Rescuing Human Rights from Human Beings

"La Scapagliata," by Leonardo da Vinci, ca. 1500

The whole civilized world takes the notion of "human rights" for granted. Ask an American if he or she has rights and a doctor's hammer below the knee couldn't provoke such an instant and reflexive response. “Of course I have rights!” (Why would you even ask?) Probe a little bit deeper and ask one of those obnoxious "why" questions and you may possibly get "It's in the Constitution." Pursue it further and ask if it would be okay if a Constitutional amendment took away a right like the freedom of speech. You'll either get stony silence or, if this pedestrian is unusually clever (or unusually good at parroting his professors), an appeal to "humanity." People have human rights because they're human beings. It's circular, of course, but, then, didn't Plato believe that the circle was the most perfect of shapes?

Fantastic as it sounds, we're supposed to believe that this rights-by-virtue-of-humanity argument is sufficient.The only problem with it is that an individual who is the sole owner of his rights (as opposed to being “endowed” with his rights) can forever give them away if he or she so chooses – and if history is any guide, he or she often so chooses. Rights that can be given away at whim are, in reality, no rights at all. The government may as well have absolute jurisdiction if it only refuses to infringe on its citizens’ rights when it’s convenient. An even more fundamental problem with basing rights in humanity itself is our era’s postmodernism. You’re telling me there’s no such thing as absolute right and wrong, but an African tribesman still has an absolute right to food, water and condoms? The absurdity is self-evident and goes a long way in explaining why nothing akin to individual rights was ever recognized until the coming of Christianity, and has receded whenever and wherever the tides of the Gospel have ebbed.

One would think this would be obvious to anyone who bothered to take the most cursory glance at the historical record. Even ancient Greece and Rome, where conceptions of humanistic individualism reached their zenith, had no such concept as individual rights. Plato spoke of the importance of the polis as the source of a kind of communitarian right. Romans emphasized the freedom granted by a just legal system. One searches ancient laws in vain for anything resembling our modern versions of individual rights. Slavery was never prohibited anywhere in the ancient world; in fact, it served as the fundamental basis of those societies. Plato and Aristotle both believed that certain people were meant to be slaves by their very nature. The rest of the world was even worse. Most non-Western languages don't even have a word for freedom.

Only with the coming of Christianity did people begin to recognize that all of mankind is made in the imago dei – the image of God—and therefore deserving of certain rights. In the words of the Apostle Paul in Colossians 3, “there is no Gentile or Jew…barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but Christ is all, and is in all.” Christians in early Rome shocked their pagan rulers by adopting the children Romans left out in the elements to die. Over the centuries, Christianity persistently eroded the philosophical underpinnings that had allowed slavery to survive. Significantly, the first widespread movement against the slave trade began, not under the auspices of Platonists, but under a Christian queen of France, Bathilda. Charlemagne was opposed to slavery; Pope Callistus himself had been a slave. Abogard, Anselm and Wulfstan and other luminaries of the medieval church all campaigned against the existence of the institution. As Rodney Stark has written, “The theological conclusion that slavery is sinful has been unique to Christianity.”

The Protestant Reformation’s rediscovery of the believer’s direct relationship to God launched a whole new inquiry into individual rights, particularly vis a vis government. If an individual is justified by his or her faith and not by physically going through a sacrament, the logic went, then no person can force salvation on another. This led to the formal enumeration of the right of conscience, and by logical extension, the rights of speech and the press, where conscience was expressed, challenged and forged. Religious thinkers like the Protestant theologian Hugo Grotius applied the principles of Christianity when theorizing about international law. Regardless of culture, government or race, people everywhere possessed certain rights because they possessed a common Creator. In the 17th century, John Locke’s theory of government went so far as to assert that political bodies are instituted for the express purpose of protecting the God-given rights of individuals. From here it was a short step to the Declaration of Independence. The distinctly Christian idea of human rights now also became a part of civic religion, with all the mixed blessings that entailed.

All our modern ideas on this subject can therefore be traced back to Christian theology, which alone has birthed, and can alone sustain, so sweeping an idea as the dignity of the entire human race. It’s all too easy to view this Christian accomplishment in a vacuum, as many American do today. Most people have never considered that humanitarianism, foreign aid, abolition and systematic resistance to tyranny have only ever existed in countries touched by Christianity. As Christianity fizzles out in this country, we should expect to see our ideas of human rights—already so twisted, mutable and vacuous that we call abortion a fundamental right—die out, too.

The Punishment that Brought Us Peace

"Descent from the Cross," by Roger Van Der Weyden, 1435:

"Christ Carrying the Cross," by Hieronymous Bosch, 1490:

"Head of Christ," Albrecht Durer, 1503:

"Christ on the Cross," Albrecht Durer, 1505:

"Crucifixion," by Matthias Grunewald, 1515:

"Christ on the Cross with Mary and John," by Albrecht Altdorfer,1515:

"Descent from the Cross," by Rembrandt, 1634:

"Cross in the Mountains," by Caspar David Friedrich, 1808:

"Morning in the Great Mountains," by Caspar David Friedrich,1810-11:

The Myth of Self-Conscious Tyranny

Watercolor by William Blake, ca. 1795

"And Caiaphas was in his own mind/A benefactor to mankind."      --William Blake, "The Everlasting Gospel"

When most of us think of Hitler, Stalin or Ahmadinejad, we think of a creature who’s fallen so low that he’s become a separation – or, at best, an aberration- from the human race – someone whom we’re not like and could never possibly become.  Like the superstitious, medieval peasant, we see a beast descended from the demonic line of Cain rather than a fellow human being.

But what do we know of the author of evil himself – of Satan? Wasn’t his name once “Lucifer” (which means “light-bearer”)? Wasn’t he the mightiest, most beautiful and most virtuous of the Almighty God’s angels? Wasn’t he presumably exalted above all the others for his righteousness? Here’s what the Bible says:

Ezekiel 28:17:  “Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground; I exposed you before kings, to feast their eyes on you.”

Isaiah 14:12-15: 

“How you are fallen from heaven,
O Day Star, son of Dawn!
How you are cut down to the ground,
you who laid the nations low!
You said in your heart,
‘I will ascend to heaven;
above the stars of God
I will set my throne on high;
I will sit on the mount of assembly
in the far reaches of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.’
But you are brought down to Sheol,
to the far reaches of the pit.”

Evil often begins with the pride that comes from doing what’s right. Although we don’t know what exactly it was that Lucifer did that earned him so exalted a position, it was obviously something very good and deserving of reward. When any of us do evil, it’s often not conscious. It begins with a good purpose - like Hitler’s sincere desire to rescue Germany from inflation and foreign dominance, Stalin’s to usher in an egalitarian order, or Ahmadinejad’s to secure Iran from outside aggression – that becomes prideful. Pride then blinds the individual to their selfishness. As they pursue their  noble goal with increasing self-aggrandizement and wickedness -with an increasing philosophy of the ends justifying the means - they tell themselves that it’s for “the public good,” and that makes it okay. This is critical to understand: most egregiously evil individuals honestly believe that they’re doing what’s right.

