I’m not the one arguing for religious freedom though. I thought I was clear I don’t have a principled view of pluralism. If the civil magistrate honors Christ and rules by his law, I have no right to claim an exemption to that.
That’s not what I’m arguing. I do think the civil magistrates can require vaccine mandates. I was part of the committee that wrote the statement on vaccine mandates.
Sorry, I should have been more accurate in describing your view.
So the main issue you have with COVID vaccines and mandates that is that they are prescribed by a secular government?
Here’s where I’m hung up…the question of whether a magistrate can do one thing or another is purely a matter or being able to accomplish said task or objective.
Can the government kill people?
Can it kill them without qualification?
Can it compel or mandate various procedures?
Can it mandate them without qualification?
Of course the government can kill and regularly does.
Though the government can kill all sorts of people, it ought not kill those without just qualification. It may kill enemies on the battle field, or take the life of murderers, but it ought not target non-combatants, such as the elderly, women and children nor may it take the life of the unborn or the lives of a person merely on the basis of their demographics. Their reasons matter, and not just the reason but also whether the outcome is in keeping with the stated just reason. The government may claim to have a valid interest in curbing population growth, but that is not a just reason to sterilize individuals or expose our communities to toxins that lead to infertility. They may claim to have an interest in the future funding of social service, but that is not a just reason to neglect vulnerable populations to the point of death and call it triage.
Of course the government can mandate various procedures, in some cases has done so for entry into a public school system or as punishment. But children in this country have private schools and homeschooling options, so it’s not really a total mandate, like it would be for entry to a food service establishment or grocery store. I’ve heard of mentally defective rapists having been chemically castrated as a prevention of future rapes. But that generally doesn’t even work. So is it a just reason?
The government may have a stated interest in keeping hospitals from becoming overwhelmed, but what about when the solution is increasing occurrences of hospitalization for other reasons. Or what about the long term effects. What if it’s discovered that future generations suddenly cannot bear children because of it. Is that an impossible scenario? Hardly, because we won’t know for many years how much damage we might be doing now.
So the question really isn’t can the government do one thing or another, but ought it do one thing or another.
God commanded that our magistrates ought not multiply horses for himself, nor shall he cause the people to return to Egypt to multiply horses, since the Lord has said to you, ‘You shall never again return that way.’ He shall not multiply wives for himself, or else his heart will turn away; nor shall he greatly increase silver and gold for himself.
… he shall write for himself a copy of this law on a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priests. It shall be with him and he shall read it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, by carefully observing all the words of this law and these statutes, that his heart may not be lifted up above his countrymen and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, to the right or the left, so that he and his sons may continue long in his kingdom in the midst of Israel.
This is not merely a theocratic directive but a directive for believers who appoint their own magistrates.
None of which diminishes the authority of the magistrate but rather is what preserves it…God says “so that he may continue long”. This is presumably the same sort of promise given when told to obey your mother and father. The meaning here, is that magistrates that do not obey as God commands, will not well preserve their own authority.
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I should have been more specific. I was responding to your statement which seemed to me to say that the government can’t force someone to risk life and limb. This was a violation of the 6th commandment requirement to preserve life. The government may take on bloodguilt.
The president and Congress will answer to God for the wars they declare. Is this the same thing as bloodguilt? I’m not sure it is. Bloodguilt to me implies that a government would lose its ability to declare war, that it would fall under the penalties for breaking the 6th commandment. You would have situation similar to the Nuremberg trials.
My basic point is that the draft has been used in the U.S. since the Civil War. That clearly puts men’s life and limb at risk, with them having no say in the matter. Arguing from greater to lesser, the magistrate may mandate vaccines. Joel Norris made this point on another thread.
The Biblical law gave exemptions and exceptions from military service. The draft as we have known it gave more power to the magistrate than the Bible did. The draft may be unbiblical. Nonetheless, Reformed churches and ministers for 400 years have never seen fit to oppose the draft in principle. To the contrary, in opposition to Anabaptists, the Reformation era confessions will defend oath taking, military service and political service.
Again, arguing from greater to lesser, if our confessions are silent on the draft, or if no statement against the draft was made by Reformed teachers over the years, the implication is that members of Reformed churches may submit to the draft, even though it is a forced risking of life and limb. And if Reformed Christians may submit to the draft, they may submit to vaccine mandates.
I agree with you on the government running out of credibility with the people, and violating consent of the governed. Evangel Presbytery’s latest statement covers that well.
