doctrinal formulation.
Similarly, the United Church of Christ in Japan (Kyodan) renounced drawing up a
new creed and limited itself to a preface to the Apostles' Creed. In the
churches of Africa, the inadequacy of the confessions of the 16th century also
has been strongly recognized as a result of their own indigenous cultural
presuppositions.
In the early church, discipline--qualified by the ideal of holiness demanded
from baptized Christians--concerned four areas in which there arose violations
of the demand for holiness: (1) the relationship to the pagan social milieu and
the forms of life and culture connected with it (e.g.,
idolatry, the emperor's cult, the theatre, and the circus); (2) the
relationship of the sexes within the Christian community (e.g.,
rejection of polygamy, prostitution, pederasty, sodomy, and obscene
literature and art); (3) other offenses against the community, especially murder
and property crimes of all kinds; and (4) the relationship to teachers of false
doctrine, false prophets, and heretics.
Employment of church discipline at an early date led to the formation of a
casuistry that at first consisted simply of the distinction between
"mortal" and "not mortal" sins (1 John 5:15 ff.)--i.e., between
sins that through their gravity resulted in loss of eternal life and those with
which this was not the case. In earliest Christianity, the relapse of a baptized
Christian into paganism (i.e.,
apostasy) was believed to be the most serious offense. In the Letter to the
Hebrews one who is baptized irrevocably forfeits salvation through a relapse
into grievous sin. The various difficulties in substantiating the theory and
practice of a second repentance were solved by Pope Calixtus (reigned
217/218-222). This question was especially important in Rome because of the
great number of offenses against the idea of holiness. Pope Calixtus granted to
bishops decisions about definitive exclusion from the congregation or
readmission as well as the evaluation of church punishments. Among all the
factors that led to the power of the episcopacy, the concentration of
penitential discipline in the hands of the bishop probably contributed more to
the strengthening of episcopal power and to the achievement of the monarchical
episcopate in the church than any other single factor. This development did not
take place without fierce opposition (e.g.,
Montanism).
Attainment of the church's demand of holiness was made more difficult in the
large cities, especially in reference to sexual purity. The period of
persecution by the pagan emperors and the legal constraint to performance of
sacrifice before the altars of the emperor's images brought countless new
instances of apostasy. The so-called Lapsi (Lapsedones), who had performed
sacrifices before the emperor's image but, after persecution, faded away and
then moved back into the churches again, became a serious problem for the
church, sometimes causing schisms (e.g.,
the Donatists).
The execution of church discipline by the clergy was subordinated to the
regulations of canon law provided for priests. A genuine practice of church
discipline was maintained in the monasteries in connection with the public
confession of guilt, which was made by every monk before the entire assembly in
the weekly gatherings of the chapter. A strong revival of church discipline
among the laity also resulted from the church discipline pursued within
monasticism.
On the whole, the casuistic regulation of church discipline led to its
externalization and devaluation. The medieval sects, therefore, always stressed
in their critique of the worldly church the lack of spiritual discipline and
endeavoured to realize a voluntary church discipline in terms of a renewed
radical demand of holiness based on early Christianity. The radical sects that
emerged in the Reformation reproached the territorial churches by claiming that
they had restricted themselves to a renovation of doctrine and not to a renewal
of the Christian life and a restoration of the "communion of saints."
Different groups of Anabaptists (e.g., Swiss Brethren, Mennonites, and
Hutterites), especially, attempted to realize the ideal of the purity and
holiness of the church through the reintroduction of a strict church discipline.
The Reformed churches in particular endeavoured to make church discipline a
valid concern of the community. In Geneva, church discipline was expressed, at
the instigation of Calvin, in the establishment of special overseers, who, in
the individual districts assigned to them, had to watch over the moral behaviour
of church members. There likewise came about the creation of such social
arrangements as ecclesiastically controlled inns and taverns, in which not only
the consumption of food and drink but even the topics of conversation were
subject to stern regulation. The cooperation of ecclesiastical discipline and
state legislation found its characteristic expression in the United States in
the Prohibition amendment to the Constitution. Its introduction came most
strongly from congregational churches, above all those characterized by
Evangelical, Fundamentalist, or Pentecostal outlooks. They united forces with
more moderate or liberal churches that were experienced in trying to affect the
social order through legislation. Together they battled against the misuse of
alcohol as part of their ideal to extend Christian norms and influence to the
whole of society.
In the 20th century, church discipline, in the original spiritual sense of
voluntary self-control, is practiced only in smaller communities of evangelical
Christians, in which the ideal of holiness of the community is still maintained
and in which the mutual, personal bond of the congregational members in the
spirit of Christian fellowship still allows a meaningful realization of a church
discipline. It is also practiced in churches in developing nations. In these
churches the practice of church discipline still appears as a vitally necessary
centre of the credible self-representation of the Christian community.
Characteristically, therefore, these churches' main criticism of the old
institutional churches has been directed against the cessation of church
discipline among their members.
The development of the episcopacy in the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches
has been covered in the general introduction of this section under evolution of
the episcopal office. Occupying a special position is the episcopal polity of
the Anglican Communion. Despite the embittered opposition of Puritan and
independent groups during the period of the Reformation and Revolution in
England, this polity has maintained the theory and practice of the episcopal
office of apostolic succession. The Low Church tradition of the Anglican
Communion views the episcopal office as a form of ecclesiastical polity that has
been tested through the centuries and is therefore commendable for pragmatic
reasons; the Broad Church tradition, however, emphatically adheres to the
traditional worth of the episcopal office without allowing the faithful to be
excessively dependent upon its acknowledgement. The High Church tradition, on
the other hand, values episcopal polity as an essential element of the Christian
Church that belongs to the church's statements of faith. The episcopal branch of
the Methodist Church has also retained in its polity the bishop's office in the
sense of the Low Church and Broad Church view.
In the Reformation churches an episcopal
tradition has been maintained in the Swedish state church (Lutheran), whose
Reformation was introduced through a resolution of the imperial Diet of Västerås
in 1527, with the cooperation of the Swedish bishops. In the German Evangelical
(Lutheran and Reformed) territories, the bishops' line of apostolic succession
was ruptured by the Reformation. As imperial princes, the Roman Catholic German
bishops of the 16th century were rulers of their territories; they did not join
the Reformation in order to avoid renouncing the exercise of their sovereign
(temporal) rights as demanded by Luther's Reformation. On the basis of a legal
construction originally intended as a right of emergency, the Evangelical rulers
functioned as the bishops of their territorial churches but only in questions
concerning external church order. This development was promoted through the
older conception of the divine right of kings and princes, which was especially
operative in Germanic lands. (see also Index: Sweden, Church of)
In matters of church polity, controversial
tendencies that began in the Reformation still work as divisive forces within
the ecumenical movement in the 20th century. For Luther and Lutheranism, the
polity of the church has no divine-legal characteristics; it is of subordinate
significance for the essence of the church, falls under human ordinances, and is
therefore quite alterable. In Calvinism, on the other hand (e.g., inthe Ecclesiastical Ordinances [Ordonnances ecclésiastiques] of
1541 and in Calvin's Institutes of the
Christian Religion [1536]), the Holy Scriptures appear as a codex from
which the polity of the congregation can be inferred or certainly derived as a
divine law. Thus, on the basis of its spiritual-legal character, church polity
would be a component of the essence of the church itself. Both tendencies stand
in a constant inner tension with one another in the main branches of the
Reformation and within the individual confessions as well.
Even in Lutheranism, however, there has been a demand for a stronger emphasis
upon the independent episcopal character of the superintendent's or president's
office. Paradoxically, in the Lutheran Church, which came forth with the demand
of the universal priesthood of believers, there arose the development of
ecclesiastical authorities but not the development of self-contained
congregational polities. When a merger of three Lutheran bodies produced a new
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 1988 it established the bishop as
leader of the synodal jurisdictions. In Lutheranism these bishops replaced
presidents. Bishops were regarded there, as in Methodism, as part of the bene
esse, the well-being, and not the esse,
the essence, of the church. More or less self-contained congregational polities
were developed in many Reformed churches because the Reformed Church
congregation granted greater participation in the life of the congregation to
the laity as presbyters and elders. Furthermore, the Reformed Church areas in
Germany, France, England, and Scotland, as well as in The Netherlands and
Hungary, had to build up their own ecclesiastical structure without dependence
upon state authorities.
Among the conservative but often spontaneous evangelical Protestant churches
diverse forms of polity have developed. They have all been founded with an
appeal to the Holy Scriptures. Their prototypes can, in fact, be identified in
the multiformity of congregational polities in the first three centuries before
the victory of the monarchical episcopal office. (see also Index:
evangelical church)
Presbyterian polity appeals to the model of the original church. The polity
of the Scottish Presbyterian Church and the Presbyterian churches of North
America is primarily based upon this appeal, which was also found among many
English Puritan groups. It proceeds from the basic view that the absolute power
of Christ in his church postulates the equality of rights of all members and can
find expression only in a single office, that of the presbyter. The calling to
this office is through election by church members, formally analogous to the
democratic, republican political mode, and, accordingly, in contrast with the
monarchy of the papal and the aristocracy of the episcopal church polity. In
Presbyterian churches the differences between clergy and laity have been
abolished in theory and, to a great extent, in practice. A superstructure of
consistories and presbyteries is superposed one upon the other, with increasing
disciplinary power and graduated possibilities of appeal. Through their emphases
upon the divine-legal character of Presbyterian polity, the Presbyterian
churches have represented a Protestant polity that counters the Roman Catholic
concept of the church in the area of ecclesiastical polity. In ecumenical
discussions in the 20th century, the divine-legal character of this polity is
occasionally noticeable in its thesis of an apostolic succession of presbyters
as a counter-thesis to that of the apostolic succession of bishops.
