I replied:
You replied what?
No, you didn't answer my question there.
Your reply was a question? I thought it was rather declarative.
Its quite true that I didnt answer your question to your satisfaction or expectation. I dont read from the scripts of others.
Not until the Age of Reason, post-1700s, was there such social movements that ultimately lead to freedom in its truest sense.
Really? Despite a paucity of knowledge and instruction, without the benefit of the ideas and research of Hugo Grotius, Johannes Gratian, Thomas Aquinas, Joannes de Legnano, Baron Pufendorf, Emmerich de Vattel, Honoré Bonet, Franciscus de Victoria, and St. Isidore (and many another), the inhabitants of the Age of Enlightenment instinctively possessed the insights to cause such a movement to spring, poof!, full blown from a standing start?
So how is it that the Law of Nations was established in 1625 when Hugo Grotius published De jure belli ac pacis? Grotius work was a monumental accomplishment of compilation, organization, and integration of the disparate elements of the ethics of how nations should treat with one another. So much so, in fact, that it immediately gained general acceptance as the definitive authority on the subject.
In producing his work Grotius drew on an extensive body of writings whose beginnings dated back approximately to the demise of the Roman Empire. The range of the philosophical and legal inquiries conducted by theologians, canonists, and other scholars, was quite broad as I indicated some time ago (when war might be lawful, the origins of war, on the avarice and cruelty of war, treatment of prisoners, when the right of conquest and the claiming of the spoils of war are just and when they are not, the rights of discovery and the treatment of native peoples, the securing of peace as the prime objective of war, issues of maritime law, redress for injuries, restitution of property and recompense for wrongs done, and the laws of embassy and envoys).
Numbered among the writers of these works were many of the most illustrious names from those times:
Johannes Gratian, generally regarded as the true founder of the science of canon law, whose major work appeared between 1139 and 1150.
St. Thomas Aquinas, Born 1225-27 - died 7 March, 1274, whose great work Summa totius theologiae occupied the last nine years of the author's life. Therein he devoted the fortieth question of the Secunda secundae to four great issues of the law of war.
Joannes de Legnano, a jurist of note and a professor at Bologna, where he died in 1383. The author of the treatise De bello this writer had on several occasions been charged with diplomatic missions.
Honoré Bonet. His work l'Arbre des batailles is thought to have been composed about 1384. Therein he devotes 132 chapters to various issues on the Law of Nations. This work was reproduced in exquisite manuscripts and graced the library of many a great prince.
Franciscus de Victoria, died 1546, held the chair of theology at Salamanca for twenty years, restoring a high quality of theological teaching in Spain. A teacher and lecturer, Victoria was not a writer, but, following his death, many of his lecture notes were published by his students, including De Indis Et De Ivre Belli Relectiones, which, as the title suggests, deals with the issue of native peoples and the law of war. Prior to Victoria, there had been a long legacy of Spanish inquiries on the Law of Nations dating as far back as St. Isidore, Bishop of Seville from 596 to 636, who included in his work Etymologiae, a description of the Roman ideas jus gentium and jus militare which correspond closely to our modern concepts, respectively, of the Law of Nations and of the Law of War.
While the ecclesiastics, jurists and academics of Western Civilization were working through the ethical and legal issues involving the relations between nations and the moral conduct of war, neither were their temporal rulers idle. Besides attending with some considerable interest the labors of the learned community within their respective societies, these rulers were themselves developing ideas and theories about a society of nations based on the developing philosophies of Natural Law and Natural Rights. Europe was forming itself into an association of republics, principalities, city-states, and kingdoms, taking the first steps in the creation of what was to be a society of nations, and they were beginning to look upon their community of nations as functioning very similarly to how a society of individuals operates.
Influences from Byzantine institutions, from the sultanates along the coast of North Africa and the Moorish kingdoms of Spain, and borrowings from Greek and Roman antiquity, all played their part, according to most historians, but the major impetus seemed to come from within Europe itself. An important event in this process occurred in 962 when Pope John XII crowned Otto I of Germany as the first Emperor of a newly formed Holy Roman Empire. This new empire never attained the level of power or influence that had been exerted by the old Roman Empire, and its vigor steadily diminished over the centuries until it finally expired at the beginning of the Nineteenth. It nonetheless served to help solidify the idea of a Western society of nations.
When some European states turned to commercial interests over other interests (the rise of Merchant States), the flourishing of commercial enterprises, benefiting most from a harmonious intercourse between states, influenced European nations towards closer relationships. Moreover, the nations shared a common religion, and Latin, being the language of their church, their legal and academic institutions, their literature, and of their statecraft, provided them with a common language with which to communicate. Their growing close association came to be known as Respublica Christiana, and, at its height, allowing for some considerable variance in degree of independence, its membership came to an estimated number close to two thousand. This circumstance made supremacy difficult to attain. Any nation which attempted to achieve dominance, found an almost instant league of other states arrayed against it, which tended to dampen its enthusiasm for conquest, and which, in turn, tended to cause the states to admit to a certain level of equality amongst their members.
Amazingly enough, through this period of time, right up to the present, it is the Christian nations of Western Civilization that have most scrupulously sought to adhere to the laws of nations and the laws of war.
