The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - Christian Persecution In America

00:00:00.440 Applying God's Word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.

00:00:11.440 Hi, this is Pastor Joel with Right Response Ministries. This is our show slash podcast

00:00:16.760 called Theology Applied. And today, with this particular episode, I am honored to have as a

00:00:21.940 special guest, Glenn Sunshine. He's the author of a book called Slaying Leviathan. And we're going

00:00:28.240 to be talking about the topic, the subject matter that his book addresses at great length,

00:00:32.760 the idea of civil tyranny, the idea of big government, of government overreach throughout

00:00:40.120 human history in different nations and cultures, and the tradition of Christian resistance in the

00:00:46.040 midst of civil tyranny. And so I'm pleased and honored to have you. Glenn Sunshine, would you

00:00:51.400 take a moment and just introduce yourself to our guest? Tell us a little bit about yourself,

00:00:54.800 your ministry, and particularly your book, Slaying Leviathan.

00:00:59.400 Well, thank you for having me. I am a college professor. I'm a professor of early modern

00:01:06.840 European history, specialist in the Reformation. And along with that, I am involved in a podcast

00:01:14.720 called The Theology Podcast, which we do weekly. And I also have a ministry called Every Square

00:01:21.700 inch ministries. And anyone who is familiar with Kuyper will know the quote, there's not a single

00:01:27.820 square inch in the whole domain of human experience over which Christ, who is Lord of all, does not

00:01:32.580 cry mine. And that is the origin of the name for the ministry. The book Slaying Leviathan came out

00:01:42.460 of a combination of things. Some of it was my studies in grad school, but a lot of it really

00:01:49.860 was a response to trends that I saw going on a few administrations ago. I started really working

00:01:58.400 on this issue of Christian ideas of liberty, tyranny, and resistance. Well, like I said, 0.99

00:02:06.220 a few administrations ago, and it seemed time to pull it together into a book, and that's what

00:02:11.420 Slaying Leviathan is about. The book traces a couple of different kinds of ideas. One of them

00:02:18.060 is where Christian ideas of liberty came from, where the ideas of unalienable rights came from.

00:02:25.380 The answer, by the way, is medieval theologians, medieval Catholic theologians, interestingly

00:02:31.140 enough. And then from there, we move into the Reformation era with resistance theory,

00:02:36.580 Luther's idea of two kingdoms, Calvin's idea of covenantal basis of government. And then along

00:02:42.500 with that, the fundamental question of when is it legitimate for Christians to resist a properly 0.85

00:02:50.360 constituted government? When does a legitimate king turn into an illegitimate tyrant? And that 0.80

00:02:57.000 thought begins with Luther. It passes through the Huguenots to the Puritans and ultimately

00:03:02.980 reaches its probably best expression with John Locke. And then from there, it shapes the founding

00:03:09.240 of the United States. Great. Well, I think we're in for a treat. So let me just go ahead and hop in

00:03:16.000 with some questions. And I really, I think for the benefit of our listeners, it's important that

00:03:22.120 we understand the history. And I know for you and your context of being a professor, you're probably

00:03:26.340 like, hey, we can't just talk about the present because we'll continue to make mistakes in the

00:03:30.980 present if we don't know our history. So I definitely want to give you an opportunity

00:03:33.900 to talk about the history that you go into great length in your book addressing. That said,

00:03:38.500 And 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

00:04:00.280 So 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

00:04:13.280 Okay, 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

00:04:31.980 Okay, 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.

00:04:46.060 There 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.

00:04:59.580 So 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.

00:05:15.820 In the early church, this really, the first place where you see this argued has to do with freedom of religion, interestingly enough.

00:05:27.380 Religious liberty was something that early Christians argued strenuously for, typically on the grounds that worship that is compelled is not pleasing to God.

00:05:39.120 So you have to allow people religious liberty, otherwise you're compelling worship and that won't please God at all.

00:05:45.820 So 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.

00:06:08.440 then through the middle ages oh excuse me go on no i was just gonna say what would be what would

00:06:16.160 be a practical example of the government um attempting to lay claim on the consciences of

00:06:21.840 men could you think of something uh like a like a tangible example when the government tells you

00:06:28.400 what you must believe about anything that would be an example of it um if you know in the modern

00:06:37.660 context now what's interesting here what's important to note is that even if the government

00:06:42.940 is telling you you must believe something that we as christians know is true that is still a

00:06:49.380 usurpation of its authority so if the government mandates certain kinds of of language which is

00:06:59.720 really fundamentally about thought control and the government mandates you must there are certain

00:07:04.440 things that you can and cannot say, that is a usurpation of authority that belongs to God,

00:07:12.020 because what it is doing is it's saying that you aren't allowed to think these things.

00:07:16.920 Yep. Yep. We see some of that going on.

00:07:19.900 Oh, absolutely. Then from there, when you move to the Middle Ages, this isn't exactly the

00:07:25.240 argumentation that they use, but the best way to understand it, so this is a later formulation,

00:07:30.460 But the best way to understand it is to ask what rights, what liberties did people have prior to the development of human government?

00:07:43.300 Because if you have institutions or rights that predate government, government cannot claim authority over those things because they pre-exist government.

00:07:54.380 So the institution of the family was established by God in the Garden of Eden.

00:08:00.460 Government has no authority to define what a family is, what marriage is, any of those kinds

00:08:07.020 of things. It can introduce certain regulations, but it cannot change the basic structure of

00:08:13.460 marriage established in Genesis. We have liberty itself as an example. Now, liberty needs to be

00:08:23.760 defined here. When I was in school, they told me that liberty was just an old-fashioned word for

00:08:27.980 Freedom. 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.

