The Free Thinker

"A World Without Barriers"

"Jesus was a refugee, pope says on world migration day" (Catholic News Service, 1/18/11, via Brothers Judd):

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Jesus was a refugee -- a fact that should be remembered as societies deal with modern issues of emigration and immigration, Pope Benedict XVI said.

"Migration today sometimes is voluntary and at other times, unfortunately, is forced by wars or persecution, often in dramatic conditions," the pope said Jan. 16. From its very beginnings, the church has taken an interest in these situations, he said.

"The parents of Jesus had to flee their own land and take refuge in Egypt, in order to save the life of their child: the Messiah, the son of God, was a refugee," he said.

Throughout the centuries, he said, Christian populations have at times suffered the necessity to leave their homelands, impoverishing the countries where they and their ancestors had lived.

On the other hand, the pope said, the voluntary migration of Christians through the ages has increased the church's missionary dynamism and ensured that the witness of faith reaches new frontiers.

The pope made the remarks at the Vatican on a day that was celebrated in most countries as the World Day for Migrants and Refugees. Late last year, he issued a message on the theme of this year's celebration, "One Human Family."

The pope said he wanted his message to underline that in the church's vision, human migration has a unifying goal: to form a single human family that is enriched by differences but that lives without barriers.

Exactly, well said. I was thinking about the state of the immigration debate on this blog up till now. Tom and Nato mostly agree with me. Dissent has come from JM, MS, and SDS.

SDS seems mainly concerned that he perceived in me a judgmental attitude towards advocates of migration restrictions. It is never amiss to be told to love the sinner while hating the sin, for even if one has not fallen into hating the sinner, one may succumb to that temptation at any moment, and it is good to be warned. However, SDS's main grounds for claiming that I had fallen into it was my use of historical analogies that compared advocates of migration restrictions to fascists and to the slaveowning antebellum South. The problem with this line of argument is that if to compare nativists to fascists or slaveowning Southerners is to "judge their hearts," presumably the hearts of fascists and slaveowning Southerners have already been judged. And not only would that be contrary to "judge not that ye be not judged" and "hate the sin but love the sinner," but it would impoverish our historical understanding of fascists and antebellum Southerners if we simply "explained" their beliefs and behavior by saying that they were evil and we are not. I think we should recognize that we are not immune to letting veneration of the state blind us to the moral law; to desiring order more than our own freedom and especially that of others; to letting our perceived economic dependence on a system induce us to condone its violations of natural rights, in a spirit of cynical "realism." Americans are prone to feel that, because our country has historically behaved morally better than other great powers, that moral superiority is a sort of birthright. It is not that; it depends on our actions; and inasmuch as we imitate one of the most infamous practices of slavery by separating families by force...

Using Census data and figures released by the Pew Hispanic Center, the report estimates that just over 1 million family members have been separated from their loved ones by... deportations.

we risk forfeiting our moral superiority to societies which we view as cautionary tales.

JM offered the widest range of arguments against my positions, some of them monstrously bad. Among them was the worst, logically and morally, of all the arguments made against illegal immigration, namely the confusion of property with sovereignty, as if the entire territory of the United States were the private property of the US government, and for unauthorized foreigners to enter is some kind of trespassing. This is an argument worthy of pharaonic Egypt, to accept which is to repudiate in its entirety the heritage of liberty, which views man as a rational being with rights, and government as based on consent of the governed, and to make us all the slaves of the state. She also hinted at paternalistic arguments, suggesting that maybe not all those who say they would like to come to America would really benefit by coming. The idea that it is for the benefit of migrants that the migration decision be taken away from them and put in the hands of a State Department bureaucrat, who is not only not adequately incentivized to decide for the desiring migrant's good, but is not even trying to do so, is so absurd that one is reluctant to bring in the fact that most migrants to the US enjoy large income gains, lest by mentioning empirical evidence one seems wrongly to concede that the argument has enough prima facie validity not to be rejected at once. I was also struck by JM's claim that my advocacy of policies that don't involve separating families by force was an unrealistic desideratum, and she used the example of war. Now, first of all, JM may not be aware of this, but the United States does not practice conscription, so a polity that does not separate families by force in order to staff its armed forces is not only realistic, but a realized fact. Second, it might be appropriate to resort to a measure in emergencies when the survival of a society is threatened by a violent assault, but intolerable to make that measure a part of one's everyday policies. Third, even conscription has traditionally separated only fathers from their offspring by force, not mothers, and this I think makes a big difference, since the mother-and-child bond seems especially intimate and sacred. Slavery and migration restrictions, by contrast, will even separate a mother from her child. It is probably quite possible to have a society which never severs that bond, at least when the mother has not committed a crime; at any rate, we have to try. I recall another disappointing bit of sophistry from JM. I was arguing that migration restrictions are unique to our time, that comprehensive migration controls were never attempted before the 20th century, and certainly did not exist in the era she tends to admire, though of course travel was dangerous then and some were better able to engage in it than others. She said that some people could travel, it depended on who you were, just like today. She somehow glossed over this, I can't remember the exact artful formulation she used, but it was a bit like arguing that there is nothing unique about slavery, because there is always work to be done, and people can't be completely equal. (I remember she also once made the bizarre suggestion that my position on immigration is "defeasible pacifism." As it isn't any kind of pacifism-- not a general rejection of state violence; not a rejection of just war-- I can't make head or tail of this one.)

However, there was one argument that JM made which I found extremely interesting. Both JM and MS have often used "community" as a slogan with which to argue against open borders. This is a seeming nonsequitur, since (a) migration restrictions constantly divide communities, and/or prevent their formation, since actual and potential communities (including families!) regularly cross borders and are forcibly separated by migration restrictions, while on the other hand (b) how migration restrictions could possibly contribute to "community" even among native and naturalized US citizens is unclear, since the crossing of the Rio Grande by an illegal immigrant would seem to have no effect on the love and friendship and trust that any particular Americans have for each other. By pressing JM hard with this argument I provoked a very intriguing glimpse of the conception that might underlie this argument. From what I remember (it would take a while to find it), JM said that people need not only food, shelter, etc., but also community, friends, and that if everyone is friends with their neighbors then everyone has friends. It is a sort of social safety net in community: let everyone have, and fulfill, a moral obligation to know their neighbors, and while some people may have many more friends than others, yet no one will be completely friendless.

If this argument is accepted, there is a fairly plausible case for some kind of migration restrictions, because it might be necessary to ensure that one's neighbors are the kind of people one can make friends with, e.g., that they speak English, and have some degree of cultural similarity. The argument could be used even more plausibly to support some kind of domestic segregation, but I don't say that to delegitimize it. I would actually be very interested to see where a serious and consistent application of the argument that coercion is justified as a means of ensuring that people know their neighbors would lead. However-- and it's odd that JM doesn't seem to have seen this-- this is not at all a defense of the status quo, because in fact, nowadays hardly anyone seems to know their neighbors. I was particularly struck by this a few years ago when I visited a friend of mine in Louisville, KY, who is very community-oriented. He's choir director of the church, he's president of the local Hibernian Club (an Irish-American organization) and organizes the annual St. Patrick's Day parade, he keeps in close touch with many friends from Notre Dame, he grew up in Louisville and moved back to his home town. And we were having a conversation about community and the theme of how people don't know their neighbors anymore, and he said that he thought about that too, but that even he didn't know his neighbors, even though he is such a community-oriented kind of guy. Of course, he'd recently bought a house; probably he knows his parents' neighbors. Still, the point stands. A society in which no one is friendless because everyone lives next to someone and everyone is friends with his neighbors is not, at this time of day, a practicable proposal. It's far more utopian than my modest proposal to tax immigration rather than restricting it by force.

One reason that I wish JM and MS would be more serious and systematic in thinking about "community" is that I think it would eventually become clear to them that while their concerns might motivate serious and far-reaching changes in our customs and policies, it certainly would not provide any basis for defending immigration control such as the US practices today. I think that even when reason is abused to defend the indefensible the results are sometimes good, because argument has a tendency to lead to truth even when that is not the motive of the arguer. I experienced this personally in my own life, when as a teenager my efforts to defend an indefensible religion, Mormonism, awakening my conscience and intellect in a way that eventually led me out of the Mormon church and to orthodox Christianity. I think the American South is another example: the libertarian, romantic, aristocratic conservatism that originally emerged there in part as an attempt to rationalize the indefensible institution of slavery lingered afterwards and changed, and became, much later, an important component of the American political instinct that enabled the United States to avoid the encroachment of the social-democratic state which is now slowly smothering Western Europe. Similarly, there may be a genuine need to revive and rethink the idea of community and make our society more conducive to its development and health, but not to shut out the foreign-born by force.

Finally, MS's main argument seems to be simply that I'm in a small minority and that it's just too improbable that I'm right. She hopes that I will "moderate" my views. The truth is that I am the moderate here, looking for practical and just solutions, the extremist position being the view that every single human being in the six-million-square-mile territory of the United States must be here only with the permission of a government bureaucracy. Oddly enough, it's not even clear which of us-- myself, or JM and MS-- is more critical of the status quo, since I, after all, want those who are here to be able to stay here, and to that extent am an advocate of the status quo over against the presumptive advocacy for mass deportation of JM and MS... though on the other hand, I'm not really sure whether either of them stand on the issue. Whatever It Takes is the title of a book by J.D. Hayworth and a co-author, which I certainly will not read, but the title is a useful summary of the immorality inherent in nativism/"enforcing the law." What would Hayworth say, if I said that nothing short of regular pogroms will sufficiently offset the economic incentives to come here (especially since there is no moral reason for foreigners to obey this particular law if it is not in their interests to do so)? Presumably, "whatever it takes." What about JM and MS? I would be glad if they would draw the line somewhere, if they would say, "we'll try to enforce the borders, but we won't resort to x." So far I don't think they have ever done that. Hopefully they would draw the line at murder, at least. It's hard to see where else they would draw it, since we're already separating families by force. As for whether I'm in the minority, that's not clear. Most ordinary Americans just don't seem to have any idea of what our immigration policies is; they'll complain about illegal immigrants, then say they just want them to come in legally, following the rules, as if they're under the impression that most or all illegal immigrants had the option of coming legally and just chose, for some reason, not to take it. Wir haben es nichts gewusst, said the Germans after the Holocaust-- "we didn't know." I'm not saying migration restrictions are the moral equivalent of the Holocaust, of course, but there is a similar (wilful?) ignorance among Americans about what immigration enforcement involves. It's not clear in what sense a person who blames illegal immigrants for not using non-existent legal channels can be said to have an opinion about immigration policy at all. They have an opinion about immigration policy in an alternate universe. And it seems like most people, even some prominent pundits, are in exactly that situation. Moreover, if you were to poll the opinions of mankind about what US immigration policy should be, I might well find the vast majority supporting my position.

Still, MS's argument deserves serious examination. To what extent should one defer to the judgment of the majority? How likely is it that an individual is right and society is wrong? The multitude has more information, more experience than the individual, after all. And there is one area of life in which I think the value of deference to the general opinion of moralizing mankind in the teeth of one's own desires and reasoning can hardly be overstated: sexuality. Here the immediate mutual benefit seems so obvious and natural, the long shadow of negative consequences so impossible to explain, or rather, the explanations seem so threadbare and silly. Who can understand the mysterious interwovenness of body and soul, how deep the bonds and how potent their vengeance when violated? Who can foresee the way the pleasures of romance and of parenthood, so different and incommensurable, are yet bound together so that the latter must succeed the former for it to be complete? The wisdom of one's elders is invaluable here, for only those who have seen all the stages of a human life unfold can begin to appreciate how scarce a resource is youth's capacity for sexual love, and how prudently that resource must be spent. Nor is it easy for a young person to perceive and to credit the kind of stake that his or her family has in whom he or she marries, and why it ought to give them a say.

However, it is not tenable that deference to local majority opinion is always a better guide than an individual's judgment. After all, local majority opinion differs from time to time and place to place, and where there is disagreement at least one side must be wrong. For example, it is universally held today, at least among Americans and Western Europeans, that slavery is a horrible evil. But now think about this: for centuries, nay for millennia, slavery was practiced wherever mankind achieved a certain degree of wealth. I recently read Rodney Stark's account of how that ended, and in particular of the dominant role which religion played, from beginning to end, in the movement to abolish slavery. Slavery first disappeared from western Europe in the early Middle Ages. Later, when it was revived during the "Expansion of Europe" in the 16th and 17th centuries, it never penetrated Europe itself (at least not on a large scale), but instead was established in the New World and other overseas colonial possessions of Europe. The popes were unambiguously opposed to it from the beginning, even decreeing excommunications for those who enslaved others, but the Reformation and Counter-Reformation had greatly weakened them vis-a-vis secular rulers, and their opposition was mostly ineffectual, though-- Stark shows-- the Catholic Church did manage to ameliorate slavery by getting slave codes passed in Portuguese and Spanish colonies that were more lenient and humane than those in Protestant Barbados and North America. Yet in the end slavery lasted longer in the Catholic countries than in the Protestant countries, where abolition was pioneered by the Quakers, and later embraced by the Methodists and Protestant evangelists of the early 19th century like Charles Finney, and British abolitionists financed the antislavery movement in France.

