BEYOND “CONSERVATIVE” & “LIBERAL”

NOTES ON DIVINE PRINCIPLES

OF GOVERNMENT

Part Two

Two Societies, Two Judgments*

Garry D. Nation

c. 2008.  All rights reserved.

The Foundation and Purpose of Human Government (Romans 13:1-4)

Human government is an institution ordained by God, to which he has delegated certain authority and power.

The legitimacy principle:  Governmental rule is both necessary and legitimate.

No divine preference: God does not seem to be perplexed by the varieties of styles of governance we invent, or by wide variance in the quality of rulers we endure.  The Bible assumes the prevalence of monarchy, and describes the divine sovereignty in monarchic terms.  It is not the form of government that draws God’s attention, but the manner of its administration, and whether those who govern approach it as a stewardship for which they are responsible (which it is), or a possession to be used as they will.  The prophets cry down the kings of the earth, not for the form of government they wield, but for the arrogance of power (see for example Isaiah 14:12-20 and Ezekiel 28:1-19, two passages that portray kings as Satan—or is it Satan as kings?).

Human government has a two-edged purpose:

•To reward those who do right.

•To punish those who do wrong.

Why God Established Governments: The rise and fall of the Post-Edenic Society (Genesis 4:1-6:8)

Mankind’s situation after the Fall

•Dominion.  Genesis 1:28-30, 2:15-17; 3:17-24

Dominion—creation power with authority to subdue and fill the earth—was given to man, male and female, at their creation.

The Fall into sin altered the conditions of the dominion, but did not repeal it; neither is there any indication that the commission for dominion—the title deed to the world, as it were—passed into Satan’s hand.  (So statements in the New Testament such as I John 5:19 that seem to ascribe to him the ownership of the world are not a recognition of his rightful authority, but an acknowledgment of the reality that the devil runs the “the system.”)

Man retains, in the condition of sin, the commission to make the earth subject to himself and to render its environment compatible to his survival and happiness.  His capacity and perpetual willingness to be deceived by the evil one impedes his moral progress and guarantees the ultimate failure of the human project.

•Fallen moral/spiritual nature (Sin):  Having declared his willful independence from God (Genesis 3:22), God grants that independence. In consequence:

Man no longer has any native or intrinsic relationship with God.

Man has no innate knowledge of God.

Man has no inbred inclination toward God.

Man retains a moral compass (conscience), but it is faulty and unreliable, being pulled in different directions.

•Open world: 

Though exiled from the Garden (not raw nature, but an environment pre-ordered by God for man), mankind has an entire world open to them.

The problem is that the world is wild, and man must impart to it the orderliness necessary first for his survival, then for his happiness.

Man must therefore rely upon the memory of the Garden for a pattern of order.

•Virtually Complete Freedom

God imposed no rules, nor commandments, nor laws to man upon expulsion from the Garden.

The only limits upon man’s behavior are the limits imposed by nature and by the Fall, which though considerable (see below) still leave an enormous amount of liberty of choice and action.

Constraints on Man’s Behavior (cf. Romans 5:12-14)

•External Constraints

Expelled from the Garden. (Gen. 3:23) There is no pre-ordered environment, no guaranteed income, no free ride, no welfare state; man must make his own environment orderly through planning and force of effort.

Curse on “the ground.” (Gen. 3:17:19)  Economic production is made difficult and risky. There is no guarantee of either success or survival.  We see here the first appearance of “Murphy’s Law,” the expression of human frustration with the futility of effort when the world seems to work against us (cf. Ecclesiastes 1:1-3).

Curse on childbearing. (Gen 3:16)  Suffering and sorrow is introduced into reproduction, rivalry is introduced into the marital relationship, and the war of the sexes begins.

Destiny of death. (Gen. 2:17; 3:19,22)  Mortality becomes the ultimate and inevitable limitation on all human endeavors; it is not merely a biological fact, but a terrible spiritual reality, “death through sin.”

No law, no ordinance, no mechanism for enforcement.  (Gen. 4:15)  When Cain murders Abel, God reserves all judgment for himself; and when Cain appeals his exile, God imposes a restraining order on all who meet Cain, prohibiting retaliation.

•Internal Constraints

Personal conscience, “knowing good and evil.” (Gen. 3:22) 

The internal capacity to evaluate moral issues is in them because they bear the image and likeness of God.

What man sought and found through sin is a conscience that operates independently of God.

Therefore the personal experience of right and wrong as good and evil is in them by the Fall from innocence to sin.

