BEYOND “CONSERVATIVE” & “LIBERAL”

NOTES ON DIVINE PRINCIPLES

OF GOVERNMENT

Part One

Regarding the Nature of Power

Garry D. Nation

c. 2008.  All rights reserved.

1. One Power, Two Expressions: There are two kinds or categories of power.

God has and uses power (δυναμισ [dynamis], sublime ability) to accomplish his will.

The sublime nature of the power of God is illustrated in Genesis 1:2, “And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.”  He is able to do what he wills to do.

God engages in two types of activity: creative, and redemptive. 

There is a distinction between the creative and redemptive activities of God, although they are both united in his ultimate purpose.

Likewise the power of God, his simple ability to perform his own will, is one; yet this one power is expressed in creation to one effect, and in redemption to another, different effect.

The power of God in creation (nature) is to create, and to sustain and temporally preserve that which he has created through Christ, the divine, eternal Logos, despite its fall into sin and corruption—a provisional order, being maintained by God’s providential goodness until the time when his redemptive purposes are complete.

The power of God in redemption is to create anew into an incorruptible nature; and in particular to save and preserve eternally those whom he has elected in grace through Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Savior, fitting them for a new heaven and a new earth that will never again fall into sin and corruption.

The unity between spiritual and material affairs is that there is one God, and in him one divine purpose: to bring together everything in heaven and earth under Christ, by whom and for whom all things were created.  (Ephesians 1:10; Colossians 1:16)

The implications of this principle are profound and pervasive, extending from the individual person, into society and the world, and even throughout the universe.

There are individual, personal implications regarding how we relate to to other people and to God; which in turn impact our personal maturation and adjustment to life’s crises (definable by creation), and how we determine meaning and purpose in life (ultimately definable only through redemption).

There are Social implications, regarding problems of groups of people and humanity at large, and the institutions that govern our lives: the institutions of Creation (family, neighbors, civil government), and the institution of Redemption (Church).

2. The Unity of Creation and Redemption: The unified purposes of God are all directed toward bringing the entire creation under the Lordship of the Son.

Redemption is the corollary of creation.

God created all things with the ultimate intention of presenting it as an inheritance to his Son, according to one prominent New Testament analogy.  (See Ephesians 1 and Colossians 1.)

Yet God also created all things, including mankind, with foreknowledge of the sinful rebellion against his order.

Therefore he created all things with the purpose of finally redeeming them.  If God had created without intending from the beginning to redeem, his creative act would have been aborted by sin and creation would have meant an inevitable downward evolution toward chaos.  But that is not so because God built redemption into his plans.

Redemption is the corollary of creation, therefore:

•Redemption is distinct from Creation.

•Redemption follows logically and existentially from Creation.

•Redemption operates conjointly with Creation.

•Redemption necessary to Creation.

•Redemption is not presently inferior or subordinate to Creation.

•Redemption assumes and indicates the improvement of Creation.

•Redemption in its fulfillment will supercede Creation.

3. The Institution for Redemption: The Church is the vehicle for God’s redemptive power in the world in this present age.

The gospel is called “the power of God unto salvation” (Romans 1:16): i.e., the gospel is the vehicle for God’s power in redemption, but not in creation.

Nature functions by the providence of God under the power vested in it by creation, and is not dependent on the power of the Age to Come (cf. Hebrews 6: )

Although creation was brought into existence by the Logos of God (John 1:1-3), but it was not necessary for the Logos to be made flesh (1:14) for that purpose, but only for the purpose of redemption.

All the living creation carries on through reproduction, and mankind the world over engage in complex mating rituals that produce offspring, all without knowledge of God through Jesus Christ or recourse to biblical revelation.

It is not necessary for a farmer to be regenerated by the Holy Spirit for his crops to produce.  A sick man can find healing for his body, and still die without spiritual redemption as defined in the Bible.

Salvation does not depend on worldly (Creation) power (1 Corinthians 1:18; 2; 16); neither does it necessarily correlate to worldly power.

For example, one’s personal salvation is no guarantee in this world and in this present age of fertility, success, or health; one may have none of these, yet be forgiven of sins and awaiting in good hope his final redemption and eternal life.

The distinction, when it comes to God, is not in the nature of the power, but in the application of it.

Jesus brought these two distinct operations of divine power together in Mark 2:1-12.

In this story Jesus forgave the sins of the paralytic and then cured his illness in separate acts, and neither act was dependent on the other—at least not in the sense that Jesus was unable to do one apart from the other. 

