The Book of Ruth

It makes sense that the Book of Ruth follows the Book of Judges. As Aristotle understands, families, not individuals, form the foundation of political communities. Unlike individuals, mated pairs generate the next generation of humans; pregnant females and newborn children need care; therefore, if human individuals were truly isolated from one another, the human race would disappear. Families eventually form tribes and tribes then may form political communities, although not necessarily. To this day, there are Afghanistans—places where tribes count more than country, where a ‘nation-state’ cannot hold together without the powerful bond of tyranny. Just as families and tribes may coalesce into political communities for the sake of self-defense and prosperity, so political communities may dissolve back into tribes or even families, often with civil war resulting. In the Book of Judges, readers see Israelites withdrawing into their households, into family life. 

More, Ruth’s descendant, David, will found a new regime in Israel, the monarchy mentioned as it were longingly at the end of the Book of Judges. More still, Ruth is an ancestor of Jesus, who will found still another monarchic regime, one far more extensive than David’s.

It therefore also makes sense that a major theme of the Book of Ruth is chesed—loyalty, that is to say attachment. In a factionalized, civil-warring society attachments need to be reestablished. Although families are the elementary human forms of attachment, the attachment of God and Man predates it. Without the right establishment of both of these attachments, both of these loyalties, the political community cannot survive, much less flourish. 

“Now it came to pass in the days when the judges ruled that there was a famine in the land” (1:1). The regime of judges combined what we would call ‘executive’ with judicial powers. These rulers had failed; each person did what was right in his own eyes—dissolving political society not merely into tribes or even families but individuals—a derangement indeed. “A certain man of Bethlehem-judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he, and his wife, and his two sons” (1:2). Famine may arise from drought or some other natural cause, but it may also result from misrule. Famine compels families to migrate, disrupting the lives of those lands to which they migrate. Moab is hill-country; Elimilech (which means “my God is King”), Naomi (meaning lovely, delightful, pleasant), their sons Mahlon (sickly), and Chilion (failing) are Ephrathites, that is, from Ephrath, the old name for Jerusalem, not far from Jerusalem. Soon after their arrival, Naomi was widowed, left with two sons, who married Moabite women, Orpah and Ruth. Although marrying a non-Israelite was not forbidden, neither was it propitious. True to their names, Mahlon and Chilion died ten years later, leaving Naomi without protection from the men in her family. Separated from Israel because a famine threatened the family from starvation, Naomi’s husband and sons were separated from her by death. 

Naomi then heard “that the LORD had visited His people” on the land He promised them, “giving them bread” (1:6). She returns to her people, likely expecting better security for herself. More, she is loyal to her people, to God, and to His regime in the Promised Land. She tells her daughters-in-law, “Go, return each to [your] mother’s house: the LORD deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead, and with me. The LORD grant you that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband.” (1:8-9). Invoking her authority as a mother, now the head of the household, she mingles her command with a blessing. The word translated as “kindly” is chesed, the same word for loyalty. Loyalty is indeed a form of kindness, a loving attachment and often a just one. It is the lifeblood of union, whether in a family, a tribe, or a political community. True loyalty intends the good of the other person. Naomi regards God as Lord, as Ruler, and evidently has taught her daughters-in-law about him; perhaps as a result of this teaching, the relationships in her household have been Godlike—kind, loyal, unselfish, ‘agapic’ as the New Testament Greek will say. To “find rest” was what Naomi, her husband, and her sons had wanted—homes, as one says in English. They are much more likely to find husbands in Moab than in Israel. With no men remaining in her own family, Naomi blesses them in parting with them; she would dissolve her family completely, but with chesed, mindful of the good of the two younger women. 

But the women don’t want to leave her. They prefer this family, however broken, to their own Moabite people. This bespeaks the attraction of God’s regime; foreigners prefer it to their own, having experienced its animating principle, chesed, a loyalty based not upon bloodlines but upon the spiritual union of human beings with and under God. That is, the love of God can overcome the love of one’s own, as indeed Jesus will command when he tells His disciples that he brings not peace but a sword, a sword that may sunder ordinary family bonds, the natural sentiments of households.

Naomi tells the women to think again. “Why will you go with me? Are there yet any more sons in my womb, that they may be your husbands?” (1:11). What is more, there will never be any more sons for her, “for I am too old to have a husband,” and even if I could find one you would need to wait a long time before they were of marriageable age! (1:12). “No, my daughters, for it grieves me much for your sakes that the hand of the LORD is gone out against me” (1:13). She thinks that God must be angry with her, possibly (as some commentators speculate) because she didn’t return to Israel as soon as her husband died. Whatever the reason, she is neither selfish nor sentimental but reasonable, considering the good of the women; Matthew Henry supposes that she tested them to discover if they truly accepted the rule of God. If so, Ruth passed the test: “They lifted up their voice, and wept again: and Orpah kissed her mother in law; but Ruth clave unto her” (1:14). Orpah will now obey Naomi’s advisory, “going back unto her people and unto her gods” (1:15). But Ruth will not go, saying, “Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the LORD do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me” (1:16-17). In response to the chesed  of Naomi, Ruth reciprocates with equal or even greater chesed, “steadfastly minded to go with her” (1:18).  She will change the regime under which she had been raised, loving her own but counting her mother-in-law and the God under whose laws Naomi counts as her mother her own, now. “There will I be buried”; in the ancient world, this is the most crucial of commitments, as the land of one’s own father, one’s own god, was regarded as sacred ground. She calls the God of Israel “Lord,” not only “God,’ the One she would be ruled by. For her part, Naomi now sees all of this in Ruth. The steadfastly-minded person is the one capable of kind loyalty, animated by the spirit of the regime of Israel. She cannot again marry a son of Naomi, but she might marry an Israelite and begin a new family, under God. (1)

Upon returning to Bethlehem, Naomi finds that her people remember her, although they are not sure if it really is her. The twenty years since she left have been long and hard. “And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty has dealt very bitterly with me” (1:20). I am no longer ‘Pleasant’ or “Lovely’; I am Mara, ‘bitter.’ Here it’s not God’s kind lordship but his power that she recalls; God is sadday, almighty, a word one commentator recalls as especially common in the Book of Job. Naomi is the female equivalent of Job. “I went out full,” with a husband and two sons, “and the LORD has brought me home again empty: why then do you call me Naomi, seeing the LORD has testified against me, and the Almighty has afflicted me” (1:21). As Ruth may or may not know, God is also called sadday when He is founding or re-founding His regime, as for example when he appears to Abraham, commanding him to “walk before Me and be perfect” (Genesis 28:3), and when he changed the name of Jacob to ‘Israel.’ Any political founding requires unanswerable might on the part of the founder. Loving kindness is not enough. Jesus Himself, who founds a regime upon loving kindness, upon self-sacrificing concern for the good of His subjects, depends upon His Father’s might to resurrect Him. Without that might, he would be merely another ‘idealist’—as an acquaintance of mine once put it, “a nice reform rabbi, better than most.”

And she has returned with a daughter-in-law who is no Israelite in the eyes of the Israelites but “Ruth the Moabitess” (I:22). What will Ruth do here? How can she find acceptance in her new regime, however loyal she may be to it, and to Naomi? 

As it happens, “Naomi had a kinsman of her husband, a mighty man of wealth” named Boaz (2:1). Deferring to her mother-in-law, Ruth asks permission to go to the field and to gather grain left behind by the harvesters. As seen in Leviticus 19:9, the law of God ordained that a farmer shall not scour his field for these leftovers, leaving them instead for the poor, especially for poverty-stricken widows. The law of God, itself an act of God’s graciousness, commands graciousness from the landowner. Laws derive from the regime, from the rulers; the ‘rule of law’ is always the rule of rules devised by rulers. Knowing the law of God, Ruth expects to “find grace” under “the sight” of the owner, who is obliged to obey that law (2:2). She does not yet know she will be in Moab’s field.

Naomi grants permission. “It so happened” that Ruth arrived at “a part of the field belonging to Boaz” (2:3). By law, Boaz must permit her to glean grain there, but he might obey God’s law ‘to the letter’ while making it hard for her to glean much. The author of the Book of Ruth asks his readers to imagine the scene: “Behold, Boaz came from Bethlehem,” greeting his workers with the traditional phrase, “The LORD be with you,” which they return (2:4). That is, owner and workers, fellow members of God’s regime, treat each other with mutual respect; at the same time, Boaz is the owner of the land, the ruler of the property, no ‘absentee landlord’; he has come to oversee the harvest, the way in which his workers work his land. Noticing the young foreigner, he asks not who she is but who ‘owns’ her, rules her. His foreman answers that she is the Moabite woman who returned to Israel with Naomi, his kinswoman.

Just as she had asked Naomi permission to go to the field, Ruth had asked the foreman for permission to glean “among the sheaves”; that is, in addition to exercising her lawful right to glean in the field, after the workers had passed, she asks permission to work with them (2:7). The foreman graciously granted this request, and since then she has only paused for a short rest in a temporary shelter near the field; she works diligently for herself and her mother-in-law.

Recognizing her as a kinswoman by marriage, Boaz reaffirms his foreman’s grace; “abide here among my young women” (2:8). Furthermore, I command that my young man not touch you, either while you work in the field or when you go to quench your thirst at the vessels “which the young men have drawn” (2:9). Young men pose a potential danger to young women (and often to themselves), but under my rule they are to obey God’s law and you shall be safe. At this, Ruth bows in gratitude, asking “Why have I found grace in you eyes, that you should acknowledge me, seeing I am a foreigner?” (2:10). Is she slightly suspicious of Boaz? Or simply astonished? Boaz assures her that “it has been showed to me, all that you have done for your mother-in-law since the death of your husband, and how you have left your father and your mother, and the land of your birth, and are come into the people you did not know before” (2:11). As a wise ruler, Boaz has taken care to learn why the foreigner has come to his land, and what her character is, particularly her exhibition of chesed. This suggests that his question, “Whose young woman is this?” was asked only to identify her with certainty, or perhaps to conceal his knowledge from his subordinates. However this may be, he reassures her with a blessing: “The LORD recompense your work, and a full reward be given you of the LORD God of Israel, under whose wings you are come to trust” (2:12). 

That is, Boaz knows Ruth has trusted God by putting herself under His regime, Israel; as a man under the rule of that God, Boaz’s rule of his field imitates God’s rule of His people. Boaz follows the law and adds to it with grace, in imitation of the Ruler who ordained that law. Ruth can trust the young men under his rule because he has commanded them to leave her alone, despite her youth, poverty, and foreignness—any one of which might tempt them to exploit her. She can also trust his rule over them, and over her, because he trusts her trust in his Ruler. Boaz is an Israelite who does not set up his own ‘household religion,’ as do the factitious heads of families seen in the Book of Judges.  

For her part, Ruth acknowledges that his “friendly” speech, the speech of one who has accepted her as a member of his family and his country, makes her the equivalent of his other young women (2:13). At this, Boaz invites her to dine with his family, after her day’s work, commanding the young men to allow her to glean among the sheaves without reproach. And more: “let fall also some of the handfuls for her,” not rebuking her when she gathers these, too (2:16). Thanks to God’s gracious law, and Boaz’s gracious supplementation of it, Ruth gathers “about an ephah of barley”—four gallons, more than enough to feed herself and Naomi (2:17). What will she do with the excess?

She brings it all back to Naomi, who blesses Boaz first of all because he did not “take knowledge of thee,” take sexual advantage of her, as Boaz had prohibited his young men to do (2:19). His command to the young men to leave her untouched was no claim to keep her for his own illicit use. And she rightly states her gratitude not only respecting Boaz’s conduct but asks God’s blessing upon him, “who has not left off his kindness to the living”—Ruth, Naomi—but “to the dead”—their husbands, his kinsmen (2:20). Like the Father of fathers, Boaz is a protector. Emphasizing again her foreign origin, the author reports that Ruth added that Boaz had commanded his young men to protect her. Naomi pronounces this good, happy to have her return and continue her gleaning. Having seen that Ruth has gleaned more than might be expected under God’s law, she explains this by saying that Boaz after all is a kinsman of hers, and now of Ruth’s. The problem of Israelite factionalism described in the Book of Judges sees its solution in the rule of Boaz, who unites his young women and men with his kinswoman, Naomi (who had been regarded with some diffidence upon her return) and, crucially, with Ruth, a foreigner who has proved herself a loyal citizen of the regime God intends to be the light unto the nations. That is, in ruling his own family and lands, Boaz thinks, speaks, and acts according to the animating principles of the regime of Israel, not according to some rules he made up for that family and those lands.

Things have improved for the women; they are not yet secure. Ruth has found a protector for as long as the harvest lasts, but what then? Naomi wants a home for her, and for herself. Boaz is “of our kindred”; he has shown favor to you. After the grain has been harvested during the day, at night he winnows it on the threshing floor, where the animals crush it underneath their hooves and the night breeze blows the chaff away. After such work, he will be hungry and thirsty. “Wash thyself therefore, and anoint thee, and put thy raiment upon thee, and get thee down to the floor: but make not thyself known unto the man, until he shall have done eating and drinking,” lies down, gets drowsy (3:3). Go in, uncover his feet and legs, then lie down next to them; “he will tell thee what thou shalt do” (3:4). Sober Matthew Henry takes this opportunity to say that this Israelite custom should not be taken as a precedent for our own times.

