Dr Greg Bahnsen - Political Ethics: Seperation of Church and State Part 2 (Part 18)

That we've outlined in the Old Testament, as I've said, is paralleled in the New Testament, where the Bible teaches us God ordains ministers for the church, but likewise he ordains ministers for the state. Now, the New Testament teaches a doctrine of two swords. There are two swords that are used in this world for the sake of order. Matthew 26:52 look at some passages here before we go on. Matthew 26:52. Then said Jesus unto him, put up again thy sword into place, for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Jesus says here to Peter that it's not right for the kingdom of God to be defended by the sword. That isn't the proper place for the sword at all. And then John 33:37. John 18:33. Then Pilate entered into the judgment hall again and called Jesus and said unto him, art thou the king of the Jews? Jesus answered him, sayest thou this thing of thyself, or did others tell it thee of me? Pilate answered, am I a Jew, thine own nation and the chief priests had delivered thee unto me. What hast thou done? Jesus answered, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews. But now is my kingdom not from here. Jesus says, the character and the origin, the source of authority for my kingdom is not this world. And therefore the means of my kingdom, the way that my kingdom flourishes and advances and takes care of its business, is not worldly. It does not use the sword. So Jesus specifically tells Peter to put up his sword, not the way the kingdom of God is defended in this age. Jesus tells Pilate that his kingdom is not of this world, and for that reason his servants do not fight. They do not use the sword. Nevertheless, Jesus is a King. John 19:12. From then on, Pilate sought to release him. But the Jews cried out, saying, if thou let this man go, thou art not Caesar's friend. Whosoever makes himself a king speaks against Caesar, Jesus does have a domain. He is a king. However, he is not a king in the way that worried the Caesars. Jesus did not himself come to this world claiming to be another Caesar, another ruler over a nation, along with the other geopolitical entities of that age. Now let's turn to Luke 23:2 also Luke 23:2, The accusation against Jesus. And they began to accuse him, saying, we found this fellow perverting the nation and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, saying that he himself is Christ a king. Ephesians 6:17. Let's see what kind of sword this king utilizes. Ephesians 6:17. Here Paul is describing the Christian soldier and he says, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. This begins to give some definition and explication to Jesus words in the sixth chapter of John's Gospel that he himself is a king, but a king of the truth. He has come as a king to rule by means of the truth. This king uses through his soldiers the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 2nd Corinthians 10:4. In Second Corinthians 10, Paul tells us, but the nature of our warfare is and is not, he says, for the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly or carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. Paul says that we don't use carnal weapons. We don't battle with people for the sake of the kingdom, using an iron sword, for instance. We use rather the sword of the Spirit, which will bring every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. And then in Revelation 19, this sword, this preached word of God, that is the sword of the Spirit, is portrayed as a sword proceeding out of Christ's mouth as he rides upon a white horse, conquering the nations and bringing all enemies under feet. So the New Testament clearly teaches that there are two swords, two legitimate swords. Romans 13:4 tells us that the magistrate bears not the sword in vain. And yet the Christian soldier bears the sword, the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, that sword that proceeds from the mouth of Christ conquering the nations. There are two swords. One's a spiritual sword. Jesus specifically says, put up your sword. Peter tells Pilate, my servants do not fight. Paul says, our weapons are not fleshly weapons. And nevertheless we do have the sword of the Spirit, which is effective. Hebrews, the fourth chapter tells us that the word of God is like a two edged sword and it's quite a, quite an effective sword. It cuts to the very point where bone and marrow, soul and spirit can be divided. And so there are two kinds of sword, the spiritual sword and the physical sword. And the physical sword is not used in vain when it's used by the state, but it's immoral and used in vain when it's attempted to be the instrument of the church. And churches advance in defense. So the New Testament ordains Ministers in the church ordains ministers in the state, has ordained a state sword and has ordained a church sword or a spiritual sword. And therefore separation of church and state, I believe, is taught in the New Testament.

Question, aside from the Romans 13 passage, how do you defend against someone who says, well, all the other passage seem to indicate that it. Any influence or any contact one has with the sword of the state is really only fleshly. Contact only brings death, it doesn't bring.

Life, and you'll die by the sword.

So Christians really shouldn't have anything to do with that. That's just a worldly kind of sword.

