Many readers of the New Testament will, at some point or other, be troubled by the question of why Jesus’ earthly ministry did not address the Roman occupation. Perhaps as a child in Sunday school you were taught that the Jews were expecting a military deliverer, and that the form of Jesus’ work was unexpected because he died at the hands of the Roman oppressors and brought spiritual rather than military deliverance. Yet, reading through the Old Testament, focused as so much of it is upon the history of Israel and the Lord’s preservation and deliverance of them, the seeming absence of national deliverance might be narratively unsatisfying and the idea that political concerns could be lightly shrugged off even more so. Jesus declares the coming of the kingdom of God: should not such a kingdom have involved, at a bare minimum, the defeat of the Romans?
In The Desire of the Nations, Oliver O’Donovan takes up this question, reflecting upon the gospel stories of the census tax (Matthew 22:15–22, ‘Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?’) and the didrachm tax (Matthew 17:24–27). He observes that Jesus’ responses are neither those of a defiant zealot or a quiescent secularist.1 Rather, utterly confident in the coming order of the kingdom, Jesus felt no need to adopt an insubordinate posture to the passing powers of the present age. Indeed, to do so would have granted them a significance they no longer possessed. While demonstrating that he was not a rebel, in the light of the kingdom of God, Jesus’ compliance with the authorities was peripheral. They were stewards of a vanishing order while he was the Son who would inherit all.
Commenting upon the surprising focus of Jesus’ works of power: demonic powers and the ‘strong man’ who kept Israel in bondage, O’Donovan writes:
[H]e treated the fact of Roman occupation casually, with little respect and less urgency. Israel was enslaved to spiritual enemies, and of this its colonial status was, at most, a secondary symptom… Jesus’ preference for addressing the demonic rather than the colonial oppressors looks, from the point of view of our own narrowed conception of politics, like a decidedly apolitical inclination.2
While he was not a zealot, it would be mistaken to consider Jesus apolitical. We are inclined to take the existence of power as a given, with ‘politics’ being concerned with who wields it. O’Donovan challenges us to reflect upon the threat of ‘depoliticization’, upon situations characterized by a ‘lack of power, or … its excessive diffusion’.3 There are places where natural disasters, for instance, prevent political structures and authorities from being established or overwhelm those that exist, or places where a multitude of opposing forces (‘a kingdom divided against itself’) prevent order from emerging. In his ministry, Jesus brought profound power into a situation that was lacking it. O’Donovan continues:
Yet that new power was directed against the forces which most immediately hindered Israel from living effectively as a community in God’s service, the spiritual and natural weaknesses which drained its energies away. This was not an apolitical gesture, but a statement of true political priorities. Jesus’ departure from the zealot programme showed his more theological understanding of power, not his disinterest in it. The empowerment of Israel was more important than the disempowerment of Rome; for Rome disempowered would in itself by no means guarantee Israel empowered. The paradigm of the Exodus was, we might say, being read with an emphasis not on the conquest of the Egyptians but on the conquest of the sea. The power which God gave to Israel did not have to be taken from Egypt, or from Rome, first. The gift of power was not a zero-sum operation. God could generate new power by doing new things in Israel’s midst.4
Jesus did not need to wrest power from Rome to empower his people. His gift of power not only exceeded anything Rome either possessed or could grant, but was quite different in kind from anything Rome could offer. And, had Jesus’ power been positioned chiefly in antagonism to Rome’s, its true character would have been misunderstood by his contemporaries (and perhaps also by the Church). Jesus’ acts of power attracted some politically restive persons, people with designs to make him king by force (e.g. John 6:15). Yet the kind of power they sought was not that of the kingdom of God.
