Government Class review and assignments — 11-14-2016

Assignments

Remember the assignments given in class

Next two chapters in Carson for reading.
Presentation — Brogan-Griffin first chapter for the week
Presentation — Becca and Carter second chapter for the week

Vocabulary

pulchritudinous
abstemious
abstruse
aesthetic
bumptious
bohemian
circumlocution
debonair
cupidity
coquettish

Notes from Lecture

I.) Elecotral College

A.) How number of elecotral votes for each state is reckoned

B.) Presidential election night = 50 elections… not 1

Unity in diversity
Illustration — Baseball Season … 1960 World Series (Yankees vs. Pirates)

C.) Challenges to the electoral College

Pure democracy

D.) Founders opinion on pure democracy

E.) 17th amendment and pure democracy

How the election of Senators worked prior to 17th amendment

F.) Who gets to be President if there is an Elecotral college tie or no one gets a majority?

1.) Historical examples

1800 —  Jefferson vs. Burr
1824 — Jackson vs. John Q. Adams vs. Henry Clay vs. Crawford

2.) House’s role
3.) Senate’s role

G.) Who gets to be President if the President elect dies before the Electors meet?

H.) Who gets to be President if the President elect dies after the Electors meet?

I.) Popular vote Win… Electoral college loss

  • Five times a candidate has won the popular vote and lost the election. Andrew Jackson in 1824 (to John Quincy Adams); Samuel Tilden in 1876 (to Rutherford B. Hayes); Grover Cleveland in 1888 (to Benjamin Harrison); Al Gore in 2000 (to George W. Bush); Hillary Clinton in 2016 (to Donald J. Trump)Looking at Tilden vs. Hayes — 1876

    “Old 13-12”
    Rutherfraud
    The deal

J.) Why Electoral College review

II.) Turning the ins out

A.) Economic downturn
B.) Major foreign policy blunder
C.) Division in the party
D.) Major corruption of party in power

Hi Pastor, here is the condensed note from last class.

Different Kinds of Government:
Head of Decision Power Rule Political
state Maker source length Freedom

Military Dictator: Dictator Dictator Military Indefinite determined
by dictator

Full Monarchy: Monarch Monarch Hereditary Death Determined by monarch

Oligarchy: Small Small
Group Group $$$$ Death Small group

Republic: President Checks + Constit- Term Bill of Rights
Balances ution limit

Full Democracy: n/a Majority Majority n/a Determined by Majority

Anarchy: n/a n/a n/a When gov. Determined by everyone
est.

Communism: Dictator Dictator Seizing Indefinite Determined by Dictator
power

Corporatism: Corp. heads Corp. heads $$$$ ”

Confederacy= many states who want to make a general gov. for a few enumerated and delegated powers

Constitutional Monarchy= When monarch is limited by law

Theocracy is an INESCAPABLE category

Socialism= Takeover by evolution, when the economy is planned by the government, gov. is God

How A Bill Becomes Law:

1. The bill begins as an idea

2. It gains a sponsor, usually a sen. and a rep.

3. Bill is introduced, starts in house

4. Goes to committee

5. Bill is reported in the House (for impeachment, 2/3 vote is required for conviction. Senate becomes jury, tried by president. some of House of Representatives as attorneys.)

6. Bill is debated in the House, can be amended

7. The Senate repeats steps 4-6, sometimes put in a drawer

8. Debated again, goes back to House (sometimes with amendments)

9. If the House does not like amendments, the bill goes to a conference committee of both Sen. and Reps., decide on compromise, if approved goes to president

10. Goes to president, either signs it, veto, or pocket veto. Both the Senate and the House together can override a veto with 2/3 vote.

____________

Locate these elements in the US Gov’t and briefly explain how they function as such

Monarchy
Aristocracy
Democracy

2.) Total # of Electoral Votes in College

3.) Total # Electoral Votes need by a Presidential candidate to win

4.) Total # of Representatives in US House

5.) Total # of Senators in US Senate

6.) Total # of SCOTUS

7.) Senate has the responsibility to advise and consent on Presidential appointments to SCOTUS

8.) Turning the ins out (4)

9.)  Briefly define the purpose of the Electoral College

10.) Briefly explain why theocracy is an inescapable category

11.) T   F — It is possible to win the Presidency while losing the nation wide vote total.

