Posted on 12/09/2002 5:13:47 AM PST by SJackson
Exactly correct
GSA(P)
You don't read the whole thread do you? Read post 87 again.
If we advocate the rendering unto Caesar of that which is not his -- we disobey God.
And just where in the bible is the marriage contract reserved to God and God alone. Note I said the marriage contract, not the marriage sacrament.
When we seek to disabuse Caesar of his Usurpations, we do not disobey God; we obey him.
The only references to contract law that come to mind in scripture are the commands to use a fair weight and measure. However the exact size and control of that weight and measure is left up to the government. So if we go and buy gasoline acording to the US gallon are we breaking God's law because we are not buying it by the hin? I don't think so.
God himself tells us that He establishes governments to enforce His law (see my prior posts again) then if we support that gov doing what it's supposed to do, and work to insure that it continues to do what it's supposed to do, how are we disobeying God. Show me the scripture that says that obeying gov is disobeying God in all cases.
GSA(P)
Ok let's try it from this angle since you seem to be closing your eyes to all else. From scripture prove that a marriage license to regulate a social contract called marriage (NOT THE MARRIAGE SACRAMENT) is a violation of God's law.
GSA(P)
Please be more consistent. Does marriage belong to God, the church, or the family. Up till now you've been seemingly arguing that God and God alone has sole ownership. Are you incorrect in this post or in all your previous ones?
GSA(P)
Show me one passage of Scripture which supports your contrived and idolatrous distinction.
And claiming that "there was no government to speak of" is just another of your Lies against Scripture, intended to deny the truths of the Bible in service of your State-Worship. Try reading Genesis again: everywhere Abram/Abraham went, he was running into Kings. Ergo, your falsehoods about Scripture are summarily dismissed.
So, which is it? Was Abram and Sarai's Marriage somehow "invalid", or are you at War with the Law of God?
Ok let's try it from this angle since you seem to be closing your eyes to all else. From scripture prove that a marriage license to regulate a social contract called marriage (NOT THE MARRIAGE SACRAMENT) is a violation of God's law.
Show me one passage of Scripture which supports the sacrilegious division of Marriage which you are trying to create. In Scripture, Marriage is Marriage... and Caesar has NO RIGHT whatsoever to "certify" ANY ASPECT of Marriage whatsoever, because the INSTITUTION of Marriage is not his to certify.
Marriage is an institution (one which precedes, and therefore exists independently of, the State), and the whoring of any part of that institution to the illegitimate usurpation of Caesar is committing War against God's Law.
you have just whored unto Caesar that which belongs solely to the Family, the Church, and to God. ~~ Please be more consistent. Does marriage belong to God, the church, or the family. Up till now you've been seemingly arguing that God and God alone has sole ownership. Are you incorrect in this post or in all your previous ones?
Hold on... You actually think that there is some kind of "inconsistency"? Really??
Lemme ask you this: When "the Lord owns the cattle on a thousand hills", who owns the Cattle -- God, or the rancher?
Both, obviously. The doctrine of Divine Creation, combined with the doctrine of Human Stewardship, permits this "dual" ownership.
Who doesn't own the Cattle? The STATE. The Cattle are not the "property" of the State.
And only Idolaters, and State-Worshippers, and Antinomian Rebels against the Law of God, would try to "shoe-horn" the State into a position of ownership or control where he has no Biblical right to be.
May the blessings of God chase you down anyway and may you have a merry Christmas.
GSA(P)
Bollocks. The institution of Marriage preceded the institution of the State. BIBLICALLY. You know it, and I know it.
And you also know that you have not provided ONE Scriptural Evidence for your advocacy of whoring any aspect whatsoever of this precedent Institution (marriage) unto the Purview of Caesar.
You're leaving, because you don't want the Church to stop prostituting it's Marriage Rights to Caesar. Why? Because ultimately, you approve of this Spiritual Adultery... and would rather see it continue, than see the Church return to the Law of God.
God won't save America (please!) until the Idolaters in the Church are purged of their State-worship (among other sins).
Judgment falls first upon the House of the Lord.
