The Mosaic Polity

by Franciscus Junius, Andrew McGinnis (Editor), Todd Rester (Translator)

This treatise, appearing in English for the first time, engages the perennial question of how the laws of Moses ought to be applied to contemporary political situations. Through clear distinctions and theses, and by drawing on diverse sources ranging from Greek and Roman law to medieval Christian theology, Junius develops a method of classifying and interpreting the Mosaic laws that honors both their particular Jewish context and their universal and perpetual significance. Junius’ Mosaic Polity also reveals the interdisciplinary nature of early modern theology, law, and politics, and the influence of Junius’ treatise and method is evident in such Reformed political luminaries as Johannes Althusius and Abraham Kuyper.

Genres: Theology, Politics, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Biblical Studies

219 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1593

About the author

The elder, born François du Jon.

Reviews

[Jonah Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good but very dry. Like, brittle. But helpful and a must read in light of all the CN discussions happening right now.
The introduction was really insightful.

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Junius, Franciscus. The Mosaic Polity. Tr. Rester, Todd. CLP Grand Rapids, MI: CLP Academic, 2015.

I have long criticized theonomists for their ignorance of Reformed teaching on natural law. To be fair, however, if they were to start with this volume they might end up even more lost. If Junius is strong and clear in the big picture, he gets lost in the details. In order to make headway with this volume, one needs to be familiar not only with Aristotle, but with basic philosophical categories that were common until modernity: genus, species, and ends. Little of what Junius says will make sense if those are not understood.

Divided into some thirty-odd theses, Junius identifies the nature of law and the place of the Mosaic code in it. That seems clear enough. What is not always clear, however, is to what degree the Mosaic code is applicable today.

Law, for Junius, is the ordering of reason to the common good. The genus is ordering and the species is reason. From this definition he divides law into eternal and natural. One is tempted to create a Ramist chart of his definitions, and that works to an extent. But there are difficulties. Natural law is separate from eternal law, yet it also participates in eternal law. The Mosaic law on one hand is an application of natural law, yet since it comes from God it seems to be divine. I think the solution is to ignore the problems that arise in the particulars. Junius is strong enough on the big picture and that is what we should focus on.

Since the Mosaic law is from God, it is perfect in origin but imperfect in mode. It has mutable and immutable parts. It is immutable concerning common notions and eternal reason. It is mutable regarding ceremonies, circumstances, and particular determinations. What parts then remain? If one can find, for example, an analogy of right between the Mosaic code and today’s laws, then that remains.

Natural law, on the other hand, advenes to nature and exists in time, though participating in God. The natural law, as it pertains to society, can be subdivided into common notions and particular determinations. The common notions, known to our Puritan forebears as “koinia ennoia,” are what they sound like. They remain constant throughout the ages. The particular determinations are the applications unique to this or that society.

Evaluation

Junius perhaps raises more questions than he answers. Structuring his argument around various theses was wise, but even then he sometimes made his task more difficult than was necessary. A good thesis is short, having a proposition and making a claim. Some of Junius’s theses ran to near-paragraph length. Even more, some of his theses seemed to summarize earlier points. Again, the best way to deal with such communicative difficulties is to ignore them and focus on the big picture. He succeeds in answering what law is. And even if he is not always clear where the Mosaic ends and the natural begins, he is clear in his use of natural law terminology, and that can prove most instructive to the reader.

[Chris · Rating 1 out of 5]

Junius' perspective on legislation and biblical law differs significantly from my own. He argues that a legislator, with knowledge of eternal law and the matters governed by laws, has the authority to create and change laws for the common good. Junius considers the laws of Moses the "perfect example" of human laws but maintains that we must continue to create and modify laws based on biblical principles. While Junius' work provides valuable insights into the development of legal thought, I remain convinced that legislating crimes based on natural law is unnecessary and contrary to biblical principles of justice and the purpose of civil government. I discuss more in my book, Seven Statist Sins - https://a.co/d/j79g7tO

[Todd Ruddell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good read, and helpful to understanding the Westminster Confession, chapter 19. Recommended!

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A judicious discussion concerning how to distinguish between which parts of the Mosaic law apply today and which laws were mutable and particular.

[Richard Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps the classic statement of the Reformed three fold division of the law. A short but very dense work, particularly difficult because the author assumes a level of familiarity not only with scripture but also with the philosophy of law and general legal theory.

I think many would be shocked by this, by:
- the celebration of the justice of the Mosaic judicial penalties
- the philosophical foundations of the division
- the fact that the division has very little in common with modern presentations of it (it is a philosophical/conceptual division NOT a literary division)

The moral law is the natural law, the unchanging moral order to creation.
Judicial law is the civic/penal code of a specific polity. (Conditioned to its time, place and people)
Ceremonial law is a mix of civic and religious ceremonies ordained for a time for a purpose. (Suited to its people)

The moral law is summarily comprehend in the love of God and Neighbour and in a different way in the 10 commandments.

It receives more nuancing but this distinction sits at the beginning of a lot of reflection: "The Judicial is dead, the Ceremonial is deadly.", Judicial is dead as it was the civic code for a long dead nation. Ceremonial is deadly as a significant portion of it was typical of Christ and to re-enact today is to deny that he has come.

Junius teaches that the Mosaic law code is the perfect example law code, given by God and hence not corrupted by any human failure. BUT in order to apply it today we must consider how it is conditioned to its time, place and the unique status of the Jews.

