As odd as it may sound, the title of this post is essentially what we are facing in the political arena. The presidential election isn't for another 18 months, but early debates have generated a lot of attention lately, mainly due to U.S. Representative Ron Paul's stance on the U.S. Constitution. If you haven't heard of or know about Ron Paul, he is one of 10 candidates that are seeking to win the Republican primaries, then go on to seeking the presidency. I suggest you get acquainted with him here and here.
When it comes to government policy, no one has the record that he has when it comes to voting consistency. This is because he uses the Constitution as the measure by which he votes. I have yet to hear of another congressman who actually does that.
Christians ought to be tremendously delighted that we have someone who actually believes in following the Constitution. After all, aren't Christians constantly arguing against non-Christians that our Federal government was founded upon Christian principles? There ought to be a groundswell of support for Ron Paul from conservative Christians, but it has been eerily silent. So far, all I've seen in Christian support of Ron Paul is coming from Chris Ortiz of the Chalcedon Foundation.
Maybe silence is better than opposition at this point. Maybe Republican Christians are rethinking their position on a lot of things since Ron Paul burst into the scene at the debates. I sincerely hope so. I sincerely hope they take a good hard look at Ron Paul, because to oppose him is to actually oppose the limits of the Constitution. And to oppose those limits is to oppose the Christian principles that those limits were founded upon.
The Constitution is not perfect, but it the law of the land by which we, as United States citizens, are obligated to uphold. The President even more so. If we, as Christians, won't back a candidate like Ron Paul, then we might as well abandon our arguments that our country and goverment was founded on Christian principles.
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Vote for a guy that thinks that every state has the constitutional right to provide same-sex marriage?
Christopher
Vote for a guy that thinks that every state has the constitutional right to define marriage as one man and one woman?
Victor
Sure, Dr. Paul ain't perfect; I also disagree with his stance against capital punishment (he's a Catholic afterall) but all things considered, the others running are far, far worse.
As to the marriage issue, I don't think the government has any role to play in "defining" the thing, just in recognizing the definition as everyone knows it to be. Government has no authority to change the definitions of words or for that matter, to change the profile of our religious and social institutions.
Though Dr. Paul is wrong on the issue, so are all the other candidates.
Then again, the point may be moot should the NAU come to pass. As far I know, I haven't heard any other candidate speak freely against it.
I agree. Just thought I'd ask what you guys think about his take on this. Every candidate has their weaknesses, and I think, you have to pick the best guy you can for a variety of reasons.
But his reason for thinking that this is a states rights issue that does not flow from a pre-constitutional base is indicative of a certain view of government that I am uncomfortable with. (vox populi)
States don't have any rights not given by God and their duties are prescribed by God. If we take this as true then the individual states each have a duty to define marriage appropriately, as in our system of government we have given the authority to license a marriage to the state level of jurisdiction. There is no federal marriage.
But the definition of rights and duties broadly understood is a federal and constitutional issue (bill of rights, etc.) and only subsidiarily a state issue (states can further define rights and duties as long as they do not contradict federal law which is held to be primary).
Thus the supposed right of men to marry each other, like the supposed right to abort the unborn child, is first, a federal issue, and there is only one coherent federal interpretation of each issue in regard to the pre-constitutional rights, duties, and interpretation of God, man, and the world that is given in the founding documents themselves as the basis for the authority of the people to write a constitution in the first place.
Paul does not think the states have the right to define the right to abortion, and I applaud him on that because it shows a certain irrationality to think otherwise, but he does think they have the right to define marriage.
I don't see how both of these can be reconciled as they seem to flow from contrary ideas of governance.
I'm looking forward to seeing how he plays out in the campaign, even if his role ends up being keeping the other fiscal and social conservatives honest. (At least the politician kind of honest)
Christopher
I understand the reticence to accept the States and their respective citizens as trustees—sovereign citizens still terrify Caesar just as they did in the first century but the fact is that God Himself prescribes ‘Vox Populi’ when He commands Samuel to “heed the voice of the people.” (I Sam.8:9)
That’s where Rutherford derived his view that Democracy, Royalty, and Representative Government (a la America) all be appropriate in respect to the temperaments of a given people. This sentiment is echoed by John Adams’ well-worn chestnut: “Our constitution was made for a people both moral and religious. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other any other.”
