July 25, 2021
THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN...AGAIN:
The Sinai Revolution and American Ordered Liberty: a review of The Magna Carta of Humanity: Sinai's Revolutionary Faith and the Future of Freedom by Os Guinness (Casey Chalk, 7/25/21, University Bookman)Guinness orients the reader to what he calls the Sinai, or Exodus Revolution, by which he means that historic moment when the Jewish people ended their time in slavery and became a people with a unique religio-political identity, founded upon the worship of the one, true God and His commandments. "There is no rival to the Exodus Revolution in its realistic and constructive understanding of freedom," he claims, referring to the Torah, or first five books of the Hebrew Bible, as "nothing less than the Magna Carta of humanity." He contrasts this with the French Revolution of 1789, which he identifies as influencing our secular, increasingly woke civil order.
Relying on the work of the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Guinness identifies the Sinai Revolution as a coherent presentation of what the Founders later described as "ordered liberty." This, he says, is a "morally responsible society of independent free people who are covenanted to each other and to justice, peace, stability, and the common good in their community." That political vision, Guiness believes, was deeply embedded within the Framers' own understanding of the ideal republic. He quotes, among others, John Adams, who several years after his presidency wrote: "I will insist that the Hebrews have contributed more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations."
According to Guinness, one can apprehend seven foundational principles that illuminate this revolutionary social, political, and religious revolution, one that serves as antithesis for contemporary revolutionary impulses. First and foremost, freedom requires an objective. We see this at play in the Sinai Revolution in YHWH's assertion "I am who I am" (Exodus 3:14), a statement that later exegetes would interpret to mean that God is reality itself, and the source of all truth, goodness, and beauty. Man is free only because God is free, and it is the divine ordering of reality that gives both purpose and limits to that liberty. To reject God, then, has not only religious, but also socio-political consequences, because it vitiates authentic freedom.
Many of the other Hebraic principles proposed by Guinness (channeling Rabbi Sacks) follow from the first. Freedom must be "grounded and authorized," meaning that freedom flows from the decision of a loving God who creates man in His own image, thus giving man an intrinsic worth and dignity that demands he be treated with justice. Freedom must be "realistic," meaning that unfettered liberty is actually detrimental to human flourishing, and that freedom demands responsibility and restraint. Freedom "must be won" and "ordered and cultivated," meaning that humans must actively practice the duties of citizenship in order to develop and preserve their liberty as members of a covenantal, constitutional community. Freedom must be "celebrated and handed on," meaning that we must prize the great narratives, principles, and heroes that helped secure our liberty. Finally, freedom must "always address wrongs, but in the right way," that way being one of mercy, forgiveness, and justice, rather than tribalism and enmity.
There are many strengths to Guinness's account of ordered liberty. Identifying the truly radical character of the Hebrew religio-political experiment is, if not a novel approach, at least an underappreciated one. The Jews themselves, as well as their descendants in Christianity, have recognized the revolutionary character of the God of the Bible. "You turn things upside down," the prophet Isaiah says of YHWH (Isaiah 29:16). "The Lord maketh the earth ... waste, and turneth it upside down," observes the psalmist (Psalm 146:9). The Roman historian Tacitus in turn noted: "Moses introduced a new cult, which was the opposite of all other religions. All that we held sacred they held profane, and they allowed practices which we abominate." First-century observers then accused Christians of having "turned the world upside down" (Acts 17:6).Yet what is so perennially curious about the Jewish (and Christian) revolution is how thoroughly conservative it was. Yes, in choosing the Hebrews to be a people "set apart" for His own purposes, YHWH initiated a remarkable, unprecedented shift in human history. But it was also, in another sense, a reditus, or return, to the Garden of Eden. The Jews were chosen to understand and practice divinely originative, eternal truths Adam and Eve had forfeited at the Fall. The Jews were then to communicate those realities and traditions to their progeny.
Posted by Orrin Judd at July 25, 2021 12:00 AM