Early Church History Rant: Part Deux

My friend, Matt Krabill, and I spent about an hour last night rehashing our Early Church History course. We became fairly immersed in the subject, that we about missed out on the fondue meal with a group of friends. As we stood in the kitchen, people kept beckoning us to come and partake of the gooey, cheesy goodness before it disappeared.

This engrossment has become common nature recently. Early Church History has held me in a trance now for the past few weeks. I tend to go off about it whenever I get the chance, which many of my friends can attest to. Since I am running out of people who will humor my fixation, I need to resort to blogging. In continuance of my previous post, here goes rant two on Early Church History...

The main critique I have is not of my professor or of my class that I took. Like I mentioned Yesterday, I felt like I have learned heaps. Part of that learning involves being taught a historical perspective that is fairly normative in its approach. This is the story of how church and Christianity developed in the West and how the West tends to remember that story. That normative approach offers me a conversation partner as I sift out my thoughts on the historical narrative of Christianity.

The main critique I have is that this history is taught with the same absence of consciousness of the culture question that was lacking in what developed into the Christendom understanding of Christianity. Christendom was a cheery place where the Christian faith became equated with society and culture. Of course it is more complex than this, but the fundamental issues remain. The engagement of the gospel in culture ceased to cause tension and a society, with a healthy homogeneity of absolute Christianity, tended to view the need for engagement, or mission, as moot.

Christendom rendered the cultural interaction with Christianity as a neutral encounter, which lead to the perception that truth is also neutrally intelligible apart from culture and contains universal application. This was evident, especially, as Christianity expanded from the West to other parts of the world. As Christianity became firmly grounded in a territorial conceptualization, expansion of the church piggybacked the whim of empire. Christianity became to be understood as universally normative according to the Western experience and perspective, much to the eternal joy of the world’s “unreached” peoples.

A good example of the culture question being being overlooked is the American context. American Christians tend to neglect the way our culture informs our understanding of Christianity. Coupled with the Christendom legacy of Christianity being somehow culturally neutral, American Christians often face a double whammy, in that we assume our cultural narrative is neutral as well. Part of the way we understand that neutrality is that our values are espoused to be universally normative. Think of our civil religion of liberty, freedom and democracy. We see those issues as either disembodied from our culture as universal truths or the other way around, as universal truths embodied in our culture.

Another example of the culture informing the context of church history is the impact of German nationality as the catalyst for the Reformation. I would argue that the Reformation was not absent of political or cultural influence. Of course the theological confrontation was the heart of the issue, but German nationality became a major rallying point behind the emergence of a major change in the church. Rome was exercising dominion, politically and religiously, over the German people. The translation of the Bible into German, Luther's theological challenge to the religious status quo of Rome, the German princes chaffing under foreign rule, all led to the convergence of political, religious, cultural, and social factors uniting against papal authority. The Reformation did not take place in a theological vacuum.

Granted, we all approach history from where we stand. My professor comes out of the reform tradition. For him, the reform becomes the definitive event in the trajectory of Christian history. Therefore, the doctrinal development of the Early Church becomes paramount to the theological clash of the Reformation. For me as an Anabaptist, it is easy to see the course of Christian history resulting in the need for a restoration. This of course informs my historical understanding. However, when we approach history without asking the culture question, I believe it can result in the blindsides of Christendom.

The world is changing and the gospel is becoming couched in cultures all over the world. Today it is absolutely impossible to avoid the cultural question. As the church expands, the integration and re-translation of the gospel is automatically present. There is no ambiguity about culture shaping and informing Christianity today. In fact, in a post-Christian west we are becoming more keenly aware of the non-Western Christian influence on the global church. In a post-Christendom West, we are finally asking the culture question of how the gospel can engage our contexts missionally.

This is my beef. It is apparent to me that no time in Christian history is it somehow removed from the culture question. Church does not take place in a vacuum. There is always the variable of culture.

See, what started with a simple discourse on Early Christian History, turned into a seriously long rant on what is wrong with the world... People like me shouldn't be allowed to blog.