Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
“What makes us exceptional — what makes us American — is our allegiance to an idea articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal …”
President Obama
Presidential Inauguration Speech — 2013
“ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS.”Napoleon the Pig
President of the FarmGeorge Orwell
Animal Farm
“For our present purposes it is also crucial to note that Israel’s experience under the law of Moses in the Promised Land of Canaan was _not_ meant to exemplify life under the _two_ kingdoms… First, unlike Abraham, the Israelites were not sojourners in the land.”
David Van Drunen
Living in God’s Two Kingdoms p. 89
Insert clearing throat sound
“Also the land shall not be sold to be cut off [from the family]: for the land is mine, [and] ye be but strangers and sojourners with me. Therefore in all the land of your possession ye shall grant a redemption of the land.”
Lev. 25:23-24, 1599 Geneva trans.
From Obama Inauguration Speech
“Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time – but it does require us to act in our time.”
That sounds a great deal like this quote from Karl Marx I am familiar with,
“The point is not to understand the world, but to transform it.”
The above Marx quote is from Karl Marx’s 11th Thesis on Feuerbach.
I’m sure the similarities between the two are sheer coincidence and nothing more.
Dear Pastor,
How can you talk about various social order Institutions being Christian? Don’t you see that the Institutions in any given culture cannot be Christian Institutions in and of themselves if only because those Institutions are common to all men, Christian and non-Christian alike?
Delaney
Dear Delaney
It is not that Institutions are common to all men so much as it is that men are common to all Institutions. As such, Institutions will be Christian, Muslim, Humanist, Hindu, Satanist, Judaistic, dependent upon the men who are animating those Institutions and the Faith that is animating those men.
It is most difficult to speak of a Institution as common to all men without taking into consideration the men who comprise the Institutions.
Remember, Delaney, it is not possible for Institutions to be neutral as if they do not serve the interests of some God or god concept. Cultural Institutions are nothing but a reflection of the theology and the people who staff them.
Also, it will do no good to try to create a distinction that admits that, there are Christian businesses and Christian marriages, and Christian families although commerce, marriage, and family are not Christian institutions in and of themselves.” This will not do, if only because commerce, marriage, and families do not exist without people. To say that there are Christian businesses, marriages, and families, while insisting that commerce, marriage and family are common and therefore neutral is an abstraction of the most intriguing sort.
On one hand R2K’ers want to say,
“Natural law is contiguous with Special revelation so that what is true from Natural law is consistent with Scripture.”
They will agree that for the Reformed Scholastics the natural law is synonymous with the moral law. The natural law is rooted in the being of God consistent with by His intellect and His will. It is not just naked authority but eternal moral truth. This natural moral law was written upon the heart of Adam at the creation. It is a part of the image of God.
They will agree that nature and grace are not in conflict. The moral law given in nature and the moral law given Scripture are the same law (as to general equity,i.e. the Ten Commandments).
On the other hand they want to say that the pagan, who is ruled by this Natural law, is not ruled by the imperatives of Scripture.
Those very same imperatives of Scripture that they earlier insisted were consistently articulated in Natural law.
“Biblical morality is characterized by an indicative-imperative structure. That is, all of its imperatives (moral commands) are proceeded (sic) by and grounded in indicatives (statements of fact), either explicitly or implicitly. The most important indicative that grounds the imperatives in Scripture is that the recipients of Scripture are the covenant people, that is, members of the community of the covenant of grace. (39)
Since membership in the civil kingdom is not limited to believers, the imperatives of Scripture do not bind members of that kingdom. These imperatives are not ‘directly applicable to non-Christians'” (40).
David Van Drunen
For R2K, the imperatives of Scripture are not directly applicable to non-Christians and yet, Natural law, which is perfectly consistent with God’s Moral law, would seem to force us to conclude that the imperatives of Scripture, as communicated via Natural Law, would be directly applicable to non Christians.
Am I missing something here?