Christianity

"Pre-Constantinian Christians had been pacifists, rejecting the violence of army and empire not only because they had no share of power, but because they considered it morally wrong; the post-Constantinian Christians considered imperial violence to be not only morally tolerable but a positive good and a Christian duty."

"It is impossible to enumerate how thoroughly Catholicism today is saturated by middle-class reasonableness; one need only recall how even baptism—once the most powerful expression of the church’s opposition to the state, a symbol of entry into a spiritual countercommunity, a mystical adoption, less the bearing of a name than being led by means of a name on the first steps of one’s inner way—is today bound up with middle-class record-keeping: with the identity card, the need for an enduring characterization resting on the firm distinctions of compelling reason; which means that being a person is made impossible by the “individual,” that incalculable spiritual and intellectual destiny that tears away the protective covering of the soul’s anonymity and drives it to mindlessly repetitious, merely defensive expenditures of energy and renders inaccessible to it everything it might do if it did not always first have to look after a person."

"From the time that the heads of government assumed an external and nominal Christianity, men began to invent all the impossible, cunningly devised theories by means of which Christianity can be reconciled with government. But no honest and serious-minded man of our day can help seeing the incompatibility of true Christianity — the doctrine of meekness, forgiveness of injuries, and love — with government, with its pomp, acts of violence, executions, and wars. The profession of true Christianity not only excludes the possibility of recognizing government, but even destroys its very foundations."

"The Church had acquired a protector, but it had also acquired a master."

"Woe to the Christian Church when it will have been victorious in this world, for then it is not the Church that has been victorious but the world. Then the heterogeneity between Christianity and the world has vanished, the world has won, and Christianity has lost."

"The conversion of Constantine ... was the effective beginning of “Christendom,” namely, of that particular form of the Christian religion that consists of a strong alliance of Christianity with political and social power, sometimes amounting to the practical identification of Christianity with the dominant forces of the society in which it finds itself."

"After his victory at the Milvian Bridge, faithful to his promise, Constantine favors the church from which he has received support. Catholic Christianity becomes the state religion and an exchange takes place: the church is invested with political power, and it invests the emperor with religious power. We have here the same perversion, for how can Jesus manifest himself in the power of domination and constraint? We have to say here very forcefully that we see here the perversion of revelation by participation in politics, by the seeking of power. The church lets itself be seduced, invaded, dominated by the ease with which it can now spread the gospel by force (another force than that of God) and use its influence to make the state, too, Christian. It is great acquiescence to the temptation Jesus himself resisted, for when Satan offers to give him all the kingdoms of the earth, Jesus refuses, but the church accepts."

"My use of laughter is my attempt to practice theology in a manner that refuses the attempt to manage the world. In short, my use of laughter is “an appropriate theological antidote to the Constantinian desire for control.”"

"The combination of Christian truth and political power led to the creation of the complex that we know so well. … The emperor endows the church handsomely, helps it in all that it does, aids it in its “mission.” The church supports the emperor’s legitimacy and assures him that he is God’s representative on earth."

"It is frightening to see how easily the church accepts all this. Hardly had it achieved peace before it itself began to persecute. … It commenced the persecution of heretics, and primarily, of course, those who contested the truth and validity of this alliance of empire and church."

"Walter Hollenweger states that “intercultural theology is that scientific, theological discipline that operates in the context of a given culture without absolutizing it.” This programmatic statement provides us with a rule for demarcating between missionary and nonmissionary theologies. A nonmissionary theology—that is, one that does not think interculturally—absolutizes its given cultural context. Such a theology engages in what we can call constantinianism. Theologies that engage in this form of God-talk we can then identify as exercises in Volkstheologie. The negative task of a missionary or intercultural theology is therefore to articulate an understanding of the kerygma that precludes, or at least resists, the absolutizing of one’s given culture."

"Cultural elites in countries that dominate peoples have adapted subject people’s religion for their own purposes."

"John Howard Yoder makes the striking observation that after the Constantinian shift the meaning of the word "Christian" changes. Prior to Constantine it took exceptional courage to be a Christian. After Constantine it takes exceptional courage not to be counted as a Christian. ... After the Constantinian establishment, Christians knew that God was governing the world in Constantine, but they had to take it on faith that within the nominally Christian mass there was a community of true believers. No longer could being a Christian be identified with church membership, since many "Christians" in the church had not chosen to follow Christ. Now to be a Christian is transmuted to "inwardness.""

