"Looking for something to blog about?"
Pablo, seeing that I have not posted a message since last Thursday, helpfully offers a conversation-starter in the form of a link to an essay by "Reformed" writer James B. Jordan advocating forced mass conversion of entire nations, to be followed by establishment of a "Biblical theocracy" and imposition of the death penalty on adulterers, homosexuals, thieves, "heretics", "blasphemers", "seditious persons", "teach[ing] against Christianity or against the church," and, apparently, just about everybody who fails to be James B. Jordan.
"Discipling the nations means extending the theocratic rule of Christ from the one nation of the Old Creation, to all the 70 nations of the world. What else would a first century Jew have understood by the command? Some kind of Baptistic individualistic person-by-person evangelism? Gimmeabreak. Genesis 10 gives us the 70 nations (which are now a lot more!), and then God selects one nation to theocratize. Now that theocratization is to be extended to all...."
The floor is open for comments, as always. I find it difficult to take this kind of frothing-at-the-mouth seriously. After all, any fool who bothers to actually read what Jesus said and did can plainly see that "some kind of Baptistic individualistic person-by-person evangelism" is exactly what Jesus did. It even occurred to me, while reading this essay, that the whole thing could be a mischievious parody of state-religionism, like "Landover Baptist Church" or the collection of Biblical quotations that the West Wing's scriptwriters put in the mouth of their fictional President Bartlett. Unfortunately, and embarrassingly, the author seems to be sincere, and a substantial number of misguided or consciously hypocritical so-called "Christians", including our Attorney General and President, apparently believe something quite similar. So do these folks. And these. And these. And these....
As for me and my house, my reaction to this kind of proposal is the same one that Jesus made when this kind of earthly "kingship" was offered to him on the pinnacle of the Temple.
Get thee behind me, Satan.
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Pablo @ 10:31AM | 2004-05-16| permalink
Felix, you made it all the way through the article? I was way too disgusted by the time he got to executing heretics to go on. But I was hoping you'd write about it, since I knew you'd have something appropriate to say.
What is interesting to me is how at odds the Calvinist concept of predestination is with the Calvinist concept of strict government. If there's nothing WE can do to convert others, then there's nothing to WE can do to force God to convert people. What you end up with is strictness for the sake of strictness instead of strictness for the sake of evangelism.
It's the people who believe that man must cooperate with God in his conversion who logically have any hope of structuring the world to maximize the"opportunites" for one to make such decisions.
That is my take on why "Thee University" was so strict. They believe that the human will is free, THEREFORE it is not only beneficial but also necessary to engineer society to be able to place God's ultimatum in front of people.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
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