It was the Judeo-Christian understanding of things that led away from Statism to the freedoms and values of the West. But sadly, as the West becomes more secular and anti-Christian, it is reverting to its pagan roots—and that includes the return to the all-powerful and all-dominating State.

Political Theology, as the term implies, has to do with thinking theologically about politics. Or, putting it the other way around, involves doing politics from a theological point of view. The Christian knows that the proper use of politics—like everything else—must be seen, assessed, and done from a biblical point of view.

This is now my third article on these sorts of themes, all drawing on one important book Jesus and Politics: Confronting the Powers by English Christian author Alan Storkey. The book is so helpful that there might be even more articles to come in the future. The other two pieces are here.

And here.

In these articles I have sought to stress how this-worldly Jesus and the Bible are. We tend to so over-spiritualise Christianity – at least in the West—that we lose sight of just how much Jesus and the disciples were involved in dealing with the physical and material needs of people.

And not only that, but we lose sight of just how much of a challenge the gospel message actually was to the powers of the day, including the political powers. Many of course have written on these themes. N. T. Wright is one such figure. And think of three volumes written or edited by Richard Horsley:

–Paul and Empire (Trinity Press International, 1997)
–Jesus and Empire (Fortress Press, 2002)
–In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance (Westminster John Knox Press, 2008)

Of course one need not agree with all that is found in these volumes, and Horsley and Co may have taken things too far. Indeed, others have written critical assessments of this anti-imperialism emphasis. See for example these three books which offer a much-needed corrective:

Christopher Bryan, Render to Caesar: Jesus, the Early Church, and the Roman Superpower (Oxford University Press, 2005)
Seyoon Kim, Christ and Caesar: The Gospel and the Roman Empire in the Writings of Paul and Luke (Eerdmans, 2008)
Scot McKnight, and Joseph Modica, eds., Jesus is Lord, Caesar is Not (IVP, 2013)

But still, there is no question that Scripture must be seen—at least to some extent—against this backdrop of empires and rulers who found the Judeo-Christian message to be a real threat. The prophets, Jesus and the disciples all posed challenges to the political powers of the day.

Getting back to Storkey, let me focus on chapter 6 of his book, “The Government of God,” which I have quoted from earlier. He writes:

The biggest subversion of all is to dethrone the ruler and politics and put them in their limited place under the sovereignty of God. This change is at the fulcrum of world political history. To identify the issue, we have to begin by recalling the overwhelming structure of the ancient world’s empires. Politically, they were ruler-dominated cultures: the ruler, often with the help of priests and religious myths, provided the total worldview for its citizens.

He looks at some of these empires, and then says this:

By the time of Jesus, not much has changed. Rome, though it has different foundations, is a politically defined culture. The Roman state defines citizenship or slavery, worship, and law, and it operates with an overwhelming sense of control. At the time the empire is moving fast toward worship of the divine Caesar….

Jesus is entirely different. He requires true subordination to the rule of God, in which the state and its ruler are banished from overall control, political and religious. People live before God and not within the conception of the state or the ruler. Living before God demythologizes the whole ethos of dominating politics. People are free to live before God as they choose. Politics is pushed into a limited place, and there is room for friendship, science, children, discussion, prayer, the arts, fishing, and walking about, meeting people.

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