Stark makes an important point which is relevant to the immigration question today. Slavery is by no means explicitly condemned by the Bible. Although the slave code of the ancient Jews, as described in the Mosaic law, is unusually lenient, the ancient Jews did practice slavery. The apostles, moreover, encouraged slaves to obey their masters, although in an epistle to Philemon, Paul seems to encourage him (but gently) to manumit a slave, Onesimus. So how could Christians come to the conclusion that slavery was sinful? Contra the biases of some historians, they certainly did not derive the concept from secular, liberal morality, for secular intellectuals mostly favored slavery: this idea began among Christians and became part of liberal morality later and as a side-effect. Rather, Christians derived this conclusion by reasoning from Biblical and theological premises:

[The 1754 Quaker anti-slavery pamphlet by John Woolman] was a model of gentle Quaker persuasion. He began by quoting Matt. 25:40: "For as much as ye did it to the least of my brethren, ye did it unto me," with the direct implication that to enslave a "Negro" was to enslave Christ. Although clearly aimed at slaveholding Quakers, it did not single them out but reminded all Quakers that "Negroes are our fellow creatures, and their present condition amongst us requires serious consideration," and that Friends are committed to justice, love, and the better of all humankind, not to self-interest. In his final paragraph he expressed his belief that while God has so far not intervened, he sees that "[Negroes] are trodden down and despised, yet he remembers them: he seeth their affliction," and soon God is apt to "humble the most haughty people" who prefer "gain to equity"...

[Later, under Woolman's influence, the Quaker Yearly Meeting] agreed to publish a tract of its own, constituting a far more direct attack on slavery: An Epistle of Caution and Advice, Concerning the Buying and Keeping of Slaves.

Written by a committee, this statement began by asking whether it was consistent with the Golden Rule to deprive "our fellow creatures of the valuable blessing liberty," or to "grow rich by their bondage"... Then... the committee got to the clincher. "Finally, brethren, we entreat you in... Gospel love, seriously to weigh the cause of detaining them in bondage. If it be for your own private gain, or any motive other than their good, it is much to be feared that the love of God, and the influence of the Holy Spirit is not the prevailing principle in you."...

Not to be outdone, many Christian groups and luminaries took up the cause of abolition, and soon abolitionist societies sprang up that were not associated with a specific denomination. But, through it all, the movement (as distinct from those it made sympathetic to the cause) was staffed by devout Christian activists, the majority of them clergy...

In 1833 leading abolitionists formed the American Anti-Slavery Society. Led by the fiery agitator and editor of The Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison (1805-1879), the group adopted and published a ringing Declaration of Sentiments, filled with religious justifications. Noting that to hold a human being "in involuntary bondage" is, "according to Scripture" stealing, the docuemnt proclaimed it a certainty that "the slaves out instantly to be set free, and brought under the protection of law." Furthermore, all current laws "admitting the right of slavery, are therefore, before God, utterly null and void... an audacious usurpation of Divine prerogative" and "a presumptuous transgression of all the holy commandments."...

The American Roman Catholic Church faced not serious internal conflict over slavery because it had few Southern parishes, and, at least by the start of the nineteenth century, the clergy followed the pope in opposing slavery. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Pope Pius VII (1800 to 1823) demanded the suppression of the slave trade. Then, in 1839, Pope Gregory XVI (1831 to 1846) sent an Apostolic Letter to the Provincial Council of American Bishops in which he condemned slavery. It began with a fine example of theological "deduction." In his opening paragraph the pope admitted that the Apostles counseled slaves to obey their masters, but went on to note (as Woolman had also done) that just as Christ declared that whatever was done to the least of all humans, it was done to Him, "it naturally follows" that Christians should treat slaves as their brothers. He then pointed out that "In the process of time, the fog of pagan superstition being more completely dissipated and the manners of barbarous people have been softened, thanks to Faith operating by Charity... there are no more slaves in the greater number of Christian nations." Unfortunately, there were "among the Faithful" men who were "shamefully blinded by their desire for sordid gain," and who went to distant countries and there "did not hesitate to reduce to slavery Indians, Negroes, and other wretched people." Then, desiring to remove such a shame from all Christian nations" and "walking in the footsteps of Our Predecessors," the pope demanded an end to slavery...

The larger point is that abolitionists, whether popes or evangelists, spoke almost exclusively in the language of the Christian faith. And although many Southern clergy proposed theological defenses of slavery, pro-slavery rhetoric was overwhelmingly secular-- references were made to "liberty" and "states' rights," not to "sin" or "salvation." This was conclusively demonstrated by Auping, who performed a content analysis of writings by randomly selected samples of prominent abolitionists and defenders of slavery. The abolitionists were far more likely to invoke God, and the difference persisted even when only clergy were compared...

But there is another and far more persuasive tack taken to minimize the importance of religion in abolishing slavery. It is argued that many sincere Christians were quite able to square slavery with theology-- as Francis Asbury, first Methodist bishop of the United States, put it in 1798, "Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians... in the highest flights of rapturous piety, still maintain and defend [slavery]." This being the case, the argument goes, it must have been not religion per se but something else that prompted some Christians to conclude that it was a sin to hold humans in bondage. But, as Asbury was fully aware, that conclusion misses the point. The case against slavery is theological, not revelational. Had Moses been given a commandment against slavery, then only heretical Jews and Christians could have owned slaves. Or had Jesus proclaimed that no slave master shall enter heaven, there would have been no ambiguity as to what Christians must do. But theology is based on human interpretations, and therefore sincere and brilliant seekers may reach opposite conclusions. Asbury did not propose that those who accepted slavery were ignorant of revelations, but that they had drawn incorrect theological conclusions, that they had neither "a sufficient sense of religion nor of liberty."

Abolition was not inherent in Christian scripture; it was only a possible conclusion... I do not propose that monotheism or even Christian culture was a sufficient basis for deeming slavery to be a sin. Instead, I propose that it was a necessary basis, in that only those religious thinkers working within the Christian tradition were able to reach anti-slavery conclusions (with the exception of two Jewish sects). (Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God, pp. 340-345)

The immigration issue today seems to be in a similar place.  It is not that the Bible unambiguously condemns immigration restrictions or declares for freedom of migration, although particular episodes, like the Exodus from Egypt, are suggestive.  But reasoning from Biblical premises cannot but strongly point towards open borders, particularly when the existence of illegal immigrants and their families on US soil transforms the issue into one of what kind and degree of violence will be resorted to in order to enforce a law which can be given no basis in justice.  The Golden Rule is certainly sufficient to condemn migration restrictions, for who of us can seriously say that if he had illegally entered the United States in order to feed his family, or earn enough to provide medical care for a child, he would wish to be deported?  And yet Matt. 25:40 makes the Golden Rule far more powerful, for while the Golden Rule seems abstract, Matt. 25:40 compels us to imagine that what we do to our fellow man we do to Christ. The fact that, as Pope Benedict observes, Jesus and the Holy Family were refugees, drives the point home. Current US law would deport the Holy Family to be executed by the agents of Herod. "Inasmuch as ye have done it to the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me."

In Defense of Christian Pacifism

This afternoon I listened to C.S. Lewis's essay "Why I Am Not a Pacifist."  More often and not, Lewis's writings delight me and win my assent, and in this case, too, his deliberate and rational approach to the problem is admirable and pleasant.  And yet I found myself frustrated and full of objections. 

C.S. Lewis says that the only grounds on which a case for Christian pacifism can be made is certain sayings of Jesus.  But, first of all, these words are very important.  In the Gospel of Matthew, they are positioned early, and are very explicit, with a general statement-- "Do not resist evil"-- followed by metonymous examples, "turn the other cheek," "go the extra mile," "give your cloak as well."  Second, throughout their whole lives Jesus and the apostles behave entirely consistently with the most literal interpretation of this teaching.  There is no evidence anywhere in the New Testament of Jesus or any of the early Christians using any kind of violence, except when Peter cuts off the ear of the high priest's servant, and for that he is immediately rebuked by Jesus.  And the behavior of the Christians throughout the Age of Martyrs continued to be quite consistent with it.  Why is it that the Christians were constantly being martyred?  Because they would not fight, even in self-defense.  Before the age of Constantine, it seems to have been the general, though not I think universal, rule for Christians to take "turn the other cheek" quite literally.

C.S. Lewis argues that pacifists are going against the "universal" opinion of mankind, as evidenced by great literature, Shakespeare, Beowulf, etc.  He admits there may be one reason not to accept this unviersal opinion as authoritative: that Christians regard the human race as fallen, deficient, depraved, and that it might be infected by many wrong opinions.  But there is another more specific reason that the "universal opinion" as seen in literature must certainly be biased on this point.  The writing and preservation of books is an expensive activity, and needs at least the tolerance, and usually the protection and patronage, of the powerful, and the powerful are, almost by definition, those who wield the sword best.  Lewis even notes that pacifism in liberal England is only possible because England is a free country, and it is a free country only because its arms have successfully defended it against threats like that from totalitarian Germany.  He thinks this is damaging to his pacifist opponents.  But it is damaging to his own argument, too.  For if the advocacy of pacifism is not usually permitted by the powerful, there may have been, for most of history, a silent majority of pacifists whom the powerful silence.  We can see why "history is written by the victors," and that is to say that history is written by, or to flatter, those who fight and win wars.  To what extent this is true, I am not sure, but that recorded history has a bias against reporting pacifism and in favor of glorifying military exploits and ignoring their victims seems beyond doubt. 

It does seem clear to celebrate stories of military heroism is a pretty universal human tradition, but here Lewis misses something very important, namely, that it is (a) possible, and (b) characteristically Christian, to appreciate military stories without exactly condoning them.  For centuries, the Psalms, many of which shine with just this military kind of glory, and which are full of violent imagery, have been read by monks committed to lives of nonviolence and nonresistance.  They can do this because they transpose-- I use this word in a sense which Lewis gives it in "Transposition," an essay later in the same volume-- it into a metaphor for the struggle of a Christian against temptation.  And the nature of the ministry of Jesus Himself can only be understood in the way.  The Jews looked for a "messiah," an insurgent leader and king in the mold of Judas Maccabeus.  Jesus was the Messiah, but He was not an insurgent leader; the militaristic dreams of the Jews were transposed into a new kind of authority that was peaceful and nonresisting yet all the more glorious for that.

I am not a Christian pacifist myself, though I am a long-time admirer and sympathizer with it.  I have a feeling for the ideal of the Christian knight and there are many historical wars of which I approve the cause of one side or the other.  At the same time I find the Gospel teaching hard to evade.  Lewis's remarks on this point seem an evasion, a deliberately narrow interpretation of sayings of Our Lord that are clearly pregnant with a vast and majestic generality, even condescending to the apostles and other Jewish hearers of His teachings, as if they could only regard the instructions as advice for settling village quarrels because, being a disarmed people, they could not be looking for geopolitical messages, and Jesus, knowing His audience, could not have meant them.  The only argument, if it deserves that name, not so much against Christian pacifism, as against a particular Christian adopting Christian pacifism as his position, is that serious pacifism must be anarchism as well-- the lazy-minded "pacifism" that rejects interstate violence but condones violent enforcement of the law begs the question of state legitimacy and is not worth answering-- and most of us are not willing-- we are not brave enough-- to dispense with the protection of governments.  And as long as, and to the extent that, we rely on governments for protection-- not merely that our safey happens to be a side-effect of government activities, but that we will and cannot help willing that the government keep operating to protect us-- we are only putting on airs if we call ourselves "pacifists" while we willingly pay other to exercise violence on our behalf.  But the apostolic way of life described in the Sermon on the Mount rejects all the security that civil society affords us, and one who lives by it can embrace pacifism without hypocrisy. 

C.S. Lewis mentions that John the Baptist advises soldiers, not to throw away their swords and accept nonviolence, but rather: "Do not intimidate anyone or accuse falsely, and be content with your wages" (Luke 3:14).  Yes, but John was the forerunner.  He was "preparing the way of the Lord," urging the Jews to follow the old law so that they would be ready for the new one.  He also said "he who has two tunics, let him give to him who has none" (Luke 3:11), but Jesus said "if anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also" (Matthew 5:40).  Lewis claims that St. Peter and St. Paul endorse state violence, but let's examine these passages.  Paul writes:

Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same. For he is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid; for he does not bear the sword in vain; for he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil. Therefore you must be subject, not only because of wrath but for conscience's sake. For because of this you also pay taxes, for they are God's ministers attending continually to this very thing. Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. (Romans 13:1-7)

And Peter writes:

Therefore submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether to the king as supreme, or to governors, as to those who are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of those who do good. (1 Peter 2:13-14)

There is no hint here that Christians should, or even may, engage in violence on behalf of the state; only that they should submit to state violence.  Moreover, if we are not to read these passages as being radically inconsistent with basic morality and with the behavior of all the Christian martyrs, we have to understand "the authorities that exist are appointed by God" as meaning that they are part of a larger divine plan that we do not understand, not that they are morally authoritative by virtue of their power.  Was Adolf Hitler "God's minister?"  Or the pagan emperors who killed St. Paul and St. Peter.  If "rulers are not a terror to good works," that is because the man engaged in good works need not fear death since he expects to be rewarded; it is certainly not because rulers don't kill people for good works, as they certainly do very often, and killed Paul in particular.  If the Roman governors who killed Peter and Paul brought the "praise of those who do good," it was not their intention to do so, but rather a side-effect of Peter's and Paul's courage in doing the right thing in the face of the threat of death at the hands of the Roman state.

