A Royal Priesthood?: The Use of the Bible Ethically and Politically: A Dialogue with Oliver O'Donovan

by Zondervan, Craig Bartholomew (Editor), Jonathan Chaplin (Editor), Robert Song (Editor), Al Wolters (Editor)

Overview

Since September 11, 2001, we are intensely aware of the need for political wisdom. Can Scripture help us in this respect? Yes, but not simplistically. In an exhilarating dialogue with Oliver O’Donovan, a team of international scholars look in detail in this book at biblical interpretation as we make the journey from what God said to Abraham, as it were, to how to respond to the political challenges of today. Such exploration is essential if the church is to become “a royal priesthood” today. Craig Bartholomew Contributors include: Oliver O’Donovan (respondent to 14 chapters) Gilbert Meilaender Christopher Rowland Bernd Wannenwetsch N. T. Wright A Royal Priesthood? is the third volume from the Scripture and Hermeneutics Seminar. This annual gathering of Christian scholars from various disciplines was established in 1998 and aims to reassess the discipline of biblical studies from the foundations up and forge creative new ways for reopening the Bible in our cultures. Any attempt to open the Book in new and fresh ways for our cultures at the start of the third millennium must explore how to read the Bible ethically and politically. This volume looks at the obstacles to such a process and in dialogue with Oliver O’Donovan’s creative work in this regard, looks in detail at how to read different parts of the Bible for ethics and politics. A unique element of the book is Oliver O’Donovan’s 14 responses to individual chapters. Volume 1, Renewing Biblical Interpretation and Volume 2, After Pentecost, are also published by Paternoster Press and Zondervan.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780310144755
Publisher:	Zondervan Academic
Publication date:	03/01/2022
Series:	Scripture and Hermeneutics Series
Sold by:	HarperCollins Publishing
Format:	eBook
Pages:	480
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Craig G. Bartholomew (PhD, University of Bristol) is the director of the Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology in Cambridge, England. He is the author and editor of numerous books, including Divine Action in Hebrews, Listening to Scripture, and The Scripture and Hermeneutics Seminar: Retrospect and Prospect.

Jonathan Chaplin is associate professor of political theory at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto. He is co-editor of Political Theory and Christian Vision, has published a range of articles in the area of Christian political theory and is currently completing a book on the political thought of Herman Dooyeweerd.
Robert Song is a lecturer in Christian ethics at the University of Durham. He is the author of Christianity and Liberal Society and Human Genetics: Fabricating the Future.
Al Wolters is professor of religion and theology/classical languages at Redeemer University College in Canada. His publications include Creation Regained: Biblical Basics of a Reformational Worldview, and The Song of the Valiant Woman: Studies in the Interpretation of Proverbs 31:10-31. He is working on a commentary on Zechariah.
Colin Greene is head of theology and public policy at the British and Foreign Bible Society and visiting professor of systematic and philosophical theology at Seattle Pacific University. He is the author of Christology and Atonement in Historical Context and the forthcoming Making Out the Horizons: Christ in Cultural Perspective.
Karl Möller is lecturer in theology and religious studies at St. Martin's College, Lancaster, and senior tutor at the Carlisle and Blackburn Diocesan Training Institute. He is the author of A Prophet in Debate: The Rhetoric of Persuasion in the Book of Amos. He has also co-edited Renewing Biblical Interpretation and After Pentecost: Language and Biblical Interpretation.

Read an Excerpt

Royal Priesthood? A: The Use of the Bible Ethnically and Politically

A Dialogue with Oliver O'Donovan

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Zondervan

Copyright © 2002 Zondervan
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-310-23413-1

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Chapter One

The Use of Scripture in The Desire of the Nations R. W.L. Moberly

It was an enlarging experience for me to read The Desire of the Nations. Professor O'Donovan is a profound and incisive thinker, from whom I have learned much. In particular, he has clearly thought long and hard about the meaning of Scripture, and the whole book is an exposition and application of Scripture - in conjunction with a robust sense of tradition, to be sure, but it is nonetheless Scripture that is fundamental. Although the primary explicit engagement with Scripture is in Chapters 2 to 4, the searching critique of modern political and social arrangements in the last two chapters, where it is argued that 'modernity can be conceived as the Antichrist, a parodic and corrupt development of Christian social order', is in substance no less scriptural than the earlier chapters, even if the mode of argument differs. For to think and argue biblically involves understanding and applying the content of Scripture, regardless of overt reference to the biblical text. In an obvious sense, therefore, a study of the use of Scripture in the book could involve an engagement with the argument as a whole.

