The Ethical Sphere

In the choice of himself as an absolute, one leaves the aesthetic stage.  Kierkegaard calls the new sphere, into which freedom has introduced man, the ethical.  As soon as  a person takes possession of himself and becomes free there arises an absolute distinction between good and evil.  For the speculative attitude (which is included in the aesthetic, because of its lack of commitment), this distinction is only relative: good and evil can be integrated in a single system.  The distinction becomes absolute when we make it so by a personal commitment.  This means that good and evil are absolute only insofar as we will them.  Such a statement does not reduce them to mere subjective determinations – they are objective and universal in themselves – but they become themselves only in the free decision of absolute choice.  Nothing but a conscious, personal acceptance can make objective standard into absolute values.

Even in their subjective acceptance, however, the objective ethical standards are a limitation of the spirit….The absolute of the ethical man is expressed as an existence which is extremely limited and, as such, relative.  Although the synthesis of the ethical personality is more balanced than the aesthetic, which refuses to bind itself to the finite, the question remains whether the ethical man will ever be conscious of the absolute as such, which is the primary condition for becoming spirit.  The very self-assurance of the ethical man makes his whole attitude somewhat suspect.  “He feels no want of the eternal, for it is with him in time.”

Louis Dupré, Kierkegaard as Theologian, 45-46.

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Aslan, Ethics, and Apologetics

The basis of the moral life is to see the truth, for only as we see correctly can we act in accordance with reality.  Even though the good can be embodied in our choices, we do not create it through our choices.  However, we are not able to ‘see’ the good simply by looking; to be man is to create and love illusion, for few of us can bear long to look at the sun.  Our vision must be trained and disciplined in order to free it from our neurotic self-concern and the assumption that conventionally defines the real.  Ethics is that modest discipline which uses careful language, distinctions, and stories to break the intellectual bewitchment that would have us call lamps the sun and adultery love.  Christian ethics is the systematic investigation of the astounding claim that the world and our self is only rightly seen and intended in the light of what God has done in the person and work of Jesus Christ, for Narnia is real exactly because Aslan has created and sustained it through his sacrificial love.

It is only on such a basis that Christian ethics can provide a basis for a proper apologetics or be relevant in a significant sense.  For if it accepts the subtle and enticing temptation to take as normative the current accounts of reality, it only ensarls men further in the darkness of the underworld.  We cannot start with the question fo what modern man will accept as true; we must begin with the nature and content of the true and the good, whether such a man will accept it or not.  An apologetic that is not first based on truth is but propaganda.

I suspect that Christians are always tempted in this respect because they consider themselves charged with the task of convincing others of the truth.  But the modern forms of this essential task are a clear witness to our bad faith, for they often represent the desperate attempt of an unsure minority to substantiate their own doubts by calling unbelief ‘faith’ and sin ‘righteousness.’  We must face the possibility that the apologetics of a true and faithful conception of the Christian life may create not more but fewer men who will walk in the way.

Stanley Hauerwas, “Aslan and the New Morality,” in Religious Education Vol. 62, no. 6. December 1972.

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The Desacralized State

What happens if Christians do not take up their freedom in Christ?

There then takes place what we have seen.  The desacralized, “dereligionized” state becomes autonomous, rational, and totalitarian.  Being no longer subject to the divine order which was integrated into it, it obeys its own law and intention and has in instelf the principle and meaning of its own will.  No longer having any secret, it obeys only the rationality of power, growth, external order, and excess.  Being no longer tied to a divine element that conducts, measures, orders, and limits it, it becomes totalitarian.

I am aware that the objection will be made that all ancient societies were totalitarian.  What could be worse than the Pharaohs’ Egypt, or Assyria, or the kingdom of the Incas?  There is truth here, but it should be remembered that the totalitarian element in these states is the divine order, or the integration of politics into the divine.  The absolute element is the god who is in the king.  Politics as such is not totalitarian because it has no real existence as such.  The desacralization and secularization of power have not yet taken place.  Since religion is totalitarian, political power does not have to be.

Once the break comes about, however, power becomes the abstract, authoritarian, and absolute state unless it comes up against the free man.  The state absorbs religion.  It reduces it to subjection.  It commandeers and uses it.  And by the same inversion as we have seen in the case of science, man calls the state itself his freedom.

