The latest Mere Fidelity podcast has just gone online. This week Derek Rishmawy, Matt Lee Anderson, Andrew Wilson, and I discuss the question of whether the Church should enjoy cultural and political privilege. Take a listen and share your thoughts in the comments.
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Alastair's Adversaria 
Reblogged this on Talmidimblogging.
Another great discussion! It has helped to inform my thinking – this must be the first time that I have thought really positively about the links between church, monarchy and state.
Alastair, thanks for you guys’ work on this! I catch the Mere-Fi shows as I can, and really appreciate them.
In this episode, your comment about whether the State had the authority to tax the Church kind of blew my mind. I’d never thought about that before – my default assumption (which I’m guessing many would share as well) is that any tax benefits to a body within a State’s geographical jurisdiction are granted by the beneficence of the State. I assume, I suppose, that the State at least theoretically “owns” (stewards?) all bodies in its governance, and can do with them as it will (kind of like we preserve national forests rather than razing and developing them – “wildernesses” exist in America, but due more to our largesse than our powerlessness against them).
Within most American thought – not just Democratic – we seem to function in that Leviathanish mode, assuming that every institution is subservient to the State and receives any benefits therefrom. It would be a radical thought-change indeed to assert – to insist – that there are real areas (outside of “my home” or “my bedroom”) that the State simply does not have the power to address.
I haven’t had much education in political history, but I’d love to learn how other governments in history have related to institutions other than in a you-can-exist-as-long-as-I-say-you-can kind of way.
I was concerned at one point, though perhaps I’m misunderstanding. You all seemed to agree that a Christian monarch should be best for everyone, and I can understand your reasoning. At the same time, the emancipation of the Jews was a product of the French Revolution, and of the enlightenment. And while that perhaps ultimately resulted in Anti-Semitism, and in a Zionist rejection of Europe, surely, it doesn’t seem to work to say that a Christian monarch would be the most just option, even for the Jews, since it was in the downfall of the Christian monarch that they were emancipated–and indeed, they were expelled from various Christian kingdoms.
And Willie Jennings traces the origins of racism toward unjust European–indeed Christian–actions toward Africans, arguing that the Christian imagination is diseased, and has falsely uprooted us from our land. And these injustices largely took place under Christian monarchs.
But then, perhaps I’m misunderstanding something.
I am pretty certain that none of us would regard the Christian faith of a monarch or ruler as single-handedly ensuring the common good. As you observe, history is littered with examples of oppressive Christian rulers and emancipatory non-Christian ones.
Respectfully, I don’t think that addresses my question. As far as I can tell, the answer you give addresses the question of particular monarchs who act contrary to the virtues–known or practices–of the Christian community. But the issues I noted weren’t examples of a virtuous community acting viciously, but were examples of vices which were or are characteristic of the Christian community.
Or to state that another way, to claim that a Christian monarch is better for Christains and non-Christians alike, is to make a *historical* claim: One that should be able to be tested against history, but also, one that implicitly, says “At time X, and with community X, a Christian monarch…” But the Christian community has had characteristic vices, and even blind-spots–it was the best that Jennings criticized, and from a Jewish perspective, the Christian centuries were characterized by expulsions, whereas enlightenment, by emancipation. And so at any given time, or at least on any given issue, it may well be that a non-Christian community is able to enact a justice which the Christian community, due to its vices and blindness, is unable to enact.
Yes, in one sense, the Christian community, even when it cannot see and cannot enact the justice it is called to is failing to live up to the justice commanded of it, and so is failing to be rightly Christian. (Though, it is entirely possible that this failure is the result of a different faithfulness: That their greatest strengths are, at a particular time, and in a particular polity, their greatest weaknesses, and their calling is to preserve an important stream that will be required later.) But then, the Christian justice it is failing to uphold is only known and enacted eschatologically, not now, and, with that answer, the question seems to over-realize the eschaton.
Additionally, I’m not sure there’s reason to assume we couldn’t be called, for a time, to have the sort of temporal duration Judaism has had. But if we were called to live in a sort of Christian ghetto, quietly studying the Torah, and waiting for God to call us out, it is entirely possible that a sudden movement from a ghetto to rulership would be disasterous for the Christian community, the non-Christian community, and for the particular ruler. That is, *in that historical situation*, not having a Christian monarch would be better than having one.
