Whose Politics Which Story A Critical en

Whose Politics? Which Story?
A Critical Engagement with Constantinianism and Theological

Accommodationism with Stanley Hauerwas, with a special focus on the
Churches in Japan
A thesis presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Divinity

at the University of Aberdeen
by John Jutaro Tsukada, 2016
B.A. in Theology, Sophia University in Tokyo

M.A. in Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, The University of Tokyo
Declaration
I hereby affirm that this PhD thesis has been composed by the author and it has not been
accepted in any previous application for a degree. The entire work has been done by the
PhD candidate, Jutaro Tsukada (b. 12 December 1971), in the couse of his PhD researches at
the University of Aberdeen. All quotation have been distinguished by quotation marks and
the sources of information specifically acknowleged.
John Jutaro Tsukada

Summary
This thesis aims to show how Stanley Hauerwas’s ecclesiology, especially his critique of
Constantinianism and liberal politics, offers a biblically defensible and christianly faithful
way of being a church for the churches of the developed world, including Japan. This thesis
is developed in two major movements. The first part (Ch. 1-5) outlines a definition of the
term Constantinianism as well as Hauerwas’s counter-Constantinian theology. The first
chapter clarifies what Hauerwas means with his frequent deployment of the term
Constantinianism, a term he inherited from John Howard Yoder. It further elucidates this
term and points to the mechanisms of worldly politics and why these can be considered to
be governed by the Powers that set themselves up as idols. Because Jesus is understood as
the one who saves by breaking the bonds of these Powers, Constantinianism names the
church’s temptation to return to the politics of idolatry. The second, third, and fourth
chapters constructively elaborate the counter-Constantinian ecclesiology of Hauerwas. The
second chapter explains in what way he understands Scripture to be the ultimate authority
for the life of the church and how the church should be guided and controlled by the Bible.
It also shows how and why he believes that the church should be an extension of the truth of
the kingdom that Jesus revealed and rules through the training that Christians call
discipleship. The third chapter displays how the church, when it becomes entrapped by the
narrative of liberalism, is assimilated into the nation state and loses her identity. The fourth
chapter explains why Hauerwas thinks that the only way the church can sustain her life is
through adoption rather than biological reproduction. This position is elaborated by
illustrating how the ways in which Christians practice singleness, marriage, family, and
having children should be understood in their relation to the church life sustained by
adoption. The fifth chapter defends this account from one of its central critics, Peter Leithart,
one of the most ardent and robust Constantinian proponents. This chapter clarifies how the
kind of theology that pursues power and control in the world must do so by bypassing the
servanthood of Jesus Christ as revealed in his death on the cross, and how this elision clouds
the eyes of Christians and entices the church to renounce her obedience and faithfulness to
her Lord for the purpose of securing a safe haven for herself in this world.
In the second half of the dissertation (Ch. 6-9) deploys these theological considerations in
order to analyze Japanese Christianity. It suggests that there are strong cultural trajectories
that render Japanese churches especially vulnerable to Constantinian temptation. Chapter six
begins by setting out a characteristicly Japanese historical and cultural sensibility that
Maruyama named basso ostinato. This term describes a cultural configuration in which the
constant reconfiguration of beliefs is justified as a necessary and appropriate
acknowledgement of changing regimes of political power. The seventh chapter substantiates
the relevancy of Maruyama’s analysis by looking at Japanese history after 1549 and to show
how the Edo bakufu (Tokugawa shogunate) turned Japanese society into an amoral
Christian eradication system to secure the Tokugawa dynasty. The eighth chapter shows
how the anti-Christian policies of the Edo bakufu were updated in the period of Japan’s
modernisation, and how liberalism gave birth to the Empire of Japan. The final chapter
narrates the mechanisms whereby all the churches in Japan refused the challenges of the
imperial government by finding ways to merge Lordship of Jesus Christ with that of the
emperor, the kingdom of God with the Empire of Japan. In the conclusion, I suggest that
Hauerwas’s warnings about Constantinianism remain pertinent today in reminding the
Japanese church, along with all the churches of the developed world, that the business of the
church is the creation of a new people who live out the politics of Jesus.
ii
Table of Contents
Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 1
Part 1 Constantinianism, Church and the Politics of Jesus ...........................................13

Chapter 1 Constantinianism and Politics of the World .......................................................... 14
Being the Church: From Committed Minority to Uncommitted Majority ............................... 15
History and Eschatology: Modification of Christian Hope...................................................... 16
Constantinianism after the Reformation ................................................................................. 17
Questioning Constantinianism: Biblical Descriptions of the Powers ....................................... 20
Constantinianism as Regression to Idolatry ............................................................................ 24
Relevance of the Eschatological Hope ................................................................................... 28
Chapter 2 Church as a Narrative Community ....................................................................... 32
Interrelationship between Jesus Christ, Scripture and Church ................................................. 33
Discipleship: Learning the Language of the Church ............................................................... 38
To Be a Citizen of the Kingdom in a New Community........................................................... 39
Church: Continuity of Jesus’ Truth......................................................................................... 43
To Be a Forgiven People by Learning the Grammar of Worship ............................................. 44
Chapter 3 Narratives in Conflict ............................................................................................. 50
Enlightenment and Nation State............................................................................................. 50
Culture Kills Churches .......................................................................................................... 53
Translation Theology ............................................................................................................. 56
Let the World Know What It Is .............................................................................................. 60
Chapter 4 Politics of Adoption ................................................................................................ 62
A Community Relies on Adoption ......................................................................................... 62
Marriage and Singleness: Two Authentic Ways of Service to the Church ................................ 63
Welcoming Children and Rejection of Abortion ..................................................................... 64
Political Sex .......................................................................................................................... 68
Fight against Violence in Nonviolent Way ............................................................................. 73
Chapter 5 Leithart’s Defence of Constantinianism: Apologetics of Christian Killing and
Wars, and his Desire for a Global Christian Empire .............................................................. 76
Questioning Yoder’s Constantinian Shift................................................................................ 76
Denial of Constantinian Shift and Defence of Constantinianism: An Alternative Reading of
Church History? .................................................................................................................... 79
Defence of Constantinianism ................................................................................................. 80
Against Leithart's Defence of Constantinianism ..................................................................... 91
Collapse from within: Irreconcilable Theological Polarity .................................................... 105
Summary of the First Part .................................................................................................... 118
Part 2 Constantinianism in Pre-Constantine Japan .....................................................125

Chapter 6 Basso Ostinato: The Manipulation of Language and the Denial of Truth beyond
Political Power ....................................................................................................................... 126
To Find A Common Pattern in the Modifications to the Themes ........................................... 126
Self-developing History ....................................................................................................... 127
Conflict with Imported Doctrines......................................................................................... 130
Praise of Momentum ........................................................................................................... 131
Praise of Shifts in History .................................................................................................... 134
Affirmation of “NOW” or the Status Quo ............................................................................ 135
Delight in Creating Heterodoxies in the Absence of Orthodoxy............................................ 138
Chapter 7 Christianity and Japan......................................................................................... 140
From the official beginning of Christian Mission to the Ban on Christianity: Development of a
Peculiar Mura-shakai (Village Society) ................................................................................ 140
Rise of Japan as a Christian Eradication System .................................................................. 144
Chapter 8 Construction of the Empire of Japan by Means of Liberalism ........................... 149
Anti-Christian Policy Remains ............................................................................................ 149
Modernisation through the Fabrication of State Shintoism by means of Political Liberalism. 155
On the Rock of the Emperor ................................................................................................ 158
Imperial Rescript on Education: Emperor above Every Name .............................................. 160
Commentary on the Imperial Rescript on Education by Inoue Tetsujirō................................ 163
Naming Dissidents and Nonconformists .............................................................................. 166
Chapter 9 Turning the Empire of Japan into a Politics of Jesus .......................................... 174
In the Beginning of Protestant Mission, Verbeck created the Empire .................................... 174
Free the Empire from Christianity........................................................................................ 177
Assimilation of Christianity into the Politics of the Empire .................................................. 181
Church Chartered by the Empire .......................................................................................... 186
ii
The Church united under the Emperor ................................................................................. 194
Japanisation: Method of Turning the Empire of Japan into a Politics of Jesus ....................... 198
Disruption? Tōdai-sha and Akashi Junzō ............................................................................. 214
Summary of the Second Part................................................................................................. 220
Liberalism, the Grand Narrative that trapped the Church in Japan ........................................ 221
Doubly Blind....................................................................................................................... 223
Double Helix of Liberalism and Basso Ostinato Makes Repentance Dispensable ................. 230
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................235
iii
Introduction
The objective of this thesis is to show how the ecclesiology supplied by Stanley Hauerwas
can provide a more biblically faithful way of being a church for the churches both in Japan
and the West, grounded as it is in fundamental criticism of Constantinianism and liberal
politics. Resident Aliens, co-authored with William H. Willimon and published in 1989,
made Hauerwas’s name known beyond the boundaries of academia and he was named the
‘best theologian in America’ by Time magazine in 2001. His fame is not limited within
America and he is undoubtedly one of the most read theologians of the last 30 years and has
become a benchmark for those who are engaged in Christian ethics or public theology or
political theology. This introduction will briefly set out the local context of Hauerwas’
theological work in order to indicate in a preliminary way the main outlines of his
Constantinian critique and the reasons why he began to pursue this line of criticism.
Hauerwas is often categorised as a Christian ethicist, though he sometimes resists this
label. He accepts this title only with the condition that Christian ethics be understood as
concerned with the life of the church in distinction from that of the world and of America.
This qualification of Christian ethics expresses his profound dissatisfaction with the
conventional Protestant Christian ethics. According to Hauerwas, ‘[t]he recent history of
Christian ethics has largely been the story of the attempt to work out the set of problems
bequeathed to us by the social gospel and the Niebuhrs.’1 The problem with the Niebuhrs,
Hauerwas thinks, is that they are the latest iteration of Christian ethics as the quest for a
universal ethics engendered by the Enlightenment project—with Immanuel Kant as its
guiding star.
Accounting for the nature of moral maxims and the relation between religion and ethics,
Kant asserts that
since the holy narrative itself, which is offered merely for the sake of the Church’s faith, simply
cannot and should not have any influence on the acceptance of moral maxims, but [it] is rather given
to her faith as the lively display of its true object (the virtue aspiring to sanctity), it (holy narrative) is
learnt and explained all the times as the moral pursuit; meanwhile, (as the ordinary man has a
persistent tendency within him to fall into passive faith), it must be carefully and repeatedly stressed
1
Stanley Hauerwas, Against the Nations: War and Survival in a Liberal Society (Notre Dame;
London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992) p. 34.
1
that the true religion is neither in knowing nor professing what God does or has done for us to
become blessed, but in what we must do to be worth being blessed, to lay down what can never be
anything else, as something that has an unquestionable unconditional value, God alone, therefore,
makes us agreeable, and at the same time every person can be fully confident on account of its
universality without any knowledge of the Scripture.2
It is obvious here that this Kantian definition of universal ethics requires theologians to get
rid of narrative elements of Christian faith, such as the election of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
Moses and David, Israel as God’s chosen nation, Exodus, Babylonian Captivity, Jesus’ life,
death on the cross, resurrection and ascension, and so on, in order to transform contingent
Christian ethics into the universal.
The presupposition of the Enlightenment that historical contingencies cannot be universal
truth was linked to the objective of subjugating the church under the newly invented
political authority, sovereignty, of the nation state, the project of inventing a universal ethics
free from theological terms. The state was therefore understood as being responsible to
foster the kind of society that is skeptical of Christianity and excluding it from official
public discourse. This was the context in which the modern protestant discipline of
Christian ethics was born, in ‘the remains of the now lost hegemony of Christianity over
Western culture,’3 Hauerwas believes.
Theologians committed to the Kantian task of producing universal ethics out of
Christianity find themselves in ‘the odd situation where many of our society’s moral
attitudes and practices are based on Jewish and Christian beliefs that are thought to be
irrelevant or false in themselves.’4 In other words, ‘Christian ethicists’ have been
attempting to provide a type of universal ethics extracted from Christianity for the society
that disavowed Christian faith but failed to replace it with rational foundation for creating
universal ethics. For Hauerwas, this society is of course America.
Beside the Enlightenment universal ethics project, Hauerwas points out the other factor
that encourages the emergence of Christian ethics as an independent theological discipline.
It was ‘a group of Protestant pastors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and
2
Immanuel Kant, Die Religion Innerhalb der Grenzen der Blossen Vernunft (Leipzig: Verlag von
Felix Meiner, 1922) p. 153. Translated by the author.
3
Hauerwas, Against the Nations, p. 23.
4
Ibid.
2
their attempt to respond to the economic crisis of their people.’5 Their movement called
social gospel sought to mobilise all the resources of the church for the social reconstruction
of America.
The Kingdom of God was emphasised, but it was not an eschatological reality that should
be fulfilled when Jesus comes again, but it is the social structure to be established on earth:
social Christianity, which makes the Reign of God on earth its object, is a distinct type of personal
religion, and that in its best manifestations it involves the possibility of a purer spirituality, a keener
recognition of sin, more durable powers of growth, a more personal evangelism, and a more
all-around salvation than the individualistic type of religion which makes the salvation of the soul its
object. I want to add that this new type of religion is especially adapted to win and inspire modern
men.6
More concretely, this Kingdom of God of social gospel was equated with democracy:
Another great factor in modern life which has helped to give real vitality to the Kingdom ideal is the
enthusiasm for democracy. The gospel of the Kingdom proclaims the kingship of God, but somehow
that always means the emancipation and democracy of the people.7
It was under the influence of social gospel, according to Hauerwas, that Protestant
seminaries started courses of Christian ethics in America. The primary concerns of these
courses were to find the best economic and social strategy to restructure American society
as democratic as possible and Christian ethicists avail themselves of analytical tools of
social scientists. As a result, ‘[a] Christian ethicist often became but a social scientists with a
religious interest.’8
Though the social gospelers were critical of American capitalism, they were ‘after all
completely committed to American progressive ideology and policies. They never doubted
the uniqueness of the American experience or entertained any critical doubt about the
achievement of the American ideal, which they saw as nothing less than the realization of
5
Ibid., p. 27.
6
Walter Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Social Order (New York: Macmillan, 1926) p. 117.
7
Ibid., p. 91.
8
3
the Kingdom of God.’9 For Rauschenbusch, the Kingdom of God was not only the ‘most
essential dogma of the Christian faith, but it was also ‘the lost social ideal of
Christendom.’10 In this way, American democracy was the Kingdom of God on earth and
the ideal form of Christendom as well for social gospelers.
The development of Protestant Christian ethics was decided by these two major sources
of Protestant Christian ethics, the universalist ethics project of the Enlightenment and the
social gospel’s equation of the Kingdom of God with American democracy. Reinhold
Nieburhr harshly criticised the social gospelers’ optimism, but whether the social gospelers
were as naïve as Niebuhr believed is questionable when Rauschenbusch could write that
‘[t]he coming of the Kingdom of God will not be by peaceful development only, but by
conflict with the Kingdom of Evil. We should estimate the power of sin too lightly if we
forecast a smooth road.’11 The great schism dividing between the social gospelers and
Niebuhr should probably be found in their treatments of violence. While Rauschenbusch
thought resorting to violence was out of the question for the construction of the Kingdom of
God on earth,12 Niebuhr thought it was neither inherently evil nor immoral. It is rather the
undeniable reality of sinful human condition and therefore ‘the real question is: what are the
political possibilities of establishing justice through violence?’13
Despite Niebuhr’s pungent criticism of the social gospelers’ optimism, his position is not
so radically different from social gospel. He actually shared most of the social gospelers’
theological and social presumptions in common. ‘[L]ike the social gospelers,’ Hauerwas
points out, ‘he never questioned that Christianity has a peculiar relationship to democracy.
For Niebuhr and the social gospelers the subject of Christian ethics was America.’14
Niebuhr never subscribed to Barth’s criticism of liberal theology and he grounded his
theology in anthropology. ‘Thus,’ Hauerwas insists, ‘his compelling portrayal of our
sinfulness, which appeared contra liberal optimism, only continued the liberal attempt to
9
Ibid., p. 29.
10
Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Social Order, p. 49.
11
Walter Rauschenbusch, A Theology for the Social Gospel (New York: Macmillan, 1917) p. 226.
12
‘The temptation to use tricky or foul means to attain a reform would be checked if that reform
were seen as part of the Kingdom of God. We should realize that the sum total of good cannot be
increased by increasing the total of evil.’ Rauschenbusch, Christianizing the Social Order, p. 101.
13
Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethics and Politics in Reinhold
Niebuhr: Major Works on Religion and Politics (ed. Elisabeth Sifton, New York: The Library of
America, 2015) p. 279.
14
4
demonstrate the intelligibility of theological language through its power to illuminate the
human condition.’15
Believing that there was no alternative form of politics to the nation state, Neibuhr saw
violence and politics as inseparable: where there is politics, there is coercion; therefore there
is no politics without violence. This is why Niebuhr held Christian ethics to be responsible
for convincing American Christians that ‘responsibility’ meant accepting war fought in the
name of America as a necessary evil, Hauerwas concludes. ‘Niebuhr, in the interest of
making Christians act “responsibly” in the world, clearly saw that Jesus could not be
followed.’16
One of Niebuhr’s heirs, Paul Ramsey sought to wed the Catholic just war tradition to the
Niebuhrian realism. Realising that Niebuhr could not provide any criteria to evaluate in
what situation the resort to violence could be acceptable, he looked to the Catholic tradition
for principles that might enables the ‘realists’ who run a state to judge when resorting to
violence is justifiable, as he made crystal clear in his own presentation of his work:
In all that I have ever written on the morality of war I have been quite consciously drawing upon a
wider theory of statecraft and of political justice to propose an extension within the Christian realism
of Reinhold Niebuhr—an added note within his “responsibilistic” ethics. There is more to be said
about justice in war than was articulated in Niebuhr’s sense of the ambiguities of politics and his
greater/lesser evil doctrine on the use of force. That more is the principle of discrimination; and I
have tried to trace out the meaning of this as well as the meaning of disproportion in kinds of warfare
that Niebuhr never faced.17
To make just war theory ‘Christian,’ Ramsey attempts to derive it from ‘charity’ as a form
of Christian love. He claims that ‘[t]he western theory of the just war originated, not
primarily from consideration of abstract of “natural” justice, but from the interior of the
ethics of Christian love, or what John XXIII termed “social charity.”’18 He then makes the
Good Samaritan represent ‘charity’ with a great twist to its context:
15
Ibid., p. 31.
16
Stanley Hauerwas, Dispatches from the Front: Theological Engagements with the Secular.
(Durham; London: Duke University Press, 1994) p. 121.
17
Paul Ramsey, The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility (Lanham; New York; London:
University Press of America, 1983) p. 260.
18
Ibid., p. 142.
5
It was a work of charity for the Good Samaritan to give help to the man who fell among thieves. But
one step more, it may have been a work of charity for the inn-keeper to hold himself ready to receive
beaten and wounded men, and for him to have conducted his business so that he was solvent enough
to extend credit to the Good Samaritan. By another step it would have been a work of charity, and not
of justice alone, to maintain and serve in a police patrol on the Jericho road to prevent such things
from happening. By yet another step, it might well be a work of charity to resist, by force of arms,
any external aggression against the social order that maintains the police patrol along the road to
Jericho. This means that, where the enforcement of an ordered community is not effectively present,
it may be a work of justice and a work of social charity to resort to other available and effective
means of resisting injustice: what do you think Jesus would have made the Samaritan do if he had
come upon the scene while the robbers were still at their fell work?19
It is worth to note that Ramsey is aware that he is distorting the parable,20 but this distortion
is necessary to make just war theory ‘Christian.’ With one step further, ‘just war is the
disinterested love taught by Christ now institutionalized in the state.’21 This state for him is,
of course, America. Therefore, ‘Ramsey continued to assume,’ Hauerwas insists, ‘that the
task of Christian ethics is to address the American body politics.’22 In other words, he
assumed, as Rauschenbusch and Niebuhr did, that ‘the first subject of Christian ethics is
how to sustain the moral resources of American society.’
America remains the subject of Christian ethics with James Gustafson, a student of
Richard Niebuhr too. He insists that Christian ethicists can provide principles and values
that can be persuasive to the ‘wider community’ outside of the church. His affirmation of the
Kantian universal ethics project is obvious from the following quote:
The theologian engaged in the task of “perspective” ethics formulates principles and values that can
guide the actions of persons who do not belong to the Christian community. They will be persuasive
to others, however, on the basis of supporting reasons different from those that Christians might
19
Ibid., pp. 142-3.
20
‘Now, I am aware that this is no proper way to interpret a parable of Jesus.’ Ibid. p. 143.
21
Stanley Hauerwas, “On Being a Church Capable of Addressing a World at War” in The Hauerwas
Reader (ed. John Berkman and Michael G. Cartwright, Durham, NC.: Duke University Press, 2001)
p. 446.
22
6
respond to. In effect, the theologian moves from the particular Christian belief to a statement of their
moral import in a more universal language. These statements will be persuasive to nonreligious
persons only by the cogency of the argument that is made to show that the “historical particularity”
sheds light on principles and values that other serious moral persons also perceive and also ought to
adhere to. Indeed, since the Christian theologian shares in the general moral experience of secular
people, and since one facet of this work that is theologically warranted is the inferring of principles
and values from common experience, he or she need not in every practical circumstance make a
particular theological case for what is formulated. The theologian ought, however, to be able to make
a Christian theological case if challenged.23
It is remarkable that from Rauschenbusch to Gustafson their works are thoroughly framed
by the Christendom model despite the institutional separation between government and
religion in America and the absence of the church in their Christian ethics is the clearest
sign of it. They see no need of providing a place for the church in their Christian ethics
because the church is amalgamated or assimilated into American politics as the Roman
Church was merged into the politics of the Roman Empire. The Christendom model makes
them equate politics with statecraft so that they believe that Christians should have a voice
in the American body politic and Christian ethics should help American democracy work.
Niebuhr became the most influential American theologian because ‘he provided the
theological justification to support the liberal ideology for the rising political elite whose
self-interest was commensurate with making the United State a world power.’24
It is against this conventional Kantian Protestant ethics centred on American liberal
democracy that Hauerwas proposes his church-centred Christian ethics which lives the
politics of Jesus. In other words, he rediscovered the church as God’s alternative to earthly
politics. I have set out this extended account of his early interlocutors in order to make it
clear that his ecclesiocentric Christian ethics was developed and grounded in a criticism of
Constantinianism. Hauerwas insists that ‘what was original about the first Christians was
not the peculiarity of their beliefs, even beliefs about Jesus, but their social inventiveness in
creating a community whose like had not been seen before.’25 But Hauerwas believes that
23
James M. Gustafson, Can Ethics Be Christian? (Chicago; London: The University of Chicago
Press, 1975) p. 163.
24
Hauerwas, Dispatches from the Front, p. 141.
25
7
what Yoder calls the Constantinian shift made the church lose her idiosyncrasy and forget
the unbridgeable schism between the politics of Jesus and that of this world.
Constantinianism is a tenacious temptation for the church to replace the universality of the
church catholic rooted in the narratives of Jesus Christ recorded in the Gospels and the
witnesses of the Apostles with the dominance of the world by violence. Hauerwas therefore
insists that Christian ethics should rediscover the narrative-centred character of Christian
faith and the church as the community where the peculiarity of this faith is lived and in this
way distanced itself from Constantinianism.
Japan never having been part of Christendom, to many it will seem counterintuitive to
claim that Hauerwas’s work can lead the churches in Japan to a more faithful way of being a
church. Japanese Christian history is full of tragic memories. The year 1549 marks the
official date of the seed of the gospel being sown by a Jesuit missionary, Francisco Xavier,
and a few of his companions, but as early as only 38 years later, when this seed started to
grow the Japanese rulers had launched persecution of Christians. Subsequently, Christianity
was systematically wiped off the surface of the Japanese Isles. The story that will come to
be the focus of this thesis is the reintroduction of Christianity in the late 19th century, in
tandem with the modernisation of Japan, and we will see that in this second phase
Christianity was systematically marginalised as the churches of Japan came to be
accommodated into the empire.
Since the brief boom of Christian conversions right after Japan’s defeat in the Second
World War, almost all Japanese churches have been constantly declining while there has
been a remarkable growth in the number of Christians in Asian and African countries from
the middle of the last century onwards. Accordingly, the ‘unpopularity’ of the Christian faith
in Japan is customarily attributed to its ‘culture.’ A widely accepted facade of freedom of
religion in Japan has also contributed to consolidating this view and many of the foreign
missionaries have come to regard Japan as the graveyard of Christianity.
As the church has contracted in the modern era, Japanese church leaders become
increasingly attracted to a stragegy of making Christianity relevant or credible to modern
Japanese people by meshing it more thoughly with ‘Japanese culture.’ The assumption
behind the most popular versions of this approach claims that Christianity has not taken root
in Japanese soil because it has not been Japanised enough or not assimilated into Japanese
culture. A Japanese Roman Catholic novelist Shusaku Endo is believed to have ardently
8
pursued the possibility of Japanised Christianity in many of his works such as Chinmoku
(Silence)26 and Fukai kawa (Deep River)27 and he has become the most popular icon of this
trajectory.
Such arguments, I suggest, overlook several crucial realities; firstly, that Japan has
experienced a radical cultural shift since its ‘modernisation.’ Japan has accepted Western
culture to an incredible degree and what people can see from outside nowadays is fully
Western: from the calendar, political system, food, art, music, literature, sports, architecture,
clothing, to monogamy. And surprisingly, Christian style weddings are a lucrative business
in Japan where Christian population is less than one per cent. According to Zexy.net, the
biggest wedding information site in Japan run by Recruit Marketing Partners Co.,Ltd., there
are at least over 900 wedding ‘churches’ that were established purely as a business but
named ‘churches’ across Japan.28 Christian style wedding in those ‘churches’ are incredibly
popular and a cash cow for the wedding industries.
Secondly, those arguments that attribute the failure of Christianity in Japan to a supposed
cultural barrier do not square with a parallel phenomenon developing on the opposite side of
the globe, in the Western part of Europe, particularly in the United Kingdom where
historically Christianity formed the backbone of its culture and the churches are still
established. In Post-Christendom Murray writes:
If the current rate of decline is not arrested, the Methodist Church will have zero membership by 2037.
If it continues to shrink at the present rate, the Church of Scotland will close its last congregation in
2033. Unless something happens to reverse the decline it is experiencing, the Church in Wales will be
unsustainable by 2020. The Salvation Army and United Reformed Church face similar prospects.29
Furthermore, ‘[a]lmost all indicators in the period 1980–2000 show accelerating decline in
the Church of England, with Sunday attendance figures below one million for the first
26
Endo Shusaku, Chinmoku (Tokyo: Shincho-sha, 1966).
27
Endo Shusaku, Fukai Kawa (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1993).
28
http://zexy.net/wedding/chapel/
29
Stuart Murray, Post-Christendom: Church and Mission in a Strange New World (Milton Keynes:
Paternoster, 2004) p. 6.
9
time.’30 If supposedly fully enculturated churches can so precipitously decline even in a
country where Christianity has had such a defining cultural presence, arguments begin to
look decidedly tenuous that assume that the success or failure of Christianity hinges on the
extent to which it manages to be seamlessly enculturated.
These arguments for enculturation therefore serve to conceal a common thread that runs
through the parallel phenomena of the declining churches on the opposite sides of the globe.
At a glance the decline of the churches in the United Kingdom and in Japan seem to have
almost nothing in common. While the British churches were a centre of Western
Christendom (in fact the word “Christendom” itself was coined in England at some point in
the 9th century)31 and its culture is saturated with Christianity, it would be accurate to say
that the church does not have a defining role in Japanese history. The church was once
eradicated from the surface of the Japanese Isles, and, as we will see in the second part of
this thesis, even after ‘modernisation’ the church has been marginalised in direct and
significant ways in modern Japanese society. Christianity has never established a firm
foothold in ‘Japanese culture.’ Nevertheless, it will be the burden of this thesis to establish
that the churches in Japan and in the West, however counterintuitive it may seem, in fact do
share the same Constantinian obsession with fashioning a church allied with earthly powers
in order to secure a safe haven for her in the world.

The main task of this thesis is to disclose the reasons and historical roots of this common
obsession. I do so in the interest of a theological and ecclesiological aim: to show that this
obsession leads to the churches’s disobedience and faithlessness toward their Lord. The
argument will proceed as follows. The first part (Ch. 1-5) clarifies the concept of
‘Constantinianism’ that frequently appears in Hauerwas’ works and then sketches his
counter-Constantinian theology. The first chapter shows that Hauerwas inherited the term
Constantinianism from John Howard Yoder’s work and explicates this term as a
fundamental hermeneutics of worldly politics in the biblical narratives as such ruled by the
Powers that reject the sovereignty of God and therefore idolise themselves. Given that the
New Testament interprets Jesus’ redeeming work as the liberation of people from and
30
Ibid., p. 6.
31
Ibid., p. 23.
10
breaking the bonds of these Powers, Constantinianism means the church’s temptation to
regress to the politics of idolatry. The second, third and fourth chapters constructively lay
out Hauerwas’ counter-Constantinian ecclesiology as a polity living the politics of Jesus.
The second chapter explains his understanding of the Scripture as the ultimate authority
over the church life rooted in the interdependence between a community brought into
existence by the narratives of Jesus Christ told by the Apostles and the texts this community
brought forth and preserved. It also shows in what way he believes that the church should be
an extension of the truth of Jesus’ kingdom through discipleship. The third chapter displays
how churches in the West were entrapped by the narrative of liberalism and assimilated into
the nation state to lose their sense of belonging to the one body of Christ. The fourth chapter
explains why Hauerwas believes that the church’s life and growth is dependent on adoption
rather than biological reproduction. It is by portraying how the ways Christians practice
singleness, marriage, family, and having children should be understood in their relation to
the church life sustained by adoption that this position is developed. In the fifth chapter this
account takes on one of its hard-core critics, Peter Leithart, one of the bluntest
Constantinian advocates, with a view to demonstrate how the kind of theology that aspires
to power and rule in the world must end up disregarding Jesus’ servanthood as revealed in
his death on the cross, and how this short circuit leads the church to renounce her obedience
and faithfulness to her Lord in order to secure a safe haven for her by allying herself with
rulers of this world.
In the second half of the dissertation (Ch. 6-9) I avail myself of these theological
considerations to examine Japanese Christian history with a special focus on the church’s
total submission to the Japanese colonial imperialism after the ‘modernisation.’ It suggests
that there is an intense but mostly unperceived cultural trend that renders Japanese churches
especially vulnerable to Constantinian temptation. Chapter six introduces and analyses a
distinctively Japanese historical and cultural undercurrent that was named basso ostinato by
Maruyama Masao. This term delineates a cultural configuration in which imported ‘beliefs’
such as Confuscianism and Buddhism are constantly reconfigured to acknowledge or
acquiesce to changing regimes of political power. In the seventh, eighth and ninth chapters I
will narrate Japanese history in order to substantiate the relevancy of Maruyama’s analysis,
focused on the Japanese rulers’ rejection of Christianity and church’s desire for the
11
acknowledgement by the powers that be. Chapter seven looks at Japanese Christian history
after 1549 and explains how the Tokugawa shogunate turned Japanese society into an
amoral Christian eradication system to secure their dynasty. Chapter eight elucidates how
the new Japanese political elites created the empire by means of political liberalism and how
the anti-Christian policies of the Edo bakufu were preserved in the ‘modernised’ Japan. The
final chapter analyses the mechanisms of so-called ‘Japanisation’ whereby most of the
churches in Japan dodged the challenges of the imperial government by justifying the
assimilation of the Lordship of Jesus Christ into the emperor’s and the kingdom of God into
the Empire of Japan. In Conclusion, I suggest that Yoder and Hauerwas’s warnings against
Constantinianism should be taken seriously by all churches not only in the West but also in
Japan for them not to fall in the universal temptation of power and control. I then conclude
that Hauerwas’ great contribution to the post-Christendom church is to remind us that the
church’s business is creation of a new people who live the politics of Jesus in a new polity,
the church, and are joyfully sent out to the world to invite people to join this polity.
12
Part 1 Constantinianism, Church and the Politics of Jesus
Stanley Hauerwas is not a systematic theologian. He has intentionally avoided giving the
impression that his work is derived from any single presupposition or grows from an
unshakable solid foundation. He has instead pursued the theological task by approaching
practical questions from different perspectives that could help one to see each aspect of the
problem more clearly. It is nonetheless also true that several keywords play major roles in
his work, and what he calls ‘Constantinianism’ is surely one of them. A wide range of his
works can accurately be described as developments of his single critique of
Constantinianism, and yet he nowhere develops a lengthy stand-alone explication of what
this term entails. One explanation for this could be his principled denial of the utility of
system contruction. Neither by beginning from a single point from which all subsequent
argument is developed, and in explicitly confessing that he has no aspiration to be an
‘original’ thinker, he displays the type of theologian he hopes to be. Hauerwas would rather
bring what he takes to be the path of faithful Christians into view than say ‘something new.’
To put it more simply, he owes his theology to other theologians.
13
Chapter 1 Constantinianism and Politics of the World
In this chapter I will explicate what Constantinianism is along with a cognate notion of a
historical Constantinian shift. Though this chapter will focus on the works of John Howard
Yoder and Stanley Hauerwas, who both speak often of Constantiniansm, one must be
careful not to see them as promoting two versions of Constantinianism, Yoderian and
Hauerwasian. There is essentially a Yoderian account of Constantinianism that Hauerwas
has adopted and elaborated. Hauerwas, for instance, develops relatively detailed
clarifications of the idea of Constantinianism in Christian Existence Today32 by referring to
Yoder’s The Priestly Kingdom,33 and in these discussions he makes it clear that he has no
intention to invent a ‘better’ or his own version of Constantinianism. This chapter shows
why, when we are reading Hauerwas’ Constantinian critique, we are in fact reading Yoder
through Hauerwas.
I will look further into the criticisms of Constantinianism developed by Hauerwas and
Yoder in order to show in more detail how they understand worldly politics governed by the
Powers to set themselves up as idols, and how they understand Jesus to have broken the
bonds of the Powers. This is to clarify a theological aspect of the Constantinian critique, the
temptation to return to an idolatrous politics before Jesus’ coming. This Constantinian
critique also explains why it evokes resistance from ‘realist’ theologians like Reinhold and
Richard Niebuhr, Ramsey, Gustafson, and so on, who are so deeply rooted in the
Constantinian habit that they see no point in questioning Constantinianism, and insist that
the church should be ‘responsible’ for the world. Any casting of doubt on this tenacious
habit stirs up hostility from them; those who question it, therefore, should be prepared to be
labeled as ‘sectarian’ or ‘tribalist.’34 Hauerwas and Yoder have been taken to be the flagship
exemplars of such ‘sectarian’ theologies in having so robustly questioned Constantinian
32
Stanley Hauerwas, Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World, and Living in Between
(Eugene, OR.: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1988).
33
John Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom: Social Ethics as Gospel (Notre Dame, Indiana:
University of Notre Dame Press, 2001).
34
Taking up an example, James Gustafson is one of the harshest critics of Hauerwasian theology. In
a paper entitled “The Sectarian Temptation: Reflections on Theology, the Church and the University,”
Gustafson criticises Hauerwas’ theology as ‘sectarian.’ He claims that Hauerwas is seeking to isolate
theology from ‘critical external points of view’ to preserve its traditional identity. James Gustafson,
“The Sectarian Temptation: Reflections on Theology, the Church and the University” in Proceedings
of the Catholic Theological Society of America 40 (1985): p. 83. He also maintains that Hauerwas
requires the separation of the church from the world. (pp. 90-91)
14
assumptions and encouraged all Christians to break away from it.
Being the Church: From Committed Minority to Uncommitted
Majority
Yoder points out the radical changes in the understanding of 1) being Christian and being
the church, 2) history and eschatology, 3) and violence and/or war in church history and he
has named these radical changes the ‘Constantinian shift.’35 Yoder, of course, is not
unaware that Constantinianism started before Constantine thus, for him, the name of
Constantine is rather a symbol that marks the radical shift in Christian history. Prior to the
Constantinian shift, the church was minority and marginal in the Jewish and Roman
societies. They were a small but visible community and to be a Christian was identical with
being a member of this visible faith community. They were first considered as an illegal
Jewish sect unprotected by the emperor worship exemption allowed to Jews. They were
powerless and had no stake in the politics of the Roman Empire. Even though they had
nothing against being ‘good Roman citizens,’ they were more willing to die for their faith
than to worship the emperor betraying their allegiance to their Lord. For Christians in the
New Testament age, the only way to become a Christian was through conversion, and it
could not be forced because it is a willing commitment that comes from listening and
responding to God’s call. In other words, some degree of loyalty was required from
everyone in this community.
After Constantine’s ‘conversion,’ however, the landscape of the church drastically
changed. After Christianity was established as the only legal religion of the Roman empire,
every citizen was made Christian without conversion. Being a Roman citizen became
equivalent to being a Christian. As a result, Christians constituted the absolute majority,
privileged and dominant class. Now that everyone had been made institutionally Christian
irrespective of their responses to the gospel, it became impossible or looked ‘unrealistic’ to
expect conversion or transformation from every member of the church. Accordingly, the
meaning of being a church member prior to the Constantine’s conversion had to be altered
35
Detailed expositions of Constantinianism and the Constantinian shift can be found in John
Howard Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom, pp. 135-147; The Original Revolution: Essays on Christian
Pacifism (Eugene, OR.: Wipf and Stock Publisher, 1998) pp. 113-131; 148-182; and Christian
Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution (ed. Theodore J. Koontz and Andy Alexis-Baker, Grand
Rapids, MI.: Brazos Press, 2009) pp. 57-74.
15
and the development of a new doctrine, that of the invisible church, became inevitable so
that the dichotomy between visible and invisible also became the predominant theological
category.36 Before Constantine, people knew where the church existed even though she was
a small community. ‘After Constantine, one had to believe without seeing that there was a
community of believers, within the larger nominally Christian mass.’37 Needless to say it
was this Constantinian shift which gave birth to Christendom.
History and Eschatology: Modification of Christian Hope

With the Constantinian shift, another change was brought about in the Christian
understanding of their existence in the world, of history, and of eschatological hope. As
mentioned above, while Christians were a minority and had no stake in imperial politics,
they had firm conviction that their Lord was the only and true king who reigns over the
world and its history was governed by the God they worship. Given that the world did not
know about the only and true king, Jesus Christ, the church was the sole place where his
lordship was avowed and his politics rooted in the eschatological hope was lived. Before
Constantine, the final form of redemption or the fulfilment of eschatology was a mystery as
an object of faith. After the emperor himself became a member of the church, all citizens
were institutionally made Christians, and, above all, they were turned into the ruling class in
the empire, They no longer needed to believe that God governs history because ‘with the
age of Constantine, Providence no longer needed to be an object of faith, for God’s
governance of history had become empirically evident in the person of the Christian ruler of
the world.’38
With this ‘modified eschatology,’ ‘brand new’ Christian ethics, which was unknown and
unthinkable to the New Testament churches, was created. Now that every citizen had been
made officially Christian, the Constantinian Christian ethics needed to be applicable to
everyone in the empire. Furthermore, given that providence was supposed to be clearly seen
in the rule by emperors, the Christian ethics had to be ‘ameliorated’ in order to buttress the
emperors’ regime, and ‘because the ruler himself must have very soon some approbation
and perhaps some guidance as he does things the earlier church would have disapproved.’39
36
Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom, p. 136.
37
Ibid., p. 137.
38
Ibid., p. 136.
39
Ibid., p. 137.
16
In other words, as the radical transformation of Caesars could not be expected, the gospel
was transformed to fit the reality of Christendom and to justify Caesars’ war. Consequently,
the just war theory took a major part in Christian ethics even though, Hauerwas says, ‘God
made war on the Caesars, not through an army, but by a baby.’40
Constantinianism after the Reformation

One might think those anomalies brought forth by the Constantinian shift were sorted out
through the Reformation, since the Reformation or Protestant movement sought to purify
and refine the Western church of unbiblical elements. But in Yoder and Hauerwas’ account
what happened in the Reformation was the crumbling of the monolithic Western
Christendom with the Enlightenment apparently dealing the death blow to it. Furthermore,
Hauerwas also maintains that ‘[w]ith the Renaissance and Reformation “Christendom” was
replaced by the nation-state.’41 Why, then, do Yoder and Hauerwas need to keep talking
about Constantinianism even after the fall of Christendom? What is the point in warning
against Constantinianism in the age of secularisation when the separation between religion
and politics is institutionally secured in the West?
Yoder answers this question most exactly in the chapter entitled ‘The Career of the Just
War Theory’ in Christian Attitudes to War, Peace and Revolution, and in the final chapter of
The Original Revolution. He develops detailed descriptions about how Constantinianism not
only survived, but it was also strengthened in the Protestant churches. According to Yoder,
‘the Protestant Reformation went beyond the medieval just war theory in the direction of
‘legitimizing war.’42 During the Middle Age, the bishop could give counsel to the monarch
and it had to be listened to, but the Protestants contrived the conception of ‘the moral
autonomy of the civil order’43 that had not existed in the Roman Catholic tradition. This
assumption meant the superiority of the civil order to the ecclesial order and the
Reformation owed its success to this autonomy and superiority of this autonomous civil
order. If it were not for regional lords who replaced Catholic bishops with new ones in
favour of Protestantism, there would have been no success for the Reformation.
However, this ‘success’ also implies the Protestants’ submission to civil power. Just as the
40
Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Where Resident Aliens Live: Exercises for Christian
Practice (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996) p. 61.
41
Hauerwas, Christian Existence Today, p. 182.
42
Yoder, Christian Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution, p. 115.
43
Ibid.
17
success of Christendom was dependent on the Caesars, the success of Protestantism hinged
upon the civil lords. Now that the civil lord the bishops’ head, it became almost unlikely that
Protestant church leaders would criticise their patrons even if some exceptional individuals
might stand up against their boss. Thus, Yoder maintains that, ‘[p]olitically speaking, the
Lutheran Reformation was a step toward state autonomy not only institutionally but in terms
of ethics.’44 For the Reformed leaders, the state was ‘the savior of reformation.’45 Just as
Christendom gave birth to the Constantinian ethic that justified the emperors’ wars, the
Protestants transformed the Constantinian ethic in order to justify a new kind of war fought
in the name of the nation state. That is to say that, ‘[w]hat the state does, in the interest of its
own people and its national welfare, is dictated by God and needed to heal or save the
church.’46
Yoder also argues that Protestant leaders such as Luther and Zwingli cancelled the
Medieval restrictions on violence and war by the state so that Protestants depending on the
autonomous state grew more inclined to violence than Roman Catholics. In effect, it is the
state that ‘saved’ the Protestant church from Catholicism. When the church went through a
drastic change from a minority church to Christendom, it also resorted to violence, for
example, to make Donatists return to the Catholic faith. But ironically, the Reformation,
which sought to purify the church of heaps of Catholic errors, needed far more violence to
be successful.
In line with this development, according to Yoder, all the Lutheran, Reformed and
Anglican creeds affirm that Christians can kill without committing sins by following the
guidance of existing laws. In this way, the necessity of violence for making the Protestant
movement successful resulted in exalting the just war theory to a ‘creedal status’47 and,
according to Yoder, ‘[t]his has never been the case in Catholicism.’48 He insists that ‘[i]t has
never been promulgated by a pope speaking ex cathedra. It has never been promulgated by
an ecumenical council. It has not been taught anywhere except from a teacher’s desk. A
Catholic can deny the whole thing and not be a heretic.’49 In short, Roman Catholics were
not required to believe the just war theory to be faithful Catholics at all. They could be
44
Ibid., p. 116.
45
Ibid., p. 117.
46
Ibid.
47
Ibid., pp. 122-3.
48
Ibid., p. 123.
49
Ibid.
18
faithful Catholics without accepting it.
At this point, we can understand why Yoder says that ‘[a]t the time of the Reformation, in
Catholic Spain (in contrast) Francisco de Vitoria criticized the political morality of the
Spanish king and queen. Protestantism lacks this restraining impact of the just war theory.’50
It should be also noted that even though at this stage, symbolised by the Thirty Years’ War,
the world wide dimensions of the Holy Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire lost,
‘the unity of a particular provincial or national church with the local government’ was
maintained.51 In other words, ‘the fusion of church and society was maintained’52 and
Yoder identifies this situation as “neo-Constantinianism.”53
Oddly enough, Constantinianism as the fusion of church and society was not given up
even at the time when the Western world went through the political and ethical revolution,
so-called secularisation, between 1776 (the American Revolution) and 1848 (the publication
of the Communist Manifesto), Yoder insists. Whilst society distanced itself more and more
from the coalition with church and the association between society and church could hardly
be taken for granted at that time, the Constantinian mindset hardly changed.54 In America,
for example, politics and religion were legally separated, but American identity was closely
associated to church membership and ‘the army, congress, schools, and even football games
have chaplaincy services.’55 This shows the fact that even though America is officially a
secular country, people considered it as a type of Christian nation. In a country like Sweden,
on the other hand, the formal alliance between church and government continued, but
people became indifferent of such association between church and society. According to
Yoder, even though these are opposed developments, both cases represent the
‘secularization of a Constantinian dream.’56 That is to say that, ‘the church blesses her
society (and particularly her own national society) without a formal identification therewith,
or without religious rootage in the common people.’57 Yoder called this type of
Constantinianism “neo-neo-Constantinianism.”58
50
Ibid., p. 117.
51
Yoder, The Original Revolution, p. 150.
52
Ibid., p. 150.
53
Ibid., pp. 150-151.
54
Ibid., p. 151.
55
Ibid.
56
Ibid.
57
Ibid., p. 152.
58
Ibid.
19
This, of course, can be seen as the radicalisation of secularisation which started earlier.
‘Even in such cases where society seeks to repudiate religion, it is possible for the church to
keep holding to her former posture, claiming that the process of secularisation can best
succeed when favoured and fostered by the church.’59 In East Germany and Czechoslovakia,
for instance, happy coexistence of communist governments and Protestantism was sought
through ‘nonreligious’ reading of the Bible and Bonhoeffer was the guiding star in this
project.60 Yoder calls ‘[t]his preoccupation of the church to be allied even with
post-religious secularism as long as this is popular’ as “neo-neo-neo-Constantinianism”61
and the future coalitions with whatever political power
“neo-neo-neo-neo-Constantinianism”62
At this state, we need to be aware that it is just the allies that change from the Roman
emperors to national governments, from national governments to a certain segment of
society, from a certain segment to the Marxist humanistic republics of eastern Europe, and
so on.63 Namely, whereas it is believed that the allies needs to be changed for overcoming
the defect of the prior alliance, the habit of Constantinianism is not questioned; hence, the
same pattern repeats itself.64
Questioning Constantinianism: Biblical Descriptions of the Powers

Yoder and Hauerwas insist that the most fundamental mistake in the Constantinian drift was
not in choosing wrong allies or partners, but in the church’s longing for the earthly power to
control her surrounding world. Hauerwas says that
something has already gone wrong when Christians think they can ask, “What is the best form of
society or government?” This question assumes that Christians should or do have social and political
power so they can determine the ethos of society. That this assumption has long been with us does
nothing to confirm its truth.65
59
Ibid.
60
Ibid., p. 153.
61
Ibid.
62
Ibid., p.154.
63
Ibid., p.156.
64
Ibid.
65
20
Both Hauerwas and Yoder believe that the real task of the church is not to grip the reins of
history, but to be the church. When they say what matters is to be the church, what is at
stake is the obedience and faithfulness of a people gathered in Jesus’ name. Thus, for
Hauerwas and Yoder, the first thing for the church to ask should be ‘Is this faithful to our
Lord?’, not if the church is ‘effective’ according to the criteria of earthly politics. In
accordance with this fundamental question for the church, the principal task of theologians
is not to translate the gospel into social theories or political theories in order to make it
credible to the world, but to help the church discern obedience and faithfulness, not to make
a better world, but to make a faithful church. To quote Hauerwas again, ‘[t]heologians are
not “thinkers.” We are servants of a tradition in which the creative challenge is how to be
faithful to what we have received.’66
Hauerwas and Yoder question the accepted principle of Constantinianism because they
suspect there is something inherently unfaithful to Jesus’ call to the church in it. More
precisely, their misgivings about Constantinianism come from their understandings of the
nature of the Powers and worldly politics grounded as they are in the Scripture. In other
words, according to both of them, the nature of Constantinianism cannot be properly
understood without seeing carefully how the Powers and earthly politics are described in the
Bible. It also means that the issue of obedience and faithfulness cannot be divorced from
biblical understandings of the Powers.
Yoder locates in the scriptures a cul-de-sac condition of human existence under the fallen
structures and this is exactly the bonds of the fallen Powers which Christ crushed and
liberated us from. In the first place, the world was created as a structured world. The
structures were created by God as part of good creation to serve his purpose. In other words,
the cosmos was created with the God-given order so that he did not need to arbitrarily
intervene to control it. In so far as God created the world with its order and gave his
commandments to Adam and Eve before the fall, ‘a network of norms and regularities to
stretch out the canvas upon which the tableau of life can be painted’67 cannot be identified
with the fallen state of the world. Thus, it is quite ‘natural’ that human existence is
embedded in society, history and nature. Yoder says that ‘[t]he creative power worked in a
66
Stanley Hauerwas, A Cross-Shattered Church: Reclaiming the Theological Heart of Preaching
(London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 2010) p. 13.
67
John Howard Yoder, The Politics of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: Eerdmans, 1994)
p. 142.
21
mediated form, by means of the Powers that regularized all visible reality.’68 As long as
these structures, including the Powers, cannot be reduced to their individual components,
these structures are transcendent. ‘We cannot live without them.’69
On the other hand, according to Yoder, the predominant New Testament view of the
‘Powers’ is as fallen.70 The Powers belong to the order of creation, but they are as fallen as
the world itself is. As long as we live in the fallen world and have no access to the good
original order of creation, the Powers cannot be untainted by the fallen condition of the
world either.71 Powers were supposed to have their God-ordained functions in the created
world to serve the objective of creator, but the fallen Powers transgress their appointed
functions and limits. Yoder says that
[t]hey are no longer active only as mediators of the saving creative purpose of God; now we find
them seeking to separate us from the love of God (Rom. 8:38); we find them ruling over the lives of
those who live far from the love of God (Eph. 2:2); we find them holding us in servitude to their rules
(Col. 2:20); we find them holding us under their tutelage (Gal. 4:3). These structures which were
supposed to be our servants have become our masters and our guardians.72
In short, the fallen Powers seek to rule the world and people living in it instead of serving
the creator’s objective so that people end up in the servitude to the Powers. ‘We cannot live
with them.’73 We are in a deadlock and lost in the world.
It is, as mentioned above, in this captivity and lostness under the fallen Powers that the
meaning of Christ’s liberating works should be questioned. It cannot be denied that human
existence hinges on the subjection to the Powers in so far as there could be no community or
history, in sum, no humanity without them. Yoder maintains that ‘[i]f then God is going to
save his creatures in their humanity, the Powers cannot simply be destroyed or set aside or
68
Ibid., p. 141.
69
Ibid., p. 143.
70
Hauerwas shares this understanding of powers with Yoder. He also says that ‘[s]uch destructive
practices are called powers in the New Testament. For the salvation wrought in Christ is about the
conflict with and the conquest of these powers.’ Stanley Hauerwas, After Christendom? How the
Church is to Behave if Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation Are Bad Ideas (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1991) p. 149.
71
Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, p. 141.
72
Ibid.
73
Ibid., p. 143.
22
ignored.’74 The dominion of the corrupt Powers, therefore, has to be broken, and Yoder
believes that this is exactly what Jesus Christ did through his earthly life and physical death
in order to liberate us from the sovereignty of the Powers.
It was his way of genuine human being that brought Jesus to death on the cross. As a
genuine human, Jesus was willingly subject to the Powers, but he morally defeated and tore
down their domination by rejecting their idolisation. Jesus declared genuine righteousness
before God denying the self-glorification of the Pharisees; he held up the vision of an
alternative community that is truer and more comprehensive than the Roman Peace; he
tolerated the Jews desecrating the Sabbath and the Romans killing him by violating the law.
It should be noted here that Jesus was the greatest threat not only to both the Jewish and
Roman dominions, but to all the Powers. In this sense, ‘Jesus’ ministry from first to last was
political. His death was political.’75 As the fallen Powers could not tolerate Jesus, he was
killed by them.
Through his life and death, however, Jesus unmasked and broke the corrupt domination
of the Powers: self-glorification, self-destructive violence in earthly peace, absolutisation,
idolisation and death. Unlike the first Adam and Lucifer and all the Powers, Jesus did not
insist on being equal with God, but emptied himself and even obeyed unto death on the
cross. Yoder declares that
[h]is very obedience unto death is in itself not only the sign but also the firstfruits of an authentic
restored humanity. Here we have for the first time to do with someone who is not the slave of these
Powers. This authentic humanity included his free acceptance of death at their hands. Thus it is his
death that provides his victory: “Wherefore God has exalted him highly, and given him the name
which is above every name… that every tongue might confess that Jesus Christ is the Lord”
(2:9-11).76
Given that this Jesus event described as such by Yoder is the firstfruits of the authentic
restored humanity freed from the bondage of the fallen Powers, it must also be understood
as the beginning of the new creation. Now that Jesus Christ has been exalted as the Lord of
74
Ibid., p. 144.
75
Hauerwas, After Christendom? p. 91.
76
Yoder, The Politics of Jesus, p. 145.
23
the new creation, every tongue should confess his name.
For Yoder and Haeurwas, this victory of Jesus through his death on a cross constitutes the
core message for the church to proclaim and the genuine criteria for her to discern her life
against. If we understand how Jesus Christ broke the sovereignty of the Powers, we will
also see that ‘the otherness of the church’ is a way of life deeply rooted in the true strength
that was shown to her by her Lord. It is, thus, utterly misguided to understand the attitude of
the New Testament church towards the social issues that she was faced with as a
‘withdrawal,’ or as something prompted by Christians’ frailty, or by their insignificant
membership, or by their marginal social status, or by apprehension of persecution, or by
obsession with purity. ‘[I]t was rather a victory when the church rejected the temptations of
Zealot and Maccabean patriotism and Herodian collaboration. The church accepted as a gift
being the “new humanity” created by the cross and not by the sword.’77
Constantinianism as Regression to Idolatry
We must never forget that it was modern, liberal democracy, in fighting to preserve itself, that
resorted to the bomb in Hiroshima and the firebombing of Dresden, not to mention Vietnam.78
Hauerwas repeatedly urges us to see the church’s politics as distinct from that of the world’s
and rejects any forms of ‘political theology’ that seek to marry the politics of Jesus
bequeathed to the church by her Lord with the politics of this world.
Nazi Germany is, Hauerwas insists, the gravest warning against the church trapped in the
idea of ‘serving the world,’79 and the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki witness to
the church’s moral incapacity. He reminds us of what President Truman said when seeing
the first atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on 6th August, 1945. According to Truman, the
attomic bomb was ‘the greatest thing in history.’80 This statement testifies that this
77
Ibid., pp. 148-9.
78
Stanley Hauerwas and Williams H. Willimon, Resident Aliens: A Provocative Christian
Assessment of Culture and Ministry for People Who Know That Something is Wrong (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1989) p. 42.
79
‘For Barth, and for us, Nazi Germany was the supreme test for modern theology. There we
experienced the “modern world,” which we had so laboured to understand and to become credible to,
as the world, not only of the Copernican world view, computers, and the dynamo, but also of the
Nazis.’ Ibid., p. 24.
80
Ibid., p. 25.
24
‘outstanding Baptist layman’ had not learnt that the greatest thing in history happened in and
through Jesus Christ, through his life, death, resurrection and ascension. At the same time,
his comment on the atomic bomb also portrays how deeply ‘Christian minds’ are trapped in
the pre-Christian understandings of the Powers, and in the unbiblical view of the universe
and ethics.
Yoder insists that the publication of our age, including history books, classic literature,
modern novels, news papers, magazines, TV programmes, films, and so on, is all together
propagating ‘a view of the universe’ with one voice, and in which the world is to be changed
only through power/violence.81 It also indoctrinates us with the world view of there being
only two sides, or two kinds of people: bad guys and good guys. In this world view, bad
guys are to be shattered and good guys are allowed to resort to any possible means to
destroy evil guys. Bad guys are not bad because of their evil intentions or deeds, but they
are bad by attribute, in being on ‘the enemy side.’ In the same way, good guys are not good
because of their ethical deeds. When it comes to their deeds, good guys are not that different
from bad guys because they also tell lies and kill like bad guys. Good guys are good because
they are on ‘our side.’ In so far as they are ‘on our side,’ they fight for the right cause, and as
they pursue the right cause, they have the right to deceive and kill. The most important point
in this view is that while good guys are predestined to win, bad guys are to perish. It is in
this view of the cosmos and ethics that the atomic bomb is the greatest thing in history
because it destroys ‘the enemy’ perfectly.
However, this view of ethics and the universe is not only seriously flawed but also untrue
from the biblical or historical points of view. Yoder argues that moral issues cannot be
simply divided into two camps of good and bad.82 Even if we could divide the world into
the good and evil camps,83 good guys do not seem to always win out.84 We have no
difficulty finding examples of bad guys’ victories.85 It is also impossible to draw the
justification of unlimited possible means for the destruction of the enemy from the Scripture.
81
82
Ibid., p. 172.
83
Post-modern thinkers do not believe that we can discern good from evil. The discernment
between good and bad itself is impossible in the post-modern world.
84
85
A deeper problem with the victory won by violence might be that every victory, either of good
guys or bad guys, is transient.
25
Furthermore, ‘[s]ecrecy and deceit are forms of slavery.’86 In contrast, Jesus Christ has
taught us that transparency and humility cannot be divorced from truth, and violence is an
indicator of ethical infirmity. Jesus shows us that ‘[h]e who resort to blows confesses he has
no better arguments.’87 Hauerwas rephrases this and says that ‘[a] leadership which cannot
stand the force of truth must always rely on armies.’88 Violence may be able to keep out the
enemy for a while, but it can never create a peaceable community. A community brought
forth by violence is unable to let it go for defending itself. This is why violence is inherent
to every community given birth to by earthly Powers.
In sum, the kind of picture of the world and ethics disseminated by the media, popular
writers, film makers, TV producers, and so on, is of the old world before Jesus Christ. This
view is not only thoroughly coloured in violence and deceit but it also ‘sustains a pagan,
pre-Christian confusion of manhood with virility.’89
Yoder also makes this point by contrasting the peace of Rome and of the church and
reveals the unbridgeable schism between them. The nature of Pax Romana is represented by
an ancient maxim, ‘If you wish peace, prepare for war.’ It clearly expresses that the kind of
peace Rome achieved was dependent upon the power of the sword. Per contra, the sort of
peace to be achieved in the church, by Jesus’s disciples, does not hinge upon the meticulous
calculation of the power balance based on military force, but upon ‘the creative construction
of loving, nonviolent ways to undermine unjust institutions and to build healthy ones.’90
The rejection of violence by the church is not withdrawal from the world. It is rather the key
to the creative pioneer works by the church in the world that the church does not have to
invest her resources on coercive measures like the earthly powers. Thus, ‘[t]he renunciation
of coercive violence is the prerequisite of a genuinely creative social responsibility and to
the exercise of those kinds of social power which are less self-defeating.’91
The two different kinds of peace above, the Pax Romana and that in the church, represent
two distinct kinds of politics. While earthly powers seek to make us believe that they are our
patrons, they reserve the exclusive rights for themselves of resorting to violence for keeping
86
87
Ibid.
88
Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: Towards a Constructive Christian Social Ethic
(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981) p. 31.
89
90
Ibid., p. 174.
91
Ibid., p. 178.
26
‘peace.’ As distinct from the way of earthly politics, Jesus has taught us that the greatest of
his disciples should be the most humble servant to the others, and exemplified it through his
life and death. Given that the power holders of the world cannot give up the idea of ruling
others by claiming a superior position to the ruled and the right to coercion, they can never
humble themselves to the form of servanthood that Jesus Christ requires from his disciples.
This simple fact that the politics of Jesus has been revealed in his most humble servanthood
to people, and the earthly politics call for the right to determine the destiny of others,
‘unmasks the pretension to use violence for the good as being a form of hypocrisy.’92
The chasm between Jesus’ politics and the earthly reminds us of the idolisation of the
Powers again. To put it in a different way, politics is matter of what we worship and what
we sacrifice ourselves to. For that very reason, Yoder states that the issue of ‘conformity for
this world’ in the scripture has connections with ‘idols.’93 As far as idolatry consists in
people sacrificing themselves to false gods, to false powers, and to ‘unworthy objects of
devotion’94 in their blindness, it is vain sacrifice, the service of death.
What, then, do we actually do when we accept killing our neighbours for preserving
‘peace’? Yoder insists that
[i]f I take the life of another, I am saying that I am devoted to another value, one other than the
neighbor himself, and other than Jesus Christ Himself, to which I sacrifice my neighbor. I have
thereby made of a given nation, social philosophy, or party my idol. To it I am ready to sacrifice not
only something of my own, but also the lives of my fellow human beings for whom Christ gave His
life.95
In other words, when we ‘practically’ accept the violence in politics, we are returning to
idolatry and give up the faithfulness to the call from Jesus to be a different way of politics.
‘Thus,’ Yoder says, ‘it is quite fitting to describe the use of violence as the outworking of an
idolatry.’96
In so far as the Constantinian alliance with the earthly powers is driven by the desire to
92
Ibid., p. 180.
93
Ibid., p. 181.
94
Ibid.
95
Ibid.
96
Ibid.
27
grasp the reins of history, it is the church’s temptation to regress into the pre-Christian
idolatrous politics, giving up faithfulness and obedience. Constantinianism thus cannot
simply be reduced to the matter of the church-state relationship but it should be rather
conceived of as one of the most gripping temptations for every church of every generation
sojourning in this world.
Relevance of the Eschatological Hope