Jacques Ellul, The Ethics of Freedom (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1976), 285.

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F.H. Bradley

A friend recently passed this quote on to me.  The quote is an excerpt from a book (no reference) of essays on T.S. Eliot, who wrote his own doctoral dissertation on the British philosopher F.H. Bradley.

As Eliot himself said, his prose style is modelled on Bradley’s. The combination of humility and irony, of feeling and intelligence, that characterizes Bradley’s writings is a hallmark of Eliot’s. Both the humility and the irony are genuine; both, in fact, are necessary results of the epistemology. They come from the double awareness that one has glimpsed some light and that one can only work in the dark; from the compulsion to refute error coupled with the consciousness that one’s own work is bound to be in error; from an awareness that one is making a raid on the absolute with shabby equipment always deteriorating. One of the disarming aspects of Bradley’s rhetoric is that he generally concludes by calling his own theories into doubt. Thus in the Ethical Studies, he shows that Kant’s formalism and Mill’s utilitarianism are deeply flawed ethical theories. He then presents his own ethical theory based on the idea that society is a moral organism. He concludes, however, by arguing the insufficiency of all ethical theories, including the one he has just proposed. Being ethical and formulating ethical theories, he claims, are worlds apart, not because an ethical philosopher might himself be unethical, but because being anything and analyzing it are inconsistent activities.

–Jewel Spears Brooker

So…who is F.H. Bradley?!  I am intrigued…

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Further Thoughts on Christian Anarchy

Well, I never heard back from the Vancouver Anarchist Bookfair about setting up a table.  It’s too bad, because I would have enjoyed more dialogue about the important differences between secular anarchy and Christian anarchy.  Although I am sure there would have been more confusion.

For example, take this passage from an interview with Ellul:

…I believe that the greatest good that could happen to society today is an increasing disorder.  For the factor that is winning is insane disorder – state-controlled order or technical order, it matters little.  It is extremely urgent that we conquer zones where man can simply move freely: something like the streets reserved for pedestrians.  I am in no way pleading in favor of a different social order.  I am pleading for the regression of all the powers of order.

He goes on, however, to clarify what he means:

…I differ from anarchists in that I do not believe in the possibility of an ideal anarchist society that would function without organization or powers.

Christian anarchists can never give up their conviction that there is some place for valid authority, which can only be recognized as having it’s authority given by God.  Christians in no way recognize illegitimate authority as acceptable, and should be among those who are the most critical of the over-reaching power of destructive political ideologies.  But Christian anarchy can never be more than a means because the end is the kingdom of God.  And a kingdom implies a King.

For those who think anarchism is incompatible with Christianity, Ellul would say this:

[The question of compatibility] has given rise to a lot of discussion since it has been possible to derive a theological legitimacy to the power of the State from Christianity based on Paul’s famous words, “All authority comes from God.”  Political power comes under constant criticism all the way through the Bible.  For example, the people of Israel want a king, against the will of God.  With surprising humor for the Bible, God remarks that a king would make soldiers of their sons, take their daughters for his harem and impose taxes.  The Jews reply that nevertheless they want a king so as to have a leader like all the other peoples.  There’s criticism for you.

Next, Jesus’ whole attitude seems to me to be a permanent condemnation of political power.  The Apocalypse involves the destruction of political power  It’s not for nothing that Rome fell!  I would interpret Paul saying, “As Christians we are all against the State, but we should remember that authority also comes from God.”

Is this not a major point of contention?

I wonder if a point of misunderstanding is the denouncement of Christendom which necessarily precedes any talk of Christian anarchy.  Vernard Eller states,

The history of Christianity traces out rather clearly as a continuing contest to determine which arkys [powers, authorities], at any given time, are actually holy agents of God…Christian arky faith got its start in the absolute conviction that the elected arkys of God were two – the Holy Catholic Church and the Holy Roman Empire. Any arkys else (be they churches or states; be they pagan, heretical Christian, or whatever) were enemies of God to be ruthlessly conquered and exterminated.

