Doctrine and Insight

 

            Christianity has a problem: doctrine.  But it is not doctrine as such or the content of doctrine that is the problem.  Rather it is what people think doctrine is, what it has come to be used for, and its disconnection from its spiritual roots.

            The role of doctrine—and its true spirit—is to provide guidance to spiritual seekers to come to spiritual insight. However, its application and development over the centuries has often had less to do with helping people move toward insight, and more to do with the desire for uniformity and the perceived needs of leaders in the Church and the society of the day to exercise control over their underlings.  Thus, doctrine was estranged from its roots and spirit, and has rightly become the object of scorn and alienation that it is now for so many.

            The content of Christian doctrine originally arose out of a set of spiritual insights connected with the life, teaching, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  While it is likely that the heart and wellspring of all religious teaching is spiritual insight (note, for example, Siddartha Gautama's experience under the Bodhi Tree or Muhammed's experience in the cave), my interest here is the Christian context; so, I will leave it to the practitioners of other religious traditions to investigate this phenomenon within their own spiritual milieu.  In this essay I will explore the concept of doctrine, the concept of insight, the roots of Christian doctrine in spiritual insight, how Christian doctrine has been misused, and what might be done to put doctrine back into its proper context as a guide leading the spiritual seeker or practitioner toward insight.

 

Earliest known depiction of Jesus: The healing of the paralytic, ca. 235, Dura Europos, Syria

 

Doctrine and Dogma—and Insight

 

            The word 'doctrine' comes from the Latin verb docere, 'to show' or 'to teach' or 'to cause to know.'  Originally it also meant 'to make appear right,' and in this way becomes the root of our word 'decent.'  The word 'dogma' is the Greek equivalent.  It comes from the verb dokein, 'to think' or 'to seem good.'  As the noun dogma, it came to mean 'an opinion' or 'a tenet' in the sense of something that one would hold to be good or true.

            In the Christian context, the earliest roots of doctrine or dogma could be said to be the teachings that Jesus handed on to his disciples.  At that stage of development, the teachings would have been the content of the master-pupil relationship, communicated through overt teaching (discourses), veiled teaching (parables), symbolic teaching (actions), and experiential teaching (assigned tasks).  There is also a tradition that Jesus delivered some teaching in an esoteric manner, i.e., in discourses and explanations shared only with the inner circle of disciples (cf. Matthew 13:10-53 and Mark 4:33-34).  Notwithstanding, the Gospels imply that even the inner circle of disciples did not grasp the deeper significance of these teachings until after Jesus had been executed and had begun to appear to them in risen form (cf. Mark 10:32-45; Luke 18:31-34; 24:13-35).  It was then that the various aspects of Jesus' teaching began to gel into a cohesive whole.

            Abraham Heschel, in his famous work, "The Prophets," offers a keen description of insight:

 

Insight is the beginning of perception to come rather than the extension of perceptions gone by.  Conventional seeing, operating as it does with patterns and coherences, is a way of seeing the present in the past tense.  Insight is an attempt to think in the present.  Insight is a breakthrough, requiring much intellectual dismantling and dislocation.  It begins with a mental interim, with a cultivation of a feeling for the unfamiliar, unparalleled, incredible.  It is in being involved with a phenomenon, being intimately engaged to it, courting it, as it were, that after much perplexity and embarrassment we come upon insight—upon a way of seeing the phenomenon from within.  Insight is accompanied by a sense of surprise.  What has been closed is suddenly disclosed.  It entails genuine perception, seeing anew.  He who thinks that we can see the same object twice has never seen.  Paradoxically, insight is knowledge at first sight. (Abraham Heschel, "The Prophets" vol. 1, New York, Harper Torchbooks, ©1962, Introduction p. xii, emphasis his)

 

            The experience of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection led to a level of insight into what had gone before that moved the followers of Jesus to a new way of perceiving.  There they experienced the "breakthrough" because of profound "dismantling and dislocation."  There, in the time from his arrest until they saw him again, they were forced into the "mental interim...the unfamiliar, unparalleled, incredible" so that "after much perplexity and embarrassment" they came upon insight.  Only at this point of insight can we truly speak of Christian doctrine or Christian teaching.  Christian teaching or doctrine is really, at its root, a spiritual insight derived from a process of learning and living with Jesus, integrated in the experience of his death and resurrection.

            It was the interest of the early Christian leadership (i.e., the disciples become apostles and those they consecrated or confirmed into leadership positions) to preserve and pass on both the teachings of their master and the insights they had reached about him.  Here it may be helpful to look at some of these early leaders to see how this process seems to have taken place.

