But Seriously (8) – Romans 13, use and misuse

(‘But Seriously’ is a strand on this blog exploring the implications of biblical texts on ‘Church and State’.  Check other entries in the strand for a rounded picture of the issues)

Romans 13 is a key passage for ‘Church-and-State’ issues; before expounding what it does mean, I want in this post to consider some things it doesn’t mean, some ways it has been misinterpreted.  First, the text itself, in RSV

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.  For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.  Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgement.  For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad.  Would you have no fear of him who is in authority?  Then do what is good and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good.  But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer.  Therefore one must be subject, not only to avoid God’s wrath, but also for the sake of conscience.

For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God attending to this very thing.  Pay all of them their dues….

Tax we’ll do another day.  Obviously how we interpret that obligation will depend on how we interpret the earlier verses.

One misinterpretation I call the ‘Verwoerd version’ after a former leader in the days of ‘apartheid’ in South Africa.  John Stott has related how a South African friend of his, an active opponent of apartheid, was one day called in to some government office, where an official confronted him with a bible open to Romans 13 and challenged him with it.  Why wasn’t he obeying the government as this text taught??  We’ll be looking later at the rounded biblical perspective, but I think it is clear that interpreting the text so simplistically would raise considerable ethical dilemmas for the Christian.  Consider how that would have affected Christians in Nazi Germany, for example, if called to obey a government sending Jews to the extermination camps.  It is surely clear that such obedience to the authorities can’t be right…. 

At least part of the solution lies in Peter’s response to the Jewish authorities in Acts 5; 29, when the disciples had been arrested for preaching the gospel – ‘We must obey God rather than men.’  But we must be careful how we use that text, in case we twist it and end up going too far the other way.

Another misinterpretation, I believe, does just that; I call it the ‘Paisley Pattern’ because I found a clear statement of it in Rev Dr Ian Paisley’s commentary on Romans (written while in prison after a demonstration; I would accept that this imprisonment was probably unjust).  Paisley’s start is perfectly correct – “It must be said clearly at the outset that these verses do not apply to laws contrary to the laws of God.  Robert Haldane said once, preaching from the first verse, ‘There is but one exception and that is when anything is required contrary to the laws of God’”.  Haldane by the way was a Baptist who in the early 19^th Century led a revival in Geneva, preaching from Romans in Calvin’s pulpit, and his teaching on Romans including that quote is to be found in his Commentary on Romans – the edition I’ve got was published some fifty years ago by Banner of Truth publishers; it’s about the size of the later Harry Potter books and contains even more content as it is in quite small print on fine paper.  In so much space Haldane said a lot more about Romans 13; 1 than just that quote, and I would suggest if you read it you’ll find his interpretation doesn’t go in the same direction as Dr Paisley….

Paisley goes on

Certain people who wish to bolster up a rotten government and the persecuting laws of the same, condemn the resistance of the martyrs, reformers, confessors, non-conformists, puritans and covenanters to the evil laws of their day…. take the line of least resistance …{and} wrest this and other scriptures to their own destruction….

It is clear from these verses that God has ordained and delegated powers to various departments of society.  For example, the father is the divinely ordained power in the family, the basic unit of society.  This does not mean that God ordains and approves every wicked, immoral, murderous brute of a father who is a tyrant in his home.  The office of father, the power of the father, is divinely ordained but the abuse of the office is not divinely ordained…. In society… the authorities are ordained of God in regard to their office or powers, but not in regard to their characters.  The chief magistrate is divinely ordained, the office is sacred, but a Hitler who usurps and abuses the office is not divinely ordained neither are the laws of such a tyrant to be obeyed when they oppose the law of God.  Paul speaks clearly on the nature of the laws he has in mind when he says, “For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil.  Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power?  Do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same”.

 This is soooo nearly right, but…!  First, some explanations….

‘The chief magistrate’ – in modern UK usage ‘magistrates’ means a panel of minor local judges.  Back in the Reformation/Puritan era, and in statements of faith like the Presbyterian ‘Westminster Confession’, and so in ‘church-and-state’ discussions in such traditions, ‘magistrate’ meant any person at a great/ruling level in society, including kings and emperors and as in this case a dictator like Hitler.

‘Covenanters’ – the Covenanters were 17^th Century Scots who basically fought a civil war with the Stuart monarchy, objecting to the Stuarts imposing Anglicanism in place of the Scots Presbyterianism going back to John Knox.  By mentioning the Covenanters, Dr Paisley shows that he accepts the possibility of a violent resistance to a government.

