Christendom and the Nations

by James B Jordan

The word state is an abstract noun, and it refers to people-as-organized-and-ruled-politically. What actually exists is not the state, but people. Particularly, what actually exists are certain people who rule over other people: civil magistrates. To treat an abstract idea as if it were an existing thing is the logical error of hypostatization or reification.

The Bible does not speak of the state, but of magistrates, judges, elders, and kings – in other words, of persons.

It is important for us to bear in mind that political relationships, and thus international relationships, always boil down to personal interactions.

A state, then, is a geographical area governed by magistrates through the use of force. Ideally, such civil governments should correspond to nations as cultural units. Historically, however, very often powerful men use the weapons of force to create states whose boundaries have nothing to do with the natural boundaries of the nations.

Most Christians are used to thinking that God created the nations by scattering people at the Tower of Babel. Not so. The curse of Babel came because the people rejected God’s plan of diversified nations. God had to come down and force them to do what He intended for them. Notice that it is in Genesis 10 that we have listed the seventy nations of the world. The story of the Tower of Babel is not recorded until Genesis 11.

The word translated language in this verse actually means lip. The phrase “same words” (sometimes translated "speech") refers to language, but the phrase “one lip” refers to religion. For instance, commenting on the Tower of Babel, the prophet Zephaniah wrote: “For at that time I will change the speech of the peoples to a pure speech [lip] that all of them may call upon the name of Yahweh” (Zeph. 3:9, ESV). The third and only other place in English Bibles where the Hebrew lip is mistranslated as “language” is Psalm 81:4-5, where again it clearly refers to religious confession, not to a foreign language: “For it is a statute for Israel, a rule of the God of Jacob. He made it a decree in Joseph when he went out over the land of Egypt. I hear a language [lip] I had not known" (ESV, emphasis mine).

A glance at a Bible concordance will show the religious meaning of lip. Start by looking at Job 27:4; 33:3; Psalm 12:2-4; 16:4; 40:9; 45:2; 51:15 (“O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise,” ESV); Isa. 6:5 (“I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips,” ESV); Isa. 6:7; and Mal. 2:6-7. We have taken this little excursion into word study in order to show that what happened at the Tower of Babel was not first and foremost a division of languages, but rather a division of religious beliefs. The idea of speaking one language or another is not absolutely excluded from this word lip (see Isa. 19:18), but in the context of Genesis 11, there is clearly a difference between the “one lip” and “one speech” of verse one.

Cain had built his city on the human sacrifice of his brother (Gen. 4), and Nimrod built his city (culture) and Tower (worship center) of bricks. When we remember that man is made of dust (Gen. 2:7), and that God’s House is made of people, “living stones” (1 Pet. 2:4-8), we can see a double meaning in what we read here in Genesis 11. Nimrod’s world of bricks cemented by asphalt served to symbolize his unified society of men, all stuck together in one place, not spreading out and shepherding the world.

We need to notice also that they wanted to make themselves a name. They did not want to be given a name by God, or wear His name. They wanted to make a name for themselves, to glorify themselves. And Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And Yahweh said, "Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language [lip, confession, ideology], and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language [lip, confession, ideology], so that they may not understand one another's speech [lip, confession, ideology]."10

It is surprising to hear God say that because the people are unified, “nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them.” In one sense, we know that God can always stop men from doing anything, but the language used here points to the fact that in terms of the economy God has established in the world, there is strength in unity. God does not want the wicked to rule the world, so He moves to destroy their unity.

What the story of the Tower of Babel tells us is that there was originally only one pagan, anti-God religion in the world. At the Tower of Babel, God acted to diversify paganism. All the heathen religions in the world have the same basic ideas, but each is slightly different from the rest. One group worships Thor and his kin, another Zeus and his family, another Jupiter and his cohorts. One nation pursues Baal, another Chemosh, another Molech, and another Amon-Ra. One group of revolutionary socialists follows Marx-and-Lenin, another follows Marx-and-Mao, another Marx-and-Castro, and another Marx-and-Ho Chi Minh. Still others follow Adolf Hitler. From the Christian point of view, there is little difference between these pagan religions, but from their point of view the differences are great. Each pagan nation has its own god, and wars are fought over them.

If it seems strange that God Himself would act to create these different pagan religions, we have to remember that according to Rom. 1:18-32, God punishes sin by giving people over to it. Idolatry is destructive to human life, and if men rebel against God, He will give them over to worse and worse forms of idolatry, until either they repent or are destroyed. The punishment fits the crime.

No matter how hard they try, the pagan dream of a secular “united nations” is doomed to failure. It is the true faith that is destined to triumph in history.

Nations are not the same things as states or governments. They are organic social groupings of people. Usually a nation has a common language, but a nation always shares a common cultural outlook, stemming from religious presuppositions, and a nation always desires to govern itself. There are many nations because God is Three and yet One, and international diversity reflects His being. At the Tower of Babel, early man refused to carry out God’s plan to diversify humanity, so God forced them to.