Ruth faithfully obeys. Harvest time brings celebration; she finds Boaz asleep on the threshing floor, next to the heap of grain, having “eaten and drunk” and made “his heart merry” (3:7). Uncovering his feet, she lies down next to them. At midnight he awakens in fear—perhaps from a bad dream, since his position next to the grain pile suggests a need to guard it. “Behold, a woman lay at his feet” (3:8)—a startling if not fearful occasion. “Who are you?” (3:9). Ruth answers quite fully: she gives her name, defines herself as his servant, and begs him to place his skirt over her, “for you are a near kinsman” (3:9). This is more than a request for protection; it is the customary way for a widow to ask a man to claim her as his wife, practiced by some Arabs to this day.

He now recognizes her. “Blessed be thou of the LORD, my daughter,” he replies (3:10)—acknowledging her as kin and as one now under the rule of the God of Israel. She deserves a blessing because “you have shown more kindness in the latter end”—that is, in her present conduct—than “at the beginning”—when she chose not to leave Naomi but to go gleaning the field for her. Why kindness? Because “you choose not young men, whether poor or rich”; you act loyally, with chesed, for the good of your family instead of seeking a young man for a husband (3:10). “Fear not: I will do to you all that you require: for all the city of my people know that you are a virtuous woman” (3:11). He knows she isn’t ‘throwing herself at him’ because the political community of Bethlehem knows her character, and marriage to her will not be a cause of dishonor.  

Showing himself a loyal follower of the law of Israel, he acknowledges their near kinship but says that “there is a nearer kinsman than I” (3:12) who must be considered; in the case of a childless widow, the nearest relation to her has the first right to marry her. Therefore, stay here tonight. In the morning, if your nearer kinsman will exercise his right, let him do it; if not, “I will do the part of a kinsman to you, as the LORD lives” (3:13). With this oath, this covenant, he ends the conversation as he begun, with a speech about God as Ruler, the one who set down the laws that form the right framework for conduct. Here Boaz shows why he is both a just and effective ruler. He acts with dispatch, but under the rule of God. The former helps to guarantee the latter; in wasting no time in fulfilling his oath to God he will make it less likely that he will fail to fulfill it. 

She lays at his feet until morning, leaving before dawn, lest she be taken for a prostitute by some observer. Equally solicitous of their reputation, Boaz commands, “Let it not be known that a woman came into the floor” (3:14). Before she leaves, he measures six units of barley, laying it into her garment; instead of impregnating her, she leaves her ‘pregnant’ with seed that she can bring back to her mother in obedience and honor. Upon her return, Naomi asks, “Who art thou, my daughter?” (3:16). Are you now Mrs. Boaz-to-be? She can reply, “These six measures of barley he gave me; for he said to me, Go not empty unto thy mother-in-law” (3:17). This confirms to Naomi not only Ruth’s honor but the honor of Boaz. “The man will not be at rest, until he has finished the thing this day” (3:18).

Indeed so. Boaz went to the city gate that morning—the place to wait for anyone he hopes to meet because the cities of Judah had no agora or town square; the gate was the hub of activity, whether for legal business or socializing. The nameless kinsman did come by, and Boaz hailed him, then called ten elders of the city to witness their conversation as an informal jury. Boaz has moved from a potentially hazardous private circumstance, at night, to a legitimate public one, in ‘broad daylight.’ He explains that that Naomi intends to sell a parcel of land once belonging to her late husband, our brother, Elimelech. It may be that she must sell the land because a widow could not inherit land in ancient Israel. If so, this would amount to a ‘distressed property’ sale, except for the legal bonds of kinship, although she would get it back during the ‘Year of Jubilee.’ “If you will redeem it,” he tells his kinsman, do so; if not, “then tell me, that I may know” (4:4). Then I will redeem it, with these men as my witnesses. There is, he now adds, a ‘rider’: “On the day you buy the land from the hand of Naomi, you must buy it also from Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of the deceased, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance” (4:5). Property is a family right, not an individual right; property supports families; therefore, the widow of a childless kinsman must not only be recompensed for her property but she ought to be married, perpetuating the name of her deceased husband. Throughout antiquity, reputation understood as the ‘family name’ constitutes part of anyone’s most valuable property. 

The kinsman demurs. If he redeems the land and marries Ruth he will “mar my own inheritance” (4:6). Supporting Ruth would be an additional expense. The kinsman veers away from the spirit of the law, away from chesed, toward materialistic ‘individualism.’ To solemnize his intention, he takes off one sandal, the symbolic act of confirming a statement before witnesses, the deed that reinforces the word and the thought behind the word. Some commentators suggest that the show which has walked the land has been transferred by the act of taking it off, symbolizing the passing on of the right to walk that land, that property. Be this as it may, “And Boaz said unto the elders, and unto all the people [at the gate], You are witnesses this day, that I have bought all that was Elimelech’s and all that was Chilion’s and Mahlon’s of the hand of Naomi. Moreover, Ruth the Moabitess, the wife of Mahlon, have I purchased to be my wife, to raise up the name of the dead upon his inheritance, that the name of the dead be not cut off from among his brethren and from the gate of his place: You are witnesses this day.” (9-10). In this way, Moab has prevented factitious rumors that might arise about his relationship with the two women while integrating the Moabite woman into his family and into the civic life of the city, with the city elders as his witness to this public act. He has further reinforced civic unity by scrupulous observation of the Mosaic law. The civic union of Israel, and of this city, has held. With this legal transaction, made in public in the spirit of chesed, Moab builds up trust among the citizens united not only or even primarily by bloodlines but by God’s law. Matthew Henry suggests further that because “Boaz did this honor to the dead, as well as kindness to the living, God did him the honor to bring him into the genealogy” of Jesus, who is the Redeemer of all redeemers” and no respecter of persons, the One who offers to redeem both a prominent man like Boaz but also a poor, widowed, foreigner like Ruth. Other commentators explain the anonymity of the kinsman who refused to marry Ruth as a tacit criticism of his lack of chesed—his un-Jewish, and therefore un-Christlike turning away from a fundamental principle of the Israelite regime.

The people and the elders at the gate attested to their witness of this covenant, prayerfully recalling Rachel and Leah, “which who did build the house of Israel: and do thou worthily in Ephratah and be famous in Bethlehem” (4:11). Ephratah is the old name of Bethlehem, referring to its old regime, which was an aristocracy, the regime of excellence. Hence to do worthily in Ephratah is to do worthily in remembrance of the worthy. The other two blessings—building and fame, ‘surround’ worthiness—the one as its beginning, the other as its end or reward. Between them, Ruth and Leah were the ancestors of the whole nations, both elders and the people, aristocrats and democrats, old regime and new.

“And let thy house be like the house of Pharez, whom Tamar bore unto Judah, of the seed which the LORD shall give thee of this young woman” (4:12). In Genesis 38, Tamar brings the foreigner into Judah; the blessing here is that the new foreigner, Ruth, will become part of the Bethlehemite line, a section of the tribe of Judah. Like Pharez, the seed of Ruth will be prominent, a good ruler. 

As he will. Boaz takes Ruth as his wife, “the LORD gave her conception, and she bore a son” (4:13). Naomi shares in this blessing, as she now has a kinsman whose “name may be famous in Israel” (4:14). Her grandson “shall be unto you a restorer of thy life, and a nourisher of your old age; for thy daughter in law, who loves you, and is better to you than seven sons, has born him” (4:15). God as Ruler rewards Naomi for her kindness to Ruth and her wisdom in thinking of this marriage and in telling Ruth how to make the marriage likely. She is restored and Israel is strengthened. The women in her neighborhood give the child a name, Obed (which means ‘servant’); his grandson will be the great king, David, servant of God as ruler of Israel. Christians will recall that David’s line comes down to the mother of Jesus. The women of the city assign this name, not the parents; naming a child is a civic duty, not a private one. Naming is the link between family and city.

Faction or even division caused by bad fortune threatens families, cities, and nations. Naomi, Ruth, and Boaz have countered it by adhering faithfully to the laws of God for His regime, Israel. Widowed and then deprived of her sons, her expected guardians, Naomi returns to Israel. Ruth comes with her, having joined the Israelite regime by vowing adherence to its laws. Ruth then attracts the attention of her future husband by her exhibition of diligence. Knowing of Boaz’s well-deserved merit and prominence, Naomi guides Ruth towards marriage, which Moab arranges by scrupulous adherence to those laws. The Book of Ruth shows the actions by which Israel can stay united on the foundation of the laws of God.

 

 

 

Note

1. Matthew Henry and many other Christian commentators find in the story of Ruth and Oprah and parallel to the New Testament story of the sisters Mary and Martha, the first who stays with Jesus to listen to His words, the other who prefers to bustle about in the household (Luke 10:38-42).

 

 

 

The Apostle Paul: Letter to the Philippians
Jeffrey Kunkel: Bible Study Series

 

Note: This discussion of the Letter to the Philippians is based on an excellent series of sermons by Pastor Jeffrey Kunkel of Community Bible Church. The sermons were delivered in May-September 2021. Having added some of my own thoughts, I take responsibility for the overall interpretation, if by no means much credit.

 

Paul and Timotheus greet “the servants of Jesus Christ” and “all the saints in Jesus Christ,” including the bishops and deacons at the church or assembly Paul founded at Philippi (I:1). [1] Paul is the author of the letter but Timotheus figures in it because he will be returning to Philippi, as Paul will tell them in due course. Christians are servants or slaves of Jesus Christ, therefore part of his regime; at the same time, they are not enslaved in the ordinary sense, inasmuch as Jesus is no tyrant. His rule presents us with the paradox of a liberating tyranny. This is at least part of what’s meant by their status as saints in Jesus Christ. They have been ‘saved’ by Him—ransomed and liberated from the consequences of their own sin, if not entirely cleansed of all sin. The principal consequence of their sin otherwise would be enslavement in the regime of the Satan, that is, the enemy of God and His creatures alike. By remaining ‘in’ Christ, the members of the church remain slaves to their Lord but they are slaves who are ‘on God’s side.’ Aristotle understands the master-slave relationship as a one-way rule whereby the master commands the slave for the benefit of the master, not the slave. Christianity radically revises slavery by making it anti-‘satanic,’ more like what Aristotle would liken to the relationship of a good father to a son, ruling his son—even to the point of self-sacrifice—for the son’s good. Christian slavery is not the slavery usually seen in ‘this world,’ the kind of slavery Aristotle saw all around him, which has persisted in various forms throughout human experience.

“Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ” (I:2). God as Father is a begetter; through Paul, he ‘begot’ or founded the church at Philippi. Jesus Christ as Lord is the ruler of that church and of the Church generally, deputized as it were by the founding Father. Grace characterizes the salvific act. A ruler who provides a benefit to his subjects that he has no obligation to provide is gracious, ‘condescending’ in the original, good sense of the word—taking kind notice of his inferiors. Peace is the result of such condescension; the ruler’s regime enjoys union because of it, civil war no longer. As Pastor Kunkel observed, grace and peace will be themes throughout the letter. Moreover, this salutation is also a prayer, a petition to God the Father and God the Son-Lord to continue to bestow grace and peace upon the Philippian assembly.

“I thank my God upon every remembrance of you” (I:3). The remembrance of the Philippian Christians is an example of God’s grace not only to them but to Paul. In his gratitude for these memories, these re-mindings, he includes them not only in this prayer for grace and peace but in “every prayer of mine for you all making request with joy” (I:4). Aristotle calls the end or purpose of human life eudaimonia—usually translated as happiness. Literally, it means something like ‘good spirit,’ a spirit natural to human beings but often not achieved by them. Paul doesn’t say “happiness” but “joy,” xapá, which means recognition of grace. Paul is telling the Philippian Christians that he prays for them in grateful recognition of God’s grace.

Paul is grateful to God for His grace in granting “your fellowship in the Gospel from the first day until now” (I:5). The Greek word translated as fellowship can also be translated as ‘communion’ or ‘society’ (as in ‘political’ or ‘civil’ society); it implies sharing a common purpose, unity for a reason. Here, this community or common purpose is centered in the Gospel or the Word of God, a community Paul began to share with the Philippians when he arrived at their city in obedience to Jesus’ command to bring that Word to the gentiles, the nations. The civil authorities at Philippi recognized a challenge to their regime when they saw one, beating and jailing Paul, who now writes from Rome, where he remains either in jail or under house arrest. Joy is related to fellowship in the Gospel, which entails obedience to the commands by which God rules His regime. To rule as God rules, to ‘enslave’ as God enslaves—for the good of the ‘slave,’ not the Master, who, unlike human masters, is already good and who needs nothing—implies the particular kind of love Christianity upholds. Agape is precisely the love that does not desire; it is unerotic. It is the love of the one who intends not so much to ‘possess’ the beloved as to benefit him. Agape comports with graciousness and joy.

