Demagogism

Demagogism in the biblical record is the practice of grasping or holding power by courting the crowd against the office one already occupies — a king's son working the gate against the king, a governor trading his verdict for the multitude's shout. Scripture tracks the pattern from the figure who first staged it in Israel down to the magistrate who staged it again at Jerusalem, and locates its taproot in the original lifted heart that wanted worship for itself.

Absalom at the Gate

Absalom is the paradigm case. He is the king's third son, born to Maacah daughter of Talmai king of Geshur (2Sa 3:3), and the narrative pauses to note that "in all Israel there was none to be so much praised as good-looking as Absalom: from the sole of his foot even to the top of his head there was no blemish in him" (2Sa 14:25). Looks are political capital, and Absalom spends them.

The campaign opens at the city gate. "Absalom rose up early, and stood beside the way of the gate: and it was so, that, when any man had a suit which should come to the king for judgment, then Absalom called to him, and said, Of what city are you?" (2Sa 15:2). He validates each petitioner — "See, your matters are good and right" — and then plants the grievance: "but there is no man deputed of the king to hear you" (2Sa 15:3). The next move is the wish that fits the grievance: "Oh that I were made judge in the land, that every man who has any suit or cause might come to me, and I would do him justice!" (2Sa 15:4). And then the body language. "And it was so, that, when any man came near to do him obeisance, he put forth his hand, and took hold of him, and kissed him. And on this manner Absalom did to all Israel who came to the king for judgment: so Absalom stole the hearts of the men of Israel" (2Sa 15:5-6). Three motions in sequence: flatter the petitioner, accuse the throne, embrace the voter. The verb the narrator chooses is theft.

The takeover follows the takeover of the affections. "There came a messenger to David, saying, The hearts of the men of Israel are after Absalom. And David said to all his slaves who were with him at Jerusalem, Arise, and let us flee" (2Sa 15:13-14). David quits the capital because the sentiment has already quit it. Ahithophel pivots to Absalom and proposes the obvious finish: "Let me now choose out twelve thousand men, and I will arise and pursue after David this night" (2Sa 17:1).

The narrator does not let the pattern coast. The same head that the camera lingered over in 14:25 is the head that catches in the oak: "Absalom was riding on his mule, and the mule went under the thick boughs of a great oak, and his head caught hold of the oak, and he was left hanging between heaven and earth; and the mule that was under him went on" (2Sa 18:9). Joab finishes it with three darts (2Sa 18:14). The father whose throne Absalom worked to steal weeps: "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! O that I had died for you, O Absalom, my son, my son!" (2Sa 18:33). The demagogue's career closes with the king he displaced grieving him.

Pilate at the Pavement

The New Testament case is a magistrate rather than a pretender, but the structural move is identical: weigh the case, then weigh the crowd, and let the crowd decide.

Pilate keeps repeating that he has no case. "I find no fault in this man" (Lu 23:4). "What is truth? ... I find no crime in him" (Joh 18:38). "I find no crime in him" again (Joh 19:6). To the chief priests' delivery he answers, "Am I a Jew? Your own nation and the chief priests delivered you to me: what have you done?" (Joh 18:35). Three times, in Luke's telling, he goes back: "Why, what evil has this man done? I have found no cause of death in him: I will therefore chastise him and release him" (Lu 23:22).

Then he hands the verdict to the multitude. He tries the Passover-amnesty trick — "do you⁺ want therefore that I release to you⁺ the King of the Jews?" — and the crowd takes the offer the wrong way: "Not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber" (Joh 18:39-40). Mark records the calculation in one line: "And Pilate, wishing to content the multitude, released to them Barabbas, and delivered Jesus, when he had scourged him, to be crucified" (Mr 15:15). Luke makes the surrender explicit — "But they were urgent with loud voices, asking that he might be crucified. And their voices prevailed. And Pilate gave sentence that what they asked for should be done" (Lu 23:23-24). Two lines later the sentence comes back to the inscription: when the chief priests want the placard rewritten, the same governor who folded on the verdict refuses to fold on the title — "What I have written I have written" (Joh 19:22). He keeps the small thing and gives away the case.

John pinpoints the lever. The crowd shifts the threat from theology to politics — "If you release this man, you are not Caesar's friend: everyone who makes himself a king speaks against Caesar" (Joh 19:12) — and Pilate immediately walks Jesus to the judgment seat at the Pavement, Gabbatha (Joh 19:13). The career of Pilate the demagogue is one verse: he hears the political shout, he sits down to sentence. That this was already his pattern in Judea the gospels glance at obliquely — Tiberius's appointee in the fifteenth year of Caesar (Lu 3:1), the governor "whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices" of the Galileans (Lu 13:1).

The Glory of Men

The corrosive thing under both stories is the appetite Scripture names "the glory of men." John writes it about the rulers who would not confess Christ: "for they loved the glory of men more than the glory of God" (Joh 12:43). Jesus had already located the same appetite as the engine of unbelief: "How can you⁺ believe, who receive glory one of another, and the glory that [comes] from the only God, you⁺ do not seek?" (Joh 5:44).

The Gospels are careful to distinguish this from mere popularity. Jesus actually drew the crowds — "all the city was gathered together at the door" (Mr 1:33), "the multitude resorted to him, and he taught them" (Mr 2:13), "a great multitude followed him, and they thronged him" (Mr 5:24), "the multitude pressed on him and heard the word of God" (Lu 5:1), "the large crowd heard him gladly" (Mr 12:37). At one point "the tens of thousands of the multitude were gathered together, insomuch that they trod one on another" (Lu 12:1). And yet the multitude is not the warrant. The line that follows is Jesus' warning to the disciples to "take heed to yourselves [and stay away] from the leaven which is the hypocrisy of the Pharisees" (Lu 12:1). Crowd-attraction is not the same as crowd-pleasing; Jesus is followed without being managed by his followers.

Paul names the disposition the demagogue cannot afford. Service is to be done "not in the way of eyeservice, as men-pleasers; but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from the soul" (Ep 6:6); the Colossian household is told the same thing: "not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, but in singleness of heart, fearing the Lord" (Cl 3:22). The eyeservice / men-pleaser pair is the demagogue's working ethic translated into a vice.

The Lifted Heart

Scripture pushes the diagnosis one level back. Demagogism is the political shape of a more basic theological move: the exaltation of a created self into a place that is not its own. Isaiah hears it as a soliloquy in the heart of the king of Babylon: "And you said in your heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God; and I will sit on the mount of congregation, in the uttermost parts of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High" (Is 14:13-14). Five "I will"s in two verses. The serpent's offer in the garden is the same offer in shorter form — "You⁺ will not surely die" (Ge 3:4) — flattering the hearer into a self-promotion the Creator did not authorize. Paul gathers the line into the eschatological figure of the man of lawlessness, "he who opposes and exalts himself against all that is called God or that is worshiped; so that he sits in the temple of God, setting himself forth as God" (2Th 2:4); the mystery, he adds, is already at work (2Th 2:7). The demagogue at the gate and the demagogue on the judgment seat are localized rehearsals of the same ascent.

The biblical tally on the practice is consistent. Absalom is dropped from his mule and pierced through the heart in the oak. Pilate keeps his title for one trial cycle. The verdict that controls both stories is the verdict the crowd cannot give and cannot revoke.