Does anyone among you, if he has a matter against someone else, dare to go to court before the unrighteous and not before the saints? Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if by you the world is judged, are you unworthy of the most insignificant courts? Do you not know that we will judge angels, not to mention ordinary matters? Therefore, if you have courts with regard to ordinary matters, do you seat these despised people in the church? I say this to your shame. So is there not anyone wise among you who will be able to render a decision between his brothers? But brother goes to court with brother, and this before unbelievers! Therefore it is already completely a loss for you that you have lawsuits with one another. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded? But you wrong and defraud, and do this to brothers! (1 Corinthians 6:1–8)
Now if your brother sins against you, go correct him between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not listen, take with you in addition one or two others, so that by ⌊the testimony⌋ of two or three witnesses every matter may be established. And if he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses to listen to the church also, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector. (Matthew 18:15–17)
Tetranomy (from tetra, “four,” and nomos, “law”) is my term for a social order in which everyone is bound to respect his neighbor’s life, property, trust, and reputation. Everyone is bound by the sixth through ninth commandments: Do not kill. Do not commit adultery (i.e., fraud). Do not steal. Do not bear false witness. No exception is given in Exodus 20, the rest of the Torah that follows, or any of the summaries in the New Testament (e.g., Mark 10:19; Luke 18:20; Rom 13:9). No one is allowed to violate his neighbor’s physical life, the property that makes that life possible, the trust that enables societies to function, or the reputation that underlies trust.
The problem, of course, is that not everyone lives that way; in fact, nobody lives that way all the time. So what is to be done when the laws are broken? Isn’t some coercively funded agency needed to “administer retribution on the wrongdoer” (Rom 13:4)?
I have answered that question at length beginning here. I would like to present in this post a hypothetical situation that demonstrates how the tetranomic solution to the abuse of parishioners by church staff is superior to the conventional statist alternative. (I have dealt with a similar real-life situation here.)
In this scenario, X, a youth group leader, is accused of having sexual intercourse with Y, an early-teenage girl, after grooming her for years, luring her into a compromising situation, threatening her when she refused his initial advances, and finally forcing himself on her when she resisted. Y has told her parents, who have apprised the head pastor of her accusation. The pastor now has a choice between trying to settle the matter in-house or going to the police.
Before we go any further, we need to establish that 1 Corinthians 6:1–8 and Matthew 18:15–17 apply to this situation. Anyone who would say that Y’s father does not self-evidently “[have] a matter against someone else” needs to come up with a better definition of that phrase that does not include this case. Was Paul talking only about lawsuits, or can we reasonably induce the principle that Christians are sinners who will sin against and thereby damage each other from time to time and lawsuits in the “unrighteous” courts are an example of the wrong way to deal with such sins? To limit Paul’s argument to lawsuits looks to me like limiting “thou shalt not commit adultery” to intercourse and not to, say, bait-and-switch marketing. No, Paul’s words apply to our scenario because he was laying down a principle that applies to any situation in which one Christian is seeking restitution for a sin committed against him by a Christian brother.
Jesus tells us how to deal with a brother—any brother—who sins against us: We are to keep the matter between us if possible. If that fails, we take the matter before “one or two others” who have the wisdom to advise but no power to enforce. If that also fails, we go “to the church,” which I take to refer to the church leadership first and the congregation second. (The Greek term originally referred to any group of people who held regular formal meetings, so it could refer to any regular meeting of Christians from a handful to a throng.) The “one or two others” would have been laymen, so “the church” in a Presbyterian system would be the session (perhaps through the pastor), who would either appoint a committee to hear both sides and render a judgment or do so as a full board. Some churches might take “to the church” to mean that they need to call a meeting of the whole congregation (which I hope would be open only to adult communicant members). Either way, the meetings at that point would have the goal not only of finding the truth but also of setting the terms for the parties to be reconciled. Once the dispute has passed the “one or two others” stage, any party who refuses to allow the dispute to go “to the church” or to submit to the judgment rendered is to be treated “as a Gentile and a tax collector,” not as a church member.
