BEYOND “CONSERVATIVE” & “LIBERAL”

NOTES ON DIVINE PRINCIPLES

OF GOVERNMENT

Part Three

The 10 Indispensable Principles of Government

Garry D. Nation

c. 2008.  All rights reserved.

Thesis

The Law of God, embodied in the Ten Commandments, contains basic and universal principles of government that must be followed by those who rule if they wish their civilization to stand.

Introduction:  Can Morality Be Legislated?

All law has a moral basis.

Law must deal with questions of right and wrong, i.e., morality.  This necessity is not dispensed with by sophistry that tries to make law morally neutral by basing it on scientific positivism or public opinion.

Society’s understanding of right and wrong is dependent upon its view of God and of man.  (See Exodus 20:1,2.)

1. •Laws will finally be based upon consensus as to the nature and character of the deity or deities (ultimate reality) worshiped (served) by the people.
   

2. •Laws will be right and true to the extent that they correspond to a true understanding of the Deity.
   

All law is thus necessarily both moral and religious in nature.

1. •It is not the job of the civil government to educate the people in the nature and character of God; that is the charge of the church.
   

2. •It is up to governors to rule with justice toward man and reverence toward God.  (See 2 Samuel 23:3.)
   

All law codifies the common morality.

Law defines the limits of civil freedom, and levies penalties upon transgressors.

Law therefore defines the outer limits of what is morally tolerable in a society.

Governments may seek to expand their power by seeking to define positive moral obligations for the society—a project which seems to be admirable, but which always ends in the loss of liberty and the usurpation of conscience.

Civil morality is derived from the character of the people who make up the society.

Virtuous individual character in the leadership and citizenry of a society is necessary for its harmonious functioning and even its survival.

Civil law can prescribe civility, but not virtuous character.

Every society has its own virtues which it emphasizes and vices it particularly abhors; and these do not necessarily determine its moral precepts, but do tend to flavor them.

Morality cannot be legislated in the sense of inculcating or prescribing moral precepts or virtuous character.

Law is both empowered and limited by the public moral consensus.

Confusion of what is right and wrong leads to contempt of the law.

Human depravity (selfishness) exerts a constant social pressure toward lawlessness.

Moral standards are never lost; they are displaced by lowered moral standards, or even by immoral standards.

When legislation and jurisprudence retreat from the public moral consensus, the public moral consensus will tend to follow it and recede.

The decline of common morality leads to an increase of laws, and ultimately to the growth of a police state.

Law is universal.

God’s law is the expression of his directive will. It is an error to think that his moral law extends only to individuals. There is one morality.  It is applicable to all persons, but also to all institutions and offices that have any moral responsibility.

To the extent that divine law deals with civic life and responsibility, it is the responsibility of every individual, social group, and institution to obey it.

Every individual, society, every government will be judged according to it, and the judgment is inescapable.  Ignorance will not be an excuse, let alone that they were not accepted or believed.

To the extent that a society (and its government) honors the principles of divine law, it is blessed.  To the extent that it rejects, ignores, or neglects them, it suffers.

The Ten Indispensable Principles for Law & Government

I.  The Principle of Absolute Truth (“No Other Gods”)

As God is one, so also truth is one.

1. •True Law: Laws will be right and true to the extent that they correspond to a true understanding of reality and the Deity that created it.
   

2. •Law and Theology: All law will ultimately be based on the general agreement of the people (or its government, if it is an authoritarian regime) regarding the nature and character of the God or gods they worship.
   

3. •Secularity: Government is not a spiritual institution, and bears no responsibility to educate its people in the nature and character of God; that is the responsibility of the church.
   

4. •Responsibility to the Creator: Since government is an institution of power in creation, it is the responsibility of those who govern to rule according to what is true and right—common principles of which can be discerned both from (what used to be called) natural law, and from the tenets of the religious faith of its people.
   

5. •Examples: The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States—neither of which is a religious document, but neither of which would have been possible without common fundamental assumptions about reality and religion—express the American political genius.
   

6. •Result in government: Under its secular but theologically grounded Constitution the U. S. has owned a stable, long-standing representative republic that has endured (with some deformation and redefinition) numerous storms, including a Civil War and a Great Depression; debates about applied policy based on commonly agreed principles of right and wrong, virtue vs. vice.
   

