RSSRE: Four-Fold Foundation or “Truth or Dare” with D…
RE: Four-Fold Foundation or “Truth or Dare” with Darryl Hart
W.H. Chellis
O.k. time for me to stop waiting for the dare and dealing with truth.
The problem of toleration/ liberty of conscience is always with us, even in a secular setting. To what degree do we allow the propagation of subversive “faiths” is difficult (and becoming more so because of radical Islam).
Here on the blog, I have tried to advocate for a form of “confessional localism”. Within a broadly Trinitarian national context, I advocate for the existence “establishments” at the township or even county levels.
As originally intended, the First Amendment would provide no stumbling block to such a situation.
This does not answer the question of what to do with non-Christian religions (although I assume some form of toleration would be allowed for all but the most militant and dangerous faiths), but does answer the problem of pluralism among Christian denominations.
I just finished reading Barry Alan Shain’s The Myth of American Individualism, and am convinced that “confessional localism” is the only hope of restoring authentic localism and Christ honoring community.
What seems to divide us is the question of whether “nations” and “states” are moral persons or simply an aggregate of all the individuals that live within it. I believe them to be moral persons, and with Burke, affirm them to be a compact of the dead, the living, and those yet to come.
Now, if nations are organic entities greater than the sum of its parts, then they are morally responsible. If they are morally responsible, the first commandment applies to them. If the first commandment applies to them, then they must honor the true God. If they must honor the true God, then they must confess the Kingship of Jesus Christ (since all authority has been placed in His hands).
More on the organic nature of nations next month…
D Hart
July 23rd, 2006 at 10:12 am
Bill, thanks for the clarification but I don’t like the way you dealt from the bottom of the deck at the end. I’m with you on localism, but unpersuaded about Burke’s notion of societies or communities as moral persons (please don’t tell my bosses at ISI). However,
to conclude by leaping from localism to nations is to commit the sin of the Republican Party which wouldn’t recognize the authority of local authorities even if those communities made huge contributions to the GOP. So I don’t think it’s fair to talk about local communities as moral persons and then impute that to the state. I am for a more organic conception of local communities. But I can’t quite see how a local community can be Christian unless it is encompassed by the church, in which case it worships and partakes of the sacraments, and excludes unbelief. That’s a plausible position, but I see no warrant from Scripture for communities to be religious as such for them to retain legitimate authority and perform their God-ordained function of restraining evil.
One other question: so if your children, God forbid, should not grow up to make a credible profession of faith, you would advocate that they leave the community? Wouldn’t religious toleration and the separation of church and state allow your kids to stick around as neighbors and family even if they don’t worship at First RP Rochester? Or are you headed for a Halfway Covenant?
W.H. Chellis
July 23rd, 2006 at 6:38 pm
Let me clarify… do you believe that local communities have an organic nature and are thus moral persons but that the more centralized forms of government are not? Or do you believe that more centralized states are moral persons but local communities are not? Or that all civil groupings are not moral persons at all? At any rate, I noted that I think this is the point that divides us and this seems to ring true.
Here is the second question that seems to divide us, can anything be Christian aside from the gathered Church worshipping in Word and Sacrament. You seem to imply no. Is a Christian a Christian seven days a week? If so, is he a Christian only when he is in family worship or reading His Bible? Or is He a Christian, bound to confession of Christ and obedience to His moral law in every area?
Now, a question. Is there an area of God’s creation that is free from the constraints of the moral law?
Finally, an answer. Since I have already granted a great deal of authority to local communities to answer the question for themselves, I will go ahead and answer you question as if I had a right to dictate. I think that toleration/liberty of conscience should be granted to all who are willing to live within the confines of community standards. Thus, such children might not become professing Church members, but as long as they were content not to be subversive they would be free to live as part of the community. Of course, the benefit as a parent would be that the community standards would enforce an assumption of the normalcy of coming to faith rather than working against it.
What I am advocating is not novel but normal American political practice/theory until the late 18th Century/early 19th Century. It was certainly not perfect, but no one expects perfection.