Congregationalism stresses the autonomous right
of the individual congregation to order its own life in the areas of teaching,
worship, polity, and administration. This demand had been raised and practiced
by the medieval sects and led to differentiated polities and congregational
orders among the Waldenses, the Hussites, and the Bohemian Brethren.
Congregationalism was advanced in the Reformation period by the most diverse
parties in a renewed and reinforced way not only by "Enthusiasts" (or,
in German, Schwärmer) and Anabaptists, who claimed for themselves the right
to shape their congregational life according to the model of the original
church, but also by individual representatives of Reformation sovereigns, such
as Franz Lambert (François Lambert d'Avignon), whose resolutions at the
Homberg Synod of 1526 were not carried out because of a veto by Luther. The
beginnings of modern Congregationalism probably lie among the English refugee
communities on the European mainland, in which the principle of the established
church was first replaced by the concept of a covenant sealed between God or
Jesus Christ and the individual or the individual congregation.
The basic concepts of Congregationalism are: the understanding of the
congregation as the "holy people" under the regent Jesus Christ; the
spiritual priesthood, kingship, and prophethood of every believer and the
exchange of spiritual experiences between them, as well as the introduction of a
strict church discipline exercised by the congregation itself; the equal rank of
all clergy; the freedom of proclamation of the gospel from every episcopal or
official permission; and performance of the sacraments according to the
institution of Jesus. By virtue of the freedom of self-determination
fundamentally granted every congregation, no dogmatic or constitutional union
but rather only county union of the Congregationalist churches developed in
England. North America, however, became the classic land of Congregationalism as
a result of the great Puritan immigration to New England, beginning with the
Pilgrims on the Mayflower (1620). In the 20th century, acknowledgement
of the full authority of the individual congregation runs through almost all
Protestant denominations in the United States and is even found among the
Lutherans. Congregationalism participates in the ecumenical movement, within
which it presses for awakening the independent activity of the Christian
churches in the entire world in terms of a proto-Christian ideal of the
congregation.
Numerous other forms of congregational polity have arisen in the history of
Christendom, such as the association idea in the Society of Friends. Even
Pentecostal communities have not been able to maintain themselves in a state of
unrestrained and constant charismatic impulses but instead have had to develop a
legally regulated polity. This was what happened in the early church, which
likewise was compelled to restrain the freedom of charisma in a system of rulers
and laws. Pentecostal communities either have been constituted in the area of a
biblical fundamentalism theologically and on the basis of a congregationalist
church polity constitutionally or they have ritualized the outpouring of the
Spirit itself. Thus, the characteristic dialectic of the Holy Spirit is
confirmed: the Spirit creates law and the Spirit breaks law even in the most
recent manifestations of its working. (see also Index: Pentecostalism)
The central focus of the liturgy of the early church was the Eucharist, which
the Christian community interpreted as a fellowship meal with the resurrected
Christ. Judaism at the time of Christ was dominated by an intense expectation of
the Kingdom of God, which would be inaugurated by the Messiah-Son of man. The
early Christian Church appropriated this expectation, which revolved around the
image of the messianic meal in which the faithful would "sit at table"
(Luke 13:29) with the coming Messiah-Son of man. At the centre of Jesus'
preaching on the Kingdom of God is the promise that the blessed would "eat
bread" with the exalted Messiah-Son of man (Luke 13:29). The Lord himself
would serve the chosen community of the Kingdom at the messianic meal (Luke
12:37 ff.), which bears the features of a wedding banquet. The basic mood in the
community gathered about him is thus one of nuptial joy over the inauguration of
the promised end time, which Jesus emphasized in Matthew, chapter 9, verse 15:
"Can the wedding guests mourn as long as the bridegroom is with them?"
The supper that Jesus celebrated with his disciples "on the night when he
was betrayed" (1 Corinthians 11:23) inaugurated the heavenly meal that will
be continued in the Kingdom of God. Decisive for understanding the original
meaning of the Eucharist are the words of Jesus in Matthew, chapter 26, verse
29: "I shall not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when
I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." (see also Index:
Last Supper)
The death of Jesus at first bewildered his community in the face of his
promise, but the appearances of the Resurrected One, beginning with Easter
morning, confirmed their expectations about the messianic Kingdom. These
appearances influenced the expectations about the messianic meal and the
continuation of fellowship with the exalted Son of man in the meal. Faith in the
Resurrection and an expectation of the continuation of the fellowship meal with
the exalted Son of man are two basic elements of the Eucharist that are a part
of the liturgy from the beginnings of the church. In meeting the Resurrected One
in the eucharistic meal the community sees all the glowing expectations of
salvation confirmed.
The basic mood of the community at the eucharistic meal is thereby one of
joy. "And breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and
generous hearts, praising God" (Acts 2:46). The Orthodox liturgy has
maintained this original Christian mood of joy as at a wedding feast until the
present. In Reformation churches, however, a mood of repentance and sorrow over
sin often diminished and suppressed the original Christian attitude of joy.
What the Christian community experiences in the eucharistic meal is basically
a continuation of the appearances of the Resurrected One in its midst. Thus,
many liturgical forms developed, all of which served to enhance the mystery of
the eucharistic meal. In the magnificent liturgical creations from the 1st to
the 6th century, diversity rather than uniformity was a commanding feature of
the development of worship forms. The eucharistic mystery developed from a
simple form, as depicted in the 1st-century Didache,
to the fully developed liturgies of the 5th and 6th centuries in both the East
and the West.
This diversity that was demonstrated in the liturgies of the early church is
still preserved in the Clementine liturgy (Antioch), the Syrian liturgy, the
Liturgy of St. James of the church of Jerusalem, the Nestorian liturgy in Iran,
the Liturgy of St. Mark in Egypt, the Roman mass, the Gallic liturgies, and the
Ambrosian (Milanese), Mozarabic (Spanish), and Scottish-Irish (Celtic)
liturgies.
In the 6th century two types of liturgies were fixed by canon law in the
Eastern Orthodox Church: the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom (originally the
liturgy of Constantinople) and the Liturgy of St. Basil (originally the liturgy
of the Cappadocian monasteries). The Liturgy of St. Basil, however, is
celebrated only 10 times during the year, whereas the Liturgy of St. John
Chrysostom is celebrated most other times. In addition to these liturgies is the
so-called Liturgy of the Preconsecrated Offerings, attributed to Pope Gregory I
the Great of the 6th century. In this liturgy no consecration of the eucharistic
offering occurs--because the eucharistic offerings used have been consecrated on
the previous Sunday--and it is celebrated on weekday mornings during Lent as
well as from Monday to Wednesday during Holy Week. (see also Index:
Basil, Liturgy of Saint)
The period of liturgical improvisation apparently was concluded earlier in
the Latin West than in the East. The liturgy of the ancient Latin Church is
textually available only since the 6th century. Though the Gallic liturgies are
essentially closer to the Eastern liturgies, the liturgy of Rome followed a
special development. From the middle of the 4th century, the Roman mass was
celebrated in Latin rather than in Greek, which had been the earlier practice.
The fixing of the Roman mass by canon law is congruent with the historical
impulse of the Roman Catholic Church to follow the ancient Roman pattern of
rendering sacred observance in legal forms and with stipulated regularities.
Because of the authority inhering in the sacred, every liturgy has the
tendency to become fixed in form, and any alteration of the liturgy can thus be
regarded as a sacrilege. The spiritual-legal fixation of the liturgy, however,
through the process of constant repetition and habit, led to an externalization
that can transfer the liturgy into a lifeless formalism for both the liturgist
and the participating community.
Characteristically, all reformation eras in the history of Christianity, in
which new charismatic impulses arise in the areas of piety and theology, are
also periods of new liturgical creations. Thus in the late 16th-century
Reformation a great diversity of new liturgical forms emerged. Luther in Germany
restricted himself to a reformatory alteration of the Roman Catholic liturgy of
the mass, whereas Zwingli in Switzerland attempted to create a completely new
evangelical liturgy of the Eucharist based upon a New Testament foundation. The
Free churches also showed a strong liturgical productivity; in the Herrnhut
Brethren (Moravian) community, Graf von Zinzendorf ushered in the singing
worship services. Methodism, influenced by the Moravian spiritual songs and
melodies, also produced new liturgical impulses, especially through its creation
of new hymns and songs and its joyousness in singing.
