Foundational Law Quotes III

“law was not thought up by the intelligence of human beings,
nor is it merely some kind of resolution passed by communities,
but rather it is an eternal force
which rules the world
by the wisdom of its commands and prohibitions.
. . . that original and final law
is the intelligence of God,
who ordains and forbids everything by reason.”



“Human laws are guided in punishing the wicked and defending and protecting the good . . .
no other kind should be given the status or even the name of law.”



“law in the proper sense is right reason in harmony with nature.
It is spread through the whole human community,
unchanging and eternal,
calling people to their duty by its commands
and deterring them from wrong doing
by its prohibitions. . .
This law cannot be countermanded,
nor can it in any way be amended,
nor can it be totally rescinded.
We cannot be exempted from this law by any decree
of the Senate or the people . . .
All peoples at all times will be embraced by a single and eternal
Unchangeable law . . .
And there will be one master over us all –
God
who is the author, proposer, and interpreter of that law.
Whoever refuses to obey it turns his back on himself . . .
he has denied his nature as a human being . . .”



- Marcus Tullius Cicero

Discussion on Statements of Faith and Post-Modernism

I had a very encouraging e-mail discussion in response to my recent post on statements of Faith by Greg Strand, the Director of Biblical Theology and Credentialing at the EFCA Home Office, and also Chair the Spiritual Heritage Committee.. The evangelical Free Church is already dealing seriously with the post-modernism issue. Here is the discussion, with minor editing out of small talk:

Here is the first e-mail:

Donald,

Greetings in the Lord!

I appreciate what you have written in your Monday, August 07, 2006
blog, "Post-modernism and Statements of Faith." Here is the statement
in particular: "I have not in any way been involved in the Evangelical
Free Church's recent enterprise of evaluating and revising its
Statement of Faith. But I am curious whether they have considered
Adding any clauses that would deal with the problem of post-modernism.
Perhaps a statement of faith that forecloses post-modernism would need to
acknowledge what people reject as well as what they say they believe?"

We on the Spiritual Heritage Committee are very much aware of the
effects of postmodernism on epistemology and the notion of
propositional truth. In the First Draft Revision we included this statement in the
article on the Bible, #2:

"2. God's gospel is authoritatively announced in the Scriptures*
We believe that God has spoken through the Scriptures, both the
Old and New Testaments. They are the verbally inspired Word of God,
without error in the original writings, the complete revelation of His
will for salvation, sufficient for all that God requires us to believe
and do, and the ultimate authority which stands over every realm of
human knowledge. We confess that we cannot know God's truth
exhaustively, but we affirm that we can know it truly. Therefore, the
Bible is to be believed, as God's instruction, in all that it
teaches; obeyed, as God's command, in all that it requires; and trusted, as
God's pledge, in all that it promises."

What I have italicized gets at the heart of postmodernism. There is a
meta-narrative, that is the Bible is the ultimate authority, the
meta-narrative, which stands over every other realm of human
knowledge, the narrative. Moreover, we also address the correctives
postmodernism brought to modernism without completely capitulating to it as well.
This is how we explained this in the commentary:

the ultimate authority which governs every realm of human
knowledge.*
This strengthens our statement on Scripture by affirming that no area
of human activity, including any area of study, lies outside the
authority of the divine Word of God. The Bible speaks with divine
authority in every area in which it speaks. With this statement and
the previous one we have unpacked and clarified the words in our current
statement: "the Divine and final authority for all Christian faith and
life."

We confess that we cannot know God's truth exhaustively, but we affirm
that we can know it truly.*

Perhaps the most debated philosophical issue of our day is
epistemology*

how do we know what we know? Postmodernism has issued a
strong rebuke to the hubris of modernism in this area, shattering the
false assumption that there can be a neutral point from which to
observe the world, thereby causing the modernist epistemological foundation
based on rationalism and empiricism to crumble. Many postmodernists
then claim that since there is no absolute and certain knowledge based on
the foundation of reason or empirical sense perception, there can be no
real knowledge of truth at all. This we deny.

This statement is a recognition that we have heard the postmodern
critique and that we do not stand on modernist assumptions. We seek to
avoid both the epistemological hubris of modernism, claiming that
everything is knowable, and the epistemological despair of
postmodernism, claiming that the search for knowledge is fruitless. We
believe that for the gospel to be good news it must be intelligible.
Reliable knowledge of truth, though not exhaustive, is still possible
and attainable through God's revelation of Him-self. Hence, we say
that we can know God's truth "truly."

When we confess that we can know God's truth in Scripture truly, we
are also affirming the doctrine of the perspicuity or clarity of
Scripture, i.e., the Scripture is able to be understood. This was one of the keys
of the Reformers, for the Book was to be in the hands of ordinary
people, of all people, to be read and obeyed; it was not reserved only
for the elite to read and interpret. With roots in the Reformation, we
recognize this is still a vi-tally important doctrine of our understanding of Scripture.