Jesus’ own explanation is that he performed the creative act of physical restoration as a subsequent demonstration of his personal authority to perform the redemptive act of forgiveness.

The church It is the divinely appointed institution vested with power and authority in the sphere and purpose of redemption.

The church is not an institution of creation, but of re-creation; its purpose is not to preserve or even to heal or correct the present temporal order, but to be a herald and demonstrator of the eternal age to come.

This does not mean the church has been given power to effect or install the redemption of creation, but that it operates according to the power and authority of the kingdom of God to direct souls to their redemption in Christ. 

Then through these individuals the church can wield a cumulative, wholesome influence on society, the influence of salt (that retards social decay) and light (that offers direction and hope in a dark and confused world).

Yet in following Jesus’ example we do not hesitate to show that our message is authentic by ministering for ends of compassion, righteousness, and justice in the realm of creation, knowing that God’s purpose is one.

4. The Institution of Order: Civil government is the vehicle for God’s power to maintain order in the world in this present age.

Civil government is a divinely appointed institution vested with power and authority exclusively within the sphere of creation. 

Government is ordained by God, but not to a redemptive purpose.  God’s plan in Creation will not be accomplished until Creation has been finally redeemed.  The governments of man will not be the instrument to establish the government of God in the world.

Civil government is ordained rather to a protective and preservative role toward society.  While it may have some positive things to do, its role in the economy of God is fundamentally provisional and negative: to prevent human society from again spiraling into and endless and uncontrolled cycle of violence and bloodshed.

A government that fulfills its divinely ordained purpose will deal with the affairs under its jurisdiction with the realization that, whatever it does to solve man’s problems and relieve his miseries, the efforts and solutions it comes up with are at best temporal, short-lived, incomplete, and carry their own problems. 

Government under God can and must insure that an atmosphere is nurtured in which God’s redemptive institution can do its job, and where virtue is encouraged and vice is discouraged.

The instrument of government for order is law, and its authority is enforced by “the sword.”

God’s intention for law—understood both generally and in its religious sense—is to restrain the injustices of men while allowing for self-determination and civil liberty.

The theocratic code of law inscribed in the Bible (especially in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) has civic aspects intertwined with moral and ceremonial ones.

While God commands his people to love their neighbors as themselves, he authorizes them as a community under his covenant to reward those who do right and to punish those who do wrong.

The law presupposes that people may and do attempt to do wrong to others, to commit violence and theft, and to try to get away with a host of misdeeds.

These civil aspects are clearly intended to restrain the injustices of men while allowing each person a measure of self-determination and civil liberty (one example may be found in regulations regarding the rights of slaves!). 

Romans 13:1-7 is a key passage that explains the purpose God intended human government to serve: to restrain evil through “the sword” (punishment) and to promote public righteousness through “praise” (reward).

What no human government can do is require and give love.

God commands the love of neighbor; and he can enforce it, because he is the Source of love and can produce it and bestow it.

Human civil government has neither the commission nor the capacity to command love. Governments rule by command and punishment (or threat thereof), and love cannot be produced by either one. 

At the very most, human government can only command responsible behavior toward neighbor and punish irresponsible behavior.

A government—regardless of what kind, whether authoritarian or democratic—cannot command love because government itself cannot love, being impersonal and oriented toward law. 

Government by nature is heartless.

This is not the same as saying that persons who govern are heartless and cannot love.  It is the institution and function of government being critiqued here, not the people who wield it.

The government that seeks to command love for neighbor—that is, to command the heart and conscience of the governed—has usurped the prerogative of God alone and is acting fraudulently.

Politics is the acquisition of civil power by a person or group for the accomplishment of some shared end.

It is unfair to call politics a “necessary evil,” because politics in itself is not evil, although it is necessary.  Certainly there are evils that inevitably come because politics is a tool wielded by sinful men in a fallen world. But men do not become evil because they enter politics, but politics becomes evil when bad men enter it; and good men are corrupted in politics when, tempted by power, they begin to compromise their moral convictions in order to gain political victory.

Notes on Sociology, Economics and the Moral Value of Systems

A society is a plurality of individuals, acting in concert or in strife within a given environment or milieu, whose cumulative decisions and actions produce a collective result.

Does this make society a true entity?  I once thought no.  I now must say yes.  But society is an entity by extension: it partakes of the identity of those who belong to it, who in turn share the identity of the group. 

But even if society is an entity, it is not thereby a person.