12.) If this is possible name one example

 

 

 

Reformation Day 2016 Homily

I Cor. 10:31 — So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God.

Colossians 3:17
And whatever you do, in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him.
 
1 Peter 4:11
If anyone speaks, he should speak as one conveying the words of God. If anyone serves, he should serve with the strength God supplies, so that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen.

________________

With these passages we are taught that there is a distinctively Christian way to lean into life … to do all that we do from the most mundane matters to the most exalted. For the Christian nothing is done from a neutral position. For the Christian all is done to glorify God.

This mindset was captured in the Reformation byword of Sola de Gloria. To the glory of God alone.

The Reformed desired to re-order all of life in ways consistent with God’s Word for the purpose of glorifying God alone in ALL they did.

Increasingly that mindset … the mindset of doing all we do for the glory of God is absent in our thinking. The very few that remain that seek to employ that in their thinking and writing are met with the catcalls of their “brethren” saying that Christianity has nothing to do with those areas that they are thinking about how one might live for the glory of God.

There was a time for example when it was routinely understood among Reformed folk that Christianity had a doctrine that had implications for our social order.

It was not thought that Christianity was to be applied only to the matter of salvation of souls. It was understood widely that Christianity created a whole unique social order.

And so with this cry of Sola Dei Gloria Reformed Christianity reshaped the West. This is so true that

World renowned German Historian Leopold Van Ranke could write,

“John Calvin was virtually the founder of America.”

“He that will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of American liberty”

George Bancroft — Historian
History of the United States of America — Vol. 1 — pg. 464

These men were not speaking of the fact that Reformed Christianity had particular doctrines of Grace that were unique. They were speaking of the Doctrines of the Reformation that created a unique social order and way of living as a people.

So, in seeking to do whatever they did to the glory of God they approached a social order that maintained distinctions and which denied egalitarianism. They saw passages such as “Honor thy Mother and Father,” as passages that taught social hierarchy.

Westminster Confession

Q. 124. Who are meant by father and mother in the fifth commandment?
 
A. By father and mother, in the fifth commandment, are meant, not only natural parents,[649] but all superiors in age[650] and gifts;[651] and especially such as, by God’s ordinance, are over us in place of authority, whether in family,[652] church,[653] or commonwealth.[654]

Calvin echoed this,

“All are not created on equal terms … This God has testified, not only in the case of single individuals; He has also given a specimen of it in the whole posterity of Abraham, to make it plain that the future condition of each nation was entirely at His disposal.” – John Calvin

And so wanting to do all they did to the Glory of God and believing in social hierarchy the Reformation created a social order that was opposed to both a static hierarchy and the kind of egalitarianism that the much of the visible Church promotes today.

But it did not stop here. All along the social order the Reformation did all it did for the glory of God.

As another example … The idea of covenantal solidarity that we find communicated in Reformed understandings of Baptism found its way into our Constitution when the Founders wrote they were seeking to,

“secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,”

This is a very Reformed and covenantal way of thinking.

And so the Church has become silent and in becoming silent a vacuum has been created so that other worldviews have achieved a cultural hegemony that would never have been possible in cultures that were epistemologically and self consciously Reformational.

Where the Reformation once called for social heirarchy, the Church has now retreated and  so soul killing egalitarianism is all the rage. Where Reformation thinking called for a social order with Limited Governments, the modern Church has retreated and so no tocsin is sounded warning about the rise of Tyrants and Usurpers. Where the Reformation talked about the effects of man’s original sin, the modern Church has retreated and no word is spoken of how original sin manifests itself in our political, educational, aesthetic or economic programs.

In the name of saving souls the Church has become silent about doing all that is done Sola Dei Gloria. As a consequence, we have lost our social order and it is now informed and shaped by pagan religions with the effect that the Church can in no way compete with an alien messaging that is being drummed into people 24-7. Further, because Christianity has surrendered the social order people are now shaped by that social order and bring that shaping into the Church with them with the result that Christianity ends up being reinterpreted in a pagan direction.

We should not be surprised that the Church, with a Reformational message, is largely seen, by a now alien culture, as being hateful, mean, and not nice. We should not be surprised that the Church that does not carry a Reformation message are seen as the haunts of the Simpson’s Rev. Lovejoys of the world.