Though a milestone of considerable proportions, the work of Grotius was but a step in a continuing process. There were important writers to follow:
Samuel Pufendorf. The Law of Nature and of Nations, published in 1674. Further development of Natural Law as it applied to ideas of justice and the Law of Nations.
Cornelius van Bynkershoek, Questions of Public Law, published in 1737. Expanded on the work of Grotius and Pufendorf on questions of the Law of Nations and Constitutional Law.
Emmerich de Vattel. The Law of Nations, published 1758. A favorite of Jeffersons. Basing constitutional and civil law on the Law of Nations, Vattels effort became perhaps the most often quoted work on state matters with regard to the Law of Nations.
By the time the United States declared their independence from the United Kingdom, the epoch treatise of Grotius had been known and referenced for 150 years, and his work, along with the subsequent works of several other authorities, had provided the states of Western Civilization with what amounted to a series of organized protocols to which they could refer in the conduct of their foreign affairs.
Whenever we undertake to study historical events or the acts of historical figures, we are "privileged" (as the historian Bernard Bailyn describes it) to know of subsequent events and outcomes, of which those earlier figures had no more than a glimmer, if even so little as that. If we study and judge events and human actions out of the context of their particular historical time and not on their terms, then it must lead either to error, or the examination, from the beginning, was intended to lead to a self-serving preordained conclusion. That is what you are doing when you attempt to divorce the Age of Reason from the civilization out of which it arose.
From its inception, Western Civilization seems to have been blessed with an instrument of self-correction, residing in the idea of the Perfectability of Man, its roots being deeply sunk in our cultures Judeo-Christian tradition going back some five thousand years. The idea does not necessarily imply that Man can achieve perfection, rather that he is capable of bettering himself and his condition; that, indeed, his very nature impels him to seek an elevation of himself and his condition. It is this idea that allows Western Civilization to correct its faults and liberate its virtues.
And, all of this strangely enough coming from a time before the post-1700s.
The scriptures are yours, as well. You cannot simply shy away from the responsibility of explaining them, both to yourselves and others who've pointed out the moral voids
I feel no obligation to explain anything. Burden of proof (be it scientific, philosophic, or otherwise) does not come into play until common assumptions are established. Youve not come for an explanation, in any event. Youve come to pick a fight.
Lets review:
I proposed that it is something other than fantastic tales of talking donkeys and snakes (serpents) that is central to Biblical Instruction. This in response to another posters obsession with the topic. After some discussion, there seemed to be a general disagreement over the proposition. Then came you with the formulaic theme of a some three hundred years plus old list of scripture scoffer grievances, a multi-page indictment to which there can be only one verdict: GUILTY. All this making it clear that the dispute centers about something other than the issue of whether or not talking donkeys, talking serpents, and other fantastic tales are central to Biblical Instruction.
Plain words to that effect, in the scriptures would have been more effective, and more truthful.
So you assert. The assertion does not prove the fact. What you assert is your interpretation, contrary to five thousand years cultural tradition and understanding. Discussion of the issue between us is not possible. No common assumptions have been established, nor are they likely ever to be. I try to read scripture with understanding. You seem to read scripture with malice.
When a pattern is seen in your scriptures, of the slow, once-in-a-millennia-updated progression of the deity's change in stance from one that is trigger-happy in ordering genocide, to later complying with the Golden Rule, it shows not the divinity of the deity, but rather, the hallmark qualities of the hand of man, in inventing those words, and those religions - each and every one of them.
Really?! A once-in-a-millennia update, huh. Using your example of the Golden Rule, from which millennial update comes Leviticus 19:18 (Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself:)?
Using your millennium standard, can you identify the scriptural revelations that have been sprung on us unannounced sometime approx around One Thousand CE?
There are patterns that are seen. Then, there are patterns that actually exist.
'we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights'
The modern smug anti-God mob begins by denying we have a Creator and that is why they end up worshipping government as the ultimate authority.
From its inception, Western Civilization seems to have been blessed with an instrument of self-correction, residing in the idea of the Perfectability of Man, its roots being deeply sunk in our cultures Judeo-Christian tradition going back some five thousand years. The idea does not necessarily imply that Man can achieve perfection, rather that he is capable of bettering himself and his condition; that, indeed, his very nature impels him to seek an elevation of himself and his condition. It is this idea that allows Western Civilization to correct its faults and liberate its virtues.
Oh dear YHAOS, what a GEM of an essay/post! Lapidary!
Thank you ever so much for posting this very fine article!
That's not a Golden Rule. The word somewhat erroneously translated as the "neighbor" doesn't mean someone physically close or near, i.e. a literal neighbor, but rather someone actually "closely related to," a member of the same clan, or family.
The rule applied to the Jews and Jews only, just as everything else in the Torah, and is not a universally applicable Golden Rule, but a binding commandment meant to preserve and protect the Jewish clan/nation from self-destruction. A pragmatic statement aimed at self-preservation.
In that respect, JCB is quite right about the "millennial update", when he contrasts the Torah with the universally applicable Golden Rule teachings of Jesus.