John of Salisbury #3 (Biblical Analysis)

John of Salisbury's Politicraticus is analyzed in terms of biblical law and the principle of restitution. The complexity of legal systems in Western civilization is discussed, with a call to return to a biblical law foundation. The need for one law code and one legal system is emphasized, along with the importance of the case law principle. The Battle of Hastings and the Norman invasion are mentioned as turning points in the shift away from restitution. The book of Exodus is highlighted as the foundation of true Christian nationalism. Hey John, this is number three for John of Salisbury, Biblical Analysis. Hi everybody, welcome to GreatBibleReset.com. Today is Bible Analysis Day as it applies to the Politicraticus of John of Salisbury. My name is Oliver Woods and our theme today is the one and only thing that will deliver us from the wrath of God in our current situation in America. And that being a covenant recommitment to his law in personal and political spheres. So let's think about Politicraticus in terms of the most basic principles of Biblical law, which is the basic principle of Biblical law, which is restitution. The victim must be compensated by the offender with a judge presiding to ensure impartiality and fairness. The principle extends beyond the determination of guilt or innocence to the penalty itself. For example, breaking a commandment without a penalty is a sin but not a crime. God alone defines and specifies the terms of criminal justice in the eye-for-eye principle of equity in Exodus 21-24. Now man-made penalties are typically either too harsh or too lenient. For example, we've had the death penalty for stealing a horse in the American Old West, or the cutting off of the hand of a pickpocket. And this is what we lost in the Battle of Hastings, this whole idea of restitution. And here's a quote. In Anglo-Saxon times, the guilty party had to compensate the victim or his relatives. Now this was prior to the Battle of Hastings and the Norman invasion during Anglo-Saxon times. But the Normans changed that in cases of felony. If the defendant lost, he was immediately hanged or mutilated, usually by exoculation, which means blinding. His land was acceded to his feudal lord, and his chattels were forfeited to the king. So here we have, and that's the end of the quote, here we have a great reversion away from restitution into something else. And common law, royal law, and a lot of other laws as we'll see here in a moment. But failure to comply with this basic principle of justice as defined by the Bible lies at the heart of God's great controversy with Western civilization today. Quote, the statutes of Omri and all the works of the house of Ahab are observed, and in their devices you walk. Therefore I will give you up for destruction. End of quote. Says Micah in 616, Micah 616. The biblical law is relatively simple compared to the complex maze of legalistic rules and regulations that have built up like barnacles on a boat over the course of two millennia in the West. You may recall in the Old Testament, even the children were required to listen to the law of God, and they could understand it for the most part. But now we're just entangled in endless law. Biblical law is relatively simple. It says in Exodus 12, 49, One law shall be for the native born and for the stranger who dwells among you. Just one law. Instead of the Bible's one law, we now have found a nearly unending parade of legal systems. Natural law, common law, administrative law, canon law, sociological law, to name just a few. The only antidote for this human tendency toward legalism is constant return to the biblical case law principle. And here's what it might look like. The papal revolution of 1075 to 1122 resulted in a secular state, divorced from the church, and all accountability to the law of God. So from that day to this, Western civilization has been plagued by a plurality of secular law codes for the past thousand years. These include, here's a more extensive list. We've got Roman law, common law, natural law, canon law, ecclesiastical law, penitential law, corporation law, constitutional law, feudal law, manorial law, mercantile law, urban law, royal law, historical law, positive law, case law, equity law, administrative law, bureaucratic law, procedural law, and sociological law, among others. Did I leave any out? As these law codes have evolved over time and are altered by violent revolution, we've had about six of these violent revolutions in the West, they've grown progressively more remote from the Bible and despotic. So like Gulliver in Gulliver's Travels, we find ourselves bound down tight by the Lilliputians in a legalistic and litiguous society. This plurality of evolving legal systems, ultimately competing with and eclipsing biblical law, lies at the heart of God's great controversy with Western civilization. So all of history is the story of Christ and his church battling out in mortal combat against the devil and his kingdom of darkness. God's simple law versus Satan's multitude of laws. The battle has been won by Christ with his death, resurrection, and ascension to the throne of God, the throne of his kingdom, and now we're engaged in a mopping up operation. So if you want two-kingdom theology, that is the real two-kingdom theology. It's not what John of Salisbury and Luther taught, that the church and family are the spiritual kingdom of God, and the civil magistrate is lord of the secular kingdom, and thus free to make up his own laws as he goes along based on so-called natural law. And that's what we've had for the last thousand years. No, the true two-kingdom theology is rooted in Revelation 11-15 at the sounding of the seventh trumpet, where it says, The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever. So there's your two kingdoms. And that happens in the book of Revelation, or it happens at the same time as the two witnesses, which are Moses and Elijah, seemingly lay dead in the streets of Jerusalem, where also their Lord was crucified. So we know it's Jerusalem. And it happened at the same time when Mary gave birth, and a great sign appeared in the heaven. The great dragon was thrown down, and the serpent of old, who is called Devil and Satan, I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down. So that's your two-kingdom theory. The kingdom of Christ started at that point in history, at the time of his death, resurrection, and ascension. So we're misinterpreting Revelation if we make it say anything else. The Bible requires only one biblical law code and one legal system, which are to be applied equally to citizen and foreigner alike and to all spheres of life, church and state, one law. There is to be one law and one ordinance for you and for the alien who sojourns with you. And that's Numbers 15-16. So even as Luther burned the canon law of the