Video Transcript: A Christian Theory of The State: The Political Institution in Society

I'd like to go ahead and give more examples of specific laws or practices that  violate either the type law of the state or your sovereignty limitations. I gave a  few last time. I'm using most of my examples from the United States. Because  

I'm a citizen, I've lived there a long time. I know that that law system better. So  I'm gonna stick with that. Last time I made the point that natural law, there's two  points, natural law theory says there's this panoply of just 1000s, maybe even  millions of natural laws of what is the right thing to do. And the foreign laws copy those, then we have the right laws, and to the extent they deviate from them,  they're not right. And I explained that Dooyeweerd rejects this for three, good  reasons, I think. But there's, there's an element in that, that we do want to keep  with respect to the norm of justice. That is, while it's not true that for every  situation, whatever, at anytime, in any place, there is something that is the exact right thing to do, the proper adjusting to do. It is true, that the norm of Justice,  the norm, the general norm, the command that we are to treat one another with  justice, that does hold at all times in all places, and for all people working out the specific laws that will govern them, and be just is a task for legislators,  lawmakers, lawyers, courts. So there, we do think that the law, the norm of  justice holds everywhere and for all people. Now as to making laws in  accordance with it, I last time pointed to some that violated the sphere,  sovereignty limitations of the state. And I want to mention a couple more and  when what I talked about last time was that the state regarded itself as the  originator, the the origination point of the authority that it wields, rather than  bearing authority that comes from God, because people been elected to the  office or made a judge or whatever. They see it as originating in the state, and  therefore the state's the offended party in any crime. That's just not right. There  are some other ways states do this same thing may not seem as important. But  actually the more you accumulate the little things and let government get away  with thinking it originates the power, the more it'll think that for the big things take something seemingly ordinary as a marriage license. In most states, in the  United States, and in most countries in the world, one gets a marriage license.  And it's a way the state has of checking on the health of prospective spouses.  And it's also a way of registering the marriage as part of the public legal order  with the state. But a lot of places viewed the license as the state's permission to  get married. So Is marriage a privilege bestowed by an almighty state? Or do  people have the freedom to be to marry? Whether the state likes it or not? can  always go somewhere else and marry, right? The State takes this absolutistic  view that it is the bearer of all authority, the originator of all authority, that rule  will tell people yes, you can bet get married? No, you can't. I don't think the  churches make marriages either. The church service is there to bless a  marriage. The state may register the marriage as part of a public legal order for  legal purposes, tax purposes, for example, or inheritance purposes but it's the  the partners to the marriage that make the marriage. And usually there's some 

kind of social public ceremony. I did some reading up on this and found  something very interesting. That up until the time of Charlemagne, there were no weddings in churches. What happened was that under Charlemagne, he after  he conquered his kingdom and the borders were set, and he could now retire  from the battlefield and give attention to domestic affairs. Charlemagne was  concerned that people out in the in the remote villages might be marrying  spouses that were too closely related to them. And so what he said to his  ministers was, well, why don't we have the local priests check on that? And then, if everything's okay, the people can go ahead and get married. And from that  evolved, have the priests marry them. Now Charlamagne that's over 800 years  after Christ. So for 800 years, churches never thought that they married people.  I think it's nice to have the blessing of the ceremony in church. I did that myself.  It was wonderful. As a Christian, I've would like God's blessing on my marriage.  And I'm the social event then that celebrates it announces it publicly can be a  church service, in which two people pledge their love to one another, nothing  wrong with that. But if we think that we need the okay of the state in the sense  that unless the state gives it, we are not really married. And if we think that a  church service marries us, because the state has transferred its authority to the  church, in that moment when the clergy say I pronounce you, man and wife,  then we have a wrong view of the state and its proper authority and its proper  limits. I think the same thing applies to a driver's license. We're quite used to  that. I see nothing wrong with there being driver's licenses, as long as the  government doesn't think that it is giving you giving to the driver getting the  license. It's Almighty permission to go from one place to another. It's not a  privilege bestowed by the state. It's something we're free to do anyway. It's not a right, or a privilege, it's a freedom. And the state certainly has the right to keep  track of who's driving. And whether they have passed sufficient tests to show  they're competent to drive. Keep a record, because if we find people that get  drunk and drive, we can remove the license. So you can't do that. Public safety  is part of the state's job. That's right. Nothing the matter with that. But it sure is  something very sure is something that the matter is the state thinks that it has  the absolute right to say who may go from one place to another, and that it is a  privilege that you get this license from the Almighty state. And now you're  allowed to go places. And if you think that's not the case, the states aren't doing  that, I can tell you that on the driver's exam, the written exam that I took, when I  was 17, or 18. In order to drive it was in the state of Pennsylvania, and one of  the questions was, is driving a right or a privilege? And the proper answer the  answer, that wouldn't get points taken away was, it's a privilege given to you by  the state, and a state can remove whatever it wants to. That's just not right.  That's not the proper view of government. There are many other things that are  freedoms, and neither rights or privileges. I'm going to finish up this section by  talking about something else that's proper to the US only, but it's a good 

