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Jonathan Leeman

Te Local As e lyas Embas y of Ch ist’s Rule

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STUDIES IN

CHRISTIAN

DOCTRINE

SCRIPTUREA N D



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“Leeman’s well-argued book is a welcome reminder that the ull reality o the church is to beound in the local congregation. I cannot imagine that his book will not become a standard

work in this area o theological inquiry.”Stanley Hauerwas, Duke University

“Tis is a very important book. Impressive in the depth and breadth o its sources, PoliticalChurch offers a resh, cogent and well-in ormed model that deserves wide attention. Situatinghis arguments in past and present debates, Leeman ormulates a unique paradigm or under-standing simultaneously the nature o the church and its relation to the kingdoms o this age.Political Church is an example o a new level o evangelical reection and serious engagement.”Michael Horton, Westminster Seminary Cali ornia

“Difficult issues related to church, state and religious reedom arise on a daily basis and ll our

newspapers and inboxes. In Political Church, Jonathan Leeman offers a way orward that wewould do well to read and consider. Te virtues o this book are considerable, ranging romits institutional reading o Scripture and the larger society to its trenchant critique o liber-alism, with the latter’s exaltation o the expansive sel and its wants.”David . Koyzis, Redeemer University College

“Jonathan Leeman is one o the most care ul, intelligent and skilled theological minds o ourday, particularly in matters o ecclesiology. Tis new volume is a courageous de ense o thecentrality and indispensability o the local church. Political Church is a model or sound exe-getical, biblical and systematic theology that makes a power ul argument. For anyone thinking

seriously about ecclesiology, local church ministry, the relationship between church and state,or even religious liberty, this volume is a brilliant resource.”R. Albert Mohler Jr., president o Te Southern Baptist Teological Seminary

“Te church, we are sometimes told, is a ellowship, not an institution. Jonathan Leeman makesus think again. Broad-ranging, deeply biblical, widely in ormed both theologically and po-litically, Political Church is a ne and statesmanlike contribution that deserves our care ulattention. We need to capture the vision o the local church as an embassy o Christ’s rule. Tisis just what the author enables us to do.”Stephen N. Williams, Union Teological College

“An incisive and distinctly evangelical contribution to political theology, Leeman’s PoliticalChurch supplants the tired dichotomies o classical liberalism by recapturing the church’sunique political ontology as a community with a message that is also at the same time an in-stitution with keys to the kingdom. o bear witness to the rule o Christ is also to representhim publicly to the world. Leeman’s account is impressively well-judged and advances a con-ception o church as embassy that those who take the rule o Christ seriously cannot afford tooverlook. Essential (and edi ying!) reading.”Matthew Arbo, Oklahoma Baptist University

“Jonathan Leeman in this pro ound and important work argues that Christ is Lord o all, thathe rules both in the church and in the public square. At the same time, Leeman unpacks orus the differences between the political sphere and the realm o the church. Te implications

or our ecclesiology are spelled out in a noteworthy way. Here we nd robust biblical andsystematic theology defly applied to our role as citizens and church members.”Tomas R. Schreiner, Te Southern Baptist Teological Seminary

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P Ce Local As e ly

as Embas y of Ch ist’s Rule

Jonathan Leeman




InterVarsity PressP.O. Box , Downers Grove, IL -

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© by Jonathan Leeman

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itle: Political church : the local assembly as embassy o Christ's rule / Jonathan Leeman.Description: Downers Grove : InterVarsity Press, . | Series: Studies in Christian doctrine and scripture | Includes index.Identiers: LCCN (print) | LCCN (ebook) | ISBN (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN (eBook)

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Contents

Outline o the Book

Pre ace

Acknowledgments

Introduction

What Is Politics?

What Is an Institution?

he Politics o Creation

he Politics o the Fall

he Politics o the New Covenant

he Politics o the Kingdom

Conclusion

Name Index

Subject Index

Scripture Index




Outline of the Book

Introduction

Need : A Better Institutional Conceptuality Need : A Better Political Conceptuality What Others Have Said A Covenantal Approach Combining Political and Institutional Conceptualities

What Is Politics?

What Is Politics? he Line Between Public and Private

Public-Wide and Coercive GovernanceWhat Is the State?Conclusion

Separating the Political and the Spiritual Spirituality o the Church Freedom o Religion as Freedom o Conscience A Broader Religious Conceptuality and a View rom Somewhere A Broader Political Conceptuality How Religious Freedom Destroys Religious Freedom Conclusion

What Is an Institution?

Community and the Relational urn What Is an Institution? What Is a Political Institution? What Is a Political Community and Its Membership?

Political Community and erritoryPolitical Rebellion and Other ComplexitiesOther Kinds o Unity

A Community o Subjects or Citizens? Biblical and heological Institutionalism




Not Just a Secular Concept An Institutional Hermeneutic

More than a Political HermeneuticBiblical Wisdom Conclusion

he Politics o Creation

he Politics o God Divine Sociality

Human Socialityhe Politics o Creation

he Creator Is Kinghe Archetypal Body Politic and Citizenship Mandatewo Classes o Political Membership

Political Worship, the Priestly Mandateand the Archetypal Sanctuary

Absolute Versus Mediate Authority and Conscience Conclusion

he Politics o the Fall

God’s Universal Rule and the Noahic Covenant he Justice Mechanism and the Foundation o Government

Religious olerance—Part

Seven Lessons rom the Noahic Covenanthe Political/Religious Accountability o the Nations

Modeling God’s Universal Rule hrough the Special Covenants Abrahamic Covenant Mosaic CovenantDeputized in God’s NameDavidic Covenant

Institutional Change, Naming Names and Visible Rule Institutional Relativity and Change

he Execution o Rule in Salvation and JudgmentConclusion




he Politics o the New Covenant

A Political People he New Covenant Deuteronomy JeremiahEzekielIsaiah A Mutually A irmed Covenant?

Conclusion: he Ful illment o the Previous CovenantsPolitics o the Heart and Spirit otalitarianism and the New Covenant

Four Lessons or a Political heologyConclusion

Politics o Forgiveness Who Has the Authority to Forgive?

What Is the Basis o his Authority in Light o Retributive Justice?

What Does Forgiveness Mean in Political erms?Reinvoking Creation’s Citizenship Mandate Conclusion

he Politics o the Kingdom

he Politics o Jesus and His People JesusChurchRecommissioned in Adam’s O ice

Matthew (Part ): A Heavenly Citizenship Covenantal Ful illmentHeaven and EarthRegime ChangeNew CovenantRighteous O ice, Righteous Community

Paul and Justi ication




Present Justi ication and Covenantal Inclusionhe Forensic Is Political

By Faith Alone— he Unexpected Basis or Political UnityFuture Justi ication According to WorksConclusion

Matthew (Part ): Keys o the Kingdom Still Needed: Public Recognition, Assurance, Reauthorization

and Authoritative Interpretation Matthew and the Keys o the Kingdom Matthew and the Local ChurchWho Holds the Keys: Congregations or Elders? Matthew as Deputization Ceremony

A Church, Its Members and the Ordinances Church Membership and the OrdinancesWhat and Where Is a Church?

A Heavenly and Eschatological Embassy and Signmakeron Earth A Political Assembly An Embassy and SignmakerReligious olerance—Part An Embassy on the International Map

Conclusion: he Unity o the Church

Conclusion

he Political Hope o the Nations




Introduction

P R P , in a well-known essay titled “Bowling Alone,” observed that “more Amer-

icans are bowling today than ever be ore, but bowling in organized leagueshas plummeted.” Putnam’s project, which ocused on declining levels oAmerican participation in voluntary organizations, was aided by dozens oresearch assistants who poured over countless city directories, MasonicLodge yearbooks, membership statistics or the General Federation oWomen’s Clubs, Rotary Club les, Episcopal Church reports, and more.Indeed, one year o my own li e was spent in the Library o Congress, Har-

vard’s Widener Library, and the offices o many national and local organiza-tions searching out those very membership gures. Not, perhaps, the most riveting year o my li e.

A oundational assumption o all this neo- ocquevillian analysis, and anassumption o many democratic Westerners, is that local churches are onemore voluntary organization, something to be classied with the likes oLittle League and the Sierra Club. Few people would deny that local churches

are politically signicant , not least Putnam, who argues that participating in voluntary organizations is instrumental in “making democracy work,” as heputs it in another book by that title. But that is qualitatively different romsaying that local churches are political associations outright, as one wouldwith, say, the US embassy in London, England.

1Robert D. Putnam, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital,” Journal o Democracy(January ): .

2I had nothing to do with bowling league research. What I worked on can be ound in GeraldGamm and Robert D. Putnam, “Te Growth o Voluntary Associations in America, – ,”in Patterns o Social Capital: Stability and Change in Historical Perspective, ed. Robert I. Rotberg(New York: Cambridge University Press, ), - ; see also Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone:Te Collapse and Revival o American Community(New York: Simon & Schuster, ), .




Yet the primary claim o this book is that the local church is just such apolitical assembly. Indeed, the church is a kind o embassy, only it represents

a kingdom o even greater political consequence to the nations and theirgovernors. And this embassy represents a kingdom not rom across geo-graphic space but rom across eschatological time.

In other words, this book is concerned with the biblical and theologicalquestion o what constitutes a local church. Te answer, it will argue, is thatJesus grants Christians the authority to establish local churches as visibleembassies o his end-time rule through the “keys o the kingdom” described

in the Gospel o Matthew. By virtue o both the keys and a traditional Prot-estant conception o justication by aith alone, the local church exists as apolitical assembly that publicly represents King Jesus, displays the justiceand righteousness o the triune God, and pronounces Jesus’ claim upon thenations and their governments.

Does this mean I am charging my ormer employer with a method-ological error, that churches are not really voluntary organizations afer all?