 

 

Peter, Paul, the Author of the Letter to the Hebrews, and John

 

            Controversy about the status of Jesus seems to have circulated already during his brief ministry.  We see in Mark 6:14-16 (parallels in Matthew 14:1-2 and Luke 9:7-9) that Jesus was variously thought to be a prophet or Elijah returned (the latter would have had apocalyptic significance for those who believed it) or even John the Baptizer returned from the grave.  This last opinion indicates that Jesus' wider notoriety may not have spread until after John had been beheaded.  The people of his hometown were sceptical about him (Matthew 13:53-58; Mark 6:1-6; Luke 4:16-30) and his own family seem originally to have considered him "off his rocker," as we read in Mark 3:21.  At the same time he seems to have used the occasion of his family coming to "restrain him" as an opportunity to say that all those who do the will of God are his family (cf. Mark 3:31-35 with parallels in Matthew 12:46-50 and Luke 8:19-21).

            Even among his disciples there was some disagreement about who Jesus was in the larger scheme of things.  It is in this context that we read of the exchange where Jesus asks his disciples who they think he is (Matthew 16:13-21; Mark 8:27-30; Luke 9:18-21).  Setting aside for a moment the Roman Papacy's peculiar use of the Matthean version of this incident (this will fall under the misuse of doctrine for ideological and political ends later in the essay), the three Synoptic Gospels agree that of all the disciples, Peter was bold to assert that Jesus was "the Messiah of God."  All three also agree that Jesus "charged them to tell no one" (an example of the "messianic secret").

            While John's Gospel does not contain this particular incident, it offers its own account of a moment when Peter stood out as the one who expressed his high regard for Jesus (John 6:66-71).  There we read that when many of Jesus' followers from the outer circle of hangers-on were abandoning him, Jesus asked his inner circle if they too would leave him.  To this Peter replied that Jesus had "the words of eternal life" and that he was "the Holy One of God."  In this passage the two elements are brought together: the teachings of Jesus ("words of eternal life") and the insight into who Jesus is ("the Holy One of God").  John's Gospel admittedly reflects a later level of integration of the doctrine of the early Christian community, but it is interesting that John would also affirm Peter's role in voicing an early version of that integration.

            Peter, who proved notably unfaithful during Jesus' arrest, trial, and crucifixion (and each in their own way, the Gospels use this uncomfortable truth as an opportunity to show that Jesus was forgiving even of those who betrayed him), became the key leadership figure of the earliest community of people who were "followers of the Way."  Thus in the tradition preserved by Luke in his Acts of the Apostles, Peter is the one who is said to speak to this early community so as to voice the insight of God's purpose in what had just transpired in the death and resurrection of their master, and then to become the spokesperson for the group to the people of Jerusalem, further fleshing out the insight (Acts 1:15-20; 2:14-36).  What we see in (Luke's recreation of) Peter's preaching is a reading back into the Hebrew Scriptures of the events surrounding the life of Jesus.  Various passages out of the Psalms and the Prophets come to be seen in a new light:  Judas had to betray his master to bring about the mysterious plan of God; the people had to reject Jesus; Jesus had to be killed, so that God could raise him from the dead and in this way confirm the status of Jesus as God's Anointed One (Messiah).

            Here we have, preserved for us in stylized form, the echo of the insight about Jesus, coming together in the minds of these disciples in the time after the execution of their teacher.  Peter, in particular, seems to receive credit, if only in implied form, for bringing the loose ends of the picture together.  At this stage the "doctrine" of the nascent Church is little more than the insight into who this amazing person (Jesus) was/is, and additionally the content of what he taught.  As we shall see, however, the content of Jesus' teaching did not figure as prominently as the insight into his person.  It was this insight that seems to have been the driving energy behind the proclamation of this early group.  Nevertheless, the content of Jesus' teaching was also being preserved in the story telling of the community, adapted to the needs and questions of the moment.

            Paul gives us useful information on the situation some two decades after the fateful events surrounding the crucifixion.  The writings of Paul form the oldest body of work on the New Testament.  These letters from the Apostle to his congregations and associates, widely believed to be the only portion of the New Testament written before the Jewish War (A.D. 66-70), and therefore still within the thriving milieu of Second Temple Judaism, also contain autobiographical information that gives us a window on the inner world of the author that we do not have on other New Testament writers or figures.  His letter to the Galatians has the longest autobiographical section, from which the following:

 

For I want you to know brothers, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin, for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.  You have heard no doubt of my earlier life in Judaism.  I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it.  I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was more zealous for the tradition of my ancestors.  But when God... was pleased to reveal his Son to me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being, nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once to Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus.  Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas [AKA Peter], and stayed with him fifteen days, but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord's brother... Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia, and I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea that are in Christ; they only heard it said, 'The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy...' (Galatians 1:11-23)

 

            What was the content of that gospel that Paul said he once tried to destroy but had come to proclaim?  Some verses later Paul describes an incident with Cephas/Peter that gives us a clue as to how to read other passages where he talks about his gospel.

