Almighty Matters

God's Hidden Politics in the Bible

Berry

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781498234221
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Almighty Matters: God's Politics in the Bible explores the underlying politics of the Hebrew and Christian Bibles by uncovering their political-theological connection in a single story line. The politics of the New Testament completes the politics of the Old. Although it has long been recognized that the Hebrew Bible prominently portrays the political development of God's Chosen People, the role of Jesus as a politician, the founder of a movement aimed from its beginning at subverting and capturing the Roman Empire, has not been recognized. Putting the Hebrew and Christian Bibles' political approach foremost shows why so much of it is hidden and why, until recently, Jewish-Christian relations have been contrary to God's design.

Part I

The Hebrew Bible

This is the story of God and his agents creating a religion among a biologically related group of people. They then create a political state. The government of this chosen people is located in a land assigned by God. God and those who speak in his name direct the politics of the Israelites. In this ancient world, where there is religion there must be a government, and where there is a government there must be a religion. There is no separation of religion (church) and government (state). They are one. Thus, the establishment of the Hebrew religion has to aim at the establishment of a political state. We begin our political analysis with the Torah—the Five Books of Moses: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The political history continues from First Samuel through Ezra. From patriarchal origins, through bondage in Egypt, to wanderings and conquest of the Promised Land, the Israelites prosper. Alas, Hebrew history does not end well—divisions, defeats, occupation, exile, more occupations, and their state extinguished. Corrupt and incompetent political leaders, not God, are to blame.

The reader must note that the Hebrew and Christian Bibles will be treated at face value. Both theologians and historians have agreed that there are clear contradictions, discrepancies, and chronological errors in them. They will not intrude here. We will look for common political themes, events, and facts in an analysis that does not depend on questionable biblical statements. Thus, it is not necessary to treat every word in the Bibles as a God-given fact. It is, however, necessary to treat the Bibles as genuine portrayals of the historical course of two religions and of two very different politics.

chapter 1

Creation: Who Has the Power?

As the cliché goes, let us begin at the beginning.

Actually, God must be present before the beginning. God must know who he is—what capabilities he has as God. The Hebrew Bible illustrates these capabilities, which have many facets or aspects.

The first aspect is somewhat obvious. He has the ability to do great things, creating great things both in nature and in shaping his subjects’ behavior. In short, he has power. A god that has no power cannot be God. He—gods tend to be males, although goddesses also exist—must be able to have a decisive impact on history. A god that cannot do anything, command anything, or plan anything is no god at all. God’s power, therefore, comes from no one else or no other source. His will is the source of his power. He can create anything that he contemplates.

Second, God can make others believe that he is God. Having a God presumes that there are others who are not God—those who are prospective followers and believers. And if these others do not believe that God is God, what is the point of being a god? Where is the power? Nowhere. The others will have no idea about the source of the things that they experience. Worse, they will attribute to something or somebody else what God has done.

God will acquire followers. To get others to believe in him, God will speak to them, telling them of him and his power. They will listen, of course. But what would make them listen?

Well, God will back up his words with proof. God will demonstrate that when he tells them that he will do X, X happens. They will witness X. Words and compatible actions are potent proof that he exists and has great capabilities.

But God will not do everything by himself, because to do so will diminish his power. The others, his followers, without any power are mere playthings. They don’t have to think about anything or do anything. Most importantly, they don’t have to honor God. Worse, they have no choice in obeying God or not. God would be in total control. God’s followers need some measure of free will. To be seen as a great God, he needs for them to choose him, celebrate him, and do his will with their will. And God will find helpers.

God will recruit agents—leaders who will follow him and get others to do the same. As long as the believers have a will of their own, that will is to be shaped and maintained in God’s favor. Although God can do everything himself, that is no challenge. And it is a lot of work. Others need to help. Being God is an ongoing process, not a one-shot affair.