And God’s people love it so.

What other examples besides the few we already communicated demonstrate this Reformation desire to do all that was done to the glory of God get in and create our social order?

We could talk of checks and balances in Government. We could speak of limited and diffuse Government. We could speak of ordered liberty. We could speak of the Protestant work ethic. We could speak of the idea of male and female roles. We could speak of how the Reformation affected views of Art in the West. We could speak of the formation of a vast network of volunteer societies that sought to ameliorate the hardships of the indigent and the poor. We could speak of adoption agencies and orphanages. We could speak of the pressing need for schools and education so as to teach children to think God’s thoughts after Him. We could speak of the valuing of human life that informed our Doctors and nurses for generations. We could speak of the Trustee family and how it informed generations of family life in the West.

Some of this existed before the rise of the Reformation but all of it was reinvigorated by the Reformation and all of it and a host of other unmentioned issues worked to form a Reformed culture that existed in order to do all that was done to the glory of God.

But now we are told, even by many of the Church, that all this must be shoved aside. It is whispered that all of this is the result of cultural bigotry…. white privilege … institutional racism even. Many in the Church are insisting that this concern about the Reformation in terms of how it leaves a decided stamp on cultures and social orders is something that the Church need not be concerned with.

But as for me and my house, it remains sola deo gloria whether we eat or drink … in word or deed, in every area of life.

Baptism Charge … Psalm 22:9-10

Psalm 22:8″Commit yourself to the LORD; let Him deliver him; Let Him rescue him, because He delights in him.” 9Yet You are He who brought me forth from the womb; You made me trust when upon my mother’s breasts. 10Upon You I was cast from birth; You have been my God from my mother’s womb.…

First, note here that the Psalmist emphasizes that the relationship between himself as an infant and His God was a relationship totally established by God.

“You made me trust when upon my mother’s breasts”

The Psalmist had a redemptive relationship with God from the time he was in the womb. And this was so because God made it so.

When we baptize infants it is not primarily about what the infant has done. In Baptism we are merely echoing the Psalmist that God owns our children from birth.

Some would contend that Baptism should not be done since babies cannot have faith and yet we find here the Psalmist saying that He was made to trust when upon His mother’s breast. Clearly, if God’s revelation says that the child upon His mother’s breast trusted God, then who are we to say that such an infant trust is impossible?

But the idea of infant trust or faith is not as ridiculous as Baptists and others like to make it sound. The reasoning goes that since infants can’t trust … can’t “have faith” therefore infants should not be baptized until they can trust and can have faith.

Before unraveling this line of thought do keep in mind again that Baptism is not primarily about our actions. Baptism is about God’s actions and God’s claim upon us and our children. To argue that we should not Baptize our children because they don’t understand is like arguing that we should not give our children’s names because they don’t understand.

Having said that, we would contend however that children can have faith, can trust, and do understand. Observe the newborn who knows his mother’s voice. If an infant knows and trusts the voice of His parents and finds security in that voice and in that presence why would we think it impossible that an infant knows and trusts His covenant King?

Now, as that child grows their trust will increase as they get to know the parents but what grows must first exist in seed form. It is just so with a child’s trust in God. The child who was made to trust God upon His mother’s breast will grow in that trust of God as the years fall away.

Baptism of infants merely recognizes this reality. Baptism demonstrates that God’s claim on us is always prior to our claim on Him. Further, infant baptism does no violence to the idea that salvation is by faith alone. The God who makes us to trust upon our Mother’s breast is the God who works in infants that very real trust. God doesn’t need our expanded capacities of understanding in order to work “trust” in us. God doesn’t need for us to be older in order to be saved by faith alone. All of our experience should teach us that the passage of years most certainly does not automatically make one a riper candidate to put faith in God. Indeed, as Trust in God only happens in people who are resurrected from being cognitively and spiritually dead in their sins it seems altogether appropriate to say that Babies are prime candidates to be made to put their Trust in God from their mother’s womb and so be Baptized.

Let’s look at this infant Baptism from another angle. Nobody, I know of, argues that since infants cannot understand their parents therefore, their parents should not speak to them. When the baby is fussy, the mother will make a promise saying, “I’ll be there in just a second honey.” The mother understands that at some level her child intuitively understands. Well, in Baptism God is speaking to His and Our babies.