 

But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned; for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with Gentiles.  But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction.  And the other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.  But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, 'If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?'  We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ.  And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus so that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law... if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing. (Galatians 2:11-16, 21b)

 

            Paul had a religious experience and spiritual insight, which he describes as a revelation from Christ having to do with the changed status of the Law now that Christ has died.  When Paul uses the word "Law" he seems to be referring not simply to the written law of the Pentateuch, but also, and perhaps especially, to the oral "tradition of my ancestors" that formed the interpretation and elaboration of the written law.  With the death and resurrection of Christ, Paul intuited that a new spiritual reality had come to be.  The old divide between Jew and Gentile had been removed.  There was a harkening back to the simple faith of Abraham (cf. Romans 4:1ff; Galatians 3:15-18), and a new kind of life of faith that was more mystical than legal in its flavour and impulse (cf. Romans 6, 8, 12:1-2; II Corinthians 3:12-18, 12:1-10; Galatians 5:2-6, 22-26, 3:20-21; Philippians 2:5-13).

            The Letter to the Hebrews also gives voice to a set of insights into the significance of Jesus Christ in relation to the religion of Israel.  This letter's overriding concern is to show that the Temple cult, the priesthood, indeed the entire sacrificial system has been fulfilled and superseded by Christ.  The operative words here are in Hebrews 1:3b: "When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on High."

            The Letter to the Hebrews, more than any other part of the New Testament, develops the themes of Christ as High Priest and Christ as Sacrificial Victim.  Its anonymous author and its audience, who seem to have been "Hebrews" or Jews for whom the Temple and Levitical Priesthood had at one time been important, came to a place of insight, following the execution of Jesus and subsequent encounters with the risen Christ, about the significance of these events, especially regarding the sacrificial cult laid out in Exodus and Leviticus.  It would be wrong to say that they created a doctrine that did away with the Temple.  Rather, they came to see the Temple in a new light given what had happened to Jesus, and so they began to explain their insight to others.   Once the content of the insight moved from those who had come to it, to others who had not themselves had this insight, it evolved into a doctrine: a teaching to help others come to the same insight.

            The problem with doctrine arises at the next stage of transmission, when those who had the original insight are no longer present, and many of those who carry the teachings about the insight with them, have not themselves come to a place of insight in the matter, but only to a place of intellectual assent to the doctrines.

            Thus, while the author of Hebrews can write,

 

Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by the Son whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he created the worlds—he is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being and sustains all things by his powerful word—when he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on High, having become as much superior to angels as the name he inherited is more excellent than theirs, (Hebrews 1:1-4)…

 

...and do so having viscerally come to "see" these things within, as though by divine revelation, as an artist might have a work of music or a sculpture or painted image come to mind fully formed in that mysterious process of insight that constitutes human creativity, those who accept these teachings as outward facts, as though they had been derived by some mechanical process of investigation or handed down as petrified doctrines from on high, will be inclined to use them in ways that rob them of their genius.

            John's Gospel offers the following insightful statement of purpose:

 

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book.  But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:30-31)

 

...and a chapter later, in what seems to be an addendum from a disciple of John:

 

This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true.  But there are also many other things Jesus did: if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. (John 21:24-25)

 

            John's entire project of writing down some of the actions and teachings of Jesus was for the purpose of helping others come to the same insight he had come to: To believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and in believing, to have life in his name.  This is a mystical insight.  Life comes to be lived within the consciousness of the Messiahship and divine Son-ship of Jesus, a consciousness attained via the process of insight after having lived with Jesus, lived through his death and burial, and encountered him living once again.

            The copyist or editor who added the last few lines to this Gospel believes the evangelist's testimony to be reliable, and marvels at how much Jesus did, but does this writer hold those opinions out of insight, or merely out of intellectual assent?

 

 

Doctrine For Control

 

            The trajectory from 'doctrine as the content of insight and guide toward insight' to 'doctrine as official formula requiring mental assent' followed the Church's trajectory from 'spontaneous counter-establishment movement' to 'official religion of empire.'  To see this evolution unfold, let us take three representative examples of the use of doctrine from three stages of that development.

            Clement of Rome (A.D. 30 - 100) belonged to the "sub-apostolic" generation: the disciples of the original apostles.  Clement, a native of the city of Philippi, was a disciple of Paul.  He would have been in his 20's when the Apostle established the Philippi congregation.  Clement's letters have much the same pastoral and practical ring as Paul's.  He uses the example of Christ and figures out of the Jewish Scriptures to admonish his readers to lives of faith and good works.  Here is a representative passage:

 

This is the way, beloved, in which we find our Saviour, even Jesus Christ, the high Priest of all our offerings, the defender and helper of our infirmity.  By him we look up to the heights of heaven.  By him we behold, as in a mirror, his immaculate and most excellent visage.  By him are the eyes of our heart opened.  By him our foolish and darkened understanding blossoms up anew towards his marvellous light.  By him the Lord willed that we should taste of immortal knowledge, 'who, being the brightness of his majesty, is by so much greater than the angels, as he has by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they...