From the standpoint o the state, to be sure, church membership should be voluntary. Te state has no authority here, or so I will maintain. Te questionis, how do the Christian Scriptures present the local church, and where dothey t onto a political landscape o the nations as the Bible conceives o thatlandscape? Should churches be classied as institutions o state, voluntaryorganizations or something else altogether? Te prosaic picture o a slump-shouldered research assistant typing membership statistics into Excel

spreadsheets offers a use ul “reality check” or any claim that the localchurch is a “political” institution, lest we all into useless theological ab-straction. How then would the Bible’s prophets and apostles instruct a po-litical scientist’s research assistant to classi y the local church? Answeringthat question requires two things then: describing what the local church isand also sketching out the political landscape o the nations as the Bibleconceives o it, which may be the harder part.

O course, it is not just political scientists who classi y a church as a club- like organization. Christian historians o the rst century, too, look or a -nities between churches and the public religious associations and vol-untary associations o the Greco-Roman world. Such historians tell us thatthese organizations, like churches, employed initiation rites or membership;

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collected membership dues; exercised discipline over their members; usedkinship language, calling one another “brother” or “ ather”; and even gave

their leaders titles like episkoposand diakonos. Tese historians do not nec-essarily mean to say that churches were merely one more such organization;and I personally do not mean to deny that analogies between the two typeso entities exist, any more than I would deny that analogies exist betweenthe church and the household, an analogy that is biblical (e.g., im : ;

Pet : ; c . Eph : ). Many such comparisons and analogies make oruse ul avenues o theological inquiry and ormulation.

Still, my purpose here is to argue that the institutional essence o thelocal assembly is a political unity. A church’s members are united in moreways than politically. But what binds the local church together as a distinctbody o people, distinct rom the nations and distinct rom Christiansunited to other churches, is the act that Jesus Christ’s universal lordshipgets exercised there—among them. Here is where the keys o the kingdomare exercised in membership, discipline, and doctrinal affirmation. Christ’s

political rule may be “not o this world,” meaning it has its source or originnot in the world but in heaven (Jn : ). And his rule unites all Christianseverywhere invisibly. But this universal rule is visibly and institutionallymani est in history through the proclamation o the gospel and the bindingand loosing activity o the local church, the two activities that constitutean otherwise unincorporated group o Christians as a particular church.

o become a member o a church is to be declared a citizen o Christ’s

3Richard S. Ascough, “Greco- Roman Philosophic, Religious, and Voluntary Associations,” inCommunity Formation in the Early Church and in the Church oday , ed. Richard N. Longenecker (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, ), - ; see also Wayne A. Meeks, Te First Urban Christians:Te Social World o the Apostle Paul (New Haven, C : Yale University Press, ), - ; PhilipA. Harland, Associations, Synagogues, and Congregations: Claiming a Place in Ancient Mediterra-nean Society(Minneapolis: Fortress, ) and Dynamics o Identity in the World o Early Chris-tians: Associations, Judeans, and Cultural Minorities(New York: & Clark, ). See also Rob-ert Louis Wilken’s discussion o how the Romans viewed churches, as with Pliny the Younger’sdescription o Christian groups as hetaeria , which might be translated “political club” or “as-sociation.” Wilken, Te Christians as the Romans Saw Tem , nd ed. (New Haven, C : YaleUniversity Press, ), - .

4 E.g., Meeks, First Urban Christians, - ; Joseph H. Hellerman, Te Ancient Church as Family (Minneapolis: Fortress, ).

5D. A. Carson, Te Gospel According to John, Pillar New estament Commentary (Grand Rapids:Eerdmans, ), ; J. Ramsey Michaels,Te Gospel o John, New International Commentaryon the New estament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ), - ; Raymond E. Brown, Te Gospel According to John XIII- XXI , Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, ), .

Introduction




kingdom. It is a local church’s politically authorized corporate existencethat constitutes a group o Christians as a visible embassy o Christ’s

kingdom on earth and that, in turn, ormally authorizes every individualwithin that assembly to represent the King’s name be ore the nations andtheir governors as an ambassador.

Tat is not to say that the authority exercised in a local church bespeaksits own sel -contained politics and that I am using the term metaphorically,as when one speaks o “office politics” or “university politics.” Rather, thelocal church’s rule is but one bolt o abric in the larger roll o cloth that

makes up Christ’s rule among the nations and their governments. Te stateand the church both mediate the rule o God, and unlike the mediate au-thority o , say, a parent, they both make an authoritative claim on the wholeo a society, one by the sword and one by gospel proclamation. And backingup both claims is God’s own sword, even i that sword won’t show itsel untilthe eschaton. Te proto- liberal Tomas Hobbes observed, “Te Kingdomethere ore o God, is a reall, not a metaphoricall Kingdome.” What’s there oreneeded, says present- day political theologian Oliver O’Donovan, is a much

“ uller political conceptuality,” one that “pushes back the horizon o com-monplace politics and opens it up to the activity o God.”

6Tomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard uck, Cambridge exts in the History o PoliticalTought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), chap. , para. . Hobbes may seemlike an unlikely candidate or making this point, but he did affirm the literal existence o thekingdom o God. Yet this does not affect his theory o the state the way one might expect becausehe (more or less) placed this kingdom entirely into the eschaton: “the Kingdome o Christ is notto begin till the generall Resurrection” (ibid., chap. , sec. ; see also sec. and ). Hisseal between the present and uture, however, was not hermetic. Tough he argued that “theKingdome hee claimed was to bee in another world,” he also acknowledged that “the Godly aresaid to bee already in the Kingdom o Grace, as naturalized in that heavenly Kingdome” (ibid.,chap. , sec. ). In short, Hobbes offered a precarious balance. On the one hand, he wantedto say “there is nothing done, or taught by Christ, that tendeth to the diminution o the CivillRight o the Jewes, or o Caesar” (ibid.). On the other hand, Hobbes wanted to reserve a place

or civil disobedience when a government calls an individual to de y God’s law: “But i the com-mand [o the civil sovereign] be such, as cannot be obeyed, without being damned to EternallDeath, then it were madnesse to obey it, and the Counsell o our Saviour takes place, ( Mat. . )Fear not those that kill the body, but cannot kill the soule” (ibid., chap. , sec. ; see also chap.

, sec. ; chap. , sec. ). Whether or not Hobbes’s system was wholly consistent on thesepoints is not or this book to decide.

7Oliver O’Donovan, Desire o the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots o Political Teology (New York:Cambridge University Press, ), . See also David Miller and Sohail H. Hashmi, introductionto Boundaries and Justice: Diverse Ethical Perspectives, ed. David Miller and Sohail H. Hashmi(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ), .

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It is tempting to jump directly to Matthew’s discussion o the keys o the

kingdom in chapters , and (implicitly) . We will do this in chapter sixto argue that Jesus authorizes the local church to act as this embassy romthe uture. But i our political and institutional conceptualities are ormedby the ideologies o the day more than by the biblical storyline, the lenses othose ideologies just might warp our investigation o these passages.Tere ore, I am going to spend the rst ve chapters o the book—the bulko it—trying to get the wrong lenses off and the right ones on. Afer that we’ll

look at the key texts.Tat means this book, be ore we ever get to the ultimate goal o dening

the local church, will rst build a political theology rom the ground up.Arguing that the church is a “political institution” requires us to get ourheads around the idea o the “political” as well as the idea o an institution.I’m convinced we need a better political conceptuality and a better institu-tional conceptuality. Let me say a bit about each, starting with the latter.

A theme that will sur ace throughout this book is institutional specicity.Te problem with much theology these days, I believe, is a lack o institu-tional understanding and specication.

Consider, or instance, how the generally remarkable Bible scholarGeorge Eldon Ladd describes Jesus’ promise to build his church and givePeter the keys o the kingdom. his statement, says Ladd, “does notspeak o the creation o an organization or institution” but instead stands

in direct continuity with the Old estament tradition o “building apeople.” When Ladd pits building an institution and a kingdom peopleagainst one another, one only wonders what he means by “institution.”Keys are symbols o institutional authority. And “building a people” isby de inition to institutionalize those people. It is to place them withina construct o rules, belie s, or norms that will shape their behavior rel-ative both to one another and to outsiders while also providing them

with a measure o social stability, identity and meaning. In other words,8George Eldon Ladd, A Teology o the New estament , rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ),

- .9 Te very Old estament texts to which Ladd looks to prove his point contain precisely these

kinds o institutional elements within Old estament Israel (e.g., structures o authority;

Introduction




the concepts described in Matthew : - practically point to the de -inition o an institution. Why does Ladd not see that?

Yet this lack o institutional understanding and specicity is common. Itis easy and popular to talk about the virtues o “community” and “ ellowship”and even “kingdom,” but leave questions like “who is in charge” or “are theremembership boundaries” unasked, unmentioned. Tink o that phrase oAbraham Kuyper overused by young preachers and bloggers everywhere:“Tere is not a square inch in the whole domain o our human existance owhich Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry ‘Mine!’” Such a

statement rightly affirms the universal nature o Christ’s lordship, but it re-mains institutionally underspecied. Does Christ the king require the samething o all people and institutions? Te same thing o the ather as o thepresident? And o the president as o the pastor? Or does he delegate onekind o authority here and another kind there? Te same lack o institutionalspecication shows up in vague talk o “holistic salvation” or “the church’smission” or the idea that Jesus came as king with “a different kind o power.”

Te same problem occurs in discussions o religion in the public square.Teologians and lawyers alike inveigh against “legislating morality” and “es-tablishing religion,” but doesn’t all legislation have some moral basis and,behind that, a religious worldview? And what exactly counts as establishing religion? I very much like the US Constitution’s language about making nolaw with respect to “an establishment o religion,” but I’m not convinced thatmany theologians or lawyers perceive the difference between “establishingreligion” and “an establishment o religion.” Every law could be said to es-tablish some religion or set o religions, at least i we’re dening religion

membership boundaries; laws that are applicable only to members): Ruth : ; Chron : - ;Ps : ; : ; Jer : ; : ; : ; : ; Amos : .

