Theonomy vs. Natural Law

Jerusalem vs. Athens

Theonomy vs. Autonomy

There is no such thing as "natural law." The theory is an attempt to replace the Law of God (Theonomy) with the law of man (autonomy).

Christian Civilization depends on Biblical Law (Jerusalem) Not "Natural Law" (Athens)

And it will come about in the last days
That the mountain of the House of the LORD
Will be established as the chief of the mountains
And it will be raised above the hills
And the peoples will stream to it.
And many nations will come and say,
"Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD
And to the House of the God of Jacob,
That He may teach us about His ways
And that we may walk in His paths."
For from Zion will go forth the Law
Even the Word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
Then they will hammer their
swords into plowshares
And their spears into pruning hooks;
Nation will not lift up sword against nation
And never again will they train for war.
And each of them will sit under his
Vine and under his fig tree,
With no one to make them afraid.
For the LORD of hosts has spoken.
Micah 4:1-7

R.J. Rushdoony has criticized Calvinist/Reformed thinkers for trying to synthesize Biblical Law and "Natural Law."

None Dare Call it Blasphemy: The Reformers and Natural Law

• Introduction
   
• August Lang: A Reformed Look at the Reformers
   
• Rushdoony: A Theonomist Looks at the Reformers
   
• Benjamin Nelson: Usury, Natural Law, and the Reformers
   
• Benjamin Nelson Describes the Reformers' War on Biblical Law

Westminster and Fascism

Rushdoony's critique is based on Van Til's "Theonomy-Autonomy" dichotomy, and Van Til's critique of "natural law." Background on "natural law" is essential to understand why non-Theonomic Reformers and Puritans were unBiblical.

God's Law vs. "Natural Law"

Suppose a civil magistrate seeks to draft a criminal code regarding sexual conduct. Should the government's laws be based on Leviticus 18, or on the latest thinking from the Harvard Law School? Tragically, many Reformers and Puritans opted for Harvard, speaking in terms of "natural law" or "the law of Nations." This means the laws of Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans.

Leviticus 18 says that the gentile nations would be judged and destroyed if they did not act Theonomically. God's Law was not just for Israel. But the gentile nations didn't always agree with God's Law. Here is some evidence that the gentiles did not agree with God's Law on sexuality:

The Biblical Source of Western Sexual Morality

This might not surprise even anti-Theonomists, but the same is true for non-Christian political thought:

Greek Mythology: The Myth of Classical Politics

• The Roman Empire was a conquering empire. Like secular America has become.
• It was an enslaving empire. 
• It was a debauched empire, opposed to your family values.

Getting government laws from these people is not just a "practical" mistake, it is rebellion against the Authority of God in His inscriptured Word.

This philosophical conflict has long been described as the conflict between Jerusalem (Christianity) and Athens (the Enlightenment). That was the title of Van Til's festschrift.

Gary North explains the foundational worldview assumptions of Roman culture:

(1) The legitimacy of homosexuality, especially the seduction of teenage boys by men over age 30;
(2) warfare as a man's supremely meaningful activity;
(3) polytheism;
(4) a personal demon as a philosopher's source of correct logic;
(5) slavery as the foundation of civilization;
(6) politics as mankind's only means of attaining the good life, meaning salvation;
(7) the exclusion of women from all aspects of public religion;
(8) the legitimacy of female infanticide.

The Harvard Law School contends that all of this "natural law" thinking is light-years more advanced than the "primitive" and "oppressive" laws of God in the Bible. And too many Reformers and Puritans agreed.

From the earliest church fathers to the most recent "process philosophy," Van Til built a body of work showing the compromise of Christians with unbelieving thought, primarily in the fields we call "philosophy" and "theology." Rushdoony applied Van Til's work to the State, and Gary North has done the same in the field of economics.

This is the big question in the "Theonomy Debate":

Is Natural Revelation Sufficient to Govern Culture?

Biblical Law versus Natural Law – Ezra Institute

The Flaw of Natural Law

Natural law theory originated after the conquest of the Greek city-states, first by Alexander the Great and then by Rome. Stoic political philosophers had to replace their theory of the autonomy of the polis and its laws. They wanted to find some theoretical foundation for their ethical system, which had previously relied on intellectual defenses based on the sovereignty of the polis. Natural law theory was their solution.⁽⁷⁾

Natural law theory assumes that there is a common logic among men. This common-ground logic is said to bind all men, so that by adopting it, we can persuade all rational men of truths regarding social and political ethics. Christian philosophers have adopted this idea. They have confused it with the work of the law written on all men's hearts, which is a doctrine of common-ground ethics, not common-ground logic. The main effect of natural law theory today has been to persuade Christians to abandon the Bible as the basis of civil law and to begin a quest for common civil laws and common civil sanctions.

The theoretical problem with natural law theory is that covenant-breakers suppress the truth in unrighteousness.⁽⁸⁾ Their powers of reasoning have been negatively affected by sin. They begin with the assumption of their own intellectual autonomy. They cannot logically conclude from this assumption the existence of the absolutely sovereign God of the Bible and His binding law.⁽⁹⁾ Natural law theory is a logical system that begins with the assumption of man's autonomy, which means that natural law theory has nothing in common with the assumption of God's sovereignty. Natural law theory assumes that covenant-breaking men can build and sustain a just society on the basis of natural laws, natural rights, and universal logic.

Natural law theory also assumes that sin and its effects have not adversely distorted the image of God in man. It assumes that fallen men do not actively suppress the truth. These two errors lead to a false conclusion, namely, that an appeal to common-ground logic can persuade fallen men. But if Paul was correct, how can natural men be persuaded to obey God, based on natural law theory? Paul entertained no such hope. "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned" (1 Corinthians 2:14). God's law is spiritually discerned, but only by those who are spiritual -- and not even by very many of them, as the history of Christian political theory indicates. The work of God's law is naturally discerned to a degree sufficient to condemn men for disobeying it, but not sufficiently to enable them to build a biblically moral society. Paul makes it clear in Romans 1 that the natural man suppresses the testimony of creation regarding God the Creator, reinterpreting God to conform to his covenant-breaking interpretation of reality. Why should Christians believe that the natural man will not do the same thing with the work of the law written on his heart? Why should Christians believe that an appeal to natural law should be any more successful in bringing men to judicial truth than to theological truth?

Today, Christian scholars are among the few remaining defenders of natural law theory. Darwinism has undermined faith in natural law theory among most humanists. Autonomous, evolving nature is widely believed to offer no moral standards. Even the survival of a species is not a moral imperative. Darwinian nature has no moral imperatives. For Darwinism, there is no permanent natural law. Everything evolves, including ethics. Because man's social and physical environments change, says the Darwinist, any ethical standards that do not promote the survival of humanity must be abandoned if mankind is to survive, yet survival is not an ethical imperative of nature unless man somehow represents nature on behalf of . . . whom? Man? God? Nature?⁽¹⁰⁾ There is no agreement among Darwinists regarding either the existence or the content of fixed ethical precepts that are derived from nature. Darwinian ethical systems are shaped by mankind's uniquely perceived requirement to survive in a constantly changing environment. This is the creed of social Darwinism, whether statist (e.g., Lester Frank Ward) or individualist (e.g., Herbert Spencer).⁽¹¹⁾ This is also the creed of free market economists, Rothbard excepted.⁽¹²⁾

Natural law theory is always an attempt to fuse Jerusalem and Athens. It is an attempt to reconcile autonomous man and the God of the Bible. No such reconciliation is possible. Because of God's common grace, covenant-breaking men are restrained in their suppression of the work of the law in their hearts. But, as they think more consistently with their presuppositions regarding God, man, law, consequences, and time, they become more hostile to the work of the law in their hearts. Logic does not persuade them.

7. Sheldon S. Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western Political Thought (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960), pp. 77-82. ^

8. Chapter 1. ^

9. This was a major argument in the philosophy of Cornelius Van Til. ^

10. The deeply religious movement known as the deep ecology movement specifically rejects the idea that mankind in any way represents nature or possesses legitimate authority over nature. A clear statement of this movement's views is Bill McKibben, The End of Nature (New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1989). The book became a best seller. It has been translated into at least sixteen languages. ^

11. Gary North, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), Appendix A. ^

12. Rothbard defended the idea of permanent ethical standards, which he believed are derived from Aristotelian natural rights theory. Rothbard broke with Mises' utilitarianism and Hayek's social evolutionism. Murray N. Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty (New York: New York University Press, [1982] 1998). On Hayek, see North, Dominion Covenant, Appendix B. ^

Source:

Gary North,
Cooperation and Dominion: an Economic Commentary on Romans
Chapter 2, "The Work of the Law and Social Utility"

Natural Law Theory

Gary North

Natural law theory was born in a time of breakdown: the breakdown of faith in the Greek city-state. Alexander and then Rome had conquered them all. Stoic philosophers sought a substitute theory of the local religious rites-based theory of the city-state.

The substitute was a theory of universal mankind, an idea foreign to classical Greek politics. This universal humanity possesses a common reason, they argued. Common reason allows men to come to agreement about ethics and law. Natural law theory was an attempt by philosophers to provide legitimacy for a world empire.

Natural law theory died as a widely believed social philosophy when Darwin's theory of evolution through unguided natural selection destroyed intellectuals' faith in an ethically normative nature.

Today, only a few conservative social thinkers, a few Protestant conservatives, and followers of Murray Rothbard still proclaim faith in natural law theory as a ground for ethics and society.

WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

Natural law theory has always suffered from the dualism of all Greek thought: law vs. change. The unchanging pure logic of Parmenides cannot be reconciled to the constant historical flux of Heraclitus. Greek philosophy never resolved this dualism. No humanist philosophy ever has, either.

The problem today is that the tiny handful of natural law theory defenders are trying to breathe life into a long-dead horse. They are wasting precious time. Natural law theory has never worked as the basis of any social order, but after Charles Darwin, the academic community abandoned natural law theory. Darwin taught that nature is impersonal and not normative. There is no universal ethics. There is only a constant struggle for personal survival. I have written about this in Appendix A of my book, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis.

Natural law theorists have yet to come up with a solution to this inconvenient fact: reason, meaning the never-proven, always sought-for "right reason" of natural law theory, has not led masses of people to adopt the same system of philosophy, ethics, or religion. Yet the theory rests on the assumption -- never proven -- that rational people can agree on these issues sufficiently to enable society to function both ethically and predictably, meaning rationally.

If the vast majority of men refuse to accept a concept of a fixed, universal common logic, let alone fixed, universal social and ethical laws, we cannot build a society based on natural law. This has always been true, but after Darwin's theory of natural selection, it has become more obvious to all but a handful of natural law defenders. They defend the idea of a universal theory of ethics and social order, the details of which have yet to be presented in a form that more than a few social theorists are willing to accept. Natural law theory requires logical universality to be true, yet the supposedly universal practical details of the system have never gained anything like a simple majority.

Christian social theorists (there are not many) are among the few remaining defenders of natural law theory. This is ironic, because natural law theory cannot be defended biblically. Paul wrote, "The natural man received not the things of the spirit of God" (I Corinthians 2:14a). He wrote that natural men turn to false Gods and suppress the truth that is in them (Romans 1:18-22). This undermines any theory of natural law for a consistently Christian society.

Natural law theory rests on these presuppositions, all of which are denied by the Bible: (1) the autonomy of man's mind; (2) the sufficiency of reason; (3) the autonomy of the universe; (4) the common ethics of all revealed religion. In short, the natural man does not need to receive the things of the spirit in matters of social theory and policy. In these areas, men do not need the things of the spirit, which are divisive. Natural men are therefore autonomous, and natural law theory rests on this presupposition.

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

We need a detailed history of natural law theory that reveals the perpetual conflict between fixed law ("Parmenides") and changing circumstances ("Heraclitus"). The book should demonstrate that natural law theory has always been afflicted by this unresolved dualism: law vs. flux, logic vs. history.

The Greeks did not solve this problem. The Greek city states exhausted themselves in continual warfare. Alexander the Great conquered them. Then Rome conquered the remains of his empire. Natural law theory was an attempt to provide meaning and hope in a world without the autonomous local Greek polis.

Show from the sources that Christianity imported natural law theory and tried to make it correspond to the Bible's revelational ethics. Show how the attempt failed because of (1) the conflict between biblical ethics and natural law categories, and (2) the inherent dualism of fixed rational law and historical flux.

The culmination of this failed attempt was Thomas Aquinas' philosophy. Show why the system he developed inevitably broke down: the Greek law vs. flux dualism and the Bible vs. Greek philosophy dualism.

Show why modern social theory since Edmund Burke has suffered from dualism: universal natural rights (French Revolution) vs. the constitutional rights of Englishmen or whoever (conservatism).

Show how Darwinism destroyed the acceptability of natural law theory among evolutionists.

WHERE TO BEGIN

Begin with the works of Cornelius Van Til. Start with In Defense of the Faith: A Survey of Christian Epistemology (In Defense of Biblical Christianity, Vol. 2). Then go to A Christian Theory of Knowledge. Or buy his CD-ROM, which is searchable: The Works of Cornelius Van Til.

For a survey of the dualisms in Greek, medieval, and modern (post-Kant) philosophy, consult Herman Dooyeweerd, In the Twilight of Western Thought (1960). For detailed discussions of specific philosophers and issues, consult his 4-volume study, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought (1953--58).

On the local religious rites-based origins of the Greek city-state, see Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City (1864).

On the breakdown of Roman philosophy, a standard treatment is Christianity and Classical Culture (1940), by Charles Norris Cochrane. It has been reprinted by Liberty Fund.

For late-medieval philosophy, a good introduction to its inherent dualism is the little-known book, Bradwardine and the Pelagians (1957), by Gordon Leff.

Then go to Otto von Gierke's standard book, Natural Law and the Theory of Society, 1500 to 1800 (1957).

On the substitution of the theory of evolution for natural law theory in economic theory, see my book (on-line, free), The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (1987), Appendix B.

Natural Law Theory: Ethical Dualism

The issue of the absolute authority of God's specially revealed civil law challenges the competing theoretical structure of natural law, natural reason, and natural revelation. We need to ask: Can these three theoretical ideals serve as sufficient guides for establishing God's legal requirements? Or is direct revelation from the God of the Bible mandatory covenantally in the civil realm?

