Posted on 08/15/2012 7:38:20 PM PDT by darrellmaurina
I find that the study of Natural Law Theory is what gives Catholic Theology the fundamental advantage over Protestant Theology. It is where Common Sense and Logic and Reason come from and the Bible should really never conflict with the teleological design of man (which is to unite with the opposite sex, have children, and then do their natural Duty of raising/protecting their own children and families.
St. Thomas Aquinas knew—since God made man rational—that we were meant to understand the things in Nature and their teleological ends-—Our intellect is meant to be used for understanding the world—since it is His creation and points to understanding of God and Truth.
I find that many people with PH.D’s are irrational and have no logic and it is because of their embracing Postmodernist philosophy which gets rid of Natural Law-—because then they can get rid of the Designer and make themselves into gods.
Your logic is much better than MANY theologians in today’s world. Pastor Bonhoeffer stated in 1931 that in America (as well as Germany) the Christianity being practiced was “religionless”—esp. by the pastors on the cover of all the prominent newspapers and magazines at the time.
Truth/Justice/Logic/Virtue/Wisdom====all go together-—can’t have any of it without Natural Law Theory. You especially have to use Logic with the Bible—not only Faith.
Excellent comment and completely correct. This also gives lie to the argument that homosexuals just want the same legal privileges and protections married people have. They've gotten civil unions which are legal and economic contracts/partnerships, but that's not enough.
Why the push for homosexual marriage? To try and get man to affirm what God has denied.
Marriage is a sacrament and cannot be consented to without the approval of God.
Look at all the sociological/psychological evidence. Science is finally catching up to God. We now know that rampant sexuality in any form isn’t healthy. Marriage works best. Families built around marriage are what create great civilizations.
To state otherwise is to ignore the historical record. It’s simple dissembling.
Since I’m not Reformed, I have no impediment to criticizing Dr. Horton’s 2 kingdom’s view.
First, it’s utterly unsupported by the actual stories of the bible. Whether Joseph and Pharaoh, David and Samuel, Hezekiah and Isaiah, Daniel and Babylonian Emperors, Esther and the King, Jesus and Pilate, James and Herod, Paul and Felix, and maybe even John and the Emperor, there is no shortage of God-believers involving themselves in affairs of state.
Jesus’ words to “render to Caesar what is Caesar’s” does not say to be uninvolved as citizens. There is no doubt, of course, that Christianity is not about taking over kingdoms and forcibly subjecting them to our beliefs. (We’ll leave that to Islam.) Christ’s intent was that believers actually believe, not that they be forced to say they are believers.
To say we are to withdraw from the reality of the political responsibilities that are upon us is no different than saying we should withdraw from the responsibility to help fight a fire at our neighbor’s house.
Truly, Christians must be involved in the political process.
Just one clarification — being Reformed definitely does not require one to believe “Two Kingdoms” theology. Many conservative Calvinists believe that Dr. Horton and the Westminster-West people have imported a Lutheran view of the state. I do not understand Lutheran doctrine well enough to make that claim and I don't want to bear false witness against Lutheran brothers. I'm “pinging” a Freeper who is a Missouri Synod Lutheran, Rev. Charles Henrickson, to see if he wants to comment.
I do know Reformed doctrine well enough to believe that “Two Kingdoms” theology, especially in its more radical forms, cannot possibly be reconciled with what Ulrich Zwingli did in Zurich, what John Calvin did in Geneva, what John Knox did in Scotland, what the Dutch burghers did in the Netherlands, and what the Puritans did in England and New England. I cannot imagine how anyone can say with a straight face that Calvinists historically did not believe their faith had direct political implications.
Some of the “Two Kingdoms” people admit that the “Old Calvinists” were, in their words, “theocratic” but say the American revisions of the Westminster Confession make that unnecessary to believe anymore. Others, including a Ph.D student in my own theological circles, are making serious efforts to prove that John Calvin himself advocated “Two Kingdoms” theology. I plan to read his doctoral dissertation or subsequent books, but I just don't see it.
