From the perspectives of history and sociology, the Christian community has
been related to the world in diverse and even paradoxical ways. This is
reflected not only in changes in this relationship over time but also in
simultaneously expressed alternatives ranging from withdrawal from and rejection
of the world to theocratic triumphalism. For example, early Christians so
consistently rejected imperial deities that they were known as radical atheists,
while later Christians so embraced European monarchies that they were known as
reactionary theists. Radical medieval Franciscans proclaimed that true
Christians should divest themselves of money at the same time that the papacy
expended great sums to manipulate the political landscape of Europe. Another
classic example of this paradoxical relationship is the early monastic
withdrawal from the world that at the same time preserved and transmitted
classical culture and learning to medieval Europe. In the modern period some
Christian communities regard secularization as a fall from true Christianity;
others view it as a legitimate consequence of a desacralization of the world
initiated by Christ.
The Christian community is always part of the world in which it exists. Thus,
the church has served the typical religious function of legitimating social
systems and values and of creating structures of meaning, plausibility, and
compensation for society as it faces loss and death. The Christian community has
sometimes exercised this religious function in collusion with tribalistic
nationalisms (e.g.,
the "German Christians" and Nazism) by disregarding traditional
church tenets. When the Christian community has held to its teachings, however,
it has opposed such social systems and values (e.g.,
the stance of the Confessing Church of Germany against Nazism). Given the
inherent fragility of human culture and society, religion in general and the
Christian community in particular frequently are conservative forces.
However, the Christian community is not always a conservative force. Its
ability to criticize the world was bitterly acknowledged by those Romans who
attributed the fall of their empire to Christian undermining of their
"civil religion." Contemporary black theology and Latin-American
liberation theology share the conviction that God takes the side of the
oppressed against the world's injustices. From the perspective of theology or
faith, the criticism of the world of which the Christian community itself is a
part is the exercise of its commitment to Jesus Christ. For the Christian
community, the death and Resurrection of Jesus call into question all
structures, systems, and values of the world that claim ultimacy.
The relationship of the Christian community to the world may be seen
differently depending upon one's historical, sociological, and theological
perspectives because the Christian community is both a creation in the world and
an influence upon it. This complexity led the American theologian H. Richard
Niebuhr to comment in Christ and Culture (1956) that "the
many-sided debate about the relations of Christianity and civilization . . . is
as confused as it is many-sided."
An influential effort to reduce this confusion to manageable and meaningful
patterns was articulated by the German scholar Ernst Troeltsch. He organized the
complex relationships of the Christian community to the world into three ideal
types of religious social organization: church, sect, and mystical movement. The
church is described as a conservative institution that affirms the world and
mediates salvation through clergy and sacraments. It is also characterized by
inclusivity and continuity, signified by its adherence to infant baptism and
historical creeds, doctrines, liturgies, and forms of organization. The
objective-institutional character of the church increases as it relinquishes its
commitment to eschatological perfection in order to create the corpus Christianum,
the Christian commonwealth or society. This development stimulates opposition
from those who understand the Gospel in terms of personal commitment and
detachment from the world. The opposition develops into sects, which are
comparatively small groups that strive for subjective, unmediated salvation and
that are related indifferently or antagonistically to the world. The exclusivity
and historical discontinuity of the sect is signified by its adherence to
believers' baptism and efforts to imitate what it believes is the New Testament
community. Mystical movements are the expression of a radical religious
individualism that strives to interiorize and live out the personal example of
Jesus. They are not interested in creating a community but strive toward
universal tolerance, a fellowship of spiritual religion beyond creeds and
dogmas. The Methodist Church exemplifies the dynamic of these types. The
Methodist movement began as a sectarian protest against the worldliness of the
Church of England; its success stimulated it to become a church, which in turn
spawned various sectarian protests, including charismatic communities. (see also Index:
sectarianism, mysticism)
Niebuhr further developed Troeltsch's efforts by distinguishing five
repetitive types of the Christian community's relations to the world. Niebuhr's
types are: Christ against culture, Christ of culture, Christ above culture,
Christ and culture in paradox, and Christ the transformer of culture. The first
two are expressions of opposition to and endorsement of the world, while the
last three share a concern to mediate in distinctive ways the opposition between
the first two.
Opposition to the world is exemplified by Tertullian's question, "What
has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" This sharp opposition to the world was
expressed in the biblical disjunction between the children of God and the
children of the world and between "the light" and "the
darkness" (1 John 2:15, 4:4-5; Revelation); and it has continued to find
personal exponents, such as Leo Tolstoy, and communal expressions, such as the
Hutterites.
Endorsement of the world emerged in the 4th century with the imperial legal
recognition of Christianity by the Roman emperor Constantine. Although
frequently associated with the medieval efforts to construct a Christian
commonwealth, this type is present wherever national, social, political, and
economic programs are "baptized" as Christian. Thus, its historical
expressions may be as diverse as the Jeffersonian United States and Hitlerian
Germany.
The other three types that Niebuhr proposed are variations on the theme of
mediation between rejection and uncritical endorsement of the world. The
"Christ above culture" type sees a continuity between the world and
faith. This was probably best expressed by Thomas Aquinas' conviction that grace
or the supernatural does not destroy nature but completes it. The "Christ
and culture in paradox" type views the Christian community's relationship
to the world in terms of a permanent and dynamic tension in which the Kingdom of
God is not of this world and yet is to be proclaimed in it. A well-known
expression of this position is Martin Luther's law-gospel dialectic,
distinguishing how the Christian community is to live in the world as both
sinful and righteous at the same time. The conviction that the world may be
transformed and regenerated by Christianity ("Christ the transformer of
culture") has been attributed to expressions that have theocratic
tendencies, such as those of Augustine and John Calvin.
Efforts by scholars such as Troeltsch and Niebuhr to provide typical patterns
of Christian relations to the world enable appreciation of the multiformity of
these relationships without being overwhelmed by historical data. These models
relieve the illusion that the Christian community has ever been monolithic,
homogeneous, or static. This "many-sidedness" may be seen in the
Christian community's relationships to the state, society, education, the arts,
social welfare, and family and personal life. (C.H.Li.)
The relationship of Christians and Christian institutions to forms of the
political order has shown an extraordinary diversity in the course of church
history; there have been, for example, theocratically founded monarchies,
democracies, and communist community orders. In various periods, however,
political revolution, based on theological foundations, to eliminate older
"Christian" state forms has also belonged to this diversity. (see also
Index: theocracy)
In certain eras of church history the aspiration for the Kingdom of God
stimulated political and social strivings for its realization that included
elements of power and dominion. The political power of the Christian
proclamation of the coming sovereignty of God resided in its promise of both the
establishment of a kingdom of peace and the execution of judgment.
The church, like the state, has been exposed to the temptation of power. The
attempt to establish a kingdom of peace resulted in the transformation of the
church into an ecclesiastical state. This took place in the development of the
Roman Papal States, but it also occurred to a lesser degree in several
theocratic churches and was attempted in Calvin's ecclesiastical state in Geneva
in the 16th century. In these cases the state declared itself a Christian state
and the executor of the spiritual, political, and social commission of the
church; it understood itself to be the representative of the Kingdom of God.
This development took place in both the Byzantine and the Carolingian empires as
well as in the medieval Holy Roman Empire.
The struggle between the church, understanding itself as state, and the
state, understanding itself as representative of the church, not only dominated
the Middle Ages but also continued into the Reformation period. The wars of
religion in the era of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation discredited in
the eyes of many the theological and metaphysical rationales for a Christian
state. In the period of the Enlightenment, this led to the idea of the
relationship of church and state as grounded upon ideas of natural law and, with
Friedrich Schleiermacher among others, to the advocacy of legal separation of
church and state.
In the early church the attitude of the Christian toward the political order
was determined by the imminent expectation of the Kingdom of God, whose
miraculous power was already beginning to be visibly realized in the figure of
Jesus Christ. The importance of the existing political order was, thus,
negligible, as expressed in the saying of Jesus, "My kingship is not of
this world." Orientation toward the coming kingdom of peace placed
Christians in tension with the state, which made demands upon them that were in
direct conflict with their faith. (see also Index: Roman Republic and
Empire)
This contrast was developed most pointedly in the rejection of the emperor
cult and of certain state offices--above all, that of judge--to which the power
over life and death was professionally entrusted. Although opposition to
fundamental orderings of the ruling state was not based upon any conscious
revolutionary program, contemporaries blamed the expansion of the Christian
Church in the Roman Empire for an internal weakening of the empire on the basis
of this conscious avoidance of many aspects of public life, including military
service.
Despite the early Christian longing for the coming Kingdom of God, even the
Christians of the early generations acknowledged the pagan state as the bearer
of order in the old eon, which for the time being continued to exist. Two
contrary views thus faced one another within the Christian communities. On the
one hand, under the influence of Pauline missions, was the idea that the
"ruling body"--i.e., the existing political order of the Roman
Empire--was "from God . . . for your good" (Romans 13:1-4) and that
Christians should be "subject to the governing authorities." Another
similar idea held by Paul (in 2 Thessalonians) was that the Roman state, through
its legal order, "restrains" the downfall of the world that the
Antichrist is attempting to bring about. On the other hand, and existing at the
same time, was the apocalyptic identification of the imperial city of Rome with
the great whore of Babylon (Revelation 17:3-7). The first attitude, formulated
by Paul, was decisive in the development of a Christian political consciousness.
The second was noticeable especially in the history of radical Christianity and
in radical Christian pacifism, which rejects cooperation as much in military
service as in public judgeship.
In the Byzantine Empire the emperor Constantine granted himself, as
"bishop of foreign affairs," certain rights to church leadership.
