Law and Political Theory

The church under the papacy, and civil governments took form by asserting themselves through law, and early protestants took to legal theory to defend themselves against hostile regimes. Liberalism created itself through theories of law and rights.

Centrality of law for Western society

Law has been a central concept and instrument in the creation and development of the West. Bequeathed by the Roman empire both as code and as embodied by institutions, it was the means by which the papacy asserted its supremacy and extended its power. The kings asserted their own law; the king’s law meant the king’s rule, and supremacy over local feudal organization. Modern societies are deeply indebted to law, as contracts are fundamental to the economy. The idea of law as having a transcendently anchored obligation is therefore vital to the stability of society. Legal arrangements are deeply ingrained and hard to change, yet the campaign against law has long been waged, attempting to substitute an idea of law as arbitrary, pragmatic, and needing to be subordinated to an external ideology. The result is increasingly lawfare instead of justice. For Christianity law has always been a key idea, almost the central one. God’s relation to man is structured by covenants, and covenants bring with them a corresponding law. Law becomes both a necessity and a burden, and man’s relation to law is a central issue of contention between Christian denominations and their theologies.

Natural Rights and Natural Law

Essays  Reviews  - The Church and State in Relation to the Law: Enemies or Necessary Partners? Review of Trojan Horse: Natural Rights and America’s Founding, by Ruben Alvarado  - Natural Law and Natural Rights Before Liberalism, rNow included in Divided Knowledge: Van Til & Traditional Apologetics  - The Manent Thesis That Natural Rights Political Theories Were Created Against Christianity, review of An Intellectual History of Liberalism, by Pierre Manent  - Review of Natural Rights Theories: Their origin and development, by Richard Tuck  - Joseph Priestley and the Birth of the Politics of Community, review of Political Writings of Joseph Priestley

Political Theory

Essays  Reviews  - Richard Price, the Enlightenment, education and the millennium, review of Political Writings, by Richard Price

Nature and Authority of Civil Government

Essays  Reviews  - Three Theories of Power and Bits of Others, review of Authority in the Christian Life, by Jean-Marc Berthoud  - John Knox on Rebellion Against Evil Authority, review of On Rebellion, Cambridge edition of Knox’s political writings  - Pufendorf On Civil Religion and the Church as a Mere Association, review Of the Nature and Qualification of Religion in Reference to Civil Society, by Samuel Pufendorf  Review of Resistance to Tyrants: Romans 13 and the Christian Duty to Oppose Wicked Rulers, by Gordan Runyan  Review of The Establishment and Limits of Civil Government: An Exposition of Romans 13:1-7, by James M. Wilson