Like Rain on Mown Grass
Good rule in the Christian tradition
This essay first appeared in Craig Hovey and Elizabeth Phillips, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Christian Political Theology (Cambridge, 2015).
For the first millennium and a half of church history, Christian political thought was an effort to evangelize politics. That involved an effort to infuse the truth and demands of the gospel into political life. Rulers were expected to follow Jesus’ teachings and Jesus’ self-giving example was held up as an exemplum of royal conduct. Kings were supposed to exhibit the fruits of the Spirit in political as well as personal life. It also meant placing political history within the framework of the evangel, the history of redemption that culminates in the Father’s gifts of the Son and Spirit. Though this effort continued into the modern era, political thought took a different path after the Reformation. Secular theorists examined political questions without reference to Jesus, his teachings, or the work of the Spirit. Christian thinkers often followed suit, confining the gospel to a “strictly soteriological” realm and viewing politics as a sphere of justice rather than love and mercy.
It is common to suggest that two strands run through the history of Christian political reflection. On the negative side are realists and “Augustinians” who, stressing the sinfulness of man, see civil government primarily as a postlapsarian restraint on sin. On this view, government does not aim to cultivate virtue, much less to instill the fruits of the Spirit, and kings are not expected to govern based on the specific values of the Christian gospel. Against this is the “Thomist” or “idealist” view that civil order is natural to man, that men are social creatures who come to a perfection of virtue only in political society.
This distinction is barely evident in patristic or early medieval writing on political themes. In patristic writings from the Latin West and Byzantium, in late patristic encyclopedists, in advice books (the speculum regiae, or “mirror of princes”) of the Carolingian era, “realist” and “idealist” strains are jumbled together without any theoretical apparatus to sort things out. Scholastics were more deliberate and systematic, but scholastic writers still exhibit the same mixture of realist and idealist strains. All were devoted to the evangelization of politics and political thought. The negative “Augustinian” view appears in a pure form only after the Reformation.
I. Good News of Good Rule.
The promise of “good rule” is one of the main themes of the Christian gospel. Jesus announced that the reign of God was breaking into creation, and this reign came to fulfillment in Jesus’ own ascension to a heavenly throne. “Jesus is Lord” (kurios) is the fundamental Christian confession, inspired by the Spirit (1 Corinthians 12:3). In a world of many lords (1 Corinthians 8:5), there is only one kurios kurion (Revelation 17:14; 19:16). As commentators have pointed out (at least) for decades (Stauffer 1955), kurios was in the apostles’ time a title reserved for Caesar. To call Jesus kurios was, at least, to relativize Caesar’s claims, perhaps to challenge and subvert them. In an apocalyptic vein, the gospel announces that Satan, “prince of this world” (ho archon tou kosmou), has been “cast out” (John 12:31). In this, Jesus fulfilled the hope of Israel’s prophets, that One from the line of David would come to establish his throne in justice and righteousness (Isaiah 9:7) as the one shepherd to feed and guide the flock of Israel: “I, Yahweh, will be their God, and my servant David will be prince among them” (Ezekiel 34:23-4; 37:25). Good rule is the good news: The time is fulfilled, and the bad rule of Satan and Caesar has given way to the reign of the crucified and risen Jesus.
The prophetic promise was never about the Messiah alone. Already at the beginning of Israel’s history, Yahweh promised that kings would come from Abraham’s seed, and sealed that promise with circumcision (Genesis 17:6, 16; 35:11). After exile, Yahweh said that “nations will come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your rising” (Isaiah 60:3). The age of light would recapitulate the great age of Solomon, when kings and queens came to learn wisdom from David’s son (1 Kings 4:34; 10:1-10). Instructed by Yahweh’s Torah on mount Zion, the nations – and, preeminently, their rulers – would beat their swords to ploughshares and their spears to pruning hooks (Isaiah 2:2-4). We can make the same point pneumatologically: The Spirit who clothes the Messiah is the Spirit of good rule, equipping the Servant of Yahweh with wisdom and understanding, counsel and strength, so that he can judge justly, deal fairly with the poor and afflicted, and strike the wicked down with the breath and words of his mouth. Anointed by the Spirit, the king exhibits royal wisdom in his an unquenchable zeal for justice (Isaiah 11:1-5; 42:1-4). Jesus devotes considerable time and attention to his twelve apostles because they are being prepared as rulers of the renewed people of God. This comes to fruition at Pentecost when the Spirit who filled Jesus descends on the apostles.
Following Daniel 7, the Apocalypse recounts this dissemination of good rule. When John first enters heaven, he sees twenty-four angelic ancient ones (presbuteroi) crowned and enthroned (Revelation 4:4), while the martyrs languish under the altar where their blood has been poured, crying for vindication (6:9-11). By the end of the book, though, the martyrs have taken the thrones and share in God’s judgment of the nations (20:4). In the messages to the seven churches, Jesus promises authority (2:25-27) and a throne (3:21) to the faithful who overcome. By the end of the book, the martyrs have received those gifts. Revelation moves from the unveiling of the anointed One to the reign of the anointed many.
