PREFACE
The Christian witness in the Western world has been exceptionally weak
in this century. Outside of a few arenas, where the church is being
persecuted, the world has had a greater impact on the church than the
church has had on the world. In most instances the message of the
Gospel has been lost through Christians exercising power and influence
over people rather than living by the truth of the gospel. Christians
have been so concerned about being relevant and effectual that they
have lost their first love – the relationship to Christ that issues in
a life lived “in Christ.”
Christians
have not realized the extent to which the powers of darkness have
conquered the church. Its members have accepted the methods of power,
influence and dominance and have become persecutors rather than be
sufferers for the sake of Christ. In fact, most of the more evangelical
churches have assumed that the Gospel is about personal salvation only
and not about economics and politics. Little attention has been paid to
the social, political and economic implications of the gospel. Few have
been aware of the way dysfunctional structures, institutions and
methods have come to hold people captive. These “powers” have subverted
the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
This essay is meant to disturb the comfort and complacency of the
church and to point us in a new direction – a direction the church has
been loathe to take; it is meant to expose the extent to which we have
given assent to the Gospel without translating it into everyday living;
it is meant to underline the importance of overcoming evil with good;
and it explains how the truth of God challenges and undermines the
power of darkness operating in the world.
Rather than allowing the powers to subvert the truth of God, the writer
claims that when Christians “put on” Christ they subvert the powers of
evil. Christians who have put on Christ will manifest the character of
Christ in all that they do. They will respond to evil not by doing evil
themselves, but by acting out of love to all. In this way the truth
will expose falsehood, justice will challenge injustice and love will
overcome evil. This is the subversion the author is talking about.
This essay deserves careful reading by Christians and non-Christians
alike. It sets out a new way by listening to the words of Scripture and
by taking seriously the life of Jesus Christ. It calls for what John
Howard Yoder called “revolutionary subordination” to the powers in
order to subvert them. The reader will be richly rewarded for reading
and heeding this message.
– David Schroeder, Canadian Mennonite Bible College
FOREWORD I
This paper was originally drafted in 1986 after a fresh study of
Paul’s teaching about the secular state in Romans 13. It was written to
get some ideas on paper, with no thought of publishing it. Since then
Jacques Ellul has written an entire book (1991) in response to Vernard
Eller’s book (1987) mentioned in the paper. Furthermore, based on the
work of René Girard and many influenced by him, the impact of a
nonsacrificial biblical hermeneutic is increasing (1). Theirs is a
truly subversive way of reading the Bible with conclusions in the same
direction as this paper, and much farther reaching.
In 1996 the board of the Christian Conciliation Service of British
Columbia encouraged me to make the original paper available now. Time
and space constraints prevented inclusion of reference to more recent
writings. If writing this now, and with more room to develop the ideas,
I would also have included interaction with Walter Wink’s impressive
three-volume study of the Powers (1984, 1986, 1992) and the exegesis of
the Sermon on the Mount and related material by Glen Stassen in his
Just Peacemaking (1992).
I look forward to dialogue with readers and sincerely invite reaction
to what I have written. I invite in particular reaction to my reading
of enduo wherever power relationships are discussed in the New
Testament alongside the so-called Haustafeln. I found this part of my
research very exciting. Please write to me at our board address.
Through various discussions and exposures, I am aware that the issues
of nonretaliatory submission and subversion are problematic for victims
of abuse and their advocates. I count myself as one of those advocates.
I have raised this concern in Footnote 5. Truth is always tested in
real-world encounters of theory and action. I look forward to robust
critique from victims and others active in overcoming specific and
systemic abuse in our society. I am convinced the above thesis applies
in this area as well, albeit with lots more work needed than was given
here. I do not argue that it is right for abused wives, children,
racial minorities, and other oppressed peoples to see their condition
as valid or justified. On the contrary!!! At issue is rather how one
overcomes such blatant evil with good.