How so? Communion in God’s word, membership in His political society under His regime, acts as any regime does; it shapes the character of the members, whether citizens or subjects. It does so more surely than any human regime, given God’s spiritual power, the capacity of the Holy Spirit to dwell within each member of the ‘body politic’ that is the Church or Assembly. Paul is therefore “confident of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work [ergon] in you will perform [epitelesei] it until the day of Jesus Christ” (I:6). Epitelesei means ‘finishing’; whereas telos or purpose implies an end inherent in the nature of a thing, finishing implies its completion by a person or force extrinsic to it. Here, the extrinsic person, God, having the telos of bringing human beings into the ecclesia or assembly which He has founded, has begun to complete the work of shaping the souls of His subjects, whom he rules with their consent. Being God, He will undoubtedly succeed. Satan had interrupted this work, but Paul continues to have confidence or trust in God’s final victory over the enemy regime.

“Accordingly, it is just for me to think this of you all, because I have you in my heart; as well as in my bonds, and in the defense and confirmation of the Gospel, you are all partakers of my grace” (I:7). It is just for Paul to think this way because God’s regime is just and God’s rule is assured. It is also just because Paul, as the proximate founder of the Philippian assembly, under God, holds the members in his heart—that is, in the Biblical sense, in both his mind and his sentiments. Equally, it is just because they are in his “bonds”—they are fellow-‘slaves’ under God’s rule—and, like all loyal subjects, he shares with them they intention to defend and confirm the ‘constitution’ of the regime, which is the Gospel or Word of God, consisting of His commands as their Ruler. Finally, as fellow-partakers of “my grace,” they share in the grace God granted to Paul. The physical separation of Paul from the Philippians was intended to break up the assembly there. But the Church isn’t a physical community. Its bonds are spiritual, confirmed by the presence of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of all its members.

In confirmation of this inward, spiritual condition, Paul appeals to God as his witness for “how greatly I long for you in all the splanchnois“—all the inward affection—of Jesus Christ (I:8). “And I pray that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge [epignōsei] and in all judgment [aiesthēsei]” (I:9). That is, Christian love requires the rational limits provided by knowledge and judgment or discernment; it needs to drink from the springs of divine love as guided by divine omniscience and wisdom. Love’s “abounding”—its growth, its generous extension—is anything but indiscriminate. It but aligns with the Christian subject’s transformation in mind and in heart under God’s loving rule. The purpose or telos of this rule is “that you may approve things that are excellent,” as distinguished from those of lesser rank; that you may be pure and blameless till the day of Christ” (I:10). Christ has provided Christians with a standard for judging their ow conduct. Because the party to a case may not be its final judge, God reserves the right of final judgment.

In the meantime, to approve (and disapprove) according to God’s standard sets the subjects of the Christian regime onto a way of life consonant with that standard. “Being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ, unto the glory and praise of God,” Christians take little credit for the virtues they develop (I:11). The Greek word translated as “righteousness” is diakaiosynēs, a derivative of the word usually translated as “justice.” Justice is one of the four principal virtues Socrates identifies in Plato’s dialogue, The Republic, a word that itself translates more literally as “The Regime.” The classical understanding of virtue as natural strength of soul, developed with effort, shifts toward an understanding of virtue as Christ-given, a set of gifts; Jesus’ purpose in giving them is to honor His Father. Human virtue in Christ’s just regime thus becomes not natural but theocentric.

Further, the eudaimonism of classical ethics also needs revision. Paul’s Christian virtues have landed him in jail, an unhappy circumstance. “But I would you should understand, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the furtherance of the gospel” (I:12). That is, the Gospel message, which teaches Christ’s standard, enables those who hear it to be filled with the fruits of righteousness, to share the goods Christ offers to the subjects of His regime. Every regime offers citizens or subjects human embodiments of its standards, examples of its way of life. Jesus Himself is that example, and Paul has followed Him into martyrdom. It is true that Paul expects to receive rewards surpassing any human life has to offer, after his death. Christianity doesn’t abandon eudaimonism altogether. 

But why suffering in this life? Paul has suffered “so that my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace [more precisely, the praetorian guard, his jailers, within the palace], and in all other places” (I:13). Every regime has bonds, ligaments that hold its members together. These include the laws but also the habits of mind and heart which keep its members on the way of life that leads to the ‘end,’ the goal, the purpose of the regime. By serving as an example of the Christian life while under house arrest in the palace of the ruler, Paul exhibits the bonds of the new, non-Roman and indeed non-‘worldly’ regime in an exceedingly prominent place, ‘for all to see.’ Every regime has its guardians, its praetorians, its ‘National Guard.’ In his imprisonment, Paul shows the guardians of the Roman regime what the regime of Christ is, and he does it not only with words but in the way such men will most respect, the way of action. He shows them that his true bonds are not the ones he endures as a prisoner but his links with his true Ruler, Jesus Christ. As Pastor Kunkel remarked, the Second Letter to the Corinthians provides a list of the many afflictions Paul suffered, long before his imprisonment, all as a result of his spiritual bonds with the Christian regime. Suffering is itself a ‘gospel,’ a gospel of acts not words; like the Crucifixion, it witnesses the best ‘good news’ in the guise of the worst news. Indeed, “many of the brethren in the Lord, waxing confident by my bonds, are much more bold to speak the word without fear” (I:14). They see that Christians multiply under persecution, perhaps because they exemplify the courage so admired by Romans, and especially by Roman soldiers and guards.

During Paul’s enforced absence from Roman civil society, “some indeed preach Christ because of envy and strife; and some also out of good intention” (I.15). Hence the need for knowledge and judgment, but not so much knowledge and judgment of the motives of the preachers in question, which are hard to discern. It is true that some preach “out of love, knowing that I am appointed for defense of the gospel,” whereas others preach “out of rivalry” towards me, “supposing to add affliction to my bonds” by seeking to supplant him in his role (I:15-16). “What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth Christ is proclaimed, and in this I rejoice and will continue to rejoice” (I:18). This is a telling example of how Christianity circulated throughout the Roman Empire. Even when its principal messenger was incarcerated, not only could he use his incarceration in the imperial palace to convert those around him, at the center of Roman rule, not only did faithful Christians continue to ‘spread the Word,’ but even those who saw his absence as an opportunity for self-aggrandizement promoted the faith. Paul could afford to let God sort them all out. “For I know that this result in my deliverance through your prayers and the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, according to my earnest expectation and hope, that in nothing will I be put to shame but with all courage as always, even now, Christ will be magnified in my body, whether through life or through death” (I:19-20). That is, your prayers for me will be effective for two reasons: they are animated by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, who has the power to dispose of all things according to His wishes; and no matter what happens to Paul’s body—death, continued imprisonment, or liberation—its disposition will magnify Christ in the minds of men. Punishment is intended to be shameful, and shaming is especially powerful in a military regime like Rome, with its valorization of honor. But Paul isn’t chasing honor for himself, only honor for God understood as the Son and the Spirit as well as the Father.

This raises the question, should Paul want to live or to die? “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (I:21). True life is with Jesus in Heaven. “But if I live in the flesh, this”—this imprisonment, this suffering—is “the fruit of my labor” (I:22). “What I will choose I do not know,” as “I am hard-pressed from two sides,” namely “the desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is much better” than continued life in the world, and the duty “to remain in the flesh,” which “is more necessary on account of you” (I:22-24). This latter choice, then, will be his imitatio Christi. They pray for him, with his approval, because they know they still need him; reciprocally, he hopes to postpone his best life in Heaven for their sake. The heroes of antiquity die for their country, for their people, for their friends. As a Christian, Paul reverses this; he lives on for the regime and the people of Christ. 

“And having been persuaded of this, I know that I will remain and will continue with you all, for your progress and joy of faith; that your boasting may be more abundant in Jesus Christ in me by my presence again with you” (I:25-26). That is, unlike the boasting soldiers of ancient comedy, Christian will boast not of themselves but of Christ. They will do so because Paul’s return to them will be evidence if God’s providence, His care for them and for him.

But what if he doesn’t return, remaining under arrest? “Only conduct your political condition in a manner worthy of the Gospel of Christ, so that, whether I come and see you or am absent and hear of you, you stand firm in one spirit, with one soul, contending together for the faith of the Gospel, not being frightened in anything by those who oppose it: which is a proof to them of their destruction but of your salvation, which is from God” (I:27-28). God’s regime within His church or assembly has a way of life that may be practiced in the physical absence both of its Founder and of the founder of a particular community which adheres to that regime. It can do so if the union of Christian spirits and souls is sustained by the subjects of that regime—that is, with unity of hearts and minds—resulting in action, in continued contention for, struggle on behalf of, the faith of the Gospel, the doctrine of God’s regime. That faith achieves what all regimes aim at, namely, the salvation of its subjects or citizens; in this regime, the salvation isn’t preservation of bodies but of souls. On the contrary: “For to you it was given not only to believe in him on his behalf but to suffer for him on his behalf, since you are having them same struggle that you saw I had and now hear that I still have” (I:29-30).

A Christian community within the overall Christian regime consists of men and women who are subjects of their King, children of their Father. But in terms of their relations with one another, including their relations with the human founder of their community, they are fellow citizens, their way of life consisting of the reciprocity seen in genuine political life: praying for one another, uniting in spirit and soul, and struggling together against the opponents of the Christian regime.

This being so, Paul presents the Philippians with an ‘If-Then’ argument:

“If there is any encouragement in Christ,

“If any consolation of love [agape],

“If any fellowship of the spirit,

“If any compassion and mercies,” then

“Make my joy complete that

“You think the same thing,

“Having the same love [agape],

“Joined in soul,

“Thinking one thing,

“[Doing] nothing in rivalry nor according to empty conceit,

“But in humility

“Esteeming one another as surpassing themselves,

“Looking not at the things of themselves but to the things of others.” (2:1-4)

Here is what a unified political regime under Christ looks like. Given your fellowship as citizens (in relation to one another) and as subjects (of the ruling monarch, Christ), if that fellowship and that subjection are real—if you are animated by the Spirit animating His regime, a spirit consisting of courage, agapic love, fellowship, and compassion, all animating acts of mercy—then, as the founder of your local regime within Christ’s larger assembly, my joy will be complete, my founding purpose fulfilled, when I know that you think alike and love each other equally, consummating that love by joining one another in soul. The evidence of this soul-unity will be seen in your thinking “one thing” and acting humbly and with respect for one another, unselfishly, considering the well-being of your fellow citizens. Any regime requires some foundation of consent, of agreement, of thinking alike. “Let this thinking be in you as it was in Christ Jesus” (2:5), the Founder of founders.

What was the thinking of Christ Jesus? That is, what will be the bond of union among the members of His regime? Although Jesus was “in the form of God,” “equal with God,” He didn’t regard this as “a thing to be grasped”—something to be exploited (2:6). Unlike Satan, Jesus didn’t tell anyone to bow down and adore Him. On the contrary, “He poured himself out,” taking the “form of a slave, in the likeness of men, having been born and having the appearance of a man” (2:7). A slave is the opposite of a ruler, not even a citizen. “He humbled himself, having become obedient unto death, death on a cross” (2:8). At Gethsemane He prayed to His Father to be spared such a death, but then went to it, enduring the supreme public humiliation. The bond that unifies Christians isn’t sin (as it is in those regimes that valorize human glory or other forms of selfishness), nor can it be suffering for their sins, since Jesus suffered that torture for them; it is a mind that thinks humbly, obeying the Ruler of the ‘city’ or regime of God. Whether citizens or subjects, members of any political community may be required to suffer and die for ‘king and country.’ Christians, Paul writes, should be ready to do so, as he is.

The regime also has a purpose, a telos. Because Jesus as Son obeyed God as Father, “God has exalted Him and gave to Him the name above every name” (2:9). Jesus has received honor not from men but from God—so much so “that every knee should bend at the name of Jesus” (2:10). As servant, Jesus did not demand to be bowed to, did not compel them to do so; Paul recognizes that now, as the acknowledged Lord of Christians, Jesus deserves that honor and that obedience, given freely, by the consent of the governed. To this act of universal deference God has added the honor of speech: “Every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, for the purpose of the glory of God the Father” (2:11). Human speech will acknowledge the Ruler of all rulers.

“Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not in my presence only but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling” (2:12). Membership in God’s regime requires obedience to God, first, but in no merely passive way. As with all regimes, the Ruler urges and commands a way of life, a course of action consistent with the union of mind and heart. “For God is the one working in you, both to will and to act for his good pleasure” (2:13). Thought, sentiment, and action cohere in one way of life, a way of life impossible without the Spirit of God living inside each Christian, but also impossible without the active consent of each. The Spirit of life God breathed into the clay He fashioned, the Spirit whose intention Satan frustrated when he interfered with human consent to God’s rule, now returns, revivifying human life, enabling human beings to ‘become who they are,’ what they were intended to be by the Founder of founders. As Pastor Kunkel remarked, the initial salvation, the conversion or turning-around of the soul toward God and away from the would-be usurper, Satan, betokened in the act of baptism, is an act of divine grace; human beings willingly receive the Holy Spirit but that is not the end of their task. There is still this path of sanctification, of refining the soul in accordance with the intention of the Founder, of becoming not only a subject but a good subject of God’s regime. This doesn’t require the physical presence of Paul or even of Jesus. Out of sight does not necessarily mean out of mind and heart and deed.