 

Let our whole body, then, be preserved in Christ Jesus; and let everyone be subject to his neighbour, according to the particular gift bestowed in him.  Let the strong not despise the weak, and let the weak show respect to the strong.  Let the rich man provide for the wants of the poor; and let the poor man bless God, because he has given him one by whom his need may be supplied.  Let the wise man display his wisdom, not by words, but through good deeds.  Let the humble not bear testimony to himself, but leave witness to be borne to him by another.  Let him that is pure in the flesh not grow proud of it and boast, knowing that it is another who bestowed on him the gift of self-containment.  Let us consider, then, brethren, of what matter we were made—who and what manner of beings we came into the world, as it were, out of a sepulchre and from utter darkness.  He who made us and fashioned us, having prepared his bountiful gifts for us before we were born, introduced us into his world.  Since, therefore, we receive all these things from him, we ought for everything to give him thanks; to whom be glory for ever and ever.  Amen.  (First Letter of Clement, 36, 38)

 

            Clement is writing out of his own insight of the significance of Jesus Christ for all the faithful, and by extension, all the world.  The doctrinal aspects merely serve the purpose of facilitating the inner transformation of the people, such transformation being exhibited in their mode of life.  Here, the inner mystical appropriation of Christ leads to the outer embodiment of a life of compassion, humility, thanksgiving to God, and practical help for those in need.

            A century later, the Church catechist Origen (185 - 253) was presenting doctrine as a set of teachings, "delivered by the Apostles," to be accepted by those who wish to be saved.  While he acknowledges that "many of those...who profess to believe in Christ hold conflicting opinions not only on small and trivial questions but also on some that are great and important..." (On First Principles I, 2), he asserts that, "the holy apostles, when preaching the faith of Christ, took certain doctrines, those namely they believed to be necessary ones, and delivered them in the plainest terms to all believers..." (On First Principles I, 3).  He then lays out what these doctrines are "which are to be believed in plain terms through the apostolic teaching..."  Here is a sampling:

 

First, that God is one, who created and set in order all things, and who, when nothing existed, caused the universe to be.  He is God from the first creation and foundation of the world, the God of all righteous men, of Adam, Abel, Seth, Enos, Enoch, Noah, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, of the twelve patriarchs, of Moses and the prophets.  This God, in these last days, according to the previous announcements made through his prophets, sent the Lord Jesus Christ, first for the purpose of calling Israel, and secondly, after the unbelief of the people of Israel, of calling the Gentiles also...

 

Then again: Christ Jesus, he who came to earth, was begotten of the Father before every created thing.  And after he had ministered to the Father in the foundation of all things... in these last times he emptied himself and was made man, was made flesh, although he was God; and being made man, he still retained what he was, namely God.  He took to himself a body like our body, differing in this alone, that it was born of a virgin and of the Holy Spirit.  And this Jesus Christ was born and suffered in truth and not merely in appearance, and truly died our common death.  Moreover he truly rose from the dead, and after the resurrection companied with his disciples and was taken up into heaven.

 

Then again, the apostles delivered this doctrine, that the Holy Spirit is united in honour and dignity with the Father and the Son.  In regard to him it is not yet clearly known whether he is to be thought of as begotten or unbegotten, or as being himself also a Son of God or not... It is, however, certainly taught with the utmost clearness in the Church, that this Spirit inspired each one of the saints, both the prophets and the apostles, and that there was not one Spirit in the men of old and another in those inspired at the coming of Christ. (On First Principles, I, 4)

 

            Origen goes on to lay out what he understood to be the apostolic doctrines on the soul, the soul's salvation, free will, the devil and his angels, the scriptures, and "the angles and good powers that minister to the salvation of men."  On these latter topics Origen had a fair amount of wiggle room for speculation because the received doctrines made only general statements on these topics; and indeed, Origin's On First Principles consists largely of his speculations on these matters, applying the logical and syllogistic tools of Greek philosophy to try to fill the doctrinal gaps.  He was condemned for heresy some two hundred years after his death on some of his speculative proposals.

            Thus, we see in the hundred years between Clement and Origin, a shift from relatively few assertions and admonishments arising out of the spiritual insight that came together in the death and resurrection of Jesus, to a lengthy catalogue of teachings that one was expected to accept.  Ironically, Origen may have set the course for his own posthumous condemnation in that he sought to define the undefined regions of Christian teaching and asserted that 'those who are gifted with the grace of the Holy Spirit in the word of wisdom and knowledge' can search the scriptures and apply philosophical principles to discern the missing pieces, thus initiating a trend toward increasing detail and precision in doctrine.

