Without some form of hierarchy there is no government, there is no order. The difficulty with the ‘rule of law’ in the current cultural atmosphere of rights and entitlements is that it is more often used as a tool of disorder rather than of order. Case in point: the recent decision of the EEOC to forbid employers to inquire or use information about an applicant’s credit history or criminal background in making employment decisions. To do so is ‘discrimination’. The logical end point of this type of ‘law’ is that an employer will have to hire anyone who asks for a job even if there are no jobs available. Anarchy

The solution to anarchy is tryanny. Those who refuse to govern themselves will be governed. Order is essential to life.

1.1.4. Emperor Marcian to Pahhadius, Praetorian Prefect.

1. No clergyman or person in the imperial service, or any one else of any other calling, shall hereafter attempt to discuss the Christian creed in an assembled crowd able to hear, seeking thereby an opportunity for tumult and disloyalty. For whoever tries to disturb and publicly discuss questions once determined and rightly disposed of, insults the judgment of the religious Synod (of Chalcedon), inasmuch as it is known that the decisions concerning the Christian faith of the bishops assembled by our order at Chalcedon, are in accord with the apostolic expositions and the decrees of the 318 and 150 holy fathers (at Nicea and Constantinople) [emphasis added].

2. Punishment shall not fail those who disregard this law, because they not only act contrary to the rightly expounded faith, but also, by such strife, profane the venerable mysteries before Jews and Pagans. If a clergyman, therefore, dares to publicly discuss religion, he shall be removed from the community of the clergy; if he is in the imperial service he shall lose his girdle of service; all others who are guilty of such crime shall, if they are free men, be expelled from this holy city and shall be subjected to proper punishment, in accordance with judicial vigor; if they are slaves, the most severe punishment shall be inflicted upon them [emphasis added].

Given at Constantinople February 7 (452).

From the Novels of the Justinian Code.

(View pdf. Scroll down to 1.1.4 on page 4.)

What really though seems to animate you is this idea that there is something uniquely good and inspired by God about Enlightenment Liberalism.

Not quite. I see something good and inspired in Classical Liberalism, much in the same you see something good in (presumably) monarchy — you still are not clear about it and have failed to give an example. Did I miss it? Classical Liberalism is 1) pessimistic about the perfectibility of man (particularly when coerced); and 2) resolutely aware of man as a moral being. This of course is something entirely different than Enlightenment Liberalism, which, as Solzhenitsyn said was the seed bed of totalitarianism (actually he said that Rousseau was the father of totalitarianism). Solzhenitsyn affirmed American Democracy too BTW, while simultaneously warning about the creeping materialism in culture. He does not offer the wild-eyed and ignorant endorsement you accuse me of making, but it is no endorsement of authoritarianism either (certainly not the kind you seem to be defending, anyway).

Now the task is to defeat the “rights/entitlement” culture that must always emerge in democracies. It will shortly have more blood on its hands than Hitler. Far more than the Khmer Rouge.

We do? These are strong words. Are you sure you want to draw an equivalency between the United States and Nazi Germany or Pol Pot’s Cambodia? And where is that blood spilled? — in abortion clinics, is that what you mean? Do you have any real sense of the darkness, depravity, and terror the Khmer Rouge fostered on the people of Cambodia, or Mao on the Chinese, or Stalin on the Russians?

What strikes me as contradictory is this: You decry the (libertine) liberalism of culture (I do too) but your prescription is exactly the same as the liberals: Ever deepening government encroachment into private life. The only difference is that your agenda opposes theirs. So I agree with you that the rights/entitlement culture needs some serious fixing (we can’t afford it anymore either) but I don’t see how your prescription differs in any substantive way from the liberals you decry.

You know we already tried this twice – Cromwell and Calvin. Both ended poorly.

God gave Moses the Law, inspired the actions of Great Synods and gave us commandments in the New Testament – – each and every action circumscribing freedom – – sometimes with dire consequences.

The freedom I am describing (you are free to obey or disobey God) can’t be circumscribed although behavior can. Read Victor Frankel to see that freedom is more than your present circumstance. Moreover, internal freedom is also what gives the external freedoms their value, and the abuse of those external freedoms cannot negate their value although it may cause them to be lost.

Therein lies the difference between you and me Scott — I value the freedom more than you do I think, and its abuse does not lower that value one iota.

“I argue that the freedom offers the potential for true restoration and renewal to occur.”

And if that is all you had argued, although I disagree with you, I would not have stated the above (which I stand by).