The innovative religious bodies, especially those that arose in the 19th and
20th centuries, have been especially productive in this area. The Mormons, for
example, developed not only a new type of church song but also a new style of
church music in the context of their liturgical new creation (e.g.,
"sealing"). The mood of charismatic, liturgical new creations has
also been preserved in the Baptist churches of American blacks, whose spirituals
are the most impressive sign of a free and spontaneous liturgy. The Pentecostal
churches of the 20th century quite consciously attempt to protect themselves
against liturgical formalism. The free, often spontaneously improvised liturgy
of the Pentecostal tent missions was transformed into patterns that became
familiar to a wider audience through televised evangelism, which was often of a
Pentecostal nature. Often ecstatic, strongly rhythmized music endeavours to
retain certain features of the charismatic spontaneity of the early Christian
worship. (see also Index: Pentecostalism)
Traditional liturgy fixed by canon law, which could develop into a lifeless
formalism, occasionally led to the adoption of a fundamentally anti-liturgical
attitude. Zwingli's reformation, for example, exhibited an emphatically
anti-liturgical tendency in that it reduced the intricate Roman Catholic order
of service to beginning song, prayer, sermon, concluding prayer, and concluding
song. In many Reformed churches, some anti-liturgical currents developed, which,
in terms of visual art, have been directed against encouraging expressions that
might distract from the preached and prayed Word. In more radical instances this
has even meant protests against the use of the organ in the worship service. The
Society of Friends radically eliminated the liturgy and replaced it with mutual
silence, expecting the spontaneous activity of the Holy Spirit.
Though definite and obligatory liturgies have been established as normative,
the forms of the liturgy continue to develop and change. The impulse toward
variations in worship services has been especially noticeable in the latter part
of the 20th century. In the Eastern Orthodox liturgy, in the Roman Catholic mass
and breviary, and in Anglican and Lutheran liturgies, there are both fixed and
changing sections. The fixed parts represent the basic structure of the worship
service concerned, and the alternating parts emphasize the individual character
of a particular service for a certain day or period of the church year. The
changing parts consist of special Old and New Testament readings that are
appropriate for a particular church festival, as well as of special prayers and
particular hymns. (see also Index: Anglican Communion, Lutheranism)
The eucharistic liturgy consists of two parts: the Liturgy of the Catechumens
and the Liturgy of the Faithful. This basic liturgical structure goes back to a
time in which the church was a missionary church that grew for the most part
through conversion of adults. The latter were first introduced to the Christian
mysteries as catechumens through instruction in religious doctrine. They also
received permission to take part in the first part of the worship service (which
was instructional), but they had to leave the service before the eucharistic
mystery was celebrated. The first part of the Orthodox worship service still
ends with a threefold exclamation, reminiscent of pre-Christian, Hellenistic
mystery formulas: "You catechumens, go forth! None of the catechumens (may
remain here)!"
The eucharistic liturgy of the Orthodox Church is a kind of mystery drama in
which the advent of the Lord is mystically consummated and the entire history of
salvation--the incarnation, death, and Resurrection of Christ the Logos, up to
the outpouring of the Holy Sprit--is recapitulated. The Orthodox Church also
attaches the greatest value to the fact that within the eucharistic mystery an
actual transformation of the eucharistic elements in bread and wine takes place.
This is not the same as the Roman Catholic dogma of transubstantiation, which
teaches that the substance of the bread and wine is changed into the body and
blood of Christ, though the properties of the elements remain the same, when the
priest consecrates the bread and wine. According to some Orthodox authorities,
the Orthodox view is similar to the Lutheran doctrine of the Real Presence. The
essential and central happening in the Orthodox liturgy, however, is the descent
of the resurrected Lord himself, who enters the community as "the King of
the universe, borne along invisibly above spears by the angelic hosts." The
transformation of the elements is, therefore, the immediate emanation of this
personal presence. Thus, the Orthodox Church does not preserve and display the
consecrated host after and outside the eucharistic liturgy, as in the Roman
Catholic Church, because the consecrated offerings are mystically apprehended
and actualized only during the eucharistic meal.
In the Roman Catholic mass, the sacrificial character of the Eucharist is
strongly emphasized, but it is less so in the Orthodox liturgy. This is because
in the Orthodox liturgy the Eucharist is not only a representation of the
crucifixion sacrifice (as in the Roman mass) but also of the entire history of
salvation, in which the entire congregation, priest and laity, participates.
Thus, the Orthodox Church has also held fast to the original form of Holy
Communion in both kinds.
The Orthodox Church still preserves the liturgical gestures of the early
church. Though in many Protestant churches parishioners sit while praying, the
Orthodox worshiper prays while standing (because he stands throughout the
service), with arms hanging down, crossing himself at the beginning and ending
of the prayer.
The prayerful gesture of folded hands among Protestant churches derives from
an old Germanic tradition of holding the sword hand with the left hand, which
symbolizes one's giving himself over to the protection of God because he is now
defenseless. The prayerful gesture of hands pressed flat against one another
with the fingertips pointed upward--the symbol of the flame--is practiced among
Roman Catholics as well as Hindus and Buddhists. Other liturgical gestures found
in many Christian churches are crossing oneself, genuflecting, beating oneself
on the chest, and kneeling during prayer or when receiving the eucharistic
elements. Among some Holiness or Pentecostal churches spontaneous handclapping
and rhythmic movements of the body have been stylized gestures in the worship
services. These gestures are often familiar features of worship in churches in
Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Liturgical dancing, widely spread in pagan
cults, was not practiced in the early church; vestigial remnants of this ancient
practice, however, have been admitted in liturgical processionals. In the latter
part of the 20th century, liturgical dances have been reintroduced in some
churches but only in a limited fashion. Among the many other gestures of
devotion and veneration practiced in the liturgically oriented churches such as
the Roman Catholic Church, the High Church Anglican churches, and the Orthodox
Church, are kissing the altar, the gospel, the cross, and the holy icons.
Liturgical vestments have developed in a variety of fashions, some of which
have become very ornate. The liturgical vestments all have symbolic meaning (see
below Church
year: Liturgical colours ). In the Orthodox Church the liturgical vestments
symbolize the wedding garments that enable the liturgists to share in the
heavenly wedding feast, the Eucharist. The
epitrachelion, which is worn around the neck and corresponds to the Roman
stole, represents the flowing downward of the Holy Spirit (see also RITES AND
CEREMONIES, SACRED ).
The interpretation and number of the sacraments vary among the Roman
Catholic, Orthodox, Eastern independent, and Protestant churches. The Roman
Church has fixed the number of sacraments at seven: baptism, confirmation, the
Eucharist, penance, holy orders, matrimony, and anointing of the sick. In the
early church the number of sacraments varied, sometimes including as many as 10
or 12. The theology of the Orthodox Church, under the influence of the Roman
Catholic Church, fixed the number of sacraments at seven. The classical
Protestant churches (i.e., Lutheran, Anglican, and Reformed) have
accepted only two sacraments--i.e., baptism and the Eucharist, though
Luther allowed that penance was a valid part of sacramental theology.
The New Testament mentions a series of "holy acts" that are not,
strictly speaking, sacraments. Though the Roman Catholic Church recognizes a
difference between such "holy acts," which are called sacramentals,
and sacraments, the Orthodox Church does not, in principle, make such strict
distinctions. Thus, though baptism and the Eucharist have been established as
sacraments of the church, foot washing, which in the Gospel According to John,
chapter 13, replaces the Lord's Supper, was not maintained as a sacrament. It is
still practiced on special occasions, such as on Holy Thursday in the Roman
Catholic Church and as a rite prior to the observance of the Lord's Supper, as
in the Church of the Brethren. The "holy acts" of the Orthodox Church
are symbolically connected to its most important mysteries. Hence, baptism
consists of a triple immersion that is connected with a triple renunciation of
Satan that the candidates say and act out symbolically prior to the immersions.
Candidates first face west, which is the symbolic direction of the Antichrist,
spit three times to symbolize their renunciation of Satan, and then face east,
the symbolic direction of Christ, the sun of righteousness. Immediately
following baptism, chrismation (anointing with consecrated oil) takes place, and
the baptized believers receive the "seal of the gift of the Holy
Spirit."
The disposition of Christianity toward tradition has exhibited a
characteristic tension from its very beginnings; it has broken tradition and it
has created tradition. This tension, which is grounded in its essence, has been
continued throughout its entire history. It began with breaking the tradition of
piety described and prescribed in the Hebrew Scriptures and synagogue practices,
which to the followers of Jesus looked legalistic. In the Sermon on the Mount,
Jesus set forth his message as a renunciation of the Old Testament tradition of
the Law. Yet, with his coming, new revelation, life, death, and Resurrection, he
himself created a new tradition, a "new law," that has been carried on
in the church. The dogmatic controversies of the Reformation period give the
impression that the tradition of the church has to do primarily, if not
exclusively, with ecclesiastical doctrinal tradition. Tradition, however,
includes all areas of life of the Christian community and its piety, not just
the teachings but also the forms of worship service, bodily gestures of prayer
and the liturgy, oral and written tradition and the characteristic process of
transition of the oral into written tradition, a new church tradition of rules
for eating and fasting, and other aspects of the Christian life. (see also Index:
Judaism)
The break with the tradition of Jewish legal piety was not total. The Old
Testament was adopted from Jewish tradition, but its interpretation was based
upon the concepts of salvation that emerged around the figure of Jesus Christ.
