How Shall We Then Live 5

The Bible as the Basis for Law and Justice

Supreme Court building of Switzerland in Lausanne. This painting was done in 1905 by Paul Robert. The judges had to pass it each time they came up to try a case to remind them of something. The Bible gives a basis not only for morals but for law.

How should the judges judge? How indeed? So that the judgment would not be arbitrary. Justice here is not blindfolded and her sword does not point upward but down to this book, La loi de Dieu, the law of God.

This was the sociological and legal base for law in northern Europe after the Reformation. As the Reformation emphasis that the Bible is the only final authority took root, the ordinary citizen was increasingly freed from arbitrary governmental power.

What Paul Robert painted for the justices in the Supreme Court building in Lausanne, Samuel Rutherford of Scotland put down in writing in 1644. It provided the people with a base for effective political control of their sovereign.

Lex rex, law is king. Freedom without chaos because there is form. Or said in another way, a concept of law rather than the arbitrary governments of men. Because the Bible was there as the final authority, as a base.

Samuel Rutherford's work and the tradition it embodied had a great influence on the American Constitution even though modern Americans have largely forgotten him and his influence. John Witherspoon, president of Princeton University, member of the Continental Congress, and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, followed Samuel Rutherford's Lex Rex directly.

Thomas Jefferson picked up this Christian teaching in secularized form from John Locke, the English philosopher who stressed inalienable rights, government by consent, separation of powers, the right of revolution.

Locke did not have Samuel Rutherford's Christian base, but he built on this base and secularized it. So one must say that not all men who lay down the foundation for the United States were individually Christian.

For example, Thomas Jefferson. However, he lived within the circle of what the Christian consensus brings forth. Many of the men who framed the United States Constitution were not individually Christians, but what they built rested on the Reformation through the Rex Lex tradition.

On the basis of the Bible as the final and unique authority, it's possible for a society and government to know form and freedom to the extent to which that society allows the biblical teaching to come to its natural conclusions.

The Reformation, Checks and Balances, and Political Freedom

This is the Reformation Wall in Geneva, a monument to the leaders of the Reformation. The Reformation in northern Europe also gave a strong impetus toward the system of checks and balances in government.

The men of the Reformation strongly emphasized the fall of man as man revolted against God. They were not romantic about man. They understood that every man is a sinner, so there needed to be checks and balances, especially for men in power.

Calvin himself by no means had the authority often attributed to him, either in political or church affairs. His influence was moral and informal, as opposed to formalized or institutional authority. There had to be checks and balances.

In each of the Reformation countries, this took slightly different forms. Switzerland was especially interesting in this regard. The Swiss have geographically separated their branches of government. The legislative and executive arms of the government are in Bern, and the judiciary is in Lausanne.

In Great Britain, there are the checks and balances of the king, the two houses of parliament, and the courts. In the United States, there is a slightly different arrangement, but the same basic principle.

The White House is the executive administration. Congress, in two balanced parts, covers the legislative, and the Supreme Court embodies the judiciary. In the Reformation countries, there was a solution to the problem of form or chaos in society.

In countries without this base, there was a more or less bloody conflict to try to resolve the tension between unmitigated power and privilege, and the relatively powerless and underprivileged social groups.

The Reformation was not perfect. It was no golden age. But in the Reformation countries, the situation was overwhelmingly better. And in the area of social relationships, these countries are still drawing upon this capital today.

The French philosopher, Voltaire, often called the father of the Enlightenment, and in whose chateau we are here, wrote these words after his years of exile in England.

The English are the only people upon earth who have been able to prescribe limits to the power of kings by resisting them, and who, by a series of struggles, have at last established that wise government where the prince is all-powerful to do good, and at the same time is restrained from committing evil, and where the people share in the government without confusion.

As you can see in the area of political reform, the results of the Reformation are very impressive. The British have been able to control the monarchy with indefinite legal bounds, and to do this deliberately.

The historians call this the bloodless revolution of 1688. During Voltaire's English exile, he was greatly impressed by the bloodless revolution of 1688 in England. But when the French revolution tried to produce English conditions, but without the Reformation base, which gave freedom without chaos, using Voltaire's humanist Enlightenment base, the result was a bloodbath, and a rapid breakdown to the authoritarian rule of Napoleon.

The National Assembly of France swore to establish a constitution in June 1789. This is the first phase of the liberal bourgeois plan for the French revolution. And in August, they issued the Declaration of the Rights of Man.

It sounds fine, but it had nothing to rest upon. Voltaire and the other men in the Enlightenment had no base, but their own finiteness. What was called the supreme being equaled the sovereignty of the nation, the general will of the people.

