PAUL’S LETTERS AS SUBVERSION
In Galatians 3:26 – 29, Paul says, “You are all sons of God
through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were united with
Christ in baptism have been clothed [enduo] with Christ. There is
neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all
one in Christ Jesus….”
What
astounding results from being clothed with Christ! All the old
conventions, institutions, hatreds, and everything else belonging to
the old aeon are done away! Paul may have limited his examples here in
keeping with the classic rabbinical prayer he likely knew, which
thanked God for not having been born a Gentile, slave, or woman! But
the examples doubtless extend to all orders of creation and hierarchies
caught up in radical sinfulness. Paul clearly will have none of them!
Religious intolerance, slavery, and patriarchy are all enemies of
the Gospel of Jesus Christ. All these are entrenchments of cultural,
societal norms and mores that the Gospel writers set out vigorously to
subvert and overcome. In Paul’s allusion to the “sons [and daughters]
of God,” one can hear echoes of “the glorious freedom of the children
of God” already discussed in Romans 8. Over against all such social
conventions, traditions, structures, institutions, norms, mores, etc.,
Paul’s cry is, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand
firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of
slavery (Gal. 5:1).”
The immediate context of Paul’s letter to the Galatian church was
judaistic legalism which he so vehemently resisted throughout his
letter. Doubtless his allusion to a “yoke of slavery” and to
Christians’ being …” enslaved by the basic principles of the world
(4:3b)” was in keeping with the “bondage to slavery” of all creation in
Romans 8. According to Paul, What God is about, in Christ Jesus, is
nothing less than the complete subversion of all these elemental,
longstanding and perverse ways of destructive relationships throughout
history.
Writers of New Testament scriptures taught the complete subversion of
all hierarchy, chain of command, or brutal authority legitimized by the
church during medieval Christianity or any other era. To Paul, Peter
and Jesus, hierarchy was as surely anathema as judaistic legalism.
There is only one legitimate archy, namely the Kingdom of Jesus, over
against which all other archies or hierarchies are illegitimate
pretenders. In Jesus’ kingdom, the way of all relationships was
exemplified when Jesus took the servant role, and washed his disciples’
feet.
In Ephesians 5:21 Paul admonished both male and female to be
mutually submissive. While such submission among believers was an “end”
called for by New Testament writers, unilateral submission
(nonretaliation) was also a means to the end of overcoming the enemy
with good. Peter especially encouraged this, saying, …” so that …
they [husbands] may be won over without talk by the behaviour of their
wives… (l Peter 3:1). “
Further as example of such submission, Paul advised Onesimus, a
run-away slave who had become a believer, to return voluntarily to his
owner Philemon, urging Philemon to welcome Onesimus …” no longer as a
slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother” (Philemon 16). On
the surface this gesture appears to be have been a denial of the
freedom which everyone created in God’s image should rightfully have.
In the long run however, Paul told both master and slave that mutual
submission was the only “Charter of Freedom” guaranteed to free them
both from that contextual enemy, the institution of slavery. In God’s
good time, or by the end of time, both would be free indeed. Paul
counselled submission to the power of the state, knowing that one day,
within or at the end of history, its power will be overcome. In chapter
Ten of his book, Christian Anarchy Vernard Eller lays out delightfully
the implications of this counsel. In it he ruminates “On Ways More than
One of Skinning Cats or Accomplishing other Good Ends (1987, p. 237).”
Likewise Paul counselled children to submit to parents, knowing
that, apart from the promise of Deut. 5:16, there was no other way to
overcome abusive fathers who provoke their children to wrath. (Compare
Eph. 6:4, and Col. 3:21). (6)
The entrenchments of destructive relationships among fallen
humanity can be found in all cultures and societies, and show up in
myriads of hierarchies of abusive and oppressive power against others.
Jesus described these as “lording it over others” (Matt. 20:25). Jesus
taught and demonstrated the way of hope to overcome them all; not
through violence and retaliation, but love.