The Old Testament book of Psalms, including its musical form, was taken over in
Christian worship as the foundation of the liturgy. The new revelation became
tradition in the oral transmission of the words of the Lord (the logia) and the
reports (kerygma) concerning the events of his life that were important for the
early church's faith in him; his baptism, the story of his Passion, his
Resurrection, and his Ascension. The celebration of the Lord's Supper as
anticipation of the heavenly meal with the Messiah-Son of man in the coming
Kingdom of God, even to the point of preserving in the liturgy the Aramaic
exclamation maranatha ("O Lord, Come") and its Greek parallel erche
kyrie ("Come, Lord!") as the supplicant calling for the Parousia
(Second Coming)--all this became tradition.
In addition to the traditions of the Old Testament synagogal worship service,
traditions of the Hellenistic mystery cults also were absorbed and reinterpreted
in Christian forms. Among the traditions taken over from the mystery religions
were: the arcane discipline--the distinction between the true mystae (those
initiated into the secrets of the Christian faith), who were permitted to
participate in the esoteric worship service (i.e.,
the Eucharist), and the catechumens; the introduction of hymn singing
dependent upon the melodic style of the mystery hymns (in addition to the Jewish
Psalms); the retention of the ancient gesture of upraised hands during the
epiclesis, the prayer that calls down the Holy Spirit upon bread and wine as
they are consecrated in the sacrament; and many others.
Of special significance is the oral tradition of doctrinal transmission and
its written record. Judaism over the centuries had developed its own unique
tradition of the oral transmission of teachings. According to rabbinic doctrine,
orally transmitted tradition coexisted on an equal basis with the recorded Law.
Both text and tradition were believed to have been entrusted to Moses on Mount
Sinai. Within the unbroken chain of scribes the tradition was passed on from
generation to generation and substantiated through scripture and exegesis. The
doctrinal contents of the tradition were initially passed on orally and
memorized by the students through repetition. Because of the possibilities of
error in a purely oral transmission, however, the extensive and growing body of
tradition was, by necessity, fixed in written form. The rabbinic tradition of
the Pharisees (a Jewish sect that sanctioned the reinterpretation of the Mosaic
Law) was established in the Mishnah (commentaries) and later in the Palestinian
and Babylonian Talmud (compendiums of Jewish Law, lore, and commentary). Because
the essence of tradition is never concluded--i.e., by its very nature is
never completely fixed in writing--the learned discussion of tradition by
necessity continued in constant exegetical debate with the Holy Scriptures. The
written record of tradition, however, never claimed to be equal to the Holy
Scriptures in Judaism. A similar process of written fixation also occurred among
the sectarians of the community at Qumran, which in its Manual of Discipline and
in the Damascus Document recorded its interpretation of the Law,
developed first orally in the tradition. (see also Index: oral
literature)
In the Christian Church a tradition also was formed proceeding from Jesus
himself. The oral doctrinal transmission of the tradition was written down
between the end of the 1st and the first half of the 2nd century in the form of
various gospels, histories of the Apostles, letters, sermonic literature, and
apocalypses. Among Christian Gnostics the tradition also included secret
communications of the risen Christ to his disciples.
A new element, however, inhered in the Christian
vis-à-vis the Jewish tradition. For Jewish piety the divine revelation
encompassed two forms of divine expression: the Law and the Prophets.
Nevertheless, this revelation is considered concluded with the last Prophets;
its actualization further ensues through interpretation. In the Christian Church
the tradition is joined not only to the teachings of Jesus and the story of his
life as prophet and teacher that terminated with his death but also to the
central event of the history of salvation, which his life, Passion, death, and
Resurrection represent--namely, to the resurrected Christ who is henceforth
present as the living Lord of the church and guides and increases it through his
Holy Spirit. This led to the literary form of church tradition--the Holy
Scripture. As the "New Testament," it takes its place next to the Holy
Scripture of Judaism, henceforth reinterpreted as the "Old Testament."
The tradition of the church itself thereby entered into the characteristic
Christian tension between spirit and letter. The spirit creates tradition but
also breaks tradition as soon as the latter is solidified into an external
written form and thus impedes charismatic life.
Throughout church history, however, the core of this field of tension is
formed by the transmission of the Christ event--the kerygma--itself. On the one
hand, the kerygma is the bearer and starting point for tradition; on the other
hand, it molds the impetus for ever-new impulses toward charismatic, fresh
interpretations and, under certain circumstances, suggests or even enforces a
conscious elimination of accumulated traditions. Decisive in this respect is the
self-understanding of the church. According to the self-understanding of the
Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches, the church, as the institution
of Jesus Christ, is the bearer of the oral and the written tradition. It is the
church that created the New Testament canon. The selection of canonical writings
undertaken by it already presupposes a dogmatic distinction between
"ecclesiastical" teachings--which, in the opinion of its responsible
leaders, are "apostolic"--and "heretical" teachings. It
thereby already presupposes a far-reaching intellectualization of the tradition
and its identification with "doctrine." The oral tradition thus became
formalized in fixed creedal formulas.
Accordingly, in the history of the Christian
Church a specific, characteristic dialectic has been evidenced between periods
of excessive growth and formalistic hardening of tradition that hindered and
smothered the charismatic life of the church and periods of a reduction of
tradition that follow new reformational movements. The latter occurred, in part,
within the church itself, such as in the reforms of Cluny, the Franciscans, and
the Dominicans; they also took on the form of revolutionary movements. The
Reformation of the 16th century exhibited various degrees of positions toward
tradition. All of the Reformers broke with the institution of monasticism, the
liturgical and sacramental tradition of the Roman Catholic Church, and certain
elements of doctrinal tradition. Luther, however, was more conservative in his
attitude toward the Roman Catholic Church than were Zwingli and Calvin. He was
thus especially hated among the representatives of the radical Reformation--e.g.,
the Anabaptists and Enthusiasts (Schwärmer), who demanded and practiced
a revolutionary break with the entire Roman Catholic tradition. The new churches
that arose from the Reformation, however, soon created their own new traditions.
This was made necessary by the predominance of both the didactic, doctrinaire
principle and the founding of one's own church upon one's own "confessional
writings." Practical manifestations against the tradition of the Roman
Catholic Church also had public effects--e.g.,
the eating of sausage on fast days in Zürich at the start of Zwingli's
reformation or the provocative marriages of monks and nuns.
In the 19th century, the period of a progressive
revolutionizing of political life in Europe and North and South America, the
Roman Catholic Church sought to safeguard its tradition--threatened on all
sides--through an emphatic program of "antimodernism." It endeavoured
to protect tradition both by law and through theology (e.g.,
in returning to a strict, obligatory neo-Thomism). The representatives of
this development were the popes from Pius IX (reigned 1846-78) to Pius XII
(reigned 1939-58). With Pope John XXIII (reigned 1958-63), a dismantling (aggiornamento) of antimodernism and a more critical attitude vis-à-vis
the "tradition" set in; this extended to traditional dogmatic views as
well as to the liturgy and church structure. The second Vatican Council
(1962-65) guided this development into moderate channels. On the other hand, an
opposite development has taken place in the Soviet Union and the eastern
European countries. In these nations the remains of the Orthodox Church, which
survived extermination campaigns of the Leninist and Stalinist eras from the
1920s to the 1950s, preserved themselves in a political environment hostile to
the church precisely through a retreat to their church tradition and religious
functioning in the realm of the liturgy. In the World Council of Churches, the
Orthodox Church in the latter part of the 20th century has viewed its task as
the bearer of Christian tradition over against the predominant social-ethical
tendencies of certain Protestant member churches that have disregarded or
de-emphasized the tradition of the church in a wave of antihistorical sentiment.
The most important creation of church tradition is that of the Holy
Scriptures themselves and, secondarily, the exegesis (critical interpretations
and explanations) of the Scriptures. Exegesis first appeared in Christian
circles among Gnostic heretics and the church catechists (teachers)--e.g., in
the Christian school systems, such as in Alexandria and Antioch. The heretics,
who could not claim the unbroken apostolic tradition maintained by the Orthodox
Christian churches, had a necessary interest in claiming the tradition to
justify their own movements. Thus, exegesis was directly related to the
development of a normative scriptural canon in the Orthodox churches. A similar
need for the interpretation of an ecclesiastically fixed scriptural canon
resulted in the Christian school system.
