Saturday, September 21, 2019

Facebook Thread on Biblical Forms of Government

The thread comes from a religious discussion group. If Facebook lets you view it, the thread is found here. It's useful, in my opinion, on the issue of Americanism and the universality of liberal democracy (that is the notion that it is the only viable form of government).

  • Patrik Fridén Why is liberal democracy preferable? Monarchy is the only divinely inspired governmental model.
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  • Jon Rowe Patrik Fridén: You are probably right. It's just I am a liberal democrat (small l and d).
  • Patrik Fridén Jon Rowe Monarchy just didn't reform itself enough and in time to keep the liberal masonic revolutionaries at bay.
    It should have become more Meritocratic and Technocratic and less Dynastic.
  • Jon Rowe Patrik Fridén: If we established the kind of monarchy that you desire, who would the monarch(s) be?
  • Patrik Fridén Jon Rowe It's impossible to tell at this moment. There are more factors involved, like who would lead such a revolt against the modern world? Initially it would be the leaders of such a movement that would take the helm, in order to establish the system of succession after their passing. Loyalty and morals somehow needs to be possible to measure as well, with the state-of-the-art scientific methods available. To me it would just be very important that such a regime would have councils of clergy and STEM-scientists as the highest bodies of power to appoint the Monarch. And that the Monarch is Catholic, or at least Christian.
  • Jon Rowe So I take it the Trump family would not do, unless they converted to a kind of Catholic Christianity?
  • Máire McGoldrick Patrik Fridén Is it? The Israelites were only given a king because they insisted on one, the government given to them by God was judges, not kings, and time and again in the bible the Kinds muck things up.
  • Patrik Fridén Jon Rowe Trump is very unsuitable for multiple reasons. Also, I am not American, nor am I in favor of continuing that republican experiment.
    If such a government comes it would be as the head of a Christian Imperium that spans many Western and Latin countries.

    Máire McGoldrick, God's Kingdom is still a Kingdom. Because it is the divine model of government.
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  • Máire McGoldrick Patrik Fridén It is the model for God not for humankind, God is the king and there was and is nothing divine about us setting up kings.
  • Patrik Fridén Máire McGoldrick Yet, Jesus came from the line of David...
  • Máire McGoldrick Patrik Fridén He did, and he is the King but that doesn't mean that having kinds is the governance that God intended for humans, as I've pointed out they were only appointed because the Israelites wanted to copy all the local groups around them.
  • Patrik Fridén Máire McGoldrick And the Temple was not ordained by God, yet Jesus respected it as the House of His Father, even though it was an invention of David.
    Your point being?

    What makes liberal democracy or republics more godly? They are completely pagan inventions and the masons set them up as carbon copies of the pagan originals, which is why Washington DC is filled with pagan aesthetics.

    The only example of democracy in the Bible was when the Jews shouted "Barabbas!"
  • Máire McGoldrick Patrik Fridén The Temple was ordained by God - which is why it was respected by our Lord but then he became the living temple and the Veil of the Temple was rent asunder showing that God was no longer there - and your point was?

    You may be enamoured     by kingship, I am not, but please don't try to pretend that kingship is the only form that God has commanded, as I have pointed out the Israelites were NOT given kings until they wanted to copy the nations living around them - it was not God's divine plan for them to have kings.
  • Patrik Fridén It was David who wanted to build the Temple.
    And even if you go by the system of Judges, Prophets and Priests, it was not a republic or a liberal democracy. It was a Theocracy, which I am also in favor of.
  • Patrik Fridén The first Kings were anointed and appointed by clergy, just like I described how I want it.
  • Jon Rowe Patrik if you want an honest opinion from a classically liberal democrat (I'm a libertarian), your case would be stronger if you dropped the freemason part. Yes, of course you can demonstrate a connection between the freemasons and liberal democracy. But anything that ranks of conspiracy theory makes your case appear weaker.
  • Patrik Fridén Jon Rowe As a Catholic interested in history, it would be dishonest of me to leave out the Masonic element and hidden hand behind the "enlightenment" and the liberal revolutions. Even the Bolsheviks had that connection.
  • Jon Rowe "They are completely pagan inventions and the masons set them up as carbon copies of the pagan originals, which is why Washington DC is filled with pagan aesthetics."

