Brazil faces a renewed war between state power, by definition secular, and religious forces that demand the sharing of political rule. Since 1500, the country has lived under ecclesiastical orders, weak in the colonial period, threatened under the Empire and the First Republic, reborn under the Vargas dictatorship. Anyone who is astonished by the current pretensions of evangelical pastors and bishops forgets the times when throne and altar, in the monarchy or supposed republic, defined the ways of acting to be imposed on the population, without them having lights or weapons to resist. The union between the public sphere and religion was marked by mutual protectionism: the sacred extends its arms to civil governments. In return, the latter guarantee a monopoly on belief and customs. [I]The result was a weakening of public order and religious life itself. With the republican regime, Catholic bishops celebrate the end of the Padroado which, in their opinion, was a “golden cage” suffocating pastoral care and preventing the numerical growth of the faithful. [II]
In historical matters it is necessary to go deeper than the circumstances faced in the race for control of the State. The attempt to seize sovereignty by religious forces dates back to the acceptance, in the Roman Empire, of Christianity to the detriment of pagan religions. Debates on the topic arise with the so-called Fathers of the Church, in rhetoric that defends the new belief and seeks to discredit competitors. Apologetics dominates the elements of ecclesiastical life. O Apologeticum of Tertullian states that the monopoly of the true is Christian property. It would spring directly from Moses, before Greek wisdom and Roman knowledge. The dissemination of evangelical truths unites the Old Testament with philosophical and legal discourses. This is what Tertullian does, whose doctrine has a Stoic basis. [III]Justino also elaborates the theory of free will based on court procedures: no defendant can be said to be guilty if he does not have the freedom to act in the direction of good or evil. [IV]
Legal language permeates the texts of Christianity and philosophy, even modern philosophy, inherits such lexical and semantic accumulation. The figures of the court, of evidence and accusations, enter the philosophical field in a profound way. Just examine the Critics by I. Kant. Leonel Ribeiro dos Santos has an excellent study on the topic. [IN] A luminous chapter by him analyzes the “meaning of political and legal metaphor in Kant’s philosophy”. When, among us, nonsense receives the technical name of “metaphor”, it is time to study the cultivated language or fall into barbarism once and for all. Let's return to the sacred.
Given the link between Christianity and the Old Testament, it is important to verify that throughout ecclesiastical history the two fields were connected to define political power and faith. Another series of writings generated theses on sovereignty, religious and secular. Dionysius, the Areopagite, dominates medieval reflections on powers. Neoplatonist, the author to whom this name was attributed understands the universe as a torrent of light that leaves the divine being and descends to creatures. On the maximum scale he places the archangels, angels, cherubs, transmitters of divine light to the lowest planes of the cosmos. After the angelic ones come the priests, under them the kings and nobles and, on the lowest scale, the simple men, the laymen. The higher the creature, the more worthy of rights and powers. When occupying lower planes, the rights of individuals and groups diminish. This way of thinking helped a lot in justifying feudalism and the absolutist regimes that followed it. But similar imagery was ruined by Lorenzo Valla, an important historian and philosopher for the works of Erasmus, Luther and all of Renaissance Humanism. The fraud of the supposed Areopagite was denounced by Valla at the same time that he destroyed the supposed Donation of Constantine, with which the popes tried to mark their earthly power. A strategic work in history, therefore, especially when it comes to political sovereignty, is the dismantling of frauds designed for princes. [YOU]
Luther brings down the hierarchical structure formulated by Dionysius (to assess the importance of the aforementioned imaginary, reread the Summa Theologiae Thomist) [VII], with immediate consequences in the religious field. If there are no scales like the Dionysian, ecclesiastical authorities that would be the link between the faithful and the Savior disappear. In the leaflet Unam Sanctam, the Roman pontiff already said that the power of the spiritual sword surpasses that given to the secular sword. [VIII]Such analogies arise when the pontifical command suffers strong shocks. Philip the Fair's attacks against the sending of goods to the Vatican and his campaigns against the Pope highlight the search for resources to build a new power, the autonomous state power that does not want to be inferior to the sacred. The secular State is born with military, legal, administrative and religious strength. Gallicanism rehearses its steps against the Holy See. [IX]
In the 17th century, the Puritan revolution radicalized the end of the hierarchy assumed in Catholicism. English Protestants deny superiority in faith and politics. The party that leads the revolution and puts a temporary end to the monarchy is called The Levelers (Levelers). He takes back from democratic Greece the responsibility to be demanded of the powers (accountability). The levelers also radicalize the connection between the New and Old Testaments, especially in relation to the Mosaic laws and the prophets of Israel. The politics that destroys absolutism reformulates the dominance of the religious over the civil in a new way. A power with a democratic basis takes on the war against the sin of a society opposed to divine commandments in the field of faith and morals. The idea of a holy people who would precede the Apocalypse marks the speeches and actions of the revolutionary Puritans. In such a context, the defense of freedom of the press (defined by John Milton) clashes with the intolerance of believers, the only ones who could enjoy freedom. full health in a world lost by Catholic sins and the will of kings. The contradiction between the two poles, intolerance and freedom, was not resolved in Protestantism and even less in Catholicism. [X]
The Old Testament serves, in modern times, as a reference for acts in defense of religious or secular power. In the legal and philosophical war waged by Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino, Hobbes, Filmer and above all King James I, the central text is found in 1 Samuel 8: 9-20. It is worth revisiting the biblical passage. Samuel grows old and his sons, judges, practice corruption by accepting bribes, which leaves the people of Israel indignant. We Brazilians know this part of history well. And the crowd asks for a king who practices justice, leads war, and administers like neighboring monarchs. Samuel initially refuses the petition and consults the Lord. The Most High orders the magistrate to grant the request, but orders Samuel to inform the mutineers of the consequences of the new regime. The king will charge high taxes, turn young men into soldiers, girls into palace servants, etc. In short, everything that is known in the history of authoritarian governments, until today. It is very clear in the writing that the people freely choose the government of one person. Here we have the sacred writing read through the lens of Justin, the creator of free will. Post the popular option, there is no return. Divine sovereignty is now exercised through the king.