In our Second Draft, based on a number of comments we received, many
did not understand what was meant by the statement above in the First
Draft. We attempted to resolved that here:

2. God's gospel is authoritatively announced in the Scriptures*
We believe that God has spoken through the Scriptures, both the
Old and New Testaments. They are the verbally inspired Word of God,
without error in the original writings, the complete revelation of His
will for salvation, and the ultimate authority that stands over every
realm of human knowledge and endeavor. Therefore, the Bible is to be
believed in all that it affirms, obeyed in all that it requires, and
trusted in all that it promises.

In our explanation of the deletion we stated, "Though we believe this
statement has something important to contribute which has been
appreciated by a number of comments, it has occasioned many questions
and is not well understood. For the sake of simplifying the statement,
we suggest deleting it."

Since we have heard many comments about including it. Either way, we
are very much aware of the importance of responding to postmodernism,
and a number of other things. If an explicit statement does not make
it into the actual SOF, we will include a section on postmodernism in the
written commentary addressing the article on God's Word. You will
also be interested to know that in the commentary we will address 1) what
we believe, i.e. what is being stated in the article, 2) what we deny,
i.e. what issues are being denied in this article, and 3) areas in which we
have agreed to be silent, i.e. which is one of the marks of the Free
Church as we major on majors and minor on minors, The Significance of
Silence (A. T. Olson). This does not mean we will not talk about our
areas of disagreement, e.g. Arminianism and/or Calvinism, we will do
so strongly and passionately, but we will not divide over it.

Greg Strand

I responded as follows:

Dear Dr. Strand,

I agree with you and the committee on the problems of modernism.
Empirical knowledge or human reason alone cannot "prove" or know
anything without a prior use of revelation. God must be the center, and
we must use what the divine light gives us to understand and know and
prove. The Bible is the one set of propositions we can trust to
calibrate and direct our minds, emotions, morals, etc.

I am glad the committee is doing such thoughtful and difficult work as
wrestling with these issues. I look forward to hearing more in the
future.

Is there a scheduled completion date fro the revised statement?

Thanks again.
Donald R. McConnell

Dr. Strand’s responding update:

Donald,

At this past summer's national Conference, we had a Resolution before the Conference regarding the process of discussing the SOF. The Resolution was strongly affirmed, for which we are grateful. You can read the update at the following link: http://www.efca.org/about/media/sof_resolution_update.pdf

We are planning a Third Draft Revision now, and if approved by the BOD at their fall meeting made public the first week of October, and we will likely be ready with a Fourth Draft Revision next April, which will probably be the Draft brought to the national Conference. If this is done next year, the earliest the Conference could vote would be 2008.

Because of Christ,
Greg

Foundational Law Quotes II

Is this not the kind of fast I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
and provide the poor wanderer with shelter –
when you see the naked to clothe him,
and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Then will your light break forth like the dawn . . .
if you do away with the yoke of oppression,
with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in darkness,
and your night will be like the noonday.
The Lord will guide you always . . .
Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
and will raise up the age-old foundations . . .”

- Isaiah 58:3 - 12

Foundational Law Quotes I

“Learning in the law entails knowledge of God and man and mastery of the difference between justice and injustice.” - Justinian

Post-modernism and Statements of Faith

Recently a friend of mine attended a class being offered at a Christian school. The Christian school has a statement of faith and tries to be quite energetic in making sure that all of their faculty adhere to the statement of faith. What was interesting is that the professor turned out to be a post-modernist. The professor thought that all the truths of Christianity are really culturally constructed and can vary from culture to culture. As a result, the faculty member made it clear that theologies of different cultures could differ and that it was appropriate to evangelize people by co-opting the rituals and ceremonies already prevalent in their own culture. The faculty member denied the existence of objective propositional truth or the accessibility of objective propositional truth about God to human beings. With this kind of an attitude, it is difficult to understand how this faculty member could be seen to have an orthodox view of Christianity.

As the dean of a Christian law school, I take my part in the enforcement of the Evangelical Free Church’s Statement of Faith very seriously. We carefully interview all of our faculty to try to make sure that they actually adhere to the principles of the Statement of Faith. But if someone does not believe that the words in a statement of faith have a definite meaning, if they believe that words can be made to mean whatever their culture would want them to mean, if they believe that there is no such thing as objective truth, how can they be detected through a standard statement of faith? I am curious what readers think about this problem. Certainly some people are likely to say that the post-modernists are right and there is no such thing as objective truth as opposed to culturally constructed truth. I cannot agree with that point of view. Second, some people are likely to think that post-modernism is in the area of the indifferent rather than in the area of core truths. But if someone believes it is impossible to have and hold specific core truths that have a fixed meaning, how can one then be said to believe in and adhere to the core truths of the Gospel?

The post-modern attitude is becoming quite widespread in academia. It is entering into the church through the emergent church movement. It also is tied into the resurgence of Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism among former Protestants. The Eastern Orthodox Church tends to be less specific and more mystical. The Catholic Church has always relied upon cultural construction in the form of the teaching magisterium of the church. The Protestant view is, or at least was, that the teachings of the church should be based upon the truth of an objectively accessible Scripture.

I have not in any way been involved in the Evangelical Free Church’s recent enterprise of evaluating and revising its Statement of Faith. But I am curious whether they have considered adding any clauses that would deal with the problem of post-modernism. Perhaps a statement of faith that forecloses post-modernism would need to acknowledge what people reject as well as what they say they believe? I think this is an important question because post-modernism is slowly invading and transforming our institutions in the same way that Unitarianism invaded and destroyed the value of the old New England universities and in which liberalism and pragmatism conquered American academia in the late 1800s.

