RE-MYTHOLOGISATION 1: CHURCH-STATE/GOD-STATE

by: Pieter Bos
date: 11/20/2008
Category: Society

A NEW DIRECTION IN THE CHURCH-STATE DEBATE:
Article 1
THE TASK OF THE CHURCH: FROM CHURCH-STATE TO GOD-STATE RELATION.

THESIS and summary of this series
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Content: Presentation of the THESIS and first application.

1.1 From altar-crown to church-state relation; the church in an odd place
The concepts of government and hierarchy are based in the reality of the relation Creator-creature. We know about this relation through revelation. The concepts of government and hierarchy require “revelation”; in any worldview they are subject of theological and philosophical debate.
The Greeks already discussed the concept of government, and the relation between the spiritual, invisible government and the visible government, the altar-crown relation.
One of the main points in this discussion was the assumption that unity around the altar was a guarantee, or a requirement, for unity around the throne. For this reason the Roman empire elevated the emperors to divine status: the veneration of the emperor as a state-religion was supposed to guarantee the unity and stability of the empire.
When the emperor Constantine wanted to include Christ, the Christian faith and the church in his imperial reality, he did so in this very framework. In this way, automatically as it were, the altar-crown discussion turned into the church-state discussion. In other words: an existing thought pattern was applied to new spiritual realities; a secular model was used to lodge a spiritual content. This landed the church in an odd situation; she was expected to be as visible as the altar; because she replaced the altar!
That is how the church, through the centuries, became a significant societal factor, very visible, with hierarchy, buildings, property, political influence and sometimes even with an army. Crusades and religious wars shaped European history in no insignificant manner. Slave trade and colonialism were rationalised theologically!
In our time the church has largely been marginalised. Faith is considered to be private; a public testimony is ‘not done’, politically not correct. Not long ago a Dutch RC cardinal, readily supported by the secretary general of a major protestant church, complained that the (Dutch) government ignored the church, not even asking advice! noot 1 However, such thinking is from a previous era.

So is this the end of the altar-crown discussion? The end of any church-state relation?
Lately the centuries-old church-state debate has been rekindled, be it in a new way. Heavy debate arose around the admission of Turkey to the EU and around the word “God” in the EU-constitution. Why? Is this development the effect of post-modernism, a reaction to secularisation? Is it the result of the thrust of New Age, or of the increase of immorality and violence, the decrease of norms, or the push of Islam?

1.2 About the use of terms
Even if the reader does not agree with me, it is necessary that he/she understands how I use the terms.
- church indicates existing churches, both “traditional” and free churches.
- Church (with capital C) does not indicate a denomination or an ecumenical platform, in the visible, but the spiritual “body of Christ, as it was meant to be”. This requires explanation, which will be given from par 1.4 onwards.
- state (nation) is the 19th century term for a geo-political entity.
- people: Psalm 117 says: “Praise the Lord, all ye peoples, exalt Him, all ye nations”. Is the psalmist saying that the peoples should praise (not exalt) the Lord and that the nations should exalt (not praise) the Lord? Of course not. This is one of the many examples in the Old and New Testament which show that in biblical vocabulary terms like tribe, people, nation, state, kingdom, city, are not academically precise (the translation from Hebrew and Greek would not support this either). Tribe, people nation, state, kingdom, city are “corporate entities-with-corporate-life”, “corporate persons”, time and again approached and addressed by God to take their corporate responsibility (in the end to praise him). In most cases these terms are interchangeable in their biblical context. noot 2