Let us take the easiest case to analyze. God told Adam that he was not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If natural law, natural reason, and natural revelation were sufficient to inform mankind of the judicial boundaries established by God, then why did God reveal to Adam this single binding law and its single negative sanction? Adam was morally perfect. His eyes were not yet blinded by sin. The creation was without blemish in Genesis 2. It did not yet provide misleading information to mankind. But God nevertheless revealed His law verbally to Adam. Why? Because natural law, natural reason, and natural revelation alone are not sufficient to enable men to know God's binding covenant law in its entirety. If this was true for Adam, then it is surely true today, since men possess only fallen reason, and the creation itself is under a curse.

Had God's civil laws been revealed in some way other than through direct verbal revelation to Moses by God, such as through the universal reason of mankind, there would have been no need for God to require that the whole law be read publicly in Israel every seventh year (Deut. 31:10-13). Men would already have known this requirement "rationally." But they did not know.⁽⁵⁾ Then what do men know? They are responsible before God, so they must know something about God's law. Men always know enough about God's covenant law to get themselves condemned by God eternally -- the work of the law (not the law itself) written in their hearts (Rom. 2:14-15)⁽⁶⁾ -- but not enough to enable them to build the kingdom of God in history. This is why those Christians who affirm natural law rather than biblical law as the sole authoritative moral standard for society almost always also explicitly deny that it is either possible or required by God that Christians build the kingdom of God in history as God's designated judicial agents.⁽⁷⁾

A Question of Judicial Subordination

The inherent ethical dualism of natural law theology has had catastrophic effects in history. The dualism between Bible-revealed personal Christian ethics and religiously neutral, universally perceivable civil law inescapably demobilizes Christians in society and simultaneously anoints pagans as the lawful interpreters of natural law. Ethical dualism inevitably places God's designated judicial agents -- Christians -- under the civil and cultural authority of Satan's designated judicial agents. Why? Because it places natural law, natural revelation, and natural reason above God's revealed law, His progressively restored creation,⁽⁸⁾ and the mind of Christ (I Cor. 2:16).⁽⁹⁾ There is no neutrality; there is always judicial hierarchy. Some law-order must be on top. Some transgressors of this law-order must be on the bottom. Christian natural law theorists in principle place a hypothetically neutral natural law on top and Christians on the bottom.

In the early stages of this cultural conquest by covenant-breakers, natural law theory is a highly useful tool for covenant-breakers in their epistemological and political disarming of Christians. The infiltrators applaud ethical dualism: separate ethical standards for believers and skeptics, but a common civil law-order for all. This common law-order must not be based on some "narrow" appeal to standards uniquely revealed in the Bible, an ethical handbook for covenant-keepers only. Dualism keeps Christians happily subservient to politically successful pagans in the name of Jesus. That is to say, dualism keeps Jesus covenantally subordinate to Satan on earth and in history. When Norman Geisler asks, "Whose ethical standard shall we use?" and immediately answers, "a moral law common to all men"⁽¹⁰⁾ -- natural law for the natural man -- he has in principle delivered society into the hands of Satan's designated judicial agents in history. The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit (I Cor. 2:14); therefore, the ethical dualist is logically compelled to affirm, the Holy Spirit has nothing judicially binding to say or do with society and politics. If He did, then the natural man, not being able to receive the things of the Spirit, would be spiritually unreliable to exercise civil authority. Political pluralism rests philosophically on ethical dualism, for it asserts the legitimacy of common citizenship based on religiously neutral civil law. Ethical dualism necessarily asserts the judicial irrelevance of the Holy Spirit to both social theory and political theory. For almost two millennia, ethical dualism has been the dominant outlook of the church's main spokesmen.⁽¹¹⁾

There is no neutrality. The ethical dualist denies this with respect to civil law. By elevating natural law, natural reason, and natural revelation above God's inspired word for the purpose of establishing social and political theory, the Christian ethical dualist has anointed the covenant-breaker as the lawful master of the covenant-keeper in every area of life outside the four walls of the Christian church and the Christian family. But the consistent covenant-breaker is not about to honor these two fragile, judicially unprotected institutional boundaries, any more than Pontius Pilate honored the innocence of Jesus Christ against the Pharisees' court.

Here is the problem: Christian ethical dualists keep insisting, century after century, that the Pilates of this world are judicially reliable. The Pilates of this world are supposedly not in need of personal regeneration and the revelation of the Bible in order to carry out their lawful and judicially neutral cultural mandate in history. On the contrary, we are assured, they need only be faithful to "ancient Hindu, Chinese, and Greek writings," to cite Dr. Geisler's recommended primary sources.⁽¹²⁾ This is why Christian ethical dualists are at war with biblical civil law, biblical civil sanctions, and covenantal postmillennialism.⁽¹³⁾ Christian natural law theorists implicitly offer this daily prayer to God: "Thy kingdom not come, thy will not be done in earth as it is in heaven." (Unless, of course, they become really consistent and argue that natural law in principle should rule in heaven, too. Then their prayer becomes: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in heaven as it is on earth." We do not find such consistent ethical dualists.)

6. John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1959), I, pp. 72-76.

7. I have in mind all Protestant ethical dualists, from Martin Luther to Norman Geisler. Luther was amillennial; Geisler is premillennial-dispensational; both deny that God's kingdom can triumph in history through the Spirit-backed efforts of Christians. On Luther's ethical dualism between Christian ethics and civil ethics, see Charles Trinkaus, "The Religious Foundation of Luther's Social Views," in John H. Mundy, et al., Essays in Medieval Life (Cheshire, Connecticut: Biblo & Tannen, 1955); Gary North, "The Economics of Luther and Calvin," Journal of Christian Reconstruction, II (Summer 1975), pp. 76-89. On Geisler's equally dualistic ethics, see Norman L. Geisler, "Natural Law and Business Ethics," in Richard C. Chewning (ed.), Biblical Principles and Business: The Foundations (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1989), pp. 157-74. Geisler explicitly identifies the work of the law (Rom. 2:14) with natural law: ibid., p. 158. God holds all men responsible for their acts; hence, Geisler concludes, if some men do not know about God's revealed law, God cannot lawfully condemn them. "If there is no natural law," Geisler says, "God is unjust." Ibid., p. 160. Geisler misunderstands biblical justice. Natural law, natural reason, and natural revelation are sufficient to condemn every sinful person to hell and the lake of fire, but they are insufficient to enable people to build the kingdom of God. God's system of sanctions for the reprobate is simple and clear: "Heads, I win; tails, you lose." For proof, see Romans 9:10-21.

8. Gary North, Is the World Running Down? Crisis in the Christian Worldview (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1988).

9. The mind of Christ is imputed to His people at the time of their conversion, and it is progressively revealed in history, both individually and corporately, through their covenantal faithfulness. Anyone who denies this progressive, corporate, intellectual sanctification must also deny the progress of the church's various theological confessions. I know of no Christian who is willing publicly to deny the progress of the confessions at least through 1647 or 1788.

10. Geisler, "Natural Law and Business Ethics," p. 157.

11. The main exceptions historically were the New England Puritans of the first generation, 1630-60. On their theocratic legal theory, see Charles Lee Haskins, Law and Authority in Early Massachusetts: A Study in Tradition and Design (New York: University Press of America, [1960] 1985).

12. Geisler, "Natural Law and Business Ethics," p. 158.

13. Gary North, Millennialism and Social Theory (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), ch. 12: "Our Blessed Earthly Hope in History."

Gary North
Boundaries and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Leviticus
Chapter 14: Impartial Justice vs. Socialist Economics

"Classical" (Greco-Roman) Education vs. Christian Education

See this: Little Things Everywhere

• Classical Education [pdf] 
   
• Puritan Economic Experiments (Gary North)
  "I have done my best to present the Puritan economic world-and-life view in terms that can be readily grasped. I have also shown why their attempts to enforce this economic worldview by resorting to the sword of civil government was based, not on biblical revelation, but rather on a specific inherited intellectual tradition: early scholasticism. While it may seem strange that Protestants as radical as the New England Puritans were in fact followers of Thomas Aquinas in the field of economics, there were reasons for it. First, they were not familiar with the later scholastic tradition, which was much more free market oriented.¹ Second, the Puritans never fully broke with the theory of natural law, and it was the scholastics who had imported and baptized this humanist myth of ancient Greece and Rome. The Puritans did not attempt to rethink economics in terms of the Bible; instead, they simply imported medieval scholastic economic categories into their legislation regarding pricing."
  ¹ Murray N. Rothbard, "Late Medieval Origins of Free Market Economic Thought," Journal of Christian Reconstruction, II (Summer 1975), pp. 62-75. 
   
• The Puritan Experiment with Price Controls
  ["The Medieval Tradition" is also called "The Scholastic Tradition." It was an attempted synthesis between Jerusalem and Athens; importing Aristotle into Christianity.] 
   
• Classical Christian Education Is Like Marxist Christian Education, But a Lot More Subtle. 
   
• Why Christian Liberal Arts Higher Education Is So Liberal
   
• Classical Christian Education: The Real Deal
   
• The Trivium: Pagan vs. Christian
   
• The Classical Christian Curriculum: Marriage to a Corpse
   
• Nine Corrupt Pillars of Classical Greece
   
• The best way to teach history and literature
   
• Learning Latin is an academic fraud
   
• Charles Cochrane’s Christianity and Classical Culture
   
• The Liturgy of Sports
   
• What Protestant Evangelical Home School Parents Want: A Roman Catholic/Greek Curriculum
   
• The Ignorance of Christian Parents Who Want an Air-Brushed Classical Education for Their Children
   
• Chapter10 from CROSSED FINGERS: HOW THE LIBERALS CAPTURED THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
  "It could be argued that it was a similar overestimation of the benefits of classical education which helped to undermine the Puritans in the seventeenth century."

Powerful Essay by Gary North: Greek Mythology: The Myth of Classical Politics

American Vision / Gary DeMar

• Reviving the Rotten Corpse of Natural Law | July 18, 2011
• Natural Law vs. "Statutes and Judgments" | July 26, 2011
• Is a Return to Natural Law a Good Thing? | October 16, 2012
• Are General Revelation and Natural Law Substitutes for Biblical Law? | April 22, 2021
• The Inadequacy of Norman Geisler's Moral Law Theory | April 23, 2021

From Christian Reconstruction: What It Is, What It Isn't, by Gary DeMar

Norman L. Geisler, an ardent opponent of Christian Reconstruction, wants us to believe that "Government is not based on special revelation, such as the Bible." Instead, he maintains, "it is based on God's general revelation to all men.... Thus, civil law, based as it is in the natural moral law, lays no specifically religious obligation on man."¹ According to Geisler, civil governments are obligated to follow only natural law.

What is natural law? As one might expect, there are numerous definitions of natural law depending on which tradition one turns to. Should we follow the natural law system advocated by Cicero, Plato, Sophocles, Aristotle, Aquinas, Montesquieu, Blackstone, Grotius, Pufendorf, or Locke? After taking all of the systems into account, the following definition adequately represents the many natural law theories: "Natural law theory rests on the assumption that man has an innate quality - reason which enables him to perceive and live by natural laws which are 'self-evident truths' manifested in our natural surroundings."²

1. Geisler, "Dispensational Premillennial View of Law and Government," in J. Kerby Anderson, ed., Living Ethically in the 90s (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1990), p. 157.

2. Rex Downie, "Natural Law and God's Law: An Antithesis," The Christian Lawyer IV, 4 (Winter 1973). Republished in The Journal of Christian Reconstruction, V, Symposium on Politics, ed. Gary North (Summer 1978), pp. 81-2.

But there is a problem. While the above definition might work in a Christian context, where people generally understand (1) that rebellious man's autonomous reason should not be trusted, and (2) that there are certain absolute values. In non-Christian cultures, righteous natural law is an impossibility. The reason? As the late Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson declared, in expressing the implication of a consistent evolutionary theory of law and justice, "Nothing is more certain in modern society than the principle that there are no absolutes. . . ."³ Natural law depends on an existing theological framework that takes into account God's sovereignty and ethical absolutes.

In addition there are several other problems with a natural law ethical position. First, how does one determine what laws found in general revelation are natural laws that conform to God's will? Is it possible that Christian natural law advocates are using the Bible as a grid in the construction of their natural law ethic? But what grid is being used by non-Christians? In a consistently evolutionary system, there can be no natural law, only evolving law determined by those presently in power, usually the State.

Second, how do we get people to agree on the content of "natural law" and how these laws should apply? Do we opt for a lowest common denominator type of law like "Do good to all men"? Should we agree that murder is wrong but not war and capital punishment since each of these would violate the general law of "do good to all men"? Does natural law, for example, tell us that abortion is wrong?

Third, what if we find a common set of laws in "nature" that contradict the Bible? As we will see below, polygamy can be supported as a natural law ethic, as can slavery, since most nations from time immemorial have practiced both. Would we, if we followed natural law, give up monogamy for polygamy? Would we give up freedom for slavery?

3. Dennis v. United States, 341 U.S. 494 (1951) at 508 in Eugene C. Gerhart, American Liberty and "Natural Law" (Boston, MA: The Beacon Press, 1953), p. 17. Time magazine commented July 23, 1951, pp. 67-68): "Whatever the explanation, Kentuckian Vinson's aside on morals drew no dissent from his brethren on the supreme bench. And no wonder. The doctrine he pronounced stems straight from the late Oliver Wendell Holmes, philosophical father of the present Supreme Court." Quoted in ibid., p. 165, note 2.

Fourth, what if a "natural law" agrees specifically with a biblical law that is religious? For example, nearly all nations have some prohibition against worshipping other gods (e.g., Daniel 3:1-30). After Nebuchadnezzar realized the error of his ways in requiring the Israelites to bow down to a false god, he then made a law that prohibited anyone from speaking "anything offensive against the God of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego" (v. 29). The penalty was pretty stiff: They "shall be torn limb from limb and their houses reduced to a rubbish heap" (v. 29). If Nebuchadnezzar turned to the Bible for the construction of this law, then his example would be proof that biblical law was applied to a non-Israelite nation. Since, as Geisler maintains, "civil law, based as it is in the natural moral law, lays no specifically religious obligation on man,"· Nebuchadnezzar must have been acting out the dictates of a natural law ethic. Therefore, magistrates, based on biblical law or natural law, could punish people for overtly religious crimes against Jehovah. But this is the one thing that natural law advocates do not want.