Essentially the ‘Paisley pattern’ interpretation of Romans 13 is that you obey the authorities until you think they’ve commanded something against God’s law – but then you rebel and take up the sword, the gun, the pipe bomb….  If you believe that you are supposed to have a ‘Christian country’, a non-Christian government will almost inevitably be considered a suitable target for rebellion (or abroad, crusading warfare) ; as will a government whose ‘Christian state’ is the wrong kind of Christianity – Catholic rather than Protestant for example, or Anglican rather than Puritan.  In Northern Ireland, it wasn’t that the Protestants were being commanded to disobey God themselves – they were just being asked to treat their Catholic neighbours fairly; Protestant violence against the Catholic civil rights movement escalated into the counter-violence by the IRA. 

As Haldane pointed out in his commentary, one of the problems with this is that the apparently reasonable exception ends up taking over from the original rule and nullifying it in practice.  Paul’s teaching of ‘be subject to the authorities’ and ‘do not rebel’ and ‘in no case paying back evil for evil’ and ‘do not revenge yourselves’ is rewritten to an actual practice of “We’ll obey so long as it suits us and when we don’t like it we’ll fight back”.  Paul’s teaching of an unusual godly and spiritually-empowered response to persecution is replaced by a position effectively identical to the ordinary worldly position on such matters.

Dr Paisley and the many others who adopt this interpretation of Romans 13 have, I believe, got confused.  They interpret ‘be subject to’ as if it was simply equivalent to ‘obey’ as in the ‘Verwoerd version’ above; and they think that ‘obeying God rather than men’ is a legitimate exception to ‘do not resist’.  The long tradition of the Christian state going back to Constantine means that they interpret the text within that tradition (a Roman Catholic tradition, please note, Dr Paisley), rather than letting the New Testament mean what it actually says.  I’ll be examining the positive interpretation of Romans 13 in a future post, but for now….

First, yes, I accept that ‘We must obey God rather than men’ is the point where Christian ‘subjection to the authorities’ differs from the unqualified obedience that the state would prefer.  But….

Secondly, We must very much indeed OBEY GOD… and that means we must follow the New Testament teaching, not our worldly desires, on how to deal with a government such as Nero, Caligula, Hitler or Stalin, or of course our own.  That NT teaching includes the implications of Romans 12 for Romans 13, as per the previous blog (‘But Seriously (6)’), and also includes Jesus’ forbidding of the sword, Paul’s insistence that our warfare is not with weapons, and Peter’s clear teaching that Christians must be prepared to follow the example of Jesus (and Peter and Paul) in being willing to suffer unjustly rather than resist/rebel violently against the government.

A modern case supporting ‘Christendom’

Some time back I came across a book called ‘A Higher Throne’, proceedings of sessions of the eleventh ‘Annual School of Theology’ of Oak Hill College, an Anglican institution in the UK.  Among the essays was one by David Field, in which he argued for a ‘Christendomite’ view of ‘confessional Christian states’, derived from the arguments of Samuel Rutherford’s book Lex Rex from the Stuart era.  Early in the essay he sets forth the kind of thing he has in mind, as seen in the following quotes

….Those who want … a Christian nation … could be identified as those who assert;

The first line (paragraph? SL) of the constitution of each and every nation on earth should include a statement such as ‘The triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is the one true living God and he is the maker, ruler redeemer and judge of the world.  The Bible is his infallible and altogether authoritative Word.  Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is King of kings and Lord of lords and has all authority in heaven and on earth.’ 

And later

In summary then, Samuel Rutherford’s arguments in ‘Lex, Rex’  are intended to provide a defence of taking up arms against the tyrant and are founded upon an exposition of the  purpose, origin, nature and raw materials of civil government.  That same exposition also shows how Rutherford would straightforwardly be a supporter of what might be called the covenanted Christian nation, or the confessional state. 

Three Questions may be asked about the relationship between the lordship of Jesus and the kings of the earth;

1. 1.       Is Jesus Christ the ruler of the kings of the earth?
2. 2.       Is it desirable that the kings of the earth should acknowledge this?
3. 3.       Is it desirable that the kings of the earth qua kings should publicly confess this? 

Non-Christians and Christians are of course distinguished by their answers to the first two questions, but those who support and those who oppose the Christian confessional state are distinguished by their answer to the third.  Rutherford and the covenanting tradition answer the third question with no less a ringing and confident ‘yes’ than they give to the first two. 

Given the purpose, origin, nature and stuff of the human person, it is clear and important that each human being confess the triune God, recognise Jesus as Lord, and live with the Word of God as his or her supreme authority.  To Rutherford and the covenanting tradition it is no less clear and important, given the purpose, origin, nature and stuff of human government, that each human ruler also confess the triune God, recognise Jesus as Lord, and live with the Word of God as his or her supreme authority. 