00:08:51.280 um it is freedom that exists within boundaries so in the garden of eden you see liberty in the

00:09:00.440 sense that adam and eve are told you can eat whatever tree you want to except that one there

00:09:05.860 was a boundary they weren't supposed to cross the alternative to liberty is what's known as

00:09:11.060 license in the 18th century it's the root of our word licentious and license means freedom

00:09:18.180 from restraint okay we are not going to accept any boundaries you can't tell me what to do

00:09:25.500 in the modern world we have completely lost the concept of liberty because we've lost the

00:09:31.920 concept of virtue and without virtue you can't have liberty so all that's left for freedom is

00:09:38.020 license it's freedom from authority i can do whatever i want to you can't stop me you have

00:09:44.620 no right to do that rather than living within the boundary set by divine and natural law which is

00:09:52.160 what liberty would point to but that's that's super helpful yeah isn't that what chesterson

00:09:57.600 said didn't he say like true true freedom is found within the bounds or true liberty is found within

00:10:02.020 the bounds i think it sounds like a chestertonian kind of thing it sounds like a chestertonian quote

00:10:06.320 i don't know that one but it's quite possible um so so we can look at liberty as being something

00:10:13.080 that is pre-political. The government cannot take that away from us. It cannot take away from us

00:10:19.040 our right to pursue a good life, good in the fullest and richest meaning of the word. We see

00:10:26.500 the right to property in the garden. Where? Well, first of all, there is the command to tend the

00:10:35.060 garden and eat the fruit so yeah you know tend and keep the garden uh protect the garden whatever

00:10:43.180 word there but also you have the right to eat the fruit so adam and eve were literally entitled to

00:10:48.960 the fruit of their labor this is known as the labor theory of property if you work for something

00:10:56.100 you have a right to it so property rights are actually predate government

00:11:02.120 okay so there are a number of things of this sort that that we can point to life god gave adam and

00:11:12.760 eve life in the garden now if you've been paying attention you will have heard life liberty and

00:11:17.240 property here which are the three unalienable rights that john locke mentioned all of them

00:11:22.600 are pre-political all of them precede human government in the garden and therefore government

00:11:28.280 cannot arbitrarily deprive us of any of them is it true just for a moment to interrupt is it true

00:11:35.960 that that that we actually had that language of of life liberty and property and then it was changed

00:11:43.720 later on to the pursuit of happiness i've heard that somewhere yes um locke said that our

00:11:50.040 unalienable rights are life liberty and property jefferson changed property to pursuit of happiness

00:11:54.760 But 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.

00:12:13.680 you know you're to we have the right to pursue our highest ends that's really what the pursuit

00:12:20.060 of happiness means and that involves um virtue again in aristotle very clear it's arete in greek

00:12:27.280 the um virtus in latin uh the the word points to excellence pursuit of excellence in every

00:12:37.720 area of life, again, as a necessary element of fulfilling your highest purposes. So the pursuit

00:12:45.160 of happiness really refers to the pursuit of your highest good. It's very closely tied to

00:12:54.080 the concept of virtue. And with that, we should add that Jefferson firmly believed that property

00:13:00.220 rights were included in there because you could not do this without property rights.

00:13:04.020 but he he jumped over walk and went back to aristotle for that one got you i appreciate

00:13:11.060 what you're saying in terms of property rights the way you were broadening it and your definition

00:13:15.860 because i think typically we just think of property rights as the right to own you know

00:13:19.940 physical land um but but you were saying it's it's the right to to um to the fruit of our labor

00:13:25.380 and um correct me if i'm wrong here but there's an important distinction between passive and

00:13:31.180 active rights and there's just there's a lot of things that people have begun well it's like the

00:13:36.220 age of entitlement there's a lot of things that people feel entitled to they think they have rights

00:13:40.060 to that biblically speaking um and just logically speaking they don't and um so if there's a right

00:13:46.200 to free health care then wouldn't that infringe on what would technically be described as property

00:13:50.980 rights that if property rights is i have the right to my own labor then a doctor who worked

00:13:55.500 hard to gain those skills and knowledge and all that and it and he's a human being yet it's he

00:13:59.760 only has 24 hours in the day like the rest of us it's his time it's his his work his knowledge

00:14:04.280 expertise we're saying his property rights over his labor supersedes any pseudo right to

00:14:13.200 health care um and and that would be a passive right correct me if i'm wrong i might be getting

00:14:18.320 them backwards but a passive right on the part of the doctor that right to the fruit of his labor

00:14:22.360 versus an active right is could you explain that am i am i on to something there yeah i i think you

00:14:29.700 I 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.

00:14:55.940 the doctor if i have an unalienable right to health care then a doctor who refuses to treat

00:15:04.520 me because i won't or can't pay him is violating my rights that's where this goes and while no one

00:15:15.520 will say that no one who advocates for the idea of health care as a right will say that

00:15:21.260 That's fundamentally where the use of the language in that way leads you automatically to that.

00:15:30.500 You're violating my rights. You don't treat me.

00:15:33.680 You're right. You're right. Yeah.

00:15:36.600 OK, well, yeah, that's a logical conclusion.

00:15:39.500 It's a train that we don't want to be on because the end is dire.

00:15:44.220 Well, you've already kind of been dancing around it a little bit and addressing it at some length.

00:15:49.760 but can we go just a little bit deeper into John Locke? Who's John Locke? And what's so

00:15:54.860 significant about his contributions? And what do you wish Christians knew about John Locke and would

00:16:01.420 fight for with his contributions? Okay, before we get to Locke, I want to give you one more

00:16:07.060 definition of civil tyranny. Because like I said, there are several different ways you can get here.

