** FATHER FRANK’S RANTS Rant Number 795 1 November 18 CHRIST IN THE TROPICS

YOU CANNOT KEEP CHRIST AND THE BIBLE OUT OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE. BRAZIL'S NEW PRESIDENT BOLSONARO WANTS TO BRING THE WORD OF GOD INTO GOVERNANCE.
------------------------------------------------------------

‘I will govern by the Bible’, announces Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s feisty President-Elect. Wot? Christ in the Tropics? Shocking! Like a Brazilian Ayatollah Khomeini? As bad as declaring ‘I will rule by the Qur’an’. An intolerable provocation. Yet, it is official. Christ is back…in politics. Wow!

One of Beato Angelico’s celebrated paintings shows Judas in the Gethsemane garden betraying Christ with a kiss. An apposite metaphor of Europe’s present apostasy. Not only does what used to be Christendom ignore Christ, it opposes him. Europe’s infidel rulers enact legislation that flagrantly disregards or contradicts divine mandates. As Judas, one of the chosen twelve apostles delivered his divine Master into the hands of wicked men to be mocked, scourged and crucified, so do the nominally Christian European politicos turn their backs on their Saviour to follow Satan’s works. Not so Bolsonaro. The Brazilian leader is the joker in the pack. He will govern by the Bible.

Christ and the Bible. A simplistic conflation? How related? St Augustine shows it. The Bible consists of two parts, two Testaments. The Old and the New. ‘In the Old Testament’, Augustine taught, ‘the New Testament is latent. In the New, the Old is patent’. He meant that the whole point and thrust of the OT is the prefiguring, the prophesying of the coming of the Redeemer, Christ, the Messiah. The NT is the fulfillment of all that. Jesus Christ is the heavenly link that conjoins both. The Bible is Christ and Christ is the Bible. QED.

The Bible in politics. A dangerous or impossible concept? The liberal media are tearing their hair out over Bolsonaro’s Christian credentials and intent. Odd because of the South American theological school called Liberation theology. Brazilian ex-Franciscan Leonardo Boff is one of its main advocates. Liberation theology takes its departure from the Exodus narrative in the Old Testament. From the Israelites’ Egyptian slavery to release and freedom under Moses. (Conveniently forgetting how the Israelites went on to conquer and occupy another people’s land in Canaan – Palestinians being all too aware of that…) Liberation theologians argue their idealogy provides a template for a so-called ‘preferential option for the poor’, including violence and armed struggle. All under the aegis of a leftist, Marxist conception of holy politics. Pope John Paul II warned against it but the Western opinion-moulders are rather fond of that particular religious approach to the public sphere. Why then be
shocked by the new Brazilian President’s desire to bring the Bible into governance? Because he isn’t a Communist?

Jair Bolsonaro is no Catholic but an Evangelical Christian. An affiliation strongly disliked by the West’s mushy media. Evangelicals rely chiefly on the Word, i.e. the Bible, for their doctrines, inspiration and action, as distinct from the Catholic emphasis on Sacraments and rituals. The priest is not an Evangelical but undoubtedly they affirm traditional Christian teachings, such as aversion to abortion and fornication, whilst Pope Francis never mentions them. The Church of England since the Reformation defended the key role of the Bible in theology and national life. There used to be a Bible open on the lectern of any Anglican parish church, to symbolise that importance. Alas, Satan has subverted official Anglicanism and the Bible is shamefully betrayed. Mercifully, the worldwide, militant network Gafcon bravely continues to uphold Anglican biblical heritage.

Malevolent critics interject: ‘Huh! The Bible in politics? Are you for the killing of witches then?’ Because Exodus says: ‘You shall not suffer a witch to live.’ A stupid question. Because the Christian Church does not abide by the penal and ritual prescriptions of the OT. Christ himself while on earth revoked them – it’s a new Covenant, isn’t it? A more serious objection is which criteria are normative in interpreting Biblical texts. Evangelicals are vulnerable to criticism, because they have a weak ecclesiology. They can’t rely on the sacred traditions of the Church, as they reject them. Regardless, the Evangelical success story in Latin America, formerly a staunchly RC continent, proves their popular appeal. They offer a real conversion experience, a change of life and a strong fellowship. People of all ranks formerly hooked on drugs, misery and dependence have bestowed the drive, the motivation to begin a better, happier existence in the name of Jesus. Bolsonaro’s Brazilian
followers witness to that.

What about Caesar and God? Christ’s famous utterance to those asking for his judgment on the lawfulness a certain tax. ‘To Caesar what is Caesar’s, to God what is God’s.’ But was the Son of God wanting to divide up reality into two mutually exclusive compartments? As if the Creator wished to declare his unconcern for half of his creation? Nonsense! Besides, remember Christ held up a coin to make his point. A coin – any coin – consists of two sides, inextricably bound up. If you try to break a coin into two separate sides, you destroy it. So it is with state and Church. They cannot be taken apart. They belong together. Ayatollah Khomeini once opined that ‘All of Islam is politics’. Speaking for Christianity I would not quite go as far as that but…still pretty close.

How President Bolsonaro exactly intends to enact his biblical governance I cannot say. Certainly, cracking down on rampant criminality is consistent with Christian rule. The State is ‘the servant of God, to execute his vengeance on wrongdoers’, St Paul declares. The poor must be looked after but today what workers aspire to is not to work more but to work less. And to join the middle classes, not stay proletarians. A lesson the Left has not taken on board yet. Bolsonaro has.

Pace Judas-like Western politicians, the Bible refuses to stay confined to the ghetto of the inner sphere. Like Christ out of the sepulchre, the Word of God bursts out into reality. It is too big, too irrepressible to stay out. The Tropics show the way ahead. Three cheers for Bolsonaro!

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

------------------------------------------------------------

============================================================
** follow on Twitter (https://www.twitter.com/eugenevonsavoy/)
| ** friend on Facebook (#)
| ** forward to a friend (http://us7.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&id=791d0e0faf&e=5707b9e8db)

Copyright © Fr Frank Gelli
Email Marketing Powered by Mailchimp
http://www.mailchimp.com/monkey-rewards/?utm_source=freemium_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=monkey_rewards&aid=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&afl=1
** unsubscribe from this list (https://simplesite.us7.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&id=f9573901af&e=5707b9e8db&c=791d0e0faf)
| ** update subscription preferences (https://simplesite.us7.list-manage.com/profile?u=3ae40cde0c299583529f1448a&id=f9573901af&e=5707b9e8db)