RELIGION AND POSITIVE LAW – INSTRUMENTAL INSTITUTIONS IN HUMANKIND'S EVOLUTION

There are some striking and significant parallels between the instrumental role of positive law and that of religion in Smith's analysis of the evolution of humankind. Both emerge to provide security in a very insecure, marginal state of human existence. Both grow from insignificance to powerful institutions. Both can, but do not always, play a constructive role in humankind's evolution, including facilitating the progress of opulence. In both cases, institutional inertia can transform what was, at one point, a useful construction into an impediment. Finally, for humankind to approach the limiting case, both the justice enforcement mechanisms of positive law and the power of institutional religion must wither because under the liberal plan, citizens enforce justice upon themselves and the ethics they share as citizens are not religious but civic.

There are also, of course, some important differences between institutions of positive law and religion in Smith's analysis. For example, positive law emerges to bring order to human society as it becomes too complex for the informal, individual enforcement of justice. In contrast, religion emerges as a means of allaying the fears humans share in the face of inexplicable and awesome displays of nature, as well as fears about their individual and collective prospect.