by Bruce Bawer
I didn't immediately find my way back to Christianity. In fact I was led to it, and resisted it. But I soon came to recognize that the religion I was resisting made sense, as nothing else did, of everything I was feeling. For that religion told me that God is love; that the meaning of humankind's existence is tied up in some way with the reality of love; that our love for one another is a faint tracery of the love that God has for us; that Jesus, more than anyone who ever lived, at once modeled God's love for us and the way in which God wanted us to love him and one another. Jesus showed us that a life lived in love is an abundant life, and he came, as he told us, to bring us more abundant life. "In experiencing God as infinite love bent on people's salvation," writes Huston Smith, "Jesus was an authentic child of Judaism; he differed . . . only in not allowing the post-Exilic holiness code to impede God's compassion. Time after time, as in his story of the shepherd who risked ninety-nine sheep to go after the one that had strayed, Jesus tried to convey God's absolute love for every single human being. To perceive this love and to let it penetrate one's very marrow was to respond in the only way that was possible—in profound and total gratitude for the wonders of God's grace."
This«passage (which I read for the first time only recently) provides a splendid summary of the way in which I came to understand Christianity: as a grateful and loving response to the love of God. And perceiving that love and allowing it to penetrate my marrow was not a matter of closing my eyes and taking a "leap of faith." It was a matter of opening my eyes and seeing something before me that I could not deny.
The experience of love, and the recognition of it as a reflection of God's own love, enabled me to believe that I, as well as everyone else, was indeed, as Christianity claimed, an infinitely precious child of God; yet at the same time it freed me from at least a degree of self-concern and made me recognize my obligation to struggle to grow as far as possible beyond that self-concern—to strive to reach a place at which I accepted the small place of my own life in the big picture of the universe, a place at which I cared about others—relatives, friends, strangers, even enemies—as much as I did about myself. Only by struggling to reach that place, I realized, could I be fully true to the love that I felt and that gave meaning to my life.
I read some theology, and I recognized in the best of it an attempt by people who had known this same experience to put its meaning into words. To read different theologians—good ones, anyway—was not like reading position papers by political parties that disagreed with one another; it was like reading love poems. No two of them were identical, but they pointed to the same category of experience, and the best of them resonated with readers who had firsthand knowledge of that category of experience. Because theology sought to convey a kind of knowledge and experience that transcended this life and this world, it could speak only in symbolic language, and was thus closer to art, music, or poetry than it was to biology or chemistry.
In the twelfth chapter of Mark, Jesus is described as walking in the court of the temple in Jerusalem with the chief priests, scribes, and elders of the Jewish people. They ask him questions, and he answers. Others join in. A group of Pharisees, who believe in the resurrection of the dead, and some "members of Herod's party" try to ensnare him with a question about the proper relationship of human beings to civil authorities; a group of Sadducees, who do not believe in the resurrection, try to trap him with a question about eternal life.
Finally one of the scribes asks an apparently sincere question: "Which is the first of all the commandments?"
Jesus replies by quoting from the fifth book of Moses in the Hebrew Scriptures. "The first is, 'Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is the one lord, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'You must love your neighbor as yourself.' No other commandment is greater than these."
"These are the most treasured verses of Judaism," note the editors of a standard biblical commentary. These verses are also at the heart of any true Christianity.
"Righteousness," the editors of the commentary point out, "is not to be understood as strict obedience to a complex code of laws and customs. The one commandment that is central is the principle of love." Jesus' unequivocal elevation of these verses above all other commandments demands that we test all scripture, all dogma, and even everything else that Jesus is reported to have said and done against this commandment, which many Christians call the Great Commandment, and which Anglicans call the Summary of the Law—for, mystery of mysteries, law itself is summed up in a law that not only allows but compels violation of lesser laws. "When there is wholehearted love for the All, for the universal good we might say," writes Huston Smith, "then the will wants that good and needs no rules."
This doesn't mean all law is null and void; it means laws that separate people from one another—that divide neighbor from neighbor and that compel unloving actions—are considered to be overridden. So it is, for example, that Christians have from the beginning set aside the strictures enumerated in the "Holiness Code" in Leviticus, which was intended to distinguish the Jews from other peoples (and which, incidentally, includes the verses most often cited against homosexuality) but which calls for brutal punishments for essentially innocuous acts. Jesus, writes Huston Smith, subscribed to much of the law but
found unacceptable . . . the lines that it drew between people. Beginning by categorizing acts and things as clean or unclean (foods and their preparation,
for example), the holiness code went on to categorize people according to whether they respected those distinctions. The result was a social structure that was riven with barriers: between people who were clean and unclean, pure and defiled, sacred and profane, few and Gentile, righteous and sinner. Having concluded that Yahweh's central attribute was compassion, fesus saw social barriers as an affront to that compassion. So he parlayed with tax collectors, dined with outcasts and sinners, socialized with prostitutes, and healed on the sabbath when compassion prompted doing so. This made him a social prophet, challenging the boundaries of the existing order and advocating an alternative vision of the human community.