In following the way of life of Christ’s regime, “Do all things without grumblings and arguments” (2:14)—that is, don’t imitate the Israelites as they trekked through the wilderness of Sinai, wishing that they could return to slavery in Egypt. Do not oppose your words to God’s Word in your hearts (grumbling) and your minds (arguments). Why not? So that “you may be faultless and pure children of God, blameless in the midst of a crooked and perverted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world; holding forth the Word of life, that I can boast on the day of Christ that I have not run or worked in vain” (2:15-16). Like Christ and like Paul, you will be true children or ‘sons’ of God—obedient to the Father. As such, you will light the way to others as living embodiments of the Word, “holding forth” the Word as you live in that crooked and perverse generation” (2:15)—that is, a generation that has strayed from the way of life God has marked out for human beings, a generation that needs the light of the Word, and the example set by those who embody it, if that generation, or any members of it, will return to that way, the regime of God. Like Paul, you will do so because you consent to do so and because the Spirit of God is within you, although unlike Christ you cannot rightly claim to be God. Whereas fear of God is the beginning of wisdom—the fear and trembling of verse 12—the completion of wisdom for human beings will come through a lifetime of holding forth the Word, readying their souls for the purpose of the quest for wisdom, for the noetic beholding of the Source of wisdom, after physical death.

That death may come well before the ordinary allotted human lifespan. “Even if I,” Paul, “am poured out as a libation over the sacrifice of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you—and in the same way you must be glad and rejoice with me” (2:17-18). That is, I may become a martyr (and did in fact become one) for the faith in God, and you and I will rejoice, do and witness my sacrifice gladly, for to me is to live in Christ and to die is gain. With this, Paul begins a careful discussion of a universal human (and indeed animal trait), the love of one’s own, a love that extends beyond ‘self-interest’ to include family—as teachers who meet parents of their students soon learn.

“But,” whatever may happen to me, “I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timotheus shortly unto you, that I also may be of good cheer, when I know the things concerning you” (2:19). I want to know ‘your own’; imprisoned, the most I can do is to send Timotheus in my stead. Timotheus is ‘my own’: “For I have no one likeminded [i.e., of a mind like mind], who genuinely will care for the things concerning you”—for ‘your own’ (2:20). Timotheus is ‘my own’ in that he thinks and feels as I do for ‘your own,’ especially your good. “For all others seek things for themselves, not the things of Jesus Christ” (2:21). By nature, human beings love their own, as does God the Father through his beloved Son, Who loves his creatures; only by Christ do I, and Timotheus, who shares my Christ-mindedness—my acknowledgment of Jesus as Lord, as Ruler—put our love of our own aside in loving you. And you know this is true. Timotheus is known to you as a man of “proven worth” who has “served with me in the Gospel” as a child with a father (2:22). With Paul and Timotheus, the natural love of a natural father for his natural son has a spiritual parallel. Therefore “him I hope to send immediately, whenever I see how the things concerning me will go”—adding, “I have confidence in the Lord that I myself will come soon” (2:23-24). 

But at this moment, “I think it necessary to send you Epaphroditus, my brother, co-worker, and fellow soldier, your messenger and minister to my need” (2:25). He, too, is ‘mine,’ but preeminently yours, a man sent by you to me. “For he yearned for all of you and was homesick, because you heard that he was sick” (2:26); he has longed to return to ‘his own’ because his fellow Philippians have shown love of him as ‘their own.’ What you heard is true. “He was sick near to death, but God had mercy on him, and not on him only but on me, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow” (2:27). God’s agapic love has saved Epaphroditus for you, and thus saved me by refraining to multiply my sorrows, already considerable because Paul has followed the regime, the way of life, of Jesus, the man of sorrows. “Therefore I sent him more eagerly, so that you may rejoice and I be less sorrowful” (2:28). “Because on account of the work of Christ he came near to death, having risked his life in order to make up for those services that you could not give me,” here in jail, in Rome (2:29). The bond of the Christian regime is agapic love, whereby Christians concern themselves first of all for one another—their own not in the natural way but as Christ’s ‘own,’ subjects of His regime.

“Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord” (3:1). Being ruled by Christ, being subject to Him, is no burden, since His love is for our good. For Paul, animated by the same love, “to write these same things to you is not troublesome but a safeguard for you” (3:1). A safeguard against who or what? “Watch out for the dogs, watch out for the evil workers, watch out for the mutilators” (3:2). As Pastor Kunkel observed, in the ancient world dogs were filthy and predatory—and obstinately so, returning again and again to devour their intended prey. They concentrate their ravening on flesh.  The enemies of Christians also work evil on the flesh; they mutilate, whether by circumcision, according to Jewish practice, or more generally, as the Baalites did. Christians have no need for forms of worship, ways of life, that include marking the flesh. “For we are the circumcision, the ones worshipping by the Spirit of God, boasting in Jesus Christ and not having confidence in the flesh” (emphasis added) (3:3). God has marked our souls, the entities which make us what we truly are, not our bodies. Bodies are superficial and also transient because infected by sin; only souls truly consist of what is permanent in human beings. Human souls are also infected by sin, which is why only the laws of God inscribed in human souls matter. External practice, ‘going through the motions,’ however good in itself, however it might make a person harmless, even helpful, to others, isn’t good enough for the soul’s salvation. Christians boast not in themselves, loving themselves secondarily; they boast in Jesus as Christ, as Savior. Their ‘love of their own’ has been transferred to Him, their just but also merciful, graceful, Ruler.

If any man is entitled to have confidence in the flesh, I, Paul, surely am that man, having been circumcised on the eighth day after my birth “of the stock of Israel”—in accordance with Jewish law (3:5). I am “a Hebrew of Hebrews, as touching the law,” indeed a Benjaminite, a member of the royal tribe, the tribe Saul, Israel’s first king, Paul’s namesake was born in. And I am a Pharisee, which means “separated one,” as Pastor Kunkel remarked; God Himself is holy—that is, that separate from His creation. To be a true Pharisee is indeed to be ‘holier than thou,’ marked off from the common run of Jews. Best of all, I was a Pharisee among Pharisees, holiest among the holy, having been a zealous persecutor of the the Christian Church, a man faultless in all regarding “the righteousness which is in the law” and therefore one of the Godliest of men of my generation, preeminently entitled to enforce the laws of God’s regime with utmost rigor (3:5). I have been, perhaps more than any other Christian now alive, a good citizen of the Israelite regime, the one who most sharply distinguished, and most ardently acted upon the distinction, between the citizens of Israel and the foreigners, the nations, the Gentiles, and also between such loyal Jews as myself and those who departed from the laws of our regime, those I regarded as traitors.

Nevertheless, all of that, “what things were gains to me, I have considered as loss on account of Christ” (3:7). Laws, like dogs, ‘have teeth in them,’ their enforcers inflict pain upon the flesh but cannot finally improve the soul, benefit what is both most human and what is most individual, most specific, about me. “But even more so I consider all [those] things to be loss on account of the excellence of the knowledge of my Lord Jesus Christ, on account of whom I consider all my gains to have been losses, mere rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not in my own righteousness as one of the law, but righteousness through faith in Christ, the righteousness of God (3:7-9). Obedience to the laws of the Hebrew regime requires obedience in action, adherence to a set of prescribed bodily acts. Bodily obedience to the laws requires a kind of ‘outward’ righteousness but imparts no righteousness to the human soul, at best only habituating the soul to decent conduct. Knowledge of the Person who rules, faith in the grace of the only true Ruler, the only pure, the only fully righteous and holy Ruler, surpasses all other knowledge and all other faith as gain surpasses loss. Gain in the ‘account book’ of actions in this world is less than nothing compared to the inner gain imparted by the Holy Spirit, which brings faith in that true Ruler. In any political community, laws and obedience to laws are important, but the source of the laws, the regime of the polis, surpasses the laws of the regime, prior to them not only in time but in authority.

To any member of Christ’s regime, knowing Him therefore takes priority even over knowing oneself. The animating principle of the regime is the ‘nature’ of God, not human nature, which is fatally flawed. Insofar as human beings can achieve righteousness, justice as defined under God’s regime, that righteousness will come by way of knowing God, knowing “the power of his resurrection”—a divine power, well beyond human competency—and “the fellowship of his sufferings” (3:10). Unlike human regimes, the best of which aim at happiness or well-being in this life, in emulation of heroes held up as examples of the right way of life, the subjects of God emulate Christ, follow His way of life, a life of suffering, sacrifice of happiness, liberty, and life on earth, “if somehow I may attain to resurrection from the dead,” eternal life in Heaven (3:11). Paul immediately cautions: “Not that I have already attained this or already have been perfected, but I pursue it, “if indeed I may lay hold upon it, the purpose for which Jesus Christ laid hold of me” (3:12). Every regime has not only a ruler, a set of ruling offices, and a way of life but also a purpose, a tēlos. God is the ruler of the Christian regime; the Church or Assembly is its set of ruling offices; its way of life is self-sacrifice in imitation of its Ruler; its purpose, the intention of that Ruler, is the salvation of the human soul, the resurrection of human beings from death on earth to life with their Ruler in Heaven.

“Brothers,” Paul reiterates, “I do not consider myself to have laid hold of [this perfection] but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining toward what lies ahead” (3:13). In this, Paul displays the humility necessary to become a good subject of this divine-centered regime. But more, he dedicates himself not to the remembrance of things past but to “forgetting” them. “Forgetting” isn’t quite the correct word, here, inasmuch as Paul has pointed quite emphatically to his own ‘past’; he remembers it well, if not happily. The Greek word, eplanthanomenos, literally means “wandering from” or “leaving behind.” Paul is leaving behind what lies behind, leaving his past status and the actions he took in the past. Whereas the hero of the Greeks, Odysseus, wandered from his home but longed to return to it, Paul wanders from his home, from his status as a Benjaminite, a Pharisee, and a zealous persecutor of Christians, with no interest in returning but instead with the intention of “stretching forward according to the goal I pursue, the prize of the heavenly call of God in Jesus Christ” (3:14). The Greek hero-sailor ventures out, fights in the great Trojan War, discovers nature, then naturally longs to return home, to his wife and their household, with his glory and his knowledge. The Christian ventures out, fights in a greater war, eventually to die in it as his Commander did. But he has no interest in returning to his natural home, intending to follow Jesus Christ to His ‘home.’

There is an old joke: “That man suffers from Irish Alzheimer’s; the only things he remembers are his grudges.” The problem isn’t limited to the Irish. Pastor Kunkel put special emphasis on this point. A Christian should not persist in chewing over things past, whether glorious or (more often) bitter. The cure for holding grudges is to set out for a far better future. Christ has already atoned for Paul’s sins against Christ and Christians. There is no need to attempt to justify one’s past actions or to wallow in self-condemnation. And not only is there no need; it is futile. By the criterion of God’s justice, Christians are condemned; only by the grace of their Ruler may they be saved from the just punishment that would follow from His judgment. It is for Christians to accept His grace, humbly and gratefully reaching for the prize that he offers with it. 

To his fellow Christians at Philippi, Paul writes, “Therefore, as many as are mature [in their Christianity], let us think this,” let us be of the same mind; “and if you think anything different, God will reveal it to you” (3:15). That is, God will correct those who wander not from their past but from His way and His purpose for them. “Nevertheless, let us hold fast to what we have attained” (3:16), not leave behind what the knowledge of our Ruler that we have achieved so far but follow it in imitation of me, observing “those who walk according to the example you have in us” (3:17). Every regime has its ‘model citizen’ or model subject, but the Christian regime, ruled by the invisible Holy Spirit, who prompts us to imitate the Son who obeys His Father, complicates a problem seen in all regimes: Who is a loyal member of the regime and who is secretly a traitor to it? Our fellow professing Christians need watching, “for many live as enemies of the cross of Christ, as I have often told you, weeping” (3:18).

Paul weeps for the traitors instead of raging at them (as patriots in most regimes would do) because “their tēlos is destruction” (3:19). Their “god is their belly and their glory is in their shame, their thinking is on earthly things” (3:19). Belly, glory, thinking: appetites, thumos, logos. The three parts of the human soul should be ordered so that reason, ruled by the Logos or Holy Spirit rules spiritedness a nd spiritedness rules the body. Such is the rightly ordered soul, a fit subject of God’s regime. The supreme example of such a soul is Jesus, who sacrificed his body on the Cross, even after praying to His Father to exempt him from that torture. That is why belly-worshippers are enemies of the Cross.

True Christians understand “our citizenship” to exist “in the heavens,” not on earth; it is from the heavens, not from earth, that “we eagerly await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ” (3.20). This is a rare example of Paul describing Christians not as Christ’s slaves, His subjects, His children, but citizens. He immediately adds that the Savior of Christians is also their Lord, but as members of His assembly or church still here on earth, they are equal under God—brothers insofar as they form a family, citizens insofar as they form a larger community. Upon His return to earth as our Ruler, Christ will neither gratify our bodily appetites nor suppress them. He will rather “transfigure our humiliating body”—humiliating to each of us because the body is loaded with sin and seeks, often successfully, to rule the better parts of our souls—into “conformity with his glorious body,” the body He sacrificed for our salvation, the body that, raised from death by the same authority which required but also enabled him to perform his “working” on the Cross, also enables “Him to subject all things to Himself,” that is, to rule all persons and all things (3:21). Willingly suffering the supreme physical agony and the supreme humiliation of spiritedness endured on the Cross, Christ will then transfigure our bodies, too, as he founds His renewed regime on the new earth, under the new heaven—all of which He rules. Paul weeps for those who remain outside God’s regime because their bodies will suffer a different transformation: the death and decay ordained, as it were, by the imperfection of body and soul produced by sin. 