O’Donovan noted the way that Jesus’ kingdom mission can appear to many to be ‘apolitical’, as it left the seeming primary threat of the colonial oppressors unaddressed. Behind such an impression there commonly lurk misguided notions of the nature of true political power, typically regarding the essence of power to be coercive force. However, the power of Jesus’ kingdom has a character that radically exceeds this (even if it certainly does not entirely exclude it). The power of Rome, to which the known world was in thrall, was not powerful enough, not ‘political’ enough. Jesus granted his people a power that radically exceeded Rome’s in its affordance of the resources required to ground a community’s life.
At Pentecost there is the gift of true power, flowing from Christ’s exaltation in the Ascension. The Spirit gives power that, while not narrowly focused on overcoming Rome as the supposed obstacle, is by no means apolitical. The power of Pentecost establishes the fundamental realities upon which effective political community depend.
At the heart of a society’s political life are its communications, its meaningful exchanges; the gift of the Holy Spirit is a transformation and renewal of the speech and the broader communication of God’s people. The Spirit is the common possession of the people of God, and the ground of its communications, each member re-presenting to others the shared Gift.
To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. For to one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the ability to distinguish between spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills (1 Corinthians 12:7–11).
The communications of a political body are paradigmatically encountered in its speech. At Pentecost fiery tongues descend upon the disciples, enabling them to speak the consuming word of God. The Spirit gives conviction and boldness for candid speech, demonstrated in the fearless witness of the Apostles. He also grants words persuasive power, inspiring confidence in the effectiveness of truthful proclamation. He authorizes and empowers us to declare the effective judgments of God, binding and loosing. The Church acts ‘in the name of Jesus’, working not with an authority of its own, but as bearers of the name of the One above all principalities and powers.
The Spirit establishes communion and a bond of peace (Ephesians 4:3). He is the love that holds the people of God in union. He overcomes enmity, making brothers of enemies. He frees people from the guilt and shame that render them abject and servile. He is the common Spirit that grounds mutual trust, service, and thereby equips us for effective shared action. He gives hope that saves societies from despair (Romans 15:13). He releases people from the fear that holds them in bondage and grants them the confidence of faith (Romans 8:15). In these and other ways, the Spirit both overcomes the fracturing of human society and grants a sure unity and confidence by which it can act.
The Spirit is the ‘Spirit of wisdom’ (Ephesians 1:17), the one who enlightens, illumines, and inspires. As such, the Spirit enables us to discern things accurately, judge rightly, and act prudently. Faithful and effective leadership is a gift of the Spirit. Joshua was a suitable leader of Israel as he ‘was full of the spirit of wisdom’ (Deuteronomy 34:9). In Acts 6:3, the Seven were to be selected from ‘men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom’. The Spirit gives to the Church charisms of teaching and leadership, gifts which any society requires if it is to flourish: ‘And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ…’ (Ephesians 4:11–12).
Despite having wise and good laws, the history of Israel was one of national failure and tragedy. The mismatch between God-given laws and rebellious hearts meant that the former was insufficient to secure a good society; indeed, it ended up functioning chiefly as a means of condemnation. The promise of the new covenant was the gift of the Spirit to the people, writing the Law on their hearts and securing a willing and understanding obedience:
“Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:31–34).
“And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules” (Ezekiel 36:26–27).
Pentecost, commonly understood as a feast commemorating the gift of the Law, provides the fulfilment of Sinai. In the gift of the Spirit, the Law is placed within human hearts, producing a free obedience. In such a manner, the Law achieves its intended end and its true effectiveness. The compliance wrested by coercion from the unwilling is weaker and shallower than the obedience freely rendered by a renovated and loving will, yet we too easily consider the securing of the former to be more ‘political’ than the securing of the latter. Coercion may be a necessary form of political power in a fallen world—my claim is not that it is not often needed, nor that it is not a real form of power—but it is not as essential or focal to authority or power as many believe. The ‘obedience of faith…among all the nations’ (Romans 1:5) brought about by the work of the Spirit is far more powerful than the slavish service rendered to the lords of the Gentiles.
