|
Modern
Reformation "began in 1989 as a small newsletter of Christians United for
Reformation (CURE), an organization founded by Modern Reformation’s
editor-in-chief, Michael Horton, to promote a new Reformation in American
Christianity."
|
- In the left-hand column is a representative of the "Two Kingdoms"
perspective. In this column is a response to the article at left from the "Vine
& Fig Tree" perspective. According to the V&FT
perspective, there really are two kingdoms, but not the two described by
proponents of the "Two Kingdom" theory. The real "kingdoms"
are:
- • The Kingdom of Satan (or
"the kingdoms of this world") vs. The Kingdom
of Christ
- Another way to put this:
- • archists vs. anarchists;
in other words,
• those who use force and threats of violence to get their
way, vs. those who follow Christ, eschew violence, and rely on the persuasion of
the Holy Spirit.
- In these two kingdoms, there are two laws:
- • Biblical Law (Theonomy)
- • "Natural Law" (autonomy)
- We call our position "Anarcho-Theonomy"
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Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Saddam Hussein
were all "ministers of God for
our good." "Minister" = "deacon" = servant. Saddam
Hussein "served" God's purposes. Assyria
"served" God's purposes with its acts of murder and pillage of Israel. The
State is evil, but
God uses evil for His purposes. No matter how evil, no dictator or tyrant can
ever be said to not be God's "minister." Christians,
followers of Christ
the pacifist, are prohibited from assassinating dictators, and are
commanded to obey all tyrants. All political "ministers" are commanded to
repent and resign. |
God's Gift of Civil Government
|
Governments are a curse. They
are evil. God uses them to threaten the disobedient. If we obeyed God's
commandments, there would be no empires, no states, no "governments." |
|
David
VanDrunen
David VanDrunen is
Robert B. Strimple professor of systematic theology and Christian ethics at
Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California). He is author of Law and
Custom: The Thought of Thomas Aquinas and the Future of Common Law (Lang,
2003). |
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Modern
Reformation - Subscribe
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| Political life continually confronts
the contemporary Christian. Newspapers and television newscasts are filled each day
with the latest acts and foibles of our government leaders, and in election years
the stream of political information becomes a torrent. Bumper stickers, billboards,
and lawn signs congest the quietest neighborhoods. Most believers would readily
assert that Christianity cannot be
identified with the political process, and yet most also believe that their
faith cannot simply leave them as disinterested bystanders. Developing a proper
perspective on political life has been an ongoing challenge for Christians faced
with this tension. Perhaps the clearest teaching of Scripture on civil government is
its claim that magistrates are ministers of God for our good, and unpacking this
idea is key for an understanding of civil government and the Christian's attitude
toward it. |
This statement is as ambiguous as saying that
"Christianity cannot be identified with any church or denomination." Yeah
. . . so? Aren't some churches more Christian than others? Isn't there a standard to
which all churches should aspire? |
The Apparent Evil of Civil Magistrates
|
|
| No one thinking about the present topic
can fail to recognize that there are a great many reasons why Christians might take
a decidedly negative view of civil government and magistrates. |
The reason we should have a decidedly negative view
of the State is because the core purpose of the State is conquest
and vengeance, financed by robbery.