In our system, the federal government is responsible for making war, and may impose a draft…on men. Drafting women would be a case where Reformed Christians such as the people of Sanityville would rightly call for civil disobedience. But state and local governments have historically always decided whether to mandate vaccines, never the feds. For the feds to do so now and by executive order is overstepping their constitutional bounds.
But that’s a narrower argument than saying that the federal vaccine mandate is wrong because it’s a violation of the 6th commandment. I don’t think that argument passes muster.
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@bencarmack here is the problem, we have a religious obligation to rescue those who are being led toward unjust death.
Equating forced medical procedures with compulsory military service is apples and oranges.
The better case analogy would be thalidomide or DDT, or the Tuskegee experiments. Not because we know what the long term effects will be but because we don’t know, we must see the tendency for great harm.
And to that point, have plenty of medical case examples of both negligent and willful medical evils. We also have the example of the Roman Catholic Church at the very least carrying water for the Nazis.
There was no virtue in their supposed submission.
If we won’t study and understand that which tends toward harm and rescue those you are headed there, then we also have bloodguilt.
As the Westminster Larger Catechism puts it…. …required in the sixth commandment are, …all careful studies, and lawful endeavors, to preserve the life of others by resisting all purposes, and practices, which tend to the unjust taking away the life of any; by just defense thereof against violence.
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I’m very opposed to Covid vaccine mandates from government or the private sector, but I don’t see how equating the Covid vaccine with the Tuskegee experiments is either accurate or helpful. We must be measured in our response, especially when our own personal fear is involved.
I think these mandates are immoral and unjust, bordering on tyrannical. I despise the fact that our society cares not a whit about Fauci’s experiments on aborted children. I detest the prevalence of abortion in our medical and scientific establishments. Please do not think I am defending this vaccine or the majority of our medical communities. But that is not what we’re talking about in this thread.
Claiming that this vaccine is leading people to an unjust death is inflammatory and simply untrue. It’s an emotional appeal that circumvents rational discussion about the facts at hand. Giving this vaccine, even unnecessarily, is no more murder than it was in Jonathan Edwards’ case, even when you account for the difference in variables. Linking this vaccine with the RCC participation with the Nazis and equating it with murder as well as claiming support of the WLC for your position not only abuses the historic confessions, it also prevents reasonable and ethically-grounded discussion.
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Ken,
To put my cards on the table, I am pro-vaccine in general and in this specific case. That was probably obvious to you, but I’m saying it just to fly my flag and let you shoot at me. If there’s a tendency I have, it would be to be too trusting of scientific advances and not skeptical enough.
It is true that we do not know what the long term effect of the vaccines will be. It is possible that something very bad could happen to all the people who have been vaccinated.
But this kind of reasoning could be applied to anything. Some scientists call this the precautionary principle. Norman Borlaug, the man who had a leading role in the Green Revolution and the agricultural developments entailed with it, has written on this principle in opposition to people in the “green” or “environmental” movements.
Nothing in life this side of heaven is risk free. Genetically modified seeds could pose some sort of risk to me. Driving a car poses a risk. Owning a gun poses a risk. Getting married is a risk. Etc. Etc.
Just because something bad could happen, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to do something. The precautionary principle says do nothing until you can prove an action is risk free. That’s unrealistic. We have to weigh risks.
There are risks to genetically modified seeds and plants. But the greater risk is that millions in the Third World will go hungry. The greater risk is that man will not be able to obey God to be fruitful and multiply if we cannot grow enough crops resistant to pests.
There are risks to the vaccines. But the greater risk, by far, is having more vulnerable people die from Covid, tie up the hospitals, and leave the rest of our lives in limbo, with us wearing masks forever, children unable to see faces, people locked down in their homes, worship canceled and work left undone. Risking a bad side effect is worth it to bring life back to normal.
By the way, I had bad side effects after the second dose of the Moderna vaccine. They were temporary. I felt better after 24 hours.
The irony watching this is that both opponents to the vaccines and the public health authorities will at times agree on using precautionary principle reasoning. The CDC has been hyper cautious in its vaccine messaging, even pulling vaccines due to just a handful of reports of bad side effects. The CDC feeds vaccine skepticism with these kinds of actions.
We don’t live in a risk free world. Dr. Fauci is not god. We can’t perfectly guarantee that nothing bad will happen to you if you take the vaccine, or do anything else the public health people tell you to do. Same reasoning applies to masks, quarantines and vaccines.
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Tuskegee may be inflammatory but only because it is a very real possibility, public health officials have a bad history of unethical studies. But equating the vaccine mandates to the draft is both nonsequiter and inflammatory. When you are in the military they literally own you and your body; the draft is no different than man stealing. And if we are saying that everyone is now subject to the absolute ownership of our bodies by the government, than I’m wondering how and when did that happened.