00:16:12.460 The other one, I'm going to go with a Kuyperian definition. Kuyper believed that there were a

00:16:19.200 number of spheres of life that were well autonomous they were established by god and

00:16:25.240 intended to have autonomy once again you can trace a lot of these right back to the garden

00:16:29.080 family um labor and business um things like that there are set well religion worship um there are

00:16:37.820 a variety of these things that predate government that are therefore autonomous from government

00:16:44.140 largely independent of it. Government has its legitimate sphere, but so does the church,

00:16:50.620 so does the family, so does education, so does business and labor, and so on. He called this

00:16:56.960 sphere sovereignty. The idea is that each sphere has its own area in which it can govern itself.

00:17:06.380 The problem comes up when one sphere, and it is almost inevitably the government,

00:17:12.660 begins to take on roles that properly belong to another sphere. And when that happens,

00:17:21.780 we are moving towards civil tyranny. The government is once again expanding out of

00:17:26.840 its legitimate zone, which is fundamental definition of tyranny. Now, this most often

00:17:31.680 happens when one of the spheres stops functioning properly. When Wall Street is corrupt and you get

00:17:40.460 derivatives trading and things like that and and bubbles like we saw happen um a few years ago with

00:17:45.960 the housing crisis um that sphere that we describe that as the sphere collapsing it ceases to function

00:17:54.400 the way it's supposed to and then when that happens another sphere has to step in to try to

00:17:59.040 pick up the slack or try to get it working again that will most often be the government but the

00:18:04.040 problem is the government is incompetent outside of its areas of authority and therefore and

00:18:09.800 And sometimes within its area of authority.

00:18:12.960 Well, yeah, I mean, yeah, even within its area of authority, it can be.

00:18:16.620 But when it steps out of that zone of authority, it is really ill-equipped to do that kind of work and frequently makes the problem worse.

00:18:26.620 And it turns into, well, Leviathan.

00:18:29.160 It turns into this monster that engulfs everything.

00:18:31.880 And would you agree that even the welfare state would be a breach of government stepping into the sphere of the family?

00:18:40.860 If 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?

00:19:00.580 Would that be another example?

00:19:01.880 Well, 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.

00:19:17.300 When 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.

00:19:29.720 so I had sort of a front well backseat view of this literally in this case but

00:19:39.180 she would occasionally she taught special ed and she would occasionally go to visit her students

00:19:46.840 at their homes and you know to talk to the parents and so on and she came home one day

00:19:54.000 and mentioned that the student that she had gone to visit lived with his mother but not his father

00:20:01.920 and you know i was 10 years old something like that i said well why why doesn't his dad live

00:20:09.300 with him and she said well it's because of welfare and i said well what's that it's well

00:20:15.560 the government gives people who are poor money so that they can live but she said the way the

00:20:22.540 welfare program is set up, they get less money if the father is at home with them.

00:20:29.820 Right. 0.99

00:20:30.820 Because they incentivize as women not to marry the fathers of their children. 0.91

00:20:35.580 Well, because you see, now they're trying to do it right, because they assume that if 0.87

00:20:39.280 the father is there, the father has a job.

00:20:41.040 But the problem was there were no jobs.

00:20:42.840 And so in order to get enough money to keep the family going, the fathers had to leave

00:20:48.540 the house, even when they were married and didn't want it.

00:20:51.200 They 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

00:21:06.580 The 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.

00:21:35.060 so they created the crisis in family by that that policy which i said like i said it was

00:21:43.360 well-intentioned and they were trying to do the right thing and they were trying to be responsible

00:21:46.940 and all that sort of thing but the law of unintended consequences which is the only

00:21:51.160 universal law of history kicked in destroyed the family and now the government is even more

00:21:57.860 in loco parentis than they were before yep i get it all right so now with it with that final

00:22:07.340 definition of civil civil tyranny uh do you feel like we're ready to discuss john lock yeah uh

00:22:13.580 let let's go to lock lock lock is an interesting guy he's he is really important um in terms of

00:22:22.000 political thought. He was a Puritan. Due to a debate over the authorship of the Pentateuch

00:22:31.680 that occurred in the intellectual, the key intellectual journal of the day, he moved

00:22:37.180 into a more liberal version of Christianity, but he never really lost, you know, his Christian

00:22:42.740 roots. And he, you know, he might have been more liberal than we would be comfortable with

00:22:48.820 gleaning deist and things like that, but I think he's still within the broad Christian tradition.

00:22:57.380 What he did is he took a lot of elements of Christian thought that were already in place

00:23:05.200 in terms of political theology. So he took the idea of unalienable rights, which was developed,

00:23:12.440 like I said, by medieval Catholic theologians. He took resistance theory with its roots in

00:23:18.500 Luther, but going through the Huguenots and the Puritans, he took Calvin's idea of covenantal

00:23:24.020 government. The idea here is that when God established a government with Israel on Mount

00:23:29.760 Sinai in Exodus, he did it in the form of a covenant, and further he asked them three separate

00:23:35.060 times, do you agree to abide by the terms of this covenant? And they didn't ratify the covenant

00:23:40.580 until you got the consent of the governed three separate times. So Calvin then argued that

00:23:48.580 government must be based on consent of the governed. This was not a new idea, but he adds

00:23:53.280 to it that the covenantal nature of government. And then this idea is going to pass very strongly

00:23:58.980 into the Puritans. They'll develop it further. But all of these different things, the idea of 0.79

00:24:04.900 unalienable rights, the idea of resistance theory, the idea of covenantal government,

