4

CORPORATE RESPONSIBILITY

And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If a soul shall sin through ignorance against any of the commandments of the LORD concerning things which ought not to be done, and shall do against any of them: If the priest that is anointed do sin according to the sin of the people; then let him bring for his sin, which he hath sinned, a young bullock without blemish unto the LORD for a sin offering (Lev. 4:1-3).

When a ruler hath sinned, and done somewhat through ignorance against any of the commandments of the LORD his God concerning things which should not be done, and is guilty; Or if his sin, wherein he hath sinned, come to his knowledge; he shall bring his offering, a kid of the goats, a male without blemish: And he shall lay his hand upon the head of the goat, and kill it in the place where they kill the burnt offering before the LORD: it is a sin offering (Lev. 4:22-24).

The theocentric message of these judicially unified passages is that God must be placated for sin. When He is not placated by sinners under His authority, He threatens negative corporate sanctions against them. Those people who are innocent of open rebellion will nevertheless suffer the consequences merely by assenting to the transgression through inaction. To avoid negative corporate sanctions, societies must conform to God's mandatory means of placating Him publicly through formal repentance.

In the Mosaic Covenant, the sin offerings were the mandatory means.⁽¹⁾ They are also known as the purification offerings. These offerings, more than any other offering in Leviticus -- and perhaps more than any other passage in Scripture -- established the judicial principle of corporate responsibility. They raised the issue of hierarchical representation (point two), but in the context of corporate sanctions (point four). The judicial issue is oath-breaking.

The purpose of the purification offerings ("sin offerings": KJV), the fourth sacrifice, was the restoration of sinful people to the presence of God after a covenantal oath had been broken through sin. Without these offerings, the Israelites could not lawfully cross the boundaries associated with God's sanctuary: local (tabernacle) and regional (nation). The people needed double protection: from their own sins and from the sins of their covenantal representatives, the priests and princes. Rulers had to offer sacrifices for their own sins in order purify the boundaries in which God resided: the temple-tabernacle and the nation.

The sins in question were unintentional. C. Van Dam argues that this unintentionality has a specific meaning: to wander or go astray.⁽²⁾ Van Dam cites Leviticus 4:13: "And if the whole congregation of Israel sin through ignorance, and the thing be hid from the eyes of the assembly, and they have done somewhat against any of the commandments of the LORD concerning things which should not be done, and are guilty."

The context of these verses is the legal relationship between the people and a ruler. To speak of going astray within a context of judicial hierarchy has the implication that someone in authority has taken the lead: the biblical shepherd and sheep relationship. It is never said anywhere in the text precisely what these sins were. Presumably, they were not major, self-conscious sins on the part of the congregation, since the atoning rituals listed in this passage applied to unintentional sins. Yet even a minor sin committed by a priest threatened the whole community.

The required offerings in Leviticus 4:1-3 were called purification offerings.⁽³⁾ They had to do with the tabernacle and temple, God's dwelling place, the geographical location around which He had drawn a boundary. Writes Wenham: "Under the Levitical laws the blood of the purification offering was used to cleanse the tabernacle from the pollution of sin. . . . [T]he primary purpose of this purification was to make possible the continuing presence of God among his people."⁽⁴⁾ Sin, if it was not judicially dealt with according to God's holy standards, would drive God away from His place of residence among His covenant people. This in turn would open the nation to invaders, for God would no longer defend the nation's boundaries. Israel would be invaded and oppressed by foreigners dwelling in the land, or worse, invaded and then dragged into captivity. This was the threat that made mandatory a series of acts of ritual cleansing.

The house of God was a place of mediation.⁽⁵⁾ The purification offering was therefore also associated with God's hierarchical authority over man.⁽⁶⁾ The priest, as the representative of the nation, was required to make atonement in order to protect society. He was the person who had legal access to the place of hierarchical mediation between God and His people.

Broken Oaths

Leviticus 4 is entirely devoted to the various atoning rituals for unintentional sins: by priest, congregation, civil ruler, and common citizen. It begins, significantly, with the sin of the priest. The New American Standard Version translates the introductory clause of verse three as follows: "if the anointed priest sins so as to bring guilt on the people. . . ." The New English Bible translates it exactly the same way. The Revised Standard Version reads: "if it is the anointed priest who sins, thus bringing guilt on the people. . . ." There is no doubt that the priest could commit a sin which in some way brought into jeopardy all those who were under his authority. It was not just that he sinned on his own behalf; he sinned representatively. In contrast, this high degree of corporate responsibility for unintentional sins did not rest upon the civil ruler, as we shall see.⁽⁷⁾

How could the priest's unintentional sin bring the people under visible judgment? Because of the structure of the biblical covenant. Responsibility is covenantal, which means that it is imposed hierarchically. Human accountability is simultaneously upward and downward. God is at the top of the hierarchy; nature is at the bottom. In between, God gives men and women varying degrees of accountability, depending on their ordained offices, their economic positions, and their social roles.

Because the idea of the covenant is foreign to the thinking of modern Christians, they have tended to become supporters of a spurious humanist individualism, both philosophically (nominalism)⁽⁸⁾ and politically (right-wing Enlightenment thought), though frequently in the name of Christianity. It is therefore necessary to explore the concept of corporate responsibility and judicial representation at considerable length in this chapter. There is no way to understand Leviticus 4 correctly if we rely on individualism as either our ethical presupposition or our epistemological presupposition.

Unfortunately, because of the influence the anti-covenantal individualism of modern fundamentalism, evangelical Christians are not accustomed to thinking in terms of biblical covenantal corporatism, either ecclesiastically or politically. This is why Leviticus 4 is so important for the establishment of a systematically biblical social theory: it establishes beyond question the representative character of covenantal office-holding. The dual covenantal oaths of allegiance, civil and ecclesiastical, can be broken through sin, and there must be a means of restoring covenant loyalty. This must be done through acts of sacrifice: covenant renewal. These dual covenants are not strictly personal, as modern individualism would have it. As Milgrom says, Leviticus presents a picture of corporate responsibility. If sin is not checked, people risk coming under God's negative sanctions in history when God brings His wrath against the evildoers: ". . . when the evildoers are punished they bring down the righteous with them. Those who perish with the wicked are not entirely blameless, however. They are inadvertent sinners who, by having allowed the wicked to flourish, have also contributed to the pollution of the sanctuary."⁽⁹⁾

God's Sanctions in History

This indicates that those who are judicially subordinate to a lawful office-holder have a moral responsibility before God to call a halt publicly to the evil committed by that office-holder -- a prophetic responsibility. If they fail to exercise this responsibility, the nation will be brought under God's negative sanctions. It is crucial for any biblical theory of institutional government to understand this point: if God did not back up His prophets with predictable negative corporate sanctions in history, the prophetic office would have very little power. Modern pietists, whose name is Legion, and modern political pluralists, whose name is vox populi, insist that God no longer imposes predictable sanctions in history in terms of His covenant law and its specified sanctions. They have therefore implicitly denied the legitimacy of the prophetic function, and have therefore also denied the legitimacy of the judicial principle of biblical republicanism: bringing rulers to account for their actions. This leaves them with some version of humanism as the basis of their self-professed republicanism: natural law theory. But natural law theory does not provide statutes (case laws): authoritative guidelines for the application of its supposedly universal judicial principles.

This passage has ramifications far beyond the Mosaic Covenant's sacrificial system. We need to explore some of these ramifications.⁽¹⁰⁾ We need to understand how the representative priest-nation relationship was archetypal for other covenantal relationships in the Old Covenant. To understand this judicial relationship more readily, let us begin with that most crucial of all representatives in Old Covenant history, Adam.

 

Original Sin and Covenantal Hierarchy

Adam broke covenant with God. He committed sacrilege (church), treason (State), and attempted parricide (family).⁽¹¹⁾ Adam in his rebellion was seeking three offices: high priest, king, and founding father -- not as a creature under God but as the Creator. He sought original control of the apex of power over all three covenantal hierarchies, a position occupied exclusively by God. This act of judicial rebellion led to his formal disinheritance by God. This was an appropriate response by a father to a son who had attempted to gain the inheritance early by bringing formal accusations of criminal behavior against the father.

By disinheriting Adam, God also disinherited Adam's biological descendants. Thus, the sin of Adam had judicial repercussions on his children and children's children. It also had repercussions in the creation. The world was brought under a curse (Gen. 3:18). "For the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will" (Rom. 8:20a, NASB). The effects of Adam's sin spread downward: down through time and down through the creation. Adam, as the delegated covenantal head of church, State, and family, brought the negative sanctions of God against him and all those under his covenantal authority.

Inherited Sin

Covenant-breaking man resists such a hierarchical concept of responsibility. He wants to believe that he sins only on his own behalf. The doctrine of inherited (original) sin -- his legal status as God's disinherited heir -- thwarts man's doctrine of human autonomy. Self-proclaimed autonomous man sees himself as the sole source of his own broken covenant, assuming that he admits the existence of any covenant. This view of sin asserts that each person implicitly possesses the power of sin-free living. A person may sin, but this sinning is supposedly of his own free will. Each person repeats the fall of Adam, it is asserted; without this morally contingent, case-by-case repetition of Adam's sin, all individuals would automatically gain heaven as God's lawful heirs. Such a view of sin rejects the biblical doctrine of corporate disinheritance. Mankind as a whole has been lawfully disinherited by God. All men are brothers in the flesh apart from regeneration: disinherited sons.⁽¹²⁾

This doctrine of uninherited sin was first formulated by the British monk Pelagius in the early fifth century, A.D. Theologian B. B. Warfield has summarized the core of Pelagianism: "It lies in the assumption of the plenary ability of man; his ability to do all that righteousness can demand, -- to work out not only his own salvation, but also his own perfection. This is the core of the whole theory; and all the other postulates not only depend upon it, but arise out of it."⁽¹³⁾ This meant a denial by the Pelagians of God's grace in salvation. "It was in order that they might deny that man needed help, that they denied that Adam's sin had any further effect on his posterity than might arise from his bad example."⁽¹⁴⁾

Hierarchical Responsibility

Because of the existence of covenant sanctions, the doctrine of covenantal hierarchy leads us to conclude that responsibility is both upward and downward. Those who are under the legal authority of a covenantal officer are under the historical sanctions of God, both positive and negative, which God applies to them through this ordained agent and also sometimes because of him. Authority is always hierarchical. It is therefore necessarily representative.⁽¹⁵⁾ No one can legitimately claim judicial innocence based merely on his claim of autonomy. Participation in any covenantal institution is inevitably a form of assent to representative authority, though always limited by God's law in the degree of required obedience.⁽¹⁶⁾

The example of an army under the authority of a military commander is an easily understood example (i.e., "representative") of the principle of collective sanctions. If he makes a serious mistake, the army is defeated, with negative consequences for civilians back home. If he does well, the army is victorious. In the first instance, the defeat of the troops and the subsequent subjection of the civilians may have no immediate connection to the specific nature of their own personal sins, but there is surely a mediate connection. They are brought under judgment because of the representative character of military authority. Similarly with the positive sanction of military victory: it is mediated through the commander.

We readily understand this principle with regard to military commanders. Few people today understand it with respect to priests, yet Mosaic law emphasized the representative sins of priests far more than the representative sins of military commanders.

