Fidelity to the Christian Identity
• It is against the backdrop of such observations concerning historical
visibility that any question concerning Christianity’s fidelity to its
identity through all its cultural permutations should be posed.
• The question of “the essence of the religion” and “religious forms”
is a worthwhile one but is particularly difficult to answer in the case
of Christianity, which as we have seen, had no stable identity or
form of its own before it engaged, was shaped by, and shaped the
Jewish and Greco-Roman cultural worlds. Were the first “forms” of
Christianity constitutive of its “essence”? Or is the essence one that
can exist in dramatically different expressions?
o The answer to the question may depend to some extent on
what forms draw our attention. If we focus, for example, on
the forms of institution, public liturgy, conciliar decisions, and
structures of authority, we might come up with one conclusion.o If we focus, however, on forms of religious expression that
do not rise so easily to visibility, we might draw another
conclusion; such forms might include acts of piety, forms of
prayer, or the witness of married life or celibate existence. Note
that we are not, here, appealing to a vague “spirit” as distinct
from the “body” so as to argue that real Christianity is an
inward, “spiritual” thing; we are talking entirely about bodies
in different degrees of visibility.• The differences in Christianity in the forms that are available to
historical inquiry are obvious and dramatic.
o There is a great distance between the simple rituals of
baptism and Lord’s Supper in the age of persecution and
the elaborate liturgy and sacramental system of the church
under Constantine.o The desert mothers and fathers of the 4th century might
recognize a fellow ascetic in Benedict of Nursia, but they
would not know what to think about the magnificence of the