The New Testament responded to the question of power with the figure of the Son of God who treated human power as a reality written into the creation – yet with a possible negative development: rebellion against God. A choice that Jesus opposed with humility: the pathway of liberation from the enchantment of dominance.
Last update: 2025-01-21 15:42:40
Power as Obedience
Man’s power, the use of which is peculiarly satisfying, is not limited to any one ‘department’ of his being isolated from the rest; it is related to his every activity and competence – or at least it can be related to them, including those which at first glance seem t have no connection with the nature of power.
It is clear that every act of doing and creating, of possessing and enjoying, produces an immediate sense of power. The same is true of all acts of the vitality. Any activity in which a man exercises his vitality directly is a power-exercise, and he will experience it as such.
Much the same may be said of knowledge, the perceptive and understanding penetration of that which is. In the act of knowing, the knower experiences the power that effects such penetration. He feels truth ‘dawn’ on him a sensation which is succeeded by that of having ‘grasped’ it. […]
In the Image of God
As we have just seen, Revelation’s testimony is essential to any deeper understanding of power. The foundation of power is revealed at the beginning of the Old Testament in connection with man’s essential destination. After the creation of the world is narrated, the first chapter of Genesis says: ‘And God said, Let us make man, wearing our own image and likeness; let us put him in command of the fishes in the sea, and all that flies through the air, and the cattle, and the whole earth, and all the creeping things that move on earth. So God made man in his own image, made him in the image of God. Man and woman both he created them. And God pronounced his blessing on them, Increase and multiply and fill the earth, and make it yours; take command of the fishes in the sea, and all that flies through the air, and all the living things that move on the earth’.
Soon after, in the second chapter on creation, we find: ‘And now, from the clay of the ground, the Lord God formed man, breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and made him a living soul’ (Gen. 1:26-28; 2:7).
First we are informed that man is a being different in kind from all other beings. Like all living things, he was created, but in a special manner, in the likeness of God. He is made of earth – the earth of the fields that nourish him – but a whiff of the spirit-breath of God animates him. Thus he is integrated into nature, yet at the same time through his direct relation to God, he is able to confront nature. He is in a position to rule the earth, and should do so, even as he is meant to be fruitful and make it his children’s habitation.
Chapter Two goes on to develop man’s relation to the world from the standpoint we touched on a while back: man is to be master not only of nature, but also of himself; he is to have the strength necessary not only for his tasks, but also to continue his own life – through generation. ‘But the Lord God said, It is not well that man should be without companionship; I will give him a mate of this own kind. And now, from the clay of the ground, all the wild beasts and all that flies through the air were ready fashioned, and the Lord God brought them to Adam, to see what he would call them, the name Adam gave to each living creature is its name still. Thus Adam gave names to all the cattle, and all that flies in the air, and all the wild beasts, and still Adam had no mate of his own kind’. Man then must know that he is essentially different from animals, that therefore he can neither truly share his life nor generate new life with them. […]
An Essential Vocation
These texts, which echo and reecho throughout the Old and New Testaments, clearly indicate that man was given power over nature and over his own life, power that imparts both the right and the obligation to rule.
Man is a being different in kind from all other beings. Like all living things, he was created, but in a special manner, in the likeness of God. He is made of earth – the earth of the fields that nourish him – but a whiff of the spirit-breath of God animates himMan’s natural God-likeness consists in this capacity for power, in his ability to use it and in his resultant lordship. Herein lies the essential vocation and worth of human existence-Scripture’s answer to the question: Where does the ontological nature of power come from? Man cannot be human and, as a kind of addition to his humanity, exercise or fail to exercise power, the exercise of power is essential to his humanity. To this end the Author of his existence determined him. We do well to remind ourselves that in the citizen of today, the agent of contemporary development, there is a fateful inclination to utilize power ever more completely, both scientifically and technically, yet not to acknowledge it, preferring to hide it behind aspects of ‘utility’, ‘welfare’, ‘progress’, and so forth. This is one reason why man governs without developing a corresponding ethos of government. Thus power has come to be exercised in a manner that is not ethically determined; the most telling expression of this is the anonymous business corporation.