Yeah. We'll touch on this again when we talk about capital punishment. But people who say the sword is necessarily evil because it's violent and brings death and so forth, fail to see that violence and death are God ordained and that the Christian, if it's God ordained, the Christian can do the will of God as well, if not better than the non Christian. Consequently, it stands to reason that the Christian could get involved in affairs of the state, even though the state is in the business of bringing about death and punishment and using the sword. So it seems to me it's a prior question as to how you conceive of violence and death, whether they're always destructive and evil.

How about the charge that is fleshly.

As Second Corinthians says, well, the weapons of our warfare as the church are not fleshly. And when a Christian gets involved in affairs of the state, he does not do so as an operative of the church. And consequently, I'd say that the weapons of his warfare as a magistrate must be distinguished from the weapons of his warfare as a churchman. Paul's not saying that Christians don't ever have fleshly weapons as though they never engage in warfare. But he does say that the weapons that are proper to the Christian armor and to the advance of the Church to evangelism are spiritual weapons. Sword of the Spirit in the New Testament, you'll notice that there's this ambivalent attitude toward the Caesars. On the one hand, in the Book of Acts, there are appeals to Caesar, Acts 25:11, for instance. And yet on the other hand, in the New Testament, we also find appeals against Caesar. Acts 17:7. And so the New Testament doesn't say that the Christian must be in all ways submissive to the Caesars. On the other hand, the Christian can make use of the agencies of the and due process of the state where it is necessary. So we can appeal to Caesar. We can also appeal against Caesar and that's because God is the Lord over both church and state, and church and state are both answerable to him, even though they are not answerable to each other. Well, how does the theocratic ideal fit into this? Can a person have a theocracy as well as a separation of church and state? The answer to that question, the easiest way to get to the bottom of the issue is to point out when people ask the question that it all depends on what you mean by the word theocracy. That word theocracy is used in a large number of ways. Half a dozen or so are discussed in my book alone, Theonomy and Christian Ethics. And there are other definitions of theocracy available beyond that. If you mean by the rule, the moral rule of God, then certainly a theocracy is compatible with the separation of church and state. Because all you want in the theocracy is that God's moral rules be obeyed. That isn't to say the church must enforce them over the state, or the church must direct the state, or vice versa. You can still have a separation of institutions and a legal separation of functions and nevertheless have a moral unity. There is one code of ethics that both church and state are interested in following. Now when people argue against the use of God's Old Testament law today in socio political matters and appeal to the Old Testament as a theocracy, I think you should notice that the various conceptions which are possible for this word theocracy, if you take the various options for what that word might mean, that they, all of them will either fail to apply to Israel. Some people will say theocracy means where God is, where God's law is kept. Well, it wasn't kept in Israel. I mean, that hardly applies to Israel. Or a theocracy is where the priests govern the kings. Well, that wasn't true of Israel, so forth. So you either have a definition of theocracy that doesn't apply to Israel, or you have a definition of theocracy that does apply to Israel. But it's irrelevant to the law of God's, to the obligation of the magistrate to the law of God. For instance, a theocracy is where the executive leader of the state delivers people from oppression. Well, okay, in that sense, the Old Testament people of God were a theocracy. What did that have to do with their obligation to keep the law of God? They had nothing to do with it. They were under obligation to keep the law of God whether their kings delivered them from foreign oppressors or not. Another concept of theocracy holds that essential to a theocracy is having a priest speaking for God in that society or having a prophet, excuse me, a prophet speaking for God in that society, some current organ of special revelation. Well, okay, if that's what you mean by theocracy, Israel wall times at least potentially a theocracy. It didn't always have a prophet speaking, but always could have a prophet speaking. So Israel was always the theocracy. What did that have to do with the king's obligation to keep the law? The king was under obligation to keep the law of God, whether a prophet was there to rebuke him or not. And so what you have here are conceptions of theocracy that don't apply to Israel and conceptions of theocracy that do apply but are irrelevant to the law of God's binding character. Conceptions don't have any real moral relevance to the king's obligation to follow God's word. So when somebody says, doesn't the theocratic ideal conflict with the separation of church and state? Then you have to distinguish, what do you mean by separation of church and state? Which of those three questions that I distinguished are we talking about? Secondly, what do you mean by theocracy? And then there's the whole question of how these two actually do relate. I do believe there's a way in which a person can say that theocracy is harmonious with separation of church and state. We see that in John Cotton. We see it in statements of the Scottish Book of Church Discipline. We see it in the United States Constitution, I believe, and we certainly find it in modern day advocates of the law of God being the moral standard for the magistrate. And yet people who hold that don't feel the church can dictate to the state. So we can say about theocracy what I've got done summarizing about the use of the word and the various conceptions and how they're morally relevant or irrelevant. But I think we need to add this final note about theocracy and the moral rule of God that the Great Commission in the New Testament seems to me demands. The concept of a Christian state, demands the ideal of a Christian state. For the goal that