I first got into anarchism by way of Christianity. I realized that anarchism is the only political philosophy compatible with the teachings of Christ and the social doctrines of the Church. As a believer, I leaned heavily towards Eastern Orthodoxy, but was also influenced by Roman Catholic ideas (e.g. distributism, natural law theory, scholasticism) and Protestantism (theonomy, presuppositionalism, Calvinism, federal vision, etc.) If I were to list the most influential Christian thinkers to me, it would be as follows: Cornelius van Til, C. S. Lewis, Nikolai Berdyaev, John Romanides, Gregory Palamas, Photius, Jacques Ellul, Vernard Eller, Hilaire Belloc, Georges Florovsky, Vladimir Lossky, and Sergius Bulgakov. In the last couple years, I have turned away from Christianity (I simply came to believe that it does not align with all the evidence I have gained through experience), but I still remain an anarchist and am still interested in theology. I currently identify as agnostic or atheistic, but that does not mean that I do not value certain truths that I have gleaned from the Christian tradition. This series will explore the rich tradition of Christian anarchism. The bulk of this series is pieced together from things I had written back when I was a believer.
Anarchism in the Overall Biblical Narrative
In the beginning, there were no governments. God created Adam and Eve free. Governments did not arrive on the scene until after the fall. The state is always corrupt and the establishment of the state could only have come about in the postlapsarian corruption of man. The Garden of Eden was the prototypical kingdom of God in which man was truly free. He had no government to “lord it over him”. Man was to be self-governed, so he would need no authoritarian government. He would obey God's commands of his own free will. The law would be obeyed voluntarily. God was the King, the sovereign ruler, but man was totally free. God told man not to eat of the forbidden fruit but he left man free to do whatever he chose. God was sovereign but he did not exercise his sovereignty in an authoritarian fashion. God did not try to prevent Adam from sinning against Him. When Adam sinned, he was expelled from the anarchist paradise. He left the kingdom of God and was sent into the world. He left God's kingdom and entered into the devil's domain. He went out into the fallen world, into the “enemy occupied territory” (to borrow a phrase from C. S. Lewis). Moreover, the primary economic task of man was originally “to tend and keep the garden” —God created man for agricultural purposes. The Garden of Eden, the prototypical kingdom of God was an anarchist paradise based around an agrarian economy. (Genesis 2-3)
After the fall, all of creation was corrupted. Adam was the sum of creation. There is nothing anywhere in creation that is not also present in man—spirit, mind, and body. The human body is composed of the same basic material elements that comprise the rest of creation. Adam's sin not only corrupted himself, but everything that came out of him. His descendants would be born imperfect because of his fall. All die because of Adam. His mistake affects all men because all men descend from him. Corruption is a disease that was passed to us all from our common ancestor. But since all things are summed up in Adam (because the microscopic particles that make up his body are the same as the elements that make up all material objects), all of creation was corrupted along with man. Not only did man fall: all of creation fell with him. Death entered into the world as a result of this corruption. Death was not a punishment for sin. Mortality is simply the natural consequence of sin.
The state as a “social apparatus of coercion” did not come into being until after the fall. It owes its very existence to corruption. The state does not have a benevolent origin. It came into being when man rebelled against God. Statism and urbanization go hand-in-hand. In rejecting God's paradisiacal model (i.e. agrarian anarchy), men began to build cities. But when fallen men live on top of each other in cities, they find that they are all too sinful and greedy to get along. Sinful men built up political alliances in these new cities. And each faction would try to “lord it over” the other factions. The state originated as a “thugocracy” when one political alliance gained predominance over the others and began to exploit the rest of the city's populace. God's condemnation of Babel was not directed against the construction of a tower: He was condemning the whole urbanite/statist establishment that fallen man was creating. (Genesis 11) In spite of God's condemnation, governments were soon established over most of the peoples of the world. Men spread out over the whole earth and corruption spread with them.