The idea of "the State" -- a small elite group has a
monopoly of violence they may use against the rest of society -- is a threat to civilization. |
| As the early Christian church first
developed its approach to civil government, much of the Old Testament that they
treasured and most of their own practical experience seemed to suggest that civil
magistrates are generally the enemies of God's people. |
Civil magistrates are always the enemies of God's
people, just like prostitutes and organized crime syndicates. Any time God's people
claim the state is their friend, they have adopted the ends and means of the State,
hoping to cash in on the sins of the State. |
| The pages of the Old Testament are
littered with examples of the unrighteousness of kings. The king of Egypt, Pharaoh,
initiated a brutal campaign against the Israelites in which he sought to kill all
newborn boys. Later, Pharaoh repeatedly hardened his heart against God, first
refusing to let the Israelites leave Egypt and then pursuing them after he did. On
their way to the Promised Land, the Israelites again encountered obstinate kings,
such as Og and Sihon, who would not even allow Israel to pass harmlessly through
their territories, and Balak, who hired the sorcerer Balaam to curse them. Even
after arriving in Canaan, God's covenant people had little rest from wicked foreign
kings. Through the age of the Judges, for example, neighboring princes constantly
harassed them. |
|
| |
Don't forget that at this point Israel demanded a
king like all the nations, and God said this
desire for human archists was a rejection of God
as Lawgiver, King, and Judge (Isaiah
33:22). |
| Later, brutal Assyrian kings
Tiglath-Pileser and Shalmaneser drove the northern ten tribes of Israel into
captivity and the great Nebuchadnezzar deported Judah to Babylon after leveling
Jerusalem and its temple. Of course, the theocratic kings of Israel and Judah
themselves were often no better. |
Samuel predicted (1
Samuel 8) that the kings would be tyrants. |
| If their Hebrew Scriptures suggested
that civil magistrates generally brought harm rather than good, the early
Christians' personal experience frequently confirmed such a view. Was it not, after
all, a representative of the Roman Empire, Pontius Pilate, who had condemned their
Messiah to death, in a sham trial in which Pilate himself admitted that there was no
just cause for accusation? The book of Acts records a number of sad instances in
which civil authorities lined up against the fledgling church and its leaders. King
Herod put the Apostle James to death and then (unsuccessfully) pursued Peter. The
Apostle Paul, who had a couple of unpleasant encounters with civil magistrates
during his missionary journeys, was handed over to the Roman authorities upon his
return to Jerusalem. Though his Roman citizenship at least secured him a judicial
hearing, he remained in prison for several years under Felix and then Festus. Felix,
Acts tells us, had been waiting for a bribe. The book of Acts ends with Paul
awaiting trial before Caesar in Rome. The outcome of Paul's appeal remains unknown,
but not long afterward a caesar named Nero would instigate a severe persecution
against the Christians. |
Then Agrippa said to Festus, “This man might
have been set free if he had not appealed to Caesar.”
Acts
26:32 |
| Added to all this was the fact that
Christians made a theological confession that threw the very idea of political
authority into question: they claimed that Jesus Christ was king — in fact, the
King of kings and Lord of lords. In the face of such a confession, the idea that
mere human beings could be kings might seem at best to be a matter of indifference
and at worst the height of blasphemy. Undoubtedly, the early Christians had many
good reasons to take a negative view toward civil magistrates. |
|
| However, at least one stubborn fact
stood in the way of such a verdict: the teaching of Jesus and his apostles refused
to dismiss civil magistrates as wicked obstructers of God and his people. Jesus
himself instructed his followers to give
to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's (Mark 12:17). This
implied, at the very least, that the civil
magistrate had some claim to people's obedience. In more detail, Paul
described civil authorities as ministers of God for their good. He explained that
whatever authorities existed had been ordained by God and that Christians were
therefore to submit to them (Rom. 13:1-7). Clearly, the many bad examples of kings
notwithstanding, the early Christians needed to develop a positive — as well as
skeptical — perspective on civil government. |
Jesus said "resist not evil."
A command to give something to a robber does not confer ethical or moral legitimacy
on the robbery.
No, God has a claim on people, and can order them not to engage in
violent revolution because He Himself intends to overthrow the tyrant: "Vengeance
is MINE, I will repay, saith the Lord."
This conclusion is neither logical nor Biblical.
|
The Development of a Christian Approach to Government
|
|
| The early church indeed did just that,
though not without struggle and ambiguity. One of the earliest extant Christian
documents to set forth a view of civil life that acknowledged both its legitimacy
and its limitations is the anonymous Epistle to Diognetus, probably written
by the mid-second century. The very fact that this letter is addressed to "his
excellency, Diognetus," is significant, for it suggests that the author
considers high government officials worthy of honor and worthy recipients of appeal.
