God & Law & Social Order

“So as sick & disgusting as bestiality is, I’m not going to advocate making it illegal & killing people who practice it. I want to preach the gospel to them, instead. There, I said it. Now either scram, all you yellow-bellied cockroaches, or fight like men.”

Rev. Chris Caughey

“Law expresses Lordship. Show me the operational law of a culture and I can show you what is driving that law, that is to say, the Lord of that Culture. Because the Lord of that culture sanctions and approves the law of that culture.”

Dr. Jeffrey Ventralla

Just as it is true that the operational law of a culture reveals who is the Lord of that culture so it is true that if one shows me the origin of any human right I can show you the God of that culture since the creation of “rights” are accomplished via law. Law requires a Transcendent every time. Now that Transcendence may not be an Objectively Objective Transcendent. Indeed more often than not in modern cultures the Transcendent is a subjectively Objective Transcendent but it remains a transcendent, even if false.

So, where does the right to Universal health care come from? It doesn’t come from Scripture. Where do Homosexual rights come from? They don’t come from Scripture. In both cases and in most cases in our culture rights come from the God-State and if it is true that rights come from the God-State than Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Dachau were positive goods since the State sanctioned them. The Gulag archipelago was a positive good since it was sanctioned by the God-State.

All of this is why it is hopeless to try and scrub “God” or “religion” from a culture. It is hopeless because every social order / culture requires a law order in order to function. At the moment a law order is in place at that moment a “god” and a “religion” is at work. Even if the social order was guided by anarchy (an arrangement which never lasts long) the fact that no one may bring order to anarchy is a law that is revealing a “god” and a “religion.”

We should also add that as the above is true it is also true that some god and some religion always orders the public square. This needs to be said due to the fact that there are currently some “Reformed” sects which are suggesting that the public square can be naked of a particular god and a particular religion. Per this “school of thought” the public square is ruled by God’s a-religious natural law which means that the public square is neutral in terms of preferring a particular God, or religion. However, such a position allows a vacuum to be created which allows particular gods of false religions to govern the public square. Per Ventralla’s quote and the following observations this putative adherence to a neutral naked public square means that the new God and religion in town is the sovereign State with its ability to create law de-novo quite apart from any consideration of God’s authoritative Law.

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

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