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Covenant Is the Key to Both Freedom and the Constitution

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Covenant Is the Key to Both Freedom and the Constitution THE SAVEDATE JUNE2018 8-9, WCS2018 Principled Ideas from the Centennial Institute Publisher, Dr. Donald W. Sweeting Volume 9, Number 10 • December 2017 Editor, Jeff Hunt COVENANT, THE KEY economy? No, they said. Was it European law and politics? CONSTITUTIONAL FREEDOM Partly, they said, but not fully. The conclusion was that it Os Guinness WCS17 was European religion. But commentators said that was not precise enough. Obviously the European religion was the Christian faith, and it had been dominant since the 4th century, not the 16th. It was many Jewish scholars who pointed out that, of course, it was the Reformation, and its impact was felt all the way to China. This is the 500th year celebrating the Reformation. Many people think only of the divisions. Others think more positively of the internal changes in the Church: the recovery of the Gospel, the supremacy of scripture, the reemphasis on lay people. But many people miss the extraordinary impact of the Reformation on the rise of the modern world and no country has been more affected Os Guinness, speaking at the 2017 Western Conservative Summitt. than America. I often reduce it to some of the famous “C’s”. First, Calling It’s no secret this is a solemn moment for humanity and and its impact on purpose, dynamism, entrepreneurialism, for America. The American Republic is going through its and the rise of capitalism; Conscience and the burst of gravest crisis since the Civil War, our Western civilization upsurge in human rights; a Commitment to the people of is in serious decline, the search for a new world order is God, (and thank God for the reversal of the awful Medieval faltering, and as we see what’s coming in terms of singularity anti-Semitism. It was actually Christian evangelical Zionists and super-intelligence and things like this, you can see who even preceded Jewish Zionists in unprecedented challenges for humanity. longing for the restoration of Israel for But I want to address today one aspect Covenant is their homeland), and one could go on. that I think is the key to understanding the key to both And then one of the key things that’s America’s greatness and also to restoring often missing in that list is Covenant. it. It’s called the American Covenant. freedom and the Many Americans do not realize that I was born and grew up in China. We Constitution. Covenant is the key to both freedom lived in Nanjing, which was the ancient and to the Constitution and therefore to Ming capital as well as the capital of China before the constitutional freedom. communists. It had been brutalized in the Rape of The Exodus, of course, is the master story of Western Nanking. It was threatened by the looming Red Army, but freedom but you can see it in the English Revolution and it still had its magnificent city walls and all its greatness in the American Revolution. They had very different roots in history. In the 15th century, Nanjing was the capital of and very different results. What was it about covenant? the most powerful, prosperous country in the world. But Os Guinness has written or edited more than thirty books, including The Call, as the Chinese understood it, suddenly in one century, Time for Truth, Long Journey Home, Unspeakable, A Free People’s Suicide, The what they considered a cultural backwater prevailed Global Public Square, and Renaissance. His latest book is Fool’s Talk—The over them and for five centuries was dominant to their Recovery of Christian Persuasion, published in 2015. humiliation: Europe. Centennial Institute sponsors research, events, and publications to enhance public understanding of the most important issues facing our state and nation. The Chinese had a famous discussion: what had gone By proclaiming Truth, we aim to foster faith, family, and freedom, teach citizenship, and renew the spirit of 1776. wrong? Was it European guns? Was it the European When you study political science, you learn people may The second feature was a morally binding pledge. Not a divide politics up in terms of governments; monarchies narrow legal contract but a broad and morally binding corrupted into tyranny; aristocracies corrupted into pledge. They are keeping a promise to the Lord and to oligarchy; and democracies corrupted into mob rule. each other. Those are studies of governments per se, but, in the last 50 And the third feature is the reciprocal responsibility of years, there’s been a movement to look at foundings. When everyone for everyone. We think of it in terms of the great you look at the founding of a nation, you get a different call to, “love your neighbor as yourself.” This has been three. The first one would be