    It's true they are pagan inventions. And yes, the architecture of DC is filled with     pagan aesthetics. They did not however, set the republics up as "carbon copies" of the originals. There were meaningful differences that accumulated in the 1800 years since antiquity.

    There is also the concept of noble paganism. If you are a Catholic, Aristotle's teachings were incorporated into the Church's.

    It's true many key Founders were Freemasons. But they were not all Freemasons. And I think the important thing is they saw masonry as benign and consistent with Christianity.

    There is little evidence of a nefarious freemasonic conspiracy behind the American founding.
On the last point I made let me note here: yes, America's founders thought something like the freemasonry with which some of them were involved was consistent and compatible with the "Christianity" they supported (or otherwise believed in). I don't make a judgment one way or the other. The "Whig history" that they promoted held that all of these various ideological sources which influenced them were consistent with one another. As Bernard Bailyn and others have shown, that might not be the case.
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2 comments:

Tom Van Dyke said...

Máire McGoldrick is correct, and wins the argument. Thomas Paine made the same argument in Common Sense.





HOW CAME THE KING BY A POWER WHICH THE PEOPLE ARE AFRAID TO TRUST, AND ALWAYS OBLIGED TO CHECK? Such a power could not be the gift of a wise people, neither can any power, WHICH NEEDS CHECKING, be from God; yet the provision which the [British] constitution makes [empowering Parliament---TVD] supposes such a power to exist.


In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology there were no kings; the consequence of which was, there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throws mankind into confusion...Antiquity favours the same remark; for the quiet and rural lives of the first Patriarchs have a snappy something in them, which vanishes when we come to the history of Jewish royalty.

Government by kings was first introduced into the world by the Heathens, from whom the children of Israel copied the custom...

As the exalting one man so greatly above the rest cannot be justified on the equal rights of nature, so neither can it be defended on the authority of scripture; for the will of the Almighty as declared by Gideon, and the prophet Samuel, expressly disapproves of government by Kings...

Monarchy is ranked in scripture as one of the sins of the Jews, for which a curse in reserve is denounced against them. The history of that transaction is worth attending to.

Near three thousand years passed away, from the Mosaic account of the creation, till the Jews under a national delusion requested a king. Till then their form of government (except in extraordinary cases where the Almighty interposed) was a kind of Republic, administered by a judge and the elders of the tribes. Kings they had none, and it was held sinful to acknowledge any being under that title but the Lord of Hosts.



Then Paine goes on [at great length] to explain that in the Book of Judges, how Gideon refuses the Israelites' offer of their crown after his great military victory [Judges 8, King James Version], replying [all CAPS are Paine's]:

"I will not rule over you, neither shall my son rule over you. THE LORD SHALL RULE OVER YOU." Words need not be more explicit: Gideon doth not decline the honour, but denieth their right to give it; neither doth he compliment them with invented declarations of his thanks, but in the positive style of a prophet charges them with disaffection to their proper Sovereign, the King of Heaven.


and of the First Book of Samuel

"But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, give us a King to judge us; and Samuel prayed unto the Lord, and the Lord said unto Samuel, hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee, for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, THAT I SHOULD NOT REIGN OVER THEM."


As well as a VERY long account from 1 Samuel 8 of how the king will take their sons for war and their daughters for servitude, and take a tenth of everything and

"...your fields and your vineyards, and your olive yards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. And he will take the tenth of your seed, ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shell have chosen, AND THE LORD WILL NOT HEAR YOU IN THAT DAY."

September 24, 2019 at 2:34 AM
Ugly hunchback said...

That Patrik Fridén guy is hardly a Christian, given that he defended Roosh V. and sexual decadence in general. Also, "STEM scientists"? Is he insane? What does he want -- a technocracy? We already have that or are in the prospect of completely turning into one. I'd rather say that Fridén is immature and likely sex-addicted.

Democracy does indeed replace God with man, there is no point of arguing here. See Gómez Dávila's numerous remarks on the topic. He also lamented that the Vatican II. Mass shifted the focus from God to man. And he was right.

May 27, 2020 at 11:25 PM

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