7. •American Pluralism, Old View: 
   

1. (1)The Melting Pot: “One nation under God”—was based on the common idea that there is one God, one truth.
   

2. (2)Plurality of minds: Different ideas and varying perspectives, sometimes held in sharp disagreement, are magnified by personal ambitions.
   

3. (3)Unifying belief in reason: Agreement that if one was right, the other must be at least partly wrong (Hamilton v. Jefferson; Lincoln v. Douglas), but that reasonable people could find agreement on fundamental principles (Daniel Webster, Henry Clay).
   

4. (4)Political problem:  Inadequacies of human understanding, weakness of will, and predominance of emotion make it difficult to find agreement even on ends, but especially on means.
   

5. (5)Goal—Persuasion: Politicians seek to persuade party members that they are the best exemplar of party ideals; and to persuade the public that party ideals are the most true and right.
   

6. (6)Process: Decisions are made by majority rule, filtered through a representative republic, modified and offset by constitutional checks and balances.
   

7. (7)Impasse: Reason failed to resolve the clash between absolute opinions on the distinct but inextricably linked questions of slavery, and state sovereignty vs. federal union—questions unhappily resolved by the Civil War.
   

Opposing Views

1. •Ethical Relativism:
   

2. The belief that truth is plural, temporary, and dependent on time, place, and situation, is a “soft” view founded on the humanistic principle that the existence of God is not objectively real.
   

3. Examples: Situation ethics; political pragmatism
   

4. Result in government: Political pragmatism—make the best deal you can, avoid offending major power blocs, and don’t let ideology (i.e., philosophical principles, moral convictions) get in the way.
   

5. •Nihilism:
   

6. The belief that there is no truth, no meaning, but only what exists; that right/wrong, good/evil are ultimately meaningless categories, is the logical conclusion from the premise that God is not objectively real.
   

7. Examples:  Nietzche, the “will to power”; Marx, history—i.e., conflict—is the only reality.
   

8. Result in government: National Socialism, Leninism, and Maoism are all nihilistic at the core.
   

9. •American Pluralism, New View: 
   

1. (1)The Shattered Pot:  A fragmented society—one person’s truth is as good as (and no better than) another’s—is becoming increasingly felt and observed in American society.
   

2. (2)Political problem: With society splintered into subcultures and countercultures, a leader, party, or group must attain sufficient power or leverage to put one’s own opinion and preferred policy into law.
   

3. (3)Goal: Those who are most skillful to direct, manage, and manipulate public opinion are able to claim “consensus,” meaning a political plurality.
   

4. (4)Process:  Freedom of speech is equal to money; politicians and parties appeal to “special interest groups” and political action committees (PACs); idiocracy, lit. “government according to private and individual interests,” often requires real government to occur through impersonal bureaucracies and judicial fiat.
   

5. (5)Impasse:  The clash between absolute vs. relative morality—only one example being the question of abortion, the right to life vs. individual autonomy—is still unresolved.
   

How Shall We Live?

1. •Our Temptation: It is easy to surrender passively to the relativist spirit of the age, and to accept its presupposition that truth is only a point of view; it is just as easy to retreat into enclaves in which we all speak the same language to one another isolated from the world.
   

2. •Our Task: To sustain the reality of truth in a fractured world, we must affirm the full implications of monotheism to a society that thinks belief in one God is not more than a feeling.
   

3. •Our Precedent:
   

4. The ethical Monotheism of biblical revelation came into the polytheistic world had had to fight on every level for its existence—including the intellectual level
   

5. The prophets and apostles did not underestimate the power of polytheism nor deny the belief in other gods, and recognized their presence and influence in the world; but they vigorously refuted the reality, truth, and power of them.
   

6. The prophets and apostles and positively asserted that “the Lord lives,” and that there is but one true and living God and judge over the whole world and the universe.
   

7. •Our Power and Our Limitations:
   

8. The Apostle Paul was “not ashamed of the gospel of Christ” (Romans 1:17), i.e., he had no fear that the great city of Rome would swallow up the message he preached, and no doubts that its truth would prevail.  When he says, “for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes,” he states both the nature of the power and the limitation on that power.
   

1. (1)The nature of the power is of redemption, not creation.  Its operations are upon the heart, soul, and mind of man, and its power to bring change is incalculable. “For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but are mighty through God but we have divine power to destroy strongholds.  We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:4,5)
   

2. (2)The limitation of the power is that its operations are solely upon the mind, heart, and soul of man--not upon his societies, institutions, politics, governments, economics, etc.  The truth works through persuasion, not compulsion.
   

