Little Sister

A Second Israel in Seventeenth-Century Scotland

Bob Halliday

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781625643667
  9781498269087
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630872571
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

The Christian state church emerged from the religion of pagan Rome. A declining western empire gave the church political power, but provoked conflict between church and state. In the Scottish post-Reformation Stewart monarchy, the king claimed to control the church by divine right. Covenanters exchanged state control for a theocracy built on the idea that Scotland, like Israel, had a God-given destiny. As "the purest kirk in Christendom," nation and kirk were the political and religious faces of one body. Like pre-Christian Israel, Scotland was one of the only two nations ever covenanted to the Lord. This idea owed more to political pressure than theological insight. Today, a mindset survives which still refuses to separate kirk from nation and thereby undermines the missionary calling. The urgent need is to recognize that God made a covenant with Israel alone, and to think in terms of "a second Israel" was to misunderstand the development of church history. Today's Kirk must see herself not as "the representative of the Christian faith of the Scottish people . . . to bring the ordinances of religion to the people in every parish of Scotland," but as the representative of Christ with an apostolic mandate for evangelism.

1

Kingdoms in Conflict

A class hated for their abominations who are commonly called Christians.25

If there was one thing Jesus Christ made clear in all that he said and did, it was that his kingdom was spiritual and his rule was not to be established by political or military force. He was neither a revolutionary nor a political reformer. He posed no obvious threat to the Roman emperor nor to the Jewish authorities. Yet he was tried as a criminal before two courts of law, one religious and the other a civil court. The religious court was the Jewish Sanhedrin, a body of considerable authority in the time of Christ. It dealt with much of the internal government of Judea and even exercised a measure of control over the Jews of the Diaspora. It operated through its own administration, had its own police force and was responsible for the arrest and trial of Christ.

Superficially, at least, the court procedure seemed to be weighted on the side of the prisoner. There was a quorum of twenty-three judges who could, by a simple majority of one, acquit the accused, whereas a “guilty” verdict needed a two-thirds majority. Acquittal could be pronounced on the day of the trial but if the prisoner was to be condemned, this had to be withheld for consideration for a period of twenty-four hours. Where there was doubt about a conviction, the accused would be given the benefit of that doubt and set free.26 In spite of all this apparent advantage to the prisoner, it was clear that when Christ stood before the Sanhedrin, his conviction was a foregone conclusion. The trial was simply a legal procedure arranged to bring about his death and the purpose of the court was to authorise his execution for the crime of blasphemy. The verdict was agreed before the evidence had been heard.

However, it was precisely in the execution of a death sentence that the Jewish court met with a legal obstacle. Although the power of life or death was given to the Sanhedrin by Jewish law, this was not recognised in Roman law and the reality was that in a case which involved capital punishment, the law of Rome overruled Jewish law, and a verdict by the procurator representing the Roman Empire was required. The death sentence passed on Christ by the high priest Caiaphas and his fellow judges for the crime of blasphemy could not be carried out by that court. Neither was it a simple matter of the procurator, Pontius Pilate, rubber stamping the decree of the Sanhedrin. For the death of Christ to take place, a second trial was necessary under Roman law and a second accusation had to be leveled against the prisoner for which the appropriate penalty would be death. Furthermore, for the accusation of a crime against Roman law to be successful, that crime had to be political and not religious. There was indeed a state church in the Roman empire, and the emperor himself was its chief priest, but Christ was not accused of any crime relating to Roman religion A charge of blasphemy against the God of Israel would not be considered in a Roman court, therefore the solution was to accuse Christ of rebelling against the political authority of the emperor by proclaiming himself to be a king in Judea.

Apart from the complete lack of any evidence to substantiate such a charge, it was never the policy of Rome to permit its legal machinery to function as the political arm of the Sanhedrin, and this is confirmed by the immediate reaction of Pilate to the charges brought against Christ. The gospel writers indicate a genuine reluctance on his part to be used to bring about Christ’s death. He attempted to have the charges against Christ dismissed as inconclusive. When this failed, he tried to have him freed under a traditional amnesty, since whatever else Christ was, he was no threat at all to Roman authority in Judea. Failure to achieve his acquittal was not due to the inadequacy of Roman law but to the lack of integrity in the governor charged with its administration. There can be little doubt that the law of Rome was, in broad terms, a benefit within the empire, however in local situations where the rule of law was in the hands of a provincial governor, it was far from impossible that a threat of mob violence or a manipulation of the legal machinery might lead to a miscarriage of justice, and Pilate was an unstable man under a considerable degree of political pressure.