Exactly right xzins.
The same thing goes for Abortion and every other thing that God is displeased with.
We do this because we love our Children, our Family, our Friends, and even our Enemies, because our Heavenly Father desires this out of us.
Another long thesis of self-congratulation. When any of you wise latinos out there has actually done the 24 months of research into each letter of the legal opinions as I did, charting the progression from the Supreme Court’s CLEAR UPHOLDING OF MARRIAGE AS THE BUILDING BLOCK OF US SOCIETY in the 1960s, on through its dismantling, block by block, including not only SCOTUS’ own decisions but the 500 or so lower court cases stemming from their decisions, and has written a detailed history of those decisions as I have, can you thump your back in one-upmanship on the topic.
While I appreciate your comment that my “logic is much better than MANY theologians in today’s world,” credentials count in the academic world. Someone with better academic credentials than me needs to be responding to these Two Kingdoms people.
On the broader issue you raise of natural law, my concern about natural law is not primarily the Roman Catholic way of viewing it but rather how the Two Kingdoms people are saying we should apply natural law and not Scripture in dealing with civil government.
In fact, some Reformed people have agreed to some extent with a Thomistic view of natural law. RC Sproul and the “classical apologetics” movement are in that category. I'm not in agreement with them but that's not an issue on which I'm going to fight.
I'm not going to ask you to agree with a Reformed view of total depravity — if you are a Roman Catholic, you need to be faithful to your own doctrinal position or leave your church — but once the doctrine of total depravity is affirmed, I'm sure you can see why most Calvinists do not believe the sinful human mind is able to understand general revelation properly.
In other words, even if natural law would in theory be sufficient to understand God's will from it, our sinful brains can't make sense of it and will come up with really bad perversions of it. General revelation is enough to leave us without excuse four our sin but not enough to lead us into the right paths. Yes, “the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead,” but while that's enough to leave us without excuse it's not enough to save us.
Romans 1:18-23 applies here: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.”
Again, I'm not asking you to change your Roman Catholic viewpoint, only to understand the logic behind the reasons why which most (not all) Calvinists do not emphasize the use of natural law or general revelation.
Hope this helps.
Absolutely. This is a stewardship issue. A vote has been placed in our household, and we must care responsibly for it.
Excellent point, brother.
I repeat: I do not think the acts of the Supreme Court are driven by reason. Twenty years ago, when I began the research, I believed that a majority of justices still adhered to their personal bias towards a JudeoChristian form of marriage, in view that the SCOTUS repeatedly UPHELD traditional marriage against challenges up until the 1970s, when Thurgood Marshall and other encroaching leftists started appeasing the underworld socialists and communists ON THIS ISSUE.
Please read the words of my original post, including the dates cited, before jumping on the "you so stupid" bandwagon here. I actually did the research in one of the nation's most outstanding law libraries. Why continue to insist that I must be wrong from the comfort of your sofa without having done similar research yourself? Could it be...vanity?
So very true, dear brothers in Christ!
Well apparently the point I made must have ticked off someone since my post was removed. I certainly didn't request that it be removed.
Moderators, could you explain why my post was removed?
Yes, Lutherans do teach the doctrine of the "Two Kingdoms," because it is the biblical teaching.
This is a huge subject. In fact, I taught a whole week's course on this subject at a pastors' conference in Indonesia in March, under the theme, "The Two Kingdoms: The Proper Distinction of Church and State."
Here is a blog report I wrote on that conference: The Luther Academy goes to Indonesia. I'll quote from that article now to give you a quick synopsis of the Lutheran view:
The topic on which I lectured . . . was “The Two Kingdoms: The Proper Distinction of Church and State.” . . .