Covenantal Allegiance

To participate in a specifically covenantal institution -- church, State, or family -- the individual must agree to obey those holding lawful office above him. This agreement is either explicit, as in the case of a naturalized citizen, or implicit, as in the case of minor children within a family, or the case of resident aliens living within the borders of a civil jurisdiction. There are sanctions, positive and negative, attached to such covenant membership. These sanctions are inherent in the very nature of the covenant; they cannot lawfully be evaded. What are sanctions? They are blessings and cursings legally applied by representative authorities to a special, set-apart people, i.e., a sanctified group.⁽¹⁷⁾

Definitive Allegiance

Covenantal allegiance is definitive: it begins at a particular point in time. A person swears an oath in the presence of other men -- God's officially sanctioned, representative, covenantal officers in history -- that he will abide by the terms of a particular covenant. Even in the case of family and State covenants that are officially secular, the person administering the oath still administers it as God's designated agent in history, whether the particular society recognizes this subordinate legal status or not. Judicially speaking, the most important aspect of government is the content of the oath. The oath is central. The oath invokes the covenant: sovereignty, authority, law, sanctions, and inheritance. This is why, in seeking to understand the actual operations of any covenantal organization, the researcher must always do two things: follow the money and examine the oath.

In the church covenant, baptism is the definitive oath-sign that establishes the covenant. In the Old Covenant era, this visible covenantal act was circumcision.⁽¹⁸⁾ This was normally a representative act, though there were sometimes voluntary conversions by adults. Circumcision also was applied representatively to household foreign slaves (Gen. 17:12-13). In the New Covenant, this act of definitive covenantal bonding is established directly through adult baptism, but also representatively in the case of infant baptism or the baptism of mentally incompetent children who are under the judicial authority of a baptized parent.⁽¹⁹⁾ God places a legal claim on those who are baptized. He places them under the threat of covenant sanctions, both positive and negative.⁽²⁰⁾

In the civil covenant, citizenship may be gained either by birth or by legal naturalization. Those who possess citizenship are beneficiaries of certain blessings, but they are also placed under unique obligations. There is usually a public oath of allegiance administered to naturalized citizens, but the same oath-covenant is representatively binding on all citizens. They may be required to take a public oath at certain times, such as when they join the armed forces or when they are elected to public office, but the terms of the civil covenant (e.g., a constitution) are still binding on them, whether or not they verbally and publicly profess allegiance to it.

In the family covenant, the definitive covenantal act takes place when the officer of either church or State declares a couple legally married.⁽²¹⁾ Family allegiance by children to parents takes place representatively and definitively at conception. God deals providentially with individuals before their birth: "And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated" (Rom. 9:10-13). This is why parents become legally responsible for the protection of their children at conception, not at birth.⁽²²⁾

Progressive Allegiance

Covenantal allegiance is also progressive in church and State: covenant renewal continues as time passes. First, in the church: the Mosaic Covenant's acts of ecclesiastical covenant renewal were Israel's annual assemblies -- above all, participation in the Passover meal. In the church, taking Holy Communion is the act of formal covenant renewal. This publicly places the church member under the sanctions of the covenant, which is why Paul warned members of the church at Corinth that they must examine themselves -- exercise self-judgment -- prior to taking the communion meal (I Cor. 11:28).

Second, in the State: various acts of citizenship mark State covenant renewal, most notably the act of voting. Under Mosaic law, the public assembled to ratify the anointing of a new king (I Ki. 1:39-40; II Chron. 23). In short, individuals in their legal office as citizens ratify or sanction a leader or group of leaders. The civil covenant extends through history by means of these public acts of re-ratification. Citizens reaffirm their allegiance to the original civil covenant by formally sanctioning their leaders from time to time.⁽²³⁾ In many countries today, the adult male citizen's appearance in response to military conscription constitutes covenant renewal.⁽²⁴⁾

In contrast to church and State, there is no biblically sanctioned judicial act of covenant renewal for the family; only death, either covenantal or physical, breaks the marital bond.⁽²⁵⁾ Covenant renewal within the family is exclusively moral rather than judicial.⁽²⁶⁾ This is an important distinguishing feature of the family covenant from both church and State covenants. It points to different structures of authority, as we shall see.⁽²⁷⁾

Responsibility: Collective and Hierarchical

The biblical doctrine of collective responsibility is an aspect of the biblical doctrine of hierarchical responsibility. We need to ask: In what way?

We know that God brought judgments against nations under the Old Covenant; the testimony of the prophets is clear about this.⁽²⁸⁾ He also showed mercy to Nineveh because the entire city repented when Jonah preached. This raises an important question: Did God ever punish a collective group solely because of the sins of the group's rulers? The plagues of Egypt indicate that God did do this. The rigorous theocratic bureaucracy of Egypt brought the entire nation under the wrath of God. But at least with respect to the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn, God offered a way of escape to every Egyptian household: blood on the doorposts. That no Egyptian household took this path to life (Ex. 12:30) indicates that they all agreed with their supposedly divine political ruler. They did consent in principle to what the Pharaoh was doing.

There is another issue that we need to consider: limiting the State. Consider the biblical law governing the State's imposition of the capital sanction: "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin" (Deut. 24:16). This is a restriction on civil government. Were there any exceptions to this under the Mosaic Covenant? Yes: the military action known as hormah.

The Army of the Lord

There was at least one exception: the destruction of an especially evil enemy society during wartime. Hormah was the representative example, and named accordingly: a place set aside by God for total destruction.

And Israel vowed a vow unto the LORD, and said, If thou wilt indeed deliver this people into my hand, then I will utterly destroy their cities. And the LORD hearkened to the voice of Israel, and delivered up the Canaanites; and they utterly destroyed them and their cities: and he called the name of the place Hormah⁽²⁹⁾ (Num. 21:2-3).

Jordan concludes that this activity of total destruction was "a priestly act, issuing from the flaming swords of the cherubic (priestly) guardians of the land, a revelation of God's direct fiery judgment against the wicked. Not every city was to be destroyed in this fashion, but certain ones were, as types of the wrath of God."⁽³⁰⁾

Speaking of the city of Bashan, Moses said: "And we utterly destroyed them, as we did unto Sihon king of Heshbon, utterly destroying the men, women, and children, of every city" (Deut. 3:6). The same curse of death was placed on Jericho and on anyone who would rebuild its walls: "And Joshua adjured them at that time, saying, Cursed be the man before the LORD, that riseth up and buildeth this city Jericho: he shall lay the foundation thereof in his firstborn, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it" (Josh. 6:26) -- a prophecy fulfilled by Hiel: "In his days did Hiel the Beth-elite build Jericho: he laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his firstborn, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son Segub, according to the word of the LORD, which he spake by Joshua the son of Nun" (I Ki. 16:34).⁽³¹⁾ While this was not the normal rule of warfare (Deut. 20:14), it did apply in certain cases. The children of the enemy perished with their parents.

Israel became God's sanctioning agent against societies that had corrupted worship and morality. Israel in a sense became the military equivalent of the angel of death. When assembled for battle, they became a holy army engaged in holy warfare, meaning a war to impose God's negative sanctions in history.⁽³²⁾ So outraged was God against the Canaanites that He hardened their hearts, just as He had hardened Pharaoh's heart against doing good,⁽³³⁾ so that they would not seek peace with Israel. He wanted to judge them.⁽³⁴⁾

Joshua made war a long time with all those kings. There was not a city that made peace with the children of Israel, save the Hivites the inhabitants of Gibeon: all other they took in battle. For it was of the LORD to harden their hearts, that they should come against Israel in battle, that he might destroy them utterly, and that they might have no favour, but that he might destroy them, as the LORD commanded Moses (Josh. 11:18-20).

A Judicial Restraint on Civil Government

We return to Deuteronomy 24:16: "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin." This law was judicially binding within the land of Israel. Yet we know that in the case of Leviticus 4, the sin of the priest could bring God's sanctions against the whole people. Does this mean that the judicial restraint of Deuteronomy 24:16 applies to the civil government but not to God? I think this is the proper explanation.

Why does God refuse to bind Himself in history by this same judicial principle? Why does He reserve the right to enforce collective judgment against the publicly non-participating sons of law-breaking priests? First, because of the doctrine of original sin: in His eyes, all men stand condemned from conception forward. Only His special grace saves some people from eternal wrath. Thus, what protects mankind in general from God's wrath in history is His grace, i.e., His merciful self-restraint. This common grace is manifested by God in His extension of physical life to men in history. He therefore distinguishes between judicial guilt in His eyes and judicial guilt in the eyes of sinful civil rulers. As a testimony to God's common grace to all men, and also as a testimony to their own guiltiness before God, sinful rulers are to be restrained from executing civil judgment against those who are judicially innocent of public crimes. God, however, is not under a similar judicial restraint. Second, God knows that the sins of the civil and ecclesiastical rulers reflect the preferences of the people. In this sense, all citizens stand condemned, at least with respect to their private thoughts and acts. Public toleration of the rulers' particular sins is the result of the people's willingness to tolerate sin in the camp, in order to avoid similar public sanctions against their own sins. In short, they are not judicially innocent in God's eyes. He knows their hearts. Third, sinful civil magistrates need judicial restraints if righteousness, peace, and freedom are to be protected; God does not need similar restraints.

It is not that sons do not die for the sins of their fathers; they do. We all do. The doctrine of original sin teaches that all people die because of the representative sin of their father, Adam. Romans 5:14 declares: "Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come." Biblical law teaches only that the State is not to execute sons for the sins of their fathers. Yet even in this case, there was an exception in ancient Israel: sacrilege.⁽³⁵⁾

Ritual Cleansings

Was the sin of Leviticus 4 unintentional sacrilege? This does not appear to be the case, for it is difficult to imagine what unintentional sacrilege might be. Sacrilege is the crime in history; those who commit it do so with a high hand against God. Adam sinned wilfully (I Tim. 2:14). So did the people who told Aaron to build the golden calf (Ex. 32). So did Saul when he sacrificed the animal in Samuel's absence (I Sam. 13:9). So did Uzziah when he entered the temple to burn incense (II Chron. 26:19).

The atoning ritual requirements for the priest were specific: a bullock (young bull)⁽³⁶⁾ had to be slain and its blood used to wipe away the sin.

And he shall bring the bullock unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the LORD; and shall lay his hand upon the bullock's head, and kill the bullock before the LORD. And the priest that is anointed shall take of the bullock's blood, and bring it to the tabernacle of the congregation: And the priest shall dip his finger in the blood, and sprinkle of the blood seven times before the LORD, before the veil of the sanctuary. And the priest shall put some of the blood upon the horns of the altar of sweet incense before the LORD, which is in the tabernacle of the congregation; and shall pour all the blood of the bullock at the bottom of the altar of the burnt offering, which is at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And he shall take off from it all the fat of the bullock for the sin offering; the fat that covereth the inwards, and all the fat that is upon the inwards (Lev. 4:4-8).

