Constantine... Holy Roman Community Wrecker

I was talking with a friend tonight... he was telling me a conversation he had had with a friend of his about what Christianity might have been like had there not been a Constantine (or had the church not decided to sell out to their first celebrity convert in a misguided attempt to find legitimacy). If there were not a cemented "orthodoxy" that focused all of our attention on the acceptance of propositional truth that, as E. Stanley Jones puts it, doesn't touch the core of our being (much less our lifestyle), would we be forced to turn to each other for help in interpreting God's Word to us (and I'm only partially referring to the Bible).

I thought it was an interesting thing to think about. Have we willingly given up a degree of community for the security of orthodoxy? Instead of engaging in a thoughtful dialogue with other believers about what we believe God is doing with us and why, we can simply have such knowledge dispensed to us now by "people who know", whether they be a priest, the latest author, our "accountability group" leader, or some other human king, to borrow a phrase from Tom Mohn.
posted by Stephen at 12:38 AM | |