I hope that sound biblical response to the errors of post-modernism can be had without the extreme bitterness, grumpiness and divisiveness that often accompany theological battle. But I strongly suspect that something needs to be done. Post-modernism does have some advantages. Its rejection of the radical politically liberal view that religion is irrelevant to everyday human life has helped restore Christianity to an influential place in the public square. But the place of the Logos of God is obviously not honored in a philosophy that is inherently anti-logocentric. How can truth be proclaimed in love to a people who reject the existence of truth itself? How can people expect to know and experience God without knowing anything about Him to define whether He is the real God or some imposter or impersonator?

British School Administrators Seek to Stop Teaching Morality and Patriotism

Schools told it's no longer necessary to teach right from wrong - Britain - Times Online

The linked article, from the times on line (hat tip to Rantburg for linking it first), discusses a proposal that English schools no longer try to teach students the difference between right and wrong, British cultural heritage, or leadership skills.

Trends in the UK seem to evidence that such teaching stopped some time back and this is just an effort to conform the rules to what is already done (or undone as the case may be). As an unjustifiably ardent anglophile and advocate of objective morality I find this news distressing none the less.

As C.S. Lewis points out in the Abolition of Man, a book discussing the same kind of trends in British education about half a century ago, good education is essential to fine tune our emotions and higher conscience to be in tune with the deep conscience and the objective moral law of God.

I remember a chapel speaker who I heard in college saying that British youth were unlikely to catch evangelical Christianity because they had been inoculated by an exposure to a weakened or dead version of Christianity in the British schools. So perhaps this current move is less of a loss than it may seem. But woe to those who teach error to children.

Bad education is the foremost tool of the malicious and the misled for spreading relativism, materialism, false spirituality, bad economics, revisionist history, homosexuality, the playboy life style, islamofacism, anti-foundationalism, devaluation of human beings, and everything else wrong with the world. It seems every advocate of some idea or form of rebellion against God has discovered that teaching young people to see the world their way is the way to dominate the world of the future. This is an epidemic problem around the world, including in the US.

After a hundred years of domination by radical political liberalism, a world view that says religion and morality are unimportant matters of culture and emotion, unfit to influence government (which should only be run based on science), the west is slowly destroying itself as the logical results of such an erroneous philosophy distort our understanding of everything. Without belief in the real objective moral principles of God people sink in to worse and worse lifestyles that bring pain and mental troubles to them and all their partners and children. We fail to understand societies motivated with passion by false religions because we no anger accept the power of spiritual things. And the dissatisfied are ever more open to irrational and destructive forms of counterfeit or evil spiritual expression since they have been taught to ignore or discount the real thing. Philosopher J. Budziszewski discusses this all at length in his excellent book The Revenge of Conscience.

We need to teach our Children the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. If state schools cannot teach orthodox historical Christianity and its world view, if they cannot teach children to understand history, culture, and humanity as they really are, we need to make sure we homeschool our children or send them to be educated somewhere where the truth is taught.

But then the size of the problem rapidly becomes even greater. So many of us Christians have learned the errors of our societies and failed to seek out and learn the truth, that few of us are satisfactory teachers of anything, and none of us are satisfactory teachers of everything. Many Christian faculty at universities no longer believe in objective truth at all, let alone know much of it. May God be merciful to us, and bring us not only a revival of faith in Christ, but a revival of true learning, wisdom and knowledge, that we might not only see things as they really are, but might be able to pass on truth to future generations.

Anti-church bias of cities

Churches Putting Town Out of Business - Los Angeles Times

At the link is an article about Stafford Texas - a small town of seven square miles and 19,227 souls that wants no additional churches because it wants more tax revenue. This is a very common problem today. But it is an error of perception rather than a real problem.

City fathers who see tax money as more important than anything else often see any number of churches as too many. In Stafford they are crying out about 51 churches. But that is only one church for every 377 people. In a Texas town like Stafford it is easy to guess that more than half of the people attend church. That could make Stafford churches a bit crowded. According to Wes Roberts, for the 350,000 churches in North America, the average attendance around 110 - 135 people. To look at a radically different sample, the Anglican Diocese of London has 479 churches attended by 71,400 people - an average of 149 people per church - much closer to what the number must be in Stafford. There are not a bizarre number of churches in Stafford for the population.

Besides, the city fathers complain about the wrong thing. They claim that most of the people attend church in Stafford are from outside of town. But why is that bad? While all these people are in Stafford is it not likely that they stay for lunch at local restaurants, by gas at local stations, see local specialty stores for return later in the week, and thereby spend far more money and pay far more sales tax than the 19,227 residents of Stafford are even capable of doing? Should not the city be happy it has a way to lure non-citizens into the city limits to spend their cash there? Besides, Stafford has no property tax, So they are not losing taxes because the land is occupied by exempt non-profits. If there are not enough businesses for the demand maybe the city fathers should open some new businesses instead of trying to chase out new potential customers.