The atoning ritual requirements of the congregation were similar, and the sacrificial animal was the same:

And if the whole congregation [Hebrew word: `edah] of Israel sin through ignorance, and the thing be hid from the eyes of the assembly [Hebrew word: qahal], and they have done somewhat against any of the commandments of the LORD concerning things which should not be done, and are guilty; When the sin, which they have sinned against it, is known, then the congregation [assembly -- Hebrew word: qahal] shall offer a young bullock for the sin, and bring him before the tabernacle of the congregation. And the elders of the congregation shall lay their hands upon the head of the bullock before the LORD: and the bullock shall be killed before the LORD. And the priest that is anointed shall bring of the bullock's blood to the tabernacle of the congregation: And the priest shall dip his finger in some of the blood, and sprinkle it seven times before the LORD, even before the veil. And he shall put some of the blood upon the horns of the altar which is before the LORD, that is in the tabernacle of the congregation, and shall pour out all the blood at the bottom of the altar of the burnt offering, which is at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. And he shall take all his fat from him, and burn it upon the altar. And he shall do with the bullock as he did with the bullock for a sin offering, so shall he do with this: and the priest shall make an atonement for them, and it shall be forgiven them. And he shall carry forth the bullock without the camp, and burn him as he burned the first bullock: it is a sin offering for the congregation (Lev. 4:13-21; emphasis added).

Congregation and Assembly

The question arises: What was the "whole congregation," and what was "the assembly"? Wenham argues that the congregation was a smaller body within the worshipping assembly. This smaller group possessed representational and legal functions. Thus, when the congregation had committed an unintentional sin, and the assembly later learned of this, the assembly brought the bullock as an offering.⁽³⁷⁾ If this thesis is correct, then there was an added degree of hierarchy in the relationship: priest, congregation, assembly. The assembly, the larger body, brought the offering for the sake of its representative body. Jordan sees it the other way around: the congregation [`edah] was the nation as such; the assembly [qahal] was the formal gathering.<sup>(38)</sup> He sees this gathering as primarily sabbatical.<sup>(39)</sup> I think he makes the stronger case. On this point, he has followed Rushdoony's lead: "Congregation has reference to the whole nation in its governmental function as God's covenant people. G. Ernest Wright defined it as `the whole organized commonwealth as it assembled officially for various purposes, particularly worship.'"⁽⁴⁰⁾

In either case, there was a unique covenantal link between the priest and the people, a link identified by the identical nature of the appropriate atoning sacrifices: a bullock. This covenantal link was judicially grounded in the designation of Israel as a kingdom of priests (Ex. 19:6). The high priest was a priest to the other priests; they in turn were priests to the priestly nation of Israel; and the nation of Israel served as priests for the entire pagan world.⁽⁴¹⁾ Thus, as Milgrom says, "The high priest assumes responsibility for all Israel."⁽⁴²⁾

Civil and Ecclesiastical Representation

In contrast to the priest, the tribal leader⁽⁴³⁾ who sinned unintentionally had to bring a male goat without defect for his offering (Lev. 4:23). The common man who sinned unintentionally had to bring a female goat without defect (Lev. 4:28). He could also bring a female lamb without defect (Lev. 4:32). The symbolism is obvious: masculinity under the Mosaic Covenant was associated in the civil covenant with rule, femininity with subordination.⁽⁴⁴⁾ In neither case -- civil ruler or citizen -- was a bullock an appropriate sacrificial animal, for the bullock was associated with priestly authority.

We have seen that the sin of the priest and the sin of the whole congregation were of similar consequence in God's eyes. Likewise, the sins of the ruler and the lone individual were comparable. The sacrificial link between priest and people indicates that the priest had sufficient representative authority for his unintentional sin to bring the people under God's negative sanctions. The civil ruler did not possess comparable representative authority.

What is indicated in Leviticus 4:1-3 is that there was a much closer judicial link between the priesthood and the covenanted society than there was between the civil ruler and the covenanted society. This is why we must conclude that the church was covenantally more important in Israel than the State was. The unintentional sin of the priest was treated by God as comparable to the unintentional sin of the whole congregation. The unintentional sin of the ruler was treated on a par with the unintentional sin of the average citizen.⁽⁴⁵⁾ Conclusion: the laxity of the priesthood regarding their personal sins threatened greater direct negative consequences for the citizens of Old Covenant Israel than the moral or judicial laxity of the civil authorities.⁽⁴⁶⁾

 

Corporate Sanctions and Authority: The People

This raises the question of the locus of authority for the initiation of corporate sins. Temporally and functionally, this infraction was initiated by the priests, who were in repeated contact with the holy implements of the tabernacle-temple. But the corporate nature of God's negative sanctions indicates that primary institutional responsibility lay elsewhere. The priests were legal representatives placed by God between Himself and His people. As representatives, they did in fact represent. A representative, judicially speaking, is legally the initiating agent, but this act must be sanctioned by those represented. His actions are to reflect the wishes of those whom he represents.⁽⁴⁷⁾ Their continuing consent is the basis of his authority. Thus, the priest was required by God to offer a sacrifice because of this representative infraction that he unknowingly had initiated.

The representative represents both God and society. If society does not bring negative sanctions against evil representatives, then God will. God delegates authority to the people to serve as His covenantally sovereign agents, meaning those who bring lawful sanctions in His name. If the people refuse to act as God's representatives, then He acts on His own behalf against both the rulers and the people. This covenantal threat is to serve as their motivation for imposing positive and negative sanctions against their rulers.

The Doctrine of Interposition⁽⁴⁸⁾

We see an example of this when Saul announced sanctions against his son Jonathan. The people intervened to prevent him from carrying them out. "And the people said unto Saul, Shall Jonathan die, who hath wrought this great salvation in Israel? God forbid: as the LORD liveth, there shall not one hair of his head fall to the ground; for he hath wrought with God this day. So the people rescued Jonathan, that he died not" (I Sam. 14:45). The word translated as "people" refers to a collective unit, such as a tribe. The army was in battle. This was not mob action; it was organized with the co-operation of the military commanders. They interposed themselves between Saul and Jonathan. The biblical text is clear: they rescued him.⁽⁴⁹⁾

Was this an act of rebellion? No, it was an act against rebellion. Saul was the rebel; the people interposed themselves in order to prevent an unrighteous act on the part of the king, their representative. It was the people who had called for a king (I Sam. 8); it was they who could lawfully interpose themselves between the king and his victim. On this occasion, Saul heeded their judgment.

The fact is, kingship in Israel was a product of the people's lawfully delegated authority under God. John Frame writes: "The kingship comes as God's response to a demand from the people. The people's motives in making their request were largely sinful (I Sam 8; cf. Deut 17:14; Judges 9), but God had planned to raise up kings for his people (Deut 17:14-20) and had given them in the law a proper method of choosing one. It is important to note that in Deuteronomy 17, the king is to be chosen by the people (v 15). As with the appointment of Moses and that of at least some of the judges, there is a human choice to be made. This choice certainly does not prevent God from playing a direct role in the selection process, but it does necessitate a human choice in addition to whatever role God may himself choose to play."⁽⁵⁰⁾ Again, "The kingship is both a charismatic office and a popular one: that is, both God and the people play roles in its establishment and continuance."⁽⁵¹⁾ The people have the legal authority to reject the leadership of a king (Rehoboam) "who will not rule according to their desires."⁽⁵²⁾

The Priestly Office

It is clear from Leviticus 4 and from many other texts in the Bible that those who are at greatest risk in relation to the imposition of God's covenantal sanctions in history are those who are the primary sanctioning agents of the specific covenant: the people rather than their covenantal representatives. We discover in this principle a fundamental rule of all biblical social authority: those who are threatened as the primary recipients of God's national covenantal sanctions are the society's primary sovereign agents. From him to whom much is given, much is expected (Luke 12:48). Again and again in the Old Testament, God's capital sanctions fell on the people rather than the kings and the priests.⁽⁵³⁾ This indicates that it was the people who possessed primary institutional authority, not their representatives. This is why Israel was a theocratic republic. The Bible's holy commonwealth ideal necessarily involves the establishment of an oath-bound civil covenant. In this civil covenant, the corporate people possess primary responsibility and therefore primary authority. In this sense, the republican ideal is biblical. Authority extends downward from God to the people and upward from them to their representatives. God validates rulers in the name of the people.

Modern democratic theory (popular sovereignty) is a secularization of this biblical holy covenant ideal (delegated sovereignty), in which the people exercised judicial authority under God because of the covenant they had made with God. The evils of democracy, familiar from Aristotle's era to today, are no worse than the evils of any other political system. The evils stem from an attempted divinization of the State, not from democracy as a political arrangement. Whenever the political order is viewed as beyond earthly appeal -- the divine right of politics -- politics will become progressively tyrannical, no matter which authority structure the State adopts: oligarchic, democratic, bureaucratic, or monarchical (today a defunct ideal).

The Door of the Tabernacle

The priest had to sacrifice a young bullock in order to turn back the negative sanctions of God against those who were under the priest's authority. These sanctions threatened not only the priest; they threatened that segment of the covenanted community under his lawful jurisdiction. The atoning sacrifice had to take place at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. "And he shall bring the bullock unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the LORD; and shall lay his hand upon the bullock's head, and kill the bullock before the LORD" (Lev. 4:4). The very place of sacrifice is designated by God as the congregation's tabernacle, i.e., a dwelling place. This was the place where God met the congregation. "This shall be a continual burnt offering throughout your generations at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the LORD: where I will meet you, to speak there unto thee" (Ex. 29:42). This was the dwelling place of God, but it was also the dwelling place of the congregation. Although the people were not allowed bodily into the presence of God, the furniture of the tabernacle symbolically represented them. The tabernacle was the place where the dual citizenship -- heaven and earth⁽⁵⁴⁾ -- of both man and God was publicly revealed. Covenant-keepers in history are not citizens merely of earth (Phil. 3:20), and God in history is King not merely in heaven. The whole creation is His kingdom, and to prove this, He brings His sanctions in history, both directly and representatively.⁽⁵⁵⁾

Sacrilege is the theft of God's property. This was Adam's sin, the primary sin in history. This sin was essentially priestly: a sacramental boundary violation. Adam's priestly sin extended downward to his heirs, bringing death. In a similar sense judicially, a priest under the Mosaic Covenant possessed delegated authority, thereby enabling him to place the covenanted community under God's condemnation. An unintentional sin committed by the priest was a greater threat than an unintentional sin committed by the king. Conclusion: the judicial link between the priest and the people was more binding covenantally in Israel than the link between the king and the people.

This is evidence that the church is more fundamental than the State in the political economy of the Bible. The church is central to society: not the State and not the family.⁽⁵⁶⁾ The family and the State have been more universal in time and place; neither has been central in history. It is the ancient error of natural law theory that has led pagan and Christian social theorists to assume that the geographical universality of family and State implies the social centrality of one or the other. On the contrary, the formal preaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments -- inclusion and exclusion -- are central in history because they are central in eternity. (Note: the word sacrament is derived from the Latin word sacramentum, a military oath of enlistment.⁽⁵⁷⁾ Sacraments are an aspect of point four of the biblical covenant model: oath-sanctions.⁽⁵⁸⁾) This does not imply that the institutional church is at the top of a single institutional hierarchy in society; no such single hierarchy exists. It does imply the institutional church is the most important institution in history, for the Bible calls it called the Bride of Christ. The Christian family and the Christian State are not so designated.

The atoning sacrificial bullock of both priest and congregation had to be slain at the door of the congregation, i.e., next to the altar itself, on the north side. It was not slain on the altar. It had to be dead before it was placed on the altar. The altar was the symbolic door to heaven. This door marked a fundamental boundary in Israel. To contain God's wrath and keep it from flowing from the holy of holies through the tabernacle's door to the people, the priest had to make atonement for his sin at the door of the tabernacle. Conversely, in order for the sin of the people to be contained outside the tabernacle, so that it would not invade the holy of holies, thereby forcing God to depart from the dwelling place,⁽⁵⁹⁾ the priest had to make an identical sacrifice for the congregation at the door of the tabernacle. The blood of the bullock was representational in both cases. It defended the integrity of the boundary between God and His people.

