Evangelische Politics: Tweaking the Two Kingdoms Theology for Apostolic Ops after Christendom -

For Wang Yi

Introduction

The two-kingdoms doctrine we inherit from our fathers is basically sound. But it needs a little re-tooling in light of Scripture and with an eye to our missionary situation. Whether you call our time the “new dark age” (Alasdair MacIntyre), the post-Christian/neo-pagan West (Lesslie Newbigin), the “secular age” (Charles Taylor) or the “negative world” (Aaron Renn), we aren’t in Kansas anymore. That is, we aren’t in sixteenth century Europe or 1776 or the 1950s or even 1963 anymore. Lament if you like, nurse your nostalgia if you must, but the sooner you adjust the better. We have apostolic work to do.

In “Lord of the Rings,” Frodo lamented, “I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.” Gandalf added, “So do all who live to see such times; but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”

The time that has been given to us is a time increasingly inhospitable to the gospel of Jesus Christ and to the kingdom of priests redeemed by his blood (Rev 1.5-6). Like US Marines, we must learn to improvise and adapt in order to overcome. Like Tolkien’s hobbits, we must be—or become—small enough to defeat the powers of darkness. It is no easy thing for an American Christian to become small. Neither is it easy for Lutheran Christians to embrace the strange politics of the gospel. But what is impossible for man is possible with God. To execute the mission entrusted to us, one small but integral part of what we Frodos (and Sams!) need to do is re-examine what the Scriptures say about how the realms of this world relate to the dominion of the dark lord, on the one hand, and on the other to the Kingdom of God’s beloved Son, “in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Col 1.13-14). Stop right there: did you just say, “politics of the gospel”?

Getting Our Bearings: the Kingdom-politics of Jesus

Religion and politics: the two topics you aren’t supposed to bring up in polite society, and the only things Jesus ever really talked about. Rightly defined, that is. For nowadays “religion” means something your self does in private and “politics” refers to that public space where facts, money, and power are in charge and God or the gods are cordoned off by Jefferson’s wall. But Jesus of Nazareth came preaching the good news of the Kingdom of God (Mark 1.14-15).

If that evangelical fact doesn’t strike you as obviously political, it goes to show how deeply the fact/value distinction at the heart of the modern West has shaped and stunted your theopolitical imagination. Jesus: Joshua, the warrior, the conqueror. Nazareth: Podunk, Scots-Irish Appalachian, underclass. Preaching: always a threat to a Jehoiakim, a Caesar, a Xi. Evangelium: that ’s what the imperial heralds declare after the victory of the Caesar in battle, the gospel of salvation (soteria), the triumph of the son of god (dei filius) that defends and advances the pax romana. Though rumor has it the Jews use a similar constellation of phrases in an ancient prophecy. Speaking of Isaiah, the Kingdom of God: to a Jew beaten down by Roman jacksandals (as it were), to even hint of the Kingdom of God is to verge toward revolution and possibly get yourself in real trouble. For the basileia tou theou is not an otherworldly (and in that sense “spiritual”) Platonic paradise but the restoration of the twelve tribes of Israel accomplished in and by the return of the King to Zion.

Do you think the Romans took the trouble of executing Jesus because they weren’t into his spirituality?

And yet: “Perceiving that they were about to take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself ” (John 6.15). Hm. Not very carpe diem, that. Maybe he got cold feet? It gets worse. At the center of this peasantrabbi’s teaching about the Kingdom of God is not war, but peace; not vengeance upon our adversaries, but a clear command to forgive them; not a battle-cry to rally the sword, but an insane summons to follow him to the … (pardon my French), ahem, “cross.” In fact, from his first synagogue-sermon (Luke 4.16-21) on, every carefully-crafted word, every symbolically-charged deed (the man is master of optics, we’ll give him that) implies that the eschatological shalom the prophets spoke about is breaking into the world right here, right now, in—him!

Now, we have to admit, he has worked great marvels: demons cry out in fear, the sick and the broken are healed and restored, the dead are raised to life, he treats the masses of worthy poor with dignity. But why the focus on demons, when the legions are the real issue? And why does he insist on putting these trucker-types in leadership positions? Of course, we all know what Nicodemus has been Nicodemus up to after dark; and there are rumors about Simon and Joseph of Arimathea: but why does Jesus think he has to make such a show about forgiving prostitutes, tax-men, and other public sinners? Why are the rabble in, the righteous out? Holy priests and orthodox scribes are cast down in humiliating judgment, while evil men and cheap hookers are welcomed into the ragtag company gathering around this “messianic” son of Man (as he insists on calling himself: is he just echoing Ezekiel’s humble usage, or is he referring to Daniel 7, or Psalm 80 or 8, or even [“ The Son of The Man”] Genesis 3.15? The nerve!). Wait—I didn’t quite follow the drift of that last story of his, but … did he just imply that we are the problem in Israel?

Nicodemus

Jesus looked directly at them and said: “What then is this that is written: ‘ The Stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone? [Psalm 118.22]’ Everyone who falls on that Stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone it will crush him.” The scribes and the chief priests sought to lay hands on him at that very hour, for they perceived that he had told this parable against them. (Luke 20.17-19)

Do you think the Jerusalem elite conspired against Jesus because he preached a “purely spiritual” gospel of a heavenly kingdom into which gnesio/confessional-sinners are admitted by straightlaced faith alone?

The chief priests and the Pharisees gathered the council and said: “What are we to do! For this man performs many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation.” But one of them,

Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them:

“You know nothing at all, nor do you understand that it is better for you that one man should die for the people, not that the whole nation should perish” (John 11.47-50).

You know the rest of the story. Jesus, who had ridden into Jerusalem to the acclaim of the people just days before, stumbled out of Jerusalem with a Roman cross on his lash-torn back. Caiaphas had asked pointblank: “Are you the Messiah?” “I AM,” Jesus replied, “and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming with the clouds of heaven” (Mark 14.61-2). Pilate had asked: “Are you the King of the Jews?” “My Kingdom is not from this world,” Jesus replied. Pilate, ever practical, pressed: “So—you are a king?” “You say that I am king. For this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I came into the world: to bear witness to the truth.” [Nietzschean chuckle.] Pilate replied, with Rortyan irony: “What is truth?” (John 18.33-38). Given the option, the crowds chose a violent revolutionary and sent Jesus as a messianic pretender to his bloody death. He was executed in style, the way Romans did to make sure you knew just who was in charge around here. The titulus, unambiguously spelled out in Aramaic, Latin, and Greek for all to see, inscribed by personal order of Pilate and nailed just above Jesus’ thorn-crowned sacred head now wounded, read: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” (John 19.19-22).

