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THE POLITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE IN EARLY MODERN BRITAIN: Britain’s most extraordinary constitutional crises. Some of these early moderns presented constitutional models so significantly shaped by biblical arguments that they cannot be separated from them or their interpretive methods reduced to “rag bag” approaches. British Political Use of the Scriptures: English Civil War and Interregnum (1640-1660) Britain’s distinct contribution to biblical political readings resulted from the constitutional crises of the Puritan Revolution, also known as the English Civil War and Interregnum periods (1649-60). Not only did the Civil War divide the population between Parliamentary and Royalist sympathies, Parliament’s eventual victory, coupled with its swift and public execution of Charles I on January 30, 1649, produced a political vacuum; what would replace the ancient constitution of Monarchy, Commons and Lords? The regicide and subsequent English political events astounded the monarchies of Europe, who now placed themselves on a cautionary foreign policy footing with their ‘commonwealth’ neighbour across the Straits of Dover. The Parliamentary victors immediately engaged the constitutional question of settlement, starting with the Putney Debates held at St. Mary’s Church, London from October 28 through November 8 of 1647, followed by the Whitehall Debates of December 14, 1648 to January 13, 1649. In attendance were officers and soldiers of Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army, as well as General Cromwell himself, accompanied by pastors and theologians. Intense deliberations often turned on the enduring political relevance of Scripture, especially the Old Testament. At issue was a new constitution, principles of civil government, jurisdiction, liberty of conscience and the political franchise. With the greater freedom to publish, the Putney and Whitehall Debates widened to include the public’s perspective on a political settlement, motivating various sects to promote political platforms to newmodel the ancient constitution. The dialogue between various Protestant and non- Protestant groups was often aggressively argumentative and contentious. These constitutional debates are revealed in various correspondences, Civil War pamphlets, treatises, tracts, broadsides, newspapers, Parliamentary speeches and sermons. The Thomason Collection of Civil War Tracts alone includes 22,000 political and religious documents spanning the entire Civil War and Interregnum period (1640-1660). Many ministers and civil servants were less appreciative of the public’s input into the settlement crises, including the great English Kidderminster Presbyterian Pastor, Richard Baxter (1615-1691). He remarked with dismay in his Reliquiae Baxterianae (London,1696), an autobiographical account of his more memorable life moments and perspectives, that once the monarchy had been dismantled, with no reinstatement of Charles II in sight, “every self-conceited Fellow was ready to offer his Model for a new Form of Government.” 10 Despite the many concerns on the part of those who shared Baxter’s observations, pursuit of a new enduring civil form prompted a focused political reading of the Scriptures resulting in radical theories, often adverse to monarchical forms, and sympathetic with republican and commonwealth models, which incorporated various dimensions of the Hebrew Old Testament polity. The Bible as a Political Text: Hermeneutics and Conflicting Political Readings Some early modern British writers developed civil proposals dependent solely upon classical and/or Renaissance texts, while Puritan sects typically combined non-biblical authors with Scripture, or attempted to new-model the government with Scripture alone. Nevertheless, those who did use the Bible politically did not reflect upon it the same way, employ the same hermeneutical approach, or select the same texts from which to deduce civil and constitutional material. Some actually resorted to the Scriptures in a sort of pick-n-mix fashion to decorate their preconceived proposals, or denounce their opponents’ models. Simply stated, tremendous contrasts in method and motive exist among those who attempted to contribute a scriptural civil model. Hermeneutical methods among early moderns range from the literal, grammatical and historical approaches to paradigmatic methods, to the more free allegorical and typological modes of interpretation. Sometimes differences in reading related to models confined to either the Old or New Testament. This was true of Anglican Royalists and Presbyterians, who tended to resort to the Old Testament, especially the polity of ancient Israel, as a normative civil model for England. They attempted to draw exact correspondences and political parallels between the type and extent of governance which Israel’s rulers displayed as a positive model for England’s Kings or, as negative examples to avoid. Independents and Separatists focused predominantly upon the New Testament and the Gospel dispensation. They read a new Christian liberty in the place of the Mosaic Judicials, a separation between the civil and ecclesiastical spheres, and a democratic approach to installing ecclesiastical leadership within a decentralised New Testament 10 Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, Book 1, 118. 4
ROYALISTS, REPUBLICANS, FIFTH MONARCHISTS AND LEVELLERS church, now a model for instituting political leadership and framing civil government. Diverse, and often times contradictory readings are also evidenced in texts and passages commonly employed by all sides in the constitutional debate as having relevant political import. The Old Testament political authorities of Deuteronomy 17:14-20 and 1 Samuel 8:1-22 were sometimes used to argue for limited authority of kings, popular sovereignty, and supremacy of the Hebrew Commonwealth. Interestingly, Royalists interpreted the 1 Samuel passage as less a command and warning against kingship, and more as a positive kingly prerogative. New Testament political texts such as Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:13 were typically used to prove divinely instituted and directed civil authority, but interpretations varied as to the extent of subordination and obedience required on the part of the governed, leading to diverse understandings of civil disobedience. Some sought to incorporate pre-monarchical aspects of the Jewish polity, seeing Jethro’s advice to Moses in Exodus 18 as a divinely ordained approach to the choice of civil magistrates. Others ignored such a judicial pattern since it resulted from the advice of a pagan Midianite. Some considered Israel’s consent in the wilderness to covenant with God and obey His laws as another divine pattern for the governed and governors to follow when establishing a civil framework; if God governs by way of covenants and covenantal requirements, then man should govern similarly. Still, some found political relevance within the Jewish monarchy itself, and particularly the righteous rule of David, Hezekiah, and Josiah. Others read prophetic and apocalyptic passages as foreshadowing a rule of the saints in Christ’s coming millennial kingdom, when the true Commonwealth of Israel would be established. Some were even convinced that Christ Himself established a political pattern of civil-servant rule from the Zebedee text of Matthew 20, concluding that His warning against tyrannical rule typical of the Gentile Lords represented a wholesale indictment against all monarchies. More examples could be given, but the Scriptures were simply not read similarly by all parties to the settlement controversy, nor necessarily resorted to in a shrewd manipulative manner to capture the attention of a biblically literate audience. Simply stated, tremendous contrasts in method and motive exist among those who attempted to contribute a civil model to fill Britain’s constitutional vacuum. Nevertheless, such variations in political use should not be used to misconstrue all political hermeneutics as irrelevant and opportunistic. Neither should these political models be judged with such disinterest or rendered historically insignificant. As a matter of fact, we may actually be able to learn from these contributions, and possibly apply them to our contemporary concerns; the American colonists most certainly made beneficial constitutional application of these British early moderns in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Surely there still exist biblically-based political and constitutional principles of enduring value for our times. 5
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