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| David Bercot |
The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down
David W. Bercot
Scroll Publishing, 2003
268 pp., pb.
David W. Bercot is a thought provoking writer if nothing else. He is a practicing attorney who spent most of his adult life in Texas but now resides in Pennsylvania. He has written a number of books, and his vision of radical Christianity is sure to challenge the modern American Christian who has grown comfortable with the popular blend of Christianity, patriotism and middle class prosperity. Mr. Bercot takes us back to the early church with its strong emphasis on the moral and ethical teachings of Jesus. It is a book that will no doubt shock and disturb many.
And it is a message that sorely needs to be heard. We are far too complacent and far too ready to compromise our beliefs. We pass all too lightly over the ethical passages of the New Testament. But when Christ returns His assessment of the modern church may not be as comforting as we would like to think.
Nevertheless we feel that Mr. Bercot's work, as valuable as it may be at many points, is marred by several serious flaws. First and foremost is his black-and-white treatment of church history. For Mr. Bercot the Christian church can be divided up into two opposing camps: those who advocate what he calls "the Constantinian Hybrid" (the alliance between church and state) and "Kingdom Christians" who advocate what Mr. Bercot calls the simple kingdom gospel of Jesus. Chief among the former were St. Augustine and the major Protestant Reformers. Included among the latter are such groups as the Anabaptists, Mennonites and Quakers.
Mr. Bercot's tendency to see everything in black-and-white, either / or terms leads him into a series of false dichotomies. He tells us at one point that Jesus "didn't come to preach a message about changing governments and kingdoms of the world. He sought to transform individuals, not to transform the world" (p.115). But the Great Commission calls us to disciple the nations. By transforming individuals we transform the world. Likewise Mr. Bercot tells us that "The banner of Jesus' disciples wasn't 'God and country!' It was God or country" (p. 120). But if we are to love our neighbor and let our light shine before men, would that not include a care and concern for our country?
A major issue for Mr. Bercot is non-resistance. At one point he has a quote form John Calvin to the effect that, in Calvin's view, if God permitted even good kings in the Old Testament to wield the sword, why would He forbid Christian believers from serving in the government or in the military (p. 249; cf. Calvin, Treatise against the Anabaptists). Mr. Bercot criticizes Calvin on this point, saying ". . . in Calvin's mind, nothing had changed with the coming of Christianity. Everything – except theology and ordinances – was just the same as it had been in Israel" (Ibid.).
But Calvin raised a legitimate question. One of the Ten Commandments said, "Thou shalt not kill." The sanctity of human life has always been a basic moral principle right from the very beginning. Yet when taken in the context of the Mosaic legislation as a whole, the commandment obviously did not preclude either capital punishment or just war. In fact, long before Moses or the birth of Israel as a nation it was laid down as a basic principle that
"Whoever sheds man's blood,
By man his blood shall be shed;
For in the image of God
He made man." (Gen. 9:6; NKJV).
The word translated "kill" in the Sixth Commandment is used only to refer to the shedding of blood by a private individual, whether it be murder or manslaughter. It does not apply to acts of war or judicial punishment. (The Hebrew Bible has different words for killing in those contexts.)
So does the situation change in the New Testament? There we are told specifically that "the authorities that exist are appointed by God," and that the civil magistrate is "God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil" (Rom. 13:1-6). So if capital punishment is specifically ordained by God, what prevents a Christian from serving in the capacity that God has ordained? Mr. Bercot would have us to believe that the fundamental principles of God's moral law have changed over time; that God forbids in the New Testament what He specifically enjoined in the Old. And while there are some things which doubtless pertained only to the theocracy of Old Testament Israel, the New Testament makes it plain that civil government, per se, is an institution ordained by God. It is hard to see how Mr. Bercot's position can be squared with Scripture when taken as a whole.
It is hard to see how Mr. Bercot's position can be squared with Scripture when taken as a whole.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to see how Luther's position can be squared with Scripture when taken as a whole.
It is hard to see how the Pope's position can be squared with Scripture when taken as a whole.
It is hard to see how Mr. AL-Ghazali's position can be squared with the Koran when taken as a whole.
Etc, etc, etc.
As someone once said "How can we tell who, if any, is telling the truth? Shouldn't we simply dismiss them all?"
Anyone could show up and say that while they have not read every piece of religious literature on this subject, they are fairly familiar with the Bible and they disagree with you.
Heck, they might even say that you are not a True Christian! What then?
Maybe you are an authority (however humble) or maybe you are not. There's no way for me to verify that. There's no way for me to just blindly trust your word.
I don't want your opinion.
I want you your methodology. That's the important thing.
That applies to the other guy too.
If you want to use whatever book to justify this, that or the other as a direct Twitter feed to your magical, invisible god then you have to do it in such a way that cannot be hijacked by the other team.