Finally, I am thankful to Cliff and Jeanette Ratzlaff for editing and preparing this paper for publication. June, 1998
FOREWORD II
Thanks significantly to the influence of Ron Dart, I am much more
predisposed to a positive role of the state. I am convinced however
that there is a single biblical ethic for the individual and the state
and that the Church’s role in politics is subversive: to hold the state
to the biblical ethic, in particular of nonviolence.
So please wrestle with me in the above thesis.
I have not updated the text or references since first redone in 1998.
You may e-mail me at: wnorthey@peacesummit.com. April, 2005
INTRODUCTION
Sometimes in the study of Christian Scripture we see things in a
new way to the point of being startled. So it was for me in developing
this theme of Christianity as subversion. I am convinced that the
overarching teaching of the New Testament regarding God’s relationship
with human beings and the creation involves the impact of subversion so
sweeping, that one day, in God’s place and time, the old order of
things will pass away and God will make all things new! This will occur
in one’s personal, private and inward being, and in the entire
social-political matrix in which we live out our days (Rev. 21:4 &
5). Paul put it, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new
creation [alternatively: there is a new creation]; the old has gone,
the new has come! (II Cor. 5:17).”
I am especially indebted to Jacques Ellul for his paper entitled
Anarchism and Christianity (1980), and to Vernard Eller for his book,
Christian Anarchy (1987). Both supplied the term “anarchy” for this New
Testament call to the subversion of just about everything: certainly of
all principalities, powers, hierarchies, traditions, conventions,
institutions, structures, governments and organizations, etc. All
belong to the sick brokenness of this groaning world; all deny us
freedom and keep us in slavish subservience.
ORDERS OF CREATION
The text that all human righteousness is as filthy rags (Isaiah
64:6) and others influenced some Reformed thinkers to the doctrine of
total human depravity. Conversely however, these same reformers
maintained the belief that government, political authority, and control
structures within society were somehow less depraved than individual
humans. Hence the offices of government were respected by the reformers
as part of what would later be identified as God’s “Orders of Creation”
(a term originating in the 19th century).
Even though persons in government office were seen as depraved and
fallen humans, reformers carried a disposition to obey even “depraved”
political leaders. They argued that the offices of state were ordained
by God. The offices of state were respected even though persons within
the office were believed to be depraved and sinful.
In God’s economy the “orders of creation” doctrine implied that
there were human governance systems and structures that were not (so)
corrupted as were the humans running those systems. The totality of
government was clearly less sinful than the sum of individual humans
within it!
It is strange indeed that such theologians during the Reformation
period believed the fall-out from sin somehow left the orders of
creation largely uncorrupted. It was as if the “groaning of creation”
Paul mentions in Romans 8 did not include these orders; as if the “old
order of things” in Rev. 21:4 was not a reference to all orders of
creation; as if the new orders of creation in Christ did not radically
subvert the old orders: i.e. government and human systems of corporate
existence.
READING THE BIBLE FROM BELOW
I consider that the perspective from which one’s theology is
understood and expressed is central to reading the Bible with a
“subversive” or a “nonsubversive” understanding. When Emperor
Constantine declared Christianity to be a legal (ultimately state)
religion in the early fourth century, cultural dominance enjoyed by
Western Christians made it axiomatic that the state be seen as a
legitimate “order of creation.” If one reads the Bible “from below,”
i.e., from the position of the underdog, the idea of the Gospel as
subversion is more readily grasped.
Lord Acton observed that power corrupts, and absolute power
corrupts absolutely. This is a profound biblical insight. The closer
the church is associated with levers of cultural/political structures,
institutions, organizations, etc., the more likely there will be a
“top-dog” theology of social ethics, and it follows there will be less
commitment to conduct power according to the Sermon on the Mount. Since
Constantine, “top dog” theology has tended to corrupt the biblical
message. It is for this reason that Christians within historic
denominational and established conventional traditions across the
centuries have often missed perceiving the Gospel as subversion.