Fifth, natural law "does not furnish a specific consensus of ethical judgment."⁵ Ultimately, it comes down to "what the individual conscience dictates; and consciences differ."⁶ In order for natural law to function in any rational and workable way, there must be a generally held common belief system. When Catholic scholars, the foremost advocates of natural-law theory, made the State subject to natural law, there existed, in the words of Woodrow Wilson, a "common devotion to right.'" But what is the source of that "common devotion to right"? What if that "common devotion to right" is no longer accepted by rulers and the courts?

Sixth, and finally, let us suppose that we can derive a body of law from nature. This would only tell us what the law is, or actually, what might be. Can we determine what we ought to do from what is or might be right?

4. Geisler, "A Premillennial View of Law and Government," p. 157.

5. William Aylott Orton, The Liberal Tradition (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1945), p. 95. Quoted in Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), p. 126.

6. Idem.

7. Quoted in Orton, idem.

Why have some Christians opposed biblical law in favor of "natural law"? Norman Geisler writes: "In brief, because not everyone accepts the Bible, but no one can avoid natural law, which is 'written on [the] hearts' of all men (Rom. 2:14-15). Only believers accept the Bible. But business must be done with unbelievers. Therefore, it is necessary for us to have some common ethical ground on which to engage in commercial transactions with them."⁸ There are numerous unproven assumptions here, but the two most glaring ones are (1) "not everyone accepts the Bible" and (2) "but no one can avoid natural law." Does everyone have to accept a standard before it is legitimate or it can be enacted into law? What if the majority of the people do accept the Bible? Would this mean that a nation could then implement biblical laws over natural laws? Aren't Christians told to "disciple the nations," to teach the nations all that Jesus commanded? Instead of avoiding the Bible, why not make it a point of discussion, showing unbelievers that the Bible has answers to all of life's problems. We could just as easily assert that not everyone accepts natural law (which is true). Does this then nullify Geisler's natural law ethic?

8. Norman L. Geisler, "Natural Law and Business Ethics," Biblical Principles and Business: The Foundations, ed. Richard C. Chewning (Colorado, CO: NavPress, 1989), p. 157.

Let us put Geisler's second assertion to the test. He would maintain that prohibitions against murder are natural laws. If "no one can avoid natural law," then why do people still murder? And when there was a prevailing biblical ethic in this nation, we had fewer murders, rapes, thefts, drug related crimes, illegitimate births, abortions, etc. People murder because they want to murder regardless what any law states, including biblical law and most certainly natural law. But because biblical law has sanctions attached to it - both temporal and eternal - there are more reasons not to murder under a system of biblical law than under natural law.

If the natural law is a law in the legal sense, what are its sanctions? ... [S]ince a law without punishment is vain, there must be another world to inflict it. Scholastics ... appear to depend on the Christian commonwealth, whose civil law is bound to reflect the natural law, to punish overt breaches. This was not unrealistic as a theory among Christian states in the days when rulers and inhabitants alike were at least technically Christian, but difficulties occurred when it came to expecting pagan kings to punish breaches of the natural law. This problem confronted the sixteenth-century Spanish Thomists, who were most unwilling to grant Christian kings rights of intervention in pagan kingdoms to punish "crimes against nature", and found themselves reduced to hoping for native kings to act in their stead in suppressing long-standing customs like human sacrifice.⁹

So then, it was expected that a Christian commonwealth would be necessary before such a natural law ethic could actually be implemented. No such trust could be expected of pagan kings since human sacrifice might still be considered normative by them.

9. Bernice Hamilton, "Some Arguments Against Natural Law Theories," Light on the Natural Law, ed. Illtud Evans (Baltimore, MD: Helicon Press, 1965), pp. 44-45.

We have had in our nation a prominently displayed biblical ethic that gave guidance to all citizens, Christians and non-Christians alike. America was a beacon to the world because it had an operating biblical ethic: In theory, everyone was treated as equal before the law, and that law was essentially biblical. In fact, there has been a concerted effort to move our nation away from an explicitly biblical ethical system. Regularly biblical laws are overturned and replaced with atheistic laws. This is true with sodomy and abortion. Take abortion. The Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade rejected Christian teaching regarding abortion, and turned instead to "ancient attitudes." These "ancient traditions" were accepted over the "emerging teachings of Christianity," teachings that were thought to have influenced the adoption of the Hippocratic Oath. The Court surmised that the anti-abortion Hippocratic Oath would never have been adopted by the medical community if Christianity had not dominated the culture. Since "ancient religion did not bar abortion," as the majority opinion in Roe determined, therefore, abortion would have to be legalized. And what were these "ancient traditions"?: Greek and Roman legal traditions that rested on natural law.¹⁰

Would our nation have Sunday as a day of rest and worship if we adopted natural law over biblical law? Even the Constitution follows biblical and not natural law in its regard for Sunday as a special religious day: "If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law...." (Article I, section 7). Would a natural law ethic permit religious oath-taking? No! Florida no longer requires Notaries to affirm "so help me God" on their written oath of office. The Rev. Gerard LaCerra, chancellor of the Archdiocese of Miami understands the implications of such an action: "What are we supposed to base our commitments on if something like this is removed? The State?"¹¹ This is where natural law leads us.

10. Curt Young, The Least of These: What Everyone Should Know about Abortion (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1983), pp. 21-23.

11. "'God' Removed from Notaries' Oath," The Kansas City Star (February 18, 1990), p. 2A "The general situation in this country is that in all court proceedings witnesses may give testimony only after they have qualified themselves by taking an oath in the usual form ending with 'So help me God,' or by making an affirmation without that phrase. The provisions for witnesses generally apply also to jurors." Anson Phelps Stokes and Leo Pfeffer, Church and State in the United States, rev. one-vol. ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), p. 490.

Some assert, using natural law as their operating principle, that the "celebration of Eros and the unlimited pleasure of the body should be elevated to constitutional principle."12 Are any and all sexual practices legitimate under natural law? As nations become officially atheistic, a natural law ethic free from biblical influence becomes impossible to formulate, since natural law requires the existence of a Creator who has a law to deposit in the universe and in the heart of man. How can a natural law ethic be formulated when different traditions come to the formulating table with contrary presuppositions? Some are Christian, religious, agnostic, and atheistic. Those who believe in God at least have some common ground, although what god we have in common is another question altogether. When the agnostic and atheist come, the difficulties multiply in trying to prove a natural law theory, especially in the area of particulars.

12. Robert H. Bork, The Tempting of America: The Political Seduction of the Law (New York: The Free Press, 1990), p. 210.

The reason for this difficulty seems to be that for those who really believe in creation and the supreme dominion of God, the principle is too obvious to need proof; whereas for those who do not believe in creation there is no basis on which to build proof.¹³

A natural law basis for moral behavior can be developed only when there is an already-operating biblical ethic. William Blackstone, the great English Jurist of the eighteenth century, wrote that natural law must be interpreted in terms of the revealed law, the Bible. "If we could be as certain of the latter [natural law] as we are of the former [revealed law], both would have an equal authority; but, till then, they can never be put in any competition together."¹⁴ The Bible shaped Blackstone's conception of natural law, although he rarely referred to the Bible in his commentaries.¹⁵ But this in itself might be indicative of how pervasively a biblical ethic influenced him.

13. Gerard Kelly. Medico-Moral Problems (Dublin: Clonmore and Reynolds, 1955), p. 167. Cited in Daniel Callahan, Abortion: Law, Choice and Morality (New York: Macmillan, 1970), pp. 310-11.

14. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, 4 vols. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press [1765] 1979), vol. 1, p. 17.

15. North, Political Polytheism, pp. 322-24.

Could there ever be a prohibition, for example, against polygamy based on natural law? While the Bible tolerated polygamy and established laws to govern it to protect the family unit, it never condoned it (Genesis 2: 18-24; Leviticus 18: 18; 1 Corinthians 7:2; 1 Timothy 3:2). Many in Israel, including such rulers as Gideon, David, and Solomon, adopted the polygamous practices of the surrounding nations. Of course, polygamy began soon after the fall (Genesis 4: 19, 23; 26:34; 28:9; 29: 15; 36:2; 1 Samuel 1:1-2). "Polygamy has always been odious among the northern and western nations of Europe, and, until the establishment of the Mormon Church, was almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and of African people. In common law, the second marriage was always void (2 Kent, Com. 79), and from the earliest history of England polygamy has been treated as an offence against society."¹⁶ Polygamy was denounced in Christian nations and practiced in non-Christian nations. Typically, "Asiatic" and "African" nations were non-Christian. Their practice of polygamy was "natural." With the advent of Christianity, monogamy was the practice and the Bible was the standard, not natural law.

The Supreme Court narrowly defined the legal protections of the First Amendment to exclude polygamy on the grounds that the practice was out of accord with the basic tenets of Christianity: "It is contrary to the spirit of Christianity and the civilization which Christianity has produced in the Western world."¹⁷ A year earlier the Court declared that "Bigamy and polygamy are crimes by the laws of all civilized and Christian countries. . . . To call their advocacy a tenet of religion is to offend the common sense of mankind."¹⁸

So with the above in mind, what common ground do Christians and non-Christians have regarding the law? The evolutionist knows nothing of natural law. His system will not allow it. Law is an evolving principle like the universe itself. Roscoe Pound, a former Harvard law school dean, wrote "that 'nature' did not mean to antiquity what it means to us who are under the influence of evolution."¹⁹ In "antiquity," nature was thought to have been created by God and thus ran according to certain "natural laws" (even though that god was a pagan deity). What many Christians regard as "natural laws" are in reality God's eternal decree.

16. Reynolds v. United Stales, October 1878.

17. Late Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- Day Saints v. United States, 136 U.S. 1 (1890).

18. Davis v. Beason, 133 U.S. 333, 341-342 (1890). Cited in John Eidsmoe, The Christian Legal Advisor (Milford, MI: Mott Media, 1984), p. 150.

19. Roscoe Pound, Introduction to the Philosophy of Law (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, [1922] 1959), p. 31. Cited in John W. Whitehead, The Second American Revolution (Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, [1982] 1985, p. 48.

The introduction of the concept of "Nature" and natural law, derived from Hellenic philosophy, led to a departure from biblical faith. Natural law spoke of a self-contained system of its own inherent law. One of the products was Deism, which reduced God to the mechanic who had created "Nature," and now "Nature" functioned independently of God. The next step was to accept the ultimacy of "Nature" and to drop God entirely.²⁰

There was predictability in the created order because God decreed all that comes to pass. The created order, what is erroneously described as "nature,"²¹ was understood to be affected by the fall of man into sin. Special revelation was needed to correct the distortions of a creation disfigured by sin. With the advent of evolution, a new understanding of nature developed that supplanted the one of "antiquity." According to Roscoe Pound, "no current hypothesis is reliable, as ideas and legal philosophies change radically and frequently from time to time."²²

20. Rousas J. Rushdoony, The Mythology of Science (Nutley, NJ: The Craig Press, 1967), p. 97.

21. Rousas J. Rushdoony writes that " 'Nature' is simply a collective name for an uncollectivized reality; the myth of nature is a product of Hellenic philosophy." The Institutes of Biblical Law (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1973), p. 608.

22. Rene A Wormser, The Story of the Law (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1962), p. 485. Cited in Whitehead, The Second American Revolution, 48.

In addition to natural law, Geisler writes that "most premillenarians recognize that God has not left Himself without a witness in that He has revealed a moral law in the hearts and consciences of all men (Rom. 2:14-15)."²³ Geisler asserts that the heart and conscience are repositories for an ethical code. But the heart of man "is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?" Jeremiah 17:9; cf. Genesis 6:5; 8:21; Psalm 14:1; Proverbs 6:14; 12:20; 14:12). General revelation may give a very clear ethical system, but man suppresses "the truth" of general revelation "in unrighteousness" (Romans 1:18).

23. Geisler," A Dispensational Premillennial View of Law and Government," p. 156.

Since man's reason is imperfect, and may be swayed by his physical and social environment, the "truths" which men "know" have been various and self-contradictory. The law of nature has been quoted for every cause, from that of Negro slavery in the United States to that of red revolution in Paris. And it has often shifted ground - or man's interpretation has shifted - on such thorny questions (for example) as private property.²⁴

24. Herbert Agar, A Declaration of Faith (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1952), p. 134.

But isn't "the work of the Law written" on the heart actually the law? (Romans 2: 15). "For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness, and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus" (Romans 2:14-16). The Gentiles, those without the written law found in the Bible, follow a law written on their hearts. It is the same law!

Second, general revelation contrary to Geisler, does lay a specifically religious obligation on man. According to Romans 1:18-32, which is the fullest biblical commentary on general revelation, men are guilty precisely because they "exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures" (v. 23). Where did they learn about "the incorruptible God"? "God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse" (vv. 19-20).

Third, general or natural revelation and special revelation (Scripture) have the same moral content. But because of man's sinfulness and the deceitfulness of his heart, he needs an infallible guide to read natural revelation. The Bible is that infallible guide. The only safeguard that sinful man has in not misinterpreting and misapplying natural revelation "is to test his interpretations constantly by the principles of the written word."²⁵

25. Cornelius Van Til, "Nature and Scripture," in The Infallible Word: A Symposium, eds. Ned B. Stonehouse and Paul Wolley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1953), p. 274.

Paul says nothing to suggest that there is a difference in the moral content of these two revelations, written and natural. The written law is an advantage over natural revelation because the latter is suppressed and distorted in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18-25). But what pagans suppress is precisely the "work of the law" (2:14-15). Natural revelation communicates to them, as Paul says, "the ordinance of God" about "all unrighteousness" (1:29, 32). Because they "know" God's ordinance, they are "without excuse" for refusing to live in terms of it (1:20). What the law speaks, then, it speaks "in order that all the world may be brought under the judgment of God" (3:19). There is one law order to which all men are bound, whether they learn of it by means of natural revelation or by means of special revelation. God is no respecter of persons here (2: 11). "All have sinned" (3:23) -- thus violated that common standard for the "knowledge of sin" in all men, the law of God (3:20).-

Reconstructionists take God's revelation seriously: the law of God found in both Testaments and general revelation.

