Glenn Sunshine, author of Slaying Leviathan, joins Pastor Joel to discuss the idea of civil tyranny, the history of Christian resistance to government overreach, and the question of when does a legitimate king turn into an illegitimate tyrant.
00:00:00.440Applying God's Word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.
00:00:11.440Hi, this is Pastor Joel with Right Response Ministries. This is our show slash podcast
00:00:16.760called Theology Applied. And today, with this particular episode, I am honored to have as a
00:00:21.940special guest, Glenn Sunshine. He's the author of a book called Slaying Leviathan. And we're going
00:00:28.240to be talking about the topic, the subject matter that his book addresses at great length,
00:00:32.760the idea of civil tyranny, the idea of big government, of government overreach throughout
00:00:40.120human history in different nations and cultures, and the tradition of Christian resistance in the
00:00:46.040midst of civil tyranny. And so I'm pleased and honored to have you. Glenn Sunshine, would you
00:00:51.400take a moment and just introduce yourself to our guest? Tell us a little bit about yourself,
00:00:54.800your ministry, and particularly your book, Slaying Leviathan.
00:00:59.400Well, thank you for having me. I am a college professor. I'm a professor of early modern
00:01:06.840European history, specialist in the Reformation. And along with that, I am involved in a podcast
00:01:14.720called The Theology Podcast, which we do weekly. And I also have a ministry called Every Square
00:01:21.700inch ministries. And anyone who is familiar with Kuyper will know the quote, there's not a single
00:01:27.820square inch in the whole domain of human experience over which Christ, who is Lord of all, does not
00:01:32.580cry mine. And that is the origin of the name for the ministry. The book Slaying Leviathan came out
00:01:42.460of a combination of things. Some of it was my studies in grad school, but a lot of it really
00:01:49.860was a response to trends that I saw going on a few administrations ago. I started really working
00:01:58.400on this issue of Christian ideas of liberty, tyranny, and resistance. Well, like I said,0.99
00:02:06.220a few administrations ago, and it seemed time to pull it together into a book, and that's what
00:02:11.420Slaying Leviathan is about. The book traces a couple of different kinds of ideas. One of them
00:02:18.060is where Christian ideas of liberty came from, where the ideas of unalienable rights came from.
00:02:25.380The answer, by the way, is medieval theologians, medieval Catholic theologians, interestingly
00:02:31.140enough. And then from there, we move into the Reformation era with resistance theory,
00:02:36.580Luther's idea of two kingdoms, Calvin's idea of covenantal basis of government. And then along
00:02:42.500with that, the fundamental question of when is it legitimate for Christians to resist a properly0.85
00:02:50.360constituted government? When does a legitimate king turn into an illegitimate tyrant? And that0.80
00:02:57.000thought begins with Luther. It passes through the Huguenots to the Puritans and ultimately
00:03:02.980reaches its probably best expression with John Locke. And then from there, it shapes the founding
00:03:09.240of the United States. Great. Well, I think we're in for a treat. So let me just go ahead and hop in
00:03:16.000with some questions. And I really, I think for the benefit of our listeners, it's important that
00:03:22.120we understand the history. And I know for you and your context of being a professor, you're probably
00:03:26.340like, hey, we can't just talk about the present because we'll continue to make mistakes in the
00:03:30.980present if we don't know our history. So I definitely want to give you an opportunity
00:03:33.900to talk about the history that you go into great length in your book addressing. That said,
00:03:38.500And could you, just in simple terms, could you give us a brief definition of what is civil tyranny and maybe some of the, you know, you know, kind of, I think it like, you know, you're a redneck if, you know, like, you know, you're, you know, you're tyrannical if blank, like what constitutes, where's the line and what is breaching that line?0.64
00:04:00.280So what constitutes civil tyranny? And then maybe, you know, speaking to some present moments, is there anything that you see in our current political climate that would be an example of that civil tyranny?0.57
00:04:13.280Okay, yeah, there are a couple of different ways we can get to this. The first of them is going back to Jesus's words, always a good idea. He says, in answer to the question about paying taxes to Caesar, he says, render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and render to God the things that are God's.0.86
00:04:31.980Okay, so that was in the context of paying taxes, but I think it's a much broader principle than that. What it says is that the government has legitimate authority, but that legitimate authority is limited.
00:04:46.060There are things that properly do belong to Caesar and there are things that properly belong to God. On a theological level, oh, and by the way, God is the one who determines what belongs to Caesar. Let's add that one in as well.
00:04:59.580So on a theological level, civil tyranny occurs when Caesar begins usurping authority that he doesn't legitimately have, when Caesar starts extending his power into areas that are not properly his.