The Bible was written from the perspective of the “underside of
history,” an expression used by Jack Nelson (1980). The Bible was
written on behalf of the underdog and the powerless. Christians who are
unable to empathize, or identify with this underside view of things are
therefore at a distinct disadvantage in correctly handling the word of
truth (II Tim. 2:15). I suggest that a “top-dog” theological
perspective in Western Christianity has seriously hamstrung biblical
understandings of social ethics throughout all the dominant Christian
traditions since Constantine.
Alistair Kee argues this at times abrasively (1982). John Yoder
does so more gently in “The Constantinian Sources of Western Social
Ethics” (1984).
DOING GOOD AS THE SUBVERSION OF EVIL
The idea that God’s Good News in Jesus Christ is about the
subversion of just about everything rose for me after another look at
Paul’s teaching regarding the state. In the context of early,
pre-Constantinian Christian understandings of the state as Public Enemy
Number One, Paul called on believers to overcome that evil power, not
with a show of revolutionary fervour, equally evil, but with good.
Thus, taught Paul, the Gospel would totally subvert the evil of the
Roman or any Empire/government.
This early Christian “good” response to evil, as Jean Lasserre
points out (1974), was most likely a reflection of their understanding
of the Ten Commandments, or Old Testament Law. Jesus sweepingly
summarized this law as LOVE for God, neighbour, and enemy. Paul and
other writers took up this theme, often dropping love for God because
it was so obviously assumed. Paul’s teaching accurately reflected the
words and example of Jesus. Biblical writers stressed love for one’s
neighbor as fulfillment of the law. Love was the overarching theme of
Paul’s entire understanding of ethics in Romans 12 to 15. Christians
who love intend no harm to neighbour, and overcome enmity by doing
good, not evil.
As recorded in Romans 8:37, Paul exulted, that …” in all these
things …,” things such as trouble, hardship, persecution, famine,
nakedness, danger or sword, Christians are “more than conquerors.” For
him the source of evils over which Christians were more than conquerors
was largely the Roman state. It was the state that “bore the sword”
(Romans 13:4). Paul used the same words as in Romans 8:37, “overcoming
evil,” again in chapter 12.
Paul understood such conquering over evil in a manner that was a far
cry from the revolutionary spirit of some early Christians. Influenced
by the Jewish Zealots, they were ready to incite armed insurrection
against the hated Roman state. To these Peter likewise wrote about the
need for submission to the enemy-state . “If you suffer, it should not
be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or as a
revolutionist (I Peter 4:15).”
To my awareness, the term “revolutionist” was never used in English
translations of the Bible even though, I suggest, it accurately
reflects the meaning Peter intended in the above text (Bauer, Arndt and
Gingrich, 1957, p. 39). Certainly in the context of first century
Christianity the term “revolutionist” was used to describe grievous
crimes against the Roman state; something a Zealot, such as Barabbas,
would be proud to commit. Paul taught that Christians are more than
conquerors over angels and demons. He used the term “archai” translated
“demons”; the same archai of whom Paul wrote in Titus 3:1. “Remind
people to be subject to rulers [archai] and authorities, to be
obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good.” Both Peter and Paul,
even as Jesus did, said NO to all revolutionary action against the
state, and any other “fallen” powers under which Christians were
obliged to exist.
There is consistent teaching by both New and Old Testament writers
that all human powers and principalities belong to Satan’s realm and
that Christians overcome evil by doing good. It is God’s will that by
loving the enemy Christians overcome an oppressive state, an abusive
parent, a misogynist male, an intolerant religionist, an overbearing
master, etc. Jesus’ teaching was submission to one’s enemies, even when
they do us evil, though as a means, not an end. Later I will show that
Paul taught this most clearly in Romans 12 and 13.
BEWARE WHEN CHRISTIANS GAIN POLITICAL POWER
In our
Christian West often when Christians have gained political power, they
have used it not to bless their enemies. In past and contemporary times
the Western church has for instance blessed state-centred, harshly
punitive justice systems, which often have employed torture and
execution quite freely. (See Berman, 1983.) The church has avidly
supported or even incited a call to arms in response to international
conflict ever since Constantine. The great Protestant leader, Martin
Luther, called on the German nobility to “smite, slay and kill” all
rebellious peasants in response to an early 16th century uprising,
claiming God’s complete blessing, based on Romans 13. Thousands were
slaughtered. Luther’s views on the Jews were consonant with this, and
in this sense he contributed to the evils of the Nazi Holocaust.