‘The consent of the governed’ is, I believe, a biblical concept. If not, what covenantal authority can the American constitution be said to represent? Either it is a covenant made between smaller covenanted authorities (individuals of families of communities of states) or it is as Hamilton saw it— an imposition of the few upon the many (similar to the ‘Divine Right’ of Royalists) with no concern for the ‘pre-constitutional rights’ of men. As you well know, the Bill of Rights did not flow from the Federalists but the Anti-Federalists such as Henry, Jefferson, Madison, and all those pesky Scotts-Irish Covenanters of Virginia.
But just talking brass tacks, I’d far rather see regional communities with the authority to define their own social institutions than remanding such power to the more Hegelian/ Unitarian Federalist model. Afterall, the presumptive rulings of Federal government are by the extent of their reach, far more dangerous than that of any run-away municipality. And in the case the occasional township run amok, they can be pressured from without in any number of different ways; but such is not the case with the Federalist Leviathan. When Washington breaks trust with the people, the people are fairly impotent to do anything about it. Infact, anyone who might be so bold as to charge the Fed with a breach of contract may find themselves divested of the right of habeas corpus and summarily locked away for the rest of their natural life. Whether under the power of the ‘Alien and Sedition act’ or that of ‘Executive Decision’, Uncle Caesar has a habit of making dissenters disappear.
I’ll take Calhoun’s theory of Localism and Nullification over that any day.
Are these really the reasons presented for allowing gay marriage? This looks like an example of the strange present communion of the communitarians with the libertarians. It’s not one that will last. Sooner or later the communitarians community will start to communalize the individual’s capital, and the libertarians will realize that communitariansim is no friend of liberty.
Notice that in 1 Samuel 8, God’s message to Samuel was a curse, not a blessing, and certainly not in any sense normative unless you are calling for the re-establishment of absolute monarchy as the means to the preservation of Civic liberties? What is normative in these passages is what Israel was rejecting, not what they chose. All men living as free citizens under the law of God needless of an autocratic centralized establishment any more than is necessary to preserve common equity. Letting the people have the pagan form of government they desired was the punishment for the rejection of God as their King, and God’s law as their Civic norm. It’s hard to see it as a Christian virtue.
God gives the people the authority to regulate themselves within the scope of His moral law, and no farther. Anything else they do on their own, not with His blessing, but in spite of it.
But we are really writing of two different but related things. You are writing practically, of what systems of divisions and jurisdictions might work best for the preservation of the rights and establishment of duties of a people. Showing historical examples isn’t very helpful in this because so few of the people you refer to ever gained enough of the “vox populi” to see their ideas put into practice. They lost all of the historic debates. So there are few actual examples here but only theories that possibly could have had benefit, but who knows?
I’m not as interested in utility, or the popular will, (which we seem to be governed by right now so you and Calhoun should be pleased) but the Law of God and what His ethics prescribe as the parameters for the form of a state, its powers, and its practice. In other words, the measurement of good and evil necessarily precedes the measurement of how it will be regulated. States are an expression of law, not creators of Law.
I see this as the precondition of a state having authority; you seem to see it as the expression of state authority. In mine, states can only do that which God gives them to do and must do those things; nothing more, nothing less. In yours, God demands a state of some kind to be formed but then leaves the expression of that power to the popular will. He might not like what they do with it, but He has given them the authority as “Sovereign citizens”. Mine is the people under God as Sovereign. Christ as King. Yours the voice of the people as the Voice of God. Vox Populi, Vox Dei?
Jefferson’s French revolutionary communitariansim continued to ruin the great state of Virginia for many years. The philosophy of Rousseau flowed in his veins and the rationalism of the age combined the with the anti-puritan sentiments that flourished in the South left a great divide between those who held that the Law of God judged the laws of men, and those that thought that the laws of men were immune to judgment because of their communities popular sovereignty.
It’s an old argument between the two views.
The Democratic Party that dominated the South still has what you are looking for. They never tire of arguing for popular will as a handy replacement for justice.
The Republican Party of the North never tires of arguing for ethical principle above mere popular sentiment and utility.
The limitations that I’m sure you would insist upon in the people’s pursuit of the popular will seem more suited to a different interpretation of Civics than the one you present. One in greater accord Justice setting the boundaries as to what States can and cannot do, and so what people can and cannot choose. This would require the Law of God to be the necessary presupposition of the establishment and expression of any State.