Joe
July 24th, 2006 at 8:13 am
I know that Deuteronomy 6:1-3 and 8:1 say that nations are moral beings which He rewards for their righteousness or destroys for their sins.
What is the scriptural reference for local communities also being moral persons?
W.H. Chellis
July 25th, 2006 at 6:18 pm
Hi Joe,
Good question. Let me twist it a bit and ask you a question… what is a nation? A second question will also help… is sovereignty divisable?
Israel was not a centralized nation-state as much as it was a confederation of tribes. Among these tribal-geographic divisions were various cities and towns. Were did soverignty vest? Only in the Judges? the Kings? Or was it divided among the various levels of community.
Now consider this, when Solomon died, the kingdom was divided. God willed the division and blessed the efforts of the 10 tribes to seceed from the Kingdom. Having done so, and having elected Jeroboam to be their king, the northern kingdom sinned grossly against the LORD. They were morally responsible. Did they become moral persons only when the seceeded? How then did they have a right to secession?
Now think about the cities and the towns. Does their corporate rebellion not received judgment just as much as “national” sins? Does the Bible really understand such a difference? Or is the difference just a product of our modernist nation-state paradigm in which no soverignty can possibly be shared.
Let me know if this is helpful. If not I will try to sketch it out further.
MarkPele
July 26th, 2006 at 11:27 am
A good reference for local governments being moral entities is found in Deut 21:1-9. The elders of the nearest town to an unsolved murder were to atone for their responsibility by laying their hands on a heifer and then sacrificing it.
That said, it is still extremely difficult to understand how some of the first table case laws should be interpreted in a “temporal” way. Should we really put people to death who blaspheme, create idols, practice sorcery or even work on the Sabbath? Was Nehemiah wrong in merely closing the gates of the city on the Sabbath and not putting all of the merchants to death? What consideration should we give to the fact that Israel was simultaneously church and state - that “excommunication” in Israel was the death penalty. That’s the real struggle we’re faced with in the application of the sword in upholding God’s law.
W.H. Chellis
July 26th, 2006 at 12:03 pm
Good point. I think your point is definitive against the Theonomic thesis.
I think the problem is helped by distinguishing between that which is moral and that which is typological for Israel. I believe that a good deal of the civil legislation of the Theocracy was rooted in the fact that it was the Holy Nation in which God dwelt in a special way.
Yet, I also believe that a good deal of the legislation given to Israel has moral implications that can be used to develop ethical and jurisprudential principles to be reapplied in other contexts. Of course, we will deal with questions of the moral law and it relationship to natural law and the revealed law in months to come.
Centurion
July 26th, 2006 at 4:09 pm
How about Exodus 18 as a model for righteous, decentralized authority in all spheres of the culture, including civil government?
Timeless in its application?
Foundational for discipling the nations?
Critical to biblical jurisprudence (e.g, protecting the innocent, punsishing the evil-doers per Rom. 13:1-4), via a bottom-up, appellate structure, as Jethro advised Moses?
How else to illuminate the sovereign justice of Christ and His “moral character” to the world — based upon His Law-Word, not the whims of depraved men?
Christina Hitchcock
August 17th, 2006 at 9:45 pm
W.H. Chellis writes, on this blog and in the Covenanter Witness,
“Unlike modernist liberalism, biblical ethics does not define the individual as the basic unit of social and political life. Rather, along with the broader pre-modern political tradition, biblical ethics establishes the foundation of social and political life upon the family. Accordingly, the family in its corporate capacity is the “little platoon†of society in both Church and State. Here the whole is greater then the sum of its parts.”
Biblical ethics certainly do not
define the individual as the basic unit of society, but it also does not define the family as the basic unit of the family. This is a common mistake of modern American evangelicals, yet one that does not take seriously the primacy of the Church. I’d like some New Testament evidence that the family is the basis for either social or political life.
Chellis also contends that no one talks about a Christian nation anymore. Actually, we talk about it all the time. It’s called the Church.
Christina
Christina Hitchcock
August 17th, 2006 at 10:02 pm
Please disregard the comment I sent a few minutes ago. It’s in reference to a different essay. My apologies.
Christina