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

by N.T. Wright

We talk about economic ‘pressures’ or political ‘forces’, which seem to mean more than simply ‘the markets won’t let us do that’ or ‘policies like that won’t win many votes’. We might talk about ‘the spirit of the age’ or about ‘collective delusions’ or worse. Some who lived through the horrors of mid-twentieth-century Europe spoke of the dark mood that gripped Germany in the 1930s, making it easy for a great many people to believe certain things, however untrue and wicked they were, and almost impossible for them to think or believe certain other things, however wise and healthy they were. Perhaps such questions only become fully clear with hindsight. Perhaps the widespread lies of any particular generation are ignored because, like the mountain outside the back door, they are simply part of the regular horizon, and so fail to register.

But both Paul and John insisted that Jesus had achieved something previously unthinkable. He had won the decisive victory over the ‘principalities’ and ‘powers’, and was now enthroned as Lord of both heaven and earth. This places the question of the Church’s relation to the ‘powers’ – of whatever sort – in a special spotlight. Something has changed. But what? And where does it now leave those who follow Jesus?

The theme of ‘new creation’ that permeates the resurrection narratives of chapters 20 and 21 answers to the biblical promises in the Psalms and Isaiah of the new world to be born once the dark anti-creation forces have been defeated. The same picture emerges dramatically from Colossians. The great poem in chapter 1 brings together two moments, ‘creation’ and ‘reconciliation’, without explaining either why ‘reconciliation’ was necessary or, in any detail, how it was accomplished (by ‘the blood of his cross’ is the only hint). Thus the opening statement of creation-through-the-image, the passage read by the Prime Minister at the Coronation, is set in poetic parallel to the statement of reconciliation: He is the image of God, the invisible one, The firstborn of all creation, For in him all things were created, In the heavens and here on the earth. Things we can see and things we cannot – Thrones and lordships and rulers and powers – All things were created both through him and for him . . . He is the start of it all, Firstborn from realms of the dead; So in all things he might be the chief. For in him all the Fullness was glad to dwell And through him to reconcile all to himself, Making peace through the blood of his cross, Through him – yes, things on the earth, And also the things in the heavens.35 The poem draws together in complex and subtle ways the themes of creation and ‘wisdom’, of Genesis 1 and Proverbs 8, in order to tell the story of Jesus as Israel’s Messiah and a...

God the Creator wanted his world to be wisely governed, as it were, from within, by his image-bearing human creatures. Indeed, that delegated authority is one of the primary meanings of ‘image-bearing’.

But why does creation – complete with all its powers, both earthly and heavenly – need to be ‘reconciled’? Clearly, the second half of the poem presupposes something not said here, something corresponding both to Genesis 3 – 11 and to the long story of humankind’s failure, of Israel’s failure. These multiple disasters have led to the point where the ‘principalities’ and ‘powers’, though created in, through and for the one we now know as Jesus, had accrued terrible power to themselves through human idolatry, and were now on the rampage through creation, wreaking havoc with people’s lives and with God’s world. They needed to be brought into line: to be ‘reconciled’.

He [God] blotted out the handwriting that was against us, opposing us with its legal demands. He took it right out of the way, by nailing it to the cross. He stripped the rulers and authorities of their armor, and displayed them contemptuously to public view, celebrating his triumph over them in him.

It takes all of Galatians to spell this out more fully, and even then it remains dense and challenging.39

The cross remains a vast, dark mystery, not least because evil itself is a dark mystery, making no sense within God’s good world.

God intends that humans should share in running his world, and should be held accountable. Structures through which this happens – though still vulnerable to abuse and distortion – are not automatically evil. On the contrary, they are thus in principle reaffirmed and celebrated. As with everything else in God’s creation, once they stop being worshipped they stop being demonic. It takes the victory of the cross to break their power. But, once that has happened, wise humans can and must rise to the challenge of establishing and maintaining God’s intention for a well-functioning human society. We recognise, of course, that all our present efforts will fall short of the ideal, but we cannot for that reason shirk the attempt.

We should be clear: they were not saying, in effect, that human authorities were unimportant, irrelevant or to be abolished forthwith. They were calling them to account, informing or reminding them of their God-given role in the Creator’s world.

In other words, it is a central part of the Church’s task, in the power and leading of the spirit, to hold up a mirror to worldly power, to hold authorities to account.