1.3 The THESIS: from church-state to God-state relation
When Jesus said: “You are the salt of the earth” he really indicated a “Church-state relation”, viz. an impact of faith on politics, a specific influence of the Christian faith on a people or state, Which?
In the course of history gradually the role of faith and God in state and politics was replaced by the institutionalised church. The church behaved and was seen as the “representative of God on earth”, but in fact soon obscured God; the living God Himself was soon moved out of the picture.
However, the God-intended church-state relationship can in fact only be properly understood in the trio God-Church-state.
When the church operates as a socio-political entity, she will cloud God, because He is Spirit. When the Church operates as a spiritual body, as she was designed (even though she has a visible presence, of course), then she can mediate between the visible state and God (who is Spirit).
This understanding leads me to the following central thesis, to be explained and elaborated throughout this study.
Thesis:
Not the church-state relationship is the issue, but the God-state relationship; the Church is a “third party”, mediating between the two, focussed on a covenant relationship of God and state.
Emphatically I am speaking of three separate parties: God, Church and people/state/city. The church-state relation is not the primary focus; the God-state relation is. It is God who commands the states and peoples to praise Him (Psalm 117), to seek and obey him! It is God who sends prophets to the nations (Jeremiah 1:5, 28:8), who confronts them with their behaviour to one another (Amos 1 and 2) and towards Israel (so many times), who warns them of a coming judgment (Isaiah 41:1). God chose Israel as an example for all nations; God invites the nations into a covenant with Him. This is the main theme of "The Nations Called”: God had a covenant with all the nations, called Grace/Beauty, and he wants to establish a new covenant with all the nations. This is even a central (but until lately poorly treated) theme in the Old and New Testament. That is why Jesus commands the Church to make disciple-nations of all nations (Matthew 28:19).
God wants a direct relationship, even a covenant relationship, with all the peoples, nations, tribes and states, a direct God-state relation! Where that notion is not made explicit in any church-state debate, we may think that the church represents God on earth, but in fact God is being obscured.
The church-state debate, formerly the altar-crown debate, deals with authentic human questions. This debate goes back to the debate on the core concepts of government and hierarchy, which debate leads back even further to that around man-and-power, or, for the Christian, around the relation Creator-creature. In this discussion everyone, from whatever walk of life, makes assumptions concerning the origin of humanity.
I believe that God is the source of life, the seat of power, the designer of tribe and nation and of government; when he created these He had in mind a direct God-state relation.
That’s why he has established the Church as a spiritual body, designed to reveal the spiritual, to mediate spiritually, between God, who is spirit, and the state/city. The Greek altar-crown discussion was a purely human affair and did not reflect, not even come close to God’s intentions.
That is already enough to convince us of the necessity to separate Church and state; the Church is a spiritual, supernatural body, whereas the state is a natural body.
This dissimilarity should help us stay alert to the continuous fundamental relation between faith and politics. The fact that the church has been marginalised does not mean that God has changed, or has to change, his plan. It means that the church is a weak partner for God’s plans with the nations. And it means that his enemies have free play, each on their way to their own version of a one-world-government (see article 4). Many believe that the only way to resist this development is an absolute separation of church and state, as fitting for our time, and that faith should have no place whatsoever in politics. But church and state are two institutions, which are indeed different in nature and therefore need to act separately (according to the principle of “soevereiniteit in eigen kring” (“let each institution be sovereign within its own province”). noot 3
But these two concepts are altogether different from faith and politics, which are not institutions but frames of reference. Politics basically deals with the question of the origin of power, and how to act upon the answer to this basic question. The spiritual cannot be separated from the political! Whether we like it or not, we are underway to a re-mythologisation of international politics (Further in Article 4).

The church has badly blocked the God-state relationship… by not functioning as Church. The very fact that society has secularised provides a new chance and challenge for the Church to present and live out the true God-state relationship.
These are political realities: God desires a direct relation with peoples/states/cities, and the Church is in charge to actively mediate between these two parties, just mediate, not represent, replace or obscure God.noot 4

The most typical example, only seemingly detached from the present political reality, is provided by Ahab and Elijah:
- God is angry at a state (Israel), and plans a confrontation with that state through a three year drought, in order to readjust the God-state relationship.
- Elijah mediates by passing on that message to the king. That did not take more than half an hour. After that he is out of the picture for three years, first praying at the brook Chered, then for personal training abroad (raising a person from the dead – for the first time in history). Then he appears on the scene again, just for one day, at Mount Carmel, showing forth the power of God: he lives out the Church-state relationship.
- The mediating role of Elijah is not organisational, in the visible, but spiritual. Yet the effect is a societal breakthrough and the intended readjustment of the God-state relation!
In chapter 2 I will give fifteen examples from ten nations illustrating how practically real this can be in the 21st century.

