The Priority of Theology over Ecclesiology
The Priority of Theology over Ecclesiology
We have already touched on this topic in the article "Theological Reasons for the Decline in Christianity." Now we would like to supplement that article and view it from other perspectives.
15.03.2018
From the acute crisis of Christianity in the 18th century to the first half of the 20th century, Christian thought widely turned to the problem of the Church—ecclesiology, rightly believing that the crisis of Christianity was largely caused by the crisis of church organization. Many ecclesiological works appeared, shedding light on the biblical foundation of the Church and offering forms of church life for the present and the future.
However, it must be acknowledged that ecclesiology, having achieved decent results, has stopped, hitting a glass ceiling. The problem of this stagnation lies in the fact that no matter what variations of ecclesiologies are proposed, they will inevitably fall into two extremes: 1) either totalitarian sects of weak-spirited people who become dependent on a psychological dominator (as has happened with many Protestant movements); or 2) into a complex bureaucratic hierarchical structure—a system in the image of the state or corporation (as happened with the Orthodox and Catholics), with all the resulting distortions and degradations.
Why does this happen? If a particular ecclesia-church claims to be Christian, then in order to remain in the form established by Christ, it requires the support and guidance of the Holy Spirit. Only the Spirit can save it from sliding into a sect or a system. And since such sliding occurs everywhere, it means there are some problems with people's communion with the Holy Spirit, with communion with God. Problems with communion with God can only arise from a false understanding of God, man, and their relationship.
Since man is the image of God, correct understandings of man flow from correct understandings of the Divine, that is, from true theology. The crisis of the Church is the result of the crisis of theology. Christian thinkers, beginning to untangle the knot from the end, went from the crisis of Christianity and faith to the crisis of the Church, and now, from the crisis of the Church, we have come to the crisis of theology.
In our opinion, the core of theology, and consequently anthropology, is found in the personal nature of God and man, and in the personal nature of their communication—sonship, friendship, discipleship. After all, the communication between a king and a servant is more legal, impersonal, and mechanistic.
Why did depersonalization occur, and why did communication with God become authoritative, mechanistic, and legal? Because this is the old technology of the devil, which consists of two stages: 1) depersonalization and disorientation (The Matrix, Babylon) with the digitization of all existence; and 2) when this reaches a crisis, they offer a way out through a false personality—the devil and the antichrist (the Beast, Cain).
Important changes occurred in Christianity in the second century. There are many of them, but one of the most significant is the shift in the Christian worldview from God to the Church, which by that time had already outlived the charismatic leaders living according to the will of the Holy Spirit and was becoming a bureaucratic structure. The big mystery is why there was no "short circuit." And if it did occur—in what forms, where, and how? We attempted to raise and explore this question in our article, "What Happened in Early Christianity or Where Was the Short Circuit?" to which we refer the reader.
But why did this happen? The answer can only be one, and it’s a pity that few emphasize this point. It is the priority of theology—understanding God in the knowledge and construction of Christian life. By knowing what God is like, we know what man is like, and by knowing what both God and man are like, we can already know how to organize church life—as a center of communion between God and people. If God is a free, creative, loving person, then the Church is an assembly of free, creative, loving people. If God is only a principle, an idea, a function, a king, or a judge, then the Church becomes a hierarchical functional mechanism of unfree and uncreative cogs driven by fear of punishment and the desire for rewards.
Just as in the 19th-20th centuries, Christian thinkers restored the biblical understanding of the Church, so in the 21st century, they must restore the biblical understanding of God and man. Otherwise, this new ecclesiology will quickly slip into the swamp. We are living at the peak of the depersonalized digital matrix of Babylon. And Revelation tells us that the Babylonian harlot will fall, and in her place will come the False Prophet-antichrist, a personality, but with a minus sign, whom the disoriented, depersonalized people will accept as the truth. This sense of the approaching end times should further stimulate and encourage the restoration of biblical theology.
It is the personality and such of its brightest examples as fatherhood, sonship, friendship, brotherhood, mentorship, and discipleship that will define the personality and the relationship of persons.
How did theology develop among the Greeks, or rather, how was it developed? Greek theology, developed under the influence of philosophy, was a fully controlled and well-organized project of the adepts of the so-called “Babylonian wisdom,” and the priests of infernal forces, among whom were many philosophers such as Pythagoras and Plato.
The main features of the dynamics of Greek theology are the transition from anthropomorphic, personal paganism, polytheism to effective monotheism, but with the substitution of the Divine for the idea of the Divine—the Absolute. While the Greeks previously represented the gods as statues-idols made of stone, metal, and wood, philosophy called for representing the Divine in the form of an intellectual idol—the Idea.
The deities of the Greek pantheon were too human in the negative sense of human nature, with all its weaknesses, and were replaced by the depersonalized Absolute—a function, a super-robot, a super-mind, but presented as a human creation, not a creation of a sculptor's hands, but the intellect of a philosopher. The Absolute is impersonal, cold, and therefore dead.
In Judaism, theology developed differently. The transition from anthropomorphic paganism, represented by man-made idols, as with the Greeks, led to strict monotheism. However, the concept of one God among the Jews developed from the human to the superhuman. While the gods of the pagans were like humans with all their weaknesses, the God of the Jews was represented as a hyperpersonal personality, in which the "human" was presented in its best traits.