People (of whatever sexual orientation) often ask how one can be both gay and Christian. But as this passage from Smith makes clear, Christianity properly understood—understood, that is, in a way that is consistent with what Jesus and his earthly ministry were really about—does not reject outcasts but befriends them, welcomes them, loves them.
Love, not law; experience, not doctrine: This, at its heart, is what Christianity is about—or should be about, if it takes its Founder seriously.
* * *
3
LOVE AND LAW
The Christian community's first belief statement was simple: "Jesus is Lord!" This was the extent of their theology, its alpha and omega. Since their religion was about loving community and closeness to God, they apparently felt no urgent need to elaborate upon this statement, to systematize their faith intellectually, to go into details. Their faith was not about giving intellectual assent to a certain set of propositions that had been formulated by someone else; it was about the powerful sense that they all shared of having been touched by God's love in the person of Jesus Christ, and of having sensed that in some mysterious way Jesus, more surely and more powerfully than anyone else who had ever lived, had been an expression of what God was like and had been a model of what men and women, who had been created in God's image, should strive to be like. The doctrine of the Trinity, which states that Jesus, with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit, is one of three "persons" that make up a single deity, had not yet been precisely formulated, and presumably the need for such a doctrine was not yet felt. The first Christians knew what they were experiencing, and they knew that since nothing like it had ever happened before, there were no words in any human language to express fully and properly the way in which Jesus had transformed and illuminated their relationship to God and to their fellow human beings.
"See how they love one another!" exclaimed non-Christians in amazement when they observed these people in action. One might say that what set the early Christians apart from others was that they didn't set some people apart from others: Among them there was, as Saint Paul declared, no slave or free, no Greek or Jew, no male or female. Theirs was, by all indications, a true Church of Love.
Things didn't stay that way, however. It was Paul himself who laid the groundwork for the Church of Law. Originally a Pharisee named Saul of Tarsus who had viciously persecuted Christians, Paul became a member of the new sect after being vouchsafed (he believed) a vision of Christ, who (we are told) appeared in other visions to members of the fledgling Christian community and declared that Paul was his "chosen instrument" to spread his name to the world. So it was that Paul became the movement's first major theologian. Yet if Jesus had taught largely through parables, Paul set forth specific doctrinal statements. To be sure, some of the things he wrote about the new religion of Jesus Christ place him squarely within the Church of Love:
What can separate us from the love of Christ? Can affliction or hardship? Can persecution, hunger, nakedness, danger, or sword? ... I am convinced that there is nothing in death or life, in the realm of spirits or superhuman powers, in the world as it is or the world as it shall be, in the forces of the universe, in heights or depths—nothing in all creation that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Rom. 8:31-39)
If I have no love, I am nothing. . . . Love is patient and kind. Love envies no one, is never boastful, never conceited, never rude; love is never selfish, never quick to take offence. Love keeps no score of wrongs, takes no pleasure in the sins of others, but delights in the truth. There is nothing love cannot face. . . . Love will never come to an end. . . . There are three things that last forever: faith, hope, and love; and the greatest of the three is love.
Make love your aim. (1 Cor. 13:4-8,13,14:1)
Other propositions from the books traditionally ascribed to Paul, however, foreshadow the Church of Law. Indeed, some of the following passages are among those most quoted and preached upon by legalistic Christian ministers:
Should anyone, even I myself or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel other than the gospel I preached to you, let him be banned! (Gal. 1:8-9)
What you say must be in keeping with sound doctrine. . . . [Women must] be temperate, chaste, busy at home, and kind, respecting the authority of their husbands. . . . Slaves are to respect their masters' authority in everything and to give them satisfaction. . . . Remind everyone to be submissive to the government and the authorities. ... If someone is contentious, he should be allowed a second warning; after that, have nothing more to do with him, recognizing that anyone like that has a distorted mind and stands self-condemned in his sin. (Titus 2:1, 2:5, 2:9, 3:1, 3:10-11)
Every person must submit to the authorities in power, for all authority comes from God, and the existing authorities are instituted by him. It follows that anyone who rebels against authority is resisting a divine institution, and those who resist have themselves to thank for the punishment they will receive. Governments hold no terrors for the law-abiding but only for the criminal. You wish to have no fear of the authorities? Then continue to do right and you will have their approval, for they are God's agents working for your good. But if you are doing wrong, then you will have cause to fear them; it is not for nothing that they hold the power of the sword, for they are God's agents of punishment bringing retribution on the offender. (Rom. 13:1—4)
In this passage from his letter to the Romans, Paul seems to have forgotten for the moment that Jesus himself had resisted authority and been viewed as an offender by government officials, at whose hands he suffered the ultimate punishment. Jesus had said, "Render under Caesar that which is Caesar's," but he had never suggested that his Roman oppressors were the agents of God.