The gospel of the Kingdom is dangerous business, it would seem: “and this gospel of the Kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” (Matthew 24.14).

Pilate

To flesh out what this means, we now turn our attention from the deeds and sufferings of the King to the ruminations of his prime theological minister, the apostle Paul.

Romans: A Messianic Manifesto on YHVH’s Plan to Conquer the World through the Gospel of his Son

Paul bookends the argument of his great letter on the righteousness of faith with Davidic/kingdom themes: Paul, a slave of Messiah Jesus, called to be an envoy, set apart for the good news of God (which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy writings) concerning his Son. He is from the seed of David according to the flesh but was appointed Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by virtue of resurrection from the dead: Jesus Messiah our Lord.

Through him, we have received grace and an envoy-ship with the goal of securing the obedience of faith among all nations for the sake of his name. That includes you, the called of Jesus Messiah. To all of you in Rome, the beloved of God, called saints: grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Messiah (Romans 1.1-8, my translation, as are all in this work).

Messiah became servant of the circumcision for the sake of God’s truth, to confirm the promises given to the fathers, and so that the nations would glorify God for his mercy. As it is written: … “Sing, all nations, to the Lord, and let all the peoples praise him” [Ps 117.1]. And again Isaiah says: “ There will come the Root of Jesse, even the One who arises to rule the nations: in him the nations will hope” [Isaiah 11.10 LXX] (Romans 15.8-12).

I’ve translated christos as “Messiah,” apostolos as “envoy,” and apostolē as “envoy-ship,” to draw out the political resonances that are there in the Greek but lost in English translation, like the blurred face on a worn-down coin; otherwise, this is a straightforward rendering of the text.

Tom Wright does a nice job highlighting the counter-imperial political theology packed into nearly every word in Romans 1.1ff: “Messiah,” “gospel,” “Son” (think both: Caesar-cult, and Psalm 2.7), “David,” “Lord” (kyrios: in one fell swoop, Jesus is YHVH, and Caesar isn’t lord), “peace.”1 Add to this Paul’s statement of his theme: the “power ” of God for “salvation” through the gospel of “righteousness” (Romans 1.16-17): dynamis/virtus, Paul soteria/salvatio, and iustitia all being of great interest to the Romans, of course. Everything Rome promises you, falsely, you actually have in Jesus Christ through my gospel, Paul says; so don’t you mind overmuch being a persecuted little band of believers in the shadow of the imperial seat. Rome will perish like every other empire of dust, but you are an outpost of the eternal Kingdom of the beloved Son, brought into being out of nothing by the power of his gospel.

And—to come round to Rom 15—this is no new

Paul

development on YHVH’s part; it ’s been his plan all along. By sending his Son in David’s flesh and pouring out the gift of his Spirit, God has kept the promises he spoke to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The curse of Adam is broken. Sin is atoned for. Death is undone. In short: “the blessing of Abraham” has come to the nations through faith (cf. Gal 3.10-14). The longed-for Root of Jesse has arisen at last: arisen from the lopped-off stump of David’s ruined house, arisen amongst the twelve tribes reconstituted in his 12 apostles, risen from the dead on the third day, exalted on the fortieth to rule the universe as Son of Man, King of kings, and Lord over all. It is too light a thing that YHVH’s Servant should raise up the tribes of Jacob and bring back the preserved of Israel. The time has come to go global.

It shall come to pass in the latter days that the Mountain of the Temple of YHVH shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it … For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of YHVH from Jerusalem (Isaiah 2.2-3).

And Jesus said to them: “ Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem” (Luke 24.46-7).

That ’s what we’re up to, says Paul. Now that Messiah has come in our flesh, atoned for sin, conquered Death, ascended the cosmic throne, and poured out the promise of the Spirit on his people, the old world that Adam-king built is being turned upside down.

They dragged Jason and some of the brothers before the city authorities, shouting: “ These men who have turned the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has received them, and they are all acting against the decrees of Caesar, saying that there is another king—Jesus.” And the people and the city authorities were disturbed when they heard these things (Acts 17.6-8).

This is the history of Acts in a nutshell: the Last Adam pours out his Spirit to send his kingdom-people (“church”) into all nations to announce the good news of his victory over evil, darkness, and Death; to rebuke the nations for their wickedness, and summon them to turn away from idols to the true and living God; to offer amnesty as a gift of his grace to everyone who believes the gospel of the King; and to bring about the obedience of faith among all nations for the glory of his Name, by baptizing them and bringing them into the communion of his universal Church.

In Romans 1-11, Paul exegetes the Scriptures to articulate and urge this great gospel, to explain the apostolic mission to subdue the nations under Messiah’s gracious rule, and to show the Church something of her own splendor and glory in him as one holy, apostolic, and catholic whole.

First, he takes the law in hand, so that the nations may repent in advance of the coming day of YHVH’s regal/judicial wrath (Romans 1.18-3.20).

Then Paul pivots from law to gospel and proclaims the atoning death of Messiah and the abounding grace and righteousness that flow to sinners from it (Romans 3.21-5.21). Mark very well: because of this grace, the King ’s anointed languish under the overlordship of Sin and Death no longer; now, the saints “reign in life as kings (en zoe basileusousin) through the one Man, Jesus Messiah” (Romans 5.17).2

Next, Paul describes the new life of the redeemed: life as little kings and queens in the real Narnia. We receive this new life once for all in baptism and live into it once and again by battling against world, flesh, and devil, by destroying strongholds, and by liberating captives through the gospel. Thanks be to God, the outcome of our strife is not in doubt come fire, water, demons, or sword: like DJ Khaled, all we do is win, win, win / no matter what. For we are more than conquerors through our Christ, and nothing can separate us from the omnipotent love of the Cross (Rom 6-8).

Finally, the still deeply Jewish apostle to the nations wrestles with the mystery of a remnant-church destined to incorporate all peoples into herself as the Israel of God, viz., “the children of the promise,” chosen by grace, ransomed by blood, and raised up into the eschatological life of the messianic Kingdom (Rom 8.28ff, 9-11).

