Fourth in the series by Paul Wallis….Chaplain General of Jesus Generation (home churches). He lectures in church history and hermeneutics at Unity College, A.C.T.
Just recently my small cluster of churches revised the little constitution that links us together. One of the things we needed to revisit was the issue of how the groups would relate to each other and where I would put myself on the map as the network’s founder. As an Anglican ordained minister I guess I was programmed with a sense of order, control and hierarchy. That, combined with the possessive heart most church-planters must feel from time to time, made for a strong temptation to design our network like a pyramid with mother churches and daughter churches and right at the top of the authority pyramid a bishop-like, pope-like figure. You can thank the Lord that I managed to resist that temptation and we readily agreed that the network should instead be family of sister churches. Having a constitution enabled us to express a shared sense of identity and a common approach while absolutely defending the autonomy of each group. In this way we avoided re-inventing the denomination, setting down that our relations would be on the basis of freedom and friendship. And we re-affirmed that the local church must have the freedom to obey Jesus with no great chain of human command compromising that relationship by inserting some other mediator. One person who helped me enormously in this decision process was a Spanish soldier by the name of Iggy.
Actually, Iggy was an ex-soldier. He had been invalided out of the Spanish army after a battle in Pamplona where he was hit in the legs by a cannonball. He was then bedridden and in traction for weeks afterwards. One leg set badly and had to be re-broken in order to be fixed. Unfortunately this was the 1500s and anaesthetic had not been invented. So the weeks of painful traction turned into painful months. Bored out of his mind, Iggy asked his friends to find some literature for him to read and requested some romances. However, with the printing press only new to the world, books were in short supply and all his friends could find was some “Lives of the Saints” – not what Iggy had in mind, but he had nothing other to do than read them.
What he read revolutionised him. Iggy was a man with a soldier’s heart, the kind of man who must do something. Though his injury left him unable to lead men in military campaigns anymore, he began to see that if he could make his life anything like the people he was reading about then he could campaign for Jesus instead. By the time he was out of bed Iggy was determined that the rest of his life would count for something and gave his heart to serving the cause of Christ. Over the next year Iggy’s first priority was to rebuild his physical strength. This he did through a boot-camp of personal training. He would walk with a pronounced limp for the rest of his life, but was not going to let that stop him.
It seemed to Iggy that if he wanted to really impact the world, he should go to Jerusalem the Holy City and win it back for God. At this time Jerusalem was dominated by Islam and Iggy felt that what was needed was not another crusade of violence, but a crusade of preaching. And he would undertake it. Kneeling before a portrait of Christ in his Spanish home, he committed his life to Christ and serving him as an evangelist. If his friends were in any doubt as to the authenticity of Iggy’s desire, he put their doubts to flight by making the long journey to Jerusalem. With his heavy limp he set out and walked all the way.
On his arrival in Jerusalem Iggy sought out a cave, because he knew the task he had set himself was impossible without the power of God’s Spirit. So he gave himself over to praise and prayer, seeking God in radical solitude and asking for a Baptism in his power. After ninety days, Iggy emerged and began preaching boldly in the streets and squares of Jerusalem. It was not long before everybody was talking about this new, fiery evangelist and the boldness of his message. However, this was the 1500s and Jerusalem was enjoying an uneasy truce between Moslem and Christian authorities. Naturally, the Bishops were rather anxious to maintain the stability of that arrangement. After only a matter of days, Iggy had created enough of a stir to attract the attention of the senior Bishop of Jerusalem, who called Iggy in to see him one day and gently invited him to leave the Holy Land before he provoked something unpredictable. After a year’s training, and year’s walking and preparing, it may amaze you to learn that Iggy did what the church authorities asked and left Jerusalem. Though disappointed to say the very least that he could not pursue the vision he felt God had planted in his heart, he reasoned that he could still campaign for Christ in other places. So headed back in the direction of Europe, preaching in every place he stayed.
Once again it was unfortunate for Iggy that this was the 1500s. The Catholic Church was experiencing a period of tumult, unrest and in some places full-on revolution. The Roman Communion had just lost control of vast swathes of Northern Europe and Scandinavia. Half of Europe was now Protestant and the Roman Communion’s claimed to equation with “The Universal Church” was at an end. Bishops in neighbouring countries were unsettled, anxious not to find themselves unseated and exiled from land, people, income and political sway. This nervousness meant that any Christian leader who gathered a following was regarded as a potential threat. It was with this fear and suspicion that church authorities now began to view this wandering Spanish preacher.
To his great fear and consternation Iggy found himself twice subject to the Pope’s special powers, the long arm of papal law reaching across national boarders to reach him and place under arrest, to be investigated by the Inquisition. This happened to him twice, and it was no small matter. A slip in his theology, philosophy or politics, and they would burn alive. In the event Iggy was released each time, having been assessed as “harmless”. However Iggy now knew that he really needed to get his theology square and would do all he could to avoid being imprisoned or inquisitioned ever again.
