While I agree that biblical ethics do not define the individual as the basic unit of social and political life, I must disagree with the idea that biblical ethics establishe the foundation of social and political life upon the family.

It is common for modern evangelicals to assume that the family is the primary focus of Christian life and fellowship, but the New Testament clearly teaches otherwise. Jesus may in fact divide families. Our loyalty is to him above and before all others. His kingdom is not a group of biologically related people, but of spiritually related people all born of the same Spirit. This is why Paul says in I Corinthians 7 that it is better not to marry. Not because he thinks marriage and the family are bad (of course they’re not!) but because he recognizes that God’s Kingdom is in no way dependent upon the family and in fact will far outlive the family in the way that we know and understand it now. Jesus himself says there will be no giving or taking in marriage in the resurrection.

This common and constant emphasis on the family as the primary domain of God’s work in the world is not only inconsistent with the New Testament, it also degrades and belittles the Church, which is where God has said he is working, speaking, and moving.

We do hear of a Christian community or nation all the time. It’s called the Church.

Christina

Ah there’s the rub. What if nature isn’t perfectable this side of glory? What if grace and nature are in tension (not anti-thetical but surely accomplishing distinct ends with distinct means)? If you really think that grace perfects nature, then we may have finally arrived at the chief difference (at least for me). I don’t think Calvinism is compatible with that construction of grace and nature (H. Richard Niebuhr didn’t think so), nor am I sure about Augustinianism.

Of course, Aquinas is. And that is why so many Protestant conservatives convert to Rome. But if the purpose of grace isn’t to improve this world but to preserve a remnant for the next, then the idea of perfecting nature is dubious.

Of course, this does not destroy the cult and culture thesis. Rather, it raises the question of the cultic roots of Greek and Roman culture. This is where we find that pagan Greek and pagan Rome were rooted in the cult and developed into cultures.

Now these pagan cults were not Christian but they were feeling around in the darkness trying to satisfy the seed of religion found in their hearts.

Distorted nature was transformed by grace when, in the fulness of time, Jesus Christ came, revealled truth, and purchased salvation.

Roman order, rooted in the pagan cult, now faced competition. The darkness was overcome by the light. Christian converts lived lives as Christians. Their Christian worship bound them together as a community in need of new traditions and ways of life. This lead to the development of a Christian order (actually a plethora of Christian orders/cultures) in the peculiar soils of Europe/America.

No one is saying that the Bible presents “a Christian culture” but that when a people are Christian they will lead lives that conform to biblical norms and that they will develop traditions and a culture that reflects their Christian faith.

Thus, Christian culture will not always look the same in all places and at all times. Rather, it will grow out of the historic experince of peoples who have committed themeselves and their posterity to Christ.

Grace does not destroy but perfects nature.

But their argument about cult and culture rests on an abstraction similar to that of Locke’s, as if there was a state of Christian civilization, when Christianity became the basis for culture in the West. In fact, Christianity took root on top of other cultures, which were products of other, non-Christian cults, and the interaction of these religions and cults became the West or Western Civiliztion. But Christianity itself was not the basis for a Christian culture. Christianity as a culture has never existed. There is no Christian language, food, economic system, form of work. Instead, Christians were hyphenated people, Christian-Greeks, Christian-Romans, Christian-Celts. This was the case historically, but I think it is also the norm since after Israel the church is a landless people, existing within the cultures of other peoples, carving out both a separate cultic existence and participating in a common (with non-Christians) cultural existence.

If this is right, I think it has implications for politics. Other polities exist as God-ordained authorities to which Christians submit and with which they cooperate. But because Christianity doesn’t have a distinct culture or polity (except for the church’s polity and own separate authority, it is wrong in my opinion to speak of a Christian politics or a Christian culture.

The work of Meredith Kline is very good on this understanding of the difference between Israel and the church, and Ken Myers works this out well in the arena of culture in his book, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes.

I share Katsu’s concern about it and welcome feedback from anyone more familiar with its contents. Conservative revisionism (meaning in this context politically motivated revision at variance with the facts) is no better than the liberal variety. I hope that’s not what’s going on in this case, especially given the testimony of many of Washington’s contemporaries that his religious views were much closer to J. Adams, Jefferson and Franklin than to S. Adams and Patrick Henry.

Have you had a time to read
Dr. Peter Lillback’s *George Washington’s Sacred Fire*?

I haven’t.

But it is interesting to
see that WTS (Chestnut Hill,
PA) is now promoting this
book on their seminary web site,
when someone like Dr. D. James
Kennedy has a high view of Thomas
Jefferson as “a Christian”.

I wonder if our Reformed brethren
are a bit too naive in terms of political philosophy.

Pro Rege,
Katsu

Good, and I would say that nations are not the kingdom of God but some nations are in it. Or, at least, are subservient to it.

One of the important discussions that needs to take places is how Protestants went from defending the idea that the visible church should be a geographic reality to an donatistic “gathered church” vision.

It seems that our preoccupation with the “gathered church” is another indication of how we blur the distinction between the visible and invisible church. I think more likely is that the gathered church system is more conducive to individualism and consummerism.

Now, you suggest that Christianity should not be the “identified with policies of a nation.” I have a hard time understanding how you can believe this. I think we differ because you are reading Christianity as soteriology but I am looking at it as a religion of nature and grace. Both God’s justice and mercy are dispensed by the King of Kings. The Bible never calls your auto mechanic God’s minister for good (Romans 13).

A nation stands upon justice and the laws and mores that codify that justice. Should we look for a standard other than that employed by the King of Kings.

Can a social order rest on a foundation without divine approval? With what would we replace it? J.S. Mill utilitarianism? Comte’s postivism? As Russell Kirk notes, all civil governments are religious establishments. This is inescable.

Also, I think you are mistaken on the nature of nations because you undervalue the role of the cult in relationship to culture. As Voegelin, Dawson, and others have shown, the origin of civilization is to be found in small bands of worshipping peoples.

Of course both were Empires. So is 21 Century America. But where they nations as well? Burke thought England was in 1790 and I would not want to be in the uncomfortable situation of having to disagree.

Now to the real questions:
1) Bill writes: “a nation has an organic and corporate unity. It is a people who share a commonality of location, heritage, and faith. This unity, although rooted in blood and soil, transcends tribal patriarchy as peoples bind themselves together in greater covenantal unity.” So if America were like this, could it legally or constitutionally affirm the Lordship of Christ?

The answer would seem to be yes. But I am very uncomfortable with the civil religion implied by this construction, as if a people is known for their nationality and their faith. The organicism of Bill’s construction of a nation implies a fusion of the swords, so that a Christian nation would make war in the name of its creed. But if the nation has an identity that is not coterminus with Christianity, if it is American but only demographically Christian, then its international relations might be carried out on less confessional grounds. And that is a blessing because I do not believe that Christianity should be identified with the policies of a nation. I would think Covenanters, having received treatment that was motivated by such identification, would know that.

2) This is a much easier question. Rome was an empire. England was an empire. Worse, England screwed the Scottish Presbyterians in its imperial ambitions.

I will grant what the Westminster Confession of Faith teaches, the Kingdom is found on earth within the visible Church.

Of course, this does not really solve the problem. Families are not the kingdom of God (the Church is) yet they are very much connected to it right?

Now, I will answer your very good questions but first please answer two of mine:

1. If America were such a nation, would you grant that what I have said about nations is biblically justified?

2. Was Rome a nation is 314 AD/ and or was England a nation in 1797 (the year Edmund Burke passed into glory)?