Category: Politics

A Conversation On The Nature & Usage Of State Power

Seth has become a bit of a friend. I say “bit” because I have not yet had the opportunity to meet him. Like many of the chaps I meet my son’s age, Seth, like my Son, is a man who is well grounded and quite sharp. Here I take exception to an idea that I find being expressed by more than a few of these young chaps who are quite sharp.

Seth writes;

“Man is fallen, therefore the state must be weak” is a category error.

Fallenness negates sentimental trust, not the legitimacy of authority.

Depravity is not an argument against power, but against naïveté.

Power is dangerous– but most dangerous in the vacuum of its absence, surrendering order to unaccountable forces. In this sense, imperialism is not tyrannical aggression but nationalism bearing the burdens of sovereignty.

Order must be preserved at scale, which means authority must extend to meet necessity. For the United States, by geography and circumstance, defense is necessarily hemispheric.

Politics is governed by necessity, not sentiment. This active character in governance is the precondition for liberty.

“But tyrannical statism!”

The failure isn’t authority, one ditch abandons rule given by God, the other replaces judgment with administration and becomes as a god.

Order is preserved only where authority is exercised with judgment and at the scale necessity demands.

Liberty does not endure by abdicating power, it survives only where power is wielded rightly.

Bret responds,

Since power is inescapable, power never goes away, even when it is distributed properly. There is NEVER an absence of power. The idea of vertical and horizontal checks and balances was a good way to distribute power that can never be flushed away. The vertical balances in our current Government were destroyed and the result is that the FEDS took power so that we live in an era where “in the state we live and move and have our being.” That is because power was concentrated in the Federal Government.

The argument that “man is fallen, therefore the state must be weak” is an argument based on the fact that an unrestricted powerful state will gobble up other delegated power centers such as family, and church. Without the state being assigned a checked and balanced power base, eventually the state will become synonymous with society as the motto arises “everything inside the state, nothing outside the state.” We have seen this happen as the power of the state, since the rise of Lincoln, but especially with the Woodrow Wilson and FDR administrations, has expanded the control of the state. Without proper checks and balances on the power of the state the state gobbles up everything as we have seen and have lived through.

When it is said that “politics is governed by necessity” whose standard of necessity are we talking about here? If one leaves that standard for “necessity” to be determined by the state that will mean the state will  discover all kinds of actions are considered “necessity.”

Seth wrote,

“The active character of Government is the precondition for liberty.”

Tell that to those who lived under Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, and Pol Pot.

We are currently living under tyrannical statism and you want to suggest that the threat of tyrannical statism is overblown?

Man is fallen. The state is comprised of fallen men. Therefore there is a necessity to properly distribute power because it remains true, despite some denials of this I’ve seen lately, that;

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

I agree that it is sin to abandon authority given by God. Tons of marriages display this truth, (And tons of marriage display the truth that women need to submit) but power not used, when properly assigned, isn’t our problem right now. Our problem now is power improperly used by the FEDS. It is why Jefferson once wrote of “tying them down with the chains of the constitution.”

You wrote;

Order is preserved only where authority is exercised with judgment and at the scale necessity demands.

Bret responds,

Yes … but by what standard, necessity?

I don’t trust the FEDS (including the Trump administration) to determine what does and does not constitution “necessity.”

Seth finished by writing,

Liberty does not endure by abdicating power, it survives only where power is wielded rightly.

Bret finishes

I agree 100% with that final sentiment, especially on the word “rightly.”

Look, I’m all for power being properly used. However, in my lifetime I’ve seldom seen the FEDS use power properly.

Dr. Kevin DeYoung’s Six Silly Questions

“A Reformed understanding of human nature should lead one to grant the civil magistrate less power in matters of religion, not more.”

 

Dr. Rev. Kevin DeYoung

Proof that having a Ph.D. doesn’t mean Jack Shinola

A Reformed understanding of the nature of reality should lead Kevin and all people to understand there is no such thing as one magistrate who is more or less religious than some other magistrate. All magistrates are equally religious. All magistrates push the state religion on the people. There is no “less” or “more” when it comes to power in matters of religion. There may be different means and ways for the magistrate to use his power in matters of religion but it is never a matter of “less power,” or “more power,” in matters of religion.

Now, it is true that some magistrates hide the fact from themselves that they are pushing an official state religion while other magistrates step up to the mic and say it out loud. But regardless, whether the magistrate is hiding from himself his religious pushing or whether the magistrate is embracing his advocacy openly, all magistrates push their religion in the same way. This is due to the fact that religion is a hopelessly inescapable concept. It is never a matter of either pushing or not pushing one’s religion as magistrate. It is only a matter of which religion will the magistrate push.

Let’s use an example. In one case the Magistrate might force the citizenry to pay a tax to support a state established church. In another case, such as our own here in the States, the Magistrate says he isn’t doing that. However, the truth of the reality is that the Magistrate is still forcing you to pay a tax to support the state established church. The gimmick is that the Magistrate here has figured out a way wherein you don’t know that you are paying a tax to support a state church. In order to fool you into thinking you don’t have a state established church here in this place where putatively, “the Magistrate has less powers over matters of religion,” the magistrate has hidden from you the fact that he indeed has great power over religious matters because he is taxing you to support the state church and that tax is found in every nickel and dime that goes to government (public) schools. Those government funded schools are in point of fact state churches wherein the state established religion is catechized into children from morning to late afternoon.