Understanding of self-interest. 

Part of their inheritance from the image of God, it was used as the point of appeal by the serpent to tempt them (Gen. 3:1-6), and became easily twisted into selfishness by the deceitfulness of sin.

A sense of need for God. 

They retained an innate longing for connection with the Creator, with the Transcendent One.  (cf. Gen. 4:2-7,14,26)

No commandment, no trespass, no moral code except what was within.

Each individual finally had to make his own judgment of what was good and evil.

The Rise of the Pre-Flood Society (Genesis 4-6)

•The Libertarian Era: The Nature of Human Society after the Fall—not civilized (as we know civilization), but not primitive (as we think of primitive) either.

The reign of the individual.

This era is marked by the rise of great, able, talented men who live for themselves, establish a name, and build their own interests.

It is not an age of anarchy, but of patriarchy; fathers exercise dominion over their families, and power structures are synonymous with family structures.

The reign of free enterprise unrestrained.

There are no governments, laws, or regulations, therefore whatever each person is able and motivated to achieve, he or she is free to achieve without hindrance.

The politics of personal advantage prevails: those who are most active to acquire power are those who want to use it to make their own lives better; if their power benefits others, that is incidental to their purpose.

The reign of the profit motive.

Profit, broadly considered as gain  from labor, is the primary motive for human life; it is for better (Abel, Seth) and for worse (Cain, Lamech) depending on the part conscience plays in the seeking of it.

•Positive results of the libertarian society: Productivity and growth

Rise of cities. (4:17)

People found mutual benefit and protection from harsh environments in urbanization.

Animal husbandry. (4:20)

Some found ways of domesticating livestock and profited from raising and herding animals.

Music and the arts. (4:21)

The human need for self-expression and enjoyment of aesthetics spawned the invention and development of new musical instruments, which in turn gave impetus to new expressions.

Metallurgy and the industrial arts.  (4:22)

Technology exploded with the discovery of how to make tools from bronze and iron.

Population boom. (6:1,11)

Supported by a booming economy presided over by long-lived patriarchs, the human population multiplied rapidly.

•Negative results of the libertarian society: Wrong overpowers right (cf. Rom 1:18-32)

Ungodliness.

Evidence of the disregard of God ranges from the nonchalant blasphemy and self-justification of the murderer Lamech (4:23-24), to heinous violations of natural morality (cf. the mysterious episode of  “the sons of God” and “the daughters of men,” 6:1,2; however it is interpreted, it is clearly regarded in the text as a monstrous act or movement of evil and an egregious offense against the good.)

Irresponsibility.

It was an epoch of total absorption in self-interest to the point of disregard for any rights of others, effectively illustrated by two cases in which killers denied all fault in pre-meditated homicides:

Cain (4:9-16) denied not only his built but his brother, then cried out in resentment and self-pity because he was judged for his deed.

Lamech (4:23) praised himself to his wives for self-avenging a personal injury.

Licentiousness.

Man breaks free from God’s intention of marriage between one man and one woman.

Sexual liberation starts with the bigamy of Lamech (4:19), and overflows with the intercourse between the sons of God and the daughters of men (6:1,2).

God’s summary assessment of the entire era is that mankind’s wicked deeds and evil intentions—with the implication that sexual depravity was part of the picture—had led to irredeemable corruption (6:5,12.

Violence and the tyranny of the strong.

Cain’s refusal to control his passions (4:7,8) gave way to Lamech’s innovation of violence as politics (4:23,24), and finally gave rise to the Nephilim (Heb., “fallen ones”)—an increase of bloodshed until finally the earth is “filled with violence” (6:11-13).

Lacking any law except self-interest and any government except self-government, it behooved the weak to associate with (and subject themselves to) the strong; while the only restraint upon the strong, other than his own conscience, was someone stronger.

In such an environment, womanhood especially is endangered, as women thus need the protection of a strong man in order to be safe from predatory men.

The Bottom Line:

Lacking divine permission either to forcibly defend themselves against aggression or to retaliate against violence, the good had were forced to adopt the methods, mindset, and ethics of the violent.  They had either to become predators or prey.  At the end there was only one family that had not become either victim or victimizer.  God only knows how they survived: surely Noah’s faith, his resourcefulness, and God’s own protection played a role together throughout his life, even as they did at the end.

•Conclusion

Liberty is a good thing, and self-interest is not a bad thing.

