Divine Light from Kings
Evangelical Ecumenism & the Gospel in the Story of Israel Divided
by Peter J. Leithart
The book of First and Second Kings has long been an important text for ecclesiological reflection, with the divided Israel the book describes serving as a model of the divided Christendom of post-Reformation Europe. But by and large, the book has been plundered for ammunition in partisan polemics aimed by divided Christians against one another, and not for its insight into Christian reunion.
For the Reformers, 1–2 Kings provided scriptural categories to describe the errors of the Roman Church. They believed that the late medieval church had fallen into idolatry, and they pointed to the fact that Israel had done the same.
They also appealed to the example of the prophets of 1–2 Kings to defend themselves against charges of schism. When, for example, Cardinal Sadoleto challenged Calvin with the charge that the Reformers had divided the body of Christ and should repent by returning to the true church, Calvin replied by referring to the prophets, who were not schismatics because they aimed to revive Israel’s true religion.
Some Roman Catholic theologians have read 1–2 Kings as a tragic history of division. Few came to the later conclusion of Bossuet that the division itself was an act of judgment, and even Bossuet, according to the Episcopal theologian Ephraim Radner’s reading, did not “transfer the negative aspect of the schismatic figure to the Church itself, confining its referent to the Church’s (Protestant) enemies.”
Though 1–2 Kings is a valuable resource for reflection on ecclesial division, it offers a more nuanced picture of a divided Israel than either Protestant or Catholic partisans have recognized. And it offers an alternative, more sobering perspective on Christian division and reunion, a perspective inseparable from its perspective on the gospel itself.
Yves Congar, the great twentieth-century French Catholic theologian, offered an ecumenical reading of 1–2 Kings similar to the one I suggest below. Reflecting that Israel was reunited only after the exile, Congar mused, “One is tempted to ask what trials or deportations will perhaps be necessary before Christians find themselves united once more. . . . One begins to wonder what price we shall perhaps have to pay for the grace of reunion.”
The ecclesiology of 1–2 Kings grows from its evangelical thrust. In using the term “evangelical” I am not referring to a subgroup of American Protestantism, but the evangel itself, the gospel of grace that is the common proclamation of Christianity. To understand the evangelical ecclesiology of Kings, we need first to see that Kings is fundamentally gospel. It is fundamentally about Jesus. And therefore about who his people are in him, no matter how they relate to one another.
Dying Israel
Jews have long classified 1–2 Kings among the “former prophets.” The prominence of prophets and prophetic ministry in the narrative supports this view, as does the narrator’s emphasis on the fulfillment of the prophetic word. It is prophetic in a more particular sense as well: It is prophetic in its fundamental message.
Peter J. Leithart is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and the president of Trinity House Institute for Biblical, Liturgical & Cultural Studies in Birmingham, Alabama. His many books include Defending Constantine (InterVarsity), Between Babel and Beast (Cascade), and, most recently, Gratitude: An Intellectual History (Baylor University Press). His weblog can be found at www.leithart.com. He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.
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