3. (3)It is important to remember that the use of force cannot propagate or perpetuate the truth--at best it can protect those who are trying to maintain the truth against external aggression.  Its weapons are “not of the flesh.”
   

4. (4)Yet the weapons of the flesh cannot ultimately prevail against truth either.  Throughout history there have been times of great darkness, but the truth cannot be suppressed in any ultimate sense, though it may be driven underground.
   

5. Give it your time
   

6. Try to understand
   

7. What spreads the crime
   

8. As the truth is banned?
   

9. David Nunn, “Days of Wrong and Right”
   

II.The Principle of Morality vs. Materialism (“No Graven Image”)

Moral and spiritual values must always take priority over material values.

1. •Idolatry v. morality
   

2. Materialism, whether philosophical or economic, is always the antithesis or morality because it is idolatry; it exalts matter and material things to the position of godhood—i.e., the ultimate reality, the ultimate good, the ultimate goal.
   

3. •The root of all freedom
   

4. All liberty is grounded in the freedom of conscience, which includes the freedom to make wrong choices that may be destructive of one’s own best interest, and thus admits the possibility of failure.
   

5. •The proper role of government
   

6. It is the responsibility of government to protect an atmosphere of equality of liberty and opportunity under law for every citizen, and to protect the weak from being unjust preyed upon by the strong.
   

7. •The improper role of government
   

8. A government that seeks to guarantee happiness and success, to provide security against the vicissitudes of life, to equalize the results of human endeavor, or to protect people from the consequences of their ethical and economic choices has adopted a materialistic and idolatrous policy.
   

9. •The worth of a soul cannot be measured in a scale.
   

1. (1)The value of human life:  The worth of persons must not be measured against material standards, including economic productivity and “quality of life.”
   

2. (2)The charade of materialistic ethics:  Once a material valuation is placed on a person’s life, it is no longer considered to be sacred or in “the image of God,” but is just one item in the continuum of material things, no different in kind from an amoeba; so that ultimately humanistic ethics is anti-human.
   

God is God—but a secular, materialistic society worships many kinds of idols

Mankind’s propensity for idolatry provides a moral framework for understanding and critiquing our society. 

Herbert Schlossberg uses this thesis as a model in his book Idols for Destruction.

1. “Anyone with a hierarchy of values has placed something at its apex, and whatever that is is the god he serves.  The Old and New Testaments call such gods idols.... ”
   

2. “Idolatry in its larger meaning is properly understood as any substitution of what is created for the creator.... A man can place anyone or anything at the top of his pyramid of values, and that is ultimately what he serves.  The ultimacy of that service profoundly affects the way he lives.”
   

3. “The word [secularization] connotes the turning away from the worship of God while ignoring the fact that something is being turned to in its place.... All such principles that substitute for God exemplify the biblical concept of an idol.”
   

Schlossberg identifies six categories or kinds of idols.

1. •Idols of History
   

2. “Idolatry based on history becomes power politics and, finally, one of numerous systems that people use to control other people.”
   

1. (1)A materialistic society sees history as an irresistible entity with a will of its own.
   

2. “The idolatries of history exalt an age (past, present, or future), or a process, or an institution, or a class, or a trend and make it normative.... History is now seen as the vehicle of salvation.”
   

2. (2)Historicism, whether optimistic or pessimistic, sees history as the lord of the universe, meaning that “just as man cannot understand history by reference to anything beyond it, so is he powerless to struggle against anything that history has a mind to accomplish.”
   

3. “It would be hard to find a saying as implausible as ‘We can’t turn back the clock”.... The problem with the clock...is that is is the wrong metaphor.... We need to speak of taking a path to a place we wish to reach.”
   

4. “There is no way to escape determinism in the idea of inevitable progress.”
   

3. (3)Modern historians are ruled (and misled) by materialistic assumptions, above the one that “the explanation of history lies within itself.”
   

4. “Different assumptions are fully as plausible, and if they seem otherwise it is because current habits of thought cannot accommodate them.  The dominant assumption of this historical books of the Old Testament, for example, is that God enters history with blessing and judgment.... The difference is not so much in the facts that are observed as in the religious beliefs that are brought to them.”
   