This is called Christendom (or Constantinianism) and the number of Christians who question its legitimacy is growing.  Any attempt to articulate Christian anarchy, however, necessarily presupposes the rejection of Christendom.  Legitimate authority, to the proponent of Christendom, rests with the Church and the State.  The Church exists to ensure that the state is doing what it is supposed to do, and the State exists because…well, its the State.  Christendom seeks to ‘Christianize’ the state with the purpose of making all citizens of the State citizens of the Kingdom of God.  On both sides of the fence, each party is using the other.  The State uses Christianity to gain acceptance with its constituents, while the Church uses the State to wield moral authority to a much greater extent than it could without the power and resources of the State.

Once this occurs, there is no longer any difference between being a citizen of the State and being a Christian: to be a citizen of one is to claim citizenship in the other.  Nominally, this may be fine, but in practice the State ends up overcoming the (questionable) purposes of the Church and begins to yield authority in a way which marginalizes the Church and renders its witness unintelligible.  How can the Gospel be heard afresh in a State which already thinks it is Christian?  Who needs the prophets when clearly we are God’s people?  The only thing left for us to do is Christianize the world – and when this happens with a specific understanding of Christendom, it is nothing more than empire building in the name of God.  But I am saying nothing new.

What I do hope to bring to light is that Christian anarchism is built upon the rejection of Christendom, but not upon the rejection of the possibility of legitimate authority in the life of a community.  I would say that an understanding of the Church needs to be more fluid in this scenario, and that ecclesial authority means something different than what we might understand as “moral authority.”  And your definition of the State is obviously important here.  Are we reading Romans 13 with a view to legitimizing political ideology?  Or does Paul have something else in mind here?  Is it possible that the State’s claim to legitimacy is not only wrong, but evil?  Is it possible that the State’s claim to be in control of history is idolatrous?

Besides the important questions of anthropology, hamartiology, eschatology, ecclesiology, and all the other ologies, this is mostly a question about what Yoder calls, “the Politics of Jesus.”  Most people think that this means either, a) denial of political responsibility (the apolitical view), or b) an overly-politicized view towards taking over society in the name of God.  The options seem clear enough: withdraw or takeover.  But this understanding of Christian political engagement is – besides being highly popular – is absolutely wrong.

We don’t normally talk about the church as being ‘public’ or ‘political’ in any other sense. The reason for this is because those words have been co-opted by the state in order to put the church in its proper place. Unfortunately, that place is no place. “Political action” is voting, running for office, and starting political action committees. The closest the church can get to being “public” is by talking about being “visible”, which usually ends up being nothing more than a discussion about church building funds. “Public” is specifically used in contrast to “private”, which is the only thing the church can be: a place for the private affairs of a dwindling number of nostalgic, self-deluded believers.

I want to reject these distinctions and the implications they lead to. I want to argue that it is the church – the ekklesia – that is the most political entity in God’s creation and, consequently, the most public. However, these words (political and public) must be used on the church’s terms rather than those dictated to us by the state. In his book Political Worship, Bernd Wannenwetsch states:

“It should be borne in mind that the church has its own ‘politics’ (and economics), its specific way of dealing with the differences in social life… This means that it enters into a struggle which is certainly not directly ‘political’ (since it does not follow the prevailing political rules) but is primarily a struggle about politics, a struggle for the true form of political existence.”

Wannenwetsch goes on, “…the Church has to bring its own form of political praxis into the game, by playing along, but with other rules.”

What are those rules? How many of us have ever considered that most of the rules we live by are actually given to us by the state, not the Gospel of Jesus Christ? The freedom of the gospel allows us to think outside the rules of empire. Why was the term ekklesia used by the early church for self-identification when other concepts were available? Ekklesia, as argued by William Cavanaugh and others, is a particularly political term. To be political was to be involved in the affairs of the polis – the state. They could have self-identified as a guild or an association (koinon or collegium) but opted for a word that denotes a specific stance towards the public life. The choice of ekklesia was a conscious choice to self-identify as the people of the public God who is the Lord of all of life – even the empire. We must recapture this understanding of ekklesia if we will ever be able to engage the state with true political and public worship.

