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THE POLITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE IN EARLY MODERN BRITAIN: mould and shape Israel in certain clearly defined directions within their own historical and cultural context. That overall social shape, with all its legal and institutional structures, ethical norms, and theological undergirding, thus becomes the model or paradigm that Israel provides as a priesthood for the nations. And, furthermore, it was a paradigm intended to have a relevance and application beyond the geographical, historical and cultural borders of Israel itself. 363 The paradigmatic approach perceives “the particularity of Israel” positively, and “not a hindrance to universal application,” since a “paradigm by its very nature is a particular, specific, concrete case that has wider relevance or application beyond its own particularity.” 364 The principalising approach bears similar positive sentiments towards specific ethical commands, precepts, and proscriptions because they are assumed to contain God’s universalisable holy and righteous character traits; for this approach, God is the model. The paradigmatic approach assumes wholeheartedly that God is indeed the model of righteousness, but that the first earthly institutionalisation of His holy and righteous requirements is found in the life and social structures of Israel, His model to the nations. The principalising approach rests on discerning God’s universalisable and equitable ethical requirements (meaning), and their application (significance) to the nations at large. As Kaiser states, “Old Testament ethics are universal, embracing the same standard of righteousness for all the nations of the earth as it does for Israel.” As a matter of fact, “never did the biblical writers conceive of justice, righteousness, or the good as the special corner of the truth reserved for Israel alone.” Indeed, long sections and even books of the Old Testament are specifically addressed to the nations at large such as Isaiah 13–23, Jeremiah 45–51, Ezekiel 25–32, Daniel 2 and 7, Amos 1–2, Obadiah, Jonah, and Nahum. At the heart of those messages, often sent by messengers and ambassadors to the foreign nations (e.g., Jer. 27:3; 51:61), was God’s standard of righteousness. Accordingly, any narrow, chauvinistic, or parochial interpretation of Old Testament ethics that limits its application to a single people in a particular socio-economic setting stands in opposition to the claims of the text. 365 The issue is not one of absolute conflicting methodologies per se, or paradigmatic versus principalisation, but possibly one of investigative emphasis; upon finding principles while neglecting the paradigms altogether. Wright asks, “Is there a difference between the paradigmatic method I am advocating here and the familiar idea that, since we obviously cannot simply lift the details of Old Testament laws and apply them in the modern context, what we have to do is ‘extract the principles’ that underlie those laws and apply them? In one sense, there is not a huge difference.” Why? Because the paradigmatic approach requires investigating and articulating “the principles the paradigm embodies and then see how they can be reconcretised in some other context.” The main difference, the key divide between these two approaches, is that the ‘look-for-the-principle’ approach on its own . . . can lead to the eventual discarding of the specific realities of the Old Testament text, the concrete, earthly history of Israel, the good, the bad and the ugly.” After all, “once you have a principle in your pocket, why keep the wrapping?” Unfortunately, as Wright notes further, “this has been how many people have handled the Old Testament (or rather mishandled it).” 366 It appears, as Wright notes, that God did not simply deliver the Scriptures in the form of a “classified collection of principles,” but rather through “the wonderfully particular portrayal of a people through many generations,” depicted “through their narratives, laws, wisdom, worship and visions, their memory and hope, their achievements and failures,” and packaged in “an untidy and incredibly complex assortment of very complex individuals, over multiple generations, in different nations.” 367 Treating all this great collection of texts merely as the expendable container for independent universal principles we can express more simply and tidily denies the character of the Bible as God has given it to us, and might even seem to render Bible reading a waste of time. Regarding the biblical texts about Israel as providing us with a paradigm preserves their historical particularity and forces us to observe all the non-reducible hard edges, all the jarring tensions and all the awkward corners of earthly reality within them. 368 In conclusion then, the paradigmatic method requires we consider both forms and principles; if “we keep hold of the total paradigm and make sure we are paying close attention to the texts that render it to us, we can of 363 Ibid., 65. 364 Ibid. 365 Kaiser, Towards Old Testament Ethics, 11, 12. 366 Wright, Old Testament Ethics and the People of God, 70. 367 Ibid., 70-71. 368 Ibid., 71. 72