But even more important is the influence of churches. If Christianity is true, peoples eternal life and their earthly discipleship is more important than almost anything else. Data will show that people who regularly attend church commit fewer crimes, are healthier, and happier. Well churched towns have less of a need for social services. So cities should want Christian churches, not despise them.

The problem with Stafford is, like much of secular liberal America, they do not see things as they really are. If they did they might be praying for a few more churches.

UK Court Upholds traditional Marriage under Common Law

Guardian Unlimited Special reports Lesbian couple denied UK recognition of marriage

The linked article in the Guardian is on an English court's decision not to recognize the relationship of a lesbian couple "married" in Canada as a marriage under English law. There are a number of encouraging quotes from the opinion. The court also concludes the European Convention on Human Rights supports marriage between one man and one woman. The court says England has accommodated same sex relationships under a separate name and law, so it is not treating homosexual couples as inferior, just recognizing they have a different type of relationship.

Of course dignifying homosexual relationships in law is problematic just as it would be to license theft, murder, or polyamory. The court also takes the perilous step of basing the ruling, in part, on the opinion of the majority of people and nations. But at least the court recognized that marriage under the common law means a relationship of commitment between one man and one woman, that usually makes provision for raising children effectively with the influence of both a father and a mother. Other partnerships are not marriages, whatever they may be.

Hamden IV

In the comment section on the Hamden III post there is a long and excellent set of remarks on the case that explains, in outline form, the arguments made by Scalia and Alito better than I think I could myself. If you are interested in the Hamden case you really should read that comment.

Lungren Comment on NPR

A kind source has provided me a copy of the text of Dan Lungren's NPR commentary about embryonic stem cell research that I linked to a few days ago. It also appears in a comment to the prior post. Here it is as a direct post:

Real Cures or False Hope?
by Dan Lungren

I am one of seven children. I'm the second oldest. My brother John is 2 years and 2 days older than I. We grew up together closer than any other members of the family. 15 years ago, my brother developed Parkinson's. I've learned a lot of things from my brother ... most of all that there's a difference between right and wrong. There is a moral dimension in most of the serious issues that we must face. HR 810 would permit federal funds to be used for research on embryos that were created in vitro for fertility treatments. Such human embryos are said to be eligible for destructive research, since they are doomed to die anyway. Applying this logic, one could deem prisoners on death row eligible organ donors, since they too are going to die anyway. Proponents of the bill claim it offers real hope for those suffering from debilitating diseases. This hope has so far proven illusory. Despite 25 years of animal research on embryonic stem cells, the dramatic predictions made by its proponents have not been realized. This is in large part due to problems relating to tissue rejection and the tendency for tumor formation. Contrast this with the results of adult stem cell research. Currently treatments for 72 diseases are being carried out with human patients. And these treatments have not required the destruction of human embryos. Many of my colleagues who supported HR 810 inexplicably voted against funding for alternate sources of pluripotent cells - cells which are able to differentiate into virtually all cell types in the human body. Some adult and cord blood stem cells have demonstrated the capacity to be pluripotent. A recent article in Nature magazine identifies studies in Japan, Germany and California indicating that pluripotent stem cells can be derived from innovative technologies such as manipulating adult cells so that they begin to act like embryonic stem cells. Would I like to support embryonic stem cell research without a question of ethics because it might assist my brother? Sure. Would I like to see embryonic stem cell research in the area of cancer where it might have helped one of my sisters who has had cancer? Yes. Would I like to see it in terms of research of cancer that plagues 4-year-old children like my nephew? Of course. But can we divorce all of that from the ethical norm that we must present here? Of course, we cannot.Even if embryonic stem cell research should someday prove effective, the destruction of one class of human beings for the benefit of another class of human beings raises the most telling ethical considerations. Human life should never be considered a means to an end. We must never fall prey to the ethical failures exemplified by the Tuskegee experiments where nearly 400 subjects, most of them poor black sharecroppers, were left to die from the ravages of syphilis. It is crucial for us as nation to stand firm for an ethos that innocent human life should be protected as an end in itself. True scientific progress entails evaluating not only what we can do, but what we should do.

Hamdan Case, number 3, the need for a new category of combatants

In our prior articles about Hamdan, we have already noted that the Supreme Court didn’t really decide anything like as much as the press is hinting. A majority of the Court as a whole decided only that the president’s commissions for trying prisoners at the Guantanimo Bay facility are not properly authorized by existing legislation or Article 3 of the Geneva Convention. The Court indicated that Article 3 requires that courts be “regularly constituted” and that they did not believe that the current situation accomplished this. Jeremy Rabkin, international law expert from Cornell University, has pointed out that the holding is limited only to procedures for passing sentences and not procedures for determining whether a suspect could be detained. He also says in an article in the July 17, 2006, Weekly Standard: “The Court also left open the possibility the detainees could be tried under somewhat distinctive procedures.” We also indicated in a prior article that even though I do not believe Article 3 of the Geneva Convention properly applies to the Guantanimo Bay detainees, it doesn’t really make any difference between we don’t violate Article 3 and no human being should be subjected to treatment contrary to general Article 3 of the Geneva Convention which largely requires only that you not torture, murder, mutilate prisoners or do other things to sentence them without “previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court.”

