It seems to me that if we do a bit of fast and loose parsing, the word "Christendom" most nearly means "Christ-domain," or "a domain unto/for/of/with respect to/regarding/according to/[insert preposition which associates an earthly domain and Christ] Christ." Wikipedia (heh heh) backs me up on this: "Kingdom of God" is often used interchangeably with "Christendom." The Wikipedia gods used the passive voice to make it more difficult to discern who uses the terms interchangeably, or when, but Vox Populi, Vox Dei Wikipedia and all that...
Also, I found this gem of a definition:
"Christendom, or the Christian world, has several meanings. In a cultural sense it refers to the worldwide community of Christians, adherents of Christianity. This community numbers in the billions of people of the world population, and is spread across many differentiations and ethnic groups connected only by faith in Christ and observance of the Bible. In a historical or geopolitical sense the term usually refers collectively to Christian majority countries or countries in which Christianity dominates or was a territorial phenomenon."
You know, Matthew, you could have saved us a lot of needless kerfuffle if you had just consulted the almighty Wiki to begin with!
Seriously though, are we dissatisfied with an identification of Christendom with the one holy, catholic and apostolic Church of the ages, wherever She may be?
If so, then why?
If the Church herself is Christendom enough (a big 'if', mind you), then what exactly does she lack? Does she have a mission other than the Great Commission that she is neglecting? If she has a commission to build an earthly kingdom, whence cometh it?
James, could you post that bit from Dostoevsky's The Idiot where he pillories Rome for taking the otherworldly Kingdom of Christ and trying to make it an earthly kingdom?
First off, could we have another word (if we shouldn't use Christendom) for the culture that developed through the middle ages through the enlightenment and beyond because of the influence of the Church in society? That's not a polemic question, but we do need a word for the culture which can understand and appreciate Cather, Pearl, and Chesterton. This cultural force is a good thing, but certainly not as good a thing as the Church. Still, many of us like (not for export even), and we'd like to find a way to keep it.
ReplyDeleteSecond, Dostoevsky writes in The Idiot (or maybe its Brothers K?) that Rome took the offer that Christ refused in the three temptations of Satan, taking the world and bread over the Gospel and the Heavenly Kingdom. This, of course, would be the problem with a One Kingdom rather than a Two Kingdoms theology, Christ rejecting the Earthly Kingdom and creating clear distinctions between what we are to render even a Pagan government and what we are to render to Christ.
I have no issue with separate heavenly and earthly kingdoms, but the question of what that separation looks like is a good one, though i think we've beaten it out as much as we can via the intarwebs.