Lesson 1.1 · Unit 1 · CA HSS 10.1.1
Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman views of law, the individual and responsibility
Two traditions stand behind almost every political argument in the rest of this course, and they answer the same questions differently. Knowing where each one puts the source of law and the worth of the individual makes the later disputes legible rather than arbitrary.
- The Judeo-Christian tradition grounds law in a divine covenant. Law is given by God to a people, which makes it binding on everyone including the king, and makes disobedience a moral wrong rather than only a crime.
- The Greco-Roman tradition grounds law in reason and nature. A law is just because it accords with a natural order that human reason can discover, which means it can be argued about.
- Both produce a standard above the ruler, which is the decisive shared feature. One calls it God's command and the other calls it natural law, and either way a king can be measured against something he did not make.
- Individual worth is grounded differently. In the Judeo-Christian account every person bears the image of God; in the Stoic account every person shares in a universal reason. Both extend moral standing beyond the citizen body.
- Responsibility is personal in both, which matters, because a tradition that holds individuals accountable for their own acts can also hold a ruler accountable for his.
- They differ on how law is known. Revelation is received and authoritative; reason is discovered and contestable. That difference drives centuries of argument about who may interpret the law.
- The fusion is later and deliberate. Medieval thinkers combined the two, and the combination is what later revolutionaries inherited.
Where students lose marks: treating this as a religion topic. The examinable point is political: both traditions place a standard above the ruler, and that is the seed of every later argument that a government can be illegitimate.
The sources. Deuteronomy 17, in the King James Version of 1611, and Cicero, De Re Publica, Book III, in C. D. Yonge's nineteenth-century translation. Both public domain; spelling and punctuation are reproduced as printed.
When thou art come unto the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I will set a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me; Thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the LORD thy God shall choose.
And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book. And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them: That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren.
True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting. It is a sin to try to alter this law, nor is it allowable to attempt to repeal any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish it entirely.
We cannot be freed from its obligations by senate or people, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it. And there will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times.
Step one: read the Deuteronomy passage for the constraint it places on the king. The king must write out a copy of the law and read it every day. He is a reader of the law, not its author, and the law existed before him and will outlast him.
Step two: identify the operative clause. "That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren." The stated purpose of the daily reading is to prevent the king regarding himself as above the people. This is a text about limiting monarchy, embedded in the instructions for establishing one.
Step three: notice what it does not say. There is no mechanism. Nobody is appointed to check that the king reads, and no procedure is given for removing one who does not. The standard exists and the enforcement does not, which is a pattern this course meets again in the Fifteenth Amendment and in the League of Nations.
Step four: turn to Cicero and locate the parallel. "We cannot be freed from its obligations by senate or people." The senate is the lawmaking body, and Cicero is saying it cannot release anyone from true law. As with the Hebrew king, the authority that makes ordinary law is subordinate to a law it did not make.
Step five: identify the crucial difference. Cicero adds that "we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it." Natural law is accessible to any reasoning person. Divine law arrives through revelation and requires transmission, which creates a class of interpreters.
That difference has enormous political consequences. A standard everyone can reason their way to can be invoked by anyone against anyone. A standard held by an interpreting class gives that class power, and much of European political history is a fight over who interprets.
Step six: note what Cicero's universality claim does. "There will not be different laws at Rome and at Athens." This denies that justice is whatever a particular city decides, which is precisely the position it was written against. If law is local convention, conquest settles what is right; if it is universal, the conquered can still appeal to it.
Step seven: state the shared political inheritance. From both traditions comes the proposition that a ruler is subject to a law he did not make and cannot repeal. Locke, Jefferson and the authors of the Declaration of the Rights of Man all rely on it, and unit 2 shows them doing so.
Questions 1 to 5 are recall. Questions 6 to 10 ask for reasoning.
- Where does the Judeo-Christian tradition locate the source of law?
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In a divine covenant, law given by God to a people
- Where does the Greco-Roman tradition locate it?
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In reason and nature, discoverable by human reason
- What does Deuteronomy require the king to do?
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Write out a copy of the law and read it every day of his life
- According to Cicero, can the senate release someone from true law?
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No, it cannot free anyone from its obligations
- What do both traditions place above the ruler?
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A law he did not make and cannot repeal
- Explain the political significance of the phrase "that his heart be not lifted up above
his brethren".
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It states the purpose of the requirement: the daily reading exists to stop the king regarding himself as superior to the people he governs. That makes the passage a limit on monarchy embedded inside the instructions for creating one, and it establishes that kingship is an office under law rather than a personal possession. The political claim precedes any of the later European arguments by many centuries. It makes kingship an office under law rather than personal supremacy
- What does the Deuteronomy passage lack, and where does that pattern recur?
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Enforcement. It sets a standard and appoints nobody to check compliance, and it provides no procedure for removing a king who ignores it. The same shape appears repeatedly in this course and the next: the Fifteenth Amendment banned racial denial of the vote and supplied no mechanism until 1965, and the League of Nations had collective security and no army. A standard without enforcement is a recurring historical problem rather than a peculiarity of ancient texts. A standard with no enforcement mechanism, as with the League and the Fifteenth Amendment
- Why does "we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder" have large political
consequences?
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Because it makes the standard accessible to everyone rather than to a qualified class. If any reasoning person can determine what natural law requires, anyone can invoke it against anyone, including a subject against a king. If the standard instead arrives by revelation and must be transmitted, the transmitters hold interpretive power, and control of that interpretation becomes worth fighting over. Much of European political conflict is a struggle over who may interpret. It removes the need for an interpreting class, so anyone may invoke the standard
- Why does Cicero insist there are not different laws at Rome and at Athens?
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Because he is arguing against the view that justice is simply local convention. If law were whatever a particular city decided, then conquest would settle what is right, and the defeated would have no ground on which to complain. Universality gives the conquered and the excluded a standard they can appeal to that their rulers did not set. It is the move that makes a claim about injustice possible at all. Local convention would make conquest self-justifying; universality gives the conquered an appeal
- Why is it a mistake to treat this lesson as a religion topic?
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Because the examinable content is political rather than theological. What both traditions contribute is the proposition that a ruler is subject to a standard he did not create, which is the premise every later argument about illegitimate government depends on. Locke's appeal to natural rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of the Rights of Man all rest on it. Reading the passages for doctrine instead of for constraints on power misses what they are doing in this course. The content is a constraint on rulers, which later revolutions inherit