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THE POLITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE IN EARLY MODERN BRITAIN:
Prospects for Political Hermeneutics
Biblical political ideas are expressed through
the description of the institutions, events, and
prophesies connected with the government of
ancient Israel. Less formally articulated than
Greek political thought, the biblical political
teaching must be discovered in the same
manner that all biblical knowledge must
emerge, by careful examination and analysis of
the text with careful attention to recurring
words and patterns and the reconciliation of
apparent contradictions.
Daniel J. Elazar, Covenant & Polity in Biblical
Israel (1995), 12. 344
As indicated previously, many seventeenth-century
British political thinkers reflected purposefully upon the
Bible for timeless political truths, and convinced it
consisted of normative God-given civil commands and
ideals for constitutional design. Nevertheless, as these
four representative categories demonstrate, they did not
read the Bible politically and constitutionally the same
way, or draw significantly from the same passages,
genres, figures or Canons for that matter. Furthermore,
they also differed on their understanding of the
relationship between Nature and Grace, which
influenced why they prioritised biblical passages over
classical ones for their political ideas. Not all concluded
a republic either, as some believed God’s highest civil
order for man was a monarchy; a mirror polity of His
own supposed model of governance traceable through
patriarchal lines. Political use is even trickier to tease
out if diverse polities prioritise the same scriptural
passage. Unfortunately, such a mixture of early modern
biblical readings and interpretive approaches has
emboldened some scholars to relegate their political
contributions to either mystical inspirations, or clever
literary constructs consisting of a dash of scriptural
window dressing to gain an audience, all the while
subversively emphasising pagan classical political
models.
Principalising and Paradigmatic
Approaches
Elazar’s perspective above is a simple yet refreshing
reminder that the interpretive approach of extracting
‘political ideas’ from the Scriptures should follow the
same methodology when mining its meaning for life
344
Daniel J. Elazar, Covenant & Polity in Biblical Israel; Biblical
Foundations & Jewish Expressions, vol. 1, Covenant Tradition in
Politics (New Brunswick, NJ; London: Transaction Publishers,
1995), 12.
application in other fields. This approach assumes the
author and text are superior to the reader’s response,
that the author’s intended meaning for his first
audience is the same for subsequent ones, that the
original languages take priority over translations, that
grammatical and syntactical constructs are fundamental
conventions of communication, that literary types and
figures of speech come packaged with principles of
interpretation unique to them, and that the various
levels of context, whether historical, social, ethical, or
political all bear interpretive weight. This process of
establishing meaning is further augmented by the
attempt at significance, or life and relational
application, such as governance and political
relationships. This approach demands serious scrutiny
of textual, contextual, and historical particulars.
Nevertheless, this entire interpretive process is
complicated by the tendency to prefer the New
Testament over the Old Testament, or to prioritise
elaborate schemes of substance modification and
repetition. 345 The “repealed unless repeated” or
“mandatory unless modified” perspective will prevent us
from determining God’s relational expectations for
governance or the relationship between rulers and
ruled, and in large part, because these interpretive
notions subject the Old Testament Law particularly,
which includes civil-political mandates, to a level of
historical interest only.
Despite the need to investigate all layers of the
Scriptural text, deriving a coherent governmental/civil
model from the Scriptures based upon a consistent
hermeneutical approach is challenging, doubly so given
the necessity to concentrate upon the Old Testament
and the polity of Israel. Not only must the nature of
that polity be determined, but its continued relevance
and applicability resolved, despite its neglected
mentioning in the New Testament. There must be due
consideration to teasing out the inspired principles and
normative commands, as well as that form and
structure, or model which reflected those dynamic,
internal requisites.
The principalising and paradigmatic approaches covet
and incorporate each of these interpretive particulars
despite some rather nuanced, though not unbridgeable
differences. Given their slight methodological disparities
summarised below, they share critical assumptions in
regards to the ethical use of the Old Testament for
contemporary application; one focuses upon the
primacy of principles which reflect the righteous and
345
Walter Kaiser Jr., Toward Rediscovering the Old Testament
(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1987), 147.
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