Dow Blog

R. C. Sproul in the latest issue of Tabletalk has an essay on the plague of Statism...

Right Now Counts Forever
Statism
by R.C. Sproul

“A decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered….†In Luke 2, the well-known passage introducing the nativity story, the title accorded to the Roman emperor is Caesar Augustus. Had this census been mandated earlier under the monarchy of Julius Caesar, the Scripture would read: “A decree went out from Julius Caesar….†Had Octavian followed the model of Julius, he would have called himself Octavianus Caesar, and then the text would read: “A decree went out from Octavianus Caesar….†But we note Octavius’ explicit change of his personal name to the title Caesar Augustus. This indicates the emerging dimension of the emperor cult in Rome, by which those who were elevated to the role of emperor were worshiped as deities. To be called “august†would mean to be clothed with supreme dignity, to which is owed the reverence given to the sacred. The elevation of the emperor in Rome to this kind of status was the ancient zenith of statism.

About thirty years ago, I shared a taxi cab in St. Louis with Francis Schaeffer. I had known Dr. Schaeffer for many years, and he had been instrumental in helping us begin our ministry in Ligonier, Pennsylvania, in 1971. Since our time together in St. Louis was during the twilight of Schaeffer’s career, I posed this question to him: “Dr. Schaeffer, what is your biggest concern for the future of the church in America?†Without hesitation, Dr. Schaeffer turned to me and spoke one word: “Statism.†Schaeffer’s biggest concern at that point in his life was that the citizens of the United States were beginning to invest their country with supreme authority, such that the free nation of America would become one that would be dominated by a philosophy of the supremacy of the state.

In statism, we see the suffix “ism,†which indicates a philosophy or worldview. A decline from statehood to statism happens when the government is perceived as or claims to be the ultimate reality. This reality then replaces God as the supreme entity upon which human existence depends.

In the nineteenth century, Hegel argued in his extensive and complex study of Western history that progress represents the unfolding in time and space of the absolute Idea (Hegel’s vague understanding of God), which would reach its apex in the creation of the Prussian state. The assumption that Hegel made in the nineteenth century was made before the advent of Hitler’s Third Reich, Stalin’s Russia, and Chairman Mao’s communist China. These nations reached an elevation of statism never dreamed of by Hegel in his concept of the Prussian state.

In America, we have a long history of valuing the concept of the separation of church and state. This idea historically referred to a division of labors between the church and the civil magistrate. However, initially both the church and the state were seen as entities ordained by God and subject to His governance. In that sense, the state was considered to be an entity that was “under God.†What has happened in the past few decades is the obfuscation of this original distinction between church and state, so that today the language we hear of separation of church and state, when carefully exegeted, communicates the idea of the separation of the state from God. In this sense, it’s not merely that the state declares independence from the church, it also declares independence from God and presumes itself to rule with autonomy.

The whole idea of a nation under God has been challenged again and again, and we have seen the exponential growth of government in our land, particularly the federal government, so that the government now virtually engulfs all of life. Where education once was under the direction of local authorities, it now is controlled and directed by federal legislation. The economy that once was driven by the natural forces of the market has now come under the strict control of the federal government, which not only regulates the economy, but considers itself responsible for controlling it. Where we have seen the largest measure of the loss of liberty is with respect to the function of the church. Though the church is still somewhat tolerated in America (in a way it was not tolerated in Mao’s Red China and under Stalin), it is tolerated only when it remains outside of the public square. In other words, the church has been relegated to a status not unlike that given to the native Americans, where the tribes were allowed to continue to exist as long as they functioned safely on a reservation, outside of any significant influence on the government. So although the church has not been banished completely by the statism that has emerged in America, it has been effectively banished from the public square.

Throughout the history of the Christian church, Christianity has always stood over against all forms of statism. Statism is the natural and ultimate enemy to Christianity because it involves a usurpation of the reign of God. If Francis Schaeffer was right — and each year that passes makes his prognosis seem all the more accurate — it means that the church and the nation face a serious crisis in our day. In the final analysis, if statism prevails in America, it will mean not only the death of our religious freedom, but also the death of the state itself. We face perilous times where Christians and all people need to be vigilant about the rapidly encroaching elevation of the state to supremacy.

Since the McCainic's selection of Sarah Palin for Veep I've been waiting for Tom Fleming and others at Chronicles to weigh in on the matter. Well they've obliged.

Scott Richert, Aaron Wolf and Fleming are concerned that the salivating over Palin by the "Christian Right" points to their rejection of the natural order and the acceptance of feminist presuppositions.

Fleming: "If Ms. Palin is a truly a Christian conservative, she is certainly not a conservative Christian. Christians are supposed to understand the implications of “male and female created He them†and, at the very least, realize that a mother’s primary obligation is not to the taxpayers but to her children and husband. It is all very well to celebrate her prowess as a politician and moose-hunter, but I do not recall these as feminine qualities in the Scriptures. I or we are not saying that we cannot vote for a woman who did not stay home to take care of her family, but only that this decision is incompatible with traditional Christian morality."

