Relativism, part II: the Patristic Ethos

We begin back in the waning days of the Roman Empire, a period I've called "Patristic." At its height, Rome stretched from the cost of Europe and Africa on the Atlantic all the way into modern-day Turkey, and from as far north as England to its southernmost settlements in Ethiopia. What is most important about this period is the pluralism and the multiculturalism of the Roman machine; vast armies were summoned from three continents; traders moved from Tarsus to Rome to Jerusalem to Cairo and back again; cities arose from the desert, the countryside, and everywhere in between. Rome was the known world, and treatises from this period often reflect the sentiment that anything beyond its borders were of little consequence.

The state religion, known to historians as the "cult of the emperor," permeated this culture from East to West, North to South. It demanded the worship of the Roman Emperor by every citizen - with severe penalties, including witholding of marketplace privileges - but also allowed them the freedom to worship additional deities as they saw fit. Religion was as such almost buffet-style, a pick-and-choose-my-favorites culture (so long as one favorite was the Emperor). Popular culture was filled with religious icons, imagery, and rituals of every imaginable variety; temples of every imaginable shape, size, and flavor dotted the cityscapes. Many of the so-called "mystery religions" served as a sort of supplemental insurance, the rider attached to one's normal religion or local deity, that insured a positive outcome in the next life. It was a colorful, multifaceted culture of indulgence in the upper classes and of earnest passion in the lower.

But corruption in politics led to many attempts - some successful - to usurp power. Emperors came and went, and eventually the once proud empire was split in two, East and West. Both were at war, with one another and with various cultures and tribes on their borders looking to take advantage of the political turmoil (namely the tribes of Germania in the north and the Turks in the East). Into the fray came a young general, Constantine.

Legend holds that Constantine received a vision of the symbol of the Chi-Rho, a Christian symbol, and was told by a divine voice, "with this symbol, victory." He immediately had the symbol affixed to the banners, the shields, and any other available surfaces of his army, and later that week, his armies defeated those of Maxentius in a fierce battle at Milvian Bridge. The civil war was over, the East and West reunited under a single banner. Thereafter, the Roman Empire began sweeping changes to its legal system, legalizing the growing Christian movement as a valid religion, eventually making it the official religion of the Empire (though not under Constantine, who himself was only ever baptized on his deathbed, preferring instead to keep his options open and even allowing the maintenance of the cult of the Emperor). Never before had Christianity, an offshoot of Judaism that had endured and even grown in the face of harsh persecution, enjoyed such wide acceptance. A clergy class sprang up, and gradually life became ... shall we say, "soft" for them.

This was the birth of Christendom, and I believe an event that marked the highpoint of the transition between the Patristic period and what I'll call the Medieval period. As the clergy became more powerful, tolerance for the many religions and cults of the Roman Empire began to fade; social and legal pressures became responsible for as many conversions as legitimate conversions. Gradually, European culture in particular began to shift away from the anything-goes religious diversity of the Roman Empire and toward a state-centered Christendom, the (re)melding of politics with religion, towards an Empire with Christianity at its center.

And then Rome fell.

Relativism, part I: A Brief History of Nearly Everything

"Questions aren’t producing answers anymore, which is more and more okay - they produce great conversations. Conversations aren’t lasting for one meal anymore either, they are as ongoing as dishes in the sink. I think this is the case because many questions don’t have simple, straightforward answers, at least if you want a good answer. That’s too neat, and life is not neat. It is messy, big, complicated, but amazing. In the conversations we have with friends, life gets unraveled, or better painted, life gets untangled so as to be unfurled." [Jeremiah Aja]

Just because you label something one way doesn't mean it is that thing, and just because you don't label it doesn't mean it's not. You can call the kettle black, but that actually tells the rest of us more about you than it tells us about the kettle. It's the problem with labels: they're - really - more informative about ourselves than about others. For example, the best way to understand a culture is not to go to the neighbors and ask them about that culture (although it does give you some useful information), but to rather talk to the people and live with them a while and then find out what they call themselves and why. The neighbors are often the ones who give the culture names like "people who desecrate nature" or "people who enjoy hyeina doodie" or "people who eat children." A lot of early anthropologists made this mistake when exploring Africa and North America; many tribes were completely misunderstood because rival tribes - who wanted to make allies out of the technologically superior Europeans - demonized their neighbors. (As a side note, the romantic view that the Native Americans and Native Africans respectively were peace-loving and unified is about as accurate as saying the same of Europe; Europeans just happened to mobilize first).

That is why one should not ask someone from the older generations to describe the younger generations unless he or she is prepared to take the answer with a salt mine (a grain of salt is, in this case, a gross understatement). Postmodernity has gotten an undeserved mark on its record for being "morally and ethically relativistic," a label that is at best misunderstood, and at worst slander. To understand this, though, we have to go back and take a look at some of the paradigm changes over the past few millenia.

Over the past two thousand years, there have been - roughly - four distinct cultural ethoi that have permeated the globe. I want to be sure that I'm clear: this is an extremely rough generalization that does not take into account the plethura of cultures or the complexities of intercultural relations. It's also a bit euro-centric in its approach, as you'll see from the labels I've given them, but it suits our purposes since postmodernity is first and foremost a western phenomenon, and secondly a developed-nations phenomenon.

It all makes a lot more sense at the end, after we get through the history. And we're going to start back in Rome.

Freedom and Choices: Political Involvement

Patrick over at Tentpegs has written a phenomenal article on the political involvement of Christians. I wholeheartedly agree with the way he puts it:

"I will simply say that it isn’t our job to make a new law for the nation. It is our job to graciously and with great kindness approach our culture in such a way as to turn its heart away from abortion. We don’t need new laws; we need new hearts. Laws will always be broken by those who want to break them whether they be laws about abortion or laws about speed limits. It is the heart we must change and that is much, much harder work than convincing five out of nine Supreme Court justices to vote our way on abortion."

When did we decide that our freedom, our ability to choose what is good, was worth handing over to somebody else? The Christian Agnostic realizes that freedom is a matter of perspective. While our actions always have consequences, a person always has, at the very least, two choices in every situation, and often far more than that. When it comes to marriage, the Christian Agnostic ought to ask "why am I letting the government decide for me if I am married or not?" In all things, we ask ourselves, "who says so, and why?" and then "how does this help the situation, in light of what we know?" I like what Patrick says because, when it comes down to it, he asks us to question everything - what the Left says, what the Right says, and what we say. And then he asks us to ask God what He thinks.

I want to write more on this, but I think for now I'm going to have to let it percolate a bit more before I get too eager.