Today’s guest post is by Wayfarer.
“Christian”
Acts 11:26 states, in part, “And the disciples were called Christians first in Antioch.” Yet the first extant manuscripts of the New Testament have a slightly distinct reading, “And the disciples were called Chrestians first in Antioch.
I might think that this is simply a typographical error, substituting eta (η) for iota (ι), but the meaning is quite distinct. A “Χριστιανος”/””Christian” literally meant, “little anointed ones” — or those who presumed to take upon themselves the title of “Χριστος”/Christos. To be “anointed”, both in Hebrew and in Greek at the time, meant to be designated and set apart as a “king.”
In contrast, the term “Χρηστιανος”/”Chrestian” means someone who is “χρηστος”/Chrestos/kind, useful. In the language of the time, a “Chrestos” was usually a designation given to a slave who was exceptional in rendering service to those he or she serves.
In almost all manuscripts referring to followers of Jesus Christ prior to the fourth century, whether in Scripture or in separate works, the reference to what we call Christians today was rendered “Chrestians.” I should note, as well, that in these manuscripts, the title of Jesus Christ is always abbreviated as JC and XC, where the “C” here is really the “S” sound, and the references to Christos is ambiguous as to whether it was “Χριστος” or “χρηστος.”
Why is this important? Why does this inform how “Christians” and Mormons act today?
The first disciples of Jesus, particularly as represented by the James community, did not “worship” Jesus of Nazareth. They understood him as a “teacher of righteousness”–perhaps even “THE Teacher of Righteousness” as taught previously by the Qumran Essene sect. But the idea of “messiah” — “Χριστος” was not really an active understanding of the first believers. Instead, they were concerned with social justice, with caring for one another, and for being authentic in their Jewish practices. They were Jews, and believed that Jesus’ primary mission was to reform their faith and love one another as true disciples.
If the term “kingdom of God” meant anything, it meant that only God was the ruler, and that the rule of God’s law, whether in the torah or as expressed in nature, was the pattern for a life in God.
Jesus became God in the fourth century, and in becoming God, Jesus *Christ” became “Lord”, “Master”, and “King,” patterned after the imperial model of Rome. One of the first things I learned in a Jesuit theology program is that the existence of the Christian church depends entirely upon Constantine, for prior to that time, “Christianity” was a set of diverse sects and beliefs. By making “Christianity” the state religion, Constantine created “Christendom” — the idea that Christianity would become “dominant” — the term “Dominum” both means “Lord” as well as being the root of the word “domination.”
Domination, no matter how benevolent it may be in some rare cases, is not “kindness”. Christos is not “Chrestos”. The image of Christ created in the image of a northern european white male brings to mind the idea of a dominant “master race”–the pattern of western society.
Such a Jesus Christ becomes a pattern for authoritarian rule.
Such a Jesus Christ becomes an object of worship.
Such a Jesus Christ becomes the tool to lend authority to those who claim to be authorized by Jesus to rule and reign.
Such a Jesus Christ becomes the object of Bruce R McConkie’s notion “ye shall obtain.”
Such a Jesus Christ inspires the idea that as those “anointed” in temples, we, too become kings and queens, to rule and reign over others in our kingdoms, thrones, principalities, powers, and dominions.
As I consider what we worship in Jesus Christ, I cannot help but wonder if Jesus of Nazareth would recognize what he has become in our vain imagination.
If being “Christian” means indulging in self-righteous dominion over others because they are less righteous than me, I want no part of it.
If being “Christian” means obeying church leaders without question, count me out.
If being “Latter-day Saint” means that I exalt the name “Jesus Christ” as being the only belief that will save me, then I’m doomed.
if being “Christian” means aspiring for exaltation in a celestial kingdom where my wives are baby factories forever and I’m appointed to be God over some “dominion” sitting upon a throne with power and authority, then I must be in hell, because that would be hell for me.
Bertrand Russell explained why he was not a Christian. Although I think his rationale was entirely too “rational” for me, I can understand the sentiment, particularly in a time when the vast majority of Christians and Mormons worship an authoritarian god, with authoritarian hierarchies and seem to lean toward authoritarianism politics.
If that is what it means to be “Christian”, then I am not a Christian. Mormon, perhaps, especially now that such a label is a shibboleth of being an apostate. I hope to be kind. I hope that the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth have a place in my soul to love my enemies, to be kind to those who make it difficult to be Latter-day Saint.
