The Strategy of Right, Number 3

[Part of a series, see also The Strategy of Right, Number 2]

So God created man in his own image, and in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth and subdue it... (Genesis 1:28)

And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. (Genesis 4:1)

Thus far in our reflections on the Biblical account of the law ordained by the Creator for human nature we have made out two primordial strands: the law of love and the law of retribution. We have referred to the latter as the first law of nature, to indicate that it corresponds to the rule usually referenced by that name in the works of other writers (Locke and Rousseau for example) who sought to develop an understanding of human right or justice grounded in the natural law. But in order to assure that our understanding is faithful to the original, we must respect the Bible's full account of God's creation of human nature as we experience it, which is to say in particular what it tells us about the human condition after human beings acquired knowledge of good and evil.

When God addresses humanity after the fall, He speaks of two different kinds of labor. He says to the woman that henceforth her labor in childbirth will cause her more intense pains; and that she will be inclined to crave male companionship and accept male domination. To the man He apportions a painful sustenance: the labor of procuring food from a cursed and reluctant soil until as dust he returns to that ground from which the Creator first withdrew him. Together these commands implant or constitute a law of labor governing the preservation of human life, in the individual and in the species as a whole. But that which preserves life reflects God's intention for man's good, the free determination of God's will for man's existence. So, despite their disregard for His warning not to eat fruit from the tree of knowledge, the Creator still sees the good in their continued existence. However, as a result of their mistake it can only be preserved through painful labor. The law of labor arises from the Creator's goodwill towards man. It is therefore an aspect of the law of love. However, our acquaintance with evil disrupts the appearance of freedom in our submission to this law. Since it is connected with the preservation of life, we submit willingly. But because of the pain involved, we do not submit without struggle.

From beginning to end, the whole spectacle of life, as it arises from the labor of procreation and is sustained by the labors of economic life, represents this ambiguity. Men and women wrestle in the throes of love. They desire union but resent surrender. They rejoice in their offspring, but chafe against the bonds imposed by their dependency. They take pleasure in the work of their own hands, yet inwardly dwell upon the sandy shores of paradise where work involves no more labor than the contemplation of lives effortlessly fashioned by their own imaginations. They take pride in the products of their labor, but are inwardly crestfallen as the perishable perfection of their material works calls to mind the ultimate fate of death that will complete their own material lives.

The ambiguous appearance of the natural law in this context necessarily affects our understanding of the human community to which it gives rise. Family life is at one and the same time the most comforting and the most distressing facet of human experience. On account of it we seem to know who we are, yet on that same account we seem unable to discover our true identity. In the curious search for self-knowledge we are driven from its midst into the world, yet time and again recalled from the world by the longing to journey home again. We may never feel as free as when we yield to the bonds of loving obligation that constitute its strength. We may never feel more confined than in the moments when its duties bar us from the pursuits and pleasures that would otherwise fulfill our longings and ambitions. What makes this ambiguity even more acute and inescapable is the fact that the compulsions of family life spring from the ground of love. They always express our freedom and therefore involve an element of choice, a crisis of will, a burden of responsibility.

Our present purpose does not allow us to explore the implications of this natural law for every aspect of human individual and social life. Indeed, those implications imply the rejection or reformation of almost every area of science (using that term in the broad sense of knowledge systematically developed and accounted for) that purports to study human affairs. But though our focus is on its implications for the understanding of human right and government, the way we proceed as we explore those implications may be a useful example to others as they seek to revise the basic concepts of their areas of study along lines that respect and build upon the Bible's account of the principles of human nature.

In the most widely read of his political works, the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau famously proclaimed that "Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains." Real experience suggests, however, that everyone is born in bondage, but everywhere survives by human choice. The umbilical cord that connects every nascent infant to its mother perfectly represents this bondage, the precursor of that dependency which binds every new born child to its parent by needs that it is utterly helpless to satisfy on its own. Natural instinct moves the child's mother to provide for those needs, beginning of course with warmth and nourishment.

