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Title: Anarchy & Christianity Author: Jacques Ellul Date: 1988 Language: en Topics: Christian anarchism Source: Retrieved on 4th May 2021 from https://archive.org/details/JacquesEllulAnarchyChristianity Notes: Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. ISBN 0-8028-0495-0.
The question I am posing is the more difficult because fixed opinions
have long since been reached on both sides and have never been subjected
to the least examination. It is taken for granted that anarchists are
hostile to all religions (and Christianity is classified as such). It is
also taken for granted that devout Christians abhor anarchy as a source
of disorder and a negation of established authority. It is these
simplistic and uncontested beliefs that I propose to challenge. But it
might be useful to say where I am coming from, as students used to say
in 1968.1 am a Christian, not by descent but by conversion.
When I was young, I had a horror of fascist movements. I demonstrated
against the Fiery Cross on February 10,1934. Intellectually I was much
influenced by Marx. I do not deny that this was less due to intellectual
than to family considerations. My father was out of work after the 1929
crisis, and we have to remember what it was like to be unemployed in
1930. There were also individual circumstances. As a student I came into
conflict with the police (e.g., during the Jèze strike), and I came to
abhor not so much the capitalist system as the state. Nietzsche’s
description of the state as the coldest of all cold monsters seemed to
me to be basic.
Though I liked the analyses of Marx, including his vision of a society
in which the state would have withered away, my contacts with communists
were poor. They viewed me as a little bourgeois intellectual because I
did not show total respect for orders from Moscow, and I regarded them
as insignificant because they seemed not to have any true knowledge of
the thinking of Marx. They had read the 1848 Manifesto, and that was
all. I broke with them completely after the Moscow trials, not in favor
of Trotsky, for the Cronstadt sailors and the Makhno government seemed
to me to have been truly revolutionary and I could not pardon their
suppression, but because I could not believe that Lenin’s great
companions were traitors, antirevolutionaries, etc. As I saw it, their
condemnation was simply another manifestation of the cold monster. I
also saw with no great difficulty that there had been a transition from
a dictatorship of the proletariat to a dictatorship over the
proletariat. I can guarantee that anyone who was willing could see
already in 1935 and 1936 what would be denounced twenty years later.
Furthermore, nothing remained of the two basic principles of
internationalism and pacifism, which ought to have resulted in
antinationalism.
My admiration for Marx was also tempered by the following fact. At the
same time as I had read Marx I had also read Proudhon, who did not
impress me so much but whom I greatly liked, so that I was scandalized
by the attitude of Marx to him in their dispute. Finally, what led to me
to detest the communists was their conduct during the Spanish Civil War
and their horrible assassination of the Barcelona anarchists.
Many things, including contacts at that time with the Spanish
anarchists, attracted me to anarchism. But there was one insurmountable
obstacle — I was a Christian. I came up against this obstacle all my
life. For instance, in 1964 I was attracted by a movement very close to
anarchism, that is, situationism. 1 had very friendly contacts with Guy
Debord, and one day I asked him bluntly whether I could join his
movement and work with him. He said that he would ask his comrades.
Their answer was frank. Since I was a Christian I could not belong to
their movement. For my part, I could not renounce my faith. Reconciling
the two things was not an easy matter. It was possible to conceive of
being both a Christian and a socialist. There had been a Christian
socialism for many years, and around 1940 a moderate socialism drew its
moral teachings from the Bible. But it hardly seemed possible to go any
further. From both angles the incompatibility seemed to be absolute.
I thus embarked on a long spiritual and intellectual quest, not to
reconcile the two positions but to see if I was finally schizophrenic.
The strange result was that the more I studied and the more I understood
seriously the biblical message in its entirety (and not simply the
“gentle” gospel of Jesus), the more I came to see how impossible it is
to give simple obedience to the state and how there is in the Bible the
orientation to a certain anarchism. Naturally, this was a personal view.
At this point I parted company with the theology which had formed me,
that is, that of Karl Barth, who continued to uphold the validity of
political authority. Yet during the last few years I have come across
other studies pointing in the same direction, especially in the USA:
Murray Bookchin, who freely admits that the origin of Christianity was
in anarchist thinking, and Vernard Eller. Nor should I forget a pioneer,
Henri Barbusse, who was not a true anarchist, but whose work on Jesus
shows clearly that Jesus was not merely a socialist but an anarchist —
and I want to stress here that 1 regard anarchism as the fullest and
most serious form of socialism. Slowly then, and on my own, not
emotionally but intellectually, I arrived at my present position.
I need to clear up another point before getting down to my subject. What
is my purpose in writing these pages? I think it is important to state
this in order to prevent any misunderstanding. First, it must be dear
that, on the one hand, I have no proselytizing aim. I am not trying to
convert anarchists to the Christian faith. This is not simply a matter
of honesty. It rests on a biblical basis. For centuries the churches
have preached that we must choose between damnation and conversion. With
good faith preachers and zealous missionaries have sought conversions at
all costs in order to save souls. As I see it, however, this is a
mistake. To be sure, there are verses which tell us that if we believe
we shall be saved. But a fundamental point here that is often forgotten
is that we must not take biblical verses out of the context (the story
or argument) to which they belong. My own belief is that the Bible
proclaims a universal salvation which God in grace grants to all of us.
But what about conversion and faith? That is another matter. It does not
relate so much to salvation, in spite of the common view. It is a taking
of responsibility. After conversion we are committed to a certain
lifestyle and to a certain service that God requires of us. Hence
adherence to the Christian faith is not in any sense a privilege in
relation to other people but an additional commission, a responsibility,
a new work. We are not, then, to engage in proselytizing.
On the other hand, I am not in any way trying to tell Christians that
they ought to be anarchists. My point is simply this. Among the
political options, if they take a political path, they should not rule
out anarchism in advance, for in my view this seems to be the position
which in this area is closest to biblical thinking. Naturally, I realize
that I have little chance of being heard, for it is not easy in a few
years to cast off inveterate secular prejudices. I would also add that
my objective cannot be that Christians should regard taking this
position as a duty, for again, in spite of the view of many centuries,
the Christian faith does not bring us into a world of duty and
obligation but into a life of freedom. I myself do not say this but Paul
does in many places (e.g., 1 Corinthians).[1]
Third, I am not trying here to reconcile at all costs two forms of
thinking and action, two attitudes to life, which I hold. Now that
Christianity is no longer dominant in society, it is a stupid mania on
the part of Christians to cling to this or that ideology and to abandon
that which embarrasses them in Christianity. Thus many Christians turned
to Stalinist communism after 1945. They emphasized whatever Christianity
has to say about the poor, about social justice, about the attempt to
change society, and neglected what they found uncomfortable — the
proclamation of the sovereignty of God and of salvation in Jesus Christ.
In the 1970s we saw the same tendency in the so-called liberation
theologies. In an extreme form a strategy has been found to make
possible association with (South American) revolutionary movements. A
poor person of any kind is supposedly identical with Jesus Christ. Hence
there is no problem. As for the event two thousand years ago, little
attention is paid to it. These orientations were broadly preceded by
that of rationalistic Protestantism around 1900 with its simple
presupposition that since science is always right, and has the truth,
then in preserving the Bible and the gospel we must abandon everything
that is contrary to science and reason, for example, the possibility
that God incarnated himself in a man, along with the miracles, the
resurrection, etc.
Finally, in our own time we again find the same attitude of conciliation
by abandonment of one part of Christianity, but this time in favor of
Islam. Christians passionately want understanding with Muslims, and so
in conversations (in which I have participated) they insist strongly on
the points of agreement, for example, that both religions are
monotheistic and both are religions of the book,[2] etc. No reference is
made to the main point of conflict, that is, Jesus Christ. I ask myself
why they still call their religion Christianity. Readers are forewarned,
then, that I am not trying here to show at all costs a convergence
between anarchism and biblical faith. I am arguing for what I take to be
the sense of the Bible, which can become for me the true Word of God. I
think that in dialogue with those of different views, if we are to be
honest, we must be true to ourselves and not veil ourselves or
dissimulate or abandon what we think. Thus anarchist readers might find
in these pages many statements that seem shocking or ridiculous, but
that does not worry me.
What, then, am I trying to do? Simply to erase a great misunderstanding
for which Christianity is to blame. There has developed in effect a kind
of corpus which practically all Christian groups accept but which has
nothing in common with the biblical message, whether in the Hebrew Bible
that we call the Old Testament or the Gospels and Epistles of the New
Testament. All the churches have scrupulously respected and often
supported the state authorities. They have made of conformity a major
virtue. They have tolerated social injustices and the exploitation of
some people by others, explaining that it is God’s will that some should
be masters and others servants, and that socioeconomic success is an
outward sign of divine blessing. They have thus transformed the free and
liberating Word into morality, the most astonishing thing being that
there can be no Christian morality if we truly follow evangelical
thinking. The fact is that it is much easier to judge faults according
to an established morality than to view people as living wholes and to
understand why they act as they do. Finally, all the churches have set
up a clergy furnished with knowledge and power, though this is contrary
to evangelical thinking, as was initially realized when the clergy were
called ministers, ministerium being service and the minister a servant
of others.
Hence we have to eliminate two thousand years of accumulated Christian
errors, or mistaken traditions,[3] and I do not say this as a Protestant
accusing Roman Catholics, for we have all been guilty of the same
deviations or aberrations. Nor do I want to say that I am the first to
take this move or that I have discovered anything. I do not pretend to
be able to unveil things hidden from the beginning of the world. The
position that I take is not a new one in Christianity. I will first
study the biblical foundations for the relation between Christianity and
anarchism. I will then take a look at the attitude of Christians in the
first three centuries. But what I write is not a sudden resurgence after
seventeen centuries of obscurity. There has always been a Christian
anarchism. In every century there have been Christians who have
discovered the simple biblical truth, whether intellectually,
mystically, or socially. They include some great names, for example,
Tertullian (at first), Fra Dolcino, Francis of Assisi, Wycliffe, Luther
(except for the twofold mistake of putting power back in the hands of
the princes and supporting the massacre of rebellious peasants),
Lammenais, John Bost, and Charles de Foucauld.
For a detailed study I recommend the excellent work of Vernard Eller.[4]
This brings to light the true character of Anabaptism, which rejects the
power of rulers and which is not apolitical, as is usually said, but
true anarchy, yet with the nuance that I quote ironically, namely, that
the powers that be are a divine scourge sent to punish the wicked.
Christians, however, if they act properly and are not wicked, do not
need to obey the political authorities but should organize themselves in
autonomous communities on the margin of society and government. Even
more strictly and strangely, that extraordinary man Christoph Blumhardt
formulated a consistently anarchist Christianity toward the end of the
19^(th) century. A pastor and theologian, he joined the extreme left but
would not enter into the debate about seizing power. At a Red congress
he declared: “I am proud to stand before you as a man; and if politics
cannot tolerate a human being as I am, then let politics be damned!”
This is the true essence of anarchism: To become a human being, yes, but
a politician, never. Blumhardt had to leave the party!
In the middle of the 19^(th) century Blumhardt had been preceded on the
anarchist path by Kierkegaard, the father of existentialism, who would
not let himself be ensnared by any power. He is despised and rejected
today as an individualist. To be sure, he ruthlessly condemned the
masses and all authorities, even though they be based on democracy. One
of his phrases was that “no mistake or crime is more horrible to God
than those committed by power. Why? Because what is official is
impersonal, and being impersonal is the greatest insult that can be paid
to a person.” In many passages Kierkegaard shows himself to be an
anarchist, though naturally the term does not occur, since it did not
then exist.[5] Finally, Eller’s most convincing proof in my eyes is that
Karl Barth, the greatest theologian of the 20^(th) century, was an
anarchist before he was a socialist, but favorable to communism, of
which he repented. These simple facts show that my studies are not an
exception in Christianity.
Alongside the illustrious intellectuals and theologians we should not
forget the popular movements, the constant existence of humble people
who lived out a faith and truth that were different from those
proclaimed by the official churches and that found their source directly
in the gospel rather than in a collective movement. These humble
witnesses maintained a true and living faith without being persecuted as
heretics so long as they caused no scandal. What I am advancing is by no
means a rediscovered truth. It has always been upheld, but by a small
number of people, mostly anonymous, though their traces remain.[6] They
have always been there even though they have constantly been effaced by
the official and authoritarian Christianity of church dignitaries.
Whenever they succeeded in launching a renewal, the movement that they
started on the basis of the gospel and the whole Bible was quickly
perverted and reentered the path of official conformity. This happened
to the Franciscans after Francis and to the Lutherans after Luther.
Externally, then, they did not exist. We see and know only the pomp of
the great church, the pontifical encyclicals, the political positions of
this or that Protestant authority.
I have very concrete knowledge of this. My wife’s father, who was
doggedly non-Christian, told me when I tried to explain to him the true
message of the gospel that it was I alone who told him this, that he
heard it only from me, and that what he heard in the churches was the
exact opposite.
Now I do not pretend to be the only one to say it. There has been an
ongoing faithful subterranean current, but no less invisible than
faithful. It is that that is in keeping with the biblical Word. That and
not the rest — the pomp, the spectacles, the official declarations, the
simple fact of organizing a hierarchy (which Jesus himself plainly did
not create), an institutional authority (which the prophets never had),
a judicial system (to which true representatives of God never had
recourse). These visible things are the sociological and institutional
aspect of the church but no more; they are not the church. On the
outside, however, they obviously are the church. Hence we cannot judge
outsiders when they themselves judge the church. In other words,
anarchists are right to reject Christianity. Kierkegaard attacked it
more violently than any of them. Here I simply want to sound another
note and dispel some misunderstandings. I will not try to justify what
is said and done by the official church or the majority of those who are
called sociological Christians, that is, those who say that they are
Christians (happily in diminishing numbers, for it is they who leave the
church in times of crisis) and who behave precisely in a non-Christian
way, or who, like the patrons of the church in the 19^(th) century, use
certain features of Christianity to increase their power over others.
There are different forms of anarchy and different currents in it. I
must first say very simply what anarchy I have in view. By anarchy I
mean first an absolute rejection of violence. Hence I cannot accept
either nihilists or anarchists who choose violence as a means of action.
I certainly understand the resort to aggression, to violence. I recall
passing the Paris Bourse some twenty years ago and saying to myself that
a bomb ought to be placed under that building. It would not destroy
capitalism but it would serve as a symbol and a warning. Not knowing
anyone who could make a bomb, I took no action!
The resort to violence is explicable, I think, in three situations.
First, we have the doctrine of the Russian nihilists that if action is
taken systematically to kill those who hold power — the ministers,
generals, and police chiefs — in the long run people will be so afraid
to take office that the state will be decapitated and easy to pull down.
We find something of the same orientation among modern terrorists. But
this line of thinking greatly underestimates the ability of powerful
organisms, as well as society, to resist and react.
Then there is despair when the solidity of the system is seen, when
impotence is felt face-to-face with an increasingly conformist society,
or an increasingly powerful administration, or an invincible economic
system (who can arrest multinationals?), and violence is a kind of cry
of despair, an ultimate act by which an effort is made to give public
expression to one’s disagreement and hatred of the oppression. It is our
present despair which is crying aloud (J. Rictus). But it is also the
confession that there is no other course of action and no reason to
hope.
Finally, there is the offering of a symbol and a sign, to which I have
alluded already. A warning is given that society is more fragile than is
supposed and that secret forces are at work to undermine it.
No matter what the motivation, however, I am against violence and
aggression. I am against it on two levels. The first is simply tactical.
We have begun to see that movements of nonviolence, when they are well
managed (and this demands strong discipline and good strategy), are much
more effective than violent movements (except when a true revolution is
unleased). We not only recall the success of Gandhi but nearer home it
is also evident that Martin Luther King did much to advance the cause of
American Blacks, whereas later movements, for example, the Black Muslims
and Black Panthers, which wanted to make quicker headway by using all
kinds of violence, not only gained nothing but even lost some of the
gains made by King. Similarly, the violent movements in Berlin in 1956,
then in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, all failed, but Lech Walesa, by
imposing a strict discipline of nonviolence on his union, held his own
against the Polish government. One of the sayings of the great union
leaders of the years 1900–1910 was this: Strikes, yes, but violence,
never. Finally, though this is debatable, the great Zulu chieftain in
South Africa, Buthelezi, supports a strategy of total nonviolence as
opposed to Mandela (of the Xhosa tribe), and by all accounts he could do
infinitely more to end apartheid than will be achieved by the erratic
violence (often between blacks) of the African National Congress. An
authoritarian government can respond to violence only with violence.
My second reason is obviously a Christian one. Biblically, love is the
way, not violence (in spite of the wars recounted in the Hebrew
Bible,[7] which 1 frankly confess to be most embarrassing).[8] Not using
violence against those in power does not mean doing nothing. I will have
to show that Christianity means a rejection of power and a fight against
it. This was completely forgotten during the centuries of the alliance
of throne and altar, the more so as the pope became a head of state, and
often acted more as such than as head of the church.[9]
If I rule out violent anarchism, there remains pacifist,
antinationalist, anticapitalist, moral, and antidemocratic anarchism
(i.e., that which is hostile to the falsified democracy of bourgeois
states). There remains the anarchism which acts by means of persuasion,
by the creation of small groups and networks, denouncing falsehood and
oppression, aiming at a true overturning of authorities of all kinds as
people at the bottom speak and organize themselves. All this b very
close to Bakunin.
But there is still the delicate point of participation in elections.
Should anarchists vote? If so, should they form a party? For my part,
like many anarchists, I think not. To vote is to take part in the
organization of the false democracy that has been set up forcefully by
the middle class. No matter whether one votes for the left or the right,
the situation is the same. Again, to organize a party is necessarily to
adopt a hierarchical structure and to wish to have a share in the
exercise of power. We must never forget to what degree the holding of
political power corrupts. When the older socialists and unionists
achieved power in France in 1900–1910, one might argue that they became
the worst enemies of unionism. We have only to recall Cl^menceau and
Briand. This is why, in a movement that is very close to anarchy, that
of ecologists, I am always opposed to political participation. I am
totally hostile to the Greens movement, and in France we have seen very
well what are the results of the political participation of the Ecolos
(environmentalists) in elections. The movement has been split into
several rival groups, three leaders have declared their hostility
publicly, debates about false issues (e.g., of tactics) have clouded the
true aims, money has been spent on electoral campaigns, and nothing has
been gained. Indeed, the participation in elections has greatly reduced
the influence of the movement. The political game can produce no
important changes in our society and we must radically refuse to take
part in it. Society is far too complex. Interests and structures are far
too closely integrated into one another. We cannot hope to modify them
by the political path. The example of multinationals is enough to show
this. In view of global economic solidarity the left cannot change the
economy of a country when it is in power.
Those who say that a global revolution is needed if we are not simply to
change the government are right.
But does that mean that we are not to act at all? This is what we
constantly hear when we advance a radical thesis. As if the only mode of
action were political! I believe that anarchy first implies
conscientious objection — to everything that constitutes our capitalist
(or degenerate socialist) and imperialistic society (whether it be
bourgeois, communist, white, yellow, or black). Conscientious objection
is objection not merely to military service but to all the demands and
obligations imposed by our society: to taxes, to vaccination, to
compulsory schooling, etc.
