How’s that again?
I don’t understand this. I must (as so often) be missing something. Roger Scruton says we we owe to ‘the Christian legacy’ the idea that law is and ought to be a secular institution, then he says we owe it to Roman law, but he goes on saying it’s a Christian legacy.
[O]ne of the things that we owe to [the Christian] legacy is the idea that law is and ought to be a secular institution, whose authority is founded in human decisions and is independent of, and in an important respect takes precedence over, divine commands…The privatisation of religious law was clearly a part of Jesus’s mission…His striking pronouncement in the story of the tribute money, that we should render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s, has served for many centuries as authority for the view that, in public matters, it is human and not divine government that should be obeyed. This idea gained credibility through St Paul’s letters, influenced as they were by Roman law and by the knowledge that the early church enjoyed the protection of a developed system of law.
In other words there was an existing system of secular law which influenced Paul, and one catchy phrase is attributed to Jesus – and that makes secular law a Christian legacy? It looks to me much more like a Roman legacy (and an Athenian legacy before that). What am I missing?
I’m not sure about Paul, but where does Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, forcing Theodosius into making Christianity the only Roman religion fit into the idea of secular law?
Well, if we’d just had the Greco-Roman tradition, I think we would have had the idea of law as separate from Divine commands. But the bible got the whole idea of law and God badly mixed up, and it’s fair to say that thought from Jesus/Paul did a lot to untangle the two. So it seems to me there’s something right (and wrong) about what Scruton says.
Since Scruton found religion (or rather started bragging about it)he’s taken on its unfortunate habit of making breathtaking assertions without any evidence.
But if the bible hadn’t gotten law and god mixed up, or if Christians hadn’t had a bible, or if there had been no Christians, then there would have been no need for anyone to undo the bible’s work. I think it’s a bit rich to call secularism a Christian legacy if it’s just a matter of a few (scanty) ideas that partly undid Christianity’s own confusion. Not to mention how many centuries it took.
I’d be a bit uneasy about attributing the strand of Christianity that sees religion as a personal relationship with the divine to some Jesus/Paul combined entity. As I see it Jesus, a reformer disgusted with the corruption he saw around him decided it would be a good idea to decouple religion from Jewish cultural practice only to have Paul, the ultimate flip-flopping politician, come along and coupled it right back into the political structure of the Roman Empire. Familiar story, of course, in it’s purely political aspects. But the legacy of that particular bit of politicking was a strange and rather unstable conception of the relation between church and state which while not straightforwardly theocratic is definitely not secular either. True secularism – yes, the enlightenment version – was an attempt to end that instability and the violence that went with it but of course the contradictions of Christian ‘secularism’ remain to haunt us – think modern American fundamentalist ‘patriot’ if you need an example or the CofE if you need one at the other end of the spectrum. Please correct if I’ve got my facts wrong. I’m no scholar of religion and I’d really rather not have to worry about such things but it seems to me that if you ignore the fact that Christianity as the world has experienced it is an attempt to deal with a contradiction you get the sort of nonsense Scruton is famous for.
I am not going to comment on Scruton’s work, but I am not completely sure that I am happy to give the name “secular law” to a system headed by a man whose titles included “Pontifex Maximus”.
Bridge-builder in chief! Perfectly secular!
I have remained a watcher in the night for many months now, but this item has made me willing to brave the odd glister. Roger Scruton is that odious thing, a Champaign Philosopher. He has so little idea of social deprivation that he spouts his communitarian claptrap in a public school generated vacuum that only the oxbridge (capital purposely omitted) media, redbrick po-mo wannabees and his savagely nepotistic co-members of parliament would ever notice. I find his writing entertaining, but the content is grotesque.
Don’t know much about law, or Christianity, or Roman law (don’t know much about much at all really) but one who doesn’t tells me that much of the practice of our Common Law (the basis of law in most English speaking countries) actually comes from the Saxons, The Roman Law is more representative of the French system. Anyway, it seems to my very small brain that most laws are based on the ‘be nice to people’ principle which seems to be almost universal.
The Roman Law is more representative of the French system.
And Scots law, don’t forget. Roger Scruton – the thinking man’s PJ O’Rourke. He talks a lot of shite at times – most of the time – but in this case all he’s really saying is that the Islamic tradition is less likely to distinguish between what is a crime and a sin than Christianity. He’s not wrong.
He was a good teacher though – didn’t let his personal views get in the way, and was good-humoured about disagreement when they cropped up. I say “was” because I’ve no idea whether he still teaches…
OB, I had the following thought: the Romans would have quite probably burned both you and the early Christians, and for the same reason … you’re atheists (for not being willing to sacrifice to the Roman deities)!
Shuggy, fair enough about his overall point, but I still think that particular claim is at least dubious. If people make dubious claims on the way to making reasonable general claims, it’s still worth pointing out the dubious ones.