CHRISTIANITY -- OVERVIEW -- "The Real Parents of My Soul!"

CHRISTIANITY – OVERVIEW

“The Real Parents of My Soul!”

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© September 19, 2014

REFERENCE:

As I've done with other works, I'm sharing this one as I prepare it for publication.  

Someone writes that he reads my essays but not my books because "they are about the corporation world," and he has had his fill of that world.  

Since we live in a corporate society, there is no escape from that world.  Therefore, we must find a way to make it work for us.  

My latest work (WHO PUT YOU IN THE CAGE?) addresses this fact and that challenge (Kindle, 2014). 

My other books acknowledge this conundrum and provide thought on how to reconcile one's self to coping with reality, on and off the job, and then making reality work for rather than against us.  

My working hypothesis is that we live in an insane world that too often finds that insanity the norm.  

Meister Eckhart, the German philosopher and spiritual mystique of the thirteenth century, dealt with a similar reality as his society was in transition.  Society changes but man's construction doesn't.   

To read quotes of Eckhart, if you have also read any of my books, is to see we address similar issues, I, not as a mystique, but as a peripatetic thinker who attempts to get inside our precious taboos and sacred edicts that no longer serve us.  

*     *     *     *

Max Weber was implicitly the guide in my “personal notes.  I shall endeavor to maintain a theoretical perspective consistent with that.  This approach is particularly salient to a social psychological organization inquiry into Christianity. 

Every society is divided into several social strata that are characterized by the esteem in which they are held, by their monopolistic practices in social, psychological and economic life, by a specific and dominant style of life, and by a distinctive more or less articulated world view.

As members of a status group, individuals are the products of this social organization.  The actions and ideas of individuals may be studied as attributes of that social organization.

Status groups may be the fountainhead of moral ideas that shape the conduct and world view of the individuals belonging to the group, and that may in turn affect the self-interested actions of large numbers of others.  That said the ideas of a few may provide the basis for the formation of a status group.

These ideas are the first instant responses to the challenges of the material environment.  Yet, the world view of a status group is never solely a response to material conditions or a product of economic interests.  It is also the product of ideas that are the result of human aspirations and human motivation in response to a spiritual challenge (Bendix, 1962).

As Weber has shown, status groups and ideas have interrelated as well as important implications for the study of culture.

Culture is a term referring broadly to the “total way of life of a people, their artifacts and patterns of conduct as well as their ideas and ideals” (Bendix, 1962).  Weber emphasizes the personal involvement and commitment that each man assumes as a participant in his society.

Caught in the styles of life of a time and place, and as a member of a particular status group, such conduct sometimes spreads beyond the group.  Social structure, then, is never static and encompasses both the limitations and opportunities of the moment for individual and group expression.   Talcott Parsons points out, there exists:

… a relatively delicate balance between the forces working in radically opposed directions, so that the differences made by war, a political movement, or even the influence of a single man may be of very far reaching consequences …. It is not that such a factor “creates” the results.  It is rather that, in addition to the other forces working in that direction, it is sufficient to throw the total balance in favor of the one possible outcome rather than the other (Parsons, 1957).

This view of society as a balance between two opposing forces is indigenous to Weber’s social psychological investigation.  For Weber, it is a means of understanding behavior of the individual in society, and collectively as a family, or indeed, as a state or nation.  People do not act or maintain or function in a consistent manner (Bendix, 1962).

Weber’s concept of society is as an arena of competing status groups, each with its own economic interests, status honor, and orientation toward man and his world view.

This allows us to trace the empirical development of Christianity without becoming involved in cumbersome methodological questions of differentiating variables.  Stated otherwise, it is more a conceptual analysis of the landed aristocracy and bureaucracy in the time of Jesus, as well as a useful comparative religion inquiry (Weber, 1949).

