Some Basic Concepts in Christianity

Pre-Christian Background

From a historical perspective, 1st Century CE Christianity, or more accurately, "the Jesus Movement," was a result of many sociological and theological factors. In a nutshell: Jewish messianic consciousness and Hellenization. Through the successive experiences of exile, Diaspora, Greek, Syrian and Roman occupation, oppression and Temple desecration, Jews sought desperately to hold on to their identity and purity in a world that seemed to be trying just as desperately to assimilate them into the whole. The Jewish apocalyptic vision became, among other things, that of a redeemer who would liberate Israel and restore her covenantal kingdom (review Meshiach on study page for Judaism). Hellenization refers essentially to the "Greek-ifying" of the entire Mediterranean and Near Eastern world. The 4th century BCE conquest of Alexander the Great did not conquer other lands as much as it altered and reshaped their respective ways of thinking and doing-- politics, art, language, philosophy and religion. Human culture moved from being a collection of poloi (cities) to being perceived and experienced as a singular kosmos (world).

Amid all of this upheaval and change, the agenda of many people, Jews and Gentiles alike, became more and more otherworldly. If there is nothing in this temporal world on which we can count, can we not look to the possibility of a next life or an eternal life that will be immutable and unaffected by all of this worldly uncertainty? Generally referred to as the Mysterion, or the "mysteries," a wide variety of religious cults and practices developed that offered the initiate just that-- a path of salvation. Gods such as Dionysus, Mithras and Osiris (via Isis) ritually "died" and were resurrected into new life; their stories were engrained by now in the collective mythological consciousness, and could be "seen" as played out in the rebirth of plants and animals in the Spring. So also, through baptisms, ritual meals of the "blood" and "flesh" of the dying and rising god, the mortal initiate could be "reborn" into a new life that guaranteed an eternal life after one's temporal life was done.

This is the scenario. And so, "In those days," we are told, "came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, 'Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand' "(Matthew 3.1-2). John is announcing the coming of a Meshiach. The Greeks translate this as Christos.

The "Gospel"

The word gospel comes from the Old English god spel, meaning "good news," or "glad tidings." While the author of Luke is the only one to use the Greek euangelion (gospel) to refer to the message of Jesus, we traditionally refer to all four of the canonical narratives of Jesus' ministry-- Matthew, Mark, Luke and John-- as "gospels."

Due to the previously mentioned experiences of Hellenization and foreign occupation, religious and cultural identity were issues of great importance for Jews in 1st Century CE Palestine. Pharisaic Judaism developed within this context. The beliefs and practices of the Pharisees were grounded in a rigid adherence to Torah. Dietary laws, ritual purity and cleanliness were to be strictly enforced, as this was the requirement of holiness and, moreover, the cultural identity of a people set apart by God. The word "Pharisee" comes from the Hebrew perusi'im, whose triliteral root PRS means "to separate." While it is most important to see Pharisaic Judaism as a valid and noble response to a world that seemed bent on swallowing them up, it is equally important to see how such rigid devotion could degenerate into a kind of legalism that makes unforgiving distinctions between who and what are ritually/socially acceptable and who and what are not.

The "good news" is about grace. In spite of the fact that human beings are imperfect and cannot possibly live up to the ideals of Torah, we are loved by God. We, in turn, are called to go forth and do likewise, i.e., to love one another. Grace does not deny the centrality of ritual and the holiness of worship, but it recovers the importance of compassion and forgiveness, both God's and ours. Torah is both "law" and "compassion," both the "vertical" and "horizontal" paths of covenantal relation.

The Ministry of Jesus

From the perspective of historical documentation, little is known about Jesus. He never wrote anything himself; and while oral traditions abounded in the life of the early church, the gospel accounts themselves were written long after his ministry was finished. The letters of Paul are probably the earliest written documents of the church, and yet, as far as we know, Paul never knew or saw Jesus. Scholars are often faced, therefore, with having to allow for distinctions between "the Jesus of history" and "the Christ of faith." Most of what we have before us is a product of the latter perspective. But for most of those who embrace the Christian faith, the latter is the former.

According to Luke, Jesus at the outset of his ministry quotes the prophet Isaiah: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord" (Isaiah 61.1-2; Luke 4.18-19).The gospels present Jesus as the messianic presence of divine grace in the world. They also present, and rather two-dimensionally, the Pharisees as being constantly at odds with Jesus, because he appears to disregard "the Law." His point, however, is that "the Law" is both-- you can't have one path (holiness) without the other (compassion). "Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them" (Matthew 5.17).

Nothing illustrates this point more powerfully in the gospels than Jesus' dining habits. Not only does Jesus associate with those who, in the eyes of the Pharisees, are "questionable" people (sinners, outcasts, prostitutes, tax collectors, et al.), but he eats with them. In Semitic culture, "the table" is an arena of great social import (see "Identity and Ritual" on study page for Judaism). With whom one eats is almost as vital a question as with whom one sleeps. In sitting at table with such people, Jesus is challenging the boundaries and assumptions of the prevailing socio-economic order by proclaiming an alternative albeit fleeting vision of community: the Kingdom of God.