I’m reasonably sure I’ve misunderstood something, or that you have an answer to these concerns, but I’m not sure how to work them out–and I’ve given it a decent bit of thought the last several years, so would appreciate feedback.
This will have to be very brief, but a few thoughts:
1. ‘Christian community’ is not a simple thing, as there is always a Church-State tension. One of the points that I gesture towards in the podcast is that the ‘Christian community’ of the body politic is always subject to testing and the Church never leaves behind its prophetic and challenging role.
2. I believe that Christian principles provide the surest principled basis for a free society. This does not mean that at any given moment in history I believe that the Church-State relation would be healthy enough to uphold and effect these principles. In many situations it would be better to have a non-Christian government than one that claimed the name of Christ but had little grasp of and commitment to Christian principles. This does not mean that a committed and principled Christian government with a lively prophetic role being played by a faithful Church isn’t the most desirable situation.
@mnpetersen37:
Your concern centers on, firstly, “the emancipation of the Jews” and, secondly, “racism toward
Africans”. Neither are properly concerns of Christianity as such, let alone a Christian monarch ruling over historic England or any other historic European people. In fact, opposition to the former–emancipation of the Jews, that is–may be a specific political duty of a Christian monarch who rules over a Christian people, as Judaism is Christianity’s historic rival and enemy.
That a Christian monarch should tolerate the presence–let alone permit the thriving–of a hostile sect in the midst of the people of whom he is to be a good shepherd is a pernicious notion. Those who seek to foist such a notion upon a Christian polity in fact seek to undo that polity as a Christian polity–and are thus its foremost enemy who must be treated as such. Of course, such a notion has already been foisted upon us and the Christian polities of the historic Christian peoples have, sadly, been undone. We chose to honor the faith of our (and Christ’s) enemies over our own faith in Christ and thus Christianity in the West (née Christendom) is really no longer much of a going concern, and Judaism–which as a religion has little other significance than to deny the Christhood of Jesus of Nazareth–receives more honor in the homelands of the historic Christian peoples than does Christianity.
As for your stereotypical and very commonplace concern over racism toward Africans, which you characterize as an injustice: racism–whether manifested by Jews against Christian peoples and other Gentiles, or by those of European descent against Africans and Jews–is not at all an injustice, but simply represents the natural and irrepressible tendency to center on one’s ownmost over against what is not (and never can be) one’s own. So long as human beings love their own children more than they love or care about another’s, so long will they care for their own people more than they care about another. There is nothing whatever to lament in this state of affairs–it is in fact a prerequisite for a morally good existence, to which the Old Testament testifies again and again as God favors those (e.g. Phinehas) who zealously protect Israel through killing both its foreign and internal enemies.
You characterize that which concerns you as “vices of the Christian community”–I assert rather that they are (or were) virtues. Indeed, it is the present-day concern with liberality and tolerance in (not coincidentally, formerly) Christian nations that is in fact vicious and represents nothing less than a betrayal of Christ and His Holy Spirit. More evidently with every passing day, we have consigned the historic homelands of the Christian peoples to a miserable doom because we loved liberality more than we loved the lordship and mastery of Christ–we loved Judaism, Islam, African voodoo, homosexuality and adultery over the faith of Jesus Christ.
The newly re-paganized peoples of the West richly deserve the fierce judgment that is descending upon them, just as the Jews have richly deserved the fierce judgments that have haunted them ever since they denied the Christ of God and will continue to haunt them till kingdom come–the return of Israel’s one and only Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth.
I disagree with a lot in your comment–though thanks for the interaction–but this much is notable: The characterization of Judaism as Christianity’s historic enemy, and the conflation of the European civilization with Israel, and in that, of the Promised Land with Europe, is precisely the problem Jennnings raises, and precisely what I object to.
