“We cannot separate Christian morals and the rule of law….”
“My Puritan ancestors of Massachusetts Bay, like their fathers the “Geneva Men” of Elizabethan England, hoped to make the laws of the ancient Jews into a code for their own time—a foolish notion . My Scottish Covenanting ancestors, too, aspired nearly to that. Upon such misconceptions, my great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather on the distaff side , Abraham Pierce, was tried at Plymouth, Massachusetts,in 1625, for indolence on the Sabbath; by a miscarriage of justice, doubtless, he was acquitted.
Such attempts at legal archaism, being absurd, failed before they properly began; for the particular laws of a people ineluctably mirror the circumstances of an age. Hebraic legal institutions would no more suit seventeenth-century England, say, than the English common law of the seventeenth century would have been possible for Jerusalem in the sixth century before Christ. No, what Christianity (or any other religion) confers is not a code of positive laws, but instead some general understanding of justice.”
Dr. Russel Kirk
1983 Lecture — Hillsdale College
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Imprimis-We-Cannot-Separate-Christian-Morals-and-the-Rule-of-Law-Apr-1983.pdf
There is a good deal in Kirk’s lecture that recommends itself to the reader because if provides fodder for a law that refuses legal relativism (Kirk’s Dionysian) as against a law that remains absolute (Kirk’s Apollonian) and for that reason I would recommend reading it.
However, what Kirk gives that is wholesome with the Right hand in that article above he takes with the left hand in the quote italicized above.
Kirk seemingly desired the fruit of Christian law influence quite apart from the root of Christian law. Kirk desired the flavor of Christianity quite apart from the ingredients required in order to yield the flavor he found delectable. Kirk praises the child while damning the parents.
First Kirk faults the Elizabethan Geneva men, the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay, and the Scottish Covenanters. This is no small or insignificant group of ancestors and yet Kirk dismisses them seemingly because Kirk didn’t like Sabbath laws. Kirk gives us no reasons why the proper codification of law as based on a proper understanding of God’s law is “foolish.” Kirk tries to make it sound like the Geneva men, the Puritans, and the Scottish covenanters were trying to repristinate God’s law to such a degree that the result would be the re-creation of 1st century Israel in 17th century England. Anybody familiar with Calvin’s Geneva knows that 17th century Geneva was in no way 1st century Israel.
Clearly Kirk’s aspiration to have a law that would produce Christian morals is limited by what morals he himself did and did not desire. Kirk noted in the article linked that there had to be a balance achieved between being to loose with the connection between Law and Christianity as the source of Law and to strict with the connection between Law and Christianity as the source of Law. The problem we find here is, by what standard will we decide what is and is not to strict? Kirk seems to tell us that we are the standard by which the appropriate amount of strictness will be measured. However, if that is the case we are right back to man being the source of law and not God’s Law-Word.
When Kirk offers that “the particular laws of a people ineluctably mirror the circumstances of an age” we are right back to some form of relativism as the source of law. Law is not objective, per this standard, but rather subjective as reflecting the always changing circumstances of an age. Also, again we find ourselves asking, “circumstances as adjudicated by what or whom?” The Marquis de Sade would have insisted that the circumstances of his age to be quite different than the circumstances his peer, Edmund Burke, would have insisted upon as prevailing. Because this is so we would ask Dr. Kirk, “who is being absurd now?”
Kirk insisted that it is the role of Christianity to provide “some general understanding of justice,” but how can Christianity provide a general understanding of justice apart from the legally archaic particulars of which Kirk gently mocks? For example, how can we have a general understanding of murder unless we know that murder includes, per God’s particular law, both the element of the intentional and the unjust? How could we make distinctions between murder and manslaughter unless the Scripture gave us particular instances and not merely some general understanding? As said earlier, Kirk desires the fruit of the Christian faith informing law (a general understanding) without out the root of the Christian faith informing law (God’s particular case laws).
On the face of it what Kirk offers it sounds reasonable, but in the end it places him in the same camp as those who do not see Law as absolute and particular. Kirk gives us a shifting law that images the circumstance of the age without quite realizing that a shifting law requires a shifting God since Law is a reflection of God’s character.
Having said all that, allow me to say that this is no paen to the idea that God’s Law can’t be differently applied in different eras or among different Christian social orders and cultures. Clearly, God’s Law was applied differently among the Christian social order of Charlemagne and the Christian social order of Calvin’s Geneva. However, even if applied differently, once traced back to its origin one will find in every Christian social order that the Law of the land is distinctly Christian and includes the general equity of God’s particular case laws.
It is encouraging to realize that Dr. Kirk knows better now.