In referring to ‘the kings of the earth’ Field means all kinds of human rulers, not just those who have the specific title ‘king’.  I must admit I’m not quite clear how he regards democracy; he does later describe ‘pluralist democracy’ as being a ‘tyranny’ – I kind of see why he says that (material for a future post perhaps), but I also think he is misconceiving how plural democracy is supposed to work and to think of itself.  I am guessing that he would find acceptable a democracy which was not pluralist but was limited by that specifically Christian opening to its constitution – but he doesn’t fully face some of the implications of that either. 

Looking at those ‘three questions’, yes, Christians believe that Jesus Christ IS the ruler of the ‘kings of the earth’ whether they acknowledge it or not, and overrules for ultimate good even their worst and most ungodly actions, which they can only do at all by divine permission anyway. 

Clearly it is desirable that everybody, king or not, should personally acknowledge Jesus’ rulership; after all those who don’t accept him as Lord are putting their souls at risk, and that is clearly undesirable.  However I’m not sure that this point is quite as clear-cut as Field seems to suggest; if a person who is a king or other ruler accepts Jesus as Lord, he will in many cases find it at least difficult to both follow Jesus and to be a regular-type worldly ruler.  There is quite a bit to be worked out here.  Following Field’s suggested path is an easy solution at first glance, but has its own problems as we will see!

In the third question the expression, rarely used nowadays, ‘qua kings’ means in this case the idea that the ruler doesn’t just as an individual person acknowledge Jesus’ authority; he also acknowledges it in his office as ruler, and so in the way he rules his subjects.  That is, he becomes an explicitly Christian ruler who rules the state as a Christian state based on a Christian constitution like the one quoted above, to which the subjects are expected to conform.  

The logic of these three questions seems impeccable; but it is actually severely flawed.  In the first place, it overlooks some issues about what is really desirable and really practical given the purpose, origin, nature and stuff of the human person and given the purpose, origin, nature and stuff of human government.  And in the second place and even more importantly, the New Testament doesn’t teach this Christian country solution at all, but proposes a very different way to bring people to acknowledge that “the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is the one true living God and He is the maker, ruler redeemer and judge of the world.  The Bible is his infallible and altogether authoritative Word.  Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is King of kings and Lord of lords and has all authority in heaven and on earth”.

Thing is, the only power that can make people Christians is the power of God himself.  Human power, be it king, emperor, president, or dictator, cannot achieve spiritual rebirth; the biggest army can’t make people Christian – not even with the threat of nukes – nor can threats of torture, or for that matter offers of worldly advantage for those who profess faith.  The most that such human power can achieve is a superficial conformity, an external acting out of Christian profession and rituals, from either fear or other worldly motives.  To compare it to education, it’s fairly straightforward to make and enforce the rule that all pupils must wear their school ties; but it needs a lot more than such rules and external conformity for children to actually learn their lessons, let alone learn willingly and joyfully!   

And part of the trouble is that the superficial conformity imposed in the ‘confessional state’ can actually work against people truly coming to faith.  It is all too easy for the status of ‘Christian country’ to be taken for granted so that everyone just assumes they are Christian, and they don’t see the need to be born again and truly personally reconciled to God; as Wesley found out, even bishops can fall into the error of thinking that preaching of the new birth is just unnecessary because ‘England has been a Christian country for centuries’.  Infant baptism and the idea of a magical ‘Christ-ening’ thereby can reinforce such assumptions.  At the other end those who realise the basic falseness of the situation may be put off faith altogether; they may continue external conformity through fear or desire for a quiet life, but again superficial conformity is all it will be.  In other cases this underlying dissatisfaction may eventually lead to open atheism and rebellion against the faith and the power structure of the state that upholds it.  Others will conform through fear of consequences, or hypocritically for the worldly advantages of it.  Desirable as it is for people to acknowledge Jesus as Lord, it is undesirable for that to be muddied by these false situations. 

Also important – the Church is supposed to be the fellowship of believers; but how real can that be when there are lots of people formally in the state church, even at ministry level, who haven’t been born again but are only conforming because the state is a ‘confessional Christian state’, people who are ministers because it’s a profitable and respected career?  OK, even the best church on earth will probably have a few hypocrites or other not-quite-Christians, but in a state privileged church those may be the majority, whereas when there is no special social benefit to a profession of faith it is much more likely that church attenders will be sincere.  Of course if the state actually compels church-going this situation will be even worse.  It is hypothetically possible to imagine a formally ‘Christian country’ that doesn’t contain a single true born-again Christian – indeed England got uncomfortably close to that situation just before the Wesleyan revival.