For the last 1,900 years, Christians have repeatedly persecuted Jews–for instance, the shemitah was ended because of the severity of Byzantine rule; during the Rhineland Massacres, Jews were forced to kill their own children, rather than have the parents killed and the children raised as Christians; the Talmud was repeatedly suppressed, and permanently damaged because of the censors; Jews were expelled from their homes in Spain, and England, and sent into an exile from their exile, etc. And even if they are our enemy, if the command to love our enemies means to persecute them into conversion, then Gil Anidjar’s unjust criticisms of Christianity as inventing true enmity are just.
Of course, Christians have also repeatedly stood up for Jews. During the Rhineland massacres, many bishops protected Jews inside their city walls. John Lightfoot was a Talmudist, and produced a NT commentary that uses the Talmud to help explain the gospels. Christians were instrumental in helping Jews find refuge during the Holocaust, and as a result, many gave their lives in the death camps. These second sort of actions are far more in accord with Christ’s commands, and far more prevalent that those like Anidjar would admit.
On the second point: Turning European civilization into Israel, and Europe into a homeland, an eretz Israel has had extremely pernicious consequences–and this is the true tie to racism, not some cliche. We preach a universal message, a message that says “become a worshiper of Israel’s God, long for eretz Israel“. Inasmuch as we make Israel’s God Europe’s God, inasmuch as we rewrite the Psalms, with England replacing Israel (as Isaac Watts did) and make the land of Israel, Europe, we turn the universal gospel into a claim that non-Europeans, non-whites, must be dissociated from their homeland, and instead must vale themselves through Europe and through whiteness. We thus make blackness into a category of subservience.
This last paragraph also is not a challenge to the Church, as such. Jennings himself is a graduate of Calvin College, and an orthodox minister of the gospel–and he is as hard on liberal Christianity (and by extension on liberalism) as on traditionalist Christianity. And in his criticism of the people who contributed to this distortion of the gospel, he remains sympathetic to them–though he charges them with fundamental Christological heresies. Nor does he deny that the Christians have often attempted to avoid these problems, only that our attempts have not, as a body, been successful.
But this does not become a charge against Christianity: Let God be false, and all men a liar. It only means we need to add a few lines to Psalm 108. Indeed, if we are sent into exile today, it can only be because, as in the Song of Moses (Deut 32), we are being provoked to jealousy by a people which is not a people.
I must say I find it remarkable that you can’t bring yourself to breathe one word of criticism against the Jews–the essence of whose religious life is to deny and refuse their one and only Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth–though you seem as eager to accuse Christians of wrongdoing as you are to absolve the Jews of any hint of same. An ostensible Christian whose heart is filled with misgivings toward his own faith, yet full of good will toward his faith’s enemies might struck some–as it does myself–as a wolf in sheep’s garb who has entered the sheepfold in order to harm the flock.
If I might be permitted to challenge directly some of your assertions:
“The characterization of Judaism as Christianity’s historic enemy”
A religion whose very essence is to deny the Christhood of Jesus of Nazareth is indeed the enemy of Christianity. By the selfsame token, the religion whose very essence is to proclaim the Christhood and Divine Sonship of Jesus of Nazareth is indeed the enemy of Judaism. We mustn’t shy away from this elementary fact. If we do, we remain far from entering into the essence of faith and truth.
“the conflation of the European civilization with Israel, and in that, of the Promised Land with Europe, is precisely the problem Jennnings raises, and precisely what I object to.”
By no means did I “conflate” Europe with Israel or maintain that Europe is the Promised Land. Israel is Israel and Europe is Europe. Israel is the Promised Land of the Bible, not Europe.
But again, we mustn’t shy away from elementary truths of historical life on this earth. If we do, we place our faith in ideological fantasies rather than the truth of real existence. The tenor of your entire comment suggests that the Jews–and the Jews alone–are entitled to a homeland. In other words, the earth as earth more or less exists for some few millions of Jews alone. If one wonders why Christendom (which this side of glory will only ever be an imperfect, partially realized, and regional–not “universal”–domain) has suffered a calamitous–and possibly permanent–collapse, then a misguided ideology like this is it.
