 It is in striving toward God that the soul strives continually after condition of freedom. God alone is insider and guarantor of freedom. He is the only guarantor....Whittaker Chambers, "Witness" |
Fortunately External freedom is only an aspect of interior freedom. Political
freedom, as the Western world is known it, is only a political reading of the
Bible. Religion and freedom are indivisible.
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ROMANS 13:1-10 IS A DIFFICULT PASSAGE
TO UNDERSTAND |
Without freedom the soul dies. Without the solar is no justification
for freedom. (Whittaker Chambers, "Witness" P 16)
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"Humanism,
for all his talk about freedom, can present no philosophical framework to
justify freedom.
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(qeou diakonoß). General sense of diakonoß. Of
course even Nero was God's minister "to thee (soi ethical dative) for good (eiß to agaqon, for the good)." That is the ideal, the goal. Beareth (porei). Present active
indicative of porew, old frequentative form of perw, to bear, to wear. But if thou do (ean de poihß). Condition of third
class, ean and present active subjunctive of poiew, "if thou
continue to do." Sword (macairan).
Symbol of authority as
to-day policemen carry clubs or pistols. "The Emperor Trajan presented
to a provincial governor on starting for his province, a dagger, with the
words, 'For me. If I deserve it, in me'" (Vincent). An
avenger (ekdikoß).
Old adjective from ek and dikh (right),
"outside of penalty," unjust, then in later Greek "exacting
penalty from one," in N.T. only here and 1 Thessalonians 4:6.
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How can we say that men have human rights and there are not bestowed
upon him by his creator?
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On what basis do we say that the state is limited if God himself is
not limited it?
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When--in the name of freedom!--The humanist tear away the Christian
freedoms of this country, they actually destroy the only philosophical
foundation upon which true freedom can be sustained."
most of what I quote is from Dr John Eidsmoe's "GOD AND CAESAR" pp. 85-86
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In yet, desirable though it may be, liberty needs restraint. One
might think that anarchy involves total freedom, but in reality it involves a
total destruction of freedom. For without restraint men will destroy one
another's freedoms by killing each other, stealing from one another,
enslaving one another and exploiting one another. The reason, quite
obviously, is a basic human condition: sin." Dr. John Eidsmoe
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Dr. Eidsmoe
continues: "to restrain man's sin nature's and safeguard human freedom,
governments are established.
To be effective, governments have to have power
but governmental power has to be restrained, for the same reason that individual
liberty has to be restrained--the fact of sin. For rulers are just as simple as
their subjects. Given absolute and unrestrained power, they will use up our
incorrupt and despotic ways." John Eidsmoe, "GOD & CAESAR"
pp.85,86
"But what is government itself but the greatest of all
reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be
necessary. If angels were to govern men, either external nor internal controls on
government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered
by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the
government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control
itself." James Madison
"It's necessary, therefore, that all power that is on
her be limited, church power or other.... It's counted a matter of danger to the
state to limit prerogatives, but it is further danger not to have them limited;
they will be like a tempest if they are not limited.... It is therefore fit for
every man then to be studious of the bounds which the Lord has set; and for the
people, in whom fundamentally all power lies, to give as much power as God in
his Word gives to men.... All entrenchment upon the bounds which God hath not
given, they are not enlargements, but burdens and snares." John Cotton
"Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely!"
So then power must be
diluted. And that's exactly what the framers of the Constitution did--by
separating and dividing the powers of government among various individuals and
groups, so that no one individual or group had too much power. Each individual
or group jealous of its own power, battles against the encroachments of power
by the other branches.
If that doesn't demonstrate that the framers didn't believe in the depravity of man. ALL ARE SINNERS! INCLUDING ALL POLITICIANS.
Another
way that power was diluted was to shrink the power groups. "The powers not
delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the
states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." The
10th amendment to the Constitution
That Dilution
of Power, according to the Constitution and Bill of Rights guarantees are
God-given rights that cannot be abridged or taken away, whether they be in the
majority or in the minority. We have the right of religion, the right to bear
arms to defend ourselves, the right to freedom of speech, the right to privacy
from illegal search and seizure, the right to trial by jury, and many others.
Power was
diluted so that no individual or group received too much power--even the people
as a whole! They never intended the United States should be up your direct
democracy in which the majority can do anything it pleases. Rather they
intended a constitutional republic in which the rights of the majority are
protected from the tyranny of the majority, and the rights of the minority are
protected from the tyranny of the majority.. The Constitution, not the people,
was the supreme law of the land. But above everything they believe that men
have rights, not because government has chosen to grant certain rights, but
because God has created Everyman with human dignity and has bestowed upon him
certain basic rights as a part of that human dignity.