The author of this letter claims that Christians are in many ways indistinguishable
from the rest of the world in terms of external appearances. Christians do not live
in their own cities, speak their own language, or follow their own customs. Instead,
they obey established laws and acknowledge the constitution of their own
commonwealth. Yet, in a rather paradoxical series of statements, the author explains
that Christians, though belonging to civil society in many important ways, at
the same time do not belong to it. They are citizens of this world, yet also
foreigners, because they are also citizens of heaven. Though they work and live in
civil society, the ultimate meaning of their lives far transcends it. Many
subsequent Christian writers in the early centuries imitated this basic approach.
For example, Justin, the famous second-century martyr, addressed his First
Apology to the Roman emperor. He not only paid respect to the emperor in his
address itself, but he described Christians as those who worship God alone, and yet
in all other things are obedient to the emperor and pray for him. |
The Early Church Fathers developed a lot of bad
ideas, by bringing them in from pagan Rome, from whence they were converted.
Even though the Bible commands us to honor the king (even as it commands us to
honor all people [1
Peter 2:17]), we are not to honor the king as god, even
if the king commands it.
|
| These early writings, though composed
when Christians were still a persecuted minority, established some basic parameters
that guided Christians in later centuries, even after their faith had been
officially adopted by the Roman authorities. The eminent fifth-century churchman,
Pope Gelasius I, for example, spoke of Christ himself as recognizing two legitimate
authorities, the royal and the priestly, each with its own proper sphere of
activity. In his vision, emperors were to submit to priests in matters of salvation
and eternal life, while priests were to submit to emperors in temporal affairs. The
great theologian, Augustine, in his famous work, The City of God, addressed
those reeling from the fall of Rome at the hand of barbarians. Along similar lines,
he accorded legitimacy to civil government-even when governed by pagans-but exhorted
his readers to set their ultimate hopes on something far greater. |
All Christians are priests and kings (Revelation
5:10; 1:6; 20:6; 22:5;Exodus 19:6;1 Peter 2:5-9) and yet at the same time, there
is no legitimate priest except Christ, and no legitimate king except Jesus.
Emperors, dictators, tyrants - even tax-financed dog catchers - have no morally
legitimate existence. Nobody has a right to be an "archist"
- to use force or threats of violence to live off the confiscated wealth of others -
even if your friends call you a "benefactor."
|
| However, there can be little doubt that
the adoption of Christianity as the official state religion of the Roman Empire in
the fourth century had a profound impact on how Christians thought about civil
government. As time went on, Christians became much less prone to doubt the
legitimacy of civil government—as in the days of the early church—and much more
prone to forget its limitations. The idea of "Christendom"—church and
state dwelling harmoniously as a unified
Christian society—held the minds of many Christians through the Middle Ages
and produced some heated debates that could not have otherwise taken place. Among
these debates were those between "imperialists" and "papalists,"
those who believed that ultimately the pope was to submit to the Christian emperor
and those who believed that the emperor was to submit to the pope. |
There are two ways to define
"Christendom," not just one.
One way is: "a unified Christian society." A society where the butcher,
the baker, and the candlestick maker all discharge their callings according to God's
Commandments, and to the glory of God. Every area of human action under the
benevolent reign of King Jesus.
The other way is: "a corrupt union of the Roman Empire and the Roman
Catholic Church forcibly imposing their vision of order on society, for their own
benefit."