00:05:15.820In the early church, this really, the first place where you see this argued has to do with freedom of religion, interestingly enough.
00:05:27.380Religious liberty was something that early Christians argued strenuously for, typically on the grounds that worship that is compelled is not pleasing to God.
00:05:39.120So you have to allow people religious liberty, otherwise you're compelling worship and that won't please God at all.
00:05:45.820So basically where that leads is freedom of conscience. The only one who has authority over our consciences is God. When the government claims authority over your conscious conscience, excuse me, that is a clear breach of government's authority and it's usurping something that properly only belongs to God.
00:06:08.440then through the middle ages oh excuse me go on no i was just gonna say what would be what would
00:06:16.160be a practical example of the government um attempting to lay claim on the consciences of
00:06:21.840men could you think of something uh like a like a tangible example when the government tells you
00:06:28.400what you must believe about anything that would be an example of it um if you know in the modern
00:06:37.660context now what's interesting here what's important to note is that even if the government
00:06:42.940is telling you you must believe something that we as christians know is true that is still a
00:06:49.380usurpation of its authority so if the government mandates certain kinds of of language which is
00:06:59.720really fundamentally about thought control and the government mandates you must there are certain
00:07:04.440things that you can and cannot say, that is a usurpation of authority that belongs to God,
00:07:12.020because what it is doing is it's saying that you aren't allowed to think these things.
00:07:16.920Yep. Yep. We see some of that going on.
00:07:19.900Oh, absolutely. Then from there, when you move to the Middle Ages, this isn't exactly the
00:07:25.240argumentation that they use, but the best way to understand it, so this is a later formulation,
00:07:30.460But the best way to understand it is to ask what rights, what liberties did people have prior to the development of human government?
00:07:43.300Because if you have institutions or rights that predate government, government cannot claim authority over those things because they pre-exist government.
00:07:54.380So the institution of the family was established by God in the Garden of Eden.
00:08:00.460Government has no authority to define what a family is, what marriage is, any of those kinds
00:08:07.020of things. It can introduce certain regulations, but it cannot change the basic structure of
00:08:13.460marriage established in Genesis. We have liberty itself as an example. Now, liberty needs to be
00:08:23.760defined here. When I was in school, they told me that liberty was just an old-fashioned word for
00:08:27.980Freedom. That's actually not true. The concept of liberty in the 18th century was really tied into ideas of virtue, ideas of purpose, ideas of living the best, the fullest life possible now, which was always a life that was aimed toward, well, virtue.
00:08:51.280um it is freedom that exists within boundaries so in the garden of eden you see liberty in the
00:09:00.440sense that adam and eve are told you can eat whatever tree you want to except that one there
00:09:05.860was a boundary they weren't supposed to cross the alternative to liberty is what's known as
00:09:11.060license in the 18th century it's the root of our word licentious and license means freedom
00:09:18.180from restraint okay we are not going to accept any boundaries you can't tell me what to do
00:09:25.500in the modern world we have completely lost the concept of liberty because we've lost the
00:09:31.920concept of virtue and without virtue you can't have liberty so all that's left for freedom is
00:09:38.020license it's freedom from authority i can do whatever i want to you can't stop me you have
00:09:44.620no right to do that rather than living within the boundary set by divine and natural law which is
00:09:52.160what liberty would point to but that's that's super helpful yeah isn't that what chesterson
00:09:57.600said didn't he say like true true freedom is found within the bounds or true liberty is found within
00:10:02.020the bounds i think it sounds like a chestertonian kind of thing it sounds like a chestertonian quote
00:10:06.320i don't know that one but it's quite possible um so so we can look at liberty as being something
00:10:13.080that is pre-political. The government cannot take that away from us. It cannot take away from us
00:10:19.040our right to pursue a good life, good in the fullest and richest meaning of the word. We see
00:10:26.500the right to property in the garden. Where? Well, first of all, there is the command to tend the
00:10:35.060garden and eat the fruit so yeah you know tend and keep the garden uh protect the garden whatever
00:10:43.180word there but also you have the right to eat the fruit so adam and eve were literally entitled to
00:10:48.960the fruit of their labor this is known as the labor theory of property if you work for something
00:10:56.100you have a right to it so property rights are actually predate government
00:11:02.120okay so there are a number of things of this sort that that we can point to life god gave adam and
00:11:12.760eve life in the garden now if you've been paying attention you will have heard life liberty and
00:11:17.240property here which are the three unalienable rights that john locke mentioned all of them
00:11:22.600are pre-political all of them precede human government in the garden and therefore government
00:11:28.280cannot arbitrarily deprive us of any of them is it true just for a moment to interrupt is it true
00:11:35.960that that that we actually had that language of of life liberty and property and then it was changed
00:11:43.720later on to the pursuit of happiness i've heard that somewhere yes um locke said that our
00:11:50.040unalienable rights are life liberty and property jefferson changed property to pursuit of happiness
00:11:54.760But we have to know what happiness means. Happiness to Jefferson is, it goes back to a Greek word, eudaimonia. He's, you know, he knows his Aristotle. And eudaimonia in Greek philosophy is the highest purpose of life.