Only now, having noted the theopolitical “bookends” of the body of the letter and surveyed the great argument in Romans 1-11, are we in position to hear Romans 13 well. Otherwise, if you skip straight to it in a rush to understand the apostle’s “view of the state” or “theology of the two kingdoms” or “approach to relating religion and politics,” you miss the obvious fact that Paul’s political theology got going at Romans 1.1 and doesn’t stop till he makes sure to mention the mission to save/conquer the nations one last time at Romans 16.25-7. (Note in particular “the obedience of faith” among the nations at both 1.5 and 16.26). The entire letter is, in fact, a magisterial exposition of the messianic gospel of the Son of David, the Son of God, who died for us, conquered Death, and now reigns as King over Rome, Russia, America, China, and every other petty fiefdom there ever was, is now or ever shall be: and who now, through his servants sent out on apostolic ops, summons the nations into the obedience of his Empire. That is to say, into freedom.

There is, of course, a hinge at Romans 12.1. For in Romans 12-14, Paul moves from his sweeping vision of God’s mercy in his Son and of new life in their Spirit to the nitty-gritty details of how to actually live in the future that began when Messiah rose from the dead but will not be consummated “till the time for restoring all things” (Acts 3.21). In this strange timebetween-the-times, this overlap of the ages, when the powers of the old age still seem very much in charge despite the evangelical fact of their defeat by Messiah’s Cross (Colossians 2.15, Hebrews 2.5-16) and the dawn of the new age on the morning of the eighth day: how does a church of believingJews-plus-believing-goyim share a common life in Christ? How do we participate together in that kingdom which “is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit ” (Romans 14.17)? How do we live the life of the age to come here and now, when much of the world rejects the claims of the King, when the dragon rages against the woman’s offspring (Revelation 12.17), and when my own old self threatens to drag me back into the death and hell of adamic pride that grace has saved me from?

Well, it ’s not easy, says Paul, but it ’s beautiful—the most beautiful thing you will experience on earth —for our life together as Messiah’s body is a participation in the sacrificial love of the King. By the power of his Spirit, and with one another ’s help, we begin to keep The Ten (Exodus 20) as the Lord summarized them in The Two (Matthew 22.37-40) and exposited at length in his Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). Be humble. Use your gifts to serve the Sermon the Mount common good of Messiah’s people, for your gifts are not yours but his, and theirs. Rejoice in hope. Be patient as you suffer. Be constant in prayer. Care for the poor. Show hospitality. Love everyone, including your persecutors. Beloved, never avenge yourselves. Don’t let evil defeat you. Instead, conquer evil by the goodness you received from God in Christ (Romans 12).

Oh, and by the way—see to it that you pay your taxes, obey mayors, governors, kings, work for the common good of the city you sojourn in as you wait for the King to come back. That kind of thing (Romans 13).

Sermon on the Mount

You see, the Kuyperians aren’t all wrong. The God of Israel, to whom you belong through the gospel of his Son, is Creator, Ruler, and Judge of the universe, theos pantokrator. He himself, not I don’t-know-what gnostic demiurge, institutes “secular ” (viz., pertaining to this saeculum, this age) rulers and arms them with the avenging sword of his justice, to maintain a measure of moral and political order in the old age that keeps puttering along until the Risen One returns to put all to rights. Otherwise, how would his holy people be able to go about preaching repentance to the nations in order to welcome them into the peace of his Kingdom through forgiveness of sins? Now, we can and will do without good roads, working aqueducts, internal justice, and international peace if we have to. Just ask my son Patrick in the wilds of Ireland, or the heroic dissidents in Eastern Europe, or that lion of a man Wang Yi in his Chinese prison cell. But temporal peace and a working economy are good gifts from our Creator God, and they sure do help. True as it is that Jesus—not Caesar, not Tsar, not Bezos/Biden—is kyrios and ruler of kings on earth (Revelation 1.5), the Church of God is no assembly of anarchists. Me genoito.

Wang Yi

But now, back to the things that matter ultimately, the things that endure: “Owe no one anything, except to love each other …” (Romans 13.8).

Taken together, the kingdom-politics of Jesus and the apostolic theology of Paul provide the necessary building blocks for a Lutheran political theology after Christendom. Or, cylinders we need to revamp our sturdy old Lycoming.

The Lutheran “Zweireichelehre”: sic et non

In the churches of the Augsburg Confession, we speak of the Zweireichelehre: the doctrine of the two kingdoms. Or, the two governments (Zweiregimente). We also speak of the doctrine of “earthly/worldly” authority (von weltlicher Obrigkeit, a 1523 book by Martin Luther) as opposed to the “spiritual” authority vested in the office of Word and sacrament. And, perhaps a third of the Lectures on Genesis, the magnum opus of Luther ’s last decade, would vanish if you cut out everything the old doctor had to say about life in “the three estates,” the distinct but mutually-serving spheres of home/economic, ecclesial, and political existence in human society: viz., the Dreiständelehre, affirmed in the Augsburg Confession (CA XVI). These are useful, complementary ways of providing conceptual definition for the same set of complexly interwoven realities. The Kingdom of God (Reiche Gottes), really though not-yet-fully present in the evangelical Church through Messiah’s invasion of this world in Word and sacrament, is one thing; Rome, Saxony, and the California Republic (Reiche Gavins), quite another.

Yet the ransomed of Jesus who are the church of his gospel are also, simul, Romans, Saxons, and Californians. The saints too, not just hoi polloi, are begotten, birthed, breastfed, loved, reared, educated, and otherwise humanized in the home; fed, clothed, and sheltered by the many hands that make light the work of an economy, to which they are also called to contribute one way or another in their vocations; defended, governed, punished, or vindicated by political authorities, who —in modern democracies—are also responsible to the citizens they defend and rule. They do not spend all their time in church, nor does God want them to. The earth is YHVH’s, and the fulness thereof.

The “cultural mandate” of Gen 1.28 still stands after the rebellion of Adam-king and his Eve: husband and wife, father and mother, farmer, guardian, and teacher they very much remained after the disaster of Genesis 3 by the providential goodness or “common grace” of God. And in the time of the gospel, the people washed in Messiah’s blood and renewed by his Spirit continue to serve their Father as “culture-makers.” For grace does not destroy nature, but redeems and completes it.

Not only so, but the “political mandate” of the sword, given to curb the insane violence of mankind Augsburg Confession that provoked the judgment of the flood (Gen 9.5-7), is still in place after the advent of the Christ and his kingdom in the gospel (Rom 13). And, in order to serve their Maker and love their neighbors well, first-rate Christians participate—to the extent that justice requires and allows: a major caveat—in the political affairs of this-worldly life. Hence Article XVI of the Augsburg Confession, to which the papal party had no objections:

Concerning public order and secular government (Von Policey und weltlichem regiment) it is taught that all authority in the world (Oberkeit inn der welt) and ordered government (geordente regiment) and laws, good order (ordenung), are created and instituted by God, and that Christians may be in authority, princes, and the judicial office (Oberkeit, Fürsten und Richterampt) without sin; pass sentences and administer justice according to imperial and other existing laws; punish evildoers with the sword; wage just wars; serve as soldiers; buy and sell; take required oaths; possess property; be married; etc.