John Milton’s classic work Paradise Lost brilliantly captures this truth about the nature of evil. Milton portrays Lucifer’s fall as beginning with pride that leads to righteous indignation against a God whom he begins to believe is a tyrant.

"My sentence is for open War; Of Wiles,
More unexpert, I boast not: them let those
Contrive who need, or when they need, not now.
For while they sit contriving, shall the rest,
Millions that stand in Arms, and longing wait
The Signal to ascend, sit ling'ring here,
Heav'n's fugitives, and for their dwelling place
Accept this dark opprobrious Den of shame,
The Prison of his Tyranny who Reigns
By our delay? no, let us rather choose,
Arm'd with Hell flames and fury all at once
O'er Heaven's high Tow'rs to force resistless way,
Turning our Tortures into horrid Arms
Against the Torturer."
--Satan in Paradise Lost, Bk. II

Although this is extra-scriptural, it seems to me to be an accurate depiction of evil. God is seen as "the Torturer," "the Tyrant," and rebelling against him becomes a good, a noble, a laudable act. This is borne out by scripture: Isn't the essence of Adam and Eve's rebellion that the serpent convinced them that God was selfishly holding them back from their full potential? When Milton describes the angelic rebellion Lucifer leads, he portrays it as a kind of democratic revolution against a perceived dictator. Satan and the demons were, indeed, acting from the most base and selfish motives – but they thought they were in the right. Also along these lines is J.R.R. Tolkien’s tale of the king of Numenor who is so seduced and brainwashed by Sauron (Middle-Earth's Satan figure) that he leads his imperial fleet to Valinor (the land of the gods) to wage ware against the perceived injustices of the gods. 

There is a lesson here for all of us.  Whenever we hear that “Obama wants to destroy the country” or “The Christian Right wants to kill homosexuals” or “Ahmadinejad is a madman,”  we should remind ourselves that, tragically, whatever we think of these people, it's quite likely they believe that they’re doing what’s right – even that God is on their side. That’s what makes evil so insidious. The greatest evils are perpetrated when we believe that we can do no wrong. And that’s why we should cringe when people act like they could never become a Hitler or a Stalin. That attitude is the beginning that led to the infamy those two men obtained. Our attitude should rather be “There but for the grace of God go I.”


(Entire nations, too, can fall victim to the blinding effects of pride. Read this article to see how)

A Tale of Two Philosophies in the Civil Rights Movement

 

Ecclesiastes 9:11: “The race is not to the swift - It is not by swiftness, nor by strength and valor, that races are gained and battles won.” The Bible teaches that “races” are won by humble virtues like perseverance, excellence and diligence. Christianity’s spread across the ancient Mediterranean world was due in large part to Christians’ persistence in doing good –from saving unwanted babies to caring for the poor and orphaned on Rome’s streets- even under the enormous pressure of persecution. Christianity didn’t conquer the ancient world by overturning the Roman state. No doubt there were those who resented Rome and wanted to fight fire with fire, like the Jewish zealots before them. But this was not to be. Christians chose the plan laid out in the Bible. It was doubtless far harder in the short run, but it guaranteed a lasting victory. Christianity won through sheer perseverance, beating an overconfident but napping Rome at its own game. As the Emperor Julian said, “Nothing has contributed to the progress of the superstition of the Christians so much as their charity to strangers… the impious Galileans provide not only for their own poor, but for ours as well.”

This classic conflict between power and humility, speed and patience, self-confidence and endurance has been played out many times in history. A more recent example can be found in the civil rights movement. The man who was in many ways the father of the movement was Booker T. Washington. He had been born in slavery, the illegitimate son of a white landowner. After his family was freed following the Civil War, Washington had to pull himself up by the bootstraps through working grueling jobs like tending a salt furnace and mining coal. He then worked himself through a secondary education and was appointed as the head of the Tuskegee Institute, a new school for freedmen. Over the years, Washington created a vast network of entrepreneurs, philanthropists (many of them white) and charitable organizations to fund schools and vocational opportunities for African-Americans throughout the South. Although he also worked to end Jim Crow laws and supported civil rights initiatives, his philosophy was not primarily one of setting blacks’ political power against whites’. He believed that any enduring victory won by African-Americans would have to rest on a more solid foundation than ballot-boxes and legal jargon on paper. Just like Christians’ victory in ancient Rome, this would have to be a victory over the hearts, minds and pocket books of the enemy. Better to overcome mistreatment and discrimination by showing how baseless they were than by wresting power and winning a legal victory only. The key was "…industry, thrift, intelligence and property." Washington encouraged African-Americans to become the very best in whatever field they worked. This far-sighted and conciliatory attitude is made even more remarkable when one recalls the difficult circumstances of Washington’s early life and all the reasons he had to harbor bitterness.

But it made him enemies, including a fellow black intellectual named W.E.B. Dubois. Dubois had tremendous talent, the result of an innate gifting helped along by both an upbringing in relative wealth and a Harvard education. Understandably, he was tired of African-Americans plodding along at a snail’s pace towards freedom and acceptance. But this impatience and frustration with discrimination in attitudes and laws - though he had not experienced them the same way Booker T. had – pushed him to advocate for a faster solution. Dubois viewed education and power as the only way to achieve true equality, and he vocally opposed Washington’s strategy, even going so far as to give him the nickname “the Great Compromiser." Through attaining positions of influence in the government, the legal system and academia, African-Americans would be able to shape society to win full equality. Eventually this emphasis on a top-down approach to equality led Dubois and the organization he helped found, the NAACP, to embrace socialism. According to this view, the slow, steady methods of Washington were tantamount to treason

Dubois’ desire to see his race achieve equality in his lifetime was certainly a noble intention, but noble intentions can be hijacked by impatience. If that impatience is allowed to define beliefs, it can lead to embracing the gravely erroneous notion that the “ends justify the means.” Booker T. Washington’s ideas promised no immediate change and may not have not had as much appeal at the time for that reason, but they’ve been vindicated in retrospect. Regardless of the political power wielded by African-Americans, the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s would have been impossible to win long-term without the support of whites nationwide. That support was gained between the 40s and 60s largely because African-Americans had (knowingly or not) followed Washington’s advice: they became the very best at whatever they did. African-Americans’ skill as sports heroes (like Jackie Robinson and Mohammed Ali), singers and musicians (Sam Cooke, Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, Nat King Cole, the Supremes and the Temptations) defined the popular consciousness of the entire nation during the 1960s. Every teenager listened to Doo-Wop, Rock and Roll, Soul and Motown – all genres that had their beginnings in African-American music. Through television and radio, African-American stars found their way into every home and car. A whole generation grew up seeing that the other race was every bit as capable of innovation as their own. African-Americans had won the battle of the mind and heart, therefore ensuring victory in the political battle that Martin Luther King Jr. would lead.

