Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 79:313 (Jan 1922)
Article: Democracy And The Kingdom Of God
Author: Thomas Valentine Parker

BSac 79:313 (Jan 1922) p. 54

Democracy And The Kingdom Of God

T. Valentine Parker

IN these days the spirit of democracy has so saturated our minds with its ideas and ideals that it is not sufficiently descriptive to say that democracy is our creed. It is more than that. It is the frame which contains and limits our creed. Should a man have the temerity to declare himself skeptical of democracy as a panacea, he would at once be eyed suspiciously as a Junker or pityingly as a lunatic. Democracy is inhaled as naturally and quite as unanalytically as the air we breathe. In antithesis to democracy we have set imperialism. We have regarded the two as forming a kind of axiomatic alternative. It is democracy or empire. We are a little astonished at the audacity of the few who suggest a change of conjunctives to make the phrase democracy and empire.

Yet may we not hold—without being guilty of the most heinous heresy, that of revolt against the spirit of the age—that there is a need of a more cautious consideration of the meaning of democracy and an analysis of the imperial idea especially as applied to our interpretation of the New Testament? One wonders sometimes if we are not intoxicated with democracy so that we face these momentous questions of our day in an exhilarated condition rather than in an attitude of judicial sobriety. Will the next revision of the New Testament scornfully regard as obsolete requirements of literal rendering of the texts and attempt a transmutation of ancient ideas into modern intellectual vernacular rather than a translation of the words of an ancient language into their English equivalents? For to the consternation of many our Lord Jesus not only presents the principles of his ideal social order

BSac 79:313 (Jan 1922) p. 55

as imperial, but actually uses the term “kingdom of God.” Our modern substitute is the “democracy of Jesus.” The few who are troubled with consistent minds are put to it to explain how it was that Jesus, whom they still recognize as speaking with unique authority upon matters of religion, should think so often in imperial rather than in democratic terms.

Of course it is easy to talk about democracy as the product of modern evolutionary forces and to affirm that Jesus necessarily confined himself to the terms in vogue in his day and especially accommodated himself to Old Testament usage. But Jesus did not hesitate to tear down hallowed customs and traditional interpretations when they obscured the truth. We recall his saying that new wine requires new skins. Long before the time of Jesus the Greeks had tried the most daring experiment in pure democracy the world has ever seen upon a large scale. It is hard to believe that Jesus was unaware of democratic forms of government. As we k...