After questioning the dynamics of Constantinianism and showing that Christian faithfulness
should be guided by Jesus Christ himself and his way of life as self-giving servanthood,
Yoder concludes that ‘our effort to perceive, and to manipulate a causal link between our
obedience and the results we hope for must be broken.’97 And then he suggests how we
should reason the relationship between our obedience and the eschatological hope against
the temptation of Constantinianism.
Yoder describes the church’s mission as a ‘a source of healing and creativity’98 in the
manner of Jesus’ suffering servanthood and he suggests that we are called out by Jesus to
re-present ‘the shape of the work of Christ’99 in a world that we are not in control of. Given
that Christians are called to proclaim Christ Jesus, not themselves, what is required of Jesus’
disciples is to be the pointer to their saviour. Giving up the ambition of ruling the world
means to confess that the completion of the Eschaton, of course, does not rely on the
church’s efforts. It is God himself who will have the new Jerusalem come down onto the
earth from heaven in the fullness of time. When the church obeys her Lord, however, she
re-presents the kingdom of the beloved Son into which she was transferred, and the lordship
of Jesus Christ may be visible to the world.
Yoder argues that when Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, it was not meant to be sanitation
improvement of the Jewish society, but in this act a peculiar spiritual and ethical value was
crystallised. Likewise, when we are engaged in the care of mentally disabled or elderly
people, we should not measure the success or effectiveness of our service based on
economic gain or loss. What should be asked in this kind of service is, according to Yoder,
whether it points to the self-giving servanthood of Jesus Christ as a ‘sign.’100 Taking up an
97
Ibid., p. 159.
98
Ibid., p. 180.
99
Ibid., p. 160.
100
Ibid.
28
example from the civil rights movement, he maintains that the effectiveness or achievement
of it should also be evaluated based on what it re-presents. According to Yoder,
[a] sit-in or march is not instrumental but it is significant. Even when no immediate change in the
social order can be measured, even when persons and organizations have not yet been moved to take
a different position, the efficacy of the deed is first of all its efficacy as sign.101
Given that we do not live in a world that we rule, there may be times when the gospel can
be proclaimed only in and through our actions. Even in such a situation, a word must be
spoken in and through our deeds, with the firm conviction that Jesus Christ is the Lord of
history and his Spirit guides us and is able to turn our mundane but peaceful gestures and
postures into manifestations of Jesus’ lordship.102 Granted that earthly politics cannot
accept the lordship of Jesus in order to free themselves from idolatry, the validity of the
eschatological hope in the form of ‘the unmasking of idols’103 should not be underestimated.
There are ages when a certain ideology dominates a community and all people become total
slaves to it: the Third Reich in Germany, the Empire of Japan, Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot,
Cultural Revolution under Mao Zedong, and so on. In such circumstances, the existence of
remnant faithful to the true Lord who secure an outpost of the heavenly dominion and name
destructive power of idols can be the clear witnesses to the character of the kingdom Jesus
established.
Yoder also reminds us that many of those essential functions of the secularised state
originated in the church. Taking this point into account, it can be said that in various ways
Christian services display the ‘pioneer’104 aspect of the eschatological hope. Anglo-Saxon
democracy, for instance, has its origin in the congregational meeting of the evangelical
churches; the work of the school and hospital were created by the church and universalised
later by the state. She also gave birth to the idea of voluntary service to youth and then it
was also adopted by universities and governments.
To confess that we do not grasp the reins of history is to accept the incalculability of our
deeds and their effects on the world. That the church can engage with the incalculability of
101
Ibid., p. 161.
102
Ibid.
103
Ibid., p. 162.
104
Ibid., p. 163.
29
the world is a great privilege because it enables her to dedicate herself to truly creative
works without fearing failures even if we may not be able to see the results we wish for. In
these pilot efforts, Yoder suggersts, we can also acknowledge the relevance of the
eschatological hope as a ‘spring in the desert.’105 He states that
[i]f, in a desert region, water can be found it is because in some distant and unknown place
incalculable quantities of water have sunk into the ground and disappeared.…So it is with deeds of
Christian obedience. Lost in the earth, filtering away without being seen or heard, they contribute to
the building up of pressure, creating a subterranean reservoir of saving and invigorating power which
can be tapped at the point where men are most thirsty.106
It can be also said that ‘my losing track of my own effectiveness in the great reservoir of
the pressure of love’107 is the mode of the eschatological hope itself as St Paul says that ‘in
hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen?
But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. (Rom 8:24, 25) We do
not know when we can see the harvest of our labours, but it could be bounteous beyond our
sight or programme or expectation. In this sense, ‘wonder’108 is another aspect of the
validity of the eschatological hope.
The final form suggested by Yoder in which we could make out the validity of the
eschatological hope is ‘mirage.’109 He emphasises the distinction between mirage and
hallucination. Whilst a hallucination is a false perception created by a malfunctioning mind
in the absence of external being, a mirage is a reflection of something or someone that
actually exists. Even though the mirage appears as an indirect vague image to us, it shows
us the right direction of its origin that really exists off our horizon. Put more boldly, the
world may see how the New Jerusalem looks through the life of the community that is
gathered in the name of Jesus and obeys him faithfully.
On the contrary, if the church loses sight of the relevance of the eschatological hope, she
is easily tempted to identify the realistic manipulation of the world by allying herself with
105
Ibid., p. 163.
106
Ibid., p. 164.
107
Ibid.
108
Ibid., p. 162.
109
Ibid., p. 164.
30
earthly powers with God’s providence, and as a result she deteriorates into the arrogant
belief that she is in control of history. In this way, ironically, the church contributes to
buttressing the idolatrous earthly politics.
The worst part of the church’s alliance with earthly powers is that it makes her forget the
first mission, which was given to her by her Lord, that no other institution or organisation in
the world can fulfil: to point to Jesus Christ in her words and deeds. This is the very reason
that both Yoder and Hauerwas try to dissuade us from Constantinianism and encourage us to
hold up obedience and faithfulness as the ultimate criteria of Christian ethics by presenting
the relevance of eschatological hope.
31
Chapter 2 Church as a Narrative Community
[O]ur prince was defenseless against those who would rule the world with violence. He had a power,
however, which the world knew not. For he insisted that we could form our lives together by trusting
in truth and love to banish the fears that create enmity and discord. To be sure, we have often been
unfaithful to his story, but that is no reason for us to think it is an unrealistic demand. Rather it means
we must challenge ourselves to be the kind of community where such a story can be told and
manifested by a people formed in accordance with it—for if you believe that Jesus is the messiah of
Israel, then “everything else follows, doesn’t it?”110
In the previous chapter I clarified Hauerewas’ account of Constantinianism, reliant as it is

on the work of Yoder. In that treatment I also suggested that an avowedly Constantinian
trajectory is not only a prominent feature of the Roman Catholic tradition, but also became a
widespread theological habit in church history. It also explained how in the Constantinian
critiques of Hauerwas and Yoder of worldly politics, governed as they are by the Powers,
idolise themselves. Constantinianism is therefore understood as a regression to the ‘old
politics’ that precedes Jesus’ coming. Eschatological hope was presented as the ultimate
foundation of the Church’s politics and her most significant mission was suggested as the
pointer to the self-sacrificing servanthood of Jesus Christ in and through her life.
This chapter clarifies the theological basis of this Constantinian critique by outlining the
biblically based ecclesiology which it assumes. Haeurwas' resistance to the dualist
ecclesiology, characteristic of Constantinianism, presumes a hermeneutic circle tying the
narratives that give birth to a community called church to its identity that is formed through
listening to the narratives of the New and Old Testament. This chapter sets out this
hermeneutic circle which is then shown to be the fundamental condition for the
narrative-centred interdependence between the existence of a faithful community and its
action. This account will illumine how the church should be guided and controlled by the
Bible and the sense in which the Scriptures can be understood as the ultimate authority for
the life of the church.
This chapter also shows how Hauerwas understands the Christian training called
110
Hauerwas, A Community of Character, p. 35.
32
discipleship, a shift in citizenship that requires acquisition of a new language and
establishing new habits. It will be suggested that discipleship requires Christians to unlearn
earthly politics by learning to live a new politics, that of servanthood as revealed in Jesus’
death on the cross, through faithful worship of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. To live the
politics of Jesus is in this construal to elucidate how and why the church can be understood
as an extension of the truth of the kingdom revealed by Jesus, he himself being its king. At
the end of the chapter the difference between confession of sin and self-justification is set
out in order to elucidate why Christians must be trained as sinners to be faithful to their
Lord, and so resistant to the temptation to justify what is laid down as sin and rejected in the
New Testament as ‘natural’ or ‘realistic’ in a manner that cannot but, in the end, make the
saving-work of God through Jesus Christ redundant.
Interrelationship between Jesus Christ, Scripture and Church

Everett Ferguson argues in his comprehensive project of biblical ecclesiology, The Church
of Christ: A Biblical Ecclesiology for Today, that ‘[t]he New Testament knows no invisible
church. That is a later theological concept to explain anomalies between the biblical
teaching and the realities of the church at given historical periods.’111 The church is ‘always
treated in the New Testament as a visible community of people, identifiable and distinct
from the surrounding world.’112 In this sense, the development of post-Constantinian
visible/invisible church is an anomaly relating to the New Testament. It can therefore be
said that in the disappearance of a visible faithful community after Constantine, theology
needed to secure the existence of the ‘true’ church somewhere up in an invisible realm, by
way of Platonic type dualisms. Once the vast majority of church members had become
‘Christians’ without conversion, it was impossible to see the ‘visible’ church as ‘saints’ even
though this is one of the most biblical descriptions of the church. However, once again,
splitting the church into visible and invisible is unbiblical and there is no place for dualistic
ecclesiology in the New Testament. Thus, the ‘traditional’ but unbiblical dualistic
ecclesiology of the visible/invisible church, which was born and developed in the course of
the church’s failing to obey her Lord, should be challenged and overcome by a more
primordial and biblically sound ecclesiology.
111
Everett Ferguson, The Church of Christ: A Biblical Ecclesiology for Today (Grand Rapids, MI.:
William. B. Eerdmans, 1996) p. 346.
112
Ibid., p. 205.
33
Hauerwas provides us with rich resources for this purpose. He draws our attention to the
parallelism between the relationships between the community of Israel and the stories that
narrate the history- and community-making events, such as creation, fall, Exodus, the
election of David as king, Babylonian Captivity and so on, and that between the church and
the narratives that tell of Jesus’ events such as his birth, life, death, resurrection and
ascension, to help us understand the narrative-centred character of both communities. This
narrative-centredness of both Israel and Church is, at the same time, essential to understand
what it actually means when Christians say, ‘The Bible is the authority over the church life.’
The people of Israel believed that God revealed himself in the history-making events that
the Hebrew Testament narrates, and they also believed that those events gave birth to the
community of Israel.113 Their rootedness in the stories which tell the history- and
community-making events inevitably made them repeatedly return to those narratives to
learn their identity. In other words, Israel did not know who they were without the stories
that narrate their history- and community-making events. It is Israel’s rootedness in the
narratives that made the Hebrew Testament authoritative for the people of Israel, and which
elucidates why the most elevated authority was given to the Torah among the books that
shape the Hebrew Testament.
The Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Testament, is also called the Law.
Obviously, they include rules that Israel were to observe. When we look at the Book of
Leviticus, for example, it may look like a rule book to our eyes. However, the existence of
rules in the Torah should not make us blind to its peculiar structure; put more simply, we
should not forget the fact that the Pentateuch begins with the story of creation instead of a
list of rules, and also the granting of the commandments put in the context of the Exodus
narrative. This structural feature also indicates that those rules make sense as long as they
are linked to the story of Exodus. This physical setting of the Torah is not accidental, but it
represents the innate bond between the community of Israel and the books called Torah.
There is also one other striking feature in the relationship between Torah and Israel. On
the one hand, those texts that form the Torah were obviously given birth to by the
community of Israel itself. In this sense, the texts are the products of the community. On the
other hand, the community which gave birth to the texts was created by and through and
113
Stanley Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame;
London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983) p. 77.
34
around the narratives that constitute as well as precede the texts of the Torah. In other words,
it is the narratives that shaped their identity as the nation of the covenant, and for this
identity-giving character of the stories that narrate the history-making events, the texts of
the Torah were compiled around those stories. This also means that without a community
that enthusiastically and faithfully listen to those narratives, there would have been no Torah,
or it must have been lost as the Torah.
Thus, as Hauerwas points out, arguing about the Bible’s revelatory function is misleading
when divorced from ‘a community that has been formed and sustained by the reality that
gives substance both to the scripture and to that community.’114 This means that the living
circulation between text and community can never be abandoned. It was fundamental for
Israel to repeatedly return to their foundational narratives not only for confirming their
identity, but also for the community’s future. To put it differently, they learn who they are
from recollecting the history-making events narrated in their texts for learning how to live
faithfully to their Lord. In this way, the recollection of the foundational narratives also
determines their attitude towards the future.
The relationship between church and scripture is not different from that between Israel
and Hebrew Testament. The church is a community gathered around the narratives of Jesus
Christ. It is only this community that seeks to listen to and to be shaped by those narratives,
and has engendered the so-called New Testament. This living bond between text and
community is also illuminating for us to understand what biblical authority means.
Hauerwas calls our attention to the fact that questions about the authority of Scripture
remain totally unintelligible and meaningless without the existence of a community that
enthusiastically and faithfully listen and remember the stories of Jesus’ life, death,
resurrection and ascension. He rightly says that
[t]he formation of texts as well as the canon required the courage of a community to constantly
remember and reinterpret its past. Such remembering and reinterpretation is a political task, for
without a tradition there can be no community.115
This hermeneutical condition of scriptural authority must not be underestimated. Firstly,
114
115
Ibid., p. 53.
35
were it not for the existence of a faithful community of disciples that returns to their
foundational stories of Jesus Christ again and again, there would not have existed the New
Testament from the very beginning. This also implies that Jesus Christ
cannot be known abstracted from the disciples’ response. The historical fact that we only learn who
Jesus is as he is reflected through the eyes of his followers, a fact that has driven many to despair
because it seems they cannot know the real Jesus, in fact is a theological necessity.
This explains why the four Gospels hold the most elevated status in the New Testament as
the Torah did in the Hebrew Testament. They perform the same function, supplying the
hermeneutic framework to interpret the other texts of the New Testament, as the Torah did
in the Hebrew Testament. The Gospels according to Mathew, Mark, Luke and John are
placed at the beginning of the New Testament and Gospel reading is regarded as the
culmination of the liturgy of the Word in the Eucharist or divine liturgy. These features, the
status given to the Gospel reading in the liturgy of the Word and the physical settings of the
New Testament, reflect the narrative-centred character of the church and her faith. The four
Gospels are so elevated because Christians cannot make sense of the world they live in and
God they believe in and the hope they hold without telling the stories of Jesus Christ.
Without Jesus, we cannot know that the Father sent his only Son to save the world. Without
Jesus, we cannot know the Holy Spirit is the spirit that confesses Jesus as Christ and the
helper he promised. Without Jesus, we cannot know that ‘Jesus’ life is integral to the
meaning, content, and possibility of the kingdom.’116 Without Jesus, we cannot know the
world was created in him and for him. Without Jesus, we cannot know that on his return, the
work of God’s creation comes to completion. In short, Jesus Christ is the umbilical cord that
connects creation, soteriology and eschatology, namely, all the Christian teachings, and no
part of Christian beliefs cannot be disconnected from Jesus Christ. If, for example, creation
is cut off from Christology, it is no longer a Christian doctrine.
However, this christocentric nature of Christian faith, as Hauerwas points out, is nothing
less than the fruition of the disciples’ faithfulness and obedience to the stories of Jesus
Christ which they heard and through which their lives were formed. ‘[T]he Jesus we have in
116
Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom, p. 85.
36
Scripture is the Jesus of the early church.’117 For the church, “no Jesus, no God; no church,
no Jesus.”118 Therefore, the significance of canonisation of the Bible cannot be properly
understood if we lose sight of the church’s commitment to the stories of Jesus and her
conviction that the church is able to discern faithful and unfaithful narratives about her lord,
because the church is the only community where authentic knowledge of Jesus Christ is
retained in her life sustained by her obedience to him. Accordingly, ‘[t]he canon marks off
as scripture those texts that are necessary for the life of the church without trying to resolve
their obvious diversity and/or even disagreements.’119
As the collection of the texts that are universally accepted by all the churches, the Bible is
assigned a special status separated from other written and oral traditions, the status of the
ultimate authority for church’s life of every generation. To sum up this point, Hauerwas says
that,
[r]ather to claim the Bible as authority is the testimony of the church that this book provides the
resources necessary for the church to be a community sufficiently truthful so that our conversation
with one another and God can continue across generations.120
To sum up, when Christians say that Old and New Testament are the Bible, it somehow
constitutes the most primordial Christian confession. It states that Christian faith stands on
this collection of books and in so doing Christians also avow that this collection of texts the
authority over the church life. The centre of Christian life is worship on the Lord’s Day and
the Bible is first and foremost the authority for church life as the collection of books that are
to be read in the context of common worship. Given that Christians are formed as Jesus’
disciples in worshiping Father, Son and Holy Spirit, when Christians say that Old and New
Testament are the Bible, they also acknowledge that their lives should be formed and ruled
by those texts. Thus, taking church life as a whole stretching beyond time and space as a
sort of organic ‘tradition,’ the Scripture is the authority over this tradition.121
Tradition needs to change or be expanded lest it be a dead tradition. To put it in a different
117
Ibid., p. 73.
118
Hauerwas, Cross-Shattered Church, p. 23.
119
120
Ibid., pp. 63-4.
121
Ibid., p. 60
37
way, there is no living tradition without interpretation. This necessity of interpretation is
extremely significant for the existence of a community which stands on the tradition
founded on a once and for all event handed down by way of witness. The unrepeatable event
of Jesus Christ that gave birth to a community called church, which had not existed before
his coming, required interpretation. The interpretations of this once and for all event were
shaped as the four Gospels in narrative form. Even though the four Gospels are the
normative interpretations of the unrepeatable event of Jesus Christ for the church, they are at
the same time open to a new narrativity in a new context. This possibility of a new
narrativity is not deviation from the tradition, but ‘the reappropriation of the tradition with a
greater depth of understanding.’122 In this way the Bible is the authority for the church as
long as the community of faith born in the narratives of Jesus Christ can preserve its identity
only through incessantly interpreting and reappropriating the Scripture to live faithfully in
each context in which it is situated.
Discipleship: Learning the Language of the Church

To be a Christian is to be a disciple and to be a disciple is to be a member of a new
community which has its own way of life. Hauerwas elucidates this point and states that
[t]o be a disciple is to be part of a new community, a new polity, which is formed on Jesus’ obedience
to the cross. The constitutions of this new polity are the Gospels. The Gospels are not just the
depiction of a man, but they are manuals for the training necessary to be part of the new community.
To be a disciple means to share Christ’s story, to participate in the reality of God’s rule.123
The crucial point here is not only that the church is a political body, but also that to become
a member of this polity requires training, which is, again, called discipleship. The most
important thing that Hauerwas has learnt from MacIntyre is that every polity or every
community has its own social ethics; in other words, granted that every ethic is rooted in the
values that are cherished in a community, there are no social ethics independent of a
community. One cannot be a good member of a community without having been nurtured
and trained to appropriate the way of life of the community.
122
Ibid., p. 61.
123
Ibid., p. 49.
38
Moving from one community to another cannot be an easy task for anybody. Especially,
if it is such a case in which one leaves their own community and becomes a citizen of a new
community where people speak a different language from their own and have a distinct way
of life, this shift is enormous and extremely demanding. And to become a Christian is
tremendously a demanding shift because ‘[i]n baptism, Christians are given a new
citizenship, a new home which makes all the difference in how we live in relationship to
present arrangements.’124 The most important part of this citizenship change is the
acquisition of a new language, because, as MacIntyre maintains, [l]earning its language and
being initiated into their community’s tradition is one and the same initiation.’125
One might wonder, ‘Why I need to learn a new language to be a Christian? Obviously I
don’t stop speaking English after I become a Christian. This claim sounds ridiculous.’
However reasonable this objection may sound, learning a new language is still indispensable
training for a Christian. Strictly speaking, there are no languages, English as such, Greek as
such, Latin as such or Hebrew as such. Hauerwas clarifies this point by quoting MacIntyre.
According to MacIntyre, there are only ‘latin-as-written-and-spoken-in-the-Rome-of-Cicero
and Irish-as-written-and-spoken-in-sixteenth-century-Ulster. The boundaries of a language
are the boundaries of some linguistic community which is also a social community.’126 In
this sense the language is always idiomatic and the narratives of Jesus are the language or
the idiom of the church that cannot be found in any other communities but in the church.
Therefore, learning the language of the church is the most crucial part of discipleship and
knowing something about Jesus or just knowing his name is not enough to be his disciples.
To Be a Citizen of the Kingdom in a New Community

The language that the church speaks is not a natural language that can be found in the world.
Therefore,
our understanding of what it means to be Christian is to submit ourselves to the discipline of learning
how to speak a foreign language. The church’s language is not a natural language, but it is a language
124
Hauerwas and Willimon, Where Resident Aliens Live, p. 73.
125
Alasdair MacIntyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, IN.: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1988) p. 382.
126
Ibid., p. 373, cited. in Hauerwas, After Christendom? p. 134.
39
that requires the self to be transformed to be part of that language.127
To show the insufficiency of just knowing something about Jesus, Hauerwas takes up Mk.
8:27-9:1. The answers to the question, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ (Mk. 8:27)128 vary
depending on people’s religious and political positions. Some people say ‘John the Baptist,’
others say ‘Elijah,’ and still others say ‘one of the prophets.’ The first question is followed
by the question to Peter, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ (v. 29) This is the central question
not only for Mark but for the entire New Testament because in this question and in the kind
of answer that Jesus requires from his disciples the meaning of following him is condensed.
Peter’s response, ‘You are the Messiah,’ seems to be perfect at a glance. In fact, what he
said is right. In Mt. 16:17, Jesus declares that ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For
flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.’ And right after this,
Jesus promises to build his church ‘on this rock.’ However, this ‘right answer’ is darkened
by Jesus’ harsh condemnation of Peter, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your
mind not on divine things but on human things.’ (Mk. 8:33)
Finally, the dialogue closes with the astonishing claim by Jesus. He declares that
[i]f any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow
me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and
for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit
their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my
words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he
comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. (Mk. 8:34-8)
This dialogue between Jesus and Peter reveals the unbridgeable gap in the meaning of the
word, “Messiah” and also shows the kind of commitment Jesus requires from his disciples.
For Peter and other disciples, the long awaited Messiah had to be a person who breaks the
Roman dominion and restores Israel to the supremacy of its golden age under king David
and Solomon. However, surprisingly, Jesus let the disciples down and rejects being seen as
127
128
Every biblical quote in this thesis is from the New Revised Standard Version (1990) except
indirect quotes from other authors.
40
the one with power to destroy the pagan empire and to bring Israel back to glory. Jesus told
them that he would be rejected by the religious and political leaders of the Jewish and
Roman societies, suffer and be killed, instead of predicting the return of Israel as a glorious
nation.
Jesus told them not only about his sufferings and death, but also about his resurrection.
Still, what Jesus told them was totally unacceptable to the disciples, and drove Peter to
rebuke Jesus. For him, the Messiah must be a man of power to destroy the Roman empire; a
saviour should have nothing to do with suffering and death. To put it differently, ‘saviors are
people with power to affect the world. To save means to be “in control,” or to seek to be “in
control.”’129 ‘His power is,’ however, ‘of a different order and the powers of this world will
necessarily put him to death because they recognize, better than Peter, what a threat to
power looks like.’130
At this point, Peter had not learnt what kind of Messiah Jesus was even though he knew
Jesus’ name. Peter, and of course the other disciples also, conjectured that there would be no
difference between the kingdom which Jesus proclaimed and that of this world. But in
reality, the kingdom Jesus proclaimed is the opposite from that of this world. He said
“[y]ou know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and
their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become
great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.
For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Mt.
20:25-28)
This portrait of the way of kingdom by Jesus must have shattered all disciples’
expectations about the Messiah and left them puzzled. In the kingdom of this world, the
king orders his subjects and they serve the king. The king orders the subjects to fight and lay
their lives for the king. In the kingdom of this world, the king never becomes a servant to
his underlings, even less dies for them. The kind of kingdom that Jesus proclaimed is totally
unintelligible to anybody of this world. Christians learn how it looks only through the
language of the church, the stories that narrate Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and ascension.
129
130
Ibid.
41
Given that the kingdom Jesus proclaimed is such a kingdom where the king himself
serves his people and gives his life for them to have a true life, Jesus’ cross is not an
accidental episode, but the pinnacle of his life; his life was fulfilled on the cross. Because
the way of the kingdom Jesus proclaimed cannot fail to undermine the foundation of the
worldly power structure standing on threat and fear, his death, or more precisely his being
killed by his contemporary religious and political leaders was the upshot of his mission. In
this sense, the whole story of Jesus is the truth of the cross. Therefore, the kingdom is the
story of Jesus’ cross too. Without Jesus’ death on the cross, the meaning of the kingdom
remains unintelligible.
It is this very way of kingdom that Jesus has proclaimed, demonstrated, and invites us to
join. This is the truth, which Jesus reveals and he himself is, and which requires us not to die
for anything and anybody but for him. The truth revealed in the cross of Jesus prevents us
from killing anybody for it, because our obedience to the truth should come from loving
Jesus, not from coercion or threat. Therefore, dying for him, if it cannot be avoided, rather
than killing others even for the ultimate truth, is fundamental to being Jesus’ disciple. In
other words, discipleship is to learn to lose one’s life for Jesus’ sake and to give up the
temptation of killing people for whatever cause.
It was this nature of Jesus’ messiahship and this way of life of the kingdom that Peter had
not learnt and he later had to learn in the life of Jesus’ community built upon his narratives.
At this point, it becomes clear that we cannot properly answer Jesus’ question, “But who do
you say that I am?” unless we are ‘formed in the kind of community he calls into
existence.’131 Therefore,
[b]eing a Christian is an expression of our obedience to, and in a community based on Jesus’
messiahship. And it was this that Peter had not learned; he assumed that this Kingdom would look
like the kingdoms of the world. But he was wrong: all kingdoms of the world derive their being from
our fear of one another; the rule of God means that a community can exist where trust, which was
made possible by the knowledge that our existence is bounded by the truth, rules. ‘Like Peter, few of
us are ready for such “knowledge,” but insofar as we are able to make it part of our lives we in fact
become citizens of his Kingdom.132
131
Ibid., p. 40.
132
Ibid., p. 49.
42
Church: Continuity of Jesus’ Truth
It is often said that Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God, but that is not enough. Given that
Jesus Christ invites us to be a citizen of his kingdom and live the kind of life that has been
revealed through the Gospels, his truth requires our full commitment without reserve and
faithfulness to death. Thus, it is not enough to say that the Bible teaches the truth, but we
should say that ‘[w]e, no less than the first Christians, are the continuation of the truth made
possible by God’s rule. We continue this truth when we see that the struggle of each to be
faithful to the Gospel is essential to our own lives.133’ To put it simply, ‘[w]hat is crucial is
not that Christians know the truth, but that they be the truth.’134
Before he was killed on the cross, in front of Pilate Jesus declared that ‘[m]y kingdom is
not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting
to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.’
(Jn. 18:36) If the church is to be the continuation of the truth revealed in the person of Jesus,
it can never be regarded as a cultural development or moral progress. If we call the life of
the church Christian ethics, we have to admit that Christian ethics can never be
universalised or generalised for a wider audience or ‘public’ by severing it from Jesus’
narratives.
At this point, we need to reconfirm the triple interdependency between Jesus, Scripture
and church. It is the richness and the power of the biblical narrative that forms a church, but
the biblical truth is proved true only through the existence of a faithful community that
keeps proclaiming the narrative of Israel and Jesus Christ and embodies the way of life
revealed in those narratives. This interdependence cannot and should not be eradicated. As
Hauerwas claims, ‘[t]he question of the moral significance of scripture, therefore, turns out
to be a question about what kind of community the church must be to be able to make the
narratives of scripture central for its life.’135 To say the same thing differently, Christian
social ethics should begin with ‘the formation of a society shaped and informed by the
truthful character of the God that was revealed in the stories of Israel and Jesus.’136 It is
only such a community that is ‘capable of sustaining the authority of scripture through use
133
Ibid., p. 52.
134
Ibid., p. 150.
135
Ibid., p. 68.
136
Ibid., p. 92.
43
in its liturgy and governance.’137
Christians are a people who adhere to the church’s historical decision of compiling texts
as a canonical book for the church on which she is to be nourished and her identity as the
body of Christ be formed. The existence of so many theologians and church leaders
doubting the ethical “relevance” of Scripture to church life, therefore, simply indicates that
there are countless ‘churches’ that have lost the narrative-centered character of church and
have failed to be shaped as a community which lives the way of the kingdom.
To Be a Forgiven People by Learning the Grammar of Worship

The church is a community where each member’s life story is grafted into the true story of
Jesus Christ in worshipping him as Lord and Saviour. It is in this community that we can
live as a forgiven people and accept even our regrettable past so that we can be responsible
for our actions. Put differently, our chaotic life stories are restored as meaningful and
coherent by being integrated into Jesus’ narrative, and ‘[i]t is in worship that we acquire the
skills to acknowledge who we are—sinners.’138
We cannot learn that we are sinners at schools or through meditation or speculation or
common sense. We learn everything about God and his kingdom in and through
worshipping Jesus. Without worshipping Jesus, we know nothing about the triune God. If
we do not worship Jesus, we never know that God forgives our sins for the sake of Jesus’
sacrifice on the cross. Without our worship of Jesus, the world does not know what love is
because the love has been revealed in Father’s sending his only Son for forgiving our sin.
Likewise, it is only in and through worshipping Jesus in the church that we are trained to be
sinners.
In worship, we are made to confess our sins. It is within the structure of worship that we
are driven to confess and acknowledge our sins. For example, in the Scottish Episcopal
Liturgy, the Collect for Purity says,
Almighty God,
to whom all hearts are open,
all desires known,
137
Ibid., pp. 68.
138
44
and from whom no secrets are hidden:
cleanse the thoughts of our hearts
by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit,
that we may perfectly love you,
and worthily magnify your holy name;
through Christ our Lord.
Amen.
At the very beginning of the service, this prayer declares that we need to be cleansed before
God, suggesting that we are sinners. After the Summary of the Law, we are literally made to
confess our sins by saying
God our Father, we confess to you
and to our fellow members in the Body of Christ
that we have sinned in thought, word and deed,
and in what we have failed to do.
We are truly sorry.
Forgive us our sins,
and deliver us from the power of evil,
for the sake of your Son who died for us,
Jesus Christ, our Lord.
This confession of sin is followed by the absolution saying
God, who is both power and love,
forgive us and free us from our sins,
heal and strengthen us by his Spirit,
and raise us to new life in Christ our Lord.
This order of confession and absolution is tremendously important and educational as this
structure itself teaches us that we confess our sins because we can be forgiven. If there was
no forgiveness, we could not confess our sins. Where there is no forgiveness, there is no
45
confession but self-justification. The fact is, it is only a forgiven people, the church, that can
honestly confess their sins. That is why, paradoxically, we need to be trained to be faithful
sinners in the biblical sense for being able to confess our sins.
As St. Paul says that ‘sin is not reckoned when there is no law,’ (Ro. 5:13) we cannot
learn that we are sinners if our sins are not named in worship. Hauerwas says that ‘[w]orship
requires that our sins be named, confessed, forgiven. In worship we discover that sin is not
something we do, but rather it is a power that holds us captive.’139 And in fact, the whole
structure of liturgy is constructed in such a way that it reminds us of our sins: at Kyrie (Lord,
have mercy, Christ have mercy), at Gloria (Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father, Lord
God, Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world; have mercy on us), at Nicene Creed
(For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. …
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.), at the Narrative of the Institution
(This is my blood of the new covenant; it is poured out for you, and for all, that sins may he
forgiven), at Lord’s Prayer (forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass
against us), at Communion, and at Communion Song (Lamb of God, you take away the sins
of the world: have mercy on us). In this way, all the structure of worship is built to train us
as a forgiven sinner.
‘To confess our sin, after all, is a theological and moral accomplishment.’140 Hauerwas
also maintains that ‘[t]o learn to worship that God truthfully requires that our bodies be
formed by truthful habits of speech and gesture. To be so habituated is to acquire a character
befitting lives capable of worshiping God.’141 To be transformed into a citizen of the
kingdom is to be transformed into Jesus’ likeness and there is no transformation of a person
without acquiring new habits. As the acquisition of language is equal to building up the
most life-determining habit for a person, worshipping Jesus cannot happen without
changing the life of worshippers as long as the language of the church is preserved in our
worship.
Being trained to confess our sins is, of course, different from justifying our craving
desires. The temptation of self-justification makes us attracted to the other story than Jesus’
story, called liberalism. ‘The story that liberalism teaches us is that we have no story, and as
139
Stanley Hauerwas, A Better Hope: Resources for a Church Confronting Capitalism, Democracy,
and Postmodernity (Grand Rapids, MI.: Brazos Press, 2000) p. 160.
140
141
Hauerwas, A Better Hope, p. 158.
46
a result we fail to notice how deeply that story determines our lives.’142 It can be said that to
a certain degree liberalism was invented to create the kind of society that allows us to turn
what the Scripture lays down as sins into harmless personal choices and to make forgiveness
pointless. Namely, once we start justifying our deviant desires, we start challenging and
manipulating the language of the church, instead of being challenged by it. As a result, we
transform the church into our likeness instead of our being transformed into Jesus’ likeness.
Where self-justification is the ultimate agendum, the question of faithfulness to Jesus’
narratives disappears.
It is, thus, no exaggeration to say that the greatest crisis which the church is faced with is
the loss of its language. John Milbank has demonstrated how this happened in Theology and
Social Theory. In this book, he has brought to light how theology became subject to the
claim of secular reason. Milbank argues that liberalism is the major invention of secular
social theories that sought to establish the autonomous realm of secular. In other words, it
was ‘in the discourses of liberalism… that the secular is first constructed.’143 However,
those ‘scientific’ social theories are theologies in disguise and the secular society
constructed with those theories is a church in disguise. In fact, ‘secular discourse does not
just ‘borrow’ inherently inappropriate modes of expression from religion as the only
discourse to hand… but is actually constituted in its secularity by ‘heresy’ in relation to
orthodox Christianity, or else a rejection of Christianity that is more ‘neo-pagan’ than simply
anti-religious.’144
This explains why liberal theology that has accommodated itself to the autonomous
secular reason of the Enlightenment is doomed to be at odds with the orthodox Christian
doctrines and why it attacks the biblical authority over the church by positioning ‘rationality’
beyond the Scripture. And also, by and large, liberal theology progressed in parallel with the
pursuit of alleged ‘historical Jesus’ and it tried to redefine Christianity from scratch, free
from the historical understanding of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed defined by the
Council of Chalcedon. This liberal theological project of redefining Christianity is perfectly
in line with political liberalism; namely, ‘we are free to the extent that we have no story.’145
142
143
John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell
Publishing, 2006) p. 4.
144
Ibid., p. 3.
145
47
The goal of liberal theology is liberation of people from the superstitious traditional
Christian narratives. For this to happen, the abolition of Jesus’ narrative of the New
Testament was pivotal. Instead of worshipping Jesus, he had to be turned into an ideal
human being, freed from divine nature.
In retrospect, as Milbank exposed, the project of liberal theology was nothing but the
replacement of the biblical narrative by the Enlightenment narrative. The irony is that while
faith in the truth-finding power of autonomous secular reason went bankrupt under the
ruthless attacks by Freud, Marx, Nietzsche and their successors, it has survived among
political theorists and theologians. This explains why ‘[p]olitical theology is intellectually
atheistic.’146 Thus, if Milbank’s explication and Hauerwas’ criticism of liberalism are
correct, the reclamation of the language is the most urgent necessity for the modern
churches that have been enormously influenced by the language of liberalism.
This recovery of the church’s idiom should originate rather in the pulpit than in academia
because what kind of sermon is delivered determines what kind of church we get. ‘[W]hen a
sermon is thought to be no more than a speech by the minister to provide advice to help us
negotiate life, the content of sermons usually are exemplifications of the superficial and
sentimental pieties of a liberal culture.’147
A sermon, Hauerwas insists, is not a giving of advice or suggestions that might help us to
sort out our daily problems but it is rather proclamation. ‘The story that makes us Christians
cannot be known without proclamation.’148 In other words, ‘Christians are not naturally
born… Christians are intentionally made by an adventuresome church, which has again
learned to ask the right question to which Christ alone supplies the right answers.’149 As
long as the objective of the story is the creation of Jesus’ disciples and of the church,
‘[p]roclamation is a practice constitutive of the story.’150 For this very reason, preaching
constitutes one of the two pillars, another one is the Eucharist, of Christian worship, and in
this way, recovery of the Jesus’ narrative, of preaching, and of faithfulness are
interconnected with one another.
The indispensability of proclamation, at the same time, means that Jesus’ cross is not
146
Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 3.
147
Hauerwas, A Cross-Shattered Church, 18.
148
Ibid., p. 16.
149
Hauerwas and Willimon, Resident Aliens, p. 18.
150
Hauerwas, A Cross-Shattered Church, p. 16.
48
inclusive, but exclusive. The content of the church’s proclamation cannot be found within
the world and is also unintelligible to natural human beings. Accordingly, the life of the
church cannot help but be odd and unintelligible to the world that has rejected the politics of
Jesus. Thus, oddness is the inalienable nature of faithfulness to Jesus Christ.
To be faithful, of course, does not mean to make no mistakes or not to sin at all. Rather,
the kind of people who can admit their errors and confess their sins because they know their
sins can be forgiven and the world has been already redeemed from the power of sin by
Jesus are faithful. Here again, the first thing that the church should know to be such a people
is that the world does not know Jesus Christ, but she does. The church is the sole
community in the world that knows that the world was created by God and redeemed by
Jesus Christ, and with his second coming, in the fulness of time, the creation will be
completed. In contrast, the world is separatist and sectarian given that it seeks to rule the
world without knowing that the world was created in and for the Son and redeemed by him.
In short, the world remains rebellious until the final day and acknowledges not the lordship
of Jesus.
49
Chapter 3 Narratives in Conflict
The previous chapter outlined how Haurwas understands the intelligibility of both Jesus
Christ and biblical authority to rest on the existence of a community which has been formed
by the narratives of Jesus Christ and who are faithfully returning to them again and again.
That brief analysis also exposed the biblical character of the church. The Bible can be the
authority only for a community that is shaped by the narratives of Jesus Christ (finally
compiled as the four Gospels), only in so far as it seeks to reconfirm its identity through the
incessant reappropriation of the Scripture. If it is to be faithful to Jesus’ lordship through
continuous transformation, the most original character of the church can be analytically
described as a community which is shaped by Jesus Christ’s narratives, keeps listening to
the Bible, and interprets it through the lens of God’s saving works realised in Jesus’ life,
death, resurrection and ascension. It also explained why Hauerwas positions Christian
discipleship as the acquisition of a new language and new habits that are required from
every good citizen of a community. In this way the church finds its form as a polity that
lives Jesus’ politics. This approach understands Christian witness to be the extension of the
truth of Jesus' kingdom.
At the end of Chapter two it was hinted that if we scratch the surface of liberalism we
discover a disguised theology and secular society as a church. This chapter expands this
theme, going further into Hauerwas’ critique of Enlightenment reasoning, liberalism or what
Hauerwas calls ‘translation theology.’ Liberalism is regarded as the grand narrative in the
Western theological academia and the narrative of the church is overwhelmed by it. This
chapter explains why Hauerwas’ arguments for ecclesiocentrism as an alternative polity
must be understood as largely developed against this grand narrative. This is why he
presents translation theology as an instrument for assimilating the church into the nation
state and for making her lose her identity.
Enlightenment and Nation State

While Milbank called the narrative that gave birth to the modern secular society ‘heresy’ or
‘neo-pagan,’ for Hauerwas ‘modernity as well as postmodernity but names the development
of social orders that presume that God does not exist or even if God exists we must live as if
50
God does not matter.’151
It is often said that after the Reformation people became sick and tired of the devastating
religious wars and the nation state was born or invented to settle the religious conflicts in
Europe. However, according to Cavanaugh, nation state was not the outcome of religious
wars, but they were the emergence of nation state itself.152 Here again it is significant to
note that the nation state was imagined and invented as a ‘false copy of the Body of
Christ’153 to take over the place of the falling western Christendom.
Cavanaugh goes on to warn the church about the danger of public space as a neutral space.
He maintains that ‘the price to the Church of admission to the ‘public’ is a submission of its
particular truth claims to the bar of public reason, a self-discipline of Christian speech.’154 It
is also the pitfall of talking of Christianity as a religion. ‘Religion is a universal essence
detachable from particular ecclesial practices, and as such can provide the motivation
necessary for all citizens of whatever creed to regard the nation-state as their primary
community, and thus produce peaceful consensus.’155 In so far as the whole logic of public
space and religion is laid down and controlled by the nation state that holds the place of God,
‘[t]he discipline of the state will not be hindered by the Church’s participation and
complicity in the “public debate”.’156 In other words, the existence of the church is tolerated
by the nation state as long as she behaves as an obedient servant to the state within the
category of religion.
This condition set by the nation state armed in the classic liberal social contract narratives
brought about great dangers and crises to the church, of the sor that she had not experienced
before. The most ironic thing, however, was that the churches schooled in liberal theology
were not aware of those dangers and crises, and they felt rather at home being tamed within
the category of religion.
According to Hauerwas, the ‘moral adventure’ of liberalism is dispersing the coercive
attributes of the state by creating a government that allows the individual to indulge in their
own desires without asking their ethical status. Accordingly the main governmental function
151
152
William T. Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2011) pp.
22ff; p.46.
153
Ibid., p.46.
154
Ibid., p.80.
155
Ibid., p.82.
156
Ibid., p.85.
51
is the preservation of individual ‘freedom’ and adjustment of conflicting desires. At first,
‘the democratic state modestly claims to be a mere means toward an end.’157 It proposes
itself as a simple instrument to secure our freedom and rights.
Behind the harmless ‘democratic’ surface of the national government, however, is hidden
the lethal catch. This instrumental government also needs to make people believe that it is
the best and only means to secure their freedom and rights, and therefore they have to lay
down their lives to protect the nation state. In this way, the nation state requires allegiance
from every citizen. That means that this instrumental government claims the ultimate
authority to order its citizens to kill and die for the state.
Hauerwas points out that this coercive aspect of the nation state becomes less obvious and
looks less cruel compared to that of kings or dictators ‘since they take the appearance of
being self-imposed.’158 But the fact of the self-imposed coercive aspect is that the myth of
social contract was also imposed and we ought not ignore the mythical origin of the concept
of the individual behind the social contract theory. Despite the variations of liberal social
theories, the result is the same: the autonomous individual has given up some of their rights
on a sovereign authority and pledged their obedience to it. It is this social contract fiction
that makes people believe that the coercive nature of the nation state is based on the
people’s consensus so that every ‘democratic government’ has the authority to order its
citizens to kill and die for protecting the only means to ensure their rights and freedom.
However, ‘a people who have learned the strenuous lesson of God’s lordship through
Jesus’ cross should recognize that “the people” are no less tyrannical than kings or
dictators.’159 In fact, the degree of mass slaughterings by ‘democratic governments’ is not
less atrocious by tyrants. To quote Hauerwas,
in 1937, when Franco’s forces bombed the Spanish town of Guernica, killing many civilians, the
civilized world was shocked. That same year, when the Japanese bombed the city of Nanking, the
world felt it was now dealing with particularly insidious forces which had little intention of obeying
historical prohibitions against killing civilians. President Roosevelt issued an urgent appeal to all
governments, at the beginning of World War II, saying “The bombing of helpless and uprooted
157
158
159
Ibid.
52
civilians is a strategy which has aroused the horror of all mankind. I recall with pride that the United
States consistently has taken the lead in urging that this inhuman practice be prohibited.” Yet only
several years later, in 1942, Churchill spoke of “beating the life out of Germany” through routine
bombing of German cities (after the bombing of London by the Germans).160
We must not underestimate this swift and radical shift in the moral argument by the
statesmen of democratic nations. What first was regarded as the inhumane practice of the
fascist dictators turned out to be a strategic necessity for the ‘democratic governments’ and
even the atomic bomb became an acceptable measure for the defence of democratic nations.
The age of the nation state testifies that ‘[c]ontrary to the modern presumption that as
enlightened people we are beyond sacrifice, few societies are more intent on sacrifice than
those we call modern.’161 In fact, in a world where the mass slaughtering with the atomic
bomb has become an acceptable practice, there actually exists no moral limit and ‘all sorts
of moral compromises were easier—nearly two million abortions a year seemed a mere
matter of freedom of choice, and the plight of the poor in the world's richest nation was a
matter of economic necessity.’162
Culture Kills Churches

For Christians, the most scandalous thing about the brutalities committed in the name of the
nation state is that there were, and still are, a good few churches accommodated into the
foundation narrative of the Enlightenment political theory and the politics of nation state so
that they have made themselves ardent culprits of the atrocities by sovereign states.
Robert P. Ericksen, for instance, shows how ‘great’ German theologians supported Nazi
German policies in Theologians under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus and Emanuel
Hirsch. Gerhard Kittel, the first of three German theologians Ericksen takes up, produced a
torrent of anti-Jewish ‘research’ between 1933 and 1945 that clearly shows his own
preference to Nazi anti-Jewish policy. Concerning Christian Jews Kittel argued that even
though they should be accepted as spiritual brothers and sisters in church, it does not make
them a German Volk; therefore, the government anti-Jewish measures should be applied
160
Hauerwas and Willimon, Resident Aliens, pp. 26-7.
161
Hauerwas, A Better Hope, p. 161.
162
53
within the church ‘so long as the Christianity of a Jewish Christian is not denied.’163 Kittel
also took a stand against marriage between Germans and Jews for reinforcing the German
national identity. As the grounds for his position, Kittel draws on the early Christian practice
of the prohibition of marriage with pagans based on baptism, but he replaces it with racism.
Above all, for Kittel, Nazism was not only a cultural phenomenon, but it was also a
‘völkisch renewal movement on a Christian, moral foundation.’164
Paul Althaus, another German theologian, believed that the Nazism was a heaven-sent
völkisch renewal movement and Hitler was the hope sent to the German people living in the
shadow of death. He declared that ‘we take the turning point of this year as grace from
God’s hand. He has saved us from the abyss and out of hopelessness. He has given us—or
so we hope—a new day of life.’165 It ought not be ignored that in this quote Hitler takes the
place of Jesus Christ for the German Volk.
In opposition to the theological and political position stated in the Barmen Declaration,
Althaus claimed that the church had to go by the aspiration of German Volk.166 For Althaus,
Ericksen insists, a Volk is not a simple human invention, but it is rather ‘God’s call’ that
creates a Volk.167 Furthermore Althaus exalted the dedication to the Volk to the
indispensable condition to have an eternal life by saying that ‘[o]ur life in our Volk is not our
eternal life; but we have no eternal life if we do not live for our Volk.’168 Accordingly,
serving God and serving the Volk became identical.169 Finally, Althaus made Hitler into the
defender of faith and in the same breath he turned endorsement of Hitler’s policy into the
German church’s duty.170 He did not hesitate to say that
[a]s a Christian church we bestow no political report card. But in knowledge of the mandate of the
state, we may express our thanks to God and our joyful preparedness when we see a state which after
a time of depletion and paralysis has broken through to a new knowledge of sovereign authority, of
163
Robert P. Ericksen, Theologians under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus and Emanuel Hirsch
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985) p. 33.
164
Ibid.
165
Paul Althaus, Kirche und Staat nach lutherische Lehre (Leipzig: 1935) p. 29, cited in ibid., p. 85.
166
Ericksen, Theologians under Hitler, pp. 86-87.
167
Ibid., p. 103.
168
This is supposed to be a quote from Althaus, but there is no reference to the name of the original
text. Ibid., p. 103.
169
Ibid., p. 103.
170
Ibid., p. 96.
54
service to the life of the Volk, of responsibility for the freedom, legitimacy, and justice of völkisch
existence. We may express our thankfulness and joyful readiness for that which manifests a will for
the genuine brotherhood of blood brothers in our new order of the Volk…. We Christians know
ourselves bound by God’s will to the promotion of National Socialism, so that all members and ranks
of the Volk will be ready for service and sacrifice to one another.171
The third and last great German theologian Ericksen deals with is Emmanuel Hirsch. Like
Althaus, Hirsch had a firm conviction that ‘Hitler was a heaven-sent Christian leader’172
and ‘the state’s role is all-embracing.’173 Refusing to ‘separate Christianity from the
concepts of religion and culture’174 as Barth did, he proposed a Volk church as the ideal
church whose boundaries ‘should correspond to those of a Volk.’175 For his ideal Volk
church, Hirsch unites three elements: state, Volk and Christianity or the church. The state
should be nation state and the German Volk must be Christian. This postulates that church
and nation state should be coextensive.
Even though his Volk church ideology is biblically indefensible, there were some
‘theological’ resources that Hirsch could refer to for supporting his position. To begin with,
he links whatever is ‘creative’ to the God of creation. People such as Amos, Socrates, Luther,
Leibniz and Kant are not only examples of creativity, but they ‘are genuine “creation” and
they give testimony to the creative human spirit, behind which stands the God of
creation.’176 In this logic, whatever creative can be, to a certain degree, a revelation of the
Creator God.177
The second resource that Hirsch resorts to is Constantinianism. As ‘the church has always
borrowed political forms from the state,’178 there was no reason for the German church not
to copy German politics. Thus, Hirsch could affirm, even under the Nazi regime, that
‘[t]here exists between German Volkstum and Christian belief absolutely no division or
contradiction to make it difficult as a German to be a Christian, or as a Christian a
171
Paul Althaus, Völker vor und nach Christus (Leipzig: 1937) p.4, cited in ibid., p. 102.
172
Ericksen, Theologians under Hitler, p. 148.
173
Ibid., p. 132.
174
Ibid., p. 142.
175
Ibid.
176
Ibid., p. 129.
177
Ibid.
178
Ibid., p. 148.
55
German.’179 We have to see how, in these arguments, the three German theologians
subjected God, Jesus Christ and the church to Hitler, sovereign authority, German Volk,
nation state and culture. Politically and culturally speaking, they are all ‘conservative’
Germans, but the language that guides their reasonings is that of the Enlightenment and
political liberalim. Hirsch, for instance, declares against Barth’s position that
it is common in some Protestant circles to consider the Enlightenment a purely destructive force,
which must be overcome by theology and the church, which must be, as it were, erased out of their
history. It has been, however, until very recently, a special honor and special pride of German
Protestant Christianity not to have taken such voices seriously. The fate of Christianity in Western
civilization depends on this, that in Protestant Christianity the men do not die out who offer this crisis
of reformulation as the path ordained by God to our veracity. In this crisis and with its means, they
become bearers of a historical process which will build a new Christian concept of history consistent
with the new circumstances and the new understanding.180
He states by means of Hegelian historical philosophy that the Enlightenment is a historical

development ‘ordained’ by God and in which Christianity needs to be ‘redefined’ and ‘made
credible’ to the Age of Reason. It should be noted that Hirsch, a ‘culturally and politically
conservative’ Christian, is also an ardent revisionist of Christianity.
Translation Theology
The ‘theological’ project of rephrasing Christianity into the post-Enlightenment theories is
called ‘translation theology’ by Hauerwas. The potential of translation theology consists in
making up a sort of meta-religion by recasting Christianity into a culturally predominant
language of each time and place and it is done by getting rid of Christian particularities.
The belief in the redefinition of Christianity is not the monopoly of Nazi German
theologians but is shared by all theologians who believe Christianity should be translated
into culture. James Gustafson, for example, says that
179
Emmanuel Hirsch, Das Wesen des Christentums (Weimar: 1939) p. vi, cited in Ericksen in ibid.,
p. 166.
180
Emmanuel Hirsch, Das Wesen des Christentums (Weimar: 1939) p. 133, cited in Ericksen,
Theologians under Hitler, p.185.
56
[i]n modern culture few persons with average education any longer believe that biological death is
caused by the sins of Adam and Eve, including few who write theology or participate in the Church. A
persuasive alternative way of explaining why we die exists. Neither theologians nor people in the
churches can avoid it. The tradition, on this point, simply has to be revised because Christian theology
and Christian churches are informed by the culture of which they are parts.181
It is not clear why he thinks that the narrative of Genesis explains why people physically die
even though Adam and Eve did not die after they ate the forbidden fruit, but he believes that
culture is a larger category than the church and that Christianity should be adjusted by
culture. He, then, declares that
historic theologies, including Christian, if they are speaking about the ultimate power and orderer of
life in the world, must be open to revision and correction in the face of alternative views—views from
other historic religions and the secular functional equivalents to theology.182
For Gustafson, fidelity to the biblical narratives is ‘self-justifying in the sectarian

temptation’183 and the Bible cannot be the basis for solid theological judgement because
the acceptance of a text, even the Bible, as that which is to be interpreted, can constrict the task of
theology so that it avoids critical interaction with other “texts,” that, is other ways of interpreting how
things really and ultimately are.184
In this quote Gustafson denies not only the authority of the Scripture but also that of Jesus
Christ for the church to see ‘how things really and ultimately are.’ He goes on to say that, in
front of the cumulative and more convincing secular knowledge of the world, we should not
stick to the frozen Christian tradition, but make a radical restart to make theology credible in
this generation by admitting ‘Jesus is not God.’185
At this point, Gustafson finally deals the coup de grâce to the Christian faith and urges us
181
Gustafson, “The Sectarian Temptation: Reflections on Theology, the Church and the University,”
pp.90-91.
182
Ibid., p. 93.
183
Ibid., p. 88.
184
Ibid.
185
Ibid., p. 93.
57
to develop a brand new version of Christianity or a meta-religion with the help of ‘creation
theology.’ He maintains that the theology of creation sets the ground for confirming
theological truth and value ‘in human experience.’186 His unbelief in the divine nature of
Jesus, of course, means that he does not believe in the doctrine of Trinity either. In the
catholic understanding of the Christian faith those who reject to worship Jesus should not be
called Christians but heretics. As has been already mentioned, the doctrine of creation is
firmly rooted in Christology and if it is cut off from the doctrine of Jesus Christ, it becomes
unintelligible. Thus, if such separation occurs, it no longer deserves to be called creation
theology. Then, in what sense, can his creation theology be ‘Christian’?
It is probably the success of natural science which is in his mind and drives him to insist
that the authority for church and theology ought to be found outside the church and
Christian tradition. It is not clear to me, however, what scientific discoveries require the
redefinition of Christianity and the negation of the divine nature of Jesus Christ, given that
there are a good number of Christians who are scientists and stick to traditional orthodox
Christian doctrines. To just name a few, John Polkinghorne, a former Professor of
Mathematical Physics and former President of Queens College, Cambridge; Francis Collins,
who was director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, overseeing the Human
Genome Project From 1993 to 2008; John Lennox, Professor of mathematics at Oxford;
Jennifer Wiseman, the head of ExoPlanets and Stellar Astrophysics Lab at the NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center; Alister McGrath who did his PhD in theology and molecular
biophysics simultaneously at Oxford and now the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and
Religion at Oxford. Furthermore, if there are superior cultural, or religious or scientific
languages or theories that explain ‘the ultimate power and orderer of life in the world,’
where, then, is the point in explaining it in theological jargon?
It is also noteworthy that those three great German theologians taken up by Ericksen and
accommodationist theologians like Gustafson are working under the myth of the
Enlightenment that secular reason is neutral and more reasonable, and therefore more
convincing and reliable than the Scripture. The Enlightenment narrative requires all cultures,
including Christian faith and Scripture, to be translated or fit into the culture of the
Enlightenment because it is the best of cultures or the fulfilment of culture. In other words,
186
Ibid., p. 89.
58
the Enlightenment foundation narrative functions as the grand meta-narrative in their
translation projects. As a result, just as Gustafson does, Christianity is required to be
rephrased into a new theory that fits into the Enlightenment narrative. This trend can be also
seen in the Japanese Protestant history that overlaps with the period of Japanese
modernisaiton as we will confirm in the second part.
As Hauerwas often says, theologies tamed by autonomous secular reason seek to free
Christianity from its historical contingencies and particulars conditioned by its narrative
aspects, such as the Jewishness of Jesus, his death on the cross, or messianic eschatology.
Consequently, they represent Jesus as ‘the pinnacle of the brightest and best in humanity, the
teacher of noble ideals, civilization’s very best. It was a short step from the liberal
Christ-the-highest-in-humanity to the Nazi Superman.’187 In reality, if we believe that we
need to translate Christianity into a theory that is credible to culture, we no longer worship
Jesus, but we worship the theory that we have come up with.188 In this sense, translation
theology is a generator of heresies.
We must also bear in mind where translation theology leads churches and how those
churches serve the world as a result. The most obvious outcome was the amalgamation of
nationalism and church. Translating Christianity into German culture helped German
churches to support Nazism and the war fought in the name of the German state; translating
Christianity into American culture helped (and is still helping) the wars in the name of
America and even enabled American Christians to swallow up the final solution by the
atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; translating Christianity into Japanese culture
drove the Japanese churches to support the war in the name of the emperor and drove
Japanese church leaders to persuade Christians in Korea and Taiwan to worship the emperor
alongside Jesus. Those churches, in fact, testify that ‘Christians in modernity have lost the
ability to answer questions about the faithfulness of what we believe because we have
accepted belief about the world that presupposes that God does not matter.’189
Deeply captivated in the Enlightenment foundational narrative modern churches interpret
Jesus and Christian faith through the world, instead of seeing the world through Jesus.
Accordingly, Hauerwas insists, they are obsessed with the idea of ‘serving the world’ or
187
188
189
Stanley Hauerwas, With the Grain of the Universe: The Church’s Witness and Natural Theology
(Grand Rapids, MI.: Baker Academic, 2001) p. 231.
59
‘making the world better.’‘Alas, our greatest tragedies occurred because the church was all
too willing to serve the world.’190 Communism, fascism, Nazism and even American liberal
democracy, Hauerwas concludes, are all offshoots of the Enlightenment political narratives.
We should never forget that the Nazi Germany was born under the most “democratic”
Weimar constitution.
When all is said and done, ‘[t]he great challenge is not how we can fit Jesus into the story
of the Enlightenment, but how the story of the Enlightenment is to be judged by Jesus.’191
That is why, ‘[e]verything needed to be reexamined, and the failure of the old answers, seen
now more clearly by the glow of the furnaces at Dachau and the fires of Hiroshima,
demanded new questions.’192
Let the World Know What It Is

‘When Barth was writing Theological Existence Today, the challenges confronting
Christians seemed clear and dramatic. After all, Hitler was the enemy, and who could miss
the threat of that? The answer is that most people, religious or not, did.’193 So the most
ironic tragedy for the church is that so many theologians believed, and still believe, that
their task is to put the story of the Enlightenment and the gospel in harmony. Translation
theologians seek to unite the politics of the world with that of Jesus, but this project is
doomed to fail because not only can it not be pursued without abandoning obedience and
faithfulness to the Lord but it also ignores the state of the world described in the New
Testament.
For Christians, the world is not just the sum of all the nation states as in the BBC News or
the Economist. The world is the world that God so much loved that he ‘gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.’ (3:16) At
the same time, however, we ought not forget that the world is rebellious toward God. The
first chapter of John’s Gospel, for instance, declares that the world, which was created
through and for Jesus, has not accepted him. It never obeys its creator. As the world remains
in sin, it is dead in God’s eyes. Accordingly the way of the world leads us to death. That is
why Paul says, ‘Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of
190
191
192
193
60
your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable
and perfect.’ (Rom 12:2)
In fact, ‘[w]e cannot understand the world until we are transformed into persons who can
use the language of faith to describe the world right.’194 Hauerwas also maintains that
Christians are enabled to see the world accurately and without illusion. Because they have the
confidence that Jesus’ cross and resurrection are the final words concerning God’s rule, they have the
courage to see the world for what it is: The world is ruled by powers and forces that we hardly know
how to name, much less defend against. …By being trained through Jesus’ story we have the means
to name and prevent these powers from claiming our lives as their own.195
Given that the world can never know what it is and in what state it is before God, it is
only by the existence of the church that the world learns that it has been killed on the cross
with Jesus and it is dead in God’s eyes because it remains in sin. Therefore, the first political
task of the church is to ‘provide the space and time necessary for developing skills of
interpretation and discrimination sufficient to help us recognize the possibilities and limits
of our society.’196 In this sense, one of the most significant ways for the church to serve the
world is to name the world as it is and let it know its limit. To quote Hauerwas again,
Jesus is the story that forms the church. This means that the church first serves the world by helping
the world to know what it means to be the world. For without a “contrast model” the world has no
way to know or feel the oddness of its dependence on power for survival. Because of the church the
world can feel the strangeness of trying to build a politics that is inherently untruthful; the world lacks
the basis to demand truth from its people.197
In this way, the church provides, so to speak, the epistemological condition for the world to
know what the world is. Without the church, the world has no way to learn what it actually
is before God.
194
195
196
Ibid., p. 74.
197
Ibid., p. 50.
61
Chapter 4 Politics of Adoption
The prior chapter elucidated the reason why translation theology should be understood as a
specific type of Christian capitulation to political liberalism, and why this should be
understood as a new type of heresy or paganism. Whether this new capitulation allies with
pragmatic atheism or not, it always subjects the church to the politics of nation state and as a
result turns her into a faithful servant of the sovereign state. Translation theology was thus
presented as by nature a heresy generator given that it is organized by way of a
metalanguage into which the narratives of the church are to be subsumed.
In this chapter I will show how Hauerwas's descriptions of singleness, marriage, family
and having children concretize the political implications of his Constantinian critique of
liberal society. I will also indicate that in political liberalism children are treated as little
more than one of the commercial items that rational people have the right to own or dispose
of while the church welcomes them, not as the hope for the continuation of the church in the
future, but because her life and growth depends on adoption or welcoming strangers, who
sometimes are children born to Christian couples. I will explicate this ‘welcoming of
strangers’ as the opposite side of the Christian pacifism or nonviolence that is an inherent
character of the politics of Jesus and the church is depicted as the true international
community beyond the arbitrary false boundaries drawn by the nation states.
A Community Relies on Adoption