We might speak promises to our babies such as,

“Mommy will be there to change your diaper in a second,” or,
“Just be patient a second, and I will feed you,” or,
“I know, you’re so tired, I will put you down for a nap in just a second.”

In the Waters of Baptism God is similarly speaking His promises to His covenant seed,

“I shall be your God…”
“Lo, I am with you always,”
“I will never leave you nor forsake you,”
“Nothing shall separate you from the Love of God.”

Would any of us dare tell either a Mother or God that she or He is silly for talking to babies who don’t understand? Of course we wouldn’t and yet that is precisely what those who deny God’s sign of the covenant to His and Our babies are saying at some level.

“Those babies can’t understand, so why bother giving them the sign of the covenant?”

And yet the Psalmist contradicts such people by saying,

“You made me trust when upon my mother’s breasts. 10Upon You I was cast from birth; You have been my God from my mother’s womb.…”

And one wonderful thing about a Baptism service is that we hear again God lisping to us as Adults those same fundamental truths that He coo-cooed to us when we were babies. Though now we are advanced in years, and perhaps a little beaten up by the wear and tear of life, we hear again those delightful and soul-stirring promises as they are spoken to another generation….

“Fear not, for I am with you little flock.”

Of course, this is only the beginning of the Baptismal journey. As the years pass the children are to be spoken to repeatedly throughout their lives of God’s promises. These promises are to be spoken to them by their parents at every turn, and they are to be spoken to them by Word and Sacrament Lord’s Day by Lord’s Day. They are to be trained to continue to Trust in the God who made them to Trust Him. Baptism is not a magical talisman that relieves us from attending to a diligent usage of God’s means of Grace. Baptism is that first Grace that anticipates all future grace.

For those who deny infant Baptism, if I could I would awaken in you how backward a Christian faith it is that insists that a man must be old enough to appeal to God before God can claim a man in Baptism I would. But, alas, I do not have that capability. Only God can teach you that.

Government Class Week #1

Government

Washington quote — The first President of the United States reputedly said:

“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence,—it is force! Like fire, it is a dangerous servant, and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.”

Definition — Government (Noah Webster 1828 An American Dictionary of the English Language

1.) Direction; regulation

2.) Control; restraint

The exercise of authority; direction and restraint exercised over the actions of men in communities, societies, or states; the administration of public affairs, according to the established constitution, laws, and usages, or by arbitrary edict.

Synonym

management,
administration
authority

law
ministry
politics
power
regime
rules
states
union
bureaucracy
command
control
direction
domination
dominion
empires
execution
executive
governance
guidance
influence
jurisdiction
patronage
polity
predominance
presidency
regency
regimentation
regulation
restraint
sovereignty
statecraft
superintendence
superiority
supervision
supremacy

sway

 

Antonym

anarchy
chaos
coup
insurrection
lawlessness
mutiny
revolt

revolution

 

PURPOSE of Government

1.) To glorify God by ordering all of our lives according to His standard of law and justice.

2.) To rule consistent with God’s standard

In the purpose statement. we find that Government always occurs by some standard. Either we will rule or be ruled in Government by God’s standard or we will rule or be ruled by the arbitrary standard of some false god.

NATURE of Government  —

Internally — Self-discipline
Externally —  Force

Origin of Government — Genesis 1 creation “And God called”

Genesis 1 in the Garden // Adam rules over the beast…(Naming)

See Westminster Confession for God as Governor — Governs (Providence)

1. That there is a providence may be inferred from the nature and perfections of God; from the dependent nature of the creatures; from the continued order and harmony visible in all parts of the universe; from the remarkable judgments that have been inflicted on wicked men, and the signal deliverances that have been granted to the Church and people of God; and from the prediction of future events, and their exact fulfilment. In the Bible, the providence of God is everywhere asserted. “His kingdom ruleth over all,” and he “worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.” – Ps. ciii. 19; Eph. i. 11.