Paul delivers the logical conclusion: “So then, my beloved and longed-for brothers, my joy and crown, thus stand firm in the Lord, my beloved” (4:1). Given the Lord’s agapic love for you, given the prospect of the refounding of His regime with renewed human beings on a new earth under a new heaven, remain loyalty to His regime in its present, imperfect form, in His assembly or Church. Imprisoned, not only do I stand firm under His regime but I am joyful; imprisoned, I wear a crown, in view of your own steadfast loyalty to the regime we share in. 

There is, however, (as in all regimes on earth as it is, with human beings as they are) an immediate problem to address. That is, the logic of the regime doesn’t match the reality of life under it—and will not, so long as the Logos in the person of God has not transformed the ‘materials’ of which it has been made. Only God can fully integrate ‘practice’ with ‘theory,’ with no contradictions. “I appeal to Eudoia and I appeal to Syntyche to think the same thing in the Lord” (4:2). “Eudoia” means something like “good journey”; “Syntyche” means “with fate,” “fortunate.” Given their names, these women should indeed be like-minded. And they have been so, having “contended alongside me with Clement (“Merciful”) and the rest of the co-workers of mine in the Gospel, whose names are in the Book of Life”—future members of the perfected regime of God (4:3). Despite this, the women are somehow at odds, evidently contending with one another not over any matter indispensable to their salvation, yet over something vexatious to themselves and to their fellow-citizens in the Church. Having contended with me, and with one another, they now contend against one another, and therefore against the spirit that animates Paul. Paul intervenes; to translate his word as “appeal” doesn’t capture the urgency of his language, better conveyed by the King James Version’s “beseech.” Pastor Kunkel remarked that the Greek word derives from “Paraclete,” Holy Spirit; Paul invokes the Messenger of agapic love, the self-sacrificing love which animates the unity of the Church. Physically absent from Philippi, Paul requests assistance. “Yes, I ask also you, true yoke-fellow”—that is, every member of the Philippian church—to “assist them,” to bring them back to mindfulness of Christ and to the mindset of Christlikeness, to the love that sacrifices personal preferences for the good of the other, so that each can continue her good journey in accordance with the right way of life, in good fortune (4:3).    

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice” (4:4). Why such emphasis? Because rejoicing restores right-mindedness, re-cognition, when Christians, warriors of the Spirit, fall into the wrong kind of warfare, into ‘civil war.’ “Let the reasonableness of you be known to all men” (4:5). The Greek word translated “reasonableness” has also been translated as ‘moderation,’ ‘forgiveness,’ and ‘gentleness.’ It is, crucially, rooted in the Greek word pneuma or ‘spirit.’ The Holy Spirit or Logos indeed partakes of reasonableness, moderation, forgiveness, and gentleness, as revealed in the ‘God-breathed’ Scriptures; He is the Word, one of God’s ‘persons,’ existing (as the Apostle John writes) from the beginning of all. Wrong contention, wrongful warfare, often derives from fear, leading quickly to anger, but Paul writes, “In nothing be anxious, but in everything let your requests be known to God in prayer and supplication with thanksgiving” (4:6). Let the Holy Spirit, who now dwells in you, be your messenger to God the Father and God the Son. “And the peace of God, surpassing all understanding, will guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ Jesus” (4:7). This reasonableness and the peace that comes with it can become known to all men, a light unto the nations, giving them an example of a community that need not fall into strife, into factions. This is cause for thanksgiving, for gratitude to God, beyond the gratitude Christians acknowledge for the specific gifts God grants them. God’s peace surpasses all understanding because the Holy Spirit knows better than human beings do; the Holy Spirit can find a way to reconciliation human beings cannot see, blinded as they often are by their passions, and especially by their ‘thumotic’ or prideful passions, fundamentally the self-regarding passions of fear and anger but also the nobler passion of honor. The Holy Spirit can address the dispute between the two women, remedy faction generally, animate union within the Church. 

“Finally, brothers, whatever things are true, whatever honorable, whatever just, whatever pure, whatever cherished, whatever well-spoken of, if of any virtue and of any praise, take account of them, which things you both learned and received and heard and saw in me, these things practice; and the God of peace will be with you” (4:8-9). The true, the honorable, the just, the pure, the cherished, the things spoken well of—all of these things bring the joy commended in verse 4. Christian union is not a dreary thing, a matter of self-abnegation, except insofar as the ‘self’ is a soul narrowed to the things of ‘self-interest.’ Nor is it an ignorant thing, a matter of ‘blind faith.’ Christian union is true to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, redirecting human nature back to its nature as the Father created it; as such, it is honorable, no source of shame. Justice and purity follow from the Holy Spirit’s guidance of the human soul, the ‘inner’ person, while the things cherished and well-spoken of register the ‘outward’ recognition of these ‘inner’ virtues. In this, Paul, as their founder/teacher, serves as both a source of virtues heard in his preaching and virtues seen in his conduct, his example. He has acted in accordance with his words, which consist of the Word of God. The God of peace will then bring to you the peace of God, removing strife within the church at Philippi.

“And I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at last you blossomed anew in thinking on my behalf, as indeed you were thinking, but lacked opportunity [to show it]” (4:10). Circumstances count; Paul acknowledges both the intent of his brethren and their inability, up to now, to carry out that intent; as for himself, “I am not in need of anything, as I have learned to be content in whatever [circumstances]” (4:11). Circumstances may dictate conduct, which should be guided thoughtfully, prudentially, but they need not dictate one’s ‘mindset.’ “I know both what it is to be humbled and what it is to abound; in everything and in all things I have learned the secret of being well-fed and being hungry, of abounding and of lacking; I can do all things by the One empowering me” (4:12-13). In place of, or perhaps supplementing, the natural virtue of prudential reasoning, God endows him with the capacity to adjust to favorable or unfavorable events and conditions. When Christ tells His followers to be as harmless as doves and as prudent as serpents, He intends to help them in both efforts.

Paul does not want the Philippian Christians to suppose that he lacks gratitude to them as well as to Christ. Christ’s strengthening of him notwithstanding, “you did well in becoming partners of my affliction” (4:14). At the beginning of the time when Paul had received the Gospel and left for evangelical work in Macedonia, “not one church shared with me in accounting of expenditures and receipts but you only” (4:15). Even when he traveled to remote Thessalonica, the Philippians met his needs. He honors them not because he sought the gift but because he sought “the fruit of the gift, namely, the profit that accumulates to your account” (4:16). In Christianity, giving or sacrificing for the sake of the advancement of the Gospel is the profit. Like a priest’s fragrant sacrifice of an animal in the Old Testament, a sacrifice for the advancement of God’s Word gives off “a fragrant odor,” “well-pleasing to God” (4:18-19). In return, “my God will fill every need of yours according to the wealth in glory in Jesus Christ” (4:19). That is, the gifts God exchanges for the gifts of Christians consists not only of material things; God’s greater gifts return glory or honor for a Christians’ material sacrifices in honor of God. God gives out of His infinite riches, which is no sacrifice, having already made the supreme sacrifice of His Son for the sake of the human beings now gratefully sacrificing for Him. “Now to our God and Father be the glory into the ages of the ages. Amen.” (4:20).

Therefore, Paul concludes, “Greet every saint in Jesus Christ. The brothers who are with me greet you. All the saints greet you, especially the ones of Caesar’s household”—perhaps the prison guards to whom Paul gave the Gospel (4:21-22). “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit” (4:23). As Lord or Ruler, Jesus Christ honors those who honor Him by grace, that is, as God to creatures, as the unqualifiedly superior Being to His inferiors. The exchange of gifts between God and men can never be equal but it can be just, as each gives according to his ability to each according to his need. The Philippians need much; Paul needs little; God needs nothing but wants honor as His due, given His sacrifice on behalf of his creatures his creation and wise rule of them, before that. The fellowship of the Lord Jesus Christ with the spirit of His subjects animates His regime, supplies its unity.

 

Note

1. Located near the northern coast of the Aegean Sea, Philippi began as a Greek city called Krenidas, settled by colonists from Thasos, a nearby island, in 360 BC. Conquering Philip II of Macedon named it after himself four years later; not only does it occupy a militarily and politically strategic point but its gold mines assured wealth to any occupier. It is almost needless to say, therefore, that the Romans eventually took it (this, in 168 BC); only a few decades before Paul’s founding Mark Antony and Octavian had defeated Marcus Brutus in a battle that marked the end of the Roman republic. It is fair to say that Paul’s spiritual warfare in the city mirrored the physical warfare and commerce it had seen for the previous four centuries.

 

François-René vicomte de Chateaubriand: The Genius of Christianity: Part the Fourth: Worship. Charles I. White translation. Baltimore: John Murphy and Company, 1875.

 

 

Aside from their attention to popular superstitions blending elements of pagan ‘nature-worship’ with Christian ceremonies, satirists of Christian practices have aimed much of their vitriol at Christian ceremonies themselves. They intend to deflate Christian beliefs by desacralizing the sacraments, sundering the ties of heart and mind implied in the command, “Do this in remembrance of Me.”

As in the previous section on the liberal arts, Chateaubriand begins his defense with a discussion of music, with Christendom’s distinctive sound, the Church bell. “To us it seems not a little surprising that a method should have been found, by a single stroke of a hammer, to excite the same sentiment, at one and the same instant, in thousands of hearts, and to make the winds and clouds the bearers of the thought of men” (IV.i.1). Thunder, the wind, the sea, the volcano, the waterfall, even “the voice of a whole assembled nation” have sublimity, have grandeur, but they all lack the harmony of bells (IV.i.1). And in its religious significance, bell-sound “has a thousand secret relations with men”—startling “the adulteress in her guilty pleasures,” catching “the ear of the atheist…in his impious vigils,” disturbing “the slumbers of our tyrants” (IV.i.1). “But, in a well-regulated society, the sound of the tocsin, suggesting the idea of succor, filled the soul with pity and terror, and thus touched the two great springs of tragical sensation” while invoking the supreme hope of Christian faith (IV.i.1). “Had bells been attached to any other edifice than to our churches they would have lost their moral sympathy with our hearts” (IV.i.1). But they have been, and so have not.

From hearing, the first among the senses that perceives the Word of God, Chateaubriand turns to the visual, to clerical vestments and Church ornaments. He emphasizes the use of candles in Christian services. Candles “perpetuate the memory of those times of persecution when the faithful assembled in tombs for the purpose of prayer,” “secretly lighting their torch beneath the sepulchral arches” and proceeding to the altar, “where a pastor, distinguished only by poverty and good works, consecrated offerings to the Lord” (IV.i.2). “This was truly the reign of Jesus Christ, the God of the humble and the afflicted”; “never were such exalted virtues seen among Christians as in those ages when, in order to worship the Lord of light and life, they were obliged to secrete themselves in the bosom of darkness and death” (IV.i.2). Fancy clerical dress and church paraphernalia easily invite ridicule from those who target Christianity. Chateaubriand wisely recalls the simpler practices of the early Church.

Words spoken and read combine hearing and seeing. Chateaubriand praises the Latin Mass. “An ancient and mysterious language—a language which changes not with the world—is well adapted to the worship of the Eternal, Incomprehensible, and Immutable Being; and, as the sense of our miseries compels us to raise a suppliant cry to the King of kings, is it not natural to address Him in the most beautiful idiom known to man? that in which prostrate nations once presented their petitions to Caesar?” (IV.i.3). Prayers in Latin “seem to increase the religious sentiment of the people” precisely because they do not understand the words, an “effect of our natural disposition to secrecy” (IV.i.3). The “disquieted soul, little acquainted with its own desires, delights in offering up prayers as mysterious as its own wants” (IV.i.3). In these passages, readers will see why Chateaubriand esteems mystery. It isn’t simply a matter inaugurating the ‘Romantic movement’ in literature, or of willful obscurantism. With Pascal, Chateaubriand understands the limitations of human knowledge. Whether he looks out at nature, up to God, down to Hell, or within, at his own soul, man learns to know that he does not know. The Enlightenment insisted that man could remove the shadows. Chateaubriand replies that too much light may cause man to forget the darkness unreached by the light he generates. To recover the sense of mystery and of wonder will make men less sure of themselves, more ready to rely on God. And if not that, at least not to despise those who do. Rather, to consider Christian mysteries “as the archetype of the law of nature” has nothing in it “revolting to a great mind” (IV.vi.13). “The truths of Christianity, so far from requiring the submission of reason, command, on the contrary, the most sublime exercise of that faculty,” an exercise which should include knowledge of our ignorance (IV.vi.13).

Accordingly, Chateaubriand lauds the simplicity, purity, and luminousness of the Lord’s Prayer—a candle in the darkness that neither denies the presence of darkness nor the possibility of insight. “Christianity, in fact, is at one and the same time a kind of philosophic sect and an antique system of legislation” (IV.i.3). Whether directed at “civil or religious matters, or only to the mere accidents of life,” prayers “have a perfect appropriateness, are distinguished for elevated sentiment, awaken grand recollections, and are marked by a style at once simple and magnificent” (IV.i.3). Christians have found a way to speak to God, whom they know and do not know, whose presence they intuit but whose intentions they cannot know except as He reveals them. 