Hauerwas suggests that to understand the meaning of marriage, family and singleness in the
church, it is significant to see how her life is sustained and how she grows as the body of
Christ. This community does not attempt to preserve its life by keeping away from the
outsider, but it applies itself to reach people outside its fold and tell them the gospel, hoping
to make disciples of them. Given that to be a Christian cannot be a biological inborn
attribute of a person, but people need to be made Christian, proclamation and disciple
making are indispensable metabolism of the church not only to sustain her life as a
community of a people who worship Jesus, but also to grow as a polity that lives Jesus’
politics. To put it differently, in so far as people can be made disciples only through the
church’s proclamation of the gospel and by people’s willing commitment to Jesus Christ,
through death to natural self and the second birth in baptism, the sole possible way for the
church to sustain her life and to grow is adoption, not biological reproduction.
62
Marriage and Singleness: Two Authentic Ways of Service to the
Church
Christian life does not make sense if it is severed from the church. If the life and growth of
the body of Christ rely on adoption rather than on biological reproduction, we cannot
properly understand the significance of Christian marriage and family without connecting
them to church’s reliance on it. To develop this point, Hauerwas says that ‘the basis and
intelligibility of the Christian understanding of marriage only makes sense in relation to the
early Church’s legitimation for some of “singleness.”’198
From the very beginning of her history, the church regarded singleness as an authentic
mode of service to the church on a par with marriage. The Apostle Paul, who was single,
was not at all inferior to Peter, who was married, in his service. According to Hauerwas, it is
significant for us to remember that ‘the “sacrifice” made by the single is not that of “giving
up sex,” but the much more significant sacrifice of giving up heirs.’199 The equal
importance of singleness to marriage as a way of life in the church not only ‘symbolized the
necessity of the church to grow through witness and conversion,’200 but also testified that
Christians did not put their hope on having their own children because the church can grow
by welcoming people into her bosom through her witness and hospitality to the stranger.
And the stranger ‘often turns out to be our biological child.’201
Once we are made Christians through conversion and baptism, ‘our true home is not the
biological family but the church.’202 Accordingly, Christians are to owe allegiance to the
church, instead of their biological families. In this sense, the church is the greatest threat to
familial loyalties, and that is why Hauerwas says that ‘[t]he first enemy of the family is the
church.’203 Moreover, in the new family, every Christian is under the order of loving one
another, loving other members of the church. This kind of ‘loving one another’ cannot
happen unless we are ‘prepared to die for the faith,’204 for Jesus Christ. Put differently, it is
only when we are ready to sacrifice our lives for our Lord that we can live as a radically
198
199
Ibid., p. 190.
200
Ibid.
201
202
Ibid.
203
Ibid., p. 127.
204
Ibid., p. 128.
63
new family in loving people who are not connected by blood relation or affection.
In this new family, an unusual thing happens to Christians: not only marrieds but also
singles become parents because ‘[b]iology does not make parents in the church. Baptism
does. Baptism makes all adult Christians parents and gives them the obligation to help
introduce these children to the gospel.’205 Singleness can be as important as marriage in the
church because singles also take the responsibility of parenthood and contribute to the
growth of church as married members do.
It is from the perspective of this radicalism of the church as a new family that Christians
should understand the roles or meanings of Christian marriage and family. Against
conventional expectation of liberal society, the first and most significant objective of
marriage is the service to church, not to the married couple or their family. Hauerwas states
that ‘[o]ur marriages are ultimately significant only as a means of supporting each of us in
our ministry, including the ministries of childrearing, conversion of the young, protection of
the old.’206
And more surprisingly, love is not exclusively fundamental to Christian marriage. As we
have already seen above, Christians do not love each other because they are married; we
love each other because we are Christians. Some of Christians are married as one peculiar
expression of loving each other and its purpose is not to make a happy family, but the
support of church. Christians choose to stay single or marry to sustain the body of Christ in
different ways. For Christian neither marriage nor a family can be a purpose in itself.207
‘We are called not to be free but to be of service, which may take the form of singleness or
marriage.’208
Welcoming Children and Rejection of Abortion

According to Hauerwas, the church’s unwillingness to kill their children and offering
hospitality to the stranger are interconnected and they are deeply rooted in the church’s
dependance on adoption. In stark contrast with liberal society that needs to allow its
members to legally kill their unwanted unborn children on their decisions to secure it, the
church needs to welcome all unborn and born children to sustain her life.
205
Stanley Hauerwas, “Abortion, Theologically Understood” in The Hauerwas Reader, p. 612.
206
207
208
Ibid., p. 129.
64
As has been already stated above, Christians do not put their hope on their children.
Hauerwas clarifies this point and states that
I cannot imagine anything worse than people saying that they have children because their hope for the
future is in their children. You would never have children if you had them for that reason. We are
able to have children because our hope is in God, who makes it possible to do the absurd thing of
having children. In a world of such terrible injustice, in a world of such terrible misery, in a world
that may well be about the killing of our children, having children is an extraordinary act of faith and
hope. But as Christians we can have hope in the God who urges us to welcome children. When that
happens, it is an extraordinary testimony of faith.209
Looking at the world full of animosities, bloodshed and all sorts of atrocities with open eyes,
it is rational to conclude that the world is ruled by the evil power and/or forsaken by God.
However, even amid great evil, Christians believe it is God who created and governs the
world. They believe that God loved the world so much that he sent his only Son into it to
save people from it and to restore it. For Christians, bringing their children into the world is
one of the most significant witnesses of their faith in the sovereignty of God. They testify by
bringing their children into the world and taking care of and nurturing them that life can be
lived with joy even in such a world of misery and injustice. For Christians, therefore, having
children is ‘a sign of their hope.’210
It should be noted that the early Christians did not have romantic ideas about children.
Children did not represent immaculacy or purity or innocence for them. They were much
more realistic about the power of sin. ‘We forget,’ Hauerwas emphasises, ‘that the early
Christians had deep convictions about the reality and force of sin and they saw no reason
why their children were to be exempt from that reality. Nor could they even assume that
their children would be Christian, since they knew also that one must be called in order to
be a member of the church.’211 Conversion was the unavoidable process even for the
children born to Christian parents to follow the way.
For early Christians, therefore, life was not the ultimate value either. ‘Christians took
209
Hauerwas, “Abortion, Theologically Understood” in The Hauerwas Reader, p. 615.
210
211
Ibid., p. 210.
65
their children with them to martyrdom rather than have them raised pagan. Christians
believe there is much worth dying for.’212 For them, taking their children to martyrdom was
much better than letting them live for nothing or for false gods because they believed their
faithfulness to Jesus Christ leads to eternal life, while living for false gods leads to eternal
damnation.
If we think that the early Christians were against abortion because they believed that the
life was the most sacred, we are wrong. They refused to kill their children, because they
regarded those lives as God’s gifts, not as their own. Accepting new lives as gifts is the flip
side of their duty of accepting and welcoming new lives without questioning their ‘qualities,’
whether they meet the requirements to be welcomed into the world or should be destroyed
as unqualified.
The church exists in history and children are a sign of Christian hope as they are her
‘anchors in history.’213 Given that living in history is equal to living in time, we give or
share our temporal lives when giving of our time to something or somebody. Therefore, by
looking at what people take time for, we can tell what their major concerns are. This is
equivalent to what Hauerwas often expresses as the question of what kind of people
Christians should be; what kind community the church is; and what kind of virtues
Christians need.
After all is said and done, ‘[a]ll politics should be judged by the character of the people it
produces,’214 and it is by seeing what the people of a community or institution or group take
and spend time for that we discern the character of people. When a Christian man and a
woman marry in church, they are expected to be a couple that can take time not only for
them selves, but for the creation of and care for new lives that may be given to them as
God’s gifts. In fact, ‘[f]aithfulness and the willingness to have children are the church’s way
of sustaining our lives in a world that is the enemy of long-term commitment to anyone, and
especially to children.’215
Welcoming children is not only one of the most significant Christian virtues, but also ‘for
those who are called to be married, a duty.’216 The calling of marriage in the church partly
212
213
214
Ibid., p. 51.
215
216
66
‘derives its intelligibility from a couple’s willingness to be open to new life. Indeed that is
part of the test of the validity of their unity as one worthy to be called “love” in the Christian
sense.’217 Of course, as long as children are God’s gifts, we cannot predict whether a certain
Christian couple can have children or not. Yet, it is impossible for Christian couples not to
want children as long as welcoming children is one of the indispensable Christian duties for
both married and unmarried members of the church. One possible answer to the question,
‘What kind of people are Christians?’ is that they are the kind of people who can
take the time to live in history as God’s people who have nothing more important to do than to have
and care for children. For it is the Christian claim that knowledge and love of God is fostered by
service to the neighbor, especially the most helpless, as in fact that is where we find the kind of
Kingdom our God would have us serve.218
In this sense, ‘[t]he Christian prohibition of abortion is but the negative side of their
positive commitment to welcome new life into their community.’219 Furthermore, as the
church is the true family for Christians, the family is ‘symbolically central for the meaning
of the existence of the Christian people.’220 The church being the true family has a great
practical connotation. As has become obvious through the discussion so far, having and
raising children is not a ‘private’ matter but ecclesiastical. Thus the woman who is pregnant
and carrying the child need not be the one to raise it.221 Even if a pregnant woman is unable
to bring up the baby or the baby is ‘unwanted’ by the biological mother, that cannot reason
for killing the life in the womb, because ‘[t]he church is a family into which children are
brought and received.’222 The best possible response from the church to a woman who is
thinking whether having an abortion or not may be ‘“Will you come home and live with me
until you have your child? And, if you want me to raise the child, I will.”’223 If such a word
could be heard from members of the church, it could be an extraordinary witness and
encouraging and preparing Christians for such a case must be part of Christian discipleship.
217
Ibid.
218
Ibid.
219
Ibid., p. 227.
220
Ibid., p. 226.
221
Ibid., p. 229.
222
223
Ibid., p. 620.
67
If the church can manifest that ‘[t]he life that lies in the womb is also a life that has come
under the lordship of Jesus Christ’224 through such a deed, the world may see that ‘[t]he
people of God know no enemy when it comes to children.’225
Political Sex
So far in this chapter, we have seen that Church’s welcoming children is rooted in her life
and growth depending on adoption, and that having and nurturing children is highly a
church’s political act, rather than a private matter. Likewise, the treatment of sex by the
church comes from her politics, directly connected to church’s welcoming of children. As
Hauerwas says, ‘our willingness to have children and form our lives in a way appropriate to
their care will determine both attitudes and practices regarding sexual behavior and
abortion.’226 Therefore, sex cannot be a matter of personal choice or one’s preference that
should be confined to the issue of privacy, but it is a matter of community’s life; namely,
Christian sexual ethics cannot help but be the church’s political ethics. This is to say that ‘a
Christian ethic of sex cannot be an ethic for all people, but only for those who share the
purposes of the community gathered by God and the subsequent understanding of
marriage.’227
Maintaining that Christian sexual ethics is only for the church is less problematic if one
sees that ‘the claim that sex is a matter of private morality is a political claim dependent
upon a liberal political ethos.’228 Indeed, every ethic is political as long as all ethical criteria
derive their power from the agreed virtues embedded in each community. In other words,
‘[a]ny rational method for resolving moral disagreements requires a shared tradition that
embodies assumptions about the nature of man and our true end.’229 In this sense, the
language of ethics and morality cannot help but be uninteligible when severed from the life
of a community. However, liberalism seeks to create a ‘just’ society by amputating the
individual from all tradition. Therefore, ‘[a]ny attempt to reclaim an authentic Christian
ethic of sex must begin by challenging the assumption that sex is a “private” matter.’230
224
225
226
227
Ibid., p. 176.
228
Ibid., p. 177.
229
Ibid., pp. 214-5.
230
Ibid., p. 177.
68
While the liberal claim of having to cut the individual off from all tradition to create a just
society makes abortion into a non-ethical private matter, Jewish-Christian tradition enables
us to see the abortion as an ethical issue. In the pagan Roman world where early Christians
lived, abortion and infanticide were common practices.231 As children were regarded almost
worthless, the terms such as abortion or infanticide or the exposure of infant themselves had
little ethical connotations in the Roman society; ‘abortion’ simply described the destruction
or killing of unborn babies. Likewise, infanticide or the exposure of child just stated the act
of killing unwanted children. It was undoubtedly Christian tradition that identified abortion
and infanticide with murder. As a result, seeing abortion and infanticide as murder became
‘natural’ for Christians.
However, ‘all “natural” relations are “historical” insofar as the natural is but what we
have come to accept as “second nature.”’232 It is a Christian perspective that sex and
accepting children as its ‘natural’ result should be treated as a single package. If a Christian
sexual ethic is for the church and it cannot be everyone’s ethic, starting an argument about
abortion or morality of sex with the liberal assumption, sex as a private matter, already
marks the defeat of the church. In other words, the fact that the termination of foetus and
disposal of unwanted children were not moral issues for Romans testifies that the Christian
way of seeing sex and welcoming children as a single issue was not ‘natural’ for them. The
irony of Christians trying to defend their position on the issue of abortion by referring to
natural law or a universal ethic is that they not only accept the liberal claim that the
individual should be freed from whatever tradition to reach the neutral and universal
understanding of justice, but they also abandon their own epistemological foundation that
enables them to be suspicious of the practice of abortion.
In fact, it is no exaggeration to say that the liberal society is seeking to restore the Roman
sex ethic, namely separation of sex and having children, that Christians rejected. We often
hear people saying in arguments about abortion that ‘unwanted baby’ should not be born. It
is obvious that when people claim so, they assume that one ought to be allowed to want sex
without wanting its ‘natural’ results.
Being nurtured long enough in Christendom to believe that all people should admit that
231
‘Exposure was only one of several checks on reproduction. Abortion was freely practised, and
the medical sources distinguish precoital attempts at “contraception.”’ Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and
Christians (Harmondsworth: Viking, 1986) p. 343.
232
69
murder is a sin, Christians in the West have been tempted to believe that all ‘Enlightened’
people could be persuaded by their arguments starting from the unborn baby’s right to life.
Human rights are universal and the right to life is the most fundamental one. Who could
deny it? ‘All agree murder is wrong; all agree life is sacred; all agree that each individual
deserves the protection of law; such surely are the hallmarks of our civilization.’233
However, even if all people may acknowledge that killing a person is wrong, as long as we
cannot ‘objectively’ prove ‘when’ the foetus becomes a person, arguments on abortion never
end.
For example, two practical ethicists, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, have
drawn public attention by arguing about the feasibility of after-birth abortion in the article
entitled “After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?” According to them, the new-born
baby’s moral status is not different from that of foetus, which means neither foetus nor
infant is a person in the full sense of the term, even though they have the potential to
develop into a person. They admit that there are ambiguities in arguments about when ‘a
subject starts or ceases to be a “person.”’234 Even so, ‘a necessary condition for a subject to
have a right to X is that she is harmed by a decision to deprive her of X,’235 which means
that to be accepted as a person with a right to life, one has to be able to at least say, “I don’t
want to be killed, because I want to do such and such things in my life!” Put more abstractly,
one cannot be registered as a person unless they can discern that there is something that will
be lost from their life if their existence is destroyed. This criterion being applied, elderly
people suffering from dementia cannot be real people either.
As far as the moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a foetus, not being a person
with a right to life, ‘it is not possible to damage a newborn by preventing her from
developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense.’ Thus, killing
a newborn in all the conditions where abortion would be should be ethically acceptable.
This argument is rather tricky, but if we see how they define ‘person,’ we understand
what they mean by it. According to them, ‘person’ is ‘an individual who is capable of
attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this
233
Ibid., p. 213.
234
Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, “After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?” in
Journal of Medical Ethics (2012: doi:10.1136/medethics-2011-100411) p. 2.
235
Ibid., p. 2.
70
existence represents a loss to her.’236 It is obvious that this definition of person is in parallel
with the condition of having a right to X by them. Actually, the authors are just
paraphrasing the same thing here again; namely one has to be able to attribute some ‘values’
to themselves and to declare that killing them will destroy those values. Probably, putting it
arithmetically makes their point clearer: 0 - 0 = 0. Neither an infant nor a foetus have value
within them; therefore, killing an infant is like destroying a valueless container; as the
container is valueless and there is nothing in it, destroying such a container cannot be a
moral issue at all. Killing a newborn is not very much different from binning a broken toy.
Effectively, there is no condition that can stop a parent or family or society or government
to kill newborns once ‘actual people’ regard them as valueless or a burden for them.
In the above discussion, it is obvious that the authors identify personhood with rationality
and also advocate the idea that the rational should be allowed to dominate the irrational. We
must not forget that this identification of rationality with personhood is traced back to the
origin of the Enlightenment; it was René Descartes who said at the beginning of Discours
de la Méthode that ‘[l]e bon sens est la chose du monde la mieux partagée.’ (Common sense
is the thing best shared in the world.)237 Common sense is the ability to make rational
judgment and that is supposed to be shared by all human beings. Once this ‘rationality’ has
become the overriding criterion against which the personhood of everyone is evaluated, it is
‘rational’ to treat those who are regarded as ‘non-rational’ like animals. Giubilini and
Minerva’s argument perfectly reflects this praise of Enlightenment rationality.
It must be noted here again how differently language works in the defence of abortion in
the liberal society and in the church’s welcoming children. In chapter two, it has been shown
that we learn how to see the world through picking up the language of the church in
worshiping Father, Son and Holy Spirit. As each language has its own perspective to see the
world, a shift from one language to another does not occur without changing the speaker’s
self. While the language of the church teaches us to see an infant as a gift from God and as a
person under God’s sovereignty, the language of liberal society teaches us to see the foetus
and newborn as valueless as the pagan Roman empire did and to regard the destruction of
them as an ethically neutral act. Furthermore, while liberal society endlessly argues about
236
Ibid., p. 2.
237
René Descarte, Discours de la Méthode (Paris: Flammarion, 1992) p. 23, translated by the
author.
71
when the foetus becomes a person so that ‘actual people’ can freely destroy the life in
mother’s uterus before it becomes a full human being, the church teaches Christians to be
prepared to welcome the life in mother’s womb into the faith community without asking
when it becomes a person, but hoping it to be another disciple of Jesus and to join their
journey. As long as there is no meta-narrative or meta-language that can arbitrate the
language of the church and that of the Enlightenment, Christians lose the abortion battle
right after they try to speak the Enlightenment language.
That is why, every effort to restore Christian sexual ethic must challenge the
Enlightenment rationality. Once everyone had been trained in the Enlightenment narrative
and acquired liberal ‘virtues,’ and come to regard life as one of the items that are at our
disposal, then ‘abortion’ would make no sense any longer. If such a time came when
abortion is no moral issue for Christians, the church would have to have been completely
swallowed up by the liberal society. Here we confirm again that the liberal politics based on
the post-Enlightenment social theories can never ever coincide with the gospel. In a sense,
the liberal nation state is not at all new; it is rather just the return of the barbarism of the
Roman empire.238
It should be remembered again and again that Christian attitude toward sex was formed
by Christians’ understanding of the church’s mission, by church’s politics. For Christians,
the matter of sex could not be one of personal preferences. As Hauerwas says,
the traditional limitation of sexual intercourse to marriage was not a puritanical desire to prevent
pleasure, though at times it may have been used for that, but rather an attempt to mark off
institutionally those contexts for sexual intercourse so that if pregnancy resulted a child would be
welcomed into a home.239
Put in a different way, the church keeps sexual relations exclusively to married couples in
order to provide the best possible care for the fruits of their relations. The seemingly
negative ban on extramarital sexual intercourse is only the reverse side of the positive policy
of welcoming children into the church. That is why the church must keep connected what
238
“If unborn children are members of the human community, then allowing abortion to be
performed on decision of the most interested party is a relapse to pure barbarism.” Robert Jenson,
Systematic Theology, 2:87, cited in Hauerwas, Better Hope, p.123.
239
72
liberal society is attempting to divorce from each other all the time: sex and having children.
The Christian ethic of sex becomes unintelligible as soon as it is cut off from the church’s
politics.
Fight against Violence in Nonviolent Way

We have already seen above that both singleness and marriage are authentic forms of service
to church, and for Christians the church becomes their true family, and welcoming children
is the most important part of the church’s mission. When the church welcomes new children,
she does so praying that they also become disciples of Jesus Christ and dedicate their lives
to her service. The most crucial thing, therefore, for the church to do for the children is to
tell the story of Jesus and equip them for service to the church, not to the nation state.
As shown in the second chapter, the truth revealed in the cross of Jesus does not allow us
to kill anyone for our faith. Our obedience to the Lord ought to come from our love for
Jesus, from our response to God’s calling, not from coercion. For Christians, there is only
one cause for which they live and die: it is faithfulness to Jesus Christ. The main reason why
Christians are against war is not because it is atrocious and cruel, but because it is the most
brazen violation of the unity of the church. ‘How can we get up from the table of unity,’
Hauerwas argues, ‘and be willing to kill one another in the name of loyalties that are not
loyalties to Christ? What would it mean to rise from the table of unity we call Eucharist and
kill one another in the name of national loyalties?’240 War and gospel can never go together
hand in hand because war is violation against the unity of the church.
Another point we need to bear in mind about war is that it imposes idolatry on Christians.
In our age, war is fought in the name of nation state. That means that war demands
Christians to give their children as sacrifice to the false god of nation state and makes them
blind to the fact that it is the God revealed in Jesus Christ who governs the world, not the
nation state. Due to its nature as a false god, Christians need to stay aleart to all calls for the
service to the world from nation state. Hauerwas warns us about this point and says that
[t]he church is not to be judged by how useful we are as a “supportive institution” and our clergy as
members of a “helping profession.” The church has its own reason for being, hid within its own
240
73
mandate and not found in the world. We are not chartered by the Emperor.241
The church is rather an alternative to the politics of nation state that seeks to dominate our
lives.242 We, Christians, ‘exhibit in our common life the kind of community possible when
trust, and not fear, rules our lives.’243 As shown in the first and second chapters, the most
fundamental difference of the politics of Jesus from that of all earthly politics, including the
democratic nation state, is the refusal of killing and radical servanthood. Christians are
nonviolent because it is the way which Jesus Christ has shown them in the victory through
the cross over powers, and because they are the disciples of Jesus who hope to walk in his
footsteps. Christians are the people who have been chosen as the witnesses to God’s peace
by living gently in a world at war.
Furthermore, the church is the only and true international, so to speak, political body in
the world. In the church, people from all nations and all over the world are gathered and
united through sharing the common stories of Jesus Christ and receiving Christ’s body and
blood at Lord’s Supper. In sharing Jesus’ stories, we belong to the nation of God and are
enabled to love the other as brothers and sisters in Christ. The church cannot be bound by
the arbitrary and false boundaries of nation states, because her Lord has already broken
down all the false boundaries. In Christ alone, the true universality of the church is secured
and a real community of love is possible.
The church as universal polity is the greatest threat to the nation state. While they seek to
relentlessly guard their arbitrary and false boundaries by the power of terror and coercion,
the church breaks them down with joy and in her love for Jesus. Due to this true universality
of church rooted in the politics of Jesus, Hauerwas contends, ‘the world will seek protection
from the church,’244 if Christians are faithful to their Lord. We must never forget the fact
that, even though persecution itself is not joyous at all, the gospel was spread all over and
beyond the Roman empire by early Christians being expelled from their homeland. In fact,
mobility characterises what kind of polity the church is. Hauerwas articulates this point and
states that
241
242
243
244
74
[t]he church is a polity like any other, but is it also unlike any other insofar as it is formed by a people
who have no reason to fear the truth. They are able to exist in the world without resorting to coercion
to maintain their presence. That they are such depends to a large extent on their willingness to
move—they must be “a moveable feast.” For it is certain that much of the world is bound to hate
them for calling attention to what the world is. They cannot and should not wish to provoke the
world’s violence, but if it comes they must resist even if that resistance means the necessity of leaving
one place for another. For as Christians we are at home in no nation. Our true home is the church
itself, where we find those who, like us, have been formed by a savior who was necessarily always on
the move.245
Christians have to be a movable people because it is the authentic way commanded by her
Lord for the church to break down the arbitrary and false boundaries built up by the earthly
powers and to secure the universality and oneness of the church. In our age where the civil
governments seek to tighten up migration control by raising the walls of national boundaries
higher, the church must be astute to circumvent the governmental border control and boost
ecclesial interdependence by the exchange of all resources, including leadership, finance,
theological education, joint ministries, and so on, even if we are regarded as “dangerous
dissidents” by government.
245
Hauerwas, The Peaceable Kingdom, p. 102.
75
Chapter 5 Leithart’s Defence of Constantinianism: Apologetics
of Christian Killing and Wars, and his Desire for a Global
Christian Empire
In the foregoing chapters, I analysed the most important and frequently used term
‘Constantinianism’ in Hauerwas’ theology. For Hauerwas and Yoder, the church has to be
vigilant against Constantinianism because it tempts the church to replace her obedience and
faithfulness to the Lord with her security on the earth, and as a result, the church regresses
to the idolatry of earthly politics. Not a few theologians have resisted this analysis, and in
this chapter I will analyse ‘Constantinianism as a politics of Jesus’ that has been developed
by Peter Leithart, an ardent advocate of Constantinianism who has explicitly positioned
himself as a retort to the works of Yoder and Hauerwas. In Defending Constantine, and its
“book-length footnote” Between Babel and Beast, he defends a Constantinian politics as
Christian. The critical response to Leithart’s Constantinianism developed in this chapter is
important for this thesis as his project provides us with an outstanding example of how the
kind of theology that pursues power and control in the world by valorizing Jesus’ kingship
or lordship at the expense of his servanthood revealed in his death on the cross, clouds the
eyes of Christians and entices the church to renounce her obedience and faithfulness to her
Lord in favour of securing a safe haven for herself in this world.
Questioning Yoder’s Constantinian Shift
For the Sake of a Global Christian Empire
Defending Constantine is not an easy read. It seems to me that what makes this book more
complicated than it should be derives from its double-layered objectives. While its seeming
goal is to discredit Yoder’s thesis of the Constantinian shift in church history and to acclaim
the Constantinian alliance between church and empire, the true goal remains hidden
throughout this book. At the very beginning, Lethart hints at the underlying motive for this
work:
Never before have American Christians been so exercised by the question of American empire. In the
back of my mind I have been asking, What, if anything, can we learn about the proper Christian
76
response to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from examining the church's relation to Constantine
Caesar?246
Oddly enough, even though Leithart suggest that he looks into the relationship between
Constantine and church to shed light on the American-led interventions in Iraq and
Afghanistan, this point never ends up being addressed throughout this book. We are never
informed about the conclusions reached in his research on the church under Constantine that
applies to those invasions.
It is in a ‘book-length footnote’247 to Defending Constantine, Between Babel and Beast,
that we find out Leithart’s hidden aspiration: a new universal Christian empire of which
‘American power’ plays the most critical role. It can be said, therefore, in Defending
Constantine, Leithart is paving the way for his ideal of a global Christian empire armed with
American military power248 in which the church holds the authority to tell when Christians
can or cannot kill.249 For some unexplained reasons, however, this major point had been
kept a secret until it was eventually developed in the lengthy “footnote.”
It is after reading the book-length footnote that we can see that Defending Constantine is
the bridge to his ideal of Christian empire, and he strives in it to make Christians believe
that they can kill and wage wars without betraying their Lord, Jesus Christ.
246
Peter J. Leithart, Defending Constantine: The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of
Christendom (Downers Grove, IL.: InterVarsity Press, 2010) pp. 11-2.
247
‘Between Babel and Beast is a book-length footnote to that earlier book, a footnote full of
epicyclical footnotes of its own—a detachable, errant appendix.’, Peter J. Leithart, Between Babel
and Beast: America and Empires in Biblical Perspective (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2012) p. x.
248
‘American churches need to commemorate the final sacrifice of Jesus in regular eucharistic
celebrations, and they need to work out the practicalities of a eucharistic politics—the end of sacred
warfare, the formation of an international ecclesial imperium that includes all Christians, the
cultivation of the virtues of martyrs, the forging of bonds of brotherhood that would inhibit
Christians from shedding Christian blood. Churches should not teach Christians to hate America, or
to hate American power; but we must train disciples to hate injustice and violence even when
perpetrated by our fellow citizens. Churches do not necessarily need to discourage Christians from
participation in American government, or even the American military, though the churches should
reserve the right to judge the justice of America’s wars and to forbid Christians from participating in
unjust wars or supporting oppressive policies. Churches should instead encourage Christians to
discover ways to turn American power toward justice, peace, and charity.’ Ibid., p. 152.
249
‘According to the just war tradition to which I adhere, killing in war is just only if the war is just.
When was the last time Christians judged an American war to be unjust? As Bill Cavanaugh says,
the church needs to re-assert its authority to tell Christians when they can and cannot kill.’, Between
Babel and Beast: “A Conversation with Peter Leithart”
kai(http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/trevinwax/2012/09/06/between-babel-and-beast-a-conv
ersation-with-peter-leithart/ Accessed on 26.07.2015).
77
The greatest theological obstacle against this purpose, obviously, is Christian nonviolence
or Christian pacifism, and, of course, Yoder’s theological contribution to it cannot be
overemphasised. It is beyond doubt that Yoder’s reading of church history from the
perspective of ‘Constantinian shift’ and his critique of ‘Constantinianism’ as idolatry that
entices the church to ally herself with earthly powers have laid solid theological foundations
for Christian nonviolence. Once we learn his hidden dream of a powerful Christian empire,
we can clearly see why Leithart needed to disparage Yoder. It can be said, therefore, that the
direct objective of Defending Constantine is to undermine the theological grounds for
Christian nonviolence laid by Yoder and disseminated by Hauerwas. Leithart thus offers the
most robust current defence of Christian Constantinianism.
Common Concerns for both Yoder and Leithart
While setting up his onslaught on Yoder, Leithart shows a friendly gesture to his opponent
by acknowledging some of Yoder’s points and concerns. He maintains that Yoder’s
emphasis on the diaspora’s faith and practice are enlightening for Christians living in an age
of after Christendom.250 He also claims that he agrees with ‘a great deal of Yoder's critique
of "Constantinianism”251 and he accepts Jesus and his Word as the ultimate authority over
the church. Like Yoder, he admits that the church herself is ‘political’ and ‘it is a betrayal for
the church to attach itself to and find its identity in an existing worldly power structure.’252
He even goes on to state that ‘[t]he church is a polity, and thus any ethical or political
system that minimizes or marginalizes Jesus and his teaching hardly counts as Christian.253
If we read only those statements by Leithart, we might take him for Yodarian. However, it
will shortly turn out that those words such as ‘church,’ ‘political’ and ‘polity’ are used and
understood in totally different ways by Yoder and Leithart. Their different understandings of
those terms come from different readings of the Scripture, and they, eventually, end up with
totally different Jesuses.
250
Leithart, Defending Constantine, p. 297.
251
Ibid., p. 316.
252
Ibid., p. 332.
253
Ibid.
78
Denial of Constantinian Shift and Defence of Constantinianism: An
Alternative Reading of Church History?

According to Leithart, Yoder goes into the opposite directions from him concerning killing
and war, namely violence as a whole, because ‘Yoder gets the fourth century wrong in many
particulars, and this distorts his entire reading of church history, which is a hinge of his
theological project.’254 That is to say that Yoder did not reach the same conclusion as
Leithart’s because of his misunderstandings and distortions of church history.
Yoder’s historical misconstructions are caused by, according to Leithart, firstly, his
dependence on unreliable historical literatures and, secondly, by his ‘Constantinian shift’
narrative. Leithart states that ‘Yoder's account of the patristic period relies on historical
work that is “not very good” and badly outdated.’255 For instance,
Burckhardt's attack on Constantine is bound up with Protestant-Catholic polemics and opposition to
the Reichs-kirche of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Scholarship on Eusebius has been distorted by scholars who
think they find echoes in Eusebius of the German church's endorsement of the Third Reich, and
Yoder's own training in postwar Europe moved him in similar directions. Some of Constantine's and
Eusebius's fiercest critics seem to have conflated Constantine with modern tyrannies and
totalitarianisms.256
Leithart maintains that ‘monologic’ historical literatures on which Yoder’s reading of church
history is based prevented him from seeing more diverse aspects of Christian history.257 To
make matters worse, Yoder’s Anabaptist ‘“prior narrative” of the church’s fall’258 prevented
him from reading history accurately and made him read his ideal untainted church into the
first two centuries of ecclesial history that never existed.259
Leithart insinuates that he is able to provide a more accurate account of church history,
from a less biased, if not neutral, point of view, based on much more up to date historical
literature.
254
Ibid., p. 11.
255
Ibid., p. 317.
256
Ibid.
257
Ibid.
258
Ibid., p. 319.
259
Ibid., pp. 319-320.
79
Defence of Constantinianism
Constantine, the First Christian Emperor
Leithart’s more ‘accurate’ counter account of Christian history against Yoder’s

‘Constantinian shift’ can be summarised in three theses: 1) Constantine as sincere Christian
and special (or exceptional) saint, 2) baptism of Rome, and 3) Constantinian church as a
politics of Jesus. Leithart argues that as Constantine was a very superstitious man, it is
highly unlikely for him to turn his back on his old gods and change his military symbols
without a good reason to do so. He claims that ‘Constantine would not have changed the
standards without powerful justification, such as a direct communication that he believed
came from a different god, perhaps even from God.’260 This ‘direct communication’ from
God was ‘a sun halo, a circular rainbow formed when ice crystals in the atmosphere refract
sunlight. In a sun halo, the sun is at the center of the circle and often radiates beams in a
cross or asterisk shape.’261
Until 312, Leithart contends, all Constantine’s military symbols and coinage were
covered with pagan gods images, but since then, they were gradually replaced with
‘Christian symbols,’ like the labarum or Chi-Rho, even though pagan symbols never did
completely disappear from his reign. It is impossible for us to know what actually was that
heavenly sign or God’s communication, but, Leithart states, we do not need to know what it
was because even if we distrust all the account of Constantine by Eusebius, it can be surely
said that Constantine held ‘a soldierly faith in the powerful God of Christians, in the cross
of Jesus as a victory over evil, and in the church as the unifier of the human race’ from his
letters and the “Oration.”262
Constantine was buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople as ‘the
thirteenth apostle, or even Jesus himself,’263 surrounded by the Twelve Apostles’
monuments and reliefs. ‘Constantine's elevation to sainthood may seem the most blatant of
capitulations, but it meant that Constantine was in a unique position among the
emperors,’264 Leithart believes.
260
Ibid., p. 74.
261
Ibid., p. 78.
262
Ibid., p. 95.
263
Ibid., p. 185.
264
Ibid.
80
Baptism of the Empire and Desacrification of Rome by Constantine
What, then, makes Constantine a unique and exceptional Roman emperor for Leithart?
One of the most obvious reasons is that he links his ideal of the omnipotent global Christian
empire to Constantine’s legacy which he calls the baptism of the Roman empire. Leithart
contends that Constantine christianised Rome and this baptism of Rome was all-embracing
and permeated almost all areas of Roman social life.
Constantine splashed out on erecting magnificent church buildings; the Holy Sepulchre in
Jerusalem became the spiritual centre of the empire; ‘[w] ith the Christianization of the
architecture of Jerusalem, the baptism of public space was complete.’265 Leithart goes so far
as to claim that Constantine’s law and government were christianised in force beyond
Constantine’s own intention. He nominated Christians as high officials in his government
and exempted the church from taxation. By lifting up Christians to the powerful positions in
the empire, the entire Roman aristocracy, as a result, was baptised.266 Child exposure was
not criminalised until 374, yet it was discouraged by him.
End of Sacrifice and Constantinianism as a Politics of Jesus
The most significant sign of Rome’s baptism, Letihart insists, can and ought to be seen in
the abolition of sacrifice from the empire:
Every city is sacrificial, but Constantine eliminated sacrifice in his own city and welcomed a different
sacrificial city into Rome. For a fourth-century Roman, eliminating sacrifice from the city was as
much as to say, “My city is no longer a city.” For a fourth-century Roman, acknowledging the
church's bloodless sacrifice as the sacrifice was as much as to say, “The church is the true city
here.”267
Under the sacrificial system of the old Roman empire, citizens were required to kneel before
the idol of emperor in whom the empire was to be united. Rome forced people to offer
sacrifices for and/or to the emperor. Christians refused to do so, because they know offering
sacrifices for or to false gods is idolatry. They, then, were sacrificed by the false god of the
265
Ibid., p. 139.
266
Ibid., p. 227.
267
Ibid., p. 329.
81
Roman empire for the imperial unity.
Under Constantine’s reign, according to Leithart, Rome was finally freed from the
stoicheia, the bondage of sacrifice and idolatry, by his acceptance of Jesus’ victory over the
power of darkness268 and the banning on pagan sacrificial rites and gladiatorial
entertainments are concrete evidence of it.
The most significant sign of the desacrification of Rome is, for Leithart, the end of
Christian persecution. He believes that the imperial structural core of sacrifice was replaced
with the bloodless sacrifice of Christ, and, thus, the Roman empire was swallowed up by the
church. Leithart states that Constantine
left behind a political order that had been “desacrificed.” The end of sacrifice announced by the
gospel was effected in the actual history of Rome, during the reign of Constantine Augustus. Just as
that was the moment of his personal liberation from the stoicheia, so it was the deliverance of Rome
from its childhood.269
Liberation from the stoicheia is, according to Leithart, the abolition of the distinction
between holy and profane, and clean and unclean.270 With Constantine, finally, the
distinction between church and empire vanished and the Roman empire itself became ‘a
politics of Jesus.’271 ‘This is the “Christianization” achieved by Constantine, Rome
baptized. This was the eschatological establishment, not of secular civilization, but of the
desacrificial civilization.’272
Baptised Military Service: Emperors’ Wars are Church's
As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the immediate goal of Defending Constantine
is to persuade Christians to believe that they are allowed to kill and wage wars. Leithart’s
foregoing argument about Constantine as a sincere Christian as well as a special saint, and
about Rome’s baptism are, therefore, scaffolding for his forthcoming argument for his
baptised killing, war and military service.
For this purpose, however, he skips almost all the New Testament passages immediately
268
Ibid., p. 325.
269
Ibid., p. 326.
270
Ibid., p. 325.
271
Ibid., p. 340.
272
Ibid., p. 331.
82
related to the issue of violence. He passes all the passages on Jesus’ crucifixion; he provides
no exegesis of the Sermon on the Mount; he ignores Romans 12 that most clearly deals with
the Christian attitude toward violence.273 Instead, Leithart seeks to ‘defend’ his position by
making the best of ‘historical ambiguity.’ His thesis is that ‘the church was never united in
an absolute opposition to Christian participation in war’274 and, therefore, there was no ‘fall’
or the ‘Constantinian shift’ in Yoderian sense. He goes so far as to contends that ‘[i]f a
Christian political theology cannot justify war, coercive punishment and judgment
evangelically, it cannot justify them convincingly.’275 Here again, it is beyond doubt that
Defending Constantine is a ‘theological project’ of creating a category of ‘faithful Christian
killing.’
Leithart argues that even if Christians might have opposed killing and waging wars at
some point in the first and early second century, they were not against killing and wars
themselves. According to him,
the opposition that existed was in some measure circumstantial, based on the fact that the Roman
army demanded sharing in religious liturgies that Christians refused; and once military service could
be pursued without participating in idolatry, many Christians found military service a legitimate life
for a Christian disciple.276
It is obvious from this quote that Leithart believes that the only obstacle for Christians to
join military service was Roman idolatry, and, thus, once it was abolished, military service
could be a proper career for Christians. He is not unaware of the fact that there is no
historical evidence of Christians in military service before, at the earliest, the middle of
second century, and all pre-Constantine Christian writers argued against killing and wars in
one voice when they mention those issues in their works. Leithart, nonetheless, turns the
gradual acceptance of military service by the church, along with war, torture and capital
punishment, into a ‘more’ faithful Christian attitude than nonviolence by giving an
273
‘Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written,
“Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they
are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their
heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.’ Rom. 12:19-21.
274
275
Ibid., pp. 332-3.
276
Ibid., p. 273.
83
extraordinary twist to historical evidence or non-evidence.
In the New Testament, there are some passages in which centurions and soldiers are
mentioned. The existence of the centurions in Mt. 8:1-13, 27:54; Mk. 15:39 and Acts 10-11,
and the soldiers in Lk. 3:14, and the fact that they were not required to withdraw from their
services show, according to Letihart, that the church was not against military service itself
from the very beginning. ‘The total absence of evidence’277 of Christian soldiers between
the New Testament and the middle of the second century should be bridged, Leithart insists,
by assuming that either there were no converts from military service and no Christians
entered it, or ‘the pattern we find in the Gospels and Acts continued until new evidence
emerges.’278 Given that most of the historical events and lives of most people simply pass
by without being registered in any form of historical record, the absence of historical
evidence does not exclude the possibility of certain unrecorded historical events or existence
of unrecorded persons. From this historical uncertainty, ‘the only thing we can conclude
with certainty is that we do not know whether the church of the first two centuries was
pacifist in practice.’279
Leithart is, nevertheless, not satisfied with this uncertainty. He moves from uncertainty to
the quasi-certainty of the affirmation of military service by the church with his presumption
of there being unrecorded Christian soldiers behind the absence of historical evidence. He
asks whether the pre-Constantinian Christian authors, such as Tertullian, Origen and
Cyprian, who wrote against killing, war and military service, truly represent the universally
shared understanding of the early church. He then makes a remarkable statement that
discredits all historical examinations in effect:
After all, however vigorously intellectuals like Origen and Tertullian opposed service in the army, and
whatever their reasons, it is entirely possible that they represented a small, articulate minority that has
come to be considered spokesmen only because they had the wherewithal to speak.280
Against or behind all pre-Constantinian historical evidence, the majority of local

Christian leaders might have supported and shared the Lord’s Supper with unrecorded
277
Ibid., pp. 260-261.
278
Ibid., p. 261.
279
Ibid., p. 261.
280
Ibid., p. 258-9.
84
Christian soldiers. We cannot exclude this possibility because, according to Leithart, there is
little evidence on this issue.281 Furthermore, Tertullian’s harsh opposition against military
service shows that there were Christians that chose to serve in it.282 Before the scarcity of
evidence, the only possible conclusion is, Leithart insists again, that there were diverse
attitudes towards military service within the church, and, therefore, the church was not
universally pacifist.
Leithart goes so far as to make his backer of Origen who is seemingly against his position.
He cites a passage from Contra Celsum in that Origen refutes his opponent, who urges
Christians to collaborate with the king to maintain justice:
we do, when occasion requires, give help to kings, and that, so to say, a divine help, “putting on the
whole armour of God.” And this we do in obedience to the injunction of the apostle, “I exhort,
therefore, that first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all
men; for kings, and for all that are in authority;” and the more any one excels in piety, the more
effective help does he render to kings, even more than is given by soldiers, who go forth to fight and
slay as many of the enemy as they can. And to those enemies of our faith who require us to bear arms
for the commonwealth, and to slay men, we can reply: “Do not those who are priests at certain shrines,
and those who attend on certain gods, as you account them, keep their hands free from blood, that
they may with hands unstained and free from human blood offer the appointed sacrifices to your
gods; and even when war is upon you, you never enlist the priests in the army. If that, then, is a
laudable custom, how much more so, that while others are engaged in battle, these too should engage
as the priests and ministers of God, keeping their hands pure, and wrestling in prayers to God on
behalf of those who are fighting in a righteous cause, and for the king who reigns righteously, that
whatever is opposed to those who act righteously may be destroyed!” And as we by our prayers
vanquish all demons who stir up war, and lead to the violation of oaths, and disturb the peace, we in
this way are much more helpful to the kings than those who go into the field to fight for them. And
we do take our part in public affairs, when along with righteous prayers we join self-denying
exercises and meditations, which teach us to despise pleasures, and not to be led away by them. And
none fight better for the king than we do. We do not indeed fight under him, although he require it;
but we fight on his behalf, forming a special army—an army of piety—by offering our prayers to
281
Ibid., p. 259.
282
Ibid., pp. 262-3.
85
God.283
Taking ‘a right cause’ out of its context, Leithart maintains that
[t]his passage damages Yoder's thesis in several ways. Origen, often cited as a key proponent of early
Christian pacifism, here supports rather than “rejects” Caesar's wars. To be sure, he limits the
assistance that Christians provide to prayer, and even then to prayers on behalf of “those who are
fighting in a righteous cause.” Yet this implies that some of Caesar's wars are “righteous” and that
some “Caesars” might be classified among kings “who reign righteously.” And this, further, implies
the larger conviction that there is such a thing as a righteous cause for war.284
Even at this point, however, the schism between praying ‘on behalf of those who are
fighting in a righteous cause,’ putting aside how we should understand it in Origen’s
argument for the moment, and ‘baptised killing by Christians’ is enormous.
Leithart is, in fact, not satisfied with Christians who offer prayers for those who fight ‘on
behalf of a righteous cause.’ He asks ‘[i]f early Christians opposed wars because they were
“Caesar’s,” what would happen if they become convinced (rightly or wrongly) that the wars
were no longer Caesar's but Christ's? Would they still reject them?’285 It is manifest here
that, for Leithart, wars of the empire became the church’s after the baptism of Rome,
because they were Christ’s. If Christian emperors’ wars are Christ’s, it should be Christians
that fight them with Christian symbols on their arms.286
At this point, it is abundantly clear that the baptism of Rome, de-sacrification of the
empire, and the de-idolised military service converge on Leithart’s ideal of Christian
soldiers fighting Christ’s wars.
283
Origen, Against Celsus, III, 73 (tr. Frederick Crombie) in Ante-Nicene Fathers. Volume 4:
Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Part Fourth; Minucius Felix; Commodian; Origen, Parts
First and Second (ed. Philip Schaff, Grand Rapids, MI.: Christian Classics Ethereal Library,
downloaded from www.ccel.org) p. 1582.
284
285
Ibid., p. 257.
286
Ibid., p. 249.
86
Scripture, a Story of War
We have seen so far how Leithart is seeking to make a case for his ideal of Christian soldiers
fighting Christ’s wars by taking advantage of historical ambiguity, while the huge gap
between Christians praying for those who fight for “a righteous cause,” and Christians
killing and waging wars on behalf of Christ remains unbridged. To fill this enormous gap,
he proposes his peculiar reading of the Scripture.
According to Leithart, ‘the Bible is from beginning to end a story of war.’287 God created
human beings to edify them as fighters. In other words, mankind was created for fighting
God’ wars and ‘Adam was formed and placed in Eden's garden with instructions to perform
a priestly service that was also quasi-military.’288 In the Garden of Eden, Adam was trained
to be a king and the battle against the serpent was the first test that he had to pass to be
enthroned. ‘Had he passed the test, he would presumably have been given the fruit of the
tree of knowledge and ascended to share in the rule of his heavenly Father, the human king
beside the High King.’289
Adam, however, refused to be engaged in God’s warfare. Adam was to fight to protect
Eve from the serpent but he neglected his duty. Adam’s sin is, in this sense, his refusal of
God’s wars.290 Failing his test, Adam was expelled from the garden to secure ‘the royal tree’
out of his reach and the sword, which was given him for fighting with the serpent, was taken
away from his hand and given to angels.291
After Adam’s failure to destroy the serpent, God predicted the coming of ‘a warrior-savior,
292
a conqueror’ that makes up Adam’s failure of fighting against the serpent by crushing its
head in exchange for a bite on his heel.
‘The first covenant’ was, according to Leithart, with angels and it was ‘a childhood
covenant.’293 ‘Swords are sharp, and fire burns, and so long as human beings were in their
minority, the Lord restricted access to dangerous implements.’294 Even under this childhood
covenant, however, there were some exceptional people who were allowed to ‘wield the
287
Ibid., p. 333.
288
Ibid.
289
Ibid., p. 334.
290
Ibid., p. 333.
291
Ibid., p. 334.
292
Ibid.
293
Ibid.
294
Ibid.
87
sword and to play with fire.’295 Priests vested with swords and fire to sacrifice animals for
God are ‘new Adams in the new garden of the temple.’296 ‘Outside the temple,’ people such
as ‘Moses, Phinehas, Joshua, Jael, Samson, David and so on’ were ‘to carry out coercive,
deadly acts of justice.’297
On Jesus’ advent, finally, the sward and fire that Leithart claims to have been given to
angels, were returned to Jesus. The church, bride of the warrior saviour, has been ‘called to
carry out his wars in and with him. Yahweh’s armor is distributed to us.’298 He maintains
that the weapons given to the church by the Holy Spirit, namely ‘righteousness, truth, faith,
salvation, the Word of God and the gospel of peace,’ are much more powerful than that of
Samson or David.299
The Bible as a story of war is, according to Leithart, also a story of ‘increasing
responsibility on the part of human beings.’300 Under the first commandment, human
beings were in the state of childhood, but under the new covenant, ‘we have reached
maturity in Jesus.’301 He also maintains that ‘the story of Scripture is not a story of
increasing passivity but of increasing participation in the activity of the ever-active God.’302
What is this ‘activity of ever-active God’? The only logical conclusion from his foregoing
reading of Scripture is nothing but God’s wars.
Leithart concludes his unusual reading of the Scripture with a remarkable twist in the
form of a question. He asks ‘if the Lord lets Christians wield the most powerful of spiritual
weapons, does he not expect us to be able to handle lesser weapons?’303 There is no doubt
what Leithart means by those ‘lesser weapons.’ They are all sorts of non-spiritual weapons
for killing and waging wars in this world.
However convincing, or not convincing, Leithart’s foregoing biblical hermeneutics is, his
intention is unambiguous; namely, he converts killing and wars by Christians into a
biblically more faithful attitude than nonviolence. For Leithart, the church ‘reached maturity
in Jesus’ when she started killing and fighting wars with Christian symbols on her weapons.
295
Ibid.
296
Ibid., pp. 334-5.
297
Ibid., p. 335.
298
Ibid.
299
Ibid.
300
Ibid., p. 336.
301
Ibid.
302
Ibid.
303
Ibid.
88
Yoder's Flawed Ecclesiology
Leithart believes that his ‘accurate historical reconstruction’ of Constantine as a sincere

Christian, the baptism of Roman empire, Constantinianism as a politics of Jesus, and,
furthermore, his biblical hermeneutics, Scripture as a war story, have disproved Yoder’s
reading of church history based on the Constantinian shift.
It is beyond doubt here that the Imperial Church configured by Constantine is Leithart’s
ideal ecclesial model and it is for his preference for this heavily armed church that he
defends Constantine. He states that ‘Constantine's interest in a unified church is evident,’304
but he had no intention of manipulating the church. Constantine wished for the unity purely
from his faithfulness to God’s grace. Leithart argues that
Constantine had considerable influence on the church but did not dominate it, dictate the election of
bishops or make final decisions about doctrine. Councils met without his approval, and bishops were
elected locally. He did not have "absolute authority" over the church, and there is no evidence that he
wanted to get it.305
Most significantly, according to Leithart, it was the church that won the battle, not the
empire. Rome lost and was assimilated into the church triumphant. With the submission of
the empire to the church, ‘the martyrs’ faith had been vindicated.’306 By the victory of the
church over the empire, ‘God's vengeance against his persecutors comforts the mourners,
vindicates the dead, and, more important, vindicates God himself, teaching that “He alone is
God.”’307 For Leithart, the baptism of Rome by Constantine is “testimony to God’s
mercy.”308
He admits that the church became dependent on the imperial budget after Constantine but
the imperial money and bishops as high-rank officials of the empire gave the church more
power and converted her into a counterbalance to the imperial power.309 Put differently, the
imperial money and the elevated position of bishops enabled the church to counter
304
Ibid., p. 159.
305
Ibid., p. 305.
306
Ibid., p. 183.
307
Ibid., p. 309.
308
Ibid.
309
Ibid., p. 304.
89
inappropriate pressures from the empire. The ‘powerful’ church, furthermore, attracted
people to Christianity and caused floods of ‘converts’ without coercion and Jewish and
pagan rights were protected.
For Leithart, Constantinianism is the ideal ‘Politics of Jesus’ and, therefore, there has
been no ‘Constantinian shift’ in the Yoderian sense nor the ‘fall’ between the church of the
apostles and the medieval church. ‘Pogroms and antipagan mob action were products of the
abandonment, not the application, of Constantinianism.’310 The only ‘fall’ for Leithart, if
there has been any, is that from Constantinianism. He, therefore, insists against Yoder that
‘Reformation “Constantinianism” was not a development of the medieval system but a
destruction of it.’311 He also maintains that
critiques of Constantinianism, especially in the modern period, have lacked an ecclesiology and have
operated with what John Milbank describes as the “liberal Protestant metanarrative,” according to
which the church gradually sheds its external political encrustrations and is revealed as what in
essence it always has been, something “purely religious.”312
What is necessary for the church swallowed up by the nation state is the restoration of
Constantinianism, not the rejection of it.
Yoder is, therefore, wrong and his ecclesiology is flawed. Yoder is wrong because the
church has never been unanimously pacifist and martyrs died wishing for
Constantinianism;313 Yoder is wrong because he himself admits that there were Christians
who stood up against Constantinianism;314 Yoder is wrong because
[h]e failed, as Augustine said against Pelagius, to give due weight to “the interim, the interval
between the remission of sins which takes place in baptism, and the permanently established sinless
state in the kingdom that is to come, this middle time [tempus hoc medium] of prayer, while [we]
310
Ibid., p. 146.
311
Ibid., p. 323.
312
Ibid., p. 308.
313
‘He (Yoder) longs for the hardy faithfulness of the martyr church but does not recognize that the
martyrs were motivated by something very different from anti-Constantinianism. They died, one
might almost say, in hope that the Lord would raise up an emperor very like Constantine, through
whom the Lord would show that their blood had not seeped silent into the earth.’ Ibid., p. 310.
314
Ibid., p. 322.
90
must pray, ‘Forgive us our sins.’”315
Against Leithart's Defence of Constantinianism