So, Rev. DeYoung is just flat out in error. We should say instead;

“A Reformed understanding of the nature of reality should lead one to understand that civil magistrates will always have the same amount of power when it comes to matters of religion, though some magistrates will hide that power from themselves and the citizenry better than other magistrates.”

Because there is no such thing as neutrality, the magistrate is always committed all the time to some God, god, or god concept. There is no lesser and greater. There is only the reality.

DeYoung, despite his good intentions, is not giving us Reformed theology here. To think that it was possible for a Reformed magistrate to have “less power in matters of religion” is to introduce a diminishing of God’s sovereignty as it relates to the state. If God is sovereign, as Reformed theology teaches, then God’s sovereignty ought to be explicitly brought to the fore in the public square by those magistrates ruling in as His vassals. To argue that Christian magistrates should somehow be hemmed in from being “too Christian” in their rule is to deny the sovereignty of God. De Young is giving us here, not only bad anthropology, but also bad theology proper.

DeYoung needs to muse on Van Til;

“The attempt to bring about a neutral culture, in which all religions and philosophies are equally tolerated, is in reality an attempt to dethrone the living God and to enthrone man in His place. There is no neutrality; every culture is either for Christ or against Him.”

When DeYoung argues for less power in religious matters he is arguing that the Magistrate might have the ability to be more neutral in religious matters. DeYoung is not arguing for a Reformed understanding. DeYoung is arguing for a anti-Reformed understanding.

Musings On Political Secularism

Political secularism, if by secularism one means that there is an absence of God(s) that is/are driving the actions of governmental business is an impossibility. No man or magistrate engages reality apart from a commitment to some God, gods, or god concept. Everything the political powers do is done with the tip of the cap (whether consciously or unconsciously) to some god(s) of some copybook heading.

Because this is so, the Biblical Christian advocates and champions the crown rights of King Jesus to rule explicitly over the political affairs of men. Of course, even if wicked magistrates are ruling, they are ruling by God’s divine decree but that fact doesn’t change the reality that wicked magistrates must be called on to rule according to the precepts of Jesus Christ found in His Word.

The doctrine of common grace, if it is held, does not change any of this. One can believe that in common grace God can do relative good through wicked magistrates and still believe that wicked magistrates are required to Kiss the Son lest God be angry and the wicked magistrate perishes in the way.

Secularism, as it is currently embraced, which is a form of pluralism, which in turn is an expression of polytheism, is not a political arrangement that any Biblical Christian can be comfortable with without being disobedient to the crown rights of King Jesus.

There is an implication here that people are not going to like. If we, as Christians are not to embrace secularism as what pleases the God of the Bible then we are not allowed to vote for candidates who will continue the secular arrangement wherein God is not pleased. We can hardly, consistently, oppose secularism and keep pulling levers for people who will continue on with secularism.

From The Mailbag; “Pastor, Aren’t You Being Unreasonable?”

Joshua Ambassador asked;

“The practical question in the debate is this: Nearly everyone in society is unregenerate today, spiritually blind, and suppressing the truth. What basis can there be, then, for law and justice?”

Bret responds,

There can be no basis for law and justice if we compromise with the heathen. Indeed, compromising with the heathen means “non-law,” and “injustice.” Let the heathen compromise with Biblical Christians.

The basis of any social order must be God’s Law Word enforced by Magistrates. The current humanist “Law and justice” is enforced on me by the Magistrate. Why shouldn’t we advocate that God’s Law and Justice be enforced upon the heathen by Christian Magistrates? Is God so small that we must wait until the Christ haters agree to be ruled by God’s law in the civil realm?  This is the Usus politicus sive civilis  of the law. This the understanding that the law serves the commonwealth or body politic as a force to restrain sin.

 
JA asked,

When people who are new to the debate hear the arguments of presuppositionalists, it sounds like they are saying that all the unregenerate are so willfully blind that it’s pointless to even try to come to a common agreement with them about what is right and wrong. The basis for Law, justice, and government in society can’t exist. Therefore Christians should go to some uninhabited place and form their own society.

BLMc responds

Because all ground is common ground (God’s ground) it is not pointless to pray and expect conversion. At the same time it is true that no ground is neutral ground. Since no ground is neutral ground we must not yield any ground to the unregenerate as if they have deed, title, or right to that ground. All must yield to Christ’s Lordship in every area because every piece of ground is the Kings.

If the heathen are given the whip hand though, it is true that the basis of Law, justice, and government in society can’t exist. This because increasingly obvious as the antithesis works out its implications on both sides. Therefore non-Christians should Kiss the Son, lest they perish in the way.

If you compromise with the heathen, the end will ALWAYS eventually be increasing heathenism and humanist anti-Christ law.

Let the heathen go look for uninhabited lands to live in.

Look… it is either rule or be ruled. We can rule by God’s glorious law – and this despite the heathen screaming like stuck pigs, or we can be ruled by Old Slewfoot’s hobnail ruinous law that seeks to maim, kill, and destroy.

Whose law would you be ruled by?

JA wrote,

Yes, the Pilgrims did that but there was a lot more land available then. And plenty of Christians have to “seek the peace of the city where they are captives” (Jeremiah 29 from memory), which surely involves co-operating with the unregenerate and coming to some kind of agreement with them about how the city/community/nation should be governed.

BLMc responds

Cooperate with the unregenerate on these matters? Isn’t that defined as sin? Let the unregenerate co-operate with me.