Did Jesus Preach Democracy?

In my recent book on Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, I present a chapter entitled: “Jesus and Democracy.”  

Does Jesus teach about democracy?  And does Christ represent democracy in some way?

Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) thought so: Christ teaches the dignity of human nature…and the full participation in Divinity which is truly humanity’s happiness and the goal of human life.

Aquinas’ brother Meister Eckhart (1260-1329) also thought so.  Eckhart teaches about democracy and traces it to the teachings of Jesus about the dignity—indeed the “nobility” or “royalty” of ordinary people–that was at the heart of Jesus’ preaching. 

To preach about the immediate presence of the “kingdom” or reign of God is to preach about the nobility and royalty available to all.   Eckhart recognizes that the teaching of Jesus on love and justice leads to equality and therefore democracy. 

Eckhart is celebrating the theme of the “royal ‘person” as found in the Scriptures.  The royal person in Israel was responsible for justice and for keeping the community together.  But we are all royal persons, Eckhart is insisting.  We share in the dignity and nobility of royalty—but also in the responsibility for justice and compassion and keeping community together.

We all share in this dignity.  By our divine origin as images of God and as creatures of the Creator, we ourselves are already nobles, aristocrats and of royal blood.  “Our Lord teaches us in these words how royal people have been created in their nature.”  In us, “God’s image shines and gives off light.”  No doubt he has the psalmist’s hymn to creation in mind:

“You have made them little less than God,
and crowned them with glory and honor.” (Ps 8:5)

Thus the psalmist—and Eckhart—see all humans as kings.  The Yahwist tradition “presents human beings as kings” throughout the Bible, points out biblical scholar Helen Kenik, who has written extensively on the theme of royal personhood in the Hebrew Bible.  

In the last analysis, only God is king, so this is another way of talking about our godliness and divinity.  Here lies the bedrock to democracy: The dignity and divinity of each person from birth.

Eckhart invokes the metaphor of a “large eagle” that the prophet Ezechiel describes (Ez. 17:4f): What our Lord calls a royal person is named by the prophet a large eagle.  Who then is more royal than one who was born, on the one hand, from the highest and best that a creature possesses and, on the other hand, from the most intimate depths of the divine nature and its wilderness?  

We are all born “from the highest and best that a creature possesses” and from “the most intimate depths of the divine nature and its wilderness.”  Here lie our origins noble and divine origins. 

In Eckhart’s German language, the words noble (edler) and eagle (Alder) are almost the same, so he is clearly playing with language in this commentary on the eagle and our origins being so noble. 

Eagles soar, there is no one above them. (This is especially so before the invention of the airplane.  Eagles represented the beings that soared highest above the earth.)  If no one is above one, then no one has the right to lord over us.  That is democracy too.  

To be continued

Adapted from Matthew Fox, Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, pp. 31-34.

See also: Fox, “Sermon Thirty-six: Everyone an Aristocrat, Everyone a Royal Person,” in Fox, Passion for Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart, pp. 510-530.

And Helen A. Kenik, “Toward a Biblical Basis for Creation Theology,” in Fox (ed.), Western Spirituality: Historical Roots, Ecumenical Routes, pp. 27-75.

And Fox, Sheer Joy : Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality, pp. 162, 471.

And Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality

Banner Image: Eagle at sunset. Photo by Sam Bark on Unsplash

Queries for Contemplation

Do you see democracy in the teachings of Jesus ? And Eckhart and Aquinas as laid out here in this meditation ?  And where else as well ?

Recommended Reading

Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election

Matthew Fox tells us that he had always shied away from using the term “Anti-Christ” because it was so often used to spread control and fear. However, given today’s rise of authoritarianism and forces of democracide, ecocide, and christofascism, he turns the tables in this book employing the archetype for the cause of justice, democracy, and a renewed Earth and humanity.
From the Foreword: If there was ever a time, a moment, for examining the archetype of the Antichrist, it is now…Read this book with an open mind. Good and evil are real forces in our world. ~~ Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit and Conversations with the Divine.
For immediate access to Trump & The MAGA Movement as Anti-Christ: A Handbook for the 2024 Election, order the e-book with 10 full-color prints from Amazon HERE. 
To get a print-on-demand paperback copy with black & white images, order from Amazon HERE or IUniverse HERE. 
To receive a limited-edition, full-color paperback copy, order from MatthewFox.org HERE.
Order the audiobook HERE for immediate download.

Passion for Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart

Matthew Fox’s comprehensive translation of Meister Eckhart’s sermons is a meeting of true prophets across centuries, resulting in a spirituality for the new millennium. The holiness of creation, the divine life in each person and the divine power of our creativity, our call to do justice and practice compassion–these are among Eckhart’s themes, brilliantly interpreted and explained for today’s reader.
“The most important book on mysticism in 500 years.”  — Madonna Kolbenschlag, author of Kissing Sleeping Beauty Goodbye.  

Western Spirituality: Historical Roots, Ecumenical Routes

In this book, Fox gathers scholars from various cultures and traditions such as Helen Kenik, Jon Sobrino, Nicolas Berdyaev, Rosemary Ruether, M. D. Chenu, Mary Jose Hobday, Ronald Miller, Monika Hellwig, James Kenney, Justin O’Brien and others to approach creation spirituality from many traditions and many angles. 
“An exciting and important book…a pleasant alternative to the oppressive burden of the fall/redemption tradition.” ~ New Review of Books and Religion 

Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality

Matthew Fox renders Thomas Aquinas accessible by interviewing him and thus descholasticizing him.  He also translated many of his works such as Biblical commentaries never before in English (or Italian or German of French).  He  gives Aquinas a forum so that he can be heard in our own time. He presents Thomas Aquinas entirely in his own words, but in a form designed to allow late 20th-century minds and hearts to hear him in a fresh way. 
“The teaching of Aquinas comes through will a fullness and an insight that has never been present in English before and [with] a vital message for the world today.” ~ Fr. Bede Griffiths (Afterword).
Foreword by Rupert Sheldrake

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality

Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story