The specific context within which this paper is being written is a project seeking a renewal of the understanding and use of Scripture within contemporary church and culture. Any such renewal of Scripture requires that one considers some of the varying forms in which Christian use of Scripture can engage with the substantive political and ethical issues of our time. DN has been chosen as representative of such engagement. We are thus not only O'Donovan's primary audience of people engaged in political theology and political ethics, but also people coming at his book as possibly exemplary of a Christian use of Scripture. Given the range of contributions to the discussion, it is probably appropriate for this paper to take 'use of Scripture' in a rather conventional and restricted sense, and to focus more on questions of method than of content. This means that probably some of the discussion falls under the heading of issues on which, in relation to O'Donovan's substantive thesis, 'nothing need be staked'. He can probably concede many of my suggestions without loss (though of course he may not wish to do so!). However, the concern needs to be not only retrospective but also prospective. We need to consider not only what O'Donovan has as a matter of fact done with Scripture but also how future use of Scripture in this area might learn from his work, a learning that may not solely take the form of emulation.

Let me at the outset, however, set out one axiom which underlies the following discussion: how one uses Scripture relates to why one is using it. Since there is more than one valid concern and context of use, so there is likely to be more than one valid method of use. To recognize this should not lead to any lazy pluralism, since for particular concerns some methods may be clearly better or worse than others. What matters is to identify the nature of particular contexts of use, and to discern the methods of interpretation appropriate to them.

O'Donovan's Scriptural Hermeneutic

In terms of approach, it will be appropriate initially to summarize the programmatic hermeneutic principles that O'Donovan himself sets out in Chapter 1. In the first place, O'Donovan sets out certain axioms that should be uncontroversial for a Christian. On the one hand there is the primacy of Scripture for the whole enterprise of political theology: 'true political concepts ... must be authorised, as any datum of theology must be, from Holy Scripture'. On the other hand, Scripture as a whole must be engaged with, not least 'so that the moment of resurrection [the concern of his earlier Resurrection and Moral Order] does not appear like an isolated meteor from the sky but as the climax of a history of the divine rule'.

Yet many hermeneutic problems instantly arise. Although 'the excitement which accompanied the recovery of political theology in our time arose very evidently from the reading of the Bible', it is overwhelmingly the Old Testament rather than the New to which appeal has been made. This is clear both from the fact that O'Donovan follows the above reference to 'the Bible' with 'Israel's political experience of Yhwh's rule', and from the fact that the best-known categories of recent political theology - shalôm, the jubilee and especially the exodus - are all Old Testament categories. The problem is thus presented as one of finding and utilizing a principled and unifying hermeneutic - 'a unifying conceptual structure ... that will connect political themes with the history of salvation as a whole', 'an architectonic hermeneutic which would locate political reflection on the Exodus within an undertaking that had its centre of gravity in the Gospels'.

How should this be done? O'Donovan first sketches an obvious problem in the history of Christian thought, to do with continuity and change between the Old and New Testaments (though O'Donovan generally prefers not to refer to discrete Testaments at all)in terms of the 'substance of religious hope in Israel and the early church'. How far does the fulfilment of 'Israel's political hopes' lie 'beyond all experience of the public realm' and how far does it point to 'an earthly rule of Christ' with the church playing some key role? Although tensions here run through Christian history, O'Donovan sees this ultimately as a failure of scriptural understanding: 'Failure to attend to Israel is what left Christian political thought oscillating between idealist and realist poles.' Indeed,

