We often think of the Christian life as becoming progressively more like God – in character, if not in substance. Though this is true in some respects, it is not an appropriate description of the whole of sanctification. Indeed, through the process we are to become less like God in certain respects, for naturally we are afflicted with a multitude of inappropriately Godlike dispositions.

The crux of the problem is that we relativize our references when they should be absolute. Take the following examples:

-God values Himself as the highest good.
-We value ourselves as the highest good, as if we were gods ourselves. Our reference to Good must be absolutely like God’s, and not relatively so: we must value God as God values Himself, not value ourselves as God values Himself.

-God’s love desires for its object that which comes from Himself, which is their highest Good.
-Our love naturally desires for its object that which comes from ourselves, as if we had their highest good. C.S. Lewis wrote much about love corrupted in this way – explicitly in The Four Loves, and implicitly in The Great Divorce and Till We Have Faces. Our reference must point the objects of our love absolutely to their highest good, not relatively to ourselves.

-God’s wrath is incited by a slight to His own glory.
-Our wrath is incited by a slight to our own dignity. Instead, proper anger on our part is to be directed at sin – intended slights to the glory of God – our own dignity being counted as nothing (c.f. John Piper’s post on anger without sin).

This is the difference between the intended Godliness of the saint and the intended Godlikeness of Lucifer. Where Lucifer desired, as our flesh often does, to lay claim to the object of these references, we must know that they can only be absolute and immutably pointed at God. Without that absolute reference, our values are idolatrous, our love is corrupt, our anger is unjust, and who knows what other categories I’ve neglected to include. I suspect there are many more. It is ultimately the difference between pride and humility, even the root of all sin.

For a time the question of culpability in predestination was one which I had a sense of the right answer, but for the life of me could not articulate coherently: the Romans 9 “God’s God. He can do whatever He wants” is true in every sense, but also hollow – why would God be glorified in blatant unfairness? I have been ineffective in refuting the idea that predestination is unfair (maybe occasionally venturing towards “it’s unfair and that’s ok”), and so would like to apologize to anyone to whom I may have misrepresented the answer.

That said, this passage answers the question brilliantly:

The goodness of God is so connected with his Godhead that it is not more necessary to be God than to be good; whereas the devil, by his fall, was so estranged from goodness that he can do nothing but evil.

Should anyone give utterance to the profane jeer that little praise is due to God for a goodness to which he is forced, is it not obvious to every man to reply, “It is owing not to violent impulse, but to his boundless goodness, that he cannot do evil?”

Therefore, if the free will of God in doing good is not impeded, because he necessarily must do good; if the devil, who can do nothing but evil, nevertheless sins voluntarily; can it be said that man sins less voluntarily because he is under a necessity of sinning? (Institutes, II.3.5)

Compulsion is not culpable.
Nature is not compulsion.
Nature is culpable.

We cannot say that God has in any meaningful sense chosen to be good – it’s His inherent nature. Yet God is praised for being good. Should we not therefore be likewise condemned for a sinful nature which we have likewise not chosen?

For a long time in the Classical Liberal tradition, there has been a tension between rationally constructed systems (for example Mises’ a priori epistemology) and the antirational purely spontaneous orders proposed by Hayek. The former stresses the universality of human nature, but does not generally refer to a legal order without the assumption (Hayek would argue it is a poor one) that it can be rationally constructed. The latter emphasizes the limits of human knowledge, the uniqueness of human experience, and the futility of deliberate construction.

Though it is well accepted that the market itself is both spontaneous and desirable – that it is more effective and efficient than any planner could hope to match – applying spontaneity to a legal system has been more difficult. Ultimately most legal theories of spontaneous order devolves into Conservatism – that institutions are valuable simply because they exist, and change in itself is an inherent negative.

This presents problems for market economists, because as has been articulated by many before me, markets are not the only things to evolve and survive. Norman Barry makes this point in his The Tradition of Spontaneous Order, saying “the period of the dominance of the open society, the market economy and minimal government may then be regarded as perhaps a chance mutation in a course of evolution which is proceeding in quite another direction, an evanescent torch in an inexorably darkening world”. Are we to accept institutions merely because they exist? That would be absurd for anyone with normative opinions, especially believers in the free market. Yet it seems as if a universal theory of spontaneous order can only lead there.

It is not in fact necessary, however. There are elements of truth both in constructivistically rational systems such as Mises’, as well as in antirational systems such as Hayek’s, yet as far as I can tell, they have never been cogently and elegantly synthesized before (please point me in the right direction if they have, though). I aim to do that here.