00:12:13.680you know you're to we have the right to pursue our highest ends that's really what the pursuit
00:12:20.060of happiness means and that involves um virtue again in aristotle very clear it's arete in greek
00:12:27.280the um virtus in latin uh the the word points to excellence pursuit of excellence in every
00:12:37.720area of life, again, as a necessary element of fulfilling your highest purposes. So the pursuit
00:12:45.160of happiness really refers to the pursuit of your highest good. It's very closely tied to
00:12:54.080the concept of virtue. And with that, we should add that Jefferson firmly believed that property
00:13:00.220rights were included in there because you could not do this without property rights.
00:13:04.020but he he jumped over walk and went back to aristotle for that one got you i appreciate
00:13:11.060what you're saying in terms of property rights the way you were broadening it and your definition
00:13:15.860because i think typically we just think of property rights as the right to own you know
00:13:19.940physical land um but but you were saying it's it's the right to to um to the fruit of our labor
00:13:25.380and um correct me if i'm wrong here but there's an important distinction between passive and
00:13:31.180active rights and there's just there's a lot of things that people have begun well it's like the
00:13:36.220age of entitlement there's a lot of things that people feel entitled to they think they have rights
00:13:40.060to that biblically speaking um and just logically speaking they don't and um so if there's a right
00:13:46.200to free health care then wouldn't that infringe on what would technically be described as property
00:13:50.980rights that if property rights is i have the right to my own labor then a doctor who worked
00:13:55.500hard to gain those skills and knowledge and all that and it and he's a human being yet it's he
00:13:59.760only has 24 hours in the day like the rest of us it's his time it's his his work his knowledge
00:14:04.280expertise we're saying his property rights over his labor supersedes any pseudo right to
00:14:13.200health care um and and that would be a passive right correct me if i'm wrong i might be getting
00:14:18.320them backwards but a passive right on the part of the doctor that right to the fruit of his labor
00:14:22.360versus an active right is could you explain that am i am i on to something there yeah i i think you
00:14:29.700I don't typically use the language of passive versus active rights myself, but I know that that's out there. But the key thing here is that if we believe in liberty, number one, and property rights defined as the labor theory of property, then what's happening with the doctor in that case violates both of them because functionally it ends up being slave labor.
00:14:55.940the doctor if i have an unalienable right to health care then a doctor who refuses to treat
00:15:04.520me because i won't or can't pay him is violating my rights that's where this goes and while no one
00:15:15.520will say that no one who advocates for the idea of health care as a right will say that
00:15:21.260That's fundamentally where the use of the language in that way leads you automatically to that.
00:15:30.500You're violating my rights. You don't treat me.
00:18:29.160It turns into this monster that engulfs everything.
00:18:31.880And would you agree that even the welfare state would be a breach of government stepping into the sphere of the family?
00:18:40.860If indeed it's true that certain fathers, or even at an epidemic proportion, that fathers have failed in their responsibility of protection and provision, it still belongs to fathers, it belongs to this autonomous sphere, and the government steps in and ends up often doing more harm than good?
00:19:01.880Well, let's take a look at this in terms of chickens and eggs. Where did the problem start? When I was growing up, my mother taught in inner city Newark, in New Jersey.
00:19:17.300When the riots occurred in 68, my mom and dad put my brothers who were still at home and me in a car and drove us through the area during the day where the riots were taking place to explain to us why those riots were happening.
00:19:29.720so I had sort of a front well backseat view of this literally in this case but
00:19:39.180she would occasionally she taught special ed and she would occasionally go to visit her students
00:19:46.840at their homes and you know to talk to the parents and so on and she came home one day
00:19:54.000and mentioned that the student that she had gone to visit lived with his mother but not his father
00:20:01.920and you know i was 10 years old something like that i said well why why doesn't his dad live
00:20:09.300with him and she said well it's because of welfare and i said well what's that it's well
00:20:15.560the government gives people who are poor money so that they can live but she said the way the
00:20:22.540welfare program is set up, they get less money if the father is at home with them.
