The Vision and Promise of the Torah
Opponents of the idea of a Christian Nation often attack the idea by finding some teaching in Christianity that supposedly disproves the notion. They will say things like, “rendering unto Caesar” (Matthew 22:20-22; Mark 12:14-17) proves that the earthly political and heavenly spiritual powers are opposed, as Caesar (a stand-in for all human governments) was and is not Christian. Thus, governments will always oppose Christ and His Church, while the Christian must take an anti-imperial stance. Legions of books have been written in an attempt to theologically disprove the idea of a Christian Nation from a Christian perspective.
However, other opponents draw upon the sordid legacy of nationalism in the modern era, warning that the political form of nationalism is dangerous. They argue that nationalism, by its nature, nationalizes all of life, transferring ownership and operation of private life to the national government. This would not only include economic life, but especially religion, and thus, nationalism would result in the nationalization of Christianity. This, in turn, would reduce Christianity to a civil religion at best, or idolatry at worst. American and Christian identity would be merged, and the state would turn into a god with its political and earthly aims (victory, prosperity, honor) replacing the heavenly and eternal purposes of Christianity.
German Nationalism
To add historical weight to these concerns, critics of the idea of a Christian Nation invariably turn to Germany in the 1930s. The ideological and political movement of National Socialism first wooed the German Church and then corrupted it through syncretism and racial philosophies. The lessons we are to learn, supposedly, are not only that Christianity must be kept separate from national politics, but that nationalism itself is suspect.
A less pedestrian and more sophisticated account of the problems of combining Christianity and nationalism comes in either the Hegelian or Voegelinian flavors. For Hegel, the height of political existence was the nineteenth-century Prussian nation-state, which, in its perfect hierarchy, order, and function, represented the long arc of God’s providential movement to overcome all contradictions and antinomies. In Hegel’s obscure vernacular, history would be complete when the objective and subjective mind of the Spirit reached the “Absolute”—subjective thought thinking its objective self. This act of self-determination represented true freedom, and its outward manifestation would be the State, which would provide a true understanding of ethical life. Here, religion and politics would be perfectly fused into an undifferentiated organic whole.
For Eric Voegelin, in his New Science of Politics (1952), the political history of the Middle Ages and the Modern period have been the history of the re-divinization of the political. St. Augustine’s City of God and City of Man had created a division between heaven and earth. But starting with the twelfth-century Italian monk, Joachim of Flora, Augustinian political theology began to be reversed. Flora divided the history of the world into three periods: the Age of the Father, the Age of the Son, and the Age of the Spirit. We now live in the Age of the Spirit, which is primarily characterized by Gnosticism—the search for esoteric and hidden knowledge as the key to life and salvation—and what Voegelin called the “immanentization of the eschaton.” This was man’s attempt to bring God down from the heavens, to breach the immanent-transcendent divide, and to establish the millennium on earth. The result is politics baptized by religion and the heavenly made earthly.
Starting from Genesis
While one can understand the perspectives of Hegelian idealism, Voegelinian philosophy, and German nationalism and the fears they engender, this approach is modern and myopic. A better place for Christians to begin if they want to think well about nations throughout history is with Genesis. Genesis 1-11 is a literarily beautiful and theologically dense portion of scripture. While most Christians either read it as history or mythical origins or mine it for doctrinal insights, the stories in these texts are advancing a specific political theology.
The story of God’s creation of the world and then of Adam and Eve in the Garden does not clearly set forth a political ideal, and some even question whether politics was present in the Garden or would have been necessary if Adam had not sinned (depending upon how you define the political). While there are good reasons not to surrender politics to the early modern view that politics is a necessary evil and concession to man’s sin, I will not pursue that debate further here.