we have is to make of the nations disciples for Jesus Christ. And these nations are shown to be disciples of Jesus Christ just in the fact that they observe whatsoever he has commanded. And so the Great Commission sets forth the ideal of a Christocracy, perhaps theocracy in its specific form of a Christian the rule of Jesus Christ. And that rule of Jesus Christ over the nations is a pervasive ideal in the Bible. Let's just look at some of these passages. Psalm 110:1 2. Psalm 110 first two verses the Lord said unto my Lord, sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool. The LORD shall send the rod of thy strength out of Zion. Rule thou in the midst of thine enemies. Psalm 67 teaches that all nations will fall down and serve Jehovah. Psalm 72 tells us that God's chosen king must rule from the river to the ends of the earth. Let's look at Isaiah 42:1 4 Isaiah 42:1 4. Behold my servant, whom I uphold mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth. I have put my spirit upon him. He shall bring forth justice to the nations he shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and a smoking flax shall he not quench. He shall bring forth justice and truth he shall not fail, nor be discouraged, till he has set justice in the Earth and the Coastlands Wait for his law the Bible tells us that all nations, even those on the periphery, the coast, coastland nations, are waiting for the law of God, the justice of God to be established in the earth. Jesus is to rule over The Nations Micah 4:2. Micah 4:2 and many nations shall come and say, come and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths. For the law shall go forth from Zion, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. The nations want, you see, the law of God to be their moral standard. Isaiah 9:6,7 tell us that of the increase of Christ's government there shall be no end. First Corinthians 15, verses 24 to 28 tell us that Christ is now subduing every enemy under his feet. Colossians 1:16 tells us that all thrones have been created for Revelation 11:15 tells us that the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. And so the Bible does set out for us, it seems to me, the prophetic ideal of a Christocracy, where God's chosen son, his anointed, the Christ, will rule over the nations and rule by the law of God. So anybody who holds that the separation of church and state, as it's taught in the Bible, contrary to the idea of a theocracy or what we've been calling a Christocracy here fails to see that these two are both taught in the Bible and therefore they can't be in tension. There can't be a disharmony between the idea of a theocracy in the separation of church and state. The difficulty arises when people have a conception of the separation of church and state that is not a biblical conception. And obviously, if one's conception of the separation of church and state is not biblical, it cannot be warranted by the Bible. It's not a distinctly Christian notion and has no authority in Christian ethics and Christian thinking. So I conclude then from our logical historical and biblical discussion that the separation of church and state does not demand secularism, does not demand secularism, does not demand the rejection of a Christian state. In fact, secularism is itself a betrayal of the cultural mandate as well as a betrayal of the Great Commission. In fact, isolating God from government under the rubric of separation of church and state, isolating God from government is really worse than heathenism. For heathenism at least allows false gods to rule the state. But the idea that the state can have no connection with God is even worse. Secularism is even worse than heathenism in that respect. Separation of church and state not amount to the separation of government from ethics. It's simply the separation, the legal separation of two institutions. It means there should be no church dominated state, but it does not forbid at all the idea of Christian morality governing the state. All right, I'm done with my remarks. What questions would you like to ask or what discussion would you like to pursue on this subject of the separation of church and state? Yes. Would you say the public school system is established religion? The question is whether the public school system is the establishment of religion. Let me propose a premise here that education is impossible without a religious point of view, that what is being taught will naturally teach some point of view, some religious point of view. Now, if that's true, if it's essential to instructing people, drawing causal relations, making judgments of responsibility, if all education has an ethical core and therefore a religious point of view is involved in it, then the public school is teaching some religion, isn't it? Now, there was a time when the public school taught the Christian religion, and that seems, you know, fine for many Christians. I don't have a great deal of objection to that. But it should be noted that if it's a public school, it's still establishing some form of religion. And I think that's a violation of the Constitution. I don't think you can have education without Religion, Religion informs the way you educate. And if the Constitution says there's to be no establishment of religion, then the state ought not to be in the education business at all. So what I'm trying to point out is that some Christians are against the public schools today because in our day they're not teaching the Christian religion. And of course, it's certainly better to have a public school teaching the Christian religion than to teach the secularism and heathenism that it now teaches. But as a principle, as Christians, I think we ought to say the public school ought not to be teaching at all. That the public school, in the very nature of the case is out of the question. The domain of education is in the hands of parents and churches and not in the hands of the state. When the state takes over education, it becomes a political tool. And there may be better days and worse days when that political tool and that religious tool is being used. But the fact is it's still establishing a religion and a religion that is tied to political politicized ends. So to answer your question, is the public school teaching a religion today, establishing a religion? I think yes, it is. And to add to the adverse judgment I would make on that, it's teaching a false religion at that.

