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Chapter 4
What Went Wrong?
Living Organism to Lifeless
Institution
We have seen that Christ imparted to His followers by
word and deed that in His kingdom there was to be no hierarchy, no power-plays
and no titles. Instead, there was to be mutual foot-washing, modeled by the Lord
Himself.
Then it was shown that Jesus is building His ekklesia on earth. Christ told the
disciples that when His resurrected body went back to the Father, they would
continue His body (His life) all over the earth. They were to continue His
legacy of a kingdom in which all were brothers and sisters, and no one was
“over” others.
But the history books reveal that something went wrong,
dreadfully wrong. Before we get into
some details, here’s a snapshot of some key moments when what Jesus initiated
was completely derailed.
**Around AD 150 Clement made a
distinction between “priest” and “laity.” This set in motion the divide
of “clergy” and “laity,” the “ordained” and the
“parishioners.”
**Around AD 250 the practice of “one-bishop rule” took
root, and each bishop’s rule was defined territorially (see Judy Schindler, Part
2, Chapter 2).
**Around AD 325 the emperor Constantine made Christianity
the official religion of the Roman Empire. From this point on, the civil rulers
would have a heavy presence in what occurred in the visible church.
Thus, what began as a Christ-driven, Spirit-led formation
of ekklesias morphed into a
power-based, hierarchy-fed institution.
The expression of Christ through gifts of the Spirit
functioned in a beautiful way in the early church. There was no "institution" at
the beginning.The "institution" started taking shape from AD 150 onwards. As
this unfolded, spiritual gifts became unnecessary, for the "institution" saw
itself as the dispenser of grace. This is not to say there were no spiritual
gifts anywhere, but it is to say that as the "institution" became more and more
powerful, the Holy Spirit became less and less a part of the
mix.
The Striking Features of the First Century
Ekklesia
First century pagan religions and Judaism all had these
basic characteristics: (1) specific experts who led the religious practices; (2)
specific places (temples) where the people came to practice the religion; and
(3) specific religious rituals that were carried out at designated ways and
times.
It is precisely these three marks that were absent from the early church. They
functioned with no “clergy” (all of the saints were “clergy,” the Lord’s
“inheritance”), no religious buildings (they met “home to home”), and no set
rituals (“each one of you has a song, a teaching, etc.”).
However, as was mentioned above, this simplicity was
compromised in the Second and Third Centuries with the introduction of the
leader/people distinction, and the increasing focus on the “bishop” as the one
to whom submission must be given.
The third major capitulation occurred in the Fourth
Century when the church was recognized as the central religion of the Roman
Empire by Constantine, and granted special privileges by the
State.
From that
time on, the relation of the Christian Church to secular rulers, as well as the growth of the
Church’s own secular power, was
bound to influence the development of the Christian religion itself. (O’Grady, p. 73)
Constantine:
The Fusion of Church and State
Constantine was an opportunistic person. From AD 306 –
337 he was the leader of the Roman Empire. The evidence points to the fact that
he saw in Christianity a way to hold his vast empire
together.
It is
probable that Constantine became convinced that hope for the future lay in the determination
and orderliness of Christianity, and that
he wanted to enlist its growing strength in
the service of the Empire. His aim in government was to preserve some form of unity, and it may have been partly
for such reasons of policy that he
accepted the Christian religion. (O’Grady, p.
75)
For a number of years before Constantine took the throne,
the bishops had been having heated squabbles over the person of Christ – was He
of the same essence as the Father, or was there a time He did not exist? In
response to this in-fighting, Constanine
Needed
Christianity to be doctrinally consistent and centrally organized if it was going to help him
hold together the vast empire he
had inherited. Hoping to create a strong sense of unity and cohesion among his subjects, he
summoned some three hundred
bishops . . . To a meeting in the Turkish city of Nicea. (Valantasis,
p.
Xxii)
The Council of Nicea in AD 325 “formulated a credo, a
pledge that all Christians could recite that affirmed their basic beliefs.”
(Valantasis, p. Xxii)
It must be underscored what happened here. A powerful
civil ruler is calling church leaders together, and putting heavy pressure on
them to come up with a statement that will significantly contribute to the unity
of a worldly empire. “After the Council of Nicea, the imperially sanctioned and
militarily supported separation of Christians into two camps, heretical and
orthodox, began.” (Valantasis, p. xxiv)
Of course, the unity Constantine tried to create at Nicea
failed miserably. Nevertheless, he kept asserting his authority by intervening
in church affairs in hopes of calming the theological
storms.
