Behemoth: The Gospellers of Leviathan

 In Revelation 13, St. John sees two beasts rising. The first beast emerges from the sea as a global imperium:

Then I stood on the sand of the sea. And I saw a beast rising up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and on his horns ten crowns, and on his heads a blasphemous name. ² Now the beast which I saw was like a leopard, his feet were like the feet of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion. The dragon gave him his power, his throne, and great authority. ³ And I saw one of his heads as if it had been mortally wounded, and his deadly wound was healed. And all the world marveled and followed the beast. ⁴ So they worshiped the dragon who gave authority to the beast; and they worshiped the beast, saying, “Who is like the beast? Who is able to make war with him?”

⁵ And he was given a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies, and he was given authority to continue for forty-two months. ⁶ Then he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme His name, His tabernacle, and those who dwell in heaven. ⁷ It was granted to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them. And authority was given him over every tribe, tongue, and nation. ⁸ All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

⁹ If anyone has an ear, let him hear. ¹⁰ He who leads into captivity shall go into captivity; he who kills with the sword must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints.

The proper hermeneutic for Revelation requires not only a deep knowledge of Jewish symbols (found throughout the canon of scripture), but a level of historicism. What St. John sees is not simply a metaphor for an invisible battle. Spiritual realities are manifest empirically because there's no radical ontological distinction between the physical/visible and the invisible. It's whether we have eyes to see. Being literate in the registry of Jewish-Biblical symbols opens the key to history. This knowledge only becomes clear to the saints when Christ our Lord opens the scrolls and seals. Preterism is only partially true: the things of this Apocalypse (literally unveiling) of Christ would happen soon and continuing on until the Eschaton. Revelation is a church book of history, what will happen until the End.

Hence, it's right to see the Sea Beast as the Roman Empire. The sea is the realm of chaos and of the Gentiles. It is the realm God has dominion over, yet His people constantly struggle with (e.g. Israel locked in battle with the Philistines). The Sea Beast is none other than Leviathan, the monstrous entity (which may or may not be some sort of crocodile of dinosaur proportions) which rules in chaos. Rome certainly represented a kind of Leviathan. Peoples of the world were subordinated or bought in. The Empire had many heads and made of many animals (a successor power to Persia and Greece in Asia Minor and the Levant). The Leviathan slaughters the people of God and blasphemes His Name (Jesus Christ), manifest in Rome's varied persecutions of Christians. Rome was a goddess, along with many her emperors. Loyalty meant offering incense to the genius of the emperor, which faithful Christians resisted and refused.

But to reduce Revelation to preterist dimensions is to miss its full impact. The spirit of Leviathan would live on. I would argue that, generally speaking, the spirit of Leviathan left the Roman empire as it split and molded a new Leviathanic entity: the papacy. The bishops of Rome seethed with jealousy as Constantinople took prime place among the old patriarchal sees. When the west collapsed, Rome was alone among the victorious Germanic nations. It returned to the Empire for brief periods, and it remained in communication with the Capital, but Rome had become a faded memory. While a century of Greek-speaking bishops kept the peace, the aristocracy eventually gained control of the see. And this aristocracy became a kind bedrock for a new order of things. Rome's power and privilege were asserted increasingly against the eastern bishops. Roman pontiffs sought to clear out the kind of bureaucratic corruption, making Rome into the throne of angels (which doubly meant clerical celibacy became a norm). However, to make it voice heard it needed allies. Rome had much symbolic value for any upstart kingdom or empire, and so many flocked to kiss the papal slipper. Charlemagne played ball, though many of his successors chafed under continued claims of Roman dominance over imperial politics. The Normans became a vicious battering ram for papal interests out east. The degradation of the Roman empire was complete in 1453. The Christian world seemed open to complete unity through the unifying factor of the pope (who, since the 14th c., had proclaimed his office as a necessary factor in salvation).