The scope and simplicity of this approach, along with the historian’s road map, provides the guidance system.  It allows for a look at the individual of early Christianity against the historical events of the time.  Along the way, there will be the broad compass of generalizations against the fine lens of interpretive explanation of religious doctrine.   In other words, in conducting this causal analysis, like a photographer, I will zoom in and zoom out with a wide angle social lens in an attempt to capture the correct aspects of the scenario we are viewing.  To that end, Weber’s orientation will be used:

TITLE:

Ancient Judaism of Early Christianity

Early Christianity

SOCIAL STRUCTURE

              Changing Social Structure

              Position in the Greco-Roman World

STATUS GROUP  

              Changes in the contending status groups

              Contending status groups

IDEAS   

Changes in the contending religious ideas

Religious ideas

SECULAR ETHICS

              Emergence of ethical rationalism

              Ideas concerning Jewish-Gentile secular ethics

 

DAILY LIFE IN THE TIME OF JESUS

We start this evolutionary process by taking a look at the daily life in the time of Jesus (Daniel-Rops, 1962).  For example, what was the social structure when Jesus came into the world, capturing the imagination and attention of his people?

Jesus was not the first to lay claim to being the messiah or the promised one, nor would he be the last.  Coincidentally, Judaism had long since gotten used to new sects breaking away from the mainstream of the orthodox faith.  Seldom would a year pass without someone rushing through the streets of Judea proclaiming they were, or had seen the messiah (O’Brien, 1962).  What was so special about Jesus?

To answer this some attention should be paid to showing the geographical, human and political context in and around Jerusalem at the time (Latourette, 1953).  The society and the religious character of ancient Palestine was influenced greatly by the prophets.

Israel’s religious life, that is, its people and its God, was unique to the region and, therefore, should prove helpful in understanding how as well as why this fertile seed, Jesus, took such root in this culture.

Writers have long been fascinated in mining this unique conundrum, and then interpreting the meaning of Jesus from the perspective of ancient Judea (Sheen, 1958, Gibran, 1928, Papini, 1923, Oursler, 1949, Mathew, Mark, Luke and John, Latourette, 1953, Kirk, 1931, and Cerfaux, 1959).  Their views, which is my source material, have percolated through my consciousness and contributed to this interpretation.  Clearly, selective as they are as there are hundreds if not thousands of other sources, they provide the definition of this inquiry and study.

That said an uncertain leap will of necessity be taken from the death of Jesus to the ambiguous dawn of Christianity with first Peter and then Paul coming on stage as advocates of a new tradition.

With these apostles as the source material, the foundation of the Christian myth is established.  There follows the precarious climb up the tenuous slope of a new ideology in the person of mainly Paul, not Peter.  Against the backdrop of the Greco-Roman world, Christianity, then, takes shape in organization and doctrine under the skillful if not manic and compulsive genius of Paul (Sharman, 1945, Burrow, 1955, Durant, 1944).

A brief inquiry into the religious thought of Greece (Tyler, 1884, Durant, 1953, Hamilton, 1930) is offered to complement Jewish and Roman influence which are clearly discernible in the writings and activities of Paul.

A reminder, no attempt will be made here to analyze the theological implications of Christianity or of source material in Greek and Roman worship.  What will be the focus instead is the actual admission process of people into Christianity, and the worship and discipline of that community. 

The interest here is to gain a sense of why this particular sect not only managed to survive despite incredible challenges, but to flourish in a most uncertain climate.  What was there about the times that helped create the moral environment conductive to this survival? (Kirk, 1931, Bendix, 1962).  Indeed, how could a society of pagans from Rome be captivated by this powerless sect (Waltari, 1956, Durant, 1939)?

We will see that the world was changing, disorder was rampant, the old ways were losing their purchase, power was fragmenting, making the times ripe for a "new coming."  It was a time of political decline and instability, social unrest, religious conflict, and the growing appeal of biblical prophecy (Bendix, 1962).  It was also the time when a tired Roman Empire was about to be put to rest, and a Christian culture about to take shape.