The first representatives of early church exegesis were not the bishops but
rather the "teachers" (didaskaloi) of the catechetical schools,
modeled after the Hellenistic philosophers' schools in which interpretive and
philological principles had been developed according to the traditions of the
founders of the respective schools. The allegorical interpretation of Greek
classical philosophical and poetical texts, which was prevalent at the Library
and Museum (the school) of Alexandria, for example, directly influenced the
exegetical method of the Christian Catechetical school there. Basing his
principles on the methods of Philo of Alexandria and Clement of Alexandria, his
teacher, and others, Origen--the Christian Catechetical school's most
significant representative--created the foundation for the type of Christian
exegesis (i.e., the typological-allegorical method) that lasted from the
patristic period and the Middle Ages up to the time of Luther in the 16th
century. Origen based his exegesis upon comprehensive textual-critical work that
was common to current Hellenistic practices, such as collecting Hebrew texts and
Greek parallel translations of the Old Testament. His main concern, however, was
that of ascertaining the spiritual meaning of the Scriptures, the
trans-historical divine truth that is hidden in the records of the history of
salvation in the Scriptures. He thus developed a system containing four types of
interpretation: literal, moral, typological, and allegorical. (see also Index:
typological interpretation)
The view of "teachers" as charismatic figures (i.e., those
gifted by the Holy Spirit with the ability to uncover the hidden spiritual
meaning of the letter) long hindered Western theologians in developing their own
exegetical works. Exegetical literature was restricted to "chains" (catenae),
in which excerpts from commentaries or homilies of the charismatic Fathers were
joined together in a "chain" for the individual words and sentences of
the Holy Scriptures. This was similar to the way in which early medieval
theological works were composed of "sentences"--i.e., individual
doctrinal definitions from the writings of authoritative church teachers along
with a limited commentary. Typological exegesis attained special significance
for medieval Christian mysticism, which was inspired to a great extent by the
allegorical interpretation of the Song of Solomon as the wedding between Christ
and the soul.
Only with the Reformation, under the leadership of Luther, did there emerge
an emphatic turning away from the allegorical exegesis and a turning toward the
literal meaning of the Scriptures. This had its beginnings in the early church
in the theological school of Antioch. In contrast to the Platonic tradition of
the school of Alexandria, the school of Antioch was guided by Aristotelian
philosophy. In place of allegorizing, which was consciously rejected, Antiochene
exegesis was very much occupied with textual criticism. Both traditions often
were included together in the so-called glosses of the Latin Middle Ages, such
as in the Glossa ordinaria ("Ordinary Glosses"), edited by
Anselm of Laon (died 1117), and the Postillae--the first biblical
commentary to be printed (1471-72)--of Nicholas of Lyra (c.
1270-1349). (see also Index: literal interpretation)
According to his own statement, Luther's reformational breakthrough came
about through a fresh exegetical reflection--legendo et
docendo ("by perusing and teaching")--in connection with his
lectures on the Bible at the university of Wittenberg in Germany. He used the
preliminary work of humanist philologists for the restoration of the Old and New
Testament text (e.g., Erasmus' 1516 edition of the Greek New Testament in
the lectures on the Letter of Paul to the Romans). Luther replaced the
traditional schema of the fourfold meaning of the Scripture with a spiritual
interpretation of the letter--i.e., one based on Christ. Inasmuch as the
letter, which speaks historically of the work of Christ, at the same time always
means this work as the salvation event that has happened "for us," it
always contains the spiritual meaning in itself. In debates with the
Spiritualists and Enthusiasts, who made use of the allegorical-tropological
(figurative) method, Luther appealed ever more strongly to the unequivocal
"clarity" of the letter of the Scriptures, which contains the
"clarity" of the "subject" expressed by it. His exegesis is
thus also a dogmatic one. The struggle between historical and tropological
exegesis was emphasized in the debate between Luther and Zwingli over the
understanding of the Lord's Supper.
During the early 18th century, biblical interpretation free of dogmatic
interest was achieved among theologians accused of heresy by orthodox colleagues
of their confession, such as among the Dutch Arminians (e.g.,
Hugo Grotius and Johann Jakob Wettstein). Interest in the history of the Old
and New Testament period was growing; ancient Middle Eastern history, biblical
geography and archaeology, and the history of the religions of the ancient East
and Hellenism were being included in the interpretation of the Scriptures. Under
the influence of the Enlightenment, the historical criticism of the Bible, which
was independent of the moral and edifying evaluation of the Holy Scriptures, was
established. Soon including criticism of early church dogma, it led directly to
the rise of historical criticism of the Bible in the 19th and 20th centuries.
In addition to the tradition of the Holy Scriptures and its interpretation,
traditions centring on holy places also developed. The veneration of holy places
is the oldest expression of Christian popular piety. From Judaism the Christian
Church adopted the idea and practice of venerating holy places. In post-exilic
Judaism (i.e., after the 5th century BC), Jerusalem became the sanctuary
and the centre of the Jews in Palestine as well as the goal of the pilgrimages
of Jews of the Diaspora. After the destruction in AD 70 of Jerusalem, which was
the holy city for the early church, it remained for Christians--as the site of
the suffering and Resurrection of Jesus Christ and as the place of his return in
glory--a holy city and a goal of pilgrimages. Such early bishops as Melito of
Sardis and Alexander of Jerusalem and such theologians as Origen embarked on
pilgrimages to Jerusalem. When the Christian Church became the state church in
the 4th century, pilgrimages to the holy places in Palestine became popular.
(see also Index: sacred place)
The journey of the empress mother Helena to the Holy Land before AD 330
inaugurated the cult of relics through the alleged discovery of the holy cross.
Constantine built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (335) and the
Church of the Nativity over the Grotto of the Nativity in Bethlehem. The
numerous other biblical commemorative places of the Old and New Testament
history soon followed.
The cult of martyrs and saints led to
establishment of shrines outside Palestine that were developed into pilgrimage
places. The idea that the martyrs are present at the places of their martyrdom (e.g., Peter's
tomb at the Vatican) secured a prominent position for holy places connected with
the cult of saints and martyrs. The cult of the martyrs was developed especially
in the Roman catacombs, and it contributed to the formation of the Petrine
doctrine and the teaching of the primacy of the Roman bishop. After the 4th
century the cult of martyrs spread further and created an abundance of new holy
places in the West: thus, Santiago de Compostela in Spain was connected with the
tomb of James, to which equal rank with Rome and Jerusalem was later accorded;
then Trèves in Germany, with the tomb of Matthew, which exerted a special
power of attraction through the relic of the holy robe; and Marburg in Germany,
with the shrine of St. Elizabeth. In the Middle Ages, during the development of
the Roman Catholic sacrament of penance, holy places became places of grace, the
visitation of which was considered a work of penance.
The original historical consciousness of the Christian Church is also alive
in the cult of relics. In the relics of the body in which the saint suffered
martyrdom, the saint himself is believed to be present, or at least something of
the power of the Holy Spirit that filled him. The cult of relics began as a
result of veneration of a martyr at his or her tomb, over which later was
erected an altar of the church built to honour the saint. From the 4th century
on in the East, and later also in the West, the remains of the martyrs were
distributed in order that as many as possible could share in their miraculous
power. Fragments of relics were sewn into a silken cloth (antimension), and the
Eucharist could be celebrated only upon an altar that was covered with such an
antimension. In times of persecution the Eucharist could be celebrated upon any
table, as long as it was covered with the antimension and consecrated through
the presence of the martyr. In the Latin Church the relics are enclosed in a
cavity (sepulcrum) in the altar top. During the deconsecration of a
church, the relic is again removed from the sepulcrum.
In the late Middles Ages the character of the pilgrimage, just like the
veneration of relics, underwent a degeneration in connection with the
degeneration of the sacrament of penance because of the abuse of the indulgence.
Luther's critique of the indulgence began with a criticism of the display of the
elector of Saxony Frederick III the Wise's imposing collection of relics in the
Schlosskirche (Castle Church) of Wittenberg on All Saints' Day (1516). Over
against the attacks of Luther, the Council of Trent declared that
the holy
bodies of the holy martyrs and others living with Christ, whose bodies were
living members of Christ and temples of the Holy Spirit, and will be by him
raised to eternal life and glorified, are to be venerated by the faithful, since
by them God bestows many benefits upon men.
In order to avoid the development of a holy place at his grave and a
reliquary and saintly cult around his person, Calvin arranged by will that his
body be buried at an unknown spot. The erection of the giant monument to the
Reformer at the supposed place of his burial shows the futility of his effort
and the strength of the Christian consciousness of tradition.
Monasticism, an institution based on the Christian ideal of perfection, has
its roots in New Testament Christianity, in which the baptized were designated
as the "perfect ones." In the early church, monasticism equated
perfection with world-denying asceticism, along with the view that perfect
Christianity centred its way of life on the maximum love of God and neighbour.
Monastic discipline, in the course of time, became an external means for the
attainment of this ideal of perfect love of God and neighbour. Only a few
especially disciplined persons, however, have been able to live according to the
path that leads to the ideal of perfection. The masses, on the other hand, are
inwardly and outwardly incapable of exercising ascetic discipline. Therefore,
the monastic rules of life were not generally binding "commands" but
rather only "counsels" directed to those called to lead an ascetic
life. The essential distinction between command and counsel is found in the
words of Jesus: he did not command men to "make themselves eunuchs for the
sake of the kingdom of heaven," but rather he recommended this condition
only to those who were "able to receive this" (Matthew 19:12).
Unmarried ascetics were recognized as a special class in the early church,
forming the core of many churches. Later, with its distinction between counsel (suasum)
and command (iussum), as in the writings of Tertullian in the late 2nd
century, the church found itself in full accord with the oldest Christian view.
During the latter part of the 2nd and the beginning of the 3rd century, the
combination of asceticism and mysticism, which was to become the spiritual basis
of later monasticism in the East and in part also in the West, was emphasized by
Clement of Alexandria and Origen.
