x CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION
the distance between God and man remained as great as ever.[4]
The answer of Chalcedon was this: Jesus Christ is both fully human and fully divine, two natures in union in one person, without intermixture. Therefore, the person of Christ is the sole link between heaven and earth. No human institution can legitimately claim to be the final court of appeals, the final voice of authority, the final anything. No human institution is divine.
The most important political implication of the Chalcedon creed, and the biblical truth that underlies that creed, is that God. is always over the State, and so are His decree and His law. The universe is not a closed universe; God is above it. Therefore, the concept of authority held by most humanists is incorrect, namely, that there is no higher court of appeal than the civil government, the most powerful human institution.[5] As Rushdoony comments:
Humanistic law, moreover, is totalitarian law. Humanism, as a logical development of evolutionary theory, holds fundamentally to a concept of an evolving universe. This is held to be an “open universe ,“ whereas Biblical Christianity, because of its faith in the triune God and His eternal decree, is said to be a faith in a “closed universe.” This terminology not only intends to prejudice the case; it reverses reality. The universe of evolution and humanism is a closed universe. There is no law, no appeal, no higher order, beyond and above the universe. Instead of an open window
[4] R. J. Rushdoony, The Foundations of Social Order: Studies in the Creeds and Councils of the Early Church (Fairfax, Virginia: Thoburn Press, [1968] 1978), p. 65.
[5] Some humanists – libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, and utilitarian classical economists — believe that the State is illegitimate. They hold, how- ever, that there is no higher earthly institution than the free market, whose dictates may not be interfered with by institutions claiming a monopoly power of authority to bring physical punishment or impose fines on evil- doers, with evil being defined by the Bible. See, for example, Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics (3rd ed.; Chicago: Regnery, 1966), pp. 146R. Thus, they divinize “man, the individual decision-maker.” Throughout history, anarchists have been useful to statist, totalitarian revolutionaries in the early stages of revolutions against an existing civil government. Because the totalitarians understand power, and seek it, the anarchists are easily and invariably dealt with most severely after the revolutions have transferred power to the totalitarians. The State, after all, does have the most power of any human institution in a world which does not respect the law of God.