“I don’t say you deny freedom, I say that you can’t abide it, that you would prefer to see authoritarian structures in place that would regulate behavior with a stronger arm. I argue this is not possible. I’ve never seen a system that fits your prescription. Do you have an example in mind?”

There is no ideal government anywhere. I have never suggested once that there is and I defy anyone to produce something to the contrary. It is a simple fact that it is possible for authoritarian structures to regulate behavior with a stronger arm. You are being dishonest (again) in denying this. In any society where, for example, abortion is illegal, while it will not stop all abortions, it cannot seriously be argued that it will not reduce the abortion rate. In the seven-year period from 1973 to 1979, the number of abortions more than doubled, whether we take the CDC’s estimated numbers (from 615,831 to 1,251,921) or the Gutttmacher Institute’s numbers (from 744,600 to 1,497,700). If this fundamental cause and effect of law is denied, then there is no basis whatsoever for the rule of law since legislation would have no effect on public behavior at all. If you’re seriously suggesting that then you’re being disingenous. The problem is that you’re terrified of authoritarian government and so you are willing to support a system which is indefensible because, having cleared the womb and being relatively safe from violent persecution at the moment, you don’t really feel the stakes.

You want to criticize me based on a false and dishonest premise: that I’m pursuing some type of perfection. I have freely and repeatedly stated here numerous times that sin will certainly continue in a more authoritarian society. What is also indisputable I think though is that democracies (and I’m using the term broadly to encompass most Western governments) do a pitiful job of even maintaining traditional Christian morality as the legal norm. Dramatically worse that traditional Christian societies whether it be Tsarist Russia, Byzantium or what have you.

“I’m not arguing for laxity here. I think a lot of laws need stricter enforcement (why we don’t regulate porn but regulate cigarette advertising is confusion, IMO — regulate both). But the moral collapse is not a function of what government you have (Soviet Russia suffered moral collapse under the strongest possible government at the time – they are still recovering from it), but a function of the hearts of the governed.”

You are, perhaps unwittingly, arguing for laxity. Regardless of what you “think” or “feel” about laws needing stricter enforcement, your voice is one out of 120 million of the electorate and because democracy caters to the passions rather than to the public good, what you or I think about laxity versus strictness means nothing and the society, playing to the tune of representative government and herded by the media, will establish not only laxity but liscentiousness as normal. We needn’t argue about the inevitability of this since it has happened in every democratic country without exception.

That the Soviet government was also monstrous is no defense. I have always argued for a more authoritarian government tied to the Church. Democracy is of a kind with Communism. Man is the measure of all things. Yes, “we” defeated Communism. Now the task is to defeat the “rights/entitlement” culture that must always emerge in democracies. It will shortly have more blood on its hands than Hitler. Far more than the Khmer Rouge.

What really bothered me however is this recurrent accusation by you that I am denying the freedom God has given mankind.

“Scott can’t abide the notion that we have radical freedom — so radical that it includes the freedom to disobey — or even crucify — our Creator.”

“One quick question. Where you ever a follower of Calvin’s teachings? I ask because Calvin denied man’s natural capacity for freedom in much the same way you do (he was afraid of it I think).”

There have been previous incidences as well but there’s no use in taking the time to look them up. In the first quote, your statement is sort of meaningless. It is simply a matter of physics that one or more people, if they are more powerful and band together, could crucify someone. I’m not sure what freedom you mean unless it’s that I’m denying (or failing to abide) freedom from God. This, of course is absurd. God gave Moses the Law, inspired the actions of Great Synods and gave us commandments in the New Testament – – each and every action circumscribing freedom – – sometimes with dire consequences.

If you’re not saying that I’m denying God’s gift of freedom to man (which if you’re talking about what He has revealed in history must be the absolute freedom to do good or evil – – but certainly not to be immune from consequences) then the most sense I can make out of these repeated accusations is that you’re suggesting that I’m denying the human capacity to consistently, individually or collectively, use their absolute freedom (i.e., to do whatever they are physically capable of) wisely.

If that is what you suggest, then I think all rational people would agree. Hence the need for governments.

What really though seems to animate you is this idea that there is something uniquely good and inspired by God about Enlightenment Liberalism. But, to say the least, that ignores the current predicament faced by all cultures originally animated by this spirit – – murderous, ruinous self-destruction. But, apparently, that spell will not let you go regardless of its increasingly aggressive anti-Christian nature as evidenced by the title and contents of the article above.