The Priestly Function

Priests lawfully control access to the public signs of eternal life: the sacraments.⁽⁶⁰⁾ The three priestly functions are these: 1) the formal, weekly, public proclamation of the message of eternal life; 2) the administration of the institutional monopoly of the sacraments; and 3) the imposition of church discipline, with the authority to deny a person access to the sacraments as its ultimate negative sanction. All three are representative judicial acts. What is formally announced by the church on earth, Jesus said, should be assumed by men to be judicially binding in heaven. "Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Matt. 18:18). The institutional church's power of excommunication is declarative -- as declarative as baptism and the Lord's Supper are.⁽⁶¹⁾ That is, formal excommunication represents God in history. This was Calvin's view of church authority; it was not some peculiar invention of Roman Catholicism.⁽⁶²⁾ This view is denied by those who adopt a nominalist definition of the Lord's Supper: a memorial rather than a judicially binding declaration in God's name that the participants are allowed in God's holy, judicial presence. This memorial view of the Lord's Supper leads to the transfer of primary social sovereignty either to the family or the State. It reduces excommunication also to the status of a mere memorial -- a sanction without much judicial clout. Whenever a church knowingly accepts excommunicated people as new members without investigating the reasons for their excommunication, it promotes the reduction of church sovereignty and its authority in society.

Tithes and Separation

The difference between the authority of a priest and the authority of the head of a non-covenantal organization can be seen in the differing methods of financing. The income of non-covenantal institutions is not mandated by God's law. The income of the church is: the tithe. This difference in financing is based on the presence of the sacraments in the church. The priest represents -- mediates judicially -- God and His people. He administers the sacraments in an organization that possesses the God-given authority to compel its members to tithe. The fact that modern churches are antinomian and pay no attention to the judicial theology that undergirds the tithe does not disprove the theology. It merely starves these churches financially.⁽⁶³⁾

The specified financial support of the priest in Israel was the tithe. The people tithed a tenth of their net increase⁽⁶⁴⁾ to the Levites; the Levites in turn tithed a tenth of their increase to the Aaronic priests (Num. 18:21-27). The Levites were entitled to the tithe because the people were not allowed to come near the tabernacle of meeting where the Levites labored (Num. 18:21-22). The existence of this boundary separated the Levites from an inheritance in land (v. 24).⁽⁶⁵⁾ Presumably, this same principle of sacramental separation governed the Levites' tithe to the priests. The even more rigorous barrier between the two areas of sacramental service -- the tabernacle of meeting vs. the holy of holies -- was the basis of the Levites' mandatory tithe to the priests. The Levites could legally not draw near to the holy of holies; they were required to tithe to those who could. The tithe is therefore grounded in a judicial principle: representation before the heavenly throne of God.

The tithe also proclaims an economic principle. The economic principle of the tithe is simple to state and readily understood: eternal life and access to the sacraments are not to be offered for sale to the highest bidder. Neither are church offices.⁽⁶⁶⁾ The monopoly position of the church with respect to the sacraments is manifested by the legitimate monopoly claim of the church to 10 percent of the net increase that God grants to individual church members. The judicial principle of the tithe is less readily understood: the existence of sacramental boundaries. The first boundary separates church members from non-members: only the former have lawful access to the sacraments. The second boundary separates the officers who administer the sacraments from unordained members. The mandatory tithe identifies the church as possessing a unique covenantal monopoly.⁽⁶⁷⁾ This is as true under the New Covenant as it was under the Old Covenant.

God's grant of monopoly sacramental authority to His church places the priest in a special intermediary position in between God and men. The sacraments are a means of bringing God's judgment into the midst of the assembly. The saints are sanctified -- set apart judicially -- and therefore they are subject to the ecclesiastical sanctions. The priest administers these sanction-producing sacraments. In ancient Israel, the whole nation was sanctified as a collective political and geographical unit; therefore, the sins of the priests threatened to bring the whole nation under God's negative sanctions. It was the Old Covenant church's sacramental function that entitled it to the tithe, beginning with Melchizedek (Gen. 14:18, 20). It was not, contrary to Rushdoony, the Levites' cultural services that were the basis of their support by the tithe. It was their sacramental office.⁽⁶⁸⁾

In the humanists' world of cosmic impersonalism, there is no priestly function except by, and in relation to, autonomous man. The priest is regarded as an intermediary between: 1) autonomous individual man and autonomous collective man; or 2) autonomous collective man and the cosmos. The priest may officially minister to mankind in the name of a god, however man or the cosmos is defined, but only in the name of the authority of the evolving species, mankind. Collective Man is the one true God.⁽⁶⁹⁾

The Quasi-Priestly Function

The biblical State, as a provider of life-sustaining services -- national defense and protection against domestic violence and fraud -- is also to be supported (and restrained) by the tithe principle: a publicly announced percentage (less than 10 percent)⁽⁷⁰⁾ of one's net income after tithes and offerings is to be taken by the entire State apparatus, bottom to top, in order to support its operations.⁽⁷¹⁾ The State must be limited in its claims because it, too, possesses a God-granted monopoly: the monopoly of violence. Such sovereign power is always placed by God within judicial and other boundaries. The State is not merely one additional institution among many, with its departments competing against other organizations on a free market governed by what economists call consumer sovereignty. (Biblically speaking, we should speak of consumer authority rather than consumer sovereignty, since the free market is not an oath-bound covenantal agency, and does not possess sovereignty in the biblical sense.) The free market offers open bidding for scarce resources. Most people perceive clearly that the courtroom decisions of a civil judge must not be governed by the free market's principle of "high bid wins."⁽⁷²⁾

Those who control access to the means of temporal life take on a quasi-priestly role. Society acknowledges this by placing judicial restraints on those who are in a monopoly position to sell the implements of life to the highest bidder, e.g., physicians. People somehow sense that biological life, like eternal life, should not be sold to the highest bidder by monopolists.⁽⁷³⁾ They perceive that the free market principle of "high bid wins" is sometimes a morally inappropriate pricing method.⁽⁷⁴⁾

For example, consider the case of a physician who stops to examine a critically injured victim of an accident. The victim is still conscious. The physician persuades the victim to pay him the monetary value of the victim's whole estate in exchange for emergency treatment. He even writes up a contract to this effect. The victim signs it. This conceptually voluntary transaction will not be upheld, either by a civil court or a jury of the physician's peers, nor should it. The physician could even be stripped of his legal right to practice medicine. The fact that this exchange of medical treatment for money was technically and legally a voluntary transaction between consenting adults is not given credence in the civil courts, nor should it be. The role of the physician as a healer has always militated against a purely free market, "high bid wins" approach to the provision of life-saving service, at least in emergency circumstances where only one supplier of healing services is immediately available to the patient. The grant of semi-monopoly status by the State to State-licensed physicians in the twentieth century was given on condition that the economic beneficiaries would not use this authority to strip patients of all of their wealth (just a lot of it on certain occasions).

That the buyers of medical services are called patients rather than consumers is indicative of the distinction between medicine and other occupations. A patient is someone who waits patiently, a characteristic feature of buyers of medical services. It is understood by all participants that buyers of medical services will be forced to wait -- to "line up" -- which is a universal feature of pricing systems that are not based on the free market's "high bid wins" principle. But socialism makes lines much longer by mandating fees that are too low to encourage a large supply of services.⁽⁷⁵⁾ This is why the imposition of medical price restraints retroactively by juries should be limited to life-threatening situations in which the victim had no opportunity to shop for a lower price. This ought to be a power rarely invoked; otherwise, the supply of conventional medical services will become artificially restricted by law.

A Growth Industry

The office of quasi-priest has become a growth industry in the twentieth century. There are today numerous candidates for the office of social redeemer, each with its own priesthood. The State is frequently regarded as the only legitimate candidate for savior of society, and therefore it is honored as an agency possessing a priestly function. Politicians and bureaucrats are its priests, and public school teachers are the Levites.

Psychology is often regarded as possessing redemptive (healing) power. The needs of the unconscious, either individual (Freud) or collective (Jung), have called forth a quasi-priestly response. Psychiatrists (M.D.'s) are the priests; psychologists (Ph.D.'s) are the Levites.

Trade unions for several decades were regarded by the public as agencies of social salvation. They are supported by a compulsory dues system that is in part governed by the tithe principle. Union leaders were long seen the priests; local organizers were the Levites.⁽⁷⁶⁾

Sports have been regarded by the public as a means of social redemption: in ancient Greece, in the Mayan culture, in England beginning in the early nineteenth century, and in the U.S. beginning in the late nineteenth century. Fans of soccer (football) in Europe become religious in intense loyalty. So do sports fans in other nations. Behavior that in ancient Rome was called Saturnalian -- lawless, irrational, sometimes violent -- is tolerated before, during, and after major games.⁽⁷⁷⁾ Athletes are the priests; today, television announcers are the Levites. Amateur sports are not supposed to be promoted in terms of free market pricing.⁽⁷⁸⁾ Professional athletics, however, are price-competitive, which means that they are not economically priestly. But because they compete with churches for attendance on Sunday, they do take on a priestly aspect.⁽⁷⁹⁾ It is revealing that professional basketball and football leagues in the U.S. try not to compete directly with the scheduling of those particular college sports from which they recruit their players.⁽⁸⁰⁾ This is especially true of American football, where collegiate games take place on Friday evenings and Saturday afternoons. Professional football games are usually held on Sunday, with one game per week televised nationally on Monday night. Professional football leagues care a great deal about infringing on amateur collegiate football games; they care nothing about infringing on public church worship. Neither do their fans.

There is generally only one international high priest in modern sports: the world heavyweight boxing champion, and only if becomes a celebrity.⁽⁸¹⁾ He engages in an activity that is designed to inflict physical injury. A boxer is allowed by law to kill his opponent in the ring with his fists. The heavyweight champion is the boxer who is most physically capable of killing someone in the ring. Professional boxers in some states in the United States are required to register their fists as lethal weapons. Outside the ring, they are not allowed to inflict physical damage on others, i.e, outside a sanctified boundary.⁽⁸²⁾ There are other would-be claimants to quasi-priestly authority, but they are price competitive, and therefore they cannot be regarded as priestly.⁽⁸³⁾

In the opinion of modern man, a priest possesses far less authority than a political ruler does. The priest does not exercise comparable visible power, and modern humanism is overwhelmingly a power religion. The State is visibly the most powerful single institution in modern society. Because of this concentration of visible power, the indispensable sacraments for modern man are political, the most basic of which is the exercise of the franchise: to provide legitimacy to the State. The church, in contrast, has little visible power. The suggestion that an ecclesiastical priest could somehow commit a private sin that might in some way bring those under his authority into danger, assuming this sin remains exclusively private, would be regarded as preposterous. It would not be a topic fit for serious public discussion.

The Authority of the People

The people as a collective unit exercised greater judicial authority in Mosaic Israel than the priesthood, who merely represented the people before God. It was the people who were derivatively sovereign under God, in both church and State, not their representatives. This should be obvious: the judicial function of representatives is, after all, to represent. The representative's judicial authority is based solely on his occupying a mid-way position between God and the covenanted assembly that he represents. God therefore held the people of Israel corporately responsible for the official actions of the priests.

