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You will be shocked to find that I found his argument
unpersuasive. His argument is based on three points, two brief points that
misapply or fail to apply at all the Scriptures and a third lengthy post that deals
mostly with irrelevant minutiae of English law.
Point 1 has nothing to do with the American revolution. Paying
taxes is not an unlawful order.
Point 2 deals with national Israel under the Old Covenant and
is irrelevant. America is
not Israel
and George Washington is not King David.
Point 3 presumes an out clause in Romans 13 that basically
says that whenever we think the government is doing a bad job we should rebel
violently against it. Under that logic we would have been justified and/or
obligated to violently rebel against the current American system at any number
of places in our history including our invasion of Iraq .
He does point out the glaring flaw in his own argument with
the common tactic of recognizing the counter-argument to your own by
downplaying and dismissing it:
"Your friends will at this point say something about Rome , and note that Paul
was speaking to people under a far worse regime when under the Spirit’s
inspiration he wrote Romans 13. They will be right, so far as that goes. But
these are apples and oranges. Again, I will leave a proper discussion of Roman
citizenship, and of Roman rule in Israel, for another day, but Scripture must
interpret Scripture, and Romans 13 is only applicable to lawful commands no
matter what position you take (see item 1 above)."
Which is fine and dandy except that it depends on his first
point which has nothing to do with the American revolution. The unlawful orders
clause would only apply when rendering something to Caesar that rightly belongs
to God, i.e. aborting a child or worshipping a false god. Conversely Jesus
disarmed the question about paying taxes to a tyrannical reign by pointing out
that the very currency being collected for taxes was Caesar's and even though
it was being used for the most ungodly of purposes (including the crucifixion
of Christ). As distasteful and onerous as the situation was for colonial
subject of England prior to
the Revolution, it pales in comparison to the situation in Rome for Christians. This is the great flaw
in his argument and explains why he tries to disarm it. If ever Christians were
permitted and indeed obligated (as he suggests with his statement that "To
support the king was to reject right and support sin, period.") to
violently oppose and overthrow unjust rulers, one might wonder why Jesus never
called on His followers to revolt against the Roman rule, a rule instituted on
the people of that region by conquest rather than a rule of people who accepted
that they were English subjects of the King. If ever there was a time for
Christians to be called on to rebel against an unjust ruler, it was in the
first century against Rome .
Yet they were not.
His essay is eloquent and chock full of fun 18th century
legal trivia but it relies on obsolete and inapplicable Old Covenant examples,
unspoken clauses in Romans 13 and an utter suspension of historical context in
spite of his attempts to the contrary. The American revolution might be
considered a good and proper event from a secular standpoint and one can easily
argue that America has been a greater force for good than it would have been
had it stayed a British colony (although, for example, slavery might have been
outlawed in America sooner ,without a bloody civil war and the subsequent
racial tension that still plagues us had we remained English subjects). However
a violent uprising against ruler far more lawful than Caesar cannot be
considered to be a sinless act nor one pleasing to God as it directly violates
Scripture in multiple places.
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