So it was that when he reached France, Iggy enrolled at the University of Paris where he spent the next six years of his life studying theology, philosophy and politics. Though not active in evangelistic service, Iggy’s heart still burned with a passion to see souls saved, and his passionate faith attracted some like-minded students who formed into a band. They studied together, prayed together, and opened their hearts to each other confessing their sins and sharing their dreams (not unlike the Holy Club of John Wesley in 1700s Britain.) At the end of their time of study the friends pledged together to give their lives to advancing the Gospel, bound together as a brotherhood. They called themselves the Society of Jesus and their goal, for this was still Iggy’s passion, was to go to Moslem countries to preach the Gospel of Christ there.
In Northern Europe radical men of God were being burned at the stake for putting the Pope too low down on their list of priorities. Iggy therefore calculated that the only way to survive in this post-Reformation world was to offer the services of the Society directly to the Pope. With him onside, no provincial Bishop could ever have them arrested or inquistioned as had happened to Iggy. He needed to stay alive if he were to become and evangelist to the Moslems. Naturally the Roman Pontiff was delighted to accept their services and give them his endorsement, in exchange for a vow of obedience to his authority as Pontifex Maximus. This was birth of the network known to the world as the Jesuits.
Unfortunately, being the 1500s, the Pope was uneasy at the prospect of provoking Moslem powers through openly evangelising them. In his wisdom he forbade Iggy’s Society to enter Moslem countries and suggested instead that they look to other places which could be considered virgin territory. Iggy and friends were happy with this. They had no desire to get into a fight with protestants over territories where the Gospel was already being preached. Virgin territory; that would be great! Reassured by their vow of total obedience to Rome, the Pope was willing to give the Jesuits unusual liberty in their missionary work. So when the Jesuits went to India, they lived as Indians, dressed as Indians, preached in Indian languages, translating the Gospels and the liturgy into the language of the people. Their ministry was marked by compassionate solidarity with the people, respect to the secular authorities, and service through education. The same could be said of their early work in South America and Japan.
The Jesuit way in to a territory was generally from the top down. They approached the local King or Lord in the same way they had approached the Pope – to gain his blessing as a man of peace. They would offer their services as educators in the royal households where their submission and integrity could be tested. Jesuit evangelists were zealous, faithful and patient, serving this way for years on end in order to gain the favour of the local king. Once that was done the door was open to them to plant the schools and colleges which became the missionary centres and gathering centres for their church planting. The personal commitment and energy that this strategy required was huge. It was made possible only by the Jesuits rejection of any other claim on their lives. The classic monastic vows were their watchwords: poverty, chastity and most of all obedience. In those early years it was a fruitful strategy indeed, taking the Gospel to people who had never heard it before. Their impact on South America was enormous and when they went to Japan there was revival. Within sixteen years Iggy, or Ignatius Loyola – to give him his full name - had over a thousand evangelists and church planters under his command.
Why then, you might wonder, does the word “Jesuit” inspire such anxiety in the minds of so many? If they were so great and godly why does the word ring with tones of heartlessness and menace? The reason lies in that deal that the Society of Jesus made with the Papacy. As long as the Pope was good and godly, the deal was no problem. However a bad Pope or a godless Pope meant the whole purpose of the Jesuit endeavour could be subverted. And it was. The members’ vow of canonical obedience gave licence to future papal regimes to deploy Jesuits as the most trusted arm of the inquisition. In their time Jesuit brothers served Rome as inquistors and de facto executioners. It would be hard to imagine a more radical subversion of Ignatius’ original high ideals. The potential for that metamorphosis was built in to the movement from the moment those zealous Christian brothers pledged their obedience to the Roman Pontiff out of fear for their lives.
The Jesuits are not the only part of the church to have made deals like this. Under Moslem Governance in centuries past, and under the Communist governments of the twentieth century, the Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church promised state authorities that they would stop Bible-teaching in the churches and in Christian homes, and stop engaging in any evangelism beyond church walls in return for the privilege of being allowed to exist. Perhaps this was a good deal for clergy who wanted to keep their buildings and their position, and maybe they genuinely thought this was the way to stop the faith being completely extinguished. But it split the Russian Orthodox community into two communions. It was a tragic deal for the Russian Orthodox just as it was for the Jesuits.
The Jesuits’ deal was existence in return for subjecting their converts to Roman governance. Consequently their Goal was changed from winning people to Christ to bringing people to Christ and to the Pope. In the fullness of time the tragic result of that deal was to be a holocaust of Jews and Christians, whose existence or reforming tendencies were seen respectively as a threat to Roman hegemony. I am sad to say that that is what a lot of people tend to remember the Jesuits for. All this was rooted in decisions made by that first generation. They had tried to square two circles that cannot be squared.
“You cannot serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other,
or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.”
(Matthew 6 / Luke 16)
“Do not be afraid of people…Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; you should rather fear God, who can destroy both body and soul in hell. Yes I tell you fear Him!”
