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===Theoretical Background: Differentiation Theory=== | ===Theoretical Background: Differentiation Theory=== | ||
The theory of differentiation in sociology has a very long history. It is present not only in Niklas Luhmann, but also in important classical and contemporary sociologists such as Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Georg Simmel, Max Weber, and Talcott Parsons: “Since its establishment, sociology has been concerned with differentiation” (Luhmann 2007a, 471ff).<ref>Opening phrase of chapter four on differentiation. The book, considered his major work, was published one year before Luhmann’s death (Luhmann 1997). The Spanish version was published ten years later (Luhmann 2007a), and an early draft was first available in Italian (Luhmann & De Giorgi 1992) and a year later in Spanish (Luhmann 1993). The English version was published by Stanford University Press in two volumes (Luhmann 2012, 2013a). | The theory of differentiation in sociology has a very long history. It is present not only in Niklas Luhmann, but also in important classical and contemporary sociologists such as Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Georg Simmel, Max Weber, and Talcott Parsons: “Since its establishment, sociology has been concerned with differentiation” (Luhmann 2007a, 471ff).<ref>Opening phrase of chapter four on differentiation. The book, considered his major work, was published one year before Luhmann’s death (Luhmann 1997). The Spanish version was published ten years later (Luhmann 2007a), and an early draft was first available in Italian (Luhmann & De Giorgi 1992) and a year later in Spanish (Luhmann 1993). The English version was published by Stanford University Press in two volumes (Luhmann 2012, 2013a). | ||
| − | </ref> | + | </ref>The concept is used to produce the unity of differences or, if you will, to indicate the unity through plurality or diversity.<p>Differentiation makes possible to refer to social reality in a more abstract way. Since the nineteenth century unities and differences began to be understood as a result of processes, that is, as evolutionary developments. In sociology, the concept of differentiation allowed to change the theories of progress with structural analyses. To a large extent, social anthropology itself would share this evolutionary and structural idea of human societies. |
| + | </p> | ||
| + | |||
== References == | == References == | ||
<references /> | <references /> | ||
Revision as of 21:16, 18 January 2019
What is the importance of heresy[1] 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[2].
For a Christian Church history the main variation element turns out to be unorthodox theological standpoints or assertions opposed to ecclesiastical sanctioned dogmas[3]. 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 councils' 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.
The Council of Constantinople IV has the peculiarity of having taken place in a twofold version (869 and 879). The Roman version of 869 condemned Photios I, Byzantine patriarch, for eliminating the filioque clause from the creed, and decided on the order of precedence of the patriarchates: Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem (Jedin 1960, 47ff). The Byzantine version of 879 reinstated Pothios as legitimate patriarch and rejected the decisions taken by Romans ten years before.
The Catholic Church recognizes the ecumenical character of this council; the Greeks do not. The schism did not consummate thanks to the Saracen incursions in Italy and to the weekness of the Carolingian empire, but progressively became final in the eleventh century with the re-edition of the filioque controversy and later on with the sack of Constantinople by westerners of the fourth crusade in 1204 (Mitre 2000, 35ff). Never again a general council took place in the East:
One can not ignore the most important characteristic of the Constantinopolitan [IV], looked from the series of councils that preceded it: it is the first council considered as ecumenical only by the Western Church and converted in fact as a symbol of division. Although it was not directly connected with the separation of East and West, it was nevertheless a prelude to it because it depicts characteristic symptoms and motives (Perrone 1993, 137).
The breaking points for an alternative periodization of Church history are set in accordance with the guiding distinctions established before. The first period is that of Christian Antiquity (first to fifth centuries AD). On the level of organized Christianity, it points to the hegemony and later displacement of Alexandria as the patriarchate with primacy in the East, and culminates after lengthy dogmatic disputes against Gnostics, Arians, Nestorians and Monophysites[4] with the schism of the eastern Christian churches during the Council of Chalcedon in 451.
Apart from papal councils themselves, the concentration of power on the Roman patriarch may be found in three distinctive elements: the Roman Curia (“no secular administration could come anywhere near it”), the figure of the papal legate, and the emergence of powerful religious orders (Mitterauer 2010, 150-151). The translocal power acquired thus will transform the Roman patriarchate into a proto-colonial power allied to western European powers-to-be:
At the end of the eleventh century, however, the papacy, which for at least two decades had been urging secular rulers to liberate Byzantium from the infidels, finally succeeded in organizing the First Crusade (1096-1099). A second crusade was launched in 1147 and a third crusade in 1189. These first crusades were the foreign wars of the Papal Revolution [Gregorian Reformation]. They not only increased the power and authority of the papacy but also opened a new axis eastward to the outside world and turned the Mediterranean Sea from a natural defensive barrier against invasion from without into a route for western Europe’s own military and commercial expansion (Berman 1983, 100-101).