These concerned not only the "outward" activity of the church but also
encroached upon the inner life of the church--as was shown by the role of the
emperor in summoning and leading imperial councils to formulate fundamental
Christian doctrine and to ratify their decisions. (see also Index:
Eastern Orthodoxy)
In the Byzantine era there evolved the concept of what has been called
caesaropapism, a system in which the harmony between church and state shifted
more and more in favour (in terms of power) of the emperor. His ecclesiastical
authority was endowed with the idea of the divine right of kings, which was
symbolically expressed in the ceremony of crowning and anointing the emperor.
This tradition was later also continued in the Russian realms, where the tsardom
claimed a growing authority for itself even in the area of the church. (see also Index:
Russian Orthodox church)
Conversely, the theocratic claim to dominion by the church freely developed
in the sphere of the Roman Catholic Church after the state and administrative
organization of the Roman Empire in the West collapsed in the chaos following
the barbarian ethnic migrations. In the political vacuum that arose in the West
because of the invasion by the German tribes, the Roman Church was the single
institution that still preserved in its episcopal dioceses the Roman provincial
arrangement. In its administration of justice the church largely depended upon
the old imperial law and--in a period of legal and administrative chaos--was
viewed as the only guarantor of order. The Roman popes used this power, which
was in fact allotted to them by circumstances, to develop a specific
ecclesiastical state and to base this state upon a new theocratic ideology--the
idea that the pope was the representative of Christ and the successor of Peter.
From this perspective the Roman popes detached themselves from the power of the
Byzantine emperor, to whom they were indeed subordinate according to prevailing
imperial law.
The Roman bishops beginning with Gregory I the Great (reigned 590-604) turned
to missionizing the peoples of the West. Under Gregory the church in Spain,
Gaul, and northern Italy was strengthened, and England was converted to Roman
Christianity. Succeeding popes convinced the rulers of the Frankish (Germanic)
kingdom in the 8th century of their leadership role; they also succeeded in
winning them as protectors of the papal dominion. These rulers were the first of
the German kings to join themselves to the Roman Church. The relationship
created a new area of tension. Whereas rulers considered the pope as a member of
the Christian state and therefore under its protection and laws, the popes saw
rulers as members of the church and therefore subject to the rule of God through
St. Peter's successors. Moreover, the emperor Charlemagne claimed for himself
the right to appoint the bishops of his empire, who were more and more involved
in political affairs. These conflicting perspectives were the cause of
interminable struggles between popes and rulers throughout the Middle Ages.
In the course of this development, the process of the feudalization of the
church--unique in church history--occurred. Ruling political leaders in this
system occupied significant positions in the church; by virtue of patronage this
development encompassed the whole imperial church. At the conclusion of this
development, bishops in the empire were simultaneously the reigning princes of
their dioceses; they often were much more interested in the political tasks of
their dominion than in the spiritual.
In the great church-renewal movement, which extended from its beginnings at
the monastery at Cluny (France) in the 10th century and lasted until the reign
of Pope Gregory VII in the 11th century, the papal church rejected both the
sacred position of the king and the temporal position of bishops, who were
awarded their rights and privileges by the king. This renewal movement
proclaimed the freedom of the church from state authority as well as its
preeminence over worldly powers. This struggle, now remembered as the
Investiture Controversy, was fought out as a dramatic altercation between the
papacy and the empire. The church did not, however, gain a complete victory in
terms of papal claims of full authority over the worldly as well as the
spiritual realms.
With the weakening of the Holy Roman Empire, the European nation-states arose
as opponents of the church. The papal ideology had developed with respect to
controlling emperors and was not suited to deal effectively with kings of
nation-states. This was first clearly evident with the humiliation of Pope
Boniface VIII by King Philip of France and the subsequent Babylonian Captivity
of the church, when the papacy was forced to reside in Avignon (1309-77).
Contributing to the strengthening of the nation rulers' right of
ecclesiastical supervision was the problem of papal schism, initiated upon the
return of the papacy to Rome by the deposition of one pope and the election of
another, with both claiming legitimacy. Popes and counter-popes reigning
simultaneously mutually excommunicated one another, thus demeaning the esteem of
the papacy. The schisms spread great uncertainty among the believers of the
empire about the validity of the consecration of bishops and the sacraments as
administered by the priests they ordained. The schism also fueled desires for a
parliamentary form of church government and contributed to the rise of the
15th-century conciliar movement, which posited the supreme authority of
ecumenical councils in the church. (see also Index: antipope)
The 16th-century Reformation forced the church to face its purely spiritual
tasks and placed Reformation law as well as the legal powers of church
leadership in the hands of the princes. Under King Henry VIII a revolutionary
dissociation of the English Church from papal supremacy took place. In the
German territories the reigning princes became, in effect, the legal guardians
of the Protestant episcopate--a movement already in the process of consolidation
in the late Middle Ages. The development in the Catholic nation-states, such as
Spain, Portugal, and France, occurred in a similar way.
The democratic ideas of the freedom and equality of Christians and their
representation in a communion of saints by virtue of voluntary membership had
been disseminated in various medieval sects (e.g.,
Cathari, Waldenses, Hussites, and the Bohemian Brethren) and were reinforced
during the Reformation by groups such as the Hutterites, Mennonites, and
Schwenckfelders and the followers of Thomas Müntzer. Under the old ideal of
an uncompromising realization of the Sermon on the Mount, there arose anew in
these groups a renunciation of certain regulations of the state, such as
military service and the acceptance of state offices (judgeship), a radical
pacifism, and the attempt to structure their own form of common life in
Christian, communist communities. Many of their political ideas--at first
bloodily suppressed by the Reformation and Counter-Reformation states and
churches--were later prominent in the Dutch wars of independence and in the
English Revolution, which led to a new relationship between church and state.
In the Thirty Years' War (1618-48), confessional antitheses were settled in
devastating religious wars, and the credibility of the feuding ecclesiastical
parties was thereby called into question. Subsequently, from the 17th century
on, the tendency toward a new, natural-law conception of the relationship
between state and church was begun and continued. Henceforth, in the Protestant
countries, state sovereignty was increasingly emphasized vis-à-vis the
churches. The state established the right to regulate educational and marriage
concerns as well as all foreign affairs of the church. A similar development
also occurred in Roman Catholic areas. In the second half of the 18th century
Febronianism demanded a replacement of papal centralism with a national church
episcopal system; in the German Reich an enlightened state-church
concept was established under Josephinism (a view advocated by Joseph II
[reigned 1765-90]) through the dismantling of numerous ecclesiastical
privileges. The Eastern Orthodox Church also was drawn into this development
under Peter the Great.
The separation of church and state as proclaimed during the French Revolution
in the latter part of the 18th century was the result of Reformational strivings
toward a guarantee for the freedom of the church and the natural-law ideas of
the Enlightenment; it was aggravated by the social revolutionary criticism
against the wealthy ecclesiastical hierarchy. The separation of church and state
was also achieved during and after the American Revolution as a result of ideas
arising from the struggle of the Puritans against the English episcopal system
and the English throne. After the state in France had undertaken the task of
creating its own political, revolutionary substitute religion in the form of a
"cult of reason," which was foreshadowed by Rousseau's discourse on
"la religion civile," a type of separation of church and state was
achieved. The French state took over education and other hitherto churchly
functions of a civic nature.
From the late 18th century on, two fundamental attitudes developed in matters
related to the separation of church and state. The first, as implied in the
Constitution of the United States, was supported by a tendency to leave to the
church, set free from state supervision, a maximum freedom in the realization of
its spiritual, moral, and educational tasks. In the United States, for example,
a comprehensive church school and educational system has been created by the
churches on the basis of this freedom, and numerous universities have been
founded by churches. The separation of church and state by the French Revolution
and later in the Soviet Union and the countries under the Soviet Union's sphere
of influence was based upon an opposite tendency. The attempt was to totally
exterminate the church and to replace it with nationalism.
In contrast to this, National Socialism in Germany under Hitler showed
paradoxical contradictions. On the one hand, Nazi propaganda pursued a
consciously anti-Christian polemic against the church; it proceeded to arrest
those clergy opposed to the Nazi worldview and policies. On the other hand,
Hitler placed the greatest value upon concluding with the Vatican in 1934 a
concordat that granted the Roman Catholic Church more special rights in the
German Reich than had ever been granted it in any earlier concordat. The
concordat with the Vatican represented the first recognition of the Hitler
regime by a European government and was viewed by Hitler as a method of entrance
into the circle of internationally recognized political powers.
In Germany the old state-church traditions had already been eliminated in the
revolution of 1918, which, with the abolition of the monarchical system of
government, also deprived the territorial churches of their supreme Protestant
episcopal heads. In the German Weimar Constitution the revolution had earlier
sanctioned the separation of church and state. State-church traditions were
maintained in various forms in Germany, not only during the Weimar Republic but
also during the Hitler regime and afterward in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Thus, through state agreements, definite special rights, primarily in the areas
of taxes and education, were granted to both the Roman Catholic Church and the
Evangelical (Lutheran-Reformed) churches of the individual states.
Even in the United States, however, the old state-church system, overcome
during the American Revolution, still produces aftereffects in the form of tax
privileges of the church (exemption from most taxation), the exemption of the
clergy from military service, and the financial furtherance of confessional
school and educational systems through the state. These privileges have been
questioned and even attacked by certain segments of the American public.
The two main forms of the relationship between church and state that have
been predominant and decisive through the centuries and in which the structural
difference between the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy becomes most
evident can best be explained by comparing the views of two great theologians:
Eusebius of Caesarea and Augustine.
Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260-c. 340) was the court theologian
of Emperor Constantine the Great, who formed the Orthodox understanding of the
mutual relationship of church and state. He saw the empire and the imperial
church as sharing a close bond with one another; in the centre of the Christian
empire stood the figure of the Christian emperor rather than that of the
spiritual head of the church.