Given that the monarch is a punishment, but freely sought by the people, the latter must always obey the throne without revolts or armed resistance or murder of the royal person. The doctrine of free will, strongly criticized by Luther and Calvin, returns in the monarch's political exegesis. His reading clashes with that of the Catholic and Protestant monarchists of his time. For those of the Orthodox and Reformed faith, popular sovereignty is the last instance of power. The king is only legitimate with the obedience and recognition of the masses. James' thesis assumes a modified Calvinism [XIV]. As the Puritans assumed radical popular sovereignty, which resulted in the Revolution and the Levelers, Calvin's doctrine was reoriented by the English king, led to diminish the strength of the pastors and the people. [XII]
It is possible to understand, therefore, the weight of the Old Testament in modern doctrines and practices, both in political Catholicism and Protestantism. Some Brazilian “innovations”, such as the construction of a supposedly Solomonic temple and the defense, without diplomatic or economic reasons, of moving the Brazilian Embassy to Jerusalem, among other signs, exhibit a modern, but not recent, trend. Yes, the targets that led to the construction of the supposed Temple of Solomon in São Paulo are all commercial (the pilgrimages of the faithful of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God bring a lot of profit to Israel's commerce and tourism) and little religious. But note the archaizing aspect of current evangelism, which is defined more as Old Testament than properly evangelical. Superstition runs rampant in the cults and money collections of those apparently Judaizing sectors. It should be noted that many Brazilian civil authorities, right and left, in order to gain political support, applaud the now costumed High Priests with dubious Protestant origins. At the same time, political parties that should be secular have a mystical orientation and obtain large swathes of state power. Threats against civil liberties resurface, starting with those of writing and speech. The possession, by sects, of powerful instruments of mass diffusion is also notable, which has a proselytizing side and a control over popular habits on the other. Each listener or viewer of the sects is a guaranteed vote for the “sacred” candidates for state positions. Apparent Judaism has little of Jewish orthodoxy, little of Christian, nothing of republican or democratic.
It is for no other reason that Spinoza, a liberal advocate of the secular State, dedicates a book to the historical interpretation of the political regimes that defined ancient Israel. His subversive and intolerable thesis, according to priests of all sects and churches, is the following: the combination of religious order and political command was only valid for the Old Testament. Today, the sovereign power of the people exercised by secular authorities must count. With the defense of the civil State comes in Spinoza's pen the radical demand for free expression. No power, secular or religious, has the right to silence the citizenry. Such items can be read in the Theological-Political Treatise. In the current return of religious power against freedoms, Spinoza considers the consequences of a State that does not respect multiple values and aims to impose doctrinal and moral codes on a diverse and still free people. Mystical apparitions and miracles, in Catholic shrines to exorcise communism (as in Fátima), or in guava trees, only serve to dominate minds and bodies. They help the illegitimate imposition of political control, reducing the space of freedom that remains for citizens. Against myths and the belief in miracles or supernatural appearances, we have science and democracy. Let us know how to use them in favor of peaceful coexistence, without persecution and lies, holy or secular. If democracy has defects, its problems confessedly originate from human beings who make mistakes and can correct their mistakes. With theocracy, no limits bind the ruler, as his decrees are divine. Deep inside every theocrat lurks a totalitarian. It is time to learn such a lesson from religious and political history.
[I] Romualdo Dias, Order Images, Images of order: the Catholic doctrine about authority in Brazil, 1922-1933.
[II] ROBERTO Romano, Brazil Church against State 1979.
[III] Q. Septimi Florentis Tertulliani Apologeticus (Cambridge, 2012).
[IV] De Gourcy, François-Antonoine-Étienne: Anciens apologists de la religion chrétienne Saint Justin, Athénagore, Théophile d´Antioche, Tertulien, Minuius Felix, Origène 1786.
[IN] Metaphors of Reason, poetic economy of Kantian thinking, Gulbenkian, 1994.
[VI] Paul Rorem: Pseudo-Dionysius: a commentary on the texts and an introduction to their influence, 1993.
[VII] Des Places, Edouard: “Le pseudo-Denys l'Aréopagite, ses précurseurs et sa postérité”, article, 1981.
[VIII] “Both are in the power of the Church, the spiritual and the material sword. But the latter must be used for the Church, the former for her.” Boniface VIII, Bull Unam sanctam (1302), cf. BETTENSON, Henry. Documents of the christian church. Oxford University Press, 1947. p. 162-3).
[IX] Roberto Romano: 'A key to understanding the government of the Church”. Article in Forum Magazine, 2011.
[X] A study that is still useful today is Christopher Hill: The World Turned Upside Down: radical ideas during the English Revolution (Penguin, 1984).
[XI] Bourdin, B.: Theological-Political Origins f the Modern State, the controversy between James 1 of England & Cardinal Bellarmine, 2010.
[XII] For the study of Calvinist politics, read Gerson Leite de Moraes: Between the Bible and the sword: an analysis of philosophy and political theology in João Calvino, 2014.
