New Covenant People & the Present Order
August 2, 2010
John H. Armstrong
It must be frankly admitted that the modern concept of human rights, though rooted as I have attempted to show in Christian ideas and ideals, is not textually normative within the Bible. Add to this the admittedly bad record of the church over the centuries and there is sufficient reason to humbly express a measure of serious consternation about the role Christians have actually played in advancing human rights.
The Bible and Human Rights Language
The Bible does not employ the kind of philosophical or legal language that we have become accustomed to in our modern discussions of human rights. When it comes to “religious rights” Luke Timothy Johnson is clearly correct when he says: “As thoroughly religious literature of antiquity, furthermore, it (the Bible) takes for granted that all people are in some sense ‘religious.’ The Bible does not need to argue for a right it assumes” (“Religious Rights and Christian Texts,” in Religious Human Rights in Global Perspective, 1996, 65).
Since the edict of Milan, in 313 A.D., Christianity has a very mixed record with regard to the “rights” of others to practice the religion of their choice. The ideological battles that characterized the Reformation and post-Reformation period of Western history offer little by way of encouragement when it comes to a clear witness to tolerance or freedom. For sure there were Christians who recognized the rights of others; e.g. Thomas More, Desiderius Erasmus, Balthazar Hubmaier, Caspar Schwenkfeld, Martin Bucer, Menno Simons, William Penn, John Owen, etc. It is interesting that these men cited support for their approach to freedom from New Testament texts such as 1 Corinthians 11:19: “There must be factions among you in order that those who are genuine among you may be recognized.” They also appealed to Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the tares (Matthew 13:24-30).
But a far more powerful influence came from St. Augustine’s use of Luke 14:23 (“compel the people to enter”) in the Donatist controversy. From this context the church had regularly argued that it had a divinely given right to “coerce” people to align themselves with Christ and the church. This kind of thinking continued to plague most of the Protestant Reformers. In the infamous Servetus episode John Calvin defended the execution of Michael Servetus on the grounds that “kings are commanded to protect the doctrine of piety by their support.” Sebastian Castellio remonstrated with Calvin by saying: “To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man. When the Genevans killed Servetus, they did not defend a doctrine, they killed a man” (Sebastian Castellio, Contra Libellum Calvini, 1612, cited in Kamen, The Rise of Tolerance, 80).
Over the last three centuries a principled position of religious tolerance was eventually worked out in Protestant churches, mostly because of the influence of the Anabaptists. Eventually the Roman Catholic Church would follow, initially with John Paul XXIII’s Pacem in Terris (1963), which included this statement: “Every human being has the right to profess his religion privately and publicly.” The Declaration on Religious Freedom issued by Vatican II (1965) strongly nailed the colors of the Roman communion to the modern mast and reflects the kind of thinking I am outlining in this series.
What happened is that the exclusivity of the New Testament’s witness to Jesus Christ as Lord was used to buttress the ideas of intolerance when the church and state became close allies. But a case can and should be made for other strands of emphasis in the New Testament that were missed by the way biblical texts were being misused.
A More Positive Reading of the New Testament
A more careful reading of the New Testament reveals strands that were not developed in Christian history by the mainstream of the church but which were nonetheless found by reading the New Testament whole. These include, but are not entirely limited to, the following:
All people are created in the image of God and that image remains in all people even though likeness to God has been altered by sin.
The internal role of conscience is inviolable to coercion. The New Testament so respects the role of each person in freely choosing to follow Christ, or not to follow him, that nowhere do we find apostles or prophets coercing anyone to become part of the Christian community.
The full riches of the Christian tradition go beyond any single expression of human faith or any single church’s ability to express the whole of faith. “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face-to-face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12).
The central moral principles of Christian discipleship manifestly oppose intolerance in matters of personal faith and practice. The Sermon the Mount makes this abundantly plain regardless of one’s traditional way of reading it.
The New Covenant People of God
In the New Testament God’s people are not defined along racial or ethnic lines. They represent a radically new type of community, incorporating people from all nationalities and backgrounds into one new covenant. Here is the Magna Charta of the New Testament:
So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise (Galatians 3:26-29).
Biblical scholar N.T. Wright states my point well when he writes:
Through his actions and words Jesus was calling into being a people with a new identity, a new family. “Here are my mother and my brothers; everyone who hears the word of God and does it” (Mark 3:34-35). This renewed community, a “family” formed around Jesus included all and sundry, the only qualification being their adherence to Jesus and his kingdom message (The Challenge of Jesus, 2000).
When Jesus announced the good news he enacted the gospel of the kingdom by embarking on a reconstitution of Israel around himself, beginning with the twelve who represented Israel. Unlike the Old Testament there was a clear distinction between the political and spiritual kingdoms. In Mark 12:17 Jesus acknowledged the place of political authority but he made it clear that the kingdom of God was different from the temporal order. The kingdom of God is not established by political action (John 18:36). This does not mean that Christians should be un-involved in the political world. We must live a public life that reflects our inner reality as children of the light. But under the New Covenant the judicial and priestly aspects of the old order have passed away. Paul Woolley was correct to write (2001) that “Even Old Testament ‘moral law’ has to be interpreted through the teaching of Jesus.”
The Present Order: The Limitations of Civil Government
The New Testament recognizes a positive role for human government. It is more than a necessary evil. It can become a force for good if justice and mercy are embraced in ways that benefit all. But human government is limited. It cannot enforce the moral law precisely because fallen humans cannot create a system whereby they can properly do what God alone can do. (The church must, in a proper way, discipline its own members but this is another sphere and different principles clearly apply that do not involve the sword or an equivalent instrumentality.)
Thus human government is not only limited morally but it is limited practically; i.e. in what it can do. Even the Mosaic Law did not ensure that God’s people would worship him truly and faithfully. This seems to be the point of Romans 8:3. I believe that a firm belief in human sinfulness is at the root of what James Madison said about the American system of government. It can guide the affairs of state but only because it recognizes the inherit dangers of sinful people controlling others. No political party or ideology will ever take the place of Christ and any human agency or person who promises anything remotely like utopia, or millennial glories, ought to be summarily rejected.
But government is good and it is needed. We should be careful about rebelling against it, even if we do not like it (cf. Romans 13:1-7). But submission to all human authority must be discriminating, supported by an informed conscience that uses God-given freedom to glorify God, not to assert my will or my interpretation of faith.
Good people do disagree about the extent to which government should become involved in promoting good and restraining evil. The Bible does not provide us with a clear blueprint that supports either the ideology of the left or the right. How far should the federal government go in promoting the common good? The Bible simply does not answer such questions directly. Professor Paul Woolley is right when he concludes:
What are the actual limits of government? Did Paul think in terms of positive or negative freedom? Did Paul envisage “restraining evil” to include the positive eradication of social, moral, political and institutional evils (e.g. the abolition of slavery) by government? Or was “restraining evil” confined simply to keeping social order? Did the apostle think that promoting human well-being required government to introduce a welfare state? Of course it is impossible to know. Paul’s political philosophy was probably influenced by his surrounding political environment as well as theological considerations (“A Christian View of Government,” October 2001, found online).
Conclusion
The people of God are a radically new community. In each generation we should face the world in which we live and work out the radical implications of Jesus’ call to follow him as disciples. In a world that is growing more and more pluralistic how then do we live as disciples who should be “salt and light” to all people? How to we preserve society from decay and darkness? How do we engage in the debate over human rights and remain faithful to our unique calling? I believe we best that question in terms of the concept of diaspora, which I will explain next week.