    The analogy here is of the crowd, for example at a sporting event.  The crowd exists by the common choice and purpose to witness the event.  It produces effects that only a crowd can produce—such as crowd noise.  Yet what is crowd noise?  It is the accumulation and concentration of many, many voices and activities exerted at about the same time in the same place, and sometimes in response to the same stimulus.

     We do not deny that society (broadly defined) possesses some of the attributes of an entity. 

    We acknowledge that the Bible addresses us not merely as individuals, but as participants in corporate identities on both a natural level (families, tribes, nations, peoples, languages, kingdoms, etc.), and on a spiritual level (the world; the church--the body of Christ, bride of Christ, etc.).

    What we must resist is the idea that the individual is nothing more than an extension of the society.

A biblical view sees the individual as the fundamental responsible entity, and the family built on monogamous marriage as the basic social unit.

Godless capitalism, Marxism, and Fascism all have a trend in the same direction:  They all exalt man to the level of God.

In both Marxism and Fascism, the social order takes priority above the individual.  This type of economy is illustrated in the age of the Tower of Babel.  The state is divine, regardless of whether a dictatorship is fascist or communist.  (In theoretical Marxism, history is divine, but in practice history always has to be helped along by the revolutionary state, which always gets stalled in the Dicatorship of the Proletariat.)

In the Tower of Babel episode, God frustrated these designs of the social order by disrupting social interaction in its most basic form—language.  Here was God’s judgment on collectivism and a forced return to individualism.

Socialism is the exaltation of the interests of society above the individual. 

Socialism is instinctive for the ant and the honeybee, but unnatural for man.  God created mankind as a social being, male and female, but made him first as an individual. 

Moreover God created man free under commandment.

Economic socialism is rooted in a collectivist philosophy of humanity, so that human worth is rooted primarily in the group.

Economic capitalism is based on individualism, which means that man’s identity consists primarily in his own relation to God, and then the world and other individuals.  In this sense, capitalism is much closer to being “right” than socialism.

Individualism is not, however, inherently good, and is capable of being stretched into unrestrained license. 

Society is responsible for no one, but every individual bears responsibility first for himself, and then for others in concentric circles of relationship broadening ever outward to all those whom his life touches and impacts.  Primarily and ultimately, however, he is responsible to God.

Here’s the catch: ungodly, irresponsible, licentious capitalism produces social anarchy and a tyranny of the mighty.  This kind of capitalism was the basis of the world economy before the Flood.  God drowned it in judgment.

But God preserved one family, that of Noah, who was an individualist and a free enterprise capitalist.  (The irrefutable evidence of this is the Ark, built solely by resources that he, in a material sense, put together on his own without any corporate resources beyond his family business.)

To restrain the licentiousness to which capitalist economics is prone in a fallen world, God instituted government in the most basic terms (Genesis 9:6).  Without ordaining any particular form of government—save for the fact that it was initially an extension of the patriarchal family structure—God commended to human government the authority to deprive anyone of the freedom to live who takes the life of another.  Why? Because life is God’s prerogative, and to murder is to exalt self to godhood.  Moreover, having shown that permissive mercy (such as he granted to Cain) led to more bloodshed and not less, he now gives social permission to kill, paradoxically in order to limit bloodshed. 

(For further discussion see Part 2, “Two Societies, Two Judgments.”)

It would seem that the economy favored in scripture is a free enterprise economy in which God is recognized as sovereign; in which the individual is accepting of personal responsibility for his own behavior and the welfare of those whose lives are touched by his actions; and in which the government plays the role of protecting the opportunities of every individual to seek his best under God.

It is impossible for an impersonal collective to love. 

A basic flaw, if not the fundamental flaw in socialism or even its watered-down form of “liberal” government is that it seeks to command and enforce what only God can do: LOVE. 

God commands the love of neighbor, and can enforce it because he is the Source of love and can produce it.  Government, at the most, can only command responsible behavior toward neighbor and punish irresponsibility. 

Government acts fraudulently when, in the name of Society, it seeks to extract love from its constituency, and for this reason: Government by nature cannot love, and Society does not love except as those who are its members love.  Governments rule by command and punishment, and love cannot be produced by command or threat.  Moreover the only society that is capable of loving as God commands is the body of Christ, but it falls short because its members fail to find their personal identity in him.  Instead they continue to identify themselves according to the world, and continue to be drawn by the loves of the world. (But that’s a discussion for another day.)