Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth, for the Colson Center. I'm John Stone Street. On a recent episode of the Daily Podcast, New York Times legal expert Charlie Savage, while discussing President Trump's capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, said this, quote, there are two types of law, international law and domestic law. In fact, many experts have appealed to international law in recent years and recent days, because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Israeli retaliation to the October 7th massacre, to the American raids on Venezuela. Not only do such appeals suffer because of bad actors like Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran, who head up many of the international bodies charged with overseeing such law, but also because it's just difficult to explain how such morality came to be and why it should be binding.
After all, unless some kind of transcendent law exists, appealing to international law is just a game of smoke and mirrors. It's played by powerful nations who insist on enforcement when convenient to them. The recent Nuremberg movie depicts the attempts after the Second World War to prosecute the Nazis for their war crimes and attempts at genocide. Of course, had the Allies just shot or hanged Hitler's cronies at the time of their capture, no one would have batted an eye.
However, the Allies wanted to make it clear to the world and to history that what the Nazis did was not ordinary wartime behavior as bad as that can be. Rather, they perpetrated an extraordinary evil. Attaining that verdict was difficult to say the least, partly because it had never been tried before. As one character said early on in the film, quote, it can't be done. There's no legal precedent for a trial.
There's no international law to base the charges on. The whole concept of international law is that one country can't tell another country's citizens how to conduct themselves. Trying these men in a German court would be different. But what you're talking about is trying them in some sort of legal limbo that doesn't exist using case law that hasn't been written yet. ⁇ Well, everyone knew the Germans did wrong.
However, how can one break a law that does not actually exist? The Nuremberg trials attempted to establish that there were such universals to which all countries could be held accountable. But if law is only a temporary and artificial construct, then it's true that only might can make right. To move beyond that transactional morality requires a higher law, and thus a lawgiver. Though secularists claim that such laws can be derived from nature, as David Noble wrote in his classic work Understanding the Times, and I quote, How can the humanists claim man has rights apart from other animals if the only source of those rights is man's own transactions and interest?
A belief in natural law and natural rights lets the humanist off the hook in one sense, because it provides a more stable source for law than does any human interpretation of legal principles.
However, the humanist is then faced with the problem of explaining the origin of this natural law, whereas the Christian believes God implanted the law in the universe and inscribed natural law on the hearts of men. The humanist cannot tolerate such an explanation. End quote. In other words, there are two kinds of law, but it's not international and domestic law. Or to put it more clearly, beneath both international and domestic law is either natural law or positive law.
Natural law appeals to universals. Positive law appeals to the changing nature of human society and assumes, wrongly, that it is evolving, not devolving. In this, the Christian worldview can provide what a secular view cannot. Because God has made himself known, the reality of revelation provides a foundation to know what's right and what's wrong. From Revelation comes dual insights about both the image of God and the fall in Eden.
Thus, every individual has both an indelible dignity worth protecting, an accountability to God, and also an incredible potential for evil. A just law, whether international or domestic, will secure the prior and punish the latter. without resorting only to mere power. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr.
Timothy Padgett. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. And to download or share this commentary with others, go to breakpoint.org.
