Frank Turk suggested the Roman model for government . . . and there is much to be said in favor of Rome. With the Founding Fathers of this Republic, true patriots should model our governance more on Cicero or the Republic than on Nero or the Empire!
Here is Cicero on torture:
Cicero on torture:
“Our prosecutor threatens us with the examinations and torture of our slaves; and though we do not suspect that any danger can arise to us from them, yet pain reigns in those tortures; much depends on the nature of every one’s mind, and the fortitude of a person’s body. The inquisitor manages everything; caprice regulates much, hope corrupts them, fear disables them, so that, in the straits in which they are placed, there is but little room left for truth.
Is the life of Publius Sulla, then, to be put to the torture? is it to be examined to see what lust is concealed beneath it? whether any crime is lurking under it, or any cruelty, or any audacity? There will be no mistake in our cause, O judges, no obscurity, if the voice of his whole life, which ought to be of the very greatest weight, is listened to by you.”
It would be a great pity if the followers of Jesus (tortured by bad Romans) would be less civilized in government than the best of the Romans.
Of course, Christian morality cannot be separated from any part of life . . . Cicero might have allowed for crucifixion as a just punishment, but what Christian would crucify a terrorist to get information or to inflict punishment?
We are better than that.
January 8th, 2010 | 12:24 pm | #1
WHOA! WHOA! WHOA!
Let me say that this is -not- at all what I was suggesting. I was not suggesting that we should somehow roll back every innovation since Augustus Caesar to get a properly-biblical form of government.
What I said was that Paul was able to concede that the Roman government was able to exercise justice. In this, we can see that Paul’s definition of ‘justice’ is not hardly the one we use today, and Paul’s idea of what consitutes just punishment is not what we conceive of today.
We would, without much consideration, look at what passed for justice in Rome and simply call it barbaric without any real reflection. But facts are facts, and even if JMR is right about Cicero being the high water mark for Roman political philosophy (and he might be), Cicero executed men accused of treason without a trial.
If that happened today, there would be a media circus dwarfing the Clinton impeachment hearings and all of Watergate.
My express point, as we consider the question of “torture”, is that Government’s job in the order of things is not rehabilitation: it is justice and right punishment.
That is a radical idea, and one which frankly gets overlooked when we consider the matter of how to act in times of war.
January 8th, 2010 | 1:01 pm | #2
We would and should call anyone calling for the practice of justice as it was done in ancient Rome barbaric.
Paul was right to commend Roman law, because it was (so far as I can see) the best and closest thing to true justice available in his world. Better Roman law (honored often only in the breach) than chaos or tyrants.
There is a difference between justice as an ideal (where we have much common ground with Rome) and how best to practice justice. I would defend a Greek and Roman view of justice gladly as quite sensible and much better than modern notions of “justice,” but reject their implementation of it.
We know better now how to get what they wanted.
Paul commends justice and the rule of law. He commands obedience to authority, because the authority of his day would have been remarkably better than chaos. He was thankful for the Providentially ordained Roman authority, because it enabled the gospel to be spread. He used Roman ideals (when they were honored) to stay alive against mobs.
He is not, by doing so, commending Roman penal codes and the system of justice under Nero.
January 8th, 2010 | 1:02 pm | #3
One (at the time) could commend Roman ideals and prefer Rome to some petty local despot without commending the particular implementation of those ideals.
January 8th, 2010 | 1:03 pm | #4
Frank,
Are you saying that Paul’s comment is tacit approval of Roman methods? We can’t say their methods really were barbarous and unjust, because Paul said they were able to exercise justice even with their methods?
January 8th, 2010 | 1:12 pm | #5
Put another way:
An ancient Roman was preferable because he was better than his non-Roman peers in this way: the rule of law.
He was not better (always) in is practice. He often did remarkably awful things in working out his ideals.
Rome was great for its time and we owe it much, but we have learned a thing or two about the implementation of justice since. The Jesus thing helped a good bit.
January 8th, 2010 | 1:26 pm | #6
I prefer to think of this as the Bird and Baby not the White Horse Inn.
We are guided by our ideals, but live in the “real world.” This means accepting that nobody (including our leaders) are perfect and that they can make bad decisions without becoming illegitimate. It means accepting that in practice we will fall short (and may have to fall short) of our ideals due to frailty.
It does not justify intentionally doing an evil and then saying, “Well, I live in the real world.”
You keep confusing Cicero’s philosophy of justice and Roman rule of law with the actual implementation and practice. Romans thought that doing x, y, and z would good and encourage justice. They were wrong.
That does not mean that overthrowing Rome (given the realistic options) would have been better or that their ideals were wrong. God gave Rome the right to execute justice. Sometimes they did it well, sometimes badly. A citizen at the time had to recognize that doing it badly did not give him the right (as an individual) to revolt. It did not mean he had to commend crucifixion and other tortures.
January 8th, 2010 | 1:52 pm | #7
Jug:
Great question.
I think JMR is reading into Paul something Paul never says — namely, that somehow the way Rome implemented justice was lacking because the results of judgments under the various magistrates was too bloody or too severe.
Here’s what Paul says in fact:
JMR’s minimalist view of Paul’s endorsement here falls apart pretty quickly — because Paul sees justice and judgments as things to fear. It’s right to fear the magistrate — becuase he’s an instrument of God’s wrath on those who are lawless.
In that, the Roman government for all its warts was very clearly enough. Is it the end and last form we should abide by? Not hardly — becuase JMR is right about this much: the Christian magistrate knows things the non-Christian magistrate does not. I have said as much already in another thread.
But what the Christian magistrate cannot do is overturn or overthrow what God has established government to do among men as Paul lines out here.
