[This is an ongoing project that is analyzing N.T. Wright’s 5
volume series, Christian Origins and the Question of God. This series is widely
read and bridges the gap between the academic and devotional world. It is
therefore worthy to be carefully analyzed so that all readers can understand
his key points while at the same time gaining a critical eye to some of his
rather bold claims. This series of posts are concerning volume 1 – The New Testament and the People of God.]
N.T. Wright, in this chapter on Early Christian worldviews
from the aspect of symbol and praxis, attempts to reconstruct the worldview of
the early Christians. Wright focuses on these elements because he argues that
these are the things that regular members of the movement – not just church
leaders – would be aware of and would be part of their life. Wright presents
these symbols and praxis as the key things that Christians did that were different from those around them (pagans
and Jews). He discusses symbols and praxis in terms of identity discourse
(though he often doesn’t use those terms). This has some fundamental value in
that many early Christians certainly did see themselves as different from Jews
and Pagans, but they did not necessarily hold all things as mutually exclusive.
Therefore, while Wright has done a good job highlighting what is different from
the world around the early Christians, he downplays what was the same and
therefore needs to be amended.
First, Wright takes the time to discuss this topic because
he believes that symbols and praxis are what an average early Christian might
have known. He rightly argues that many members of the community could not read
or have the leisure to hear someone read. Further, even if they could, it is
not clear that they had access to the books that we know. Therefore, focusing
on symbols and praxis allows one to see what a standard devotee might have
considered important. Wright explains in a tongue and cheek way this dichotomy:
As with Judaisms of the first
century, we cannot assume that all or even most early Christians knew, or even
knew of, the writings that we can casually pull off a shelf today and treat as
‘typical’ of first- or second-century Christianity…With praxis and symbol we
are on surer ground. Even those who wrote nothing, and read little, took
certain styles of behavior for granted, and gave allegiance to certain central
symbols.[1]
Wright here is certainly correct – at least to some extent.
Many early Christians were not aware of everything we are, and had to put
together their belief system without the use of texts. One very good example of
this would be the Pauline communities – they knew Paul (who of course himself
never knew Jesus), were in place before any of the Gospels were written (with
the possible exception of Q – if it even existed in written form), and were yet
vibrant Christian communities.
Wright wants to show the variance of Christians with those
around them. He therefore rightly discusses identity issues when considering
the early Christians. For instance, he tries to emphasize the importance of
creeds as identity markers. He argues that this was their primary role – as a
badge of identity – and all other aspects of them were secondary:
The early creeds, and the
baptismal confessions which partly underlie them, were not little pieces of
abstract theologizing to satisfy the curious intellect, but symbols which
functioned as such, badges which marked out this community from others in terms
of the god in whom they believed.[2]
Indeed Wright believes that creeds were developed to show
identity – who was and who was not a Christian. He argues that this is the
thing that could help to encapsulate the symbols and praxis of the early
Christians. He argues that this was complex enough that these creeds had to be
developed in the form of a story in order to show the truly unique nature of
Christianity:
They realized, soon enough, that
this transfer of symbolism was forcing them to articulate the meaning of the
word ‘god’ itself in a new way. This drove them, in due course, from the early
credal formulae such as 1 Corinthians 8.4-6 and 15.1-8 to the fully-blown
formulae which speak of the creator and redeemer god in terms of a story, in
deed the Jewish story: creation and redemption accomplished in Jesus and
applied through the divine spirit. It is in this context that we can readily
understand the wholesale transfer to Jesus, and the church, of Jewish
Temple-imagery.[3]
Notwithstanding his discussion of credal formulae in 1
Corinthians which some people will agree or disagree with, the point that
Wright presents is that identity politics could be seemingly streamed through
symbols and praxis but was governed through creeds. He argues that creeds were
developed to be complex enough to manage the symbols of what made Christians
different from those around them.
Wright is certainly correct to point out this aspect of
creeds – they certainly did express things that showed an identity as separate
from other formulae. He then applies this same idea to some of the symbols and
praxis of the early Christians.
