Corporate Sin and the King's Two Bodies

An Addendum to a Review

In my recent review of Jemar Tisby’s new book, How to Fight Racism, over at Founders, I critique his handling of Ezra 9 which he attempts to leverage to impose corporate repentance for racism on all white churches. In short, Tisby skews the plain meaning of the text by artfully, well, not presenting a large enough sample of the pericope to reflect its true import. He erroneously suggests that Ezra was repenting, on behalf of the people, for past sins, the sins of their fathers. Though the prophet does mention that the idolatry in focus had been committed by generations past, it is clear from the verses subsequent to what Tisby quotes that the issue was a present one. Princes, priests, indeed the whole people, had taken wives from surrounding pagan nations contra God’s command. But there was corporate repentance, just not for past sins as such.

This leads to another point to be made that is helpful to illuminate the passage in question, one that I did not include in the already lengthy review. (It is, admittedly, a little bit obscure, but I’ll risk boring you with it here.)

Our contemporary idea of leadership and community is, rightly or wrongly, radically different from that of most of the people who have lived in history. I will not rant too much about liberalism here, but it is the priority of the egalitarian, ever-more-autonomous individual that has contributed to this; so too has technological advancement and a host of other material and cultural factors. I represent myself; I am responsible for myself; I am a self-sufficient, self-creating, independent moral agent, and so on. Within these assumptions, government plays the role of umpire. As long as my pocket is not picked, nor my leg broken, your business is no business of mine. Government as umpire is manned by governor-administrators, referees of the game.  

People, up until the later 18th century or so, did not think in these terms. To oversimplify, they were much more communal and conscious of organic societal connectivity and, yes, hierarchy. This influenced how representative leadership was conceived.

Ernst Kantorowicz's fascinating study of medieval political theory, The King's Two Bodies (1957), gets at something closer to what the Israelites would have felt. The ruler is an individual person, of course. I am not he and he is no me. At the same time, by way of his God-ordained office, the king embodies the body politic. In some sense, he is the kingdom, much more than just a corporeal being, and the kingdom never dies. Kantorowicz describes this dynamic in terms near that of the hypostatic union.

The monarch, upon his coronation, mystically merged with the eternal body of the whole people. And so, when the king sins, when he violates the law, the people share in the guilt as well. A wayward, tyrannical, corrupt king was not merely committing a personal crime, easily dealt with by impeachment and replacement. Rather, he was sinning on behalf of everyone else, and as everyone else. The kingdom was sinning. Built into this formula was of covenantal thinking, which was better articulated in the late medieval period and early days of the post-Reformation years.

All of this is to say, when Ezra is told that the heads of households, the priests, and princes—every level of authority in society, whether all the people were actually guilty, and it appears that they were not—they, in a sense, were all guilty by proxy. Their representatives, as embodiments of those under them, had sullied the name of their families and Israel itself.

We do not think quite like this anymore. Maybe we should. But something like this socio-political theory of representation should be acknowledged when examining corporate repentance in Old Testament Israel. They were a covenant-bound nation with a corporatist outlook, especially toward their leadership. To again invoke the Puritans contra Tisby, this way of thinking about authority extended to American soil, at least for a time. Just as rulers could bring a commonwealth crashing down on their people through their own insolence and tyranny, so too could they uphold it. This is, in part, why the character of the good ruler was so emphasized in 17th century. James Fitch (1622-1702) spoke to this dynamic in a 1674 sermon on Zechariah 2 at Harford, Connecticut:

"[W]hatever he inormities [sic] and scandals of some may be, yet if there be a considerable number of those who shine, but especially if the ruling and carrying party do shine in Grace and Godliness this will argue for that People [such that God does not remove his wall of fiery protection from around them]…if yet a considerable number of those who fight because of the abominations committed, Ezek. 9.6, and weep sorely because of those evils… especially if the Ruling party do, though through many difficulties shine in godliness, and the Glory of God appeareth… to the suppressing and confounding of all scandalous practices."

The principle goes both ways. Representatives of the people, conducting their duty coram Deo, can either bring a people down or raise them up. Certainly, something proximate to this outlook on authority and society is apparent in the Ezra passage Tisby invokes and should influence our understanding and application thereof.