00:20:30.820Because they incentivize as women not to marry the fathers of their children.0.91
00:20:35.580Well, because you see, now they're trying to do it right, because they assume that if0.87
00:20:39.280the father is there, the father has a job.
00:20:41.040But the problem was there were no jobs.
00:20:42.840And so in order to get enough money to keep the family going, the fathers had to leave
00:20:48.540the house, even when they were married and didn't want it.
00:20:51.200They had to leave the house. And so what this ended up doing is destroying the African-American family in the inner cities so that now we have this massive epidemic of unwed mothers, single-parent households, and things like that.0.59
00:21:06.580The family collapsed, but the family collapsed because the government stepped into a sphere that isn't its responsibility. The government is not responsible for welfare, especially not at a federal level. That's the responsibility of the church. It's the responsibility of local charitable organizations, those kinds of things, because they understand the issues on the ground better and can do a better job than the one-size-fits-none policies of the federal government.
00:21:35.060so they created the crisis in family by that that policy which i said like i said it was
00:21:43.360well-intentioned and they were trying to do the right thing and they were trying to be responsible
00:21:46.940and all that sort of thing but the law of unintended consequences which is the only
00:21:51.160universal law of history kicked in destroyed the family and now the government is even more
00:21:57.860in loco parentis than they were before yep i get it all right so now with it with that final
00:22:07.340definition of civil civil tyranny uh do you feel like we're ready to discuss john lock yeah uh
00:22:13.580let let's go to lock lock lock is an interesting guy he's he is really important um in terms of
00:22:22.000political thought. He was a Puritan. Due to a debate over the authorship of the Pentateuch
00:22:31.680that occurred in the intellectual, the key intellectual journal of the day, he moved
00:22:37.180into a more liberal version of Christianity, but he never really lost, you know, his Christian
00:22:42.740roots. And he, you know, he might have been more liberal than we would be comfortable with
00:22:48.820gleaning deist and things like that, but I think he's still within the broad Christian tradition.
00:22:57.380What he did is he took a lot of elements of Christian thought that were already in place
00:23:05.200in terms of political theology. So he took the idea of unalienable rights, which was developed,
00:23:12.440like I said, by medieval Catholic theologians. He took resistance theory with its roots in
00:23:18.500Luther, but going through the Huguenots and the Puritans, he took Calvin's idea of covenantal
00:23:24.020government. The idea here is that when God established a government with Israel on Mount
00:23:29.760Sinai in Exodus, he did it in the form of a covenant, and further he asked them three separate
00:23:35.060times, do you agree to abide by the terms of this covenant? And they didn't ratify the covenant
00:23:40.580until you got the consent of the governed three separate times. So Calvin then argued that
00:23:48.580government must be based on consent of the governed. This was not a new idea, but he adds
00:23:53.280to it that the covenantal nature of government. And then this idea is going to pass very strongly
00:23:58.980into the Puritans. They'll develop it further. But all of these different things, the idea of0.79
00:24:04.900unalienable rights, the idea of resistance theory, the idea of covenantal government,
00:24:08.900all of these different things operated sort of in their own lanes. What Locke did is he
00:24:16.520synthesized them. He brought them together into a coherent system that really unified all of these
00:24:24.240different branches of Christian political theology for the first time. And so you get Locke's idea
00:24:30.080that government exists. Now, he secularizes it a bit. He is not as theologically oriented as I
00:24:37.560would like. He changes the language of covenant to the language of contract. Contract is a
00:24:43.240secularization of covenant here. But he argues that government consists of a proper government
00:24:50.240is established as a contract between the government and the people. That that contract
00:24:57.000is based on the idea that it is going to be protecting the people's unalienable rights,
00:25:05.520life, liberty, and property coming out of medieval theologians. And that if the government
00:25:10.120violates that contract, violates the rights of the people, the people have a right to resist.
00:25:15.320They have a right to stand up, overthrow the government, and replace it with one more to
00:25:19.960their liking. Now, they do need to replace it with another government. We're not talking about
00:25:25.380anarchy. And that other government then is subject to the same contractual obligations
00:25:30.280to the people to protect their unalienable rights as the previous government had been.
00:25:35.520Now, like I said, this is a brilliant synthesis of a lot of elements that already existed within Christian political theology.
00:25:45.640It then crosses the Atlantic and becomes the foundation for Jefferson's thinking with the modification of pursuit of happiness that we talked about before.
00:25:55.840And then this becomes a critical element in the establishment of government of the United States government.
