God's justice and our own

I recently stumbled on this article (while reading about a very different subject), summarizing a speech given by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The article delves into many topics: the death penalty, secularism, democracy, but its main focus is the role of the divine in government.

I don't want to comment on the article in whole, since reading it is a gateway into the mind of one of America's top-level adjudicators. I do want to say I respect Antonin Scalia for his level-headedness, his strict constitutionalism, and his loyalty to the notion of popular sovereignty. I also think he's a funny guy. Like almost every other Supreme Court justice he can write very well, his ideas are organized cleanly, and they are presented as equally well.

Where I disagree with him is in his assertion that government "however you want to limit that concept—derives its moral authority from God". What justice Scalia is saying then, at least insofar as I understand it, is that no matter the type of government, no matter the ruler, no matter the decision making process, the ultimate authority to lead a nation of people derives from God. I have no doubt that this position in part stems from Scalia's Roman Catholic religion, which teaches the special connection between man and God. Scalia believes that the great moral authority that the state possesses to do things not allowed to the individual doesn't come from the collective will of the people but rather from the hand of the divine lordship. This is why the state has the authority to execute people, take land and property, create rules for all to follow, etc. Scalia even references non-democratic governments as divinely ordained because their leaders are chosen in a series of battles the outcomes of which are decided by the "Lord of Hosts" or "Lord of Armies".

Where this breaks down is a familar logical pitfall for anyone who's thought about the legitimacy of human government: we come to a conclusion that either every government that has ever existed has a "mandate of heaven" or that God sanctions some governments and not others. Both of these are equally fallacious. If the ruling government is always ordained by God either through the democratic exercise of the people or the submission of them to the strongest army, then even the ultra-atheistic former Soviet Union and current People's Republic of China have God's go-ahead to rule. If however, governments can be formed without the approval of the "Big Guy Upstairs" then how are we to know which governments have it and which don't? It's quite possible then that governments created in war and maintained by brute force against their civilian populace have the utmost approval of the Lord, while democratically elected ones do not. We could not only argue about which types of government have God's favor, but indeed which individual governments themselves have it. What a mess we have made for ourselves, then.

Also, Scalia's comments about the outcome of battles being decided by the Lord of Armies bespeaks a peasant mentality, if you ask me. Any competent military commander or student of history will tell you battles are won by those more prepared, more trained, and more willing to win. There have been countless times in history where a superior numerical force has been repulsed by a smaller force better equipped and better trained. It is not up to random chance to decide the outcome of battles but rather the decided, calculated actions of the men involved. No one would expect to win a major military confrontation by simply praying and marching in. There will always be a battle plan, always maps and logistics tables, always scouts and spies and reconaissance. To win you must win in this universe, in this reality. The external universe of the Godhead does not factor into deciding victors.

There is one more problem with this notion I want to go into. It is best to illustrate it by example. In 1781, the leaders of the provisional government of thirteen former colonies of Great Britain accepted the surrendur of Lord Cornwall, the highest British military authority in the land, effectively ending the British military presence in the colonies at the time. It also generally assured American independence since Britain no longer had an army to force its will on the colonies. So, since the fate of the colonies had been decided on the battlefields of North America, and by extension had been decided by the "Lord of Hosts", then it stood that the new American government had received its seal of approval from the Office of Heaven and could legitimately claim to rule. Fast forward 190 years, and the American nation, remember given a divine decree to rule, wars in Vietnam to stop "Communist aggression". Eventually, due to Vietnamese military persistence and domestic turmoil, the American military is forced to withdraw. So, the new Vietnamese government (Communist and not religion-friendly) having won on the battlefield, now has the seal of Heaven to rule legitimately. You see where this is headed? The American nation has the heavenly right to rule, but only in a certain geographical area. Other than that God has partitioned other governments to rule. We are falling into a trap of "might-makes-right". Indeed, the human impossibility of fullly comprehending God would mean any attempt to measure human governmental authority in this way is ultimately an exercise in futility.

I submit that as free individuals we possess the authority, moral or otherwise, to do whatever we please. It is only through the unwritten social contract, which is itself written in various ways by different societies throughout the world, that we agree to concede these individual rights to a greater collective entity. It is a distinctly human action, and human action, having been set free by God at the beginning of the universe, needs no higher justification then its own satisfaction. Indeed, as God has forfeited all responsibility for us, he has likewise absolved all our responsibility to him, so that we might do whatever we want to do. This is the practice of free will.