Then there’s an interesting point; Charles I, opposed by Rutherford and the Scots Covenanters as a ‘tyrant’ was not a bloodthirsty evil pagan like Nero, or the likes of Hitler and Stalin.  No, he would have seen himself as a Christian king, indeed a Protestant king; as far as I can discover, he too would have quite happily adopted Field’s suggested ‘first paragraph of the constitution’ as the position of the state, and would have given a rousing ‘Yes!’ in response to all three of Field’s questions.  He would have seen himself as a king, ‘qua king’, publicly confessing Christ as his ruler, and aiming in his rule to confess the triune God, recognise Jesus as Lord, and live with the Word of God as his supreme authority.  The only problem was that he wasn’t supporting the exact flavour of Christianity favoured by Rutherford and the Covenanter party, but was seeking to suppress their version – basically he saw himself as doing the will of God and the opponents as the tyrants!  Rutherford, it should be pointed out, actually wrote a book against the ‘pretended’ liberty of conscience and probably would have imposed a narrower version of the faith than Charles (though I grant slightly more biblical)….

One thing you can be sure of about the nature and stuff of humans, and so of their governments – “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God”, and even those who have become Christians face a lifetime of temptation and occasionally getting it wrong.  You simply can’t guarantee that the ruler will get Christian things right; you can’t guarantee that he will actually be the Christian he professes to be, let alone be himself a competent theologian.  You can’t guarantee that about the ruler’s advisers, and in the superficial conformity of the ‘confessional state’, you also can’t even guarantee that about church leaders.  What you can be pretty sure of is that the rulers of state and state church will be subject to the temptations of worldly power and also the spiritual temptations from believing that God is on their side in what they do, and that they are therefore entitled to use their powers to impose conformity on others – partly by bribes and influence offering benefits to those who conform, but ultimately by the state force of police and army.  And others who have the same kind of belief in state religion, but disagree with the particular ruler – well, whether they are right or wrong where they differ from the ruler’s beliefs, they too will think it’s all right to resist by force in order to impose their better version of the Christian state, to ‘take up arms against the tyrant’ as Field puts it.

In simple terms, the ‘Christian state’ though aiming at unity, is all too likely to lead to war and division between Christians in practice, even persecution of Christians by other Christians using the power of the state[i].  This started even in the time of Constantine, with the tragedy of the Donatist rebellion – classic case, as in modern Ulster, of both sides really being wrong, though as an Anabaptist I think the Donatists came out marginally better when they eventually challenged the state church by asking “Quid est imperator cum ecclesiae?” – in modern terms “since when is the Church the Emperor’s business?”  Being ‘Christian’ led to religious wars between and within nations; but it also didn’t stop ‘Christian’ nations warring against each other for the other traditional reasons of human greed, pride, etc. yet claiming often to do it in God’s name.  The claims on all sides in the First World War to have God on their side in the carnage was arguably a major cause of modern disillusionment with Christianity and ironically the decline of ‘Christendom’. 

And just there is the beginning of an argument why this whole approach is wrong in Christian terms; because Paul, for example, clearly said (II Corinthians 10; 3) “…we do not war with carnal weapons.  For the weapons of our warfare are not physical…”  And Jesus said his kingdom is not of this world, and ordered Peter to put up his sword, and Paul clearly said in Romans (and Peter in a parallel passage in I Peter) that Christians are not to rebel against the state authorities, even when in Paul’s and Peter’s day the ‘authorities’ meant Nero himself.   Yet neither the establishment nor defence of the ‘Christian state’ is practical without those ‘carnal weapons’!  Just from that text alone Field’s thesis seems to be unravelling….

I commented above that ‘the New Testament doesn’t teach this Christian country solution at all’.  Field’s lecture/paper/essay has just over 30 pages expounding his Christian confessional state – and yet offers very little biblical evidence.  It’s all logical argument and assumptions.  Now there is truth behind some of these assumptions, even biblical truth.  But as the saying has it, ‘assume’ makes an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’; does the actual teaching of the NT about state and church match the assumptions in this case?

Specifically it is very obviously true that in preparing the first advent of Jesus, his coming into the world to make atonement for our sins, God used the nation of Israel and did indeed set it up as a ‘confessional state’.  It is an easy assumption that after Jesus came, the same pattern would continue, of God’s people manifesting in yet more earthly religious nations under earthly religious rulers, but Christian/Messianic rather than Jewish. 

It is also true that ultimately Jesus will be recognised as king of kings and Lord of lords – and ultimately every knee will indeed bow to him.  Again, it’s an easy assumption that God wants this to be realised in the here and now with Christian kings ensuring that their subjects bow the knee.