Two things are included in the notion of providence,—the preservation and the government of all things. God preserves all things by continuing or upholding them in existence. The Scripture explicitly asserts, that “he upholds all things by the word of his power,” and that “by him all things consist.”—Heb. i. 3; Col. i. 17. He preserves the different species of creatures, and sustains the several creatures in their individual beings; hence he is called “the Preserver of man and beast.”—Job. vii. 20; Ps. xxxvi. 6. God governs all things by directing and disposing them to the end for which he designed them. “Our God is in the heavens, he hath done whatsoever he pleased.”—Ps. cxv. 3. “He doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?”—Dan. iv. 36. The government of God may be considered in a twofold view,—natural and moral. This twofold view of his government arises from the two general classes of creatures which are the objects of it. The irrational and inanimate creatures are the subjects of his natural government. The rational part of the creation, or those creatures who are the fit subjects of moral law, as angels and men, are the subjects of hismoral government.

HC — LD #10

Genesis 2:15 — To dress and to keep (to Govern)

Some suggest that the Fall was a result of Adam failing to Govern. The argument goes that if Adam had governed per God’s instruction the Serpent would not have been in the Garden to tempt Eve.

An aside — Notice God names Adam showing his direct sovereignty over Adam but Adam is the one who names not only the animals but also Eve thus communicating man’s call to govern women.

Goal of Government — 1.) To Glorify God

2.) To order all things as consistent with God’s revelation for ordering and so to magnify God by living the good life.

Standard in relation to Governance / Government  — All Government rules by some standard.

Varying standards may be the autonomous self, or it may be God’s law, or it may be God’s law as misinterpreted by the autonomous self or it may be by the standard of 50% plus 1 (mob rule)

Government as Inescapable category –You will never meet a person who is not governed. Even in anarchy the government is each individual self doing what is right in his own eyes. He is the sovereign governor and so he is being governed by the self.
Government and Worldview — You can know a great deal about a person by knowing who or what they are governed by. In point of fact if you can locate that which is governing a person who can determine how close you can get to that person. If a person is governed by their own selfish desires then you know you want to stay away.

Tell me what a man is Governed by and I will tell you the person he is.

II.) Government starts with the individual

Government is moral and personal before it is intstitutional.

Self-government undergirds all institutions governments

1.) family government
2.) church government
3.) civil government

If a man cannot govern himself by internal restraint (self-government) he will have to be governed by external restraint.

Some have argued, that it is in the interest of an institutional Government that desires to be God to do all it can to break down the ability of its citizenry at self-governance because with that lack of internal restraint comes the necessity of external restraint and so the growth of Statist Government to that end. In such a case it is in the interest of the pagan state to introduce chaos into the personal morality of its citizenry so that it has to be that which provides societal controls.

Examples — Weimar Republic …. Soviet Experiment … Modern USA

What is Government?

1.) Sovereignty — Legitimacy to rule

As all Authority comes from God (Romans 13:1) because only God is answerable to no one but Himself all other authority is therefore delegated authority and therefore limited authority to govern. God delegates this limited governing authority to every institution (Family, Church, Civil)

A desire to have the governing sovereignty of God often leads to madness (Daniel 4:30f). Nero, Caligula,

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

God takes legitimate governance so seriously that He calls rebellion to be as the sin of witchcraft. (I Sam. 15:23)

External Governments can remain legitimate even though those in position of authority in those Governments can act illegitimately. Then it becomes a question of how long the practice of ruling illegitimately can last before the Government itself is no longer legitimate.

This is an answer that requires Wisdom. For my part, I believe we long ago reached that point with the US Government. The US Government is no longer legitimate and any obedience we render up is not due to its legitimacy but is a matter of wisdom recognizing that they have the biggest guns.

II.) Representation: Accountability to the rule of another (I Cor. 11:3, cf. 3:23)

All Governments represent the sovereignty of another Government. This is just to say that no human Government is absolute. Only God’s Governance is absolute.

Exodus 18:17-23 as an example of Representative Government

III.) Law — A moral code by which to rule

All governments follow an ethical code. Ethical code like government itself is an inescapable category. It is never a question of “will there be an ethical code, but only the question of “which ethical code shall we have.” Even if no ethical code is allowed, (total anarchy) what one has is the ethical code of no ethical code.

In the civil realm the civil magistrate is to render judgment consistent with what God calls “good,” and “evil.” (Romans 13:3-4).

IV.) Jurisdiction: Authority to enforce sanctions

Law without the ability or will to enforce is no law.

