Exodus 32 and the Theory of Holy War_The History of a Citation

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Exodus 32 and the Theory of Holy War: The History of a CitationAuthor(s): Michael WalzerSource: The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 61, No. 1 (Jan., 1968), pp. 1-14Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Harvard Divinity SchoolStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1508946

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HARVARD THEOLOGICALREVIEWVOLUME 1 JANUARY968 NUMBER

EXODUS 32 AND THE THEORY OF HOLY WAR:

THiE HISTORY OF A CITATION

MICHAEL WALZER

HARVARDUNIVERSITY

THROUGHOUT much of the history of political thought in the

West, the Bible was at once a constitutional document and a

kind of case book, putatively setting limits to speculationas well

as to conduct. Theologians and political theorists were forced to

be judges interpretinga text or, more often, lawyers defending a

particularinterpretationbefore the constituted powers in church

and state or before the less authoritative court of opinion. The

Bible became, like other such texts, a dissociated collection of

precedents,examplesand citations, each of which meant what thelawyersandjudges said it meant.

But the lawyers and judges did not agree. Indeed, the historyof any particular citation will suggest that arguments from au-

thoritative texts are not necessarily less controversial or erratic

than the speculations of men who admit no authorities what-

soever. The appeal to such texts is not a way of endingdiscourse

and settling disagreements though of course the appeal to an

authoritative interpreter of texts, possessing political or ecclesi-astical power, is just that - it is rathera way of carryingon dis-

course. But it is a special and highly formal way, restrictive in

the argumentsit permits even if not in the conclusions it allows.

The recognition of an authoritative text by a group of writers

imposes a common style; it makes necessary certain intellectual

motions. It compels a writer to extract his meaning from am-

biguous, obscure or irrelevantpassages and, what is most impor-

tant, from passages with which other men have already wrestled.Because of all this, it makes possible detailed comparisonsamongwriters committed to the same authority. Their different inten-

tions are often most sharply revealed in the way they approacha disputed passage: one man after another confronts the same



HARVARDTHEOLOGICAL EVIEW

words of Holy Writ, twists and turns them, qualifying, rejectingor ignoring the views of his predecessors,and inevitably reveal-

ing (as he may not do when he sums up his doctrine) the goalsat which he aims and the anxieties which attend him on his way.

The purpose of this brief essay is to examine the history of a

particularcitation which figures significantlyin the work of three

very different thinkers--St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas,and John Calvin-and which provides a useful key to their

different views of a crucial form of political activity: holy war

or, in Augustine's words, the struggleof good men against wicked

men.

Then Moses stoodin the gate of the campandsaid,Whois on the

Lord's ide? let himcomeunto me. Andall thesonsof Levigatheredthemselves ogetherunto him. And he said unto them,Thus saith

the LordGodof Israel,Put everymanhis swordby his side, and

go in andout fromgateto gatethroughouthe camp,andslayeverymanhis brother,and everymanhis companion, nd everymanhis

neighbor.And the childrenof Levi did according o the wordof

Moses;and therefell of the peoplethat day about threethousand

men.

In the context of the Five Books of Moses, Exodus 32:26-28is an uncharacteristicpassage. It forms one conclusionto a kind

of doublenarrativeof the storyof the

goldencalf

(inthe alterna-

tive conclusion,Moses intercedes for the idol-worshippingpeopleand God forgives them: "Andthe Lord repentedof the evil which

he thought to do unto his people"). The text is disjointed and

confusing, evidence- so we have been taught by moderncritics

-that it is a compilation from different sources or a late re-

constructionof an early, now partially obscuredtale. The narra-

tive as a whole is differentfrom earlier and later descriptionsof

popularrebelliousnessagainst Moses and his new God. Through-out the books of Exodus and Numbers (and also in the Deuter-

onomic recapitulation) rebels and idolators are punished by

Jehovah directly. He sends fire, plague, and serpents.1 But here

1 Compare, for example, Numbers II:i, 1:4-34, I6:4I-49, 2I:5-6.

2



EXODUS 32 AND HOLY WAR

and only here the punishment is carried out by human agentsand at the direct command of an infuriated Moses -"Moses'

anger waxed hot." There is no command reported in the textfrom Jehovah himself. More than this, the executors of the

punishment,the children of Levi, have at this point in the Exodus

story no defined political or religious position. The only consti-

tuted authoritiesin the Mosaic polity, such as it was at that early

time, were Moses himself, Aaron the high priest, and the judgeschosen by Moses, presumably from among the tribal elders.2

The establishment of the Levites as priests (or as one set of

priests along with the descendants of Aaron) comes later in thebiblicalnarrative.