When the nation of Israel was formed, it was established as a people, a community. There was no government over Israel. God's people were simply to obey his commandments. They didn't need anyone to force them to be obedient. God doesn't act through coercion. But even the Israelites were fallen men, sinful men. They rebelled against God and a loose government was gradually established in Israel. A system of government by “judges” was established. Yet government is formed in corruption and tends towards corruption. When the sons of Samuel became the judges over Israel, they became corrupt: “They turned aside after dishonest gain, took bribes, and perverted justice.”(1 Samuel 8:3) At this point in time, the Israelites had fallen into the mire of statism. They saw government as the solution to all their problems. So when the people confronted Samuel about the corruption of the government by his sons, they saw the solution to the problem in revolution. They did not want to go back to anarchism. They did not see that the state was the problem. They wanted to establish a new kind of government. They said, “Your sons do not walk in your ways. Now establish a king for us to judge us like all the rest of the nations!”(1 Samuel 8:5) Samuel prayed to the Lord and sought guidance on this. God said to him, “Heed the voice of the people in what they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but rather they have rejected Me, to bring to naught My reign over them.”(1 Samuel 8:7) And God warned the people of Israel through the prophet that if they chose to establish a government there would be terrible consequences: the king would kidnap their children and force them to serve in the military, he would socialize labor by forcing people to work for the state, and he would steal from the people by taxing them. (Cf. 1 Samuel 8:11-18) Even after hearing God's warning against the establishment of government, the Israelites rebelled against God, saying, “No, rather it is that we want a king to be over us. Then we will be like all the other nations, and our king will judge us and go out before us to fight our battles.”(1 Samuel 8:19-20) So it came to be that Saul was instituted as the first king of Israel and he was a corrupt king too! God was supposed to be the King of Israel and He was supposed to fight their battles for them, but the Israelites did not trust God. As soon as another earthly nation rose up against them, they lost all hope in God and put their faith in government. “And you saw Nahash king of the sons of Ammon come against you, and you said, 'No, none but a [human] king shall reign over us', whereas the Lord your God is your King.”(1 Samuel 12:12) The nation of Israel became idolatrous in the very act of establishing a state over Israel. By time the Israelites realized what they had done, it was too late. The monarchy had already been established: a dictator was raised to power. They repented, crying out to Samuel, “Pray for your servants…for we have added to all our sins in asking for ourselves a king.”(1 Samuel 12:19) War and tragedy broke out immediately as a result and everything goes downhill from there. (Cf. 1 Samuel 13)
Any idealized and eutopian view of the monarchy in ancient Israel is simply unbiblical. Nowhere does the Bible ever say anything good about the establishment of the human government, much less about the establishment of the Hebrew monarchy in particular. Even King David, who is remembered as the righteous king, fell into the most horrible sins. David saw Bathsheba the wife of Uriah bathing on the roof while her husband was off fighting in the war. He was attracted to her, so he used his political power in order to have her brought to him. David committed adultery with Bathsheba, then he had Uriah, her husband, sent to the front lines in the battlefield so that he would be killed in battle in order that David could marry Bathsheba himself! (2 Samuel 11:2-5, 14-17) What a horrible abuse of power. “Power corrupts!” Even the righteous king was corrupted by political power. Even King David abused his political authority in order to commit adultery and murder! If David, the righteous king, did such horrible things, then what chance is there of anyone else remaining faithful in such a position of authority? To make matters worse, when David was confronted about the issue, he actually tried to justify himself even though he knew he was in the wrong! “But what David did was evil in the Lord's eyes.”(2 Samuel 11:25-27) David had fallen prey to the old statist morality. The statist thinks that some things are crimes for individuals to do but okay for the state to do. It is a crime for me to steal from you but it is okay for the government to steal from you and call it taxation. It is a crime for me to kidnap a person but it is okay for the state to kidnap you and force you to serve in the military. This is statist moral philosophy and it is precisely the kind of philosophy that David was applying to himself. He was the government, so he thought himself to be above the law. God condemned David for his actions and cursed him for his “selective morality.” (2 Samuel 12:9) But David did repent and acknowledge, “I have sinned against the Lord.”(2 Samuel 12:13) The reason that this story is told in scripture is precisely because of the fact that David was righteous. He was a good man. Nevertheless, political power will corrupt even a good man. No one in his position could have done any better because power corrupts in the very nature of the case.
It is no surprise that the Jews rejected God when He came to them in the person of the Christ. “He came unto His own and His own received Him not.”(John 1:11) The natural children of Israel had committed themselves to the rule of an earthly king from the outset. They had already chosen the state as their savior and rejected God. When God came in the person of Christ, they could not receive Him because He did not come as a political messiah—He did not come to be an earthly king over Israel. God came down to earth to be a spiritual King and to reign as a libertarian monarch over the restored paradise, the kingdom of God. He came to restore the anarchistic agrarian way of life that we had in the Garden of Eden. The sovereign King is an anarchist.
“The Kingdom of God is anarchy.”―Nikolai Berdyaev (Slavery and Freedom, Part 3, § 1.A)
Christ came to bring about “the restoration of all things” and His resurrection was the beginning of that restoration. (Acts 3:21) As all of creation was summed up in Adam, all of creation was once again summed up in Christ. Christ became our Concrete Universal. In Him, all of the many particulars are brought into one body. Every element that exists anywhere in the material world is found in Christ. Therefore, St. Paul teaches: “For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.”(1 Corinthians 15:21-22) But St. Paul does not stop there. Death is a consequence of the fall that is ultimately going to be fixed and set right again, but governments are also a consequence of the fall, therefore St. Paul concludes, “Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power.”(1 Corinthians 15:24) Christ is going to bring an end to government and restore God's kingdom as an agrarian anarchistic society! This is the gospel message as it is presented in the Bible.