Today, as in ages past, we find ourselves attempting to steer a middle course between Scylla and Charybdis. This is true in various parts of life (indeed this basic principle is foundational to Aristotelian virtue theory), but in this post, my emphasis is on government and politics. On the one hand, lies the danger of viewing the state as the source of our rights; on the other lies, hyper-democracy. Neither ideology is compatible with a Christian worldview.
The state is not the source of our rights, of our role as image of God on this earth. God created us as His image, meant to subdue and govern the earth according to the principles of His Kingdom. He sent His Son, Jesus the Messiah, to teach us what those Kingdom principles are.
He created the state in order to exercise some kind of justice in this fallen world, as a bulwark against the kind of chaos that characterised the earth in Noah’s day (Genesis 6). Administering justice does not entail that the state is the source of our rights – only that it has been ordained to protect and enforce them. Acting on God’s behalf does not entail that one is God. Were I to enter the throne room of a medieval monarch, I would show respect to the Lord Chancellor, but I would pay homage to the King. So in this world, placing the state on too high a pedestal is equivalent to mistaking the Chancellor for the King.
The state’s authority, given it by God, is not intended for the purpose of interfering in every aspect of human life. It holds its authority on trust for the beneficial interest of the people it governs. When it ceases to obey the principles of trust by which it was validly constituted, it loses its authority and is in need of replacement. This was the conclusion drawn by the authors of the American Revolution, relying on ideas elaborated by Thomas Aquinas and Enlightenment thinkers. They held that the state, as embodied by His Majesty George III and his ministers and Parliament, no longer exercised its power for the true weal of the people.
These revolutionaries, spurning the Scylla of tyranny that glowered above them, were also careful to steer away from the Charybdis of hyper-democracy. The good of the people, their welfare and prosperity, is independent of the people’s wishes. Right and wrong, albeit perceived and heeded contextually, are independent of our wishes and emotions. We presuppose such objective morality when we appeal to a common standard by which to persuade an interlocutor to adopt or refrain from an attitude or course of action.
While the wishes of the majority should be obeyed in certain matters, owing to the respect we ought to show the gift of free will, the wishes of the majority cannot make what is wrong right or vice versa. For this reason, though the majority of a nation should consider abortion to be acceptable, the answer as to whether it is or not must be derived from reason and not from a poll. In so far as abortion is a species of murder, and the state owes a duty to prevent murder, the Christian worldview must reject democracy to the extent that it promotes a crime against which God ordained the state as a protection.
These two dangers lie at the centre of the corruption that is killing the nations today: people on the one hand, who think that the state is our highest authority; and people on the other, who think that the people can make whatever laws they choose. Neither extreme is acceptable, because both reject the kingship of God. As Christians we must resist attempts to bring the power and influence of the state into areas over which it has no lawful authority, and we must likewise speak truth to the people when they would themselves become tyrants over the laws of God.
All Along the Watchtower 
Aye, language, customs and laws are a prerequisite to order rather than chaos, justice as opposed to injustice and peaceful lives rather than lives that lived in fear of the state. Recently we have deconstructed all three and it seems to almost be a worldwide movement to do that which even the strongest dictators of the past were not able to do: conquer to the world. If only the Body of Christ were as successful in our times as is the success of satan (the father of all lies and confusion) we might not have to suffer nearly as much when the Brave New Globalist World is forced upon us all without firing a shot. Sadly, it will not remain that way. People will again rise up as they always do to repel the forces of those who conquer them and overturn their sense of morality and justice. There are things more important than licentiousness and trying to win hearts by giving people free reign of their passions will not be enough to subdue the world . . . even as Rome found that honoring all the gods of other nations never united the Empire at its heart. Just like Rome, this empire is doomed to failure in the long run. The question is how long will it take for the Fall this time?
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Tyranny always devours itself: some aspirant for the throne conspires and before you know it, like the Mad Hatter’s tea party, it’s, “Change places!” We must endure and continue to preach that the state is not empowered to do whatever it likes and neither is the people. God’s throne in Jerusalem will send the rod of correction and rebuke to the nations that disobey – see the Prophets on those nations that refuse to obey the call for delegations.
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Nicholas – need to connect your reference to “Noah’s day” directly into today!
We’re also now living in the return of the days of Lot and both of which we’re all well aware of our Lord predicting that condition of society – when sodomy and SSM is officially sanctioned by the state (rabbinical teaching; Enoch foretold flood’s start as when his son Methuselah dies; per PK Davis, C Missler) – describes the state of play “on the day the Son of Man is revealed” (Luke 17)
So keep watching and looking up for our redemption draws near!
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You’re absolutely right. I also think it’s important for us to preach the coming judgment to the unbelievers: God promised not to bring a flood again, but Peter talks of the earth being burned by fire.
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Could the onset of the latter be the real reason for last year’s global abnormally high temperatures?
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May well be: it is interesting that Adam was made from the earth in Genesis – suggesting a kind of relationship between the two. Paul’s comment about the creation groaning also springs to mind. The earth groans under our unrighteousness.
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‘…and waits in expectation for the sons of God to be revealed’ (Rom 8:18 et seq). So my friend, we return to the importance of training for the Millennium 🙂
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Re your 1st point: agreed and it’s part of the reason for my blogging on end-times and modern prophecy to attract not-yet Christians (as a number of my readers seem to be) and thus woo them into the scripture, for which others are far more competent than me.
So perhaps that could become the focus of your team’s website, rather than playing cricket over theological differences?
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I certainly would like the emphasis to shift in that direction, provided everyone else is happy to do that. I think as a team of contributors we need to have a discussion about a common vision and also agree a position regarding Bosco. My personal policy is mostly to ignore him, because I hold it is usually better to starve that sort of commenter rather than to feed him. I think if we are to move in that direction, we must agree to leave certain provocative things alone, such as the article in the Catholic Herald discussed at Cranmer’s blog, which provoked a great stream of controversy. I do remain troubled though by the need for unity. I do not see how we can get the Catholic traditionalists to “play ball”.
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