How do we deal with Jewish schools or Hindu schools? Or at.

Least question is, how would we deal with Hindu schools or Jewish schools or even atheist schools in a Christian society? Would they be allowed to exist? That would all depend on, it seems to me, what point of development you have in the outworking of God's law in your society. If we were in a situation that seems to me much closer to our own day and age, if there was some reform brought about, the first step in reform, it seems to me be to have every private group run their own school. There'd be some that would be secular in outlook, just unbelievers, want their kids taught math and reading and that sort of thing. Then there'll be some that are religious, more explicitly religious in outlook that had the Christian religion. Some might be Catholic schools, some might be Protestant Presbyterian schools. And then also you probably have Jewish schools and maybe possibility of even some Eastern religions running their own schools. Now I think that we would accept that as a better situation than what we have today where the state is enforcing one outlook and trying to regulate education. Education should be a matter of parents freedom to have their child educated as they see fit so they can contract with the school to teach from the perspective they want or put up with the differences that are in the school. Because they're willing to have the education are the positive points that are there. But now, if you were further along in the development of the nurture of a society, we must remember the law of God calls for forbidding idolatry. And then you have to start asking the difficult questions. What forms of idolatry must the state punish? It was a little more cut and dry in Israel than it is for us today, primarily because of the Jewish question. I, for one, have difficulty coming to the conclusion, although I understand why some people do. But I have difficulty coming to the conclusion that in a Christian society we would have to punish Jews, for instance, for idolatry. Now, there's a spiritual sense in which they're idolaters. To be sure, everybody who doesn't worship the true God is an idolater. However, the Jew, if he's an Orthodox Jew, I mean, we're not talking about the liberal Jew or the Reformed Jew, but if he's an Orthodox Jew, he would say that his allegiance is to Jehovah and to the law code of Jehovah, the Old Testament, which is precisely the law order that we're trying to uphold when we say you can't worship a false God. And so I have difficulty seeing that you could punish the Jew. However, the Hindu, the Buddhist, clearly are bringing in alien force, alien commitments, loyalties and alien law codes. And they would be punished. If you were further along in the development of God's kingdom on earth and you were in a nation where it was forbidden for people to teach publicly the point of view of Buddhism, then of course you couldn't condone a Buddhist school. And so I think that's one of those situational questions. Not that the principles change, but the application of the principles. Given the condition of your society, I think we should work toward the day when we would forbid Buddhist schools. What about Catholics? I believe there's no question that Catholics should be allowed to operate as Christians. I also happen to disagree with Roman Catholic theology. I feel the Reformation was a moral necessity and all that. But Catholics are not calling for the worship of another God. Well, you have to remember, the question is, what about the Catholic idols? The Catholics do not call them idols. The Protestants call them idols. The Protestants, I think, are right in that in their heart of hearts, Catholics do try to draw near to God and perform acts of worship by means of the agency of these relics or statues of Mary, crucifixes and so forth. So I believe that there is a spiritual idolatry going on there, something for which God will punish on the final day. But whether that is a provable form, a demonstrable form of civil idolatry is another question. And in that case, you have to remember that the Catholics, for all of the rationalization that we see from a spiritual standpoint in what they're doing, the Catholics do not believe that they're falling down before their God. They do not believe that these are idols in the crass pagan sense of idols. And so I think it's important, just like we want to interpret the Constitution of the United States in historical grammatical context and insist that separation of church and state means something there that it doesn't mean in the 20th century, we have to keep in mind that what the law of God meant in its own historical context, in punishing idolaters is not to be taken. Well, I'll give you a parallel. The law of God calls for the punishment of adulterers, and Jesus speaks of spiritual adultery. That doesn't mean that the law of God means the civil magistrate can punish the lust of the heart, spiritual adultery. Likewise, we rightly, as Protestants, see Roman Catholic use of relics and crucifixes and so forth as idolatry. But it's not the idolatry that was punishable in the Old Testament. It doesn't seem to me Catholics are a Christian denomination. I would put them right up there on the shelf, especially today, along with the liberal Protestants and the Methodists and Anglicans and all the rest. If in your country you're allowing the Christian religion to be the established religion, that sets the moral tone of the society, that all those who claim to be Christians, it seems to me, have some right to operate there. And then the Jewish question is the difficult one. But I've explained to you why I think it's hard motivation in the Old Testament law for punishing idolaters doesn't seem to be applicable even to the unbelieving Jew today. It's the pagan religions that would be outside the pale of our toleration. Yes.