After Adam and Eve are cast out of the Garden, the world plunges into deepening spirals of rebellion against God and wickedness against each other. Cain, a farmer who works the land, brings a sacrifice to God but is rejected, while his brother Abel, who is a shepherd, brings a meat sacrifice that is accepted. Cain seems to be doing what God commanded of Adam and Eve, to cultivate the land and have dominion over it (Genesis 1:29), while Abel has shed the blood of an animal to sacrifice to God—something God never commands and which he only concedes to after the flood (Genesis 9:2-3). Thus, it is understandable why Cain is angry at his brother, yet his reaction is to kill his brother in his anger, even after being warned by God not to do evil (Genesis 4:6-7).
Cain’s murderous violence leads to increasing violence and bloodshed in the world. By the time we reach Genesis 6, we are told that “the Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind had become great on the earth.” How wicked? “Every inclination (intention) of the thoughts of their minds was only evil all the time” (Genesis 6:5). There is no stronger way to express the depths of man’s depravity. The pre-flood world was a world of anarchy: each man did what was right in his own eyes, leading to a state of nature of the strong oppressing the weak, and violent heroes imposing their will upon others. There was no political stability or justice that came from civilization or good government. There was only chaos, the will to power, and violent domination. Accordingly, God initially decides to destroy all of mankind and the whole earth, but then has mercy because of Noah’s righteousness.
After the flood, the saving of Noah and his family and the animals, and the renewal of God’s covenant with man in Genesis 9 (although with many additions and concessions to human wickedness), we come to the story of the Tower of Babel. There in Shinar (i.e., Babylonia), we see a host of men, all speaking the same language, who decide that they want to make a name for themselves. This was the desire to overcome death by becoming so great in the memories of men that the name and legacy of the men of Shinar would live forever. It was also an attempt to conquer the world and to conquer heaven. God had told Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiple; after his sin, God scattered Cain (but he resisted and instead built a city, Genesis 4:17). Here we see men resisting God’s desire for them to spread across the earth in order to fill it with life and fruitfulness; instead, they intentionally build a magnificent city in order not to be scattered.
Babel is a story of man’s idolatry and rebellion against God, of man’s resistance towards God’s original purpose for them, and of pagan imperialism and self-reliance. Thus, between the Garden of Eden and the calling of Abraham, scripture presents two extremes of human existence: anarchy, chaos, and bloodshed before the flood on the one hand, and tyrannical imperialism, self-reliance, and pagan idolatry on the other hand—the anarchy of the state of nature versus the tyranny of imperialism.
At this point in the narrative, there is a glaring problem: mankind has not found a way to live in peace and justice outside of the Garden. The question readers are supposed to ask is, how are men supposed to live in a way that is pleasing in God’s eyes and does not end in either violent bloodshed or imperial slavery? The call of Abraham provides the answer.
Abraham and the Nations
It is not by accident that Genesis 12 follows Genesis 11, as God’s calling of and covenant with Abraham is meant to be contrasted to Babel’s arrogance and the pre-flood confusion. In the anarchic violence before the flood, each man sought to make his name great. In the imperial hubris of Babel, all the men collectively sought to make their names great. Yet when God calls Abraham, his promise to him is that “I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing” (Genesis 12:2). God will make Abraham’s name great, and this will not only be a blessing for Abraham and his descendants, but for all the peoples of the world. God is not against the greatness of men, but he must accomplish it in his way and time. Not incidentally, the greatness of men will come through God’s design for the nations.
When God confused the language of the men of Shinar, he scattered them throughout the world. This effectively created distinct peoples grouped by language and region. Yet these peoples were lost and did not know the God who had created the world. In contrast, when God calls Abraham, he made the following promise: to “make you into a great nation/people (גּוֹי), and I will bless you … so that all the families (מִשְׁפְּחֹ֥ת) of the earth may receive a blessing through you” (Genesis 12:2-3). God’s promise to Abraham was not merely to make his name—his individual name and family name—great, but that God would raise up a people or nation through Abraham’s descendants. This nation, then, would be a blessing to all the other families and peoples of the earth.
When read in contrast to Genesis 6 and 11, the conclusion is clear: in contradistinction to anarchy and lone heroism on the one hand, and imperialism and slavery on the other, God’s desire was that his people would form a nation, and that through this national and ethnic entity, God’s blessings would come to all the nations. The scattered people of the post-Babel story will be saved by a godly nation. Instead of the nation being anti-Christian, it is, in fact, a central element of God’s covenantal plan for the salvation of the world.
