10 Truths About Christians And Politics

Coral Ridge Ministries
Dr. D. James Kennedy, Founder

From the 10 Truths Series
TRUTH #2 - Christianity Makes the Best Foundation for Law and Politics

Christianity brought a moral overhaul to the ancient world that is most evident in the treatment before and after Christ of the “least of these,” little children. What we take for granted about cherishing the young was not always so.

In 1 B.C. a Roman traveler to Alexandria, Egypt, sent a warm note home to his wife. It was a tender letter, with one chilling exception: I send you my warmest greetings. I want you to know that we are still in Alexandria. And please don’t worry if all the others come home, but I remain in Alexandria. I beg you and entreat you to take care of the child and, if I receive my pay soon, I will send it up to you. If you have the baby before I return, if it is a boy, let it live; if it is a girl, expose it. You sent a message with Aphrodisias, “Don‘t forget me.” How can I forget you? I beg you, then, not to worry.

This blunt and matter of fact direction to discard a baby girl offers stark and troubling insight into the moral character of the ancient Roman world, where infanticide was common. Nineteenth century Irish historian W.E.H. Lecky called infanticide “one of the deepest stains of the ancient civilization.” It was so much a part of Roman culture that the myth of the founding of Rome recounts the abandonment of two infants, Romulus and Remus. Thrown into the Tiber River in the eighth century B.C., they were said to have survived by being nursed by wolves.

Opposition to Infanticide
“Not only was the exposure of infants a very common practice, it was justified by law and advocated by philosophers,” including both Plato and Aristotle. The Roman tradition of paterfamilias gave the father total authority to decide the fate of his children— including whether a newborn was to be exposed to die outside the city walls, or allowed to live. Early Christians followed the example of Jesus, who loved and blessed the children, as recorded in Matthew 19:14. They firmly opposed abortion and infanticide. Two early church documents that were widely read, the Didache and the Epistle of Barnabas, both prohibited infanticide. Eventually, these Christian views became Roman law. Emperor Valentinian, who had been lobbied by Bishop Basil of Caesarea, outlawed infanticide in 374 A.D.21 and in 529, Emperor Justinian emancipated all “exposed” children who had been forced into slavery.

Slavery was widespread in the ancient world, but it was not opposed by church fathers with the same firmness as infanticide. Still, Paul made it clear that in Christ, “there is neither slave nor free . . . for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). By the fourth century, legal reforms to benefit slaves were adopted under the first Christian emperor, Constantine. As Christianity spread throughout the ancient world, its influence was felt in other areas of the law. Constantine, for example, also ended the practice of branding criminals on the forehead because, he said, The human countenance, formed after the image of heavenly beauty, should not be defaced. In the sixth century, Emperor Justinian reorganized the Roman legal code and essentially “enacted orthodox Christianity into law,” according to historian Will Durant. Charles Diehl, author of a history of the Byzantine Empire, states that Justinian’s Code “introduced into law a regard, hitherto unknown, for social justice, public morality, and humanity.”

Rule of Law
The Roman Caesars, unfettered by legal or moral restrictions, had been prone to mercilessly dispatching their victims to death. Historian Alvin Schmidt reports that Tiberius enjoyed seeing his torture victims thrown into the sea, and a suspicious Caligula had his entire palace staff killed. Christianity, however, brought both a new ethic and new ideas about the limits of civil authority. Ambrose, the fourth century bishop of Milan, rebuked Emperor Theodosius I, telling him that “No one, not even the emperor, is above the law.” That challenge to the sovereignty of the Caesars, who required worship from their subjects and often threw them to the lions for refusing to do so, was a new thought for the ancient world. It was a Christian idea that the king, like his subjects, was subject to the law. As Christianity took root, so did this revolutionary idea, and slowly it worked its way into Western law. As the first British monarch to rule over all of England, King Alfred the Great (849-899) placed English law on an explicitly biblical foundation, drawing from “the Ten Commandments, the Laws of Moses, the Golden rule of Christ, and other biblical principles.”

According to one commentator, King Alfred’s published laws “were a creative effort of government unique in Europe and marked the beginning of a great age for England.” As the Bible was applied to civic law, “the Christian church effected nothing short of a revolution in the forms of Western politics.” King Alfred also saw the connection between an educated populace and effective government and he promoted general education and insisted that his nobles read and learn Christian history. His view of government, he wrote, was that: Local government ought to be synonymous with local Christian virtue, otherwise it becomes local tyranny, local corruption and local iniquity. The idea that even the king was subject to the rule of law was tested 300 years later by the tyrannical rule of King John. But in 1215, the English barons, with the help of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, and other ecclesiastical leaders, forced the king to submit himself to a written charter. The Magna Carta placed specific limitations on the king’s rule and, according to an American Bar Foundation publication, it provided “the foundation on which has come to rest the entire structure of Anglo-American constitutional liberties.” This landmark document, which clearly rested on the Holy Scriptures, later served as the cornerstone for the American colonists’ claim that King George III had violated their rights as British subjects.

“The Bible,” as Dr. D. James Kennedy has written, “laid the foundations and principles upon which the Magna Carta was framed.” But can the Bible serve as a political handbook? The next chapter answers that question.

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