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Our Task

It has become common parlance to speak of a global economy. Whether in boom times or recessions, the interdependency of nations—large and small, industrial and developing—is evident. The banking crisis that struck the member-states of the G10 in 2008 threatened the financial stability not only of the world’s richest countries, but had crippling effects on nations that even in more normal times were finding it impossible to service their debts and provide minimal care for their poor and infirm. In the area of economics, the world clearly is woven tightly into a single web. As much as individual states would like to step outside of this web, they are bound as economic partners “for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.”

In the meantime, many people of faith live in a world that is confined to their particular congregation, denomination, or locality. Charity is directed to the immediate neighbor and the spiritual family is coterminous with one’s own parish, whereas references to Darfur, Somalia, and Pakistan register with the hollow sound of far away places. Such are the fruits of a spirituality that has become increasingly individualistic, of an ecclesiology excluding any concept of the individual congregation being part of a worldwide network, of salvation construed as a gift of eternal life given exclusively to those adopting a particular set of beliefs.

Fortunately, the classic biblical view of the church as a universal phenomenon has not been extinguished completely, but lives on in congregations in Minnesota vitally connected with sister congregations in Tanzania, among doctors devoting months of pro bona service in disaster areas throughout the world, and within organizations raising millions of dollars for food, medicines and agricultural equipment in striving to serve “the least of these my brethren.”

Perhaps the need to re-experience the world as one global family of God’s children is especially urgent in a country like the United States where endemic isolationism fosters a hegemonous sense of superiority. To the extent that engaging in the commerce of religious and ethical ideas is entertained, it is construed as exporting aspects of the world’s most advanced civilization to more benighted parts of the world.

Although such a parochial worldview can be challenged both by rigorous news reporting and commentary such as one gets on NPR and PBS and insightful fictional and nonfictional books like Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner, Greg Mortenson and David Relin’s Three Cups of Tea, Elias Chacour and David Hazard’s Blood Brothers, and Rory Stewart’s The Places in Between, Mark Twain’s antidote perhaps remains the most effective for the fortunate minority that can afford it, namely, the exposure of “innocents abroad” to other cultures through travel. Three times in the last several years, my own “innocent” eyes have been opened thanks to invitations to lecture in South Africa, the Philippines, and India. In each case, what modest scholarly contribution I could offer was repaid many times over by lessons taught by courageous women and men who in their struggles for justice and acts of compassion have demonstrated to the world the profound relevancy of the Bible for contemporary political policy and action.

One cannot avoid the question: “What is it about the culture of creaturely comforts and assumed security that turns our attention inward and leads to a dulling of the sense of shared global humanity and the preciousness of every single newborn baby?” The answer comes through pilgrimage to Nelson Mandela’s cell on Bird Island, through conversation with a Jesuit priest fasting in solidarity with Manila’s impoverished shanty dwellers, and in the testimony of a parish pastor in a district of India threatened by anti-Christian prejudice and violence. In the visitor’s homeland, liberty is taken for granted and demands little in return; in the host society, liberty is a daily struggle demanding great courage and entailing suffering. In the visitor’s homeland, a sense of the contemporary meaning of Hebrew slaves escaping willy-nilly from a ruthless oppressor must be sought through a scholarly exercise; in the host society it is encountered daily in crowded streets and marketplaces. In the visitor’s homeland, the thought of a God who would sacrifice his own son to win back rebellious children hell-bent on their own destruction is about as comprehensible as forfeiting all one’s possessions and giving them to the poor; in the host society only such a God can offer hope to those experiencing all earthly forms of power as agents of their exploitation.

The reflections found in this book arose specifically and concretely from one visitor’s encounter with his hosts. For the gracious and courageous Christians with whom I became friends, the reality of a global spiritual family is as real and essential to humanity’s survival as a healthy global economy. Thus, for example, when Fr. Victor Salanga invited me to address the Annual Convention of the Philippine Catholic Biblical Society under the theme of “Scripture and the Quest for a New Society,” he had in mind not a new society designed for his country alone, but a society defined by the universality of the Kingdom of God. And he was not timid in making the connection between the two realms: “Our Bible has much to say about economics and politics.”

Much indeed, enough to fill many volumes, but the advantage of a short book is that it behooves one to move immediately to the heart of the matter. And as I see it, the heart of the matter pulsates with a central truth that flows through the length and breadth of Scripture: For the person of faith and for the faith community, there is but one government to which we owe our ultimate allegiance, and that is the universal government whose Ruler is the author and source of all that is just, compassionate, and respectful of the dignity of every creature. Our shared citizenship in that regime places upon us concrete responsibilities in relation to our specific nation-states. And the common task that thereby unites Christians throughout the world is unambiguous and urgent, namely, to clarify the mandate of Scripture for all those whose political starting point is the Bible, to aid one another in drawing forth implications for domestic and international crises that transcend nationalism and political ideology, and to forge strategic alliances with justice-loving adherents of other religions in obedience to the Creator and Redeemer of all families, creeds, and nations.

A History of Nationalistic Idolatry

If there is one fundamentally important lesson that nations have not learned from the tragic events of the past, it is the lesson of resisting the temptation of confusing human rule with divine rule. Let us consider the policy adopted by the United States towards the fledgling independence movement in the Philippines at the beginning of the twentieth century as an example.

In pre-colonial times, the inhabitants of the Philippine archipelago regarded the forests, fields, and waters as communal property, to be cultivated for the good of all. Of course there were differences in status between clan heads and their subjects, but one pictures a gentler way of life than the harsh conditions imposed by the importation of European feudalism by the Spanish, the ill-effects of which still afflict the lives of a large percentage of the Philippine populace. After the liberation struggles of the early 1890s were interrupted by the Cuban revolution and then the Spanish-American war, memory of their own nation’s earlier struggle against colonialism was lost by President McKinley and his cabinet as they strove to enhance the competitive edge of the U.S. in the increasingly lucrative maritime trade routes connecting East and West. In the congressional debates of that time over the annexing of the Philippines, national hubris rose to new heights, as illustrated by the speech in defense of U.S. intervention by Senator Albert Beveridge:

God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration. No! He has made us the master organizers of the world to establish system where chaos reigns . . . He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples. Were it not for such a force as this the world would relapse into barbarism and night. And of all our race He has marked the American people as His chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world.1

Such imperialistic policy arises out of the blasphemous identification of one nation’s destiny with divine purpose. In ancient Egypt the corollary was found in the belief that the Pharaoh was the incarnate god Horus. Rome based its authority to impose the Pax Romana on the clans and nations it conquered on the claim of Augustus and his successors to be divine. The persistent tendency for the U.S. to claim the right to determine the political destiny of other nations rests on a typological connection, namely, that it is the new Israel. This was a notion the Puritans brought with them from England, but it matured in the nineteenth century in step with the growth of U.S. imperialism and was christened by John L. O’Sullivan in 1839 as “Manifest Destiny.”2

The reason why the concept of “manifest destiny” must concern us here is this: The primary warrant enlisted in its defense is the Bible. At the apex of Spanish colonial power, conquest was understood not simply as the means of advancing the cause of Philip’s kingdom, but as an instrument for the spread of the Kingdom of God to Central and South America and the Philippines. In recent U.S. history, the most ardent supporters of the Pax Americana in the Middle East and in East Asia have been the leaders of the Religious Right, that is, those religious and political figures who claim to understand the bearing of Scripture on international developments.

