The letter and the spirit of the law

WE obviously have to be governed by the rule of law.

Without the law, we can only expect disorder and chaos, and all the

forms of injustice. But we need to distinguish between the letter of

the law and the spirit of the law, and know how to understand and

apply the law properly.

            Ideally, both the letter and the spirit of a certain law

should be in perfect harmony. But that is hardly the case in real

life. The problem, of course, is that the articulation of the law is

conditioned and limited by our human powers that cannot fully capture

the richness of human life, considering its spiritual and supernatural

character that will always involve the intangibles and mysteries and

the likes.

            That is the reason why we can go beyond but not against a

particular law, when such law cannot fully express the concrete

conditions of a particular case.

            But, first of all, we have to understand that all our laws

should be based on what is known as the natural law that in the end is

a participation of the divine eternal law of God, our Creator and the

first and ultimate lawgiver. And that part of natural law that is

specific to man is called the natural moral law that would recognize,

as its first principle, God as our Creator and source and end of all

laws.

            A legal system not clearly based on this fundamental

principle about laws would already be a system that is defective ab

initio. A legal system that is based only on some human consensus

would put the spirit of the law in full subservience to the letter of

that law.

            This kind of legal system is what is referred to as legal

positivism. This means that the laws are valid not because they are

rooted in moral or natural law, but because they are enacted by some

authority and are accepted by society as such.

            Thus, this system makes us the first and ultimate

lawgiver. It is as if we make ourselves our own God, our own creator,

an absurd assumption to make. It is as if we are so capable of knowing

everything about man that we can legislate everything about him, that

is, about us.

            But even if a legal system recognizes God as the source

and end of all laws, it is still highly characterized by our human

condition. The articulation of the law in its letter has to be

constantly animated by the spirit of that law that in the end is the

spirit of God.

            So the proper understanding and application of our law can

only be achieved if we discern closely the spirit of God. Tackling our

laws only by means of our common sense or our other ways of estimation

can open the possibility of missing the real intent of the laws. Our

problem nowadays is that much of our legal culture is into legal

positivism.

            In the gospel, there is an episode where Christ clarified

the real spirit of the law on the Sabbath. It is in the gospel of Luke

6,6-11 where a man with a withered hand was healed by Christ on the

Sabbath. Here Christ asked the scribes and the Pharisees who were such

a stickler on the Sabbath law that nothing should be done on that day.

            The pertinent part goes: “’I ask you, is it lawful to do

good on the Sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than

to destroy it?’ Looking around at them all, he then said to him (the

man with the withered hand), ‘Stretch out your hand.’ He did so and

his hand was restored.”

            We really need to go to Christ to know the real spirit

behind a particular law!