Human beings do not exist as fully-realized human beings–this side of glory or yonder–if they do not live in a place they can call home and this necessarily means living in an earthy locale (a homeland) among those who speak the same language, practice the same customs, and have a common religious life and faith. This is as true of Europeans, et al. as it is of Jews. That England, by your reckoning, is not a homeland for the English people and never has been, but is rather something akin to an idolatrous imitation of Israel, is to say that the English people have no right to exist as English on this earth. You may subscribe to such a lunatic notion, but not I.
Of course, it’s important that the religious life of a people be rooted in a religion that is true and not false. If Jesus of Nazareth is the one and only Son of God and Israel’s one and only Messiah, then the religious life of Christian peoples is the one and only truly religious life. It simply isn’t possible that the Christian peoples as peoples will fade away or disintegrate but Christianity itself will live on in an even purer form as the province of atomized, dislocated individuals. Real human life doesn’t work that way.
Having said that, even I–who do not subscribe to contemporary ideologies of liberalism, inclusion and anti-racism–wouldn’t deny peoplehood and homeland to those peoples, like Jews and Muslims, who practice a false religion.
“For the last 1,900 years, Christians have repeatedly persecuted Jews”
As they ought to have. Just as the devil is God’s devil, so are the persecutors of Jewry God’s persecutors, the agents of his fury.
“Jews were forced to kill their own children, rather than have the parents killed and the children raised as Christians”
How unfortunate. If those children had been raised as Christians, then their souls would have been saved. As it is, both they and their parents have since been consigned to an infinity of terror.
“the Talmud was repeatedly suppressed”
As it ought to have been. The Talmud is a deeply false and erroneous writing. Those who subscribe to its teaching travel a path of folly.
“Jews were expelled from their homes in Spain, and England”
This contradicts your fundamental tenet. If Spain and England aren’t homes for the Spanish and English respectively, how much less could they ever be homes for wandering Jews.
“And even if they are our enemy, if the command to love our enemies means to persecute them into conversion, then Gil Anidjar’s unjust criticisms of Christianity as inventing true enmity are just.”
I take it then that you have succeeded in loving your enemies–otherwise your criticizing others for failing to do so would be hypocritical. Count me skeptical.
But even assuming that the injunction to love our enemies were not an impossible ideal, we couldn’t possibly begin to forgive our enemies if we weren’t first willing to acknowledge that we have enemies–something that contemporary Western sophisticates seem loathe to do.
“John Lightfoot was a Talmudist, and produced a NT commentary that uses the Talmud to help explain the gospels.”
Using the Christ-denying Talmud to “explain” the gospels is a perverse notion.
“Christians were instrumental in helping Jews find refuge during the Holocaust, and as a result, many gave their lives in the death camps. These second sort of actions are far more in accord with Christ’s commands, and far more prevalent that those like Anidjar would admit.”
I’d be the first to admit that willingly being killed is a true emulation of Christ–so have at it!
But what is essential to Christian faith for those of us who are merely fallen and sinful mortals is not to fantasize about fulfilling Christ’s impossible moral demands, but rather to acknowledge the Christhood and Divine Sonship of Jesus of Nazareth–precisely what Jews do not do.
“Inasmuch as we make Israel’s God Europe’s God, inasmuch as we rewrite the Psalms, with England replacing Israel (as Isaac Watts did) and make the land of Israel, Europe, we turn the universal gospel into a claim that non-Europeans, non-whites, must be dissociated from their homeland, and instead must vale themselves through Europe and through whiteness.”
Again, I haven’t done what you suggest I have–I didn’t substitute England for Israel, etc–but am I to understand that you accept that nonwhites and non-Europeans are entitled to their respective homelands, as are the Jews? Then surely the English are entitled to their homeland.
“We thus make blackness into a category of subservience.”
Since I’m certain that you are a white Gentile–as am I–something tells me you aren’t in a position to pontificate about what is right for blacks. What I find disturbing is that you aren’t in any position to speak in behalf of your own kind either. You strike me as someone without genuine rootedness, being, or incarnation, floating free in imaginary ideological space.
I don’t have time to respond fully to this comment. Suffice it to say that I find the sentiments expressed within it, especially in the latter half, extremely objectionable and I disagree with a number of the claims made very strongly.
This episode was very enjoyable. I was interested in your comments on Christian pluralism. What do you take to be the main differences between this and what normally goes for civic pluralism? And if I can ask one more question, what authors/sources have shaped your view of Christian pluralism?