Booker T. Washington’s capitalistic and individualistic philosophy was thus vindicated, making it all the more unfortunate that fifty years later it’s in danger of being thrown away. When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, people mistook the culmination of the civil rights movement for its cause. They seized the opportunity to invoke Dubois and use the state as a sort of “savior” for African-Americans. This has since become the prevailing philosophy in talks about equality between the races. It has created endemic dependency on government, poverty. It has also fostered a bitterness and victim mentality that had no place in the life of the one who began the movement - one who had actually known the horrors of life as a slave. Washington would be appalled. In eschewing power and instead stressing industry, excellence, patience and winning the war of the mind, he recognized that it was folly to exchange aristocratic Southern masters for a whole government of far more powerful masters.

In Praise of Myth

Before God was declared dead in 1882, the European elite had lost their willingness to believe. Nietzsche’s famous statement simply reflected the grave error of thinking that the intelligentsia’s lack of faith had nullified God’s faithfulness. Years before, European academia as a whole, stretched and stressed between rationalism and pantheism for decades, had made the fatal decision to play it safe and discard faith for reason. These Deists, blind to anything but what they could stare at past their own noses, promptly found that the next logical thing to do was to throw out the object of their faith, too.

Yet despite the relentless march of over a century-and-a-half of “progress,” the rocks still haven’t had to cry out (it must be frustrating to be a secular visionary). It seems that faith in something is as fundamentally needed in the human condition - even in its fallen-ness- as breathing. Think about it. It doesn't matter what archaeologists' spades do or don't uncover deep in the English loam. King Arthur held court in Camelot, surrounded by a troop of gallant knights. In the same way, the story of Robin Hood emerging from the shadowy eves of Sherwood Forest to secure justice for the oppressed is every bit as real in our mind's eyes as if he had existed just as the tales say he did. 

Decades of stressing objectivity, empiricism and rationalism in our schools have failed to erase these pictures, these “forms” that lie somewhere in the back of our minds in a place reason can’t reach. In the process of trying to snuff them out and preach only what we can know with absolute certainty, we've reduced history to a jumble of numbers and equations and proofs. Endless pages of quantitative statistics are needed to establish causality – and even then scientists accept that, at best, we can only know “probabilistic” truth. We've bumped up against the same wall through reason for which we through faith out the window.

And here we are, unable to teach Arthur or Robin Hood in history courses; unable to incorporate our highest aspirations and fears – in short, anything resembling a purposeful story – into scholarship. But why? Are these impressions false? Do they pervert our sense of history simply because they can’t be corroborated by a rock some farmer's plow caught upon by chance? Quite obviously, in the search for absolute meaning, it’s a zero-sum game: science has come up just as short as “myth.” I’m not saying legends should be taught as fact, but I am saying that they would not have been believed in the first place unless they contained a grain of truth. More importantly, in their essence they convey more truth than ten thousand pages of quantitative analysis. Arthur embodied for the Welsh the same kind of hope in a temporal redemption that they had in a spiritual one. Robin Hood will always be a lesson of compassion and justice conquering in the face of unjust rulers. In the words of Winston Churchill, "It is all true, or it ought to be." Which is safer? To accept things that we can't know beyond the shadow of a doubt and risk being wrong once in a while, or to acknowledge that we can't know anything?

Two Wolves and A Sheep

"The Triumph of Representatives," William Hogarth, 1755

The Anglo-Saxon scholar Alcuin once wrote to Charlemagne, “And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.” We of the 21st century can no doubt agree with Alcuin of the 8th. It’s a disturbing thing when the Mubaraks and Gadhafis of the world are unseated, mistreated or killed by the very people who brought them to power years ago. It would be shameful enough if it had been a single person who had offered himself in service to a master only to turn around and stab him in the back. But what are we to say when the instigator of this madness is an entire people? It makes the theorists’ claim that the people are a safer repository for liberty than the prince look specious at best.

One would have divine sanction for these macabre doubts, too. There is no religion in the world so opposed to the Tyranny of the 51% as Christianity. Chapter 23 of the Book of Exodus contains a prescient warning against such mob rule: “Do not follow the crowd in doing wrong. When you give testimony in a lawsuit, do not pervert justice by siding with the crowd….” The New Testament continues this theme vividly. Indeed, we Christians have the distinction of being the only religion who can claim God as a casualty of democratic vote. Though he was raised from the dead, this was the work of an autocrat.

My point is not that monarchy or oligarchy is better than good, old “demokratis,” which, as an ideal, has been there right along with us throughout all the summers of Western Civilization. No, I agree too much with Winston Churchill that “…democracy is the worst form of government - except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Christianity recognizes that all men are equal, that they are given rights by their Creator – and this is the foundation of democracy. But it's not the cornerstone. Intimate knowledge of our own sin is. Truly, the only thing that makes the voice of people the voice of God is when the people know they are the farthest things possible from God. When they can acknowledge that they are the silliest, most temperamental and dangerous beings in the universe, then democratic government just may work – fingers crossed.

This knowledge of our fallenness is the vital ingredient missing from democracy across the globe today. It’s why Athens and republican Rome fell thousands of years ago and the French and Bolshevik revolutions created Hell on earth. It’s why the media’s pet Arab revolutions never know what to do but tear themselves apart once Big Brother’s gone. It’s why Occupy Wall Street’s solution is far worse than the problem. We’re no longer democrats because we recognize that we can’t trust ourselves with power over other people. We’re democrats because we think that we deserve whatever anyone else has. The same rights, the same treatment and the same amount of money. Bertrand Russell was right: "Envy is the basis of democracy."

The Language of Creation

"Caspar David Friedrich in his Studio,"
Georg Friedrich Kersting, 1819

Christmas Day, 1807. The Count of Thun and his family fought blustery winds on their way to their private chapel at Tetschen castle, Bohemia. This year's religious pageantry was made all the more spectacular by a new addition to the sanctuary. There, in place of the old, ponderous altar-piece stood a newly-finished masterwork. A glinting frame enrounded a painting of Calvary reimagined in an Alpine setting, craggy and crowned by firs. The cross itself stood silhouetted by the brilliant pink hues of a setting sun. This was The Cross on the Mountains, the first major work in what was to be the long and brilliant career of German painter Caspar David Friedrich.

