One of my assignments for "History of Christianity and Social Change" this week was to read The Didache and an excerpt from Tertullian's Apology. Both are works from early Christianity (before its rise to a body of power). My response was way long and had to be edited a bunch, so I'm posting it here. Also, since this is the non-edited post, the paragraphs are not as organized. Whatevs.
In trying to approach these works with a “hermeneutic of generosity,” I tried to think very contextually about the authors and their motives. The first thing that struck me was the very different tones between Tertullian and the Didache. However, considering the context of each helps me to understand why each might have adopted such ways of speaking.
The Didache is an early Christian catechism, so it’s talking to Christians about how to be Christians “correctly.” As we might expect, it instructs in purity, charity, and orthopraxy (although it, somewhat surprisingly, lacks what I would expect in the way of doctrinal instruction). There isn’t really talk about Jesus (except maybe a bit at the end), which I find interesting. Most of how I think of Christian instruction today seems to derive from “because Jesus did/said X, Y, Z,” which is missing from this early work. Q, also written for Christians, is much more Jesus-centric. The lessons in the text are derived from his ministry. While the Didache may also derive its values from his ministry, such methodology seems further from the surface. Q seems to be about preserving memory as much as values, while the Didache seems to be more about creating a standard. If we imagine early Christians living in community and sharing all, at a certain point, it seems logical that “house rules” would become necessary. However, the binary set up immediately (The Way of Life and the Way of DEATH) seems pretty harsh. Since most of us are better at articulating our values than living up to them (I hope that’s not just me), I wonder how the reality on the ground looked. Something I try to remember is that if someone’s advising folks not to do certain things, some of those folks must be doing those things, so maybe these communities were more forgiving than their documents might suggest-- maybe they were a community of folks struggling together with their sins. If that was the reality, I wish their document was more reflective of a theology that allowed room for imperfection and difference.
In my past encounters with the Didache, I’ve noticed an intense puritanism (with a small p) that I don’t notice (as much) in this translation. In a very brief comparison with another translation, it seems that this particular translator is concerned with the “spirit” of the text in such a way that it has less of the literal “no abortion! no prostitution!” stuff that felt very “black and white” in contrast with my understanding of a complex world that often asks us to make non-ideal choices. However, in imagining a first or second century world, I see how puritanical behavioral standards may have been much more practical. I’d imagine that health concerns were far more wrapped up in sexual behaviors than they are today, in a world where many of us have access ways of having safer sex and are not doomed to poverty because we’ve had more than one sexual partner (the ways that many women would have been in earlier times). In section 3 of part 1, these ideas of purity and temptation come into play, but I find it very interesting that the author asks adherents to start within. “Don’t just stop hitting people, stop thinking about hitting people,” the author seems to say. In that sense, I like where that section is going. I have trouble with the section on idolatry, since it seems fairly harmless to me, but I suppose folks may have thought that there was a connection between worshiping the wrong gods and terrible things happening, and so may have sensed the “danger” in heresy to be quite literal. Perhaps in a similar way, I also liked the second section and its overview of orthopraxis. While there preference for particular ways of doing things (baptism in cold, running water, for instance), there are alternative options. The rituals themselves are about the spirit of the event, not about the physicality.
In contrast to the Didache and Q authors, Tertullian is writing to non-Christians, which explains why this document seems least like the others. His intention is to argue that Christians are not dangerous and crazy. He insists that they, too, pray for those in power (although perhaps being purposefully ambiguous about the content of those prayers), in a seeming attempt to say they’re not anti-Roman. Perhaps this is also why there is little (again) mention of Jesus, who was executed by the state. He is also concerned about the ways that their agape meals are being seen by outsiders. He insists that they aren’t drunken murderers (“Could a drunken murderer sing from the scriptures or compose music? Of course not!” he basically says). Perhaps, however, the reality that he’s defending against such accusations, implies that some Christians got a bit drunk and disorderly at their meals.
While Tertullian seems to be painting a picture of a rather soft, harmless-puppy-of-a-religion, he’s of course doing so because that’s the entire point: to prove that they are not dangerous to the powers-that-be. He’s not trying to be a martyr this week, he’s trying to survive under an oppressive regime.
The (not 100% functional) modern day parallel that pops into my mind is that of the LDS (Mormon) Church. Mormons are, and have been, a very divisive presence to outsiders. They believe and behave in ways that most of us think are very strange (perhaps without the self-awareness of the objective absurdity of our own ways of believing and practicing faith-- I mean, many of us do talk to invisible beings and eat food that we expect to have “magic power” despite what science tells us) and most of us have very incomplete understandings of what Mormons believe and what their practice looks like, as is evidenced by the reality that many still believe mainstream Mormons still practice polygamy, when the Church is very severely anti-polygamy at this point and has been for a pretty long time. As is pretty expected considering this, what you’ll hear and experience in a Mormon worship service or other functions will be very different than what we might hear or experience during the SLC Olympics, on a commercial for the LDS Church, etc. We might call that difference between messages dishonest or manipulative, but they would probably consider it practical.
As liberal and progressive Christians, I think most of us can see the ways that some folks might hear what happens in our spaces as “dangerous” (thinking of some of our prophetic, change-seeking ministries) and also recall the ways that we, when we are out in the world, are constantly saying, “We are not dangerous or crazy like that thing you saw on the news.”
No comments:
Post a Comment