In the foregoing sections of this chapter, we have seen Leithart’s counter account of church
history against Yoder and his biblical hermeneutics, the Scripture as a story of war. In the
following sections, I will question the ‘accuracy’ of his ‘historical reconstruction’ and the
soundness of his biblical hermeneutics.
Has Leithart Accurately Reconstructed Church History?
It is worth remember that Leithart contends that Yoder’s inaccurate reading of church
history led him to his flawed ecclesiology. He also insists that he questioned ‘the accuracy
of Yoder's portrayal of the church between the apostles and the second century.’316 He
criticises Yoder for his reliance on outdated unreliable literatures and being biased by the
Constantinian shift narrative. In contrast with Yoder’s inaccurate historical understanding,
Leithart is supposed to have come up with much more ‘accurate historical reconstructions’
of the first two-century church and of Constantine in Defending Constantine. The first
question to be asked here is, therefore, whether he has achieved what he claims to have, or if
we witness up-to-date accurate historical reconstructions based on the latest historical
literatures.
As has been already mentioned, Leithart criticises Yoder for his biased ‘prior narrative’ of
the Constantinian shift and church’s fall. Accordingly, Leithart claims, Yoder misread
church history. All Leithart’s ‘historical’ arguments, however, seem neither neutral nor
unbiased to my mind. As Nugent points out, ‘[m]aking extensive use of Eusebius, he brings
forward as many positive testimonies as possible. Evidence that does not support his case is
either ignored, chalked up to exaggeration (126), or re-interpreted with the help of more
sympathetic secondary sources (227–230).’317 Parler also says that ‘[t]he most glaring
weakness of Leithart’s work, then, is that he bases a polemical argument and constructive
theology upon an admittedly-biased historical portrait of Constantine.’318 In other words,
Leithart has not derived his theology from reading Christian histories, but it is his ‘theology’
315
Ibid., pp. 341-2.
316
Ibid., pp. 319-320.
317
John C. Nugent, “A Yoderian Rejoinder to Peter J. Leithart’s: Defending Constantine” in
Constantine Revisited, p. 3.
318
Branson Parler, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” in Constantine Revisited, p. 136.
91
that makes Constantine a ‘faithful’ Christian and ‘extraordinary’ saint, baptises the empire
and its military service. He writes, in short, like a trickster, putting everything out of its
context, twisting and realigning them to fit his hidden motive of an omnipotent Christian
empire. But, unfortunately, it is this opportunist style that makes his whole project collapse
from within.
Eusebian Constantine
It is somewhat surprising that there is almost nothing new in Leithart’s historical narrative
of Constantine and early church, even though he bashes Yoder for depending on outdated
unreliable materials. The fact that he has to ardently defend Eusebius to defend Constantine
clearly shows that his ‘historical reconstruction’ of Constantine largely relies on Eusebius.
In other words, Defending Constantine is a defence of Eusebius too. To take some examples,
‘Even when Eusebius celebrated Constantine's role in the church, he hedged. When he
described Constantine as a “sort of bishop,” the “quasi” was as important as the “bishop.”’
(p. 180); ‘Eusebius commended Constantine for offering God no sacrifice, “no blood and
gore,” no smoke to “propitiate the infernal deities,” but rather the sacrifice of a pure mind,
of imitation of “Divine philanthropy” in “imperial acts.”’ (p. 248); Eusebius ‘mentioned
Constantine's conquests in passing, stressing, with suitable biblical echoes, Constantine's
pietas and Moses-like meekness as barbarians are brought beneath his feet.’ (p. 249);
‘Rather than fitting the church into a grand narrative of Roman imperium, Eusebius was
trying to find a place for the empire in the Christian story.’ (p. 252), and so on.
It is utterly in line with Eusebius when Leithart affirms that ‘his “Oration” and Life do
not make the church subservient to the empire, nor do they accommodate Christian faith to
the sacrificial honor system of the empire, but rather they fit the emperor and his empire into
a cosmic Christian framework.’319 It is beyond doubt that Leithart retraces the Eusebian
narrative of Constantine and bases his baptism of the empire, Constantinianism as a politics
of Jesus, and his baptised military service on Eusebian Constantine.
His deep dependence on Eusebius, however, reduces the credibility of his ‘historical
reconstructions’ of Constantine and his reading of Church history. Michael Grant, one of the
best authorities on the ancient Mediterranean history, whom Leithart turns a blind eye to,
maintains that
319
Leithart, Defending Constantine., p. 250.
92
Eusebius was not only a mediocre stylist but a depressingly unobjective historian. …he falsified the
emperor into a mere sanctimonious devote, which he was not, and showed himself guilty of numerous
contradictions and dishonest suppressions, and indeed erroneous statements of fact, or untruths. For,
even if not deliberately fraudulent, Eusebius was indifferent to precision.320
Grant also comments on the character of the first Christian empire and says that ‘he was a
Christian of a very peculiar type, a type that would hardly be recognized as Christian at all
today.321’ His appraisal of Constantine’s faith coincides with Yoder’s misgiving about
Constantine’s Christianity stated in The Priestly Kingdom; he says that ‘in the fourth century
there was no recorded strong advocacy of the possibility that the conversion of Constantine
might change his behavior or that of his heirs.’322
Against Yoder’s misgivings, Leithart, however, goes so far as to claim that ‘[i]t is likely
this is because the bishops believed he had already done so.’323 He does not even hesitate to
exalt Constantine as ‘[a] man of high moral standards,’324 of ‘a strong sense of justice.’325
These are, though, remarkable claims when we take into account what Constantine did as a
‘Christian.’ He defeated Maxentius and returned to Rome holding his head on a pike;326 he
executed his second wife Maxima Fausta and his eldest son Flavius Julius Crispus;327 he
killed Fausta’s father Maximian thanks to whom he gained the title of Augustus;328 he
executed his sister’s husband Bassianus;329 in 324 he ordered to kill another of his sisters,
Constantia’s husband Licinius, even though Constantine promised to secure his life, and he
also put their son, his nephew, Licinianus to death.330
His killing, surprisingly, did not stop even with his baptism. Hornus writes that
320
Machael Grant, Constantine the Great: The Man and his Times (New York: Barnes & Nobles,
1993) pp.4-5.
321
Ibid., pp. 221-2.
322
Yoder, The Priestly Kingdom, pp. 82-3.
323
Leithart, Defending Constantine, pp. 183-4, footnote 68.
324
Ibid., p. 301.
325
Ibid., p. 301.
326
D. Stephen Long, “Yoderian Constantinianism?” in Constantine Revisited, p. 115.
327
Grant, Constantine the Great: The Man and his Times, p.110.
328
Jean-Michel Hornus, It Is not Lawful for Me to Fight: Early Christian Attitudes toward War,
Violence, and the State (tr. Alan Kreider and Oliver Coburn, Scottdale; Kitchener: Herald Press,
1980) p. 203.
329
Ibid., p. 204.
330
Ibid.
93
[a]t the very time of his baptism by Eusebius of Nicomedia, he is said to have confided to his personal
chaplain Eutakios his last wishes. These included the order, which was to be transmitted to his sons,
for the liquidation of his brothers, whom he held responsible for his death. The sons made no mistake
about getting rid of their uncles and their families, thereby radically simplifying all questions of
succession.331
It is remarkable that Leithart turns a blind eye to those atrocities and claim that there was no
need for such a person to morally change as a Christian because he had already changed,
and call him ‘a sincere Christian.’
Even before the piles of historical evidence that show his unchristian atrocities, Leithart’s
defence of Constantine is not halted. He boldly, but somewhat hesitantly, stands up for
Constantine and contends that ‘[t]here is no evidence that any bishops criticized Constantine
for his conquests and battles with family members, and the evidence that survives suggests
that they warmly supported him.’332 Therefore, ‘despite the damning evidence, it is wise to
be cautious.’333 Even in the presence of the well-known fact that judicial punishments
became made much more brutal and cruel under Constantine than under his predecessors,
Leithart attempts to defend his beloved emperor, as he does to baptise killing and wars, by
exploiting the ‘ambiguity’ of historical evidence; he says that ‘it is not entirely clear whether
these punishments were ever enforced or whether they were ever intended to be
enforced.’334
Here again, it can be clearly seen that Leithart is determined to use whatever ‘historical
evidence’ for making Constantine a sincere Christian and special type of saint, and filter out
or skip whatever evidence discredit him.
Baptism of Rome?
As we have seen, Leithart insists that Rome was baptised by Constantine; the church
triumphed over the empire so that Rome was swallowed up by the true city, church;
Constantine abolished sacrifice from Rome and the empire was de-sacrificed and became ‘a
331
Ibid., p. 205.
332
333
Ibid., p. 229.
334
Ibid., p. 200.
94
politics of Jesus;’ this merger of church and empire is ‘the eschatological establishment of
the desacrificial civilization.’ Do those remarks ‘accurately’ reflect what actually happened
in Rome under Constantine? Are they more convincing historical narratives than Yoder’s
narrative of the Constantinian shift?
Leithart reluctantly admits the simple fact that pagan emblems and practices survived
Constantine’s regime. He states that ‘[p]agan symbolism never completely disappeared from
Constantine's propaganda, and the monotheistic symbol of Sol continued to play double
duty, but pagan significations receded.’335 It is noteworthy that before Constantine allied
himself with Christianity, he identified himself with the Sun-god linked with Apollo and/or
Sol. Even after 312 pagan symbolism of the Sun-god coexisted along with, or was
transformed into, Christian symbols and survived his demise. Other pagan gods had
disappeared by 317, but the Sun-god did not. Coinage, for instance, with Sol was issued
until 319 or 320.336 Jesus Christ was called “Sun of Righteousness” (Sol Justitiae) and
represented by the young Apollo- or Sol-like figures.337 A coin of Vetranio issued around
350 holds the labarum crowned with an inscription, Sol Invictus.338 The Lord’s day, when
Christians commemorated Jesus’ resurrection and worshiped, became Sunday. And, of
course, the most obvious vestige of the pagan Sun-god is the Christmas in the West, in
which the Sun-god’s birthday was identified with Christ’s birthday.339
It is generally believed that Constantine’s attachment to the Roman Sun-god facilitated
his shift to the “Christian God” that was conceived of as the “Unconqured Sun.” Grant also
suggests that Constantine ‘may well have believed that Christ and the Unconquered
Sun-god were both aspects of the Highest Divinity, and that no mutual exclusiveness existed
between them or separated them.’340 To buttress his case, Grant brings up a striking episode
of the bishop of Troy that shows the almost seamless shift between the pagan Sun-god and
Christian God for Romans.341 Even though he was a bishop, he did not stop praying to the
solar god and believed that he could do so with clear conscience.
In Defending Constantine, Lethart treat Chi-Rho and labarum as Christian symbols and
335
Ibid., p. 76.
336
Grant, Constantine the Great: The Man and his Times, p. 134.
337
Ibid., p. 135.
338
Ibid.
339
Ibid
340
Ibid.
341
Ibid., p. 136.
95
he does not seem to doubt their Christian origin. Arguing for Constantine’s conversion, he
states that ‘[p]agan signs continued to appear on Constantine's coins and other depictions,
but he added explicitly Christian symbols like the Chi-Rho and the cross, and these symbols
gradually replaced the pagan signs.’342 But this is questionable. With respect to this point,
Drake states that ‘the Chi-Rho sign was a novelty, with no long association to Christian
belief.’343 Grant also says that ‘[t]he Chi-Rho was, previously, almost unknown as a
Christian emblem: no pre-Constantine use of the letters in such a role, or at most very few,
have been identified. Certainly, the Chi-Rho had appeared, but in quite a different and
non-Christian context, as pagan papyri indicate.’344 It is, thus, surely after Constantine that
the Chi-Rho was loaded with a Christian meaning alongside a traditional pagan meaning.
‘The Significance of the labarum, then, lies in its ambiguity. Like so much else that
Constantine did in these years, it could mean many things to many things.’345
According to Hornus, there were even two conflicting interpretations, pagan and
Christian, of the event of the Milvian Bridge.346 It was only Christians that attributed
Constantine’s victory over Maxentius to the Christian God, even though such a linkage
between the emperor’s victory and God revealed in Jesus was utterly unprecedented and
inconceivable for the Christians of the first two centuries.347 On the other hand, ‘[t]he
pagans—led by Constantine—interpreted it in exactly the opposite way.’348
Moreover, Constantine remained ‘the head of another religion’349 even after he allied
himself with Christianity. Right after his baptism on his deathbed, according to Hornus, he
was eager to provide his endorsement to the pagan imperial cult, and, in fact, the Senate
held their own ceremony of Constantine’s deification alongside the Christian funeral and
‘the crowds of Constantinople gathered on their own accord in front of his statue to worship
Constantine-the-Sun.’350 This vindicates Kreider’s assertion that ‘[t]he religious and
administrative center of Rome was controlled by the senatorial aristocracy, and these
342
343
H. A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (Baltimore, Md.: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2000) p. 203.
344
345
Drake, Constantine and the Bishops, p. 204.
346
Hornus, It Is not Lawful for Me to Fight, pp. 202-3.
347
Ibid., pp. 202-3.
348
Ibid., p. 203.
349
Ibid., pp. 204-5.
350
Ibid., p. 205.
96
aristocrats during Constantine’s reign were “overwhelmingly pagan” in their sympathies.’351
From even just a few examples above, we can clearly see that what was actually
happening under Constantine was far from the victory of the church over the empire or
Christianisation of Rome; it was no more than syncretism between Roman paganism and
Christianity. Kreider calls it ‘a process of inculturation involving the “assimilation” into
Christianity of pagan practices’352 and Hornus regards it as ‘an attempt at mutual
annexation, in which the emperor hoped to integrate the Christians into his solar cult, and
the Christians within the Church strove for a similar synthesis.’353
Leithart, of corse, is not unaware of all those syncretic phenomena after Constantine, but
he avoids calling them syncretism. Instead he names this amalgamation ‘infant baptism.’ He
goes so far as to maintains that ‘[a]ll baptism are infant baptism’354 to turn the syncretism
between imperial cult and Christianity into the baptism of Rome. By this twist, however,
Leithart makes his case for ‘historical accuracy’ less convincing because he knows that not
all baptism is infant baptism. More precisely, even in the third and fourth centuries, baptism
was dominantly for adults and infant baptism was not common. Concerning this point,
Kreider looks into a chapter by Leithart’s from The Case for Conventional Infant Baptism
and shows that Leithart himself argued that one can see even from the early medieval
baptismal liturgies that they were originally conceived for adult believers.355 Leithart also
admits that those baptismal liturgies designed for adults were extended and used for the
baptism of children who could not speak and this extended usage of the adult baptismal
forms was a negative development, influenced by ‘Stoicism and mystery religions.’356
Constantinianism as a Politics of Jesus Creedally Unified Empire?
As we have seen, Leithart argues that the Roman empire itself became a politics of Jesus
through the baptism of Rome by the first ‘Christian emperor’ Constantine. He also states
that Rome stopped being a city by accepting the true city, the church. For him Constantine’s
empire is the Constantinianism that all Christians living in nation states should pursue, and,
351
Alan Kreider, ““Converted” but Not Baptized: Peter Leithart’s Constantine Project” Constantine
Revisited, p. 49.
352
Ibid., p. 51.
353
Hornus, It Is not Lawful for Me to Fight, p. 203.
354
355
Kreider, ““Converted” but Not Baptized: Peter Leithart’s Constantine Project,” pp. 53-4.
356
Ibid.
97
therefore, it is the politics of Jesus that Christians ought to return to. Here again, we need to
question his ‘historical reconstruction’ of Constantine’s empire as a politics of Jesus and ask
whether Rome was ‘swallowed up’ by the church or vice versa.
Leithart vacillates between the two contradictory claims on the Nicaean Council. He, on
the one hand, downplays Constantine’s influence on it and maintains that the decisions were
made by the bishops free from any pressure from the emperor so that he can deny the
emperor’s manipulation and control of the church. He repeatedly states that Constantine did
not dominate the church. On the other hand, however, he seeks to give Contantine the credit
for the ‘success’ of the first ecumenical council in order to exalt him as the ideal ‘Christian’
emperor under whom Leithart’s ideal Constantinianism was implemented, and to depict his
empire as a politics of Jesus established on the credal unity.357
To defend Constantine and tranquillise the anomaly of the unbaptised emperor’s
convening church meetings, Leithart claims that ‘Constantine refused to take a place in the
council until invited.’358 What is most striking in Letihart’s defence of Constantine is,
however, his claim that Constantine did not have the “absolute authority” or manipulated the
church because he did not select ‘the bishop for every see,’359 nor censor sermon texts ‘for
every preacher in the empire,’360 nor was he ‘responsible for every act of discipline.’361 He
also maintains that the fact that Constantine summoned councils shows he did not exercise
‘absolute authority’ over the church. If this argument works, however, Hitler did not
dominate Germany because there existed the Nazi Party and some decisions were obviously
made by his underlings. It is, in fact, this sort of niggling two-mindedness that runs through
Defending Constantine.
Leithart’s denial of Constantine’s manipulation or control of the church is fairly
questionable if we look at what happened at and after the Nicaean Council. This council was
originally planed to be held at Ancyra but ‘Constantine transferred it to Nicaea and perhaps
357
‘When the bishops at Nicaea had determined the relationship of the Son to the Father, that
became the creed of the churches of the Roman empire. Arius was exiled and kept at arm's length
until he could come up with a convincing confession of Nicaea. This creedally based empire had one
great advantage for Constantine: it gave Rome a universal cultural and religious mission that it had
never had, and made it a rival of the more ideologically focused Persian empire.’ Leithart, Defending
Constantine, p. 292.
358
Ibid., p. 153.
359
Ibid., p. 151.
360
Ibid.
361
Ibid.
98
enlarged its scope so that it became the first “ecumenical council” of the Christian
church.’362 To portrait the first ecumenical council as a great success and the Nicean Creed
(the original version has been lost) as the fruit of church’s unconstrained discussions,
Leithart emphasises that all but two bishops approved the creed. But the ‘solution’ of the
Arian controversy was, in a sense, ‘reached’ through Constantine’s favoured tactics of
ambiguity. It was, in fact, Constantine himself who ‘guided the debate until he secured a
consensus,’363 and it is also generally believed that the disputable term homoousios was
proposed by the emperor himself.
If the most decisive word of the first ecumenical creed was proposed and, moreover, its
‘proper understanding’ was demarcated by the unbaptised emperor,364 it is hardly possible
to deny his strong influence on the church. Realising undeniably powerful influence from
Constantine upon the first ecumenical council, Leithart then attempts to turn Constantine
into a skilful arbitrator and contends that ‘[w]hen some of the bishops objected, Constantine
offered an interpretation that satisfied all but two Libyan bishops, who may have acted in
defense of Arius, a fellow Libyan.’365
It is, nevertheless, impossible to make such a claim unless one ignores what happened
shortly afterwards. Far from the Arian Controversy settled, it was reignited right after the
first ecumenical council. The history after the council until Constantine’s demise could even
be called an Arian plot against the Nicaean orthodoxy. The ‘court bishop’ of Constantine,
Eusebius of Caesarea, and the baptizer of the emperor on his deathbed, Eusebius of
Nicomedia, were Arians from beginning to end. Towards the end of council, Eusebius of
Caesarea wrote to his supporters, who were also Arians, and explained why he accepted the
creed drafted at the council and its anathema to Arian churches. ‘Throughout the letter,’
Barnes writes, ‘he shelters under the authority of Constantine, whose presence and role at
the council he continually recalls. Eusebius justifies at length his acceptance of the Nicene
Creed, explaining in what precise sense he interprets each phrase, and he defends the
362
Timothy David Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, MA; London, U.K.: Harvard
University Press, 1981) p. 214.
363
E. Glenn Hinson, The Church Triumphant: A History of Christianity up to 1300 (Georia: Mercer
University Press, 1995) p. 153.
364
‘Constantine contributed an exegesis which virtually every bishop present, even Eusebius, could
accept as consistent with his own views.’ Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, p. 217.
365
99
anathema appended to the creed as “harmless.”’366 Moreover, it is ‘in a fundamentally
Arian sense that Eusebius interprets the phrase “of the substance of the Father” and “being
of one substance with the Father.”’367
After the council, Arius, being excommunicated, had fled to Caesarea and it was Eusebius,
Leithart’s master of Constantinianism, who gave him shelter and worked on Constantine to
reinstate him.368 The emperor, Hornus states, ‘was quick to recognize in Eusebius of
Caesarea someone who would be willing to put all of his ecclesiastical authority and
theological skill at the service of the imperial ideology.’369 After learning that ‘the reason
for Constantine’s support of Nicene formula was not so much theology as a commitment to
unity and consensus, Eusebius skillfully turned the tables on Athanasius, using a series of
councils to maneuver him into a position where he would become the obstruction in
Constantine’s eyes.’370 Approximately two years after the Council of Nicaea, ‘a council of
bishops met at Antioch and conducted a purge in the Arian interest. Eusebius of Caesarea
presided.’371
Seeing the success of Nicaean purge at Antioch, Arius and Eusebius of Nicomedia
requested their re-acceptance into the Catholic church. ‘At Nicomedia, in December 327,
two hundred and fifty bishops assembled. Constantine, who was residing in Nicomedia,
attended their debate and participated as he had at Nicaea.’372 Even though this council
decided to readmit Arius to communion, Athanasius refused to accept him and declared that
‘Arius was a heretic and that there could be no place in the Catholic church for a heresy
which attacked Christ.’373 By 333, however, Constantine himself sided with Arians and
gave Nicaean supporters the cold shoulder.374 He reinstated Arius and disposed of the
ardent Nicaean faith backers, Alexander and Eustathius, after Alexander refused to restore
Arius.375
What do they all mean? As Leithart claims, Constantine did not manipulate or control the
366
Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, p. 226.
367
Ibid., p. 226.
368
369
Ibid., p. 208.
370
371
Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, p. 227.
372
Ibid., p. 228.
373
Ibid., p. 231.
374
Hinson, The Church Triumphant, p. 154.
375
Ibid., p. 180.
100
church? The ‘right worship of the Christian God’376 was Constantine’s only or main
concern? Faithful understanding of Jesus Christ mattered to him? Is Leithart right when he
says that Constantine ‘envisioned a universal empire united in confession of the Nicene
Creed?’377 It does not seem so. What the history of the Council of Nicaea and Arian
Controversy show is that
[i]n his treatment of both Arius and Athanasius, Constantine was consistent: neither
theology in Arius’s case nor the various criminal charges in Athanasius’s were as
important to him as the willingness of the defendant to compromise for the sake of
unity and consensus. The type of players Constantine was looking for were those who
would advance his agenda for a moderate and inclusive Christianity, who whould in
turn be part of a coalition of Christians and pagans united behind a policy that proved
a religiously neutral public space.378
If the content of the creed had really mattered to Constantine, why did he shift the weight
of his support from Nicaean supporters to Arians? Why were two of his most ‘faithful’
adherents, Eusebius of Caesarea and Eusebius of Nicomedia, Arians? If a ‘catholic’ creed
matters to the emperor, why was he baptised by Arian ‘heretic,’ Eusebius of Nicomedia?
How can Constantine’s empire that deposed and replaced bishops that stuck to the Nicaean
creed with Arian bishops be a credally unified empire, and, furthermore, a politics of Jesus?
Church history, in fact, points to an inconvenient fact that Leithart studiously ignores or
underestimates; namely,
the emperor completely controlled the bishops himself. His dominance over them, embodied in the
statement ‘my will must be considered binding’—which some earlier Christians would never have
accepted—was a prime example of that monarchical control of the church described as
Caesaropapism. Athanasius declared that the Fathers never sought imperial sanction, but in
Constantine’s time they had to, and they did. And it was he himself who chose every bishop when a
vacancy arose.379
376
377
Ibid., p. 288.
378
379
101
Constantine’s indifference to the content of the Nicean Creed squares with another fact
that ‘Jesus’ doing did not seem to him of any importance: nor, even, did the person of Jesus
himself.’380 To be like Jesus Christ as his disciple does not interest Constantine at all and he
despises Constantia, his half-sister, for her veneration of Jesus’ likeness.381 His ‘Christian
God’ was a God of power that gave him the victory at the Milvian Bridge, enabled him to
eliminate his political opponents; and it was a God that secured him the unity of empire.382
For the emperor with such a faith, ‘it was embarrassing, to say the least, that God’s own son
had been subjected to this humiliating end, and contemporary Christian art avoids the whole
question, because it seemed to involve such ignominy; and for this reason Constantine
abolished crucifixion as a punishment.’383 Constantine’s outlawing of crucifixion was not
‘amelioration’ of punishment as Leithart claims.384 He banned it as a method of punishment,
because he made the sign of the cross into a war emblem; after he made it into a banner of
conquering wars,385 the cross simply could not be a symbol of humiliation.
Baptised Military Service?
Leithart also simply linked the early Christian refusal of military service solely to Roman
idolatry, including emperor worship and bloody spectacles in colosseum, in order to make
military service into a respectful career option for Christians, and more importantly, to
create a category of “faithful Christian killing and wars.” This strategy, however, is not only
overly exploited by just war proponents, but it has also been refuted by Hornus and Cacoux
down to the ground. In footnote [2] to chapter 2, “The Pacifism of Pre-Constantinian
Christianity” of Chrisian Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution, Yoder points out that
380
Ibid., p. 149.
381
Ibid.
382
‘Even if we dismiss Eusebius entirely, however, we still have the evidence of Constantine's
letters and the “Oration,” in which he expresses a soldierly faith in the powerful God of Christians,
in the cross of Jesus as a victory over evil, and in the church as the unifier of the human race.’
383
384
‘There were some ameliorations of punishment. Crucifixion was outlawed, apparently in respect
to the cross of Jesus that had given Constantine his throne, and after Constantine no one appears to
have been condemned to death by wild animals. But many of his decrees suggest a horror show.’
385
‘This sort of philosophy is excellently illustrated by sarcophagi of the time, which combine the
Cross with the labarum and laurel-wreath—with which it was also combined on imperial
standards—so that it became a Cross not of humiliation but of triumph.’ Grant, Constantine the
Great: The Man and his Times, p. 149.
102
[i]n the last two generations, scholars have used this history in two different ways. If the early church
is to be appealed to as a norm, and if the early church was pacifist for the sake of pacifism—that is, if
the Christians refused military service because military service is wrong—then of course that stance
provides guidance for us. Some historians then made a counterargument: “Yes, the early Christians
did refuse military service, but they did so because of the idolatry, or the circuses, or the persecution.
If (as in later Christian nations) there had been military service without idolatry or circuses or
persecution or oaths, they wouldn’t have been against such service. Therefore we can be faithful to
the guidance of the early church without being pacifist.” The latter (traditional) argument, found in
the older literature, is taken less seriously today. Although this argument can still be made, no one
who has worked carefully through the work of Cecil John Cadoux— to say nothing of Jean-Michael
Hornus—argues it at length.386
If Leithart wished to discredit Yoder’s reading of church history and his thesis of the
Constantinian shift, Leithart should have consulted those two authors. He, however,
completely skipped those must-reads. As a result, Leithart repeats exactly the same story
that was overly exploited by other just war theorists, but roundly rebutted by Cadoux and
Hornus.
In 295, a young Numidian Christian, Maximilian, refused military service and was
executed by Dion, the proconsul of Africa. His refusal of military service was mainly due to
fighting itself and ‘[t’he question of sacrificing to idols or to the Empire is not mentioned by
either party.’387 After being executed, Maximilian’s corpse was brought back to Carthage
and buried at the foot of Cyprian’s. This fact testifies that ‘the bishop of Carthage
completely shared the pacifist position of Tertullian.’388 It is, therefore, ‘a mistake to regard
Tertullianus as an individual dissenter from the Church as a whole on this question of
whether Christians ought to serve in the army or not.’389
The Synod of Illiberis or Elvira, in the south of Spain, which was held around 300 A.D.,
decided to exclude Christians who are at the office of duumvir (not even soldiers), from
386
Yoder, Christian Attitudes to War, Peace, and Revolution, pp. 46-7, in footnote [2]. Italics by the
author.
387
Cadoux, The Early Christian Attitude to War, p. 149.
388
389
Cadoux, The Early Christian Attitude to War, pp. 117-8.
103
communion.390 The reason for this exclusion of magistrates from communion is perfectly in
line with an argument in On Idolatry by Tertullian. He contends that
let us grant that it is possible for any one to succeed in moving, in whatsoever office, under the mere
name of the office, neither sacrificing nor lending his authority to sacrifices; not farming out victims;
not assigning to others the care of temples; not looking after their tributes; not giving spectacles at his
own or the public charge, or presiding over the giving them; making proclamation or edict for no
solemnity; not even taking oaths: moreover (what comes under the head of power), neither sitting in
judgment on any one’s life or character, for you might bear with his judging about money; neither
condemning nor fore-condemning; binding no one, imprisoning or torturing no one—if it is credible
that all this is possible.391
The point is that both Tertullian and the Synod of Elvira believed that it is not lawful for
Christians to be involved in imperial justice, such as judging, imprisoning, torturing and
executing criminals, not only in idolatry.
In the seventh chapter of book eight of Against Celsus, Origen argues that Christians are
not allowed to put people to death nor to resort to violence because the ‘the Christian
Lawgiver,’ Jesus Christ, teaches nowhere his disciples to do so,392 without touching on the
issue of idolatry. There is nothing striking, therefore, that Origen does not attempt to refute
Celsus’s criticism of Christians being bad Roman citizens for their refusal of military
service. We must not underestimate that ‘at the end of the second century, a pagan who had
made a thorough investigation of Christianity had found only Christians who refused
390
Ibid., p. 156.
391
Tertulian, On Idolatry, chapter XVII (tr. S. Thelwall) in Ante-Nicene Fathers. Volume 3: Latin
Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian (ed Menzies, Allan and Schaff, Philip. Grand Rapids, MI.:
Christian Classics Ethereal Library, downloaded from www.ccel.org) p. 144.
392
‘And yet, if a revolt had led to the formation of the Christian commonwealth, so that it derived
its existence in this way from that of the Jews, who were permitted to take up arms in defence of the
members of their families, and to slay their enemies, the Christian Lawgiver would not have
altogether forbidden the putting of men to death; and yet He nowhere teaches that it is right for His
own disciples to offer violence to any one, however wicked. For He did not deem it in keeping with
such laws as His, which were derived from a divine source, to allow the killing of any individual
whatever. Nor would the Christians, had they owed their origin to a rebellion, have adopted laws of
so exceedingly mild a character as not to allow them, when it was their fate to be slain as sheep, on
any occasion to resist their persecutors.’ Origen, Against Celsus, III, 7 in Ante-Nicene Fathers.
Volume 4, p. 1051.
104
military service.’393 It also has to be reconfirmed here that Origen’s refusal of military
service does not rely only on the problem of idolatry or pagan cult, but it strictly derived
from his Christology. Jesus Christ came into the world as ‘reformer of the world,’ but he did
not resort to violence to change the world ‘which had been in favor under the old covenant,
for the force of his teaching was enough to spread the Word everywhere.’394
Whilst Leithart uses the existence of ‘Christian soldiers’ in the late second century to
baptise military service and killing, most of them were made soldiers ‘by the persecutions in
which the authorities used compulsory enrollment to bring the refractory,’395 which means
that ‘the Christians then in the army had not enlisted voluntarily after they had become
Christians.’396 The existence of Christian soldiers that first resulted from persecution later
gave the powers that be a pretext for further persecutions on those who refused military
service. In terms of soldier saints, many of them ‘joined the army only in the hagiographer’s
imagination.’397
Most significantly, all the written literatures, including the inscriptions on the tomb stones,
the works of Church Fathers such as Tertullian, Origen, Cyprian of Carthage, and so on, and
the Church Orders, namely the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, Constitution of the
Egyptian Church, and the Testament of Our Lord, ‘show that the constant trend of Christian
thought on this and similar questions was from strictness towards relaxation, from an almost
complete abstention to an almost equally complete freedom to participate.’398
It is, thus, abundantly clear that there was a drastic change since the late second century
in the church’s stance on violence, killing, wars and military service that Yoder calls the
Constantinian shift.
Collapse from within: Irreconcilable Theological Polarity
Leithart’s Prior Narrative
Up to this point, I have attempted to show that Leithart’s ‘historical reconstruction’ is not
very convincing and grossly retouched. It should also be noted here that he worked with a
‘prior narrative’ of ‘Constantinianism as a politics of Jesus.’ Toward the end of Defending
393
Hornus, It Is not Lawful for Me to Fight, p.161.
394
Ibid., p. 217.
395
Ibid., p. 123.
396
Ibid.
397
Ibid., p. 128.
398
Cadoux, The Early Christian Attitude to War, pp. 124-5.
105
Constantine, he, surprisingly, retreats from the battle for ‘historical accuracy’ that he himself
started and states that
[a]ll historians work with types and tropes and fill historical figures and movements with conceptual
significance that goes beyond anything the historical figures themselves could have known or done. I
have offered my own story line for the period, and it does not include everything; certain events
contextualize other events, and I have developed the threads of the story that I think are most
revealing and representative. Plus, I have written the history of Constantine with polemical intention,
in order to redress an imbalanced popular portrait of the first Christian emperor.399
It is worth remember that Leithart started his battle against Yoder by targeting the ‘historical
inaccuracy’ in his interpretation of church history; he found fault with Yoder’s ‘prior
narrative’ of the ‘Constantinian shift’ in his reading of Christian history. Leithart himself,
however, as can be seen in the above quote, has given up the cause for which he started his
criticism against Yoder and admits that all historians work with ‘prior narratives,’ including
Leithart himself.
Now that Leithart himself has admitted that he cannot help but starting with his own prior
narrative to interpret church history, it is no longer clear on what ground he thinks he could
criticise Yoder’s ‘inaccurate interpretation’ of church history. When Leithart started his
criticism against Yoder by declaring that his understanding of Church history is largely
framed by an Anabaptist narrative of the fall of the church, Leithart argued as if he could see
church history from a ‘neutral’ perspective and as if he was in a better position to
understand it more accurately. But now he admits that he also reads his own
‘Constantinianism as a politics of Jesus’ into church history. In other words, his own
narrative is not the historical fact that was ‘reconstructed’ from the unbiased neutral
perspective, but he obviously read his own meta-narrative into Church history. In other
words, Leithart’s ‘Constantinianism as a politics of Jesus’ is not a logical outcome of any
sort of ‘historical axioms,’ but, at best, another interpretation of church history.
No Place for Jesus’ Death on the Cross in Leithart’s Meta-Narrative
Leithart’s dream of an omnipotent global Christian empire is doomed to collapse from
399
106
within due to the divergent forces that reside in his ideal of ‘Constantinianism as a politics
of Jesus.’ Whilst he had to idealise Constantine’s empire as ‘baptised’ and ‘desacrificed’ by
the emperor, he had to defend Constantine’s oppression and killing and wars by making an
exception of sacrifices made by him at the same time. This dichotomy within the
‘Constantinianism as a politics of Jesus’ exerts the most distorting power on his biblical
hermeneutics. Being driven by the gravity of his ideology of an omnipotent Christian
empire, for which killing and wars by Christians are indispensable, Leithart has read his
ideology into the entire Scripture and he made the Scripture into ‘a story of war.’ However,
as Long points out, ‘[n]owhere does God train Adam or Eve for war. He gives them no
sword; he does not even provide implements for butchering animals.’400 Moreover,
‘Genesis never presents the serpent as an intruder or the garden as a fortified camp
protecting one part of God’s creation from another.’401 And most importantly, ‘[w]ar and
violence are not part of God’s original good creation.’402
Leithart looks to Milbank for support for his ecclesiology of ‘Constantinianism as a
politics of Jesus’ and for baptised killing and wars, but he cannot summon Milbank for his
defence without making another distortion. Whereas Milbank is a non-pacifist Augustinian,
no conflict or war can be set in the original condition of the created world in his theology of
an alternative ontology against the Enlightenment ontology of conflict. He states that ‘[a]n
abstract attachment to non-violence is therefore not enough—we need to practice this as a
skill, and to learn its idiom. This idiom is built up in the Bible, and reaches its
consummation in Jesus and the emergence of the Church.’403 Put another way, in his
counter ontology based on his reading of Augustine, peace is ‘a primary reality’404 and any
form of ‘preceding violence’ must be rejected. On the contrary, ‘[w]ar and violence are not
for Leithart, as they were for Yoder and traditional Christianity, consequences of the fall.
They are intrinsic to being God’s creatures, a form of participating in his rule.’405 In so far
as ‘the Catholic vision of ontological peace’406 is ‘the only alternative to a nihilistic
400
Long, “Yoderian Constantinianism?” in Constantine Revisited, p. 121.
401
Ibid., p. 120.
402
Ibid., p. 120.
403
Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 402. Italics by the author.
404
Ibid., p. 429.
405
406
Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 442.
107
outlook’407 for Milbank, Leithart’s meta-narrative of ‘the Scripture as a war story’ can never
be reconcilable even with Milbank’s Augustinian ontology.
A prominent New Testament scholar Richard Hays also categorically contends that ‘from
Matthew to Revelation we find a consistent witness against violence and a calling to the
community to follow the example of Jesus in accepting suffering rather than inflicting it.’408
That is to say that nonviolence runs through all Jesus’ teachings, his life, death, resurrection
and ascension. Hays also states that
[a]t every turn he renounces violence as a strategy for promoting God’s kingdom (e.g., Luke 9:51–56,
where he rebukes James and John for wanting to call down fire from heaven to consume unreceptive
Samaritans), and he teaches his followers to assume the posture of servanthood (Mark 10:42–45; John
13:1–17) and to expect to suffer at the hands of the world’s authorities (Mark 13:9–13; John 15:18–
16:4a). The hope of vindication and justice lies not with worldly force—that is the satanic temptation
rejected at the beginning of his ministry—but in God’s eschatological power. Jesus’ death is fully
consistent with his teaching: he refuses to lift a finger in his own defense, scolds those who do try to
defend him with the sword, and rejects calling down “legions of angels” to fight a holy war against
his enemies (Matt. 26:53). In Luke’s account, he intercedes for the enemies responsible for his
execution (Luke 23:34a, if this belongs to the text).409
As Yoder insisted, Hays also maintains that Jesus’ renunciation of violence has been
crystallised in the passion narrative and ‘[t]he whole New Testament comes rightly into
focus only within this story. Whenever the New Testament is read in a way that denies the
normativity of the cross for the Christian community, we can be sure that the text is out of
focus.’410 Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is the victory over the power of violence and the
community of his followers is to live to prefigure the new creation or new order that has
already started intruding into the old order through Jesus’ resurrection.411
It is noteworthy at this point that Leithart’s meta-narrative of the Scripture as ‘a story of
war,’ makes Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection from the dead almost unintelligible
407
Ibid., p. 442.
408
Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Cross, Community, New Creation—A
Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996) p. 332.
409
Ibid., pp. 329-330.
410
Ibid., p. 338.
411
Ibid.
108
and/or redundant. For Leithart, Adam’s sin is his refusal to take arms to fight God’s wars
and to protect Eve. For him, Jesus came into the world to make up Adam’s failure.
According to his meta-narrative the Bible as a story of war, Jesus was to fight and kill Judas,
the crowd, the high priest, the Roman soldiers and officials to defend his disciples. Within
his biblical hermeneutics, Jesus’s death on the cross is nothing but ‘a failure similar to
Adam’s.’412
It has been already mentioned that Leithart utterly skips Jesus’ death on the cross in his
work. Jesus’s death on the cross and resurrection from the dead are brought up neither in
Defending Constantine nor in the book-length footnote Between Babel and Beast because
there is no place for them in his meta-narrative. This can be confirmed in his tricky readings
of some New Testament passages too. He, for instance, reduces ‘Turn the other cheek’ to the
matter of ‘honor and shame’413 in order to defend self-defense killing and wars by
Christians. But Matthew 5:39 is, Hays insists, ‘about non violence.’414 ‘The admonition not
to strike back is one of several “focal instances” that figuratively depict the Matthean vision
for the community of discipleship. It is not simply a rule prohibiting a certain action; rather,
415
it is a symbolic pointer to the character of the peaceful city set on a hill.’
While the first martyr Stephen is turned into a proponent of “faithful Christian killing and
wars” by Leithart,416 Hays’ reading of this passage that ‘[t]he story of Jesus’ exemplary
renunciation of violence’ is reflected in his martyrdom417 is much more straight forward
and comes in harmony with all the passion narratives.
The centurions and soldiers in the New Testament do not help Leithart baptise killing and
wars at all. The story of the centurion in Matthew 8:10–13 and its ‘theological force is,’
Hays argues, ‘analogous to that of the saying, “Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the
prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you” (Matt. 21: 31).418’ Furthermore,
‘none of the positive stories about soldiers who become believers actually depicts them
412
413
414
Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, p. 326.
415
Ibid., p. 326.
416
‘Nor were the earliest Christians pacifists. Stephen—Christlike, full of the Spirit, the first
martyr—thought that Moses' killing the Egyptian was an act of just vengeance to protect the
oppressed, the beginning of the liberation of Israel from captivity (Acts 7:23-24), and the Jews did
not stone him for saying that.’ Leithart, Defending Constantine, p. 336.
417
Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, pp. 339-340.
418
Ibid., p. 335.
109
fighting or using force in God’s service. Their military background is no more commended
by these stories than are the occupations of other converts, such as tax collectors and
prostitutes.’419
It is absurd to claim that prostitution could be a respectful Christian career by referring to
Matthew 21:31–32, ‘Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the
kingdom of God ahead of you.’ Likewise, to insist that killing and waging wars in military
service can be a faithful Christian practice by referring to the existence of centurions and
soldiers in the New Testament is not different from claiming that running brothels is a
legitimate way for the church to fund charity for helping single mothers and abused women.
‘Nowhere in the New Testament is there an instance of any writer appealing to a principle
such as love or justice to justify actions of violence.’420
Against Paul and Origen
In the same way, when Leithart takes ‘on behalf of those who are fighting in a righteous
cause’ out of its context and uses it for christianising killing and wars, he abuses not only
Origen but also Paul. In the first place, if that all the governing authorities are instituted by
God is ‘a fixed datum in Christian political theory,’ Cacoux says, ‘the rule that a Christian
must never inflict an injury on his neighbour, however wicked that neighbour may be, was
also a fixed datum in Christian ethical theory.’421 Romans 13:1 assigns all authorities to
God by stating that ‘there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist
have been instituted by God.’ Therefore, logically speaking, even the Devil’s authority
somehow derives from God himself. This is why in the Revelations, ‘authority’ can be
allocated to death (6:8), dragon and beast (chapter 13), and the ten kings that ally
themselves with the beast and fight against the Lamb (17:12–17). Nonetheless, we must not
forget that someone is ‘appointed by God for a certain work or permitted by God to do it’422
and is given ‘authority’ to do it does not secure their ethical character at all. That certain
authority was given to the beast does not mean that the beast was righteous or ‘his
persecution of the saints was not blameworthy.’423
Moreover, the meanings of those words such as ‘good,’ ‘bad,’ ‘just,’ and ‘righteous’
419
Ibid., p. 340.
420
Ibid., p. 339.
421
422
Ibid., pp. 211-2.
423
Ibid., p. 212.
110
differs depending on contexts, whether they are used in a Christian context or pagan.
Cadoux explains that
the just ruler who as the servant of God enforces the laws, punishes wrongdoers, and wages war
against the unrighteous aggressor, is, in the thought of Paul and the early Fathers, always a pagan
ruler, and therefore, though eligible for conversion, is, yet, quâ pagan, not to be expected to obey the
distinctively Christian laws of conduct or to exercise the distinctively Christian restraint upon
wrongdoing.424
Given that the governing authority about which Paul argues in Romans 13 is pagan, it is
impossible to identify any governments’ judgement or law with God’s judgement or
righteousness in the Christian sense. If the qualifiers such as ‘good,’ ‘bad,’ ‘right,’ ‘wrong,’
‘just,’ ‘righteous’ and so on meant the same in both the pagan and Christian context,
proclamation of the gospel would become redundant, but Paul never thought that people did
not need to repent in so far as they live abiding by the Roman law.
This point becomes more obvious when we see Athenagoras saying that ‘Christians
cannot endure to see a man killed, even justly, and à fortiori cannot kill him.’425 For
Christians, killing even a wicked man is sin and unjust. It is, therefore, abundantly clear that
to kill justly means to kill abiding by the law. It is, thus, too naive to believe that Christians
can be involved in whatever activities that can be qualified ‘good,’ ‘right,’ ‘just’ and
‘righteous’ in a Roman civic or judicial sense. To command Christians to support the
coercive power of government or wars fought by the state by referring to Romans 13 is
nothing but abuse of the Scripture that can be done only severing this chapter from the
previous verses, Romans 12:19–21.426
When Origen talks about praying to God ‘on behalf of those who are fighting in a
righteous cause,’ the word ‘righteous’ cannot be understood in the Christian sense. As we
have already seen, Origen calls ‘enemies of our faith’ those who require Christians to ‘bear
arms for the common wealth, and to slay men’ in the same passage where he talks about
424
Ibid.
425
Ibid., pp. 214.
426
‘Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written,
“Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they
are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their
heads.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.’
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‘forming a special army’ that fight for the king by praying to the true God. What is
‘righteous,’ therefore, for the empire cannot be ‘righteous’ for Christians; if this was the case,
there would be no reason for Christians to refuse to fight wars ‘in righteous cause.’ We can,
thus, conclude with Cadoux that
the Christian justification of coercive government and of war, though real and sincere, was only a
relative justification: it was relative to the non-Christian condition of the agents concerned. It
therefore furnished no model for Christian conduct and no justification for any departure on the part
of the Christian from the gentler ethics characteristic of the religion of Jesus.427
If we criticise Origen for just praying for wars ‘in a righteous cause’ without fighting
them and think his position irresponsible, we underestimate the church’s own way of peace
making and the gravity of her sacrifice. As for the church’s service to the world, Christians
looked out for abandoned children and pulled them out of the rubbish heaps and the rescued
children were looked after by Christian families; they provided widows with shelter, food
and clothing; they took care of the sick, poor, disabled, prisoners and captives; they
conducted burial of the poor and ransomed slaves; they provided the unemployed work and
helped the victims of calamities.428 ‘[S]o far as the endurance of hardship and danger went,’
Cadoux states, ‘the early Christians were far worse off than the magistrates, executioners,
and soldiers; for not only had they to take their share as civilians in ordinary and special
risks to which people are exposed alike in peace and war, but they had also to endure all the
troubles and disabilities and persecutions which public odium heaped upon them.’429
Leithart’s Obsession with Power, Rule and Control
Reading through Defending Constantine, one cannot help but see that this book is full of
inconsistent descriptions of almost anything he talks about and his two-mindedness is
brought to the fore when he needs to be most clear-headed.
The baptised Rome as a de-sacrificed city is the conceptual core for his Constantinianism
as a politics of Jesus that is supposed to provide his ideal of an omnipotent global Christian
empire with a solid foundation. His accounts of the baptism of Rome or the de-sacrificed
427
428
Hinson, The Church Triumphant, pp.40–45.
429
112
city, however, vacillate throughout the book. On page 328, he states that, ‘Constantine's
polity has remained in place until the present. A desacrificed civilization has become so
commonplace that we think it is the natural order of things.’430 Leithart here claims that the
baptism of Rome still defines the modern politics and de-sacrification is regarded natural in
it. But on page 340, he says that ‘[m]odern politics is apostasy from the fourth-century
baptism.’431 He goes on to state that ‘[a]ll modern states, totalitarian and democratic,
renounce the Constantinian system; that is what makes them modern states. …For all their
differences, totalitarian and democratic systems are secretly united in their
anti-Constantinianism.’432 ‘Modern nations thus,’ Leithart also contends, ‘get resacralized
because they are resacrificialized, they demand the “ultimate sacrifice” (pro patria mori),
they expel citizens of the wrong color or nationality or religion.’433 In brief, Leithart, in
effect, holds up completely opposite claims simultaneously: the baptism of Rome is still
alive and dead.
It is even less clear what he means by ‘the Constantinian system.’ His intention of
idealising Constantine’s empire is beyond doubt. However, even though Leithart rejects
Yoder’s Constantinian shift, he had to admit that church leaders conceded too much to
Constantine and he went too far; he reluctantly states ‘there was a brief, ambiguous
“Constantiniantinian moment” in the early fourth century, and there have been many tragic
“Constantinian moments” since.’434 As he cannot say that Constantine’s regime was fully
Christian, he pictures the process of christianisation of Rome as infant baptism to mitigate
the syncretism of Constantine’s empire. What Letihart insinuates by infant baptism is also
obvious: Rome was baptised by Constantine, but it was not fully Christian yet; the
christianisation of the empire began with the first “Christian” emperor, but it did not reach
maturity at once; the christianisation of Rome was an ongoing process. Constantine’s
empire, therefore, cannot be regarded as the ideal or pure Constantinianism.
Here arise two big questions against Leithart. According to him, modern politics is
apostasy from the baptism in the fourth century and modern nations are resacrificialised;
430
431
Ibid., p. 340.
432
Ibid.
433
Ibid., p. 340-341.
434
Ibid., p. 287.
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therefore, modern civilisation should be baptised.435 His odium against Anabaptism is
evident throughout Defending Constantine but, oddly enough, Leithart reveals himself as a
practical Anabaptist when he criticises modern politics and nation states. He wants to have
all the Western nation states of ex-Christendom, including America, re-baptised in order to
restore ‘a purified Constantinianism.’436 But when did the first baptism end? And in
addition to this, where can we find this ‘purified Constantinianism’? There is not even a
single paragraph that explains when the first baptism ended or where we ought to spot the
‘purified Constantinianism.’
Leithart has depicted Constantine’s empire as desacrificialised Rome, but the fact is that it
was full of sacrifices. Constantine did not stop his conquering wars; the oppression, torture,
killing and executions of pagans, ‘heretics,’ enemies and criminals did not go away from the
‘baptised’ and ‘desacrificialized’ city Rome. Leithart simply argues as if violence from one
side (Constantine) can be acceptable, but not from the other (Constantine’s enemies). In
other words, Leithart talks as if all atrocities by Constantine’s enemies are sacrifice, but
violence by him is not. But ‘[t]he sacrifice necessary to maintain the Empire is,’ Parler states,
‘not merely a religio-political ritual offered to a god or the emperor; it is the religio-political
sacrifice of the enemy and the outsider offered up in the name of honor, peace, liberty, and
justice.’437 For Yoder and Hauerwas, as we have already seen, sacrifice does not relate only
to pagan rituals, but it is rooted in the idolatrous nature of all earthly politics, and it is this
idolatry of earthly politics that Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross annulled.
The irony of Leithart’s project of Constantinian restoration is that he could sacrifice the
true sacrifice of Jesus Christ for the sake of his ideal of an omnipotent global Christian
empire. His ‘political theology’ or theology of empire, in fact, can be constructed without
the New Testament. All his typology of empire in the book-length footnote, Between Babel
and Beast, depends on his peculiar reading of the Old Testament and his meta-narrative of
the Bible as a war story cancel off the Passion narratives in the Gospels.
Moreover, how can the God of war be compatible with his lamentation over the
re-sacrification of modern nations? If he believes in the kind of God he describe as the war
God, there is no point crying over bloodshed. From the very beginning, the end of sacrifice
435
‘An apocalypse can be averted only if modern civilization, like Rome, humbles itself and is
willing to come forward to be baptized.’ Ibid., p. 342.
436
Ibid., p. 342.
437
Ibid., p. 141.
114
has no place in his own picture of the war God. Furthermore, his war God makes it
impossible for us to understand the death of Jesus on the cross by turning everything that
Jesus himself rejected into ‘Christian.’
If there could be such a case where Christians should be ordered by the church to kill
someone, why did the Apostles not do so? Why did they not order the church to fight wars
when she went through the harshest persecutions? Why they did not order Christians to kill
false prophets that risked most the eternal life given by and in Jesus? Furthermore, why
were the Apostles not ordered by their Lord to fight for him? Just before he was killed on
the cross, Jesus declared before Pilate that ‘[m]y kingdom is not from this world. If my
kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being
handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.’ (Jn. 18:36) Considering
that Jesus ‘forbade the use of the sword in Gethsemane, the occasion was one on which it
had been drawn, in a righteous cause and for the defence of an unarmed and innocent
man,’438 who can have the authority to order the church to kill for whatever lesser causes?
What can be a more grave cause for the church than her Lord, Jesus Christ himself and his
kingdom?
The question that we have to ask at this point is what makes Leithart believe that the
church should kill people against her Lord’s teachings and orders. Leithart, of course,
cannot show any criterion against which the church can say that ‘for this cause, we are
allowed to kill,’ or ‘in such and such a situation, we ought to kill,’ because there is no
passage in the New Testament that can be used as such a criterion.
There is no New Testament passage that can be used for the church to justify killing, but
in Defending Constantine we can spot what drives him to justify killing and wars by
Christians. For him, society or community or empire or state, or whatever he calls it, always
exist outside the church. As Thiessen Nation points out, ‘[w]hat seems clear is that Leithart
does not really believe that Israel, and later, the Church—in the context of “the [pagan]
nations” that surround them—truly is a polis.’439 As Leithart cannot think that the church
can be a polity without allying herself with earthly powers, he ridicules critics of
Constantinianism and claims that there was no pacifist church, even though all of the
438
439
Mark Thiessen Nation, “Against Christianity and For Constantine: One Heresy or Two?” in
115
earliest historical materials we can consult show the church was pacifist until the late second
century, and attempts to make us believe that the church was Constantinian from the very
beginning.
For Leithart, the only criterion against which he can evaluate the success or failure of the
church is whether the church’s ‘partner’ is powerful enough to destroy her enemies to secure
a safe haven for herself in the world. His Constantinian restoration project that Leithart
developed in Defending Constantine and its book-length footnote Between Babel and Beast
is to persuade Christians to participate in all killing and wars for securing a safe haven for
the church by turning them into Jesus’ or God’s wars. After all is said and done, what really
matters for Leithart is the power to rule the world.
The greatest irony of Leithart’s Constantinian restoration project is that he has provided
us witth another evidence to believe that Hauerwas and Yoder’s criticism of
Constantinianism is true and right by repeating the almost universal pattern of
Constantinianism described by them: giving up faithfulness to Christ Jesus for controlling
the world. For Hauerwas and Yoder, Jesus Christ has defeated the sovereignty of the Powers
by rejecting killing for the rule of the world. In other words, the sacrifice of human beings
for the purpose of controlling the world is the universal nature of the fallen Powers and
politics of the world as idolatry. For Yoder and Hauerwas, Jesus has overcome it on the
cross. Leithart himself admits that sacrifice to false gods and powers is idolatry and for this
reason he had to claim that Constantine desacrificiated Rome. But for the sake of his
ideology of an omnipotent global Christian empire, he had to swallow up the sacrifice by
Constantine. He gave away his desire for the power to control the world and this is exactly
the temptation, according to Yoder and Hauerwas, that makes the church forget her
obedience and faithfulness to her Lord, and makes her to regress to the idolatry of the fallen
politics that has been abolished by Jesus on the cross.
Leithart, one of the most ardent proponents of Constantinianism, has proven through his
own obsession with Constantinianism that it is destined to fall in under the burden of
serving two masters, master of this world and of the church, or of reconciling two different
sorts of politics, that of Jesus and the world. He has also shown us that the desire for the
power to rule, control and manipulate is deep and self-deceptive to such a degree that we
abandon Jesus’ straightforward teachings and orders to his disciples. The temptation of
Constantinianism is probably the same one that the first persons yielded to; the temptation
116
of being like God, of dominating one’s own life and controlling God’s created world. And as
Leithart has demonstrated, it is the temptation of Constantinianism that makes us read our
desires for power, rule, control and manipulation into God’s word and finally justify exactly
the opposite of his word.
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Summary of the First Part
In the first part, I expounded what Constantinianism and the Constantinian shift mean in the
works of Yoder and explicated Hauerwas’ counter-Constantinian ecclesiology. In chapter
five, I examined Leithart’s Constantinian restoration project, or Constantinianism as a
politics of Jesus. At the end of the first part, I would like to sum up what we have gone
through so far. For Hauerwas and Yoder, Constantinianism has to be abandoned because the
church betrays the obedience and faithfulness to her master by seeking to ally herself with
earthly powers to secure a safe haven on the earth. The church has been created and called
out of the world by her Lord to live his politics by giving up the politics of the world. Even
though the Powers belong to the order of creation, the overall New Testament view of the
Powers is as fallen and corrupt. The fallen Powers seek more to separate people from God’s
love (Rom. 8:38), to rule over those who live far from the love of God (Eph. 2:2), to hold us
in servitude to their rules (Col. 2:20) and under their tutelage (Gal. 4:3) than to serve the
objective assigned by the Creator. Jesus has broken the dominion of the fallen Powers and
liberated us from the sacrificial politics of the Fallen powers through his life and death on
the cross. His resurrection and ascension is God’s vindication of the authentic peace-making
power that was enacted in Jesus’ servanthood. For Hauerwas and Yoder, therefore, when the
church seeks to ally herself with earthly powers, she betrays the politics of peace-making
that consists in the way of servanthood shown in her Lord’s life and death because earthly
powers run on the sacrificial politics of the world and, thus, can never humble themselves to
the form of servanthood that Jesus Christ requires from his disciples.
The church is a narrative-centred community that enthusiastically and faithfully returns
and listens to the stories of Jesus’ life, death, resurrection and ascension and the Scripture is
the ultimate authority only for and within such a community. If such a community vanishes,
the authority of the Bible also disappears. In this way, the christocentric nature of Christian
faith is embedded in the disciples’ faithfulness and obedience to the stories of Jesus Christ
through which their lives are to be shaped. The church is a people formed into such
faithfulness in worshiping the Triune God revealed in and through Jesus Christ in a polity
established by the resurrected Lord.
To be a faithful disciple requires a training called discipleship. When people become
Christians in baptism, their citizenship is shifted and they become members of a radically
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new household to which there is no equivalent in the world. And the most important part of
this citizenship change is the acquisition of a new language because the boundaries of a
language are coextensive with the boundaries of linguistic community. The most significant
part of discipleship is, therefore, to learn the language of the church. To learn the ecclesial
language is to learn to speak Christian and it is this very language of the church that the
politics of Jesus is grounded in.
As Peter had to learn the distinction between Jesus’ politics and this world’s in the
community of Jesus’ disciples, all Christians need to follow in his footsteps. The politics of
the kingdom that Jesus proclaimed is unintelligible to the world, and Christians therefore
need to unlearn the language of this world in the process of learning the language of the
church. And the most shocking thing we have to learn from the new ecclesial language is
that we should be prepared to die only for Jesus Christ if death is not avoidable. The
opposite side of this same truth is that the church is not allowed to judge her enemies, which
means she cannot kill her enemies. She must rather love her enemies. The church has been,
therefore, called out of the world to be an extension of the truth of the kingdom Jesus
proclaimed in her faithful obedience to her Lord. In this way, Christian ethics is the matter
of the formation of faithful churches.
The church is a community of forgiven sinners. We are taught that we are sinners in
worshipping the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We can confess our sin because we
have learnt that we can be forgiven. But confession of sin should be strictly differentiated
from self-justification that the grand narrative of our age called liberalism propagates. Even
though liberalism as such is no more than another form of heresy or the revival of paganism
in disguised theology, most of the Protestant churches have succumbed to this neo-heresy.
The temptation of self-justification tempts us to challenge the Scripture to transform the
gospel into our likeness instead of us being transformed into Jesus’ likeness. To avoid this
temptation, we have to reaffirm that the language of the church, gospel, cannot be translated
into any form of alleged universal language. The recovery of this language of the church is
in dire need for all the churches of our age.
The church sustains her life and grows by adopting the stranger as children of God
through the dissemination of the seeds of gospel and making people disciples of Jesus. In
other words, Christians are made by way of the proclamation of Christ Jesus with people’s
willing commitment to Jesus Christ, through their death to natural selves and second birth in
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baptism. In this sense, the church’s life does not depend on biological reproduction of the
existing members. The church is a new family that consists in adopting strangers in the
name of Jesus Christ. We reaffirm here again why Christians are not allowed to kill their
enemies. We cannot tell who might convert and become our family members in the future of
our today’s enemies. That is why we should leave judgement in God’s hands.
Children are not the hope of the church but she welcomes them in the hope of them
committing their lives to the Lord someday and join the journey which their parents are
already on. Thus, welcoming children is grounded in the same virtue of welcoming the
stranger of the church. We learn that life is God’s gift, not our possession, by welcoming the
stranger. As long as disciple making and discipleship are ecclesial matters, children’s
education and care cannot be a personal business. It is rather the most significant business
for the churc. In the church, to have children is a duty for the married couples, but parenting
is a duty for both the married and unmarried.
It is the virtue of welcoming the stranger that makes the church an authentic international
community. We learn to accept people from all nations in the name of Christ. The church
needs to cunningly get around and break down the false national boundaries because they
hamper the unity of the church. Christians must be travellers for the sake of the true
universality of the church.
While Constantinianism is a hazardous temptation for Hauerwas and Yoder, for Leithart,
it is a politics of Jesus and can be in accordance with Christian discipleship. According to
him, the church can even kill and wage wars for creating ‘peace.’ Referring to Augustine, he
says that ‘[w]hen “the earthly city observes Christian principles,” then it wages war “with
the benevolent purpose that better provision might be made for the defeated to live
harmoniously together in justice and godliness.”’440 ‘For Augustine,’ Leithart goes on to
state, ‘war had to be waged, when it was waged, for the sake of peace. Peace, not war, was
still the Christian vision of the world subdued by the gospel.’441 In the same passage that
Leithart quotes, a Letter to Boniface (Letter CLXXXIX, 6.), Augustine says that ‘even in
waging war, cherish the spirit of a peacemaker, that, by conquering those whom you attack,
you may lead them back to the advantages of peace,’442 and then he quotes Matthew 5:9,
440
441
Ibid., pp. 277-8.
442
Augustine of Hippo, “Letter CLXXXIX,” 6 (tr. J. G. Cunningham) in Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers Series I, Volume 1: The Confessions and Letters of St. Augustine, with a Sketch of his Life and
120
‘“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”’ This peacemaker
clause from the Sermon on the Mount is followed by a flagrant phrase of ‘[l]et necessity,
therefore, and not your will, slay the enemy who fights against you.’443
When Augustine and Leithart talk as if Christians can kill enemies loving them and for
the benefit of those whom they kill, are they in accordance with what Jesus taught and
ordered his disciples? Or are they tempted to distort the gospel for the sake of something
that cannot square with Jesus’ teachings? I think that there are good reasons to believe that
the right answer is the latter. Firstly, all the early Christian authors forbid Christians in one
voice to inflict any sort of violence on anybody. Secondly, Jesus forbade his disciples not
only to murder, but also to have a feeling that drives people to kill, namely to hate (Mt.
5:21-26). Therefore, talking as if Christians can kill with love is the worst distortion to what
Jesus actually taught. To borrow a phrase from Thiessen Nation, ‘[i]t’s as if Jesus had said:
“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and
‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that only if you love
murdering will you be liable to judgment.”’444 Thirdly, as I mentioned in chapter five, there
can be no greater cause than Jesus Christ and his kingdom for the church, and Jesus himself
forbade his disciples to kill for him nor his kingdom; there can be, thus, no cause for which
Christian are allowed to kill. Fourthly,
the New Testament’s witness is finally normative. If irreconcilable tensions exist between the moral
vision of the New Testament and that of particular Old Testament texts, the New Testament vision
trumps the Old Testament. Just as the New Testament texts render judgments superseding the Old
Testament requirements of circumcision and dietary laws, just as the New Testament’s forbidding of
divorce supersedes the Old Testament’s permission of it, so also Jesus’ explicit teaching and example
of nonviolence reshapes our understanding of God and of the covenant community in such a way that
killing enemies is no longer a justifiable option.445
One of the most common practices of the Christian just war theorists is referring to the Old
Work (ed Philip Schaff, Grand Rapids, MI.: Christian Classics Ethereal Library, downloaded from
www.ccel.org) p. 1179.
443
Ibid., p. 1179.
444
Thiessen Nation, “Against Christianity and For Constantine: One Heresy or Two?” in
445
121
Testament to justify what is clearly denied in the New Testament. But when Christians seek
to justify what the New Testament clearly dismisses, they are avoiding facing up to the
simple fact that, for Christians, Jesus Christ is the fulfilment of the Old Testament and that
way is not open to them. If Christians attempt to justify whatever practice ruled out in the
New Testament, they reject the finality of Jesus Christ. In doing so, they return, as Yoder has
shown, to the old politics of idolatry before Christ’s coming.
Therefore, however great a theologian Augustine was, and however ‘traditional’ just war
theory may be, ‘it cannot stand the normative test of New Testament ethics—unless it could
somehow be shown that its norms are consistent with the New Testament witness.’446 In so
far as ‘Christian’ killing and wars cannot be justified without sacrificing the true sacrifice of
Jesus Christ by going back to the Old Testament and making his death on the Cross
redundant, just war theory can never stand the normative test of New Testament. When
Augustine talks as if he could square the observation of Christian principles with Christians’
killing and waging wars, it is Augustine who is wrong, not Jesus nor Paul. And when Yoder
and Hauerwas warn Christians that Constantinianism leads the church to betray her
obedience and faithfulness to the Lord, they are right.
As Hornus points out ‘the illusion that a “Christian empire,” in the strict sense of both
words (i.e. a political unity embracing all believers), could and must exist in the world’ was
at the root of just war theory,447 church’s betrayal and unfaithfulness start when we try to
justify our desires or ideals or whatever we want by reading them into the teachings of Jesus
Christ, instead of us being challenged by christocentric reading of the Scripture. When the
church wanted to make the Roman empire Christian, she read their ideal of Christian empire
into Romans 13 where Paul only talks about pagan governing authorities. When Leithart
talks about the baptism of Rome, he goes the same path. Even though there is no New
Testament passage that talks about baptism of empire or state or culture, he reads his ideal
of baptised empire into the Scripture.
This pattern of identifying certain state or group or culture or movement as Christian and
reading them into Jesus’ teachings is endlessly repeated, for example, by alleged
Augustinian political theologians such as Bretherton, Gregory and Mathewes,448 and in the
446
Ibid., p. 341.
447
448
‘But there is a third possible vision, a deeply minority vision, one rooted in the experience of
1989. In this case there was a real revolution (and it was even televised!), and while it never of
122
field of missiology, under the name of Missio Dei. Against this trend, however, the author of
Romans wrote that
[d]o not be mismatched with unbelievers. For what partnership is there between righteousness and
lawlessness? Or what fellowship is there between light and darkness? What agreement has the temple
of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will live in them and walk
among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore come out from them,
and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you, and I
will be your father, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.” Since we have
these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and of spirit, making
holiness perfect in the fear of God. (2 Cor. 6:14-7:1)
Christians are called out to be peacemakers, ‘sons of God’ (Mt. 5:9), and to love their
enemies (Mt. 5:45) by Jesus Christ. ‘Thus,’ Hays states, ‘the church’s embodiment of
nonviolence is—according to the Sermon on the Mount—its indispensable witness to the
gospel.’449 After all is said and done, the mission of the church is to be a faithful
community that reads the Scripture through Jesus Christ and live his politics. As Hays
points out, if the world finds the peacemaking message of Jesus Christ ‘unrealistic’ and
‘impractical,’ it is largely due to the church’s failure to live Jesus’ politics and
unfaithfulness.450 ‘The meaning of the New Testament’s teaching on violence will become
evident only in communities of Jesus’ followers who embody the costly way of peace.’451
Therefore,
[t]he task of the church then would be to tell an alternative story, to train disciples in the disciplines
course achieved the millenarian goals some set for it, it incontestably managed, in most of Central
Europe at least, actually to be a good thing. This vision of the world begins not from the crowd,
neither seeing it from above nor being in it from below, but from what must come before the crowd
gathers, if the crowd is not to devolve into a mob: the long, slow work of creating the kind of culture
of civic commitment—a culture that knows what it wants, and how it can get it (and what it must not
do if its goals are to be possible at all). Given that civic culture, the crowd becomes something more
than the crowd: it becomes a unity, a people, a united will. For this view, the basic task of politics is
to find out how such civic commitment can be fostered, and then to foster it.’ Charles Mathewes, A
Theology of Public Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) pp. 301-2.
449
450
Ibid., p. 343.
451
Ibid.
123
necessary to resist the seductions of violence, to offer an alternative home for those who will not
worship the Beast. If the church is to be a Scripture-shaped community, it will find itself reshaped
continually into a closer resemblance to the socially marginal status of Matthew’s nonviolent
countercultural community.452
452
Ibid., pp. 342-3.
124
Part 2 Constantinianism in Pre-Constantine Japan
In the first part, I showed that Constantinianism is one of the most important terms in
Hauerwas’s theology and demonstrated why Constantinianism should not be understood
simply as a historical amalgamation between church and empire but is rather a theological
diagnosis of the universal temptation for all churches of all generation wherever they are.
Constantinianism is the temptation to hold onto power to rule or control the world in order
to secure a safe haven for the church. Allying herself with earthly powers to such a degree
that she regress to the idolatry of pre-Christian earthly politics, a church that succumbs to
this temptation replaces her obedience and faithfulness to the Lord with a quest for security
on the earth. Against this temptation, I set out a biblically faithful peace-making
ecclesiology grounded as such in Hauerwas’ critiques of Constantinianism.
In this second part, I will apply this critique to the contemporary church in Japan. I will
suggest that the Japanese churches are highly susceptible to the Constantinian temptation
due to a historical or ‘cultural’ idiosyncrasy that is presented as basso ostinato by
Maruyama Masao. Maruyama has paid close attention to the general trends in the thinking
of seminal historical Japanese intellectuals of the Edo period (1603-1867) who he
understands to have extolled the political status quo without any ethical criticism of power
holders. His following analysis suggests that basso ostinato is an ancient layer of Japanese
culture that gives theological warrant for the sheer praise of power. I will then narrate a
concise story of the introduction of Christianity to Japan and the resistance to it by the Edo
bakufu or Tokugawa shogunate. This will be presented as the historical background against
which this panegyrical historical literature was produced. I will then show how the history
of the Japanese Protestant church overlapes with the modernisation of Japan to culminate in
her submission to the emperor. In this way the modern Japanese church became a
constituent of the newly invented religious state built on State Shinto. Toward the end of this
second part, it will be suggested that there are obvious reasons why the basso ostinato
trajectory so easily became entangled with liberalism to render the Japanese church
exceedingly liable to the Constantinian temptation. The final chapter suggests that Japan’s
experiment with liberalism will reveal the church-destroying potential of political and
theological liberalism.
125
Chapter 6 Basso Ostinato: The Manipulation of Language and
the Denial of Truth beyond Political Power

This chapter investigates a Japanese historical and cultural characteristic that Maruyama
Masao named basso ostinato. It is a feature of Japanese culture that has remained largely
invisible to both Japanese and non-Japanese observers even though it renders the churches
sojourning in Japan extremely vulnerable to the Constantinian temptation. Maruyama
Masao was and still is one of the most renowned Japanese academics in the field of the
history of politics. He was an unusual scholar in that he was not only familiar with Western
political thought but also with ancient Japanese texts that are unintelligible and unreadable
to most modern Japanese. His wide-ranging intellectual curiosity makes it almost
impossible to locate him within a single academic field.
To Find A Common Pattern in the Modifications to the Themes