The entire passage relating the golden calf incident has been

described by some biblical critics as a late interpolation whose

possible basis in fact or in memorycannot be known, and which

may indeed have no basis at all. It is excluded by Professor

Winnett from what he calls "the Mosaic tradition," a specula-tive reconstruction of the earliest narrative which includes all

the other stories of rebellion against Moses (the ten "murmur-

ings"). The purpose of the interpolation, Winnett and others

believe, was to justify the role of the Levites in the later Judaeanstate. It was designed also, perhaps, as a propaganda thrust

against the northernkingdom of Israel, where golden bulls were

set up and worshippedduring the reign of King Jeroboam.3These are, of course, recent notions; so long as the Bible was

considered the revealed word ofGod,

suchspeculation was im-possible. Theorists did not then question the historical value

of particular passages, but rather sought out the divine inten-tions and injunctions which they contained, even if obscurely.But faith in revelation was not an adequate guide in that diffi-cult search. Inevitably, particulardiscoveries of God's will weredetermined chiefly by personal and social needs (in contrast,presumably,to the discoveries of moderncritics which are other-

wise determined). Thus the notion conveyed by Exodus 32:26-2

Exodus I8:2I.

F. V. WINNETT,The Mosaic Tradition (Toronto, I949), 48-50, I46f., I6I;S. A. COOK,Critical Notes on Old Testament History (London, I907), 75; T. J.MEEK, Hebrew Origins (New York, I96o), I34ff. But see the different view ofW. F. ALBRIGHT,From the Stone Age to Christianity (New York, I957), 299ff.

3



HARVARD THEOLOGICAL REVIEW

28 -that there existed around Moses a special group of men

whose function it was to enforce divine law upon the recalcitrant

multitude- had enormousappeal to certain groups of theoristsand theologians in the medieval and early modern periods. It

appealed to men who sensed the immediate relevance of the tale

of the golden calf because they lived, or so they thought,among

idol-worshippersand lusty sinners. The Levitical onslaught re-

quired of them also a vigorous struggle against the enemies of

Jehovah and Christ. But among other men, who did not feel

with the same immediacy the dangers of idolatry, who were

uneasy with religious militancy, the tale evoked only concern-and then called forth a considerabletalent for exegesis. If it was

not yet possible to declare the text a late interpolation,it could

always be arguedthat Goddid not intend it as a direct command,

or, that it was a command to be obeyed only in special circum-

stances unlikely ever to recur. Whatever God's intentions, Ex-

odus 32 was frequently cited in the long debates which ragedover the

questionsof

religious persecutionand

holywar (and

later over the relatedquestionsof political purge and revolution).From the time when Augustine first grappledwith the problemsof a Christian empire until the collapse of Calvinist radicalism

in England in I660, the dramatic onslaught of the Levites uponthe idolatrous people was an example which, if it was not to

be imitated, needed to be elaborately explained.

II

It cost St. Augustine many years of anxious study and reflec-

tion before he brought himself to defend the persecution of

heretical Christiansby the Roman state.4 When he finally did

so, he offered in justification of his new position an interpreta-

tion of Exodus 32. Earlier in his career, Augustine had main-

tained that spiritual men would struggle against heresy armed

only with the Word of God. They would not, that is,make war

with heretics, but would rather seek to persuade them of their

folly or wickedness through the example of holy lives and the

The development of Augustine's thought on persecution is carefully traced

by HERBERT . DEANE,The Political and Social Ideas of St. Augustine (New

York, I963), Chapter VI.