00:24:08.900 all of these different things operated sort of in their own lanes. What Locke did is he

00:24:16.520 synthesized them. He brought them together into a coherent system that really unified all of these

00:24:24.240 different branches of Christian political theology for the first time. And so you get Locke's idea

00:24:30.080 that government exists. Now, he secularizes it a bit. He is not as theologically oriented as I

00:24:37.560 would like. He changes the language of covenant to the language of contract. Contract is a

00:24:43.240 secularization of covenant here. But he argues that government consists of a proper government

00:24:50.240 is established as a contract between the government and the people. That that contract

00:24:57.000 is based on the idea that it is going to be protecting the people's unalienable rights,

00:25:05.520 life, liberty, and property coming out of medieval theologians. And that if the government

00:25:10.120 violates that contract, violates the rights of the people, the people have a right to resist.

00:25:15.320 They have a right to stand up, overthrow the government, and replace it with one more to

00:25:19.960 their liking. Now, they do need to replace it with another government. We're not talking about

00:25:25.380 anarchy. And that other government then is subject to the same contractual obligations

00:25:30.280 to the people to protect their unalienable rights as the previous government had been.

00:25:35.520 Now, like I said, this is a brilliant synthesis of a lot of elements that already existed within Christian political theology.

00:25:45.640 It then crosses the Atlantic and becomes the foundation for Jefferson's thinking with the modification of pursuit of happiness that we talked about before.

00:25:55.840 And then this becomes a critical element in the establishment of government of the United States government.

00:26:04.100 Now, 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.

00:26:20.720 and original sin is an important again critically important concept for western political thought

00:26:28.680 because what it means is that there is no one that can be trusted with absolute power because

00:26:34.200 everyone is corrupt and corruptible therefore government must be limited and must have systems

00:26:41.560 of checks and balances in place this again is some part and parcel of the medieval political

00:26:47.340 tradition coming out of Augustine. We think of checks and balances as being American, but it

00:26:51.860 really dates all the way back into the Middle Ages with roots in Augustine's thought. That became

00:26:58.220 really strong with Calvin, who's heavily influenced by Augustine. It goes to the Puritans, the Puritans

00:27:05.000 to New England, and thus this fundamental mistrust of government is worked directly

00:27:13.700 into the U.S. Constitution through its system of checks and balances, as well, by the way,

00:27:20.800 as its utter fear of political parties. One of the things most people don't realize is that in

00:27:27.480 the original Constitution, the president was the one who got the most electoral votes. The vice

00:27:32.960 president was the guy who got the second highest amount of electoral college votes.

00:27:37.060 and the reason they did that is they knew from the experience of republics in italy during the

00:27:46.120 middle ages and renaissance that if you get factions in the government um and a faction

00:27:52.240 manages to take control it's the death of the republic and so they absolutely feared factions

00:27:58.520 and parties now they discovered pretty quickly how are we doing on that glenn yeah well where

00:28:05.420 Where does this lead? Think about the checks and balance system. The idea is that you've got three

00:28:12.380 major branches of government. I'm going to use that word, even though it's probably not exactly

00:28:17.960 correct. You have the executive, the presidency, you have the Senate, and you have the House.

00:28:27.120 The judiciary is non-political in principle. Basically, its job is to play referee.

00:28:33.400 But 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.

00:28:48.700 the idea so it's it's technically what's referred to as a mixed state okay an aristotelian mixed

00:28:55.920 state the idea is that if any branch of government oversteps its legitimate bounds the other two

00:29:04.020 will rein it in okay because they hope they were trying to use actually original sin to their

00:29:14.100 advantage. The idea is that each institution will be so interested in guarding its prerogatives

00:29:22.740 that it won't let any other institution overstep its bounds. It'll team up with the other side,

00:29:28.020 with one of the other institutions to stop. Presidency gets too big for its britches. The

00:29:33.140 House and the Senate will work against it. The Senate and the President will work against the

00:29:37.140 house and so on. That only works if you don't have political parties. Because once you have a 0.92

00:29:45.620 political party, loyalties are no longer to the institution, they're to the party. And that

00:29:52.840 crosses institutional lines. And therefore, the system of checks and balances can't work correctly.

00:29:59.040 So instead of three united branches of government institutions, you have three different that are

00:30:03.820 But 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.

00:30:13.200 No 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.

00:30:20.700 And in some way, it kind of ruins the traditional way of watching football.

00:30:25.920 I don't know.

00:30:26.960 Just throwing that out there.

00:30:27.860 Well, again, the idea is that the different branches of government should be in competition with each other.

00:30:33.820 And instead, what happens, that's how the system of checks and balances, it's the only way it works.

00:30:40.740 But 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.

00:30:53.920 Wow.

00:30:54.800 And that's really interesting.

00:30:55.780 I 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.

00:31:03.520 It's not that just, you know, he and his administration, you know, lose, but he's actually the vice president.

00:31:09.160 I was not aware of that.

00:31:11.200 Yeah, it's a great idea in theory, in practice.

00:31:16.340 Could you imagine President Biden and Vice President Trump?

00:31:19.880 Yeah, I am imagining that.

00:31:23.200 Right. Yeah.

00:31:23.960 But even that, man, I'd rather that than Biden and Kamala.

00:31:28.120 But yeah, I get it.

00:31:30.980 Yeah.

00:31:31.280 So anyway, what you're seeing here in America is a combination of things.

00:31:38.060 Locke synthesizes, like I said, brilliantly a lot of elements of Christian political theology.

00:31:43.860 And then that gets transported over here with Jefferson.

00:31:46.800 When 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.

