By Vexen Crabtree 2008 Jul 22
Pauline Christianity represents a whole new type of Christianity: It dropped all the difficult Laws of the Old Testament. The early Ebionite Christians who may have been the very first Christians, correctly upheld them but this made it hard to obtain converts. Pauline Christianity won many converts amongst Romans, which is why much of the Canon chosen by later Pauline Christians in the fourth century were in Greek rather than in the native tongue of anyone who had spoken to Jesus in person. Gnostics in the second century complained of a growing form of Christianity that dispensed with the inner, gnostic, teachings of Christianity and only embraced the outer stories. They said this growing form of Christianity was "a 'worldly Christianity' suitable for 'people in a hurry'. Gnosticism, by contrast, was a truly 'spiritual Christianity'. These particular quotations are not from some little known Gnostic heretic, but from the writings of two of the most eminent Christians of the early Church - Clement, the head of the first Christian philosophical school in Alexandria, and his successor Origen"1. But it was the easier, more simplistic and literalist form of Pauline Christianity that was to grow.
Pauline Christianity was therefore quite an extremely liberal (at the time), loose, and Gentile-orientated form of Christianity. It came to dominate Christianity from the 5th century so completely that it is hard, in modern days, to appreciate just how different Christianity in the past was, compared to Christianity today.
The Roman Christian Church became very powerful, with powerful converts, lots of wealth, and more importantly than both of these: access to the publishing press and scribes of the Roman Empire. As a result of the literary strength of the Roman Church, the books of the New Testament were chosen solely from Pauline Christian texts, especially from the letters (epistles) written by St Paul, and those written in his name. It made continual proclamations that all other, including older forms of Christianity that were closer to Christian ideals, forms of Christianity were 'heresies', to be suppressed and excluded from civility.
In retrospect, it is easy to see that the Christians who courted the emperor, and who were popular in Rome, would no doubt win any prolonged disputes between themselves and others. It was Roman power that broke the Arians and made Nicene Christianity victorious.
“As should be clear, for Bauer, the internal Christian conflicts were struggles over power, not just theology. And the side that knew how to utilize power was the side that won. More specifically, Bauer pointed out that the Christian community in Rome was comparatively large and affluent. Moreover, located in the capital of the empire, it had inherited a tradition of administrative prowess [...]. Using the administrative skills of its leaders and its vast material resources, the church in Rome managed to exert influence over other Christian communities. Among other things, the Roman Christians promoted a hierarchical structure, insisting that each church should have a single bishop. [...] By paying for the manumission of slaves and purchasing the freedom of prisoners, the Roman church brought large numbers of grateful converts into the fold, while the judicious use of gifts and alms offered to other churches naturally effected a sympathetic hearing of their views. [...] By the end of the third century, the Roman form of Christianity had established dominance.”"Lost Christianities" by Bart Ehrman (2003)2
After emperor Julian, another Arian emperor, Valens, ruled the East of the empire. After the tumultuous and warring church councils of the previous century, he chose to limit the power of what church councils could do. The Church was still heavily divided between the Arians and the Nicenes, many of the former of whom could not bare the thought of returning to pseudo-paganism where there were multiple god-like beings (Jesus and God), and the latter of which could not bear the thought of Jesus being less than divine. Under Valens, however, a new consensus became possible.
“Under his relativity mild regime, a new theological school aimed at uniting these forces began to flourish in Asia Minor. Its greatest exponents were three boyhood friends from Cappadocia: Basil of Cappadocian Caesarea (Basil the Great), his younger brother, Gregory of Nyssa, and their best friend, Gregory of Nazianzus. [...]
Together the three Cappadocians developed the ideas that would make it possible for conservative Arians and Nicene Christians eventually to fuse. Oddly, what triggered this burst of creative thinking was the appearance of a new issue that threatened to make divisions within the Christian community even more contentious and complex: the nature of the Holy Spirit. [...]
