Re: [asa] Moral law - Francis Collins

Hi Janice. I read through McKnight's full article, which is very
interesting. There are a couple of things I'd agree strongly with McKnight
about, particularly this:

The ontological basis of justice for the Christian is two-fold then. First,
humans are Eikons of God, and this far transcends the sense of equality.
Equality measures humans over against one another, which is always a tricky
thing because what I see in the world is not as much equality as diversity.
Not only does this ontology transcend the sense of equality. It also makes
it clear that humans are not to measure themselves over against God so much
as understand themselves vis-à-vis God. They are not so much "equals with
one another" (which in fact they are) but they are Eikons of God.
    If the ontology begins not with equality, but with Eikons, second the
telos also differs. The Western sense of justice is that it is designed (by
someone in power, or by nature – and even then someone defines what is
"natural") to lead humans into freedom. And, again, freedom is understood
individually and it is preoccupied with rights. But, for the Bible, the
telos is not freedom but love, love of God and love of others. And if love
is the defining telos of the Eikons of God, then grace and forgiveness and
peace are constant companions.

I think it is correct that a thoroughly Christian theory of law and justice
must be incarnational and teleological. I also think McKnight is right to
question whether American Christians are overly reliant for their
jurisprudence on the American founding documents and the indivdualistic
Enlightenment presuppositions those documents reflect. One criticism I
might have of this particular essay is that it doesn't account for the shift
in American jurisprudence towards legal realism and epistemological
pragmatism. I think many of the aspects of American / Western jurisprudence
that I might find problematic from a Christian perspective are rooted more
in 20th-Century Holmsian pragmatism than in the 18th-Century Lockean
paradigms that so heavily influenced the founders (though of course Holmes
is to some extent rooted in Locke). However, I wouldn't advocate a simple
return to Locke as if the 18th Century were a golden age; I'd suggest
something that goes beyond Locke and is thoroughly Christian in its
incarnational and teleological focus.

As to exactly what all this would look like -- I'm not sure, maybe I'll have
a book out on it sometime later this decade!

