Reynolds himself is a moderate Hefnerian whose beliefs are derived from the Playboy Philosophy as well as The Fountainhead. He is a prestigious law professor who won't hesitate to mention he went to Yale, though he has a comic book mind for all that. It's intriguing that a bunch of libertarians, most of whom haven't been to any church in decades, would find it worthwhile to link to an Evangelical pastor's stance on anything.
MacArthur's announcement was notable enough that a visitor sent me a link to its appearance on a different blog.
The announcement at MacArthur's church website is here. There's a link to the full text of the announcement.
Christ is Lord of all. He is the one true head of the church. . . . As His people, we are subject to His will and commands as revealed in Scripture. Therefore we cannot and will not acquiesce to a government-imposed moratorium on our weekly congregational worship[.]This argument points to the US Constitution as reflective of God-given rights and is more or less acceptable as far as it goes, but of course MacArthur is an Evangelical, and he doesn't acknowledge any ecclesiastical authority beyond the individual parish, which for main line Protestants as well as Catholics is problematic.. . . Insofar as government authorities do not attempt to assert ecclesiastical authority or issue orders that forbid our obedience to God’s law, their authority is to be obeyed whether we agree with their rulings or not. In other words, Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 still bind the consciences of individual Christians. We are to obey our civil authorities as powers that God Himself has ordained.
MacArthur's statement has attracted some mildly stimulating comments on the blogs that linked to it. One on the Instapundit site approaches MacArthur's argument with a passing reference to Aquinas :
The situation reminds me of a famous Aquinas dictum to the effect that an unjust law -- one that restricts freedom without demonstrable intent to prohibit or punish a harm -- is a species of violence, not a law. In general, when one gets down to fighting over the lawfulness of a law, one is already outside the protective shield of proper behavior.The reference to Aquinas reminded me of a favorable comment Bp Barron made on Dr King's Letter From Birmingham Jail, where Dr King says,. . . In other words, stay away from the two kingdoms argument -- fundamentally because it is undesirable, unrealistic, and impossible to un-mix, to de-polymerize their fibers -- and focus instead on the geo-political phenomenology of anti-Christian animus and its consequences, such as actual lawlessness, actual hardship, actual harm and loss.
To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.The problem with any reference to Aquinas on unjust law, though, is that the orders proclaiming lockdowns, or facial masks, or closing schools to in-person instruction, or no singing in church, or maintaining six feet of separation are not laws. They are temporary orders from a range of local authorities, governors, health directors, mayors, county executives, and others, often conflicting, and often purely arbitrary. They're imposed or relaxed based on recondite calculations, which Gov Newsom compares to a "dimmer switch".
The fact that they aren't laws passed by the relevant legislative authority is the main reason sheriffs and police chiefs have often publicly refused to enforce them. In fact, if thy're health department regulations, health departments have inspectors who normally enforce such things. If they're alcohol-related, the state alcohol board has its own inspectors, and so forth.
In cases like Wisconsin, Illinois, and Michigan, legislatures have gone through the courts to assert their authority to pass applicable laws, claiming that governors' emergency authorities cannot extend beyond circumscribed periods, and emergency directives can't be extended indefinitely.
As a result, we're in uncharted territory, since local jurisdictions from governor to county executive to mayor to city health director are imposing extra-legal constraints without specific legal authority, and thir ability to enforce them is as diverse as their individual jurisdiction.
And it can't even necessarily be argued, as the Instapundit commenter does, that these arbitrary constraints are bad because they're specifically anti-Christian. A lockdown that orders all people in "non-essential" jobs to stay home violates general human rights outside any specific one relating to freedom of worship. And these orders aren't temporary; various California legislators, as well as Mayor Garcetti, have been pressuring Gov Newsom to re-impose the full stay-at-home that was in effect from March through May.
This week, the mayor and the county health director are disposed to let us pursue our daily business, with restrictions, of course, Next week, they warn us, maybe not. The scope of the problem goes beyond whether the law is just or unjust. We're in a situation where representative government, consent of the governed, or the uniform applicability of any specific law is in question.
We're still in an early stage of working out the remedies.