10Quoted in James E. Bratt, Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat(Grand Rapids:Eerdmans, ), xx.

11My point here is not to indict Kuyper’s system generally, or even to suggest that he should havemore care ully qualied that statement in its original context. One cannot say everything all thetime. John Halsey Wood Jr. argues that Kuyper eventually recognized this lack o institutionalspecicity and saw the con usion it caused in the relation between church and state. Wood,“Teologian o the Revolution: Abraham Kuyper’s Radical Proposal or Church and State,” inKingdoms Apart: Engaging the wo Kingdoms Perspective, ed. Ryan C. McIlhenny (Phillipsburg,NJ: P&R, ), - . See also John Halsey Wood Jr., Going Dutch in the Modern Age: AbrahamKuyper’s Struggle or a Free Church in the Nineteenth Century Netherlands(New York: Ox ordUniversity Press, ), - .

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unctionally and not substantively . But that is different than institutionallyorganizing a religion, its members and its statements o belie or behavior.

Again, the conversation suffers rom a lack o institutional conceptuality.o remedy this problem, chapter two will introduce the “new institution-

alism” that has emerged among political scientists and sociologists over thelast several decades. Hope ully this institutional revival tour will help usdevelop a better institutional conceptuality, which in turn will enable us todiscern what an institutional church is in the pages o Scripture. Just to makethe tour sound even more exciting, I conclude chapter two by developing an

“institutional hermeneutic.”

N : A B P C

Te larger question at stake in claiming that the church is a political insti-tution, o course, is whether the “political” category is an appropriate one tobring to bear on New estament interpretation or the nature o the church.Scholars over the past ew decades have been happy to characterize the

church as the “community o the kingdom,” to use Ladd’s description. Andthe New estament word “kingdom,” observes New estament scholar N. .Wright, is nothing i not a “thoroughly political concept.” So, too, the termekklēsia. Another New estament scholar, Mark Sei rid, notices “it is strikingthat the earliest Christians chose a distinctively political . . . term or theircollective existence, speaking o themselves as anekklēsia, a public assembly,rather than as a ‘religious gathering’ (‘synagogue’).”

12 I am taking this distinction rom William Cavanaugh, which I will discuss (along with a third“constructivist” way) in chapter one.

13 Ladd, Teology o the New estament , . He then expounds this relationship under ve points:the church is not the kingdom; the kingdom creates the church; the church witnesses to thekingdom; the church is the instrument o the kingdom; and the church is the custodian o thekingdom (ibid., - ).

14 N. . Wright, “Paul and Caesar: A New Reading o Romans,” in A Royal Priesthood: Te Use othe Bible Ethically and Politically(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, ), .

15 Mark Sei rid, Te Second Letter to the Corinthians, Pillar New estament Commentary (GrandRapids: Eerdmans, ), ; see also Bernd Wannenwetsch, Political Worship(New York: Ox ordUniversity Press, ), - . Te term ekklēsia( rom ek-kaleō, or “called out”) can be ound

rom the time o Euripides and Herodotus in the fh century BC, be ore the Hebrew Bible wastranslated into Greek, as a term that re erred to the gathering o ull citizens in the Greek polis

or making decisions, ofen by vote, on matters o judicial and political import. Every citizenwas able to speak or propose items or discussion. Te term ekklēsiathen occurred about onehundred times in the Septuagint (including the Apocrypha) as a translation o the Hebrew termqāhāl and represented the people in a specially summoned or convened capacity such as hearing

Introduction




Still, it is my assumption that most Westerners today (Christian and non-Christian) have a secular and liberalized understanding o “politics” or the

“political.” Te political sphere is treated like its own sacred realm that mustbe kept clean rom the pro ane world o religion. Te two spheres are sepa-rated, says Oliver O’Donovan, by a care ully guarded cordon sanitaire. William Cavanaugh similarly remarks, “Politics has been emancipated andproperly differentiated rom theology. Politics takes place in an autonomous,secular sphere, and is established on its own oundations.” Tough Hobbesdid not so cleanly separate the political and the spiritual, he did anticipate

what would eventually become the sacred nature o the political spherewhen he described a (ironic) parallel between the holiness o God’s kingdomand the publicness o an earthly kingdom.

Formally, this separation between the political and the religious or spir-itual can be attributed to philosophical liberalism. And liberalism, a numbero thinkers have remarked, is “the overarching mythos o the modern age” and the “political philosophy by which we live.” When people today think

about politics or citizenship, they tend to think within a liberal ramework,whether they mean to or not. Another political philosopher writes, “Sothoroughly has this liberalism come to suffuse our political culture, espe-cially in the Anglo-Saxon world, that virtually all o us can be said to beliberals in some sense, even i we explicitly repudiate the label.” Liberalism is

God’s word rom Mount Sinai or to assemble three times a year on Mount Zion. Adapted romPeter . O’Brien, Colossians, Philemon, Word Bible Commentary (Waco: Word, ), - ;and Lothar Coenen, “Church,” in Dictionary o New estament Teology , vol. (Grand Rapids:Zondervan, ), - .

16O’Donovan, Desire o the Nations, .17William . Cavanaugh, Migrations o the Holy: God, State, and the Political Meaning o the Church

(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ), .18Hobbes writes, “Out o this literal interpretation o the Kingdome o God , ariseth also the true

interpretation o the word HOLY. For it is a word, which in Gods [ sic] Kingdome answereth tothat, which men in their Kingdomes use to call Publique, or the Kings. Te King o any Countreyis the PubliquePerson, or Representative o all his own Subjects. And God the King o Israel wasthe Holy oneo Israel.” Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. , para. .

19Cavanaugh, Migrations o the Holy , .20 Michael Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search o a Public Philosophy (Cambridge,

MA: Belknap Press o Harvard University Press, ), . Alasdair MacIntyre similarly writes,“Te contemporary debates within modern political systems are almost exclusively betweenconservative liberals, liberal liberals, and radical liberals.” MacIntyre, Whose Justice, Which Ra-tionality? (London: Duckworth, ), .

21David . Koyzis, Political Visions and Illusions: A Survey and Christian Critique o ContemporaryIdeologies(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, ), .

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not without its critics, but I mention all o this because I believe that liber-alism and its dualisms remain the inarticulate assumption or many Chris-

tians and non- Christians in the West. And it is these assumptions thatpresent the biggest hindrance to conceptualizing the “community o thekingdom” in political terms (presuming, or a moment, that this is what theBible teaches). As such, I believe that it is worth beginning this book byretracing the outlines o liberalism, which is a signicant part o whatchapter one will do. I the whole book is devoted to developing a morebiblical political conceptuality, chapter one is necessary or recognizing

our de ault conceptuality. Te words politics or political , or most West-erners today, are simply understood in liberal terms. Tat at least is myworking assumption.

At the same time, some argue that the seeds o liberalism were plantedwith Martin Luther’s doctrine o sola de and its political counterpart, hisdoctrine o the two kingdoms. Afer all, Luther arguably introduced to thehistory o political thought the picture o the lone individual standing be orethe judgment seat o God, not nally accountable to prince or priest, notdeclared just or one’s obedience to them or to God, but accountable to one’sconscience and justied and made (internally) ree as a gif o grace through

aith alone. Te best a prince can do, there ore, is to regulate the outerperson, leaving the church to address the inner person or conscience with

22James Madison drew the connection between Luther and liberalism when he re erred in a per-sonal letter to “the excellence o a system which, by a due distinction, to which the genius andcourage o Luther led the way, between what is due to Caesar and what is due to God, bestpromotes the discharge o both obligations. Te experience o the United States is a happy dis-proo o the error so long rooted in unenlightened minds o well- meaning Christians, as well asin the corrupt hearts o persecuting usurpers, that without a legal incorporation o religious andcivil polity, neither could be supported. A mutual independence is ound most riendly to prac-tical Religion, to social harmony, and to political prosperity.” Letters and Other Writings o James Madison, vol. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, ), - . More critically, Jean BethkeElshtain practically draws a straight line rom Luther to the Kantianism o John Rawls when, ina critique o sola de’s inner/outer distinction, she observes, “One can readily see ImmanuelKant emerging out o this Lutheran chrysalis.” Elshtain, Sovereignty: God, State, and Sel(NewYork: Basic Books, ), . Also, Quentin Skinner help ully recounts the movement romLuther’s theology, particularly his doctrine o justication by aith alone, through to its ecclesialand political implications. Skinner, Te Foundations o Modern Political Tought: Te Age o theRe ormation, vol. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), - ; see also W. D. J.Cargill Tompson, Te Political Tought o Martin Luther (Sussex: Harvester, ); J. W. Allen, A History o Political Tought in the Sixteenth Century( ; repr., New York: Barnes & Noble,

), - .

