Video Transcript: A Christian Theory of Society: Sphere Sovereignty

We've been talking about different views of the state, the political institutions  society. And I've said that our Christian approach is going to first look at a theory of society, a Christian theory of social institutions and how they interrelate. To do this, it might be just as well, to talk about how this came about historically, over  here, we have what I call a hierarchical view of human society. Here is the state  at the top, and the collectivist says it includes everything else marriage, family,  school, Temple, business, union, workers, guilds, whatever, and the individuals  are down here. The collectivist view says the state intrinsically has that authority  exercises it. And of course, it's just about guaranteed, then that the state will rule the totality of life. That's what totalitarian means. We talk about kinds of rule that  we object to sometimes as dictatorships or so on. And yet, that's doesn't really  tell us what we need to know, what is the state? How much of life does the state  think has the right to control? That's the question. And the and the collectivist  says everything. So a collectivist like Aristotle was going to say, the state is  going to say, who can marry, the state is going to determine what's taught in the  schools, what the religion of the people will be, and so on. Aristotle, starts in his  political theory raises the question how much unity does there need to be in the  state for the state not to fall apart. And he says, Plato had it wrong. And then he  that was his teacher. And then he goes ahead and, and over the next few  chapters, he lists the things that the state has to control, and force everybody to  do alike, in order for the state, to stay together not to disintegrate. And among  those things are they have to speak the same language, they have to have the  same education, they have to worship the same gods dance, the same dance to celebrate the same holidays and so on. That listing there, including religious  beliefs, as he did, is very fateful for the the history of Europe long after he was  gone. You see the kings and queens, the nobility of European nations, were  taught Aristotle that having an education meant that you studied these ancient  Greek thinkers. And here's Aristotle telling the Kings, that if you don't have a  unity of religious belief in your country, it's a threat to the state and it'll fall apart.  If you want to know why so many kings, especially in the Middle Ages, were  executing people for having differences of opinion and religion, why the Counter  Reformation thought it was justified in going after Protestants and executing  them and so on. It's, it's because of what Aristotle taught. Scripture doesn't say  the state will fall apart if people hold different religions. It envisions the state as  being partly Christian and partly not right. But we are called to go preach the  gospel to the people that don't yet believe it, or have never heard it. And that  sort of assumes that they're in within your same territory. The individualist tries  to avoid such totalitarian consequences, doesn't want the state to be ruling  everything all the time. So it says no, the authority originates from the  individuals, the individuals delegate the authority to the state, that doesn't really  change a whole lot. If you don't think that the state's intrinsically limited as to  what it may do, it doesn't much matter whether you've got a single dictator here, 

or the or the tyranny of the majority here. Unless the state itself is conceived as  limited in some important way. I don't mean but small I mean, limited as to its  authority, then you going back and forth, and this hierarchical way of thinking of  individuals in relation to the state is not really going to do do a lot of good, the  individualist who started that propose individualism as a way to avoid a  totalitarian government. And one of the major examples of this is the theory of  John Locke and his Second Treatise of civil government. Since 1619, Locke  proposes that it's the individuals that have the authority they delegate it to the  state, and then the state exercises it and the individuals can call the state on  mishandling it or extending it too far. But when Locke himself treats, different  problems that can arise for a government, he admits that the government is  going to act in a totalitarian way and there's not much we can do about it. He  faces the question, what what happens if there's a fire and the fire spread,  spreading through the city? Doesn't the state then have the responsibility to step in and order the buildings that are in front of the direction of the fire spreading  order them torn down so that the fire will stop and save the rest of the city? I  mean, his theory was that the government just was a security company, it's  there to protect your life and property. But then the question is, should it not act  in case of a fire sweeping the city. And in that case, it doesn't protect the  property of the people who own the houses that need to be torn down, it  destroys it. Similarly, for what would happen if a plague broke out, there's a  there's a disease that's in an epidemic across the city, can you quarantine  citizens? Can you tell them? Sorry, you can't come out of your house or you  can't go past this? Because we got to stop the spread of this disease. Locke  admits Yeah, well, I guess it would have to act then. See, even he has an idea  that's broader than just secure. You're just secure your life and, and property. It's the greater good for the whole, that the state is governing. And he admits also,  that if, if a difference of religious opinion was threatening to destroy the state, if it was in conflict, there was a if there was a conflict, that the state would have the  right to step in and say which religion was going to be allowed and which one  was not going to be hard. So it starts out, let's not have one absolute dictator,  let's have the people vote and send delegate their authority to the state. But  then he's got no principles upon which to restrict it so that it doesn't become  totalitarian. Historically, speaking, most all the states in the ancient world were  assumed to be, just assume that they had collective absolute totalitarian power.  The Pharaohs of Egypt went even further. They own the land everybody lived on Egypt belonged to the Pharaoh. So it was his private property. There was no  government in the sense of a public institution, there to serve the needs of the  public, it was his private plaything. And he can order anything he wanted. Those  absolute dictatorships. were somewhat ameliorated when Christianity came on  the scene when the Roman Empire finally stopped persecuting Christians, and  because the Emperor himself converted, in 312. And then the year 313, he 