Eusebius made this idea the basis of his political theology, in which the
Christian emperor appears as God's representative on Earth in whom God himself
"lets shine forth the image of his absolute power." He is the
"Godloved, three times blessed" servant of the highest ruler, who,
"armed with divine armor cleans the world from the horde of the godless,
the strong-voiced heralds of undeceiving fear of God," the rays of which
"penetrate the world." Through the possession of these characteristics
the Christian emperor is the archetype not only of justice but also of the love
of humankind. When it is said about Constantine, "God himself has chosen
him to be the lord and leader so that no man can praise himself to have raised
him up," the rule of the Orthodox emperor has been based on the immediate
grace of God.
This religious interpretation of the Christian emperor reinterpreted in the
Christian sense the ancient Roman institution of the god-emperor. Some of
Eusebius' remarks echo the cult of the Unconquered Sun, the Sol Invictus, who
was represented by the emperor according to pagan understanding. The emperor--in
this respect he also resembled the pagan god-emperor who played the role of the pontifex
maximus(high priest) in the state cult--took the central position within the
church as well. He summoned the synods of bishops, "as though he had been
appointed bishop by God," presided over the synods, and granted judicial
power for the empire to their decisions. He was the protector of the church who
stood up for the preservation of unity and truth of the Christian faith and who
fought not only as a warrior but also as an intercessor, as a second Moses
during the battle against God's enemies, "holy and purely praying to God,
sending his prayers up to him." The Christian emperor entered not only the
political but also the sacred succession of the Roman god-emperor. Next to such
a figure, an independent leadership of the church could hardly develop.
Orthodox theologians have understood the coexistence of the Christian emperor
and the head of the Christian church as symphonia,
or "harmony." The church recognized the powers of the emperor as
protector of the church and preserver of the unity of faith and limited its own
authority to the purely spiritual domain of preserving the Orthodox truth and
order in the church. The emperor, on the other hand, was subject to the
spiritual leadership of the church as far as he was a son of the church. (see
also Index: Eastern Orthodoxy)
The special position of the imperial ruler and the function of the Byzantine
patriarch as the spiritual head of the church have been defined in the Epanagogethe
judicial ruling establishing this relationship of church and state. The
church-judicial affirmation of this relationship in the 6th and 7th centuries
made the development of a judicial independence of the Byzantine patriarch in
the style of the Roman papacy impossible from the beginning.
The
Epanagoge, however, did not completely subject the patriarch to the
supervision of the emperor but rather directed him expressly "to support
the truth and to undertake the defense of the holy teachings without fear of the
emperor." Therefore, the tension between the imperial reign that misused
its absolutism against the spiritual freedom of the church and a church that
claimed its spiritual freedom against an absolutist emperor or tsar was
characteristic for the Byzantine and Slavic political history but not the same
as the political tension between the imperial power and the politicized papacy
that occurred in the West.
Augustine's City of
God attempted to answer the most painful event of his century: the fall of
Rome. Augustine responded to the existential shock and dismay his contemporaries
experienced with the collapse of their world by a literary demolition of their
nostalgic paganism. From Augustine's perspective the "splendid vices"
of the pagans had led inexorably to the fall of an idolatrous world. In sharp
contrast to this "earthly city," epitomized by Rome but everywhere
energized by the same human desires for praise and glory, Augustine projected
the "most glorious city" of praise and thanks to God, the heavenly
Jerusalem, a historical image of which was the new Rome of the Catholic Church.
However, Augustine did not simply identify the state with the earthly city and
the church with the city of God. He perceived that the state existed not simply
in opposition to God but as a divine instrument for the welfare of humankind.
The civitas dei and the civitas
terrena finally correspond neither to church and state nor to heaven and
earth. They are rather two opposed societies with antagonistic orders of value
that intersect both state and church and in each case show the radical
incompatibility of the love of God with the values of worldly society.
Based upon Augustine's views, the historical development of the church in the
Latin West took a different course, one away from the Byzantine imperial church.
In the West a new power was formed--the Roman Church, the church of the bishop
of Rome. This church understood itself as the successor of the extinct Roman
Empire. In the political vacuum of the West that was created by the invasion of
the Germans and the destruction of the Roman state and administrative apparatus,
the church became great and powerful as the heir to the Roman Empire. Only
within this vacuum could the idea of the papacy develop in which the great
popes, as bishops of Rome, stepped into the position of the vanished emperors.
(see also Index: Roman Catholicism)
It was in this context that the judicial pretense of the "Gift of the
emperor Constantine"--the Donation of Constantine--became possible, to
which the later development of the papacy was connected. The Donation attempted
to reconstruct the history of the Roman papacy in retrospect in order to make
legitimate the newly gained ecclesiastical and political position of the popes
after the extinction of the Western Roman imperial reign. This fabrication
entered papal ideology in written form through the mid-9th-century resource for
canon law known as the Pseudo-Isadorian Decretals. The exposure of the Donation
as a forgery did not occur until the 15th century. The Donation is the account
of Constantine's purported conferring upon Pope Sylvester I (reigned 314-335) of
the primacy of the West, including the imperial symbols of rulership. The Pope
returned the crown to Constantine, who in gratitude moved the capital to
Byzantium (Constantinople). The Donation thereby explained and legitimated a
number of important political developments and papal claims, including the
transfer of the capital to Byzantium, the displacement of old Rome by the new
Rome of the church, papal secular authority, and the papal right to create an
emperor by crowning him. The latter would be used to great effect when Pope Leo
III crowned Charlemagne king of the Romans in 800. The force of this action was
of great significance throughout the Middle Ages as popes exerted authority over
the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire, and it explains the symbolic significance
of Napoleon's taking the crown from Pope Pius VII's hands to crown himself. (see
also Index: Constantine, Donation of, False Decretals)
This was the point of separation from which the developments in the East and
in the West led in two different directions. The growing independence of the
West was markedly illustrated by the Donation of Pepin (Pepin, father of
Charlemagne, was anointed king of the Franks by Pope Stephen III in 754), which
laid the foundation of the Papal States as independent of any temporal power and
gave the pope the Byzantine exarchate of Ravenna. At this time the development
of two different types of a Christian idea of the state and of the church began,
and it subsequently ended in the schism between Rome and Byzantium in 1054.
The idea of the church as a state existed not only in the Roman theocracy and
in the papal idea of the church, but it also appeared in a new democratic form
and in strict contrast to its absolutist Roman model in some Reformation church
and sect developments and in Free churches of the post-Reformation period. The
sects of the Reformation period renewed the old idea of the Christian
congregation as God's people, wandering on this Earth--a people connected with
God, like Israel, through a special covenant. This idea of God's people and the
special covenant of God with a certain chosen group caused the influx of
theocratic ideas, which were expressed in forms of theocratic communities
similar to states and led to formations similar to an ecclesiastical state. Such
tendencies were exhibited among radical Reformation groups (e.g., the Münster
prophets), Puritans in Massachusetts, and various groups of the American Western
frontier. One of the rare exceptions to early modern theocratic theology was
Luther's sharp distinction of political and ecclesial responsibilities by his
dialectic of law and gospel. He commented that it is not necessary that an
emperor be a Christian to rule, only that he possess reason.
The latest attempt to form a church-state by a sect that understood itself as
the chosen people distinguished by God through a special new revelation was
undertaken by the Mormons, the "Latter-day Saints." Based on the
prophetic direction of their leaders, they attempted to found the state Deseret,
after their entrance into the desert around the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The
borders of the state were expected to include the largest part of the area of
the present states of Utah, California, Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado. The
Mormons, however, eventually had to recognize the fact that the comparatively
small centre state, Utah, of the originally intended larger Mormon territory,
could not exist as a theocracy (though structured as other secular models) under
a government of Mormon Church leaders. Reports (some apparently spurious) by
federal agents hostile to the church and widespread revulsion toward the Mormon
practice of polygyny mitigated against federal sanction of the church leadership
as the governmental heads of the proposed state. Utah eventually became a
federal state of the United States.
The enlightened absolutist state of the 18th century basically took over the
secularized form of the old Christian government that consciously took into
account the equality of Christian denominations.
Ever since the Reformation, the development of Christianity's influence on
the character of society has been twofold. In the realm of state churches and
territorial churches, its influence has been a strong element in preserving the
status quo of society. Thus, in England, the Anglican Church remained an ally of
the throne, as did the Protestant churches of the German states. In Russia the
Orthodox Church continued to support the feudal society founded upon the
monarchy, and even the monarch carried out a leading function within the church
as protector. (see also Index: established church, England, Church of,
Russian Orthodox church)
Though the impulses for transformation of the social order according to the
spirit of the Christian ethic came more strongly from the radical Free churches
and sects, churches within the established system of state and territorial
churches made positive contributions in improving the status quo. In 17th- and
18th-century Germany, Lutheran clergy, such as August Francke (1663-1727), were
active in establishing poorhouses, orphanages, schools, and hospitals. In
England, Anglican clergymen, such as Frederick Denison Maurice and Charles
Kingsley in the 19th century, began a Christian social movement in the throes of
the Industrial Revolution. Their movement brought a Christian influence to the
conditions of life and work in industry. Johann Hinrich Wichern proclaimed,
"There is a Christian Socialism," at the Kirchentag Church Convention
in Wittenberg, Ger., in 1848, the year of the publication of the Communist
Manifesto, and created the "Inner Mission" in order to address
"works of saving love" to all suffering spiritual and physical
distress. The diaconal movements of the Inner Mission were concerned with social
issues, prison reform, and care of the mentally ill. Only in tsarist Russia did
the church fail in matters concerning social problems and the Industrial
Revolution. (see also Index: Lutheranism)
The Anglo-Saxon Free churches made great efforts to bring the social
atmosphere and living conditions into line with a Christian understanding of
human life. Methodists and Baptists addressed their message mainly to those
segments of society that were neglected by the established church. They
recognized that the distress of the newly formed working class, a consequence of
industrialization, could not be removed by the traditional charitable means used
by the state churches. The fact that in Germany, in particular, the spiritual
leaders of the so-called revival movement, such as Friedrich Wilhelm Krummacher
(1796-1868) and others, denied the right of self-organization to the workers by
claiming that all earthly social injustices would receive compensation in heaven
caused Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to separate themselves completely from the
church and its purely charitable attempts at a settlement of social conflicts
and to declare religion with its promise of a better beyond as the "opiate
of the people." This reproach, however, was as little in keeping with the
social-ethical activities of the Inner Mission and of Methodists and Baptists as
it was with the selfless courage of the Quakers, who fought against social
demoralization, against the catastrophic situation in the prisons, and, most of
all, against slavery.
