ChnMind 2.20 The State an Intrinsic Part of God's Kingdom

Sub-Christian Views of the State

History has thrown up four different views on the place and role of the State within Christendom or God's Kingdom. Three of these views are sub-biblical and not of Christ. Only one is true. The three sub-Christian views all draw upon pagan themes or elements and seek to incorporate them into the Christian faith. They represent an attempt to syncretise Athens and Jerusalem.

The first pagan influence is represented by popism. The medieval Roman Catholic church postulated that the pope—the head of the church at Rome—was the vicar of Christ upon earth. As Christ's representative, it was argued that the pope carried the authority of Christ upon earth, ruling over all things. Papal ideology therefore asserted that the pope had higher authority than the State: the pope ruled over kings. An historic avatar of this claim was the papal crowning of Charlemagne on Christmas night, AD800 by the pope as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

Popism represents a syncretised sub-Christian version of the ancient idea of the king or emperor being the vicar of the gods and himself semi-divinised.

The second pagan influence is represented by divine right theories. Here the king is seen as God's representative on the earth. In this pagan variant, the king rules over all things, including the Church. The king is an implicit absolute monarch, the vicar of Christ upon earth. An historical manifestation of this pagan variant is the claim by Henry VIII to be the head of the Anglican church—a claim continued to be maintained by the British monarchy to this day.

A particular historic avatar of this sub-Christian view is the coronation of Napoleon on December 2nd, 1804. The pope blessed the crown (Charlemagne's crown remade) then Napoleon walked forward, took the crown up, and placed it upon his own head. The symbolism was deliberate and carefully planned. This variant also is a manifestation of the older pagan view of the emperor being the vicar of the gods.

The third, and final sub-Christian view of the State is represented by the Anabaptists at the time of the Reformation. The Anabaptists asserted that while the New Testament clearly taught that the State or the civil magistrate was an office appointed by God Himself, it belonged to the realms of this world, and not the Kingdom of God. So sharp was the disjunction that Anabaptist teachers forbade Christians to hold government office. Christians, it was argued, shared the perfection of Christ and the civil magistracy was a worldly institution, belonging to the realms of this world, not of Christ.

This sub-Christian view represents the syncretism of pagan platonic and neo-platonic views and the Christian faith. The non-material, non-earthly, other worldly perspective of the Anabaptists was in fact an “anaplatonism”, an insinuation of Socrates, without his mortal coils, into the Kingdom of God.

Against all these defalcations and compromises with Athens, reformed Christianity captured and faithfully presented the Scriptural teaching concerning the State and its place and role in God's Kingdom. We can summarise the revelation of God concerning these matters in the following propositions:

1. Universal totalitarian authority belongs to Christ alone.
2. There is no head of the Church, but Christ.
3. There is no head of the State, but Christ.
4. His Kingdom embraces all created reality.
5. Spirituality is a matter of being of the Holy Spirit, or led by the Spirit.
6. The State is an intrinsic and essential institution of the Kingdom of God
7. Christ has endless vicars upon the earth; every servant of God is a vicar of Christ.
8. Every vicar of Christ has a duty to follow his or her particular divine callings.
9. No servant of Christ can judge or reject another servant of Christ: to his own Master he stands or falls.
10. Every vicar of Christ is subject to His law and command as given in Holy Scripture.

These ten propositions mean that Jerusalem is unique in all the earth. Every other political ideology, every other version of the role of the Kingdom of God or of the State is a doffing of the cap to speculations and lofty things raised up against the knowledge of God, and are not part of the obedience of Christ.