The institution of the Sabbath day marks another limitation—the limitation of human political authority. “Sunday combines every advantage, for it is at the same time a day of pleasure and of religion” (IV.i.4). Since human leisure “is beyond the reach of civil law,” how will it be regulated? (IV.i.4). Given the flawed character of man, to release him from all constraints, even for one day, would be “to plunge him again into a state of nature, and to let loose all at once a kind of savage on society” (IV.i.4). The Sabbath temporarily removes the bond of civil law without removing the bond of religious law. In so doing, it concentrates the worshipper’s mind on the religious law, which the civil law, with its this-worldly penalties, might otherwise obscure. This is why the Christian Sabbath “shocked the enlightened understandings” of the French revolutionaries, men all too eager to plunge the French back into the state of nature, the better to recast them in an image formed by human hands (IV.14). Danton “wanted to separate the French people from all other nations,” rather as God separated light from darkness, “and make it, like the Jews, a caste hostile to the rest of mankind” (IV.i.4). This is Old Testament practice adopted by a false God for a wrongly chosen people. Danton substituted his own sabbath for God’s Sabbath, a “tenth day which had no other honor than that of heralding the memory of Robespierre” (IV.i.4).

But, say the satirists, is the Mass not absurd? No: “the ceremonial of the mass may be defended by an argument at once so simple and so natural, that it is difficult to conceive how it could have been overlooked in the controversy between the Catholics and Protestants” (IV.i.5). Sacrifice “constitutes the essence of religious worship,” forming a part of all genuine religions (IV.i.5). Among religious sacrifices, “the eucharistic offering is the most admirable, the most mysterious, and the most divine” (IV.i.5). Human sacrifice “belonged to the state of nature, when man was almost entirely merged in the physical order”; animal sacrifices, however, could scarcely “redeem a being endowed with intelligence and a capability of virtue” (IV.i.5). “A victim, therefore, more worthy of the nature of man, was sought after; and, while philosophers taught that the gods could not be moved by the blood of hecatombs, and would accept only the offering of a humble heart, Jesus Christ confirmed these vague notions of reason,” His sacrifice far more than the sacrifice of a body but an “immolation of the passions,” the “sacrifice of moral man” (IV.i.5). That is, the soul-agony of the Passion alone can redeem the sins of man’s passions. 

To those who insist that Jesus was only a man, not a God, Chateaubriand thus prepares an answer on their own terms: “The more deeply we study Christianity, the more clearly shall we perceive that it is but the development of our natural light, and the necessary result of the advancement of society” (IV.i.5). That is, as the natural reasonings of man progressed beyond the state of nature to civil society, and then to higher civilization, a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice “daily offered”—the Eucharist—corresponds to humanity’s advance from that state, from the primarily physical to the spiritual (IV.i.5). As the Legislator of His regime, Christ “instituted the eucharist, where under the visible elements of bread and wine he concealed the invisible offering of his blood and of our hearts”—a symbol in “which has nothing contrary to good sense or to philosophy” (IV.i.5). 

Christian ceremonies also follow this pattern. Unlike “the ceremonies of paganism,” in Christian ceremonies “all is essentially moral,” actions satisfying a God who cares for “the emotions of the heart and with the uniformity of sentiment which springs from the peaceful reign of the soul” (IV.i.7). Christian festivals as well invoke harmony, harmony with nature and its seasons. The more holy holidays entwine spirituality with the powerful natural sentiments of family life. In the days before Ascension Thursday, the curé calls villagers to assemble in front of the church, delivering a sermon in which he calls them, repeatedly, “My children” (IV.i.8). 

It was the lack of religiosity and of family feeling that doomed the French revolutionaries’ attempts to establish their own lasting calendar of holidays. “Men, speaking in the name of equality and of all the passions…never have been able to establish one festival,” while “the most obscure saint, who had preached naught but poverty, obedience, and the renunciation of worldly goods, had his feast even at the moment when its observance endangered life”—when “the statue of Marat usurped the place of St. Vincent de Paul” and the revolutionaries renewed persecutions of Christians, persecutions unseen since the days of the Roman emperors (IV.i.9). “Many a pious family secretly kept a Christian holiday,” a remembrance presided over by an “infirm grandfather” who emerged from his room to serve as “the ruling spirit of the paternal mansion” (IV.i.9).”It cannot be doubted that these religious institutions powerfully contributed to the maintenance of morals, by cherishing cordiality and affection among relations” (IV.i.9). How different families became, when the sacrament of marriage and “the sentiments of nature” alike were replaced by “the articles of a contract”—the law now “universally made a substitute for morals” under the regime of the secular republic (IV.i.9). The Christian festivals had linked living families with “our ancestors,” who “had rejoiced at the same season as ourselves”; Christianity “found means to give, from generation to generation, a few happy moments to millions of the unfortunate” (IV.i.9). Bastille Day offers only fireworks to crowds.

The true republic isn’t the one so celebrated. “Religion crowns her pious work in honor of the dead by a general ceremonial, which recalls the memory of the innumerable inhabitants of the grave—that republic of perfect equality where no one can enter without first doffing his helmet or crown to pass under the low door of the tomb” (IV.i.9). And “religion alone can give to the heart of man that expansion, which will render its sighs and its love commensurate with the multitude of the dead whom it designs to honor” (IV.i.9). With the funeral mass, the Christian republic of the dead welcomes souls into the greater Kingdom of God. 

Tombs provide the infrastructure of that republic. “Religion received birth at the tomb, and the tomb cannot dispense with religion” (IV.ii.1). The Egyptians saw this; “in Egypt you can scarcely move a step without meeting with emblems of mortality” (IV.ii.2). It was there that Greek philosophers voyaged “to acquire knowledge respecting the gods,” passing on the way the tomb of Homer (IV.ii.2). “Ingenious antiquity could imagine that the shade of the poet still recited the misfortunes of Ilium to the assembled Nereids, as in the soft and genial night of Ionia he had disputed with the sirens the prize of song” (IV.ii.2). And in China, then still an outpost of antiquity in a modernizing world, the people “have an affecting custom” of “inter[ring] their relatives in their gardens,” reintegrating them into life, keeping them close to their families (IV.ii.3). Among the Pacific Islanders, the Otaheites do not bury their dead but place them in a cradle “covered with a canoe turned upside-down—an emblem of the shipwreck of life” (IV.ii.5). 

Still, “we feel that [the Christian] tomb alone is worthy of man,” for “the monument of the idolater tells you of nothing but the past,” whereas “the Christian speaks only of the future,” of the soul’s ascension to Heaven (IV.ii.6). In desecrating such tombs, and especially the tombs of their kings, and in robbing the graves, the French revolutionaries unwittingly reviled the future even as they attempted to obliterate the past, the ‘ancien‘ regime. This “was tantamount to a conspiracy to overturn the world, not to leave in France one stone upon another, and to advance over the ruin of religion to the attack of all other institutions” (IV.ii.8). The result? The revolutionaries themselves “fell into the pits which themselves had dug, and their bodies were left with Death as pledges for those of which they had plundered him” (IV.ii.8).

Perhaps nothing in Christendom attracted the jibes of satirists more than Christian priests, to whom no folly or vice went unattributed. Chateaubriand begins with the first Christian priest, Jesus of Nazareth, establishing His divinity as plausible if not of course demonstrable. Son of a carpenter, a Nazarene, “selecting his disciples from among the lowest of peoples,” demanding nothing but sacrifices from them all subsequent converts,” He “prefers the slave to the master, the poor to the rich, the leper to the healthy man” while despising “power, wealth, and prosperity” and ends his life in agony and ignominy, naked and nailed to a cross, which then became a symbol of self-sacrificial worship (IV.iii.1). “He overthrows the prevalent notions of morality, institutes new relations among men, a new law of nations, a new public faith,” convincing men of his divinity and prevailing over the religion of the Caesars and, eventually, existing religions throughout the world (IV.iii.1). “No! if the whole world were to raise its voice against Jesus Christ, if all the powers of philosophy were to combine against its doctrines, never shall we be persuaded that a religion erected on such a foundation is a religion of human origin” (IV.iii.1).

His character has not been questioned, even by His “bitterest enemies,” and “no philosophers of antiquity,” no patriarchs of the Church itself, have achieved His moral perfection (IV.iii.1). “Christ alone is without blemish; he is the most brilliant copy of that supreme beauty which is seated upon the throne of heaven” (IV.i.1). At the same time, he exemplifies not happiness but sorrow and agapic love, “never manifest[ing] any sign of anger except against insensibility and obduracy of soul” (IV.iii.1). “If the purest morality and the most feeling heart—if a life passed in combating error and soothing the sorrows of mankind—be attributes of divinity, who can deny that of Jesus Christ?” (IV.iii.1).

Being human, no subsequent priest has neared Christ’s perfection. Hence they more readily invite charges of hypocrisy couched in mockery. Chateaubriand defends Christian priests against their critics, beginning with the regime of the assembly of men under God, the Church.

“We will venture to assert that no other religion upon earth ever exhibited such a system of benevolence, prudence, and foresight, of energy and mildness, of moral and religious laws” (IV.iii.2). Whether promoting “arts, letters, science, legislation, politics, institutions (literary, civil, and religious), foundations for humanity” in efforts organized by it upper ranks, or delivering “the blessings of charity and humanity” by means of the village priests, the Church “answers, by its different degrees, all our wants” (IV.iii.2). Of the main kinds of clergy—secular and regular—Chateaubriand must take special care in justifying the secular priests’ way of life, which requires them to mingle with the world. Initially, “all Christendom was poor,” priests no less so (IV.iii.2). But as men recovered from barbarism and civilization advanced, “it would have been unreasonable” for the secular priests “to remain poor,” inasmuch as “they would have lost all consideration,” lost “their moral authority,” among an increasingly affluent population (IV.iii.2). As for the pope, he became “a prince, that he might be able to speak to princes”; similarly, the bishops gained “equal footing with the nobles” in order to “instruct them in their duties” (IV.iii.2). “Raised above the necessities of life” by revenues derived from tithing, secular priests could move among the rich, “whose manners they refined” and among the poor, whom they “relieved by [their] bounty” and “consol[ed] with [their] example” (IV.iii.2). [1]

Secular priests have done some of their most meritorious work among the rural poor. “The peasant without religion is a ferocious animal,” lacking “the restraint of education or of human respect”; “the possession of property has taken from him the innocence of the savage” (IV.iii.2). Yet “he is transformed into a new creature by the hand of religion,” “his propensity to betray…converted into inviolable fidelity, his ingratitude into unbounded attachment, his distrust into implicit confidence” (IV.iii.2). The parish priest, in exhibiting “the charity of Jesus Christ, [has] made them one of the most respectable classes of the nation” (IV.iii.2). “Which of us, with all our boasted philanthropy, would like, in the depth of winter, to be wakened in the middle of the night to go to a considerable distance in the country for the purpose of attending a poor wretch expiring upon straw?” (IV.iii.2).

The regular priests, who have joined one of the religious orders, taking vows of poverty, charity, and obedience, trace their origins to the prophet Elias, who fled a then-corrupt Israel for the mountains. The line goes through the prophets to John the Baptist and Jesus, “who often retired from the world to pray amid the solitude of the mountains”; following them, the “celebrated saints of Thebais filled Carmel and Lebanon with the highest works of penance” (IV.iii.3). With all of these men, “divine harmony mingled with the murmur of the streams and of the cascades” (IV.iii.3). Later, in Western Europe, an early monastic community was founded by Charlemagne at Roncevaux “on the very spot where the flower of chivalry, Roland of France, terminated his glorious achievements” (IV.iii.3). Such were the communities that saved classical culture from the barbarians “as from a second deluge”; eventually, “the first anchorets by degrees descended from their eminences, to make known to the barbarians the word of God and the comforts of life” (IV.iii.3). And the monasteries are still needed. “When the evils of a barbarous age disappeared, society, which is so ingenious and so effective in its means of tormenting man, knew well how to invent a thousand other sources of misery, which drive us into solitude! How often does disappointment, treachery, and profound disgust, make us wish to escape the world!” (IV.iii.3). We have hospitals for attending to diseases of the body: “Why should not religion have its institutions for the health of the soul, which is much more liable to disease, and whose sufferings are much more poignant, much longer, and much more difficult to be removed?” (IV.iii.3). More, some people are simply ill at ease in the world, “persons of such excellent qualities that they cannot find in the world congenial spirits with themselves, and are thus doomed to a kind of moral virginity or eternal widowhood. It was particularly for these solitary and generous souls that religion opened her peaceful retreats.” (IV.iii.3).

Accordingly, the monastic regime ordains an ascetic and contemplative way of life. The Enlighteners, “either from ignorance or prejudice, despise these constitutions under which such a number of cenobites have lived for so many centuries”—a “contempt [which] is anything but philosophical” (IV.iii.4). If he would study them candidly, the philosopher will find in the monasteries an important moral and political phenomenon: “The more the legislator combats the propensities of nature the more he insures the duration of his work,” at least in small communities (IV.iii.4). And indeed the philosopher should know better, recalling the ancient philosophic sects and the regime of the Spartans. “Most of these religious laws display an astonishing knowledge of the art of governing man,” realizing something of the republic Plato’s Socrates could only found in speech (IV.iii.4). 

