Brief Introduction to the Politicization of Christianity and its Consequences–From Jesus to 312 CE

A brief summary of the course and causes of the transformation of Christianity from a faith that offered individual friendship with God into a politicized tool of social control up to 312 CE.

The problems of the Church discussed herein were not caused by Jesus, by individuals’ faith in him, by his teachings or by the teachings of his immediate Disciples/Apostles.  Neither were most of them introduced into the Church maliciously (at least at the human level). Rather, they were caused by errors introduced initially with the good intention of making the Gospel (which is always unacceptable) more acceptable to the masses and their leaders—through making itself compatible with human philosophies of the day, through syncretism with dominant pagan religions of areas it entered (initially Greek and, especially, Roman) and through what Jacques Ellul termed “mass evangelism.” These efforts were successful within the Roman world—they led to the absorption of the Church, as a human organization, by the Roman ruling class, to the end of persecution for Christians as long as they stayed within the “official” organization, to the whole empire becoming nominally “Christian,” and to the conversion of “Christianity” itself into a tool of statecraft.

Moreover, even some of the attempts at syncretism that were ultimately rejected by the “Great Church” before Constantine as “heresies” contained elements the official Church found useful in developing its changing mission and adopted.  For example, the heterogenous early Christian dualist schools of thought now known as Gnostic arose during the Second Century, as did Marcionism and various other attempts to syncretize Christianity with those elements of Platonic/ middle Platonic philosophy (and later Neoplatonism) and other current philosophical schools that stressed dualism and the inaccessible remoteness of the true, good God.  These movements did not submit to the control of the developing ecclesiastical structure—some were, in fact, protests against it—and were eventually extirpated.  But their root concepts of God’s inaccessibility and impassibility and of soul versus body, spirit versus physical universe dualism proved useful to the developing Church organization (though in weakened forms) and were incorporated into its doctrines, as we will see. Similarly, though Origen, born in the late Second Century and active until his death in about 253, was formally identified as a “heretic” for some of his teachings two centuries after his death, his allegorical approach to the Scriptures and various of his other teachings were found to be useful and adopted by the official Church. The concept that all Scripture must be interpreted allegorically was important because it transformed the study of the Scriptures from a common activity, open to all, into an activity confined to experts who had been trained to follow the “correct” allegorical reading. All of this contributed to the conversion of Christianity into a religious system that could be imposed by law, rendering whole countries nominally “Christian.”

But this “success” had a high cost.  The Gospel is first of all a way of individual salvation into an active friendship with Jesus.  It requires only repentance—turning from our own way that once opposed God—and willingness to now live as God’s children and friends through his Son Jesus. Christian belief, as reflected in the New Testament, was focused on the freedom of each believer’s direct relationship with God, as an adopted child, through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Instead of a rigid moral code, it taught something much more difficult—living under the direction and power of the Holy Spirit under the law of love. All the good things believers are to do for the benefit of others and the world are not works we are to do for Jesus, in isolation from him, to get on his “good side;” instead, we are already on God’s “good side,” and our works are to be works done by Jesus through us. 

Returning to the beginning of the Church, Jesus was from the lower classes of Jewish society, though perhaps not as poor as he is often represented (carpenters were skilled craftsmen). A majority of his immediate disciples appear to have been fishermen. For about the first century and a half after Jesus’ resurrection, the Church taught life with and in Christ, something which appealed mostly to “have nots” who could put their hope in nothing else, although favoritism shown toward the few rich members had to be rebuked even in the time of the Apostles. (Compare, for example, Matthew 5:3, Matthew 19:16-26, Luke 6:20-26, 1 Corinthians 1:26-29, James 2:1-7, James 5:1-6). The Holy Spirit and the Church operated largely outside the existing social order, the Church lived as outcasts from it, and none of the distinctions of wealth or social rank were to have any place in it.  There was never any thought of the possibility that a community based on individual faith in Christ might someday rule whole communities and nations—indeed, that concept was directly opposed to the individual direct relationship with God that is at the heart of the New Testament.

Although apologetic syncretism started in the Second Century and the numeric growth of the official Church accelerated in the Second Century and started to include more people from the ruling classes, “mass evangelism”–in the sense of directing evangelistic efforts mostly toward political, military or social leaders with the expectation that those under their control will follow their decisions–did not start in earnest until sometime in the Third Century. Specifically, the mass approach started to pick up momentum during the roughly fifty years in the mid-Third Century now known as the Crisis of the Third Century. During this period, from the death of Severus Alexander (235) (though arguably it started in 193, the year of the five emperors) until the accession of Diocletian (284)–the combination of continuous political instability, frequent dynastic wars and assassinations, invasions, climate changes that led to frequent famines, and several massive Empire-wide plagues created near-complete anarchy in many areas of the Empire. Neither the Roman legions nor the Roman gods could keep order, and many in among the ruling classes saw the need for a substitute for the old way. This is where the versions of Christianity “repackaged” during the Second Century to appeal to the educated upper class entered. The opportunity was appreciated to market this version of Christianity to the upper class as the long-term solution of their problems. “Mass Christianity” was born.

But once it became established that everyone in a whole community, military regiment (the main setting in which “mass evangelism” started in Imperial Rome), social group, nation or empire must be recognized as “Christians” by decree and taught to act (yes, play-act, hupokrisis) like it, the idea of individual relationships with God—and everything that goes with it–had to be discarded. Any notion of individual communication with God also became dangerous to those in authority.  If any direct relationship with God were to be permitted, it must be strictly limited to the church organization and its politicized leaders—in much the same way direct contact with the gods was limited under the pre-Christian Roman civil religion.  And this is exactly the way organized Christianity gradually took, even in groups outside the Roman Empire.   