This painting was not just an expression of faith, it was a way for the Thun family to show a cosmopolitan streak. Friedrich’s work was part of a fashionable new movement that was attempting to wash the Enlightenment out of Western Europe. The previous century's overreaching search for rational truth had left the earth a barren wasteland through its insatiable desire to force all knowledge inside of men’s heads. Mysteries and miracles that didn’t conform to formulas had been rejected. For the first time in centuries, Christianity had been publicly attacked. The artists in this new school styled themselves “romantics.” By depicting the inexplicable, the beautiful, and most of all, nature in its glory, they sought to free men from bondage to their minds. Others, chief among them Caspar David Friedrich, painted to remind men that it was not just truth that could be found throughout all of creation, but the truth of the Christian God.

The Cross on the Mountains drew its most vehement criticism, not from Deistic intellectuals, but from a most unlikely source: a fellow Christian. That Christian was the aptly named Basilius von Ramdohr. Unlike Friedrich, von Ramdohr was born and bred among the upper classes of German society. He had acquired a reputation as a conservative lawyer and defender of traditional German values, which led to a career as a cultural critic. With a hint of contempt, no doubt, von Ramdohr went to see Friedrich’s much talked about "romantic" piece when it was on special display. He was deeply unsettled by the painting, so much so, in fact, that he wrote a painstakingly long refutation of the ideas he saw represented in it. He objected that the pine trees had been illustrated to the point of painting each needle. The way the light was rendered was against “all the rules of optics.” And what of landscape paintings themselves? Surely nature itself can contain no explicit meaning and is improper in a church. The rock was rendered poorly, a “most strident contrast to the bright sky, without any transition or harmony.” Perhaps worst of all, in von Ramdohr's opinion, the cross was not located in the center of the painting, and Jesus was not facing the viewer – and surely this would convey the wrong message to worshipers..

With his fledgling reputation at stake, Friedrich was forced to respond. His answer? “Jesus Christ, nailed to the tree, is turned here towards the sinking sun, the image of the eternal, life-giving father. With Jesus’ teachings, an old world dies – that time when God the Father moved directly on the earth. This sun sank and the earth was not able to grasp the departing light any longer. There shines forth in the gold of the evening light the purest, noble metal of the Savior’s figure on the cross, which thus reflects the earth in a softened glow. The cross stands erect on a rock, unshakeably firm like our faith in Jesus Christ. The firs stand around the cross, evergreen, enduring through all ages, like the hopes of man in Him, the crucified.”

Unfortunately, it is very easy for us Christians to make the same mistake von Ramdohr did. In our very desire to keep the Gospel pure, it is tempting to keep our artists in the shadows. We are prone to confusing convention with the Gospel; to thinking that a change in style means a change in substance. Can God only speak through us when we make sure that two pieces of wood are at the exact center of our painting like von Ramdohr wanted? The Bible tells us that God can speak through donkeys, rocks, burning bushes and David’s harp-playing. We forget that though symbols may change, Christ himself can still remain at the center of the work. The greatest stories of salvation are usually told, not through hackneyed altar-calls, but through metaphors. Jesus’ parables are prime examples of this. And what is nature but a majestic metaphor? By depicting Creation in a way that's good and beautiful (Philippians 4:8), we can challenge peoples' deepest beliefs. A God who's evident through the physical world challenges today's naturalists in a way they can't respond to. On the other hand, to deny nature’s revelation of God like von Ramdohr did is to deny what God called “good.” Like the Apostle Paul before his conversion, this man was an intellectual who thought he was advancing the kingdom of God by purging it of false revelation. It turned out that what they were both calling false was God's voice. What place do landscape paintings have in church? Friedrich showed in his response what the psalmist declared long before in chapter 19: "The heavens declare the glory of the Lord; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge."

Becoming the Beast

"Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime," Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, 1808

No one can fail to have heard about the assassination of Anwar al-Alwaki last week. What you may not have heard was how unprecedented this killing was. Never before (as far as I'm aware) has our government been legally allowed to kill anyone, much less a citizen, without having to prove his guilt in trial. His guilt was beyond doubt? It doesn't matter. I’ve written about this previously, but there’s a reason that our symbol of Justice, the Roman goddess Justitia, is portrayed with a blind-fold and a scale. These aren’t just artistic flourishes; they communicate a deep truth. God’s justice is perfect. He is "no respecter of persons" - he is blind. He always convicts the guilty and exonerates the innocent because he can see into their hearts and minds and can separate truth from lies - he is balanced. Our human judges thankfully don’t have this same omniscience, and “there’s the rub” in this case. Whatever blood may have been on his head, Alwaki was killed unjustly because he never got a chance to defend himself to the nation. Without the accused having that chance, the verdicts of governments, judges and juries can be easily mistaken. They can be swayed by their own prejudices, false testimony and their own lack of knowledge. Verdicts are, at best, educated guesses. Then how can we protect the innocent from being hauled into court and jailed or executed on false premises? How do we keep justice blind and balanced like a scale? These were just the questions Englishmen faced in the 17th century and Americans in the 18th century: kings and courts abusing their powers to bend people to their tyrannical wills.

As the Anglo-American world found out, the answer lay in keeping true to the old maxim “innocent until proven guilty.” This principle has been the cornerstone of our legal system ever since. After all, the men who codified our laws had lurid experiences with judges who convicted the innocent so as to increase royal power in the colonies. Even before that hard lesson, however, our Founding Fathers had defended the innocent even when it was incredibly inconvenient. Two examples will suffice. After the Boston Massacre, John Adams (a lawyer in Boston at that time) thought it was so important to give a fair trial to the British soldiers involved in the shooting that he went against his every inclination (he later hazarded angry mobs, his reputation and his livelihood) to defend them personally. Bostonians were caught up in the tragedy of the moment and wanted the soldiers dead. Wasn’t their guilt evident enough after three people lay bleeding in the streets? But human passions can cloud fair judgment. What they took to be certain guilt was actually not so certain at all, as Adams proved. Or take Thomas Jefferson, who, as a young lawyer, took slaves and free blacks as clients to defend in court, when having dark-skinned clients was enough to imperil even the most well established law practice.

Given how integral this idea of blind, even-handed justice is to Christianity, and how it launched the life of our nation and its heroes, it’s deeply unsettling that many Americans and Christians are ignoring our government's departure from these principles in the case of Alwaki's assassination. Alwaki was not shot on a battleground. In fact, as far as we know he only ever preached violence. While there can be little doubt judging from his sermons that Alwaki was an evil man, the simple fact is that, under our Constitution, even the most evil of men are entitled to a fair trial for their crimes. Nazis whose guilt was established beyond the residue of doubt were famously given trials at Nuremberg. Although Southerners were regarded as traitors after the Civil War, those who were captured outside the field of battle were at least afforded hearings in military courts. According to the Bible, conviction of murder (not the preaching of murder, but murder) requires the testimony of “two or three witnesses.” (Deut. 17:6) The verse goes on: “…no one shall be put to death on the testimony of only one witness.” And what about when the person himself isn't a murderer? Are the testimonies of fewer witnesses required to convict him than to convict an actual  murderer? Why, even Iran sees the need to keep up the semblance of a capital trial as it tries to convict Yousef Nadarkhani. The fact that our "Christian" government doesn’t feel compelled to put on a charade of justice should give us pause to consider whether, through fear of our enemy, we are becoming the beast we mean to destroy.

