Mastering the Ages

Bene legere saecla vincere - To read well is to master the ages. (Professor Isaac Flagg)

Duped by Deists

The First Amendment laid down religious freedom saying: "Congress shall pass no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Now I suppose that this could be distinguished from secularism by pointing out that it doesn't prohibit congressmen from making religious arguments on the job. It doesn't prohibit religiously informed policy or a transcendent basis for law. In fact, it guarantees the free exercise of religion.

But, I would argue, that the seeds of secularism are here, especially when coupled with the Constitution's prohibition of any religious test for office. The Constitution and the First Amendment made it feasible to be a Unitarian, like many of our founding Deists, or an atheist of the kind that Jefferson liked, and enter the political process. Hooray for freedom! We were so Enlightened!

Christians like John Witherspoon, who trained many of our founders like Madison, were willing to go along with this and be marginalized to the religious marketplace. We had come a long way since Governor Winthrop's Massachusetts Bay Colony, which exiled Roger Williams for his forward thinking on religious liberty, Anne Hutchinson for her heresy, executed pesky Quakers who wouldn't go away as well as a few accused witches.

So with that not so shining "city on a hill" behind us, we thought we didn't need official recognition by the state to influence society. We can can give up our home field advantage and defeat the enemy on his own turf. I contend that we were blinded by the Enlightenment and duped by the Deists. We couldn't see much less argue for what has been called a chastised Constantinianism. It's too bad we didn't have a John Keble to preach us a sermon about "National Apostasy" and too bad that Jonathan Edwards didn't have any successors. Well we did have Patrick Henry arguing for a Christian commonwealth of Virginia but his voice was drowned out by Madison and Jefferson.

I think it's too bad that most Christians didn't argue for a non-coercive Christian state. But maybe that's our job today. Gasp! That sounds like American heresy. Shouldn't we at least point out the failure of secularism? Shouldn't we make a case for a transcendent basis for law from our Christian heritage of special revelation and natural law?

Christopher Dawson said that it's no exaggeration to say that all "civilizations have always been religious." Even our founding Deists tipped their hats to the connection between religion and morality, but they also put a wedge between the two and secularists have been driving it with reckless abandon ever since. Blind Willie Johnson used to sing:

I've got a Bible in my house

I've got a Bible in my house

If I don't read

My soul be lost

Nobody's fault but mine

Nobody's fault but mine

We need to start reading it again don't we?

Proverbs 14:34 Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people.

Deuteronomy 4:8-9, And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and

laws as this body of laws I am setting before you today? Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.

So it seems to me that these are the governmental options:

1. Constantinianism
2. Separation of Church and State
3. Secularism
4. Chastised Constantinianism

Governor Winthrop tried the first with mixed results, some of which were more than a little scary this side of Israel and the New Jerusalem. The second option led us into the third with disastrous results to the state and the church. Has the fourth option ever been tried? Should it?

Brother Hitchens

Great New Cereal!

God's Permissive Will and Divine Necessity

God's will, according to Luther and Calvin, extends beyond salvation to all things, and it imposes necessity on both. When applied to salvation we are talking about predestination, when talking about everything else we are talking about providence.

Augustine says that "the will of God is the necessity of all things" (On Genesis in the Literal Sense 6, 15, 26, PL 34, 350). Calvin quotes this in support of his and Luther's doctrine that everything, even the fall, happens by divine necessity or by divine decree. This means that from God's perspective nothing could be otherwise than it is, though from our perspective most things are contingent or could go in more than one way.

With regard to permissio, or God's permissive will, Augustine wrote, “Nothing, therefore, happens but by the will of the Omnipotent, He either permitting it to be done, or himself doing it” (Enchiridion 95). So there is a difference between God doing something and permitting something to be done, but both are willed by God and thus necessary. Augustine adds: "His permission is not unwilling, but willing" (Enchiridion 100).

For Augustine, God permitted the fall but it was nonetheless his will and thus happened of necessity. This because God didn't add the gift of perseverance to Adam and Eve. When Calvin and Luther speak of the divine "decree" it is simply another way for them to express that all things, even what God permits, happens by divine necessity.

Being downstream from the via moderna, Luther and Calvin use the terminology of "decree" and "ordination," but they gave it the Augustinian sense of necessity. Luther and to some extent Augustine and Calvin, spoke of God's will as preached and hidden. God's hidden will works all in all and thus imposes necessity. His revealed will expressed in the gospel works our salvation.

A Civil Debate

I haven't blogged in a while because I've been marshaling my forces for a Civil War debate that occurred yesterday. I had a ball fighting the intellectual battle, but I'm also licking some wounds inflicted by some good friends: Chris Baker (Southern Sympathizer) & Pete Watson (Southern Gentleman). I was also happy to have Michael Colvard (Northern Sympathizer) on my side. Stay tuned for some videos of the debate. Yours, a Saved Yankee.