Nations and kingdoms flourish and fade, tossed and turned by the unpredictable currents and storms of history. Great empires collapse, crisis and misfortune befall the wisest rulers. No one can shepherd the winds of history, yet all polities exist at their mercy. If those who fancied themselves immune to such forces are remembered, it is chiefly for their hubris.
At the mercy of the whims of fortune and the forces of fate, political powers must always reckon with the possibility of radical reversal and failure. Yet, reading the New Testament, we are repeatedly confronted with the assurance of the Church. Faced with powerful opponents and in profoundly uncertain times, the early Christians were nonetheless utterly confident in the success of their mission. This was not a result of exhaustive planning and careful consideration of all possible contingencies on their part. Rather, their confidence arose from their knowledge of Christ’s authority in the heavens and the power of the Spirit moving them on earth.
In Acts we see several instances of the Spirit’s ‘matchmaking’ work, working, beyond the knowledge of the parties involved, in two or more different persons and then bringing them together: Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch, Saul and Ananias, Peter and Cornelius. The wind of the Spirit blows where it wishes and, although people can see his effects, they cannot tell where he is coming from and where he is going. Nevertheless, when the Spirit is driving and orchestrating your mission, although you cannot shepherd it, the wind of the Spirit is on your side. Not only did the apostles know that, in Christ’s exaltation, they had the Mandate of Heaven for their cause, but providence was determinedly working in their favour. And the Church can be confident that, though driven powerful by the wind of the Spirit even beyond its capacity to set its own course, it will never finally be shattered upon the rocks of history, nor will the Spirit ever leave it becalmed. The Spirit of God’s providential wind fills the Church in Christ.
The confidence granted by the Spirit is a confidence of access to God in prayer and in the effectiveness of prayer. We can come to the throne of the cosmos as sons and daughters. We can ask for what we need for the mission, assured that the Father delights to give the Spirit to those who seek him.
Where the reality of Pentecost is truly experienced, there is a new power discovered in our midst, not a power wrested from some opposing human ‘regime’ or granted by some human government, but of God working among, through, and around us. So many of our problems in our day arise, not from opposing powers, but from broken politics, where words are weak and speech confused, where love has failed, where trust has gone, where obedience is rejected and, though multiplied, laws are ignored, where guilt and blame enervate people, where counsels are folly, where all are divided, and where the possibilities seem to be exhausted.
Too often we can assume that true power is ultimately to be found in the halls of our deliberative bodies. Faced with growing hostility within society, feeling the pressures of anti-Christian corporate culture, and the impact of bad laws and political opposition, we can feel weak and anxious. Yet, in the Spirit, we enjoy a power that far exceeds anything in Washington or Westminster. Indeed, fixated as we can be upon coercive force, we can fail to appreciate the weakness of such force, a weakness exposed by Christ’s death and resurrection and by the faithfulness of the Church’s martyrs. One of the things that the gospels unmask the fact that the supposed ‘power’ exercised in the crucifixion arose chiefly from fear, weakness, ignorance, and anxiety: fear of the crowds, fear of rival factions, fear of Caesar, fear of the Romans, fear of a mysterious Galilean prophet, and, behind it all, the fear of death. As the Spirit delivers people from fear, this weakness is even further exposed. While the negative power of destruction is real, it is ultimately weak and manifests the lack of true positive political power. Such an economy of power enslaves rather than liberating and, as the Spirit delivers us from the fear of death, is largely disarmed:
Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery (Hebrews 2:14–15).
The gift of the Spirit at Pentecost is the gift of the positive means by which political community can be formed and the power by which to act with confidence in history. Rather than power operating through and grounded in coercion, fear, enmity, and death, the power of the Spirit is liberating, energizing, uniting, and living.
Jesus did not directly attack Rome. However, by overcoming death and giving his Spirit, he unsettled the power of Rome at its root and poured out a power that was qualitatively different from and that radically exceeded Rome’s. They may not have taken up arms against Rome, yet the growing presence of a people animated by Christ’s Spirit in the midst of the Empire ultimately led to victory over it.
