Politics

Canada’s law was based on God’s Word

Blackstone, Britain, the Bible and the legal heritage of the English-speaking countries

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Canada’s law was largely based on God’s law.

That’s a claim many would dispute – they don’t want to give God credit for the freedoms, and legal protections we enjoy in our country. But disputing the facts doesn’t change them. Canada’s political and legal institution can largely be traced back to Britain – our “mother country” – and when the British laid down the foundations of their own legal system, they were an officially Christian country (with Anglicanism in England and Presbyterianism in Scotland) that had set out to build their laws and legal system on a biblical foundation.

It is this Christian legal and political foundation that Britain transferred to Canada.

Documenting Scriptural influence

During the eighteenth century an English legal scholar, Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780), wrote a multi-volume set of books called the Commentaries on the Laws of England. This was no ordinary set of legal books. Blackstone’s Commentaries were quickly accepted as the authoritative account of English law and philosophy of law. This is noteworthy because in the Commentaries Blackstone was very explicit about the influence of the Bible upon the law of his time.

Robert Stacey, a professor of government at Regent University in Virginia, has written about the significance of Blackstone in his book, Sir William Blackstone & the Common Law. In our day it often seems that the law works against Christianity, so Christians need to be reminded that our current legal situation is a deviation from our country’s history. In this book Stacey briefly traces the development of common law in England and how Blackstone deeply influenced the American colonies and the early American republic.

800s - King Alfred’s “Dooms”

A key figure in the initial development of common law was King Alfred the Great of England. He formulated a body of law known as “Alfred’s Dooms” in the ninth century that relied on the Ten Commandments as well as other aspects of the Mosaic Law and the New Testament. Stacey writes that the Dooms were “steeped in Christian principles of right and wrong” and they “became the starting point for English law to come.”

1200s – Magna Carta

In 1215 some prominent English citizens forced King John to sign the Magna Carta which placed significant limits on the monarch’s power and recognized certain rights and liberties for English subjects. The idea that monarchs are not above the law, but are under it just as their subjects are, was a central theme that reflected Biblical ideals.

1600s – King and country are not above God

During the seventeenth century, Edward Coke, a major judicial and political figure in England at that time, led the fight against Charles I, a king who claimed illegitimate powers for himself. According to Stacey, Coke “resisted both Crown and Parliament whenever either attempted to operate outside its common law boundaries or act in violation of God’s law.” He also wrote a multi-volume Institutes of the Laws of England which was the standard work on English law until Blackstone’s Commentaries in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

Anyway, the overall point that Stacey is trying to make by surveying the history of English law is that “the common law emanates from a distinctly Christian worldview.” More precisely, “the common law traces its origin to two sources, Holy Scripture and the natural law.”

It’s important not to be confused by the term “natural law” in this context – today that term is often used to describe foundational law that finds its origin in Nature rather than God.

But Blackstone did not see it as a rival authority to the Bible. Rather, in using that term he is

“acknowledging the common law’s roots in Scripture and God’s created order, as applied to the circumstances of England by many past generations of great Englishmen, exercising a providentially granted wisdom that was perhaps less common in Blackstone’s own, more humanistic age.”

Or to put it another way, Blackstone was using the term “natural law” for what the Apostle Paul describes in Romans 2:14-15 as the law that is written on our hearts.

1700s – Christian legal heritage challenged

Already in the eighteenth century, English law was being challenged by Enlightenment-inspired secularists. Blackstone defended the earlier Christian heritage of the law. In contrast to the man-centered concepts of law,

“Perhaps the most foundational principle for the whole of common law is the axiom that the source of all good and just law is outside of man. Man does not act on his own to produce justice, but acts justly only when he conforms to external standards of justice, in short, the law of God.”

Blackstone was very influential in his own day as well as during much of the nineteenth century. His Commentaries appeared in the late 1760s and sold thousands of copies in England and America. According to Stacey:

“His intellectual and practical impact on American political philosophy, governing institutions, and legal system being more profound than it was even in England, Blackstone’s Commentaries may be justly counted among the foundational canon of America.”

“According to some estimates, the Commentaries were the most widely read work in revolutionary America after the Bible.”

Blackstone’s Commentaries remained the standard for American legal education until the second half of the nineteenth century when secular theories of law began to dominate the field.

The United States and Britain were not the only countries where law was powerfully affected by Blackstone: “Blackstone’s influence was also felt in such far-flung corners as Canada, Australia, New Zealand . . .” and certain other countries.
The fact that Blackstone helped to shape the law and legal education in the English-speaking countries is not just historical trivia. His influential perspective on law both reflected and helped to develop the Christian foundation of law in these countries. “Blackstone effectively advocated a God-centered legal system at a time when many leading culture-shapers sought to impose a man-centered system.”

Christian influence waning

Looking at Blackstone’s Commentaries reveals the degree to which the common law of England – and therefore also the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand – was rooted in a Christian worldview. This Christian influence on the law has been progressively discarded over the last few decades, but it was there for hundreds of years previously. It’s not a coincidence that these countries are becoming less hospitable to Christians as the Christian foundation of law is being lost.

Law is always rooted in a particular philosophical perspective, and if that perspective isn’t shaped by Christianity, it will be shaped by a different worldview. Modern law in the developed English-speaking countries is increasingly shaped by secular humanism which is inherently hostile to Christianity. It is a very different perspective on law than the original perspective Canada inherited from its “mother country.”

This first appeared in the April 2011 issue.