Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to reconstruct a hypothetical genealogy of the U.S. national motto “in God we Trust” by comparing the juridical and theological concept of “depositum”. According to Philo of Alexandria, the deposit was the most sacred institutional act of ancient social life, because it had both a religious and a sociological function. According to the Epistulae to Timothy (1 Tm 6,20) the term ‘deposit’ defined the legacy of the Christian faith of which the disciple of St. Paul was entrusted. His task was to manage this legacy and to spread it among the others. Hence the deposit defined at the same time a contract based upon good faith and a symbolic space of “security”, namely a container that protected an unchangeable content: the oral knowledge transmitted by Christ to the Apostoles and, indirectly, to St. Paul. The depositum was also the procedure through which the word of Christ would acquire all its potential. On the other hand, the contract defined as “depositum” by Roman law was characterized by a centrality of the so-called bona fides (“good faith”) and by the distinction between regular and irregular deposit. This means that the principle of good faith should lead the conducts of the manager whose task is exactly to look after an object called Christian faith. How can we interpret the word ‘trust’ according to the juridico-political remarks? The purpose of this chapter is to explain all these related issues.
Section 8.1 has been discussed and co-authored with Angela Condello to whom I express my deep gratitude.
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Notes
- 1.
The first such appeal came in a letter dated November 13, 1861. It was written to Secretary Chase by Rev. M. R. Watkinson, Minister of the Gospel from Ridleyville, Pennsylvania, and read:
Dear Sir: You are about to submit your annual report to the Congress respecting the affairs of the national finances.
One fact touching our currency has hitherto been seriously overlooked. I mean the recognition of the Almighty God in some form on our coins.
You are probably a Christian. What if our Republic were not shattered beyond reconstruction? Would not the antiquaries of succeeding centuries rightly reason from our past that we were a heathen nation? What I propose is that instead of the goddess of liberty we shall have next inside the 13 stars a ring inscribed with the words PERPETUAL UNION; within the ring the allseeing eye, crowned with a halo; beneath this eye the American flag, bearing in its field stars equal to the number of the States united; in the folds of the bars the words GOD, LIBERTY, LAW.
This would make a beautiful coin, to which no possible citizen could object. This would relieve us from the ignominy of heathenism. This would place us openly under the Divine protection we have personally claimed. From my hearth I have felt our national shame in disowning God as not the least of our present national disasters.
To you first I address a subject that must be agitated.
Source: https://www.treasury.gov/about/education/Pages/in-god-we-trust.aspx.
- 2.
As regards pseudo-epigraphy widely used in the Christian cultural environment from 60 to 100 AD, cf. Penna, R. 2011. Le prime comunità cristiane. Persone, tempi, luoghi, forme, credenze. Rome: Carocci: 171–180. As regards the question of Pauline authorship of the Pastoral Epistles, called into question at the start of the 1800s by Schleiermacher among others, cf. the detailed critical review by Marcheselli-Casale, C. 2008 (1995). Le lettere pastorali. Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane: 21–44.
- 3.
For the english version cf. Towner, Ph. H. 2006. The Letters to Timothy and Titus. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans: 429 and 456.
- 4.
Spicq, C. 1969. Les Épîtres pastorales (2 vol.). Paris: Gabalda. I, 34 et seq.
- 5.
Penna, 2011. 127 et seq.
- 6.
Rordorf, W., and A. Tuilier. 1998 (second edition) La Doctrine des Douze Apôtres (Didaché). Paris: Éditions du Cerf.
- 7.
Timothy is considered an “evangelist”, in other words a second-level apostle (I Tm I,18) and, as such, invested with a charismatic office (I Tm 4,14). Cf. von Harnack, A. 1902. Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten. Leipzig.
- 8.
For a general overview on Catholic, Protestant and Anglican commentators, cf. Burtchaell, J.T. 1992. From Synagogue to Church. Public Services and Offices in the Earliest Christian Communities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- 9.
Schmitt, C. 1996 (1923). Roman Catholicism and political form. Westport: Greenwood Press.
- 10.
With regard to this cult of origin as purity of experience and as such qualitatively superior, cf. the criticism by Adorno, T.W. 1973. The Jargon of Autenticity. Chicago: Northwestern University Press.
