Transcript: Episode 0094

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Welcome to the Stone Choir Podcast.

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I am Corey J.

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Mahler.

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And I'm still, whoa.

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On today's Stone Choir, we're going to be discussing the Magdeburg Confession.

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This is a document that was written in 1550 during a conflict between the Holy Roman Empire and a Lutheran city-state.

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Basically, just a city, wasn't even a city-state.

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The reason that we are visiting a five-century-old document is because there is some applicability to the arguments that were made to our lives today, to current political conflicts.

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It's something that comes up periodically.

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The government's doing something bad.

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What do we do?

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And so before we get into the meat of the Magdeburg Confession, which was the beginning of what you probably are familiar with, the Lesser Magistrate doctrine, that is something that basically originated at this point and then was evolved over the next few decades into what became known as the Lesser Magistrate doctrine.

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Before we get into it, I want to make sure that people don't get the wrong impression of us going back and talking about an old document.

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You might notice that it's actually pretty rare that Stone Choir episodes do something like this.

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We don't do a lot of history.

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We don't do a lot of rehashing of old arguments.

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And it's not that we're novelty seeking.

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For one, you can generally find good coverage of good basic stuff other places.

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Yeah, we did the baptism and communion episodes because a bunch of people asked for it.

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We want you to be Lutheran, but this podcast doesn't exist to bully anyone to being Lutheran.

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People ask, why are you guys different with the sacraments?

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So we gave the Lutheran case and we think the scriptural case for those things.

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But for the most part, we don't touch on things that are pretty well settled.

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Also, it's really important to me not to perpetuate the notion that exists in so many minds today that I can only think or believe something if a bunch of old guys agreed.

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So, so often I see throughout the religious discourse, guys find some old book, they find some old author, and they see some argument from him they like and get really excited and say, hey, this is great.

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I now have permission to think this thing that I already thought, because this dead guy said so.

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I hate that.

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I absolutely loathe it.

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It is an excuse for people to be lazy.

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The reason that we're talking about the Magdeburg Confession today is to point to the argument that they make and the framework that they lay out for establishing or evaluating whether or not a government is a good and godly government, and when it's not, how do we handle that situation?

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Because that's very much a live issue.

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In any century, in any place, in any political context, it's always a live issue.

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This government is doing something bad.

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What do we as Christians do when we have a duty to God?

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Well, we're not pointing to it because a bunch of dead guys said it, so that makes it okay for us to think it.

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That's absolutely not the case.

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One of the reasons that so many of the arguments that we make on Stone Choir are just our arguments is precisely because we don't have any credentials or particular credibility or any reason for you to believe us just because we said it.

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So what that does is it frees you to disbelieve us, to challenge what we're saying, to actually think about it, which is something that we don't necessarily think we have the freedom to do when some old dead guy said something.

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I think one of the reasons that so many pastors lean on the writings of other better men, dead men, is that it lets them share something that's interesting knowledge.

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But the danger there is that when they make someone else's arguments, as a pastor in a theological context, there's always going to be the incentive to bind people's consciences with whatever is said.

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Here's an argument, here's a dead guy's argument, he made an argument from the Bible, I'm making it to you as your pastor, so now you have to do this or you're going to hell because you're sinning if you disagree.

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There's none of that with a podcast.

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If you disagree with us, we've said many times, I don't think you're going to hell, even if I think you're wrong, because if I thought that you're right, I wouldn't have said the thing that you disagree with.

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But the fact that there's a degree of equality between the listener and the speaker in the case of a podcast is lost as soon as you delve into old stuff, where it's famous, The Magdeburg Confession has a Wikipedia article.

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It's been now thankfully reprinted fairly recently and translated.

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It was actually lost for a while.

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Knowledge existed, but it wasn't in active use.

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It's important that although we are pointing to something old, I don't want to reinforce people thinking, well, okay, it's old, so I'm going to believe it.

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That's just, it's silly.

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There's so much of that in the way that men try to operate and it's exhausting.

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Because it's not thinking.

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If you're just borrowing somebody else's thoughts, you're basically doing what an LLM does, so just regurgitating text that it ingested.

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Please don't be that guy.

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So when we point to this 500-year-old text, we're not encouraging anybody to be that guy.

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We're going to lay out today the arguments that they made and say, well, here's why we think this makes sense.

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And if you look at the arguments and for those of you want to go get a copy of it, it's worthwhile.

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Another thing to note, if you do read the whole thing, you're very much going to see that it is a product of a historical moment.

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The context of the men in Magdeburg in 1548 to 1550 when they were dealing with the situation was a dire situation.

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And we'll get into the history of that.

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But again, these were Lutherans.

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They were besieged by Papus.

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They were surrounded by Lutheran lands that had in large part ceased to be Lutheran.

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And that was the entire conflict here.

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The Holy Roman Empire had come in and said, all right, Lutheranism is canceled, Reformation is canceled, and everyone's Catholic again.

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And these guys were saying, no, we changed our beliefs as a matter of conscience, and we're not gonna go back on that.

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And hence the bloodshed, hence the siege that we're gonna get into.

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So people actually died as a result of the thing that was written here.

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And they did it as a matter of conscience.

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They fought, and part of the reason for them writing this was to justify why they would fight.

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They didn't passively resist, because the papal armies were coming to destroy their home, and they fought back.

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And it was important to them as Christians to understand if that was illicit.

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Was it actually a moral thing for them to do?

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And some of those issues are live potentially to some degree.

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But I also want to make the case as we go through the specific details of Magdeburg that although their particular historical situation involved matters of conscience with regard to church practice and religious belief, the framework that they lay out has nothing to do with the church.

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And the reason I point this out ahead of time is that it's very important that if someone goes and reads Magdeburg, this confession, a lazy reading would cause you to conclude, okay, well, if the church is besieged by the state and the state is trying to enforce religious beliefs, then these tests apply.

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And that's simply nonsense.

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When you look at the actual tests that are laid out, that we think are reasonable tests, and you can apply your own reason to it to see what you think, some of you probably already agree, even if you don't know the specifics, because the Lesser Magistrate doctrine has evolved and it came from this essentially, but it's all ultimately scriptural.

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And it's based on headship, the notion that there is somebody at the top politically who governs a land.

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We often call that the prince, just a shorthand.

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It's not explicitly about monarchy.

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It's just there will be an executive who's responsible for a geographic region politically in charge of enforcing the law, punishing evildoers.

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Prince is far removed from our modern politics, but Donald Trump is effectively the prince of the United States today.

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Not politically, but he's in that position to act as the executive.

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And thankfully, as we're recording the first week of his second term, we're seeing him actually moving more like a prince than like most presidents we've seen in the past.

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The authority is there, and then the question is, do they use it?

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And when they use it, do they do it in a godly fashion?

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That's what the tests are about in the Magdeburg Confession.

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It's not about, is the state being mean to the church or being mean to Christians?

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The Magdeburg Confession, the reasoning applies to every man, regardless of religious belief, because it's basically a reason proposition from hierarchy.

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So, as we're going through this, I hope that you will focus on those parts.

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We're going to try to focus on them and not get sidetracked on the specific details of the battle.

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If you go and read it, you're going to find a lot of very nasty polemics against tapists.

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And some nasty things are said about the Anabaptists and about the Reformed as well.

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They were polemic.

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And it was because they were besieged, where they were about to be besieged, they knew that they stood a very real chance of being killed over this stuff.

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And all their neighbors had betrayed their own confessions.

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So if you read it and you see the polemic stuff and you feel hurt by it, just keep in mind that they thought that they might be about to die because all their neighbors betrayed the confession that they had shared a year prior.

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And so it wasn't simply, you know, emotional tumult.

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It was the fact that this was a very real life and death matter in a matter of conscience.

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So our arguments are from conscience, they're from scripture and they're about real world things.

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What do we as Christians do when the government steps out of the line from the top, not necessarily always from the top.

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You know, one of the nice things about the way the argument is laid out is that maybe you have a bad mayor.

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The nice thing about that is you have a governor above him.

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There's someone above the local magistrate that you can go to.

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The real problem is when it's the emperor, when the Holy Roman emperor or the president is the bad guy, then it gets tricky because there's no one to appeal to above him for relief.

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And then the resistance becomes the moral question.

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And so it's a live issue for us today because these are the circumstances that we are all facing in the 21st century.

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We saw with the COVID shutdowns and we'll see again other things in the future that maybe people can't even imagine yet where the state does intervene against churches and against individuals for ungodly reasons.

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We have to have thought some of those things through so that we can behave as Christians.

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We have to answer to God for whatever we do.

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And that includes how we protect our lands, how we protect our families, our neighborhoods.

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We have a lot of duties beyond just make sure that the right doctrine is at church.

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So they were fighting for all of that in Magdeburg in 1550.

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And the argument they lay out is one that I think stands the test of time.

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So we're sharing it for that specific reason, not because a bunch of dead guys said it.

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So now we have an excuse.

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Go read it, disagree with it freely.

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Like that's fine.

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Just like you can disagree with any of our arguments.

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That's important.

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That's thought.

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That's actual men participating in the process of us living together.

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When guys point at history and say, well, now you're bound because some guy 500 years ago said it.

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That's crap.

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That's crap.

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It's just simply nonsense to have to have a book from a long time ago to be able to believe something or to be obligated to believe something as it was written in a book a long time ago.

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The only question is, does this withstand reason?

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Does this withstand scripture?

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And then does it apply?

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Is it useful?

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And that's when the matter of wisdom really comes into play because maybe it's a good idea, but it doesn't have anything to do with our circumstances.

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So as we go through this today, just keep that in mind.

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Don't take this as us saying suddenly we have to look to dead guys to believe anything and don't think that it's limited just to the specific fact pattern that they faced in 1550, because it simply doesn't.

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There's a lot of lessons for us to apply because they're wisdom, they're wisdom, they're morality.

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And when you apply reason to all of that, you can see that, yeah, I want this to be my idea.

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So we'll present this to you today for your consideration.

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I hope you'll find it valuable.

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Just don't get the wrong message.

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I'm belaboring that point because I hate so much how many guys delve into history and then that becomes their entire personality.

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If people start running around on X or wherever saying, I'm a Magdeburg Christian now, I'm going to lose my mind.

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Don't do that.

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That's not the point.

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Don't say you're a Stone Choir Christian either.

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Like it's Christian.

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That's what we should be.

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It's what we are trying to be.

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To adopt things that you borrowed from somewhere else is a recipe for failure.

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And these men were fighting for their lives and for their faith and for their consciences.

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That's something that we should take seriously and then hear out the arguments that they made for why they did it.

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Although we're focusing specifically on the Magdeburg Confession in this episode, for reasons that are and will become even more obvious, what we are actually doing in this episode is laying the groundwork with regard to the Christian doctrine of resistance to tyranny.

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And there are a number of moving parts with regard to how you run that analysis, what Christians should and should not do.

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We'll get into that later in the episode.

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But the episode itself is not limited specifically to the Magdeburg Confession.

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We're not doing a book review.

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We're generally not going to do book reviews.

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We've done one previously, and there will be exceptions to that, possibly also in the future.

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But that is not what we're doing in this episode.

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In this episode, we are going over the idea, this area of thought, that has an intersection, not only with Christianity, but also with politics.

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And we'll get into that more as well, because there is a moral question here, and a political question here.

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And those are not identical.

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You do not run identical analyses for the one and the other.

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They are separate things, which is something that we tend to lose sight of sometimes in Christian circles.

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We want to conflate the political and the religious.

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And they, again, are not identical.

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They are not the same thing.

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You have different considerations in the political realm.

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But to help lay some of the background for this, for those who are not familiar with this era of history, and that's probably most listeners, quite frankly.

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This is not an area of history that is extensively studied by most in school, unless you have an interest in the Reformation era, or in related matters to this time.

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So obviously, we have the Reformation that essentially kicks off in the early 1500s with the 95 theses.

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Then you have the Augsburg Confession in 1530.

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That sort of gives you the broad brush strokes, as it were, of the Reformation.

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We're not going over the Reformation this episode, as we're not going to give a full timeline of that.

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But the Pope obviously is not very happy with the spread of Lutheranism, specifically Lutheranism.

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He also is not very fond of the reform, but this particular issue at this particular time is very much a matter between the Roman Catholic Pope and the Lutheran princes.

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In this case, it winds up being one particular Lutheran city, not even the Lutheran princes, because some of them have been imprisoned at this point.

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I'll get to that.

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But the Pope goes to the emperor and makes a deal with the emperor to suppress Protestantism, to suppress Lutheranism, because he sees it spreading in the empire and he wants to stop it.

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And so what flows from that is what is known as the Schmalkaldic War.