Citizens of nations that have not yet become as secularized as countries like France and Sweden but retain the biblical story as part of their own epic understanding of nationhood face a particular challenge: The Bible remains ensconced in the cultural ethos as a powerful warrant in political argumentation. And, as Willard Swartley has documented, it can be used with equal force on opposite sides of moral struggles involving issues such as war, slavery, and women’s rights.3 Any reflexive, uncritical invocation of biblical authority in defense of a policy or action that places millions of people at risk must raise serious moral and theological concerns for all people of faith. Have not the testimonies of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Desmond Tutu burned with sufficient clarity into our modern consciousness the urgent need to treat any political interpretation of the Bible with diligence and attentiveness to the critical scrutiny of interlocutors of all nations and creeds? Dare we lack the courage to name every self-serving domestication of the Bible an heinous act of nationalistic idolatry?

Harold Lindsell in 1976 published a book defending biblical inerrancy under the title, The Battle for the Bible.4 Fifteen years later and from a very different, though no less deeply committed Christian perspective, James Davison Hunter authored a book bearing the title Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America.5 More recently, in a book titled The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Harvard professor of government, Samuel Huntingdon, predicted increasing strife between the Muslim East and the Christian West leading to a decline of the latter and the emergence of China as a world power.6 While these books differ widely with each other in their underlying assumptions and conclusions, they converge in painting a somber picture of a future in which religious and ideological differences will be a driving force in cultural and international conflict. Conscientious believers dare not stand by passively as imperious religious and political leaders exploit the Bible to defend reckless foreign policies in the pursuit of self-serving economic and geo-political objectives.

What Is the Nature of Biblical Authority in Relation to Politics?

What this question requires is a hermeneutic capable of translating the meaning of Scripture into contemporary political, social and economic relevance in a manner that is both in accord with the legal norms and social mores of a given society and faithful to the central tenets of the proponent’s religious tradition. The problem facing the modern world resides not in a lack of efforts to apply various scriptures to world events, for we see ample examples within various branches of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism to inculcate and disseminate what is purported to be the political message of the deity. Rather, the problem is the nature of that application, or, to use the technical term again, the hermeneutic by which it is directed. Let us cite several examples to clarify the problem.

During his second term of office, Ronald Reagan, Commander-in-Chief of the world’s mightiest nuclear power locked in the grips of a Cold War with the Soviet Union, shared his biblical “hermeneutic” with Israeli lobbyist Tom Dine: “You know, I turn back to your Old Testament and the signs foretelling Armageddon, and I find myself wondering if—if we’re the generation that’s going to see that come about. I don’t know if you’ve noted any of these prophecies lately, but believe me, they certainly describe the times we’re going through.”7 On the surface, these words remain cryptic, but read against the background of Hal Lindsey’s bestseller, The Late, Great Planet Earth,8 it seems that Reagan was envisioning the possibility of a coordinated attack by the Soviet Union and China on Israel, which would set in motion the end-time cataclysm of Armageddon, a scenario sure to provoke the U.S. to unleash its nuclear arsenal.

On January 14, 1991, President George H. W. Bush was on the eve of announcing whether the U.S. would attack Iraq in response to Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. His own Episcopal Bishop, Edmond Browning, had expressed his opposition to Desert Storm. That evening the President invited Evangelist Billy Graham to the White House. The next day CNN televised the pyrotechnical extravaganza of bombs falling on Baghdad. A year later the by then former President Bush had the opportunity to express his thanks at the annual meeting of The National Religious Broadcasters: “I want to thank you for helping America, as Christ ordained, to be ‘a light unto the world.’”9 What hermeneutic underlies this stingingly ironic scriptural reference? Is it simply an exploitation of biblical language in defense of a military action that was already etched in the sand? It is said that former presidential advisor Ralph Reed commented that he was glad that when he turned to the Christian faith his politics could remain unchanged. Is such a docile role of faith in relation to politics in accord with the examples of Christian leaders remembered by history for their acts of courage in times of crisis? What is the role of the Bible in relation to domestic and foreign policy? Is it simply to provide politically expedient justifications, or is it to provide a perspective free from ideological entanglements and open to chastening and reproof?

George W. Bush, in a Spring 2004 press conference, reflected on his Iraq war initiative with this theological statement: “Freedom is the Almighty’s gift to every man and woman in this world. And as the greatest power on the face of the Earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom.”10 On the face of it, this sounds like an admirable goal. But if it is a pious rationalization authorizing the U.S. to act unilaterally and without restraints in promoting a plan of geo-political control over the oil-rich countries of the Middle East, it raises the specter of national idolatry, the confusion of divine and national purpose. As the military occupation of Iraq became besmeared with the shocking photographs taken in the Abu Ghraib prison facility and the number of civilian and military causalities accelerated, the prophetic irony of George H. W. Bush’s earlier remark in defense of stopping short of a full invasion of Baghdad in 1991 became shockingly apparent: “Trying to eliminate Saddam would have incurred incalculable human and political costs . . . Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”11

Clearly, in the case of U.S. foreign policy, the Bible is not dismissed as an irrelevant relic of the past, for publicly vocal preachers claiming to be its true interpreters often are seated in places of honor among those who write and execute U.S. policy. But what sort of biblical message are they presenting, and what is the nature of the hermeneutic being applied by Presidents and their closest advisors. In the case of Reagan and the Bushes, the most charitable reading would be that they were simple, pure-hearted Christians applying biblical truth under the tutelage of preeminent religious leaders. A more cynical reading would ask whether they were being manipulated by Right Wing leaders like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Karl Rove to advance, under the pretense of biblical faith, self-serving national policies that may be in tension with or even contradict central tenants of Scripture. While room for debate over such complex and controversial issues remains, what cannot be neglected is critical analysis of the hermeneutical and moral dimensions involved in the application of biblical warrants to political policy and the economic and military actions they promote.

Part of such analysis must be the examination of the dispensationalist theology that for over a century has shaped the global policy of some of Washington’s most influential political leaders (including presidents, senators and representatives), and in the background their advisors (both official and informal) and influential and well-funded lobbyists. Though that task is too large for the present context, the initial observation can be made that the political theology that has been advanced by many influential religious and political leaders in the United States is theocratic, at times even resembling hermeneutical principles followed by Islamic fundamentalists and extreme religious Zionists like the followers of Meir Kahane and Baruch Goldstein. Held in common by these otherwise strange bedfellows is the assumption that Scripture—whether the Quran, the Tanak, or the Christian Bible—contains a political blueprint that they bear responsibility to promote in the realms of cultural mores and international policies. The exclusivist, theocratic nature of their program is illustrated by Tim LaHaye, co-author of the apocalyptic bestseller series, Left Behind: “No humanist is qualified to hold any governmental office in America—United States senator, congressman, cabinet member, State Department employee, or any other position that requires him think in the best interest of America . . . [Christians] must vote in pro-moral leaders who will return our country to the biblical base upon which it is founded.”12 Paul Weyrich adds: “We’re radicals working to overturn the present structure in this country—we’re talking about Christianizing America.”13