Christian desire to exercise “power over” has not been the exception to
the rule, but precisely the rule that has not readily known exceptions.
Christians have throughout the centuries in our Western history been
far better persecutors than sufferers.
In light of this we need once more to hear Paul saying that he
considers present sufferings [at the hands of the state or other
enemies] are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed
in us (Romans 8:18).
CHRISTIANS IN AN EVIL STATE: NONRETALIATION AND SUFFERING
Consider now the theme of suffering as a direct consequence of
nonretaliation to one’s enemies. The consistent call of Jesus was to
follow him into suffering. God’s communication with the newly converted
Saul of Tarsus included the chilling words, “I will show him how much
he must suffer for my name (Acts 9:16).” Later, Paul wrote: …” we are
heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in
his sufferings…. (Romans 8:17).” Similarly Paul’s litany of
sufferings in II Cor. 11 abounds with references to enemy-inflicted
pain and suffering.
References to suffering made by the New Testament writers is
suffering caused by one’s enemies. Enemies were the source of Christ’s
sufferings. But after the church emerged “top dog” in the West, in the
early fourth century, Christians have “doggedly” pursued avoidance of
suffering at the hands of their enemies. To the contrary, and up to the
present, they have been willing to sacrifice and destroy enemies for
perceived good, and they supported such actions by unbiblical notions
of ‘freedom’ (2). Since then the church’s consistent stance and action
toward its enemies have been retaliation and counter-persecution.
Retaliation is, after all, what one can do when in a position of power,
authority, and influence. Powerful people lord it over enemies,
regardless of Christ’s teaching and example to the contrary.
Inflicting destruction on the enemy, so utterly contrary to the
way of Christ and early church example, was first used against “pagans”
in retaliation for pagan-incited state persecution of Christians. Then
in ever-widening circles, the church encompassed all other enemies of
the faith in its treatment of enemies. Violence against enemies
eventually included Jews, Muslims, heretics, war-time enemies,
criminals, Anabaptists, Huguenots, abortionists, secular humanists,
communists and so on. The list is as endless as the case-studies are
myriad.
Since the era of Constantine, the face-saving recourse of the
church has been to reinterpret Christ’s teachings so that they appear
to agree with this kind of malignant treatment of the enemy. Eventually
this recourse included notions of a two-tiered system of morality. This
may still prevent individual Christians from personal retaliation
against an enemy, but it permits or even mandates the state to destroy
the enemy through whatever violent means it deems appropriate. Alistair
Kee (1982) points out that this represented an amazing reversal of all
that Christ stood for. It lead to the triumph of an alien, anti-Christ
ideology that became a normative response to enemies of state and
church. Kee described it as a perversion of ethics, widely practised
during hundreds of years of church history.
The church, in almost all its denominational manifestations, has simply
“put on Emperor Constantine,” instead of “putting on the Lord Jesus
Christ (Rom. 13:14).” It has for many centuries strutted about in
clothes alien to Jesus and the early Christians, and, illustrative of
Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes (1949), there has
been only a minority dissenting voice crying out that the church has on
the wrong clothes.
SUBVERSION AS HOPE FOR CREATION
Hear Paul in Romans 8:18 – 25: “I consider that our present
sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed
in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to
be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its
own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that
the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and
brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God… We know
that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth
right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have
the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for
our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we
were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what
he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for
it patiently.”
Notice that the grand theme of this passage, waiting and hoping,
is the very antithesis of any form of acting out in retaliation to
whatever evil Christians encounter. We are resolutely called to
nonretaliation even though that appears as sheer passivity and folly.
Paul declared nonretaliation to be “glorious freedom.” He wrote that
creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought
into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
These words of Paul form the key New Testament text for the
doctrine that God’s gospel is the subversion of just about everything.
