NOTES for Dan 6:1-28

Daniel's behavior is the ideal rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's. There is work that he does better than anyone, and Darius can reproach him in nothing. There is the law of the country where Daniel lives, and the law cannot be canceled, changed, or violated for his sake. But there is God, who is above all this. God is more important than career, king, money, and law. Daniel worships God, and if by this he violates the law, then, recognizing the necessity of rendering to Caesar what is Caesar's, he can even go into the lions' den. In this we see a consistency that we so often lack. Serving God, one must be ready for the fact that Caesar will have to be paid in full. The miracle is not that one will not have to pay, but that God helps us pass through it.

What can and what can a ruler not do, even an absolute monarch, the head of a great power of his time? Reading some chapters from the Book of Daniel, at times it appears that he can do almost nothing. Or at least that he cannot do the main thing: make the decision that in a concrete situation seems to him the only right one. So it is with Darius: he does not want Daniel's death, he would gladly change the decision he had previously made and cancel the decree he himself had issued, but he is unable to do so. The laws accepted in the Persian Empire were irrevocable, and even the king could do nothing about it.

It is hard today to say with certainty whether this was actually so, or whether before us is one of the many legends about the Persian Empire and its rulers. But in this case it does not matter: whatever the case, the author of the book noticed one characteristic feature of the position of a ruler standing at the head of any state that lives according to the laws of the untransformed world. He has power neither over himself nor over the situations in which he finds himself as ruler. And the point here is not the sacredness of laws or authority, and not the fact that, as the well-known saying has it, "the retinue makes the king."

Of course, one can speak in a certain sense and in certain eras about the sacredness of laws, and the influence of a ruler's circle on the ruler is a reality with which any ruler has to reckon. But both of these, and much else that any ruler faces, ultimately represent nothing other than what could be called the logic of power. Of course, much depends on the concrete person. And yet the authors of all the biblical books are unanimous: in the fallen world there is no good power; there is only bad or very bad power. And this is not because all its representatives are necessarily and originally malicious, but because any state has always been and remains a machine, a mechanism that either functions according to the laws proper to it or does not function at all. And the more complex and large-scale the mechanism, the more there manifests in it that evil in which, according to the word of the Gospel, the world lies.

For the author of the Books of Samuel, theocracy is better than monarchy, even an elective monarchy such as it was in the days of Saul and David, not only because charismatic leaders guided by God then come to power, since in those same books real theocracy is described as an institution both spiritually and politically ambiguous, but also, and perhaps even primarily, because it makes it possible to avoid the formation of a state mechanism.

Although, of course, in the fallen world theocracy is no panacea either. For both the prophets and the sages, the Torah is the best legislation possible, but even it will not make society ideal; it can make it only, in Plato's phrase, "second after the best." And in an ordinary society, in a great empire, the ruler at times is left only to suffer pangs of conscience and the inability to help someone whom he does not consider guilty at all. And only these pangs of conscience will he be able to present to God on the day of Judgment as testimony to his best unrealized intentions.

The actions of people in power do not always bring them joy. The Persian king's question to Daniel is telling in this respect: he is clearly not glad about what he had to do. Of course, on the one hand, the king's action could be considered exemplary for a person in power. The king himself had signed the law forbidding worship of anyone except the king, and now he strictly carried it out, although he would have preferred to make an exception for Daniel, toward whom he had a special attitude.

Such unwavering consistency in observing the law, regardless of persons and personal attachments, undoubtedly deserves approval in a statesman; therefore God also does not condemn the king, seeing that what is happening does not gladden him at all, that he would prefer to free Daniel from punishment if it were within his power, and that he still hopes, in essence, for a miracle that will save the one whom he himself cannot save, even as king. But, on the other hand, the situation in which the king found himself explains as well as possible why the Kingdom, if it is true, can only be "not of this world."

Here, obviously, the issue is not even whether this or that concrete ruler is good or bad. The issue is that the logic by which every earthly power is forced to be guided, the very mechanism of its functioning, is built according to the laws of the untransformed world. And if a person, like all God's creation, can be transformed, can qualitatively change his nature so that it becomes fit for life according to the laws of the Kingdom, the state mechanism cannot be transformed; an attempt to transform it can lead only to its destruction. And no human being can change anything here: if he wants the state machine to function, he will have to allow it to function according to the laws of the untransformed world.

As is evident, if a certain people, a certain society wants to give room in its life to the Kingdom, that people or society must limit the functioning of the state machine as much as possible without harming the fulfillment of the minimally necessary state functions. And, of course, there is no way to count on structures of this kind bringing any benefit in the affairs of the Church, whose vocation is to bring the Kingdom into the world. That very Kingdom which, by definition, is incompatible with any earthly power.