I should mention that the reason this blog is called "The Berean Observer" is because of an episode that occurred during the ministry of the apostle Paul. Berea is a town in northern Greece. On one of Paul's missionary journeys he was briefly imprisoned in Philippi and had to slip out of Thessalonica at night. He then went to Berea where, we are told, hearing Paul, they "searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so" (Acts 17:11). In other words, the idea behind the blog is to invite our readers to read the Bible (and the Qur'an, for that matter) for themselves, and to form their own opinions. We all live in the same universe. We must all face our own mortality. We face moral and ethical decisions every day. The truth is important. I hope we are all looking for it.
ReplyDeleteAs for "my opinion," I should tell you a little bit about my own story on the issue of just war. I was raised in a very patriotic, conservative family -- my father had been a bomber pilot (co-pilot, actually) in World War II. so we always held the military in high regard. Well, I eventually found myself in the Army as well, and was stationed for a while in Viet Nam. Periodically I would have to pull guard duty -- you would sit on a bunker for hour on end and stare out into the night, waiting for an enemy "sapper." And so I had plenty of time to think. And knowing how controversial the war was, at the time, and being a Christian, I couldn't help but wonder what God thought about the war. Was i doing something immoral by being there? Sad to say, the church in which I was raised had said very little about the morality of war, and yet here I was, faced with the biggest moral decision of my life. What if I actually did see a sapper? Could I kill him? (Fortunately, I never saw one.)
ReplyDeleteSo when I got out of the service I went to Eastern Mennonite
College to complete my undergraduate studies, very interested to hear what they had to say about war. Unfortunately it wasn't quite as enlightening as I could have hoped for -- most of my fellow students came from generations of Mennonite families and really couldn't articulate their theology very well. I did read a hightly recommended book, however, by a leading Mennonite theologian, John Howard Yoder. A key passage on the subject is Romans chapter 13. Yoder spent quite a bit of time trying to explain what the chapter didn't mean, but he was less successful at explaining what it did mean. This is how I arrived at the conclusion that "It is hard to see how [the pacificist] position can be squared with Scripture when taken as a whole."
This is not to say that I did not learn a lot from the Mennonites or profit from my experience at EMC. They have certain emphases such as brotherhood, non-conformity and mutual aid, that are obviously biblical but not emphasized in denominations with an Anglo-Saxon background. In some of those areas I will always be indebted to my Mennonite friends.
In other words, the idea behind the blog is to invite our readers to read the Bible (and the Qur'an, for that matter) for themselves, and to form their own opinions.
ReplyDeleteAnd those opinions will be different.
Yet they use the same book or methodology.
There's nothing divine about it. Nothing "higher" as in a "higher law".
It's just people. People forming opinions. No magical friends guiding everything somehow to ensure quality control.
Was i doing something immoral by being there? Sad to say, the church in which I was raised had said very little about the morality of war, and yet here I was, faced with the biggest moral decision of my life. What if I actually did see a sapper? Could I kill him? (Fortunately, I never saw one.)
Good questions. Yet your moral code is...yours. There's nothing magical about it.
It's yours. It's human.
It's ordinary.
It's based on your geography and your general background.
"This is how I arrived at the conclusion that "It is hard to see how [the pacificist] position can be squared with Scripture when taken as a whole."
Sure but that's you. It's not some god whispering in your ear. It's you. Someone else might come to a different conclusion. Even if that someone had a very similar upbringing.
Even if that someone grew up sleeping on a stack of bibles every night.
Drop Christianity altogether.
Take your entire train of thought and morph it into a Muslim background or a Sikh background or whatever.
Just switch the labels.
It's all to easy to imagine a thoughtful person from a different culture wrestling with the same age-old question of the morality of killing a fellow human being.
Inevitably, there will be those others that will end up adopting the same position as you have.
So the morality of killing a fellow human being is just a matter of personal opinion? What is wrong for Gandhi might be perfectly O.K. for Hitler?
ReplyDeleteSo the morality of...
ReplyDeleteI don't think you understand.
Any argument must stand or fall on it's own merits.
If you want to claim a "higher law" or magical help or inspiration or divine guidance or whatever, then you have to provide evidence for that claim.
Something that cannot be hi-jacked.
Your argument is is either strong or weak.
It's not dependent on me or what I say or fail to say or what someone else says or fails to say.
My opinion or lack of one is neither here nor there.
The strength/weakness of an argument is independent. It stands alone.
An argument in and of itself does not have merits.
ReplyDeleteThe strength or weakness of an argument stands or falls depending on whether it is true or not. Whether you or I do or do not believe that the Bible is the Word of God is irrelevant. All that matters is whether it actually is.
In response to: "As someone once said 'How can we tell who, if any, is telling the truth? Shouldn't we simply dismiss them all?'" The context of the OP's statement was that Mr. Bercot is making some serious doctrinal errors in light of the full teaching of Scripture by basing his positions on some of the early writings of men who (mostly) were genuinely trying to understand the New Testament. You don't dismiss them all. You compare what a man teaches with the whole counsel of God.