Defining the Right
Do not be embarrassed at your inheritance. Claim the Right.
Contemporary political and theological discourse suffers from a perennial problem: the terms “Right” and “Left” are not sufficiently defined. In the strife of tongues euphemistically known as “common parlance,” these terms can map to a plethora of concepts.
One might wish to object that the use of these terms is not absolutely essential to profitable discourse and debate. The point is conceded. It cannot be denied, however, that the Right/Left dichotomy reflects a broad range of Western intellectual debates. To sever our speaking and thinking from this rich conceptual heritage in favor of contemporary and emergent abstractions would be imprudent — and arguably impious.
What, then, is the Right? And what is the Left?
The Right is the Law of God in the strict sense—the eternal moral will of God. As such it is manifest in nature (“nature” construed here to include the orders of creation as well as the heart and mind of man, i.e., man’s reason and conscience) and specially revealed in Holy Writ, namely in the Decalogue and all biblical presentations of the moral law—including the civil laws of ancient Israel, insofar as they materially present the moral Law and apply it concretely, but excluding the purely ceremonial laws.
The Left is defined by its negation of the Right—a fact that is manifest even in its etymological derivation. Like Augustinian evil, it is pure privation, having no independent existence. It subsists in rebellion against the Law of God—revolution, if you prefer. It is literal lawlessness, although it entails the replacement of the Law of God with a raft of idolatrous and phony laws of man. Here G. K. Chesterton’s maxim is apt: “If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments, they shall be governed by the ten thousand commandments.”
We note, then, the following secondary propositions, and treat them in turn:
- All Christians must adhere to the Right and abhor the Left.
- Not all who adhere to the Right are Christians.
- Adherence to the Right is necessary but not sufficient for Christianity.
All Christians Must Adhere to the Right and Abhor the Left
While it is true that adhering to the Right does not make one a Christian (see below), it is absolutely necessary that Christians adhere to the Right, inasmuch as it is absolutely necessary for Christians to love God’s Law and to seek to conform their lives to it, rendering obedience as sons, not as slaves. The chief theologians of the present writer’s Old Lutheran tradition put it this way:
They are never without the Law, and nevertheless are not under, but in the Law, and live and walk in the Law of the Lord, and yet do nothing from constraint of the Law.
—Solid Declaration of the Formula of Concord, VI, The Third Use of the Law, 18.
That Christians would claim to love God and believe in his Son unto salvation, yet also despise his ordering of creation and the inscription of his Law in their hearts—thereby denying those things which even the heathen “can’t not know,” to use J. Budzizewski’s phrase—would have been dismissed as scoffing and mockery by all professed Christians not very long ago. It suffices to say that the blithe espousing of such an impious contradiction at scale, i.e., by entire churches, is largely a twentieth-century phenomenon. Put another way: time was when everyone knew that there is no such thing as a Christian who abhors God’s Law.
Not All Who Adhere to the Right Are Christians
For when the Gentiles, which have not the Law, do by nature the things contained in the Law, these, having not the Law, are a law unto themselves: which shew the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another.
—Romans 2:14-15
So writes the holy apostle Paul to the Christian church in Rome. That the eternal moral law is in view here, and not those temporary ceremonial statutes which governed ancient Israel, is attested by verse 19 of the following chapter: “Now we know that what things soever the Law saith, it saith to them who are under the Law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.” Ceremonial prohibitions of mixed fabrics—though salutary in their time and place—did not and do not arraign a sinful world before a righteous God. No; this is the office of the moral law.
But to return to the point: a man may recognize the moral order of the world and yet not reck the rod of his Maker. Such is the basis for the old GNON meme, which stands for “God of Nature or Nature.” While a Christian should demur from the casual equivalence of Creator and creature, nevertheless he should also recognize it as an imperfect gesture in the right direction, inasmuch as it attests to the truth expressed in Romans 2: men who do not know Christ the Lord nonetheless “can’t not” know the eternal moral truths which pervade the world.
The Right in every society just is comprised of men who, even if they do not know God aright, still recognize that rebellion against Nature is wicked, destructive, and immiserating. It is true that, unless such men be converted, they cannot obey the Law according the spirit—as sons, not as slaves; “in the Law,” not under it—but only according to its letter in some form or fashion. Yet this does not overthrow the contention. Consider: Cyrus the Great did not render obedience to God’s will from a regenerate heart, yet still God called him “my shepherd,” and said to him by the mouth of Isaiah, “I have even called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me” (Isaiah 44:28, 45:4). Thus and so does God speak to all kings of the earth who by righteous dealing bless the Church in their realms, even if their motives for doing so are not pure. We might well go even further and say that God speaks thus to every father, for every father is a king in his own home, obligated to do right by those in his household.
Adherence to the Right Is Necessary But Not Sufficient for Christianity
Inasmuch as knowledge of God’s Law in the strict sense cannot save a man, but only knowledge of the Gospel—and that not an idle intellectual knowledge (notitia, assensus) but faith and trust in Jesus Christ (fiducia)—it must be stated that adherence to the Right is necessary but not sufficient for Christianity. The great reformer known as the Praeceptor Germaniae (“Teacher of Germany”), Philipp Melanchthon, summarizes this contention in the following words:
Now, although we cheerfully assign this righteousness of reason the praises that are due it (for this corrupt nature has no greater good, and Aristotle says aright: “Neither the evening star nor the morning star is more beautiful than righteousness,” and God also honors it with bodily rewards), yet it ought not to be praised with reproach to Christ.
—Apology of the Augsburg Confession, IV, Of Justification, 24
Yet so abysmal is the nadir of Christendom today, so beaten down and subverted by the demonic forces of revolution (i.e., by the Left), that even the low threshold of the “righteousness of reason” is not consistently cleared by those who claim the name “Christian.” The name of God is blasphemed among the nations through such execrable witness. The candle is under a bushel.
Conclusion
How can we right such a lamentable state of affairs? Here, as in so many endeavors, a sound foundation is essential. For lack of it, all subsequent building will be for nought. We must firmly plant our feet on this foundation of the Right if we are to stand against world, flesh, and devil—the elemental agents of the Left.
It may seem simplistic or even jejune, but consider how consistently Christian doctrine and indeed the English language itself associate “right” with morality and soundness. The right hand of the Father is where Christ is seated. At the Last Judgment the sheep are placed on the right, and the goats are placed on the left. To be “right” is to be correct. To be “in the right” is to occupy some moral high ground. “Right” and “direct” share a root, namely the German recht, meaning straight (cf. Latin rectus; Spanish derecho). The equivocal aspect of the term “right” is, upon deeper examination, no equivocation at all. The Right is righteousness.
Men of the Right should not be so concerned with not wanting to “virtue-signal,” that they forget that they are in fact actually supposed to be virtuous, which is to say righteous. The empty signal is the problem, not the virtue which shines as a light before men. It is good to be righteous. It is of course the best to have the righteousness of faith by which one is united to Christ, reconciled to God, and saved eternally. But it is also good when men—all men—live righteous lives here in time.
Let us then perceive the matter aright and be bold in our identification as men of the Right, putting away modern notions and faddish and ephemeral ways of speaking. Do not be embarrassed at your inheritance as such. Claim the Right. Defend it, and teach your sons to do the same.