But if so, the New Testament is strikingly silent about these ‘obvious’ ideas, these easy assumptions.  If you check out doctrinal standards and statements of faith like the Anglican 39 Articles or the Westminster Confession, you’ll find that they don’t offer many ‘proof texts’ for the establishment/Christian country’ position, and most of what they do offer are Old Testament generalities, not the specific instructions of the NT for the Church.   Furthermore on close examination the texts generally don’t actually prove the Christian country idea; more a case of you can interpret them in line with that position if you already hold it for other reasons – which reasons don’t seem to be found in the NT!  I’d also suggest that if you check such texts out for yourself you’ll probably agree with me that they’re being, shall we say, stretched a bit; and that they can also be interpreted comfortably in line with the anti-establishment position, and in many cases more so!  In more recent times many Anglicans and other ‘Christian country’ types seem to have given up the idea that there is NT proof; for example, I’ve just been taking part in an online discussion forum in which a few of the participants seemed to think the Bible didn’t express an opinion either way.  Again a few years ago I found an essay from well-known Anglican evangelical JI Packer including the following (heavily but I hope fairly edited to isolate ‘establishment’ from four other issues in a long passage)….

“….one finds that the main theological issues that have divided Protestants who hold to sola Scriptura have been… (4) how the churches should be related to the state – the issue in debates about establishment throughout the world since the seventeenth century

What are we to say to these … matters of debate?    … The fourth debate reflected the presupposition that Scripture must legislate on the issue in question, even though no biblical author addresses himself to (it).” 

I think Packer is wrong here; he is right in that no biblical author positively teaches the establishment of the Christian church, but wrong in that they do address the issue – to present a positive alternative view.  It is both surprising and sad that Packer, normally so acute, should have failed to notice this. 

What the New Testament positively teaches?  I’m only giving an outline here – and at that a sketchy one; for more details and (so far just the beginnings of) biblical exposition see various other posts on this blog and especially the ‘But Seriously’ strand which deals with this topic .

Starting with Jesus’ disciples, God has been calling people out from the nations of the world, not to the forced and grudging superficial conformity of an institutional state ‘church’, but to a loving relationship with Jesus based on a living faith, and also a loving relationship with others who have heard and followed Jesus’ call.  When the state and its coercive power isn’t involved, those who hear and freely follow that call join God’s real holy nation on earth, the Church itself, the worldwide community of their fellow-believers.  In turn by the power of God’s Word and Spirit these voluntary believers call others to repent and believe, and to worship God freely ‘in spirit and truth’, not just turn up to go through the motions of worship because the law says so or because they are offered worldly benefits to conform outwardly[ii].

Christians live in the state – even the state which is their native land – as ‘resident aliens’ whose primary citizenship is the kingdom of heaven.  To be sure they respect the state they live in, and they are ‘subject to the authorities’ as both Peter and Paul say; but in the last resort if there is conflict between the demands of state and kingdom of heaven, Christians will ‘obey God rather than man’.  Contrary to Field’s and Rutherford’s suggestion this disobedience does not lead to ‘taking up arms against the tyrant’, instead Christians follow the example of Paul, Peter, and indeed Jesus himself by submitting to the state’s punishment even though that punishment is ultimately unjust.  Christians do not need worldly power, Christendom as a ‘kingdom of this world’, to advance God’s agenda of true reconciliation between God and man; on the contrary worldly power can compromise God’s work.

 OK, I too think those two paragraphs are sketchy; but I want you to go back to the New Testament itself and check it out.  Over and over the NT speaks against worldly power and merely physical weapons, and in favour of that worldwide spiritual unity of Christians that the state is powerless to bring about, a church of those ‘called out’ from the world and ‘gathered together’ by God as Jesus’ disciples and friends.  (The Greek word for ‘Church’, ekklesia, combines those two ideas of ‘called’ and ‘gathered’)

Jesus’ kingdom is ‘not of this world’; we must resist people like Field and Rutherford who can’t see beyond the superficial conformity of state religion.

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[i] There are also issues of all kinds between Christian states and states committed to other kinds of religion, particularly Islam at present, and often those issues are adverse to the spread of the gospel. For this post I’m not going there – this is already one of my longest essays – but hopefully you’ll see some of those aspects in other future posts.

[ii] These days with freedom of religion in most western countries even where there still is a state religion, we probably see most church members being such voluntary believers, in whatever denomination.  But in a country so long formally Christian, and still offering some respect and social status to churchgoers, there is still a confusing legacy of nominal Christianity for worldly and social reasons, not only in the state churches but among non-conformists as well.  Worryingly, seemingly in reaction to the challenge of Islam, I’m seeing increasing numbers of people who seem to have little understanding of biblical faith and whose profession of Christianity seems to be more an assertion of British/English national identity against ‘immigrants’.  This is particularly problematic when you realise that according to the New Testament Christianity is meant to be very anti-racist, a faith where ‘in Christ’ racial differences do not matter.   Another place where the notion of a ‘Christian country’ distorts Christianity itself….