If the State "sticks to the natural moral law" (i.e., the Biblical Law of God), then the State cannot "certify" or pronounce judgment upon Marriage in any way, shape, form, or fashion whatsoever.
The "natural moral law" (that is, the Biblical Law of God) prohibits such a usurpation of Authority by the State.
Ergo, any advocacy for any State "certification" of any marriage whatsoever constitutes an Idolatry and a Sacrilege, and places one at War with the natural moral law.
Thus, in keeping with the "natural moral law" for the authority of the State, the State cannot "certify" marriages without committing War against the Law of God.
QED
"Honor" the institution by claiming Legal Power over it's definition? That's like saying that Caesar "honors" a Man by climbing into bed with the man's Wife. So also does your advocacy of State Certification, whore out the Institution of Marriage unto Caesar.
Caesar has no business "recognizing" BY LAW or "acknowledging" BY LAW, any marriage in any way whatsoever. Such an "acknowledgement" or a "recognition" is by nature a Claim of Enforcement Authority over the institution, for all State Actions are ultimately undergirded by the State's monopoly of Force.
Such a "recognition" or "acknowledgement" of Marriage IN LAW, therefore amounts to a State usurpation of authority against God's Law for the prerogatives of the State.
The only business the State has in "honoring" Marriage is to consider that precedent Institution to be so far above it's authority to even comment upon, as to be akin to an Orthodox Jew's reverence for "G_D"... a holy fear so terrible that the State does not even utter the word "Marriage", for fear that it would be damned to hell for daring to even speak the name of "Marriage" with its bloody lips.
THAT is how the Institution of the State "honors" the precedent Institution of Marriage -- like the Ark of the Covenant, it dare not touch upon it; like the Holy of Holies, it dare not set foot inside it's sphere; like the Name of God, it dare not even speak of it. Anything less, would imply that the State has some infinitesimal fractional portion of Authority to "define" the validity of Marriage. It has no such right, at all.
I realize that for most citizens these days, sex has become entirely divested from procreation just as marriage has become entirely divested from Family.
The state is OBLIGATED to recognize the marriage contract on two counts:
(1) it is the State's judicial system (currently cranked toward divorce and "palimony", of course) to which both parties of the marriage contract will turn to enforce or dissolve the terms of that contract; and most importantly
(2) the State is obligated to ensure "justice for all" ... INCLUDING the children born of a marriage.
I'll agree in a heartbeat the State has absolutely abandoned the latter obligation ... instead working very hard to effect the Artificial Reality necessary to claim parity with the institution of matrimony for any and all sexual/economic unions of whatever duration, with or without the intent to bear children.
But I fail to see how you intend to claim sovereignty of the family -- a parent's RIGHT to educate and rear his children as he sees fit -- without first establishing by legally sound and recognized contact the union on which that family is founded.
Makes no sense.
While anyone can refer to Dominus Iejus and see where I stand on the obligation of men to seek and defend the truths of faith in their private lives and it's also true I recognize Christian Marriage as the zenith of justice for all members of the family, I see no reason to pretend that marriage is a strictly "Biblical" proposition.
The State is merely recognizing the Family as the essential set of relationships, the prime loyalties and overriding source of authority and support for individuals ... AS IT SHOULD.
Contrary to what the "anarchist" whiners in shortpants have to say, the State is People and always will be people. It's not evil, per se, but only moral to the extent that individuals with responsibility and power are moral.
Just because our government is essentially evil at this point is no reason to lose your head and espouse some nation-less utopia where everything's seen in economic terms and bound by mutual contracts but only the most precious, enduring and powerful of those contracts -- the sort which bring forth new life and assure fathers and mothers of sovereignty over their children and mutual support from each other -- are "private" matters only one's own sect or temple or mosque or Radical Fairy Ring in the Forest recognize.
You're being silly.
As a Catholic, I'm a little tired of your trotting out the Bible with which to try and beat this dead horse.
I realize it's your prerogative to believe as you wish but the FACT remains that the natural moral law has been apprehended over time by all sorts of men ... any of whom who loved and remained obedient to that law being pleasing in the eyes of his Creator ... "saved" or not saved.