In slightly less Lutheran, more Augustinian terms: citizens of the city of God, baptized into Messiah and incorporated into his universal nation of Israel-plus-the-nations, are also, in the time of our pilgrimage, citizens of the cities of man. Our real and best home is in that sphere named ecclesia, because our citizenship is in the messianic “republic” (Phil 3.20: politeuma) already liberating and reclaiming territory in this world through the people of the gospel as through an advanced force, ahead of the glorious day when the New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven from God (Rev 21.2). But our ultimate allegiance to Jerusalem does not make us indifferent to the temporal concerns of the earthly cities into which the King himself sends us as ambassadors to herald his gospel and as soldiers to advance his kingdom.

Jeremiah 29.7: Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to YHVH on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.

Augustine, City of God 19.7: Even the heavenly city in her pilgrimage here on earth makes use of earthly peace and defends and seeks compromise between human wills in respect of provisions relevant to the mortal nature of man— so far as may be permitted without detriment to true religion and piety.

For Augustinian/Lutheran Christians, the penultimate spheres named oeconomia and politeia matter too, not just the ultimate sphere of the gospel and the pilgrim-people created by its power. For it is in the here-and-now of this old mundane world that we are called to love our neighbors as ourselves, proclaim the gospel of the King of love, and so show them something of the new heavenly world that is to come.

This is tricky stuff. Somehow, by way of a Scripturesoaked, gospel-bold, Spirit-led, tradition-informed, churchdiscerned wisdom, it has to get sorted out. Above all in the warp and woof of a rich human life lived for the glory of God and the advance of the gospel of his Son, but also in the theoretical account we give of the rightly-nuanced, thisworldly, eschatological life. That ’s what the two-kingdoms doctrine is for.3

There are alternatives. The Amish/Hauerwasian option, which is also the original Benedict option, is simple: flee the world to keep yourself pure. Too simple, however, for it forgets that men and women are men and women, not angels, and at some level (and to varying degrees) denies our catholic faith in the Wordmade-flesh.

On the other end of the spectrum, the revanchist-nationalist option is too simple too, and if anything worse than monastic flight from the world. For the world is after all just the world, and the nations are like a drop from a bucket and dust on the scales (Isa 40.15). When the church forgets this and reverts to that pagan sacralization of strongman and nation that seems to be the default setting of the fallen heart, the saints are exposed to the influences of demons and the way is paved for antichrist himself. Blut und Boden must never, ever be our battle cry: only, “Maranatha: Come, Lord Jesus!” One must never forget that “the other 13” in a good NT theology of the political is Revelation 13: the unmasking of dragon, beast, and false prophet is central to the apocalypse of spiritual/political reality given to St John on Patmos.4

Two-kingdoms thinking is meant to keep us flesh-and-blood saints grounded in this good if fallen world, while simultaneously making us mindful of the fact that the kingdom of this world has yet to become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ: and he shall reign forever and ever, Amen (Revelation 11.15; Handel). Spe salvi, nondum in re.

All well and good, as far as I can tell. But we get into trouble when we lose sight of Paul’s eschatological proportion.

Too often, the way we talk about the doctrine of the two kingdoms implies a symmetry of importance, permanence, and indeed reality between the one and the other: a symmetry that our idolatrous hearts find quite to our liking, and quickly turn into Babylonian captivities of one kind or another. For we are children of the man who was made to be priest-king of all creation, but who traded his temple and throne for the chance to become god in a dragon-like way: grasping power, wielding it to make a name and empire for himself (Genesis 11), crushing anyone who dares get in his way, and—in the ultimate inversion/perversion of the gift of being in the image of God—rationalizing the entire imperial enterprise by sacralizing it. In the inextirpably pagan recesses of our hearts, we aren’t really satisfied with political leaders who are people just like us.5 We want a king who is also a priest. We want a nation more than almost-chosen. We want a war we can tell ourselves is holy. In the end, left to our own culture-making adamic devices, our culture-making always devolves into cult, our politics into idolatry.

Alas, it is all too easy for a Eusebius of Caesarea, a Reichsbischof Müller, a Michael Curry, or a Patriarch Kirill to celebrate a “symphonia” (as the Orthodox label their political-theological heresy)6 between Christ and culture, a demonic dance intertwining presiding bishop or patriarch with president or premier. Alas, the collapse of the distinction between the Two, and the consequent absorption of the catholic church of the gospel by culture/world/empire, is an all-too-common story: a collapse and an absorption fueled, more often than not, by the cowardly capitulation of bishop-qua-chaplain to whoever happens to hold the purse strings and the power at a given moment. The Cross is draped with the flag, at the expense of the Cross. The sword of the Word is sheathed, to justify the unleashing of one Orthodox nation’s military on another Orthodox nation’s people. Worse: the Word is perverted by pastor or patriarch to valorize violence in the holy name of our tortured king.

When in reality, the asymmetrical relationship of the two kingdoms works quite the other way round. St Paul does not so much as deign to use the words “Caesar ” or “king ” when he discusses the subject in his letter to the church in—Rome. Little, eternally insignificant men like Julius Caesar or Vladimir Putin have their place as “governing authorities.” They are servants of God, “liturgists” of divine justice and political order, and they do not bear the sword in vain (Rom 13.1-6). But the least in the Kingdom of God, the most obscure saint in the holy nation of priest-kings in Messiah Jesus, is greater than they are. And behold: the day is coming, perhaps sooner than we think, when “the kings of the earth, who committed sexual immorality and lived in luxury with the whore Babylon, will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning ” (Rev 18.9). (Do you hear that, Mr Xi? Do you hear that, American businessmen who close your eyes to line your pockets? Repent, before it is too late.)

But as for the martyrs and saints who are the Bride of the Lamb: the King who laid down his life for us in battle will seat us with great fanfare at his table. We will see his face, his lovely, thorn-scarred face, and he will wipe away every tear from our eyes. Every tear shed by Pastor Yi in his isolation cell. Every tear from the eye of every martyr ’s mother, from the first Eve to the second (Luke 2.35, John 19.25-27) and to the end of the age. And Messiah will embrace us in his arms and in the love of his Father and ours, and the Spirit will fill us to overflowing with life and fulness and peace, and we shall reign in the kingdom of light forever, and our joy will know no end (Rev 19-21).

