Why, then, the law? Christianity in a changing legal environment, Part 1
From John Richardson
(…) what we have now is a ‘moralism’ just as determined as any which might have putatively existed in Puritan England or Calvin’s Geneva. The difference is in the morality, not in the rigour with which it will be imposed. We find ourselves living not in a new-found freedom but under newly-empowered masters.And the Christian cannot address this by creating legal ‘enclaves’ for Muslims in the hope that similar ‘enclaves’ will be found for themselves.
On the contrary, we now find ourselves needing to confront the fact that the Christian ethos is essentially in tension with all legal frameworks. And this tension derives entirely from the words and works of Christ himself. On the one hand, he simply disregarded, where he deemed necessary, the law (the ‘Shari’ah’) of his own community. On the other hand, he established that there are legal authorities which must be obeyed, even by such a community, irregardless of their ‘godliness’. His saying, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,” not only answered the immediate question about paying taxes, it established a remarkable new framework for the engagement between faith and law.
Thus again, on the one hand, it rendered unnecessary the establishment of a ‘theocracy’. If the godly have a duty to obey Caesar, then the godly can live with Caesar. On the other hand, it established that Caesar’s demands are limited. Potentially, therefore, the godly can, and at times must, disregard or even disobey Caesar. The latter point, of course, was rapidly demonstrated during the long period of the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire.
It only needs to be observed that Caesar is any and every system of human government, and we see why the Christian engagement with contemporary society in the UK cannot be presumed to be straightforward. We have had perhaps 1500 years of things going conveniently our way. From here on, though, there is likely to be increasing conflict. Read more
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February 17th, 2008 at 8:48 am
[...] Anglican Mainstream wrote an interesting post today on Why, then, the law? Christianity in a changing legal environment, Part 1Here’s a quick excerptWhy, then, the law? Christianity in a changing legal environment, Part 1 February 17th, 2008 Posted in Uncategorized | From John Richardson (…) what we have now is a ‘moralism’ just as determined as any which might have putatively existed in Puritan England or Calvin’s Geneva. The difference is in the morality, not in the rigour with which it will be imposed. We find ourselves living not in a new-found freedom but under newly-empowered masters.And the Christian cannot address this by creat [...]