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This is essentially a localized civil war within the Holy Roman Empire in Germany, of course.

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This results in the defeat of the Lutheran German princes.

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Subsequent to the defeat of the Lutheran German princes in the Schmalkaldic War, what is instituted by the empire is what is known as the Augsburg Interim.

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Essentially, that sees a restoration of Roman practices in the areas that were conquered.

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And so obviously, this is a suppression of Protestantism, a suppression of Lutheranism, and this is unacceptable, of course, to the Protestants.

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This is what sets the stage for Magdeburg, because Magdeburg holds out.

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They do not consent to the interim, they reject the interim, and so they are besieged by the Imperial forces.

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Eventually, what comes out of this, and this is not sort of a spoiler warning for something that happened five centuries ago, but what comes out of this is that Magdeburg essentially wins.

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They hold out long enough.

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The siege lasts about a year, about 4,000, give or take, Imperial troops die just shy of 500, Magdeburgers die.

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And the result winds up being what's known as the Peace of Pisao.

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This is sort of an early recognition by the Holy Roman Empire, not so much by the Pope yet, because he doesn't want to concede, but by the Holy Roman Empire of Lutheranism, of some of the claims of the Protestants.

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Eventually, there's a fuller piece, a larger recognition of Lutheranism specifically, because the recognition of the reformed comes later, but what is known as the Peace of Augsburg.

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And it is the Peace of Augsburg where we get Cuius regio eius religio, which is just Latin saying that the religion of a given territory can be decided by the authority, by the prince who reigns in that territory.

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And so you wind up having Lutheran lands and Roman Catholic lands, and later, of course, reformed as well.

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This is essentially what is maintained for a number of decades until essentially the 30 Years War.

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That's a topic for another time.

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That lays the historical background though, for what we are discussing here.

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And so we're dealing in the time period after the defeat of the Lutheran princes in the Schmalkaldic War, and before the Magdeburgers, of course, hold out, and then we wind up with eventually the Peace of Augsburg.

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That is the context in which they are writing this document.

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And so, like Woe said, some of the things in here are polemical to a certain degree, because they're quite literally watching imperial troops set up to siege their city.

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Some men have already died because there have been some skirmishes, and obviously there was just a small scale civil war in which men did indeed die.

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That is the background for this confession.

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And so, when they talk about resistance to tyranny, this is not some abstract, this is not a thought experiment, this is not men sitting in a room and just thinking, well, what if?

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No, these are men who could go to the city walls and see imperial troops getting ready to siege the city and slaughter them.

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This was a very concrete thing for the men writing this document and for the men who signed their names to it.

00:20:15.232 --> 00:20:20.552
And of course, signing their names to it could have very well been signing their own death warrant, had they lost.

00:20:23.292 --> 00:20:36.472
But to turn to the Confession itself, we're not going to go over the first section because the first section of the Confession is essentially just a distillation of Lutheran beliefs.

00:20:36.472 --> 00:20:40.732
It's worth reading because it's actually a pretty good summary of them.

00:20:40.732 --> 00:20:44.532
It is a very short summary, but we've gone over that in other episodes.

00:20:44.532 --> 00:20:46.312
It is not the point of this episode.

00:20:47.812 --> 00:21:04.172
The point of this episode is to go over the arguments for Christian resistance to tyranny, for Christian resistance to the magistrate who oversteps his bounds, who goes beyond what is permissible for him to do.

00:21:05.792 --> 00:21:18.492
And as we already said, the core of this is that doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate, because there's the concept of the authority being delegated and the hierarchy of authority.

00:21:18.492 --> 00:21:31.572
And so if you have someone higher up the chain who is doing something wicked, it falls first and foremost to those directly under him in that hierarchy to correct him.

00:21:31.572 --> 00:21:44.472
That's going to be relatively uncomfortable in many cases, particularly in this one, because if you are, say, an elector in the Holy Roman Empire, well, that means you have to correct the emperor.

00:21:44.472 --> 00:21:56.552
That is somewhat dangerous, because he does have the authority, at least theoretically, there are some complications here with how exactly the structure works, but he does at least theoretically have the authority to simply have you executed.

00:21:56.552 --> 00:22:02.332
And so this isn't something that's just easy, because by virtue of your office, you can just go and do this thing.

00:22:02.992 --> 00:22:04.952
No, your life may very well be on the line.

00:22:04.952 --> 00:22:10.512
There are some very real risks inherent in these sorts of undertakings.

00:22:10.512 --> 00:22:13.752
But in some cases, there's a Christian duty to do it.

00:22:13.752 --> 00:22:16.872
And so there's that, again, twofold question.

00:22:16.872 --> 00:22:24.312
There's the moral consideration, the Christian question, we could call it, and then there's the political, which is a question of wisdom.

00:22:24.312 --> 00:22:29.972
Just because you can do the thing doesn't mean that you should do the thing.

00:22:29.972 --> 00:22:35.872
Just because it's unwise to do the thing, doesn't mean that you have the option not to do it.

00:22:36.932 --> 00:22:46.192
Because if you have a moral duty to do something, then you actually don't get to run the full political analysis, as it were.

00:22:46.192 --> 00:22:58.092
You can still undertake the execution of that duty in a wise manner, but you can't decide, I'm just not going to do that because it would be unwise.

00:22:58.092 --> 00:23:19.172
If you have a moral duty to do something, it is incumbent on you to do it, even if you know that the outcome is going to be bad for you, which if you have to go to the emperor and correct him, the outcome may very well be bad for you, but you still have a duty to do it, assuming that in this particular hypothetical case, you do in fact have that moral duty.

00:23:20.472 --> 00:23:45.612
And so, essentially the core of the analysis here for the moral analysis in The Magdeburg Confession is four different levels of violator, four different levels of a superior magistrate who has overstepped in some fashion, and it goes from least bad to most bad.

00:23:45.612 --> 00:23:51.612
And the fourth level would be the one where you have that moral duty to act.

00:23:51.612 --> 00:23:54.832
And so, it's no longer simply a matter of wisdom there.

00:23:54.972 --> 00:24:07.472
It is a matter of you have a duty to do something because of what this tyrannical magistrate is doing, because of how far and in what ways he has overstepped his boundaries.

00:24:08.532 --> 00:24:11.832
The first level is the simplest one.

00:24:13.192 --> 00:24:15.252
All men have weaknesses.

00:24:15.252 --> 00:24:22.992
All men have predilections, have certain temptations into which they are more likely to give.

00:24:22.992 --> 00:24:23.732
We're all sinners.

00:24:24.472 --> 00:24:26.192
That includes magistrates.

00:24:26.192 --> 00:24:31.152
And so magistrates are occasionally going to do things they should not do.

00:24:31.152 --> 00:24:34.512
They are going to do things that are, in fact, sinful.

00:24:34.512 --> 00:24:49.772
However, we as Christians, this is the moral analysis, we as Christians have to bear with their weaknesses and still submit to that rightful authority they hold by virtue of their office, even when they sin.

00:24:49.772 --> 00:24:56.972
That's not to say that we participate in their sin, because that's an important caveat with the first and the second level here.

00:24:58.072 --> 00:25:06.752
You are to submit to that magistrate still, as long as you can do so without joining in his sin.

00:25:06.752 --> 00:25:21.232
Now, if you are the lesser magistrate under him, you can very well go to him and say, you are sinning, you need to stop doing that, you need to do X, Y, and Z, or not do A, B, and C, whatever it happens to be.

00:25:22.592 --> 00:25:32.472
And you probably do have a Christian duty to do that, because there is that general duty to rebuke your brother when he is in sin, to correct him so that he can return to the correct path.

00:25:32.472 --> 00:25:38.072
You're not doing it just because you feel like correcting him, you're doing it to help him because he is your brother.

00:25:39.812 --> 00:25:55.892
The next level would be not just the natural weakness that men have, but a particularly bad magistrate, someone who engages in atrocious and notorious violations.

00:25:57.132 --> 00:26:10.792
This is a magistrate who goes above and beyond, as it were, not simply violating rights or the law because of his natural proclivities or weakness, but this is a wicked man.

00:26:10.792 --> 00:26:14.732
You are still generally to submit even to that wicked man.

00:26:15.952 --> 00:26:20.352
Not if doing so causes you to participate in his sin, of course.

00:26:20.352 --> 00:26:24.152
That is the same caveat as with the first level here in the second.

00:26:26.032 --> 00:26:38.312
But because of the sort of harm that would come with rebellion, because rebellion is generally always a wicked thing, and that's one of the major considerations in all of this.

00:26:39.932 --> 00:26:48.952
Not just as Christians, but as men, we should never want to engage in rebellion, because rebellion is always going to cause significant harm.

00:26:48.952 --> 00:26:55.652
Often it is going to cause greater harm than simply suffering the sort of harm against which you would be rebelling.

00:26:55.652 --> 00:26:59.332
And that is the case here for the second level.

00:26:59.332 --> 00:27:08.752
The third level is where things start to be less of a matter of wisdom and more of a matter of moral duty.

00:27:08.752 --> 00:27:18.992
Or, said another way, a matter of moral duty that can be executed in wisdom, because there's that consideration there of the two different types of wisdom, as it were.

00:27:18.992 --> 00:27:27.252
Wisdom in choosing whether or not to do something versus wisdom in choosing how to do it when it is incumbent on you to do it.

00:27:27.252 --> 00:27:43.712
And so the third level, if the magistrate is wicked to such an extent that what he is doing forces you, as the lesser magistrate, to participate in his sins, then you have a duty not to do that.

00:27:43.712 --> 00:27:48.592
You have a duty to reject participation in his sins.

00:27:48.592 --> 00:27:50.772
You have a duty to do something.

00:27:50.772 --> 00:27:57.732
You have a duty to defend those against whom he is committing these wicked acts, whatever it happens to be.

00:27:57.732 --> 00:28:00.952
It is going to be a matter of wisdom how you do that.

00:28:00.952 --> 00:28:11.272
But it is no longer a matter of whether or not you are permitted or required because of the fact that he is forcing you to participate in his sins.

00:28:11.272 --> 00:28:14.552
You are required to act at this level.

00:28:14.552 --> 00:28:22.932
And then the fourth level, of course, would be essentially the sort of magistrate who is acting on behalf of Satan himself.

00:28:22.932 --> 00:28:32.172
This is someone who is attacking the church, attacking Christianity, driving men to open and notorious sin.

00:28:34.012 --> 00:28:38.712
This is the level that was in play with regard to Magdeburg.

00:28:38.712 --> 00:28:49.352
Because what you had was the Pope corruptly acting in concert with the Emperor to attack and murder Christians.

00:28:49.352 --> 00:29:04.212
This is a magistrate who has gone so far beyond his bounds, who has exceeded his authority to such an extent that he is no longer an instrument of God and has become instead an instrument of the devil.

00:29:04.212 --> 00:29:09.532
In this case, there is an affirmative moral duty to resist.

00:29:09.532 --> 00:29:16.172
And again, there is that wisdom consideration, and the wisdom is how you go about resisting that.

00:29:16.172 --> 00:29:20.792
Not whether or not you resist it, but how you go about doing so.

00:29:20.792 --> 00:29:28.572
And to make sure that I've been clear with what I've said, we are still talking about those who are in that hierarchy of authority.

00:29:30.032 --> 00:29:41.552
This becomes somewhat difficult in our current context in most of the Western world, because the men who wrote the Magdeburg Confession didn't even have democracy in mind.

00:29:41.552 --> 00:29:43.132
That was not a thing.

00:29:43.132 --> 00:29:47.512
They weren't thinking about representative government as we think of it.

00:29:47.512 --> 00:29:58.312
Of course, there was some sort of representation in the Holy Roman Empire, because you had electors and things like that, but different from what we have today.

00:29:58.312 --> 00:30:07.992
And so today, some of these questions are a little more difficult, a little more challenging to assess, because who is the Lesser Magistrate?

00:30:07.992 --> 00:30:10.412
We have the obvious hierarchy that we can see.

00:30:10.412 --> 00:30:12.492
We have the president at the top.

00:30:12.492 --> 00:30:14.112
We have the vice president.

00:30:14.112 --> 00:30:14.972
We have the Senate.

00:30:14.972 --> 00:30:16.412
We have the House of Representatives.

00:30:16.412 --> 00:30:17.832
We have governors.

00:30:17.832 --> 00:30:20.672
We have mayors on down the chain.

00:30:21.672 --> 00:30:32.992
But at the same time, we have a political system in which basically all adults participate, because we have universal suffrage.

00:30:32.992 --> 00:30:46.732
And so, to a certain extent, every man is a Lesser Magistrate, granted all the way at the bottom of that hierarchy, but that does devolve certain duties to every single Christian man.