The Fig Tree, the Unjust Steward, and the Woman at the Well

Some notes about the New Testament in honor of Easter (it's still Easter season, even if Easter itself was a week ago).

1. The fig tree. There is a story of a fig tree in Matthew and Mark which some have found troubling:

And seeing a fig tree by the road, He came up to it and found nothing on it but leaves, and said to it, "Let no fruit grow on you ever again." Immediately the fig tree withered away. (Matthew 21:19)

In Mark's telling this detail is added: "because it was not the season for figs." 

Bertrand Russell cites this as a counter-example to the idea that Jesus is an example of perfect goodness, as if Jesus were vindictive to punish the fig tree for not having fruit, and unjust to do so since it was not the time for figs anyway. However, a fig tree is not a sentient being with a moral nature against which injustice can be committed. We would not judge too harshly, I trust, a scientist who killed a fig tree for an experiment, even if the experiment were ill-designed and a failure.

Clearly, the miracle was meant to evoke wonder and to teach a lesson, and the real problem is that the lesson it teaches seems to be harsh and repugnant. Let a fig tree represent a person. God, perhaps in the form of someone hungry, naked, sick, or in prison as the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31-46) illuminates, comes to him unexpectedly and expects "fruit"-- meaning perhaps some good work or expression of love or confession of faith or word of wisdom. The person must be ready in advance. The "fruit" cannot be produced in a moment. One must have thought hard about the welfare of those around oneself to recognize their moment of need and the way to help them. The words with which to express love, without cliche or triteness but with spontaneity, subtlety, and sincerity, will only be found at the moment they are wanted by one who has long watched the beloved with the eyes of love, has come to know the unique personality, the details and eccentricities. A confession of faith, to have the ring of truth, must express not a cold, well-rehearsed formula, but a perpetual preoccupation of the mind. Wisdom is not easily got, and it must be true wisdom and not merely echoes of the wisdom of others (though learned, no doubt, with the help of the teachings of other wise men and women) to be applied properly to a novel situation. So the "fruit" must be made ready in advance, and then the Master will come unexpectedly to take it, and if it is not there, we wither away. This seems harsh and gratuitous, yet life bears constant witness to it. The earthquake strikes Haiti: help must come soon, or the victims will already have died. The conductor of the orchestra gives the cue: woe to the violinist whose bow is not ready at the string! Timing, coordination are important to all great endeavors, and since autonomous actors cannot, except by an infinitesimally unlikely coincidence, initiate action together, one must sometimes have the initiative while others wait... wait... wait... then obey. Woe to us if, like the fig tree, the Master comes and our fruit is not hanging on the branches. (Jesus was also making another point about faith, but that would require a longer post.)

2. The unjust steward. In two of Jesus's parables, the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son, almost every detail is beautiful and wholesome, but in other parables one could go wrong by focusing on certain details. This is not to fault the parables. If one were so scrupulous as only to use metaphors that were untainted by misleading or pernicious connotations one could scarcely speak at all. The word triumph comes from an ancient Roman ceremony to honor a victorious general, which inculded many sordid details: captives humiliated, gladiatorial combats, and so on. We have, praise God, managed to render the word innocent of all those nasty connotations while preserving the sense of victorious exaltation which a victorious general must have felt in the midst of a triumphal march through Rome. Similarly, in some of the parables, the figure representing God is a master or king or bridegroom who behaves in ways that would be cruel, harsh, even unjust if a real person were to act in the same fashion. But in such cases the parable is not about the nature of God, or at least not the nature of God as a whole, but about something else, such as the misdeeds of the Jewish religious hierarchy, or, again, the need for us to be alert (the ten virgins) or to redouble our efforts to make the best of the opportunities we have (the talents).

There is one parable, though, in which hardly any detail seems to be wholesome. The historian and Christian believer Paul Johnson, in his biography of Jesus, even suggests that Luke "might have muddled it or left out some vital detail," so odd does he find the parable to be. This is the parable:

[Jesus] also said to His disciples: "There was a certain rich man who had a steward, and an accusation was brought to him that this man was wasting his goods. So he called him and said to him, 'What is this that I hear about you? Give an account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward.' Then the steward said within himself, 'What shall I do? For my master is taking the stewardship away from me. I cannot dig; I am ashamed to beg. I have resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.' So he called every one of his master's debtors to him, and said to the first, 'How much do you owe my master?' And he said 'A hundred measures of oil.' So he said to him, 'Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.' Then he said to another, 'And how much do you owe?' So he said, 'A hundred measures of wheat.' And he said to him, 'Take your bill, and write eighty.' So the master commended the unjust steward because he had dealt shrewdly." (Luke 16:1-8)

I won't claim to fully understand this, and I'm still trying to figure out what Jesus means in the few verses that follow with which He tries to illuminate the parable, but I'll write what I think I do understand. We are all in the position of the unjust steward. We have been given by God, in varying degrees, mind, and body, a capacity to discern the right and to do it, to love our neighbor, to appreciate and admire and give praise to God's creation. And we have fallen far short of what we might have, could have, ought to have done with these gifts, becoming ensnared to base passions and addictions, succumbing to fear, seeking the false security of money, competing with one another, being blinded and debased by pride. And there will come a time, in this world, in the next or both, when we will be accused for these sins, deprived of worldly position perhaps, deprived, inevitably in the end, of life itself. We have not yet died; 'the stewardship [of our bodies] has not been taken away.' But the news has reached us, and we know it will happen.

One of the problems with the parable is that in his effort to save his own skin, or self-respect, the steward compounds his dishonesty. We are not actually told that the steward was dishonest before, though presumably so, since the master found the accusations convincing and the steward did not defend himself. But the steward seems to be cheating his master when he tells his master's debtors to write down their debts. Or perhaps not: possibly, being still steward for the time being while he is preparing the accounts, he has the right to manage the master's affairs in this way. Even so, he is clearly guilty of what would now be called a "conflict of interest," and is serving his own interests, not the master's, in these transactions. Oddly, the master praises him for it.

While the parable seems to condone dishonesty, it clearly exhorts to forgiveness, like the parables of the Prodigal Son and of the two debtors and I think several others. And when you think about it that way, it is all the more touching that the parable condones forgiveness even when the forgiveness is self-interested and involves usurpation of authority and dishonesty. That's how important forgiveness is! It is more important than justice or "altruism."

The steward's hope that his master's debtors will "receive him into their houses" has a parallel in the long-standing Christian practice of praying for the dead. It has been said, I think, that prayers for the dead can sometimes be efficacious in saving the souls of those who otherwise would not have been saved. The parable of the unjust steward suggests that God is pleased if a sinful man forgives, at the end of life, those who have offended him, even if his only motive is the hope that they will pray for his soul after his death. Again, the steward is forgiving not only debts to himself, but to his master; and this is commended. One characteristic of Jesus's ministry which shocked some contemporaries was that He "forgave sins," that is, told sinners who had not wronged him but (presumably) others, that there sins were forgiven. If the Church is the Body of Christ this prerogative is, perhaps, extended to the Church. And the Church, like the unjust steward, though its members are all sinners, yet forgives the sins of her children, sins not against herself but against others and against God. Note that in the parable, the master does not seem to go to his debtors and demand that the contracts be rewritten correctly. The steward's forgiveness is condoned by the master. God's forgiveness, it suggests, may even take its cue from our forgiveness of one another.

3. The woman at the well. There is much to be said here, but I want to comment only on one exchange in a longer conversation:

Jesus said to her, "Go, and call your husband, and come here."

The woman answered and said, "I have no husband."

Jesus said to her, "You have well said, 'I have no husband.' For you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly."

Now, the first thing to note is Jesus's miraculous knowledge about the woman's life. But the second, less satisfying, is that He seems to have been showing off. His original remark is even a little bit dishonest, or at least ironic, since He knowingly referred to a person-- the woman's husband-- who He knew did not exist. I do not know whether Jesus was trying to provoke the woman into a statement which would give Him occasion to display His miraculous knowledge, or whether He was asking Her to call the man she was living with in sin, ignoring the legal nicety that they were not really married. Either way, though, the showing off seems a little unseemly.

But I think there is something much subtler and more touching going on here. A woman who had had five husbands and was living with another man in sin (perhaps he disdained to be the sixth?) could not have been popular among the women of a Samaritan village, nor much respected among the men. When she answered 'I have no husband,' to Jesus, she probably felt that she was being dishonest. She probably felt vaguely that to allow herself to be taken for a respectable woman, as her remark did, was a sort of lying. This, I think, is something that commonly happens. We often fail to discern, or to admit, our own sins, but, also, we often let public opinion or authority figures make us feel guilty of sins we are not guilty of. The most horrific example of this is the Stalinist show trials, where many leading Communists seem almost to have been persuaded that they were guilty of many fantastic crimes, so habituated were they to believing in the dictates of the Soviet state. Jesus sought out and argued with her secret sense of guilt by which the devils were tempting her to despair. He was telling her, you may be guilty of much, but you told Me the truth just now, as I am proving you; do not listen to the voices in your head that are accusing you of lying.

Christianity and Politics

What are the implications of Christianity for politics?  When Christians are citizens of polities, how should they behave?  Should Christians ever be rulers, and if they are, how should they govern?  Should Christians try to abolish polities, or reform them, or create new ones where they are absent or bad, and if so, what kinds of polities should Christians seek to create, reform and/or abolish?  Should Christians be monarchists, or democrats, or even anarchists?  Should Christians be pacifist, or might there be a case for making “just war,” perhaps even a lot of it?  Should Christians be political quietists, or, on the other hand, civic-minded activists and agitators, constantly voting, campaigning, or even fighting?  Should they seek to abolish slavery, or communism; to prohibit abortion; to liberate oppressed peoples from totalitarian rule; to increase foreign aid; or to open borders to immigration?  Is there such a thing as a Christian state?  If so, is it desirable?  And what would it look like?

There are some Gospel texts relevant to these questions.  Although the political context of 1^st-century Judea is important, I think it also to useful to contemplate the texts separately from their context, focusing on the meaning of the words themselves, before considering how the context affects their meaning.  The Gospels actually do not have much to say about politics directly.  For some passages it is hard to say whether they are relevant or not.  For example, if we think of the scene where Pilate asks Jesus if He is the king of the Jews and He answers “It is you who say it,” this seems to be relevant: Jesus is claiming to be a king.  Not so fast.  Jesus also says, “My kingdom is not of this world,” and His whole life and behavior makes it clear that, probably to the disappointment of many who were looking for a Messiah to re-establish the Jewish kingdom militarily, Jesus was not seeking to be a king in an earthly sense, so the passage does not have direct political implications.

The passage most cited from the Gospels with respect to politics is Luke 20:25 (with parallel verses in Matthew and Mark), “Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.”  I have often heard this read as if it were a prescient endorsement of the kind of church-state relations that prevail in late 20^th-century American jurisprudence, meaning something like, “there is a state [Caesar] and a church [God] which have separate claims on us, which must be distinguished, and the Christian citizen must fulfill the legitimate demands of each, obeying the church in matters of spirituality and personal morality, but not attempting to impose the church’s will on infidels or wayward believers through the power of the state, nor, on the other hand, using allegiance to the church as a pretext for disobeying the authority of the state, except in the special case that laws of men violate the Christian’s conscience.”  Such a philosophy of church-state relations is anachronistic as a reading of Luke 20:25.  It uses conceptions of church and state that would not have been available to Jesus’s 1^st-century hearers and hardly before modern times.  Indeed, if Luke 20:25 is read by itself, it is question-begging.  One wants to answer: “Yes, but what is Caesar’s and what is God’s?”  We will return to this passage, but for the moment we will start our inquiry elsewhere.

No, if any political message emerges clearly from the Gospels, it is not the attitude of obedience to rulers that authority figures like to read into “give unto Caesar,” but a principled Christian nonviolence.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus counsels his disciples “do not resist the wicked man” and “turn the other cheek” (Matthew 5: 39).  Now, if violence is ever justified, surely it is justified as a means of resisting the wicked man.  If one is ever justified in slapping, surely it is justified when one is being slapped.  Self-defense is the least controversial form of violence.  Some people find other forms of violence acceptable.  To believe in a welfare state is to believe that men who are not specially wicked, who are minding their own business and harming no one, should be made, that is, coerced, under an implicit or explicit threat of violence, to give of their substance to the government for redistribution to the less fortunate.  This form of violence is more controversial.  If few would reject non-self-defensive violence absolutely and universally and consistently—it seems doubtful that violence solely as self-defense can provide the basis for any state at all—then almost everyone is at least wary about extending such justifications for violence too far.  So if Jesus rejects violence even in self-defense, as He does explicitly in “turn the other cheek,” it is hard to escape the conclusion that He is exhorting his disciples to refrain from all violence whatsoever.  But Max Weber is probably right in defining government as an entity that claims a monopoly of legitimate violence.  A nonviolent state is a contradiction in terms.  So “do not resist the wicked man” and “turn the other cheek” imply a rejection of government as such.