Naturally, I am in favor of education, but only if it is adapted to
children and not obligatory when children are obviously not equipped to
learn intellectual data. We ought to shape education according to the
children’s gifts.
As regards vaccination, I have in mind a remarkable instance. A friend
of mine, a doctor of law, a licentiate in mathematics, and an anarchist
(or very nearly so), decided on a real return to the land. In the harsh
country of the Haut-Loire he bred cattle for ten years on the high
plateau. But he objected — and this is the point of the story — to the
compulsory vaccination of his cattle against hoof-andmouth disease,
reckoning that if he raised them carefully, and at a distance from any
other herd, there was no danger of contracting the disease. This was
when matters became interesting. Veterinary officers went after him and
imposed a fine. He took the case to court, giving proof of the
incompetence and accidents connected with vaccination. He lost at first,
but on appeal, with the help of reports from biologists and eminent
veterinarians, he was triumphantly acquitted. This is a very good
example of the way in which we can find a little free space in the
tangle of regulations. But we have to want to do it, not dispersing our
energies but attacking at a single point and winning by repulsing the
administration and its rules.
We had a similar experience in our fight against the Aquitaine Coastal
Commission. By enormous efforts we were able to block certain projects
which would have been disastrous for the local people, but only after
many court cases even at the highest levels.[10] Naturally, these are
very small actions, but if we take on enough of them and are vigilant,
we can check the omnipresence of the state, even though the
“decentralization” noisily promoted by Defferre has made the defense of
freedom much harder. For the enemy today is not the central state[11]
but the omnipotence and omnipresence of administration. It is essential
that we lodge objections to everything, and especially to the police and
the deregulation of the judicial process. We must unmask the ideological
falsehoods of the many powers, and especially we must show that the
famous theory of the rule of law which lulls the democracies is a lie
from beginning to end. The state does not respect its own rules. We must
distrust all its offerings. We must always remember that when it pays,
it calls the tune.
I recall the prevention clubs we founded in 1956 to deal with the
maladjustment of young people. Our premise was that it was not the young
people who were maladjusted but society itself.[12] So long as the clubs
were financed in many different ways, including a subsidy, they went
well and enjoyed great success, not adjusting young people to society
but helping them to shape their own personalities and to replace
destructive activities (drugs, etc.) with constructive and positive
activities. But all that changed when the state took over the full
Financing, thinking under Mauroy, the minister, that it had itself
invented the idea of prevention, and creating a National Council of
Prevention, which was a disaster.
An important point which I must emphasize is that there have to be many
efforts along the lines suggested. I have in mind one that is most
important, namely, the objection to taxes. Naturally, if individual
taxpayers decide not to pay their taxes, or not to pay the proportion
that is devoted to military expenditures, this is no problem for the
state. They are arrested and sentenced. In a matter of this kind, many
people have to act together. If six thousand or twenty thousand
taxpayers decide upon this type of action, the state is put in an
awkward position, especially if the media are brought in. But to make
this possible there has to be lengthy preparation: campaigns,
conferences, tracts, etc.
More immediately practicable, though again requiring many participants,
is the organizing of a school by parents on the margin of public
education, though also of official private education. I have in mind a
school which the parents themselves decide to organize, giving
instruction in fields in which they are equipped and have authorization
to teach. At the very least they might set up an alternative school like
the Lycée de Saint-Nazaire started by the brother of Cohn Bendit. The
most effective type is one that is run by true representatives of the
interested parties: the students, the parents, and the teachers.
Whenever such ventures are made, they need to be organized apart from
the political, financial, administrative, and legal authorities and on a
purely individual basis. An amusing personal example comes from the war
days when we were refugees in a rural area. After two years we had
gained the confidence and friendship of the villagers. A strange
development then took place. The inhabitants knew that I had studied law
and they came to consult me and to ask me to solve disputes. I thus came
to play the part of an advocate, a justice of the peace, and a notary.
Of course, these unpaid services had no validity in the eyes of the law,
but they had validity for the parties concerned. When I had people sign
an agreement settling a dispute or solving a problem, they all regarded
the signatures as no less binding and authoritative than if they were
official.
Naturally, these modest examples of marginal actions which repudiate
authority should not cause us to neglect the need for an ideological
diffusion of anarchist thinking. I believe that our own age is favorable
from this standpoint in view of the absolute vacuum in relevant
political thinking. The liberals still think they are in the 19^(th)
century. The socialists have no real type of socialism to offer. The
communists are merely ridiculous and have hardly yet emerged from
post-Stalinism. The unions are interested only in defending their
position.[13] In this vacuum anarchist thinking has its opportunity if
it will modernize itself and draw support from existing embryonic groups
such as the ecologists.
I am thus very close to one of the forms of anarchism, and I believe
that the anarchist fight is a good one. What separates me, then, from
the true anarchist? Apart from the religious problem, which we shall
take up again at length, I think that the point of division is as
follows. The true anarchist thinks that an anarchist society — with no
state, no organization, no hierarchy, and no authorities — is possible,
livable, and practicable. But I do not. In other words, I believe that
the anarchist fight, the struggle for an anarchist society, is
essential, but 1 also think that the realizing of such a society is
impossible. Both these points need explanation. I will begin with the
second.
In truth the vision or hope of a society with neither authorities nor
institutions rests on the twofold conviction that people are by nature
good and that society alone is corrupt. At the extreme we find such
statements as this: The police provoke robbery; abolish the police and
robbery will stop. That society does in fact play a big part in
perverting individuals seems sure enough to me. When there is excessive
strictness, constraint, and repression, in one way or another people
have to let off steam, often by violence and aggression. Today
perversion in the West takes another form as well, namely, that of
advertising, which promotes consumption (and robbery when people cannot
afford things), also that of open pornography and violence in the media.
The role of the media in the growth of delinquency and hatred of others
is considerable. Nevertheless, society is not wholly responsible.
The drug policy in Holland offers an important illustration.
Face-to-face with increasing drug traffic and drug use, the Dutch
government opted in 1970 for a different policy from that found in other
countries. To avoid the temptation of the forbidden fruit, drug use was
legalized, and to check the sale of drugs the government opened centers
where addicts could receive for nothing, and under medical supervision,
the doses they needed. It was believed that this would halt the trade
and all its evils (the bondage to dealers, the exorbitant prices, and
crimes of violence to get the money). It was also believed that the
craving for drugs would decline. But none of this happened. Amsterdam
became the drug capital, and the center of the city holds a horrible
concentration of addicts. Ending repression does not check human
cravings. In spite of beliefs to the contrary, it is not a good thing.
My statement to this effect has no connection with the Christian idea of
sin. Sin in effect exists only in relation to God. The mistake of
centuries of Christianity has been to regard sin as a moral fault.
Biblically this is not the case. Sin is a break with God and all that
this entails. When I say that people are not good, I am not adopting a
Christian or a moral standpoint. I am saying that their two great
characteristics, no matter what their society or education, are
covetousness and the desire for power. We find these traits always and
everywhere. If, then, we give people complete freedom to choose, they
will inevitably seek to dominate someone or something and they will
inevitably covet what belongs to others, and a strange feature of
covetousness is that it can never be assuaged or satisfied, for once one
thing is acquired it directs its attention to something else. Ren£
Girard has fully shown what the implications of covetousness are. No
society is possible among people who compete for power or who covet and
find themselves coveting the same thing. As I see it, then, an ideal
anarchist society can never be achieved.
It might be objected that people were originally good and that what we
now see is the result of centuries of declension. My answer is that in
this case we will have to allow for a transitional period, because
tendencies which are so firmly rooted will not be eradicated in one
generation. For how long, then, are we to retain the structures and the
necessary authorities, hoping that they will adopt policies that are
just and liberating and firm enough to direct us in the right path? Is
our hope to be a withering away of the state? We already have experience
of how this theory works out. Above all we have to remember that all
power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This has been
the experience of all millenarians and “cities of God,” etc.
For my part, what seems to me to be just and possible is the creation of
new institutions from the grass-roots level. The people can set up
proper institutions (such as those indicated above) which will in fact
replace the authorities and powers that have to be destroyed. As regards
realization, then, my view is in effect close to that of the
AnarchoSyndicalists of 1880–1900. Their belief was that workingclass
organisms such as unions and labor halls should replace the institutions
of the middle-class state. These were never to function in an
authoritarian and hierarchical way but in a strictly democratic manner,
and they would lead to federations, the federal bond being the only
national bond.
We know, of course, what happened. At the beginning of the 1914 war the
deliberate policy was to remove the better Anarcho-Syndicalists, and the
union movement underwent a radical change with the appointment of
permanent officials. That was the great mistake. At the same time the
labor halls lost completely their original character as breeding grounds
of a proletarian elite.
In sum, I have no faith in a pure anarchist society, but I do believe in
the possibility of creating a new social model. The only thing is that
we now have to begin afresh. The unions, the labor halls,
decentralization, the federative system — all are gone. The perverse use
that has been made of them has destroyed them. The matter is all the
more urgent because all our political forms are exhausted and
practically nonexistent. Our parliamentary’ and electoral system and our
political parties are just as futile as dictatorships are intolerable.
Nothing is left. And this nothing is increasingly aggressive,
totalitarian, and omnipresent. Our experience today is the strange one
of empty political institutions in which no one has any confidence any
more, of a system of government which functions only in the interests of
a political class, and at the same time of the almost infinite growth of
power, authority, and social control which makes any one of our
democracies a more authoritarian mechanism than the Napoleonic state.
This is the result of techniques. We cannot speak of a technocracy, for
technicians are not formally in charge. Nevertheless, all the power of
government derives from techniques, and behind the scenes technicians
provide the inspiration and make things possible. There is no point here
in discussing what everybody knows, namely, the growth of the state, of
bureaucracy, of propaganda (disguised under the name of publicity or
information), of conformity, of an express policy of making us all
producers and consumers, etc. To this development there is strictly no
reply. No one even puts questions.[14] The churches have once again
betrayed their mission. The parties play outdated games. It is in these
circumstances that I regard anarchy as the only serious challenge, as
the only means of achieving awareness, as the first active step.
When I talk of a serious challenge, the point is that in anarchy there
is no possibility of a rerouting into a reinforcement of power. This
took place in Marxism. The very idea of a dictatorship of the
proletariat presupposed power over the rest of society. Nor is it simply
a matter of the power of the majority over the minority instead of the
reverse. The real question is that of the power of some people over
others. Unfortunately, as I have said, 1 do not think that we can truly
prevent this. But we can struggle against it. We can organize on the
fringe. We can denounce not merely the abuses of power but power itself.
But only anarchy says this and wants it.
In my view, then, it is more necessary than ever to promote and extend
the anarchist movement. Contrary to what is thought, it can gain a
broader hearing than before. Most people, living heedlessly, tanning
themselves, engaging in terrorism, or becoming TV slaves, ridicule
political chatter and politics. They see that there is nothing to hope
for from them. They are also exasperated by bureaucratic structures and
administrative bickering. If we denounce such things, we gain the ear of
a large public. In a word, the more the power of the state and
bureaucracy grows, the more the affirmation of anarchy is necessary as
the sole and last defense of the individual, that is, of humanity.
Anarchy must regain its pungency and courage. It has a bright future
before it. This is why I adopt it.
I will try to recall here the attacks of 19^(th)-century anarchy on
Christianity and to explain myself without concealing what ought not to
be. It is not a matter of justifying Christianity. I might begin by
recalling the distinction I have made elsewhere between Christianity (or
Christendom) and the Christian faith as we have it in the Bible.[15] I
believe that the attacks on Christianity fall into two categories: the
essentially historical and the metaphysical. I will begin with the
former.
The first basic thesis is that religions of all kinds generate wars and
conflicts which are ultimately much worse than the purely political or
capricious wars of rulers, since in them the question of truth is
central and the enemy, being the incarnation of evil and falsehood, has
to be eliminated. This is perfectly true. It is true not only as regards
traditional religions but also as regards the new religions that have
replaced them: the religion of country, for example, or that of
communism, or that of money. All the wars that are waged in the name of
religion are inexplicable wars, as was once a Roman war. In that case
the war was so atrocious that the evil it caused could not be made good
by sacrifices (piaculum). But our wars are inexpiable because the
adversary has to be totally crushed, without exception and without pity.
The model for such wars may be found in the Bible, where at times a
herein was declared against an enemy of the Jewish people, the point
being that this hostile people had to be destroyed, women and children
and even cattle being slain. Naturally, the verses that refer to the
herein are a severe trial for believers who take the Bible seriously.
Then we have the wars waged by Islam. The principle behind these is as
follows. All children born into the world are Muslims by birth. If they
cease to be such, it is the fault of the parents and society. The duty
of all Muslims is to bring others to the true faith. The sphere of Islam
(the umma or community) is the whole world. No one must escape it. Hence
Islam must conquer the world. The idea of the holy war (jihad) is the
result. I do not insist on this; it is evident, and it is not my
problem. Yet Islam shows more clearly than any other religion that
believers are fanatics and that they are thus ready both to be killed
and also to kill without restriction.
There have also been “Christian” wars. These did not begin at the first
but with the Carolingian empire. The wars waged by the Christian
emperors of Rome (after Constantine) were not religious. Like those of
the 4^(th) century, they were in defense of the frontiers of the empire.
The idea of a religious war appeared only in the 8^(th) century after
the disintegration of the empire and the Merovingian period. My own view
is that the holy wars of Christianity were in imitation of what Islam
had been doing already for a century or so. War became a means to win
new territories for Christianity and to force pagan peoples to become
Christian. The climax came with Charlemagne, consecrated external
bishop, whose action against the Saxons is well known. Having conquered
part of Saxony, he gave the Saxons the choice of becoming Christians or
of being put to death, and six thousand Saxons, it is said, were
massacred. There then followed the long series of the Crusades, the
internal wars (against the Albigenses, Cathari, etc.), and then in the
16^(th) and 17^(th) centuries the wars of religion in the strict sense
between Protestants and Roman Catholics, with all the familiar
atrocities (e.g., on the part of Cromwell). Finally, there came the
“colonial” wars in which, in truth, religion was no more than a pretext
or ideological cloak or justification, so that these were not really
religious wars, though religion was closely implicated.
Religion, then, is incontestably a source of war. My personal response
is as follows. There is a great difference between a religion that makes
war a sacred duty or a ritual test (as among some Indian and African
tribes) and a religion which reproves, rejects, condemns, and eliminates
all violence. In the first case there is agreement between the central
message that is said to be the truth and the waging of war. In the
second case there is contradiction between religious revelation and the
waging of war. Even though the authorities, intellectuals, and public
opinion that is brought to a white heat by bellicose preaching may
support the legitimacy of a war, the duty of believers in face of it is
to recall the heart of the spiritual message and to point out the
radical contradiction and falsity of the call to war. Naturally, this is
very difficult. Believers have to be capable of extricating themselves
from the sociological current and to have the courage to oppose
intellectuals and the mob. This is the problem for Christianity. I have
never understood how the religion whose heart is that God is love and
that we are to love our neighbors as ourselves can give rise to wars
that are absolutely unjustifiable and unacceptable relative to the
revelation of Jesus. I am familiar with various justifications, which we
shall consider later. The immediate reality, however, is that the
revelation of Jesus ought not to give rise to a religion. All religion
leads to war, but the Word of God is not a religion, and it is the most
serious of all betrayals to have made of it a religion.[16]
As regards the Christian faith, two questions remain, both of which link
up with what follows. The first is that of truth, the second that of
salvation. We have seen that one of the charges against religion is that
it claims exclusive truth. This is accurate, and Christianity does not
escape the charge. But what do we mean when we talk about Christian
truth? The central text is the saying of Jesus: “I am the truth.”
Contrary to what might have been said and done later, the truth is not a
collection of dogmas or conciliar or papal decisions. It is not
doctrine. It is not even the Bible considered as a book. The truth is a
person. It is not a question, then, of adhering to Christian doctrine.
It is a question of trusting in a person who speaks to us. Christian
truth can be grasped, heard, and received only in and by faith. But
faith cannot be forced. The Bible tells us that. So does common sense.
We cannot force someone to trust a person when there is distrust. In no
way, then, can Christian truth be imposed by violence, war, etc. Paul
anticipated what might happen when he admonished us to practice the
truth in love. We are to practice it, not to adopt a system of thought.
This means that we are to follow Jesus, or to imitate him. But this
truth is still exclusive. Hence we are to hold this truth in love. That
is very hard. In church history, then, there has been constant
vacillation between holding the truth without love (compulsion, etc.)
and stressing love but completely neglecting the simple Gospels.
The second problem is that of salvation. A fixed idea in Christianity is
that all are lost (or damned, though this is not a biblical term) unless
they believe in Jesus Christ. To save them — and this is where it
becomes a serious matter — we must first declare to them salvation in
Jesus Christ. Yes, but suppose they will not believe in him?
Progressively the idea arose that we must then force them to believe (as
in the case of Charlemagne or conquests like that of Peru, etc.). The
force used might be severe even to the point of threatening and carrying
out a capital sentence. The great justification (as in the case of the
Grand Inquisitor) is that their souls should be saved. Compared to
eternal felicity, what does bodily execution matter? This execution
could even be called an act of faith (auto de fe). Obviously, we have
here a complete reversal of the preaching of Jesus, the epistles of
Paul, and also the prophets. Faith has to come to birth as a free act,
not a forced one. Otherwise it has no meaning. How can we think that the
God whom Jesus calls Father wants a faith under constraint? As regards
all these criticisms of Christianity and Christendom, it is clear that
Christians who try to be faithful to the Bible will agree that
anarchists are quite right to denounce such actions and practices (i.e.,
the policy of violence, force, and war).
The second historical criticism is close to the first. It is that of
collusion with the state. From the days of Constantine (and for many
years serious historians have doubted the sincerity of his conversion,
viewing it as a purely political act) the state has supposedly been
Christian.[17] The church has received great help in return. Thus the
state has aided it in forcing people to become “Christians.” It has
given it important subsidies. It has safeguarded its cultic sites. It
has granted privileges to the clergy. But the church has also had to let
emperors meddle in its theology, decide at times what must be its true
doctrine, summon councils, supervise the appointment of bishops, etc.
The church has also had to support the state. The alliance of throne and
altar does not date from the Reformation but from the 5^(th) century.
Attempts were made to separate the two powers, the temporal and the
spiritual, but they were constantly confused. As I noted above, the pope
became the internal bishop, the emperor the external. The many
ceremonies (e.g., coronations, Te Deums) had at their heart the idea
that the church ought to serve the state, the political power, and
guarantee the people’s allegiance to it. In his cynical way Napoleon
said that the clergy control the people, the bishops the clergy, and he
himself the bishops. No one could state more clearly the real situation
that the church was an agent of state propaganda. Obedience to the
authorities was also a Christian duty. The king was divinely appointed
(though dissent arose about how to state this), and therefore to disobey
the king was to disobey God. But we must not generalize. I am noting
here what was the official teaching, that of the higher clergy and
church policy (among the Orthodox and Lutherans as well). At the base,
however, among the lower clergy, the position was much less certain. As
regards the period that I know best,[18] the 14^(th) and 15^(th)
centuries, in most of the peasant revolts the clergy marched with their
parishioners as revolutionaries and often headed the uprisings. But the
usual outcome was a massacre.