Of course, on paper this reality was always tenuous. Popes and emperors bickered and fought. However, the result of these conflicts was almost always papal victory. The Investiture Controversy ended with the symbolic victory of Canossa. The Babylonian Captivity was less of a defeat of the papacy as a temporary transference. The Conciliar movement ended in failure, as pressure from the Turks meant unification under the papacy even more important. Nevertheless, Christendom was considered to be a seamless whole. Princes could ignore the pope, or even quarrel with him, but it was all under a single order. Fights were often not about disrupting papal power, but claiming it for one's self. Hence, Henry VIII (as far as his own reign is concerned) was not exactly a break with the doctrine of the papacy. He had embraced some Lutheran doctrines temporarily in the Ten Articles, but the key to his "reform" was to transfer papal powers to the monarch. The reversion to Roman doctrine in the Six Articles (which saw the execution of Robert Barnes and two other "Lutherans") was a pivot, but still continuous with Henrician policy. The key goal was ecclesiastical supremacy, a monarchic papalism, a rex sacerdos. Edward VI functionally reversed this policy, as the Somerset Protectorate advanced a new kind of monarchic-republicanism. Elizabeth cemented it, refusing the title "head" of the reformed Church of England and opting for "supreme governor". This change might seem simply like semantics, but it impacted the role the monarch had within the church (and the greater society). The Elizabethan church saw itself as broadly Reformed, linked to other churches, aware of England's own limitations of society. The major tell for a Leviathan is whether it's possible to really imagine a world outside of one's own. The Henrician reforms were a pale shadow, showing the major crackup happening across Europe. But for Medieval theologians, such was simply the world.

Thus, if the Papacy exudes a certain "spirit of Leviathan", as the supra-state entity that claims absolute power over the nations, then its advocates represent the "Land Beast" of St. John's vision:

Then I saw another beast coming up out of the earth, and he had two horns like a lamb and spoke like a dragon. ¹² And he exercises all the authority of the first beast in his presence, and causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. ¹³ He performs great signs, so that he even makes fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men. ¹⁴ And he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived. ¹⁵ He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. ¹⁶ He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, ¹⁷ and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

¹⁸ Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666.

 In the preterist reading, the Land Beast is faithless Israel, the Behemoth (perhaps some kind of Mammoth-type of Elephant) of Scripture. Israel was the Land, the orderly and peaceful place of prosperity (man can't live on the waters). Faithless Israel sold its soul (viz. the Temple) to the Roman Leviathan. Priests and scribes aided Rome in its over-lordship over the People of God. Christ and His Apostles did not advocate violently overthrowing Rome, but there was a reason why Zealots (like Judas) found Jesus as an attractive preacher and advocate. Of course, Jesus refused the overture for violence and Isacariot sold him for a bag of coins (to recoup the losses of his money-grubbing revolutionary days with his Master). 666 is perfect imperfection, the heavenly triad without its totality. 7 is the Kingdom of God's number, the perfect marriage between Heaven (3) and Earth (4). 666 is a fraudulent claim to be the kingdom of God. Pax Romana was a lie, built on corpses and oppression. The Behemoth brings about this loyalty, pretending to godliness but defining piety through the Leviathan. Submit and subordinate, or be destroyed. The Mark of the Beast is how you do business, requiring a selling of your mind (forehead) and strength (right hand) to the regime of the Beasts.

However, the historicist would take one's view towards the sanctification of this universalist regime of conquest. While the above may seem anti-Catholic, it's not. While papalism is a devilish doctrine, many western/Latin Catholics did not see the papacy as definitive of their faith. They may have simply rejected his pretensions to grandeur. Roman Catholicism would progressively center on the authority of the pope as pope, not simply an ancient and venerable episcopate. However, allies of the papacy would promote this doctrine to the four corners of the Earth. Papal legates, inquisitors, and tightly allied monastic orders promoted this doctrine of universal dominion as far as they could. After the Reformation, as papal power shrunk, the claims ballooned. Jesuits exhibited the worst of this ultramontanism, which only intensified over the centuries. Vatican I was perhaps a highpoint, even as the papacy ceased to be in any real sense a Leviathan. Nevertheless, the papacy would eventually contribute to a new Leviathan, aiding it as part of a new Behemoth.

