BTW, here’s the bio of Cromwell I’m reading. Chose it partly b/c it was written over a century ago.
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Thanks for the replies Tim, I think there are some good responses to be made, but I’ll need to find some time to get back to you.
Dear Aaron,
No, and no. Here ecclesiology informs political theory, of course. But stay and argue because you’re not muddying the waters, but helping to clarify them. Cromwell despaired over ever getting any of the different church factions to be anything but absolutist towards one another. He pulled his hair out over it. I’m neither a prelatic (like Fr. Bill) nor an independent (like Doug). Rather, I’m Presbyterian. So what are you? But most of all, keep arguing. It’s greatly helpful. At least I find it so. Love,
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This seem to be a pretty live issue for Evangel presbytery. My comment about ecclesiology trumping political theory is that loyalty (in the biblical sense) to presbytery should carry a heavier weight ones political views. I’d rather be wrong in my understanding of history and stand shoulder to shoulder with my fellow elders than get history right at the expense of those I need most. If ones political theory (or outside influences or view of history) is creating conflict today with brothers in presbytery (or a local congregation), something is wrong.
I would hate to be a party to further division among your brotherhood by discussing something that from my vantage point is from a distance. These are days we desperately need our friends. Solid Christian brothers are not gained easily.
But maybe I’m reading more into this than is there?
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What surprises me about this matter is how many people, even Christians, who seem to think that they are in a position to rightly judge whether the election was stolen or not based on things they read or viewed on the internet. I claim no such competence since I lack expertise with the pertinent law and have not reviewed all relevant evidence that is presented by both sides. Instead, I take my cues from those in a much better position to judge the matter, such as the courts and governmental officials. And if someone like Vice President Pence has conceded that Biden is the President-elect, why should I think I know better?
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As I am reading this thread and thinking about it, I can’t help but notice how larger the discussion is. It started off as a question of two competing claims to authority but it has grown to encompass discussion on the American War for Independence and possibly the War of Northern Aggression 
. It encompasses our interpretation of Romans 13. Is it merely descriptive of Nero and thus a call for near absolute submission to even tyrants or is it prescriptive of both citizens and civil governments. The discussion includes the issue of Masks, Covid shutdowns, and election fraud. We have talked about the concept of consent of the governed both implied and explicit. I think also under the surface is eschatology and ecclesiology. It includes discussion on the English Civil War, Calvin, and other figures in church history. Lastly, we are discussing the extent of godly resistence to tyranny if there is such thing at all. I am saying all this to say that the issues we are thinking through and facing are multifaceted. There is much to think about. There are many different positions to be had. Many things to be defined so that we are using the same definitions.
Let me lay out where I think we all agree at least in the big principles. I think will see even in that agreement where the disagreement and the work needs to be done.
We agree that God has instituted authority and given it his name Father. We agree he has instituted Family, Church, and Civil Government. We agree that there are different jurisdictions that those authorities hold authority over and yet there is some overlap in those areas. We also agree that Christians are not rebels. The Gospel did not come overturning the created order. While there is neither Jew nor Greek, nor male nor female, nor slave nor free in Christ, this is not a statement meant to destroy nature or our natural relations but meant to show that the gospel is for all people regardless of station, class, or ethnicity. Therefore Christians submit to the authorities God has given us. We also agree that God is the only one with absolute authority and an absolute claim to our allegiance and obedience. Therefore, all other authorities are limited in some way to the post that they have been given. And our call to submission to them is thus limited as well. We all can agree that we do not obey those in authority when they demand us to do something contrary to the law of God. This is where we agree. The disagreement though is in the details of the last three sentences I just wrote.
We disagree on what is the proper sphere of the civil government, that is what is the limitation to the jurisdiction of the civil government. We disagree on what actually counts as a command that goes again the law of God.
In our day, most give to the jurisdiction of civil government anything and everything that is not necessarily the jurisdiction of the Church. They even give to the civil government pretty much everything that is the jurisdiction of the Family. Some even allow civil government to encompass a large portion of the Church’s jurisdiction. So rather than two distinct branches of government instituted by God, the Church basically becomes a subordinate branch of the civil government.
The question I think to be answered is what is the jurisdiction of civil government. Does it have right to any area that it claims authority of. Does it have right to command in any area of life not left to some spiritual area of the church? Or is its sphere more limited? I believe Romans 13 actually explains its limits and jurisdiction. It is to punish evil and therefore protect the good. It is a deacon of vengeance against crime. This is its jurisdiction and authority and therefore it has the right to tax to do this. It punishes evil and provides for the defense of the people. There is room to argue the details of this but I don’t think that civil government has right to force me to watch certain television shows for example and the only reason I might submit to a command to do that would be out of prudence to avoid personal danger, not because they have the right to actually command it and thus I have a duty to obey it.
