Peter Leithart: Christian Empire, Christian Mission

Postost: Peter Leithart: Christian Empire, Christian Mission Andrew Perriman

In a chapter on “Christian Empire, Christian Mission” in Defending Constantine Peter Leithart challenges the view of John Howard Yoder—widely accepted amongst modern theologians if not amongst historians—that Constantinianism was a fundamental departure from the intention of Jesus and the New Testament. Leithart’s analysis suggests that it is not so far-fetched to see a theologically coherent development, embodied in the missional self-understanding of the early church, between the initial New Testament impetus and the eventual merger of church and state. …

… The argument here becomes very interesting. In Yoder’s view the proper model for the church’s relation to empire is to be found in Jeremiah’s instructions to the diaspora community in Babylon:

Jews were to “seek the salvation of the culture” of Babylon by accepting their dispersion as a call to mission. They were to retain their separate identity by adherence to a peripatetic moral and liturgical life—they defined themselves by a “text which can be copied and read anywhere,” centered their worship on “reading and singing the texts,” established places of worship without priesthoods wherever ten households gathered, maintained their international unity by “intervisitation, by intermarriage, by commerce, and by rabbinic consultation,” found the “ground floor of identity” in “the common life, the walk, halakah,” and confounded kings and emperors “with the superior wisdom and power of the one authentic God.” There was no “Jewish emperor,” and they were not to hope for one; their leaders might be in king’s palaces, but it would be as “intermediaries” between “the community and the Gentiles.” (294)

This is an “invigorating” vision, as Leithart notes; and as “a historical thesis, it accurately describes the experience of the church in the first three centuries” (295). It is even a “key vision that should guide the twenty-first-century Christian response to empire in a world after Christendom”. But it does not tell the whole story. Jeremiah hoped for a renewed Davidic dynasty; Daniel prayed for a return from exile; there is no criticism of the programme of Ezra and Nehemiah; and Isaiah ‘goes so far as to designate the temple-building Persian emperor Cyrus as Yahweh’s “Christ” and “shepherd” (296). The biblical vision does not leave the people in perpetual exile. …

I just purchased the book. After reading some of the discussion about the book, it is quickly moving up my "to read" list.