organic societies connected profoundly influential. As the Rabbis put it, there wasn’t by kinship and blood, think African tribes or Scottish just one covenant, there were 600,000 covenants. When clans. Then hierarchical governments, think kingdoms and that was said, another Rabbi quickly said, “No, 600,000 empires connected by power, conquest and force. But the times 600,000” as all the people made a covenant to the third, and of course the one important here, is covenantal Lord and made a covenant to each other. governments and societies, those connected by a strong and binding agreement of the people. And of course that The Sinai Covenant has been incredibly influential down goes back to Sinai. through history. Obviously for the Jews, they had a king, but when they lost their king and the temple and the land, There are other covenants, covenants in the Middle East, they still had the Covenant. And despite their scattering covenants in the Book of Genesis, but the covenant at and the viciousness of their persecution, the Covenant held Sinai is unique in its features and them together. influence. It was a covenant with God as a partner and it was a covenant The covenant at Then came the second great period with all the people. Look at Athens. of influence, the Reformation. The The Athens demographics included Sinai is unique in catholic centuries had been, not only 20 percent of the men. Not the its features and covenantal, but hierarchical. In many rest of the men, not the women, not ways, they borrowed the structures the children, not the visitors and the influence. of imperial Rome with the Pope foreigners, and certainly not people reflecting the Caesar. When they were in other parts of the empire, just corrupted, they were oppressive— 20 percent of the men. Whereas, the Sinai Covenant think of the Inquisition. But Calvin, Zwingli, Knox, and includes men, women, children, and those who were born Cromwell—they went back to taking the Sinai Covenant and as they put it, “those yet unborn,” because it was an seriously as a political arrangement in their time. intergenerational project. And it covered not some narrow In England what they did was called the “Lost Cause.” It legal idea, but the whole way of life of the Jewish people. failed. But what was the “Lost Cause” in England became There were three features that really put a stamp on politics the winning cause in New England. Covenant came across later and are the roots of the American experiment. in the churches, in marriages, in townships, and in states. The Constitution of Massachusetts, written by John Adams The first feature? The Sinai Covenant was a freely chosen and others is a “covenant.” You can also see the third great consent. This is actually the origin of the idea of the period of influence, the 18th century, when covenantal- consent of the governed. Three times it says in Exodus that, ism appears in a somewhat secularized, nationalized form even when the Master of the Universe is proposing how called the United States Constitution: We The People. they live, that decision is only ratified when all the people say, “All that the Lord says we will do.” That’s consent of Now, of course, all systems of governments have their the governed. strengths and weaknesses. The same is true of covenantalism CENTENNIAL REVIEW is published monthly by the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University. The authors’ views are not necessarily those of CCU. Designer, Justin Jones. Illustrator, Benjamin Hummel. Subscriptions free upon request. Write to: Centennial Institute, 8787 W. Alameda Ave., Lakewood, CO 80226. Call 800.44.FAITH. Or visit us online at centennial.ccu.edu. Please join the Centennial Institute today. As a Centennial donor, you can help us restore America’s moral core and prepare tomorrow’s leaders. Your gift is tax-deductible. Please use the envelope provided. Thank you for your support. - Jeff Hunt, Director Scan this code with your smartphone to read this and previous issues online. Centennial Review ▪ December 2017 ▪ 2 as we can see in the scriptures. The great strength of American covenantalism is the root of freedom: both the basis of freedom rooted in the fact we’re all made in the image of God and beyond that, the bringing together of faith and freedom again. For Americans, “faith and freedom” rolls off the tongue like a cliche. “Faith, family, freedom, future,” all these happy F’s. But when you read de Tocqueville, he says for most of European history, Christian history, those who loved religion squelched liberty (think of the oppressive medieval church) and those who loved liberty fought religion. But the difference in this country, he adds, was that the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty went hand in hand. Why? The covenantal arrangements.
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