Such is the case that Jesus was an anarchist, or, to coin an unwieldy term which is unfortunately necessary to distinguish the attitude from two other attitudes which are less coherent but have large followings, a pacifist-anarchist.  A pacifist-anarchist is quite distinct, on the one hand, from the kind of anarchist that engages in random violence—bombing buildings, assassinating policemen and presidents—in hopes of bringing about anarchy by overthrowing governments, and on the other hand, from the kind of pacifist that opposes war in the foreign policy arena but takes it for granted that policemen should keep (violently if necessary) catching and locking up criminals.  A pacifist-anarchist rejects resistance to the wicked man—except of course by persuasion; this is presumably implicit in the Sermon on the Mount teaching and is advocated explicitly by Jesus elsewhere in the Gospels—both by private individuals and by “governments,” and without regard to the place where violence occurs or whether those who commit and suffer violence are fellow-citizens of any polity or not.  

Now, although I do not think Christian nonviolence is the whole answer to the question of what attitude Christians should have to politics, I am always surprised that it is not a more influential idea.  I have heard rumors of Christians who dismiss out of hand, as if it were absurd, the idea that Jesus was a pacifist.  If there really are such Christians, I don’t know how to regard their opinion as anything but a function of ignorance, prejudice, and/or unseriousness.  A simple and direct reading of the Sermon on the Mount points to Christian nonviolence or pacifist-anarchism so clearly that someone unfamiliar with this idea must, it seems to me, either never have read the Sermon on the Mount or not paid attention to it.  Yet through most of the history of Christianity, Christians have lived in states and been loyal to rulers and fought in wars and enforced laws and not felt this to be inconsistent with their Christianity.  Why?

As a way to underline the point it might be worthwhile to mention another argument that is superficially parallel to the one I am making, but much stupider.  I seem to remember seeing an anti-war bumper sticker that says “What part of ‘Thou shalt not kill’ don’t you understand?” and have heard arguments to this effect in a few other places.  Now, “Thou shalt not kill,” if taken literally and universally, would imply something like pacifist-anarchism.  All governments claim the prerogative of killing under certain circumstances, e.g. in the event of foreign invasion, and probably no government could do without it.  But it is clear that the Jewish law, of which the Ten Commandments are a part, is not a pacifist-anarchist program.  It prescribed the death penalty for some crimes, to be carried out, it seems, by judges or kings of some sort—different political arrangements occurred in different phases of Jewish history, as recorded in the Bible—and a distinctive class with special legal—we might say, “sovereign”—authority that suspended the ordinary prohibition on killing for these people while they were acting as enforcers of the law was clearly implicit.  Jewish history was also full of wars, not only just wars, but also wars which hardly seem to meet any standard of “just war” that could be articulated and defended today—we would call the conquest of the Promised Land “ethnic cleansing”—and yet which the Bible seems to condone.   Clearly, taken in context, “Thou shalt not kill” does not apply to soldiers or judges, but means “Thou shalt not murder,” that is, thou shalt not kill without provocation and in the capacity of a mere private citizen.

But “do not resist the wicked man” and “turn the other cheek” are different.  It does not involve any tendentious interpretation of the text to read these as a general or universal exhortation to nonviolence.  On the contrary.  Consider the verses in context:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’  39 But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.  40 And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.  41 If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.  42 Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”

So Jesus introduces “do not resist the wicked man” by explicitly invoking the old law and signaling that His teaching is superseding it.  To read this as an exhortation to private citizens only with no political ramifications is deliberately to ignore this parallelism and seems exegetically indefensible.  The old law with which it is contrasted was not merely an exhortation to private citizens.  It was meant to be enforced by a judge or some other third party.  It would not have made sense as an exhortation to private citizens.  If A gouges out B’s eye, presumably he is able to do so because A is stronger than B.  If so, B cannot gouge out A’s eye in return.  Certainly there is unlikely to be any credible threat from B’s side that would deter A from violence in the first place.  The old law would have to be applied by someone who is neutral between A and B and stronger than either of them, who can recognize that A has done wrong to B and must be punished, and who can carry out the punishment, either overcoming any resistance A might make, or else deterring such resistance by its known superiority in strength.  In other words, the old law must be applied by some kind of state.  The old law implies and depends on politics. 

Jesus’s new teaching, by contrast, neither requires a state gives any opening for the state to have a role.  A private individual can turn the other cheek without the help of a government.  And if everyone practices nonviolence, there can be no governments.  There can be no entities claiming a monopoly of violence if everyone has renounced violence.  Jesus’s teaching, then, points to the disappearance of the state if it is universally practiced.  If only some practice Christian nonviolence, then since calling on the state for help is a way to resist the wicked man, those must, it would seem, turn their backs on the state or renounce it to a certain extent, and certainly must decline to participate in it, as rulers, magistrates, soldiers, or even plaintiffs (or for that matter defendants, as “if someone sue thee at the law…” states).

An adherent of Christian nonviolence will pay taxes to the state, but not on “give unto Caesar” grounds as that verse is usually understood, rather on “turn the other cheek” grounds.  They will submit to the demands of the state as they would submit to the demands of a robber.  This is not to say that adherents of Christian nonviolence would regard the state as a robber.  If we are not to resist wicked men, we are presumably also not to resist good men, that is, men who live by a lesser good than that which we aspire to live by, such as just and beneficent government in a secular sense.  We need not morally equate the tax collector with the bandit in order to submit to both for the same reason and in the same way.  The state is, first and foremost, a collective means to resist the wicked man.  To accept the Sermon on the Mount in this way is to reject the state’s not only particular means that the state uses but the end of the state.  It leaves the state without a raison d’etre.

The Roman Catholics have a way out of the radical implications of this reading of the Sermon on the Mount.  They argue that the Sermon on the Mount was advice but to a select inner circle, to the apostles, perhaps also to clergy or monastics and others who feel called to follow it, but not on Christians generally.  In support of this, they point out that the Gospel of Matthew says Jesus took His disciples up onto a mountaintop—thus the phrase “the Sermon on the Mount”—away from the crowds.  The physical setting of the sermon is taken as indicative of its narrower intended audience.  Possibly.  But in other cases where Jesus speaks to His disciples separately from the crowds, e.g., the parable of the sower, He does not say He is doing so because the teaching applies only to them.  On the contrary, the parable of the sower clearly carries a universal message.  And the reason Jesus gives on that occasion for speaking to them separately is that “the knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom of heaven has been given to you, but not to them,” that is, to the crowds.  Of course, the message is ultimately intended for all mankind, but there seems to be an initiation process, and there are some truths for which the mass of the people are not ready.  So this Argument from Audience for treating the Sermon on the Mount as a special calling for a select few is not compelling.  And the style of the argument, introducing an allusion to the old law with “you have heard that it was said,” then contrasting the new teaching that is to supersede it by the words “but I say unto you,” suggests the opposite.  The old law, of course, was intended for everyone, or at least for all Jews, for all those God had brought under His special direct rule, as all mankind is invited to be in the new dispension that came with Christ.  This at least suggests that the new law should be similarly universal in its scope.

Having said all that, the position I will ultimately arrive at may strike some as a variation, elucidation, or reiteration of this Roman Catholic view.  Still, for now we may register dissatisfaction with it and put it on one side.

A difference response to the direct reading of the Sermon on the Mount is to embrace it, to accept Christian nonviolence as an ethos or political philosophy, a rule of life.  I am aware of one historical example of a people that has done this, the Amish—I think there are other examples—and of three important intellectuals who, though none of them are orthodox Christians, have embraced this position, surely in each case under the influence of Jesus’s teachings: Henry David Thoreau; Leo Tolstoy; and Mahatma Gandhi.  The Amish have adopted nonviolence as a way of life for centuries.  Leo Tolstoy developed a political philosophy of nonviolence in The Kingdom of God is Within You, Thoreau in “Civil Disobedience.”  Gandhi adopted nonviolence as a tactic and ideology for his movement for Indian independence.  All these examples shed light on the virtue and the limitations of the pacifist-anarchist ideal.

Amish nonviolence is widely admired, other parts of Amish culture not so much.  Their practice of shunning, of strict and specific rules against interaction with those deemed persona non grata by the community, which involves alienating even family members, seems downright cruel and immoral.  Their rejection of so many modern technologies, a more salient feature of Amish society even than nonviolence, as well as of education above the 8^th-grade level, strike most as gratuitous and unappealing.  Why can’t the Amish be nonviolent without being so harsh and weird? 

But stop a moment.  How, after all, does Amish nonviolence set them apart from mainstream society (e.g., in America)?  If the Amish never kill, neither does most of the rest of the population.  In American society, as in all advanced societies today, and probably to a lesser extent in most civilized societies of the past for thousands of years, violence is a specialized function of professional policemen and soldiers.  Most people never engage in violence, just as they don’t repair computers, renovate bathrooms, cut hair, or teach sociology.  The Amish are against violence in principle, rather than merely refraining from it as a matter of professional specialization, but how much does that matter?  Does it have any effect on what one does, how one lives, given that most citizens perhaps not once in their lives encounter a situation in which they would be willing to commit violence? 

Suppose that Mr. Bourgeois Tolstoyan is persuaded by the interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount of Tolstoy and the Amish, and makes an inward personal commitment to Christian nonviolence.  Having done so, he lives exactly as he did before, since he had never previously found it to his advantage or taste to use violence anyway.  It would seem odd to argue that this inward commitment that has no practical effect is really very important.  Is the principled nonviolence of the Amish more important than that of Mr. Tolstoyan?  There are two reasons why it might be.  First, as the Amish are known to be nonviolent, and as Amish dress and lifestyle makes them conspicuous and identifiable, their commitment to nonviolence subjects them to special risks.  If I am a thuggish sort of person who does not scruple to take what I want by force, and I see Mr. Bourgeois Tolstoyan walking down an isolated street with something I want, say a shirt or a bit of food or wine.  I do not know who Mr. Tolstoyan is or what he believes in.  I consider robbing him, but I notice that he’s a fairly strong man and reflect that he may, after all, be armed, and decide it isn’t worth the risk.  Mr. Tolstoyan is morally committed “not to resist the wicked man,” and would, in fact, let me take everything from him.  Nonetheless, he benefits by the presumption that he would resist, based on the fact that he looks like others—like normal people—who would do so.  By contrast, if I see an Amish walking down the street, with his beard and his odd clothes, and he has something I want, I know that he is forbidden to resist me, so I will rob him without hesitation.

The second reason that Amish nonviolence is more serious than that of Mr. Bourgeois Tolstoyan is that the whole Amish way of life cuts them off from many of the benefits of division of labor that the broader society enjoys with the help of its use of violence, especially in enforcing property rights.  If Mr. Tolstoyan doesn’t practice violence himself, it is done on his behalf by armies and police forces that are paid with his tax dollars and that regard his safety and that of his fellow citizens as their mission.  But that is not so true of the Amish.  Their technological primitivism and social exclusiveness make them less intensively dependent than others are on the society and economy they live in the midst of.  If society were to break down around them, they would probably suffer less than others, and it would be an exaggeration but not an absurdity to regard their community as more or less self-sufficient.  And just as they stand to lose less by a breakdown of society, so they stand to gain less by its continuation, since their various scruples make their lives poor and simple.

Still, if the Amish takes extra risks by advertising his nonviolence in the way he lives and dresses, he is still much safer because the state locks up so many of the criminal types who would be willing to rob him.  And though he may be less dependent than others are on the kind of advanced capitalism that is underpinned by violent enforcement of property rights and national frontiers, the American armed forces are, at the end of the day, protecting him too.  He could not practice his distinctive way of life if the Soviets had won the Cold War.  And this is a general problem for all these pacifist-anarchists: they depend on those who practices they disavow.  Tolstoy was a wealthy man.  His wealth was protected by the laws of the Russian state whose dissolution he willed.  Gandhi’s nonviolent methods worked only because the British Raj was too liberal and constitutionalist to resort to the repressive methods that might have stopped him.  Indeed, he didn’t survive long in the communal violence that ensued when that Raj ended, and he could have had no impact in Soviet Russia or French Indochina.  Thoreau spent only a single night in jail because someone else paid for him the tax (in support of the war with Mexico) that Thoreau refused on principle to pay, and this benignity of the society against he was protesting gives “Civil Disobedience” a slightly comic flavor. 

Are these principled practitioners of nonviolence ungrateful to the nonpractitioners of nonviolence who protect their lives and prosperity?  I do not think a charge of ingratitude is warranted, as long as the pacifist-anarchist acknowledges the benefits he receives from the soldier and policemen, even if he doesn’t exactly thank them.  In effect, the Christian pacifist-anarchist says to the soldier: “I accept that you believe that what you are doing is right. I agree, moreover, that I benefit from your efforts to protect me.  I also acknowledge that you risk your own life to do so, and respect your sacrifice.  Nonetheless I desire a world in which you cease to do so, fully recognizing the costs to myself if this world were brought about.  I am willing to face the risks of being plundered or murdered so that none may practice or threaten violence on my behalf.  Of course, I cannot stop you from exercising violence in ways that benefit me.  You will continue doing so for your own reasons, which may include a desire for my welfare.  I merely make it known to you that I do not consent to the arrangement, and will continue to try to end it through moral suasion.” 