            For Clement, Origen, and others of the second and third centuries, doctrine and teaching were handed on in the context of a religious movement that stood outside the social and political establishment, and that was persecuted on numerous occasions by local or imperial decree, and so always had about it an element of free choice.  People could always walk away from the Church and return to their pagan, Jewish, or philosophical roots.

            This all changed over the course of the fourth century.  From Constantine's legalization of Christianity in the tolerant Edict of Milan at the beginning of the century, to the intolerant edicts of Theodosius near the end of the century, the Christian Church underwent a rapid transition from hated target of emperors to sole established religion of the empire.  With this shift, Christian doctrine took on a legal and bureaucratic tone.  State endorsement and enforcement of church doctrine meant that spiritual or religious insight became, at best, an afterthought.

            A perusal of the acts of the synods and councils of the Church from this time reveals an obsession with order, procedure, and untangling legal technicalities.  For example, the 80 canons of the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) recorded in various manuscripts deal almost exclusively with matters of electing bishops, episcopal and patriarchal jurisdiction, rules governing priests and deacons and their ordination, and discipline for lapsed or wayward lay people (a system of graduated temporary excommunication and restoration to communion seems to have been developing at the time).  In this context, doctrine becomes another matter of order.  Thus, the doctrinal decree (the "Nicene Creed") associated with this council ends by saying, that all who teach differently, "the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes them."

            The First Council of Constantinople (A.D. 381), which gave us the form of the "Nicene Creed" we use today, in its Acts sets this creed out as a preface.  Canon I, referring to the earlier Council, then declares:

 

The Faith of the 318 Fathers assembled in Nicaea in Bithynia shall not be set aside, but shall remain firm.  And every heresy shall be anathematized, particularly that of the Eunomians or Anomoeans, the Arians or Eudoxians, and that of the Semi-Arians or Pneumatomachi, and that of the Sabelllians, and that of the Marcellians, and that of the Photinians, and that of the Apollinarians.

 

            The remaining canons again deal with administrative or disciplinary matters.  Clearly, doctrine had become a matter of uniformity and control, part and parcel of a Church that had become an arm of imperial administration.  No longer concerned with spiritual insight, the highest leadership of the Church used doctrine as ideology and dealt with it bureaucratically rather than spiritually.  Could it be that this shift, among other things, prompted so many of the faithful of this time to flee to the deserted places of Egypt, Palestine, and Cappadocia to take up a life of isolated self-denial and detachment from the world?

 

 

Abuse of Doctrine

 

            Once doctrine is detached from its roots as religious or spiritual insight, and comes to serve as organizational or institutional ideology, it becomes a useful tool for achieving political ends.  A good example of this is the use of the passage from Matthew 16:13-21 mentioned above.  While this passage has parallel readings in Mark 8:27-30 and Luke 9:18-21, and while a thematic parallel may be discerned in John 6:67-71, uniquely in Matthew Jesus makes the following declaration to Peter:

 

Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.  And I tell you, you are Peter (Greek Petros), and on this rock (Greek petra) I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.  I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." (verses 17-19).

 

            This passage has, of course, become a cornerstone upon which the Roman Papacy has built its claims of priority over the other Patriarchal sees (Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, and Jerusalem) and the related claims to constituting the institutional embodiment of the One True Church of Christ.  In other words, the Roman Papacy has used this passage to create a doctrine about itself, asserting its unique and preeminent place in the world.  Yet the evidence from the Patristic period (generally considered the period up to the Seventh Ecumenical Council in A.D. 787) points to something quite different.  It seems that in these early centuries when the Christian Church still functioned, more or less, as one, the Bishop of Rome was granted honorific priority, but not practical priority.  We read in the acts of the Second Ecumenical Council (First Council of Constantinople, A.D. 381) the following:

 

Canon II

The Bishops are not to go beyond their dioceses to churches lying outside of their bounds, nor bring confusion on churches; but let the Bishop of Alexandria, according to the canons, alone administer the affairs of Egypt; and let the bishops of the East manage the East alone, the privileges of the Church in Antioch, which are mentioned in the canons of Nicaea, being preserved; and let the bishops of the Asian Diocese administer Asian affairs only; and the Pontic bishops only Pontic matters; and the Thracian bishops only Thracian affairs.  And let not bishops go beyond their dioceses for ordination or any other ecclesiastical ministrations, unless they be invited.  And the aforesaid canon concerning dioceses being preserved, it is evident that the synod of every province will administer the affairs of that particular province as was decreed at Nicaea...

