Here is how John Maynard Keynes ends his famous book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money
But apart from this contemporary mood, the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. [continue reading…]
To an imagination of any scope the most far-reaching form of power is not money, it is the command of ideas. If you want great examples read Mr. Leslie Stephen’s “History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century,” and see how a hundred years after his death the abstract speculations of Descartes had become a practical force controlling the conduct of men. Read the works of the great German jurists, and see how much more the world is governed today by Kant than by Bonaparte.— Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Path of the Law, 10 Harv. L. Rev. 457, 478 (1897). [continue reading…]
Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in a dissenting opinion in Southern Pacific Company v. Jensen, 244 U.S. 205, 222 (1917) that “[t]he common law is not a brooding omnipresence in the sky, but the articulate voice of some sovereign or quasi sovereign that can be identified.” By this he asserted his rejection of any idea of a higher or natural law–a law above the law so to speak. Justice Holmes would have us instead look only to the sovereign. What then is the check on the power of the sovereign one might ask? How are we to know whether a law is just or unjust?
Compare the words of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in Updegraph v. Commonwealth, 11 Serg. & Rawle 394, 406-407 (1824 WL 2393 (Pa. 1824):
No free government now exists in the world, unless where Christianity is acknowledged, and is the religion of the country. [continue reading…]
For most of the history of Western civilization, some form of higher law or natural law jurisprudence dominated legal thought. Despite the rich variation within this tradition, nearly all of its proponents agreed that there really was a standard by which human law could be judged to determine its validity. Obviously, for most, this standard was God and His word.
So dominant was this thinking that, for the most part, it dominated legal philosophy well into the nineteenth century. Then, in a little over a century, it has all but disappeared within the legal academy. Well, maybe “disappeared” is too strong a term. But, comparatively, the influence of this type of thinking, and certainly its Christian underpinnings, has, within the academy, waned nearly to the point of disappearing.
Judge Posner, who would probably say “great and good riddance” to the preceding, described the progression from a natural or higher law position to Oliver Wendell Holmes very well in the opening chapter of his book The Problems of Jurisprudence
Roberto Unger begins his book Law in Modern Society
It is commonplace that great men impose a burden upon those who come after them. [continue reading…]
Here is a parable written by a good friend of mine and former student, Ben Walton. Thanks to Ben for allowing me to post it here.
The Love of a Child
By: Benjamin S. Walton
There once was a mother of a young son who sought to faithfully mirror the nature and character of God to her little boy. One day, when her son was first learning to speak, he very soberly and earnestly proclaimed, “Mommy, I wuv you.” The mother seemed very concerned, took her boy over to the couch, sat him down, and proceeded to explain the following truths to him:
“Tommy, I know you think you love me; I know you think that we have a close relationship. But there’s something very important you need to realize, son.”
She paused momentarily, pondering how best to explain a very important reality to her little boy.
“You can’t really love someone unless you know them, Tommy. And, well, I know you may think that you know me, honey, but you just aren’t old enough yet to really appreciate who I am and what I have done for you. You can’t understand all the sacrifices that I have made for you, son. You aren’t old enough to comprehend what it meant for me to give you life. You just can’t yet grasp the nature of my sacrificial life-giving work for you.”
She paused again, as her son looked at her with naïve bewilderment.
“One day you’ll be big enough to understand all these things, and then you’ll be able to love me if you want to. Right now, though, it’s just impossible for you to be able to honestly count the cost of making a life-long decision to love me and have a genuine, intimate relationship with me. So, of course this means that we really can’t have a true relationship at all until you get older. Maybe when you’re older, and you understand more about who I am and what I’ve done for you, you’ll be able to decide for yourself whether you really want to have a relationship with me. But until then, it’s impossible for us to experience any kind of genuine relationship. For us to pretend that we did would just be—well, pretending.”
The mother sighed as her little boy was fidgeting confusedly.
“Tommy, you just need to rest content with the fact that we can’t be genuinely close to each other until you’re old enough to know what that means. You can’t say that you know me until you’re able to understand more about me. And you can’t really love me until you’re mature enough to understand what all I’ve done for you, honey.”
Her loyal little boy’s eyes were now brimming with tears.
“You can love mommy when you’re older, Tommy.”
The mother promptly and briskly left the room, silently congratulating herself on what a faithful picture of the Heavenly Father she had just given her little boy. As for Tommy, he lay broken-hearted on the couch.
I have written in the past about the dominance of Law and Economics in modern American jurisprudence. In that, I noted that brilliant and industrious Richard Posner, the Chief Justice of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, is the primary proponent and exponent of Law and Economics in our time. I wondered in that post whether we, as the church of Jesus Christ, have a compelling alternative answer to Law and Economics. You can read that post here.
Whatever the reader may think, Judge Posner clearly believes that Christians do not have an answer for Law and Economics. In fact, he believes that we have no hope of influencing the judiciary (and the rest of government?) at all. He sees academic moral philosophy as a threat, but not Christian morality. The problem is that we Christians have, as he puts it, “controversial metaphysical commitments” that cannot “conceivably appeal to the judges of our secular courts.” [continue reading…]
Our liturgy often affects our understanding of the Bible and Bible words that we use, even if we deny that we have a liturgy. An example of this is the way that many of us understand the word repentance. Most of us know that this word carries the meaning of turning around, reversing course, making a significant change in direction, or the like.
However, our liturgy often teaches us a very different meaning of the word. In many churches, every service ends with a “gospel presentation” that often amounts to encouraging the faithful to undergo an emotional period of morbid introspection. This internal witch-hunt is designed to encourage the faithful to come to the front and have an emotional experience. This, of course, we often call repentance.
Thus, our Bible teaching gives us one definition of repentance, but our practice, our liturgy, gives us another. [continue reading…]
Here is another great quote from Doug Wilson’s excellent book Heaven Misplaced: Christ’s Kingdom on Earth
However, as Wilson notes, “false gods tell a false story.” Further, the stories of those false gods often ape God’s story on important points, changing the good guys and the bad guys, of course. The following is a portion of Wilson’s description of the false story that the secular world is telling. On pages 116-117, he writes:
In our case, the story we’ve heard countless times concerns how the secular state, our supposed “savior,” came to exist. [continue reading…]
Lord God, we come to You this first Sunday of our New Year, the Year of the Lord 2011, and we recognize that You have been our dwelling place in 2010 and indeed in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art our God.
You, Lord, are infinite and unbound by time. Indeed, You are its creator. We, however, are finite. The days of our lives are like a sleep that is gone in the morning. We are like grass that springs up and flourishes in the day, but by evening is withered. We are as vapors that appear for a little time and then vanish away.
Thus, Lord, at the beginning of this new year, we pray as Moses did in Psalm 90 that You would teach us to number our days aright that we might apply our hearts unto wisdom. [continue reading…]