00:26:04.100Now, there's another element that runs through this that doesn't go through Locke that's worth noting. That comes from St. Augustine. Augustine is the guy, he's probably best remembered today for predestination, but he's also the guy who really codified in a lot of ways the doctrine of original sin.
00:26:20.720and original sin is an important again critically important concept for western political thought
00:26:28.680because what it means is that there is no one that can be trusted with absolute power because
00:26:34.200everyone is corrupt and corruptible therefore government must be limited and must have systems
00:26:41.560of checks and balances in place this again is some part and parcel of the medieval political
00:26:47.340tradition coming out of Augustine. We think of checks and balances as being American, but it
00:26:51.860really dates all the way back into the Middle Ages with roots in Augustine's thought. That became
00:26:58.220really strong with Calvin, who's heavily influenced by Augustine. It goes to the Puritans, the Puritans
00:27:05.000to New England, and thus this fundamental mistrust of government is worked directly
00:27:13.700into the U.S. Constitution through its system of checks and balances, as well, by the way,
00:27:20.800as its utter fear of political parties. One of the things most people don't realize is that in
00:27:27.480the original Constitution, the president was the one who got the most electoral votes. The vice
00:27:32.960president was the guy who got the second highest amount of electoral college votes.
00:27:37.060and the reason they did that is they knew from the experience of republics in italy during the
00:27:46.120middle ages and renaissance that if you get factions in the government um and a faction
00:27:52.240manages to take control it's the death of the republic and so they absolutely feared factions
00:27:58.520and parties now they discovered pretty quickly how are we doing on that glenn yeah well where
00:28:05.420Where does this lead? Think about the checks and balance system. The idea is that you've got three
00:28:12.380major branches of government. I'm going to use that word, even though it's probably not exactly
00:28:17.960correct. You have the executive, the presidency, you have the Senate, and you have the House.
00:28:27.120The judiciary is non-political in principle. Basically, its job is to play referee.
00:28:33.400But between those three branches, each of them represents one of Aristotle's ideal forms of government. You've got the monarchial principle in the president, you have the aristocratic principle in the Senate, you have the republican principle in the House.
00:28:48.700the idea so it's it's technically what's referred to as a mixed state okay an aristotelian mixed
00:28:55.920state the idea is that if any branch of government oversteps its legitimate bounds the other two
00:29:04.020will rein it in okay because they hope they were trying to use actually original sin to their
00:29:14.100advantage. The idea is that each institution will be so interested in guarding its prerogatives
00:29:22.740that it won't let any other institution overstep its bounds. It'll team up with the other side,
00:29:28.020with one of the other institutions to stop. Presidency gets too big for its britches. The
00:29:33.140House and the Senate will work against it. The Senate and the President will work against the
00:29:37.140house and so on. That only works if you don't have political parties. Because once you have a0.92
00:29:45.620political party, loyalties are no longer to the institution, they're to the party. And that
00:29:52.840crosses institutional lines. And therefore, the system of checks and balances can't work correctly.
00:29:59.040So instead of three united branches of government institutions, you have three different that are
00:30:03.820But all three of them are fractured with different – it makes me think kind of a silly example, but it makes me think of what fantasy football has done to watching football.
00:30:13.200No longer do you have an actual team that you're rooting for because you're rooting for all these individual players who are spread out on all these different teams.
00:30:20.700And in some way, it kind of ruins the traditional way of watching football.
00:30:27.860Well, again, the idea is that the different branches of government should be in competition with each other.
00:30:33.820And instead, what happens, that's how the system of checks and balances, it's the only way it works.
00:30:40.740But when you get parties and you get the president and the Senate and the House or one faction versus another faction, the system of checks and balances breaks down.
00:30:55.780I did not know even what you said about the, you know, the guy who got the most electoral votes being the president and then the guy who got the second most.
00:31:03.520It's not that just, you know, he and his administration, you know, lose, but he's actually the vice president.
00:31:31.280So anyway, what you're seeing here in America is a combination of things.
00:31:38.060Locke synthesizes, like I said, brilliantly a lot of elements of Christian political theology.
00:31:43.860And then that gets transported over here with Jefferson.
00:31:46.800When you add the Puritan component heading into the Constitution, you get a lot of the ideas from Locke coming in, but you're also getting this emphasis on original sin, which Locke didn't have.
00:31:58.620And as a result, I would argue that the founding documents of America, the Declaration and the Constitution, are probably the ultimate culmination of a long tradition of Christian political theology.