We have to ask whether things became any different under democratic
systems. Much less than one might think! The central thought is still
that power is from God. Hence the democratic state is also from God. The
odd thing is that this was an old idea. From the 9^(th) century some
theologians had stated that all power is from God through the people.
Plainly, however, this did not lead directly to democracy. In
“Christian” democracies we find a similar alliance to that already
described, except that the church now has fewer advantages. In lay
democracies there is theoretically a complete separation, but that is
not in fact the case. The church has shown much theological uncertainty
in this area. In France it was royalist under the kings and then became
imperialist under Napoleon and republican under the Republic (with some
hesitation on the part of Roman Catholics but not on that of
Protestants). The prize example is that elsewhere it could even become
Marxist in communist lands. Yes indeed, in Hungary and Czechoslovakia
the Reformed Churches became openly communist with Hromadka and
Bereczki. And in the USSR we should never forget that during the war, in
1941, Stalin asked the Orthodox Church to lend its support (e.g., by
loans), and the church was happy to do so. The Orthodox Church, then, is
a prop of the regime. The Roman Catholic Church is less compliant, but
we must not forget that under Hitler, if it did not directly aid the
regime, it did support it even in Germany. The pope even made a
concordat with Hitler. The point is that no matter what the form of
government, at the higher level and in its directives the church is
always on the side of the state.
In the communist sphere we also call to mind a Latin American country
like Nicaragua, where communism was able to install itself thanks to the
Roman Catholic Church and liberation theologians. The only clear example
of opposition is the well-known one of Poland.
At the same time as the churches adapted themselves to the forms of
government they also adopted the corresponding ideologies. It is of
interest to stress that the church in the West preached a universal
Christendom covering all Europe, and transcending national differences,
at the very time when the Empire was (or pretended to be) universal.
Then with the breakup of the West into nations the church became
national. Joan of Arc was plainly an early nationalist Christian.[19]
From the 16^(th) century wars became national, and the church always
supported its own state. This led to the Gott mit uns which is such an
object of contempt to unbelievers and such a scandal for believers. When
two nations went to war, each was sure that God was on its side in an
incredible distortion of biblical thinking, as though it were the elect
people of the Hebrew Bible, or as though it were fighting the
allegorical battle of Revelation and the political enemy were Satan.
Finally, to these manifestations of violence on the part of Christians
or the churches we must add the destruction of heresies — we come back
here to the idea of exclusive truth which the church represents
infallibly and absolutely — and the Inquisition. At this point we must
be careful to distinguish. The Inquisition in the strict sense was set
up in the 13^(th) century (1229) to fight against heresies (Cathari,
Albigenses) and then in the 14^(th) century against sorcery.[20]
Contrary to what is usually said, there were not really many
condemnations to death or massacres. The only important instance was
that of the Cathari. I have had doctoral students examine the extant
records of the Inquisition for Southwest France (Bayonne, Toulouse,
Bordeaux), and at most they have found only an average of six or seven
condemnations a year. The Inquisition, however, was a means of
controlling opinion on the one hand and inducing collective fear on the
other (because of the anonymity, the secrecy of the procedure, etc.).
Its very presence was enough. It then changed completely when it became
an instrument of political power. Some kingdoms took it over in the
16^(th) century, and it became a terrible instrument in their hands.
Where did this happen? In Portugal, Spain, and Venice, in which it
became wholly a political weapon, used not merely to induce fear but to
put to death for politico-religious reasons. Already in the case of the
Cathari the aim was more political than religious. The Cathari were
teaching that one should not have children, and certain kings feared
that this would lead to a serious drop in population.
Notwithstanding every explanation, I repeat that anarchists are right to
challenge this kind of Christianity, these practices of the church,
which constitute an intolerable form of power in the name of religion.
In these circumstances, religion and power being confused, they are
right to reject religion. Furthermore, although we need not insist on
the point, we must also take note of the wealth of the church and
prelates on the basis of exploitation of the people, and in the 19^(th)
century the association between the church and capitalist regimes. We
all know what horrible use was made of the beatitude: “Blessed are the
poor,” and Marx was right to denounce religion as the opiate of the
people. As it was preached by the church at this period, this is
precisely what Christianity was.
I will say two things in conclusion. First, the situation has become
much better and clearer now that the churches no longer have power, now
that there is no longer a link between them and the authorities, and now
that they have fewer members. Those who were in the church out of
selfinterest have largely left. Second, the condemnations of
Christianity and the churches by anarchists (also Marxists,
freethinkers, etc.) ought to be a reason, in fact, for Christians to
achieve a better understanding of the biblical and evangelical message
and to modify their conduct and that of the church in the light of the
criticisms and their better understanding of the Bible.
Leaving the historical and moral field, we must now consider the
metaphysical attacks of anarchists on religions in general and
Christianity in particular. We will find in effect four decisive
objections. First, we naturally run up against the slogan: No God, no
Master. Anarchists, wanting no political, economic, or intellectual
master, also want no religious master, no God, of whom the masters of
this world, as we have seen, have made abundant use. The nub of this
problem is very simply the idea of God.
Now it is true that for centuries theology has insisted that God is the
absolute Master, the Lord of lords, the Almighty, before whom we are
nothing. Hence it is right enough that those who reject masters will
reject God too. We must also take note of the fact that even in the
20^(th) century Christians still call God the King of creation and still
call Jesus Lord even though there are few kings and lords left in the
modern world. But I for my part dispute this concept of God.
I realize that it corresponds to the existing mentality. I realize that
we have here a religious image of God. I realize, finally, that many
biblical passages call God King or Lord. But this admitted, I contend
that the Bible in reality gives us a very different image of God. We
shall examine here only one aspect of this different image, though new
ones also come to light and give rise to the following questions. Though
the biblical God is the Almighty, in practice he does not make use of
his omnipotence in his dealings with us except in particular instances
which are recorded precisely because they are abnormal (e.g., the Flood,
the Tower of Babel, or Sodom and Gomorrah). God’s is a self-limited
omnipotence, not through caprice or fancy, but because anything else
would be in contradiction with his very being. For beyond power, the
dominant and conditioning fact is that the being of God is love.
It is not merely Jesus who teaches this. The whole Hebrew Bible does so,
at least if we read it attentively. When God creates, it is not to amuse
himself, but because, being love, he wants someone to love other than
himself. Nor does he create by a terrible explosion of power but by the
simple Word: “God said”—no more. God does not unleash his power but
expresses himself solely by his Word. This means from the very outset
that he is a communicative God. By contrast, in the religious
cosmogonies of the ancient Near Eastern world, the gods (including those
of Olympus) are always squabbling, creating by violence, etc. In the
creation of humanity, the second story (Genesis 2) shows that the word
is what characterizes humanity, too. The primary role of human beings is
to be those who respond to God’s love. They are created to love (this is
what is meant by the image of God).
Another gripping image of God is given in the story of Elijah in the
wilderness (1 Kings 19). After forty days of depressing solitude, Elijah
is confronted by a series of violent phenomena: a terrible fire, a wind,
an earthquake. But each time the text tells us that God was not in the
fire or wind or earthquake. Finally, there was a gentle murmur (A.
Chouraqui translates: “the sound of a vanishing silence”), and then
Elijah prostrated himself and covered his face with his mantle, for God
was in this “still small voice.”
Confirmation may be found in many prophetic texts in which God talks
sadly to his people, making no threats. (My people, what have I done
that you should turn from me?) Even when God manifests himself in power,
there is never absent the aspect of what a great theologian (Karl Barth)
has called the humanity of God. Thus, in the Sinai story, the mountain
is encircled by thunder and lightning and the people are afraid. But
Moses climbs it all the same, and the story in Exodus 33 tells us that
he talked to God face-to-face, as friend to friend. Thus, no matter what
God’s power may be, the first aspect of God is never that of the
absolute Master, the Almighty. It is that of the God who puts himself on
our human level and limits himself. Theologians who were under the
influence of a monarchy (whether that of Rome or that of the 16^(th) and
17^(th) centuries) might have insisted on omnipotence by way of
imitation, but they did so by mistake. Sometimes, of course, when we
have to oppose an all-powerful state, it is good that we should tell the
dictator that God is more powerful than he is, that God is indeed the
King of kings (as Moses told Pharaoh). When assassins put tyrants to
death, tyrants soon see whether they are God. For the most part,
however, the true face of the biblical God is love. And I do not believe
that anarchists would be too happy with a formula that runs: No love, no
master.
A second great complaint that anarchists make against Christianity
relates to one of the two well-known dilemmas, namely, that if God
foresees all things, if he is “providence,” this rules out all human
freedom. Here again we have in fact a view of God which derives from
Greek philosophy and which classical theologians have greatly
propagated. On the basis of Greek thought, as we all know, the Christian
God was endowed with many attributes: omniscience, foreknowledge,
impassibility, immutability, eternity, etc. I do not argue with what
comes directly from the Bible, for example, that God is eternal, though
we cannot really have any conception of what eternity is. I do claim,
however, that we have made an image or representation of God which
depends much more on human thought and logic than on an understanding of
the Bible. The decisive contention of the Bible is always that we cannot
know God, that we cannot make an image of him, that we cannot analyze
what he is. The only serious theologians are those who have practiced
what is called negative theology — not knowing what God is but saying
only what he is not, for example, that money is not God, nor a tree, nor
a spring, nor the sun. We cannot say anything positive about God. (I
said above that God is love, and that is the one positive biblical
declaration, but love is not a conferred “being.”) This is the point of
the great statement of God to Moses in Exodus 3:14: “I am who I am.” The
Hebrew terms can have different senses, so that various renderings of
the statement are possible: “I am he who I am,” “I am he who can say: I
am” (as other texts put it), “I will be who I am,” “I am who I will be,”
or “I will be who I will be.” As Karl Barth said, when God reveals
himself to us, he reveals himself as the Unknowable. Hence the qualities
that we attribute to God come from human reason and imagination. Perhaps
it is the great merit of the Death-of-God theologies not to have killed
off God but to have destroyed the images that we have made of God.
Undoubtedly, the attacks of the great 19^(th)-century anarchists, as
well as those of Nietzsche, were directed against the images that
obtained in their period. A Protestant theologian has said that science
has taught us that we no longer need the hypothesis of God to reach an
understanding of phenomena. Ricoeur, a Christian philosopher, has often
raised the question of the God of the gaps (i.e., appealing to God when
we do not understand something). The mistake is to make of God either an
explanatory God of the gaps or a useful hypothesis to explain the origin
of the universe. But we are now returning to the simple and essentially
biblical truth that God does not serve any outside purpose.[21]
But, one might say, why then preserve this God? Why not preserve only
that which is useful, which serves some purpose? To say this is to give
evidence of a utilitarianism and modernism in the very worst taste! It
was a serious mistake to try to make God useful along these lines. But
if God is not of this kind, we need to challenge a common notion,
namely, that of providence. The idea of a power which foresees and
ordains and controls all things is a curious one that has nothing
Christian about it. There is no providence in the Bible, no God who
distributes blessings, sicknesses, wealth, or happiness. Is God a giant
computer functioning according to a program? There is nothing biblical
about an idea of that kind. In the Bible there is a God who is with us,
who accompanies us in our ventures. This God can at times intervene but
not according to set laws or dictatorial caprice. There is no God of
providence. We shall have to see why later on. If I believe, I may
regard this blessing as a gift of God and this misfortune as a warning
or punishment from God. The essential thing, however, is to understand
that there is no objective knowledge of God. I cannot objectively
proclaim (especially in the case of others) that one thing is a divine
gift and another a divine chastisement. This is a matter of faith and it
is thus subjective. Hence when someone says something to me, 1 may in
faith hear more than the actual words state, perhaps finding in them a
Word of God. Is all that an illusion? But why should what is subjective
be an illusion? Experience over hundreds of years proves the contrary.
Let us continue, however, to hunt down the mistaken images of God that
Christians have fabricated. If providence is a popular one,
intellectuals have invented a God who is the first cause (on the basis
of scientific causalism). Naturally, this can be maintained
metaphysically, but never biblically. The basic reason for this is that
the God who is a first cause belongs to an essentially mechanical
system, but the God whom the Bible portrays is changing and fluid. He
makes decisions that might seem to be arbitrary. He is a free God. As
Kierkegaard says, he is supremely the Unconditioned. He cannot sit on
top of a pyramid of causes. This brings us to an even more basic point.
Genesis 1 describes a six-day creation. (Naturally, we are not to think
of twenty-four-hour days.) Creation is complete on the sixth day. God
saw that everything was very good. Then on the seventh day he rested.
But where does all human history fit in? The only possible answer is
that it takes place on the seventh day.[22] God enters into his rest and
the human race begins its history. It has a specific place in creation.
Creation has its own laws of organization and functioning. The race has
a part to play in it. It has a certain responsibility. The fact that it
proceeds to disobey God, that is, to break with him, does not alter the
situation in any way. God does not begin again. He does not leave his
rest in order to direct operations. The organization of the world
remains the same. But we must not forget what we said above. God
continues to love this creature and he waits to be loved by this
creature. He is Word, and he wills to continue dialogue with this
creature. Furthermore, at times he leaves his rest. Many biblical texts
say this expressly. And at the end, in Hebrews and Revelation, the great
promise and joy is that of refinding rest. God will find his rest again
and we shall enter into this rest of God (which has nothing whatever to
do with the rest of death).
At times God comes out of his rest. When the human situation becomes
desperate, God devises a plan of rescue. This may not always succeed,
for we humans have to take part in it, and we may fail. There are many
examples. Again, God comes out of his rest because human wickedness in
relation to others becomes so intolerable that he has to intervene
(though not, as I have said, with stupefying wonders) and provisionally
to reestablish an order in which the wicked are punished (although by
others, to whom God secretly gives his power). What is hardest to
understand if we are used to traditional concepts of God is the
intermingling of human history with God’s history.
This brings us to a central notion. Far from being the universal
Commander, the biblical God is above all the Liberator.[23] What is not
generally known is that Genesis is not really the first book of the
Bible. The Jews regard Exodus as the basic book. They primarily see in
God not the universal Creator but their Liberator. The statement is
impressive: “I have liberated you from Egypt, the house of bondage” (cf.
Exodus 13:14; 20:2). In Hebrew, Egypt is called Mitsraim, and the
meaning of this term is “twofold anguish,” which the rabbis explain as
the anguish of living and the anguish of dying. The biblical God is
above all the one who liberates us from all bondage, from the anguish of
living and the anguish of dying. Each time that he intervenes it is to
give us again the air of freedom. The cost is high. And it is through
human beings that God discharges this mission, mostly human beings who
at first are frightened and refuse, as we see from the many examples of
God’s pedagogy, by which Alphonse Maillot shows how full of humor the
biblical God is.
But why freedom? If we accept that God is love, and that it is human
beings who are to respond to this love, the explanation is simple. Love
cannot be forced, ordered, or made obligatory. It is necessarily free.
If God liberates, it is because he expects and hopes that we will come
to know him and love him. He cannot lead us to do so by terrorizing us.
I realize that one might lodge objections. This God is also the one who
gave the Jewish people hundreds of commandments, primarily the
Decalogue. How can we say, then, that he does not force us? I am again
amazed that we can treat these commandments as though they were the
equivalent of the articles in a human code, deriving from them
obligations and duties. We have to view them very differently. First,
these commandments are the border that God draws between life and death.
If you do not kill, you have the best chance of not being killed. But if
you commit a murder, it is almost certain that you will die in
consequence. (Nor is there any difference between private crime and
war!) Those who
take to the sword will be killed by the sword. This is true of all the
commandments. If you stay within them, your life is protected. If you
break them, you enter a world of risks and dangers. “See, I set before
you good and life, evil and death. Therefore choose good [I, God,
counsel and implore you to do so], so that you may live” (cf.
Deuteronomy 30:19). Second, these commandments are more a promise than
an order. You shall not kill also means that you will not have to kill,
God promises that it will be possible not to kill.
God’s liberating action for us, so far as the Christian faith is
concerned, comes to fulfilment in Jesus Christ. The one who insists the
most on this freedom is Paul. Liberty is the theme of his Epistles to
the Corinthians. It is for freedom that we are freed. We have been freed
and must not become the slaves of anything. All things are lawful but
not all are expedient. James, too, calls the law of God the law of
liberty. Amazingly, Paul finds no place for precepts on food or
lifestyle. Such precepts, he says, have an appearance of wisdom but they
are merely human commandments and not the commandments of God. When we
read such passages, we find it hard to understand how the churches have
derived the very opposite from them, heaping up moral precepts and
treating their members as subjects and even as infants.
We are thus liberated. We have to take up our responsibilities.
Nevertheless, God acts. There are divine interventions and divine
orders. How are we to understand this? My first point is that God’s
commandments are always addressed to individuals. God chooses this or
that person to do something specific. It is not a matter of a general
law. We have no right to generalize the order. At most we may draw a
lesson from it. Thus Jesus tells the rich young ruler to sell all his
goods, to give to the poor, and to follow him. We must not generalize
this command. We must not decide that all Christians have to sell their
goods, etc. But the saying is designed to put us all on guard against
riches. Individual Christians, if conscience so dictates, may also take
the command as specifically addressed to them. The main point in this
context, however, is to see that we are confronted here by a
divine-human dialectic. We ourselves are free to act and are responsible
for our acts. But God also acts in each situation. The two actions then
combine or oppose one another. In any case, we are never passive. God
does not do everything. He can give counsel or issue an order, but he
does not prevent us from taking a different course. Eventually — an
astonishing situation — he might approve of us even though we do not do
as he wills. (We recall the extraordinary wish of Job that God would
find himself in the wrong and Job in the right.) In other words, the
biblical God is not a machine, a big computer, with which we cannot
reason and which functions according to a program. Nor are we robots for
God who have to execute the decisions of him who made us.
This leads us to what is (to the best of my knowledge) the last and
great objection of anarchists against God. It consists of the famous
dilemma: Either God is omnipotent but in vi of the evil on earth he is
not good (since it is he who doe s all that takes place), or God is good
but he is not omnipotent, since he cannot prevent the evil that is done.
I believe that what we have already said will facilitate our reply.
First, we must make it clear that evil is not the product of some higher
force, that is, Satan, the devil, etc. What we have here are not
realities but mythical representations. The terms are general ones in
Hebrew and Greek, not proper names. Mephistopheles is a legendary
figure, not a biblical one. All that which causes division between
people (the very opposite of love) is the devil. Satan is the accuser,
that is, that which causes people to bring accusations against one
another. Evil derives from us in the twofold sense that we wrong
ourselves and others and harm our neighbors, nature, etc. There is no
dualism of a good God and a bad god. What we have are not evil beings
but evil forces. The evil one stands for false intellectual questions.
The great serpent is the force that drives the world to destruction. But
biblically it is we ourselves who are the issue, and we alone.
