The Christian Idea of the State

Summary
There are two streams in humanistic natural law: State-absolutism and antistate-absolutism.

The old-liberal theory of Rechtsstaadt comes from the antistate-absolutism, as does the laissez faire program.

A comparison of Calvinism and humanistic natural law:

Kuyper’s break with the nature/ grace dualism opened the way for a Christian view of society.

To gain insight into the structural principles it is necessary to understand the rich diversity of modal aspects.  Reality functions in all these aspects and cannot be reduced to any of them.

Each modal aspect has its own law sphere.  

The deeper unity can’t be found in any one of these aspects.  This is found in Jesus Christ.

There is no area of life that exists outside of Christ: he is lord of all.  No area exists independently of him.

Questions
1. How does a denial of sphere sovereignty affect the view of the State?

Summary
Humanism began to become the dominant worldview.  It made humanity  sovereign.  It secularised creation, fall and redemption.
Revelation was replaced by science
Christian freedom was replaced by the the sovereign freedom of the human personality

The humanistic worldview entailed a dualism of freedom and nature:

It resulted in two poles: the science ideal and the personality ideal.
The science ideal is epitomised today by Richard Dawkins. It resulted in rationalism and modernism

The science ideal resulted in a mathematisation of nature.
Mathematics became the origin of all laws and of temporal life.

The personality ideal did not become popular until later. It resulted in Romanticism and post-modernism.

The science ideal implied that social relationships were simple mathematical components ie abstract units.

In the social contract freedom is given up to the State. In the Aristotelian compromise the State existed before the individual, here the individual exists before the State.

Study questions
1. In what way was the science ideal reminiscent of nominalism?

Summary
The radical break with a nature-grace dualism began with Calvin. This opened up the way for a Christian worldview.

Calvin viewed the law as the boundary between God and creation.

God is not subject to his law; he transcends the law.  God gave each sphere of life its own law.  The true origin of all things is not in reason but in the sovereign will of God.

This is the origin of the idea of sphere-sovereignty.

Unfortunately, the ideas of Melanchthon held sway.  The Christian idea of the State became submerged in a Medieval-Scholastic synthesis.  The State could only receive a Christian stamp by serving the church community.

Study questions
1. What reformed ideas did Calvin introduce?
2. Why didn’t they reform the Christian understanding of the State?

Summary
During the 14th century William of Ockham developed, as a reaction against the Thomas-Aristotle compromise, nominalism.

Are things good because God decrees them good or dies God declare them good because they are good?  Aquinas held to the latter view, nominalism the first.  

Nominalism was an attempt to reassert the sovereignty of God.  God’s will became ‘despotic voluntarism’.  God could decree whatever he waned to be good, eg murder, and it would be good.

Nominalism became the dominant paradigm.  It meant that reason was no longer absolute and the concept of law became the ordering of temporal life where sin reigned.  Law was removed from the life of grace.

In nominalism nature was no longer a portal of grace.  Nature, as the realm of law, was in direct opposition to grace. Nature was sinful.  There was no place for Christian learning or even a Christian notion of the State as learning and the State all belonged to the kingdom of the world.  Nature and grace had become radically separated.

Luther had been brought up in nominalist thinking.  Despite his reforming tendencies he still held to a nominalist dualism of law and freedom.

This sort of dualism can also be seen in Melanchthon and more recently Brunner and Barth. This is why they rejected the idea of Christian thinking.

Study questions
1. Compare and contrast nominalism with the Aquinas-Aristotle view.
2. How did nominalism view the Christian State?
3. What is the origin of the nominalist dualism of law and freedom?
4. Why did Brunner and Barth reject the idea of Christian culture, learning or political life?
5. How did Brunner see the political role of the Christian?
6. Should Christians be in politics?

Summary
The state and all social relationships have God-given structures that are rooted in the creation.  

The rule of God is total.  There is no area where the kingdom of God does not touch and that includes the State.

Every social relationship has its own God-given structure and it is sovereign in its own sphere.  This can be illustrated thus:

The temporal spheres have a sphere-sovereignty. This means that each sphere, eg church, the state, the family, the school and so on, has its authority derived directly form God and not from another sphere or aspect.

The Roman Catholic view is a compromise with the Aristotelian position; the State rules nature and the church grace.  All social relations in nature were seen as being parts of the State and the church as the total bond in the realm of grace. The State may participate in the realm of grace by eradicating heresy and paganism. The State is subject to the church.

Such a view was protested against by the Reformers.  The Reformers rejected:
➢    An identification of the kingdom of God with the temporal church institution
➢    A dualism of nature and grace
➢    The idea that the fall did not affect ‘nature’

However this was not enough, particularly in the case of Luther, to provide a Christian conception of the State.

Study questions
1. Compare and contrast the idea of sphere-sovereignty with that of subsidiarity.