There is nothing in what Jesus taught that is even remotely a call
to conservatism or the status quo! Jesus calls his people to love
intensely the enemy, and so to become a survivor in an ultimate way. To
overcome the enemy means one freely chooses to suffer the wrong rather
than inflict suffering. To overcome evil with good is pursued even if
the attempt is the way of suffering and death. Jesus exemplified this,
responding to his immediate enemies at the crucifixion with “Father
forgive them”! The same cry was heard from the lips of the first
Christian martyrs (witnesses), and repeatedly down through the
centuries. But it has often been muted or relegated to an inimitable
counsel of perfection outside the realpolitik of life. The cry is
unthinkable for the average Christian; it is at least so for the state
in response to domestic or foreign enemies.
The Christian does not rise above the Master in this regard. There
is no better way than Christ’s way of resolutely loving the enemy and
doing so in the sure hope of the resurrection! However the Christian
church over the length of the Christian era has tended to think it
could do better than Christ. Hence John Yoder asserts that the church
failed even when it “succeeded” through use of “power over.” The
original Gospel of subversion by love became inverted into religious
social power and tyranny, practised and promulgated by the church
throughout most of the Western Christian era. This inversion remains, I
suggest, a primary contributing factor to the great modern-day
rejection of Christian faith in the West. It is similar in cultural
impact to the idolatry of front-end “rationality” which has dominated
Western culture since the Enlightenment (though is now being displaced
by “post-modernism” at the end of the 20th century. (7) )
Throughout most of church history, the “fruits” of Christianity
appear to be directly opposite to its ideal of love! One writer, in
examining contemporary manifestations of the evangelical movement said
there is lots of faith, much hope, but no charity (Haiven, 1984)! Is
this not perhaps why there is such a pressure on Christians to
relativize the absoluteness and finality of the revelation in Christ?
Christian mission has often presented an image of a triumphalistic
Christ bent on destroying rather than liberating humanity and culture.
Missionaries have too often employed the “military secret” of Hudson
Taylor who preached the Gospel in the wake of British gun boats. There
appears to be profound truth in seeing the church’s violence as one
reason for the great rejection of Christian faith within Western
culture which the church so profoundly shaped and nurtured. Christ
rejected violent scapegoating but the Western church has been a prime
instigator or supporter of scapegoating throughout Western history.
The uniqueness of Christian truth rightly stands against
culturally driven pressures to privatize and relativize Christ’s saving
work. This applies also to the social and political application of
Christ’s saving power. The tendency has been to allow Christian social
ethics to become clothed in that which was contrary to the way of
Christ; as contrary as any notion that there can be any other Light of
the world than Jesus, or any other Way to God, than ultimately through
Christ.
The entire third chapter of Paul’s letter to the Colossian church
rings with the same need to be clothed with Christ to overcome the old
ways of relationships. In verses nine and ten Paul wrote, …” you have
taken off the old self with its practices and have put on [enduo] the
new self….” This, said Paul, resulted in “putting to death” (v. 5)
all manner of personal sins: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil
desires and greed, etc. All represented idolatry, i.e., bondage to the
old orders of creation. Paul then continued with another list of old
orders equally subverted by clothing oneself with Christ: “Here there
is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian,
slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all. Therefore, as God’s
chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves [enduo] with
compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience…. And over
all these virtues put on [enduo] love, which binds them all together in
perfect unity (11, 12 & 14).”
According to Paul the language of submission also applied to all
relationships so that wives, children, and slaves were encouraged to
submit to abusive, domineering, oppressive, ways of being treated. They
were advised to submit even though they were created in God’s image. On
the other hand Christian husbands were told not to be harsh with their
wives and Christian fathers were not to provoke their children to
wrath. We know from Philemon that Christian masters were to treat
slaves as brothers. All this was urged precisely in the hope of ridding
oneself of whatever belongs to the “earth.” It was thus possible to
subvert all fallen relationships, and move toward the new kingdom
reality of the “glorious freedom of the children of God.”