00:31:58.620 And 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.

00:32:19.500 and it's really it's really in a lot of ways its last its last expression because shortly after

00:32:29.160 the constitution is established you get the french revolution which is a purely secular revolution

00:32:34.620 and with that it changes the rules complete political theory political thought from that

00:32:43.580 point on is dominated by the secular French Revolution and the ideas that come out of that

00:32:50.340 much more than from Christian political theology, which is really at the root of America.

00:32:57.920 Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, so with all that, well, one of the things I just, I got to play the

00:33:05.380 devil's advocate for a moment, and I think it'll be helpful for our listeners. But I think one of

00:33:09.140 the things that I just constantly hear Christians, you know, use to push back on some of the things

00:33:12.900 you're saying. It's just, well, what about, you know, what about Romans 13? What about different

00:33:17.640 verses in the Bible that talk about, it seems as though the New Testament would say that there's

00:33:22.800 just this blind submission, you know, from citizens. Christians should submit to civil 0.85

00:33:29.120 governments even when they are tyrannical. How would you respond to that? Well, what they're 1.00

00:33:36.380 doing is they're appealing to romans 13 okay um what they're ignoring is what romans 13 says about

00:33:44.260 the purpose of government romans 13 says that the magistrate exists to punish evil and reward good

00:33:54.640 right are we obligated to obey when the government punishes good and rewards evil

00:34:01.860 when the government is not doing what god has ordained the government to do

00:34:09.820 are we still obligated to obey that because in the context of romans 13 it tells you what the

00:34:18.200 government is to be doing right it assumes yeah i that's the argument that i've always used is

00:34:23.320 saying that you know all the submission language from citizens to civil government in romans 13

00:34:29.120 but it's all on the backdrop, it's all on the assumption

00:34:33.220 that the government is functioning in the way that God ordained it to function, that they're rewarding

00:34:37.280 good, that they're punishing evil, they're bearing the sword for just reasons

00:34:41.460 and so there's a lot of things

00:34:45.340 that I think Paul is assuming in Romans 13, submit to

00:34:49.180 civil governments and the implicit

00:34:52.760 kind of word is when they look like this, this is civil government

00:34:57.280 This is God's design for civil government, and you should submit to that.

00:35:01.760 And, I mean, he even says, like, you know, that would you have no fear, you know, of the government?

00:35:07.440 You know, then do what is good.

00:35:09.680 So even that, like, shows, Paul, I think, is showing his hand.

00:35:13.700 He's showing the assumptions that are baked into the text.

00:35:16.440 And, like, because if he was just talking about governments, period, whether they were good, you know, bad, or in between,

00:35:22.200 then I think he would offer some clarification when he says, you know,

00:35:26.300 would you have no fear the one you know who rules over you like um then then do instead of saying do

00:35:32.960 what is good he would have to say do what they want whether that's actually aligns with god's

00:35:38.120 moral moral law or not and right so i'm with you i agree i think i just you know we just often hear

00:35:43.860 romans 13 romans 13 you know yeah and and that comes really from sort of a minimalist

00:35:49.860 understanding going right back to jesus's words render to caesar things that are caesar and to

00:35:55.660 gods, the things that are gods. That's going to sort of a minimalist view that says that

00:36:00.460 only the things that are explicitly related to worship of God are gods. The government has

00:36:08.220 everything else. It's not a Kuyperian view. Yeah, I mean, so if they tell you you've got to worship 0.96

00:36:14.660 a statue of the emperor, you've got to burn incense to the statue of the emperor,

00:36:18.600 yeah, we've got to draw the line there. But pretty much anything else the government tells

00:36:21.540 you to do if it doesn't impinge on that you need to do no because there are things that are not

00:36:30.080 the governments and they're a lot more than just the things that are explicitly gods the things

00:36:35.680 that god expressly commands and god owns a lot more than just the church i mean if i had a dollar

00:36:42.460 forever every time so you know christ is the head of the church you know christ is the head of the

00:36:46.080 church, not Caesar. And so I always want to point them to Ephesians or Colossians. Amen, Christ is

00:36:52.460 the head of the church. But did you know he's also the head of all things? Christ is not merely the

00:36:57.060 head of the church, you know. Yeah, when I'm talking about the kingdom, I will usually just say, you

00:37:02.140 know, a kingdom, the Greek word vasileia, translated kingdom, really doesn't necessarily refer to a

00:37:10.260 geographic territory what it refers to is the exercise of royal authority thus even if a roman

00:37:18.600 soldier on an errand for caesar is not in roman territory it doesn't matter that he is still

00:37:27.660 the kingdom is there with him in him okay so so if you you then take the next step and say okay

00:37:37.580 the most basic christian confession is jesus is lord now that was itself an inescapably political

00:37:48.840 statement because the de facto confession of the roman empire is caesar is lord

00:37:53.940 but let's move it to a current context what is jesus lord of

00:37:59.840 and i'll give you a hint it's a three-letter word that rhymes with call

00:38:05.160 okay now we we say this in our hymns we sing this in our hymns all the time you know crown him

00:38:13.180 what is not included in all right well i think you're absolutely right and i think the problem

00:38:21.320 is that the american evangelical modern church has has um has pushed jesus lordship all the way

00:38:28.800 back to to exclusively the realm of the heart jesus is lord of we've replaced all i think

00:38:34.460 you're right we still do have some of those those hymns and some of that language he's lord of all

00:38:38.500 but but it you you see it quickly eroding away that jesus is lord of all language and being

00:38:43.560 replaced with jesus is the lord of my heart and so jesus is like his lordship you know um it's very

00:38:50.320 very limited and it's a private right lord of my heart it's internal it's invisible like it's a

00:38:55.520 private lordship rather than a public uh and it's it's crazy it's scary to see that lord of all

00:39:03.040 replaced with Lord of my heart. Yeah, there are two observations to make here. One of them

00:39:11.180 is that this is effectively secularizing the gospel. In secularization, there are a variety

00:39:20.780 of definitions of it, but basically it says that religion is a private matter. You're welcome to

00:39:27.700 have it if you want to, but keep it out of public life. If our concept of Christianity is it's just

00:39:34.180 about personal salvation, maybe personal morality, we have secularized the gospel.