I do not worship Jesus Christ.
I hope to be a kind one, although I find it very difficult. I think that is what Jesus of Nazareth calls me to do.
Wheat & Tares 
Can you follow Christ without “worshipping ” him? Would he even want to be worshipped? I have always struggled with these questions.
I think He wants us to follow His example (service, charity, love). Not sure he wants us to adore and worship.
Boy! I expected a different discussion when I opened your entry, Wayfarer.
I would have said my original answer back in the 50s when I was growing up and observing the culture around me would have been 1) if you believe in Jesus and 2) behave decently you’re Christian. Now I can see that I was always confusing things. I would have gone on that the common understanding of “Christian” has become very warped by Evangelicals thinking it was a proprietary classification that they owned the rights to and that any requirement for kindness or decency was long gone from the most jealous of the “Christians”.
Now I have to reflect a good deal more. But 2 books that I’ve found interesting are Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth which describes the Jewish reformer and political activist Jesus and James Reston’s The Last Apocalypse: Europe in the Year 1000 A.D. which describes the mania of the first millennium which latched onto early Christianity and drove a wide variety of thriving folk religions that unified local societies into obscurity out of it’s own brand of superstition.
Thank you for this opportunity to think about what “Christian” means. I hope somehow we’re able to get back to the “folks who behave decently and inclusively” thing with an eye for the larger communitarian well being and secure future.
As I get older, and certainly as my faith, life experience, and understanding of the world increase, my view of Jesus of Nazareth and what it means to be a “Christian” or disciple of Christ also evolves.
As a young boy, Jesus was represented and taught to me as a God, before, during, and after his earth life, mostly incomprehensible and only found existing in a prior age of world history captured in a few books of scripture. To follow Jesus was to honor and obey. I believed that my actions were either being watched or recorded, and that had the greatest effect on my thoughts and behavior.
During my LDS mission, I understood Jesus like a middleman for God’s true religion, a holy member of the Godhead who came to earth primarily to establish a church and religious ordinances, and offer himself a sacrifice for the world. This Christ was besties with prophets and apostles, though he clearly loved regular folks too. I understood Christ wanted others to join His church with living prophets, which would ensure proper paths to salvation and eternal life—a focus mostly on the future hereafter. Belonging to and building up that organization was (unfortunately) the end goal.
Now in middle age, I see Jesus (historical and mythical) more like a reliable friend and champion for the down trodden, underrepresented, and outcasts of society. I observe his primary focus on loving and serving people in our immediate community and also speaking truth to the powers that be, even when that is not safe or popular. I now feel most like a Christian when I am positively interacting with others, serving however I can offer, defending others’ right to dignified and safe/healthy lives, or sharing/giving what I have. Not even close to being good at this version of a Christian, but trying and finding more joy than before.
Jesus is all of these you mentioned and more… He is not limited to our knowledge and experiences. It will take a life time to know him… and I am okay with it
“I do not worship Jesus Christ.”
You’re in good company with BR McConkie.
This is why he came down hard on George W. Pace and have a BYU Devo on not worshipping Christ.
If you don’t believe He’s a God, of course don’t worship Him.
Wow, this post really hits on one of my biggest issues with the institutional Church. And really any church.
Over the last few years I’ve struggled with the concept of worshipping any god (Jesus or otherwise). What kind of god wants to be “worshipped”? Only a narcissistic one, and that’s not a god I’m interested in worshipping. Seems more like a concept that small insecure men who dream about being worshipped imposed on a god they made in their own image.
I think god wants us to care for one another and perhaps wants us to connect with him/her but worship? No. So love I your comments on authoritarianism and certainly we are seeing the rotten fruits of that false teaching now.
Two critical acceleration points in what was otherwise a fairly slow-burn faith crisis / transition for me (both relate to this post):
(1) I had the opportunity to attend a special temple session (sealing) with a mentor who’d been a temple president and sealer, lots of fancy people in the group including some 70’s etc. I was really not super into the temple and was considering not renewing my recommend but thought this might be an opportunity to strengthen / salvage a testimony so I renewed my recommend and went. As he was describing the dominion and principalities and kingdoms promised (with his wives, cause he had three since two had died) I realized “wow I don’t even want this!” If I don’t even want the highest promises because they are so darn hierarchical and that is so distasteful to me then why would I even try?