There is one further statement made by Paul to consider, Phil. 2:1
– 11. This was likely an early Christian hymn. In verse 8 Paul wrote,
…” [Jesus] humbled himself and became obedient to death even death on
a cross!” This is the language of submission, this time to the “last
enemy” (I Cor. 15:26). Again the model of freedom by submission
emerges. Submission to death is the means for a complete reversal of
death to life.
Paul here repeats his death-resurrection message as in I Cor.
15:26 & 27, “For he [Jesus] must reign until God has put all his
enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he
‘has put everything under his feet’.” This “everything” includes “all
dominion, authority and power” (v. 24) – the precise language of the
state. So we read again in Phil. 2:9 – 11: “Therefore God exalted him
to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth
and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is
Lord, to the glory of God the Father (verses 9 – 11).”
The pattern is consistent. Submission in the form of
nonretaliation to an enemy is God’s way to know full freedom and
victory. The call is to constant subversion of all the old orders of
creation, in order to effect “the glorious freedom of the children of
God.” Submission to and nonretaliation towards one’s enemies are God’s
means to overcome the enemy with the greatest good – making him or her
a friend! For this is what God did to us while we were yet sinners, and
his enemies (Rom. 5:6 – 11).
SOME APPLICATIONS
1. A call to ongoing conversion
There are some who argue that the early church was not primarily
or consistently pacifist since it so easily changed to a diametrically
opposite mode in the early fourth century.
This argument is obviously specious. But it is easy to understand
how the church abandoned this call to faithfulness to the
nonretaliatory way of the crucified God. One need only attempt trying
to apply the principles of nonviolence and loving the enemy in one’s
personal life for a day, or even a week! One quickly discovers how
opposite the natural human bent is, and how lacking in will,
creativity, and imagination we all are, to apply loving subversion to
all spheres of human relationships. So when the church suddenly was
offered power in the fourth century, it was an irresistible temptation
in that historical context. It had scarcely emerged from ruthless
state-sanctioned persecution, and the temptation was too great.
The temptation to resort to power is present whenever one is in a
position of power. Refusal to resort to retaliation requires a unique
resolve which the church had originally affirmed then largely let go.
There is a circumstance one might call “Constantine’s Law” whereby
those with power invariably resort to the full use of power (especially
retaliation and scapegoating), unless an ethical principle stops them.
As soon as the Americans had nuclear weapons, they used them, and have
threatened their use ever since. It could not have been otherwise, and
will not be in any future confrontation of super-powers – without a
countervailing ethic. Living out this lifestyle of subversion
consistently is a call to endless conversion. It is a highly demanding
call, not immediately attractive at all.
2. We live with both good and evil
According to New Testament writers the Gospel is subversive of all
fallen orders of creation. But it does not follow that the various
institutions, conventions, traditions and governments, etc., under
which influence we all live, are “totally depraved.” Rather, just as in
our fallen humanity, the image of God, built into us at creation, is
never extinguished, however marred. So within the most fallen of
structures some good shines. For example women in our Western Christian
culture have been considered inferior over the centuries, but chivalry
at least offset the total trampling of women’s dignity and rights.
It is true that power over others can be used for good. This is
the case for instance in disciplining children, but it can be so easily
abused. Jacques Ellul warned somewhere that the State’s prosperity
always implies the death of innocents. The early Christians were
nonetheless immensely grateful for the pax Romana (the great peace of
the Roman Empire secured through tight military control), although they
knew all too well Rome’s evil too. Until Constantine, they had a
love-hate relationship toward the Roman Empire. They recognized that,
embryonic in every state, is the head of the Beast.
Capitalism, despite its basis in avarice, and the resulting
oppression of many, has done much good for many people. Also communism
and socialism, despite all the trampling of individual freedoms and
rights, have served the poor well in some countries.
However pragmatism per se is no reason for judging any system as
good. Compared to God’s kingdom in Jesus Christ, there is no “order of
creation” that is good, no not one! Everything is in need of liberation
…” from bondage to decay ….” The good is invariably mixed in with
the evil, the weeds with the wheat. We must hold out for the good, seek
to root out the evil, but carry this out in a spirit of humble
compassion for those who broker power.
