Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies

by N.T. Wright

Peter Leithart (Against Christianity[Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2002], p. 136) writes: ‘As soon as the church appears, it becomes clear to any alert politician that worldly politics is no longer the only game in town. The introduction of the church into any city means that the city has a challenger within its walls.’

This is the main thesis of Holland, Dominion. Note too Smith (Awaiting the Kingdom, pp. 93–4), who believes that the task of ‘political theology’ is ‘re-narrating to late modern liberal societies their religious and theological inheritance’.

In fact, Christian faith is meant to be a public faith, for the common good, which compels us to do good, to make good, and to build good in private and public endeavours. As for the answer to the second question, we are compelled to be Christians for the sake of our municipality,

How does God’s authority relate to the authority of the State? 2 What type of state should Christians support? 3 How should Christians manage differences within the diversity of the state they find themselves a part of?

The takeaway is that almost any government is better than anarchy. God gives government as a gift to humanity to bring welfare, safety, order and justice to human communities.

The role of government is, as Calvin commented, ‘to provide for the common safety and peace of all’ and ‘to preserve the tranquillity of the dominion, to restrain the seditious stirrings of restless men. To help those forcibly oppressed, to punish evil deeds’.3

Yet almost nobody today talks as if the State is a divine servant, is accountable to God, or exercises divine authority in its governance.

state. In this post-Christendom settlement, authority was delegated not from on high, from God to the king, but transmitted from below, from people to public officials.

Thus, governing actors, rather than trying to reflect heavenly authority in an earthly administration, now understood their objective as executing the will of the citizens as it applied to justice, security and welfare. Instead of ‘the divine right of kings’ (jus divinum regum) we have ‘the voice of the people is the voice of God’ (vox populi, vox Dei). Instead, of ‘the King’s Law’ (Rex Lex) with absolute monarchy, we have ‘the law is king’ (Lex Rex) with the rule of law over kings and

paupers alike. It is a fact that forcing the State to answer to its own citizens promotes tran...

Be that as it may, Western liberal democracies, without the stability produced by a representative monarch or a shared meta-narrative, have always run the risk of fragmentation and republican fratricide.

The problem with state authority from below – and this is proving to be the key vulnerability of liberal democracies today – is that they must be rooted in some kind of consensus.

agenda. Without a shared story, we cease caring about the common good and allow our minds to be dulled by endless entertainment, we cease to have the ability to discern truth from lies, or we demand that all opposition is destroyed even if this overthrows our own freedoms. Without shared symbols, stories, ideals, goals and visions of human life together, a liberal democracy can fracture and fragment its freedoms away. Without belief in one who sits above the table of petty partisan squabbles, we are destined to be governed by grifters and torn apart by grievances.

The ultimate sin of government is not against law, tribe or house, but against the one who wills that government must govern justly, wisely and benevolently.

1 God gives authority to the State for the common good;

2 the State does not possess authority as much as it performs a divinely delegated task with authority; 3 the notion of a divinely delegated state authority as per Christendom was open to manifold abuses, hence the need for an authority that operates on the basis of the consensus of the governed; 4 the problem with stateship from below is that it becomes fragmented and fratricidal without a sustaining narrative or a supporting vision of the common good; therefore 5 Christians can insist that the State is neither infallible nor inviolable; it answers to God, and the stories and symbols of Jesus can furnish a republic or commonwealth with resources to forge bonds of civil affection and common purpose.

Love of neighbour is a way to disrupt hierarchical, grievance-based, identity-ordered ways of assigning status.14 The natural sequel is love of enemies,15 and the best way to destroy our enemies is to make them our friends, our partners, our neighbours. If we add to that the parable of the Good Samaritan,16 then we recognise that our neighbours, who are religiously and ethnically different from us, have the same capacity for goodness, love and mercy that we possess.

Democracy’s strength is that it can sustain diversity. Democracy’s weakness is that diversity creates conflict.

Confident pluralism has a very simple premise, namely, that people have the right to be different, to think differently, to live differently, to worship differently, without fear of reprisal. Confident pluralism operates with the idea that politics has instrumental rather than ultimate value. In other words, politics is a means, not an end. No state, no political party, no leader is God-like, or can demand blind devotion. Any attempt by political actors to create social homogeneity by compelling conformity, by bullying minorities or by punishing dissent, whether in religion or in policy, is anti-liberal and undemocratic.

The fact is that the consciences of some people will lead them to kneel for a national anthem, while others will proudly stand and place their hand on their heart. In such a diverse society, as Alasdair MacIntyre said, politics is ‘civil war carried on by other means’.

Lee C. Camp opened his book on Christianity and politics with a very provocative statement: ‘The faith of the Christian is the last great hope of earth.’1 That claim will raise the eyebrows of people who think that ‘progress’, economic growth, nuclear power, nuclear disarmament, population reduction, social justice, socialism, diplomacy, open borders, religious revival, religious decline or technology will be the saviour for humanity’s problems. Yet we believe with prophetic

First, we have recognised that the world we live in now is at a moment of social and economic turmoil, with new imperial powers rising and democratic nations tearing themselves apart.

Second, we’ve observed that God’s people have always had to deal with empires, from the many empires of the ancient Near East, to the empires of Greece and Rome, to Mongol and Muslim dominions.

Third, Christianity has always had a public witness, and our conception

of the kingdom shapes how we relate to the political and social challenges of the day.

Fourth, we laid out that governing authority is a God-given institution that, in part, carries forward the divine design for humans to be custodians of creation.

Fifth, we have argued too that the Church, meaning all practising Christians in reality, has a duty to bear public witness.

We have no misapprehensions about establishing a Christian utopia after one good revival or in the aftermath of a cathartic revolution.

Sixth, we have explored how Christians should relate to governing authorities. We discovered in the New Testament that there is an oscillating perspective of submission to state authorities and at other times subversively resisting them.

Seventh, there are many varieties of tyranny or unjust government that Christians may find the need to resist. The ones identified include totalitarian regimes, whether Fascist or Communist, Christian nationalism, and post-liberal civic totalism. Christian faith is an allegiance to King Jesus, and that

allegiance often requires the Church to engage in active defiance of tyranny, cruelty, corruption and despotism.

Eighth, and finally, we have examined the very nature of state authority itself. We concluded that, while government is good, the authority of the state needs to be limited. No state apparatus should aspire to be all-powerful. In the quest for a good and just state, we have set...