What is civil liberty and political liberty distinct from Christian liberty we considered previously?
What is Civil Liberty?
For an answer, I turn to William Blackstone, the “preeminent authority on common law for the founding generation” according to the U.S. Supreme Court. You may recall him writing that people needed to understand the foundations of the law in their nation which, in England and the United States, is common law.
On the topic of civil liberty he wrote that the “singular frame and polity” of England was “perhaps the only one in the universe, in which political or civil liberty is the very end and scope of the Constitution.” (Written before our nation’s independence).
Just as some have confused Christian liberty with civil liberty (last episode), many today confuse civil liberty with a rather unencumbered liberty of the individual to do as each thinks right in his or her own eyes. The book of Judges should disabuse us of any thought that this is a good idea.
According to Blackstone, civil liberty “rightly understood, consists in the power of doing whatever the laws permit.” (Keep in mind that “laws” included unwritten law and was not limited to positive, enacted law by legislative bodies).
Few today would consider civil liberty as only having a right to do what the law permits, partly because we think of law primarily in terms of rules dictated by a human authority, legislative bodies! It is certainly different from today’s libertine, do-what-we-think-right kind of liberty.
The Bounds of Civil Liberty, Not License or Tyranny
But Blackstone offered a limit on law (unwritten and written law (enacted)). Law, he wrote, must be “effected by a general conformity of all orders and degrees to those equitable rules of action by which the meanest [lowest] individual is protected from the insults and oppression of the greatest.”
I submit that this “conformity” and “protection” can only be found in a right understanding of the Triune nature of God and the offices of Christ, and its correct application (Remember, the “mystery of God, of the Father and of Christ. Colossians 2:2?). In that revelation, we find the key by which “all orders and degrees” find their harmony, as in the creation of Adam and Eve.
That is s a different understanding of civil liberty from what we have today.
What is Political Liberty
For answer to this question I turn to a pamphlet published in 1864 (still available for purchase), “Of the Distinction Between Natural and Political Rights.” It was written by George Parks Fisher who taught theology at Yale and was once president of the American Historical Society. It was published in January 1864.
What he wrote may blow your mind as it did mine when I first read it:
The management of the state not being among the original rights of man does not belong equally to all.
It is no violation of Natural Rights [the ones we would have from God that define our given nature] when political power is lodged with a few or with one man, provided the great ends of government are accomplished. . . . The obligations of the subject do not depend on any voluntary, formal act of consent on his part.”
That is in direct contravention of what is said today, even among some Christian writers whose work I’ve mentioned.
He continues,
It is obvious that the question how widely in a given country political power shall be diffused must depend for its answer on a variety of circumstances.” (Emphasis supplied).
In other words, laws and constitutions of nations are not abstract things written on pieces of paper. Rather, they are realities under the providential guidance of God discerned by His people observing and studying the “works of God” (Psalm 64:9, 111:2). The work of a people and their public officials is to conform their law (written and unwritten) and written constitutions to the laws of God as law and the “natural” constitution of a nation and its institutions develop. This, in my view, would constitute “the great ends of government.”
However, such thoughts can only flourish when an understanding of Divine Providence fulfilling eternal Divine Decrees flourishes in the minds of a people.
The Ultimate Mind-Bender to a Modern Democratic Society
Fisher’s next statement is mind-bending to modern thinking: “Let political power be distributed to the few or to the many or to all or be concentrated in the hands of one person.” Return to a king? Really?
Here is why, as a matter of observed experience, he could write that:
It is conceivable that every Natural Right may be left intact and be safe under the aegis of government, whose office [notice the word office] is to preserve it from infraction. It is conceivable likewise that under every system, the most popular alike with the absolute, Natural Right should be violated.
In other words, we can say that voluntary consent is the only security for “Natural Rights” (natural liberty?), but their violation happens every day.
The Consequences of an a-Historical Understanding of Civil and Political Liberty
In my view, the problem is too few have a biblically-sound understanding of law and offices. I didn’t ten years ago, and I’m still learning.
Sadly, I can’t think of one public official I have known over the last 30 years who has ever been instructed on the biblical and historical foundations of law, office, and law (as was my case). Resistance to such instruction is strong. I suspect preaching that emphasizes a subjective personal piety contributes to it.
But when voters don’t know this either, that is the kind of public official elected to office. True civil and political liberty is lost, and deservedly so.
In next episode in this Liberty series, we will look at how a right understanding of office allows public officials to help effect a well-ordered civil liberty.
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