A serious problem arose: how do you represent the personal nature of God to people, without diminishing or limiting the unlimited, uncreated God through something created (a sculpture or an idea)?
The Bible offers the best solution. On one hand, there is the strictest prohibition against representing God as an image or intellectual concept, and on the other hand, the most vivid descriptions of His personal traits: God speaks, sees, breathes, hears, walks in the garden, sits in the heavens, with the earth as a footstool beneath His feet. God rejoices, grieves, loves, hates, shows mercy, has compassion. God communicates with people. Such a description of God in the Bible does not confine Him to any limitations, as with pagans, occultists, or philosophers. On the contrary, it shows His openness—the main characteristic of a divine personality that embodies freedom and infinity.
As we can see, philosophers and occultists have the completely opposite God-Absolute, who seems to be everywhere but who seems not to exist.
In the Bible, especially with the rise of Christianity, more complex images of God appear. These can be conditionally divided into two groups: 1) God for those who strive toward Him; and 2) God for those who distance themselves from Him.
For the former, God is the Trinity: God the Creator-Father as Father (the human relationship to God as sonship), God the Son—the God-Man, as a Brother and Friend to man (the relationships of brotherhood and friendship), and God the Holy Spirit, as the Comforter, Teacher, and Guide (the relationship of discipleship, mentorship). These images were chosen not by chance, but because they reveal the traits of Personality in their fullest extent, especially in three of its most important components—creativity, freedom, and love.
For those who distance themselves from God, who ignore Him or even oppose Him, God is portrayed in less personal images, where personality is already limited. This does not mean that God is limited, but that a person avoiding God cannot comprehend many aspects of God's Personality and can only accept God in a very limited format. These are the images of King and Judge. It is immediately clear that King and Judge are more functions with greatly limited freedom than personalities. But a sinner can only accept God's personality in this way. A sinful apostate in contact with the Divine is a defendant and a slave. However, if the sinner returns to God, he "comes not into judgment" before the Judge, and is no longer called a slave, but becomes a son, a friend, a disciple.
Later, Christianity strangely deviated from the personal God, focusing attention on God as a position and function—King, Judge, Punisher, and Merciful One, a "magic wand." Moreover, the heresy of pantheism or absolutism (God as the Idea-Absolute) took prominence in Christianity. Classical Christian theology (the “theology of the Fathers") became thoroughly imbued with pagan Platonic or Aristotelian nonsense, from pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite to Thomism, a philosophy that has little in common with the biblical God. This shift in theology automatically diminished God in Christianity and elevated the church bureaucracy, giving it the right to act as God's representatives on earth.
This happened under the influence of several factors, namely:
- The influence of post-second-temple Judaism, which increasingly slipped into pantheism (Kabbalah) and legalism-mechanism in its relationship with God.
The influence of pagan philosophy, religion, and occultism, where God is not a person but an idea. Neoplatonism, in particular, greatly harmed the Christian mind, becoming the foundation of the theology of the Fathers.
The influence of the temptation of power and money, when in the pursuit of earthly matters, the Church turned into a corporation based on law and norms, rather than personal relationships.
It is interesting that a significant portion of both Christian and secular researchers views biblical theology as an archaic concept for Near Eastern Bedouins. Yet we, thinking we are "smart," present God in the form of Neoplatonic nonsense, believing it is modern and true. For these reasons, in Christian theology, God begins to be diminished through depersonalization, formalization, and the transformation of God into a function—the function of granting blessings and punishments, the function of governance, judgment, etc. The personal traits of God are forgotten.
For many, it is difficult to admit that the biblical God "with a footstool" and the Unknowable God from the Neoplatonist pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite represent fundamentally opposed theologies. But Scripture presents God exactly as "with a footstool," warning against being swayed by philosophies. It is precisely the human, too-human, hyperpersonal God, and not the dead Absolute, that was the God-Man, Christ.
When God is viewed as a function and a construct, it becomes easy to shift the main focus of Christianity from God Himself to the church structure. And this structure becomes just as constructively functional, but not interpersonal.
The penetration of philosophy into Christianity and the displacement of biblical theology by philosophical, impersonal, created, mechanistic, optical, and symbolic theology of "Babylonian wisdom" is a striking, glaring, and terrifying fact.
However, the overwhelming majority of both modern and ancient theologians, including most of the Fathers, not only do not see this, but also support such a substitution. In the ecumenical frenzy, many begin to look for common ground between Christianity and other world religions and worldview concepts. In some respects, this is correct: despite external differences, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Talmudic Judaism, Kabbalah, and philosophy all share a common basis and source: the so-called primordial Babylonian wisdom. The essence of this "wisdom" is as follows: 1) the Divine (thus, also man and angels) is depersonalized and represented as an intellectual construct; and 2) the whole world is presented as a digital and conceptual matrix.
In biblical Christianity, everything is the complete opposite of this Babylonian wisdom and its continuations in the form of philosophy, occultism, and other religions. In biblical Christianity, God, angels, and man are personal, and the Church and the entire universe are not a matrix, but the result of the interaction of personalities.
Kondratio