Two Rabbinical Groups Support "Ten Commandments" Judge Roy Moore

Actually, it is a mitzvah of the Torah (in this week's portion, I believe) that `Am Yisra'el was to choose a king (som tasim `aleykha melekh) so that he could 1) exterminate the `Amaleqites and 2) build the Temple. Samuel scolded not the act of choosing a king in and of itself, but the flawed motivation of the Israelites which was not so much to obey the mitzvah as to "be like all the other nations round about."

It is a great tragedy that all the ideas that were originally Jewish have come to be perceived as non-Jewish and even anti-Jewish ideas (Theocracy, holy war, etc.). I don't know how long it will take for Jews to re-learn their own heritage after attacking it in others for so long. I suppose when they stop using Scottish names and actually go back to using Hebrew names like Yedidyahu.

The modern secular state is a recent phenomenon. In ancient times religion was neither private nor purely interior but formed the public life of the nation (though most of these religions were false). Today in the modern secular state we have Pat Buchanan putting his loyalty to fellow northwest-European-descended Protestants ahead of his (non-existent) loyalty to his indigenous Mexican co-religionists. This is a thoroughy modern notion and whether Buchanan's loyalty is motivated by race or secular state citizenship he is most certainly not being an orthodox Catholic.

I believe in the Rule of Law. I will work through lawful channels to change the law (and I do not oppose free speech expressed in opposition to this ruling). I believe that open defiance of the Rule of Law by Judge Moore is wrong. His first duty as Chief Judge is to uphold the Rule of Law.

I thought you were against "law" and in favor of "grace?"

At any rate, we'd best re-segregate all the lunch counters (or, as we would call them down here, dinner counters) and reprofess our loyalty to her Royal Majesty as both the civil rights movement and the American Revolution were "against the law."

You seem very confused.

Thanks for the mitzvah clarification. Let me ask you this--do you think a resurgence of such ancient political ideas in Israel is likely anytime soon--or is the modern state just too secularist to go that route at this point?

On religion being part of the public life of the nation--precisely. My understanding is that in 1787 there was to be no *national* Church, because there were already different established Churches in each state, and to establish one of these overall was to run roughshod over the rest. New England's Puritans could hardly suffer support for a national Anglican Church--so the non-establishment clause was a compromise necessitated by the fractious heresies which birthed the colonies. But when in the early 1800s the state churches went by the wayside, the idea crept in (contrary to all precedent in Christendom) that it was necessary for there to be *no establishment at all.* Which of course, has led us to where we are--a government which panders pornographers, pederasts and the Stygian witches who revel demonically in some fictive "right" to infanticide.

As for Scottish names, point noted--I'll start calling my wife Yahudis.

Patrick Henry delivered his well-known statement, "Give me liberty or give me death." at St. John's Church in Richmond, which

became famous as a living memorial to American liberty when 120 Virginia colonial leaders, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Nelson, Jr., and Patrick Henry, met there in the spring of 1775 to avoid the wrath of Royal Governor Lord Dunmore in Williamsburg.
The Second Virginia Convention, originally called to consider the recent proceedings of America's first Continental Congress became the setting for Patrick Henry's bold call for arming the colony of Virginia. [snip]
Henry's famous speech in defense of liberty occurred on March 23, 1775 inside the Church.

Henry mentions God several times in that same "liberty or death" speech...

I repeat it, sir, we must fight!! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!
Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature has placed in our power.
There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us.
"Forbid it, Almighty God -- I know not what course others may take; but as for me -- give me liberty or give me death!"

Oops, is that an angel in the picture? Were there any religious images in the Church at the time that the Virginia Convention met there?

All the following text is from the Library of Congress Website.

standing in his pew, Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death! [snip] As the first governor of Virginia and as a state legislator, Henry continued to have profound influence on the development of the new nation. He worked for the addition of the first ten amendments to the Constitution. Known as the Bill of Rights, they guarantee certain freedoms, such as the freedom of speech and religion.
Can you imagine the U.S. without such rights?

There may be no "authorization" in the NT for a Christian State per se, but there's certainly no argument there against it, and the copious examples from the OT would tilt the scales. Whatever form of government we find there--Judges, Kings, it was theocratic.

The NT leaves the form of government rather open--but anyone who tries to make it call for a secular state has a impossible case to make IMHO.

The new testament is apocalyptic, as were the early chr*stians. The Roman Empire, prior to its conversion, was the evil world system that could not be converted but only overthrown at the "second coming." Of course once the Roman Empire converted this theology was no longer kosher (pardon the expression) and it was then that the "old testament" example was used to justify chr*stian "theocracy."