Hi Wade,
Your most recent comment is addressed to mnpeterson37, so I will confine my comment to one point:
‘Just as the devil is God’s devil, so are the persecutors of Jewry God’s persecutors, the agents of his fury.’
The Schutzstaffel persecuted Jewish people in Nazi Germany in WW2 – are you suggesting that the SS were agents of God’s fury? I hope you aren’t.
Christine
He did say
One of the judgments that descended on them was Shoah. So it seems that here, he’s claiming that Shoah was *deserved*, and if so, the SS was in roughly the same position as, say, the Assyrians. Which is, to say the least, a rather terrifying position.
Please do keep in mind that I acknowledge judgment against the Western peoples as much as I do against the Jews, et al.
Please keep in mind as well that desert–what one deserves–and delighting oneself in the fact that another gets what they deserve, are separable notions. To acknowledge that Christ-denying Jewry has incurred the fierce judgment of God is not to delight in that fact–I don’t.
Unlike you, however, I don’t deny the wrath of God against sinners–be they Christ-denying Jews or Christ-denying Gentiles.
Several former SS members were convicted as war criminals. I believe that the conviction of those criminals was fitting. According to your claims, those ‘agent’s of God’s fury’ were wrongly convicted. I don’t agree with that at all, so if you hope to convince me, you hope in vain!
Our God is a God of wrath, and there are specific references to this in the Scriptures.
The Holocaust Museum in Berlin is Germany’s apology for the atrocities against the Jews.
Lord have mercy.
I keep putting my comments in the wrong place – sorry. My Berlin comment was for you, mnp.
Would you acknowledge that the SS was a satanic organization?
Since Satan is God’s Satan (or “persecutor”), I’m afraid there really is no getting around the fact that the SS was an agent of God’s fury.
Wade – I replied to this above instead of below your comment – sorry!
As mnpetersen37 says above, the claim that the SS was an agent of God’s fury against unbelieving Jewry is parallel to the indubitably Biblical claim that the Assyrians were divinely-appointed ministers of God’s wrath against sinful Israel.
The ancient Israelites who were the objects of this divine judgment administered by Assyria were infinitely closer to being in right relationship to God than were the Jews of the twentieth century–who resolutely rejected and denied God’s one and only Son and Israel’s one and only Messiah.
mnpetersen37 characterizes this as “a terrifying position”–but it is no more terrifying than that Assyria was the minister of God’s wrath in ancient times, or that the only begotten Son of God had to undergo a gruesome death-by-torture in order to save the world. Life on this earth–the real earth on which we live, as opposed to the ideological fancies of contemporary Western sophisticates–is, as the Bible depicts from start to finish, frankly terrifying. We need to accept that fact.
Christine said:
“Several former SS members were convicted as war criminals. I believe that the conviction of those criminals was fitting. According to your claims, those ‘agent’s of God’s fury’ were wrongly convicted.”
I tend to think they were wrongly “convicted”–though not for reasons having anything at all to do with the idea that they were agents of God’s fury, but rather that their “convictions” were a case of victor’s justice. The United States, Soviet Union, et al. standing in judgment over Nazi Germany was a case of stronger anti-Christian polities standing in judgment over a weaker anti-Christian polity.
In effect, the US and the USSR, etc. were agents of God’s fury against sinful Germany, just as Germany was an agent of God’s fury against sinful Judah. The collapse of the Soviet Union was God’s judgment on sinful Russia and the imminent collapse of the US is God’s judgment on sinful America. Judgment swirls on judgment, and I grant that it isn’t a pretty picture–but subscribing to ideologically contrived fantasies doesn’t cause the reality of divine judgment on earth against sinful nations to go away.
In the end, there is only one way to escape the judgment of God against sin–faith in Jesus’ blood. Since neither the SS nor world Jewry nor the contemporary West exercise(d) faith in the shed blood of Jesus of Nazareth, they stand (or stood) in the same relation to one another vis a vis God’s wrath.
OK, on this note, I am going to express my disgust at the direction this conversation has taken and to take the unprecedented action of closing the comments for this post.