I have always, I think, understood where you are coming from and what you basically mean to say…I just don’t agree. It would be so much easier if you’d say the same, don’t you think? I get that much from Andrew (thanks, Andrew). This “I don’t get you” refrain seems a bit below the threshold of useful discussion since I don’t think much of what I say is all that enigmatic.

Maybe it is just “different strokes”?

Steve

Who says that we are here to give such formulas? And who says it even has to be a republic? John Knox and then the Westminster Divines were comfortable with a monarchy.

Second, what transformational thinker claims that the Bible is a textbook for republican formulas?

Steve, you miss the point because your Christology is defective. The truth about our Savior does not end with his death. After nailing our legal failure to his cross, he disarmed rulers and authorities, put them to shame, triumphing over them. His incarnation/crosswork entitled him to enter Satan’s house, bind him, then plunder him, as Christ demonstrated by casting out demons. Thus with confidence we may go forth, joyfully, to disciple all the nations.

This defect is why you totally miss the point when you write, “We are not here to give formulas for a better republic.” The point isn’t about us but about our Redeemer, what he has done, and what he has received. We are mere servants.

You’re too pessimistic about what Christ has accomplished.

Who is the master, or author, of this approach? It cannot be our own Darryl Hart. I have never read anything nearly as off the wall from him. I guess my question is: whose banner are you flying?

Or, rather, “what you talking about Willis?”

It has everything to do with how we live our lives as believers, *which is precisely the point of all that is being said*. The rigid rules that W2K is so concerned with has to do with reversing what has happened within western Christendom and its laze, at least from my reading of it. If you want to catch me in some sort of “abstractionism” I don’t see how you can; you need to catch me in apathy. But it would seem, don’t you think, that if I was apathetic I wouldn’t be saying what I do? I say what I do *because* it matters–gravely.

Steve

Or, the violation of the Commandments that “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. This is the first and the great commandment; and the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Or, “Every sin, both original and actual, being a transgression of the righteous law of God, and contrary thereunto, does in its own nature, bring guilt upon the sinner, whereby he is bound over to the wrath of God, and curse of the law, and so made subject to death, with all miseries spiritual, temporal, and eternal.”

Steve

I have other questions along these lines for you: Why Christianity? Don’t plenty of other religions, philosophies, therapies and/or activities solve many of this life’s problems? Hasn’t Farrahkan’s Islam morally netted a host of at-risk youth? And if it isn’t moral quest but a more subjectivistic one, don’t plenty of unbelievers go to their graves legitimately happy, healthy and whole? Or is their self-attestation to being such simply to be dismissed out of hand because Christianity wasn’t credited? If so, are we saying that the inner discernment of a sinner is ultimate?

It still seems like the problem, against what the spirit of the age might have, is sin…not morality or personal fulfillment or the dis/repair of the republic, as perfectly legit as those things are. Or does that sound much too simplistic and abstract?

Steve