4. (4)The biblical view, “that history had a beginning and will have an end, and that both the beginning and the end are in God’s hands,” invests the time and events that come between them with meaning and purpose.  Above all, “it provides a principle of value against which all values are judged.”
   

5. Does history repeat itself?  No—but one generation may ignorantly or willfully commit sins similar to what a previous generation also committed, and will suffer similar consequences.
   

6. “Historicism relativizes everything in the moral universe.... Everything, that is, except for the idol that the historicism miraculously extracts from the flux with the forceps of mystification—the state, the proletariat, the national honor, the liberal society, the fact or sentiment.... That is why modern societies ruled by the historicist mentality are ruled also by the polarities of individualism and statism.”
   

7. “History thus dechristianized has no moral limitations.... A society than cannot tolerate a judge beyond history will find that it can learn to tolerate anything else.”
   

8. “The kind of relativization that can be affirmed, in contrast, is that which places human values under the judgment of the transcendent God.... Thus, deprived of divinity, history resumes its creaturely status and is rendered subservient to God.”
   

9. •Idols of Humanity
   

1. (1)Idols of humanity are constructed when mankind is exalted to the status of deity. This kind of idolatry “dates from the furthest reaches of antiquity, but its development into an ideology embracing the masses is a characteristic trait of modernity.”
   

2. “The idea of humanity as a deity is seldom avowed openly but rather is expressed by ascribing to man attributes of God: sovereignty (or autonomy), complete rationality, and moral perfection.”
   

3. “Modern humanists are hostile to any notion of law that is external to the legislative organs under human control, and this means that morality cannot be predicated on universal codes.”
   

2. (2)Thus Pragmatism replaces morality as the basis of law, and sentiment becomes the criterion.
   

3. “All laws are conceived, obeyed (or not obeyed), and enforced on the basis of faith in their legitimacy.... No law can survive the hegemony of sentimentality and human autonomy.  Only force remains.”
   

4. “Is there anything that cannot be justified when sentiment replaces law?”
   

5. “All forms of humanist sentimental ethics have one common characteristic: subjectivism…. Being poor is the greatest evil, in humanitarian thinking, because having material possessions is the greatest good.”
   

3. (3)Humanitarianism is the ethical arm of the Religion of Humanity, and expresses itself through ressentiment, equalitarianism, and the divinization of the poor.
   

4. “Ressentiment begins with perceived injury that may have a basis in fact, but more often is occasioned by envy.... It is not content to suffer quietly but has a festering quality that seeks outlet in doing harm to its object.  Ressentiment has its origins in the tendency to make comparisons.”
   

5. “In attacking the sources of its irritation,...ressentiment uses third parties as foils.... A is played off against B.  Therefore what appear to be positive affirmations of the worth of others are really disguised attacks on still others.”
   

6. “As society erases social distinctions and moves toward a leveling of income differentials, the demand for equality is not satisfied, but intensified.... The leveling movement has nothing to do with justice, because its impulse is not to raise those who are down but to topple those who are up; ressentiment is the motive.”
   

4. (4)Equalitarians make effective use of guilt feelings to accomplish redistribution of property.
   

5. “...Contemporary feelings of guilt about the economic privations of others are primarily group phenomena.... They are not concerned, then, with a sense of personal moral failure requiring repentance and restitution.  Collective guilt has replaced a sense of personal sin.”
   

5. (5)The humanitarian definition of poverty is relative: as wealth increases, poverty is redefined upward.
   

6. “This means that nobody can be content with what he has because someone else has more.”
   

7. “Being poor is the greatest evil, in humanitarian thinking, because having material possessions is the greatest good.”
   

8. “Humanitarianism...changes victimhood from accident to essence.  It expands the category of victim until it swallows the entire person.  It takes away the poor person’s humanity and gives him in its place the ontological status of victim.”
   

6. (6)Humanitarianism is about the exercise of power.
   

7. “The humanitarian aim is to exercise power. Whether the ideology acknowledges this openly or not, all the policies converge on it.”
   

8. “The power of modern humanitarianism is the state.”
   

7. (7)Humanitarianism cannot sustain the dignity of human life, because it is founded on humanism.
   

8. “Modern humanism has a view of both life and death that are diametrically opposed to the Christian view.  [Within the dominant culture of humanism there is no] justification for the sanctity of human life because such sanctity can be persuasive only when derived from a transcendent source.... But if man is a product of chance and time...then killing is an action, like any other, that must be judged on pragmatic grounds.”
   