The literatures that Maruyama draws on for his project of revealing the ‘ancient layer’ of
Japanese historical consciousness are exceedingly different from any school of Western
thought. This simple fact makes it hard for non-Japanese readers to follow his argument. It
may therefore be helpful to see how he sums up Japanese thought, in advance, and then go
into details of his argument. According to Maruyama,
in Japanese thought it is only ideologies that had become doctrines, such as ‘Confucianism,’
“Buddhism,” “liberalism,” “democracy,’ “Marxism” and so on, that make up the themes in the history
of Japanese thought. Furthermore, including Confucianism and Buddhism, all of them came from
abroad. It is, thus, undeniable that, in terms of their contents or themes, all Japanese thought is made
up of foreign elements. However, this does not mean that there is nothing Japanese in Japanese
thought. When a system of an ideology with firm doctrine comes to Japan, it does never remain as it
originally is, but it is always modified to a certain degree. If there is something ‘Japanese’ in Japanese
thought, [I assumed that] it could be reflected in the way or pattern of modification of imported
doctrines. In fact, looking into the process of Japanisation of Confucianism, Buddhism, European
thought and Marxism, we can find a common pattern in all of them; [the way that the themes were
modified] is surprisingly similar in each case. This is the issue of ‘old layer.’ This is to say, again, that
this ‘old layer’ does not make up the themes, but it appears as the way or pattern of the modifications
126
of them.453
In this passage, Maruyama clearly states that there is nothing original to Japanese thought in
terms of its contents or themes, but something very Japanese is to be seen in how themes
originating abroad are modified. It is, therefore, significant for us to carefully follow how
Maruyama describes this pattern of modification.
Self-developing History
As the starting point for his project, he pays attention to a verse from Motoori’s work.
Motoori was a scholar of ancient Japanese literature and culture of the middle Edo period
(kokugaku). It says that ‘from the ancient time until now, examining how good and evil
come and go, it should be mused on that nothing contradicts the law of gods’ age, now and
for ever.’454 Motoori repeatedly claims that all ‘the law of history’ is condensed in the gods’
age, including the future. When he says this, the substance of history or each historical event
were in his mind, but Maruyama assumes, as mentioned above, that there is rather a certain
pattern that obstinately repeats itself in Japanese historical thought and descriptions.
Borrowing an analogy from musicology, he names this pattern basso ostinato (obstinate
bass).455
Starting with this assumption, Maruyama spots some passages that, he believes, represent
the basso ostinato in the oldest Japanese literatures, Kojiki (The Record of Ancient Matters)
453
「日本思想史において主旋律となっているのは、教義となったイデオロギーなんです。
儒・仏からはじまって「自由主義」とか「民主主義」とか「マルクス主義」とか、こうみ
てくると「儒教」「仏教」を含めて全部これは外来思想なんです。日本思想史の主旋律は外
来思想なんです。それでは日本的なものはないのかというと、ちゃんとした教義をもった
イデオロギー体系が日本に入ってくると、元のものと同じかというとそうではなくて必ず
一定の修正を受ける。その変容の仕方、そこに日本的なものが現れているのではないか。
そうすると儒教が日本化されていく過程、仏教が日本化されていく過程、今度はヨーロッ
パ思想が日本化されていく過程、マルクス主義が日本化されていく過程、それを見ていき
ますと、そこに共通したパターンがあり、それが驚くべく類似しているんです。それが「古
層」の問題なんです。だから「古層」は主旋律ではなくて、主旋律を変容させる契機なん
です。」Maruyama Masao, “Nihon-shisōshi niokeru ‘kosō’ no mondai,” Maruyama Masao Shū, Dai
jū-ik-kan (1979-1981) (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1996) pp. 180-181. All the Japanese/Chinese words and
phrases cited in this chapter are translated by the author.
454
「古へより今に至るまで、世の中の善悪き、移りもて来しさまなどを験むるに、みな神
代の趣に違へることなし、今ゆくさき万代までも、思ひはかりつべし」Quote from Kojiki-den,
san no kan, cited in Maruyama Masao, “Rekishi-ishiki no ‘kosō,” Maruyama Masao Shū,
Dai-jik-kan (1972-1978) (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1996) p. 3.
455
Ibid., p. 7.
127
and Nihongi (Chronicle of Japan) or Nihon Shoki (Written Chronicle of Japan).456 Both of
them start with cosmogony myths in the first chapter and there are a lot of common
elements in their contents. It is, however, generally believed that they have different
editorial purposes; while Nihon Shoki or Nihongi was supposed to create “the authentic
Japanese chronicles” in the style of Chinese historiography from the point of view of
emperors’ rule, Kojiki was compiled to justify the rule of ‘Ashihara-no-Nakatsukuni’ (a
mythological name of Japan in Kojiki) by emperors in narrating that the Imperial lineage
could be traced back to the age of gods, more directly, in turning the Imperial houshold into
the direct descendants of gods. In this sense, the cosmogony myths in both Kojiki and Nihon
Shoki were written, to a certain degree, as pretexts for the imperial rule.
Concerning creation or foundation narratives, Maruyama claims that there are three
foundation verbs or verb categories that make up the bottom currents of the all cosmogony
myths around the world: they are ‘tsukuru’ (to create), ‘umu’ (to give birth to), and ‘naru’
(to form [into]). Even though those three verbs may share common etymological origins in
some cases or be interchangeably associated with one another by way of analogy, all
cosmogony myths can be logically classified into three distinct types; the world we live in
and all the creatures a) were created by creator(s) with certain purposes, or b) were born
through gods’ sexual intercourse, or c) formed by the power of some mysterious innate
spirits (for instance, the mana in Melanesian mythology). While Maruyama admits that
these three types overlap with one another in many cases and not many religions or
mythologies exclusively fall into just one of these three, he claims that it is possible to learn
which type is prevalent in a certain nation or culture, and what is characteristic in their
world views.457
If the logic of ‘tsukuru’ (to create) is refined, creator and creatures split up as subject and
object so that the creation logic distances itself form that of ‘umu’ (to give birth to) in so far
as it embraces the consanguinity between the ones that give birth to and the ones that are
born. In this sense, ‘umu’ (to give birth to) and ‘naru’ (to form) are in stark contrast with
‘tsukuru’ (to create). On the other hand, while in a sentence like “A forms” (for example,
‘The world forms.’), the subject of the sentence is clearly presented as ‘A’ and the
proposition concludes, in sentences such as ‘A was born’ or ‘A was created,’ the
456
Kojiki was completed in 712, Nihon Shoki in 720.
457
Maruyama, “Rekishi-ishiki no ‘kosō,” Maruyama Masao Shū, Dai-jik-kan (1972-1978), p. 8.
128
propositions are still open to questions such as, ‘Who gave birth to A?’ or ‘Who created A?’
In this sense, ‘tsukuru’ (to create) and ‘umu’ (to give birth to) fall onto the same side and
make contrast with ‘naru’ (to form).458
Thus, if those three are to be placed on a single line, ‘tsukuru’ (to create) and ‘umu’ (to
give birth to) constitute the opposite poles and ‘naru’ (to form) is to float between them.459
In certain cultures, the magnetic force of ‘tsukuru’ (to create) is so strong that the logic of
‘umu’ (to give birth to) is drawn toward that of ‘tsukuru’ (to create), whilst in other cultures
affinity between ‘naru’ (to form) and ‘umu’ (to give birth) grow stronger. According to
Maruyama, the most typical case of the former is the Judaeo-Christian creation myth, while
the Japanese mythologies represent the latter, in which the subject of creation or of giving
birth, or the purpose of the world are hardly questioned in so far as the magnetic force of
‘naru’ (to form) tends to absorb the logic of ‘umu’ (to give birth to).460
Maruyama, then, argues that the logic of ‘naru’ (to form) not only permeates the
cosmogony myths in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, but the logic of ‘umu’ (to give birth to)
tends to be overwhelmed by the prevalent logic of ‘naru’ (to form) and its logic provides a
springboard for basso ostinato. He states that the world seen from the perspective of this old
layer is not a world where an unchangeable eternal being exists or a world doomed to the
void, but it is an incessantly forming world.461 This old layer is, according to Maruyama,
rooted in the image of sprouting, growing and thriving of living things and defines Japanese
historical consciousness as ‘Nariyuku’ (to gradually form).462 It is significant to point out
here that the basso ostinato as a cosmogony of growth and reproduction by virtue of
generating spirits (Musuhi: 産霊) pierces through Japanese historical descriptions, even
after the category of ‘nariyuku sekai’ (forming world) was coloured with the most
pessimistic tone of Buddhism.463
In this way of historical descriptions, it is the continuity itself or the momentum of ‘tsugi
tsugi’ (one after another) that is to be exalted and praised. In fact, the unbroken line of
Kōshitsu (imperial household) is commended in Kojiki for not only its chronological
succession from gods to imperial family, but also for its horizontal expansion, which means
458
Ibid., p. 8.
459
Ibid., p. 9.
460
Ibid.
461
Ibid., pp. 18-9.
462
Ibid., p. 19.
463
Ibid., p. 21.
129
the increase of the imperial family members.464 In other words, it is the chronologically
endless succession ‘one after another’ and the prosperity of the family or household that are
to be commended. According to Maruyama, this praise of bloodline succession and
prosperity of household was universalised and applied to other noble families that supported
the Yamato (ancient Japan) dynasty, to the Hongan-ji Buddhist household, to performing
artists and artisans and heads of household business in the Edo period, and so on.465
Conflict with Imported Doctrines

The purely Japanese paise of bloodline succession and of the prosperity of a household was
at odds with the Confucian ideal of the governance by virtuous rulers imported from China.
According to this Confucian ideal, the ruler should be a man who enacts heaven’s mandate
and he is to be deposed if he behaves against the heaven’s will. Maruyama points out,
referring to works of ancient Chinese historical literature Shunjyū-kokuryō-den and
Sankō-hongi, that there are only a few example of the uncommon expression of ‘keiten or
ten wo tsugu’ (継天=succeed to the heaven) in Chinese Confucian literatures, and even in
those exceedingly sporadic cases the focus is not on the bloodline succession but on
heaven’s mandate. For example, one passage from Shunjyū-kokuryō-den states that ‘tenka
no shu naru mono ten nari, ten wo tsugu mono kimi nari’ (為天下之主者天也、継天者君
也: the one who becomes the lord under heavens is the heaven; the one who succeed the
heaven is the lord). In this passage, the inheritance of the heaven’s mandate is more
significant than the lord himself.466
However, once this unusual expression of ‘keiten’ (継天) from Chinese historical
literature had been imported to Japan, its tone was modified to obscure and enfeeble the
original transcendent attribute of heaven in Chinese Confucian literature. The phrase ‘keiten’
(継天) was favoured and repeatedly used by Japanese Confucian authors and thinkers in the
Edo period to stress Japanese ‘tradition’ of the foundation of the country. Maruyama
maintains that this phrase helped the notion of the unbroken Imperial lineage from the gods
in heaven or the Amateras (Sun Goddes) to amalgamate with the heaven’s mandate or
heavenly virtues in order that potential conflicts in the inculturation of the notion of virtuous
ruler could be avoided, and the authority of the Imperial lineage could be doubly buttressed
464
Ibid., pp. 24-5.
465
Ibid., p. 25.
466
Ibid., p. 28.
130
by the notion of god-given or heaven-given status and also by virtue and bloodline.467
Praise of Momentum
Maruyama pays attention to the identification of ‘toku’ (徳: virtue) with ‘ikioi’ (いきほひ:
momentum) that clearly shows a peculiar Japanese sense of value.468 A verse in
Wakun-no-shiori469 states that ‘Jindai-ki ni toku wo yomeri, Imbe, Hatsukanorito nimo toku
ha ikioi nari to mietari’ (Searching “Jindai-ki [the age of gods],” “Imbe” and
“Hatsukanorito” for virtue; it can be seen that virtue is regarded as momentum.)470 This can
be seen as one of the most obvious examples of the identification of virtue with momentum
and Maruyama concludes that when momentum is identified with virtue, the normative
character in Chinese Confucian literature is lost. To put it differently, one does not gather
momentum because they are virtuous, but praise of those who gather momentum is virtue.471
This acclamation of ‘momentum’ is also seen in the phrase of ‘Mitama-no-fuyu’ (みたま
のふゆ), i.e. the invocation of momentum, benefit, favour, protection and so on to emperor
or divine spirits, and the exaltation of momentum is endowed with a lofty status within the
Japanese value order, associated with the category of ‘naru’ (to form) mediated by belief in
growth, reproduction and activeness.472
More significantly, according to Maruyama, the acclamation of momentum can be
discerned in embryo at the very beginning of Kojiki. He indicates that the phrase of ‘Tenchi
shohatsu no toki’ (天地初発之時: the time when heavens and earth first started off) is not
used in Nihon Shoki, but only in the cosmogony myth of Kojiki. Moreover, this phrase was
even replaced with a more authentic Chinese phrase of ‘kenkon hajimete wakarete’ (乾坤初
分: heavens and earth first separated [from each other]) in the preface to Kojiki which was
written in a lofty Chinese mode.473
It is worthwhile to reconfirm that Japanese classic literature borrowed the Chinese writing
system, and in many cases the authors endeavoured to write in a sophisticated Chinese style.
467
Ibid., p. 27.
468
Ibid., p. 31.
469
This is a Japanese dictionary edited by a scholar of Japanese classic literature and culture,
Kotosuga or Tanigawa Shisei, published between 1777 and 1887.
470
「神代紀に徳をよめり、斎部、八箇祝詞にも徳は勢也と見えたり」(jindai-ki ni toku wo
yomeri, Imbe, Hatsukanorito nimo toku ha ikioi nari to mietari), cited in Maruyama, “Rekishi-ishiki
no ‘kosō,” Maruyama Masao Shū, Dai-jik-kan (1972-1978), p. 31.
471
472
Ibid., p. 34.
473
Ibid., pp. 34-5.
131
It is, however, not always possible to articulate Japanese idiomatic expressions or nuances,
or more generally Japanese thought, in a lofty Chinese fashion. Thus it can be said that if a
certain phrase seems unusual according to Chinese standard, it could be more Japanese.
Therefore, as far as ‘kenkon hajimete wakarete’ (乾坤初分) represents a common
expression in Chinese cosmogony myths, the phrasing of ‘Tenchi shohatsu no toki’ (天地初
発之時) is more likely to reflect a primeval Japanese way of seeing their surrounding world.
Maruyama, then, maintains that the image of separation in ‘kenkon hajimete wakarete’ (乾
坤初分) should be contrasted with another primitive image of ‘ashikabi’ (葦牙: sprouting
reeds) and he also believes that this primeval image is reflected in the phrasing of ‘Tenchi
shohatsu no toki’ (天地初発之時: the time when heavens and earth first started off). In this
image, the world is seen as the development of innate life energy. Just as reeds sprout out of
seeds and grow, earth and heavens and mud and every part of the male and female body just
form one after another.474 This is the picture of a world where, due to the lack of an ultimate
being, ‘worlds’475 are to be blasted off again and again by the driving force of the original
life energy and endlessly proceed in one direction.476 It should be noted that the notion of
the order or purpose of the world is out of sight in this image of the world.
The fact that there is no imperishable eternal being in Shinto wrecked all the time the
ambition of Shinto ideologues to make up ‘Shinto theology.’ However, this disadvantage for
establishing providential or normative historical consciousness not only sustained the
historical optimism of ‘momentum’ in Japanese history, but it was also the flip side of the
peculiar logic of ‘In the beginning, there was momentum,’ in which the energy of formation
itself is considered as the point of departure.477
The supremacy of momentum in Japanese historical descriptions can be also seen in the
frequent use of the Chinese phrases such as ‘jisei’ (時勢: the momentum of time) or ‘tenka
no taisei’ (天下之大勢: the prevalent momentum under the heavens). Even though very few
examples of these two expressions can be found in Chinese historical literature, they were
preferred by Japanese authors to describe turning points in Japanese history. Those phrases
imply that once ‘ikioi’ (いきほひ: momentum) or ‘hazumi’ (はずみ: impetus) is gathered
474
Ibid., p. 36.
475
If I am not mistaken, there is no notion of the ‘world’ in the Kojiki or Nihon Shoki. As the authors
did not have a perspective from which they can see the whole world, they only describe the forming
of the islands that were governed by the imperial family (kōzoku).
476
Ibid., p. 36.
477
Ibid., p. 38.
132
and goes in one direction as time passes and reaches certain point, the direction of the
movement cannot be changed, and, moreover, it cannot be reversed.478
When the categories of ‘jisei’ (時勢: the momentum of time) or ‘tenka no taisei’ (天下之
大勢: the prevalent momentum under the heavens) are used in historical descriptions in
contexts such as ‘jisei yamuwoezu’ (時勢止むをえず: the momentum of the time cannot be
stopped) or ‘Jisei-no utsurikawarukoto-wa tenchi-no onozukaranaru ri-naruka, mataha
kami-no on-hakari naruka, bonryo-no hakari-shirubeki naranedo, hikkyō hito-no chi nimo
chikara nimo oyobubeki-koto narazu’ (時勢の遷変る事は天地の自なる理なるか、また
は神の御はからひなるか、凡慮の測しるべきならねど、畢竟、人の智にも人の力に
も及ぶべき事ならず: Whereas whether the transition of the momentum of the time is due
to the principle of heavens and earth or gods’ will is not for ordinary mind to learn, after all,
it is beyond human wisdom and power [Date Chihiro, Taisei-santen-kō (18022-1877)]), a
tone of predestined inevitability similar to ‘Jiun’ (時運: a matter of chance) comes to the
fore.479 United with appreciation of the irreversibility of history, the proposition of
‘tenka-no taisei ippen-su’ (天下の大勢一変す: the momentum of heavens and earth has
drastically changed) was applied to various historical accounts for the turning point from the
imperial court governance to the samurai military rule.480
Maruyama’s survey of Japanese historical literature has led him to sum up the basso
ostinato or the old layer of Japanese historical consciousness in a phrase ‘tsugi-tsugi-ni
nariyuku ikioi’ (つぎつぎになりゆくいきほひ: momentum that forms one after
another).481 He does not claim that the complexity of the mutation of Japanese historical
consciousness can be reduced to this single phrase. He admits the basso ostinato does not
make up themes of Japanese historical descriptions or thought; it is rather Buddhism,
Confucianism, Taoism, and Western thought, after the Meiji period, that come to the fore as
the themes of Japanese historical consciousness. That is to say, as mentioned at the
beginning of this chapter, in terms of the substance or content of Japanese culture or thought,
nothing is ‘purely’ Japanese; all of them came from abroad. However, the basso ostinato
never fails to Japanise all doctrines or teachings.
478
Ibid., p. 42.
479
Ibid.
480
Ibid., p. 43.
481
Ibid., p. 45.
133
Praise of Shifts in History
Eki-kyō (『易経』: I Ching or The Book of Changes) is originally an ancient Chinese manual
of divination and counted as one of the five classics of Confucianism, but it also developed
a sort of cosmology in the course of its historical expansion. According to Maruyama, this
Chinese text was most frequently referred to by Japanese authors to describe major
historical turning points in Japanese history. ‘Hentsū’ (変通: adaptation in line with
historical changes), for example, was one of the most popular conceptions for describing
historical dynamics, associated with the category of ‘jisei’ (時勢: the momentum of
time≒zeitgeist or spirit of the age) and ‘taisei’ (大勢: the prevalent momentum≒general
trend).
However, Maruyama argues, even though verses such as ‘eki kyū sureba soku hen ji,
henjireba soku tsūzu’ (易窮則変、変則通: Once a series of changes has reached a dead end,
another change arises; then this change goes its way) can be found in the part of Keijika-den,
the focus is on demonstrating the universal law that cuts through all changes. This quote is,
therefore, followed by a phrase, ‘tsūzureba soku hisashi, kore wo motte ten mizukara
tasuku-nari’ (通則久、是以自天祐之: Going its way, then, will be long; therefore heaven
itself helps this), and rule by saints as per the everlasting circular way of heaven or the law
is exalted.
The focus was, however, shifted by Japanese authors from the heavenly law to the
flexible changes prompted by momentum. Yamagata Taika (1781–1866 [Edo period]), for
instance, utterly undermines the way of saints in Chinese Confucian literature by saying that
[w]ar and peace and rise and fall; they are the trend of heavens and earth; human feelings and ideas
change over time; this is the momentum of nature. Therefore, there is a way for saints to go along
with changes; (saints should) change along with changes in the course of time and do not become a
master of the way… Namely, it is now against the law of heavens and earth, and of nature, to put on
airs as if nothing has changed since the ancient simplicity, and to wish that human feelings and ideas
would always remain unchanged.482
「治乱盛衰は則ち天地の気運にして、人情趣向もまた時と推し遷る。これ自然の勢なり。
482
故に聖人、変に通ずるの道あり、時に随って変化してその道窮まらず。（中略）今、太古簡
朴風をして長く変ずることなく、人情趣向をして常に一の如くならしめんと欲するは、則
ち天地自然の理に非ざるなり。」Kokushi-hensan-ron, ni-no-kan, cited in Maruyama,
134
It is remarkable here that not only ‘the law of the heavens and earth, and of nature’ of Xhu
Xi school is presented in stark contrast with changes of human feelings as ‘the momentum
of nature,’ but also to change along with changes in the course of time and not to become a
master of the way is proposed as a new way of saints!483
Jien484 also furthers the shift of focus by differentiating between ‘shizen-hō-teki-dōri’ (自
然法的道理: the logic of natural law) and ‘rekishi ni naizai suru dōri’ (歴史に内在する道
理: the logic existing in history) in Gukan-shō. He maintains that the latter keeps changing
eternally, the logic existing in history, and thus is to be newly created as generations proceed
and change. Maruyama claims that this praise of changes derived from the ever changing
logic of history makes Japan a better soil for historical relativism to flourish than any other
place in the world.485
Japanese historical descriptions, especially of the Edo period, are coloured with optimism
about the objective course of events that is regarded as the self-revelation of innate values or
spirits (hi:霊＝ヒ). As a result, criticism of historical events is considered as pointless or
unnecessary. Maruyama refers to Dainihon-shigaku (The Great Japan Annals) of the Edo
period, which adopted the Chinese annals and biographies style historiography (kidentai), as
one of the most striking examples of uncritical optimism in Japanese historiography. He
pays attention to the omission of critical comments (ronsan: 論賛) on each historic figure
by authors that should conclude annals and biographies in Chinese historiography. This
omission was nothing but the result of the editorial policy of Dainihon-shigaku (The Great
Japan Annals): ‘shitsutoku zenaku wo zehisuruha kore kedashi ikka no shigi ni shite, tenka
no kōron ni arazu’ (失得善悪を是非するは是れ蓋し一家の私議にして、天下の公論に
非ず: judging gain and loss or good and evil is, after all, just a personal opinion, not fair
arguments by the whole country).486
Affirmation of “NOW” or the Status Quo

The historical optimism of ‘tsugi-tsugini nariyuku ikioi’ (つぎつぎになりゆくいきほひ:
momentum that forms one after another) is, according to Maruyama, rooted in the image of
“Rekishi-ishiki no ‘kosō,” Maruyama Masao Shū, Dai-jik-kan (1972-1978), pp. 47-48.

483
Ibid., p. 48.
484
A Tendai school Buddhist priest, 1155-1225.
485
486
Quote form Suihan-shūshi-jiryaku, cited in ibid., p. 51.
135
linear extension of vegetable growth and reproduction admits no ultimate goal in history.
For this very reason, this old layer has an odd affinity with the model of biological evolution
as the endless process of adaptation that is not the result of goal-oriented acts.487 It is, thus,
neither the past nor future that makes up the oldest layer in Japanese historical
consciousness, but it is ‘now.’
The provisionality and uncertainty of ‘amatsu kami, kunitsu kami’ (天つ神・国つ神:
heavenly gods and earthly gods) in Kojiki and Nihon Shoki not only facilitates invoking
‘liberally’ ancient ghosts, but also enables a peculiar mode of thinking that conceives of
every new revolution and adaptation as sorts of linear manifestations of the invoked
origins.488 As long as the past is conceived of as a formation that can be ceaselessly traced
back, it is to be newly redefined from the perspective of ‘now’ without any restriction. On
the other hand, the past envisaged as a process of ‘forming’ and ‘giving birth to’ is to be
newly and endlessly present in every ‘now,’ and in this sense, the present ‘re-presents’ all
the past. The future is, therefore, nothing but a ‘new start’ from ‘now.’ This ‘new start’ is
free from any form of utopianism or teleology or even meaning of history; there is no
exemplar in the past which should be restored, but a new start is always charged with the
energy of the past.489 ‘Now’ is always the beginning of heavens and earth.490
There is no surprise that this kind of eulogy of ‘now’ becomes no more than a praise of
the military governance by samurai in the Edo period. According to Maruyama, Seiryō
(1755–1817 [Edo period]) claimed, for example, in the Yōshindan that in seeing the
momentum of the current trend, one learns that the rule by force fits heaven’s law.491 It
should be noted here that the dominant political power is identified with heaven’s law.
Hiraga Gennai (1728–1780 [Edo]) reinforces this identification of powers that be with
heaven’s or natural law. He went so far as to unconditionally praise the Edo military rule
and said that
Chinese customs are different from Japanese; (in China) even an emperor could be treated like an
alien and he is to be replaced if not favoured; as it is such an insolent country where people quibble
487
488
Ibid., p. 57.
489
Ibid., p. 55.
490
Maruyama, “Nihon-shisōshi niokeru ‘kosō’ no mondai,” Maruyama Masao Shū, Dai jū-ik-kan
(1979-1981), p. 200.
491
Maruyama, “Rekishi-ishiki no ‘kosō’,” Maruyama Masao Shū, Dai-jik-kan (1972-1978), p. 62.
136
and say that the country does not belong to a man, but to heaven, and bring down the emperor and
plunder the country, saints appeared and taught. In contrast, Japan is a country where people naturally
abide by the perfect virtue and righteousness, so great peace has been achieved without saints’
appearance.492
Now that the law of heaven has been replaced with the praise of the rule by sheer force
and the ideal of the rule by virtuous rulers is mocked, it is understandable why Maruyama
says that ‘[i]t is no exaggeration to say that the history of Confucianism in the Edo period is
revisionist from the very beginning.’493 One of the most striking examples of this
revisionist history can be also seen in the fabrication of Shinto doctrines. Even though it is
often claimed that Shinto is traditional Japanese religion, according to Maruyama, there is
no such thing as Shinto (神道=the way of gods). He points out that the word and concept of
‘way’ (michi:道) itself was born under the influence of foreign doctrines such as
Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. ‘Shinto’ was created by abstracting components of
that seemed ‘Japanese’ from imported teachings. This is why it is almost unavoidable for the
‘doctrines of Shinto’ to be a jumble of fragments from Buddhism and Confucianism.494
Furthermore, some Shinto ideologues even incorporated Christian doctrines into their
versions of Shinto. Maruyama names Hirata Atsutane (1766–1843 [Edo period]), as one
such Shinto ideologue,495 but the case of Nanri Yūrin (1812–1864 [Edo period]) is much
more striking. He published his version of Shinto doctrine as Shinri-jūyō (『神理十要』: Ten
topics about gods’ law). Muraoka Tsunetsugu , however, revealed that Nanri’s work was
nothing but a rehash of Tendō-sogen (『天道溯源』: The heaven’s way traced back to the
origin) by William Martin, a Christian apologetics written in Chinese. Nanri carefully
omitted, of course, all Christian terms such as ‘seisho’ (聖書: Bible), ‘yaso’ (耶蘇: Jesus),
‘seirei’ (聖霊: Holy Spirit), ‘kanzai’ (陥罪: Fall), ‘shokuzai’ (贖罪: atonement) and so on
492
「唐の風俗は日本と違ふて、天子が渡り者も同然にて、気に入らねば取替へて、天下は
一人の天下にあらず、天下の天下なりと、へらず口をいひちらして、主の天下をひったく
る、不埒千万なる国ゆゑ、聖人出て教給ふ。日本は自然に仁義を守る国ゆゑ、聖人出ずし
ても太平をなす。」Fūryū-shidō-kenden, ichi-no-kan, cited in ibid., p. 62.
493
「江戸時代の儒学史ははじめから修正主義の歴史といっても言い過ぎではない。」
Maruyama, “Nihon-shisō-shi niokeru ‘kosō’ no mondai,” Maruyama Masao Shū, Dai jū-ik-kan
(1979-1981), p. 188.
494
Ibid., p. 182.
495
Ibid., p. 189.
137
from ‘his work’ to hide its Christian origin.496
Delight in Creating Heterodoxies in the Absence of Orthodoxy

By and large, what Maruyama extracted as the basso ostinato is not far from what is
understood in a much more banal phrase of ‘Wakon-Yōsai’ (和魂洋才=Western intelligence
with Japanese spirit); namely, they both represent the same phenomenon of the limitless
arbitrary manipulation of language. Japanese historical revisionism is nothing but the flip
side of this manipulation of the non-manipulable or truth which threw the Japanese Empire
into hell during the Second World War. Maruyama states that
it was a tragedy or comedy that during the Second World War, Hirata Asutane school, the Imperial
Way proponents and Japanists, to turn Japanese spirit into a world view that could compete with
universal world views such as Confucianism or Buddhism or Christianity or Marxism.497
Through Maruyama’s arguments, it is abundantly clear that there is no chance for any
‘Japanese thinkers’ to establish any sort of ‘Japanese orthodoxy’ because all teachings or
beliefs are foreign, not Japanese. He then concludes that in so far as there is no orthodoxy in
Japan, ‘heterodoxies’ do not emerge from orthodoxy; the impossibility of establishing
orthodoxy, however, reproduces ‘favours for heterodoxies’ instead.498 In other words, not
only creation of heterodoxies of imported doctrines could be regarded as outworking of
‘Japanese creativity’ but it was also the only way for the ‘Japanese thinkers’ to come up with
quasi-Japanese orthodoxies. This is why those who sought for ‘genuine Japanese tradition,’
like Hirata Atsutane or Nanri Yūrin, indulged in creating their own versions of heterodoxies
in seeking to turn them into ‘Japanese orthodoxies.’
Maruyama showed through his analysis of basso ostinato that truth claim of imported
doctrines is always tamed by praise of the powers that be in Japanese thought or Japanese
496
About Christian influence on Nanri Yurin’s Shinri-jūyō, there is a detailed analysis by Maeda
Tsutomu, “Nanri Yurin Shinri-Jūyo ni okeru kirisutokyō no eikyō: Tendō-sogen to no kanren”
Aichi-kyōiku-daigaku-kenkyū-hōkoku 57 (Jinbun-shakai-kagaku-hen) (March, 2008) pp. 83–92.
497
「日本的な精神を、儒教とか仏教とかキリスト教とかマルクス主義とか、そういう普遍
的世界観と並ぶ一つの世界観にしようとしたところに、平田篤胤派から戦争中の皇道主義
者、日本主義者に至るまでの悲劇あるいは喜劇があったと思うのです。」Maruyama Masao,
“Genkei, kosō, shitsuyō-teion” Maruyama Masao Shū, Dai-jū-ni-kan (1982-1987) (Tokyo: Iwanami,
1996) p.145.
498
Maruyama, “Genkei, kosō, shitsuyō-teion” Maruyama Masao Shū, Dai-jū-ni-kan (1982-1987), p.
154.
138
historical consciousness. Put differently, ‘orthodoxy’ or alleged ‘Japanese tradition’ or
whatever ‘peculiar to Japanese culture’ are yielding to political power. That also means that
there is no moral or ethical principle that the powers that be should comply with in Japanese
political thought. It is thus impossible for the ruled to accuse the rulers of doing something
corrupt or unlawful because there is no principle that should limits political power.
139
Chapter 7 Christianity and Japan
In chapter six, I analysed Maruyama’s reading of what he believes to be an ancient layer of
Japanese culture or basso ostinato, in which there seems to be an understanding of truth
having little substance beyond the power of political rulers and the manipulation of
language. In chapters seven, eight and nine, I will show what physical fomr the basso
ostinato abstracted by Maruyama from Japanese historical literatures took in Japanese
history after the advent of Christianity to Japan in 1549, how it enabled the Edo bakufu
(shogunate) to exterminate Roman Catholics and then the Restorationist government after
‘modernisation,’ and so to turn the church in Japan into a docile servant of the emperor. This
will help us see how basso ostinato renders the churches in Japan highly susceptible to the
Constantinian temptation in inviting fealty to the incumbent rulers by denying any truth
beyond political power.
This chapter narrates the introduction of Christianity to ‘Japan,’ which did not exist at that
time as we know it today, and the extermination of Kirishitans (Roman Catholic Christians)
by the Edo bakufu. ‘Japanese society’ under Tokugawa shogunate is revealed as an amoral
Christian eradication system designed to secure the Tokugawa dynasty.
From the official beginning of Christian Mission to the Ban on
Christianity: Development of a Peculiar Mura-shakai (Village Society)

A Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier landed Japan in 1549. Watsuji Tetsurō, one of the most
renowned Japanese ethicists, describes this time and says that the destruction of the
authority of old traditions was under way and the power of ordinary people came to bloom
for 36 or 37 years after Xavier’s arrival, and the radical social shift during this period
enabled Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a son from a poor peasant family, to climb the ladder of power
up to the top.499
Yet, no sooner had Toyotomi Hideyoshi seized power than he excluded and suppressed all
impact from below and he devoted all his energy to establish and secure his regime. The
sword hunt decree issued in 1586 and the decree of expulsion of missionaries in 1587 were,
according to Watsuji, the most symbolic events that represent Hideyoshi’s ambition for
absolute rule. While Hideyoshi was striving to eliminate all possible threats to his rule, the
499
Watsuji Tetsuro, Sakoku (Tokyo: Chikuma-shobou, 1964) p. 374.
140
missionaries were prepared to sacrifice their lives for the propagation of the gospel and
resolved to remain in Japan.
All the missionaries went underground and the church became an illegal backstreet
community. This meant that no Jesuit missionaries were supposed to exist in Japan officially,
while Hideyoshi ignored the existence of them as long as they remained invisible from
society. In other words, Christian were tolerated in so far as they were utterly excluded from
the ‘public’ and remained in the ‘private realm.’
In the course of time a fierce persecution broke out in 1596 and six missionaries and
twenty Japanese Christians were seized in Kyoto. All of them but three Jesuits were
Franciscans. They were dragged around Kyoto, Fushimi, Osaka and Sakai, then taken to
Kyushu overland and exposed to public there as a lesson to the people. On 5 February, 1597,
they were executed in Nagasaki. This is the martyrdom of Nagasaki 26 Saints.500
Under the Tokugawa regime,501 annihilation of Christianity became an absolute
imperative to maintain its grip on power. Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun of the
Tokugawa regime (1603–1867) that lasted 265 years over fifteen generations of Tokugawa
shoguns decided to annihilate Christianity by force in 1614, but it did not lead to the
seclusion (Sakoku) yet.
While both Hideyoshi and Ieyasu desired to exterminate Christianity to ensure their rules,
they also aspired to benefit from Western civilisation and technologies. In other words, the
powers that be wanted to ban Christianity as it was regarded as the greatest danger to their
regime, but on the other hand, the profits from Western civilisation were too attractive to be
ignored. In fact, the ban on Christianity was initially devised as the safeguard for importing
Western civilisation by filtering Christianity out of it.502
However, to clearly separate Western civilisation from Christianity turned out to be an
impossible task. As a result, the ban on Christianity, which was initially invented as the
means for importing the Western civilisation safely, turned into the absolute condition for
the preservation of their rule. Explaining this process, Watsuji states that
as the persecution against Christians became cruel and brutal, the government’s perspective was
500
Shimizu Kōichi, Kirishitan-kinsei-shi (Tokyo: Kyoiku-sha, 1981) pp. 86 ff.
501
Tokugawa regime or the Edo period is from 1600 to 1867.
502
Watsuji, Sakoku, p. 391.
141
narrowed to such a degree that they completely forgot their original objective. As armed forces
cannot acknowledge their own weakness, they become hysterical seeking to show their power when
they are revealed to be impotent to faith or thought. When the adventurous spirit of Spanish
Missionaries became enthusiasm for martyrdom and landed on the archipelago, and Japanese
Christians fought against the armed forces standing firm in faith, the armed forces were impotent and
ineffective. The only thing they could do was to kill Christians. Those who attempted to show the
glory of military power competed with Christians by inventing all sorts of sadistic methods for killing.
That sort of brutal mind further strengthened their hatred against Christians. As a result, the ban on
Christianity devised as a method for safe trade replaced its objective and restricted the trade itself in
various ways.503
This desire of filtering Christianity out of Western civilisation survived the collapse of the
Tokugawa regime and repeats itself at the time of Japanese modernisation more than 250
years later in the Mēji and Taisho periods (1868–1926), and even in the Showa period
(1926–1989) under the Wakon-Yōsai propaganda (Western practical knowledge with
Japanese spirit). In fact, this propaganda is still repeatedly referred to by nationalists for
exalting Japan’s uniqueness in the world.
In 1633, at last, the first national seclusion decree was issued by the bakufu (Edo
government) and it prohibited all Japanese people and ships from sailing oversees, and all
the Japanese who had stayed abroad were barred from coming back to the homeland. The
third seclusion decree issued in 1636 also banned all the people who have European
ancestors to stay in Japan and Japanese people to communicate with the expelled
503
「その視界の狭小は、宣教師やキリシタンの迫害が進むに従って、ます
ますその度を加えた。単純に武力を以て思想や信仰に対抗する場合には、
武力はそれ自身の無力を見せつけられてだんだんヒステリックになる。お
のれの無力を承認しようとせず、一層その力を証示しようと努めるか
らである。スペイン人の冒険的精神が宣教師の殉教熱となって日本の
岸にうち寄せ、日本人のなかの背骨の固い信者たちが同じ殉教熱を以て
武力に対抗したとき、武力は実際何の効果もなかった。武力はただ彼
らの生命を奪い得るだけであった。しかし武力の威光を示そうとする
人々は、あらゆる残虐な殺し方を工夫することによって、それに対抗した。
そういう陰惨な気持は、理非もなくキリスト教への憎悪を高めて行く。そ
の結果、貿易を安全に続けるための手段であった禁教が、逆に貿易を
もさまざまの形で制限する目的の地位を占めるに至ったのである。」Ibid., p.
393, translated by the author.
142
mixed-blood Japanese.504
The Shimabara Revolt triggered by the tyranny of the lord Matsukura of the Arima vassal
dealt a death blow to Japanese Christians. The vast majority of the population in Shimabara
Peninsula, which is in the east of Nagasaki in Kyushu, were Christians and it was regarded
as a Christian domain. Under the ruthless anti-Christian policy of the bakufu, the residents
of this peninsula had to go through all the cruel and relentless exploitation, abuses and
persecution by bakufu’s officials along with a torturously high taxation.505 In the middle of
December in 1637 a few officials were killed by some provoked villagers and this incident
led to the Shimabara Revolt.
It is noteworthy that Christianity brought to pre-Constantinian ‘Japan’ by the Roman
Catholic missionaries was already Constantinian. Namely, the first missionaries’ mission
plan was completely based on the Constantinian Christendom model: going to the miyako
(capital), political and administrative capital, evangelising the king and government officials,
and then teaching Christianity to academics at Buddhist education centres such as Hiei-zan
or Koya-san.506 The basic assumption was that ordinary people would become Christians
without any difficulty once political leaders converted to Christianity.
At first they believed that the emperor was the ultimate political authority all over
Japanese archipelago and sought to get permission from him for their mission. It soon
turned out, however, that his power or authority was rather nominal and there did not exist
any unified political centre. As a result, they altered their plan and sought to build up
friendly relations with local vassals who controlled their domains independently. They
started endeavouring to find favour with powerful samurai and accordingly there were
conversions of vassals. Those converted samurai were known as Kirishitan daimyō or
Kirishitan bushō (Christian vassals).
What is interesting about the conversions of Christian vassals is the abuse or
over-extended application of just war theory. When the missionaries proclaimed the gospel
to samurai vassals, they did not require them to abandon their vassalage. As mentioned in
the first part, just war theory was invented to justify Christian emperors’ wars and to
demarcate in what kind of situations the resort to violence is permissible, even though those
504
Sukeno Kentaro and Murata Yasuo, Kirishitan to Sakoku (Tokyo: Ofu-sha, 1971) pp. 57-60.
505
Shimizu Kōichi, Kirishitan-kinsei-shi, pp156-8.
506
Hubert Cieslik, Kirishitan-shi-kō: Kirishitan-shi no mondai ni kotaeru (Nagasaki:
Seibo-no-kishi-sha, 1995) p. 25.
143
set criteria were mainly used as the guidance for penitence of those who killed in war in the
late medieval period. Undeniably, Christian vassals’ job was to fight for shōgun and their
fiefdoms were rewards for fighting their shogun or generals’ wars and they were allowed to
stay lords of their domains on condition of homage and allegiance to their lords. Needless to
say, shogun were all pagans and they never acknowledged any other authorities beyond their
own power. This means that from the very beginning of Christian history in Japan the
contradiction of ‘serving two masters’ had never been treated seriously. Therefore, even
though the Shimabara Revolt is often thought to be warfare between Tokugawa shogunate
and a ‘Christian domain,’ it was no more than a tragic reactionary uprising without any
theological reasoning. In other words, there could not be any theological reasoning behind
this revolt.
Led by a mystical Christian leader Amakusa Shirō, who was supposed to have had an
apocalyptic vision and stirred up many of villagers with an apocalyptic faith, the rebel force
fought fiercely against the government army for more than three months. But finally 37,000
Christians, including women and children, found themselves surrounded by the bakufu army
in Hara Castle, deprived of food and weapons, were all slaughtered in the all-out attack by
bakufu.507
Christian warriors’ odious resistance not only surprised the bakufu but also added fuel on
its odium against Christianity, and finally it lead them to the complete seclusion of the
country but Dejima (an artificial island reclaimed as the trading station at Nagasaki) and
obliteration of Christians from all its domains.508 For Watsuji, it meant that ‘the desire of
the Edo bakufu for the acquisition of supremacy as well as the preservation of their power
over the archipelago overwhelmed other cultural or modern movements in the world.’509
Rise of Japan as a Christian Eradication System

The Edo bakufu was not at all content with excluding the influence from missionaries on
‘Japan.’ Their ultimate end was to delete every single mark or sign of Christianity from
every domain. At first, the bakufu attempted to hamper the dissemination of Christianity by
cruelly killing Christians. At a later stage, however, the bakufu learnt that cruel death of
507
Kataoka Yakichi, Nihon Kirishitan Junkyō-shi (Tokyo: Jiji-Tsūshin-sha, 1979) pp. 532–3.
508
As it will be mentioned in the next chapter, thousands of hidden Christians were discovered just
before the fall of Tokugawa shogunate. However, their belief hugely changed from Catholic doctrine
as they lived in Buddhist disguise.
509
Watsuji, Sakoku, p. 396.
144
Christians evokes greater enthusiasm for martyrdom and it rather helped Christianity prevail
in the middle of ruthless persecution.
The Bakufu finally found out that it was much more effective to force the church leaders
to ‘willingly’ abandon their faith than simply killing or expelling them. They, consequently,
built up a network of apparatuses throughout the archipelago that coerce Christians to
apostatise and then keep them under rigid surveillance not to return to the ‘evil faith.’ Some
of the methods used by bakufu for torturing Christians may be known to Western readers
through the vivid descriptions in Chinmoku (Silence) by Endo Shusaku.
One of the most well-known methods to spot hidden Christians and to force them to
apostatise is fumie or efumi. At this inspection, people were forced to tread on images such
as crucifix, Madonna and baby Jesus, or of other Christian symbols to prove that they were
not Christians. When this interrogation method was invented, it was used only to make
Christians apostatise or to confirm that apostates did not return to the ‘evil faith,’ but it was
later turned into an apparatus to detect hidden Christians.510 Fumie, furthermore, had the
effect of imposing psychological pressure on apostates not to return to Christian faith by
forcing them to desecrate the faith that they had adhered to. Fumie was, surprisingly,
applied not only to Japanese, but to all foreign traders landing on Dejima, an artificial island
reclaimed as the trading station at Nagasaki for securing ‘safe trade’ with aliens without
Christianity.511
All those who declared their apostasy were required to sign the oath called
Korobi-shōmon that declares that the signer never returns to Christianity. There were two
versions of the oath, Japanese and Western. In the Western version, the apostates were
compelled to pledge not to return to Jesus Christ in the name of God, Mary, Angels, Blessed
or Saints while in the ‘Japanese’ version, it was in the name of traditional ‘Japanese’ gods.
One version of Western oath, for instance, that was signed by thirty-nine apostates from ten
households in Nagasaki in 1637 states as follows:
We were Kirishitan for many years. Yet, we found out that the Kirishitan religion is an evil religion.
510
Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan Junkyō-shi, p. 504.
511
‘[T]he captain would then order his crew to unload the guns and lock all Bibles and other
Christian literature into barrels. In at least the early years the crew was obliged to tread on images of
the Madonna and child (fumie), a test that had been found particularly effective for interrogation of
kirishitan.’ Marius B. Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA.: Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, 2000) p. 81.
145
It regards the afterlife as the most important. They teach that those who disobey the padre's orders
will be excomuhão and be cast into Inferno. But how can a human being cast another into Inferno?
The padres are after all plotting to take the lands of others. When we learned this, we became
adherents of the Hokke, Shingon, or Ikkō school, and our wives of the same school. We hereby
submit this statement in writing to the Magistrate. Hereafter we shall never revoke our apostasy, not
even entertain the slightest thought thereof. There is no falsehood in this respect. If there is, let us be
punished by the Padre, Filio, and Spiritu Santo, as well as by Santa Maria and all anjo and Beato,
Let us forfeit all mercy [of God] like Judas, have no thought of the five precepts, become a mockery
to others, and finally die a violent death to suffer the torments of Inferno without hope of salvation.
This is our Kirishitan Oath.
The fourteenth year of Kan’ei
[1637] February 9.
(Names)
There is not a single person whose name is not mentioned. If there is, we will immediately report so.
Genzaemon, sashi, under the surveillance of
Nakamura Hanzaemon.
The fourteenth year of Kan’ei
February 9512
Not only the lives of apostates, but their relatives and even their descendants were
carefully monitored through the network of Buddhist temples woven all over Japan. This
surveillance machinery is called Terauke system. The bakufu made all the Buddhist temples,
apart from some minor exceptions, into parish temples (called Danna-ji) and had all
members of each household registered to one of those parish temples in each domain. Every
household consequently became Dan-ka (family unit), and its members Dan-to (family
members=Buddhist laypeople).
Danna-ji (parish temples) were to record the whereabouts and life events from birth to
death, including travel, change of address, matrimony, funeral, burial, and so on, of all
members of each household in Shūmon-ninbetsu-aratame-chō. They were also to issue a
512
Ōmurahan ko-Kirishitan kenkyū shiryō (ed. Yamaguchi Takusuke, Tokyo: Katorikku Chūōshoin,
1937) 65–69, cited in Higashibaba Ikuo, Christianity in Early Modern Japan: Kirishitan Belief and
Practice (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2001) p. 146.
146
certificate, called Terauke-shō-mon to show its holder not of ja-shūmon (evil faith).513 As
this certificate was indispensable for all areas of social life, such as marriage, business, job
hunting, permission of travel, moving house, and so on, it was utterly impossible for anyone
to live as a citizen without it. It cannot be too emphasised what role Buddhist temples
played in the totalitarian feudal police state during the Edo period.
It should be noted here that the so-called Buddhist funeral was universalised and imposed
by the bakufu on its subjects in this period. Before presiding funerals, Buddhist priests were
to ensure that there no Christian symbols or disguised signs of “evil faith” on the corpse,
and then to prove that the dead was non-Christian, and finally to provide a posthumous
Buddhist name or kaimyō. Without this thorough inspection by a registered Buddhist priest,
no corpse was allowed to be buried.514
Another important task of parish temples was to keep monitoring records in
Ruizoku-cho.515 When Christians were tracked down, not only all their relatives had to be
examined and kept under rigid surveillance for the rest of their lives, but their descendants
were also strictly monitored for four generations for females and for six generations for
males, and then all their life events, such as birth, death, funeral, marriage, divorce, travel,
moving, change of name, and so on, were to be registered in Ruizoku-cho.
Detection of Christians and monitoring of apostates relying on the Terauke system was
reinforced by two other apparatuses; one was goningumi (five-household unit) and the other
was Sonin-hōshō or Kenshō-sonin (informant reward system). The Sonin-hōshō is widely
believed to have started in 1618 or 1619 in Nagasaki when local bakufu officials put up
thirty roadside prohibition-decree boards to state that one who inform the officials
whereabouts of Christians along with bandits would be rewarded with thirty silver bars.
Reward was offered even in cases where the informants were a family member or a relative
of the reported household. As time passed, the article dealing with Christians was
individualised as Kirishitan-satsu and displayed on the all roadside prohibition-decree board
sites throughout Japan and the number of reward silver bars for informing on a missionary
513
Even though ja-shūmon (evil beliefs) chiefly meant Christianity, ‘[i]n some domains even
Buddhist sects with a history of insurrection were also outlawed; the bakufu discriminated against
some branches of Nichiren, and the Satsuma domain, which required all commoners to wear wooden
identification tags, forbade Ikkō Buddhism as well.’ Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan, p. 253.
514
Shimizu Kōichi, Kirishitan-kinsei-shi, pp. 229-232.
515
The word ‘Ruizoku’ means category, and cho a book. The literal translation of Ruizoku-cho
would be a category-book.
147
was raised from 30 in 1618/9 to 500 in 1682, while the highest for other criminals was 300
for gun smugglers. The Kirishitan-satsu was not repealed even after the ‘threat of
Christianity’ vanished and it was not until 1873 that all the roadside prohibition-decree
boards of Kirishitan-satsu were taken away, more than 5 years after the Edo bakufu fell.516
The other apparatus that strengthened the Terauke system was goningumi. The basic
function of this apparatus was mutual surveillance by the unit made up of five households
with rentai-sekinin (collective responsibility). All the constituent members of each unit were
required to monitor one another and inform bakufu officials if there were Christians. The
last kirishitan-satsu issued in 1682, for instance, states that all members of a goningumi
would be punished, including nanushi (village chief), in such a case where outsiders, i.e.,
members of other goningumis informed on hidden Christians in the five-household unit.517
Once all Christians had been officially eradicated from the surface of Japan, the objective of
goningumi system shifted to the surveillance of apostates in its later stage.
It is worth noting before we move on to the modernisation of Japan after the fall of Edo
bakufu and wartime Japan that signs of basso ostinato can be easily seen in the Tokugawa
regime that lasted over 260 years. For the Tokugawa shogunate, there were no fundamental
disciplines or moral standards that guided or limited their rule, apart from the continuity of
their reign and succession of Tokugawa bloodline. The seclusion policy over 250 years was
adopted to secure Tokugawa’s reign by preventing the authority of Christian God from
encroaching on their realm. Moreover, the formation of the Edo ‘Japan’ as a Christian
eradication system is the culmination of the praise and identification of momentum or power
with virtue, which is another attribute of basso ositinato. It may be no exaggeration to say
that the perfect embodiment of Nietzschean virtue can be seen in the Tokugawa regime and
we are going to see that the same unchanged praise of mere bloodline succession and
identification of power with virtue are repeated in the political narratives of the empire in
‘modern Japan.’
516
Shimizu Kōichi ichi, Kirishitan-kinsei-shi, pp. 172-180.
517
Kataoka, Nihon Kirishitan Junkyō-shi, p. 502.
148
Chapter 8 Construction of the Empire of Japan by Means of
Liberalism
Chapter seven set out how the holders of political power from Toyotomi Hideyoshi onward
sought to neuter Christianity, culimanting in Tokugawa’s obsession with eradicating
Christianity. As neither Toyotomi nor the Tokugawa shogunate wanted to give up the profits
being earned and their access to advanced Western technologies gained through trade with
European countries, they began to develop policies designed to filter Christianity out as they
imported what they found advantageous in European civilisation. When this attempt at
filtering turned out to be impossible, they turned to a new policy: exterminating Christianity
from the entire surface of the Japanese Isles by expelling all mixed-blood Japanese as well
as missionaries and foreigners, closing all ports to foreign ships except Dejima, banning
Christianity, torturing and forcing Japanese Christians to ‘convert’ to Buddhism and
executing all those who refused to convert. In chapter seven we also saw how the
institutionalisation of these attempts to exterminate Christianity were headed up by the
Tokugawa shogunate in a manner that rendered Japanese society an amoral Christian
eradication system.
This chapter elucidates how the anti-Christian policy of the Edo regime continued to
develop after the foundation of the modern Empire of Japan. We will see how several
thousand formerly hidden Christians were persecuted and sent to exile under the Meiji
Restorationist government and how this new government continue to treat Christianity as an
illegal belief even after the ban on Christianity was rescinded on 24 February 1873. More
broadly, this chapter examines the contribution of political liberalism in forming the empire
as a new religion by taming the churches in Japan, explaining why it was impossible for the
founders of the Empire of Japan to form the new polity into a modern nation state without
the grand narrative of political liberalism. In the conclusion of this chapter I will explain
why Christian leaders did not resist the formation of this new Japanese empire, and in not
doing so left Japanese Christians blind to the idolatrous nature of the ‘Japanese’ ethic
established in the Kyōiku-chokugo (Imperial Rescription on Education).
Anti-Christian Policy Remains

In 1853, the seclusion policy of the Edo regime came to an end under the threat from
149
America. On the 2nd of July that year, Commandore Matthew Clabraith Perry appeared at
Edo Bay leading four black war steamships with sixty-one guns and 967 men.518 He
demanded the bakufu open some of its ports for American traders and whalers. As there was
no realistic prospects for the Edo regime to reject this ‘request’ they unwillingly agreed to
open two harbours at Shimoda at the entrance of Edo Bay and Hakodate on Hokkaido. More
than a decade later, in 1867, the last Tokugawa shogun Yoshinobu (Keiki) was forced to
resign under pressure from the anti-bakufu ‘Restorationist’ samurai of the Satsuma-Chōshū
alliance and the emperor was held up as the ‘authentic ruler’ of Japan. The ‘modernisation’
of Japan led by the Restorationists held the ancient divine imperial household as the
authentic ruling class, and in so doing is best considered an extension of Tokugawa politics
but now given a new Western façade. The odium against Christianity that had characterized
the previous regime continued even after the fall of the Edo regime. The new political
leaders that formed the Meiji government continued to regard Christianity as the ‘detestable
sect.’519 There was a shift from the bakufu to the Imperial system, but the interrelationship
between domination and subordination, superior and inferior remained has not changed
much. Even for the ‘new leaders’ of ‘modern Japan,’ it was unimaginable to accept an
authority or ethical principle with any greater authority than the ruling class. This point is
easily substantiated by a brief examination of Urakami Yoban Kuzure (the Fourth Great
Crackdown on Christians in Urakami) that occurred near the fall of bakufu.
When the bakufu, on the verge of collapse, unwillingly re-opened some ports, they
allowed foreigners on the settlements to practice their religion. On the Treaty of Amity and
Commerce or Harris Treaty signed in 1858, foreign settlements were established in
Hakodate, Niigata, Tsukiji, Yokohama, Kawaguchi and Nagasaki. In 1864 Ōura Catholic
Church was erected at Minamiyamate of the Nagasaki Settlement under the supervision of
Bernard Petitjean of the Société des Missions Étrangères de Paris. In 1865, the same year
when Ōura Catholic Church was consecrated, to Petitjean’s surprise, fifteen native villagers
were standing at the doorstep of the church and they confessed they were Christians. This
first discovery of hidden Christians was followed by further more Christians from Sotome,
Gotō, Amakusa, and Chikugo. The news of the survival of hidden Japanese Christians
518
Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan, p. 277.
519
Samuel H. Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia Vol.II: 1500-1900 (Maryknoll; New York:
Orbis, 2005) p. 507.
150
through three centuries of bloody persecutions under the Edo regime spread through and
surprised the world.
But what was awaiting those re-discovered Christians was another cruel persecution. It is
reported, at first, more than one hundred hidden Christians were arrested and imprisoned for
refusing Buddhist funerals for their families and relatives. Even though the Edo bakufu was
brought down by the Satsuma-Chōshū alliance while they were kept in custody, the Meiji
government issued the ‘Go-bō no keiji’ (Five Bans which includes the ban on Christianity)
on 15 March, 1868 instead of abolishing the bakufu’s anti-Christian policy. Soon afterwards,
at the counsel in the presence of the emperor held on 25 April the same year, the Meiji
government decided to exile 114 of the imprisoned Christians to Tsuwano, Hagi, and
Fukuyama and to track down all hidden Christians and punish them severely. As a result, in
1870 another 3300 Christians were arrested and deported from Urakami, separated from
parents, children, families and relatives, and 36 were put to death. The deported were
tortured in water, snow, ice, fire, starved to death, and some were hung on trees. Even
women and children were enslaved to toil for coal mining, reclamation and so on, and many
children were tortured before their parents, 662 lost their lives, as result of persecution. The
cruelty of the Meiji government was no more moderate than that of Edo bakufu.
Concerning the barbarism of the Japanese officials’ treatment of the native Christians, Sir
Harry S. Parkes, British minister from 1865 to 1883, accused the Meiji government and
wrote on 5 February, 1870 that
these poor people, for no crime, were driven from their humble homes in a storm of snow and during
the coldest weather experienced in Nagasaki for many years past, no time even being allowed them to
collect and remove their little household requisites and no toleration being shown towards the women,
children and infirm…. and it has been reported to me that a woman among the persecuted band who
had just given birth to a child was taken from her hut and died as she was being shipped on board a
steamer.… it is a notorious fact that the men were all sent away first and their families afterwards,
and they as well as the Japanese generally believed that they were to be separated.… The very sudden
order given to them in the midst of a most severe winter to leave their humble homes in which they
had lived undisturbed for many years and embark on board steam vessels to be deposited in some
strange part of Japan, separated from their families is certainly a barbarous proceeding and will no
doubt call forth the indignation of the Civilized World. The persons thus banished were a quite
151
industrious set of people, considerably more so than their surrounding countrymen, and a large native
employer assured me that the Christian portion of his labourers were by far the best workmen, both as
to steadiness and ability. They were guilty of no crimes whatsoever and resisted no law except the
one which forbade them to adopt Christianity.520
Against this accusation, the Meiji government did not hesitate to counter and say that ‘there
is no one that does not know that Christianity is forbidden and that who violate this ban is to
be severely punished…. They are to obey their country’s law as long as they were born in
Japan.’521 The functioning Foreign minister Shigenobu Ōkuma justified their treatment of
those Christians and stated that
[a]s we do not detest Christianity itself but we detest [people] violating the domestic law, to outlaw it
is completely a matter of internal politics, different from prohibiting trade or cutting diplomatic
relationship. There is no room, thus, for foreign interference [concerning this issue].522
On 24 February, 1873, under strong pressure from Western states against their
anti-Christian policy, the Meiji government reluctantly decided to remove all the roadside
prohibition-decree boards of Christian ban to join the modern nation state league. This
removal of the roadside prohibition-decree boards was, however, not the repeal of Christian
ban; it was rather a political sophistry. The official reason of the removal of Christian ban
was, internally, that it is already well acknowledged that this faith is evil and forbidden. But
externally the Meiji government explained that the Christian ban was abolished. The
following correspondence from the British minister to the Meiji government clearly shows
how the self-contradictory “explanations” from the Japanese foreign ministry irritated
Western diplomats:
520
Dai-Nippon-gaikō-bunsho Dai san-kan (ed. Gaimushō Chōsabu, Tokyo: Nihon-kokusai-kyōkai,
1938) pp. 362–5.
521
「切支丹宗厳禁にて之を犯す者は厳刑に處せらるゝ事を知らさる者なし。。。彼ら日本に
生れ其國法に從ふは當然なり。」Dai-Nippon-gaikō-bunsho Dai san-kan, pp. 368–9.
522
「吾々は決して基督教そのものを嫌ふのではなく、その國法を紊るを嫌ふのであつて、
これを禁ずるのは通商を禁ずるとか、外交を絶つとか云ふことゝは自ずからその意義を異
にし、全く内政上のことであつて、毫も他国の干渉を受くべきことでない。」Ōkuma
Shigenobu, Waikō-kanwa (ed. Ikeda Shigenori, Tokyo: Hōchi-shinbunsha-shuppanbu, 1922) p. 215,
translated by the author.
152
British Legation,
Yedo,
November 4, 1873.
Sir,
On the 5th July last I had an interview with the Acting Minister for Foreign Affairs for the purpose
of communicating a Despatch which I had received from Earl Granville on the subject of Christianity
in Japan. His Lordship instructed me to express the satisfaction with which Her Majesty’s
Government had learned that His Majesty the Mikado had determined to tolerate the profession of the
Christian religion by Japanese, that directions had been given for the removal of the edicts prohibiting
Christianity and that the native Christians who were banished from Urakami in 1870 on account of
their faith were to be returned to their homes.
On stating the above to Mr. Uyeno he replied that it was erroneous to suppose that the Japanese
Government had openly tolerated the Christian religion, that on the contrary it was still prohibited and
Japanese might be punished for professing it, but that the infliction of punishment would depend upon
the conduct of the converts, who, if they did no harm, would not be interfered with.
I pointed out that his remarks did not agree with the assurance given by the Foreign Minister
Soyeshima to the Foreign Representatives in February last, which had led the latter to believe and to
report to their Governments that Japanese Government would no longer persecute their subjects on
account of their religious belief and would allow converts to Christianity to make profession of their
faith. The report that this resolution had been taken by the Japanese Government was published in the
newspapers of various countries, and great credit was given to the Japanese Government for the
liberal and enlightened spirit which it was believed they had thus exhibited. I observe therefore to Mr.
Uyeno that the Christian world would now be disappointed if they heard that instead of the above
resolution having really been taken Japanese might still be punished simply because they believe in
the Christian religion, and that it would cause me regret to have to report to my Government that the
action of the Japanese Government had not been so liberal as was supposed.
My report of the above conversation having been received by Earl Granville His Lordship has now
instructed me to state to the Japanese Government that with every willingness to make allowances for
their difficulties in dealing with this question and with a belief that it is the desire of the Japanese
Government to allow in effect the adoption and profession of Christianity by all quiet and
153
well-disposed citizens, Her Majesty’s Government cannot but regret that the toleration of Christianity
will be less complete than they had been led to expect. I am also instructed to point out to the
Japanese Government the disappointment which will ensue throughout Great Britain at the great
discrepancy between what was announced and what has been done in the matter.
I have accordingly to communicate the above to Your Excellency in order that the views of Her
Majesty’s Government on this question may be placed before the Government of His Majesty the
Tennô.
I take this opportunity of conveying to Your Excellency the assurance of my most distinguished
consideration.
HARRY S. PARKES,
H.B.M. Envoy Extraordinary and
Minister Plenipotentiary
in Japan
His Excellency
Terashima Munenori.523
What this lengthy quote indicates is the remarkable confidence of the Meiji government
in their capacity to manipulate language. It is striking that the juggling of contradictory
explanations did not appear at all disgraceful to the minds of the new Japanese leaders.
There was no reason for the Meiji oligarchs to avoid contradictory explanations as long as
the effect was the reinforcement and securing of their rule. This appears to be another
indication of the perspicuity of Maruyama’s concept of basso ostinato; language again
seems to be understood as simply one of the tools that should serve ruling classes’ desire to
rule. Thus, what is required from all Japanese subjects is to obey whatever the powers that
be say, however contradictory or untruthful their language is, because there is no other
criteria against which power holders’ language should be judged.
523
Dai-Nippon-gaikō-bunsho Dai- rok-kan (ed. Gaimushō Chōsabu, Tokyo: Nihon-kokusai-kyōkai,
1939) pp. 599–601.
154
Modernisation through the Fabrication of State Shintoism by means
of Political Liberalism
If one hears that Japan’s ‘modernisation’ was brought forth by the invention of a new myth,
or more precicely of a new religion that intententionally rivalled Christianity in the West by
setting the emperor in the postion of Christian God, it may seem odd to Westerners because
it is widely believed the nation state was born as the result of the separation of religion from
politics. However counterintuitive such an invention might be, it is less contentious to claim
that the modernisation of Japan was clearly a response to western political liberalism. If we
take this seriously I believe we can begin to see how Japanese modernisation paralelled the
birth of the modern/nation state in the West in which the religious aspect of liberalism also
coincided with the invention of liberalism couched in mythic terms.
To see what liberalism did or how it functioned in Western political history, we should
look at how the modern state was born in Europe and how liberal theories were fabricated. It
is widely believed that the separation between politics and religion is the zenith of the
Western political wisdom. Political thinkers or theorists are in the habit of displaying the
emergence of the modern nation state as the remedy for the endless Wars of Religion. They
tend to claim that people of different Christian groups or denominations fought one another
for the sake of their religions and the so-called Wars of Religion threw Europe in great crisis.
Then, the non-religious modern states appeared as the saviour of Europe from the religious
turmoil.
This widely accepted narrative has been roundly criticized by William Cavanaugh in the
book The Myth of Religious Violence. Cavanaugh shows with numerous examples how in
the so called Wars of Religion in late Mideval Europe Catholics were allying with
Protestants to fight against Catholics, Lutherans killing Lutherans and Presbyterians killing
Presbyterians,524 and, most puzzlingly, that there was no war between Lutherans and
Presbyterians.525 Cavanaugh further shows that since the late 15th century, local princes in
Europe started to separate themselves from the jurisdiction of the Holy Roman Empire and
sought autonomy. At the same time, they also tried to be more powerful than other princes
524
William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of
Modern Conflic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) pp. 142-150.
525
Ibid., p. 150.
155
and vied against each other for domination of larger domains of influence.526 Whatever the
causes or reasons might have been proffered for the war-making of those princes, they
shared the common goal: autonomy and a larger realm. Cavanaugh convincingly suggests
that it was this movement of local princes for autonomy or power that caused the storm of
wars to rage in the moment of the birth of modernity in Europe and it was out of those wars
that the so-called nation state was also born. The boundaries of the nation states were
established simply by violence, with those drawing the boundaries around them needing
pretexts that could allow them to justify their rule. To serve this objective, so-called ‘liberal’
political theories were invented by ‘liberal political thinkers.’
In the West, historically speaking, liberalism did not bring the modern state or nation state
into being, but it was a myth invented to retrofit the nation state that severed itself from the
ecclesial jurisdiction with autonomy and sovereignty. For instance, ‘Thomas Hobbes’s
comprehensive subordination of the church to state control was necessitated by his
absolutist theory of sovereignty.’527 He defines ‘a Church to be, A company of men
professing Christian Religion, united in the person of one Soveraign; at whose command
they ought to assemble, and without whose authority they ought not to assemble. And
because in all Common-wealths, that Assembly, which is without warrant from the Civil
Soveraign, is unlawful; that Church also, which is assembled in any Common-wealth, that
hath forbidden them to assemble, is an unlawfull Assembly.’528 ‘[T]here is’ Hobbes goes on
to say, ‘on Earth, no such universall Church, as all Christians are bound to obey; because
there is no power on Earth, to which all other Common-wealths are subject.’529 In short, for
Hobbes, there is no church but a ‘Civill State.’530
The invention of the myth of liberalism is thus coterminious and intertwined with the
reasons behind the invention of another myth, that of Wars of Religion. Nation states
emerged through wars, but those wars that gave birth to them were not confessionally
demarcated. ‘The so-called wars of religion,’ Cavanaugh observes, ‘appear as wars fought
526
Ibid., pp. 162-3.
527
Jeffrey R. Collins, The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford; New York: Oxford University
Press, 2007, published to Oxford Scholarship Online: January 2010,
doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199237647.001.0001) p. 11.
528
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909, downloaded from the Online
Library Of Liberty, http://oll.libertyfund.org) p. 276.
529
Ibid.
530
Ibid.
156
by state-building elites for the purpose of consolidating their power over the church and
other rivals.’531 Put differently, it is factually inaccurate to claim that the nation state arose
to save Europe from unending Religious Wars. Emerging nation states fought wars to win
their autonomy from ecclesial authority and to be more powerful than their competitors. In
the West, therefore,
[t]he modern idea of religion as a realm of human activity inherently separate from politics and other
secular matters depended upon a new configuration of Christian societies in which many legislative
and jurisdictional powers and claims to power—as well as claims to the devotion and allegiance of
the people—were passing from the church to the new sovereign state.532
Furthermore, in this process the nation state absorbed the church and ‘became itself
sacralized. The transfer of power from the church to the state was accompanied by a
migration of the holy from church to state.’533 In other words, the religion of the church was
replaced by the new religion of nation state.534 Liberalism is nothing but a myth that was
created to provide the nation state with ‘a new doctrine of salvation; my death is not in vain
if it is for the nation, which lives on into a limitless future.’535 It should be noted that the
narratives of liberalism constructed the nation state as secular while sacralising itself at the
same time.
To sum up, in Western political history, liberalism was forged to retrofit the nation state
with the authority to justify the restriction of freedom of the ‘individual,’ subjection of
religion, namely the church, to the state, and monopoly of violence by the state for the
domination of ‘public’ arena. Liberal theories proposed under the authority of ‘reason’ differ
from theorist to theorist, but it is significant to see that they all aim at common goal:
controlling and taming the church under the civil government. To put it differently, it is an
apologetics of the new religion, nation state.
While in the West liberalism retrofitted the newly emerged nation states with sovereignty,
in the case of ‘Japan,’ it was liberalism itself that gave birth to this late-coming modern state.
531
Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence, p. 162.
532
Ibid., p. 161.
533
Ibid., p. 176.
534
Ibid.
535
Ibid., p. 178.
157
In the following discussion, it will be demonstrated that the founders and ideologues of the
Empire of Japan availed themselves of liberal theories extensively.
On the Rock of the Emperor

