Preface

 

By Stephen Palmquist (stevepq@hkbu.edu.hk)

 

 

      It was June 5th 1989, less than thirty-six hours after the historic "Beijing massacre", when the People's Army complied with the Chinese government's order to roll the tanks down the Avenue of Eternal Peace and through Tiananmen Square, to clear all debris from the nation's political heart, whatever the cost. I was in the student canteen at Hong Kong Baptist College, picking at my rice box, sitting across from one of my students. Mee Mee had just struggled through a final exam on a day when many of the students, still in shock, had stayed home, unable to think about school­work when their homeland's future was hanging in the balance. We were discussing whether or not the college should postpone the remaining exams until the political crisis cooled.

 

      About six weeks earlier, near the beginning of the forty-nine day stu­dent protest that ended in tragedy, four well-meaning students had come to my office trying to persuade me to cancel my classes in support of the democracy movement in China. They were quite surprised at my rather unorthodox response, and went away perplexed at the idea that there should be a Westerner, a U.S. citizen no less, and a teacher of religion and philosophy, who actually claimed not to believe in democracy! Until then, I had normally kept to myself the political ideas which had been brewing in my mind over the past ten or twelve years, since voicing them usually met with just such reactions of offence and disbelief.

 

      But here was Mee Mee, her heart torn in two over the recent events in China, not knowing whom to support. Her parents thought the Chinese government was in the right; she disagreed, yet found it hard to accept the equally extreme belief of the recent tendency in Hong Kong to view democ­racy as the final answer to mankind's political quest. I bared my heart to her, telling her how I have always been the sort of person who is naturally in­clined to grasp his rights in the name of freedom and justice, and yet, how the results of such grasping rarely satisfy me. For if my struggle to defend my rights succeeds, I am often left with a strange sense of empti­ness or guilt; and if it fails, I am left with bitterness at having been treated unfairly. As our conversation developed, I realized that what she was so interested in discussing, others might also find challenging in this time of crisis.

 

      A few weeks later, after reading my students' exams and turning in their final grades (in the end the college did decide to postpone the exams for two days), I volunteered to lead a seminar for a group of academics on the topic "How Is Christian Politics Biblically Possible?" I chose this title because, even though I did not at that point know exactly what I would say at the seminar, I felt sure that my method would be parallel to the method used by Immanuel Kant, whose philosophy I had been studying intently over the past seven years. (Kant's critique of two thousand years of meta­physics, which was an attempt to provide a revolutionary new foundation for philosophy, focused on answering the question "How are synthetic propositions a priori possible?" See p.4 below for a brief discus­sion of the parallel between Kant's question and my own.)

 

      That November I wrote a paper with the above title, and read it at a seminar on 20 November 1989. The reaction of my fellow scholars both pleased and disappointed me. It pleased me because any reaction is better than no reaction (which is the usual situation at academic meetings where one person is presenting the results of a technical study in which the others have little if any genuine interest), and their reaction was more intense than any I have ever witnessed in an academic context. Most of them expressed their reservations in one way or another, and several seemed to be outright offended at what I said. For the rest of that day, and for the next few weeks, those who attended the seminar had numerous conversations with me and with each other, discussing the implications of what I had said, mostly in order to explain why the position I defended is wrong. I would like to thank all those who responded for their helpful comments.

 

      Perhaps the main reason for the adverse reaction to my initial presenta­tion of the ideas contained in this book was that my origi­nal paper was written in a rather polemic tone-or at least, so it appeared to many who heard it. In this book I have tried to elimin­ate any sense that I am accusing any particular persons or groups of reacting in a wrong or "unChristian" way to any particular poli­tical situations. Although I do discuss numerous examples, especi­ally in Part Two, these should be regarded merely as ex­amples, and are in no way intended as direct accusations against the actions of anyone known personally to me. As I have explained above, my own motivation for setting down these ideas in writing was, in fact, very much born out of a particular political situa­tion. However, I am convinced that the validity (or invalidity) of the ideas them­selves is independent of this or any other particular situation.

 

      The paper I presented in November of 1989 has evolved, after numer­ous revisions, into Part One of the present book. Part Two, which develops the practical implications and application of the theory developed in Part One, was also born out of a specific series of events. A brief description of these events should provide the reader with a helpful context.

 

      Two weeks before I was to read my paper on Christian politics, I at­tended a conference at which Jackie Pullinger, a Christian who lives and works with the poor and oppressed in Hong Kong, spoke on the impor­tance of "Ministry with the Poor" for Christians. During her talk she made some comments about politics which seemed surprisingly close to some of my own ideas. So afterwards I invited her to attend the seminar at which I read my paper. She did. And about a week later, after defending my paper from the attacks of fellow scholars, I was pleasantly surprised when Miss Pullinger told me she had a favorable reaction to the paper. In fact, she invited me to present the paper at a conference she would be leading in Canada the following May.

