ABSTRACT
Humankind was created for communion, but is everywhere divided. For the purposes of this essay, this opening statement will serve as a somewhat boldthough I hope not inaccurate-summary of the Book of Genesis, Chapters 1-11. The reader will recognize an intentional parallel with one of the most famous opening lines of modern intellectual history, that of Rousseau’s The Social Contract: ‘Man was born free, but is everywhere in bondage.’1 Although at first glance Genesis and The Social Contract seem to be about quite different tasks, both are similarly engaged with foundational stories of human cooperation and division. Modernity is unaccustomed to regarding political theory as mythological in character. The modern state is, however, founded on certain stories of nature and human nature, the origins of human conflict, and the remedies for such conflict in the enactment of the state itself. In this essay I will read these stories against the Christian stories of creation, fall, and redemption, and argue that both ultimately have the same goal: salvation of humankind from the divisions which plague us. The modern state is best understood, I will attempt to show, as a source of an alternative soteriology to that of the Church. Both soteriologies pursue peace and an end to division by the enactment of a social body; nevertheless I will argue that the body of the state is a simulacrum, a false copy, of the Body of Christ. On the true Body of Christ depends resistance to the state project. The Eucharist, which makes the Body of Christ, is therefore a key practice for a Christian anarchism.
