Imagine Donald Trump realizes tomorrow that Christian disagreement over Jesus’ relationship to illegal immigrants was causing a lot of political problems. So he decides to convene a council with representatives from every US denomination. It’s going to be held at some exclusive Caribbean island and each denomination has to pay to send their person...and the only people who find out about it are the ones who read Truth Social.
Once a quorum reaches the island, they debate about the question of the historical Jesus and the most likely answer to the pressing American question of Christ and the immigrant. After months of discussion and voting, the poor people have to leave because their denominations can’t afford to keep them there, the ones who don’t speak English well get little traction in the assembly, and behind closed doors the evangelical denominations all band together against the catholics and mainline protestant groups.
The answer is decided, the government aligns with the decision and everyone who disagrees with the answer gets banned from social media or worse...
. . .
In my mind, this would not be the first time that localized theology becomes universalized through an exercise of power.
As Christianity grew in popularity throughout the Roman empire, specific questions of ontology provoked by Greco-Roman religious and philosophical norms began to dominate the Christian conversation. The religious tension became so fierce that the Roman emperors began to convene councils in an effort to provoke some sense of unity. The creeds that emerged from these councils have shaped Christianity within the Roman empire and its evolutions through the Holy Roman Empire and the later colonizing forces of Europe.
So it little surprise that comfortable, safe, relatively wealthy, white, educated males (aka. theologians) should reference the councils and creeds as a normative standard for newly emerging Christologies of the Black, Feminist, or Hispanic persuasion. According to one theologian I’ve been reading, these new ways of thinking about Jesus are examples of localized “translations” of the gospel into a specific cultural context - and he views them as necessary!
However, he would also argue that that the localized translations of the 16th century (Protestant Reformation) and the 4-8th century (ecumenical creeds) of the European context should be considered as normative for everyone else. In short, the dominant western Christian tradition has forgotten that our own councils, creeds, and history are an example of localizing and translating the gospel into a particular context.
It is easy for those caught up in the dominant stream of the western tradition to forget that our councils and creeds were simply early attempts at translating the gospel into the language of that time to answer questions raised by the surrounding political/philosophical climate.
In my opinion, every attempt to translate the gospel, including those that took place in the 4th century and the 16th century ought to be understood as localized translations that deserve (as much as the new localized translations) to be in conversation as an effort to more deeply understand and embody the revelation of God seen in scripture (which itself offers a kind of translation of the events).
It would be equally unwise to reject the historical Christian creeds or the newly emerging translations of the gospel. They are all incredible examples of how Christians have wrestled with faith over time, but I do not agree with the idea that any one of them can serve as a normative standard alongside of scripture. Nobody has a monopoly on truth even when it is supported by power.
Just because a localized answer has become universally dominant does not mean that it can transcend its own origins. Power and truth are not the same thing. And it seems quite clear from the scripture that Jesus would be on the side of the powerless, not the oppressor - regardless of who wins at the emperor’s council.
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