The early Christians, like the Jews, focused their critique not on how the rulers had become rulers but on what the rulers then did with the power they now had. The idea of speaking the truth to power was not new. It was central to the prophetic vocation.

God wants his world to be properly run, but the standard for ‘properly’ is that of Psalm 72: the wise, healing justice of the Messiah’s rule, caring for the poor and needy, confronting and overthrowing the bullies and the oppressors, opening the way for the whole world to be filled with God’s glory. Where that is not happening, the Messiah’s people are commissioned, and equipped by the spirit, to point out the failure and urge people, as Jesus and his first followers did, to repent and amend their ways.

Why has this vision, of holding the world to account, not been eagerly embraced by followers of Jesus?

But at another level – and this brings us with a flying leap into our own era – the Church has often remained unaware of this aspect of its calling. There are many Christians today, not least in the modern Western world, who have no idea that the Jesus whom they worship did indeed win the victory over the dark powers of the world, let alone what that might mean in practice. And this has left the door open for very different, and unbiblical, visions of the political calling of the followers of Jesus. As in earlier days, when it was possible for devout Christians to imagine that a bloodthirsty ‘crusade’ might be God’s will, so today many are simply, and sometimes dangerously, confused. Some opt for an escapist piety in the present and a distant ‘heaven’ in the future, leaving the present world untouched lest they get embroiled in its messy ways.

For the Neoplatonist, the aim was not for a multi-ethnic and multilingual community to worship together as the sign of hope in the present, pointing towards what the Creator God would eventually do for the whole cosmos. The aim was for the individual ‘soul’ to be so purified that, after death, it would leave the world of space, time and matter and make its way into the divine presence in ‘heaven’. It cannot be stressed too strongly that none of this is found in the New Testament.49 It represents a major step away from the biblical vision to which Jesus and his first followers were obedient. (This is why, of course, from the third century onwards, methods of reading Scripture were developed to make the Bible address what people thought it ought to be addressing – a process that continues to our own day.) As long as people are focused on ‘going to heaven’, they will have less compulsion to pursue the New Testament’s vision of a united trans-ethnic and trans-local family worshipping the one God and thus holding the powers of the world to account. Indeed, they may warn that this is all too ‘worldly’, a distraction from a proper ‘heavenly’ focus. Thus the Church’s vocation to speak truth to power, the truth of God’s wise, healing justice, sustained by the knowledge that the powers of the world have actually been defeated on the cross, can easily go by the board when people ‘translate’ the language of Jesus’ victory into the message of ‘going to heaven’ despite ongoing sin. Of c...

To read on in Colossians 3 is to be struck by what amounts to a miniature version of the Sermon on the Mount: a blueprint for a new-creation people, demonstrating before the world what a genuinely human community should look like: You must be tender-hearted, kind, humble, meek, and ready to put up with anything. You must bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against someone else, you must forgive each other . . . On top of all this you must put on love, which ties everything together and makes it complete. Let the Messiah’s peace be the deciding factor in your hearts; that’s what you were called to, within the one body. And be thankful. Let the Messiah’s word dwell richly among you, as you teach and exhort one another in all wisdom, singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to God with grateful hearts. And whatever you do, in word or action, do everything in the name of the master, Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the father.

Once we start pondering what this way of life really means, we have, in effect, a whole political vision, including economy, the environment, community development and plenty more.

It became fatally easy to suppose, as many in Europe, not least Britain, had done before, that this or that country was automatically ‘Christian’, and that whatever it needed to do in pursuit of its national identity and destiny would somehow be underwritten by that ‘religious’ label.

‘religion’, such as it had become, could easily be co-opted in favour of specific national aspirations. Thus the Deutsche Christen were an important part of Hitler’s programme, just as ninety years later the idea of ‘Holy Russia’ has been invoked in support of Putin’s war against Ukraine.

This kind of ‘Christian nationalism’ is, as it were, an ideological accident waiting to happen. It presents a standing temptation, whenever the on-earth-as-in-heaven message of the New Testament has been sidelined in favour of the supposedly ‘spiritual’ teaching of ‘going to heaven’, either in the ascent of the soul after death or in a ‘rapture’ at the Lord’s return.57 The result is clear: the ‘powers’ are still dictating the terms.

