The Church and It's Self-Subversion

There is much discussion, and arguing, and outright yelling going on right now about the church and her formation of doctrine. It is not a new criticism that says the church and her doctrine as we know it is simply the result of Constantine and his political co-optation of the church. That Christianity is what it is because it has been power-hungry from its formal inception. But, thanks to a terribly written novel, an even worse movie and some grumpy atheists, these arguments are finding a larger audience.

Today, I revisited Alan Lewis' "Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday," and found something I wanted to share. He does not deny the role that Constantine and his politics played in the formation of the church's doctrine. However, because of the incarnational nature of Christian theology - basically because God uses people, even the ones who suck royally - truth could (did) still win out, and Constantine ended up, on an eternal scale, shooting himself in his very foot that pressed on the necks of the lowly. But Lewis says it better:

(Forming doctrine is an) uncertain struggle to speak as truthfully as possible, though always fallibly and with penultimacy, (that) happens not in a vacuum of intellectual and spiritual purity, but in the midst of and affected by webs of ecclesiastical, political, and social circumstance. How extraordinary, then, in this case, that it was the doctrine of the Trinity and thus a God of vulnerability and lowliness to which the church's authorities gave clear endorsement in the years and decades following its triumph - however disastrous that establishment of Christendom may have been for the followers of Jesus, crucified by Pontius Pilate. The church did not stop thinking now about the nature of the gospel, theologically anaesthetized by the elixir of political power. RATHER, AN UNDERSTANDING OF GOD WAS SEALED WHICH POSITIVELY CHALLENGED THE VERY NOTIONS OF EARTHLY POWER AND IMPERIAL AUTHORITY WHICH THE CHURCH IN PRACTICE WAS ENJOYING.If ever there was a moment to preserve for its political effect belief in God as monad it might have been when Constantine brought church and state together under a single dominion: "one God, one emperor, one church." In the face of such a claim upon divine monarchy, the ultimate sanctification of earthly sovereignty, the church chose to reject monistic unitarianism for plurality and community within God, the sharing of rule among interdependents rather than its imposition by a single, superior, self-sufficient governor upon inferior subjects. Whatever might be true of the church, of pope and patriarch, of God the church's doctrine said that majesty and glory are revealed in the lowliness of mortal being; that almightiness and power are exercised not ultimately from on high but in the powerlessness of a crucified and buried one; that transcendence and distance do not negate but find expression in vulnerability and intimacy, and in the depths of flesh and loss and death. In such contradictions of the external context, AND SUBVERTING ITS OWN BRIGHT MOMENT OF POWER AND GLORY, the church of Jesus Christ gave birth to a new doctrine which, in spite of everything, bore witness to the scandalous story of the cross by which foolishness, weakness, and nothingness bring to shame all that has existence, might, and wisdom. (emphasis mine)

Here, doctrine seems to provide its own nice critique of those who attack it, as well as those who form it.

May we always be open to the critique of the truth, and remember that it is not ours to own, but rather that by which we are to be owned.