Skeleton 03 - The Constantine Codex (46 page)

Jon and Shannon flew to Israel a week before the Jerusalem Council was set to begin. One reason for their early arrival was to take a nostalgic excursion. Their “sacred romance,” as they called it, had unfolded in the Holy Land. Here they had first met one another—she, the daughter of the famed British archaeologist Austin Balfour Jennings, and he, the Harvard prof on sabbatical who stumbled onto something at their dig that merely set the entire world on edge.

They rented a car at Ben Gurion International Airport and drove north along the Mediterranean coastlands to the Megiddo Pass, thence, over the hills of Nazareth to their favorite haunt in Israel, the seaside city of Tiberias. It was along the western shore of the Sea of Galilee at Tiberias that the two had finally unveiled their feelings for one another. Several months earlier, they had fallen in love, but neither dared reveal that wondrous secret to the other. Jon was more timid about it than Shannon, who asked him for their first hug one evening after dinner when they were taking a moonlight swim in that immortal lake. The explosive joy suffusing Jon when they kissed rapturously after that first hug he later called “one of the greatest moments in my life.”

Again they rented a sailboat and plied the very waters that Jesus had so masterfully controlled in calming waves or making them buoyant enough to serve as his personal sidewalk. Again they roared over the memory of a boatload of pilgrims ogling them as they were making out while becalmed in the middle of the Sea. Again they scampered across the waterfalls at the head of the Jordan up at Caesarea Philippi. What a blessing was Galilee at the time of Jesus—what a blessing now to Jonathan and Shannon Weber.

The Ecumenical Council of Jerusalem became a world event almost from the start. Its festive opening took place inside the holiest shrine of Christendom: the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in the Old City of Jerusalem. This was the very Golgotha where Jesus was crucified but then resurrected from the nearby tomb situated under the great rotunda at the western end of the sanctuary.

“All this may be sacred,” Shannon remarked to Jon, “but what I’d love to see here instead would be the open hillock of Golgotha and a tomb with a rolling stone as a door.”

“You don’t go for all the candles and lanterns and icons and incense, I take it?”

“The endless crowds and the hubbub don’t help either. But I’ve finally learned to control my disappointment.”

“What’s your formula?”

“I just shut my eyes and realize that in terms of longitude and latitude on earth,
this
is where it all happened.”

“Otherwise it could get to you,” he agreed. “And it’s hard to believe that a Muslim is the warden here with the keys, to keep peace between Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. Some centuries ago, they actually shed blood over the boundaries of their separate enclaves inside the church.”

“Let’s hope that’s history now.”

They hurried over to the central nave of the church for the opening service of the ecumenical council, from which the army of pilgrims had temporarily been excluded in view of the equal host of churchmen filing inside. What impressed Jon and Shannon the most, however, was not the magnificent sacred music and solemn liturgy that followed, but the moment when the Ecumenical Patriarch and the Bishop of Rome embraced publicly and sincerely. This was not a simple Bartholomew-meet-Benedict formality, they knew, but a very powerful and moving symbol of reconciliation after centuries of hostility. The three thousand church leaders present shouted
hosanna
s and applauded wildly.

As a further exercise in ecumenicity, several of the council worships would also be held in the beautiful white interior of Redeemer Lutheran Church in the Old City—the church nearest Golgotha—as well as at St. George’s Episcopal Cathedral at the northeastern edge of Jerusalem.

“I asked Kevin how he ever brought that off,” Jon commented to Shannon.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Orthodox and Roman Catholics worshiping in a
Protestant
church—when they’re quite sure they’re not part of the true church?”

“What did Kevin say?”

“That both Benedict and Bartholomew agreed on the arrangement because it would be ‘an irenic gesture to the separated brethren.’ But he had a little more trouble convincing the other Protestants that Anglican and Lutheran sanctuaries, as those of the two largest Protestant denominations, would have to represent all Protestants. Still, they finally agreed.”

“It’s a new era, Jon.”

Jon and Shannon spent most of their time in the Holy City attending sessions of the Ecumenical Council. These were held at the National Convention Center in West Jerusalem, wired as it was for simultaneous language translations and the latest in media technology, including electronic voting.

