Who's In, Who's Out, and Who Says

Plunging into the Scriptures is spiritually renewing for me, especially when I can look at them with the help of scholars who are both serious and faithful about their craft. Wrangling with the "Church Fathers" is my close second to wrestling with the Bible. One morning, while poking around in a number of Patristic texts and commentaries, willy-nilly, I re-discovered an important fact about the theological discussions of the first three centuries that is more than just a little relevant to this present decade.

In those days, every revered teacher held very strong opinions about what everyone else ought to think about the emerging core doctrines of the church. The trouble was that the opinions they put forward differed greatly, even though this obvious fact did not stop them from insisting that if you did not agree with them about their favorite doctrinal constructions, you had already put yourself outside the Christian fellowship.

Ever since Constantine dictated that potentially divisive theological debates should be snuffed out either by his bishops' votes or his armies' swords, the church has been working overtime to convince Christians that they must all share one mind about every core belief of our common faith. As Constantine behaved toward the bishops, all too many church leaders behave toward their fellow believers: affirm the same things in the same way, or you're out. In previous centuries, you were not only out; you could also be dead.

Religious freedom? The dictates of conscience? The devil, you say. We'll tell you what and how to believe, and whether you are doing the belief-thing right or not. The erudite way of putting this is usually to make frequent references to "the mind of the Church" as having long ago demonstrated beyond all doubt the errors of deviant opinions about God, Christ, and human destiny. Make that mind your own, and you will be thinking straight as a Christian. Step outside that framework of thought for even a moment, and you will lose not only your own mind and your friends in the true faith, but your eternal soul as well.

For a while, it looked like the Protestantist movements of the sixteenth century were going to help greatly in recovering the openness of a truly apostolic Christianity. But not even a generation after Luther nailed his own theses to the Wittenburg church door, Protestant groups of all ilks were promulgating creeds and confessions to show (a) how wrong all the Catholics are, and (b) how even more wrong all the other Protestants are. The first objective is not the issue it once was, but the second still is. Holding fast to the right beliefs, as defined by the right people, once again threatens to become the single most important sign of genuine faith.

The idea that there is one and only one "mind of the Church" is fetching, but also wistful. One thing that psychology has taught us well is that we argue the most vehemently for things about which we have the greatest doubts. We need to apply this teaching to the fact that churches sometimes get their people to say the same things in the same way only by force. Christians do not and cannot see things alike all the time, contrary to the illusions of those in our time who are calling the rest of us to wage a jihad for "purity of doctrine."

Actually, the idea of "the mind of the Church" is a very dangerous idea. What makes it so is that it generally confuses the whole Church of Jesus Christ with the leaders of and in it who have their own favorite theological axes to grind. Much of what has passed for authoritative church teaching is just that: the prescriptions and prohibitions of a chosen few who are authorized to define the faith for rather than with everybody else, and to ostracize those who think differently than they do.

Are there beliefs that in the holding of them will set us outside the Christian fellowship? Of course. One is that the Maker of Heaven and Earth takes delight in the destruction of anything he has created. Another is that anything we do is acceptable in the sight of God as long as we do it from sincere and thoughtful deliberation. And there are more besides. But in the end of the day, the "mind of the Church" will contain far fewer of them than a lot of church leaders will like, and some of their most righteously held favorites not at all.