"The most pertinent fact about the new state of things after Constantine and Augustine is not that Christians were no longer persecuted and began to be privileged, nor that emperors built churches and presided over ecumenical deliberations about the Trinity; what matters is that the two visible realities, church and world, were fused. There is no longer anything to call "world"; state, economy, art, rhetoric, superstition, and war have all been baptized."

"A central task of Christian theology is to interrogate the relationship between kerygma and culture, between what is reflectively normative for Christian faith and practice and what is prereflectively normative for one’s historical situation. We will identify those forms of Christian self-understanding that conflate these two norms as modes of constantinianism."

"For the early Church, "church" and "world" were visibly distinct yet affirmed in faith to have one and the same lord. This pair of affirmations is what the so-called Constantinian transformation changes (I here use the name of Constantine merely as a label for this transformation, which began before AD200 and took over 200 years; the use of his name does not mean an evaluation of his person or work). The most pertinent fact about the new state of things after Constantine and Augustine is not that Christians were no longer persecuted and began to be privileged, nor that emperors built churches and presided over ecumenical deliberations about the Trinity; what matters is that the two visible realities, church and world, were fused. There is no longer anything to call "world"; state, economy, art, rhetoric, superstition, and war have all been baptized."

"In order to examine ourselves thoroughly, let the case be proposed in the strongest manner. What, if I were to see a Papist, an Arian, a Socinian casting out devils? If I did, I could not forbid even him, without convicting myself of bigotry. Yea, if it could be supposed that I should see a Jew, a Deist, or a Turk, doing the same, were I to forbid him either directly or indirectly, I should be no better than a bigot still."

"It can now be sufficiently established... what is the cause and ground in man himself of that faith: namely, love, zeal of doing right and avoiding wrong. Now this love and zeal are able to be present already either before man heard anything of the commands given to him by God or before he was awakened through this hearing. But if neither occurs this faith of which we speak will never be able to exist in man."

"We believe Christ to be the eternal, supreme God; and herein we are distinguished from the Socinians and Arians. But as to all opinions which do not strike at the root of Christianity, we think and let think."

"Our justification before God is that we are regarded by God as just, or righteous."

"We may be all said to be sent by God into the world, without the supposition of a pre-existent soul. Especially are prophets sent from God. But above all Jesus is most properly "the sent of God," as he had the highest and most important commission."

"I will make the world believe that I never heard of such a man as Socinus: and if they tell me that I speak his very language as perfectly as if I were a Native of Sienna, I'll face them down that I had it not by fingring of any Socinian Authors, but by a kind of Natural Revelation. Well, this cause must be carried on, and I can do it as well as any man by maintaining that there is but One Article of Christian Faith necessarily to be believ'd to make a man a Christian, necessarily to be believ'd in order to salvation. For if there be but One Point necessary to be believ'd, then the doctrines concerning the Trinity, concerning the Incarnation and Divinity of Christ, concerning his Satisfaction, &c. are rendred unnecessary as to the making us Christians. And this I will shove on under the colour of being serviceable to the bulk of Mankind, of being obliging and merciful to the Multitude and Rabble, and Poor People; though (to say the Truth) I shew my self to be so far from obliging the Multitude that I do them an infinite deal of Mischief. Yet if I compass my End, it is enough, and I care for no more. And my End is this, to hale in Socinianism after a new manner."

"Eph. i.6. "Who hath made us accepted in the beloved.” Our being in him is the ground or our being accepted. So it is in those unions to which the Holy Ghost has thought fit to compare this. The union of the members of the body with the head, is the ground of their partaking of the life of the head; it is the union of the branches to the stock, which is the ground of their partaking of the sap and life of the stock; it is the relation of the wife to the husband, that is the ground of her joint interest in his estate; they are looked upon, in several respects, as one in law. So there is a legal union between Christ and true Christians; so that (as all except Socinians allow) one, in some respects, is accepted for the other by the Supreme Judge."

