Dissidentia

What is the importance of heresy and dissent for the sociocultural evolution of Christian semantics? Put in social systems language it could be said that in the course of Christian communications evolution, heresies or non-conformist Christian communications represent variations which allow the recognition of a particular communicative selection, which in time will be expressed as an expectation structure (stabilization) or simply as ecclesiastical orthodoxy.

For a Christian Church history the main variation element turns out to be unorthodox theological standpoints or assertions opposed to ecclesiastical sanctioned dogmas. Non-conformist Christian communications function was that of defining a particular and alternative Christian semantics, and allowing for various ecclesiastical patriarchates to consolidate. Here, the guiding distinctions are orthodoxy/ heresy (canonical/ apochriphal when referred to the testamentary tradition, and hegemonic Church/ schismatic Church when viewed from an organizational perpective).

Guiding Distinctions for a Sociological Framework

When Church history is viewed through these guiding distinctions, the protruding theoretical statement is that dogma formation is linked to ecclesiastical organization (consolidation of patriarchates together with its territorial jurisdiction) as well as to their rivalry (in general the question about the primacy of patriarchates). The more creepy and daring the beliefs asserted dogmatically, the greater the need to make religious generalizations, that is, to affirm one’s own theological opinion against the opinions held by other organized churches, in order to establish them as criterion of membership:

These reflections lead to the sociological hypothesis of a connection between the forms and degree of organization of the religion system and the magnitude of the dogmatization of religion, whereby dogmatics can be used in organizations for purposes of distinction, either for recognition of right faith and for the expulsion of heresies, or, finally, in the form of pre-formulated articles and confessions of faith in order to fix the conditions of association in religious organizations (Luhmann 2007b, 207).

Broadly and as examples of this, the first Church schism of the eastern non-Chalcedonian churches (451) —Coptic, Armenian, Syrian and Ethiopian—corresponds to the rivalry between Alexandria and Antioch (and in general all eastern episcopates). The second schism of the Greek Orthodox Church (869/879) corresponds to the rivalry between Byzantium and Rome. Finally, the last schism of the Western Latin Church in 1517 (Protestant Churches), where local Christian traditions (Wycliffe, Hus, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Grebel) demanded their independence from Rome. This is why

… the historical evolution [of the Church] seems to be characterized by the progressive diminishing of the councils’ ecumenicity –from universal to Western, from Western to Roman– as well as of their horizon. The priority put in service to the community’s living faith has been gradually changed in favor of a functionality that serves the ecclesiastical institution (Alberigo 1993, 13-14).

Since Constantine the Great, Roman imperial policies and the Christian Church intermixed to the point that the most important councils or synods of the Church began to be convened by the Roman Emperor and, the way round, Church council’s decisions were incorporated into the Roman legislation:

It was clearly within the emperor’s powers to revise the laws and several such revisions were made. But he could also add Novels (Novellae), new laws or constitutions. The Byzantines, living as they did in a theocratic society, found it hard to be sure where things temporal ended and things spiritual began. Thus the laws of their state frequently incorporated legal rulings of the church. Where a necessary qualification for citizenship was Orthodoxy in religious belief, it was natural that the canons of the church councils which had defined that belief should also be the law of the land. Justinian had decreed that “the canons of the first four councils of the church, at Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon, should have the status of law. For we accept as holy writ the dogmas of those councils and guard their canons as laws” (Nicol 1997, 65).

This opens the way to a Christendom which closely combines Church and State.

An Alternative Historical Narrative for Church History

By the ninth century, the division between Western (Roman patriarchate) and Eastern (Constantinopolitan patriarchate) Christianity became evident. At this time a conflict of jurisdiction over southern Italy and Dalmatia escalated into the filioque controversy, a dogmatic point pertaining to the use of the clause “and the Son” in the creed formula, which led to conflicting relations between both patriarchates.