But humanity involves self-consciousness, so that in human beings, instinct does not guarantee action. In the context of this self-consciousness, the body is an object that we identify with ourselves by a complex process that requires that we also stand apart from it, experiencing its impulses and pains from a vantage point of observation that seems to allow us to take a stand with regard to them, one that is distinct from the mere fact of observation. We can assume an attitude of inclination or aversion; say yes or no; accept or deny what our experience sets in motion. Insofar as we follow it, our reaction determines the nature of the future (with respect to the moment of observation) we see unfolding from it. This we take to be our will (our present determination with respect to a future state or condition). By thus taking it for our own, we consent to the action that follows in order to produce it. We make a choice favoring such action.

In mother's case, the result of this inner process of self-determination appears to an observer in actions that respond to the child's needs as if they were her own, thus recognizing and claiming the child as belonging to her in much the same way that her own body belongs to the being that constitutes her consciousness. Given that the child emerges from her body, and has for some time functioned as a part of it, the extension of her self-consciousness to encompass the child is not hard to comprehend. In the broad sense of the term she claims the child as her property, that is, as something that fits or is properly a part of her being. Those familiar with Rousseau's work will notice that, because of the more accurate examination of the birth of man the Biblical account inspires, it is not so difficult for us to imagine the first assertion of human property as it was for Rousseau. In a sense though, like Rousseau and others, we see labor as the constitutive basis of this assertion, but it is labor that acknowledges an already extant proprietary relationship. It does not arbitrarily assert a new one. Property thus derived has a natural basis, since it is the direct consequence of physical reproduction. But it also originates in a determination of human will with respect to that consequence, as the mother consents to act upon her natural impulse to care for the child.

The first human society thus appears to have its origins in a relationship formed both by nature and by human will. To borrow a phrase from Aristotle, the family "is made by man, but by the sun as well." It arises in part from the free choice of the parents, and in part from the instinct implanted in them by the will of the Creator. Since he does not first experience the child as part of his own body, the element of self-conscious choice is especially important as the basis for the father's relationship with the child. In the Biblical account, the man first sees the woman as flesh of his flesh, and bone of his bone. Then in the bond of love expressed in their physical relations, they become as it were one flesh, overcoming by their consensual consciousness the difference between their separate bodies. The man's identity with the child is an extension of this consensually conscious unity, which the woman at first represents to the man as subjective thought and feeling, but after the child's birth, also as an objective fact. The child belongs to the man, therefore, in a sense that corresponds almost exactly to the concept of property as we know it, which is to say as the assertion of identity between an agent and the object affected by it on account of the appearance of the mark, or evidence of substantive change, the agent's action produces. The child is that mark, and the woman the substance in which it is made, so that the appearance of the child is a token of the consensual unity of man and woman, the proof that they have come and belong together (that is, that they have formed and are part of a common whole, understood respectively as the family and the human race.)

The family brings together three distinct manifestations of humanity: man, woman and child. Like the three persons of God according to Christian theology, they are three separable aspects of the self-same being, human being. Like the drawstring devised to make a circle of cloth into a purse, humanity runs through them and draws them together, forming their unity. But in our human perception, this unity never completely erases their differences. Though the purse is one, we still perceived it front and back, bottom and top and sides, and so on. In our self-consciousness we assume a vantage point in relation to which these separable aspects emerge, upon any one of which we may choose to center our attention, thereby establishing the relative identity of the rest.

This is best imagined if we think of two people, stretched out in outer space, face two face but with their legs extending in opposite directions. Place an object between them, and what one would call its top, is its bottom for the other, and so on. Yet by agreement between them, they may choose to establish a common vocabulary, and with it a common understanding. From their common perspective, therefore, the top of the object is such only as a result of their mutual consent. Consent is therefore in one sense the basis of their community, though it is not what brings them together in the first place with a certain orientation with respect to one another.