00:39:40.460 We have bought into the lie of secular culture. We have ceded territory that belongs to Jesus

00:39:46.780 to the secular world. The second observation is that it really reflects a utterly defective view

00:39:56.360 of salvation. We think of salvation, and this is a problem with evangelicals across the board,

00:40:04.100 we think of salvation pretty much exclusively in terms of forgiveness of sins. We've got a very

00:40:09.280 forensic legal understanding of what salvation is. That is really, really important, and I don't want

00:40:18.940 to downplay the significance of that, but it's only the beginning. If you go to Europe and you

00:40:29.040 go to a Gothic cathedral in France, let's say Chartres or France or, well, it can't do Notre

00:40:35.960 Dame anymore, but if you were to go there, what you would find is the main door to the west

00:40:43.040 has got boatloads of symbolism attached to it it's to the west which is where the sun sets so

00:40:50.540 it's symbolic of the end of the world and when you enter from the west you're entering from the end

00:40:55.480 of time and over the main door you will see christ on the on his enthroned in heaven either

00:41:01.160 the scene from revelation 4 or christ judging people um you know the the final judgment that's

00:41:08.280 what's over the door. And so when you go in there, there's a lot of theology right on that door.

00:41:15.580 And you could spend a lot of time at the west door, at the vestibule in there, looking at

00:41:21.880 everything there and studying it. But if you want to get to the real jaw-dropping part of a Gothic

00:41:29.340 cathedral, you've got to get inside into the nave, into the main body of the church. That is where

00:41:35.740 you will be absolutely awestruck at what at what they did and what how they managed to do this

00:41:41.520 it's breathtakingly beautiful it's amazing stuff the cathedral is the kingdom getting your sins

00:41:51.400 forgiven is the doorway evangelicals are stuck at the door they never or very few of them go all the

00:42:01.620 way in to see the real glories of the kingdom, to see the real glories of the church. It's like

00:42:07.080 being stuck at the West door. Like I said, it's great. It's interesting. It's fascinating. Lots

00:42:11.940 of good theology and all of that. But you're missing the best part if that's where you leave

00:42:17.620 it. That's really good. It makes me think I love Pilgrim's Progress. It makes me think of the

00:42:23.780 Wicket Gate. If Pilgrim had just stopped there and, you know, goodwill thrust his hand and, you

00:42:28.860 know you know with all my heart are you welcome you know are you willing to to welcome me with

00:42:33.280 all my heart and if he had just you know grabbed his hand stepped inside and sat down and called

00:42:39.740 it done you know it'd be kind of a boring a boring book i mean still from the city of destruction

00:42:45.700 the slew of the spawn you know and you know all there would still be a lot you're right we could

00:42:50.840 fascinate ourselves and delve into a lot of good theology and still plenty of beauty um but we'd

00:42:58.020 be missing. We'd be missing a lot. We'd be missing the delectable mountains. We'd be missing the

00:43:02.680 celestial city. We'd be missing a lot. Here's a challenge for you and your listeners. Read

00:43:09.820 through Paul's epistles, the guy we get our doctrine of justification by faith from, and notice how

00:43:16.740 often he uses the phrase in Christ or with Christ, and notice all of the things that are associated

00:43:24.180 with it. If you really look and you see everything that is said there, it does two things. First of

00:43:32.000 all, it tells you that we have literally every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in

00:43:38.240 Christ. So we have to maintain our connection to Christ. It's branches and vine image. It's all of

00:43:47.940 those kinds of things. But what it says we have in Christ is a lot more than just forgiveness

00:43:54.200 of sins. That's mentioned almost incidentally. There are so much more riches that are involved

00:44:00.560 in our salvation that we just completely miss because we do not understand the lordship of

00:44:05.220 Christ. We've privatized it. We've reduced it simply to salvation. Yeah, I think you're right.

00:44:12.340 I 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.

00:44:32.320 What do the founders mean by this, that eternal vigilance as the price that we pay for our liberty?

00:44:37.900 And what are some specific ways kind of getting as, you know, present day, you know, speaking to our culture, our society?

00:44:48.220 What are some ways that the church has failed in this eternal vigilance?

00:44:54.100 What do you think?

00:44:54.800 Well, once again, at this point, we're dealing with the idea of original sin.

00:45:03.080 You know, the fact is, you know, as Lord Acton famously said, power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

00:45:10.000 You 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.