... the hermeneutic principle that governs a Christian appeal to political categories within the Hebrew Scriptures is, simply, Israel itself. Through this unique political entity God made known his purposes in the world. In relation to the crisis facing this unique entity, the church proclaimed those purposes fulfilled. Or, to express the same point differently: the governing principle is the kingly rule of God, expressed in Israel's corporate existence and brought to final effect in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

This leads to four concluding comments about right and wrong use of the Old Testament in political theology. First, the OT must be treated 'as history', by which is meant 'a disclosure which took form in a succession of political developments, each one of which has to be weighed and interpreted in the light of what preceded and followed it'. This is to rule out unprincipled or decontextualized use of a 'disconnected image or theme'. Secondly, one must resist 'constructing a subversive counter-history, a history beneath the surface which defies and challenges the official history of Israel'. This relates to the main theme of the first chapter, the need to move 'beyond suspicion'. Thus, 'a decision to take Israel with special seriousness implies a willingness to have done with perpetual unmasking'. Thirdly, one must not 'rewrite Israel's history as a "Whig" history of progressive undeception', for by such means 'the past is recalled solely to justify the present against it, and has no standing as a point of disclosure. This is so that the history should remain normative in its own right. Fourthly, Israel's history must be seen as the context where 'certain principles of social and political life were vindicated by the action of God in the judgement and restoration of the people'. The construal of God's rule must be that of Israel itself. Thus it is not just the history but also the meaning of that history which must be found within the biblical text.

This is an admirable programme, as far as it goes (though it is perhaps curious that there is no comment upon appropriate use of the New Testament). I would like in what follows to contribute to its advancement. First and foremost, I will raise three general issues of principle with regard to O'Donovan's hermeneutic. But I will also select specific examples of textual interpretation that raise a variety of issues.

General Issues of Scriptural Hermeneutics

Where is the history of Israel to be found?

First, the prime challenge that O'Donovan apparently envisages to the history of Israel within the OT is the voice of suspicion, an ideologically subversive counter-history. This is indeed a major contemporary issue. Yet he says nothing about what for many students of Scripture is the more obvious problem - that is, the relationship between the history of Israel as presented by the OT itself and that constructed by modern 'historical-critical' scholarship. The name of Julius Wellhausen remains the convenient shorthand for the insight, shared by all mainstream biblical scholars (however much they continue to dispute details),that the history of Israel and its religious development as perceived through the lens of modern critical historiography look very different from the picture presented by the OT itself. Does, for example, the mass of laws in Exodus to Deuteronomy derive from Moses and the origins of Israel's history? Or is it, as most post-Wellhausen scholars suppose, a composite of different law codes from different periods, the majority of which are exilic or postexilic in date? For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the OT's own presentation was seen by scholars as interesting chiefly as a spring-board to recover something else - the 'true', 'original', 'authentic' course of history and religious development - and was hardly considered as significant in its own right.

Among other significant recent developments, so-called 'canonical' approaches, for which perhaps the name of Brevard Childs may serve as convenient shorthand, have argued for reconceptualizing the way the scriptural text is handled. Here there is a concern to find positive significance in Israel's own picture of its history without feeling any need to justify it as 'really more or less historical after all' (the standard 'conservative' approach). Rather, one may take for granted the kinds of traditio-historical and compositional developments that are commonly hypothesized but see the text in their light as representing Israel's mature reflection on the meaning and significance of its history. So, for example, even if (for the sake of argument)it is granted that 'covenant' did not develop as a way of depicting the relationship between Yhwh and Israel before the Deuteronomists in the seventh century, the fact that 'covenant' has been used to structure the formative moments in Israel's faith (especially in both Genesis and Exodus) should be taken with total seriousness. Whatever the historical development of Israel's religion, 'covenant' has become the normative pattern within which Israel's faith should be understood and appropriated by those who subsequently seek to stand in continuity with it. The mature perspective of the developed and received texts of the Pentateuch is that perspective in the light of which subsequent generations who seek to enter into Israel's heritage should engage with its enduring significance, even if Israel for some or much of its history existed without this perspective.