What was needed to clear up this confusion was something that the Nicene Creed alone could not supply: a doctrine explaining how God could be One and yet consist of two or three separate entities. [...] The corrective was to distinguish clearly between ousia and hypostasis, essence and being. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three separate beings, each with his own individual characteristics - they are three hypostases. But they are one and the same in essence - they are homoousious. Adopting an idea of Origen's that easterners would appreciate, Basil described Jesus was a "sharer of [God's] nature, not created by fiat, but shining out continuously from his ousia." [...] God is three individuals sharing one essence.”
"When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity During the Last Days of Rome" by R. Rubenstein (1999)3
The doctrine of the trinity was created as a wordplay in an attempt to get the strict monotheist Arians to accept the same creed as the more pagan Athansasius Christians. You could read such a contradictory theology as either polytheism (3 gods), henotheism (1 god with 3 faces, like Hinduism) or monotheism (actually one God, but with 2 subordinate 'appearances' to mankind). Such subtle distinctions were fused in the doctrine of the trinity; you could if you wanted (like many did) to place God the Father a 'greater' place in the Trinity, and consider Jesus and the Holy Spirit to be subordinate, or you could consider them all to be equal emanations of the divine trinity, as was the orthodox position adopted as the next Nicene update of 381.
Nowadays the doctrine of the Trinity is assumed by nearly all Christians, even if they do not understand it. What has been lost is a sense of it's innovative nature. This innovation resulted from the urgent debates over the nature of the Christian god, which took place in the first few centuries. This debate itself resulted from Christianity being a fusion of different movements within Judaism and Paganism; the scriptures themselves sometimes reflect God as one thing, sometimes as a nother. New Testament theology is very unclear, vague and indistinct when it comes to the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost. It took hundreds of years for the doctrine of a 3-person godhead to emerge, and over the millennium the idea that the Holy Spirit was a person in the trinity only slowly gained prominence. Christian forefathers mostly ignored, but sometimes argued for, and sometimes argued against, the traits of the Holy Spirit. When definitions of the Holy Spirit are most in tune with Scriptures, it is very vague and certainly an abstract concept rather than a 'person'.
“Many contemporary theologians are forced to admit that New Testament evidence for the personal nature of the Holy Ghost is, to say the least, indistinct. Professor Jackson concedes that New Testament witness of the Holy Spirit is scanty and concludes: 'Our traditional religious phraseology has fixed so firmly in the popular mind the threefold distinction of Persons within the Godhead that many readers often fail to note how much less definate is the language of Scriptures'.”"Jesus Versus Christianity" by Alfred Reynolds (1993)4
The savage edicts of emperor Theodosius I (378-395) heralded the creation of Catholic Christianity, and created the definition of the 'heretics' as all those who did not accept his modified Nicene Creed of 381CE, (no longer referred to as the Creed of Nicene of 325CE): "Here we see the origin of Roman papal power, religious intolerance, and sixteen centuries of trinitarian dogmatism in one imperial document"5.
“From that time on there was only one religion and one creed in the whole Empire. Any form which denied the one divine essence in three hypostases, or in Western terms, the one substance in three Persons, was subject to savage persecution. Theodosius also forbade 'heathen' worship, under severe penalties, such as were metered out only for the most heinous crimes.”"Jesus Versus Christianity" by Alfred Reynolds (1993)5
Christianity had gone from a sect of Judaism, into an oppressed, hectic minority religion popular amongst the young and the rebellious, and had its adherents grow up into the power centres of the Roman Empire.
“At the beginning of the fourth century, Christians may have comprised something like 5 to 7 percent of the population; but with the conversion of Constantine the church grew in leaps and bounds. By the end of the century it appears to have been the religion of choice of fully half the empire. After Constantine, every emperor except one was Christian. Theodosius I (emperor 379-95CE) made Christianity (specifically Roman Christianity, with the Bishop of Rome having ultimate religious authority) the official religion of the state [...]. Christianity became the religion to be handed down to Middle Ages and onwards.”
"Lost Christianities" by Bart Ehrman (2003)6
The power-centric approach of Roman Christianity then prevailed over diversity for over a thousand years before its next major changes. Its infamous Inquisition and Crusades were the modern apparatus to replace what it lost when the Roman Empire fell.