Only when these facts have been accepted, does the phenomenon of power receive its full weight, its greatness, as well as its earnestness, which is grounded in responsibility. If human power and the lordship which stems from it are rooted in man’s likeness to God, then power is not man’s in his own right, autonomously, but only as a loan, in fief. Man is lord by the grace of God, and he must exercise his dominion responsibly, for he is answerable for it to him who is Lord by essence. Thus sovereignty becomes obedience, service. […]
Archetype and Image
Next we have the account of man’s testing, and we see at once that it is the turning-point of his existence. What is tested is nothing less central than man’s power and its use. […]
All of this means that man is to attain sovereignty in the broadest sense of the word, but that this is possible only by maintaining his relationship of obedience to God, by remaining in his service. Man is to be lord of the earth by remaining an image of God, not by demanding identity with his Maker. […]
Salvation is no mere improvement of the conditions of being, it ranks in importance with the creation of all being. It originates not within the structure of the world, not even in the most spiritual parts of it, but within the pure freedom of God. It is a new beginningThe serpent, a symbolical figure for Satan, confuses man by misrepresenting the fundamental facts of human existence: the essential difference between Creator and created; between Archetype and image; between self-realization through truth and through usurpation; between sovereignty in service and independent sovereignty. In the process, the clear concept of God is perverted to a myth. For to say God knows that man can become like him by doing the act he has forbidden is to imply that God is afraid, that he feels his divinity threatened by man, that his relation to man is that of a mythical divinity. ‘The gods’ spring from the same natural root as man, hence ultimately are no more than he. […] Man falls into the trap and raises the claim to sovereignty by his own grace. And it is with truly apocalyptic power that we are told how disobedience brings, not knowledge that makes man a god, but the deadly experience of ‘nakedness’ so essentially different from that mentioned at the beginning of the passage: ‘both went naked…and thought if no shame’.
With this event, man’s fundamental relation to existence is destroyed. Now as before, he has power and is capable of ruling. But the order in which that sovereignty had meaning (as service answerable to him who is Sovereign by essence) is destroyed. […]
A new Beginning
The Old Testament’s doctrine is one of noble simplicity. It has what might be called a classical quality, in which God’s intention and man’s resistance, creation’s original circumstances and those resulting from revolt and the Fall, conflict dramatically. The presentation of the New Testament is much more difficult to understand.
Salvation is no mere improvement of the conditions of being, it ranks in importance with the creation of all being. It originates not within the structure of the world, not even in the most spiritual parts of it, but within the pure freedom of God. It is a new beginning, which provides a new platform for existence, a new ideal of goodness and new strength with which to realize it. This does not mean sudden transformation of the world, nor yet withdrawal from it to a detached plane of existence. It means that salvation takes place within the reality of people and things. The result is a very intricate situation, perhaps most clearly expressed in the teachings of the Apostle Paul on the relation between the old and the new man. […]
The sages of all great cultures were aware of the dangers of power and taught the means of overcoming them. Their most exalted doctrine on the subject is that of moderation and justice. Power seduces to pride and disregard for the rights of others. Hence over and against the tyrant is dangled the ideal of the man who remains considerate, who respects God and man, who defends justice. All this, however, is not salvation. It is an attempt to erect a stand, an order within disordered existence. It does not – as salvation must – embrace existence as a whole.
From the viewpoint of our discussion, what is the decisive characteristic of the Christian message of salvation? It is expressed in a word which in the course of the modern age has lost its meaning: humility.
Humility has become synonymous with weakness and paltriness, cowardice in a man’s demands on existence, low-mindedness – briefly, the epitome of all that Nietzsche calls ‘decadence’ and ‘slave morality’. Such conceptions are innocent of the last trace of the phenomenon’s real meaning. It must be admitted that in almost two thousand years of Christian history conceptions of humility and forms of practicing it may be found which fit Nietzsche’s description; but these are themselves signs of decadence, forms of decline from a greatness no longer understood.
True Christian humility is a virtue of strength, not of weakness. In the original sense of the word, it is the strong, high-minded, and bold, who dare to be humble.
He who first realized the attitude of humility, making it possible for man, was God himself. The act by which this took place was the Incarnation of the Logos. St. Paul said in his letter to the Philippians that
Christ being in the form of God, thought it not robbery [i.e., something which one does not possess by right and thus, out of weakness, clings to with anxiety] to be equal with God: But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit formed as a man. He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross’ (Phil. 2:6-8).
In the Form of Humility
All creaturely humility has its origin in the act in which the Son of God became man. He accomplished it out of no personal need whatsoever, but out of pure freedom, because he, the Sovereign, willed it. The name of this ‘because’ is Love. And it should be observed that the norm of Love is not to be found in what man has to say about it, but in what God himself says. For Love, like humility, as the New Testament points our, begins with God (I John 4:8-10).