But Seriously… (2) In which Pilate’s exercised!

In this episode we are looking at Jesus’ trial before Pilate.  The basic plot is that the Jewish leaders, having captured Jesus, drag him before the Roman governor not only to get the death penalty they, in an occupied territory, can’t legally exact for themselves, but also because in their eyes a Messianic claimant who gets killed by the Romans should be thoroughly discredited.  Pilate for various reasons refuses just to rubber-stamp their demand and actually examines the case and declares Jesus to be innocent as far as he’s concerned.  The High Priests and the Jerusalem ‘Rent-a-mob’ thwart Pilate’s efforts to free Jesus by a combination of political arm-twisting and by choosing the robber Barabbas for amnesty, following which Pilate orders the crucifixion but makes his opinion clear by the gesture of ‘washing his hands’ of the affair[i].

For Jesus to fulfil his role as a sacrifice for sin it was necessary for him to be innocent.  In relation to the Jewish charge of blasphemy, he appeared guilty in his claim to divinity but was innocent because those claims were true and were vindicated by the resurrection.  Appropriately he was unjustly put to death for what is really the root or basic sin of men, that we try to be our own gods, effectively stealing our lives from God; from that fundamental selfishness flow all our other sins, both the obviously evil and also sins like those of the Pharisees, superficially good but proud and self-righteous.

It tends to be overlooked that having been handed over to the Romans, Jesus needed also to be innocent and unjustly executed in Roman terms, which is why the gospel writers make such a point of Pilate’s verdict of innocence.  This mattered in two ways – firstly if Jesus was truly guilty in Roman terms, at the very least it confuses the issue of whether he died an undeserved death, and secondly a Jesus justly executed in Roman eyes would not be an easy ‘sell’ in the Roman Empire and would mean that Christians in turn would be deservedly persecuted by Rome for following a rebel.  This confusion and persecution of the Christians could still arise if you tried to make the case – as a more conventional messianic claimant might – that Jesus had been unjustly executed because the Roman law itself was unjust.  Pilate’s verdict of innocence followed by him crucifying an innocent for reasons of expedience avoids all such ambiguity.  Christians could claim that Jesus had died an innocent death in every respect and that persecuting them for Jesus’ claims would also be unjust.

But – how on earth did Jesus secure a verdict of innocence from Pilate of all people?  Pilate was a tough guy who had quite happily ‘mingled the blood of Galileans with their own sacrifices’, and executing messianic claimants was part of the job description for the governor of Palestine.  For Jesus to convince this tyrant would need exceptional circumstances.

I do suspect that the Holy Spirit did a bit of ‘overtime’ here to ensure that Pilate actually listened to Jesus rather than cursorily rubber-stamp the death sentence; but even so, Jesus would have to provide a credible argument for his innocence.  The answer, I believe, is to be found in the exchange between Jesus and Pilate recorded in John’s gospel[ii]

Then Pilate entered the palace again and summoned Jesus, whom he asked, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

Jesus replied, “Do you say this of your own accord, or have others told you about me?”

Pilate answered him, “I am not a Jew, am I?  Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me.  What have you done?”

Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world.  If my kingdom were of this world, my attendants would have struggled to prevent my being delivered to the Jews.  But really the source of my kingdom is not here.”

Pilate then said to him, “You are a king, then?”

To which Jesus replied, “You say correctly that I am a king.  For this purpose I was born and for this I entered the world, that I might testify to the truth.  Everyone who loves the truth listens to my voice.”

Pilate remarked to him, “What is truth?”  With these words he went outside again to the Jews and told them, “I find him not guilty at all….”

The key sentence here is ‘My kingdom is not of this world’.  In many bible commentaries this is almost passed over as a bit of airy-fairy spirituality or vague philosophising; but come on, this is not a casual conversation between friends at a Socratic symposium; this is a trial on a capital charge requiring the accused to give hard-as-nails answers to the judge!  Yes, Jesus has said, I’m a king – BUT… I’m not the kind of king that concerns you, Pilate, not the kind of king who threatens your Roman rule with military rebellion and strife.  I’m a different kind of king, seeking a different kind of following, disciples who will act very differently from those of the usual ‘messiah’.   My followers won’t be fighting to save me from you; indeed if you check you will find that when one young hothead did draw a sword I stopped him and even healed the wound he had inflicted.  My kingdom is not one of armies and weapons, but of people who recognise the truth I proclaim and follow that truth.