ROYALISTS, REPUBLICANS, FIFTH MONARCHISTS AND LEVELLERS course articulate the principles built into it.” The “concept of a paradigm includes the isolation and articulation of principles, but is not reducible to them alone.” 369 We can extract principles embedded in laws for contemporary application while being mindful of the broader paradigm they’re associated with. We can avoid the tendency to discard structural forms reminiscent of the various institutional and relational dimensions of Israel’s social, economic, and political life, and thus practice a faithful and focused handling of the entire Old Testament which recognises God’s providential dealings and relational administration of Israel and the nations at large. Each of our representative figures targeted the Old Testament, but Harrington the Republican and Royalists prioritised it; Harrington incorporated the early Hebrew Commonwealth paradigmatically, while Royalists focused upon the origin, character and inauguration of kingship. Harrington perceived God as divinely instituting Israel’s civil government, and therefore, resorted to the polity of Ancient Israel as a “paradigm” for reconstituting England’s political authority; his understanding of the Agrarian, and debating and resolving, rotation, and popular prerogative in the congregation, are all incorporated into Oceana, Britain’s constitutional parallel. Royalists stopped far short of using Israel’s polity in this way. They were not keen on incorporating Jethronian judicatures or a court modelled after the Sanhedrin, or many of the particulars Harrington teased out. Instead, they saw the seeds of monarchy in Adam’s creation, confirmed in Saul’s inauguration, modelled in David’s kingship, even patterned after God’s own government, and conveyed through Adam’s male prodigy, the Fall notwithstanding. Kings were also commonwealth ‘fathers,’ and could demand their subjects’ obedience in the same way any father of a family could naturally rule over his wife and children. The Royalists adopted a patriarchal hermeneutics, while Harrington’s followed more closely to a paradigmatic method with politics written out of Israel. Milton straddled both Canons but stressed the New Testament’s Gospel of liberty. From the Hebrew Polity he incorporated God’s absolute rule—not that of human kings—and popular choice of civil magistrates, and from the Gospel, its redemptive power to transform individuals from slavery to personal liberty. He conveyed these principles to a commonwealth of civil and religious liberty governed by servant leaders who shed themselves of the ‘gentilising’ character of monarchy and absolute lordship. Milton did not read Israel’s polity as the divine political template, but instead, teased out timeless truths and normative 369 Ibid. commands within the polity transferable to Britain’s constitutional crisis. His was a hermeneutics of religious and civil liberty. The Levellers extrapolated a whole series of constitutional pillars and principles from man’s created nature and created purpose, and undergirded by the relational ‘golden’ rule of service to community and commonwealth. God made man free, equal, and for liberty, and therefore, the polity that best matched his divine design was a commonwealth of popularly chosen successive Parliaments restricted in authority by a written constitution. Like Milton, theirs was a hermeneutics of civil liberty embodying perpetually limited magistrates. Nevertheless, they proceeded to the next level of application by enunciating government through written constitutions; governors were to be governed under God’s rule of law, and institutionalized through the people’s consent. Fifth Monarchists do appear quite imaginative and enigmatic to the modern mind, but their model of a ‘godly commonwealth’ and ‘rule of the saints’ is worth the scholarly effort to unravel and unpack. Rather than dismiss them entirely because of such apparent fantastical and fanciful apocalyptic musings, it is productive to understand not only what they concluded politically and constitutionally from the Scriptures, but how. They prioritised the importance of godly rule, and the supremacy of Christ’s kingdom reign, anticipating a kingdom coming where righteousness would reign as at the beginning. Theirs is an eschatological hermeneutics. One can locate the paradigmatic and principalizing approaches in each of these representative models, as well as their admixture. We can of course ‘appreciate’ them too for their models, and hermeneutical approaches. But my purpose in writing this paper was to move beyond this sentiment towards more practical application. We can best steward their contributions by reinvigorating their methods, models, and conclusions, determine their influence, and consider investigating the proposals and hermeneutical approaches of others who engaged that early modern constitutional debate, towards addressing current constitutional issues and policies problems. God is the absolute righteous relational model of ethical and social life, and He chose Israel as the earthly societal and national expression to portray, paradigmatically, that righteousness relationally in a fallen world. It is critical to the exegetical ethical task at hand to delve into the institutional and principled dimensions of her political life. Revelation is both propositional and relational, and the fact that the supreme creator of the universe divinely delivered a polity to His people packaged with numerous relational 73
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