In this penultimate article on the problem of exclusivity, I will further develop the idolatry perspective raised in the previous article, and also incorporate the aspect of mythology. Orthodox Christianity is not overtly idolatrous, but it is steeped in mythology.
Last month, I made much of the “reasonableness” of idolatry, at least from a human perspective. I wrote that we ought not think of idolaters in the Bible as hopelessly clueless semi-civilized primitives who lived in less enlightened times. Idolatry represented the end product of a process of belief that attempted to incorporate the great powers of nature into one’s life. However, God’s condemnation remained absolute and without deference to any alleged positive intentions of the idolater (e.g., Psa. 135:15-18).
Orthodox Christianity has as much resemblance to original Christianity as idolatry does to monotheism. The path to orthodoxy followed a somewhat different path than that which resulted in idolatry, but some parallels are evident. This is a rich and fascinating study that I will only outline here.
Early Christian believers came from either Jewish or Gentile backgrounds. On the one hand Jews shed the ineffective rituals based on Mosaic law, and on the other, pagans discarded their immorality and superstitions. Regardless of their previous lives, all believers witnessed the manifestation of power in the gospel and the forms of worship of first century ecclesias. This power was a spiritual power that led to new lives in Christ. Love, faith, unity, peace, and other virtues came to fruition in some of the unlikeliest of humans, including Paul the Apostle.
The first century ecclesias constituted a religious situation parallel to the world of the idolater of Isaiah 44, but set in a different context. Instead of wanting to identify with and obtain the powers of nature for the sake of one’s natural life (harvest, war, reproduction, wealth, etc.), people wanted to improve their spiritual lives and find salvation. They wanted to become individual participants in the burgeoning Christian movement. They saw the power that changed lives in the early church and, as they joined the various assemblies of brothers and sisters, they sought to isolate and understand wherein the motivating and sanctifying forces lay. In apostolic times, a combination of several factors worked together to create the ecclesia: personal emulation of Jesus’ representative sacrifice, the active Spirit powers, the communal strength of brothers and sisters serving each other in harmony, the power of prayer, the character-building adversities of life, and the influence of inspiring brothers and sisters such as Paul, Barnabas, Priscilla, Aquilla, Epaphroditus, and many others.
As time progressed, inevitably the human desire to obtain spiritual benefits with a lesser investment wrought its evil work within the household of God. People wanted the power of religion, of course, but they wanted it in some easily attainable, immediate, tangible fashion. While it might come easily and naturally to make material and tangible idols to represent the powers of nature, how does one materially represent the power that converts a life or brings salvation? What idol would you make to represent the growth of internal peace, for instance? What object or image would you choose to concretize the concept of “faith?”1Idolatry does not easily fit into the spiritual scheme of Christianity. Moreover, with just a minimum of rituals, there wasn’t much to work with on that account.
Thus, the path to orthodox idolatry did not first come in the form of making images to represent religious values. First there came a distinct shift in the belief system. Of greatest significance was the deification of Jesus, which began probably late in the first century and reached formality in 325 with the formulation of the Nicene Creed.2This new view of Christ was an understanding, a “doctrine,” and not a physical image. The deified Jesus was soon represented in images, sculptures, and artwork of many sorts. Christianity never did devolve completely into material idolatry, although the icons of the Eastern orthodoxy and the cathedral affectations of the Western Catholic church did suffice for material representations of religious values.3
Had the early theologians retained the understanding of Jesus as we know it in truth (that he was a representative human, fully mortal, one who conquered sin living within the framework of human nature), would we have had the proliferation of Jesus-image icons that developed within the next few centuries? In the first century, worship consisted largely of small groups of brothers and sisters dedicated to mutually aiding each other in spiritual and natural matters. By the fifth century, worship meant assembling in large ornate buildings dedicated to rituals directed at icons of Jesus. The now apostate church “needed” the stature of the man-God, the divine, the God-who-became-man-to-rescue-our-immortalsouls. Thus, the idolatry of the Christian era was largely a matter of the changed perception of the work of the Savior, and then it became materialized in many ways. There was a close and necessary connection between a deified Jesus and the abundance of material representations of him, many of which achieved idolatrous status in their own right.
The Protestant reformation attempted to remove material and tangible forms, such as they were, from the Catholic Church, but they never (except for those smaller sects identified by Bro. Alan Eyre in The Protestors) pulled the plug on the root of the problem: the deified Jesus.