8. (8)Humanism is “fundamentally irrational.”
   

9. “Although naturalistic in most of its forms, it nevertheless professes belief in the special worth and dignity of human beings, a position for which there can be no support in naturalism.”
   

10. “Morality  based on individual sentiment means anarchy and the disintegration of society.  Humanists cannot have this, and their writings are filled with fervid arguments in favor of a powerful central state.  Autonomous man needs leadership, and strong leadership is the hallmark of humanist society.  Whether embodied in a committee or personalized in a leader, the elite dominates.”
    

11. “The theology that divinizes men, it turns out, only divinizes some men.  Thobjects of humanitarian concern become less than men, so that the humanitarian can exercise the prerogatives of a god.”
    

12. •Idols of Mammon
    

1. (1)Material things are not evil, but must not be sought as ends in themselves.
   

2. “The mammon described here as the rival of God is the idolatrous elevation of money and the material possessions it will buy as the goal of life.... Like all idolatries, it finds ultimate meaning in an aspect of the creation rather than in the creator.  And like all idolatries it finds outlet in destructive pathologies that wreck human lives.”
   

3. “Those pathologies cannot simply be subsumed under such labels as liberal, conservative, or radical.”
   

2. (2)Idols of Mammon sanctifies the vice of covetousness, a strong desire to have the possessions of others, which is preceded by envy.
   

3. “Envy may strike at those who are envied in an effort to destroy their superiority.  This is the action of ressentiment.... On the other hand envy may act in a more straightforward, less devious, way by simply striving to take what it desires from those it envies.”
   

4. “Idolatries of mammon are unanimous in their insistence that it is more blessed to receive than to give; their ethic therefore is one of taking.  Political economies that follow them are inflationary and redistributive.”
   

5. “Idols of mammon invite us to place our hopes on wealth, tell us that taking is better than giving, tempt us to covet what our neighbor has, convince us that we have been wronged because we do not possess as much as we desire, and finally, pervert the sense of justice that alone can preserve peace.”
   

3. (3)Theft takes many forms, many of which are legal, and many of which are practiced by government, including:
   

4. ✦Inflation
   

5. “Every debt that appears as a liability on one person’s balance sheet appears as an asset on another’s.  The inflationary act that wipes out one’s debt, at the same time destroys the other’s wealth.  In this way it transfers wealth from one to the other.  Inflation is a process of redistribution.”
   

6. “Inflation has both moral and economic consequences.  It discredits whatever economic system it is part of because it removes any perception of justice that might otherwise be present.... Wealth is obtained by plunging into debt, using borrowed money to by commodities of real value that tend to rise in value at a rate faster than the currency is depreciating.  People thus receive wealth without producing anything of value.”
   

7. ✦The politics of envy
   

8. “Avarice and envy do not come from a system; they are put into the system and change it.  Conceptions that blame systems for the failures of people confuse cause and effect.”
   

9. “It has become a common assertion that envy is fostered by inequality and can be ended by equalitarian distribution.... Envy cannot be assuaged any more than cancer can be.... By its nature, envy is expansive regardless of the realities it encounters.”
   

10. “A corollary of a generalized ethic of redistribution is the dominance of pressure groups or constituencies.... Redistribution thus ensures that society is divided into adversary groups.... To associate redistribution with the doing of justice is a sham.  The principle that determines the actions of both those who seek money and favors from the state and those who distribute them is self-interest.... In our society, people call the arrangement that meets their demands ‘just.’”
    

11. “Since government produces no goods, it can distribute only what it takes from others.  This process is indistinguishable from theft.... In a redistributive society, the law is a thief.”
    

12. ✦The consumption of capital
    

13. “It is only a slight oversimplification to say that prosperity is largely a matter of saving and investment.  The enemy of saving is consumption.”
    

14. “With profitability reduced by envy-driven regulatory and tax policies, the inevitable consequence is that people do other things with their money than invest it productively.”
    

15. “Capital that is not invested is consumed, in one way or another.... When capital is taxed by the state, it is diverted from an investment role to a consumption role.
    

16. ✦The loss of liberty
    

17. “There are no societies that are cavalier toward property rights but which safeguard human rights.  The state that lays its hand on your purse will lay it on your person.”
    