Thus far our illustrations of what can be characterized as the enlistment of Scripture for political purposes have been drawn from members of the Republican Party. When we turn our attention to Democratic leaders, we see another facet of the “culture war” that Hunter has studied. Quite generally, Democratic leaders have sought to avoid religious language. While he was at the apex of his campaign to become the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean, who once explained that he withdrew from his church over a dispute about a bike path, offered the liberal rationale for avoiding religiously charged hot-button issues. The presidential race, he insisted, should stay away from the issues of “guns, God and gays” and focus on “jobs, healthcare, and foreign policy.” To be sure, even before the sea change initiated by Barack Obama, we can find Democrats who did not hesitate to expose the spiritual and even biblical dimensions of their political thought. Notable was the candor with which Jimmy Carter revealed how his Christian faith influenced his decisions, and certainly his post-White House career as world spokesman for peace and advocate for the poor has demonstrated the staying power of his idealism. Bill Clinton began his presidency with biblical themes like covenant and community, themes that were translated into political action in the drive for healthcare reform (spearheaded aggressively by his wife Hilary, but failing to gain sufficiently wide support to be implemented), improvement of the nation’s public school system, and tax relief for lower and middle-class Americans. Noteworthy as well was the zeal with which Clinton, as he approached the end of his second term in office, sought to bring the Israelis and Palestinians towards a lasting peace agreement at the Second Camp David. Unfortunately, a promising moment of hope vanished amidst the impeachment proceeding stemming from the Monica Lewinsky affair, an episode exposing another dimension of the Bible/Politics dialectic, the dimension of private morality.

When one ponders that dimension and specifically the impact of moral turpitude on political process, the biblical paradigm that most readily comes to mind is the story of David and Bathsheba, even as the words that epitomize the potentially tragic impact of infractions in the realm of personal ethics on the realm of public duty were the words of divine judgment pronounced against David by the prophet Nathan: “Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house” (2 Samuel 12:10). As in the case of biblical paradigms arising from episodes in public realms such as the judicial system, business practices, and international policy, however, the David/Bathsheba story does not provide a proof-text that can be applied mechanically to any contemporary event. The contribution it makes is more subtle, for one must remember that the biblical narrative goes on to describe how God continued to use David for his purposes. On the other hand, the warning against mechanical proof-texting is not an invitation to use the ambiguities that are a part of the fabric of biblical narrative to dismiss the personal realm as of no political significance. In the personal as in the wider public domain, human actions carry consequences. And it is for that reason that the community of faith studies the Bible using all of the methods at its disposal as well as the collective wisdom of the ages as it searches for the balance between judgment and pastoral concern for its leaders in their moments of moral failure.

To summarize our discussion of the issue of biblical authority in relation to politics, we can draw the following thoughts from recent U.S. history: Those who have been most explicit in enlisting the Bible in public discourse have tended to incorporate a hermeneutic that is absolutist and theocratic in nature, with the Bible functioning as a source of warrants for positions against abortion and gay marriage and in defense of assertive American foreign policy and a traditional definition of sexuality. The more muted hermeneutic characteristic of much, though not all, of the Democratic Party revolves around a strict application of the First Amendment to minimize the use of religious language in political debate.

The question arising out of this dichotomy is a challenging one: Is there a more adequate hermeneutic, one that will be faithful to the biblical heritage while yet remaining sensitive to the legal and cultural norms of a society characterized by religious and philosophical diversity? Before turning to this question, we need to examine the realm of politics in the Bible to discern the manner in which faith was applied to social and economic issues by our spiritual ancestors.

Politics in the Bible

While every endeavor to direct modern questions to ancient writings runs the risk of producing anachronisms, the basic fact remains that ancient Israel and the early Christian communities struggled with political, economic, and social issues not dissimilar to ones faced today, in relation to which they sought to find answers under the guidance of their scriptural traditions. What is less obvious, or ignored, by many students of the Bible is this: In contrast to the dominant cultures around them, the ancient Israelites did not view the divine realm as the source of a timeless design of government that was transmitted in the form of a state myth to temple officials. Indeed, the founding events of the Israelite community revolved around the repudiation of the myth of the Pharaoh inspired by encounter with a God embracing the cause of peasants and slaves. As a running account of Israel’s relationship with the God who accompanied them and—when they allowed—directed them through the changing conditions of their historical existence, Israel’s sacred writings took the form of an epic, elaborated with laws, psalms, laments, and proverbs. This dynamic, historical perspective of the people of Israel accounts for there being not one timeless political model in the Bible, but six, arising each in turn as Israel sought to tease out the political implications of God’s rule for her national existence.

The first political model to emerge in Israel was theocratic in nature. It arose out of the question: How do we organize our life so as to reflect our origin in the act of a God who freed slaves and gave them a land and a future? In response to the continued efforts of Canaanite kings like Sisera to re-impose absolute monarchy upon them, they organized as a loose confederation of tribes and insisted that their only king was Yahweh. They expressed their cultic and political unity only in annual pilgrimages and in defensive battles, and even there the rallying point was Yahweh’s reign over them. They devised laws and economic structures that expressed the equality of all citizens under the one divine Ruler, laws forbidding usury and its tendency to lead to debt slavery, the levirate marriage custom that secured for the widow economic security, and a structure of land tenure that divided use of the land equally among extended families and acted as a counter force to the accumulation of property by the wealthy at the expense of the poor by insisting that there was only one legitimate title holder, the very God who allotted the land equally to the clans in the first place!

The theocratic phase of Israel’s history was remarkable in many ways. It introduced a new worldview in which the deity was viewed not as an absolute authority securing humans in a timeless social pyramid enforced by an earthly surrogate, the divine king or pharaoh, but as a guide present with humans in their earthly experiences. The nature of their God as liberator of slaves intensified the profound moral insight tracing back to Hammurabi and beyond, namely, the Chief Justice of the universe was the guardian and protector of the rights of the weak and vulnerable. This in turn set the standard upon which human governments were to be measured. The heart of God’s people was to be fashioned out of justice and compassion that extended memory of the past to her daily life in the present. Though its idealistic notion of there being only one even-handed Ruler, Yahweh, shattered in practice on the ledges of a turbulent world, it lived on in principles that would be upheld as the basis for judging all of the forms of government to follow, principles of evenhanded justice, equal distribution of wealth, and care for the poor and infirm. Of specific interest are two concepts, for though they were compromised in the course of subsequent biblical history almost beyond recognition by resurgent elitism and corruption, they continue to convict unjust governments to this day.

One is the concept of hlxn (nahialah), the division of the use of the land equally among the clans and the insistence that because God alone held title, those who accumulated land through exploitation of the common farmer were guilty of a crime against heaven! Given similarly communal notions of land usage in pre-colonial tribes and clans in the Americas, in Africa, and in Southeast Asia, it is wise to ponder what potential contributions a particular culture’s pre-modern history might contain for future reforms. It is interesting to observe, for example, the inspiration that the custom of open discourse in the pre-Christian tribal counsels of South Africa imparted to Nelson Mandela’s revolutionary concept of Truth and Reconciliation. When we come to the fourth biblical political model, the sapiential, we shall see how a biblically based politics can be open to such contributions from spheres beyond the traditional belief system.