This saves us from the inevitable problem of having a Caesar in the first place, or even a Caesar by committee, or a series of Caesars equal to the number of citizens within a given State, and preserves Christ alone as King.
All the best,
Christopher
Would it be justified to go to war with a state that has decided to secede because it wanted to become like a Sodom? Because it seems to me, from what you have written, that no state would have the right to secede
In the order argued:
You Say: “Are these really the reasons presented for allowing gay marriage?”
I never proposed such. Rather, I was arguing that since all the ’08 candidates believe the government to have jurisdiction over marriage (and fiat definitions thereof) in some capacity, Dr. Paul’s deference to the states is far less dangerous than the deference to Federal government maintained by the menagerie of faux conservatives with which he now competes.
You say: “This looks like an example of the strange present communion of the communitarians with the libertarians. It’s not one that will last. Sooner or later the communitarians community will start to communalize the individual’s capital, and the libertarians will realize that communitariansim is no friend of liberty.”
This is a complete mischaracterization.
You say: “…in 1 Samuel 8, God’s message to Samuel was a curse, not a blessing, and certainly not in any sense normative unless you are calling for the re-establishment of absolute monarchy as the means to the preservation of Civic liberties?”
Of course it was a curse. And the nature of that curse was proportionately corrective to the temperament of the people in question. That is, ‘they got the sort of government they deserved’. It was prescribed by God as a concession to “the hardness of their hearts” (Matt.19).
Optimally, I’d call for a return to the localist representative government form of Theonomy as it was prior to the kings of Israel. But we run into the same problem with which Samuel dealt— an unconsenting populace. Are we to presume ourselves more moral than God by imposing a form of government which He Himself rescinded under identical circumstances? Populism seems to be a pre-condition to Theonomy. That’s why Rushdoony emphasized the grass-roots evangelistic approach. At it’s most basic level good Christian nomology is propagated by individuals in families in communities, which is to say, on a sociological basis.
The alternative is the Totalitarian regime, which, despite any high-minded pretense of morality, ostensibly denies any form of ‘sphere sovereignty’. Such an approach is not Trinitarian in nature but Unitarian and Hegelian.
You say: “…we are really writing of two different but related things. You are writing practically, of what systems of divisions and jurisdictions might work best for the preservation of the rights and establishment of duties of a people.”
Yes, that’s because I consider God’s concession to Israel (I Sam. 8) to have been a practical measure (not unlike divorce in Matt. 19). As I believe you’ve written elsewhere, “The Natural Law and God’s Law are one.”
You say: “Showing historical examples isn’t very helpful in this because so few of the people you refer to ever gained enough of the “vox populi” to see their ideas put into practice. They lost all of the historic debates. So there are few actual examples here but only theories that possibly could have had benefit, but who knows?”
In what capacity did Rutherford lose the debate? Despite current declension the American commonwealth was, in my estimation, a rather grand vindication. So too were the Scotts-Irish Covenanters vindicated via the Ant-Federalist establishment of the Bill of Rights, which was incidentally reviled by the dictatorial Hamilton gang. And the Lincoln/ Douglas debates stand as one great testimonial to the incoherence of the Federalist world view. But hey, it did win Lincoln the adulation of Karl Marx so the theory of top-down enforcement of Union wasn’t without its admirers.
You say: “I’m not as interested in utility, or the popular will, (which we seem to be) governed by right now so you and Calhoun should be pleased.”
I have no clue as to how you may have come to the conclusion that our current national course is of any real utility. On the contrary, I find the upper echelons of power to have abandoned all sound reason in pursuit of their Social-Marxist utopia. They’re coursing the old paths from the mountains of Ararat to the valley of Shinar in pursuit of messianic one world government, with no deference to the God-ordained Law and natural order. Calhoun’s rolling in his grave.
You say: “…the measurement of good and evil necessarily precedes the measurement of how it will be regulated. States are an expression of law, not creators of Law.”
I agree. Heck, I wish I’d written it first.
You say: “In mine, states can only do that which God gives them to do and must do those things; nothing more, nothing less. In yours, God demands a state of some kind to be formed but then leaves the expression of that power to the popular will. He might not like what they do with it, but He has given them the authority as “Sovereign citizens”. Mine is the people under God as Sovereign. Christ as King. Yours the voice of the people as the Voice of God. Vox Populi, Vox Dei?”
