Madness Replacing Reason

Indictments From the Common Lawyers

What does a Christian society look like?  What might be some of the key features of the Second Christendom when it emerges in redemptive history?  There are many.  One central feature will be the grounding of civil and criminal law upon the higher law of God.  This, of course, is not novel.  It is the way it used to be in the First Christendom.

F E Dowrick describes how biblical law (both written and inscribed in the creation itself) was deeply embedded in the English legal tradition.  He writes:

The basic assumptions in this doctrine [of natural justice] are that God exists and that immanent in all creation is God’s eternal law.  St. Germain’s Doctor defines [in the early sixteenth century] the eternal law as:

the reason of the wisdom of God, moving all things by wisdom made to a good end.

The eternal law is not wholly known to men.  It is known in part through revelation, as recorded in the New and Old Testaments, that part being called the law of God or positive divine law; and it is known further through reason, that part being called the law of nature or the law of reason.  So, natural law is unequivocally established on a divine basis.  Since it is part of God’s will or plan for mankind natural law is neither parochial or temporary.  According to the Doctor of Divinity

This law ought to be kept as well among Jews and Gentils, as among Christian men . . . it is never changeable by no diversity of place, ne time (sic).

F.E. Dowrick [Justice According to the English Common Lawyers (London: Butterworths, 1960), p.49]

The divine law provided the primary or fundamental precepts.  Reason assisted in applying those precepts (by means of subordinate premises and the rules and laws of logic) to situations and circumstances.  The fundamental principles laid down in the law of God included:

1. Good is to be loved and evil is to be fled.
2. Do to another that thou wouldst another should do to thee.
3. Do nothing against truth.
4. A man must live peacefully with others.
5. Men should live in society.
6. Actions by which a human life is to be preserved are to be pursued.
7. Male and female should join together and children be educated.  (Ibid., p. 50)

By the nineteenth century, the First Christendom was in terminal decline.  The hearts of the people and their rulers and teachers decided they had a better idea.  The law of God as the foundation of all human law and justice was gradually, yet ineluctably, replaced by the mind of man as the ultimate lawgiver.  We see the fruits on every hand today.  “Reason” now dictates that an unborn child can be killed at will.  It has “discovered” eternal and irrevocable rights to homosexuality, homosexual “marriage”, and no-fault divorce.  It has declared, on the grounds of its own recognizance, that the state must impose “equality” upon its citizens, thereby sanctifying and glorifying envy and covetousness.

All these, and many other perversions, the common lawyers of Christendom would have called madness, not reason.  They would have been right.  They testify against us and the resulting indictment leaves us without excuse.  

Nevertheless, the “reason” and “laws” of autonomous man will inevitably run their course, to produce their fruit, and to bring their self-immolating sentence of death and destruction, before a generation will arise, by God’s grace, to toss this ghastly human idolatry into the lake of fire, and to repent, and to replace it with the principles and doctrines of the First Christendom, thereby building the Second Christendom. 

The Christian Heritage of Justice

 Being Treated Fairly Before the Court

It is a great boon to live in a just society–and, no, we are not thinking of the faux “justice” of egalitarianism, now so very popular amongst the ignorant and those riddled with the canker of envy.  Rather, we have in view the system of justice which enables citizens to seek redress or get their actions judged properly and fairly.

Justice is often difficult to define. The traditions of English common law, however, have developed over many centuries the concept of a fair trial and the principles which undergird it.  F.E. Dowrick [Justice According to the English Common Lawyers (London: Butterworths, 1960)], courtesy of a series of lectures by Lord Denning, has provided a summary of the essential principles which make up a fair trial.

1. The judges should be absolutely independent of the Government.

It is of the essence of fair trial that the judge should be dependent on no man who can by any possibility become a party to a proceeding before him, so that he can adjudicate evenly between the parties–whether these are private citizens or whether a private citizen is opposed to a government official or to the government itself.  And in jury trials the absolute independence of the jury is no less important than the independence of the judge.

2. The judge must have no interest himself in any matter that he has to try.  He must be impartial.  No person can be a judge in his own cause. 

3. The judge, before he comes to a decision against a party, must hear and consider all that he has to say.  No-one ought to be condemned unheard . . . . (T)he only fair way of reaching a correct decision on any dispute is for the judge to hear all that is to be said on each side and then come to his conclusion. 

4. The judge must act only on the evidence and arguments properly before him and not on any information which he receives from the outside. 

5. The judge must give his reasons for his decision.

6.  A judge should in his own character be beyond reproach, or at any rate should have so disciplined himself that he is not himself a breaker of the law. 

7.  Each side should state its case as strongly as it can . . . (since) truth is best discovered by powerful statements on both sides of the question. 

The search for the truth of the matter before the court is of the essence of a fair trial but counsel must contain themselves within bounds: accordingly they “must never distort or suppress the truth”, and in criminal cases counsel for the prosecution should act “not as an advocate to to condemn the accused, but as a minister of justice to see that he is fairly treated. 

This list is not exhaustive, but it captures the essentials, such that if any of the seven be lacking, the centre of justice through a fair trial will not long hold.