Jan
19
The Principle of Sphere Sovereignty, Part 2 of 2
“Increasingly, the citizen stands denuded before the total state, stripped of the protection of mediating non-civil private institutions and even of the inherited liberties of private civil law.” — Joe Boot
In last week’s Part 1, Dr. Joseph Boot commented on failed attempts at church/state/society relationships due to both faulty designs and abuses by those in power. He then introduced a solution that is both practical and scripturally supported, based on the principle of “sphere sovereignty”. This week, we continue looking at how that principle would work in practice, in particular when recognizing the need for public vs. private and civil vs. non-civil jurisdictions.
I’ll be quiet now and let Boot explain it much more thoroughly than I can, with helpful quotes by Herman Dooyeweerd and Abraham Kuyper…
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The principle of sphere sovereignty thus enables us to distinguish a just state from an absolutist power state, because a just state will recognize, in terms of the Christian principle, a variety of spheres of law within society including public law, civil private law and non-civil private law. Public law concerns the constitution, penal law and laws of criminal procedure as well as administrative law, which are meant to guarantee our political freedoms. Common law, or civil private law, exists to guarantee our freedom of thought and expression, association and so forth, making sure that as individuals and social entities we are on an equal footing with others. Critically, non-civil private law concerns the existence and freedom of non-political spheres of law, like the church.
Prior to the historical-cultural differentiation of the different spheres of law beginning in the West, with the life of the church institute as independent of the state, undifferentiated societies did not know an independent church, school, or state. Undeveloped societal forms of the extended family, clan, sib and tribe sought to fulfill in an undifferentiated way the tasks and functions of the distinct societal forms we know today. The recognition of distinct spheres of law in Western society is the result of a drawn-out historical process and requires the existence of a genuine state (res publica) with an independent and impartial judiciary where decisions are executed by officers of the state. Public law is communal law with its own distinct character:
“It comprehends the legal organisation and arrangement of relationships of authority and compliance between government and subjects. This organisation is founded on the sword power of the government and is intended to bring to expression the public legal idea of the common good.”
This public law is distinct from the domain of civil private law which involves the regulation of private relationships that do not involve authority and subordination. Here the significance and worth of image-bearers as individuals is given legal expression regardless of ethnicity, sex, or personal beliefs — it is the asylum of the individual person. Dooyeweerd explains the existence of civil private law:
“It presupposes a high degree of differentiation and integration of legal life and is geared to one structure in human society only, namely that of coordinational civil relationships that fall outside the internal communal and collective spheres of marriage, family, the business firm, organisations, and so on, thus to relationships in which individuals do not exercise any authority over one another… it presupposes the development of individualized private societal relationships where people participate in coordinated interaction as individual legal subjects with juridical equality. Distinct from the specific private communal law obtaining within particular societal collectivities such as the family, church, school, business, social club, etc., the sole purpose of civil law is to apply the demands of social justice in the reciprocal private interactions between individuals.”
Clearly, none of the jural spheres of human society can exist in isolation. The civil law sphere is obviously intertwined with the state, but it is not communal public law. Neither should it be equated with non-civil private law (or private communal law) manifest in the distinct structures of marriage and family, the extended family, the private school, voluntary associations and organizations and the business corporation. Law falling outside the domain of public law is not all private civil law, because private law includes various spheres of law which do not have civil-legal character. Civil private law thus needs to be balanced by the non-civil private law of private communities which should defend their own sphere sovereignty against encroachment by the state:
“What falls outside the domain of civil law is all the specific law of private communities and collectivities which serve their inner structure, guided by a destination lying outside the jural domain. This is the case in internal marriage and family law, internal business law, internal associational law, internal church law, and so on.”
This means, for example, that the civil magistrate cannot command or interpret the proper nature of church discipline, doctrine or worship, because this is the domain of non-civil private law and lies outside of the state’s competency. It also means that, where civil private law or public law does ‘touch’ on these non-civil private spheres of authority — say, in the marriage relationship — it does so only with respect to its external private civil or public side, i.e., the marriage contract/licence and divorce law, or criminal matters in cases of violence or abuse. And the same is true in regard to the church if clergy were assaulting or abusing members. This limitation on the state is necessary because marriage, as an intimate societal form, functions in numerous internal relationships like husband and wife, parent and child, etc.
Abraham Kuyper explores the institution of the family as a crucial example of a private law sphere which by virtue of its very existence and ordination of God limits the state:
“The sphere of the family opens itself, with its right of marriage, domestic peace, education and possession; and in this sphere also the natural head is conscious of exercising an inherent authority — not because the government allows it, but because God has imposed it. Paternal authority roots itself in the very life-blood and is proclaimed in the fifth commandment… Calvinism protests against state-omnipresence; against the horrible conception that no right exists above and beyond existing laws; and against the pride of absolutism…”
This delimiting principle is absolutely vital because most people tend to think of all law as state law and all government as state government. Yet in terms of the scriptural idea of sphere sovereignty (that is, spheres of law), the state (that is, civil government) is only one form of human government and no state has a legitimate right or authority to invade other law spheres and redefine pre-political societal structures like the family and marriage (let alone biological and creational realities like human sexuality), or to dictate to the church institute how she will worship and govern her members. The same applies to the question of how and what private schools and home schools should teach their children, how a person should decide and conduct their business investments and transactions, or what the artist should paint, or the musician compose and perform.
The state only has a valid interest in these matters if and when crimes are being committed or infractions of civil private law come into view. In other words, “Dominion is exercised everywhere,” as Kuyper argued, “but it is a dominion which works organically, not by virtue of a state investiture, but from life’s sovereignty itself.” Thus, the church does not exist by the permission of civil government any more than the family is created by the state. The church is governed and ruled by Jesus Christ under His Word. The state cannot command the church not to preach Christ, baptise or administer the sacraments and exercise church discipline, because Christ himself and His inspired apostles gave these commands (Matt 28:16-20; 1 Cor 11:23-32)….
Each God-ordained sphere of life, created by His Word, is obligated to submit itself to Christ by honoring and respecting each law sphere and keeping within the limits established by God. None of this is to say that the state does not have an important and legitimate role under the sovereignty of God and His Word. But the church, the family, the school and other spheres have their own king, and it isn’t the state. As Kuyper puts it in regard to the church institute, “Her position in the state is not assigned her by the permission of the Government, but Jure divino. She has her own organisation. She possesses her own office-bearers… the sovereignty of the State and the sovereignty of the Church exist side by side, and they mutually limit each other.”
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Thus, we come to the end of our look at selections from Dr. Boot’s book, Ruler of Kings: Toward a Christian Vision of Government. I learned a few things, and it gave me some things to cogitate on. I hope the same goes for you.
