ecclesiology – Page 6

Examining Rev. Dr. Jim Cassidy’s “Racial Supremacy and The Gospel” Sermon (III)

“The Javanese are a different race than us; they live in a different region; they stand on a wholly different level of development; they are created differently in their inner life; they have a wholly different past behind them; and they have grown up in wholly different ideas. To expect of them that they should find the fitting expression of their faith in our Confession and in our Catechism is therefore absurd.

“Now this is not something special for the Javanese , but stems from a general rule . The men are not all alike among whom the Church occurs. They differ according to origin, race, country, region, history, construction, mood and soul, and they do not always remain the same , but undergo various stages of development. Now the Gospel will not objectively remain outside their reach, but subjectively be appropriated by them, and the fruit thereof will come to confession and expression, the result may not be the same for all nations and times. The objective truth remains the same, but the matter in appropriation, application and confession must be different , as the color of the light varies according to the glass in which it is collected. He who has traveled and came into contact with Christians in different parts of the world of distinct races , countries and traditions can not be blind for the sober fact of this reality. It is evident to him. He observes it everywhere.”

Abraham Kuyper
‘Common Grace’ III XXXII

RDC sermonized,

“The good that is given to each culture comes by the undeserved blessing of God. The bad, of course, comes only from sin and to the curse.

Now, it is true that we can say that some Nationalities have produced some aspects of culture that are superior to others. There are (not that the race is superior, not that a particular ethnicity is superior) we can say, we have to rightly acknowledge that there are some aspects of culture that some Nationalities have excelled at advancing.

For example, think of the Germans. The Germans are known to have made a better car than the Irish. But the Irish are known for making better whiskey than the Germans. Fair enough. But see we also have to keep in mind on the negative side that the Irish drink way too much of their whiskey and the Germans drive their cars way too fast. Alright? So you’ve got good and you’ve got bad. But be that as it may, before the eyes of God — and this is the point — all Nationalities, all races stand condemned and each and every one of these races are totally depraved. You see sin becomes the great leveler of humanity. It’s not like we can find a race in the world that is morally superior to another, that is perhaps only 90% depraved, or that we can find a race of Ethnicity in the world that is only 70% depraved. No, all the people of all the nations are 100% depraved. That is what our doctrine of total depravity teaches us.”

Bret responds,

I am confident that RDC is mishandling total depravity.

When Calvinists speak of humans as “totally depraved,” they are making an extensive, rather than an intensive statement. The effect of the fall upon man is that sin has extended to every part of his personality — his thinking, his emotions, and his will. Not necessarily that he is intensely sinful, but that sin has extended to his entire being. So, total depravity is extensive, not intensive. Not all total depravity looks the same. People and / or Nations can remain totally depraved and still be morally superior to other people and / or Nations who are also totally depraved. Total depravity does not mean that everyone is equally depraved, in the sense that everyone is as equally wicked as they could possibly be. Total depravity most certainly is not the moral leveler that RDC contends. People and / or Nations who are totally depraved can be morally superior though that moral superiority lends no salvific aid.

Dr. Loraine Boettner put it this way,

This doctrine of Total Inability, which declares that men are dead in sin, does not mean that all men are equally bad, nor that any man is as bad as he could be, nor that any one is entirely destitute of virtue … What it does mean is that since the fall man rests under the curse of sin, that he is actuated by wrong principles, and that he is wholly unable to love God or to do anything meriting salvation. His corruption is extensive but not necessarily intensive.

Further, God’s common grace can be more abundant to one people group than another people group so that the former group is indeed morally superior than the latter group. That common grace, in the end, makes the former group more ripe for judgment but total depravity does not make all men, cultures, or races, functionally or morally equal. Who would ever contend that the cannibal Korowai tribe from Indonesian New Guinea is on the same moral level as Victorian England? Yet, outside of Christ Victorian England perishes in its sins as much as the Korowai tribe does.

Now certainly when it comes to salvation sin levels us all in the sense that it makes all, outside of Christ, fit only for hell. However, total depravity does not mean that all people, nations, and cultures are equally functionally wicked.