Paul used exactly the same language of such subversion in Romans 13. In
the Romans 8 text, the grand enemy of all creation is “futility”;
possibly with reference to the emptiness, void or chaos out of which
God originally created all things. For the effect of sin has been to
plummet us headlong toward undoing all God’s good in creation.
Nonetheless observe how God subjected creation to this great,
grand invidious evil or chaos and futility! Why did God subject his
creation to malignant powers, principalities and powers which hold sway
over God’s fallen creation, including all humanity and all orders of
creation? The answer is: …”in hope that the creation itself will be
liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious
freedom of the children of God.” The will of God, in history and in
response to the overwhelming evil threatening his entire creation, is
submission, precisely with a view to subversion, or liberation! His
modus operandi throughout history (following Eller’s cue (1980)) has
been the resurrection.
Liberation is the corollary of subversion. One undermines to free;
subverts to liberate. Submission per se is never the end of God’s will.
In fact, as an end it is utterly invidious to God’s purposes.
Submission is only the temporary means to the end. Brokenhearted love
toward an enemy will one day overcome the enemy. It will do so either
by the enemy’s freely entering into the overcomer’s circle of friends,
or by the enemy’s experiencing the consequence of wrath and judgment
freely chosen. For love denied is ultimate wrath and destruction.
Whenever Paul is interpreted as conservative and status quo toward
the social institutions of his day, his message of subversion is
misunderstood or altogether missed. Means have been mistaken for ends.
Paul wants to conserve precisely nothing of creation’s “bondage to
decay.” He strenuously rejects buttressing the status quo of rotten
social institutions and conventions, whether they be state-citizen,
Jew-Greek, master-slave or male-female relationships.
God’s grand movement and strategy in history has been and still is
submission to the enemy. In the spirit of Jesus, God calls his people
to turn the other cheek, give one’s cloak if the tunic is taken, go the
extra mile (Matt. 5:39 – 41), in hope that one day, by the mighty power
of the resurrection, there will be glorious liberation of all God’s
good creation from bondage to the enemy. The Christian’s hope rests in
the resurrection power of Jesus that will one day gloriously reverse
this terrible process of decay.
Jesus submitted to his enemies in a double sense; first, to his
arch-enemy, the evil one, and second, to the Roman state. But in the
process, he triumphed over them. He turned the other cheek to the Roman
state without reviling and allowed his clothes to be stripped from his
back without calling twelve legions of angels. He went the extra mile,
carrying the cross to Golgotha, even when it meant certain death. Thus
by abject submission he broke the power of the state, though not
without being executed in the process.
Alas, when the early fourth century church triumphed over the
state, it was a Pyrrhic victory. The church was seduced to employ the
very means of obscene power consistently denied Christians by Jesus and
Paul. Progressive secularization in the West of the state within the
past four hundred years has broken the abominable relationship between
church and state. In this sense, secularization has been God’s gift to
the world.
In the 16th century, Anabaptists (Radical Reformers) called for
total separation of church and state. Mostly they defended this very
revolutionary stance in a nonviolent, nonretaliatory way. They
therefore effected the eventual enshrinement of that principle in
theory at least, in Western civilization. Their action led to
overcoming an evil which had haunted the church for centuries.
The one consistent and recurring stance of the writers of the New
Testament is that the Gospel is a subversion that leads to liberation.
Indeed the Christian continues to battle against personally besetting
sins, such as lust, envy, anger, bitterness, etc., from which there is
also the need for liberation. Paul supplies several exemplary lists.
But the Christian’s standpoint to demands for subservience to the
numerous power-systems under which we live is rooted in Jesus’ and
Paul’s response: liberation by subversion! Theirs was and is a most
unconventional way of attaining such a goal. It was and is contrary to
all common sense, and most common practice, given our common
fallenness.