Despite the disadvantages of living in a fallen world, mankind did prosper and grow because it had the freedom to do so.

There is such a thing as a godly individualism.

Godly individualism exercises individual freedom in the pursuit of righteousness and peace (cf. Gen. 5:24, 6:9).

Individualism divorced from God spirals into depravity.

The promotion of individuals seeking their own good independently of God tends toward man’s self-exaltation to the level of God—much to the detriment of himself and the society in which he lives.

Self-interest, divorced from moral goodness, devolves to selfishness

Selfishness creates an environment in which human life is not respected for its own sake (as regarding others to bear the image of God the same as oneself), but only as a means to an end.

The prevailing ethical standard is: “You shall be as gods,” not only to know good and evil, but also to gain power over others.

The godly individualist (like Noah), because he respects the rights of others as he does his own, is at a serious disadvantage in a world governed by the violent and without the restraint of law.

Self-government alone is insufficient to restrain evil and inequity*.

The heart of man is bent toward the pursuit of moral good, but of power, possession, and pleasure.  No individual person, even the good, can forever suppress his love for the world and the things of the world.

*I do mean to say inequity here, not iniquity, although the latter word certainly applies.  My point is that if there is no compelling force, people do not long respect the rights of others if there is an advantage to be gained.  In the world before the Flood there was no standard of justice to rule society, but there always was the principle of equity to rule the conscience–and at that time, inequity reigned.

When God Established Governments: Judgment and Correction (Genesis 6:5 – 9:17)

The Flood (6:5 – 7:24)

•What God destroyed: An individualistic, free-enterprise society

•Why God destroyed it:

Possessing an unrestrained liberty unseen in the world since, the post-Edenic society developed an ungodly, irresponsible, licentious economy.

That prosperous economy supported a society of moral anarchy, loss of respect for human life, the tyranny of the strong, and rampant violence.

The pursuit of ultimate freedom led to the ultimate loss of freedom.

•What God preserved: The family of one “capitalist” entrepreneur, Noah

Evidence that Noah was an entrepreneur: He built the ark with the help of his immediate family solely by resources he put together on his own for private reasons.

The free-enterprise system at its best: Noah may be regarded (with a little imagination) as the archetype of the best we can expect from individualism—God-fearing, noble, and courageous (6:9), but flawed (9:20,21).

The New Beginning (8:1 – 9:3,17-17)

•Renewed Commission: God renews mankind’s commission to fill the earth.

•New Conditions:  God installs new conditions, including the animals’ dread of man, and the divine covenant promising no more judgment by universal flood.

The Institution of Government (9:4-6)

•Blood, the central issue:  To a world that had been drenched in blood, God ratified the shedding of blood—of animals for food, of human beings for restitution.

Symbolism: Though eating meat is authorized and made lawful, eating blood, the “life” of the animal, becomes taboo (9:4; cf. Leviticus 17:10-14).

Accountability: Man and animal alike are made accountable to society for shedding human blood (9:5).

A broad principle: Human life is sacred in a unique sense, because we are made in the image of God (9:6).

The decision to terminate a human life (distinguished from life in general or animal life) is solely God’s prerogative.

To commit murder is to exalt self to godhood.

Capital punishment mandated: It is installed neither for vengeance, nor for political leverage; but it is for retribution against homicide (9:6).

It is expected that there would be a deterrent effect, but that is not the specific purpose.

The concept is that violence committed by private individuals must be met with equal violence by society for the protection of society; and there is the implication that justice will be dealt impartially and not for private interest (in contrast to Lamech’s high-handed claim that vengeance belonged to him).

In the last analysis it is to satisfy the wrath, not of the victims’ families nor of the society, but of God.

•The power of the sword: to restrain the licentiousness and violence to which human nature has proven it is prone, God vests society with the authority now to take life for life.

This is an explicit authorization of retaliation for bloodshed.

Here is an implicit authorization of self-defense, because if it is lawful to take life for life, then it is lawful to take life in defense of life.

It is also an implicit authorization of social action: It is not private vengeance that is endorsed, but public propitiation by the community of man.

Finally, there is an implicit delegation of governmental powers without ordaining any particular form of government, except that it was established in the context of the patriarchal family, and included:

(1) The statutory principle that human life must be protected.

(2) Implied authority for a judiciary to impute guilt or innocence.

(3) Implied authority for an executive to carry out the mandate.

God’s Judgment on the City of Man: Government Seeks Equality with God, Genesis 9-11.