To re-tool the two-kingdoms doctrine for our missional moment, we need to recover this apocalyptic urgency, this eschatological proportion, freedom, and joy. The quickest path forward is, I think, the path back through the Reformation to St. Augustine and the pastor who led him to Christ: Ambrose of Milan.

The Proposed “ Tweak”

In The Desire of the Nations, 7 Oliver O’Donovan maps the now happy, now tragic fate of “the doctrine of the Two” (as he styles it) through the centuries. The pre-Nicene church evinces an “extraordinary Oliver O’Donovan missionary triumphalism … conquering society with the word of truth and the blood of the martyrs.” The goal of the earliest Christians vis-à-vis the Greco-Roman world was twofold: to transform society by the law of Christ, the law of love, and to put earthly rulers in their proper place as conquered subjects of the risen Jesus (p. 193). By the fourth century, they had met with imperfect but real success. Ambrose and Augustine in particular, though modifying it in light of the new situation, kept up the original vision: that is why the former excommunicated (and subsequently absolved) emperor Theodosius, and why the latter wrote his great work on the city of God vis-à-vis the earthly city of man.

Oliver O'Donovan

At this early stage, the doctrine of the Two is still very much the biblical/eschatological doctrine of the two Adams, the two ages, and the two cities. The “vis-à-vis” of the triumphal missionary (don’t forget, that ’s just the Latin form of “apostolic”) church is still operative. Though martyrdom is no longer to be expected as a matter of course, the Word of God as law remains a prophetic Word that attacks the folly, idolatry, and injustice of the worldly-wise; and the Word of God as gospel remains a saving Word that delivers lost and condemned men by ripping them out of Adam and implanting them into Christ. And the bishop who preaches accordingly may well find himself holed up in his basilica singing hymns with holy women and praying the angels restrain the Arian emperor ’s forces from slaughtering them.

Just so, that little Psalter-singing flock (Augustine’s mother Monica among them) cannot possibly be confused with the Arian soldiers outside the walls. They are two quite distinct groups of people, two societies, two cities: the one, an altera civitas inside the earthly city; the other, an empire of dust doomed to crumble beneath the nail-pierced feet of the Serpent-Crusher, Jesus, who is The Right Side of History and who will, as such, come again to judge the quick and the dead. This, says O’Donovan, is the original and fundamental form of the genuinely Christian doctrine of Christendom:

In its primary form, the Christendom idea supposes the vis-à-vis of church and secular government, as distinct structures belonging to distinct societies and, indeed, distinct eras of salvation-history. Until the end of the patristic period this vis-à-vis is constantly in evidence, and the meaning of the Christian empire as a capitulation to the throne of Christ is not forgotten (p. 196).

But as the Roman empire continued to capitulate to Christ in succeeding centuries, the Ambrosian approach (courage) and the Augustinian vision (two-cities eschatology) fell prey to its own success. The missionary vis-à-vis was lost sight of. Instead of two cities, there was now one holy Roman empire ruled by two “swords”—two departments of state, if you will: “With the replacement of the empire in the West by the Germanic kingdoms, a new perspective emerges, that of a single, homogeneous society with twin foci of authority. The missionary context falls away, and we are left with a Christian society led by kings and bishops” (p. 196). In high Christendom, there is but one social res, not two; one spiritual-political respublica. Augustine had said: “Two loves made two cities.” Now, Gelasius (d. 496) begins to teach: “ Two there are by whom this world is ruled as princes”; and in the Carolingian age, when “world” was sometimes replaced by “church” in the reiteration of Pope Gelasius’ novel doctrine, the gloss was by no means self-conscious (p. 203). In its political- Gelasius ecclesiastical unity, Europe is the church, the corpus Christianum.

In the Reformation era, both Evangelical and Reformed theologians adopted the inherited Gelasian doctrine: though with important variations. German Lutherans repristinated it, disavowing the Pope’s authority, exalting the office of the Word, strengthening the cause of the princes, and thus attempting to restore the equilibrium between the two “swords.” So, e.g., CA XXVIII: “some have improperly mixed the power of bishops with the secular sword,” and the two must again be distinguished in their office, nature, ends, and means. The power of the keys/of bishops is a divine power to preach the gospel, forgive or retain sin, and administer sacraments. “For the Gospel brings us not a bodily kingdom (leiplich reich) but eternal goods, the Holy Spirit, eternal righteousness and eternal life.” Secular power, on the other hand, deals with matters altogether different from the gospel. “ The gospel protects the soul; worldly power (weltlich gewalt), the body.” And it uses coercion and violence to do so, which is a big reason why one mustn’t mix the two up. “One must know how to rightly distinguish geistlich und weltlich gewalt.” Even so, the one and the other come together in the Lutheran body-politic in a kind of psychosomatic social harmony.

Pope Gelasius

Other reformers/princes experimented with other recalibrations of the Gelasian synthesis. Swiss Calvinists reworked the Gregorian triumph of Pope over Emperor into the Genevan dream of consistorial supremacy in the city-state: a pipedream, it turned out, that Calvin himself never quite pulled off. The English Reformed, with a few noble exceptions, succumbed to a western caesaropapism and proceeded to develop a tradition of sycophantic Erastianism that continues right up to the present day, mutatis mutandis. (Fearless John Knox, despite his formal adoption of the doctrine of the Two in its Calvinist-Gelasian form, is really in a class of his own: what with his 18 months as a galley-slave, his trumpet-blasts against the monstrous regiment of women, his defiant preaching of the Word of God in the face of mortal danger and, generally, his huge to-hell-with-your-threats heart. He and Luther make an extraordinary pair of sixteenth-century Ambroses.)

But these are merely variations on the old Gelasian theme. For good and for ill—and it was a mix of both—the Reformers inherited the theopolitical synthesis of medieval Christendom. So much so that they couldn’t imagine what it might look like to live, preach, worship, evangelize, serve, suffer, and die as an altera civitas ontologically distinct and (often) sociologically alienated from the cultural, religious, political, and economic mainstream of the earthy city. The seeming exception, namely the persecuted evangelical churches of France, proves the rule: if the king did not favor your confession, you made like Jean Cauvin and fled for Geneva to live the Christendom life—the only imaginable life—in civil/ecclesial peace. The only other option available, the Anabaptist option, bore its own tragic witness to the Kingdom of God as distinct from the realms of this world, alas; but for what I believe are biblical and catholic theological reasons, this option was not viable for our ancestors in the evangelical Church.