Introduction




God’s Word. Reading Luther’s On Secular Authority and John Locke’sLetter Concerning oleration back to back does show a striking number o

similarities. Both divide the outer and inner person. Both place a secular government over one and a spiritual government over the other. Both insistthat the two governments must remain distinct. Both argue that secularauthority cannot reach the inner person or conscience but only reaches tooutward things, and that aith cannot be coerced. Locke was no Lutheran,but not a small number o scholars have argued that his work dependedupon a Protestant theological rationale. And Luther was no philosophical

23Political scientist imothy Lomperis connects the dots between Luther and liberalism in suc-cinct ashion: “Luther’s belie in a justication by aith alone, and not by good works (especiallythose prescribed by the church), gave Christians the undamental reedom o their souls. Out-side institutions, like the church, the state, or even the pope himsel , could not determine theinternal condition o the souls o believers or their social standing as moral beings in the com-munity. . . . Tere was, then, in this internal reedom o the soul, and o external pro essions o

aith, a justication or the reedom o the conscience above any claims by religious or politicalinstitutions that became a central tenet o Lutheran theology—and o modern liberalism.” Lom-peris, “Lutheranism and Politics: Martin Luther as Modernizer, but or the Devil,” in Church,State, and Citizens: Christian Approaches to Political Engagement , ed. Sandra F. Joireman (New

York: Ox ord University Press, ), .24For introductions to Luther’s two- kingdoms doctrine, see William J. Wright, Martin Luther’s

Understanding o God’s wo Kingdoms: A Response to the Challenge o Skepticism(Grand Rapids:Baker, ); also Bernard Lohse, Martin Luther’s Teology: Its Historical and Systematic Develop-ment (Minneapolis: Fortress, ), - , - ; Oswald Bayer, Martin Luther’s Teology: AContemporary Interpretation, trans. Tomas H. rapp ( ; repr., übingen: J. C. B. Mohr,Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ), - , esp. - ; David VanDrunen, Natural Law and the

wo Kingdoms: A Study in the Development o Re ormed Social Tought (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,), - ; W. D. J. Cargill Tompson, “Te ‘ wo Kingdoms’ and the ‘ wo Regiments,’ Some

Problems o Luther’s Zwei-Reiche-Lehre,” Journal o Teological Studies , no. (April ):- ; James M. Estes, “Luther on the Role o Secular Authority in the Re ormation,” in Te

Pastoral Luther: Essays on Martin Luther’s Practical Teology , ed. imothy J. Wengert, LutheranQuarterly Books (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ), - , esp. - .

25A series o help ul discussions o Locke’s letter can be ound in John Locke—A Letter Concerningoleration in Focus, ed. John Horton and Susan Mendus (New York: Routledge, ), especially

the essays by J. W. Gough, Maurice Cranston and Jeremy Waldron in that volume.26Compare, or instance, parts one and two o Martin Luther, On Secular Authority , in Luther and

Calvin on Secular Authority , trans. Harro Höp, Cambridge exts in the History o PoliticalTought (New York: Cambridge University Press, ), with the rst third or so o John Locke,“Letter,” in wo reatises o Government and a Letter Concerning oleration, ed. Ian Shapiro (NewHaven, C : Yale University Press, ); see also “On the Difference Between Civil and Eccle-siastical Power,” in Te Li e and Letters o John Locke, comp. Lord Peter King (London: HenryG. Bohn, ), - .

27“Weltlich” in Luther’s German. See Höp, “Glossary,” in Luther and Calvin on Secular Authority ,xxxviii.

28See Ian Shapiro, introduction to Locke, wo reatises, xiii; John Dunn, Te Political Tought o John Locke: An Historical Account o the Argument(New York: Cambridge University Press, ),

, ; James ully, A Discourse Concerning Property: John Locke and His Adversaries(New York:

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liberal, particularly as he pointed to God’s will and ordinance as expressedin Romans as the ground o government, not the public’s consent. But he

arguably put the necessary anthropology, ecclesiology, and aspects o gov-ernmental authority in place or liberalism to ollow. In the centuries aferLuther, a more developed doctrine o a spiritual (not political) church wastied to a decidedly spiritual gospel. Such a viewpoint seems to correspond,

urthermore, with the liberal idea that the public square must or at leastmight hypothetically remain neutral between various religious or spiritualconcerns, and that the state cannot coerce the conscience. So while chapter

one examines our de ault political conceptuality, it will also, at least briey,sketch out a religious conceptuality.

W O H S

Is this the rst book to argue or the political nature o the church? Studentso political theology know the answer to that question is no. And or thesake o such students I assume it is use ul to locate mysel on the landscape,

Cambridge University Press, ); John Marshall, John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Respon-sibility(New York: Cambridge University Press, ); Jeremy Waldron, God, Locke, and Equal-ity: Christian Foundations o Locke’s Political Tought(New York: Cambridge University Press,

); and Greg Forster, John Locke’s Politics o Moral Consensus(New York: Cambridge Univer-sity Press, ).

29Re erring to the medieval idea that the pope and emperor were parallel and universal powers,Quentin Skinner observes that Luther effectively “destroyed ‘the metaphor o the two swords;hence orth there should be but one, wielded by a rightly advised and godly prince.’” Skinner,Foundations o Modern Political Tought , . Skinner then recounts examples o how the re or-mulation o who possessed the swords began to instantiate itsel in the policies o Europeangovernments. In particular, the governments o many German cities, Denmark, Sweden, andEngland repudiated “the separate legal and jurisdictional powers hitherto exercised within theirterritories by the Papacy and the Catholic Church,” changes “legitimated by way o appealingto an essentially Lutheran conception o the church as a purely spiritual body, the sole duty owhich was to preach the word o God without laying claim to any other powers” (ibid., ). Itwas at this point, says Skinner, that “a distinctively modern concept o political obligationbegins to emerge” in which “it became possible or the secular authorities to legitimate theclaim that they should be regarded as the sole jurisdictional power within their own territories,and thus that they should be recognized as the sole appropriate object o a subject’s politicalallegiance” (ibid., ; see also Elshtain, Sovereignty , ). For all these reasons, it is hardly sur-prising that another historian would write, “Modern politics is unimaginable without the re-denition o the relation between politics and religion that Martin Luther . . . demanded andobtained. It was the Re ormation that made the separation o religion, law, and history rompolitics inevitable.” Constantin Fasolt, Te Limits o History (Chicago: University o ChicagoPress, ), . Fasolt urther remarks, “Whoever wishes to improve our understanding oearly modern political thought should there ore read more than Machiavelli, Hobbes, andLocke” (ibid., ).

Introduction




which I will attempt to do in this section and the next. Tese two sectionsmay be the most technical sections o the book, and nonspecialists should

eel ree to skip them. Consider this a “get out o jail ree” card.In response to the traditionalist’s spiritual gospel and spiritual church, a

rst generation o twentieth- century “political theologians,” “liberationtheologians” and “public theologians” sought to draw out the politicalmeaning o the gospel and to consider what kind o church such a politicalgospel creates. For instance, the Protestant Jürgen Moltmann, who withthe Roman Catholic Johann Baptist Metz is counted among a movement o

political theologians, argued,‘Liberation’ is an ‘open concept’ which permeates and embraces the differentdimensions o suffering. It runs rom the economic abolition o exploitationwhich results rom the rule o particular classes, or the political vanquishingo oppression and dictatorship and the cultural elimination o racialism,down to aith’s experience o liberation rom the compulsion o sin and theeschatological hope o liberation rom the power o death.

From this more holistic concept o salvation emerged a so- called politicalchurch: “A logical and consistent Christian discipleship always has logicalpolitical consequences. . . . Te expression ‘political church’ there ore doesnot mean a politicizing o the church. On the contrary, it means the Chris-tianization o the church’s politics according to ‘the yardstick and plumblineo Christ.’” Moltmann and Metz, in turn, proved very inuential amongthe South American liberation theologians like Gustavo Gutiérrez and

Leonardo Boff. We will glance at some o these ideas as Gutiérrez expressesthem in chapter ve.

While the so- called political and liberation theologians explored thepolitical signicance o Christianity on the theological and political lef,several conservative thinkers such as the Roman Catholic Richard JohnNeuhaus or the Re ormed Max Stackhouse argued or the public signi-cance o Christianity on the center or right by arguing that Christian

30Tis tripartite characterization comes rom Daniel M. Bell Jr., “State and Civil Society,” in TeBlackwell Companion to Political Teology , ed. Peter Scott and William . Cavanaugh (Malden,MA: Blackwell, ), - .

31Jürgen Moltmann, Te Church in the Power o the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology(Minneapolis: Fortress, ), , see also - .

32Ibid., .

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doctrines bore an attendant “public theology.” Neuhaus amously arguedthat the public square should not be naked or bare o religious speech.

Stackhouse, observing the threat to human rights coming rom varioussecular quarters, argued that “human rights,” a so- called liberal concept,

“is essentially a matter o religious ethics.” Broadly, the point among suchthinkers is that Christianity or religious thought generally provides the

oundations and moral capital necessary or democratic and liberal institu-tions to ourish.

Following this rst generation o political theologians came a secondgeneration, who are sometimes characterized as post- liberal and anti-modernist and who sometimes sel - characterize as Augustinian. o thissecond generation belong names like the neo- Anabaptists Stanley Hauerwasand John Howard Yoder as well as the Radical Orthodoxy writers like JohnMilbank, Daniel Bell, and William Cavanaugh. Charles Mathewes perhapsbelongs to this second generation. And some lump the harder- to-classi y

33Bell, “State and Civil Society,” - . For a broader discussion o public theology that goesbeyond the characters and characterization offered in Bell, see the multi- essay volumes PublicTeology or a Global Society: Essays in Honor o Max Stackhouse, ed. Deirdre King Hainsworthand Scott R. Paeth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ), and Teology and Public Philosophy: FourConversations, ed. Kenneth L. Grasso and Cecilia Rodriguez Castillo (Lanham, MD: LexingtonBooks, ).

34Richard John Neuhaus, Te Naked Public Square: Religion and Democracy in America, nd ed.(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ). See also Stephen Carter, Te Culture o Disbelie : How Ameri-can Law and Politics rivialize Religious Devotion(New York: Doubleday, ).

35Max L. Stackhouse, Creeds, Society, and Human Rights: A Study in Tree Cultures(Grand Rapids:Eerdmans, ), . See also Nicholas Wolterstorff, Justice: Rights and Wrongs(Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press, ), which argues or the pre- Enlightenment and even Old esta-ment basis o natural rights and a concept o justice grounded in those rights.