In my work within the Canadian criminal justice system I have seen
my role as subversive of much within it. From the overarching goals of
those in power who run the system, and on down, what occurs is often
contrary to the message of this paper. This is not to say that the
entire system is bad, and certainly in no way do I suggest that those
who work in it are evil! But I argue that the system is seriously
flawed, and needs constant changing in the direction of kingdom
peacemaking values.
As Jesus talked about being “in the world but not of it.,”
Christians are to be active subverters of all the old, fallen ways. So
I strive to be ‘in the system of criminal justice, but not of it’. I
want to subvert and thus overcome everything which is at enmity with
the Gospel of Christ. But I want to do so in the spirit of Peter’s
admonition, …” with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear
conscience, so that those who speak maliciously against your good
behaviour in Christ may be ashamed of their slander. It is better, if
it is God’s will, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil (I Peter
16 & 17).”
3. Christians and the exercise of power
I am convinced that the biblical message is a glorious
Emancipation Proclamation. It leads to the subversion of just about
everything in human relationships which prevents humans from fully
embracing freedom and shalom, and from developing to their full
potential. Freedom is not something to be grasped at any more than
Jesus grasped at equality with the Father according to Phil. 2:6. Nor
is subversion something to be imposed upon those holding oppressive
sway over others by engaging in power-plays.
The early church knew that in Christ women were liberated from
male domination. It also understood the cruelty and evil of the tyranny
of Rome and hence permitted among them those who bore incipient
revolutionary attitudes against Rome. To them all Paul counseled loving
submission to one’s enemy, and mutual submission of women to men and
men to women (Eph. 5:21), in hope which would not disappoint them (Rom.
5:5). Paul wrote these words right in the context of suffering of early
Christians at the hands of the enemy, Rome. Paul told the Christians
that God had poured out His love into their hearts by the Holy Spirit.
He reminded them again that the Christians’ use of the subversive power
of Love is in direct inverse relationship to the cruelty and violence
of the enemy. Only love works when one subverts an enemy. But when the
church accepted the invitation to become a major power within the evil
Roman state church leaders also embraced the very evil that had
suppressed them. Incredibly the church took up arms.
Eventually, overcoming the evil Empire led the 4th century church
leaders to embrace the very evil of the Empire. In similar manner
emancipation of black slaves in America led to bitter black-white
relationships ever since. Has modern-day Israel so quickly forgotten
its Holocaust, that it now readily employs violence towards its
domestic and foreign enemies? The Christian-led women’s liberation
movement of last century has given way in many quarters to a radical
feminism more counter-oppressive than much male chauvinism. Radical
feminism has contributed to a worse denial of heterosexual relations
than the Augustinian perversion leading to celibate monastic and
priestly vows. (8)
Paul and the early church knew that in human relationships submission
and love were the only safe ways for Christians to exercise power. The
Christian’s uppermost motivation was to serve the neighbour or the
enemy, and to refrain from ever engaging in injurious wrongdoing to
anybody. “Love does no harm to its neighbour. Therefore love is the
fulfillment of the law (Rom. 13:10).”
4. Working for political change
Christians must ever be vigilant about employing political
processes to achieve victory. Jacques Ellul in The Political Illusion
(1972) speaks to this point well. The early church “overcame” the evil
of the Roman Empire by finally gaining legal status, but the victory
was, in Kee’s words, a “Judas kiss (1982),” or as previously described,
a Pyrrhic victory. Rather than be free in Christ, the church entered a
new bondage to the abuse of power and violence. This was an enslavement
not readily recognized as a defeat in the very jaws of political
victory. Pragmatism in the social ethics of Western Christianity has
apparently provided greater motivation for Christians than faithfulness
to Jesus Christ. This is seen for instance in such notions as “just
war.” Over against Jesus’ alternate way of subversion, Christians may
“win,” but lose in the long run. Remember Paul’s words: …” hope that
is seen is no hope at all (Romans 8:24).”