Did God, as Geisler maintains, place only the Israelites under obligation to the moral demands of those commandments specifically delivered to the nation through Moses? Are Gentile nations ever condemned for violating laws specifically given to Israel? If we can find just one law that fits into this category, then all nations are obligated to submit to God's special written revelation, the Bible. I will summarize the argument for you:

God gives a series of instructions to Moses for the people: "You shall not do what is done in the land of Egypt where you lived, nor are you to do what is done in the land of Canaan where I am bringing you; you shall not walk in their statutes. You are to perform my judgments and keep My statutes, to live in accord with them" (Leviticus 18:3-4). God then issues a list of Canaanite practices that were prohibited. He commands the Israelites not to engage in incest, polygamy, adultery, child sacrifice, profaning Jehovah's name, homosexuality, or bestiality (vv. 6-23). The Mosaic law outlawed all such behavior and severely punished it. Immediately following the long list of prohibitions, God's word describes what disobedience will bring: "Do not defile yourselves by any of these things; for by all these the nations which I am casting out before you have become defiled. For the land has become defiled, therefore I have visited its punishment upon it, so the land has spewed out its inhabitants. But as for you, you are to keep My statutes and My judgments, and shall not do any of these abominations, neither the native, nor the alien who sojourns among you; (for the men of the land who have been before you have done all these abominations, and the land has become defiled); so that the land may not spew you out, should you defile it, as it has spewed out the nation which has been before you" (Leviticus 18:24-28).

26. Greg L. Bahnsen, "What Kind of Morality Should We Legislate?," The Biblical Worldview (October 1988), p. 9.

The transgression of the very law which God was revealing to Israel was the same law which brought divine punishment upon the Gentiles who occupied the land before them. "Israel and the Gentiles were under the same moral law, and they both would suffer the same penalty for the defilement which comes with violating it - eviction from the land."27

27. Greg L. Bahnsen, "For Whom Was God's Law Intended?," The Biblical Worldview (December 1988), p. 9.

The Offense of Christian Reconstruction

Gary North

Modern Christianity implicitly sings this hymn: "O, how hate I thy law; O, how hate I thy law; it is my consternation all the day." It is the offense of Christian Reconstruction that its promoters call upon all men to reconsider God's Bible-revealed law. This law is the only God-given, authoritative means of evaluation: self-evaluation first, and then the evaluation of everything else. God's law tells us what God thinks of the works of self-proclaimed autonomous man: "But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away" (Isaiah 64:6). It is not a pretty self-portrait, so autonomous men refuse to look at it. Meanwhile, Christians today are afraid to mention its existence, out of concern for the sensibilities of autonomous men, with whom they have an unspoken alliance.⁷

7. See below, Chapter 9.

Nevertheless, covenant-breakers cannot escape the testimony of God in everything they think, see, and do. They know the truth, and they actively hinder it, to their own damnation. For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold [back] the truth in unrighteousness;⁸ Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are dearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen (Romans 1:18-25).

8. Murray, Romans, I, pp. 36-37.

Each person is made in God's image. This is the common ground among men - the only common ground. We are born the rebellious sons of the Creator God. We are all of one blood: "God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation" (Acts 17:24-26). We are all born as God's disinherited children.

Christian Reconstructionists insist that there is no common ground among men other than this: the image of God. While all men know the work of the law (Romans 2:15), this knowledge is not enough to save them.⁹ It brings them under God's eternal wrath. They hinder in unrighteousness whatever truth they possess as men (Romans 1:18). The more consistent they are with their covenant-breaking presuppositions, the more they hate God's law and those who preach it. The more consistent they become with their rebellious view of God, man, law, and time, the more perverse they become. They prefer to worship creatures rather than the Creator:

For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, Without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them (Romans 1:26-32).

9. Ibid., I, pp. 74-76.

This means that natural law theory is a myth, the creation of Hellenistic Greek philosophers to offer hope in a world in which the Greek city-state (the polis) had fallen to Alexander the Great and then to Rome. But if natural law theory is a myth, what can take its place? To what other standard can men safely cling if they reject the abiding authority of God's law in history? Christian Reconstructionists have an answer: none. This answer is hated, rejected, and ridiculed by Christians in our day. This answer is the offense of Christian Reconstruction.

Without Theonomy, the World Would Be Uncivilized

• Who Wants to be Uncivilized?
• Why Civilization is Good
• Jesus is the Promised Messiah
• Five Books on Civilization
• Jerusalem, Not Athens: Western Civilization is the product of Christianity, not the Greeks or the Romans
• No Liberty In Non-Christian "Civilizations"
• Marks of a Civilized Man
• Michael Novak: "A New Vision of Man: How Christianity Has Changed Political Economy"
• Gary North: "Classical Education: The Dog Returns to His Vomit"
• U.S. Presidents on Christian Civilization

There is a chilling contrast between "Jerusalem" (the Kingdom of God, the Bible) and "Athens" (the reign of man the would-be god).

Let's look first at "Jerusalem" through the eyes of the prophet Micah (chapter 4):

Here are ten "core values" of "Jerusalem" as seen in Micah's prophecy: We can contrast those values with the values of "Athens" in the modern university

Let's compare these core values in more detail. Jerusalem is on the left, Athens on the right, usually quoting Dr. North.

Athens mocks Jerusalem, just as Marx coined the word "capitalism" and Queen Elizabeth mocked Calvin's metric Psalms as "Geneva Jigs." Our belief in the Bible as the Word of God is called

Civilization = Christendom

What is "Christendom?"

This section will be radically expanded soon. For now, see the article in Wikipedia, which defines "Christendom" as "countries in which Christianity dominates or prevails." I will define "Christendom" as "Christian Reconstruction in every area of life." Going further, I will define "Christendom" as "Civilization." Some call this "Western Civilization." I've heard some Christian commentators, like Eric Metaxas, describe "western civilization" as the combination of "Jerusalem and Athens." But "Christendom," or "Christian Reconstruction," should be defined as "Jerusalem WITHOUT Athens," as Tertullian said.

It has been said that the average human uses less than 10% of the awesome power of the human brain.

"Christendom" has used only a small fraction of the civilizing power of the Bible. Too often, Christians have resorted to the strategies of Athens and the Roman Empire to build "civilization."

True civilization, which is Christian Civilization, is founded on the Bible, and the three most hated words in secular/classical/enlightenment/humanistic political philosophy:

• Pacifism
• Anarchism
• Theocracy

If you were educated in secular schools, you are a victim of educational malpractice, and have been brainwashed into believing that those three concepts undermine "democracy" and "civilization."

What is "Pacifism?"

The word "pacifism" comes from the Latin word for "peace." It does not come from the word "passive." Our definition of "pacifism" is active civilization-building dominion conducted in accordance with the ethical prescriptions of the executed Christ. It is these prescriptions that modern secular man finds so offensive.

• Thou shalt not kill (Mark 10:19, quoting Exodus 20:13)
• Thou shalt not confiscate property (Matthew 19:18; Exodus 20:13-16; Deuteronomy 5:17-20)

Jesus goes further, and says that if anyone does these things to you, you must

• Forgive enemies (Matthew 6:14-15)
• Love enemies (Matthew 5:44)
• Bless enemies (Romans 12:14)
• Pray for enemies (Luke 6:27-28)
• Give gifts to enemies (Romans 12:20)
• Exhort your enemy to repent (Matthew 18:15-17)

And if all these fail to bring repentance, restitution, and reconciliation,

• Leave vengeance to God (Romans 12:19-21)

To say that you must leave vengeance to God means you must not hire a Mafia hit-man to take vengeance on your enemy. To do so would be "unChristian" and therefore "uncivilized."

To say that you must leave vengeance to God means you must not VOTE for a Mafia hit-man to take vengeance on your enemy. To do so would be "unChristian" and therefore "uncivilized."

The moral and ethical similarity between a contract killer and a politician is not often contemplated. Nor are the frequent connections between politics and organized crime.

The Bible says that throughout history, God has raised up contract killers and vile, reprobate, pathologically violent nations to take vengeance on sinners. See Isaiah 10 for the prophecy of God using Assyria to punish Israel. Although Israel deserved punishment, it was morally wrong for Assyria to do so. Therefore God destroyed Assyria, as Isaiah went on to prophesy.

You and I must leave vengeance to God.

Autonomous Man will not do this. Autonomous Man takes vengeance autonomously, sometimes using verses of Scripture to justify his own vengeance.

It is wrong to hire vengeance-takers.

It is wrong to vote for vengeance-takers.

"Vengeance is Mine" saith the Lord. "I will repay." (Romans 12:19, quoting : Deuteronomy 32:35; cf. Psalm 94:1; 1 Thessalonians 4:6; Hebrews 10:30).

This completely rules out "politics" as secular man defines it.

Too many Christians have sought to ground the creation of an institution of human vengeance on commands given to the priesthood of Israel. See more on this.

Pacifism -- forgiveness and leaving vengeance to God -- leads logically to "anarchism."

What is "Anarchism?"

Civilization without "Archists."

The word "anarchist" is derived from two Greek words meaning "not an archist."

An "archist" is a vengeance-taker. An "archist" believes he has the right to impose his own will on others by force or threats of violence.

Every professor of political science in every university on planet earth agrees that the essential nature of "the State" is a monopoly of violence. See here.

An "archist" is the opposite of a "pacifist."

Modern secular political philosophy opposes pacifism and anarchism for the same reason. Taking Jesus literally means the end of "civilization" as they know it.

Liberty was a 19th-century anarchist periodical published in the United States by Benjamin Tucker from August 1881 to April 1908. Included in its masthead is a quote from Pierre-Joseph Proudhon saying that liberty is "Not the Daughter But the Mother of Order."

Most people think that liberty and prosperity are the products of imposed order -- order imposed by "the State."

"The State" says "We have a moral right to take vengeance on the bad guys and take money by force [extortion] from the good guys." This is false. The Bible says vengeance belongs to God, not to any earthly creature. Extortion is a sin. When "the State" attempts to impose order on a society, it engages in sin. Even if the State has some noble motivation, and even if the bad guys are genuinely bad, the State sins, and legitimizes sin, and when sin is legitimized, Christendom is undermined.

Relentless, systematic institutionalized vengeance is uncivilized.

"The State" is the enemy of True Christendom. For Wikipedia, above, "the State" is essential to "Christendom." This is because Wikipedia is the vassal of Athens, rather than Jerusalem.

Civilization is the byproduct of obedience to the Commandments of God, and especially those pacifist-sounding Commandments of Christ which "the State" and "the institutional church" relegate to the "personal" and "private" sector, freeing up "the State" to use violence and aggression to pursue State objectives.

Jesus is "the Prince of Peace." Prior to His Incarnation, the world was uncivilized. The Reign of King Jesus is fulfilling "Messianic Prophecies" from the Old Testament which emphasize "peace on earth." True Pacifists are anarchists. Christian pacifists create true Christendom.

The idea of imposing Biblical commandments on the State is anathema to secular humanistic autonomous political philosophy.

They will say Christians are attempting to "impose a Theocracy" on "our" democracy.

The word "Theocracy" is derived from two Greek words meaning "God governs."

A pure Theocracy is not a government by clergymen. That would be an "ecclesiocracy," from the Greek ekklesia, which is usually translated "church" in the New Testament.

God rules/governs when people are obeying His commandments.

True Christian Civilization is a society that obeys God's commandments.

Civilization is Christian Theocracy, or "Christocracy."

Benjamin Rush signed the Declaration of Independence (1776) and served in the Presidential administrations of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison -- each of whom came from a different political party. And of what party was Rush? He answered:

I have been alternately called an aristocrat and a democrat. I am now neither. I am a Christocrat. I believe all power. . . will always fail of producing order and happiness in the hands of man. He alone Who created and redeemed man is qualified to govern him.

"Civilization" is the result of being governed by the Prince of Peace. All those who trace their genealogy to Athens despise Christian civilization. Their civilization puts them in power over a society characterized by

1. Pederasty
2. Demonism
3. Warfare
4. Slavery
5. Autonomy ("Man is the Measure")
6. Welfare State
7. Human Sacrifice
8. Cyclical View of Time
9. Female Inferiority

All those who trace their genealogy to Jerusalem are champions of Christian civilization, and are at war with Athens. The symbol of the Athenian State is "the sword." Christians battle against the sword with the Word of God:

Hebrews 4:12
For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.

2 Corinthians 10:3-5
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh. ⁴ For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, ⁵ casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ,

No sensible person wants to be "uncivilized."

The English word "civilization" comes from the same Latin root as "city." Augustine wrote a book "On the City of God" (De Civitate Dei).

• "The City of God" is civilized.

• "The City of Man" is uncivilized.

The City of God leads to life, peace, and prosperity, while the "City of Man" ultimately leads to death, either through tyranny (genocide) or through chaos and meaninglessness (suicide).

Our job as human beings is to build the City of God following God's Blueprints. This is the only path to lasting civilization.

Before the Advent of Christ, the world was uncivilized. It was a world of dehumanizing violence, irrational occultism and demonism, and the complete absence of any concept of personal liberty. Jesus, the Messiah, by His reigning from the Throne of David, has created Christian Civilization. Every corner of the earth has now been touched by the City of God. Our job is to continue to invite the world to live in this peaceful and prosperous City -- to become "civilized."

Civilization = Salvation

Jesus is the cause of "Western Civilization."

That's because Jesus is a "Savior" (one who brings "salvation"), and "civilization" is another word for the Biblical concept of "salvation."