When a supposed ‘Christian nationalism’ goes hand in hand with a culture that glorifies violence, and the means of violence, at whatever level; where the churches are so divided that they have no collective witness with which to speak the truth to the powers in question; where people ignore the regular biblical insistence on the love of enemies, and the goal of a single multi-ethnic worshipping community, and prefer de facto ethnically based separate assemblies; where truth ceases to matter, either because it is deconstructed into ‘my truth’ and ‘your truth’ or because political leaders so obviously tell lies – then the gospel, the euangelion, is being denied, irrespective of how many people within ‘the system’ think of themselves as evangelisch or ‘evangelical’.

For every high-profile would-be ‘Christian’ leader who has led all-too-willing followers into a battle based on lies, arrogance, greed and the lust for power, there are (thank God) countless unsung heroines and heroes who have heeded the words of Jesus about those who want to be leaders needing to be the servant of all.

We have a sense that the Church, for much of its history, has been quite happy to think of Jesus having all authority in heaven, but has yet to work out what it might mean that he – the Jesus of cross, resurrection and spirit – already possesses all authority on earth. A good way to begin that discussion might be with Psalm 72, which emphasises that the priorities of God’s true King are looking after the poor and needy and rescuing them from oppression and violence. The reconciled ‘powers’ – the structures of a wise society, working together as true human beings to reflect the loving, healing wisdom and justice of the Creator God – need constantly to be recalled to this vision.

Our mission is not to be the ‘religious department’ of an empire. It is, rather, to build for the kingdom.

Ever since the Enlightenment, God, religion and the Church have been removed into the private sphere, like a demented elderly relative confined to the upstairs attic: we can visit him from time to time, but he mustn’t be allowed to come downstairs and embarrass us, especially when there are visitors present.

The Church does not exist to provide religious sponsorship to anyone’s programmes.

Blair and Cameron were prime examples of what happens when a Christian politician doesn’t think through a serious Christian political theology.

We must be concerned with the entailments of the gospel for ourselves, for our churches, for our cities and for our world. Oliver O’Donovan puts it well:

Theology must be political if it is to be evangelical. Rule out the political questions and you cut short the proclamation of God’s saving power; you leave people enslaved where they ought to be set free from sin – their own sin and others’.

There is no opt-out for us if we are committed to Jesus as Lord and the way that lordship becomes part of a life lived in community with others. To be clear, this is not about a Christian takeover. It is about Christian testimony in an age of troubles, terror, tyranny and tragedy.

Accordingly, we must ‘do God’; we must be involved, active and activist, in public, in politics, in matters for which our kingdom-calling requires us.

It was almost as if Jesus, his kingdom-message and healings, were just the warm-up to Paul’s letters.

Advancing the kingdom means promoting the gospel from Jesus and about Jesus. Kingdom-work is continuing to do the very same things that Jesus himself did among individuals in need, challenging self-assured religious types, offering mercy to the downtrodden and forgotten, warning of judgement, exhorting faith in God’s generous forgiveness, and speaking words of truth in the halls of political power.

God intends his wise, creative, loving presence and power to be reflected, ‘imaged’ if you like, into his world through his human creatures. God has enlisted us to act as his stewards in the project of creation and in new creation.

If that is true, then, every act of love, gratitude and kindness; every work of art or music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely disabled child to read or to walk; every act of care for a dying patient; every deed of comfort and support for refugees; everything done for one’s fellow human beings; everything to preserve and beautify the created order; all spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the Church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, every prayer for the heart’s longings, and the worship that makes the name of Jesus honoured in the world – all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make.

But one must be wary of indifference masquerading as humility, as if to say I am too insignificant to make a difference. As if to presume that God cannot use me, though he has used people less educated and less fortunate than me. Do not fall into the sin – yes, we should use that word – of becoming merely a religious consumer rather than a kingdom-contributor.

Let your heart be burdened by the needs you see about you. Let your mind be haunted by a great missionary task that remains unfinished. Let your conscience be pricked by a grave injustice that goes on blighting your land.

Let your mind be haunted by a great missionary task that remains unfinished. Let your conscience be pricked by a grave injustice that goes on blighting your land.

We live in interesting times, dire times, dangerous times, tragic and terrible times.

Perhaps the single greatest threat is not the rise of secularism or the emptying of churches, but the apathy and indifference of the churches that are still here.