In this teaching may lie the nub of every revolutionary’s quarrel
with Jesus and Paul since the dawning of the Christian era. On first
blush, both are mistakenly perceived to be profoundly a-political,
status quo oriented and conservative. In no way did Jesus even hint at
armed insurrection against one of the most unjust, repressive regimes
of all history. On the contrary, he openly rejected the way of the
Zealot. Marxists and certain liberation theologians alike are offended
at that. Similarly, some feminists are disgusted with Paul’s counsel of
submission to patriarchy. And his views seem no better when he comments
on parent/child relationships or slavery.
GOD’S GOSPEL IS AN UPSIDE DOWN AFFAIR
Jesus’ and Paul’s counsel was that Christians not react with power
plays, retaliation and threats toward the many enemies that hold them
in bondage. Jesus’ counsel of submission to one’s enemy has
consistently been derided and belittled as politically suicidal,
disgustingly passive or as simply impractical in the real world in
which everyone else lives. But that is precisely the marvel of “the
upside-down kingdom,” that Donald Kraybill argued for in his book by
that title (1978).
Peter wrote, “The stone the builders rejected has become the
capstone, and … a stone that causes men to stumble; and a rock that
makes them fall” (I Peter 2:7 & 8). This Stone is Jesus the Christ!
This resurrected living Christ, not an abstract Christ of mere dogma,
calls us to radical conversion, to follow him in word and deed, as
supremely demonstrated in relationship to neighbour and enemy. “As you
come to him, the living Stone, rejected by men but chosen by God and
precious to him, you also, like living stones, are being built into a
spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices
acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (I Peter 2:4 & 5).” The term
“sacrifices” here is the same as the living “sacrifices” in Romans 12:1
– 2. Christians offer themselves to God sacrificially precisely so that
they may, as Paul wrote in Romans 13:14, be clothed with the Lord Jesus
Christ. Similar to what Paul wrote in Romans 12, Peter implied that
Christians become “living stones.” Notice that in our words and deeds
we are to become clones, as it were, of that original Stone, Jesus
Christ.
It is in the very same context of clothing ourselves with the Lord
Jesus Christ that Peter moves on to discuss the Christian’s response to
the state, and he does so in terms similar to those used by Paul. After
he calls for submission to the enemy, the state, he continues, “Live as
free men, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as
servants of God” (I Peter 2:16). Paraphrased, Peter is saying, yes be
subversive toward the state, but not in anarchic insurrection (as
“murderer, thief, criminal, revolutionist” – I Peter 4:15), for that
would be overcoming evil with evil! Through submission the Christian is
free from the power of the state, freedom is one’s right as joint-heirs
with Christ. Through nonretaliatory submission Jesus subverted every
authority known to humanity. God alone has the right to absolute
lordship over us. Evil shall not lord it over us, least of all the evil
state!
Peter also discusses how Christian slaves should respond to their
(evil) masters, and how Christian wives should respond to (domineering)
husbands. It is all of a piece! New Testament writers called for love
for and overcoming of the enemy through submission; through refusing
any show of power-play, counter-force, or retaliation. All called for
understanding of what suffering is and means at the hands of the enemy.
“For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust
suffering because he is conscious of God…. To this you were called,
because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you
should follow in his steps. He committed no sin, and no deceit was
found in his mouth. When they hurled their insults at him, he did not
retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted
himself to him who judges justly (I Peter 2:19 – 23).”
The implication is of course, that neither state nor master (nor
counter-insurrectionists!) is capable of meting out anything remotely
approaching God’s way of justice. It is not for us to take into our
hands, through any form of retaliation, the righting of wrongs and the
enforcement of freedom! Biblical freedom is not “the absence of
tyranny.” Freedom is not obtained by attacking evil by every violent
means known. For the Christian freedom means not to retaliate by
resorting to violence. Revengeful retaliation cannot produce the
freedom humanity seeks.
Freedom for Christians means to entrust ourselves to God and the
ultimate power of the resurrection and love, whether or not we attain
freedom from social and political tyranny in our lifetime. Jesus did
not. In the litanous description of the suffering of the “cloud of
witnesses” the writer of the book of Hebrews (11:39), says, “These were
all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been
promised.” That is reminiscent of Paul’s words, “But hope that is seen
is no hope at all (Rom. 8:24).”