00:45:23.360 because government always tends toward tyranny okay that that's fundamentally what that needs

00:45:34.020 we you know i see that quote used a lot but very few people really think about its implications

00:45:41.080 its implications really have to do with the fact that you can't trust people with power

00:45:45.440 and what we see i i would say that we have really dropped the ball on this

00:45:53.820 the church has been more than happy this is really um dating to the 60s but coming out of the

00:46:02.160 golden era of liberal christianity in america which is the 1950s um the church has been very

00:46:10.380 happy to subcontract out its responsibilities to the government yeah and as a result the things

00:46:19.060 that the church is supposed to be doing like caring for the poor and the needy and so on

00:46:25.680 are now in the hands of government and government is ill-equipped to do them but the government is

00:46:31.300 more than happy to take whatever power you're willing to cede it and we have been consistently

00:46:36.620 ceding power to the government let me ask you this question i just actually posted this on facebook

00:46:42.240 when we talk about giving to caesar what caesar's and giving to god what's god's

00:46:49.580 what belongs to caesar does determining the time and place where we can worship belong to caesar

00:46:58.400 no does determining how many people can come to worship belong to caesar no

00:47:06.140 Does determining what we can do in worship, for example, you aren't allowed to sing, does that belong to Caesar?

00:47:15.020 That's not even the circumstances of our worship, but that's the elements of our worship.

00:47:18.680 That certainly belongs to the church.

00:47:21.440 So, how is it that our churches have rolled over?

00:47:29.600 Yeah, it's a great question.

00:47:33.280 So, you know, you want a concrete example of government overreach, you want a concrete example of why eternal vigilance is necessary.

00:47:41.260 what i am abundantly concerned about is that however well-intentioned and i'll give them the

00:47:52.120 benefit of the doubt however well-intentioned these government restrictions are they have

00:47:57.440 established a precedent that given the tendency of government toward corruption and tyranny

00:48:04.860 because of the problem of sin in the world, we can't trust them not to use this to push other

00:48:16.240 things on the church that are not justifiable by the pandemic, but by other things that they're

00:48:24.220 going to claim are national priorities. And we've already seen examples of this.

00:48:29.160 Right. The Equality Act is coming.

00:48:30.840 The Equality Act will be a great example. Yeah. And don't underestimate the impact of the Equality Act.

00:48:41.800 Ministerial exemptions will get ministers off the hook, maybe, but it won't get people who work in the church who are not ministers.

00:48:49.460 It won't protect churches from being required to hire there. And it certainly won't apply to non-church Christian institutions.

00:49:00.840 um parachurch ministries uh groups like focus on the family for example or christian colleges

00:49:07.460 and universities um and even an organization like i've got a lot of respect for hillsdale

00:49:13.480 grove city these places that don't take federal funding but it's not going to stop with federal

00:49:19.200 funding it's going to go the next step to accreditation and if you lose accreditation

00:49:25.620 you are out of business as a college and i can pretty well guarantee if the equality act passes

00:49:32.620 the accreditation agencies are going to say okay you have to abide by the terms of this

00:49:36.980 for accreditation or you are unaccredited the consequences of this are absolutely massive

00:49:43.560 and yet given the church's track record of rolling over at every government intrusion

00:49:51.460 i don't really see them having the backbone to put up a fight yeah me neither uh at the same time i

00:49:58.940 am hopeful and encouraged at least in respects to um i think that uh at least some christians

00:50:07.240 are starting to wake up i think i well i'd see it as a winnowing you know the lord sovereignly he

00:50:12.940 prunes i think he's used covid i think he's used black lives matters he's used multiple things

00:50:18.600 especially in this last year is his winnowing fork and separating the wheat from the chaff and

00:50:22.860 i think what we found is that um a lot of the numbers are our numbers and our ranks that we

00:50:28.000 boasted of um weren't actually there um so we we're working with less than perhaps we we were

00:50:35.300 claiming less less people than we actually thought we had but the ones that we do have the remnant

00:50:41.240 if you will um is is waking up and uh and getting i think i think angry and a righteous uh anger

00:50:50.240 so i'm i'm hopeful but we we need we need voices we need guys like john knox um we need we need

00:50:57.920 fighters um let let me just ask one more thing because you just got me thinking with you know

00:51:02.940 the church caring for the poor and you know if the church you know any of these spheres autonomous

00:51:08.320 you know sphere sovereignty if any of these spheres fails and its responsibilities its duties

00:51:13.440 then there's always going to be the temptation of another sphere to to encroach and to step in

00:51:18.300 and government tends to be that sphere what about though i just the the thing that's difficult so

00:51:24.760 like caring for the poor you know the the church has so we have some pretty clear conditions

00:51:30.540 that god gives us in his word you know like i mean i think of just first timothy five you know

00:51:36.160 it's like, care for the poor. And the first implicit question is, who's the poor? You know,

00:51:41.100 and then what we see in 1 Timothy 5, and I'm not saying that this is, you know, because we can

00:51:45.340 obviously look at other texts and Old Testament texts, but 1 Timothy 5, you know, a widow. And

00:51:51.680 to make the widow's list. Now, to be fair, Paul says, you know, Galatians do as often as you have

00:51:57.260 opportunity to do good to all, but prioritize the household of faith. And, but then, you know,

00:52:02.040 1 Timothy 5, it's like, here are the qualifications for a widow. She must be, you know, he gives an 0.93

00:52:05.900 age limit. She must be this old. You know, it doesn't count if she's the 30-year-old woman, 0.98

00:52:09.980 30-year-old widow, but she needs to be this age. She also needs to be faithful, right? We don't 0.66

00:52:15.260 just give to people who are needy, but we do as often as we have opportunity, but we're not

00:52:23.980 limitless. We're finite in our resources, and the church is finite, just like the government and

00:52:28.260 everything else. We can't just, the government doesn't know it's finite, but it is, but it just

00:52:32.560 prints money. And the church is finite, also like the government, but tends to know it maybe a little

00:52:37.860 bit better than the government. And so there's only so much. And so we prioritize, we have these

00:52:41.620 regulations from God's word. And so I just think about the masses, that the population, the people,

00:52:46.820 when you have two entities, two spheres, and one is rightly instituted by God to care for the poor.