Illustration — Recent statements VP debate that while abortion should be illegal there should be no sanctions brought against a woman who chooses to have an abortion. No penalty after transgression of law … no law.

Family sanctions — Rod (Proverbs 13:24, 22:15, 23:13, 29:15)
Church sanctions — Keys (Mt. 16:19, 18:15-20)
Civil sanctions — Sword (Gen. 9:6-7, Romans 13:4, I Pt. 2:14)

V.) Continuity: Stability of Government  (Dt. 28)

VOCABULARY

Aberration
Bandy
Baneful
Bedraggled
Candor
Debacle
Dank
Ebullience
Fabulist
Facetious

Week 1

Government — Definition

God’s overarching Gov. Isaiah 9:6-7

Christ is the Sovereign of the world (Eph. 1:20-23)

Bow to God’s Government or be destroyed — Psalm 2

World History is a long chronicle of rebellion to God’s Government

II. ) Self-control

Galatians 5:22

Proverbs

Lack of self-control

Eve
David — Bathsheba
Moses — Striking as oppose to touching the rock
Amnon — II Sam. 13

Standard by which we determine self control. II Tim. 3:16

Ability to be self-controlled — Regeneration (John 3)

Consequences of not being self-controlled

Control from the outside (Top Down)

If you will not be self controlled in family parents discipline (Prov. 13:24)

If you will not be self controlled in Church Elders Discipline

If you will not be self controlled in civil realm magistrate disciplines you

(Now with everything upside down … anarcho-tyranny)

All depends on a citizenry being regenerated. Without a proper belief system, all that is left is Mahat systems to control.

Quote — Winthrop (pg. 17)

Week #2

III.) Family Governments  (Rod)

A.) Structure

1.) Trustee

When the state is weak, the extended family or clan is the primary social power, and the state itself is seen as a union of families rather than individuals.  Rights and property belong primarily to the family itself, and its current living members see themselves as mere trustees, charged with passing along what they have received.  The family is the primary instrument of justice:  the family itself is held accountable for the misdeeds of its members, and each member has a duty to avenge wrongs against his kinsman.  Trustee society is naturally polytheistic, with each clan having its private gods.  Greece, Rome, and the Germanic barbarians all began with the trustee family system.

2)      The domestic family.

As the state gains power, it takes over the role of enforcing justice and tries to stamp out the private justice of the trustee family.  Universal religions extend moral duties to non-kinsmen.  With the spread of trade, it becomes useful for a family to be able to sell the property which it had been holding in trust.  Out of these pressures arises the domestic family, the type which Zimmerman believes constitutes the best balance of family and society.  The domestic family consists of the living members of the nuclear family unit:  father, mother, and children.  Family property belongs to the paterfamilias; the living no longer hold it in trust.  Rearing children is the family’s primary function.  Religion provides strong social sanctions against divorce, childlessness, and sexual immorality.

3)      The atomistic family.

As individualism and impiety spread, the ideological foundations of the domestic family are undermined, leading to the atomistic family.  In an atomistic society, marriage is seen as a temporary and socially unimportant contract between independent individuals.  As atomism spreads, divorce becomes common, adultery loses its stigma, sexual perversions of all sorts come to be accepted and even celebrated, children rebel against their parents, childbearing comes to be seen as a burden, and the population implodes.  A society cannot survive without the will to produce a next generation, and so the decedent society is eventually replaced by a new civilization embracing a more virile (trustee) family type, and the cycle begins again.  Greece after the Peloponnesian War, Rome during the late empire, and the contemporary West have the atomic family as their dominant type.

It is in the interest of the State to undermine the family since an Atomistic family is no threat to the State’s increasing power. Where the family is weak there the State can assume the former’s authority and power of the family to itself.

Zimmerman sees Western civilization headed for destruction if it cannot revive the domestic family.  One of the heroes of his story is the Emperor Augustus, whose anti-adultery and anti-celibacy laws can be seen as a rational attempt to protect the Roman family and hold Rome’s destructively atomistic tendencies at bay.  This history’s most important hero, however, is the Roman Catholic Church, which was forced to fight a war for the domestic family on two fronts, against both Roman atomism and barbarian trustee-ism.  By the High Middle Ages, the Church had established her own sacramental version of the domestic family as the primary type in Christendom.  This work was undone by the smart-aleck partisans of divorce and immorality of the Renaissance and Enlightenment.