By the 4th century, monasticism had become an established institution in the
Christian Church. This was not because of the decadence of the people of late
antiquity, as has often been asserted, but rather because monasticism was
sustained by the resilient and culturally unexhausted rural populations of Egypt
and Syria, who had developed an enthusiasm for asceticism itself. Out of the
desire for still further advanced isolation, ascetics moved from areas in
proximity to inhabited places and established themselves in tombs, abandoned and
half-deteriorated human settlements, caves, and, finally, into the wilderness
areas of the deserts. The main task of the ascetics--i.e., struggle with
the demons--thereby underwent a heightened intensification: the desert was
considered the abode of the demons, the place of refuge of the pagan gods
falling back before a victorious Christianity. Hence, the expansion of
Christianity in the cities of Egypt and the rise of Egyptian desert monasticism
in the 4th century occurred both because the masses streamed into the churches
as a result of the official imperial toleration and support policies and because
ascetics striving for perfection left the cities and moved into the desert in
significant numbers.
Certain writings that captured the spirit of monasticism further enhanced the
development of this way of life in the church. Athanasius of Alexandria, the 4th
century's most significant bishop spiritually and in terms of ecclesiastical
politics, wrote the Life
of St. Antonywhich described the eremitic (hermit) life in the desert and
the awesome struggle of ascetics with the demons as the model of the life of
Christian perfection. This work indicates that the church sanctioned and
propagated monasticism.
A former Roman soldier of the 4th century,
Pachomius, created the first monastery in the modern sense. He united the monks
under one roof in a community living under the leadership of an abbot (father,
or leader). In 323 he founded the first true monastic cloister in Tabennisi,
north of Thebes, in Egypt, and joined together houses of 30 to 40 monks, each
with its own superior. Pachomius also created a monastic rule that, however,
served more as a regulation of external monastic life than spiritual guidance.
During the remainder of the 4th century, monasticism soon developed in areas
outside Egypt. Athanasius brought the monastic rule of Pachomius to the West
during his banishment (340-346) to Trèves in Germany--as a result of his
opposition to the imperially sanctioned heretical doctrines of Arianism. Mar
Awgin, a Syrian monk, introduced the monastic rule in Mesopotamia, and Jerome
established a monastic cloister in Bethlehem.
Basil the Great, one of the three Cappadocian Fathers of the 4th century,
definitively shaped monastic community life in the Byzantine Church. His ascetic
writings furnished the theological and instructional foundation for the
"common life" (cenobitism) of monks. He became the creator of a
monastic rule that, through constant variations and modifications, became
authoritative for later Orthodox monasticism. The Rule of Basil has preserved
the Orthodox combination of asceticism and mysticism into the 20th century. (see
also Index: Eastern Orthodoxy)
Western monasticism, founded by Benedict of
Nursia (Italy) in the 6th century, has gone through a double form of special
development vis-à-vis early church monasticism. The first consists of its
clericalization. In modern Roman Catholic cloisters, monks are, except for the
serving brothers (fratres), ordained priests and are thereby drawn in a
direct way into the ecclesiastical tasks of the Roman Church. Originally,
however, monks were laymen. Pachomius had explicitly forbidden monks to become
priests on the ground that "it is good not to covet power and glory."
Basil the Great, however, by means of a special vow and a special ceremony,
enabled monks to cease being just laymen and to attain a position between that
of the clergy and the laity. Even in the 20th century, monks of the Orthodox
Church are, for the most part, lay monks; only a few fathers (abbots) of each
cloister are ordained priests (hieromonachoi), who are thus allowed to
administer the sacraments. (see also Index: ordination)
The second special development in Roman Catholicism consists of the
functional characteristics of its many orders. The individual orders aid the
church in its various areas of activity--e.g., missions, education, care
for the sick and needy, and combating heresy. Developing a wide-ranging
diversification in its structure and sociological interests, Roman Catholic
monasticism has extended all the way from the knightly orders to orders of
mendicant friars, and it has included orders of decided feudal and aristocratic
characteristics alongside orders of purely bourgeois characteristics. To the
degree that special missionary, pedagogical, scholarly-theological, and
ecclesiastically political tasks of the orders increased in the West, the
character of ancient monasticism--originally focused completely on prayer,
meditation, and contemplation--receded more and more in importance. Few monastic
orders--the Benedictines and the Carmelites are notable exceptions--still
attempt to preserve the ancient character and purposes of monasticism in Roman
Catholicism in the 20th century.
In Christian popular piety the saint plays a very significant role.
Originally a self-designation of all Christians collectively, "the
saints," understood in this broad sense, are "sanctified through the
name of the Lord Jesus Christ and through the Spirit of our God," according
to the First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians, chapter 1, verse 31. On the one
hand, the saint may be understood as a Christian who endeavours to fulfill the
binding demand of moral holiness in obedience to God and in love of his
neighbour (2 Corinthians 7:1; 1 Thessalonians 4:3), or a charismatic figure in
whom the gifts of the Holy Spirit operate according to the personal and temporal
circumstances of such an individual. Because of certain views on being
"called to holiness," members of many radical sects have designated
themselves as "the saints"--from Oliver Cromwell's "saints"
in 17th-century England to the Mormon "latter-day saints" in the 19th
and 20th centuries.
The general meaning of "saint" was transformed during the period of
the persecutions of Christians in the Roman Empire. The martyr, the witness in
blood to Christ and follower in his suffering, became the prototype of the
future ideal of the saint. Veneration of the saints began because of a belief
that martyrs were received directly into heaven after their martyrdoms and that
their intercession with God was especially effective--in the Revelation to John
the martyrs occupy a special position in heaven, immediately under the altar of
God (Revelation 6:9). Veneration of confessors (i.e.,
those who had not denied their belief in Christ but had not been martyred),
bishops, popes, early Church Fathers, and ascetics who had led a godlike life
was established soon after cessation of the persecutions.
In the Greek church the saints were regarded as charismatic figures in whom
the prototype of Christ is reflected in multifarious images. Veneration of the
saints in the Orthodox churches was thus based more upon the idea that the
saints provided instructional examples of the Christian life of sanctification.
In the West, however, cultic veneration of the saints, the concept of patron
saints, and the view that saints are helpers in need became predominant. The
cult of the saints gradually came under the control of the papacy, which
regulated cultic veneration of a saintly personality extolled in popular piety
by means of a process of canonization strictly defined by canon law. The saints
thus dominated the church calendar, which notes the names of the
ecclesiastically recognized saints of each day of the year. They are venerated
on a particular day in the prayer of intercession, and references are made to
their deeds, sufferings, and miracles in the liturgy.
Under Pope Paul VI, the Roman Catholic Church attempted to reduce the
significance of the veneration of saints--and thereby emphasize the idea of
their historical exemplariness--by deleting some unhistorical, ostensibly
mythological figures from the calendar of saints. The difference between
historical and mythological saints, however, is difficult to maintain in details
because mythological features from pre-Christian hero myths had often been
intermixed, even in the lives of demonstrably historical saints. Thus, deletion
of saints from the calendar has had little success in popular piety. Pope John
Paul II, fully respectful of the directions of the second Vatican Council, did,
however, pay renewed respect to some of the pre-council forms of devotion which
the reformers had tended to displace.
In the early church the veneration of saints at first was restricted to
celebrations at their tombs, but the cult of saintly relics soon spread the
veneration of particular saints to many areas. The Martyrdom
of Polycarp, for example, called the remains of the bishop Polycarp of
Smyrna, martyred in 156/167, "more precious than costly stones and more
excellent than gold." A belief in the need of special protection by saints
is the basis of the system of patron saints: most Roman Catholic churches have a
saint as their patron, whose presence in the church is represented by a relic of
that particular saint. Saints, however, became patrons not only of churches but
also of cities, regions, vocational groups, or classes. Saints also won a
special significance as patrons of names: in the Roman Catholic and Eastern
Orthodox churches a Christian generally received the name of the saint on whose
holiday (day of death) he is baptized. The believer is thus joined for life with
the patron of his name through the name and the name day, which, as the day of
rebirth (i.e., baptism), is of much greater significance than the natural
birthday.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, relics of saints appear less frequently, but
icons of saints appear in greater numbers. Though cultic veneration of saints as
patrons, tutelary saints, and helpers in need has increased through the
centuries, the view that the saints are examples of the Christian life of
sanctification has been preserved. The Roman Catholic Church, through its use of
the canonization of saints, has constantly established new models for practical
religiosity and morality to meet contemporary needs--raising to the position of
sainthood personages all the way from the holy king to the holy servant girl.
In view of the excess of the veneration of
saints, the Reformation not only eliminated the cultic veneration of saints but
also images and relics of the saints from the churches and homes. Although the
Reformation did not theoretically deny the saints their significance as
historical witnesses to the power and grace of God, through such radical
measures it virtually eliminated the meaning of saints as guiding images and
examples of Christian life. Under the influence of Luther's view that all
believers are saints, the veneration of the saints and their relics also was
either de-emphasized or eliminated. The experience of martyrdom in the times of
persecution in the Reformation and Counter-Reformation encouraged the
development of a new saintly ideal in the radical Protestant sects in connection
with the renewal of a strict demand for sanctification. Such was the case in the
Baptists' "Chronicle of the Martyrs" as well as in Spiritualism. The
Swedish archbishop Nathan Söderblom's attempt at awakening in Protestantism
in the 20th century a new understanding of the saint received notice in
Protestant ecumenical circles and led to a rediscovery of saints in the
Protestant realm (e.g.,
through Walter Nigg's book Great
Saints). In modern Roman Catholicism, emphasis is increasingly being placed
upon the charismatic aspects of the saints and their significance as models of a
spiritual, holy Christian life.