Exactly what constitutes a regularly constituted court? The Geneva Convention which does apply to international conflicts and not to terrorists, does provide that prisoners of war who commit crimes while incarcerated are to be disciplined under the legal system that applies to the armed forces of the detaining power. (See the Handbook of Humanitarian Law in Armed Conflicts by Dieter Fleck.) Minimum standards related to this, according to international law expert Dieter Fleck, are quite minimal: “No prisoner of war may be punished or disciplined more than once for the same act (Article 86 GC III). Prisoners of war may not be sentenced to any penalties except those provided for in respect of members of the armed forces of the detaining power for the same acts (Article 87, paragraph 1 GC III). Prisoners of war shall be given an opportunity to present their defense (Article 96, paragraph 4 & 99, paragraph 3 GC III). Collective punishment for individual acts and cruel punishment are forbidden (Article 87, paragraph 3 GC III).” (Fleck, The Handbook of Humanitarian Law in Armed Conflicts, section 725, page 359.) Even though the court set up by the president to try the Guantanimo Bay detainees was not exactly like the courts used by our armed services, they would have met these basic minimal due process guarantees. This gives a good idea of exactly what due process guarantees would actually be required by international law. But as Rabkin has pointed out correctly concerning the court’s opinion in Hamdan, “No justice claims that Congress was bound to authorize procedures consistent with the court’s interpretation of Geneva’s standards. No justice claims Congress was even bound to accommodate anyone else’s understanding of Geneva’s standards.” As Rabkin also points out, it is well established precedent that such standards can be set by an act of legislation even if the legislation is contrary to a treaty it will control. Standards about what is actually involved here, people who have committed war crimes, are much more fuzzy. For example, Dieter Fleck says, “Thus it remains unanswered, for example, whether a prisoner of war may be convicted for a war crime if the sentence for the act had not been set out at the time the act was committed.” (Dieter Fleck, The Handbook of Humanitarian Law in Armed Conflicts, section 724, page 258.)

The court admits both that military tribunals have been convened in the past by military officers, (Hamdan, page 26) and that Chief Justice Chase of the Supreme Court suggested that “the president may constitutionally convene military commissions without the sanction of Congress in cases of controlling necessity” (Hamdan, page 28). In light of historical practices, it is quite likely that the phrase “regularly constituted” in general Article 3 of the Geneva Convention simply means constituted according to normal procedures due process or appropriate government power. The contrast would be to forms which do not have official authority. For example, if a group of soldiers in the field decided that they would hold an impromptu tribunal and do in certain of their prisoners for war crimes without any authority to do so, that would be a violation of the provision requiring regularly constituted tribunals. By contrast, a tribunal constituted within the president’s power as commander in chief under the normal laws of war or a tribunal constituted by congressional action could be “regularly constituted.” Nevertheless, the Supreme Court’s majority rejected this argument. Despite its oft common insistence today on viewing the laws of other nations or the international actions of other nations in interpreting our own Constitution, the Supreme Court does not look at the actions of other countries with respect to military tribunals or commissions.

The Court argues sighting a well-known treatise on military law by Winthrop that the current military tribunals do not fall under the major categories for which military tribunals are used: Marshall Law, occupation and trial of war crimes. They claim that “none of the overt acts that Hamdan is alleged of committing violates the law of war.” It also argues that an offense against the laws of war must have been committed both in the particular theater of war and during the relevant conflict. The High Court infers that Hamdan might have engaged in his conspiracy prior to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

This does bring up a problem which is created by the nature of Islamic extremism. The Islamist extremists as a rule violate the laws of war all the time. That is how they conduct warfare. They attack and kill civilians, they do not wear uniforms, they do not identify themselves, they do not work under a centralized identifiable command structure associated with the authority of a nation state, their attacks are not proportional, they do not protect those who are captured or rendered hors de combat (instead they torture them and cut their heads off), they do not have rational and achievable war goals (world conquest is not exactly achievable), they utilize neutral locations such as hospitals and mosques for the storage of weapons and the planning of attacks, they deliberately place military targets in private homes, hospitals and other locations where civilians will be killed if the targets are attacked, and while they may have certain semi-legitimate historical grievances, their essential cause is fundamentally unjust from an objective perspective. In other words, Islamic extremism is an organized movement dedicated to violating the laws of war. Participating in an organization which supports this kind of activity ought to be characterizable as a violation of the law of war in itself. This is exactly what the indictment says: that Hamdan conspired to participate in an organization that was doing things that are in fact actually violations of the law of war even though the indictment does not specifically lay that out.

If it is the case that current international law is not adequate to create a separate category for radical Islamic fighters working for Al Qaeda and other similar organizations, then a new category needs to be explicitly created. The difficulty with doing so is that undoubtedly many Islamic countries will not agree to international treaties creating a new category. In addition, countries like the Soviet Union and China will find it in their interest to harry the United States and the West by denying the existence of a new category. They have the power to simply act extrajudicially and do whatever they want. They know that the United States is hampered by law and that by refusing the existence of a category that explicitly deals with Islamic terrorists, they will effectively hurt the United States politically and weaken it internationally. Somehow the United States needs to act to ensure that such a category in international law is created. Just as in the past it was recognized that piracy was in a special category and that pirates could be hung on the spot because they were per se in violation of the laws of nations and civilized conduct, it needs to be recognized that organizations like Al Qaeda and their followers deserve a special categorization different from that of soldiers, spies or civilians. It must also be recognized that the exigencies of dealing with organizations like Al Qaeda are completely different from those of dealing with the army of a nation state. Al Qaeda’s methodologies involve the violation of all laws of war and civilized conduct. As a result, any communication by detained Al Qaeda personnel with their companions is likely to result in severe damage to the cause of fighting them.

