VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 4, SECTION 1
The Four Hard Problems When Faith Becomes Power
Last chapter made clear the two kinds of enfeoffment: the enfeoffment of power decays every few centuries, the enfeoffment of faith and culture can last thousands of years. But hidden here is the sharpest paradox of all. What happens when the enfeoffment of faith and culture turns around and takes up worldly power? This section opens that paradox, to see whether, once faith holds power, the four problems arrive at once.
First set one thing firm. The enfeoffment of faith and culture standing alone and taking up power are two different things. Standing alone, it bears only the teaching, the practice, the transmission, the rite, and does no worldly governing. But once it takes up power, it must also manage finance, move armies, appoint officials, judge criminal cases, meet outside enemies, the concrete work of worldly power. This difference looks simple, and it is in fact the watershed.
Last chapter said that the enfeoffment of faith and culture can last thousands of years precisely because it needs no living person making concrete decisions day after day, the classic having come loose from the living person and so come loose from the four problems. But these worldly decisions the classic cannot supply. The classic teaches love your neighbor as yourself, but how to set this year's taxes it does not say. The classic teaches take no life, but whether to strike back when an enemy attacks it does not say. The classic teaches the highest good is like water, but how to relieve a year of disaster it does not say. The concrete decision still has to be made on the spot by a living person, and the moment that living person sits down on the seat of worldly power, the four problems take over at once. Ability wears down with the body, an old pope's power of decision weaker than in his youth. Private wants are magnified by power, a religious leader holding worldly power may begin to pursue splendor and the enrichment of his family. A web of interests necessarily forms, the system of bishops, monasteries, and priests, once it holds worldly resources, knitting the same web as any court. And information is cut off, a religious leader high above hearing mostly the carefully prepared reports of those around him.
The four problems do not vanish because the bearer is a religious leader. If anything they grow harder to correct, because he carries the halo of the sacred. Remember the deepest line of this section: a theocratic state is not the exception to the enfeoffment of power, it is a special form of it, and the form that is hardest of all to self-correct.
Why harder to correct? Because an ordinary worldly leader has only the one temptation, power. The people may talk about the emperor, may write stories to mock him, and the emperor knows he is only a mortal, and however great his grip on power he has no legitimacy of speaking for the divine. A theocratic leader is different, he has two, worldly power plus sacred agency. The words I speak for the divine weigh more than any worldly authority. To question an emperor is at most to call him muddled. To question a theocratic leader becomes to question the divine, to become a heretic, an apostate. In an ordinary dynasty a loyal minister may point at the emperor and say you are wrong, and the emperor may deal with him, but others can still say the emperor is wrong. In a theocratic state the one who opposes bears not only opposing the state but opposing the divine, to be tried by a religious court, the cost far greater than for the opponent in an ordinary dynasty. So the corruption inside a theocratic state is often deeper and more hidden, the corruption there, but no one daring to point it out openly. Harder still, the corrupt person often truly believes I speak for the divine, what I do is the divine will, and that belief makes even self-reflection difficult. Double temptation, double blind spot, double corruption. See it clearly: a theocratic state is not a higher enfeoffment, it is an enfeoffment harder to self-correct. The sacred here is not a strength, it is a burden, a shell of unquestionability fitted over the problems of the enfeoffment of power.
Look at the most complete historical sample, the Papal State of the Vatican, running from the eighth century to eighteen seventy, over eleven hundred years, the most complete sample of a theocratic state in Western history. The pope was both the highest religious leader of Catholicism worldwide and the worldly sovereign of that patch of land. At its height the pope was among the most powerful people in Europe, able to crown kings, to launch crusades, to arbitrate borders between states, and he amassed startling wealth. But the other side of that height was that corruption also reached its peak. In the late Middle Ages the Church sold indulgences to believers, that paying money could reduce time in purgatory, which fundamentally violated the core teaching of salvation by faith, and yet the Church did it openly and on a large scale to raise money. Some popes were extravagant beyond measure, openly placing their kin and raising their offspring to high seats. Factions fought inside the Church, which had its own finance, army, and administration, and like a worldly dynasty it saw officials sheltering officials and offices bought and sold. All of this went on under the shell of the sacred, the believers knowing in their hearts the Church was corrupt, and yet not daring to question openly, because to question was to be a heretic. Until fifteen seventeen, when Martin Luther openly challenged indulgences and papal authority, the Reformation caught fire, half of Europe broke free of Catholicism, and the pope's spiritual authority began to collapse from that moment.
In the centuries that followed, the Papal State retreated step by step, losing half of Europe in spirit and shrinking in territory. In eighteen seventy, Italy unified, the Papal State was folded into the Kingdom of Italy, and the pope withdrew to Vatican City, that patch under half a square kilometer, smaller than a large park. Catholicism from then on returned to the enfeoffment of faith and culture, with no worldly regime at all.
