by Adi Schlebusch
There is a branch of Philosophy which we call Social Ontology. The word “ontology” is derived from the Greek words ontos which means “essence” or “existence” and logos which means “word” or “doctrine.” Ontology therefore entails the study of the nature of being, while social ontology specifically deals with the nature, structure and properties of human society.[1]
One of the core differences between the Biblical view of society and the liberal or humanist view is that the former views the family as the basic unit of society, while the latter identifies this as the individual himself. At the heart of this deviation from biblical social ontology is liberalism’s view of man as sovereign over his own life, while of course Scripture teaches us God, in his sovereignty, placed each human being in a specific social context for a specific purpose. According to the fathers of liberalism such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rosseau, a society exists as an aggregate of free and sovereign individuals, who, in their own interest, surrender their liberty and sovereignty in order to make the existence of a functional human society possible.[2]
The Christian view of society is radically different. Sovereignty does not belong to any man, but to God alone. Man, as created being, can only exist in complete dependence upon God. The entire universe, for every nanosecond of its existence, is fully dependent upon God’s providential maintainance thereof. Human beings therefore also do not exist with any kind of independence, but rather in complete dependence upon God. God, by means of his sovereign decree, has ordained every individual to exist in a specific time, and as part of a particular family and nation. Practical reality also teaches us that the individual human being never exists in a vacuum. Each one of us are born as tiny, weak and vulnerable babies incapable of surviving on our own. We do not enter this world as free and sovereign individuals, but as helpless beings without any say into which family or people we are born into. We do not choose our parents and we do not choose our siblings. Yet these natural relations into which we are providentially placed are just as much part of our being as our individuality is.[3]
The authority that parents hold over their children is the most basic force holding society together. It is also in this natural obedience that children are due to give their parents, that social and political structures are rooted. Society is therefore no aggregate of individuals, but rather a natural extension of the family. The nineteenth-century Southern Presbyterian Robert Lewis Dabney describes it as such:
Commonwealths have not historically begun in such an optional compact of lordly savages. Such absolute savages, could we find any considerable number of them, would not usually possess the good sense and the self-control which would be sufficient for any permanent good. The only real historical instances of such compacts have been the agreements of outlaws forming companies of banditti, or crews of pirate ships … Commonwealths have usually arisen, in fact, from the expansion of clans, which were at first but larger families.[4]
That the family, as opposed to the individual, is the most basic building block of society can also be derived from the words of Christ Himself, who notes in Matthew 19:6 that husband and wife are not “two but one flesh [and that] what God has joined together, let not man separate.”
The enemies of Christ, in their rebellion against God’s created order, has therefore been launching a relentless attack against the family unit precisely in order to attempt to effectuate the very separation that Christ forbids.
The author is a senior researcher at the Pactum Institute.
[1] Seele, J.R. “Social Ontology: Some basic Principles”. Anthropological Theory 6(1), 2006: 51-52.
[2] Locke, J. 1690. The Second Treatise on Civil Government. Edited by Andrew Baily, 2015. Broadview Press: Peterborough, Ontario,63; Rousseau, J.J. 1762. Du contrat social, ou, Principes du droit politique. Amsterdam: M.M. Rey, 69.
[3] Dabney, R.L. 1892. Discussions: Philosophical. Richmond, VA: Presbyterian Committee of Publication, p. 305.
[4] Ibid., 308-309.