(2) reading the New Testament during Come
Follow Me and realizing the Jesus and Church they were describing in the manual had almost nothing to do with the one I was reading about in the New Testament and in many ways were opposite. And coincidentally it was also some Jesuits who resonated more with me! Those darn Jesuits. And Franciscans. Catholicism of course has some real issues as well but also some excellent thinkers.
Neither “Jesus,” nor “Christ,” were used to identify Messiah during His ministry in the Herodian era. So the name “Jesus Christ” indeed may be used in vain.
The “Jesus” name was given by the Rabbis to mock the idea of a weak Messiah, and those who raised Byzantium, elevated the Emperor to a “Christos,” after the pattern of Pharaoh (not Caesar)…
The Lord has many names. He is Gate, Door, Keeper, Gardener, Husband, Bridegroom, Monitor, High Priest, Master, Father, Son, Brother, Scapegoat, Sacrifice, Only Begotten, Fisherman, Carpenter, Builder, Stone, Physician–and so on.
Without exception, when the symbol itself overshadows or overpowers the symbolism it holds, the symbol becomes an object of idolatry.
False worship isn’t so much worshipping the wrong thing: false worship is worshipping the wrong WAY. Aaron’s Golden Calf motif is an imminent reminder…
@jpv:
I think you may be reversing the position of George Pace and Bruce R. McConkie. Having attended Pace’s BYU religion classes during the conflict with McConkie, Pace was quite clear on having a personal relationship with Christ. McConkie would have none of it. To McConkie, as stated in his Hymn 134 “I Believe in Christ”, Jesus is “my King,” “my Lord and my God.”
In the original post, I stated “I do not worship Jesus Christ,” because Jesus is my friend and brother, as taught in John 14-16 and in our own LDS theology about who and what Jehovah is as our spiritual brother. When Jesus invited the disciples into friendship, he specifically said, “I call you nor servants…but I call you friends.” Of all relationship types, friendship is one of equality and mutuality, never of subordination. When Jesus then prayed that we might be one, he equaled that relationship with the nature of Jesus with Elohim–again, one of equality.
Speaking theologically, George Pace, along with the writer of John, are speaking from a position of “ascending Christology” (at least in John 14-17). LDS christology is complete ascendant: for Jesus is not the “other” or the “object” of our worship, but rather, our brother, intimately in relationship with us. McConkie draws his christology from Protestant, Reformed theology, which speaks from a position of “descending Christology,” where Christ is the infinite other, and condescends to lower himself to our level. While the Book of Mormon theology derives clearly from nineteenth century New England protestant theology, Joseph Smith’s later understandings, especially in D&C 93, and the King Follett discourse, were entirely ascendant. “God is an exalted man! That is the Great Secret.”
So when we begin to understand the nature of God in Latter-day Saint theology, we must clearly understand when we are speaking from the vestiges of Protestant, Reformed theology where God and Christ are “sovereign”–as does McConkie–as being distinct from the radically ascendant and humanizing theology expressed by Joseph Smith. To Joseph, God and Jesus were real human beings, with whom he could commune directly. Although Joseph did indulge in authoritarianism in his later years, he also sought to democratized divinity in suggesting, radically, that “man was in the beginning with God.” This is not Christian theology. This is not a theology of empire and kingdom. Latter-day Saint theology is completely distinct from any aspect of Protestant, Reformed theology, and we should embrace it for the unique perspective it offers.
I believe the name of the church strongly infers this relationship of equality. It is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. “Of” indicates ownership. Jesus and the saints collectively jointly own the church. I know another way to interpret the OLDS phrase is as a description of the make up of the church rather than ownership, and perhaps is can be both.
Cool, mainly pointing out that McConkie’s anti trinitarianism led him to view incongruent with the BoM as well as later JS thought.
“We worship the Father and him only and no one else. We do not worship the Son”
https://speeches.byu.edu/talks/bruce-r-mcconkie/relationship-lord/
“What kind of god wants to be “worshipped”?” Elisa, I long have thought that to be true. As god informs King Arthur and the knights in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “oh , don’t grovel, if there’s one thing I can’t stand is people groveling!” But I do think that a sense of gratitude is an essential part of worshipping deity, and that’s why in 95% of my prayers I just basically express thankfulness for stuff without really asking for anything else. I’ve always liked Psalm 100 approach to gratitude:
100 Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands.
2 Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing.
3 Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.
4 Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.