Why do such regimes flourish, for so long? “The unhappiness of man proceeds chiefly from his inconstancy, and from the abuse of that free will which is at once his glory and his misfortune, and will be the occasion of his condemnation” (IV.iii.4). Human “disquietude,” lamented by earlier by Pascal and later by Tocqueville, issues in “a wretchedness which cannot be removed until some superior power fix[es] [a person’s] mind upon only one object” (IV.iii.4). We see this in the mechanic, “more happy than the rich man who is idle, because he is engrossed with a work which effectually shuts out all foreign desires and temptations to inconstancy” (IV.iii.4). The perpetual vows imposed on the Spartans by Lycurgus and on the Cretans by Minos accomplished the same thing, as do the vows of the monks. Protected against “the illusions of the world,” the regime of the monastery “deprives us at most of a few years of freedom” in exchange for “banish[ing] regret and remorse the remainder of our days” (IV.iii.4). “The soul that is calm and cheerful would soon lose its joyful tranquility amid the troubled spirits of the world” (IV.iii.4). And unlike the regimes founded by Lycurgus and Minos, the regime of the monastery binds its members by their own consent, a vow which “offers to the heart a compensation for the terrestrial love which it sacrifices,” an “alliance of an immortal soul with the eternal principle” that alone offers human beings “true greatness” (IV.iii.4). Rousseau is right to say that man is born free, wrong to suppose that happiness consists in pursuing one’s own will; the novitiate “swears to make God the object of his love, and, as is the case with the Divine Being, he creates for himself by his own act a necessity to do so,” a necessity that puts his or her soul in line with the necessity set out for human salvation and genuine happiness (IV.iii.4).

The way of life of the monastic regime consists not of the illusions generated by the Enlightenment project but of “mystery, solitude, silence, and contemplation,” all directed toward a better apprehension of the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit (IV.iii.5). In this, no social obligation is neglected, as each monastery serves as a node of illumination and refuge, worldwide without being ‘worldly.’ “People talk of philanthropy; the Christian religion is philanthropy itself,” its monasteries offering refuge to lost travelers, to exiles, to the distressed (IV.iii.5). With it, “Jesus Christ has restored to us the inheritance of which we were derived by the sin of Adam,” since for the Christian “there is now no unknown ocean or deserts”; he “will everywhere find the hut of thy father and the language of thy ancestors” (IV.iii.5).

Moreover, “these rigorous orders of Christianity were schools of active morality, instituted in the midst of the pleasures of the age, and exhibiting continually to the eyes of vice and prosperity models of penance and striking examples of human misery,” a magnificent misery betokening the sublime victory over human passion (IV.iii.6). While “it is usually the task of the living to encourage their departing friends,” monk on his deathbed “summons his companions and even his superiors to works of penance” (IV.iii.6). In this, he embodies the Christian regime itself, a religion that “has drawn from the tomb all the morality that underlies it” (IV.iii.6). Had man “remained immortal after the fall, he would never perhaps have been acquainted with virtue” (IV.iii.6), never needing to concentrate his mind and heart on the need for it, and especially the need for charity or agapic love. “In the performance of these pious duties” that flow from that love, “the sweat has often been seen to flow from the brow of these sympathizing monks and to trickle upon their robes, making them forever sacred, in spite of the sarcasms of infidels” (IV.iii.6). Even in the face of “the lowest depths of misfortune,” when a man found guilty of a capital crime stands on the scaffold, next to “the avenging sword” of justice stands the “man of peace,” offering “pity and hope” and even absolution to him who is about to die, whether innocent or guilty but repentant (IV.iii.6).

Nor do regular priests confine themselves to the monasteries. “The ancient philosopher themselves never quitted the enchanting walks of Academus and the pleasures of Athens to go, under the guidance of a sublime impulse, to civilize the savage, to instruct the ignorant, to cure the sick, to clothe the poor, to sow the seeds of peace and harmony among hostile nations; but this is what Christians have done and are still doing every day” (IV.iv.1). From France, the Jesuit Order had sent missionaries to the Levant, China, Guinea, and the Antilles, but Chateaubriand is especially interested in their mission to Paraguay. When the Jesuits arrived, the Spanish had not yet “extended their devastations” there” (IV.iv.4). “In the recesses of its forests the missionaries undertook to found a Christian republic and to confer at least upon a small number of Indians those blessing which they had not been able to procure for all”—one of “the noblest designs that ever entered into the heart of man” (IV.iv.4). At the Jesuits’ request, the Spanish crown granted liberty to any indigenes who converted to Christianity—much to the displeasure of the Spanish colonists. When some of the priests were “massacred and devoured by the savages,” other priests would perform the funeral rites, singing the Te Deum “over the grave of the martyr” (IV.iv.4). This so “astonished the barbarian hordes” that they began to listen to the message of the remaining priests. As it happens, “the savages of that region were extremely sensible to the charms of music”; caught “by this pious snare,” this “foretaste of the social virtues and of the first sweets of humanity,” they more and more began to approach the Jesuits in peace (IV.iv.4). “Thus the Christian religion realized in the forests of America what fabulous history relates of an Orpheus and an Amphion—a reflection so natural that it occurred to the missionaries themselves” (IV.iv.4). 

Perhaps as much to band together against feared Portuguese slave traders operating out of nearby Brazil, thirty members of the Guarani tribe joined with the Jesuits to found “that celebrated Christian commonwealth which seemed to be a relic of antiquity discovered in the New World,” an act “confirm[ing]under our own eyes the great truth known to Greece and Rome—that men are to be civilized and empires founded, not by the abstract principles of philosophy,” as the Enlighteners suppose, “but by the aid of religion” (IV.iv.5). Armed and trained, the Guarani defended themselves successfully against the slavers, thereby “afford[ing] an example of a state exempt both from the dangers of a wholly military constitution, like that of Lacedaemon, and the inconveniences of a wholly pacific community, such as that of the Quaker. The great political problem was solved. Agriculture, which sustains, and arms, which preserve, were here united. The Guaranis were planters, though they had no slaves, and soldiers without being ferocious—immense and sublime advantages, which they owed to the Christian religion, and which neither the Greeks nor the Romans had ever enjoyed under their system of polytheism. In every thing a wise medium was observed.” (IV.iv.5). The regime was a republic rather more in Plato’s sense than in the Roman, much less the American or the French; it was ruled by the Jesuits, whom the Guaranis “justly regarded as a kind of divinities,” taking the place of Plato’s philosopher-kings in the never-to-be-realized ‘city in speech.’ Such a regime could, however, be realized in practice by Christianity, whereby the Guarinis’ longstanding “spirit of cruelty and vengeance,” along with “the grossest vices which characterize the Indian tribes, were transformed into a spirit of meekness, patience, and chastity” (IV.i.5). Lawsuits were unknown, as was private property, and the citizens “enjoy[ed] the advantages of civilized life without having ever quitted the desert,” experiencing “a happiness unprecedented in the world,” Il Cristianesimo felice (IV.iv.5).

Several decades later, the Christian republic was destroyed by Portuguese and Spanish secularists, now in full-throated ‘Enlightenment’ mode in Europe, where the Jesuit order was suppressed in 1757. “Infidelity triumphed at the sight of Indians consigned in the New World to an execrable servitude, all Europe re-echoed its pretended philanthropy and love of liberty!” (IV.iv.5). Today, “the simple Christian of Paraguay, now buried in the mines of Potosi,” where they work as slaves but “doubtless adoring the hand which has smitten them,” working to win “a place in that republic of the saints which is beyond the reach of the persecutions of men” (IV.iv.5). As for the Jesuits, “they have always maintained that liberty is an imprescriptible right of the Christian,” a point that English Protestants in their own colonies acknowledge backhandedly by “defer[ring] the baptism of the Negro until the hour of death,” in an attempt “to conciliate cupidity and conscience” (IV.iv.7). It is the ‘enlightened’ French imperialism, with its “vain, boasting philanthropy,” which “has ruined everything” in its New World colonies, where the slaves revolted violently (IV.iv.7). 

Having traveled to North America, Chateaubriand readily tells the history of French and English dealings with the Hurons and the Iroquois. “Witty, gay, and sprightly, yet deceitful, brave, and eloquent, elated with success, dispirited by adverse fortune, and governed by their women,” with “more honor than patriotism,” the Hurons were the Athenians of the North American nations (IV.iv.8). “Politic, taciturn, and demure, burning with the desire of dominion, capable of the greatest vices and of the most sublime virtues, sacrificing everything to the welfare of their country,” the Iroquois were the Spartans (IV.iv.8). It is almost needless to add that, “by a natural instinct,” the Hurons allied with the French, the Iroquois with the English (IV.iv.8), although over the years both played the European colonists against the other. As in Paraguay, “France owed almost all her success” in New France “to the Jesuits,” failing there because the secular administrators interfered with the priests’ “good intentions” (IV.iv.8). “I myself met one of these apostles of religion amid the solitudes of America,” a “tall, venerable man” with whom he discussed the priest’s sufferings there, and also the sufferings of the French during the Revolution (IV.iv.8). “Those to whom a priest is an object of hatred and ridicule will rejoice in these torments of the confessors of the faith,” blaming them on priestly “fanaticism” (IV.iv.8). “With disdainful pity they will ask, What business had these monks in the wilds of America?” (IV.iv.8). Chateaubriand answers, “They went merely in obedience to the injunction of that Master who said to them, ‘Go ye and teach all nations'” (IV.iv.8).  The “simplicity and heroism” of Christian missionaries is “a just subject of pride for Europe, and in particular, for France, which furnished the greatest number” of them (IV.iv.9). He is confident that “never will men of science, dispatched to distant countries with all the instruments and all the plans of an academy, be able to effect what a poor monk, setting out on foot from his convent, accomplished singly with his rosary and his breviary” (IV.v.8).

In addition to the missionary orders, Christians also extended Christendom by means of its military orders, including the Knights of Malta, the Teutonic orders, and the Knights of Calatraya and St. Jago-of-the-Sword. These orders animated “the age of chivalry,” which Chateaubriand calls “the only poetical period of our history” (IV.v.1). These “chaste heroes and warriors who talk of nothing but love” defended Europe from the Turks at Rhodes, causing the Emperor Suleiman to lose “one hundred thousand men before its walls” before forcing the knights to retreat to Malta, where they made a successful stand against Muslim aggression (IV.v.1). In northern Europe, the Teutonic order subdued several barbarian tribes, “oblig[ing] them to embrace a social life and to attend to agricultural pursuits” (IV.v.3). And in Spain the knights fought the Moors, “another enemy still more dangerous, perhaps, than the Turks and the Prussians, because fixed in the very center of Europe” (IV.v.3). “Several times on the point of enslaving Christendom,” the Moors practiced polygamy and slavery and, “in their despotic and jealous disposition,” posed “an invincible obstacle to civilization and the welfare of mankind” (IV.v.3). Thanks to the firm bonds of their Christian vows, the Knights of Caltraya and St. Jago-of-the-Sword “formed associations of men who swore to spill the last drop of blood for their country” and pursued the Muslims to the Middle East itself in an attempt to defeat an empire that ranged from the walls of Vienna in the West to those of Delhi in the East (IV.v.3). So long as chivalry remained under the influence of the Catholic Church, it proved “a most powerful auxiliary for the advancement of civilization,” but once it became, “at a later period,” the “embodiment of a worldly principle,” aiming “solely at the exaltation of material beauty” and of the martial spirit of dueling, “it introduced an imaginary and independent principle of honor outside of the duty imposed by the divine law” (IV.iv.3).

In its original form, chivalry was fostered by an education both Christian and aristocratic. A youth who aspired to knighthood took a position as page in the castle of a baron. “Here were inculcated the first lessons of fidelity to God and the fair sex,” the latter often in the person of the baron’s daughter, whom he was allowed to adore under her father’s watchful eye (IV.v.4). “Excited by love to valor, the page practiced the manly exercises which opened for him the way to honor” hunting, falconry, horsemanship, maneuvers in full armor (IV.v.4). After completing his service, he became an esquire, with “religion always presid[ing] over these changes” (IV.v.4). He attended the knight’s table in times of peace, his weapons in times of war; finally, he was himself “admitted to the honors of knighthood” (IV.v.4). “The disinterestedness of the knights—the elevation of soul which acquired for some of them the glorious title of irreproachable—shall crown the delineations of the Christian virtues” (IV.v.4).

Chateaubriand concludes The Genius of Christianity with an account of the services Christian clergy and Christianity itself have rendered to mankind. Given Christianity’s “many admirable institutions” and “inconceivable sacrifices,” he “firmly believe[s] that this merit alone of the Christian religion would be sufficient to atone for all the sins of mankind” (IV.vi.1)—a decidedly heterodox, not to say heretical claim according to Christianity itself, as Chateaubriand likely understands, but one that may blunt the ire of anti-religionists. Thinking of them, he immediately exclaims, “Heavenly religion, that compels us to love those wretched beings by whom it is calumniated!” (IV.vi.1).

