Law from Reason

I was recently reading an article in the paper regarding religious (specifically Christian) influence on politics. It was pretty run of the mill and contained the type of argument we have been accustomed to seeing when we read about this topic. That is to say it was an uninformed, unintellectual, lazy piece of propaganda.

The author said that nobody agrees on one religion and even people that share a religion differ with each other. This is uncontested and so obvious that it goes without saying. The author then proceeded to argue that since religious beliefs vary with individuals religion only provides subjective truth. Subjective truth cannot provide an adequate foundation for laws or politics; therefore he concluded that religion cannot and should not play any role in the shaping of public laws and policy. Only reason provides an objective foundation to laws, so reason alone should shape our politics. Sounds like a pretty good argument, too bad it is false.

First off, no one agrees about what conclusions reason provides. In fact philosophers disagree with each in far greater ways than religions (in particular the philosophers of the West in comparison to the religions of the West). What strain of reason is objective? What philosophy should we follow? Plato says democracy is the worst form of government, Jefferson thinks it is best. Hobbes, Bossuet, Fillmore, Dostoevsky, and Aquinas preferred a monarchy, but for very, very different reasons. Thomas More advocated religious communism Marx wanted secular communism. Hegel and Rousseau wanted a totalitarian state, but one that would increase man’s ‘positive freedom,’ while Nozick contends for a minimalist state.

These men are brilliant, heavy-weight thinkers. These are the men who have turned the pages of history. They all relied on reason to formulate their theories of government. Yet they all came to radically different conclusions when dealing with something as simple and foundational as the rational basis for the form of government. What’s the point of demonstrating this? Only to show that reason is not some silver bullet. It is not preferable to religion because it leads to uncontestable answers; on the contrary it is even more divided than religion.

Second, modern western liberal democracy (the form of government that prevails throughout the West) is grounded in Christianity. This is an uncontestable historical fact. This form of government is founded in a respect for individual rights. A respect for individual rights requires a notion of equality and equality was a concept introduced and grounded in Christianity. It was not present before the time of Christ and it has not developed independently anywhere in the world apart from the spread of Christianity. People have a notion of equality only to the degree that Christianity has influenced them.

Don’t believe me? Well, let’s consider the height of Western thought before Christ. In Greece we have Aristotle and Plato. Aristotle advocated a theory of natural slavery. In essence this theory stated that people are born unequal: some are born to rule, others are born to be slaves. Plato in The Republic compared people to metals. Some are made of fine metal, others out of base metal. People have different value based on what type of metal they are made from and justice requires that we treat people differently based on their value. The valuable should rule and the less valuable should serve. The height of Greek thought never produced any notion that remotely resembles equality.

What about the Romans? To begin with they, like the Greeks, divided the world into Roman and Barbarian. There were two classes of people, very unequal to one another, and the Romans belonged to the ruling class. They saw themselves justified in brutally conquering and ruling the world because of this inequality. Further, even within the Roman system there was rigid inequality. Their family structure was based in the notion of the Pater Familias, in which the oldest male was regarded as king of the family. He had the legal power to enact laws within the family and punish disobedient family members with death. Yet he himself was exempt from his own laws. There was no concept of equality to be found in Rome.

The Jews fared much better than both these groups, yet they had no notion of the equality of the sexes. In Judaism a husband could divorce his wife on a whim, but a wife could not divorce her husband even for abuse or inequality.

What about the Barbarians of Pre-Christian Europe and the Middle East? There slavery and abuse existed that horrified even the slave societies of Greece and Rome.

When we consider the East we fare no better. In India there existed till the modern age (and in some ways still exists) a rigid class system. One is born into a certain class (based on what they did in a former life). Some are born as rulers and priests, others as workers, and still others as untouchables. The untouchables are ostracized and forced to do degrading and humiliating work. They lack the same status before the law as other classes. This is really something else. Here we have a legally recognized and enforced caste system that mistreats some people on the basis of birth in ways we cannot even come to close to understanding.