36Oliver O’Donovan remarks o the school o thought that sel - identies as Augustinian, “Teyare a heterogeneous crowd, assertive o the Augustinian identity because they had to nd it orthemselves, but diverse in their interpretation o it and inclined to disagree with each other overalmost everything.” O’Donovan, “Book Review: Charles Mathewes, A Teology o Public Li e,”Political Teology , no. ( ): - . See also Eric Gregory’s survey o the Augustinians,Politics and the Order o Love: An Augustinian Ethic o Democratic Citizenship(Chicago: Universityo Chicago Press, ), - .

I am loosely ollowing what Bell characterizes as the movement rom the “dominant tradition”to an “emerging tradition,” in “State and Civil Society,” - . Te same basic distinction is

ound in Peter Scott and William . Cavanaugh, introduction to Blackwell Companion to PoliticalTeology , ; also Michael Kirwan, Political Teology: An Introduction (Minneapolis: Fortress,

), - . Eric Gregory offers a our-part division in “Christianity and the Rise o the Demo-cratic State,” in Political Teology or a Plural Age, ed. Michael Jon Kessler (New York: Ox ordUniversity Press, ), - .

37See his A Teology o Public Li e(New York: Cambridge University Press, ).

Introduction




Anglican theologian Oliver O’Donovan into this camp. What unites thissomewhat disparate group is that they hold modernist suppositions at arm’s

length and disavow Enlightenment dualisms, such as a strong separationbetween aith and reason or politics and religion. John Milbank, or instance,has argued that all the supposedly neutral, rational, and objective socialsciences—sociology, psychology, economics, political science, and so on—

“are themselves theologies or anti- theologies in disguise.” All such seculardisciplines and theories (like liberalism) are built on covert idols, whichpoints to “the practical inescapability o worship.” You are always worshiping

something.And the secular theories o the West are either Christian heresiesor Neopagan rejections o Christianity—in both cases being derivative. Along these lines, it is not difficult to think back to Augustine’s City o God ,which attributes all human activity to one o two loves, to idolatry or toworship. William Cavanaugh draws out the implications o Milbank’s ideas

or the post-Hobbesian or modern state, which claims to possess imperiumover against the church: such a state offers an “alternative soteriology to thato the church”; but it is “a simulacrum, a alse copy, o the Body o Christ.” Radical Orthodoxy, says Daniel Bell similarly, “begins with the recovery othe Augustinian insight that politics as statecraf is but a secular parody othe true politics that is the ellowship o the saints.”

Tis critique o Enlightenment social theory is accompanied by a critiqueo any correlationist (read “modern”) theology—liberal or conservative,Moltmann or Neuhaus—which is bamboozled by the neutral and rational

38Use ul comparisons between O’Donovan and Hauerwas can be ound in William . Cavanaugh,“Church,” - inBlackwell Companion to Political Teology , - , as well as rom Hauerwashimsel in his War and the American Difference: Teological Reections on Violence and NationalIdentity (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, ), xii.

39John Milbank, Teology and Social Teory: Beyond Social Reason, nd ed. (Maldan, MA: Black-well, ), .

40Augustine, Te City o God Against the Pagans, ed. and trans. R. W. Dyson, Cambridge exts inthe History o Political Tought (New York: Cambridge University Press, ), e.g., (XV. )and (XIV. ).

41William . Cavanaugh, “Te City: Beyond Secular Parodies,” in Radical Orthodoxy: A New Te-ology,ed. John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward (London: Routledge, ),

; also Cavanaugh, Migrations o the Holy , - .42Daniel M. Bell Jr., Liberation Teology Afer the End o History: Te Re usal to Cease Suffering

(London: Routledge, ), ; Bell, “State and Civil Society,” - ; also Stanley Hauerwas, Afer Christendom? How the Church Is to Behave I Freedom, Justice, and a Christian Nation AreBad Ideas(Nashville: Abingdon, ), - .

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pretense o social theory: “Contemporary theologies which orge allianceswith such theories are ofen unwittingly rediscovering concealed affinities

between positions that partake o the same historical origins.” Tat is, theydo “Christian” theology on heretical or Neopagan oundations. Case inpoint: “the main proponents o ‘political theology’ in Germany, and ‘liber-ation theology’ in Latin America . . . remain . . . trapped within the terms o‘secular reason,’ and its unwarranted oundationalist presuppositions.” Spe-cically, these political and liberation theologies embrace Marxism “as adiscourse which supposedly discloses the ‘essence’ o human beings and a

‘ undamental’ level o human historical becoming.” Te Radical Orthodoxand post- liberal perspectives eschew philosophical oundations but pro essinstead to depend epistemologically either upon a concept o revelation andillumination or upon discipleship into a particular narrative.

Tough Stanley Hauerwas does not ormally belong to the Radical Or-thodoxy movement, he is sympathetic with these points. Te problem, sayshe, is that “contemporary Christians allow their imaginations to be captured

by the concepts o justice determined by the presuppositions o liberal soci-eties. For example, we simply take or granted distinctions between act and

value, public and private, that these societies privilege.” In the process,Christians let their aith become “privatized” and domesticated to the liberalcause. Tis means shearing off all those troublesome Christian distinctives(“e.g., the nature o God, the signicance o Jesus, the eschatological ate othe world”) and turning the aith into an inoffensive civil religion, neutered

o any real public signicance. Which is to say, the Christian partnershipwith liberalism reduces one’s aith to one more private “opinion” as opposedto a proclamation o what is true, thereby undermining it both inside and

43Milbank, Teology and Social Teory , .44Ibid., - .45John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward, introduction to Radical Orthodoxy: A

New Teology , ed. John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward (London: Routledge,), ; see also John Milbank, “Knowledge: Te Teological Critique o Philosophy in Ha-

mann and Jacobi,” in the same volume, - ; and Milbank, Teology and Social Teory , - .A help ul overview o the epistemology o Radical Orthodoxy can be ound in James K. A.Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-secular Teology (Grand Rapids: BakerAcademic, ), - .

46Stanley Hauerwas, Te Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics (Notre Dame, IN: Uni- versity o Notre Dame Press, ), - ; Afer Christendom? , - .

47Hauerwas, Afer Christendom? , .

Introduction




outside the church. Scientic verication, instead, becomes the evaluatoro truth. “We thus live in a time where Christians in the name o being so-

cially responsible try to save appearances by supplying epistemological andmoral justications or social arrangements that made and continue to makethe church politically irrelevant.” Hauerwas there ore urges Christians tostop underwriting the liberal project but instead seek, above all else, to bethemselves—an alternative society that gives up coercive violence but livesout the politics o the cross and the resurrection, the kind o political witnesspower ully enacted through the martyrs.

In short, the rst generation o political theologians may have spoken oa “political gospel” and a “political church,” but the second generation e -

ectively suggests that the rst generation remains stuck within a liberal,Enlightenment paradigm and that they still view the political and the spir-itual too separately. At the risk o oversimplication, it is as i the secondgeneration accuses the rst generation o saying that the gospel and thechurch are “political,” but it argues that what the rst generation means is

that the gospel merely has political “implications” and that the church is notmuch more than politically “signicant,” somewhat like Robert Putnamdoes. Te Augustinians and post- liberals, on the other hand, insist that thechurch actually is a political entity. Cavanaugh there ore points us back tothe word ekklēsia, and in so doing brings us back to our earlier conversationabout voluntary associations:

In Greek usage, ekklesia named the assembly o those with citizen rights in agiven polis. In calling itsel ekklesia, the church was identi ying itsel as ullypublic, re using the available language or private associations (koinon or col-legium). Te church was not gathered like a koinon around particular interests,but was concerned with the interests o the whole city, because it was the

48Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom, - ; Hauerwas, Afer Christendom? , - .49Hauerwas, Afer Christendom? , .50Ibid., - ; Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom, - ; Hauerwas, A Community o Character:

oward a Constructive Christian Social Ethic(Notre Dame, IN: University o Notre Dame Press,), - .

51See Arne Rasmusson, Te Church as Polis: From Political Teology to Teological Politics as Exem- plied by Jürgen Moltmann and Stanley Hauerwas, rev. ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University o NotreDame Press, ), .

52O course, Milbank would be quick to insist that we would use the term “is” analogically, notunivocally.

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witness o God’s activity in history. At the same time, the church was notsimply another polis; instead, it was an anticipation o the heavenly city on

earth, in a way that complexied the bipolar calculus o public and private.

Cavanaugh also observes that the word ekklēsiawas used in the Septuagintor signicant public gatherings o the nation o Israel (e.g., Deut : ; Kings : ; Neh ) and that the early Christians used the Greek term to

identi y themselves with the nation o Israel as God’s public representativeon earth. Hauerwas, too, pushes the political signicance o the Christianmessage and the church beyond talk o “implications” to what the things are.

“Jesus’ salvation does not have social and political implications,” says Hau-erwas, “but it is a politics that is meant as an alternative to all social li e thatdoes not reect God’s glory.” Te church does not just have a social ethic,Hauerwas is well known or saying, but the church is a social ethic. Andthis ethic, this politics, witnesses to the kind o social li e possible or thosewho have been ormed by the story o Christ. Te church’s challenge hasalways been “to be a ‘contrast model’ or all polities that know not God.”

Arne Rasmusson describes the movement rom the rst generation to thesecond generation as a movement rom political theology to theologicalpolitics, and he narrates this movement in the persons o Moltmann andHauerwas. His summary o the differences is clari ying:

For Moltmann the political o the national and world communities, and moreprecisely power over the national (or uture world) state, has priority. Hisconcern is the participation o Christians in this political struggle. Hauerwas,on the other hand, sees the church, the called people o God, as the primarylocus or a new politics. Te church as an alternative polis or civitas is thus acarrier o a specically theological politics; that is a politics determined by thenew reality o the kingdom o God as seen in the li e and destiny o Jesus. Hethere ore understands the politics o the world, and relates to it, in the lighto this new politics. . . . Moltmann makes God’s activity in the world,

53Cavanaugh, Migrations o the Holy , .54Ibid., - .55Hauerwas, Afer Christendom? , ; also Hauerwas, Community o Character , .56Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom, - ; Hauerwas,Community o Character , - , , - ;

Hauerwas, In Good Company: Te Church as Polis (Notre Dame, IN: University o Notre DamePress, ), .