What is this "Kingdom" to which Jesus refers? It is not so much quantitatively described as it is qualitatively experienced. Jesus at table "with sinners and tax collectors" is the Kingdom. Jesus' very presence on earth is the Kingdom. When Jesus performs healings and miracles, the gospel writers describe them as occurring only because of the faith of the recipients who discern Jesus' reality in and through them. That, too, is the Kingdom. In short, the Kingdom is the experience of grace. It is the recovery of the covenantal ideal. But the Kingdom is also a fleeting reality that is simultaneously hidden and yet disclosed to "those with eyes to see and ears to hear." Jesus' opponents-- and sometimes his own disciples-- are portrayed in the gospels as having eyes and ears that do neither.

According to Christian theology, the ultimate act of divine grace is in Jesus' death and resurrection. To say that Jesus died "for our sins," or "as a ransom for many" is a reference to the ancient Hebrew ritual of communal atonement, in which a goat or lamb was annually sacrificed to God as a "scapegoat" for the sins of the community. Thus Jesus is often referred to as "the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." But beyond the direct references to violent and bloody sacrifice, the crucifixion is perhaps better understood as an ultimate and graceful giving of the self for the sake of those whom one loves. Such an act of selflessness "conquers" death, in the sense that one who embraces it willingly and without fear has defeated its power to claim him, as if to say, "Death, you have indeed won the battle, but you have lost the war." This became a powerful image for early Christian communities who at various points in their history faced persecution and death on a daily basis.

It is reported that Jesus was resurrected from death "on the third day." The gospel narratives present this in diverse ways, the most compelling, in my opinion, being Mark, who ends his account thusly: "And they [who discovered the empty tomb] fled from the tomb, for fear and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid" (Mark 16.8, the original ending to this narrative).

Mark's point would seem to be that proof and reliable witnesses are non sequiturs in matters like this; either you "know" or you don't. But however one interprets this experience of "knowing," it is clear that those who "knew" began to experience Jesus in a new and transformative way.

The Mind of the Church

The earliest experience of "the church" is more accurately expressed as "the Jesus Movement," because its adherents continued to regard themselves as Jews. It was not long before the question arose as to how one could "become" a follower of Jesus. Does he/she have to be Jewish first?

This controversy came to head when Paul's mission to the Gentiles (non-Jews outside of Palestine) came into direct conflict with the "church" in Jerusalem. Led by Peter, the "Jewish Christians" insisted that a non-Jewish initiate must first submit oneself to Judaic law and practices, such as circumcision and dietary observances, and then be baptized into the group. Paul asserted that only confession of faith and baptism were necessary. Adding fire to the conflict was the fact that Peter, as one of the original Twelve, had known Jesus, while Paul, a former persecutor of Jesus' followers albeit a recent convert, had never known or even seen Jesus. The dispute was resolved to some extent when it was agreed at the so-called Jerusalem Council that Gentile converts would be required only to follow certain fundamental dietary observances. Peter did eventually carry his mission to the Gentiles as well.

What is "the church?" when Paul writes of Christian gatherings for worship and meals, he uses the Greek term ekklesia, which means "assembly." Thus the church is not a building or an institution, but the assembly itself, the coming together of a community of believers. This extends even into the socio-economic realm: the early Christian community may be regarded as one of the first communist communities as well.

Some important dates in the formative life of the Christian church (all CE):

• 313: the Roman emperor Constantine declares that Christianity will be recognized as a legal religious practice among others.
• 325: the Council of Nicaea; church leaders from throughout the Roman Empire gather to establish theological standards of "orthodoxy;" in doing so, some ideas and positions are condemned as heretical. A result of this council is the Nicene Creed.
• 330: Constantine moves his primary capital to Byzantium, which he renames Constantinople (now Istanbul). While the church at Rome remains intact, this move results in the development of a very unique Christian tradition in the East. What began as geographical isolation became a profound theological isolation due to differences in everything from language to art to philosophical assumptions.
• 391: Theodosius I declares that Christianity is now the Roman state religion; he bans all "pagan" practices (it is worth noting here that Christianity, once persecuted and oppressed but now empowered, begins to take on the role of the "oppressor!")
• 1054: the schism of East and West: after seven centuries of growing alienation, the "Western" and the "Eastern" churches formally split into what we know today as Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.
• 1517: The Protestant Reformation; beginning with a German Augustinian priest named Martin Luther, many come forward to "protest" certain abuses that have been taking place in the Roman Catholic Church. These calls for "reform" result in the all-too-vast diversity of what we know today as "Protestant churches." While Southern Europe remained Roman Catholic for the most part, Protestantism was by and large a Northern European phenomenon.

In spite of these divisions, there have generally remained three common doctrines that Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and Protestantism share (although often interpreted in different ways). They are:

• the Incarnation; Jesus is understood as an avatar, i.e., as a spiritual reality in a physical form. The Nicene Creed states that Jesus Christ is "fully God and fully human" (not 50/50, 60/40, etc.). "I and the Father are one," says Jesus in the gospel of John.
• the Atonement; Jesus is understood as the channel through which divine grace is made present to humanity, through which humankind is reconciled to God, through which "at-one-ment" is restored.
• the Trinity; the three "persons" of Father, Son and Holy Spirit-- one God. The Trinity may perhaps be thought of as three manners in which God is experienced. Compare to the Hindu triune godhead of Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva.

