A Living Constitution

Words That Matter

There is a right-royal brouhaha in the United States at the moment--at least amongst the liberal elites.  It has been provoked by the newly elected Republican majority in the Congress, which has determined it will begin by a formal reading of the Constitution to the House  (Most Democrats refused to attend.)  This is one of those debates that divide and so is of interest to any who think seriously about the legitimate role of civil government in a free society.

To be sure there are those in the United States who have made an idol of the US Constitution, wanting to endow it with infallibility and the status of a demigod, just as there are those who want to rip the thing up and consign it to the dustbin of history.  These represent the extreme fringes of the debate and thus need not concern us. 

The positions of the "mainstream" protagonists can be neatly summarised.  Firstly, there is the editorial writer of the New York Times who sneers at the waste of time and money, and empty symbolism of having the  Constitution read to the House. 

Those who had hoped to see a glimpse of the much-advertised Republican plan to revive the economy and put Americans back to work will have to wait at least until party leaders finish their Beltway insider ritual of self-glorification. Then, they may find time for governing.

The empty gestures are officially intended to set a new tone in Washington, to demonstrate — presumably to the Republicans’ Tea Party supporters — that things are about to be done very differently. But it is far from clear what message is being sent by, for instance, reading aloud the nation’s foundational document. Is this group of Republicans really trying to suggest that they care more deeply about the Constitution than anyone else and will follow it more closely?

Dear me.  Tut, tut.  But the substantial argument for the legitimacy and place of the Constitution is made obliquely in the next paragraph:

In any case, it is a presumptuous and self-righteous act, suggesting that they alone understand the true meaning of a text that the founders wisely left open to generations of reinterpretation. (Emphasis, ours)

In this view, the Constitution is a beginning, not an end. "Reinterpretation" implies changing the meaning thereof.  It needs to be reinterpreted with each succeeding generation, to keep it alive and relevant.  Beneath this lies an ossuary of suppressed premises.  Amongst these are:

1. It is illegitimate for previous generations to bind and control the present generation.
2. Continuity of meaning over time of a particular text (book, essay, letter) is impossible.
3. Relevance cannot be sustained and maintained intergenerationally.
4. Truth and meaning evolve and change over time.
5. To survive requires change and adaptation.
6. Life comes from the existential now.

This view of the Constitution is the "mainstream" progressive perspective.  It leads to legislators and the Executive ignoring the limits on civil government imposed by the Constitution, on the one hand, and activist judges who discover new, previously unheard of  "constitutional rights" in every bedroom and washroom in the country.  In a word, it has led to a relentless expansion of power by the civil government--which pretty much sums up the last two hundred years of Western history. 

The contrary position is succinctly put by US Supreme Court justice, Antonin Scalia in the following video.


This position, too, has many suppressed premises--the opposite of those listed above.  What is really interesting is that these are the same issues that have dogged Christ's Kingdom for two thousand years.  Moreover, it is impossible to take a definitive position on this debate without grounding it biblically and theologically. 

Because the Christian Gospel believes in the all governing, all conditioning God, Who does not change, continuity through development and despite change is not only possible, it is inevitable.  Because Christ is King and Lord over all the nations of the earth, and has been for over two thousand years, all the contingencies, all the developments, all the change has already been anticipated, accommodated and sufficiently addressed in His Word.  This means that the Bible remains infallible and sufficient.  Whilst TV's and the Internet had not been invented, and the United States did not yet exist whilst our Lord was upon earth, their eventual reification was already anticipated and has been sufficiently addressed in Holy Scripture.  (II Timothy 3: 16,17) Thus the Word of God remains perpetually authoritative and pervasively relevant  to each generation--but only because of the totalitarian governance of our Lord Jesus Christ over the entirety of human history, so that no contingency is brute or unplanned or unordained.  Every decision of the cast lot is of the Lord.  (Proverbs 16:33)


If a society believes this, then authoritative documents binding successive generations are not only possible, but essential.  For the Lord has commanded us to learn from our forbears what He has already taught them.  (I Corinthians 11:2; II Timothy 2:2).  It is inevitable that subordinate standards emerge and are accepted--standards that are subordinate to the Word of God, that derive their authority from it, but are neither themselves  inspired, nor infallible.  Whilst capable of modification and adjustment and development, their higher authority depends not upon continual adjustment, but upon the Word whence they are derived.

For a society to remain Christian, it must not only have such subordinate standards, but they must be entrenched and not subject to the popular or elitist will du jour.  This is what the very foundations of constitutional government are themselves built upon.  But without the "deeper Magic" of the Word of God, they will soon crumble into desuetude.  Which is what is happening now in the United States and, as we have already noted, across the entire Western world. 

But the prerogatives of Power do not disappear under this revolution: they get transferred by man from Christ to the State, and therein lies the seed and root of the divine judgement which will inevitably fall until we repent.  For our Lord is a jealous God and He will not give His glory to another--which is to say, to the creature. 

We agree with the progressive liberals.  All subordinate standards in a community must be living documents and living words.  The issue is whence the spirit and life come.  But for the liberal the quickening of all things, including foundational documents, comes from us, from humanity.  For the Christian, the quickening of all things comes from the One who lives and abides forever and to Whom has been granted all power and authority in the heavens and upon the earth.  

Patterico makes a historical and "common sense" argument for the Constitution as an authoritative subordinate standard.  But in our world, it strangely fails to compel.  Why?  Because the argument below is only compelling upon overt, explicit Christian foundations. 

These twin concepts, of original understanding and textualism, are not mere legal theories. They are the underpinning of the legitimacy of our government. The People of the various states did not surrender powers whose contours were to be decided by judges who substituted their own “evolving standards of decency” for the text. Nor did they surrender powers to be determined by the unexpressed will of any particular founder or group of founders. They surrendered powers — limited powers — according to a text, the meaning of which is fixed in the words of the document, and determined by the original understanding of those words. The only legitimate way that our Congress can exercise power is by adhering to that text.
It is an absolutely essential idea, therefore, for a Republican Congress that actually intends to exercise power in a legitimate fashion, to begin its session by reading the very text that delineates and circumscribes its legitimate authority.
The proof of the pudding is, of course, in what this Congress does — not in mere symbols. But symbols matter too — and this is a hell of a symbolic statement with which to open.
UPDATE: Ilya Somin says it well in an old post:

The idea that the law is ultimately embodied in the text enacted by the legislature rather than in the subjective “purposes” of the legislators strikes many people as just common sense.

Indeed. And since we are a nation founded on the rule of law, we are a nation governed by texts, not subjective purposes or intent. This, again, is why reading the text is so important — and why reading the text of our most important document is a crucial reminder of what it says — and what (despite liberals’ fondest hopes) it doesn’t say.

Patterico is right and the argument is both compelling and sound, but only if we give up the suppressed premises of progressive liberalism and reject the false religion upon which they are based.  Unless we have Christ enthroned in our lives and communities, we are all progressive liberals at heart.  "Turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel? (Ezekiel 33:11)