Misreading Jonah

It is not uncommon for Theonomists and other advocates of Dominion Theology to make an appeal to the Book of Jonah as an example of a pagan society transformed. Nineveh's repentance represents (to them) a kind of prototype of what would take place over one thousand years later under the New Covenant.

Beginning with Constantine and the Roman Empire, the long history of Christendom has provided countless examples of Christian statecraft, which would include the modern era of republicanism – or so it is claimed.

Such a claim would need to be validated by the New Covenant writings. There must be some example, impetus, imperative, or suggestion that this is the expected course or outworking of the New Covenant as it unfolds throughout history. Is this the case? The answer is a resounding 'no' with considerable evidence to the contrary. The New Covenant era is marked by persecution, its people are pilgrims with a transcendent Spirit-marked citizenship, and indeed the entire age bridges the eschatological.

The present evil age in which we live is transitory, a fleeting moment (as it were) in the grand scheme of things, extended only by the longsuffering of God as the elect are gathered and His people as martyr-witnesses, proclaim the eschatological victory of their Risen King in defiance of the principalities and powers. And as such we pronounce their doom, and all their Babylonian enticements have no power over us nor are we tempted by them.

As Christ makes clear in the gospels, episodes such as the healing of Naaman the Syrian were a form of judgment as the mercy of God was being extended to those outside the Covenant – testifying to the unfaithfulness of His own people. But also over the course of the gospels (and further elaborated in Acts and the Epistles) is the story of the Gentile Inclusion to which these events also foreshadowed. God's mercy was going to extend beyond one tribally-affiliated people in a small Levantine land and would in the days of the Messiah extend to the ends of the Earth. People from all lands and nations would receive the call to be part of Christ's Kingdom, a Realm that at the consummation will encompass the entirety of the world – in the fire-refined and renewed New Heavens and New Earth.

Taking into consideration the nature of extra-covenantal mercy as a form of judgment (as seen in the Old Testament), and the New Testament's interpretation of these events, as well as the numerous anticipatory prophecies found in Isaiah and elsewhere, we must conclude that the Nineveh episode in Jonah should be understood in descriptive as opposed to prescriptive terms. It is not a pattern to follow or emulate but in keeping with consistent patterns in Redemptive-History, we see Jonah as a type of the dead and resurrected Christ, bringing a message of repentance and mercy to the Gentile world.

And as expected, because Old Testament patterns are weak, incomplete, and lacking, Jonah ultimately fails as the type of Christ. He did not actually die, was not actually resurrected, and was not entirely faithful in the execution of his mission but that doesn't in any way take away from the typological picture being painted. As part of the Mosaic order, Jonah was part of a system that was weak and ultimately unprofitable. Taken alone it's even described as a ministration of death. But when understood in terms of Redemptive-History and Christ – it was a symbolic but real and historical picture anticipating the coming of the Messiah and the establishment of His glorious Heavenly Kingdom.

Aside from the Redemptive-Historical arguments, there is abundant data from the New Testament itself which renders the notion of a Christian or Christianized state an impossibility. Aside from the term not being applicable in that sense, for example how is a state baptised and brought into covenant, or indwelt by the Holy Spirit? These concepts are central to the definition of 'Christian' and do not seem applicable to a political entity – without some kind of large-scale redefinition. This (it would seem) has to fall under the aegis of Paul's anathema in Galatians 1.

Further, we have the language in 1 Corinthians 5 and the assumed state of permanent antithesis for this age between the Church and the world. A Christian state (assuming for the sake of argument that such a thing can exist), would fall outside these boundaries.

Paul contrasts the eschatologically-rooted renewed-mind ethics of the Christian in Romans 12 with the purposes and sword-bearing conduct of the state – once again an 'us-them' paradigm that would become meaningless in light of Christian statecraft or so-called Christianisation.

1 Timothy 2 calls for us to pray for kings and all in authority – so that they would legislate the Mosaic Law or some form of Christian legislation? No, the hope is that we lead quiet and godly lives and this echoes similar exhortations in terms of minding our own business and working with our hands. If the Jonah-Nineveh paradigm was some kind of imperative to Christianize the nations, one cannot find it in the New Testament.