With a normal army, the letters a prisoner of war writes home to his family are not going to help the enemy’s war effort. But with an illegal underground organization like Al Qaeda, code words can be passed in letters, through attorneys or even through the Red Cross. These codes could easily result in severe harm to civilians. By the same token, because of their common violation of the laws of war, it is often difficult to identify an Al Qaeda combatant. They are not honest about their participation in Al Qaeda’s efforts. Instead, they frequently claim to be something other than what they are. This has already been seen with many of the people who were captured, sent to Guantanimo and subsequently released because they claimed to be innocent farmers who had been framed by jealous relatives or rival tribes. Once returned to Afghanistan, many of them immediately returned to combatant status and were later found bearing arms against the United States and the Afghan government. Originally, I think most commentators in favor of fighting the war on terror have through that the exigencies involved would justify merely bending the normal rules of war or recognizing that no rules applied since the normal rules of war did not, and proceeding with what needed to be done. As the war has already lasted five years and is likely to go on for many years to come, regularization and the creation of special categories and rules that deal with the exigencies of this kind of conflict is of paramount importance. While politically problematic, it needs to be done sooner or later. Obviously the current Senate of the United States is probably not well suited to dealing with this problem. But someone must.

Commentators and experts on international law need to stop dividing into categories of those who seek to hamper the war effort through international law and those who seek to argue away international law in order to facilitate the conflict. Instead, we need to come to an understanding that the conflict must be dealt with in appropriate ways that facilitate the war while making it clear what the legal basis for combating terrorists is. It may be politically unrealistic to think that the government of the United States is currently capable of handling this task. So many members of the opposition will do anything to help our enemies and nothing to compromise with those at the other end of the political spectrum. The backlash of anger and suspicion that results from those who legitimately seek to protect our country makes political discourse even more difficult. At the same token, international venues are even less likely to be fruitful for the reasons already discussed above. Perhaps legal scholars who favor combating terrorism could take the lead by developing a proposed system of categories and rules that both recognize the exigencies of this type of situation and clearly apply the rule of law in a way that prevents the current use of international law to circumvent the war against terror. Perhaps as things continue to deteriorate in the nations of Europe, the Europeans will eventually be willing to sign on to these new rules. Normally when confronted with exigencies they simply ignore the rules they are so eager to apply to others. (For example, French actions in the last few years in the Ivory Coast and their actions a few decades ago in Algeria.) Anyway, the Hamdan decision clearly opens the door for Congress to deal with at least the bare minimum issue of how Al Qaeda members can be legitimately tried. One hopes that they can do it without making it impossible to convict and punish people who are conscious violators of the laws of war and the rights of human beings, while still creating a process that will in some way enable someone to actually sort out innocent farmers from ruthless Islamo-fascists.

Undoubtedly Congress already thought they had already dealt with this problem. As the Hamdan court notes at page 38 of its opinion, the Uniform Code of Military Justice had incorporated by reference the common law of war. That ought to be enough. But under current usages of international law that seek to prevent the application of objective standards of justice and reason and instead focus on preventing rule of law abiding combatants from having combat, this provision is no longer working. The Supreme Court is using international law against our own country in a sense. Undoubtedly it hopes to protect innocents and to protect the liberties of human beings. But it did not have to make the decision it made.

Indeed, this is one of the most frustrating things about the Hamdan decision. As Justices Thomas, Scalia and Alito point out in their dissents, there are many ways in which the Court could have avoided making a decision in this case. At the very least, the Court could have exercised political question abstention and said that because this dealt with a highly political issue, the Court would abstain and instead leave it to Congress to enact new rules if it thought the president was violating its existing intentions. If Hamdan was not intended as a political decision, it certainly has been used that way by the media. You constantly hear news articles claiming that the court applied the Geneva Convention to the prisoners at Guantanimo. As we have seen, while there is a tiny portion of the Geneva Convention that the Court applied, that requiring basic humanitarian conduct, the vast bulk of the conventions, over 90% of their provisions, have no applicability to the Guantanimo detainees even under the broadest understanding of the Hamdan decision. The detainees are not people who work for a nation state. They were not in uniform. They were not under a systematic identifiable command. They did not abide by the laws of war themselves. As a result, they clearly do not come under the normal provisions of the Geneva Convention governing treatment of combatants. The Hamdan court never said they did. Nevertheless, in order to create political leverage against the Bush administration, the news media is happy to make statements that make people think the Court has said the Geneva Convention applies to the Guantanimo detainees.