Now Pilate may be a bit scornful of this, as his rhetorical “What is truth?” suggests; but it is clear that he believes Jesus, that he accepts that Jesus is not the usual violent rebel messiah, and he is at least willing to make some effort to avoid what he realises is an injustice, though not to the point of putting his career at risk.  As a result, the important point is made – Jesus is innocent and his crucifixion unjust.

What does this mean for the scriptural teaching about ‘established churches’ and ‘Christian countries’?  Well Jesus was on trial for trying to set up the most direct form of Christian country, with himself as king rebelling against Rome; and he disclaims any such intention.  Is it credible he intended his disciples later to set up such kingdoms in his name?  And in any case, if he would approve of his followers setting up Christian states, that would be just as bad in Pilate’s eyes as Jesus setting himself up as king.

Try a thought experiment; nearly 300 years later, Constantine took over the Roman Empire by force, conquering ‘in the sign of the cross’ and supposedly in the name of Jesus.  Imagine Jesus by a miracle showing Pilate that future episode and then saying that he approved of Constantine – could Pilate approve?  Or indeed imagine Jesus showing Pilate the English Civil War and telling Pilate he approved of his followers behaving like that in his name!!  I can’t see Pilate responding to that any other way than “If that’s the kind of ‘king’ you are … guilty as charged – to the cross with him!”

Take a modern example.  I found a book called ‘A Higher Throne – evangelicals and public theology’ which originated as papers at Oak Hill College’s Annual School of Theology.  In an essay advocating ‘Christian confessional states’ (with a marked lack of scriptural evidence for the proposal), one David Field cited with approval the Puritan Samuel Rutherford’s ‘defence of armed resistance against the tyrant’.  Again, what would Pilate say to that?  Surely his response would be, “Oh you messiahs and your followers always justify your rebellions that way!  Get the cross ready!”

That’s the problem; those who advocate ‘Christian countries’ are advocating exactly the kind of ‘kingdom very much of this world’ that Jesus rejected – and there would have been a verdict of guilty against him if he hadn’t rejected it!  A kingdom that may be set up by force rebelling against the existing government, and then defended by force.  A kingdom that might invade its neighbours in a holy war to impose the faith upon them, or externally encourage subversion and foment rebellion in the neighbours for that purpose.

In advocating a ‘Christian state’ such people think they are honouring Jesus, but in fact they are contradicting him at the key point of his declaration of innocence when on trial for his life.  If you think about it either they are saying

• “Jesus meant what he said to Pilate about his kingdom not being of this world; but we know better what kind of kingdom Jesus should have”. Or they are saying
• “Jesus intended kingdoms-of-this-world/Christian-states all along; but he misled Pilate about his intentions”.  Effectively they accuse Jesus of lying, yet of course can’t explain why Jesus would do so.

I’m not sure which of these options is worse.  The arrogance of claiming to know better than their Lord the Son of God, or the sheer blasphemy of accusing the Lord, the Son of God, of lying.  Perhaps the second, because although others are misled as a result, the arrogance in the first case mostly affects the moral position of the arrogant themselves; accusing Jesus of lying threatens the atonement itself, because if Jesus were a liar  that would make Him a sinner and therefore unable to die as an innocent sacrifice!

But what is arguably worse still is that the advocates of Christian states are generally not consciously saying either of these terrible things; rather, they so take for granted the idea of a Christian state that they have never thought through this issue at all, they have blinded themselves to it.

Pilate took Jesus seriously, that his kingdom is not of this world, and declared Jesus innocent.  The advocates of the ‘Christian state’ do not take Jesus seriously, and end up saying that Pilate should have found Jesus guilty!!   For faith in an innocent Jesus who can therefore save you, follow Jesus as Lord and follow what he said on this issue, and reject the ‘Christian state’ lobby!

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[i] And of course ‘the Jews’ should not be held responsible for ever for the actions of a few leaders and what was effectively a ‘Rent-a-mob’.  Modern Jews are no more ‘responsible for the crucifixion’ than any Gentile unbeliever.  And in any case as Christians we are meant to follow the example of Paul who, far from wanting to persecute his fellow-Jews, said that if it was possible he would be prepared to lose his own salvation to save them!!

[ii] interestingly, a case where we very likely have more than usual ‘the actual words’, since the Koine Greek ‘trader language’ of the New Testament would be the common language of Roman Pilate and Galilean Jesus, whereas most of Jesus’ teaching  would have been in the Aramaic usually spoken among the Jews at that time, which Pilate would not have known.

