Sacralist Jurisprudence and Evangelical Syncretism

https://reformedforum.org/podcasts/ctc877/

I've been listening to Christ the Center since about 2009. An interesting podcast most of the time, this episode was an exception. After realizing the guest was a law professor at Liberty University, I almost turned it off. I struggle to take anyone associated with Liberty seriously, but I decided to give it a listen.

Essentially the entire episode was an exercise in begging the question. The assumption is that we as Christians are to somehow have an interest in how society is to organize its education. This is a sacral assumption and yet one opposed to Scripture. From Paul's statements in 1 Corinthians 5 about 'what have I to do to judge them also that are without?' to his statements in 2 Timothy 2 - 'No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life', we are reminded that such questions are driven by philosophy and tradition not exegesis.

We're to surrender all duty and all things to God we're told. Indeed, but He tells us how to pursue this end and Christ tells us that there are things that rendered to Caesar that are separate from things rendered to God. Paul's application in Romans 12-13 contrasts the Christian surrender of vengeance to the vengeance role of the state - a providential role but not a Christian one.

And the idea that society at large will somehow apply the principles of Christian education - is an exercise in dissonance. The wicked have no right to declare God's statute or take His covenant in their mouth (Psalm 50.16).

We are in Adam or we are in Christ. There is an antithesis - points emphasized by the host. And yet the entire dialogue is an exercise in erasing that very antithesis or begging the question regarding society at large and assuming that somehow it can become Christian or Christianised - which would (need it be said) eliminate the antithesis. That's the very notion of sacralism - a society with no antithesis.

The conversation is a confused mess criticizing Thomism and yet all but relying on the Pelagian views of the American Founders concerning liberties and other Lockean expressions of Classical Liberalism - none of which are sustained in the New Testament. On the contrary these very 'rights', we as Christians are told to surrender.

The whole discussion regarding tyranny falls into the same pitfalls and traps - a mixed and syncretist exercise in tortured exegesis conflated and combined with Liberal thought. Taxes are not tyranny - at least not according to the New Testament. And even if they are reckoned as such, the New Testament answer is clear enough - so what? Nero was the tyrant of Paul's day when he wrote Romans 13. Nothing these people say accords with what Paul is teaching in that context. Nowhere does the New Testament suggest that we should resist 'tyrannical' taxes.

Tuomala entangles himself in a morass of Theonomic and libertarian ideas, denying the fiction of Originalism (the only bright spot in his thinking) and yet utterly confounded over the question of state involvement in public education. For that matter the legislative and judicial hook upon which he hangs his entire argument is dispensed with in about two seconds - the 14th Amendment. This changed the role of the Federal Government. Additionally non-Originalists understand that the Constitution was written in the 1780's and the needs and issues surrounding an industrial society are going to be quite different. Once again the Civil War fundamentally changed the nature of the Constitution as have the 'interests' of the state in light of not just the questions surrounding that war but society in general. One may agree or disagree but that's the way it is.

For my part I can dismiss these discussions as a waste of time as the Constitution is fundamentally un-Christian. And yet I can live under its auspices. The only danger it presents to the Church is when its false notions are confused or conflated with Christian doctrine and ethics - the very thing this episode pursues with great zeal.

The appeals to the First Amendment are disingenuous anyway. Tuomala doesn't want the state compelling him to financially support (via tax) speech he doesn't agree with - teaching things he doesn't believe. I'm going to guess he's going to draw a line somewhere on that. On that basis I would pay no tax as I don't agree with much of anything the state says or propagates - especially in terms of economics and foreign policy. I'm going to guess his answer would be 'too bad for you'.

Further, he seems to suggest that the perverted heretic Roy Moore was right in wanting to post the Decalogue on his courtroom wall. Maybe it was paid for privately but the building is still a publicly funded building and thus taxpayers are subsidizing the public display of Moore's beliefs. He does believe in the state's right to compel speech and the funding of it - just when he happens to agree with it.

By the end of the episode my suspicions regarding academics at Liberty (and Pat Robertson's Regent) were only further confirmed. A Christian would be mad to attend that corrupt institution or send their children to that theological and ethical cesspool. I would rather see my children feed on secular rot and know it for what it is - then to feast on the deceptively sweet rot offered by places like Liberty, Regent, Grove City, and Hillsdale. This professor struck me as an amateur, someone incompetent in the realm of jurisprudence.

A society with no antithesis due to Christianisation is nevertheless something other than Christian. And in the process the Church loses its identity. This is the legacy of Liberty University and the fundamentally compromised thinking it rests on and continues to disseminate. In this present evil age the Church lives in a state of permanent antithesis. We go about our business and our lives, words, and deeds proclaim the Kingdom to the world and its powers. We have a charge regarding our children which are part of the Church. The world is outside this. Trying to steer their education and politics to somehow put a Christian veneer on their Babel is not just a waste of time but an exercise in chaos and confusion. Let them build their schools, fight their wars, build their empires and die. They're going to do it anyway. So what if the Supreme Court Justices believe in a 'level of neutrality'. They're not Christians - and those that profess to be demonstrate clearly by their works (and the fact they're on the Court) that they're not. They're Samaritans. Turn away.

I don't care what Madison said about the interests of the state and religion. The Founders were wrong. The Revolution was wrong. And yet it happened and they set up a new government. We live under it but we don't sanction it by voting, calling on their courts, investing in their empire and its wars, wearing its uniforms, or being agents of its violence. If it's overthrown, then so be it. The powers that be are ordained by God - it doesn't mean they're sanctioned or covenantal. We'll live under that new government as well.

The only exception to this would be a state that professes to be Christian and yet is not - since such a thing cannot exist. At that point we must openly condemn the state - not with violence but with the proclamation of the Gospel and Kingdom which are necessarily in opposition to it. And that's true of the Holy Roman Empire, the Papal States, the British Empire - or the American. Tuomala and his ilk must be opposed and condemned and should the Christo-fascists of the Trump cult take over - we must oppose them as well even though we're driven out of the Church and suffer persecution. They are far more of a threat to the Church than the decadent capitalist forces of the DNC and its bogus humanitarian empire.

Sadly this kind of confusion hitches the Church to the Babel-wagon and the Church is harmed (even decimated) as a result. Just look around if you doubt this.

This episode surprised me. I'm not a fan of Confessional Presbyterianism but I thought a little better of the people at Reformed Forum. This episode was a mistake.