What does it mean to be political? How can we distinguish between true and false modes of Christian political action? I have few answers to these questions but I refuse to begin with the answers of the State. As long as the illusion is perpetuated that says we can divvy up our life into public, private, sacred and secular, it is crucial that the church resists the disintegrating force of the modern political machine driven by propaganda and technique. We must disengage from the dominance of the state – to use the words of Walter Brueggemann – only then to re-engage as Christians to unmask the principalities and powers. The action of disengagement begins with gathering as the ekklesia. After prayer, gathering around the crucified and resurrected Lord is the most significant form of political (public) action we have available to us. And if we don’t engage in these two things with patience, hope, and imagination, we will not be faithful to our call to be the church that resists the world by living the Word.

Christian anarchy, therefore, is about something different than we may have previously thought.

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Ellul on Barth

Ellul looks to Barth’s theology for his starting point.  But Ellul, trained in law, history, and sociology, was not satisfied with Barth’s non-theological work on understanding the world we live in.  In the essay, “Karl Barth and Us,” Ellul explains how he sees his “mission” after Barth:

I had the impression that the ethical consequences of Barth’s theology had never been elicited.  I was not satisfied with his volumes of ethics and politics, which seemed to be based on insufficient knowledge of the world and of politics.  However, there was everything there necessary to formulate an ethic without losing any of the rediscovered truth, being totally faithful to the Scriptures, but without legalism or literalism.  But this work seemed possible to me only if one conserved the groundwork laid by Barth and did not start over.

I often hear that Barth’s ethics are lacking substance, and Ellul was among the many who saw this gap in Barth’s work.  While Barth laid the theological groundwork necessary to be able to articulate a distinctly Christian ethic, he could not follow through.   For all that is lacking in Barth’s ethics, I think Ellul might be able to offer a glimpse into what a concrete Barthian ethic could look like.

[Freedom] is at the center of my whole life and my whole work.  Nothing I have done, experienced, or thought makes sense if it is not considered in light of freedom.  This is so, first, because the God revealed in the Bible is above all the liberator.  He creates for freedom.  And when men break their relation with him, God respects this act of independence.  The only problem is not the metaphysical freedom but how to be assured that we are liberated by God in Jesus Christ, and how to live this freedom.  Hence an ethic of freedom.

That was Ellul.  But it could easily be Barth, nein?

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Wendell Berry to Jail?

I am hardly up-to-date on much of the current discussion about the food economy in the United States, but I found this bit particularly interesting:

Wendell Berry Picks Jail Over NAIS

The NAIS is short for the National Animal Identification System.  In an effort to be able to trace diseases back to their source, the NAIS would require every single livestock animal in the US to be tagged, regardless of the size of the operation.  The problem, or so it is argued, is that the diseases exist because we have made it a standard practice to house a huge number of animals of the same species together in relatively small spaces.  In these conditions, they are often fed food that is not consistent with their natural diet and because of the resulting health problems, they are treated with huge amounts of antibiotics.  Basically, the antibiotics keep the animals alive because they would otherwise die in the conditions they are currently existing in.  Sounds good, eh?

In a small farm with crop and animal rotation, such as Joel Salatin’s Polyface, Inc., the animals tend not to get sick because they are treated as they should be – that is, as they were created.  The website explains that one of their guiding principles is “Nature’s Template”:

Mimicking natural patterns on a commercial domestic scale insures moral and ethical boundaries to human cleverness.  Cows are herbivores, not omnivores; that is why we’ve never fed them dead cows like the United States Department of Agriculture encouraged (the alleged cause of mad cows).

And, as this principle shows, it is not just the animals who are treated well, but we humans also get to live well by recognizing the ‘moral and ethical boundaries’ of our role as caretakers of God’s creation.  This is the stuff of real life.

Back to the article, quoting Berry:

The need to trace animals was made by the confined animal industry – which are, essentially, disease breeding operations. The health issue was invented right there. The remedy is to put animals back on pasture, where they belong. The USDA is scapegoating the small producers to distract attention from the real cause of the trouble. Presumably these animal factories are, in a too familiar phrase, “too big to fail”.

This is the first agricultural meeting I’ve ever been to in my life that was attended by the police. I asked one of them why he was there and he said: “Rural Kentucky”. So thank you for your vote of confidence in the people you are supposed to be representing. (applause) I think the rural people of Kentucky are as civilized as anybody else.