The New Testament

The "New Testament," so named because, according to traditional doctrine, it fulfills the Hebrew scriptures or, in Christian terminology, the "Old Testament." It is composed of four parts:

• the gospels, addressed in some detail above. Most scholarship holds with the following synopsis: the first gospel was Mark (c. 70 CE). This was followed in c. 80-90 CE by Matthew and Luke (also the author of Acts), both of whom utilized Mark as a point of narrative reference. But both Matthew and Luke contain in common large collections of short, pithy mind-bending aphorisms that Mark doesn't have. Usually described as simply a "sayings source," its existence is essentially a mental construct. For the sake of reference, it has been given the title "Q," which stands for the German word quelle, meaning "source." Because of their unusual relationship to one another, these three gospels are called the "synoptic gospels." "Synoptic" means "same sight." The gospel of John (c. 100-110 CE) is a completely separate tradition. From a literary perspective, it is the most beautifully written of the four. Its style makes the other three seem almost pedestrian. But each gospel was created for a particular time, place and reader/listener. More about this in class.
• the Acts of the Apostles, written by the author of Luke. The two are usually referred to collectively, i.e., as "Luke-Acts." Acts tells the story of the formation and growth of the early church, presenting a somewhat contrived linear history that moves from Jerusalem to the very gates of Rome with a sense of predestined purposefulness.
• the Epistles, or "letters;" while most of them are attributed to Paul, only seven of them are believed to have been actually written by him. The others are by later writers. But all of them are written to churches that are developing throughout the Mediterranean and Asia Minor. They address the myriad concerns and problems that are faced by these congregations as they deal with social relationships, ecclesial responsibilities and divergent doctrines. Paul's letters also provide the reader with a deep insight into his personality and struggles.
• the Apocalypse of John ("Revelation"); the subject of much interpretation, the Apocalypse is better understood within the context in which it was written, probably in the last years of the 1st century CE. While it does include visions of "the end times" and descriptions of the final consummation of history, one should not dismiss the contextual references that the author makes to the experiences, events and personalities of his own time and place, for they in themselves are quite "revelatory."

The Sacraments

A sacrament is a visible act through which the holy is perceived as immanent and present, as opposed to transcendent and removed. The question is, How? In what sense? The Eucharist (Communion) provides a good example. While the Roman Catholic Church has historically focused upon the nature of the elements themselves, i.e., that the bread and wine are substantially transformed via the consecrating words of the priest (transubstantiation), Protestantism has traditionally fled to the other end of the spectrum in its conclusion that these elements of bread and wine/grape juice are "only symbols." But do not both of these absolutist perspectives undermine the integrity of not only the Eucharist in particular but also the very concept of symbol as a whole?

What if we were to focus not upon the elements themselves but upon the act of sharing them? Recall Jesus and his presence at the table "with sinners and tax collectors." His meals are expressions of grace in which, through the very act of sharing with these people, he is making himself present and known to them. Thus, "the Last Supper" is a ritual enactment of what Jesus was expressing in all of his meals: a disclosure of himself. In the symbolic and corporate act of sharing this food with one another, Eucharist (Communion) is a fleeting vision of the Kingdom. Of the primary ecclesial traditions, Eastern Orthodoxy, which probably keeps the lowest profile of the three, understands this idea of sacramental presence better than anyone.

This should recall for you the concept we discussed at the very beginning of this course: a symbol or a symbolic act is not an absolute quantity, nor is it merely a signifier that points to a referent; it is a relational quality. Sacraments are relational because relationships, when they are at their best, are sacramental. That is grace.

Important Vocabulary Terms

Hellenization
Gnosticism, Gnostic
The Mysterion

• Dionysus
• Mithras
• Isis/Osiris

The Logos
Messiah/Christos
Grace
Jesus of Nazareth
The "Kingdom"
Euangelion
Gospel
The Synoptic Tradition
Mark
Matthew
Luke
John
Q (the "sayings source")
The Acts of the Apostles
The Epistles
Paul
Gentile
Ekklesia
Incarnation
Atonement
Trinity
Sacrament
Orthodoxy/Heresy
The three primary divisions of the Christian church:

• Roman Catholicism
• Eastern Orthodoxy
• Protestantism

The Protestant Principle

Discussion Questions

1. Why is the table so central to the message and the teachings of Jesus? What does it symbolize and what challenges did it present to the Jewish authorities in first century Palestine?

2. Describe the nature of "sacrament." What is the technical meaning of the word? Focus on either baptism or Eucharist (communion) and explain its significance in the life of the church. How was it suggested in the lecture that God is "present" in these ritual acts?

3. What is the church? If it is a "holy" or "sacred" place, what makes it so? What "takes place" to make it a "place?"

Back to Homepage | REL 120 Syllabus | REL 120-S Syllabus | Glossary