This is a study of a youthful challenge to the status quo in the form of a new religious ideology, Christianity.  With Jesus dead, but not forgotten, he is the source of religious hysteria, while his mission, gospels, transfiguration from an earthly being to a deity will be extrapolated into religious dogma over the next several centuries.

The Christianity and the Christians that will evolve will demonstrate proselytizing zeal in the name of Peter and Paul, and be constantly entangled in conflicts over creed (Durant, 1944).

Out of this will arise Plotinus and the post-apostolic “Fathers,” who provide a philosophy for Christianity in an effort to overwhelm the new religion’s enemies with compelling argument (Lake, Volume I, 1923). 

As impressive as this emerging theology would demonstrate being, more impressive was the Faith’s remarkable ability for organization and functional authority.  Christian pragmatists of organization correctly apprised the incipient collapse of the Roman Empire, and were more than ready to fill the vacuum it created (Durant, 1944, Latourette, 1953, St. Augustine, 1934).

The economic clime was such that spiritual and temporal needs inextricably overlapped (Cunningham, 1900).  There followed the war of church and state with the church using each account of martyrdom to be bankable emotional fodder to promulgate evidence of its legitimacy to the illegitimacy of its attackers.  

This campaign was effective and was often padded with exaggerated claims of martyrdom, filling the populous’ fascination for gore and legend with the banner “the blood of martyrs,” as Tertullian put it, “the seed” that authenticated the cause of Christianity (Gibbon, 1900).

The herald of Christianity’s survival was in the person of a crafty politician, Constantine, who had ambitions to become Rome’s new emperor.  

This resourceful figure noted the Christian struggle, its tenacity and constancy against incredible odds, while being scorned and persecuted by a succession of emperors.  At the same time, he noted the lethargy of the Roman populous, and the decline in stability of the Roman Empire. 

Eusebius of Caesarea and other Christian sources recorded that Constantine experienced a dramatic event in A.D. 312 at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, after which Constantine claimed the emperorship of the Roman Empire in the West.  

It is alleged that Constantine looked up to the sun before the battle and saw a cross of light in the sky, and with it the Greek words, “In this sign, conquer!”  Constantine commanded his troops to adorn their shields with a Christian symbol before the battle, emerging from it victorious.

While Constantine reigned (A.D. 306-337) and ruled Rome, Christianity began the heady climb to become the dominant religion of the Roman Empire.  

Historians remain uncertain, however, about Constantine’s favoring Christianity.  Reports told him that Christians were quietly multiplying, building order where their enemies were dogged by chaos, fighting the sword with the word, and brutality with hope.  

Theologians have argued what was the actual form of Christianity the emperor subscribed to.  Although exposed to Christianity by his mother, Helena, there is no consensus among scholars as to whether he adopted his mother’s Christianity, or gradually did so as Christianity was changing over his lifetime.  One thing is clear.  He didn’t receive baptism until near his death (R. Gerberding and J. H. Moran Cruz, 2004).    

Decriminalizing Christian worship was a turning point for early Christianity, and was confirmed with the “Edict of Milan” issued in A.D. 313.  

Thus Christianity defeated the greatest challenge any religion had ever experienced, the might of the Roman Empire.  Caesar and the Christ met in the arena and Christ won (Durant, 1944).  Christians could no longer be persecuted for their faith, but Christianity did not become the religion of the Roman Empire until A.D. 380, forty-three years after Constantine’s death.

Was Constantine’s conversion sincere?  Was it an act of religious belief or a consummate stroke of political genius?  Some would accept the former (Slaughter, 1965).  For our purposes, it is irrelevant to the discussion.  The situation determined the rise of Constantine to emperor and not the man to the situation (Katz and Kahn, 1966).

Late into Constantine’s reign, the First Council of Nicaea took place in A.D. 325.  What precipitated this council was a Greek monk named Arius, who saw in his reading of the life of Jesus and the role that life played in Christianity reason to doubt Jesus being Lord and God, or divine, but simply a man (Van A. Harvey, 1964). 