The War in Lebanon

I’ve been quite surprised to see so many voices on the Internet and elsewhere complaining that Israel’s strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon are in some way disproportionate or unjust. I do feel sorry for the civilians in Lebanon who are apparently being used as human shields by Hezbollah. I do feel compassion for Lebanon as a whole because they are in part deceived by Hezbollah and in part unable to eliminate them from their country even if they have the desire to do so. And there is no question but that war is always a terrible and tragic thing. The only problem is that there are some things worse than a two-sided war.

Hezbollah started this particular war. They have fired far more than 2,400 anti-personnel rockets into Israel from locations within Lebanon. They have also invaded Israeli territory and captured and killed Israeli soldiers. It should be obvious that such acts are unjust and are acts of war. But what Hezbollah has done goes beyond mere war. Hezbollah is not the representative of the nation state. Nor are they an indigenous revolutionary movement seeking freedom from a tyrant. As a result, their status is inherently in violation of the laws of war. Second, Hezbollah is using unguided rockets which are aimed in a vaguely general way, not unlike the V1s and V2s used by the Germans during the Second World War. Such rockets can in theory be used against military targets. But they work much better against civilian targets since civilian targets are usually much larger and much “softer.” Hezbollah has deliberately targeted civilian targets throughout Israel with their attacks. The rockets used are designed specifically to cause human casualties. They are packed with buckshot or ball bearings designed specifically to kill and injure human beings. Deliberate use of unguided rockets as a terrorist weapon against innocent civilians and is also a violation of the laws of war. It is fundamentally unjust. As if all this wasn’t enough, Hezbollah does still more. They locate their rocket launchers and their other weapons caches in areas in which civilians will be injured and killed if anyone attempts to destroy a launcher or weapons cache. They put their rocket launchers in peoples’ houses and villages. They put them in mosques. In fact, Hezbollah has deliberately installed much of their military hardware in Christian communities and Sunni communities so that when these military targets are hit, people whom they do not value and whom they wish to arouse against Israel will be the victims. So Hezbollah is in effect waging war against the people of Lebanon. They have drawn the righteous wrath of Israel down upon the heads of their somewhat more innocent neighbors. At the same time, they profess to have no political goals against these neighbors, nor do they claim that the government of Lebanon is inherently tyrannical. As a result, their actions vis-à-vis Lebanon are also unjust and in violation of the laws of war.

Even if Israel is not always perfect, even if you believe that the world made a mistake in allowing the creation of the State of Israel (which I do not), even if you sympathize with the economic problems of the Palestinians (which are largely their own fault. If they invested as much money in business as they invested in terror, they would be doing quite well), it is still the case that the actions of Hezbollah weigh far worse in the balance.

Israel is quite just in seeking the military destruction of Hezbollah’s unjust and illegal force. They are justified in using whatever force is necessary to do so. It is unfortunate that relatively innocent people in Lebanon are dying because Hezbollah has been allowed to place their weapons of terror among them. But under the circumstances that simply cannot be helped. In the long run, the world will be better off is Hezbollah is eliminated as a force in the Middle East. If people cannot get away with unlawful terrorist tactics, perhaps they will try diplomacy or other tactics more in keeping with law and morality.

Naturally there are risks to Israel’s action. Their self-defense will alienate some people in the Middle East who are ardent fans of Hezbollah despite their methods. But one suspects that there is not really anything Israel could do to gain these peoples’ approval anyway. Second, because Hezbollah is effectively targeting Lebanon itself through their choice of emplacements, Lebanon is being degraded and will be less effective as a state for a period of time in the future. Again, this may have negative results in the short run. But, once again, it cannot be helped. The allies in the Second World War could not simply allow Germany to take over the world because innocent people would be killed if they responded. Likewise, we could not let the Japanese take over and dominate the world during the Second World War even though innocent people were killed in resisting Japan. There have always been innocent victims in war and no one should underestimate the heartache, pain and suffering that these people undergo. Evildoers cannot be allowed to get away with evil deeds simply because combating them will also cause a certain amount of unintended collateral human suffering. This is because the evildoers are creating human suffering to begin with. And human suffering deliberately caused is actually worse than human suffering caused indirectly. It may not seem to be the case to those experiencing the suffering, but it must, in fact, be true. When we have a cavity in our tooth, we are willing to experience pain at the dentist in order to prevent the further decay of the tooth. When we have decay among the world of nations, we must experience the pain of war in order to remove the decay and cancer that could easily cause even worse problems down the road. This is an unpopular thing to say in today’s world of moral equivalents. It is easier to try to claim that no one should ever use violence for any reason. But then doing this empowers the people who are willing to use violence despite our remonstrances.

What is particularly odd in today’s world is that people are often willing to excuse the use of violence by aggressors and then become upset about the use of violence against the aggressors. Likewise, if someone wisely seeks to prevent the aggressor from his announced and intended course of action, people disapprove of the preemptive use of force to stop the aggressor before he goes out and kills first. Neither of these objections really makes any sense even though they are understandable. When it is difficult to make moral choices and when people claim to have disagreements about morality, it is easiest to throw up one’s hands and claim that you cannot tell the difference. It is also much easier to appeal to the moral scruples of those who actually have them than to appeal to the moral scruples of those who are international criminals. But stopping the moral in their combat against the immoral merely empowers the immoral rather than ending war or combat. In a difficult moral world, we have to make difficult moral choices. Human motives are always mixed and human beings are always sinful and imperfect. No army or nation or people will ever be completely right in everything they do. All are sinners and fall short of the glory of God. But this does not mean that some groups and some violent acts are not worse than others.