How it is possible that he, the Absolute and Sovereign, can enter into existential unity with a human being, that he not only rules history but enters into it, taking upon himself all that such participation involves, namely ‘fate’, in the true sense of the word – is beyond human comprehension. The moment we attempt to approach the mystery from mere natural philosophy, that is to say, from the concept of absolute being, the message of the Incarnation becomes mythology – or nonsense. The very attempt is nonsensical, for it would turn the whole order of existence upside down. We cannot say: God is thus and so, therefore he cannot do this or that. We must say: God does this, and in so doing reveals who he is. It is humanly impossible to judge Revelation. All we can do is to recognize it as a fact, and accept it, and judge the world and man from its standpoint. This then, is the basic fact of Christianity: God himself enters the world. But how?
The passage in the letter to the Philippians tells us: in the form of humility.
Consider Jesus’ situation on earth: the way his mission progresses, molding his fate; his relations with people; the spirit of his acts, words, behavior. What you see over and over again is supreme power converted into humility. Just a few examples. By blood, Jesus descends from the old royal line, but it has declined and become insignificant. His economic and social conditions are as modest as possible. Never, not even at the peak of his activity, does he belong to any of the ruling groups. Of the men he selects for his associates, not one impresses us as personally extraordinary or particularly capable. After a brief period of activity, partly bored, partly intimidated by the accusers, fails to uphold justice and sentences him to a death as dishonorable as it is agonizing.
It has been remarked, and rightfully, that the fate of the great figures of antiquity, even when it led to tragic downfall, always kept within a certain measure, within the set limits of what is permitted to happen to the great. In the case of Jesus, no such canon seems to exist; it seems that anything can happen to him. Isaiah’s mysterious prophecy of the ‘slave of God’ foreshadows this fate (52:13; 53:12).
The Strength of the Slave
In the same sense St. Paul speaks of Kenosis, the self-emptying act whereby he who was essentially in the morphe theou, the glory of God, gives himself into the morphe tou doulou, the lowliness of the slave.
Jesus’ whole existence is a translation of power into humility. Or to state it actively: into obedience to the will of the Father as it expresses itself in the situation of each moment. And Jesus’ situation, as a whole and it its parts, is one that demands constant self-renunciation. For the Son, obedience is nothing secondary or additional; it springs from the core of his being. Even his ‘hour’ is shaped, not by his own will, but by his Father’s. The paternal will becomes the filial; the Father’s honor, Jesus’ own honor. Not by succumbing to their demands, but in pure freedom.
Jesus’ acceptance of ‘the form of a slave’ signifies not weakness, but strength. […]
Such is the New Testament’s answer to the question of power. It does not condemn power as such. Jesus treats human power as the reality it is. He also knows what it is like; otherwise an event like the third temptation in the desert – which was temptation to hybris, pride – would make no sense (Matt. 4:8-9). Equally evident, however, is the danger of power: the danger of revolt against God – the danger, above all, of no longer being aware of him as the serious reality; the danger of losing the measure of things and lapsing into the arbitrary exercise of authority. To forestall this danger, Christ sets up humility, the liberator which breaks asunder the spell of power.
Yet for all of that, one might ask, what effect has Christ had upon history? Has the destructiveness of power been overcome through him? It is not an easy question to answer.
Man cannot be human and, as a kind of addition to his humanity, exercise or fail to exercise power, the exercise of power is essential to his humanity. To this end the Author of his existence determined himSalvation does not mean that the arrangements of the world have been changed once and for all, but that a new beginning of existence has been set – by God. This beginning remains as a permanent possibility. Once and forever, God’s attitude towards power is revealed; once and forever, through Christ’s obedience, God’s answer to the question of power is given – not privately, but publicly, historically, visible to all. It is not simply the isolated experience and victory of one individual that is here revealed, but rather an attitude in which all who will may share. And here the word ‘will’ is to be understood in the full sense of the New Testament, embracing both the grace to be able to will and the decision of the will to act.
This beginning is there and can never be eradicated. Now far its possibilities are realized is the business of each individual and each age. History starts anew with every man, and in every human life, with every hour. Thus at any moment it is free to begin again from the beginning thus established.
[Excerpts taken from Romano Guardini, Power and Responsibility. A Course of Action for the New Age, Henry Regnery Company, Chicago 1961, pp. 9-30 passim]