|
Politics and the reign of God
Politics presents a double-bind. In order to implement particular ideals for the human good within society, political contenders must participate in the compromised quest to gain power and to sustain it. In human life and memory, the quest for political power is frequently experienced as the very antithesis of human wellbeing. The equation of any political ideology and God ultimately makes a temporal and regional possibility absolute. Yet the impossibility of securing the definitive good in any time and place of human life is self-evident. The future of God becoming present in grace represents another possibility, other than those configured within the possibilities of human politics. v The Hebrew prophets enunciate the failure of politics. Jerusalem fails politically; the nations function as an instrument of Yahweh’s judgment on Israel, then Judah. All political powers are under judgment, even as God is the source of mercy for all. The quest to establish a political theocracy—a state under God’s rule—amid human compromise, requires a necessary alternative in the promise of days to come when the righteousness of God will be established in a new way as written into human hearts. The final word on politics is articulated in prophetic critique of all political possibilities with its anticipation of the future of God who calls to be things that are not—that is, eschatological resolution. In the inability of human regimes to establish the reign of God, the significance of this reign is more sharply distinguished from political possibilities. God reigns. Faith alone affirms this reality in a politically ambiguous world. The future of God becoming present belongs to the initiative of God in the same way, in biblical remembrance, exodus out of Egypt is the inaugural expression of liberation for all possibilities of human liberation. The critical issue is that the gift of God’s life in righteousness is the only enduring source of human liberation. New Testament testimony neither revives the political ideal of a theocratic state nor expects the future of God to be realised as an endorsement of one among competing expressions of politics. Instead, it articulates a new creation that is focused in Jesus Christ, which is always coming obliquely as unexpected, transforming human life in the present, while forming a permanent critique of all political expression. God in Christ alone is the source of a truly new possibility within the recurrence of nothing new under the sun in the machinations of power and politics. Governance, to which political contenders aspire, is an aspect of God’s providence for the nurture of human society. Even if its various political manifestations are impermanent, the state is nevertheless beneficent in sustaining society through mechanisms of law, economy and various civic responsibilities. Yet this beneficence is also easily reduced to a feint concerning the human good. Alternatively, the Christian gospel of transforming grace will always exceed the conflicted possibilities inducted by legislation. Any form of governance represents a limited system of values. This is inevitable, given human anxiety and self-interest. The providential role of governance is invariably compromised. It is under critique within the proclamation of gospel. This radical critique of human governance goes to the root of its tacit and explicit expressions of perennial human self-compromise. The state endorses some form of authority; law is contingent on a mechanism of its enforcement. The community in Christ articulates the limits of all human rule and dominion, but not through partisan conflicts that offer limited alternatives within perennial human compromise or sin. All are indicted. Christian faith also gives testimony to the grace of God for humanity, which is expressed through a new community in the Spirit that has its definitive shape in Jesus Christ as the truth of integral human life. As transient, every state is called into question by the community of Christ, which anticipates human dignity in Christ. The state does not and cannot represent the reign of God that comes in Christ. The state is always implicated in the ambiguities of power. The grace of God exceeds the capacity of politics to give any enduring effect to mere silhouettes of righteousness. New Testament testimony to the reign of God articulates the conflicted and transient nature of human dominion, anticipating instead, the reign of grace in Christ, which exceeds all human possibilities. Every expression of human politics is partisan and inherently divisive by comparison to the grace of God for all. Christians cannot synchronise the reality of grace with the machinations of politics and its inevitable pursuit of power. Within the logic of Christian identity, their differences are sharpened. These differences are necessary so that neither the conflicted posturing of politics is confused with Christian faith nor the legitimate, even if compromised role of human governance is confused with God. Christian proclamation is a reminder that everything other than the reality of God in grace is temporary at best, while always implicated in potential and actual evil. Christians gives testimony to another reality other than politics, even as politics has its possibility and season under the sun only by virtue of this other reality. The community in Christ articulates, by tangible deed and gracious word, the coming reign of God. Throughout history, Christian institutions have often become closely aligned with partisan political positions. By contrast, the called community in Christ gives focus to Jesus Christ as the source of wholeness amid human compromise through self-giving life in the Spirit, as the future of creation and its possibility beyond all orders of creation. The failure of Christian community to be distinguished from the machinations of politics is perpetuated by over-estimation of politics and under-estimation of human transformation focused in Jesus Christ as the definitive expression of human dignity. v A horizon can imply two possibilities—it represents a limit and it suggests a beyond. Any political pursuit of righteousness within a regional and temporal horizon is ultimately resourced from the existing possibilities that humans have within a political horizon. This is a recipe for more of the same or nothing new under the sun, with any anticipation for the human good already within a specific horizon. Accordingly, human yearning, imagination and hope pertaining to righteousness are equated with existing possibilities—a sense that we can grasp everything, even if its final realisation is just over our immediate horizon. It is precisely in exposure to the reality of gospel as the reign of God in Jesus Christ we discover that political horizons are limited, their source of imagination truncated and their depth of hope for humanity too meanly hinged on ideals and possibilities within the human horizon—whether this is couched in sociological, economic or pragmatic terms. The reality of grace and life in the Spirit extend human life beyond any conceivable political horizon to the future of God. Pentecost gives an alternative horizon for human communities and their desire for righteousness. These are given tangible expression as eternal imperatives—as tangible, they cease to be political and as imperatives, they are initiated beyond the political. The horizon of every human life is death, beyond which there are no resources from anything within human life, except the risen Christ, whose life becomes our resource within and beyond every human horizon as already encompassed by God in grace.
Selected sources: Jenson The Works of God (STII); Käsemann Romans; Kasper Jesus the Christ; Moltmann Theology of Hope; Niebuhr Nature and Destiny I & II; Pannenberg, Sys. Th. III. |