One can achieve much in public office, serving in a local council, a state legislature or a federal senate, or even within a government department. One can do great good for a great many people. But one can also do much damage if bad decisions are made or if political expedience proceeds at the expense of public interest. Plus, there’s the temptation to see power as an end in and of itself; a means to influence, status and wealth; or else as an opportunity for corruption and grift. Even if one starts out with the noblest of intentions, those intentions can be worn down by cynicism or ruined by greed. They can end up gaming the system rather than bettering the system.

To understand political office as a Christian vocation is obviously prone to manifold abuses. Anyone claiming that God is on their side or that they alone represent the position that God endorses is treading on dangerous ground, perhaps even thin ice, for God is not mocked by such human hubris. It is sheer arrogance to claim that one has a special relationship with God so that our challengers and critics are opposed to God if they are opposing us. One can aspire to have God on one’s side in politics, but one must never claim it for certain, nor boast of it as a matter of indubitable fact. Those warnings aside – the temptations of power and the dangers of mixing God and politics – it can be a great service to one’s nation to have men and women of deep Christian conviction in public office. We should not be seeking to lord it over others, but to leaven society with Christian influence.

Anyone claiming that God is on their side or that they alone represent the position that God endorses is treading on dangerous ground, perhaps even thin ice, for God is not mocked by such human hubris. It is sheer arrogance to claim that one has a special relationship with God so that our challengers and critics are opposed to God if they are opposing us. One can aspire to have God on one’s side in politics, but one must never claim it for certain, nor boast of it as a matter of indubitable fact.

When Christian men and women have confidence in their convictions, have experience of life’s struggles, see public office as a means, not an end, seek the common good rather than limited privilege, act transparently and respect the rule of law, and cherish consensus rather than stirring up partisan frenzy – then we are seeing people with a real opportunity to build for the kingdom.

In a healthy liberal democracy, Christian voices will not be stymied, but neither will non-Christian voices be censored. There should be limits on a Christian influence in government; it must never be absolute. Here we do well to remember that the whole purpose of Christian influence is not the pursuit of Christian hegemony but the giving of faithful Christian witness. Christian hegemony treats Christians as a type of invisible ruling class or an unspoken civil religion that demands public assent. In contrast, Christian witness is offered in a spirit of persuasion, rather than in a spirit of pursuing raw public power. By ‘witness’, we mean offering a type of ‘faithful presence’, as James Davison Hunter calls it, in public institutions, where any power wielded is redemptive and relational rather than concerned with power attained by any means.

Yes, there are risks involved in public forays of faith into the public sector, but there are also risks if one does not speak out. Politics is like fire: get too close and you will burn; stay away and you will freeze. One need only consider the work of people such as the British archbishop William Temple or the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr to see how Christians can shape, for the better, the political settlement of their day. And that is without even considering the positive legacy of Christians in advocating everything from the abolition of slavery, to indigenous rights, to action on poverty and environmental stewardship. Even if there are two kingdoms,48 it does not mean that Christians are prohibited from moving between them or working among them. We are not required to stick to ‘spiritual things’, even if that means that some political leaders will excoriate us as ‘meddlesome priests’ or ‘God-bothering nuisances’. It is our commitment to Jesus that means that we do sometimes have to make a meddlesome nuisance of ourselves.

One need only consider the work of people such as the British archbishop William Temple or the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr to see how Christians can shape, for the better, the political settlement of their day. And that is without even considering the positive legacy of Christians in advocating everything from the abolition of slavery, to indigenous rights, to action on poverty and environmental stewardship. Even if there are two kingdoms,48 it does not mean that Christians are prohibited from moving between them or working among them. We are not required to stick to ‘spiritual things’, even if that means that some political leaders will excoriate us as ‘meddlesome priests’ or ‘God-bothering nuisances’. It is our commitment to Jesus that means that we do sometimes have to make a meddlesome nuisance of ourselves.

What we can do at present is ‘seek the welfare of the city’ in whatever city or village we sojourn, direct institutions such as government towards their God-given tasks of administrating justly as Paul taught, lead wisely like a Joseph when called to serve, give advice to power like Daniel when asked, deliver (as Huldah did) words of prophetic warning and encouragement to rulers, and pray for our political leaders so that we might lead a peaceable life and be known for our godliness.

Your church is not a retirement village for moralising geriatrics. Your church is supposed to be more like a boot camp for soldiers of Jesus who go out into the world wearing the full armour of God, preaching reconciliation with God, loving their neighbours, sowing good deeds in the soil of hurting hearts, and becoming the scourge of the corrupt and the champion of the weak.