promulgated an edict that said that Christianity was not to be persecuted  anymore. And along with that, because everybody knew that he had become a  Christian. So he didn't make didn't, the law that he promulgated, didn't say,  you've got to be a Christian to all the citizens of Rome, it just said, we're not  going to engage in the persecution anymore. And by the way, I become a  Christian, then people rush to be baptized, because they want to be on the right  side of the Emperor's favors. But what came out of that was that the Emperor  asked the church bishops to meet together and create a statement of the  Christian religion. So here's the here's a summary of the Christian faith. And  they did that Nicaea. And they finished their deliberations and 325, they  published the Nicene Creed, which many Christian churches still recite and  worship, the one I belong to does every Sunday. So here we have the the  Emperor, saying to the church, bishops, and theologians, give me a statement of Christianity. So we know what we're talking about here, something definite. And  then on the side, the Emperor speaks to them about the proper relation between the church and the state. And unfortunately, brilliant as those theologians were  as great a job as I think they did in the Nicene Creed. They had no clear idea of  the state church relations except to say that the church has its authority, and the  state has its, so we've got two sources of authority in society, not just one. And  they held that this, the church authority has to do with people's souls and their  morality and their ultimate destiny. So this church authority is over people's  souls by a market through moral rules and church practice, and then it ends up  in eternal life. The state has control over your body, it does this by making laws.  And the end result is the same that is peace, peaceful and harmonious. Life until death. This is eternal life after death, of course. So they've got a theory here it's  going it's that has two sides to it. The church has its authority, the state has its.  They interact in this way the state is going to protect the church, the church is  going to approve of the state. So for many centuries, this idea of split authority,  in practice meant that the church crowns the king, in a public ceremony, the  state, meanwhile, enforces, a protects the church from persecution. Actually, it  turned out that it enforced conformity. In other words, in most countries in  Europe, it became the case that whatever the king said, was the religion that  was it, of course, some form of Christianity, but is it Eastern Christianity? Is it  Roman Catholic Christianity is it Protestant? And as you probably already know,  this whole thing after the Reformation ended up in a huge war. And everybody  got terribly sick of this war. And they voted, all the countries of Europe got  together and they all agreed at the Peace of Westphalia 1648, they all agreed  that anybody who is Catholic could live in a Catholic country, if they were in a  Protestant one, wanted to move, they were free to move, they were not going to  be harassed or attacked or anything like that the Protestant said the same, right, they could go to a Protestant area, or they could stay in a Catholic area, and  there was going to be tolerance. Now. There was no no more of this burning 

people at the stake stuff or going out on the battlefield and shooting at each  other. So in that way, they tried to calm things down. But still, you see the  mischief of Aristotle's point. Unless there's a unified religion in the country, the  state might fall apart. And so that's why the state executed people for religious  deviants for heresy. The church actually never put anybody to death, it doesn't  have the authority or the power, only the state can do that. So it had to be that  the king made a law that made heresy, the same as treason, and you were  executed for treason. This became the ensconced arrangement, especially in  Europe. And it lasted centuries. The division between these two authorities in  life, the state and the church looks as though you draw a nice tidy line. But in  fact, in practice, it resulted in endless messy debates about who had the  authority here and why, and then they and, they never were settled. Now, when  Kuyper reflects on all of this, and he takes those hints that we talked about last  time, from scripture, about the kinds of authorities there are in life, he's going to  take a very different view, it's not going to be a hierarchical view at all. It's not  going to be collectivist or individualist, it's not going to just split authority  between the states authority over your body and the church's authority over your soul. It's not going to do that either. It's it's a genuine third possibility distinct and  different. And that's what we're going to tackle next time. So think about this, and get ready for a treat.