Ever Ancient, Ever New by Foley Michael P. Fortin Ernest L

Author:Foley, Michael P.,Fortin, Ernest L.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780742579170
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.
Published: 2013-07-11T04:00:00+00:00

CHRISTIANITY AND THE POLITICAL ORDER

Christianity may have far-reaching political implications but the least that can be said about it is that it was not originally conceived as a political religion. Anyone who reads the New Testament carefully from this point of view cannot help being struck by its profound silence on problems of a properly political nature, its manifest ignorance of or indifference to the distinction between regimes, its all but total disregard for the harsh necessities of the social life, and its countervailing emphasis on a mysterious kingdom of God supposedly taking shape within history but whose promises can only be fulfilled outside of it. Unlike the Hebrew Scriptures or the Koran, it does not call for or encourage the formation of an earthly society or promulgate a code of laws by which such a society might be governed. While it makes perfect sense to talk of a Hebrew or an Islamic polity, there is in the strict sense no such thing as a Christian polity. Christians were not to constitute a triton genos or “third race,” distinct from but more or less on a par with Jews and Gentiles. The particular way of life enjoined upon them was neither a substitute for that of the city or the nation nor a recipe for its improvement but a necessary complement to it. The belief on which it rested was that one’s relationship to the transcendent deity is mediated by the person of Christ, to whom one is united, not as a disciple to a revered but dead master, but as friend to friend or lover to beloved.9 Faith in Christ rather than membership in a divinely ordained and divinely ruled body politic had become the prescribed means of salvation. As Paul writes, God is one. One also is the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all (I Tim. 2:5; cf. Hebr. 9:15 and 12:24). In the risen and living Christ, all human beings now found themselves bound to one another as actual or potential members of the same invisible kingdom, regardless of race, national allegiance, or social condition.

This is not to suggest that the New Testament is blind to or unconcerned with matters of justice but only that the rules of just and humane conduct that it lays down do not form part of a well-developed legal system calculated to insure their efficacy by stipulating the modalities of their concrete application. It is significant that the situations envisaged in the Gospel are typically one-on-one encounters from which there are few definite conclusions to be drawn regarding the behavior that is appropriate when the welfare of the larger community is at stake. “Love your neighbor,” “Be merciful,” “Turn the other cheek,” and the like may be valid maxims for the person who prefers forgiveness to punishment, prizes mercy more than justice, and has only himself to think about, but they are less suited to multilateral situations involving third parties for whom one is responsible and whom one also has the duty to love.

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