RDC wrote,

“Now that doesn’t mean that any given people or any given nation is as depraved as it can be by God’s restraining grace. We know that sin is held in check but sin nevertheless does reign in each of us extensively. So where then could be our boasting? Sin becomes the great leveler of humanity.”

Bret responds,

I quite agree that any boasting of any superiority, as if that superiority is not all of grace, is an indictment writ against the one doing the boasting.

RDC writes,

“Sin is the great equalizer. We are all 100% depraved. What kind of deep-seated arrogance then, what kind of deep seated pride does it take to think that we, or our particular ethnicity, or our particular culture, or our particular language (whatever it is) is superior to another? You see sin, being the great leveler, renders all men under sin…. We are all equally depraved.”

Bret responds

The fact that all unregenerate peoples are depraved and so equally, spiritually shut out from God does not translate into all Nations are functionally equal. Japanese culture, as one example, is certainly superior to the Bush Men culture of Irian Jaya. Now, as outside of Christ, they are equal in being without God and without hope but that is not the same thing as saying that because of sin they are leveled in terms of ethnicity, race, or culture so that one is not superior to another.

RDC’s reasoning seems to make total depravity the handmaiden of cultural relativism. Total depravity, per RDC, is the great leveler of race, nations, and culture, therefore, no culture is superior or inferior to any other culture. The Reformed doctrine of total depravity does not teach functional egalitarianism.

There seems also to be a kind of double speak here again. On the one hand, sin is the great leveler, but on the other hand, earlier RDC admits that the Irish can be superior in making whiskey. The confusion here may be found in the fact that RDC keeps jumping the shark on categories. It is true that spiritually speaking all unregenerate people stand condemned before God but then there are times RDC wants to apply that category broadly so as to say, “therefore there is no functional superiority in terms of race, ethnicity, nations, cultures or languages.”

RDC sermonizes,

“The Gospel is also a great equalizer…. The Gospel teaches us that Christians especially must never regard themselves as …. superior over others. That is because the Gospel teaches us that was rent asunder at Babel has now been brought together and healed. What is more, since the Gospel means that God is the one who saved us, then we Christians stand on the same footing with one another before God, for we stand on Jesus Christ and in this sense there is equality…..”

Bret Responds,

Yes, we are equally saved by grace alone in Christ but that does not mean that are races or ethnicities are functionally equal. This would be to teach cultural or racial relativism. Cassidy has confused categories here. He wants to make a Redemptive equality of outcome in terms of any people and / or person looking to Christ to translate into a Creation equality of outcome in terms of culture and / or race. This is a category confusion. Many are the people that have come in from comparatively backward cultures and who will be in the New Jerusalem but that doesn’t mean their comparatively backward cultures, in the present, are equal to other clearly superior cultures.

RDC is correct when he says, in that last sentence above, “in this sense there is equality.” If he had stuck to the idea that Paul presents in Galatians 3:28f that temporal position or status doesn’t advantage or disadvantage one in terms of Redemption he would have been fine but RDC constantly wanders from that wonderful truth and seeks to apply it into functional realities.

Because RDC has muddied the waters earlier it makes his statement about “the Gospel being the great equalizer,” suspicious, if only because historically it has been the Anabaptists who were known as thoroughgoing socio-cultural “levelers” and “equalizers.” Historically the Anabaptists have believed that Jesus Christ is our great High Priest and Chief Leveler. Historically, the Reformed have always spoken out against Anabaptist socio-cultural levelers and equalizers.

And RDC is wrong about Christians never thinking themselves superior. Clearly St. Paul is making the case of his superiority of the more inferior false Apostles in II Corinthians 11. Now, Paul thinks it is folly that he is forced to do so, but there is no doubt that he is making a necessary case for his superiority in that passage.

The fact that Babel has not been brought together and healed the way the RDC thinks has been dealt with earlier, but I will note again here that all those nations walking around in the New Jerusalem (Revelation 21-22) testify that the Church is a nation of nations and not Babel restored.