Appointed by the emperor Tiberius in AD 26 as governor of Judea, Pilate found Jewish political forces both complex and difficult to contain. The appointment of the Jewish high priest was by Pilate’s authority. He controlled high priestly vestments and temple funds. He had hundreds of cavalry soldiers and thousands of infantrymen to reinforce his decisions, but what he lacked was the political skill to keep the Jews under control. He had, early in his government, antagonised the Jews by setting up in Jerusalem standards which bore an image of the emperor. Only when it became clear that the worshippers of the God of Israel were prepared to sacrifice their lives to resist such an offence was he persuaded to remove the images from the holy city. His dedication of a set of golden shields bearing his own name and that of Tiberius within his quarters at Jerusalem,brought another protest to the emperor, who decided in favour of the Jews and ordered the removal of the shields. On more than one occasion Pilate attempted to solve local problems by the use of military force to massacre rioters and execute political leaders. His career ended in disgrace when he was summoned back to Rome to answer to the emperor for his brutality. However, in spite of his flawed character, this was the man charged with the administration of Roman justice before whom Christ was on trial for a political crime. Even a ruler as harsh and insensitive as Pilate knew exactly why Christ had been accused by the Sanhedrin and what justice demanded, but what he feared more than anything else was yet another complaint by the Jews to the emperor. The threat by Jewish leaders to report him to Tiberius for political disloyalty forced him to agree to the execution of the prisoner. The now-famous gesture of washing his hands to indicate that he rejected responsibility was indeed no more than a gesture. The fact was that Christ could not be crucified except for a political crime against Roman law, and the only authority permitted to pass sentence was represented by Pilate. The sign fixed to the cross which read “This is the King of the Jews”27 was intended to be an indication of a capital crime for which the appropriate punishment was carried out.

This encounter of Christ, the head of the church, with the law of the state in which that church grew and flourished was certainly not the beginning of a legal or formal relationship, but it was the first step in a growing interaction between the church and imperial Rome which developed in the following centuries to an extent that must have been unimaginable to the Christian apostles who first set off to evangelise their pagan world. The insignificant band of disciples grew to become one of the most powerful forces in Roman life and culture. Beyond all doubt the empire was brought under the influence of the Christian church in almost every aspect of its existence. However, if it was true that the empire was shaped by the church, it was equally true that the church gained the dubious advantage of being moulded by the empire. In the relationship between church and state, pagan Rome stamped a pattern on the church’s life and thinking, traces of which are still discernible in the twenty-first century. Within a comparatively short space of time, in historical terms at least, the little flock of Jesus had grown into an ecclesiastical organisation modelled on the Roman administration. In the future it would claim to have the right to exercise not merely spiritual authority over all who professed faith in Christ, but political and temporal authority over Rome, the Western Empire, and later the world.

By the earlier part of the fourth century, without the use of military weapons or political influence, the church had conquered prejudice, misrepresentation, the harshest persecution both physical and psychological, and more than one attempt at the complete destruction of the entire Christian community. It was when all this had been accomplished that the dangerous concept of a Christian state became firmly established and the church began to lose the distinction between the things that belonged to Caesar and the things that belonged to God.

When Christ stood before Pilate, it was the confrontation of two radically different kingdoms. The attempt to forge them into one changed the shape of the church from the fourth century onwards. Three centuries later, the so-called “Donation of Constantine” appeared. This document, by which the emperor Constantine was held to have given to the current bishop of Rome the imperial palace, the diadem and crown, and the tiara and purple mantle, as a symbol of all the power which was to be transferred from state to church, is now universally recognised as a forgery. It was probably written sometime in the eighth century and as a record of historic fact it has no worth at all. The value of the document lies in the reason it was considered necessary. It was needed to provide historical and theological justification for the structure and authority which the church sought to possess and exercise at the time when it was written. It was accepted as genuine from the ninth to the fifteenth century and has been cited by at least ten popes and other writers. A work of fiction, its composition was nevertheless important to be able to explain the transfer of the entire imperial political structure from emperor to pope.28 The church which Christ built upon the foundation of faith had travelled a very long way from Jerusalem to Rome.

Evidence for the expansion of the church immediately after Pentecost is recorded to some extent in the book of Acts and the Letters of the apostles. When Paul met with James, the leader of the Christian community in Jerusalem, the church in that city was already numbered in “many thousands.”29 By the time the apostle arrived in Rome as a prisoner, about the year AD 60, there were Christian communities around the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, across Asia minor, and into Europe and Rome itself. The next two-and-a-half centuries provided a record of continuous expansion for the Christian church. By the early years of the fourth century there were disciples of Christ in almost every part of the empire and even beyond its borders. From the northwest, there were strong Christian communities in Gaul, and the British church could send...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Kingdoms in Conflict
• Chapter 2: Blurred Boundaries
• Chapter 3: The Great Persecution
• Chapter 4: The Coming of Constantine
• Chapter 5: The Thirteenth Apostle
• Chapter 6: The Gospel Is Law
• Chapter 7: The Theodosian Code
• Chapter 8: Zeno to Anastasius
• Chapter 9: Justin and Justinian
• Chapter 10: An Empire Reborn
• Chapter 11: The Vicar of God
• Chapter 12: Daughter of Rome
• Chapter 13: The Stewart Dynasty
• Chapter 14: The Reek of Patrick Hamilton
• Chapter 15: Mary, Queen of Scots
• Chapter 16: The Wisest Fool
• Chapter 17: The Road to Revolution
• Chapter 18: Covenant Is King
• Chapter 19: Bring Back the King
• Chapter 20: The Remnant Church
• Chapter 21: This Is My Covenant
• Chapter 22: The Visible Church
• Chapter 23: The Legacy of the Covenant
• Bibliography