57Hauerwas, Community o Character , .

Introduction




understood as the political struggle or emancipation, the horizon in whichthe church’s theology and practice are interpreted, while Hauerwas makes the

church’s story the “counter story” that interprets the world’s politics. In thisdifference we nd the most decisive parting o ways between Moltmann’spolitical theology and Hauerwas’ theological politics.

Tough the distinction is ontologically articial, perhaps we can capturethe differing emphases by suggesting that the rst generation almost uses

“political” as an adjective, while the second uses it as a noun. Does thechurch merely have political qualities, or is it a Spirit- lled polis?

Tis second generation, too, has its critics, who are typically o a liberalbent. Whether we say they belong to a third generation or the rst, I’m notsure. But they, like a number o other Christian writers, are not convincedthe liberal project has given up the ghost. A number o academic andpopular books in the United States respond to the present- day cultural warsby urging us to “go back to the Founders” or even to John Locke. Not to becon used with the Religious Right’s call or a Christian America, such

writers point to Locke as offering a nonsectarian “moral consensus” amongdifferent religious groups, and to the broadly theistic Founders as concili-ating religious belie and liberal ideals.

58Rasmusson, Church as Polis, - .59I say it’s ontologically articial because any adjective that describes an essential (not accidental)

attribute o something must be a constituent part o that something. And I assume that Molt-mann would say that the political nature o the church is an essential attribute o it.

60Tat said, Hauerwas observes that “ethics always requires an adjective or qualier—such as,Jewish, Christian, Hindu, existentialist, pragmatic, utilitarian, humanist, medieval, modern—inorder to denote the social and historical character o ethics as a discipline.” Hauerwas, PeaceableKingdom, .

61E.g., Jeffrey Stout, Democracy and radition(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ),- ; Wolterstorff, Justice, - ; also James Davison Hunter, o Change the World: Te

Irony, ragedy, and Possibility o Christianity in the Late Modern World(New York: Ox ordUniversity Press, ), - , though I don’t know how sympathetic with the liberal projectHunter is.

62Forster, John Locke’s Politics, e.g., - ; Nicholas P. Miller, Te Religious Roots o the First Amend-ment: Dissenting Protestants and the Separation o Church and State(New York: Ox ord UniversityPress, ), esp. - ; Jon Meacham, American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making o a Nation(New York: Random House, ). Tough I don’t know that these authorspro ess to be Christians, the same hope is expressed in Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality , andSteven Waldman, Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth o Religious Freedom in Amer-ica (New York: Random House, ).

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A C A

My own view is that Christians should not be beholden to any one ideology,

since doing so invariably leads to idolatry, but instead become “uent inthe idiom o multiple ideologies,” as a riend o mine put it. We can pick andchoose according to principles o wisdom. Tat means I am not a wholesalecritic o liberalism, or at least a liberal polity, as some belonging to thesecond generation might claim to be. Even the severest critic o liberalism,I assume, agrees that both church and state have limited jurisdictions, andthat there are some questions that both institutions do not have the au-

thority to answer while the other does, such as “what should a church be-lieve about the atonement” or one or “who should the prime minister des-ignate as the home secretary” or the other. And as soon as we accept alimitation on jurisdictions, we have embraced a certain kind o institutionalneutrality in those areas beyond an institution’s jurisdiction. So against thecritics I would say that everyone but the most thoroughgoing (and probablyimaginary) theonomist adopts some orm o neutrality, that hallmark o

liberal institutions, whether they mean to or not. But this need not be theincoherent neutrality o liberal antiper ectionism or the ar-reaching secu-larism o a France or a urkey. Neutrality can “vary in both its conceptualscope and eld o application.” And just because church and state shouldboth remain neutral on certain questions that all within the other’s juris-diction does not mean the church is politically neutral or the state religiouslyneutral in general. In act, this book, together with these same critics, bears

an Augustinian posture inso ar as it argues that there is in act no such thingas spiritual or political neutrality. Everything the state does is spiritual orreligious, and everything the church does is political, though neither haspermission to step beyond the authorizations God has given it. Te phrase

“Yahweh is king,” observes O’Donovan, is a “liturgical act in which politicaland religious meanings were totally used.” So with “Jesus is Lord.” And

63See Koyzis’s excellent Political Visions and Illusions. 64Andrew Koppelman, De ending American Religious Neutrality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni- versity Press, ), .

65See ibid., , .66See Jocelyn Maclure and Charles aylor, Secularism and Freedom o Conscience(Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press, ), ; Koppelman, De ending American Religious Neutrality , .67See Koppelman, De ending American Religious Neutrality , .68O’Donovan, Desire o the Nations, .

Introduction




this book’s thesis, on the sur ace, lines up with the second generation’s basicpoint: the church is a political entity.

But my primary goal is not to engage with these authors or their move-ments, largely because I arrive at this conclusion by a different means.Open up the machine and you will nd different wiring inside. My hopeinstead is to present a case or the political nature o the local church usinga theological methodology that individuals and churches within my ownevangelical tradition would nd compelling—specically, a theologicalmethod driven by the biblical covenants. And this leads to different impli-

cations and conclusions.For those who are amiliar with this second generation o political theo-

logians (hence orth, I will use the phrase “political theology” more ge-nerically and not just in re erence to the movement o Moltmann andothers), here are a ew points o comparison and contrast, points whichshould help every reader locate the perspective o this book on the theo-logical landscape (again, this section not only can but probably should be

skipped by nonspecialists!):Ontologically , like Radical Orthodoxy, I believe we should begin with the

“interpersonal harmonious order” o the rinity —that Christianity mustplace “in the arche (the rinity) a multiple which is not set dialectically overagainst the one, but itsel mani ests unity.” And I agree that creation, insome sense, “participates” in the li e o God (see Acts : ), even while a -rming that we can only speak o God analogically. What’s more, human

participation in the li e o the triune God is the direct counter to violence. But ollowing Michael Horton, I believe we need a covenantal ontology, notthe Neo- Platonic ontological participation called or by Radical Orthodoxy. Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward argue that there is

69Milbank, Pickstock and Ward, Radical Orthodoxy , .70Milbank, Teology and Social Teory , .71In general, James K. A. Smith’s Introducing Radical Orthodoxyis extremely help ul or discerning

the strengths o the movement while raising good questions and challenges.72Michael Horton, Covenant and Salvation: Union with Christ(Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox,

), - , esp. - ; c . Bruce L. McCormack, “What’s at Stake in Current Debates overJustication? Te Crisis o Protestantism in the West,” in Justication: What’s at Stake in the CurrentDebates, ed. Mark Husbands and Daniel J. reier (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, ),

- . See also James Smith’s critique o a Radical Orthodoxy’s participationist ontology, whichhe attempts to improve with a “creational ontology.” Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy , - .

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no “territory independent o God,” which is a statement I would be happyto make too, but I would make it covenantally and politically, not ontologi-

cally. Radical Orthodoxy is anxious not to separate or unhook creation romthe Creator, or ear o creating a conceptual independency and autonomy,a good motive to be sure. But it is hard to see how it avoids a Platonic ascen-dancy o being that blurs the Creator/creature distinction and that, Hortonobserves, “seems to represent a different kind o univocity . . . since createdbeing participates ontologically in uncreated being as such.” Hans Urs vonBalthasar’s critique o any Platonic concept o ascendency makes the point

well: “Tus one nds in one’s human nature a place—perhaps only a point,but this point suffices—where one can, as it were, traffic with God ‘reli-giously,’ on the same ooting, a place where a mystical identity obtains be-tween Creator and creature.” Te separation between God and humanity,a separation which began at the all, is overcome not by ontological tin-kering but by the work o God: “Tis union we [Christians] enjoy is effected

or and in us not by an impersonal process o emanations, by a ladder o

participation, or by in used habits, but by the Holy Spirit, who gives theungodly the aith both to cling to Christ or justication and to be united toChrist or communion in his eschatological li e.” In short, Radical Or-thodoxy is right to seek an ontology that celebrates political unity in di-

versity in the ace o the violence o univocal concepts o being and truth,and right to seek it in the rinity, but the solution, I believe, is covenantal,not Neo- Platonic.

Epistemologically , like the post- liberals, I believe we should eschew anEnlightenment oundationalism that employs pure reason to build Babel- like edices o universal truth or morality. Further, it strikes me asunavoidable— ollowing Hauerwas, who ollows Alasdair MacIntyre—to saythat every theological truth claim (e.g., interpretive statements about whatthe Bible means) exists within a historically situated narrative and traditiono rationality. Christian Scripture, too, is historically situated, being au-

thored by human beings. However, inso ar as the post- liberals, Hauerwas,73Milbank, Pickstock and Ward, Radical Orthodoxy , .74Horton, Covenant and Salvation, .75Quoted in ibid., .76Ibid., .

Introduction




said to have captured the point more concisely: “I know not by reason, butit has been given to me.” On the subjective side o knowing, John Frame

use ully combines normative, situational and existential perspectives allwithin the ramework o a covenantal relationship. Speaking o the covenantrelationship, he says,

Above all, we must recognize that human knowledge o God is covenantal incharacter, as all human activities are. Knowing is the act o a covenant servanto God. Tat means that in knowing God, as in any other aspect o humanli e, we are subject to God’s control and authority, con ronted with His inevi-

table presence. . . . We dare not aspire to the kind o knowledge that God haso himsel ; we must be satised with the kind o knowledge that a servant mayhave o his Lord, even when that knowledge is a knowledge o mystery or oour own ignorance.

