Review by Jonathan Leeman. Leeman is the editorial director for 9Marks and an elder at Cheverly Baptist Church in Bladensburg, Maryland. He is the author of How the Nations Rage: Rethinking Faith and Politics in a Divided Age (Thomas Nelson). The views expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of BCNN1.
When it comes to determining how the Bible addresses political issues, its many related verses can feel like a massive sack of Legos. One person opens the sack and builds a car, another a brontosaurus, another an old Western town. With enough skill, you can build whatever you want.
Want to make the Bible say welfare policies are bad? Find a proverb on laziness leading to poverty (Prov. 10:4). Want to say the opposite? Find another calling people to “defend the rights of the poor and needy” (Prov. 31:8–9).
The point is not that Proverbs contradicts itself. All these passages say something true. But we lack clear rules for knowing how any one of them should guide today’s public policy. Further, we too often witness people and parties exploiting the Bible for their purposes.
Longtime Westmont College professor Tremper Longman III brings his Old Testament expertise to bear in The Bible and the Ballot: Using Scripture in Political Decisions. The book offers counsel on how to read Scripture politically, followed by what Longman believes the Bible teaches on ten public policy issues of our day: nationalism, religious liberty, war, abortion, criminal justice and capital punishment, immigration, same-sex marriage, the environment, poverty, and racism.
Most of what Longman offers about how to read the Bible politically is sensible. He argues that the Bible does not provide us with specific public policies, only general principles we should take seriously. I agree entirely.
Longman offers good, solid principles of interpretation. They include paying attention to a book’s genre and original context and taking account of continuities and discontinuities between the Testaments, especially the way in which a Christian reading of the Old Testament recognizes Christ’s fulfillment of all things.
Yet Longman’s approach is insufficient because it lacks institutional awareness. Let me explain. Suppose I place a list of evening “to dos” for my wife on my desk at work, but my assistant thinks it’s for him. Why am I returning a new pair of oven mitts to Bed Bath & Beyond? he wonders. The confusion arises because my wife and I inhabit one institutional structure, my assistant and I another, and interpreting such a to-do list means minding those structures.
Longman rightly observes that the rules binding Old Testament Israel cannot transfer directly to the New Covenant church. Yet we also need to ask which to-do lists the Bible gives to the governments of the nations. What is their purpose? What authority do they receive? The Old Testament prophets indict the nations for injustice. In Israel’s case, however, the indictment is for injustice plus idolatry. That’s significant because, in covenantal terms, the United States and Kenya stand closer to ancient Egypt and Rome than to ancient Israel and the church. By the same token, we must distinguish between church authority and individual Christians, who can work in government.
In short, reading the Bible politically requires institutional awareness, not just a few principles of interpretation. When we encounter Proverbs’ instructions regarding the poor, for instance, we need to read them through that institutional filter, just as my assistant needs to interpret the “to do” list through the filter of “Is this for me or for your wife?”
Without institutional and covenantal sensitivity, we pick up our Bibles and default to what feels right in our time and place. For instance, Longman feels politically burdened by Israel’s civil laws concerning foreigners. Why not by its moral laws concerning adultery or honoring one’s parents? Perhaps because it’s literally unimaginable today that the government might draw from Israel’s laws on sexuality.
Longman denies that his own previously held political views influenced his reading of Scripture. Indeed, he observes that Scripture changed his views on some matters as he studied for this book. Which is well and good. But with few exceptions, his views fall left of center (by 21st-century American standards) on nearly every issue. He’s reluctant about war. He would accommodate undocumented immigrants. He fears climate change. He pushes hard on caring for the poor. He calls for race reparations. He questions the justice of capital punishment due to racial disparities. He says the church shouldn’t impose its sexual ethic when it comes to same-sex marriage. And he seeks a “third way” on abortion, arguing that “there may be wisdom in making abortion rare and safe,” with the implication that it’s also legal, as Bill Clinton’s infamous triplet had it.
It concerns me when any Christian’s political positions match, point by point, a well-defined constellation on America’s left–right spectrum. You see the first two or three stars, and you know where the rest will flash. Perhaps this is my own idealism, but I’d like to think that working from Scripture would yield some unexpected combinations, like someone who is staunchly pro-life and pro-reparations, or pro-traditional marriage and pro-environment.
Source: Christianity Today
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