00:30:47.872 --> 00:30:50.792
And, of course, I am specifically saying Christian men.

00:30:50.792 --> 00:30:58.452
I am not using that as a generic term here, because this is a matter of headship, as Woe said in his opening.

00:30:58.452 --> 00:31:00.832
So this is not a matter for women.

00:31:00.832 --> 00:31:01.932
It's not a matter for children.

00:31:01.932 --> 00:31:08.212
This is a matter for men, because only a man can be head.

00:31:08.212 --> 00:31:20.532
And so in our context, in the context of a democratic system, there is a certain duty that devolves all the way down to the individual man.

00:31:20.532 --> 00:31:30.612
Depending on what sort of violator a given magistrate is, it may be incumbent on individual Christian men to do something.

00:31:30.612 --> 00:31:33.472
There may be a moral duty to act.

00:31:33.472 --> 00:31:37.672
There is still that wisdom consideration in how you act in what you do.

00:31:37.672 --> 00:31:39.672
That is always the case.

00:31:39.672 --> 00:31:41.532
God does not call us to be fools.

00:31:42.872 --> 00:31:45.072
We want to be very clear about that.

00:31:45.072 --> 00:31:50.712
Just because you have a duty to do something does not mean you have a duty to be an idiot.

00:31:50.712 --> 00:31:53.752
Hopefully you will avoid doing that.

00:31:53.752 --> 00:31:58.432
We in fact strongly advise you to avoid doing that.

00:31:58.432 --> 00:32:08.192
But in our system, the hierarchy does run all the way from the top, the president in the US case, down to individual men.

00:32:08.192 --> 00:32:09.772
And to some degree, that's always been the case.

00:32:10.732 --> 00:32:25.712
Because even in some system, like the Holy Roman Empire, you had the emperor, then you had electors, you had princes, depending where you lived, you had all the way on down to, they still in fact had mayors and things like that.

00:32:25.712 --> 00:32:29.392
But then individual Christian men still had duties.

00:32:29.392 --> 00:32:37.612
Because if your mayor was corrupt, if your mayor ordered you to participate in sin, you have a Christian duty not to do that.

00:32:37.652 --> 00:32:40.572
You have a Christian duty to resist.

00:32:40.572 --> 00:32:47.332
What the Magdeburg Confession gives is essentially a framework for thinking about these issues.

00:32:47.332 --> 00:32:50.032
It is a useful document to read.

00:32:50.032 --> 00:32:53.452
It is not something again, as to echo Woe.

00:32:53.452 --> 00:33:01.212
It is not something that we are saying, read this, memorize it, use these exact steps, run this analysis and you'll get the answer.

00:33:01.212 --> 00:33:03.272
That's not what this is.

00:33:03.272 --> 00:33:11.612
As with many of the other episodes that we do, this is a matter of learning how to think about a particular type of issue.

00:33:11.612 --> 00:33:22.752
And so, the Magdeburg Confession is useful because it gives a very concrete, a very real world example of these things coming into play.

00:33:22.752 --> 00:33:28.812
And so, you can look at something that was not simple, certainly, for the men involved.

00:33:28.812 --> 00:33:41.492
You have the emperor involved, you have the Pope involved, you have Imperial troops on one side, you have formerly Imperial troops on the other side, you have a somewhat independent city.

00:33:41.492 --> 00:33:46.672
This was a complicated matter, and these were Christian men attempting to navigate these things.

00:33:48.432 --> 00:34:01.472
What we face today is also complicated because in some ways, our government is deeply wicked, but in other ways, our government is still our government.

00:34:02.292 --> 00:34:10.932
Our government still holds rightful authority, and so Christians are not to rebel against rightful authority.

00:34:10.932 --> 00:34:18.452
But Christians also cannot participate in sin, and so it's not a simple matter.

00:34:18.452 --> 00:34:26.592
The Magdeburg Confession serves as a useful tool for Christians to think about these matters, to think about these issues.

00:34:26.592 --> 00:34:29.312
How do we approach these things as Christian men?

00:34:30.792 --> 00:34:38.032
How do we run the analysis of what is morally permissible, or what is morally impermissible?

00:34:38.032 --> 00:34:44.272
And then how do you approach that with wisdom, as we are commanded to do in scripture?

00:34:44.272 --> 00:34:46.512
We're not commanded to be fools.

00:34:46.512 --> 00:34:49.712
Again, to repeat that, it's an important point.

00:34:49.712 --> 00:34:54.692
We are commanded to be wise as serpents, to be crafty even.

00:34:54.692 --> 00:34:57.612
We are not commanded to act foolishly.

00:34:58.272 --> 00:34:59.892
And so, we have to think through these issues.

00:34:59.892 --> 00:35:05.092
We have to consider these sorts of things, because it is not a simple analysis.

00:35:05.092 --> 00:35:10.392
It is not just, here are your bullet points, check them off, and then you have your answer.

00:35:11.712 --> 00:35:19.092
It's easier, certainly, if someone gives you a checklist and just says, if you do this, then this, then that.

00:35:19.092 --> 00:35:21.492
That's not how life works.

00:35:21.492 --> 00:35:41.972
And it's certainly not how things work when we're dealing with moral issues and political issues, which is what we are certainly dealing with in this episode, when we're dealing with how Christians are to navigate real world issues with regard to those who usurp authority or exceed the bounds of their authority.

00:35:41.972 --> 00:35:47.952
Now, of course, some are going to think of Romans 13, and we will get to that in a little bit in the episode.

00:35:49.192 --> 00:35:54.012
It is not a simple matter of just submitting to all earthly authority regardless of what they do.

00:35:55.572 --> 00:36:00.172
That is an incorrect interpretation of Romans 13.

00:36:00.172 --> 00:36:07.752
But at the same time, rebellion itself is wicked, and so we cannot be rebels.

00:36:07.752 --> 00:36:12.212
That is not something Christians should ever aspire to be or even tolerate.

00:36:13.292 --> 00:36:23.712
But there are times where you do have to resort to resistance, because certainly the Magdeburgers took up arms against a wicked and oppressive Caesar.

00:36:24.692 --> 00:36:26.432
That was necessary.

00:36:26.432 --> 00:36:29.072
That was their Christian duty.

00:36:29.072 --> 00:36:44.652
And so as we navigate these issues, we have to recognize the complexity of the matter and the complexity of the analysis, and not resort to simple answers, because they're simple, because they're easy.

00:36:44.652 --> 00:36:55.572
We have to actually think through the matter, run the assessment, and then navigate these in not just a Christian way, but also a wise way.

00:36:57.052 --> 00:37:05.232
As we've discussed in the episode on violence, obviously there are times where violence is necessary in life.

00:37:05.232 --> 00:37:08.952
There are times when men must be violent to stop evil.

00:37:08.952 --> 00:37:13.312
And that was the predicate notion that these men carried into the siege.

00:37:13.312 --> 00:37:17.672
They drafted and published this in April of 1550.

00:37:17.672 --> 00:37:20.852
By August, they were under siege, and that siege lasted 13 months.

00:37:21.332 --> 00:37:23.992
So as Corey said, there had already been skirmishes.

00:37:23.992 --> 00:37:26.052
They knew that this was coming.

00:37:26.052 --> 00:37:36.292
And part of the reason for the first portion of the Magdeburg Confession, just being an exhibition of their Lutheran faith, was to establish, look, we're not anarchists.

00:37:36.292 --> 00:37:41.192
We are not godless rebels seeking to tear down the high places.

00:37:41.192 --> 00:37:47.192
They were specifically pleading with the emperor himself directly to say, we want to obey you.

00:37:47.192 --> 00:37:52.812
They were begging the emperor, Charles V, to behave in a fashion that they could obey.

00:37:52.812 --> 00:38:00.312
And they said, basically, if you take off of the table, forcing us to be papists, we will obey everything else.

00:38:00.312 --> 00:38:02.332
We are obeying everything else.

00:38:02.332 --> 00:38:08.872
In every regard, as much as they could, they were obeying what was commanded of them, but not that one thing.

00:38:08.872 --> 00:38:13.792
And so the reason that they were writing this was that their home was being besieged.

00:38:13.792 --> 00:38:15.052
They knew the violence was coming.

00:38:15.052 --> 00:38:17.252
Violence has already ensued before they wrote it.

00:38:17.252 --> 00:38:18.352
They knew it would get worse.

00:38:19.492 --> 00:38:35.812
So as these men were looking out and seeing these preparations for them to be besieged and probably killed, I mean, that's how sieges are supposed to end if you don't surrender, they understood that in order for them to defend their homes and their lives, they would have to engage in violence against the king's own men, the emperor's own men.

00:38:35.812 --> 00:38:38.472
And on paper, that sounds sinful.

00:38:38.472 --> 00:38:42.012
And so they had to try to figure out, can we resist?

00:38:42.012 --> 00:38:43.352
Do we have to just take this?

00:38:44.152 --> 00:38:48.632
Or is there a moral out for us to defend ourselves?

00:38:48.632 --> 00:38:53.752
Which is a terrible position for the executive to put anyone in.

00:38:53.752 --> 00:39:00.532
The prince, the emperor, the magistrate, whatever you call it, to put people in a position where they have to decide, this is unjust.

00:39:00.532 --> 00:39:05.752
Do I have to also behave unjustly to keep from dying here?

00:39:05.752 --> 00:39:09.992
And that's a position that states should never ever permit anything to get to.

00:39:10.592 --> 00:39:14.332
You know, de-escalation is not just a leftist meme, it's a good idea.

00:39:14.332 --> 00:39:16.092
When somebody is dead, they stay dead.

00:39:16.092 --> 00:39:18.052
You can't undo that.

00:39:18.052 --> 00:39:28.372
And so, resorting to violence is sometimes necessary, but when it can be avoided as a matter of wisdom and as a matter of morality, it generally should be.

00:39:28.372 --> 00:39:33.892
Obviously, we've talked in the past, that's not remotely pacifist, but at the same time, you don't want to see violence.

00:39:33.892 --> 00:39:36.772
Violence is always necessarily destructive.

00:39:36.772 --> 00:39:38.712
There's no creation in violence.

00:39:39.452 --> 00:39:42.232
All you're creating is pain and suffering.

00:39:42.232 --> 00:39:45.472
Sometimes it must be done, but that's never desirable.

00:39:45.472 --> 00:39:49.012
Any other outcome would be preferable if possible.

00:39:49.012 --> 00:40:09.312
So as these men were looking around and seeing what the emperor was prepared to do in the name of Rome, I'm sure they were beside themselves with moral and emotional anguish that to be put in this position, how unthinkable to have to face the idea that you might have to kill your countrymen and not to be killed for exercising your faith.

00:40:09.312 --> 00:40:20.912
And that was the entire impetus for them to lay out their position as Lutherans and then to make the case for, here's how we calculated that we are not sinning by resisting.

00:40:20.912 --> 00:40:31.012
I think one of the key insights is correlated out with that hierarchy is that the notion of the Lesser Magistrate is not one of anarchy, but it's one of devolution.

00:40:31.692 --> 00:40:46.532
In the event that the president does something evil and he continues to do evil things and those evil things escalate to the point that force must be employed, it doesn't automatically devolve to me to fight back.

00:40:46.532 --> 00:40:48.072
That's the key insight.

00:40:48.072 --> 00:40:53.072
And this is a key moral insight because it's the only way to keep from devolving into anarchy.

00:40:53.072 --> 00:41:03.192
If the president, if the emperor, whomever at the top is an absolute despot and has failed every test, is just the devil's right hand in what he's doing.

00:41:03.192 --> 00:41:04.892
There's men beneath him.

00:41:04.892 --> 00:41:08.472
There are going to be more men beneath him because that's how hierarchies work.

00:41:08.472 --> 00:41:10.592
You don't have one general and then one colonel.

00:41:10.592 --> 00:41:13.892
You have a number of colonels and they have a bunch of majors and a ton of lieutenants.

00:41:13.892 --> 00:41:15.812
That's how hierarchy works.

00:41:15.812 --> 00:41:20.612
So, you know, in our country, we have everyone listening in the United States has one president.

00:41:20.612 --> 00:41:22.612
You have one of 50 governors.

00:41:22.612 --> 00:41:25.552
Almost all of us are going to have mayors, as Corey laid out.

00:41:25.552 --> 00:41:39.112
So at any point, one of those men could potentially step in and say, as it comes to my town, as it comes to my state, we will not participate and I will actively resist the evil that you are proposing.

00:41:39.112 --> 00:41:40.552
That was their key insight.

00:41:40.552 --> 00:41:42.432
It wasn't completely novel.

00:41:42.432 --> 00:41:55.112
It's just the first time that I'm aware of that someone had written it down and articulated it certainly this clearly, that we don't want to see battles and resistance in wars, particularly up and down.