The ethics of Jesus make for a chronically unsettling way for
Christians to live. Jesus’ ethic of love is alien to much exercise of
power, even though deeply concerned about the life of humanity under
political powers and authorities. Jesus’ ethic makes it difficult to
put down roots or to build monuments for posterity. But this should not
surprise us, given, for example, the language of Hebrews 11 – 13: “And
they admitted that they were foreigners and strangers on earth…
looking for a country of their own… a better country – a heavenly
one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has
prepared a city [polis] for them… here we do not have an enduring
city [polis], but we are looking for the city that is to come
(11:13b;16 & 17; 13:14).”
Despite their relative legitimacy, all earthly political
institutions fail to approximate the Kingdom of God. It is an illusion,
as held by postmillenialists, that one can establish fully God’s
kingdom within the polis of fallen human history. To try through power
brokering is to create a nightmare of varying degrees of horror. Pope
Gregory’s Holy Roman Empire, Calvin’s Geneva, Cromwell’s England,
Puritan colonial America, not to mention similar failed attempts in
Western democracies, etc., are all examples of such terror and folly.
Writers of New Testament scriptures say that the only way Christians
can influence the polis for good according to dynamics of the coming
kingdom, is from a position of relative powerlessness. The Christian’s
influence rests in truth, spoken and acted out in love towards all
one’s neighbours and enemies.
C. J. Cadoux, in an Epilogue to his study of the pre-Constantinian
church, The Early Church and the World (1925 & 1955), says of the
early church era: …” we certainly have a moral reformative movement
on a scale and with a potency unparallelled at any other epoch before
or since… the achievements of the early Church can defy comparison
with those of any other moral or religious movement known to history
(p. 611) (9).” But this powerful effect upon the polis was achieved
without Christians’ having had even a legal standing within the Empire!
It was done from the position of weakness and political powerlessness.
Lesslie Newbigin asked, “When the ancient classical world, which
had seemed so brilliant and so all-conquering, ran out of spiritual
fuel and turned to the church as the one society that could hold a
disintegrating world together, should the church have refused the
appeal and washed its hands of responsibility for the political order?
(1986, p. 101).” Of course the answer is “No.” But from the vantage
point of biblical subversion, should it have taken over the state’s
means of exercising power? Are they not contrary to Jesus’ way? He
said, “The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who
exercise authority over them are given the title Benefactor. But you
are not to be like that (Luke 22:25 & 26a).”
What Jesus prohibited is what the church became, and continued to
be throughout its quest to be a benefactor of culture through dominant
exercise of power. This has persisted right into the era of modern
democracies. Jesus said starkly that one cannot be a benefactor to the
polis if one exercises power in the manner of the Gentiles. How then is
true power exercised? “Instead, the greatest among you should be like
the youngest, and the one who rules like the one who serves (v. 26b).”
What a stark contrast! But this is what is to be expected from one who
came to subvert just about everything! What an overwhelming inversion
of worldly ways, of the common bureaucratic notion of ‘civil servants’.
Alistair Kee wrote, “But there is one conquest made by Constantine, the
effect of which still continues to the present day, his most surprising
yet least acknowledged… He conquered the Christian church. The
conquest was complete, extending over doctrine, liturgy, art and
architecture, comity, ethos and ethics… But this achievement,
unheralded then, unrecognized now, represents Constantine’s greatest
conquest, the one which has persisted largely unchallenged through the
centuries in Europe and wherever European Christianity has spread…
“To be declared heretical by the norms of orthodox Constantinian
Christianity may be a source of relief and encouragement to those who
seek to follow Christ (1982, pp. 154 & 169).”
5. Christian spiritual formation
Finally, I am convinced that the only way of Christian spiritual
formation, including theological formation, is somehow to learn to
identify with the poor, the marginalized, the alien, the outsider, the
outcast, the criminal, etc. This means to suffer their pain along with
them in empathy or compassion until one reads the Bible from the
perspective of the powerless, not the Establishment, the underdog, not
the top dog, the poor, not the well-heeled. The early church had just
such an under-dog vantage point and from it effected amazing changes
within the polis. As Kee wrote at another point: “It is not that the
perspective of the early church provides the norm for critically
assessing the life of the church today. To the contrary, after
Constantine, it is the church under the sway of imperial values which
now provides the perspective for reading the Bible (p. 168).”