As we have seen, God calls us to turn to himself in love. Constantly,
then, he intervenes to liberate us. Being free, we can ourselves decide.
We can wrong and injure. We can do the opposite of what God wills. God
wills the good, but he leaves us free to do the opposite. If he did not,
if as the Almighty he made us automatically do the good, human life
would no longer have any meaning. We would be robots in his hand, toys
that he has made (but why?). Note well that if this were so, we would no
longer be responsible for anything and it would be of no importance
whether we did good or evil. “Things” would no doubt function
impeccably. There would be no more wars, murders, dictatorships, etc.
There would be no more computers! What about natural accidents?
Cataclysms? This is obviously the point of greatest difficulty for
agnostics. The biblical explanation is that since creation is made as a
whole, all its parts are in strictest solidarity with one another (as
the most advanced physicists now admit), and since in this creation
human beings are the crown of the work and are also responsible for
creation, their role being to carry God’s love to it, all creation is
implicated in their break with God. Now that the principal part of
creation has decided to seize its autonomy and go its own way, nothing
within creation is left intact. The result is bad. Nevertheless, the
laws of the organization of the cosmos and matter remain, just as the
human body is preserved. There is no return to chaos. Like human life,
however, the universe is now subject to rents and accidents. This is
inevitable, since humanity has broken with him who is being itself.
A final point, however is that what we call cataclysms are so only for
us and relative to us. An avalanche, earthquake, or flood is not bad in
itself. It does not cause any particular damage to nature. Often it is
simply an expression of physical or chemical laws that we have set in
motion. It is terrible only because we are there and suffer the
consequences of natural changes that we call cataclysms relative to us.
As we have said, God does not intervene incessantly. He does not stop
the functioning of natural laws because we are there, we who have broken
with him! He does so only in the exceptional cases that Christians call
miracles. And we need to insist again and again that the material fact
of a miracle is not at all the important thing from the biblical
standpoint. The important thing is simply the meaning that we find in
it, and especially the sign it gives that relationship with God is
reestablished, as God shows by protecting, healing, etc. A miracle is
not a marvel. It is also very rare and exceptional. I thus reject
totally, for example, the miracle attributed to the child Jesus (making
birds out of day and breathing upon them to make them fly). Miracles of
this sort which some later texts record have no other aim than that of
dumbfounding those who see them. Jesus himself, however, never performed
miracles in order to astonish people or to make them see in him the Son
of God. He expressly refused to do this. Finally, 1 also reject totally
the well-known apparitions (of the Virgin or of angels) which have
nothing whatever to do with what the Bible teaches us about God’s
action.
Having said all this, I make no pretense at all of having convinced my
readers. My only effort has been to put the questions better so that
those who claim to be atheists or agnostics may do so for good reasons
and not for reasons that are false or fanciful. When I used to teach an
annual course on Marx and Marxism (1947–1979), I always told my students
that I was trying to be as honest as possible, that I was not seeking to
convince them either one way or the other, that what I wanted was that
when they decided either to be for Marxism or against it they should not
do so out of emotion or with vague ideas or because of a certain
background, but with a precise knowledge and for good reasons. I would
say the same here and now.
My next task is to show by a “naive” reading of the Bible that far from
offering us a sure basis for the state and the authorities, a better
understanding will, I believe, point us toward anarchy; not, of course,
in the common sense of disorder, but in the sense of ati-arche: no
authority, no domination. We commonly talk of sheer anarchy when we see
disorder. This is because we in the West are convinced that order can be
established in society only by a strong central power and by force
(police, army, propaganda). To challenge power of this kind necessarily
means disorder! Luther, for instance, was so frightened by the disorder
of the Peasants’ Revolt (a consequence of his preaching of Christian
liberty, which peasant groups accepted and wanted to manifest at once)
that he quickly called upon the princes to suppress the uprisings.
Calvin could even say that anything is better than social disorder, even
tyranny! I quote these two authors because they are the closest to me
(as a Protestant) and in order to show that even faithful readers of the
Bible and true Christians can be blinded by the obvious usefulness of
kings, princes, etc. They can read the Bible only through this filter.
But today, confronted with the crushing of individuals by the state
under every regime, we need to challenge this Behemoth and therefore to
read the Bible differently. It is true enough, as we shall see, that
there are also in the Bible texts which seem to validate authority. But
as I will show, I believe that there is a general current which points
toward anarchy, the passages that favor authority being exceptions.
After its liberation from Egypt, the Hebrew people was first led by a
charismatic head, and during its forty years of desert wandering it
really had no precise organization (in spite of certain hints in
Exodus). To invade and conquer Canaan it then had a military leader,
Joshua, but this was only for a short time. (Some scholars doubt indeed
whether the Hebrew people was a single group of identical origin.) As
already sketched out, perhaps by Moses, the people settled by clans and
tribes. The twelve tribes all had their own heads, but these had little
concrete authority. When an important decision had to be made, with
ritual sacrifices and prayers for divine inspiration, a popular assembly
was held and this had the last word. After Joshua each tribe set about
occupying its own territory, for many of the areas, although assigned,
had not yet been fully conquered! When the tribes had completed the
occupation, an interesting system was organized. There were no tribal
princes. Families that might be regarded as aristocratic were either
destroyed or vanquished. The God of Israel declared that he and he alone
would be Israel’s head. Yet this was not a theocracy, for God had no
representative on earth and tribal assemblies made the decisions.
An exception was when the situation became disastrous through successive
defeats, through famine, through social disorder, or through idolatry
and a return to pagan religions. God then chose a man or a woman who had
no specific authority but whom he inspired to wan a war or to lead the
people back to reverence for God, that is, to resolve the crisis.
Apparently when the “judges”[24] had played their part they effaced
themselves and rejoined the people. This was obviously a flexible
system. God did not necessarily choose people of distinguished family or
health. Deborah, Gideon, Tola, Jair, and Samson were more prophets than
kings. They had no permanent power. God alone could be considered the
supreme authority. A significant phrase at the end of the book of Judges
(21:25) is that at that time there was no king in Israel; people did
what was right in their own eyes. Proof may be found in the story of
Abimelech in ch. 9.
One of the sons of Gideon, with no mandate from God, decided that since
he was of the family of him who had saved Israel, he ought to succeed
his father in office. He began by assassinating all his brothers. He
then assembled the inhabitants of Shechem and Millo (or Beth-millo) and
proclaimed himself king. But the prophet Jotham opposed him, and
addressing the people he told them an interesting parable. The trees
gathered to elect a king and put him at their head. They chose the
olive. But the olive refused, saying that its job was to produce good
oil. They then chose the fig, but it made a similar response: “Shall I
give up my sweetness and the excellent fruit which I bear in order to be
above the other trees?” (v. 9). But the trees wanted a king. They chose
the vine, but the vine answered like the first two. They then approached
the bramble, which accepted and stated at once that those which
disobeyed it would be burned by it. Having denounced Abimelech, Jotham
had to flee. Abimelech reigned for three years. The Israelites,
accustomed to freedom, then began to revolt. Oppression and massacres
resulted. But after his victories over the rebels, Abimelech was passing
a tower and a woman up in the tower threw a piece of millstone on his
head and crushed his skull. The system of judges was then restored.
The real history of royal power (i.e., central and unified power) would
begin only with the familiar story in 1 Samuel (ch. 8). Samuel was now
judge. But the assembled people told him that they had now had enough of
this political system. They wanted a king so as to be like other
nations.[25] They also thought that a king would be a better military
leader. Samuel protested and went to God in prayer. The God of Israel
replied: Do not be upset. The people have not rejected you, Samuel, but
me, God. They have constantly rejected me since I liberated them. Accept
their demand but warn them of what will happen.[26] Hence Samuel
returned to the assembly of the people of Israel and told them that
since they wanted a king, they should have one. But they had to know
what this king would do. He would take their sons and make soldiers of
them. He would take their daughters for his harem or as domestic
servants. He would impose taxes and confiscate the best lands.... The
people replied, however, that they did not care. They wanted a king.
Samuel warned them again that they would cry out against this king. But
nothing could be done. He who was chosen to be king thus came on the
scene, namely, Saul, who, as we know, became mad, committed all kinds of
abuses of power, and was finally killed in battle against the
Philistines.
The second king, David, enjoyed great renown. He was Israel’s greatest
monarch. He was constantly held up as a model. I have written elsewhere
that he was the exception among Israel’s kings. But Vernard Eller is
harsher than I am.[27] He thinks that David is a good example in favor
of anarchy. A first reason is that one of the passages (2 Samuel 12:7–9)
shows us that Daviid did nothing on his own. It was God alone who acted
through him. His glory owed nothing to his arche but solely to (God’s
benevolence. Eller then shows that during his reign David did all the
things that in later centuries would bring successive disasters on
Israel’s kings. This is obviously important. (In France Louis XIV would
do all the things which led to the political mistakes of the 18^(th)
century and hence to the revolution.) Furthermore, the Bible curiously
insists upon :all David’s faults: the killing of his rivals, arranging
the deatlh of the husband of a woman whom he desired, the incessant
civil wars of his reign, etc., so that David is not presented as in any
way blameless or glorious.
After David came Solomon his son. Solomon was just and upright. But then
power went to his head, as it did with others. He imposedl crushing
taxes, built ruinous palaces, and took 700 wives and 300 concubines! He
began to worship other gods besides the God of Israel. He built
fortresses over the whole land. Wlhen he died he was hated by everyone.
The elders of Israel advised Solomon’s son and designated successor to
adopt a more liberal policy, reducing taxes and the heavy yoke of
servitude. But Rehoboam did not listen to them, and whem the people
reassembled he told them: “My father made your yoke heavy, but I will
make it still heavier; my father chastised you with whips, but I will
chastise you with scorpions” (1 Kings 12:14). The people revolted. They
stoned his finance minister. They rejected the house of David. A
division took place. The tribe of Judah stayed loyal to Rehoboam. The
other tribes rallied around a former minister of Solomon, Jeroboam.
In my view this whole story is worth telling because it shows how severe
the Bible is even on the “great” kings. It is severe precisely to the
degree that these kings represented in their day the equivalent of a
state: an army, a treasury, an administration, centralization, etc.
Yet this does not exhaust what we have to say about Israel’s monarchy.
Two important points have still to be made. The first can be summarized
briefly. We can say that in the biblical accounts “good” kings are
always defeated by Israel’s enemies, and the “great” kings who win
victories and extend their borders are always “bad.” “Good” means that
they are just, that they do not abuse their power, and that they worship
the true God of Israel. “Bad” means that they promote idolatry, reject
God, and are also unjust and wicked. The presentation is so systematic
that some modern historians suggest that the accounts were written by
antimonarchists and partisans. (It is true that in Chronicles the
presentation is much less clear-cut.) The astounding thing to me is that
the texts were edited, published, and authorized by rabbis and
representatives of the people (if one can say that) at a time when the
kings in question were reigning. There must have been censorship and
controls, and yet these did not prevent the writings from being
circulated. Furthermore, the accounts were not merely preserved but were
also regarded as divinely inspired. They were treated as a revelation of
the God of Israel, who is thus presented as himself an enemy of royal
power and the state. They were sacred texts. They were included in the
body of inspired texts (there was as yet no canon). They were read in
the synagogues (even though they must have seemed like antiroyalist
propaganda to rulers like Ahab). They were commented upon as the Word of
God in the presence of all the people. This is to me an astonishing fact
which gives evidence of the dominant thinking of the Jewish people from
the 8^(th) to the 4^(th) century B.C.
In addition, the same texts and all the prophetic books bring to light a
politically very odd phenomenon, namely, that for every king there was a
prophet. The prophet (e.g., in the case of David) was most often a
severe critic of royal acts. He claimed to come from God and to carry a
word from God. This Word was always in opposition to royal power.
Naturally, the prophets were often expelled; they were obliged to flee;
they were put in prison; they were threatened with death, etc. But this
did not make any difference. Their judgment was regarded as the truth.
And again their writings, usually in opposition to power, were
preserved, were regarded as a revelation of God, and were listened to by
the people. None of them came to the aid of a king; none was a royal
counselor; none was “integrated.” The prophets were a counterforce, as
we might put it today. This counterforce did not represent the people —
it represented God. Even idolatrous kings found it very hard to deal
with these representatives of God in whom the people believed. The
prophets stated unceasingly that the kings were mistaken, that the
policies they were pursuing would have such and such consequences which
had to be viewed as a divine judgment. Sometimes the kings appealed to
others who also claimed to be speaking in God’s name and to be prophets.
There was thus a battle of prophets. But the accounts preserved under
Isaiah and Jeremiah show that each time the true prophets prevailed
against the false. Here again we find the same strange phenomenon as
before. None of the false prophecies that were favorable to the kings
has been preserved in the holy scriptures. The struggles of the true
prophets have been preserved, however, and the fact that logically the
royal authority ought to have suppressed them shows that we have in
their declarations the Word of God. As I see it, these facts manifest in
an astounding way the constancy of an antiroyalist if not an antistatist
sentiment.
We are not yet done. We have to add two further factors. Toward the end
of the 4^(th) century B.C. we come across an astonishing book which is
usually called Ecclesiastes (or Qohelet). This book seriously challenges
political power.[28] It is supposedly the work of Solomon, the great
king, the most wealthy and the most powerful. But from the very first
Solomon learns that political power is vanity and a pursuit of wind. He
has obtained all that royal power can give. He has built palaces and
promoted the arts. But none of that amounts to anything. Nor is that the
only criticism of political power. In 3:16 we are told that “in the
place established to judge among humans, wickedness is always
established, and in the place established to proclaim justice, there is
wickedness.” The author also sees the evil that there is in what we
would now call bureaucracy (a child of hierarchy). “If you see in a
province the poor oppressed and the violation of law and of justice, do
not be surprised, for the person who is in charge is watched by a
higher, and above them there are yet higher ones.” And this text
concludes ironically: “an advantage for the people is a king honored by
the land” (5:8–9). But then there is a virulent attack on all
domination: “A person lords it over a person to make him miserable”
(8:9). Finally, irony again: “Do not curse the king, do not curse the
rich in your bedchamber, for a bird of the air will carry your voice, or
some winged creature will tell your words” (10:20). Thus the political
power has spies everywhere, and even in your bedroom, do not say
anything against it, if you want to go on living!
In conclusion we must look at the end of the Jewish monarchy. Palestine
was conquered by the Greeks and then became part of the Seleucid kingdom
(end of the 3^(rd) century B.C.). Then came the Maccabean revolt to
liberate Judea and especially Jerusalem. The war of liberation was long
and bloody, but success came in 163 B.C. Many political parties then
struggled for power. From a colonial dictatorship the Jews fell under a
Jewish dictatorship, the Hasmonean monarchy, which was not only very
corrupt but was characterized by palace intrigues (one king starved his
mother to death, another assassinated his brothers, etc.). These things
made pious Jews hostile to this dynasty, and the people were so
disgusted that they preferred to appeal to a foreign king to rid them of
their Israelite king. The deposition did not succeed, but we have here
an explanation of the hostility to all political power that prevailed in
the 1 st century B.C.
The story of the collapse of Israel’s monarchy was not yet at an end.
The Romans came on the scene in Palestine in 65 B.C. Pompey besieged
Jerusalem and finally took it, a horrible massacre following. When
Pompey celebrated his triumph at Rome, Aristobulus, the last Hasmonean
king, was among his prisoners. An abominable struggle for the succession
then began among the leading Jewish families. Obviously, the law of God
and the solidarity of faith meant nothing to the leaders.
It was Herod, the son of a prot£g£ of Caesar, who was appointed governor
of Galilee by the Romans. Herod adopted a harsh policy and restored
order in what had become a world of dismal brigandage. He put the main
brigand leader to death. (Guerrilla attacks on the political authorities
had now become pure and simple banditry.) His enemies accused him before
the supreme “political” court, the Sanhedrin (which did nothing and had
no real power), on the ground that he had usurped this court’s
prerogative, it alone having the power of life and death. But Herod, who
knew that he had Roman support, showed such assurance and arrogance
before the Sanhedrin that this timid body did not dare do anything
against him. Herod returned to Jerusalem with an army but his father
intervened to prevent a new war. His power progressively increased. In
37 B.C. he became the true king of all Palestine in alliance with Rome.
A governor ruled with him, but he was not under the governor. He
depended directly on the princeps (later emperor) of Rome.
Equipped with such power, he engaged in considerable political activity.
He imposed a tight administration on the whole country with police
control. He also began construction. He built whole cities in honor of
Augustus and a magnificent temple of Augustus (he was one of those who
spread the emperor cult in the East). He also built strong
fortifications at Jerusalem. Finally, in 20 B.C. he began building a new
temple (as we see, he was eclectic) for the God of Israel. He enlarged
the esplanade (with enormous supporting walls that may still be seen,
one of them being the famous Wailing Wall). He also put up a sumptuous
structure with ornaments of gold, etc. He thus came to be known as Herod
the Great. But he could engage in this construction program only by
imposing heavy taxes and oppressing the people, even to the point of
forced labor. Nor should we forget that after him the country would be
delivered up to 150 years of civil war and incomparable devastation. The
land was ruined and there were frequent famines. Violence and terror
were the instruments of government, as we can well imagine. The only
reality that counted for Herod was the friendship and support of Rome
and the emperor.
Herod died in A.D. 4 and the disputed succession gave rise to new civil
wars. Rome then seized one part of Herod’s kingdom. Finally, one of his
sons, Herod Antipas, carried the day and regained part of the kingdom.
Antipas led a completely insane life of crime and debauchery. We need to
note this if we are to understand what followed. How did the people of
Israel react to the rule of Rome on the one side (which was less severe
than that of the Jewish crown) and the violence of the Herods on the
other? (The curious thing is that, except for the book of Daniel, no
more writings were recognized by the people and the rabbis as divinely
inspired. Up to John the Baptist there were no more prophets.) What we
find are two reactions. The one was violent. This unworthy dynasty and
the Roman invaders must be chased out of the country. The country, then,
was not merely prey to conflicts among its leaders. It was also in
ferment due to the activity of guerrilla bands (then called brigands)
who fought the royal house and Rome by the usual methods: attacks,
assassinations of prominent people, etc. The other reaction, that of the
devout, was one of withdrawal from this horrible situation. These pious
people established fervent religious communities, avoided secular
matters, and devoted themselves solely to prayer and worship. Among them
there developed an apocalyptic trend, on the one hand prophesying the
end of the world (which had long since been announced: When you see the
abomination of desolation standing where it ought not — how better
describe the Hasmonean and Herodian dynasties?), and on the other hand
expecting the coming of God’s Messiah who would set everything in order
and reestablish the kingdom of God.
In their different ways both reactions ascribed no value to the state,
to political authority, or to the organization of that authority.
This was the general climate into which Jesus was born. The first event
that Matthew’s Gospel records concerning him is not without interest.