Itō Hirobumi admitted at the council for drafting the imperial constitution in the presence of
emperor that
[i]n Europe the constitutional politics has been budding over a thousand years; not only people are
well educated in this system, but also a religion exists that serves as the axis for it and permeates
people’s minds; their minds are united in it. In our country, however, the power of religions is quite
weak and none of them has the potential to be the axis of the state.536
Admitting that there is no religion nor tradition in Japan that can be the Japanese spiritual
core and play the role of Christianity in Europe, he continues that
[i]t is only the imperial household that is to be the axis of our country. Hereby we focus on elevating
the tenno’s power in the draft of imperial constitution in order that it is least restricted…. That is to
say that in this draft, the concept of the separation of powers in Europe should be intentionally
denied; instead the emperor’s power is to be the axis and it should never be diminished. From the
very beginning, our objective is different from that of the collaboration between monarchical power
and people’s power in the system of some European countries.537
This quote substantiates my contention that the founders of the Empire of Japan sought to
build their new state based on the ideal of absolute sovereignty commended by all classical
liberals except Locke. The founders not only attempted to put all political power on the
536
「欧州ニ於テハ憲法政治ノ萌セル事千余年、独リ人民ノ此制度ニ習熟セルノミナラス、
又宗教ナル者アリテ之カ機軸ヲ為シ、深ク人心ニ浸潤シテ、人心此ニ帰一セリ。然ルニ我
国ニ在テハ宗教ナル者其力微弱ニシテ、一モ国家ノ機軸タルヘキモノナシ。」Shimizu Shin,
Teikoku-kenpō-seitei-kaigi (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1940) p. 88, cited in Maruyama Masao, Nihon-no-shisō
(Tokyo: Iwanami-shoten, 1961) p. 29, translated by the author.
537
「我国ニ在テ機軸トスヘキハ、独リ皇室アルノミ。是ヲ以テ此憲法草案ニ於テハ専ラ意
ヲ此点ニ用ヒ君権ヲ尊重シテ成ルヘク之ヲ束縛セサラン事ヲ勉メリ。。。乃チ此草案ニ於テ
ハ君権ヲ機軸トシ、偏ニ之ヲ毀損セサランコトヲ期シ、敢テ彼ノ欧州ノ主権分割ノ精神ニ
拠ラス。固ヨリ欧州数国ノ制度ニ於テ君権民権共同スルト其揆ヲ異ニセリ。」Shimizu Shin,
Teikoku-kenpō-seitei-kaigi, p. 89, cited in ibid., p. 30, translated by the author.
158
emperor alone, but also to make this new political system into ‘the substitution of
Christianity that was the basis for European culture more than a thousand years.’538
In line with this ultimate political objective, the Constitution of the Japanese Empire was
engrafted on the foundation myth of the imperial household to secure, whatever happened,
the absolute political authority of the emperor and his regime depending on his authority.
The declaration (Tsuge-bumi) of this constitution enacted in 1889 states that
[w]e, the Successor to the prosperous Throne of Our Predecessors, do humbly and solemnly swear to
the Imperial Founder of Our House and to Our other Imperial Ancestors that, in pursuance of a great
policy co-extensive with the Heavens and with the Earth, We shall maintain and secure from decline
the ancient form of government.539
The new Japan was hereby defined as a religious body that sought to enact the ancient
divine policy that was granted to the imperial household.
Accordingly, subjects of the Japanese state were defined as faithful members of this
newly fabricated religious body. The Imperial Rescript on the Promulgation of the
Constitution declares that
[c]onsidering that Our subjects are the descendants of the loyal and good subjects of Our Imperial
Ancestors, We doubt not but that Our subjects will be guided by Our views, and will sympathize with
all Our endeavors, and that, harmoniously cooperating together, they will share with Us Our hope of
making manifest the glory of Our country, both at home and abroad, and of securing forever the
stability of the work bequeathed to Us by Our Imperial Ancestors.540
It should be noted here that what this constitution set as the ultimate virtue is the divine
imperial household, and, therefore, all Japanese are required to serve and glorify this divine
household state that was identified with emperor himself. As Jansen points out, the Meiji
Constitution was ‘designed as a generous gift of power sharing by a compassionate
538
「ヨーロッパ文化千年にわたる「機軸」をなしてきたキリスト教の精神的代用品をも兼
ねる。」Maruyama, Nihon-no-shisō, p. 30, translated by the author.
539
Itō Hirobumi and Itō Miyoji, Commentaries on the Constitution of the Empire of Japan (Tokyo:
Igirisu-Hōritsu Gakko, 1889) p. 151.
540
Ibid., pp. 153-4.
159
sovereign. But the sovereignty that made it possible to share was not lessened by that
generosity, and the language of the constitution left little doubt that the throne remained
paramount.’541 In this way, modern Japan was destined to crystalise into Kokka-shintō
(State Shinto).
Furthermore, ‘[t]he Meiji Constitution was deliberately vague on the subject of executive
responsibility. Sovereignty and final authority in all matters rested with the throne, but at the
same time the ruler had to be protected from active participation lest he be found fallible.’542
This point is extremely important. On the one hand, as Maruyama’s basso ostinato has
revealed, in the Japanese political language, the ultimate virtue is reduced to the praise of
the powers that be. Japanese politics needs no truthful language; what should be found in its
political language is the power of manipulation that enables power holders to control
ever-changing situations. Situations change as time passes; thus there should not be any
final criteria or law or authority beyond the powers that be that could restrict their arbitrary
decisions. To put differently, the political language, including the constitution and law,
should be open to limitless arbitrary interpretations to deal with unexpected changes.
On the other hand, the Meiji constitution gave birth to the unprecedented irresponsible
ruling machine. From the Meiji Constitution to Japan’s defeat in the Second World War,
every political decision was made in the name of the emperor, but the Constitution of
Japanese Empire was designed to exonerate the emperor from all responsibilities. Even
though all the political decisions were made in the name of the emperor and unconditional
obedience was required from the subjects, the ultimate authority, emperor, was not
responsible for anything; therefore there existed no political leaders were responsible for
any decisions. In the Japanese political language, responsibility evaporates into the air with
truth.
Imperial Rescript on Education: Emperor above Every Name

To preserve the façade that the new Japan was essentially a modern, western-style nation
state, the Meiji Constitution included an article about religious freedom. Article 28 of
chapter 2 states that ‘Japanese subjects shall, within limits not prejudicial to peace and order,
and not antagonistic to their duties as subjects, enjoy freedom of religious belief.’543 As this
541
Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan, pp. 414-5.
542
Ibid, p. 496.
543
Itō, Commentaries on the Constitution of the Empire of Japan, p. 53.
160
article was to be played out in practice, however, it seems less to have been an article of
toleration than a warrant for the government to police all thoughts and beliefs of Japanese
citizens.
As early as at the end of October 1890 the Imperial Rescript on Education was issued to
indoctrinate all the subjects with the ‘doctrines of the emperor’s state’ through schools. It
states that
Know ye, Our subjects: Our Imperial Ancestors have founded Our Empire on a basis broad and
everlasting, and have deeply and firmly implanted virtue; Our subjects ever united in loyalty and filial
piety have from generation to generation illustrated the beauty thereof. This is the glory of the
fundamental character of Our Empire, and herein also lies the source of Our education…. should
emergency arise, offer yourselves courageously to the State; and thus guard and maintain the
prosperity of Our Imperial Throne coeval with heaven and earth…. The way set forth here is indeed
the teaching bequeathed by Our Imperial Ancestors, to be observed alike by Their Descendants and
the subjects, infallible for all ages and true in all places. It is our wish to lay it to heart in all reverence,
in common with you, Our subjects, that we may all attain to the same virtue. I, the emperor, think that
my ancestors and their religion founded my nation a very long time ago. With its development a
profound and steady morality was established…. These ideas hold true for both the present and the
past, and may be propagated in this nation as well as in the other countries. I would like to understand
all of this with you, Our subjects, and hope sincerely that all the mentioned virtues will be carried out
in harmony by all of you subjects.544
This rescript was regarded as the only and absolute foundation of education until Japan’s
defeat in the Second World War over half a century. As Jansen points out, the Imperial
Rescript on Education was ‘the cornerstone of Meiji ideology.’545
A copy of the Imperial Rescript on Education was paired with an official photograph of
the emperor’s portrait (goshin’ei) and consecrated in a special shrine, called houanden (奉
安殿) at each school across the country, ‘serving as powerful surrogates for the emperor
himself.’546 The picture of the emperor’s portrait was usually hidden in the houanden, but
544
Kan-Ei-Futsu-Doku Kyōiku-chokugo-yaku-san (ed. the Department of Education, Japan, Tokyo:
Kokutei-kyōkasho-kyōdō-hanbaisho, 1909).
545
Jansen, The Making of Modern Japan, p. 410.
546
Emily Anderson, Christianity and Imperialism in Modern Japan: Empire for God (London; New
161
on specific holidays appointed by the Ministry of Education, it was brought out of the
miniature shrine and read aloud in the presence of all pupils and teachers. While it was
being recited, all pupils and teachers were to keep the position of the deepest bow toward
the goshin’ei, as a sign of their profoundest obeisance to the emperor. This ritual is then
followed by expository addresses of the Imperial Rescript on Education, and then the
national anthem and some appropriate songs for the holidays were sung.
It should be noted that the Imperial Rescript on Education was the implementation of the
liberal political project of monopolising ethics and morality by the civil government.
Spinoza claims that
it is the function of the sovereign only to decide what is necessary for the public welfare and the
safety of the state, and to give orders accordingly; therefore it is also the function of the sovereign
only to decide the limits of our duty towards our neighbour—in other words, to determine how we
should obey God.547
In place of the church, it is now the sovereign power that should teach people what is right
and wrong. More precisely, obeying God should be equated with obeying the sovereign.
That is why Spinoza goes so far as to say that
no private citizen can know what is good for the state, except he learn it through the sovereign power,
who alone has the right to transact public business: therefore no one can rightly practise piety or
obedience to God, unless he obey the sovereign power’s commands in all things.548
This monopoly of ethics and morality by the sovereign was for Rousseau the essence of
civil religion.
There is… a purely civil profession of faith of which the Sovereign should fix the articles, not exactly
as religious dogmas, but as social sentiments without which a man cannot be a good citizen or a
Delhi; New York; Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2014) p. 32.

547
Benedict de Spinoza, Tractatus-Theologico-Politicus in The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza,
vol 1 (tr. R.H.M. Elwes, London: George Bell and Sons, 1891, downloaded from the Online Library
Of Liberty, http://oll.libertyfund.org) p. 189.
548
Ibid.
162
faithful subject. While it can compel no one to believe them, it can banish from the State whoever
does not believe them.549
It is now easy for us to understand that the Imperial Rescript on Education is nothing but the
‘articles’ of the newly invented civil religion, called State Shinto.
It should be also noted that the schools were turned into the worship centre for State
Shinto where people were trained as the emperor’s servants, to learn to live and die for him.
In fact, the ritual built around the Imperial Rescript on Education and the picture of the
emperor’s portrait (goshin’ei) made up one of the most important forms of the emperor
worship of the State Shinto. To borrow a phrase from Holtom, the education rescript
‘became the chief sacred text of State Shintoism.550
It is recorded that probably at the Kanto Great Earthquake Disaster in 1923 many school
headteachers lost their lives trying to save the official pictures of the emperor’s portrait
(goshin’ei) from burning school buildings. Hearing about those incidents, some ‘progressive’
commentators proposed to keep goshin’ei away from schools, but it occurred to no one’s
mind to ask if letting the pictures burn is much better than killing headteachers for saving
mere pictures.551
Commentary on the Imperial Rescript on Education by Inoue
Tetsujirō
The same year the Imperial Rescript on Education was issued, a Japanese academic, Inoue
Tetsujirō, was commissioned by the Ministry of Education to provide an official
commentary on the rescript. Inoue studied in Germany for six years (between 1884 and
1890) and became a full professor of philosophy at the Imperial University of Tokyo on his
return. Immediately after his homecoming, he began writing this commentary,
Chokugo-engi, which was completed in September 1891. It was immediately distributed to
all the shihan-gakkō (state teacher training schools) and chūgakkō (state secondary schools)
as the official school textbook of shūshin (ethics).
549
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses (tr. G.D. H. Cole, London and
Toronto: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1923, downloaded from the Online Library Of Liberty,
http://oll.libertyfund.org) p. 133.
550
Daniel Clarence Holtom, Modern Japan and Shinto Nationalism: A Study of Present-Day Trends
in Japanese Religions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947) p. 80.
551
Maruyama, Nihon-no-shisō, p. 32.
163
It is noteworthy that Inoue was an ultra nationalist and one of the fiercest anti-Christian
ideologues of that time. The simple fact that the government commissioned such a person to
write the official commentary on the Imperial Rescript on Education should have primed the
Christian leaders for their upcoming conflict with State Shinto, but they could not see the
nature of the emperor’s state and were easily and quickly tamed by the civil religion.
In Chokugo-engi Inoue states that the strength and unity of Japan should be found in the
unconditional obedience of all subjects to the emperor. He writes that
the strength of our country resides in the unity of billions of hearts and whereby [the subjects] obey
the emperor’s commands as if the limbs move immediately obeying the will of mind without a sign of
paralysis. In the first place, as the state is one body, the hearts of subjects must not be divided in order
that the only principle penetrates them.552
Inoue is describing Japan as one body with the emperor as its mind or head, reflecting
hereitical reinterpretations of the Scripture that had already been developed by western
liberal theorists. Hobbes maintains that ‘the Multitude so united in one Person, is called a
Common-wealth, in latine Civitas. This is the Generation of that great Leviathan, or rather
(to speake more reverently) of that Mortall God, to which wee owe under the Immortall God,
our peace and defence.’553 This common-wealth united in one person is also to be seen as
‘one Person.’554 In Hobbes’ attempt to depict a common-wealth united by one person, the
sovereign, he is applying the New Testament description of the church as one body of Christ
to the common-wealth united in the sovereign.
If Japan is the body of the emperor and all Japanese subjects are constituents of it, to have
another head is out of the question for any Japanese. By principle, therefore, Japanese are
not ‘allowed’ to be Christians because to be a Christian means to have a different head from
the emperor.
Inoue clarifies this point by saying that
552
「我国ノ鞏固ナル所以ハ億兆心ヲ一ニシテ、以テ天皇陛下ノ命令ニ従フコト、恰モ四肢
ノ忽チ精神ノ向フ所ニ従ヒテ動キ、毫モ澀滞スル所ナキガ如クナルニアリ、抑国家ハ一個
體ニシテ、唯一の主義ヲ以テ之レヲ貫クベク、決シテ民心ヲ二三ニスベカラズ」Inoue
Tetsujiro, Chokugo-engi, Kan-jō (Tokyo: Bunseido/Bunkaido, 1899) p. 8, translated by the author.
553
Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 113.
554
Ibid., p. 222.
164
after all, the sovereign is like the mind and the subjects are like the limbs or all parts of the body. If
there is something in the limbs and all parts of the body that does not move in obedience to what the
mind will, the whole body will not function properly as if it is paralysed from the waist down. If
subjects do not obey the sovereign, not only the cohesion of country diminishes but also the policy
that seeks to advance their welfare will be rather marred.555
He emphasises, in this way, the significance of all the subjects having the same mindset and
being united by the same national virtue: being prepared to sacrifice everything, including
one’s life, for the emperor.
If the strength and unity of Japan resides in the commitment of all subjects to the emperor,
whatever that distracts them from their unconditional obedience to the emperor must be
nipped in the bud. Chokugo-engi develops this point and contends that
as for the subjects of the country, each one of them ought to fulfil their own duties and should always
attempt to be a faithful subject. If a country is scattered with dissidents and nonconformists, the
malady will eventually affect all its subjects and that country loses the solid foundation. Therefore,
that each one of the subjects does their duty of subject not only fortifies the foundation of the country
and secures the sovereign, but also advances their well-being. This should not be doubted.556
To secure the strength and unity of the empire, ‘dissidents and nonconformists’ have to be
carefully examined, monitored and then tamed and accommodated into the body of emperor,
otherwise they jeopardise the unity of Japan.
555
「蓋シ君主ハ譬ヘバ心意ノ如ク、臣民ハ四肢百體ノ如シ、若シ四肢百體ノ中、心意ノ欲
スル所ニ随ヒテ動カザルモノアルトキハ、半身不遂ノ如ク、全身之レガ為メニ活用ヲナサヾ
ルナリ、臣民ニシテ君主ノ名ニ随ハザレバ、啻ニ國ノ結合力ヲ減殺スベキノミナラズ、又
臣民ノ福祉ヲ増進スルヲ以テ目的トスル所ノ施政ノ方針モ、之レガ為メニ障碍セラルルコ
ト少ナカラザルベシ」Inoue, Chokugo-engi, Kan-jō, pp. 41–2, translated by the author.
556
「凡ソ國ノ臣民タルモノハ、各自ラ其盡クスベキ義務ヲ盡クシ、以テ忠良ノ臣民タルベ
キノ念慮ナカルベカラズ、若シ夫ノ悖逆乖戻ノ徒、国内ニ散在スルトキハ、其弊遂ニ臣民
一般ニ及ビ、其國ハ之レガ為メニ鞏固ナル基礎ヲ失フモノナリ、然レバ臣民タルモノガ各
自ラ一個ノ臣民タル義務ヲ完クスルハ、啻ニ其國ノ基礎ヲ固クシ、併セテ君主ヲシテ安全
ナラシムルノミナラズ、又各自ノ幸福モ、亦此レニ由リテ増進スルコト疑フベカラザルナ
リ」Inoue Tetsujiro, Chokugo-engi, Kan-ge (Tokyo: Bunseido/Bunkaido, 1899) p. 45.
165
Naming Dissidents and Nonconformists
Whilst the Imperial Rescript on Education sets up Chū-kō (loyalty to the emperor and filial
piety to parents) as its core values, structurally speaking the latter is absorbed into the
former. The emperor is to occupy the status of Christian God in the assertion of the Rescript
that he be regarded as the giver of all good things; namely, filial piety to parents is replaced
with children’s sacrificing their lives for the emperor and the most virtuous act from parents
is to sacrifice their children for the emperor. Inoue claims that
[t]he Imperial Rescript is a written form describing the ordinary ethic that has been practiced in Japan
from the foundation; it begins with filial duty that should be practiced in a household, and then it
flows from a household to a village, from a village to a region, and eventually ends up with
communal love for the country. It is for the state that one masters his mind and flesh; in short, filial
piety to parents and brotherly love are also for the country; and our bodies are to die for the emperor
as sacrifice for the state. Our fellow Japanese have been practicing this in historical unity and it
should be continued from now on as well in order to do the duty of subjects.557
According to Inoue, it is beyond doubt that the ultimate objective of the Japanese ethic
stated in the education rescript is the state equated with the emperor himself. Thus, the goal
of the Imperial Rescript on Education is to create a people who are willing to kill and lay
down their lives for the empire. In this sense the duty of every Japanese citizen boils down
to dying for the emperor. Emphasising this point he continues
given that there is a passage in the Imperial Rescript on Education which states that ‘should
emergency arise, offer yourselves courageously to the State; and thus guard and maintain the
prosperity of Our Imperial Throne coeval with heaven and earth,’ in case of emergency every one of
us Japanese subjects must sacrifice even their lives to upbuild the imperial grandeur, and this should
557
「勅語は元來日本に行はる〻所の普通の實踐倫理を文章にしたるものにて、其倫理は一
家の中に行ふべき孝悌より始まり、一家より一村、一村より一鄕に推及し、遂に共同愛國
に至りて終る、其意一身を修むるも國家の爲めなり、父母に孝なるも、兄弟に友なるも、
畢竟國家の爲めにして我身は國家の爲めに供すべく、君の爲めに死すべきものなり、是れ
我邦人が古來歴史的の結合を爲して實行し來れる所なれば、今日より以後、益ゝ之れを繼
續して各ゝ其臣民たるの義務を全うすべしと云ふにあり」。Inoue Tetsujiro, Kyōiku to shūkyō
no shōtotsu (Tokyo: Keigyo-sha, 1893) pp. 33-4, translated by the author.
166
no be doubted. To state this in a word, the quintessence of the Imperial Rescript on Education is
nationalism.558
For Inoue and most of the Japanese citizens, it was abundantly clear that the kind of ethic
established in the Imperial Rescript on Education was nationalist, and that it required
unquestioning allegiance to the emperor by every single subject. It was clear that this ethic
culminates in the willingness to sacrifice one’s life for him. There must be, therefore, no
room for reservation in the minds of subjects about obeying and venerating the emperor lest
the state be destabilised.
The promulgation of the Imperial Rescript on Education did cause some disturbance and
dissention as to the ‘nature’ of the veneration or worship to the Rescript and goshin’ei
(official picture of the emperor) among Christians. There was even strong opposition from
some Christians to the ‘unreasonable’ demand of the Ministry of Education. Christian
resistance, however, against the ritual required of all teachers and students towards the
goshin’ei and rescript gradually died down after the most notorious fukei jiken, or
lèse-majesté incident by a Christian teacher, Uchimura Kanzō, at the Dai-ichi kōtō-gakkō
(the first high school: prerequisite course for the Imperial University of Tokyo).
On 9 January, 1891, the Kyōiku-chokugo-hōdoku-shiki (reverential reading ceremony of
the Imperial Rescript on Education) was held at the Dai-ichi kōtō-gakkō. While all the
teachers and students were required to show their unreserved allegiance to the emperor and
their reverence to the god-given teaching of the rescript with deep bows duing the ceremony,
Uchimura, not having been forewarned about the expectation that he would make this
gesture, hesitated to bow toward a mere picture and a piece of paper. Instead he simply
nodded his head to them. Uchimura’s behaviour stirred outrage and animosity toward him
from other teachers and students attending the ceremony. The ‘incident’ then found its way
into almost all national media as fukei jiken, generating hostility aimed not only at Uchimura
but also at all Japanese Christians.
Seeing the gravity of this incident, the head teacher of Dai-ichi kōtō-gakkō, Kinoshita
「勅語の中に『一旦緩急アレハ義勇公ニ奉シ以テ天壌無窮ノ皇運ヲ扶翼スベシ』とある
558
を以て之れを觀れば、我邦の臣民たるものは、いかなるものも、国家の緩急に際しては、
身をも犠牲に供して皇運の隆盛を圖るべしとの意なるを復た疑ふべからず、然れば勅語の
主意は、一言にて之れを言えば國家主義なり」
。Ibid., p. 34, translated by the author.
167
Kōji, sent Uchimura a letter demanding he obey the social rules even as he distanced
himself from this as a coercive act with the claim that the school itself does not intend to
interfere with the freedom of individual person. In this letter, Kinoshita stated that Japanese
society regards Imperial Rescripts as ‘sacred things’ and ‘the ultimate object of respect’ that
should be treated with the utmost reverence.559 He also ‘assured’ Uchimura that the ritual
required of all teachers and students towards the rescript and emperor’s picture was not of
religious nature at all, but it is just a ‘nonreligious’ civil rite. Uchinura, who was a devout
Christian but felt loyalty to the emperor, agreed to show his undivided reverence with a deep
bow in front of the rescript and emperor’s portrait for the school, head teacher and his
students, even though he found such a ritual absurd.560
With the publication of a book, Kyōiku to shūkyō no shōtotsu (The Conflict between
Education and Religion) by the author of the official commentary on the Imperial Rescript
on Education, Uchimura’s lèse-majesté incident was turned into a national campaign against
unpatriotic Christian traitors. Considering that Inoue was the author of the official
commentary on the education rescript, no one could be in a better position than him to
‘interpret’ the intent of the rescript and rituals linked to it. In this work, which was devoted
to elucidating the fundamental problem created by Christianity in Japan, he explicates why
Christians cannot help but be ‘dissidents and nonconformists’ in Japanese society. He says
that
[a]fter the Imperial Rescript on Education came out a while ago, it was not Buddhists or
Confucianists or Shintoists, but only Christians that defiled it. Some of them say that they are not
against the rescript itself but against worshipping it. This is, however, no more than a superficial
excuse. They in fact do not like the intent of the rescript. All Christians detest it as an ancient Oriental
morality.561
559
Dohi Akio, Kirisuto-kyōkai to tennō-sei: Rekishi-ka no shiten kara kangaeru (Tokyo:
Shinkyo-shuppan, 2012) p. 156.
560
Uchimura avoided talking about his fukei jiken for the rest of his life, even after the Second
World War ended, but he revealed what he thought about that incident in a letter to his most closed
American friend, David C. Bell that he wrote on the 6th March, 1891. About Uchimura’s letter to
Bell, see Īnuma Jirō, Tennō-sei to Kirisuto-sha (Tokyo: Nihon-Kirisuto-Kyoudan-Shuppankyoku,
1991) pp. 90–94.
561
「嚮きに教育に關する勅語の出づるや之れに抗せしものは、佛者にあらず、儒者にあら
ず、又神道者にあらず、唯ヽ耶蘇教徒のみ之れ抗せり、或は云はん耶蘇教徒は勅語其れ自
身に抗せしにあらず、勅語を拜するをに抗せしなりと、然れども是れ唯ヽ表面上の口實に
168
What seems patent is that the education rescript provides Inoue with the hermeneutic
framework that generates what he calls ‘the Christians problem.’ To expose the
irreconcilable discrepancies between Christian ethic and that of the Imperial Rescript on
Education, he points out that the essential difference comes from the worshipping of rival
gods. He states that
[a]s Christianity is monotheism, it never worships the amaterasu-ōmikami (sun goddess) or
amida-nyorai or any hotoke, except for the only God that praises. Monotheism, like dictatorship,
claims that there is no other god except for one God who is the Lord of all, and does not allow any
other gods to coexist in his realm. (Christians) acknowledge only their own God as the true God and
do not regard other gods that all other religions worship as true gods. By contrast, there are many
polytheistic religions that allow all gods of other religions to cohabit, like a republic, and never
rigidly forbid to worship other gods as monotheism does. In this way, monotheism and polytheism are
entirely different (from each other) in their nature; whilst Buddhism that is polytheistic has peaceful
history from ancient times, Christianity that is monotheistic caused a lot of havoc all over the
world.562
Our purpose here does not include correcting his inaccurate description of Buddhism or his
ignorance of the bloody persecutions of Christians on his ‘peaceful’ Isles. What is relevant
for our analysis is his attempt to construct a story about a peaceful and harmonious ethic out
of the education rescript by comparing ‘polytheistic religions’ to a republic, without
referring to any hard fact to confirm his claim. Christianity, in contrast, is depicted as a
militant, offensive and peace-breaking religion associated with dictatorship.
過ぎず、其實は勅語の主意を好まざるなり、耶蘇教徒は皆忠孝を以て東洋古代の道徳とし、
忌嫌に堪えざるなり」。Inoue, Kyōiku to shūkyō no shōtotsu, p. 4, translated by the author.
562
「耶蘇教は唯一神教にて其徒は自宗奉ずる所の一個の神の外は天照太神も彌陀如来も、
如何なる神も、如何なる佛も、決して崇敬せざるなり、唯一神教は恰も主君獨裁の如く、
一個の神は、一切萬物の主にして、此神の外には神なしとし、他神の其領分中に併存する
を許さざるなり、獨り自宗の神のみを以て眞正の神とし、他の諸宗の奉ずる所は、如何な
る神も、皆眞正の神と見なさゞるなり、多神教は之れに反して共和政府の如く、他宗の諸
神をも併存するを許すを多く、決して唯一神教の如く、厳に他神崇拜を禁ずるものにあら
ざるなり、唯一神教と多神教とは、此の如く全体の性質を異にするを以て、多神教たる佛
教は古來温和なる歴史を成し、唯一神教たる耶蘇教は到る處激烈なる變動を成せり」。Ibid.,
p. 8, translated by the author.
169
He then connects emperor worship and ethic of the education rescript to the ‘peaceful
tradition’ of polytheism. He writes that
[f]rom old times, our country has the teaching of Shinto and the number of its gods counts as many as
ten million. Its greatest goddess, amaterasu-ōmikami, is in fact said to be an imperial household’s
ancestor. Moreover, all the emperors in history are worshiped as gods. Furthermore, the ethical
teachings are considered as the instructions from all the emperors and their ancestors, and herein the
kokutai (national structure or essence) resides.563
In this way, Inoue maintains that the ethic of the education rescript originated in the imperial
household’s ancestor gods who created Japan itself. Moreover, this ethic, namely obedience
to the emperor and worship of him, is the only authentic way of peace for Japan because
Japanese ethic should come from Japanese ancestor gods that created and granted the
country to the imperial household. The ethic established in the education rescript is,
therefore, from beginning to end nationalist.
On the contrary, ‘[w]hat Christians worship and venerate are not emperors or those
teachings from their ancestors. It is nothing but the God that was proclaimed by Jews.’564 In
contrast with the nationalist ethic of the education rescript, Inoue insists, Christianity is
non-nationalist, or even anti-nationalist:
Christianity is lacking in patriotism; it is not only lacking in patriotism, but also to a greater or lesser
degree against nationalism. For this reason, it cannot avoid being in conflict with the nationalism of
the Imperial Rescript on Education. Jesus himself seems not to know of the state and there are few
passages in the entire New Testament that deal with it; even if there are any, they do not teach
communal love for the state. Christianity, in fact, is non-nationalist. However Christians seek to
defend themselves on this particular point, they can never succeed in it. If they force themselves to
563
「我邦は古來神道の教ありて、神の多きを實に千萬を以て數ふ、然るに其最大の神たる
天照太神は實に皇室の祖先なりと稱す、然かのみならず、歴代の天皇は皆亦神として尊崇
せらるる、然ならず倫理に關する教も皇祖皇宗の遺訓と看做さる、是れ現に國体の存する
所とするなり」。Ibid., p. 8, translated by the author.
564
「然るに耶蘇教徒の崇敬する所は、此にあらずして他にあり、他とは何ぞや、猶太人の
創唱係る所の神に外ならざるなり」。Ibid., p. 8, translated by the author.
170
defend, they fall into sophistries.565
‘In short,’ Inoue concludes, ‘Christianity is a teaching that does not fit our country by nature.
That is why the issue of assimilation into our country’s customs and conventions arises. If
Christianity did fit Japanese mores, assimilation would never be required.’566
Inoue’s argument is straightforward and unambiguous. He flatly states that, 1) the
discrepancies between Christian ethic and that of the education rescript derive from
worshipping different gods, 2) the ultimate objective of ‘Japanese ethic’ established in the
education rescript is the Japanese state embodied in the person of emperor, 3) the Christian
ethic and that of the education rescripts are totally incompatible, 4) thus if Christians try to
assimilate Christianity into the ethic of the Imperial Rescript on Education, it is no longer
Christianity.
After all, the Imperial Constitution, Imperial Rescript on Education, and its commentary
by Inoue, all together simply repeat the same myth fabricated by the founders of the Empire
of Japan; the imperial household are god’s descendants; they are appointed by gods to rule
Japan; as the emperor is the head of imperial household, faithfulness to the emperor is equal
to reverence of ancient divinities; Japanese are subjects of the imperial household; all
Japanese citizens, therefore, should revere and obey the emperor; this is the eternal
unchangeable truth for all Japanese. The Imperial Rescript on Education and its official
commentary, chokugo-engi, by Inoue provided a new form of fumie to screen Christians out
as dissidents and non conformists until Japan’s defeat in the Second World War. In Kyōiku to
shūkyō no shōtotsu Inoue only had to use the official lithmus paper to prove that the ethic of
the Imperial Rescript on Education is nationalist and Christian ethic anti-nationalist, and,
therefore, Christians were ‘dissidents and nonconformists.’
The most tragic and comic irony is that it was probably only Christians who could not
565
「耶蘇教は甚だ國家的精神に乏し、啻に國家的精神に乏しき而巳ならず、又國家的精神
に反するものあり、爲めに勅語の國家的主義と相容れざるに至るは、其到底免れ難き所な
り、耶蘇自ら能く國家の事を知らざりしものと見え、新約全書中國家の事を説く所殆んど
之れなく、纔に之れあるも遂に共同愛國の要を説くに至らざるなり、耶蘇教は實に非國家
主義なり、此一點に就いては耶蘇教徒が如何ほど辯護せんとするも到底辯護し能はざる所
なり、若し强いて辯護せば牽合附屬の詭辯に陥らざるなり」。Ibid., p. 34, translated by the
author.
566
「要するに、耶蘇教は元と我邦に適合せざるの教なり、故に我邦の風俗に同化すべき必
要も起るなり、若し耶蘇教が始めより能く我邦の風俗に適合するものならば、豈に之れに
同化するを要せんや」。Ibid., p. 5, translated by the author.
171
understand that Japan and the church worshipped and belonged to completely different gods.
In contrast with the governmental intent of singling out Chrisitans as dissidents, Japanese
Christians failed to see through the religious character of the newly invented empire.
Accordingly they were blind to the idolatrous nature of the education rescript. Throughout
the Uchimura ‘incident’ no Christian leaders uttered even a single word of criticism of the
ethic of the education rescript, including Uchimura himself. When he was attacked as
unfaithful subject and traitor on the lèse-majesté incident, he attempted to defend himself by
claiming that he was a loyal subject of the emperor and he lived in accordance with the
Imperial Rescript on Education.567
Uchimura was and still is regarded as one of the greatest Christian leaders in modern
Japanese Christian history but even a ‘great Christian’ like him could not see that Japan
itself was forged as a great idol after the fall of Edo bakufu. In other words, he was unable to
see through the fictitious and idolatrous nature of the newly invented modern state, Japan.
One of his contemporaries, Yamaji Aizan, recorded the word of Uchimura’s special
attachment to the emperor that he is supposed to have said on the occasion of Tenchō-setsu,
1889, and which says that ‘the greatest mystery of Japan that exceeds the world is the
imperial household. Coeval as heaven and earth our imperial household should be the only
pride for Japanese, indeed.’568 He also confesses in a prose entitled “Two J’S” that his
allegiance was divided between Jesus and Japan. He writes that
I love two J’s and no third; one is Jesus, and the other is Japan. I do not know which I love more,
Jesus or Japan. I am hated by my countrymen for Jesus’ sake as yaso, and I am disliked by foreign
missionaries for Japan’s sake as national and narrow. No matter; I may lose all my friends, but I
cannot lose Jesus and Japan. For Jesus’ sake, I cannot own any other God than His Father as my God
and Father; and for Japan’s sake, I cannot accept any faith which come in the name of foreigners.
Come starvation; come death; I cannot disown Jesus and Japan; I am emphatically a Japanese
Christian, though I know missionaries in general do not like that name. Jesus and Japan; my faith is
not a circle with one centre; it is an ellipse with two centres. My heart and mind revolve around the
two dear names. And I know that one strengthens the other; Jesus strengthens and purifies my love for
567
Īnuma, Tennō-sei to Kirisuto-sha, p. 91.
568
「日本に於て世界に卓越したる最も大なる不思議は実に我皇室なり。天壌と共に窮りな
き我皇室は実に日本人民が唯一の誇とすべきものなりと。」Yamaji Aizan, Kirisutokyō Hyōron,
(1906), cited in Dohi, Kirisuto-kyōkai to tennō-sei, p. 155, translated by the author.
172
Japan; and Japan clarifies and objectivises my love for Jesus. Were it not for the two, I would become
a mere dreamer, a fanatic, an amorphous universal man. Jesus makes me a world-man, a friend of
humanity; Japan makes me a lover of my country, and through it binds me firmly to the terrestrial
globe. I am neither too narrow nor too broad by loving the two at the same time. O Jesus, thou art the
Sun of my soul, the saviour dear: I have given my all to thee! O Japan, Land of lands, for thee we
give, Our hearts, our prayers, our service free; For thee thy sons shall nobly live, And at they need
shall die for thee.569
Since Uchimura uncriticaly accepted the fictitious Japan that did not exist until the new
Japanese political leaders invented it in the Meiji period, he was unable to see this false god
through the politics of Jesus Christ. The same can be said of almost all Christian leaders at
the time. A Japanese Orthodox priest, Morita Ryō, for instance, criticised Uchimura of
offending against Japanese feelings and custom, and then says that Orthodox Christians do
not hesitate to affirm Uchimura’s behaviour as lèse-majesté. He, then, declares that the
reverence of the education rescript has nothing to do with religion.570
On 25 February, 1891, five leading Protestants, Minami Hajime, Maruyama Tsūichi,
Iwamoto Yoshiharu, Oshikawa Masayoshi and Uemura Masahisa issued a joint statement
entitled “Aete yo no shikisha ni kokuhaku su” (We Dare Confess to the Intellectuals of the
World). In this statement they contended that to urge teachers and pupils and students at
schools to worship a picture of the emperor’s portrait and to bow down towards a piece of
paper with the education rescript on it did not necessarily need to be understood as idolatry,
and was only dubious if there was any educational advantage gained through such practices.
They maintained that if people were required to be involved in a religious activity by
worshiping the emperor as a god, that would infringe the freedom of religion, and if this was
the case, Christians would have to protest with death.571 They then made an astonishing
‘request’ to government officials to ‘clarify’ whether the rituals required at schools are of
religious nature or not.572 It occurred to none of them to question if the content of the
Imperial Rescript on Education itself was idolatrous.
569
Uchimura Kanzo, “Two J’S” in Uchimura Kanzō Zenshū, Dai jū-go kan (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1933)
pp. 599-600.
570
Īnuma, Tennō-sei to Kirisuto-sha, p. 98.
571
Ibid., pp. 106–8.
572
Ono Shizuo, Nihon Purotestanto Kyoukai-shi (Jō): Meiji-Taishō-hen (Hiroshima: Seikei-jusanjo
Publishing Department, 1986) pp. 132-3.
173
Chapter 9 Turning the Empire of Japan into a Politics of Jesus
Chapter eight has explicated how the founders of the empire inherited the anti-Christian
policy of the Edo bakufu and cruelly treated any underground Christians who were
discovered towards the end of Tokugawa dynasty. It also showed that the nation state
emerged as a new religion in competing with the church in the West. Liberal political
theories were then invented to retrofit this new religion with sovereignty or civil autonomy.
It also explained how political liberalism helped the founders of the Empire of Japan to
build a late-coming modern nation state as a new religion through the marginalisation of
rival thought and religion, especially Christianity. All this was accomplished without
attracting the suspicion of Japanese Christian leaders that Japan itself was being set up as a
great idol.
This chapter shows how the churches in Japan were subjugated under the authority of the
emperor to the point of amalgamating the Lordship of Jesus Christ with that of the emperor
and the kingdom of God with the empire by way of what has come to be called
‘Japanisation.’ It also explains that the Nihon Kirisuto Kyōdan (United Church of Christ in
Japan) was brought into being through governmental pressure on the churches aiming to
mould them into docile servants of the empire. This chapter will investigate one sad chapter
of the story, sad because revealing that the heroic resistance that has been supposed to have
been offered by high-church Anglicans against the Imperial Government is infact a myth. It
turns out that the Japanese branch of the Watch Tower, Tōdai-sha (lighthouse-company),
was the only ‘Christian’ denomination or group that clearly saw the Empire of Japan as an
intentionally erected idol.
In the Beginning of Protestant Mission, Verbeck created the Empire

Even though there have been Roman Catholics and Russian Orthodox in Japan through the
period of the emergence of the Japanese Empire, it was predominantly Protestants who
exerted the most significant impact on the formation of Japan as the body of the emperor. In
fact, were it not for the existence of Protestant missionaries and lay workers, modern Japan
as we know it could not have been constructed.
Though there were numerous Protestant missionaries in the time of the formation of the
Japanese Empire, it is no exaggeration to say that Guido Verbeck, a Presbyterian missionary
from America, is the personification of Protestant mission in Japan. He landed Nagasaki in
174
1859, more than ten years before the roadside prohibition-decree boards banning
Christianity were removed in 1873. He taught young samurai from Satsuma, Chōshū, Tosa,
and Saga English and Yōgaku (Western learning such as law, politics, defence, technology,
industry, economics, education, music, arts, science, mathematics and so on), and many of
them, such as Ōkuma Shigenobu, Soejima Taneomi, Itō Hirobumi, Ōkubo Toshimichi, Katō
Hiroyuki and Yokoi Koshō, were the founders of the Empire of Japan.
In 1870 Verbeck was summoned from Nagasaki to Tokyo as the most high-ranking
political advisor of the Meiji government by his former students to ‘reëstablish (sic) the
foundations of the empire’573 and helped establish the Imperial University of Tokyo which
was explicitly designed to train state bureaucrats. Verbeck took Christianity, or more
precisely Protestantism, as the foundation of the nation state. He taught his students the
Constitution of the United States alongside the New Testament as the two greatest
documents expressed in English.574 On the request from Kumamoto officials that a Yōgakkō
(school for Western learning) be founded in order to learn about modern defence forces,
Verbeck called a Civil War veteran, Captain Leroy L. Janes, from America. Janes also taught
young samurai ambitious for leadership in the country, and like Verbeck, he presented
Christianity as the foundation of the developed Western civilisation and Christian God as
the creator of the universal law.575
Furthermore, Verbeck advised the new Meiji government leaders to send top officials to
Western developed countries to conduct extensive research into their political system,
government organisations, industrial and economic development, education, science,
technology, religion, and so on. It is a testimony to the strength of Verbeck’s Protestantism
as the foundation of nation states that he listed up only Protestant countries in his original
itinerary for the diplomatic research journey, the so-called Iwakura Mission. Between 1871
and 1873, almost fifty emissaries and about another sixty students comprised the
unprecedentedly massive delegation. Even though France and Italy were included on their
itinerary for these comparative studies, the most important countries for the embassy were
America and the United Kingdom, where they stayed the longest. Though Verbeck was the
de facto planner and organiser of this mission, it was Iwakura Tomomi, Verbeck’s former
573
William Elliot Griffis, Verbeck of Japan: A Citizen of No Country (New York; Chicago: Fleming
H. Revell company, 1900) p. 182.
574
Ibid., p. 125.
575
Anderson, Christianity and Imperialism in Modern Japan, p. 30.
175
student, who took all the credit for its success.
In the making of the empire, Verbeck made another decisive suggestion to the Meiji
government. He proposed the introduction of conscription, by writing that
while peace is the dream of philosophers and the hope of the Christian, war is the history of mankind.
Considering what the attitude of European Governments toward Asiatic nations is, I advise you to
fortify your coasts. You know what Great Britain has done in India, and France in Annam and
Tonquin. Germany, having humbled France, will soon be looking for possessions in this part of the
world, and may get Formosa. Russia has been for centuries steadily moving eastward, she already
occupies half of Saghalien, and in 1861 tried to seize Tsushima. You see the dangers. They are real.
Now, gentlemen, I advise you, besides fortifying your coasts, to create a truly national army. Educate
the young men while you train them, and make promotion open to all. This will secure exactly what
you are seeking. It will destroy sectionalism and excess of class conceit, and will fill the people in
every part of the country with a proper pride in the welfare of the whole nation and an earnest zeal for
His Majesty's honor.576
It was, ironically, more by Verbeck than by any other Japanese political leaders that the
grand design of the new religious state, where all the subjects were expected to sacrifice
everything, including their lives, for the emperor, was firmly laid.
As can be seen in the example of Verbeck, Western civilisation or Western learning were
accepted by the new Japanese leaders only as the indispensable instrument for
modernisation. In the time when Christianity was still ‘illegal,’ missionaries and Christian
workers were allowed to teach Western learning without Christianity. Under such
circumstances, Verbeck and Janes taught Christianity as the foundation of the nation state
and essential resources for building a strong country. This testifies that from the very
beginning what the new Japanese leaders wanted from the West was practical knowledge
that was necessary to build Japan as a strong modern state that could compete against
Western countries.
According to Moffet, ‘the Japanese imperial government brought in more than 5,000
salaried Westerners including about 1,2000 teachers to prepare the country for dealing with
576
William Elliot Griffis, The Mikado: Institution and Person (Princeton: Princeton university press,
1915) p. 171.
176
the outside world’577 in the last three decades of the 19th century and Christianity was their
religion. ‘Mission schools have been given much credit for bringing to Japan not only a
Christian worldview but also the highly prized products of Western civilization and
technology. Their advanced knowledge of science and history caught the attention of the
nation.’578 As a result, even Fukuzawa Yukichi, who was ‘a distinguished educator and
“leader of the liberal thought of the day,”’ completely indifferent of religion, ‘went so far as
to advocate the adoption of Christianity as the national religion of Japan. In a world that he
sensed would be dominated by the Christian West he felt that a non-Christian nation would
be at a disadvantage.’579
Nevertheless, once the new political leaders of Japan had acquired what they wanted and
needed to build the country as the empire, all the credit was given to the emperor and the
new government started claiming that everything is given to Japanese from the emperor and
all Japanese subjects should live and die for him. The contributions of missionaries and
Christian workers were not to be mentioned or remembered in Japanese history but on the
margins.
Free the Empire from Christianity

As shown above, the first Protestant missionaries started their ministry by teaching young
former samurai English and Western learning. Christianity was introduced as the Western
civilisation and foundation of the modern state to them in the time of regime change of
Japan when Christianity was still strictly banned. As a result, both the first converts and
later Protestant leaders were predominantly samurai; and as it can be easily imagined, most
of them, if not all, were attracted to Christianity as ‘a means of advancing civilization and
bringing good to the nation.’580 Accordingly, all the Christian leaders shared by and large
the assumption that Japanese Christians should have a stake in the project of building a new
Japan as a modern nation state. ‘An appeal to patriotism was that a temptation to use it too
constantly. Statesman and politicians who favored constitutional government and popular
rights invited preachers to hold meetings in the cities where they lived, believing that the
577
Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia Vol.II: 1500-1900, p. 513.
578
Ibid.
579
Ibid., p. 515.
580
Otis Cary, Japan and Its Regeneration (New York: Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign
Missions, 1899) p. 92.
177
spread of Christianity would tend to advance their ends,’ Cary states.581
This assumption that Christians should have a say in the Empire of Japan became a snare
for the Japanese church leaders. On learning that some of the church leaders had claimed
that Christianity was the foundation of the nation state in the West, Inoue pointed out that
the most ‘advanced’ liberal thinkers in the West, such as Bentham, Mill, Spencer, Wundt,
Dühring, Höffding, Salter and Coit, were seeking to establish new ethics free from
Christianity. Ridiculing the claim that Christianity was indispensable for building a strong
nation state, he argued that if Christianity was the universal ethic relevant to any place and
any generation, the movement for Christianity-free ethics in the West would not have
emerged.582
Inoue, who was fully aware that liberalism was the foundation narrative of the nation
state, goes so far as to say that ‘Christianity has become obsolete today and modern ethics
could not be sustained by it at all; and that is why academics of progressive spirit have been
seeking for other foundations for ethics outside of Christianity.’583 Admitting, to a certain
degree, Christian contribution to social welfare, he, still, condemns it for having stirred up
conflicts and wars and persecutions in the Western world. Referring to the myth of religious
wars, he states that
Europe more suffered than benefited from Christianity. Anyway, Christianity is losing its influence
nowadays due to the progress of natural science and as a result we will not witness persecutions as
harsh as they used to be. The decline of Christianity should be, therefore, regarded as blessing to all
humankind.584
In this quote Inoue just repeats Rousseau’s criticism of Christianity that ‘the law of
Christianity at bottom does more harm by weakening than good by strengthening the
581
Ibid., p. 92.
582
Inoue, Kyōiku to shūkyō no shōtotsu, p. 37.
583
「然るに今日にありて耶蘇教は最早陳腐に屬し、到底此れに由りて今日の倫理を維持す
るを能はざるが故に進歩的の精神に富める學者は、倫理學の基礎を耶蘇教以外に求むるに
あらずや」。Ibid., p. 37, translated by the author.
584
「歐洲が耶蘇教の爲めに利益を得たりと云ふよりも、寧ろ弊害を蒙りたるを多しと云ふ
を妥當なりとすべきなり、固より今日となりては科學進歩の爲め、耶蘇教も其勢力を失い、
從ひて又往日の如き迫害は復た見るをなかるべきなり、果して然らば耶蘇教の勢力を失ひ
たるは實に人類一般の爲めに賀すべきをなり」。Ibid., p. 80, translated by the author.
178
constitution of the State.’585
In short, Inoue argued that Japan did not need Christianity, because 1) it was declining in
the West, 2) the nation states that used to belong to the Western Christendom were freeing
themselves from Christianity, 3) natural science proved that Christianity was superstition, 4)
and finally Christianity caused countless religious wars and conflicts in Europe and shakes
the unity of a nation state.
Katō Hiroyuki, another social Darwinist, the second president of the Imperial University
of Tokyo and Christianity basher joined Inoue and started vilifying Christians in line with
Inoue’s criticism of Christianity. In his critique published in 1907, Waga Kokutai to
Kirisutokyō (Our National Structure and Christianity), he claimed that he has ‘scientifically’
proved that Christianity is harmful to the Japanese Empire.586 He maintains that he disdains
not only Christianity but all religions because they are superstition (Meishin) and as such
hamper the development of knowledge.587 According to Katō, superstition was forged to
govern and control, and even to console ignorant people by bringing up ghosts (obake) or
gods; in an enlightened world, however, even Jesus or Buddha are no more than a sort of
advanced superstition.588
Each nation has, Katō says, their own gods, but when it develops into a world religion, its
gods claims universal reign over the world.589 The emergence of global religions is both
progress and regress, because they reveal all people belonging to brotherhood and
encourage fraternity between nations, on the one hand, but they also harm national identity
of each nation and impose great damage on each state by setting up another authority
outside of the sovereign authority, on the other hand.590
Katō, then, argues that unity is most significant for a state and no religious authority
should stand alongside the sovereign authority.591 It is obvious here that Katō follows in
Inoue’s footsteps and claims that the state ought to have an undivided mind; in other words,
both Inoue and Katō believe that to give unreserved allegiance and obeisance to the state is
585
Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, p. 130.
586
Katō Hiroyuki, Waga Kokutai to Kirisuto-Kyō (Tokyo: Kinkōdō-shoseki-kabushiki-gaisha, 1907)
p. i.
587
Ibid., p. 1.
588
Ibid., pp. 14-5.
589
Ibid., p. 21.
590
Ibid., pp. 21-2.
591
Ibid., p. 23.
179
the most important obligation of all citizens; therefore this duty must not be hampered by
religious authority. In this sense, nationalism is the heart of nation state. Given that
Christianity does not exalt the state, but it just encourages the kingdom of heaven,
Christianity is harmful to the nation state592 and cannot be assimilated into the Japanese
national structure. It is noteworthy that his interpretation of superstition and his criticism of
world religions are utterly in line with Rousseau’s explication of heathen civil religions and
his denunciation of Christianity.
As a social Darwinist and materialist, Katō argues that there is nothing but natural law or
laws of cause and effect that rules the universe.593 The emergence of the state, therefore, is
not the result of social contract, as Rousseau and Hobbes594 claim, but it is simply a result
of natural evolution. That is to say that primitive human beings were gradually formed into
tribes or clans or races, then finally organised into nation states, through their struggles for
existence guided by natural law.595
Japan as a nation state is also a result of evolution, but it is unique and exceptional in the
world, in so far as it was formed and has been preserved through the veneration of the
imperial household as the patriarch of Japanese nation, without discontinuity from ancient
times till the present.596 That Japan has been formed and preserved around the emperor
worship is, according to Katō, not superstition, but a scientific truth; thus ‘there is no reason
for anything else to be worshipped besides the emperor in our Japan.’597
Inoue and Katō’s arguments are not logically rigid; they are rather juggling double
standards; they ridicule Christianity as obsolete or superstition, but never talk about the
absurdity and superstitious elements of the newly fabricated Shinto State ideology.
Furthermore, their theories of the Japanese Empire united in the veneration of the emperor
are downright myths. Inoue and Katō, however, do not bother about accuracy or truthfulness
of their language; what matters to them was just to unite all Japanese under the emperor’s
authority and to minimise Christian influence on the country.
592
Ibid., pp. 52-3.
593
Ibid., p. 89.
594
Bearing in mind that both Hobbes and Spinoza subscribed to a materialist determinist world view,
and that the social contract is no more than a rhetorical instrument in their liberal political theories,
Kato’s theory is not very different from Hobbes’ or Spinoza’s.
595
Katō, Waga Kokutai to Kirisuto-Kyō, p. 90.
596
Ibid., p. 91.
597
「吾が日本國に於ては天皇陛下より外に至尊として崇拝すべきものあるべき道理は決し
てない」。Ibid., p. 91, translated by the author.
180
But the shocking fact is that Inoue and Katō’s fictions are not different from those of
liberal political theorists from the West. Both Kato and Inoue have seen through the true
face of the development of modern states in the West that used to be united in Christendom;
namely, they knew that the emergence of the nation state coincided with the secularisation
or de-Christianisation of the West. They were also fully aware of the true character of
liberalism; in liberalism, at least on the level of ‘theory,’ each individual is their own god;
but each monadic god needs a higher or super god that secures their lives and possessions;
but there is no consensus or logical conclusion about what kind of super god they should
have; as a result people try to make up theories that they think may persuade other people to
subscribe to; but as there is no universally shared criterion to evaluate which theory is better
than the others, what actually happens is sheer imposition of a certain political system by a
handful of people under the auspice of a ‘rational’ theory. All is said and done, what social
theories or political theories actually do is to simply justify whatever forms of political
systems that theorists prefer. In this sense, all theories are nothing but different versions of
sectarianism. If each theory does nothing but support a political system one likes, there is no
reason for Inoue or Katō not to come up with theories that will fortify the kind of Japan they
want. In short, they simply knew that all ‘liberal’ theories are mere self-justification and
what is hidden behind them is a naked desire for power and control.
The greatest tragedy for the church in Japan is that while Inoue and Katō knew that
earthly politics is no more than manipulation justified by ‘theories’ and fully committed to it,
Japanese church leaders were doubly blind to liberalism as the foundation narrative of
nation state and to the manipulative character of Japanese political language. As a result,
they were easily tricked by Inoue and Katō’s arguments that they assimilated Christian faith
into the imperial ethic established in the Imperial Rescript on Education, even though Inoue
and Katō warned them that it would not be Christianity any more if they did so.
Assimilation of Christianity into the Politics of the Empire