We acknowledge this limit on the other authorities established by God. No one thinks Fathers have an unlimited jurisdiction over their children or their wives. Nor do we say that children and wives must obey unjust commands from their father and husband. We don’t think pastors and elders have an unlimited jurisdiction over their flock. I can’t command a parishioner that he must sell his home and give me the money. I can’t command them to go along with something they believe to be based upon a lie.
We acknowledge the limits to these jurisdictions. And yet we have people arguing that we are duty bound to obey unjust commands by our civil government. We have people arguing that we are duty bound to obey commands that one believes are based upon a lie and propagate a lie if issued by the civil government.
For example, Pastor Dionne used the passage in Hebrews about the people rejoicing that their property had been stolen from them in such a way to say that we are duty bound to submit to unjust commands by the civil government. But that’s not the point of the passage. The people were commended for rejoicing in the Lord even though they had had great evil done to them. They were not being told that they must allow their items to be stolen. Early Christians could have and did often hide their earthly goods to keep them from being stolen. The Apostle Paul fled over the wall in a basket to avoid the civil authorities trying to harm him. There is one story from church history of a pastor being arrested for refusing to give out the treasuries of the church to the civil government. He was executed. They then went to the deacon who had the key to the treasury. He said give me a couple of days to get it altogether. Then they came back two days later. He opened the treasury and it was all gone. They asked him where it was. He pointed to the crowd that had gathered and said here is the treasure of the church. He meant that both figuratively and literally because he had given out all the treasures of the church to the people in those two days he was supposed to be collecting it. This is a form of resistance to unjust commands.
We are not duty bound to obey unjust commands. We may with wisdom obey those commands that would cause us some suffering while sparing others. It may be prudent for me as an individual to go an extra mile when demanded to go one. It may be prudent not to put up a fight when I am outmanned and outgunned. It is definitely commendable when I suffer for doing what is right and I do so with the patience of Christ. But it is not commendable when I join in and obey commands that cause injustice on my neighbor. It is not commendable to join in and obey when my obedience gives my own credibility to a lie or mistruth that harms others. The scriptures no where command us to make Romans 13 into a road map for tyranny. What I mean by that is we turn it into an absolute that can never allow a nation of Christians to stop a tyrant from taking over.
There is a ton more to be written on this. But let me apply it to masks. The issue is not masks in and of themselves. Wearing a mask is not necessarily an idol or sinful. It is not inherently unjust. Yet context can make it all three of those things. Some definitely have made masks and all the covid restrictions idols. Furthermore, I believe that masks are not some isolated issue. They are interrelated with shutdowns and powergrabs that are doing much to harm not just me as an individual but my neighbors. How many people have been put out of business because of the panic that is being induced nonstop with Covid. Masks are an integral part of that panic. How many people have not been able to say goodbye to dying relatives in nursing homes because of that panic? Furthermore I believe the Covid restrictions have undermined institutional trust and thus are hastening the ripping apart of our society. When we are being asked to do completely incoherent things and yet expect them to help, we are being robbed of our ability to even think rightly about what is happening around us. Masks have hasted to cause us to see each other not as neighbors to love but as people to avoid. Places that were once warm and lively have become places of coldness and isolation. Add on top of this the mass censorship of doctors, medical professionals, and researchers who have questioned what we are doing. There have been studies showing that masks don’t really prevent sickness and yet these things get censored and we are told we must simply believe what we are told without question. This censorship has paved the way for the censorship of our president, many of his supporters, and most likely any who oppose the socialist takeover.
I think the most charitable and probably the right way to view Moscow in this debate over masks is that they see masks as a government reach beyond its jurisdiction and a furthering of unjust actions that will harm our neighbors and brothers in the faith. In light of this, I would not argue that we are duty bound to obey mask orders. Prudence may dictate that we do so at certain times. I am certainly not as a pastor commanding my flock that they are duty bound to wear them. More can be said but I have already written a book.
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One more thing that I think might be helpful is to define what I mean by resistance to tyranny:
Resistance to Tyrants can look like the following:
- Faithfully preaching the word of God to all of life. In particular the church properly instructing the tyrant on their duty to obey God.
- Faithfully living the faith of Christ not matter what.
- Passive resistance that is willing to give up property, reputation, livelihood, and even life The martyrs who went to the stakes for refusing to burn incense to the Emperor where resisting tyrants.