RDC wrote,

“God forbids that we would segregate in the Church. Peter tried that and Paul was very upset about it. We do not separate the people of God based on race or nationality. Ethnic churches while in one sense understandable are far from ideal. What is glorious however is when we see the people of God gather for worship and we see among the people of God many nations represented in her midst. That is Pentecost.”

Bret,

1.) In Galatians., Paul was the one in favor of segregating in the Church. The Judaizers and Peter were arguing that in order to be justified one had to become a soci0-cultural Jew and keep the same laws. Paul, on the other hand, was reasoning that one could remain an ethnocultural Gentile and still be Christian. The Judaizers and Peter were the ones trying to force an integrated uniformitarian Church and Paul resisted them to their face and insisted that one could have a Gentile diet and be justified … Gentiles could be segregated and have their own Church. (see also Acts 15)

2.) Quotes that contradict RDC’s claim that “we do not separate the people of God based on race or nationality;

a.) (See opening quote by Abraham Kuyper)

b.) “Scripture, as I read it, does not require societies, or even churches, to be integrated racially. Jews and Gentiles were brought together by God’s grace into one body. They were expected to love one another and to accept one another as brothers in the faith. But the Jewish Christians continued to maintain a distinct culture, and house churches were not required to include members of both groups.”

John Frame,
“Racism, Sexism, Marxism”

c.) “As a matter of fact, the early church was segregated. First of all, in New Testament times it was segregated between the Jewish believers and the Gentile believers. And there was… a good reason for that. The Jewish believers were so far superior that to integrate the two would have meant more often confusion. And when you realize that in, say the Corinthian church, they didn’t even know that fornication or adultery was a sin because in the Greek world there was nothing wrong with that. After all the chambers of commerce in Greece and Corinth and elsewhere… in Corinth, the chambers of commerce maintained regularly around two thousand prostitutes for all visiting businessmen. It was a manufacturing town and so on… and no one thought there was anything immoral about that. Or about men having relations with prostitutes. This was all taken for granted. So in the Gentile churches, the moral standard was pretty low. It was a lot of hard work for a couple of generations and more to bring them up to any kind of standard. Well, the Jewish congregations represented a far higher moral standard and Paul saw nothing wrong with that, nor did any other apostle. So the principle of segregation was present there from the beginning.”

R. J. Rushdoony
Audio – On Segregation

God does not forbid segregating in the Church.

Baptist Refusal to Baptize Their Children & Postmodern Refusal to Assign Gender to Their Children

Baptists are forever insisting that only those who can articulate their confession of Christ are to be Baptized. John MacArthur gives us one such example,

“The significance of Baptism is unmistakably clear. In our day, an open solemn confession of the crucified risen Lord is necessary. All who experience the reality of the power of the risen Savior should give this public testimony to His glory as an act of obedience. In biblical Baptism in the New Testament manner, believers not only give testimony to their union with Christ…listen to this…they give testimony to their thoughtful, careful, submissive obedience to the holy Scripture in which nothing could be treated as unimportant.”

Since infants can’t give what MacArthur’s requires therefore infants are not to be recipients of Baptism as a means of Grace. Indeed, the genuine Baptist doesn’t even like calling Baptism a “means of Grace” since to speak like that is putting the emphasis on what God is doing in Baptism as opposed to the Baptist emphasis that Baptism is about what we are doing by being Baptized.

This is Baptist thinking. Children of Christians are not to be Baptized until they can name for themselves their own religious identity as Christian.

This thinking of the sovereign child, who can only be Christian in the context of their own self understanding is now bleeding off into other areas that make perfect sense given the Baptist premise of, “a child cannot choose their religious identity until they are epistemoligcally self conscious about what identity they want to choose.”

Think about it.

What is the difference between Baptist parents insisting that their children have to be epistemoligcally self conscious about what religious identity they want to choose and Modern parents now who are insisting that their children have to be epistemologically self conscious about what sexual identity those children want to choose? What we are saying here is that there is a harmony found in Baptist parents refusing to baptize their children and many modern parents today refusing to “baptize” their children into a predetermined gender believing, just as the Baptists believe, that their children should be able to have a say in the matter of what gender they will have.