Wolf: "I will resist the temptation to steal my own thunder for next week’s John Randolph Club meeting in Philadelphia, where I intend to talk about the most important aspect of the Palin Pandemonium: the conservative Christian rejection of the natural order...It is not an exaggeration, however, to suggest that the Palin pick is harmful. It has lured dissatisfied Christians (evangelicals, Catholics, conservative Lutherans and Calvinists) back to the GOP Roe-reversal delusion—and to an obsession with fruitless national politics in general—and it portends to put in Washington a new convert to perpetual war for Israel and petroleum pipelines and “our values."

Richert: "That doesn’t mean, however, that it is sexist to raise them. Instead, it points to the very heart of the problem: From a Catholic understanding of the complementarity of the sexes, should a woman ever find herself in the position where she has to choose between her vocation as a wife and mother and political service? Even considering this a choice that needs to be made implies that, at best, motherhood and political service are of equal value.

But they aren’t—not in the eyes of the Church. That is not to demean wives and mothers, but to raise their vocation to its proper dignity—a dignity that dwarfs any that may once have been attached to politics."

Some jackass in the Obama campaign named Mark Bubriski calls Buchanan a "Nazi sympathizer."

The all too typical charge is discussed by Joe Scarborough and company.

A very worthwhile read by Patrick Cockburn on the situation in Iraq. It turns out that the Shia won. Wow, what a shock! I've said repeatedly that the only possible outcomes of the Iraq war were utter chaos or a victory by the numerically superior Shia. Neither result is preferable to the status quo of 2002, or 1990 for that matter.

The "Damascus Road" conversion of...Joe Esterhas? Esterhas wrote soft porn "classics" like "Basic Instinct", "Sliver", and "Showgirls." He is now, apparently, a faithful Catholic and has written a new book entitled "Crossbearer: A Memoir of Faith."

Daniel Ritchie writes that "Two Kingdom" theology is not a Reformed doctrine. I've not read R. Scott Clark, but I have often read and listened to Mike Horton. Horton's thinking represents a Lutheranizing tendency and must be rejected. Christian activism and engagement, the spreading of the Kingdom in all spheres of life, is part of the task of the believer. We should be about the business of sanctifying all of life.

Is Sarah Palin a Buchananite?
Apparently she was also part of Buchanan's efforts in 1996 when he won the Alaska caucuses. Ron Paul supporters were also talking her up in 2007.

Charley Reese says goodbye to his readers. Thanks to the Internet, I've been reading Charley since 2000. He'll be missed.

There are three illegals in Los Angeles for every Republican. God Bless America!

Derb on the election from hell. "I don't want either of these men in charge of the federal government, neither the crazy old fool nor the simpering sophomore. I don't want either the moralistic imperialism of John McCain or the welfare-state-to-the world sentimentalism of Barack Obama."

More on the death of west. "Deaths are expected to outnumber births in the European Union from 2015 when migration will become the only source of population growth, according to an EU report released Tuesday."

The mainstream right always tries to turn the Dem nominee into the Boogeyman. Here is another try.

Labels: q

Henry Van Til remarked that culture is the “externalization of religion,†a product of the religious presuppositions that under gird a culture. The blessings of Western culture thus are merely the outworking and externalization of the faith of Christendom.

Constitutionalism, the rule of law and the free market are outgrowths of a Christian worldview. True liberty is found in Christ and other forms of freedom are merely derivative of that fact. The blessings of the West and the resultant freedom of men to develop property and fulfill their callings is a product of fidelity to scripture.

Trinitarian Christianity resolves the tension between the one and the many, providing for a social structure balancing order and freedom. Humanism by definition lacks any basis for law and values and ultimately collapses upon itself. For Christians, that base or foundation is God’s written law revealed in scripture. The content and the authority of the law is ultimately grounded upon and rooted in God Himself. Therefore, neither the church nor state is above the law. Economic and political freedom are thus a product of a biblical social order which places a priority on liberty in Christ, recognizes land and freedom to use land as an aspect of salvation—a place to have dominion, and condemns theft, including theft perpetrated by the messianic state.

Unbelief naturally creates conditions of lawlessness because it attempts to destroy the Lawgiver. As a result a culture of death and present mindedness arises which ultimately stifles economic growth and destroys political liberty. Consequently, humanistic cultures become imperial in nature as a means of survival.

Unfortunately the zeal of the imperial crusader can often be found in the hearts of many professing believers sitting in the pews of our churches. Such zeal is usually masked or baptized. Witness this quote from Richard Land as an example:



Francis Schaeffer, a hero to many evangelicals, understood that liberty was a product of culture, specifically Christian culture, and could not grow in the soil of alien worldviews. He wrote, "When the men of our State Department, especially after World War II, went all over the world trying to implant our form-freedom balance in government downward on cultures whose philosophy would never have produced it, it has, in almost every cases, ended in some form of totalitarianism or authoritarianism."

Heathen cultures reject the King and ultimately devolve into statism and tyranny, the rule of godless men (I Sam. 8:7-20). The urge to dominion, a God-given impulse, is perverted by sin. Ungodly men still yearn for power and possession, but their authority no longer stems from servant-mindedness but from the exercise of raw power.

