The Prince is a Pauper: Christian Echoes from an Unlikely Source

“though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor…” (2 Cor. 8:9)

It would be overly simplistic to attribute the modern tendency to flatten traditional hierarchies to a simple rejection of tradition for its own sake. It would be equally simplistic to attribute it to a pure understanding and desire for justice. While there is likely truth to both of these motivations, consciously or unconsciously, this desire to see the prince as a pauper goes back long before the pseudo-democratization of power that humanity has been experiencing in a unique way in the last hundred years. While this destruction of hierarchy, or sacred order, seems to also be anti-Christian on the surface, and there are certainly anti-Christian elements to it, it comes from a very important Christian theological concept. 

The eponymous story, The Prince and the Pauper, appears in the 1881 tale by Mark Twain, a vocal critic of Christiaintiy despite his glowing respect for St. Joan of Arc. It is a classic tale that has been retold and reimagined countless times. Tom Canty, a poor London boy, is noticed by Prince Edward Tudor and invited to his chamber, where they are both fascinated by the lives of the other as well as their resemblance, and so switch places. It is here that both boys experience important growth which proves to benefit both of them personally as well as the entire kingdom. While there are clear moral truths evident that one can surmise even in this simple summary, they proceed from and are informed by the even deeper theological, more specifically Christological truth from which they spring. 

There is a deep significance to the seemingly least believable part of The Prince and the Pauper story, which is the uncanny, almost identical resemblance of them. In the Twain story, they also share the same birthday, which implies they are twins separated at birth with one of them being sent to live with the commoners. And before you Google it, yes this is what The Parent Trap movies are based upon. The mythological, Christological reality to this detail though, aside from a convenient and necessary plot point, is that in outward appearance, the prince is indistinguishable from the pauper and vice versa. There is a reason every human who interacts with Jesus in the Gospels prior to his Resurrection is not utterly compelled to worship him. It is also why the Transfiguration was such a significant event that it is recorded in all three Synoptic Gospels.

From a human standpoint, Jesus appeared like any other human. To have appeared in any other way would have, at best, distracted from the message of the Gospel he was preaching and, at worst, acted as a form of manipulation upon those with whom he interacted. This would have been problematic considering these were the ones upon whom he would found his Church. In fact, this was even built into one of the most dramatic moments of the Gospels when Jesus and Barabbas are presented to the mob by Pilate. Bar-abbas, which directly translates to “son of the father” is juxtaposed with Jesus, the true Son of the Father. Both of them are suspected insurrectionists, but we cannot tell the difference. 

The “prince” had to resemble us “paupers.” In order for that to happen, the Prince had to shed his royal status and become weak, and shed his royal garb in order to experience the reality of his kingdom. This is called kenosis and it has proven to be one of the most alluring and confounding realities in Christian theology and spirituality. The theological concept of kenosis, a word that means “self-emptying,” finds its root in Philippians 2:7 and refers to the ”emptying” of the Son’s divinity in order to assume our human nature. It is the limitless Creator being limited by the box of created humanity. 

Once actually understood, no one can stay complacent to this idea. The notion that the all-powerful God not just became weak, but made Himself weak, should scandalize even the most pious of believers. We expect our leaders to be powerful, so our God must be the most powerful, right? What good comes from worshipping a weak God?

Twain’s story confronts this very problem, in fact. This kenosis, or “emptying out,” of the Prince leads to discomfort on his part and a lack of faith in the story. In experiencing some of the injustice that had previously gone unnoticed in his reign, he identified himself and vows to resolve these injustices. The reaction he receives is suspicion, accusation of insanity and a mock coronation reminiscent of Our Lord at his Passion (John 19:2). Ironically, it was in this episode that Christ’s kingship and his true power was being made manifest. Similarly, it is this “passion” that the Prince experiences that will empower him to reform his kingdom when he does return to his throne in spirit and in truth. Some Christians are called to a similar kenosis in participation with Christ when they take a vow of poverty. A popular and moving example of this shedding of earthly wealth for greater identification with Jesus can be seen in the famous scene in the life of St. Francis of Assisi, where he stripped naked and renounced his family inheritance to live a life of poverty. This is done, according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, for the transfiguration of the world. 

“...so that you through His poverty might become rich.” (2 Cor. 8:9)

Of course if there was no resolution to the experiment between the two boys then this story would be extremely unsatisfying to us paupers making up the majority of the reading audience. The true prince not only reveals his nature in a dramatic moment that includes the presentation of an official seal indicating his identity, perhaps some baptism imagery on Twain’s part methinks, but alas, medoubts as well, but he also exalts the pauper afterwards for his loyalty and support to show how the prince has grown from experience. 

As a brief aside, it is worth reflecting on the fact that Twain, though no apologist of Christianity himself, seemed to allude to such a deeply historical and profound element of Christian theology in such an imaginative way. Though C.S. Lewis now often gets chided for the heavy-handedness of his Christian allegory in the Narnia series, he wrote how he sought to “steal past watchful dragons” by his integration of Christian themes into his children’s literature. Seemingly unbeknownst to the young reader, the soil of their soul would be tilled for the seed of faith to take root. Here with Twain, we seem to find an inverse of sorts. Now, it is God who has stolen past the watchful dragons of Twain's conscious imagination in his construction of the story. In so doing, has God planted the seed of kenosis into Twain’s natural ability to tell stories? Has God wired us to recognize the fittingness of kenosis, so that we not only see it in small stories like Twain's, but in The Story of Jesus? Thus, it cannot help but grow in the hearts of readers, especially those with eyes to see it. 

The Prince, because of his becoming poor, has a new experiential knowledge of his kingdom that not only resonates deeply with him, but can resonate deeply with his subjects because they know he became one of them. The subjects now have a greater participation in the kingdom itself because of these actions, actions that required humility and discomfort. So too was the kenosis of God the Son. God emptied himself in order to take on human nature, but this was not achieved for its own sake. What came from it was the exaltation of human nature itself. Though the line “God became man so that man might become God” from St. Athanasius is probably the most popular example of this idea, it is certainly not the first. The answer isn’t that we paupers all grasp at prince-hood, but that we recognize the Prince already became a pauper so that we could participate in his kingdom.