Koenig's Terrible Telos: An Exchange on Religion and Politics

At first glance, it would appear that only a believer could offer an honest response to Mr. Koenig’s devastating and brilliant critique of Protestant fundamentalism. But since Koenig himself alludes to the Catholic martyrs of Central America, it may be worth a short commentary explaining what has been occluded in such a withering blast of secular critique. For it is not simply that Christians were on the front lines in Central America because of their faith in liberation theology, but also that that faith and its Jewish roots remain the basic foundations for liberal values in the West, including the secular liberalism which Koenig advocates.

Perhaps the best way to zero in on the problem is by gesturing towards Koenig’s jump between contemporary fundamentalism and the origins of Christianity itself. Relying as he does on the scholarship of Harnack, Koenig concludes that Christianity was a Greco-Roman manifestation more than a Jewish one. Specifically, Koenig cites Harnack’s remark that “church and doctrine developed within the Roman world in opposition to the Jewish church.” This is a contentious claim, and many contemporary scholars reject this reading or find it only a half-true. My interest here is not to delve into the minefield of studies exploring the development of the early church or the theology of St. Paul. Instead, one can focus directly on a specific line from Paul’s Letter to the Galatians in order to demonstrate that Christianity, at its root, could be something very different from the Roman world into which it was born. In one of the founding statements of Western humanist values, Paul states: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal. 3:28.) The founding of Christian theology by a Jewish thinker forced into the world a philosophy based on equality that barely existed prior to its advent. In fact, this frank radicalism did not survive long in the Hellenistic world; it had to be put down in part because Gnostic Christian groups, such as the Montanists, were threatening the basic makeup of the Greco-Roman household and by offering women positions of power. Women really were leaving home to follow the Holy Ghost. The Greeks and Romans, as Foucault notes throughout the History of Sexuality, simply did not have much conception of human equality, particularly when women were at issue. It was the Jewish root that gave the life to Paul’s letters.

That Christianity failed its initial promise cannot change the truth that this very promise was Christianity’s greatest gift to the secular humanism and liberalism that followed from it. The perspective of the history of ideas suggests that the concept of equality, as it has emerged in the modern West, must be traced back to Paul’s statement, and Paul’s statement analyzed as that of a Jewish thinker grappling with God. This is greatly paradoxical when one considers that secular critiques of Christianity itself – the traditional subjugation of women, above all – take unwitting inspiration from Paul, who is often reviled by feminists as an archenemy. But it is characteristic of secular thought in general to base its damnation of Christianity on what are, if not Judeo-Christian values, then at least values that did not arise in any other tradition, or from any other source. A brief survey of women’s rights in Japan, China, Africa, and the Middle East lends credence to the idea that this paradox is very real. (When one considers that women’s rights are probably more advanced in America than in Europe, the case becomes even more complicated.) And it is a paradox Koenig is not entirely ready to face, his invocation of liberation theology in Central America aside. After rightly following the contemporary fundamentalist attempt to graft itself on to the early church – all fundamentalists must force their views into an Original Constructionist reading of scripture – Koenig takes the additional step of generating a teleological model in which the scripture leads directly to fundamentalism and anti-Semitism. Here Koenig cites Walter Benajmin; the Catholic Church’s complicity in the holocaust is more clear evidence of Koenig’s case. But Koenig’s great leap forward, in a matter of paragraphs, from the early church, to Luther, then the holocaust, disguises the equally obvious fact that not only were many Christians on the front lines of resistance, but also that faith motivated resistance. Scripture, in other words, remains a battleground, and the assault on fundamentalism, racism, and anti-Semitism can take refuge in the New Testament. Fundamentalism must be beaten on its own turf, and it turns out that Paul’s credo “ye are all one” remains a guiding thread of international human rights and global justice.

A final remark. The paradox alluded to above becomes most extreme when one considers that Paul’s astonishing claims only came into being because he possessed supernatural beliefs about God and the end times. Paul was, yes, a fundamentalist; almost everyone was until very recently, and so the term loses its polemical relevance the further back one goes. Paul was a fundamentalist in the sense that Lincoln and Jefferson were racists. Paul did not start with the premise of equality, and then proceed to construct a philosophy around his theory. Instead, his understanding of God’s prophecies and his adamant belief in the reality of things we would now find absurd forced him to conclude that all humanity was equal. In other words, it was theology that drove the concept of equal rights for women into the fabric of Judeo-Christian civilization. Paul wrote in Greek, but the theological concepts that led to his conclusion – a conclusion that humanity has yet to accept – were fundamentally grounded in Jewish thought and Jewish prophecy. One might yet argue that the real problem with fundamentalism may not be its literalism as such, but rather its inability to accept that scripture is inevitably contradictory, paradoxical, mixed-up – one must choose which passages to take as matters of life or death.