In the interests of balance and fairness, the council was chaired on alternate days by the Ecumenical Patriarch and the Pope. Voting delegates, all of whom were the highest officers of their respective church bodies, were allotted in terms of percentage of world Christian church membership size, which yielded the following results for the 2,800 delegates:

1,390 Roman Catholics

352 Eastern Orthodox

236 Anglican

232 Lutheran

590 other Protestants

To prevent Roman Catholicism from controlling the conclave, however, it was agreed that for the great issues at the council, passage of a measure would have to be approved by no less than three-quarters of the delegates, a true super-majority. This was also designed to showcase Christian unity, if possible.

“Our paragon example here,” Jon told Shannon, “was the Council of Nicaea in 325, where they decided the greatest issue by a vote of 312 to 2.”

“Not exactly a cliff-hanger.”

“Right. No hanging chads.”

Shannon grew serious and asked, “Jon, tell me true: how do you rate our chances? We hear a lot of threats and saber rattling from the far right, also in the Catholic and Orthodox camps . . .”

“True. They also have their rigorists who’ve been condemning the council in advance for admitting Protestants. ‘They’re not part of Christ’s true church on earth,’ they scream.”

Shannon started chuckling. “But that claim doesn’t get very far, since that’s the very same thing Catholics say about Orthodox and vice versa.”

“Exactly. I’m more concerned that all the fundamentalists—Protestant, Catholic, or Orthodox—are uniting on the slogan
Don’t break God’s Word by tearing the Bible open!
They seem to be raising a rage with it in the media. It’s catchy, but simplistic and wrongheaded.”

“And yet you and Kevin always seem so upbeat about the possibilities of success.”

“I know. That could be a big mistake, though I do have one reason for hope: the ultras—right or left wing—rarely get elected to leadership posts in their church bodies, and it’s the leaders who are delegates here.”

“Speaking of which, here they come.”

It was quite a sight indeed. Filing into the convention hall were two popes/patriarchs—actually, three, since Coptic Pope Shenouda III was there—a variety of cardinals, archbishops, bishops, metropolitans, archimandrites, abbots, moderators, presbyters, presidents, and other colorful names of Christian magistrates. If their offices had different titles, so did their apparel, which ranged from pure white for the Bishop of Rome and pure black for the Ecumenical Patriarch to every variety of color and style in between, with the African delegates taking the prize for showing every tint in the rainbow. Some of the churchmen were hirsute, others bald by nature or intention. Some were bearded, others clean-shaven.

“I haven’t seen such variety since the UN in New York,” Shannon observed.

“Too bad we’re only observers here, Shannon. Otherwise we could have joined the parade.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

He merely grinned.

The Council of Jerusalem did not take on the issue of the Canon until later. First there were some animated preliminaries, since the rare opportunity to solve problems affecting all of Christendom could not be missed. It took an entire week of debate before Roman Catholic and Lutheran bishops admitted that they misnumbered the Ten Commandments and finally abandoned St. Augustine’s mistake in parking the true second commandment against idolatry under the first.

“Remember, Shannon, he was afraid that the ‘You shall make no image or likeness’ commandment would ruin art among Christians as it had among Jews,” Jon commented, “when idolatry was the only issue in play here.”

“I
do
know my church history, Jon,” she replied, affecting a pout that quickly changed to a grin. “So now Augustine has only nine commandments instead of ten. What does he do? He takes the
least
offensive commandment—coveting—and cuts into two for nine and ten.”

Jon breathed a sigh of relief. “From now on, the whole Christian world can agree that ‘Don’t kill’ is number six, and ‘No adultery’ is number seven.”

Then another great concession was made—this time from Eastern Orthodoxy. While the Council of Nicaea had agreed that Easter should be celebrated on a
day
—Sunday—rather than on a
date
—as in the case of Christmas, Eastern and Western Christendom still rarely celebrated the Festival of the Resurrection together. Why? The Eastern church still used the old Julian calendar, whereas the West adopted the Gregorian ever since 1582. The council agreed on the latter but changed the name to the “Common Calendar,” since Gregory was a Western pope.

“Hard to believe,” Shannon said, “but when to celebrate Easter almost split the early church. Now there’s even talk of making the first Sunday in April the universal time to celebrate the Resurrection.”

Jon nodded. “It’s a really excellent idea, but I think it’s going to be tabled for a future council to decide. They’re hanging on to the rules for when Jews celebrate the Passover.”

And finally the Council of Jerusalem turned to matters canonical. No longer would Jon and Shannon be passive observers.