The protection of a moral ethical code is important in the preservation of an ethical system of rule making, by creating their own moral judgments about what is important in the Bible; through following the house rules developed in the oikonmia, the Eastern Orthodox church created room for the creation of their own ethical system. That made it possible to break the ethical rules developed by the Christian Holy Bible.
An ethical decision is made based on what a person believes and values. Ethics itself is the discipline of dealing with what is good and bad with moral duty and obligation. When a person is defining their own ethics they establish a set of moral principles. Moral principles are a system of moral values. In the Christian religion ethical decisions are made based on the beliefs that are established to follow the teachings, scripture, and tradition of Jesus Christ the son of God.
Within Christianity a set of moral principles was created called the Oikonomia. The Oikonomia was a set of rules that was established by the Eastern Orthodox and Greek-Catholic churches in order to manage the pastoral ecclesiastical economy as well as to enforce what is known as God’s divine economy.
The Oikonomia otherwise known as the “household rules” are based on the teachings of the Christian holy bible. They are referred to when the church needs to make decisions and wants to do them in a way that honors their beliefs in Christianity. What the Oikonomia says is considered authoritative and when it is used in writing the word begins to be used in place of saying ‘this is the word of God’ or ‘this is what God has willed for his people’. Christians in the Eastern Orthodox and Greek-Catholic churches believe that what is said by God becomes divine right and morally good in accordance to the Divine Command theory. The divine command theory is the meta ethical view which claims that ethical sentences express propositions, some such propositions are true. And that those propositions that are the attitudes of God are morally good.
The teachings of the Oikonomia influenced theologians and writers in the Christian Church. Leaders of the church were given the responsibility of enforcing the rules of the Oikonomia and being the final decision makers on how the rules would be used correctly. These rules referred to everything including the management of the church and it’s economic issues.
The ethical issues that arose from giving the clergy such a responsibility of the household rules was that they had the ability to change the rules in a way in order to benefit the church. The church had a lot of power in the government and any decisions that the church leaders made influenced their power. An expansion of the church would create more power for those in charge of the church.
The enforcers of the Oikonomia’s house rules felt that some of the rules should be enforced more than others for the betterment of the power of the church. The favoritism of some of the bible’s rules over others is an important factor in determining which of the rules should be considered morally good and therefore worthy of being followed ethically. Yet the Oikonomia did not show favoritism and was considered a fair and just method of determining what decisions a Christian should make. The knowledge of which of the bible and the Oikonomia’s morally ethical rules are considered wrong and sins and the continued misuse of them is considered a sin in the christian faith.
The ethical situations in which clergy managed the church in a way that broke the christian commandments were wrong because they became sinful against God. Claiming that an act is good because it was from God became the same as claiming that the act was good because it was from the Oikonomia and enforced by the church leaders. The leaders of the church were the only people educated in the Oikonomia enough to be able to understand what rules could be broken. They decided to use their control over the household rules to expand their power in a way that helped themselves get more power by using God’s name in vein. Using God’s name in vein is one example of a sin in the christian faith and the church did just that when they decided to send men out purposely to kill in God’s holy name.
The Christian crusades were a great example of the Christians focusing on some of the rules established in the Oikonomia and neglecting others. The sixth commandment reads, “Thou shall not kill.” The New international Version of the bible translates it to, “Thou shall not murder.” The Bible later states that neither accidental killing can be made nor justifiable homicide in Numbers 35:22-25 and Exodus 22:2.
The leaders of the Eastern Orthodox and Greek-Catholic Churches allowed the crusades to happen on the justification that they were for the betterment of Christians and mankind through the works of the church. For example in March 1095, at the Council of Piacenza, Pope Urban II received a plea for help from the Byzantine emperor Alixius I. Alexius needed help to repel the advance of the Seljuk Turks that had already taken much Byzantine territory in Asia Minor and were getting closer and closer to Constantinople. Alexius chose to ask help, not from the individual monarchs of western Europe, but from the head of the western Christian Church who, arguably, had domain over all of the western political influential decision making monarchs.
Urban saw this plea as presenting a wonderful opportunity to progress his own personal career. There had been a schism that had deeply divided the Orthodox Greek Church and the Latin Catholic Church since 1054. Urban saw the chance to heal the schism and hopefully become a powerful leader of both churches.
There was an opportunity to extend the crusade campaign to take the Holy City of Jerusalem into Christian hands. In order to gain support of his cause, Urban discussed the matter at the Council of Clermont in early November 1095, and then again on the 27th of November, he preached the crusade.
No record survives of Urban’s actual words in his call for an armed campaign to Jerusalem, but chronicles that were written after the event often show that he indulged in blatant propaganda. He claimed that the Muslims that ruled Jerusalem were maltreating Christians most horrifically, which was untrue.
His lies against the Muslim empire led many European men to kill and be killed in the crusades. He envisioned the First Crusade as the key to healing the schism within the church also he saw that it had the potential to put him at the head of all the Christian domain. Aiding to the Byzantine emperor became a side show.
Urban said that he had “just cause” in order to take back something that had been stolen from the christian church such as Jerusalem.
The church used the Oikonomia to justify their actions in killing because they claimed to have the “right intentions.” The fighting could stop people sinning and create more followers of God. In the case of the Muslims, this was achieved by killing them, so they could sin no more. The act had all the legitimate authority when it was approved by the Church, because it was assumed that the act was going in accordance to the Oikonomia. The pope ‘after having already consulted what he knew of the household rules’ then gave his permission. The crusaders took Jerusalem on 15 July 1099, but Urban died about two weeks before the news reached western Europe.
The crusades were a sort of spiritual genocide, a genocide being the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. Because the crusaders were focusing on making war on members of non-Christian areas and Muslims in particular they were in fact committing genocide.
The power that the members of the church were gaining became the main focus of the acts. Church leaders justified their permittivity of the sinful act of killing during the crusades by saying that the Oikonomia (or rather ‘what God has willed’) supports the church and therefore would support the deaths of thousands of people.
Church leaders who were responsible for protecting and preserving the rules of the Oikonomia (which were also the rules of the holy bible) forsook the rules in order to benefit themselves.
The Church created its own spiritual act which is an act concerning not the body but the soul that Christians believe will be able to enter heaven or hell after a person’s death. The spiritual act that they created concerned the forgiveness of a Christian soldier who was sent out to kill in the name of God by the church. The people who killed could be forgiven and set aside their sins and become born again through the church in the name of God.
They called this act of acknowledgment and forgiveness of sin repentance. The members of the church did not abide by the divine command theory that God says is always good. Living by what Jesus Christ named the first and most important commandment that God had established for Christian followers to obey. The law in the Christian religion known as the law of love or the Golden rule. The law od love was first established in Matthew 22:36-39 when Jesus was ask of a follower:
Matthew 22:36-39 (New International Version)
36“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” 37Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’
If the followers of the oikonmia or the rules established by the Eastern orthodox and Greek-Catholic churches to mangagement the divine and ecclesiastical economy had followed God’s household and divine rules for their economy they would have understood that loving your neighbor as yourself would transcend into that of God loving all people of any religion.
They would have learned that God’s commandments should never be neglected for the betterment of the church. Murder is murder regardless of the method of forgiveness. The members of the church may have been justified because Jesus said that all who go in his name, and commit good acts in teh name of his God could be saved and could have their sins washed away. Following God’s commandments should be the first and foremost rule when following the oikonomia and its law of enforcement and wise instruction for the economy.
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