(Else God is some Calvinist fiend and we're all subject to that inexorable pagan fate by which one's destiny is Determined one way or another.)
This nation was founded on self-evident truths. The sorts which ALL MEN (being created equal) may apprehend to one extent or another ... be they Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, pagans.
As much as I loathe the pinhead arguments re: "separation of church and state" which our Christianized "atheist" or "anarchist" friends use to the State's benefit always, I have no interest in making this a "Biblical" nation in the Protest-ant sense.
The Supreme Court's ruling in Roe v. Wade -- particularly the part where they noted that not all religious can agree when life begins -- stands as testament to the heinous errors inherent in "personal interpretation" absent absolute harmony with both revelation and scientific FACTS.
Further to that point ... here's a golden oldie I haven't trotted out for a while. It's by Goetz von Berlichingen on Cornelis's old "What's Left, What's Right, What's a Value" thread:
| On the other hand, if knowledge of the true and the good is common property, why is it so few people agree on what it is? Name one value that is good and true that is a common property for everyone. I beg to disagree. It only seems that few people agree because of the Leftist environment in which we live. It is a common tactic of the Deconstructionists to find small discrepancies among ethical systems and then emphasize them to the exclusion of the much more substantial areas of ecumenical accord. By this simple device, the Left seeks to prove that there is no objective morality. "Almost all of the great religions of the world are based on universalistic principles: The Bible enjoins us to 'love thy neighbor as thyself'; the Koran (or Qur'an) reminds us that 'human beings are worthy of esteem because they are human' and that the 'kindness of God . . . has now bound your hearts together so that through His goodness you may become brothers.' . . . Buddha taught compassion and self-sacrifice; 'right conduct' was one of the stages of the Eightfold Path along which an individual could seek an end to suffering.Morris Ginsburg, like many others, has pointed out how much most religious doctrines have in common: "A list of virtues or duties drawn up by a Buddhist would not differ very greatly from one drawn up by a Christian, a Confucianist, a Muhammedan, or a Jew. Formally all of the ethico-religions systems are universalist in scope." (Page 199. James Q. Wilson. The Moral Sense. New York: The Free Press, 1993. ) C.S.Lewis in The Abolition of Man has extracted eight general rules for human conduct, taken purposely from a variety of different cultures. They are:
|
This doesn't obligate the State to "certify" Marriage AT ALL, askel5. The State can (and does) punish Breach of Contract all the time, without writing the Contract for the contractors.
Rather, the Contractors write the Contract as they see fit; the State merely punishes any Breach of Contract. If there is no "breach", then there is no basis for prior State involvement of any sort -- whether to "acknowledge" or "recognize" or "register" or "certify" the Contract. The contractors enjoy Sole Right of definition over the terms of the Contract, the State is not involved in the formulation, and UNTIL there is a Breach of Contract, there is NO justification for State involvement whatsoever.
(2) the State is obligated to ensure "justice for all" ... INCLUDING the children born of a marriage. But I fail to see how you intend to claim sovereignty of the family -- a parent's RIGHT to educate and rear his children as he sees fit -- without first establishing by legally sound and recognized contact the union on which that family is founded.
Sure, but as noted above, the State has no authority whatsoever to involve itself in the establishment of the Contract.
Since the Right to form Covenants (Genesis 2-3) precedes the Existence of the State (Genesis 9), the formation of a contracted Private Covenant requires NO State involvement whatsoever (and except where State involvement is Biblically mandated, such involvement is illegitimate). The State may only intervene if and when a Contract has been Breached. It does not have the right to "acknowledge" or "recognize" or "register" or "certify" such Contracts at all, only punish a Breach if and when a Breach is brought to the State's attention.
If a Man and a Woman have a Contract together, and one of them Breaches the Contract, then the State must punish the Breach of Contract. This is true whether their Contract concerns marital relations, business relations, or what have you.
The State has no right to define their Contract as a "Marriage" AT ALL (the State has no right to claim any definitional authority whatsoever in regard to that Word); only to enforce that contract's particular terms, as written by the Contractors (NOT the State).