00:52:54.220 And one is not, namely the government. But this one that actually it is their right

00:52:58.660 has stipulations and conditions um and and then this one says no conditions we won't we won't give

00:53:06.660 you a drug test we won't give you anything you don't have to you don't have to live a holy life

00:53:10.760 you don't have to do this you don't have to do that and we'll just you know what I mean people

00:53:14.500 so part of it I think the church fails but part of it is like our constitute all these you know

00:53:20.020 written for a moral population and the more that morality you know erodes in the population as a

00:53:25.800 whole, it's like even if the church steps up its game and is caring for the poor righteously

00:53:30.740 according to God's word and rightly prioritizing, because it is finite, if somebody's immoral

00:53:39.820 and they look at government will give me money and I don't have to do anything, church will

00:53:43.640 give me money, but I have to get my life together.

00:53:46.540 You know what I mean?

00:53:48.740 Do you have any thoughts on that?

00:53:51.120 Well, I'd like to point out just a couple of things.

00:53:55.360 One of them is that Jesus tells us that we're to give to whoever asks of us without expecting return.

00:54:02.780 You know, he talks about how God does good to the righteous and the unrighteous.

00:54:07.840 And God expects us to do the same thing.

00:54:11.180 So when you look at the history of the church, the church has taken care of the poor.

00:54:18.140 It has worked at various times to distinguish between the worthy poor and the unworthy poor.

00:54:24.440 and to support particularly the worthy poor, but not the others.

00:54:29.020 I mean, so there have been distinctions drawn there.

00:54:33.480 But the other thing to keep in mind is that I don't know the current numbers,

00:54:38.480 but a while ago I ran into statistics that said that charitable organizations

00:54:43.540 use 70% of their income for the work that they're doing.

00:54:51.640 the government uses 30 percent because there's so much overhead so what that means is it is

00:55:01.160 economically inefficient to work through the government because the government is ill-equipped

00:55:06.360 to do this it's not what it's supposed to be doing christianity also along with the church

00:55:12.960 it's also worth noting that christianity created the first charitable institutions in world history

00:55:20.400 so there are people had always given alms to the poor but organized systematic hospitals

00:55:29.400 orphanages things like this are the invention of the christian church so it doesn't have to be the

00:55:36.800 church itself that is doing the work there is plate there is space for these kinds of charitable

00:55:44.400 institutions and that is often the work in it but it still is often the work of the church

00:55:52.220 in in the sense that the church it is christians who truly care about that that's helpful that's

00:55:59.620 helpful yeah so you know we have catholic hospitals catholic charities um you know things like that

00:56:04.140 is one example but there are also other denominations that do similar kinds of things

00:56:08.340 catholics get a lot of press because they're big but but there are others that that do the same

00:56:13.080 thing yeah yep that's really helpful well let's um let's go ahead and conclude and as i told you

00:56:18.880 before we we started recording um our typical practice with theology applied is that um that

00:56:24.520 we have a bonus question and so we encourage people um to sign up for our club membership

00:56:30.640 we call it our responders um if you feel so inclined and you're one of our listeners today

00:56:35.060 and you'd like to support this ministry so that we could produce and create more content like this

00:56:40.100 with biblically qualified guests like Glenn Sunshine.

00:56:44.880 We need your prayers and we need your support.

00:56:47.060 And as an incentive and our gift to you

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00:56:51.600 that only our club members, our responders can access.

00:56:55.760 And so this is our bonus question for our responders,

00:56:58.040 our club members.

00:56:59.280 I'm gonna go ahead and say it

00:57:00.540 just to whet everyone's appetite,

00:57:02.600 to throw out a little incentive here.

00:57:05.360 We already were starting to get at it a little bit.

00:57:07.560 So maybe we could just go a little bit deeper

00:57:09.440 with the Equality Act. So Glenn, our bonus question is, could you just spend a little bit

00:57:14.840 of time briefly explaining the Equality Act and offer your personal prediction for what you believe

00:57:20.480 some of the effects might be on the church, but also the society at large? So that's our bonus

00:57:25.460 question. And let's go ahead and conclude our episode by Glenn giving you the final word.

00:57:30.620 How can people be praying for you and how can they follow your ministry?

00:57:33.800 Okay, 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.

00:57:51.500 Along with that, I have a ministry that I run myself.

00:57:57.640 It is Every Square Inch Ministries.

00:58:00.140 That's at esquareinch, E-S-Q-U-A-R-E-I-N-C-H dot org or dot com.

00:58:07.420 There's also the Theology Podcast.

00:58:09.800 All of those are good ways to find me.

00:58:11.780 In terms of prayer, I'm actually retiring from my position at the university at the end of this semester.

00:58:18.900 And 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.

00:58:40.560 so um i'm kind of stepping out of the boat here um so uh prayer for future ministry opportunities

00:58:52.600 and frankly not to be too crass about it for support um maybe some ministry opportunities

00:59:00.480 that pay yeah yeah there you go so those would be some uh the most important prayer items for me

00:59:07.780 currently. Great. Okay. Well, Glenn, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's an honor to get

00:59:13.360 to speak to you. And I've benefited, you know, before this evening, getting to speak to you

00:59:18.340 face to face, I've benefited from your ministry, especially the theology podcast. I forgot that

00:59:23.320 you were on that before we started recording, but then I, you know, remember that. And that's,

00:59:28.120 that's one of my favorite podcasts. So thank you so much for coming on the show and everything

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01:00:07.180 Thank you.

The NXR Podcast - July 21, 2021

THEOLOGY APPLIED - Christian Persecution In America

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