Was this a mortal blow to Catholicism? Not at all. After losing worldly power, Catholicism instead recovered its spiritual vitality, expanded greatly worldwide, and the pope's spiritual authority was rebuilt in another way, no longer on worldly power but on the drawing force of faith itself. The problem of corruption fell away sharply too, because there was no worldly power left to corrupt, and the main work returned to faith, worship, charity, and education. The vitality of twentieth-century Catholicism worldwide may be greater than five hundred years ago. The eleven hundred years of the Papal State's theocratic experience prove that faith taking up power is a burden. Losing worldly power in eighteen seventy instead let Catholicism return to the position it does best. Losing power and thereby recovering the force of faith is one of the deepest pieces of evidence history has given.
Look at the second sample, the early Caliphate of the Islamic world. In Muhammad's lifetime he was both a religious leader and a worldly one, the tradition of joining religion and the worldly together from the very beginning of Islam. After his death the position of caliph appeared, inheriting his two roles, both the highest religious authority and the worldly sovereign of a political body. The early expansion was extremely fast, holding within fifty years the Arabian Peninsula, most of the Middle East, the North African coast, and Persia. Why so fast? Because the joining of the sacred and the worldly brought a double force, the religious fervor of believers converting directly into military force, fighting for the faith without fear of death, governance able to rest directly on religious law without building a worldly law from scratch, and newly taken regions integrated quickly through conversion. This is the real strength of a theocratic state in the short term. But it split inside quickly, the dispute over succession leading directly to a division of sects that lasts to this day, one of the deepest tensions within the Islamic world. The dynasties after all made the caliph's position hereditary, and all ran the cycle of the enfeoffment of power to its end one by one. In nineteen twenty-four the caliphate was abolished, yet Islam as a faith itself endures, and is today the world's second largest religion. Like the Catholic sample of eighteen seventy, the vanishing of worldly authority did not weaken the faith itself.
Set the two samples side by side. The Papal State eleven hundred years, the Caliphate thirteen hundred, and any attempt to join faith with worldly power is, over the long run, pulled down by the laws of the enfeoffment of power. Yet so long as the faith itself keeps its independence, the enfeoffment of faith can go on after the worldly power has vanished.
The present-day world still has a few theocratic or half-theocratic polities. Here a sense of proportion must be kept. Name no present-day polity, pass no verdict on any present-day politics, only set out the structural problems, and let you see for yourself. Every polity of this kind faces the same several structural problems. The leader is both religious authority and worldly authority, so voices of opposition inside are doubly pressed down. Governance must accord with a reading of the classic, yet the classic often gives no direct answer to complex present-day governance, so the power to read it becomes the core political power, and whoever holds the power to read holds everything. Dealings with the outside worldly world are full of tension, one side needing to take part in international affairs, the other to keep religious purity, wavering inside all the while. The younger generation meets the worldly world through the internet, their questions about the traditional frame growing, a tension hard to resolve over the long run. And tensions between different sects within the same religion often turn into long conflict. These five problems sit there in different degrees. This section passes no verdict on any concrete polity, it only sets out the regularity itself: any attempt to join faith with worldly power is inside the cycle of the enfeoffment of power, possibly very strong in the short term, necessarily dragged down over the long run by the four problems.
Now the opposite sample, the separation of church and state. Modern worldly states generally let the church be the church and the state be the state, neither directly interfering with the other. This is not against religion. It is letting religion return to the enfeoffment of faith and culture, and letting the state give its whole attention to the enfeoffment of power, each doing what it does best. The American constitution forbids an established religion, and this one clause kept America free for centuries of the kind of religious wars Europe had, letting many religions coexist in peace, so that religious vitality has stayed strong instead. After France cut the financial and administrative link between church and state, Catholicism developed more steadily in the twentieth century, because it was no longer drawn into state politics. China traditionally never had a theocratic state in the Western sense, the emperor having the mandate of Heaven yet not being a religious founder and not interpreting the classics, while Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism each had its own line of transmission, none wholly folded into state power, an arrangement that gave Chinese politics and religion each their own room, so that the great traditions each endured over a thousand years. Put these samples together and one summary comes out: the separation of church and state lets both live longer. Religion returned to its own position doing the enfeoffment of faith and culture can last thousands of years. The state returned to its own position doing the enfeoffment of power can give its whole attention to governing. Each doing its own, over the long run both are steadier.
So here is the position this section lays down. We opened the deepest paradox: once faith and culture take up worldly power, the four problems take over at once, with one more shell added, I speak for the divine, making it harder to self-correct. The Papal State and the Caliphate, two samples, both prove that faith taking up power is a burden, while the separation of church and state lets both live longer.
But with so many problems laid out, a real question presses down. A person sitting in a position, whether emperor or religious leader, knowing he is ringed by these problems, what can he actually do? Is there a single line that gives every person in a position the deepest counsel there is? The next section brings out the nine words Laozi left more than two thousand years ago: governing a great state is like cooking a small fish.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section Two. Governing a great state like cooking a small fish