But the police are here prematurely. If you impose this program on the small farmers, who are already overburdened, you’re going to have to send the police for me. I’m 75 years old. I’ve about completed my responsibilities to my family. I’ll lose very little in going to jail in opposition to your program – and I’ll have to do it. Because I will be, in every way that I can conceive of, a non-cooperator.

I understand the principles of civil disobedience, from Henry Thoreau to Martin Luther King. And I’m willing to go to jail to defend the young people who, I hope, will still have a possibility of becoming farmers on a small scale in this supposedly free country. Thank you very much. (applause, cheers)

This is the stuff of real life.

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The Church Against the World

In the faith of the church, the problem is not one of adjustment to the changing, relative and temporal elements but rather one of constant adjustment, amid these changing things, to the eternal.  The crisis of the church from this point of view is not the crisis of the church in the world but of the world in the church…The church has adjusted itself too much rather than too little to the world in which it lies.  It has identified itself too intimately with capitalism, with the philosophy of individualism, and with the imperialism of the West.

H. Richard Niebuhr, Wilhelm Pauck, and Francis P. Miller, The Church Against the World (Chicago: Willett, Clark, 1935)

Yes, this was written by the same H. Richard Niebuhr who wrote Christ and Culture in 1951, which Craig Carter argues is nothing more than an argument for Christendom.  Of course, a lot happened between 1935 and 1951 which needs to be accounted for, but the shift is significant nonetheless.

Carter, in his book Rethinking Christ and Culture: A Post-Christendom Perspective (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), aruges that

The liberal Protestantism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries assumed that America could be brought into the kingdom, but the horrific events of World War I and II made it clear that the liberal humanistic optimism  was naïve.  In reaction against this error, Niebuhr lost hope of the kingdom coming on earth, and much of the passion he spent on refuting the Christ against culture position [from Christ and Culture] appears to have arisen from his arguing against a position that he had formerly held and to which many of his fellow liberal Protestants were still attracted. (65-66)

I find it interesting that Carter says that ‘Niebuhr lost hope,’ because it seems to me that is precisely the problem with Christian Realism: a lack of real hope.  They may say that they have hope, but I don’t think the ethical dimension of their hope has been realized.  One of the problems is the question of location: do we locate ourselves most fully in the “now” or do we locate ourselves eschatologically in the “not-yet.”  Everyone is going to argue for a tension, of course, but the question is one of how our actions are directed.  Can we justify our actions as good because they lead to a good end?   Or do we dissolve the distinction between the means and the ends, and recognize that the kingdom is a place where the means are the end.  In that sense the latter position is a position of hope precisely because it seeks faithfulness over effectiveness.

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Why is Theology So Complicated?

A good friend once asked me, “Why, if the basics of the Christian life are simple, pursue the study of ethics?”   Now, my friend had no illusions about the complexity of theology.  But we were wrestling through our own mutual desire for knowledge and he had a hard time justifying the study of philosophy, theology, critical theory, etc. for the sake of learning how to tell someone that Jesus told us to ‘love one another.’  Again, no illusions about how hard this command actually is, but I think I get why he was asking.

Paul Holmer’s paraphrase of Wittgenstein offers an answer with keen insight into what I think my friend was really getting at:

Why is theology so complicated?  It ought to be completely simple.  Theology unties those knots in our thinking which we have so unwisely put there; but its ways in untying must be as complicated as the knots are in tying…The complexity of theology is not in its subject matter but rather in our knotted understanding and personality. (“Wittgenstein and Theology”, in New Essays on Religious Language [New York: Oxford, 1969], 27.)

In this same essay, Holmer discusses a letter Wittgenstein wrote to a friend on the issue of his muddled understanding of philosophy:

‘I am working reasonably hard and wish I were a better man and had a better mind.  These two things are really one and the same – God help me!’