In our own time, although we face growing opposition and hostility, we must learn to recognize the profound depoliticizing forces that afflict our societies and the ‘dis-Spirited’ character of our nations’ political lives. Like Jesus, we need a ‘theological understanding of power’, not dismissing the importance of power, but seeking it chiefly where it is most truly to be found. A pentecostal political vision is not apolitical but recognizes political resources beyond the constricted imagination of those who think of politics fundamentally in terms of coercive force and enmity, which, though real and important, are not and cannot be the ultimate truths of politics.
The call of Abram occurred against the backdrop of the failure of Babel. Babel, founded by the self-appointed god-king Nimrod, was an attempt by its builders to secure power against the threat of death, afraid that society would either dissolve and scatter or that their names would be forgotten. God frustrated the building of Babel, confusing the builders’ speech. Diverse nations then splintered off from the judgment of Babel. After Babel, the Lord called Abram, promising to make his name great and to bless all the nations through him. What God would achieve through Abram would somehow provide an answer to Babel.
Galatians 3:14 speaks of the gift of the Spirit as the promised ‘blessing of Abraham’: ‘[I]n Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.’ While the languages of the peoples were confused at Babel, at Pentecost many tongues were united in declaring the mighty works of God. Babel was a Promethean attempt to gain godlike powers, recalling the original sin of the garden, motivated by the desire to become like the gods. The tower with its top in the heavens offered the prospect of man’s exaltation in dominion. The reversal of Babel at Pentecost has as its basis Christ’s exaltation to the Father and his enjoyment of all authority and power. The pouring out of Christ’s Spirit is the form that the blessing of Abraham takes; the Spirit is how all peoples can be blessed and empowered by heaven. Rather than stealing fire from the gods, heavenly power is distributed in fiery tongues.
The Pentecostal Spirit can renew the life of our earthly polities. However, it is not the possession of any such polity and is that which tests the spirits of all polities. The Spirit has been given to the Church, a single Gift common to all, yet re-presented by each member in their respective spiritual gifts. Each spiritual gift is a refraction of the single Gift and a participation in it, as it is exercised in service of others. The Spirit forms a catholic body, one that embraces a whole humanity within it, being exclusive to no single group, and establishing the only ultimately common good. As such the Spirit forms a peoplehood that exceeds and cannot be identified with the nation, while reviving peoples and their polities.
The bond of the Spirit must also be that against which we test our mortal polities. As O’Donovan writes, ‘To each particular identity, then, is put the question: how can the defense of this common good, focussed around this common identity at this time and in this way, be brought to serve that common good which belongs to the all-embracing identity, individual and collective, of God’s kingdom?’5 As such the Spirit tests and tempers all earthly loyalties, subjecting them to the rule of a much higher loyalty before which they must bow. Loyalty to nation and people have often proven to be springs of dark idolatries, as such loves—fitting and good in their place—have been given a priority that belongs to God and his kingdom alone.
In a brilliant little book, On Sacrifice, Moshe Halbertal questions the common notion that selfishness and excessive self-love are the fundamental ethical problem. Rather, he argues that ‘misdirected self-transcendence’ is far more serious, not least because it masquerades as something noble and can be used to justify the most horrific acts as ‘sacrifice’.6 Another way of describing this is ‘idolatry’. Halbertal writes, ‘Idolatry…is the utmost surrender to a cause that is not worthy of the corresponding sacrifice.’7 In giving the profoundest form of self-transcendence to us, the Spirit keeps us from idols that would demand dreadful sacrifices of us in their service.
Among other themes, the book of Daniel explores the idolatrous aspirations of empire, against the thematic backdrop of Babel (the reference to the land of Shinar in the opening verses already tips us off to the connection). It is a book of proud towers, of attempts to gather all peoples under a single rule, of the confusion of language, failures of interpretation, and frustration of speech, and of God’s humbling of proud empires.