Gentiles (and, presumably, tax collectors) “lord it over” their neighbors (Luke 22:25)—their relationships are determined by power, not by justice or compassion, and Jesus tells his church that those who refuse to submit to the decisions of the church are looking to have the dispute resolved by power, not by justice or compassion, in which case they are to be excommunicated (i.e., have their membership revoked) and allowed to seek their fortunes from the state.
Some would say Romans 13 gives the father no choice but to go to the police: rape is a crime, and prosecuting crime is the state’s responsibility. But this raises two questions. First, who decides what is and is not a crime? Is a crime whatever the state says is a crime? This is a subset of the “render unto Caesar” question: Is anything Caesar puts his name on legitimately his? Does he have the right to put his name on anything he desires? In this case, if he puts his name on Y in the name of protecting her, does she primarily belong to him or to her parents? If she belongs primarily to Caesar in this case, how can she not now be subject to Caesar’s guidelines for education (e.g., Islam, Christianity, atheism, critical theory) and conscription for whatever purposes Caesar has in mind for her (e.g., Est 2:2–4)?
Second, what are the likely consequences of this action? The first is that the church and X will get their names in the paper. If X is married, his wife will bear shame before everyone who can identify her. If he has children, they will become objects of ridicule in school and wherever else word travels. If he is convicted and jailed—and if he cannot raise bail before trial—his household will have no breadwinner, and his wife will be essentially widowed and his children orphaned while he is incarcerated, and his ability to find employment once he is released will be severely hampered. And this is if he confesses when he is first confronted or is acquitted by the court!
If he denies the accusation, the prosecution will go through church records with a fine-toothed comb and interview anyone he thinks will be able to strengthen his case. Any defense lawyer engaged by X will be looking for any fault in the accusation that will enable him to win an acquittal. Y will then become a tool for the prosecutor and an enemy to be destroyed by the defense, both in pursuit of their careers. The execution of justice and the welfare of the victim will be secondary at best.
If God truly is the God of justice and of the afflicted, there has to be a better way for Christians to handle this kind of horrible situation, one that brings glory to him alone and provides a greater opportunity for justice. There is, and it involves the church acting as the church.
How can the matter be settled in-house? First, we need to define our phrase settle the matter. It does not mean that X says, “I’m sorry,” and that’s it. The damage has been substantial, so the restitution needs to be substantial. Any satisfactory resolution has to be just that—satisfactory to the victim and the church adjudicators and ideally one the perpetrator agrees is just and even merciful. The primary aim must be to fulfill justice—the question of mercy has to wait until a just solution has been defined and plans made for its implementation—but if “mercy triumphs over [just] judgment [i.e., justice]” (Jas 2:13), the question of mercy will need to be addressed eventually.
Any solution rendered by imperfect adjudicators will be imperfect, but that is no more true for an adjudication by a church than for one by the state. If no one will be satisfied with any solution, not even one provided by the state, perhaps it is better to think of an optimal solution. The optimal solution restores the victim’s personhood and restores the perpetrator to Christian fellowship and to the victim as much as is humanly possible. Is such a course of action more likely from a group of men selected by the congregation for their commitment to Scriptural faith and practice or from those who “[do] not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to [them]” (1 Cor 2:14)?
Of course, any resolution will probably give the victim less than she would like to receive and cost the perpetrator more than he would like to pay, but both are welcome to weigh the likelihood that the state will serve them better and act accordingly.
So the question is now, How can a just course of action be decided upon? According to Matthew 18:15–17, the process should involve as few people as necessary. If Y’s family confronts X and he confesses and is willing to cooperate with the terms Y’s family sets, who else needs to know? If Y were my daughter, I would expect X to resign from his post and pay for any counseling Y needed. I would want X to be kept accountable, and I would ask church leaders to be part (or all) of the process, which would likely include provisions beyond resignation and counseling (e.g., restricted access to church facilities). According to 1 Corinthians 6:1–8, these men should be up to the task; if not, the congregation should be dissolved.