What a tremendous contrast to the English bloodless revolution, and what a contrast to the results of the Declaration of the Independence in America 13 years prior to the French revolution. The English bloodless revolution and the American Declaration of Independence had a Reformation base.

The French Declaration of the Rights of Man did not. It took the French National Constituent Assembly two years to write a constitution. Within two years, it was a dead letter. And now the second French revolution was in motion.

In order to make their base completely clear, rather than counting the years from the birth of Christ, they devised their own revolutionary calendar, in which 1792 was the year one. They began to destroy the things of the past, even suggesting the destruction of the Cathedral of Chartres.

They proclaimed the goddess of reason in Notre Dame in Paris and other churches in France, including Chartres. In Paris, the goddess they carried shoulder high was a certain Damazel Candy from the opera.

They did this to indicate as graphically as possible that human reason was being made supreme, and that Christianity was being pushed aside. Before it was all over, 40 ,000 people, many of them peasants, were killed by the government and its agents.

Robespierre, the revolutionary leader, was himself executed. These results were not from outside. They were the product of the humanist Enlightenment base. The men of the Enlightenment thought that both man and society were perfectible.

They held on to this even in the midst of the terror. Just as in the later Russian Revolution, there was no choice, given the humanist base, except anarchy or repression. Sometimes the French Revolution is related to the slightly earlier American Revolution, but in reality, this is incorrect.

The American Revolution is related to the English Bloodless Revolution. And on the other hand, in contrast, what we find is that the French Revolution is very much related to the Russian Revolution. And then by 1799, Napoleon had arrived to govern as a one-man elite, just as Lenin later did in Russia.

Reformation Freedom Versus Revolutionary and Communist Repression

Allowing for local influences, it would seem that most of the revolutionary changes, which came in the south of Europe, came by copying those changes that the Reformation brought forth in the area of freedom in the north of Europe, even though they contorted them in certain places.

And when we think of the Reformation and what it brought forth in northern Europe by natural growth, and when even we think of what was brought forth by borrowing in the south of Europe, it stands in gigantic contrast to that which communistic countries have produced and continue to produce.

Marxist-Leninist communists have a great liability in arguing their case, because they've never come to power and continued in power without their materialistic base leading to repression. Don't forget, it was not Lenin, Trotsky, Marx, and Stalin that made the break for freedom in Russia.

The break was made with Prince George Lvov as prime minister, and then Alexander Kerensky, a social reformer, but not a Leninist in the February Revolution. Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin took over this revolution made by others in October of 1917, and built a regime of repression from the beginning.

The Bolshevik Leninists were only a very small percentage of the Russian people, and made up only one quarter of the Constituent Assembly. But when the Constituent Assembly, only just elected in November, met for the first time in January of the following year, 1918, the Bolsheviks dispersed it by force.

The election of the Constituent Assembly was the first and the last free election in Russia. Repression engulfed not only political life and political freedom, but the whole spectrum of life. What was called the temporary dictatorship of the proletariat has proven to be in reality the permanent dictatorship of the small elite.

Communism has to function on the basis of internal repression. One can think, for example, of the repression under Lenin, the Stalinist purges, the Berlin Wall, the loss of freedom in China. Russia also holds on to its allies by repression.

In Czechoslovakia, the repression did not end with the tanks. Later, half a million followers of Ducek were purged from the Communist Party. The Communist base has not produced anywhere the freedoms brought forth in Northern Europe by the Reformation.

Seeing the contrast to the Southern European countries and to the Communist countries, the riches provided by the Reformation in the area of society and government should not be minimized. And even in those places where the consensus produced by the Reformation people was less consistent than it should have been.

Nevertheless, the biblical basis did give absolutes upon which to combat injustice. In contrast, the humanist has no way to say that certain things are right and certain things are wrong. Because for the humanist, the final thing that exists is the impersonal universe.

And that's silent and neutral about right and wrong and about cruelty and non-cruelty. He has no way to have absolutes. Therefore, consistent with its own position, humanism, both in private life and private morals and in political life, is left only with the arbitrary.

And because there was no basis for right and wrong, laws could be exchanged tomorrow for another arbitrary absolute for the sake of expediency. We have just seen what happened in those countries which did not have biblical absolutes, which did not have a Reformation base.

But we must not forget that as the centuries passed, weaknesses did develop in those countries which did have a Reformation history. People often did not act consistently upon the biblical teaching which they said they held.

And today's Christians must feel profoundly sorry for these places of inconsistency when biblical Christianity had more influence upon society than it has today. And of course, the most effective apology is for today's Christians to act more consistently upon the biblical teaching at these crucial points.

Race, Slavery, and the Church's Failure to Speak Clearly

There were various areas where the Bible was not followed as it should have been. But two stand out glaringly. First, a twisted view of race. And second, a non-compassionate use of accumulated wealth.