Modern parents insisting that children must choose their own sexual identity is just the logical extension of Baptist parents insisting that children must choose their own religious identity.

The point here isn’t that there is an exact one to one correspondence on this matter. The point here is that when you start with the sovereign individual who must be consulted before covenantal realities are determined apart from his or her approval the end result, naturally enough, is sovereign individuals who must be consulted before any number of realities are determined apart from zhis or zhers approval.

Consistent Baptist thinking lends itself to the atomized individual and once the individual is atomized then he or she is free to be self determinate in every area of life from religion to sexuality to who knows where else.

Some will protest that this isn’t a fair analogy since baptism signifies a supernatural event whereas sex is a natural given. But to protest such as this is to miss the point of the analogy. The point of the analogy is not supernatural vs. natural. The point of the analogy is the sovereign individual choosing all. When it is realized that this is the point of the analogy then all protestations of my creating a “straw man” here lose their power.

Let me also add here that both in God’s covenantal ordering and in sexuality both Baptism and gender are objective categories. When one is birthed to Christian parents one is, objectively speaking, a member of the covenant and so is Baptized just as one is, objectively speaking, either male or female. There is a givenness in both being a member of the covenant and in our gender that is objective. That givenness may be twisted but it can never be changed.

A Look at Dr. David Wright’s and IWU’s Surrender to the LGBT Religion — Part II

I conclude my fisking of Indian Wesleyan University’s President’s Dr. David Wright’s Testimony in favor of taking away civil rights from many Christian business owners in exchange for IWU’s being allowed to be a marginally “Christian” University.

Dr. David Wright, President of Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion Indiana,

They (the LGBT activists) are men and women just like us who are doing their best to find their pathway to well-being and happiness. Our love for them means we cannot affirm a pathway that we sincerely believe is mistaken, but neither do we want them to be denied the basic human rights that are their due as fellow citizens.

Rev. McAtee responds,

1.) What does Dr. Wright mean when he says that “they (LGBT activists) are men and women just like us who are doing their best to find their pathway to well-being and happiness?” This is such a circumlocution. This could be said of any criminal class.

a.) Necrophiliacs are men and women just like us who are doing their best to find their pathway to well-being and happiness.

b.) Pedophiliacs and Pederasts are men and women just like us who are doing their best to find their pathway to well-being and happiness?

c.) Bestialics are men and women just like us who are doing their best to find their pathway to well-being and happiness?

d.) Kidnappers are men and women just like us who are doing their best to find their pathway to well-being and happiness?

e.) Rapists are men and women just like us who are doing their best to find their pathway to well-being and happiness?

The fact that Dr. David Wright, President of Indiana Wesleyan University, can speak like this proves that he has accepted the LGBT lifestyle as normative for the public square. He would never utter the counter examples above as an attempt of rational speech and yet here he is trying to make his listeners have sympathy for those involved in the kind of behavior that the men of Christendom have made illegal as being vile and criminal for thousands of years.

2.) Wright insists he does not desire the “basic human rights” of perverts, which are their due, to be denied. And yet Dr. David Wright has no problem denying the basic human rights of “Freedom of Association,” to Biblical Christians. Biblical Christians must forgo the basic human right of expecting their daughters to go into public bathrooms that don’t have perverted men dressed as women in those same bathrooms. IWU President David Wright’s testimony desires the Biblical Christian’s basic human right of being able to honor God in their business denied so that the LGBT can honor their God by forcing Christians to give legitimacy to the God of self that informs the LGBT movement.

Dr. David Wright, President of Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion Indiana,

We believe all of us who live together as law-abiding citizens of this state must enjoy the basic protections of the law. To deny one person the protections of law is ultimately to lay the groundwork for denying all persons the protection of law.