It's important to not have a flat symbolic register. The sea is not simply a code for the Gentiles or chaos. The sea itself imports a kind of meaning. Peoples defined by sea-faring often become imperialists, not simply confined to the geographic limits of their own lands. Self-possession (empire) is a political good, but mutates into domination of others (imperialism). And the most effective way to open up this possibility is the ocean. Look at a map. If you look at land as the main thing, the world seems broken up and disconnected. There are many islands and continents that are apart from one another. However, look at from the vantage of the waters. The whole world is connected and single unity. In the Heavenly vision of the New Jerusalem, St. John sees the waters like glass. They had become stilled. Earth and ocean became peacefully wedded, one in order and harmony. But that's the reign of 777, not 666. Instead, maritime empires often become imperial Leviathans. Rome's shift into imperial overdrive was when they assumed Carthage's role. The Mediterranean was the Roman Mare Nostrum. And as this Leviathan appears upon the coast to swallow up the world, Behemoth calls all to kneel down before him and worship. It is this synthesis between Leviathan and Behemoth that reboots the Babel project, to build a tower to storm the heavens, to create a gate of the gods, to make the demoniac haven of Babylon. Together they make Hell on Earth. Yet, this prophecy is in God's hand and it is part of "the patience and the faith of the saints". History is part of God's judgement.

While Christendom ruptured, many powers sought to fill in the gap. The Renaissance/Reformation shattered this dominion, but many nations scrambled to fill in the gap. Henry VIII's fever dreams of rex sacerdos are pathetic, but it was the goal of not a few. The repeated early modern fear was of "universal empire". Spain seemed poised to become the successor to papal Leviathan. Then the Dutch and French poised to claim the mantle. All of these nations found incredible wealth and power through the seas. However, it was little England who would become dominant. At first, the English had perfected a self-possessed empire under the Whigs. It's perhaps a fit of irony that it was the Tories who advocated a Blue-Water policy of naval domination, not the Whigs (a term usually associated with future liberalism). However, the British Empire rapidly shifted from an empire into imperialism. George III had reinvited Tories into power, exacerbating tensions (rather than pursuing synthesis) with American colonies. The resulting shatter realigned the interests of finance and commerce (which bankrolled and managed the manufacturing interests in the country). The aristocratic landlords who ran finance had at least a public spiritedness, being the same men who ran Parliament. Now, with the flood of European capital into London after the Napoleonic Wars, Britain shifted into free-trade empire. The idea of an integrated, autarkic, state gave way to corporatization (a Tory philosophy). The troubles with the East India Company metastatized. By absorbing India into the empire, the empire was absorbed into the merchant company. Britain exerted power over the world through market-domination. The Leviathan broke down all barriers. Latin America became a British colony, flooded with cheap manufacturing goods and London capital. Foreign ministers knew English better than Spanish. The British Empire dominated the world with a comprehensive, universal, secular Christendom: liberalism.

America and the nascent Germans feared this turn of things. They pursued a land-based empire (a mix of good development and abusive conquest). However, both were tempted to the same spirit. Ultimately, America embraced this Anglophilic tendency, as the concern for national protection fused to an internationalist free-trader outlook. J.P. Morgan and Rockefeller helped unite the interests in the New Freedom of Woodrow Wilson, advancing the ideological matrix of the "new liberalism". The 20th c. saw a shake-up as the early modern quest for Leviathan-hood repeated itself. The Anglo-American alliance, fusing London finance to New York, was an evolved Leviathan. FDR had set the stage for the transmuted new liberal global dominion.

