Wednesday, December 10, 2003
(1:00 AM) | Anonymous:
The church does not happen everywhere
Those of us who study theology or know Church history and care about the doctrine of the Trinity recognize two main heresies that plague the Church even today. Ariainsim, the heresy that brought the Nicene council together to proclaim that Christ was equal and of the same ousia as the Father, and Modalism, which has, from time to time, been official Church dogma that stated that there was some hidden God behind the appearances of God as revealed in the Creator, Son and Spirit. Jurgen Moltmann argues that both of these heresies support "monarchy" and the subjection of human freedom by an absolute subject. This is also, I think, the kind of thing that Derrida argues against with his idea of "Religion without Religion"; Derrida wants to free religion from the violence done in it's name or in God's name. Both of them are right and I think most of my friends are comfortable saying that the emperor must always be clothed with royal robes while Christ must be naked and bleeding and these two things cannot be reconciled. Clearly this is true and we need look no further than our own Christian President but it may be helpful to look at Hitler and Constantine as well.
There is another heresy I find to be troubling, that is the idea that the Church happens everywhere. I don't even know if this heresy has a name (or if I am the only one that wants to call it a heresy) but I feel it is as large a threat as Constantine and has arisen as a direct result of the Church’s lack of relevance in the world today.
The reason I hate this kind of thinking is not because it gives the emperor more power in the name of God directly, but rather because it gives him more power through the apathy of the people of God. The kind of people I grew up with fall into this way of thinking constantly, I have sympathy with it because of the way I grew up but something about it really bothers me. It seems to come from the anarchistic thinking that many of us who wanted to rebel against the kind of Church that gave the emperor "holy" robes but it does so at the expense of giving the Church a voice or a hand. By making Christ's body (the Church) everywhere we have taken away Christ's singularity in a vain attempt to subsume the Many into the One again. As if salvation existed in order for us to be subsumed!
What confuses me is that the very people who say this would never want to admit that the Church happens in a KKK meeting (though let us pray and weep for the coming of Christ even there!) but by their very language it must mean that. By remaining silent in hopes of letting everyone be Christian (or at least religious) we are forced to say "Amen" when the Empire becomes the Church catholic.
So where has this come from? The Church, for far too long, has let itself become a tool of the secular Nation-State and has become irrelevant in the face of massive oppression. It can’t very well bite the hand that feeds it (though it should!). People who have become disgusted with this, people like myself and I am sure like many of The Weblog’s faithful readers, and have jumped ship. We haven’t wanted to deny Christ, after all we still believe in Hell, kinda, sort of and so we find salvation everywhere.
I think I’m advocating a kind of battered wife 'ought' to stay with her husband position. As we are to submit to the government, we must also submit to the Church (since the two have such a strange alliance) and that submission means turning the other cheek every time we are slapped for speaking up. I love my Church and it saddens me that it doesn’t happen everywhere but divorce isn’t an option in this case. This, by no means, advocates a real battered wife stay with her husband, though that may sometimes be her calling and other times her calling is to cut his penis off and throw it out a car window. That's the nature of undecidability.
I know, you are sick of the Jesus posts. Next time I promise I’ll write something about Howard Dean.