Christian art constitutes an essential element of the Christian religion.
Until the 17th century the history of Western art was largely identical with the
history of Western ecclesiastical and religious art. During the first three
centuries of the Christian Church, however, there was no Christian art, and the
church generally resisted it with all its might. Clement of Alexandria, for
example, criticized religious (pagan) art in that it encouraged people to
worship that which is created rather than the Creator. About the mid-3rd century
an incipient pictorial art began to be used and accepted in the Christian Church
but not without fervent opposition in some congregations. Only when the
Christian Church became the Roman imperial church under Emperor Constantine in
the early 4th century were pictures used in the churches, and they then began to
strike roots in Christian popular religiosity. (see also Index: Early
Christian art)
Later, however, when pictorial art was publicly placed in the service of the
church, warnings against this development were voiced by leading theologians.
The church historian Eusebius, the most diligent glorifier of Constantine,
characterized the use of images of the Apostles Paul and Peter as well as of
Christ himself as a pagan custom. Asterius, bishop of Amaseia in Pontus during
the late 4th and early 5th centuries, similarly stated in a sermon:
Do not
picture Christ on your garments. It is enough that he once suffered the
humiliation of dwelling in a human body which of his own accord he assumed for
our sakes. So, not upon your robes, but upon your soul, carry about his image.
Epiphanius (c.
315-402), bishop of Salamis in Greece, also energetically opposed in word and
deed the disposition toward images in the imperial church:
Have God
always in your hearts, but not in the community house, for it does not become a
Christian to expect the elation of his soul from recourse to his eyes and the
roaming about of his senses.
Christian art developed at such a late stage because of its origins in
Judaism and its opposition to paganism and the emperor's cult. In addition to a
faith in God the Father, Creator of heaven and Earth, and faith in the
uniqueness and holiness of God, Christianity also received from its Jewish
origins a prohibition against the use of images to depict the sacred or holy,
including humans, who were created in "the image of God." The early
Christian Church was also deeply involved in a struggle against paganism, which,
to the Christian observer, was viewed as idolatry in that its many gods were
represented in various pictorial and statuary forms. In early Christian
missionary preaching, the Old Testament attacks upon pagan veneration of images
were transferred directly to pagan image veneration of the first three centuries
AD. The struggle against images was conducted as a battle against
"idols" with all the intensity of faith in the oneness and
exclusiveness of the imageless biblical God.
Abhorrence of images also was furthered because the emperor's cult was so
despised by Christians. Christians were compelled, through anti-Christian
legislation, to venerate the imperial images by offering sacrifices to them.
Refusal to make the sacrifice was the chief cause of martyrdom.
Characteristically, thus, the Christian Church's reaction after its public
recognition was expressed in the riotous destruction of the pagan divine images.
In spite of these very strong religious and emotional restraints, the church
developed a form of art peculiar to its needs. Protestants often have held that
the development of ecclesiastical art was a part of the entire process of the
inner decay of the Christian Church when it was elevated to the position of the
officially favoured religious institution of the Roman Empire. In other words,
some groups within Protestantism have claimed that the development of church art
was part of the process of the church's inner paganization.
The starting point for the development of Christian pictorial art, however,
lies in the basic teaching of the Christian revelation itself--namely, the
incarnation, the point at which the Christian proclamation is differentiated
from Judaism. The incarnation of the Son of man, the Messiah, in the form of a
human being--who was created in the "image of God"--granted
theological approval of a sort to the use of images that symbolized Christian
truths. Clement of Alexandria, at one point, called God "the Great
Artist," who formed humans according to the image of the Logos, the
archetypal light of light. The great theological struggles over the use of
images within the church during the period of the so-called Iconoclastic
Controversy in the 8th and 9th centuries indicate how a new understanding of
images emerged on the basis of Christian doctrine. This new understanding was
developed into a theology of icons that still prevails in the Eastern Orthodox
Church in the 20th century.
The great significance of images of the saints for the Orthodox faithful is
primarily expressed in the cultic veneration of the images within the worship
service. Second, it is expressed in the dogmatic fixation of the figures,
gestures, and colours in Eastern Church iconic art. In the West, the creative
achievement of the individual artist is admired, but Orthodox painting dispenses
with the predominance of the individual painter's freely creative imagination.
Throughout the centuries the Eastern Church has been content with reproducing
certain types of holy images, and only seldom does an individual artist play a
predominant role within the history of Orthodox Church painting. Most Orthodox
ecclesiastical artists have remained anonymous. Icon painting is viewed as a
holy skill that is practiced in cloisters in which definite schools of painting
have developed. In the schools, traditional principles prevail so much that
different artist-monks generally perform only certain functions in the
production of a single icon. Style motifs--e.g.,
composition, impartation of colour, hair and beard fashions, and gestures of
the figures--are fixed in painting books that contain the canons of the
different monastic schools of icon painters.
The significance of the image of the saint in the theology, piety, and
liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church can be judged historically from the fact
that the struggle over holy images within Orthodox Church history brought about
a movement whose scope and meaning can be compared only with the Reformation of
Luther and Calvin. In the 7th century a tendency hostile to images and fostered
by both theological and political figures gained ground within the Byzantine
Church and upset Orthodox Christendom to its very depths; known as the
Iconoclastic Controversy, it was supported by some reform-minded emperors.
Although opponents of icons had all the political means of power at their
disposal, they were not able to succeed in overthrowing the use of icons. The
conclusion of this struggle with the victory of the supporters of the use of
icons is celebrated in the entire Orthodox Church on the first Sunday of Lent as
the Feast of Orthodoxy.
Orthodox icon painting is not to be separated from its ecclesiastical and
liturgical function. The painting of the image is, in fact, a liturgical act in
which the artist-monks prepare themselves by fasting, penance, and consecrating
the materials necessary for the painting. Before the finished icon is used, it
likewise is consecrated. Not viewed as a human work, an icon (according to 8th-
and 9th-century literature) was understood instead as a manifestation of a
heavenly archetype. A golden background is used on icons to indicate a heavenly
perspective. The icon is always painted two-dimensionally because it is viewed
as a window through which worshipers can view the heavenly archetype from their
earthly position. A figure in the three-dimensionality of the plastic arts, such
as sculpture, would thus be an abandonment of the character of epiphany
(appearance).
Ideas of the iconic liturgy dominate the manuals of the Orthodox icon
painters. The model of the Christ figure for icon painters was found in an
apocryphal writing of the early church--the Letter
of Lentulus, which was a legendary letter supposedly written by a certain
Lentulus, who was named consul in the 12th year of the emperor Tiberius. As the
superior of Pontius Pilate, the procurator of Judaea, he by chance was staying
in Palestine at the time of the trial of Jesus. In an official report to the
Emperor about the trial of Jesus, Lentulus included an official warrant for
Jesus with a description of the Christ. This apocryphal description furnished
the basic model for the Byzantine Christ type.
The Trinity also may not be represented, except in those forms in which,
according to the view of Orthodox church doctrine, the Trinity showed itself in
the divine Word of the Old and New Testaments. Early church theology interpreted
an Old Testament passage (Genesis 18:1 ff.) as an appearance of the divine
Trinity--namely, the visit of the three men with the patriarch Abraham at Mamre
in Palestine. Also included in icons of the Trinity are the appearance of the
three divine Persons--symbolized as a hand, a man, and a dove--at the baptism of
Jesus (Matthew 3:16 ff.) and the Pentecostal scene, in which the Lord, ascended
to heaven, sits at the right hand of God and the Comforter (the Holy Spirit) is
sent down to the Apostles in the form of fiery tongues (Acts 2). Another
Trinitarian iconic scene is the Transfiguration of Jesus at Mount Tabor (Matthew
17:2).
Icons of Mary were probably first created because of the development of
Marian doctrines in the 3rd and 4th centuries. The lack of New Testament
descriptions of Mary was compensated by numerous legends of Mary that concerned
themselves especially with wondrous appearances of miraculous icons of the
mother of God. In Russian and many other Orthodox churches, including the
monasteries at Mount Athos, such miraculous mother of God icons, "not made
by hands," have been placed where the appearances of the mother of God took
place.
The consecration liturgy of the icons of saints expresses the fact that the
saints themselves, for their part, are viewed as likenesses of Christ. In them,
the image of God has been renewed again through the working of salvation of the
incarnate Son of God.
The foes of images explicitly deny that the New Testament, in relation to the
Old Testament, contains any new attitude toward images. Their basic theological
outlook is that the divine is beyond all earthly form in its transcendence and
spirituality; representation in earthly substances and forms of the divine
already indicate its profanation. The relationship to God, who is Spirit, can
only be a purely spiritual one; the worship of the individual as well as the
community can happen only "in spirit and in truth" (John 4:24).
