The Law as Power and Discrimination as Power and Discrimination

5. The Law as Power and Discriminationas Power and Discrimination

The fact of power is inseparable from law. Law is not law if it lacks the power to bind, to compel, and to punish. While it is a fallacy to define law simply as compulsion or coercion, it is a serious error to define law without recognizing that coercion is basic to it. To empty God of absolute power is to deny that He is God. To separate power from law is to deny it the status of law. The fact that God repeatedly identifies Himself in Scripture as “the Almighty” (Gen. 17:1; 35:11; Ex. 6:3, etc.) is a part of His assertion of total sovereignty and hence His call to obedience.

Power is a religious concept, and the god or gods of any system of thought have been the sources of power for that system. The monarch or ruler has a religious significance precisely because of his power. When the democratic state gains power, it too arrogates to itself religious claims and prerogatives. Because the Marxist state has more power, and claims more power, than other contemporary states, its rejection of Christianity is all the more radical: it cannot tolerate ascription of absolute power to a god other than itself. Power is jealously guarded in the anti- Christian state, and any division of powers in the state, designed to limit its power and prevent its concentration, is bitterly contested.

The law is applied power, otherwise it ceases to be law. The law is more than power, but, apart from coercion, there is no law. Those who object to the coercive element in law are in fact objecting to law, whether knowingly or unknowingly. The purpose of the law is in part to be a “terror” to evildoers (Rom. 13:4); the word “terror” is given a m ilder translation in modern versions, but the whole tenor of Scripture requires the element of fear as man faces God, and as sinful, lawless man faces the law. St. Paul makes it clear, however, that power is ordained of God, “for there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God” (Rom. 13:1). Since God is absolute power, all subordinate and created powers derive their office, power, and moral authority only from God, and they must exercise it only on His terms and under His jurisdiction or else face His judgment. Lord Acton’s dictum, “All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” is a liberal half-truth and reflects liberal illusions. First of all, all power does not corrupt. The power of a godly husband and father to govern his family does not corrupt him; he exercises it under God and in terms of God’s law-word. Instead of being corrupted by his power, the godly man is blessed by means of his power, and he makes it a blessing to his family and society. A godly ruler, who uses his power readily for legitimate and moral ends, prospers the society under his power. The two evils with respect to power and the exercise thereof are, on the one hand, the fear of using power, and, on the other, the immoral use of power. Both evils extensively prevail in any humanistic society. Men who are afraid to use power lawfully and morally corrupt their families and societies. The failure to exercise due power reduces a society to lawlessness and anarchy. The immoral use of power leads to the corruption of society and the suppression of freedom, but it is not the use of power which causes this decay but the immoral use thereof. Power does not corrupt when it is used properly under God: it blesses, prospers, orders, and governs society to its advantage and welfare.

Second , if “absolute power corrupts absolutely,” then God must be called corrupt, because He alone has absolute power. But Acton is wrong: man cannot have absolute power. He may strive for it, and the striving is corrupt and it corrupts society, but man remains, in all his pretensions, totally under the absolute power of God.

Not only is all power derived from God and decreed by His absolute power, but it is also decreed and bound by His absolute righteousness. Law therefore is, when it is true law, not only power but also righteousness. It is therefore a “terror” to evildoers but the security and “praise” of the godly citizenry (Rom. 13:2-5). Because true law has its roots in the sovereign God, the very nature of all being works to uphold it. As Deborah sang, “They fought from heaven, The stars in their courses fought against Sisera” (Judg. 5:20). The law is either righteous, or it is anti-law masquerading as law. Modern legal positivism, Marxism, and other legal philosophies are thus exponents of anti-law, in that they deny law as an approximation of ultimate order and truth and recognize only a humanistic doctrine of law. If law is severed from righteousness and truth, it leads on the one hand to the anarchy of a lawless and meaningless world, or, on the other, to the totalitarianism of an elite group which imposes its relative “truth” on other men by sheer and unprincipled coercion.

