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scholarly precision with accessibility. And here she goes beyond a purely historical analysis to consider the prospects of a biblical politics in the twenty-first century. But why should twenty-first century Christians take the time and effort to learn about how seventeenth-century Protestants thought about politics? I can think of three reasons. First, it is a means of resourcement. In the contemporary climate, Christians are strongly tempted to follow secular ideologies and neglect the resources of their tradition. But instead of lurching to the Right or to the Left, we need to reengage with the history of Christian political thought. In different ways, Moltmann, Gutierrez and the O’Donovans have encouraged us to draw on the legacy of earlier Christian political thinkers. And while reflecting on the political thought of previous generations of Christians can be taxing, there is no better way to enlarge our reference group and learn from the wisdom (and folly) of past generations. G.K. Chesterton urged us to enfranchise our ancestors in that ‘democracy of the dead’ called ‘Tradition’. Ferdon’s paper does just that, convening an animated and rather fractious seminar in which we hear some powerful and utterly distinctive voices: Sir Robert Filmer, John Milton, James Harrington, John Lilburne. A second reason to look to the past is that there are certain perennial issues and tendencies in Christian political thought. We still find ourselves divided over questions of political power – Who holds it? Where does it originate? To whom are the powerful accountable? How can they be removed from power? British Christians who value the institutions of the monarchy and the established church will resonate with certain aspects of Royalist thought. For American Christians, the conclusions of Ferdon’s Republicans may seem like common sense. Human rights activists will find the Levellers’ vision of practical Christianity particularly compelling. And as for Fifth Monarchists, one might argue that they are still with us in the shape of theonomists or Christian Reconstructionists (a small movement whose influence has been greatly exaggerated by alarmist commentators). The persistence of these tendencies can be explained in part by reference to Scripture itself – different strands of the biblical text perpetually give rise to different political emphases among Christians. But it also testifies to the seminal character of early modern thought. In Britain, Royalists triumphed at the Restoration and we still have a monarchy and an established church; in America, the republican tradition as mediated by Milton and Harrington exercised a significant influence on the Founding Fathers; our human rights discourse has roots in the theistic natural rights tradition powerfully articulated in the writings of Grotius, the Levellers and Locke; and theonomists justify their aspirations for godly rule by appealing to the godly commonwealths of early modern Calvinism. As the novelist William Faulkner once explained: ‘The past is never dead. It’s not even past’. Understanding the past helps us to make sense of our present. Finally, this study gets us to wrestle with the problem of biblical hermeneutics. We see how different factions in the English Revolution turned to different parts of Scripture as they sought to answer fundamental issues about power. Contemporaries were concerned that the Bible had become ‘a nose of wax’, that could be twisted in various directions to suit different interests, and there is evidence of this here. This study shows that there are no easy answers when it comes to reading the Bible politically, and it ought to make us more self-critical in our own hermeneutics. Yet we also find evidence of deep and serious engagement with the Bible, and see how the reflecting on the Old and New Testaments was once an integral part of European political thinking. Reading the Bible with the dead can be a valuable exercise. It highlights strands of Scripture that we may have neglected, and suggests levels of meaning that we may never have encountered. 5 Past thinkers cannot do our thinking for us. But by reading them, we will learn to think more carefully and more deeply about politics. In the light of current controversies over religion in the public square, this could hardly be more necessary. John Coffey Professor of Early Modern History University of Leicester February 2013 5 See John L. Thompson, Reading the Bible with the Dead: What you Can Learn from the History of Exegesis that You Can’t Learn from Exegesis Alone (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2007). iv
