RSSW2K and Abortion
Let me hop in here for a comment turned post.
The W2K positions sounds great if you are Daniel in Babylon or even a Christian serving in the Chinese government. But is this our situation?
Rather, we in the West have a right to appeal both to nature and the Decalogue because the Decalogue is historically woven into the fabric of the Anglo-American cultural, legal, and political tradition. Maybe we cannot point to an unbelieving neighbor and say that abortion is wrong because God says so… not very convincing to an unbeliever I suppose but we can certainly point to the revealed law of God as it has been historically recognized and taken into account by our legal tradition.
What I am saying is that W2K is sound on an abstract basis but when applied it must take into account the role that Christianity has played in shaping the culture WE (not Daniel or Joseph) actually serve within.
Christendom still has some clout around here (and this is am objective reality whether Reformed theologians it is a good thing on theoretical basis).
Phil
May 22nd, 2008 at 12:07 pm
Thank-you for this question. I generally doubt the use of Jer. 29:7, “seek the peace of the city,” since folks who use it usually ignore the context.
Judah was in Babylon because of God’s judgment. Are we similarly and broadly under God’s judgment?
D Hart
May 25th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Bill, I actually take the view that the 2k view is concrete and the Lordship of Christ view is abstract — otherwise, why would Andrew accuse the 2k position of being pragmatic and compromised. You’re the legal scholar, but as a historian I don’t see the Decalogue as that crucial to our legal tradition. Maybe the second table, but those are commandments affirmed in a host of cultures and religions. (Just try getting the advocates of Justice Sunday to spend one minute reflecting on the duties involved in the Fourth Commandment.) Maybe also it comes down to a different take on cult and culture. You follow Eliot and Kirk, I follow Kline and Myers.
stevez
May 28th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
Bill,
Could you also be saying that “W2K is great but when it seems to not be a champion of a particular socio-political dogma we must hold it suspect”? Liberals recoil because it seems uninspired doctrine to get illiterate and starving boys and girls better educated, fat and happy; Conservatives wince when it becomes clear that it is useless in making sure every fetus comes to term.
In conversations I have with those who high stakes driven into the western tradition generally and American experiment specifically, and who seem to apply said principles differently (i.e. ideological Liberals and Conservatives), it always seems that W2K is rendered a dangerous doctrine. I can’t help but conclude that this is only so because it is interpretated as a weak partner in proping up the fading traditions of men, whatever they may be. Nobody–at least not I–wants to take your ideology away from you, but, in point of fact, let you have it, just with a bit more sanity. I mean, aren’t prayers to the Most High in thanks for certain idealogues, I don’t know, just a bit creepy?
W.H. Chellis
May 28th, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Steve, I do not see what is “creepy” about being thankful for men willing to defend Christendom.
To your point. W2K is an abstraction, and worse- a revolutionary abstraction- IF it demands that we damn the good things that Christendom has given us. Ignoring Christ’s Kingship over the nations is what seems creepy to me.
D Hart
May 29th, 2008 at 9:44 am
Bill, where this gets really complicated for you is that the classic Christendom model is caesero-papism of the Constantine sort. Where the west always differed from the east was the separation of the two swords, or at least an acknowledgement of the tension and the need to keep some distance between them. The Lordship model has more affinities to Constantine than it does to William and Mary.
Caleb Stegall
May 29th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Steve’s language is offensive and continues to give aid and comfort to moleck. If I were on the noctural council that runs this show, I’d say 10 lashes and 30 days in the novice cell!!
W.H. Chellis
May 29th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Darryl, I am sorry but I am not familiar with any ideological rules for the “Lordship” model. I am not carrying water for neo-calvinism or transformationalism. I have worked hard to develop a “model” that is Augustinian, Reformed, Presbyterian, and with a mix of libertarian and traditionalist flavors including quite a bit of W2K.