4




preachingof true doctrine. Wars with the sword, Augustinehad

insisted, could bring only secular victories. They might lead to a

worldly peace-or rather to a few moments of worldly peace,since war was chronicin the City of Man- but they could never

bring that eternal peace which God offered to the souls of his

elect. Christians might fight in the wars of the earthly city,

seeking the only peace that was possible on earth; indeed, theyshould fight (and their wars would be just), for peace on earth

was a worthy goal even for God's pilgrims who sought a higherend. But as a community the City of God had nothing to gain

from such wars; they were civil wars of the earthly city, andthe heavenly city was, so to speak, a foreign power which was

not involved and had no possible interest in intervention.5

Augustine's defense of religious persecution resulted from (orat any rate required) the discovery of anotherkind of war. This

was a war very different from the endless encounters of ambi-

tious and lustful men, and one which necessarily culminatedin a

peace verydifferent from those brief moments when ambition

was satiatedor lust controlled. It was not a civil war,but stemmed

instead from the deep-rootedand perpetual enmity between the

City of God and the City of Man. "Thus," Augustine wrote,"we have two wars, that of the wicked at war with the wicked

and that of the wicked at war with the good."6 So long as the

two cities existed, there would be war between them, and reli-

gious persecution, Augustine concluded, was nothing more than

one form of this perpetual struggle. "The truth is, that alwaysboth the bad have persecuted the good, and the good have per-secuted the bad: the formerdoing harmby their unrighteousness,the latter seeking to do good by the administration of disci-

pline. .. . 7

In his Letter to Vincentius, one of the first pieces in which he

5AUGUSTINE, City of God, Book XVIII, 2 and XIX, 7, 12 (trans. Walsh,

Zema, et al.).

' City of God, Book XV, 5.7 Letter XCIII, paragraph 8 (trans. J. G. Cunningham). It is necessary to dis-

tinguish this struggle of wicked men and good men from Ithat defense of the peaceof the earthly city (described above) which Augustine calls "just" (City of God,Book XIX, 7). Good men may fight against wicked men in a just war, but theydo so as members of the earthly city and so represent only the limited goodnessthat pertains to that city. Hence they fight a limited war. A just war has a begin-

5




defended the persecution of the Donatists, Augustine used the

book of Exodus to illustrate this double persecution: Pharaoh

was the oppressor of the good; Moses of the bad. The two usedthe same weapons. Faced with the threat of a militant and suc-

cessful heresy, Augustine was unwilling to rely on holiness and

the Word. Now worldly men and spiritual men employed alike

the weapons of the world. Yet the Bishop of Hippo had no diffi-

culty distinguishing them.8

When good and bad do the same actions and suffer the same afflic-

tions, theyare to be

distinguishednot

bywhat

theydo or

suffer,but by the causes of each: for example,Pharaohoppressedthe peopleof God by hard bondage; Moses afflictedthe same people by severe

correction when they were guilty of impiety [reference to Exodus

32:27]: their actions were alike; but they were not alike in the

motive of regard to the people's welfare-the one inflated by the

lust of power,the other inflamedby love.

A close examination of this citation will suggest some of the

difficulties of Augustine's position. Pharaoh, he argues, oppressedthe Israelites out of lust, that is, in his own interest. Moses acted

out of love for the people, in their own interest. These different

motives point to another difference of greater significance which

Augustine's political purposes required him to establish. A "re-

gard for the people's welfare" was thought by the classical writers

whom he knew so well to be one of the crucial signs of a legiti-mate ruler. The mere "lust for power" marked the tyrant.9 Moses

afflicted the people for their own good, then, but also as their

true sovereign, their prince, chief or judge chosen by God to

lead them out of Egypt. In another passage, citing the same

ning: it begins with a specific violation of worldly peace. And it has an end: it

ends when that peace has been restored (not improved upon) by defensive action.But the war of the wicked and the good has no beginning or end, or rather, it is

coterminous with the earthly city itself, which had its beginning at the Fall. It

is not started anew by each particular aggression, nor is the activity of the good

necessarily defensive (or limited). The theories of the just war and the holy

war (or crusade) represent two radically different Christian defenses of the useof violence. Both have their origins in Augustine and a long history thereafter.

For a discussion of the two traditions in later history, see ROLAND AINTON, on-

gregationalism: From the Just War to the Crusade in the Puritan Revolution,Andover Newton Theological School Bulletin 35:3 (April, I943), I-2o.

