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THE POLITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE IN EARLY MODERN BRITAIN:
holy character of God and their life application, while
the other incorporates the application of principles as
derived from the broader context of Israel’s national
experience as God’s ethical model to the nations. This
last section attempts to argue the need to consider and
search for the seed (principle) and the shell (paradigm)
so to speak, when investigating the relevance of Israel’s
polity, as both may bear an authoritative claim on
constitutional design, and for that matter, life generally.
This both/and approach requires an examination of
principles and paradigms to understand the nature and
relevance of Israel’s polity, or how to ‘write politics out
of Israel,’ as well as the Gospel for that matter.
Such a blended approach is hardly without difficulties.
Nevertheless, as Walter Kaiser Jr. points out in his
Toward Old Testament Ethics (1983), though the very
nature of Old Testament ethics speaks to a level of
scholarly difficulty discouraging to most who embark
upon its study generally, “there still is an enormous
need in Old Testament scholarship and in the church at
large for an Old Testament ethics that will treat the
subject as systematically and irenically as possible.” We
need continual reminding that it represents “77 percent
of the total biblical corpus,” 346 which constitutional
design and political ethics are an integral part. The
principal and paradigmatic approaches may provide a
way through the diversity of methods to meet the issue
of constitutional design.
The Principalising Approach: The Bible
as a body of Principles and Normative
Commands
According to Joe M. Sprinkle in Biblical Law and its
Relevance, A Christian Understanding and Ethical
Application for Today of Mosaic Regulations (2005), the
“principalising approach” examines “each law” to
determine “what principle—moral or religious—underlies
this regulation,” with the objective of reapplying that
very principle to modern society. This approach
concedes the radical and real differences between the
“cultural, historical and theological setting” of the
people of Israel in comparison with the modern world,
but recognises that principles immediately associated
with Israel’s heritage are not time-bound but “transcend
their original cultural and covenantal setting.” 347
Principalising begins with consideration and analysis of
“a particular law,” whether of a civil, ceremonial, or
moral nature, and then proceeds upward through a
method of abstraction as opposed to direct application
346
Ibid., 2.
347
Joe M. Sprinkle, Biblical Law and its Relevance, A Christian
Understanding and Ethical Application for Today of Mosaic Regulations
(Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2005), 20, 21.
“to find a more general moral or religious principle that
undergirds that law.” An interpreter ascends abstractly
until he locates the principle, or intent, which gives rise
to the command. Once discovered, this “principle . . . is
then reapplied today taking into consideration the
changed cultural and theological setting under the new
covenant.” Sprinkle notes Kaiser’s use of the term
“ladder of abstraction” to describe the process by which
one makes biblical application of principles to
“analogous situations today.” 348
Some of the principalising approach’s significant
strengths are found first in its recognition and
affirmation of the Old Testament’s comprehensive
profitability toward godliness and righteousness as
confirmed in 2 Timothy 3:16-17; “all the laws: moral,
civil, and ritual” are relevant for righteous instruction.
Furthermore, this method “allows Paul’s positive
statements about Christians keeping the law
(Romans 3:31, etc.) to be true.” Though this approach
recognises the impossibility of making direct application
of all of Israel’s laws given the new covenant, it also
discourages the unnecessary classification of the Mosaic
Law into moral, civil, and ceremonial segments by
highlighting the abiding nature of principles supportive
of each. 349
There seems to be significant internal scriptural support
for this approach. Ezra’s contemporary application of
Deuteronomy 7:1-5, which forbids Israelites from
intermarrying with Canaanites, denounced marriages
between Israel and “non-Canaanite foreigners”
(Ezra 9:1-2). Ezra links two very similar historic
situations or comparable particulars separated by
centuries with the principle of the same command; just
as Israel would be (and was) lead “astray spiritually” by
marrying Canaanites, so too would Israel in Ezra’s time
be tempted to depart from her covenant with God by
marrying foreigners of a non-Canaanite extraction. Any
foreign marriage was relationally as much of a threat to
God’s covenant demands upon Israel as Canaanites
were. Paul’s apparent principalisation of the command
against muzzling a threshing ox (Deuteronomy 25:4) to
argue against withholding economic support of
ministers of the Gospel is another case in point. 350
According to Kaiser, the “Ladder of Abstraction”
represents “a continuous sequence of categorizations
from a low level of generality up to a high level of
specificity.” 351 At issue is how we actually conclude
348
Ibid., 21. Kaiser’s phrase “ladder of abstraction,” is found in
his Toward Rediscovering the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, MI:
Academie Books, 1987, 1991), 164.
349
Ibid., 22, 23.
350
Ibid., 23. Sprinkle notes other examples of Paul’s apparent use
of this method. See p. 24.
351
Kaiser, Toward Rediscovering the Old Testament, 165.
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