All this is perfectly logical but I think it contains some moral dangers.  To put it bluntly, this might all be humbug.  As long as the policemen and soldiers do their work well, my claim to moral distinctiveness rests on a claim about how I would behave in a situation that never occurs.  But how do I know how I would behave?  Perhaps, faced with a real robber, I would resist after all.  Perhaps, faced with a weaker but murderous enemy, I would lack the courage to accept death rather than to kill.  Also, the argument is a too subtle.  Only an intellectual could understand it.  The ethic will inevitably remain abstract and utopian.  The believer in nonviolence will in practice live by the ethic of ordinary bourgeoisie who outsource the violent functions to others.  The pacifist-anarchist ethos will make little by way of demands, and be a temptation to pedantry and pride.  (The Amish avoid this problem by making many other demands on their members, which, unlike nonviolence, involve real and heavy sacrifice, but we are treating nonviolence as a separate ideal of its own.)

This is a good place in the argument to take note of another group of practitioners of nonviolence, namely, priests, monks, the apostles, the early Church and its martyrs.  It is characteristic of all these “not to resist the wicked man” and to “turn the other cheek.”  This is not to say that monks and priests never engage in self-defense, sometimes they do.  But they hardly ever fight with weapons or kill.  Apostles such as Peter and Paul, and according to tradition most of the rest of them as well, accepted martyrdom without resistance, perfectly following the Sermon on the Mount in this respect.  Monasteries are unique examples of durable miniature societies based on voluntary and noncoercive socialistic central planning.  The Rule of St. Benedict is a constitutional document, a set of rules to govern a society, but with this difference, that under no circumstances does it envision killing, or even severe coercion—beating is prescribed at one point but a penitent monk might consent to this form of discipline, and could presumably leave if not (this is forbidden by the Rule but no physical prevention of it is prescribed).  As with the Amish, complicated systems of shunning are used as a method of discipline, reflecting the fact that this method is effective yet avoids violence.  The forerunner of monastic voluntary socialism was the early Christian commune described in the Book of Acts.  There is a harrowing story in Acts about how a husband and wife who lied to the apostles about the price for which they sold some property in order to join the commune were miraculously killed, but importantly, though Peter foretold their deaths, it is clearly God and not Peter who does the killing.  And of course, Jesus himself practices His own teaching of “do not resist the wicked man” and “turn the other cheek” when, having ordered Peter to put away his sword, He goes unresistingly to His own death on the cross.

And so the Church, or if not quite the Church as a whole then certain agencies within it, gives an example of a society organized on the principles laid down in the Sermon on the Mount.  (I would argue that the Church, properly understood, has always practiced “do not resist the wicked man” and “turn the other cheek,” but that the organization of the Church as it can be perceived from a secular point of view has often been infiltrated by hostile elements and instrumentalized by external powers, while the essence of the Church, the community of love among the believers, has remained mystically pure throughout, but this is a bit of a mystery and it would be beyond the scope of the present argument to defend the claim here.)  Unlike the Amish or the Tolstoyan, however, the monks and priests and apostles and martyrs have not, in general, felt the need to disapprove, either of the soldier and the policeman who uphold the secular polities in which they live.  Many, and perhaps those who best embody the ideal member of these classes of persons, seem hardly to have had any opinions one way or the other on whether there ought to be a state with a monopoly of violence.  Others definitely supported the state, and some actively campaigned for even greater violence.  Pope Urban II and St. Bernard of Clairvaux, for example, preached the crusades.  So we’re left with our original question, “What are the implications of Christianity for politics?”, as well as a new one, “Why don’t most Christians seem to regard the Sermon on the Mount as the universal political program which it seems to purport to be?”

There is something else that we should note about the apostles, martyrs, monks, and priests: many of them were celibate.  Not all: Peter had a wife, plenty of martyrs were married (though many weren’t), and in the Orthodox east priests can marry and for those who wish to serve in parish this is even preferred or semi-required.  But it is a common pattern.  And I think it’s clear enough why living the Sermon on the Mount is connected with celibacy.  For it is very hard for a householder to take the Sermon on the Mount literally.  A householder, after all, has a reason to practice violence which is even more compelling than self-defense: the defense of his wife and children.  To turn the other cheek when one is slapped on the cheek may be regarded as brave; to stand idly by as one’s wife is raped or one’s child killed seems monstrous.  Again, consider the question of property.  In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches:

²⁵"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? ²⁷Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life^[b]?

 ²⁸"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. ²⁹Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. ³⁰If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? ³¹So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' ³²For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. ³³But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. ³⁴Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

This ideal of apostolic poverty is actually connected to the ideal of Christian nonviolence, because if one disavows violence, one disavows the defense of property.  As St. Francis said, “If we had any possessions, we would need weapons and laws to defend them.”  For a solitary individual to practice this ethos involves not only physical but moral risk, for it threatens to reduce him to a parasite, begging others for the bread which he refuses to hoard for himself.  Yet I think readers will have the intuition that a person who disavows worldly possessions for the love of God may—it is hard to foresee exactly how, but that is because the story of life is too full of the unexpected for us to predict it—not be a burden but be of great service to his fellow man.  Still, this hardly seems appropriate advice to give to a householder, or at least, to householders generally (Peter might have been a special case).  To consent not to know where one’s next meal is coming from may be gloriously humble and brave; but to consent not to know where one’s child’s next meal is coming from seems monstrous.

So unless we are going to take the view that Jesus wanted to impose universal celibacy—and this is hardly tenable since he made remarks on marriage that seem to uphold the institution—we seem to be compelled in the direction of thinking that Jesus saw two classes of people, “eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:12) who would give up marriage and family to serve God alone, and those who married and raised families.  The ideal laid down in the Sermon on the Mount can only be taken as strict and literal prescription for the first category.  God might, indeed, grant to some married couples to live in circumstances in which they can turn the other cheek and the rest of it without jeopardizing their children and family, but in general they may, for a time, have to remain in the world, with its polities that claim a monopoly of violence.  And these, for the householders, for those not yet ready for the higher path of apostolic poverty and Christian nonviolence, must still think about politics, must be prepared to wield and/or to support violence, must live by those ideals which the Sermon on the Mount supersedes but which are still ideals of a sort, which in the Old Testament seem to enjoy God’s blessing even if the Christian’s intuition is too strong to be gainsaid that some Old Testament writers did not understand God’s real nature and purposes as well as the early Christians did.

Unfortunately, if we are going to “resist the wicked man” after all, we can’t stop there.  John Locke is, I think, the most benign of the great political thinkers of modern times.  Most of the others—Hobbes, Rousseau, Hegel, Marx, Sorel, Sartre, Spengler, Nietzsche, you name it—had a baneful influence, giving rise to one or another form of tyranny or totalitarianism.  Locke, by contrast, was the chief ideologist of the Glorious Revolution in England and the forerunner of the American Revolution, and is thus associated with the birth of the two great, free, humane polities that have been the model, bastion, and champion of liberty for three centuries.  This is not only because of Locke’s unique genius but, even more, because he was in large part the spokesman of a tradition.  Locke’s theory begins with the idea that people have rights, and he goes on to suggest that the origin of government is a social contract by which people agree to defend these rights.  Subsequent history suggests that states behave much better when this is their founding myth.  But the logic of Locke’s theory is flawed.  People don’t really sign a social contract, and it would surely be impossible to get them to do so.  Aside from the practical difficulties and the differences of opinion that would arise in any such attempt, there’s a temptation to free-ride.  If A and B agree to pay their taxes to support an army to defend the frontier, C’s best bet may be to have them count him out, and trust that the soldiers paid by other people’s money will also keep the wolf from his door.  With no justification, Locke gives the majority the right of deciding: A and B will take C’s money for national defense, whether he likes it or not.  But already we have stepped beyond using violence to resist the wicked man, to using it to confiscate the property of the good man.

A certain degree of violence, not against the wicked, but against those who have done us no harm, is an inevitable side-effect of bringing into existence any kind of state.  Even the most wisely and justly designed state in the world will be guilty of it.  And real states never limit their use of unjust (i.e., unprovoked) violence to the minimum amount needed to sustain government.  Most states historically have supported kings and nobles in parasitic luxury.  Few states are innocent of squandering and killing in campaigns of territorial aggrandizement.  Most states have compelled men to lie, or at least to conceal the truth: subjects are made to speak praise of rulers they hate, or to remain silent when justice demands denunciations of the wrongdoings of the mighty.  All states prior to the emergence of Christianity and most states since, including many whose rulers and populations were baptized Christians, have practiced slavery, subordinating some individuals to the wills and whims of others for their whole lives.  Today, the world’s advanced democratic states have organized vast systems of social engineering by which individuals not born within the borders of these states are compelled by men with guns to remain outside these states, depriving them thereby of the chance to fulfill just and natural desires to migrate, in many cases making these states complicit in religious and political oppression, and always exacerbating world poverty and inequality. 

What I suggest, then, for a Christian politics, is that Christians should strive to build up and strengthen the kingdom of heaven, the nonviolent kingdom based on the principles of the Sermon on the Mount.  Those who are householders will have to live in the world and make various compromises, but they must not give their hearts to it, and even those who are in the world should try to emulate the ideal laid down in the Sermon on the Mount, the ideals of nonviolence and apostolic poverty, as much as they can.  A husband may have to live in a worldly manner for a wife’s sake, or a wife for a husband’s sake, or both for their children’s sake, if their loved ones have not yet consented to try to live by the Gospel ideal, but a married couple or even a whole family might all live in apostolic poverty and Christian nonviolence by mutual consent.  Meanwhile there should also be some who forsake marriage and family so as to follow the Gospel ideal in as literal a manner as their faith and strength enable them to do.  All Christians should remember to “trust not in princes, in the sons of men, in whom there is no salvation.”  And Christians should be very careful about all the subtle ways in which they can become enmeshed in worldly injustices through the complex division of labor that occurs in modern society.  It will often be their duty to look for ways to “flee the world,” not only in the extreme sense of retreating into the desert or emigrating to America to practice their faith, but in more limited senses, e.g., leaving a law firm or a vacuum-cleaner-selling job that requires them to be dishonest; giving up a corporate or government sinecure which they recognize as an abuse of taxpayer or shareholder money; refusing to engage in payday lending or in a trade associated with gambling; refusing to fight in an unjust war, etc.  If they live in a slaveowning society, they should at least treat their slaves with exceptional kindness and should probably manumit them and refuse to own slaves altogether.  Of any property they may own, they should regard themselves not as owners but as stewards, and in spending it they should seek not their own good but the good of all their fellow men.

There are two particular current or recent issues where I want to bring to bear a Christian perspective.  The first is immigration.  Of the immigration restrictions of today’s rich countries, both the ends—the exacerbation of global inequality to protect the privileges of the American-, or British-, or French-born, etc.—and the means—the separation of families, the expulsion of children from the countries where they weren’t born but have spent nearly all their lives, the use of violence against peaceful workers—should be intolerable to each and every Christian.  Every Christian ought to regard it as his duty never to collaborate with such laws by reporting an illegal immigrant to the police.  Those whose personal or family position allows them to make relatively fewer compromises with the world may be called on to defy the law by employing or giving accommodations to those whom the laws of men reject but whom God loves, risking fines or prison thereby.  Christians should stand with their illegal immigrant brethren when these protest to demand decent treatment.

The second is the Iraq war.  Here I am a bit less sure of myself.  It would be odd to say that Christians who don’t choose the higher way of nonviolence and apostolic poverty are therefore bound to practice violence not only in their own defense but also to save others from totalitarianism.  Though on the other hand, I think that if one is not called to the apostolic way, to fight for distant just causes is just as appropriate as to fight for nearby ones.  Why not?  If I am being robbed, I can defend myself.  If I see my neighbor being robbed, I can equally well go and defend him, no?  More than that, though, world trade, global political organizations like the UN, and the nature of modern weapons have created a sort of integration of all the world’s political systems, which, even if limited and/or shallow in extent, gives us a certain stake and a certain complicity in what goes on far away.  We were complicit in Saddam’s regime.  We helped bring him to power.  We supported him against Iran.  The oil-for-food program strengthened him.  The weapons inspections served our interests but worsened the plight of the Iraqi people, even making us, in a way, their co-oppressors.  That’s why I think we had a duty to extricate ourselves from that.  The monk, busy fleeing the world, trusting not in princes and the sons of men, would have no such duty.  But worldly people, who benefit from the geopolitical system which in turn collaborated in various ways with the Baathist regime, did, I think, have that duty.  Liberating the Iraqi people from Saddam may or may not have been the only way to discharge that duty, but it was one way.  As for the objection that it’s a violation of “Iraq’s sovereignty,” I don’t think it should have the slightest weight for the Christian.  I simply don’t think there is any basis for the concept of sovereignty in a Christian approach to politics.