The fight against slavery has passed through many controversial phases in the
history of Christianity. Paul recommended to Philemon that he accept back his
runaway slave Onesimus, "no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a
beloved brother . . . both in the flesh and in the Lord" (verse 16).
Although the biblical writings made no direct attack upon the ancient world's
institution of slavery, its proleptic abolition in community with
Christ--"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free,
there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus"
(Galatians 3:28)--has been a judgment upon the world's and the Christian
community's failure to overcome slavery and all forms of oppression. Medieval
society made only slow progress in the abolition of slavery. One of the special
tasks of the orders of knighthood was the liberation of Christian slaves who had
fallen captive to the Muslims; and special knightly orders were even founded for
the ransom of Christian slaves. (see also Index: Galatians, The Letter of
Paul to the, Middle Ages)
With the discovery of the New World, the institution of slavery grew to
proportions greater than had been previously conceived. The widespread
conviction of the Spanish conquerors of the New World that its inhabitants were
not really human in the full sense of the word and therefore could be made
slaves in good conscience added to the problem. The attempt of missionaries,
such as Bartolomé de Las Casas in 16th-century Peru, to counter the
inhuman system of slavery in the colonial economic systems finally introduced
the great basic debate concerning the question of human rights. A decisive part
in the elaboration of the general principles of human rights was taken by the
Spanish and Portuguese theologians of the 16th and 17th centuries, especially
Francisco de Vitoria. Even modern natural law, however, could still be
interpreted in a conservative sense that did not make slavery contrary to its
provisions. Puritanism, however, fought against slavery as an institution. In
German Pietism, Nikolaus Ludwig, Graf von Zinzendorf, who became acquainted with
slavery on the island of Saint Croix in the Virgin Islands, used his influence
on the King of Denmark for the human rights of the slaves. The Methodist and
Baptist churches advocated abolition of slavery in the United States in the
decisive years preceding the foundation of the New England Anti-Slavery Society
in Boston in 1832 by William Lloyd Garrison. In regard to the fight against
slavery in England and in The Netherlands, which was directed mainly against the
participation of Christian trade and shipping companies in the profitable slave
trade, the Free churches were very active. The overcoming of the institution of
slavery did not end racial discrimination. Martin Luther King, Jr., Baptist
pastor and Nobel laureate, led the struggle for civil rights in the United
States until his assassination in 1968. In South Africa in the 1980s, Desmond
Tutu, Anglican archbishop and Nobel laureate, exemplified a continuing Christian
struggle for human rights. (see also Index: Americas, abolitionism)
The fight against slavery is only a model case in the active fight of the
Christian churches and fellowships against numerous other attempts at
desecration of a Christian understanding of the nature of humanity, which sees
in every human being a neighbour created in God's image and redeemed by Christ.
Similar struggles arose against the persecution of the Jews and the elimination
of members of society characterized by political or racist ideology as
"inferior." In Germany the members of the Confessing Church fought
against the practices of National Socialism, which called for the elimination of
the mentally ill and the inmates of mental and nursing institutions, who were
considered "unfit to live."
Decisive impulses for achieving changes in the social realm in the sense of a
Christian ethic have been and are initiated by men and women in the grasp of a
deep personal Christian experience of faith, for whom the message of the coming
Kingdom of God forms the foundation for faithful affirmation of social
responsibility in the present world. Revival movements have viewed the Christian
message of the Kingdom of God mainly as an impulse for reorganization of the
secular conditions of society in the sense of a Kingdom of God ethic. Under the
leadership of an American Baptist theologian, Walter Rauschenbusch (1861-1918),
the so-called Social Gospel movement spread in the Anglo-Saxon countries. A
corresponding movement was started with the Christian social conferences by
German Protestant theologians, such as Paul Martin Rade (1857-1940) of Marburg.
The basic idea of the Social Gospel--i.e., the emphasis on the
social-ethical tasks of the church--gained widespread influence within the
ecumenical movement and especially affected Christian world missions. In many
respects modern economic and other forms of aid to developing
countries--including significant ecumenical contributions from the World Council
of Churches, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, the Lutheran World
Federation, and the Roman Catholic Church--have now succeeded the Social Gospel.
(see also Index: revivalism)
There is concern on the part of some Christians that these developments
reduce the Christian message to a purely secular social program that is absorbed
by political programs. Others in the Christian community believe that faithful
responsibility in and to the world requires political, economic, and social
assistance to oppressed peoples with the goal of their liberation to a full
human life.
In contrast to Tertullian's anti-intellectual attitude, an exactly opposite
attitude toward intellectual activities has also made itself heard from the
beginning of the Christian Church (e.g.,
by Clement of Alexandria). It also has its basis in the nature of Christian
faith. In the 11th century Anselm of Canterbury expressed it in the formula fides
quaerens intellectum ("faith seeking understanding"), a formula
that has become the rallying point for scholastics of all times. Because people
have been endowed with reason, they have an urge to express their experience of
faith intellectually, to translate the contents of faith into concepts, and to
formulate beliefs in a systematic understanding of the correlation between God,
humankind, and creation. Christians of the 1st century came from the upper
levels of society and were acquainted with the philosophy and natural science of
their time. Justin Martyr, a professional philosopher, saw Christian revelation
as the fulfillment, not the elimination, of philosophical understanding. The
Logos term of the opening chapter of the Gospel According to John is the point
of departure for the intellectual history of salvation. The light of the Logos
(a Greek word meaning "word" or "reason," with the sense of
divine or universal reason permeating the intelligible world) had made itself
manifest in a number of sparks and seeds in human history even before its
incarnation in the person of Jesus Christ. (see also Index: education,
history of )
These two contrasting opinions have stood in permanent tension with one
another. In medieval Scholasticism the elevation of Christian belief to the
status of scientific universal knowledge was dominant. Theology became the
instructor of the different sciences, organized according to the traditional
classification of trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic) and quadrivium
(music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy) and incorporated into the system of
education as "servants of theology." This system of education became
part of the structure of the universities that were founded in the 13th century.
The different sciences only gradually gained a certain independence.
With the Reformation there was widespread concern for education because the
Reformers desired everyone to be able to read the Bible. Their concern was the
beginning of universal, public education. Luther also argued that it was
necessary for society that its youth be educated. He held that it was the duty
of civil authorities to compel their subjects to keep their children in school
so "that there will always be preachers, jurists, pastors, writers,
physicians, schoolmasters, and the like, for we cannot do without them."
Open conflict between science and theology occurred only when the traditional
biblical view of the world was seriously questioned, as in the case of the
Italian astronomer Galileo (1633). The principles of Galileo's scientific
research, however, were themselves the result of a Christian idea of science and
truth. The biblical faith in God as Creator and incarnate Redeemer is an
explicit affirmation of the goodness, reality, and contingency of the created
world--assumptions underlying scientific work. Thus, in the 20th century,
William Temple, archbishop of Canterbury, could assert that Christianity is an
avowedly materialistic religion. Positive tendencies concerning education and
science have always been dominant in the history of Christianity, even though
the opposite attitude arose occasionally during certain periods. Thus the German
astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) spoke of celebrating God in science.
The attitude that had been hostile toward intellectual endeavours was less
frequently heard after the Christian Church had become the church of the Roman
Empire. But the relationship between science and theology was also attacked when
the understanding of truth that had been developed within theology was turned
critically against the dogma of the church itself. This occurred, for instance,
after the natural sciences and theology had turned away from total dependence
upon tradition and directed their attention toward experience--observation and
experiment. A number of fundamental dogmatic principles and understandings were
thus questioned and eventually abandoned. The struggle concerning the theory of
evolution (e.g., the Scopes Trial in Tennessee in 1925) has been a
conspicuous modern symptom of this trend.
The estrangement of theology and natural science in the modern period was a
complex development related to confessional controversies and wars in the 16th
and 17th centuries and philosophical perspectives in the 18th and 19th
centuries. The epistemological foundation of faith was radically called into
question by the Scottish philosopher David Hume. Building upon Hume's work, the
German philosopher Immanuel Kant advocated freedom from any heteronomous
authority, such as the church and dogmas, that could not be established by
reason alone. Scholars withdrew from the decisions of church authorities and
were willing to subject themselves only to critical reason and experience. The
rationalism of the Enlightenment appeared to be the answer of science to the
claim of true faith that had been made by the churches, which had become
untrustworthy through the religious wars and the influence of philosophy.
The Christian Church created the bases of the Western system of education.
