Once Again The Cosmic Christ
By Craig R. Dumont, Sr.
Psalm 99:1-5 & Psalm 110
Historian Will Durant wrote perhaps the most popular multi-volume series on the history of civilization. Volume three is titled Caesar and Christ and he starts with a most remarkable admission for a non-Christian scholar that should make contemporary Christians sit up and take notice. In fact, so powerful are several of Durant’s passages assessing Christianity that it literally made me want to stand up and shout "We gave You thanks, O Lord God Almighty, The One who is and who was and who is to come, because You have taken Your great power and reigned" (Rev. 11:17).
Let me quote just two passages from his book, the first coming right in the preface:
The study of antiquity is properly accounted worthless except as it may be made living drama, or illuminate our contemporary life. The rise of Rome from a crossroads town to world mastery, its achievement of two centuries of security and peace from the Crimea to Gibraltar and from the Euphrates to Hadrian’s Wall, its spread of classic civilization over the Mediterranean and western European world, its struggle to preserve its ordered realm from a surrounding sea of barbarism, its long, slow crumbling and final catastrophic collapse into darkness and chaos—this is surely the greatest drama ever played by man; unless it be that other drama which began when Caesar and Christ stood face to face in Pilate’s court, and continued until a handful of hunted Christians had grown by time and patience, and through persecution and terror, to be first the allies, then the masters, and at last the heirs, of the greatest empire in history.
Far into the book, way back on page 652, Durant brings us to the conclusion of Caesar and Christ with his chapter on The Triumph of Christianity. He summarizes the triumph shaping up as early as 311 AD when,
Galerius, suffering from a mortal illness, convinced of failure [to rid the empire of Christianity], and implored by his wife to make his peace with the undefeated God of the Christians, promulgated an edict of toleration, recognizing Christianity as a lawful religion and asking the prayers of the Christians in return for "our most gentle clemency."
The Diocletian persecution was the greatest test and triumph of the Church. It weakened Christianity for a time through the natural defection of adherents who had joined it, or grown up, during the half century of unmolested prosperity. But soon the defaulters were doing penance and pleading for readmission to the fold. Accounts of the loyalty of martyrs who had died, or of "confessors" who had suffered, for the faith were circulated from community to community . . . "The blood of martyrs," said Tertullian, "is seed." There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned or oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has known. Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won.
I don’t know how you can read testimony like this and be satisfied with the hopeless, doom and despair, scaled down version of the faith we have today.
Harold Berman, writing on the incredible influence Christian belief, thinking and direct action had on the development of law through the centuries, reports that Christian understanding of Scripture, justice, mercy, atonement, love, forgiveness, restitution and restoration transformed the legal systems of the world. Indeed, the theological teachings of Anselm concerning the atonement around 1100 AD shook up the entire western world and launched the greatest paradigm shift in law the world has ever experienced. As Berman and so many other legal scholars have rightly proclaimed, "Anselm’s theology is a theology of law."
Unfortunately, Berman also says the most recent significant event in the development of law took place in the nineteenth century and even more in the twentieth. He observes that,
The significant factor in this regard . . . was the very gradual reduction of traditional religion to the level of a personal, private matter, without public influence on legal development, while other belief systems—new secular religions (ideologies, "isms")—were raised to the level of passionate faiths for which people collectively were willing not only to die but also to live new lives.
Did you pick up on the incredible change in the understanding of the Christian faith that separates Durant’s explanation of historical events and Burman’s observations of recent history?
Durant reports on the 400 year period in which the Faith is vibrant, fiercely tenacious, overflowing with hope, culminating in the clear recognition that "Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won." The world is turned upside down and changed from a chaotic and dark mess to one of regenerated order and light. While no doubt intensely personal and life-giving to every individual who was called by name by God, there was no doubt in the believer’s mind that he or she was serving "an undefeated God" and the Cosmic Christ, the Ruler of Heaven and Earth! Christ was transforming the old heaven and earth and creating a new heaven and earth. The old political orders may be raging against God and His Christ, but The Son ruled with an iron rod.