In Nebuchadnezzar’s first dream, he saw a towering image of a man: its head of gold, its chest and arms of silver, its middle and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, and its feet iron admixed with clay. This image represents a succession of empires, but also implies an idolatrous elevation of humanity through such imperial might. This image is broken to pieces by a stone cut without hands, which then expands to fill the whole earth, the enduring kingdom of God, which inaugurates a new political order and puts a definitive end to such imperial idolatry.
Likely in response to his dream, Nebuchadnezzar then constructed an image of gold upon the plain, gathering people from the breadth of his vast kingdom and from all levels of government to pay homage to it. Nebuchadnezzar was attempting a sort of reversal of Babel, joining people of all peoples, nations, and languages in a unified act of worship, directed towards his towering image.
In the following chapter, a further towering structure is seen in the immense tree of Nebuchadnezzar’s second dream, representing Nebuchadnezzar himself. In an action reminiscent of Babel, an angelic watcher comes down from heaven and fells the tree, humbling the king for his hubris. In chapters that follow, we see confusion caused through strange language, with the writing on the wall of Belshazzar’s Feast. There is also a further frustration of an idolatrous elevation of a king to the status of universal mediator between man and the gods.
Chapter 7, recalling chapter 2, presents us with the figure of the Son of Man, to whom is given an everlasting and universal dominion. The dominion of the Son of Man will spell the end of the age of the beasts, and the inauguration of a new order of authority. There will continue to be great political powers, yet the idolatrous projects to consummate humanity and secure its destiny in vast empires under kings that claim divine or messianic prerogatives for themselves reach their end as the Son of Man ascends to the divine throne. Empires, nations, peoples, and all other such human solidarities must now bow to the Son of Man and seek the destiny, exaltation, unity, and consummation of humanity in him.
Daniel exposes the way that some arrogant and vainglorious political visions can have an idolatrous core to them. They offer people an ultimate meaning, fulfilment, and completeness—the sort of ‘self-transcendence’ that Halbertal describes—that is not in their power to give. As with the original Babel project, they may offer a way to make our name great, or some security against death, ensuring that our names will not be forgotten and that we will have an enduring legacy. And, with such proud promises, they will make dreadful demands and require terrible sacrifices of people. Fueled by such false promises of self-transcendence, people will do terrible and evil deeds in the name of their gods.
The establishment of the kingdom of God and the granting of all authority and power in heaven and on earth to the ascended Christ is a radical humbling and demystifying of the pretensions of such political powers. Their authority, though real, is that of servants. It is in Christ alone, who is over all powers and authorities, that we can find completeness—not in the success of the revolution, nor in fighting for our people, nor in a perfected earthly nation, nor in the advent of a powerful political leader. Although many of these might be worthwhile, they are poor objects upon which to set our trust and hope.
Politics can often have a more ‘spiritual’ character, seeking to summon, arouse, capture, or channel various spirits. Politics is always a realm of powerful spirits, yet some political movements more intentionally seek to arouse, summon, or channel the spirit of a people, class, or nation, to receive the power of destiny that might impel them to greatness as the Zeitgeist settles upon them, or to act with the exalted authority of History (whether hypostatized as Judge, Revealer of Truth, Destiny, or Irresistible Force). Here our minds might naturally and appropriately go to something like the Volksgeist of the German Völkisch movement, with the overtly mystical tendencies of Romantic nationalism. Such politics might also seek to capture the mood of the masses, pursue certain ‘vibes’, or excite a free-floating vitalist energy.
That it is a unified humanity in Christ that receives the Pentecostal Spirit means that no particular nation or people can lay claim to his prerogatives. No nation is the bearer of human destiny nor anointed for messianic mission. No people is complete in itself outside of the church. No ruler but Christ can unite all humanity. No leader but Christ can truly sum up a people in himself. None but Christ enjoys all authority and power or absolute sovereignty. Pentecost is not only the reversal of Babel but the continued divine frustration of all babelic projects. The ‘let us go down’ of Genesis 11:7 is realized most fully in the descent of the Spirit.