In his
opinion, the Emperor, by virtue of his office, had the right to intervene in such controversies and to
preside over the councils
convened to settle them . . . . Constantine, himself, wanted to show
that, by virtue of his Imperial
office, he was supreme in
ecclesiastical affairs, hoping thereby to mould the Church into an instrument for consolidating the
absolute power of the Emperor.
(O’Grady, p. 75)
The truth is, after the Council at Nicea there was a lot
of confusion. Theological unanimity was a joke. Some exiled for their views were
called back; some once viewed as heroes were exiled. All this had nothing to do
with Christ. It was about raw power and control. HE THEM BY THEIR NECKS
SIR.
Doctrinal
and personal quarrels multiplied and the Emperor intervened either to support or to
exile the leaders of the
conflicting parties. Three years after accepting the decrees of the Council of Nicea, Constantine changed
his mind, recalled Arius from
exile and supported the anti-Nicene party until the end of his reign. (O’Grady, p.
92)
Once the State was subsidizing the church, the power of
the bishops kept expanding.
By the
time Christianity became the official religion of the Empire, the power of the bishops had become
enormous. In his diocese the
bishop commanded almost supernatural prestige; he was the popular choice of the people and he
now had official powers of
jurisdiction over his clergy, and over any other case brought before him. Because the Church in the
fourth century, through this
far-reaching power of the bishops, had become an indispensable part of the social
welfare of the State, it seemed at
times that it would even become an organ of the Imperial Government. (O’Grady, p.
77)
So by AD 350 the original vision of Jesus Christ was
totally abandoned, and had been replaced by a human organization calling itself
“church,” which had jumped into bed with the State.MONEY LOVE, “The Church was
taking Roman organization, philosophy and jurisprudence into its service.”
(O’Grady, p. 61) The church had become a
business, a bureaucracy, and was now consumed with preserving and perpetuating
its religious accoutrements. As the Cardinal said to Christ in Brothers Karamazov, “We took from him, the wise and mighty spirit of the
wilderness, what You rejected with scorn – Rome and the sword of
Caesar.”
“Orthodoxy”
We hear the word “orthodoxy” and generally think, “that
which is right (orthodox) in contrast to that which is wrong (heterodox).” But
it is just not that simple. Remember, the primary impetus to have “Christianity
doctrinally consistent and centrally organized” came from a self-aggrandizing emperor.
Constantine presided at the Council of Nicea in AD 325. Do you think the bishops
could be objective about the issues before them with the Emperor sitting there?
How many were exiled for giving the wrong answers?
An “Orthodoxy” in concrete was being formed by bishops as
ecclesiastical power was being centralized in Rome more and more, and civil
emperors shaped the agenda for the church. Those who questioned “orthodoxy,” or
stood outside of it, found themselves facing many dangers.
But,
already in the fourth century, a persecuted Church had turned persecutor. Those who disagreed
with ‘orthodox’ teachings were stripped of their
authority and exiled. In one
instance, when all persuasion had failed to bring the dissenters back into the fold, Church and State
joined to put them down by
force. These dissenters were the Donatists. (O’Grady, p.
79)
In the Fourth Century the Emperor had the upper hand in
church affairs. It came to be a deadly assumption that the civil leader would
take the helm in theological matters.
So the
institution by the Emperor of ecumenical councils was considered to be the act not of a
political leader, but of the leader of
the Christian people. The Emperor was automatically asked to intervene in theological arguments.
The general councils were
summoned and guided by imperial authority. (O’Grady, p.
90)
Wrangling with Words and Each
Other
The visible church became a battle ground for one
controversy after another. One Greek letter left in or omitted became the source
of endless in-fighting. When the bishops should have put their hands over their
mouths, they kept going on and on into areas of speculation to refute the
“heretics.”
The
Greeks, who adopted the new religion, brought with them their love of disputation and logical
definition. (O’Grady, p. 89) The
attempt to combat Gnosticism with definitions was to give rise to further definitions, and then
to further arguments about those
definitions, and so to accusations and counter-accusations of heresy . . . . But once the questions
were raised and other ‘heretics’
gave their response, it seemed that an official answer had to be given. It may have been
necessary to have definitions,
but it is possible that the very act of defining distorts the understanding of that which lies
beyond logic. (O’Grady, p. 33)
In
studying these controversies and the Councils that attempted to settle them, it often seems that their
endless dissentions,
condemnations and counter-condemnations were merely theologians’ quarrels about the
detailed use of words, and about
minute differences in the ‘expression of the inexpressible.’ St. Hilary of Poitiers, writing to the
Emperor Constantine complained
that “Every year, nay every moon, we make new creeds to describe invisible
Mysteries. CULT We research that junk out here ,,done, we defend those who
repent, we anathematize those whom we
defended. We condemn either the doctrine of others in ourselves or our own in that of others;
and, reciprocally tearing one another
to pieces, we have been the cause of each other’s ruin.” (O’Grady, p.
