October 21, 2024
Biblical, Creational Law
The contemporary humanistic faith in an evolving universe in Western society precludes any standard above or distinct from itself; this immediately implies that the law of the state (as a product of nature) is beyond criticism by any transcendent source of authority — for there can be no such thing as a transcendent source of authority and law. This means state law is inescapably totalitarian law. There is no right, realm of justice, nor source of law beyond or above what the state enacts. As such, the modern state seeks to unite absolute power and total jurisdiction with a growing claim to total competence. As the new source of law, the humanistic secular state claims to stand above the law as the new god of being, planning and ruling over every sphere of life. This is the idolatry of statism, “It is a reductionist vision of mankind and society … a vision that absolutizes — and therefore idolizes — one aspect of the created order above other equally legitimate aspects of creation that exist independently of the state.”[1]
As a result, and in the name of secular psychology, anthropology, and sociology, our era is experiencing a reversal and repealing of biblically derived law for man’s so-called “rational law,” sociological law and social-scientific planning. This has created the modern crisis in law and politics and a growing disillusionment with and disregard for law and justice.
The Meaning of Law
The central question that confronts us in considering a Christian view of law is the nature and meaning of law. There have been a variety of views of law (jurisprudence) in modern Western thought. From the secular humanistic standpoint, there have been two main approaches to fulfill the desire to jettison God from the realm of law in human society.
In the ‘Pure Theory of Law’ (analytical jurisprudence), the question of whether a law is good or bad, just or unjust, is not the concern of jurisprudence — moral judgments supposedly cannot be defended by “rational” argument. There are various norms (situations of fact) operating in a variety of legal systems based in diverse constitutions. Each constitution is a hypothesis and legal rules are deductions from this hypothesis. Law is therefore the structural analysis of positive rules within these various systems. It is concerned with the actual and not with the ideal.
In the “Sociological School,” law as a social institution is really based in an experimental science which has the task of satisfying human desires and wants that are constantly changing. It is not concerned with deductions from first principles. As such, “human interests” are the subject of the law. The goal is the smooth working/control of a social machine in terms of various social interests. Law on this view is simply what the courts do and decide. Law is reduced to a form of legal behaviorism where we simply “scientifically observe” the way courts behave in various cases.
In either case, laws are reduced to the commands of human beings, and the goals are purely pragmatic — law is ultimately whatever “works.” If most people obey them, then they are “valid.” Certainty here is being sought not in God’s Word but in culture and experience.
God’s Law
By contrast, from the scriptural standpoint, law in its restricted (juridical) sense is not concerned with prescribing but with discovering the meaning of the concept of justice and its implications for social and political society.
The norms of law which lie at the foundation of the jural/legal dimension of created reality are different from those governing the natural sciences. Critically, in law and justice, we are not merely dealing with descriptive observation of states of affairs, but truly normative criteria for human life by virtue of creation and God’s self-revelation in scripture. People show an everyday awareness (however much suppressed) of creational norms as God’s creatures with their sense of injustice, their demands for justice, and by inescapably invoking normative criteria like truth, fairness, right and wrong, crime and punishment for legal societal relationships.
The Word of God reveals that he has placed the entire cosmos under His law-Word and ordinances for creation. This includes, but is more than, the decalogue (Ten Commandments), case law, and prophetic instruction. It encompasses all the universal ordinances that constitute the structural principles for the existence of all differentiated things and societal entities. God’s Law-Word for all reality is the condition of life. We can therefore speak of a creational law-order because of the multiplicity of laws for the various dimensions of creation.
Torah and Just Recompense
In scripture torah is translated as “law” and its essential meaning is instruction, which is reflected in some English translations. The English word instruction reminds us that we are in-structure in God’s creation. Our life is structured within and governed by God’s Law-Word. God Himself is not to be confused with His law (temporal law is not eternally existing in God), but neither is law apart from God. Rather, he binds himself to his creation law in covenant faithfulness.
Unless God in scripture teaches us the nature of creation and reveals to us His Law-Word, we would not of ourselves, in our sinful and ruined condition, seek true justice or rightly apply his norms for legal life in the political sphere. Because legal norms regulate relations between people and human institutions, what they are concerned with is the just balancing of human legal interests, that is, giving people their due. As such the principle of retribution is at the heart of legal life.
In scripture we see an excellent example of this principle formulated in what we call the Lex Talionis, the law of recompense seen in Exodus 21:24–25:
If there is an injury, then you must give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, bruise for bruise, wound for wound.
This passage is sometimes used by thoughtless critics who think they are identifying barbarism in Scripture. However, the principle here is not that a judge is to order the burning of one who burned someone else; rather, it is concerned with just recompense. Here, in the case of personal injury, the retribution must be commensurate with the nature and scale of the offense — in short, proportionality is the governing principle. Thus, retribution must properly balance legal interests, and punishments must fit the crime.