Holmer claims that Wittgenstein’s genius was in his conviction that “[philosophical] problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have always known.”  And thus, the untying of knots becomes the task of the philosopher, not speculative analysis about questionable foundations.  And so Holmer concludes,

Perhaps it is appropriate to say that ‘knots in understanding’ also pervade theology.  If so, this will make theology harder work rather than easier.  It will ask for more passion rather than less.  Such work will not make it a ‘game’ in an invidious sense, but it will demand great congruence between our thoughts and our form of life. (30)

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Christian Anarchy in Vancouver

On June 20th and 21st, the Vancouver Anarchist Bookfair will be held on Unceded Coast Salish Territory.  Seeing as Ellul is well known for being a Christian Anarchist, Michael suggested to me tonight that I attend the bookfair and set up a table representing Christian Anarchy.  It hadn’t occurred to me to do this but I think it’s a pretty good idea.  Not only would this cause some major confusion – I can only imagine what the fair organizers will think when they open my email titled ‘Christian Anarchy’ – but it would be a great witness to a lot of people who are most likely at least mildly anti-organized religion.

Vancouver anarchists are anti- a lot of things: “We reiterate our opposition to capitalism, imperialism, patriarchy, heterosexism, racism, colonialism, statism and all other forms of oppression…”  While I wouldn’t say I’m for any of those things (although I’m not totally sure what is meant by ‘heterosexism’), it would be interesting to see what exactly it is they are proposing we do about these problems.  While Christian Anarchy would surely be opposed to any and all forms of oppression in the world, there most likely is a major difference: a belief in a universal, transcendent Truth that allows us to rightly order our lives over and against all forms of false order and oppression.  This Truth is not simply called ‘god’, but rather Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and we see him most fully revealed in Jesus Christ.  This is what Christian Anarchists bring to the table.

I think the problem with anarchy in general is its postmodern-esque attitude.  From what I can tell, the anarchy movement is a praxis-focused program of deconstruction which is mainly concerned with the destruction of the currently dominant political, economic, and social structures in favor of “the autonomy of individuals [and] groups.”  I can’t buy into that vision because I reject the idea of the autonomous individual. Anarchy, with this vision, really is a vision of the perfect fusion of the radical left and the radical right more than a vision of an-archy.  As I have quoted before from the Front Porch Republic:

Contemporary American-style conservatism and liberalism are merely two faces of that intelligible beast, (Eighteenth Century) Classical Liberalism. Its vision says the substantive unit or entity in politics is strictly the individual, and the freedom of the individual is the primary good after which society and government seek. Since, therefore, the term “society” indicates nothing more than a numerical aggregate of the individuals in a given area, then the only purpose of government must be to defend the potentially infinite number of “private” interests of these loosely gathered individual freedom-maximizers…

Now, I might get some criticism here for misunderstanding the actual argument of the anarchists.  Perhaps they would tell me that they don’t want any government, and thus, the difference between anarchism and Classical Liberalism is precisely in anarchism’s rejection of any form of government which would assert its authority over the individual.  But how did you arrive at the position of ‘the individual’?  It seems to me that you can’t acknowledge the primacy of the individual without first establishing some sort of schema within which the idea of the individual actually makes sense.  And the only system in which this makes sense is Classical Liberalism.  Apart from this, it seems to me that all biological and sociological factors that determine what it means to be a human being also point to a rejection of autonomy: a human is one who is first given life by someone other than themselves, and one who is formed into a healthy functioning human being by someone other than themselves. The ‘autonomous individual’ has no place in this model, but it is the only model that actually describes how we live.  So the anarchist who desires autonomy for the individual has to rethink his understanding of the human person.  Perhaps it begins with a radically different understanding of freedom, one that doesn’t worship individual choice as the goal of human history.

But back to Christian Anarchy: what does it have to offer?  Since Halden has helpfully pointed out to us that some things tells us nothing about what it means to be a human being, we must find some point of reference from which to begin.  In its rejection of Classical Liberalism, Christian Anarchy has something else which allows it to base its understanding of the human being on: Jesus Christ and the Church.  First, Jesus Christ is the true human, so our understanding of the human person must begin there.  With this christological starting point, we can then proceed to the Church: the people of God, The authorized ‘group’ of people who are gathered by God to witness to his kingdom on earth.  This Church is more than a ‘group,’ however: it is not constituted by individual choice but by the election of God, and it is sustained not by human organization but through the Holy Spirit and the sacraments of baptism and eucharist.