Civilization is holistic salvation. The word "salvation" comes from the same Hebrew root as "JESUS." The name "Jesus" comes from the Hebrew word Yhowshuwa', which is derived from yasha', which is the Hebrew word most frequently translated "salvation." Here's how one mainstream scholar defines the Hebrew word for "salvation:"

Yasha and its derivatives are used 353 times. The root meaning . . . is “make wide” or make sufficient: this root is in contrast to sarar, “narrow,” which means “be restricted” or “cause distress.” To move from distress to safety requires deliverance. [T]he majority of references to salvation speak of Yahweh granting deliverance from real enemies and out of real catastrophes. That which is wide connotes freedom from distress and the ability to pursue one’s own objectives. Thus salvation is not merely a momentary victory on the battlefield; it is also the safety and security necessary to maintain life unafraid of numerous dangers. Hartley, John E. (1999). 929 יָשַׁע ["yasha"], in R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer, Jr. & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, vol. 1, pp. 414-15.

Let's think about this definition. An "uncivilized" person with power is called a "tyrant." When God threatens a sinful and rebellious nation, He often threatens to send "a sword." "Sword" is a symbol for violent uncivilized people with power: Tyrants and their armies. These uncivilized tyrants are a threat to "civilization," our society's salvation.  Here again is Hartley's definition, with key words highlighted.

Yasha and its derivatives are used 353 times. The root meaning . . . is “make wide” or make sufficient: this root is in contrast to sarar, “narrow,” which means “be restricted” or “cause distress.” To move from distress to safety requires deliverance. [T]he majority of references to salvation speak of Yahweh granting deliverance from real enemies and out of real catastrophes. That which is wide connotes freedom from distress and the ability to pursue one’s own objectives. Thus salvation is not merely a momentary victory on the battlefield; it is also the safety and security necessary to maintain life unafraid of numerous dangers.

• tyrants cause insufficiencies and shortages    • tyrants restrict our liberties    • tyrants are our enemies    • tyrants cause "catastrophic meltdowns"    • tyrants restrict freedom    • tyrants interfere with our pursuit of happiness    • tyrants leave us insecure    • tyrants are the object of our fears

"Civilization (and "Salvation" in the Bible) is therefore "freedom from tyrants." America's Declaration of Independence complained about an empire that "has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance." Around the world, most famine is caused by tyrants, not nature; uncivilized tyrants with power to blockade ports, confiscate family farms, and put farmers in concentration camps. Technologically advanced but morally uncivilized people who wield political power are the greatest threats and obstacles to civilization.

Tyrants depend on thousands or millions of uncivilized people to carry out the tyrant's de-civilizing orders. Tyrants depend on victims of educational malpractice, who don't know what "civilization" really is.

Who is more "civilized?" These guys:      ... or these guys:

I once read an intelligent person on Facebook (or do I contradict myself?) speak of an uncivilized person as "a pagan swine herder in some northern European forest or an illiterate peasant on the wild windy coast of Celtic Britain." I don't claim that pacifism can eliminate coastal winds (?), but if the opposite of a "swine herder" is Constantine, I would rather herd swine.

Does a truly civilized person leave his home and family to lead a military expedition to conquer foreign nations, using the cross or other Christian rhetoric to baptize the invading army, with the death and destruction it brings?

Who is more "civilized" -- the "illiterate peasant" who bears the fruit of the spirit and the character of Christ, or a conquering tyrant leading sociopathic armies and violently exacting tribute from "illiterate peasants?"

Take Jesus Seriously

Imagine that you had a button, the pushing of which would cause all professing Christians to take Jesus seriously.

If you take Jesus seriously, the unbelieving world (and most church-goers) will say you're "unrealistic," "impractical," and "utopian." They will call you a "pacifist" and an "anarchist." 

"Taking Jesus Seriously" means the following: 

1. Pacifism: Any objective observer of the teachings of Christ admits that Christ commanded His followers to be "pacifists." This proposition is proven here, here, and here.

   Objections to this claim are almost universally based on misapplications of Old Covenant "ceremonial law," or interpretations of a small number of New Testament verses, e.g., Luke 22:35-38 -- interpretations which John Calvin would have described as "truly shameful and stupid ignorance."

   The pacifist says "I will not intentionally kill another human being, even to defend my own life."

Christians who take Jesus seriously would believe that we are to

1. Love our enemies (Matthew 5:44) with an "agape" love that puts the redemption of the attacker ahead of one's own life.
2. Resist not evil (Matthew 5:39)
3. Pay your taxes; don't take up arms against the Red Coats (Matthew 22:21). [details]
4. Turn the other cheek (Matthew 5:39)
5. Forgive those who seek to kill you (Luke 23:34; 1 Peter 2:21-24)
6. Go the second mile (Matthew 5:41). If you take this verse seriously, it means "national defense" is a sin.
7. Christians would believe that it is always sinful to kill a human being ("Thou shalt not kill." Mark 10:19, quoting Exodus 20:13). Better to be killed than to kill.
8. In short, even if we get called "pacifists," we will take Jesus seriously and follow Him. [details] 

The Westminster Larger Catechism (1647) gives detail on the meaning of the Commandment "Thou Shalt Not Kill." It is a pacifist manifesto.
It also explicates the implications of the Commandment "Thou Shalt Not Steal." It is an anarchist manifesto, since "the State" is based on theft ("taxation," "eminent domain," "asset forfeiture," currency debasement, etc.).
 

2. Anarchism: Christendom would believe that it is always sinful to impose your own will on others by initiating force or threatening violence. (We are to be servants, not "archists." Mark 10:42-45.) I know, that sounds "weird." "Anarchism?"  [explanation]
    
3. Home Education:
   "Let the children come to Me." (Mark 10:14)
    Christians would believe that the central core of "education" is not going to a government-run "school," and not getting a paper "degree," but simply teaching children these commandments of God throughout the day, as they participate in the daily business of the family (Deuteronomy 4:9f.; 6:7f., 20f.; 11:18-21). Teach them to bear the fruit of the spirit and the character of Christ, and you will have civilization.
   This kind of education is the equivalent of "pushing the button" for future generations.
    
4. Preterism:
   The word "Preterism" comes from the Latin word for "past."
   Preterists believe that Jesus began His Messianic reign in the past. Most church-goers believe Jesus will not reign as Messiah until after He comes again. But the Bible says nothing about Jesus coming in our future; it says Jesus came and began reigning in the past:

"Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in His kingdom with power and glory and the holy angels." (Matthew 16:27-28; Mark 8:38-9:1; Luke 9:26-27)

"Pushing the button" would mean that Americans would not believe that Jesus is "coming soon" to destroy all the bad guys at "Armageddon" and deliver the Kingdom to Christians on a silver platter. I know: very controversial. Just read all the verses. [details]

• DominionPacifism.com
• TheonomicPacifism.com
• more links

Always evil to kill

This means the end of the American Revolution. Americans would not get out their muskets and kill the "Red Coats." Rather, they would do what Jesus and the Apostle Paul commanded: Pay your taxes. People today would accuse such Americans of being "pacifists."

• Would Jesus Celebrate Independence Day?
• Romans 13: The Prohibition of Armed Revolution
• "National Defense" is a sin.

Imposing your own will on others by force

In Mark 10, Jesus discovers the disciples arguing about who is going to wield the most power in the coming Kingdom. Jesus tells them that "the kings of the Gentiles" like to wield power, but Christians are not to be like them, but are to be servants instead. Jesus uses the Greek word from which we get the English word "anarchist." He says we are not to be "archists." What is an "archist?" What makes "the kings of the Gentiles" different from other Gentiles? Answer: kings claim the right to impose their own will on other by force: by prisons, by armies, by the sword. Christians are not to be "archists." People today would call consistent Christ-followers "anarchists."

• How To Become a Christian Non-Archist
• Order through Peace
• Anarcho-Theonomy.com
• Anarcho-Preterism.com
• I Am Not an Archist

How This Would Have Changed the World

Suppose that in 1761 (when John Adams said the American Revolution really began) that all of "Christendom" had repudiated archism and adopted pacifism. Notable nations with this Christian heritage include Britain, Germany, and Russia.

1. British Red Coats would have gone home, rather than impose a tax on tea.
2. Even if they didn't, Americans would have paid their taxes instead of getting their muskets out.
3. The Declaration of Independence would not have been signed.
4. George III would have abdicated, or if he didn't, he wouldn't have sufficient numbers of Red Coats to carry out his orders. So the "British Empire" would have ceased to exist.
5. The Constitution would not have been written.
6. The Bolshevik Revolution would not have taken place, for the same reasons the American Revolution would not have taken place.
7. Communism would not have taken root. Christians would not have carried out Stalin's orders.
8. The Soviet Union, Red China, and the Third Reich would not have come into existence, along with every other "government" on earth for the last 200 years.

This archist-free world of Christian pacifism would have resulted in the following, during the 20th century, according to Prof. R.J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii:

1. Hundreds of millions of human beings would not have been intentionally murdered by "governments."
2. Billions of human beings would not have been enslaved by communism, socialism, fascism, or Keynesian "governments."
3. Trillions of dollars worth of private property would not have been bombed, stolen, destroyed or "nationalized" by "archists."

Would You Push the Button?

Some people will become downright angry at this "easy-button" scenario. They would refuse to "push the button." They say that if sufficient numbers of people became "pacifists" and we abolished all governments and their armies and police -- especially "our" government -- then "evil would take over." This would mean the end of "civilization." It would mean a reign of "warlords."

I've heard that many times.

Let's think carefully about this. We're supposed to believe that

If "We the People" take Jesus seriously
and refuse to form "governments,"
then "EVIL" will "take over."

Really?

Please tell me what "evil" looks like if it is not:

1. Hundreds of millions of human beings intentionally murdered by "governments" through war and concentration camps (and 135,000 government-approved abortions each and every single day).
2. Billions of human beings losing their rights and liberties and being enslaved by communism, socialism, fascism, or Keynesianism.
3. Trillions of dollars worth of private property destroyed or confiscated by "archists."

How could the world have been more evil than it was under "governments" in the 20th century???

Seriously.

If "We the People" do not create the machinery of "government," what will evil "take over?" What institutions will evil men employ to do evil?

Adolph Hitler did not kill six million Jews.
Six million Germans killed six million Jews -- and many of them were church-going Lutherans. But they did not take Jesus seriously. They did not say "We must obey God rather than man" (Acts 5:29). If Hitler were transported through time to a future day when everyone took Jesus seriously, Hitler could get no evil done, because nobody would take him seriously. Nobody would have said, "I was just following (Hitler's) orders." Because everyone would be saying "I am following Jesus' orders."

It is a myth that "evil" could "take over" a world where everyone takes Jesus seriously. If there were no "governments," there would be no laws requiring people to do evil. Nobody would run the trains that take the Jews to the death camps. Nobody would bomb other people "back to the stone age." People do these horrible things because they believe that "governments" have the right to be "archists" and use force and violence to impose their will on other people (people who are not "the government," or people of other "governments").

Too many church-goers say we can't take Jesus seriously because . . . Jesus is a loser.
That's really what they're saying.
Jesus' advice doesn't work.
  We have to be "prudent."
  We have to be "practical."
  We have to be "responsible"
and make sure that evil does not take advantage of the naïveté of Jesus and those who take Him seriously.

Because God is not Sovereign.
God is not in control.
We must act like God and take vengeance on our enemies.

"Civilization" is not the product of bureaucracies and armies.

"Civilization" is the result of regenerated hearts, the gift of God's grace.

"Civilization" is not the result of "prudent" archism, which is in fact the machinery of REVOLUTION, feeding fallen man's desire to be as god, creating social salvation autonomously rather than in dependence on Divine Providence.

Because we trust in "the State" instead of God's grace, we live in a "civilization" which is more like Nazi Germany than an Amish barn-raising. More like the Roman Empire under Constantine than Celtic farmers. And we as Americans are particularly blind to the brute force of statism which is behind "Western" civilization and all the creature-comforts we've grown to assume are normal.

You may have heard it said that the average human being uses less than 10% of the total brain power with which we have been endowed.

It is likely that the human race has only applied about 1% of the pacifist teachings of Christ.

But just this 1% is responsible for what we call "civilization."

The "uncivilized" person is not a pacifist. He is an "archist." He believes he has the right to extract what he wants from others through force or threats of violence. He believes in vengeance. Civilization -- peace and the prosperity that peaceful cooperation and trade brings -- is impossible on these terms, in the long-run.

Human beings before the Advent of Christ were not pacifists. Historians and anthropologists have speculated that anywhere from 30% to 60% of all human beings died violent deaths in the years "B.C." (Before Christ). Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, previously at MIT, wrote a controversial article entitled "Why is There Peace?" What was most controversial about this article was not his data on the violence of the human race before Christ, but his claim that there is, now, today,  peace. Most people have been brainwashed by the mainstream media to believe that our world is awash in war and violence. But compared to the ages before Christ, we now experience unimaginable "peace on earth." Pinker claims that the peace which human beings enjoy today is the result of the modern revival of statism that was born in Greco-Roman culture. This page argues that "civilization" was not the product of Rome and "classical" values, but is the result of the reign of Jesus the Christ as Messiah, in fulfillment of Biblical prophecies concerning global peace.

If you doubt that Christianity teaches pacifism, and that Christian pacifism is responsible for "civilization," you need to explore the six links above. More verses. If you believe that "classical" Greece and Rome are responsible for "civilization," you're on the right page.

The Christ is the Prince of Peace

Some people don't believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah predicted by the Old Testament prophets. Let's look at a Jewish website and an article called "Why Jews Don't Believe In Jesus." It says,

Jews do not accept Jesus as the messiah because . . . Jesus Did Not Fulfill the Messianic Prophecies.
What is the Messiah supposed to accomplish? One of the central themes of biblical prophecy is the promise of a future age of perfection characterized by universal peace and recognition of God. (Isaiah 2:1-4, 32:15-18, 60:15-18; Zephaniah 3:9; Hosea 2:20-22; Amos 9:13-15; Micah 4:1-4; Zechariah 8:23, 14:9; Jeremiah 31:33-34)

I would like to suggest that Jesus is in fact fulfilling those Messianic Prophecies, and understanding why this is true can revolutionize your faith. (For a detailed response to that article from the Jewish website, click here.)