The situation is not much different in areas influenced by Buddhism. There is no compassion for the weak and disabled in Buddhism, these people are seen as deserving their condition for some unjust action they did in a prior life. The whole religion in fact is founded on a notion of inequality. You rise or sink to different levels based on what you did in past lives and you must recognize and perpetuate these notions of inequality if you want to advance to a higher stage in your next life.

I could go on and on, but what’s the point. We all know that Muslim countries mutilate women’s gentiles at birth and don’t allow them the same legal standing as men. The Mayans had an empire founded on human sacrifice and slavery that was as brutal as they get. The fact of the matter is that the notion of equality, which is absolutely essential to Western government, has no historical foundation outside of Christianity.

The plain truth is that we are not equal. Some can run faster or jump higher, others are more creative, while others are more intelligent. Yet, Christianity insists that we are equal. How can this be? In Christianity all men are equal by their very nature, in their very essence. All are created by God. All are sinful and fallen, yet all may be redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ.

In contrast to Hinduism and Buddhism, Paul writes that no man may boast for no man may save himself, we are saved by God’s grace alone (I Corinthians 1:29). As opposed to Judaism, the Bible treats the sexes equally in marriage (I Corinthians 7:4). A slave economy existed at the time of the foundation of Christianity just as it had in ancient Greece, but slaves were equal to their masters and masters were to treat them with respect (Ephesians 6:9). Like the Roman systems parents had authority, but not unlimited power over their children (Ephesians 6:4). There are plenty more examples. James writes that if we treat people differently on the basis of wealth our faith is a fraud. In a culture when a woman was not a legal witness, Mary Magdalene is the first witness to the key event of Christianity (the resurrection).

The clear, historical fact of the matter is that Christianity said that all men are equal in the eyes of God. Men may have different gifts and purposes, but all men are part of the same body. This notion originated in Christianity and no where else and this is the foundational value of our political systems. Why shouldn’t we have slaves or forced labor camps? Why don’t we allow men to beat their wives and kids or give different legal rights based on wealth? Man has done these things in the past, but our notion of equality precludes differences in legal rights. All have inalienable individual rights that prevent us from being tortured or used as slaves or being placed under the despotic control of an abusive husband or father.

There is one last argument people will make and that is that liberal democracy is not founded in Christianity, but rather in the Enlightenment. They say that the Enlightenment was a rational reaction against Christianity; therefore our notion of equality is not based in Christianity, but rather a rebellion against Christianity.

First off the Enlightenment was in parts a rebellion against Christianity, but it was not a rebellion against Christian values. On the contrary the goal of the Enlightenment was to affirm and provide a rational foundation for the values of Christianity. Read Kant. His whole goal is to secularize Christian values. Read Locke, Rousseau, and Hobbes. All of these guys were Christians (maybe unorthodox to some degree, but Christians none the less). They shared Christian values and grounded their thought in the Christian tradition.

So to those who say our government is founded not on Christian values, but rather on the values of the Enlightenment, I say you misunderstand history. There is no contradiction there. The values of the Enlightenment are the values of Christianity. Liberty, equality, fraternity? Show me a historical source outside of Christianity that provides them. The Enlightenment only took these values and gave them another source.

It is true that in doing this they undermined the historical foundation of these values, but never did they attack Christian values themselves. In this way the West still is a Christian society: our government is based on fundamental Christian values. Yet in another sense we are not a Christian society for we have undermined Christianity and have sought to do away with the source of the very values we hold so dear.

The sobering question we must ask ourselves is: if these are Christian values how long can they survive now that we’ve undermined their historical source? If the French Revolution is a warning to what happens to a society that thinks it can have Christian values without Christianity, we should be very careful in undermining the historical source of our values any further. When we want people to have a political system based on reason alone, we must remember history and ask ourselves if that is really such a good idea.