This moral reality is well depicted in literature. One of the wonderful things about Tolkien’s trilogy, the Lord of the Rings, is Tolkien’s understanding of the moral complexities of war. In Tolkien’s world, men, elves, dwarfs and hobbits are all sinners. None of them are morally pure. All of them have fallen to unjust wars and squabbling with the other races from time to time and unjust wars among themselves. Nevertheless, the elves, dwarfs, men and hobbits which are essentially loyal to the free peoples of Middle-Earth, still have moral supremacy over the forces of Sauron and Mordor. The forces of Mordor no doubt believe they are revenging themselves for their defeat in past wars, for their lack of natural resources and for their general villanization by the free peoples of Middle-Earth. Perhaps it requires the iron hand of Sauron to unify their chaotic forces into an army that does not destroy itself. Nevertheless, this does not make Mordor less evil than the free peoples of Middle-Earth. Nor does it make them less worthy of being resisted. It is also the case that some men have been tricked into allegiance with Mordor . Their involvement with evil and their subsequent death is all the more tragic and sad because they could have lived like other free men.

Our human wars are clearly not as clear cut as the mythology of Tolkien. But there are still causes that are better than others and there are still justices and injustices in this world. While no one should say lets do evil that good may come of it, it is still good to resist what is more evil. Let’s always be eager to examine ourselves first and to seek God’s help to eradicate the evil in our own hearts. But let us also be unwilling to rise to the cause of those who are unjustly under attack or who are unjustly oppressed. These choices are difficult but not making them is a moral failing in itself. The exercise of all virtue and righteousness requires courage. Courage to face the choices we have to make, wisdom to evaluate those choices and see the world as it truly is, and the Word and Spirit of God to guide us in that endeavor.

Lungren Commentary on Adult Stem Cell Research

NPR : Ethics Take Precedence over Medical Advances

One of the best comments on adult stem cell research that I have ever heard or read is on audio at the above link. Dan Lungren has made the best, most succinct and accurate set of arguments I have ever heard in just three and a half minutes. He expresses compassion and gives reasoned arguments for the truth. This is a model for bioethical discourse.

Lungren has really done credit to himself and greatly furthered the civil debate of this issue with this commentary.

Book Review: Paul Marshall's God and the Constitution: Christianity and American Politics

Paul Marshall’s book on God and the Constitution is the best book on faith and government, in fact the best book on government for that matter, that I think I have ever read. It is thorough, balanced, biblical, and almost always correct. Marshall begins by sketching the difficulty that in our culture today religious faith is suppressed, criticized and expelled from the public. At the same time religion is ignored here in America, it is ignored abroad despite its great importance in history, current affairs, war and peace. But a proper understanding of the world requires seeing things as they actually are rather than as we wish them to be or as they would seem to be convenient. Religion must be understood. True religion must be believed. Marshall sets about discussing the Christian faith and its application to the realities of human government. He starts off near the beginning with the story of Cain and its many implications. He deals wisely with the questions of coercion and power raised by human government. He notes the source of government’s authority in God Himself and goes through the biblical passages dealing with government both directly and tangentially. Marshall’s hermeneutic is practically flawless. He wisely interprets and combines the biblical passages to show the authority of human government, its limits and the times it can be changed. Marshall explains away many of the attacks by Christians and non-Christians alike on a biblical view of government.

Marshall also explains the proper relationship between the Christian faith and government. He notes that Christians should not be seeking a genuine theocracy, but cannot avoid expressing true ideas as part of their love for their neighbor in a participatory republic. Marshall deals with the issues of rights, civil disobedience, democracy and politics from a Christian perspective in a marvelously balanced way. He gives examples of the failures of both the right and the left to properly apply the truth in politics. He provides suitable anecdotes, the problems raised by these anecdotes, and illustrates in detail the classic understanding of the relationship between law and gospel. Marshall also warns us against the various types of idolatry inspired by life, culture and political action. But he is not afraid of political action. He explains the proper role of the church, the state and religious freedom. He debunks the current belief that true toleration is believing nothing at all and only endorsing religions that believe nothing significant. He also rejects the idea of a denomination controlling the government. He understands that there is a need to recognize the truth of Christianity and to use the truths flowing from Christianity in government despite the current hostility to doing so. But Marshall is sensitive to how this can be done effectively. He understands that while we should never compromise our principles, we must compromise in politics. Incrementalism will often gain us far more ground in the fight to love our neighbors than a steadfast insistence on all or nothing. He also understands the difference between law and morality, that a government cannot require all acts of virtue or punish all acts of vice. All human government is a tool for God to punish evil and reward good, but there must always be mercy and restraint involved since all of us are sinners and incapable of keeping the whole of God’s law. Marshall deals with some of the thornier issues in politics today including abortion. He also deals with the difficult questions of international law and international relations including the current problem with Islam and the ancient problem of war. Overall, I find Marshall’s book to be extremely satisfying and I am surprised that it is not more popular and more common among Evangelicals today.