Forever Young

I want to connect a few sayings and verses to shed light on something. First, Jesus said: 

Assuredly, I say unto you, unless you become converted, and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3) 

There is a poem by William Wordsworth which I think sheds light on at least part of what this saying means.

ODE: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY FROM RECOLLECTIONS OF EARLY CHILDHOOD

(1803-1806)

   THERE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
   The earth, and every common sight,
     To me did seem
     Apparelled in celestial light,
   The glory and the freshness of a dream.
   It is not now as it hath been of yore;--
     Turn wheresoe'er I may,
     By night or day,
   The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

         II

     The Rainbow comes and goes,
     And lovely is the Rose,
     The Moon doth with delight
   Look round her when the heavens are bare,
     Waters on a starry night
     Are beautiful and fair;
    The sunshine is a glorious birth;
    But yet I know, where'er I go,
   That there hath past away a glory from the earth.

         III

   Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous song,
    And while the young lambs bound
     As to the tabor's sound,
   To me alone there came a thought of grief:
   A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
     And I again am strong:
   The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep;
   No more shall grief of mine the season wrong;
   I hear the Echoes through the mountains throng,
   The Winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
     And all the earth is gay;
      Land and sea
    Give themselves up to jollity,
     And with the heart of May
    Doth every Beast keep holiday;--
     Thou Child of Joy,
   Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, thou happy
     Shepherd-boy!

         IV

   Ye blessed Creatures, I have heard the call
    Ye to each other make; I see
   The heavens laugh with you in your jubilee;
    My heart is at your festival,
    My head hath its coronal,
   The fulness of your bliss, I feel--I feel it all.
    Oh evil day! if I were sullen
    While Earth herself is adorning,
     This sweet May-morning,
    And the Children are culling
     On every side,
    In a thousand valleys far and wide,
    Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm,
   And the Babe leaps up on his Mother's arm:--
    I hear, I hear, with joy I hear!
    --But there's a Tree, of many, one,
   A single Field which I have looked upon,
   Both of them speak of something that is gone:
    The Pansy at my feet
    Doth the same tale repeat:
   Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
   Where is it now, the glory and the dream?

These thoughts lie at the heart of Wordsworth's poetic works and perhaps cannot be fully appreciated without an immersion in Wordsworth's other poetry. In "Ode: Intimations of Immortality" he is subjecting to analysis the feelings that in many of his simpler poems are simply expressed. "While the young lambs bound / As to the tabor's sound" is an effort to express delight, but only so as to study it, to try to figure out whence it comes from and why, Wordsworth thinks, such transports of joy fade as one grows older. Elsewhere Wordsworth expresses delight merely to express delight, and perhaps does it more sublimely. Still, I think one knows what Wordsworth means, knows "the glory and the dream," "the bliss," "the laughter of Heaven"... and I think it's true, too, that certain memories of childhood often evoke it most poignantly. In the next stanza Wordsworth expresses a theory of sorts:

         V

   Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
   The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
    Hath had elsewhere its setting,
    And cometh from afar:
    Not in entire forgetfulness,
    And not in utter nakedness,
   But trailing clouds of glory do we come
    From God, who is our home:
   Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
   Shades of the prison-house begin to close
    Upon the growing Boy,
   But He beholds the light, and whence it flows,
    He sees it in his joy;
   The Youth, who daily farther from the east
    Must travel, still is Nature's Priest,
    And by the vision splendid
    Is on his way attended;
   At length the Man perceives it die away,
   And fade into the light of common day.

Mormons, who believe in a "pre-existence," find the last stanza to be a confirmation, from a secular poet, of their beliefs. I think Wordsworth did not mean, however, that his words be taken as literal truth; when church people objected to the heterodoxy of the supposition he defended it as a "poetic postulate" useful to communicate certain feelings. Though even from an orthodox Christian perspective, though, Wordsworth's theory has truth in it, but I'll come back to that.

Old age is usually seen as an evil, and eternal youth is a perennial longing of mankind. This desire need not have any special, transcendental character: one might simply want to retain strength and beauty and sexual potency, and avoid medical bills and wrinkles and hardness of hearing. A yearning for childhood such as Wordsworth expresses is different: it is not at all practical; its motive is aesthetic, romantic, or so to speak numinous. But I think there is always, or at least usually, this transcendental element in the desire for eternal youth, even in its cruder forms, the hair dyes and workouts and fashions in dress and cults of movie stars that it motivates. A Bob Dylan song contains these words of blessing: "May you stay forever young." What blessing better captures all the desires of the human heart in its best moments than this? And yet it is so absurd that the wish hardly seems to be worth expressing. I like the song "Forever Young" by Alphaville because it is bold enough to express it:

Let's dance in style, lets dance for a while 
Heaven can wait we're only watching the skies 
Hoping for the best but expecting the worst 
Are you going to drop the bomb or not? 
Let us die young or let us live forever 
We don't have the power but we never say never 
Sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip 
The music's for the sad men 
Can you imagine when this race is won 
Turn our golden faces into the sun 
Praising our leaders we're getting in tune 
The music's played by the madman 


Forever young, i want to be forever young 
Do you really want to live forever, forever forever 
Forever young, i want to be forever young 
Do you really want to live forever 
Forever young 


Some are like water, some are like the heat 
Some are a melody and some are the beat 
Sooner or later they all will be gone 
Why don't they stay young 
It's so hard to get old without a cause 
I don't want to perish like a fading horse 
Youth is like diamonds in the sun 
And diamonds are forever 
So many adventures couldn't happen today 
So many songs we forgot to play 
So many dreams are swinging out of the blue 
We let them come true 

Forever young, i want to be forever young 
Do you really want to live forever, forever forever 
Forever young, i want to be forever young 
Do you really want to live forever forever forever 
Forever young, i want to be forever young 
Do you really want to live forever, forever forever 
Forever young, i want to be forever

I like the hint of ambivalence. The chorus alternates: "I want to be forever young" and "Do you really want to live forever?" There is a hint of smugness in the later stanzas of Wordsworth's "Ode," whose ending, "To me the meanest flower that blows can give / Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears," has an air of complacently celebrating his poetic maturity, which, after all, has just been displayed in authoring a fine poem! Oh, well, it's all right then! By contrast, Alphaville's "Do you really want to live forever?" is not the voice of complacency, but, I think, of a kind of holding back or fear; its effect is to underline the wonderful wildness of this unattainable desire. I think this juxtaposition of ardor and trepidation is wise. I'll appeal to another poem:

I THOUGHT no more was needed
Youth to prolong
Than dumb-bell and foil
To keep the body young.
Oh, who could have foretold	5
That the heart grows old?
Though I have many words,
What woman’s satisfied,
I am no longer faint
Because at her side?	10
Oh, who could have foretold
That the heart grows old?
I have not lost desire
But the heart that I had,
I thought ’twould burn my body	15
Laid on the death-bed.
But who could have foretold
That the heart grows old?

Only the refrain of this poem is, I think, really excellent poetry, yet the thought the poem expresses is an important one. For it claims that it is not enough merely to wish for eternal physical youth; it claims that "the heart grows old." This is the insight of Wordsworth's "Ode" too. And it is the answer to Alphaville's question. Do you really want to live forever? Yes -- and no. We want to be forever young, but the heart grows old. And this is unexpected. I think all children disdain adults to some extent, not understanding how adults can be so easily bored by things (cartoons, board games, toys) they find so delightful. And rightly so in a way. Yet the same thing will happen to them. They will become bored by the toys and the games and the old stories. I remember how Christmas-- the candy, the opening presents-- used to be so gloriously delightful an event, and how it faded. And not all, and perhaps few-- one has to know a person well to be sure-- will ever discover higher, stronger delights in which to rejoice.

And this brings us back to the saying of Jesus, who invites us to "become as little children"-- whatever that means. Without saying how it can be done, I think I can see a little of why this is necessary. One must, somehow, reverse the law of fallen human nature by which every delight is dulled and fades, otherwise the gift of eternal life would be of no use, would be a burden, a curse. It is within God's power, but it would serve no good purpose, to make us all "forever young," physically. If we can somehow make our hearts cease to grow old, God will provide, in due course, the new bodies in which we can live forever.

We call God "Our Father, who art in heaven," and rightly so in some ways: He is stronger and wiser than we, He loves us and seeks our good, He ought to be obeyed. Yet in another way the analogy breaks down. A child sees in his father a being more careworn than himself, beset with temptation, and for that reason, at least sometimes, less able to delight in things. God is like the father, yet he is also like the child who wakes a groaning parent on Christmas morning with his impatient cries of anticipation and joy. God says to us, "Thou shalt not...", but also "Come and see! Come and see!"

What the Gospels Say about the Church

In the comments of a recent post, I was startled by Joyless Moralist's reading of the Gospel and Acts:

It does seem worth noting that Christ never sat down and wrote/dictated a book, while on the other hand he *did* give serious attention to the organization of a church...  One has the impression [why?] that more organization may have been done in the 40 days between the Resurrection and the Ascension, but admittedly no real detail is given about what went on during that time. What is certainly true, though, is that a kind of organization began to form fairly rapidly in the years following Christ's ascension...  Immediately after the Ascension the Apostles already understood themselves to be a governing body invested with authority by Christ...  There is nothing ad hoc about the way Matthias is chosen, nor about the way Peter (Peter!) initiates the action...  Why didn't Jesus pick Judas' successor himself? Because that was the Apostles' right and responsibility. Jesus chose the original twelve, and after that left it to those he had chosen to perpetuate the organization. They are no longer fledglings under Jesus' wing; it's *their* job now to build up the Church, and they immediately begin doing so, purposefully and with a clear sense of mission...  [In response to me: "You wouldn't get the idea from Acts that he's superior in authority to Paul, or indeed to any of the apostles."]  Actually, I think that's exactly the idea one would get from an impartial reading of the Gospels and Acts. That aspect of Catholicism always made perfect sense to me, long before I seriously considered being a Catholic. In the Acts, Peter takes charge at once, and others defer to his authority. It's true that Paul stands up to him once, but this is the exception that proves the rule; Paul is clearly taking a bold step here, and his attitude is exactly what one would expect of an underling taking a stand against the man in charge...  Think of the Church as being a bit like a branch of a larger company with a CEO that occasionally steps in and gives a direct order or takes charge of a project himself. Most of the time they're expected to work things out for themselves, though always in keeping with the company's general goals and with certain resources that they can turn to when they need extra help. Once in awhile the CEO might step in personally and change the course of operations in a larger way. Now, in a sense it might undermine the authority of the branch manager when the CEO steps in, because it shows that he isn't the top of the hierarchy, but it doesn't necessarily undermine him in a substantial way, because it was always a clear part of his identity that he was subject to a higher authority. Meanwhile, it's perfectly possible that the CEO (especially in the early days when he's getting a new manager started) might cede certain tasks or decisions to him: it's *your* job now, so you decide!

Joyless Moralist seems to look on the history of the early church as a business school case study.  Again and again, the words "organization" and "authority" appear.  The question I find myself asking is: Where did JM get this paradigm that she's imposing on the Gospel and Acts.  At one point in the Gospels the disciples have a quarrel over pre-eminence:

Then a dispute arose among them as to which of them would be the greatest. And Jesus, perceiving the thought of their heart, took a little child and set him by Him. And said to them, "Whoever receives this little child in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me receives Him who sent Me. For he who is least among you all will be great." (Luke: 9:46-48)

 Or in Matthew:

At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Who then is greatest in the kingdom of Heaven?" Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, and said, "Assuredly I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will be no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 18: 1-3)

Or another episode, in Mark:

They said to Him, "Grant us that we may sit, one on Your right hand and the other on Your left, in Your glory." But Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking"... And when the ten heard it, they began to be greatly displeased with James and John. But Jesus called them to Himself and said to them, "You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. And whoever desires to be first shall be slave of all."

In short, Jesus refuses to put one apostle above the others, to define ranks or hierarchies among them. Their requests for such information are misguided and show that they don't understand what He's about. Joyless Moralist seems to have a rather less evasive answer to the apostles' question: Peter was the greatest of the disciples, the branch manager, the man in charge, to whom the others were underlings. Now, there is one verse in Scripture of which I would say a superficial reading does tilt slightly to this interpretation.

