Category: Government

Luther & Knox Concerning Disobedient Magistrates

“The Sword of Justice, Madam, is God’s, and is given to princes and rulers for one end. If they fail in their duty and spare the wicked, then those who intervene and deal out the requisite punishment will not offend God. Nor are those who restrain kings from striking innocent men committing any sin, as numerous Biblical example demonstrate. In Scotland, judges are empowered by Act of Parliament to seek out and punish those who celebrate Mass, and it is your duty, Madam, to support them. Ye should therefore consider what it is that your subjects expect from you, and what it is that ye ought to do unto them by mutual contract. They are bound to obey you and that not but in God. Ye are bound to keep laws unto them. Ye crave of them service: they crave of you protection and defence against wicked doers. Now, Madam, if ye shall deny your duty unto them…think ye to receive full obedience of them? I fear, Madam, ye shall not.”

John Knox
Interview w/ Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots
Teaching us on the proper disposition to Magistrates

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Here is Luther. In fairness, I’m told that Luther had a change of heart after 1530. Still, this provides an interesting contrast.

“Thus one has to suffer the power of a prince. If he misuses his power one should not turn one’s back on him, nor take revenge, nor punish him actively. One has to be obedient to him solely for the sake of God, because he is in God’s place.”

Evangelium am 23
Sonntag nach Trinitas

“Even if the magistrate is wicked and unjust there should be no excuse for rioting or rebellion. For not everybody has the right to punish wickedness; only the secular authorities in the possession of the sword.”

Ermahung zum Frieden auf die 12 Artikel der Bauernschaft in Schwaben

“It is better that the tyrants be a hundred times unjust to the people than that the people inflict one injustice on the tyrants. If there must be injustice it is to be preferred that we suffer from the authorities than that the magistrate suffer from the subjects.”

Ob Kriegsleute auch im seligen Stande sein konnen

“One ought not to resit outrage but rather suffer it; yet one should not approve of it….

“The princes of the world are gods, the common people are Satan, through whom God sometimes accomplishes what He would otherwise accomplish through Satan, namely rebellions, as punishment for wicked men.”

Von weltlicher Obeerkeit wie weit man ihr Gehorsam schuldig sei

“The donkey wants to be beaten and the mob wants to be ruled by force; God knew this well. This is the reason He gave the sword into the hands of the magistrate and not a foxtail.”

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500 years later Christians continue to debate whether the Luther approach or the Knox approach is more God honoring. For reasons already set out on Iron Ink I clearly think the early Luther was in error and Knox is right.

No Magistrate, no Husband, no Father, no Employer, no Minister, is owed unconditional obedience. Only God is owed unconditional obedience. Magistrates, as Covenant heads who viciously and continually violate the charters and covenant documents of a Nation, are no longer to be considered Magistrates, but instead are to be considered the Devil’s spawn and so are to be resisted when opportunity arises and the possibility of success is good.

It may be the case that we submit to wicked magistrates because the time is not right to resist because they have the biggest guns but strategically submitting is not the same thing as submitting because of the righteous claim of a magistrate.

The old Cameronian Covenanter motto holds true,

“Rebellion against Tyrants is Obedience to God.”

Libertarian Tyranny

Does anybody except me see the irony in people calling me “Isis like” when I object to a sodomite marriage ruling that forces the sodomite definition of marriage upon the social order.

I object to their heavy handed Tyranny and I’m the one who is “like Isis.”

Theonomy has forever been accused of wanting to implement a top down law order. People have, over the years, been absolutely apoplectic that Theonomists wanted to be ruled by God’s law in the social order. Yet, having defamed, slandered, and libeled Theonomy for insisting that law is always religiously derived and in turn law always reflects the will of some God, god, or gods (thus always giving Theocracy) what we find happening now is that in a top down fashion the law of the sodomite god “Molech” is now being forced upon us. Many of the movement Libertarians are, in effect, telling us that we have no liberty to have marriage defined, for our social order, in a Christian fashion. Instead, marriage must have a forced Libertarian sodomite definition. Ironically enough many Libertarians are pleased that the State is forcing this on us. The best that the Libertarians can do is howl about how this wasn’t left up to the states to decide. As if states have some kind of inherent right to thumb their nose at God’s law.

You have to hand it to those of the Libertarian and Isis faiths. At least they each believe, unlike R2K and Baptist “Christians,” that the will of their respective gods should be honored in the public square.

Look, in the end law is always going to have a aspect of “top down” about it. We are now learning that you can have your top down law aspect from as from God’s law or your can have your top down aspect as from Molech, Talmud, or humanism.

Hoover Chronicles FDR’s Failures Which Brought Us To War (VII)

The seventh gigantic error in Roosevelt’s statesmanship was the total economic sanctions on Japan one month later, at the end of July, 1941. The sanctions were war in every essence except shooting. Roosevelt had been warned time and again by his own officials that such provocation would sooner or later bring reprisals of war.

