Christian Ethics by Georgia Harkness Part 2. Problems of Social Decision
Chapter 10: The Christian Conscience and the State
2. Our biblical and theological base
We must look first at the Old Testament, for there we find, particularly in the messages of the prophets, a more explicit reckoning with social problems than is reflected in the New Testament. Israel, unlike the early Christian community, was a political State, and during much of its history its leaders had civil as well as religious authority. This dual relationship, as we saw in Chapter 2, gave a particular turn to the significance of the covenant, the Law, and the prophets. It is both asset and barrier as we try to apply the moral insights of the prophets to our own times.
No literature of any people reflects a keener concern for social
righteousness than is found in the writings of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah, and in a different setting in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The prophets did not hesitate to rebuke kings, as well as people, who disobeyed the commands of God. The evils reflected in their words, and indeed portrayed throughout the Old Testament — avarice, exploitation,
bribery, chicanery, and attempts at seizure of power for personal gain — are perennial human tendencies which appear in every State. Both the situation and its remedy are timeless. In the message of the prophets there is a call to personal and social righteousness which stems from the sovereign rule of a righteous God. They spoke to the conditions of their times from the standpoint of both the judgment and the proffered
deliverance of Yahweh, and proclaimed their faith in a divine Ruler who moves within political events as in all other events of human
history. Dark as their messages appear to be with indictment and doom, hope through the mercy and faithfulness of Yahweh was never
withdrawn. Both their discernment of human affairs and their insight into the moral nature of God make their messages of incalculable and permanent worth.
Yet when we are confronted with the need to apply the social teachings of the prophets to a particular measure before Congress in our time — for example, to expenditures for military defense, or a farm bill, or fair employment practices — the directives are less clear. Aside from the obvious disparities in the general social situation, there are major
differences between Israel’s political structure and our own. Israel was a theocracy, owing its very existence to the intermingling of political with religious destiny, while we are committed to the principle of separation of Church and State. Israel was not a democracy, as we are, and while the prophets pleaded eloquently for personal righteousness in social relations, there was no expectancy of or challenge to the individual civic responsibilities basic to a democracy. Thus even the highest moral
insights of the Old Testament leave us with a large gap.
Is the New Testament a more specific guide? It is, and it is not. The most direct political reference in the words of Jesus is the familiar
"Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s" (Mark 12:17). This is ambiguous because it does not tell us how to distinguish between what is Caesar’s and what is God’s. As we have noted repeatedly, Jesus was concerned to set up a spiritual, not a political, kingdom, and it is unlikely that he gave much thought to the structure of the political state in which his followers were to find
themselves. He did foresee that they would endure persecution as he sent them out "as sheep in the midst of wolves," but his call was to fidelity in witness rather than to assumption of the wolves’ prerogatives and power.
Nevertheless this passage through the centuries has had very great value, and it is so today. For one thing, it recognizes the right of duly constituted civil authority to exercise control — and this at a point before which human nature is chronically reluctant, the payment of taxes! More significantly still, it recognizes that God has claims upon the citizen that cannot be wholly subsumed within the claims of the State. On the strength of this declaration, Christians from the first century to the twentieth have refused to let the State have their total allegiance, and not a few in our own time have died in Nazi
concentration camps and Communist purges rather than render to Caesar the things that are God’s.
When further directives are sought within the experience of the early Church, the principle enunciated by Jesus stands, but the ambiguity is not removed. Peter’s "we must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29) carried the first Christians boldly through persecution to victory or death. Yet there is a sharp contrast between Paul’s conservative and on the whole conciliatory attitude toward the ruling powers and what is portrayed in the book of Revelation. Paul could say in words destined to have great influence, "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God." (Rom. 13:1.) Similarly in I Pet. 2:17 we read, "Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor." These injunctions seem to have equal status, and there is no suggestion that only the good emperor is to be thus honored.
Nevertheless, the book of Revelation emerging out of the persecutions under the emperor Domitian does not hesitate to refer to Rome in
cryptic but pointed terms as "Babylon the great, mother of harlots and of earth’s abominations. . . , drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus" (Rev. 17:5-6).
In general the Church has followed the lead of Paul in enjoining
obedience to the ruling powers. This has been more true of the Lutheran than of the Calvinist tradition. It led Luther to side with the princes against the peasants in the Peasants’ Revolt, and modern Lutheranism in Germany to defer revolt against Nazi tyranny until it became clear that Hitler was usurping the place that belonged only to Christ. Calvin
established a theocracy in Geneva in which the Church dominated the State, though not without a long struggle to establish this control, and this temporarily resolved the tension between the two. However, he did not hesitate to sanction resistance to rulers who defied God and
commanded abominations, saying that "when they rise against God they must be put down, and held of no more account than worn-out shoes."1 Both the Puritan and the American Revolutions drew largely from Calvinism for their spiritual undergirding.
With this ambiguity as to the degree of allegiance owed to the State embedded in the Bible and in the history of the Church, we cannot expect to be wholly extricated from it. Yet two other aspects of Christian faith throw light upon it and must not be left out of
consideration. These are the sovereignty of God and the Christian view of man.
Reference has been made to the claim of every State to sovereign political authority. Yet to the Christian there is a higher sovereignty, that of "God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth." Since the State like the family is an "order of creation," it owes its very existence to God. God has ordained that men should live together in communities and that such communities, larger or smaller, should be structured into forms of government. But God has not ordained that any existing national State should be exactly as it is. As we saw regarding economic systems, none is perfect enough to be equated with the kingdom of God — or can be while human sin exists. Some are better, some worse, carriers of divine justice; democracy is better fitted than either fascism or Communism to bring about the kind of human society willed by God. Yet before the sovereign Ruler of the world, every political State must be judged defective, and all Christian citizens must seek to bring their State more nearly into harmony with what is believed to be God’s will for human life. This we noted was the major concern of the prophets of Israel, and in this they gave us a permanent legacy that must never be surrendered. Taken seriously, recognition of the ultimate and final sovereignty of God could transform the structure of human society.
The second principle stems more directly from the New Testament. It is the recognition of the supreme and equal worth of all persons to God. It is here that democracy is grounded. It is apparent that "equal worth"
cannot mean equal endowment or ability; certainly to us and presumably to God it does not mean equal usefulness to society or
equality in the attainment of personal character. Yet the equal and
impartial love of God for all men, both saints and sinners, both high and low in the world’s esteem, is the indisputable deduction to be drawn from the words and acts of Jesus. Here is a guiding principle for both personal and political action which is bedrock.
Thus it comes about that to say that every soul everywhere is "a person for whom Christ died" is more than pious verbiage; it is an affirmation of the duty to treat every person as a being of supreme and infinite worth. One may speak in some contexts more formally of the "dignity of human personality," but in a Christian context this stems from the, conviction of the immeasurable love of God for every man. A religious insight has profound political significance when it makes the difference between a fragmentary adherence to democracy and its practice in human relations.