- Fleeing. -Now this may not seem much like resistance but fleeing a tyrants grasp is resisting him.
- Using every judicial and legal remedy that you can.
- Giving financial support to those facing tyranny.
- Supporting lesser magistrates with your finances and with your arms and life if called upon.
- Self-defense: This requires wisdom because those who take up the sword may die by the sword but there are examples in the Bible and in church history of God raising up a group of the people to fight off a tyrant or an enemy to God’s people.
To say resistance to Tyrants is obedience to God does not imply that Christians must take up arms and fight but rather it is simply to say that the Christian religion is opposed to tyranny. When you are faithful to God you will find yourself opposed to tyrants. Furthermore this doesn’t mean that every authority whom you dislike is a tyrant or that every authority that makes mistakes or even bad decisions is a tyrant. Christians submit to authority. We give honor to imperfect authorities and to even sinful men in authority. We do however oppose the abuse of authority, especially when it is used to persecute God’s people and to promote true injustice.
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Actually, dear brother, what is charitable is to take Moscow at their words. Masks are idolatry. Period. Not sometimes and somehow when the people using them also hold membership in the local chapter of witches. Masks are idolatry. Masks are a sacrament. The government has overstepped its proper bounds when it uses police powers to protect life. Masks are evil because they efface the Image of God. Full stop.
Until interlocutors take these declarations and argue for or against them, I’m losing interest in all the other embroidery of nursing homes and economics and supposed conspiracies to silence this or that supposed authority.
No one will simply say it was wrong to declare masks to be idolatry and it was wrong to say pastors and elders who require them are committing idolatry and it was wrong to claim Scripture shows masks efface the image of God and it was and is still wrong to deny the state has police authority to protect life… If we agree these things were wrong, then they have divided the church unjustly, placing on the church and her conscience unbiblical manmade constraints which have violated the unity of the Spirit which is the bond of peace.
This is not any Evangel Presbytery matter. We have men who agree with Moscow although my sense is the majority of us don’t. It is a church issue way beyond us and it is those men I have been thinking about from the very beginning. The men who have called me for counsel about their church’s divisions are mostly neither Evangel nor Moscow men and it’s not just the Moscow men who are being schismatic making such declarations as above. Love,
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My teenage daughter has resisted obeying my commands when, in her words, they don’t make sense to her. My wife has had to explain to her that obedience that arises only from agreement is not obedience, and since I was not commanding her to sin, she was obligated to obey all of my commands whether they made sense to her or not. Whether I was doing rightly or not in what I commanded her to do was for God to judge, or in certain circumstances, also for the elders of the church and the civil authorities to judge.
Masks and other public health measures may work well or not, but I don’t see how most of us are in a position to more competently judge that than the public health authorities and the civil magistrate. To think otherwise is hubris. What we can judge more competently than the civil authorities is whether the masks and shutdown and preservation of health and life are worth the economic and social cost that we and those we know personally experience. And the way to properly exercise that judgement is by means of petition, the courts, and the next election.
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Yes, and the results of the last election make clear that, regardless of what I or anyone else may think of the wisdom of the national Covid response, we are the minority. We lost. We made our case and we lost. We will see what happens in 2022.
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Your authority is not unlimited though. We all have a duty to judge whether the commands are lawful or not from any authority. We will answer to God both as those in authority and those under authority. The guards at Nuremberg don’t get to say, I was just doing my job. You acknowledge this right to private judgement when you say we don’t obey sinful commands. We must discern or judge whether the commands are sinful. I am not saying that they must always make sense to us or not. Sometimes there are thing we aren’t privy to or don’t have all the information. In those cases those in authority need to help those under their charge with what they can. Furthermore a trustworthy authority will be much easier to follow when we don’t know everything but if someone proves to be constantly untrustworthy its going to be much harder to obey. When someone goes out of their way to censor and shutdown any questions especially when those questions or statements may provide evidence that the commands are not only not understandable but actually built on lies, then we have a much bigger problem.
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I guess Ben it depends if you believe we lost or not. I’m not convinced that we did.
That’s true, but the real issue here is whether those arguing against and disobeying authority have the competency and humility to rightly do so. Going back to my teenage daughter, if she were wise, she would realize that she doesn’t have the life experience and character to rightly judge the lawfulness of my commands except in matters that are starkly black and white. And there are many times that I order her to obey without explanation, not because I am being arbitrary, but because she is unwilling to accept my reasoning so there is no point in going over it again. Moreover, she has an improper understanding of authority and views it merely as the power to tell other people what to do and chafes that she must do according to what I say instead of others doing according to what she says.