(Matthew 10 / Luke 12)
Maybe Iggy made that deal because he was a soldier – and simply translated his military mind-set from one organisation to another. But it is a gentile view of authority which Jesus specifically banned from the church when he said:
“You have only one Master, and you are all brothers. You have only one Father and he in heaven. You have only one teacher, and he the Christ…You know what Gentiles are like? How their leaders like to Lord it over their subjects? And how their senior leaders exercise total authority as those who must be obeyed? It must not be so among you.”
(Matthew 20 & 23)
After so much history, you and I today don’t need to be so naïve about the corrupting power of kingship – it’s all set out in I Kings 8. In that chapter, speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Samuel unpacks the political and economic implications of creating “crown” or unaccountable powers. The scenarios he paints have since been played out in secular history many times over and yet more shamefully in church history too. I can only assume that when they made their deal, those first members of the Society of Jesus simply couldn’t see that there could ever be any conflict between Jesus and the Papacy. Of course there have been since been good Popes and bad Popes. No-one could deny that. For instance Borgias: bad. John 23: good. But the mistake Iggy’s band was not in their high opinion of the papal selection process. Rather it was that they pledged to a human authority a degree of obedience that is actually forbidden by the Gospel itself.
You will have picked up that I admire Loyola as a great man, who together with his peers brought revival to many parts of the world, just as there are Jesuits brothers today whose ministries I might greatly admire. But in my opinion, history demonstrates unambiguously that Ignatius Loyola made a huge mistake, which within only a generation or two of its inception, poisoned his entire movement in the most terrifying fashion.
In that respect we can see our friend Iggy in contrast to the first three radicals we’ve looked at in these articles: Francis of Assisi, Benedict of Norcia, and Revd John Wesley.
Take Francis: when he went to Rome his purpose was simply to state, “This is what we are doing. Are you willing to bless us?” But we know the Franciscans resolve to continue in their radical way was in no way dependent on the Pope’s answer. We know that because the Franciscan brothers had been following their call for many years, self-authorised and without seeing the need for any kind of permission from senior clerics or any kind of institutional endorsement in order to initiate their projects and plant their communities.
There is no hint that Francis’ view had changed when he went to Rome. In fact he was so strong in his view of their right to continue unmolested by church authorities that some of the shrewder and more fearful of Francis’ brothers were very anxious that Francis bold approach to the Pope was more likely to go horribly wrong. They feared the audience would backfire because it was clear that Francis was determined to assert what they were doing without offering the Pontiff any reassuring promise of quiet compliance in exchange for his blessing. In other words, Francis was offering Rome no deal.
Perhaps we could say that Francis was ‘lucky’ because this was not the 1500s, the Reformation hadn’t happened, and so Pope Innocent felt able to agree that the Franciscan brothers should be let alone to carry on.
Likewise, Benedict also was one who simply authorised himself to do his new thing, and who let each community in his loose network be in charge of itself. It was up to the wider church how they felt about that! Likewise the Methodists brokered no deals with the Anglican Bishops who had ordained them, and found themselves thrown out and censured as a consequence. Ironically this only unlocked their ministry.
By contrast, and I say this with all due respect to those pioneering members of the Society of Jesus – and indeed to many contemporary brothers of that order - the light of hindsight would strongly suggest to me that in making that deal with Rome those first brothers of the Society of Jesus really wanted to have their cake and eat it. They wanted to be out there converting the world but without being troubled and persecuted by the church’s upper echelons. One can only sympathise, but in the end history shows their movement could not square that circle. It also seems to me a very great shame that as a consequence Loyola and his pledged brothers put aside their own vision and so missed their heartfelt call to take the Gospel to their Moslem neighbours. How different might history have been if they had not let another authority divert them?!
That’s why as my own cluster redrafted its constitution we decided to be a network of sister churches, each one autonomous, and each one led in a collaborative effort. Practically speaking, Jesus has to be the Lord of the local church doesn’t He? After all, it is to Him we pray, to Him that we listen, Him that we seek to follow, isn’t it?! In that sense, every church - denominational or not - needs to declare that it has one Lord only and Him the Christ. In the final and divine analysis it is to Him we will have to answer – and not to anyone else – as to how we have lived. That’s why Anabaptists of history have been so strong in rejecting the tying of church to state authorities, and why they have been so firm in styling all church members, whatever their role, as brother or sister. It is also why they have been so strong in asserting the autonomy of the local church under the Lordship of Christ.
I might say it’s also why I love the approach of OIKOS to grassroots, small, simple and emerging churches. I like it that Bessie and colleagues come alongside only as sisters, brothers, encouragers, and facilitators, with not a hint of “pyramid building” or “empire building”. I appreciate the fact that the freedom, integrity and autonomy of each local church is valued and respected. If, as sister churches, we choose to associate it is on the basis of freedom and friendship - because as the Apostle says in Ephesians 4, it is love that binds the church together not chains of human command! My reading of history - and especially of Iggy’s history - makes me really appreciate that.