In short, just as I adopt a covenantal ontology, so I adopt a covenantal epis-temology.

One last point o relevance and possible contrast here concerning episte-mology: a covenantal epistemology can make room or a concept o commongrace since all humanity belongs to God’s Adamic and Noahic covenants. Tatmeans there is much space, in my view, or borrowing discerningly rom po-litical scientists, sociologists, and other social scientists in the work otheologizing—even modernist ones! Radical Orthodoxy is correct to questionthe oundations o philosophical thought, but that does not mean peoplecannot partake in the structure o philosophical thinking. Troughout

chapters one and two, I will borrow rom secular thinkers, and it is not obviousto me that I necessarily compromise theological oundations by doing so.

Hermeneutically , two comments are in order. First, reading the biblicaltext or political signicance requires a measured ability to read “behind thetext,” “within the text” and “in ront o the text,” to borrow the tripartitemethodology o Old estament scholar Gordon McConville. aking them

81Konstantin Levin in Leo olstoy, Anna Karenina, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Barnes& Noble Books, ), .

82John Frame, Te Doctrine o the Knowledge o God(Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, ), , see also - .83C . Luke Bretherton, Christianity and Contemporary Politics: Te Conditions and Possibilities o

Faith ul Witness(Malden, MA: Wiley- Blackwell, ), - .84J. G. McConville, God and Earthly Power: An Old estament Political Teology(New York: &

Clark, ), - . See also Richard Bauckham, Te Bible in Politics: How to Read the Bible

Introduction




one at a time: It is difficult to grasp the meaning o texts without someawareness o the world behind them. Clear examples relevant to our pur-

poses include the Old estament question o ancient vassal treaties or theNew estament meaning o “binding and loosing.” Tat said, I believe Mc-Conville is right to argue that we should not be “unduly inuenced by over-condent theories o the text’s origins, and by an excess o ‘suspicion’ aboutthe motives or its production.” A number o things could be said aboutreading within the text. My concern lies with recognizing that the text, as Isaid a moment ago, is a human and divine speech- act, whose interpretation

depends on sensitivity to genre, authorial intent and a text’s location in thecanonical horizon. A text should be understood on its own terms be ore itssignicance or the contemporary reader can be ascertained. Tat said, be-cause the text presents itsel to God’s covenant people, God’s covenantpeople can read in ront o the text, trusting it has political signicance ortoday (see Cor : ). In short, the goal here is to offer a reading o thebiblical text “which a) learns rom historical setting, b) reads the text in its

integrity and interconnectedness, and c) aims to hear it in relation tomodern issues.”Second, reading the biblical text or political signicance means ac-

counting or the covenantal structure o the canon as a whole. Strangely,political theologies too ofen ail to closely heed Scripture’s covenantaldrama but instead rely on a proo - text methodology. I agree with Biblescholar Peter Gentry and systematician Stephen Wellum—among others—when they argue that “the covenants orm the backbone o the meta narrativeo Scripture and thus it is essential to ‘put them together’ correctly in orderto discern accurately the ‘whole counsel o God’ (Acts : ).” Tat is tosay, the mani old characters, authorities and episodes o the Bible must be

viewed in light o the structure o the canonical plot line in order to help usproperly understand “the metanarrative o Scripture and not a marriage o

Politically(Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, ).85McConville, God and Earthly Power , .86Ibid., .87Peter Gentry and Stephen Wellum, Kingdom Trough Covenant: A Biblical-Teological Under-

standing o the Covenants(Wheaton, IL: Crossway, ), , . See also Michael Horton, Godo Promise: Introducing Covenant Teology(Grand Rapids: Baker, ), - ; Horton, Covenantand Eschatalogy , - .

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biblical data and secular worldviews”; the major biblical covenants affordus with just this structure. Something like Radical Orthodoxy, or all its at-

tempts not to marry revelation and secular philosophy, does exactly this (Iwould argue) because it does not appear to pay heed to Scripture on its ownterms and within its own covenantal ramework. You might as well try toconvince your spouse that you are “really listening” even though you don’tlet her (or him) explain what she means on her terms. Chapters three, ourand ve will be devoted to delineating the covenantal structure.

Institutionally, it is necessary or this book to give some attention to the

state, because one’s views on the jurisdiction and authority o the state inu-ences one’s views on the jurisdiction and authority o the church, and vice

versa. And here we nd two other places o contrast between the a oremen-tioned thinkers and mysel , both o which all under the “institutional”banner. First, these authors don’t seem to take much interest in institutionalquestions. Teir ocus (not a bad one) is on explicating Christian practice,not static structures. For instance, Milbank says that he does not “subscribe

to the rather ahisoricist and static division o human li e into distinct‘spheres.’” I am sympathetic with this point inso ar as the language o“spheres” can be institutionally imprecise. Still, i God has established di -

erent institutions with different jurisdictional boundaries, then we shouldbe able to use a concept o “spheres” that accords with those different juris-dictional lines. o put it the other way around, doing away with spheres isonly conceivable i you have a weak view o institutional authority in therst place, and this latter weakness will lead to con usion over the precisenature o the church’s authority relative to the state’s authority.

88Gentry and Wellum, Kingdom Trough Covenant , .89John Milbank, oreword to James K. A. Smith, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy , .90I am sympathetic with Cavanaugh’s point, discussed above, that the supposedly neutral liberal

state offers itsel as an alternative soteriology (see ootnote ). My sense is that liberal statesofen have. Te messianic content o American presidential speeches presents one obvious ex-ample. Tat said, Cavanaugh’s critiques may overreach. Te church does not exist by permissiono the state, yet God has given the state authority over the church within its domain (e.g., I wouldargue that churches exceed their biblical authorization by trying to deal with child abuse them-selves behind closed doors without noti ying the public authorities). Hobbes’s subjection o thechurch to the state—which Cavanaugh criticizes—is appropriate within the state’s authorized jurisdiction. Yet even Hobbes acknowledged that the state’s sovereignty is not absolute, whichis why he reserved a place or civil disobedience, as we saw a moment ago: “But i the command[o the civil sovereign] be such, as cannot be obeyed, without being damned to Eternall Death,

Introduction




Second, I am not convinced that Scripture views all acts o coercive andeven destructive orce as wrong, whether in the present or the eschatological

age. And this appears to put me slightly at odds with Milbank’s “ontology opeace” and even more with Hauerwas and Yoder’s pacism. For instance,Yoder’s interpretation o Romans claims that the unction o governmentto bear the sword is “not the unction to be exercised by Christians.” Non-Christians might bear this unction, but they do so in the same way that

“divine providence can in its own sovereign permissive way ‘use’ an idola-trous Assyria (Isa. )” —as i to say God can mysteriously use even bad or

good. But it is not clear to me why one would restrict the government’s useo the sword to non-Christians unless a urther assumption is at play, namely,the assumption that all coercive and destructive orce is wrong or ungod-like. But why this assumption when there are so many texts that speak oGod’s wrath and judgment? I do not intend to pursue this train o thoughtmuch urther, except to say that one’s view o the state pro oundly relates toone’s view o God’s judgment. Does God have the right to destroy as an act

o judgment or to authorize humans to use destructive orce, whether orproleptic or restraining purposes, since this is where a theory o governmentbegins? What’s more, could it not be that God’s judgment is a property o hislove and goodness as much as it is o his righteousness and holiness? Tathe will destroy all evil because he is good and loving? It is my sense that, as ageneral principle, one who possesses an underspecied doctrine o divine judgment will, to the extent that that person is consistent, possess a doctrineo the state that is anemic, wobbly and underspecied. And a wobbly, under-specied concept o the state will, in turn, affect one’s concept o the church.

Te doctrine o justication is one more place where my own viewsdepart rom the thinkers cited above. Where most o these thinkers adopt

then it were madnesse to obey it, and the Counsell o our Saviour takes place ( Mat. . ).”Hobbes, Leviathan, chap. , sec. .

91Milbank says that all evil “converts” to violence, but he acknowledges that not all violence “converts” to evil. He then distinguishes his position rom pacism in Being Reconciled: Ontology andPardon (New York: Routledge, ), - .

92John Howard Yoder, Te Politics o Jesus, nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ), .93I certainly agree with Hauerwas when he writes, “Because Christians believe we are what the

world can be, we act in the hope that the world can and will positively respond to the witnesso peace. Tat witness begins with Christians re using to kill one another in the name o lesserloyalities and goods.” Hauerwas, War and the American Difference, xiii.

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either some Roman Catholic or New Perspective view on justication, Iwill propose in chapters ve and six that the best way to establish the local

church as a model political society is through a traditional Protestant con-ception o sola de, albeit with a covenantal emphasis. A properly covenantalconception o justication involves a corporate component. I will argue thatbeing declared righteous be ore a judge means, as an intrinsic property othat declaration, being declared righteous be ore an entire populace. Fur-thermore, justication by aith alone, I will contend, provides the only truebasis or a just political unity. Whereas Isaiah Berlin amously employed his

positive and negative conceptions o liberty as the grand divider in thehistory o political philosophy, I would propose that history’s real divisionlay between those political philosophies grounded in some orm o sel -

justication and those political societies grounded in justication by aithalone. And o course that is nothing more than the division between the

“wisdom o this world” and a gospel-preaching local church. Behind everyavor o tyranny, oppression and social stratication in history is some orm

o justication grounded in the sel and its works: “I’m more righteous, moreideologically correct, more reedom-loving, more tolerant, more inclusive,more wise, more white, more wealthy than you. Tere ore, I should rule overyou.” Such sel - justication leads invariably to injustice. Sola de, however, undermines all such sel - justications and is there ore the only source o a just political unity and liberty (see Acts : ). And it is in the local churchthat we should witness this new and true unity that yields a right liberty, asone-time enemies learn to love one another and beat their swords into plow-shares and spears into pruning hooks.