Alan Koenig Replies:

Before addressing Tyree’s counterintuitive claims of a philosophic debt between progressive notions of equality and certain epistles of Paul, a trimming of his critique of the Terrible Telos is required. Until Tyree provides evidence, the author will stand firm behind Harnack’s assertion that “church and doctrine developed within the Roman world in opposition to the Jewish church.” The Pauline ministry rewired, some would even say hijacked, the original “Jesus movement” with its focus on fulfilling a specifically Jewish messianism as opposed to Paul’s more ecumenical efforts, and the spread of early Christianity was very much in opposition to various schools of Jewish thought.

Tyree’s charge that “The Terrible Telos” avoids competing strains of non-fundamentalist theology proves quite accurate and reveals an underlying rhetorical strategy that propels the essay. The conceit was to take a branch of Protestant fundamentalism on its own terms, literally, while fusing its reactionary interpretations with a recurring historical commentary on Christian anti-Semitism (as per Benjamin). Such a tactic provides a question, a goad for mainline Protestants and Christian Zionists alike. If “The Terrible Telos” hits its mark then one would agree that the “telos” is frightening and politically repugnant, an ideology to be confronted especially if its tenets are derived from similar religious wellsprings; if one thinks it misses then they would have to supply their own interpretation in rebuttal. This, “The Telos” advocates, is the substance and style of a progressive debate with which to challenge egregious policies based on religious conviction.

Alas, Tyree aims off-target himself when he opines, “But Koenig’s great leap forward, in a matter of paragraphs, from the early church, to Luther, then the holocaust, disguises the equally obvious fact that not only were many Christians on the front lines of resistance, but also that faith motivated resistance.” Koenig never mentions the Holocaust, and avoids questions of Christian culpability, going only so far as to assert that Luther’s “On the Jews and Their Lies”, “read like a blueprint for the racialist horrors of Kristallnacht.” This is safe, perhaps too safe ground to stand on. Christian failure and guilt over mass opposition to the Holocaust will be left to other scholars, and the author is well aware of the few, far too few, heroic counterpoints in the martyrdom of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who the Lutheran’s cling to with exculpatory desperation.

Leaving behind Tyree’s occasional inaccuracy, one wonders if Western feminism truly owes a philosophic debt to Pauline inspiration as per his thought experiment and what any of this divageted conjecture has to do with Protestant anti-Semitism or Christian Zionism? Indeed, a conceptual link between feminism and Protestant fundamentalism sounds far-fetched and subject to a quick refutation. Doesn’t a rather conventional American history of early twentieth century anti-Suffrage fundamentalists to the long anti-ERA Christian campaign (1921 to their victory by the late 70’s) to Beverly LaHaye’s Concerned Women for American (cwfa.org) easily counter Tyree’s egalitarian argument? As Karen Armstrong, in her The Battle For God, summed up the fundamentalist’s longstanding viewpoint on feminism: “Ever since Eve disobeyed God and sought her own liberation, feminism has brought sin into the world and with it, “fear, sickness, pain, anger, hatred, danger, violence and all other varieties of ugliness.” [1]

As Tyree knows, opposition to feminism, or efforts to legally guarantee equality of the sexes, constitutes one of the prime planks of mobilization, a veritable goad, for modern fundamentalists. For movement leader Beverly LaHaye, feminism was “more than an illness” -- based on Marxist and humanist teachings -- “it is a philosophy of death . . . Radical feminists are trying to bring about the death of an entire civilization as well.” [2] Such views can hardly be reconciled with a progressive desire to extend the franchise of civil rights.