00:41:55.112 --> 00:42:04.412
It's one thing when neighboring nations go to war, but in internal war where you have a state warring against its superior, that's worse.

00:42:04.412 --> 00:42:07.372
You know, it's potentially a civil war, but it's always undesirable.

00:42:07.372 --> 00:42:13.912
And so they made sure that they came up with a scheme and a framework and a logical proposition.

00:42:14.312 --> 00:42:15.832
I don't say scheme negatively.

00:42:15.832 --> 00:42:29.732
Like here are the rules that we think will make any situation like this and generalize the specifics of our situation such that a man can look and see, yes, under these conditions, it is necessary for someone to resist.

00:42:29.732 --> 00:42:41.872
Not the individual, not the pastors themselves personally, but the magistrate over the lesser domain had to do something to resist because he had a duty from God to his town, to his city.

00:42:42.572 --> 00:42:49.212
The governor has a duty from God to his state, just as the president has a duty from God to his country.

00:42:49.212 --> 00:42:54.272
So at any point, we're all participants in all of those simultaneously.

00:42:54.272 --> 00:42:56.492
It's exactly the same way race works.

00:42:56.492 --> 00:42:57.432
I'm white.

00:42:57.432 --> 00:42:58.792
I'm mostly English.

00:42:58.892 --> 00:43:00.512
I'm American.

00:43:00.512 --> 00:43:11.852
I have much closer relations here in this country, going back hundreds of years, but to particular relatives of mine, that's a much smaller concentric circle than white or European.

00:43:12.492 --> 00:43:16.852
English, those concentric circles matter in exactly the same way.

00:43:16.852 --> 00:43:19.952
And they're manifest in the doctrine of Lesser Magistrate.

00:43:19.952 --> 00:43:29.912
At those various concentric circles, not necessarily perfectly correlating, but you're going to find that someone closer will also have, you know, I have multiple people over me.

00:43:29.912 --> 00:43:30.892
I have a mayor.

00:43:30.892 --> 00:43:31.452
I have a governor.

00:43:31.452 --> 00:43:32.612
I have a president.

00:43:32.612 --> 00:43:40.072
And then various intermediary bodies that are sort of peripheral, but they do come into play in the United States, as well as in England, where we got it from.

00:43:40.152 --> 00:43:46.552
You have the sheriff over a county who's a very interesting legal authority in our system.

00:43:46.552 --> 00:43:49.152
We talked about that a little bit in a previous episode.

00:43:49.152 --> 00:43:55.092
The importance of not saying, well, okay, the president's mean, not the president's mean, I want to downplay this.

00:43:55.092 --> 00:43:57.112
The president is Satan himself.

00:43:57.112 --> 00:43:59.212
So I'm going to go hurt people.

00:43:59.212 --> 00:44:00.592
I'm going to go be violent.

00:44:00.592 --> 00:44:02.692
That's absolutely impermissible.

00:44:02.692 --> 00:44:08.432
And the key insight that the Magdeburg Confession provides is that that's not even necessary, because there's always somebody above me.

00:44:08.512 --> 00:44:11.992
And as Corey said, I don't have authority of my own, but I can appeal.

00:44:11.992 --> 00:44:13.452
I can go talk to someone.

00:44:13.452 --> 00:44:21.492
I can raise the alarm and say, hey, you guys who are over me and beneath the ultimate bad guy that's a problem here, do something.

00:44:21.492 --> 00:44:22.572
Look at this problem.

00:44:22.572 --> 00:44:23.172
Protect me.

00:44:23.172 --> 00:44:24.992
Protect my community.

00:44:24.992 --> 00:44:29.552
That is what we do have the opportunity to avail ourselves of.

00:44:29.552 --> 00:44:35.492
And so the fact that they went out of their way to make sure that, you know, they didn't have to stretch scripture at all.

00:44:35.492 --> 00:44:40.132
They make their arguments from scripture, and they go into ample detail, I think in some cases, almost too much.

00:44:40.452 --> 00:44:46.072
They want to pull in so many peripheral anecdotes about, well, in this one example, this guy did this.

00:44:46.072 --> 00:44:53.512
There's this appetite that so many Christians seem to have to try to plumb the depths of scripture for trivia, to make some moral point.

00:44:53.512 --> 00:44:55.852
I personally find that really dangerous.

00:44:55.852 --> 00:45:01.852
I would much rather just make the argument in my own words and not bind your conscience and let you figure it out.

00:45:01.852 --> 00:45:05.372
And if you agree, then if your conscience is bound, it's because it's obedience to God.

00:45:05.972 --> 00:45:12.252
But as soon as I start coming up with weird examples from deep in the bowels of the Old Testament, I'll say, well, look, here's this example.

00:45:12.252 --> 00:45:13.232
You got to do it.

00:45:13.232 --> 00:45:15.452
You're invoking the name of God in a dangerous fashion.

00:45:15.452 --> 00:45:16.372
I don't think they did it wrong.

00:45:16.372 --> 00:45:18.052
I just think they did it too much.

00:45:18.052 --> 00:45:21.852
It's a habit I see a lot today, and especially in some of the reform circles.

00:45:21.852 --> 00:45:22.792
It's not bad.

00:45:22.792 --> 00:45:27.072
It's always struck me as kind of odd because it's not the strongest case for the argument.

00:45:27.072 --> 00:45:31.972
One of the important points that they made was that, I'm just going to give you a quote here.

00:45:31.972 --> 00:45:38.332
This was nullifying one of the counter arguments against the idea that they wouldn't be able to fight back or resist.

00:45:38.332 --> 00:45:54.332
They wrote, Magistrates and subjects shall be bound by shirk chains and mutual owes, but it shall be permitted to magistrates, when they want to be, to be loosed and free from all obligation, while subjects shall always be bound in all circumstances and never be free.

00:45:54.332 --> 00:46:04.012
It shall be permitted to magistrates to exercise the utmost tyranny contrary to the laws and their owes, but it shall not be permitted to the subjects to restrain the ravings of tyrants.

00:46:06.292 --> 00:46:13.652
Thus, the truth of our common sense and the logic of consequences will always depend on the whims and weapons of those who have power.

00:46:13.652 --> 00:46:15.432
Obviously, that was spoken tongue-in-cheek.

00:46:15.432 --> 00:46:17.272
They were saying, this is absurd.

00:46:17.272 --> 00:46:29.212
The idea that the subject is always bound to obey, and also the Magistrate, the Superior, is always bound to obey God, but he can just change his mind and you still have to obey once he breaks his oath.

00:46:29.212 --> 00:46:32.292
Once he's disobeying God, you have to keep obeying him.

00:46:33.032 --> 00:46:38.152
And they went on to articulate very clearly that that's basically setting God against himself.

00:46:38.152 --> 00:46:49.892
If God puts a man in a position to rule over you in a godly fashion, and then he turns against God and is doing wicked things and involving you in those wicked things, he's not acting on behalf of God.

00:46:49.892 --> 00:46:51.192
He can't be.

00:46:51.192 --> 00:46:54.072
That's a house divided against itself.

00:46:54.072 --> 00:47:06.512
And so part of their argument rested on the moral argument that the limitations of the executive, of the magistrate, of whatever level are going to be scoped by the duties to which he's bound.

00:47:06.512 --> 00:47:09.012
And they must always be oriented towards God.

00:47:09.012 --> 00:47:21.952
Even if it's secular, even if it's just making the trains run on time or making sure that invaders don't burn the crops, whatever duties the magistrate has, he is fulfilling them for the benefit of God's people.

00:47:21.952 --> 00:47:41.632
And that is obedience to God, whether he knows it or not, when he inverts that and starts harming God's people in various ways, and they exceed the threshold of the four-part test they lay out, then their argument is that violence is necessary from the Lesser Magistrate solely to protect those beneath them.

00:47:41.632 --> 00:47:44.292
And again, this is all purely defensive.

00:47:44.292 --> 00:47:47.212
It's not we're going to overthrow this guy.

00:47:47.212 --> 00:47:51.012
It's simply we must neutralize the threat.

00:47:51.012 --> 00:47:56.012
You know, in self-defense legal frameworks, that's the goal.

00:47:56.012 --> 00:47:57.312
Not I'm going to kill somebody.

00:47:57.492 --> 00:47:59.152
I have to neutralize the threat.

00:47:59.152 --> 00:48:04.072
If lethal force is necessary to neutralize the threat, then it's legally permissible.

00:48:04.072 --> 00:48:07.152
It's not you want to kill the guy, and so you're going to use lethal force.

00:48:07.152 --> 00:48:10.252
No, then you're going to catch a manslaughter rap.

00:48:10.252 --> 00:48:14.552
Because the intent there is not to protect yourself, it's to hurt him.

00:48:14.552 --> 00:48:21.712
Even though it's such a subtle and seemingly insane distinction, because if you pull the trigger, obviously someone's going to be hurt.

00:48:21.712 --> 00:48:23.412
It's a question of intent.

00:48:23.412 --> 00:48:29.932
If your intent is I want to stop this person from hurting someone, then pulling the trigger is permissible.

00:48:29.932 --> 00:48:37.852
If your intent is I want to kill that guy because I'm mad that what he's doing is wrong, then you're suddenly in fraught legal territory.

00:48:37.852 --> 00:48:39.392
Self-defense is incredibly tricky.

00:48:39.412 --> 00:48:43.712
It's legally fraught and it's morally fraught, even when it's justified.

00:48:43.712 --> 00:48:49.292
These men understood that they had a duty to God to get this right before the siege was laid.

00:48:49.292 --> 00:48:58.392
And as Corey was saying, there was the discussion around the, you know, something we've talked about before in other episodes, a nation should have a unified religion.

00:48:58.392 --> 00:48:59.832
That's a good thing.

00:48:59.832 --> 00:49:04.912
We talked about households converting and then, you know, the husband converts, the whole household converts.

00:49:04.912 --> 00:49:17.192
We've talked at great length from the very earliest episodes about how when, in many cases, kings or rulers, the magistrates of European lands converted to Christianity and rapidly their people followed suit.

00:49:18.072 --> 00:49:27.792
It wasn't necessarily enforced rigidly, but the example was set and then eventually, this is effectively the law of the land is this new religion.

00:49:27.792 --> 00:49:35.692
So when all of these other Lutheran lands reneged on their promise to God to be Lutheran, it wasn't duty to Luther.

00:49:35.692 --> 00:49:41.512
They believe it was their Christian duty to be Lutheran and to reject the papacy.

00:49:41.512 --> 00:49:57.852
When the emperor swept in at the Pope's orders and said, we're going to kill you if you don't become Roman Catholic again, one of the points that they made to emphasize that this was tyranny and not simply, well, the guy in charge gets to decide what religion we are.

00:49:57.852 --> 00:50:04.252
They pointed out that in these very same lands, there were Jews and there were pagans who were tolerated.

00:50:04.252 --> 00:50:06.432
The Pope didn't care about Jews and pagans.

00:50:06.432 --> 00:50:08.212
He only cared about Lutherans.

00:50:08.212 --> 00:50:13.992
The only people he was killing were the people who refused to be Roman Catholic specifically after the Reformation.

00:50:14.572 --> 00:50:21.212
And that was part of their case, that this specific instance was per se tyranny, because they were leaving other people.

00:50:21.212 --> 00:50:25.532
It wasn't that everyone was being converted to the papacy by the sword.

00:50:25.532 --> 00:50:27.852
As Corey said, the Pope was mad.

00:50:27.852 --> 00:50:28.672
He was livid.

00:50:28.672 --> 00:50:41.252
He was murderously angry, specifically at Lutherans in these lands that he claimed authority over, which was another part of the fight in the Reformation itself, that the Pope doesn't have universal authority.

00:50:41.692 --> 00:50:44.932
It was literally one of the fundamental fights.

00:50:44.932 --> 00:50:46.112
So when they said, You know what?

00:50:46.112 --> 00:50:57.632
You're leaving Jews alone, you're leaving pagans alone, and you're only coming after us, proves that it is not the potentially legitimate case where the magistrate is saying, everyone in my land must be Christian.

00:50:57.632 --> 00:50:59.512
That's not even a question here.

00:50:59.512 --> 00:51:03.212
Whether or not that's legitimate, they pointed out, that's not what's going on here at all.

00:51:03.212 --> 00:51:13.172
If you're going to tolerate unbelievers and let them practice their own religion, but you won't let us practice Lutheranism, well, we believe we're Christian and we believe you're murdering Christians.

00:51:13.172 --> 00:51:18.072
And because of that, it is necessary to employ violence to protect Christian lives.

00:51:18.072 --> 00:51:23.452
And that duty devolves to the Lesser Magistrate, and here's the case that we're making for it.