Herod the Great was still in power. He learned that a child had been
born in Bethelehem and that reports were circulating that this child
would be Israel’s Messiah. He realized at once what trouble this might
cause him and he thus ordered that all the children of two years and
under in Bethlehem and vicinity should be killed. The accuracy of this
account is irrelevant for my purpose. The important thing is that we
have the story, that it was abroad among the people, and that the first
Christians accepted it (we must not forget that they were Jews) and put
it in a text which they regarded as divinely inspired. This shows what
their view was of Herod, and behind him of power. This was the first
contact of the infant Jesus with political power. I am not saying that
it influenced his later attitude to it, but undoubtedly it left a mark
upon his infancy.
What I really want to point out here by means of a series of recorded
incidents is not that Jesus was an enemy of power but that he treated it
with disdain and did not accord it any authority. In every form he
challenged it radically. He did not use violent methods to destroy it.
In recent years there has been much talk of a guerrilla Jesus who, the
people thought, would chase out the Romans. I think that there are two
mistakes here. Nothing supports the account of a guerrilla Jesus such as
we find, for example, in R Cardonnel, who concludes from the cleansing
of the temple and the request of Jesus for two swords that the disciples
had a stock of arms. A single fact shows how impossible is that theory.
Among the disciples there were Zealots (Simon and Judas), who supported
violence, but also collaborators with the Romans (Matthew), and the two
groups were able to get on well together. Jesus never extolled violence;
if he was a guerrilla head, the least we can say is that he was a fool.
His travels, especially the last journey to Jerusalem, made no tactical
sense, and they inevitably led to his arrest.
Another and even more widespread error is that all the Jews were
essentially preoccupied with expelling the Roman invaders. Undoubtedly,
there was hatred for the goyim and a desire to chase out the invaders.
The massacres perpetrated by the Romans were constantly remembered. But
that was not all. In addition, patriotic Jews could not forget that the
kings of Judea had been appointed by the Romans and could not remain in
power without their support. Hatred of the Romans combined with a desire
to be rid of the Herods. Even among pious sects like the Essenes there
was expectation of the coming of a mysterious personage who as a Teacher
of Righteousness would not have political power but who would give true
freedom to the Jewish people by establishing not temporal and military
power but spiritual power, as we see also in certain Jewish apocalypses
of the period. I would not venture to say that these sects had an
anarchist hope, but many of the texts suggest it.
When Jesus began his public ministry, the Gospels tell the story of his
temptation. The devil tempts him three times. The important temptation
in this context is the last (in Matthew). The enemy takes Jesus to a
high mountain and shows him all the kingdoms of the world and their
glory: “I will give you all these things, if you will prostrate yourself
and worship me” (Matthew 4:8–9), or: “I will give you all this power and
the glory of these kingdoms, for it has been given to me, and 1 give it
to whom I will. If you, then, will prostrate yourself before me, it
shall all be yours” (Luke 4:6–7). Again, my concern is not with the
facticity of the records nor with theological problems. My concern is
with the views of the writers, with the personal convictions that they
express here.
It is not unimportant to emphasize, perhaps, that the two Gospels were
probably written with Christian communities of Greek origin in view, not
Jews who were influenced by the hatred to which we referred above. The
reference in these texts, then, is to political power in general (“all
the kingdoms of the world”) and not just the Herod monarchy. And the
extraordinary thing is that according to these texts all powers, all the
power and glory of the kingdoms, all that has to do with politics and
political authority, belongs to the devil. It has all been given to him
and he gives it to whom he wills. Those who hold political power receive
it from him and depend upon him. (It is astonishing that in the
innumerable theological discussions of the legitimacy of political
power, no one has ever adduced these texts!) This fact is no less
important than the fact that Jesus rejects the devil’s offer. Jesus does
not say to the devil: It is not true. You do not have power over
kingdoms and states. He does not dispute this claim. He refuses the
offer of power because the devil demands that he should fall down before
him and worship him. This is the sole point when he says: “You shall
worship the Lord your God and you shall serve him, only him” (Matthew
4:10). We may thus say that among Jesus’, immediate followers and in the
first Christian generation political authorities — what we call the
state — belonged to the devil and those who held power received it from
him. We have to remember this when we study the trial of Jesus.
A further question is why reference is here made to the devil. The
diabolos is etymologically the “divider” (not a person). The state and
politics are thus primary reasons for division. This is the point of the
reference to the devil. We do not have here a primitive and simplistic
image or an arbitrary designation. What we have is a judgment which is
not in the least religious and which expresses both experience and
reflection. This judgment was obviously facilitated by the horrible
lacerations caused among the people by the Hasmonean and Herodian
dynasties and the ensuing uprisings and civil conflict. However that may
be, the first Christian generation was globally hostile to political
power and regarded it as bad no matter what its orientation or
constitutional structures.
We now come to texts which record Jesus’ own sayings and which exegetes
regard as in all probability authentic. We do not have here early
Christian interpretation but the position of Jesus himself (which,
evidently, was the source of this early Christian interpretation). There
are five main sayings.
Naturally, the first is the famous saying: “Render to Caesar.” I will
briefly recall the story (Mark 12:13ff.). The enemies of Jesus were
trying to entrap him, and the Herodians put the question. Having
complimented Jesus on his wisdom, they asked him whether taxes should be
paid to the emperor: “Is it lawful to pay the taxes to Caesar or not?
Should we pay, or should we not pay?” The question itself is
illuminating. As the text tells us, they were trying to use Jesus’ own
words to trap him. If they put this question, then, it was because it
was already being debated. Jesus had the reputation of being hostile to
Caesar. If they could raise this question with a view to being able to
accuse Jesus to the Romans, stories must have been circulating that he
was telling people not to pay taxes. As he often does, Jesus avoids the
trap by making an ironical reply: “Bring me a coin, and let me look at
it.” When this is done, he himself puts a question: “Whose likeness and
inscription is this?” It was evidently a Roman coin. One of the skillful
means of integration used by the Romans was to circulate their own money
throughout the empire. This became the basic coinage against which all
others were measured. The Herodians replied to Jesus: “Caesar’s.” Now we
need to realize that in the Roman world an individual mark on an object
denoted ownership, like cattle brands in the American West in the
19^(th) century.
The mark was the only way in which ownership could be recognized. In the
composite structure of the Roman empire it applied to all goods. People
all had their own marks, whether a seal, stamp, or painted sign. The
head of Caesar on this coin was more than a decoration or a mark of
honor. It signified that all the money in circulation in the empire
belonged to Caesar. This was very important. Those who held the coins
were very precarious owners. They never really owned the bronze or
silver pieces. Whenever an emperor died, the likeness was changed.
Caesar was the sole proprietor. Jesus, then, had a very simple answer:
“Render to Caesar that which is Caesar’s.” You find his likeness on the
coin. The coin, then, belongs to him. Give it back to him when he
demands it.
With this answer Jesus does not say that taxes are lawful. He does not
counsel obedience to the Romans. He simply faces up to the evidence. But
what really belongs to Caesar? The excellent example used by Jesus makes
this plain: Whatever bears his mark! Here is the basis and limit of his
power. But where is this mark? On coins, on public monuments, and on
certain altars. That is all. Render to Caesar. You can pay the tax.
Doing so is without importance or significance, for all money belongs to
Caesar, and if he wanted he could simply confiscate it. Paying or not
paying taxes is not a basic question; it is not even a true political
question.
On the other hand, whatever does not bear Caesar’s mark does not belong
to him. It all belongs to God.[29] This is where the real conscientious
objection arises. Caesar has no right whatever to the rest. First we
have life. Caesar has no right of life and death. Caesar has no right to
plunge people into war. Caesar has no right to devastate and ruin a
country. Caesar’s domain is very limited. We may oppose most of his
pretensions in the name of God. Jesus challenges the Herodians, then,
for they can have no objections to what he says. They, too, were Jews,
and since the text tells us that those who put the question were
Pharisees as well as Herodians, we can be certain that some of them were
devout Jews. Hence they could not contest the statement of Jesus that
all the rest is God’s. At the same time Jesus was replying indirectly to
the Zealots who wanted to transform the struggle for the liberation of
Israel into a political struggle. He reminded them what was the limit as
well as the basis of the struggle.
The second saying of Jesus about political authorities comes in an
astonishing discussion. The disciples were accompanying him to
Jerusalem, where some of them seem to have thought that he would seize
power. They were arguing who would be closest to him when he entered
upon his kingly rule (Matthew 20:20–25). The wife of Zebedee presented
her two sons, James and John, and made the express request that Jesus
would command that the two to whom she pointed (though Jesus knew them
well enough!) should sit one at his right hand and the other at his left
in his kingdom. We see here once again the genera) climate of
incomprehension in which Jesus lived, for he had just told the disciples
that he knew that he would be violently put to death at Jerusalem. He
thus said to them first that they had no understanding. He concluded
with the statement that is relevant for us: “You know that the rulers of
the nations lord it over them, and those in high position enslave them.
It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must
be the servant.” Note that he makes no distinction or reservation. All
national rulers, no matter what the nation or the political regime, lord
it over their subjects. There can be no political power without tyranny.
This is plain and certain for Jesus, When there are rulers and great
leaders, there can be no such thing as good political power. Here again
power is called into question. Power corrupts. We catch an echo of the
verse that we quoted above from Ecclesiastes. But we note also that
Jesus does not advocate revolt or material conflict with these kings and
great ones. He reverses the question, and as so often challenges his
interlocutors: “But you... it must not be the same among you.” In other
words, do not be so concerned about fighting kings. Let them be. Set up
a marginal society which will not be interested in such things, in which
there will be no power, authority, or hierarchy.[30] Do not do things as
they are usually done in society, which you cannot change. Create
another society on another foundation.
We might condemn this attitude, talking of depoliticization. As we shall
see, this was in fact the global attitude of Jesus. But we must take
note that it is not desocialization. Jesus is not advising us to leave
society and go into the desert. His counsel is that we should stay in
society and set up in it communities which obey other rules and other
laws. This advice rests on the conviction that we cannot change the
phenomenon of power. And this is prophetic in a sense when we consider
what became of the church when it entered the political field and began
to play politics. It was immediately corrupted by the relation to power
and by the creation of its own authorities. Finally, of course, one
might rightly object that setting up independent communities outside the
political power was relatively easy in the days of Jesus but is no
longer possible today. This is a real objection but it is hardly enough
to convince us that we may engage in politics, which is always a means
of conquering others and exercising power over them.
The third saying that I want to adduce concerns taxes again, and the
question that is put is much the same as the one we have met already. We
read in Matthew 17:24ff. that “when they came to Capernaum, the
collectors of the halfshekel tax spoke to Peter and said, ‘Does not your
teacher pay the half-shekel tax?’ Peter responded, ‘Yes.’ And when he
came into the house, Jesus said to him, ‘What do you think, Simon? From
whom do the kings of the earth take tribute or taxes? From their own
sons or from foreigners?’ Peter answered, ‘From foreigners.’ Jesus then
said to him, lThe sons are thus free. However, not to scandalize them,
go to the lake, cast your line, and take the first fish that comes up.
Open its mouth, and you will find a shekel; take that and give it to
them for me and for yourself.’ ”
Naturally, for a long time attention focused on the “miracle.” Jesus was
making money like a magician! But the miracle is without real importance
as such. On the contrary, we have to remember that the miracles of Jesus
are quite different from marvels. He performs miracles of healing out of
love and compassion. He performs some extraordinary miracles (e.g.,
stilling the storm) to come to the help of people. He never performs
miracles to astonish people or to prove his power or to stir up belief
in his divine sonship. He refuses to perform miracles on demand. If
people say: Perform this miracle and we will believe in you, he refuses
absolutely. (This is why faith is not linked to miracles!) A miracle of
the type found here is thus inconceivable in and for itself. What then
is the point of it?
Jesus first states that he does not owe the tax. The halfshekel tax was
the temple tax. But it was not simply in aid of the priests. It was also
levied by Herod the king. It was thus imposed for religious purposes but
was taken over in part by the ruler. Jesus claims that he is a son, not
merely a Jew but the Son of God. Hence he plainly does not owe this
religious tax. Yet it is not worth causing offense for so petty a
matter, that is, causing offense to the little people who raise the tax,
for Jesus does not like to cause offense to the humble. He thus turns
the matter into a subject of ridicule. That is the point of the miracle.
The power which imposes the levy is ridiculous, and he thus performs an
absurd miracle to show how unimportant the power is. The miracle
displays the complete indifference of Jesus to the king, the temple
authorities, etc. Catch a fish — any fish — and you will find the coin
in its mouth. We find once again the typical attitude of Jesus. He
devalues political and religious power. He makes it plain that it is not
worth submitting and obeying except in a ridiculous way. One might
object again that this was no doubt possible in his day but not now. At
the same time it was an accumulation of little acts of this kind which
turned the authorities against him and led to his crucifixion.
The fourth saying of Jesus concerns violence rather than political
power. It is the well-known pronouncement: “All who take the sword will
perish by the sword” (Matthew 26:52). The preamble to the saying
presents a difficulty. According to Luke, Jesus surprisingly tells his
disciples to buy swords. They have two, and Jesus tells them that is
enough! The further comment of Jesus explains in part the surprising
statement, for he says: “It is necessary that the prophecy be fulfilled
according to which I would be put in the ranks of criminals” (Luke
22:36–37). The idea of fighting with just two swords is ridiculous. The
two swords are enough, however, to justify the accusation that Jesus is
the head of a band of brigands. We have to note here again that Jesus is
consciously fulfilling prophecy. If he were not, the saying would make
no sense.
But now let us take up the relevant saying which was uttered at the time
of the arrest of Jesus. Peter was trying to defend his master. He
wounded one of the guards. Jesus told him to stop, anci in so doing
uttered the celebrated saying which is an absolute judgment on
everything that is based on violence. Violence can only give rise to
further violence. An important ppint is that the saying is repeated in
Revelation 13:10. The new and significant factor here is that the
reference of the passage is to the beast that rises out of the sea. I
have tried In show elsewhere that this beast represents political power
in general and its various forms of force.[31] The beast that rises out
of the earth is the equivalent of what we now call propaganda. The first
beast, then, is the state, which uses violence and controls everything
with no respect for human rights. It is face-to-face with this state
that the author says: “Any one who kills with the sword will be killed
by the sword.” ‘The meaning, of course, is ambivalent. On the one side,
we might have here a cry of despair. Since the state uses the sword, it
will be destroyed by the sword, as centuries of history have shown. But
we might also view the saying as a com mand to Christians. Do not fight
the state with the sword, for if you do, you will be killed by the
sword. Again, therefore,, we are oriented to nonviolence.
The trial of Jesus is the last episode in his life that we need to
consider in this context. He was tried twice, once before the Sanhedrin
and once before Pilate. Before going into his attitudey we must first
deal with a preliminary question. Most theologians, including Karl
Barth, take it that since Jesus agreed to appear before the jurisdiction
of Pilate, showed respect for the authorities, and did not revolt
against the verdict, this proves that he regarded the jurisdiction as
legitimate, and we thus have here a basis for the power of the state. I
have to say that I find this interpretation astounding, for I read the
story in precisely the opposite way.
Pilate represents Roman authority and applies Roman law. Now, I concede
that no civilization ever created so welldeveloped a law or could give
such just decisions in trials, debates, and conflicts. I say this
without irony. I taught Roman law for twenty years and discovered all
the nuances and all the skill of jurists whose one aim was to say what
was right. They defined law as the art of the good and the equitable,
and I can guarantee that in hundreds of concrete cases they rendered
decisions which showed that they were in effect dispensing justice. The
Romans were not in the first instance ferocious fighters and conquerors,
as they are often described. Their chief achievement was Roman law. A
little problem which virtually no one considers is that their army,
strictly speaking, was never large. At the most it seems to have had 120
legions, and these were nearly all stationed on the frontiers of the
empire. They came into the interior only when there was a rebellion. The
order of the empire was not a military order. It was through
administrative skill and through the equilibrium established by skillful
and satisfying legal measures that the empire endured for five
centuries. We have to bear this in mind in evaluating what the accounts
of the trial tell us.
The law of which the Romans were so proud and which provided the justest
solutions — what did it accomplish in this instance? It allowed a Roman
procurator to yield to the mob and to condemn an innocent man to death
for no valid reason (as Pilate himself recognized!). This, then, is what
we can expect from an excellent legal system! The fact that Jesus
submits to the trial is not in these circumstances a recognition of the
legitimacy of the authority of government. On the contrary, it is an
unveiling of the basic injustice of what purports to be justice. This is
what is felt when it is said that in the trial of Jesus all those who
were condemned to death and crucified by the Romans are cleared. We thus
find here once again the conviction of the biblical writers that all
authority is unjust. We catch an echo of the saying of Ecclesiastes 3:16
that “where the seat of justice IS found, there rules wickedness.”[32]
Now let us look at the sayings and attitude of Jesus during the trial.
There are differences among the four Gospels. The sayings are not
exactly the same nor are they made before the same persons (at times the
Sanhedrin, at times Herod, at times Caiaphas). But the attitude is
always the same, whether it takes the form of silence, of accusation of
the authorities, or of deliberate provocation. Jesus is not ready to
debate, to excuse himself, or to recognize that these authorities have
any real power. This is the striking point. 1 will take up in order the
three aspects of his attitude.
First, there is silence. Before the chief priests and the whole
Sanhedrin Jesus is silent. All the accounts agree that they sought
witnesses against him, that they did not find any, but that finally two
men said that he had stated that he would destroy the temple (Matthew
26:59–60). Jesus answered nothing. The authorities were astonished and
ordered him to defend himself, but he remained silent. The same was true
before Herod (recorded only in Luke 23:6ff.). Herod had him appear
because he wanted to talk with him. But Jesus did not answer any of his
questions. Before Pilate, Matthew and Mark tell us that he adopted the
same attitude. This is the more surprising in view of the fact that
Pilate could condemn him and he was not a priori unfavorably disposed to
him. Many people were accusing him before Pilate. The chief priests
brought many charges and Pilate asked him if he had no answer, but he
did not reply (Matthew 27:12ff.). His attitude was one of total
rejection and scorn for all religious or political authority. It seems
that Jesus did not regard these authorities as in any way jiut and that
it was thus completely useless to defend himself. From another point of
view he took the offensive at times and manifested disdain or irony.
Thus when asked whether he was the King of the Jews, according to two of
the three accounts he made the ironical reply: “It is you who has said
so” (Mark 15:2; Matthew 27:11). He himself would make no statement on
the matter; they could say what they liked!
Second, his attitude involves accusation of the authorities. Thus he
said to the chief priests: “I was with you every day in the temple, you
did not lift a hand against me. But now you have come out with swords as
against a brigand! Behold, your hour has come, and the power of
darkness” (Luke 22:52–53). In other words, he expressly accused the
chief priests of being an evil power. John records a similar episode
(18:20–21) but with a different reply that is half irony and half
accusation. When the high priest Annas asked him about his teaching,
Jesus replied: “I have spoken openly to the world. Why do you question
me? Question those who have heard me; they know what I said.” Wheft one
of the officers struck him for this insolent answer, Jesus said to him:
“If I have spoken wrongly, prove it; but if I have spoken rightly, why
do you strike me?” Along the same lines of accusation there is another
ambiguous text in John 19:10–11. Pilate said to Jesus: “You refuse to
speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to free you or to have
you crucified?” And Jesus replied: “You would not have the least power
over me unless it had been given to you from above; therefore he who
delivered me to you is more guilty than you.”
