3 - God and human society

Summary

The Epistle to the Politica informs the reader that, inquiring into the causes of present disaster and divine judgement, the author discovered (after much study of political authors and the political parts of the Bible) that the causes were as much religious as secular.

Sins and impenitency have brought down God's judgement, but ignorance and error in matters of government have also caused division (Pol. Epist.). More specifically, Lawson emphasises what he takes to be much confused thinking about secular and ecclesiastical communities. These Lawson sees as linked by common principles of politics, distinguished by complementary aims and the differing adaptation of the rules of government. They are, in short, distinct but not separate, and by laying them side by side Lawson hoped to make clear the nature of each. Lawson's modern readers are more willing to separate than to distinguish and so his conceptual technique has allowed the undue isolation of the secular and the imposition of a distorting modernity upon his text. For not only are his secular doctrines suspended in a net of theological conviction, but also the distinct realms of church and state were perceived by him to be mutually informing. In this I believe he was quite typical. The whole text may be seen as being teased out from the first sentences of the work, which authoritatively declaim the theological basis of all Lawson's thought and the principles which structure the taxonomies of church and state.