Junius takes for granted that the civil magistrates duty to promote what is good and punish what is evil includes matters of piety (love of God) as well as love of neighbour. However he allows that difference in circumstance may change how this is to be done - the Jews had seen unique actions of God in bringing them out of Egypt this was an aggravating circumstance for apostasy that does not apply today. (Though Junius would still advocate capital punishment for those clearly promoting full heresy/apostasy) Certain of the land laws related to the way that the land typologically symbolised the new creation and ought not to be carried over today. On the other hand the principle that the murderer should be put to death, or for that matter the delinquent who reviles his parents "obviously" applies immediately today.

Most laws in the Mosaic law code contain a mix of moral, judicial and ceremonial elements; using these categories allow us to analyse the abiding application of them. For example the Sabbath reflects creation hence it is natural law that one day in seven should be devoted to religious worship "Good morals cannot exist - not even according to nature itself - among human beings who do not observe and sanctify to the Lord one day in seven."; but the choice of day was ceremonial and the details of how it were to be observed combined ceremonial and judicial features. Jesus set a new day (declaring by his resurrection that it should now be the first day of the week), some of the ceremonial features of the old day were typological pointing to Christ; in order to observe a day some judicial law is necessary but the details of that need to be fitted to the society in question.

Striking take aways
The depth of the philosophical basis to the system.
The idea of analysing out Moral, Civil and Ceremonial elements from a law.
The idea of civic ceremonies as well as merely religious ones and the need for appropriate ceremonies for different societies.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great beginning, unnecessary dense middle, great ending.

Very useful for thinking about all sorts of issues like sabbath, ceremony, theonomy, and politics.

If I were to sum up the middle section for my own memory and for others reading it, I would say his argument here is in sum that human laws have mutable and immutable parts. The immutable parts are those derived from the eternal reason of God, and the mutable parts are those that exist because of and apply to mutable things such as persons and circumstances. The Mosaic law is both divine and human as it contains a mixture of moral laws tied to God’s eternal reason and judicial and ceremonial laws tied to persons, circumstances, and redemptive history.

[Jordan Coy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reformed Theologian Franciscus Junius has written one of the foundational texts for Protestant political theory. Junius asks how we make good and just laws. How does a Christian commonwealth rule? How does the Mosaic Law of the Old Testament relate to Christians today?
This book is a contender for being the Protestant equivalent of Aqunias’ Treatise on Law. It is also an early example of Scholasticism used within Protestant theology.
It is a difficult, but rewarding text to read on natural law, the divisions of law, and a useful framework for reading the Mosaic Law of the Old Testament

4/5 Challenging but rewarding book

[Gary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a very easy read, but essential for the topic. Junius gets to much the same conclusions as a Theonomist (at least a general-equity Theonomist), but he gets there with better math. In fact, he gets there more Biblically.

The fourfold categorization of law into Eternal, Natural, Divine, and Particular or Human Law is incredibly helpful. And it is also noteworthy that Junius does not have rigid lines drawn between moral, ceremonial, and judicial when dealing with the laws of Moses, but recognizes that many laws are deeply mixed, and so we need to carefully distinguish those parts that are mutable, and those which are immutable. Fantastic, and very helpful.

I liked it a lot.

[Caleb Newsom · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a great treatise on formulating a position on the Natural Law in a distinctively Protestant formulation. Junius’ method is impeccable. I only wish he was consistent in applying it to the mosaic law. In his distinctions of the immutable and mutable aspects of the law, he , for example, categorizes capital punishment in instances beyond capital murder to the immutable aspect of the law. While surely his teachers Calvin and Beza had an influence on him, his inconsistency in applying his method is the primary weakness of his work.

[Andy Schreiber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book! It can be a bit of a slog in parts, but overall it is very helpful. If you want to have a clearer understanding of the nature and use (i.e. general equity) of the Mosaic civil law today, read this book. (And maybe read it again.) Some of the terminology may sound foreign to modern ears, but it helps the reader to distinguish things that must be kept distinct with regard to a right understanding of the law.

[Peter]

One of the densest books I've ever read, especially at the start. I definitely didn't completely understand all his arguments, and I'll need to reread it at some stage. That said, some great stuff - a lightbulb moment for me in the final chapter was that the judicial laws are to the second table as the ceremonial laws are to the first table.

[Taylor A · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great work explaining how the Mosaic civil laws still apply, (via natural law filtered through human law). This is a good critique of reductive theonomic applications and dispensational (maybe even Marcionite) neglections.

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great! Important stuff. The preface was a great piece of political theology.

[Brandon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very thoughtful non-theonomic study of the Mosaic judicial laws from a leading Reformed scholastic theologian.

Very heady, but good.

[Caleb Harris · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I'm glad a translation of this work exists, I did not find the book very helpful. Although I can appreciate that Junius, as Rester points out in the intro, intended his work to be merely rudimentary and prolegomenal, I think that the work leaves too much unsaid. In particular, while Junius spends a lot of time arguing for the traditional threefold division of the Mosaic law--the moral, which is eternally binding, the ceremonial, which is now obsolete, and the judicial, which is merely instructional--he does not lay out sufficiently clear principles for discerning which laws fall into which category. Rather, he appears to leave these kinds of determinations to the judgment of "plain reason" (though, as he himself acknowledges, how particular Mosaic laws are to be categorized is not always a matter of "common sense," particularly when distinguishing between moral and judicial laws).

All in all, I think someone interested in the topic of how/whether the Mosaic law applies today, and how that question has been answered in the past, should look elsewhere.