In this same way, consent and pre-existing obligation are both of them at the origin of the family's existence. On that account, it is at one and the same time a product of the natural predisposition that reflects the will of the Creator, and of human consensus, which is the mutual agreement of human wills. In this respect it simply represents the ambiguity of humanity itself which consists partly in common physical characteristics (featherless and bipedal, for example) and partly in the mutual acknowledgement of an inner worth and meaning that transcends these characteristics. Insofar as its identity depends on natural predisposition, the family expresses and is subject to the law of nature, which obliges the will. Insofar as its existence depends on consensual acknowledgement, the family expresses and is subject to the law of love, which expresses the will's free self-determination. Yet in the nature of the family these two laws are so inextricably expressed that they operate almost as one. Like the persons of God whose way of being they reflect, there is between them a distinction that at once asserts and overcomes their difference. For what the natural law makes possible the law of love freely accepts and perpetuates. What the law of love freely acknowledges and respects, the natural law takes for granted as the product of pure self-determination. In this way natural right and freedom come together, with the family as the first paradigm of their substantive co-existence.

We will explore this in greater detail in our next essay. Already however, we begin to see why those who take the view that an understanding of politics that respects natural rights can do so without respect for the form and integrity of family life understand neither rights nor family. As their mistake is already destroying the fabric of our liberty, we have good reason to pay careful attention to the discussion ahead.

Worth considering? Then don't forget to DIGG IT!!!!

The Strategy of Right, Number 2

[See also The Strategy of Right, Number 1]

 
 

 
 

For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.

Romans 7:22-8:2

 
 

The first law of nature impels people to act against the person who assaults the image of God represented in another. It is right to follow this impulse, because as human beings we are bound and determined (obliged) by God's will to do so. It is our nature. Thus the first right of nature provides the paradigm for the definition of a right, as a natural predisposition to act in accordance with God's will. This predisposition corresponds with our obligation to God and is the same in all who are of the same nature as we. We are disposed to come together (covenant), to agree in the same course of action, which is to say we one and all mutually consent to the performance of it. Properly understood, therefore, such consent is not an arbitrary determination of our will. Rather it is a consequence of our natural inclination to do God's will.

By this consent, we spontaneously form a community. This community of action, which emerges from the executive impulse encoded by God into our nature, is the archetype of the first lawful human societies not strictly arising from procreation. It emerges in the context of bloodshed, by means of a reaction that acknowledges the image of God in others, and therefore recognizes their humanity. It is the shedding of man's blood that gives rise to the reaction, and only in other men. The operation of the first law of nature therefore presumes consanguinity, a community of blood. But though this community includes all humanity, humanity is clearly recognized only after the fact.

We will understand this better after looking more carefully at the Bible's account of God's promulgation of the law of retribution. He says that He will require an accounting for the destruction of human life from every man and beast. At first, the notion of holding the beasts accountable may seem odd. But as in our mind's eye we look more carefully at the scene being called into account, we understand. We are out hunting with a group of others from our village. We all see from a distance a beast crouching to feed upon the body of another beast. We approach the crouching beast from behind, thinking to surprise and slay it for its meat. As we come closer to the scene, we recognize in the lifeless form stretched out upon the ground someone we know to be a man like ourselves, perhaps a son or brother. Apprehension mingles with the excitement of the kill, and we move at once to strike dead the wild beast that seems to feed upon him. Alerted by our sudden move, the creature turns and we note with horror the bloody features of another who seems to all appearances, like one of us. Our blow is falling. Do we stay our hand? It looks like a man, but in the slaying our brother for food, it behaves like a beast. The indignity of it stokes our indignation. As one man we strike and strike, as if to annihilate the shame, pouring his blood, like our brother's, into the cursed ground.

In the Biblical account the promulgation of the first law of nature occurs in consequence of God's proclamation of the dietary dispensation that characterizes human nature after the Great Flood. As a concession to the evil inclinations of humanity, God adds meat to the human diet, and the hunting of beasts for food to the catalogue of human activities. It makes sense then to imagine the application of the law of retribution in the context of the hunt. In that context arises the need to distinguish man from beast, so that hunting does not become an excuse to re-introduce among mankind the untamed violence that contaminated the world before the Great Flood. So by the law of retribution God encodes a check into the nature of man, a telltale sign that flags our recognition of humanity in others and so confirms our own.

