The Impact of Law

September 23, 1962
Rochester

Sermon Series: Our Judeo-Christian Heritage
3. The Impact of Law

In holding forth the impact of law from our Judeo-Christian heritage, I would have you know that everything I say is affected by a proposition I believe deeply: that a world of peace depends on a world of law. In a time of chaos in ancient Palestine, the old book of Judges reports (17/6-7 and passim), "In those days there was no King in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes." Today kingship is an antiquated institution, but the success of the United Nations is less than it might be and the inauguration of a warless world is severely handicapped because each nation does that which is right in its own eyes.

Disraeli, the great Victorian prime minister, once said, "all our freedoms smack of law." The impact of law upon us is beyond measure. In the roots of our culture, law is embedded deeply and strongly. When one looks at the enormous changes that have taken place in the source of authority and the development of human values, one should become aware in Lowell's words that

"New occasions teach new duties;
Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still and onward,
Who would keep abreast of truth."

The laws of the Old Testament have influenced us profoundly. When the hanging judges of Salem pronounced the verdict of death for those accused of witchcraft, the authority for that capital punishment was eight-words from Exodus (22), "thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." In our culture, the Ten Commandments have a sanctity which is exceeded only by the-frequency with which they are ignored or disobeyed.

The Old Testament contains a vast store of legal instruction, injunction and commentary on law. The Ten Commandments (Exo. 20 2/17 and Deut. 5 6/21) appear twice in slightly altered forms. Nearly the whole of Deuteronomy is a book of the law of Moses—not much of which can be traced literally to Moses, but law which later prophets and scribes believed would be sanctioned by Moses, as following from the old traditions associated with the Exodus and the Wilderness. There is also a vast body of ritual law, sacrificial laws and rules for living in the Priestly codes, found in Numbers and Leviticus, particularly.

There are many contradictions and puzzles, which become less confusing when one appreciates that the various codes of laws and morals arose at different times in the legends and history of the Hebrew tribes. To the fundamentals, additions and revisions were made as new experience and requirements subsequently dictated. The Hebrews occupied the land of Canaan, where the Canaanite culture both left its mark on the people and also, in reaction to Canaanite practices, the priestly codes attempted to define the rules ever more precisely, to the end that God's favorable attitude toward the Covenant People would be maintained.

The large library of Old Testament law and rules for ritual did not spring into codified form spontaneously. When they began wandering, the tribes possessed tribal customs and attitudes set in their minds and feelings. Even as we are touched by many cultures, so the ancient Hebrews consciously and unconsciously absorbed attitudes and practices of the even more ancient Babylonians, Egyptians, Sumerians. Later on in their history, their life and literature were affected by Roman, Greek, Assyrian and Persian [cultures].

Scholars point to the Code of Hammurabi, usually dated about 2100 B.C., as a particular influence on Hebrew law. The Code of Hammurabi contains about 300 separately itemized statutes on justice, crime and punishment. Incidentally, recent archaeological finds demonstrate that the Code of Hammurabi had even earlier antecedents in the Near East.

But there are scholars who believe there was a difference in the way the Hebrews blended the judicial, the moral, the religious. Hammurabi was a kind; the lawmakers of Egypt were Pharaohs. But the Hebrews knew no secular legislative authority. For them, only the prophets could legislate. Samuel, unafraid, could point the finger at King David, “Thou art the man.” An unarmed old prophet denouncing the King! How unlikely that moral authority would have been in Egypt or Babylonia.

This distinction arose because of the nature of the Covenant Law. In their enduring belief that God had made a covenant with them, their pre-supposition now seems astounding: Yahveh gave the people of Israel their laws; they covenanted to worship Yahveh and obey his laws, in return for which they were to occupy a land of milk and honey and assume responsibility for moral leadership. The astonishing feature is that both man and god were bound to a covenant, which was unconditional. If from the position of our modern knowledge we are inclined to look upon such a man-god relationship as supernatural and naive, reflect also on whether such a beginning is not the best fore-runner to the most sorely-needed covenant in all human experience, a covenant relationship of mutual honor and justice between man and man. Consider how this found expression many centuries later on in Medieval times. When the nobles in the kingdom of Aragon selected their ruler, the formula of election went like this: “We who are as good as you choose you for our ruler and lord, provided that you observe our laws and privileges and if not, not.” (See Parker, CHRISTIANITY AND THE STATE, Harper & Bros., p. 104-5).