This leads to an important covenantal conclusion: it is the moral character of the people that determines the public character and historical fate of society. The collective nation is represented in church and State by ordained individuals whose acts necessarily have covenantal consequences in history because of God's sanctions; nevertheless, it is the people who will receive the brunt of God's judgment, for it is they who possess greater authority under God.

If my thesis on the primary connection between priest and people is correct, then the fundamental political thrust of Old Testament covenant theology was toward theocratic republicanism: the political authority of formally covenanted citizens. In both church and State, the locus of institutional authority in Old Covenant Israel flowed upward: from the people to their legal representatives. The moral integrity of the ecclesiastical hierarchy was of greater importance for the survival of a biblically covenanted society than the political hierarchy's integrity was.

In church and State, those people who possess initiatory earthly authority -- church members and citizens -- are those who are under the formal jurisdiction of superiors who possess derivative authority: offcers. The officers' authority is derived from above -- God -- but also from below, i.e., those who are under their oath-bound authority. Those who are under the visible sanctions of these two covenantal institutions are those who are required by God to exercise institutional sanctions: positive and negative. Formal acts of covenant renewal periodically manifest this God-derived sanctioning authority of the people.⁽⁸⁴⁾ This is why there are no acts of covenant renewal for the family: there are no formal sanctioning powers held by those who are under the authority of the head of the household.⁽⁸⁵⁾ Authority is delegated downward by God to the head of the household, not upward from his wife or children.

Why the Family Is Judicially Different

It is important to note at this point that this system of republican representation was not (and is not) true of the family. The father was (and still is) the source of initiatory authority in the family. The reason for the difference between family authority and authority in both church and State is that the household unit of parents and children is temporary: adult sons leave the household of the parents in order to set up their own households (Gen. 2:24). Prior to their departure, the children are not held by God to be legally responsible agents. Thus, the representative character of covenantal authority must flow from the father, as the head of the household, to minor children, who are not legally independent agents. Sons in Israel became legally independent at age 20, when they became subject to the draft, i.e., military numbering (Ex. 30:13-14). Wives and those unmarried daughters who remained in their fathers' households did not obtain legal independence, as testified by the fact that their vows had to be sanctioned within 24 hours by the male head of the household in order to become legally binding before God; only widows could take a vow independently as heads of their household (Num. 30:9).⁽⁸⁶⁾

 

The Authority of the Priest

The priest who committed an unintentional sin brought the covenanted nation of Israel under the threat of God's negative sanctions. He had to sacrifice a bullock to atone judicially for this sin. Similarly, if the people as a covenanted nation committed an unintentional sin, the priest had to sacrifice a bullock to atone for their sin. Because the people could not know of a priest's sin, he had to guard himself carefully. Their ignorance was no automatic safeguard to them, any more than the ignorance of the 36 victims of the first battle of Ai regarding Achan's sin safeguarded them (Josh. 7:5).

The atoning sacrifice was killed at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation. This ritual barrier was a two-way barrier: keeping the polluting effects of the priest's sins contained inside the tabernacle until he could offer a sacrifice, and containing the pollution of the people's sin outside the tabernacle, so that God would not depart from the holy of holies. The doorway was the place of judgment, just as it had been on the night of the first Passover. It was the barrier against God's sanctions, just as it had been on the night of the first Passover.⁽⁸⁷⁾ This threat of God's departure accentuated the importance of boundaries. These boundaries could not be violated with impunity.

The Mosaic Covenant's sacrificial system announced that the integrity of the priests and the people regarding unintentional sins was of greater consequence in relation to God's negative covenant sanctions than was the integrity of the civil authorities. It is incumbent upon theologians, whether liberal or fundamentalist, who assert that there is no comparable relationship in the New Covenant era, to prove their case from Scripture.

The Social Atomism of Christian Individualism

Wenham's comment on the purification offerings is typical of the modern Christian mindset: an implicit denial of God's sanctions against the community as a result of an individual's sins. Wenham individualizes the New Testament meaning of the purification offerings. "For the NT writers it is the blood of Christ which cleanses from the defilement of sin. . . . Thus the cleansing from sin that was secured under the old covenant through the purification offering is effected under the new covenant by the death of Christ. Whereas in the Levitical laws it was the place of worship that was purified, under the new dispensation it is the worshipper himself."⁽⁸⁸⁾ Wenham makes his position inescapably clear: the threat of God's negative sanctions today is aimed solely at the individual Christian.

Lev. 4 makes explicit that sin defiles the sanctuary: it makes it impossible for God to dwell among his people. Though Israel was still the chosen people, when it sinned it no longer enjoyed the benefits of God's presence (cf. Exod. 32; Lev. 10; Num. 14, etc.). In a similar way the Christian is warned not to "grieve the Spirit" (Eph. 4:30) by sin. God's presence is now mediated by the Holy Spirit indwelling the believer (Eph. 2:22); that is why Christ's death has to purify our "conscience" or "heart." There is the continued threat in the NT that sin can drive the Spirit from the believer just as under the law God could be driven from the tabernacle. The Christian is told to walk in the Spirit and be filled with the Spirit (Gal. 5:25; Eph. 5:18).⁽⁸⁹⁾

There is no suggestion in his comments on this passage regarding the threat of corporate sanctions. He clearly does not believe that there is any such threat, despite Revelation 2 and 3. This is a shared assumption of modern Christianity and modern humanism. The problem with this internalizing of the New Covenant's ethical concern is that it assumes that the national covenantalism of the Old Testament is no longer judicially binding or relevant. The national sanctions supposedly no longer apply. God does not threaten to depart from a nation, since He supposedly never establishes any unique judicial presence in a nation.⁽⁹⁰⁾ God apparently establishes covenants only with individuals.⁽⁹¹⁾ This individualistic view of God's covenants is basic to the pietist-humanist alliance.⁽⁹²⁾

Wenham rests his case for the New Testament's internalization of ethical concern with a two-step argument: 1) in the Mosaic era, the polluting effects of sin were geographical rather than personal; 2) in the New Covenant era, the situation is reversed. He is incorrect on both points. First, in Old Covenant Israel, both the individual and the place of worship were polluted by sin, which is why God threatened to leave the sanctuary. This threat was made not merely because of the pollution effects of sin geographically; it was the pollution of individuals within the geographical boundaries of His national covenant (Deut. 8:19-20). Both the individual and the place of worship were cleansed by the offering.

Second, on what New Testament basis can we say that this two-fold effect of sin and purification is not equally true today? Surely within the church the same effects of moral pollution continue, which is why God threatens negative sanctions. "And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God; I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth" (Rev. 3:14-16). This is the New Testament era's equivalent of the land's spewing-out process in the Mosaic Covenant: "Ye shall therefore keep all my statutes, and all my judgments, and do them: that the land, whither I bring you to dwell therein, spue you not out" (Lev. 20:22). The land was said figuratively to serve as God's sanctioning agent: "That the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you" (Lev. 18:28).⁽⁹³⁾ This warning regarding the previous inhabitants of the land was a variation of Deuteronomy 8:19-20: "And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the LORD thy God, and walk after other gods, and serve them, and worship them, I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish. As the nations which the LORD destroyeth before your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would not be obedient unto the voice of the LORD your God." There was a close relationship between individual sins and corporate judgment: if the community did not collectively offer ritual atonement, God promised to act against the family, city, tribe, or nation as a whole.

It could be argued that this relationship between minister and people holds only for the institutional church, but this line of argumentation refuses to deal with the question of national covenants under God, which are to be the result of the Great Commission: "Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen" (Matt. 28:19-20). Nations are to be baptized. They are to be brought formally and publicly under God's covenant sanctions.⁽⁹⁴⁾ The Great Commission is opposed to Christian individualism.⁽⁹⁵⁾ It is also in direct opposition to the modern humanist concept of political pluralism.

 

The Moral Atomism of the Enlightenment

We now come to the application of all this to the field of political economy. The following material is too important to consign to an appendix, yet it is complex. For those unfamiliar with Western political theory, it will be difficult. It will seem out of place in a chapter on the purification sacrifices. Nevertheless, what I have argued so far has been preparatory for this delayed exercise in applied theology. The biblical concept of corporate responsibility, imbedded in the purification sacrifices, has extensive implications for political theory, which in turn affect economic theory. Later in this commentary I will begin to draw out the positive implications of Leviticus for biblical political economy.

Before we get to these passages, however, we must recognize a crucial fact: the Bible is at war with the Enlightenment. For developing a systematically biblical political theory and biblical economics, a full understanding of this statement is crucial. The problem is, Protestantism, especially Anglo-American Protestantism, has been heavily influenced by the Enlightenment. What I call the right wing of the Enlightenment, also known as the Whig tradition, has been unhesitatingly absorbed into Protestant political theory, beginning in the late seventeenth century. Thus, very few Protestant evangelicals are aware of the degree that they have been compromised by the presuppositions of the Enlightenment. They have repeatedly used the formative ideas of the Enlightenment's right wing to challenge the Enlightenment's left wing. This dependence on the categories of the right wing has undermined their commitment to biblical judicial categories. This has weakened the case for Christianity. For example, Christians rarely understand that Darwinism is a product of the Enlightenment's right wing, not the left wing. The doctrine of evolution through natural selection is an extension into biology of the Scottish Enlightenment's concept of social evolution: society as the product of individual human action but not of human design.⁽⁹⁶⁾ They do not understand the terms of surrender to the Enlightenment, terms which they have virtually all implicitly signed in their legal capacity of voters: the substitution of Enlightenment contractualism -- agreement among equals -- for biblical covenantalism, which is an agreement among men under God's authority, law, and sanctions.⁽⁹⁷⁾ It was this shift from covenantalism to contractualism that transformed New England Puritanism into Unitarianism, beginning in the late eighteenth century.⁽⁹⁸⁾

Western social philosophy for over three centuries has been a systematic attempt to replace a covenantal interpretation of all three institutional governments: church, State, and family. Yet this biblical model is inescapable; it is built into the creation (Gen. 1:26-28). Furthermore, because Western civilization was self-consciously Christian until the late eighteenth century, its political theory has always been colored by the categories of Christian theology. Thus, in order to maintain intellectual continuity between the past and contemporary culture, the opponents of covenant theology have had to substitute a series of theoretical alternatives to the categories of the biblical covenant -- sovereignty, hierarchy, law, sanctions, and continuity -- but with autonomous man as the new source of political order.

Giving a "Push" to Autonomous Man

In the second half of the seventeenth century, secularism outside of political philosophy made its initial appearance: in science,⁽⁹⁹⁾ ethics,⁽¹⁰⁰⁾ and economics.⁽¹⁰¹⁾ (Machiavelli a century earlier had already performed this service for political philosophy.) The heart of this new worldview was its rejection of teleology. Teleology views whatever exists as the result of a design. It sees the world as being pulled toward something. The ultimate "something" that the world must not be moving toward, implicitly asserts modern humanist man, is the day of final judgment. This anti-teleological outlook is comprehensive in its denial of final causation: not a trace of such causation can be admitted to exist anywhere in the universe.

