Christian Political Theory (1)

When I was young, I was very interested in politics and economics. Many of the problems in the world are caused by politics. It seemed like solutions would be political.

When I went to university, I studied political science for a couple of years, but I found it was a dry well. There are a huge variety of political systems, but none seem to work well. The common answer was that we should persist with the government we have, because anything else would be worst. This was disappointing.

Once I became a Christian, I realised that the solution had to involve Jesus. Every society needs laws, so I spent a long time thinking about how a parliament could produce laws that were consistent with God’s will. The only way that seemed possible, if most of the members of the parliament were followers of Jesus. If that did happen, and it is not common, the people who were not Christians would hate having Christian laws imposes upon them. That did not sound like Jesus.

I committed to solving this conundrum. I went to theological college for three years to get a sound understanding of theology. I learned NT Greek. I read several histories of political thought to understand how we had got to where we are today. I worked for thirty years of the edge of the political system; close enough to see how it worked, but not close enough to be distracted by power. Later, I did a three-year course in Hebrew to understand the Old Testament better.

Over several decades God showed me the answers to the questions that were bugging me. I was totally surprised by where he led me. I will describe what I found I found in the next few posts.