I
have been reading early Christian history lately, especially The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture
(Bart Ehrman, 2011), Jesus Wars: How Four
Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would
Believe for the Next 1,500 Years (John Philip Jenkins. 2011), and Sources of the Jesus Tradition: Separating
History From Myth (R. Joseph Hoffman, Ed., 2010).
I
am struck by how passionate the early Christians were about “orthodoxy” – about
the need for EVERYONE to believe exactly the right thing (which happened to be
exactly what THEY believed) about Jesus. There were in the early days, up perhaps
to the fourth century, a widely divergent range of views about Jesus among
Christian communities, and even within Christian communities. Was he all divine, or all human, or half
divine and half human, or simultaneously divine and human, or human but
inhabited temporarily by the divine, or human but adopted by the divine, etc,
etc, etc. Given the fairly tolerant attitude of the Greek and Roman world
around them to adopting new gods and believing in a multitude of gods, it is
surprising to me that the early Christians felt so strongly about these issues
that they were (eventually) willing to resort even to genocide against those
who held even slightly different views on these issues. This was not a Jewish fetish. Some of the most vehement – even anal – in this
regard were non-Jews, many of them Romans.
Of
course eventually one group became dominate, and established their particular views
as the orthodox or “right” views (and rewrote some of the scriptures to buttress
their views), and then proceeded through the following centuries to persecute
and exterminate anyone who believed even slightly differently.
I
think of this these days when “political correctness” has taken over the
nation, and even college students, who used to fight for freedom of speech, now
fight for political correctness and feel “unsafe” in the presence of alternate
opinions. And perhaps the arrogant
certainty of the Islamic jihadists that they and they alone have the correct
belief is also on my mind.
Why
is it that the monotheistic religions, especially Christianity and Islam, are
so passionately concerned to make sure everyone believes exactly what they
believe, or extinguish them in the attempt.
In almost every other field of human endeavor – food, literature, art, dress,
music etc , etc, etc. diversity is tolerated, even valued. But Christians have
fought century-long wars and slaughtered millions over this issue – and Islam
is still doing it. Why? Why does it matter so much to these people
that everyone believe EXACTLY what they believe?
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