This reactive basis for our recognition of common humanity is not, of course, the only one. In the scene we have just imagined, we recognized the victim as someone like ourselves because we were already familiar with them. They came from our community. In this respect, the human community arising from procreation takes precedence over that which forms in reaction to transgressors. It is based upon the positive recognition of humanity in consequence of which the mother, on account of a bond arising from her physical predisposition, acknowledges the humanity of her children and consents to preserve and care for them.

This means that there are two natural principles of human community. One flows directly from the physical predisposition of the human body; the other from our emotional reaction to its destruction. The first defines community in terms of all that is required to produce and preserve the body. The second is defined by what God commands us to do in reaction to a murderous assault upon it. The first conceives community in the context of the law of love which is the principle whereby God rules the universe. The second produces human community in the context of the code, dictated by God's will, whereby man governs man. Obviously, we do not use the word "law" in the same sense in both cases, for the law of love is the consequence of perfect freedom, while the law of man is a reaction against his abuse of its reflection. In a sense, therefore, the law of love is not law at all, at least not in the sense of a rule enforced to constrain wrongdoing. True love can do no wrong, but seeks only to serve and preserve what is good. The good of each particular being consists in that which respects the form and substance of its existence. Love does this, respecting the limits and boundaries of particular being, without which that being's existence becomes inconceivable. As a rule operating in conformity with this respect, love takes on the form of a law, though without any implication of force or constraint. For that which respects the limits and boundaries required for the existence of a particular being frees rather than constrains it, unless particular existence itself be regarded as constraint. But every particular exists by the will of God, which is absolutely free. Therefore the law of love is freedom.

Still, though every man is a particular being, in whom the freedom of God is realized as a fact, each is also a person, which is to say an image of God in whom the freedom of God is only reflected as a possibility. Now a fact is what it is. But a possibility is only what it will be, what the will (understood with reference to the future) determines it to be. So each man experiences the freedom of God as a will determined in such a way as to bring about the possibility; therefore, as a choice suspended among ways of being not yet determined by it. This human experience of the will (with reference to the future)is of course, not identical with that of God, as God is not bound by the prerequisites of human existence, such as time and space. And therein lies the dilemma. For God, the will is being, absolute and unquestionable. But of our humanity the Bard said accurately, "to be or not to be, that is the question." We question that which is, in the will of God, unquestionable, starting with the possibility of our own existence. Like Eve, or Cain or the one who sheds innocent blood, we may choose to act upon a possibility that contradicts the possibility we ourselves represent. The extremes of murder or suicide simply epitomize the enduring dilemma of our special nature: the imperfection of our existence coincides with the perfection of our nature, and vice-versa.

To understand this better, we must remember that in its origins the word "perfection" refers to something finished or complete. Because we are made in the image of God, freedom is in our nature. But in the absolute sense, freedom must include every possibility, including the possibility that denies or contradicts the image of God in us. (When Eve ate the forbidden fruit, she chose to act as if her likeness to God required something other than what God had already provided. Her intention was Godly i.e., consistent with God's intention for her. But by substituting herself for God as the agent of that intention, she effectively denied its fulfillment, because only God could provide the substance required for it. In like manner, Cain sought in his sacrifice to acknowledge his dependence upon God, as his Godliness required of him. But by the murder of his brother, he ends up denying the unity with God that is the cause of that dependency, especially in those who like himself are persons, and who therefore represent the image of God.) If we refrain from the choice that denies God's will for us, the freedom that is in our nature seems to us to remain unfulfilled. Our nature seems to us imperfect. But If we exercise the choice, though we seem to fulfill the freedom inherent in our nature, we actually deny the will of God that alone makes this freedom appear possible for us in the first place. The dilemma is resolved only when we forego trying to remedy our seeming imperfection in our own way, and trust instead that God's will coincides with our perfection. Our trust is rewarded with the appearance of Christ, the one whose appearance in human form proves the coincidence of God's will with our seeming imperfection, thereby opening our eyes to the Godly perfection God first offered and still intends for us.

According to the Biblical account, the origin of nature as we now know it is the human decision to complete our freedom of choice by denying God's choice for our freedom. Thanks to this choice, we live in the context of sin, evil and death. Having denied the presence of God within us, we must be constrained by force to respect the will of God for us, which is to say for our existence, life and good. We live therefore under the law that takes account of our inveterate inclination to sin and that relies upon the force of retribution to discourage and repress the destructive actions occasioned by it.