00:32:19.500and it's really it's really in a lot of ways its last its last expression because shortly after
00:32:29.160the constitution is established you get the french revolution which is a purely secular revolution
00:32:34.620and with that it changes the rules complete political theory political thought from that
00:32:43.580point on is dominated by the secular French Revolution and the ideas that come out of that
00:32:50.340much more than from Christian political theology, which is really at the root of America.
00:32:57.920Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, so with all that, well, one of the things I just, I got to play the
00:33:05.380devil's advocate for a moment, and I think it'll be helpful for our listeners. But I think one of
00:33:09.140the things that I just constantly hear Christians, you know, use to push back on some of the things
00:33:12.900you're saying. It's just, well, what about, you know, what about Romans 13? What about different
00:33:17.640verses in the Bible that talk about, it seems as though the New Testament would say that there's
00:33:22.800just this blind submission, you know, from citizens. Christians should submit to civil0.85
00:33:29.120governments even when they are tyrannical. How would you respond to that? Well, what they're1.00
00:33:36.380doing is they're appealing to romans 13 okay um what they're ignoring is what romans 13 says about
00:33:44.260the purpose of government romans 13 says that the magistrate exists to punish evil and reward good
00:33:54.640right are we obligated to obey when the government punishes good and rewards evil
00:34:01.860when the government is not doing what god has ordained the government to do
00:34:09.820are we still obligated to obey that because in the context of romans 13 it tells you what the
00:34:18.200government is to be doing right it assumes yeah i that's the argument that i've always used is
00:34:23.320saying that you know all the submission language from citizens to civil government in romans 13
00:34:29.120but it's all on the backdrop, it's all on the assumption
00:34:33.220that the government is functioning in the way that God ordained it to function, that they're rewarding
00:34:37.280good, that they're punishing evil, they're bearing the sword for just reasons
00:35:09.680So even that, like, shows, Paul, I think, is showing his hand.
00:35:13.700He's showing the assumptions that are baked into the text.
00:35:16.440And, like, because if he was just talking about governments, period, whether they were good, you know, bad, or in between,
00:35:22.200then I think he would offer some clarification when he says, you know,
00:35:26.300would you have no fear the one you know who rules over you like um then then do instead of saying do
00:35:32.960what is good he would have to say do what they want whether that's actually aligns with god's
00:35:38.120moral moral law or not and right so i'm with you i agree i think i just you know we just often hear
00:35:43.860romans 13 romans 13 you know yeah and and that comes really from sort of a minimalist
00:35:49.860understanding going right back to jesus's words render to caesar things that are caesar and to
00:35:55.660gods, the things that are gods. That's going to sort of a minimalist view that says that
00:36:00.460only the things that are explicitly related to worship of God are gods. The government has
00:36:08.220everything else. It's not a Kuyperian view. Yeah, I mean, so if they tell you you've got to worship0.96
00:36:14.660a statue of the emperor, you've got to burn incense to the statue of the emperor,
00:36:18.600yeah, we've got to draw the line there. But pretty much anything else the government tells
00:36:21.540you to do if it doesn't impinge on that you need to do no because there are things that are not
00:36:30.080the governments and they're a lot more than just the things that are explicitly gods the things
00:36:35.680that god expressly commands and god owns a lot more than just the church i mean if i had a dollar
00:36:42.460forever every time so you know christ is the head of the church you know christ is the head of the
00:36:46.080church, not Caesar. And so I always want to point them to Ephesians or Colossians. Amen, Christ is
00:36:52.460the head of the church. But did you know he's also the head of all things? Christ is not merely the
00:36:57.060head of the church, you know. Yeah, when I'm talking about the kingdom, I will usually just say, you
00:37:02.140know, a kingdom, the Greek word vasileia, translated kingdom, really doesn't necessarily refer to a
00:37:10.260geographic territory what it refers to is the exercise of royal authority thus even if a roman
00:37:18.600soldier on an errand for caesar is not in roman territory it doesn't matter that he is still
00:37:27.660the kingdom is there with him in him okay so so if you you then take the next step and say okay
00:37:37.580the most basic christian confession is jesus is lord now that was itself an inescapably political
00:37:48.840statement because the de facto confession of the roman empire is caesar is lord
00:37:53.940but let's move it to a current context what is jesus lord of
00:37:59.840and i'll give you a hint it's a three-letter word that rhymes with call
00:38:05.160okay now we we say this in our hymns we sing this in our hymns all the time you know crown him
00:38:13.180what is not included in all right well i think you're absolutely right and i think the problem
00:38:21.320is that the american evangelical modern church has has um has pushed jesus lordship all the way
00:38:28.800back to to exclusively the realm of the heart jesus is lord of we've replaced all i think
00:38:34.460you're right we still do have some of those those hymns and some of that language he's lord of all
00:38:38.500but but it you you see it quickly eroding away that jesus is lord of all language and being
00:38:43.560replaced with jesus is the lord of my heart and so jesus is like his lordship you know um it's very
00:38:50.320very limited and it's a private right lord of my heart it's internal it's invisible like it's a
00:38:55.520private lordship rather than a public uh and it's it's crazy it's scary to see that lord of all
00:39:03.040replaced with Lord of my heart. Yeah, there are two observations to make here. One of them
00:39:11.180is that this is effectively secularizing the gospel. In secularization, there are a variety
00:39:20.780of definitions of it, but basically it says that religion is a private matter. You're welcome to
00:39:27.700have it if you want to, but keep it out of public life. If our concept of Christianity is it's just
00:39:34.180about personal salvation, maybe personal morality, we have secularized the gospel.