Man’s Situation after the Flood

•Patriarchal Government: Is a holdover from the Antedeluvian Era, as first Noah, then his sons build the new society from the ground up, based on old structures but using new rules.

•Family-based communalism: There is no evidence of communism (equal sharing of all things), but apparently a mutual sharing that grew out from family relationships and the lasting impact of the experience on the ark.

•Family conflicts and rivalries: The episode of Noah’s drunkenness and Ham’s mockery (9:20-27) gives evidence not only of human frailty (of both Noah and Ham) and nobility (of Shem and Japheth), but also of a boiling power struggle within the family of a gentle man of God (hence the curse on Ham’s son Canaan).

The Rise of the City of Man

•Forceful Leadership: The rise of Nimrod, first of the great kings of the earth (10:8-12. Cf. Psalm 2:1,2)

Nimrod is called the “first...mighty man,” and “a mighty hunter before the Lord.”

Many unproven speculations exist relating Nimrod to Babylonian myths and legends about Merodach and Gilgamesh; or the Assyrian legends of Ninus who founded Nineveh (cf. v. 11); or to the Hebrew name for King Sargon I of Akkad.

The Origin of Monarchy: He arose as a forceful leader, able to turn legitimate social authority and the “power of the sword” to serve his own ends, to increase his power; capable of coalescing a kingdom, and to compel organization and cooperation by force.

The Origin of Armies? “The soldier was one of the first inventions of civilization.” (Gwynne Dyer).  It seems reasonable to infer that the first army—i.e., a mass of men trained to fight as one unit—was assembled by Nimrod.  (We do know that the first war of recorded history took place in Mesopotamia and involved great armies of thousands of soldiers.)

A Rebel against God: “Before the Lord,” literally means “to the face of the Lord,” and may imply antagonism. Tradition indicts Nimrod as a rebel against God, hungry for power.

•Communal Identity: Mankind saw itself as a single entity, speaking with one voice and expressing one will and intention (11:1-3).

•Cooperative Economy: It is assumed that mankind has discovered the power of cooperative production as civilization as we know it is born.

•Strong Centralization: The total resources and labor of society are summoned and constrained to one purpose, implying governmental command and organization (11:2,3).

•Humanistic Independence: The chief threat to humanistic power under a unified social order is God (11:4). 

The Jewish historian Josephus passes on the theory that the Tower was a pre-emptive move against a second Great Flood.

•The Individual Swallowed by Community:

In contrast to the antedeluvian world when everyone did whatever he could get away with, now everyone does what the king (government) orders him to do.

The Tower is the ultimate symbol of every project of human autonomy, and of man’s wish to challenge the dominion of God and to exercise power over others.

The Tower becomes the symbol of Collective Man (“that we may make a name for ourselves”); it is no longer every individual striving against God, but the who society as a single entity standing against Him.

The Tower is man’s first great achievement to overcome the limits of nature—but not necessarily for the better.  C. S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man:

“The final stage [of man’s conquest of Nature] is come when Man by eugenics, by pre-natal conditioning, and by an education and propaganda based on a perfect applied psychology, has obtained full control over himself.”

“Human nature will be the last part of Nature to surrender to Man.  The battle will then be won…. But who, precisely, will have won it?  For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please.”

Lewis explicitly draws on the Tower as the paradigm for this theme in his sci-fi fantasy novel That Hideous Strength.

The Tower as a paradigm of Socialism:

In the earliest systems the king is the divine source of rule; later the state (Greek polis; Roman imperium ) becomes the focus.

Modern collectivism takes shape in Marxism and Fascism.

Marxism and fascism are commonly cast as opposites, but both are collective, socialistic systems; i.e., the social order takes priority above the private interests of any individual.

As in the age of the Tower of Babel, the state is divine regardless of whether the governing system is fascist or communist.

In Marxist dogma, history is divine; but in Marxist history, society, and the state in particular, sits on the throne of deity.

In the fascist state, the dictator personifies the deified society.

In both Marxist and fascist states the individual is eclipsed and exists only to serve the purposes of the collective.

•The Consensus of Sin: Unity in Rebellion

The new development: For the first time in human existence, large masses of people cooperated as one unit to bring forth a great achievement.

When unity is not good

A society that is unified to promote human autonomy inherently is opposed to God, and will ultimately be shown to oppose faith in God, submission to divine morality, and the rule of conscience.

The peace and harmony of a society that seeks autonomy from God is deceptive and short-lived.