8Letter XCIII, paragraph 6.9See ARISTOTLE'S olitics, Book III, C. VII.

6



EXODUS32 AND HOLY WAR

text, Augustine similarlystressed the "justice"of Moses's action.10

He was, after all, defending the activity of Roman magistrates

and opposing the violence of self-appointed Donatist saints.Hence, he had to argue not merely that persecution was a war

of the good against the wicked, but also that the good as a grouphad representativeson earth who might even by earthly stand-

ards legitimately wield the sword. He was not ready to hand

that sword to private Christians. And it was for this reason that

he omitted any mention of the Levites and attributed the "afflic-

tion" of the people simply to Moses: for the Levites had appar-

ently volunteered for their bloody mission and never beenordainedor appointed. To have emphasizedtheir activity would

have been to suggest the prerogatives of saints-out-of-office.

Augustine seems to be maintaining that Christians may hold

office in worldly states and empires and then act officially, and

only officially, in pursuit of religious purposes. It is an argu-ment which, as his most recent interpreter has pointed out,

fundamentallycontradicts the dualism of his

general theory.llMagistrates who persecute heretics in the name of Christ turn

the City of Man into a theocracy or, since Augustine does not

pretend that Moses acted at the direct command of God, into

a kingdomof the godly.But suppose the godly did not hold power in state or empire.

Might they still wage that second war which Augustine describes

as perpetual? Augustine's response was firmly negative.12 But

his own world-historical conception of permanent persecutionvitiated the effectiveness of that response. He would have been

more successful in limiting the use of the sword to secular magis-trates if he had also limited the purposes for which the sword

might be used to secular affairs. He would have been more suc-

cessful, or at least less useful to later Christian crusaders, if

he had maintained his dualism consistently. It was simply not

possible to defend worldly religiousactivity without calling forth

all sorts of religious activists, enthusiastic imitators of the chil-dren of Levi.

10 Oeuvres Completes de Saint Augustin (Paris, 1873), Vol. 23, 279.11DEANE, Political and Social Ideas, 2i5ff.12 See the discussion in DEANE, p. 199 and references there. One of the criteria

for a "just war" is that it be waged at the command of a legitimate sovereign.

7




The theoryof eternal warfaredeveloped by Augustinewas elab-

orated in the Middle Ages into the full-scale legal and theologi-

cal doctrine of holy war.l3 Until the age of Hildebrand, holywars were fought only between Christiansand infidels, and since

in such wars the Christians were usually led by their secular

lords, the problem which had worried Augustine did not arise.

But Gregorian writers of the eleventh and twelfth centuries,

citing Augustine's defense of religious persecution, insisted that

the doctrine encompassed also the struggle of true Christians

against heretics, schismatics and excommunicants." Even this

struggle might, of course, be carried on in accordancewith Au-

gustinian restrictions. Given the political position of the Gre-

gorians, however, they could hardly leave it to secular officials.

They urged instead that holy wars might be fought at the com-

mand of the church alone and that soldiers who struggled

against the enemies of God required no secular sanction what-

soever. The radical papalist Manegold of Lautenbach forth-

rightlytook the very position that Augustine had hoped to

preclude: "those who kill excommunicants,"he declared, "are

not considered murderers." That the accusation was even im-

aginable indicates that the men involved were not public officials

enforcing the laws of the state. They were presumablyprivateChristianswho had taken the holy war, so to speak, into their

own hands.l5 To vindicate Manegold's extreme position it was

only necessary to cite the example of the Levites, so carefully

ignored by Augustine. And judging from the rebuke whichAquinas later administered to the more enthusiastic defenders

of the holy war doctrine,this appeal to Exodus 32 was frequentlymadeby medieval radicals.

III

St. ThomasAquinasdid not believe that war was either chronic

or perpetual, or that human history since the Fall had involveda continuouspersecutionof the good by the wicked and the wicked

13MICHEL VILLEY, La Croisade: essai sur la formation d'une theioriejuridique(Paris, I942), 3off.

14VILLEY, 36ff.15

VILLEY, 39.