The apostolic option—narratively rendered above in the sketch of Messiah Jesus’ strange revolution and brutal political execution, theologically outlined in our brief survey of Romans, and powerfully exemplified in the early church of deathdefying martyrs, take-no-prisoners apologists and brave bishops with their bold “missionary vis-à-vis”—wasn’t yet on the table.

A quarter of the way into the 21st century, evangelical catholics in the barbarian ruins of the post-Christian West find ourselves in a very different situation than that of our early modern forebearers.8 Are we not wise to seize the opportunity that lies before us, not only theologically (though a reformation of genuine theology is of capital importance) but also in terms of our life together as the kingdom-people of Messiah and of our mission to save the nations from eternal destruction? The catholic Church has been misled by Pope Gelasius’ error long enough, however understandable that error may have been in his cultural moment and however venerable our Zweireichelehre may seem to us. The time is ripe for an Augustinian adjustment of the two-kingdoms doctrine. Or if you like, an Ambrosian restoration of the paleo-Augustinian theology of the two cities.

Enter Bonhoeffer, stage Kirchenkampf—and a Few Forgotten Truths from the Confessions

“The Body of Jesus Christ takes up space on earth.”9 So Dietrich Bonhoeffer began the chapter on “the visible Community” (die sichtbare Gemeinde) in his 1937 book Discipleship. We tend to read it as a spiritual classic, which of course it is, but in our piety we tend to miss how politically-charged the argument is. Not just church-politically, though there is no lack of polemic against the Nazified Deutschen Christen as well as against the moderate wing of the Confessing Church that Dietrich Bonhoeffer Bonhoeffer and his closest friends (the “Dahlemites”) despised. Running a secret seminary while trying to hide it from the Gestapo, Bonhoeffer went after the Nazis themselves: not directly, but subversively, like the remarkable slave-pastors in the antebellum South who preached the Exodus story right under their masters’ noses. The community needs space on earth, he insisted: Lebensraum. “ The community claims space on earth not only for her liturgy and her order, but also for the daily life of her members. That is why we must now speak of the Lebensraum of the visible community ” (p. 248). The italics are original; Bonhoeffer didn’t want anyone mistaking the fact that the evangelical ecclesiology he’s articulating in the fourth part of Discipleship posed a direct challenge to the globe-gobbling intentions of the Third Reich. The Nazis say they need “living space” for their Aryan master-race, do they? So does the community of Jesus Christ, Messiah of Israel and Lord over all nations. And if push comes to shove, well … let ’s just say not all the German Lutherans were two-kingdom pushovers like Althaus and Elert. “Spiritual” though the gospel may well be, if it is in fact the gospel of Jesus Christ the incarnate Word it must take up space on earth in the form of the people it generates by its saving power. Earthly rulers who feel threatened by that are hereby put on notice: Achtung, Hitler (cf. Ps 2.10-12). Here we have another Knox, another Ambrose.

Bonhoeffer

The argument turns on the visibility (Sichtbarkeit) of the messianic community. And for Bonhoeffer, as for the catholic tradition in which he stands, the visibility of the Church is a necessary consequence of the Incarnation of her Lord.

The Body of Jesus Christ takes up Raum on earth. With the Incarnation (Meschwerdung) Christ demands Raum among men. He came into his own possession. But they gave him a barn at his birth, “since they had no Raum in the inn.” They thrust him out at his death, so that his body hung on the gallows between earth and heaven. However, the Incarnation (Fleischwerdung) includes a claim to its own Raum on earth. What takes up Raum, is visible. So, the body of Jesus Christ can only be a visible body, or it is no body at all … A truth, a doctrine, a religion needs no Raum of its own. It is bodiless. It is heard, learnt, conceptually-grasped, but that ’s it. But the incarnate (meschgewordene) Son of God needs not only ears or even hearts, but real living men (leibhaftige Menschen) who will follow him (p. 241).

But, granted the power of Bonhoeffer ’s brave anti-Nazi polemic, doesn’t this emphasis on the visibility and physicality of the Church reflect a departure from orthodox Lutheran theology? Is not the invisibility of the Church as the community of elect believers in Christ the genius of Augustinian Protestantism? And does this not constitute a fundamental Grunddifferenz distinguishing the evangelical Church of the Word from the institutional-sacramental Church of Rome?

To make his case, Bonhoeffer works his way through the traditional “marks” (notae) of the evangelical Church one-byone. “How does this Body become visible? In the first place, in the preaching of the Word” (p. 242). “ To the visibility of Christ ’s Body in the preaching of the Word is added the visibility in Baptism and the Supper. Both come out of the true humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ. In both he encounters us bodily (leibhaftig) and makes us partakers in the fellowship of his Body … Neither the gift of Baptism nor that of the Supper is completely encompassed if we describe it as forgiveness of sins. The gift of the Body (Leibes), which is donated in the sacraments, gives us the bodily (leibhaftigen) Lord in his Church” (p. 244). In sum: “ The community of Jesus Christ in the world lays claim to a Raum of proclamation. The Body of Christ is visible in the community gathered around Word and Sacrament” (p. 245). And, Bonhoeffer adds, as a visible community of Word and Sacrament the Church also lays claim to a Raum of church order: an order that is divine, not human, in both its origin and its substance. “Office and community are equally originally in the triune God” (pp. 245f).

This is the stuff of catholic ecclesiology to be sure, though in the cast given it within the Evangelical as opposed to the Orthodox or Roman portions of the Great Church. “For all time there must be and remain one holy Christian church, which is the assembly of all believers, among whom the Gospel is purely preached and the holy Sacraments are administered according to the Gospel” (CA VII). Where is the catholic Church? Wherever Jesus Christ is, present with his flock through Word and sacrament.