00:51:24.712 --> 00:51:37.452
The authors of the Magdeburg Confession advance essentially three different arguments with regard to why they believe and they are correct in this.

00:51:37.672 --> 00:51:39.872
Yes, we would say they are correct in this.

00:51:39.872 --> 00:51:52.712
Why they believe that there are limitations to the power of, in this case, the emperor, and why it is permissible for the Lesser Magistrate to resist under certain circumstances.

00:51:54.132 --> 00:52:01.252
The three arguments are essentially an argument from definition, an argument from inference, and an argument from absurdity.

00:52:02.832 --> 00:52:09.652
And so, definitionally, is essentially, is the Romans 13 argument, so I'll come back to that.

00:52:09.652 --> 00:52:20.292
Inference is also drawn from Romans 13, and then the absurdity argument I'll cover briefly, because it's the easiest to cover before we delve into Romans 13.

00:52:20.292 --> 00:52:38.392
If you argue that Caesar, that the emperor, that the president, whatever office, if you argue that he can do whatever he wants, and you must always submit to his authority, then what you've effectively argued is that God sanctions sin.

00:52:38.392 --> 00:52:57.992
Because if you advance the moral argument, that the magistrate can do whatever he wants, and you must always submit, then if he sins and forces you to sin, what you're saying is that the authority granted him by God encompasses enforcing sin.

00:52:59.052 --> 00:53:00.992
Which is absurd.

00:53:00.992 --> 00:53:13.772
You can give any number of concrete examples, of course, if the magistrate says that no man is allowed to have a wife now, that all the women have to be prostitutes.

00:53:13.772 --> 00:53:18.672
This is actually an example that is given in The Magdeburg Confession.

00:53:18.672 --> 00:53:22.232
Obviously, you do not have to submit to that as a Christian.

00:53:22.232 --> 00:53:24.732
In fact, you have a duty to resist at that point.

00:53:25.892 --> 00:53:36.712
So, to argue that there is no limitation on the authority, on the power of the magistrate is absurd.

00:53:36.712 --> 00:53:42.812
And so, that alone would be sufficient, but there are the other two arguments, definition and inference.

00:53:42.812 --> 00:53:47.332
And in order to understand those, they have to be couched in Romans 13.

00:53:47.332 --> 00:53:50.872
And so, I'll read the relevant portion of Romans 13.

00:53:52.432 --> 00:54:02.732
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

00:54:02.732 --> 00:54:10.392
Therefore, whoever resists the authorities resists what God is appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment.

00:54:10.392 --> 00:54:14.272
For rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad.

00:54:14.272 --> 00:54:17.232
Would you have no fear of the one who is an authority?

00:54:17.232 --> 00:54:20.252
Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval.

00:54:20.912 --> 00:54:23.552
For he is God's servant for your good.

00:54:23.552 --> 00:54:28.652
But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain.

00:54:28.652 --> 00:54:34.292
For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrongdoer.

00:54:34.292 --> 00:54:41.952
Therefore, one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath, but also for the sake of conscience.

00:54:41.952 --> 00:54:48.612
For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing.

00:54:49.672 --> 00:55:01.012
Pay to all what is owed to them, taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

00:55:02.032 --> 00:55:23.652
There have been many historically, and certainly it seems to be very popular today, who have argued, and who indeed argue today, that Romans 13 gives a blanket command for Christians to submit to authority, to submit to the state, whatever the office happens to be.

00:55:23.652 --> 00:55:32.512
Now, we've already seen the argument from absurdity that defeats that, but Romans 13 is not merely a command.

00:55:32.512 --> 00:55:50.692
Romans 13 is also a polemic, because if you look at what is actually said in the passage that I just read, and I of course encourage you to go and read it yourself, and I will put a link in the show notes, it actually gives a definition of what a proper authority is, what a rightful authority is.

00:55:51.712 --> 00:55:53.672
And what does it say?

00:55:53.672 --> 00:56:00.632
Well, it says in the core of it, for rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad.

00:56:00.632 --> 00:56:04.172
That's defining what a ruler properly is.

00:56:04.172 --> 00:56:14.352
And so, a man who is a terror to good conduct and not to bad, is in fact not actually a rightful ruler.

00:56:14.352 --> 00:56:15.552
He has overstepped.

00:56:15.552 --> 00:56:20.492
He has become a minister of satan instead of a minister of god.

00:56:20.492 --> 00:56:38.892
And so, for instance, if you were living somewhere and the authority in that area, the president, say, outlaws Christianity and forces everyone under penalty of death to convert to paganism, he is not a rightful authority.

00:56:40.032 --> 00:56:41.752
Because what has he done?

00:56:41.752 --> 00:56:45.892
He has become a terror to good conduct and not to bad conduct.

00:56:47.112 --> 00:56:53.272
He is the inverse of what god defines here as being a rightful authority.

00:56:53.272 --> 00:56:57.572
And so, you have to read Romans 13 and recognize what it is saying.

00:56:57.572 --> 00:57:07.252
It is not simply saying that first part which some modern teachers love to quote, Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.

00:57:08.392 --> 00:57:13.212
And perhaps they will move on from there and also say, For there is no authority except from god.

00:57:14.332 --> 00:57:21.952
But you have to read the rest of it, because it goes on to define what an authority, a proper authority actually is.

00:57:21.952 --> 00:57:36.592
And so, if some person holding some certain office does not meet this standard, insofar as he deviates from the standard that is set forth here in Romans 13, he is not a rightful authority.

00:57:36.592 --> 00:57:40.492
And then you run that analysis that we spoke about earlier.

00:57:40.492 --> 00:57:45.612
Again, not specifically that one, but that is the general sort of analysis you have to run.

00:57:45.612 --> 00:57:48.132
What sort of violation is he committing?

00:57:48.132 --> 00:57:51.032
What sort of violator is he?

00:57:51.032 --> 00:58:01.512
Is he some sort of horrible tyrant that is actually suppressing Christianity, that is going specifically after the church, that is commanding you participate in sin?

00:58:02.192 --> 00:58:08.272
Well, he's certainly not a rightful authority, according to the definition we have here in Romans 13.

00:58:08.272 --> 00:58:12.932
And so Christians are going to have certain moral duties that flow from that.

00:58:14.132 --> 00:58:20.752
But then there is also the argument from inference, and we can see this elsewhere in scripture as well.

00:58:20.752 --> 00:58:29.952
The Magdeburg Confession also makes reference to Christ's words, render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, render unto God that which is God's.

00:58:32.132 --> 00:58:35.192
That also implies a certain number of things.

00:58:35.192 --> 00:58:37.592
There is an inference to be drawn there.

00:58:37.592 --> 00:58:47.812
The inference, of course, is that you do not render unto Caesar that which is God's, and you do not render unto God that which is Caesar's.

00:58:47.812 --> 00:58:51.292
In that specific case, there's a sort of nuance that goes along with that.

00:58:51.292 --> 00:59:06.032
This would be used polemically, in fact, against the Pope, because the Pope then and less so now, because he doesn't have the power anymore, although certainly if he had the power, he would make the same claims, because the doctrine has not changed, in this case.

00:59:06.032 --> 00:59:12.392
He makes claims to having authority over the states, over the nations.

00:59:12.392 --> 00:59:18.092
He makes claims to having power in the kingdom of the left hand.

00:59:18.092 --> 00:59:20.072
That is a violation.

00:59:20.072 --> 00:59:33.352
That is an attempt to take what belongs to Caesar and not really take it for God, because, of course, we would disagree that the Pope is working for or speaking on behalf of God.

00:59:33.352 --> 00:59:36.192
But that is essentially the claim that he is setting forth.

00:59:36.192 --> 00:59:39.632
He is saying, no, none of these things belong to Caesar.

00:59:39.632 --> 00:59:53.412
They all belong under this particular formulation of the church, which is a violation of what Christ is saying, because he is saying there are certain things that belong to Caesar.

00:59:53.412 --> 00:59:56.452
Ultimately, of course, yes, everything belongs to God.

00:59:57.272 --> 01:00:16.032
But here in time, and with regard to human affairs, there are certain things that belong to Caesar, just as there are certain things that belong to God, which is to say there is a distinction here between the things of the left hand and the things of the right hand.

01:00:16.032 --> 01:00:27.492
If Caesar invades the domain of the church and says, you must worship in this specific way, believe these specific things, Caesar is likely overstepping his bounds.

01:00:27.492 --> 01:00:36.972
There are some cases in which Caesar, in which the authority has a duty to see that right religion is taught in his realm.

01:00:36.972 --> 01:00:37.952
We already said that.

01:00:37.952 --> 01:00:41.752
We went over some of that with regard to the history.

01:00:41.752 --> 01:00:51.972
But those who have authority, rightful authority, in the left hand kingdom, do have a duty to see that right religion is taught in their realm.

01:00:51.972 --> 01:00:55.172
They will stand before God and answer for that.

01:00:55.172 --> 01:01:10.392
It would be completely ridiculous to claim that they have no authority to enforce right religion in their realm, and then also they're going to stand before God and answer for not enforcing what they didn't have the authority to enforce.

01:01:10.392 --> 01:01:11.772
That argument would be incoherent.

01:01:12.532 --> 01:01:21.632
And so, the authority must have the power, must have the right to see that what is taught in his realm is correct.

01:01:21.632 --> 01:01:26.752
He's going to stand before God and answer for that if he is wrong or if he did it in a wrong way.

01:01:26.752 --> 01:01:30.612
That's one of the things that comes along with having that sort of office.

01:01:30.612 --> 01:01:35.852
It's not just power and enjoyment with no strings attached.

01:01:35.852 --> 01:01:37.772
You get a sort of stricter judgment.

01:01:38.172 --> 01:01:44.432
There's a form of that that you are going to have if you are an authority in the left hand kingdom.

01:01:44.432 --> 01:01:52.872
But with regard to the matters of the right hand kingdom, the church does not tell the state what to do.

01:01:52.872 --> 01:01:58.232
That would be trying to take the things of Caesar out of his hands and say, no, these don't belong to you.

01:01:58.232 --> 01:02:00.512
They belong to me instead.

01:02:00.512 --> 01:02:01.392
I'm the pope.

01:02:01.392 --> 01:02:02.292
I'm the bishop.

01:02:02.292 --> 01:02:03.652
I get to do this.

01:02:03.652 --> 01:02:05.652
I have all the authority and you have none.

01:02:06.812 --> 01:02:18.572
That is rejecting the clear words of Christ, because when he says that you are to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, it means there are things that are Caesar's.

01:02:18.572 --> 01:02:25.932
And so the inference here is that that inverse, you can't have the one taking from the other.

01:02:25.932 --> 01:02:39.332
That was the problem that we see occurring here with regard to the emperor, because the emperor is coming in at, of course, the behest of the pope, and saying, no, you cannot be a Lutheran.

01:02:39.332 --> 01:02:42.952
No, you cannot practice Christianity.

01:02:42.952 --> 01:02:45.452
You cannot believe these things.

01:02:45.452 --> 01:02:49.392
Instead, you are going to do what I tell you to do.

01:02:49.392 --> 01:02:55.812
Now, of course, some of you are going to recognize there's a tension here, and there absolutely is.

01:02:55.812 --> 01:03:12.632
One of the ways that you can solve this tension, and the way that eventually the Peace of Augsburg did solve this contention, is by permitting princes to have a religion as the established religion in their own realms.

01:03:12.632 --> 01:03:22.552
And so, that meant, if you were Lutheran and your prince was reformed, you moved next door, and you lived under a Lutheran prince.

01:03:22.552 --> 01:03:24.732
That solved the problem.

01:03:24.732 --> 01:03:32.672
The issue with regard to the Pope is the Pope was claiming that absolutely everyone has to believe exactly what Rome teaches.

01:03:34.252 --> 01:03:38.292
That does not leave any room with regard to Christian conscience.

01:03:39.512 --> 01:03:46.912
We're not going to argue that false doctrine is right simply because some men believe it is true.

01:03:46.912 --> 01:03:47.892
That's of course false.

01:03:47.892 --> 01:03:49.092
That's ridiculous.

01:03:51.112 --> 01:04:11.612
But with regard to these matters, similar to the question of wisdom and how you pursue your duty with regard to, if you have violations of the moral law and you have a duty to act, there is a consideration of minimization of harm.

01:04:11.612 --> 01:04:28.552
With regard to rebellion, rebellion, one of the reasons that rebellion is so wicked is that it always causes harm, and the harm is almost always worse than the harm that caused the rebellion, and cause, so called, in the first place.

01:04:28.552 --> 01:04:32.052
And so you have to subject that to wisdom.

