Until I became a father, I’m not sure I really quite appreciated just how nuanced the term “justice” could be. When two children have two, we’ll say “competing” stories about why the kitchen wall is now covered in mayonnaise and uncooked macaroni, how do we determine punishment and reparation?!
Throughout human history, we have struggled with the concept of justice. World history is replete with governments, and people, failing stunningly in this area, even with guidelines divinely given through the revelation of scripture and natural law written on the hearts of mankind (Romans 2:15). Yes, even in the United States, we have a plethora of situations where the government, in fact, did not pursue justice but instead acted in ways directly contrary to Biblical values (even when the Bible was purposely distorted to fit certain human desires).
However, I’d suggest that the ideals of the United States judicial system have put this nation in a position to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for over two centuries. I’d also suggest it is worth continuing to protect (and reform when necessary).
Inalienable Rights of Mankind and Limited Government
First, and perhaps most importantly, the forefathers of the U.S. justice system recognized that human beings have implicit value–and, therefore, inalienable rights (cannot be taken away). These values and rights come from God, not government. God and his Word were the guiding light for our nation. No other source was even close to being cited by our founders more than the Bible. With God as the source of our values and rights, it became necessary for a limited government to exist, one that would also protect individuals from other individuals and from an intrusive government.
In Federalist 51, James Madison wrote of the need for a judicial branch for the new nation, stating, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” We know, and the founders understood, that we humans are incapable of perfection, and yet we are called to be holy and strive to emulate Jesus (I Peter 1:15-16). And while government is one of the three God-ordained institutions, because it is formed by imperfect man, the government itself will always be imperfect and, therefore, necessarily must be limited. Consequently, the judicial system must also seek to limit the awesome power of the government while simultaneously sustaining a society that does not devolve into lawlessness. It is admittedly a tough balance between permitting God-given freedoms and restraining man’s “bestial tendencies,” to use a phrase from Thomas Hobbes.
But just as we personally should be striving to better ourselves, and as Christians “to be holy just as God is holy,” we should also be seeking to ensure that the foundations of our government, and therefore our justice system, remain firmly rooted in the objective morality of the Bible. Once again, our founders and those who played instrumental roles in the formation of our justice system recognized the dire need for this.
The Foundations of American Law in History: Mayflower, English Common Law, Blackstone
[Mayflower] The first formal compact made between the Pilgrims who landed in the northeast was called the Mayflower Compact, where each family had to give their consent as free people to be ruled by the compact, which was to be “for the Glory of God, and the Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country.” While this document only applied to these forty-one families, it was significant because it showed that these Protestant Christians were viewing the political rights of government differently than their ancestors: consent of the ruled was required in order for the governing body to be legitimate. The Pilgrims and Puritans both sought to create a localized judicial system that would realign to the Biblical form of justice rather than the monarchial and socially-tiered judicial system of England and other European nations.
As the colonies continued to develop their own judicial systems independently of each other, we still see a core belief system based on inherent human value, especially in the Northern states, where education was rooted in Biblical understandings of human nature, inalienable rights, and the divine nature of God. Thomas Jefferson, a deist who had his own complicated relationship with the Bible, recognized that the “certain inalienable rights” that all men possess must come from a divine lawgiver and not the state. If rights come from the state, then they cannot be inalienable. Jefferson and the other founders understood that if a Supreme Being was removed, then all laws and rights, including the Bill of Rights that protected the people, could be changed on the whim of the government.
[English Common Law] There were strong intellectual traditions passed down through English Common Law that helped the new Americans develop their judicial system. For example, in 1644, Samuel Rutherford wrote a monumental legal work titled Lex Rex (meaning law is king) as a direct challenge to the tradition of rex lex (meaning the king is law). It was steeped in Christian thought interwoven with legal and political philosophy. John Locke and other influential individuals, including many of the founders, were well-versed in this work and embraced it as a central theme throughout, not just the Revolution but in the creation of a constitution that purposefully decentralized power.
[Blackstone] In the 1760s, English jurist Sir William Blackstone wrote an eminent work called Commentaries on the Law of England, in which he stated that there are but two sources of law: nature and revelation. And he made clear that he was speaking of the Holy Scriptures. Soon these Commentaries would be mass printed in the United States. Every lawyer who hoped to pass the bar was required to first become an expert on Blackstone’s work.
Think about what these quotes from Blackstone mean, and consider that every lawyer in America understood these to be the truth of both God and law:
“When the Supreme Being formed the universe, and created matter out of nothing, He impressed certain principles upon the matter, from which it can never depart, and without which it would cease to be.”
“Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator, for he is entirely a dependent being…[A}s man depends absolutely upon his Maker for everything, it is necessary that he should, in all points, conform to his Maker’s will.”
