Political Engagement as Biblical Mandate. Paul D. Hanson
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Israel’s historical memory of bondage under the Egyptian Pharaoh, the warning of conscription, taxation, and king-sponsored slavery constituted something less than a propitious start for her second form of government. In fact, a few chapters later we find the people confessing to Samuel: “We have added to all our sins the evil of demanding a king for ourselves.” Samuel’s answer represents one of the most significant contributions to political theory found in the entire Bible. He agrees that they have sinned in asking for a king, but he goes on to assure them of his continuing support through prayer and instruction “in the good and the right way.” But there is a very important underlying condition: “Only fear the LORD, and serve him faithfully with all your heart; for consider what great things he has done for you. But if you still do wickedly, you shall be swept away, both you and your king” (1 Samuel 12:24–25). With these words there entered into the history of political reflection for the first time the clear distinction between two levels of government, the level of ultimate authority that belongs solely to God and the level of penultimate, or delegated authority that is the province of human rulers. In the face of this fundamental distinction, differences among diverse government models pale in significance. They will reflect the different conditions pertaining to their place in time and space. From a theological perspective, they are all the products of human sin. Individually, any given regime can claim legitimacy to govern on one basis alone, the extent to which it discharges its divinely authorized responsibility to uphold justice, embody fairness, and maintain peace.
According to the biblical annals, only a handful of kings even approximated these standards, including Asa, Hezekiah, and Josiah. Ultimately, the tensions between the divine standard set for the kings of Israel and the failure of those kings to embody divine righteousness and compassion issued forth in two theologically and politically momentous developments, one lying in the distant future, namely, the concept of a Messiah anointed by God to usher in an age of universal peace and prosperity and one arising with monarchy and ending with monarchy’s demise, namely, prophecy. To the latter we now turn, for through the courageous witness of its representatives the oft despised example of God’s justice and mercy continued to be proclaimed and through that proclamation the biblical option of rule not by brute force but by gentle compassion survived and found new forms of expression in ages yet unborn.
Prophecy is not a freestanding political model, but one that always assumes the presence of a human regime over against which it provides a standard for critique and restraint. The office of prophet testifies to the fundamental biblical political principle mentioned above, namely, that for the person of faith there is only one ultimate governing authority, God. The prophetic office was charged with the responsibility of representing that authority amidst world governments and human authorities of all types, and the plural is intended here, inasmuch as the prophets spoke on behalf of the universal ruler who was partial to no one regime. Thus Elijah is charged with a message to the Arameans, Amos addresses the treaty violations occurring between the various countries of the eastern Mediterranean, Isaiah identifies Assyria as God’s agent in judging Israel, Second Isaiah announces Cyrus the Persian as God’s messiah responsible for liberating Israel from her Babylonian captors. But the primary recipient of prophetic address was Israel, including both its rulers and its subjects.
No office in the Bible conveys the seriousness with which the God of Israel takes the political realm more than prophecy. The notion it enlists to depict the essential relation of human government to divine government is political in origin, namely, treaty, or more precisely, covenant. This stresses that human existence on its most fundamental level is relational, and viability for individuals and nations alike is possible solely when two essential relationships are healthy, between the human and God, and between human and human.14 Moreover, the terms of those parallel relationships are clear, being derived from the nature of the God known to Israel through its history, and spelled out in the Torah. The three pillars of that Torah are worship and mercy and justice. So clear, so universal, so incisive is the moral universe that is upheld by those pillars that it can be captured succinctly in one verse:
He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)
A consistent theme runs through the Bible regarding the quintessential choice facing humans, both as individuals and as nations. It is summarized in a word of God through Moses in the book of Deuteronomy: “I have set before you life and death . . .” (30:19). This declaration of the irreducible moral structure of the universe at first may sound similar to the moral absolutism expressed by the popular bumper sticker: “The Bible Says It. I believe It. That Settles It.” When applied, that approach to the question of biblical authority gives rise to a number of apodictic pronouncements: “The Bible condemns gays. The Bible opposes all forms of abortion. The Bible supports detention of suspected terrorists without the protection of habeas corpus.” We must ask, Does this mechanical application of biblical law to contemporary issues capture the true nature of the prophetic message? We need to look more deeply at the prophets, lest we confuse the certainty of God’s moral universe with the purported certainties of our own moral biases.
Prophecy first came to expression in opposition to the waxing authority of kings. Nathan rose in opposition to David when the latter claimed special privileges by virtue of his office. The foreign mercenary whom he sacrificed as an impediment to his claiming the lovely object of his lust, though expendable according to the notion that kings stand above the laws pertaining to subjects, was entitled according to the divine law preserved by the prophets to protection against arbitrary injustice. Unfortunately for Uriah, this protection came to light only posthumously. In similar fashion, Ahab, when he confronted a stubborn subject who refused to surrender his ancestral farmland to the king’s desire for a vegetable garden, invoked the age-old ploy of eminent domain and arranged for the execution of the peasant Naboth. But his blatant violation of the higher law predicated on the equal worth of every human life and the entitlement of every family to the benefits of its allotted plot of land led to the convening of the heavenly court, the verdict of which was delivered by the prophetic messenger Elijah. Tragically, the ultimate verdict, like that pronounced by the divine judge in the case of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero, and Benigno Aquino, was again posthumous. And the long history of the slaughter of righteous individuals who dared to stand up against evil tyrants weighs heavily upon those who seek to understand the nature of divine justice. As perplexing as is the question of theodicy, one thing is clear: All efforts at revising history by ruthless potentates and their defenders have been unable to silence the eternal witness of the martyrs to the ultimate validity of the universal justice of the sole Sovereign and the assured failure of every attempt to supplant God’s rule with human alternatives.
Arising from the prophetic tradition’s master metaphor of covenant was its favorite genre, the covenant lawsuit. Wherever the prophets witnessed an act of injustice or oppression, they condemned it not in the name of their own moral authority, but in the name of the heavenly Judge, whose court proceedings they faithfully recorded and reported. Take as an example the prophet Hosea, who witnessed blatant immorality, corruption in high circles, and derision of God’s sovereignty. He studied the balance of power in the eastern Mediterranean and described how the powerful military force of the Assyrians was poised to destroy a kingdom blind with regard to the consequences of its contempt of the covenant. And the calamity he foresaw was not limited to the geo-political realm, but encompassed the entire created order:
Hear the word of the LORD, O people of Israel;
for the LORD has an indictment against the inhabitants of the land.
There is no faithfulness or loyalty,
and no knowledge of God in the land.
Swearing, lying, and murder, and stealing and adultery break out;
bloodshed follows bloodshed.
Therefore the land mourns,
and all who live in it languish;
together with the wild animals and the birds of the air,
even the fish of the sea are perishing. (Hosea 4:1–3)
Here we see the