Mythological concepts of Jesus
Orthodoxy as we usually encounter it today in the form of evangelical groups does not seem to bear too many marks of idolatry, but the root of the problem, a deified Jesus, remains. Several other mythological features remain firmly in place, notably the doctrine of incarnation, that is, God becoming a human. This sort of interchangeability between the Divine and human realms is a common feature of mythologies, and is mentioned in Acts 14:11. Orthodoxy has had nearly two millennia to recognize and repair this problem, but to say that it’s firmly entrenched would be the understatement of the year. The divinity of Jesus is the sine qua non [essential feature] of orthodoxy, and the incarnation, as absurd as it is on any level (theological, practical, metaphysical), is the process by which God allegedly became man. This idea is patently mythological, and I’m sure it has its origins there. Trying to reconstruct what Constantine might have been thinking as the controversy swirled in the religious world around him, Rubenstein writes:
…Athanasius maintains that this utterly transcendent God transformed Himself into a man, suffered, died, and then resurrected Himself! Doesn’t this mixture of Creator and creature sound pagan?… He therefore hastens to add that the Father’s method of generating the Son is beyond human understanding.4
Rubenstein goes on to discuss the nature of Jesus under such an arrangement, and the necessary implications on the atonement:
Athanasius apparently thinks that Christ-like behavior is to be limited to a few desert saints like Antony, while the rest of us sinners wait in hope of unmerited salvation. It substitutes the sacraments of the Church for sacrificial action in the world. What, one wonders, would Jesus have made of that?5
Rubenstein nails the point: we cannot form a valid relationship to a false Jesus (Bro. John Launchbury’s series on the atonement also highlights this critical issue). The implications of a deified Jesus included mythologizing the mode of salvation and incorporating the idolatry of sacraments, icons, rituals, and pilgrimages. Understanding the atonement depends on knowing who God is, who Jesus is, and what humanity is. Theology does count, and it counts a lot. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does have to be right.
Today, many concepts or images exist, all under the name of Jesus. The Eastern and Western Catholic systems retain their highly visual and ritualized images, and the inevitable image worship that developed from them. Protestant churches may have rejected the overt imagery, but the deified Jesus concept abides. Speaking in broad terms, the protestant Jesus is a necessarily magical god capable of saving the immortal souls of his adherents; the requirements for being an adherent varies among denominations.
The Jesus of the evangelicals is a talismanic god, invoked for assistance in any circumstance of life, from the need for instant salvation to finding an open parking space. There is also the Jesus of the Unitarians and other organizations that have rejected Biblical veracity; we might not feel so akin to them for that reason, but their Jesus retains the same name, holding the form of religion, but denying the power of it. He has become only a great moral teacher, one among many, and the singularly defining aspect of resurrection is considered nothing more than a teaching myth.
More mythology
The battle between supernatural forces of good and evil is another obviously mythological feature of orthodoxy. There’s probably not a mythological tradition anywhere in the world that doesn’t have some version of this conflict, and it is a major feature of the oldest mythologies. In the somewhat sophisticated “Christian” version, the supernatural force of evil, the Devil himself, plies his nefarious work not by direct confrontation with God, but by contesting for the immortal souls of mankind. This form of an adversarial supernatural power fits right into the Christian scheme of salvation versus punishment.
And what shall we say of the ubiquitous immortal soul? Found in mythologies worldwide, the immortal soul certainly ranks as the primal expression of human arrogance. Even worse, it necessitates the equally mythological locations of heaven and hell. Again, there’s probably not a mythology anywhere without these features in some form.
It’s not my purpose here to catalog the errors of orthodox Christianity. Nor do I intend to show how these errors destroy any possibility of a meaningful relationship to God. Our writers have vigorously addressed these vital topics. My point here is to show that what might sound very close to us is, in fact, plainly mythological. Just as we would have no trouble excluding ourselves from a hypothetical idolater or devotee of some ancient mythology, we should have the same judgment about adherents to the conventions of orthodox Christianity in its many forms.
The early Christian departure from the Truth involved layering important principles upon existing mythological beliefs. Again, this is a subject ripe for detailed study, but the only point I want to make here is this: despite the similar terminology, orthodox Christianity is so much a mythological affair that it provides few insights into Biblical teaching.
Same terminology, different meaning
The troubling aspect is the overlap of terminology: God, Jesus, Bible, salvation, Holy Spirit, baptism, salvation, and so on. We can listen to people of this persuasion talk about their belief in Jesus and think that they are pretty well lined up with us. However, the words are only a veneer, and the meanings behind them are worlds apart. Many people use the word Jesus or the phrase “Son of God”. What they mean with these words differs at an essential level. Do not be deceived by similar terminology. What can sound very similar represents a system of falsehood that bears no resemblance to any truth about the world. Similar terminology masks ideas that share no harmonious relationship.
Ask yourself this question if you are sometimes vexed by the separateness we maintain from orthodoxy: “Would I be likely to accept the religion of an idolater or one who believed in any mythology? What if a Molech worshiper or one who believed in the Greek pantheon came into my presence? Would I consider their form of worship as close enough to mine that I would I extend my boundaries to include that person?” If the answer is “No,” and I expect it would be, then you should have the same response when asked about a practitioner of orthodoxy.
The underlying principles are the same in each case.
However, the main issue is not how we regard those entrapped in the errors of orthodoxy. The main concern of our life is how we respond to the love of God and our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who have revealed themselves to us in truth. Knowing the truth, we have no excuses for our discipleship.
- There is certainly a warning for us here concerning the statement of faith, and other tangible aspects of worship.
- For a well-documented and insightful history of this movement, read Richard Rubenstein’s When Jesus Became God (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999). It has been popular in our community, and for good reason. Rubenstein stated that “selling” a human Jesus, one like them, at that time in the Roman Empire was not at all feasible; the people needed a divine, iconic figure, one such as readily available in a deified Jesus image. Rubenstein accounts for social and political influences in this process.
- The word “iconoclast” (literally, “image breaker”) comes from the artifact-smashers of the Reformation ages. Pictures of the Virgin Mary, crucifixes, and cathedral artwork items were destroyed by frenzied mobs of zealous Protestants in outbreaks of what became known as “iconoclastic furies”.
- Rubenstein, p. 118.
- Rubenstein, p. 119.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One