Neither emperor nor pope has a legitimate existence. You do not have a God-given
right to assume the office of "pope." You do not have a God-given right to
assume the office of "emperor." If you are a "pope" or an
"emperor," you should resign immediately.
|
| Throughout church history, however,
there have been those who, in the light of the radical claims of Christian
discipleship and Christianity's eschatological expectations, have spurned the
authority of civil government altogether. One prominent group that tended toward
such an approach was the so-called Anabaptists of the sixteenth century. The
Anabaptists, however, provided the reformers Martin Luther and John Calvin with the
occasion and opportunity for setting forth a positive approach to civil government
for the young Protestant churches. Though the views of Luther and Calvin were not
identical, they both approached issues of civil government from the perspective of
the "two kingdoms." Against the Anabaptists who despised civil authority
and preferred anarchy to order,
Luther and Calvin defended the existence of law and magistrates. |
www.TheonomicAnabaptists.com
It should be recalled that Calvin dedicated his Institutes to that great
libertarian defender of religious freedom, the king of France, and specifically
intended to re-direct French persecution of Protestants onto the backs of the
Anabaptists. The
Institutes therefore sometimes shifts from careful exegesis to
political propaganda. Such as this line about Anabaptists preferring "anarchy
to order," which implies the preferred chaos to order. In truth,
they preferred peace to violence, and harmony over disorder. They preferred a
non-archist "Christendom" of harmony over a military dictatorship. The
"Magisterial Reformers" (Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, et al) were willing to
benefit from a military dictatorship, as long as it was a Protestant dictatorship,
imposing Protestantism by force on Catholics.
|
| For Luther, the same Christian who,
according to the kingdom of God's "right hand," would follow the ethic of
the Sermon on the Mount and foreswear all violence and vengeance in his personal
life, must also submit to civil authority according to the kingdom of God's
"left hand," and might even himself serve as a government official and
thus bear the sword. |
This is schizophrenia. "I love my neighbor
unless the State orders me to kill my neighbor." |
| For Calvin, though the doctrine of
Christian liberty frees believers from all man-made laws in religious matters,
according to the spiritual kingdom of Christ, Christian liberty does not at all
diminish the believer's obligation to obey civil magistrates in all matters that do
not directly contravene God's law, according to the civil kingdom. Calvin
made the remarkable claim that suffering under the worst tyrant was better than
living in anarchy. For both of these reformers, and most of their followers,
civil government was a blessing from God, though not of ultimate importance. |
Calvin is correct if he means that suffering
under one tyrant is better than suffering under multi-archy, where every man claims
to be his own god, and is seeking to confiscate your property. But suffering under
the worst tyrant is certainly not better than the situation that existed in the days
immediately following America's abolition of the British government, leaving America
"without
any government whatever." Calvin, a product of his time, could not have
imagined a nation with "the consent of the governed," a nation with no
king at all, a Christian/Protestant
nation with no priest but Christ and no king but Jesus.
The Bible plainly says that civil
government is a curse from God. It nowhere says living under tribute is a
"blessing." |
Biblical Teaching on Civil Government
|
|
| Despite all of the readily available
examples of the wickedness of rulers, much of the Christian tradition has affirmed
that civil government is a legitimate and God-ordained institution. But is there a
biblical basis for such a view? A survey of relevant teaching in both the Old and
New Testaments affirms that there is much scriptural support for the idea that civil
government is legitimate, though always limited. |
Everything "civil government" does is
prohibited by God's Law. Tax-financed vengeance is lawless. That's what "the
State" is all about. |
| Many people have seen the origin of
civil government already in the story of Cain and Abel in Genesis 4. When God
declared that Cain's punishment for the murder of his brother was that he would be a
restless wanderer on the earth, Cain cried out that this was more than he could
bear, because anyone who found him would kill him. The Lord answered that there
would be vengeance upon anyone who killed Cain. It seems
that Cain's great fear was that there would be no system of justice to protect him,
and God's answer addressed precisely this problem. |
I've read a lot of commentators, and none have
suggested that it "seemed" this way to Cain. Cain's great fear, it seems,
was that everyone who knew him to be a murderer would try to shed his blood. There's
no reason to think that the same God who revealed to mankind that murder was a
crime, did not reveal that it was a capital crime, and in addition to
forbidding murder, imposed a
duty on all to shed the murderer's blood to
make atonement. Cain's murder of Abel, after all, was over their sacrifices for
atonement, and the Genesis narrative speaks of the
land being polluted by the shedding of Abel's innocent blood. When Noah got off
the ark, God reminded him of several duties: to "be fruitful and
multiply," and to shed the blood of murderers like Cain. |
| Little coincidence it is that
immediately after this dialogue Cain goes forth and builds a city, for God provides
justice in a sinful world through civil society. God did not promise salvation to
Cain, but he did assure him that justice would not be absent. Here we find a first
glimpse at the role of civil magistrates in this world. |
This narrative is completely backwards. Cain was
the first dictator. Cain was not a victim of anarchy. Cain was the archist.