These hopes should not be spiritualized out of political existence. Israel’s hopes were not directed to a disembodied, apolitical future. They looked to the Creator to prove himself to be what Abraham confessed him to be, the Judge of all the earth who does what is just (Genesis 18:25). They expected a revolution in world order that would break the fangs of predatory rulers and rescue the helpless (Luke 1:52; cf. Wright 2014; Perriman 2010). Jesus died on the cross to make the saints a new Adamic people, a kingdom and priests who reign on earth (Revelation 1:6; 5:10).
The Bible offers a number of detailed portraits of what good rule looks like. Deuteronomy 17 prohibits three of the most common practices of ancient kings: Building an offensive force of horses and chariots; enriching the treasury with gold and silver; forming marriage alliances by creating a harem that has side benefits that are decidedly not political (vv. 16-17). Solomon violated all three prohibitions and fractured the kingdom (1 Kings 10-11). Instead of devoting himself to typical royal behavior, Israel’s king was to write out a copy of the Torah with the aid of the priests, so that he could study it “all the days of his life.” A king who renounced the normal forms of security could be secure only if he learned “to fear Yahweh his God, by carefully observing all the words of this law” (Deuteronomy 17:19). The king’s proper place was among the people, not lifted above them (v. 20).
Most of its political instructions in the Torah are given to judges rather than kings. Judges were to love truth, hate bribes, capable of making judgments in disputes (Exodus 18:21). Yahweh repeatedly warned not to take bribes, which blind the wise and pervert the judgment (Exodus 23:8; Deuteronomy 10:17; 16:19). Judges must resist both the sentimentality that would unjustly favor the weak and the cowardice that would cower before the powerful (Leviticus 19:15).
In the Psalms and prophets, these instructions from Torah are translated into a vision of good rule focused on protection of the vulnerable and suppression of violent oppression. The ideal king of Psalm 72 judges the people with justice when he vindicates the afflicted, saves the children of the needy, and crushes the oppressor (vv. 1-4). Rulers who rule well refresh the land like “rain upon the mown grass, like showers that water the earth” (v. 5). Good rule is quite literally as essential to the well-being of the land as regular rainfall: If the powerful confiscate the produce of the poor or invaders plunder the land, the people cannot survive. In Psalm 82, Yahweh addresses an assembly of “gods” (v. 1), but it is clear from the context that they are rulers. He rebukes them because they use their power to judge unjustly and show deference to the wicked (v. 2). They should instead judge in favor of the weak and fatherless, “vindicate the afflicted,” by delivering the weak from the hand of the wicked (vv. 3-4). Jeremiah exhorted the kings of his day to administer justice by delivering victims from robbers (21:11-12) and promised that the Lord would raise up a Davidic branch who will do just that (23:5-6). Ezekiel’s shepherd-king not only defends the weak when they are attacked but searches for the sheep that wander, in order to feed them, bind the broken, strengthen the sick, and destroy the fat cannibalistic sheep (Ezekiel 34:11-19). Rulers are called to restrain and punish crime, and to protect the weak. In the Hebrew Bible, however, these two responsibilities are seamlessly united: Restraining the wicked is protection of the weak.
In Scripture, wisdom is a royal virtue (1 Kings 3), and Proverbs is a virtual mirror of kings. Written mostly by Solomon to his son (1:8), it offers a detailed sketch of the wisdom of a ruler. All Israel, but especially her kings, were to “get,” and “prize” wisdom (4:7) more than silver, gold, and precious gems (3:13-17; 16:16). Kings above all were to bind kindness and truth as garlands around their necks, trust in Yahweh, renounce self-regard, honor Yahweh, submit to the discipline of the Lord (3:1-12). Kings above all had to retrain their words (10:8, 10), pursue mercy (11:17), reject the lifestyle of the sluggard (6:6-9; 13:4; 19:24: 20:4). Not only in their personal interactions but in political life, “a gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh words stirs up anger” (15:1). “Better is a little with righteousness than great income with injustice” is an axiom of public life, not merely a piece of pious advice (16:8). These few citations are, of course, representative. The entire book of Proverbs should be read as an advice book for good rule.
Throughout these Scriptures, Yahweh who is Wisdom provides the model of good rule. He comes to Israel’s rescue at the exodus, judging Egypt with plagues to deliver his distressed people. He provides water and bread in the wilderness, guides them like a good shepherd to the promised land, and leads them in conquest of the promised land. Yahweh is what he expects all kings to be, Father of the fatherless, defender of widows and orphans (Psalm 68:5; 146:9), who will not leave the guilty oppressor unpunished (Exodus 34:7). His rule is like rain on mown grass, like the showers that refresh a parched land.