When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, "Who do men say that I, the son of Man, am?" So they said, "Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter answered and said, "You are the Christ, the son of the living God." Jesus answered and said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock [petrus is related to the Latin word for rock, so some say there is a pun here] I will build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Then he commanded His disciples that they should tell no one that He was Jesus the Christ. From that time on Jesus began to show to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem, and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day. Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, saying, "Far be it from You, Lord; this shall not happen to You!" But He turned and said to Peter, "Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men." (Matthew 16:13-23)

I've extended this quote a bit longer than the Catholics typically do, because I think the episodes are closely connected. Anyway, Father Michael Pomazansky, an Orthodox priest, in Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, writes of this passage by quoting a letter to the Fourth Ecumenical Council from St. Juvenal, Patriarch of Jerusalem: "On this confession the Church of God is made firm, and this Faith, given to us by the holy Apostles, the Church has kept and will keep to the end of the world." That is, the "rock" is Peter's confession, not Peter himself. This is certainly plausible, but the Roman Catholic interpretation-- that with these words Christ names Peter personally the rock on which the Church will be built-- does seem semantically tenable. Though the image that puts in one's mind is a strange one. For one does not, please note, build a church or other structure on a single rock. When I think of the Roman Catholic view, I can't help imagining an enormous cathedral balanced awkwardly on a single tiny rock. Actually, that image expresses what's wrong with the view of a monarchical church, too: it is too fragile, too imbalanced, depending as it does on a single individual. If we focus again on the words of the passage, it appears that Jesus's naming of Peter as "the rock" is a response, almost an impulsive response, to Peter's declaration that "You are the Christ." If one of the other apostles had spoken first, one feels that Jesus might have said the same thing to him; or that if another apostle expresses the same declaration then or later, Jesus would have declared him, too, to be a "rock." Of course, they did confess that in due course. And that makes the architectural metaphor much more satisfactory, for a church finely balanced on one foundation stones might, it would seem, tumble at the slightest breeze, but there's no reason a church built on twelve foundation stones could not withstand a hurricane. Still, at least to my ears (biased perhaps because I've lived in the West and spent a lot of time with Catholics) this passage does have a slightly Roman Catholic ring to it.

But nothing else in the Gospel or Acts does. Before addressing the appointment of Matthias, it's worth looking at some of the many images of the Church that the Gospels present. From John:

"I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned." (John 15:1-6)

I find it amazing how apt this passage is if read as a theory of history. Every human civilization has grown old and withered except the Christian one. Christianity is forever young; it gives rise to sciences and literatures and ideologies and states and nations and ethics and institutions, and these all ossify, weaken, wither, and die when they cut themselves off from Christianity: this is the lesson of the past 2,000 years, indeed of all history, since before Christianity mankind was bound to the wheel of growth and decay and "there was nothing new under the sun." But I digress. What does the vine-and-branches metaphor imply for Church organization? First, it is consistent with hierarchy, for branches may branch off of branches and not only from the trunk of the vine. But it does not at all suggest monarchical organization, since many branches, not just one, will communicate directly with the vine.

Also in the Gospel of John, Jesus uses the metaphor of a shepherd and a flock:

I am the good shepherd; and I know My sheep, and am known by My own. As the Father knows Me, even so I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. And other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they will hear My voice; and there will be one flock and one shepherd. (John 10:14-16)

(The "other sheep" are generally taken to be the Gentiles, I think.)  Since sheep are famous for following each other, this metaphor is again consistent with the idea that some follow Jesus more closely, while others, not as close to Jesus themselves, follow other Christians; and in that sense, it is consistent with a certain degree of hierarchy.  But it does not suggest any fixed hierarchy, and certainly not a single highest hierarchy.  Indeed, the idea of some "chief sheep" leading the other sheep is absurd.

In the middle of the Gospel of Matthew there is a wealth of images by which Jesus describes "the kingdom of heaven."  For purposes of argument take "the kingdom of heaven" to refer to the Church, although I don't think that identification is, theologically, the whole story.  First (Matthew 13:24-30), he compares the kingdom of heaven to "a man who sowed good seed in his field," but his enemy came and planted weeds. No idea of hierarchy here: stalks of wheat grows side by side together.  Next Jesus says:

"The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches." (Matthew 13:31-32)

This image seems to contain a prophecy, for it was indeed to transpire thereafter that the tiny beginnings in Judea were to swell into a great movement which converted whole kingdoms, first the Roman empire, as well as Georgia and Armenia, then Ireland and the European "barbarians" beyond the old Roman frontier, then the Slavs, and more recently Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, much of South Korea, now tens of millions of Chinese, etc.: the tiny seed became a great tree. Again, there is an idea of growth, and of fruitfulness, and I think of holiness (to me, the "birds of the air" seem imaginatively to evoke angels), and even perhaps of a limited degree of hierarchy since some branches are stronger than others and some branch off of others.  But not of hierarchy, unless the pope is the trunk of the tree.  Then Jesus says:

"The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till it was all leavened." (Matthew 13: 33)

This is a beautiful and wise metaphor for the way the Church spreads. Again, there is nothing top-down here, no organization: instead, growth comes from the autonomous and decentralized actions of many tiny organisms. So with Christianity: it spreads by this kind action and that good friend, by a song or a story; it is not planned from above by an "organization." Two more parables highlight the initiative of the seekers for truth who come to the Church:

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls. Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it. (Matthew 13:44-46)

It is interesting how often Jesus uses commercial metaphors.  These parables communicate the ideas of there being something of great value and of making great sacrifices for its sake.  That individual initiative is so prominent here contrasts, perhaps, with the Good Shepherd metaphor in John.  Of course there is again no suggestion of hierarchy, or of organization.

Aside from the "rock"/"keys" passage, there is one other explicit mention of "the church" in Matthew (and no others in the Gospels):

Moreover if your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that 'by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.' And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector. (Matthew 18:15-17)

This passage suggests that "the church" has authority, but it gives no indication of the structure of the church. Certainly no church leaders are mentioned: Jesus does not say to tell it to a priest or a bishop or an ecclesiastical court. On the contrary, the progression from "you and him alone" to "one or two more" to "the church" suggests that the church is a large body of people, who somehow-- and this is the important point!-- are presumed to be able to form a collective judgment.

Joyless Moralist says that Christ didn't dictate a book, but he did found an organization. While it's true that He didn't dictate a book, He did teach, and the Gospels are (generally taken by Christians to be) first- or second-hand accounts of His teaching. But it's not exactly true that he founded an organization either. In particular, He does not establish authority structures, resisting pressure by the apostles to do so. What He founds is a church, an assembly, a community of love. The Church is something new. He warns the apostles not to model it on the secular authority structures of the Gentiles. He describes this new thing with many rich and beautiful images. Most of them-- the field, the flock of sheep-- are strikingly egalitarian, seeming to put the believers on an equal footing and directly in touch with God. One can derive from some of the parables-- the flock perhaps; certainly the vine-- enough suggestions of leadership and hierarchy to be consistent with the commonsense needs for at least some structure and leadership if any organization which is in this world even if not of it is to manage its affairs, remain coherent, make necessary decisions; but scarcely even that and certainly not more.  If Christ did not found an organization, neither do the apostles seem to have done that, exactly. They taught the Gospel, made occasional decisions in an ad hoc way; their own authority, if that's what it was, as apostles, they communicated to no one, and that office died with them; they created a few offices and set precedents that became the basis of others.  The tremendous amount of traveling that Paul at least, and according to tradition all the apostles, did, was the ideal way to fulfill the command to "go and make disciples of all nations" but seems hardly compatible with running an organization.  Christians needed organizational structures, as they needed bread and clothing and roofs, for mundane practical reasons; but to think that that organization is the Church is a profound error.  As Father Michael Pomazansky writes: "The life of the Church in its essence is mystical; the course of its life cannot be entirely included in any 'history.'  The Church is completely distinct from any kind whatever of organized society on earth."

Finally, one of the things that saddens me about JM's view of "Petrine authority" is that it seems to make it impossible to appreciate Peter for who he was.  Consider again the appointment of Matthias in the Book of Acts.  Luke writes that "Peter stood up in the midst of the disciples"-- a striking phrase.  Peter says that some passages from the Psalms were prophecies about Judas.  Were they?  Does it matter?  Anyway, based on these Scriptures he concludes that another should take Judas's place among the Twelve.  Two candidates, Matthias and Barsabbas, are chosen, and they draw lots to decide whom to appoint, seemingly a way of ascertaining the Divine will; but if one is inclined to believe that the lot fell to Matthias by mere chance, there is not a word in the Book of Acts to gainsay it.  There is no other mention of Matthias in the New Testament.  However, soon afterwards another apostle, the extraordinarily eloquent and energetic Paul, is appointed by a miraculous vision and conversion on the road to Damascus.  So, if Peter's goal was to ensure that the number of apostles was twelve, the appointment of Matthias actually achieved the opposite of this, raising the number to thirteen.  Mightn't it have made more sense to wait and let Paul take the place of Judas?  This is not to say anything against Matthias of course.  Rather, I want to draw attention to what it shows about Peter's character.  Peter is forever impetuous.  He is present at the Transfiguration, and babbles: "Master, it is good for us to be here; and let us make three tabernacles: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah" (Luke 9:33). Luke adds explicitly, and amusingly, that "he did not know what he was talking about."  He is the only one of the disciples to walk on water at Jesus's invitation; but he quickly loses faith and begins sinking.  He is the first to declare "You are the Christ!" but a moment later he plays the part of "Satan" by tempting Jesus not to face crucifixion, to "let this cup pass," to quote Jesus's own prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane when (and I hardly dare to write this even though it is written in the Gospels) Jesus seems Himself to have felt a powerful temptation.  (In thise sense, Peter was even a greater tempter than the dread spirit in the wilderness, for none of the dread spirit's temptations seems to have gone as close to Jesus's heart as Peter's words did.)  On the eve of the Crucifixion, Peter boasts that "I will lay down my life for Your sake," (John 13:37) then denies Him three times before the cock crows.  Just before that, when Jesus washes the disciples' feet, Peter first cries "You shall never wash my feet!" then, when Jesus says that "if I do not wash you, you have no part with Me," he goes to the other extreme and declares "Lord, not my feet only, but almost my hands and my head!" and earns another gentle reproof for his enthusiasm.   When Jesus is arrested, Peter takes a sword and cuts off the high priest's ear: Jesus heals it and tells him to sheathe his sword, saying "all who take the sword will perish by the sword" (Matthew 26:52).  After the Resurrection, Peter runs to the empty tomb.  Was that necessary?  Later in Galilee, when John recognizes Jesus on the shore:

Simon Peter put on his outer garment (for he had removed it), and plunged into the sea. But the other disciples came in the little boat... dragging the net with fish. (John 21:7-8)

Did Peter need to leap into the sea and swim to Jesus?  Mightn't it have been just as well to help his fellows bring in the haul of fish?  And yet it is these details that bring Peter to life.  He is nothing like a branch manager or an executive.  That is not the sort of role for which he is suited.  His best actions, you could not deduce from a moral code; they are not generically good but expressive of a peculiar goodness that is distinctively Peter's and the more precious for that.  He might never have existed; and yet now that he has lived and been the man he was, he seems necessary, one feels that the whole universe would lose something if he were not.  "Eternity is in love with the creations of time," as William Blake wrote.  In his impetuosity and volubility Peter often makes missteps, yet his love for, his joy in the Lord, always shines through, and is contagious.  I love Peter.  Praise God for Peter!  What joy it would be (will be, I hope) to meet him!  But when you consider Peter's whole character, as displayed over and over again in the Gospels and Acts, it is not at all difficult to see the episode with Matthias as another instance of Peter's, as it were, jumping to conclusions, leaping into a course of action which, though in this case not harmful, is not particularly... optimal.  It may be another case where Peter's missteps turn out well.  One feels, particularly in the phrase "Peter stood up among the believers," that Peter set the church in motion, that the event made an impression and was remembered, even if it received no confirmation by revelation or miracle and nothing in particular came of it, and even if the real awakening of the church came not then, at Peter's initiative, but just afterwards, at divine initiative, with the coming of the Holy Spirit, though of course Peter plays a leading role in that episode too, giving a great speech and converting thousands.  Later, when Peter converts Cornelius, a Roman, Acts says:

And when Peter came up to Jerusalem, those of the circumcision contended with him, saying "You went in to uncircumcised men and ate with them!" But Peter explained [and recounts vision in which God told him to do so]... (Acts 11:2-3ff)

Note here that "those of the circumcision" don't seem shy about confronting Peter.  The passage does not suggest that Peter had "authority" over them.  Peter does lead, but, as in the appointment of Matthias, by persuasion, namely by appeals to Scripture in the first case and to personal revelation in this case, not by claiming ecclesiastical authority.  Christ is the vine, and Peter is one of the branches. 

Jesus's Prophecies

From the Gospel of Mark:

And Jesus answering them, began to say "Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, 'I am He,' and will deceive many. But when you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be troubled; for such things must happen, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be earthquakes in various places, and there will be famines and troubles. These are the beginnings of sorrows.

"But watch out for yourselves, for they will deliver you up to councils, and you will be beaten in the synagogues. You will be brought before rulers and kings for My sake, for a testimony to them. And the gospel must first be preached to all the nations. But when they arrest you and deliver you up, do not worry beforehand, or premeditate what you will speak. But whatever is given you in that hour, speak that; for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit. Now brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise up against parents and cause them to be put to death. And you will be hated by all for My name's sake. But he who endures to the end will be saved.

"So when you see the 'abomination of desolation,' spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not," (let the reader understand), "then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let him who is on the housetop not go down into the house, nor enter to take anything out of his house, and let him who is in the field not go back to get his clothes. But woe to those who are pregnant and to those nursing babies in those days! And pray that your flight may not be in winter. For in those days there will be tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of creation which God created until this time, nor ever shall be. And unless the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect's sake, whom He chose, He shortened the days.

"Then if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or 'Look, He is there!', do not believe it. For false christs and false prophets will rise and show signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. But take heed; see, I have told you all things beforehand. But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars of heaven will fall, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. And then He will send His angels, and gather together His elect from the four winds, from the farthest part of earth to the farthest part of heaven.