From its beginning the Christian community faced external and internal
challenges to its faith, which it met by developing and utilizing intellectual
and educational resources. The response to the external challenge of rival
religions and philosophical perspectives is termed apologetics--i.e.,
the intellectual defense of the faith. Apologetic theologians from Justin Martyr
in the 2nd century to Paul Tillich in the 20th have promoted critical dialogue
between the Christian community, the educated world, and other religions. The
internal challenges to the Christian community were met not only by formulating
the faith in creeds and dogmas but also by passing this faith on to the next
generations through education. (see also Index: religious education,
educational system )
In the early Middle Ages a system of schools was formed at the seats of
bishops to educate clergy and to teach the civil servants of the government and
administrative offices. The school at the court of Charlemagne (which was
conducted by clergy), the medieval schools of the religious orders, cathedrals,
monasteries, convents, and churches, the flourishing schools of the Brethren of
the Common Life, and the Roman Catholic school systems that came into existence
during the Counter-Reformation under the leadership of the Jesuits and other new
teaching orders contributed much to the civilization of the West. Equally
important were the schools and educational reforms started by the German
Reformers Luther, Philipp Melanchthon, Johann Bugenhagen, John and August
Hermann Francke, and the Moravian reformers John Amos Comenius and the Graf von
Zinzendorf. The church was responsible for the system of schools even after the
Reformation. Only in the 18th century did the school system start to separate
itself from its Christian roots and fall more and more under state control.
With the separation of church and state, both institutions have entered into
tensely manifold relationships. In some countries the state has taken over the
school system completely and does not allow private church schools except in a
few special cases in which constant control is maintained regarding religious
instruction as a part of the state's educational task. Other countries (e.g., France)
maintain school systems basically free of religion and leave the religious
instruction to the private undertakings of the different churches. In the
American Revolution the concept of the separation of state and church was a
lofty goal that was supposed to free the church from all patronization by the
state and to make possible a maximum of free activity, particularly in the area
of education. On the other hand, the Soviet Union used its schools particularly
for an anti-religious education based upon the state philosophy of dialectical
materialism, practicing the constitutionally guaranteed freedom of
anti-religious propaganda in schools, though the churches were forbidden to give
any education outside their worship services.
A second issue that results from the separation of church and state is the
question of state subsidies to private church schools. These are claimed in
those countries in which the church schools in many places take over part of the
functions of the state schools (e.g., in the United States). After the
ideological Positivism and the Materialism of the 19th century faded away in
many areas, it was realized that religious life had had an important role in the
cultural development of the West and the New World and that the practiced
exclusion of religious instruction from the curricula of the schools indicated a
lack of balance in education. Based on new insights, it has therefore been
maintained in the 20th century that religion should be adopted as a subject
among the humanities. State universities in the United States, Canada, and
Australia, which did not have theological faculties because of the separation of
church and state, founded departments of religion of an interdenominational
nature and included non-Christians as academic teachers of religion. (see also Index:
government support)
The Christian system of education led to the early founding of universities.
The university was a creation of medieval Europe and spread from there to other
continents after the 16th century. The universities that had been formed in the
beginning through the unification of schools for monks and schools for regular
clergy succeeded in gaining their relative independence by agreements with
church and state. The universities represented the unity of education that was
apparent in the common use of the Latin language, the teaching methods of
lecture and disputation, the extended communal living in colleges, the
periodically changing leadership of an elected dean, the inner structure
according to faculties or "nations," and the European recognition of
the academic degrees.
The advent of humanism and the Reformation created a new situation for all
systems of education, especially the universities. Humanists demanded plans to
provide designated places for free research in academies that were princely or
private institutions and, as such, not controlled by the church. On the other
hand, the Protestant states of the Reformation created their own new state
universities, such as Marburg in 1527, Königsberg in 1544, and Jena in
1558. As a counteraction, the Jesuits took over the leadership in the older
universities that had remained Roman Catholic or else founded new ones in Europe
and overseas.
In overseas areas, Christian education has had a twofold task. First, its
function was to lay an educational foundation for evangelization of
non-Christian peoples by forming a system of education for all levels from
grammar school to university. Second, its function was to take care of the
education of European settlers. To a large extent the European colonial powers
had left the formation of an educational system in their colonies or dominions
to the churches. In the Spanish colonial regions in America, Roman Catholic
universities were founded very early (e.g., Santo Domingo in 1538, Mexico
and Lima in 1551, Guatemala in 1562, and Bogotá in 1573). In China,
Jesuit missionaries acted mainly as agents of European education and culture (e.g., astronomy,
mathematics, and technology) in their positions as civil servants of the court.
(see also Index: colonialism)
Since the 18th century, the activities of competing Christian denominations
in mission areas has led to an intensification of the Christian system of
education in Asia and Africa. Even where the African and Asian states have their
own system of schools and universities, Christian educational institutions have
performed a significant function (St. Xavier University in Bombay and Sophia
University in Tokyo are Jesuit foundations; Doshisha University in Kyoto
is a Japanese Presbyterian foundation).
In North America, Christian education took a different course. From the
beginning, the churches took over the creation of general educational
institutions. The various denominations did pioneer work in the field of
education; a state school system was established only after the situation had
consolidated itself. In the English colonies, later the United States, the
denominations founded theological colleges for the purpose of educating their
ministers and established universities dealing with all major disciplines,
including theology, often emphasizing a denominational slant. Harvard University
was founded in 1636 and Yale University in 1701 as Congregational
establishments, and the College of William and Mary was established in 1693 as
an Anglican institution. They were followed during the 19th century by other
Protestant universities (e.g.,
Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas) and colleges (e.g., Augustana
College, Rock Island, Ill.). In addition, many private universities were based
upon a Christian idea of education according to the wishes of their founders.
Christian education has been undertaken in a variety of forms. The system of
Sunday schools is nearly universal in all denominations. Confirmation
instruction is more specialized, serving different tasks, such as preparation of
the children for confirmation, their conscious acknowledgment of the Christian
ethic, of the Christian confessions, of the meaning of the sacraments, and of
the special forms of congregational life. ( E.W.B./C.H.Li.)
The Christian community has fostered the development of a Christian culture
in all areas of life. In this development the arts have played major roles in
expressing, communicating, and deepening the faith of the community. At times
some art has been rejected because either the content or the form was perceived
as incompatible with the faith of the community. For example, the antipathy of
the early church, especially in Orthodox realms, to theatre was related to the
perception that the Greek theatre was preoccupied with ancient myths and deities
and that comedy excused immorality. Instrumental music also was rejected in
Orthodoxy because of both its accustomed role in pagan cults and the belief that
God should not be praised with "dead" materials. The Orthodox
community did not completely reject dramatic and musical art, however, but
transformed them into the service of the church through rich liturgical dramas
and extraordinary choir music. (see also Index: religious art)
The didactic use of art, succinctly expressed by Pope Gregory I the Great in
the phrase "images are the books of the laity," was present in the
architecture and art of the churches constructed up to the modern period. The
symbolic significance of the church building in the shape of a cross, its deep
entrances leading into sacred space, the carefully engineered proportions of the
building, the use of light and shadow in relation to statues and stained glass,
the smells of candles and incense, not to mention the liturgy itself--all these
forms, colours, sights, sounds, and smells worked to communicate a sense of the
sacred. The sculptures and stained-glass windows were graphic presentations of
biblical stories and moral instructions to which the preacher could point and to
which the largely illiterate congregation could return for reflection and
edification. The very location of the church in the centre of medieval towns and
villages gave physical expression to the community's faith in God's presence in
the world.
Until the Renaissance the arts were patronized by and in service to the
Christian community. Since then there has been a growing independence of artists
from the church. In the modern period the older "Christ against
culture" concerns of the early church have once again been raised. The
Christian community has by and large not found the criterion of religious
subject matter satisfactory for its decisions about art. While the music of
Richard Wagner may be regarded as inappropriate for the church because of his
preoccupation with Teutonic gods and goddesses, a painting such as Picasso's
"Guernica" depicting human sin and evil may be appropriate. At the
same time a musical, literary, plastic, or graphic representation of Jesus may
either vitiate and trivialize the faith of the community, as in modern
sentimentalized "portraits" of Jesus, or profoundly express that
faith, as in Matthias Grünewald's "Isenheim Altarpiece"
portraying the Crucifixion (see photograph).
The Christian community, sensitized by its Jewish roots and the Hebrew
prohibition of idolatry, has been aware that the beauty of the holy may be
twisted into the holiness of beauty. Thus, at various times in history there
have been iconoclastic reactions to art. But for the most part the Christian
community has appreciated and contributed to the didactic, expressive, and
symbolic representation of faith and the human condition. (C.H.Li.)
The Christian Church has administered its concern for the sick in a twofold
manner: both by healing the sick and by expressing concern and caring for them.
The practice of healing has retreated into the background in modern times, but
healing played a decisive role in the success of the early church and was
important in missionary apologetics. In the Gospels, Jesus appears as a healer
of body and soul. The title "Christ the Physician" was the most
popular name for the Lord in missionary preaching of the first centuries. Even
the Apostles are characterized as healers. The apologetics of the church of the
2nd to 4th century used numerous miraculous healings as arguments for the
visible presence of the Holy Spirit in the church. The Fathers of the first
centuries interpreted the entire sphere of charismatic life from the basic
concepts that Christ is the physician, the church the hospital, the sacraments
the medication, and orthodox theology the medicine chest against heresy.
Ignatius of Antioch called the Eucharist the "medication that produces
immortality."