This would revolutionize Christian education in church and Bible
school, home and seminary. What if a student obtaining a diploma from a
Christian Bible school, a degree from a liberal arts university or a
seminary, or undergoing ordination to Christian ministry, would first
be required to demonstrate that real empathetic identification with the
poor and with the nation’s domestic and foreign enemies had occurred?
This would be doing incarnational spiritual and theological
transformation. The Incarnation is unthinkable in the context of Jesus’
hobnobbing with the rich, established, and powerful of his day, of
calling down destruction on his enemies, or without intense suffering,
pain and even death (10).
Ominous, however, is the obvious fact that throughout the
centuries since Constantine, a majority of the great thinkers,
theologians and teachers have approached the Bible from the top down,
rather than from the bottom up. Is it any wonder then that this
doctrine of subversion by love should have been lost to the church over
the centuries? Doing theology from the bottom up is like pulling the
rug out from under oneself, and turning one upside down. That however
is the upsetting Gospel imperative. Jesus’ truth is The Upside-Down
Kingdom (Kraybill, 1978).
The non-Christian way to get things done is shot through with
selfishness, like a pile of filthy rags. Diametrically opposed is the
way of the Incarnation or kenosis; the way of suffering love for one’s
enemies. Such patient subversion of just about everything is rooted in
the sure hope of the resurrection.
I suggest therefore that the tradition of top-down theological
education is itself one of the fallen powers and systems of bondage
from which Christians are called to be free. Jesus spoke of glorious
liberation from oppressive pharisaic theological traditions.
Church historian Douglas Frank argues that the core characteristic
of dominant evangelicalism is a spirit of pharisaism; a spirit not
likely easily to disappear from those who in positions of leadership
set the evangelical agenda. He yearns nonetheless for, …” a church
that awakens to the Stranger, Jesus Christ, the Jesus Christ of the
biblical witness; not the denatured, ideologically and morally useful
Jesus Christ of evangelicalism… (11) (1986, p. 277)”
This is hardly good news for some in positions of power and
influence within the church. In the 16th century, such used their power
to hound, torture and execute countless thousands with whom they
disagreed. Today however, the church has no recourse to direct
manipulation of state power (thank God!). Persons committed to the way
of subversion in the Gospel of Jesus Christ are often simply ignored,
or else labelled “saints.” To the latter Dorothy Day used to demure by
saying she refused to be dismissed so easily!
A professor of church history once warned me of the dangers of
ideological bias in thinking that the early church was essentially
pacifist. He seemed oblivious to how that warning could be turned
around. Alistair Kee’s book, Constantine versus Christ in this regard
is subtitled, The Triumph of Ideology (1981). During personal
discussion with John Yoder, he alluded to the fact that few mainline
scholars accept his pacifism, yet none generates biblical arguments
opposing it. He suggested that theologian Stanley Hauerwas might better
have served the cause of Christ by not declaring himself pacifist. He
might have instead written his ethics as a kind of fifth columnist,
never openly showing himself.
When Christianity Today did an otherwise positive article on
Stanley Hauerwas, it was simply said that evangelicals would not like
his pacifism! Yet pacifism pervades all his writings on Christian
ethics, and therefore must be taken as fundamental to his (biblically
based) thought. In his book The Peaceable Kingdom (1984), he recognized
that seriously following Christ’ teachings relegates one to the
backwaters of debate over ethics within academic circles.
To this, the writer to the Hebrews would say: “Let us, then, go to
him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not
have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come
(13:13 & 14).”
Sadly, there is a parting of the ways; a parting as serious as the
denial of any central issues of faith. Yoder suggests this in “A
Critique of North American Evangelical Ethics” (1985). Sufficient to
say that the hoary tradition of dominant Christian teaching in the area
of ethics represents a fallen power equally to be reckoned with as the
fallen power of the state.
