trc@houti.UUCP (07/11/83)
Response to Paul Dubuc on religion and the Constitution: There probably were some christian influences at in the writing of the constitution. But I would claim that the writers were far more influenced by the attitudes and thoughts of the "Age of Reason". After all, there had already been over 1700 years in which the principles of Christianity had time to be fully applied, through many governments that explicitly accepted the authority of Christianity. Why is it that none of these came out like the US government?? I would suggest that in fact, those earlier governments, and the Catholic Church as they were in the Dark Ages *are* the natural form of government under Christianity, and that only when that form was modified to include some elements of reason (rather than mysticism), did the more just form of government emerge. Consider what the bases for absolute laws in the Judeo-Christian tradition are. The Old Testament provides two possible sources - the Ten Commandments, and Jewish law, which I believe is supposed to be based mostly upon the Commandments. None of these laws are derived from a fundamental principle - all are claimed to originate from God, for no specified reason, by revelation. Some laws were, of course derived from these basic laws. This is not to criticize all of the laws that came out of this system, but merely to point out that they were accepted upon the basis of mysticism, rather than a unifying moral principle. The New Testament essentially replaced the old laws. It does not claim to destroy the old laws - merely complete them, presumably without negating its fundamentals. The New Testament appears to be an attempt to provide the consistent basis in principle that was lacking in the Old Testament. The basis can be summed up in two words - Mysticism and Altruism. Christians were to put nothing above God, and once they got that priority right, they were to "Love one another". Under this new scheme of morality, Love was presented as the basis - God's love for humans being the original reason for this. It is interesting to note that the ultimate expression of God's love required him to allow the murder of his own son - symbolic of the surrender of his highest value - to pay for the sins of humans that did not deserve to have their sins paid for. That is altruism. In Christianity, "Love" is used as a code word for altruism. Thus, any government based upon Christianity must be based upon Mystic Altruism. In fact, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution do contain elements of altruism and they probably were justified on religious grounds. However, I consider that these elements are flaws, that have allowed the slow degeneration of the government to its' present state. To re-use a metaphor, Christianity planted the seeds of the weeds of bad/big government that eventually grew in the cracks of the structure of the US Constitution. Tom Craver houti!trc