{"id":8983,"date":"2024-02-09T07:52:33","date_gmt":"2024-02-09T02:22:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/09\/its-about-holding-powers-to-a-higher-standard\/"},"modified":"2024-02-09T07:52:33","modified_gmt":"2024-02-09T02:22:33","slug":"its-about-holding-powers-to-a-higher-standard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/09\/its-about-holding-powers-to-a-higher-standard\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s about Holding Powers to a Higher Standard"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Here\u2019s what I think about something and I don\u2019t care if you think I\u2019m wrong.<\/p>\n

One of the things that I find fascinating about the Old Testament is how the power of the king was kept in check<\/strong> (at least theoretically). A king\u2019s word wasn\u2019t automatically law. A king\u2019s will was not automatically the will of God. Rather, a king was held to a standard higher than and outside of himself.<\/p>\n

That external standard is two-fold: the covenant stipulations given to Moses<\/a> (Torah<\/strong>) and the word of the prophets<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Concerning Torah<\/strong>, it gets a bit tricky, because the most explicit reference to the king\u2019s subjection to Torah is in Deuteronomy 17<\/a>, though presented as the words of Moses (as is the rest of Deuteronomy), probably reflects a later situation\u2014namely the late 7th century and the time of King Josiah.<\/p>\n

But still, I don\u2019t think that the idea of the covenant made by God with the people through Moses was a new idea in the 7th century, but rather was part of Israel\u2019s self-understanding for much longer that gets \u201ccodified\u201d later.<\/p>\n

Concerning the prophets<\/strong>, they weren\u2019t predictors of a far distant future time, but conduits for the will of God for very present problems, often focused on the abuse of power by kings or priests.\u00a0So think of the prophets as part of this check on power.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s tricky here is that the prophets rarely (ever?) appeal to the Torah for support when calling kings to account\u2014which is one reason why modern biblical scholars have tended to argue that Torah is\u00a0later<\/em> than the prophetic word.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot of truth to that\u2014not there there were no \u201cstandards of law\u201d before the onset of the prophetic voice, but only that there was no one officially sanctioned chapter-and-verse body of laws for the prophets to appeal to. The prophets who spoke during Israel\u2019s monarchy had no Torah in the sense in which we know it.<\/p>\n

Anyhoo, we won\u2019t get into all that here. I just think it\u2019s interesting and vitally practical in\u00a0this day and age to think of the Torah from this perspective\u2014as a means of holding power in check, especially if we bring the Jesus angle into it (as mediated through Paul and the book of Revelation).<\/p>\n

At least part of what it means for Jesus<\/strong> to be the super-fulfillment of Torah and the prophetic role is his ultimate rule over all rulers, all political regimes\u2014a point made at great length in the book of Revelation. The Gospel, in other words, is the standard by which the rulers are judged. Not so much on the level of personal piety but on the level of how their rule and their actions affect people.<\/p>\n

Those who follow Jesus have an obligation to voice their opposition to corrupt rule, and to never allow the Kingdom of God to become enmeshed with political agendas.<\/p>\n

Like the prophets of old, we have the obligation to be sure that justice, peace, and righteousness remain the higher standard by which the state is held accountable rather than aiding and abetting the state to redefine and co-opt that standard.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Here\u2019s what I think about something and I don\u2019t care if you think I\u2019m wrong. One of the things that I find fascinating about the Old Testament is how the power of the king was kept in check (at least theoretically). A king\u2019s word wasn\u2019t automatically law. A king\u2019s will was not automatically the will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[]},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8983"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cccfornews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}