Who Owns the Creed? Joerg Rieger on the Conservative Gimmick and the Surplus They Missed

Second live Q&A, and this week we went to Nicaea. Here's the setup, in case you're new: Constantine called the council, funded the bishops' travel, set the agenda, chaired it, and personally suggested the technical term homoousios — that the Son is of the same substance as the Father. Joerg's method is to notice who pays for the trip. The boss funds the conference, the boss owns the product. Which means bringing Jesus up into the Godhead looks like a great move of respect right up until you notice it also removed him from Galilee and assimilated him to an imperial first person. But here's the part that makes this class worth taking: Joerg's move is to read it backwards. Let the second person define the first. Suddenly the creed becomes dangerous to empire, and Constantine — who moved away from Nicaea late in life for reasons nobody fully understands — may have figured out it was blowing up in his face. We also got into the Christological vacuum and what rushes in to fill it, why Chalcedon accidentally underwrote the self-made man, how Hellenization was a class matter, and what the Theodosian Code's protection of church asylum asks of congregations right now. Next week: Anselm. Get ready.

The Christ Empire Couldn’t Keep is running now. Sign up at homebrewedclasses.com — you don’t have to donate anything. You’ll get access to all the lectures, you can send in questions by replying to any class email (that’s where every question in this Q&A came from), and you’ll be connected to the online community working through the material together.

You can WATCH the conversation on YouTube

Dr. Joerg Rieger is the Distinguished Professor of Theology and the Cal Turner Chancellor’s Chair of Wesleyan Studies at Vanderbilt University and founding director of the ⁠Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice⁠. For three decades, he has worked to bring together theology and the struggles for justice and liberation that mark our age. His work addresses relations of theology and public life, reflecting on the misuse of power in religion, politics, and economics. His interest is in movements that bring about change and in the positive contributions of religion and theology. His constructive work in theology draws on a wide range of historical and contemporary traditions, with a concern for manifestations of the divine in the pressures of everyday life. Several of his 24 authored and edited books address the topics of this course, including ⁠No Rising Tide: Theology, Economics, and the Future⁠; ⁠Unified We Are a Force: How Faith and Labor Can Overcome America’s Inequalities⁠ (with Rosemarie Henkel-Rieger); and ⁠Faith, Class, and Labor: Intersectional Approaches in a Global Context⁠ (with Jin Young Choi). ⁠www.joergrieger.com⁠

Previous Episodes w/ Joerg

Empire Goes All the Way Down

⁠Why Religion Matters Now⁠

⁠Theology in the Capitalocene⁠

⁠Divine Justice & our Ultimate Concern⁠

⁠ the End of Religion & Business as Usual⁠

⁠Joerg Rieger: Jesus vs Caesar ⁠

⁠Different Gods, Different Religions?⁠