If X makes restitution and submits to the other disciplinary measures imposed by the church leaders, what could be better? But what if he doesn’t?
As noted earlier, if my conversation with X yields no fruit, then I take “one or two others” to listen to both sides and give their unofficial opinions of the merits of our arguments and recommendations for ways the matter can be settled without it going any further. If that doesn’t work, I take the matter up with the church leaders. They appoint a committee to hear both sides, ask questions, and render the best official verdict and terms of resolution they can. This is crucial: the church leaders are redeemed sinners, and their decision will be imperfect. But they are (in Presbyterian circles, at least, though in any congregation that elects its leadership) “as good as it gets,” and those who ordain their leaders covenant before God to obey them. So, if X refuses to abide by their decision, he is excommunicated from the church, 1 Corinthians 6 no longer applies, and I am free to take the matter to the police.
However, if I do so, the horrible consequences of requesting state intervention listed earlier would ensue, so the church leadership would be acting reasonably if they were to beg me not to do so and to try to work out another solution. They might agree to take on my daughter’s restorative care by paying for counseling or whatever and take on the responsibility of keeping track of X to make sure he doesn’t get into positions where he can repeat his offense. Or they might decide that my daughter has not provided enough proof for her accusations to overcome reasonable doubt and consider the case closed.
Either way, if I refuse to accept the church leaders’ decision and take the matter to the police, I am excommunicated, and I will have to live with whatever the state provides.
But if tetranomy becomes the law of the wider society and if X refuses to listen to the church or if the church chooses to close the case, there will be no police for me to turn to. Then what?
I assume that tetranomy can become the law of the wider society only through a bottom-up process by which affinity groups become large and strong enough that the state withers away. Specifically, given the choice between taxing their neighbors to finance schools, parents will choose to vote against school levies and the politicians who support them—and win the elections—and they will work alone or with others to build what they consider the optimal education systems for their families. If God blesses their efforts, tax-funded education becomes obsolete. Again, people will vote against the one-size-fits-all healthcare bureaucracy necessitated by tax funding, and it will be replaced by voluntarily funded institutions. They will keep watch over each other’s property and deal with malefactors, obviating the need for career police and military. They will take care of those in need, obviating the need for tax-funded provisions for retirement and unemployment. In short, they will form communities. Some communities will be expressly Christian; others will not. Different Christian communities will have different requirements for entry (e.g., policies on alcohol or beach apparel) and offer different benefits (e.g., grief counseling or firearms training). The hope is that the Christian communities will work so much better than the secular versions that people will be drawn to Christ (1 Pet 3:15) and God will crush Satan under their feet (Rom 16:20; Mal 4:3).
If the wider society devolves into chaos before coercive institutions can be supplanted through the ballot box, then viable communities will of necessity be established by force of arms. The results in that case would probably share many authoritarian characteristics with the state they replace and therefore be inferior to an order established through peaceable supplanting. We can be sure, however, that whatever institutions emerge will be as satisfactory as they are voluntary, and we can hope that they will make establishing voluntarism a goal.
For now, we should strive to build congregations that see that their members’ needs are met—spiritual first, then (in no particular order) physical, educational, health, nutritional, and relational. Part of meeting their spiritual needs is keeping them out of the kind of situation in our scenario. But sinners gonna sin, so second best is learning how to deal with the problems that come up without recourse to “the unrighteous.”
Our scenario neglected a crucial relationship that was damaged by X’s attack on Y: his relationship with his wife. He committed adultery against her. Adultery is a capital offense in the Torah. How does a congregation deal with that or with murder, the ultimate capital crime? Dealing with sexual abuse in-house is currently illegal, but it can be pulled off by competent church elders—and should be. Executing capital offenders is a different matter, if for no other reason than the impossibility of keeping it hidden. I will explore a possible strategy for dealing with capital offenders in part two of this series.
