Jason Gehrke ’07 teaches history at Hillsdale College.
Courtesy | Hillsdale College
The history of Catholic Christianity after 325 A.D. is the history of being divided by its agreement, Assistant Professor of History and Director of the Center for Military History Jason Gehrke said during his lecture “What Happened to Catholic Christianity?” Feb. 28.
Gehrke, a confessional Lutheran, said Catholic Christianity is fundamentally united by its belief that there is a unity of both thought and practice.
“In ancient Christianity, that assertion is perhaps most fully articulated when Catholic Christians were talking to pagans,” Gehrke said.
This lecture was the second in Gehrke’s three-part lecture series on theological history, which he said was partially born from hearing theological debates around campus.
“I often hear theological claims and narratives traded, often among people who aren’t really sure about the historic and therefore definite reference for the words they’re using,” Gehrke said. “I think that’s a bit ubiquitous around here, particularly among the students.”
Gehrke said one of the first markers of Catholic Christianity is how it differentiates itself from Gnostic teachings.
“That tradition of Christianity that used the word ‘catholic’ first was that one asserting that the incarnation was real,” Gehrke said. “Catholic Christianity is predicated on the real incarnation of Jesus. It emerges, not only in opposition, but necessarily and fundamentally in opposition to that other trajectory that we can call gnostic Christianity, which was also a tradition.”
Moving chronologically, Gehrke used the Creed of Nicaea to demonstrate an internal Church pattern.
“Catholic Christianity is itself involved in a process of internal differentiation that will involve regular, mutual anathemas, and what happened in the history of the church around that,” he said. “Catholic Christianity received and admitted the Creed of Nicaea in 325, and pretty soon also became divided by its acceptance of Nicaea.”
Rather than the Protestant Reformation of the early 1500s, Gehrke pinpointed how differences about the 4th century Council of Chalcedon — which emphasized Christ’s human and divine natures — led to four kinds of Catholic Churches: Assyrian Church of the East, the Egyptian Coptic Church, Chalcedonian Orthodoxy, and the Church of Rome.
“All of those Catholic churches are the historic seeds of Nicaea, the ones named in Canon Six,” Gehrke said. “Three of them have a Petrine charism, and all of them are holding partially except Chalcedon.”
Associate Professor of History Matthew Gaetano reflected on the significance of taking the Coptic and Assyrian Churches seriously, which presents a reality of a differentiated Catholic Church in the West wherein its members affirm the Council of Chalcedon.
“Chalcedonian Christianity as actually being preserved through the Reformation is something that’s actually not to be taken for granted quite as much as I think we do,” Gaetano said. “The way that you’ve attended to the significance of the Egyptian Assyrian church helps to make clear just how remarkable that level of unity about the character of the Triune God and Christ really is.”
Gehrke said the 16th-century Reformation was really a “schism around the Alps,” and not the whole world, as the churches already drew distinctions several centuries earlier.
“Unless your notion of what the church is becomes purely ideological rather than historical, then you’re going to have to affirm, in some sense, an enduring Catholic character in all of these broken traditions,” Gehrke said.
Davis Smith, a first year graduate student, said he enjoyed learning how schism is not a bug, but a feature of Catholic Christianity.
“Schism is going to be an inevitable feature of Orthodox Christianity wherever it is because if you’re really concerned about truth and doctrine and practice, you’re going to want to make a split from those who believe differently,” Smith said.
Smith said Gehrke saw things through a Lutheran lens, yet was balanced in his presentation.
“He was pretty gracious towards the other traditions,” Smith said. “They can all claim Catholicity — he wasn’t saying that Rome and Calvinists and even Anabaptists are necessarily wrong for being schismatic or for having doctrines we disagree with.”