The other concept worth noting from the period of ancient Israel’s theocracy is the Jubilee. Besides the forgiveness of debt and the release of slaves in the seventh year, in the fiftieth year observance of the Jubilee stipulated return of lost properties to their rightful owners as an essential part of the land’s being restored to its original divinely ordained state. We see the tenacity of that concept in the Jubilee 2000 debt relief movement promoted by British political economist Martin Dent and supported by the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, who later became England’s Prime Minister. For those grown cynical to the possibility of an ancient Scripture contributing towards the breaking of the chains of debt enslavement in the modern world, the Jubilee 2000 movement, though still having achieved only partial success, offers an opportunity to reflect and reconsider!

If ancient Israel had simply adopted the theocratic model in place of the monarchical one without simultaneously radically altering her understanding of the metaphysical basis for human government, the historical developments that made it impossible for the loose confederation of tribes to defend itself against the centralized government and professional armies of the Philistines would have erased Israel from the annals of history. But at this point a remarkable irony enters the picture: The second political model adopted by Israel was the all too familiar one of monarchy! The irony unfolds in the narrative of 1 Samuel.

The theocratically organized tribal league has come on hard times. The priesthood has fallen into disrepute through the moral turpitude of Eli’s sons, the office of judge has been tainted through the corruption of Samuel’s sons, and the military has suffered a stinging defeat resulting in the enemy capture of the central symbol of divine presence, the ark of the covenant. Out of these adversities arises the request of the elders: “Give us a king, that we may be like the other nations” (1 Samuel 8:5). Yahweh’s consent is not without an accompanying warning: Their king will conscript the young into his court and army, he will levy taxes to support the royal building projects, and finally the warning culminates with the blunt assertion, “you will be his slaves” (8:17).

Given Israel’s historical memory of bondage under the Egyptian Pharaoh, the warning of conscription, taxation, and king-sponsored slavery constituted something less than a propitious start for her second form of government. In fact, a few chapters later we find the people confessing to Samuel: “We have added to all our sins the evil of demanding a king for ourselves.” Samuel’s answer represents one of the most significant contributions to political theory found in the entire Bible. He agrees that they have sinned in asking for a king, but he goes on to assure them of his continuing support through prayer and instruction “in the good and the right way.” But there is a very important underlying condition: “Only fear the LORD, and serve him faithfully with all your heart; for consider what great things he has done for you. But if you still do wickedly, you shall be swept away, both you and your king” (1 Samuel 12:24–25). With these words there entered into the history of political reflection for the first time the clear distinction between two levels of government, the level of ultimate authority that belongs solely to God and the level of penultimate, or delegated authority that is the province of human rulers. In the face of this fundamental distinction, differences among diverse government models pale in significance. They will reflect the different conditions pertaining to their place in time and space. From a theological perspective, they are all the products of human sin. Individually, any given regime can claim legitimacy to govern on one basis alone, the extent to which it discharges its divinely authorized responsibility to uphold justice, embody fairness, and maintain peace.

According to the biblical annals, only a handful of kings even approximated these standards, including Asa, Hezekiah, and Josiah. Ultimately, the tensions between the divine standard set for the kings of Israel and the failure of those kings to embody divine righteousness and compassion issued forth in two theologically and politically momentous developments, one lying in the distant future, namely, the concept of a Messiah anointed by God to usher in an age of universal peace and prosperity and one arising with monarchy and ending with monarchy’s demise, namely, prophecy. To the latter we now turn, for through the courageous witness of its representatives the oft despised example of God’s justice and mercy continued to be proclaimed and through that proclamation the biblical option of rule not by brute force but by gentle compassion survived and found new forms of expression in ages yet unborn.

Prophecy is not a freestanding political model, but one that always assumes the presence of a human regime over against which it provides a standard for critique and restraint. The office of prophet testifies to the fundamental biblical political principle mentioned above, namely, that for the person of faith there is only one ultimate governing authority, God. The prophetic office was charged with the responsibility of representing that authority amidst world governments and human authorities of all types, and the plural is intended here, inasmuch as the prophets spoke on behalf of the universal ruler who was partial to no one regime. Thus Elijah is charged with a message to the Arameans, Amos addresses the treaty violations occurring between the various countries of the eastern Mediterranean, Isaiah identifies Assyria as God’s agent in judging Israel, Second Isaiah announces Cyrus the Persian as God’s messiah responsible for liberating Israel from her Babylonian captors. But the primary recipient of prophetic address was Israel, including both its rulers and its subjects.

No office in the Bible conveys the seriousness with which the God of Israel takes the political realm more than prophecy. The notion it enlists to depict the essential relation of human government to divine government is political in origin, namely, treaty, or more precisely, covenant. This stresses that human existence on its most fundamental level is relational, and viability for individuals and nations alike is possible solely when two essential relationships are healthy, between the human and God, and between human and human.14 Moreover, the terms of those parallel relationships are clear, being derived from the nature of the God known to Israel through its history, and spelled out in the Torah. The three pillars of that Torah are worship and mercy and justice. So clear, so universal, so incisive is the moral universe that is upheld by those pillars that it can be captured succinctly in one verse:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;

and what does the LORD require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness,

and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

A consistent theme runs through the Bible regarding the quintessential choice facing humans, both as individuals and as nations. It is summarized in a word of God through Moses in the book of Deuteronomy: “I have set before you life and death . . .” (30:19). This declaration of the irreducible moral structure of the universe at first may sound similar to the moral absolutism expressed by the popular bumper sticker: “The Bible Says It. I believe It. That Settles It.” When applied, that approach to the question of biblical authority gives rise to a number of apodictic pronouncements: “The Bible condemns gays. The Bible opposes all forms of abortion. The Bible supports detention of suspected terrorists without the protection of habeas corpus.” We must ask, Does this mechanical application of biblical law to contemporary issues capture the true nature of the prophetic message? We need to look more deeply at the prophets, lest we confuse the certainty of God’s moral universe with the purported certainties of our own moral biases.

Prophecy first came to expression in opposition to the waxing authority of kings. Nathan rose in opposition to David when the latter claimed special privileges by virtue of his office. The foreign mercenary whom he sacrificed as an impediment to his claiming the lovely object of his lust, though expendable according to the notion that kings stand above the laws pertaining to subjects, was entitled according to the divine law preserved by the prophets to protection against arbitrary injustice. Unfortunately for Uriah, this protection came to light only posthumously. In similar fashion, Ahab, when he confronted a stubborn subject who refused to surrender his ancestral farmland to the king’s desire for a vegetable garden, invoked the age-old ploy of eminent domain and arranged for the execution of the peasant Naboth. But his blatant violation of the higher law predicated on the equal worth of every human life and the entitlement of every family to the benefits of its allotted plot of land led to the convening of the heavenly court, the verdict of which was delivered by the prophetic messenger Elijah. Tragically, the ultimate verdict, like that pronounced by the divine judge in the case of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero, and Benigno Aquino, was again posthumous. And the long history of the slaughter of righteous individuals who dared to stand up against evil tyrants weighs heavily upon those who seek to understand the nature of divine justice. As perplexing as is the question of theodicy, one thing is clear: All efforts at revising history by ruthless potentates and their defenders have been unable to silence the eternal witness of the martyrs to the ultimate validity of the universal justice of the sole Sovereign and the assured failure of every attempt to supplant God’s rule with human alternatives.