The reality of the Church is irreducibly mysterious, for the nature of her society is not merely sociological but spiritual and indeed divine: for she receives her being and life as a gift from Christ through the grace and power of the Holy Spirit. “The Christian Church consists not only in a society of external signs, but principally in an inward community of eternal goods in the heart (gemeinschafft innwendig der ewigen güter im hertzen), like the Holy Spirit, faith, fear, and love for God.” But great care is needed here, for this is not to say that the Church is “spiritual” in the Emersonian/American-gnostic “spiritual but not religious” sense so perniciously pervasive in the postChristian West. “The very same Church has however also external signs (eusserliche zeichen) by which one can recognize it, namely, where God’s Word goes purely ahead, where the Sacraments are rightly administered according to the same, da ist gewis die Kirche.”10

On the one hand, the Church of Christ is so much more than rites, ceremonies, or duly-ordained bishops. “If we were to say that the Church were only an external polity (eusserlich Politey) like other governments (regimente), in which there are evil and good alike and so forth, then no one would ever learn or understand that the kingdom of Christ is spiritual (Geistlich), as in fact it really is. In it Christ rules, strengthens, consoles hearts inwardly, distributes the Holy Spirit and manifold other spiritual gifts. Instead, you’d think it were an external wisdom, a certain order of genuine ceremonies and liturgy.” But if that ’s the case, what ’s the difference between the Spirit-filled church of the gospel and Israel kata sarka under the regime of the old covenant? “Paul distinguishes the Church from the Jews when he says that the Church is a spiritual people (geistlich volck): that is, the sort of people which isn’t just distinguished from the heathen by its polity and civic nature, but a true people of God, which is illumined in the heart and born again through the Holy Spirit … They alone are God’s people (Gottes volck) according to the Gospel who receive the spiritual goods, the Holy Spirit; and the very same Church is the kingdom of Christ, distinguished from the kingdom of the devil.”11

On the other hand: “spiritual” as the Church is in this carefully-defined sense, invisible she is not. “Nor indeed are we dreaming about some Platonic city (Platonicam civitatem), as some people impiously cavil.” The spiritual community of the gospel is visible, touchable, cancellable, killable, for she consists of the real flesh-and-blood children, women, and men who believe the gospel and receive the Spirit through Word and sacrament. “We do not speak of an artificial church which is nowhere to be found … This Church, in which is holy living, truly is and remains on earth (warhafftig auff erden ist und bleibt), namely: there are quite a few children of God, hither and yon in all the world, in all kinds of kingdoms, islands, lands, states, from the rising of the sun to its setting, who have Christ and the Gospel rightly confessed. And we say, this same Church has these external signs, the preaching office or Gospel and the Sacrament.”12

Probably, our very nature as spiritual-physical m broken up by composites dooms us (under the conditions of sin) one explosive to oscillate between these two poles. The history of the Church could be written as the story of one decadent institutionalism broken up by one explosive spiritualism after another. In the 1520s, the spiritualist option was very much in play. And to this day, some of Luther ’s progeny read his Reformation as a real but imperfect break from the sacramentalism of the medieval Church: a break that we, in our superior gnosis, are now positioned to complete. To this, Martin Luther, the confessions of the Evangelical Church, and Pastor Bonhoeffer reply: Nein! Vigorously, Nein.

When God made Man in his image, he made us embodied men and women. When God set out to save the world that Adam lost, he became Man of Mary, was crucified in the body, rose in the body, ascended in the body, rules in the body: and in that body will return to judge all men on the last day. In the meantime, he goes about the business of rescuing lost people from sin and Death by giving them his Spirit and gathering them into his community through his Gospel and sacraments. It is all thoroughly “physical,” because God loves bodies and intends in the end to raise us from the dead and make us the spitting image of his crucified and risen Son, flesh, bones, blood and all. It is all thoroughly “spiritual,” because God is spirit and gives life to the embodied bipeds he cherishes in his Son by giving them of his lifegiving Spirit. Not one or the other, but both.

Whoever confesses this doctrine and abides in a church that lives it out should give thanks to God and know that he is a catholic Christian and citizen of the Israel of God, regardless of whether (in God’s strange but trustworthy providence) he finds himself a member of an Orthodox, Roman, or Evangelical tribe. Whoever does not confess this doctrine is a gnostic, however dyed-in-the-wool Lutheran or devout Catholic or ecstatic Pentecostal he may appear or even be.

Ambrosian/Evangelische Politics in the Pilgrim People of the Gospel: a Preliminary Sketch

Jarring as it may be, the confessional fact of the matter is that the Evangelical Church agrees with Robert Bellarmine: “ The Church is a body of men that is just as visible and palpable as the body of the Roman people, or the Kingdom of France, or the Republic of Venice.”13 The church is not a Platonic republic, not an ideal form existing in the predestinating mind of God. It is a people: the messianic people of Jesus, some Robert Bellarmine chosen from the Jews, some from the goyim, who through the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Spirit have been transferred out of the domain of darkness into the kingdom of the beloved Son (Col 1.14). Echoing Exodus 19.5-6, when Israel was constituted,

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy (1 Pet 2.9-10).

A body of men (and women and children) as visible and palpable as Israel, Bellarmine might have said. For that is what the church is: Israel redeemed by Messiah, renewed by the Spirit, and sent as a people by covenant at Sinai, as well as the great love-promise about election in Deuteronomy 7.6-8, and the whole interlaced with eschatological prophecies from Hosea 1-2, St. Peter declares with apostolic authority: out to gather the nations into the city of God through law and gospel. None of this was on Bellarmine’s radar screen: apostolicity seems to be the first ecclesial mark to go, and neither is our Israel-like character (as George Lindbeck’s clunky phrase had it) high on the list of things Christians wish to be known for. One, if possible; holy, definitely; catholic, of course: but sent to the nations to gather them into God’s Israel, well, we high-church types are content to leave that to the evangelicals and the Pentecostals.

You will have noticed that Bellarmine likened the Catholic Church to the Kingdom of France. Our ecclesiologies of glory will settle for no less. When really, we are more like the Hmong: a people yes, but a landless, powerless, vulnerable people, who depend on the generosity of our host-nations and must sometimes flee violent death under cover of darkness. That is to say, we are more like the Jews … … only, like Jews who, while being ostracized, taken advantage of, and maligned, and also sometimes asked to serve in the highest echelons of government, business, law, etc., somehow miraculously combine the mad courage of Simon bar-Kokhba with the broken strength of Simon barJonah.

For we were not a people, once, separated as we were from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, strangers to the covenants of promise. We had no hope at all to speak of, being without God in a disenchanted world and dying by suffocation in a secular age. And then, to our amazement, we suddenly realized that divine mercy had made us fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. We who were once far off were brought near … by Messiah’s blood. By the King ’s Cross. By the brutal, undeserved death of the Son of God. In our place. In my place. And that changed everything.

Before, we had nothing to live for. Now, we are ready even to die for the name of the Lord Jesus Messiah’s Christ, who loved and saved us and gave us his Spirit and brought us home to his Father. Were the whole realm of nature ours, it would be an offering far too small. What then shall we do, to give him thanks? How can we become men, to honor this Man? priests, to sacrifice praise to our sacrificed God? kings, to reign with him in life? For already now, the One who loved us and freed us from our sins by his blood has made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father; and to him belong glory and dominion forever and ever, Amen.