They were produced by characters, yet they weren't fitting. The law didn't apply to them.

The question is, and as I understand it, offering further support, I guess, for what I'm saying here is that in the day of Jesus there were two sects of the Jews, the Pharisees and Sadducees. You could add the Essenes community too, by the way. And that since these two were equally tolerated, that shows that the law of God doesn't judge questions of heresy, because the Sadducees were clearly heretical. The Pharisees Were in some regards too. The problem is that you don't have the law of God being followed out in society in that day anyway. Now if you did, if we could presume that we're in a context there in the New Testament Testament where God's law is being followed by the civil magistrate and the civil magistrate doesn't persecute either the Pharisees or the Sadducees. And you might have some historical confirmation. But somebody I say, I agree with you. I don't think heresy should be tried by the state. But if somebody felt that it should be, I think that he would have grounds for rejecting this line of argumentation, saying, well, the state wasn't doing anything it was supposed to do doing that day anyway. So the fact that it failed to try the Sadducees for heresy is just further evidence that the state was not doing what God wanted it to do. You can take it two ways, kind of ambiguous.

Yeah, you may not want to address this question at this point, but you applied in a way correctly that it's entirely sponsored for a Christian view work in the office of the civil magistrate. Even though we are subject to the kingdom of God, we can function in a kingdom which uses a literal sword, maybe dealing with a specific issue. What would your response be to a Christian being involved in espionage or our particular country in a foreign country?

The question is, what should our attitude be as Christians toward the practice of espionage? Can Christians engage in espionage in a foreign country? And if it's part of Jewish questions, The difficult one. But I've explained to you why I think it's hard. The motivation in the Old Testament law for punishing idolaters doesn't seem to be applicable even to the unbelieving Jew today. It's the pagan religions that would be outside the pale of our toleration.

Yes, the existence of Pharisees and Sadducees in Israel. They were pretty much heretic. At least the Sadducees were. Yet they weren't fitting. The law didn't apply to them.

The question is, and as I understand it, offering further support, I guess, for what I'm saying here is that in the day of Jesus there were two sects of the Pharisees of the Jews, the Pharisees and the Sadducees. You could add the Essene community too, by the way. And that since these two were equally tolerated, that shows that the law of God doesn't judge questions of heresy. Because the Sadducees were clearly heretical. The Pharisees were in some Regards, too. The problem is that you don't have the law of God being out in society in that day anyway. Now, if you did, if we could presume that we're in a context there in the New Testament where God's law is being followed by the civil magistrate, and the civil magistrate doesn't persecute either the Pharisees or the Sadducees, then you might have some historical confirmation. But somebody I say, I agree with you. I don't think heresy should be tried by the state. But if somebody felt that it should be, I think that he would have grounds for rejecting this line of argumentation, saying, well, the state wasn't doing anything it was supposed to do in that day anyway. So the fact that it failed to try the Sadducees for heresy is just further evidence that the state was not doing what God wanted it to do. You can take it two ways, kind of ambiguous.

You may not want to address this question at this point, but you apply in a way to do not state correctly that it's entirely proper for a Christian to work in the office of a civil magistrate. Even though we are subjects of the kingdom of God, we can't function in a kingdom which uses a literal sword. Maybe dealing with a specific issue, what would your response be to a Christian being involved in espionage for our particular country in a foreign country?