The history of charismatic healing has hardly been explored. Miracles of
healing remain a characteristic attribute of the great Christian charismatics of
the Roman Catholic Church as well as of the Eastern Orthodox. Healing within the
church began to retreat only in connection with the transformation of the church
into a state church under Constantine and with the replacement of free
charismatics by ecclesiastical officials. (see also Index: faith healing
)
The early basis for healing was generally a demonological interpretation of
sickness: healing was often carried out as an exorcism--that is, a ceremonial
liturgical adjuration of the demon that was supposed to cause the illness and
its expulsion from the sick person. The development of exorcism is
characteristic in that the office of the exorcist eventually became one of the
lower levels of ordination, which led to the priesthood. Traditionally,
exorcisms were connected not with the rite of baptism alone; the Rituale
Romanum (Roman Ritual) contains many liturgical formulas for cases of
demoniacal possession. Only the Enlightenment in the 18th century repressed the
practice of exorcisms within the Roman Catholic Church.
In the churches of the Reformation, exorcism never completely vanished; in
Pietistic circles several exorcists have appeared; e.g.,
Johann Christoph Blumhardt the Elder (1805-80). With the motto "Jesus
is Conquerer," Blumhardt transformed his healing centre at Bad Boll, Ger.,
into an influential resource for international missionary work. His son,
Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt (1842-1919), continued his father's work and in
sympathy with working-class needs included political action as a member of the Württemberg
Diet. Since the latter part of the 19th century, different groups of the
Pentecostal and charismatic movements have re-accepted the use of exorcistic
rituals with great emphasis and--pointing to the power of the Holy Spirit--they
claim the charisma of healing as one of the spiritual gifts granted the
believing Christian. After the basic connection between healing of the body and
healing of the soul and the psychogenic origin of many illnesses was
acknowledged theologically and medically, different older churches, such as the
Protestant Episcopal Church and even the Roman Catholic Church in the United
States, have reinstituted healing services.
In terms of spiritual healing, one church has stood out in this respect in
North America. Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910), the founder of Christian Science,
referred particularly to healing through the Spirit as her special mission.
Based on her experience of a successful healing from a serious illness by
Phineas Quimby, a pupil of the German hypnotist Franz Mesmer, she wrote her work Science and Health with Key
to the Scriptures and founded the Church of Christ, Scientist. According to
the instructions of its founder, Christian Science today carries out a practice
of "spiritual healing" throughout the world.
From the beginning another concern besides healing was care for the sick, an
element of the earliest commandments of Christian ethics. At the Last Judgment,
Christ the Judge will say to the chosen ones on his right hand: "I was sick
and you visited me," and to the condemned on his left hand: "I was
sick and you did not visit me." To the condemneds' surprised questions as
to when they saw Christ sick and did not visit him, they will receive the
answer: "As you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to
me." (see also Index: health care)
The first office created by the church in Jerusalem was the diaconate; it
spread rapidly throughout the entire church. The care of the sick was carried
out by the deacons and widows under the leadership of the bishop. This service
was not limited to members of the Christian congregation but was directed toward
the larger community, particularly in times of pestilence and plague. Eusebius
included in his Ecclesiastical History
the report that while the heathen fled the plague at Alexandria, "most of
our brother-Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty" in caring for and
frequently dying with the victims.
During the Middle Ages the monasteries took over the care of the sick and
created a new institution, the hospital. The growing number of pilgrims to the
Holy Land and the necessity of care of their numerous sick, who had fallen
victim to the unfamiliar conditions of climate and life, led to knightly
hospital orders, the most important of which was the Order of the Hospital of
St. John of Jerusalem (later called the Knights of Malta). The service for the
sick, which was carried out by the knights besides their military service for
the protection of the pilgrims, was not elaborate.
In connection with the orders of mendicant friars, especially the
Franciscans, civil hospital orders were formed. Even the hospital in Marburg
that was founded by St. Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-31) on the territory of the
Knights of the Teutonic Order was influenced by the spirit of St. Francis. Other
hospitals were founded as autonomous institutions under the leadership or
supervision of a bishop. The meaningful centralization of the different existing
institutions became necessary with the growth of cities and was most frequently
undertaken by city councils. The laity began to take over, but the spiritual and
pastoral care of the patients remained a major concern.
In the realm of the Lutheran Reformation, the medieval nursing institutions
were adapted to new conditions. The church constitutions in the different
territories of Reformed churches stressed the duty of caring for the sick and
gave suggestions for its adequate realization. The office of the deacon was
supplemented by that of the deaconess; and these offices of service were
considered part of the polity of the church of the New Testament. The
Counter-Reformation brought a new impulse for caring for the sick in the Roman
Catholic Church, insofar as special orders for nursing service were founded--e.g.,
the Daughters of Charity, a non-enclosed congregation of women devoted to
the care of the sick and the poor, by Vincent de Paul, who was a notable
charismatic healer. A great number of new orders came into existence and spread
the spirit and institutions of ecclesiastical nursing care throughout the world
as part of Roman Catholic world missions.
In the realm of Protestantism, the Free churches led in the care of the sick.
Methodists, Baptists, and Quakers all had a great share in this development,
founding numerous hospitals throughout the world and supplying them with willing
male and female helpers. German Lutheranism was influenced by these
developments. In 1823 Amalie Sieveking developed a sisterhood analogous to the
Daughters of Charity and was active in caring for the cholera victims of the
great Hamburg epidemic of 1831. She was an inspiration to Theodor Fliedner, who
founded the first Protestant hospital in Kaiserswerth in 1836 and created at the
same time the female diaconate, an order of nurses that soon found worldwide
membership and recognition. Florence Nightingale received training at
Kaiserswerth, which was an important model for modern nursing schools.
Church hospitals and ecclesiastical nursing care still maintain a leading and
exemplary role in the 20th century, although along with the general political
and social development of the 19th century the city or communal hospital was
founded and overtook the church hospital.
The most impressive example of the universal spread of care for the sick was
the founding of the Red Cross by the Swiss humanitarian Henri Dunant. The
religious influence of Dunant's pious parental home in Geneva and the shocking
impression he received on the battlefield of Solferino in June 1859 led him to
work out suggestions that--after difficult negotiations with representatives of
numerous states--led to the conclusion of the "Geneva convention regarding
the care and treatment in wartime of the wounded military personnel." In
the 20th century the activity of the Red Cross has embraced not only the victims
of military actions but also peace activity, which includes aid for the sick,
for the handicapped, for the elderly and children, and for the victims of all
types of disasters everywhere in the world.
From the beginning the Christian congregation cared for the poor, the sick,
widows, and orphans. The Letter of James says: "Religion that is pure and
undefiled before God is this: to visit orphans and widows in their
affliction." Widows formed a special group in the congregations and were
asked to help with nursing care and other diaconic (from diakonia,
or faith active in love and service to all) congregational tasks as long as
they did not need help and care themselves. (see also Index: widowhood)
The church had founded orphanages during the 4th century, and the monasteries
took over this task during the Middle Ages. They also fought against the
practice of abandoning unwanted children and established foundling hospitals. In
this area, as in others, a secularization of church institutions took place in
connection with the spreading autonomy of the cities. In the Reformed churches
the establishment of orphanages was furthered systematically. In Holland almost
every congregation had its own orphanage, which was sustained through the gifts
of the members.
Following the great wars of the 17th century, the orphanages were reorganized
pedagogically, notably by August Hermann Francke, who connected the orphanage in
Glaucha, Ger., which he had founded, with a modern system of secondary schools.
Francke's orphanage became a model that was frequently imitated in England and
also in North America. An exemplary proponent of comprehensive Christian caring
and curing for the whole person and community was the Alsatian Lutheran pastor
Johann Friedrich Oberlin (1740-1826). Responsible for a remote and barren area
in the Vosges Mountains, Oberlin transformed the impoverished villages into
prosperous communities. He led in establishing schools, roads, bridges, banks,
stores, agricultural societies (with the introduction of potato cultivation),
and industries. His nursery schools were imitated in many areas through
"Oberlin Societies." These efforts provided a significant contribution
to the development of modern welfare, which in the 20th century is mainly the
responsibility of state, communal, or humanitarian organizations but is still
characterized strongly by its Christian roots. (E.W.B./C.H.Li.)
The Christian community's relation to the questions of property, poverty, and
the poor may be sketched in terms of four major perspectives, which have
historically overlapped and sometimes coexisted in mutuality or contradiction.
The first perspective, both chronologically and in continuing popularity, is
personal charity. This was the predominant form of the church's relationship to
the poor from the 1st to the 16th century. The second perspective supplements
the remedial work of charity by efforts for preventive welfare through
structural changes in society. This concern to remove causes of poverty was
clearly expressed in the Reformation but was soon submerged in the profound
sociopolitical and economic changes of the time. The third perspective is a
retreat into the charity models of the earlier Christian community. Because of
the overwhelming effects of the process of secularization and the human misery
caused by industrialization, the key to social welfare was expressed in the
Pietist maxim that social change depended upon the conversion of individuals.
The fourth perspective, present in churches of the modern period, envisions
systemic social change to facilitate redistribution of the world's wealth.
Personal charity is not neglected, but the major goal is to change the unjust
structures of world society.
The early Christian community's teachings on property and poverty were marked
by the tension between its expectation of support from the wealthy and its
biblically rooted criticism of wealth. The solution was to place rich and poor
in a symbiotic relationship oriented toward salvation. The rich supply the needs
of the poor, who in turn provide the rich with the opportunity for good works
and prayers for their salvation. (see also Index: wealth and income,
distribution of)
Augustine's doctrine of charity became the heart of Christian thought and
practice. Augustine portrayed the Christian pilgrimage toward the heavenly city
by analogy to a traveler's journey home. The city of God, humankind's true home,
is characterized by the love of God even to the contempt of self, whereas the
earthly city is characterized by the love of self even to the contempt of God.