"Any of whom who loved and remained obedient to that law being pleasing in the eyes of his Creator".... Well, lessee -- that's a Numerical Set of, hmm... precisely Zero.
The Righteousness of Christ alone being pleasing to the perfect Holiness of God, and all having sinned, God is pleased with none others.
Why are you raising an argument which, constituting as it does a Numerical Set of Zero, is Logically Moot?? I'm afraid I don't follow.
(Else God is some Calvinist fiend and we're all subject to that inexorable pagan fate by which one's destiny is Determined one way or another.)
Confronting a Race of beings who are all, by nature and spiritual essence, all-together Haters of God, who would N-E-V-E-R "choose God" of their own natural Volition (because they hate Him) without the prior Sovereign Re-engineering of their God-hating hearts... God in His Mercy ordained to Rescue some of these wretched beings from the noxious putrescence of their rebellion against Him, and sacrificed His Own Son to provide the Reconciling Atonement for His Chosen.
He didn't have to save any; it would be commensurate with His Justice to damn them all. Yet, He has seen fit to Save some.
And you call Him a "fiend" for mercifully deigning to save those whom He will? A curious definition of "fiend", and a rather ungrateful assignation of the slur on your part... don't you think??
As we see: Man is the fiend, and God is the savior.
The Supreme Court's ruling in Roe v. Wade -- particularly the part where they noted that not all religious can agree when life begins -- stands as testament to the heinous errors inherent in "personal interpretation" absent absolute harmony with both revelation and scientific FACTS.
And yet... you still advocate that the Church whore out the definition of Marriage to this spiritual fornicator named "Caesar"?? Curiouser and Curiouser!!
ONLY if the State has NO RIGHT WHATSOEVER to define "Marriage", can the absolute legal protection of truly Biblical Marriages be restored.
Understand...
Certainly the State will also have to enforce other "contracts" drawn up by various non-Christians; but if these unions do not constitute Biblical Marriages, then the Church has no legal obligation to treat them as Marriages -- only as "Contracts" to which the Church, not being a Contracted Party, has no obligation.
The Church knows that these are not valid Biblical Marriages (and even so does the broader Society, hence our euphemistic terms "remarriage" and "open marriage"); but by surrendering the definition and certification "Marriage" to the Power of the State, Christians have incurred the legal obligation to treat these as Marriages. Christians have rendered that which is Holy, unto the blood and filth that is Caesar.
You cast yourself as a Defender of Marriage and Culture, but methinks thou dost protest to much.
Since You have advocated that Christians whore out the definition and certification of "Marriage" to that filthy fornicator named "Caesar", You have no right to complain when the Institution of Holy Matrimony keeps becoming infected with Secularly Transmitted Diseases of the heart and soul.
I do too!! (I was just waiting for someone who does not have my reputation as a "Catholic-basher" to make the point).
Though like you say, "I can sure be corrected".
The Roman Catholic Church would not (last I checked) ever dream of whoring out the definition and certification of the "institution" of "Papacy" to that filthy spiritual fornicator named "Caesar". Why then, are (some) Roman Catholics so willing, then, to whore out the definition of "Marriage" to Caesar?
If there is such a thing as the "Institution of Papacy", Roman Catholics must admit that Caesar has NO Right whatsoever to define and certify that Institution. Well, if that be so, let us apply the ancient Hebrew Rule of Exegesis:
If the definition and certification of "Papacy" cannot in any aspect whatsoever be whored out to the fornications of Caesar, then how much the more can the definition and certification of Marriage (which Institution precedes both the State and, certainly, the so-called "institution of papacy") not, in any aspect whatsoever, be whored out to the fornications of the State.
Sorry to abuse your analogy yet again (but I laughed so hard when I first read it, I feel that I just have to)...
And without necessarily evaluating themselves the validity of the contract, the integrity of the performance or the just value of the consideration.
Experts in the field do that sort of thing. The judge and/or jury make their finding based on some combination of the Bare Minimum of contract law (as set forth in the law) and the detailed information provided by the experts for both sides.