And here we have the major difference between regular anarchy and Christian anarchy: Christian anarchy not only seeks to deconstruct currently dominant and oppressive political, economic, and social ideologies, but in their place it offers a vision of the human person in community that can resist these powers and offer life to a dying world, freedom to the oppressed, and water and bread to those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.  Not just anarcho-syndicalist communes but, to state it more clearly, the Christian Anarchist has the Church – rightly understood – to offer as an alternative polis, an alternative economy, and an alternative social structure to the dominant structures in our society.  It is this positive aspect of Christian Anarchy which separates it from its secular cousin, and will ultimately put it at odds with it.  For in this vision, there is one ‘archy’ who we must submit ourselves to, and that is Jesus Christ.  Christian Anarchy can only be a means, and never an end, for its order (or disorder) is always penultimate and never ultimate.

Below are Vernard Eller’s basic principles of Christian Anarchy (slightly edited).  This comes from his book Christian Anarchy: Jesus’ Primacy Over the Powers (which is available online – full text!). For clarity, Eller uses the term ‘arky’ to “identify any principle of governance claiming to be of primal value for society. “Government” (that which is determined to govern human action and events) is a good synonym–as long as we are clear, that political arkys are far from being the only “governments” around. Not at all; churches, schools, philosophies, social standards, peer pressures, fads and fashions, advertising, planning techniques, psychological and sociological theories–all are arkys out to govern us.”

1. For Christians, “anarchy” is never an end and goal in itself. The dying-off of arky (or our dying to arky) is of value only as a making of room for the Arky of God.
2. Christian anarchists have no opinion as to whether secular society would be better off with anarchy than it is with all its present hierarchies. We can say only as much as Blumhardt said: “There is no way anarchy could be much worse than the nailed-up-tight business we have now.”
3. Christian anarchists do not even argue that anarchy is a viable option for secular society. Ellul: “Political authority and organization are necessities of social life but nothing more than necessities. They are constantly tempted to take the place of God” (Anararchism, p.22).
4. The threat of the arkys is not so much their existence as it is our granting that existence reality and weight–our giving ourselves to them, attaching importance to them, putting faith in them, making idols of them. Revolutionists fall into this trap in their intention of using good arkys to oppose and displace the bad ones–thus granting much more power and being to the arkys (both evil power to the bad ones and righteous power to the good ones) than is the truth of the matter.
5. Christian anarchists do not hold that arkys, by nature, are “of the devil.” Such absolutist, damning talk is rather the mark of revolutionists concerned to make an enemy arky look as bad as possible in the process of making their own arky look good. No, for Christian anarchists the problem with arkys is, rather, that they are “of the human”–i.e., they are creaturely, weak, ineffectual, not very smart, while at the same time they are extravagantly pretentious. They pose as so much more important (or fearsome) than they actually are. There is no intent to deny that this “human fleshliness” does indeed provide entrée for the devil–but that is as much into good arkys as into bad ones. The only thing more devilish than a “bad” arky is a “holy” one.
6. Christian anarchists would not buy Ramm’s clever characterization that “all states are created equally wicked.” They would agree that all are equally human and none the least bit divine. An arky is an “arky” for all that. None is as good as it thinks it is or gives itself out to be, and there is no guarantee that even a good one will stay good.So, good arky or not, those anarchists retained a healthy biblical suspicion of arkys in general and en toto. There is no denying that, as he chooses, God can and does make positive use of the arkys–bad ones as well as good ones. It does not follow that we dare ever accept any as being select instruments of his goodness and grace.And it was none other than anarchist Ellul who once chided the Christian revolutionists for their inability to see any moral distinction between the arky of the U.S. government and those of Hitler and Stalin. Christian Anarchy does allow room for the relative moral distinctions between arky and arky–and real appreciation for the same.
7. It is no part of Christian Anarchy to want to attack, subvert, unseat, or try to bring down any of the world’s arkys. (It is here that Ramm’s “passive” makes sense, although it will not do so regarding points to follow.) To fight arkys, we have seen, is to form counterarkys, is to enter the contest of power (precisely that which Christian Anarchy rejects in principle), is to introduce arky in the very attempt to eliminate it. To undertake a fight against evil on its own terms (to pit power against power) is the first step in becoming like the evil one opposes.
8. Speaking of anarchy’s model, Ellul says: “Jesus does not represent a-politicism or spiritualism. His is a fundamental attack upon [‘refusal to conform to’] political authority…. He challenges every attempt to validate the political realm and rejects its authority because it does not conform to the will of God” (Anarchism, p.20). With this and what follows, Christian Anarchy can no longer be called “passive.”
9. Regarding Jeremiah’s command that the exiles are to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf” (Jer. 29:7), Ellul points out that such is not at all the same thing as approving and supporting the Babylonian arky. Just so, the radical-discipleship churches that have been most anarchist toward the state and the world may have the best track records regarding the loving of neighbors near and far and the serving of human need. Anarchism is no bar to social service. Whether the ends of political justice truly are served by our power-manipulation of the arkys is another question.
10. Christian anarchists occasionally are willing to work through and even use worldly arkys when they see a chance to accomplish some immediate human good thereby. This is an admittedly risky business; the regular pattern is to make a quick entrance and just as quick an exit.  Ellul again: “As a Christian one must participate in the world of action. But one must do so to reject it, to confront it with … refusal that alone can call into question, or even prevent, the unchecked growth of power” (Anarchism, p. 22).
11. Ellul’s critique of “Christian revolutionism” is perhaps best summed up as “a lack of realism.” And that, in turn, can be spelled out under four heads-namely, the revolutionary faith in (1) activism; (2) utopianism; (3) what we shall call “the trigger effect”; and (4) dramatization. Although, obviously, Ellul finds the Christian Left to be the opposite case, he believes that “Christians can be, among other things, more realistic and less ideological than others” (Season, p. 91).