Wright does a good job showing some of the distinctiveness
of early Christians from their culture. For instance, he argues that the lack
of sacrificial offering was very rare and perhaps unique in the ancient world
for religious contexts. Wright makes his case quite strongly:
Among the striking features of
early Christian praxis must be reckoned one thing that early Christians did not do. Unlike every other religion
known in the world up to that point, the Christians offered no animal
sacrifices.[4]
Here Wright is correct – it was very odd for worship centers
to have basically no interest in sacrifice. There were some who did not do
animal sacrifices for practical reasons (e.g. the Jews only had one site
wherein it could be done so many people were excluded; financial reasons for a
lack of animal sacrifices; etc), but it was a very rare religion that had no
interest. Wright does point out later on that same page that there were some
Christians who continued to do sacrifice (based upon the fact that Hebrews and
I Corinthians were advising people to stop), but this was never a major part of
the religion of Christianity.
Rather than animal sacrifice for worship practice, baptism
and eucharist seemed to be major worship components.
For our present purpose the point
is that already by the middle of the second century baptism and eucharist, as
significantly new forms of religious praxis, had become so much second nature
to the Christian church that new questions and theories could be advanced about
them. They were not strong actions which some Christians might on odd occasions
perform, but ritual acts which were taken for granted, part of that praxis
which constituted the early Christian worldview.[5]
These ritual actions were done consistently. It is suggested
that this was quite rare (particularly the frequency of the events) and that it
provided a space where Christianity was different from those around it. While
this is true to an extent, Wright is so interested in what made Christians
different that he went too far. While it is true that baptism was not a weekly
performance, there were “Baptist sects” of Judaism which did baptize (ritually
wash) regularly before doing worship (offering sacrifice). What made Christians
unique here was not that they did the baptism but that they didn’t do the
sacrifice afterward. Further, the eucharist in its earliest days was a communal
meal. That practice of eating ritually was the hallmark of Greco-Roman
religion. Again, what was unique was not that they ate a meal ritually, but
that it wasn’t from a sacrifice that they had just performed.
Wright might be forgiven for stretching his argument too far
in regard to sacraments (and also the missionary zeal of the early Christians[6]),
but his claims in regard to ethics are harder to swallow. He claims that
Christians had a radically different set of ethics than the culture around it.
Wright presents his case in the context of an early Christian apologist:
The church, we may be sure, was
never as totally pure and worthy as this, nor were its enemies as totally
depraved as the apologists made out. But that there was a striking difference
in general praxis as between pagans and Christians there can be no doubt. That
there was even a viable expectation of
a striking difference is remarkable in itself; even when a Christian teacher is
bemoaning the fact that his congregation is not pulling its weight morally,
there is a sense of a norm, an accepted praxis, to which the people are
disobedient.[7]
He argues that Christian ethics were fundamentally different
than Greco-Roman ethics. He further argues that these ethics were a hallmark of
the faith. While the latter is certainly true (that ethics mattered for
Christians), the former is much harder to prove.
Christian ethics were developed from both Judaic ethics as
well as Greco-Roman philosophy. Christian ethics look quite like Stoic ethics
(which by this time had merged in some ways with Platonic ontologies of the
world). The “table of household” rules found in Colossians 4 and expanded in
Ephesians 5, for instance, is a very standard set of ethical principles from
which one ought to live. If one were to compare that with, for example,
Xenophon’s Oikonomia for instance,
there would be remarkable continuity. This is not to say that ethics were not
important or that Christians were not being authentic. It is simply presenting
the fact that some of the ethics that Christians obtained was in fact not unique. In fact, Wright would be the
first to point out that many Roman officials – who were mostly confused about
Christianity – lauded the Christian ethical principles. If the Christians’
ethics were so different from the Romans’, then why would they laud them? They
must have had a similar framework.
There were other slightly troubling aspects of Wright’s
scholarship – but much of that can be attributed to either simple mistakes or
its being written in the early 90s. For instance, Wright continues to discuss
Christianity as surpassing race, whereas recent scholarship has shown that
Christianity in its early years very much saw itself as a kind of race.[8]
It is unfair to hold Wright to the standard that was not being discussed when
the book was received.
What should be taken from this, though, is Wright’s tendency
to want to set the symbols of a movement by what makes them different. He feels
this is what creates identity. At some level, this is certainly correct – every
group draws boundaries. If one wants to know who one is, then one has to know
who one is not. However, those boundaries should not be seen as the completion
of one’s identity. Many things can be acculturated into a new group that are in
common with older groups. Wright here is much like many Christians who – for obvious
reasons of purpose – would like to believe that they are aggressively different
from the world around them. In many ways, they are; however, in other ways they
need to understand the essential continuity of themselves with the culture
around them.
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