It is the goal--not the journey--that is ultimately important. The world and its
goods must be used for the journey, but if they are enjoyed they direct the
traveler away from God to the earth. This imagery incorporates into the heart of
Christian theology the great medieval themes of pilgrimage, renunciation,
alienation, and asceticism; and the biblical and early Christian suspicion of
riches receives systematic theological articulation. Pride and covetousness are
the major vices; humility and almsgiving are the major virtues; and poverty is
endorsed as the favoured status for the Christian life.
This view did not, however, lead to a rejection of property and its
importance for society. Against both Marcionite denigration of the world and
Gnostic communism, respect for private property was maintained as integral to a
comprehensive ethic. It was clear that without property Christians could not
care for the needy. And, although Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 330-c.
389) linked private property to the Fall, he understood that the abolition of
private property would not cure sin. Property and wealth should be shared, not
relinquished. Yet the paradox of 2 Corinthians 6:10 remained: How could a
Christian be poor yet make many rich, have nothing yet possess everything? The
answers given were communal property, charity to the needy, avoidance of
avarice, and concentration upon heavenly treasure. In this way the early
Christian community achieved an aristocratic attitude to riches. The solutions
of institutionalizing poverty in priesthood and monasticism, while rationalizing
poverty as poverty of the spirit and material wealth as God's provision for
ministry, formed the basis for medieval care of the poor.
The medieval Christian community promoted almsgiving within a theological
framework oriented to the future salvation of the individual. Although this
framework was a stimulus to insightful and humane laws and actions, it did not
result in the formulation of policies to deal with the major social and economic
changes that accompanied the late medieval shift from rural-agricultural society
to urban-commercial society. (see also Index: Middle Ages)
The most influential medieval thinker on the problem of property was Thomas
Aquinas. Thomas saw community of goods as rooted in natural law because it makes
no distinction of possessions. The natural law of common use protects every
person's access to earthly goods and requires responsibility by everyone to
provide for the needs of others. Private property, on the other hand, is rooted
in positive law through human reason. In history, reason leads to the conclusion
that the common good is served if everyone has disposition of his own property
because there is more incentive to work, goods are more carefully used, and
peace is better preserved when all are satisfied with what they have. Private
property exists to serve the common good; thus, superfluous property is to be
distributed as alms to the needy.
The other major effort to deal with property and poverty at this time was
through rational direction and administration. As cities developed into
political corporations, a new element entered welfare work: an organizing
citizenry. Through their town councils, citizens began to claim the authority to
administer the ecclesiastical welfare work of hospitals and poor relief. The
process was accelerated by the Reformers, whose theology undercut the medieval
idealization of poverty. According to the Reformers, righteousness before God
was by faith alone apart from human works, and salvation was perceived as the
foundation of life rather than its goal. Thus, the Reformation community found
it difficult to rationalize the plight of the poor as a peculiar form of
blessedness, and no salvific value either in being poor or in giving alms could
be identified. When the Reformers turned to poor relief and social welfare,
their new theological perspectives led them to raise questions of social justice
and social structures. This was institutionalized in the "common
chest" sections of Protestant church legislation, which spread throughout
Europe from its origin in Wittenberg. The common chest--funded by church
endowments, offerings, and taxes--was the community's financial resource for
providing support to the poor, orphans, aged, unemployed, and underemployed
through subsidies, low-interest loans, and gifts. The attempt to resolve social
problems in the cities was a constitutive part of the early Reformation. (see
also Index: city government)
In the following centuries the heirs of Luther and Calvin, although producing
noteworthy examples of compassion and charity for the poor, nevertheless lost
their "fathers' " vision of a social ethic that was preventive as well
as therapeutic. Like their Roman Catholic counterparts, the Protestants made
noteworthy efforts to serve the poor but ignored the root causes of poverty.
In the 18th and 19th centuries the social institutions of Pietism, the Inner
Mission, and European revival movements inspired social concern for the masses
of people pauperized and proletarianized by industrialism. The Methodists in
England undertook adult education, schooling, reform of prisons, abolition of
slavery, and aid to alcoholics. Famous missions arose in Basel, London, and
Paris. The Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA; 1844), Young Women's
Christian Association (YWCA; 1855), and the Salvation Army (1865) were only some
of the numerous charitable institutions and organizations created to alleviate
modern ills. In 1848 Johann Wichern, founder of the Inner Mission, proclaimed
that "love no less than faith is the church's indispensable mark."
Yet this Christian social concern hardly was aware of and rarely attempted to
expose the origins of the social ills it strove to remedy. Wichern himself was
aware that poverty is social, not natural, but his orientation, like that of
others, was toward renewing society through evangelization. This attitude--that
society is changed by changing the hearts of individuals--is still prevalent.
In recent years, however, the Christian community, especially in its
ecumenical organizations, has begun to analyze the social problems of property
and poverty from the standpoint of justice and the perspectives of the poor and
oppressed. In 1970 the World Council of Churches (WCC) established the
Commission for the Churches' Participation in Development (CCPD). Initially
involved in development programs and the provision of technical services, the
CCPD focus has shifted to the psychological and political character of the
symbiosis of development and underdevelopment. This focus was endorsed at the
1975 WCC Assembly at Nairobi, Kenya, as "a liberating process aimed at
justice, self-reliance and economic growth." Other church bodies, such as
the Lutheran World Federation and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, share
this perspective. Emergency relief and development projects--the modern
equivalents of charity--have not ceased, but there is growing realization, due
to the increasing participation of so-called Third World churches, that the
biblical themes of justice and liberation entail the creation of social
structures to enhance human life, economic structures for just distribution of
goods, and political structures to promote participation and minimize
dependence. The present WCC paradigm for this mission is the church in
solidarity with the poor. (see also Index: economic development)
Pastoral care has always been of special importance in the Christian
community. The biographies of the great charismatic ministers, beginning with
the Fathers of the Eastern Church and the Western Church, testify to surprising
variations of this pastoral care. The principal interest of pastoral
care--whether exercised by clergy or laity--is the personal welfare of persons
who are hurt, troubled, alienated, or confused within the context of ultimate
concerns and meanings. The historical expressions of pastoral care have focused
on the predominant--but not exclusive--expressions of ultimate concern
characteristic of the period in question. According to Paul Tillich, in The Courage to Be
(1952), these concerns may be described in terms of the anxieties of death
(early church), guilt (Middle Ages), and meaninglessness (modern period). Thus,
Ignatius addressed the terror of death when he termed the sacrament "the
medicine of immortality"; Luther responded to the conscience tortured by
guilt and uncertainty by proclaiming the free forgiveness of sin by grace alone,
apart from human accomplishment; and the modern Christian community has utilized
the insights of psychology and psychiatry in developing pastoral counseling and
therapy responsive to modern anxieties. Fundamentally, however, pastoral care
has always attempted to respond to the totality of human needs in every age in
consonance with the words of Jesus Christ: "I was hungry and you gave me
food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison
and you came to me" (Matthew 25:35-36).
The first influential contribution to pastoral care after the New Testament
was by Pope Gregory I the Great. His
Pastoral
Care written after he became bishop of Rome in 590, was so influential that
it became customary to present it to new bishops upon their ordination. This
textbook of the medieval episcopate emphasized the role of the pastor as
shepherd of souls.
The medieval institutionalization of pastoral care in the sacrament of
penance led to certain deficits in practice: the exclusion of the laity by
emphasis upon the central role of the priest and the distortion of its original
spiritual purposes of prayer, repentance, and forgiveness of sins by the
introduction of paid indulgences. The indulgence abuse sparked the Reformation
critique of the sacrament of penance. This in turn led to the Reformers'
emphasis upon lay as well as clerical responsibility for pastoral care as
expressed in their teaching of "the priesthood of all believers." The
Reformation insistence upon justification by grace alone shifted the burden of
proof for salvation from human accomplishment to divine promise. By
"letting God be God," the Reformers claimed that persons were free to
be human. This shift of theological focus, from an otherworldly achievement to a
this-worldly trust in God, facilitated a renewed holistic awareness of human
needs and pointed the way for the Christian community's appreciation of the
benefits available in modern medicine and therapy. (C.H.Li.)
The tendency to develop an identifiable Christian culture is apparent even
where Christian minorities live in a non-Christian environment--i.e., in
an environment the life of which has been shaped and is characterized by a
non-Christian religion. This is the case with most Christian churches in Asia
and Africa. (see also Index: minority)
In some countries Christian minorities have had to struggle for their
existence and recognition, and there are cases of persecutions of Christians. On
the other hand, in some cases the situation of Christian minorities is ideally
suited to demonstrate to outsiders the peculiar style of life of a Christian
culture. This is particularly advantageous for the church within a caste state,
in which the church itself has developed into a caste, with special extrinsic
characteristics in clothing and customs. An example of this phenomenon is the
Mar Thoma Church of South India.
A special problem presents itself through the coexistence of racially
different Christian cultures in racially mixed states. The influence of the
Christian black churches, especially of Baptist denominations, has been
thoroughly imprinted upon the culture of North American blacks. The churches
themselves were founded through the missionary work of white Baptist churches
but became independent of their mother churches or were established as
autonomous churches within the framework of the Baptist denomination. A similar
situation exists in South Africa, where white congregations and separate black
congregations have been established within the white mission churches;
independent messianic black churches have appeared outside the older organized
congregations. In the 20th century much tension exists in this area.
