Relativism, part III: Postpatristicism

It didn't take as much to take out Rome as you'd think. A few well-placed plagues, constant harrassment by organized tribes on the borders, and the empire practically tore itself apart. It's the so-called "Yoko Factor." When the Beatles disbanded, Lenon's love interest Yoko Ono was accused of breaking the band apart, but on further investigation, Yoko was but a catalyst of pre-existing issues. They broke themselves up, Yoko merely brought their issues to the surface.

The rub for the Romans was, as far as I can tell, the way that the upper eschelons became so dependent upon their luxuries that they would do anything to maintain their way of life. They could not adapt to change, and when the empire was unable to support their decadence, they became its worst parasites. For one, wealthy citizens became increasingly violent and peculiarly exotic in their tastes for entertainment; a well known example, the gladiators provided gory entertainment at the expense of life itself. It was their extravagence that ran the empire into the ground (an example from which contemporary Americans ought learn carefully). But of the strongest importance is a simple fact: those that once were patriots and willing to give up their time and finances for the greater good of the empire - the Aristocrats - were no longer willing to do so. As individualist selfishness replaced social consciousness, the empire slowly and methodically bled to death from within. The sacking of Rome in 410CE - and several times afterward - goes to show just how far the Empire had fallen from its former glory.

It was in this period of transition that the great councils of the Church were held: Nicea, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Chalcedon. During the persecution of the previous centuries, heresies were generally addressed by apostles or missionaries in letters networked through the underground movement. Paul, for example, wrote extensively on the issue of circumcision, or more broadly, why one need not first become Jewish before one became Christian. However, the relative security (migration in any form was always dangerous, but much less so now that they were no longer a hunted group) of their new positions afforded the clergy the chance to meet and begin hammering out, in an "official" capacity, creeds that stated in broad, sweeping strokes what the Christian Religion was really about. What did they all believe? The majority of scholars agree that these councils were, for the most part, responses to various influential cults. These "heterodoxies," as they would later be called, questioned the very essence of what it meant to be a Christian with varying interpretations. In some cases, such as gnostism, it was to possess a secret knowledge afforded only to the initiated elite. Other cases questioned the very nature of Jesus' essence (such as arianism and docetism). In any event, the councils all addressed many of the issues and questions floating around the waning Roman Empire, culminating in a set of creeds (the most well-known of which is the Nicene Creed, still found in many hymnals and even some Bibles) that stated the nature of orthodox belief according to the most learned and respected Christian scholars of the time:

I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made. Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end. And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets. And I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen. [Nicene Creed]

The creeds mark an important step in the history of Christianity, but also in the morphing of one cultural ethos into another. As patristicism waned with the Roman Empire's fall, the rise of the coucils and their subsequent creeds shows that the very nature of Christianity itself - what it meant to be a christian - began to morph. Instead of a set of beliefs that were holistically integrated into lifestyle, a person now must only recite their beliefs as memorized from the creeds. Without the need to worry about the controversy of those beliefs, Christianity became much more tempered to social norms. To put it another way, when one didn't have to worry about dying for one's beliefs, it started to matter less and less what one did with them or who one told about them. Christianity became a fashion, and then became the norm across many of the mediterranian cultures (especially those in the north and east), even as the Roman Empire itself struggled for survival.