A twisted view of race took two forms. Slavery based upon race and race prejudice as such. Slavery based upon race was, of course, the most blatant. And race prejudice continues right down to our own day.

Arab slave traders, such as those seen in this drawing, captured the Africans whom they then sold into slavery. Many Englishmen, Europeans, and Americans indulged in the arbitrary fiction that the black man was not a person and could therefore be treated as a thing.

Here, the United States must bear special criticism as slavery based on race continued to such a late date. We just cannot pass over the conditions that existed on these slave ships in which thousands died crossing the seas and the treatment these slaves often received.

Slavery based upon race and racial prejudice are wrong. We must acknowledge that often both were present when Christians had much more influence on the consensus than they have today. And the church, as such, did not speak out sufficiently.

Industrialization, Wealth, and the Dignity of Labor

The beginning of the Industrial Age was the harnessing of water power in new ways. After water, steam was harnessed. This coal-burning steamer which we are on is a relic of the Industrial Revolution.

The age belonged to the inventors and the engineers. Industrialization produced a steady stream of better things, for example, better pottery for the working man's table, and a steady flow of more goods for everyone.

If industrialization had been accompanied by a compassionate use of accumulated wealth and an emphasis on the dignity of each individual man, both of which are stressed in the Old and the New Testaments, the Industrial Revolution would have been a revolution for good indeed.

But unhappily, there was too often silence on these two crucial points. There were acts of individual charity, help to the poor, but the church often was simply silent on the Bible's command for the compassionate use of wealth, both in England and in other countries.

It wasn't that most people were worse off than in the previous mostly agrarian society, but that the wealth the Industrial Revolution produced was often not used with compassion. Thus slums grew in London and the industrial towns.

The average working day was between 12 and 16 hours. Women and children were especially exploited. The central reason the church should have spoken on these issues with courage and clarity is that the Bible commands it.

If the church had spoken out clearly against the cruel use of wealth as a kind of a survival of the fittest, probably this concept would not have been so automatically accepted when it was put forth by a secularized science.

All too often, the church did not speak out clearly against utilitarianism, a teaching that the measure of all ethical questions is that which is useful. To keep the matter in balance, it must be said that there were many non-Christian forces at work, and also that many who would have called themselves Christians were not Christians at all in the biblical sense.

It was fashionable to bear the name and to go through the forms. It was the church as the church that did not take a clear and vocal stand when it had the voice to do so. Individually, there were many Christians who fought for the truly Christian teaching which should accompany a Christian consensus, and had a vital and vocal part in the battle against these abuses.

Christian Reformers Who Opposed Slavery, Prison Abuse, and Child Labor

The Bible makes plain that there should be a result in these areas from the preaching of the gospel. There were many voices raised and lives given to illustrate it. John Wesley spoke out strongly against slavery, including slavery in the United States.

John Newton was a slave trader. He became a Christian, and he quit the trade and spoke out against it. Thomas Clarkson spoke out strongly against slavery, and William Wilberforce, following the pioneer work of Clarkson, fought on and on against slavery, and for the basic recognition of the humanity of the black man under God.

Wilberforce the Christian, and because he was a Christian, was the overwhelmingly outstanding voice in England against the slave trade. The slave trade was prohibited in England in 1807, and as Wilberforce lay dying in 1833, slavery itself was abolished in England.

I wish there had been someone in the United States as consistent to Christian principles as early as 1833, and as influential as Wilberforce. Someone who could have brought forth the same results in the United States.

In Britain, John Howard, friend of John Wesley, labored tirelessly for prison reform. Elizabeth Fry, a Quaker, had a profound and practical compassion for the prisoners of Newgate Prison. Lord Shaftesbury, as a Christian, fought on and on against the exploitation of children in the factories.

The preaching of George Whitefield and John Wesley revived biblical Christianity in Britain. This had a strong impact on the grassroots, which inspired political education and economic reform. As a matter of fact, it is not too strong to say that without this influence, England could not have escaped its own version of the French Revolution.

The Reformation did not bring about perfection, but gradually, on the basis of its return to its biblical teaching, it did bring forth a unique improvement, a vast and tremendous freedom in society without chaos.

The could be this tremendous freedom without these freedoms leading to chaos. The biblical teaching meant that there was something by which the society and the state could be judged, namely, the biblical absolutes.

The little man, the ordinary citizen, with a Bible in his hand, could jump up and say that the majority was wrong. So, to the extent in which the biblical teachings were practiced, the despotism of the 51 vote, the despotism of an individual, or the despotism of a group could be controlled.

The basis by which there could be this tremendous freedom without chaos is the fact that the Bible gives a base for law.