There was already a Theocratic religion given to 'Adam, Noach, 'Avraham, and to `Am Yisra'el at Sinai. The claim that this religion was temporary and a "foreshadowing" of another future permanent religion can only be accepted post facto, on the authority of chr*stianity itself (since the TaNa"KH does not imply any such thing to someone who doesn't already believe it).

I stand by my assertion that the "two kingdoms" doctrine of Protestantism, which separates religion from morality and law, is implicit in chr*stianity itself and that the Protestant reformers merely took this implication to its ultimate conclusion (since, quite correctly, they noted that it was hypocritical to use J*sus as an excuse to abolish the Torah and then replace it with another legal/ritual system).

I have posted my musings on these topics at my web site.

PS: Is it not hypocritical for the same churches who have for centuries attacked the idea of a "temporal messiah" who rules the world (insisting instead on a "spiritual messiah" in Heaven) to turn right around and demand "chr*stian theocracy?" That simply makes no sense, as may be attested by the fact that these advocates of a "spiritual messiah" are now saying that a Davidic monarch (from the French royal family!) is going to rule the world and establish the Kingdom of G-d on earth. My my. It seems that these people don't really believe J*sus is the messiah after all or they would allow him that privilege.

The claim that this religion was temporary and a "foreshadowing" of another future permanent religion can only be accepted post facto, on the authority of chr*stianity itself (since the TaNa"KH does not imply any such thing to someone who doesn't already believe it).

"Religion" is a loaded word there. I'm sure I don't have to go into Christian theology with you, but "dispensation" or maybe "rite" would fit better I think. "I come not to take away the Law but to fulfill it" etc.

Adam didn't need a government because he was one nation. Abraham's family did not need a government, because he was one family. Israel, however, needed a government, because it was one nation. If and when the Gentiles as multiple nations are to be incorporated into the family of God (as we believe they have) you can't expect a Davidic kingdom to rule over them all. Divesting the moral law from a specific form of government is quite natural if you want that moral law to penetrate into multiple nations and governments. The "two kingdoms" idea is a response to that need.

As for the Reformers, well, you won't find me too willing to defend that heresy. :)

Forgive my tardy reply. Real Life has been brutal this month.

If and when the Gentiles as multiple nations are to be incorporated into the family of God (as we believe they have) you can't expect a Davidic kingdom to rule over them all.

Then why the expectation of a Davidic "emperor of the last days" to arise from the French royal family to rule the world?

Though you and I must disagree on matters of theology, I understand where you are coming from. What I do not understand is the hostility to an organic, rooted, hierarchical, nationalist, Davidic Israel by the people who advocate those things for everyone else. It is almost as if they believe that Jewish rootedness causes uprooting elsewhere, that Jewish nationalism causes internationalism, Jewish theocracy causes atheism among non-Jews, etc. I can only conclude from this hostility that the people who have it instinctively realize that the unique mission and status of Israel is that such a status for them would bring an end to all other (to me, subjective and false) religious systems and bring about the eschaton and the triumph of the True G-d over all falsehood. Is this what makes Israel so unique? Can Israel not have such a Theocratic society without "destroying the world" (ie, the world's false religions)? Haman (y'sh"v), the great enemy of Israel, told King 'Achashveirosh that the Jews used to go into their Temple to work "witchcraft" and afterwards emerged to destroy the world. Is this why so many "palaeoconservatives" see a rebuilt Jewish Temple and Jewish settlement of the Land (as well as a hierarchical vision of humanity with Israel as the priesthood) as so incredibly corrosive and destructive of world order?

Is the "new world order" about which these people scream so incessantly merely their term for the eschatological messianic Kingdom of G-d on earth? And is this why the they so instinctively connect the homelessness of Israel with the rootedness of all other nations?

As for the Reformers, well, you won't find me too willing to defend that heresy. :)

Hey . . . do you have any idea what the Eastern Orthodox say about you Catholics? Did you know that the whole "sin and atonement" interpretation of the crucifixion was a later artificial post-Augustinian development unknown to the Church Fathers? ;-)

Seriously, though Protestantism tries to correct the hypocrisy it senses in historical chr*stianity's antinomian stance on the Torah while adovocating a law of its own, in the end bowing one's head and saying the "sinner's prayer" (which is how most evangelicals are "saved") is just as much "earning one's salvation" as anything else (the difference is one of quantity, not quality). Only the Primitive or "Hardshell" Baptists, who insist that the "elect" are the passive and non-participating recipients of salvation by pure grace, can be said to be truly internally consistent.

My pleasure of course. :)

Then why the expectation of a Davidic "emperor of the last days" to arise from the French royal family to rule the world?

Why indeed! :) And from the French!

Did you know that the whole "sin and atonement" interpretation of the crucifixion was a later artificial post-Augustinian development unknown to the Church Fathers? ;-)

LOL...I'd heard inklings. I gave up on debating justification after I found the topic was much more complicated than my miniscule interest in it would like to go.