Localism in Church and state ensures that justice will be tempered with sympathy. When local churches and states are governed by people far away, true order is impossible. Local people know one another best. They have personal interaction. They understand one another’s problems, and because they know each other, they can tell the difference between high-handed sins and sins of ignorance.

First is the property tax. The power to tax property is the power to destroy and disinherit. Since local people control the election of tax assessors and county supervisors, the taxation of property seldom becomes oppressive. This prevents central governments from destroying the citizenry. Second is criminal law. Law enforcement officers, police, and judges are officers of the county, not of the state. Until recent years, executions were held at the county seat. In a dramatic reversal, nowadays virtually no execution takes place without being appealed to the United States Supreme Court. Third is civil law. Most civil law is county law, enforced by local courts by locally elected officials.

The history of the United States is a history of centralization. First the states began removing power from the local counties, and then the federal government began removing power from

the states. As the U.S. has become more secular, it has become more statist.

Every Bible reader is familiar with the fact that the Assyrian empire conquered Northern Israel and took the ten tribes into captivity. After this, the Assyrians moved other people into the holy land. “And the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the people of Israel. And they took possession of Samaria and lived in its cities” (2 Kings 17:24, ESV). The remainder of 2 Kings 17 describes what happened to these foreign people: They became the Samaritans, who appear in the New Testament.

American foreign policy has shown itself committed to secularism rather than to Christianity when it comes to allowing freedom for the true nations.

Gen. 2:10 says, "A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers” (ESV). The following verses describe how these rivers spread out to the “four corners of the earth” in order to water all the lands. What we want to see here is that the water flowing from Eden to the whole world is the basic symbol of international unity.

When we look at the Tabernacle and Temple, we find that each had a container of water. There was the “laver of cleansing” in the Tabernacle, and the “bronze ocean” in the Temple; but because of sin, none of this cleansing water ever flowed out to transform the world. Thus, as we shall see, during most of the Old Covenant the gospel did not really go out to the nations. Instead, the nations were brought to the central sanctuary — or to its gate, since they could not go in.

There are many nations, but one Church. There is only one kind of fruit: the fruit of the true Tree of Life, the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The true principle of unity is not found in some political union of nations but in the worldwide work of the Spirit and the Bride.

We see it again: many nations, but only one kind of tree, fed by the water of the Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son (Lamb). The biblical symbol of international unity is twofold: the water of life and the tree of life. The water symbolizes the life-giving work of the Spirit, poured out on Pentecost. The tree symbolizes the healing and feeding/nurturing work of the Bride, the Church.

In the Old Covenant, the international unity of the world was seen in the one central temple in Jerusalem. All nations were tied to Jerusalem. Those who blessed the Jews were themselves blessed. Those who cursed them were cursed (Gen. 12:3). The Godly gentiles who understood this always acted to build up Jerusalem, because they knew it was for their benefit (see Ezra 1 for an example). In the New Covenant, there is no longer any central earthly sanctuary. Rather, the “gate of heaven” is found in every place that the Church is established. The Church ministers as the Tree of Life to heal the nations. And since the Church is the same everywhere, she is the embodiment of international unity. The only true “united nations” is the Church herself.

The Bible says that, despite what men think, there is “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” (Eph. 4:5). Baptism is visible. In fact, baptism is that water we’ve been talking about. The water of baptism is what makes us grow into Trees of Life, with leaves to heal our nations.

There is also one visible (audible) Word of God: the Bible. There may be many translations, but there is only one Bible. You can see it anywhere. And, there is visibility (tangibility) in the sacrament of holy communion. There is only one bread and only one cup, because there is only one Christ on whom we feed in the Spirit.

The Church has a government like the state. She is a family for believers. Her husbandry of the tithe is in some ways analogous to the economics of a business enterprise. In all these ways, the Church serves as a new community in the earth, a training ground for the transformation of each nation and people.

The story of the Tower of Babel tells us that paganism (secular humanism) cannot provide a common culture for the nations. The Christian faith, acting as a nursery for the nations, does provide such a common culture. Each nation will be different, but each nation will be Christian and united in the common faith.

Secular humanism works in exactly the opposite manner. For pagans, unity is something imposed from above by the power and force of the state (the conqueror). For the humanist, unity comes about when several states (rulers) form

alliances without regard to truth. Such secular unity has no inner principle holding it together. It is simply held together by force and convenience. As we see in the next essay in this series, the secular humanist scheme actually makes international relations impossible. Every attempt to build a Tower of Babel results in the scattering of those involved.

There is one tree, ministering to birds of every sort. The branches of the tree support the birds; the fruit of the tree feeds the birds; the shade of the tree protects the birds. So it is with the

Church and the nations. The Church supports, feeds, and protects the nations.