89)
It Was Always
About Power and Control ,,coming back to our true
faith..
With the increasing definition of “orthodoxy,” the
“bishops demanded from their faithful” a “blind faith” and “mindless trust”
(Valantasis, p. 126). From cradle to grave the dark cloud of the church hovered
over them, packaged in seven “sacraments” and a labyrinth of other religious
rituals and duties. Is it any wonder that when civil liberties emerged much
later, people exited from the churches? Henri Nouwen made these pointed
observations:
When I
ask myself the main reason for so many people having left the church during the past decades in
France, Germany, Holland, and
also in Canada and America, the word “power” easily comes to mind. One of the greatest ironies of the
history of Christianity is that its
leaders constantly gave in to the temptation of power – political power, military power, economic
power, amen true fully corrupted !!!!!!or moral and spiritual power – even though they
continued to speak in the name of
Jesus, who did not cling to his divine power but emptied himself and became as we are. We keep
hearing from others, as well as
saying to ourselves, that having power – provided it is used in the service of God and your fellow human
beings – is a good thing.
With this rationalization, crusades took place;
inquisitions were organized; Indians were
enslaved; positions of great
influence were desired; episcopal palaces, splendid cathedrals, and
opulent seminaries were built; and much moral manipulation of conscience was engaged in. Every time we see
a major crisis in the history of
the church, such as the Great Schism of the eleventh century, the Reformation of the sixteenth
century, or the immense
secularization of the twentieth century, we always see that a major cause of rupture is the power
exercised by those who claim to be
followers of the poor and powerless Jesus. (In the Name of Jesus, pp.
75-77)
Power
offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love. It seems easier to be God
than to love God easier to control people than to love people, easier to own
life than to love life. Jesus asks, “Do you love me?” We ask, “Can we sit at
your right hand and your left in your Kingdom?” (In the Name of Jesus, p.
77)
The long
painful history of the church is the history of people ever and again tempted to
choose power over love, control over the cross, being a leader over being led.
(In the Name of Jesus, pp. 78- 79) well said for sure it is deeply immersed in
the it’s poison sir..
One thing
is clear to me: The temptation of power is greatest when intimacy is feared.
Much Christian leadership is exercised by people who do not know how to develop
healthy, intimate relationships and have opted for power and control instead.
Many Christian empire builders have been
people unable to give and receive love. (In the Name of Jesus, p.
79)
An Example of “Outside the
Box”
“Montanus was the male founder” of a movement, and he
“began to prophesy in Phrygia, in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) sometime around 170
C.E.” (Valantasis, p. 100)
This “group of Christians who broke away from the main
Church in the second half of the second century were the Montanists . . . . they
sought a return to the purity of original Christianity, declaring that the rules
governing the ethical behavior of Christians were not given through the
authority of bishops and Church institutions, but by God alone, speaking through
the inspired prophets . . . . His [Montanus] declared mission was to bring about
a return to the simplicity of the early Church, and to announce the fulfillment
of the prophecy of Pentecost.” (O’Grady, p. 60)
“Montanus called forth a vision of a church renewed –
filled with the Holy Spirit, alive with fresh prophecy, and eagerly awaiting the
imminent return of Christ.” (Valantasis, p. 100) “The Montanists . . . aimed at
a freer, more emotional form of religion.” (O’Grady, p.
60)
Women fully participated in this movement. (Valantasis,
p. 102) “Woman after woman, then man after man, would channel words from God,
while the others listened attentively.” (Valantasis, p.
99)?
“The Montanists understood their new prophecy as a
renewal movement for an increasingly decadent church.”(Valantasis, p.
101)
They did not challenge the main church’s sacramental and
hierarchical system. (Valantasis, p. 102) “Their fervency for reform did not
extend to their church’s structure,” and thus they ordained women and men as
“deacons, presbyters (priests) and bishops.” (Valantasis, pp. 103, 102) “The
famous North African Latin theologian Tertullian (160-225) converted to the
movement and wrote energetically from a Montanist perspective.” (Valantasis, p.
105)?
My purpose here is not to defend or condemn what the
Montanists practiced. Rather, it is to underscore that this “outside the box”
group deeply disturbed those in power in the “orthodox” church. “Obviously the
leadership of the church could not have people claiming to channel the divine
voice directly . . . and so the Montanists eventually were excommunicated.”
(Valantasis, p. 104) true they were ,
“Mysticism in an organization leads to a crisis of
authority, and many of the internal disputes of the first three centuries of the
Christian church concerned the problem of revelations.” (Fanning, p.
