Category: Quotes & Commentary

Social Hierarchy and Inequality as Christian Doctrines IV — Christianity is Anti-Egalitarianism (Hooker and Perkins)

 

Without Order there is no living in public Society, because the want thereof is the mother of confusion, whereupon division of necessity followeth; and out of division destruction…If things and persons be ordered, this doth imply that they are distinguished by degrees: for Order is a gradual disposition. The whole world consisting of parts so many, so different, is by this only thing upheld; he which framed them, hath set them in order. The very Deity itself both keepeth and requireth for ever this to be kept as a Law, that wheresoever there is a coagmentation of many, the lowest be knit unto the highest by that which being interjacent may cause each to cleave to the other, so all continue one. This order of things and persons in public Societies is the work of Policy, and the proper instrument hereof in every degree is Power. (Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, Book VIII, Section 2)

Richard Hooker (1554 – 1600)

 

The common good of men stands in this, not only that they live, but that they live well, in righteousness and holiness and true happiness. And for the attainment hereunto, God hath ordained and disposed all callings, and his providence designed persons to bear them. (see here)

The whole [political] body is not the hand, nor the foot, nor the eye, but the hand one part, the foot another, and the eye another; and howsoever in the body one part is linked to another, yet there is a distinction betwixt the members….In every society one person should be above or under another; not making all equal, as though the body should be all head and nothing else; but even in degree and order, he [God] hath set a distinction, that one should be above another.

William Perkins (1558 – 1602)

Calvin on Social Hierarchy and Inequality as Christian Doctrines III — Christianity is Anti-Egalitarian

Celebrity of name is not in itself condemned; since it is necessary that they whom the Lord has adorned with peculiar gifts should be preeminent among others; and it is advantageous that there should be distinction of ranks in the world.

John Calvin
On Genesis 6:4

Hence as the world will have an end, so also will government, and magistracy, and laws, and distinctions of ranks, and different orders of dignities, and everything of that nature. There will be no more any distinction between servant and master, between king and peasant, between magistrate and private citizen.

John Calvin
On 1 Cor. 15:24 

“Let us suppose all to be on one equal level, what would such anarchy bring forth? No one would wish to yield to others; every one would try the extent of his powers, and thus all would end in prey and plunder, and in the mere license of fraud and murder, and all the passions of mankind would have full and unbridled sway. Hence I have said, tyranny is better than anarchy, and more easily borne, because where there is no supreme governor there is none to preside and keep the rest in check.”

John Calvin
on Daniel 4:13-16

God does not delight in changes, or elevate in mockery to a lofty station, those whom he has determined immediately to throw down. It is rather the depravity of men that overturns the state of things, because nobody acknowledges that the disposal of every one is placed in His will and power. 

John Calvin
On Luke 1:52

In a well-ordered society the distinction between master and servant must be observed. In like manner, no public government can be lasting without the transactions of commerce; and therefore, when the distinction between rich and poor has been taken away, every scheme for gaining a livelihood among men is destroyed.

John Calvin
On Isaiah 24:2

It is God who appoints and regulates all the arrangements of society.

John Calvin
Ephesian 6:5-9 

Servants must also be cognizant of their rank and station; and everyone must apply himself in the thing which he has been called. It certainly accords well with Christianity that the rich man should enjoy his wealth (provided, of course, that he not devour everything without attending to the needs of his neighbors), and that the poor man should endure his station patiently, and beseech God, not desiring more than is proper.

John Calvin
Sermon on 1 Cor. 11:11-16

Calvin on Social Hierarchy and Inequality as Christian Doctrines II

“Regarding our eternal salvation it is true that one must not distinguish between man and woman, or between king and a shepherd, or between a German and a Frenchman. Regard policy however, we have what St. Paul declares here; for our Lord Jesus Christ did not come to mix up nature, or to abolish what belongs to the preservation of decency and peace among us….Regarding the kingdom of God (which is spiritual) there is no distinction or difference between man and woman, servant and master, poor and rich, great and small. Nevertheless, there does have to be some order among us, and Jesus Christ did not mean to eliminate it, as some flighty and scatterbrained dreamers [believe].”

John Calvin — Sermon on 1 Corinthians 11:2-3

Every one who goes beyond the limits of his calling provokes the wrath of God against himself by his rashness. Let every one therefore be satisfied with his lot, and learn not to aim at anything higher, but, on the contrary, to remain in his own rank in which God has placed him. If God stretch out his hand, and lift us up higher, we ought to go forward; but no one ought to take it on himself, or to strive for it from his own choice. And even those who are raised to a higher rank of honor ought to conduct themselves humbly and submissively, not with any pretended modesty, but with minds so thoroughly depressed that nothing can lift them up.”

John Calvin
In comments on Isaiah 14.13

It is the Lord’s peculiar work to divide people into their respective ranks, distinguishing one from another, as seemeth good to him, all men being on a level by nature.

John Calvin
On Psalm 87

Now we know for what end God would have rank and dignity to exist among men, and that is, that there might be something like a bridle to restrain the waywardness of the multitude.