Arising from the prophetic tradition’s master metaphor of covenant was its favorite genre, the covenant lawsuit. Wherever the prophets witnessed an act of injustice or oppression, they condemned it not in the name of their own moral authority, but in the name of the heavenly Judge, whose court proceedings they faithfully recorded and reported. Take as an example the prophet Hosea, who witnessed blatant immorality, corruption in high circles, and derision of God’s sovereignty. He studied the balance of power in the eastern Mediterranean and described how the powerful military force of the Assyrians was poised to destroy a kingdom blind with regard to the consequences of its contempt of the covenant. And the calamity he foresaw was not limited to the geo-political realm, but encompassed the entire created order:

Hear the word of the LORD, O people of Israel;

for the LORD has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land.

There is no faithfulness or loyalty,

and no knowledge of God in the land.

Swearing, lying, and murder, and stealing and adultery break out;

bloodshed follows bloodshed.

Therefore the land mourns,

and all who live in it languish;

together with the wild animals and the birds of the air,

even the fish of the sea are perishing. (Hosea 4:1–3)

Here we see the perspective and role of the prophets. They view reality from the perspective of God’s universal moral order, and they announce the consequences of perfidy and repudiation of the commandments, dire consequences for the realm of politics and the world of nature alike.

The second example we cite is the prophet Isaiah. Though he comes from the upper class, he shares the socially sensitive moral vision of his more humble predecessors, Hosea and Amos. His call vision in chapter 6 portrays with brilliant clarity the starting point of every prophetic act or pronouncement, the experience that there is but one ultimate reality in the universe, the Holy One of Israel. It is in the presence of the Holy One that the prophet grasps the nature of divine justice and its singular importance for the durability of societies and nations. The theme that runs throughout Isaiah’s prophecy is trust: “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength” (30:15). Trust in the Holy One means patterning life, as individual and nation, after the divine example. Preeminently it means showing special loving attention to the weak, the ill, the friendless, and the alien. What Isaiah sees instead is “pride”: leaders claiming special privileges by merit of their offices, the wealthy exploiting the poor for personal enrichment, the noble class flaunting their items of luxury. Isaiah not only denounces such behavior as immoral; he claims that it is nothing less than a stinging insult to God. A disciple of Isaiah captures with vivid imagery the consequences of such public and national dereliction:

The earth dries up and withers, the world languishes and withers;

the heavens languish together with the earth.

The earth lies polluted under its inhabitants;

for they have transgressed laws, violated the statutes,

broken the everlasting covenant. (Isaiah 24:4–5)

A final arresting example that we shall give from the Hebrew prophets is from Jeremiah:

Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness,

and his upper rooms by injustice;

who makes his neighbors work for nothing

and does not give them their wages;

who says, “I will build myself a spacious house

with large upper rooms,

and who cuts out windows for it,

paneling it with cedar,

and painting it with vermilion.

Are you a king

because you compete in cedar?

Did not your father eat and drink

and do justice and righteousness?

Then it was well with him.

He judged the cause of the poor and needy;

then it was well.

Is not this to know me?

says the Lord. (Jeremiah 22:13–15)

Jeremiah contrasts two views on politics that are as old as the human race, one according to which leaders regard no authority above their own and predicate their policies and rules of conduct on the basis of self-gain, the other according to which all humans are equal in status under one universal, just Ruler, whose example and will they seek to follow. Of course, not only those holding office in political institutions face this basic decision; spiritual leaders do as well, and Jeremiah extends his critique to those who place their trust in the religious institutions to secure their security and well-being: “Do not trust in these deceptive words: ‘This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD’ . . . Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods . . . and then come and stand before me in this house . . . and say, ‘We are safe’” (7:4, 9–10).

The legacy of the political model of prophecy is profound: It sets forth the clear distinction between the ultimate authority of God and the limited, delegated authority of every human government. It defends the equality of every human under God’s rule and bitterly opposes anyone who violates the rights and the irreducible dignity of subjects, regardless of rank. It vehemently opposes the invocation of human constructs to lay claim to special divine favor, whether nation, cult, or social status. “Chosenness” in the Bible is a call to special responsibility, not special privilege. Amos took direct aim at the boasting of the people of Israel that their historical roots in the exodus provided proof positive that they were God’s favored nation:

Are you not like the Ethiopians to me,

O people of Israel, says the LORD.

Did I not bring Israel up from the land of Egypt,

and the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir? (Amos 9:7)

Any person of faith today who takes seriously the bearing of the Bible on society and world affairs will sit humbly and attentively at the feet of the prophets.

There remain three other political models in the Old Testament, each in turn leaving an important legacy for those seeking to understand the meaning of biblical faith for contemporary society and politics. Here we can only mention each of them briefly.

The sapiential model draws not upon the specific stories and laws of Israel’s history, but upon what amounts to an empirical study of the natural order. This is the reason the book of Proverbs, for example, does not infer rules for life from the Exodus or Mount Sinai, but rather from the patterns observed in the life of wise and foolish humans, from the behavior of ants and beasts, and from the forces of nature and the ordering of the heavens. Human institutions, like ethical norms, are regarded as parts of a universal order, and it is perhaps not surprising that submission to the authority of kings and judges rather than radical critique of existing social structures is the preferred style of sapiential politics. Consider Proverbs 24:21–22:

My child, fear the LORD and the king,

And do not become involved with those who seek change;

For disaster comes from them suddenly,

And who knows the ruin that both can bring?

Since many of the sapiential writings are tied to a royal court setting, it follows that a close connection is displayed between civil order and a strong monarchy with the king benefiting from a sizeable bureaucracy:

Where there is no guidance, a nation falls,

but in the abundance of counselors there is safety.

(Proverbs 11:14)

It would be a mistake, though, to conclude that the sages of the wisdom literature give blind assent to royal authority. Kings are authorized to rule by God, and their success and the happiness of their people depend on their embodying divine justice in their decrees and judgments. Though they are to enjoy the loyalty of their subjects, they themselves must submit to the laws of the Creator. It is thus accurate to say that the fundamental principle of biblical politics, the subordination of the penultimate authority of human leaders to the ultimate authority of God, remains intact in the sapiential writings of the Old Testament, as it still does in the description of governing authority in the New Testament by the Apostle Paul: “Let every person be subject to the ruling authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God” (Romans 13:1).

Rulers and judges are to study the writings of the sages of old as a source of wisdom and discernment, on the basis of which they are to provide a clear vision for their subordinates and subjects. We read from Sirach 10:1–3:

A wise magistrate educates his people,

and the rule of an intelligent person is well ordered.

As the people’s judge is, so are his officials;

as the ruler of the city is, so are all its inhabitants.

An undisciplined king ruins his people,

but a city becomes fit to live in

through the understanding of its rulers.

What is more, the emphasis of the prophets on even-handed justice and advocacy for the poor is not neglected by the sages, as is evidenced by Proverbs 31:8–9:

Speak out for those who cannot speak,

for the rights of all the destitute.

Speak out, judge righteously,

defend the rights of the poor and needy.