In the King James Bible, the word law appears in the synoptic Gospels only thirteen times altogether, and crops up a dozen or so times in John. In the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of Paul, by-contrast, the word appears scores of times. Given Paul's background as a Pharisee—a lawyer who believed strongly in the letter of the law— this is not surprising: Indeed, Paul's writings shift frequently back and forth between an understanding of God that derives clearly from the teachings of Jesus about love and an understanding of God that reveals the continuing influence on Paul of pharisaical patterns of thought. In the contradictions within Paul's heart and mind—the contradictions, one might say, between Saul the Pharisee and Paul the Apostle—one can see some of the first inklings of what would be a two-millennium-long struggle between the Church of Law and the Church of Love.
Of course, it hardly took Paul to bring this struggle into being. Human beings are what they are. The first Christians expected Jesus to return imminently and usher in the end of the world; as that expectation gradually faded, and as each new generation of early Christians succeeded the last, human frailties predictably reasserted themselves. Some people crave power over others; some people ache just as desperately for other people to be in charge and to tell them what's true and what isn't and what they should and shouldn't do. A sense of spiritual fullness can dissipate over time; unconditional love for one's neighbors can give way to an irritation at them and a perceived need to set and enforce rules and boundaries, to define rights and responsibilities, to found institutions and invest them with authority. With time, the desire to separate people into categories also reasserted itself.
As time went by, then, fewer and fewer Christians had a constant and transforming sense of being filled with Jesus' love. Once, it had been clear who was and wasn't a Christian: Christians were people who lived in community with other Christians and were charged with the undiscriminating love and presence of Jesus; now, as the number of Christians rose and as the passionate devotion of the early Christian community abated, many Christians felt a need for something other than their intense experience of Jesus by which they could define themselves. Once, the statement "Jesus is Lord" had been all they needed by way of a declaration of faith; now that many Christians' souls were less powerfully charged with that mystical truth, the Christian community felt a need for more elaborate statements of belief.
At first, such statements posed no problem. "The original confessions of faith," notes the distinguished Swiss theologian Hans Kung, "were in no way concerned with dogmas in the present-day sense. They were not doctrinal laws." Far from representing "a legal foundation," the early confessions were "a free expression of the faith of the community." But that soon changed as the concept of orthodoxy began to take hold. And when some doctrines were made orthodox at four councils in the fourth and fifth centuries, it was usually not because the community of the faithful all shared the same understanding of things, but because someone with power was forcing his understanding of things on others.
"The theology which became manifest at the councils," writes Kung, "led to a considerable alienation from the New Testament. In four centuries the simple and easily understandable baptismal formula in Matthew ["I baptize you in the name of Jesus"] had become a highly complex trinitarian speculation." The concept of orthodoxy ("this unbiblical word") was now all-important; and along with orthodoxy came the concept of heresy. The fourth-century Roman emperor Theodosius the Great "made Christianity a state religion, the Catholic church a state church and heresy a state crime"; thus "it took less than a century for the persecuted church to become a persecuting church.... For the first time Christians killed other Christians over a difference in faith." (They also began to kill Jews—for the same impulse that gave birth to institutional creeds and hierarchies also gave new life to anti-Semitism.) As the community of Christian believers developed into an institutional and dogmatic church, and as the faithful became divided hierarchically into a clergy that established laws and creeds and a laity that was expected to be perfectly pliant, Christianity came to be understood, writes Kung, "less and less as existential disc
ipleship of Jesus Christ and more—in an intellectual narrowing—as the acceptance of a revealed doctrine about God and Jesus Christ, the world and human beings."
Christianity's most influential doctrine-maker by far was Augustine of Hippo (354—430), who put such concepts as original sin, election, and predestination at the center of Christian theology in the west. Part of the reason why he and other so-called church fathers began to work out a theological understanding of the faith, of course, was an admirable intellectual curiosity. What did it mean to say that Jesus was Lord, and that he was still alive? Was Jesus man or God or both? If both, how? What was the relationship between God and Jesus, and between Jesus' humanity and divinity, and what was the relationship of both of these to the Holy Spirit that Jesus had spoken of? What was the meaning of his death?
An exhaustive study entitled The Faith of the Early Fathers, which enjoys the official approval of the Roman Catholic Church, identifies no fewer than 1,046 distinct doctrines that were propounded by one or more of the early church fathers. These doctrines concern such matters as the authority of scripture, tradition, and the church, the nature of God and Jesus, the soul, faith, hope, sin, grace, justification, the sacraments, worship, death, judgment, and heaven. Of these 1,046 doctrines, only nine concern love. Love figures far less frequently in the works of most of the church fathers, in fact, than almost every other subject treated by them. In the centuries that followed, the church continued to add doctrines to which members were compelled to declare their assent. Some of these involved concepts that early Christians had certainly never conceived of. In 1950, for instance, Pope Pius XII declared that the Virgin Mary, at her death, had been taken up bodily into heaven, and that Catholics were required to believe this. Now, it is hard to know what this doctrine can mean, since in order to believe it one has to conceptualize heaven as a place in the sky to which a physical body can travel. Moreover, since this idea had not occurred to anybody until late in the fourth century, and had never been a part of standard church teaching, virtually all Christians who lived before the twentieth century would be heretics in the eyes of the church if they were somehow transported to the present and asked for an accounting of their beliefs.