01:04:32.052 --> 01:04:36.692
You can't cause a worse harm to undo a lesser harm.

01:04:36.692 --> 01:04:44.272
That is what the Pope was attempting to do in this case and the Emperor at his behest.

01:04:44.272 --> 01:05:10.392
If you are subjecting everyone to this same doctrine, to this same belief, and you are leaving no place for Christian conscience, what you are doing is you are telling men, you must either rebel against your conscience in submitting to this doctrine in which you do not believe, this doctrine that you believe to be false, or you must rebel against the Empire.

01:05:10.392 --> 01:05:12.952
You must take up arms.

01:05:12.952 --> 01:05:25.712
That is leaving men with absolutely no good option because they are either going to have to sin by acting against conscience, which of course Christians cannot do, or they are going to have to rebel.

01:05:25.712 --> 01:05:29.892
And if they have to rebel, that is going to lead to other forms of wickedness.

01:05:29.892 --> 01:05:33.692
That is one of the reasons you want this sort of subsidiarity.

01:05:33.692 --> 01:05:42.732
You want this to be devolved, not to be handled at the imperial level, which is what was happening here.

01:05:42.732 --> 01:05:50.192
Because if, again, if you are Lutheran and your prince is not, you can move next door.

01:05:50.712 --> 01:05:59.112
Or if you are Roman Catholic and your prince is Lutheran, you can move one principality over, or two, whatever it happens to be.

01:05:59.112 --> 01:06:08.792
And then you can practice your version of Christianity under a prince who has said, my realm is going to be Lutheran.

01:06:08.792 --> 01:06:10.952
My realm is going to be reformed.

01:06:10.952 --> 01:06:13.672
My realm is going to be Roman Catholic.

01:06:14.792 --> 01:06:21.192
That means that men are not forced to violate their conscience or choose to take up arms.

01:06:22.572 --> 01:06:30.712
We know from scripture, scripture is very clear about this, that there are going to be divisions in the church.

01:06:30.712 --> 01:06:35.832
We are not going to achieve complete unity of doctrine.

01:06:35.832 --> 01:06:39.432
And despite what some have claimed, we didn't even have it historically.

01:06:40.732 --> 01:06:43.392
Rome doesn't even have it today within Rome.

01:06:43.392 --> 01:06:46.052
So that claim as well is complete nonsense.

01:06:46.932 --> 01:06:49.912
We are always going to have these quarrels.

01:06:49.912 --> 01:06:52.872
We are going to have disagreements.

01:06:52.872 --> 01:06:57.672
And so we have to act in a Christian manner with regard to those.

01:06:57.672 --> 01:07:04.432
We have to seek to minimize the harm without violating our conscience in the process.

01:07:04.432 --> 01:07:10.612
Because of course, if we are forcing men to violate their conscience, what we're doing is we're forcing them to sin.

01:07:10.612 --> 01:07:18.352
That doesn't mean, again, it does not mean that just because men believe in false doctrine, that doctrine is acceptable.

01:07:18.352 --> 01:07:22.292
It means that there is a greater harm that we want to avoid.

01:07:22.292 --> 01:07:27.292
We should seek to convince our Christian brothers by convincing them.

01:07:27.292 --> 01:07:33.372
We don't convince them by sieging their city and murdering them.

01:07:33.372 --> 01:07:36.272
That is what the emperor was doing here.

01:07:36.272 --> 01:07:39.272
That is why it was rightful for these men to resist.

01:07:39.272 --> 01:07:43.292
And incidentally, the emperor had already made promises and gone back on them.

01:07:44.052 --> 01:07:49.532
This was not the first thing the emperor did that was out of bounds, that was impermissible and immoral.

01:07:49.532 --> 01:07:52.132
He had a history of doing it at this point.

01:07:53.372 --> 01:08:01.972
And so when you look at what it means to be an authority, you have to look at what scripture actually says.

01:08:01.972 --> 01:08:06.372
This is another one of those cases in which we are advocating that you read carefully.

01:08:07.892 --> 01:08:15.852
Don't just glaze over and sort of pay attention to the words as you read through it quickly.

01:08:15.852 --> 01:08:21.012
Actually pay attention to the words of scripture because God chose those words.

01:08:21.012 --> 01:08:22.852
He didn't choose them idly.

01:08:22.852 --> 01:08:25.032
He didn't choose them without reason.

01:08:25.032 --> 01:08:30.132
He chose them specifically because they say what he wants you to know as a Christian.

01:08:30.132 --> 01:08:42.832
And so when you read Romans 13, it's not just saying submit blindly to whatever authority happens to be over you at any given time because that's your Christian duty.

01:08:42.832 --> 01:08:55.732
I would hope that at least most Christians, and it should be all Christians, but at least most Christians would recognize there was no duty to submit to the Soviet Union.

01:08:55.732 --> 01:09:13.212
The Soviet Union was actively wicked in almost every conceivable way, did everything it could to destroy Christianity, did everything it could to attempt to destroy the world insofar as it was capable of doing it.

01:09:13.212 --> 01:09:17.292
There is no Christian duty to submit to that sort of wickedness.

01:09:18.612 --> 01:09:36.492
But under the supposed interpretation of Romans 13, that has become popular in certain circles, you would have had a duty to submit to Stalin, to simply submit to that sort of wickedness, regardless of what he tells you to do.

01:09:36.492 --> 01:09:38.892
That is absurd.

01:09:38.892 --> 01:09:47.872
That is not Christian, because Romans 13 gives you a definition of what a rightful authority is.

01:09:47.872 --> 01:09:49.952
It does not just say submit.

01:09:49.952 --> 01:09:58.972
It says you submit to the rightful authority, because rulers are a terror to bad conduct, not to good conduct.

01:10:00.152 --> 01:10:11.152
If you have someone who is a terror to good conduct and encourages bad conduct, he is not an authority according to the definition we have in Romans 13.

01:10:12.792 --> 01:10:28.312
And the other argument that is set forth in the Magdeburg Confession, as I've already said, is the one by inference, the fact that if there are things that belong to Caesar, then there are, in fact, things that belong to Caesar, and they should not be seized by others.

01:10:28.312 --> 01:10:30.472
And the inverse as well.

01:10:30.472 --> 01:10:43.332
So it's important to read these things, not just to accept whatever you're told about, you know, well, Romans 13 says submit, and so you obviously have to submit regardless.

01:10:44.412 --> 01:10:48.412
Go and read what it actually says.

01:10:48.412 --> 01:10:53.772
We're not telling you just to believe what we say, as we have said in a number of other episodes.

01:10:53.772 --> 01:11:02.532
We want you to look at what Scripture says, to look at what God has caused to be transmitted in His Word, and believe what He says.

01:11:02.532 --> 01:11:04.412
That's why I read it.

01:11:04.412 --> 01:11:13.392
That's why I am going over the interpretation of it and not simply saying, well, it says, be subject to the governing authority, so obviously that's it, end of story.

01:11:13.392 --> 01:11:16.392
No, read it in context.

01:11:16.392 --> 01:11:18.452
God's Word is complete.

01:11:18.892 --> 01:11:26.672
God's Word gives you everything you need to know about the subjects that are addressed by God's Word.

01:11:26.672 --> 01:11:31.492
God's Word addresses what it means to be a rightful authority.

01:11:31.492 --> 01:11:37.612
It addresses it, I won't say extensively because it's obviously not a very large treatment here.

01:11:37.612 --> 01:11:39.552
It's one paragraph in Romans 13.

01:11:39.552 --> 01:11:45.652
Yes, there are some other sections that are relevant as well, but it addresses it sufficiently.

01:11:45.652 --> 01:12:06.692
If you read the words that are actually there, and understand what is being said, and part of this is an exegetical tool that is important to bear in mind when reading any part of scripture, when reading really anything, because this is true with regard to other literature as well, not just for scripture.

01:12:06.692 --> 01:12:14.092
But when you have a positive statement, it imports with it a sort of inverse negative statement.

01:12:14.092 --> 01:12:18.732
And the same, of course, for a negative statement, importing the inverse positive statement.

01:12:18.732 --> 01:12:23.512
To give a more concrete example, so it is more easily understood.

01:12:23.512 --> 01:12:33.492
This is something that is going to be very recognizable, readily comprehensible to Lutherans, because this is in the Book of Concord.

01:12:33.492 --> 01:12:35.772
This is in our Confessions.

01:12:35.772 --> 01:12:51.012
With regard to the Ten Commandments, if the commandment prohibits something, it is also implying, it is also stating inversely, that you have a duty with regard to the inverse of that negative thing.

01:12:51.012 --> 01:12:57.732
Or if it tells you to do something, then you are not to do the negative things.

01:12:57.732 --> 01:13:00.892
So for instance, thou shalt not murder.

01:13:00.892 --> 01:13:12.092
Not only does that mean, don't go and stab your neighbor, which is obviously the core meaning there, do not murder, but it also means that you aid your neighbor.

01:13:12.092 --> 01:13:13.652
It means you help your neighbor.

01:13:13.652 --> 01:13:16.192
You do not do things that harm your neighbor.

01:13:16.192 --> 01:13:18.512
There are things that come along with that.

01:13:18.512 --> 01:13:20.832
The same is true here.

01:13:20.832 --> 01:13:31.132
With regard to what it means to be a rightful authority, you can draw out more from that passage than just the bare words themselves.

01:13:31.132 --> 01:13:34.332
Scripture doesn't just have a surface level meaning.

01:13:34.332 --> 01:13:35.352
There is more to it.

01:13:35.592 --> 01:13:38.712
We should expect that it's written by God.

01:13:38.712 --> 01:13:47.132
God chose these words because he wants us to believe what is said here, and this is what he wants us to know about the subject.

01:13:47.132 --> 01:13:56.972
And so we have to exercise the abilities that God has given us to interpret this, to understand this, to exegete this.

01:13:56.972 --> 01:14:02.832
With regard to authority, it is not simply a matter of, well, there's authority you must submit.

01:14:03.592 --> 01:14:06.592
No, the authority has duties from God.

01:14:06.592 --> 01:14:10.112
The authority has a definition from God.

01:14:10.112 --> 01:14:13.252
It means something to be an authority.

01:14:13.252 --> 01:14:24.112
And if you are faced with someone in a position of authority who is not living up to the standard that God has set, then there are some additional questions.

01:14:24.112 --> 01:14:27.052
That is the point of the Magdeburg Confession.

01:14:27.052 --> 01:14:29.332
That is the point of this episode.

01:14:30.492 --> 01:14:46.532
If an authority does not meet the standard for a rightful authority that has been set by God, then it is incumbent on the Christian to figure out what sort of violator is this person?

01:14:46.532 --> 01:14:49.512
How bad is what he is doing?

01:14:49.512 --> 01:14:52.752
And whose duty is it to do something about it?

01:14:52.752 --> 01:14:55.432
Because it probably isn't your duty.

01:14:55.432 --> 01:15:03.592
But it might be your duty to raise it with the person who is above you in the hierarchy, who should then take it to the man who is above him.

01:15:03.592 --> 01:15:28.732
That is how things are supposed to work, because as Woe said, if we do not respect the authority and the hierarchy that God has built into creation that just inevitably expresses itself with regard to human constructions, so civilization, society, these things form organically because God has designed creation in that way.

01:15:28.732 --> 01:15:35.752
If we ignore them, we wind up with anarchy, and there is nothing worse than anarchy.

01:15:35.752 --> 01:15:54.612
Even to submit to a wicked ruler, who is, of course, with the caveat, not causing you to participate in his sins, it is better to submit to that wicked ruler than to engage in behavior that will lead to anarchy, because anarchy is the greater evil.

01:15:55.652 --> 01:15:57.832
That's that wisdom call.

01:15:57.832 --> 01:16:11.032
Will resisting, in whatever means you happen to be employing, a particular form of wickedness from an authority, lead to a greater evil than the one you are attempting to destroy?

01:16:11.032 --> 01:16:22.192
If so, then obviously it is not only unwise to go down that road, but it would be wicked as well, because it is in fact a sin to commit that greater wickedness.

01:16:23.312 --> 01:16:25.032
You are not making the world better.

01:16:25.032 --> 01:16:26.812
You are not solving the problem.

01:16:26.812 --> 01:16:30.032
You are creating a new and larger problem.

01:16:30.032 --> 01:16:34.512
That is why as Christians, we oppose rebellion.

01:16:34.512 --> 01:16:41.612
We are never going to advocate for rebellion, because rebellion inherently is anarchy.

01:16:41.612 --> 01:16:44.392
Anarchy creates worse conditions.

01:16:44.392 --> 01:16:47.872
It creates more and greater sins.

01:16:47.872 --> 01:16:51.472
The goal should always be the maintenance of hierarchy.

