Civilisational renewal and the biblical narrative

There seems to be a lot of talk these days about reversing the decline of the West as a formerly Christian civilisation. Here’s an example that I happened to come across. The aim of the UK-based Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) is “to draw on our moral, cultural, economic, and spiritual foundations to develop a more hope-filled vision for the future and, ultimately, to re-lay the foundations of our civilisation.”

The spiritual aspect is not marginal. Os Guinness argues that the “deterioration is happening because the faiths that gave vitality and unity to Western civilisation have become enervated and are contested or rejected entirely today.” But if the Western crisis is at core a spiritual crisis, “the solution needs to include a spiritual dimension.”

Civilisational renewal is not religious revivalism, but since the “spiritual foundations” of the West are historically Christian, the assumption is that it will have an essentially Christian value base. ARC reportedly has strong evangelical and more broadly religious representation.

Which overarching master story?

Guinness talks about the need for an “overarching master story,” without which “there can be no prophetic interpretation, only conflicts and confusion.” I agree, if only because that is patently how scripture works.

But what story?

He sees three possible outcomes: “a renewal of the dynamic that inspired the civilisation in the first place, a successful replacement of the original dynamic by another, or the decline of the civilisation” (9).

The first seems to me impossible: the triumph of the early church, driven by a very particular biblical vision of kingdom (we will come back to this), was a one-off historical event; the “dynamic” cannot be recovered and made to work again. The forces driving change are too deep and too powerful to allow anything like a recapitulation of the historical contingencies out of which Western Christendom emerged.

The second is, to my mind, the most likely outcome: a replacement civilisational dynamic is already in full swing. The West has been engaged in the chaotic and disorienting work of “modernisation” for a long time now, painfully tearing down old value systems, no less painfully constructing—as much by trial and error as by design—a very different moral consciousness. There is still a long way to go, the project will not be completed easily or quickly, it may not be very “successful.” But history can only move forwards.

Thirdly, there is a global rebalancing taking place that will necessarily be experienced as a diminution of the power of the West. Not only the authoritarian “East” but also technocratic globalism—a tertium quid in the rebalancing of power—constitute compelling alternative civilisations.

A joined up story of civilisational change

The overarching master story of civilisational change is still being written; there may be unforeseen twists and turns to come. Climate change may prove world-shattering. But to think the problem through in this fashion has immense theological value, because this is precisely the level at which scripture operates.

The biblical story, all the way through, is a story of civilisational change—or of change and the hope of change.

The flood was a judgment against the wickedness and violence of whatever sweep of humanity was within the purview of the cultures in which the story evolved. A new justice-based civilisation emerges: “And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning…. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image” (Gen. 9:5-6). Humanity is made accountable.

The monolithic civilisation of the descendants of Noah build a fortified city and a “tower with its head in the heavens” for the purpose of concentrating power in Shinar or Sumer. The Lord sees this and disperses a fractured and divided humanity across the face of the earth (Gen. 11:1-11).

Abraham is brought out of the towering shadow of proto-Babylon to be the progenitor of a new people, who will be blessed, who will be fruitful and multiply in the land which the creator God will give them. If the empire builders want to make a name for themselves, God will make Abraham’s name great and his descendants a great nation (Gen. 12:2). If there is no prospect of a global righteousness, perhaps it can be achieved on a small scale.

The descendants of Abraham are redeemed from servitude in Egypt and are chosen by YHWH to be “my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exod. 19:5-6). Israel exists in the land as a God-centred civilisation-in-microcosm. Israel functions as a priestly ethnos in service of the living God in the midst of pagan nations.

The “kingdom” narrative has its origins in the popular demand for a king who would, on the one hand, judge the people—maintain justice—and, on the other, defend them against their enemies (1 Sam. 8:6, 19-20). For all its flaws and contradictions, this becomes the defining political model for the government of Israel with respect both to justice internally and security externally. The coming of the kingdom of God in the New Testament would be a peak “political” event when God himself would intervene to judge a wicked and adulterous generation of Israel and dramatically reset—for the sake of his reputation—the relation between his people and the nations.

The Babylonian invasion and deportation of the Jews into exile mark a supreme triumph of pagan empire over the deeply compromised servant people of Israel. But they also see the birth of a new and frankly absurd ambition—not merely that Israel will be restored in the land around a new Jerusalem, but that the peoples of the region will forsake their idols and submit to the righteous rule of Israel’s king. At least, that is the prophetic vision, roughly speaking, that comes to be embraced by the followers of Jesus.

Daniel’s succession of beasts from the sea (Dan. 7:1-8) encapsulates for Jews in the Hellenistic period the great civilisational transitions—from the Assyrians to the Babylonians to the Persians and Medes to the Greeks and Romans. Throughout these long ages Israel is buffeted and besieged. In the end, as Jesus foresees, an ill-judged revolt against Rome brings a “final” disaster on the nation. The dangerous pattern of conflict, alliance, and self-preservation will not be resumed until the modern era.

