Christianity and Government Authority

Bust of Constantine I,
photographed by
Jean-Christophe Benoist.

This is a must-read article on Romans 13 and Government Authority by Paul Green. For those keeping score, there have been at least three major answers to the problem of just how much authority the government has according to Christian doctrine:

• Absolutist (the government may do more or less whatever it wants).
• Compatibilist (the government may do most things, as long as it does not compel me to do anything against my Christian-informed conscience.)
• Anabaptist (all coercion, violence and authority are immoral. Jesus was a pacifist.)

The Compatibilist view has been I'm sure the most common view, and it exists both on the Religious Left and Right as they are commonly understood. For example, it makes perfect sense in the Compatibilist-Left view that the government can set up a compulsory welfare state, and those on the Right who question whether this is the state's role are missing the point from the Left-Compatibilist's viewpoint. According to him, the government can compel us to do anything not actually immoral; and certainly taking care of the poor is not immoral. The Right-Compatibilist generally concedes that ground, and limits his critique to pragmatic objections -- that churches are better at taking care of the poor than the state -- rather than questioning the very legitimacy of compulsory charity.

The absolutist view is not common, though there is good evidence that it was Luther's view -- such as when he sided against the peasants in their rebellion. Green, of course, gives evidence of its persistence.

The Anabaptist view is also not common, though it has had some brilliant expositors. Tolstoy and Gandhi probably did a good deal to inspire it, but the key works are John Howard Yoder's Politics of Jesus and Jacques Ellul's Anarchy and Christianity. It has some passionate contemporary advocates, such as Shane Claiborne (author of Jesus for President) and the folks at Jesus Radicals.

Yoder's masterpiece
of Christian pacifist
exegesis.

Despite its compelling and often learned advocates, the view is not without flaws. For one thing, it's anachronistic. Christian pacifism simply has more to do with Gandhi and Tolstoy than it has to do with Jesus, and Jesus' teachings and actions are frequently inconsistent with a doctrinaire pacifism (Green cites many of the best examples). Moreover, there is very little historical evidence that the early Christian fathers interpreted the gospel as calling for pacifism -- about the only thing that can be cited are controversies about whether Christians could be soldiers in pagan Rome, and this is inconclusive to say the least, since participating in the Roman army was problematic for any number of Christian reasons without even raising the question of doctrinaire nonviolence. All this is without going into the frank inconsistency of pacifism with the Old Testament (Christian pacifism, it seems to me, demands some form of Marcionism.)

The brilliant part of Green's analysis, though, is that he takes many of the smartest critiques of the Anabaptist school (1 Samuel 8 alone is a pregnant chapter) and demonstrates that they make more sense as a critique of the coercive state than as a critique of violence per se. The verses usually cited by the Anabaptist interpreters retain all of their potency and pose none of the same interpretative problems when read in the way Green suggests. Green's essay might also be profitably read in light of James Davison Hunter's critiques of political Christianity in To Change the World (expect a fuller review of that book in a future post).

Let me close with a quotation that will hopefully pique your interest if it hasn't been already to read the article:

In Anglo-Saxon countries until the mid 1800’s with the introduction of police, the administration of justice worked well, largely without government. The Common Law was (and still is in some places) administered by unpaid local Justices of the Peace and Constables who were independent and often opposed the State. "Citizen’s arrest" was the primary means of enforcement. Enforcement of law under ancient Israel was similar, with Judges and volunteer officers of the court.

Sketches of a Critique of the Arch

My previous post on the Arch was not really a critique in any systematic sense (though the comparison to the statue of Louis IX might have been suggestive to some), but comments I have since received have suggested to me what the lineaments of such a critique would be:

An excellent critique
of "placeless"
architecture.

• A public architecture of placelessness: the defining feature of modernist architecture is its lack of place; public architecture, on the other hand, succeeds primarily through conveying content, essential to which is a sense of place; a placeless public architecture is therefore a kind of contradiction.
• The purpose of fascist architecture was to make the individual feel dwarfed, while exalting the potential of collective action (cf. the fasces); the resemblance to Mussolini's never-completed arch is therefore not incidental, but actually quite central to the artistic effect of both structures.
• In comparison, the defining feature of a monument like the statue of Louis IX or the Jefferson Memorial is humanity: they commemorate certain individuals whose lives we regard as exceptional, and perhaps as models to our own; Louis IX may just inspire someone to do good for someone less fortunate: nobody ever reflected on their life because of a giant hunk of metal.