“The first inquisition was created 1184 annihilate the Cathar 'heresy' following a Crusade to do the same thing, not as a means of fighting witchcraft. All of the Inquisitions - e.g. the Medieval, the Episcopal, the Papal, the Roman, the Spanish and the Portuguese - were created to eradicate differences in opinion among Christians; only the Roman way was permitted.”"Sophia Bestiae" by Edward O'Toole (2006)7
The historian A. McCall describes the ungodly methods of the Christian orthodox from the 12th century onwards. However where he, perhaps hastily states that 'growing numbers of heretics' were the problem, I believe that the number of 'heretics' has always been very high and that it was the Church's increasing strictness that produced heretics through active exclusion, rather than any increase in deviant belief.
“From the twelfth century onwards, more and more severe measures were introduced to deal with the growing numbers of heretics, the Church, for its part, neither forbad the use of torture to extract 'free concessions' from suspected heretics nor shrank any longer, once the heretic has made such a confession, from imposing the death penalty. [...] And so, here again, with the setting up in 1230 of the Holy Office, and as a result of the unholy zeal which some officers of the Inquisition subsequently displayed in their determination to eradicate any trace of wrong belief, both the organized Church, in general, and the Papacy under whose control the Inquisition was established, in particular, were to give their Christian flock cause rather to fear and even loathe than to love or respect them. Indeed, to some Christians it seemed that by countenancing such ferocious measures, the religious authorities were embracing the ways of the Devil and hence forfeiting any claim to their spiritual allegiance: and so, gradually, as violence begat more violence, was the spiritual standing of the religious authorities still further eroded.”"The Medieval Underworld" by Andrew McCall (1979)
The gnostic Mithraists and Jewish Ebionites formed the very first Christians of the first century, with practices and beliefs based respectively on Gnostic and Judaistic rituals, symbols and practices. Pauline Christians dispensed with the difficult Jewish laws and became popular amongst gentiles, soon out-numbering the Jewish Christians, causing them to be secluded and eventually suppressed. Increasing literalism amongst roman converts then led the Pauline Christians to become obsessed with enforcing their literal interpretation of Christianities original stories, causing another huge rift with older gnostic-style Christians. With Roman power behind their printing press and the favour of Emperors, the Pauline-Nicene Christians wiped out the gnostics, annihilated the Arians after long bloody campaigns, and murdered and burnt the Marcionites and many other small sects, to leave themselves as the sole Christians within the Roman Empire, free to edit their own books to 'prove' how all their predecessors had been wrong. The three Cappadocian scholars promoted the Holy Spirit to the godhead to create a Trinity, which was codified strictly in to the Nicene Creed of 381, which went to careful lengths to disclaim against 'heresy'. Emperor Theodosius published a series of forceful edicts intolerant of all non-Nicene sects. This state of affairs persisted in the West for over a thousand years from the 5th century.
Despite the number of denominations that now exist, Christian diversity has never again regained the richness it had in the first few centuries. Christianity has remained, in the West, the Pauline, Cappadocian, Nicene victor that emerged from the ashes of Christian groups within the Roman Empire and Judea. It is a shame that it appears the most worldly, least spiritual, most power-hungry, least tolerant, most violent and least honest form of Christianity is the one that survived those brutal battles of the first few centuries.
Types of Christianity in History
Ehrman, Bart
"Lost Christianities" (2003 hardback). Oxford University Press, New York, USA.
Freke, Timothy & Gandy, Peter
"The Jesus Mysteries" (1999). Text taken from 2000 paperback edition. Published by Thorsons, London. [Book Review]
McCall, Andrew
"The Medieval Underworld" (1979). Quotes from 2004 Sutton Publishing softback edition.
O'Toole, Edward
"Sophia Bestiae" (2006 Jun 06). Published by Aestheteka Press. Quotes taken from a pre-release edition.
Reynolds, Alfred
"Jesus Versus Christianity" (1993 ed). Originally published 1988. Cambridge International Publishers, London UK.
Rubenstein, Richard E.
"When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity During the Last Days of Rome" (1999). First Harvest edition, 2000. Published by Harcourt, Inc.
By Vexen Crabtree 2008 Jul 22