The Hebrews were a prime example of the ancient theocracy. They were ruled by their gods. Usually the kings were believed to be descendants or deputies of the gods. This was true in ancient Sumeria, where centuries before the time of the Hebrews, the kings were called “tenant-farmers of the Gods.” (See Kahler, MAN THE MEASURE, George Brazillier, p. 52). But the god of the Hebrews, Yahveh, became more than the regional deity. Perhaps because the theological consciousness of the Hebrews became intensified during their folk-wanderings, their God, Yahveh, could not be confined to one place or region, which was the usual limitation. One city-state worshiped one god; its neighbor city could very well worship another with no theological strain, particularly. But Yahveh could not be so limited and still be the God and King of the roving tribes. Thus, when the ancient prayer supplication was sued, still most common among the Jews, “King of the Universe,” it was more than literary grandeur; Yahveh, because he had no territorial limits, was King of the Universe. Thus, the Hebrew God is cosmic, as well as a god who has a covenantal relationship of justice and obedience with man. This has been a germinal influence and a force not readily found in other ancient cultures. All laws in nature and all rules for men were the same because God was king of the universe. Consequently, the impact of our Judaic heritage is not alone the idea of the gods giving laws to men, for this was common in antiquity. What was distinctive was universal law, universal order, universal application of obedience, justice, honor and mercy.

This was one of humanity’s great ideas, but we would be amiss not to note that it has come back to bother us in strange ways today. Essentially the law of ancient Judaism made an inseparable blend of religion, morality, politics and government. The famed historian Josephus, writing in the days of the Roman Empire, is said to have coined the term “theocracy” when he wrote, “Some legislators committed political authority to monarchies, some to oligarchies, others to the people. But our legislator had no regard to any of these forms, but he ordained our government to be what, by doing violence to words, may be termed a “theocracy,” by ascribing the authority and the powers to God." (Parker, ibid, p. 8). We shall return to this matter of complete integration of the church and state.

The heritage of law that has come to us, not only from ancient Judaism and Christianity, but also from Rome, Greece and the Teutonic tribes, leads to another principle which is vital: it is a government of laws, not men. The ancient legends have it that Moses did not govern, he was the giver of Yahveh's laws. The laws were to be obeyed, not because Moses was the leader, but because the laws were part of the covenantal relationship. Were it not for this distinction, law would become either anarchy or unlimited misrule, depending on the whims or strength of whoever happened to be king or ruler. Our present democratic forms would be unthinkable under any other principle than that we are a government of laws, not men. The famous Herodotus, greatest of Greek historians of the times before the Christian era, indicated that this was a principle cherished by the Greek city-states as well. When Xerxes, the Persian monarch, was skeptical that the Spartans would resist the overwhelming might of the Persian army, Demoratus, an exiled Spartan king in the court of Xerxes, assured him to the contrary, saying, "So likewise the Lacedemonians, when they fight singly, are as good men as any in the world, and when they fight in a body, are the bravest of all. For though they be free men, they are not in all respects free; law is the master whom they own; and this master they fear more than thy subjects fear thee, O Xerxes. Whatever law commands, they do; and the commandment is always the same; it forbids them to flee in battle, whatever the number of their foes, and requires them to stand firm, and either conquer or die." (quoted by Crane Brinton, HISTORY OF WESTERN MORALS, p. 102-3). Xerxes discovered that this assertion was true when the 300 Spartans barred his way at Thermopylae. In our nation we have had our heroes, Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson. The source of their strength, the key to their inspirational leadership was not so much their great personal qualities (and these were profound), but their determination to defend a government of principles, not personalities. Sir Arthur Bryant, in his fascinating history, MAKERS OF ENGLAND, phrased our immediate debt to the great Anglo-Saxon tradition of law when he commented, "Loving private liberty, yet finding that it could not exist without public order, the English devoted themselves to making the two compatible. Freedom within a framework of discipline became their ideal. They achieved it through the sovereignty of law.... And by law, the English meant an enforceable compact between themselves and their rulers, deriving not from unilaterally imposed force, but from assent freely given." (p. 24, Doubleday, 1962). This is just one more illustration of the impact of a great idea — the covenant idea of law —mutually binding.