John Calvin
Lecture 26 on Hosea

Since Isaiah reckons this confusion among the curses of God, and declares that, when the distinction of ranks is laid aside, it is a terrible display of the vengeance of God, we ought to conclude, on the other hand, how much God is pleased with regular government and the good order of society, and also how great a privilege it is to have it preserved among us; for when it is taken away, the life of man differs little from the sustenance of cattle and of beasts of prey.

John Calvin
On Isaiah 24:2

Meanwhile, the political distinction of ranks is not to be repudiated, for natural reason itself dictates this in order to take away confusion.

John Calvin
On Numbers 3:5

How Genocide Happens

Although new minorities and immigrants are driving the increases in the younger and labor force–age populations, the growth of the senior population is driven by the mostly white baby boomers. The result is a potential for conflict. There is no question that the primary concern of working-age Hispanics—and to a lesser extent Asians and blacks—will be their children rather than the older dependent population.

2014 New Republic Article

“Thus did the Western White Christian decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down, and having convinced himself that he was too numerous, labored with pill and scalpel and syringe and open borders to make himself fewer. Until at last, having educated himself into imbecility, and polluted and drugged himself into stupefaction, he keeled over–a weary, battered old brontosaurus–and became extinct.”

Paraphrasing Malcolm Muggeridge
Vintage Muggeridge: Religion and Society

Christian History and its Consistent Stance on Hierarchy and Social Inequality as being Biblical

Over here,

Quotes on Social Inequality from the Protestant Tradition

There is a list of quotes that demonstrate that Christianity had never taught the Cultural Marxist doctrine of social equality. I am going to take a quote or two or three every day from this site and post the quote here. The idea of egalitarianism needs to be beaten, bruised and bloodied until it dies a violent death. If the idea of social equality (modern egalitarianism) is not killed it will kill the Church and us as a people.

Elsewhere, I have posted a slew of quotes that demonstrate that Christians throughout history have believed in distinctions between peoples and nations.

So Say We All … A Protest To Dr. Sproul 2.0’s Comments

Also, elsewhere I have posted several times where I have provided quotes that reveal that it is the Marxists and Cultural Marxists who have always desired social equality and social order egalitarianism.

These quotes I am providing in the next few days would provide a more general category under which the quotes I have provided earlier would exist as a subpoint under the general category.

Augustine (354 – 430)

Peace between man and man is well-ordered concord. Domestic peace is the well-ordered concord between those of the family who rule and those who obey. Civil peace is a similar concord among the citizens. The peace of the celestial city is the perfectly ordered and harmonious enjoyment of God, and of one another in God. The peace of all things is the tranquility of order. Order is the distribution which allots things equal and unequal, each to its own place.  (City of God xix.13)

Thomas Aquinas (1225 – 1274):

Under the question “Whether in the state of innocence man would have been master over man?,” he writes (Summa Theologica 1.96.4):

But a man is the master of a free subject, by directing him either towards his proper welfare, or to the common good. Such a kind of mastership would have existed in the state of innocence between man and man, for two reasons.

First, because man is naturally a social being, and so in the state of innocence he would have led a social life. Now a social life cannot exist among a number of people unless under the presidency of one to look after the common good; for many, as such, seek many things, whereas one attends only to one. Wherefore the Philosopher says, in the beginning of the Politics, that wherever many things are directed to one, we shall always find one at the head directing them.

Secondly, if one man surpassed another in knowledge and virtue, this would not have been fitting unless these gifts conduced to the benefit of others, according to 1 Peter 4:10, “As every man hath received grace, ministering the same one to another.” Wherefore Augustine says (De Civ. Dei xix, 14): “Just men command not by the love of domineering, but by the service of counsel”: and (De Civ. Dei xix, 15): “The natural order of things requires this; and thus did God make man.”

For the question, “Whether men were equal in the state of innocence?” he writes:

Equality is the cause of equality in mutual love. Yet between those who are unequal there can be a greater love than between equals; although there be not an equal response: for a father naturally loves his son more than a brother loves his brother; although the son does not love his father as much as he is loved by him.

The cause of inequality could be on the part of God; not indeed that He would punish some and reward others, but that He would exalt some above others; so that the beauty of order would the more shine forth among men. Inequality might also arise on the part of nature as above described, without any defect of nature.

A properly ordered hierarchical social order has greater beauty than a collection of equals. This is consistent with Aquinas’s view that “divine goodness” is communicated “more perfectly” by “diverse things” (Summa Contra Gentiles , III, 97)

God, through His providence, orders all things to divine goodness as to an end; not however in such a manner that His goodness increases through those things which come to be, but so that a likeness of His goodness is imprinted in things insofar as it is possible, for indeed it is necessary that every created substance fall short of divine goodness, so that in order for divine goodness to be communicated to things more perfectly, it was necessary for there to be diversity in things, so that what is not able to be perfectly represented by some one [thing] is represented in a more perfect manner through diverse things in diverse ways.