We need to do that because we have to distinguish between what the Government’s responsibility in wielding the sword (for example, capital punishment) and its abuse of that power (the holocaust, soviet labor camps, etc.) in order to rightly define what we’re talking about before we say something like, “the government should not torture.”
Me walking around my neighborhood should not torture anybody. Period. But I am also not invested with a metaphysical responsibility to maintain justice and a proper fear of judgment in a society — and “government” is.
January 8th, 2010 | 2:06 pm | #8
Frank:
Your argument against me seems to be that if Paul says bad guys will be a afraid of government, that this sanctions all Roman practices (or even most of them).
This seems a bad argument for this reason. A wicked man may fear the government without fearing torture. A wicked man may fear loss of liberty or the death penalty. In short, many things are fearful (and even very unpleasant) that are not torture. What has Paul said government should do:
1. punish evil doers
2. bring fear to evil doers.
Now Paul has also not given us a philosophical treatise on HOW to do this. We could punish evil doers (for example) by throwing them to lions. This certainly would produce fear, but I would suggest that no Christian magistrate would or could justly use that MEANS. By just, government should make crime pay and put the fear of God and man into evil doers, but that does not mean the government can do ANYTHING it wishes to produce this.
In fact, the necessity of Paul’s statements makes sense only when one recognizes that reasonable Christians thought rebellion or disdain for government justified by the evil actions of the Romans. Paul makes it plain that government (even imperfect government) is a better than no government and should (in this context) be obeyed (though see Locke for Christian thoughts on exceptions to this). It is NOT bad (says Paul) that the government has the sword and is a terror to wicked men.
That does nothing to justify government being a terror to good men (persecution) or to all the ways the government is terrible.
Romans used practices on prisoners so awful that I cannot describe them on this family blog. They make anything done at Abu Ghraib look like Sunday School. Was Paul commending that?
Christians have said “no.” Empowering the state to torture is not part of the English conservatism of Burke. It is foreign to the development of Christian social theory and politics. It is bluntly regressive.
January 8th, 2010 | 2:25 pm | #9
There’s a longer response necessary to that last comment, but here’s what I’m going to post:
Paul’s definition in Rom 13 includes the use of the sword to punish evil-doers, and includes making them fear the outcome of judgment. JMR’s clearly does not.
If JMR can reconcile what he has said here with what Paul said in Rom 13 — given those two foundational issues — I’d be willing to read it and stand corrected.
Lunch is over in my office. Will be back later.
January 8th, 2010 | 2:39 pm | #10
Frank,
I must be unclear, so let me try again.
Paul commends the use of the sword by the Romans. I agree.
Paul commends the government of Rome making evil doers fear punishment. I agree.
This does not logically entail commending every use of the “sword” by the Romans or every means that the Romans used to induce fear.
For example, suppose the Romans dipped evil doers in pitch and burned them alive at parties. This is a use of the “sword power” and it is fearful, but that does not mean that Paul commends it.
What might Paul mean?
Paul could have in mind the sort of execution he in fact received as a Roman citizen. His head was cut off by a sword. Leaving aside the injustice of convicting Paul who was NOT an evil doer, the means of his execution were licit for an evil doer given the means available at the time. It is certainly fearful.
So Rome was able to use the sword to cause fear in evil doers (when they had good judges) without torture.
They also tortured people and if you were a non-citizen treated you like dirt. Christians refused to treat the “other” that way.
I see nothing Paul said for which I have not accounted (Rome still has a sword and evil doers should fear it as a pain in the neck) with the added bonus that I have not made Saint Paul tolerant of torture.
January 8th, 2010 | 2:58 pm | #11
Put another way:
Paul’s commands can be used to justify the death penalty in cultures with the wealth of Rome, but not to justify all forms of execution.
January 8th, 2010 | 3:35 pm | #12
So, if someone says, “That practice is barbarous & unjust because it sparks fear”, Paul’s comment disagrees. JMR and Frank agree on that.
Another question is:
Does Paul’s comment imply that there was no injustice in Cicero’s practice of executing men accused of treason without a trial?
January 8th, 2010 | 6:33 pm | #13
Jugulum
You say:
“So, if someone says, “That practice is barbarous & unjust because it sparks fear”, Paul’s comment disagrees. JMR and Frank agree on that.”
I say:
Just so.
You ask: Does Paul’s comment imply that there was no injustice in Cicero’s practice of executing men accused of treason without a trial?
I say:
No.
January 9th, 2010 | 10:58 am | #14
[...] Bad Argument in Favor of Torture Cicero not Nero! On Pacifism and Torture A Conservative and Pragmatic Argument Against [...]
January 12th, 2010 | 10:26 pm | #15
Well, thanks for talking about Marcus Tullius Cicero. Its true that Lucius Cornelius Sulla proscribed a lot of folks. Also, its true that Cicero didn’t have a proper trial in the case of Catline and his followers. Its interesting that Turk knows something about Cicero, among Evangelicals, no insult, most of them know Cicero if they have an interest in Ancient History, many don’t outside of the bible. Also, Cicero certainly to stop Caesar or Antony but Cicero had to rely on folks like Pompey or Cassius which definetly had their faults as well. A great fictional novel on Nero is Paul L Maier’s the flames of Rome. Paul is Lutheran with a an history background. Nero was a bettr ruler of course in his first years when Seneca had influence on him.
January 12th, 2010 | 11:01 pm | #16
Sorry,wrong Sulla, not the one when Cicero was in his 20′s.
January 12th, 2010 | 11:14 pm | #17
What Paul thought about Cicero’s execution of some of the Cataline conspirators, no one can say for certain, since Paul was a Roman Jew from Tarsus almost a century later. Granted, he did quote some greek philosophers like Aratus. So ,maybe he was familar with the trial during his lifetime,even though it happen almost a century earlier.
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