The early church, however, proceeds with remarkable “faith” to proclaim the impending overthrow of the hegemonic pagan powers. Following the trauma of the eschatological birth pains, a new age will dawn; not a small number of gentiles, but the nations as nations will forsake their idols, serve the living God, and acclaim his Son as overlord (Acts 17:29-31; Rom. 15:12; 1 Thess. 1:9-10; Phil. 2:9-11). The whole stupendous edifice of pagan civilisation, finally and most fearfully represented by the “great prostitute” seated on the blasphemous beast of Roman imperial power, will be torn down and in its place a new world constructed, over which Christ and the martyrs will reign for a thousand years (Rev. 17:1-20:6).

A landless priesthood

It is sometimes argued that with the apostolic mission beyond Jerusalem and Samaria the whole world became God’s “holy land.” That, I think, is misleading.

On the one hand, the apostolic objective was the transformation of a particular civilisation, not of the whole of creation. I disagree with N. T. Wright that in Romans 8:18-17 “Paul speaks of God’s intention to make the whole world his Holy Land, to renew and liberate the whole of creation.” Paul has in mind, rather, the liberation of the physical materials of creation from subjection to the futility of idol worship.

On the other, the Christ-honouring civilisation that would hold sway in the age to come was not a simple geographical expansion of Israel. In principle, the nations of the Greek-Roman world remained the nations, distinct from that priestly people which now legitimately served the one true God in the name of Jesus and in the power of the Spirit.

The difference is that the nations no longer worshipped idols, they worshipped the God who made the heavens and the earth, they adhered to a new model of justice, and they acknowledged that supreme authority over all powers had been invested in Israel’s crucified messiah, seated at the right hand of the Father.

This whole geo-political-religious transformation may be described as a “new creation” in a manner anticipated in Isaiah 65:17-18; 66:22-23, but the church has become a land-less priesthood—a body apart, replacing the old pagan priesthoods of Greece and Rome.

Some implications

This account of things may then have important implications for how we understand the purpose of the church during the present civilisational transition.

1. The “kingdom” narrative, strictly speaking, has had its day. The New Testament envisioned a new political-religious order, established at the parousia, which would embody concretely the rule or kingship of Christ Jesus over the nations of the Greek-Roman oikoumenē. For New Testament apocalyptic, that pretty much meant the end of history—an uneventful happy-ever-after. From our post-Christendom perspective, however, it is apparent that history continues apace, and we are having to deal with the age after the age to come—the loss of kingdom.

2. A new controlling narrative for the church needs to be framed, probably in broadly creational and “humanistic” terms. I see no prospect of a recovery or renewal of “kingdom” as such, whether at a civilisational level or in the more manageable but menacing form of Christian nationalism. There are abundant biblical resources for this reframing; and by “humanistic” I do not mean the deprecation of the Jesus story: the church remains a redeemed people, subject to the lordship of its crucified and risen messiah, and empowered by the Spirit of the living God, etc.

These words from Tish Harrison Warren, from the book Uncommon Ground: Living Faithfully in a World of Difference, capture the humanistic orientation well enough: “We proclaim a holistic vision of reality, of what it means to be human, what it means to live well, what it means to know God.” It’s roughly where we need to be, I think, but it’s a poor account of the New Testament proclamation.

3. It is not the responsibility of the church to bring about civilisational change. The early church believed that God would do this in due course and understood its primary task to be the prophetic one—to make it known to the peoples of the Greek-Roman world that the God of Israel had it in mind to replace the old, degenerate polytheistic and idol-worshipping civilisation with a shiny new righteous monotheistic one.

4. If we cannot confidently say now that God will reinstate the old Christian order, it seems to me that the task of a landless priesthood is to go with the change rather than against it. But the church still has a biblical mandate to be vitally present in the civilisational process, whichever direction the world is moving in, as a dedicated priestly people representing the interests of the living God at a civilisational moment of enormous importance.

5. Because this is, in effect, an eschatological moment, the priestly function should have a prophetic edge. The Spirit of prophecy empowers the church to make sense of what it is going through and what lies ahead.

6. There is a two-fold behavioural dimension to this. First, the church needs to learn how to live and witness effectively through the trauma of civilisational change—through the birth pains of the end of the age. Secondly, I think that the church needs to model an optimal way of being human for the uncertain age to come.

The word “optimal” reflects the fact that social behaviour is always subject to prevailing historical conditions. There is not a single, absolute, ideal way of being human—even of being “Christian.” So the church should embody—no doubt in fragmentary and often contradictory fashion—the best way of being human not in any world but specifically in a post-holocene, post-Western, non-binary, consumer driven world, a world enthralled by technology, in a state of massive demographic flux, on the brink of environmental catastrophe, and so on.

So put off the old person, the product of a civilisation that is passing away. Put on the new person that is being fashioned by God to live well in the civilisation to come.