5 For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.
@larryco, I think gratitude is spectacularly important, but I think it’s for us – not for god.
@larryco
There is no doubt that the psalms are beautiful, and the sentiments of gratitude are genuine. As Elisa said, the act of gratitude and praise is important to us as humans.
I would like to challenge the notion of worshiping a personal being, even if that being is God. It seems to me that we look externally, both for those whom we can follow as well as those whom we can blame. The notion of a peculiar people — in the pecuniary sense of being owned by God — seems to speak to the idea that as long as we’re in the “in-group” of those who follow a being: whether God, Lord, prophet, priest, king, or (god forbid) a president, the we are granting our authority to act to someone else. In 2 Nephi 2:25-26, I read,
“Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy. And the Messiah cometh in the fulness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall. And because that they are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon…”
This notion of freedom, while always involving accountability for our actions, means that we are not to be commanded in all things. (D&C 42:15), but rather, that we are able and have the agency to act. In particular, Lehi’s statement that humans exist to have joy has a specific reference to the holistic nature of being. Joseph Smith wrote, “For man is spirit. The elements are eternal, and spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy;” (D&C 93:33). In other words, our being human, as embodied spirits with eternal elements is the very purpose of being. It is being, and without both body and spirit, we cannot say that we are.
So it goes to the very idea of how and what we worship, not *who*. In that same revelation in the Doctrine and Covenants, Joseph Smith makes clear that it’s not about *who*, but rather, *what* we worship. He revealed, “I give unto you these sayings that you may understand and know *how* to worship, and know *what* you worship, that you may come unto the Father in my name, and in due time receive of his fulness.” (D&C 93:19) After this verse, Joseph reveals the nature of humanity, an inseparable set of connections between light and truth as “intelligence, (verse 29), the “Spirit of Truth” as being the very definition of divinity (verse 26), and that we, as spiritual intelligences were in the beginning with God (verse 23). But a spirit, alone, does not achieve the fulness, but rather, as is so clear in LDS doctrine, only the spirit and body, inseparably connected, achieves divinity, or the full measure of our divinity. While Jesus is present in this discourse as the archetype of the life in God, the “what we worship” and “how we worship” is by becoming divine our selves, but entering into communion with God, not as subordinate, but as co-eternal with God.
Thus, we do not worship the person of God, but rather, we become companions with God in our love and connection with God, as did Jesus of Nazareth. Thus, I don’t *worship* Jesus Christ–Jesus is a “who” and not a “what”–but rather, I think the ideal is to *follow* Jesus as the examplar, to realize the Christ as being our unity and communion with God and others in love. *What* I worship is unity with God. *How* I worship is to follow Jesus’ example, of being one with myself, with my divine companion in the Holy Spirit, and with others.
This excellent post ties in very well with Richard Rohr’s focus this week in his Daily Meditations blog:
“It’s possible to trace the movement of Christianity from its earliest days until now. In Israel, Jesus and the early “church” offered people an experience; it moved to Greece, and it became a philosophy. When it moved to Rome and Constantinople, it became organized religion. Then it spread to Europe, and it became a culture. Finally, it moved to North America and became a business. This isn’t much of an exaggeration, if it’s an exaggeration at all. The original desire or need for a “Jesus” experience was lost, and not even possible for most people. Experience, philosophy, organized religion, culture, business—in each of those permutations and iterations, Christianity was seen as above criticism. It simply was the religion, the philosophy, the culture.”
If our contemporary “experience of Jesus” connects us with domination, hierarchy, and personal gain (in this world or another), we’ve gone over to what Paul called “principalities and powers,” or more simply, “the world.”
Personally, I’ve never felt that the servant-master dichotomy adequately represents our relationship with God. The master-servant relationship is all about power, not love. In one respect, however, it is an accurate description of our relationship with Jesus Christ as our Savior. We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God. In that sense, we are powerless because nothing we can do can atone for the sins that we have committed. We are entirely dependent on our Savior to lift us up and help us bridge the gap. Much was also said in the comments about the commandment to worship God. Perhaps our understanding of the word “worship” is partially to blame here. “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” It seems to me that our motivation to keep the commandments should not be out of fear of retribution, but out of love and gratitude.
We know, A Christian is someone who believes in Jesus Christ and follows his teachings. The Bible says, ‘If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. A Christian, then, is a person who is born again by the Spirit of God as he or she wholeheartedly trusts in Jesus Christ and seeks to follow Him .