We started with the distinction of Law and Gospel, since that is the basis for the distinction of how God rules in his two “kingdoms” (or “governments”), Church and State. The “first use” of the Law, written on human hearts, is how God keeps order in the world, especially through civil government. The Gospel is the special ministry of the Church, by which God saves sinners for Christ’s sake for eternal life. Law and Gospel, Church and State--these need to properly distinguished and not confused, so that each can do its necessary job.
The seminal work by Luther on the topic of the Two Kingdoms is his 1523 treatise, “Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed” (Luther’s Works, Volume 45). All subsequent Lutheran teaching on this topic stems from this essay. I led the group through this treatise, which was also a good way of getting at the key Bible passages, which Luther handles.
Next we went through the pertinent portions of the Lutheran Confessions, especially the following. From the Augsburg Confession: Articles IV, V, and VII, on Justification, the Ministry, and the Church; Article XVI, on Civil Government; and Article XXVIII, on Church Authority. Likewise, from the Apology: Article XVI, on Political Order. And from the Small and Large Catechisms: the Fourth Commandment and the Table of Duties.
After all of this, we were able to identify six key passages that Luther and the Confessions always were citing: Matthew 22:21, “Render unto Caesar”; John 18:36, “My kingdom is not of this world”; Acts 5:29, “We must obey God rather than men”; Romans 13:1-7, government as God’s servant that bears the sword; 2 Corinthians 10:4, “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal”: and 1 Peter 2:13-14, very similar to Romans 13.
Then we went through other biblical and historical examples of how the two kingdoms operate and how they often have been confused. From the Imperial Cult of Rome to Constantinian Christendom to the Medieval Crusades, from the Protestant Reformation to the Prussian Union to issues of Church and State today, history bears witness to the importance of keeping the two kingdoms in their proper perspective.
If anyone's interested, I can send you the three handouts I used at the conference, which give: an outline of the course; excerpts from Luther's essay on "Temporal Authority"; and excerpts from the Lutheran Confessions. Send me a freepmail with your e-mail address, and I'll send you the three documents as file attachments.
I'm planning to use this same material to teach a class at my congregations this fall on the same topic, "The Two Kingdoms: The Proper Distinction of Church and State."
BTW, Luther's important and helpful 1523 essay can be found online in pdf form: "Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed"
I'll post a comment on the particular subject of this thread here in a moment.
Leni
God has written his law, a sense of right and wrong, on human hearts. This is the basis for civil law, e.g., laws against murder, stealing, bearing false witness. See Romans 2:14-15: "For when Gentiles, who do not have the law [i.e., the Ten Commandments, given to Israel], by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them. . . ."
As much as possible, civil laws and societal norms should correspond to God's Law, his unchanging will for human society. When they do, a society works better. When they don't, a society declines. In our lifetime, American society has declined especially in the areas of marriage and the family, sexual behavior, and the like. We can and should work for improvement in these areas, both in unwritten societal norms and in written civil laws.
Matters such as abortion and homosexual "marriage" (sic) fall under the category of Law. One need not be a Chrisitan to recognize that these things are wrong. Nature, reason, and conscience all attest that abortion and homosexual behavior are wrong. To oppose these abominations is not a distinctively Christian position.
What IS distinctively Christian is the content of the Gospel, e.g., the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of the person and work of Christ, the doctrine of justification, the preaching of forgiveness and eternal life for the sake of Christ. This is the exclusive domain of the Church. This is the ministry of the Gospel.
The Law cannot save. Only the Gospel can do that. The Law can make for a better society, and it should do that.
One more post in a moment on what Michael Horton said.
Thanks for this. I’ll give it a look when I have time. I like guy who knows his stuff.
Summing up my position (and what I think is close to Horton's): Homosexual "marriage," no. Contractual arrangements between individuals, already permissible. But no special status bestowed by society on immoral relationships.
We agree on that, then. Sorry if I came across belligerent or vain.
You said, "My astonishment was not with the arguments of the left: it was with the contortions of the the Supreme Court justices". My thought was that since you were astonished by a [mental] contortion, you must have expected reason instead of a contortion. I misunderstood something; it happens to me often.
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