When it comes to the pandemic, many of those railing against restrictions come off as lacking the right attitude and perspective needed to judge the lawfulness of commands in a gray area. This is especially the case in the matter of masks, which I regard as a triviality. I am much more sympathetic towards someone who quietly keeps his restaurant open after spending a lot of money to get his establishment into compliance for outdoor socially-distanced dining and then has the rug pulled out from under him when the civil authority forbids outdoor dining while at the same time the public health official expresses doubt that it will do much to prevent the spread of disease.
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Entering these threads is like opening a fire hydrant, its very hard to keep up, but I will try.
So all along you have not been arguing that Doug and Toby are belligerators? Honestly surprised to hear this. I think the many posts at Warhorn directed at Moscow strongly imply this conclusion, but am glad to hear if it is not true. I think it better for peace and unity that you would have made this clear, just as they have been clear to except you from charges of unfaithfulness.
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Not my objection at all - I don’t mind. I’ve often benefited from your sharpening iron with Doug, as long is it is obvious you remain brothers and friends.
ON MASKS
Ok I’ll try. I know you’ve said this a lot, but for me I remain unconvinced of Warhorns argument for the following reasons:
I read what both of you were saying, and Moscow clarified a number of times in various places that it was not meant in the absolutist sense you have taken it, so I’ve never understood why it needs to keep being taken in that way.
In your pushback against Doug I do think Warhorn have trivialized mask wearing as though it is of such trivial consequence as to laugh at those who make an issue of it. In my experience it does impede human interaction and Christian fellowship significantly, and nature seems to teach that the human face is ordinarily to be uncovered (eyes, mouth and nose are there). I also understand the ‘visceral’ feeling many have felt in this particular context of mask wearing with it being paired with larger forces at work in the massive restriction of liberties without sufficient reason.
One can also recognize masking has become a political flag to varying degrees in various places, as I think even you have written about. Whether we should fly that flag is a legitimate question as if that is how you read it then it has a moral component and I don’t wish to stop those who try to oppose it. I reject that you must either always or always not fly a flag as logic-chopping. Kind of like the question of wearing the party badge as Peter Hitchens wrote. You might wear it in some situations (as a disguise to escape a concentration camp, or perhaps to be able to buy food for your children) and sometimes symbols rise to such gravity that a Christian should not wear it at all. There is liberty for judging how far along that spectrum we are. In other contexts I understand being sensitive to the weak who are truly terrified that they have a much greater chance of dying if you don’t wear a mask. And of course many Christians just think it is as simple as Romans 13 and feel no sense of a political flag, and for them that is obedience to God. So I do think there is liberty for disagreement among Christians.
All this boils down to say I reject the position that people are stupid for making any issue over masks, and I also reject the position that good Christians cannot wear masks, and I think Moscow rejects that latter position too, though they would argue those good Christians are both an anomaly and mistaken.
So why do you believe they were wrong in doing it, if the law exonerated them and said their opponents were the lawless ones? As per my previous posts, I wonder if it is because you are of the mind that masks and social distancing and the lockdowns they are part of are entirely trivial and it is laughable that a church should try and oppose such silly matters. If so, I just don’t think that is at all true, and we should probably focus our argument there.
Ok I’ll stop there with this one. I’ve not engaged every detail but think I’ve responded to the most substantive points.
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I said Doug. I did not say Moscow. I’ll leave it at that. Love
I must deny the premise behind this point. The very point of debate is whether the US courts have become so corrupt / weak that they are unable to fairly sift election fraud claims. If they have, then the argument does not fly as it would like be trying to tell Venezuelans to stop dismissing their court election rulings and calling them ‘tyranny’.
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Then all the more so with local judges and their rulings. But when the court’s ruling is with us, we point to it and say “see.” Either courts are political or they judge based on the merits of the case. We can’t pick and choose as we like. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Love,
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I see this is obliquely directed at me, and Joel I hope you can forgive me for my first ever frosty interaction with you here on YAC. I’ll just say there comes a point when the common man is entitled to trust his nose over the experts of the chattering class. It comes down to whether you hold the belief that your institutions are fundamentally solid enough to withstand election fraud.
As for Vice President Pence, he expressed significant unresolved doubts, as did a whole lot of the House. Here is an except from Pence’s infamous letter:
I’m suspicious on Pence. He carries himself with dignity, true, and there is good in him. But when all is said and done I fear he is a combination of the Christian nice guy and the establishment/company man who is incapable of fighting and entering the fray. Doesn’t he have a history in Indiana documented on Baylyblog?
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Haha, I was actually going to make the same point against you, but forgot!