The question is, what should our attitude be as Christians toward the practice of espionage? Can Christians engage in espionage in a foreign country? And if it's part of the legitimate function of the state to engage in espionage at all, then it would be part of the legitimate function of a Christian Christian to engage in espionage. Because the major premise is that the Christian can partake of the functions of the state, can engage in them. And if that is one of the legitimate functions of the state, then the Christian could do that. Let's take the office of executioner, for instance. Could a Christian be an executioner taking somebody's life? Well, that all depends on whether the state has the right to take somebody's life. If the state has the right to take somebody's life, then the Christian has the right to function in the state to that end. And if the state has the right to engage in espionage for its own defense, then the Christian has the right to be the one who is the spy. And I happen to think the state does have the prerogative to engage in espionage to protect its own interest. And of course, you have to distinguish between espionage for the sake of overthrowing another country and espionage for the sake of protecting your own. And maybe you'd want to draw a distinction in differentiate your application there. But I think a Christian could be a spy. Now, can a Christian be a spy who commits adultery to gain secrets? Now you're getting really, that's getting tough. Does the Bible give us any warrant to believe that there's an exception in such cases to the moral order God has laid down, which is against adultery? And for my own money, my own conviction is that the Bible does not warrant adultery in any circumstance, apart from what might be called the adultery. I'm using it loosely now, of the levirate institution that is, it's not right for men to engage in sexual relations with anybody other than their single wife, that is the one sole wife they have. That's the biblical model. And I don't see that espionage or anything else has given us an exception to that. Although the Bible does allow lying in cases of warfare. Rhetor Ahab has allowed taking of life and self defense, so forth. But I don't see that it allows for adultery in defense of your country. So then the question is, could you really be a good spy if you were not willing to engage in adultery? Maybe you couldn't. Well, then maybe nobody should be a good spy. I mean, that would be the Christian position.

How about killing someone while you're a spy?

Killing somebody who's a threat to your own country or whom you're told as a spirit threat to your country? Well now see, now you're bringing in an epistemological distinction. Okay, I'm told something, I have to believe it. Am I under obligation to do what is true or under obligation to do what I'm told is true? Well, you're under obligation to do what you're told. If your government, and of course, if there's obvious reason to doubt what the government says, let's say some agent, the government comes to me in the Dallas airport this afternoon and says, you know, the whole country is going to fall if you don't go over there and kill that fellow who's carrying your bags right now. You know, and you've got to do it, nobody else can do it. Well now I might say there's some prime efface the evidence against this that's not very plausible. Okay, so you wouldn't be under obligation in that way. And then of course, from the absurd example, you can start working down where you get some borderline cases. What if you're in Vietnam and you're told to kill women and children because they are in fact carrying bombs or they are being used to infiltrate. Well, if there was some obvious evidence against that, you'd be under obligation to say, no, I won't keep this unjust order. But on the other hand, I think we're not under obligation to know everything. We do have to take orders. And so now if I'm a spy in a foreign country and the government calls up and says, you know, knock off, so. And so I would probably take it for granted that the United States government feels that's necessary and they'll be answerable to God. If they're playing around, I mean, they aren't right about that. I go ahead and do it. But then if I had some reason to suspect that this is really politically motivated, that's a vendetta, personal vendetta, or for some other unjust. This person is being, his life is being called in, then I would probably hesitate and ask some questions. You know, you can always stall a little bit. Now, how do you spell that name? Why is it you want this person knocked off? I realize I'm being unrealistic. I've never been a spy. Of course, if I were, I wouldn't tell you. But anyway, I've never been a spy. And so I don't. I don't know all the circumstances that arise. But I think Christian principles have to govern espionage too. And that may mean that Christian spies are less effective than non Christian spies. There are situations in this world where because the good guys follow the rules, they don't have a natural advantage over the bad guys who won't follow the rules. But we believe there's honor in doing that and that God will honor our attempt to be legitimate and righteous in the way we carry out the task even of espionage. Well, I don't know how this comes from church and state. Did you want to relate that to a church state issue in particular?

Well, I was just asking in regards.