Freedom is God’s will for Christians and the entire creation.
God’s way of achieving it is nonretaliation. The great flaw of
retaliation is failure to recognize that the very taking up of violent
means to establish freedom proves ironically to be only greater
enslavement to the fallenness and futility of creation. To react with
violence is a perpetuation of bondage to decay desperately in need of
the glorious freedom of the children of God. Retaliation only spreads
the fire of violence; it never douses it.
Christians do not take revenge; but leave room for God’s wrath.
Paul quotes the Old Testament, “It is mine to avenge; I will repay
(Romans 12:19).” Jesus, Peter, and Paul all counselled submission seen
as nonretaliation to the enemy as a preliminary response leading to
God’s ultimate goal; the just overcoming of that enemy. It matters not
if the enemy is the punitive state, the abusive spouse, the oppressive
master, the intolerant religionist and so on. That is why true
Christianity is the subversion of just about everything!
“ENDUO”: CLOTHED WITH JESUS CHRIST
There is a kind of code expression used by Paul on several
occasions when dealing with the socially and politically entrenched
evil structures of control. To accomplish the task of overcoming evil
with good, Paul held that, through resurrection empowerment, it was
possible to love the enemy until the death of the tyranny is realized
(3)! Such love is profoundly the biblical way of subversion. Paul’s
code expression is found in Romans 13:14: “Clothe yourselves with the
Lord Jesus Christ.” I take these words to mean that it is possible to
be so immersed in the words and ways of Jesus in his response to the
enemy, that we will respond to all our enemies in similar fashion.
I wish to examine more fully Paul’s teachings in Romans 13:14,
appearing in the context of relation to the state. In this text, as
well as in some others, is an expression that rises from the Greek word
enduo, meaning “to put on,” “to clothe.” But first a quick aside.
In Hans Christian Anderson’s classic tale, The Emperor’s New
Clothes (1949), the Emperor discovered, following an outcry from his
subjects, that his new clothes ostensibly made of fancy new material
were indeed no clothes at all! “The Emperor felt very silly for he knew
that the people were right but he thought, ‘The procession has started
and it must go on now!’ So the Lords of the Bedchamber held their heads
higher than ever and took greater trouble to pretend to hold up the
train which wasn’t there at all (1949, p. 44).”
Though Emperor Constantine was not the only person responsible, he best
illustrates the great reversal of social ethics which occurred in his
time, and has dominated ever since in Western Christianity. A whole new
way for the church to exercise its mission in the world was begun. It
was the way of political power and dominance. The state church that
emerged became unclothed of the Lord Jesus Christ and the newly
appointed “Lords of the Bedchamber” typified sycophantic or
unsuspecting historians and theologians ever since. Whether Eusebius,
Augustine, Calvin or Niebuhr, or countless others, all have, whatever
else their otherwise grasp of biblical teaching may have been,
pretended to discover in the Bible a social ethic which is not there.
John Yoder best comments on this by saying …”if kenosis [a reference
to Phil. 2:1 – 11, meaning God’s self-emptying in the Incarnation] is
the shape of God’s own self-sending, then any strategy of Lordship,
like that of the kings of this world, is not only a strategic mistake
likely to backfire but a denial of gospel substance, a denial which has
failed even when it succeeded. What the churches accepted in the
Constantinian shift is what Jesus had rejected, seizing godlikeness,
moving in hoc signo [in this sign] from Golgatha to the battlefield. If
this diagnosis is correct, then the cure is not to update the
fourth-century mistake by adding another ‘neo-’ but to repent of the
whole ‘where it’s at’ style and to begin again with kenosis (1984, p.
145).”