My model is Western, two swords, two kingdom, and more American than previous Covenanter models. It aspires to be Andrew Melville meets John Randolph of Roanoke. It likely has few adherents in our out of the RP church but I am doing my best.
D Hart
June 1st, 2008 at 11:27 am
Bill, I understand that you’re trying and I don’t want to diminish that effort. I’m still left wondering if Augustinians must inevitably kick away the crutch of Constantinianism.
W.H. Chellis
June 1st, 2008 at 8:07 pm
Darryl, I hear what your saying. I am wondering if the genius of the American Founders is that they helped to cut this gordian knot in an Augustinian manner. It allowed for an Augustinian outworking the relationship between Church and State, cult and culture that rejected Constantinianism on one hand and radical (read French) secularism on the other.
Iohannes
June 2nd, 2008 at 1:27 pm
What would Augustine make of the comparison of political factions and religious sects?
“In a free government the security for civil rights must be the same as that for religious rights. It consists in the one case in the multiplicity of interests, and in the other in the multiplicity of sects.” (Federalist No. 51)
I think highly of Madison, but have trouble reconciling his vision on this point with Christ’s high priestly prayer.
W.H. Chellis
June 3rd, 2008 at 8:45 am
Surely Augustine would not understand Madison’s point. His experience with the multiplicity of sects was far different from Madison’s or our own. He lived in the context of a universal, visible, catholic church.
That visible unity is broken. The invisible unity is not. America with a deeply Protestant heritage. That heritage has upsides and down. The down may be the multiplicity of sects.
Don’t blame Madison. He was a statesman not a churchman. It is silly for the church to create its own problems and to be mad at the civil government for having to deal prudently with them.
But, providentially, this problem has served as a kind of benefit. The multiplicity of sects has allowed unique little groups like the RPCNA and the OPC to worship our God according to His own command without interference by guys with funny hats or guys carrying a sword.
Iohannes
June 3rd, 2008 at 1:43 pm
I wouldn’t dispute that our heritage has a mix of upsides and downsides, nor would I want to minimize the benefits that have come from our American tradition. And again, I have a lot of respect for Madison. But I am not fully sold on his views about church and state.
Madison was a radical on this question, and he does not always exhibit his usual moderation when dealing with it. For example, he openly suggested that Patrick Henry’s proposal for a general religious assessment in Virginia was of the same spirit as the Inquisition (he said “it differs from it only in degree”). For my part, I am glad that the assessment was defeated, and glad that the Presbyterians, after flirting with it, ultimately opposed it–he who pays the piper calls the tune, and churches should be funded independently of the state. At the same time, I am not convinced that it is possible or desirable for civil government to take no cognizance of religion. We should remember that Madison’s attitude toward religion was largely baptistic–not in the pejorative sense with which we Reformed sometimes imbue the term, but in a strictly historical one. Madison was profoundly shaped by witnessing as a young man the persecution of the baptists in his own backyard in Orange County, Va. Madison’s cousin was the first Episcopal bishop of Virginia, and he was educated by Witherspoon at Presbyterian Princeton; yet at least in the matter of how church and state should relate, his writings show that his own ideal was to be found among the Baptists and Quakers and Mennonites.
With regard to Augustine, I think he may have been more sophisticated than we think today. After all, he was in large part the pioneer of the later distinction between the invisible and visible church. Moreover, the church was divided in his day–when he returned from Italy, the Donatists, not the Catholics, were the majority in North Africa, and although he doesn’t say it directly, his mother’s family background was probably part Donatist. This is not to say Augustine’s ideas were perfect, but it should counterbalance our inclination to see the modern day church’s situation as far different from that of the patristic period.
What I said above wasn’t meant to upbraid Madison. Surely it is possible to disagree with and challenge one of his views without belittling him. Maybe the problem is that I am uncomfortable with placing as much stress on invisible unity over against visible unity as we sometimes do today. Anyway, I hope this clarifies what I was getting at.