Evil political spirits have been the source of some of history’s greatest evils and horrors; when a people are possessed and driven by false spirits, a sort of collective insanity can result. In 1937, Prof D. Cajus Fabricius wrote the following, in a book entitled Positive Christianity in the Third Reich:
The Führer himself belongs to those who fulfil the will of God and realize the life of Christ in this life in an extraordinary degree. The Führer is uniting the nation and helping it to rise from the laxity and neglect into which it had fallen, to a sense of moral discipline, fulfils the law of Christ respecting love in a way few mortals could ever hope to emulate. By defending with a strong hand the spiritual heritage of the German nation against the powers of darkness, he also protects our most sacred possession, the Gospel, guaranteeing moreover, the further spread of its power. And when he himself in the strength of his trust in God places the destiny of the whole nation in the hands of the Father, he manifests the Spirit which through the coming of Christ has become a living power in the world.
On several occasions in his book, Fabricius distinguishes between the service and honour owed to God and those due to the nation and its leader. Bracketing for a moment the referent of his statements, Fabricius’s claims—especially when we consider some of the qualifications and distinctions he makes at various points—might sound like the sort of thing that a Protestant political theologian influenced by German Romanticism would say. As an implicit theology of the Christian nation and its Christian prince, it would not even sound strange in some circles today (indeed, Fabricius’s book is currently being republished by a right-wing Reformed Christian publisher).
That Fabricius is making all these pious-sounding statements about none other than Adolf Hitler is alarming to us! However, it should be a sobering reminder that, without rigorous testing of the spirits, such a theology can easily end up underwriting and making us complicit in great evil. Without the discernment that the Spirit grants us to recognize his fruit and those spirits that come from God, such a political theology might be considerably worse than worthless.
The terrifying ambivalence of such a theology should also drive us to consider how such dangers might be avoided. Even within Fabricius’s qualifications and distinctions, it is important to observe the manner in which the Führer and the German nation start to take on a prominence that trespasses upon that enjoyed by Christ and the Church. The Führer assumes something of a messianic role and the German nation, animated by the Volksgeist and claiming a grand destiny for itself, begins to sound like a rival to the Church.
Fabricius manifestly both failed to recognize the spirit of Nazism for what it was, or the fact that he had himself fallen so deeply under its influence. Fabricius is an especially chilling reminder of how imperative it is to test political spirits, and how even people who claim to serve Christ can be deceived. Nothing can protect us from imbibing such devilish spirits more than drinking deeply of the Spirit of God; the best way to recognize false and counterfeit spirits is to devote ourselves wholly to enjoyment of the true Spirit.
With the benefit of historical hindsight, we can see more of the ‘theological’ shape of Hitler’s aspirations and the way in which the Führer, the Nazi Party, and Nazi Germany parodied Christian realities. In the messianic role and prerogatives the figure of the Führer was granted in forging the identity and destiny of his people, his place came to rival that of Christ. The radicalization and elevation of national identity in Nazi Germany unsurprisingly established the nation and the party as a rival to the Church, claiming ultimate loyalties for the state and people to which they had no rightful title. The national Volksgeist was usurping the place that belonged to the Heilige Geist. The result was nothing less than a dark and idolatrous political system (communism provides other examples, some of which also have their theological useful idiots).
While political rulers are ministers of Christ and kings may be crowned in Christ’s name, one of the most important tasks of the Church is to desacralize the politics of this present age. That God is king means that there can be no divine emperor or god-king and frustrates the aspirations of the state to apotheosis. That Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords means that all rulers of this age are humbled in their claims to ultimate sovereignty. The king is not a god or even the Messiah, but a minister of Messiah Jesus, subject to Christ’s Law. Pentecost is a fundamental political truth and the reality of the Church is a primary defence against political idolatry. The Church is the recipient of the gift and anointing of the Spirit in a way that no earthly nation has been, and so the spirits of all nations and political movements must all be subject to and tested by him.