The Catholic Encyclopedia takes the exact opposite tact on antinomianism, which it says "was not only a more or less natural outgrowth from the distinctively Protestant principle of justification by faith, but probably also the result of an erroneous view taken with regard to the relation between the Jewish and Christian dispensations and the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. Doubtless a confused understanding of the Mosaic ceremonial precepts and the fundamental moral law embodied in the Mosaic code was to no small extent operative in allowing the conception of true Christian liberty to grow beyond all reasonable bounds, and to take the form of a theoretical doctrine of unlimited licentiousness."

Jews do not believe the Mosaic Law is binding on Gentiles, who are under the Noahide Laws, right? In my mind that makes the Mosaic Laws analogous to the disciplinary laws of particular churches--very much morally binding for those under its dispensation, but not anyone else. Eastern Rite Catholics are not being bound by the disciplines of the Latin Rite and so on, although they are both one in faith. Otherwise you get into all these problems in Christian theology with God abrogating (or at the least declaring useless) His own Laws.

It is a pleasure to converse with someone such as yourself.

It is true that TaRYa"G HaMitzvot (the 613 commandments) do not bind non-Jews. Non-Jews are bound by Sheva` Mitzvot Benei Noach (the Seven laws of the sons of Noah) instead, though both the 613 and the 7 have many complicated ramifications that are not obvious on the surface.

I was Catholic for six years and investigated Eastern and Oriental (non-Chalcaedonian) Orthodoxy as well. But as a Fundamentalist Biblicist I could never accept the actual Biblical ritual law as temporary or prophetic only and that it was to be superceded by a non-Biblical ritual system adapted from paganism. If the "salvation won by J*sus" was to be appropriated through a moral/legal/ritual system, then what was wrong with appropriating HaShem's forgiveness for sins by obeying the 613/7 Laws? Why was a new religion, much less a new calendar and religious ceremonial, necessary at all? I suppose to a lifelong Catholic this presents no logical problem, but to someone coming from Fundamentalist Protestantism it made Paul's attacks on the Torah seem hypocritical. I often observed that liturgical chr*stianity preached Protestantism to the Jews and Judaism to the Protestants!

But enough of all that.

Eastern Orthodoxy does indeed insist that the Western understanding of the crucifixion as an offering of atonement for sin is a false accretion. Their theory of the "redemption" is basically impossible for a Westerner to understand. I do know that their doctrine of synergeia (by which the individual is saved, not by G-d alone, but by G-d and the individual working together) is what Westerners call "semipelagian."

Another irony is that just as some Catholics claim that only Protestants have a problem with evolution (and some Jews claim creationism is a strictly chr*stian position) there are Eastern Orthodox who claim that "Western creationism" is the result of a mistranslation by Augustine of the word simul and, and that the notion of the passivity of matter (as opposed to its participation in its creation) is a pagan notion. Hmmm. Their theory of creation seems to be similar to their theory of redemption. (BTW, there are now some Sefaradi Jewish intellectuals who are claiming that authentic Judaism is open to evolution and the documentary hypothesis, and that Orthodoxy is an alien invention by 'Ashkenazim who are "chr*stians who don't know it. I'm waiting for Billy Sunday to be declared an evolutionist.)

If you are interested in comparative liturgics, I still maintain the Armenians run everyone else into a gopher hole (though the Armenian Church itself is very liberal and based more on ethnicity than on theology). I actually have the Armenian badarak saved onto my computer, though I probably shouldn't. At one point in my spiritual search I attended an Armenian Apostolic church for the better part of a summer. It's a combination of the aesthetics and the nostalgia.

BTW, according to something I read at the website of The Remnant (which promoted the French Davidic messiah) this theory was endorsed by Padre Pio.

Just some maeandering thoughts on this and that!

In addition to the two groups mentioned in the initial post, another Orthodox group (representing the Mitnaggedic or more rationalistic stream of Orthodoxy) has also supported Judge Moore. The article by Rabbi Moshe Ben-Chaim is available here.

I am not completely at ease with this group's hyper-rationalism, though they offer some balance to the more mystical streams of Judaism, some aspects of which also make me uncomfortable. More to the point, however, is that the author is compelled to defend Judge Moore from the charge of mixing religion and government on the grounds that the giving of `Aseret HaDevarim (the "ten commandments") is history rather than religion. I feel that such a defense is unnecessary because G-d's authority rather than the US Constitution is of primary importance. One need not make claims that the Constitution is being violated to defend government recognition of HaShem, since a Constitution that does forbid such a thing is no law at all. Ultimately even the American form of government must meet the standards and obligations set by the Creator. It is He who judges Washington and Jefferson, not vice versa.

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