01:16:52.212 --> 01:16:58.052
The maintenance of these systems that God has built into creation for our benefit.

01:16:58.052 --> 01:17:03.192
Yes, they are going to be imperfect, because there are imperfect men in these offices.

01:17:03.192 --> 01:17:08.972
But what we should endeavor to do is fix the problems, not burn everything to the ground.

01:17:10.092 --> 01:17:13.072
I want to emphasize one more point about Romans 13.

01:17:13.072 --> 01:17:18.292
It's something that I pointed out in the past when we were talking about the Sermon on the Mount.

01:17:19.712 --> 01:17:32.952
When Christians speak of the Sermon on the Mount, beginning with the Beatitudes and these moral prescriptions that Christ provides, they are very clearly challenging teachings, because they show that we are all sinners.

01:17:32.952 --> 01:17:36.012
They show that we all fall short of the glory of God.

01:17:36.012 --> 01:17:38.312
You were taught, don't murder, I say don't hate.

01:17:38.312 --> 01:17:40.912
If you've hated someone in your heart, you've already murdered them.

01:17:40.912 --> 01:17:45.392
That's impossible for any man to live perfectly throughout his entire life.

01:17:45.392 --> 01:17:53.552
The point that I've made in the past about the Sermon on the Mount, is that that was not a lecture to governors.

01:17:53.552 --> 01:17:56.192
That was a lecture to Christians.

01:17:56.192 --> 01:17:57.492
It was not about government.

01:17:57.492 --> 01:18:01.392
It was about interpersonal behavior.

01:18:01.392 --> 01:18:06.452
Part of the Sermon on the Mount says, do not resist the one who is evil.

01:18:06.452 --> 01:18:09.872
Could you possibly apply that to a government?

01:18:09.872 --> 01:18:15.352
Could that possibly be something that a governor, that a magistrate is held to?

01:18:15.352 --> 01:18:16.232
Absolutely not.

01:18:17.072 --> 01:18:23.832
If there is an evil doer and the magistrate does not resist the one who is evil, that magistrate is evil.

01:18:23.832 --> 01:18:27.872
He has failed to do one of his primary tasks.

01:18:27.872 --> 01:18:48.292
So it's an important point when we, in a God-forsaken democracy, are talking about our participation, we cannot take things like the Sermon on the Mount or Romans 13 and apply them to the government as though these men, as though God, were speaking to the government, because it's simply not the case.

01:18:48.292 --> 01:18:54.112
Romans 13 begins, let every person be subject to the governing authorities.

01:18:54.112 --> 01:18:57.472
Paul is obviously not addressing the governing authorities here.

01:18:57.472 --> 01:18:59.772
He's addressing everyone else.

01:18:59.772 --> 01:19:17.732
The arguments that are made here are not applicable in terms of limiting, but at the same time, a godly ruler, a godly magistrate, governor, emperor, whomever, when he reads in Romans 13, he's going to read, for rulers are not a terror to good conduct but to bad.

01:19:17.732 --> 01:19:21.672
And the ruler is not going to think that he is limited by that.

01:19:21.672 --> 01:19:23.772
He's going to think, well, this is my punch list.

01:19:23.772 --> 01:19:25.612
This is what I've got to be doing.

01:19:25.612 --> 01:19:27.232
Have I terrorized good conduct?

01:19:27.232 --> 01:19:29.372
Have I sinned against God as a ruler?

01:19:29.372 --> 01:19:33.132
Or have I failed to be a terror to bad conduct?

01:19:33.132 --> 01:19:36.132
That itself is a sin for a magistrate.

01:19:36.132 --> 01:19:42.672
It's not my personal job to be a terror to bad conduct, but to the emperor, to the prince, it absolutely is.

01:19:42.672 --> 01:19:51.012
And so for a prince who does not resist the one who is evil, he has failed to be a terror to bad conduct and he's a wicked prince.

01:19:51.012 --> 01:20:02.632
This is one of the primary reasons that girls are utterly disqualified from any political participation because no girl is part of her nature as a female is going to want to terrorize evil men.

01:20:02.632 --> 01:20:12.612
The good prince, he'd been lazy for a while and he picks up Romans 13 and he reads this and he says, for rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad.

01:20:12.612 --> 01:20:16.612
And he pauses and he thinks, have I been a terror to bad conduct recently?

01:20:16.612 --> 01:20:17.932
And he realized he hasn't.

01:20:17.932 --> 01:20:20.892
He hasn't terrorized any evildoers in a long time.

01:20:20.892 --> 01:20:22.192
He's going to stop what he's doing.

01:20:22.192 --> 01:20:23.532
You see, I'm going to be right back.

01:20:23.532 --> 01:20:25.852
And he's going to go terrorize some evildoers.

01:20:25.852 --> 01:20:28.172
That's him doing his job.

01:20:28.172 --> 01:20:30.232
That's something that's not inherent to a female nature.

01:20:30.232 --> 01:20:32.192
It's inherent to a male nature.

01:20:32.192 --> 01:20:34.232
Men are potentially good at that.

01:20:34.812 --> 01:20:37.132
Most men are particularly good at it.

01:20:37.132 --> 01:20:40.252
And some men have had that notion bred out of them.

01:20:40.252 --> 01:20:47.752
And our society is oriented to say, no, you have to not resist the one who is evil, which is completely ungodly.

01:20:47.752 --> 01:20:49.312
It's completely wicked.

01:20:49.312 --> 01:20:52.212
It's how Satan is burning down our society.

01:20:52.212 --> 01:20:56.052
When every time we see evil, we're told, well, you can't resist evil.

01:20:56.052 --> 01:20:57.592
Absolutely not.

01:20:57.592 --> 01:21:00.212
We have a duty to resist evil.

01:21:00.212 --> 01:21:03.512
That is the entire premise of the Magdeburg Confession.

01:21:04.132 --> 01:21:09.992
The Magistrates at every level have a duty to resist evil, even when that evil is government.

01:21:09.992 --> 01:21:17.252
And in particular, it's vital that the Lesser Magistrate resists the evil of government, because he's the only one who can do it.

01:21:17.252 --> 01:21:33.992
One of the similar passages to Romans 13 that comes up in the Magdeburg Confession and elsewhere is 1 Peter 2, which begins, be subject for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperors, the supreme or the governors, as they're sent to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good.

01:21:33.992 --> 01:21:36.532
It's very similar to what Paul wrote.

01:21:36.532 --> 01:21:44.672
The important thing about 2 Peter 2 is you have to read the rest of it, and you have to understand it in the scope of what the Magdeburg pastors were talking about.

01:21:44.672 --> 01:21:48.612
When you look at the rest of 1 Peter 2, it begins with governments.

01:21:48.612 --> 01:21:52.912
It says that we, the people, should obey emperors, as supreme or governors.

01:21:53.492 --> 01:22:00.692
Interestingly, in this passage, it acknowledges there are multiple forms of government, and whatever it is, you're going to have an executive.

01:22:00.692 --> 01:22:03.512
And then the next paragraph is about servants.

01:22:03.512 --> 01:22:04.552
Servants are slaves.

01:22:04.552 --> 01:22:05.232
I shouldn't say that.

01:22:05.232 --> 01:22:06.292
I'm looking at the ESV here.

01:22:06.292 --> 01:22:07.252
It's slaves.

01:22:07.252 --> 01:22:14.872
Slaves who are owned by other men obey your masters, particularly when they beat you, when they are cruel and unfair.

01:22:14.872 --> 01:22:17.712
And then it goes on and talks about wives and husbands.

01:22:17.712 --> 01:22:20.292
The wives are to submit to their husbands.

01:22:20.292 --> 01:22:33.312
Now, the crucial distinction here that gets back to what Corey said at the beginning about the arguments that the Magdeburgers were making was that in the case of a husband, she has to obey her husband unless he commands her to do something evil.

01:22:33.312 --> 01:22:35.772
He does not have absolute authority over his wife.

01:22:35.772 --> 01:22:38.592
There's never absolute authority in this life.

01:22:38.592 --> 01:22:46.392
A husband has a duty to protect her, to defend her, to command her properly, but that should never be a burden for her.

01:22:46.392 --> 01:22:49.512
It may be a burden for him, but have to do more thinking and more work.

01:22:50.152 --> 01:22:52.692
But it should not be a burden to her to be commanded.

01:22:52.692 --> 01:22:59.732
It is sin if he goes too far, particularly if he commands her to do something that is sinful.

01:22:59.732 --> 01:23:02.952
The same is true of slaves, and the same is true of governments.

01:23:02.952 --> 01:23:25.852
But the difference between husband and wife, slave and master, and us at the bottom of the political pile, and the emperor, the prince, the magistrate, whatever at the top, is that, and this is encapsulated in the Magdeburg argument, the necessity to employ violence is particular to a man's duty as it relates to external threats.

01:23:25.852 --> 01:23:28.992
Now, that excludes slaves and excludes wives.

01:23:28.992 --> 01:23:41.772
If a wife has a wicked husband who's commanding her to sin, that does not give her the moral right to kill him, just as it does not give slaves the moral right to kill their masters, even if their masters are wicked.

01:23:41.772 --> 01:23:45.512
To the extent possible, those people should obey.

01:23:45.512 --> 01:23:57.292
As an example of the submission that we have to God, but they do not have the license morally to commit violence against the slave master or against the husband.

01:23:57.292 --> 01:24:07.152
It is exclusively not true in the political realm, but only because of the Lesser Magistrate, because there's always somebody in greater authority of you as an individual.

01:24:07.152 --> 01:24:13.932
And as we've said before, even in the case of the prince at the very top, the only person above him is God himself.

01:24:14.592 --> 01:24:20.752
He answers to God alone for his actions, which is what puts him in a particularly precarious place.

01:24:20.752 --> 01:24:31.832
When the very top man is acting wickedly, is failing all the tests, all four tests, is showing that he is an absolute tyrant, that there's nothing but evil, a Stalin.

01:24:31.832 --> 01:24:37.092
The duty of the Lesser Magistrate is to employ violence against the one who is doing evil.

01:24:37.152 --> 01:24:39.212
And this is the case that Corey mentioned.

01:24:39.212 --> 01:24:50.492
The reason, the specific reason, the violence is permissible, and in fact is necessary in the political environment, is because there's still a duty to protect those beneath you.

01:24:50.492 --> 01:24:52.912
The mayor has a duty, the governor has a duty.

01:24:52.912 --> 01:24:59.252
There's always a duty to those beneath, to protect from those above, just as with any external threat.

01:24:59.252 --> 01:25:05.412
So when evil comes, those men are still obligated to God, to be a terror against evildoers.

01:25:06.212 --> 01:25:09.372
Not to embrace those who do evil, say, oh, it's fine, I forgive you.

01:25:09.372 --> 01:25:11.672
Absolutely impermissible in politics.

01:25:11.672 --> 01:25:23.212
And that's why it's really tough for us as Americans or anyone in a Western democratic society to tease this out, because to the extent that we're voting, we're wearing too many hats.

01:25:23.212 --> 01:25:32.612
Most men are not equipped to deal with politics as Christians where you have duties to neighbor that are peaceful and positive, and you also have duties to violence.

01:25:33.212 --> 01:25:49.272
There are duties to kill people in certain narrow cases, and the participation of individuals in a democracy make those lines incredibly blurred, because suddenly maybe I'm the one who's voting to go to war, you know, indirectly by voting for someone who's promised to go to war.

01:25:49.272 --> 01:25:59.252
When those situations arise, suddenly we as individuals become participants in a hierarchy that we're at the bottom of the hierarchy, but we're pretending that we have other places.

01:25:59.252 --> 01:26:09.632
It's part of the reason that democracy is evil is that it's artificially elevating men who are not equipped by God, not called by God, not suitable by God to do those things.

01:26:09.632 --> 01:26:21.032
The other last thing I want to say about, you know, the Stalin case in particular, any particularly wicked king, even in the case where you have the worst king imaginable, God has still permitted that man.

01:26:21.032 --> 01:26:31.352
That doesn't mean you obey him, but when you look in scripture and you can see throughout history, scripture is replete with evil, absolutely evil kings, that God permitted.

01:26:31.352 --> 01:26:39.892
He sent evil kings to harm, to punish, to destroy, at the least end of the scale, to chastise.

01:26:39.892 --> 01:26:43.992
But often it goes from chastisement all the way up to genocide.

01:26:43.992 --> 01:26:47.832
God unleashes evil kings to do evil.

01:26:47.832 --> 01:26:50.892
It's a question of their hearts being hardened to do what they want to do anyway.

01:26:50.892 --> 01:26:54.152
And God's like, you're going to be my man to destroy these people.