But these Leviathans (whether British or Anglo-American) required emissaries. It's here that the double-faced nature of evangelism appears. Such is not to condemn all missionaries. The Moravians advanced the gospel and the kingdom of God on their own terms. The British Empire had not yet become Leviathan, and the need to manage/corrupt/direct evangelism was weak if not non-existent. Per the nature of this beast, the power is almost magnetic or gravitational. Many "conspiracy theorists" assume these sorts of degenerations only happen because a central committee is directing things. It is true that power-players do involve themselves to advance their own goals and that of the dominion. However, the pull of legitimacy, symbolic potency, and access to resources brings many in. The relationship between Leviathan and Behemoth is synthetic and mutually reinforcing. The sea-wolf Normans sought symbolic power and legitimacy from the Papacy, and the Papacy sought wealth, soldiers, and a political shell. The same operated within the British and Anglo-American imperium. Men came with bibles and deeds, they mapped out territories as they evangelized the nations. Conversion meant submission to the Empire and obedience to its ruler (over one's own or through one's own). It's not that there wasn't anything worthwhile in the deal. The British were at least an alternative to some of the despotic and corrupt princelings that dotted the land. The East India Company may seem more fair or even-measured than the Mughal emperor or the Marathan princes. The point of this analysis is not so much a utilitarian comparison between maximum good versus necessary evils. The point is the construction of a demoniac system where the world outside becomes unimaginable. The world-system becomes confused with the world as it is. Liberalism became, simply, the rational and "common-sense" way of things. There was no alternative.

And thus the evangelists did not simply preach the gospel (if they did), but liberalism. Free-trade became a mark of civility, which sold many peoples on the idea of Christianity as a means to an end. The preachers may have looked like a Lamb, but they spoke with the voice of a dragon. They performed miracles, even of fire from the sky. Perhaps in papal times this referred to real wonders, but perhaps it referred to alchemical knowledge. Certainly "fire from the sky" is a shocking wonder when coming from the barrel of a canon or from the cargo-hold of a bomber. Drone strikes seem almost like divine wrath poured out on a people. It's the reign of 666. And preachers embrace and advocate it. The gospel is devotion to the Anglo-American imperium. The United States became what it feared and now simply marches towards its own pseudo-Zion, synthesizing Leviathan and Behemoth to build a Tower of Babel. Vehicles like the IMF, the World Bank, NATO, and a whole host of other funds only advance the cause of this world-prison. Weber was wrong to analyze things from the perspective of industrial capital. It was not on the verge of creating a prison of iron, but financial capital built a ghostly prison. Like the movie They Live!, the ideology is so thick that our eyes are useless to see it. And worst yet, the materialist spirituality of this regime makes not a few hostile to its overthrow. If not for God's grace, even the elect would be deceived and worship the Leviathan.

It's a dark reality to reckon with. Some missionaries snapped out of these paradigms. Some others did better than they knew. As St. Paul recognized: even those who preach out of jealousy to cause trouble will advance the Kingdom of God. The attempt at domination is never complete and never self-contained. The Lord can harpoon Leviathan (as He did, mortally, on the cross). Nevertheless, despite making good from evil intentions, it's sad to think how many missionaries are simply parts of Behemoth. Whether its Evangelical NGOs who spy for the imperium or the papacy as a vehicle for Cold War propaganda, both are part of worshiping Leviathan (even as they resist corrupt or oppressive princes). Pope Francis has embraced "ethical capitalism", siding with global capital firms and Rockefeller money. He is not a radical advancing "liberation theology" (a mixed movement whose softer edges gelled with center-left capitalist interests), but part of Vatican 2's embrace of the Anglo-American dominion. If this argument seems hard to believe (considering how critical Francis is of the United States), one only has to see the MO for CIA operations. The CIA (which worked as a network for many Anglo-American financial interests) often supported regimes mildly critical of the US to hide their own influence. The CIA usually bankrolled center-left parties (Labour in UK, Christian Democrats in many Catholic countries, etc.) to gain effective loyalty, but superficial opposition. Hard rightists tended to misunderstand the CIA's more complex maneuvering. As degenerate as Joseph McCarthy was, he was allowed a lot of leash until he began attacking the Pentagon and CIA as red-infested agencies. Rightwinger movements that emphasize American nationalism are stooges, often oblivious to how empire actually operates. They are often useful battering rams for oppositions, but become liabilities when given too much latitude.

