DeConick A.D

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THE PI OF POLITICS
solidify the group’s mentality and identity as uniform and positional, as
normal and natural. Across this vast network emerged norms of belief and
behavior, which the leaders and parishioners took for granted and assumed
were markers of Christian identity worldwide. Likewise, they began identifying
themselves as the worldwide church, calling themselves the Catholic
(universal) church (Irenaeus, Against the Heresies 1.10.2–3, 4.33.8).
Finally, there was shame and punishment, deterrents that Catholics
used to avoid loss of members from their congregations. Irenaeus accuses
former parishioners of transgression when they cross over and join Gnostic
communities, leaving behind their previous belief in YHWH. They are
labeled sinners of the worst kind (4.27.3). Those who come back into the
Apostolic Catholic fold are subjected to public confession and humiliation
in front of the congregation. Irenaeus understands this movement
of congregants back and forth to be a pervasive problem. He states that
there were frequent readmissions to the Apostolic Catholic church. To be
readmitted, the reconverted Christians were required to publicly confess
that they had been shamed and corrupted within the Gnostic churches
they had been attending (see Eshleman 2011, 193, 211–12).
The success of the Apostolic Catholics in wielding power to socially
enforce negative sanctions against beliefs and behaviors they identified as
deviant worked to reinforce the normalcy and rightness of their opinions.
The more their creeds were collectively chanted, the more the borders
of transgression were imprinted. The more people were humiliated and
shamed in public confessions, the more future transgression was avoided.
This was the stuff of social power. And ultimately it was the stuff that defined
the boundaries of right and wrong, of orthodoxy and heresy.
The Orthodox Prescription
Transgression is the act of breaching a norm that has become recognized
by a powerful group as a prescription, law, or custom. It is the act of
crossing a line, stepping over a boundary, moving beyond convention,
straying from the straight and narrow, overstepping a limit. It has to
do with a passage of some kind, an infringement that moves a person
from one place to another. The passage is not neutral. It represents going
from what is standard and authorized to what is illicit and outlawed
(Wolfreys 2008, 3).