 

      The conference, on the topic "Release the Oppressed", was organized by several Vineyard churches in the Vancouver area. As I prepared to share my ideas, I realized that if I were to present them merely as a theory, then the response would probably be more or less the same as that of the major­ity of people who attended my November seminar. It suddenly struck me that this was, in fact, one of the main reasons why my position had been prematurely re­jected by my fellow scholars: what I was offering them was not so much a theory, as a vision of what Christian politics ought to be, a vision which I myself am only beginning to learn how to realize in practice. But when a vision is regarded as a theory it rarely makes sense, since a vi­sion sees the "not yet" as a reality, where­as a theory can accept only what "already is". So in Vancouver I presented the same ideas as a vision, and they were surprisingly well-received. This was partly due to the fact that, in addition to the theoretical aspects of the vision, I saw and presented some of its practical implications, many of which I had not considered in depth before that conference. The expansion and clarification of those practical aspects is the task of Part Two of this book.

 

      A word of warning is in order. I am a philosopher by inclina­tion and a philosophy and religion teacher by profession, so there will inevitably be a philosophical slant to this book. But it will not, I hope, be one which will prevent even the least philosophi­cally-inclined reader from understanding the message, from seeing the vision, which in itself is rather simple. I should add, however, that some of the footnotes, and a few chapter sec­tions, may be difficult to follow for anyone not versed in philosophy (and particularly in Kant's philosophy). Any readers not interested in philoso­phy can safely overlook the notes in question, though I would not recom­mend skipping the philosophical sections included in the main text.

 

      In addition to Jackie Pullinger and all those who responded to the November 1989 colloquium, I would like to thank Elaine Chen Wan Lung, Lee Mee Mee, Betty Li Man Yin, Dorothy Palmquist, Timothy Palmquist, Lauren Pfister, and Timothy Wong Man Kong, all of whom thoroughly read earlier versions, and pointed out numerous ways in which the text could be improved. These many comments and critic­isms motivated me to clarify and enlarge my argument. Without their help, there would be far more ambiguities, half-truths and partially elaborated ideas in this book than there are at present. Special thanks goes to Timothy Wong, who first encouraged me to convert my original paper into a book and who under­took the unenviable task of translating Part One into Chinese.

 

      Most of all, I would like to thank my wife, Dorothy, and my children, Daniel, Joy, and Jonathan, for their love, patience, support, and encour­agement. Without their willingness to give up "Daddy" for half of their summer holiday, this book might never have been written.

 

S.R. Palmquist,

Hong Kong,

August 1990

 

 

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face.  Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

-1 Cor. 13:12

 

Supplement

 

      I completed the original manuscript for Theoc­racy over two and a half years ago. The intervening delay in publication has given me an opportuni­ty to become better acquainted with the vast literature on this subject, thus also allowing my own ideas to mature. Publishing the book in this Philo­psychy Press edition has enabled me to reflect this further study by making many small but important changes in the main text, and by adding a sub­stantial amount of new material in the footnotes and three Appendices. Of the changes reflecting a refinement in my own position, the most significant is the addition of "Biblical" to the title, thereby distinguishing more clearly between my use the term "theocracy" and the way it has normally been used  in the past. This difference is discussed more fully on pp.42-43n, along with a fuller explanation of how to interpret the title. (Throughout this book, cross-references such as this are distinguished from references to other books by using "p." or "pp." for the former but not for the latter.)

 

       I have added this new material mainly in order to clarify the relation­ship between my view of "Christian politics" and some of the many others that have been suggested by various scholars. Anyone in the habit of divid­ing the range of positions on Chris­tian politics into two opposing camps (whether these be labelled "pacifism" vs. "just war", "liberal" vs. "conser­vative", "Anabaptist" vs. "Reformed", etc.) is like­ly to be dissatis­fied by my tendency to avoid stating clearly which "side" I am on. Although my imperfect attempt to expound biblical theoc­racy is bound to be con­demned by it critics by attaching to it various pre-estab­lished labels, I do not see my position as fitting neatly into any previ­ously-estab­lished school of thought, including pacifism. For biblical theoc­racy cuts through all such di­chotomies in the hope of reconciling opposites in a higher unity.

 

      Despite its independent derivation, there are some striking points of agree­ment between my understanding of biblical theocracy and the views of other scholars. My dialogue with these scholars has resulted in a fairly large number of footnotes, some of them quite lengthy and at times making points significant enough to merit being included in the main text. But most of these tangential issues are likely to be of interest mainly to schol­ars, so to minimize the risk of clouding the basic "vision" of biblical theocracy (which is by no means limited to schol­ars in its intended appeal!), I have decided in most cases not to bring this material into the main text. That way, readers who are not interested in the many scholarly debates relating to Christian politics can simply skip the foot­notes, without feeling they are missing anything essential to the vision sketched in the main text. Of course, in spite of their length, the scholarly notes contained herein can make no claim to be complete. There is still much rele­vant material that has not been touched upon. For example, I have said nothing about the currently influential school of Liberation Theology, and how its political vision relates to the one described herein. To attempt a more complete treatment would require a more wide-ranging work on the Theology of Politics, only the beginnings of which are sketched in Part Two.

 

      I would like to take this opportunity to thank three additional persons: Robert Carle and John Wenham, for reading and commenting on the origi­nal manuscript; and Patricia Gillatt, for assisting in preparing the revised typescript and the indices for this publication.

 

Good Friday 1993