B.) Type

1.) Patriarchy

Father rule

Ephesians 5:22 – 23 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.For the husband is head of the wife, as also Christ is head of the church; and He is the Savior of the body.

I Corinthians 11:9 Nor was man created for the woman, but woman for the man.

I Timothy 2:11 Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. 12 And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. 

Titus 2:5 
 the older women likewise, that they be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not given to much wine, teachers of good things— that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, to love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed.

2.) Matriarchy

Mother rule

3.) Communal

Community  rule

4.) Anarchistic

Week #3

IV.) Church Government

1.) Episcopalianism (or “prelacy”) is the rule of the church by monarchial bishops. That is, one man may govern those under him (whether members or other elders), and he need not be chosen by the people to be their leader, but can be appointed by a higher agency. Authority thus rests in the one human priest at the top (a pope or archbishop), is then communicated to his subordinates, and extends from there over all of the congregations.

2.) Congregationalism (or better: “independency”) is the rule of the church by every member and the independence of every congregation from all others. Authority now rests with the many at the bottom. Technically speaking, for any given decision which the church may make, every member within the congregation has the same authority as every other; ruling boards are simply an administrative convenience (whose decisions can by overthrown by the congregation as a whole). Moreover, no individual congregation is subject to external jurisdiction; associations of churches are voluntary and have no independent power over the internal affairs of their member churches.

3.) Presbyterianism is the rule of the church by multiple, elected elders—not the dictates of one man, nor those of the whole congregation. These elders must be chosen by the people from among themselves (men to whom they are willing to vow submission), but also examined and confirmed by the present governing board of elders in the congregation or regional body of elders (the presbytery).

All congregations are connected with each other under the jurisdiction of the presbytery, and all presbyteries are connected under the jurisdiction of the “general assembly” of elders from the entire church—thus allowing a system of graded courts for the purposes of appeal and redress of errors made in subordinate ruling bodies.

 Biblical Pattern

Christ directs his church through the Scriptures, His own self-revelation and authoritative guidance. Let me offer here a brief summary of the biblical material which I believe is relevant to determining how Christ would have His church governed. The Bible is not silent on this matter.

  1. There is no distinction between “elders” and “bishops” (Titus 1:5-7; Acts 20:17,28); these represent the same office and order.
  2. Each congregation and center of leadership is to have a plurality of elders (Acts 14:23; 20:17; Phil. 1:1), not one-man rule.
  3. These elders have oversight of the church (Acts 20:28; I Pet. 5:2-3) and are thus responsible to rule the congregation (I Tim. 3:5; 5:17; I Thes. 5:12; Heb. 13:7, 17, 24). They judge among the brothers (cf. I Cor. 6:5) and, in contrast to all the members, they do the rebuking (I Tim. 5:20). Christ calls them to use the “keys of the kingdom” to bind and loose (Matt.16: 19; 18: 18; John 20: 23)—these keys being the preaching of the gospel (I John I :3), administering of the sacraments (Matt. 28:19-20; I Cor. 11: 23ff.), and the exercise of discipline (Matt. 18:17; I Cor. 5:1-5).
  4. The elders are assisted in their ministry by “deacons” who give attention to the ministry of mercy (Phil. 1:1; Acts 6:1-6; cf. I Tim. 3:8-13).
  5. The office-bearers in the church are nominated and elected by the members of the congregation (e.g. Acts 6:5-6), but must also be examined, confirmed and ordained by the present board of elders (Acts 6:6; 13: 1-3; I Tim. 4: 14).
  6. Members of the church have the right to appeal disputed matters in the congregation to their elders for resolution, and if the dispute is with those local elders, to appeal to the regional governing body (the presbytery) or. beyond that, to the whole general assembly (Acts 15). The decisions of the wider governing bodies are authoritative in all the local congregations (Acts 15:22-23, 28, 30; 16:1-5).