"Now learn from this parable of the fig tree: when its branch has already become tender, and puts forth leaves, you know that summer is near. So you also, when you see these things happening, know that it is near-- at the doors! Assuredly I say to you, this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away. But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." (Mark 13: 5-31)

One of the troubling things about early Christianity is that you get the sense that many or most early Christians believed in an imminent end of the world. Of course, 2000 years later, the end of the world still has not occurred. Is this a problem for Christians? What makes it seem more embarrassing is that these prophecies came from Jesus himself. Moreover, he provides a timeline: this generation shall by no means pass away, till all these things take place. "This generation," that is, the generation of his disciples, already adults in 33 A.D., would have lived to 100 A.D. or a little later, at the most.

However, many of the above prophecies seem to have described events that took place within a couple of decades after Jesus's death, especially the Jewish rebellion that led to the destruction of Jerusalem. If the phrase "This generation shall not pass away..." refers only to those events-- distant for us but a real apocalypse for Jews who saw their peculiar religious nation smashed by the overwhelming force of the Roman legions after a thousand years-- then the chronology is not problematic. Is it just a matter of a few phrases out of order, or a somewhat confusing reference in the term "all these things come to pass?"  That, of course, would place "the sun will be darkened" in the future.

Whatever else one may say, the passage is striking, exhilarating, spectacular-- and perhaps that impression is more useful than an attempt to map it onto chronology, for those of us who find it hard to understand.  It dispels complacency; it evokes a sense of wonder; it is a reminder of the fragility and impermanence of this world.  For each of us, after all, there is at least one apocalypse in store: death.

I am struck by the phrase "pray that your flight will not be in winter." Why pray if the events are predetermined? It is as if Jesus foresaw the general outlines of the coming events, but certain details remained indeterminate, such as what season it would be when the destruction of Jerusalem would occur. Also, the phrase "of that day and hour, no one knows, not even the angels in Heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" seems to have theological implications. Can the Father know things that the Son does not?

Near the end of the Gospel of John there is a text which is unusual in that, instead of merely telling the story, it makes mention of an opinion that formed later:

Then Peter, turning around, saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following... said to Jesus, "What about this man?" Jesus said to him, "If I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you?" 

Then this saying went out among the brethren that this disciple would not die. Yet Jesus did not say to him that he would not die, but, "If I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you?" (John 21: 21-22)

Thus John goes out of his way to suggest that his fellow Christians were jumping to conclusions about the meaning of Jesus's words concerning him ['the disciple Jesus loved' is John himself]. Was this unusual digression meant as a dissent from the widespread expectations of imminent apocalypse among the early Christians? If Jesus did not mean to say John would live till Jesus came again, the motive for Jesus's words about John are not quite clear to me. Clearly Jesus doesn't think Peter needs to know what will happen to John, that is why He says, "what is that to you?" We are to love one another; but idle curiosity about the lives of others is a distraction and a temptation to envy. Still, why does Jesus make the suggestive remark about John surviving till Jesus comes?

One thing at least is known: John outlived Peter. From Peter's point of view, then, did Jesus's words prove true? That is, John was still living when Peter was reunited with his Lord? But I am wandering, writing of what I do not understand. Divine foreknowledge is full of mysteries.

Wheat and Tares in the Soul

The following parable is usually interpreted as a description of the world and of Judgment Day, but I think it has another application:

Another parable He put forth to them, saying: "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared.

So the servants of the owner came and said to him, 'Sir, did you now sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?'

He said to them, 'An enemy has done this.'

The servants said to him, 'Do you want us then to go and gather them up?'

But he said, 'No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers: First, gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barns.'

The metaphor of wheat and tares applies also to the human soul, I think. Good and bad qualities exist in us side by side, and are related to one another in complicated ways. When we try to improve the way we live, we run a risk of uprooting virtues along with vices. A man who is proud of his courage, in seeking to become humble, might cease to be brave. A man whose hard work gives him little time for friends may, in trying to be sociable, become lazy. A Christian is forever being reminded that he is a sinner, and rightly so; but we may not have the insight, at any given time, to see just how we are sinning, and if we rush to judgment against ourselves, we are likely to do a bad job of it, just as if we rushed to judge others. Sometimes I think we must let the wheat and tares grow together for a time, waiting for a moment of discernment when we see a way to change our lives.

Paul Cites His Sources

Paul writes to the Ephesians:

If indeed you have heard of the dispensation of the grace of God which was given to me for you, how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already, by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ)... (Ephesians 3:2-4)

I remember that when I was younger I found passages like this in Paul's epistles off-putting. It came across to me as Paul bragging, pulling rank, bullying. When I read this passage the other day, it was so obvious why Paul wrote this that I didn't see how I could have missed it before. It has nothing to do with boasting; it's about evidence. Paul is not writing to credulous fools who believe everything they are told. They want to know how he knows. And Paul is not mentioning his personal encounter with Jesus to pull rank, but because he wants to persuade his audience of things that are very important, and this personal encounter is the reason they should believe he is telling the truth.

"I Have Overcome the World"

From the Gospel of John:

These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. (John 16:33)

If we are to take John (or the author of the Gospel of John-- Biblical scholars would dispute its authorship) at his word, Jesus said these words on the eve of his Crucifixion. Whether John meant literally that the words were said then, I do not know. I believe tradition holds that he didn't write his Gospel down until decades later. I am not sure, but I suspect that it rarely happens that I can remember even a small part of a conversation verbatim a day, or an hour, later, let alone decades. On the other hand, especially striking phrases do sometimes linger in the memory much longer, and what Jesus says in the Gospels is almost always striking. Of course that night was the most important in John's life; John, indeed, with other Christians, believed that it was perhaps the most important night in the history of the world; so he undoubtedly thought about it a great deal and might have remembered it better than an ordinary conversation. So it is not inconceivable, though it seems improbable, that John might have remembered parts of that conversation verbatim by natural means. Christians might say, too, that John had divine help. I would certainly agree, but it is not obvious that divine help would take the form of making John's record an exact transcription of the conversation that took place. It might instead have enabled him to write a version that was of most use to Christians, or that expressed one side of the Gospel message with the utmost clarity, or that telescoped many things that Jesus said over the three years of His ministry into a single night. I think a Christian should at least be inclined to think that if the words are not a literal transcription-- and they might well be-- they are if anything even truer than that, in capturing the impression made by Jesus on the men who were closest to Him and who subsequently devoted their whole lives to Him, even unto death.

"I have overcome the world." The first thing that is striking about the phrase is how mad, how megalomaniacal, the words are, under the circumstances, from a worldly, or we may say simply from a normal or commonsense point of view. From Jesus, the son of a carpenter's wife, from Nazareth, a humble man of no wealth or position, and a member of a conquered nation, in a backward province of the Roman empire, come words that would have been vainglorious even in the mouth of Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar. He had, admittedly, attracted a small following, even at times large followings, people impressed by his miracles of healing, of casting out demons, of making a few loaves and fish feed multitudes, as well as by His teaching, which could be, at different times and to different people, both persuasive and off-putting. He had been welcomed into Jerusalem by crowds chanting "Hosanna" and throwing palms a week before, but these crowds were so fickle that a few days later they called for Pilate to free Barabbas, whom the Gospels call a robber (John), or a rebel and murderer (Luke), rather than Jesus. Even Peter, the most enthusiastic of Jesus's disciples, denied Him three times that night.

And yet even from a secular and historical point of view, this utterance of Jesus's gained a certain vindication in the subsequent conversion of the Roman Empire, and later in the global ascendancy of Christian Europe, which indeed persists even to this day. All that both is and is not, I think, what Jesus meant when He spoke those words. It was good that Rome converted to Christianity, and that the nations of Europe, and later of the Americas, then many in Africa, and now many millions in South Korea and China, lived in the Christian faith. And the "worldly" success, the wealth and power and scientific and artistic achievements, of Europe owed much to this Christian heritage. Yet it remained "the world" in the sense that, I think, Jesus and John mean it. What exactly Jesus/John did mean by "the world" here is not easy to say. Other references to "the world" in John 16 are almost equally opaque.

I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me. But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave Me commandment, so I do. Arise, let us go from here. (John 14:30-31)

If the world hates you, know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. (John 15: 18-19)

And when He [the Helper; the Holy Spirit] has come, He will convict the world of sin... (John 16: 8)

I came forth from the Father and have come into the world. Again, I leave the world and go to the Father. (John 16:28)

I suppose the last seems straightforward: Jesus is prophesying His own death, and when the soul leaves the body it is no longer in this world. But when Jesus tells his disciples "the world will hate you," He cannot mean the world quite in the merely physical sense, for the disciples are part of the world in that sense and will not hate themselves. "The world" means society, perhaps; or the Roman Empire; or the Jewish nation with its sinews of religious identity; or, somehow, all of them in one. It is a system with its own ineffable logic, yet it has a "ruler," a reference to Satan. There is in Christianity, I think, something that is rather the opposite of Adam Smith's notion of the "invisible hand." Adam Smith thinks that the invisible hand of the market will coordinate individuals' self-interested efforts in the service of the common good, in a limited sense, and he hits on a profound truth. But there is, I think, an even more profound truth, that there is something in this world, in the self-organizing logic of human society, and also in a man's own will, that thwarts and corrupts all that is good in us. Rome was made great by justice, courage, tolerance, and love of freedom in the great days of the republic; yet it was also a slave society. According to The Holy Apostles, a book on the lives of the apostles published by the Holy Apostles Convent in Buena Vista, CO, John himself became a slave in a bath-house for a time, after being shipwrecked, but willingly, as penance for a sin:

When the lands of the earth were divided among the apostles, John was downcast when he chose the last lot, that of Asia Minor, and uttered three sighs. With tears, he fell prostrate on the ground and made reverence to all the apostles. Peter then took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: "We all have thee as a father, and they patient endurance for our support. Why has thou troubled us with this thine action and confused our hearts?'"John answered, weeping and groaning bitterly, "I have sinned, brethren; for this hour I have seen that grave perils lie before me in the sea; for, just as the lot of Asia fell to me, I received it with great heaviness, failing to call to mind our Lord Who said: '... there shall not a hair of your head perish.' For not one hair is lost without God's permission. I beseech ye, therefore, beloved brethren, pray on my behalf before the Lord, that He forgive me this sin!"

After a shipwreck, John and a companion, Prochorus, were employed in a bath-house, and later meekly submitted to be made slaves by deceit:

Now Romana [the bath-house owner] had a friend who was a lawyer and, seeking his legal opinion, she told him a lie: 'My parents reposed, leaving me two slaves who, after many years, ran away from my house. Therefore, I destroyed the certificates of their purchase. Now they have returned to my house and acknowledge themselves to be my slaves. Is it possible to draw up duplicate papers of ownership?' The attorney replied: 'If they admit now, before three trustworthy witnesses, that they were once thy slaves, it is possible to make new papers.' Through the Holy Spirit, this entire scheme was revealed to John, and he said to [Prochorus]: 'Prochorus, my child, Romana seeks for us to make a written acknowledgment that we are her slaves, and she went to see a lawyer about the matter. He has agreed to whatever she hath chosen to tell him. Now she is looking for three witnesses who will certify that we are her slaves. Therefore, let no sadness enter thine heart, but rather rejoice; for by this will our Lord Jesus Christ quickly reveal everything to this woman, as to who we are.' Just then Romana entered the bath-house and, grasping John by the arm, she began to rain blows down upon him, and said: 'Wicked servant, runaway! When thy mistress entereth, thou must greet her and do reverence! Mayhaps thou didst imagine thou wast a freeman? Know this: thou art Romana's slave!' And, once again, she slapped him to scare him, and said, 'Thou are not my servant, runaway!' And John said: 'But thou hast said otherwise, that we are thy servants. I am John the fireman, and this is Prochorus the water man.' Romana again asked: 'Whose servants are you, O wicked ones?' John answered: 'Whomever thou desirest to say.' She replied: 'That ye are mine.' John then said: 'Written down or not, we admit that we are thy servants.' Then she quickly said: 'I want it in writing before three witnesses.' John told her: 'Do not tarry; let us take care of the matter today.' She then took us before the temple of Artemis and, in the presence of three witnesses, she wrote out our papers of sale. Then we [John and Prochorus] returned to our work.

I don't know where this story comes from or how reliable it is, but the thought of the Apostle John, 'the disciple Jesus loved,' who leaned his head on Jesus's breast at the last supper ("Now there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one of His disciples, whom Jesus loved," John 13:23), the first man (but there were women before) to see the graveclothes of the Resurrected Lord, reduced to this, to what, as far as the world was concerned, would be a lifetime of toil in a Roman bath-house, submitting to beatings and humiliations at the hands of a petty cheat of a tradeswoman, is one of the saddest scenes I can imagine. Of course, John seems not to have been discouraged by it, according to the story. Yet if John had indeed been a slave, it might explain the anti-Roman and anti-wordly flavor of John's writings. John had seen the world as it looks from the very bottom. "The meek shall inherit the earth" and "blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5:4-5) are sublime.  Yet the broken-hearted might find still greater comfort in the transcendental simplicity of the Gospel of John's "I have overcome the world."