In general, the contribution of the sapiential tradition to biblical politics is insufficiently appreciated. Few scholars (notable in this regard are James Barr and James L. Crenshaw) have pointed to the importance of the wisdom writings in a comprehensive understanding of biblical theology. Within contemporary thought, these writings remind us of the importance of rigorous intellectual scrutiny as a restraint on sectarian fanaticism and parochial bias. It would be difficult to conceive of the process that led to the composition of the founding documents of the United States without the presence of the sage advice of Benjamin Franklin and James Madison, thinkers steeped in eighteenth-century equivalents of the biblical sapiential tradition, namely, English Deism and French philosophy. We have also noted how Nelson Mandela, while acknowledging his indebtedness to prophetic tradition, also drew freely on pre-Christian tribal custom, thereby exercising the openness of one who could recognize divine truth beyond the borders of explicitly Christian culture.

Closely related to the sapiential model, though at the same time distinct from it because of its explicitly Jewish orientation, is the accommodationalist model that we associate with Ezra and Nehemiah. It grew out of the Jewish experience during the Second Temple period of living no longer as an independent nation able to address the relation of religion and politics free from outside intervention, but as a vassal state under the firm control of the Persians. It amounted to the working out of a compromise that conformed to the imperial conditions of a foreign occupier at the same time as it permitted the Jews to remain faithful to their Torah and their native customs. This model became vitally important in subsequent ages of Judaism, for not only in the Persian period, but during the Hellenistic and Roman periods and on into the Middle Ages the Jewish communities in the Diaspora were obliged to continue to adjust their lives to the hegemony of foreign rulers. And when it comes to the question of the legacy of Ezra’s model for contemporary theo-political reflection, we do well to consider John Howard Yoder’s suggestion that for the Christian who would be true to the politics of Jesus and Paul, the Jewish diaspora model can serve as a chastening corrective to the Constantinian model of Christian imperialism.15

The sixth political model found in the Bible is the apocalyptic model. It arises as an adaptation of prophetic faith to the bleak setting of persecution where the faithful suffer at the hands either of their own compatriots or foreign adversaries. The floruit of apocalyptic politics occurred between the second century BCE and the end of the second century CE, and its literary expressions in the Bible are most notably Daniel and the book of Revelation. This political model has been of vital importance in modern times for Christian communities suffering under religious persecution, such as Jewish communities and the Confessing Church in Nazi Germany. It gives expression to the central confession of biblical politics, namely, that there is but one ultimate Ruler of the universe and that no human ruler has the right to demand the unqualified allegiance of his subjects. It upholds the belief that in the final verdict, the moral structure of the universe will be maintained and all those who have been sentenced unjustly in world courts will be vindicated in the divine court of justice. The visions of the apocalyptic writings depict God’s final victory over all opposition and function to preserve the hope of the faithful, even in the face of a world that seems to have come under the control of the Evil One and its hosts.

For the majority of Christians in the world today who enjoy the protection of freedom of belief under the laws of their states, apocalyptic politics is not as politically relevant as the prophetic model, inasmuch as their situation allows them to seek to reform their societies on the basis of God’s rule of justice and mercy. In other words, the temporary withdrawal from political engagement provided by the apocalyptic model would be inappropriate. It is within such settings that the Christian must scrutinize the arbitrary application of apocalyptic politics by such sensationalist authors as Hal Lindsay and Timothy LaHay. To demonstrate that their sectarian, death-wish theology is heretical would require more time than we have at present.16

Equally impossible would be the next important step, namely, a discussion of the politics of the New Testament, for it should be obvious that for Christians, the vital lessons of the six Old Testament models are mediated to us through the politics of Jesus and the apostles.

Here we must limit our observations regarding the vast topic of politics in the New Testament to a few essentials. First, it is as important to understand the background of these writings in the Roman Empire as it was to understand the various historical settings of the Old Testament within a world dominated in turn by Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia and Persia, for the dynamic historical understanding that began with the exodus continues into New Testament times, as does the fundamental belief that there is but one absolute Ruler of the universe before whom this world’s potentates are mere passing shadows. What this means is that political strategies will continue to avoid static imposition of a timeless blueprint and instead justify political positions on the basis of the criterion of their adequacy in representing God’s governance of justice and mercy within specific historical and geographical settings.

In the case of Jesus portrayed in the Gospels, we find a politics of critical engagement with the Roman and Jewish leaders, and the uncompromising insistence on the sole Lordship of the heavenly Father. Since the courageous witness of Jesus threatened both the Roman control of a rebellious, sprawling empire and the Jewish leaders deadly fear of any movement that could become the catalyst of revolt, it was unavoidable that Jesus took his place in the line of witnesses to God’s sovereignty whom the rulers of this world sought to silence. The centrality for faith of this particular martyr lies in the fact that vindication of the bearer of divine justice and mercy came on the third day after his crucifixion, and thus established like never before for the faithful the basis for their vocation of bearing witness in the world to the only ultimate government, God’s government and the reign of his Son.

Jesus’ political position embodied the dialectic of God’s ultimate ruling authority and the derived, penultimate rule of humans. Let us consider two examples from the Gospels.

In relation to the Roman emperor, the classic formulation is “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” (Matthew 22:15–22 // Mark 12:13–17 // Luke 20:20–26). Against the background of the politics of the entire Bible, believers then and now hear what the Romans would not have heard, namely, that everything is ultimately God’s, and therefore what will be rendered to Caesar will be what God has delegated to earthly rulers. Added to this is the defining qualification that their legitimacy remains intact only to the extent that they promote the universal justice and mercy of God.

Since divine justice and mercy were more often violated than upheld by the Romans, the question of fitting response was especially difficult for Jesus and his followers. Enormous pressure was placed on them to follow the path of the Zealots and the Sicarii of open revolt. But it is clear that Jesus regarded such a suicide tactic as a form of idolatry, that is, placing nationalistic goals over the purposes of God’s kingdom. Patience and suffering constituted the truthful path to “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

In relation to the claim that religious institutions and authorities hold over those who have submitted to the rule of God, the classic story revolves around the half-shekel temple tax (Matthew 17:24–27). Should the disciples pay it, and thereby acknowledge the authority over them of the temple administrators, or should they assert their true spiritual citizenship by refusing to pay, thereby raising the specter of violence? The path of submission placed in jeopardy their sole allegiance to God. But violence was not the way to the Kingdom taught by their Lord. The story has an ending that exquisitely upholds the dialectic of biblical politics: Not the disciples, but a fish pays the temple tax! Covenant fidelity and political pragmatism are simultaneously commended through a story that like Aesop’s fables proves that animals often are our most subtle teachers!

The political position of the Apostle Paul is even more complex, and many fine monographs in recent years have challenged older assumptions.17 At the heart of the controversy is Romans 13, a key chapter, which we above suggested is related to the accommodationist model and should perhaps be understood in relation to Paul’s later writings, especially those written from Roman prisons. At any rate, it is important to recognize that the fundamental biblical principle of God’s sole authority is affirmed in the leading verse of Paul’s discourse, “for there is no authority except from God.” That having been said, the fact remains that in Romans 13, Paul seems to be more accommodating than either Jesus of the Gospels or even Paul himself in many of his other pronouncements. A plausible explanation for this is that he is being extraordinarily careful not to exacerbate the growing tensions between the Romans, the Jews, and the growing Jesus movement. Also not to be forgotten is Paul’s education under the Pharisees, which would explain the resonances between his thought and the earlier position of Ezra in relation to the Persians.