I sincerely believe that my last post was accurate and needed to be written. You have knowingly, repeatedly misrepresented my opinions and what you are doing by perpetuating the idea that our system can maintain any relationship to decency in the face of all evidence to the contrary is to try to serve two conflicting masters.

Adieu Fr. Johannes, and may God have mercy on us both. I leave you the last word.

Actually, all the problems you cited are problems of radical disobedience, not radical freedom. Freedom preexists the act, that is why we can label an act as right or wrong. And no kind of government can restrain the chaos of the heart if a person chooses (freedom again) the chaos over order. That is precisely why John Adams said that the American constitutional government can only succeed with a moral and virtuous people.

Can you show me any example where governments were able to restrain human passions? I don’t think they can which leads all decisions about the preferred type of government into a “two cheers” category. And given the alternatives, the representative democracy of America has not done too bad (not three cheers necessarily), but enough certainly that your dismissal of it strikes me as rash.

Fr. Johannes refuses to engage me on the merits of that argument but instead asserts falsely, and knowingly and willfuly so, that I deny the gift of God’s freedom. He says it despite the fact he knows it’s a lie since he knows that the modern representative government he advocates is a relatively recent invention in the history of mankind.

I don’t say you deny freedom, I say that you can’t abide it, that you would prefer to see authoritarian structures in place that would regulate behavior with a stronger arm. I argue this is not possible. I’ve never seen a system that fits your prescription. Do you have an example in mind?

(BTW, Fabio was writing such excellent posts that there was little I could add to them. I learned from him. That’s why I was silent for so long.)

Here’s the problem Scott: the stronger authority is centralized, the more control it has over your life. Don’t assume that the morality the authorities choose to enforce will be one of your liking. You can assume however, that if it is not, you will have no recourse in challenging it (unless of course you consent to martyrdom). If by chance they do choose the morality you like, then those that object are the left without recourse so the same holds true for them. The point here is not that morality is relative, the point is that adjudicating structures have to exist so that these questions can be resolved without bloodshed.

I know how you “hear” this. You hear the entire apparatus collapsing into a relativistic thud. I argue that the freedom offers the potential for true restoration and renewal to occur. There still is a whole lot in American society worth preserving and thus worth fighting for. I’m not ready to give up on it yet.

I’m not sure either where your ideal form of government exists, or where it ever existed. I think you grant governments a credibility that more rightfully belongs to Christianized culture. As the culture becomes increasingly de-Christianized, the institutions built on that ground will become increasingly unstable. This is as true of Monarchy as it is of representative Republics.

I’m not arguing for laxity here. I think a lot of laws need stricter enforcement (why we don’t regulate porn but regulate cigarette advertising is confusion, IMO — regulate both). But the moral collapse is not a function of what government you have (Soviet Russia suffered moral collapse under the strongest possible government at the time – they are still recovering from it), but a function of the hearts of the governed.

“Scott can’t abide the notion that we have radical freedom — so radical that it includes the freedom to disobey — or even crucify — our Creator.”

Since Fr. Johannes has nothing relevant to offer, he resorts to his old accusation that I deny God’s grant of freedom. I have attempted to explain this to him before and I simply have to conclude he is a liar who prefers to engage in slander. He resorts to falsehoods about what I can and cannot abide. I have amply demonstrated that the freedom God has granted us is the freedom to choose good or evil, not the freedom to escape the consequences of our actions. The rules of any society, whatever the government, restrict our freedom and impose consequences. In asserting that I have a problem with the freedom God has granted mankind, he shows himself as dishonorable and dishonest.

No sane person advocates the freedom to murder, rape, commit incest, theft, etc. My point has always been – – and Fr. Johannes knows it all too well – – that a government based on the will of the people is incapable of defining the true good as good and the true evil as evil and thus applying the necessary consequences to misbehavior (just as God has done Himself and every governmeent respectful of Him has done). Fr. Johannes refuses to engage me on the merits of that argument but instead asserts falsely, and knowingly and willfuly so, that I deny the gift of God’s freedom. He says it despite the fact he knows it’s a lie since he knows that the modern representative government he advocates is a relatively recent invention in the history of mankind. This is the equivalent of asserting some “new dispensation” from God or of asserting, as the apostate Episcopalians do, that “God is doing a new thing.” How could this modern representative government be equal to God’s gift of freedom? In fact, contrary to all Christian morality and the examples of government found in Scripture and in the Orthodox world prior to present age, in the Modern Age that Solzhenitsyn spoke of we have abortion on demand, normalization of homosexuality, destruction of the family, normalization of promiscuity, etc. All these are examples of radical freedom.

