Where Does Homosexual Marriage Lead?

Recently I came across somebody who was for homosexual marriage but who insisted that the allowing of buggery marriage wouldn’t allow other abominations like marriage between groups, or marriage between man and beast or marriage between adults and children. Below is some of the interaction.

Maggie,

That having been said, I would like to throw out a couple points of (respectful) disagreement or, at least, commentary. First, I think the United States was well down the road of removing a Biblical justification for disallowing anything a long, long before gay marriage was ever on the table. Gay marriage doesn’t accomplish this removal of Biblical justification for our laws, since that was already a done deal long before the Massachusetts and other state courts considered whether prohibitions on gay marriage violate constitutional equal protection clauses.

Bret,

Maggie, you’re right about this. Gay marriage is just the latest consequence from being consistent with moving law off the only rational basis that it has. Law presupposes a lawgiver. Get rid of the idea of a transcendent lawgiver and what replaces the basis for law is an immanent lawgiver which in turn yields the consequence of relativism in the legal realm. Gay marriage though, perhaps exhibits most clearly that These United States has removed the Biblical justification for law.

Maggie

The premise behind the court decisions prohibiting laws against gay marriage is an old one. The premise was that any law that makes distinctions among categories of people must have a “rational basis,” and the rational basis cannot be God’s Word, since basing legislative decisions on God’s Word would be a state endorsement of religion in violation of the first amendment.

Bret,

First of all what standard shall we use to describe “rational basis.” I would contend that the only way to find a “rational basis” is by using God’s Law-Word as the transcendent standard. I would go one step further and say that the concept of “rationality” itself cannot be consistently arrive at apart from an appeal to God’s transcendent Law-Word.
Second, I don’t know why using God’s Word as the rational basis is a violation of the first amendment but using man’s autonomous law word as the rational basis isn’t likewise a violation of the first amendment. Indeed, as the law order is always reflective of and descends from religious a-priori commitments there is no possibility of having any rational basis that isn’t a violation of the first amendment.

Maggie,

(I don’t mean to imply that God’s Word cannot be rational; rather, that an argument that boils down only to, “God said so,” does not meet the “rational basis test” under our laws.) It seems that the heart of the argument is really about whether church and state should be separated in the manner I have just described. I think it should be, and I am guessing that you think otherwise!

Bret,

Maggie, it is not possible to separate Church and State. Our defacto State Church in our country today is the Government schools, and our defacto officially state religion is humanism.

Still, I agree that we need to do better than arguing by saying “God said so” though that certainly is always the place we must start. We start with “God said so” and we move on to explain why God’s saying so is the stuff of which the good life is made of.

Magie,

I disagree that the Bible is the only possible basis for proscribing certain activities such as bestiality. Many other moral codes (probably most moral codes) abhor cruelty and unnecessary suffering. A corollary of those principles is that one should not engage in sexual relations without meaningful consent from the other being involved. I don’t think you have to be a Christian to be morally opposed to animal cruelty, such as torturing an animal for sport (as opposed to killing it for food) or subjecting an animal to sex for the sole purpose of sexual gratification (as opposed to breeding an animal for purposes of increasing one’s livestock).

Bret,

Apart from a transcendent God it is not possible to define what cruelty. For that matter, apart from a transcendent God who cares about cruelty or suffering? Apart from a transcendent God I don’t know why anybody would be concerned with meaningful consent.
Now its quite true that you don’t have to be a Christian to be morally opposed to animal cruelty but you do have to be a Christian to be able to be consistent about any moral opposition in regard to the cruelty of animals.

Maggie,

If there ever were a push to legalize bestiality in the United States, I would be happy to join with the readers of this forum in vigorously opposing it.

Bret,

Your problem Maggie is you’re so yesterday. If you had been alive 100 years ago I suspect your biblically conditioned moral instincts would have said the same about homosexuality. But now you live in times where the winds of morality have changed and so you find homosexual marriage acceptable. I suspect if you had been born 50 years in the future you would be for bestial marriage. You’re simply a reflection of your times and culture.

Alexandar Solzhenitsyn — The World Was Not Worthy Of Him

Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) died last night of an apparent stroke. Since prophets are desert dwellers, and are often as angular as the God they serve, their deaths usually don’t make a great amount of news. Those with the prophetic voice often live in isolation and are seen to be an irritant to those cultural gatekeepers who are often in the sites of the prophetic voice. Last night one of the greatest prophetic voices the West possessed in the twentieth century met his Maker.