example of what happens when we don't get the sphere sovereignty view. There are all kinds of ways of violating this, and the type law for a state and so on,  failing to see the proper limitations of it, or the origin of its power, its authority.  I'm going to refer now to something most Americans are very proud of. And  that's the Declaration of Independence, that they the letter that they sent to  George the Third and telling him you're fired, you're no longer our King. It was  written by Thomas Jefferson, and it was revised several times in conference with other members of the Congress, particularly Franklin, advised Jefferson on this,  but part of what many people think is wonderful is Jefferson's statement. We  hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. And have  been endowed by their creator with unalienable rights, among which are life,  liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And that it is to secure these rights that  governments are instituted among men. Sounds nice. But if you look at that, in  the light of many centuries of Christian thought about politics and law and  government, you might notice that Jefferson has flipped the Christian view on its head. He's turned everything upside down. The Christian view as with Jews  before us before Christians, is that God has built these norms into creation.  God's law reveals to us, His will for us, God says, Be just with one another and  be loving to one another. And we have rights. We have the right to be treated  that way because the Law binds us and the other, my fellow man, because the  law binds him too, I have the right not to be assaulted, cheated, lied to, and so  on. And because the law binds me, he has the right not to be assaulted and  cheated, and robbed and so on. In other words, it's the law that generates the  rights, not the rights, generate the law. In Jefferson's telling of it, we're all born  with rights sticking in it's like feathers like a baby Eagle. And then, because we  have them, the state the governing body, the government makes laws to protect  the rights. If you think that that's getting picky, let me point out to you right away,  that there was a real debate in the US over who actually had these rights.  Jefferson doesn't say there are laws built into creation by God, he didn't believe  in God, there are laws built into creation by God. And because of those laws, we have rights. If that's true, if the if the rights come to us, because of the laws that  govern us, then everybody has them. Because the law governs all places at all  times. But in the US, because he flipped it around, there were real debates  about who had the rights. And he didn't have any rights. blacks didn't have any  rights. Women didn't have a whole raft of rights women didn't have. If you make  the law primary, and the rights come from it, the laws apply to everybody, then  everybody's got those rights. If you turn it around the way Jefferson did, and you flip it on its head, then you have debates over who's got the rights and who  doesn't. Who made the government protect, and whom not. There's also another remarkable failure in that caused by flipping that on its head, turning the  Christian view upside down. And that is that if the laws, govern everyone, all  times, all places. There's no reason then to say that the laws don't hold not only 

for individuals, but families. Not only individuals, but churches, schools,  businesses. But Jefferson had it that only individuals have rights. And if that's  true, a business has no legal rights, and therefore no standing in court. It can't  bring a case. For that It's intolerable. Of course, business needs to be regulated  by law. People need to know what to expect, what what's forbidden. And so the  tradition in the US law was, we will create a legal fiction, emphasis on the word  fiction that will regard a business as a person. Now, fiction is a nice word for lie.  We have a deficient view, it turns out that on our view, businesses won't have a  legal standing in court, that's ridiculous. So instead of fixing what was wrong,  we'll create another problem. We'll pass in the legal system will regard a  business as a person, and then the business can have legal standing in court,  businesses aren't people. What needs to be fixed is the initial flip that turned  everything upside down. Because the command to be just applies to everyone.  Then everyone has both rights and responsibilities. And that goes for social  communities as well as individuals. These are some examples of ways in which  wrong thinking wrong views of the state, infect political practice that even  wanted to be guided by Christian principles. It's hard to weed out all the things  that assume that the authority originates with the state. The only difference  between the collectivist and the individualist in that respect is the individualist  says, the authority originates with the people and the people confer the authority on the state. Neither one of those is the Christian view. The authority originates  with God, and people elect who will bear that authority. That's why we have a  respect for an office. Even if the person holding the office is hard to respect, we  still have to respect that office. The thing to do if the person is incompetent or in  other ways unfit to hold. It is to remove them by the normal legal means of doing that. But we still do it with respect for the office, because the authority of the  office comes from God. I hope these illustrations will help you to see ever more  clearly, what happens when we first distinguish the different aspects and the  ways things have possessed their properties in them, then we distinguished the  ways that artifacts do we come up with a view of the state, as one of the  institutions, one of the communities that people establish. And then we look at  its type law, which is the relation of might to right. And we want the legislative  and the legal to leave the use of coercive force, either by the military or the  police. We don't want a military dictatorship. But then, even when we get all that  done, if we have a representative state, where lawmakers and administrators  are elected by the people, we still have these other ideas creep in, they keep  coming back ideas that are holdovers of monarchy. One, I'll give you one more  trivial example. It seems trivial. And I'm always afraid of the little things that  seem trivial because they eventually grow big and do a lot of damage. Here's  another example. I hear a lot of talk by newscasters, and people who discuss  politics. I hear them on television, I read it in the newspaper and so on. And  there's an expression that keeps getting used. And it goes like this when we 

have to decide whether messing with this is really the President's best interest,  he's got better things to do. He's got to run the country. And we have to let this  go. He's got to do what? The President doesn't run the country. The President  

doesn't run families, churches, labor unions, businesses, schools, churches,  health providers, artistic organizations, we can keep going. No, the President in  the US, heads up the executive branch of the federal government. It's only one  institution, the government, the federal government, and it's only one branch of  that, that he does have, that he's supposed to run. But that's hardly running the  whole country. If you get my point. I hope you do. I worry about things like that  expression. It's that's the way ideas sneak in. They get absorbed by kind of  cultural osmosis. People pick it up. And they begin to think that way. And if they  think that way, for several generations, maybe they'll start to make laws  assuming that and things will change. And we'll be right back to an absolute  dictatorship, or an absolute monarchy, or whatever coin wants to take. And our  next meeting, or next lecture, we're going to talk some more about ways that  laws could be improved relative to this view of government, sphere sovereignty  view. And we'll talk about how what laws we might need to make and about  interpretations of some that already exists.