01:26:54.152 --> 01:26:58.732
This evil that's going to befall this entire race, you're the guy that's going to do it.

01:26:58.732 --> 01:27:00.912
Because you're going to do it anyway, I'm going to permit it.

01:27:00.912 --> 01:27:08.152
I'm going to let you be the king that goes and wipes out this neighbor because the neighbor is the one that I'm punishing.

01:27:08.152 --> 01:27:24.612
So when you have a situation like the USSR, very many others, where there's absolute evil from top to bottom, it is simultaneously the case that we have a duty to end that evil by whatever station we are and that God has permitted it.

01:27:24.612 --> 01:27:28.052
But God hasn't permitted it to the extent that, well, it's okay.

01:27:28.052 --> 01:27:32.632
God let Stalin be in charge of the USSR, so that means it's fine when he doesn't.

01:27:32.632 --> 01:27:37.632
No, that means that they were under chastisement as well, as well as the rest of the world.

01:27:37.632 --> 01:27:41.052
Russia was destroyed by the Soviet rule.

01:27:41.052 --> 01:27:42.852
That country was absolutely destroyed.

01:27:42.852 --> 01:27:44.052
It will never recover.

01:27:44.052 --> 01:27:47.132
They were a mess before, and which is why they fell under chastisement.

01:27:47.132 --> 01:27:51.152
It's ugly when God unleashes evil rulers.

01:27:51.152 --> 01:27:57.212
And again, that's over our pay grade as individuals to have those battles.

01:27:57.212 --> 01:28:06.892
But it's important to recognize that these things happen in the timeline, and we see examples in scripture, we see examples in modern history, and everywhere in between.

01:28:06.892 --> 01:28:09.212
The Pope was permitted to be the Pope by God.

01:28:09.212 --> 01:28:11.732
As we've said in the past, some of the Popes were good.

01:28:11.732 --> 01:28:15.072
There were men who were absolutely good Christian leaders.

01:28:15.072 --> 01:28:24.872
Even failing the fact that we disagree with the office itself existing, there were periods when the Roman Catholic Church was behaving as a good Christian church.

01:28:24.872 --> 01:28:27.132
It was the only one we had in the West.

01:28:27.132 --> 01:28:32.192
There was a territorial monopoly, so we're thankful that that Christianity was preserved.

01:28:32.192 --> 01:28:39.592
But the bad Popes were permitted by God too, and they're permitted for the chastisement, both of the church and of the countries that tolerated it.

01:28:39.592 --> 01:28:45.132
That was part of what the battle that played out, beginning in Germany in their Reformation.

01:28:45.132 --> 01:28:55.072
When Christians began to resist what at that time had become the clear-cut tyranny of the Roman Pontiff, suddenly a lot more men got involved in these questions.

01:28:55.072 --> 01:28:57.552
And it was a terrible situation.

01:28:57.552 --> 01:28:59.272
We talked about that in the Reformation episode.

01:28:59.272 --> 01:29:03.892
It was terrible for this situation to have ever been created in the first place.

01:29:03.892 --> 01:29:07.832
The Reformation was not desirable, but it was necessary.

01:29:07.832 --> 01:29:12.152
And at the very beginning, their only desire was to reform the church.

01:29:12.152 --> 01:29:15.392
There was no overthrow, it was never anarchy.

01:29:15.392 --> 01:29:17.272
It was never rebellion.

01:29:17.272 --> 01:29:24.732
Their goal was to say, hey, we believe scripture says one thing, and the current pope and the recent popes are doing something different.

01:29:24.732 --> 01:29:31.152
Let's get back to what we were doing in the past, an argument that they made from history, and what we believe scripture teaches.

01:29:31.152 --> 01:29:32.892
And that's when the killing began.

01:29:32.892 --> 01:29:35.072
That's when the pope doubled down.

01:29:35.072 --> 01:29:51.712
And we see that same malice today in modern church bodies, where when there is resistance from the rank and file, or from the lesser magistrates of, you know, pastors or priests or anyone at some mid level, saying, hey, this theology is bad, they immediately get targeted for destruction.

01:29:51.712 --> 01:29:54.752
And it's coming swiftly and frequently today.

01:29:54.752 --> 01:29:56.372
It's the same spirit.

01:29:56.372 --> 01:29:58.952
You are going to see this play out over and over again.

01:29:58.952 --> 01:30:03.852
And so one of the tremendous values of the Magdeburg Confession is the general framework.

01:30:03.852 --> 01:30:12.092
As I said at the beginning, it's not strictly about matters of conscience, or specifically about matters of doctrine.

01:30:12.092 --> 01:30:13.212
In that case, it applies.

01:30:13.212 --> 01:30:14.732
And that's a very important question.

01:30:15.312 --> 01:30:25.792
But I don't know if we'll ever see another government that's directly tied where the belief of the leader is reflected in the belief of the country.

01:30:25.792 --> 01:30:28.052
I think that would be a good and desirable thing.

01:30:28.052 --> 01:30:31.652
And obviously it's most desirable if it's the correct doctrine.

01:30:31.652 --> 01:30:36.072
But even failing that, the doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate still applies.

01:30:36.072 --> 01:30:47.932
In secular context, when absolute evil is occurring, you know, resistance to Stalin, well, he did have something to do because he exterminated the Christian Church, exterminated Christianity in Russia.

01:30:47.932 --> 01:30:50.572
That was resistance against evil for the sake of the Church.

01:30:50.572 --> 01:30:55.592
But it was resist, even absent that, he could have left Christianity itself alone completely.

01:30:55.592 --> 01:31:00.152
All the other destruction that was being done was absolutely evil and had to be resisted.

01:31:00.152 --> 01:31:03.352
So the framework is generally applicable.

01:31:03.352 --> 01:31:05.252
And that's why we're talking about it.

01:31:05.252 --> 01:31:07.692
It's not just some narrow niche thing.

01:31:07.692 --> 01:31:10.872
And it's a really valuable framework for you to consider.

01:31:11.512 --> 01:31:14.612
We'll put a link in the show notes where you can get a hold of a copy of it.

01:31:14.612 --> 01:31:17.112
You can read about it elsewhere.

01:31:17.112 --> 01:31:24.012
The idea that we have to even deal with these things is only ever going to be a symptom of sin and harm.

01:31:24.012 --> 01:31:30.852
These pastors who were besieged in their city 500 years ago, should never have had to write about this or think about this stuff.

01:31:30.852 --> 01:31:32.172
They were nobodies.

01:31:32.172 --> 01:31:36.212
And later on, when it came up and others pointed back to them, arguments were made.

01:31:36.212 --> 01:31:37.552
Hey, this is a pretty good argument.

01:31:37.552 --> 01:31:40.532
And guys looked at the list of names like those guys are nobodies.

01:31:40.592 --> 01:31:42.072
And the answer is, yeah, they were.

01:31:42.072 --> 01:31:45.232
They were forced to do this by circumstance.

01:31:45.232 --> 01:31:48.052
That's often how theology comes about.

01:31:48.052 --> 01:31:51.092
The creeds were forced by circumstance.

01:31:51.092 --> 01:32:02.552
The creeds were written from scripture through reason, by the church specifically to battle parishes, rampant heresies and to defend the faith.

01:32:02.552 --> 01:32:06.812
When the fight is picked, you have these markers that are then left in the history of the Christian Church.

01:32:07.352 --> 01:32:19.672
And the Magdeburg Confession is an important one for us today, simply because if we don't think about these matters now, how do I remain a Christian in the face of implacable evil, we will get into trouble.

01:32:19.672 --> 01:32:23.252
And it's not that these guys have absolute authority, it's an argument.

01:32:23.252 --> 01:32:27.952
You don't need permission from the Magdeburg pastors to believe this.

01:32:27.952 --> 01:32:30.032
They happen to be the first ones to tackle it.

01:32:30.032 --> 01:32:32.012
They wrote it down, they laid it out.

01:32:32.012 --> 01:32:33.752
It's a benefit to us to consider it.

01:32:34.432 --> 01:32:37.592
I'm glad the people have been looking back at this for some time.

01:32:37.592 --> 01:32:41.612
I'm sure many of you at this point have heard of the Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate.

01:32:41.612 --> 01:32:49.132
This origin was born out of evil, out of the extermination of Christians by a wicked pope.

01:32:49.132 --> 01:32:54.912
Whether any one of them were good, this guy was a bad one, and he did harm, he killed Christians.

01:32:54.912 --> 01:33:06.192
There are other cases in modern society, certainly I think in the rest of the century, we will see Western governments that these tests will prove failed.

01:33:06.192 --> 01:33:21.332
And if and when the circumstances arrive that we determine, and those in the future determine that some current government is absolutely evil, that it fails those tests that have held up to reason and to scripture, then the next step is not anarchy.

01:33:21.332 --> 01:33:23.352
The next step is not rebellion.

01:33:23.352 --> 01:33:29.752
The next step is you find the guy who should be resisting and you help and encourage him, and make sure that the resistance is godly.

01:33:29.752 --> 01:33:34.512
As individuals, all we can do is try to bring a Christian voice to these difficult problems.

01:33:34.512 --> 01:33:44.692
These are all ultimately matters of wisdom, which is why there's no playbook, there's no carbon copying from one portion of history into another and saying we got to do it exactly like this.

01:33:44.692 --> 01:33:51.152
We're never going to see cities besieged by a papal army to force some city to stop being Lutheran.

01:33:51.152 --> 01:33:52.592
It's not going to happen.

01:33:52.592 --> 01:33:55.672
So if that's all you think that the confession is about, then it's completely worthless.

01:33:55.732 --> 01:33:57.632
That's a dead letter and there's no point.

01:33:57.632 --> 01:34:13.592
If there's some wisdom contained in it, even if you're a Roman Catholic, that's why I said you can disregard the polemics and the historical circumstances and still apply the wisdom of their arguments from scripture to situations that face all of us today.

01:34:13.592 --> 01:34:21.392
It's part of the reason that it's useful to look at history only insofar as you're going to root around and find the stuff that's good and throw away the rest.

01:34:21.392 --> 01:34:22.912
You can't just carbon copy.

01:34:22.932 --> 01:34:29.392
You can't clone one guy's philosophy from one century directly into another.

01:34:29.392 --> 01:34:38.452
I think that the arguments they make are good and they're sound, they're scriptural, they're useful, but the application is always going to be a matter of wisdom.

01:34:38.452 --> 01:34:43.772
And that's why you have to think about these things and talk about them, particularly in times where it's not pressing.

01:34:43.772 --> 01:34:50.372
You don't want to have to figure this stuff out when they're about to lay siege to you for whatever reason, by whatever means.

01:34:51.092 --> 01:34:55.072
You want to figure this stuff out when it's quiet so you can be prepared.

01:34:55.072 --> 01:34:59.032
God willing, this will only ever be an incidental matter for us.

01:34:59.032 --> 01:35:01.832
If we thought that were the case, we wouldn't be doing the episode.

01:35:01.832 --> 01:35:03.272
But it's relevant.

01:35:03.272 --> 01:35:06.792
It's something just to have in your back pocket to understand the thinking.

01:35:06.792 --> 01:35:10.452
And to be prepared, if you disagree with their arguments, that's fine.

01:35:10.452 --> 01:35:11.912
Come up with a better framework.

01:35:11.912 --> 01:35:14.752
They provide a four-pronged test and three arguments.

01:35:14.752 --> 01:35:16.932
Maybe you need five and two, doesn't matter.

01:35:16.932 --> 01:35:20.132
The structure is just there for your benefit to start thinking.

01:35:21.172 --> 01:35:22.592
We need to do more of that as Christians.

01:35:22.592 --> 01:35:27.692
We need to think like Christians and act like Christians, and then we will conduct our lives like Christians.

01:35:27.692 --> 01:35:38.512
But we cannot continue to engage in the bumper sticker theology where we're basically just governed by school marms and everything is tolerate evil, don't get mad.

01:35:38.512 --> 01:35:39.712
You can't be angry about that.

01:35:39.712 --> 01:35:40.592
You got to put up with it.

01:35:40.592 --> 01:35:42.612
Jesus wanted you to do that.

01:35:42.612 --> 01:35:47.212
That politics, that religion lost at the ballot box, and it lost at the cross.

01:35:48.152 --> 01:35:52.692
Jesus did not die on the cross for us to be weak and to be destroyed.

01:35:52.692 --> 01:36:04.172
We were given tasks in this life to honor God, and as men and as leaders, that specifically includes protecting the weaker, protecting those who cannot protect themselves.

01:36:04.172 --> 01:36:14.112
Any man who's in a position of authority has a duty to God, and if that means he has to go against the man above him, that's a terrible duty, but nevertheless, it's one that remains.