Last semester, I was startled to reread a remark by John Calvin in his dedication of the Institutes to the king of France, where he offers one definition of government’s ends:
For where the glory of God is not made the end of the government it is not a legitimate sovereignty, but an usurpation. And he is deceived who expects lasting prosperity in that kingdom which is not ruled by the scepter of God, that is, His holy word; for the heavenly oracle cannot fail which declares that “where there is no vision, the people perish.”[1]
I am no expert in all the twists and turns of Reformed political theology and its history, but this ethos does seem to offer at least some insight as to why the Reformed appear to be the least gun-shy Protestants vis-à-vis early modern revolutions (e.g., the Puritans). After all, who gets to decide whether the government is living up to “God’s glory” and by what metrics? Are papist and/or heretical monarchs and magistrates “right out”? What about outright pagans? Etc. Of course, partial answers have been ventured by commentators in the Reformation Era and in the present day, and I certainly durst not challenge an entire tradition in a single blog post.[2] As I will suggest at the end, however, I do think this political theology, as it is sometimes posited today, bears certain similarities to a particular kind of “evangelical” exegesis and political outlook.
The figure who got me thinking about all this again is Dionysius of Alexandria (fl. 231–264), a prominent bishop who lived through the persecutions by the emperors Decius and Valerian. Preserved in large excerpts by Eusebius’ Hist. Eccl., we have a fairly full picture of Dionysius for a man whose writings don’t otherwise survive: he is arguably the lead character in Book 7 of Eusebius’ history. Earlier in life, Dionysius had been a student of Origen’s in Alexandria’s famed catechetical school, an institution which he himself would later lead before his ascent to the episcopal chair.
Although Dionysius escaped martyrdom in the subsequent persecutions that occurred in his tenure, he would face sharp scrutiny and criticism for this from some Christian quarters. To rebut the accusations that he had up and scarpered, he retold his own high-stakes encounters with the Roman authorities, which he claims were recorded in the imperial public record.
As Roman officials so often did in these situations, the sitting governor, one Aemilianus, had encouraged Dionysius and his fellow Christians to “worship the gods that preserve the reign” of the sitting emperors.[3] In turn, Dionysius rather diplomatically observed that not everyone worshiped the exact same gods, and he sounds like he is trying to explain Christian monotheism in pop-Platonist terms that an educated Roman could understand:
Not everyone worships all the gods, but they each worship the ones to which they are accustomed. So then, we worship the one God and fashioner (demiourgos) of all who also vested the rulership in the most God-beloved Augusti, Valerian and Gallienus [Valerian’s son]. This is also the God we reverence and worship, and we ceaselessly pray to him on behalf of their reign, that it might endure unshaken.[4]
These are fairly strong words of allegiance to persecutory pagan emperors—but insufficient for Aemilianus, who points out that there is nothing preventing Christians from worshipping this One God “along with the gods of nature,” the gods whom “everybody knows.”[5] One can almost hear Dionysius sigh in the transcript’s next line: “We worship no other.” At this point, the governor banished Dionysius to Libya to await further punishment, forbidding Christians to meet in their churches or in their cemeteries, which suggests this was hitherto permitted.
Despite this confrontation with the governor, Dionysius would later praise Gallienus in a different letter to Christian associates in Egypt. Expressing relief that Gallienus had succeeded the antagonistic Valerian and reasserted his rule over the usurper Macrianus (d. 261), Dionysius writes,
It is like the empire, having set aside its old age and cleaned off the prior badness, is coming into its full bloom. It is also seen and heard more far-and-wide. And it is spreading everywhere.
Reflecting on the last few emperors, Dionysius continues:
It occurs to me to look back on the days of the emperors’ years. For I see how those who were named as the most impious have in a short time become anonymous, while the holiest and most God-cherishing of them, having well surpassed seven years, is now completing his ninth, in which we might celebrate [Easter]![6]
In the chaos of the Third Century Crisis, which threw up something like fifty emperors (plus other usurpers, such as aforementioned governor Aemilianus who took his own shot at the purple) in a fifty-year period, Gallienus had achieved a long tenure. Bear in mind that Dionysius is writing this about fifty years before the Edict of Milan and about sixty before Constantine would consolidate his rule over the whole empire.
Evidence of this sort should throw a monkey wrench into the plentiful oversimplifications of Christian-Roman relations. Dionysius knew first-hand all about persecution and the empire’s paganism at its highest levels. Nevertheless, he also recognized the difference between better and worse governments, all while insisting upon an unfaltering political allegiance to the empire and a confidence that God appointed the sitting ruler. Not only would he pray for hostile emperors, he could even call them “most God-beloved” by virtue of their obvious appointment by the Creator’s Providence. (Incidentally, this should warn us against over-reading later “Eusebian” rhetoric praising Christian emperors, since the same kind of language was applied to earlier pagan rulers as well.)