The famous “from above” has been taken differently. Those who think that
political power is from God find in it confirmation. Jesus is
recognizing that Pilate has his power from God! But in this case I defy
anyone to explain what is meant by the second part of his reply. How can
the one who has delivered up Jesus be guilty if he has been delivered up
to the authority which is from God? A second interpretation is purely
historical. Jesus is saying to Pilate that his power was given him by
the emperor. I have to say, though, that I can make no sense at all of
this view. What point is there in Jesus telling Pilate that he depends
on the emperor? What is the relevance of this to their discussion?
Finally, there is the seldom advocated interpretation that I myself
favor. Jesus is telling Pilate that his power is from the spirit of
evil. This is in keeping with what we said about the temptations,
namely, that all powers and kingdoms in this world depend on the devil.
It is also in keeping with the reply of Jesus to the chief priests that
we quoted above, namely, that the power of darkness is at work in his
trial.
The second part of the saying is now easy to explain. Jesus is telling
Pilate that he has his power from the spirit of evil but that the one
who has delivered him up to Pilate, and therefore to that spirit, is
more guilty than Pilate himself. Obviously so! If we accept the fact
that these texts, which undoubtedly reproduce an oral tradition relating
to the attitude of Jesus at the trial and probably contain his exact
words, formulate the general opinion of the first Christian generation,
why did the writers not state clearly that Pilate had his power from the
spirit of evil? Why did they record so ambiguous a text? I think that
the matter is simple enough. We must not forget that the Gospel was
written at a time when Christians were coming under suspicion and when
certain texts were put in code so that their meaning would not be clear!
Third, we find provocation on the part of Jesus. Thus when the high
priest asked him whether he was the Messiah, the Son of God, he replied:
“It is you who has said so,” but he added: “Hereafter you will see the
Son of man seated at the right hand of (divine) Power and coming on the
clouds of heaven” (Matthew 26:64).[33] In relation to the whole
theological teaching of the time, this is derisive. Jesus did not say
that he was the Christ or that he would be at the right hand of Power.
He did not say: “I.” He said: “The Son of man.” For those who are not
very familiar with the Bible it must be pointed out that Jesus never
said himself that he was the Christ (Messiah) or the Son of God. He
always called himself the Son of man (i.e., true man). He was obviously
mocking the high priest when he said: “Hereafter,” that is, from the
moment when you condemn me. (We find the same reply in Mark, and it
seems to have been uttered by Jesus himself and handed down to the first
Christian generation.)
Similar provocation is recorded in John 18:34ff., this time before
Pilate. As so often happened, Jesus was trying to disconcert Pilate.
When Pilate asked him: “Are you the King of the Jews” (v. 33), Jesus
answered: “Do you say this of your own accord, or did others say it to
you?” Pilate replied that he was not a Jew and that all he knew was that
the Jewish authorities had handed Jesus over to him. He thus repeated
the question, and this time Jesus made the ambiguous reply: “My kingship
is not of this world [hence I am not competing with the emperor!]. If my
kingship were of this world, my companions would have fought in order
that I might not be handed over to the Jews.” Pilate ignored these
subtleties and insisted: “So you are king?” (This was the only charge on
which he could condemn Jesus.) Jesus, as we have seen already, answered:
“It is you who has said so! [I myself have nothing to say on this
subject.]” He then added: “I was born and 1 have come into this world to
bear witness to the truth. Every one who is of the truth understands my
word.” Pilate then put his last question: “What is truth?” Jesus made no
reply. He had no teaching to give to Pilate. Once again we find a kind
of underlying mockery, a defiance or provocation of authority. Jesus
spoke to Pilate in such a way as not to be understood.
In this lengthy series of texts relating to Jesus’ face-toface
encounters with the political and religious authorities, we find irony,
scorn, noncooperation, indifference, and sometimes accusation. Jesus was
no guerrilla. He was an “essential” disputer.
We shall now try to find out what was the attitude of the first
Christian generations to power. We begin with Revelation.[34] This is
one of the most violent texts, and it follows the sayings of Jesus but
with even greater severity. It obviously has Rome in view, but not
simply the presence of the Romans in Judea. At issue is the central
imperial power of Rome itself. Throughout the book there is radical
opposition between the majesty of God and the powers and dominions of
earth. This shows how mistaken are those who find continuity between the
divine power and earthly powers, or who argue, as under a monarchy, that
a single earthly power ought to correspond to the one almighty God who
reigns in heaven.
Revelation teaches the exact opposite. The whole book is a challenge to
political power.
I will simply mention two great symbols. The first is that of the two
beasts. It takes up a theme of the later prophets, who depicted the
political powers of their time as beasts. The first beast comes up from
the sea. This probably represents Rome, whose armies came by sea. It has
a throne that is given to it by the dragon (chs. 12–13). The dragon,
antiGod, has given all authority to the beast. People worship it. They
ask who can fight against it. It is given “all authority and power over
every tribe, every people, every tongue, and every nation” (13:7). All
who dwell on earth worship it. Political power could hardly, I think, be
more expressly described, for it is this power which has authority,
which controls military force, and which compels adoration (i.e.,
absolute obedience). This beast is created by the dragon. We thus find
the same relation as that already noted between political power and the
diabolos. Confirmation of this idea that the beast is the state may be
found in the fact that at the end of Revelation (ch. 18) great Babylon
(i.e., Rome) is destroyed. The beast unites all the kings of earth to
make war on God and is finally crushed and condemned a’fter his main
representative has first been destroyed.
The second beast rises out of the earth. Specialists have railed against
my interpretation of this beast, but I stand by it. It is described as
follows. “It makes all the inhabitants of the earth worship the first
beast.... It seduces the inhabitants of the earth. It tells them to make
an image of the first beast.... It animates the image of the beast and
speaks in its name.... It causes all, small and great, rich and poor,
free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their
forehead, so that no one can buy or sell without having the mark of the
beast” (13:12–17). For my part, I find here an exact description of
propaganda in association with the police. The beast makes speeches
which induce people to obey the state, to worship it. It gives them the
mark that enables them to live in society. Finally, those that will not
obey the first beast are put to death.
The point is clear enough, I think. One of the main instruments of Roman
propaganda was the establishment of the cult of Rome and the emperor
with altars, temples, etc. The Jewish kings of the period accepted this.
This is why the text speaks of the beast that rises up out of the earth.
The local authorities in the provinces of the Near East were the most
enthusiastic promoters of the cult of Rome. This was a kind of power
that works on the intelligence and on credibility to obtain voluntary
obedience to the beast. But let us not forget that for the Jews who
wrote this text the state and its propaganda are two powers that derive
from evil.
My second and last symbol is the fall of Great Babylon in ch. 18. There
is general agreement that Babylon represents Rome. But it is also clear
in the text that Rome is equated with supreme political power. All
nations have drunk the wine of the fury of their vices. The first
interesting feature is that of the fury or violence in evil. All the
kings of the earth are delivered up to adultery. Political power is the
climax, for earthly kings all lie with it. Merchants are enriched by the
power of Babylon’s luxury. The state is a means by which to concentrate
wealth and it enriches its clients. We see the same thing today in the
form of public works and arms production. Political power makes alliance
with the power of money. When Babylon collapses, all the kings of the
earth lament and despair and the capitalists weep. A long list is then
given of the goods bought and sold at Rome, but the interesting point is
that at the end of the list we find that great Babylon bought and sold
human bodies and souls. If the reference were only to bodies we might
think of slaves. But there is also a more general reference to souls.
The slave trade is not the issue here. The point is that political
authorities have all power over people. What is promised is the pure and
simple destruction of political government: Rome, to be sure, yet not
Rome alone, but power and domination in every form. These things are
specifically stated to be enemies of God. God judges political power,
calling it the great harlot. We can expect from it neither justice, nor
truth, nor any good — only destruction.
At this point, as may be seen, we are far from the rebellion of Jesus
against Roman colonization. As Christians became more numerous and
Christian thought developed, the Christian view of political power
hardened. Only reductionist thinking can see this passage as directed
solely against Rome. The hardening might be due to the beginning of
persecution, of which the text gives evidence, for the great harlot “was
drunk with the blood of saints and with the blood of witnesses to
Jesus.” “In the great city was found the blood of prophets and of
saints, of all who had been slain on earth” (18:24). (The reference, of
course, is to the slaying not merely of the first Christians but of all
the righteous.) A remarkable point is that according to 20:4 those who
were thus put to death for their Christian allegiance were beheaded.
They were not killed in the arena or fed to lions, etc. Power slays not
merely Christians but all righteous people. This experience undoubtedly
strengthened the conviction that political power would be condemned. I
believe that among the first Christians there was no other global
position. At this period Christianity was totally hostile to the state.
Before taking a look at Paul we must glance at a strange passage in a
later epistle, namely, 1 Peter 2:13ff., which tells us to “be subject to
the king as supreme” and to “honor the king.” Oddly, this passage has
never given commentators any difficulty. As they see it, the matter is
simple enough. The king was the Roman emperor. That is all. On this
basis, then, sermons are preached on the obedience and submission of
Christians to political authorities. Interestingly, in parallel Bibles
there is usually a cross-reference to the saying of Jesus that we must
render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. In fact, however, this whole line of
exposition displays great ignorance regarding the political institutions
of the period.
First, the head of the Roman state was then the princeps. This was the
term for the emperor at the time when the Christian texts were written.
The period is known historically as the principate. The princeps was
never called the king (Greek basileus). The title was formally forbidden
in Rome. We have to realize that Caesar was assassinated on the rumored
charge that he was planning to restore the monarchy. That was a good
enough reason. Augustus was careful enough never to hint at anything of
this kind. He acted very cleverly, simply assuming successively the
republican titles of “consul,” “people’s tribune,” and “commander in
chief’ (imperator, which should not be translated “emperor”). He then
took also the title of “supreme pontiff,” exercising religious
functions. All these were traditional titles of Rome’s democracy.
Augustus also took steps to abolish “abnormal” institutions that had
arisen during the civil war, for example, the triumvirate and the
permanent consulate, and he opposed the creation of a dictatorship.
Having taken all power to himself, he was content with the title
princeps or first citizen. The people alone was sovereign, and it
delegated its potestas to the princeps. This delegation was by a regular
procedure. To avoid military coups, Augustus had the plenitude of power
assigned to the senate by a democratic vote. He then received some
imprecise titles without legal content, for example, “father of the
country,” “guardian of the citizens” (servator civium). He was also
princeps senatus, first senator. He restored the regular functioning of
republican institutions. His successors were less scrupulous than he
was. Little by little they established the empire, but never in an
absolute and totalitarian sense. And they never took the title “king.”
They expressly avoided any reference to this title or any assigning of
it to themselves. Hence the author of 1 Peter can hardly have had the
emperor in view in this passage.
I thus want to make a hazardous suggestion. What follows is pure
hypothesis. There were political parties at Rome. During the 1^(st)
century a strange party evolved on the basis of a global philosophy.
This philosophy was as follows. The world’s empires have a cyclical
life. A political power is born, grows, reaches its height, and then,
unable to grow further, inevitably declines, entering a period of
decomposition. This applied to all known empires. Hence it applied to
Rome as well. Many writers of the 1^(st) century thought that Rome had
already reached the summit of its power. Its rule stretched from Spain
to Persia, from Scotland to the Sahara and the south of Egypt. It could
not expand any more. In consequence its decline was beginning. After the
period of glorification and enthusiasm such as we see in Vergil and
Livy, there thus came a period of dark pessimism among less well-known
writers and philosophers. It should be added that whenever one empire
collapsed (e.g., Egypt, Babylon, or Persia), a new one arose to take its
place. In all probability this would also happen in the case of Rome.
But the Parthians were the only unconquered enemy of Rome, and they were
constantly invading new territories. One group, first of intellectuals,
then of members of the governing class, very seriously envisioned the
Roman empire being replaced by a Parthian empire. Some of them, entering
into the flow of history, began to spread these ideas and founded, it is
said, a party that would finally support the Parthians.
Now the Parthians, for their part, were governed by a king. Some think
that prayers were being said for the king, that is, the Parthian king,
and that they were forbidden. If we grant this, and some historians, of
course, dispute it, the text in 1 Peter is seen in a new light. There
can be no question of honoring the emperor under the name of king, or of
praying for the king of Rome! But Peter twice refers to the king. Why,
then, should he not have had the Parthian king in view? If so, the
passage is a totally subversive one. But the reference in this case is
solely to the political power of Rome and not to the state as such, for
the author is supporting another power. Nevertheless, the passage is in
accord with the general Christian attitude, which is far from being one
of passivity or obedience, and which we might classify in three ways.
validity of political power, though not of total rejection.
capture of Jerusalem by the Roman armies, the destruction of the temple,
the suppression of the autonomy of Jewish government, the massacre of
thousand of Jews during the war, and finally the suppression of the
Christian church at Jerusalem in A.D. 70, the Christian hatred of
political power clearly came to focus on Rome.
We finally arrive at the passages in Paul. We had first to fix the
general Christian climate in order to put the verses in context.
Although they are (too!) well known, I will quote them. First we have
Romans 13:1–7: “Let every person be subject to the higher authorities.
For there is no authority which does not come from God, and the
authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore the one
who resists authority resists the order that God has established, and
those who resist will bring condemnation on themselves. It is not for
good conduct but for bad that magistrates are to be feared. The
magistrate is the servant of God for your good. But if you do evil, be
afraid, for it is not in vain that he bears the sword, being the servant
of God to exercise vengeance and punish those who do evil. It is
necessary therefore to be subject, not only for fear of punishment but
also for the sake of conscience. It is also for this reason that you pay
taxes, for the magistrates are servants of God, attending entirely to
this function. Pay to all of them what is their due, taxes to whom you
owe taxes, tribute to whom you owe tribute, fear to whom you owe fear,
honor to whom you owe honor.” We then have Titus 3:1: “Remind them to be
subject to magistrates and authorities, to obey and to be ready for any
good work.”
These are the only texts in the whole Bible which stress obedience and
the duty of obeying the authorities. It is true that two other passages
show that there was among Christians of the time a counterflow to the
main current that we have demonstrated. In 2 Peter 2:10 there is
condemnation of those who “despise authority,” and Jude 8 also condemns
those who “carried along by their dreamings ... despise authority, and
revile the glorious ones.” We must emphasize, however, that these are
very ambiguous texts. What is the authority that they have in view? We
must never forget the constant reminder that all authority belongs to
God.
Finally, we might adduce 1 Timothy 2:1–2: “Therefore I exhort that,
above all things, make prayers, supplications, petitions, and
thanksgivings for all humans, for kings, and for all who are in high
positions, that we may lead a peaceable and quiet life in all reverence
and honesty.”
In these Pauline texts we seem to have a trend that differs from the one
we have just seen. Our next task is to pose a completely
incomprehensible (or, alas! only too comprehensible) problem. From the
3^(rd) century A.D. most theologians, simply forgetting all that we have
shown, have focused solely on the statements of Paul in Romans 13 and
preached total submission to authority. They have done this without
taking into account (as we have done) the context of the statements.
They have even fixed on one statement in particular: “AH power comes
from God.” This has been the leading theme in sixteen centuries of
cooperation between church and state: omnis potestas a Deo. Some bold
theologians added per populum (by way of the people), but this was a
mere detail as compared to the imperious duty of obeying the power that
is from God as though it were itself God.
The curious thing is to see how theologians fared when often to their
embarrassment they had to do with tyrants. A strange casuistry was
adopted to explain that power comes from God only when it is gained in a
legal, legitimate, and peaceful way and exercised in a moral and regular
way. But this did not call into question the general duty. Even at the
time of the Reformation Luther used this text in the Peasants’ War to
charge the princes to crush the revolt. As for Calvin, he insisted that
kings are legitimate except when they attack the church. So long as the
authorities let Christians freely practice their religion, they cannot
be faulted. As I see it, we have here an incredible betrayal of the
original Christian view, and the source of this betrayal is undoubtedly
the tendency toward conformity and the ease of obeying. However that may
be, the only rule that has been gathered from the vast array of texts is
that there is no authority except from God. We shall now try to examine
the Pauline passages more closely.
As in the case of all biblical texts (and all other texts!) we must
first refuse to detach one phrase from the total line of thinking. We
must put that phrase in the general context. Let us, then, take Paul’s
argument as a whole. In Romans 9–11 Paul has just made a detailed study
of the relations between the Jewish people and Christians. A new
development then begins which will cover chs. 12–14 and at the heart of
which is the passage that we are now considering. This lengthy
discussion begins with the words: “Do not be conformed to the present
age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” Paul’s general and
essential command, then, is that we should not be conformists, that we
should not obey the trends and customs and currents of thought of the
society in which we live, that we should not submit to the “form” of
them but that we should be transformed, that we should receive a new
form by the renewing of the mind, that is, by starting from a new point,
namely, the will of God and love. This is obviously a strange beginning
if he is later to demand obedience to political authorities! Paul then
goes on to teach at length about love: love among Christians in the
church (12:3–8), love for all people (12:9–13), and love for enemies
(not avenging oneself, but blessing those who persecute), with a further
exhortation to live peaceably with all (12:14–21). The passage on the
authorities follows next. Then all the commandments are summed up in the
commandment of love and of doing no wrong to others (13:8–10). In ch. 14
some details are offered as to the practice of love (hospitality, not
judging others, supporting the weak, etc.).
This, then, is the general framework or movement within which the
passage on authority occurs. It seems so odd, so out of joint, in this
larger context that some exegetes have thought that it must be an
interpolation and that Paul himself did not write it. For my part,
however, I believe that it has its place here and that it does come from
the apostle. We have seen that there is a progression of love from
friends to strangers and then to enemies, and this is where the passage
then comes. In other words, we must love enemies and therefore we must
even respect the authorities, not loving them but accepting their
orders. We have to remember that the authorities have attained to power
through God. Yes, we recall that Saul, a mad and bad king, attained to
power through God. This certainly does not mean that he was good, just,
or lovable. Along the same lines one of the best commentators on the
passage, Alphonse Maillot, relates it directly to the end of ch. 12: “Do
not let yourself be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Let
every person (therefore) be subject to the higher authorities—” In other
words, Paul belongs to that Christian church which at the first is
unanimously hostile to the state, to the imperial power, to the
authorities, and in this text he is thus moderating that hostility. He
is reminding Christians that the authorities are also people (there was
no abstract concept of the state), people such as themselves, and that
they must accept and respect them, too. At the same time Paul shows
great restraint in this counsel. When he tells them to pay their dues —
taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue, respect to whom
respect, honor to whom honor — we are rightly reminded of the answer of
Jesus regarding the tax. Far more boldly Jesus claims that we owe
neither respect nor honor to magistrates or the authorities. The only
one whom we must fear is God. The only one to whom honor is due is God.
(In an appendix I will adduce two of the better commentaries on this
passage.)
Three points still call for discussion. The first presents no
difficulty. We have met it already. It relates to the paying of taxes.
