Anti-Gnosticism: The Church

This is not a long post; just a reflection. There’s a passage in Romans that always struck me as strange:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval, for it is God’s agent for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the agent of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s agents, busy with this very thing. Pay to all what is due them: taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.

Romans 13:1–7 (NRSVUE)

It’s just not those whom we might consider radical that play games with this passage, and that’s not to say that such games aren’t warranted. These are the kind of caveats I’ve seen when interpreting this passage, some from self-identified conservative readers, and many of them are supported elsewhere in canon including by Paul:

• God’s law takes precedence over human law.
• Offices, not individual officers, are ordained by God.
• Submission does not necessarily mean obedience.
• Officers are agents of God only when they act according to God’s law.

Note that when conservative commentators qualify Paul’s writing, they have in mind not fascist regimes necessarily, but also secular, liberal nanny states and so on. That is to say that the stakes are low for them, so we shouldn’t feel too bad to explore them. Anyway, those caveats are informed by comparison to Paul’s biography and early church history:

• Paul wrote his epistles before Christians were persecuted by Rome.
• Paul wielded his Roman citizenship to protect himself from mob violence.
• Paul and other apostles disobeyed authorities to escape jail or preach.

One gets the impression that Paul’s political theory, so to speak, is one of opportunism on an individual level and avoidance on an organizational level. Maybe it’s practical given the situation in which Paul and the Church found themselves, to survive by any means except by transgressing God’s law—embodied as per Romans 13:8–10 by loving one’s neighbor—but it’s not particularly satisfying and it leaves readers with more questions than answers. Isn’t an authority who does not facilitate justice, or who is overthrown and then replaced, not an authority at all? Of course, that doesn’t mean Christians should directly participate in the replacement of leaders; that is foreclosed from Paul’s prescribed behavior.

What is not foreclosed, however, is the influence of churches as secondary powers which sit besides and influence administration. This is how churches have always functioned, at different times and places, irrespective of any one church’s particular context (whether of their society, goals, or even theology). Take the Basileias in Caesarea, the Catholic Church in feudal Europe and colonial America, and the various Churches which had participated—or continue to participate—on either side of race politics in the United States. The Church in other words is an organization form which exerts soft power via mass participation to influence authority. A church is not inherently altruistic or exploitative, elitist or populist, progressive or reactionary. A church is also not a state or party (or at least, when it mixes with one or the other to attain direct political power, a church ceases to function as such and things get real weird). It is only a strategy for long-term soft power.

The Church is on one hand a medium between an individual and the Logos, on the other hand a medium between society and History (the medium itself is what we call the Holy Spirit). For this reason a church often emerges as the herald of new heavens and earths, of the arrival of a Messiah who resurrects the dead and gives them new spiritual bodies. Every civilization contains within itself the seed of its own destruction, and a church is such a seed. I’m mostly critical of the gospel narratives, but this aligns straightforwardly with how the synoptic Jesus characterizes the Kingdom of Heaven or of God through parables—which are now not particularly abstract. Quoting from the apocryphal Thomas only because it’s short and sweet:

Jesus said, “Look, a sower went out, took a handful of seeds, and scattered them. Some fell on the roadside; the birds came and gathered them. Others fell on the rock; they didn’t take root in the soil and ears of grain didn’t rise toward heaven. Yet others fell on thorns; they choked the seeds and worms ate them. Finally, others fell on good soil; it produced fruit up toward heaven, some sixty times as much and some a hundred and twenty.”

Gospel of Thomas, Saying 9

The disciples asked Jesus, “Tell us, what can the kingdom of heaven be compared to?”

He said to them, “It can be compared to a mustard seed. Though it’s the smallest of all the seeds, when it falls on tilled soil it makes a plant so large that it shelters the birds of heaven.”

Gospel of Thomas, Saying 20

Jesus said, “My Fathers’ kingdom can be compared to someone who had [good] seed. Their enemy came by night and sowed weeds among the good seed. The person didn’t let anyone pull out the weeds, ‘so that you don’t pull out the wheat along with the weeds,’ they said to them. ‘On the day of the harvest, the weeds will be obvious. Then they’ll be pulled out and burned.’”

Gospel of Thomas, Saying 57

Jesus [said], “The Father’s kingdom can be compared to a woman who took a little yeast and [hid] it in flour. She made it into large loaves of bread. Anyone who has ears to hear should hear!”

Gospel of Thomas, Saying 96

In other words, the Church as an organizational form is consistent both throughout the New Testament and throughout History, to the extent that it could describe movements which did not even self-identify as churches or with Christianity. It’s a useful form, and we know it works to an extent, but it suffers from its own aspirations: despite striving for long-term, slow-burn social change through soft power, social transformation eventually transitions into social reproduction and soft power into hard power, all the while losing sight of its original goals for continued longevity. Same shit as always.