Some people have commented on my predilection to write on things on government, state, politics. I do not do this because I think those subjects are be all end all of discussion but I do it because that is the way many moderns think about those subjects.
Try to think of it this way. Before the Reformation changed the European theology, Church, social order, and culture everything was under the umbrella of the Church. If you wanted to change European theology, Church life, social order, and culture you had to give a virus to the thought life of Medieval Europe in order to make their contemporary understandings of the Church unacceptable. The Church was the behemoth driving everything in Medieval culture.
Today the behemoth driving everything is the state, and if you want to change our current Western theology, Church, social order and culture you have to find a way to give a virus to the thought life of the West in order to make our contemporary understanding of the state unacceptable. In Medieval Europe they believed that in the Church they lived and moved and had their being. In the modern West we believe that in the state we live and move and have our being. Just as the Reformers brought down the Medieval Church by attacking its core theology so those who would desire to see Reformation today must bring down the Modern State by attacking its core theology.
There are some other interesting parallels here as well. Just as the Reformers appealed to the text (the Scripture in its original intent and meaning) to bring down the Church, thus freeing the other God ordained institutions to find their proper place as ministerial institutions before God, so Reformers today must appeal to the text (the Constitution in its original intent and meaning) in order to bring down the state, in order to once again free up the other god ordained institutions to find their proper place as ministerial institutions before God. During the Reformation the problem is that the interpretive tradition of the Church had replaced the plain meaning of Scripture. The Magisterial Reformers gave the Medieval Church a belly ache by returning to the Scripture. The same thing needs to happen again today in the realm that is playing behemoth. The state has stolen the Constitution away from the people — just as the Medieval Church had stolen the Scriptures away from the people — and determined meaning by reading it according to a tradition that emphasizes more the horizon of meaning in the Constitution. This horizon of meaning is created by logical positivists Judges who use the idea of evolutionary growth of the meaning of the Constitution. This evolutionary process reading is done by making case law determine the meaning of the Constitution as opposed to making the Constitution determine the meaning of case law. The point that needs to be grasped is that Reformation will be achieved by winning on the text just as Reformation was won by winning on the text in the 16th century.
Pressing this issue a little further we must note that since the state is the behemoth of our age wherein everything finds its meaning we must realize that this means that the must of the modern church finds its meaning in relation to the state. This means that the state has an official theology. If we want to change the behemoth that is defining everything we must give its corrupt official theology a virus. Just as the Magisterial Reformers attacked the anthropocentric theology that was the official theology of the Medieval Church so aspiring Reformers today must find a way to effectively attack the anthropocentric theology that is the official theology of the state.
It is because the state today is the behemoth idol that we must think of ways to challenge the state with sound theology. This is what the Reformers did in the 16th century with the Medieval Church which was their behemoth idol.
When I write on issues of government, politics, culture, social order and the state I am trying to figure out a way to give the beast a belly ache that will cause the idol to topple.
The Reformers found the Idols and attacked them. We must do the same.
Very true indeed… BUT… How is this to be accomplished when the modern church prefers poor theology over sound? In the days of the Reformers, were the people more ready for freedom than we are today? Or is that just a false presumption that I would make based on a somewhat lopsided reading of history?
In short, when the moderns in the Church run around spewing their “render unto Caesar” garbage, what do we do to change their theology? Who do we work on? Clergy? Laymen? Pagans? I find that most are so brainwashed, it’s difficult to even hold a decent conversation with them.
Good advice needed here.
I also find that spelling is not my strong point. :o)
Matt,
These things go not out but by prayer and fasting.
After that …
I’m not sure the people in the 16th century were more ready for freedom than we are today. To be honest most people in any age just follow a convinced minority who know what they believe and why they believe it and what they don’t believe and why they don’t believe it.
I think the point to take from this is that serious ideas, seriously acted upon always prevail.
Next, as to the “render unto Caesar” there was quite a good piece recently on lewrockwell that dealt with that text exegetically. Fruitfulmomma left the link on one of the other comments section. Here it is again,
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/bevis1.html
George Grant deals with that text by saying to people … “Yes, we are to render unto God the things that are Gods and one of the things that are Gods that we must render unto him is Caesar.” Romans 13 is another text that you are going to have to master. My daughter just had that one thrown in her face yesterday by someone who loves tyranny.
Personally, I would give up on the clergy. They are largely hopeless. Most of them have just enough knowledge to be dangerous and to much knowledge to listen to laymen. I would work on the rank and file as opportunity arises.
States do not march into power on empty stomachs, that is, they need funding to build themselves into imperial behemoths, and the mother’s milk of a pagan state is pagan money. There are but two ways for the state to exact worship. They can force it through the bayonet, which history has shown to be short-lived and fraught with tremendous risk, or they can gain it by making slaves of the people through the enticement of credit and handouts via fiat currency loaned at usury, which binds them in perpetual slavery, something Thomas Jefferson warned against.
I believe the biggest idol that must be dealt with is the debt-based economic system which not only empowers the state to buy the worship of the people while making them slaves (Pro. 22:7), but funds the various enforcement mechanisms to punish non-worshippers and keep the slaves on the great plantation.
Thanks Tom!
Great insight and great quote.
I would only suggest that theological reasons must precede economic reasons if only because the desire to be economically responsible can only descend from thinking rightly about God.
Thank you for the link. I went to it yesterday when it was originally posted. It is fantastically written. Thank you, also for the advice. Prayer and fasting… Sometimes the answers are right in front, out in the open.
I entirely concur. A reformation of the heart and mind where the believer becomes epistemologically self-conscience in their economic reasoning must take place first, as it should for all the issues of life, else God’s Word is not the standard for the whole of man for the whole of life. Of course, theology without application is dead; it is only when we learn to apply economic theology that we become economically responsible (response – able) to engage the economic idols within our culture.