1.4 The Church as a spiritual body
We refer once more to the complaint of the Dutch cardinal, supported by the secretary general of a major protestant church, concerning the marginalisation of the church in our time. Their discovery illustrates the failure of the functioning of the church regarding the state. For when the Church effectually is not “the salt of the earth”, then it does not serve any purpose and just deserves “to be thrown away and marginalised” (freely after Matthew 5:13)!
When the church has been marginalised, is that the end of the church-state relationship? What purpose does it then serve? Is it to disappear to the meditation-room, to the closet? Become a “societal partner”, be “involved” in the “re-evaluation of norms and values”? Give mercy in times of disaster? Be a “societal uniting force” in times of unrest? Be the vehicle of cultural values (like the Orthodox church in Eastern Europe)? Maybe every one of these things, but that is not what the Church was designed for!
Being the “salt of the earth” does not primarily aim at a place or function in the visible, at a visible institution, a recognised position, responding to societal expectations, a lobby-network, a political force, an organisation with a societal veto-power. The role of “salt” is the role of an invisible force, working invisibly. It has to do with the spiritual functioning of the Church: salting, cleansing, conserving, challenging and so directively inspiring societal dynamics, wherever basic questions are asked or basic motives are required.
The church in our time is busy organising and executing services and programmes, is so busy with pastoral care, overburdened with care for souls and buildings, with internal organisation and seeking church unity. It leaves evangelisation, intercession and societal service to zealous specialists.
Are these the right priorities? Are not most of the activities, in business terms, “internal organisation”? In a company these need to be minimal in relation to the production process for which the company was established! The same is true for the Church: the main mission is not internal organisation; the internal organisation should just be a support to her main mission. noot 5
That is why I speak of the “Church as she was meant to be”. This poses a challenge for churches and denominations, viz. to consider their destiny, and move from social club and societal/political lobby to spiritual force with spiritual means. Truly a revolution!
The destiny of the Church is clearly summarised in the “Great Commission: ”Disciple all nations”. Not: make as many disciples as possible from as many nations as possible, but: make all peoples, tribes, nations, states and cities into disciple-peoples, disciple-tribes, disciple-nations, disciple-states and disciple-cities. Let us consider two historical spiritual summits. In Luke 4:5-6 we read about the spiritual summit Jesus-Satan. Chairman Satan states: All kingdoms and their glory have been given to me and I can give them to anyone I want to...” Jesus does not contradict this; in fact recognises Satan as the “Prince of this world”. But in a later spiritual summit, the final meeting of Jesus with his disciples before his ascension, he summarises all he has said the previous six weeks: “NOW, after the cross, I have been given all authority over peoples and kingdoms (but they do not know it yet;) therefore you go and tell all peoples and kingdoms to follow me from now on; I give every people (tribe, nation, state, city) a Church, in order that that Church brings that people (tribe, nation, state, city) before my throne” (freely after Matthew 28:19). The spiritual and political leaders of this world basically strive for a one-world-government. Satan does so even since the tower of Babel and ever since (Luke 4), and in his following so have the masons, the communists, Islam, the Buddhists (see article 4). And they do so after the example, and in competition with Him by whom this earth was made and to whom, because of his work on the cross, all authority was given and who therefore will return to this earth to become the King of all kings and presidents and chiefs, ruling through the final and God-designed one-world-government.
The Church has received the commission to spiritually prepare the political one-world-government of God’s Christ; the necessary internal organisation needs to focus on nothing less than that spiritual goal. To elaborate this we go back to the example of Ahab and Elijah. Elijah’s role is to prophesy (half an hour), pray (three years) and show forth God’s power (one day).
This is the prototype for the Church, the Church “as she was meant to be”:
1) intercession (including spiritual warfare) for “her“ people or state is the primary task (the “three years”); God’s house must be a house of prayer for all nations (Isaiah 56:7).
(2) showing forth God’s power in society: healing the sick, prayer stations, healing rooms, deliverance, raising the dead (according to Jesus’ explicit command, Matthew 10:8 noot 6), evangelism, mercy ministry, divorce prevention, outreach to homeless and addicts, disaster relief, protection of the unborn, multicultural community development, reconciliation of peoples and races, nature preservation, ecological agriculture. This showing forth of God’s power should not take place “one day” but, since the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, all the time and authoritatively and publicly.
(3) prophecy to society and government, mediating as Church between God and the state or city, leading to national repentance, national reconciliation and in the end the state/city covenanting to God: the final God-state relationship! noot 7 This “prophecy” should take “half an hour” so to say: the intercession and the showing forth of God’s power is the main thing.
That the Church is a “spiritual body’” does not mean that she is invisible; she needs a form and an organisation. But both form and organisation need to be subject to the “main mission” of intercession, showing God’s power and prophecy.
- intercession: brings the state/city before God;
- showing God’s power: makes God visible to the state/city;
- prophecy: confronts the state/city with God.
In this way the Church prepares the state/city to covenant with God, and so to meet her future King. The internal organisation of the Church needs to be focussed on and subject to this overall goal. Too long the church has played the role of “representative of God on earth”, with increasing internal organisation and blocking a clear view of God(’s supernatural power). This has been the wrong approach. The mediation should be “in the power of Elijah”: bringing the state/city before God, making God visible to the state/city, confronting the state/city with God.
Is this theocracy? In a way, yes. But not through party politics or any form of lobby. It happens within the constitutional and electoral space (see further on this par. 2.3) and through inspired prayer, through a revolutionised Church, without a trace of tradition, through a body that is spiritual! Read about the two Elijah-type prophets, the Two Witnesses in Revelation 11; they are really the prototype for the Church. That is the Great Commission; if we serve that commission Jesus promises to be with us, until the end!