The modern era not only tramples our spiritual being, it destroys the very fabric of our society and results in a body count in this country alone of 50 million dead unborn babies in the last 37 years. There’s radical freedom. I guess many of those who are lucky enough to have survived birth, including, tragically, some of our own Orthodox clergy, are ready to sacrifice another 50 million unborn at the feet of Lady Liberty together with our society’s sense of decency, the institution of the family, etc.

Fr. Johannes’ idolatry is that he loves a modern political concept more than God or Orthodoxy.

Oh well, bridges burned, over and out forever.

Scott can’t abide the notion that we have radical freedom — so radical that it includes the freedom to disobey — or even crucify — our Creator. Yet it is in coming to terms with this freedom that real freedom is discovered and obtained. Solzhenitsyn said the same thing in different words at Harvard:

If the world has not come to its end, it has approached a major turn in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will exact from us a spiritual upsurge, we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but, even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon as in the Modern era.

Solzhenitsyn described here that deep intuition we all sense but can’t resolve: Is the world ending or at the cusp of cataclysmic change? And if we don’t rise to the “new level,” is the only option at best a descent into totalitarianism or at worst conflagration?

The warning is already here. It’s the Islamic threat that functions with a totalitarian certitude that the Marxist could only dream about given its belief in absolute law that flows from the will of God. (You can see here how secularists weaned on the Nestorianism that afflicts most of non-sacramental Protestantism discover familiar echoes in Islamic teaching. You can even see why they might embrace Islam once they become inured to its inherent brutality.)

For the rest of us the Islamic threat is the same threat Israel faced from the Assyrians of the north. Call it a judgment, the kind that comes into being because of the weaknesses engendered by our own sins.

And the curious thing is that a monarchy *can* be democratic as well, an idea that is not altogether bad *since* the crown in case is one of the powers in the checks and balances system.

In the 19th century the Brazilian monarchy attempted something that modern monarchies could develop further: the concept of the “fourth power”, the Moderator Power. In short, it consists of keeping the Head of State and Head of Government separate as in a parliamentary system, but giving the “Power of State” certain more active powers that allow it to protect the institution from being taken over by party politics, ideologies and pressure groups. In that system, being monarchical prevented it from depending on party politics – so it was independent fromm the moods of the age.

In practice, though, the Brazilian Emperor had more power than the minister. A more sophisticated form of that idea would prevent that. Also, there is no need to have a dinastic family as the sole owner of the “fourth power”. A collegiate entity with long term mandates and rotating its numbers 1/3 by 1/3, and with majority from any single party being forbidden would be stable enough to meet the necessary neutrality.

Fabio, (and this will be my last word on this because as I said before it is becoming boring) I just realized this morning that something you wrote about last night proves my point better than perhaps anything either I or you have written above:

As I count them, there were four institutions that judged Christ at the time of his Passion. 1) The sanhedrin, 2) King Herod Antipas, the Jewish (actually Idumean) ethnarch, 3) the Roman Procurator, Pontius Pilate and 4) the crowd at his trial by Pilate.

Of these, in the end, 3 institutions condemned Him (one of them only very reluctantly) and the other one did not.

Guess which one did not. The only king involved, Herod.

Guess which one was very reluctant to condemn Him, and only did so at the insistence of the demos. The Roman Procurator.

Christ was arrested by the temple guard. He was tried before an assembly, the Sanhedrin. They operated under a “rule of law”, the Law of Moses and procedural rules including rules of evidence and for the qualification and impeachment of witnesses. Now, there certainly was no popularly elected body at the time. However, the Sanhedrin was composed of judges from many towns in the country and so it was representative of widespread opinion within Judea at the time. Its members had to be qualified by scholarship and having served in a number of lesser offices before being admitted.

This body, although there was a process of witness testimony, cross-examination and debate (your “rule of law”), condemned Him after His claim of divinity which, under the Law as they understood it, was blasphemy.

King Herod never condemned Christ. Christ was passed back and forth between him and Pilate because neither of them wanted to condemn Him or be reponsible for doing so.