Christians must not refuse to pay them. That is all.
The second is more striking: We must pray for the authorities. We have
quoted the passage in which Paul asks that prayer be made for kings —
the plural shows that we cannot expound this as we did in the case of 1
Peter — namely, for those in authority, for the government. This verse
confirms what I said above. Paul is saying in effect that we are to pray
for all people. Included are kings and those in high office. We are to
pray even for kings and magistrates. We detest them, but we are still to
pray for them. No one must be excluded from our intercession, from our
appeal to God’s love for them. It might seem completely crazy, but I
knew some German Christians who were in the resistance movement against
Hitler, even to the point of plotting his overthrow, and who still
engaged in prayer for him.[35] We cannot want the absolute death of
political foes. Certainly our prayer will not be a kind of Te Deum. It
will not be prayer that they remain in power, that they win victories,
that they endure. It will be prayer for their conversion, that they
change the way they behave and act, that they renounce violence and
tyranny, that they become truthful, etc. Yet we still pray for them and
not against them. In Christian faith <ve will also pray for their
salvation (which is obviously not the same thing as the safety of their
kingdom). This prayer must still be made even if from a human standpoint
there is no hope of change. We must not forget that these passages on
respect and prayer were probably written at the very moment of the first
persecution under Nero, or shortly after it. We thus have to say to
Christians, as Paul does in Romans 13, that even though you are revolted
by persecutions, even though you are ready to rebel, instead pray for
the authorities. Your only true weapon is to turn to God, for it is he
alone who dispenses supreme justice.
We now come to the final point. I cannot close these reflections on this
passage, which unfortunately gave a wrong turn to the church and
Christianity after the 3^(rd) century, without recalling a study of some
thirty years ago.[36] The word used in this train of thought is in Greek
exousiai, which can mean the public authorities, but which has also in
the New Testament another meaning, being used for abstract, spiritual,
religious powers. Thus Paul tells us that we are to fight against the
exousiai enthroned in heaven (cf. Eph. 6:12). It is thought, for
example, that the angels are exousiai. Oscar Cullmann and Gunther Dehn
thus conclude that since the same word is used there has to be some
relation.[37] In other words, the New Testament leads us to suppose that
earthly political and military authorities really have their basis in an
alliance with spiritual powers, which I will not call celestial, since
they might equally well be evil and demonic. The existence of these
spiritual exousiai would explain the universality of political powers
and also the astonishing fact that people obey them as though it were
self-evident. These spiritual authorities would then inspire rulers.
Now these authorities might be either good or bad, angelic or demonic.
Earthly authorities reflect the powers into whose hands they have
fallen. We can thus see why Paul in Romans 13 refers to the authorities
that actually “exist” as being instituted by God and also why some
Protestant theologians could say after 1933 that Hitler’s was a
“demonized” state which had fallen into the hands of a demonic power. If
I say this, it is not simply because I want to say that the attitude of
the first Christian generation was not absolutely unanimous, that
alongside the main line, according to which the state should be
destroyed, there was a more nuanced line (though no one demanded
unconditional obedience). The important point for me is that when Paul
in Colossians 2:13–15 says that Jesus has conquered evil and death he
also says that Christ has “stripped of their power all the dominions and
authorities and made a public spectacle of them, in triumphing over them
by the cross.” In Christian thinking the crucifixion of Christ is his
true victory over all powers both celestial and infernal (I am not
saying whether they exist but expressing the conviction of the day), for
he alone has been perfectly obedient to the will of God, even accepting
the scandal of his own condemnation and execution (without fully
understanding it: “My God, why have you abandoned me?”). Though he has
doubts about his interpretation and mission, he has no doubts about the
will of God and he obeys perfectly.
I know how scandalous for non-Christians is a God who demands this
death. But the real question is this: How far can love go? Who will love
God so absolutely as to lose himself? This was the test (stopped in
time) for Abraham. It was also the test that provoked the anger of Job.
But Jesus alone obeyed to the very end (when he was fully free not to
obey!). For that reason, having loved beyond human limits, he robbed the
powers of their power! Demons no longer hold sway. There are not
independent exousiai. All are from the very outset subject to Christ.
They may revolt, of course, but they are overcome in advance.
Politically this means that the exousia which exists alongside or
outside political power is also vanquished. The result is that political
power is not a final court. It is always relative. We can expect from it
only what is relative and open to question. This is the meaning of
Paul’s statement and it shows how much we need to relativize the
(traditionally absolutized) formula that there is no authority except
from God. Power is indeed from God, but all power is overcome in Christ!
MAILLOT
I will present in summary fashion two interpretations by two important
authors so as to show that all, theologians and the whole church have
not been unanimous in interpreting this passage as an absolute truth in
the matter of the state. We must still recognize, of course, that it is
a very embarrassing passage.
In his great commentary on the Epistle to Romans which was his
theological manifesto in 1919,[38] Barth begins his exposition of Romans
13: Iff. by agreeing that order is indispensable for societies and that
political institutions are part of this order. We should not wrongly or
arbitrarily overthrow the order. The passage thus counsels
nonrevolution, but in so doing, by that very fact, it also teaches the
intrinsic nonlegitimacy of institutions. All established order presents
those who seek God’s order with triumphant injustice. The issue is not
the evil quality of the order but the fact that it is established. This
is what wounds the desire for justice. In these conditions every
authority becomes a tyranny. Nevertheless, revolutionaries are in fact
overcome by evil. For they, too, claim to represent intrinsic justice.
In so doing they usurp a legitimacy that will at once become a tyranny
(written in 1919!). Evil is no answer to evil. The sense of justice that
is offended by the established order is not restored by the destruction
of the order. Revolutionaries have in view the impossible possibility:
truth, justice, forgiveness of sins, brotherly love, the resurrection of
the dead. But they achieve another revolution, the possible possibility
of hatred, revenge, and destruction. They dream of the true revolution
but launch the other. The text is not favoring what is established but
rejecting all human enemies of what is established. For God alone wills
to be acknowledged as the victor over the injustice of what is
established.
As for the exhortation to submit to the authorities, it is purely
negative. It means withdrawal, nonparticipation, noninvolvement. Even if
revolution is always a just condemnation of what is established, this is
not due to any sense to the act of the rebels. The conflict into which
rebels plunge is the conflict between the order of God and what is
established. Rebels finally establish an order which bears the same
features as the preceding order. They ought to be converted instead of
rebelling. The fact that we must submit means that we should not forget
how wrong political calculation is as such.
The revelation of God bears witness to true justice. We could not more
effectively undermine what is established than by recognizing it as we
are here commanded. For state, church, society, positive justice, and
science all live on the credulity which is nurtured by the enthusiasm of
chaplains and solemn humbug. Deprive these institutions of their pathos
and they will die of starvation. (We find here the same orientation as
that uncovered in the attitude of Jesus.) Nonrevolution is the best
preparation for the true revolution (which for Barth is that of the will
of God and the kingdom of God).
Barth finally comes to the text, for which all of the above is
introductory. Only in appearance, he says, does the text provide a basis
for order. For all authority, like everything else that is human, is
measured by God, who is at the same time its beginning and end, its
justification and condemnation, its Yes and its No. God is the sole
criterion that enables us to grasp that the bad at the heart of what is
established is really bad. Hence we have no right to claim God in
validation of this order as if he were at our service. It is before God
alone that what is established falls. The text sets what is established
in God’s presence. This takes away all the pathos, justification,
illusion, enthusiasm, etc. Very freely Barth quotes 12:10. Setting up
justice is God’s affair. Submitting, then, is recognizing the strict
authority of God alone. Through not paying heed to this for so many
centuries, the churches have betrayed the cause of humanity by deferring
to the state. The true revolution can come from God alone. Human
revolutionaries claim that they can bring a new creation and create a
new, good, brotherly humanity, but in so doing they fail to see the sole
justice (and justification) of God and the order that God alone can and
will set up in opposition to established human order.
Although not a theologian of the stature of Karl Barth, Maillot is one
of the best living commentators on the Bible.[39] He offers a different
perspective from that of Barth. He begins with a very astute question.
Throughout his writings Paul is against legalism. He shows that the
Torah is marginal. The only law is that of love. The work of Jesus is
one of liberation. How, then, can he become a legalist and a champion of
law when it is a matter of social and political institutions?
What Paul shows is on the one side that the political structure is not
outside the will of God and that it cannot prevent us from obeying God.
If the state threatens to enmesh us in evil, then we must reject it.
Paul rejects all Manichaeism, all dualism. There cannot be a world in
which some things are not in God’s hand. Rulers, magistrates, etc. —
they, too, are in God’s hand in spite of their pretensions.
Paul also speaks of authorities that actually exist. He is referring,
says Maillot, to those of his own day. He does not legislate for all
history. The duty of Christians is to bear witness to what they believe
to be the truth. It is because we believe that the authorities are in
God’s hand that we have the possibility (seldom utilized) of telling
them what we think is just. If Paul also tells us that we are to obey,
not by constraint but for the sake of conscience, this means that our
obedience can never be blind or resigned. For conscience might lead us
to disobey, obeying God rather than humans, as Peter says (Acts 5:29).
This would be for reasons that politicians cannot understand.[40]
Finally, Maillot’s most important point is as follows. Paul wrote this
when he had already been imprisoned several times. He did not take
politicians for choirboys. He would shortly afterward be executed by the
Roman authorities. His difficult life and death “delegalize” ch. 13.
Maillot also puts the chapter in the general context of the epistle, but
in a different way from mine, since he covers a wider field. As he sees
it, the letter as a whole seeks to show the movement of God’s saving
righteousness in human history. Paul wants to demonstrate this in every
aspect of human reality. The church and Israel (about which Paul speaks
prior to ch. 13) are not the only ones to make history. There are also
politics and human society. Paul seeks to show that the polis is also
part of God’s plan, that it is not alien to his will, that it can have a
part in his saving righteousness. It seems, says Maillot, that the
meeting between Christians and non-Christians was inevitable at times
when a pagan magistrate became a Christian. Could one be a judge and a
Christian or a tax collector and a Christian? Paul indeed speaks to
members of the praetorian guard (Philippians 1:13) and Caesar’s
household (4:22). Undoubtedly, with the tasks they had to perform these
Roman officials who were also Christians had to face spiritual
difficulties!
Maillot also emphasizes concretely what we pointed out earlier, namely,
the general opposition of the first Christians to power. Paul, then,
wants to “compensate.” Civil structures, the magistrates, and even Nero
are integrated into the dynamism of the righteousness of God, though not
in the same way as Israel and the church. Ultimately, they are not from
the devil but from God. Christians, then, must not repudiate them. At
the same time Paul is not answering the question posed by a regime that
tips over into the demonic. His point is that magistrates ought to
support the good. If, then, they become flagrant supporters of evil, we
have to review our relation to them. In any case true obedience is not
just a copy of other obedience!
Thus far I have been investigating the biblical texts which express, as
I have said, the opinion or orientation of the first Christian
generation. We do not have here purely individual witness or opinion,
for we should not forget that these texts became “holy scripture” only
as they were regarded as such by the majority in the church (not by a
council but by grass-roots consensus). We shall now take a look at the
application of these orientations by Christians in the first three
centuries who became “rebel citizens.”[41]
Before studying the main point of conflict, the question of
conscientious objection, we need to look first at some by no means
negligible factors. In the 2^(nd) century Celsus in his True Word, among
other criticisms of Christianity, described Christians as enemies of the
human race. He did so because they opposed the Roman order, the pax
Romana. This meant that they hated the human race, which was organized
by Rome. Later, when Christianity had ceased to be a little sect and had
become an aggressive religion, Christians were accused of weakening the
empire by their contempt for magistrates and military leaders. This was
one of the complaints of Julian the Apostate. It was the fault of
Christians that Roman organization was crumbling and that the Roman army
had lost many frontier wars. Julian advanced an argument that does not
seem valid to us today, namely, that Christians led people no longer to
respect and serve the traditional city gods and that these had abandoned
Rome, so that Rome had now became decadent. Return to the ancient gods,
and Rome will recover its greatness. We can ignore that argument, but
what historians of the later empire all agree on is that the Christians
were not interested in political matters or military ventures.
There are two sides to this. On the one hand, for centuries Roman
intellectuals had been passionately interested in law and in the
organization of the city and the empire. But after the 3^(rd) century
they become passionately interested in theology. On the other hand,
Christians were not willing to function as magistrates or officials. So
long as Christianity was winning over only the lower social classes —
and it spread first among the city poor, among freedmen and slaves —
that did not greatly matter. But as it made inroads into the rich and
governing classes, the defection became serious. Many documents show how
hard it became to recruit curiales (mayors) for cities, governors for
provinces, and military officers, because Christians refused to hold
such offices. They were not concerned about the fate of society. When
the emperor tried to force them to become curiales, many of them
preferred to retire to their secondary residences in the country and to
live as landed proprietors. As for the army, the emperor had to recruit
foreign (barbarian) officers. Some modern historians think that this
general defection on the part of Christians was one of the most
important reasons for the decline of Rome from the 4^(th) century
onwards.
We now return to Christian practice prior to the 3^(rd) century. It was
dominated by the thinking of Tertullian, who, after proving that the
church and empire are necessarily antiChristian and therefore hostile to
God, seems to have been one of the first to champion total conscientious
objection. One of his fine phrases is that the Caesars would have been
Christians if it were possible to have Christian Caesars or if Caesars
were not necessary for the world (i.e., the world in the New Testament
sense as the epitome of what is inimical to God). This said, the
practical point at which opposition expressed itself (apart from refusal
to worship the emperor) was military service.
Historians have debated heavily this matter of military service. A few
inscriptions show that there were some Christian soldiers, but only a
few (and these perhaps conscripted). It is fairly certain that up to
A.D. 150 soldiers who became Christians did all they could to leave the
army, and Christians did not enlist in it. The number of Christian
soldiers would grow in the second half of the 3^(rd) century in spite of
the disapproving attitude of the church authorities and the whole
Christian community.[42] But even though there were more Christian
soldiers, they caused trouble. Thus one soldier refused to put on the
official laurel wreath at an official ceremony. On another occasion
Diocletian made an offering with a view to knowing the future
(haruspice), and when the sacrifice failed, the failure was blamed on
some Christian soldiers who made the sign of the cross. One might say
that military service had become a fact by A.D. 250, but through
conscription and not by choice. From the end of the 2^(nd) century
emphasis was placed on the example of soldier martyrs, that is, those
who were recruited by force but who absolutely refused to serve and were
put to death as a result. This happened in time of war. It is recorded
that some soldiers who were chosen to execute their comrades suddenly
decided on conversion and threw down their swords. Numerous examples are
given by Lactantius and Tertullian.
It is possible, then, to speak of a massive Christian antimilitarism.
The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, an official collection of church
rules at the beginning of the 3^(rd) century, says that those who have
the power of the sword or who are city magistrates must leave their
offices or be dismissed from the church. If catechumens or believers
want to become soldiers they must be dismissed from the church, for they
are despising God. In these conditions the number of Christians who were
executed rose, the period of massive persecution began, and what came to
be known as “soldier saints” were created.
A slight change came with the Council of Elvira in 313, which merely
ruled that those who held a peaceful office in the administration should
not be allowed to enter the church while holding office. What was
condemned was all participation in power that implied coercion. At this
time also (ca. 312–313) came the conversion of Constantine. Though the
legend is familiar, his conversion was probably a matter of political
calculation. Due to their numbers Christians had now become a by no
means negligible political force and Constantine had need of all the
support he could muster to gain power. The general populace as well as
intellectuals and the aristocracy was abandoning the ancient religions.
There was a religious void, and Constantine knew how to exploit it. He
officially adopted Christianity and in so doing trapped the church,
which readily let itself be trapped, being largely led at this time by a
hierarchy drawn from the aristocracy. Some theologians tried to resist.
As late as the end of the 4^(th) century Basil said that to kill in war
is murder and that soldiers who had engaged in combat should be refused
communion for three years. Since war was permanent, this meant permanent
excommunication. But this had now become the view merely of a small body
of resisters. The fact that Christianity was becoming the official
religion, and that the churches would receive great privileges, won over
most of the leaders.
Thus at the Synod of Arles in 314, summoned by the emperor himself, the
teaching on administrative and military service was completely reversed.
The third canon of the council excommunicated soldiers who refused
military service or who mutinied. The seventh canon permitted Christians
to be state officials, requiring only that they not take part in pagan
acts (e.g., emperor worship), and that they observe the church’s
discipline (e.g., abstaining from all murderous violence). Some
expositors think that the Council of Arles forbade killing, but if so,
it is hard to see what the role of soldiers could be. In reality the
state had begun to dominate the church and to obtain from it what was in
basic contradiction with its original thinking. With this council the
antistatist, antimilitarist, and, as we should now say, anarchist
movement of Christianity came to an end.
For twenty years I have been serving as priest and pastor in a parish of
2,000 inhabitants. I also work three days a week in a metal construction
company. I am known to many people here as an anarchist. I am asked how
I can reconcile my position as both a Christian and an anarchist. I not
only feel no opposition between my Christian faith and my anarchist
convictions but my knowledge of Jesus of Nazareth impels me toward
anarchism and gives me courage to practice it.
“No God, no Master” and “I believe in God the Father Almighty” — these
two convictions I hold in all sincerity. No one can be the master of
others in the sense of being superior. No one can impose his or her will
on others. I do not know God at all as supreme Master.
I reject all human hierarchy. Jean-Paul Sartre finely expressed the
unique value of every human being when he said that one human being, no
matter who, is of equal worth to all others. Before Sartre, Jesus made
no distinction between people. Those in power were upset by his attitude
and wanted his death. They said to him: “You speak without worrying
about what will be, for you do not regard the position of persons”
(Matthew 22:16). Human life transcends all the laws that try to organize
society. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are full of stories of clashes
between Jesus and the authorities because he violated the law out of
concern for individual lives.
It is in this spirit that we have collected a number of signatures in
favor of freedom of movement, stating that Elena Bonner, wife of
Sakharov, ought to be able to go to the West if she judges that to be
necessary to her health, and that people in the South ought to be free
to go to countries in the North if they think this to be vitally
necessary.
I reject hierarchy between us and God. God, at least the God whom Jesus
calls Father and whom he tells us to call Father, is never presented to
us as a Master who imposes his will on us or who regards us as
inferiors. For Jesus there is no hierarchical relation between Father
and Son. He says: “I and the Father are one ... he in me and I in him”
(cf. John 10:30; 17:21).
Religious people who can think only in terms of rivalry, superiority,
equality, and inferiority thus bring against Jesus the charge that he is
making himself Gods equal. They are incapable of imagining that a man,
Jesus, can be God with his Father, and that the vocation of all of us is
to be God with the Father.
The author of Genesis (to refer to the Bible) finds our human fault in
this attitude of wanting to become as gods knowing good and evil instead
of being with God in enjoyment of life and the pleasure of creating
life. That attitude of those who are preoccupied with themselves and
their rank engenders every kind of unhappiness. We are left alone, naked
and scornful, mutually accusing one another, toiling for ourselves, in
creation and procreation sowing death, fighting for domination or
accepting domination in fear.