church, along with the papal bull of excommunication, he and his students threw him all on the bonfire, at some point, hopefully soon, we've got to start over and build from a biblical law foundation, never departing from, always returning to, the biblical case law principle. Now here are the basic features of such a statute. For example, in the case of homicide, thou shalt not kill, is what the Ten Commandments say. So number one, we have the case law principle, he who strikes a man, this follows the Ten Commandments in Exodus 21, 12-14, it says, he who strikes a man, so that he dies, shall surely be put to death. But if he did not lie in wait for him, but God let him fall into his hand, then I will appoint you a place to which he may flee. If, however, a man acts presumptuously toward his neighbor, so as to kill him craftily, you are to take him, even from my altar, that he may die. And this was the idea in the case of, we see several examples in the Old Testament, one is the case of Joab, where a man who felt he was treated unfairly by the civil magistrate could flee to the ecclesiastical authority and cling to the horns of the altar. But in this case, you cannot do that, in the case of premeditated murder. Okay, number two, here's the statutory application, in which we write down, summarizing or integrating all of the relevant Bible principles. For example, in the case of homicide, we might say, a judgment for homicide may only be rendered after diligent inquiry or due process and the testimony of at least two witnesses. The witnesses may be human or a non-human line of evidence, as in Genesis 4-10, where the earth itself cried out to God. But the human witnesses must be involved in the execution process and the execution must follow as soon as practicable after the conviction. So, this is what John of Salisbury left out, that we find imperfectly in the reign of Alfred the Great prior to the Battle of Hastings, prior to the Norman invasion. But John of Salisbury, after the Norman invasion, brought the Bible in as but one authority among many. Instead of going straight to the fountainhead of biblical authority. And here's six points related to that, okay? First of all, we find in Exodus 24, the ten words, God calls them the ten words, or the ten commandments, and the ordinances. And he lists them there in Exodus 24. They're a package deal called the Book of the Covenant. So, it's a unit, it's a book. So, we can't say, okay, we're going by the ten commandments, and then throw out the ordinances. You can't do that because it's a package deal. God looks at it as a unit. And the ordinances define the ten commandments in terms of both individual and public administration. And the principle of restitution is at the heart of it in Exodus 22, 1-4, where, for example, here it's related to theft. It says, if you steal one sheep, you've got to pay two sheeps back. So, the equity of that is double restitution, right? Okay. So, Exodus 20-24, these five chapters, are the foundation of true Christian nationalism. The recent book by Stephen Wolfe, trying to build a case for Christian nationalism on natural law philosophy, as the foundation for biblical theology, is another doomed attempt. It's just one more time. It's happened over and over throughout the history of Western civilization. Where we've gone beyond the word of God, we're going to lay our natural law philosophy and use that as the foundation for biblical theology. And that's backwards, exactly backwards. And it's going to end in utter failure if we continue down this road. Okay, number three, not all laws are crimes. In Exodus 22-21 through Exodus 23-9, we have a section which provides Christian cultural guidelines and attitudes that have no civil penalty, but they're enforced by God himself. And things like helping your neighbor, your enemy, pull his donkey out of the ditch. That's an example. Maybe that means for us, perhaps, stopping on the freeway to help your enemy or something. So, not all laws are crimes. If it's a crime, it's going to have a civil penalty attached to it. Number four, strangers or resident non-believers must be protected in the Christian Republic on pain of divine judgment if they are not. And it's really quite abrupt there where God says, if you oppress a stranger, I will kill you. So there's definitely protection of minority in the biblical republic. And we can't make the excuse that non-believers are going to be ill-treated because, in a sense, they're first-class citizens in one sense. Okay, number five, God will accept gradualism. In several cases in the Old Testament, he says, if you find just one man who will begin to do these things, I will relent. I will work with you. I will encourage you. I will help you. And it says this in Exodus 23. It says, by little and little I will drive them out from before you, lest the beast of the field be multiplied against you. And so that's preceding the Exodus 24, where it's actually a covenant commitment, where the people said, all that the Lord, Moses read the law, and then it says, the people said, all that the Lord has spoken, we will do. So there's a covenant commitment, but there's also gradualism. God will work with us if we'll just work with him and come back to him and commit ourselves to his law and lay off this constant philosophizing. This book, In Search of Christian Nationalism, is just a sidetrack. It takes us away from thinking God's thoughts after him to thinking Stephen Moore's thoughts after him. And we've got to stop doing that. Okay, now Thomas Aquinas was wise enough at the end of his life, finally, three months prior to his death, he realized the error of what he was doing in trying to integrate Aristotelian logic in trying to prove the Bible through logic. And when we do something like that, we elevate our thoughts, our conception of law, above the law of God. And that's what Richard Wolff, or Stephen Wolff is doing, and Canon Press is doing in this book, In Search of Christian Nationalism. They're elevating their thoughts above the law of God. It's not going to work. It's not going to work, folks. He's going to set us back. Please, we need to hold Canon Press accountable. So talk to them. Talk to them. Ask them, why are you doing this? Okay? All right. So, number six. Mercy is built into the capital laws with the possibility of repentance and monetary ransom, looking ahead to the cross with the consent of the victim. And the exception is premeditated murder, as we've seen here a little bit earlier. Okay. So these are six of actually 12 principles, and we'll get into the other six, I think, next week. So in the meantime, feel free to visit our bookstore at kingswayclassicalacademy.com for more details on this. And thanks for being here today, and look forward to seeing you again tomorrow for an interview, exploring this in quite a bit more detail. So until then, we'll see you tomorrow.