The new science of the West from Galileo forward systematically rejected the medieval and classical Greek doctrines of final causation.⁽¹⁰²⁾ Scientific causation denied temporal "pull" and affirmed temporal "push" as the exclusive form of physical causation. Physicist Fred Wolf summarizes the Newtonian outlook: "For every effect, there had to be a known cause. For every cause, there had to be accountable effects. The future, therefore, became a consequence of the past. It seemed there was little anyone could do to alter the world. Even our thoughts were to be explained somehow by Newton's machine."⁽¹⁰³⁾ All of modern science has been premised on this anti-teleological faith, but this did not become clear in the biological sciences until Darwin's Origin of Species (1859).⁽¹⁰⁴⁾

Science today "modestly" and agnostically affirms its procedures as being so narrowly circumscribed that the scientific disciplines are incapable of leading men to any legitimate conclusion regarding the inherently unscientific thesis that history is moving toward God's final judgment. This is another way of saying that God's final sanctions are scientifically irrelevant -- unverifiable, transcendent, and transhistorical -- because they are beyond measurement by scientific techniques of investigation. The scientific discussion of cosmic origins and eschatology (i.e., the Big Bang and the heat death of the universe) is conducted in terms of discussions of processes and rates of change that either exist today or else can be inferred by means of evidence interpreted in terms of today's rates of change (i.e., uniformitarianism). This is how modern science attempts to transform the transhistorical and personal into the historical and impersonal. Modern scientists conclude that there can be no final causes in nature, only prior causes. This viewpoint regarding final causation has in fact defined modern science for over three centuries. Quantum physics has gone a step farther, however: to begin to deny causation altogether.⁽¹⁰⁵⁾ God is not mocked!

This modern scientific model has greatly influenced Western historical thinking. Cause and effect in history are said to be exclusively historical: events in the past have alone made the present possible. Some event must happen in the present in order to make possible something specific in the future. Nothing happens in the future that makes the present possible, nor does any force in nature propel nature toward a predestined future. There can be no predestined future until such time as man is capable of predestinating it. Man subdues nature (including himself)⁽¹⁰⁶⁾ in a supposedly contingent, chance-dominated universe that is somehow governed by scientifically absolute laws.⁽¹⁰⁷⁾

Ethical Effects

This "push, not pull" view of causation has had a revolutionary effect on ethics. Because the new science rejected the scientific legitimacy of final causation in nature, it also repudiated as scientifically useless any concept of a God who intervenes historically in the cosmos in terms of positive and negative sanctions based on ethical standards. Ethics was understood to be grounded on the doctrine of the autonomy (self-law) of man; science officially has nothing to say about ethics. Thus, the more authority that the scientific worldview has gained in men's thinking, the less that ethics has been said to be relevant to the affairs of man. The denial of final causation was the cause; ethical relativism was the effect. Wrote A. D. Lindsay in 1943: "The new sciences which came into being in the seventeenth century and have gone on growing in prestige ever since began with a repudiation of final causes. That repudiation is the denial of the authority of ethics in science. The new sciences were as energetic as the new politics in denying the supremacy of morality."⁽¹⁰⁸⁾

The rejection of final causation and all ethical authority based on final causation was only part of the new science's paradigm. Lindsay continued: "The scientific revival of the seventeenth century not only repudiated final purposes. It revived atomism."⁽¹⁰⁹⁾ This scientific atomism, with physics as the model, then reshaped political theory. "When men are regarded as objects of scientific inquiry so conceived, they are regarded as atomistic individuals, not as personalities. Society is regarded as analysable into a collection of independent, isolable, alike atoms."⁽¹¹⁰⁾ This is the humanistic philosophy of cosmic impersonalism. It leads to the adoption of the perverse definition of the individual that Arthur Koestler attributed to Communism in his novel on Stalin's purge trials of the late 1930's, Darkness at Noon: one million men, divided by one million.⁽¹¹¹⁾

If carried to its logical conclusion, which few scientists have been willing to do in public, this seemingly neutral assertion regarding the nature of cause and effect denies the possibility of personal responsibility and human freedom, except insofar as it is tempered by an appeal to dialecticism or irrationalism.⁽¹¹²⁾ The ethical implications of such a deterministic cosmology have not been universally perceived, but over the last three centuries there has been a steady erosion of confidence in the decision-making ability of individuals and a steady increase in the denial of personal responsibility.

The Enlightenment's Two Wings

The Western tradition of political and moral philosophy since the late seventeenth century has been divided between two rival wings: left-wing Enlightenment thought and right-wing Enlightenment thought. The second tradition is more self-consciously individualistic and contractual. The defenders of both Enlightenment traditions base their speculations on a hypothetical contract among men that created the political community in the past. The right-wing Enlightenment saw this compact as requiring voluntary acts of renewal from time to time, or at least implicit formal acceptance, in order to provide legitimacy to the civil order. Standard histories of modern political philosophy usually begin with either Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan (1651) or John Locke's Second Treatise of Government (1690). The origin of this worldview is at least two centuries earlier: the humanism of the Renaissance. Nisbet's summary of Renaissance individualism goes right to the heart of the matter: the rejection of Christianity.

What the humanists did wish to serve, as their lives and writings make plain enough, were the power and wealth of the princes around them and a conception of religion that is highly subjective and individualistic. The individualism that is to be seen in the flamboyance, cultivated eccentricity, bravado, and diverse color of the Italian Renaissance can be seen in different but related form in the preoccupation with self and the innumerable states of consciousness of self. Rarely in history has there been an age comparable to the Renaissance -- not only in Italy but in France and other parts of the West -- in its dedication to the individual and the most individualistic types of thought and conduct. . . .

We must not overlook what is central here: the erosion of the sense of religious community. It does not matter that the Renaissance may be associated in our minds with some of the most vital and creative qualities of mankind, not to mention literary and artistic works of boundless importance. We are concerned with the fate of the Christian community during this early-modern period. And we can hardly escape the conclusion that everything serving the interests of the secular and the subjective, no matter how brilliant and lasting in the history of Western culture, was bound to militate against that communal and corporate conception of Christianity born of Augustine which became the very cornerstone of medieval civilization.⁽¹¹³⁾

Both Hobbes and Locke began their speculations with the assumption of the autonomy of the individual. Each author created a self-consciously hypothetical history in which autonomous men in a hypothetical state of nature met together and voluntarily transferred a portion of their authority to the king, as representative of the body politic.⁽¹¹⁴⁾ In this Enlightenment political tradition, authority moves upward, from the citizen to the representative. An individual in the pre-political state of nature was supposedly originally sovereign: possessing the autonomous power to establish the civil covenant. He voluntarily delegated political authority to those above him. Statecraft in this view is ultimately grounded in the sovereign will of individuals, who in turn maintain the political order through obedience to their representatives. These representatives do not in theory need to be elected, although ever since Locke, democratic theory has predominated in the West. The people are regarded as sovereign -- possessing power to originate the civil covenant -- and not just bearers of primary authority within the civil covenant.

Left-wing Enlightenment thought, which is conventionally dated with the publication of Rousseau's Social Contract in 1762 -- a book that had very little influence in France or anywhere else during lifetime and for at least two decades thereafter⁽¹¹⁵⁾ -- has been overwhelmingly collectivist, but Rousseau also began with a hypothetical history that grounded politics in the acts of autonomous men. In his Essay on Inequality (1755), he stated clearly that all previous political philosophers had felt it necessary to offer a theory of the state of nature, yet not one of them, he insisted, had discovered it. Rousseau recognized the cause of their difficulty: the Genesis account of the origin of society. "[I]t is clear from the Holy Scriptures that the first man, having received his understanding and commandments immediately from God, was not himself in such a state; and that, if we give such credit to the writings of Moses as every Christian philosopher ought to give, we must deny that, even before the deluge, men were ever in the pure state of nature; . . ."⁽¹¹⁶⁾ He then chose to ignore Moses by adding the classic foundational statement of the hermeneutics of hypothetical history: "Let us begin by laying facts aside, as they do not affect the question."⁽¹¹⁷⁾ Western political man has been laying the Mosaic facts aside ever since.

Rousseau, in distinction from Locke, equated the general will of the post-"state of nature" society with the decisions of enlightened national rulers of a post-revolutionary era, not necessarily with a temporary political majority. Modern totalitarianism is an outworking of Rousseau's theory of the general will: the collective, unified will of all men in society as it would be able to manifest itself if there were no intermediary institutions and loyalties between the citizen and the central political order.⁽¹¹⁸⁾ If men were allowed institutionally to be the social atoms that they are in principle, Rousseau taught, their general will would manifest itself exactly as it does in the will of the rulers. Nisbet is correct: Rousseau "saw goodness in popular will only to the extent that it had become liberated from all possible influences of traditional society. For Rousseau, the general will could exist, and could be invariably right in its judgments, only when its wielders, the people, had become purged of all social and cultural influences stemming from family, local community, guild, church, or other social elements. It was indeed this aspect of the matter that rendered Rousseau's doctrine of the general will the single most revolutionary doctrine in the history of political thought. Popular sovereignty was, as we observed, for Rousseau a means of permanent revolution in the social order."⁽¹¹⁹⁾ Few ideas have been more productive of evil in the modern world.⁽¹²⁰⁾

Enlightenment Thought and Corporate Responsibility

It is easier for those in the left-wing Enlightenment tradition to acknowledge some concept of corporate responsibility than for those in the right wing. By adopting some version of Rousseau's general will as manifested in the decisions of the civil rulers, they have been able to equate civil government with the collective will of the people, meaning people bound together only in their capacity as citizens -- the only legitimate form of corporate bonding in the view of the left-wing Enlightenment.⁽¹²¹⁾ The decisions of the rulers are said to be in fact the decisions of the collective people.

Those in the right-wing Enlightenment political tradition have historically been more ready to deny the possibility of corporate responsibility, for such a concept seems to be at odds with the individualistic tradition. This was especially true of political philosophy prior to the appearance of late-nineteenth-century Darwinian political thought.⁽¹²²⁾ Atomism in right-wing Enlightenment thought allows for legitimate multiple bonding based on criteria other than political order as such. It therefore allows pluralism; indeed, it requires it.⁽¹²³⁾ Atomistic individuals must not be prohibited by the State from making contracts among themselves even if these contracts are not inherently political, although contracting individuals are necessarily under an overall political jurisdiction.⁽¹²⁴⁾ Unless a contract explicitly says otherwise, contracts are regarded as enforceable by the State. So, even in the right-wing Enlightenment tradition -- except for the anarchist tradition -- politics remains the common bond among the various secondary bonds.⁽¹²⁵⁾ Political power is honored as the final court of appeal, the social order's ultimate sanctioning mechanism.

Both wings of the Enlightenment therefore acknowledge some version of corporate responsibility. This responsibility is interpreted in terms of a worldview that assumes that the political universe is self-contained, meaning that mankind is politically autonomous. Both wings see contractualism as the ultimate foundation of social order: an original political contract (Hobbes and Rousseau), multiple economic contracts (Adam Smith), or implicit social contracts (Edmund Burke). In Enlightenment political theory, contractualism replaced covenantalism. The Enlightenment rejected biblical covenantalism's doctrine of responsibility: individual and corporate moral responsibility under a sovereign personal God who establishes fixed moral standards (boundaries) and who also brings sanctions in history -- blessings and cursings -- in terms of these standards.⁽¹²⁶⁾ In short, the Enlightenment rejected Moses, both as historian and law-giver. Modern evangelical Christian social theory rejects the continuing authority of Mosaic civil law. Thus, evangelicals have adopted Enlightenment social theory, baptizing it. This has been going on for three centuries.

