Over coffee this morning, I found that Razib Khan and Ross Douthat have started a lively little debate about the use and abuse of the term "Judeo-Christian". Khan argues that it’s little more than political correctness. In fact, the dominant form of Judaism between about 500 and 1800 AD was closer to Islam than Christianity. Douthat counters that "the Christian decision to swallow the Hebrew Bible whole into its scripture - and to preserve, rather than elide, Jesus’ own obvious self-understanding as a Jew - ultimately creates deeper grounds for dialogue than does Islam’s insistence that the narrative of the Hebrew scriptures was deliberately corrupted and required correction from Muhammed." According to Douthat, affinity concerning revelation is more significant than the quarrel about Law.
As a matter of doctrine, I’m more sympathetic to Khan. Although I appreciate efforts to make Jews feel at home in a largely Christian society, we shouldn’t allow politeness to obscure the distance between rabbinical Judaism, which is essentially communal and theonomistic, and the emphasis on personal faith that characterizes many forms of Christianity. But there is a truly Judeo-Christian current of the highest importance for modern life. The political Hebraism that emerged in the 17th century is a major and often unacknowledged source for American principles and institutions.
This is not the right setting for a scholarly account, which I’m anyway ill-equipped to provide. As a general sketch, it’s enough to say that the renewed emphasis on Scripture by the reformers, especially Calvin, encouraged the view that the regime established by the covenant at Sinai remained pleasing to God. This regime, however, was neither a monarchy nor a feudal-style aristocracy. Instead, it appeared to be a kind of democratic republic, constituted by the decision of the whole people to accept to the Mosaic code.
The Biblical priority of republicanism generated a whole new genre of arguments in favor of popular sovereignty and representative government. Traces of these arguments can be found not only in thinkers like Hobbes, Grotius, and Milton, but right into 18th century debates surrounding the American War of Independence and associated attempts at constitution writing. Many such arguments were "secularized" along the way—and in some cases were chosen for their secularizing potential ("paging Benedict Spinoza"). Yet there’s a case to be made that the most meaningful Judeo-Christian synthesis is neither ethical nor theological, but occurs on the level of politics and concerns the relation of the people to its government.
