Let me clarify my position on this: From a fideist, and especially "fundamentalist" perspective, the Tory loyalists were correct. But even if one believes in the natural law, that still doesn't necessarily get you around Romans 13's prohibition on revolution.
Many of the Tory loyalist for whom Dr. Frazer argues in his recent book, weren't fideists. They were Anglicans and as such, their theology incorporated Richard Hooker's natural law teachings. One could easily argue that a traditional understanding of the natural law doesn't get you around Romans 13 either.
But I do think you can get a *Christian* case for the American revolution and founding, ONLY if there is a natural right component to it. Or, at least, I have a hard time seeing how you can make an exegetical or sound theological case for such without natural law/natural rights.
What we discover is that you are either reliant on the more modern John Locke's or the scholastics' -- whether Catholic or Protestant -- doctrines of natural right. As Dave Kopel has noted:
A Huguenot using the pen-name Marcus Junius Brutus (the Roman Senator who assassinated Julius Caesar) went further with the 1579 book "Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos" ("Vindication Against Tyrants"). "Vindiciae" was organized like a Catholic Scholastic treatise. Like the other Geneva writers, Brutus owed a great debt to Catholic thought on the subject of Just Revolution.And for the record, there is much more John Locke in the founding era sermons.
7 comments:
The review was written for The Gospel Coalition. Whatever you or I or Mark think “Christian” means, that group and its followers have a particular understanding of the word “Christian” – one that they happen to share with that of the 18th-century American churches. Mark’s book offers virtually no evidence that the American founders were Christians in the sense that The Gospel Coalition (the audience for the review) understands the term.
Gregg Frazer once again concedes my point, and critique of his own work and standing as a historian.
"Gregg's method is the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, that any "Christian thought" that disagrees with his own Protestant fundamentalism is simply not Christian!
Well, that may be a valid theological argument in his circles, but it's certainly not a historical one out here in the world the rest of us live in."
The Gospel Coalition may well have its own religious audience and definition of what may permissibly be called "Christian," but they do not make the rules for the academic historical community.
In their world, the unitarians, Quakers, and other non-conformists are not "Christian," but historians can and do validly disagree.
And of course, the Vindiciae contra tyrannos itself is a Huguenot tract, cited all across Christendom. No true historian would argue is not part of "Christian thought."
If scripture is interpreted different than the CLEAR understanding of God's word, like Dr. Frazer has shown, it isn't Christian thought; end of story. Rom 13:1-2, 1 Peter 2:13-21
Blogger Our Founding Truth said...
If scripture is interpreted different than the CLEAR understanding of God's word, like Dr. Frazer has shown, it isn't Christian thought; end of story. Rom 13:1-2, 1 Peter 2:13-21
You don't know how much I appreciate your fundamentalist self proving my point over and over, Jim.
that may be a valid theological argument in his circles, but it's certainly not a historical one out here in the world the rest of us live in
that may be a valid theological argument in his circles, but it's certainly not a historical one out here in the world the rest of us live in""
Yes, the scriptures are God's word, no matter what u say, and Christ is the word. Therefore, His word is the foundation of history and the creator of history. That's what inerrancy and infallibility is. God's word is superior and authoritative over everything and at all times, including history.
you and Gregg and your fellow fundamentalists claim to speak for God
this is a problem in scholarly circles
you keep proving my point that if we are to accept Gregg Frazer's history, we must accept his theology too
you keep proving my point that if we are to accept Gregg Frazer's history, we must accept his theology too""
If it happens to represent the clear meaning of scripture, yes, and it certainly does.
That scripture is "clear" is a myth.
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This is the latest by leading Protestant theologian and ecclesiastical historian Carl R. Trueman.
https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/12/turning-inward
"The most immediate and pressing ecumenical question for Protestants is not their relationship to Rome but their relationship to one another. From the moment Luther refused to accept Zwingli’s memorialist view of the Lord’s Supper at Marburg in 1529, the history of Protestantism has followed the pattern that Roman Catholic critics predicted: ever-increasing theological and institutional fragmentation.
Insisting that the unity for which Christ prayed need only be spiritual, and not institutional, Protestants have become as divided from one another as they are from Rome.
“Scripture alone” was meant to be a means for regulating the church’s tradition; too often it has become the justification for reinventing the faith every Sunday. The debacle that has been the modern evangelical doctrine of God, with its unwitting rejection or catastrophic revision of catholic doctrines such as the Trinity, divine simplicity, and divine impassibility is only the most obvious."
Which is how Luther's "priesthood of all believers" ended up with unitarianism. The Bible CLEARLY states that Jesus is NOT God. Here's the proof, right from the Bible itself!!
https://www.biblicalunitarian.com/100-scriptural-arguments-for-the-unitarian-faith
Trueman continues:
"A glance at the bibliography revealed, as I suspected, the presence of R. T. Kendall’s Calvin and English Calvinism to 1649. It is rare that a book has been subjected to such consistent and devastating critique as this monograph. It relies on a narrow selection of sources, engages in consistent misreading of primary texts, reflects a tendentious theological agenda, and is based upon the historically indefensible idea that Calvin’s thought, expressed in the Institutes, is both a comprehensive account of his theology and normative for future generations."
As I ask my Calvinist-influenced friends, whose Calvinism is it, anyway? Even Calvin diverges from his own "Institutes," as did his successor Theodore Beza and now dozens of generations of Reformed theologians. Hell, the Presbyterian Church of America not only marries lesbian couples, it ordains them!!
https://www.christianpost.com/news/pcusa-church-ordains-first-married-lesbian-couple-as-ministers-days-after-denominations-marriage-amendment.html
You are a minority in your own church, in your own religion. Those of us outside it have no standing to judge which one is the "real" one.
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