This is what we will do: we will heed the command of the King who gave everything for us, and go into all nations as a wretched/invincible pilgrim people preaching the glad tidings of his gospel. We will rebuke them for their wickedness, but with tears in our eyes. We will summon them to submission, knowing that postmodern freedom is nothing but the bondage of an insecure flimsy dying self to itself, and to demons, and to its own damnation, but knowing also that in the service of the King of love perfect freedom may be found. We will sing the power, power, wonder-working power of the Blood / of the Lamb: the blood of Jesus our God, which washes sin-stained sinners white as snow. We will use the keys Christ gave us to set the damned free, to restore innocence to the fallen, purity to the stained, and hope to souls drowning in despair. Then, we will baptize them, and give them new birth by water and the Spirit, and welcome them into the adoptive family of God, and feed them with the rich food and well-aged wine of the Son’s Supper. In short: we will conquer the nations in the name of our good King and for the glory of our Father and in the power of the Spirit, armed with nothing but law and gospel and the apostolic-armor Paul talks about, flanked by unseen hosts of angels, spit upon, mocked, imprisoned, or even loved, humble as dirt and bold as lions.

Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against YHVH and against his Messiah, saying, “Let us burst their bonds apart and cast away their cords from us.” He who sits in the heavens laughs; the Lord holds them in derision. Then he will speak to them in his wrath, and terrify them in his fury, saying, “As for me, I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.” I will tell of the decree: YHVH said to me, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.” Now therefore, O kings, be wise; be warned, O rulers of the earth. Serve YHVH with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and you perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who take refuge in him. (Psalm 2)

Xi Jinping

And our Hmong- and Israel-like band of ransomed sinners and warriors of light will be a Church in truth: an altera civitas luminous and alive even amidst “these dread latter days of the old violent beloved U.S.A. and of the Christ forgetting Christ-haunted death-dealing Western world.”14 And the little beachheads of the Jerusalem above that the King builds by Word, sacrament, and Spirit through us here below “shall be inhabited as villages without walls,” open to every starving wanderer, welcoming to every sister-church, exposed to the violence of Cain and Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar and Nero, Justina and Xi. Yet we shall not be afraid, for we will remember the Lord’s promise: “And I will be a wall of fire to her all around, declares YHVH, and I will be the glory in her midst ” (Zecheriah 2.4-5). And in just a little while, yet once more, He will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. And we will lift up our eyes and dance for joy as we welcome the coming King.

Rev. Dr. Phil Anderas (Ph.D., Marquette) is pastor of St. John Lutheran Church in Roanoke, VA.

Endnotes

1N. T. Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009), cp. 4: “Gospel and Empire.”

2Thus proleptically fulfilling the prophecy at Dan 7.27 and explaining, via unio cum Christo, the riddle of Daniel’s shift from the singular “Son of Man” in vv. 13-14.

3Good guides on “sorting this out” include: Augustine’s City of God, esp. bks. 8, 10-14, 1922; Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship (1937) and Ethics (unfinished at his death in April 1945); Robert Benne, The Paradoxical Vision: A Public Theology for the Twenty-first Century (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995); Jean Bethke Elshtain, Augustine and the Limits of Politics (Notre Dame: UNDP, 1996); Gilbert Meilaender, The Way that Leads There: Augustinian Reflections on the Christian Life (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006); Richard John Neuhaus, American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile (New York: Basic, 2009).

4Peter Leithart, Between Babel and Beast: America and Empires in Biblical Perspective (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2012).

5On the “naturalness” of sacral kingship, see Francis Oakley, Empty Bottles of Gentilism: Kingship and the Divine in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (to 1015) (New Haven: Yale, 2010).

6The recent “Declaration” on the part of leading (western; non-Russian) Orthodox theologians and churchmen is most welcomed, precisely because it signals a firm departure from Orthodox tradition in the direction of the western two-kingdoms theology. See https://publicorthodoxy.org/2022/03/13/a-declaration-on-the-russian-world-russkii-mir-teaching.

7The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the roots of political theology (NY: CUP, 1996), cp. 6: “The obedience of rulers.”

8“The barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time”—Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame: UNDP, 1984), 263. Also, David Hart: “As far as I can tell, homo nihilisticus may often be in several notable respects a far more amiable rogue than homo religiosus, exhibiting a far smaller propensity for breaking the crockery, destroying sacred statuary, or slaying the nearest available infidel. But, love, let us be true to one another: even when all of this is granted, it would be a willful and culpable blindness for us to refuse to recognize how aesthetically arid, culturally worthless, and spiritually depraved our society has become. That this is not hyperbole a dispassionate appraisal of the artifacts of popular culture—of the imaginative coarseness and cruelty informing them—will quickly confirm. For me, it is enough to consider that, in America alone, more than forty million babies have been aborted since the Supreme Court invented the ‘right’ that allows for this, and that there are many for whom this is viewed not even as a tragic ‘necessity,’ but as a triumph of moral truth. When the Carthaginians were prevailed upon to cease sacrificing their babies, at least the place vacated by Baal reminded them that they should seek the divine above themselves; we offer up our babies to ‘my’ freedom of choice, to ‘me.’ No society’s moral vision has ever, surely, been more degenerate than that.” https://www.firstthings.com/article/2003/10/christ-and-nothing.

9Nachfolge, Martin Kuske & Ilse Tödt, eds., Dietrich Bonhoeffer Werke, Bd. 4 (Gütersloher Verlaus, 1992).

10Apology of the Augsburg Confession, art. VII, Die Bekenntnisschriften der EvangelischLutherischen Kirche, ed. Irene Dingel et al. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014), 398. Here, I cite Justus Jonas’ German edition of the Apology, which was used in the original Book of Concord (1580). On gnosticism as the American religion par excellence, see Harold Bloom, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992).

11Ap. VII, BSELK pp. 402-4.

12Ap. VII, BSELK pp. 406f.

13De controversiis fidei christiani contra haereticos nostri tempori, I.3.ii.

14Walker Percy, Love in the Ruins: The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World (New York: Picador, 1971), 3.

In Rom 1-11, Paul exegetes the Scriptures to articulate and urge this great gospel, to explain the apostolic mission to subdue the nations under Messiah’s gracious rule, and to show the Church something of her own splendor and glory in him as one holy, apostolic, and catholic whole.