As the poet put it:

We’re really takin’ over, so don’t get in our way

Soon the whole world will have to do what we say

Whatever we decide, that’s just what we’re gonna do

There ain’t nothin’ gonna stop it, not me and not you

We know how to deal with those who stand in our way

So let me tell you buddy, better watch what you say

All of the power and the money too

Will be right in our hands when the work is all through

We say who’s gonna sell, who’s gonna buy,

Who’s gonna live, who’s gonna die

Don Francisco, “Tower of Babel”

The spiritual failure of collectivism:

Collectivism fails as a morally superior substitute for individualism: The valuation of society over the individual is promotes man’s independence from God and exalts his delusions of divinity no less than pure individualism—perhaps even more so.

The size and grandeur of collective achievement—and the development of civilization itself—fosters the illusion of autonomy; but only in modern times has man completely surrendered to it through atheistic dogmas of Marxism and fascism.

•Judgment and Correction

The terseness of the story suggests that there must be more to what happened than what is related; the Bible does not deal with proximate causes and effects, but goes straight to the essential matter.

The confusion of language forms the crux of the judgment

God intervenes to disrupt human unity and social interaction on its most fundamental level—verbal communication.

God does not restrict or take away language, but rather multiplies it.

The intent of the judgment is to prevent the realization of what “they have imagined to do”; it interrupted man’s utopian plans for an omnipotent society.

The outcome:

The social order was decentralized, at least temporarily.

De-concentration of the population occurred, and tribal/national migrations began.

Nations arose out of tribes, and national rivalries began to take root; nations gathered under kings to become checks upon the ambitions of one another—with mixed results.

Some great kingdoms and dynasties rose up, and dominated large populations and great wealth for centuries; but none could truly claim worldwide dominion.

The Balance: What is the best social situation we can hope for in a fallen world?

No Ideal Society, No Ideal Government

•No society or government will perfect the situation of mankind, because neither mankind nor the world he lives in is perfectable under current divine sanctions.

•Human nature carries the ultimate flaw:

The selfishness that motivates achievement also finally brings it down.

Sin divides man from his fellowman and isolates him in his quest for individual identity; and sin also gathers men together in a power bond that obliterates individual identity.

Balancing the One and the Many

•Individual responsibility: Every person bears his own responsibility for his own behavior, but also for the welfare of those whose lives are touched by their actions.

•Corporate responsibility:

Governments are instituted to protect society from violence and anarchy, and to promote the opportunities of all to seek their best interests (moral and ethical as well as material) under God.

The temptation of power and wealth is ever present, and must be checked through a balance of powers and a constant regard for the rights of the people.

*The question surely will arise in the mind of some whether it is valid to try to make such detailed inferences from the early chapters of Genesis as we make here. 

I recognize the difficulty of placing these passages into a known historical context.  (What do we really know about the prehistoric past? Everything we think we know is inferred from fragments and assumptions, and periodically new discoveries are made that “change everything”!)

Nevertheless, I believe that these stories do relate to and describe real events that actually happened, even if their cultural and environmental settings may have been different from the way we might imagine them.  That they come down to us as the traditions of a people rather than as a historical chronicle should not deter us from reading them for their plain meaning.  The stories handed down in a family from one generation to the next bear a character all their own, but that does not make them untrue or unreliable.

But for the sake of argument, consider: Even if we were to concede that these stories do not in any way convey literal events, how better to interpret them than if they did?  Clearly the writer intended it so, and we would do violence to the text if we try to read it in any other fashion. 

Andrew Walker points out in Enemy Territory, “If we want to tell the gospel story as drama [i.e., narrative], as opposed to elucidating the truths of revelation in dogmatic theological form, then we have to take the story as it comes, neat. …But to suggest that we should toss out the Garden of Eden story because it is not necessarily historical fact would be a dangerous precedent.  The fall is real enough … and to take out the story of Adam and Eve is to make a terrible hole in the gospel. It also creates serious difficulties for the theological understanding of Christ as the second Adam. We can be too clever and it is wiser to take the gospel story as revealed throughout the sacred text of scripture.” (p. 37)

Finally there should be no question that these chapters represent the biblical worldview regarding the social and political realities they describe.  In them we see how the earliest ethical monotheists, whose faith formed the foundation of the Judeo-Christian heritage, approached these issues.  They embraced this worldview seemingly alone in a world that believed in many gods and lords.  Whether we accept this worldview as normative depends on whether we believe in the divine inspiration of the scriptures.