I propose that there are two spheres of design: the structural sphere, and the behavioral sphere. Hayek, despite his apparently universal antirationalist streak, seemed to have been aware of this cleft: he says that “laws must be general, binding on everybody, not be retrospective in application, and should name no individual or group”. Essentially he has separated the structural order from the behavioral order: a rationally constructed set of institutional rules to ensure that behavioral rules do not encumber the spontaneous order. And though it doesn’t seem to be explicitly articulated, much of the perceived schizophrenia of Hayek’s theory comes from the failure to distinguish between these two spheres.

The antirationalism of Hayek is entirely appropriate in the behavioral sphere. It is of course impossible to improve upon market allocation by rational intervention, simply because the knowledge problem is too great. The behavioral sphere deals with unique human experience, and thus may only arise spontaneously for lack of central knowledge.

In the structural sphere however, the universality of human nature allows us to rationally construct institutions appropriate for spontaneous order to appear in the behavioral field. The qualitative difference between the two allows us to critically evaluate existing institutions without abandoning a commitment to spontaneous market order. By separating the two spheres – a strict separation of economy and state, as Rand put it – we can be both epistemologically rigorous and ideologically firm.

But a simple separation of economy and state is not the whole of the two spheres theory – it is much more general than that. The behavioral sphere is always characterized by spontaneous order in the presence of freedom, and by a rationally constructed structural framework to ensure its functioning. The cleft between the spheres may even be taken up a degree so that the structural sphere is a superstructure of states, and the behavioral sphere comes to encompass the behavior of the institutions, as well as that of individuals. As was stated in the Microfederalist Manifesto, a microfederalist superstructure (a rationally constructed one at that), being a degree higher than the institutions that we are used to constructing, allows for spontaneous order in the legal realm. It is only with such a rationally constructed superstructure that spontaneous order can apply to the legal order. For common law, despite Hayek, is not a spontaneous order without such a competitive superstructure, as without that, it is fundamentally no different and no less unconstrained than legislation.

People from the time the law was given have looked at it as a series of categorical imperatives – things that one must abide by no matter what and regardless of the reason. It becomes more about the action itself than the spirit behind it. It was exactly this thinking that led Jesus to rebuke the Pharisees for adhering to the letter of the law while completely missing its spirit (Mark 2:23-28).

The law, as I have said before, is only an approximation of how the regenerate person acts. It approximates by detailing actions that correspond to values – values which are more fundamental than the actions. It is for this reason that Jesus said that the greatest commandment was “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind”, and the second, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 22:35-40): First, God is the highest value. And second, we are not special: if we value ourselves and our own happiness, then we must necessarily value others and their happiness just as much. These are the two most fundamental values under which the rest of the law can be placed as more specific manifestations of these general values: “on these two commandments hang the whole law and the prophets”.

1) You shall have no other gods before me / 2) You shall not make for yourself a graven image. God is the highest value, and we are not to value anything more highly than God.
3) You shall not take the name of the Lord in vain. The name of the Lord is valuable.
4) Remember the sabbath and keep it holy. Rest is valuable.
5) Honor your father and mother. Reproof and correction are valuable (c.f. Proverbs 15:32), or, the family itself is valuable.
6) You shall not murder. Human life is valuable.
7) You shall not commit adultery. Purity is valuable (compare images of the Church as the bride of Christ).
8) You shall not steal. Fairness is valuable (c.f. Jeremiah 22:13).
9) You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Truth is valuable.
10) You shall not covet. Material possessions are not valuable.

Looking at it in this way, standard moral dilemmas that pit one categorical imperative against another become soluble. Why is truth valuable, for example? Because people act based on knowledge, and to bear false witness is to cause them to act on misinformation. Lying is a lack of love for the person lied to. If then I am hiding Jews and a Nazi soldier comes to my door looking for them, the question is not “do I lie or tell the truth?”, as Kant would have it, but “do I value the life of my fugitives or the welfare of this soldier more?”. Most people would intuitively know to lie, but moral philosophers have a way of muddying the waters here. Categorical imperatives in these cases drive a wedge between “right” and “moral”. But within a system of values, there is no such thing as morally “taking one for the team”. There is no guilt in the higher valuation of life than welfare, and we don’t have to resort to consequentialism (the ends justify the means) as most would do to justify the action.

Ultimately, consequentialist morality is just as bankrupt as imperative morality: as the latter focuses on the nature of the action, the former focuses on the result. Neither gives any regard to the spirit of the law, nor the spirit of the doer. It is the spirit that Jesus was concerned about in questions of morality – the process of sanctification cleaning the outside by first cleansing the inside. A consequentialist morality produces ruthless pragmatists, and a categorical imperative morality can only produce whitewashed tombs. Only a morality from proper internal valuations may produce a Christian.