Given all this, I tend to think Dionysius would balk at the—shall we say—spunkier iterations of Calvinist political theology, living as he was under conditions that many later Calvinists would have found definitionally tyrannical. It’s even difficult to square Calvin’s plain remarks quoted at the opening with Dionysius’ own: how exactly are persecutory imperial regimes ruling in step with the word of God? To be sure, Dionysius’ apparent political theology doesn’t in itself debunk or disprove the Calvinist approach, and I don’t doubt that thoughtful Calvinists have their own provisos, qualifications, addenda, and such. Even so, I’m still very much inclined to suspect Dionysius is closer to the mindset and political outlook of the first-century writers.
By that same token, I think Dionysius would be similarly puzzled by the speak-truth-to-power, activist mode that appears in some “evangelical” discourse. I’ve previously discussed, for example, the difficulties I see in the “subversion” exegesis of Paul; I simply have a hard time imagining such a great gap between the apostolic attitude toward Rome and the well-documented approach of persecuted Christians a century or two later in that same empire.
Finally, there is also something a bit amusing here in the overlap between today’s evangelical activist types and the more enthusiastic exponents of the “do-the-reading” school of Reformed political theology. For as much as they might disagree about whether, say, our own sitting emperor in the Western world is Very Good or Very Bad, they basically share the same idea about means. That is, they seem to want their preferred vision of the Good instantiated forthwith, without too much hand-wringing about all that fussy stuff like culture, norms, institutions, procedures, and unintended consequences.
This makes one awfully suspicious that the real animating forces here are not so much sound biblical exegesis or deep-thinking about Christianity’s relation to the political sphere: maybe it really has more to do with shared modern assumptions.
John Allen, ed., Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin, trans. John Allen, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1813), 22–3.
See the contributions by Brad Littlejohn and Glenn Moots to Onsi Kamel, Jake Meador, and Joseph Minich, eds., Protestant Social Teaching: An Introduction (Landrum, SC: Davenant Press, 2022).
Hist. Eccl. 7.11.7. All translations are my own. Δεδώκασιν γὰρ ἐξουσίαν ὑμῖν σωτηρίας, εἰ βούλοισθε ἐπὶ τὸ κατὰ φύσιν τρέπεσθαι καὶ θεοὺς τοὺς σῴζοντας αὐτῶν τὴν βασιλείαν προσκυνεῖν, ἐπιλαθέσθαι δὲ τῶν παρὰ φύσιν. ↑
7.11.8: οὐ πάντες πάντας προσκυ νοῦσι θεούς, ἀλλ’ ἕκαστοι τινάς, οὓς νομίζουσιν· ἡμεῖς τοίνυν τὸν ἕνα θεὸν καὶ δημιουργὸν τῶν ἁπάντων, τὸν καὶ τὴν βασιλείαν ἐγχειρίσαντα τοῖς θεοφιλεστάτοις Οὐαλεριανῷ καὶ Γαλλιήνῳ Σεβαστοῖς, τοῦτον καὶ σέβομεν καὶ προσκυνοῦμεν, καὶ τούτῳ διηνεκῶς ὑπὲρ τῆς βασιλείας αὐτῶν, ὅπως ἀσάλευτος διαμείνῃ, προσευχόμεθα.
7.11.9: τίς γὰρ ὑμᾶς κωλύει καὶ τοῦτον, εἴπερ ἐστὶν θεός, μετὰ τῶν κατὰ φύσιν θεῶν προσκυνεῖν; θεοὺς γὰρ σέβειν ἐκελεύσθητε, καὶ θεοὺς οὓς πάντες ἴσασιν.
See 7.22.12–23.4: καὶ οἷον ἀποθεμένη τὸ γῆρας ἡ βασιλεία καὶ τὴν προοῦσαν ἀνακαθηραμένη κακίαν, ἀκμαιότερον νῦν ἐπανθεῖ καὶ πορρώτερον ὁρᾶται καὶ ἀκούεται καὶ διαφοιτᾷ πανταχοῦ. . . . καί μοι πάλιν τὰς ἡμέρας τῶν βασιλικῶν ἐτῶν ἔπεισι σκοπεῖν. ὁρῶ γάρ, ὡς ὀνομασθέντες μὲν οἱ ἀσεβέστατοι μετ’ οὐ πολὺ γεγόνασιν ἀνώνυμοι, ὁ δὲ ὁσιώτερος καὶ φιλοθεώτερος ὑπερβὰς τὴν ἑπταετηρίδα, νῦν ἐνιαυτὸν ἔνατον διανύει, ἐν ᾧ ἡμεῖς ἑορτάσωμεν. ↑