Rev. McAtee responds,

1.) Here Dr. Wright assumes what he has not, and cannot prove and that is that those involved in the LGBT lifestyle are “law abiding citizens.” For millennial LGBT behavior has been criminalized. Back in 1977- 1982 when I attended Marion College, if it were found out that a student was a sodomite they would have been tossed out of school. So, what has happened between 1982 and 2016 that has changed wherein this behavior has gone from criminal to “law abiding?What has happened wherein we have gone from throwing students out of Marion college who were LGBT to now having a Indiana Wesleyan President now categorize them as “Law abiding citizens?”

2.) Wright, by favoring special rights in the public square for LGBT people has surrendered the basic protections of the law for those who favor “Freedom of Association,” and for those who desire to honor God in their public square business. What David Wright is actually saying here is that “to deny one criminal LBGT person the protection of their criminal behavior is ultimately to lay the groundwork for denying all law abiding persons the protection of law.” Wright fails to realize that those who are criminals do not deserve the protection of the law. What Wright should have said, were he operating as a Biblical Christian, is, “To deny one Christian the protection of law is ultimately to lay the groundwork for denying all Christians the protection of law.” This is what Wright is doing. Via Wright’s testimony Wright is denying Biblical Christians the protection of the law in favor of providing the color of law’s protection to the LGBT community. Law here, can either protect the Biblical Christian’s Freedom of Association, or it can protect the LGBT in forcing Christians to affirm the LBGT lifestyle by doing business with them. Shame on Dr. David Wright.

Dr. David Wright, President of Indiana Wesleyan University in Marion Indiana,

In summary, then, we believe that our laws must honor the fundamental rights of freedom of religion, of conscience, and of peaceful coexistence granted us in the constitutions of our state and our nation. If we abandon or curtail the right to sincerely held religious convictions, peaceably pursued among fellow citizens, we will in time deny all other rights as well.

Rev. McAtee responds,

But David, you’re not honoring the fundamental rights of freedom of religion as it pertains to freedom of association. David, you’re not honoring the fundamental rights of freedom of conscience for those Biblical Christian’s in the public square whose consciences are being violated in being forced to do business with the LGBT community. President Wright, there can be no peaceful coexistence between the God of the Christian and the God of the LGBT movement. You are kidding yourself Dr. Wright and dishonoring Christ at the same time.

Dr. Wright, you seem to think that we can arrive at some kind of social order neutrality between Biblical Christians and pagans and their Gods. You seem to think that a peaceful co-existence can be attained whereby those who are lovers of Christ and those who are haters of Christ can both pursue their diametrically opposed religions in the public square. What’s more you seem to think this while you yourself are testifying so as to curtail the civil rights of Biblical Christians in the public square. That you can not see that this is what you are doing is astounding.

By you testimony Dr. Wright you are giving cover for those who are saying that the desire of Biblical Christians to live out their faith in peace and liberty is radical. By you testimony Dr. Wright you are giving cover for those who are saying that it is Biblical Christians who are the problem in the public square and that they need to be reigned in. By you testimony Dr. Wright you are countenancing men in public bathrooms that our daughters may be using. By you testimony Dr. Wright you are giving cover for those who are pushing legislation that is, in essence, bigoted against Biblical Christian in the public square.

Nero fiddled while Rome burned Dr. Wright. What you have done is far worse. You have helped set the fire to Rome.

Kuyper’s Principled Pluralism … a Framework for Kind of Embracing Same Sex “Marriage”?

Principled pluralism holds that in God’s diverse and differentiated creation there are different structures that have their own particular authorities and powers. These different structures of authority operate within different spheres of social life. Each of these spheres—family, school, church, state, etc.—has its own God-given task, right, and authority. Each possesses authority within its own domain, and each possesses an appropriate authority in their interrelationships with other spheres. Committee to Provide Pastoral Guidance re Same-sex Marriage 13 The Kuyperian view upholds the legitimate authority of the state within a particular sphere of life. Alongside the sphere of the state, we recognize other social structures as having legitimate authority within their respective domains of social life. The state is one structure to which God has given this relative authority. This pluralism, a structural pluralism, is both pragmatic and fundamentally good—that is, both useful and the way things are supposed to be…

