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To: RJR_fan

The church is a consideration, of course, as a candidate for some kind of communal lifestyle. The problem with that is that the individual is ultimately responsible before God.

The assembly is the assembly of the saints, that is, the “holy ONES.” These ONES join together because of “love”...another choice...and not because of any teaching that the individual must be obliterated and absorbed by the communal.


27 posted on 03/13/2011 1:57:42 AM PST by xzins (Retired Army Chaplain & proud of it: Truly Supporting the Troops means praying for their Victory!)
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To: xzins
These ONES join together because of “love”...another choice...and not because of any teaching that the individual must be obliterated and absorbed by the communal.

R J Rushdoony wrote a book-length meditation on the political implications of trinitarian Christianity, The One and the Many. Is reality ultimately singular? If so, monism makes sense, and we must all be One, subsumed into the Greater Whole, that entity that Hegel called "God walking through history," The State. Is reality ultimately plural? If so, then anarchy is the only way to go -- the "state of nature," with every man for himself. Both answer, Rushdoony said, are wrong. Reality is ultimately both singular and plural, since God Himself is simultaneously One and Three. Given this model, Christian nations have managed to simultaneously support form and freedom, individual and corporate concerns.

This explains in part the unceasing warfare of the God-haters on the normal family. Something about the marital union tells us something about God. Man and wife are simultaneously two, and one. As they delight in each other, and in their union, the individuality of each is sharpened, heightened, appreciated. Not subsumed. Not suppressed.

The 19th amendment disenfranchised the family, even as the 17th disenfranchised the states. If you are a God-hating statist, your preferred deity must be One, and rival allegiances, rival citizenships must be obliterated. If you are a Christian, with a healthy disrespect for the righteousness of man, then you will work to nurture multiple spheres of jurisdiction -- family, church, local governments. Home schooling is the deliberate and conscious repudiating of statism, the assertion that our children belong to God, not Caesar.

39 posted on 03/13/2011 1:14:19 PM PDT by RJR_fan ("Be kind to every person you meet. For every person is fighting a great battle." St. Ephraim)
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