 

Canon III

The Bishop of Constantinople, however, shall have the prerogative of honour after the Bishop of Rome, because Constantinople is New Rome. [emphasis mine]

 

            The history of tensions between the bishops of the east and the Bishop of Rome is too long and complex to deal with here.  Yet it is clear that the pre-eminence of Rome was originally derived from the fact that Rome was (had been) the imperial capital, and so the bishop of that city was accorded higher honours for having the unique role of overseeing the life of the church in that place.  Canon III of First Constantinople thus assigns second honours to Constantinople, not because it is associated with any of the apostles, but simply because it had become the new imperial capital.  This principle was further emphasized and affirmed in the Fourth Ecumenical Council (Council of Chalcedon, A.D. 451) in Canon XXVIII:

 

...we also do enact and decree the same things concerning the privileges of the most Holy Church of Constantinople, which is New Rome.  For the Fathers rightly granted privileges to the throne of old Rome because it was the royal city.  And the One Hundred and Fifty most religious Bishops actuated by the same consideration gave equal privileges to the most holy throne of New Rome, justly judging that the city which is honoured with the Sovereignty and the Senate, and enjoys equal privileges with the old imperial Rome, should in ecclesiastical matters also be magnified as she is, and rank next after her... [emphasis mine]

 

            It is interesting to note that Rome's primacy is not granted or asserted by virtue of Peter's confession or Jesus' declaration about Peter, but only because Rome had been the imperial capital.  It is also noteworthy that this primacy is seen to be honorific, not administrative.  While the bishop of "old Rome" may have a higher status than the one of "New Rome", he does not have any practical rights over his Constantinopolitan counterpart.  Again, many complex issues of imperial politics enter in here, but the point is that the use of Matthew 16:17-19 to assert primacy for the Bishop of Rome and "heir of St. Peter" is not reflected in the official acts of the Ecumenical Councils which first affirmed any privileges for that see.  Rather, it was a matter of the Church mirroring imperial administrative realities.

            By contrast, the passage in Matthew is not about which bishop stands above other bishops, but about the power of the insight that Jesus is "the Messiah, the Son of the Living God."  Read on this level, the passage says that it is on this insight and all those who come to it that Christ builds his Church; and it is to all of them that Christ gives the keys to the kingdom of heaven, such that what they bind or loose here on earth will be bound or loosed there as well.  There is a notable parallel in John's Gospel (20:22-23), when the risen Jesus breathes on the disciples and says, "Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they will be forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they will be retained."  This is not a "power" or "privilege" assigned only to Peter and his "heirs," but one given all the disciples, and by implication, to all who receive the Holy Spirit.  Again, this is not an administrative matter, but something that is directly linked to life in Christ arising out of the powerful spiritual insight of who Jesus is.

 

            Another example of the misuse of doctrine has to do with the Church's relationship to the state and its armed forces.  Christianity began as a sort of counter-cultural movement within the social framework of existing power structures, i.e., within the religious framework associated with the Jerusalem Temple and the military and bureaucratic framework of the Roman Empire.  Unlike Judaism and Islam, Christianity did not begin as a religion designed to run a society, much less an empire.  Jesus made no claims on temporal power, and the earliest generations of Christians remained true to this spirit.

            Paul's injunction, "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.  Therefore whoever who resists authority resists what God has appointed..." (Romans 13:1ff) is a re-expression of Jesus' injunctions to "not resist an evildoer; but if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also;" and to "love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven," (Matthew 5:39, 44-45).  Persecution by governing authorities is assumed in much of the New Testament, though it is not sought.  So, Paul writes, "I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity." (I Timothy 2:1-2)

            Once persecution had become more intense, the unhappy relationship with the governing authorities came to be portrayed in terms of God's judgment.  The Revelation of John was probably written in the context of the Neronian persecution of the Church, and here that same governing authority, which Paul some years earlier could still say was put in place by God, becomes the "whore of Babylon."  Note the thinly veiled references to the city of Rome, whose empire surrounded the Tyrrhenian, Adriatic, and Aegean Seas, and was built on seven hills:

 

Then one of the seven angels... came and said to me, 'Come, I will show you the judgment of the great whore who is seated on may waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and with the wine of whose fornication the inhabitants of the earth have become drunk.'... and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns... And I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the witnesses to Jesus... 'This calls for a mind of wisdom: the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated...' (Revelation 17:1-3,9)

 

            This tension between retaining the "quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity" and the reality of recurring persecution was the Sitz-im-Leben of the Church until its legalization by Constantine in A.D. 313.  Following that legalization there was a shift from the old spiritual insight that life in Christ was a life of faithful and peaceful endurance in the face of societal and official oppression to a doctrine that subsumed this spiritual insight to the needs of empire.