On 1/4/07, Janice Matchett <janmatch@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> My comments follow below this exchange:
>
> At 08:47 AM 1/3/2007, *David Opderbeck *wrote:
>
> Hi, Don. *You said: however I never discussed whether any laws were
> positive or not.
> *
> I think you misunderstood what I meant by "positive" law. "Positive" law,
> in legal parlance, is simply law that is officially encoded and enforced by
> a sovereign, such as statutes. We use this term to contrast "positive" law
> to other sources of regulation, such as private contracts, social norms, and
> ecclesiastical structures. "Positive" law in this sense doesn't imply that
> the particular rule in question is "good" or "bad" policy.
>
> And: *However, I am saying that the primary purpose of laws should be
> individual rights and group issues should be secondary*
>
> I'm not sure I can fully agree with this as a general principle. I'd
> agree that individual "rights" are important -- thought I'd prefer terms I
> might consider more Biblical, such as "personal dignity." However, I think
> the Enlightenment tradition (and its libertarian offshoots) overemphasizes
> this notion of individual "rights" and tends to deify the individual. It's
> an unfortunate quirk of American Evangelicalism, I think, that Western
> Christianity has come to be so tightly identified with an essentially
> l*bertarian ethic and jurisprudence.
>
> It seems to me that the Biblical pattern is to emphasize the community to
> a greater extent than the individual. Certainly this is true within the
> Church: "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in
> humility consider others better than yourselves." (Phil. 2:3). I think a
> similar principle is reflected in Biblical social ethics, from things like
> the OT jubilee laws to Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount.
>
> So, I'd suggest that a thoroughly Christian jurisprudence has to account
> for the dignity of each individual as created in the image of God, but
> cannot have as its focus an *individualistic* focus on personal autonomy
> and rights.
>
> On 1/3/07, *Don Perrett wrote:*
> >
> > I appreciate your willingness to read what my post, however I never
> discussed whether any laws were positive or not. I merely am stating that
> while there are some laws to protect individual rights, most laws (around
> the world, not just the US) are designed to benefit the group, or "an"
> individual person. Individual rights are secondary in most systems. This
> seems normal and in flow with nature. However, I am saying that the primary
> purpose of laws should be individual rights and group issues should be
> secondary. Rights of the leader should not exist individually except in
> that the leader is an individual and is entitled the same rights as anyone
> else. Many laws, even in the US, are made simply to protect bad behavior of
> our leaders. When the same crime is committed by an individual it is not
> overlooked.
> >
> > Nor did I say that groups are not allowed or that civil authorities
> shouldn't exist. They should exist simply to ensure that one individual
> does not infringe on the rights of another individual. They should not be
> as concerned with group survival. Quite often leaders will sacrifice
> individuals (rights and lives) to ensure the survival of the group. This to
> me is counter to scripture. If all individuals are taught to be self
> responsible and accountable, and show agape towards one another, then the
> group will survive through the "natural" human behavior of each individual.
> Groups consist of individuals and if individuality is removed, of what then
> does a group consist? Your last paragraph is right on target. ~ Don
>
>
> [snip]
>
> *@ * Any comments on what I'm posting below? :)
>
> *August 01, 2005
> When is Social Justice Just? by Scot McKnight
>
> *"...I post here a paper I gave to our Faculty this Spring. *I'm concerned
> that our sense of justice be Christian and not cave in to the US
> C*nstitution.
> *So here it is...
>
> *When Social Justice is Just* - Reflections
> *Scot McKnight *[[[ who also posts here: What is the Emerging Church?
> Postmodernity http://www.jesuscreed.org/?p=516 ]]]
> Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies North Park University
>
> *Here are the key ideas I want to excerpt from his "social justice"
> screed which show that he doesn't have the first clue:
>
> *God's P*lit*cs
> "Before I proceeds to such, however, *we need to observe just how
> difficult it is to pull this off*. Jim W*llis, whom I have been reading
> since the mid-70s, and whose books The Call to Conversion I consider one of
> the finest tracts ever on how Christians should operate within the
> State......"
>
> But, frankly, Jim W*llis not a sociologist or a theologian but a pastor
> and a p*litical activist and an editor, and he has a voice in the public
> forum and I like what he has to say – most of the time. ... It is largely
> because of W*llis' work in the last thirty years that I have chosen to give
> this lecture (and now permit it to take on a printed form) on justice: ..
>
> There is something present in both Aristotle and his medieval
> reincarnation in Aquinas that is totally missing in the modern sense of
> justice: justice for both of them, and for the Bible, is communal and not
> just individual. ...
>
> *The Calvinists*, .....had a theory of a *progressive millennialization of
> the world through due process.* The irony of this view is that it seems to
> be what both the social c*nservatives and the social l*berals believe in the
> USA today, and now both may be upset with me for suggesting they are *Calvinistic
> in their understanding of justice.
>
> * So, then, how shall we live?
> My suggestion is that Christians need to operate on the basis of their
> Christian sense of justice –.......hold to an ideal that transcends the
> opportunistic and narcissistic tendencies of personal freedoms and rights,
> and that will work instead for *a society where humans are given back the
> opportunity* to become, once again, Eikons of God, in union with God and
> in communion with one another. And it is Trinitarian. ....
>
> What this will mean is that *justice first of all has to be redefined,*.....
> *Social justice is only truly just for the Christian when it is a justice
> not based on equality and freedom,* but on Eikons designed for love of God
> and others, designed to be played out in relationships and in community. *Until
> our rights are subsumed under God's right, we will distort our sense of
> justice.
>
> Posted by ScotMcKnight *in URL for this entry:
> http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/2930973
>
> *Some comments to Scott with which I would agree* (excerpted)*:
>
> *"...In my assessment, we need to recover the particularity of the
> christian conception of justice for our logic *within the church*. *But I
> think it is a mistake to take that conception, fully fledged, into the
> public realm as the standard for assessing the nature of the organization of
> social structures that are shared by people of different religious- and
> life-perspectives.
>
> *My reason is this: when assessing the norms involved in the practices
> that Christians share with non-Christians,* if we attempt to enforce* the
> concepts of eikon and love for god, *we will run into some severe problems
> that are rooted in epistemology*. The root cause of these problems is
> this: *in a pluralistic setting, people can be rationally justified in not
> believing in the christian narratives.* In many cases, they do not have
> reason to accept that narrative, nor the specific concepts that precipitate
> out of it (e.g., love for god, eikon relationships). So if the Christian
> holds these concepts as the standards by which he/she judges and debates the
> norms of practices shared by non-christians (or christians of different
> persuasions) then *the invevitable result will be the attempt to
> coercively impose these standards on people who have no reason to accept
> them.
>
> *Our concerns with public or social justice need not be rooted in an
> ontological analysis of justice, liberal atomistic or otherwise. *The
> basis for such concerns is simply the fact that we share space, resources,
> and institutions with people of differing religious- and life-perspectives.
> *Despite what Hobbes and Nietzsche might say, people (Christian and not)
> have capacities to share, exhibit empathy, and in some cases, even strive to
> minimize bias and partiality. This gives us reason to suspect that Hobbes'
> and Nietzsche's conceptions of human nature are, perhaps, overly simplistic.
> *In assessing the nature and quality of our shared practices, we need to
> be multi-lingual enough that we can arrive at solutions that do not involve
> coercing people into accepting Christian standards for which they are not,
> and should not be, accountable.
>
> *Posted by: *Steve B/ *| August 03, 2005 at 10:55 AM
>
> Steve, Thanks for this. What I am trying to say is that, though Christians
> will have to operate on a different set of public forum conversational
> premises, the Christian should not adopt those premises as Christian
> premises. In other words, I may argue for pluralism in the public without
> affirming pluralism as something I believe in. *My concern is the
> all-too-quick attempt by so many Christians to adopt the premises of the US
> C*nstitution and never to challenge it as a foundation for what they are
> actually believing. ..."
>
> *Posted by: *Scot McKnight *| August 03, 2005 at 01:40 PM
>
> Scot, "...but *the Christian definitely has to enter the public sphere as,
> first and foremost, a Christian. But what I don't see much of in the
> contemporary scene is a willingness for Christians to recognize that others
> do not adhere to Christianity (or the particular version of it in question)
> *and that they are rationally justified in not doing so. A serious
> recognition of that would motivate us, .... to seek to find cooperative
> solutions with others who don't share the particular conception of the good
> that we do. [Edited]
>
> Posted by: *Steve B.* | August 03, 2005 at 02:20 PM
>
> "...*While I understand, and agree, that the US C*nstitution and B*ll of
> R*ghts is not precisely a spiritual document, it has proven to be the single
> best liberator of people to act freely on their moral choices in human
> history. The C*nstitution and B*ll of R*ghts is there "to seek to find
> cooperative solutions with others who don't share the particular conception
> of the good that we do."
>
> *Posted by: *Phil | December 17, 2006 *at 02:31 AM
>
> Source:
> http://www.generousorthodoxy.net/thinktank/2005/08/when_is_social_.html#more
>
> *~ Janice*
>
>

-- 
David W. Opderbeck
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