18. “The alternative to free economic activity is not cooperation but coercion.”
    

19. “The modern redistributive society has made factual Spengler’s remark that every modern election ‘is a civil war carried on by ballot-box.’  Redistribution is absolutely incompatible with peace.  Accepted as a norm for civic life, it means that social strife is inevitable.”
    

20. •Idols of Nature
    

1. (1)The basic premise is that nature “comprises the whole show,” and that the study of natural sciences is the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe.  Science thus becomes the ultimate government, the determiner of what is right and wrong.
   

2. “Science too has been found to have some of the same disabilities as its rivals: reliance on unproved assumptions, subjectivity, and the propensity to make pronouncements on questions that lie outside its field of competence.”
   

2. (2)Determinism usually accompanies materialism.
   

3. “Naturalistic assumptions about human beings proceed to the conclusion that human behavior follows laws that can be used to predict the organism’s future action.”
   

3. (3)Rationalism gives way to irrationalism.
   

4. “A society that values reason tends to idolize it and, finally, turns against it.”
   

4. (4)Pantheism gains appeal.
   

5. “Radically monist, just as materialism is, it does not recognize any ontological difference between man and other living beings; between the living and the nonliving; between God and the universe.”
   

6. “Surprisingly, pantheism up in a dehumanization of mankind that is not very different from that of behaviorism.... There is in it no essential difference between men and maggots.  Only an illusion of differentiation exists between various elements of the the cosmos.”
   

5. (5)Naturalistic ethics have no moral component.
   

6. “A system of ethics that says human beings ought to base their behavior on nature therefore justifies any behavior, because nature knows no ethic.”
   

7. •Idols of Power
   

1. (1)It is not the irresistible march of history that has led to statism, but the unquenchable thirst for power.
   

2. “Christian freedom stems from the separation of the creation and the Creator...;  from the rejection of determinism and the affirmation of responsibility; and from the limitations on Caesar, the declaration that he is a creature, and the removal of the divine status that he continually seeks to acquire.  Christian liberty rests on the foundation that man’s responsibility to God may not be abridged or compromised by lesser loyalties.... When loyalty to God disappears, there is no longer a barrier to an omnicompetent state.”
   

2. (2)The only motive strong enough to make free people surrender liberty is survival.
   

3. “If placing extraordinary powers in the hands of political leaders will truly stave off the ultimate disaster, then those who demur can be made to appear as enemies of the human race.  That is why arguments based on survival are so effective in persuading people to permit actions that violate their moral code.”
   

3. (3)The proper function of the state is now seen, no more to provide justice, but to provide paternal security; instead of looking to God for their daily bread, people begin to look to government.
   

4. “Looking to the state for sustenance is a cultic act ... and when we regard the state as the source of physical provision we render to it the obeisance of idolatry.”
   

5. “The paternal state not only feeds its children, but nurtures, educates, comforts, and disciplines them, providing all they need for their security.... It transforms the state from being a gift of God, given to protect us against violence, into an idol.”
   

6. “When the provision of paternal security replaces the provision of justice as the function of the state, the state stops providing justice.”
   

7. “Once the illusions of compassion and rationality are stripped away from the exercise of state power, there is nothing left to see but power itself.  As O’Brien tells the hapless Winston Smith in 1984, “Power is not a means; it is an end.”
   

4. (4)It is a small, direct move from paternalism to totalitarianism: provision is conditional on control.
   

5. “Modern visions of salvation by state direction are incompatible with freedom.”
   

6. “It is no longer taken for granted, even in those countries where it has flourished, that freedom is a good thing.”
   

7. “We should understand totalitarianism to refer not to the severity of the regime ... but rather the scope of its purview.  A totalitarian regime is one that seeks to control every aspect of communal life, and to bring as much of private life as possible into the sphere of the communal.”
   

8. “Social democracy cannot be distinguished formally from totalitarianism, since it does not recognize in principle any limit to the purview of state supervision.... When they appear in the social democracies, policies of state supremacy are justified as being for the good of society and contrasted with individualism.  That is, the state is confused with society.”
   

9. •Idols of Religion
   

1. (1)Institutions of religion are particularly susceptible to idolatry, usually through syncretism.
   

2. “When Israel fell into idolatry, it did not openly renounce the worship of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.... Rather, the nation combined the old rituals with what it knew of Canaanite religion.”
   