But there is more to be said. Our Judeo-Christian heritage proclaims that the covenantal idea of law must be based on human values, not on the capricious whims or appetites of a power elite.

If you will take the time to read the painfully elaborated and difficult prose of the laws of Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, you will find more than the ritualistic requirements for a proper sacrifice at the altar. You will find the rules for the rights of slaves and the right of strangers in times when slaves were usually treated as disposable property and the stranger was always suspected and in peril. There are rules to be obeyed to provide kindness and care for the widow, the orphan and the poor. There were rules, even in tribal days, for the impartial administration of justice. There were penalties for crimes against life and property and other offenses.

Thus legislation is always more than the letter of the law. Implied is the relationship of man to man, the cherished goals of human effort and the insistence upon justice – in effect, a broad foundation that humanity is holiness.

As the centuries passed, the idea of law as the relationship of man to God continued to abide as a strong force in the history of Western Civilization. The faith in the divine origin of law reached an eloquent expression in the laws of Justinian, Roman emperor in 533 a.d.: “the laws of nature which are observed equally among all nations – established as it were by divine providence – remain ever firm and immutable, 1) universality – precepts the same in all times for all peoples. 2) necessity – because it is a demand on man’s rational nature. 3) immutability – because it is independent of all human authority.” (Americana Encyc.)

But Justinian was wrong. The laws have always changed in accordance with new needs; the evidence is persuasive that the source of legislation is human. This emphasizes, rather than diminishes, the importance and necessity of government by lawful principles. The liberals of the 17th and 18th centuries, usually called the Rationalists, notably John Locke and Rousseau, re-defined natural law to stake man’s claim to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Reflected in the documents of political revolution, the Declaration of Independence here, and in the French Revolution of 1789, the principles find a new emphasis in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948.

The laws of ancient people found their sanction in “divinely revealed” laws. Now we recognize that the sanction of laws created by the sovereignty of free people. The evolution of the authority for law has seen the church as a prime mover for the sovereignty of people, as well as an institution which maintains the supernatural basis of law. The heritage is a mixed one.

But one thing seems sure. Law has become secularized in the United States. Legislators look to principles of human rights and human justice in the never-finished task of refining the rules by which we live together. The church no longer dictates the law; public morality is the guide. The church’s power resides in the amount of persuasive influence it is able to exert on public opinion.

We are now a pluralistic society as far as religion is concerned. A person has the right to believe in one, three, thirty-three, or no gods. Under our constitution, the acts of government shall not establish any one religion nor aid any one religion, nor favor any one religion.

Insofar as law is concerned then, our Judeo-Christian heritage has been one of changing positions, of favored religions and disinherited religions, of law that gradually discards the authority of one particular religion because the broadening range of man’s knowledge discovered that the authentic reason for law is human need and human rights.

Any realistic look at the current variety of religions (world religions as well as the multiplicity of Christian denominations and sects), not to speak of the powerful political religions of the Marxist nations, could find no ground for hoping that the peoples of this world will become sufficiently convinced of the truth of one religion so as to accept it as the sanction for law. In law and government the laws must find sanction in principles of liberty, rights and human needs. Ability to find a basis in human society for universal law would give our world the lift it needs to break the impasse of our day. Failure to find a basis for world peace through world law will lead to our damnation. Any other measures are but political patchwork; any other safeguards are but temporary holding actions.

The impact of law in our Judeo-Christian heritage has demonstrated a tendency to move from the supernatural to the natural; a shift from the divinely ordained reason to the humanly needed cause.

In early times in England, there was an ancient tribal right for the official to fine those citizens who failed to attend the sessions of the local courts. This, we are told by the historian checked the natural tendency for the peasant to stay away, absorbed in his own affairs, leaving the application and enforcement of the law to others. (see Bryant, MAKERS OF ENGLAND, p. 113).

I suppose it would be impossible today to fine those people who take no interest in the
achieving of world order through world law. But certainly the “taming of the nations” (Northrup's phrase) will never be a serious accomplishment until we become aware of the historical necessity, that unless world law has its impact on the problems of the time, then these problems will continue to be unsolved, aggravated and the source of probable
world catastrophe.

There is not one of us who may not profitably re-interpret the great old words of Psalm 1:

"Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the wicked,
Nor standeth in the way of sinners,
Nor sitteth in the seat of scoffers:
But his delight is in the law of Jehovah
And on the law doth he meditate day and night."