 

            Canon XII of the Council of Nicaea (A.D. 325) reads as follows:

 

As many as were called by grace and displayed the first zeal, having cast aside their military girdles, but afterward returned, like dogs to their own vomit, so that some spent money and by means of gifts regained their military stations: let these, after they have passed the space of three years as hearers, be for ten years prostrators.  But in all these cases it is necessary to examine well into their purpose and what their repentance appears to be like.  For as many as give evidence of their conversions by deeds, and not pretence, with fear, tears, and perseverance, and good works, when they have fulfilled their time as hearers, may properly communicate in prayers; and after that the bishop may determine yet more favourably concerning them.  But those who take the matter with indifference, and who think the form of not entering the Church is sufficient for their conversion must fulfil the whole time.

 

            It is noteworthy that the Council called by Emperor Constantine for the purpose of overcoming divisions in the Church, such that the Church might function as a unifying force for his newly reunified empire, should express such strong aversion to the profession that was instrumental in Constantine's victory over his rivals.  The bishops were, of course, merely expressing the sentiment they had grown up with during the time of persecutions.  The soldier's profession was antithetical to the Christian way of life because the raison d'être of soldiering was violence against enemies.

            Later hagiographies of soldier saints such as Maurice or Sebastian imply that these men were both Christian and active in military service and that they came to martyrdom for refusing to participate in pagan religious rites or in violence against fellow Christians.  Given the explicit aversion toward military life expressed by the bishops at Nicaea, however, it is likely that these stories evolved in the later context of a "Christian" empire with a "Christian" army to encourage troops to be loyal to their fellow Christians.  As to the original circumstances of these martyrdoms, they may have looked more like that of Menas (Mina) in Egypt, who, upon his conversion to Christianity, left the military altogether to embrace the ascetic life, and was later killed in one of the general persecutions.

            A generation after Nicaea, the ambiguity of the new circumstance of an increasingly "Christian" empire whose borders needed guarding comes through in Basil of Caesarea (330-379), when he writes, "Our fathers did not think that killing in war was murder; yet I think it advisable for such as have been guilty of it to forebear communion three years," (The Canons of Basil, XIII).  Basil is torn between what others tell him and his own inner sense of what it means to be a faithful Christian.

            Augustine of Hippo (354-430) affirmed the basic pacifist nature of the Christian life, but also saw that some means was required to protect women, children, and the defenceless from the predations of invaders and the violence of criminals.  He proposed that while Christians ought not use violence to defend themselves, they were permitted to use the means of violence to shield others.  In this way the profession of soldiering could be an acceptable Christian calling as long as the mandate of the military was the protection of the defenceless.

            Nearly a thousand years after Augustine, Thomas Aquinas (1227-1274), living in the midst of the "Christian civilization" of Medieval Europe, notable for its unending state of internal armed conflict as princes and monarchs vied for local and regional hegemony, formulated what would come to be known as the "Just War Theory."  Thomas asserted the following: 

 

In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary.  First, the authority of the sovereign by whose command the war is to be waged.  For it is not the business of a private individual to declare war, because he can seek for redress of his rights from the tribunal of his superior.  Moreover, it is not the business of a private individual to summon together the people, which has to be done in wartime.  And as the care of the common weal is committed to those who are in authority, it is their business to watch over the common weal of the city, kingdom or province subject to them.  And just as it is lawful for them to have recourse to the sword in defending that common weal against internal disturbances, when they punish evil-doers, according to the words of the Apostle: "He beareth not the sword in vain: for he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil"; so too, it is their business to have recourse to the sword of war in defending the common weal against external enemies. Hence it is said to those who are in authority: "Rescue the poor: and deliver the needy out of the hand of the sinner"; and for this reason, Augustine says: "The natural order conducive to peace among mortals demands that the power to declare and counsel war should be in the hands of those who hold the supreme authority."

Secondly, a just cause is required, namely that those who are attacked, should be attacked because they deserve it on account of some fault. Wherefore Augustine says: "A just war is wont to be described as one that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state has to be punished, for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects, or to restore what it has seized unjustly."

Thirdly, it is necessary that the belligerents should have a rightful intention, so that they intend the advancement of good, or the avoidance of evil. Hence Augustine says: "True religion looks upon as peaceful those wars that are waged not for motives of aggrandizement, or cruelty, but with the object of securing peace, of punishing evil-doers, and of uplifting the good." For it may happen that the war is declared by the legitimate authority, and for a just cause, and yet be rendered unlawful through a wicked intention. Hence Augustine says: "The passion for inflicting harm, the cruel thirst for vengeance, an unpacific and relentless spirit, the fever of revolt, the lust of power, and such like things, all these are rightly condemned in war." (Summa Theologia, Second Part of the Second Part, Question 40, Article 1)

 

            The inner struggle is visible here, as faithful Christians tried to find a way to accommodate the original spiritual insight about the "peaceable" life set out by Jesus, to the needs of state and warcraft.  We also see here the evolution of the understanding of the Christian's relationship to the civil authorities from non-violent endurance in the time of Jesus and Paul, to one of defiant proclamation in the next two and a half centuries, to one of submissive obedience once those authorities wear the mantle of Christian identity.  What had been a spiritual insight about life in the world became a set of studied teachings and guidelines setting out the obligations and limitations of ruler, army, and loyal Christian subject.

