Over at Gnostikoi’s life,
http://oldlife.org/2012/05/looks-like-peter-and-paul-were-radical-2kers/#comments
Gnostikos gives a flurry of Scriptures and then concludes with this,
The more some try to read their political opposition into Scripture, the more they resemble political Islam.
Now, the political opposition that Gnostikos Darryl says I read into Scripture was merely the idea that God has ordained Spheres of sovereignty in the Temporal realm (Ecclesiastical, Civil, and Family) and over those spheres He has set Covenant Heads (Elders (I Peter 5:1-4) , Magistrates (Romans 13:1-7), Fathers (Ephesians 5, 6) to rule as His representatives in their ordained spheres. Then I merely mentioned that Marxism is a Sphere sovereignty sucking philosophy that seeks to overturn God’s ordained spheres.
Then I ended with this paragraph that might have hurt Darryl’s feelings,
All of this explains why radical two kingdom theology is such a poison pill for the church because radical two kingdom theology insists that the Church as the Church has no role in declaiming against the Marxist state’s attempt to seize all temporal sovereignty. R2K “theology” would stand silent as the state seeks to absorb all temporal sovereignty so that it becomes the idol state that has raised itself up against the almighty God. In R2K “theology” the only time the Church can protest this seizure of sovereignty is when the state seeks to dictate to the Church about its formal worship patterns. But if the Church is only concerned about its formal worship patterns then why would the state ever have any reason to want to absorb a sovereignty that it views as irrelevant? In point of fact if the R2K church is telling its people that they must obey the state, the state may very well view the R2K church as already effectively one of its agents.
1.) Note the political opposition that Gnostikos Darryl is reading into my quote is the opposition of the Church to declaim against Marxism as a concrete plausibility structure that is seeking to gain all temporal sovereignty for itself so that it can be a god above God. Scripture informs me, as a Pastor, I am to have, “No Other Gods before me,” and so as a Pastor, when the State seeks the kind of Sovereignty that would ensconce it as God, I am compelled by Scripture and conscience to declaim against the God-State. There is no reading into Scripture here.
2.) Note that the Scripture that Gnostikos Darryl quotes in his blog entry does not trump Peter’s, “We must obey God rather than man (Acts 5:29). And the same Paul that wrote some of those Scripture’s that Gnostikos Darryl can refer to is the same Paul who disobeyed a direct order from the Magistrate in Acts 16,
35 Now when day came, the chief magistrates sent their policemen, saying, “Release those men.” 36 And the jailer reported these words to Paul, saying, “The chief magistrates have sent to release you. Therefore come out now and go in peace.” 37 But Paul said to them, “They have beaten us in public without trial, men who are Romans, and have thrown us into prison; and now are they sending us away secretly? No indeed! But let them come themselves and bring us out.”
Here you have the same Paul who wrote I Timothy 2:1-4, and Romans 13, disobeying a direct order from a Civil Magistrate. If St. Paul could defy a Magistrate’s orders for being released — a defiance which was for far more picayune reasons then the kind of defiance I’ve said is warranted as against a Magistrate for flagrant and repeated disobedience to God’s revelation — then how much more is Christ centered defiance warranted when a Magistrate is seeking to suck up all the temporal sovereignty available so they might seek to place themselves in the position of God to God’s people?
3.) Gnostikos Darryl doesn’t believe that there is no time in which a Christian can say “no” to a Magistrate. He believes saying, “no” to a Magistrate is warranted when the Magistrate gets in the way of formalized worship. As such Darryl and I agree that the Magistrate’s authority isn’t absolute. Our only difference is where to draw the line. Darryl draws the line at the point where the Magistrate gets in the way of formalized Church worship whereas I would say lines might well be drawn, as well in matters like,
A.) The Magistrate demanding that I must turn my children over to the pagan state schools
B.) The Magistrate condoning and supporting the wide scale murder of the unborn
C.) The Magistrate condoning and promoting sexual perversion
D.) The Magistrate condoning and legislating oppressively against private property
E.) The Magistrate requiring me to be involved in a office-work process role of a final solution for Radical Two Kingdom officialdom.
In each of those I can envision the necessity of the Church to say, “We must obey God rather than man.” Darryl however, says the Church should be silent on these matters and so by its silence support the agenda of the tyrant.