The prophets unceasingly tell us to live in covenant with God, but under
the sway of the authorities we prefer to assert ourselves by attacking
others.
Look at 1 Samuel 8 in the Bible. The elders of Israel said to Samuel:
“Give us a king to govern us.” God then said to Samuel: “Give
satisfaction to the people for all that they ask They have rejected me
because they do not want me to reign over them.” Samuel then told the
people what God had said: “This will be the status of the king who will
reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots
and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariot. He will use them
as commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties; he will make them
labor and harvest to his profit, to make his implements of war and his
harnesses. He will take your daughters for the preparation of his
perfumes and for his bakery. He will take the best of your fields, your
vineyards, and your olive orchards and give them to his servants. He
will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to
his officers and to his servants. He will take the best of your
menservants, your maidservants, your cattle, and your asses and make
them work for him. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you
yourselves shall be his slaves. And in that day you will scream and
complain about your king whom you wanted; but God will not answer you.”
I believe in God, why? I believe in one God, and this God is a man,
Jesus. Many say that he is dead. I reply that he is alive. I have a
decisive and irrefutable proof. Believing in Jesus living with me, I
have a taste for life, and in moments when I forget his presence I no
longer live or have any morality. Naturally I choose to live. Jesus,
then, is God for me, for with him I can live.
In ch. 8 of the Philosophy of Misery I can understand Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon very well. He has in view only the one God who is the Supreme
Being and who is dominant over us. He could only deny this God, for this
God necessarily prevents him from living. He said that if God exists, he
is “necessarily hostile to our human nature. Does he really turn out
finally to be anything? I do not know that I ever knew him. If I must
one day make reconciliation with him, this reconciliation, which is
impossible so long as I live, and in which I have everything to gain and
nothing to lose, can come about only in my destruction.”
The futility of philosophies and theologies. Finally to accept or reject
the existence of God is unimportant. What counts is having the taste and
joy that life gives. The discussions of philosophers and theologians
trying to prove that they are right, and to make out that they are great
thinkers, are all futile.
With Paul of Tarsus in 1 Corinthians 31 maintain that the arguments of
the wise are nothing but wind. They are caught in the trap of their own
cleverness. Thus a man like Socrates has to die out of respect for the
democracy which he thought out.
With John, a friend of Jesus, in 1 John 4, I think that there is nothing
we can say about God. No one has ever seen him. We are simply to love
one another, for love is of God, and those who love are born of God and
know God. Those who do not love have not known God, for God is love. If
people say that they love God and hate their brother, they are liars. If
wealthy persons see a brother in need and refuse to take pity, how can
love be in them?
We believe in Jesus. We acknowledge him as our God and call him God.
This is not because we see divine qualities in him: omnipotence,
transcendence, eternity, etc. It is because of his attitude of love to
others, which leads us to live in the same spirit and gives us a taste
for living.
For a revolution — which one? I cannot condemn the oppressed who revolt,
take arms, and plunge into violence, but I think that their revolt is
ineffective as real revolution. The oppressed will be crushed by those
in power, or if they attain to power they will have acquired a taste for
power by arms and will thus become new oppressors, so that it will all
have to be done over again.
For true revolution we have to find the morality which means acting to
remove the source of all violence: the spirit of hierarchy and fear; the
fear that rulers have of not being able to live unless they rule, the
fear which forces them into violence in order to maintain their rule;
the fear also of the ruled that they cannot live unless they overthrow
their masters, the fear which impels them to accept the violence which
they suffer. The oppressed try to compensate by aiming to rule over
others, always at the cost of violence in an infernal cycle of revolt
and oppression.
In the spirit of Jesus we fight violence by attacking fear. Jesus says
to the oppressed: If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the
left cheek also. He thus seeks to liberate us from fear of the violence
of oppressors. He himself, freed from fear, when he has received a blow
does not turn the other cheek but asks for an explanation: “If I have
spoken wrongly, show that what I said was wrong; but if I have spoken
rightly, why do you strike me?” (John 18:23). He is not afraid of the
death to which they are going to subject him.
Jesus also says that if any one takes our coat, we are to give our cloak
as well, and if any one makes us go one mile, we are to go two. He wants
the oppressed to be freed from the fear of not being able to live
without a master. They will then be able to do as he did, treating
masters as hypocrites, as a brood of vipers, until they can no longer
maintain their spirit of domination (Matthew 23). Masters are always
proud of themselves so long as they dominate. We have thus to make them
see their baseness and then they will abandon their position, for no
people can live when they despise themselves.
Gandhi, Lanza del Vasto, Lech Walesa, and Jesus. It is false to present
Gandhi as a champion of nonviolence after the manner of Jesus. Gandhi
used nonviolence, but only to establish the oppressive power of the
Indian state. He used it against superior British power but he used
weapons of war against the weaker. With the leaders of India, his
disciples, he sent police against the group which would assassinate him.
On Christmas Day he appealed for war against the Sikhs who were
demanding independence for the Punjab. His fine thoughts masked the
violence which is at the heart of every leader.
Furthermore, the nonviolence of Jesus is very different from that of
Lanza del Vasto and more recently that of Lech Walesa. These two fear
violence and steer clear of the world of violence. They refuse to attack
an oppressive power and thus to bring to light its violence. In 1976
Lanza del Vasto, facing violence, prudently advised us to be gentle and
not to respond. Fear of violence led him to accept the violence of
nuclear power. We can admire the strong Solidarity movement which Lech
Walesa launched in Poland. Unfortunately, he kept the brakes on the
movement of liberation. Because those in power threatened violent
reaction and bloodshed, he would not aillow certain demonstrations. Thus
the daily violence of the state continued for many years.
In contrast, Jesus seeks a peace which bypasses conflict and
provocation. He realizes that by taking the side of the oppressed he
will automatically bring down violence upon himself. He does not shrink,
for in his relation with this’ Father he finds; the strength to make his
choice. Otherwise he could not live: “the one who would save his life
will lose it” (Matthew 16:25).
Not respecting his opponents, Lanza del Vasto refused to denounce their
renouncing of all responsibility in obeying the orders of superiors.
Jesus, however, treats his enemies in a way which allows them to
rediscover their human personality. Lanza del Vasto also lacked respect
for the demonstrators. He did not think that they could assume
responsibility or evaluate the risks that they were incurring. Jesus,
however, warns his friends of the difficulties, shows them what is
involved, and lets them make their own choices.
Alvaro Ulcut Chocut and Jesus. In our day I see people merging into the
history of those who are animated by a catholic (i.e., universal)
spirit, finding brothers and sisters in everyone. Among them there are
some who say that they see God in Jesus of Nazareth. They see that he
does not pretend to be superior to others but that in love for all he
takes the side of the oppressed against oppressors, working to destroy
all hierarchy, all power of some over others.
A text published in March 1985 speaks of Alvaro Ulcu£ Chocu£, the only
Indian priest in Colombia, who was assassinated in November 1984. His
sister had been killed by the police in 1982. Before his death, speaking
on one occasion about institutionalized violence, Chocu£ challenged
Christians: “What are we doing? We are watching as spectators and
approving by our silence, for we are afraid of proclaiming the gospel in
a radical way” (reported Feb. 11, 1985).
The text goes on to say that Christians of the parish of Bozel and
Planay, with their priest, having to analyze the situation in the world
as it is, reject the violence of states. They have been led to see and
denounce the practice of interest rates as the essential cause of
violence. One might almost call it a form of assassinating those who are
dying of hunger. They denounce especially military budgets and the
making and sale of arms. They also oppose the police violence which
subjects the poor and opponents to the ruling power, for example, by
imprisonment, torture, etc. They call upon their bishops and other
Christian communities to join in rejection of this state violence.
Hoping for a. response, they express to others their union in Jesus.
To strengthen their actions, I believe that Christians and anarchists
would do well to get to know one another better.
If libertarians publish this article, it is perhaps because they have a
more open spirit than Catholics, whose name really means: “Open to all.”
Adrien Duchosal
In writing these pages I have been asking with some anxiety whether
anarchist readers will have the patience to read lengthy analyses of
biblical texts, whether they will not be wearied or irritated, whether
they will see the use, given the fact that they necessarily do not view
the Bible as any different from other books or as possibly carrying a
Word of God. After all, however, this was part of my subject. And I had
to do it well so as to counter fixed ideas of Christianity. This was
just as much needed in the case of Christians as of anarchists.
And now, how do I conclude a book of this kind? It seems to me to be
important only as a warning to Christians (and as a Christian I have no
desire to meddle with anarchist groups). As I see it, what we have
learned first is that we must reject totally any Christian
spiritualizing, any escape to heaven or the future life (in which I
believe, thanks to the resurrection, but which does not sanction any
evasion), any mysticism that disdains the things of earth, for God has
put us on this earth not for nothing but with a charge that we have no
right to refuse. Nevertheless, over against involved Christians, we have
to avoid falling into the trap of the dominant ideology of the day. As I
have noted already, the church was monarchist under the kings,
imperialist under Napoleon, and republican under the Republic, and now
the church (the Protestant Church at least) is becoming socialist in
France. This runs contrary to the orientation of Paul, namely, that we
are not to be conformed to the ideas of the present world. Here is a
first area in which anarchism can form a happy counterweight to the
conformist flexibility of Christians.
In the ideological and political world, it is a buffer.
Naturally, Christians can hardly be of the right, the actual right, what
we have seen the right become. The republican right of the Third
Republic had some value.[43] That is not the issue. The right has now
become the gross triumph of hypercapitalism or fascism.[44] There is
none other. This is ruled out, but so is Marxism in its 20^(th)-century
avatars. A Christian cannot be a Stalinist after the Moscow trials, the
horrible massacre of anarchists by communists at Barcelona, the
German-Soviet pact, the prudent approach of the Communist Party to
Mardchalism in 1940, and their conduct after 1944, at the very time when
our bold pastors were discovering the beauties of Stalinist communism.
Anarchism had seen more clearly and put us on guard. Perhaps we can hear
the lesson today.
Finally, anarchism can teach Christian thinkers to see the realities of
our societies from a different standpoint than the dominant one of the
state. What seems to be one of the disasters of our time is that we all
appear to agree that the nation-state is the norm. It is frightening to
see that this has finally been stronger than the Marxist revolutions,
which have all preserved a nationalist structure and state government.
It is frightening to think that a desire for secession like that of
Makhno was drowned in blood. Whether the state be Marxist or capitalist,
it makes no difference. The dominant ideology is that of sovereignty.
This makes the construction of a united Europe laughable. No such Europe
is possible so long as the states do not renounce their sovereignty.
State nationalism has invaded the whole world. Thus all the African
peoples, when decolonized, rushed to accept this form. Here is a lesson
that anarchism can teach Christians, and it is a very important one.
Need I go on? I said at the outset that I was not trying to Christianize
anarchists nor to proclaim an anarchist orientation to be primal for
Christians. We must not equate anarchy and Christianity. Nor would I
adopt the “same goal” theory which was once used to justify the
attachment of Christians to Stalinism. I simply desire it to be stated
that there is a general orientation which is common to us both and
perfectly clear. This means that we are fighting the same battle from
the same standpoint, though with no confusion or illusion. The fact that
we face the same adversaries and the same dangers is no little thing.
But we also stand by what separates us: on the one side, faith in God
and Jesus Christ with all its implications; on the other side, as I have
already emphasized, the difference in our evaluation of human nature. I
have not pretended to have any other aim or desire in this little essay.
[1] Cf. my Ethique de la libertd, 3 vols. (Geneva: Labor et Fides,
19751984) (condensed Eng. trans. Ethics of Freedom [Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1976]), in which 1 show that freedom is the central truth of
the Bible and that the biblical God is above all else the Liberator. As
Paul says, it is for liberty that we are freed, and as James says, the
perfect law is that of liberty.
[2] I have shown elsewhere that the biblical God really has nothing in
common with Allah. We need to remember that we can read anything we like
into the word “God.” I have also shown that apart from some names and
stories the Bible and the Koran have nothing in common.
[3] Some time ago 1 explained this movement from the Bible to what I
call Christianity, with political and economic reasons, etc.; see my
Subversion of Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986).
[4] Eller, Christian Anarchy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987).
[5] See Vernard Eller. Kierkegaard and Radical Discipleship (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1968).
[6] Cf. the interesting founding of confraternities in the 7^(th) and
8^(th) centuries.
[7] I prefer this title to “Old Testament” so as to avoid the charge
that Christians have annexed these books and deprived the Jewish people
of what really belongs to them.
[8] Cf. my Violence: Reflections from a Christian Perspective (New York:
Seabury, 1969).
[9] We see the perversity of power from the fact that the pope was given
a vast domain in order to free him from the political pressure exerted
by kings, emperors, barons, etc., i.e., to ensure his independence, but
the exact opposite was the result.
[10] An interesting point here is that we forced the administration
itself to act illegally, The method was simple. The administration began
work outside the rules and had to justify itself by orders and decrees.
Biasini, the director of the Commission, advanced the theory that once
work has begun, even though irregularly and without a proper inquiry,
etc., there is nothing more to be done. In other words, once the
bulldozers set to work, there is no further recourse. This means a total
regulation of citizens and an official authorization of illegality.
Another example of the same kind is the building of the lie de Ré
bridge, which an administrative tribunal rejected but which is going on
as if nothing had happened.
[11] Disastrous though its role is! For an illuminating study cf. J. J.
Ledos, J. P. Jlzequel, and P. Regnier, Le gdchis audiovisuel (Ed.
Ouvrteres, 1987).
[12] Cf. Y. Charrier and J. Ellul, feunesse dilinquante: Utte Experience
en province (Paris: Mercure de France, 1971).
[13] We should not forget that on the plea of safeguarding employment
they supported the folly of the Concorde and still justify the
manufacture and export of armaments.
[14] Except for a few scientists who see the dangers of science, and a
few isolated figures like C. Castoriadis.
[15] See my Subversion of Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986),
e.g., pp. lOff.
[16] See ibid., e.g., pp. 17ff.
[17] I have shown elsewhere that it is impossible for the state or
society or an institution to be Christian. Since being Christian
presupposes an act of faith, it is plainly impossible for an abstraction
like the state.
[18] I was Professor of the History of Institutions and I specialized in
the crises of the 14^(th) and 15^(th) centuries, political, religious,
economic, social, etc.
[19] Much as I admire that extraordinary woman, Joan of Arc, I think
that history would have been much simpler if France had been swallowed
up in a Franco-English regime!
[20] It is not generally known that at first the church’s attitude to
sorcery was one of skepticism. Texts from the 4^(th) to the 10^(th)
century show that parish priests were to teach the faithful that magic
and sorcery do not exist! The punishing of sorcerers and witches began
in the 13^(th) century and especially in the 14^(th), when their numbers
increased wildly due to disasters like the Black Death.
[21] Readers will undoubtedly argue that the first chapters of Genesis
explain how things began. They do not. The point of these chapters is
very different. The rabbis had no interest in origins.
[22] For a full explanation cf. my What I Believe (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1989), pp. 152–66.
[23] Cf. my Ethique de la liberty 3 vols. (Geneva: Labor et Fides,
19751984) (condensed Eng. trans. Ethics of Freedom [Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1976]).
[24] These were not judges in our sense but leaders of the people who
also showed them where justice resides and what it is.
[25] We note here the attraction of the centralized state. The same
thing has been seen in Africa since 1950, as the African peoples have
wanted states after the Western model.
[26] We need to see that this is exactly what the prophets would do, not
predicting the future but warning people of what would happen if they
persisted in their chosen path.
[27] See Tiler, Christian Anarchy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), pp.
8–9.
[28] Cf. my Reason for Being: A Meditation on Ecclesiastes (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990).
[29] It is extraordinary that J.-J. Rousseau attacked this saying
(Social Contract, IV, 8) on the ground that setting the kingdom of
Caesar and the kingdom of God in antithesis generates internal divisions
which break up nations. All institutions that bring humanity into
self-contradiction, says Rousseau, must be rejected. His conclusion,
then, is that the state must be the great master of a “civil religion,”
i.e., a state religion!
[30] One is always astounded, when reading sayings of this kind, that
the church has been able to set up its own hierarchies, princes, and
primates.
[31] Cf. my Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation (New York: Seabury,
1977), pp. 92ff. See below fe>r further explanation.
[32] The New Testament authors would obviously know the saying, for
Ecclesiastes was solemnly read each year at the Feast of Sukkot (also
called Booths or Tabernacles).
[33] The word “clouds” is often misunderstood. For the Jews the term
“heaven,” and especially “heaven of heavens,” did not denote our blue
sky with the moon and sun. Heaven is the dwelling place of God. It
denotes what is inaccessible. “Heaven of heavens,” an absolute
superlative (i.e., heaven in the absolute), makes this point. As for the
clouds, they simply denote the impossibility of knowing, of penetrating
the mystery. They are the “veil.” Painters who depict Jesus marching on
the clouds are grossly mistaken.
[34] Cf. my Apocalypse, which shows that Revelation is not just a book
of dramas and disasters.
[35] It is not out of place to recall that the only ones to organize
resistance to Hitler after 1936 were German Protestants of the
Confessing Church.
[36] See O. Cullmann, Heil ah Geschichte (Tubingen: Mohr, 1965); Eng.
trans. Salvation in History (Naperville: Allenson, 1967).
[37] See ibid.; idem, Christ and Time, 3^(rd) ed. (London: SCM, 1962),
pp. 193ff.; idem. The State ill the New Testament (New York: Scribner’s,
1956), pp. 93ff; G. Dehn, “Engel und Obrigkeit: Ein Beitrag zum
Verstandnis von Romer 13, 1–7,” in Theologische Aufsdtze fur Karl Barth
(Munich: Christian Kaiser, 1936), pp. 90–109.
[38] Karl Barth, Der Rdmerbrief, 1^(st) ed. (Bern: G. A. Baschlin,
1919); 2^(nd) ed. (Munich: Christian Kaiser, 1922); Eng. trans. of
2^(nd) ed., The Epistle to the Romans (London: Oxford, 1933; 6^(th) ed.
repr. 1980).
[39] Alphonse Maillot, L’Epitre aux Romaim (Geneva: Labor et Fides,
1984).
[40] In typical fashion Maillot shows that a military law of
conscientious objection is absurd. It is a contradiction in terms.
Objectors are obeying conscience; military law aims at the smooth
functioning of the military machine. There can be no mutual
understanding.
[41] In this section I am simply summarizing the remarkable work of
Jean-Michel Hornus, It Is Not Lawful for Me to Fight: Early Christian
Attitudes Toward War, Violence, and the State, rev. ed. (Scottdale, PA:
Herald, 1980).
[42] See E. A. Ryan, “The Rejection of Military Service by the Early
Christians,” Theological Studies 13 (1952) 1–32.
[43] Cf. the excellent book by Andr£ Tardieu (who was of the right), Le
souverain captif (1934), in which he denounces the illusory sovereignty
of the people.
[44] I noted the relation between liberalism and fascism in a long
article, “Le Fascisme, fils du lib^ralisme,” Esprit 5/53 (Feb. 1, 1937)
761–97.