Martin Luther and Modern Religious Differentiation
Social systems theory refers to religions strictly as communication. In a flat formulation, when the theory refers to religion, the topic is “exclusively religious communication, religious meaning that is updated in communication as the meaning of communication”.[5]But this already involves a specific religious meaning different from other meanings in society:
Originally, religion was secured by society itself. Not in the sense that every action was always religiously qualified. Neither social communication nor the surrounding nature were totally and completely sacralized. But in its foundations, religion and society were not distinguishable from one another… The historical-evolutionary event which we want to analyze under the tag “differentiation process of religion”, ends with this possibility. The process of differentiation involves a renunciation to redundancy. Religion does not assure today either against inflation or against an unwanted change of government, or against the outcome of a passion, or against the scientific refutation of one’s own theories. It can not interfere with other functional systems (Luhmann 2009, 195).[6]
Theoretical Background: Differentiation Theory
The theory of differentiation in sociology has a very long history. It is present not only in Niklas Luhmann, but also in important classical and contemporary sociologists such as Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Georg Simmel, Max Weber, and Talcott Parsons: “Since its establishment, sociology has been concerned with differentiation” (Luhmann 2007a, 471ff).[7]The concept is used to produce the unity of differences or, if you will, to indicate the unity through plurality or diversity.
Differentiation makes possible to refer to social reality in a more abstract way. Since the nineteenth century unities and differences began to be understood as a result of processes, that is, as evolutionary developments. In sociology, the concept of differentiation allowed to change the theories of progress with structural analyses. To a large extent, social anthropology itself would share this evolutionary and structural idea of human societies.
References
- ↑ Catholic canon law defines heresy as “the persistent denial, after receiving baptism, of a truth to be believed with divine and catholic faith, or the pertinacious doubt about it; apostasy is the total rejection of the Christian faith. Schism is the rejection to subject oneself to the Supreme Pontiff or to have communion with the members of the church submitted to him... [Nevertheless,] From a current perspective, the commentators of the Pauline texts, both Catholic and Protestant, have chosen to interpret the Greek expression hairesis (Latin haeresia) in the sense of splits, parties, factions, and not as doctrinal discrepancies that would receive later. St. Paul [1 Cor, 11:19], they say, would be thinking in the contrasts of practical, moral and personal characteristics of the Corinthian community” (Mitre 2003, 175, 33).
- ↑ For the sociocultural evolution mechanisms compare Luhmann (2007a, 325-469), third chapter on evolution.
- ↑ For the detailed argumentation compare Ornelas (2018, 87-170), second chapter on heresies and Christian organization.
- ↑ Against Church orthodoxy, Gnostics postulated a dualist philosophy which opposes two principles (good/ bad; light/ darkness; spirit/ matter), and includes the belief in an ignorant god (demiurge) who created the material evil world (Markschies 2002, 37-38). Arians denied the divinity of Christ. Nestorians rejected Mary as mother of God. Monophysites argued, without denying the double nature of Christ, that the human nature of Jesus was absorbed in favor of his divinity.
- ↑ Compare Luhmann (2007b, 37). This book was posthumously published (Luhmann 2000). The English version was published by Stanford University Press (Luhmann 2013b).
- ↑ This book is a compilation of the two most important articles that Luhmann wrote in life about the system of religion (Luhmann 1977, 77-181; Luhmann 1989, 259-357). An English version of Religious Dogmatics could be found in Luhmann (1984).
- ↑ Opening phrase of chapter four on differentiation. The book, considered his major work, was published one year before Luhmann’s death (Luhmann 1997). The Spanish version was published ten years later (Luhmann 2007a), and an early draft was first available in Italian (Luhmann & De Giorgi 1992) and a year later in Spanish (Luhmann 1993). The English version was published by Stanford University Press in two volumes (Luhmann 2012, 2013a).
Bibliography
Alberigo, Giuseppe. 1993. "Prólogo: Los concilios ecuménicos en la historia". In Historia de los concilios ecuménicos, Giuseppe Alberigo (ed.), Salamanca: Sígueme.
Berman, Harold. 1983. Law and Revolution. The Formation of the Legal Western Tradition. Cambridge/ London: Harvard University Press.
Jedin, Hubert. 1960. Breve historia de los concilios. Barcelona: Herder.
Luhmann, Niklas. 2007a. La sociedad de la sociedad. México: Herder/ Universidad Iberoamericana (UIA).
Luhmann, Niklas. 2007b. La religión de la sociedad. Madrid: Trotta.
Markschies, Christoph. 2002. La gnosis. Barcelona: Herder.
Mitterauer, Michael. 2010. Why Europe? The Medieval Origins of Its Special Path. Chicago/ London: University of Chicago Press.
Mitre F., Emilio. 2003. Ortodoxia y herejía: entre la Antigüedad y el Medievo. Madrid: Cátedra.
Mitre F., Emilio. 2000. Las herejías medievales de Oriente y Occidente. Madrid: Arco Libros.
Nicol, D. M. 1997. "Byzantine Political Thought". In The Cambridge History of Medieval Political Thought, c. 350-c.1450, James H. Burns (ed.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ornelas, Marco. 2018. Modern Religious Differentiation: The Latin Mass (1517-1570). Mexico: Independently Published.
Perrone, Lorenzo. 1993. "El cuarto concilio de Constantinopla (869-870)". In Historia de los concilios ecuménicos, Giuseppe Alberigo (ed). Salamanca: Sígueme.
