I just watched a video produced by a former seminary prof of mine, who specializes in the theology of culture, Dr. Paul Metzger. The video features a discussion with Dr. Greg Camp and professor, Jon Morehead, and the topic is: American evangelicals, conspiracy theory and its connection to end times eschatological speculations and fervor (or fever). In all honesty, for any of us who have been more intimately associated with so-called conspiracy theorism, it wasn’t all that informative. Although it does get into the origins of the illuminati in the late 19th century, in America, and then how that has blossomed into 21st century iterations; that represented a helpful sketch of the historical sourcing that so-called conspiracy theorism is funded by. But then it tails off into a passive anti-Trump advertisement, as Trumpism is tied into Qanon and other so-called conspiracy theories afoot.
But I want to get beyond that, a bit. Some of my readers, I’m sure, are concerned with my apparent turn to the sort of conspiracy theorism I have been referring to above. I want to provide some perspective on that. The reality is that in the history there have been actual CONSPIRACIES that have engulfed humanity into the most destructive vicissitudes imaginable (the easiest and closest reference that comes to mind, of course, is Nazi Germany). I do grant, of course, that there are actual and real conspiracy theories, but those are often deployed as deflections which serve as subterfuge, in the sense that it makes it almost impossible to disentangle the theory from the actual conspiracy; especially when media, of any type, gets involved in the fomentation of these things.
But this is exactly what, I would contend, folks committed to anti-conspiracy theorism, in the name of sobriety and institutional identity, overlook too hastily. They fail to recognize that there are real, even satanic (because us Christians still believe that the devil and his minions are real and active in this present ‘evil age’) conspiracies that the ‘world system’ is embroiled in. And precisely because we are Christians, we ought to see these things framed within the apocalyptic framing that Scripture, and even more importantly, as Scripture attests to its reality, Jesus did. There are identifiable conspiracies, and conspirators active in the world today, and they are of their father the devil. Often folks like my former professor, and the guests he had on his production, want to keep things much too abstract (that’s I how read them). They prefer to operate with an abstract notion of evil that is operative in the world, thus it allows us to keep things more intellectually manageable in regard to how we approach these things (i.e. in dispassionate and ‘academic’ ways). In other words, there almost seems to be this sense that the mode I am referring to is okay with thinking of evil as a globular mass ‘out there,’ but when others attempt to make that too personal and particular, when we start giving names, and identifying movements, it is just at this moment that the descriptor “conspiracy theory” becomes the handy way out.
Ever since my first real introduction to Martin Luther in Reformation Theology class in seminary by my former prof (and I’ll still claim him as my current mentor), Ron Frost, I was hooked (maybe this is because of my Scandinavian heritage, I don’t know)! Luther, was a theologian who had grist in his theology, the sort that produced his famous theologia crucis (theology of the cross). Luther, the son of a miner, was a ‘man of the earth,’ we might think of someone like Esau, in terms of earthiness, or of St. Peter; at least these are the sorts of personages who come to mind when I think of Luther. Psychologically and spiritually, Luther had a deep sense of his utter need for God; which of course propelled him into his protesting work against the Papacy. Luther, as Heiko Oberman so eloquently describes him, was ‘a man between God and the devil,’ as such, Luther had a sense of God’s apocalyptic presence and even doom. He found relief, from the doom part of that, personally, through his solifidian (‘faith alone’) breakthrough. Once this relief came, he came to see the papacy, and the pope himself, as the literal and personal Antichrist (some Lutherans today, like the Wisconsin Synod, an offshoot of the Missouri Synod, still understand the office of the pope to be representative of the Antichrist). My point: if Luther was present today, if he operated with this same sort of zeal, and was willing to openly call out the pope as the Antichrist, he would be considered a conspiracy theorist himself. Notice the historical mode surrounding Luther, and how Luther saw himself vis-à-vis the pope during his time, as described by David Whitford:
In 1522, the dramatic woodcut, attributed to Hans Hoblein, depicting Martin Luther as the Hercules Germanicus firs appeared . . . . The woodcut was part of early pro-Luther propaganda. Dangling from Luther’s nose hangs the pope. Screaming in Luther’s mighty grasp is the inquisitor Jakob von Hochstraten. Lying at Luther’s feet are the decapitated Hydra of scholastic miscellany: Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Okham, Aristotle, Nicholas Lyra, and Peter Lombard. The Hydra, of course, was only one of the first tests Hercules would face. Other more terrible tests awaited him. Hercules final test was to face Cerberus, “a monster not to be overcome and that may not be described, [who] eats raw flesh, the brazen-voiced hound of Hades.” So too, Luther came to feel that he would have to vanquish not only the scholastic Hydra, but his own hound of Hades. In 1520, Luther came to believe that he involved in an apocalyptic struggle against the Antichrist himself: the pope.[1]
If the Christian, I contend, is living with a sense of God’s immediacy, particularly as that is ‘felt’ through the theology of the cross, they will live with the sort of abandon and apocalyptic energy that Luther (and the Apostle Paul) did. Even if we’re ‘planting trees’ in the process, we will not be afraid to live lives that are framed by the scandalous nature of particularity. This does not mean we must, at the same time, engage in the sort of sacrificium intellectus that real conspiracy theorists often do. But it does mean that there ought to be a willingness to attempt the discernment and disentanglement of things that ‘institutional discernment’ typically fails at. Luther, while initially, attempting to work within the institution, was so driven by the all compelling light of Christ that shown upon him in his Augustinian monkery, and freed him, that he finally was cast out of the institution because of his willingness to be the “Church’s” idiot.
I am willing to be considered the Church’s idiot, if it means an openness to view things that contravenes ‘conventional’ discernment tablets. In that process I will, to a degree, slide too far down one side of the pendulum, this way, or that way, but there must be, in my view, a willingness to think beyond the so-called sobriety of the “peers.” Luther was willing to call the pope the personal Antichrist. Today that would be akin to seeing Obama or Trump as the Messiah, literally. But it was Luther’s willingness to be considered a fool for the Gospel, and often that led him into being a fool simply for himself, that he was willing to take these theopolitical stands. I’ve been told by a few people I know, PhDs in theology, that I have ‘lost my mind’ because of the particular conspiracies that I think are real; but so be it. I stand coram Deo (before God), and so do you!
[1] David M. Whitford, “The Papal Antichrist: And the Underappreciated Influence of Lorenzo Valla,” Renaissance Quarterly, (Volume 61: Number 1), Spring 2008:26.