Christendom is “a vast republic,” marbled throughout Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa (IV.vi.1). Hundreds of millions of souls have been touched by it, practicing the virtues Christianity commends for eighteen hundred years. Its leading institutions, apart from the Church offices themselves, are hospitals and schools; it has promoted the fine arts and sciences, agriculture, the rule of law, artisanship, manufacturing, and commerce. Contra Machiavelli, it has improved politics and government while fostering international understanding.

Its hospitals embody the “exclusively Christian virtue,” charity, a virtue “unknown to the ancients” (IV.vi.2). [2] “The primitive believers, instructed in this great virtue formed a general fund for the relief of the poor, the sick, and the traveler”; “this was the commencement of hospitals” (IV.vi.2). The ancients dealt with the poor and the sick with “two methods”: infanticide and slavery (IV.vi.2). But there is “no wretchedness beyond the sphere of [Christian] love” (IV.vi.2).

After alleviating human suffering, the next benefit of Christianity is enlightenment—a term Chateaubriand for which readily contests with the philosophes. “Christians were not afraid of the light, since they opened to us the sources of us,” preserving “those precious stores which they had collected at the hazard of their lives among the ruins of Greece and Rome” (IV.vi.5). Further, “all the European universities were founded either by religious princes, or by bishops or priests, and they were all under the direction of different Christian orders,” making France preeminently “a Christian Athens” (IV.vi.5). “After a revolution which has relaxed the ties of morality and interrupted the course of studies, a society at once religious and literary would apply an infallible remedy to the source of our calamities” (IV.vi.5). The Benedictines and Jesuits in were “profound scholars,” and the Jesuits ordered their society with particular care for education. After training a candidate for ten years in order “to ascertain the bent of his genius,” then assigning him to hospital service and a pilgrimage “to accustom him to the sight of human afflictions, and to prepare him for the fatigues of the missions,” he was assigned an appropriate task (IV.vi.5). Those whose “qualities…are calculated to shine in society” were placed in a capital city, introduced at court and among the great” (IV.vi.5). But those with a “genius adapted to solitude” were employed in a library; those with “a luminous understanding, a correct judgment, and a patient disposition” became college professors, while those who “displayed talents for governing men” would be sent to rule in Paraguay (IV.vi.5). When the Jesuits were suppressed in Europe, a half-century before Chateaubriand wrote, “learning sustained an irreparable loss” and education “never perfectly recovered” (IV.vi.5).

Respecting the fine arts and sciences, the Church not only educated youth and conducted research into antiquities, it rewarded scholars and scientists, taking “the lead in the general solicitude for the promotion of knowledge (IV.vi.6). “Those who represent Christianity as checking the advancement of learning manifestly contradict all historical evidences,” as “in every country, civilization has invariably followed the introduction of the gospel”—unlike “the religions of Mohammed, Brama, and Confucius, which have limited the progress of society and forced man to grow old while yet in his infancy” (IV.vi.6). Indeed, “most of the discoveries which have changed the system of the civilized world were made by members of the Church”: gunpowder, the telescope, bombshells, the mariner’s compass, and clockwork (IV.vi.6).

Christian clergy introduced a more general practice of agriculture to our barbaric European ancestors. “Almost all the grants made to the monasteries in the early ages of the Church consisted of wastes which the monks brought into cultivation with their own hands” (IV.vi.7). Their example “undermined those barbarous prejudices” of warrior societies “which looked with contempt upon the art of agriculture” (IV.vi.7). “The peasant learned in the convent to turn up the glebe and to fertilize the soil. The baron began to seek in his fields treasures less precarious than what he procured by arms” (IV.vi.7).

Barbarian Europe was lawless, and therefore without secure modes of travel. Without roads or inns, “her woods…infested by robbers and assassins,” Europe found in “religion alone, like a massive column rising from the midst of Gothic ruins,” “shelter and a point of communication to mankind” (IV.vi.8). Monks formed companies of bridge-builders, post-houses and roads. With the development of that infrastructures, pilgrimages became possible, drawing “all ranks of people from their homes” in a movement that “powerfully contributed to the progress of civilization and letters” (IV.vi.8). “There was not a pilgrim that returned to his native village but left behind him some prejudice and brought back some new idea” (IV.vi.8). Even the wars of the crusades extracted the well-rooted peasant from his land. “If we could recall to life one of those ancient vassals whom we are accustomed to represent to ourselves as stupid slaves, we should, perhaps, be surprised to find him possessed of more intelligence and information than the free rustic off the present day” (IV.vi.8).

Contra Machiavelli and his philosophe followers, “nothing is more at variance with historical truth than to represent the first monks as indolent people who lied in affluence at the expense of human superstition” (IV.vi.9). While his religious order might acquire wealth, “the lives of the monks individually was one of great self-denial” (IV.vi.6). They were fully engaged in the mechanical arts, manufacturing, and commerce—far from the “pious sluggards” of Enlightenment satire (IV.vi.9). 

The Church also promoted civil and criminal law. It made sense to rulers to employs priests as mediators in disputes, as “they were a kind of natural justices of the peace,” so much so “that the religious spirit operated at a thousand points and in a thousand ways upon the law” (IV.vi.10). The priests’ “spirit of mildness and impartiality” regarding “things which did not regard their order or themselves individually” made them well-disposed for all matter in what “is termed administration,” inasmuch as the Church’s own legislation, the canon law, derived from “moral principles in preference to political considerations” (IV.vi.10). Charity, forgiveness, and the practice of sanctuary all lent to priestly mediators a sense of equity that moderated the rigor of law. The Dominicans, for example, denounced “the cruelties of the Spaniards in the New World” (IV.vi.10). “As our civil code was framed in a barbarous age, and the priest was then the only individual who possessed any learning he could not fail to exert a happy influence upon the laws and impart a knowledge which was waning to those around him,” taking from the canon law such principles as the refusal to condemn a person in absentia, who has no lawful means of defending himself, barring accusers and judges from bearing witness against a defendant, barring “great criminals” from being accusers, and requiring more than one witness in a criminal case (IV.vi.10).

Finally, Christianity has decisively improved political life. As Cicero understood, and many Enlighteners did not, “the destruction of piety towards the gods” would destroy good faith among men, and thereby destroy civil society and justice in it (IV.vi.11). “Let us not deem it a crime in our ancestors to have thought like Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Plutarch, and to have placed the altar and its ministers in the highest position of social life” (IV.vi.11). Critics of Christianity charge that it has injured liberty and the public good. Chateaubriand denies this, recurring to “general principles” in his rebuttal (IV.vi.11). “Nature,” he begins, generates new things by blending “strength with mildness,” an example of “the general law of contrasts” (IV.vi.11). To employ violence or weakness alone would cause destruction “by excess or by defect” (IV.vi.11). In political life, this would result in either a “bold, impetuous, and inconstant” people or a “weak and timorous one”; in legislating for either kind, a founder must frame a regime that corrects their way of life, giving a “mild, moderate, invariable” regime to the one and an “energetic and vigorous” regime to the other (IV.vi.11). So, for example, theocracy ill-suited the peace-loving Egyptians, who needed military discipline, whereas Numa rightly instituted a civil religion in Rome, “a nation of soldiers”; “he who has no fear of men ought to fear the gods” (IV.vi.11). As a result, Egypt froze in place, by Chateaubriand’s time a prey to Napoleon, whereas Rome, the “queen of the world, owed her greatness” to Numa’s laws (IV.vi.11).

The French are more like the Romans than the Egyptians. “They need no excitement, but restraint. People talk of the danger of theocracy; but in what warlike nation did a priest ever lead men into slavery?” (IV.vi.6). In France, “Christianity was like those religious instruments which the Spartans used in time of battle, and which were intended not so much to animate the soldier as to moderate his ardor” (IV.vi.11). Aristotle recommends the encouragement of a middle class, which can act as a balance-wheel between the few who are rich and the many who are poor. In France, “the clergy acted the admirable part of moderators,” as they “alone possessed information and experience when haughty barons and ignorant commoners knew nothing but factions and absolute obedience” (IV.vi.11). The Church’s “superior knowledge, her conciliatory spirit, her mission of peace, the very nature of her interests, could not fail to inspire her with generous ideas in politics, which were not to be found in the two other orders”; moreover, having “everything to fear from the nobility and nothing from the commons,” she “became the natural protector” of the people, “alternately plead[ing] the cause of the people against the great, and of the sovereign against his factious nobility” (IV.vi.11). When “men unworthy of the name of Christians slaughtered the people of the New World,” the Church condemned “these atrocities,” and although “slavery was authorized by law…the Church acknowledge no slaves among her children” (IV.vi.11). 

Some of the better modern political institutions owe their origin to the Church. The tripartite English regime, with its houses of Lords and of Commons and its monarch, derives not from Germany, as Montesquieu claims, but from the Church; unlike the absolute monarchy of Spain and the “temperate monarchy” of France, England has enjoyed a “mixed monarchy”—really a mixed regime, not unlike that proposed by Aristotle, whose political principles were studied by Christian scholars in the ancient manuscripts they saved (IV.vi.11). What Christians first, then moderns generally added was the system of representation, “wholly unknown to the ancients” and first seen in the Church councils, where the supreme pontiff and the prelates were joined by deputies of the lesser clergy (IV.vi.11). 

Most important, Christianity puts all of these civil laws and political institutions under “the spirit of the gospel,” a spirit “eminently favorable to liberty” and to “moral equality” under God—the “only kind of equality that it is possible to preach without convulsing the world” (IV.vi.11). “Christianity is peculiarly admirable for having transformed the physical man into the moral man,” having taken the ancient principles of liberty and equality and applying them “to the mind and consider[ing] [them] with reference to the most sublime objects” (IV.vi.11). As a result, modern nations feature “an internal tranquility” unknown in the ancient regimes, with their “continual slaughter of gladiators: (IV.vi.11). “The meanest of Christians, if a virtuous man, is ore moral than was the most eminent of the philosophers of antiquity” (IV.vi.11), his religion having provided, through the Gospel, the formation of “the genuine Philosopher,” and its precepts “the genuine citizen” (IV.vi.11).

“What would the present state of society be if Christianity had not appeared in the world?” (IV.i.13). The succession of Roman emperors from Augustus to Nero and Claudius gives a fair indication. “A Roman, on quitting the arms of a strumpet, went to enjoy the spectacle of a wild beast quaffing human blood” (IV.vi.13). Little wonder that the barbarians overran the Empire. “What would have become of the world if the great ark of Christianity had not saved the remnant of the human race from this new deluge?” (IV.vi.13). The priests were “the only class amid the conquered nations whom the barbarians respected,” and rightly so (IV.vi.13). Were it not for Christianity, it is “highly probable that…the wreck of society and of learning would have been complete” (IV.vi.13). Philosophy could not have done this, as it “served but to propagate a species of impiety, which, without leading to a destruction of the idols, produced the crimes and calamities of atheism among the great, while it left to the vulgar those of superstition” (IV.vi.13). 

“Religion alone can renew the original energy of a nation” (VI.iv.13). The “initial excess of Christian austerity” was “necessary” to counter “the grossest violations of morality” by “the monsters of barbarity” in the latter decades of Rome (IV.vi.13). Jesus Christ saved the world—spiritually, as the Bible teaches, but even physically, as Enlighteners ought to acknowledge. Christianity is “so truly the religion of philosophers that Plato may be said to have almost anticipated it” (IV.vi.13). And in political life, “the time may perhaps come when the mere form of government, excepting despotism, will be a matter of indifference among men, who will attach themselves more particularly to those simple, moral, and religious laws which constitute the permanent basis of society and of all good government” (IV.vi.13). It is “the doctrine of the gospel” that stands as “the doctrine of a free people” because it combines morality with religion” (IV.vi.13). Let philosophy, then, “with a more enlightened zeal” than that displayed by the Enlighteners, “and with a spirit more worthy of her name, remove those barrier which she proposed to place between man and his Creator” (IV.vi.13). Accordingly, Chateaubriand ends his book with a logical syllogism: “Christianity is perfect; men are imperfect. Now, a perfect consequence cannot spring from an imperfect principle. Christianity, therefore, is not the work of men. If Christianity is not the work of men, it can have come from none but God. If it came from God, men cannot have acquired a knowledge of it by revelation. Therefore, Christianity is a revealed religion.” (IV.vi.13).

 

Note

1. Such arguments did not meet the unanimous approval of Roman Catholic writers between the era of the early Church Fathers and Chateaubriand’s time. Here is Marsilius of Padua: “Let us sum up regarding the activities of nearly all priests or bishops and other ministers of the temple and testify before Christ, invoking his judgment if we lie, that in recent times nearly all the said bishops and others practice almost the exact opposite of what they preach that everyone else should observe according to the gospel. For they smolder for pleasure, vanities, temporal goods and secular principate, and pursue and seize them not by right but by injustice, both secret and open. Whereas Christ and the apostles his true imitator rejected all such things and taught and commanded others to despise them, especially those who must preach the gospel of contempt for this world to others” (Marsilius of Padua: The Defender of the Peace, II.xi.6. Annabel Brett translation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
2. Chateaubriand believes that charity or agapic love “originated in Jesus Christ,” a claim that overlooks its presence throughout the Old Testament (IV.vi.2).