Most people who call themselves "Christians" today believe that Micah's prophecy (and the others cited) will not begin to see fulfillment until Jesus returns to earth a second time. The Jewish website understands this rationalization:

       Because no one has ever fulfilled the Bible's description of this future King, Jews still await the coming of the Messiah. All past Messianic claimants, including Jesus of Nazareth, Bar Cochba and Shabbtai Tzvi have been rejected.
       Christians counter that Jesus will fulfill these in the Second Coming. Jewish sources show that the Messiah will fulfill the prophecies outright; in the Bible no concept of a second coming exists.

But the Bible teaches that Jesus was born during "the last days" of the Old Covenant, and He put into effect a New Covenant, and as a result of this New Covenant, billions of human beings have been streaming to "the mountain of the Lord" (Miach 4:2), and the world is more obedient to God's Commandments today than it was before Jesus was born. The world is more peaceful. The world is more civilized. The Pentagon, the Mainstream Media and secular academia do not want you to understand this.

Nor do most clergymen. The more perceptive clergy will say that our belief that Micah's prophecy is already being fulfilled (along with all the other Messianic prophecies), and that we should continue beating swords into plowshares, is "dangerous." They will warn you that we are promoting the ancient heresy of "anarcho-preterism." They are correct (we are indeed promoting "anarcho-preterism") except for two things:

1. This position is not "heretical." It is the core of the evangelical message of the Bible. (The word "evangelical" comes from "evangel," which means "good news."). That's what this website is all about: Good News. Civilization is "good news." Tyranny is "bad news."
2. This position is not "ancient." I just made up the term "anarcho-preterism" last Thursday.

Yes, Jesus is described as a violent Archist Warrior as well as a Prince of Peace:

“I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and makes war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean…On his robe and on his thigh he has this name written ‘King of Kings and Lord of Lords.'”
Revelation 19:11-14, 16

But I believe the book of Revelation describes a Day of Vengeance against . . . the "Institutional Church" of Jesus' day.

"Who warned you to flee from the wrath about to come?" (Matthew 3:7)
"The axe is already laid at the root of the trees." (Matthew 3:10)

"You shall not finish going through the cities of Israel, until the Son of Man comes." (Matthew 10:23)

"The Son of Man is about to come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and will then recompense every man according to his deeds. There are some of those who are standing here who shall not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom." (Matthew 16:28; cf. Mark 9:1; Luke 9:27)

"'When the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those vine-growers?' '....He will bring those wretches to a wretched end, and will rent out the vineyard to other vine-growers, who will pay him the proceeds at the proper seasons.' '....Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you, and be given to a nation producing the fruit of it.' ....When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard His parables, they understood that He was speaking about them." (Matthew 21:40-41,43,45)

Matthew 22:7 But when the king heard about it, he was furious. And he sent out his armies, destroyed those murderers, and burned up their city.

Matthew 23:31 “Therefore you are witnesses against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. ³² Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers’ guilt. ³³ Serpents, brood of vipers! How can you escape the condemnation of hell? ³⁴ Therefore, indeed, I send you prophets, wise men, and scribes: some of them you will kill and crucify, and some of them you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from city to city, ³⁵ that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. ³⁶ Assuredly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.

Vengeance belongs to the Prince of Peace, not to the princes we might elect through "political activism."

At this point, I need to revise this page. The books below speak glowingly about "achievements" by Christians which may have been as de-civilizing as civilizing. It would be hasty to applaud an action simply because the actor was a professing Christian. There was a time in my life when I might have said that a Christian who did not vote Republican was a "pietist" (where "pietist" is very pejorative). There are contexts where "pietism" is more civilized than "political activism."

D. James Kennedy What If the Bible Had Never Been Written?	D. James Kennedy What if Jesus Had Never Been Born?	Alvin J. Schmidt How Christianity Changed the World	Thomas E. Woods How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization	Rodney Stark The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success
			How the Monks Saved Civilization Not just that "monks" preserved the remains of Greco-Roman culture after the fall of Rome. Christians created a new civilization in the ruins of an old, corrupt regime. Early kings like Æthelbert (c. 560 – 24 February 616 AD) and Alfred (849 – 26 October 899) based their legal systems on Biblical Law, and anchored the "common law" system in Europe on a Christian basis. Æthelberht later was canonised for his role in establishing Chalcedonian Christianity among the Anglo-Saxons, as were his wife and daughter. His feast day in the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church was originally 24 February, but was changed to 25 February. Æthelberht of Kent - Wikipedia	In important ways, Justinian also Christianized the Eastern Roman Empire, and the "civil law" nations followed suit. Justinian the Great | Influence of Theodora
				Christian Faith in Progress Other religions believe that history and the entire created world is illusory, meaningless, or infinitely cyclical at best. In Christianity, History has a goal and a standard.
morality	morality	America's Founding Fathers frequently reminded the nation that it is not government or constitutions which keep people free. It is religion and morality. The Bible made America the most prosperous and admired nation in history. The Bible is the Word of the Messiah.	Western Morality
It is interesting that none of these books has a chapter on "peace." Blessed Are the Peacemakers The Sixth Commandment -- "Thou shalt not kill" - God's Law leads to peace. And yet, all of these chapters lead to peace. As even atheists like Pinker admit, the Christian era is vastly more peaceful than the pre-Christian era.		When every man is his own god, his neighbor is the devil. Violence and vengeance are rational in this worldview. Jesus is "the Lamb of God" that takes away the sins of the world. We no longer need to punish our neighbor to gain a sense of atonement. We no longer need to punish ourselves (or let others do so) to atone for our own sins.		Christian morality is pacifist morality, while non-Christian morality is warlike. Some will say that if we follow the pacifist teachings of Jesus, and beat "Swords Into Plowshares" (Micah 4), that "evil will take over." We must be more "practical" and "realistic" we are told. "Peace through strength" we are assured. But the political and military machinery we have created to be more "practical" and preserve our "security" has, in the last 100 years, resulted in the murder of hundreds of millions of innocent non-combatant civilians, the enslavement of billions under socialism and fascism, and the destruction or confiscation of trillions of dollars worth of private property. If the billions of people who find Jesus to be "impractical" were to take Jesus seriously, their taxes would be cut in half and their sons and daughters would not have died in vain. Trusting in "the State" rather than the Messiah is vain. "National Security" is anti-Christian.
Public schools were created in America to make sure that everyone in town could read the Bible.	education	Christianity's Impact on Education	Church and University	Universities were created by Christians, not atheists.
science	science	Science: Its Christian Connections	Science	Theology and Science
				Christianity produced science. Non-Christian religions gave us alchemy and astrology; pseudo-science, not science. Reason and Christianity
The Eighth Commandment - "Thou shalt not steal"	If you cannot trade it, you do not own it. If you do not own it, you cannot trade it for something you want more, up to a better position. Economic growth is therefore impossible without the recognition of private property. A Society of Mutual Benefactors	Socialism Is Evil	Christian Economics in One Lesson	Property Rights
law	government	Christianity puts limits on the State. Primitive religions worshiped the State and the King.	Western Law	Limiting States and Kings Command Economies
politics	freedom, civil liberties	Liberty and Justice for All		Rise of Individualism
		Slavery Abolished: A Christian Achievement		Abolition of Medieval Slavery
	art	Christianity's Stamp on Art and Architecture	Art, Architecture
literature		Hallmarks of Literature: Their Christian Imprint
	music	The Sound of Music: Its Christian Resonance
	free enterprise, economics work ethic, honesty, morality	Labor and Economic Freedom Dignified	Economics	[Stark's book is mostly about the rise of capitalism in Christian Europe]
	medicine, healing	Hospitals and Health Care: Their Christian Roots
	sex, family,	Christianity Elevates Sexual Morality
	women children	Women Receive Freedom and Dignity
In the first century, Christians looked after the orphans of their cities. It was an outgrowth of their understanding of the scriptures as well as following the example set by their Jewish predecessors. The custom of their faith was to take orphans and give them to childless couples. Children were also placed with widows for the mutual benefit of each looking after the other. R.J. Rushdoony wrote in his book “The Atheism of the Early Church”: …. when the unwanted babies were born, they were promptly taken and abandoned under the bridges of the river Tiber in Rome. In other cities there were places which were routinely used for abandoning babies. The Christians made it their habit immediately to go to the places where these babies were abandoned — to be devoured, as Tertullian said, by wild dogs — to collect these infants and parcel them out from family to family. This tells us something about the life of faith among these believers. How many members of congregations today would welcome an officer of the church coming by with an abandoned baby or two, and feel it was their duty to rear them in faith! Adoption Heart Ministries | Adoption Matters
Non-Christian religions are evolutionary. The "Struggle for Survival" and the "survival of the fittest" has always meant the poor have no hope. They ought to be discarded in favor of the "fittest." Evolution and Genocide	welfare, charity, compassion mercy	Charity and Compassion: Their Christian Connection
	Value of human life	The Sanctification of Human Life
missions exploration		Christopher Columbus was motivated by the prophecies of Isaiah. He was a Christian hero. Christians were the first to condemn slavery. Columbus repented of his sub-Christian behavior, which is more than can be said of Marxists. Voluntary colonialism is not all that bad, compared to idolatrous superstition and bitter poverty.	International Law
society founding of America everyday things	The State is not Society America was a Christian nation.	People Transformed by Jesus Christ		Globalization and Modernity
We have recently heard of another book to be added to this list, highly recommended: The Book that Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization, by Vishal Mangalwadi. Table of Contents: Forword by J. Stanley Mattson, Ph.D. Prologue: Why This Journey into the Soul of the Modern World? Part I: The Soul of Western Civilization 1. The West Without Its Soul: From Bach to Cobain Part II: A Personal Pilgrimage: 2. Service: Or a Ticket to Jail? 3. Quest: Can Blind Man Know the Elephant? 4. Self: Am I Like Dog or God? Part III: The Seeds of Western Civilization 5. Humanity: What is the West's Greatest Discovery? 6. Rationality: What Made the West a Thinking Civilization? 7. Technology: Why did the Monks Develop It? Part IV: The Millennium's Revolution 8. Heroism: How Did a Defeated Messiah Conquer Rome? 9. Revolution: What Made Translators World Changers? Part V: The Intellectual Revolution 10. Languages: How Was Intellectual Power Democratized? 11. Literature: Why Did Pilgrims Build Nations? 12. University: Why Educate Your Subjects? 13. Science: What Is Its Source? Part VI: What Made the West the Best? 14. Morality: Why Are Some Less Corrupt? 15. Family: Why Did America Surge Ahead of Europe? 16. Compassion: Why Did Caring Become Medical Commitment? 17. True Wealth: How Did Stewardship Become Spirituality? 18. Liberty: Why Did Fundamentalism Produce Freedom? Part VII: Globalizing Modernity 19. Mission: Can Stone Age Tribes Help Globalization? 20. The Future: Must The Sun Set on the West? Appendix: The Bible: Is It a Fax From Heaven? Notes With Gratitude About the Author Index

Western Civilization is the product of Christianity, not the Greeks or the Romans

• Classical Education [pdf]
• Puritan Economic Experiments (Gary North)
  "I have done my best to present the Puritan economic world-and-life view in terms that can be readily grasped. I have also shown why their attempts to enforce this economic worldview by resorting to the sword of civil government was based, not on biblical revelation, but rather on a specific inherited intellectual tradition: early scholasticism. While it may seem strange that Protestants as radical as the New England Puritans were in fact followers of Thomas Aquinas in the field of economics, there were reasons for it. First, they were not familiar with the later scholastic tradition, which was much more free market oriented.¹ Second, the Puritans never fully broke with the theory of natural law, and it was the scholastics who had imported and baptized this humanist myth of ancient Greece and Rome. The Puritans did not attempt to rethink economics in terms of the Bible; instead, they simply imported medieval scholastic economic categories into their legislation regarding pricing."
  ¹ Murray N. Rothbard, "Late Medieval Origins of Free Market Economic Thought," Journal of Christian Reconstruction, II (Summer 1975), pp. 62-75.
• The Puritan Experiment with Price Controls
  ["The Medieval Tradition" is also called "The Scholastic Tradition." It was an attempted synthesis between Jerusalem and Athens; importing Aristotle into Christianity.]
• Classical Christian Education Is Like Marxist Christian Education, But a Lot More Subtle.
• Why Christian Liberal Arts Higher Education Is So Liberal
• Classical Christian Education: The Real Deal
• The Trivium: Pagan vs. Christian
• The Classical Christian Curriculum: Marriage to a Corpse
• Nine Corrupt Pillars of Classical Greece
• The best way to teach history and literature
• Learning Latin is an academic fraud
• Charles Cochrane’s Christianity and Classical Culture
• The Liturgy of Sports
• What Protestant Evangelical Home School Parents Want: A Roman Catholic/Greek Curriculum
• The Ignorance of Christian Parents Who Want an Air-Brushed Classical Education for Their Children
• Chapter10 from CROSSED FINGERS: HOW THE LIBERALS CAPTURED THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
  "It could be argued that it was a similar overestimation of the benefits of classical education which helped to undermine the Puritans in the seventeenth century."
• What a Seriously Christian Curriculum Should Be: Christian, not Humanist

I.C.E. Cover Letter - May, 1995

May, 1995

Dear ICE Subscriber:

Earlier this year, I received a letter from the headmaster of a Christian high school. The school, he said, is committed to providing a classical education. He asked me if ICE could supply materials that would improve his curriculum. I wrote back to him that the most important thing he could do for his students is to scrap his curriculum.

Peter wrote: "But it is happened unto them according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire" (II Peter 2:22). He was not writing about classical education, but he could have been.

Classical education undermines Christian orthodoxy. Christian orthodoxy has tried to make classical education Christian for over eighteen centuries, and it has always failed; the reverse always happens. Classical education is a Trojan horse: Greeks bearing gifts.

Classical education begins with a premise: the student must learn the classics. The classics are pagan: Greek and Roman literature and philosophy. They were based on the premise that man is the measure of all things, that man's reason is ultimate. The rational side of the Renaissance was based on the same premise. (Its irrational side was also a revival of Greek and Roman religion: occult, magical, and either chance-based or fatalistic.)