8



EXODUS32 AND HOLY WAR

by the good. His Aristotelian conception of political life dis-

posed him towards a view of peace as the natural condition of

mankind. Even between Christiansand infidels,he thought,therewas no necessary state of war (and in his discussion of war in

the Summa Theologica, Aquinas made no mention of the most

importantwars fought in the centuryand a half before he wrote:

the Crusades).16 All men were ruled by the same natural law,

imprinted on their minds at birth and not entirely effaced byAdam's sin. Aquinas did, of course, accept the notion that here-

tics might legitimately be persecuted, but since he did not view

this persecutionin world-historical erms, he was able to go muchfarther than Augustine in limiting it. The difference between his

own position and Augustine's is evident in the new interpreta-tionhe offeredof Exodus32.

Christian radicals (unnamed in the Summa) had apparentlydrawn two argumentsfrom the biblical descriptionof the Leviti-

cal onslaught,both of which Aquinaswas eager to refute.' Theyhad argued first that it was lawful for any private individual to

punish a sinner--for had not Moses issued a command that

was virtually an invitation: "Put every man his sword by his

side . . ."? To this Aquinas replied that the Levites had in

fact acted at God's command: "Thus saith the Lord God of

Israel. . ." The slaughter was "properly" His act and not

their own. The second radical argument was that clerics might

legitimately slay evil-doers. This assumed that the Levites were

already priests, an assumption that Aquinas chose not to ques-tion. He argued instead that the Levites were ministers of the

Old Law which appointed corporalpenalties. They were not tobe comparedwith Christianpriests.

Aquinas thus offered an interpretationof Exodus 32 in its wayas curious as Augustine's: if the Bishop of Hippo ignored the

Levites, the medieval doctor ignored Moses. He not only failedto reproduceAugustine's discussion of Moses' motives; he did

not even mention Moses as a participant in the slaughter. Inhis version God and the Levites were the only actors. Aquinas

"AQUINAS, Summa Theologica, 2a, 2ae, Q. 40.17The following paragraph is based on an interpretation of Summa Theologica,

2a, 2ae, Q. 64, Articles 3 and 4.

9




was not willing to confront the attack upon the idol-worshippersas the act of a secular magistrate not because he would neces-

sarily have disapprovedof such an act; more likely because hesensed the danger of defending persecution with such a cita-

tion. It was far better to ascribe Moses's indiscriminate invi-

tation to Jehovah himself, since Jehovah, Aquinas felt, was un-

likely to issue another such. And this in effect denied the value

of the citation altogether. This particular incident in Israel's

history was a special case from which Christianshad nothing to

learn. God no longergave commandslike the one he presumably

gave (no direct command is mentioned in the text) to the Le-vites. The penalties of the Old Law had been superseded.

Aquinashad no desire, of course, to question the generalvalue

of Israelite history as a guide for his contemporaries. Indeed,he defended his preference for mixed governmentwith a careful

analysis of the Mosaic polity.l8 Like Augustine, however, his

argumentset in motion intellectual processes which he could not

arrest. Men who shared St. Thomas's obvious dislike for the

crusading spirit, for example, might well deny the legitimacy of

religiouspersecutionas well - crusadeand persecutionhad often

enough been described as aspects of the same war. The defense

of either by reference to Old Testament passages might then be

met by a simple extension of Aquinas'sown argumentas to rele-

vance. An interesting example of this extension can be found in

Hugo Grotius' De Jure Belli ac Pacis, a seventeenth-century

treatise restating and enormously elaborating the Thomist doc-trine of the just war. Grotius repeats in rather different but

recognizableform Aquinas' two argumentsagainst the relevance

of Exodus 32. First, he attributesthe severity of Mosaic punish-ment to "divine counsel." And he then dismissessuch counsel with

a fine show of agnostic trepidation: "no conclusive inference can

be drawn . . . its depths we cannot sound . . . we are liable

to run into error."19 Acts committed at the command of God

are no precedentsfor latter-dayChristians. The conclusion is notdifferentfromAquinas'and the method is only a moreradical ver-

sion of his own. Secondly, Grotius writes what sounds like a

28Summa Theologica, ia, 2ae, Q. 105, Article i.

19De Jure Belli ac Pacis, Book II, XX, xxxix.