Men did not want to move out and take dominion, however. They tried to stay in one place. At the Tower of Babel, God forced them out. He forced them to diversify. As we have seen, God did two fundamental things at the Tower of Babel. He divided their ideologies, so that sinful man would never be able to unify and attain to the power that comes from true unity. Second, He divided their actual languages, so that they would be forced to move away from each other and form new nations.

All men descend from Adam, so all are equally human. Moreover, the Bible insists that foreigners be given equal protection under the law. Exod. 12:49 says, “There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you" (ESV; see also Lev. 24:22). Laws protecting the stranger and guaranteeing him equal justice include Exod. 20:10; 22:21; 23:9; Lev. 19:32-33 (“You shall love him as yourself ”); Deut. 10:19; 14:29; 23:7; 24:14-22; 26:11-13. The kindness that Israel was required to show to strangers was, as we saw in Chapter 3, part of her missionary task; but it was also a simple reflection of the fundamental humaneness of the true religion.

For years, the secular humanist government of the United States has maintained a policy of “recognizing” some countries and not “recognizing” others. This policy is based on a set of humanist values and is designed to manipulate other governments. The most grotesque illustration of this in recent years has been the de-recognition of Free China (Taiwan) in favor of recognition of Communist China. This policy is absurd and unbiblical.

The first is that Christian thought places more value on peoples and nations than on states and governments.

The second principle is that there is a difference between Christian and non-Christian countries and nations.

The first is that war must never be aggressive. The rulers of Israel were forbidden to “multiply horses” (Deut. 17:16).

The second principle is crushing the head. The Bible holds the leaders of society primarily responsible for social decisions. Thus, the most important matter in victory over an invading army is the destruction of its leadership.

The third principle is the offer of peace. This is seen in Deut. 20:10ff. The law states, “when you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it” (ESV).

The fourth principle is that the land is not to be wasted in warfare (Deut. 20:19-20).

The fifth principle is universal participation. Every able-bodied man was to be ready to fight to preserve the nation (Judges 21; Deut. 20:1-9). A small company of crack troops might be maintained as a small professional army ready to take the brunt of an initial attack, but the main defense of the nation was the job of the citizen militia. Thus, each Israelite had the “right and duty to bear arms.”45

The sixth principle is localism. A study of the battles in Judges shows that those near the battle were expected to send more men and support the war more heavily than those farther away. Some token of support, however, was expected from every tribe.

Paul is not saying that “man has come of age” in the sense that certain modernist theologians have used this phrase. He is not saying we can ignore the Old Testament or put aside God’s law in favor of “situation ethics.” He is simply saying that there is a maturing process at work in humanity just as there is in individuals. This point is important for us as we consider warfare. In the ancient world, prior to the rise of the great empires, war was pretty simple. One day an army of soldiers and chariots invades your land. You defend on the battlefield. You may have to hole up in a city behind walls. After a few battles, one side or the other is massacred, and the war is over. Their nation is pretty small, and so is yours.

In the ancient world, travel was long and arduous. Nations far away were no threat. You only had to worry about the people next door. That is no longer the case. It is easy to think about dealing with a neighboring aggressor nation, but what do you do with a nation halfway around the globe that is using all kinds of subtle tricks to defeat you? What if that nation halfway around the globe is filling the nation right next to you with hate-propaganda? Do you counter it with your own?

In George Washington’s day it was much easier to “ignore Europe” than it is today. Our modern “global situation” forces the United States to be more cognizant of international affairs than our forefathers needed to be. It is still true that each nation should mind its own business, but its “business” has increased.

Men are either allied with God in covenant or they are set against Him as enemies. There is no neutral ground. Moreover, all those allied with God are allied with each other in the unity of the Church. Finally, it is obvious that no alliance can be made between Christian and pagan, between God’s people and His enemies. The Bible teaches the same thing regarding the nations. There is a proper place for alliances and treaties between Christian nations, but there is no place for alliances between Christians and pagans. It is our purpose in this essay to explore this dimension of international relations.

All the same, the Bible has much to say against alliances with pagan nations. Christians are not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers in marriage or religious activities (2 Cor. 6:14), and this same principle applies to nations. Israel was obviously not to make any alliances with the Canaanites, since she was to destroy them utterly. By implication, no alliances were to be made with any pagan nations.

Concerning the kings of Israel, the law of God commanded, “and he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away” (Deut. 17:17, ESV). Since polygamy was already strictly forbidden in the law (Lev. 18:18), we need to ask why God would bother to give this rule specifically for kings.48 The answer is that such royal marriages were alliances. The premier example of this sin of marital alliances is Solomon. The climax of the good side of the story of Solomon is the visit of Queen Sheba (1 Kings 10:1-13). This story shows the conversion of a gentile nation and an exchange of gifts between the leaders of two Godly peoples. Immediately after this story, we are shown Solomon breaking the Three Laws of Kingship, found in Deut.17:16-17.