"I all along intended... to observe a part of what is said by Dr. Clarke in his Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity; which I have now done. And I cannot forbear saying, that his interpretations of texts are generally false, arising, as from some other causes, so particularly, from an aversion to Sabellian or Socinian senses: some of which may be absurd, and unnatural. But I must prefer Grotius's interpretations upon the comparison, above Dr. Clarke's. So far as I am able to judge, Grotius explains texts better than the professed Socinians. The reason may be, that he had more learning, and particularly was better acquainted with the Jewish style. But I am apt to think, that their later writers have borrowed from him, and improved by him."

"Socinians denominate all who advocate the Divine Nature of Christ, "Idolaters;" and if Christ be only a man, they are such. We reply, The men who believe the conformation of our Earth to have resulted from fire, could never be called Neptunists, and the admission of the Newtonian system could not comport with the denial of gravitation; why therefore should those who degrade the Saviour, in rejecting his Divinity, by declaring him to be, a mere man, and who renounce almost all the peculiar features of our Holy Religion, retain the name of Christian? Let them call themselves, rather, by the term Mr. Belsham has chosen, Theophilanthropes, or any other name which describes what they are, rather than what they are not."

"The Trinitarian believes in the Divinity of Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit, in essential union with the One living and true God; the Arian believes that the Son, and Spirit, are Creatures; while the Socinian... rejects the personality of the Spirit (except as identified with the Father,) the Pre-existence of Christ; the Atonement; Eternal punishment, (believing that all will be saved;) affirms the materiality, or sleep of the soul; denies the existence of Satan, and the reality of Hell; rejects the Incarnation, and the Fall; and asserts our Lord Jesus Christ to have been a mere man, the Son of Joseph and Mary."

"Charles Hartshorne... informed me that my theological standpoint is Socinian. ...The main tenet of the Socinian heresy is that God is neither omniscient nor omnipotent. He learns and grows as the universe unfolds. ...I ...find it congenial, and consistent with scientific common sense. I do not make any clear distinction between mind and God. ...We are the chief inlets of God on this planet at the present stage... We may later grow with him as he grows, or we may be left behind. ...If we are left behind, it is an end. If we keep on growing, it is a beginning."

"Both narrow-minded science and narrow-minded theology stand opposed to free will. ...The philosophical problem of chance and free will are closely related. The Socinian theology deals with both together. Free will is the coupling of a human mind to otherwise random processes inside the brain. God's will is the coupling of a universal mind to otherwise random processes in the world at large."

"Nathaniel Lardner, the author of Letter on the Logos, the work [that] Priestley credited with his own conversion from Arianism to Socinianism, had published anonymously to avoid retribution from both the civil authorities and private citizens—in vain as it turns out."

"Whatever the Causes have bin of this suddain Appearance of Socinianism, or whoever were the Authors that have secretly and in masquerade, abetted and encouraged it; much of which lies as yet in the dark; the pernicious effects of it have bin, and are, at this day too Visible. The minds of men... throughout the Nation being strangely corrupted; Infidelity and Scepticism universally prevailing. Some deriding all Religion, which they either laugh at as the effect of Folly and Superstition, or detest as a meer Cheat and Contrivance of some Cunning and designing men."

"...the church of England, when she baptizes any one, makes him not a Christian ...the church of England is mistaken, and makes none but socinians Christians."

"Against Socinians, Arians, and all other enemies of the truth, the surest defence will be found to be the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Would mankind take their faith from the holy scriptures, and not rest it upon the unstable foundation of human systems, and would no man presumptuously aim at being "wise beyond what is written," heresies would soon vanish away."

"In the late 1690s, as a result of the increased prominence of... antitrinitarian views, the English minister Jonathan Edwards launched a sustained attack against John Locke's use of reason in scriptural interpretation and Socinianism. His was the first of many such attacks against the unitarian dissenters, who had yet to declare themselves outside the parameters of the Church. Edwards noted that it was "absolutely necessary, to make one Member of the Christian Church, to believe a Trinity in the Unity in the Godhead." As he noted in Socinianism Unmask'd, this idea was but the "One article of Christian Faith necessarily to be believ'd to make a man a Christian." Edward's ideas... were often adopted verbatim in the writings and sermons of American ministers. ...Edward's ideas went on to form the core of the American rejections of Socinian and unitarian beliefs."

