The Christian Political Thinkers

1. The Christian Political Thinkers The Duty of the Law

2. St. Augustine • According to St. Augustine, how should kings serve the Lord? • “How then are kings to serve the Lord with fear, except by preventing and chastising with religious severity all those acts which are done in opposition to the commandments of the Lord? For a man serve God in one way in that he is a man, in another way in that he is also king. In that he is a man, he serves Him by living faithfully; but in that he is also king, he serves Him by enforcing with suitable rigor such laws as ordain what is righteous, and punish what is the reverse.” • Reactions? Good argument?

3. Punishment and Pain Can Lead to Salvation • “It is indeed better (as no one could ever deny) that men should be led to worship God by teaching, than they should be driven to it by fear of punishment or pain; but it does not follow that because the former course produces the better men, therefore those who do not yield to it should be neglected. For many have found advantage (as we have proved, and are daily proving by actual experiment), in being first compelled by fear or pain, so that they might afterwards be influenced by teaching, or might follow out in act what they had already learned in word.” • Can punishment and pain produce real belief?

4. Care for Men Demands Punishment to Keep Them in the Arms of the Church • “Is it not a part of the care of the shepherd, when any sheep have left the flock, even though not violently forced away, but led astray by tender words and coaxing blandishments, to bring them back to the fold of his master when he has found them, by the fear or even the pain of the whip, if they show symptoms of resistance.”

5. Goodness of Christian Life Justifies Whatever Is Necessary to Make Men Achieve it • “For if two men were dwelling together in one house, which we knew with absolute certainty to be upon the point of falling down, and they were unwilling to believe us when we warned them of the danger, and persisted in remaining in the house; if it were in our power to rescue them, even against their will, and we were afterwards to show them the ruin threatening their house, so that they should not dare to return again within its reach, I think that if we abstained from doing it, we should well deserve the charge of cruelty.” • Reactions?

6. Even Death of Others is Justified to Save a Soul • “But if we were to consider the matter under discussion with yet greater care, I think that if there were a large number of persons in the house which was going to fall, and any single one of them could be saved, and when we endeavoured to effect his rescue, the other were to kill themselves by jumping out of the windows, we should console ourselves in our grief for the loss of the rest by the thoughts of the safety of the one.” • Upon what assumption does this whole argument hinge?

7. Pious Certainty • Augustine’s certainty about the only true path toward salvation being within the Catholic Church allows him to make this argument. The certainty that any other path a human being might mistakenly choose leads to his eternal damnation allows almost any means necessary to bring men to the true path. • Because of his certainty about the rightness of the Catholic path, he thinks the duty of the law to involve compelling, if necessary, men back into the folds of the Catholic church. Doing anything else would be both to betray one’s own principles and to fail in one’s duty to care for other men. • Is this the mindset of the religious terrorists? How can we respond to this mindset?

8. St. Thomas Aquinas: Virtue Requires Training • While man has a “natural aptitude for virtue” the perfection of his virtue requires “some kind of training.” • We do not become truly virtuous by merely thinking ourselves so, we must be brought to virtue • “The perfection of virtue consists chiefly in withdrawing man from undue pleasures, to which above all man is inclined, and especially the young, who are more capable of being trained.”

9. The Training Toward Virtue Must Be Included in the Aims of the Law • “But since some are found to be depraved and prone to vice, and not easily amenable to words, it was necessary for such to be restrained from evil by force and fear, in order that, at least, they might desist from evil-doing and leave others in peace, and that they themselves, by being habituated in this way, might be brought to do willingly what hitherto they did from fear, and thus become virtuous. Now this kind of training which compels through fear of punishment is the discipline of the laws.”

10. Aquinas’s Interpretation of Aristotle’s Claim • Laws, Aquinas claims, quoting the Philosopher (Aristotle) are necessary because man is the most noble of animals when perfected by virtue but the lowest of all when separated from law and righteousness. • Why? “Because man can use his reason to devise means of satisfying his lusts and evil passions, which other animals are unable to do.”

11. The Higher Law as the “Measure” of Law • Aquinas claims all human laws must be evaluated in terms of their consonance with both the divine law and the natural law • Thus, quoting Augustine “that which is not just seems to be no law at all.” If any human law “deflects from the law of nature, it is no longer a law but a perversion of law.” • This means that one has no obligation to obey unjust laws: “If they be just, they have the power of binding in conscience.” • So, within Aquinas’s conception of law, we can evaluate every human law in terms of whether or not it is consonant with a higher natural and divine law.

12. Original Democracy • We see in both the Mayflower Compact and in the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut that the American colonies were still very much influenced by a theological conception of law when they were founded. • That means that, while democratic, they remained deeply committed to using democratic governmental power to accomplish religious goals. • Reveals something important about present United States: we are a liberal democracy. That is, we have rule by the people but we also cut off from the political possibilities the types of theological politics, even if democratic, that we find in Augustine and Aquinas.