State, Church, Family…?

The civil government usually claims, now and across human history, to be the distinguishing and unitary factor of each society. On occasion the religious institution, the ‘church,’ makes a grab for the same, but it does so either by being identified with the civil government, as with the monarchical cults of the ancient world and modern Communism/ Fascism, or by seeking to become a civil government, as with the Papacy. The pattern of history, however, is remarkably consistent. The civil government is almost assumed to be the party ultimately in charge of and responsible for the society in sum, with occasional carve-outs from that general power for other powers, the religious and familial governments, though these carve-outs are exceptions, nothing more. But why?

Most Powerful

Now, in the practical sense, this state of affairs is easily explained. The state is the single largest concentration of force in any sufficiently organized society; even pre-state civil governance possesses that ultimate power of worldly influence, the power of the sword. The state accumulates the power and perceived-to-actual right to kill, to remove property, to compel obedience. For sinful man, it is only natural to leverage this force to all other ends, to making the state preeminent.

But in the Christian view, the state plays second or third fiddle to the other two interpersonal governments. The state has no rightful dominion in the saving of men’s souls, and properly run it has a lesser role in aiding that work compared to the church, though neither has true government of salvation. The church’s role in the morals of society, meanwhile, is in Scripture established to be much farther-reaching thant the state’s, covering all sins under the state’s dominion (though with a different right and purpose) and then all the rest (though not always to punish).

Looming far above both state and church is the family. The family is the single most powerful institution of all of these, even if in most societies an individual power can rival state or church only by controlling some of those institution’s apparatus, as with a monarchical autocracy (al a Persia) or the Pornocracy in the Papal States. In the eternal view, however, the family is the single most influential agent because it holds the responsibility of educating children, of developing material dominion (wealth, inheritance, and vocation), and of most social cohesion. Even where it fails to hold on to these authorities in its exercise of power, the very usurpation demonstrates the family’s importance, for the church and state both fail with what they usurp (as they must), leaving the family with the need to, despite the usurpation, actually fulfil the role usurped.

Most Expansive

Is the civil government the largest of the three governments, larger than church or family? Well, church’s institution has at many times been larger than most individual states, as in medieval Europe, or equal, as with the caliphs, whose religious and political power were, to my knowledge, theoretically coextensive, though tilting in both directions at different times. And the family’s extra-governmental expression as the culture is often larger than a particular government. But the most important question is….

Is size relevant? True, the best size for a civil government is ‘one government for one nation,’ but that’s a function of government rising from a nation’s responsibility to self-govern under Genesis 9:5-6, to which end government is an instrument (and therefore a subordinate). Government is not made the default ruler of a society’s whole because it is ideally coextensive; that’s a clear nonsequitur.

Biblical?

The Biblical model does not make any of the three governments the ruler of society by default or at all. Each is given its duties, with the family having the largest role and the smallest governmental unit, the state having the smallest role and the largest unit, and the church the middle in both, as a rule.

The civil government, specifically, is given the job of punishing (punishing, not reforming) murder (Gen 9:5-6), a commission which, as per the Mosaic civil code and other passages in both testaments, includes the duty of punishing theft (via restitution), sexual crimes, kidnapping, and certain other things (such as blasphemy), as well as the power of just war. This duty it is given, with all powers necessary and proper (yes, I’m referencing the US constitution, and in reading those words, forget McCulloch v Maryland like the rest of the country ought to).

Limited government, according to Scripture, is not a function of exceptions being placed into government’s general power, like dykes walling off areas from the sea. Limited government is rather the limitation inherent to a grant of specific authority. As Spencer Roane recognized in savaging Maryland v McCulloch (I highly recommend his ‘Algernon Sidney’ essays), a grant of specific power contains a refusal of all ungranted powers. So it is with civil government’s grant from God (Rom. 13:1-3). It extends thus far and no farther.

In this recognition lies a pervading difference I have with Stephen Wolfe, whose position and its use of natural law integrates a view of civil government as the general steward of society, empowered to do whatever it finds necessary to a healthy society. But God did not give the state that right, and so it cannot pretend to exercise it without cursing its efforts and its nation (Hag. 2:10-19). We must return to a government limited from its first grant rather than by exception if we want a solid foundation for its reform- and for society’s health.