There is no record that the Caeser in Rome at the time had any problem with Christ. His procurator made every effort to release Christ. At first, he announced that he could find no fault with Him. He attempted to evade the question by sending him to Herod. When pressed, Pilate had Him flogged. He tried to appease the feelings of the demos by releasing a zealot named Barabbas instead. In the end, only after the people cried out “We have no King but Caesar!” (as you so ably pointed out) did Pilate reluctantly condemn Him. However, the people were not proclaiming their love for Caesar. Jews at the time had no love for Caesar. The Sadducees, of course, were the most sycophantic group, but they were merely taking advantage of the situation. What the people, and their agitators, were stating by saying that they had no king but Caesar was that Pilate was being disloyal, even treasonous, to the Roman Emperor if he did not condemn someone who claimed kingship in opposition to Roman authority.

“Upon this Pilate sought to release Him, but the Jews cried out, ‘If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend. Every one who makes himself a king sets himself against Caesar.'” – John 19:12

So, Fabio, there you have it. In the Gospels themselves the most representative organizations, the demos and the Sanhedrin (the latter operating under its rules of law and procedure) were the most eager entities to condemn Christ. The only king involved refused to. And the Roman representative only did so under profound coercion (by the people and agitators from the assembly).

Not exactly a commercial for your point of view, is it?

Sure we call them empires.

“God clearly states the evil that is to have a central strong authority.”

No, He doesn’t. You’re proof-texting.

Yeah right. The apostles recommend to obey a fierce pagan persecutor while not much later a few martyrs gave their blood to not pay respect to the emperor (but, of course, that would be *only* because Roman Emperors demanded worship…), God states in a clear way that the demand for a king is a denial of Himself, the administration of the two greatest kings of the Bible choked their people and led their nation to disaster (including the loss of the Ark) and I am the one prooftexting?

The problem with the “God loves strong central authorities” argument is that it values more the positive verses about the issue than the negative ones when they have to be taken into account equally.

If you put both the positive and negative verses about “central strong authorities” together, instead of putting the positive ones above the negative ones so to relativize then, it stands clear that it is something God states clearly He does not want (in the OT in I Samuel 8 and in the NT in Luke 22:24-26, Mark 10:42-43, Mat. 20:25-27) and a typical temptation of the devil (Mat 4:8-10, Luke 4:5-8). The OT admonition is strong enough to say that it is a denial of God Himself, which the temptation verses above confirm very clearly. But, in His mercy, God does provide and anoint good kings, and because obedience is good we are to be obedient to everything life gives us, including the king, if he does not lead us to go against God. Good kings may and have been produced despite putting our trust on strong central authorities being evil in itself.

Another thing I think it’s important to remember is to defuse the idea that this is a dichotomy between a strong central authority or chaos. There are several things in the middle. The ship needs both the anchor and the sails.

Also, and I can’t emphasize this enough, it is in the U.S., with its imperfect democracy as it may be, that Orthodoxy has thrived in the West. Because of the liberty the country provides and despite having no king to support it. Here in Latin America, which has suffered the burden of numerous regimes of “protectors of the people”, it is a feeble decimal number below one, closer to zero. It is because of American democracy that the U.S. has so many seminaries, monasteries and a plethora of lay and ecclesiatical institutions. And, to concede a point, all this was made possible because truly there was a strong protector of the people in the U.S. Only that it was not a king, but the Constitution, protecting both the rights of the born-Americans and of the legal immigrants. It is on this federal, constitutional, democratic country that Orthodoxy could grow in the West, while the centralized regimes of Europe and Asia were simply doing their thing.

Truly “honour the king” then. In the case of our countries, the king is the Constitution. It is anointed and appointed by God. Honour it, ask God to protect it on your prayers against its enemies and wish it a long life and you’ll both obey the commandment and be part of one of the most amazing and successful experiences in history.

Which brings up a question I still have not answered for myself: Can a monarchy even succeed in a society that is not mono-cultural?

“God clearly states the evil that is to have a central strong authority.”

No, He doesn’t. You’re prooftexting.

“But from Pharaoh to Pilates to the modern usurpers of hope in the hearts of people, the “strong kings” have always been enemies of God and oppressors of the people *like* He said they would.”

David and Constantine were enemies of God? Well, you’ve outdone yourself.

“It was the see outside the power of the emperor that kept Orthodoxy for a thousand years and only after a mad king dominated it, it fell.”

If you mean Rome, it fell into schism over the filioque for a while during the time of Photios.

Also Pope Honorius, who reigned as bishop of Rome from 625 to 638 A.D., was a monothelite.

“It is the masses will you so dislike that create the ‘kings’ you so love. Always.”

That’s just silly.

As to the rest, it’s not worthy of response.