The Forgotten Father of Constitutional Liberty

Stephen Langton, from the exterior of
Canterbury Cathedral

Very little is known about Stephen Langton's childhood. What we do know is that he was born in the late twelfth century in the county of Lincolnshire. He first emerges from the shadow of obscurity as a star pupil at the University of Paris, where he befriended a fellow student who later became Innocent III, the most powerful of medieval popes. Thanks to this friendship, Langton was made a cardinal years later. He became renowned throughout Europe as a prolific expositor of scripture, publishing commentaries and treatises  - he even divided the Bible into the chapter/verse format we're so familiar with today. As profound as these accomplishments were, they pale in comparison with his greatest.

Hundreds of miles away, Langton's home was being torn between the teeth of Normans and Saxons, rich and poor, barons and king, church and state. The latest controversy was who would be Archbishop of Canterbury and therefore control the English church. King John had his man who would be sure to be loyal to the Crown, and the churchmen of England had theirs. Innocent III, ever intent on strengthening Papal power wherever it reached, saw an opportunity here to bring the English church firmly under Rome's control. He stepped in and engineered the election of a third candidate: a friend and a champion of the church; someone who would take orders from Rome without question. Langton's election was thus engineered, and King John's vengeance predictably broke out like a torrent.The struggle mounted until the king's plundering of the church resulted in his excommunication.

As serious as this conflict was, in English minds it was only a sideshow to one that had been simmering for centuries - that of barons and king. Every monarch since William the Conqueror had seen his greed for land, power and money frustrated by his equally greedy nobility. These barons were tired of spending their lives and fortunes in fruitless contests for what they considered the foreign lands in France.This friction between throne and fief had embroiled the kingdom in almost constant civil war for generations. Now that King John had been declared apostate by the church, this civil war became a holy war for the barons.

There seemed to be a thousand different ambitions clashing in the realm, like a pack of dogs tearing each other to pieces without a goal in mind. Langton saw an opportunity to bring order from the chaos, and it was now that he leaped into the contest. He had been reminded of something which the lords and churchmen of England could use to the advantage of themselves and the kingdom and posterity. He called for a council of churchmen and barons at Westminster, where he reminded those assembled of a certain "Charter of Liberties" which John's great-grandfather, Henry I, had been compelled by the barons to sign. True enough, that charter had dealt with only inconsequential matters like the illegality of certain fees kings had been accustomed to collect. But Langton saw here a precedent: that kings, too, were under the law. The Charter of Liberties should be expanded, renewed, and used to keep a lawless king accountable. With loud shouts of acclamation, the council swore an oath to conquer or die in defense of their liberties.

By now, however, the wily king had outmaneuvered his enemies. By swallowing his pride and submitting to the pope he had secured a powerful ally, but it had not been without a price. John's olive branch was nothing less than England itself - it would be governed as a Papal fief. Innocent III had jumped at the opportunity, but Langton balked. The last thing he wanted was more exploitation of the English people, whether from Westminster or Rome. Yet, the tables were now turned against him, and his cause was still fruitless. Continuing the struggle to check the king would mean going against the full might of both church and state. Perhaps Innocent had been misinformed. Clinging to that hope, the archbishop urged the barons to continue their efforts to check the king's ambition by refusing to submit to his taxes, and pressuring him to renew the Charter of Liberties or face open rebellion. John remained unmoved, and so in June 1215 the barons gathered their might to march on London, whose gates were thrown open by a sympathetic populace. There, with support from both France and Scotland, they forced John to agree to approve a royal charter that recognized the rights of his noblemen and, for the first time, codified legal limits to the king's power. Langton hurriedly set to work articulating the barons' grievances.

Dutifully, and no doubt seethingly, the king and his entourage processed to the nearby meadow of Runnymede to sign this charter in the midday sun of June 15, 1215. What he was forced to affix his seal to cannot have pleased him.The charter that Langton and the barons produced went far beyond the provisions of the Charter of Liberties in its effort to restrain the Crown. A few examples will suffice: Section 12 of this "Great Charter" said that "No scutage or aid shall be imposed on the kingdom unless by common counsel...." This principle became a rallying cry that found its way into subsequent charters until it was enshrined in the English Bill of Rights and became a principle of our own Revolution: "no taxation without representation." Section 20 said that barons could only be judged by their peers, not by courts in the pocket of the king. Freemen, too, would be judged by the oaths of honest men in their own neighborhoods. If this principle of English liberty sounds familiar it's because the Sixth Amendment of our Constitution contains it: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed." The guarantee of a "speedy trial" was also found originally in Magna Charta: "To no one will we sell, to no one will we refuse or delay, right or justice." The document further guaranteed the rights of merchants, provided that all sheriffs and constables would be "competent" and first enumerated the idea of a constitutional government: "All fines made... against the law of the land...shall be entirely remitted." To enforce these concessions, a council of 25 barons was appointed to oversee the king, his laws and fines.

Shortly after signing Magna Charta, John proceeded to break nearly every rule in it with the full sanction of Innocent III (who also condemned the document). John's successors, too, were not particularly more faithful to its idealistic clauses. But this does not mean that Langton's work was forgotten. It gave the struggle against tyranny a profound legitimacy, and the idea of a limited monarch entered into political thought. To see just how much the document mattered to the nation, consider that over the next two hundred years, the English kings were forced to renew the document over 30 times. Finally, during the dictatorial reign of Charles I (1600-1649), what were by now considered centuries' old liberties were transferred into the English Bill of Rights, thus diffusing throughout the English-speaking world to, among other places, America, where the principles Langton had devoted his life to securing found their way into colonial charters, state constitutions, and the United States Constitution itself.

Rousseau, Human Nature and Our Foreign Policy Problem

Put aside for a moment the constitutional arguments (and they are many) against being involved in the internal squabblings of governments overseas. Put aside the pragmatic arguments of finance and sustainability that see these wars for the vacuous black hole that they are. Even put aside the Founding Fathers' warnings against "foreign entanglements." Let's examine the philosophical moorings required to think we can"make the world safe for democracy."

As Christians, it is our duty to not only recognize, but actively live like we believe that sin is something each of us has the choice -the free-will- to indulge in or resist. Furthermore, God tells us in his word that man is fallen, that he delights in sin, just as St. Augustine delighted in stealing an apple, not to eat, but for the pure pleasure of sinning.  How does this reverberate into how we should see man's place in civil society? He is a law-breaker by choice. 