A third political position is staked out by the book of Revelation. Christian communities throughout the Empire were being sacrificed to the wrath of Nero and Diocletian. Powerless before this overwhelming power, they interpret it as the Anti-Christ. They find refuge in the message of final vindication after death and accordingly adopt the strategy of the apocalyptic political model. Again the dynamic flexibility of biblical politics to changing conditions is in evidence, providing an invaluable source of hope and strategy for survival in modern times for Christian leaders like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Hans Lilje as they encountered yet again the face of the Anti-Christ in Adolf Hitler and his collaborators. And in our own time, the poignancy of the apocalyptic message has become apparent as the specter of genocide continues to cast its ghastly pall over Ruwanda, the Congo, and Sudan.

The Contribution of the Bible to Contemporary Politics

The diverse and often contradictory conclusions that individuals and communities draw from the Bible regarding the controversial issues of contemporary life represent one of the areas of religion that attracts the most attention in the popular media. To the “cultural despisers of Christianity,” the utter lack of unanimity among religious people offers occasion for ridicule or disdainful dismissal. For religious zealots, conflict is welcomed as a sign of the approach of the climactic skirmish that will determine the winners in the “battle for the Bible.” On the other hand, for many conscientious people of faith who want to do the right thing in relation to issues such as human sexuality and world peace, the fact that not only individual believers but entire denominations seem to be locked in intractable dispute over important moral issues is a source of great distress.

It is especially to such people that we now turn to reflect on the important issue of the essential nature of the theory of interpretation one uses as a guide to discerning the contemporary meaning of Scripture, which is to say, the issue of hermeneutics. It may be helpful to bring to light the presuppositional starting point of the two positions into which, in the most general sense, most interpretative strategies seeking to define biblical authority fall.

We begin with the approach that can be called absolutist. Proponents of this position within Christianity and Islam commonly go by the label “fundamentalist,” whereas within Judaism “ultra-orthodox” is the term most commonly used. All three ascribe to the words of Scripture (and in Judaism to the total corpus of words attributed to Moses) the attribute of truth transcending the limits of historical particularity and the fallibility of human understanding. In this approach, human participation in revelatory events is reduced to the formal matter of transmission, meaning that the words of the Quran are the words of Allah mediated by the Prophet Mohammed, the words of Christian Scripture (in the original transcripts) are the words of God inerrantly recorded by human authors, and the Hebrew Bible, Mishnah and Talmud are the words Moses received from God on Mt. Sinai.

In the case of the Christian version of absolutism, the assumption of inerrant Scripture is accompanied by the belief that the Bible contains answers to all matters of belief and morals if read literally and without the biases imposed by liberal interpreters deriving not from the realm of divine revelation but from the human realm of rationalist philosophy and secular bias. Biblical truth is thereby insulated from the limits endemic to human existence and the flux characteristic of history. Through literal reading, the plain truth of the Bible becomes clear regarding homosexuality and abortion. And depending on the particular interpreter, the list can go on to include global issues like the return of all Jews to Israel and even eschatological matters like the date of the end of the world.

Commonly, the critique of the absolutist hermeneutic begins with the marshalling of evidence intended to discredit the notion of inerrancy, such as the presence of two creation stories, conflicting accounts of a single historical event, and misattribution of a quotation. That starting point is unfortunate, inasmuch as its negativity seems indistinguishable from the scorn of the cultural despiser and, more importantly, it fails to place front and center the powerful positive argument for the alternative position.

Let our criticism be stated clearly: The absolutist position rests on an unbiblical concept of divine revelation! In the Bible, God is not presented as an aloof lecturer who occasionally breaks his customary austere silence with a solemn pronouncement of abstract truth directed to Moses or Isaiah or the Apostle Paul, humans viewed as passive amanuensises who take up chisel or stylus or pen and meticulously record the dictated words. Rather, God is encountered in the raw stuff of human experience such as the dread moment when fleeing slaves tremble as a crushing army of the Pharaoh descends upon them to drag them back into captivity, and what will become a passage in Scripture arises as their joyous response to seeing calamity transformed into deliverance: “The LORD is my strength and my might, and he has become my salvation” (Exodus 15:2). And the hand of God is recognized by an anonymous prophet of the Exile as he observes the Persian Emperor Cyrus breaking the fist of the Babylonians and preparing the way for the return of the Jews to their beloved homeland: “For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name, I surname you, though you do not know me” (Isaiah 45:4). Scripture is written when they respond to a miraculous deliverance in a hymn of praise (Isaiah 45:25). Revelation in this understanding is not the mechanical transmission of abstract truths, but the discovery of Immanuel, God with us, in the joys and tragedies of human existence. The Bible consists not of words frozen in eternity, but testimonies by a living faith community of their awareness of living not alone but in the ever-watchful presence of a loving God. The Word of God is not a set of propositions trumping human experience and excluding the ongoing exercise of discernment of that loving God in the here and now, but rather the framework of an ongoing conversation between a God continuing to create and to redeem and a people attentive to God’s presence in their midst. Part of the beauty of this historical understanding of the origin of Scripture and its ongoing interpretation in the community of faith is its congruity with central tenets of classical biblical faith, for example, covenant as relationship between humans and a God who chooses to enlist partners in his activity on behalf of fullness of life for all, and incarnation as God’s entering into intimate proximity with humanity not in the form of disembodied spirit but real flesh and blood. What is being affirmed in this description is the incarnate Bible of Luther and Calvin, described by the former as “a worm of a book” and the latter as “God’s stuttering,” powerful metaphors intended to stress the genuinely human dimension of Scripture.

Though it is far preferable to present the alternative to absolutism in positive terms such as the preceding, candor also leads us to note that the notion of an inerrant Bible resembles in an essential respect the timeless myths that defined the relation of ancient peoples like the Egyptians and the Babylonians to their deities. Unlike the epic of the Israelites, which we have described as arising out of historical experience and inviting ongoing development first through the stages of growth leading to canon and then through lively reinterpretation, the myths of Israel’s ancient neighbors depicted eternal realities in the realm of the gods that were mediated through scribal specialists to their particular cultures as a timeless template for the ordering of their religious cult, political institutions, and cultural mores. By repudiating myth, ancient Israel created room for all humans to experience dignity as equals before a God who related to them as one respecting their freedom and their right to accept or reject his beneficence. Such freedom involves far greater ambiguity and risk than the certainty offered by a timeless myth, but according to biblical faith, such freedom is the sine qua non of creatures created in the image of God. And it is within the context of that freedom that individuals and communities of faith today consult the living Word of God in the effort to be obedient and productive children of God.18

How does that obedience and productivity translate into citizenship? How can Christians enrich discussions in the public square by drawing on the riches of their scriptural tradition while still being respectful of the broad diversity of religious and moral perspectives within their society?

People of faith can view their civic involvement as an aspect of participating in the unfolding epic of God’s ongoing creation dedicated to the restoration to health of an order in which creatures large and small have been fractured and alienated from one another and in which even the inanimate world has been degraded. As free citizens of God’s reign of restorative justice and all-inclusive compassion, Christians are commissioned to be ambassadors of the New Creation through which God seeks to restore the entire cosmos to wholeness (2 Corinthians 5:16–21 and Romans 8:18–39). Though they view participation in government as an important part of their discipleship, their mode of engagement differs from zealots seeking to impose their theocratic visions on a godless order. Precisely because they regard all human institutions as imperfect and provisional and recognize the wisdom of those adhering to different views of the world, they accept the debate and compromise involved in policy-making as a natural part of laboring for the healing of the present order even as they yearn for the permanent and perfect peace that only God can inaugurate.