19)
“The reaction of the anti-Montanist Christians indicates
that the mainstream of Christianity no longer experienced possession by the Holy
Spirut as a normative feature of the faith . . . . The promise of the
unmediated, indwelling divinity within the believer offered a means of bypassing
the authority of the emerging hierarchy of bishops . . . . Moreover, the
prominence of the prophetesses was considered to be unseemly by the male
clergy.” (Fanning, pp. 20-21)
Church people had to be watchful of anything “that
challenged in any manner the authority of the ecclesiastical leaders, or of its
increasingly specific and narrowing orthodox faith.” (Fanning, p. 21) As I.M. Lewis put it, “direct claim to divine
knowledge is always a threat to the established order.” (Fanning, p. 21) true!!!
By the fourth century “there was a conflict between those
who saw Christianity as a religion of the mind, a system of beliefs about God
that was governed by the Scriptures, and those who saw Christianity as an
experience of God.” the unchanged ones.(Fanning, p.
34).
The Montanists vividly illustrate what happened to any
group in the future – like the Donatists -- who pursued things in a different
way, outside of the “orthodox” hierarchy.
Did Christ Build This Mess?never the
ancient mysteries were enter the people were kept ignorant to just recently as
the nature of the perversion taking place about truth,, into that was the toxin
that would produce the powerless estate you now see sir. cult mix sir is what quenches the
spirit , Israel had to lean it as well as we are going to, out get saved by fall
sleep in lethargic condition to their surroundings no spirit warfare abilities
other than voting good Luck in the world of Hegelians lies and state religions
....fs
I have given above a concise, condensed summary of some
key characteristics of the post-apostolic church
–
**that civil rulers became the controlling factor in
church affairs;called stupid
**that a central church hierarchy and a doctrinal system
called “orthodoxy” were put into place in order to control peoples’ lives;
**that those outside of the hierarchy and “orthodoxy”
were viewed as “heretics” who were harassed and often killed; Satanism with in,
he is murderer, liar,as Jesus said he was and is, sir Jesus does not murder
his kids man does fs
**that in all these matters and more, what began when
Christ came to the ekklesia in the
Spirit on the Day of Pentecost was long-lost after AD 150 in a growing
ecclesiastical bureaucracy. they milked the people for money and their lives fs
Now I have a critical question for you to consider. But
before the question, I want to set before you a little snapshot of “church life”
in the fifth century.
A Council
was summoned at Ephesus in 431. The city mob
demonstrated violently against the ‘opponents of the Mother of God.’ The Emperor intervened, and, at
one time during the roceedings, imprisoned both Cyril and Nestorius. Churchmen condemned each other; the common
people rioted; the Imperial
civil servants carried on intrigues between both parties. Finally,
[Emperor] Theodosius dismissed the Council saying, quite rightly, that it had
failed to achieve reconciliation. But Nestorius himself was condemned as a
heretic, deposed and exiled. (O’Grady, p. 103 a few saw deep lies , amen
So “church” then consisted of
Emperors changing their theological views pragmatically, depending on various
circumstances, and “bishops changed sides according to who was Emperor.”
(O’Grady, p. 106) Keep in mind that “three years after accepting the decrees of
the Council of Nicea, Constantine changed his mind, recalled Arius from exile
and supported the anti-Nicene party until the end of his reign.” (O’Grady, p.
92) it never stopped doing it either sir , still lie
about it now... easy to do when the masses are so institutionalized, the
ability to think for themselves is nill at best ...
The vital question is this: are you prepared to equate Christ’s words,
“I will build My ekklesia,” with the Roman Catholic and Protestant Reformation
churches? Do we really believe that Christ was the Architect of these
Institutional Churches? Did He build these religious bureaucracies or did humans
craving power and control?man sir purely man... sir and in this case lost in
it...
I know this: Christ has always been building His
ekklesia, but not in organizations that are intertwined with State power,
not in organizations that depend on State support and backing for their
existence, and not in organizations that murder people “outside the box” in
Jesus’ name. amen we are free here sir.... few there be all that matters what
is with me is worth the purest gold to come sir, Paul was such, I do miss him
but he is free now, our kingdom is not of this word either , we to will year
for this day you shall be with me in paradise ,
What happened in AD 451 in those riotous mobs, in those
theological fights, and in the Emperor’s presence at the Council was not Christ. It was flesh; it was
control; it was power.
Just because an institution calls itself “Church” does
not mean it has anything to do with Christ. We need to come to terms with this
reality. When Jesus builds something, it is Spirit, and it is Love. Further, Christ builds out of weakness, not fleshly power and control.
As Nouwen put it so well –
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