Justice
Thomas makes some statements in his opinion in Chiafalo v Washington that reveal something about the nature of
Americanism. While he agrees with the
judgment of the majority, that State legislatures do have the ability to tell
presidential electors how they must vote, he nonetheless critiques the
justification underlying their ruling. A
big part of that critique is their straining the words of the text of the uS
Constitution to arrive at their conclusion.
He says,
The Court appears to misinterpret Article II, §1, by overreading
its language as authorizing the broad power to impose and enforce substantive
conditions on appointment.
. .
. the Court’s attempt to root its analysis in Article II,§1, seems
to stretch the plain meaning of the Constitution’s text.
. .
. Thus, even accepting the Court’s strained reading of Article II,
§1’s text, I cannot agree with the Court’s effort to reconcile Washington’s law
with its desired theory.
In short,
the Constitution does not speak to States’ power to require Presidential
electors to vote for the candidates chosen by the people. The Court’s attempt
to ground such a power in Article II’s text falls short. Rather than contort
the language of both Article II and the state statute, I would acknowledge that
the Constitution simply says nothing about the States’ power in this regard.
It
is here that we confront the reality of what Americanism is: It is the incarnation of Radical Protestant
Reformation theology in the sphere of politics.
The fetish of these Protestants for the written word of the Bible gives
birth to a similar obsession with the written text of political
constitutions. Word-by-word
exegesis/analysis/examination of the religious and political texts is crucial
for them. This same over-heated zeal for
‘textualism’ that so irks Mr Justice Thomas is what is on display by the
majority in Chiafalo (and also in the Bostock ruling).
Americanism
is, therefore, not the Golden Key that unlocks the secrets to good government that
have been hidden from mankind during all the days of his sojourn on the
earth. It is simply the form of
government that conforms to the temperament of a certain sect of Protestantism.
And
as the low-church Protestant approach to the Bible is not the correct approach,
we must likewise question its approach to political law. The Orthodox priest Fr John Whiteford says of
the former,
A key question
to consider at the beginning here is whether Protestants discovered an approach
to Scripture, beginning in the 17th century, which is essential to properly
understanding the Scriptures? If this were true, that would mean that for most
of Church history, people were not really able to to properly understand the
Scriptures. And that is an assumption which no right-believing Orthodox
Christian could possibly accept.
When speaking
about Protestants in general, it is necessary to make generalizations that are
not going to be true to the same extent in every case, but generally modern Protestant
biblical scholarship attempts to do the same thing with interpreting Scripture
that Protestants attempt to do with Church history. They assume the Church
became corrupt over the course of its history, and so it is necessary to
leapfrog over the centuries and reestablish (more or less) the early Church.
When it it comes to interpreting the Bible, they argue that we have to make
that same leap, and get back to the understanding that prevailed when the
Scriptures were written, in order to properly understand them. But the problem
is, absent a time machine, we can only go back to the first century, in a
sense, via the living Tradition that connects us with that time and with the
apostles and saints of that time.
How do we know
what St. John meant in his Gospel? We of course start with the text, but we
then look to those whom he taught, and then to the Church as whole which
received his teachings, and preserved them. We do not believe that the
connection we have with St. John and the preservation of his teachings is
either tenuous, or only partially reliable -- we believe the Church to be an
infallible guide to what St. John meant.
Protestant
scholars approach the Gospel of John like a crime scene investigation, or an
archaeological dig, where they have to piece together fragmentary evidence, and
then try to put together some sort of a plausible hypothesis about what to make
of it. This, however, would only be true, if the Scriptures were not really the
inspired word of God, and if the Church was not really the pillar and ground of
the Truth. The Church understands the Scriptures because it knows the authors,
and it is guided by the ultimate author of the Scriptures -- the Holy Spirit.
We also have to
understand that Protestant methods are not neutral "technologies."
They are methods that come with theological assumptions... assumptions which we
generally do not share. If they were neutral technologies we should expect to
see consistent results from their use, but in fact what we see is that they are
used to produce speculative and subjective scholarship that is all over the map
-- the likes of which would make the most speculative Freudian psychoanalysts
blush, and shame the worst Gnostics the Church has ever encountered in its
history.
--'Orthodox Biblical Interpretation and
Protestant Biblical Scholarship’, http://orthochristian.com/116449.html
Do
you see how the Protestants view the Holy Scriptures? For them, they are like a lump of lifeless
matter, like a stiff, dead body, to be examined, dissected, and broken down
into their constituent elements with the chemist’s and coroner’s tools of steel
cutting blades, tubes and flasks of glass, and burning solvents. Likewise, Protestants view political law as a
rigid, unbending corpse that must be scrutinized ever so meticulously in order
to be rightly understood and followed. Yet neither conforms to the views and
practices of Orthodox Christians throughout history. The Orthodox remember, to paraphrase the Lord
Jesus, that law was made for man, not man for the law. Orthodox kings have at times put aside the
cold letter of the political law in order to show mercy to criminals, and
Orthodox bishops have the authority to bend canon law when situations require
it.
The
American/Protestant view of law reminds one of what the Lord says in His
denunciation of the scribes, etc.:
[23] Woe unto you,
scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and
cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment [i.e.,
justice], mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the
other undone.
[24] Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.
--Gospel according to St Matthew 23:23-4.
Southerners
have for too long been captive to the American view of law. But there is another, older strand of thought
here at the South that is more in keeping with the Orthodox view, which sees
law as an organic historical development, a body of traditions that is quick
and warm and to which we owe some paternal devotion and love, not merely the
scientist’s stone-hearted, disinterested, detached glare. It is a view akin to what the Holy Apostle
Paul writes to the Corinthians:
[2] Ye are our epistle written in
our hearts, known and read of all men:
[3] Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ
ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God;
not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.
It
is this older view that will help the South avoid the excesses decried by
Justice Thomas when deciding questions about political laws; and by the Lord
Jesus in questions concerning religious laws.
***
For
those who are interested, this is a good podcast covering the errors of sola
Scriptura:
https://jaysanalysis.com/2020/07/10/the-orthodox-view-of-scripture/
--
Holy
Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema
to the Union!
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