In our political engagement, we are deployed not with a timeless blueprint in hand, but with the example of ancestors in the faith who responded to the call to covenant partnership in an ever-changing world. Inspired by Abraham, we dare to move beyond comfortable boundaries, with Moses we dare speak God’s word of truth to tyrannical power, and like Amos we embrace as our strategy doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with our God (Amos 6:8). Reformed theologian Paul Lehman contrasted the absolutist political philosophy of fundamentalism with the legacy of the Reformation, which legacy, in his words, introduced “a liberating grasp of the ways of God with men and thus also the possibility of ever fresh and experimental responses to the dynamics and the humanizing character of the divine activity in the world. This meant for ethics the displacement of the prescriptive and absolute formulation of its claims by the contextual understanding of what God is doing in the world to make and to keep human life human.”19

Application of this dynamic understanding of God’s redemptive presence in the world to political process leads to this conclusion: The specific form that the branches of a particular government should take is to arise from the diligent search of the citizenry for the structures most suitable for upholding mercy and justice within the concreteness of its global setting and its temporal location within an every changing and challenging world. This conclusion derives from a central tenet of the Christian faith, namely, that human governments are legitimate only to the extent that they serve the purposes of even-handed justice, provision for the needs of the poor and infirm, and global peace. It is solely from the promotion of these purposes that human institutions derive their authority to rule.

From this understanding the church derives these principles regarding its responsibility vis-à-vis society and government:

1. The perspective from which social and political issues will be viewed is its carefully delineated vision of God’s universal reign.

2. The responsibility of the church to government will take the form of representation of and advocacy for God’s Reign.

3. Its mode of action will include, as appropriate, critique, admonition, and support, uncompromised by penultimate claims such as patriotism and ecclesiastical loyalty, but respectful of the constitutional principles of a legitimately constituted host state.

Even after these principles are clear, an important practical question remains: With sensitivity to its particular location in time and place, how does a given community of faith go about the task of enriching political process with the specific wisdom and insight into truth derived from its own tradition while remaining respectful of participants from other religious and philosophical perspectives? What form of discourse will be faithful, legal, fair, and effective, given the wide diversity of religious and nonreligious perspectives present in a pluralistic society? A lively debate rages over this question, with three major alternatives being offered by scholars variously trained in philosophy, political science, and theology. The three alternatives are these:

1. Political liberalism: John Rawls has proposed that public discourse in a modern, religiously diverse society must be confined to arguments comprehensible to all participants, thus excluding appeal to comprehensive worldviews, such as religion, for warrants that will make sense only to adherents.20 He later modified this by conceding that religious warrants could be admitted into public discussion, but they carried no weight if not backed up with rational justifications, a modification emotively significant but without philosophical substance. 21 Richard Rorty argues along similar lines, except that his reason is more pragmatically than philosophically based, namely, the introduction of religious language in political discussions amounts to a “conversation stopper.”22

2. Communitarianism. Stanley Hauerwas, drawing on Alasdair MacIntyre,23 argues that political liberalism has impoverished public moral discourse by depriving it of the depth dimension of faith, that is, the dimension that provides people and movements with moral motivation and specific ethical content. The attempt to find a neutral language not only reduces public debate to drabness but privileges rationalism over other alternatives.24

3. Pragmatism. Jeffrey Stout suggests that public discourse should be pragmatically goal-oriented, with all perspectives—religious and nonreligious—welcomed, granted that they abide by the rules of civility and remain focused on and mutually committed to the qualities that constitute a good society.25

In the efforts of the church to translate biblical truth into political process, the above three alternatives will challenge thought and provide important insights. In the final analysis, however, a theo-political hermeneutic is required that is simultaneously true to Christian beliefs and moral principles and suitable for the political settings within which we live. Rather than choosing between political liberalism, communitarianism, and pragmatism, such a hermeneutic can draw judiciously from all three in the process of forging a strategy that strikes the delicate balance between confessional integrity and civility.

A Five-Step Hermeneutic for a Biblical Based Political Theology

We have offered examples of the dangers inherent in an undisciplined application of biblical verses, motifs, and themes to contemporary domestic and international issues. We also have given an overview of the political models that arose over the course of biblical history by means of which our spiritual ancestors sought to relate their faith to the political, economic, and social realities within which they lived. The picture that emerged was not of a static blueprint for relating religion to politics, but rather a dynamic one characterized by adaptability to ever changing circumstances, both within the nation and in neighboring empires often led by imperious rulers. The nature of the biblical sources themselves thus deprives us of the simple exercise of consulting an authoritative manual for answers to all problems. Not timeless answers, but testimony to a living God involved with his creation and the people responding to his call to partnership on behalf of fullness of life for all, such is the authority to which we have fallen heir.

The hermeneutic that grows out of this understanding of the Bible will take the form of a process rather than a mechanical deductive exercise, a process conducted not by an elite cadre of experts but by a faith community embracing people from all lands and from all social and economic classes and races, a community moreover that works cooperatively with justice-loving members of all other communities. The following brief description of a five step hermeneutic will offer a glimpse into my understanding of the interpretive process in which a faith community engages as it turns to the Bible for guidance from the perspective of the Christian faith and within the context of a society characterized by broad religious and philosophical diversity and a history of a lively legal and legislative debate over the issue of the proper relationship between church and state.

First, if we believe that the cornerstone of a Christian political theology is the distinction between God’s ultimate authority and the derived, penultimate authority of every human institution, we must abide in a living relationship with that God, whom we know personally through his Son, the Messiah who has inaugurated God’s reign, and by whose Spirit we are supported through every trial. Where the triune God is most intimately present to us is in worship, where we are invited to celebrate the Kingdom-to-come that is already present through participation in the Eucharist and where we hear anew the Word that directs our lives. We can formulate this first stage of our hermeneutic thus: The starting point of authentic Christian political reflection and action is worship, for there it is that we experience the living God awakening our conscience, kindling our compassion, and directing our actions on behalf of justice and advocacy for the suffering and the poor. Lest we be tempted into seeing the Church as just one more social action movement, we can restate the first step in our theo-political hermeneutic thus: worship is the most political thing the community of faith does.

Secondly, it stands to reason that we must be adequately tutored in our biblical and confessional traditions to be informed and reliable contributors to the public forum of the bearing of our scriptural legacy on contemporary realities. It may be helpful to note that on these first two levels, the communitarian position can contribute enormously to clarification of the convictions and moral principles to which the faith community must bear witness if it is to remain faithful to its prophetic calling. For as Stanley Hauerwas has emphasized repeatedly, to adopt the latitudinarianism of liberals like John Rawls dulls both the specific message of the Gospel to world affairs and threatens to cut off the ambassadors of the Gospel from the source of their passion for justice and mercy, the God who in Christ stands in solidarity with every individual impoverished by corrupt economic structures and oppressed by tyrannical political authorities.