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130 REDISCOVERING COVENANTS Reformed Protestant Hebraism, emphasizing the Old Testament patriarchs, circumcision, and covenants, was a means of recasting the Christian’s relationship with God. Calvin and Bullinger and other sixteenth-century reformers were looking at the same biblical text as their Roman Catholic predecessors, but their construction of a new theological continuity stretching back to the Hebrew patriarchs convinced them they had rediscovered biblical truths both ancient and foundational. This not only justified their reforming effort, it gave that reforming effort a powerful symbol and device. The covenant, as a symbol, provided a moral ethos that could define the new theological community of Reformed Protestants on a par with the Old Testament’s chosen people. As a device, it cast salvation largely in legal terms consistent with northern European humanism and its emphasis on law. When viewed as an imposition or a demand, the covenant asserted the sovereignty of God to do with His creatures as He saw fit. This was consistent with Reformed Protestant theology, which emphasized divine holiness, justice, and mercy. When viewed as something more akin to a contract both voluntary and conditional, it recognized that the sovereignty of God did not negate the responsibility of persons. Thus, the covenant preserved the rights of God and man. Reformed Protestantism understood that the biblical narrative is not a story of puppets or of push-pull cause-and-effect. It is a story of redemption, and redemption follows failure. The Bible’s patriarchs and leaders proved capable of great deceits and betrayals. Christ’s parables tell of stony ground, unfaithful servants, prodigal sons, and barren fig trees. This recounting of failures enabled reformers to talk about the covenant of salvation as both bilateral and unilateral at the same time. God defined terms and in some mysterious way enabled believers The Reformation in Retrospect 10 The Reformation in Retrospect 131 to persevere to the end, but He also called on them to heed and hearken to terms, leaving persons without excuse. The covenant became a perfect tool for politics. The terms of salvation appeared almost contractual. Why should not the order, justice, and rewards of the civil magistrate work in much the same way? The covenant made divine attributes accessible and applicable, resembling the power of civil authorities. God established order at creation, the same kind of order established by civil law. God’s justice is manifest from the Fall until Judgment Day, and civil magistrates execute justice as well. God’s rewards are bestowed graciously and powerfully, but not without terms of performance. If divine authority could be fit to conditional terms of rewards and punishments, the civil magistrate could have no better model. Liberty and order were thus complementary. The covenant was both liberating and challenging. It enabled new understandings of freedom and equality. It respected individualism but always in the context of duties and community. All men and women found themselves under the same terms of redemption, the same economy of salvation. The covenant asserted the importance of the individual conscience. But while the covenant offered many advantages over secular political philosophies, it also imposed many difficult demands. As a covenant of salvation, persons were always called to terms that required divine grace, and this grace was found in a community deliberately called out of the world. Demands of moral improvement and separation, coupled with the desire to appropriate the mysterious means of grace, introduced unprecedented challenges into politics. REFORMING POLITICS Whether the Reformation was a restoration, as the reformers insisted, or it was a revolution, as its opponents insisted, it resulted in a re-formation of politics . This re-formation had a significant impact on Anglo-American political theory. Protestant reformers were first motivated primarily by what they viewed as corruption of authority in both the political and the ecclesiastical realms. They responded to that corruption by calling for moral reformation of the use of authority. Insofar as the Bible cast authority as a delegated trust from God, power had to be used in accordance with biblical prescriptions and proscriptions . Though the idea of righteous resistance to tyranny did not begin in the Reformation, there was something radically innovative in this new re-formation of politics. Every Christian, especially magistrates, became a watchman against the abuse of authority. At first, the Protestants resisted the abuse of papal authority, but they soon directed their polemics at the legal abuse of civil authority as well. [18.221.174.248] Project MUSE (2024...

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