International and ecumenical Protestantism engaged in widespread evangelism at behest of its neofeudalist liberal corporate overlords. The East India Company bankrolled not a few evangelists (High Church, Evangelical, and Anglo-Catholic) to preach in India. British finance aided evangelists to spread throughout Asia and Africa. However, these efforts were small-potatoes when compared to the Rockefeller money that basically built up a Protestant supra-church. Often siding with the "modernists" (though not exclusively), the Rockefeller Foundation aided efforts to send missionaries to China and abroad. Combining evangelism and social science, these preachers brought the gospel of new-liberal civilization. Believing in the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of Man, these evangelists emphasized the applied social gospel of medicine and social planning. Many had good intentions, but the result was uplifting foreign nations into fully compatible market economies. Labor would become available for corporate interest, natural resources would become available for investment, and infrastructure would move these goods to the ports for the World (Anglosaxon) Market. London set the gold prices until the Bretton-Woods synthesis, where New York would have a says as the senior partner. The shift away from the Gold Standard meant a more open dollarization of national economies. But the point is that the modernist evangelists were to save souls through their bodies. The exclusivity of the gospel was too polarizing (and could engender missionary opposition to imperial policies). The Behemoth of Modernist ecumenical Protestantism (crystallized in the World Council of Churches) would give way to the secular religion of Humanism, where NGOs replaced churches and missionary agencies. But it doesn't really matter how markets are opened, resources made available, and nations are given the Mark of the Beast. Modern science seems like a wonder from heaven. Sometimes they need some "fire from heaven" to remind the people that Leviathan is god. Either way, whatever works.

Hence, "conservative" missionaries have also played a part. Many Evangelicals were rabid liberals, seeing free-trade as a necessary belief for true Christianity. Some Evangelicals of course turned on the imperialist vision. Missionaries at time opposed imperial policy if policy was better severed by liberalizing non-Christian groups (such as Muslims in Africa and Asia). Somtimes missionaries realized the game and sought to turn these indigenous churches into autocephalous entities, with their own leaders and without dependence on metropolitan agencies or evangelists. Nevertheless, the interests of the imperium were not always clear-cut. As the book Thy Will Be Done makes clear, the conservative (even fundamentalist) Summer Institute for Language (part of the Wycliffe Bible Translators organization) provided logistics for the Rockefellers in the Amazon. These missionaries inadvertantly marked out where the indigenous people lived and how strong they were, clearing the way for mercs (working for Rockefeller allies in Brazilian government) to slaughter them. Is it any wonder that Putin's Russia fears foreign missionaries? Putin is not an Orthodox supremacist (he praises the "historic faiths" of Russia, including Jews, Muslims, and Lutherans). He simply wants to protect Russia from any more intrigue. Thus Jehovah's Witnesses and Baptists are often prosecuted and fined to drive them away. Similarly other nations fear or welcome American-influenced missionaries based on their posture to neoliberal globalism. They either embrace or reject the overtures of Behemoth.

It's really depressing to realize these features. I don't think a church being allied with a particular state is necessarily damning. Perhaps unwise, but not disastrous. However, the threat of Leviathan will often turn such churches into allies of the Beast, a constituent for Behemoth, a polluter of the gospel. Most of the globe lives under the spell of TINA, the technocratic management of all things for the sake of Freedom. Free markets means anything at any price. Goods, ideas, bodies, souls. The Mark of the Beast gives access. The past and future are erased into an ever recurrent present, the same way the amillenialist of the Medieval era was a negative infinity. The looming shadow of the future ceased to be, as heaven and hell coexisted temporally with Earth. It's this view which has become "common-sensical" in literature and film. The idea of an End is gone, simply unimaginable. St. John's vision, the Revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, ought to shatter the illusion for Christians. However, many who claim this name, who are "of the Land", become elements of Behemoth. God damn these beasts and the Babel they seek to build