…Principled pluralism does not of itself provide a definitive answer to whether Christians should oppose or be supportive of civil same-sex marriage. Rather, it provides a framework within which a society decides which policies shape its interactions. While principled pluralism does not give us definite answers as to how we ought to act, it does shape the way we think through our current situation, where the church’s understanding of marriage is different from the state’s. No longer must this be necessarily threatening; nor must we have a singular response in all areas of life

2016 CRC Committee to Provide Pastoral Guidance re Same-sex Marriage (majority report)

Here in the Committee’s work we see Principled Pluralism invoked as some kind of limited cover for accepting sodomite marriage. Under the head of Principled Pluralism is gathered both structural pluralism and confessional pluralism.

1.) The idea of Principled Pluralism flounders on the shores of the word “Principled.” The word “Principled” is invoked in order to communicate that Principled Pluralism is distinct from cultural relativism or “anythinggoesism.” The problem here is that we have to ask ourselves is, “by what standard do we measure Principled.” This is absolutely key because the standard we use in order to determine what is and what is not “principled” is the end of Principled Pluralism because we are using only one standard to determine our pluralism. I mean, if we are going to have Principled Pluralism then we should have pluralist standards in order to determine what is and is not Principled. If Principled Pluralism can provide cover for sodomite marriage why can’t Principled Pluralism, using pluralist standards, provide justification for Sati or provide cover for Bestiality Marriage or provide cover for smoking peyote or provide cover for Snuff Pornography magazines or provide cover for any number of other deviant activities that could conceived?

2.) In the end Principled Pluralism when examined closely is a myth. The idea that many religions (Confessional Pluralism) and their competing gods will be allowed into the public square is seen to be a myth when we understand that some entity must exist in order to rule a competing pluralism to be in or out of bounds as Principled. Until recently Principled Pluralism ruled sodomite marriage as out of bounds. Now with Obergefell vs. Hodges Principled Pluralism allows for sodomite marriage. But notice there isn’t really anything Principled about this Pluralism. One of the Gods (the God of the Bible in this case) lost out against the God of Modernity and it was the real God in the system (the State via the Supreme Court) that determined how Principled “not-so-Pluralism” is defined. We see here then, that Confessional Pluralism is a no thing. There is no Confessional Pluralism when the State is God walking on the earth determining which of the lesser gods in the putative social order Confessional Pluralism is allowed to have it’s version of pluralism in the public square. The Committee appeals to a myth — to a non-sequitur — in invoking Principled Pluralism as a limited cover for sodomite marriage.

3.) Kuyperian Principled pluralism also insisted that each sphere is under Sovereign God and must move in terms of Gods’ authority and rule. This is something that the Committee left out about Kuyperian Principled Pluralism. In this version of Principled Pluralism the reality is that all of the Structures (Spheres) are accountable to God and are required to govern in their spheres consistent with God’s Word. Does anyone really want to argue that the State is ruling in keeping with God’s Word when it sanctioned same-sex “marriage”? We should remember Kuyper’s warning here regarding the State, “the government is always inclined with its mechanical authority to invade social life, to subject it and mechanically to arrange it.” No better example of this kind of social engineering can be found than in Obergefell vs. Hodges decision in favor of same sex “marriage,” and yet we are being led to believe that Kuyperian social theory gives limited cover for the State to sanction same sex “marriage.”

3.) We should also note here that Kuyper not only gave us a doctrine of Principled Pluralism he also emphasized the doctrine of the antithesis which emphasized that believing thought and unbelieving thought were in direct opposition. Kuyper noted here that,

We speak none too emphatically therefore when we speak of two kinds of people Both are human but one is inwardly different from the other and consequently feels a different content rising from his consciousness thus they face the cosmos from different points of view and are impelled by different impulses And the fact that there are two kinds of people occasions of necessity the fact of two kinds of human life and consciousness of life and of two kinds of science for which reason the idea of the unity of science taken in its absolute sense implies the denial of the fact of palingenesis and therefore from principle leads to the rejection of the Christian religion.

