The Keys of the Kingdom: Binding and Loosing in Heaven and Earth

Where are my books going? What is the point I’m trying to make by writing them?

There is something very important about the way the cosmos was understood in antiquity, which has been lost almost entirely. But not actually entirely, as I have found out in conversation with readers since my first book was published in November 2015. Some readers seem to grasp the ancient understanding almost intuitively, without having to know how it can be approached at a technical level.  Others arrive at the knowledge as the result of logical argument. It is also possible to approach the knowledge on the basis of the study of ancient literature, liturgy, philosophy, and iconography.

My own way into the ancient understanding began perhaps with discovering the statement Matthew 16: 19 concerning the ‘Keys of the Kingdom’, which is a phrase used only once in the Bible.

 “ whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven”

I first read this when I was about fifteen, and at school, and wondered at what it could possibly mean. It remained a mystery to me for some time – it would have been an entirely fruitless business to bring it up in our religious instruction class. The full passage extends from Matthew 16, verse 13-20, which I quote here:

13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
14 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
15 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
16 Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
17 Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven.
18 And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.
19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
20 Then he ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

This passage concerns the knowledge that the Son of Man is in  fact God incarnate. Jesus asks questions of his disciples about their understanding of who he is, and they reply with different interpretations. All except Simon Peter answered by suggesting he is one of the prophets. Simon Peter on the other hand, identifies him directly as the Messiah, and declares that he is the Son of the living God.

Jesus declares that Simon Peter is blessed, on account of this identification, "for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood” (i.e., by anything or any experience with roots and nature in the physical and secular world), “but by my Father in heaven”. He then proceeds to proclaim this idea as the rock on which “I will build my church”. There is a pun here of course on Simon Peter’s name – Petros - which means ‘rock’. But the meaning of the passage is that the Church (ekklesia) is to be built on the idea that whatever is bound on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever is loosed on earth will be loosed in heaven. This power constitutes the Keys of the Kingdom (of God).

Peter here represents a personification of the Church, but it is the Church itself which is important, and whose nature is being defined. Jesus is saying is that there is an essential identity between Heaven and Earth, and between the Father (in Heaven) and the Son (on Earth). However difficult a concept this may be to grasp, since it seems to defy logic. Simon Peter does grasp this, and he is made blessed and holy by this understanding.

As I said, this remained a passage which was hard to fathom for many years, despite the fact that it came to serve an important function for the Catholic church, in that the Church knows Saint Peter as the first Bishop of Rome, and claims that the power of the 'keys of the kingdom of God' is therefore invested in their Church. But its meaning is so much more interesting than that.

It is in fact a passage which parodies the Mesopotamian understanding of the relationship between gods in heaven, and incarnations of the gods on earth. I’ve written extensively about this in The Sacred History of Being. Babylonian priests could set up gods in heaven, and on earth, and they had a complex ritual process (lasting three days) which allowed them to do this. Close study of the texts associated with this process tell us a great deal about the logic which underpins it, and indeed the priests have the power to both create and to decommission gods both in heaven and on earth.

The king in Babylonia, as the living representative of Bel/Marduk on Earth, had the power to confer a temporary divinity upon the workmen making or refurbishing the divine images, which power could then be removed when they had finished their work. Part of the ceremony involved the ritual parody of their hands being cut off with a knife of tamarisk wood, symbolising the removal of their capacity to make gods. Which was their ability to join together divinity in heaven, and divinity on Earth, and to bind and loose in two worlds.

The holiness code in Leviticus confirms this interpretation that there is, for some reason which is hardly ever spelled out, an essential identity between heaven and Earth

“I am the Lord your God. If I am Holy, then you must be Holy”. (Leviticus 19.2).

Many in the modern world struggle with the idea of the incarnation of the divine on earth, and divinity made flesh. It was a struggle for many in antiquity also, hence the importance that faith (without understanding) came to have.  There are real answers out there to this question however, which illuminate much about ancient thought, religion, liturgy and literature, and they are worth spelling out.