Not everyone agrees with what the Bible says, however. In fact, for a couple hundred years now it's been in vogue to take a position that owes more to Jean Jacques Rousseau: that man is born free and decent, and it's society's institutions that corrupt him. Break the back of these institutions and a violent man suddenly finds himself cherubized. Freud agreed. Man is a complex animal without a soul who responds to impulses in his environment. Pavlov believed that his famous discovery of reinforcement and the salivating dog was equally true of human beings: man is mechanical and needs stimuli to provoke the "right" responses. As these theories became mainstream, education shifted from its classical focus on searching for truth and instead began treating children like Pavlov's dog. It became about conditioning children to make the right responses to stimuli in the world.

Once this generation of children became adults, they could be found at the helm of this nation and most others in the Western world. They had a firm belief in the innate goodness of man - if only the harmful stimuli can be removed. Man is perfectible if he can just be given the right environment. Crime was no longer the rebellion of the soul, it was the automatic response to poverty and inner-city decay. Housing projects and the welfare state resulted. But there was something else, too. If this picture of human nature was true, then it was now within the grasp of the government of the United States of America not only to perfect its own citizens, but to perfect the citizens of the world - in effect to create a new world order of peace and prosperity for all. To free them to that natural state that Rousseau had talked about. Remove the evil effects of institutions and governments and you will cure the men under them. Or in more modern terms: "If we only remove the dictators, they will be good people." The French tried it in their Revolution of 1789. We did it in Cuba, in Europe (twice) and all across the third world ever since, and we've seen how it's played out. Iran was one of our first projects in the 1950s. Now it's Iraq and Afghanistan, which, despite all dreams of flag-waving Iraqi children, are not Jeffersonian democracies or anything remotely like. Egypt has been delivered, not to democracy, but to the Muslim Brotherhood. Now there are reports that Libya may be falling under the sway of Al Qaeda.

The problem of our foreign policy is primarily a problem with our view of human nature. Try as we might to export freedom and American ideals, our plans will continue to backfire until we understand that we cannot make men and women desire freedom by getting rid of the evil around them. Correcting our foreign policy starts with understanding that sin is a choice; that any inherent desire for freedom and democracy in the human race is outweighed by an inherent desire to sin. People around the world need to be reached by the Great Commission, not by Operation Odyssey Dawn.

From The Confessions of St. Augustine, Book II: Sin a Counterfeit of God

 "For so doth pride imitate exaltedness; whereas Thou alone art God exalted over all. Ambition, what seeks it, but honours and glory? whereas Thou alone art to be honoured above all, and glorious for evermore. The cruelty of the great would fain be feared; but who is to be feared but God alone, out of whose power what can be wrested or withdrawn? when, or where, or whither, or by whom? The tendernesses of the wanton would fain be counted love: yet is nothing more tender than Thy charity; nor is aught loved more healthfully than that Thy truth, bright and beautiful above all. Curiosity makes semblance of a desire of knowledge; whereas Thou supremely knowest all. Yea, ignorance and foolishness itself is cloaked under the name of simplicity and uninjuriousness; because nothing is found more single than Thee: and what less injurious, since they are his own works which injure the sinner? Yea, sloth would fain be at rest; but what stable rest besides the Lord? Luxury affects to be called plenty and abundance; but Thou art the fulness and never-failing plenteousness of incorruptible pleasures. Prodigality presents a shadow of liberality: but Thou art the most overflowing Giver of all good. Covetousness would possess many things; and Thou possessest all things. Envy disputes for excellency: what more excellent than Thou? Anger seeks revenge: who revenges more justly than Thou? Fear startles at things unwonted and sudden, which endangers things beloved, and takes forethought for their safety; but to Thee what unwonted or sudden, or who separateth from Thee what Thou lovest? Or where but with Thee is unshaken safety? Grief pines away for things lost, the delight of its desires; because it would have nothing taken from it, as nothing can from Thee.

"Thus doth the soul commit fornication, when she turns from Thee, seeking without Thee, what she findeth not pure and untainted, till she returns to Thee. Thus all pervertedly imitate Thee, who remove far from Thee, and lift themselves up against Thee. But even by thus imitating Thee, they imply Thee to be the Creator of all nature; whence there is no place whither altogether to retire from Thee. What then did I love in that theft? and wherein did I even corruptly and pervertedly imitate my Lord? Did I wish even by stealth to do contrary to Thy law, because by power I could not, so that being a prisoner, I might mimic a maimed liberty by doing with impunity things unpermitted me, a darkened likeness of Thy Omnipotency? Behold, Thy servant, fleeing from his Lord, and obtaining a shadow. O rottenness, O monstrousness of life, and depth of death! could I like what I might not, only because I might not? For so doth pride imitate exaltedness; whereas Thou alone art God exalted over all. Ambition, what seeks it, but honours and glory? whereas Thou alone art to be honoured above all, and glorious for evermore. The cruelty of the great would fain be feared; but who is to be feared but God alone, out of whose power what can be wrested or withdrawn? when, or where, or whither, or by whom? The tendernesses of the wanton would fain be counted love: yet is nothing more tender than Thy charity; nor is aught loved more healthfully than that Thy truth, bright and beautiful above all. Curiosity makes semblance of a desire of knowledge; whereas Thou supremely knowest all. Yea, ignorance and foolishness itself is cloaked under the name of simplicity and uninjuriousness; because nothing is found more single than Thee: and what less injurious, since they are his own works which injure the sinner? Yea, sloth would fain be at rest; but what stable rest besides the Lord? Luxury affects to be called plenty and abundance; but Thou art the fulness and never-failing plenteousness of incorruptible pleasures. Prodigality presents a shadow of liberality: but Thou art the most overflowing Giver of all good. Covetousness would possess many things; and Thou possessest all things. Envy disputes for excellency: what more excellent than Thou? Anger seeks revenge: who revenges more justly than Thou? Fear startles at things unwonted and sudden, which endangers things beloved, and takes forethought for their safety; but to Thee what unwonted or sudden, or who separateth from Thee what Thou lovest? Or where but with Thee is unshaken safety? Grief pines away for things lost, the delight of its desires; because it would have nothing taken from it, as nothing can from Thee."   

The Measure of All Things

Human beings have a rare talent for abusing power. For millenia, we've bound ourselves by oaths to protect ourselves and others from our own avarice for just this reason. The oaths follow a common formula. Usually a deity is called upon as a witness and becomes the rule against which the oath-taker's actions and intentions are to be judged by his fellow men. If the promises made are kept, blessings are expected; if the terms are violated, curses divine and human will follow. Either way, justice is done so that life and well-being are secured.