In either case what we ought to be concerned about is the dignity of image bearers of God. I am not suggesting violent resistance, but I am saying that Christians and the Church ought to speak out vociferously about the indignities suffered by unjust policies, like man stealing and deceitful medical experimentation.
Lastly, as to the tendency toward unjust death, you must also compare apples to apples. Vaccines have been a long time controversial topic. It didn’t just creep up in the last year and a half. Movies have been made, big name celebs have long made it a talking point from bully pulpits. But I’m not anti-vaxer. I don’t accept that label or presupposition about my arguments. But given the long history of vaccine resistance and suspicion, there have only been less than 1000 reported deaths to the CDC in the last 30 years for all other vaccines combined.
Obviously the fears about most other vaccines are more related to injury than death, but take note….less than 1000 deaths for all vaccines for the last thirty years. Compared to the COVID19 vaccines which have seen 7,517 reported fatalities, with over 4100 happening within 30 days of receiving the jab.
Now you might argue that those number are not significant…compared to say car accidents, or compared to COVID. You might also say that these are not official numbers for actual cause of death. But they don’t have to be. Compared to other vaccines, it’s highly significant. And the argument about official cause of death is laughable since that information is intentionally kept secret and also depends on a public health system wanting to document COVID vaccines related deaths. Really the numbers we have are probably way lower than actual.
In 30 years 7500 deaths per year would be a quarter of a million. Now if the whole database had that many deaths in total, we might still say this vaccine is trending way more deadly than the other vaccines, but given that the database had only 1000 before COVID19, we are long past saying that it’s generally safe for everyone. That’s where deceitful experimentation comes in. That also happens to describe the Tuskegee studies.
Comparing it to thalidomide is really an understatement. Thalidomide had only 2000 deaths and most only in Germany.
P.s.
This doesn’t even include the number of youth who were the lowest at risk for hospitalization due to COVID19 have the highest reports of myocarditis within less than a week of receiving the vaccine. The highest numbers are for the groups between 19-29 yrs old, and 6-17 yrs old followed by 30-39 yrs old. In total COVID19 vaccine represents 91% of all reported cases of myocarditis within 60 days following a vaccine.
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@Krlamb1, I’m not sure you understand the point of this thread. The question is not how necessary, effective, or even safe the covid vaccines are (or any other vaccines for that matter). You may be right in your analysis above, you may not be. That’s neither here nor there for the topic at hand.
The question is if vaccine mandates violate religious freedom. The reason conscription comes into the discussion is arguing from the greater to the lesser. If you genuinely believe conscription is essentially man-stealing, then I’m afraid you’re not going to get much out of this thread as I don’t think we’re operating from the same theological and ethical framework.
The real question is if it is a sin to submit to a vaccine mandate. That is what we’re discussing here. Is it genuinely and necessarily abusive towards others to submit to this admittedly unjust situation?I don’t know of anyone here who would argue that we must not resist, that is it sinful to take the consequences of disobeying these mandates, but the question is rather, must we resist?
You are arguing from Tuskegee and from other current medical ethical violations that this is a religious freedom issue, but from a very personal perspective. It seems to me that you’re saying you want to resist, therefore we (pastors and churches) must accommodate ecclesiologically - that is, provide religious freedom exemptions as a Christian position for - those who think they must resist.
I’m questioning the validity of that argument. Is taking the vaccine inherently objectionable from a position of Christian ethics? Is it a sin to take the vaccine? Is a vaccine mandate in the abstract inherently objectionable? Is it a sin to obey a vaccine mandate? Is there a theological and ethical argument here why Christians are sinning if they submit to these mandates (either local, civil, or federal)?
If the answer to these question is actually ‘no,’ then however much we may disagree with vaccine mandates, however much we may dislike them, however much they may be tyrannical and unjust, our disagreement with them is not that they violate our religious freedom.
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That’s not what I’m arguing. And it seems like you intentionally obfuscate what I am arguing. Violations of the sixth commandment do not necessitate complete knowledge. I would argue this is why the WLC says it includes practices that tend to the unjust taking of life. Key word here is tend. Which is why it includes manslaughter and certainly negligent manslaughter.
If the numbers of events are underreported which they most certainly are, and actually causes of deaths from the vaccine are more obfuscated concealed than the deaths of the disease itself, then forcing someone to be injected with something that is probably the most dangerous vaccine known to modern medicine is indeed unethical and immoral. And if immoral, than the question isn’t about whether it violates the religious freedoms of the flock, it’s about whether Christian shepherds violate God’s law in turning a blind eye to these risks and their compulsion, and say nothing about the immorality of it.