The Apocalypse is interpreted in different ways but those of us who make the case that it constitutes a multi-faceted shifting and repeating picture of the Church Age discover there's no Jonah-Nineveh paradigm as the Dominionists would have it. Instead we find the normal patterns in keeping with what we discover in the more lucid sections of the epistles and gospels. It's the story of a pilgrim-martyr Church overcoming in a state of cross-bearing weakness.

1 Corinthians 10 tells us that the pattern of New Testament Church history will in many respects echo what was seen in the Old. There will be dangers, temptations, and great apostasy and as such we are warned. Worldliness, lusting after the fruits of Egypt, looking back on the sumptuous riches of Sodom – these are all temptations which we are exhorted to resist in both the Corinthian epistles and elsewhere. The rest of the New Testament weaves mammon into this narrative and riches are spoken of as deceitful and choking, and it isn't much of a leap to understand how riches and power always go together. There is a real peril in so-called Christian politicking and all such aspirations – which would include those built on the spurious Jonah-Nineveh paradigm. The warnings found in the New Covenant writings have not been heeded and the record of Church history is one of great hypocrisy and many evils done in the name of Christ by false professors of His name.

2 Corinthians 1.20 tells us all the promises of the Old Testament are affirmed and confirmed in Christ (Yea and Amen) and therefore the Jewish order, the Mosaic Law, or any of the prophecies cannot be read apart from the 'lens' of Christ. To do so is to turn one's back on the authority of the New Testament and the hermeneutic it provides. This is the very hermeneutic of both Dispensationalism and Dominionism – the dominant hermeneutical and theological forces within today's Evangelical sphere.

In other words, the Jonah-Nineveh thesis would need to be established in the New Testament – and then the Old can be utilised to elaborate it, not vice versa. When pursued correctly, we find the Jonah-Nineveh episode to be commensurate with already established patterns of redemptive-history as outlined above. The Dominionist model starts with Jonah-Nineveh and then imposes it on the New Testament despite the fact their reading and use of it are incompatible.

Theonomists in particular are obsessed with the 'By what standard' argument, the epistemological challenge they have misappropriated from the likes of Cornelius Van Til.

They would suggest that apart from theonomy we have autonomy and when man sets out to establish government by his own means – natural law, social contract, hereditary monarchy, or whatever, it is an autonomous polity that dishonours God and is not faithful. The only faithful method is a Theonomic one built upon his revelatory Word.

Since the New Testament is silent in terms of statecraft or any kind of political order, they turn to the Old Testament.

And yet they do so in error. As already stated, 2 Corinthians 3 refers to Moses as a ministration of death that could not save and has been superseded by the glory of the New and its mediator Christ. Hebrews 7 teaches that the Old Testament law has been annulled. Hebrews 10 reveals the Mosaic Law was but a shadow and its weakness is contrasted to the potency and reality of the New.

Clearly the Old Testament is not the model for a Christianizing polity, were such a thing possible or desired. And so if it's not found in the Old Testament then where does one turn? The New Testament? But as has already been demonstrated, no case can be made.

The 'By what standard' argument when utilized in such a fashion generates a false dilemma, a series of questions and problems the New Testament doesn't entertain. It's not the result of exegesis but philosophical inference and is thus invalid. By what standard do they ask the question to begin with? Clearly not the Scriptures.

The New Testament is not concerned with Christians managing a political order – as it is incompatible with a Christian calling, the testimony and imperatives of the gospel, the ethics of the Kingdom and our status as pilgrims and strangers. The powers that be are ordained by God – let that be sufficient. If Paul was content with Nero, then we can manage with anything that comes after and contrary to the misguided thinking of many Christians – figures like Constantine and Charlemagne are not models, but examples of error that must be rejected.

And finally, the Theonomic thesis fails in a most glaring fashion when one realizes there's no evidence to suggest Nineveh appropriated the Mosaic Law – or even some permutation of it. Without a temple-priesthood system it could not be appropriated, as indeed it cannot by any modern state either. But the Theonomists think they can pick and choose elements from the Mosaic code and then apply them mutatis mutandis to a modern situation. Again, we must ask, where is there ever any precedent for doing this with the Mosaic Law or any Covenant polity? When can men go through and filter the commands of God and apply them ad hoc to another situation? Indeed, by what standard? Their argument is self-refuting.

The Jonah-Nineveh paradigm is often appealed to and gains a great deal of traction among those who don't understand the issues at stake but it rests on false assumptions and represents a gross misreading and mishandling of Scripture.