16-6-10 Dogmatism And Legalism
The early brethren clearly had a firm and vital grasp on essential
doctrine. But this lead them into the danger of saying that we are
saved by knowledge alone, and this ended up with the perversions
of Gnosticism- whereby intellectual knowledge became paramount rather
than behaviour. And we run this very same risk. We also see that
the early church so valued true knowledge that they sought to codify
Christian Truth into creeds. These then became used as a test of
orthodoxy, and the result was that instead of being men and women
charged with glad tidings, the Christians became arrogant and legalistic
and argumentative. I am not against the fact that any church has
a statement of faith. But one can only be concerned at the way some
of us have added and added to these documents, making their further
credal points into tests of fellowship and weapons for aggression.
It was exactly because of this that the church which once attracted
others to it by its warm love and unity, became famous for its division
and strife. The emperor Julian came to observe: "No wild beasts
are so dangerous to men as Christians are to one another".
And so the 'church' only grew by political machinations and even
forced conversions.
The writings of the 2nd and 3rd centuries
seem to almost revel in vicious and condemnatory language. The Apocalypse
of Peter seems to delight in describing the punishment to come
upon those Christians who practiced abortion- their children would
supposedly confront them in ‘hell’, tormenting them and torturing
the breasts of their mothers. It was as if the ‘Christian’ community
decided that it was perfectly acceptable to vent the anger that
is within all of us through vicious condemnation of those whose
positions they didn’t agree with. And surely there are similarities
and warnings here for our own communities. For there’s no reason
to think that a delight and glory in judgmentalism isn’t growing
amongst us. Perhaps one of the reasons for apostate Christianity
choosing to misunderstand ‘hell’ [hades] as a place of punishment
rather than simply the grave, was this desire to justify a vent
for human anger against others, delighting in painting as awful
a picture as possible of others’ condemnation. Psychologically this
appears to have been the reason why false doctrine about hell /
hades / the grave was adopted.
It is no accident that when the early church gave up seeking to
convert the Jews, apostacy set in big time. The church came to change
its creeds in order to establish the Christian claims in opposition
to those of the Jews- rather than, in the spirit of Paul, seeking
to be Jews to the Jew that they might win the Jews. And we too,
in parts, have given up [pretty well] seeking to convert this world,
and looked inwards rather than outwards. This has also resulted
in an ever-increasing desire to codify God’s Truth, the covenant
of grace, and then to yet further sub-divide against those of our
number who cannot 100% subscribe to the new additions. Let’s remember
that we as a community started [and start] where the early brethren
were on the day of Pentecost. We have the same basic Gospel. The
same love of its glorious propositions, and the same desire to gladly
testify to it, rigorously argue for it, persuade others of it…and
yet we are tempted to let it go just the same way as the 1st and
2nd century believers did- into endless codifying of it, aggressive
and self-justifying argument with it, heaping condemnation upon
those who can’t agree with us… and this could likewise lead to the
Truth being lost by our very efforts to preserve it. To preserve
it, preach it. This is the undoubted message of the 1st century.
What happened then in the 1st century can happen now. A handful
of ordinary men and women, with everything against them, walked
out against the wind and turned their world upside down for Christ.
This, to me at least, is the insistent challenge and inspiration
that cannot end. It is easy to tire of being a misfit in a generation
going in a different direction to that which we have chosen. And
yet in considering our first century brethren we have the human
inspiration to carry on. We face the same problems, but in essence
we have the same means for success available to us. It is possible
that our community could mushroom as did theirs. We have the same
Gospel. There is no hint that God simply enabled things to spread
more in those days than in ours. He earnestly wishes the salvation
of men and women through His Son, then as much as now. So we are
driven to the hard conclusion: that it depends upon us, as to whether
we will truly follow the pattern of our early brethren in their
experience of the Gospel of the Kingdom and the changing, saving
power and person of Jesus.
The early Christian community was above all a witnessing community.
Personal testimony, the example of radically transformed lives,
heroic sacrifices… all this combined to enable the rapid growth
of the church. The community was comprised of first generation converts,
who spread the word with all the insistence, urgency and persuasion
of those in first love with the Father and Son. But as time went
on, the community inevitably began to inbreed, internal debates
and issues assumed more importance than the vital task of saving
others. We’ve commented how women were at the forefront of spreading
the message through the social networks and households they were
part of. The freedom and dignity afforded to women was a major attraction
of Christianity. And yet it wasn’t long before the anonymous Didascalia
Apostolorum was warning women not to preach, lest “The Gentiles…
hear the word of God not fittingly spoken… all the more in that
it is spoken to them by a woman… she [the female preacher] shall
incur a heavy judgment for sin” (1). I saw this history repeat itself
amongst a group of Russian speaking sisters, who were some of the
most dynamic preachers I was ever privileged to know in the 20th
century. They baptized a few hundred people in the remote towns
in which they lived; and then, were informed that women who baptized
others were liable to condemnation at the judgment, and their baptisms
weren’t valid as they were performed by women. And so the amazing
spread of the Gospel in that area came to a standstill. Ramsay MacMullen
likewise concluded that the mass gatherings and evangelization of
the first century soon ceased, and the focus of Christian preaching
was increasingly upon raising children in the faith rather than
on actively propagating it to non-believers (2). And we obviously
ask ourselves, whether in our personal and collective lives, we’ve
not fallen into the same overall pattern. Where is our initial post-conversion
enthusiasm to spread the word to all? Do we still have it? Where
did it go? And all too often, communities and ecclesias go through
that same sad cycle. And yet that cycle isn’t inevitable; history
doesn’t inevitably repeat itself. It remains written for our learning,
that we might break the mould and even invert the cycle.
Notes
(1) R. Hugh Connoly, ed., Didascalia Apostolorum (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1992) pp. 132,133.
(2) Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing The Roman Empire (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1984).
“If I believed what you Christians believed
I would crawl across England on my hands and knees, if need be,
to tell men about it”
General Booth
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