Now we’re at the crux of the matter: The idea which you’re promoting begs the old question— Quis custodiet ipsos custodies (‘who guards the guards’)? How do you presume to have a government wholly separate from her citizenry? While I perceive no disjunction of authority in a covenanted community consisting of Christian families electing elder representatives from amongst them to the role of Magistracy (my view), I find it wholly incongruous and self-contradictory to say that the government exists separately from the people (apparently your view).
We obviously agree that God’s Law is the standard for all human law— that much is clear but my point is that government doesn’t exist in a void. I believe that the very concept of Law imparted to men for the governing of human affairs implies that individuals and communities must come to some degree of consensus inorder to implement said precepts. I think the Autocratic Federalist model spurns these obvious preconditions to Theonomy.
You say: “The philosophy of Rousseau flowed in his veins and the rationalism of the age combined the with the anti-puritan sentiments that flourished in the South left a great divide between those who held that the Law of God judged the laws of men, and those that thought that the laws of men were immune to judgment because of their communities popular sovereignty.”
I agree that Jefferson was a Heretic— during the prime years of his life atleast, but as you know, so too were many of the Federalists (Lincoln was worse cradle to grave).
As for Southern “Anti-Puritanism”, you’re right in part. Early on such sentiments were strongest amongst all the Scots-Irish Presbyterians and French Cavaliers (Huguenots). The Baptists and Episcopalians had their own grievances too but those divides grew stronger with the metricular apostasy of New England, which fell to Unitarianism and “the rationalism of the age.” Such was not only the appraisal of Dabney, Thornwell, and Palmer but also that of the few languishing hold-out Believers in the North. The Mathers (Cotton and Increase) had earlier made quite an omen of the fall of Harvard to such Apostates and Liberals. On point, Emerson’s religious survey of circa 1830 New England neatly illustrates the popular spirituality of the region— TBN meets Psychic Friends Hotline; and Totalitarian Statists every one.
You say: “The Democratic Party that dominated the South still has what you are looking for. They never tire of arguing for popular will as a handy replacement for justice. The Republican Party of the North never tires of arguing for ethical principle above mere popular sentiment and utility.”
This borders on libel. First, I never insinuated that popular will be “a handy replacement for justice”. My position is that due to the nature of revelation, innate rights, sphere sovereignty, and necessary human participation in government that some degree of social consensus must exist inorder to institute and execute any law. Theonomy will only follow the peoples’ religion, not the other way around. Old Democrats were pretty good…the new Democrats, not so much. The old Republicans were horrible and not much has changed on that account but they are admittedly better than the new Dems. And yeah, I think Dr. Paul is a big step in the right direction.
You ended your post with some good stuff about setting definite boundaries on what states can and cannot do, to which I give an “amen” with certain qualifications: The biggest problems with it are that highly centralized power which ignores the God-given rights of the people and goes on in the ‘will to power’ to suppress the peoples’ Godward duties is by definition, a Caesar.
But at present, they do not stop at demanding us to ‘pinch incense’; they now demand that we tithe the first-fruits of our very families by repeal of the rights of property, free association and ‘restrictive covenants’. So too do they lay claim to our children directly via compulsory education and the relegation of the gospel to a hate crime status.
The point is that authority centralized in Washington is no more grounded in their Nomology than the smaller, regional authorities. Both are prone to flux by virtue of the fact that they are overseen by men. But Washington’s reach and consolidated power makes it far more dangerous than the local City Hall. The outward expression accords with the metaphysical assumption that an uncontestable power remote to you and yours has the right to reappropriate your property and your flesh on the basis of their self-important view of ‘equity’ and the ‘common good’. Federalism is the deification of the Polis as it arrogates to itself the unassailable characteristics which belong to God alone.
On a point of personal musing, it’s my conviction that we should have included the Ten Commandments in the preamble to our Constitution from the beginning along with the acknowledgement of “Almighty God” as was done in the Confederate Constitution. But of course, the old Israelite Commonwealth had precisely such a constitution and they still wound up at the crossroads where they proclaimed in unison, “We have no god but Caesar!” Good law will only be upheld by good religion amongst the people.
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