Medieval Scholasticism was as committed to the classics as the Renaissance was, though without classical occultism and pornography. The Scholastics were committed academically far more to Aristotle than to the Bible, especially in their political philosophy. They worshipped at Aristotle's shrine. Prior to the eleventh century, medieval theologians had worshipped at Plato's shrine: neoplatonic mysticism. The Scholastics substituted Aristotle for Plato. There was some gain — Aristotle at least was not a communist, as Plato was — but not in the realm of men's presuppositions. It was the equivalent of substituting Milton Friedman for Karl Marx: better economics, but the same old humanism. For humanism, man is the measure, and man's mind is the sole valid instrument of measurement. The Bible denies this view.

From the beginning, the medieval university was committed to classical education, and from the beginning, rationalism and irrationalism (mysticism) undermined the Christian roots of education. By the time of Cromwell and the Puritan Revolution of 1642-59, the Puritans suspected that the curriculum of Oxford and Cambridge was against them, yet they did not seek to change it. They hoped that inward salvation would somehow make Renaissance rationalism Christian. Cromwell changed nothing at Oxford, even though as Lord Protector, he was chancellor of Oxford. John Morgan writes in his survey of Puritan education, Godly Learning: Puritan Attitudes towards Reason, Learning and Education, 1560–1640 (Cambridge University Press, 1986):

Puritans did not venture far from the traditional academic routine. The structures of educational institutions, and the content as affected by Renaissance urgings, seemed to satisfy their need for an academic base. There can certainly be no doubt of the very limited effects of puritans to the legacy of the Renaissance, or in developing the human intellect in the Baconian sense of the `advancement of learning.' . . . A novel theory of learning or education lay outside the necessities of a puritan blueprint for the future (pp. 305–6).

To indulge in classical education is to indulge in Renaissance education. To force a child to learn Latin is to encourage him to accept the premises either of medieval Catholicism or the Renaissance. Yet today's would-be Puritans have accepted the error of those Puritans who built Harvard. Harvard went Unitarian in 1804. Christians know something is wrong with rationalism, yet they seem incapable of breaking with the past.

Van Til's apologetics should warn us: the history of Christian philosophy has been one long compromise with the philosophy of autonomous man. From Plato to Newton, from Newton to Kant, from Kant to some cast-off liberal fad, Christian philosophers have sought to baptize humanism. They hope to appropriate for Christ the anti-Christian philosophies of their day or an earlier day. They trust the natural mind of the natural man, refusing to acknowledge the enormous danger involved: the importation of alien philosophical categories into the Church. And so, without exception, Christians for over 1800 years have surrendered education, and therefore the future (inheritance), to the humanists.

What is the obvious sign of this surrender today? The futile attempt to revive Latin. Why force a child to master Latin rather than New Testament Greek? Greek will enable him to read the New Testament in the original — an obvious benefit. But what is the benefit of Latin? Except for the historian of the ancient or medieval eras — for whom there will be no paying employment — Latin is peripheral. Yet it is seen as the mark of true learning. Latin was the universal language of the Western Church, i.e., Roman Catholicism and early Protestantism. But that learning was deeply compromised with Renaissance humanism. At best, Latin will enable a tiny handful of highly skilled, highly motivated, and poorly paid Christian scholars to read fragments of the Latin Church fathers. Meanwhile, we live in an era in which the vast majority of Christians know nothing of Calvin, where Calvinist pastors have yet to read all of The Institutes of the Christian Religion, let alone Calvin's commentaries. Forget about Latin; teach the Institutes. Abandon the futile boast: "My child is receiving a classical education, just like the good old days." The good old days produced the bad new days, step by step. The assumption of intellectual neutrality is the Church's great enemy. Latin education was the primary agency used to spread this lie.

I see home school mothers who cannot read Latin, who have no intention of reading Latin, who are utterly uninterested in anything written only in Latin, buying Latin grammars to inflict on their hapless children. Why? Because somebody they trusted told them that "Latin is basic to a well-rounded education." To which I reply: "Latin was basic to the initiation process of pagan and/or deeply compromised academics to gain control over the training of each generation of Christian leaders in England and America." Latin was a wedge used to separate Christian children from their parents. In the same way that the sex education fanatics today devise ways to keep parents from finding out what teachers are really teaching the children, so was Latin for six or seven centuries. To open the doors of ecclesiastical office and government patronage to your child, Christian parents had to surrender him to the Latin-based curriculum, a curriculum that rested squarely on the autonomy of man. The child was initiated into classical humanism by way of Latin.

What is nothing short of astounding is that there are dedicated Christians today who insist on doing this to their children. They insist on reviving the tool of their ancient enemies in the name of traditional education. But traditional education was Satan's own tool for capturing the souls of Christians as well as their inheritance. Satan's agents abandoned that tool only late in the nineteenth century, when it became clear that mass education was going to make the traditional Latin school obsolete as an initiation process for the elite. At that point, the humanists substituted the modern curriculum, in which Latin plays no role. Latin has become a lost tool of learning. Let's keep it that way!

Is there a role for Latin? Only historical. If there were a self-conscious effort on the part of dozens of Christian schools to create a cooperative program for translating the 220 volumes of J. P. Migne's Latin Church Fathers, I would approve. But the cost — $65,000 for four CD-ROM disks, shared by four schools — is prohibitive. Christian schools do not have the funds or the vision to begin a project like this. Until they do, it is foolish to indulge in the waste of time that a Latin curriculum involves. The vast majority of children so initiated will learn only the equivalent of pigeon Latin. If a child cannot sight read a foreign language without a dictionary by age 14, then whatever benefits he has received from the exercise of learning that language are indirect, e.g., learning the rules of grammar. If someone is going to be forced to do this, then he should learn a language useful to Christians: Greek, first; Hebrew, second, and Latin only a distant third. But what do we see? Mostly Latin, with no Greek and no Hebrew. This is Renaissance pride in action.

What does your child really need? First, he must learn how to read early, so he will enjoy reading throughout his life. He must learn to read critically. This means he must also learn to write, for in writing, the student learns how others have communicated with him through the printed page. Reading and writing are complementary skills.

Second, he should gain a knowledge of the Bible. I prefer the King James Version, for these reasons: (1) the language is magnificent; (2) its unique phrases stick in the mind, making Bible study easier; (3) the Strong's numbers are tied to the King James, making serious Bible study easier, especially with a modern computerized Bible search program.

Third, he must master mathematics. Until there is a self-consciously Christian version of Saxon's math program available, we should go with Saxon, which emphasizes review and mastery. Fourth, anything else that interests him. Let him master a subject for the joy and experience of mastering it.

Christian education should be highly focused on a handful of topics: reading-writing, Bible, and mathematics. To force a child to take six courses per semester is both traditional and foolish if the child has not first mastered reading, writing, arithmetic, and the Bible. If he has mastered these, he can pick up the other courses in short order, such as by preparing through Advanced Placement exam cram courses.

Students can sometimes gain admission to a local junior college and take courses that count for both high school and college. My son did this: he started college part-time at age 14. He graduated from high school at 15. He will be a junior in college the month he turns 18. Even if a child does not graduate, he or she can attend a junior college at age 18, when, by law, the JC must accept the child on a provisional basis, even without a diploma.

A child who has gone through the King James Bible twice and Saxon's calculus once will get 1,000+ on the SAT, and will gain provisional acceptance in most colleges without a high school diploma. I have my 15-year-old daughter taking Saxon math (algebra II) and Shakespeare. Every week she writes a paper on one of the plays. She is getting a feel for the most magnificent English ever written. Then I have her use a computerized typing course (Typing Tutor), so that she can type her weekly paper. Her grammar is generally correct; she can communicate on paper. She is learning how to think.

The lust for academic certification is what has placed the Christians under the domination of the humanists for nine centuries. How will we break the cycle? Christians make their children take high school biology. Why? So they can cut up frogs and learn Darwinism? They make them take high school chemistry. Why? So they can find out that hydrogen sulfide smells rotten? They make them take high school history. Why? So they can get the Enlightenment view of American history, which is what most of the high school textbooks teach?

All of this can be picked up in college by anyone who has mastered the King James Bible and calculus. It does no good to force a child to speak pigeon history, pigeon chemistry, and pigeon anything else at the expense of fluency in reading, writing, Bible, and mathematics. Yet Christian day schools and most home schools are tied to the state-approved curriculum. The "innovative" ones then add classical education. We compel our children to read the lies of Greece and Rome that led to the persecution of the early Church. Like kidnap victims, the early Church's apologists proclaimed the wisdom of their own kidnappers — what two decades ago was called Patty Hearst syndrome. That famous poster of Patty Hearst holding a machine gun during a bank robbery should be placed above the door of every Christian school headmaster whose school teaches classical education.

Sincerely,

U.S. Presidents on Christian Civilization

The Government of the Samoan Islands has sent an envoy, in the person of its secretary of state, to invite the Government of the United States to recognize and protect their independence, to establish commercial relations with their people, and to assist them in their steps toward regulated and responsible government. The inhabitants of these islands, having made considerable progress in Christian civilization and the development of trade, are doubtful of their ability to maintain peace and independence without the aid of some stronger power. The subject is deemed worthy of respectful attention, and the claims upon our assistance by this distant community will be carefully considered.
Rutherford B. Hayes: First Annual Message, December 3, 1877

The recommendations of this international conference of enlightened statesmen will doubtless have the considerate attention of Congress and its cooperation in the removal of unnecessary barriers to beneficial intercourse between the nations of America. But while the commercial results which it is hoped will follow this conference are worthy of pursuit and of the great interests they have excited, it is believed that the crowning benefit will be found in the better securities which may be devised for the maintenance of peace among all American nations and the settlement of all contentions by methods that a Christian civilization can approve.
Benjamin Harrison: First Annual Message, December 3, 1889

I have appealed against race discriminations as to civil rights and immunities, and have asked that law-abiding men of all creeds arid all colors should unite to discourage and to suppress lawlessness. Lynchings are a reproach to any community; they impeach the adequacy of our institutions for the punishment of crime; they brutalize the participants and shame our Christian civilization.
Benjamin Harrison: Letter to the Virginia State Baptist Convention on Lawlessness in the Southern States, May 21, 1892

The proposition of the Democratic platform is to turn over the islands as soon as a stable government is established. This has been established. The proposal then is in effect to turn them over at once. Such action will lead to ultimate chaos in the islands and the progress among the ignorant masses in education and better living will stop. We are engaged in the Philippines in a great missionary work that does our nation honor, and is certain to promote in a most effective way the influence of Christian civilization. It is cowardly to lay down the burden until our purpose is achieved.
William Howard Taft: Address Accepting the Republican Presidential Nomination, July 28, 1908

The four hundredth anniversary of the printing of the first English Bible is an event of great significance. It challenges the reverent attention of English-speaking peoples the world over. To that day, October 4, 1535, when Myles Coverdale, an Augustinian Friar, later the Bishop of Exeter, produced this Book in the common vernacular, we trace not only a measurable increase in the cultural value and influence of this greatest of books, but a quickening in the widespread dissemination of those moral and spiritual precepts that have so greatly affected the progress of Christian civilization. The part that William Tyndale played in this English translation is generally acknowledged by the historian. It is also evident that there were others who made valuable contributions to the monumental undertaking. Independent of and apart from the devotion of these zealous translators, the work they did marks the beginning of one of the great epochs in the history of English-speaking peoples.

It would be difficult to appraise the far-reaching influence of this work and subsequent translations upon the speech, literature, moral and religious character of our people and their institutions. It has done much to refine and enrich our language. To it may be traced the richest and best we have in our literature. Poetry, prose, painting, music and oratory have had in it their guide and inspiration. In it Lincoln found the rounded euphonious phrases for his Gettysburg address. Speaking of its place in his life, he says: "In regard to the great Book, I have only to say, it is the best gift which God has ever given to man."

One cannot study the story of the rise and development of the men and women who have been and continue to be the pathfinders and benefactors of our people and not recognize the outstanding place the Bible has occupied as the guide and inspiration of their thought and practice. Apart from their professed allegiance to any particular form of Christian doctrine or creedal expression of faith, they have found in it that which has shaped their course and determined their action. Look where we will, even in periods that have been marked by apostasy and doubt, still men have found here in these sacred pages that which has refreshed and encouraged them as they prosecuted their pilgrimage and sought for higher levels of thinking and living.

In the formative days of the Republic the directing influence the Bible exercised upon the fathers of the Nation is conspicuously evident. To Washington it contained the sure and certain moral precepts that constituted the basis of his action. That which proceeded from it transcended all other books, however elevating their thought. To his astute mind moral and religious principles were the "indispensable supports" of political prosperity, the "essential pillars of civil society." Learned as Jefferson was in the best of the ancient philosophers, he turned to the Bible as the source of his higher thinking and reasoning. Speaking of the lofty teachings of the Master, he said: "He pushed His scrutinies into the heart of man; erected His tribunal in the region of his thoughts, and purified the waters at the fountain head." Beyond this he held that the Bible contained the noblest ethical system the world has known. His own compilation of the selected portions of this Book, in what is known as "Jefferson's Bible," bears evidence of the profound reverence in which he held it.

Entirely apart from these citations of the place the Bible has occupied in the thought and philosophy of the good and the great, it is the veneration in which it has been and is held by vast numbers of our people that gives it its supreme place in our literature. No matter what the accidents and chances of life may bring in their train, no matter what the changing habits and fashions of the world may effect, this Book continues to hold its unchallenged place as the most loved, the most quoted and the most universally read and pondered of all the volumes which our libraries contain. It has withstood assaults, it has resisted and survived the most searching microscopic examination, it has stood every test that could be applied to it and yet it continues to' hold its supreme place as the Book of books. There have been periods when it has suffered stern and searching criticism, but the hottest flame has not destroyed its prevailing and persistent power. We cannot read the history of our rise and development as a Nation, without reckoning with the place the Bible has occupied in shaping the advances of the Republic. Its teaching, as has been wisely suggested, is ploughed into the very heart of the race. Where we have been truest and most consistent in obeying its precepts we have attained the greatest measure of contentment and prosperity; where it has been to us as the words of a book that is sealed, we have faltered in our way, lost our range finders and found our progress checked. It is well that we observe this anniversary of the first publishing of our English Bible. The time is propitious to place a fresh emphasis upon its place and worth in the economy of our life as a people. As literature, as a book that contains a system of ethics, of moral and religious principles, it stands unique and alone. I commend its thoughtful and reverent reading to all our people. Its refining and elevating influence is indispensable to our most cherished hopes and ideals.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: Statement on the Four Hundredth Anniversary of the Printing of the English Bible, October 6, 1935

At the Pan American Conference at Buenos Aires, and again at Lima, we discussed a dim and unpleasant possibility. We feared that other Continents might become so involved in wars brought on by the school of destruction that the Americans might have to become the guardian of Western culture, the protector of Christian civilization.