- 11.
Sohm, R. 1892 (1923). Kirchenrecht. Band. 1: Die geschichtlichen Grundlagen. München & Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot: § 2: Der Begriff der Ekklésia.
- 12.
Ibidem, 22.
- 13.
Spicq, 1969., I, 462.
- 14.
Ibidem, II, 741.
- 15.
Stephanus, Thesaurus graecae linguae, III/I, 887.
- 16.
Super 2 Tm I, l. 4. Aquinas, Thomas. 1902. In omnes S. Pauli apostoli epistolas commentaria. Turin: Marietti, II: 237.
- 17.
- 18.
As regards Jewish-Greek history of the ethical and juridical notion of παραθήκη cf. Ehrhardt, A. 1958. Parakatathke. Zeitschrift der Savigny Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte (Rom. Abt.) 75:32–90.
- 19.
Philo of Alexandria, De specialibus legibus, IV, 30–32.
- 20.
T. Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, IV, 8. 38, 285.
- 21.
Spicq, C. 1931. Saint Paul et la loi des dépôts. Revue biblique 40, 482 et seq.
- 22.
See Arangio-Ruiz, V. 1981. Istituzioni di diritto romano. Napels: Jovene: 309 et seq.
- 23.
C. Spicq, 1931. 490.
- 24.
Philo of Alexandria, De specialibus legibus, IV, 30–36. Cf. also T. Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, IV, 8. 38, 287.
- 25.
V. Arangio-Ruiz, 1981. 312.
- 26.
The verb used is παράθου, the middle aorist imperative of παρατίθημι, “entrust the deposit”. C. Spicq, 1969. 738.
- 27.
Cf. Dibelius, M. 1955. Die Pastoralbriefe. Tübingen Mohr: 69-70. Indeed, it is clear that, equated with tradition, the deposit appears as a restriction that prevents Christians from free use of the revealed word: the freedom of Christianity from the law, which Luther rediscovers in Paul, was to find an awkward conditioning in another law, that of the deposit whose cautious, if not conservative vocation, would be definitively sealed by placement with tradition and apostolic succession. It is no coincidence that in the encyclical Pascendi dated 1907 where Pius X was to condemn modernism, the reference to deposit of faith as a safe port of sound doctrine, features as a emblem right from the start of the document.
- 28.
As regards the relationship between didaskalia and paratheke, see the observations by Iovino, P. 1998. Il deposito della fede e la sana dottrina. In Il deposito della fede. Timoteo e Tito, ed. G. De Virgilio. Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane: 168–169.
- 29.
Something very similar is described by a study by Yan Thomas on the original function of the ius pontificale in Rome, and specifically on its being stuck, so to speak, at the root of the city, hidden but at the same time ready to be transmitted. In this regard, Thomas cites the passage by Titus Livius recalling that civil law had been deposited in the depths of the popes’ sanctuary (civile ius, repositum in penetralibus pontificum, T. Livio, 9, 46, 5). Cf. Thomas, Y. 2011. Idées romaines sur l’origine et la tranmission du droit. In Les opérations du droit, eds. M-A. Hermitte, and P. Napoli. Paris: Seuil-Gallimard, Hautes Etudes: 74.
- 30.
By other means, the idea developed by G. Agamben of an oikonomia as a government practise is confirmed. Cf. Agamben, G. 2007. The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Theological Genealogy of Economy and Government. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
- 31.
Super I Tm., 6, l. 4. Cf. Aquinas, 1902. 227 et seq. See above the idea of depositum juvenescens conceived by Irenaeus of Lyon.
- 32.
- 33.
Maitland, F.W. 2003. State, Trust, Corporation, ed. by D. Runciman and M. Ryan, Cambridge University Press: 79.
- 34.
Ibid., p. 77.
- 35.
See case Newdow v. Lefevre, 10–893.
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https://www.treasury.gov/about/education/Pages/in-god-we-trust.aspx
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Napoli, P. (2018). A Hypothesis on the Genealogy of the Motto “In God We Trust” and the Emergence of the Identity of the Church. In: Huygebaert, S., Condello, A., Marusek, S., Antaki, M. (eds) Sensing the Nation's Law. Studies in the History of Law and Justice, vol 13. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75497-0_8
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