Quotes- Law, Civil
Polemos Ministries
www.polemos.net
"The social order which despises God's law places itself on death row: it is marked for judgment."
R.J. Rushdoony -The Institutes of Biblical Law
"The law is either righteous, or it is anti-law masquerading as law...."
R.J. Rushdoony -The Institutes of Biblical Law
"Law is in every culture religious in origin. Because law governs man and society, because it establishes and declares the meaning of justice and righteousness, law is inescapably religious, in that it establishes in practical fashion the ultimate concerns of a culture. Accordingly, a fundamental and necessary premise in any and every study of law must be, first, a recognition of this religious nature of law.
Second, it must be recognized that in any culture the source of law is the god of that society. If law has its source in man's reason, then reason is the god of that society. If the source is an oligarchy, or in a court, senate, or ruler, then that source is the god of that system..."
R.J. Rushdoony -The Institutes of Biblical Law
"The law, both criminal and civil, claims to be able to speak about morality and immorality generally. Where does it get its authority to do this and how does it settle the moral principles which it enforces? Undoubtedly, as a matter of history, it derives both from Christian teaching. But I think that the strict logician is right when he says that the law can no longer rely on doctrines in which citizens are entitled to disbelieve. It is necesary therefore to look for some other source."
Sir Patrick Devlin
"The church is called to function as a preservative in society ("the salt of the earth"), (Matthew 5:13) and thus the early church and Reformers mainlined, among other things, that the civil "magistrate" is also a "minister" if God (Romans 13:4,6) and as such responsible to His authority and law. Previously the autonomous polis and natural reason, taken to be the source and authority for political law, were challenged by the church, but today the church has largely succumbed to the idea that God's law is extraneous, lot only to personal morality, but to matters of statesmanship and civil government. The theologians of this century have offered no serious alternative to the world, giving the impression that "the salt has lost its saltiness." For instance, in a book on the very topic of The Christian in Politics we read these words by Walter James:
The Christian is called upon to act beside other men and no assurance is given him that he will sense God's purpose better than they. He can no more aim to be a Christian statesman than a Christian engineer. . . . He stands on a par with the non-Christian. . . . His religion will give him no special guidance in his public task. . .
In addition to not having anything to speak before kings (Psalm119:46) because of its endorsement of neutralism in civil affairs, the modern church has shown itself to be as antinomian in its theory of ethics as the autonomous secular man. As a result the church fails to challenge "the powers that be" with the "power (authority)" of Christ (Romans 13:1 with 28:18) or to offer restorative guidance to its society...."
Greg Bahnsen in Theonomy in Christian Ethics