The word for “nation” in Hebrew, גּוֹי (gôwy), is the same as the word for “people”; this is also the case for the Greek ἔθνος (ethnos). Modern minds conditioned to associate the “nation” with the geopolitical entity of the “nation-state” must disabuse themselves of this relationship in order to understand what the scriptures are teaching us. God is first and foremost calling Abraham as a people, and his descendants would eventually form the nation of Israel. While this nation was ethnically descended from their forefather Abraham and the other patriarchs, Exodus tells us that a “mixed multitude” came out of Egypt at the time of the Exodus (Exodus 12:38). From the Mosaic law given at Mount Sinai, we know that many foreigners and sojourners who were not ethnically Hebrew were part of the people of Israel who wandered in the wilderness and eventually inherited the Promised Land.
This is not to say that ancient Israel was a diverse, multicultural society—an obvious and facile falsehood. But it raises the question about what, in essence, constitutes a nation or people. In short, there are five characteristics: ethnic relations (family and kin), language, religion, land, and law (or custom). Not all of these are to be weighed equally. Arguably, language, religion, and custom are the most critical. While a specific and constrained physical location is necessary if these people want to gather and constitute themselves as a self-determined political entity, the fact that a people can retain their national identity during diasporas proves that land is not as important (although one should never discount it). Likewise, ethnic homogeneity is an important principle for peoples and nations, but it is not ironclad; those who are not blood relatives can be assimilated and grafted in, granted that they accept the language, religion, and customs of the people as they live together in the land. This is what we observe with foreigners in ancient Israel.
From the time of Israel’s exodus from Egypt until she entered Canaan (forty years of wilderness wanderings), she was a people without a land—she was a nation, but not a ‘nation-state.’ Thus, God’s promise to make Abraham into a great nation, and to bless all the nations of the earth through him, was not a promise to political nation-states, but to all the different people groups throughout the world who spoke different languages, practiced other religions, lived in faraway lands, held unique customs, and were descended from distinct bloodlines. While these myriad people groups invariably formed city-states, political commonwealths, and empires according to their national distinctives, the emergence of political entities was an accidental development that grew out of a national self-conception.
A Holy Nation
After God delivered the Hebrews from the slavery and imperial dominance of Egypt and brought them to the foot of Mount Sinai, Moses went up on the Mount and received these words from God: “You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt and how I lifted you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. And now, if you will diligently listen to me and keep my covenant, then you will be my special possession out of all the peoples (הָ֣עַמִּ֔ים), for all the earth is mine, and you will be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation (ג֣וֹי)” (Exodus 19:4-6).
The promise that Israel would be a holy nation (i.e., set apart) was not a claim to pride or exclusion. Instead, Israel was to be holy as an example and light unto the other nations. In Deuteronomy, with the renewal of the covenant as the people stood on the cusp of entering the Promised Land, Moses reminded the people that God had given the people the Law so that they might obey and “because this will testify of your wise understanding to the people who will learn of all these statutes and say, ‘Indeed, this great nation is a very wise people.’ In fact, what other great nation has a god so near to them like the Lord our God whenever we call on him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as righteous as this whole law that I set before you today?” (Deuteronomy 4:6-8).
God made Abraham’s descendants into a great nation, and he gave the Law to Moses and to the Hebrew people as a holy nation, so that all the other nations might come to know and worship God through them. God’s design and plan to make his name great, to redeem his creation, and to save the nations happens through both the natural association of peoples as nations, and God’s holy covenant with the Hebrews. God’s grace does not destroy nature, but perfects and completes it; God does not denigrate nations, but instead he makes them, calls and delivers them to himself, and perfects them through merciful love and obedience.
The story of Israel as a holy nation does not end here, of course. The inheritance of Canaan is hopeful and victorious, but soon turns disastrous. The chaos of the period of the judges will signal the need for kingship and order. The story will continue in part two.