The central meaning of justice as re-tribution is grasped through direct intuition by God’s creatures who bear His image within His law-order and it is republished in the written Word of God which is why we are able to grasp the meaning of the Decalogue. This human consciousness of accountability stems from our awareness that the judgment of God rests upon the lawless, individually and corporately. The principle of just retribution restrains excessive severity or lax leniency in the administration of justice in the courts.
Love and Justice
It is critical to observe that this justice does not conflict with love. The love of God lies at the religious root of all creation itself and is covenantal in character. Retribution is the foundation of love in its moral sense. Legal norms, which are presupposed in the commandment to love God and neighbor — since you cannot love your neighbor while denying them what they are due (Rom. 13:8-10) — are the principles for public social order, whereas ethical norms govern our personal lives. This is why not all sins are crimes.
All the moral commands of the Decalogue, such as “You shall not murder,” appeal to and presuppose the legal order, without which it has no meaning. Justice is therefore the temporal foundation of love in that it protects the weak and the wronged and restores order when disrupted by wickedness. As such, Christians must not try to break down the distinction between legal norms and the moral demand for love to neighbor as though justice is unloving!
Love certainly goes beyond justice, but not without justice as its foundation. To oppose love and justice to each other produces a false dichotomy, an artificial contradiction that can lead to a world of tyranny by shattering the very idea of justice itself.
The goal of legal justice in political life is not primarily deterrent (though that may at times be a secondary benefit); neither is it moral education or “treatment” toward rehabilitation. Crime is not a disease, but rebellion against God’s law-order that demands retribution and restitution. If crime were a disease, then you might be cured by compulsion by for any behavior the state deems a sickness! C. S. Lewis’ warning about humanitarian theories of justice is very telling:
The humanitarian theory removes from punishment the concept of desert. But the concept of desert is the only connecting link between punishment and justice. It is only as deserved or undeserved that a sentence can be just or unjust…There is no sense in talking about a just deterrent or just cure. We demand of a deterrent not whether it is just but whether it succeeds. Thus, when we only consider what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a ‘case’ to be in a clinic… The humanitarian theory wants simply to abolish justice and substitute mercy for it. This means you start being kind to people before you have considered their rights, and then force upon them supposed kindnesses which no one but you will recognize as kindnesses and which the recipient will feel as abominable cruelties. You have overshot the mark. Mercy detached from justice grows unmerciful. That is the important paradox. As there are plants which will flourish only in mountain soil, so it appears that mercy will flower only when it grows in the crannies of the rock of justice. Transplanted to the marshlands or mere humanitarianism, it becomes a man-eating weed, all the more dangerous because it is still called by the same name as the mountain variety.[2]
We can either retain the biblical legal norm of just retribution and stand with the law of God or be condemned to the control and “healing” of a pseudo-scientific political elite.
Law, Politics and the Lord Jesus Christ
The final and all-important manifestation of the unity of love and justice is found in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ who is both creator and redeemer. As the living Word, He is author of the jural dimension of creation as well as the inscripturated Word. In him, love and mercy, righteousness and justice, meet. At the cross, Christ has vindicated and proven the sanctity of God’s law and reconciled law and love by paying the price for man’s lawlessness. There he took the retributive punishment for sin demanded by a holy and just God while manifesting his divine love. There is thus no contradiction between law and love, or law and gospel. As Cornelius Van Til pointed out,
The very content of the Gospel is that Christ has fulfilled the law. The joy of the gospel is that man can in Christ know and obey the law and therefore live in the presence of God forever. There is no Gospel but that of the law. On the other hand, the Gospel is law because all must obey it.[3]
This good news about God’s law must be applied culturally and politically or we will only inherit a lawless world. The British Anglican thinker and reformational philosopher, Hebden Taylor, correctly saw that without belief in God’s law-order there is no valid basis for the enforcement of law in society:
When God and his laws and creation structures are rejected by nations then all defense against arbitrary power vanishes at the same time. If Americans and Britons refuse to acknowledge God as their ultimate sovereign in this life they will finish up as having tyrants as their masters because it is only God himself who can subject the powers of politicians, judges, police, and scientists to conscience. Without such a conscience enlightened by God’s Word and God’s Law there can be no abiding defence against injustice and tyranny. It is therefore imperative that Christians realise the vital necessity for a constant witness on their part to the saving, reforming and liberating power of the Lord Jesus Christ…. The Christian philosophy of life must not be allowed to hang in thin air but it must be brought down to earth in the hearts and consciences of the common people and in the concrete political, economic and legal situations of life.[4]
For the flourishing of our families and nations, the Law-Word of God must be proclaimed and commended to all power and authority.
[1]Stephen C. Perks, The Politics of God and Man: Essays on Politics, Religion and Social Order (Taunton: Kuyper Foundation, 2016), 49
[2]C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 288-289, 294
[3]Cornelius Van Til, The Ten Commandments (United States: Cantaro Publications, 2023), 9
[4]Hebden Taylor, The New Legality (Philadelphia: P&R, 1967), 51