Despite the warnings from Inoue and Katō, Japanese church leaders were determined to
accommodate Christianity into the empire. To paraphrase a quote from Hauerwas, they
transformed the gospel rather than themselves.598 Yokoi Tokio, a minister of prestigious
Hongō church established in the vicinity of the Imperial University of Tokyo, argued that
598
181
“[w]hen Christ preached about heaven, he did so for the sake of this world. When Christ urged loyalty
to God, he meant for people to do so in this world for the sake of people in society, for doing work for
mankind was work for God. In fact, in contemporary Europe, the most sound and influential religious
thought has separated itself from the corrupt pessimistic and apocalyptic thought of the middle ages,
and is just now returning to the belief in the kingdom of God in this world that was so clearly Christ’s
message.”599
As a good liberal, he did not hesitate to identify the idea of ‘progress’ or ‘civilisation’ with
the kingdom of God that Jesus preached; for him the ‘new Christianity,’ which Yokoi
himself subscribed to, was ‘the crucial catalyst of modern progress.’600 Such a view of
history, however, was nothing but ‘regress’ for Inoue and Katō who allied themselves with
the most progressive academics propagate non-religious ethics in the West.
Wataze Tsuneyoshi was a pastor of Hongō church, the head master of Keijō Gakudō
which was established by Japanese Christians to enlighten or civilise Korean boys and
youngsters between 1899 and 1907. On his return to Japan, he became the head minister of
Kōbe church and was elected as the head of the Korean mission in the general synod of
Kumiai Kyōkai in 1910, the year of the Korean annexation by the Japanese Empire, and sent
to Korea next year. It should be noted that his mission in Korea was funded by the secret
budget of the Government-General of Chōsen that was the hub of the Japanese Empire’s
Korean assimilation policy.
Wataze also tried to ‘defend’ Christianity by claiming that his ‘new Christianity’ brings
peace and prosperity to the nation. Accepting Inoue and Katō’s ‘liberal’ reading of Western
history and their criticism of Christianity in one gulp, he says that ‘Christians today,
including myself, do not think that we must absolutely revere every statement attributed to
Christ.’601 He then states that the kind of Christianity that Inoue and Katō criticised was ‘an
arcane form, hindered by superstition and ignorance, rigid in its dogmatic insistence on
599
Yokoi Tokio, “Tokuiku ni kansuru jiron to Kirisutokyō,” Rikugō zasshi (December 1892) p. 144,
reprinted in Inoue hakushi to Kirisutokyōto, vol. 1, 23, cited in Anderson, Christianity and
Imperialism in Modern Japan, p. 36.
600
601
Watase Tsuneyoshi, Kokutai to Kirisutokyō: Kato hakushi no shoron wo bakusu (Tokyo:
Keiseisha, 1907), 50, cited in ibid., p. 59.
182
irrational beliefs and its intolerance of other religions.’602 In contrast to the out-of-date
superstitious Christianity that could harm nation states, he contends, the new kind of
Christianity that he believes in ‘was informed by the latest scholarship in comparative
religion and guided by a more enlightened theology based on biblical criticism or new
scholarship of the Bible. These new enlightened Christians acknowledged the contributions
of other religions and accepted that as a result of its dependence on rigid beliefs, the
Christian church had been responsible in the past for great harm.’603 Above all, the new
enlightened Christianity includes nothing incompatible with the nation.
According to Wataze, when Paul said ‘your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you’
in 1 Cor. 6:19, ‘he pointed to the divine holy spirit of humans and equated this with God’s
spirit. That is to say God fills the great universe, and exists as the actual fulfillment of
mankind and is [in turn] fulfilled. Christ teaches that this [being] should be worshipped and
loved as God the Father.’604 For him, and for his master Ebina too, Christianity boils down
to ‘the highest consciousness of humanity through the unification of self and universe.’605 It
is obvious that as a faithful disciple of his master, Ebina Danjō, Wataze repeats exactly the
same Christology as his master’s that was developed in Kirisutokyō Teiyō.606 For both of
them, to worship Jesus Christ as the second person of Triune God is not only irrational and
superstition but also a clear sign of pagan influence on Christianity.607
The ‘universality’ of Christianity, whatever it means, does not make Japanese Christians
fail to do ‘their duties to their own nation.’608 Wataze argues that Jesus himself
discriminated his disciples and ‘favored Peter, James and John above the others,’609 and
then he suggests that Jesus’ mission was the restoration of Judea as a nation state by
referring to ‘Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go
602
Watase, Kokutai to Kirisutokyō: Kato hakushi no shoron wo bakusu, 7, cited in Anderson,
Christianity and Imperialism in Modern Japan, p. 56.
603
604
Watase, Kokutai to Kirisutokyō: Kato hakushi no shoron wo bakusu, 23. cited in Anderson,
605
606
Ebina Danjō. Kirisutokyō Teiyō (Ōsaka: Kirisutokyō Sekaisha, 1910) pp. 5-15.
607
Kuyama Yasushi et al., Kindai Nihon to Kirisuto-Kyō: Meiji hen (Tokyo:
Kirisutokyou-gakuto-kyoudaidan, 1956) p. 215.
608
609
Watase, Kokutai to Kirisutokyō: Kato hakushi no shoron wo bakusu, 44, cited in ibid., p. 58.
183
rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ (Mat. 10:5-6)610 The new Christianity to
which Wataze subscribes teaches us, first of all, to serve one’s own nation state; then, he
says, ‘if there were sufficient resources and energy remaining once their duty to nation was
accomplished, Christians would turn their attention to assisting other nations.’611 Arguing
this way, Wataze is suggesting that Christianity should be transformed or Japanised to be of
the best service to Japan. He insists that ‘[t]he meaning of Japanization (Nihonka) is that the
Jewish and Western wrapping that enveloped this truth is now transformed into a Japanese
one. In other words, there is no truth to the claim that conflict exits.’612 In short, the new
Japanised Christianity is the best support for the empire.
He, then, concludes his argument with an extraordinary assertion. He insists that as his
version of Japanesed Christianity is the best fusion of the East and West, it can be
proclaimed in China and Korea instead of the Western Christianity. Moreover, he goes so far
as to declare that ‘there is no place among the nations not suited for this [Japanized
Christianity].’613 When Wataze states this, he is practicing what he preaches; namely he
provides Japan with the ‘best’ form of Christianity that is of the best service to the Japanese
imperial colonialism.
From the temptation of transforming Christianity into the foundation of the Japanese
Empire, even Kashiwagi Gien could not be free. He was called ‘a stubborn critic of
imperialism, capitalism and militarism’614 and was made pacifist through profound
influence from Tolstoy. He criticised the Japanese education based on the Imperial Rescript
on Education as an unusual ethic not only to sacrifice all citizens to the imperial household
but also to require them to die with it.615 He then concluded that ‘our country’s education is
build on the sand.’616 But Kashiwagi could not see through the idolisation that was clearly
expressed in the Imperial Constitution and in the ethic of the education rescript.
He was an ardent proponent of constitutional democracy, and it was utterly unimaginable
610
611
612
Watase, Kokutai to Kirisutokyō: Kato hakushi no shoron wo bakusu, 57, cited in ibid., pp. 59-60.
613
614
615
Sakai Makoto, “Kashiwagi Gien no kokka-shugi kyōiku hihan” in Shakai-kagaku 92 (2011), p.
57.
616
Kashiwagi Gien, Kashiwagi Gien Nikki (ed. Īnuma Jirō and Katano Masako, Otsu: Kohrosha,
1998) p. 124, cited in ibid., p. 57, translated by the author.
184
for him that one can idolise the monarch or the nation state by codifying a constitution. His
adherence to constitutional democracy, ironically, made him blind to the idolisation of the
emperor in the very beginning of the Constitution of the Empire of Japan. As he could not
see the idolisation of the emperor through the constitution, he could not see the nature of the
ethic established in the Imperial Rescript on Education either even though he harshly
criticised the education established on it. He, consequently, began his counter argument
against Inoue by claiming that Inoue misunderstood the education rescript.617 Kashiwagi
argued that Inoue was wrong, because if the nature of the ethic expressed in the education
rescript was like that of Inoue’s interpretation, such ethic was unconstitutional; thus Inoue’s
reading had to be wrong.618
His refutation of Inoue tragically missed all the crucial points that Inoue developed and
thus all his arguments were doomed to collapse when he naïvely equated the tennō-sei
(Imperial System) with the constitutional monarchy of British Christendom. His equation of
the Japanese Imperial System with the British style constitutional monarchy even made him
claim that ‘if the Imperial Rescript was promulgated to encourage morality, there should be
nothing about religion—which is granted freedom under the Constitution—that interferes
with its principles.’619
Against Inoue’s denunciation of Christianity not being nationalist, Kashiwagi rebuts and
maintains that ‘the government to which Jesus showed a lack of loyalty was not, of course,
that of an independent Judea, but that of Herod, the ruler of Palestine put in place by the
Roman Empire.’620 In this argument we are able to see that Kashiwagi’s understanding of
the Christian faith is framed by the modern nation state myth that each nation should pursue
independence and have their own state. He accordingly makes Jesus’ mission into a Jewish
independence movement.
In other words, in his attempt to defend Christianity from Inoue’s attack, Kashiwagi
misrepresented Jesus as a zealot seeking to liberate Israel with violence from Roman
oppression. And this misrepresentation of Jesus derived from his adherence to constitutional
democracy. Kashiwagi regarded it as the ideal political system and he contended that
617
Dohi, Kirisuto-kyōkai to tennō-sei, p. 186.
618
Sakai, “Kashiwagi Gien no kokka-shugi kyōiku hihan” in Shakai-kagaku 92 (2011), p. 75.
619
Kashiwagi Gien, “Chokugo to Kirisutokyō (Inoue hakushi no iken wo hyōsu),” Dōshisha
Bungaku 59 (November 1892), reprinted in Inoue hakushi to Kirisutokyōto, vol. 1, 43, cited in
620
Ibid., p. 49.
185
Christianity was the guardian of constitutional democracy.621 As a result he was made to
believe that the Japanese ethic of the Imperial Rescript on education could be compatible
with the Christian ethic. Kashiwagi not only maintains that Jesus’ teaching of ‘love thy
neighbour’ encourages love for the nation, but he also goes so far as to say that the type of
Christianity that those liberal philosophers, whom Inoue referred to, criticised and sought to
establish ethics free from was exclusively Roman Catholicism.622
In this way, he too was trapped in the Constantinian mindset; he believed the task of
Christianity was to make the Japanese Empire into a constitutional democratic country. His
political ideal made him blind to the fact that the church of the Apostles was a polity that did
not have a stake in political decisions of the Roman Empire, and she also existed without
constitutional democracy.
Church Chartered by the Empire

On the ‘request’ from many church leaders to ‘clarify’ whether the imperial rituals such as
the veneration of the Imperial Rescript on Education and deep bows before the goshin’ei
that are required at schools are of religious nature or not, the Minister of Education issued
an official statement to ‘affirm’ that to worship the Imperial Rescript and to give a deep bow
in front of the official picture of the emperor’s portrait have nothing to do with religion, but
those rites are ‘only “to pay homage” to the gracious ruler himself according to social
custom.’623
On the other hand, after the victory of the Russo-Japanese War between 1904 and 1905,
the militarism and colonialism of the Japanese Empire were accelerated and radicalised.
Korea was annexed in 1910 and Manchukuo, a puppet state of the Japanese Empire in China,
was established in 1932 and the Japanese imperial expansionism did not stop until the tragic
defeat in 1945 that was sealed with the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Correspondingly, the imperial government became more and more oppressive as well as
unyielding.
As the Japanese Imperial government was slipping down the steep slope into militarism
621
Sakai, “Kashiwagi Gien no kokka-shugi kyōiku hihan” in Shakai-kagaku 92 (2011), p.69.
622
Kashiwagi Gien, “Futatabi Inoue Tetsujirō shi ni tadasu,” Dōshisha bungaku 64 (April 1893),
reprinted in Inoue hakushi to Kirisutokyōto, vol. 1, 371, cited in Anderson, Christianity and
Imperialism in Modern Japan, p. 48.
623
John M. L.Young, The Two Empires in Japan: A Record of Church-State Conflict (Pennsylvania:
The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1961) pp. 48-9.
186
and colonialism, school pupils were strategically forced to visit and worship at nearby
Shinto shrines, apart from worship of the Imperial Rescript on education and a picture of the
official portrait of the emperor at schools. Another form of the emperor worship called
Kyūjō-yōhai (to worship toward the imperial palace) being added, the four forms of the
emperor worship, including the worship of the education rescript, goshin’ei, and Shinto
shrines, were systematically imposed on all ‘Japanese citizens,’ not only on the Japanese
Isles, but also in the Japanese colonies.
In 1912 the imperial government summoned representatives of three religions, Buddhism,
Shinto and Christianity, to encourage them to discuss how they could contribute to
consolidating the Japanese ethic as the solid foundation of the Empire. This conference was
called Sankyō-kaidō (the Three-Religions Conference).624 The conference itself, which took
place on 25 February 1912, was in fact anything but a conference. Responding to the
invitation by the chief of the Religious Affairs Bureau of the Home Office, the ‘conference’
was attended by 13 Shinto delegates, 51 Buddhists and 7 Christians, but there were no
presentation of papers, no discussions, nor even exchange of opinions; there were just an
opening greetings by an official and meal. The meeting was just one and half hours. Having
nothing to announce after the ‘conference,’ the attendants agreed to meet next day with each
own draft proposal for a joint statement.
On the evening after the conference, the seven Christian representatives gathered and
wrote up theirs:
We have resolved that we acknowledge that the government authorities, by summoning the
Three-Religions Conference, have intended to approve of the authority of religion itself, based on the
great principle of religious freedom, to encourage national morals and to improve social behaviour so
that the dignity and virtue of the imperial household be exalted and the development of jisei (the
momentum of the time) be stimulated, in cooperation between politics, education and religion with
keeping their demarcations, that as this (intent) overlaps with the long-standing claim of us religious
practitioners, we welcome it and exert ourselves further, standing on each one’s religious principle, to
accomplish the great mission of the edification of Japanese subjects in the future, that we
624
About the Sankyō-kaidō, see Dohi Akio, “Sankyō-kaidō (1): Seiji, Shūkyō, Kyōiku tono kanren
nioite.” Kirisutokyō-Shakaimondai-Kenkyū 11 (1967) 90-115; Dohi Akio, “Sankyō-kaidō (2): Seiji,
Shūkyō, Kyōiku tono kanren nioite.” Kirisutokyō-Shakaimondai-Kenkyū 14/15 (1969) 72-93.
187
simultaneously expect the government authorities honestly and sincerely to see to it that this intent is
accomplished.625
On the 26th all the attendants of the Three-Religions Conference unanimously adopted a
resolution:
Acknowledging that the government authorities, by summoning the Three-Religions Conference,
have intended to approve of the authority of religion itself, to encourage national morals and to
improve social behaviour for the prosperity of Our Imperial Throne and stimulating the development
of jisei (the momentum of time), in cooperation between politics, education and religion with keeping
their demarcations, that this (intent) overlapping with the long-standing claim of us religious
practitioners, welcoming it and exerting ourselves further, standing on each one’s religious principle,
to accomplish the great mission of the edification of Japanese subjects in the future, simultaneously
expecting that the government authorities honestly and sincerely see to it that this intent is
accomplished, we resoluted as follows: 1) we expect to proclaim our doctrines, to guard and maintain
the prosperity of Our Imperial Throne, and to promote national morals. 2) We hope that the
government authorities approve of religion and harmonise politics and religion and education with
one another so that (they) are all together allowed to promote the expansion of the national destiny.626
The Three-Religions Conference and its ‘fruit’ were nothing but another example of
Japanese political sophistry. As we have already observed when we look at the beginning of
625
「吾儕は今回三教者会同を催したる政府当局者の意思は信仰自由の大義に基き宗教本来
の権威を尊重し国民道徳の振興社会風教の改善のために政治教育の三者各々その分界を守
り同時に互に相協力し以て皇室の威徳を翼賛し時勢の進運を資けんとするに在ることを認
む是れ吾儕宗教家年来の主張と相合致するものあるが故に吾儕はその意を諒とし将来益々
各自の信仰の本義に立ち奮励努力国民教化の大任を完うせんことを期し同時に政府当局者
も亦誠心鋭意この精神貫徹に努められんことを望む右決議す」。Dohi, “Sankyō-kaidō (2),”
p.87, translated by the author.
626
「吾儕は今回三教者会同を催したる政府当局者の意思は宗教本来の権威を尊重し国民道
徳の振興社会風教の改善のために政治教育の三者各々その分界を守り同時に互に相協力し
以て皇運を扶翼し時勢の進運を資けんとするに在ることを認む是れ吾儕宗教家年来の主張
と相合致するものあるが故に吾儕はその意を諒とし将来益々各自の信仰の本義に立ち奮励
努力国民教化の大任を完うせんことを期し同時に政府当局者も亦誠心鋭意この精神貫徹に
努められんことを望み左の決議をなす一、吾等は各々その教義を発揮し皇運を扶翼し
益々国民道徳の振興を図らんことを期す二、吾等は当局者が宗教を尊重し政治宗教及び
教育の間を融和し国運の伸張に資せられんことを望む」。Ibid., p.88, translated by the author.
188
the Imperial Constitution, it is obvious that the Japanese Empire itself was invented as a
religious state, but for giving a constitutional monarchy façade to the state idol, an article of
religious freedom, the article 28, was inserted in the constitution. In order to preserve the
constitutional monarchy façade, the imperial government put all the Shinto rituals related to
the arahitogami (god of human appearance) or emperor under the category of Jinja Shinto
(Shrine Shinto) or Kokka Shinto (State Shinto), and this Kokka Shinto was claimed to be
‘non-religious’ or a ‘super religion.’ In this process, thirteen Shinto ‘schools’ were
categorised as Kyōha Shinto (denominational Shinto) and they were supposed to be religion.
In the Three Religions Conference, therefore, there was no representative from State Shinto.
While the imperial rites at schools were tightened up, in August 1898, more than ten years
before the Three-Religions Conference, the twelfth order of the Ministry of Education was
issued to forbid Christian schools to read or use the Bible in any classes, by ‘strictly’
applying the principle of ‘the separation between education and religion.’ And as a matter of
fact, all the Christian schools accepted this instruction from the government, even though it
meant that they were banned from teaching anything about Christianity but forced to teach
only the Jinja Shintō’s ethic stated in the education rescript.
The true tragedy of this development was, of course, that there were no Christian leaders
who could ask themselves whether the empire itself, the constitution itself, and the content
of the Imperial Rescript on education itself were idolatrous or not. There were some leading
Christians who ‘criticised’ the Three-Religions Conference. Uchimura, for example, took it
for an attempt to make up a new chimeric religion out of the three religions, even though it
was not such a project. Kashiwagi criticised the government’s ‘non-religious’ education
policy by claiming that religion is the foundation of education. He, then, opposes the idea of
the government imposing religious education, because it will result in formalism and
hypocrisy.627 What astonishes us in Kashiwagi’s criticism is that he swallowed the
government’s definition of the imperial ritual as non-religious.
Whilst a quasi-chartered status of the Japanese churches after the Three-Religions
Conference enabled them to enjoy a transient but comfortable relation with the imperial
government, the empire itself was growing as a super-religion and seeking to keep all
religions, particularly Christians, under tight control. The process of the Japanese churches’
627
Ibid., p.81.
189
perfect submission to the idol empire hereafter is tragic but in a sense comic as well. Their
comfortable relation with the imperial government, ironically, made them ‘bold’ to complain
about some of the governmental policies. In 1917 the Federated Churches of Japan, which
represented virtually all the Protestant churches and later gave way to the National Christian
Council, professed that ‘[t]o lead the people into a vague religious exercise under the pretext
of reverence towards ancestors, and thus to mix the two things, is not only irrational, but
results in harm to education and hinders in many ways the progress of the people.’628 The
Roman Catholics also became courageous and in 1918 the Bishop of Nagasaki openly
declared that
[s]hrine worship... is an organized form of reverence to supernatural beings and must be regarded as
religion. Moreover, it is a religion forced upon the people... We regret exceedingly that as Catholics
we cannot accept the interpretation of shrine worship given by the government, nor can we visit the
shrines and engage in the services for the dead, nor can we ever pay respects to the so-called gods.629
On the governmental side, in the 1930s, the Ministry of Education began to put stronger
pressure on the Christian schools to get all pupils to participate in the imperial rites at
nearby Shinto shrines; the same year, 55 churches, institutions and mission organisations
belonging to the NCC submitted a proposal letter to the Shrine System Investigation
Committee of the government and asked to ‘clarify’ whether the Shinto shrines were
religion or not. Replying it, this committee issued another statement that ‘the shrines were
above religion in nature but institutionally represented the national religious character’630 to
facilitate Christian participations in Shrine worship. As the Japanese churches were still
believing that they were in good enough relationship with the government to complain about
the governmental committee’s explanation, they unanimously opposed this pressure from
the Ministry of Education. This year, for instance, the NCC’s committee on the Shinto
problem issued a statement to declare that
628
Holtom, Modern Japan and Shinto Nationalism, p. 96.
629
Young, The Two Empires in Japan, pp. 69-70.
630
A. Hamish Ion, “The Cross under an Imperial Sun: Imperialism, Nationalism, and Japanese
Christianity, 1895–1945” Handbook of Christianity in Japan (ed. Mark R. Mullins, Leiden; Boston,
MA.: Brill, 2003) p. 84.
190
[f]or many years we have deplored the fact that there has been no solution of the traditional difference
of opinion and the confusion which has existed as regards the relation between Shrine Shinto and
religion. While it is true that since middle of the Meiji Era the traditional policy of the Government in
its administrative treatment of Shrine Shinto has been to put it outside of the religious sphere, still, to
treat the Shinto shrines, which from of old have been religious, as nonreligious has been unreasonable.
The shrines of Shrine Shinto are actually engaged in religious functions. This has given rise to much
confusion. Furthermore, recently the Government in its effort to foster religious faith has promoted
worship at the shrines of Shrine Shinto and even made it compulsory. This is clearly contrary to the
policy that Shrine Shinto is nonreligious. Moreover, the question has been often raised as to whether
at times it has not interfered with the freedom of religious belief granted by the Constitution of the
Empire. In the interests of the people’s thought-life, this is a problem of such gravity that it can no
longer be overlooked….631
In 1931, the bishop of Nagasaki declared in a New Year’s message that
[t]he Shinto shrines, so the high authorities of the government tell us, do not maintain a religion, but
as a matter of fact the ceremonies that are performed therein have a full religious character. Thus the
sacred right of religious freedom, given to the people in article 28 of the constitution, is forgotten and
violated by the ministry of education itself, and students are forced to go to the shrines and punished
if they refuse.632
Despite the unanimous objection from the churches against forcing Christian pupils and
students to take part in Shrine worship, the pressure from the government would never be
relaxed; on the contrary the government authorities were getting more and more unyielding
and oppressive against the criticism coming from Christians.
It is said that in 1932 an ‘incident’ occurred at the Roman Catholic University in Tokyo
and it rocked all the Roman Catholic Church and related institutions in Japan.633 Though
631
Japan Christian Quarterly, V, No. 3 (July, 1930) p. 276, cited in Holtom, Modern Japan and
Shinto Nationalism, p. 123.
632
Die Katholischen Missionen, LVIII (1930) p. 247, cited in J.B. Aufhauer, “Die Jinsha-Frage im
Heutigen Japan,” Umweltsbeeinflussung der Christlichen Mission (München, 1932) pp. 167-68,
cited in Holtom, Modern Japan and Shinto Nationalism, p. 123.
633
Concerning this “incident,” visit the website of Fr. Peter Toshihiko Nishiyama,
http://peace-appeal.fr.peter.t.nishiyama.catholic.ne.jp/senseki-index.htm.
191
this ‘incident’ was supposed to have happened on 5 May, it was not reported by a newspaper,
Hōchi-shinbun, until 1 October 1932. There is no way for us to confirm whether this
‘incident’ actually happened or not, but the undeniable fact is that this ‘incident’ was part of
the Christian assimilation campaign by the government authorities and it actually marked
the unconditional submission of not only the Roman Catholic Church but of all the
Churches in Japan to the empire as well.
According to the widely accepted story, two Roman Catholic students of Jōchi (Sophia)
University refused to visit and worship at the Yasukuni shrine where the souls of the war
dead were to be deified. This Yasukuni visit was guided by an army officer who was
appointed to the university for military drill and about sixty students were required to
participate in this imperial ritual. After this ‘incident’ the Army warned the university of the
withdrawal of the army officer from Jōchi University. As military drill was necessary
condition of students’ application for the ten-month reduction from military service, the loss
of military drill meant a steep drop in the enrolment of new students. Furthermore, it was
obvious that the government threat would not be limited just to Jōchi University, but other
Catholic schools and the entire Roman Catholic Church would be targeted by the
government.
As had been so all the time after the Meiji Restoration, regardless of its dubious character,
the government succeeded in stirring up Christian bashing among people by leaking this
‘incident’ to the mass media and in intimidating the whole Roman Catholic Church.
Moreover, through this case the government also showed all the churches that they could
easily ostracise Christians unless they were assimilated into the government policies,
namely, into the State Shinto rites. Facing this threat from the powers that be, the
archbishop of Tokyo, Jean Baptiste Alexis Chambon, sent a letter to the Minister of
Education, Hatoyama Ichirō and asked the government authorities to declare that the
imperial rites at the Shinto shrines aim only at cultivation of patriotism and therefore of no
religion, while expressing that all Roman Catholics were willing to cultivate patriotism and
pay appropriate respect to the legitimate governments of any countries.
We can see the magnitude of this ‘incident’ in what happened to the churches afterwards.
Responding to the enquiry and/or request from the archbishop of Tokyo, the Ministry of
Education stated, again, that ‘the student visits to a shrine were based on educational
considerations and that the statements the children were required to make on these occasions
192
were simply meant to indicate their patriotism and loyalty.’634 Accepting this definition of
the imperial rites at Shinto shrines by the education ministry, the Roman Catholic Church
issued a statement in 1936 to declare that
[t]he Ordinaries in the territories of the Japanese Empire shall instruct the faithful that, to the
ceremonies which are held at the Jinja (National Shrines) administered civilly by the Government,
there is attributed by the civil authorities (as is evident from the various declarations) and by the
common estimation of cultured persons a mere significance of patriotism, namely, a meaning of filial
reverence toward the Imperial Family and to the heroes of the country; therefore, since ceremonies of
this kind are endowed with a purely civil value, it is lawful for Catholics to join in them and act in
accordance with the other citizens after having made known their intentions, if this be necessary for
the removal of any false interpretation of their acts.635
In the same year, realising their comfortable relationship with the imperial government was
over, the Protestants also followed the Roman Catholics and the NCC officially announced
that ‘[w]e accept the definition of the government that the Shinto shrine is nonreligious.’636
The author of The Two Empires in Japan, who was a missionary to China and Japan,
witnessed how the churches subjected their Lord to the emperor:
The writer returned to Japan in the summer of 1938, on his way to Manchukuo (Manchuria), and that
August at missionary prayer meetings in Karuizawa sensed a tenseness and foreboding in the air.
Prayers were made for holy boldness, but little of such was to be displayed. The churches in Japan
had apparently made up their minds that they would accommodate themselves to the State on the
Shrine issue.637
Confirming that they had succeeded in making all the churches kneel before the emperor,
the Ministry of Education published a book entitled Kokutai no Hongi (The Fundamental
Principles of the National Structure) in 1937. In terms of its contents, there is nothing more
634
Ion, “The Cross under an Imperial Sun: Imperialism, Nationalism, and Japanese Christianity,
1895–1945” Handbook of Christianity in Japan, p. 85.
635
“Instructions” (official English translation of “Sacred Congregation Propaganda Fide,” given at
Rome on May 25, 1936), cited in Holtom, Modern Japan and Shinto Nationalism, p. 99.
636
Holtom, Modern Japan and Shinto Nationalism, p. 97.
637
Young, The Two Empires in Japan, pp. 77.
193
than a repetition of what was already stated in the Imperial Constitution, the Imperial
Rescript on Education and its official commentary, such as that the emperor unites himself
with divine imperial ancestors in religious ceremonies (saishi), or he reigns over his empire
with the spirit of those divine ancestors, or he teaches his subject the way they should live
with the spirit of ancestor gods, and so on. What is remarkable in this book is, however, that
it included a phrase to state that ‘education and religious rites and politics are united at the
root. That is to say that each of them has its own function, yet ultimately they are one and
the same.’638 This passage clearly contradicts the repeated governmental affirmations of the
imperial rites being non-religious. As we have already seen, the government authorities did
not care about truthfulness or coherency of their language at all. Their goal is domination,
power and control; juggling contradictory explanations is one of the most useful techniques
for them. What we witness in this example is no more than another clear mark of
Maruyama’s basso ostinato, unlimited arbitrary manipulation of the language.
The Church united under the Emperor

The publication of Kokutai no Hongi by the Ministry of Education in 1937 coincided with
the beginning of the consummation of governmental church control scheme. We can
actually confirm that the imperial government started strategic and clandestine purge of
some well-known Christian leaders from their positions just before the publication of this
book. In 1936, for instance, the president of Rikkyō University was forced to resign due to
the allegation that he misread the Imperial Rescript on Education; in 1937 Yuasa Hachirō,
the president of Dōshisha University in Kyoto, was also dismissed for the same reason; in
1938 Meiji Gakuin University was subjected to intense interrogation by the education
ministry for not providing proper space for the goshin’ei (emperor’s portrait).
The final step of religious control was the Religious Bodies Bill that was passed in 1939
and came in force in April 1940. This law laid down the guidelines for religious
organisations to receive a charter. According to it, a religious organisation should have at
least fifty churches with more than 5,000 members for registration.639 As it was also called
638
「從って教育も、その根本に於ては祭祀及び政治と一致するのであって、卽ち祭祀と政
治と教育とは、夫々の働きをしながら、その歸するところは全く一となる。」Kokutai no Hongi
(ed. Japanese Department of Education, Tokyo: Japanese Department of Education, 1937) p. 26,
translated by the author.
639
Dohi, Kirisuto-kyōkai to tennō-sei, p. 90.
194
‘[t]he Law to Control the Religious Institution and Propagator,’640 this law mainly aimed at
putting the churches under more effective control in order to use them as an instrument for
making not only Japanese but also the people of the colonies, annexed by the Japanese
imperial army, into obedient subjects of the empire. In other words, ‘it was the Army's
objective… to compel the churches to unite in order both to keep them in line with the
military's Shinto ideology and to make them more efficiently serve the war effort.’641 This
point is abundantly clear through the article 16, which repeats the article 28 of the Imperial
Constitution, stating that ‘[s]hould the religious rituals or events or propagation of teachings
of a religious organisation or religious teacher be prejudicial to peace and order, or
antagonistic to the duties of subjects, the competent minister is able to limit or forbid them,
or discharge the teacher or withdraw its charter from the religious body.’642
This law was also accompanied by unofficial strong pressure from the government on the
churches to cut all their ties with missionaries and missions. It meant that the powers that be
were set on treating every single person who is different from other Japanese or does not
support the empire as a spy. As a warning to all the churches, in July 1940, the head of the
Salvation Army was scapegoated, put into prison and interrogated by the military police.
After the interrogation the suspect was released on the direct order from the imperial
household and he was also rewarded with ten thousand yen for his public denial of the
disgraceful treatment by the army police.643 After this incident, however, the Salvation
Army was furthermore disgraced and required to submit a report stating that it would deport
the British financial secretary, change its name from Kyūsei-gun to Kyūsei-dan, alter its
doctrines to fit the Kokutai no hongi (Fundamentals of the National Structure), and finally
expect governmental guidance for reviewing its mission policy in order to create faithful
subjects (shinmin) who are willing to contribute to the welfare of fellow countrymen.644
640
Young, The Two Empires in Japan., p. 93.
641
Taniguchi Shigetoshi, “The Real Circumstances Surrounding the Establishment of the Nihon
Kirisuto Kyodan,” The Bible Times, Vol. VII, No. 2, (1957) p. 23, cited in ibid, p. 99.
642
「第十六条宗教団体又ハ教師ノ行フ宗教ノ教義ノ宣布若ハ儀式ノ執行又ハ宗教上ノ行
事ガ安寧秩序ヲ妨ゲ又ハ臣民タルノ義務ニ背クトキハ主務大臣ハ之ヲ制限シ若ハ禁止シ、
教師ノ業務ヲ停止シ又ハ宗教団体ノ設立ノ認可ヲ取消スコトヲ得」From the website of the
Ministry of Education, http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/hakusho/html/others/detail/1318168.htm.
Accecced on 24 May 2016, translated by the author.
643
Richard Terrill Baker, Darkness of the Sun: The Story of Christianity in the Japanese Empire
(Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1947) p. 45.
644
Ono Shizuo, Nihon Purotestanto Kyoukai-shi (Ge): Shōwa-hen (Hiroshima: Seikei-jusanjo
Publishing Department, 1986) p. 97.
195
Threat and intimidation from the government always follow the same pattern and take
two forms; they hint at withdrawal of licences or dissolution of church-related institutions,
and then mobilise the mass media to stir up national chastisement of specific Christians
belonging to a specific church or church-related institution for the lack of patriotism or the
suspicion of spying. The case of the Salvation Army was also ‘leaked’ to national
newspapers and caused national animosity against Christians again.
Witnessing the government’s relentless resolution to put all the churches under strict
control and their will to sabotage churches that preserve their relationship with missionaries
and missions, on 17 October 1940 all the churches decided to cut their ties with missions
and missionaries. This decision, however, put many denominations and churches in jeopardy,
because, firstly, most of the Protestant churches at that time were hugely dependent on the
money from missions; and, secondly, there were only less than ten out of over forty
denominations that could meet the terms and conditions for a charter laid down by the
government.645 This forced disconnection from missionaries and missions and the
governmental church control policy led the churches to unification.
The same day when they decided to disconnect themselves from missionaries and
missions, they announced their decision to set up a united Protestant church, Nihon Kirisuto
Kyodan (United Church of Christ in Japan) on the occasion of the Kōki 2600 nen (2600th
anniversary of the foundation of the nation). This unification was, nevertheless, far from a
union based on a common confession. Even though there was a sort of unification
movement after the foundation of the Nihon Kirisuto-kyō Renmei in November 1923, a
confession-based union was out of question from the very beginning. While those who lead
the unification movement were from the Presbyterian or Reformed tradition, the Lutherans
were against any form of union that ignore the significance of confession. While the
Anglicans regarded episcopacy as fundamental for church polity, the Presbyterians or
Reformed could not accept that position. By 1940, the fragile unification movement had
turned completely lethargic.
In 1940, however, unification became the most urgent issue for the Protestant churches,
and in fact it had to come true under the persistent pressure from the government.
Subsequently the plan for a unified Protestant church was announced on the opportunity of
645
196
the 2600th anniversary of the foundation of the tennoō’s empire at Aoyama Gakuin in Tokyo,
and the Nihon Kirisuto Kyodan (United Church of Christ in Japan) came into the world with
the application for a charter in the summer of 1941, even though it was not until the
December the same year that the charter was granted.646
As has been already mentioned, however, the newly born unified church could not be a
united church. It was in fact no more than an association of various church groups. This
point is clear when we look at the fact that the Nihon Kirisuto Kyodan comprised eleven
blocs when it launched; namely 1) Presbyterian (Nikki); 2) Methodist, Methodist Protestant
and Holy-Garden (Seian); 3) Congregational, Brethren, Evangelical, Disciples and Friends;
4) Baptist; 5) Evangelical Lutheran; 6) Holiness (Sei); 7) Pentecostal, Jesus (Restoration),
Holiness (Seiketsu); 8) Free Methodist, Nazarene, Alliance (Domei), World Mission; 9)
Kiyome (Holiness), Free Church; 10) Independent; and 11) Salvation Army.’647 As it was
impossible for them to reach a common confession or common church polity, major
denominations such as Presbyterian and Lutheran and Baptist tried to preserve their
denominational identities as an independent bloc, while minor denominations were put
together in bloc 7, 8 and 10, quite arbitrarily, for each bloc to meet the terms and conditions
for a governmental charter.
Even though the bloc system was the last resort for the denominations with different
confessions and polities to be unified into a single body, it was later rejected by the
government that detested many groups existing within one organisation. As early as
November 1942 the government ordered the Kyōdan to disband all its blocs648 and to be ‘a
real united church.’ This alteration was easily done despite a lot of objections, because the
Religious Bodies Law stipulated that each organisation should have a tōri-sha (president or
chief executive officer) who is in charge of supervising the entire organisation. In other
words, the tōri-sha was instated in each religious body as the controller that enables the
government to manipulate all religious bodies. In this sense, the governmental control of
religious organisations hinged on the existence of the tōri-sha.
The Roman Catholic Church was, en passant, also granted a charter; but it was at the cost
of promising to become independent from the Vatican.649
646
Ibid., p. 91.
647
Young, The Two Empires in Japan, p. 95.
648
Ibid., p. 96.
649
Kuyama Yasushi et al., Kindai Nihon to Kirisuto-Kyō: Taishō-Shōwa hen (Tokyo:
197
Japanisation: Method of Turning the Empire of Japan into a Politics
of Jesus
As is clear from its history, the United Church of Christ in Japan was brought into existence
by and for the Japanese Empire, and furthermore it was controlled by the imperial
government. As Baker points out, ‘[s]ervice to the country was glamorized and sanctified.
The slogans of war were made into short homilies with scriptural support. The catchwords
“victory,” “loyalty,” “sacrifice,” and the like, were picked up by church writers and given a
spiritual dimension.’650 And as we have seen too, the Religious Bodies Law ‘stipulates at
every essential point that the church or religious body can do nothing without “approval of
the competent minister.” The minister in every case was the government’s minister of
education.’651
Replacement of Jesus’ Lordship with the emperor’s can be plainly seen in the
restructuring of worship service. Every Sunday, at every church in Japan, worship service
would start with worshipping the emperor with a deepest bow toward the imperial palace
and praying for war heroes. This was, of course, made a duty of every Japanese Christian by
the imperial government and if it was neglected at a church, a ruthless and cruel
interrogation by Tokkō (the Special Higher Police)652 would await the pastor.653
Another example that shows that the church in Japan became the emperor’s is the
censorship of hymn books exercised by the church. The notion of Jesus Christ as the King,
for example, was expressed by Ō-kimi or Ō-gimi in many Japanese Christian literatures and
hymns. This word, however, was also used for the emperor by Shinto ideologues. As a result
of the emperor’s idolisation, this word should be reserved exclusively for him. ‘Therefore,
out it went from all Christian hymns. Any such reference to Jesus or God as “king of Kings”
Kirisutokyou-gakuto-kyoudaidan, 1956) p. 334.

650
Baker, Darkness of the Sun, p. 25.
651
Ibid., p. 34
652
‘The Special Higher Police (tokko ka), established under the provisions of the Peace Preservation
Law, had branches in all police precincts and were under the control of the Home Ministry, while
prosecution was left to the Justice Ministry, which maintained special Thought Prosecutors.
Particular care was given to monitoring religious sects, Koreans, and of course suspected leftists and
pacifists. Japan also introduced German-inspired monitoring of Jews, although the possible targets
were relatively few and the restrictions were not implemented very rigorously.’ Jansen, The Making
of Modern Japan, p. 645.
653
Baker, Darkness of the Sun, pp. 30–31.
198
was a Shinto sacrilege, and the Christians gave up their usage of the term.’654
It should be noted, however, that the enslavement of the church to the emperor, of course,
did not begin with the emergence of the United Church of Christ in Japan in 1941. As I have
already scratched the surface of this issue, the process of the equation of the service to the
Japanese empire with that to God began in the name of ‘Japanisation’ as soon as Japanese
Christians started taking over leadership from missionaries. The Constantinian unification of
the churches is nothing but a result of Japanisation of the Christian faith that had started way
before.
Ebina Danjō, for instance, who was one of the most influential Protestant leading figures,
sought to associate sacrifice for Japan as a new nation state to Christian martyrdom, at the
time of the Russo-Japanese War. Ebina eulogises the war-dead of the Russo-Japanese war as
‘heroic martyrs, comparing them to early Christian martyrs who refused to take up arms
against the Roman Empire but who accepted their executions as a consequence of their
faith.’655
His equation of the sacrifice for Japan with Christian martyrdom was coupled with his
criticism of Christian pacifism. ‘The problem with those who dissented from the dominant
position was its exposure of the inability,’ according to Ebina, ‘of Christians to unite, even
in the face of national crisis. In order to diffuse and disarm the persuasive power of those
who insisted that warfare fundamentally violated Christian teaching, Ebina turned to
scripture.’656 He acknowledges that Jesus’ teachings and his life were nonviolent and
pacifist. His life and teachings were nonviolent, because he ‘sought to create a spiritual
kingdom, the kingdom of God, rather than engage in the futile effort of attaining political
independence.’657 By this Ebina insinuates that Jesus could be pacifist, because his
kingdom was merely spiritual that stands on spiritual characters such as love, righteousness,
truth and so on. In other words, as far as it was spiritual, it could be free from conquering or
defensive wars.
However, ‘[t]his did not necessarily imply a rejection of all forms of violence, rather, a
new conception of the nation made such efforts meaningless.’658 As Christian just war
654
Ibid., pp. 31–2.
655
656
Ibid., p. 74.
657
Ibid., p. 75.
658
Ibid.
199
theorists always do, he also goes back to the Old Testament and finds examples where God
orders Israel to fight and kill their enemies. He then argues that as the biblical view of
violence is incoherent, a total repudiation of violence cannot be practical.659 He also goes so
far as to praise ‘the Beauty of War’ (Sensō no bi)660 to support the war Japan fought. He
describes the Russo-Japanese War as ‘a moral purifier, and the hardships it created as
serving a greater good.’661 War is beautiful in so far as it brings out ‘the most “beautiful”
aspects of people, such as courage and justice.’662 For Ebina, in fact, this war against Russia
was ‘the welcome final stage of the transformation of Japan from an antiquated feudal
society to one on par with other modern nations.’663 In the Russo-Japanese War, ‘all
Japanese subjects sacrificed for the nation’664 and the national character of Japan was tested
and transformed through their sacrificial acts.
Ebina made full use of German liberal theology to transform ‘patriotism into martyrdom,
and thus a beautiful offering to God.’665 He urged his congregation to turn their back on the
out-dated orthodox Christian doctrine by emphasising ‘the advantages of a new “scientific”
approach to biblical scholarship’666 and accept his version of ‘new Christianity’ to become
‘new men’ (and women) who would transform Japan into God’s new kingdom on earth.667
In other words, it was theological liberalism that gave him the tool to justify his heterodox
biblical hermeneutics, alteration of the orthodox Christian doctrine, including rejection of
Jesus’ divine nature, and creation of his ‘new Christianity’ in order to turn Christian faith
into a servant of Japan.
He finally goes so far as to maintain that
[a]ccording to an ancient Japanese tradition, there exist the only fundamental god among eight
million gods; the lord in heaven is namely this ruler…. The only God of Christianity also developed
from Judaism. Although Judaism is the cradle of monotheism, it acknowledged the existence of
multiple gods in ancient times. Even in the age of Jesus, various angels and their hierarchies were
659
Ibid., p. 75.
660
Ibid., p. 73.
661
Ibid.
662
Ibid.
663
Ibid.
664
Ibid., p. 74.
665
Ibid., p. 75.
666
Ibid., p. 69.
667
Ibid.
200
recognised. In essence, just there is surely one lord in heaven above eight million gods, Jehovah was
acknowledged above eight million heavenly gods. Therefore if (we) come to recognise the dignity of
this lord in heaven and to venerate it as the only god that rules everything under the sun, it is not
unnatural at all to develop Shinto thoughts to a degree where significant differences vanish between
the Christian view of God (and Shinto). Thus I suppose that Christianity and ancient Shinto could be
made one and the same religion if (we) exercise a great revolution to Japanese polytheism, and, so to
speak, cause a great restoration of religious world.668
Motoda Sakunoshin, who was a spokesman-like person of the NSKK (Nippon Sei Kō
Kai: Anglican Church in Japan) of that age and consecrated as one of the first Japanese
bishops in 1923, also wrote an article on the necessity of Japanisation of Christianity,
entitled “Nihon-teki Kirisuto-kyō” (Japanese Christianity), in Kirisuto-kyō Shūhō in 1906
and he maintained that Japanised Christianity should fit the Japanese national structure,
which means a Christianity faithful to the polity ruled by the emperor, and he called it
‘Chūkun-teki Kirisuto-kyō.’669 The next year, he published another article entitled “Mu-mei
no Kirisuto-kyō-koku” (Anonymous Christian Nation) in the same Christian periodical and
he claimed that Japan is already an anonymous Christian nation in terms of its domestic and
foreign policies as long as they are dependant on humanity and justice and fraternity, even
though it is not crowned with the title of Christian. According to him, ‘the modern Yamato
Damashii (Japanese Spirit) is a Yamato Damashii influenced by Christian-ism’ and ‘it is not
impossible to say that our country is an unbaptised anonymous Christian nation’ that
‘secretly bears Christian fruits,’ even though ‘our country superficially despises the name of
Christianity.’670
668
「日本の古傳によれば八百萬神の中に唯一の根本神がある、天之御中主は即ち此の統治
者である。。。。基督教の唯一神教も猶太教より發達したものである。猶太教は唯一神教の揺
籃ではあるが、然もその遠い昔は多神の存在を認めて居つた。又基督の時代とても様々の
天使とその様々の階級を認めて居た。要するに八百萬神の上に厳然として天之御中主のあ
る如く、八百萬の天神の上に唯一のエホバを認めて居た。故にこの天之御中主の尊厳を認
め森羅萬象を統治する唯一の神と崇むるやうになれば、基督教の神観と大同小異の點にま
でその思想を展開することは決して不自然ではない。故に日本の多神教に一大改革を加え、
所謂宗教界における一大王政維新を断行すれば、基督教と古神道とは神観に於て同一の宗
教となることが出来ようと思う。」Ebina Danjō, Kirisuto-kyō Jikkō (Tokyo: Keisei-sha Shoten,
1915) pp. 280-281, translated by the author.
669
Tsukada Osamu. Tennō-sei-ka no Kirisuto-kyō: Nihon Sei Ko Kai no tatakai to kunan (Tokyo:
Shinkyo-Shuppan, 1981) pp. 38-9.
670
Ibid., p. 39.
201
Uchimura Kanzō, who caused the fukei jiken or lèse-majesté incident at the dai-ichi
kōtō-gakkō in 1891, was also an ardent advocate of Japanese Christianity. As we have
touched on already, he loved Japan as much as Jesus. In other words, Japan and Jesus were
of the same significance for him. His Japanese pride could not tolerate any foreign elements
in Christianity and drove him to pursue a non-mediated pure Japanese Christianity. He
declared that
Japanese Christianity is not a Christianity peculiar to Japanese. It is Christianity received by Japanese
directly from God without any foreign intermediary; no more, no less. In this sense, there is German
Christianity, English Christianity, Scotch Christianity, American Christianity, etc.; and in this sense,
there will be, and already is, Japanese Christianity. “There is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the
Almighty giveth him understanding.” The spirit of Japan inspired by the Almighty is Japanese
Christianity. It is free, independent, original and productive, as true Christianity always is.671
For him Christianity is one of the many religions. ‘By faith,’ he says, ‘we are united in
religion, and not by the object of faith,’ and then he states that ‘[t]hirteen millions of my
countrymen who profess the Jōdo form of Buddhism are my brothers and sisters in faith.’672
If Uchimura read Christ and Culture by Richard Niebuhr, he would have to enthusiastically
side with Jesus as transformer of culture. Regarding Jesus as the perfecter of culture,
Uchimura says that
Buddha is the Moon; Christ is the Sun. Buddha is the Mother; Christ is the Father. Buddha is Mercy;
Christ is Righteousness.… I now love the Sun more than I love the Moon; and I know that the love of
the Moon is included in the love of the Sun, and that he who loves the Sun loves the Moon also.673
Against critics of his Japanese Christianity, namely missionaries, he defends his ideal of a
non-mediated pure Japanese Christianity and argues that even though missionaries claim
that Christianity is a universal religion, there are many denominations in this universal
religion and they in fact proclaim denominations that they represent as Christianity. After
671
Uchimura, “Japanese Christianity” Uchimura Kanzō Zenshū, Dai jū-go kan, p. 452.
672
Uchimura, “Household of Faith” Uchimura Kanzō Zenshū, Dai jū-go kan, p. 390.
673
Uchimura, “Buddha and Christ” Uchimura Kanzō Zenshū, Dai jū-go kan, p. 577.
202
questioning if multiple denominational forms of Christianity, such as ‘Methodism,
Presbyterianism, Episcopalianism, Congregationalism, Lutheranism and hundred other
Christian isms’674 are a universal religion, he then link them to nations:
There is no national Christianity in Europe and America? Is not Episcopalianism essentially an
English Christianity, Presbyterianism a Scotch Christianity, Lutheranism a German Christianity, and
so forth? Why, for instance, call a universal religion “Cumberland Presbyterianism”? If it is not
wrong to apply the name of a district in the state of Kentucky to Christianity, why is it wrong for me
to apply the name of my country to the same?675
He continues to say that
[d]oes Christianity lose by bringing the spirit of samurai into it? Was not Latin Christianity a happy
fusion of the Christian faith and the old Roman spirit? Was not Luther's German Christianity a
valuable and distinct contribution to Christianity?676
As the amalgamation of Christianity with the nation seemed completely ‘natural’ to

Uchimura, he does not seem to have suspected that a nation could be a mere invention or
even an idol. It seems to me that he believed that wherever Christianity was proclaimed, it
should satisfy nationalism. This conviction led him to maintain that
Paul, a Christian apostle, remained a Hebrew of the Hebrews till the end of his life. Savonarola was
an Italian Christian, Luther was a German Christian, and Knox was a Scotch Christian. They were not
characterless universal men, but distinctly national, therefore distinctly human, and distinctly
Christian.677
In this quote, Uchimura equates Jewishness with nation-ness, but he takes no pains to
explain how and why the biblical characteristics of Jews as God’s chosen people can be
674
Uchimura, “Japanese Christianity” Uchimura Kanzō Zenshū, Dai jū-go kan, p. 578. Note: This is
a different essay from the one with the same title quoted previously. Uchimura Kanzō Zenshū, Dai
jū-go kan includes two essays of the same title, “Japanese Christianity.”
675
Ibid., p. 578.
676
Ibid., p. 579.
677
Ibid.
203
reduced to nation-ness.
Yanaihara Tadao was a disciple of Uchimura and professor of the Imperial University of
Tokyo. Like his master Uchimura, he was a blunt critic of war and imperial colonialism, and
at the same time, an ardent proponent of Japanese Christianity. He maintains that a
Christianity which is worth the name of Japanese Christianity should love the Japanese
state.678 For him, authentic patriotism is to love the state through Christianity679 and a
Japanese Christianity is to shape Japan as ‘a genuine peace-loving Christian country while
maintaining its unique cultural tradition and the basic political structure of the imperial
system.’680
As has been occasionally mentioned in the foregoing arguments, all Japanese church
leaders believed that the church should have a stake in the politics of the Japanese Empire;
however, none of them seems to have learnt from anybody to see the politics of Japan from
the perspective of Jesus’ politics; none of them even suggested that the Japanese Empire
itself was invented as an idol. Christian war-time literature in Japan is full of countless
examples of the equation of the service to the emperor with that to the Christian God and the
process of Japanisation of Christianity allows us to clearly see where the kind of
Christianity whose subject has changed from the God revealed in and through Jesus to
nation and culture leads.
An episode reported by Young about a ‘fantastic’ effort of accommodating Christian faith
into the imperial politics by a group of Congregational pastors is desperate but also comic.
In 1938, an official in Osaka sent them a questionnaire on their understanding about the
relation between the authority of the emperor and of Christian God. To this ‘sensitive’
question, they tried to come up with an acceptable answer to the governmental authority by
‘harmonising’ Christian doctrine with the imperial policy, and they proposed a novel
conception of ‘Quadrinity.’ Replying to the questionnaire, they stated that
the Godhead consisted of four persons, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit and the Japanese emperor.
Further, they taught that the God of Christianity has a twofold incarnation, the saviour of the soul,
678
Kikukawa Miyoko, “Yanaihara Tadao no ‘Nihon-teki Kirisuto-kyō’: Dochaku-ka-ron saikō,”
Kirisuto-kyō Kenkyū 73 no. 2 (2011) p. 94.
679
Ibid., p. 95.
680
204
Jesus Christ, and the political saviour of the world, the Japanese emperor.681
Despite the novelty of these replies and their genuine efforts to reconcile the emperor and
Jesus Christ, their understanding about the relation between the authority of the emperor and
of the Christian God was severely condemned by the powers that be for putting the
emperor’s authority on a par with that of the Christian God.
In 1940 the NCC issued a succession of four official pamphlets that expressed their
support for Japanese imperialism, colonialism, expansionism and the conquering war in
Asia fought by the Japanese Imperial Army. In one of those pamphlets, entitled “Patriotism
of the Spirit and Christianity,” a Methodist minister Imai Saburo, former chaplain of
Aoyama Gakuin high school, wrote:
We love our nations; we love our fatherland; and if ever our fatherland is in danger, we immediately
arise and place ourselves on guard. We are not among those who love war. When, however, the fight
is against an unrighteousness that is trampling righteousness under foot, when the fight is for the
establishment of true peace, we count it glory to enter the field of battle and stand as a shield against
iniquity. “Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword!”682
In support of the invasion of China by the Japanese Imperial Army, he goes so far as to
declare that
[i]t is our mission to protect the Chinese people from having their whole body cast into Gehenna,
even though their right eye must be plucked out. With love in our hearts we have resolved on the
completion of the holy war. With tears in our hearts we have raised aloft the whips of love, and the
time may yet come when these will bring the people of China to perceive their error. We hope and
believe and pray that on that day when the peace of the Far East opens before their eyes, their time of
thanksgiving will come.683
In his attempt of turning the expansionist war of the Japanese Empire into a holy war, who
681
682
Baker, Darkness of the Sun, p. 28.
683
Ibid.
205
fails to hear an echo of Augustine’s ‘by conquering those whom you attack, you may lead
them back to the advantages of peace’?
In an issue of the Sunday School Teacher's Magazine published by the Board of Sunday
Schools of Kyōdan, Kozaki Michio, who became the head of Kyōdan after Japan’s defeat in
the Second World War, wrote an article entitled “Obey the Imperial Rescript.” In it he
taught children of Sunday school that to obey the Imperial Rescript on Education is equal to
obeying and serving Christian God.684
Another perfect example of the identification of Christian faith with the Japanese
Imperial policy is provided by Ebisawa Akira, who was the General Secretary of the NCC
until 1955. In an article entitled “Christianity and the Establishment of the New Order in
East Asia,” Ebisawa equates Japan’s invasion of China in the name of hakkō ichiu (the
whole world under one roof) with the kingdom of God685 and declares that
[w]hat is then the plan for the long-term reconstruction of East Asia? Its purpose is that of realizing
the vision emblazoned on the banner, “The world one family”; and that purpose, we must recognize
afresh, coincides spontaneously with the fundamental faith of Christianity. The policy of extending
even to the continent our family principle, which finds its center in an imperial house, so that all may
bathe in its holy benevolence, this policy—can we not see?—is none other than the concrete
realization on earth of the spiritual family principle of Christianity, which looks up to God as the
Father of mankind and regards all men as brethren. This is the Christian conception of the Kingdom
of God. The basis of the Japanese spirit also consists in this; and thus, wonderful to relate, it is with
Christianity. Nay, this must indeed be the Great Way of heaven and earth…. Herein is the reason why
we, in this emergency, must make it our supreme and immediate duty to serve the country by
preaching the gospel of Christ. To store up spiritual strength to regulate the various dislocations that
the “incident” produces within the nation itself; to help the people to make that progress in both
physique and character which will fit them for the fulfillment of their mission; to enable them to burn
with the ideal of the establishment of a new East Asia; and to state firm in the assurance that it will be
accomplished; thus to make us as a nation, face to face as we are with unprecedented difficulties,
ready to sacrifice gladly for the development of the life of the ancestral country…. This, we believe,
684
Young, The Two Empires in Japan, pp. 104-5.
685
Ibid., pp. 105-6.
206
can be the work only of those who share the faith and life of Christianity.686
To sum up his lengthy discussion above, he contends that Japanese Christians must serve the
country by proclaiming Jesus Christ in order to expand the boundary of the Japanese Empire
until the end of East Asia because the expansion of the empire is the growth of God’s
kingdom.
It was in this ‘conviction’ that the president of the United Church of Christ in Japan,
Tomita Mitsuru, sent the “Nihon Kirisuto Kyodan yori dai-tōa-kyōeiken ni aru
Kirisuto-kyōto ni okuru shokan” (Epistle to the Christians in the Commonwealth of the
Great East Asia) and urge Christians of East Asia to fight against the common enemies,
White Colonialists, who are seeking to rob Asians of their lands and exploit them.
Criticising their superiority derived from unbiblical arrogance, Tomita encourages
Christians in East Asia to stand up and collaborate with the Japanese Empire for the
construction of the Commonwealth of Great East Asia. Justifying Japan’s expansionist war,
he maintains that ‘[e]ven though Japan attempted to deal with this injustice of the enemy
countries by all possible peaceful means, their arrogance did not accept them, then,
unavoidably, Japan has taken arms to defend its own existence.’687
After rendering Japan’s war into self-defence measures, he elevates them to the status of
holy war next:
The significance of our Japanese holy war is being made clearer through the victories won by the
Imperial Army since the first battle and through all the facts built upon the paths they marched. The
liberation of the East Asian nations from their injustice is God’s will.688
Identifying the objective of the Japanese Imperial war with God’s will, he then declares
that the war for the construction of the Great Commonwealth in East Asia is a fight against
686
Baker, Darkness of the Sun, pp. 30–31.
687
「日本はこの敵性国家群の不正義に対してあらゆる平和的手段に出でたるにもかかわら
ず、彼らの傲慢は遂にこれを容れず、日本は自存自衛の必要上敢然と干戈を取って立った。」
“Nihon Kirisuto Kyodan yori dai-tōa-kyōeiken ni aru Kirisuto-kyōto ni okuru shokan” (Tokyo:
Nihon Kirisuto Kyodan, 1944) chapter 1, translated by the author.
688
「しかも緒戦以来皇軍によって挙げられた諸戦果とその跡に打ち樹てられた諸事実とは、
わが日本の聖戦の意義をいよいよ明確に表示しつつあるではないか。彼らの不正不義から
東亜諸民族が解放されることは神の聖なる意志である。Ibid., translated by the author.
207
Satan who is embodied in America and Britain:
What, then, will the arrogance of Britain and America be defeated by? It is by the soldiers of the
Imperial Army and by the hands of all the East Asian nations that have stood up for earthly justice.
Because your nations have determined to stick together through thick and thin with us Japan, to fight
through this great holy war until we achieve the first objective, and have joined and collaborated with
us, in heaven and earth of East Asia, the horn heralding our and your battle for the great liberation of
the East Asian nations, the march of our great extermination war against Satan’s ferocity, has been
loudly blown. Holy and righteous God, you will rise and be with us; shine upon our path and guide
and help us. Brothers, the first bond uniting you and us is our deep awareness that we are fellow
soldiers joining this holy war. The second decisive bond that binds us together despite our differences
is the fact that we believe in our Lord Christ and we belong to him spiritually…. The ideal of the
Commonwealth of Great East Asia compels us to hear our Lord’s order of ‘love thy neighbour’ in
faith and practice it through our obedience. We should stand under our Lord’s order and march
forward, overcoming all adversities.689
Astonishingly, Tomita claims that satanic Britain and America are to be defeated by the
emperor’s army and joining the emperor’s war for the liberation of East Asia should be
regarded as obeying Jesus’ order, ‘love thy neighbour,’ and therefore fighting this war
should be taken for Christian duty. He eventually situates the emergence of the United
Church of Christ in Japan in God’s will too. He states that
[f]inally the day has come the Japanese Church is established both in name and in reality. Before our
「それでは米英の高ぶりは何によって排撃されるであろうか。皇軍の将兵によってであ
689
り、地上の正義のために立ち上がった東亜諸民族の手によってである。そして諸君の民族
がこの大聖戦にわれら日本と共に同甘共苦、所期の目的を達成するまで戦い抜こうと深く
決意し、欣然参加協力せられたことによって、大東亜の天地には、われら日本人と共に諸
君の、すなわち大東亜諸民族の一大解放の戦い、サタンの狂暴に対する一大殲滅戦の進軍
を告ぐる角笛は高らかに吹き鳴らされたのである。聖にして義なる神よ、願わくは起き給
え、しかしてわれらの出てゆく途に常に共に在して、行く手を照らし助け導き給え。兄弟
たちよ、諸君とわれらとを結ぶ第一の絆は、われらが相共にこの聖戦に出て征く戦友同志
であるという深い意識である。次にわれらを種々の相違にもかかわらず一つに結ぶ第二の、
しかも決定的な絆は、われらが共に主キリストを信じ霊的に彼の所属であるということで
ある。
。。。大東亜共栄圏の理想は、この主の隣人愛の誡めを信仰において聞き、服従の行為
によって実践躬行することをわれらに迫る。われらはこの主の誡命の下に立ち、あらゆる
障害を排して一直線に前進すべきである。」Ibid., translated by the author.
208
celebration of the 2600th anniversary of the foundation of the nation, all the Christian denominations
in Japan came together in a corner of Tokyo, dispelled all conventional differences in custom, church
polity and doctrine, became independent from the spiritual and financial supports and yoke of the
foreign missionaries, and have been united as one church of one nation abolishing all denominations.
This is an unprecedented and amazing occurrence in world Church history and it has come true.
While this is God’s answer of his grace and help to our prayers, it could be well done first and only
by Japanese Christians that incarnate the ethic of the imperial way (kōdō), standing on the
foundations of our national structure incomparable in dignity.690
Thanking God for the establishment of the Nihon Kirisuto Kyodan in God’s grace and his
answer to their prayers, he goes so far as to claim that the birth of the United Church of
Christ in Japan was made possible through the imperial ethic that has been revealed by the
emperor. What is the raison d’être for the Kyodan whose midwife is the Imperial
household? It is to serve the emperor and to help make his great will come true:
Through this process the Nihon Kirisuto Kyōdan has been established and is addressing you.
Afterwards, the president (tōrisha) of the Kyōdan was granted the glory of stepping inside the
imperial palace and of an audience with the emperor. All members of the Kyodan could not help but
shed tears for his splendour and blessings, and have deeply determined to serve the country, kindled
together with the fire of service to the country through religion, and to live up to his great will as
much as possible.691
It should be noted that these foregoing arguments do not represent only Tomita’s personal
690
「しかして遂に名実とも日本のキリスト教会を樹立するの日は来た、わが皇紀二千六百
年の祝典の盛儀を前にしてわれら日本のキリスト教諸教会諸教派は東都の一角に集い、神
と国との前にこれらの諸教派の在来の伝統、慣習、機構、教理一切の差別を払拭し、全く
外国宣教師たちの精神的・物質的援助と羈絆から脱却、独立し、諸教派を打って一丸とす
る一国一教会となりて、世界教会史上先例と類例を見ざる驚異すべき事実が出来したので
ある。これはただ神の恵みの佑助にのみよるわれらの久しき祈りの聴許であると共に、わ
が国体の尊厳無比なる基礎に立ち、天業翼賛の皇道倫理を身に体したる日本人キリスト者
にして初めてよくなしえたところである。」Ibid., chapter 3, translated by the author.
691
「かかる経過を経て成立したものが、ここに諸君に呼びかけ語っている「日本基督教団」
である。その後教団統理者は、畏くも宮中に参内、賜謁の恩典に浴するという破格の光栄
に与り、教団の一同は大御心の有難さに感泣し、一意宗教報国の熱意に燃え、大御心の万
分の一にも応え奉ろうと深く決意したのである。」Ibid., translated by the author.
209
opinion, but they express the Kyōdan’s official position. For the United Church of Christ in
Japan, the Lordship of Jesus Christ was completely replaced with the emperor, or Jesus
Christ was absorbed into the emperor.
This syncretism was to be seen across the denominations and even the high-church
Anglicans who refused to join the United Church were ardent advocates of Japanisation,
albeit some Japanese Christians, mainly Anglicans, believe that those high-church
Anglicans who refused to join the United Church of Christ in Japan resisted the
warmongering imperial government and did not give in to the governmental pressures on
them to assimilate Christianity into the Japanese National Structure (kokutai), and remained
faithful to catholic Christian faith. This is, however, nothing but a myth.
The Anglican Episcopal Church in Japan or NSKK (Nippon Sei Ko Kai) at first sought to
be chartered on their own, separated from other Protestant denominations. Even though they
met all the requirements for a charter, the government authorities refused to give them a
charter in September 1942. The reason for this decision was simple; the Imperial
Government could not tolerate their close relation with other Anglicans of enemy countries,
such as America and Britain. Even though the NSKK decided to cut their ties with
missionaries and Anglicans of enemy countries, the powers that be did not find it good
enough to believe that Japanese Anglicans are faithful the emperor’s subjects.
After the NSKK was ‘officially’ disbanded on 31 March 1942 and became an
unregistered organisation, the Anglicans split over the unification issue. While the bishops
of the dioceses that sought to join the United Church negotiated with its president to pave
the way for them to join the United Church with episcopacy and they also asked to
acknowledge the bishop’s authority to ordain clergies, the high-church Anglicans refused to
be united with the Kyodan that would not acknowledge the governing authority of
bishops.692 After the pro-unification bishops’ efforts turned fruitless in Novermber 1943, a
third of the Anglicans decided to join the United Church, while the other two thirds, alleged
high-church Anglicans, refused to be merged with the Kyodan.
Evaluating this high-church Anglicans’ ‘resistance,’ Tsukada Osamu, a Japanese
Anglican historian, contends that
‘[e]piscopacy’ is a sign of God’s sending the church into this world like Jesus sent his disciple to do
692
Tsukada, Tennō-sei-ka no Kirisuto-kyō, p. 197.
210
God’s mission. It was this ‘historical episcopacy’ that made the crisis of the confiscation of Christian
faith by the Tennō-sei (Imperial System) ideology manifest at last. What should we call this but
God’s grace?693
The structure of the original Japanese sentence of this quote is extremely tricky. A more
literal translation should be more like ‘This very “historical episcopacy” at last helped
(someone) realise the crisis of the confiscation of Christian faith by the Tennō-sei (Imperial
System) ideology.’ But in the original Japanese sentence the ‘someone’ in the parentheses is
missing. Tsukada is obviously trying to insinuate that there were some high-church
Anglican leaders who were aware of the crisis and resisted the assimilation of Christian
faith into the Japanese Imperialism. To make his point more plausible, he also claims that
those high-church Anglicans ‘confronted’ the imperial government. He states that ‘the
NSKK’s confrontation with the unification issue revealed the fact that the conflict between
episcopacy and the Japanese National Structure (kokutai) was the conflict between the
Christian community and Japanese society.’694
This claim, however, is unconvincing and utterly misleading. As a matter of fact, both the
low-church bishops and high-church bishops were ardent proponents of Japanese
Christianity and they found it necessary to create a Christianity that fit and serve the
Japanese Empire. Tsukada himself pens a statement by the seven bishops declaring that
‘establishment of a genuine Kōkoku Kirisuto-kyō (Christianity that fits and serve the empire)
is impossible if the ecclesial essence is ignored.’695 Of those seven bishops, six were
so-called high-church Anglicans and the ecclesiology expressed in this statement was that of
those high-church men who refused to join the Kyodan. Judging from its context, ‘ecclesial
essence’ in this statement implies episcopacy, and, therefore, the high-church Anglican
bishops claimed that episcopacy is essential for a Japanese Christianity that genuinely fit
693
「〈主教制〉は、キリストが神の職務を果たすために弟子たちを遣わしたように、教会
をこの世に遣わしていることのしるしである。「天皇制イデオロギーによるキリスト教信仰
の押収という事態を、最後に気づかせてくれたのは、まさしくこの〈歴史的主教制〉であ
った。これを神の恵みと呼ばずに何と言うべきであろうか。」Ibid., p. 249, translated by the
author.
694
「日本聖公会が合同問題に直面することによって明らかになってきたことは、日本の国
体との対決は、実は〈主教制〉との対決、すなわち、日本社会とキリスト者共同体との対
決であるという事実であった。」Ibid., p. 233, translated by the author.
695
Ibid., p. 194.
211
and serve the emperor (=Japanese National Structure).
This point becomes clearer if we look at Yashiro Hinsuke, one of the most legendary
high-church Anglicans in the history of the NSKK. In 1927 he was ordained to the
priesthood at 27, sent to the UK to study at Kelham Theological College, and returned to
Japan in 1929. Ten years later, in 1939, he was consecrated to the bishopric in the diocese of
Kobe. It is often said that after Japan’s defeat in 1945, he helped restore the broken relations
with the global Anglican communion as the presiding bishop. But what he talked about the
war fought in the name of the emperor and what he thought about the relation between
Christian faith and emperor has remained almost unknown, or more precisely it has been
kept secret. There are almost no documents except for one booklet that allows us to know
what he actually talked and wrote about those issues, and as far as I know, there are only
two copies of that booklet, one in the National Diet Library and the other one in the library
of Rikkyō (St Pauls’s) University in Tokyo.
The shocking fact divulged in that harmless-looking tiny booklet, Tō’a-shin-chitsujo no
kensetsu to Kirisuto-kyō (Construction of A New Order in East Asia and Christianity) is that
what he said and wrote about the Japanese imperialist wars and the empire is almost
identical with that stated in the Epistle to the Christians in the Commonwealth of the Great
East Asia by Tomita or the Kyodan. Yashiro does not hesitate to declare that he subscribes
to the official view on the war fought in East Asia: the great will incarnated in the Imperial
Japanese policy was the establishment of peace in East Asia and the construction of a new
order in East Asia was born in the spirit of the establishment of Japan; therefore the
fulfilment of this mission is great responsibility of Japanese;696 the war that the Imperial
Army is fighting is completely free from territorial ambition or pursuit of reparations.697
After expressing his joy and gratitude for the Religious Bodies Bill passing the Diet and
Christians being acknowledged as an officially registered religion along with Shinto and
Buddhism,698 even though this law is the midwife of the Unites Church of Christ in Japan,
Yashiro argues that what matters for Christianity that seeks and preaches peace is how it
justifies war.699 He maintains that if the history of the world is covered in war, Christianity
696
Yashiro Hinsuke, Tō’a-shin-chitsujo no kensetsu to Kirisuto-kyō (Kobe: Yashiro Hinsuke, 1940)
p. iv.
697
Ibid., pp. iv-v.
698
Ibid., p. 1.
699
Ibid., p. 3.
212
should have the ‘solution’ for it, namely it should be able to justify war.700 To accomplish
this mission, he reads world history as a history of progress. For primitive people, including
Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel, their world was just their family and even that small
world was not free from war.701 The Bible teaches, according to Yashiro, that the world
cannot be limited only within the family, but it had to expand from the family to the clan to
satisfy entrepreneurship, sexual desire, appetite, and to boost intellectual life.702 Human
beings progressed further beyond the boundaries of clans and made a great leap to live in
the state, and at this stage wars between clans had disappeared.703 However, human lives in
states should expand into the household of the global state; and blocs of states should come
in the process of globalisation.704 Yashiro insists that
[i]n this day and age when every nation wears wool from Australia, cotton from India, silk from
Japan, eats wheat from America, whale meat from the South Pole, needs oil from Borneo for its life,
uses gold from Russia and needs iron from Britain, its life has been unavoidably expanded all over
the world. The life of ‘they may all be one’ in the Bible has to be realised.705
This goal is reached through the process of war.706 Looking to Christopher Henry Dawson
for his support, Yashiro says that conflict between nations is caused by the issues of
education, conscription, and economy. But the expansion from the states to the blocs, and
finally to the union of the world should be achieved through conflict. This ideal of the
united world is hakkō ichiu (the whole world under one roof) and Jesus’ prophetic prayer,
“they may all be one.”707
Subsequently, Yashiro develops his own version of just war theory. He maintains that
killing is evil, but that does not lead to criticism of war. In all ages, it is only ‘Cain’s sin’
700
Ibid.
701
Ibid.
702
Ibid., p. 5.
703
Ibid., pp. 5–6.
704
Ibid., p. 6.
705
「どこの國民もその身につけるものが、オーストラリヤの毛であり、インドの綿であり、
日本の絹であり、その口にするものがアメリカの麥であり、南極の鯨であり、その生活に
ボルネオの石油を要し、ロシヤの金を用いイギリスの鐡を必要とする時、必然的にその生
命は世界大に擴大されたのである。聖書の所謂「彼らも一つにせられん爲なり」の生活が
具現されねばならぬ。」Ibid., translated by the author.
706
Ibid., p. 7.
707
Ibid.
213
that should be condemned. Killing hundreds of people in war should not cause guilty
conscience, because it is not homicide. It does not leave hatred on those who are killed.708
‘Cain’s sin,’ contrarily, remains forever. What is this ‘Cain’s sin’? He says that it is to enjoy
killing. This kind of killing is sin, and it remains for ever. This must, therefore, beg for the
grace of forgiveness.709
At this point, we should already know what he wants to do in this booklet. In the process
of achieving the ideal of the united world, Japan and China first have to be united; the
construction of the new order in East Asia is the path to the unification of the world; the
ideal of the united world is the fulfilment of Jesus’ ‘they may all be one’ and the emperor’s
great will and Jesus’ prayer for his disciple being united are one and the same; the mission
of Christians in Japan is, thus, to unite all Japanese for the holy war in East Asia that the
Imperial Army is fighting.710 This should be done by proclaiming the hope of
resurrection.711 In other words, Christian mission in Japan is to encourage all Japanese
subjects to sacrifice themselves for the country and console those who lost their loved ones,
with the hope of resurrection, ‘victory over death’712
Including a heroic figure like Yashiro, there were no Anglicans who confronted the
emperor or his empire; we cannot find even a single word of criticism of war or colonialism
or expansionism or Imperial System (tennō-sei) or the emperor himself or his empire in
wartime Anglican historical documents. They were as faithful to the emperor as other
Japanese church leaders of the Kyodan. In terms of their understanding of the relationship
between church and emperor, the high-church and low-church Anglicans and the United
Church of Christ in Japan were all in the same league.
Disruption? Tōdai-sha and Akashi Junzō