00:39:40.460We have bought into the lie of secular culture. We have ceded territory that belongs to Jesus
00:39:46.780to the secular world. The second observation is that it really reflects a utterly defective view
00:39:56.360of salvation. We think of salvation, and this is a problem with evangelicals across the board,
00:40:04.100we think of salvation pretty much exclusively in terms of forgiveness of sins. We've got a very
00:40:09.280forensic legal understanding of what salvation is. That is really, really important, and I don't want
00:40:18.940to downplay the significance of that, but it's only the beginning. If you go to Europe and you
00:40:29.040go to a Gothic cathedral in France, let's say Chartres or France or, well, it can't do Notre
00:40:35.960Dame anymore, but if you were to go there, what you would find is the main door to the west
00:40:43.040has got boatloads of symbolism attached to it it's to the west which is where the sun sets so
00:40:50.540it's symbolic of the end of the world and when you enter from the west you're entering from the end
00:40:55.480of time and over the main door you will see christ on the on his enthroned in heaven either
00:41:01.160the scene from revelation 4 or christ judging people um you know the the final judgment that's
00:41:08.280what's over the door. And so when you go in there, there's a lot of theology right on that door.
00:41:15.580And you could spend a lot of time at the west door, at the vestibule in there, looking at
00:41:21.880everything there and studying it. But if you want to get to the real jaw-dropping part of a Gothic
00:41:29.340cathedral, you've got to get inside into the nave, into the main body of the church. That is where
00:41:35.740you will be absolutely awestruck at what at what they did and what how they managed to do this
00:41:41.520it's breathtakingly beautiful it's amazing stuff the cathedral is the kingdom getting your sins
00:41:51.400forgiven is the doorway evangelicals are stuck at the door they never or very few of them go all the
00:42:01.620way in to see the real glories of the kingdom, to see the real glories of the church. It's like
00:42:07.080being stuck at the West door. Like I said, it's great. It's interesting. It's fascinating. Lots
00:42:11.940of good theology and all of that. But you're missing the best part if that's where you leave
00:42:17.620it. That's really good. It makes me think I love Pilgrim's Progress. It makes me think of the
00:42:23.780Wicket Gate. If Pilgrim had just stopped there and, you know, goodwill thrust his hand and, you
00:42:28.860know you know with all my heart are you welcome you know are you willing to to welcome me with
00:42:33.280all my heart and if he had just you know grabbed his hand stepped inside and sat down and called
00:42:39.740it done you know it'd be kind of a boring a boring book i mean still from the city of destruction
00:42:45.700the slew of the spawn you know and you know all there would still be a lot you're right we could
00:42:50.840fascinate ourselves and delve into a lot of good theology and still plenty of beauty um but we'd
00:42:58.020be missing. We'd be missing a lot. We'd be missing the delectable mountains. We'd be missing the
00:43:02.680celestial city. We'd be missing a lot. Here's a challenge for you and your listeners. Read
00:43:09.820through Paul's epistles, the guy we get our doctrine of justification by faith from, and notice how
00:43:16.740often he uses the phrase in Christ or with Christ, and notice all of the things that are associated
00:43:24.180with it. If you really look and you see everything that is said there, it does two things. First of
00:43:32.000all, it tells you that we have literally every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in
00:43:38.240Christ. So we have to maintain our connection to Christ. It's branches and vine image. It's all of
00:43:47.940those kinds of things. But what it says we have in Christ is a lot more than just forgiveness
00:43:54.200of sins. That's mentioned almost incidentally. There are so much more riches that are involved
00:44:00.560in our salvation that we just completely miss because we do not understand the lordship of
00:44:05.220Christ. We've privatized it. We've reduced it simply to salvation. Yeah, I think you're right.