The great achievements of science and even of art can be used in one way or another to destroy as well as to create; they are only instruments by which men try to do the things they most want to do. If death is desired, science can do that. If a full, rich, and useful life is sought, science can do that also. Happily for us that question has been solved—for in the New World we live for each other and in the service of a Christian faith.

I am a pacifist. You, my fellow citizens of twenty-one American Republics, are pacifists too.

But I believe that by overwhelming majorities in all the Americas you and I, in the long run if it be necessary, will act together to protect and defend by every means at our command our science, our culture, our American freedom and our civilization.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: Radio Address Before the Eighth Pan American Scientific Congress. Washington, D.C., May 10, 1940

We have come to realize the greatest attack that has ever been launched against freedom of the individual is nearer the Americas than ever before. To meet that attack we must prepare beforehand—for the simple reason that preparing later may and probably would be too late.

We must prepare in a thousand ways. Men are not enough. They must have arms. They must learn how to use those arms. They must have skilled leaders—who, in turn, must be trained. New bases must be established and I think will be established to enable our fleet to defend our shores. Men and women must be taught to create the supplies that we need. And we must counter the agents of the dictators within our Nation.

There is, moreover, another enemy at home. That enemy is the mean and petty spirit that mocks at ideals, sneers at sacrifice and pretends that the American people can live by bread alone. If the spirit of God is not in us, and if we will not prepare to give all that we have and all that we are to preserve Christian civilization in our land, we shall go to destruction.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: Address at Dedication of Great Smoky Mountains National Park,  September 2, 1940

On this day—this American holiday- we are celebrating the rights of free laboring men and women.

The preservation of these rights is vitally important now, not only to us who enjoy them—but to the whole future of Christian civilization.

American labor now bears a tremendous responsibility in the winning of this most brutal, most terrible of all wars.

In our factories and shops and arsenals we are building weapons on a scale great in its magnitude. To all the battle fronts of this world these weapons are being dispatched, by day and by night, over the seas and through the air. And this Nation is now devising and developing new weapons of unprecedented power toward the maintenance of democracy.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: Labor Day Radio Address, September 1, 1941

I HAVE ASKED Mr. Myron C. Taylor to return to Italy as my personal representative to His Holiness the Pope, with the rank of Ambassador.

After the cessation of hostilities Mr. Taylor came home for consultation and report. I have studied his report of his several audiences with the Pope with interest and with profit. I feel that he can continue to render helpful service to the cause of Christian civilization if, at my instance from time to time, he resumes his duties in Italy. As on his previous trips Mr. Taylor will confer not only with the Pope but with other leaders in the spiritual world and in the world of politics and secular affairs as he travels through Europe in the fulfillment of his mission.

The cessation of active fighting has left the world in a state of unrest. In many quarters we witness lamentable conflicts of principle and policy. Out of all of this unrest and conflict, however, one conviction emerges as dear as the noonday. It is that we shall establish an enduring peace only if we build it upon Christian principles.
Harry S. Truman: Statement by the President Upon Reappointing Myron Taylor as His Personal Representative at the Vatican, May 3, 1946

I don't think that we should get too excited about these surpluses, until we approach that place of unusability, deterioration, and spoilage. Then it gets serious, because I believe now that we have a moral value involved. I just don't think it is right for the sweat and toil and resources of the United States to be thrown out in the middle of the ocean when someone else is starving.

Now, you say "all right, if it is not socialistic, it is based on a purely humanitarian thing"--and I believe George Kennan argues that humanitarian and moralistic values have no place in foreign relations. But after all, we do believe that we are a product and a representative of the Judaic-Christian civilization, and it does teach some concern for your brother. And I believe in that.
Dwight D. Eisenhower: The President's News Conference, June 17, 1953

My friends:

We have come together in memory of an inspiring moment in history-that moment, 300 years ago, when a small band of Jewish people arrived on the ship "Saint Charles" in what was then the Dutch colony or state of New Amsterdam. It was an event meaningful not only to the Jews of America, but to all Americans--of all faiths, of all national origins....

In this respect--as in so many others--they were no different from scores of other groups that landed on our shores. Only 34 years earlier, another party had landed at Plymouth Rock. That group, too, came here in the hope of escaping persecution, of gaining religious freedom, of settling quietly in the wilderness to build their homes and rear their families.

And there was another noble concept of our common Judeo-Christian civilization shared by these two groups: the ideal of peace.

I recall that wonderful prophecy of Isaiah: "And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever."

The pursuit of peace is at once our religious obligation and our national policy. Peace in freedom, where all men dwell in security, is the ideal toward which our foreign policy is directed.
Dwight D. Eisenhower: Address at the American Jewish Tercentenary Dinner, New York City, October 20, 1954

This is our power, and this our freedom. This is our future. And through this power—not drugs, not materialism nor any other "ism"—can we find brotherhood. And you can create the new Europe—a Europe democratic, a Europe united east and west, a Europe at long last completely free.

Now, we hear it said by some that Europe may be glum about her future, that Europe dares no more. Well, forgive me, but I think this kind of talk is nonsense. And I hope you think it's nonsense, too. It is you, Germany, and you, Europe, that gave the values and vitality of Judeo-Christian civilization to America and to the world. It is Europe that has known more tragedy and triumph than any place in history. Each time you suffered, you sprang back like giants—the giants, Adenauer and Schuman, Churchill and Monnet.
Ronald Reagan: Remarks to Citizens in Hambach, Federal Republic of Germany, May 6, 1985

Prime Minister Berlusconi. As President Bush has just mentioned, in Brussels, during the NATO meeting, I spoke, and then I spoke at Göteborg during the dinner that we shared. And I said that I was in agreement with what President Bush had said very clearly. The world scene has changed. There is no antagonism between Europe and the United States, on the one hand, and the Soviet Union on the other hand. The Soviet Union is something different.

And we're very interested as Europeans with the support of the United States; we look to a progressive journey of the Russian Federation. Maybe tomorrow, the day after, the Russian Federation might even become part of the European federation, where we have countries that share a common Christian civilization. And I believe that in the future we will also be able to speak of a Russian Federation that becomes part of the Atlantic Alliance.
George W. Bush: The President's News Conference With Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy in Rome, Italy, July 23, 2001

Why the Bible is Central to Our Curriculum

And why the Bible is so offensive to the modern university

Our starting point is the existence of God. Not a silent god, but the God of the Bible, who communicates to man.

Creationism and Calvinism

God is our Creator. The creature owes deference and obedience to the Creator. This is "Theonomy," and it is offensive to Autonomous Man and the University of Autonomy.

Before the Creator created all that is, the Creator knew the end from the beginning (Isaiah 46:10; Revelation 1:8; Revelation 21:6, 13). God knows the future because God created it. The future has already been created. This is called "predestination," meaning the the destination of the creation was designed and set in motion before ("pre") it was even created. The path of every molecule and sub-atomic particle in the universe was set in motion, and is carefully and lovingly conducted by God through history to its predestined end. The thoughts I think and the feelings I feel are wave-particles of energy and chemicals that travel across the synapses of my brain and through my heart and "reins." All predestined by God. Some say my belief makes man a "robot." But God did not create man as a robot. You and I both know that we are not "robots." God created man in His Image. That means when I think and plan, when I paint a picture or compose a symphony, when I build a log cabin or a skyscraper that can house 25,000 people, I am engaged in the wonder-filled task of exercising dominion over the earth (Genesis 1:26-28), something animals do not do.

No matter how glorious I think man is (by virtue of his being created in the Image of God), there are those who feel that my conception of God "violates" human "free will."

If you believe in "free will," you do not believe that the Bible is the Word of God.

If you believe in "free will," or that God cannot "violate" man's "free will," then you cannot logically believe that the Bible is the Word of God.

The words in the Bible were written by the hands of human beings, but I believe the Bible is the Word of God. God speaks through those human words. This says something about the words, something about the human authors of the Bible, as well as something about the God.

God wrote the Bible using "human pens." God made their hands move the way He wanted them to move. In the Bible, the will of God is sovereign over the will of man. 1 Peter 1:21 says

For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

Of course, it was the "will" of Moses and Isaiah and Paul and other authors to write down words. Moses wrote what God told him to write, but perhaps Moses would say he wrote those words "of my own free will." Nobody pointed a gun at Moses' head and forced him to write. But what Peter says is controversial. Even though Moses and other Biblical authors freely wrote the words they intended to write, God was doing something through them, and the words they wrote were the words God wanted to be written. They did not write those words solely by their own "free will." Their hands moved the way God willed them to move. Their voices spoke the words God wanted spoken.

It's true, we can tell the differences between the words Moses wrote, the words Luke wrote, the words John wrote, and the words Paul wrote. They all had their own individual personalities and writing styles. But the men who wrote the words of Scripture had their lives — their parents, training, and life experiences — all orchestrated by God so that — guided by the Holy Spirit — they would write the exact words that God wanted to be written so that God could communicate exactly what He wanted to communicate to the human race. Their words are God's words. God's will trumps their will. Paul told Timothy that God "breathed out" His words through these human authors (2 Timothy 3:16, [theópneustos (Strong's #2315, from 2316 /theós, "God" and 4154 /pnéō, "breathe out"]).

To say that the Bible is the Word of God is to say that God's will is sovereign over the will of man. Some people find this deeply offensive.  God made the mouths of Moses, David, and Isaiah speak the words God wanted spoken. God made the hands of Matthew, Paul, and John write the words God wanted written. If God did not overrule the "free" and fallible will of man, how did their will to speak and write beget the infallible Word of God?

Some will say that since God predestines even sin, and then punishes sinners for the sin God predestined them to commit, it would be better if sinners had never been born. They had no "free will." They had no choice. "That's not fair." And if it's not "fair," it can't be true. But Mark 14:21 says exactly what Autonomous Man does not want to hear: God predestined Jesus to be put to death by sinners, who were held accountable for the sins they were predestined to commit.

"The Son of Man indeed goes just as it is written of Him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been good for that man if he had never been born.”

That's pretty scary. Judas had no choice in whether he would be born. God created Judas without asking Judas for permission, and predestined Judas to commit a terrible sin (John 19:11).

But Judas was created in the Image of God. All sinners are created in the Image of God. And in the end, every knee will bow and every sinner will admit that God's Judgment is fair (Isaiah 45:23; Romans 14:11; Philippians 2:10-11). All sinners will say "I admit. I sinned." All sinners will admit that God is just. Even though He predestined them to sin (Romans 9; Isaiah 10).

Acts 2:23
Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain:

Acts 4:27-28
“For truly against Your holy Servant Jesus, whom You anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatever Your hand and Your purpose determined before to be done.

Christians who oppose the Sovereignty of God and uphold the "free will" of man claim that predestination "makes man a puppet." But as I said, man is clearly not a puppet; we both know that; man is created in the Image of God. But the Bible agrees that God's sovereignty makes man a "puppet" of God's decree. The Bible describes man not as a "puppet," however, but as a bucket of water.

Well, not a bucket, but a river of water.

Proverbs 21:1
The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, 
Like the rivers of water;
He turns it wherever He wishes.

How is this not like being "a puppet?"
Is a meandering river created in the Image of God?
How is the opponent of God's Sovereignty not making an accusation against God?

I said I believe the Bible is the Word of God. That means I worship the Bible. That alarms nearly every church I know.

The Bible claims to be the Word of God. It claims that God speaks to human beings. It claims that God used human beings the way I am using a keyboard as I write this.

Let's consider first the claim that God speaks, and the Bible is God speaking to us.

• If this claim is false, and the universe is just a meaningless, accidental result of molecules bumping into each other for endless eons, then there is no difference between a nurse and a serial rapist. Both are doing what they like, and both enjoy whatever their DNA makes them enjoy.
• If this claim is true -- if the Bible is God Himself speaking to us -- it doesn't seem like very many church-goers are listening very seriously.

Imagine that a UFO lands on the White House lawn, and an extraterrestrial being hands the President a Peace Treaty. The ET says, "Read this Treaty. It tells you how to cure cancer, end war, obtain free energy, eliminate the threat of global warming, and extend life-spans by hundreds of years. If you agree to abide by its terms, our race will help your race. If you do not agree, we will destroy you. We will wait right here for your answer."

Network television will have their cameras at the White House 24/7. Commentators will be speculating endlessly about what the extraterrestrial Treaty says, and whether or not the President will accept their terms. People will cancel vacations and having children, breathlessly waiting for the decision, knowing their entire future hangs in the balance.

If there are any ET's in the universe, they were created by the God of the Bible. His Word is more important than the word of any ET.  But we spend more time watching CNN or FoxNews than we spend listening to the Bible, even though the news channels aren't covering anything as interesting as a UFO on the White House lawn. For some, "news" doesn't get our attention as much as sports, soaps, or celebrities.

All the while, we have a book from the Creator of the universe sitting un-read on a shelf next to the Flat Screen TV.

What the heck is wrong with us?

The Bible is a Peace Treaty that God is willing to enter into with those who have been in rebellion against Him. The Treaty calls for unconditional surrender on our part.

Autonomous Man hates the very existence of the Bible.

The Academy

What did Tertullian mean by setting "Athens" and "Jerusalem" in antithesis?

What did Tertullian mean by "the Academy?"

Plato's "Republic" was a tyranny of the one ("the government," elite philosopher-kings, political unity) over the "many" (individuals, slaves). Platonism leads to the destruction of the freedom of the individual. But without form or unity, Aristotle's particulars cannot be brought together as the object of science. They are atomistically unrelateable. In either case, knowledge (scientia) collapses; society collapses. Secular philosophers still debate these ideas. Endlessly.

http://KevinCraig.us/o-m.htm