On the one hand, the Christian Church has from the beginning urged the
overcoming of racism. In the early church, racism was unknown; the Jewish
synagogues allowed black proselytes. The first Jewish proselyte mentioned in the
Acts of the Apostles was a governmental administrator from Ethiopia, who was
baptized by the Apostle Philip. The early congregations in Alexandria included
many Ethiopians and blacks. Among the evangelizing churches, the Portuguese
Catholic mission in principle did not recognize differences between
races--whoever was baptized became a "human being" and became a member
not only of the Christian congregation but also of the Christian society and was
allowed to marry another Christian of any race. In contrast to this practice,
the Catholic mission of the Spaniards introduced the separation of races under
the term casticismo (purity of the Castilian heritage) in the American
mission regions and sometimes restricted marriage between Castilian Spanish
immigrants and native Christians. Like the Portuguese in Africa and Brazil, the
French Catholic mission in Canada and in the regions around the Great Lakes in
North America did not prohibit marriage of whites with Indians but tolerated and
even encouraged it during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Consequently, the Christian churches led in endeavours for racial
integration, with the exception of those churches that maintained racial
segregation from the beginning, in deference to theological arguments deduced
from the "order of the creation" and "predestination." The
latter was the case in some Reformed churches of the United States and of South
Africa. On the other hand, the ideologically and politically founded racial
theory has been introduced into black churches in recent times. The demand for a
black theology with a black Christ in its centre has been made and, just as much
as a theologically and ideologically founded racial theory on the part of
whites, aggravates the specifically Christian task of racial integration within
the church.
The promise of recent liberation theologies such as black theology,
Latin-American theology, and feminist theology is that of expanding awareness of
the history and praxis of Christianity beyond the history of doctrines, the
ideas of the elite, and the institutions that convey these ideas. Such
reflection--which arises out of lived situations--reveals roles of the poor, the
oppressed, and women that have too often been ignored and suppressed. These new
orientations serve the church and the world not only by recalling hitherto
unnoticed aspects of the past but also by strengthening peoples' awareness of
their own causes.
The Christian understanding of sexuality, marriage, and family has been
strongly influenced by the Old Testament view of marriage as an institution
primarily concerned with the establishment of a family, rather than sustaining
the individual happiness of the marriage partners. Until the Reformation the
patriarchal family structure not only had been preserved but also had been
defended from all attacks by sectarian groups. In spite of this, a
transformation occurred from the early days of Christianity.
This transformation is evident in the New Testament departure from the
Hellenistic understanding of love. The classical understanding of love,
expressed in the Platonic concept of eros, was opposed in the Christian
community by the biblical understanding of love, agape. Although erotic love has
frequently been understood primarily as sexual desire and passion, its classical
religious and philosophical meaning was the idealistic desire to acquire the
highest spiritual and intellectual good. The early Christian perception of eros
as the most sublime form of egocentricity and self-assertion, the drive to
acquire the divine itself, is reflected in the fact that the Greek New Testament
does not use the word eros
but rather the relatively rare word agape.
Agape was translated into Latin as caritas
and thus appears in English as "charity" and, later,
"love." The Christian concept of love understood human mutuality and
reciprocity within the context of God's self-giving love, which creates value in
the person loved. "We love, because he first loved us. If any one says, 'I
love God,' and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his
brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this
commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother
also" (1 John 4:19-21). Love is presented as the greatest of the virtues (1
Corinthians 13:13) as well as a commandment. The Christian community understood
faith active in love primarily in terms of voluntary obedience rather than
emotion and applied this understanding to every aspect of life, including
sexuality, marriage, and family.
Christianity has contributed to a spiritualization of marriage and family
life, to a personal deepening of the relations between marriage partners and
between parents and children, as well as between heads of households and
domestic servants in large families. Marriage can be called the most intimate
form in which the fellowship of believers in Christ is realized. In the early
church, children were included in this fellowship. They were baptized when their
parents were baptized, took part in the worship life of the congregation, and
received Holy Communion with their parents. The Eastern Orthodox Church still
practices as part of the eucharistic rite Jesus' teaching, "Let the
children come to me, and do not hinder them." During the first decades of
the church, congregational meetings took place in the homes of Christian
families. The family became the archetype of the church. Paul called the members
of his congregation in Ephesus "members of the household of God"
(Ephesians 2:19). (see also Index: childhood)
In the early church the Christian foundation of marriage--in the
participation of Christians in the body of Christ--postulated a generous
interpretation of the fellowship between a Christian and a pagan marriage
partner: the pagan one is saved with the Christian one "for the unbelieving
husband is consecrated through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is consecrated
through her husband"; even the children from such a marriage in which at
least one partner belongs to the body of Christ "are holy" (1
Corinthians 7:14). If the pagan partner, however, does not want to sustain the
marriage relationship with a Christian partner under any circumstances, the
Christian partner should grant him a divorce. (see also Index: paganism)
Jesus himself based his parables of the Kingdom of God on the idea of love
between a bride and groom and frequently used parables of a wedding that
describe the messianic meal as a wedding feast. In Revelation the glorious
finale of salvation history is depicted as the wedding of the Lamb with the
bride, as the beginning of the meal of the chosen ones with the Messiah-Son of
man (Revelation 19:9: "Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage
supper of the Lamb"). The wedding character of the eucharistic meal is also
expressed in the liturgy of the early church. It is deepened through the
specifically Christian belief that understands the word of the creation story in
Genesis "and they become one flesh" as indicative of the oneness of
Christ, the head, with the congregation as his body. With this in mind the
Christian demand of monogamy becomes understandable.
In the so-called ethical lists in the Letter of Paul to the Colossians and in
1 Peter, Christian marriage is distinguished from the marriage practices of its
pagan environment by its stricter ethical demands. The rules concern the mutual
relationship of the marriage partners, fidelity, as well as attitudes toward
children and slaves of the house.
Christianity did not bring a revolutionary social change to the position of
women, but it made possible a new position in the family and congregation. In
the world of the early church, women were held in very low esteem, and this was
the basis for divorce practices that put women practically at men's complete
disposal. With the prohibition of divorce, Jesus himself did away with this low
estimation of women. The decisive turning point came in connection with the
understanding of Christ and of the Holy Spirit. Even the Jewish view of the
patriarchal position of man was substituted by Paul with a new spiritual
interpretation of marriage. "There is neither male nor female; for you are
all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). In fulfillment of the prophecy
in Joel 3:1, the Holy Spirit was poured out over the female disciples of Jesus,
as well.
This created a complete change in the position of women in the congregation:
in the synagogue the women were inactive participants in the worship service and
sat veiled on the women's side, usually separated from the rest by an opaque
lattice. In the Christian congregation, however, women appeared as members with
full rights, who used their charismatic gifts within the congregation. In the
letters of Paul, women are mentioned as Christians of full value. Paul addresses
Prisca (Priscilla) in Romans 16:3 as his fellow worker. The four daughters of
Philip were active as prophets in the congregation. Peter, in a sermon on
Pentecost, spoke about men and women as recipients of the gifts of the Holy
Spirit: "Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy" (Acts 2:17).
Pagan critics of the church, such as Porphyry (c. 234-c. 305),
maintained that the church was ruled by women. During the periods of Christian
persecution, women as well as men showed great courage in their suffering. The
fact that they were spontaneously honoured as martyrs demonstrates their
well-known active roles in the congregations. In this, representatives of
patriarchal, rabbinic, and synagogic traditions within the Christian Church saw
a danger to congregational constitutions. Paul, on the one hand, included women
in his instruction, "Do not quench the Spirit" (1 Thessalonians 5:19),
but, on the other hand, carried over the rule of the synagogue into the
Christian congregation that "women should keep silence in the
churches" (1 Corinthians 14:34). In the 20th century the Roman Catholic
Church still refuses to ordain women as priests.
The proponents of an ascetic theology demanded exclusiveness of devotion by
faithful Christians to Christ and deduced from it the demand of celibacy. This
is found in arguments for the monastic life and in the Roman Catholic view of
the priesthood. The radical-ascetic interpretation stands in constant tension
with the positive understanding of Christian marriage. This tension has led to
seemingly unsolvable conflicts and to numerous compromises in the history of
Christianity. Without doubt, from the beginning a strong ascetic tendency
dominant in Christianity was emphatically directed against the oversexualization
of the Hellenistic culture, against the decay of marital life in the Hellenistic
world, against the spreading of pederasty and its social recognition and open
institutionalization, against cultic and non-cultic prostitution, and against
the more or less tolerated sodomy that was excused with pagan mythology.
In the light of the beginning Kingdom of God, marriage was understood as an
order of the old passing eon, which would not exist in the approaching new age.
The risen ones will "neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like
angels in heaven" (Mark 12:25). Similarly, Paul understood marriage in the
light of the coming Kingdom of God: "The appointed time has grown very
short; from now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none . . .
for the form of this world is passing away" (1 Corinthians 7:29-31). In
view of the proximity of the Kingdom of God, it was considered not worthwhile to
marry; and marriage was seen to involve unnecessary troubles: "I want you
to be free from anxieties" (1 Corinthians 7:32). Therefore, the unmarried,
the widowers, and widows "do better" if they do not marry, if they
remain single. But according to this point of view marriage was recommended to
those who "cannot exercise self-control . . . for it is better to marry
than to be aflame with passion" (1 Corinthians 7:9). With the waning of the
eschatological expectation that formed the original context for the Pauline
views on marriage, his writings were interpreted ascetically. While these texts
have been used alone in the course of church history, however, they do not stand
alone in the New Testament, which also portrays marriage feasts as joyous
occasions and sexual intercourse between spouses as good and holy (Ephesians
5:25-33).
A demonization of sex in general occurred in dualistic Gnostic movements.
This was particularly apparent in the ascetic branches of Gnosticism and
especially in Manichaeism (an Iranian dualistic religion). The conscious
renunciation by Christians of the customs of their oversexualized pagan
environment supported these tendencies. Their motives are apparent in the
biographies and letters of the great ascetics, such as Anthony and Jerome.
Within the Roman Catholic Church the tension between the Christian high esteem
and the ascetic devaluation of marriage led to a constantly challenged
compromise: celibacy was demanded not only of asceti
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