There is only one reason why God allowed Cain to live: so that somebody's
descendants could murder Christ.
The City of Cain vs. The
City of God
|
| Genesis 9 communicates a similar
message. After the flood, God made a covenant with Noah, which is recorded in this
chapter. God makes no mention of salvation from sin as he enters into this covenant.
Rather, this covenant is made with all people and all living creatures
indiscriminately, and it promises the continuation of somewhat normal life on earth.
One of the provisions of this covenant is that no one is to kill another person, and
that anyone who does will be subject to capital punishment. Rather than destroying
life, human beings are to cultivate life. The command that God gives here, to be
fruitful and increase in number, echoes the
commands of the original creation mandate in Genesis 1. Despite the fall into
sin, man retains the God-given tasks of working, procreating, and caring for
creation, tasks which can and will happen only as there is some measure of justice
in the world. Here again, Scripture gives us a glimpse of the task of what we now
know as civil government. |
Read
what happened when Noah got off the ark.
Genesis 8:20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD,
and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings
on the altar. And the LORD
smelled a soothing aroma. Then the LORD
said in His heart, “I will never again curse the ground for man’s sake, although
the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again
destroy every living thing as I have done.
This has nothing to do with sin? Nothing to do with salvation (being saved from
destruction)?? This is a covenant for the benefit of the entire world.
Building altars and offering sacrifices is "a glimpse" of civil
government?
Clearly, there is only one kingdom: God's Kingdom. There is only one
"church," and at this time Noah was the priest. There was no
"separation of church and state."
|
| Some time later, God made a covenant
with Abraham, and here he did what he did not do in the covenant with Noah, namely,
set apart a special people for himself and promise them eternal salvation. But
despite the promises that Abraham and his family received, they did not turn their
backs on the world in regard to temporal matters. Genesis records many stories of
Abraham interacting with the kings of the lands where he wandered, and he even
consorted with several of them in rectifying a particular injustice that was done to
his nephew Lot (Gen. 14). Later, the righteous Joseph took a high position in the
royal court of Egypt and used his position to preserve the peoples of that land when
faced with a devastating famine. The covenant families of Jacob and his children
gladly took refuge under the civil protection of Egypt. This story of Joseph
illustrates not only that God's redeemed people may serve as civil magistrates, but
also that God uses magistrates to do good for his people and for all people
generally. |
How does the Bible demonstrate that
Abraham had a promise of "eternal salvation" -- and how does the
Bible demonstrate that Noah did not?
The promise to Abraham is that he would in some sense serve as Noah did: as
priest for all nations.
Not all of Abraham's relations with the kings around him were sinless.
Genesis 14 displays God's law on kidnapping, which was repeated
by Moses and elsewhere in Scripture.