2. What are the implications for a ‘state-church’ such as the Church of England?

3. What is the relationship between the temporal church institute and the supra-temporal body of Christ?  How does his relationship affect Church-State relations?

Summary
Dooyeweerd emphasises the human heart as the supra-temporal centre and the creaturely centre.  

Adam’s fall affected the whole of the temporal creation.  Jesus came and redeemed all of creation.

Pagan philosophy found the supra-temporal centre, not in the heart, but in ‘reason’.  However, reason is a composite of different aspects of the heart.

Elsewhere Dooyeweed has developed the notion of a number of distinct modal aspects

The fall meant that the heart was in rebellion to God.  Human thought sought to become autonomous, a law unto itself.  This is the pagan root of Aristotle’s conception of idealised reason.  Christianity compromised with this position.  One result was that the heart became identified with a psychical function. Another was the false contrast between nature and grace.

Reaso became self-suuficient and autonomous in the area of nature.  It became independent of God.  Grace was supra-temporal and transcended nature.

These ideas also affected the view of the fall.  Humanity could no longer be totally deprived; nature was merely wounded and not depraved.

The State was associated with nature and the church with grace:

The State became the highest form of community and all other communities were part of it:

The State is the whole and the rest its parts.

This Aristotelian view is similar to the ancient Greek view.  For the Greeks, the State was the highest rung on human development. It has much in common with the totalitarian view of the sate in Facism and Nazism.

Study questions
1. Does Dooyeweerd’s concept of the heart reveal a latent dualism?

2. There are a number of different conceptions of nature and grace:

• Grace opposes nature
• Grace above nature
• Grace alongside nature
• Grace transforms nature

(a) What is the position of (i) Brunner and (ii) Aquinas?
(b) How do the different conceptions of nature and grace shape the view of the State?

3. How is the Arstotelian/ Aquinean view of the State an idolatrous conception?

* All page numbers are from the 1968 Craig Press edn 

Summary
Brunner sees the origins of the State not in creation but in the fall.  He holds to a nature-grace dualism.  For him, nature is outside of faith.

Elsewhere Dooyeweerd has developed the idea of competing religious ground motives (RGMs).  The Christian worldview is based on the RGM of creation, fall and redemption.  For a view of the State to be Christian it must be rooted in this RGM.  There is no contrast between grace and nature.

Study questions
1. Why is the Christian idea of the State so problematic?
2. Why does Brunner reject the concept of a Christian State?
3. Why is the notion of a total state  pagan idea (p2)?
4. Can there be a different interpretations of a Christian view of the State – why or why not?

Here are the extensive headings for the Craig Press edn:

•    Emil Brunner rejects the Christian idea of the state
•    National Socialism and Fascism and the idea of the Christian state
•    The ever new, inspiring idea of the Christian state and the causes of its decline
•    Synthesis and Antithesis
•    Actually, there is but one radical and Scriptural idea of the Christian state
•    The contrast of “nature” and “grace” is non-Scriptural. Scripture posits the heart as the religious center of man’s existence
•    The pagan view that “reason” is the supra-temporal center of man’s being 
•    The effects of compromise of Christian and pagan views. The scheme of “nature” and “grace” as a result of this compromise
•    Thomas Aquinas on human nature. “Nature” as portal of “grace”
•    Aristotle: the pagan idea of the state. The state as the highest bond of human society, of which all other societal relationships are but dependent parts
•    The pagan totalitarian idea of the state and its revival in National Socialism and Fascism
•    The truly Christian view of the state takes its stance in the supra-temporal root-community of redeemed humanity in Christ Jesus
•    All temporal societal relationships ought to be manifestations of the supra-temporal, invisible church of Christ
•    The Kingdom of God as the all-embracing rule of God
The Christian idea of sphere-sovereignty over against the pagan view that the state is related to the other societal structures as the whole to its parts
•    The Roman Catholic view of the Christian state - Thomas Aquinas - is a falling away from the Scriptural conception
•    Infiltration of the pagan totality-idea in the Roman Catholic concept of the church
•    A false view of the Christian state: the state is subject to the temporal church-institute.
•    Penetration of this view in modern denominational political parties
•    The Reformation over against the Roman Catholic view of Christian society
•    Nominalism in Late-Scholasticism
•    The nominalistic conception of the law as subjective arbitrariness and the Thomistic idea of the law as rational order
•    The Nominalist dualism of nature and grace
•    This dualism was perpetuated in Luther’s law-gospel polarity 
•    Melanchthon’s synthesis
•    Brunner continues Luther’s dualism
•    Calvin breaks with the dualistic nature-grace scheme
•    Calvin’s Scriptural view of law
•    The law as boundary between God and creature
•    Calvin’s view of the divine creation-order contrasted with Thomas Aquinas 
•    The principle of sphere-sovereignty: Calvin and Althusius
•    The greater influence of Melanchthon’s synthesis predominates
•    The rise of the modern humanistic world and life view
•    The overpowering influence of the new mathe¬matical science-ideal upon modern culture
•    The humanistic ideal of science continues in the modern individualistic idea of the state
•    Relativizing character of modern individualism in its view of society
•    Humanistic natural law over against its Aristotelian - Thomistic counterpart
•    Two mainstreams in humanistic natural law and the idea of the “Rechtsstaat” in its first phase of development.
•    The old-liberal view of the Rechtsstaat and the separation of Church and State
•    Tolerance in State-absolutism
•    The Calvinistic view of sphere-sovereignty has nothing in common with the humanistic freedom-idea of natural law
•    The truly Christian idea of the state cannot be separated from a recognition of sphere-sovereignty
•    The radical difference between sphere-sovereignty and autonomy
•    Sphere-sovereignty and antithesis go hand in hand in Kuyper
•    Kuyper broke with nature-grace and distinguished between church as institute and as organism
•    Elaboration of Kuyper’s views the first meaning of sphere-sovereignty, the sovereign law-spheres
•    Temporal reality-aspects in distinct law-spheres
•    The religious root-unity of the law-spheres
•    As sunlight diffuses itself in prismatic beauty . . .
•    Common grace and the grace of rebirth (palingenesis): no dualistic doctrine
•    Sphere-universality of the law-spheres
•    Succession of the law-spheres and the organic character of sphere-sovereignty
•    Disclosure and deepening of the meaning of a law-sphere
•    The second meaning of sphere-sovereignty: individuality-structures in things and in societal relationships
•    Concrete things function in all law-spheres indiscriminately. The significance of the typical end-function
•    The first meaning of sphere-sovereignty (law-spheres) is not voided in the individuality structure of things. The thing as individual totality
•    The basic error of humanistic science: the attempt to dissolve the individuality structure of a thing in a schema of lawful relations within one aspect of reality
•    The individuality structure of societal relationships
•    The typical founding-function
•    The structural principle of the state. The state an institution for the sake of sin. This Scriptural view not maintained by Thomas Aquinas
•    One-sided action for national disarmament is a neglect of the structural principle of the state
•    The indissoluble coherence of the typical found-function and the typical end-function of the state
•    The “common good” (public welfare) as jural principle and as absolutistic principle of power
•    The old-liberal idea of the “Rechtsstaat” proves powerless to control the absolutism of “common good”
•    The humanistic idea of the “Rechtsstaat” in its second, formalistic phase
•    Only the Christian idea of the state, rooted in the principle of sphere-sovereignty, is the true idea of the “Rechtsstaat.”
•    The task of the state cannot be limited externally by excluding the state from certain aspects of reality.
•    The state, with its function as political faith-community, may not be subjected to an ecclesiastical creed
•    The Christian faith deepens the typically political principles of justice. The Roman and the Christian idea of justice
•    The liberal-humanistic and the Fascistic views of justice
•    All non-Christian theories of the state are essentially theories of power (Machtsstaats-theorieen)
•    The true relation of state and church: not a mechanical division, but sphere-sovereignty
•    The inseparable, interwoven texture of the various structures of society
•    The prophetic task of Christianity in these times
 

This book started off life as lecture to the Anti-Revolutionaire Jongeren Actie (ARJA) ‘De Christelijke Staatsidee’ (Appledoorn, 3 October, 1936).  It was then published in an expanded form (56 pages) by Libertas, Rotterdam in 1936.

In 1968 Craig Press published the first English translation in their University Series, Historical Studies; the editor was Rousas J. Rushdoony.  John Kraay, a graduate of Calvin College and at the time a graduate student in philosophy at the VU in Amsterdam, was the translator. In his translators’ preface (pp. v-vi in the 1968 version) he notes that it was H. Evan Runner who encouraged him to translate it and students of Runner’s Groen Van Prinsterer Society who arranged publication with the Craig Press.  Kraay also translated the Wedge Press version of Dooyeweerd’s Roots of Western Culture.

It was reprinted by Craig Press several times, including in 1975 and 1978. 

It has subsequently been republished in two books by Edwin Mellen under the auspices of the Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd:

In Essays in Legal, Social, and Political Philosophy. Ed. by Alan M. Cameron et al. The Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd, Series B, Volume 2 (1997), pp. 121–55.

In Political Philosophy. Ed. by Daniël Strauss. The Collected Works of Herman Dooyeweerd, Series D, Volume 1 (2004), pp. 17–47.

Welcome to a study guide for Herman Dooyeweerd’s The Christian Idea of the State. It is a working document. If any one has any comments, criticism or suggestions please make them in the comments.