Gollum and the Ring of Power

[This post has now been followed up by a loose series labelled ‘But Seriously’ in which I explore the biblical texts on the relation of Church and state.  For now just check other posts under the ‘But Seriously’ heading; I’ll try and get some better indexing or whatever as my blogging skills improve]

I frequently look at the website ‘Ship of Fools’, which is Christianity with a sense of humour.  As well as forums and news it has the ‘Secret Worshipper’ feature where people in effect review church services and comment on them, and some pure fun bits like ‘Signs and Blunders’ – an assortment of usually unintentional ‘gaffes’ from posters, noticeboards, church newsletters etc. (One intentional one I liked was the American church noticeboard saying “Will whoever is praying for snow please stop”!)  One of these features is ‘Born Again’ which amusingly suggests, on the basis of a resemblance, that some well-known figure is a reincarnation of someone (or occasionally something!) else; Ian Paisley of Christopher (Dracula/Saruman) Lee, for instance.  Recently this feature suggested that the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Wellby, might be a reincarnation of Gollum, the Andy Serkis CGI-generated character from the Lord of the Rings.  I sort of saw what they were getting at; but at first I did feel that for once the suggestion was a bit cruel, that ‘Born Again’ had gone too far….

But later I realised that while it might be rather cruel as a personal comment on the Archbishop’s appearance, it might actually be quite relevant as a comment on the reality of the Anglican Church.  Gollum of course starts life as ‘Smeagol’,  an imperfect but not particularly evil hobbit-like person who comes into contact with the One Ring and is led to murder his brother Deagol and ends up as the Gollum we meet in The Hobbit and then in the LOTR saga.  Not a bad person underneath, but corrupted by his addiction to his ‘Precious’, the evil, deceptive and destructive Ring of Power which in the end he simply will not let go of even when this means he casts himself into the fiery Crack of Doom in Mordor.  For the Church of England, the corrupting Ring of Power is the Church’s ‘Precious’ established status….

OK, historically the Church of England didn’t start relatively innocent like Smeagol; it grew out of a Catholic Church already corrupted by being tangled with the state since the days of Constantine, so it started already addicted to its ‘Precious’ in the hands of Henry VIII who wanted religious uniformity and control of his subjects.  Indeed despite a pretty good attempt under Edward and Elizabeth at restoring the Biblical gospel, one could argue that the narrowly national establishment of Anglicanism was a slightly worse form of establishment than the Roman version.  (I should mention here for the record that though currently Anabaptistic much of my early education in Christianity came from Anglicans and I still really appreciate many Anglican scholars like Stott and Packer and other clergy and laity I’ve known myself.)

Right from square one under Henry, the Anglicans persecuted dissenters; not only the Roman Catholics, but also at the other end a party of Dutch Anabaptists were executed by them.  Persecution (such as the imprisonment of John Bunyan) continued till the Act of Toleration under William III, and all manner of petty discrimination carried on even beyond that – exclusion of dissenters from the universities for many years, for example.  However, as will be a major theme of this blog in many of its posts, the big issue is not the obvious problems like wars and persecutions but the simple fact that being an established church is disobeying the Word of God and confusing the gospel teaching in all kinds of ways.  It is particularly frustrating to us serious non-conformists that when one reads books by the like of Richard Dawkins; generally more than half of his criticism of our faith is not dealing with real biblical issues (which he’s usually misunderstood anyway!), but with the completely unnecessary faults and problems of the various established churches, and of others like Ian Paisley who want unbiblical favour and privilege in the state.  We find ourselves having to fight through all that unnecessary stuff – where, let’s be blunt, we agree with Dawkins that it’s wrong – before we can get a hearing for the real biblical teaching.

As things currently stand, the Anglican establishment no longer means the totalitarian uniformity it started as under Henry and Elizabeth; it no longer even means that Anglicans (albeit often nominal) are the majority of the population – partly of course because much of Anglicanism has put people off religion generally.  But still the Church clings resolutely to its destructive ‘Precious’, still the good it does is undermined by the contradictions and practical problems of establishment; still establishment is probably the biggest bar to Christian unity simply because it is impossible to be united with Anglicanism without accepting their entanglement with the state, their position as precisely the kind of ‘kingdom of this world’ that Jesus rejected when he defended himself before Pilate.

So, on the one hand, yes, it’s cruel and wrong to compare Archbishop Justin’s appearance to Gollum – Ship of Fools please repent in sackcloth and ashes; but on the other hand, yes, Gollum with his split personality and his destructive addiction to his ‘Precious’ is a pretty good symbol of the Archbishop’s church and its contradictory personality with its unbiblical clinging to the rags that remain of the tempting power and influence of establishment.