Mental and institutional constitution of Christianity. Asking for the phantasmal structures

Abstract

Thesis of the article: Christianity as an religious system is mentally founded on two different “institutionalized concepts” of its own identity. The first one is anarchical – related to the religious-reformist potential of the early “Jesus movement” and of the gospel; the second one is archical (authoritarian) – related to the “classic” hierarchic structures of religious-political power. Both concepts are mutually indispensable: socio-institutional instabilities created by the first one can be over and over stabilized through the authoritarian structures of the second one – and on the contrary: the moral doubts created by the prevalence of an authoritarian structure in the Christian life can be again and again overcome by recalling “the reformist potential of the gospel”. Most paradox and inconsequent behaviors of institutional Christianity can be explained by understanding the permanent interference of the both concepts and the phantasmal structure of their mutual relations.