Similarly, the divine archetype can also be realized only spiritually and
morally in life. The religious path of the action of God upon humans is not the
path of external influence upon the senses but rather that of spiritual action
upon the mind and the will. Such an effect does not come about through the art
of painting. Opponents of icons thus claim that the only way to reach an
understanding of the truth is by studying the writings of the Old and New
Testaments, which are filled with the Spirit of God.
The decisive contrast between the iconodules (image lovers) and the
iconoclasts (image destroyers) is found in their understanding of Christology.
The iconodules based their theology upon the view of Athanasius--who reflected
Alexandrian Christology--that Christ, the God become human, is the visible,
earthly, and corporeal icon of the heavenly Father, created by God himself. The
iconoclasts, on the other hand, explain, in terms of ancient Antiochene
Christology, that the image conflicts with the ecclesiastical dogma of the
Person of the Redeemer. It is unseemly, according to their views, to desire to
portray a personality such as Christ, who is himself divine, because that would
mean pulling the divine down into the materialistic realm. (see also Index:
Alexandria, School of, Antioch, School of)
The theology of the iconoclasts of the Reformation period in the West made
use, for the most part, of the same arguments. For the radical Protestants, the
realization of God is only in the Word and sacrament.
After iconic theology had overcome opposition in the Byzantine imperial
church, there were numerous Christian groups--especially in Asia Minor--in which
the old hostility toward church icons was still maintained and which, in part,
already had been forced into positions of heresy, such as the Paulicians
(members of a 7th-9th-century dualistic sect).
The history of iconoclasm began in the early church with an emphatic (and,
from the viewpoint of lovers of Greek and Roman culture, catastrophic)
iconoclastic movement that led to the annihilation of nearly all of the sacred
art of the pagan religions of the Roman Empire. In Western Christendom, an
iconoclastic attitude was again expressed in various medieval lay movements and
sects, such as the Cathari and the Waldenses. Iconoclasm underwent a
revolutionary outbreak in the 16th-century Reformation in Germany, France, and
England. Despite the different historical types of iconoclasm, a surprising
uniformity in regard to their affective structure and theological argumentation
exists. The Iconoclastic Controversy of the 7th and 8th centuries also became a
point of contention in the Western Church. To be sure, the latter had recognized
the seventh ecumenical council at Nicaea (787), in which iconoclasm was
condemned. Nevertheless, an entirely different situation existed in the West.
The Frankish-Germanic Church was a young church in which images were much more
infrequent than in the old Byzantine Church, in which holy icons had accumulated
over the centuries. In the West there was still no Christian pictorial art as
highly developed as in the East. Also, Christianity there did not have to
struggle against a highly developed pagan pictorial art. Donar, a Germanic god,
reputedly whispered in a holy oak, and Boniface merely had to fell the Donar oak
in order to demonstrate the superiority of Christ over the pagan god. Among the
Germanic tribes in the West, there was no guild of sculptors or goldsmiths, as
in Ephesus (Acts 19: 24 ff.), who would have been able to protest in the name of
their gods against the Christian iconoclasts.
The Western viewpoint is revealed most clearly in the formulations of the
synodal decisions on the question of images, as they were promulgated in the
Frankish kingdom in the Libri
CaroliniCharlemagne's code of laws. In this work it is emphasized that
images have only a representative character. Thus, they are understood not as an
appearance of the saint but only as a visualization of the holy Persons for the
support of recollecting spiritual meanings that have been expounded
intellectually through sermons. Hence, this led to an essentially instructional
and aesthetic concept of images. The Western Church also viewed images as the
Holy Scriptures' substitute for the illiterate--i.e., for the
overwhelming majority of church people in this period. Images thus became the
Bible for the laity. Pope Adrian I, who encouraged Western recognition of the
iconodulic Council of Nicaea, also referred to the perspicuity of the icons.
This idea of perspicuity--i.e., the appeal to one's imagination to
picture the biblical persons and events to oneself--enabled him to recognize the
Greek high esteem for the image without completely accepting the complicated
theological foundation for icon veneration. The ideas articulated in the Libri Carolini remained
decisive for the Western tradition. According to Thomas Aquinas, one of the
greatest medieval theologians of the West, images in the church serve a
threefold purpose: (1) for the instruction of the uneducated in place of books;
(2) for illustrating and remembering the mystery of the incarnation; and (3) for
awakening the passion of devotion, which is kindled more effectively on the
basis of viewing than through hearing.
In the Western theology of icons, the omnipotence of the two-dimensionality
of church art also was abandoned. Alongside church pictorial painting,
ecclesiastical plastic arts developed; even painting in the three-dimensional
form was introduced through the means of perspective. Art, furthermore, became
embedded in the entire life of personal religiosity. The holy image became the
devotional image; the worshiper placed himself before an image and became
engrossed in his meditation of the mysteries of the Christian revelation. As
devotional images, the images became the focal points for contemplation and
mystical representation. Conversely, the mystical vision itself worked its way
back again into pictorial art, in that what was beheld in the vision was
reproduced in church art. The burden of ecclesiastical tradition, which weighs
heavily upon Byzantine art, has been gradually abolished in the Western Church.
In the Eastern Church the art form is just as fixed as ecclesiastical dogma;
nothing may be changed in the heavenly prototypes. This idea plays little or no
role in the West. There, religious art adjusts itself at any given time to the
total religious disposition of the church, to the general religious mental
posture, and also to religious needs. Religious art in the West also has been
shaped by the imaginative fantasy of the individual artist. Thus, from the
outset, a much more individual church art developed in the West. Thus, it became
possible to dissociate sacred history from its dogmatic milieu and to transpose
it from the past into the actual present, thereby allowing for an adaptable
development of ecclesiastical art.
The missions and expansion of Christianity are among the most unusual of
historical occurrences. Other world religions, such as Buddhism and Islam,
also have raised a claim to universal validity, but no world religion other than
Christianity has succeeded in realizing this claim through missionary expansion
over the entire world (see also below The Christian community and the world:
Christian missions ).
The unique global expansion of Christianity is directly related to its
expectation of the end time, in the imminent expectation of the return of
Christ. The Christian expectation of the end time never consisted simply of a
passive yearning for the coming Kingdom of God. Being grasped by faith in its
immediately impending arrival was expressed instead in an intense activation and
acceleration of efforts to prepare the world for the return of Christ and the
coming of the Kingdom. This state of being grasped transformed itself into the
pressing duty to "prepare the way of the Lord" (Matthew 3:3) and to
remove all resistance to the establishment of the Kingdom on Earth. (see also Index:
eschatology)
This eschatological pressure stands behind both
the earlier and the later achievements of an ever wider expansion of
Christianity. Columbus, in undertaking to cross the ocean in a westerly
direction in the 15th century, for example, believed that Satan had settled in
India, thus successfully disrupting the extension of the gospel and delaying the
return of Christ. According to his eschatological calculations, the time for the
return of Christ was nearly at hand; thus, India had to be reached by the
shortest way possible so that the last bulwark of Satan might be removed through
Christian missions. The same eschatological expectation drove the Spanish Jesuit
Francis Xavier to India and Japan in the 16th century. Protestant world
missions, commencing a century later, also were influenced by the eschatological
expectation of the end time (e.g., the missions of the German Lutherans
Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Plütschau in India in the early
18th century and the missions of the Puritans among the Indians in Massachusetts
in the late 17th century). The first seal of Massachusetts displayed an Indian
with a beckoning hand and the inscription "Come over and help us"--the
words of the Macedonian who appeared to the Apostle Paul in a night vision (Acts
16:9).
The leading missionaries of all times have accomplished great feats of
extensive travels. On his numerous missionary journeys, the Apostle Paul showed
a greater accomplishment in distances traveled than any known general of the
Roman army, official of the Roman Empire, or trader of his time. Francis Xavier
also traveled more than any other known person in his times and endured intense
physical exertions on land and sea. John R. Mott, founder of the World's Student
Christian Federation, was the most widely traveled man of the first half of the
20th century. The catchphrase coined by him, "Jesus Christ to the nations
in this generation," has been the basic principle of all the great and
small missionary impulses that have contributed to the worldwide expansion of
Christianity.
This eschatological aspect of Christian missions has continued through the
20th century, especially among Pentecostals and Adventists. The missionary
institutions of these churches come from the tradition of the conservative
evangelical churches, which maintain a strong inclination toward an imminent
expectation.
Related to the eschatological motif in missions
is the ideal of ascetic homelessness. In imitation of the homeless Christ, who
"has nowhere to lay his head" (Matthew 8:20), the early medieval
Scots-Irish monks--as radical Christian ascetics--demanded the renunciation of
that which is dearest to humans: one's own home. "For the sake of
Christ" they assumed ascetic homelessness by leaving their cloisters--often
in groups of 12 under the leadership of a 13th--and ventured abroad. They
traveled to continental Europe--especially in Celtic areas--as far as
Switzerland and over the Alps and also went to Iceland. Similarly, Russian
Orthodox hermits and monks, who often had to flee because of repressive measures
by the state and the state church, conducted missions in areas northeast of the
Soviet Union, Siberia, the Aleutian Islands, and Alaska. An example of a modern
ascetic missionary is the French nobleman Charles-Eugène de Foucauld
(1858-1916), who became a martyred anchorite missionary among the Bedouin of the
Sahara.
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