Parekbasis: The Need for a Christian Social Order

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

The Need for a Christian Social Order

Over the past century Christianity has increasingly ceased to function as public truth in the Western nations. Whatever a society considers to be public truth will inevitably function as the religion of that’s society. What functions as public truth in modern Western nations is secular humanism. Secular humanism is the religion of the West today. Christianity has been reduced to the status of a mere mystery cult, i.e. a personal salvation cult.

But secular humanism is too relativistic to function as a stable foundation for civilisation and must eventually give way to some other religious foundation. Only Christianity can provide a true, stable and lasting foundation for civilisation, and that the abandonment of Christianity as public truth in the twentieth century has led to world into chaos. The answer to the chaos that the modern world faces is therefore the revival of Christianity as public truth, i.e. as the religious foundation of our civilisation, in terms of which both individual men and nations, with their civil governments, must organise their whole life by conforming to the precepts and teachings of the Bible. In other words Christianity must be the established religion of all nations. This is precisely what the Great Commission calls for.

But this will not be possible without the manifestation of the Kingdom of God in the lives of both individual Christians and the Christian communities of all nations as a concrete social order that models to the world what true society should be, and by doing this calls the world to repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Without the manifestation on earth in tangible form of this prophetic social order the world will not be won for Christ. The Christian community is to be a light to the world. Only as that light is seen, i.e. only as Christians are seen living as a real social order that transforms the whole life of man, will the world be drawn to it:

“And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us his ways, and we will walk in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many peoples: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up swords against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Is. 2:2–4).

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Parekbasis

The word parekbasis is a Greek term meaning a going out aside from, a deviation or digression.† According to Aristotle there are three forms of State government: monarchy, aristocracy and constitutional government, which govern the State for the benefit of the common interest. Those governments that do not govern for the benefit of the common interest are deviations (parekbaseis) of these forms of government. In his Politics Aristotle says: “Deviations [parekbaseis] from the constitutions mentioned are tyranny corresponding to kingship, oligarchy to aristocracy, and democracy to constitutional government; for tyranny is monarchy ruling in the interest of the monarch, oligarchy government in the interest of the rich, democracy government in the interest of the poor, and none of these forms governs with regard to the profit of the community.”‡ According to Aristotle, therefore, tyranny is a parekbasis of monarchy, oligarchy is a parekbasis of aristocracy, and democracy is a parekbasis of constitutional government.

† H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1901), p. 1150a.
‡ Aristotle, Politics (London: William Heinmann Ltd, The Loeb Classical Library, 1932, trans. H. Rackham), p. 207 (Book. III.v.4: 1279b).

CIVITAS DIABOLI

“The civitas terrena carries within itself a tendency to parekbasis, to reach beyond itself, a tendency which leads to self-transcendence. For the glory with which God has equipped the civil power is always accompanied by the temptation to self-glorification. All too quickly the earthly monarch forgets that he holds his office from the heavenly King (Sbar. 6ff.; 83; ParalJer. 2.7). But at that point he goes beyond the historical task which God has set him (AEn. 89ff.; PsSol. 2). He forgets that political weapons are impotent when it comes to the last and most specific dangers of men. But he appears as a deliverer and bringer of salvation, and calls himself a saviour (Acts 4.12). He forgets that he is a sinful fallen man in daily need of forgiveness for his political activity. He allows himself to be honoured like God (Jdth. 6.2; Acts 12.19ff.). He forgets that he is a mortal being whose political life is, therefore, inevitably temporary, and he enthuses about the imperishability of his work (Dan. 4.30; Sbar. 82.2ff.). He forgets the glory of God and strives with him for his honour (MEx. 15.11; PsSol. 2.29; II Mac. 9.8; Mark 13.14). Then the Church which gives glory to God alone is nothing but an offence to him, and he persecutes her with growing fury and makes himself into an enemy of God and an agent of the devil (TestJud. 217ff.; VitProph. 50; Rev. 11.7). But when in its fight with the demons of chaos, the civitas terrena succumbs to its own demon then the historical role of civil power is changed into its opposite: from being a bulwark against antichrist it becomes the very fortress of antichrist himself (Dan. 8.9ff.; 11.30ff.; Rev. 13.14ff.). The civitas terrena has become the civitas diaboli.”

—Ethelbert Stauffer,

New Testament Theology

(London: SCM Press Ltd, 1955), p 85f.