THE POLITICAL USE OF THE BIBLE IN EARLY MODERN BRITAIN: Introduction The European continental Reformation (1400s-1500s) is known for producing an array of theological scholars whose writings attempted to either reform Roman Catholic institutions or replace them. Protestant Reformers, armed with vernacular translations of the Scriptures and a new approach to biblical interpretation, strategically attacked significant doctrinal assumptions critical to the Church’s authority as well as the ecclesiastical and civil institutions developed from them. The Roman Catholic Church, for all intents and purposes, dominated the flow of information relative to the Scriptures. Most European laity were unschooled in Latin, without direct access to the Bible, and therefore, dependent upon the Priesthood to interpret its divine doctrines, which included its political and governmental truths. It was not until the Scriptures were made available in the language of the common man that individuals were able to infer a political theology with its corresponding civil/institutional emphasis. Protestant readings of the Scriptures resulted in new relational paradigms between individuals, communities and ecclesiastical and civil authorities. The institutional consequences of the translation of the Scriptures into English, German and French, resulted in a new constitutional relationship between rulers and ruled characterised by limited ecclesiastical and civil authority. Early modern political thinkers of Great Britain’s Interregnum (1649-1660) would seek to incorporate Protestant reformed political principles and methods of constitutional design to solve the constitutional crises brought on by the civil wars (1642- 1647), sometimes referred to as the Puritan revolutions. Royalist, Republicans, Fifth Monarchists, and Levellers, among other sectarians and political groups, searched the Scriptures for constitutional principles to newmodel the government. The Reformation and the Translation of the Scriptures The German reformer Dr. Martin Luther (1483-1546) is thought to have formally launched the continental Reformation with his Disputation of Doctor Martin Luther on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgencies. Commonly referred to as the ‘Ninety-Five Theses,’ Luther publicly nailed his points of dispute with the Church to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. His subsequent writings would continue to attack the ecclesiastical absolutism of the Roman Catholic Church with its monopoly upon salvation and the Scriptures. The leading French reformer was none other than John Calvin (1509-1564), who confronted the very platonic assumption that the Roman Catholic Church was the centre and reference for life. Calvin forcefully declared that God alone bore absolute sovereignty over all of life, not the Church, and therefore, every institution must be organised in submission to Him. Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536) was an attempt, in part, at such institutional reorganisation of the church and state through the application of the Scriptures. The Republican city-state of Geneva, Switzerland was Calvin’s institutional experiment. There were a number of reformers who made significant contributions to the Protestant movement. Much could be said of the labours of men like the Bohemian Jan Hus (1369-1415), the Scotsman John Knox (1505[1515]- 1572), the Frenchman Theodore Beza (1519-1605), as well as the Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531). The Reformation not only produced a wave of Protestant leadership, but Bible translations were being rapidly disseminated through Johannes Gutenberg’s press with its advent of movable type in 1436. Consequently, the Catholic hierarchy’s interpretive supremacy over the Scriptures was forever altered. It was an Oxford professor who produced the first English translation of the Scriptures based upon Jerome’s 382 A.D. Latin Vulgate—the version used by the Roman Catholic Church. John Wyclif (1320-1384), known as the ‘Morning Star of the Reformation,’ published his Wyclif Bible in 1384. The German Johann Gutenberg (1400-1468) produced the Gutenberg Bible in 1455 and like Wyclif’s, was translated from Jerome’s Vulgate. The Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536) published his Greek and Latin Parallel New Testament in 1516 from Greek New Testament manuscripts then available, and therefore, apart from the Vulgate. Erasmus’s translation placed greater stress upon the importance of original languages in establishing textual authenticity and interpretation. Another Englishman, William Tyndale (1494-1536), translated the New Testament from Greek into English in 1526. Tyndale’s translation was followed by Miles Coverdale’s (1488- 1569) 1535 English Bible and then another, the very large Great Bible of 1540. Luther published his German New Testament in 1522 and translated the entire Scriptures by 1534. One of the most controversial translations was the Geneva Bible (Breeches Bible) of 1560, with its first printing in England in 1571. A product of numerous reformed hands, including those who fled persecution in Britain under Queen ‘Bloody’ Mary (1553-58), the 1
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