no law, or only lawyers
[Unless otherwise noted, all quotes are from Bullinger’s Decades and have been lightly adapted.]
Bullinger explains to us, from the beginning, that his sermon ‘will not be unpleasant or unprofitable to zealous hearers’. I should try that this Sunday: ‘If you’re really paying attention and you’re godly, you’ll love this sermon.’ Didn’t even know that was an approach I could be using. Thanks Bullinger! Oh wait…he apologizes at the end for having been ‘somewhat tedious’. Now that sounds like my sermons.
This sermon focuses on the judicial law, the law as applied to civil society and the court system. The Old Testament theocracy had distinctions between church and state. While there was overlap between some responsibilities, the religious leaders weren’t responsible for civic matters and the civil leaders weren’t responsible for religious matters. The priests weren’t executing criminals (even if they were giving input from the law as to the situation) and the elders weren’t actually offering sacrifices (even if they were presiding over the events). Hence the value of the three-fold division of the Old Testament law: moral – dealing with the overarching precepts drawn from God’s eternal character, ceremonial – dealing with the sacramental system and the specific responsibilities of the priests, and civil – dealing with the application of the moral law to corporate society.
How did this law code compare with that of other nations?
Now though these judicial laws are few in number and not to be compared with the huge volumes of the laws and decrees of emperors, kings, and wisest sages, yet they do in this short catalogue contain the main points of judgment and justice. In effect, they contain almost as much in these short books (of the Pentateuch) as the many books of laws and constitutions of emperors and civil lawyers. The good Lord did not want to burden and trouble his people with too long and burdensome a pack of laws, nor was it necessary to pry into every single thought of people of bad character. It’s enough for wise men, people, and nations if every one have so much law as is necessary for the conservation of peace, civil honesty, and public tranquillity; as all the holy scriptures witness that the people of Israel had.
I’m not sure if these points are a theological justification for common law over civil law, but Bullinger’s observations from the Old Testament judicial law certainly apply to this discussion. Bullinger himself lived in a civil law system, so he would have personally known what it was like to live in a society where there were many laws. (I once asked some Swiss friends if there were a law in Switzerland against flushing the toilet after 10pm, as I’d been told there was. They laughed and said, ‘Of course not’. But then they got very serious and asked, ‘But why on earth would you want to flush a toilet after 10pm? It’s just not kind.’ Right…). Few laws, chosen carefully and written well, is vastly preferable to a system where laws are multiplied to fix every single situation. Why? Because laws are dealing fundamentally with human behavior, and human behavior flows from the human heart. Can any book of laws cover all the depravity and deviance the human heart can come up with?
Bullinger continues…
The judges are the overseers of judgment, those who justly give sentence according to the law, between those who in conflict, who defend and deliver the good, and who punish and bridle the wicked. So the judicial laws are those which inform the judges how to determine controversial matters and questions, how to judge justly, how to punish the wicked, and how to defend the good, that peace, honesty, justice, and public tranquillity may be among all men; this is the single purpose and goal to which both judge and judicial laws should tend and ought to be directed. For God, our good Lord and lawgiver, desires it to go well with man, that we may live happily, kindly, and peacefully.
Simply put, the civil law is the application of the moral law to civil society. There have been political battles in the US about whether or not the 10 Commandments should be displayed in courthouses. Many British Christians saw these political dramas as quaint if not downright misplaced. But there is something very significant about a judge wishing to make it clear that his judgment is flowing from eternal and transcendent principles. Where else do we get our law? What other source do we have for why we restrict certain activities and permit others? And no, arguing that we live in a multicultural society doesn’t get us around these questions. The very same questions still remain: where do we get our law? What’s the source of our law? God? Human reason (ie: man)? Other religions? Jonathan Leeman’s book Political Church very helpfully argued that everyone is bringing his or her god into the civil square, even the secularists – maybe especially the secularists.
The rest of the sermon more or less walks through the moral law and seeks to draw connections from the ten commandments to the various civil laws explained in the Pentateuch. Several big-picture lessons seem particularly clear from Bullinger’s sermon on laws.
1. Bullinger doesn’t have the least embarrassment about God’s law having application to civil society today. The idea that it wouldn’t would be completely incomprehensible to him.
2. Bullinger sees a society that is ordered by the principles contained in God’s law as best for justice, peace, and public tranquillity. He’s heartily convinced that God knows what’s best for society. Are we?
3. He’s also realistic. This law is for men, not angels; and the process of governing men is messy. There’s nothing at all of the idealist or the revolutionary in Bullinger’s sermon (his people had already heard that song under Zwingli). He’s working to apply God’s law to his own setting and time, with sensitivity to what his own people need and can handle. Calvin functioned similarly in Geneva.
Maybe an exercise for modern Christians would be to slowly, meditatively, look through the 10 commandments. Think, as you read, ‘How do these laws impact the political discussion of our day?’ What do these 10 commandments have to say about the political crises that consume our papers, our social media feeds, and indeed our own thoughts? How would better following God’s moral law make our society better?
Is such a thought beyond how most of us engage in political conversations? Bullinger would like a word…
Next, how the law is to be used, and comparing the law in Old and New