            The dangers of abuse in this trend toward cooperative submission to the needs of rulers are clear and were exploited by "Christian" monarchs.  John Chrysostom (347-407), who served for a time as the Patriarch of Constantinople, a position appointed by the emperor, says in his Homily on I Timothy 2:1-4:

 

For God has appointed government for the public good.  When, therefore, they make war for this end, and stand on guard for our security, were it not unreasonable that we should not offer prayers for their safety in wars and dangers?  It is therefore not flattery, but agreeable to the rules of justice.  For if they were not preserved, and prospered in their wars, our affairs must necessarily be involved in confusion and trouble; and if they were cut off, we must either serve ourselves, or be scattered up and down as fugitives.  For they are a sort of bulwarks thrown up before us, within which those who are enclosed are in peace and safety. (Homily VI)

 

            He is acutely aware of the degree to which the military success of his emperor means peace and safety for his loyal subjects.  It is one thing, however, for a congregation of believers to hear these words encouraging them to be supportive of their ruler and his armies in their prayers, and another thing for a ruler to hear these words and derive a sense of entitlement from them, that is, entitlement to the unquestioning obedience of the people.  It is at this logical juncture that the spiritual insight of our dependence on others (an insight that can lead to a sense of gratitude and prayerful support) can so easily be misused to become a doctrine to undergird power, thus coming unhinged from its original genius.

            It strikes me here that one could assert the following litmus test: If a doctrine leads people to enter into the self-emptying life of Jesus, then it is in the spirit of those first insights about Jesus; but if a doctrine undergirds violent, unjust, exploitive, or oppressive systems, or leads individuals to arrogance, hubris, sense of entitlement, or other self-serving impulses, then it stands against those original insights about Jesus.

 

 

Discerning Insight in Doctrine

 

            It is important, then, to distinguish between the misuse of doctrine and the heart of doctrine.  Doctrine misused is generally doctrine used for control or to justify some social, cultural, or political given such as class privilege, gender privilege, or institutional privilege.  The heart of doctrine is to lead one to insight about the person and teaching of Jesus, such that one seeks to enter into that life and teaching with all of one's self.

            It would be a mistake to jettison all doctrine out of hand in an effort to reclaim insight.  While some individual doctrines can be viewed as cynical adaptations to institutional or social needs, other doctrines arise out of the struggle of faithful Christians to apply spiritual insight in practical ways in order to find a balance between the insights of previous generations and the changing circumstances of their own times.  Rather than discard doctrine out of hand, it is more useful to examine each doctrine within the context of its origins and thereby discern the underlying wisdom of the doctrine in that context.

            For example, while such doctrines as the one which asserts the primacy of the Roman Patriarch over all other bishops or the Doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings are clearly developments driven by the desire to control, others, such as the Just War Theory, embody a more complex set of struggles and reflections that warrant further inner struggle and reflection (for example, if one enters into the non-violent way of Jesus, what is the faithful response of a Christian when others are attacked?).  By the same token, the doctrines about the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Two-fold Nature of Christ are more than the metaphysical speculations of people with too much time on their hands.  Rather, they are attempts to work out the ramifications of the original insight about Jesus, expressed in various ways in the New Testament, within the intellectual framework of the day.  Each doctrinal assertion about the Trinity and Jesus was also an affirmation of other principles, such as the continuity of the God of the Israelites and the Heavenly Father of Jesus, the solidarity of God with God's creation, and the image of God in humanity.  Once these connexions are recognized, Trinitarian teaching reveals itself to be a reflection on the mystical interaction of the divine with the creation.

            The task of reclaiming the insights that stand behind these doctrines is one of looking deeper.  It is one of suspending prejudgment, and seeking the inner wisdom that stands behind each doctrine.  Within the Christian context, this means seeking the links between the original insights communicated in the New Testament and each later doctrine or interconnected set of doctrines (such as the doctrinal complex Trinity-Creation-Incarnation-Deification/Sanctification).  In this way doctrine can again function to lead one toward insight; to move one through "dismantling and dislocation"; to force one into the "mental interim...the unfamiliar, unparalleled, incredible" so that "after much perplexity and embarrassment" one can make the "breakthrough" and came to insight.