The Christian gospel is political at its heart, albeit political in a form alien to the rulers of this age. Likewise, the Church does not have to go outside of itself to become political: in our cry ‘Come, Holy Spirit!’ we are seeking the generative Power that grounds all true political community. The Spirit’s power is not a formless and fungible means to our various autonomous political ends but, understood properly, is an end in itself. The Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, communicating and fashioning the form of Christ wherever he is bestowed. The power of the Spirit can neither be divided from his Person nor the form of his fruit: ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control’ (Galatians 5:22–23).
The river of the water of life flowing from the heavenly city is flanked by the tree of life, its leaves for the healing of the nations (Revelation 22:1–2). The power of the Spirit can renew our earthly polities, the fractured and chaotic Babels we inhabit, even when Christians are in the minority. This should not be understood as a retreatist, quietist, or separatist vision: we can be actively and passionately involved in the life and discourse of our polities.
Nevertheless, this does not involve the sacralization of secular politics nor the politicization of the sacred that so commonly occurs when we fail to appreciate the relativization of the politics of this present age in the light of the pentecostal politics of the kingdom of God. While Christian ministers should speak with moral clarity concerning sin and righteousness in public life, they should beware of meddlesome involvement in questions of political policy or prudence in this present age and should firmly resist any tendency to throw in the Church’s lot with any political cause, or to use Christ’s sovereignty to underwrite any candidate, party, or nation. This is not because the Church lacks authority, but in no small measure on account of the danger of confusing the much greater enduring authority of the kingdom of God with or reducing it to the authority proper to the temporary stewards of this age.
As Jesus relativized and decentered the power of Rome in his teaching and practice, the Church’s proclamation and practice of a higher and greater politics must challenge a common preoccupation with and excessive investment in the politics of this age. It must also expose the threat of idolatry that lurks where loyalty to, alignment with, service of, and advocacy for some political cause, candidate, party, policy, or entity becomes a principal test of faithfulness, mark of membership, basis of unity, or foundation of identity, and when no questioning, challenging, or counteracting of it is tolerated. The Church exceeds any party alignment, national project, class solidarity, earthly power, or political movement, relativizing all, calling them to bow before a higher throne, and placing all under that throne’s judgment. Where earthly politics bows before this higher throne, it may experience something of the healing streams that flow forth from it. It may also see in its midst a new political community being formed, one which, by its very existence, reveals the penultimacy of all others.
Even while being politically involved, we need not play a zero-sum game of politics, becoming fixated upon wresting power from our opponents: there is power the rulers and children of this age neither know nor understand. We see the shrinking and the exhaustion of power in our politics, an increasing dependence upon the weak and enslaving forces of fear and coercion, and the strife and confusion of tongues. Despite all this, we can find confidence in the gift of the Spirit, grounding and investing ourselves in a new kingdom of which the Church, anointed at Pentecost, is a promissory initiation. As the life of this new kingdom flows out, we can seek his reviving and empowering of the common life and the rule of our societies.
Alastair Roberts (PhD, Durham) is adjunct Senior Fellow at Theopolis and is one of the participants in the Mere Fidelity podcast.. He blogs at Alastair’s Adversaria and tweets using @zugzwanged.
- Oliver O’Donovan, The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the roots of political theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 93. ↩︎
- O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 93. ↩︎
- O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 94. ↩︎
- O’Donovan, Desire of the Nations, 95 ↩︎
- Oliver O’Donovan, The Ways of Judgment (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), 184. ↩︎
- Moshe Halbertal, On Sacrifice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 78. ↩︎
- Halbertal, On Sacrifice, 78. ↩︎