This was a dangerous heresy in light of the church’s fragile status in the Roman Empire.  Most of Constantine’s generals and high military officials had not been converted to Christianity, and still participated in practices of the traditional religions of Rome.  Constantine exhibited a willingness to appease these factions, and even to mint coins with images of Roman gods.  The Arias heresy was called “Arianism>"  It was put to death at this council, signaling a far reaching and draconian survival strategy,

In A.D. 390, at the Council of Milan, this strategy was crystalized in a creed that echoes to this day with Roman Catholics and other Christians known as the “Apostles Creed.”  It was the conviction of the church fathers that the organization needed the fixity of a creed as a simple prayer of belief to ensure the survival of catholicity (Durant, 1950).

In two millenniums, the implicit authority of the Apostles Creed has never been abandoned.  It has instead coalesced the church’s dominion and dominance.  Like the nuclear personality of the child, the personality of the Christian church would mature with age and reason and providence.  As a consequence, the Roman Catholic Church with 1.5 billion members in the twenty-first century resembles the scope, will, architecture and ubiquitous authority of the Roman Empire of the first through fifth centuries, if anachronistically so today. 

It is not the purpose here to assess this predisposition or to theorize why Christianity has become so prominent.  Suffice to quote Dr. J. A. C. Brown, who was considering an individual with the following remarks, but they seem apropos to the corporate clout of Christianity:

In the sense that some behavior is ill-adapted to deal with a given situation, we are entitled to describe some actions as irrational, but no behavior is irrational in the sense that it is incomprehensible or has no cause … We must recognize that no matter what a man does, he does it for good and sufficient reason.  When we change the reason for, or the cause of, his behavior, then, and only then, will his behavior change (Brown, 1954)

Here Dr. Brown could just as will be talking about early Christianity and its struggle for identity:

The family, acting as the potter on a comparatively undifferentiated lump of clay, the newborn child, which like clay may be hard or soft and easy or difficult to mold because of the inherent qualities which make it good or poor material, has the function of attempting to shape it into a more or less close approximation of the type of individual approved by the society and its subcultures with which the child must later identify itself (Brown, 1963).

Taking Christianity up through its first five centuries is perhaps equivalent to taking a child through its oral, anal and genital periods after Sigmund Freud.  If this seems absurd, adoration of the saints, the Blessed Virgin Mary (Freudian Electra Stage), and the Father Almighty (Freudian Oedipus State) could interpret the church having a Freudian superego leaning (Simon, 1968).  Idolatry is indigenous to all religions, but in Christianity it is not acknowledged.

Early Christianity was full of vigor and passionate purpose, while twenty-first century Christianity seems to have lost that disposition.  It has been taking its lumps over the last several decades.  Today, only 20 percent of Christians in the United States regularly attend church, which is one half of what pollsters report.  Church attendance has been steadily declining: 20.4% (1990), 18.7% (2000) and 17.7% (2004). 

Only one state in the United States is outpacing its population, and that is Hawaii (13.8% attendance).  Moreover, mid-sized churches are shrinking, while the smallest and largest churches are growing, especially in metropolitan areas.

Established churches 40 to 190 years old are at every level declining, while new churches are not keeping up with population growth.  By 2050, it is predicted that only 10 percent of the American population will be attending Christian churches regularly (Rebecca Barnes and Lindy Lowry, 2014).

Could it be that this inquiry into "The Real Parents of My Soul" is not likely to be found in a Christian church of whatever denomination?

In any case, we will now look at pre-Christianity, or the emerging world between the Old Testament and New Testament to discover the origins of this vigor and what fed it to such an extraordinary degree.

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY: CHRISTIANITY -- INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW

Reinhard Bendix, Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait, Anchor Books, Doubleday & Co., New York, 1962, pp. 259-260.

Ibid, p. 260.