Dabney and McAtee On Equality

“Again: we have all heard the famous maxim: ‘All men are created equal.’ There are two species of equality of British freedom, whose watchword is: ‘Every Englishman is equal before the law.’ It does not mean that the peasant is equal to the peer in the list of his particular franchises — these are different. But the peasant has the same right to his narrower franchises as the peer has to his wider. The same law protects both, on the same fundamental principles of justice. The maxim, in this sense, does not assert that nature has made men literally equal in strength, in sex, in capacity of mind, in virtue, in fortitude, in health. Hence it holds that a true and equitable equality must distribute different grades of franchise to these different beings, according to their capacities to use them. It does not hold that the child justly wields the same set of privileges as the father. It does not believe that the woman has, for instance, the same ‘inalienable’ right to sing bass and wear a beard with her husband. But this maxim, after leaving Providence to distribute to different classes of mankind the several allotments of privilege they have capacity to improve aright, claims for the protection of all the common sanction of justice and the golden rule.
 
Then, there is the equality of the Jacobin: a very different thing, which teaches that mechanical sameness of function, franchise, and privilege, in each detail, is a right, ‘inalienable,’ ‘natural,’ and ‘self-evident.’ That whatever particular franchise is enjoyed by the highest citizen, must also be attainable by the lowest: or these sacred institutions are outraged. The question between these is a question in philosophy: not a very easy one, if we may judge by the frequency which thinking men confuse the two together. Let us see what practical fruits this confusion to two abstract theories has borne.
 
One crop of those fruits might have been seen in Paris a century ago. ‘The Reign of Terror,’ was established. The guillotine stood before the Thuilleries ‘en permavence.’ The gutters ran daily with blood. The prisons, filled by vile delators with thousands of the noblest and best , were emptied by the ‘Septembrigans,’ through wholesale massacre. To have belonged to a privileged class was the sufficient crime. To assert the privilege of any class, in church or state, was treason. This was the logical result of the philosophy.
 
We pass over to America in 1865, and we see the second harvest of death from this same philosophy. If the Jacobin equality is that which intuition teaches to be ‘inalienable,’ then it was inconsistent that the Africans, though pagans, aliens, lately savage, and utterly unfit to wield the higher franchise of civic life without ruining society and themselves, should be ‘held to service or labor’ under other citizens. It was iniquity that they should be denied any franchise attainable by any other citizen. As this was ‘self-evident,’ and the equality ‘inalienable,’ no constitutions, laws, or covenants could be legitimate the difference between African and American. But they all became null and void in attempting to do so. Yea, God himself was quite roundly notified, that he had better not legitimate it, or he would be repudiated also! And when some eight millions were unable to see this Jacobin logic so, a quarter of a million of them were killed, their homes desolated, and half a continent clad in ruin!”
 
Robert L. Dabney — D.D.

Secular Discussions — pg. 291-293

Equality, per Dabney, in a Christian Worldview, is particular, applied to all people in their particularity wherein God has created and placed them, while in the Jacobin worldview equality is universal and so works to the end of denial God’s distinctions. In my estimation, the Jacobin variant of equality arises out of the conviction of the Jacobin that man and God are equal. From that premise blooms their conviction that all other distinctions must be eliminated in the name of and in pursuit of Jacobin equality.

One thing is certain that the flattening out of all distinctions and differences in the name of equality if it does not begin with man’s conviction that God and man are equal, will certainly end with God and man being seen as equal.  In a world where, in the name of equality, the distinctions between men and women are sacrificed, the distinctions between the disabled and the healthy are pretended not to be relevant, and the distinction between people groups denied it is inevitable that the distinction between God and man should be negated.

Dabney didn’t live to see what this doctrine of egalitarianism did to Russia and China. Where the 18th century French Revolution and the 19th century American Revolution murdered their hundred of thousands, the 20th-century egalitarian Revolutions murdered their ten’s of millions.

It is my conviction that the church’s errant embrace of some version of Jacobin egalitarianism is to our generation what the Church’s errant embrace of Justification by works was to the Magisterial Reformers. In 2016 the embrace of God ordained distinctions is the article by which the Church stands or falls. Just as in the 16th century the Church’s future depended upon following Scripture and getting Justification by faith alone correct, so in the 21st century the Church’s future depends upon following Scripture and getting the embrace of God ordained distinctions correct. Failure in getting this right will result in the amalgamation of Christianity with all other faith systems into a mono-religious faith system. Failure in getting this right means the destruction of the Biblical family. Failure in getting this right means the equalizing of God and man.

A great deal is at stake. May the Lord Christ grant us grace to fight.