I thought Scrooge McDuck was Scottish?

Not Austrian (this is really quite remarkable).

The Obscenity of the Gateway Arch

El Greco's portrait of Louis IX.

I must say, even as a lifelong St. Louisian, that I am no fan of the Arch, and so I was not particularly enthused to learn about the three hundred million dollar (!) project to make the Arch/riverfront even more of a focal point, complete with beer garden and ice skating rink (?!).

OK, I do realize that when people think of St. Louis, they think of our little bit of possibly fascist architecture (though maybe not). But personally, I'd prefer as a symbol of our city something like the majestic equestrian statue of Louis IX outside of the Art Museum. Though he may have been a crusader, St. Louis was also renowned for his charity towards the less fortunate:

"The peace and blessings of the realm come to us through the poor he would say. Beggars were fed from his table, he ate their leavings, washed their feet, ministered to the wants of the lepers, and daily fed over one hundred poor. He founded many hospitals and houses: the House of the Felles-Dieu for reformed prostitutes; the Quinze-Vingt for 300 blind men (1254), hospitals at Pontoise, Vernon, Compiégne."

Beats the heck out of a naked metallic hunk of geometry.

Jeffrey Tucker: an Appreciation

Jeffrey Tucker is undoubtedly one of my favorite authors on Mises.org or Lew Rockwell. Whether he's skewering the price-less abyss of health care "markets", outlining his ultra-conservative sartorial philosophy, pondering the virtues of fermented breakfast beverages, or lamenting what the state has done to our toilets, Tucker never fails to entertain, enlighten and enrich. His mixture of social conservativism and political libertarianism has undoubtedly serve to wean me off coercive solutions to social problems.

Not surprisingly, then, I think this address he recently gave about his new book Bourbon for Breakfast (which I hope to soon acquire) is a must-listen piece of audio. I hope it will usher you into the hallowed ranks of Tucker Appreciators.

Bourbon for Breakfast: Living Outside the Statist Quo - Jeffrey A. Tucker - Mises Media(Audio File)

Questions We Aren't Asking About Health Care: Why?

There are numerous questions about health care that just aren't getting asked -- by the left or the right. Yet these questions seem essential to any real solutions to the problems we face. Today I will begin the first in this series.

#1: Whatever happened to the small, family-practice GP?



If you're keeping score, you've probably noticed that the small, family-practice doctor with his own office is essentially a thing of the past. Nowadays, doctors as a rule band together into small consortia, primarily to defray the costs of malpractice insurance, which are considerable.

What are the consequences of this? Well, for one thing, the fact that you probably aren't going to a small-town doctor (heck, you probably don't even live in a small town) means your relationship to that doctor probably isn't one of considerable trust. You aren't a part of the same community, and in that situation people are going to be more suspicious and, perhaps, more likely to sue.

Of course, these consortia, their insurance rates, and the buildings that house them all contribute to medical costs. A doctor is going to charge more if, in addition to the overhead inherent in providing medical care, he has to pay astronomical rates for insurance as well as the mortgage or rent on the shiny medical center just off the interstate.

The solutions, of course, are tricky. Putting arbitrary caps on even punitive damages in malpractice suits seems unfair: who are legislators to declare what it was worth to you when they sawed off the wrong leg?

An alternative might be voluntary contracts between you and your doctor not to sue for malpractice in exchange for lower rates, a prescient suggestion Walter Block makes in a lecture on health care. These might include clauses that the doctor will provide you additional care for free if anything goes wrong, or that you waive the right to sue as long as the doctor follows some set of "best practices"--even if something nevertheless goes wrong.

The Costs of Ultra-Feminism

Alice Walker's daughter has a stirring article on growing up with an ultra-feminist mom in the Daily Mail. The qualifier "ultra-" here is only fair, since we're not talking about mere legal equity but an active disparagement of the family.