1.5 The Great Commission has always implied this
In the well known “Great Commission” (Matthew 28:18-20) Jesus places the Church and the state/city in their proper relationship. The Church’s mission statement is:
“Disciple all nations... baptising them... and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you... I am with you...” In other words:
“You, Church, are responsible for the proper relationship of your state/city with Me: to become my devoted disciple and covenant partner (baptised even), that obeys me, in view of my return as King!
Again in other words: I give every people (tribe, nation, state, city) a Church, so that this Church should lead “her” people (tribe, nation, state, city) out of any Babylonian bond into a covenant with Me”.
God does not want to be obscured by a church-state relation; he wants a direct God-state relation. The Church will need to learn her proper role in society anew:
- The Church must learn to mediate between God and “her” state/city, being a third party between them, not with lobbies (and Christian political parties) and armies, but with intercession, showing God’s power and prophecy, in view of a God-state relationship.
- The Church must discern that the position “Faith is private” is in fact the domination of another faith: humanism. The statements “Faith is private… you must not thrust you faith upon anyone… evangelisation endangers the fabric of society...” are intimidating and untrue. Indeed, intercession and spiritual warfare are for the prayer closet, and that is the main part of the job, the “three years”. But the ”showing forth of divine power” surely must be continually visible! And prophecy is audible (and not politically correct)!
- The Church must discern that the suggestion “to remove every vestige of religiosity out of the public system” is in fact the domination of another faith: New Age thinking. (Persons of this persuasion of course make use of the fact that her historic failures of traditionalism and superiority have discredited the church.)
- The Church’s task is to stand against these suggestions through intercession and to raise up assertive and authoritative believers who can speak up publicly, in order to clear the air for the concept of the state/city covenanting to God.
- The Church’s task is also to train the believer to stand up in society in a visionary and authoritative way (the vision being the coming kingdom), particularly in business, the media and the education system. noot 8 These are three primary mission fields in our time, where at the moment Mammon and New Age take the lead. It is mainly because the church did not have such a vision that she has been marginalised.
- The Church should not let herself be pushed in the position of (equal or not) “social partner” or “socially cohesive factor”. For again, she is destined to be Christ’s spiritual partner to rule with him, through intercession, showing God’s power and prophecy, and so directively play a role in society.

This is not exalted or spiritual language, or outdated theocratic thinking, but the command to act spiritually in the political reality. When we pursue that destiny, Jesus promises to “be with us always, to the very end of the age” even in the beginning of the 21st century.


noot 1 Nederlands Dagblad (Dutch Daily), 7 March 2001. Terug
noot 2 For a detailed word study and argumentation see § 1.6 of “THE NATIONS CALLED, Theology of the Nations and their Redemption.” Terug
noot 3 “Soevereiniteit in eigen kring” (“Let each institution be sovereign within its own province”) is the adage of Abraham Kuyper’s influential philosophy concerning Christian politics. Terug
noot 4 There is a direct parallel here between a state (a corporate person !) and an individual person. The latter is not called to be a “church-Christian” (baptised and married in the church, without a personal commitment to Christ, trusting the church will mediate on his behalf) but a “born-again Christian” (with a personal relation to God through Jesus). Terug
noot 5 When, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, all effort is focussed on the main mission, most probably much less “internal organisation’ will prove necessary. Terug
noot 6 In this command the emphasis is not on well meant human effort, but on showing forth God’s supernatural power. In the testimonies of transformation in the city of Paranaqui, Philippines, it is said the Christian civil servants received many dreams, indicating how to act in their positions: God is showing himself and his power to the state/city! Terug
noot 7 The “covenant of God with all the nations” may seem strange to many ears, but it is well researched and presented in “THE NATIONS CALLED, Theology of the Nations and their Redemption.” ; this is the background of these articles. Terug
noot 8 A more complete list of “mind molders” is the following: business, education, media, family, health care, politics, art/entertainment (developed by Loren Cunningham). Each of these spheres is a mission field in itself, and the Church should train her members to make a stand for the truth wherever they are positioned in society. Terug

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