Solzhenitsyn’s life included spending the years of 1945-1953 in the Soviet slave labor camps –- the infamous Gulag Archipelago — and the years of 1953-1956 in exile in Soviet Russia. Much of Solzhenitsyn’s writing was committed to telling the story of those eaten alive by the communist system and whose stories would have never been known had it not been for Solzhenitsyn’s pen. Out of fear of what would happen if his works were seized by Communist nekulturny, Solzhenitsyn’s writings were smuggled out of Soviet Russia and published in the West.

In mysterious providence, God used his enemies in the Western media to make a celebrity out of Solzhenitsyn the prophet. The contrast between the media-manufactured celebrity and the prophet Solzhenitsyn could have not been more stark, yet God used the media-manufactured celebrity status, based upon Solzhenitsyn’s Nobel Peace prize in 1970, to check the communist desire to destroy Solzhenitsyn. The whole world’s eyes were on Solzhenitsyn and as such the communists were loathe to make the new celebrity disappear. Checkmated in their desire to do to Solzhenitsyn what it had done to so many other dissidents, communist Russia played the part of Jonah’s whale and after arresting and charging Solzhenitsyn with treason the communists exiled him by spitting him out on the dry land of the West along with his family.

Once in the West, Solzhenitsyn picked up where he left off while in the repressive USSR. In the USSR Solzhenitsyn’s theme grew out of a Russian proverb that said, “One word of truth outweighs the whole world.” This was the kind of theme that one would expect a prophet to have. Solzhenitsyn spoke this word of truth for those he called the “forgotten people” -– for all those who disappeared and dropped alive down the communist memory whole.

The word of truth that outweighs the whole world continued to be spoken once Solzhenitsyn arrived in the West. In a series of speeches that were later collected and published as Warning to the West Solzhenitsyn stepped up to the microphone and told the West, from a worldview influenced by Christian categories, what was happening in the world and why. Once the Western news agencies, which at that time were Fabian socialists in their belief system, began to realize that the words of the Russian prophet would, if taken seriously, not only bring the Communists down but also the Socialist West, they began to turn off Solzhenitsyn’s microphone and gave him the silent treatment.

Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Address is a bracing example of his penchant to speak the “one word of truth that would outweigh the world.” In 1978, Solzhenitsyn mounted the rostrum at Harvard and speaking to and of the West said things like,

“Such a tilt of freedom in the direction of evil has come about gradually but it was evidently born primarily out of a humanistic and benevolent concept according to which there is no evil inherent to human nature; the world belongs to mankind and all the defects of life are caused by wrong social systems which must be corrected.”

Here Solzhenitsyn is decrying that the West’s worldview included the absurdity that man was inherently good and that all evil came from the individual’s environment.

Speaking of the press in the West,

“Enormous freedom exists for the press, but not for the readership because newspapers mostly give enough stress and emphasis to those opinions which do not too openly contradict their own and the general trend.”

Here Solzhenitsyn is faulting the press for only giving “news” that serves its own deformed worldview.

Speaking of the West’s herd mentality,

There is a dangerous tendency to form a herd, shutting off successful development. I have received letters in America from highly intelligent persons…but his country cannot hear him because the media are not interested in him. This gives birth to strong mass prejudices, blindness, which is most dangerous in our dynamic era.

Here Solzhenitsyn speaks of how only approved majority opinions are discussed in the West.

Volumes of similar prophetic declamations could be quoted from Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn was a man for the times. The fact that so little is being said of him on the day of his death reveals that the times ignored him and went on their merry, God-hating way.

Oh, God of the prophets, show thy grace to raise up another prophet for our times.

Calvin On The Reformed Magistrate

John Calvin 1509-1564

“But this was sayde to the people of olde time. Yea, and God’s honour must not be diminished by us at this day: the reasons that I have alleadged alreadie doe serve as well for us as for them. Then lette us not thinke that this lawe is a speciall lawe for the Jewes; but let us understand that God intended to deliver to us a generall rule, to which we must tye ourselves…Sith it is so, it is to be concluded, not onely that is lawefull for all kinges and magistrates, to punish heretikes and such as have perverted the pure trueth; but also that they be bounde to doe it, and that they misbehave themselves towardes God, if they suffer errours to roust without redresse, and employ not their whole power to shewe a greater zeale in that behalfe than in all other things.”

