Читать книгу What is Christianity? - Douglas Jacobsen - Страница 15

The Great Church in the Roman Empire was the largest group of Christians in the world when the Chalcedonian Creed was being written, but it was certainly not the only group. Many Christian sects (marginalized Christian communities that were not legally recognized by either the Imperial Church or the government of Rome) continued to survive out of public sight within the borders of the empire, and groups of Christians outside the Roman Empire were even more diverse. As early as the first century, Christianity had been introduced to southern India via maritime trade routes, and it subsequently became a permanent minority religion within India’s complex social and spiritual environment. Christianity also put down roots in the Persian Empire (now Iraq and Iran) as early as the second century, and Christianity was brought to Armenia and Georgia in the Caucuses (the land between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea) about the same time. Christianity made its way into Ethiopia during the fourth century, and later a group of nine theologically anti-Chalcedonian monks (known as the Nine Saints) fled south from Syria to Ethiopia where they helped to complete the evangelization of the region. Contemporaneously, Patrick was preaching the gospel in Ireland, where Christianity was organized along the lines of the Irish clan system rather than clustering around major urban centers as it did in the Roman Empire.

Christians adopted slightly different Christian identities in each separate region. Armenia, for example, was the first nation to officially embrace Christianity as its state religion, which remains a source of pride for Armenian Christians even today. Christians in Persia were severely persecuted – far beyond the horrors endured by Christians in the Roman Empire – but they remained faithful nonetheless, and joyful perseverance in suffering became a mainstay of their identity. In Ethiopia, where Judaism was historically respected, Jewish ideas and customs remained prominent in the movement. The fact that Christian communities adopted locally unique practices does not mean that they stopped thinking of themselves as belonging to a larger Christian movement that transcends cultural and national boundaries. Then, as now, Christians understood that being associated with a specific local Christian community was fully compatible with viewing other different Christians as siblings in faith. Christian unity was understood to be a matter of mutual recognition and respect much more than it was a matter of strict uniformity of practices or beliefs.

The Roman Imperial Church became the exception to this rule. Rome was a legalistic society, and the Roman Imperial Church imbibed that tendency toward legalism. Romans assumed that there really was one best and proper way to do everything, and the purpose of the law was to identify and enforce that one correct path. In earlier centuries, Christian communities had negotiated their way toward consensual agreements that mitigated conflict but simultaneously allowed reasonable differences to remain. This was true even of the Great Church before Constantine. As the church and the Roman state became more closely aligned, however, it became harder to maintain even a minimal degree of organizational graciousness. The Imperial Church wanted uniformity, and that desire eventually caused the larger Christian movement to snap under the pressure. A Great Division took place, and the formerly diverse but loosely connected Christian movement became three separate and distinct Christian traditions.