The eighth time statesmanship was wholly lost was Roosevelt’s contemptuous refusal of Prime Minister Konoye’s proposals for peace in the Pacific of September, 1941. The acceptance of these proposals was prayerfully urged by bot the American and British Ambassadors in Japan. The terms Konoye proposed would have accomplished  every American purpose except possibly the return of Manchuria — and even this was thrown open to discussion. The cynic will recall that Roosevelt was willing to provoke a great war on his flank over this remote question and then gave Manchuria to Communist Russia.

The ninth time that Roosevelt became lost in international statesmanship was his destruction of the 1933 World Economic Conference. This conference was arranged by British Prime Minister MacDonald and myself to take place in January, 1933. Owing to the election of Mr. Roosevelt it was postponed until June. At that time the world was  just beginning to recover from the world-wide depression but was engaged in bitter currency wars and multiplying trade barriers. The preliminary work had been done by experts. Roosevelt called ten Prime Ministers to Washington with whom he agreed to restore the gold standard in international transactions. Suddenly during the conference he repudiated (‘the bombshell’) these undertakings and the Conference cracked  and died without accomplishment. His own Secretary of State Hull explicitly denounced this action as the roots of WW II.

Herbert Hoover
Freedom Betrayed — pg. 876, 878-879

HOOVER CHRONICLES FDR’S FAILURES WHICH BROUGHT US TO WAR (III)

In his book, “Freedom Betrayed,” (pg. 875f) former President Hoover chronicles 19 failures on FDR that moved the US inexorably towards an unnecessary  war (WW II). Hoover’s case is compelling.

Over the next few days I will list these failures as given by Hoover and you can judge if WW II was a “good war.”

Failure #3 — The third abysmal loss of statesmanship is when the British and French guaranteed the independence of Poland and Rumania at the end of March, 1939. It was at this point that the European democracies reversed their previous policies of keeping hands off the inevitable war between Hitler and Stalin.

It was probably the greatest blunder in the whole history of European power diplomacy. Britain and France were helpless to save Poland from invasion. By this act, however, they threw the bodies of democracy between Hitler and Stalin. By their actions they not only protected Stalin from Hitler but they enabled him to sell his influence to the highest bidder. The Allies did bid but Stalin’s price was annexation of defenseless people of the Baltic States and East Poland, a moral price which the Allies could not meet. Stalin got his price from Hitler.

Yet Hitler had no intention of abandoning his determination to expand in Southeast Europe and to destroy the Communist Vatican in Moscow. But now he must of necessity first neutralize the the Western Democracies which he proceeded to do.

The long train of the hideous WW II started from the blunder of the Polish guarantees. Roosevelt had some part in these power politics but the record is yet to complete to establish how much. ** Churchill, not yet in the government, had contributed something by goading Chamberlain to desperate action after his appeasement at Munich.

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** — Hoover will later document, in his book, a conversation that took place between himself and FDR’s Ambassador to Britain, Joseph Kennedy. In that conversation we get a sense of how instrumental FDR was in pushing Prime Minister Chamberlain to grant guarantees to Poland. Hoover writes,

“Joseph P. Kennedy called me this morning….

Kennedy said that after the Germans had occupied Prague and the great cry of appeasement had sprung up in the world and after the Germans had pressed their demands for Danzig and a passage through the Corridor, that Roosevelt and Bullit (US Ambassador to France) were the major factors in the British  making their guarantees to Poland and becoming involved in the war. Kennedy said he had received a cable from Roosevelt to ‘put a poker up Chamberlain’s back and to make him stand up.’ Kennedy saw Chamberlain on numerous occasions, urging him, in Roosevelt’s name to do all this with the implication that the United States would give the British support. He said that after Chamberlain had given these guarantees, Chamberlain told him (Kennedy) that he hoped the Americans and the Jews would now be satisfied but that he (Chamberlain) felt that he had signed the doom of civilization.

Kennedy claimed that he was constantly urging Roosevelt not to be engaged in this question, but his urgings were to no avail. Kennedy said that if it had not been for Roosevelt that the British would not have made this the most gigantic blunder in history.”

Hoover Chronicles FDR’s Failures Which Brought Us To War (II)

In his book, “Freedom Betrayed,” (pg. 875f) former President Hoover chronicles 19 failures on FDR that moved the US inexorably towards an unnecessary  war (WW II). Hoover’s case is compelling.

Over the next few days I will list these failures as given by Hoover and you can judge if WW II was a “good war.”

Failure #2 — “I am not disposed to condemn the agreement English Prime Minister Chamberlain gained at Munich in September 1938 for transfer of Sudeten Germans to the Reich because it was a hideous heritage of the (ill conceived) WW I treaty of Versailles which made such action inevitable. However, by the time of Munich, Hitler opened the gates for consummation of his repeated determination to invade Russia. Having gone that far in providing for the inevitable war  between the dictators, the lost statesmanship of FDR was then trying to stop these monsters from mutual destruction.”

Hoover was of the conviction that these united States should have left Hitler and Stalin exhaust each other in their mutual warfare thus saving Western Europe and these US the tragedy of war.  Some of that era even suggested arming both Hitler and Stalin alternately so as to insure that they would utterly wipe each other out.