As David Chilton says, capitalism and freedom cannot be exported to those cultures hostile to true liberty:

From the International Herald Tribune:



The only group bucking the trend: Hispanic women, who average 2.3 children. Hence the demographic transformation of the country continues apace.

"The alien who lives among you will rise above you higher and higher, but you will sink lower and lower… You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left but few in number, because you did not obey the LORD your God" (Deuteronomy 28:43, 62).

For past thoughts see here, here, here, and here.

"The Council of Chalcedon met in 451 to deal with the issue as it came to focus at the critical point, in Christology. If the two natures of Christ were confused, it meant that the door was opened to the divinizing of human nature; man and the state were then potentially divine. If the human nature of Christ were reduced or denied, His role as man’s incarnate savior was reduced or denied, and man’s savior again became the state. If Christ’s deity were reduced, then His saving power was nullified. If His humanity and deity were not in true unison, the incarnation was then not real, and the distance between God and man remained as great as ever."

--R. J. Rushdoony, "The Foundations of Social Order"

From the NY Times comes this thigh-slapper: "Russia’s military offensive into Georgia has shattered, perhaps irrevocably, the strategy of three successive presidential administrations to coax Russia into alliance with the West and integration into its institutions."

Who tried to do what?

Even better is this quote from the Prez: "With its actions in recent days Russia has damaged its credibility and its relations with the nations of the free world. Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century."

Though you might not be able to tell by watching his deeds, a bucket of rotten fruit if ever one existed, "W" has always claimed to be a Christian. He's just not much for the ole Golden Rule and never stumbled across this little blurb from our Lord: "You hypocrite! First remove the beam from your own eye, and then you will see clearly enough to remove the speck from your brother's eye."

Clearly Americans lack the capacity to see ourselves as others see us. For since 1994 our political elites have ceaselessly advanced a strategy of encircling Russia. After pledging to Gorby that we would not move our alliance into the former Soviet bloc, the Clinton and Bush administrations expanded NATO to include numerous former Warsaw Pact nations and three former republics of the Soviet Union. After all we have a deep strategic interest in the affairs of the Slovaks and Estonians.

In the late 90s American aircraft bombed Serbia for 78 days to steal Kosovo from the Serbs and hand it to group of Islamic thugs in clear contravention of morality, international law and Russian strategic interests. We've meddled in the internal affairs of Ukaraine and Georgia to create "democratic" revolutions, overthrowing Russian sympathizing regimes. We attempted to ram-rod a "free market" ideology onto the Russian people which amounted to the looting of the Russian nation by parasitical gangster capitalists. After Moscow allowed us to use former Soviet republics in Central Asia to war in Afghanistan the United States sought permanent bases there.

After fifteen years of baiting the Bear they finally had enough and responded to the idiotic provocation of the Georgians.

Pat Buchanan asks rhetorically what we expect from the Russians:

That housing bailout which will hand billions of taxpayer dollars to bankers will also funnel cash to the anti-white organization La Raza and the lefty Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.

Homes in Detroit are now selling for the price of double cheeseburger at Micky D's. Heck, if my son picks up the pace and completes a few more chores he could purchase a whole block.

In yet another sign of the impending death of Europe, it is now legal for certain foreigners to practice practice bigamy in Holland with the best wishes and legal protection of the Dutch state. While your average Mormon resettling from Salt Lake City to Rotterdam would get the boot, Islamic polygamous marriages that take place in countries where more than one wife is permitted are accepted.

I have yet to procure a copy of Pat Buchanan's book on Churchill, but I think Pat is absolutely right that the myths surrounding WWII continue to animate American expansionism.

In a wonderful column Eric Margolis remembers Alexander Solzhenitsyn and unmasks a few of the lies masquerading as truth:

From the AP:
"Republican presidential candidate John McCain continued hammering Russia on Tuesday for its invasion of U.S.-allied Georgia, telling a cheering audience that he had spoken again with the tiny Caucasus country’s president to assure him of America’s moral support.

The longtime Arizona senator, who had adopted an increasingly tough line against Moscow well before the crisis in Georgia, told a town meeting in Pennsylvania that he had spoken with Mikhail Saakashvili, president of the former Soviet republic, to assure him that 'Today we are all Georgians.'"

McCain's propensity to patronize makes me want to puke.

What's worse is that both candidates yearning to be emperor are demanding an expansion NATO, including redoubling efforts to include Georgia in the alliance.

"NATO’s decision to withhold a Membership Action Plan for Georgia might have been viewed as a green light by Russia for its attacks on Georgia, and I urge the NATO allies to revisit the decision," McCain said.

Obama appeared to agree, saying, "I have consistently called for deepening relations between Georgia and trans-Atlantic institutions, including a Membership Action Plan for NATO, and we must continue to press for that deeper relationship."

Nations with sane elites typically enter into alliances to strengthen themselves. Exactly how is America strengthened by giving a war guarantee to a wack job like Saakashvili? As American forces and "allies" encircle the Russians we soothingly reassure Moscow that we have the best of intentions. Nevertheless one wonders what reaction would ensue if the Russians gave war guarantees to Mexico and began arming and training Mexican forces.