The motto of this approach could well be 'That which the ancient writers have joined together, let not modern scholars put asunder'. It is not that one cannot, or should not, for certain analytical purposes in relation to certain contexts, abstract and recontextualize the text in relation to its possible origins and development. Rather, one should not rest content, at least if one is a believer concerned to engage with the text as Scripture, until one has returned to a renewed appreciation (and appropriation)of the whole. It is, perhaps, the difference between 'murder to dissect' and 'analyze to understand'. The real and contentious issue then becomes how to understand and evaluate the 'constructed' nature of reality within Scripture that becomes apparent from such a process - something I take to be one of the major tasks of this Scripture and Hermeneutics Seminar.

In the light of this, one problem I have with O'Donovan is to know what he understands as 'the history of Israel', especially given his concern that the construal of God's rule must be that of Israel itself. The 'history of Israel' for Jews and Christians is surely that history which the OT itself presents in the primary sequence from Genesis to 2 Kings (which can coexist with different tellings of the story, most notably in Chronicles). It is not that of the modern paraphrases with varying amounts of subtraction and reinterpretation of biblical texts (together with appeal to non-biblical material) according to varying wissenschaftliche premises - paraphrases that constitute a certain kind of analytical historiography under the heading of 'history of Israel'. O'Donovan is clearly happy to accept and utilize well-established scholarly constructs (the Yahwist and Elohist, the Deuteronomi[sti]c Historian), which may suggest that his working model of Israel's history is that of the modern scholar, rather than of the OT itself, even though these constructs play little significant role. His first hermeneutic principle, that the OT must be treated 'as history', by which is meant 'a disclosure which took form in a succession of political developments, each one of which has to be weighed and interpreted in the light of what preceded and followed it', seems to point in a similar direction. Likewise, his periodic discussion of texts as 'authentic' (e.g., that Jer. 51:59-64 is authentic to Jeremiah; though most comments about authenticity relate to gospel texts) suggests the presence of that modern scholarly frame of reference in which the Bible's own account of matters is to be judged by its conformity to a 'historical-critical' account. My concern here is not O'Donovan's specific judgements about authenticity, which are consistently well-taken, but the frame of reference which his judgements presuppose, and whether such a frame of reference is appropriate or necessary for a political and ethical engagement with Scripture.

We may come at this from another angle. Elsewhere O'Donovan refers not unappreciatively to the work of narrative theology (which establishes a common 'story' as essential to social identity), and he makes positive use of the 'narrative-structure of the Christ-event', a structure which is recapitulated in the life of the church ('the four moments [which]can claim to represent the essential structure of the story').

Continues...