These oaths aren't just for officeholders or magistrates, but for any human being who finds himself faced with the gravity of holding the life or death of another in his hands. Hippocrates of Cos, the ancient Greek physician and “father of medicine”, was in just such a position. Strongly pro-life, his famous “Hippocratic Oath” contains the line “...I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy.” Because of its harmony with Biblical views on the sanctity of life, this oath was administered unaltered by many western medical colleges until the late twentieth century, when such an antiquated line was tossed aside in favor of feeble advice such as “...tread with care in matters of life and death.” Other cultures across the world have also, by and large, forsaken their commitment to life. Japan's “Seventeen Rules of Enjui” (echoing Hippocrates' oath in its condemnation of abortion) no longer bind its doctors. Nor do Jewish doctors practice under the constraints of anything like their ancient “Code of Asaph”.

One of the more recent oaths required of the medical profession is the Physicians' Oath of 1948. After the physician pledges his life to the “service of humanity”, the oath goes on “I will maintain the utmost respect for human life from the time of conception, even under threat, I will not use my medical knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity.” Defending life from conception was not long possible once mankind had become “the measure of all things” Today, most medical students graduating will take an oath that values human choice more than it does human life -a logical step if mankind is God. They would do well to remember the first time our race abused its freedom of choice and played God. The fruit Satan offers may appear different, but God’s words remain the same – “The moment you eat from it you are surely doomed to die.”

The Dream of the Rood

Apart from reading the wonderfully harmonious Gospel accounts of the crucifixion, one of my favorite Easter traditions is reading the Anglo-Saxon poem, "The Dream of the Rood." ("rood" means "crucifix" in Old English) Not only are these verses the first, full Christian poem in the English language, they comprise what may be one of our earliest of all English poems. Historians theorize that the poem may have been penned by Caedmon, whom the Venerable Bede tells us was a plain, uninspired herdsman until taught in the course of a dream to write hymns to God. The poem's enduring quality apparently caught on among the churchmen of Northumbria. Parts of it were inscribed on an equally masterful work of art, the Ruthwell Cross. Side-by-side with such engravings as Mary Magdalene washing Christ's feet with her hair, the healing of the man born blind, and the flight from Egypt, the poem -through the eyes of the cross upon which Jesus died- captures the paradoxical nature of Christ at once submitting to, and yet conquering, death.

.

1 Lo! I will tell of the best of dreams,
   what I dreamed in the middle of the night,
   after the speech-bearers were in bed.
   It seemed to me that I saw a very wondrous tree
5 lifted into the air, enveloped by light,
   the brightest of trees. That beacon was all
   covered with gold. Gems stood
   beautiful at the surface of the earth, there were five also
   up on the central joint of the cross. All those fair through eternal decree gazed
10 [on] the angel of the Lord. [It] was certainly not a wicked person’s gallows there,
   but holy spirits, men over the earth,
   and all this famous creation gazed on him.
  Wondrous was that tree of victory, and I stained with sins
  wounded sorely with defects, I saw the tree of glory,
15 honoured with garments, shining joyously,
  adorned with gold....

(Read the remainder of the poem here)

Straightening Crooked Judgments

By the early 6th century B.C., the people of Athens were embarking on a course free of monarchy. Without a king, a maelstrom of ambition ensued. Plutarch tells us of a struggle between the people of the hills who clamored for democracy, and those of the urban valleys who sought the protection of an oligarchy. The universally admired aristocrat Solon, full of poetic sparkle, seized this deadlock to make promises of "straightening crooked judgments" and equal justice for all. Shouts of acclamation from rich and poor alike made him dictator for a year. Solon quickly took control over the city's olive oil producers and banned the selling of cereal crops abroad so that they could instead feed Athenians. It didn't matter to Solon whether or not this meant bankrupting the cereal farmers. Solon's most radical reform was the abolition of the commoners' debts. Not only usurers, but all creditors, saw their money forcibly disappear as it was redistributed to the poor. Abuse was rife. The annals tell us of several of Solon's friends who anticipated this policy by taking out loans to buy swathes of land in the very hours before debts were to be eradicated.

Several centuries later we can see Rome's reformers treading the same proverbial road to hell paved with good intentions. As the Republican armies haphazardly acquired lands abroad, and as the Equestrians and Populares sought more influence in government, the Senate became divided. A starry-eyed reformer named Tiberius Gracchus arose from among the governing class. Tiberius had traveled throughout the colonies and had come to identify the financial plight of farmers as Rome's greatest problem. Encouraged by two Greek scholars, Tiberius presented a proposal to seize the lands of Rome's noble families and spread them to the lower classes. The tribune Octavius became the voice of the aristocrats' furor at this blatantly unjust scheme. But democracy, then as now, knew no law. Tiberius simply held an unconstitutional election where the Roman mobs deposed Octavius. After even this, the measure was not to pass. Tiberius was killed by rioting senators; his brother Gaius followed him when he attempted to carry out the very same plan. Robbing the rich to give to the poor was something that Romans were not yet anesthetized to.

So much for the celebrated ancient reformers. To find an example of reform that was fair to all, regardless of the money they had or didn't have, it's necessary to look beyond the West. We now turn to the story of the exiles' return to Israel. Although the Israelites astonished their neighbors by reconstructing Jerusalem's walls, problems still abounded. The fields that had lain un-tilled for so long could not immediately bear a harvest. This plunged farmers into debt as they enslaved their children in order to get grain. The governor, Nehemiah, recognized the property of all men as sacrosanct. Instead of using his power to force the redistribution of weath, he relied on the Israelites' fear of the Lord to prompt their voluntarism. Nehemiah exhorted the noblemen to restore the fields, vineyards, sons and daughters that had been taken from the poor, lest they all become an object of scorn amongst their neighbors. As one, the nobility disavowed usury and restored what they had taken. Unlike Solon's bankrupting of Athens' creditors, or Tiberius Gracchus' socialistic seizure of private property, this manner of reform didn't entail taking at sword point from those who had in order to give to those who had not. It required a people who feared the Lord, and an understanding that only by encouraging man's free will, his voluntary effort, can good ever be done. Socialism knows no higher law than the here and now, and so it compels what is right. The fact that it creates poverty by grinding down the rich reminds one of Proverbs 12:10: "Even the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel."

Romanticism and Christianity

When we think of movements in art or culture, its tempting to fixate on where they lead, not where they begin. Consider the Enlightenment. Instead of seeing it as a rejection of abject superstition and ignorance in favor of a view of an ordered world created by an ordered God, we see it as humanism or a megalomaniacal IQ exercise by old, dead, white men. But what are the facts? The Enlightenment began with the Protestant rediscovery of the Bible through which God could speak to people individually. It was confirmed in the discoveries of rational scientific laws by the Christian scientists Newton, Kepler and Copernicus. The same is true with Romanticism. The utopian communities and Transcendentalism we associate with the movement don't do it justice; actually, they distort the truth. To judge a thing by where it leads in its extremes is a fallacy by which we would have to condemn the idea of “civilization” since it always ends in ruins, or “life” since it ends in death.