10




modernistparody of the medieval argumentabout the Old Law:

the zeal of private men to punish sinners and idolators, he sug-

gests, was justified in the period before "civil jurisdiction"wasestablished. "Primitive" law permitted such punishment,but it

is "veryunsafe"today.20

IV

For both Aquinas and Grotius, society and peace were the

natural conditions of mankind and the natural aims of all men.

God, perhaps, could act against nature (though Grotius did not

believe he ever did so) but men surely could not, or at any rate

only perverse men could- the terms of the argument are am-

biguous enough, but the intentions of the theorists are fairlyclear. They meant to require peaceful behavior from all men

and to restrict war to a defensive struggle against aggressionand

perversity waged by recognized championsof society and never

by private men or self-designated saints.For John Calvin, on the other hand, peace was the natural

conditiononly of regeneratemen. So long as mankindwas divided

into saints and worldlings, war was inevitable and continuous.21

Describing this struggle, urging the saints onward, Calvin and

his followers brought the theory of the holy war to its logicalconclusion. Their rejection of the moderation of Aquinasand his

school carried them further than Augustine had ever ventured.

The radicalism of their doctrine is apparent in the startlinglynew view they took of Exodus 32. Flatly contradictingAquinas,Calvin described the Levitical onslaughtprecisely as a precedent:the Levites foreshadowed the Protestant elect. They were a

special group of men to whom God had given special privilegesand commands; but they were also symbols of the coming gen-erations of holy warriors.

The key to the character of the Levites for Calvinwas not that

20 De Jure Belli ac Pacis, Book II, XX, ix and xiv.The imagery of warfare was frequently employed in CALVIN'Sermons to

describe the activity of the saints and the response of Satan and his worldlings;for some examples, see Commentaries upon the Prophet Daniel (London, I570),Sig. B2; Sermons on the Epistles of St. Paul to Timothy and Titus (London,I579), Sermon 9 on Timothy, p. ioo.

11




they killed idolators but that they killed brethren. He thus

stressed a feature of the biblical text carefully avoided by both

Augustine and Aquinas. "You shall show yourselves rightlyzealous of God's service," he told his Genevan audience, "in that

you kill your own brethren without sparing, so as in this case the

order of nature be put underfoot, to show that God is above

all . . . 22 The point was made even more clearly by John

Knox, in a brief comment upon the same text: "God's word

draweth his elect after it, against worldly appearance, against

natural affections and against civil statutes and constitutions." 23

Neither Calvin nor Knox made any mention of the time-honoreddistinction between private men and magistrates. That distinc-

tion had been largely superseded by the confrontation of saints

and worldlings-a supersession always implicit in the theory

of the holy war. Indeed, Knox's reference to civil statutes and

constitutions suggests that he was perfectly willing to set saints-

out-of-office against ungodly magistrates. He saw the Levites as

saintsserving only God,

and that without benefit of ordination.

Moses presumably served God also, in a higher but not in a

different capacity. Both the Levites and Moses were assimilated

to the new Protestant conception of the elect, and so neither

Calvin nor Knox shared the concern of Aquinas and Augustine

over which to emphasize.

The radicalism of Calvin's sermons is not at all evident in his

Institutes. It was only with Knox and then some of the English

Puritans that that radicalism was developed in anything like aconsistent fashion. Writing against the Anabaptists in the famous

chapter on civil government, Calvin merely reaffirmed Augus-

tine's view of the right of magistrates to wage war upon God's

enemies- and reaffirmed also the required version of Exodus 32

"Sermons on the Fifth Book of Moses (London, 1583), p. I203. In his Com-

mentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses (Edinburgh, 1854), Vol. III, 35Iff.,Calvin denies that there is anything cruel in the slaughter of brethren: "Moses

onlywished to condemn that absurd

regardto

humanity whereby judgesare often

blinded . . ." It should be said that the long discussion of Exodus 32 in the

Commentaries is not directly relevant here, since Calvin is not citing the passagein the course of an argument, but expounding it in detail. Citation depends, to

a degree, on previous exposition, but often the exigencies of argument will lead a

writer to use a particular passage in a way not yet canvassed by the expositors.