To say that Joseph's providential appointment is normative for all men is the
height of interpretive folly. Anyone who is not in direct
communication with God and confiscates one-fifth of a nation's property is a
tyrant and a dictator. God was using Joseph to create a situation where, in the
midst of inescapable famine, Joseph's family would come to Egypt, be made slaves,
and eventually escape slavery and watch the Egyptian Pharaoh and his entire army be
destroyed. One does not learn about this kind of divine public policy in the Harvard
Law School. It is not normative.
|
| Between the time of Moses and Christ,
the situation of God's people changed in some important ways. In the covenant with
Moses, God did something different from what he did in the Abrahamic covenant and
from what he would do in the new covenant: he constituted his covenant people as a
geopolitical nation, giving them a land of their very own and a system of
laws to guide their civil life. When they arrived in the land of Canaan, God's
covenant people were no longer to cooperate with kings of other nations but to
exterminate them. There is no space here to consider exhaustively the reasons for
God's administering things in this way, but surely they relate in part to the fact
that the Promised Land of Canaan was to be a foreshadowing of the eternal heavenly
kingdom in which God's people were no longer to mingle with pagans, but be
decisively separated from them. |
- The word "geopolitical" is not in the Bible. In what sense was
Abraham not a "geopolitical nation?"
- • God had given the Promised Land to Abraham before it was
given to Moses.
•
Abraham
had a system of laws to guide his civil life.
• Israel could engage in
commerce with all the pagan nations of the world -- except those few in the
Promised Land that they were commanded to exterminate. (See the next sentence.)
|
| This is consistent with the fact that
when the people of Israel stepped away from the Promised Land, their attitude toward
the rulers of the lands around them was often positive and not necessarily hostile.
This is evident in the friendly relations that kings David and Solomon had with
foreign rulers, such as Hiram, King of Tyre and the Queen of Sheba (1 Kings 5 and
10). More telling are the instructions in the letter that Jeremiah wrote to the
Israelites who had been carried into exile in Babylon. These exiles were not to
resist the Babylonian government, but to live humbly under it. Jeremiah instructed
them to build houses, get married, and have children. He told them to pray for the
peace and prosperity of the city in which they lived. Jeremiah even explained that
if that the city had peace, so would they-Babylon's civil government would be their
protection! Outside of the Promised Land, these exiles found themselves again in a
situation like that of Abraham and the patriarchs, before the days of Moses. They
were to live at peace with their neighbors as far as possible and acknowledge
the legitimacy of civil magistrates, reaping the benefits of the social order
they provided. Yet, just as Abraham, they knew that they were a people set apart by
God for eternal life, and thus they recognized that this life in Babylon was one day
going to come to an end when God restored the fortunes of his people (Jer. 29:1-14). |
Just because we are not to resist dictators who commit genocidal kidnapping and
enslavement of entire populations does not mean that genocide might be a
"common grace" policy option for politicians acting under "natural
law."
Nowhere is anyone commanded to acknowledge the moral legitimacy of civil
magistrates that take nations captive, or engage in military occupation.
Nevertheless, we are commanded not to engage in violence revolution
toward these same illegitimate governments. Jeremiah's word to Israel was:
"Accept your punishment," not, "Be thankful for civil
magistrates who plunder at will."
|
| With the death and resurrection of
Christ, God brought to an end the old covenant with Israel and inaugurated the new
covenant with the church. The situation of God's new covenant people with respect to
civil government in many ways resembles that of Abraham or the exiles in Babylon.
God gave his New Testament people no special
land of their own, no system of civil
laws, and no instructions about exterminating their enemies. He entered into
covenant with a church, not a nation. The church abides in many nations, not one. It
mingles freely with its neighbors, even if not Christian. As Paul explains, though
the church is to dissociate from so-called "brothers"—professing
Christians—who persist in immorality, this does not mean cutting off relations
with immoral people "of this world" (1 Cor. 5:9-11). Similarly, believers
are generally to remain in their station in life, freely buying and using the things
of this world, though without becoming engrossed in them (1 Cor. 7:17, 29-31). As
part of this basic attitude, Christians are to submit to civil magistrates and
recognize them as a beneficial gift of God. |
It's new in one sense, in another sense it is the
same covenant made with Abraham, which was the same as that made with Noah and Adam.
Christ (and His seed) own the
entire planet. The "church" is "a holy nation" (1
Peter 2:9), and we
are kings. God's Laws are "civil laws" in the sense that they
cover every area of life purportedly under the jurisdiction of civil magistrates. No
civil magistrate is needed because we would otherwise be without direction and
guidance in those areas.