In Romans 13:14, Paul’s call for Christians to be clothed with the Lord
Jesus Christ is immediately followed by the antithesis: …”do not
think about how to gratify the desires of your sinful nature.” In the
context of his letter to Christians at Rome who had felt already the
rising threat of imperial power (4), Paul’s call to clothe oneself with
Jesus Christ meant not to gratify the sinful nature through any kind of
vengeful thoughts, or resort to revolutionary fervour, least of all to
any notion of violent retaliation against Roman officials such as
practised by the Zealots. Rather, as Paul put it only two verses
earlier, Christians are to …” put aside the deeds of darkness and put
on [enduo] the armour of light.”
Jean Lasserre in War and the Gospel (1974) wrote that Paul’s words
in Eph. 6:10 – 18 should be seen as key to understanding the
Christian’s response to the state and all other power structures. To
the Ephesians Paul said, “Put on [enduo] the full armour of God so that
you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes (v. 11).” In both
the Romans and Ephesians passages Paul asks that Christians avoid
gratifying the desires of the sinful nature, including all desire for
revenge against one’s enemy. Then he goes on, in verse 12 of Ephesians
to say, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against
the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark
world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”
The terms are identical to those in Paul’s discussion of the state in
Rom. 13. This reflects a consistent biblical view that all states are
in Satan’s realm, and are subject to God’s ultimate judgment. The state
was indeed Public Enemy Number One to Christians in Paul’s time, but
his counsel to the Ephesian Christians was to put on the full armour of
God. In Romans 13 his admonition was to put on the armour of light. In
both cases Christians were told thereby to put on the Lord Jesus
Christ, the only valid Armament, the only true Light of the world.
Why does one put on Christ? “Therefore put on the full armour of
God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your
ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm
then… (Eph. 6:13 & 14a).” The identical Greek term for “stand
your ground” is used by Jesus in his admonition in Matt. 5:39: “Do not
resist an evil person.” So clearly Jesus’ words as interpreted by Paul
in no way represent counsel of mere passivity, or worse yet, sheer
yielding defenselessly to evil.
Walter Wink demonstrates persuasively in his book Violence and
Nonviolence in South Africa: Jesus’ Third Way (1987), that Jesus’
counsel was the refusal of any kind of “retaliation in kind.” This is
the New Testament meaning of “submission.” Paul wrote that it was
impossible to overcome evil with evil. All the pages of the New
Testament rustle with the call that Christians are to overcome evil
with good. Even so the Ephesians passage is fully consonant with the
Romans 12 and 13 account to overcome the evil of the state with good.
Both are consistent with Jesus’ way and words. He called for submission
to the enemy, not like a doormat, and certainly not as an end, but as a
means of accomplishing the greatest good imaginable, namely, turning
the enemy into a friend! To this end, we must be willing to offer
limitless forgiveness to our enemies, as Jesus taught in Matt. 18 (5).
ENDNOTES
(1) See for instance: Girard, (1986, 1987). For biblical
interpretation influenced by Girard, see Williams (1991);
Hamerton-Kelly (1992, 1994); Alison (1993, 1996, 1998). For a highly
original cultural critique of violence from a Christian anthropological
perspective, indebted to Girard, see Bailie (1995). For a
well-presented sampling of Girard’s thought, see Williams (1996).
(2) Lloyd Billingsley’s book, The Absence of Tyranny (1986)
produced by a reputable evangelical publisher (Multnomah Press), is a
glaring example of unbiblical thinking about freedom passed off as
Christian.
(3) The founder of Koinonia Farms, Clarence Jordan, tells the
possibly apocryphal story of a senator who addresses President Lincoln
at the time of the defeat of the South with the words: “Mr. Lincoln, we
ought to move in now and utterly crush those Southerners!” To which
Lincoln replies: “Mr. Senator, do we not also destroy our enemies by
making them our friends?” That is profoundly the biblical way of
subversion, as Romans 5 so beautifully lays out.
(4) Jews not long before the time of Paul’s writing had been expelled from Rome by Emperor Claudius.
(5) An outstanding exegesis of that chapter, arguing this point
well, is found in Das Recht im Dienst der Versöhnung und des Friedens
(1972).