After the establishment of the Kyodan, a few minor Christian denominations or groups that
refused to join it, such as Plymouth Bretheren, Seventh-Day Adventist Church and the New
Covenant Church of Jesus Christ, went under relentless persecutions. Some members of
those groups were arrested and imprisoned for their alleged lese-majesty or sacrilege to
708
Ibid., p. 8.
709
Ibid., pp. 8–9.
710
Ibid., p. 41.
711
Ibid., pp. 64–5.
712
Ibid.
214
Shinto shrines713 but we cannot find any record of their criticism of Japan as a religious
state or idol. Of the United Church, nearly 150 members of the former Holiness Church that
was put in block 6 and 9 were arrested for their belief in the Second Coming of Jesus, albeit
they found themselves faithful subjects of the emperor and believed the war fought in his
name to be a holy war.714
While the Enlightened church leaders replaced the lordship of Jesus Christ with the
emperor and equated the wars in his name with the expansion of God’s kingdom, there was
only one ‘Christian’ group that could see through the idolatrous nature of the empire and
also refused to take arms for his wars for the sake of their faithfulness to God. Most
Japanese Christians, however, have not heard about their unusual examples in the Japanese
Christian history after the Meiji Restoration715 because this group is usually not treated as a
Christian denomination.
This group was the Japanese branch of the Watch Tower, named Tōdai-sha
(lighthouse-company) by its founder, Akashi Junzō. On 6 September 1926, Akashi was sent
as a missionary of the Watch Tower to Japan, Korea, and China. When he set up the first
base of his ministry in Kobe, he translated the English name ‘Watch Tower’ into a Japanese
word ‘tōdai,’ which meaning lighthouse, understanding the Watch Tower as ‘a means of
shining the light of understanding.’716
As the empire revealed itself more and more as an oppressive idol and radicalised in
militarism, Akashi kept criticising the demonic nature of its politics. In a booklet for the
Witnesses, entitled Kingdom of God and Peace, he criticised war and stated that
[t]he vast majority of people of all nations long for peace. Only a tiny minority always long for war. If
a war breaks out between two countries, ordinary people are powerless to decide either on war or
peace. Only the minority of rulers arbitrarily make decisions on this issue and conscript ordinary
people for battle. In this way war provides only a minority of people with material profit. Ordinary
people suffer a great loss, and young people are sent to the battle field inopportunely, and afterwards
713
Fujio, Masahito. “Senjika Kirisuto-kyō Hakugai Kankei Shiryō ni tsuite” in Sanko Shoshi
Kenkyu, no. 5, (ed. Kokuritsu Kokkai Toshokan, 1972: doi: 10.11501/3050895) pp. 4-5; 13-14.
714
Dohi, Kirisuto-kyōkai to tennō-sei, pp. 96-7.
715
A revolutionary movement that sought to pull down the Tokugawa shogunate and establishe
Japan as a modern state by holding up the emperor as the absolute sovereign.
716
Carolyn R. Wah, “Jehovah's Witnesses and the Empire of the Sun: A Clash of Faith and Religion
During World War II,” Journal of Church and State (2002): p. 54.
215
only a lot of people suffering in despair are left to be seen. War is destruction of people. To take
human life is murder. God made human life holy. The true reason for the outbreak of wars is Satan’s
influence on all the sovereignties of people.717
About the emperor and the expansionist war in his name, he declared that
Japan’s military action in China is absolutely nothing but invasion, and that would lead Japan to
destruction. The emperor is no more than a human, not a god. The plan of conquering not only all
Asia, but the whole world by holding up this mere human, emperor, is megalomania of the fanatic
militarists driven by the Devil. Therefore those who truly love Japan and Japanese people must not be
deluded by their unreasonable remarks.718
This kind of succinct statement of the emperor being a mere human or sharp criticism of the
war fought in his name cannot be found in any of the books or pamphlets or magazines or
periodicals or sermons by other Christian leaders.
In January 1939 Tōdai-sha went into a head-on collision with the imperial government
when Akashi’s eldest son, Akashi Masato refused to receive his uniform and gun issued by
the army. He said to his commander officer that ‘[a]s a Christian I would like to obey the
Bible words which state, ‘Thou shall not kill.’ Therefore I am returning my gun.’719 For
Masato, as long as a gun is nothing but for killing and military training is also for this
purpose, the military service was a breach of the biblical interdict of ‘you shall not kill your
717
「『諸国民の大部分は平和を欲求している。唯極めて少数者のみが常に戦争を望んでい
る。両国の間に紛争が発生せる場合、一般民衆は和戦の如何を決するに全く無力である。
少数の支配者のみがこの問題を勝手に決定し、一般民衆を戦闘のために強制徴収す。而し
て、戦争は常に極めて少数の者のみに物質的利益を与うる結果となる。一般民衆はこれが
ために大損害を受け、時ならずして多くの青年を墓場に送り、その跡には失望と落胆に苦
しみ悩む多くの人々を見るのみである。戦争は人々の破壊である。人命を奪うことは殺人
である。神は人々の生命を神聖なるものとされた。戦争勃発の真因は見ゆる人間の支配権
の上に働くところのサタンの危険なる感化である。』
」Inagaki Masami, Heieki wo kyohi shita
nihon-jin: Tōdai-sha no senjika-teikō (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1972) p. 60, translated by the author.
718
「日本の対支（中国）行動は絶対に侵略的行為であって、この結果は日本を亡ぼすこと
になる。天皇は人間の一人であって神にあらず。この人間天皇を擁して全アジア否全世界
を征服せんと企図するがごとき計画は、悪魔に踊らされる軍国狂徒の誇大妄想である。故
に、真に日本と日本人を愛する者は斯かる狂徒の妄言に惑わされるな」。Inagaki, Heieki wo
kyohi shita nihon-jin, p. 60, translated by the author.
719
Wah, “Jehovah's Witnesses and the Empire of the Sun: A Clash of Faith and Religion During
World War II,” Journal of Church and State (2002): p. 61.
216
neighbour.’ He even believed that Christians were not allowed to possess arms.
When Masato was sent from the army barracks to a prison cell and questioned there, one
of the inquiring officers pointed his gun at him and asked, ‘Are you saying that you don't
mind being killed?’720 Even though he was startled by the unexpected behaviour of his
inquirer for a moment, he soon gained his composure and replied, ‘Even if you kill me, I
won't kill you.’721 When Masato was asked what he thought about the emperor, his answer
was that the emperor is just a human and the highest authority of Japan.722 He refused to
worship the emperor in whatever form, because the emperor was no more than a creature
created by God. He also believed that ‘the emperor ruled in a system that was controlled by
Satan, and he refused to participate in military training because he didn't want to be trained
how to kill.’723 On Masato’s refusal of military service, Akashi Junzo and his wife Shizue
were ordered to report to Tokkō (Special Higher Police). Being questioned about their
thoughts about their son’s stand, both of them replied, ‘Given his faith, he did the right
thing.’724
Another member of Tōdai-sha, Muramoto Kazuo, older than Akashi Masato by four years
and conscripted in April 1938, was in military training when he heard that Masato refused to
receive his gun. He was shocked by this story and came to realise that his faith was
weakened in the army even though he refused the daily worship toward the imperial palace.
After pondering on Masato’s refusal of the gun for a few days, he felt he should not remain
in the army. Then, one early evening, he escaped from his regiment and headed to the
Tōdai-sha’s humble headquarters in Tokyo where Akashi lived. At around 9 in the evening,
he met with Akashi and said, ‘I have escaped from my regiment. I have given up the
military training and I am here.’725 Akashi nodded his head, but to Muramoto’s surprise, he
encouraged Muramoto to go back to his regiment. Akashi said, ‘Think it over. Even if you
stay here, once they learn you have escaped, they will come here for you and take you back.
It is unquestionable. It is better for you to go back now.’726 Muramoto mumbled, ‘It needs
courage.’ Akashi replied and said, ‘Exactly. That is the real courage.’ Late at night,
720
Ibid., p. 62.
721
Ibid.
722
Ibid.
723
Ibid.
724
Ibid., p. 64.
725
Ibid., p. 87.
726
Ibid.
217
following his master’s advice, Muramoto went back to the military engineering school
where he was allocated. Both his platoon and squad leaders were relieved to see him coming
back. They were simply glad that their faces and the school’s reputation were saved and his
escape was not reported to the headquarters.
But three days later, he followed in Masato’s footsteps. When he was ordered to do
maintenance work on the guns, he went up to his squad leader and said, ‘I am returning my
gun.’727 He then also declared that he could no longer take military training. He expressed
his refusal of military service in this way. Hearing Masato’s refusal of military service, his
squad leader went pale in fear. Even the platoon officer did not know what he should do
with Masato’s case. They kept asking Masato if he had talked about his stand and decision
with other soldiers as they were afraid that conscientious objection would infect other
soldiers.
Learning that those cases of military service refusal were linked to Tōdai-sha’s faith, the
imperial government accelerated their oppression on this sect and set about disbanding it.
On 21 June 1939 Tōdai-sha’s headquarters was surrounded by about 50 policemen and its
26 resident members, including Akashi Junzo, his wife Shizue, their second son Chikara and
third son Mitsuo, were arrested. Tōdai-sha’s printed materials, such as books, periodicals,
pamphlets, and its other possessions, like typewriters, gramophone, print paper, and so on,
were all confiscated. The other six building owned by Tōdai-sha also went through police
crackdowns and the number of arrested members totalled over 130 on this day.728
Interestingly, this mass arrest was completely covered up and there was not even a single
newspaper that covered this incident.729 That is to say the fact that there were Japanese who
refused military service had to be kept secret. This testifies that under the military
government even a thought of refusing military service was intolerable and any trace of
such a stand had to be erased from the empire.
Being separated from the other family members, Akashi Junzo was transferred to the Ogu
police station and suffered cruel torture for over seven months there. ‘After increasingly
violent cross-examinations, the police completed their report on Junzo Akashi on 1 April
1940.’730 In May 1942, he was sentenced to twelve years in prison for anti-war conduct,
727
Ibid., p. 89.
728
Inagaki, Heieki wo kyohi shita nihon-jin, p. 102.
729
Ibid., p. 103.
730
Wah, “Jehovah's Witnesses and the Empire of the Sun,” Journal of Church and State (2002): p.
218
plotting to alter the National Structure, and lèse-majesté at the Tokyo district court. In April
next year, he received a ten-year jail sentence at the appeal court and after his appeal to the
supreme court was rejected, he was incarcerated in Kyugo prison in the north of Japan untile
October 1945 where he was treated cruelly by prison guards. Shizue, Junzo’s wife, was also
convicted with him and sentenced to three years and six months in prison. During the four
years of confinement in jail in an extremely inhumane condition she contracted tuberculosis
and neuralgia. She was so enfeebled that she could not walk even with two nurses holding
her on both sides, but no treatment was offered for her diseases, and as a result, on 8 June
1944, she died at the age of 58. Junzo was not even allowed to see her on her deathbed.
This extraordinary resistance of Tōdai-sha against the empire was not reported even by a
single national newspaper. There was, therefore, virtually no Japanese who knew that there
was a ‘Christian’ group that denied the emperor’s divinity, saw through the demonic and
idolatrous nature of the Empire of Japan, refused to fight for the emperor, and prophesied
the destruction of this idol state.
64.
219
Summary of the Second Part
In this second part, I sought to uncover the Japanese historical and cultural idiosyncrasy that
almost always remain invisible to both Japanese and non-Japanese but renders the churches
sojourning in Japan extremely vulnerable to the Constantinian temptation. In order to
develop this point, I analysed Maruyama’s papers that deal with the issue of the Japanese
cultural old layer which he named basso ositinato. Maruyama analysed it as a kind of
unconscious mechanism that is hardly ever thematised in Japanese thought history, but
penetrates it and works all the time behind the scene to Japanise imported materials such as
Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, Marxism, and Christianity. This old layer of Japanese
culture is, according to Maruyama, particularly perceptible in those Japanese authors,
especially of the Edo period, who wrote about the dramatic changes in politics on Japanese
soil by referring to imported teachings. All imported doctrines never remain intact as they
are imported, but they all go through the process of Japanisation. Whatever the material of
Japanisation is, it alway works out in the same direction: Japanisation is always
accommodationist. All imported teachings are altered to approve the political status quo or
the most powerful; transcendent elements are put aside and momentum is praised instead;
then the most powerful clique is identified with heaven’s law. Moral or ethical evaluation of
political power is mocked and naked power is exalted. In this way, the basso ostinato paves
the way for the unlimited arbitrary manipulation of language. In other words, Japanisation
driven by the basso ostinato is the process of eliminating the distinction between truth and
lie by denying any truth beyond the powers that be.
While Maruyama sought to find a key, if not the key, in ancient Japanese literatures for
understanding the justification of the status quo through historical narratives written by
intellectuals of the Edo period, I have attempted to complement his insight by looking at
Japanese history after 1549. My concise account of Tokugawa regime as an amoral rule,
whose ultimate objective is just to satisfy Tokugawa’s desire for power, is to shed light on
the historical background that gave birth to those intellectuals who produced historical
literatures that only suck up to the brutal rulers. The history after the collapse of the Edo
bakufu that I have told showed not only that Tokugawa’s anti-Christian policy was
succeeded by the newly fabricated Japanese Empire, but also that the church leaders’
behaviour patterns perfectly fit Maruyama’s basso ostinato thesis; namely all the Christian
220
leaders that I dealt with in this second part craftily modified the Christian doctrine to fit the
Japanese Empire’s divine state ideology grounded on the emperor.
Liberalism, the Grand Narrative that trapped the Church in Japan

From the vantage point of Hauerwas’s criticism of Constantinianism and liberalism, it is not
hard for us to tell what the controlling narrative was that actually guided and decided the
direction of the arguments between the founders of the Japanese Empire and church leaders.
It was from beginning to end an imagination shaped by western liberalism. They all spoke
the same language to give birth to Japan as a late-coming nation state. Japan as a modern
nation state, of course, did not exist before the Meiji period (from 8 September 1868 to 30
July 1912). The fall of Tokugawa bakufu itself did not give the Restorationists, founders of
the Japanese Empire, any resources that could enable them to establish their new polity as a
nation state. They did not know what the nation state was. They needed a grand narrative
that could help them to establish a new polity that could compete with the powerful
European countries, but they did not have it. It could not be found in their past. That had to
be imported from the West. This grand narrative, which was also the midwife of the Empire
of Japan, was liberal political theories.
On the other hand, the development of theological liberalism is, as we have already seen
in the first part, in parallel with that of political liberalism. Theological liberalism
unconditionally accepted the authority or superiority of the Enlightenment secular reason
and put the biblical authority for the church and Christian doctrine under the human
reasoning power. Namely it is the Enlightenment rationality freed from the church and the
Scripture and the catholic doctrine that redefines Christian faith. Jesus and God should be
freed from the triple bond of church, Bible and ecumenical doctrine so that more ‘rational
Christianity’ is achieved. The objective of theological liberalism is the liberation of
Christianity from the obsolete superstitious doctrine.
If we read the concise history of the church in Japan after the Meiji Restoration and of the
Japanese Empire that I described, bearing those fundamental functions of political and
theological liberalism in mind, the church-destroying potential of liberalism should become
visible. Once political liberalism and theological liberalism are imported into a country like
Japan, which has never been part of Christendom, political liberalism tends to shore up the
power of the power holders who have the ambition to seize power by marginalising or
221
annihilating political rivals, including churches, to consolidate their hegemony. Theological
liberalism abets this process by embracing it as the ‘updating’ of Christianity.
It was political liberalism that gave the founders of the Japanese Empire the grand
narrative which enabled them to bring ‘Japan’ into being. It was by way of political
liberalism that they could assimilate more than 270 countries or han of the Edo period into a
single nation state named ‘Japan’ by codifying the Constitution of the Empire of Japan and
establishing the emperor’s sovereignty by defining the newborn state as his empire. In fact,
Japan was created through the Meiji Constitution, but this constitution could not have been
codified without the political liberalism imported from the West to establish a new polity
after the fall of the Edo bakufu.
What was completely unimaginable for the Western advisors hired by the new political
leaders was, however, that the founders of the Japanese Empire could deify a sovereign
through drafting a constitution. They seem to have been unaware of the mythical origin of
their own nation states and and the histories of their own states in which civil religions were
established in order to replace or subjugate the church. The founders of Japanese empire, in
contrast, seem to have been fully aware of the fictitious character of liberal foundation
narratives. Given that there were no cultural or historical resources that could be used by the
founders of Japan to centralise power under a single person and to integrate more than 270
countries of the Edo period into one polity, and furthermore, to establish it as a powerful
religion that could order all people living on its territory to sacrifice their lives for it, it
should be concluded that political liberalism brought forth Japan as a nation state and civil
religion.
The fictitious character of political liberalism is also highlighted by article 28 of the Meiji
Constitution and the Religious Bodies Law. We must recall that the category of religion was
invented through the manipulation of attributing politics or ‘public’ only to the governing
authority and kicking their rivals, the church, out of politics. Here again the governing
authority or sovereignty is one that is manipulatively invented, established and justified.
Furthermore, as Cavanaugh showed, the governing authority that is born through such
processes is sacralised; namely, it is set up intentionally as a rival religion in non-religious
disguise that competes against ecclesial authorities. The founders of the Japanese Empire
went through the same manipulation process when they sought to give their new polity a
modern nation state façade.
222
The religious nature of modern liberal nation states is much more obvious in the case of
Japan than in other western cases because while emerging nation states in the West could
conceal their religious characters by defining themselves as ‘civil’ and ‘non-religious’
against the church, Japan needed to emphasise the religious nature of the new polity in order
to control and keep the church out of Japanese politics. Here Inoue and Katō’s denunciation
of Christianity is highly enlightening. They were fully aware that the modern state was born
through the process of the sovereignty or civil government gaining power by severing itself
from ecclesial authority. They also knew the religious nature of the nation state really well.
In other words, for both Inoue and Katō, the nation state was nothing but the strongest of
competing religions. For them, politics was religion. What matters was, therefore, how to
control and marginalise other rival religions to secure the dominance of the most powerful
religion, namely the nation state.
This point is quite obvious when we see that they play with their own apologetics to
bolster the unity of Japan based on emperor worship, while criticising Christianity for
weakening national unity by causing religious wars. This religious wars narrative was, of
course, a creation of political liberalism. For Inoue and Katō, a Christian claim that
Christianity contributes to the unity of the Japanese Empire was nonsense and it was no
more than a sign of Christians’ ignorance.
Doubly Blind
In contrast to the founders of the empire and its apologists, the church leaders were naïve
and doubly blind, firstly, to their own historical or cultural vulnerability to power, and,
secondly, to the religious nature of Japan as a nation state that was brought forth by political
liberalism. They were not aware that the Edo regime established amoral societies that deny
any truths but the powers that be in order to create an amoral people obedient to the ruling
class. Nor could they see that the empire was established as a religion. Even though the
Constitution of the Empire of Japan and the Imperial Rescript on Education and its official
commentary had clearly defined the Japanese Empire as a new religion, and even though the
author of the official commentary on the education rescript showed that the Japanese ethic
and Christian ethic belonged to different gods, hardly any church leaders could understand
Japan itself was a religion, namely, an idol.
The more oppressive and unyielding the imperial government became, the more yielding
223
and submissive became the church leaders. They finally ended up parroting what the
government preached as kokutai (National Structure) in Christian jargon. They, in fact,
translated Christian faith into the State Shinto ideology, and in doing so they made
Christianity completely redundant: progress/civilisation is the kingdom of God that Jesus
preached and the ‘new Christianity’ is the catalyst of modern progress (Yokoi); Christianity
is ‘the highest consciousness of humanity through the unification of self and universe,’
dying for Japan is martyrdom, and Japan is to be transformed into God’s new kingdom on
earth (Ebina); the expansion of the empire is the growth of God’s kingdom and joining
emperor’s war for the liberation of East Asia is equal to obeying Jesus’ order of ‘love thy
neighbour’ (Tomita); Jesus’ prayer of ‘they may all be one’ is identical with the Japanese
imperial ideology of hakō ichiu (the whole world under one roof), and the holy war fought
in the name of the emperor in East Asia is the process of ‘they may all be one,’ and killing
for the nation state is no sin (Yashiro). In short, serving the emperor is serving Jesus, and his
empire is the kingdom of God. These are the fruits of what Wataze proclaimed as ‘[t]he
meaning of Japanization (Nihonka):’ once the Jewish and Western wrappings are taken away
from Christianity, there remains nothing hostile to the Empire of Japan. Who fails to hear
echoes of Maruyama’s basso ostinato in those Japanised Christianities, modification of
imported doctrines into sheer laud of the status quo?
There is a strong affinity between basso ostinato and liberalism. While the basso ostinato
covertly drives Japanisation of imported doctrines into apologia of the status quo, the true
power of liberalism exists in generating fictions, such as a State of perfect Freedom, a state
of nature, individual, the dichotomy between private and public, politics separated from
religion, social contract, Wars of Religion, and so on, to retrofit a new polity that emerges
through violence with sovereignty.
This character of liberalism is exemplified, for example, by Rorty’s defence of liberal
society. He admits that liberalism has its origin in the Enlightenment idea of reason that
‘there is a relationship between the ahistorical essence of the human soul and moral truth
that ensures that free and open discussion will produce “one right answer” to moral as well
as to scientific questions.’731 ‘In our century,’ however, ‘this rationalist justification of the
731
Richard Rorty, “The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy” in The Rorty Reader (ed. Christopher
J. Voparil and Richard J. Bernstein, Malden, MA.: Wiley Blackwell, 2010) p. 240.
224
Enlightenment compromise has been discredited.’732 Admitting, with Rawls, that there is
no possibility of coming up with a better philosophical theory that can be universally
acceptable, he declares that ‘we—we heirs of the Enlightenment for whom justice has
become the first virtue’733 do not need to define or explain what self is that is to be
attributed with ‘rights.’ In other words, liberals or the heirs of the Enlightenment can be
completely indifferent of questions, such as, what is human, what is human nature, who has
rights, and what is justice.
Those questions should be ‘detached from politics’734 and
questions about the point of human existence, or the meaning of human life, to be reserved for private
life. A liberal democracy will not only exempt opinions on such matters from legal coercion, but also
aim at disengaging discussions of such questions from discussions of social polity. Yet it will use
force against the individual conscience, just insofar as conscience leads individuals to act so as to
threaten democratic institutions.735
But if basic ideas or conceptions of liberalism that were exploited to justify the governing
authority of a nation state like America must be abandoned, how can a ‘democratic society’
be sustained? To answer this question, Rorty quotes Rawls:
since justice as fairness is intended as a political conception of justice for a democratic society, it tries
to draw solely upon basic intuitive ideal that are embedded in the political institutions of a democratic
society and the public traditions of their interpretation. Justice as fairness is a political conception in
part because it starts from within a certain political tradition.736
This development or shift of liberalism is remarkable. Once the universalist claim of

liberal theories has gone bust with the Enlightenment, a new liberalism, which Rorty and
Rawls subscribe to, suddenly turned communitarian and started saying a common
understanding of justice should be found in the public tradition of a specific democratic
732
Ibid., p.240.
733
Ibid., p. 245.
734
Ibid., p. 246.
735
Ibid., p. 246.
736
John Rawls, “Justice as Fairness,” pp. 225–6, cited in ibid., p. 243.
225
society, which is America for them. But Cavanaugh has taught us that America had become
an autonomous state through the war, even though the Royalists did not like independent
‘America.’ Then the ‘founders’ imposed on all ‘Americans’ their ideal ‘liberal democratic
system.’
Postmodernism has scrapped what the Enlightenment believed to be the foundation of
every truth, but for some reason political theorists cannot let go of liberalism. Once the
foundational narrative of liberalism has been discredited, what should it do then? What kind
of role should liberalism play? For Rorty and Rawls, the new liberalism is merely functional.
For the new liberalism, there is no telos to politics. ‘Function’ is normally understood in
relation to its objective, but for the proponents of the new liberalism, function exists for the
sake of function itself. In other words, politics is meaningless function. So even if the
foundation narrative of liberalism has been discredited it continues to play an important
function. This function is to persuade people in ‘liberal societies’ to swallow up the ethical
highest common factor as just and fair. More precisely, as the the Enlightenment settlement
unravels, it seems the only role left for liberalism to play is to make the 49% of citizens to
accept or condone a ‘political’ decision made by the other 51%. In this way, liberalism has
transformed itself into a little more than a tool for social manipulation—one not far from the
premise of basso ostinato.
In this sense, what the founders of the emperor’s empire tried to do was quite similar to
what the founders of America did; the founders of Japan sought to impose their own ideal
political system by creating their own version of liberal foundation narrative. As liberalism
was used to justify the new governing authority called America, the blend of liberalism and
basso ostinato was tactfully utilised by the founders of Japan to retrofit the new polity they
were building with sovereignty.
The premise of this thesis has been that Christian faith is utterly vain if its foundational
narratives about Jesus Christ are discredited. Paul says that
if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain.
We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—
whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then
Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your
sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in
226
Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.737
For liberalism was, from the very beginning, invented as the self-justifying theory of the
emerging modern state, there is nothing surprising in the readjustment project of liberalism
by modern liberals such as Rorty and Rawls to justify the system which is already in
operation and they are already in, in their case, American politics, even after the foundation
narrative of liberalism was discredited.
The foundation narratives of the church are, on the other hand, those of Jesus Christ.
They were not invented by the Apostles, but they are their witnesses. If people do not trust
the Apostles’ witnesses, they should not join the church. If there are members in the church
who mistrust the Apostles’ witnesses, they are to repent or to be excommunicated. If there
was a ‘church’ of which the minister and all members distrusted the Apostles’ witnesses,
thus abandon the foundation narratives of the church, it could not be a church by definition.
It is a new cult distinct from the church.
The vast majority of the enlightened Japanese church leaders advocated Japanisation of
Christianity. Accepting the myth that Europe was devastated by Wars of Religion fought
between competing Christian confessions, they believed that Christianity should be
transformed for Japan; they believed Christianity should fit Japanese culture; they thought
that Christianity should contribute to making Japan a great country. And they found the
necessary resources in theological liberalism. That does not mean that all church leaders
confessed liberal Christianity, but in most cases their arguments were framed and controlled
by political and theological liberalism. That is why even those who thought they subscribed
to the catholic Christian creeds advocated the idea of Japanisation of Christianity and they
also believed that Japanese Christianity should fit Japanese culture. Just as culturally
conservative German theologians were enthusiastic proponents of the idea of Enlightened
Christianity and equated Christianity with German national culture, hardly any conservative
Japanese Christians had doubt about Japanising Christianity in order to transform it to fit
Japanese culture and the national structure.
Theological liberalism largely received its contents from political liberalism. As far as I
understand, of liberal theories by classical liberals, such as Hobbes, Locke, Spinoza,
737
1Cor. 15:14–19 (NRSV).
227
Voltaire, Rousseau, and so on, the most crucial part is not their myths of ‘state of nature’ or
‘social contract’ that are proposed as ‘facts’ revealed by ‘reason,’ but their redefinitions of
Christianity through their unorthodox reinterpretations of the biblical narratives. Even if
there is a variety of interpretations of particular passages, they share the same hermeneutic
principle: to read the Bible in order to subject the church to the civil sovereign or
government. In this sense, political liberalism was launched as a theological project whose
objective was to come up with a new Christianity that transforms the church into a good
servant to the nation state governed by the civil sovereign.
Spinoza, for example, states that ‘God has no special kingdom among men except in so
far as He reigns through temporal rulers. Moreover, the rites of religion and the outward
observances of piety should be in accordance with the public peace and well-being, and
should therefore be determined by sovereign power alone.’738 He also says that ‘[i]nasmuch
as the kingdom of God consists entirely in rights applied to justice and charity or to true
religion, it follows that (as we asserted) the kingdom of God can only exist among men
through the means of the sovereign powers.’739 Rousseau redefines Christianity and
maintains that it ‘has neither temples, nor altars, nor rites, and is confined to the purely
internal cult of the supreme God and the eternal obligations of morality, is the religion of the
Gospel pure and simple, the true theism, what may be called natural divine right or law.’740
Hobbes claims the best form of worship to God is obedience to the civil sovereign and his
laws, ‘[f]or as Obedience is more acceptable to God than Sacrifice.’741 Laws set by the civil
sovereign are ‘the Lawes of that Divine Worship, which naturall Reason dictateth to private
men.’742 In his new Christianity, as we have already seen, there is no place for the church
catholic, because the ‘chief Pastor’ of the church is the ‘Civill Soveraign’743 and it is he
who decides what is orthodox and what is heretical for the church in his domain; and
therefore, there is no ultimate authority that all Christians should obey. That means that the
church should be divided into as many as the number of sovereigns. For this new
Christianity, ‘the Kingdome of God is a Civill Kingdome.’744
738
Spinoza, Tractatus-Theologico-Politicus, Tractatus Politicus, p. 186.
739
Ibid., p. 187.
740
Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, p. 130.
741
Hobbes, Leviathan, p. 222.
742
Ibid.
743
Ibid.
744
Ibid., p. 247.
228
What Collins has unmasked about the Hobbesian project, in fact, applies to most classical
liberals. He maintains that ‘Hobbes understood the historic hold of Christianity. This, and
not a genuine devotion to scriptural “truths”, explains his effort to offer a reading of the
Bible consistent with his philosophy.’745 Hobbes did not wish to read the Scripture
faithfully, but he ‘would seek to transform Christianity into an instrument of sovereignty,
thus destroying its inherent challenge to the absolute state.’746 ‘Leviathan’s task was to
suggest a model of Christian theology that would render it as politically malleable as the
pagan religious doctrines had been.’747 In other words, the ultimate objective of the
Hobbesian project was to turn Christianity into civil religion in order to secure the
domination of the civil sovereign or government, and this is exactly what classical liberals
sought to achieve through their theories.
It was theological liberalism that gave wings to the creative imagination of Japanese
church leaders who pursued to ‘link’ their most significant cultural element, the emperor
and imperial household, to Christianity. It is now easy to see that, when Japanese church
leaders argued that the out-of-date superstitious old Roman Catholicism was harmful to the
nation state, but their ‘new Christianity’ brings peace and prosperity to the nation and it was
of the best service to Japan, or that the new Christianity teaches us to serve one’s own nation
state, or that Christianity should be transformed or Japanised to be of the best service to
Japan, they just rephrased political liberal theories. It is the newly redefined kingdom of
God, which is co-extensive with the sovereign state, that encouraged the Japanese church
leaders to identify the expansion of the Empire of Japan with the growth of God’s kingdom.
Furthermore, it is the liberal equation of reason=nature=God/rational=natural=divine that
paved the way for them to make ‘Japanese culture’ Christian.
The ‘new Christianity’ that assimilates the church into the sovereign state made it
impossible for the Japanese church leaders mentioned in this thesis to ask the right question,
‘What is faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ?’ As they could not ask the right question, they
were made faithful servants of the newly invented idol, instead of Jesus Christ. As political
liberalism had to divorce itself from truth, and therefore it was destined to degrade into a
tool of rhetorical manipulation of ‘liberal society’ after the truth-finding potential of the
745
Collins, The Allegiance of Thomas Hobbes, p. 35.
746
Ibid.
747
Ibid., p. 45
229
Enlightenment reason was discredited, it was a ‘natural’ outcome of theological liberalism,
which operates on the reason=nature=God/rational=natural=divine equation, that the ‘new
Christianity’ deteriorated into a dazzling array of creative human imagination.
In The Original Revolution, Yoder pointed out that at the roots of all types of
Constantinianism, ‘the church tried to strengthen her hold on society and her usefulness
within society by taking the side of the persons or the ideologies currently in power.’748 He
named this blind desire of the church to ally herself to the most powerful and to the zeitgeist
of any generation in the future ‘neo-neo-neo-neo-Constantinianism.’ The versions of
Japanese Christianity that equated the kingdom of God with the Japanese Empire and
accommodated the Lordship of Jesus Christ into the emperor expresses the desire so well
described by Yoder. After all is said and done, it is undeniable that the dominant versions of
Japanese Christianity have explicitly aimed to contribute to converting the whole Japanese
church into a docile subsidiary to Japanese empire. Thus was the church in Japan captured
by ‘the ruler of this world’ through their desire to side with the powers that be, to be
influential on the society where they sojourned, and to be ‘realistic’ in time of crisis.
If it is true that ‘the church always exists, if it is faithful, on foreign or alien ground,’749
we are inevitably led to ask whether a church that is seized by ‘the ruler of this world’
should still be called ‘a church.’ The past cannot be changed, but the history of the church in
Japan that I narrated in this part might be able to serve as a precaution for the faithful of this
and of future generations.
Double Helix of Liberalism and Basso Ostinato Makes Repentance
Dispensable
The ‘holy war’ fought in the name of the emperor was also ended in his name; on 15 August,
1945, the defeat of Japan in the Pacific War was announced to the Japanese people by the
emperor himself on the radio through the Jewel Voice Broadcast (Gyokuon Hōsō) in which
he read out the Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War. This broadcast symbolises
the collapse of the religious state built on all the fiction and myths that were fabricated at the
beginning of the Meiji era. But even this devastating defeat in the ‘holy war’ did not wake
up the wartime church leaders. The wartime political leaders, Japanese Christians and the
748
749
230
SCAP (Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers) helped retain the irresponsible
fictitious divine state after the war.
On 28 August of the same year, the 13th standing committee of the United Church of
Christ in Japan was held and Tomita, president of Kyōdan, delivered a speech:
Once the holy decision has been made and the imperial rescript revealed, thereby the path we should
walk is laid down. The teachers and members of this denomination should now hold up the holy will,
be fully committed to preserve the national structure, walk in faith to restore the national power in the
future lest we should fail to live up to the holy intent. First of all, we have to deeply reflect and repent
that things have turned out this way because we failed to sacrifice ourselves enough to render sincere
services to the country; we then should solemnly pledge to contribute to laying spiritual foundations
for the new Japan by bracing ourselves for walking the thorny path with endurance and devotion.750
For the war-time Japanese church leaders who replaced or equated the lordship of Jesus
with the emperor’s, the task of the church did not change even after Japan’s defeat in the
war; it was shūkyō-hōkoku (service to the country with religion) and the mission of the
church was to pave the way for the restoration of kōkoku (nation of the emperor).751
On 17 August this year, Hirohito, emperor, appointed Prince Higashikuni, a member of
the imperial family, as Prime Minister and formed the first and last imperial household
cabinet in Japanese history. The ultimate objective of this cabinet was to exonerate the
emperor from all responsibility for the war and to secure the preservation of the kokutai
(National Structure=Imperial System). For this purpose, finding a skilled negotiator who
could gain sympathies from General MacArthur and GHQ was crucial and the very person
whom the Higashikuni cabinet appointed for this role was Kagawa Toyohiko, one of the
most respected Christian leaders, educated at Princeton. He served as cabinet advisor on
Higashikuni’s request. ‘Kagawa was for the emperor. “We need him” he said strongly….
750
「聖断一度下リ畏クモ勅書ノ煥発トナル。而シテ我ガ国民ノ進ムベキ道茲ニ定マレリ。
本教団ノ教師及ビ信徒ハ此際聖旨ヲ奉戴シ国体護持ノ一念ニ徹シ、愈々信仰ニ励ミ将来ノ
国力再興ニ傾ケ以テ聖慮ニ応ヘ奉ラザルベカラズ。我等ハ先ヅ事茲ニ至リタルハ畢竟我等
ノ匪躬ノ誠足ラズ報国ノ力乏シキニ因リシコトヲ深刻ニ反省懺悔シ、今後辿ルベキ荊棘ノ
道ヲ忍苦精進以テ新日本ノ精神的基礎建設ニ貢献センコトヲ厳カニ誓ウベシ。」Jinja mondai
to kirisuto-kyō, (ed. Tomura Masahiro, Tokyo: Shinkyo-shuppan 1976) p.356, cited in Ono, Nihon
Purotestanto Kyoukai-shi (Ge), p. 206, translated by the author.
751
Saji, Dochaku to zasetsu, p. 165.
231
Hirohito is a man of tragedy. I sympathize with him. The nation and the Diet are responsible
for the war. He is not.’752
Higashikuni and Kawaga started the Ichioku sō-zange (all hundred-million repentance)
campaign and Higashikuni went around stating that the preservation of the Imperial System
is firm Japanese faith that is beyond reasoning and emotions, and that all the hundred
million Japanese subjects, including the soldiers and the officials, should express a deep
remorse to the emperor and make this ‘repentance’ the first step toward rebuilding and
uniting Japan. On 20 September, 1945, Tomita, President of the Kyōdan, received a
message from Prince Higashikuni with great joy which asked Japanese Christians to help
establish Japan as a peace-promoting state under the emperor and Tomioka promised all
support from the United Church of Christ in Japan. On the side of the SCAP, ‘[i]t is now
known that, from the early days of the occupation, MacArthur believed that retaining the
emperor would assist his governing of Japan, and he had no intention of indicting him as a
war criminal.’753
From this campaign it can be clearly seen that the political leaders that led Japan to the
tragic war were still seeking to recycle the fiction and myths that were invented and
exploited for building up the religious state, and that Christians, again, enthusiastically
helped the post-war leaders to turn the warmongering empire into a peace-loving country in
the name of the emperor by adding another myth that there are mutual trust and love
between the emperor and his subjects that are beyond all reasoning and explanation.754
As early as January 1946, the leaders of the United Church of Christ in Japan published
their ‘opinion’ about their ‘responsibility’ for having supported the war in Nihon
kirisuto-kyōdan shinpō (United Church of Christ in Japan News). They claimed that
Japanese Churches had not actively supported the war; the church leaders had not planned
the war nor stirred up hostility against other countries; the Kyōdan had been ordered to
inform its members of the objective of the war and to pass on the information offered by the
government and military authorities that they had believed true; they had so trusted the
government and the military authorities that they had not realised the information provided
was inaccurate; therefore the wartime church leaders were not to be blamed for supporting
752
Mark Gayn, Japan Diary (New York: W. Sloane Associates, 1948) p. 99.
753
Dear General MacArthur: Letters From the Japanese During the American Occupation (ed.
John Junkerman, trans. Sodei Rinjirō, Lanham, MD.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001) p. 66.
754
Saji, Dochaku to zasetsu, p. 156.
232
the war.755 In fact, most of the wartime church leaders avoid talking about their
responsibility for supporting the war. They remained in leading positions and ‘in the church,
it was exceedingly rare to discuss their responsibility for the war with one another.’756
At the WCC conference at Bangkok in 1949, the NCC delegates stated that ‘[t]here
seemed only two alternatives for the church to follow, either to clash with the militaristic
regime at the expense of complete dissolution of the churches and even martyrdom, or to
suffer together with their fellow country-men in perseverance and sacrifice. The sense of
national solidarity led our church people to choose the latter position.’757 It is remarkable
that the Japanese church leaders did not hesitate to talk as if the church of the first and
second centuries had just two options, namely to be chartered by the Roman Empire or
perish, to save their faces.
The same face-saving attitude of the leaders goes for the ‘heroic’ Anglicans too. Neither
the war itself nor the idol state were raised as issues or problems for the Anglicans until the
1980s motions of the omission of the biddings for the emperor and imperial household from
the Prayer Book were raised.758 The proposers of those motions required the Prayer Book
Revision Committee and House of Bishops to explicate the meaning of the prayers for the
emperor and imperial household, considering the last war fought in the name of the emperor
and more than 20 million Asian people victimised in it.
On those motions, the Prayer Book Revision Committee stated that the prayers for the
emperor and imperial household were included in the Prayer Book because the emperor was
stated as the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people in article nine of the Japanese
Constitution,759 and refused to discuss it, claiming that to make judgment on the prayers for
the emperor and imperial household was to lose the diversity and richness of Anglicanism.
The House of Bishops also declined to deal with it as taking a certain position on the
Imperial System (tennō-sei) makes the church political.
755
Ono, Nihon Purotestanto Kyoukai-shi (Ge), p. 207.
756
「キリスト教会では、戦争責任を相互に問題化することが、まずきわめて稀であった。」
Ibid., p. 208, translated by the author.
757
758
On the issue of the omission of the bidding for the emperor and imperial household from the
Prayer Book of the NSKK, see Saji Takatsune, “Jūgo-nen-sensō ka no tennō-sei to Nihon Sei Ko
Kai,” Jūgo-nen-sensō-ki no tennō-sei to kirisuto-kyō (Tokyo: Shinkyo-shuppan, 2007); Tennō no
dai-gawarini sonaete (ed. Nihon Sei Ko Kai “Tennō no dai-gawarini” kenkyū gōdō iinkai. Tokyo:
Nihon Sei Ko Kai Kanku Jimusho, 1988).
759
Mimoto ni tachikaerasete kudasai (ed. Nihon Sei Ko Kai Kanku Jimusho, Nihon Sei Ko Kai
Kanku Jimusho, 1994) p. 76.
233
That the motion of the omission of the biddings for the emperor and imperial household
passed the 39th general synod in 1986 did not mean that the NSKK came to see that they
committed idolatry since the establishment of the Japanese empire and repented their sin.
Some dioceses continued to use the omitted biddings. The joint committee for the research
on the imperial succession issue kept talking about the discipline of the separation between
religion and state, while the bishop of the diocese of Kita-Kanto, a son of Yashiro Hinsuke,
attended Daijo-Sai, in which the new emperor is said to not only becomes a god, being
united with the archaic founder Sun-god and local gods, but the rituals are included that
express the subordination of all people to the emperor, and that those who don't yield to the
him are regarded as enemies as well as evil.760
For the Japanese church leaders nurtured in basso ostinato and liberalism, the emperor’s
war was a holy war; his will was God’s will; and the expansion of his empire was the
growth of the kingdom of God. Since their imaginary Christianities enabled them to identify
any historical and cultural developments with God’s work and his will, there was no sin for
them to repent. Is it exaggeration to conclude that churches shaped by such Japanese
Christianities are predestined to vanish into ‘Japanese culture’ if they are not led to
repentance in God’s mercy?
760
Tennō no dai-gawarini sonaete, pp. 2 ff.
234
Conclusion
In the first part of this thesis I attempted to demonstrate through my reading of Hauerwas
and Yoder that Constantinianism is an obsessive temptation that prompts the church to
abandon faithfulness and obedience to her Lord for the sake of power and control in the
world by allying herself with the most powerful and influential, but this alliance with earthly
powers makes the church blind to the idolatrous nature of earthly politics so that she is
gradually lead into self-justification and self-deception. I have, then, sought to show that the
church is a polity that lives the politics of Jesus by faithfully worshipping Father, Son and
Holy Spirit and by being transformed in enthusiastically listening to the Scripture on each
Lords’ day, in such a world where the entire social web has been weaved to control all
people through the mould of rigid uniformity for the civil manipulation by power-holders.
In the second part, the exceeding vulnerability of “Japanese culture” to the Constantinian
temptation that Maruyama named basso ostinato has been unmasked, and I have narrated
my version of concise Japanese church history after 1549 to show how Japan was
constructed as a Christian eradicator, and how the entire church in Japan was enslaved by
the Japanese Empire as a faithful servant of the emperor.
While earthly politics is inherently idolatrous and as such under the ruler of this world,
the church has been brought into being and called out of the world by Christ Jesus to live his
politics in giving up the politics of the world. Jesus has broken the dominion of the fallen
Powers and the sacrificial politics of the world through his life and death on the cross. The
Father vindicated the authentic politics of peace-making by raising his Son from the dead.
The politics of Jesus resides in his servanthood, not in controlling nor killing enemies. His
disciples are to imitate the way of servanthood revealed by their master. The only offensive
weapon given to the church is “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Eph.
6:17). That is to say that the only way for the church to conquer the world is proclamation of
the gospel and disciple making. Jesus’ disciples are forbidden to kill God’s enemies, namely
the world, by Jesus; they are rather required to be ready to die for their Lord to show what
the politics of Jesus looks like. It is because the politics of the world, which does not
confess that Jesus is Lord nor kneel before him, cannot let go of killing and controlling, that
the church sojourns in the world without belonging to it until Jesus comes again. Given that
earthly politics is under the ruler of the world, when the church seeks affiliation with earthly
powers, it cannot happen without betraying obedience and faithfulness to her Lord.
235
The most pressing issue for Christians in a Japanese context is how communities that call
themselves church could be a church sojourning in Japan without being assimilated into it.
Dohi Akio, who was a professor of historical theology at Dōshisha University and tackled
the issue of tennō-sei (Imperial System) all his life, ended up saying that it was impossible
to resist the Imperial System ‘except for people like Akashi Junzo (the head of Tōdai-sha:
Japanese branch of the Watch Tower) who stood pristine character of Christianity on a naïve
infallible biblical view and saw Japanese society from it. But we can never understand
Christianity that way.’761 Dohi was a Union Theological Seminary graduate theologian but
even he could not see the simple fact that the Empire of Japan was invented as a great idol,
while Akashi could penetrate it without difficulty. Does not this fact eloquently testify the
incompetence of liberal Protestant theology that was invented to tame the church as a
faithful servant of the nation state?
Akashi Junzo and Tōdai-sha stand as the greatest scandal in Japanese Christian history. In
front of their witnesses, what could be a faithful Christian response? Should we just despise
them as fundamentalists and justify all support from the church for the great slaughters
called the First and Second World War by claiming that it was in line with just war
tradition? Or should those great slaughters lead us to repentance? If so, what sin should we
repent?
Looking at what happened to the church in Japan during the Second World War, I am
convinced that Yoder and Hauerwas’s warnings against Constantinianism are crucial in
highlighting the very sin that the church in Japan committed but hardly any church leaders
or theologians could spot, namely idolatry. More precisely, almost all Japanese ‘Christians,’
except for the members of Tōdai-sha, subjected the Lord of the church to the emperor, knelt
before that mere human being and worshiped him. Even though Japan has never been part
of the Western or Eastern Christendom, the theology that was invented to make the church
an obedient servant of the nation state had a similar effect both on Europe and Japan. In the
West, this theology was accepted by the churches that believed that the church should be
allied with sovereign governments and those churches were tamed as national churches and
made faithful servants of the nation states. In Japan, the church leaders who believed that
761
「それに最後まで抵抗することは、キリスト教の清純な性格を聖書無謬説という素朴な
立場でとらえ、そこから日本社会を洞察した明石順三のような人でなければ、できないこ
とでした。私たちはもとより明石のようなキリスト教理解はできません。」Dohi,
Kirisuto-kyōkai to tennō-sei, pp. 84-5, translated by the author.
236
the church should definitely have a stake in the politics of the Empire of Japan accepted the
theology that had subjected churches to the nation states in Europe and they also
subordinated most of the churches, if not all, in Japan under the authority of the emperor. Do
not those parallel phenomena show that a church willing to ally herself with earthly powers
fails to discern the politics of Jesus from that of the world?
The greatest gift that we can receive from reading Hauerwas is, to my mind, that he
always reminds us that, in the end, the church’s business is creation of a new people who
live the politics of Jesus and are joyfully sent out to the world to invite people to join this
new politics. Christians are a people who declare that power holders are not the owners of
the world. When they claim so, and in fact earthly powers claim so either implicitly or
explicitly, Christians are simply to say, ‘No, the world does not belong to them. It’s God’s
world created in and for Jesus Christ. The true king is Christ alone.’ Christians are a people
equipped with spiritual skills to show the world that the function of the powers that be is not
to own the world, but just to keep order in it for the church to be able to proclaim the gospel
of her Lord Jesus Christ. Thus, one of the most urgent and challenging missions for the
church in this generation is to reclaim the world as Jesus’ from the nation states, without
owning or controlling or manipulating it, so that the world may come to see who the true
king is.
237
Bibliography
Books and Papers authored or co-authored by Hauerwas
Books
After Christendom?: How the Church is to Behave if Freedom, Justice, and a Christian
Nation Are Bad Ideas. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991.
Against the Nations: War and Survival in a Liberal Society. Notre Dame; London:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1992.
Approaching the End: Eschatological Reflections on Church, Politics, and Lie. Grand
Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: Eerdmans, 2013.
A Better Hope: Resources for a Church Confronting Capitalism, Democracy, and
Postmodernity. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2000.
Character and the Christian Life: A Study in Theological Ethics. Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1994.
Christian Existence Today: Essays on Church, World, and Living in Between. Eugene, OR.:
Wipf and Stock Publishers, 1988.
A Community of Character: Towards a Constructive Christian Social Ethic. Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1981.
A Cross-Shattered Church: Reclaiming the Theological Heart of Preaching. London:
Darton, Longman and Todd, 2010.
Dispatches from the Front: Theological Engagements with the Secular. Durham; London:
Duke University Press, 1994.
Disrupting Time: Sermons, Prayers, and Sundries. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2004.
In Good Company: The Church as Polis. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1995.
Matthew. Grand Rapids, MI.: Brazos Press, 2006.
Performing The Faith: Bonhoeffer and the Practice of Nonviolence. London: SPCK, 2004.
The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics. Notre Dame; London: University of
Sanctify Them in the Truth: Holiness Exemplified. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998.
238
Unleashing the Scripture: Freeing the Bible from Captivity to America. Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 1993.
With the Grain of the Universe: The Church’s Witness and Natural Theology. Grand Rapids,
MI: Baker Academic, 2001.
The Work of Theology. Grand Rapids, MI; Cambrdige, U.K.: Eerdmans, 2015.
Co-authored Books
Hauerwas, Stanely and Willimon, William H. Resident Aliens: A Provocative Christian
Assessment of Culture and Ministry for People Who Know That Something is Wrong.
Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989.
—Where Resident Aliens Live: Exercises for Christian Practice. Nashville: Abingdon Press,
1996.
—Preaching to Strangers: Evangelism in Today’s World. Louisville, KY.:
Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992.
Hauerwas, Stanely and Vanier, Jean. Living Gently in a Violent World: the Prophetic
Witness of Weakness. Downers Grove, IL.: InterVarsity Press, 2008.
Papers
“Aslan and the New Morality.” Religious Education 67, no. 6 (1972):
doi:10.1080/0034408720670602.
“The Christian Difference: Surviving Postmodernism.” Cultural Values 3, no. 2 (1999):
doi:10.1080/14797589909367159.
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Bell, Daniel M. Just War as Christian Discipleship: Recentering the Tradition in the Church
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Bix, Herbert P. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.
Blumenau, Ralph. Philosophy and Living. Thorverton, U.K.; Charlottesville, VA.: Imprint
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Bosch, D. J. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. New York:
Orbis Books, 1991.
Boyd, Gregory A. The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is
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Brock, Brian. Christian Ethics in a Technological Age. Grand Rapids, MI.; Cambridge,
U.K.: Eerdmans, 2010.
Burleigh, Michael. Earthly Powers: The Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe From the
French Revolution to the Great War. London; New York; Toronto; Sydney: 2006.
Bowen, Roger W. Japan’s Dysfunctional Democracy: The Liberal Democratic Party and
Structural Corruption. London; New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2003.
Brinkley, Frank. A History of the Japanese People: From the Earliest Time to the Meiji Era
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Butler, Eamonn. Classical Liberalism : A Primer. London: The Institute of Economic Affairs,
2015.
Cadoux, C. John. The Early Christian Attitude to War: History of Christian Ethics. London:
Headley Bros, 1919.
Carter, C. A. Rethinking Christ and Culture. Grand Rapids, MI.: Brazos Press, 2006.
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Christian Community. Cambridge, U.K.; Grand Rapids, MI.: Eerdmans Publishing, 2010.
Gaddis, Michael. There is no Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the
Christian Roman Empire. Berkley; Los Angels; London: University of California Press,
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press, 1915.
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Chicago Press, 1975.
Hays, Richard B. The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Cross, Community, New
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Healy, Nicholas M. Hauerwas (Interventions). Grand Rapids, MI.: Wm. B. Eerdmans
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Hinson, E. Glenn. The Church Triumphant: A History of Christianity up to 1300. Georia:
Mercer University Press, 1995.
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Hornus, Jean-Michel. It Is not Lawful for Me to Fight: Early Christian Attitudes toward War,
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Milbank, John. Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason. Oxford: Blackwell
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Moffett, Samuel H. A History of Christianity in Asia Vol.II: 1500-1900. Maryknoll; New
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Niebuhr, H. Richard. Christ and Culture. New York: Harper Collins, 2001.
—Theology, History, and Culture: Major Unpublished Writings. ed. Johnson, William Stacy.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.
Rasmusson, Arne. The Church as Polis: From Political Theology to Theological Politics as
Exemplified By Jürgen Moltmann and Stanley Hauerwas. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of
Ramsey, Paul. The Just War: Force and Political Responsibility. Lanham; New York;
London: University Press of America, 1983.
Rauschenbusch, Walter. Christianizing the Social Order. New York: Macmillan, 1926.
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Shenk, Wilbert R. The Transfiguration of Mission: Biblical, Theological and Historical
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Stassen, Glen H., Yeager, D. M. and Yoder, John Howard. Authentic Transformation: A New
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Stout, Jeffrey. Democracy and Tradition. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press,
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253

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Whose Politics? Which Story?

A Critical Engagement with Constantinianism and Theological

A thesis presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Divinity

by John Jutaro Tsukada, 2016

B.A. in Theology, Sophia University in Tokyo

the sources of information specifically acknowleged.

John Jutaro Tsukada

Part 1 Constantinianism, Church and the Politics of Jesus ...........................................13

Part 2 Constantinianism in Pre-Constantine Japan .....................................................125

universality without any knowledge of the Scripture.2

that always means the emancipation and democracy of the people.7

that Niebuhr never faced.17

a Christian theological case if challenged.23

established. In Post-Christendom Murray writes:

extent to which it manages to be seamlessly enculturated.

in order to secure a safe haven for her in the world.

especially vulnerable to Constantinian temptation. Chapter six introduces and analyses a

such as Confuscianism and Buddhism are constantly reconfigured to acknowledge or

Being the Church: From Committed Minority to Uncommitted

History and Eschatology: Modification of Christian Hope

Constantinianism after the Reformation

Questioning Constantinianism: Biblical Descriptions of the Powers

nothing to confirm its truth.65

Constantinianism as Regression to Idolatry

Relevance of the Eschatological Hope

can be tapped at the point where men are most thirsty.106

Israel, then “everything else follows, doesn’t it?”110

In the previous chapter I clarified Hauerewas’ account of Constantinianism, reliant as it is

Interrelationship between Jesus Christ, Scripture and Church

without a tradition there can be no community.115

This hermeneutical condition of scriptural authority must not be underestimated. Firstly,

with one another and God can continue across generations.120

Discipleship: Learning the Language of the Church

To Be a Citizen of the Kingdom in a New Community

become citizens of his Kingdom.132

To Be a Forgiven People by Learning the Grammar of Worship

to whom all hearts are open,

all desires known,

cleanse the thoughts of our hearts

by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit,

that we may perfectly love you,

and worthily magnify your holy name;

through Christ our Lord.

God our Father, we confess to you

and to our fellow members in the Body of Christ

that we have sinned in thought, word and deed,

and in what we have failed to do.

We are truly sorry.

Forgive us our sins,

and deliver us from the power of evil,

for the sake of your Son who died for us,

Jesus Christ, our Lord.

This confession of sin is followed by the absolution saying

God, who is both power and love,

forgive us and free us from our sins,

heal and strengthen us by his Spirit,

and raise us to new life in Christ our Lord.

Enlightenment and Nation State

bombing of German cities (after the bombing of London by the Germans).160

Culture Kills Churches

with the new circumstances and the new understanding.180

He states by means of Hegelian historical philosophy that the Enlightenment is a historical