Professing Christians who persist in immorality are to be put out of the church
and treated as -- tax collectors, says Jesus (Matthew
18:17). Why would you kick a "beneficial gift of God" out of the
church?
|
| Echoing Jesus' own command to give to
Caesar the things that are Caesar's, Paul instructs all believers to submit to the
governing authorities. The reason is that God has ordained their authority, so that
resisting them is resisting God himself. Though Christians are often tempted
otherwise, we ought not see this as a burden, but as a blessing, for Paul explains
that the magistrate is God's servant for our good. He exists to be an agent
of wrath and punish the evildoer (Rom. 13:4)—in other words, to bring about that
justice on earth that God promised to provide already in Genesis 4 and 9.
Contemporary Christians living in the First World often complain about the cultural
degeneracy and political misdeeds of their own societies. Surely it is sobering to
consider that the Roman government that Paul described as a blessing from God and
worthy of obedience was filled with far greater injustices than First World
Christians today endure. Paul reiterates the thrust of his concerns in 1 Timothy
2:1-2. Here, in telling Christians to pray for all people, he especially exhorts
them to pray for kings and those in authority. For what purpose? Paul says that we
should pray for them in order that we might live peaceful and quiet lives, in all
godliness and holiness. When civil magistrates do their job—even to some extent—we
are enabled to pursue our work and worship in ways that would be virtually
impossible otherwise. |
Tribute
money.
"For our
good."
The "job" of the State is murderous vengeance, financed by stolen
property.
If we didn't have a civil magistrate, why would we not be able to pursue our work
and worship? Who would confiscate
two-thirds of everything we work to earn if there were no civil magistrate? Who
would be the object of the First Amendment's concerns if there were no civil
magistrate?
|
Conclusion
|
|
| As the Scriptures teach and as the
church has acknowledged, civil magistrates are ordained by God and to be received by
us as a gift from him. Of course, civil magistrates often fail in the tasks
entrusted to them, and thus it is helpful to close this article by remembering that
civil authority is legitimate, but always limited. Though civil authority is a good,
it is not an unmitigated or ultimate good. Though it suppresses wickedness in the
world to some degree, it can never provide
salvation. Thus, even while Christians remain humble and obedient citizens in
whatever country they have been placed, they remember that their true citizenship is
in heaven. Like the exiled Israelites who looked forward to being rescued from
Babylon and returned to the Promised Land after seventy years, Christians today look
forward to the time when Christ returns and establishes that eternal kingdom in
which righteousness and peace dwell. Until then, we gratefully receive God's
provision of civil government, with whatever justice, peace, and prosperity
accompanies it. |
Where does the Bible say the State is a gift and not
a curse?
All states have always claimed to provide
salvation. There is certainly no exception to this claim in the Bible. It is
only as the world has become Christianized that states have existed with lesser
roles than Messiah-Savior. As America has become secularized, the Bush-Obama regime
has increasingly claimed the role of Savior.
We are no longer in exile. The Second Adam has returned us to the position of the
First Adam, and our calling is to build the New Jerusalem, the City of God, with our
prayer being, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in
heaven."
|
David
VanDrunen
is Robert B. Strimple professor of systematic theology and Christian ethics at
Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California). He is author of Law
& Custom: The Thought of Thomas Aquinas and the Future of the Common Law
(Lang, 2003). |
|
| Issue: "The
Christian Voters Guide" Sept./Oct. Vol. 13 No. 5 2004 Pages 17-22 |
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| Permissions: You are
permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format
provided that you do not alter the wording in any way, you do not charge a fee
beyond the cost of reproduction, and you do not make more than 500 physical copies.
For web posting, a link to this document on our website is preferred. Any exceptions
to the above must be explicitly approved by Modern Reformation. |
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Copyright © 2010 White Horse Inn
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