But law is required to be a ministry of justice under God, and the civil officer “a minister of God” (Rom. 13:5-6). This concept of the law as a ministry of justice is all but forgotten today, and, where remembered, it is derided. But it is all the same the only possible foundation for a just and prosperous social order. The law as a ministry lacks the arrogance of positivist legal theorists, who see no law or truth beyond themselves. Ministerial law is law under God: it is required to have a humility which positivist law cannot have. The champions of legal positivism are prone to accuse Christians of pride, but the world has never seen more ruthless arrogance and pride than that manifested by the relativists, whether of ancient Greece, the Renaissance, or of the twentieth century.

Another aspect of law is implicit in St. Paul’s statement in Romans 13:1-6: the law is always discriminatory. It is impossible to escape or evade this aspect of law. If the law fulfils its function, to establish justice and to protect godly, law-abiding men, then the law must discriminate against lawbreakers and rigorously seek their judgment. The law cannot favor equality without ceasing to be law: at all times, the law defines, in any and every society, those who constitute the legitimate and the illegitimate members of society. The fact of law introduces a fundamental and basic

inequality in society. The abolition of law will not eliminate inequality, because then the very fact of sheer survival will create an elite and establish a fundamental inequality.

The law has often been used as an ostensible weapon to gain equality, but such attempts represent either self-deception or an attempt to deceive by the group in power.

The “civil rights” revolutionary groups are a case in point. Their goal is not equality but power. The background of Negro culture is African and magic, and the purposes of magic are control and power over God, man, nature, and society. Voodoo, or magic, was the religion and life of American Negroes. Voodoo songs underlie jazz, and old voodoo, with its power goal, has been merely replaced with revolutionary voodoo, a modernized power drive.103

The student revolution attacks the inequality between students and faculty, between students and the ruling powers, but it has consistently rejected favorable concessions in favor of broader claims to power. The goal from the beginning is power.

The list could be extended indefinitely. The goal of the equalitarians has always been power, and equality has been an argument to tickle the sick conscience of a faithless and shaky ruling element.

The law will always require inequality. The question is simply this: will it be an inequality in terms of fundamental justice, i.e., the rewarding of good and the punishing of evil, or will it be the inequalities of injustice and evil triumphant?

The commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” requires that we recognize no power as true and ultimately legitimate if it be not grounded in God and His law-word. It requires that we see true law as righteousness, the righteousness of God, and as a ministry of justice, and it requires us to recognize that the inequalities of just law faithfully applied are the basic ingredients of a free and healthy society. The body politic, no less than the physical body, cannot equate sickness with health without perishing.

The commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me,” means also, “Thou shalt have no other powers before me,” independent of me or having priority over me. The commandment can also read, “Thou shalt have no other law before me.” The powers which today more than ever

present themselves as the other gods are the anti-Christian states. The anti-Christian state makes itself god and therefore sees itself as the source of both law and power. Apart from a biblical perspective, the state becomes another god, and, instead of law, legality prevails.

This devotion to legality has a long history in the modern world. Gohier, minister of justice in France during the years of the Reign of Terror, came to be known as “the casuist of the guillotine” because of his dedication to legality. Later, as a member of the Directory, when faced with the threat of Napoleon’s seizure of power, he declared, “At the worst, how can there be any revolution in St. Cloud? As President, I have here in my posses sion the seal of the Republic.”104 Stalin operated his continuing terror under the umbrella of legality.

But legality is not law. A state can by strict legality embark on a course of radical lawlessness. Legality has reference to the rules of the game as established by a state and its courts. Law has reference to fundamental, God-given order. The modern state champions legality as a tool in opposing law. The result is a legal destruction of law and order.

As a result, the state, instead of being a “terror” to evildoers, is a terror progressively to the law- abiding citizenry, to the righteous and godly people. Hoodlums terrorize the country with riots and violence, and without fear. Moreover, even as Rome declared war on the Christians, so socialism and communism, and progressively the democracies, are at war against orthodox or biblical faith. The consequence of such a desertion by the state of its calling as the ministry of justice can only be finally the fall of the state. The state which ceases to be a terror to evildoers

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