Talcott Parsons and A. M. Henderson, translators and editors, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization by Max Weber, Free Press, New York, 1957, pp. 31-32.

Op. cit., Bendix, p. 262.

Max Weber, Ancient Judaism, Free Press, Glencoe, Il., 1952.

Henri Daniel-Rops, Daily Life in the Time of Jesus, Hawthorn Books, New York, 1962, Part I & III.

John A. O’Brien, Eternal Answers for an Anxious Age, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliff, N.J., 1962.

Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christianity, Harper & Row, New York, 1958, 1953, pp. 3-20.

Fulton J. Sheen, Life of Christ, McGraw-Hill, New York, 1958; Kahlil Gibran, Jesus The Son of Man, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1925; Giovanni Papini, Life of Christ, Harcourt, Brace & Co., New York, 1923: Fulton Oursler, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Doubleday, New York, 1949; The Holy Bible: (Old Testament in the confraternity-Douay Text, and the entire New Testament in the confraternity translation) – Vulgate Bible, Abradale Press, New York, 1959; New Testament: St. Mathews, pp. 1-35; St. Mark, pp. 36-57; St. Luke, pp. 58-94; St. John, pp. 95-123; op. cit., Latourette, pp. 33-64; K. E. Kirk, The Vision of God, Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1931; Lucien Cerfaux, Christ in the Theology of St.Paul, Herder and Herder, 1959, pp. 55-67.

Henry Burton Sharman, Paul as Experiment, Harper & Bros., New York, 1945; Millar Burrows, The Dead Sea Scrolls, Viking Press, New York, 1955, pp. 301-344; Will Durant, Caesar and Christ, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1953, 41-73; Edith Hamilton, New York, 1954, Book V.

W.S. Tyler, The Theology of the Greek Poets, Warren F. Draper, Boston, MA, 1884; Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1953, pp. 41-73; Edith Hamilton, op. cit., 266-283.

Op. Cit., Kirk, pp. 19-22.

Mike Waltari, The Etruscans, G. P. Putnam, New York, 1956 (novel).  This novel gives a graphic picture of early Roman rulers.  For one hundred years, they had such a varied influence on Rome and its ways that Rome can hardly be understood without them.  Most Roman literature is mute about the Etruscans.  Waltari attempts to bridge this gap; Durant, op. cit., pp. 169, 219, 276, 472, 667.

Op. Cit., Bendix, pp. 233-236.

Op. Cit., Durant, p. 603.

K. Lake, editor, The Apostolic Fathers, Loeb Library, London, Vol. I, 1923.

Op. Cit., Durant, 631-645; Latourette, Op. Cit., pp. 65-70; St. Augustine, City of God, Selected Letters, Loeb Library, London, 1934.

W. C. Cunningham, Western Civilization in its Economic Aspects, Cambridge, 1900., Vol. I.

E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Everyman Library, 1900, London.

W. R. Gerberding and J. H. Moran Cruz, Medieval Worlds, Houghton Mifflin, New York, 2004, p. 55; Eusebius, Life of Constantine, Eusebius of Nicomedia, Catholic Encyclopedia, Robert Appleton Co., New York, 1913.

Op. Cit., Durant, pp. 652-653.

Frank G. Slaughter, Constantine, The Miracle of the Flaming Cross, Doubleday, New York,  1965 (novel).

Daniel Katz and Robert L. Kahn, The Social Psychology of Organizations, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1966.

Van A. Harvey, A Handbook of Theological Terms, Pelican Original, New York, 1964, pp. 27-29.

Will Durant, The Age of Faith, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1950, pp. 630, 741, 764.

J. A. C. Brown, The Social Psychology of Industry, Pelican Original, New York, 1954, pp. 164-165.

Edith Simon, The Saints, Dell Publishing, New York, 1968.

Rebecca Barnes and Lindy Lowry, Seven Startling Facts: An Up Close Look at Churches in America, www.google.com, 2014.