00:44:12.340I completely agree. Let me ask you one more question in our episode. There's a phrase that the founders seem to be fond of saying and that you have quoted that says that eternal vigilance is the price that we pay for our liberty.
00:44:32.320What do the founders mean by this, that eternal vigilance as the price that we pay for our liberty?
00:44:37.900And what are some specific ways kind of getting as, you know, present day, you know, speaking to our culture, our society?
00:44:48.220What are some ways that the church has failed in this eternal vigilance?
00:44:54.800Well, once again, at this point, we're dealing with the idea of original sin.
00:45:03.080You know, the fact is, you know, as Lord Acton famously said, power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
00:45:10.000You have to constantly, eternal vigilance really involves watching what your government is doing and not letting it get too big, not letting it overstep its bounds, not letting it get too big for its britches.
00:45:23.360because government always tends toward tyranny okay that that's fundamentally what that needs
00:45:34.020we you know i see that quote used a lot but very few people really think about its implications
00:45:41.080its implications really have to do with the fact that you can't trust people with power
00:45:45.440and what we see i i would say that we have really dropped the ball on this
00:45:53.820the church has been more than happy this is really um dating to the 60s but coming out of the
00:46:02.160golden era of liberal christianity in america which is the 1950s um the church has been very
00:46:10.380happy to subcontract out its responsibilities to the government yeah and as a result the things
00:46:19.060that the church is supposed to be doing like caring for the poor and the needy and so on
00:46:25.680are now in the hands of government and government is ill-equipped to do them but the government is
00:46:31.300more than happy to take whatever power you're willing to cede it and we have been consistently
00:46:36.620ceding power to the government let me ask you this question i just actually posted this on facebook
00:46:42.240when we talk about giving to caesar what caesar's and giving to god what's god's
00:46:49.580what belongs to caesar does determining the time and place where we can worship belong to caesar
00:46:58.400no does determining how many people can come to worship belong to caesar no
00:47:06.140Does determining what we can do in worship, for example, you aren't allowed to sing, does that belong to Caesar?
00:47:15.020That's not even the circumstances of our worship, but that's the elements of our worship.
00:57:05.360We already were starting to get at it a little bit.
00:57:07.560So maybe we could just go a little bit deeper
00:57:09.440with the Equality Act. So Glenn, our bonus question is, could you just spend a little bit
00:57:14.840of time briefly explaining the Equality Act and offer your personal prediction for what you believe
00:57:20.480some of the effects might be on the church, but also the society at large? So that's our bonus
00:57:25.460question. And let's go ahead and conclude our episode by Glenn giving you the final word.
00:57:30.620How can people be praying for you and how can they follow your ministry?
00:57:33.800Okay, well, first of all, following the ministry is easier. I am easy to find on Facebook. I accept, unless there's some obvious red flag, I accept pretty much everybody who sends a friend request.
00:57:51.500Along with that, I have a ministry that I run myself.
00:58:09.800All of those are good ways to find me.
00:58:11.780In terms of prayer, I'm actually retiring from my position at the university at the end of this semester.
00:58:18.900And I'm retiring specifically so that I can put more focused time in teaching, writing, and speaking to the Christian world. I want to, I really believe God is calling me into more active and direct ministry, and I can't do that with a full-time job at the university.
00:58:40.560so um i'm kind of stepping out of the boat here um so uh prayer for future ministry opportunities
00:58:52.600and frankly not to be too crass about it for support um maybe some ministry opportunities
00:59:00.480that pay yeah yeah there you go so those would be some uh the most important prayer items for me
00:59:07.780currently. Great. Okay. Well, Glenn, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's an honor to get
00:59:13.360to speak to you. And I've benefited, you know, before this evening, getting to speak to you
00:59:18.340face to face, I've benefited from your ministry, especially the theology podcast. I forgot that
00:59:23.320you were on that before we started recording, but then I, you know, remember that. And that's,
00:59:28.120that's one of my favorite podcasts. So thank you so much for coming on the show and everything
00:59:31.680that you do. Again, thank you for having me. As a special thank you for your gift of any amount,
00:59:37.180we'll be happy to send you a free digital book from our store to access this offer visit
00:59:42.320right response ministries.com slash offer we highly recommend pastor joel's book am i truly
00:59:48.360saved if you or someone you know has wrestled with doubts about the love of god this would
00:59:53.280be a great resource as a reminder to get this offer go to right response ministries.com
00:59:58.320slash offer and thank you for your generous support