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Table of Contents

	Contributors	xv
	Preface	xix
	Abbreviations	xxi
	The Artists	xxiii
	Introduction	1
	Introduction: A Royal Priesthood	1
	The Cover and Goya's The Third of May	3
	Obstacles to Reading the Bible Ethically and Politically	7
	How Has the Bible Been Used Ethically?	12
	O'Donovan's Biblical, Theological Ethics	19
	O'Donovan's Reading of the Bible for Politics	26
	O'Donovan's Biblical Hermeneutic	34
	This Volume	39
1.	The Use of Scripture in The Desire of the Nations	46
	O'Donovan's Scriptural Hermeneutic	47
	General Issues of Scriptural Hermeneutics	49
	Cui Bono? What is at Stake in this Discussion?	60
2.	Response to Walter Moberly	65
3.	Law and Monarchy in the Old Testament	69
	Locating Israel's History	70
	Deuteronomy and David/Zion in the Old Testament Story	73
	Deuteronomy as Critique of the Zion-Davidic Synthesis	75
	Deuteronomy as a 'Constitution'?	78
	Deuteronomy, Government and Creation	79
	Implications for O'Donovan's Thesis	80
	The Zion-Davidic Theology Beyond Deuteronomy	84
4.	Response to Gordon McConville	89
5.	A Time for War and a Time for Peace: Old Testament Wisdom, Creation and O'Donovan's Theological Ethics	91
	Introduction	91
	Creation Order	91
	Epistemology	101
	Wisdom and Politics	104
	Conclusion	110
6.	Response to Craig Bartholomew	113
7.	The Power of the Future in the Present: Eschatology and Ethics in O'Donovan and Beyond	116
	Introduction	116
	Old Testament Ethics and Eschatology	117
	Eschatology in the Ethics of O'Donovan	120
	The Demands on Eschatology in Latin America	128
	Contributions from the Books of Isaiah and Amos	131
	Conclusion	139
8.	Response to Daniel Carroll R.	144
9.	Power, Judgement and Possession: John's Gospel in Political Perspective	147
	Variations on Old Testament Judgement Themes	150
	Power and Judgement in Jesus' Mission	151
	Power and Judgement in the Trial before Pilate	155
	Power and Judgement in the Death and Resurrection of Jesus	158
	Possession and Community Identity	159
	Justice, Truth and Life	164
10.	Response to Andrew Lincoln	170
11.	Paul and Caesar: A New Reading of Romans	173
	Introduction	173
	A Fresh Perspective?	175
	Initial Comments	177
	Towards a Multi-Dimensional Fresh Reading of Paul	180
	New Creation, New Covenant: The Heart of Romans	188
	Conclusion	191
12.	Response to N.T. Wright	194
13.	'Members of One Another': Charis, Ministry and Representation: A Politico-Ecclesial Reading of Romans 12	196
	Ecclesiology and Politics	196
	Paraklesis: The Genuine Political Speech Act of the Church	200
	The Transformation of the Body	204
	Members of One Another: The Representation of Charis and Ministry	210
	Representation and Political Society	214
14.	Response to Bernd Wannenwetsch	221
15.	The Function of Romans 13 in Christian Ethics	225
	Introduction	225
	Two Visions of the Relation Between Government and God in Romans 13	229
	Judgement and the Paradigmatic Political Act	234
16.	Response to Gerrit de Kruijf	238
17.	The Apocalypse and Political Theology	241
	Oliver O'Donovan on the Apocalypse	242
	The United States of America, the Beast and Babylon	244
	Contrasting Interpretations of the Apocalypse	247
	Practical Engagement in Political Theology in the Light of the Apocalypse	249
18.	Response to Christopher Rowland	255
19.	Ethics and Exegesis: A Great Gulf?	259
20.	Political Eschatology and Responsible Government: Oliver O'Donovan's 'Christian Liberalism'	265
	Introduction	265
	Christian Liberalism	269
	Christianity and Liberal Society	272
	Christian Political Liberalism	275
	After Christian Liberalism	283
	O'Donovan's 'Dispensationalist Political Eschatology': Critical Reflections	290
21.	Response to Jonathan Chaplin	309
22.	Revisiting Christendom: A Crisis of Legitimization	314
	The Reign of God and the Concept of Authority	315
	Jesus: Lord of Lords	321
	The Early Church	323
	Romans 13	324
	The Christendom Settlement	325
	The Christendom Settlement in the West	329
	Revisiting Christendom	332
	Conclusion	336
23.	Response to Colin Greene	341
24.	'Return to the Vomit of "Legitimation"'?: Scriptural Interpretation and the Authority of the Poor	344
	Authority of the Poor and the Poverty of Authority	344
	The Argument of this Paper	347
	Attending to Legitimation: True Speech and Ideology	350
	Praxis and Knowledge	354
	Christ and Political Order	358
	In Jesus Christ, a Revolution	362
	Scriptural, Practical Reasoning?	366
25.	Response to Peter Scott	374
26.	A Timely Conversation with The Desire of the Nations on Civil Society, Nation and State	377
	The 'Romantic', the 'Civic' and the 'Functional' Nation	379
	The Nation as a Theological Construct	384
27.	Response to Joan Lockwood O'Donovan	395
28.	Acting Politically in Biblical Obedience?	398
	Introduction	398
	Welfare Policy and Religious Freedom	398
	Action on Welfare Reform and Reading the Bible	400
	Reading O'Donovan	402
	Church, Society and Rulers	405
	Romans 13	410
	History and the State	413
	Conclusion	416
29.	Response to James W. Skillen	418
	University of Gloucestershire, Theology and Religious Studies	421
	The British and Foreign Bible Society	423
	Baylor University	425
	Scripture Index	426
	Name Index	430
	Subject Index	436