Marriage works somewhat thus. Sometimes an arrangment is confected outside the state which either bears, inherits or purchases children and/or real property and due to some falling out between the parties or abuse and/or murder of the rights of a child or party, it falls up on the court to sort out the rightful owner of the property or the proper guardian of the child.
It is not the State's purview to decide whether or not a child is baptized, a marriage is suitable or a union is dissolved by annulment.
I agree with xzins that Catholics look to the Church as authority, Muslims look to the prophet, Jews look to their Rabbi and protestants do whatever they think is best according to their own or the founder of their sect's interpretation of one Bible passage or another.
But I consider these the experts in the field ... all of whom have their own strictures and guidelines and requirements to fit their communities just as states or counties will have certain building codes proper to a coastline or a faultline, high altitude or marshland.
That's an improper analogy of sorts since the "The State" has a part in codifying such strictures but -- at heart -- when constructing a building, it's generally accepted that the materials must be of good quality, the design must be sound and the structure is built to house and protect People.
I think the State is equal to and even obligated to recognizing the base foundation of society is the Family and the only enduring means of creating and sustaining families is the union of Man and Woman.
The only reason we're having such a ludicrous discussion -- I feel like I'm sitting at tea with Alice, the Hatter and a March Hare -- is because the State has elected to abandon its obligations to respect the sovereignty and sanctity of the marriage contract on which families are founded and instead pursued an end-run of "Personal Values" by which they've sanctioned a three-prong assault on the family:
It's not that I'm arguing the State has final say in what is and is not a marriage. I'm just the last gasp, I guess, of those whose brains haven't been totally caved in and still understand that any just state is OBLIGATED to protect the integrity and respect the sovereignty of the marriage contract by which individuals bind themselves to one another and bring forth new lives entitled to the full measure of human rights and justice.
If not a Mother AND a Father they know and love.
I realize I'm not going to make anymore headway with you, OP, than I do the self-styled "anarchists" I argue with regularly. That's truly a pity because it's depressing as hell to see you all do the Evil State's dirty work day in and day out with the best of intentions, of course.
We agree on plenty and I do understand where you're coming from. The failure to limit the State to the one true and universal construct of marriage and family -- Man, Wife, Child conceived by sexual union -- is sorta the last nail in the coffin, IMHO.
I have every hope for those of whatever faith who do maintain real marriage. All disappointment and trepidation abouit the future aside, I'm honestly rather fascinated by the way the Christians can be every bit as effective as the "anarchists", as the atheists, as the homosexuals, even, in advancing the State's agenda.
Just one of those times, I guess, where I'm feeling guilty for wishing my side were half as clever as theirs. It's very easy sometimes to understand the contempt in which they hold us and how it is they fully expect to corral, brand and breed us like cattle.
There you go. You explain the entire issue here.
Obviously....very obviously....we do NOT in this PRESENT TIME have anything approaching a just state.
Let's take a broad meat-axe to your entire convoluted post, and cut to the marrow:
And yet... you still advocate that the Church whore out the definition of Marriage to this spiritual fornicator named "Caesar"?? Curiouser and Curiouser!!
ONLY if the State has NO RIGHT WHATSOEVER to define "Marriage", can the absolute legal protection of truly Biblical Marriages be restored.
Understand...
Certainly the State will also have to enforce other "contracts" drawn up by various non-Christians; but if these unions do not constitute Biblical Marriages, then the Church has no legal obligation to treat them as Marriages -- only as "Contracts" to which the Church, not being a Contracted Party, has no obligation.
The Church knows that these are not valid Biblical Marriages (and even so does the broader Society, hence our euphemistic terms "remarriage" and "open marriage"); but by surrendering the definition and certification "Marriage" to the Power of the State, Christians have incurred the legal obligation to treat these as Marriages. Christians have rendered that which is Holy, unto the blood and filth that is Caesar.
You cast yourself as a Defender of Marriage and Culture, but methinks thou dost protest to much.
Since You have advocated that Christians whore out the definition and certification of "Marriage" to that filthy fornicator named "Caesar", You have no right to complain when the Institution of Holy Matrimony keeps becoming infected with Secularly Transmitted Diseases of the heart and soul.
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