Oh, if a Christian could. Yeah, that's right. If a Christian could be engaged in operations of the state, could he go even that far? That's right. Okay, let's turn to another question now. Probably going to have some difficulty finishing all of our issues today. And we can either take them up again when I come back and we discuss contemporary moral issues, or they can fit in somewhere else or you can do some reading on them. But I'd like to take up now the question of the enforcement of morals. The whole question of the enforcement of morals. There are some people who maintain that the state is not to enforce morality. The state is not to enforce morality. It's not the job of the state to do so that the state's job is simply to see to the protection of its citizens and that liberty is upheld. Now, if I do something that infringes upon the liberty of some other person. Person, then the state would have the right to interfere. If I try to take away somebody else's life or imprison him or beat up on him or steal his money, then of course I'm infringing on his space. And the state has the right to keep me from interfering with the life of another person infringing on his liberty and safety. But beyond that, I don't have the right to try to enforce my moral code on my neighbor. For instance, I may think homosexuality is perverse, but if he wants to be a homosexual, that's his business. As long as he keeps his homosexuality to himself, stays in his house and has his friends over and so forth. And I can't say anything about that. But if he starts coming and destroying my property or is trying to rape little children on the street or is trying to kill people, then that'd be another matter. When he infringes on somebody else's liberty and safety, then you can interfere. But in terms of moral matters, you cannot enforce your morality on somebody else. Therefore, when the Christian takes the stand, for instance, that the law of God should be enforced by the civil magistrate, today, one of the most common pleas against that is that the state cannot or ought not to enforce morality. The state ought not to enforce morality. And that's what Christians are asking the state to do. To punish adulterers and homosexuals and idolaters and so forth. Well, the state should not be in the job of enforcing that. The state should simply be preserving our liberty and our safety. And so the question arises, and I'll use homosexuality as my example here, the question can be put, is homosexuality a civil right? Is homosexuality a civil right? Is it something that should be protected by the state? Remember, of course, that the word right can be used as an adjective as well as a noun. We can speak of somebody having a right, and we can speak of something being right. And there's a difference between those two. It is right to give money to the Red Cross, but they don't have a right to your money. There's a difference between having a right and something being right. You are free to give money to the Red Cross, but that doesn't mean they have a claim upon you. They have a right to your money. Moreover, we have to Recognize the distinction that I have drawn in my book on homosexuality between sin and crime. As Christians, we do not believe that all matters of morality are enforced. We don't believe, for instance, the state should step in and tell us how much food we can eat to keep us from the sin of gluttony or overeating. We don't believe that the state has the right to hymns we can sing in our churches or what thoughts we can think in our minds. Not every sin is a crime. So we would recognize the distinction between sins which are not punishable by the state and sins which are. Sins which are punishable by the state would be called crimes. And then one more distinction. The distinction between rights when they're understood as freedom rights, benefit rights, or non discrimination rights. The difference between a freedom right and a benefit right. A freedom right. For instance, if we use education as our example, again, the right to education interpreted as a freedom right means you are free to pursue an education without interference. Whereas a benefit right to education means the state's under obligation to provide you with an education. The state must give you that benefit. A non discrimination right to add to our list is a right to pursue housing or some opportunity like education, a job without some feature about you being used to keep you from the marketplace or from housing and so forth. A non discrimination right is a little bit different than a freedom right because the non discrimination right tends to interfere with the freedom rights of other people. So that if I own, say an apartment complex, and ordinarily I have the freedom right to rent to whomever I think is to going to be a good tenant. Now for some perversity of my moral development, I don't have to like black people and I refuse to rent to a black person. The state grants a non discriminatory right to the black person, meaning that that will take precedence over the freedom right of the land owner to rent to whomever he wants. Okay, so non discrimination rights are not the same as freedom rights. They are overriding rights. They say that you may not use your freedom right against me in virtue of my sexual preference, my religion, color of my skin, national origin, or what have you. And what we're asking, when we ask the question, is homosexuality a civil right? Is not whether homosexuality is a freedom right? Whether people have the freedom to pursue homosexuality without interference and not whether homosexuality is a benefit right? We're not saying somebody's under obligation to provide homosexual favors. We're asking, is homosexuality a non discrimination right? Is homosexuality a non discrimination right? Can homosexuality be used as an overriding consideration to deprive you of your freedom right with regard to employment, housing, education or what have you. So we have the enforcement of morals question before us. The liberty ideal. John Stuart Mill said we should preserve liberty above all. In all circumstances. We have to try to preserve as much freedom as we can. The state therefore should be a minimal state that punishes only in cases where the freedom of some other individual is being infringed upon. Christians, on the other hand, say no, we should enforce morality as God says we should enforce