Slaying Leviathan: Limited Government and Resistance in the Christian Tradition by Glenn S. SunshineMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’ve enjoyed getting to know Glenn Sunshine on the Theology Pugcast podcast, with Chris Wiley and Tom Price. His insights into modern culture from medieval and Reformation history are consistently incisive and helpful.
In Slaying Leviathan, Sunshine wields his historical knowledge to help us understand the proper role of the state, in a Christian worldview.
Common knowledge has it that before the Enlightenment, Medieval Christendom was a theocratic, absolutist nightmare, right up through Calvin’s Geneva. It took the wars of religion in Europe in the 1600s to cure us of that, along with Christendom, and we’ve been happy, tolerant pluralists ever since. Conservative Christians who press for limited government do so against their history and against Romans 13.
Except that’s not how it is – or was - at all.
From monks arguing for property rights, to the Magna Carta restricting the king’s power, to England’s Glorious Revolution chasing out an absolutist monarch for the more reasonable William and Mary, Sunshine lays out the developing history of a Christian culture and theologians restraining its civil rulers from taking on too much power. But when the Christian faith wanes, the state waxes as a possible idol. Hobbes’ Leviathan, and our current culture’s values are two cases in point.
I cut my theological teeth on the Reformed teaching of RC Sproul. I’ll be forever grateful for coming across him. And he taught me that the classic Christian tradition says this regarding submitting to government: if they aren’t demanding you disobey God, or if they aren’t forbidding you to do what God requires, you have to do what they say. Sunshine presents a different historical view, with plenty of faithful Christian pastors and authors challenging the authority of the magistrate before that standard is clearly reached. (The American Revolution is a major example.) Are there any Scriptural examples of this, and does that matter?
Slaying Leviathan would have benefitted from some direct interaction with Sproul’s view, which is held by most in the church today. Still, Sunshine’s argument from history is well done and worth the read.
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