A profound reformation, in line with ecclesia semper reformanda,
is needed! In the 16th century, church and state on Catholic and
Reformed sides of the Reformation sought to oppress, root out, torture,
and execute all who took the ethics of Jesus seriously. Jesus’ words
then and now are apt, “Blessed are you when people insult you,
persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of
me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in
the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you (Matt.
5:11 & 12).”
The entrenched hegemony of religious establishments within the
history of both Judaism and Christendom invariably have been
persecuting powers. It is no less so today, even though the means of
violent oppression have of necessity been curtailed in contemporary
democratic states.
CONCLUSION
I am convinced that we Christians are not sufficiently converted.
This is the reason the Gospel as Subversion is overlooked and missed.
It is also the reason the Bible has been consistently used in support
of the conservative status quo whereby the exercise of oppressive power
over others is perpetuated.
So that we may begin to see the kingdom right side up we need to
be fully stood upside down! This cannot be accomplished by the pharisee
amongst us! Our hermeneutics of reading the Bible must change. Paul
said: “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 (Eph.
6:12).” And again: “The creation waits in eager expectation … [to]…
be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious
freedom of the children of God (Rom. 8:19 & 21).”
What a PROCLAMATION OF EMANCIPATION! What a hope and prospect! We
may now begin to know something of the stirrings of that freedom. We
venture out in faith empowered by the crucified and resurrected one,
who overcame evil by doing good. This same resurrected Jesus founded a
movement destined to culminate one day in the subversion of just about
everything!
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ENDNOTES
6(6) This of course raises troubling questions about domestic violence.
The argument of this paper is: submission means refusal to retaliate in
kind to be sure, but also to overcome the evil of child abuse, spousal
abuse, elder abuse, etc., with good. How that is done is problematic in
a culture that inflicts pain for pain inflicted so routinely that any
intervention to stop abuse carries with it an inevitable sting against
which this paper is arguing. Much more work needs to be done beyond the
scope of this paper on how to overcome the evil of domestic violence in
a nonretaliatory way.
7(7) A philosophical rule of thumb is: The reigning worldview of today
becomes inevitably the myth of tomorrow. Lesslie Newbigin in
Foolishness to the Greeks (1986), argues persuasively against the
so-called “modernism” of the Enlightenment. René Girard, Gil Bailie,
James Alison and others, mentioned in the NOTE at the essay’s end, deal
with the Gospel’s revolutionary demythologizing power from a literary
and anthropological perspective. A similar book to Newbigin’s needs to
be written entitled, A Stumbling Block to the Powerful, that would
present the case for the nonviolent way of the cross against all
legitimations of resort to violence and scapegoating. Both titles arise
from Paul in I Cor. 1:18ff.
8(8) Walter Wink provides many illustrations of a similar point in a
disturbing article entitled: ‘On Not Becoming What We Hate’, the first
of four which appeared in Sojourners, November, 1986, through February,
1987.
9(9) Such a claim could likewise be made concerning the church growth
of this time. This is one reason, incidentally, why so much current
witnessing seems to be, to steal a phrase from Sojourners magazine,
‘evangelism without the Gospel’. For what shall it profit one to
evangelize the whole world, and never preach nor demonstrate the
Gospel? In our evangelistic efforts are people really being called to a
metanoia in their behaviour? If Instead only some kind of mere change
of belief is in view, quite abstract and highly individualistic, is
this Christian conversion at all? While there is a need for a change of
belief, this is barely the beginning of the matter – certainly not in
Jesus! It seems such minimalist Christianity arises from a footnote
theology of John 3:16 that reads: “Except out enemies!” after “For God
so loved the world,” “whoever believes,” and “shall not perish.”
10(10) It would mean as well a great hesitancy in the use of the
electronic media, since they are intrinsically so opposite to
incarnational ways.
11(11) John Alexander similarly dedicates his book, Your Money or Your
Life: A New Look at Jesus’ View of Wealth and Power (1986), to his
father this way: “He is an unusual fundamentalist; for he believes that
inerrancy extends to the teachings of Jesus.”