Calvin, Sermons upon Deuteronomie, p. 541-542

Note in this quote that Calvin would have found it quite strange to contend that there could be a theocratic arrangement that was not at the same time theonomic in some sense. I mention this because I have read some “smart” people try to make the case that while Theocracy was a part of Reformed tradition Theonomy never has been. This quote makes shreds of that proposition. Still, it must be admitted that the kind of theonomy that was advocated by the Theocratic Reformers would have been an altered form from what was developed in the 20th century. BUT not so altered that there are not touchstones of commonality.

Secondly, note that this was a sermon which means it was preached in a Church. Calvin, speaking as the voice of God in the pulpit, was clearly violating Escondido notions of radical two kingdom theology. In this sermon he is instructing the State how it should operate.

Could Calvin be ordained by R2Kt virus men?

Dr. Clark and Rev. McAtee discuss Two Kingdom Theology

At this link

http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2008/08/01/flash-reformed-writers-uses-two-kingdoms-categories/#comments

Dr. R. Scott Clark had a bit of conversation on two Kingdom theology. If you want to see the whole context of this conversation I am repeating in an edited form I encourage you to read it there.

Bret,

Of course, as I’ve said many times, the two kingdoms theology was worked out in a theocratic context and yes, some of us are trying to put that theology to use in a post-theocratic context. Why is that wrong?

Dr. R. Scott Clark

Dr. Clark,

The answer is because we don’t live in a post-theocratic context and that it is impossible to live in a post-theocratic context. All cultures or peoples or socieities are organized theocratically, whether in a dejure or defacto sense. Theocracy is an inescapable category and all that.

Lutheran Theology and Reformed Theology are similar only in the sense that Lutheranism partakes of felicitous inconsistency. We may use the same words or phrases but because the systems are different we are using them equivocally when the systems are compared as a whole. This is no different than the similarity one finds between Reformed theology and any other branch you’d like to name. In all branches you can find surface similarities but when you burrow down you realize that you’re not saying the same thing at all.

Thanks for being gentlemanly,

Bret

Bret,

You’ve set up a definition that is inherently circular. It’s one thing to do this with ultimate questions. It’s another to do it with penultimate questions. You’ve rigged the game!

I did not respond to Dr. Clark at his site because I could foresee that this was a conversation where I would be cut off at some point. Therefore I am bringing my response to my site.

Dr. Clark,

Think about it. In your proposed and supposed non-theocratic context there exists a plurality of Gods contending in the marketplace of the culture of society. Now, who will referee how far the competing gods can go? Who will determine in your supposed and proposed non-theocratic context how vigorously the competing gods can walk in the public square? Wherever you locate that institution or person who is setting boundaries on the competing gods in the cultural market place there you find the God of the gods. In our culture, which is the culture that you would contend is “non-theocratic” that referee is the State. Therefore the State is the God in your non-theocratic culture. Another way of saying this is that if in democracy the voice of the people is the voice of God the theocratic arrangement in a democracy is the religion that animates the people which for Americans is a humanism that animates the State.

I therefore, as you can plainly see, most certainly have not “rigged the game” but rather simply recognized the nature of reality. I invite you to join me in embracing reality. It can be quite refreshing.

This is why R2Kt virus theology cannot work. It can not work because there is no such thing as a non-theocratic culture. When the Church refuses to speak to the God State in your putative “non-theocratic” setting what you accomplish is an institutionalizing of the violation of the first commandment.

Finally, because the methodology can be used on ultimate questions it can be used on penultimate questions that depend on the answer given in ultimate question. Because God is an inescapable category, everything that relies on God is likewise inescapable. For example since God is inescapable likewise religion is inescapable. Since some God is inescapable for an individual, God is inescapable for a people. Indeed, it is this shared sense of the Theo in the theocracy that alone makes cohesive culture possible.

By your creation of a non-theocratic realm, you have stated that it is possible to have some realm that isn’t derivative of theology.

I know you think I’ve rigged the game, but I think you’ve not realized what game is being played.

Bret

Reformed Quotes Regarding Two Kingdoms

The Belgic Confession of Faith, Article XXXVI

The Magistracy (Civil Government)

We believe that our gracious God, because of the depravity of mankind, has appointed kings, princes, and magistrates; willing that the world should be governed by certain laws and policies; to the end that the dissoluteness of men might be restrained, and all things carried on among them with good order and decency. For this purpose He has invested the magistracy with the sword for the punishment of evil-doers and for the protection of them that do well.Their office is not only to have regard unto and watch for the welfare of the civil state, but also to protect the sacred ministry, that the kingdom of Christ may thus be promoted. They must therefore countenance the preaching of the Word of the gospel everywhere, that God may be honored and worshiped by every one, as He commands in His Word.