Adultery in High Places

Mosaic law specifies that unintentional sins of ecclesiastical officers can have consequences for the life of the collective nation. In contrast, the Renaissance-Enlightenment tradition denies the idea that the exclusively private sins of rulers can have any visible effect on society in general. Of course, all branches of this tradition would freely acknowledge that there can be national repercussions if a ruler has a mistress who happens to be a spy or the carrier of a venereal disease. However, few, if any, would acknowledge that there will be corporate repercussions if a ruler has a disease-free secret mistress who is never discovered, or whose relationship with the ruler is suppressed by the press,⁽¹²⁷⁾ assuming that he is not paralyzed by sexual guilt (which modern rulers never seem to be). The discussion of the public effects of a representative's private immorality would be limited, in the Renaissance-Enlightenment tradition, to considerations of such things as psychology, politics, medicine, and the military.⁽¹²⁸⁾

The issue here is private intentional sins, not unintentional sins. If the public dismisses such obviously intentional sins as if they were the equivalent of unintentional minor infractions, God's corporate negative sanctions will come in history. Modern humanism's social ethics relegates private ethics, especially sexual ethics, to the realm of adiaphora: things irrelevant to the public good. The fornicators and adulterers who formulate social ethics prefer to dismiss such matters. The public has begun to think of sexual sins as irrelevant, i.e., of less concern than even unintentional sins. The old disdain for adultery attributed to the British upper classes has become nearly universal: "Do anything you wish in private, but don't disturb the horses."

Earlier in this chapter I wrote that "even a minor sin committed by a priest (though not the civil magistrate) threatened the whole community." A major private sin -- a high-handed sin -- by a civil ruler does threaten the whole community. The covenantal question is this: Does the community acknowledge the known sin as major, taking steps to place negative sanctions on the ruler, or at least pray that he depart from his wicked ways? If not, the community is threatened. It has treated a major sin by a civil ruler as if it were an unintentional sin by a priest. In fact, this is the very conclusion of rebellious priests, who say nothing in public against the known sins of the ruler. The priests thereby become the civil ruler's accomplices. God then applies negative corporate sanctions.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

President John F. Kennedy's stream of adulterous trysts, conducted almost daily, has long been treated by the intellectuals and the press as somewhat amusing, or at least as nothing really serious. In contrast, Rev. Martin Luther King's numerous adulteries are mentioned only briefly, and only by serious historians who are professionally compelled to be faithful to "the historical record."⁽¹²⁹⁾ King's major biographer puts it euphemistically: "Unfortunately, Martin King, as a small number of close friends knew, had certain compelling needs that could not be satisfied within a `very high-level relationship.'"⁽¹³⁰⁾ But he does say "unfortunately."

Liberal intellectuals' reticence to dismiss lightly King's compulsive adultery is evidence that they take King's priestly role (1956-68) very seriously. They understand that King's priestly function was basic to his role: not in his capacity as an minister of the Christian gospel, but in his capacity as high priest of the civil rights gospel. They understand that his repeated adulteries in some way do retroactively tarnish his reputation and his office. They regard the cover-up by his associates as a necessary evil, but nonetheless evil.

When King's friend, colleague, and successor Rev. Ralph David Abernathy devoted two pages to King's two sexual liasons the night before he was assassinated and five pages to an admission of his adulterous behavior, in a book of 620 pages, he was attacked by leaders of the black community.⁽¹³¹⁾ He had done this apologetically, dismissing King's sins as comparatively minor: "Sexual sins are by no means the worst. Hatred and a cold disregard for others are the besetting sins of our times, but they don't sell books or tabloid newspapers -- and that's the reason why people have talked about Martin's failings and left the flaws of some others alone."⁽¹³²⁾ The fact that the Mosaic law authorized the victimized spouse to demand the public execution of both adulterers⁽¹³³⁾ is not taken seriously by modern liberals or modern conservative Christians.

Covenantal representation has corporate consequences. King set the unofficial pattern for the civil rights movement. An active participant in that movement, socialist author Michael Harrington, reminisced years later: "Everybody was out getting laid."⁽¹³⁴⁾ But no respectable social analyst dares to suggest a connection between King's politics, his theology, and his adultery. (Also ignored is the aftermath of the sexual debauching of white female civil rights volunteers by black and white members of civil rights' movement in the 1960's: radical feminism.)⁽¹³⁵⁾

President John F. Kennedy

Kennedy was the most flagrant adulterer in Presidential history, committing adultery daily whenever his wife was away, and sometimes when she was not. One of his many consorts was a known Mafia moll.⁽¹³⁶⁾ He used her to get the Mafia to fund part of his 1960 campaign for the Presidency.⁽¹³⁷⁾ Only after Kennedy was elected did J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), intervene to get Kennedy to keep the woman away. This, however, did nothing to stop members of the U.S. Treasury Department's Secret Service, assigned by law to protect the President's life, from bringing girls to him through a tunnel system under the Carlyle Hotel in Washington.⁽¹³⁸⁾ It did not stop Kennedy and his brother-in-law, minor Hollywood actor Peter Lawford, from administering a dangerous drug, amyl nitrate ("poppers"), reputed to increase sexual excitement, to a pair of young women on Kennedy's staff, each of whom was a regular partner for him.⁽¹³⁹⁾ Reporters knew about his use of prostitutes and other women, just as their predecessors had known of Franklin Roosevelt's adulteries, but they covered up the story, just as their predecessors had.⁽¹⁴⁰⁾ When the Mafia moll's book appeared in 1977, the mainline reviewers either ignored it or panned it.⁽¹⁴¹⁾ But times were beginning to change. There had been articles in the conventional press two years earlier on a few of his adulteries.⁽¹⁴²⁾ It was the Mafia connection that seems to have bothered them; adultery by a President was not a shocking story by 1977. Only in the late 1980's have the two Kennedy brothers' adulteries with the actress ("sex goddess") Marilyn Monroe surfaced in the conventional press.⁽¹⁴³⁾ Even in 1991, the author of the book that reveals these stories (with documentation) did not use the words "adultery," "affairs," or "sex" in the index. The reader has to look up the passages through substitute words: "Mafia," "Campbell" (the moll's maiden name), or "Lawford." Kennedy had money, charm, and power; the fact that he was morally debauched is still regarded as secondary. The liberal intelligentsia loved him. So did the press.

God imposed negative sanctions: on Kennedy on November 22, 1963, and on the United States for the next seven years.⁽¹⁴⁴⁾ Within months of his assassination, American society began its descent into the most tumultuous and culturally disastrous seven years in its history. The Beatles arrived from England ten weeks later, launching the counter-culture. They seemed harmless and rather cute; what followed in their wake culturally was anything but harmless and cute. Simultaneously, the Vietnam War began to escalate. Less than a year after Kennedy's death, the first violent student protests began at America's most prestigious taxpayer-funded university, the University of California, Berkeley. They spread across the nation. The drug culture appeared in 1965. Occultism arrived with it. So did widespread sexual debauchery among students. From 1964-1970, the United States was torn apart. Every institution, every traditional belief came under attack. It ended in May of 1970, when the Ohio National Guard killed shot and killed four students at Kent State University, a minor academic institution. Campus protests ended; the school year was nearly over in May. The protests did not resume that fall. The turmoil ceased. But in the aftermath of this era came great disillusionment: a widespread loss of faith in the older, optimistic, can-do technocratic liberalism whose most eloquent public defender had been John F. Kennedy.⁽¹⁴⁵⁾ This faith has never returned.

The old slogan -- "If a man will cheat on his wife, he will cheat on anyone!" -- is no longer taken seriously by social philosophers and political commentators. Liberal columnist Jeff Greenfield writes: "All the historical evidence suggests that an individual can be a terrible husband and father and a very good president (Franklin Roosevelt for one)."⁽¹⁴⁶⁾ (Whenever you read the word "all" applied to historical evidence, you are reading theology, not historiography.)

This Enlightenment view of ethical cause and effect is so widespread that even self-proclaimed defenders of biblical religion have accepted it. Consider National Review magazine. From its founding in 1955, this became the single most important magazine of American conservative political opinion, especially in the early 1960's, when it had almost no competition. In 1992, it published an article on adultery and political leadership. The author insisted that "the evidence is overwhelming that whether a man or woman has had an extramarital affair tells us nothing of his or her ability to be a good and moral leader." He cited as proof the careers of Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, the latter two committing adultery "with numerous women."⁽¹⁴⁷⁾

King was not a political leader, never holding political office. He was, however, a representative figure: priestly rather than kingly (in this case, no pun intended). He was a lifelong plagiarist⁽¹⁴⁸⁾ and a theological liberal: an ordained Baptist minister who betrayed his sacred trust both theologically and sexually.⁽¹⁴⁹⁾ He died in 1968 as John Kennedy had died: by an assassin's bullet.⁽¹⁵⁰⁾ Conservatives do not need to be reminded about the legacies of the other two men: Roosevelt's statist New Deal (1933-45) and Kennedy's War in Vietnam, coupled with Keynesian budget deficits.

King Edward VII

Another example is Edward VII (1841-1910), Queen Victoria's son, who was England's king, 1901-1910. He was a notorious adulterer, known unofficially as Edward the Caresser. The whole nation knew that Mrs. Keppel was his mistress. He was also extremely popular. His mother disapproved of him and his life style; the people did not. George IV, ninety years earlier, had also been a notorious adulterer, but the evangelical movement was highly critical of him. This hostility carried well into Victoria's reign. Thackeray's 1861 lecture, "George the Fourth," was an attack on the king and his court, as well as a defense of moral purity.⁽¹⁵¹⁾ This outlook had changed radically by the end of Victoria's reign. Debauchery was fast becoming a way of life among the nation's intellectual leaders.⁽¹⁵²⁾

In 1909, Edward VII capitulated (needlessly) to the Liberal Party's demand that he use his power to force the House of Lords to give up the veto over the Commons' plan to raise taxes. The Lords were then forced to accept this abdication of power by the King's threat to add new Lords who would vote his way.⁽¹⁵³⁾ The budget passed in 1911, the year after the King's death. This was the most important political event prior to World War I in the advent of socialism in England.

When Edward VII died in 1910, according to historian Barbara Tuchman, "There was a general sense as of an anchor slipping away and of a recognized order of things gone. People somehow felt that the familiar royal bulk had stood between England and change, between England and outside menaces. . . . When he died people expected times would now get worse."⁽¹⁵⁴⁾ Times did. World War I broke out four years later. This was the beginning of the end for England's empire. The "royal bulk" had represented the public drift's into adultery, and the nation had loved him. God's negative sanctions came soon.