morality. And then we have the key question, is homosexuality a civil right, a non discrimination right? I want to offer a series of considerations here to try to answer that question. First of all, note that someone's freedom is going to be curtailed. Someone's freedom will be curtailed. Even if we're thinking only of non discrimination rights, someone's freedom is going to be curtailed. If the state does not allow you to discriminate against the homosexual, then your freedom will be curtailed. If you're a Christian and you're running a Christian school and a person comes and applies as a homosexual, otherwise qualified for the job, but as a homosexual, if you don't have the right to turn that person down, then you don't have the freedom to protect your children from moral perversion, for instance. On the other hand, if the state says you do have the right to discriminate against the homosexual, then his freedom is curtailed. His freedom to pursue a living, a place to reside, a job. So either the Christian's freedom is going to be curtailed or the homosexual's freedom going to be curtailed. And it's rather bothersome to me that when these issues are discussed, people don't seem to be willing to recognize that. That it's not a question of whether we should curtail freedom, but whose freedom we should curtail. In a situation where the homosexual wants acceptance in a society that doesn't want the homosexual, somebody's freedom is going to have to be deprived. I mean, it's going to have to be cut back. Well, so whose freedom should be curtailed becomes the question. And that question cannot be answered without referring to a specific moral system. You have to have a general ethical framework and perspective before you can answer the question as to whose freedom should be curtailed. My second consideration, moving on quickly here we can ask what is the function of law in petty what are the limits of the state's coercion? And what are the what is the source of an individual's rights? Here we Have a complex series of questions. What's the function of law in society? What are the limits of coercion? And what is the source of an individual's rights? Now when you stop and reflect on it, you will see that those questions cannot be answered outside of a specific systems framework that to tell us the function of law and society, the limits of coercion and the source of rights, you have to have a broader moral system within which you can answer the question. And so a consistent ethic must be at the base of the state's legislation and sanctions. If there is not a consistent system of ethics that is the basis for what the state legislates and what it punishes, then then there will be no distinction between crime and punishment. If the state doesn't have a moral system that it's following, you notice that when it punishes somebody, for instance, by imprisoning, that's no different than kidnapping, is it? It's just that one group of people do the kidnapping rather than another group of people do the kidnapping. If the state is going to distinguish between what it does in punishing people and what criminals do and punishing people, afflicting people, it must have a moral order by which it draws that distinction. So the state has got to have a moral framework within which it tells us the function of law, the limits of coercion and the source of an individual's rights. So twice now we've seen, and I think indisputably, if we had time, we could pursue it even further. Indisputably on two grounds. We can see that you cannot answer the question about a whole homosexual civil rights without a specific moral system that's going to be used to answer the question. My third consideration then perhaps we'll take a break. You notice that we can still follow the liberty ideal. We can still follow the liberty ideal and conclude that homosexuality should be a crime due to its consequences. That as the liberty ideal says, that you don't follow punish somebody unless it curtails another person's liberty or safety. Well, from a Christian standpoint, we believe it's for our corporate good to follow God's law and that when we don't follow God's law, that brings his judgment. And specifically the book of Romans tells us that homosexuality is the sign of a burnt out culture with all these other crimes and misdeeds coming in along with it. And Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for that sin. A Christian could say we believe homosexuality is in fact detrimental to our society. It breaks down the moral fiber of our society by teaching that there are no proper restraints in the realm of sex, it teaches unnatural perversion as being acceptable. It gives the idea that really, it's different strokes for different folks, that morality is a relative matter. It breaks down the family and it incurs the judgment of God. And so for these reasons, we as Christians believe that if you hold to the liberty ideal that you only punish people if they're going to infringe on the rights and safety of others, then we should punish homosexuals because they are really indirectly bringing judgment upon our society and they are bringing harm to our society. Now, what's the non Christian going to say to this? Well, now you have made that evaluation in light of what your own moral system, your moral system says that this is going to bring back, bring about a breakdown of society's moral order. But we don't hold to that. And then we are going to say what? That's because you have a different moral system. And so even evaluating the consequences of homosexuality will be dependent upon the moral system that you use for evaluation. What colored glasses you're looking through. So if you're looking through one moral system, you say, well, homosexuality is no big deal. You look through another moral system, you say, no, it's a very big deal. It all depends on the ethical framework that you have in mind. And so thirdly, we again see that the very use of the liberty ideal depends upon some underlying moral system that helps your evaluation of consequences. And so, on three grounds so far, we've seen that you can't answer this question about homosexual rights without first having a moral system that you're going to be using for evaluation. And when we come back, I'll continue with other considerations leading to what I trust is the conclusion that we have the right to enforce morality in this area.