The point here in citing Kuyper on the Reformed Antithesis is that we cannot fairly take Kuyper on his Principled Pluralism as a limited cover for same sex “marriage” without also taking his understanding of the antithesis as an explanation as to why anybody would ever champion sodomite “marriage” as normal for a social order. The religion that is now animating the Civil Sphere is in antithesis to the Christian religion and all the Principled Pluralism in the world will not cover that up. If we, as Christians, are massaged into supporting same sex “marriage” in the civil realm while not supporting it in the religious realm we thus become like the man who serves two Masters. Our Lord Christ said that was not possible. The reason it is not possible is because of Kuyper’s antithesis.

Religious Marriage vs. Civil Realm Marriage?

Within Western culture, marriage has become a social institution in which civil government, the state, has an interest and plays a role. This has not always been the case. In its origins marriage was religious, and only in the past few centuries—as modern nation-states have developed—has the state become involved in issuing marriage licenses and recording marriages for the good ordering of society….

… there has emerged a level of disconnect between civil and religious marriage. They are no longer, nor have they been for some time, of one piece. The question is how significant the disconnect is, and whether the state has both the authority and the latitude to redefine civil marriage to include same-sex relationships.

2016 CRC Committee to Provide Pastoral Guidance re Same-sex Marriage (majority report)

This committee returns repeatedly to the distinction between “religious marriage” and “civil marriage.” This is an unfortunate distinction and serves to cloud the issues before us. The distinction has been drawn in the wrong place by the committee. The distinction is not between religious marriage and civil marriage but between two different kinds of religious marriages, one that occurs in a context informed by the Christian faith and one that occurs in a context that is informed by a non Christian faith. The fact that some of these marriages happen in the civil realm doesn’t negate that a religious marriage is occurring. It only means that the civil realm is now the container for a marriage that is consistent with a differing religion.

When marriages occur in the Christian context there is one parameters of law that is informing what constitutes a marriage. In the Christian religion the law informs us that in order for a marriage to occur you need one of each sex. In the pagan religion of the civil realm there is a different parameter of law that is informing what constitutes a marriage. In the pagan religion of modernity the law allows for a “marriage” to occur between matched sets (but stay tuned because yet more differing combinations are sure to be legalized in the near future.) Now, what is important to keep in mind here is that the law that legislates the allowed parameters in each context is inescapably religious and therefore each context likewise is inescapably religious — the so called “civil” as much as what is admitted as “religious.” In this case laws defining who and who cannot be eligible partner combinations for marriage. We have to keep before us in this conversation that the source of any law, regardless of what realm we are speaking of, when invoked as an authority to define parameters, at that very point takes on the color of religion. The Civil realm and civil marriages are religiously saturated. We have to keep before us that

1.) Governments make law — In this case the law that says two people of the same sex can get “married.”

2.) Law always has its source in some god or God concept — Government’s that make law are inescapably religious.

3.) Law is inescapably religious — A people’s or realm’s (civil) source of authority is it’s God and so it’s religion.

So, we say again, that the distinction we need to be discussing is not the distinction between civil realm marriages and religious marriages as if the civil realm marriages are not inherently religious. The distinction that needs to be made is between marriages shaped and informed by the Christian religion and marriages shaped and formed by some other religion.

Finally, we, as Christians, would say that as the State is God’s minister to do us good (Romans 13) that we answer the question of whether the state has both the authority and the latitude to redefine civil marriage to include same-sex relationships, with a decided negative. The State has no authority or latitude to rebel against God. The State has no authority or latitude to throw off the Christian religion in the family realm. The State has no authority or latitude to seek to arise to the most high to fulfill its aspiration of being god walking on the earth. As God’s spokesman the Church would do well to remind the State of Nebuchadnezzar’s folly and penalty when it seeks to legislate reality by its own fiat word. The State has no authority or latitude to deem itself anti-Christ.

And neither does the Church.