Power moved steadily over the next decade into the hands of the Liberal Party leader David Lloyd George, another notorious adulterer -- a man, in Tuchman's phrase, of strong political principles but no scruples.⁽¹⁵⁵⁾ His Welsh constituents loved him. He served in the House of Commons for an incredibly long term: from 1890 to 1945. His "Limehouse" speech in 1911 remains a classic statement of the politics of envy.⁽¹⁵⁶⁾ Lloyd George had led the successful fight in Commons in 1908 to create a government old age pension program. In 1909, he led the fight for the "people's budget," which the Lords opposed. The budget established national health insurance. It passed in 1911. As the Conservative Minister of War, he established the "war socialism" controls system. As Prime Minister in 1919, he was determined to punish Germany with the Treaty of Versailles, which in turn led to the Second World War. He almost took England to war with Turkey in 1922. This cost him the Prime Minister's office. He later became a staunch advocate of that period's Keynesian economics (the details kept changing every few years), campaigning in 1929 for a huge public housing program.⁽¹⁵⁷⁾

The New Conservatism

The judicial issue here is the question of the private sins of civil rulers -- sins that become public knowledge. Modern liberalism dismisses this relationship as nonexistent. Increasingly, so do modern conservatives. Conservative William Saffire in 1994 wrote a column defending columnists and reporters who publish information that is damaging to politicial candidates and political appointees. A few weeks earlier, he had published material that had led an appointee to remove his name from consideration.⁽¹⁵⁸⁾ Saffire discused what is off-limits to such investigations. The only thing he mentioned as being off-limits is a person's sexual activities. "Sex lives should be `over the line,' but business records, previous public service, speeches and writings should be sifted and examined closely."⁽¹⁵⁹⁾ The message is clear: business connections are important as indicators for honest public service; adultery is not. This essay was published a few weeks after a conservative reporter published sensational findings about alleged sexual infidelities by President Clinton during his years as Governor of Arkansas -- infidelities supposedly arranged and then covered up by policemen on the state's payroll.⁽¹⁶⁰⁾ The media's response was to accuse Brock of being a homosexual -- ironically, an exposé based on sex, not on the accuracy of his report. The media's other major response was to avoid the story, if possible.⁽¹⁶¹⁾ But no conventional conservative journalist is willing to write what the editor of a Calvinist weekly news magazine wrote: "Leadership has everything to do with trust -- and a man whose wife can't trust him has no business asking the electorate to trust him for a minute."⁽¹⁶²⁾ This is no longer widely believed.

The author of the National Review essay insisted that "I am a religious person devoted to the Ten Commandments. . . ."⁽¹⁶³⁾ But he is clearly not devoted to the laws of the Old Testament, which authorized the victimized wife of an adulterer to demand the death penalty for both her spouse and his consort (Lev. 20:10).⁽¹⁶⁴⁾ He warned his conservative readers: "This preoccupation with sexual sins has had many unfortunate consequences -- both for religion and for the people influenced by it. . . . And, now, it is helping to undermine the choosing of appropriate leaders." He was quite clear on this point: "In choosing public leaders, public actions and speech are what count most. . . . Whether they [civil leaders] condone infidelity is a matter of public concern. Whether they are faithful is a matter between them, their spouses, and their God."⁽¹⁶⁵⁾ In short, do not worry about electing an adulterer, even one who commits it with a new woman (or women) on a daily basis (as Kennedy did), just so long as he hides what he is doing behind the rhetoric of marital faithfulness. Elect hypocrites. God will do nothing about it in history, assuming the Mafia is not involved. This is the governing worldview of modern humanist politics, both liberal and conservative: the Enlightenment view. (When I wrote a brief letter of protest to the National Review, a journal for which I used to write, I received a standard rejection form card: sorry, not enough space.)

One year later, another conservative intellectual journal published an article by Prager critical of homosexuality. He wrote that Western civilization is at stake: the purity of family life.⁽¹⁶⁶⁾ Yet he also called for laws decriminalizing homosexual acts in private affairs, although not for public displays.⁽¹⁶⁷⁾ Once again, we see the intellectually debilitating effects of smorgasbord ethics: a little of this, a little of that, but always at man's discretion. By internalizing and privatizing sexual sins -- removing them from the public arena -- Prager believes that we can save Western civilization. Just so long as sexual sins do not become public matters, God supposedly will not bring negative corporate sanctions. Politically conservative humanists and conservative religious advocates want sinners to remain in their closets: deviant-behavior closets to match the fundamentalist Christians' prayer closets, closets supposedly equally invisible and equally impotent politically. But this dream of closeted sin is nonsense. Sinners are not merely demanding the judicial liberty to sin in their closets; they are demanding social acceptance.⁽¹⁶⁸⁾ Prager knows this: ". . . social acceptance is precisely what gay liberation aims for. . . ."⁽¹⁶⁹⁾

What is even more startling is the response of Richard John Neuhaus to this homosexual demand for acceptance. Neuhaus was formerly a theologically liberal Lutheran cleric, and is today a Roman Catholic priest. He is also a well-known neo-conservative scholar -- today, perhaps the number-one "in-house" priest of the neo-conservative movement. The National Review published his long review of a pro-homosexual book written by a homosexual who claims to be "a monogamous, churchgoing Christian" in a supposedly lifelong sexual partnership with another man. Neuhaus proclaims: "Much of what they presumably feel for each other -- the comforts of companionship, the mutual bearing of burdens, their shared devotion as Christians -- is undoubtedly a good thing. We can and should rejoice in it."⁽¹⁷⁰⁾ That a Roman Catholic cleric could write such ethical and theological nonsense, and a formerly Roman Catholic-oriented conservative journal should publish it, testifies to the extraordinary moral darkness of my era.

Homosexuals do not reproduce. They recruit. There is an inescapable competition for bodies and souls: homosexuals vs. heterosexuals. If the homosexuals should win this competition, the human race will end unless test-tube babies should become a cost-effective reality. This is not just a war over civilization; it is a war over the survival of the human race.

There is no ethical neutrality. This is why there can be no judicial neutrality. Ultimately, the sinner (like Satan) is not asking for equal rights, equal time, or equal acceptance. He or spiritual heirs will eventually demand dominion: the exclusion of rival views.

Then God's negative corporate sanctions will come, if not sooner.

Transmission Belts

Combining half of the dualistic epistemology of Kant (the phenomenal realm only)⁽¹⁷¹⁾ with the organizational theory of Lenin,⁽¹⁷²⁾ modern social thought assumes that there must be institutional transmission belts in order for the private sins of rulers to have social consequences. These transmission belts must in principle be traceable by means of systematic techniques of investigation. That is, if videotapes or other records of the particular chain of events were available to investigators, these investigators could explain the historical results in terms of specific historical records. God, of course, cannot be videotaped; he is "outside the loop." The very concept of a "chain of events" is indicative of this humanist mindset.⁽¹⁷³⁾ Any aspect of the sinful life of a ruler that could not in theory be traced through such historical records is not regarded as historically relevant to society. Put another way, the only historically significant events are those that can conceivably leave historical records, even if actual participants do not leave them in particular situations.

In short, no modern discussion of politics would begin with the suggestion that there can be negative sanctions brought against the nation as a whole as a result of the private sins of national rulers, assuming that these sins have no physical, informational, or judicial connection to the society. To discuss such a possibility necessarily would involve the consideration of a supernatural sanctioning agency that is above and outside the society. This supernaturalism means that a covenantal organization's representative is responsible upward to God and not just downward to the people. Such discussions would be considered improper, not just intellectually but even aesthetically. They would involve a breach of social etiquette. The modern world has thoroughly internalized the Enlightenment's worldview. American Church historian Sydney Ahlstrom has announced this universal principle of interpretation: "Providence cannot be invoked as an explanatory principle. Supernatural sources of insight or knowledge can not be claimed; . . ."⁽¹⁷⁴⁾

Modern social thought has nevertheless transferred judicial sovereignty to numerous representative agencies, just as the ancient world did and the medieval world did. There is no escape from the covenantal doctrine of representation and hierarchy. The primary difference between the modern world and the preceding worlds is the doctrine of the autonomy of man. Mankind is now regarded as independent of any personal forces in history other than those created by other men. Apart from mankind's own efforts, the only historically significant influences in man's environment supposedly are impersonal biological and environmental forces. This is modern man's doctrine of cosmic impersonalism.

Sacramental Priesthood and Civil Congregation

The Old Covenant's system of sacrifices was based on man's need to atone for his sin. Adam broke his covenant with God. He violated his implicit oath of allegiance to God by disobeying the covenant's stipulations. Adam acted as a representative judicial agent for all mankind. Co-responsibility for Adam's sin is inherited from Adam; therefore, every person begins life at conception disinherited by God. Only adoption by God can overcome this automatic legal condition. The mark of adoption in the Abrahamic Covenant was circumcision; in the New Covenant, it is baptism.

Adam's rebellion made mandatory a system of blood sacrifices in order to reconcile God and man. The fourth category of Israel's sacrifices, purification offerings, involved unintentional corporate sins, either representatively or collectively (assembly and congregation), and therefore the threat of negative corporate sanctions.

The Bible places primary institutional authority on those who are primarily threatened by God's negative sanctions in history. In civil government, primary authority is lodged in the congregation: the corporate, judicially sanctified people who publicly covenant under God (Ex. 19). The people delegate authority to civil officers. This is why the Bible establishes a theocratic republic as the ultimate model for civil government. Kings came later (I Sam. 8). They departed in the twentieth century.⁽¹⁷⁵⁾

If we follow Kline and argue that God no longer imposes predictable corporate sanctions in history,⁽¹⁷⁶⁾ then we will find it very difficult -- I would say impossible -- to identify authoritatively the God-ordained locus of primary authority in civil government: king, legislature, judges, or people. Such a view of God's historical sanctions -- the triumph of operational indeterminacy -- makes impossible the development of an exclusively biblical standard for Christian social theory,⁽¹⁷⁷⁾ Christian economics, and Christian political theory. It is because God threatens predictable negative corporate sanctions in history that He delegates to individuals, churches, families and civil governments the judicial sovereignty to impose sanctions in his name, so as to avoid having to impose them more directly. On Kline's basis, it is not possible to identify who is at greatest risk of God's negative sanctions in history. Without a concept of God's predictable sanctions in history, it becomes impossible for Christians to use the Bible to correctly identify covenantal sovereignty and the loci of authority within this sovereignty. This is why Kline's doctrine of God's humanly indeterminate sanctions in history becomes the theological foundation for pluralism, both intellectual and political. It transforms the ideal of Christendom into a heresy.⁽¹⁷⁸⁾ Kline understands this; so do his published disciples.

While the Levitical sacrifices have been annulled (Heb. 9), the principle or representational authority revealed by the reparation offering has been in force since Adam's covenant. Through Adam death entered the world (Rom. 5:12). The obedience of the Pharaoh of Joseph's day brought God's corporate blessings on the Egyptians. Similarly, the rebellion of the Pharaoh of the exodus brought God's corporate cursings on the Egyptians. While the Israelite sacrificial system has been annulled, the principle of corporate responsibility and representation has not been annulled. Such corporate responsibility was manifested by the law of the purification sacrifice, not inaugurated by it.

Priesthood and People

The required sacrifices of Leviticus 4 reveal a tighter judicial link between priest and people than between king and people. The priest sacrificed a bullock for his sin. A bullock also atoned for the sin of the congregation (vv. 14-15). Civil rulers and private citizens brought lesser sacrifices. The civil ruler brought a male goat (vv. 22-26). The individual brought a female goat or lamb (vv. 27-35). This indicates that the congregation was sacrificially closer to the priesthood than it was to the civil ruler. The congregation possessed primary authority in civil government because the threat against them was great; hence, the more holy the required sacrificial animal. The king operated by the authority delegated to him by the congregation (I Sam. 8). His required sacrificial animal was less holy -- less associated with priestly sacrifice.

This tight covenantal relationship between sacramental priesthood and civil congregation still exists. God expects men to honor it. Nothing