This is probably best illustrated by organized Christianity’s response to Montanism, the “New Prophecy,” which became briefly widespread mostly during the Third Century and which had particularly interesting temporally remote consequences in the Western Church. Montanism started in the late Second Century mostly among native Phrygian Christians who, even at this fairly early date, were beginning to feel disenfranchised due to the dominance of Greek bishops.  By sometime in the Third Century it had spread through much of Asia Minor, the Roman provinces in the Balkans, northern Italy, Roman Gaul and even to North Africa.  From what is known of it–mostly from polemics written against it–Montanism, or, at least, some Montanists at some times and places, may have taught doctrines that denied some of the basic doctrines of Christianity.  However, much of the movement’s appeal was its teaching that opened prophecy to every believer, not just elite bishops and priests.  Thus, whatever may have been its faults, it certainly taught that direct contact with God was possible, without going through the official Church and its ordained clergy as mediators. This by itself made Montanism very dangerous to the emerging hierarchy, and steps were taken to suppress it.   Though the Montanist movement itself had been fairly effectively suppressed within two centuries of its founding, its teachings–particularly the possibility of direct communication with God–entered other heterodox groups and the common thinking and folk practices even of obedient orthodox Christians in many areas where it went.

As the organized Church developed, it gradually developed toward a hierarchical ecclesiastical structure in which bishops were supreme, some bishops were greater than others, and political power struggles became commonplace. At the same time, starting about the last half of the 2nd Century, educated apologists–all of them believers from the upper classes of Greco-Roman Gentile society–started their efforts to make Christianity more acceptable to the upper strata. These efforts, unfortunately, resulted in a version of Christianity which came over time to be increasingly “watered down,” emphasizing correct moral behavior and a formal relationship with the Church over a personal relationship with Jesus (which was said to be had only by the Church collectively, or by select members of the ordained clergy). This allowed large numbers of unsaved people to become “members” in good standing of the organized Church without having any personal relationship with or allegiance to Christ at all.

As the numbers of Church members from the upper classes–many of whom did not know Christ at all–increased, the pressure to limit the leading roles in the churches to them also increased. By sometime in the third century, most of the active priests and nearly all of the bishops in the orthodox–and, during some long periods in many areas in the 3rd century, only officially semi-tolerated–branch of the church came from important families in the secular political world. In many areas being born into an important family became a tacit requirement for episcopal office.

This shift to a politicized, mass Church necessitated a complete de-emphasis of the idea of an individual relationship with God—except for a very special class of living clergy and recognized martyred “saints”—in favor of individual relationships with the church organization.  It also necessitated a near complete obliteration of the idea of freedom in following the Holy Spirit (who most church “members,” who belonged only because their leaders did, did not possess) in favor of rigid moral rules and a focus on individual sinful acts and prescribed penances for them in order to regain the favor of God.   Our loving Heavenly Father became the Heavenly Ogre, the Ultra-Just “Hanging Judge,” the vengeful number one enforcer of public morality and the existing social order.

The shift in general perception within the Church from a loving Heavenly Father who gave his Son to have a direct friendship with us to a vengeful Heavenly Ogre who could have no direct relationship with us at all because of our sins–and his infinite distance from us–led naturally to the need for other mediators to plead our case with him.  Jesus, as a member of the Trinity, was too close to the Father to tolerate our sins.  So various Gnostic sects arose fairly early in Church history, incorporating pre-Christian Jewish and Greek speculations about chains of angelic or semi-divine mediators between a totally simple, infinitely distant, indivisible and inaccessible God and the cosmos and human beings.  And the official Roman Church, and its major Eastern and Southern offshoots, also adopted a God and a Jesus who were mostly inaccessible except through human mediators–the “merciful” Virgin Mary, the official human representatives of the visible Church organization, and, later, venerated Saints.  And it is noteworthy that historians often date the veneration of Mary and the veneration of martyrs (“saints”) among Christians to the Third Century (see the inline Wikipedia links in this sentence and this Orthodox source).

The  shift from a message emphasizing relationship with Christ to one emphasizing relationship to the Church, and the shift to enforced upper-class leadership for lower-class congregations–brought in two other unfortunate changes. The first was a shift from true evangelism (bringing individuals to faith in Christ) to “mass evangelism” (bringing whole groups of people forcibly into a relationship with the Church by converting their leaders). The second was an abandonment of living by faith at an individual level, in favor of making the organized Church the mainstay of the existing social order, so it could be “sold” in this form to leaders of existing power groups both inside and outside the Roman Empire.

Of course, the two great triumphs of this change of strategy were the “conversions” of King Tiridates III of Armenia in 301 CE and of the Roman Emperor Constantine I in 312 CE. Prior to his somewhat questionable “conversion” experience before the battle of the Milvian Bridge, Constantine had been primarily a follower of Sol Invictus (the unconquerable Sun), and his personal response to Christianity after that experience often had a flavor of solar worship mixed in with it. But he clearly recognized that the ability of the old imperial Roman pagan religion to maintain public morality, obedience to superiors (vitally important in an empire that was half slaves!) and loyalty to the Emperor was waning. He also clearly–and correctly–saw that institutional Christianity, as it had been revised during the previous century–had BOTH a large and powerful following (particularly in the Legions) AND the ability to be used to restore order (by the agency of a single, wrathful, unbribable God willing and able to punish anyone who stepped out of line!).