Autor: Voegelin, Eric

Buch: Israel and Revelation

Titel: Israel and Revelation

Stichwort: Dialektik von Bund (Moses) und Monarchie; Kirche - Staat

Kurzinhalt: the creation of the community substance through Moses and the Covenant, and the the political organization for successful pragmatic existence

Textausschnitt: Once the structure is recognized, its meaning is apparent. The cause of the difficulties is the compact experience of order. We have referred to the two focuses of Israelite history, that is, the creation of the community substance through Moses and the Covenant, and the the political organization for successful pragmatic existence through the monarchy. These were the two focuses which in the later, Christian development differentiated into sacred and profane history, into Church and State. In Israelite history the differentiation, while never quite achieved, very noticeably began; and in the course of the attempts to break the initial compactness of order occurred the curious reversals in the hierarchy of the focuses. In the situation of the "conquest," under the threat of extinction at the hands of the Philistines, the organization of the people under a monarchy was understood as the fulfillment of the task imposed by the Covenant. But as soon as the monarchy was established, and had adjusted itself to the internal and external exigencies of politics, it became obvious that the new social order did not correspond to the intentions of the Covenant at all. Hence, only with the reaction to the monarchy began the intense interest in Moses and the Instructions which ultimately caused the Kingdom to appear as a great aberration. The foundation of the monarchy, thus, became an ambivalent event in both the history and historiography of Israel. Without the monarchy, the Israel of the confederacy might have disappeared without leaving much of a trace in history; with the monarchy, it survived but betrayed the Mosaic Instructions. Without