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In short, this book will present a covenantal approach to political theologyor the sake o establishing the political essence o the local church.

94Milbank et al. characterize a traditional concept o guilt, atonement and justication as“univocalist- nominalist.” John Milbank, “Alternative Protestantism,” - in Radical Orthodoxyand the Re ormed radition: Creation, Covenant, and Participation, ed. James K. A. Smith (GrandRapids: Baker Academic, ), . For a response and critique, see Horton, Covenant andSalvation, - ; see also Smith,Introducing Radical Orthodoxy , n . Yoder and Hauerwasadopt something closer to the New Perspective on Paul. See Yoder, Politics o Jesus, - ;Hauerwas, Peaceable Kingdom, - . C . Wolterstorff, Justice in Love(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,

), - , - .

Introduction




Covenants provide the “constitutionalization” and “institutionalization” ohuman relationships, says Jewish political philosopher Daniel Elazar. He

elaborates,Te Bible necessarily holds that the covenantal relationship is the only properbasis or political organization—that is, the structured allocating o authorityand power among humans. . . . In a political sense, biblical covenants take the

orm o constituting acts that establish the parameters o authority and itsdivision without prescribing the constituting details o regimes.

In other words, covenants constitutionalize or institutionalize relationships,and this is the basis o a political society. Covenants bring together both apolitical and institutional conceptuality, which, to return to the earlier dis-cussion, is what’s lacking in so much theology today.

o oversimpli y the current state o play, some emphasize the Oneness oGod’s political rule . Tink perhaps o the neo- Kuyperians (the “not onesquare inch” crowd), the post- liberals, the Augustinians, the theonomists,those who claim the mission o the church is to trans orm culture and so

orth. Tese are the thinkers who, like me, want a “ uller political conceptu-ality” that explores the impact o Christ’s rule in all o li e. And their politicalconceptuality help ully attends to both divine and human actors and theirpower. But these writers tend to stop short o institutional questions suchas who has authorized whom to do what, where the lines o jurisdiction andmembership all, and how these structures in turn shape the identities othe actors.

Meanwhile, others emphasize the woness o the institutions o state andchurch, or instance, by arguing that God rules through one institution ascreator and through the other as redeemer. Here I’m thinking o two-kingdom writers and those sympathetic with the liberal tradition. Tesewriters, like me, insist on institutionally distinguishing the wo in one

ashion or another. But their political conceptuality o the One can remainunderdeveloped. Does Scripture actually distinguish God’s creation rule

rom his redemptive rule, or does it simply declare him to be king and judgeover all nations, now licensing one institution one way and another

95Daniel J. Elazar, Covenant and Polity in Biblical Israel: Biblical Foundations and Jewish Expressions, vol. ,Covenant raditions in Politics (New Brunswick, NJ: ransaction Publishers, ), .

96Ibid., .

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institution another way? Yes, God grants one institution the sword o co-ercion and another institution the key o declaration. Yes, we could even say

he rules the two institutions differently. But isn’t that like saying a primeminister rules over his personal staff in one way and the average citizen onthe street in another way? Or like saying a CEO delegates one kind o au-thority to his vice president o marketing while he deputizes his lawyer withanother kind o authority (power o attorney)? Would we then re er to the

“two rules” o the prime minister or the “two kindoms” o the CEO? Suchcharacterizations would seem a bit overwrought.

In short, it’s as i those emphasizing the One are responding to a brando political concerns (re actors), while those emphasizing the wo are re-sponding to a number institutional concerns (re structures), such that con-

versations between them can occur at cross- purposes. It reminds one o howCharles aylor once characterized the liberal- communitarian debate in thelate twentieth century. One side o that older debate, aylor suggested,traded in the coin o sociological, anthropological and epistemological de-

scription; the other side in the currency o political and institutional ad-vocacy ; and the two, to some extent, missed one another.How then do we bring a political and institutional conceptuality together?

And the One and the wo together? First, by looking to where God’s politicalrule is given institutional expression: the Bible’s common and special cove-nants. Elazar again: “Te basis or political authority is invariably covenantal,and political obligation ows rom a covenantal base. Covenanting makes

Divine sovereignty concrete and human sel - government possible in theworld.” A ull political conceptuality contains within it an institutional

97Te distinction between delegated and deputized authority, which we will pick up in chapterour, comes rom Nicholas Wolterstorff, Te Mighty and the Almighty: An Essay in Political Teol-

ogy(New York: Cambridge University Press, ), ; and Wolterstorff, “‘Te Authorities AreGod’s Servants’: Is a Teistic Account o Political Authority Still Viable or Have HumanityAccounts Won the Day?” in Teology and Public Philosophy: Four Conversations, ed. KennethL. Grasso and Cecilia Rodriguez Castillo (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, ), - .

98Charles aylor, “Cross- Purposes: Te Liberal- Communitarian Debate,” in Liberalism and the Moral Li e, ed. N. Rosenblum (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ). See also JohnR. Wallach, “Liberals, Communitarians, and the asks o Political Teory,” Political Teory ,no. ( ): ; Amy Gutmann, “Communitarian Critics o Liberalism,” Philosophy and Pub-lic Affairs , no. ( ): ; Don Herzog, “Some Questions or Republicans,”Political Teory

, no. ( ): - , , .99Daniel J. Elazar and Stuart A. Cohen, Te Jewish Polity: Jewish Political Organization rom Biblical

imes to the Present(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, ), .

Introduction




conceptuality, which is what the biblical covenants provide. In chapter our,I will dene politics as the mediating o God’s covenantal rule.

But there is a second place or us to look or the institutionalization oGod’s authority: in the power o the sword and in the keys o the kingdom.Te sword is God’s authorized gif to humanity or protecting li e under theNoahic covenant. Te keys o the kingdom are Jesus’ authorized gif to themembers o the new covenant or the purpose o administering that cov-enant by establishing churches. We will spend a little time on the ormer,but more on the latter. Te keys, I will argue, both affirm new covenant

doctrine and new covenant citizens, thereby constituting the visible, insti-tutional church on earth—the local church. Te state, I will argue, is aplat orm builder, while the local church is a signmaker. Te latter has theauthority to hang signs over the what and the who o the gospel. A churchcan declare on behal o heaven, “that is the true gospel, that is a alsegospel” and “he is a Christian, she is not.” It is an authority, quite simply, towrite statements o aith and to affirm church members and so constitute

itsel as a local church, actions that the state must not undertake. Tat said,the state is accountable to the judgment o precisely the same heavenlyking; and every action taken by the state, invariably, affirms God’s rule overhumanity or the rule o some other god. Te state must remain ormallyneutral on matters outside o its jurisdiction, as I said above, but, ironically,within its jurisdiction no law and no constitution is religiously neutral,even i it’s called the “godless constitution,” as the US Constitution some-

times is because it never names God. Within the state’s jurisdiction andwithin the public square generally, there is religious overlap and religiousimposition, nothing more. Not only shouldn’t the public square be naked,it cannot be. It’s nothing more or less than a battleground o gods, each

vying to push the levers o power in its avor. Which means, there are nosecular states, at least in terms o what the basis is or a nation’s laws. Tereare only pluralistic states.

100 Tis denition captures the basic relationship between kingdom and covenant articulated inthe title o Peter Gentry and Steve Wellum’s book Kingdom Trough Covenant —namely, Godestablishes his kingdom throughout redemptive history through covenants. G. K. Beale, too,writes, “Covenant is the primary means by which God, the suzerain, governs his people, the vassal.” Beale, A New estament Biblical Teology: Te Un olding o the Old estament in the New(Grand Rapids: Baker, ), .

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account o religious tolerance over against the more common conception oreligious reedom. Chapter ve ollows the covenantal storyline into the new

covenant and raises the question o a politics o orgiveness. Chapter sixconcludes this question by examining the politics o sola de and then offersan institutional and political reading o Matthew’s Gospel, especially thetexts that pertain to the keys o the kingdom. It is here in the nal chapterthat I will argue that the church is an embassy o God’s international rule,which in turn requires us to consider where the church sits in the landscapeo the nations and to conclude the book’s recurrent discussion o religious

reedom or tolerance.o call a church “political,” no doubt, immediately raises questions about

how the church should engage the public square. Tose are important ques-tions, but they come second. Te church’s political nature begins with itsown li e—with its preaching, evangelism, member oversight and discipline.

o put real esh on the idea, it begins with the two crumpled old womensitting over there in the church pew. Do you see them? Both have persevered

in the aith or decades. Both have listened care ully week afer week to theirKing’s words heralded rom a pulpit. And year afer year, decade afer decade,through the ebb and ow o seasons, through the raising o children and thetemptation to compare whose children rise higher, through the petty jeal-ousies o riendship and maybe even an injury inicted, through the di-

vergent paths o nancial prosperity and the attendant threats o covet-ousness and condescension, through ethnic contrast and conict, through

hasty words and hurt eelings, through times good and bad, those two oldwomen, unrelated by blood, enemies by birth, have, by the power o theSpirit, ound their worth and justication in a vicarious righteousness. Andso, relieved o the burdern to boast in themselves, they have discovered the

reedom to orgive one another’s hasty words, to surrender the desire tocompete and compare, to outdo one another only in showing honor, to ght

or sisterly love and justice amidst everything that would have torn themapart. Here between these two old women is where we nd a model politicalli e, one that con ronts, condemns and calls the nations.

Is the local church a voluntary association? From the standpoint o thestate, yes. Te state possesses no authority over church membership. But

rom the standpoint o Christ’s overarching kingdom, no—in two respects.

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First, Christians must be united to a local church. Second, the local churchis not an association; it is an office. And the work o this office includes

con ronting the peoples, parliaments and princes o history with the justiceand righteousness o the king who will one day judge them. One might aswell have told the prophet Jonah that his office was “voluntary,” even as hepulled the seaweed out o his hair.

Introduction




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