23JOHNKNOX, Works, ed. D. Laing (Edinburgh, 1846-48), Vol. III, 3IIf.

12



EXODUS 32 AND HOLYWAR

with its exclusive emphasis upon the role of Moses. "How did

the meek and placid Moses," Calvin asked, "burn with such

cruelty, that, after having his hands imbrued in the blood of

his brethren, he continued to go through the camp till three

thousand were slain?" 24 There is, of course, no mention in the

text of Moses having killed anyone at the foot of Sinai, let alone

all three thousandof the idol-worshippers. Once again, the omis-

sion of the Levites is determined by the answer which Calvin

intends to his own question: Moses was engaged, by virtue of

his office, in the "infliction of public vengeance." Still, Calvin'sstress was not quite the same as Augustine's; he did not mention

"the people's welfare" and he was quite unconcerned with any

suggestion of Moses' secular authority. Instead, Moses "avengesthe affliction of the righteous at the command of God." God

alone is sovereign,and if in the Institutes he is imaginedto work

only throughmen whom he has first raised to public office, it is

not hard to imagine him choosing other instruments--or to

imagine other men claiming to be so chosen.

That claim was most dramatically put forwardduringthe sev-

enteenth-century English Revolution. Indeed, the English saints

expanded considerably on the ancient dispute over the meaningof Exodus 32 and developed a full-scale interpretation of the

escape from Egypt as a revolution parallel to their own, an in-

exhaustible source of godly precedents and examples.25In their

sermons and pamphlets, the Levitical onslaught was describedas a revolutionarypurge. But it was still a questionwhetherthat

purge should be conducted by magistrates or by private men.

"The divine policy and heavenly remedy to recover a common-

wealth and church . . . endangered,"wrote one Puritan minis-

ter, citing Exodus 32, "is that those that have authority under

God do totally abolish and extirpateall the cursedthings wherebyit was disturbed."26 But saints in and out of office

mightstill

2 The Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book IV, XX, x (trans. JohnAllen).

2 See for example the remarkable sermon which JOHN OWENpreached justafter the execution of Charles I, Works, ed. W. H. Goold (Edinburgh, 1862),Vol. VIII, I27ff.

6SAMUEL AIRCLOTH,he Troublers Troubled (London, 1641), 24f.

13




claim that extraordinary authority. Alas, the tale of the goldencalf offered no clear evidence as to its precise recipients.

V

Three basic interpretationsof Exodus 32 were offeredby politi-cal theoristsand theologians n the course of more than a thousand

years of debate. St. Augustine imagined the slaughter of the

idol-worshippersas a public and benevolent act of persecutiondirected by Moses, a secular magistrate seen in the

guiseof a

Roman consul. St. Thomas Aquinas saw the same event as an

act of God (the Levites merely his agents), without significancefor the future. Calvin saw it as an example of zealous activity

by a band of saints free from earthly and natural law, instru-

ments of the divine will, but voluntary instruments. In these in-

terpretations the three men reveal themselves and the specialanxieties of their times: Augustine, struggling to justify perse-

cution, but also to establish limits upon it consistent with theexistence of a Christianempire; Aquinas, uneasy with crusading

fervor, refusing altogether to recognize the war of good men

against wicked men; Calvin, eager for battle and willing to set

the saints loose from secular control. All three of them were

forced to be biblical lawyers, but God's law in their hands was

as differentas men and ages could make it.

Differently as they might interpret that law, however, dismiss

it they could not. Only when the Bible had ceased to be an au-thoritative text could men free themselves from the need to de-

bate its precise meaning and to describe their own positions as

consistent with that meaning. Then the way was open for the

historical critics, and open also for a kind of judgment which

could never have been uttered by Augustine,Aquinas, or Calvin.

Thus John Aubrey reports the opinion of Thomas Hobbes: "I

have heard him inveigh much against the Crueltie of Moyses

for putting so many thousands to the Sword for Bowing to theGolden Calf." 27

27Aubrey's Brief Lives, ed. O. L. Dick (Ann Arbor, I962), I57. See also the

entry "Moise" in VOLTAIRE'SDictionnaire philosophique.

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Exodus 32 and the Theory of Holy War_The History of a Citation

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