By the late 18th century, the Enlightenment had digressed into absolute faith in man's ability to discern truth for himself, attacks on Christianity, and degradation of nature into a machine for man's exploitation. Romanticism began by simply voicing opposition to each of these points. According to distinguished historian Isaiah Berlin's The Roots of Romanticism, the earliest person to have done so in a “Romantic” way was the German philosopher Johann Georg Hamann. Hamann had received a broad education before his life began to fall apart in the pursuit of pleasure. Then, upon discovering the Bible, he was transformed and aligned himself with the Lutheran Pietists. A tireless writer, Hamann earned his nickname “Magus of the North” by churning out treatises in response to the dangerous theories of his Enlightenment friends who placed human Reason on a pedestal. He wrote to one of his closest friends, Immanuel Kant, “Reason is not given to you in order that you might become wise, but that you may know your folly and ignorance; as the Mosaic law was not given to the Jews to make them righteous, but to make their sins more sinful to them.” To reinforce this point, Hamann insisted that faith in God alone could lead one to a knowledge of the truth through his Holy Spirit. He deliberately styled himself after Socrates, the man whose greatest strength was his insistence that he knew nothing.

Unlike the other philosophers in his circle, Hamann never held a post at a university, but he did attract an enthusiastic following. One of his students was another Lutheran: a scholar and a priest, named Johann Gottfried Herder. Together, Herder and Hamann's ideas inspired a new genre of German art called Sturm und Drang. In its eschewing of rationality as the basis of truth, this style of music, plays and books profoundly influenced Goethe and all later Romanticists, including the master painter Caspar David Friedrich and his profoundly Christian artwork. Meanwhile, the Christian elements of this message had reached France, where the nobleman Francois Rene de Chateaubriand was hard at work writing what would become one of the brightest ornaments of the Romantic movement: The Genius of Christianity. This book argued that "Christianity comes from God, because it is excellent,” and defended it from its Enlightenment critics by arguing that the very beauty of the Christian religion was a proof that it was true. Chateaubriand's thesis was a tremendous influence on Lord Byron and other Romantics, but they unfortunately dropped the author's orthodoxy in favor of his aesthetic finesse. This was increasingly true of the Romantic movement as the 1800s wore on. Like the Enlightenment before it, the movement that had started as a Christian reaction to error branched out farther and farther from its original purpose and looked for truth somewhere other than in God. For the Romantics, this door to understanding became the senses instead of the mind, as it had been for the Rationalists. But let's not forget how it began. Rather than lamenting where movements in the arts, philosophy and culture may go in the end, Christians should be inspired that they have, and can still, frame the discussion from the beginning.

The Early Church and Abortion

Several years ago, I distinctly remember when I first learned that abortion was practiced in the ancient world. This came as no small surprise to me, having always associated the murder of the unborn with either advanced surgery or coat-hangers, neither of which was known a couple of millenia ago. The historian's classic conflict between vilifying or romanticizing the past had me in its grasp; I had forgotten that, in the words of King Solomon, “There is nothing new under the sun.” It takes a peculiar -and usually unintentional- form of arrogance to presume to have problems today that our ancestors didn't share.

As it turns out, abortion stretches back to the beginning of human history. Not only were there primitive attempts at surgical abortion, but people as varied as the civilized Greeks, the Romans, and the itinerant shepherds of Illyria, had access to the Iron Age equivelant of the birth control pill: herbal abortifacients, such as pennyroyal, saffron and rue. The pagan world was divided over the issue. Some men, like Hippocrates, defended the unborn and refused to administer abortive mixtures. Other men, like Aristotle, found themselves defending abortion. This philosophical position was based on the belief in “ensoulment,” the notion found in Aristotle's On the Generation of Animals that human beings don't have souls until between 40 and 90 days after they're conceived.

When the Gospel surged across the vast openness of the Pax Romana, Christians encountered a world whose peace and order were deceptive. Although the watchmen along the sweeping frontiers were idle, this lull had been bought by decades of incessant warfare and violence. Inside the Empire, Christians encountered daily bloodshed not only in the arena, but in the streets. Abortion and infanticide were widespread from one end of the Roman world to the other. It was such a problem, in fact, that the Didache (an early Christian catechism) saw fit to include a line specifically condemning abortion and infanticide as murder. Faced with a world where life was held so cheaply, Christians immediately began to defend the Bible's definition of life. God had said to the prophet Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart...." This belief in the eternal nature of the soul was in direct opposition to the philosophy of the day. Almost every one of the early Church Fathers -Tertullian, Clement, Jerome, Basil, Felix, Hippolytus- unanimously declared abortion's absolute moral wrong. Athenagoras only echoed the rest of Christendom when he petitioned Emperor Marcus Aurelius in A.D. 177: “We say that women who induce abortions are murderers, and will have to give account of it to God.... The fetus in the womb is a living being and therefore the object of God's care.”

For hundreds of years, the Church's position on abortion was consistent and uncompromising. In the 13th century, however, a challenge came from a surprising source. Thomas Aquinas, leader of the Scholastic movement, reintroduced the mixed legacy of Aristotelian thought to Europe. Renewed reading of Aristotle's theories of the political world were unfortunately accompanied by the reemergence of his metaphysical musings. Among these was the old doctrine of ensoulment, which some spiritual and secular scholars of the day embraced, including Aquinas. The consequence was a temporary weakening of the Church's stance against abortion by a group of churchmen who proclaimed that fetuses that had not yet received a soul (as the theory went) could be aborted. This temptation to defer to philosophy and science in place of faith has been with Christians since the days of the apostles and will be until the end. Hundreds of years later, in the 20th century, a similar acceptance of the “prevailing wisdom” of the day over and above of biblical revelation would lead to some Protestant denominations condoning abortion.

But for the time, the influence of this idea was short lived. By the 15th century, Pope Sixtus V had renewed the classification of abortion as murder and prescribed severe punishments for its practice. Although in the 16th century Pope Gregory XIV briefly returned the Church to Aquinas' position, it was soon once again widely accepted throughout all of Christendom that abortion at any stage was immoral. Despite the many differences between the burgeoning denominations of the Church in that era, any Christian of the 17th century would have agreed with John Calvin when he made this simple argument: “The fetus, though enclosed in the womb of its mother, is already a human being and it is a most monstrous crime to rob it of the life which it has not yet begun to enjoy. If it seems more horrible to kill a man in his own house than in a field, because a man's house is his place of most secure refuge, it ought surely to be deemed more atrocious to destroy a fetus in the womb before it has come to light.”