Thus arises the need for external government, for which the first law of nature supplies the wherewithal. This comes in the form of a natural community that arises in response to transgression, as people of goodwill come together, all motivated to provide for this response. This covenant community of goodwill is the seed which, properly cultivated by reason, becomes a civil society. Proper cultivation involves first of all the recognition that righteous passion alone cannot subdue those whose fatal prowess has already dispatched at least one victim. People of goodwill must therefore provide against this prowess, outfitting and preparing themselves effectively to prosecute wrongdoers. The will to repress and discourage their wrong actions (to govern their unruly behavior) must be armed with an instrument devised to achieve the intended result. The different powers of government, and the organizations instituted to apply them supply this instrument.

This discussion sheds light on the true origin and characteristics of government based upon consent. As derived from the natural law of retribution, government is an external institution that emerges from the consent (common feeling or inclination) of people of good will (that is, God's will) who come together (covenant) to execute his commands, in order to repress and discourage wrongdoers. The consent from which the just powers of government are derived is not a passive token of agreement, but an active acceptance of responsibility for the constitution of those powers. This is in harmony with the language commonly used to signify the development and confirmation of consent, such as "I move that such and such be done," "I second the motion," and "The motion carries." All this language signifies that consent is a continuous activity, reminiscent of the steps required to gather and make successful use of a militia or army in defense of the community.

The reason for the title of this series of essays should now be apparent. The very concept of government derived from the Bible's first law of our nature takes shape in the context of offensive action, undertaken by people of goodwill against those whose actions conclusively demonstrate their opposite disposition (bad will). By putting into practice the will of God, the people of goodwill literally exercise the right. For this purpose they form themselves into a body, that is, constitute civil society and government, just as an army (in the Latin, exercitus ) forms itself for war. Now in warfare, strategy is the planning that clarifies the aims and objectives of the exercise, and that organizes and directs its movements to achieve them. Right (in Latin jus, from which we say justice) as Madison wrote "is the end of government. It is the end of civil society." As the general must think through and implement the strategy whereby his army may achieve its goal in battle, so those responsible for the conduct of government must think through the strategy whereby people of goodwill may win victory for right.

 
 

In light of all this, a question to ponder: How can anyone who claims to approach government from a Biblical perspective offer leadership that removes the issue of right, as God establishes it, from its proper position as the strategic goal and aim of all political action?

 

The Strategy of Right, Number 1

 
  

 
 

[Note: This is the first installment of the serialized presentation of a work in progress. From time to time new installments will appear under the same title. At the beginning of each installment a link to the preceding one will appear, so that readers can catch up or refresh their memory as needed.]

 
 

But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. 23 For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: 24 For he beholds himself, and goes his way, and straightway forgets what manner of man he was. 25 But whoso looks into the perfect law of liberty, and continues therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. (James 1:22-25)

 
 

Among those I call the moral conservatives there is much anguished discussion these days about what to do in the face of the evident exaltation of evil Barak Obama represents. All the moral capital "piled up by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil," and the subsequent century of racial injustice and legalized humiliation, Obama now puts in service to the destruction of innocent human life; the suppression of the natural right and characteristics of family life; and the subversion of the form of government required to preserve our life in liberty.

People who care about these essential goods are right to grieve and to raise their cries to heaven from hearts broken and heavy laden. They are not only right, but also wise, who understand that the prayer (that is, the one who prays) must be prepared to be the instrument through which God answers prayers. Such preparedness, as the apostle says, lies first in the willingness to reform our lives in accordance with God's will; to remember as best we can, and in all that we do, the example that, in Christ, God sets before us. Then, following that example, we must offer and give our lives to fulfill God's will, giving the life that ends in order to gain life that doesn't.