The nations were angry and Your wrath has come, and the time of the dead that they should be judged, and that You should reward Your servants the prophets and the saints, and those who fear Your name, small and great, and should destroy those who destroy the earth [Rev. 11:18].
But by the mid 1800’s and even until now we have changed the Faith into one that operates at the reduced level of a personal, private matter, without public influence. The good news, the very heart of the gospel, is that the kingdom of God is at hand and that Christ has all authority in heaven and in earth; that
. . . out of [Christ’s] mouth goes a sharp sword that with it He should strike the nations. And He Himself will rule them with a rod of iron. He Himself treads the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God, [that] He has on His robe and on His thigh a name written: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.
This world-changing, life-giving, hope inspiring, joy unspeakable gospel that is full of glory has been systematically reduced to the mediocre news that Christ may, if we let Him, reign in our hearts. But don’t worry, He doesn’t really want to change very much and you get to go to heaven when you die. Isn’t that exciting!
When Martin Luther looked at the religious climate and church culture in the 1500’s he realized that the message of the hour was "The just shall live by faith," that salvation came by faith alone, through grace alone, in Christ alone. That message resonated with people across Europe as it liberated them from the despair of earning or buying their salvation; it set them free from the tyranny of a Church priesthood that set itself up as mediator, savior and redeemer. What a glorious and powerful message Luther set forth directly from the pages of scripture.
That was then. This is now. Today Luther would look out and see a religious climate and church culture that embraces defeat as the height of spirituality, proclaims a pathetically simplistic gospel limited to internal personal development and sets as it’s highest goal the hope that it can convince just one more person to please, please let Jesus come into your heart.
I believe Luther would do two things. First, he’d probably head down to the nearest pub and throw down a few brews to drowned his disgust. Second, he’d head out and start preaching at the top of his lungs that Christ is the Cosmic Ruler of the Universe and probably hurl a few sarcastic comments at the effeminate preachers in the pulpits today who would faint in terror at any thought of standing before a king, president or local sign inspector and telling them that they are under Christ’s command and accountable to His laws.
The message of the hour, the good news of the day, is that we serve a Cosmic Christ who rules over the affairs of men. The Church must proclaim the gospel of Christ so "that the living may know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men [and] gives it to whomever He will." [Daniel 4:17]
We need to hasten the time that the Church once again lifts our eyes to heaven, and our understanding returns to us; and we bless the Most High and praise and honor Him who lives forever:
For His dominion is an everlasting dominion,
And His kingdom is from generation to generation.
All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing;
He does according to His will in the army of heaven
And among the inhabitants of the earth.
No one can restrain His hand
Or say to Him, "What have You done?" (Daniel 4:34-35)
The message of our church and is and will be the good news of the Cosmic Christ. It is the message understood by Daniel in 7:13-14:
I was watching in the night visions,
And behold, One like the Son of Man,
Coming with the clouds of heaven!
He came to the Ancient of Days,
And they brought Him near before Him.
Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom,
That all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion,
Which shall not pass away,
And His kingdom the one
Which shall not be destroyed.
Jesus speaks of His cosmic rule when He declares point blank in John 3:35-36 that,
The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand. He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.
Jesus Christ proclaims His cosmic rule in Matthew 28:18. "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth."
It’s reiterated by Paul in Colossians 1:16.
For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him.
It’s a foregone conclusion reported on by Paul again in Philippians 2:9-11:
Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
John confesses it on the Island of Patmos in Revelation 1:5 where he writes of "Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn from the dead, and the ruler over the kings of the earth."
Just what part of this claim Christians don’t understand today, I don’t know, but it’s a claim that our church will shout every day until we all "get it." The new reformation hinges not on the sola’s proclaimed in the past, but on the one great Sola we’ve forgotten. Christ’s sole rulership of the galaxy and not just of our hearts.
