Political doctrine and its historical development

¶ … Christian Church: Doctrine and Politics

The doctrine and politics of the early Christian Church were intrinsically related to one another, particularly during the fourth and fifth centuries. During this crucial time period in which the Holy Roman Empire (which had officially adopted the religion of Christianity) (Shelley, 2008, 1st page chptr 9) was attempting to expand, some of the fundamental principles regarding the nature of this religion and of Christology were widely debated and eventually solidified. There were political issues contributing to the initial debates regarding Christian doctrines, which in turn produced even greater political consequences regarding the solidarity of the Church. A look at several crucial ideas and events in the early Church reveals that Christian doctrine was greatly influenced by political motives and agendas.

The doctrine of Christianity became intertwined with politics once it became the official religion of the Roman Empire, which was largely focused on expansion and conquering. Part of the reason that it was so necessary to formulate an orthodox doctrine of Christianity was so that the religion could continue to expand globally (Shelley, 2008, p. 96) in much the same way that its chief propagators, the Roman Empire (both in the West and in the East) hoped to do so politically. The principle point that had to be decided then, was the nature of Christ himself. The divinity of Christ was roundly discussed at the Nicaean Council in the fourth century, in which Arius argued that Jesus could not have been divine and Athanasius argued that he was. The latter's viewpoint eventually triumphed due to inductive reasoning that had definite political implications, in which "without full divinity, Christ could not impart the salvation the Bible and the church's worship testified to" (Noll, 2012, p. 64). There are definite political implications of this statement. There was an entire (growing) church of people who were following Christianity based on the salvation that Christ could deliver. Therefore, one of the primary reasons why Christ's full divinity was incorporated into Christian doctrines was so that all of those people would continue to believe in this religion. There was a degree of political necessity in deciding that Christ was fully divine.

The political motives and agendas that impacted Christian doctrine became even more obvious with the events that led to the council of Chalcedon, which was a natural progression from the decision that Athanasius helped produce at Nicaea. At Chalcedon, representatives of both the Eastern and Western faction of the Christian Church -- which were still unified at the time -- struggled to rectify the apparent contradiction of the conclusion of Nicaea (that Christ was divine) with the perception that he was also human (Parys, 1970, p. 306). During this council there were disputes from various parts of the church in the east regarding the explanation for Christ's divinity as a human; there were contradictions with these explanations and those posed by the branch of the church in the West. Within the east, Alexandria, Antioch and Constantinople all advanced slightly varying viewpoints of their doctrines of Christology in what amounted to a dispute that was almost as much about political power within the church itself as it was about defining this aspect of the doctrine. Thus, "all three major Eastern sees competed against each other to enlist support from the bishop of Rome, who was traditionally recognized as the church leader" (Noll, 2012, p. 67). The political situation of the Roman empire at the time of the council of Chalcedon's end greatly affected the decision that Christ was a single person with both human and divine natures in him. Marcian was selected as Roman emperor by the previous emperor's widow simply because she was sympathetic to the Christology advocated by Antioch, which is why Marcian agreed with the dual nature of Christ propagated from Antioch (Noll, 2012, p. 70).