Christendom the Revelation

“Religion is man trying to reach God through frail and perishable hands. Christianity is God’s revelation to man, so that God may reach the heart of man.”

-Unknown

A shared revelation is a shared reality. Christendom as revelation connects the individual to the community and the communities of believers to each other. Encountering Christ in the collective knowledge of community embodies the very purpose of community formation, we must build the Church! Nearly two thousand years ago we were supplied with the raw revelation of Christ himself. Since then, we have been aided by the spirit through faith and reason to further cultivate the mystery supplied. Projected through Christ we have the authentic revelation of Christendom as an un-fractured whole. Though visibly, since the reformation we have sunken into denominations and entrenched ourselves in final decisions; we do in fact remain one body. We have one reality that we hold in common, Christ has destroyed sin and death. This shared reality was supplied by one revelation, the Christ event. This revelation continues to be offered to the entire world for its own sanctification.

Christianity did not begin as an institution ingrained in the legal and authoritative fabric of society, but as a gathering of people who came together to break bread and share in the common revelation of everlasting life. Even after the legalization of Christianity in the early fourth century and into the middle-ages, it continued to cultivate the revelation supplied so many centuries before. But in persevering, desperately at times, to retain power and authority as a European institution, into the enlightenment and renaissance, the Church alienated itself from the people it was designed to serve.

Coming out of the last five centuries Christendom has broken out of its institutional form. It has become a more personally, and warmly, recognizable quality of one’s identity; in a secular society being a Christian says something about you that sets you apart from the usual. In its visible structure it has retained property, buildings, and its formal hierarchy. But the invisible structure of its body, the gathering of the people, has grown immensely in number and in spiritual richness. Retaining its form in the heart, Christendom exists now not as an institutional powerhouse but instead it is a reality held in common amongst many. It is a revelation now offered to the whole world.

Vatican II brought out from under the surface of Christendom the yearning to come out of Europe and assume the role of a worldwide and accessible revelation. Vatican II understood that the nature of the theological enterprise is never finished and that there is a benefit in returning to the sources of our rich Christian heritage to continually develop doctrine. Rearranging the visible structure of the Church, Vatican II sought to bring in the fullness of all the cultures that incorporate into Christendom. Being a European institution prevented the Church from doing its mission and Vatican II clearly saw this. Coming out of the Council the Church became fixed into a servant model. The tendency toward “clerical-centrism” has been marginalized by the refinement and clarity of Christ’s revelation, and what that specifically means to the individual believer and the community of the Church. It is a reality held in common, it is a universal revelation.