In 1829, Joseph Story, in his address as Dane Professor of Law for Harvard, stated, “There has never been a period in which Common Law did not recognize Christianity as laying at its foundation.”
Biblical Foundation v. Humanist Foundation
Over the last century and a half, the Bible has essentially been purged from the legal education of our nation’s institutions. Instead, we see a materialistic, humanist worldview attempting to charade itself as a foundation for law. I say it is a charade because it cannot, in fact, be a firm foundation for anything. The materialistic, humanist worldview contaminating our legal system is what is known as “sociological law.” Francis Schaeffer described this best when he said, “By sociological law we mean law that has no fixed base but law in which a group of people decides what is sociologically good for society at the given moment; and what they arbitrarily decide becomes law.”
You can see the dangers of a legal system that bends to the will of a petulant society. A people who have no foundation of what is ethically or morally right and wrong, other than how they feel, are doomed to the abuses of one another’s legalized opinions.
American v. French Legal System
The U.S. Revolution of 1776 was based on the concept of natural rights being given by God. The French Revolution in 1789 was based on an arrogant belief that they had intellectually grown beyond the superstitions of religion. The anti-religious and state-sponsored Cult of Reason (Culte de la Raison) took over the cathedral of Notre Dame, where they inscribed “To Philosophy” over the main doorway and had girls take turns dressing up as the Goddess of Reason. These were all symbolic attempts to lay religion low while exalting the intellectual powers of man. And what did their revolution, founded in man’s morality, beget? Paranoia, terror, and the execution of some 40,000 of their own countrymen, even as they failed to overturn the monarchial state. This led directly to the conquests of Napoleon.
Socialism and communism are modern examples of the results of making mankind the source and center of a government. These governmental philosophies destroy the individual and religion. Religion, they recognize, is too limiting to the power of the government. Historians consistently estimate that over 100 million people have been murdered under communist states—states that don’t protect individual values and rights. When people elevate the powers of the government over that of the individual, and when state powers define what they deem morally correct, then they can justify any action, including the abuses of their own people.
This is not to say that terrible things have never been done in the name of the Bible. They have, and discussing them is a worthwhile task. But here’s the stark difference: when the Bible is used to justify horrible actions (slavery, religious war, or the Spanish Inquisition, as examples), those are times when Biblical principles were purposely and empirically misused. To further make the point, one apologist I heard asked, “If you were listening to a pianist play a piece by Bach, and it sounded absolutely horrendous, would you blame Bach?” Of course not! The foundations of the moral truth of law are the same as they have always been. They unfortunately have just not always been played in the right key.
In contrast, when humanists’ relative morality is used to justify horrible acts, they believe there is no accountability to a higher law. And because man’s morality can change on a whim, they believe, it can never be objectively wrong. Do you see the present danger that is infiltrating our judicial system? The more “man’s” morality is used to justify right and wrong, the more we venture down a dangerous path of justifying horrible evils toward individuals in the name of the “collective good.”
A Call Back to the Biblical Foundation
The concept of justice requires an absolute Truth. A Biblical worldview, such as our legal system was founded on, provides that basis. The recognition of timeless truths is an acknowledgment of the natural law that God wrote on our hearts. We, and our governmental leaders, also have the ability to ignore that natural law when we fall victim to the allure of sin. As post-modernism, humanism, and sociological law have risen, we have witnessed a changing of our legal system. You can see evidence of that in parts of this country where crime is skyrocketing because legal pundits believe punishment is no longer the “right” thing to do. Therefore, with little fear of punishment from the law, people feel free to act as they wish. We’re seeing the consequences of our legal system gutted by a foundationless morality.
The good news is that we DO still have a legal tradition rooted in a Biblical worldview. And that tradition DOES stand up to logic and reason, as was sagaciously argued by the judicial forefathers of this nation. The U.S. Constitution is not the Bible, but it is a morally binding document based on the Biblical truth of inalienable rights. That is why it is vital that the U.S. Supreme Court adheres closely to our founding principles rather than using changing cultural values as the marker of justice. We are not a Christian nation, but we are a nation that was founded on timeless Biblical principles that protect individuals from abusive crime and tyranny. That remains true even when our government fails to live up to those ideals.
Therefore, as Americans and as Christians, we must be aware of what is occurring around us. It is for our well-being that we should actively seek justice and stop injustice. Our judicial system has never been and never will be, perfect, but its roots are worth fighting for because they protect people and preserve human dignity. Fighting for timeless Biblical values in our government is not discriminatory; it is universal, loving, and just towards all people, and we want to pass that on to the next generation.
Tags: justice, ethics, law, protection, legal, rights, morality, founding fathers, humanist, bill of rights, limited government, american constitution