"He John Edwards] hopes to fright people from reading my book by crying out Socinianism, Socinianism! Whereas I challenge him again, to show one word of socinianism in it. ...Truly, I did not think myself so considerable, that the world need be troubled about me, whether I were a follower of Socinus, Arminius, Calvin, or any other leader of a sect among christians. A christian I am sure I am, because I believe "Jesus to be the Messiah," the King and Saviour promised and sent by God... and left upon record in the inspired writings of the apostles and evangelists in the New Testament; which I endeavoured to the utmost of my power... to understand in their true sense and meaning. To lead me into their true meaning, I know... no infallible guide, but the same Holy Spirit, from whom these writings at first came. If the unmasker knows any other infallible any interpreter of scripture, I desire him to direct me to him: until then I shall think it according to my master's rule, not to be called, nor to call any man on earth, Master. No man, I think, has a right to prescribe to me my faith, or magisterially to impose his interpretations or opinions on me: nor is it material to any one what mine are any farther than they carry their own evidence with them. If this, which I think makes me of no sect, entitles me to the name of a papist, or a socinian, because the unmasker thinks these the worst and most invidious he can give me: and labours to fix them on me for no other reason, but because I will not take him for my master on earth, and his system for my gospel: I shall leave him to recommend himself to the world by this skill, who, no doubt, will have reason to thank him for the rareness and subtilty of his discovery. For I think, I am the first man that ever was found to be at the same time a socinian, and a factor for Rome."

"There are only two loves, whence originate all our wishes and all our actions: the love of God which does all for God and which God rewards and the love of ourselves and of the world, which does not refer to God what should be referred to him and which for that very reason becomes evil."

"[While] there are worldly singularities, there are Christian and salutary ones, too; and this singularity by which one is differentiated from the crowd who tread the broad path is what constitutes the straight and narrow path of the Gospels. ... Holy things will never be established or reestablished so long as we have this fear of appearing singular."

"Do we have all the hatred and all the aversion for the world which Our Lord requires, and which his example must inspire in us?"

"Not only do we have no real right to the things of the world, because belonging always essentially to God they can never belong to creatures; but we are also limited by the laws of God in the use of those possessions; for it must not be imagined that God gives them to us so that we may dispose of them as we wish. He is too just to have made such an unequal distribution. These goods being the means destined by his Providence for the subsistence of men, he gives to some more than they need only so that they may distribute it to others. A rich man, in so far as he is rich, is thus no more than steward of God's good things."

"People want to be Christians too cheaply, and consequently they are not Christians at all. Salvation has to cost, it has to cost everything, at least as far as the disposition of the heart is concerned."

"The soul which stops at creatures delays the course of the voyage by which it moves toward God; and by desiring to enjoy them, it proportionately deprives itself of the enjoyment of God."

"We might easily pursue these contrasts between bourgeois of the Jansenist school and those of the Jesuit school. One, of upright and rigid character, was himself in the various occupations of daily life; the other had the personality of his state, which would make of him less a moral personality than a socially determined being, subject to rules which it would be improper and unChristian not to observe, the "first duty of probity" always being, as Père Bourdaloue puts it, to "submit to authority." So that while the disciple of the Jesuit Fathers might be a reliable man, who most probably would always remain prudently within the confines of mediocrity, the disciple of the Jansenists might sometimes indulge in eccentricities. He was less reliable; he might take the counsels of perfection literally, and not be so docile. Under a middle-class exterior, he might often conceal a romantic spirit, preserving a predilection for the heroic feats of olden times."

"Jesus ... never laughed. Nothing has ever equaled the seriousness of his life; it is clear that pleasure, recreation, anything that could divert the mind, had no part in it. The life of Jesus was utterly taut, wholly caught up in God and in the woes of men, and he gave to nature only what he could not have refused it without destroying it."

"Sins which would terrify us if they were peculiar to ourselves alone cease to frighten us when they are shared. The sinner sleeps soundly when he finds himself surrounded by a multitude, as though God were obliged to spare him."

"Through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God."

"The law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian."

"Jesus said to his Jews: “The law was for slaves—love god as I love him, as his son! What do we sons of God have to do with morality!”’"

"Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law."

"As long as an heir is underage, he is no different from a slave, although he owns the whole estate. The heir is subject to guardians and trustees until the time set by his father. So also, when we were underage, we were in slavery under the elemental spiritual forces of the world. But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, Father.” So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir."

"You experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them. ... Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering."

"Do not lay down any rules beyond what I appointed you, and do not give a law like the lawgiver lest you be constrained by it."