John Wesley convinced me that improper action is ultimately rooted in some kind of theological problem. Perhaps the call for Marriage Amendments comes from the fact that so many on the Christian right have a lousy theology of the state? A lousy theology of marriage? Both?
From what I can tell, the strongest case for government in Scripture is Romans 13 - but that passage suggests that the purpose of government is to punish the evildoer. I think many Christians read "evildoer" as "sinner". But, from my very rudimentary understanding of Greek, that's not the case. The two are different Greek words. "Sin" typically comes from the Greek "hamartia" which means "missing the mark". It tends to place the emphasis on the fact that sin is self-originated. "Evil", at least in Romans 13, is from "kakos" - which often implies doing harm/injury to someone else.
While I don't think that Romans 13 actually provides an argument that we need government to do these things (it's one thing to say that an institution serves a purpose and another to say that only that institution can serve that purpose), it is interest to me that going back to the Greek suggests that Romans 13 is really only giving justification to a libertarian government that punishes things like murder, rape, theft, and fraud...
Dr. Gordon at GCC had an interesting perspective on Christians and government. He argued that God gave government the authority to create laws in line with certain qualifications, and the authority to punish those who break the laws. He went on to argue that from a Christian perspective there are three sorts of laws: Laws that support God's laws, laws that are unrelated to God's laws, and laws that contradict God's laws, and that we, as Christians, must, need not, and must not follow those types of laws, respectively. However, as God had granted government the authority to punish violators of the law, we must submit to punishment regardless of the type of law we broke
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On marriage - I wonder how Christians with the "government makes marriage" view deal with the Adam-Eve problem. They obviously had no government (at least not what we'd call government), yet the Scripture is clear that they were married. Or what about Israel under the judges? No real "government" (except when there were foreign oppressors), yet people were clearly married.
There is, I think, a somewhat infuriating (to me!) tendency to look at such things and say, "Oh, those were special cases. They don't matter for deciding how the basic principle works!"
I could see an argument going something like "In those cases, God was the government, and He decided they were married. Then He gave us human government to do His will with, so now the human government decided when people are married."
It's not one I agree with, but it would be far less hand-wavy than "Ignore anything that doesn't fit with my view."
That's fair. I also disagree, and I think there's nothing in Scripture to support it, but it's better than the alternative.
I don't think most people who would hold to this actually do think you need government permission, though. I wouldn't expect many of them to agree that the government could, say, make marriage impossible via legislation.
I don't think most people who would hold to this actually do think you need government permission, though.
Agreed. It probably tends to be one of those "This is how it's always been done as far as I know, clearly this is how it's supposed to be done." Until someone pushes the issue, they never think to question it or realize some of the ridiculous consequences that follow from that assumption.
A few thoughts come to mind, though...
John Wesley convinced me that improper action is ultimately rooted in some kind of theological problem. Perhaps the call for Marriage Amendments comes from the fact that so many on the Christian right have a lousy theology of the state? A lousy theology of marriage? Both?
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Hm. I'm not sure I'd agree that the problem is always theological, but maybe we're just using different senses of "improper ( ... )
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From what I can tell, the strongest case for government in Scripture is Romans 13 - but that passage suggests that the purpose of government is to punish the evildoer. I think many Christians read "evildoer" as "sinner". But, from my very rudimentary understanding of Greek, that's not the case. The two are different Greek words. "Sin" typically comes from the Greek "hamartia" which means "missing the mark". It tends to place the emphasis on the fact that sin is self-originated. "Evil", at least in Romans 13, is from "kakos" - which often implies doing harm/injury to someone else.
While I don't think that Romans 13 actually provides an argument that we need government to do these things (it's one thing to say that an institution serves a purpose and another to say that only that institution can serve that purpose), it is interest to me that going back to the Greek suggests that Romans 13 is really only giving justification to a libertarian government that punishes things like murder, rape, theft, and fraud...
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There is, I think, a somewhat infuriating (to me!) tendency to look at such things and say, "Oh, those were special cases. They don't matter for deciding how the basic principle works!"
Reply
It's not one I agree with, but it would be far less hand-wavy than "Ignore anything that doesn't fit with my view."
Reply
I don't think most people who would hold to this actually do think you need government permission, though. I wouldn't expect many of them to agree that the government could, say, make marriage impossible via legislation.
Reply
Agreed. It probably tends to be one of those "This is how it's always been done as far as I know, clearly this is how it's supposed to be done." Until someone pushes the issue, they never think to question it or realize some of the ridiculous consequences that follow from that assumption.
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