    1. Activism. Ellul, certainly, is not opposed to Christians being on the political, social, or ecclesiastical scenes or whatever. He does reject the activist presupposition that people’s public, arky actions are the only true test of their Christian faith:

    “Because I have a realistic and active nature, meaning lay in action. But it is obvious that, for me, action itself does not embody meaning. Action more or less gives witness to meaning, expresses it to me or others. But the most basic meaning is beyond all action” (Season, p. 83).

    2. Utopianism. Ellul lays it out. “I have already said how much all utopians irritate me, both for their lack of realism and their authoritarianism” (Season, p. 219).And is not the revolutionary rhetoric of the Christian Left–whether in talking about “unilateral disarmament,” “a world without war,” “a truly just society,” “the disappearance of the distinction between males and females,” “an economic equality,” “a dean environment,” and whatever–invariably and essentially utopian? And, as Ellul would have it, does not this utopianism show a complete pragmatic political possibility and, likewise, an imperious decree in telling the world what order it should be getting itself into?
    3. “The Trigger Effect.” With this I have in mind the common arky assumption that, by bringing our power to bear and working a change at “the top,” we can trigger a revolution of the entire system. Ellul thinks differently:
       

       I have arrived at this maxim: “Think globally, act locally.” This represents the exact opposite of the present spontaneous [i.e., that which comes naturally to us] procedure…. We have the spontaneous tendency to demand centralized action, the state, through a decision center that sends down the decrees from above; but this can no longer have any success. The human facts are too complex and the bureaucracy will become heavier and heavier. (Season, pp. 199-200)

    4. Dramatization. The term is Ellul’s–or rather his interviewer’s–but it intends “playing up,” “exaggerating,” or perhaps what we will call “zealotism” or “absolutizing.”Because Christian Anarchy doesn’t always have to be trying for “results,” it can afford to be realistic and thus also more honest. And because it can be honest (speaking the truth in love), Christian Anarchy also can be less manipulatively authoritarian. It isn’t trying to make anybody do anything.
12. The nonconformity of Christian Anarchy–the refusal to recognize or accept the authority of the arkys of this world–is done in the name of human “freedom.” And this is not at all the same thing as “autonomy”–that being the secular name for freedom, not the Christian. No human arky can create or grant freedom; the idea of “government,” of “imposed arky,” is essentially contradictory to that of “freedom.” “Yet, just as truly, the simple elimination of arky creates, not freedom, but only “anarchy”–which is not the same thing. No, Ellul suggests that there is for us no once-for-all liberation, but that our freedom is to be found only in the act of wresting it from the powers. “It exists when we shake an edifice, produce a fissure, a gap in the structure” (Anarchism p.23).

Thoughts?

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