Pauline waters run deep, and perhaps Tyree and the author are simply sipping from different tributaries. As to this Christian kernel from which Tyree posits led to a flowering of Western feminism, wherein the Apostle proclaims in Galatians 3:28, “ye are all one in Christ Jesus”, it is too easy to riposte that in I Timothy 2:11-15 he also thunders: "Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. . . . Yet woman will be saved through bearing children. . . ." Which statement has echoed more forcefully throughout Christian history? Christian history impelled the hard-boiled suffragette, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, to bravely state: "The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation." She also said of the Bible: "I know of no other books that so fully teach the subjection and degradation of women." The editors of Christianity Today note in “Christian History” that conservative Christians opposed women’s suffrage by a ratio of ten to one (http://www.ctlibrary.com/ch/1997/55/55h002.html ). So much for “ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Tyree (and Foucault) may not be exactly topical in his scholarship when he asserts: “The Greeks and Romans, as Foucault notes throughout the History of Sexuality, simply did not have much conception of human equality, particularly when women were at issue. It was the Jewish root that gave the life to Paul’s letters.” Alas, this sentiment is far too procrustean to be historically accurate. From the spicy tome, Roman Sex, we learn of the recent scholarship of Professor Eva Cantarella, who declares that “Roman women of the first century A.D. achieved a level of autonomy equaled only in late-twentieth century Europe and American.” [3] After the bloody Roman civil wars of the first century B.C. decimated the elite male population, Roman law reformulated to allow women the rights to inherit property and wealth personally. In addition, multiple forms of marriage, “from a highly formal and unbreakable bond to common law cohabitation existed”, and were framed by a shift towards easier divorce laws which allowed women to leave with control over her own property. These various movements of liberation took place while Christianity was but an uninfluential cult. Were these moments of equality lost to history or did they leave faint impressions and philosophic traces? Regardless, they do reveal a conception of human equality which took the Christian world centuries to attain. (Hmmm, multiple forms of marriage?)

Though on the surface his argument appears a bit facetious and counter-historical, on a deeper level of analysis, Tyree gets it. He has delved into the ancient text and come up with an archeology for a progressive politics! He writes, “One might yet argue that the real problem with fundamentalism may not be its literalism as such, but rather its inability to accept that scripture is inevitably contradictory, paradoxical, mixed-up – one must choose which passages to take as matters of life or death.” Questioning which passages are relevant and applicable strikes at the core of conservative fundamentalist’s insecurity, for such post-modern perspectives rob them of their conviction. Maybe this is far from a post-modern dilemma, as Martin Luther discovered after he unleashed the forces of Church democracy and scriptural interpretation and then had to face the violently discordant storm of countless schisms. In confronting epiphanic Charismatics of the Zwickau prophets or the almost proto-Communist peasant revolution led by his formal disciple Thomas Muntzer, Luther very painfully learned that anyone who makes the Bible a supreme authority has trouble deciding where to stop. The historian Richard Marius noted the dark, bitter irony in Luther’s method of scriptural interpretation when challenged by Erasmus’s assertion that even holy men have disagreed on scripture. “Luther replies that the Holy Spirit must guide our reading of the sacred text; otherwise it is all without meaning. That argument is as unanswerable as the doctrine of predestination itself, since we have no means of proving it wrong – just as we have no means of proving it right.” [4]

Armed with such ambiguities, progressives must engage fundamentalists on their scriptural insecurities while expanding the franchise, the term, for those worthy Christian movements that both inspire us and share our goals. Aren’t the Agrarian Christian Communists of the Bruderhof (www.bruderhof.com) far truer to their faith and texts [5] than Pat Robertson and his diamond dealings with the diabolic Mobutu or gold concessions with the tyrannical Charles Taylor? As Tyree so eloquently sums up: “Fundamentalism must be beaten on its own turf, and it turns out that Paul’s credo “ye are all one” remains a guiding thread of international human rights and global justice.” Amen.

[1] Karen Armstrong, page 311, paraphrasing Phyllis Schlafly, a Roman Catholic ally of the predominantly Protestant Fundamentalist Moral Majority. Armstrong, Karen The Battle For God, New York, 2000

[2] ibid. page 312

[3] John R. Clarke, page 29. Clarke, John R. Roman Sex: 100AD to BC 250, New York 2003

[4] Richard Marius, page 458. Marius, Richard, Martin Luther: The Christian Between God and Death, Cambridge 1999

[5] Acts 2: 44-45 “And all that believed were together, and had all things in common; And sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all men, as every man had need.”

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Josh Tyree follows up:

In a recent book, Mary Wollstonecraft and the Feminist Imagination (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Barbara Taylor reveals that Wollstonecraft’s entire conception of equality was founded on a Christian philosophy: “the nature of reason must be the same in all, if it be an emanation of divinity, the tie that connects the creature with the Creator.” This was, in fact, a view based on St. Thomas Aquinas, but purged of Aristotle’s pagan model of women as a defective version of men (“the male manqué”). As Elizabether Spelman notes in her review of Taylor’s book (“Assertrix,” London Review of Books, February 19, 2004), Wollstonecraft’s feminism exists in direct contradiction with the snotty misogyny of contemporaries such as Rousseau. Spelman puts the case very elegantly: perhaps contemporary feminists “can’t imagine that religious belief could be a very reliable source of politically promising views about the nature and place of women, given that religious texts have been used to shore up notions of…subordination.” Yet the simple fact is that, like Catharine Macaulay in the 18th century, Wollstonecraft’s faith gave her “considerable spiritual and logical leverage against sexism.”