This is not only an admonition. It is the key to understanding the strategy of action that wins God's blessing in the deed, and thereby plugs us into the power for good it represents. When we get right with God, and seek to do right according to His will, we are in the right as we act. Others are obliged to respect the right we exercise (i.e., put into practice.) In the strict sense, therefore what they respect is not "our" right but the will of God which accounts for what we do. The right belongs to God, not to us. It passes to us in and through God's act of creation, in the way that He shares His being with us so as to form and constitute our nature. Our unalienable rights arise from the specific requirements of maintaining ourselves in this way of being, which is right for us because it makes our existence possible. Such rights are called "unalienable" because we cannot lose or surrender them without contradicting the distinctive way of being that makes us what we are. Without them we become, as it were, strangers to ourselves, alien to our own identity.

This accounts for the dehumanizing effects characteristic of institutions such as slavery and serfdom. But it also makes clear that this degradation of humanity arises from the failure to respect those aspects of human being that announce a presence in each man and woman that transcends humanity. The key effect of this presence is life itself. Life appears in the form, shape and physical constitution of the body, but we each of us experience life as feelings that perceive, and therefore lie beyond such things. Life appears in feelings. But we, each of us, are conscious of life as thought that observes and therefore lies beyond these feelings. Life appears in thought, but we have knowledge of life as being that lies beyond our thoughts, and therefore beyond the appearances of life that come to us through the mediation of any of our faculties. Whatever we experience, however deeply we feel, however much we think we observe and seem to know, something of life escapes us even as, with certainty, we hold it in our grasp.

The Bible's account of our creation explains this irony of our existence with the simple truth that we are, in the very essence or intention of our existence, that which we appear to be. But this is true only because that which we appear to be determines at every moment what we are. We are made in the image and likeness (that is the appearance and activity) of God, who is the being that in and of itself determines the appearance of all things. We therefore represent that which is within, and yet forever lies beyond, what we are.

In the literal sense, our existence is paradoxical. In the practical sense, this means that whenever we deal with a human being, we are dealing as well with the being that lies beyond humanity. In ancient times, actors held before themselves a mask (in the Latin, persona) of the character they were supposed to represent. Like actors playing a part, human beings carry about the image, and act like the character, they represent. As they do they call upon the resources of the individual carrying the part, whose body, feelings and mind inform the representation. In this analogy, God is both the actor and the character he plays, while we are the person (mask) He carries. We are the mask of His being, our existence the veil through which He appears in the nature of the universe that conforms to the character we are supposed by Him to be.

In this respect, too, the Biblical account makes sense. After the flood, God lays down the first law of our nature as we know it, when He says to mankind "And for your life's blood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from his fellow man (brother) I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever pours out the blood of a man, in recompense his blood shall be poured out, for I made man in the image of God." (Genesis 9:5-6) Because each man is a person (an image of God, supported or upheld up Him), God commands retribution for murder. When one human being assaults another, he attacks God. But God is the substance (the upholder) of the attacker's person too. His attack upon another is therefore substantially the same as an attack upon himself. God's declaration of retribution simply reflects this fact.

The flare of indignation we feel on account of murder constitutes the executive power that God intends for the enforcement of the commandment of retribution. Indignation moves us to do what God commands; to carry out what the murderer has begun (which is the annihilation of his own life.) Because it is God's command, we are in the right as we execute it. We have the right to shed the murderer's blood. The first law of nature therefore gives rise to a right of nature, a right of way to the result foreseen in God's will. As it opens to us we are drawn towards this will. We feel strongly inclined to act against the one who violates another's person (image of God).

By this paradigm of right, particular rights are not passive goods stored in our possession. They are active responsibilities, reflected in the emotional forces that incline our will toward action in response to God's commands. As we shall see, this difference has profound implications for the strategy of right. As executors of God's will, we are not supposed, in the first instance, to act in defense of our rights. We act to do God's will. If opposed when we do so, we stand on our rights in defense of our action. We resist whatever denies or draws us from God's right of way. Since the ground of rights is our responsibility to God, we cannot exercise those rights while sitting by the roadside, oblivious to wrongdoing. Nor can we do so by standing aside, letting wrongdoers have their way so long as they leave us in peace. Rights arise in the context of our positive commitment to right action. They are warrants for action, not writs of entitlement.