This means that God will give followers rules to live by. God has standards and others have to abide by them. They need help, and providing rules for them will certainly help them become God’s people. Yes, those who follow God are, by definition, God’s people. Now rules are all well and good, but rules aren’t worth much if there are no rewards for following them or punishments for disobedience. For this reason, God fashions rules so that they bring benefits if followed and costs if not. Furthermore, the more people who follow God and his rules, the better. This will marginalize other so-called gods, making God supreme. God’s team is the biggest, the most powerful. This power, more than anything, validates God as God.

One can only conclude that God in the Hebrew Bible fits the bill. This is good news for the Hebrews.

Power is a key concept in the realm of politics.

The Hebrew founding fathers fashion a creation story that endows the people chosen by that all-powerful creator as embodying, representing, and employing the creator’s power. They publicize, eventually in the Hebrew Bible, what they hear God tell them—that he created heaven and earth. Believing that God created the heaven and earth and all that dwells upon it compels believers to conclude that God owns what he has created and has authority over its residents. Their rent, as occupiers of God’s creation, is their devotion and obedience to the Almighty. Not being a theologian, I can clearly understand that this set of beliefs becomes the foundation for God’s covenant with his people and why creation is a central belief in the three Abrahamic religions. As Professor Michael Walzer expresses in his book, “God was Israel’s king; Israel was God’s vassal or servant nation.”1

The key point in our story is this: The Hebrew Bible relates the history of a people who firmly believe God commands that they establish a religious state. They must rule themselves. Rule by an alien means that that ruler has another god or gods and will enforce wrongful worship. Political and religious unity is mandatory. And with God on their side, these people are bound to be politically spectacular and ever successful.

There is a flaw in this logic, however, as I will analyze when reviewing the collapse of the Jewish state, but the belief that their God is the powerful creator and helper sets the stage for the entire Hebrew history. It also sets the stage for the necessity for God via Jesus to create a Christian state by subverting and capturing the Roman Empire.

The connection between power and politics is intimate. Politics includes all the activities and ideas for and about leading a group. The components of politics are numerous: defining group membership, establishing the rules for selecting leaders and making laws and policies, providing law enforcement, adjudicating disputes, providing services to the group, conducting ceremonies, creating symbols, defending the group, and working with other groups. These activities and ideas associated with them all require power, with power defined as the capacity to gain compliance. Groups and group leaders need it to create all the political components listed above. For example, groups need a process to select leaders, which must be (or at least should be) complied with, and the leaders selected need group members to comply with duly created laws and judicial decisions. Anarchy—life without governing power—is like a vacuum that nature abhors. Without political order, as Thomas Hobbes writes in Leviathan, life will be poor, nasty, brutish, and short—a war of all against all. This means that the leader or leaders of a group must have supreme power. There cannot be two sovereign (supreme controlling) governments for one people. If there are, then who are the people to obey? Won’t the two governments struggle to gain supreme power? And that will create a Hobbesian state, with all of life’s attendant problems.

There are many ways to exercise power: physical force, intimidation, enculturation, persuasion, and social pressure; the Bible, as we will examine, illustrates all of them. Life for humans, whose social nature is mandatory, cannot exist without the reality of power—and thus without politics.

Religion is designed to be a unifying force in politics, but inevitably results in being a divisive force in politics as well if there are disputes about religion within a religion or between competing religions. As I have noted above, a set of religious beliefs designates who represents God’s power. This means that competing religious beliefs inevitably produce more than one belief regarding who should have power, especially in an era before the strictures separating church and state. As Hobbes notes, competing sources of power raise the question of who is in charge of the group. Disobeying the competing source of power, as noted, brings social disorder. The resulting conflict has costs related to security, welfare, and economic production. As we trace the history of the Hebrews, their push for religious unity seeks political unity and all the benefits that come from social order. Alas, there will be religious disunity at times, with all the ills that it brings.

Religion and politics rarely mix calmly, whether within a group or between groups. A strong case can be made that the origin of the problem lies with the creation story in Genesis. Power is the central issue here as well. Those who are not the chosen people have power, too, embodying, they believe, the ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Part One: The Hebrew Bible
• Part Two: The Christian Bible
• Bibliography