P.S.
Pastor Bayly has said you can’t just wait for the most obvious and clear instances of sin within a church member before you discipline. He likened it to doing nothing in a church short of waiting for a man to murder the little old lady in the front pew, in front of the whole congregation, and then disciplining him. This seems to be the standard you all are waiting for before speaking out against something clearly unethical, not the vaccine itself, but the mandate.
Okay…the title of the thread is ‘do vaccine mandates violate religious freedom?’ So there’s that.
Now you’ve just upped the ante (though I think this was implied in your earlier posts) to whether or not pastors are sinning against ‘God’s law in turning a blind eye to these risks and their compulsion’! That’s a big charge. Pastors are complicit in murder, or manslaughter and negligent manslaughter?
You’ve got to do the theological and ethical heavy lifting to validate such charge if you’re going to throw that out. And citing statistics is not what I’m talking about. But charging pastors with violating the 6th commandment for disagreeing with you? That’s not argumentation…that’s hysterics.
And many here have repeatedly said these mandates are immoral and unethical. The Evangel statement addresses this issue. I’ve repeatedly said in my interactions with you that I believe these mandates are tyrannical. The 9th commandment - do not bear false witness - is as significant as the 6th.
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What motive would medical authorities have to conceal the danger of a vaccine?
Think about all the people who had to be involved in vaccine R&D, including the people who volunteered as test subjects. Then there were all the government regulators and reviewers. If there were some sort of conspiracy afoot to bamboozle people into taking a vaccine that would harm them or cause their death, wouldn’t someone have said something?
If they wanted to kill a bunch of us off, why not just let Covid run wild? Or manufacture a deadlier disease in the Wuhan lab and set it free? Either would be simpler than going to the trouble to develop and distribute a vaccine.
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Sheer incompetence, then covering incompetence.
I’m not saying I trust our medical establishment. But there’s more to it than that.
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Never eliminate sheer incompetence. That’s fair.
If anything should be clear from the last 18 months, it’s that governing authorities in Western countries are driven by risk aversion. Nobody wants to be blamed if something goes wrong, so it’s CYA all day every day. It’s why children, who really are not at risk for serious disease and death from Covid, still have to wear masks.
The same risk averse paternalism that led to lockdowns last year has also driven cautiousness about the vaccines. If there really were a problem, I find it hard to believe that nobody noticed and nothing has been done.
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I guess you didn’t hear about the guy that invented RNA technology, the basis for the vaccine. He’s speaking out against mandates. He’s raising some real concerns.
He’s concern is not specifically for mRNA vaccine technology, which really is a cool bit of scientific engineering. His concern is specifically for these particular mRNA vaccines because they don’t all seem to stay in the arm muscle where they are injected but have been shown to migrate around the body to other tissues, where their cytopathic tendencies can cause significant problems.
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Ben, in your experience, do men in the position of saviors tend to back down in the face of criticism or double-down in the face of criticism?
Here in November of 2020, we have enormous quantities of evidence that the vaccines do not do all of what we were told they do (reduce transmission, reduce infections, reduce severity, reduce deaths), and that what they do do, they do at a much higher risk level than we were led to believe.
“Somebody” has noticed, but the somebodies who notice are consistently un-personed by the authorities, who are in the midst of doubling down on vaccines. Perhaps the somebodies are all wrong and vaccines are the way out of this. But I personally wouldn’t bet a lot on the modern-day Lysenkos. There is so much smoke on both vaccine efficacy and on vaccine safety, I’m finding it harder and harder to believe that there is no fire underneath.
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I think one reason we keep going around in circles is that we aren’t putting decisions in the right categories. Imagine a scenario in which a commanding officer orders a subordinate officer to attack a particular enemy position. The subordinate officer is convinced that the attack will fail at great loss of life and that his commander is giving the order out of incompetence or for the purpose of obscuring other screw-ups. In light of the sixth commandment, it may be that the right thing to do is for the subordinate officer to refuse the order and accept the consequences, but that’s not a matter of conscientious objection. Even though the sixth commandment is involved, the decision is driven by prudence, not religious freedom. The same is true for vaccine mandates – it’s a matter to be argued on the basis of prudence, not religious freedom.
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And by “these particular vaccines” you mean the COVID19 vaccines. I also said that he still isn’t anti-vaccine for COVID19, but has been clearly opposed to mandates.