It is lawful for Christians to accept and execute the office of a magistrate (in which) they ought especially to maintain piety, justice, and peace, according to the wholesome laws of each commonwealth...
Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven; or, in the least, interfere in matters of faith. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord…
- Westminster Confession of Faith 23.2,3
But it often happens that the magistrate is negligent, nay, sometimes himself requires to be chastised; as was the case with the Emperor Theodosius. Moreover, the same thing may be said regarding the whole ministry of the word. Now, therefore, according to that view, let pastors cease to censure manifest iniquities, let them cease to chide, accuse, and rebuke. For there are Christian magistrates who ought to correct these things by the laws and the sword. But as the magistrate ought to purge the Church of offences by corporal punishment and coercion, so the minister ought, in his turn, to assist the magistrate in diminishing the number of offenders. Thus they ought to combine their efforts, the one being not an impediment but a help to the other.
- John Calvin, Institutes; 4:11:3
Observing radical two kingdom men in their atomistic machinations of this and that, only precisely there but absolutely not then or now, leads me to say that one of their gravest problems is that man is, by nature, given to worship. He was made for this.
If he will not bow to his Creator, he won't stop bowing; instead, he'll bow to idols. Scripture says "Blessed is the nation whose god is the Lord," and the understood alternative is not the enlightened nation that has adopted an official no-god-at-all called "separation of church and state." If a nation does not have God as their god, they are in thrall to demons. And their subjection is not only as individuals, but corporately as families, cities, states, and nation.
There is the nation whose god is the Lord and there is the nation whose god is an idol of demons--those are the only two possibilities. Man was made to worship. He can't help himself.
Thus while R2K men are scurrying around trying to shore up the separation of church and state that they hope will provide us a few more years of peace, our presidents--both Democrats and Republicans--never stop constructing the temples and altars of Molech. And this is only to cite one example, albeit the bloodiest and most pathetic one...
There is no such thing as a king constructing a demilitarized zone or an unreligious no-man's land. God made us for worship and worship we will. Those granted civil authority will use their authority to enforce the cult that holds them in bondage even as they justify those enforcements by appealing to separation of church and state. God has given them over and they are blind to their inconsistency or hypocrisy--it's hard to know which.
There never has been such a thing as a "naked public square." The square is always cultic and liturgical. If it's proper to speak of nakedness, it's only in reference to Christians who have refused to testify to the Only True God anywhere but inside the safe boundaries of church-house and home, and only about strictly pious matters related to their own private religious pursuit which is of a deeply personal nature. Christians have stripped it naked of the Truth, robbing their neighbors of their salt and light, of God and His Law; heartlessly abandoning their neighbors to, for instance, the slaughter of their offspring on the altars of demons.
Our presidents, governors, and mayors ceaselessly toil at enforcing the worship of their gods and the only thing up in the air is which gods the pinch of incense adores: the Only True God or Molech.
This is these United States today. On every street corner, we have altars to Molech where pagans and Christians alike sacrifice our own offspring to demons--something Scripture tells us is so very evil that it never entered the mind of God (Jeremiah 19:5)--and Christians drive by on our way to our church-house, silencing our consciences by assuring ourselves confessing Christians aren't putting Covenant children in the fire, only pagans do that; that as Christians we have no duty to oppose the fire since the Westminster Divines told us not to meddle in affairs rightly belonging to the jurisdiction of the civil magistrate; that whether the civil magistrate should outlaw the slaughter is a question of public policy not addressed by the general equity of the Law; that pagans have always given their children to the fire, so what's new; that if we speak up against Molech's bloodlust, we'll only alienate the pagans rendering them even more resistant to the pure, unadulaterated, scrupulously clean Gospel message; and on it goes.
When the Apostle Paul went to Athens, he went as a Church father who had been delegated the work of opposing the cult of Athens, seeking to supplant it with the glorious cult of our Lord Jesus Christ. And he didn't address them just as individuals, keeping his appeal strictly on a personal and private level.
He addressed them corporately.
He didn't retire to a private home, scrupulously calling this and that man to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.
He went to the Areopagus at the Areopagus--the city fathers at their city gate--and there he rebuked them individually and corporately for their civic cult of idolatry.
Athens was a "city full of idols" and the Apostle Paul rebuked the city fathers, saying: "Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all respects" (Acts 17:22). It was not simply individuals, but like Jonah with Ninevah, the city herself the Apostle Paul had in his sights.
Every man and every civil magistrate is always and only religious. There never has been, nor ever will be, any separation of church and state. Christophen Hitchens is a fool not only because he refuses to worship the One Who made him, but also because he believes that he has no cult or temple or altar.
Fact is, every king enforces his own cult and temple and idol. The only question is which god his liturgy adores.
Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD... Psalm 33:12 and 144:15
(TB)