3. “Descriptions of the church in the New Testament demonstrate that from the start it was plagued by serious distortions of doctrine and practice..... Apostasy is described similarly in the New Testament as in the Old.
   

2. (2)The religious culture that has a weakness for material prestige succumbs to the strong pull of secular culture with its idols, and conforms to it.  The pull of religious syncretism submerges Christian distinctives “under the weight of the dominant positions of the larger society.”
   

3. “Ecclesiastical structures that depart from the faith do so by the loss of distinctiveness, the gradual conformation of their thought and life to that of the larger community.... People brought up in such churches, and the clergy trained to work in them, find that traditional Christian doctrines seem implausible.  They are so accustomed to deferring to society’s norms as their norms that anything else seems odd.”
   

4. “Thus the master of the American church is likely to be whatever cultural or intellectual fad has gained the ascendancy.... In sociological terms, the church functions as just another means used by the political and social establishment to integrate society’s values into the next generation.”
   

5. “The historicist mentality finds it difficult to consider the possibility that a dominant trend may be evil, and thus stands ready to embrace anything that will confer contemporaneity on itself.”
   

6. “Theological decrepitude seems to be the inescapable accompaniment to, if not a major cause of, ecclesiastical debasement.... If theologically based values are to give way to pragmatic concerns, no ethical or theological principle can remain inviolate.... The only theology consistent with humanitarianism is works-righteousness, or Pelagianism.”
   

3. (3)Humanistic church leaders confuse prophetic teachings in the Bible with redistributionist economics.
   

4. “Having convinced themselves, rightly, that the biblical tradition has much to say about economics, the church intellectuals make theological statements serve as substitutes for economics.”
   

5. “Do church leaders who inveigh against “obscene profits” have any idea what would constitute adequate profit?  Do they know the function of profit? ...Is there lurking behind such statements a belief that any profit is wrong? ...Examples abound of basic errors in economic thinking.... The fanning of guilt feelings combines with willful ignorance and contempt for any factual understanding of economic processes.”
   

6. “Concern for the poor, which could have the healthy effect of sending the churches back to rediscover the biblical meaning of service and wealth, has instead all too often thrown them into the arms of the state..., unconsciously imitative of the temple religion that endorsed and undergirded the unjust rulers of Judah.”
   

7. “Many theologians in the West have rediscovered [Marxism] as the map that points the way to the kingdom of God.... ‘Jesus is Lord--in the Church; Marx is Lord in history.’”
   

8. “Revolutions typically start with relatively modest goals ... and are guided by relatively moderate leaders.  As power is accrued, moderate policies and those who espouse them are progressively discarded until those on the left fringe are in control.... Those theologians who declare that Marxism is a science will have no place among people who make revolution and not just propaganda.”
   

4. (4)One word best characterizes the institutions of American Christianity relative to the larger culture: convergence.
   

5. “Times of crisis produce surges of civil piety because religious observances are intended as propitiatory offerings to bring back good fortune and stability.
   

6. “Idols are hard to identify after they have been part of the society for a time. It became ‘normal’ for the people of Jerusalem to worship Molech in the temple, and it seemed odd that people calling themselves prophets should denounce the practice.... The idol was supported by all the ‘best’ elements of society, the political, economic, and religious power structure.  The prophets therefore denounced the powerful, wealthy, and respectable, not because there is anything inherently wrong with those attributes, but because in that society people so described organized and validated a system of idol-worship and injustice.”
   

7. “The attempt to be contemporaneous, which is to say relevant, ensures the irrelevance of theologies and churches.... Instead of exposing the modern idols, they promote and serve them.”
   

8. “People desire false teaching because it enables them to absolutize contingent systems to which they have given allegiance.”
   

9. “When the theology erodes and the institutional framework of the ecclesiastical organization weakens, it is only natural that people should search for direct religious experiences that do not depend on organization or intellectual categories.”
   

10. “A pluralistic society has many ways of coopting the churches.... The churches are useful adjuncts to a bewildering melange of causes, out of which they create competing gospels.”
    

11. “The only hope for [the church] to fulfill its true function is in a return to Christian orthodoxy, one that carries with it a determination to fulfill its heritage of doctrine, faith, and practice.”
    

12. “Meanwhile, we are left with a church that to a large extent has chosen to befriend the powers that dominate the world instead of judging them.”