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Law, liberty, and Christian morality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2007

KYLE SWAN
KYLE SWAN
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, National University of Singapore, 3 Arts Link, Singapore 117570
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Abstract

There is a long liberal political tradition of marshalling arguments aimed at convincing Christians that distinctively Christian reasons for issuing coercive laws are not sufficient to justify those laws. In the first part of this paper I argue that the two most popular of these arguments, attributable to Locke, will not reliably convince committed biblical Christians, nor, probably, should they. In the second part I argue that even if the Lockean arguments fail, committed biblical Christians should think that God has authorized the state only to fill the same general role that political liberals have identified for it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 4 , December 2007 , pp. 395 - 415
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

Notes

1. See, for example, Christopher Eberle Religious Conviction in Liberal Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Michael Perry Under God? Religious Faith and Liberal Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); and the essays in Terence Cuneo (ed.) Religion in the Liberal Polity (Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005).

2. John Locke A Letter Concerning Toleration (Indianapolis IN: Hackett, [1689] 1983), 39.

3. Ibid., 35.

4. Ibid., 38.

5. H. L. A. Hart Law, Liberty, and Morality (Stanford CA: Stanford University Press, 1963), 57–58.

6. See my ‘Can a good Christian be a good liberal?’, Public Affairs Quarterly, 20 (2006), 167.

7. Patrick Devlin The Enforcement of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 110.

8. Ibid., 14–15.

9. Basil Mitchell Law, Morality and Religion in a Secular Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967).

10. Ibid., 34.

11. T. A. Roberts ‘Law, morality and religion in a Christian society’, Religious Studies, 20 (1984), 79–98.

12. Ibid., 85.

13. Ibid., 97.

14. Ibid., 91.

15. Ibid., 92.

16. Romans 1.28–32.

17. I Corinthians 11.13–15.

18. Matthew 5.21–30.

19. This by itself might be enough to provide a reductio of Roberts's principle, but I think there is even more to say against it.

20. Roberts ‘Law, morality and religion in a Christian society’, 93.

21. Ibid., 94.

22. Ibid., 86.

23. Ibid., 90.

24. Aquinas Selected Political Writings, A. P. D'Entreves (ed.), J. G. Dawson (tr.) (New York NY: The Macmillan Company, 1959).

25. See my ‘Can a good Christian be a good liberal?’, 168.

26. As far as I am aware, nothing in the argument hangs on whether these committed biblical Christians are Protestant, Roman Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox. None of the claims that I rely on are obviously incompatible with any of these traditions.

27. Martin Luther On Temporal Authority: to what extent it should be obeyed; http://www.augustana.edu/Religion/LutherProject/TemporalAuthority/Temporalauthority.HTM.

28. Thanks to John Coffey for referring me to their discussions of Romans 13.

29. Roger Williams The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution (London, 1644), 81.

30. Ibid.

31. John Goodwin Hagiomastix; or, the Scourge of the Saints displayed in his colours of Ignorance and Blood (London, 1646), 61–65.

32. Ibid., 62.

33. Ibid., 64.

34. Ibid.

35. Eberle Religious Conviction in Liberal Politics, 146.

36. Ibid., 147.

37. See ibid., 104–105.

38. Ibid., 183.

39. Gerald Gaus ‘Review of Christopher Eberle’, Religious Convictions in Liberal Politics, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews (2003);http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=1214.

40. Ibid.

41. This suggestion should be distinguished from that of many who hold to postmillennial eschatology. Postmillennialism is the view that the gospel being proclaimed throughout the world will gradually come to effect the transformation and salvation of the entire world. Many who hold to this view also believe that, since the overwhelming majority of people will be Christians in the coming millennium, civil government will be in the hands of Christians who will make the laws of the land conform to Christian morality and who are democratically elected by citizens supportive of this mission. The main difference is that these postmillennialists think that the state has the divine mandate to do this within any social-political context. They just lack the political power to accomplish it for now.

42. Roberts ‘Law, morality and religion in a Christian society’, 89.

43. Ibid., 86.

44. Some would say that it is likewise soured when it is accompanied by the threat of God's punishment. I agree. States are not the only agents who are manipulative and ineffective in presenting the gospel.