Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider
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with guest Nick Miller.
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Before the break,
if you remember, Nick,
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we were talking
about the Reformation
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and I was trying to
relate it more to today.
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Temporary events like
I do in my in my book,
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I have a chapter on...
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This is devolving very
quickly to sales pitch issues.
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But it is a book
that I hope our viewers
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can pick up and read.
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But let me give you an
example of what I've seen lately
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that
contemporizes the Reformation
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in this case in a bad way.
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A few years ago, when
he was pope, Benedict,
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actually at the
beginning of his papacy
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he gave a speech at
Regensburg University.
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It caused rioting all around
the world in the Muslim world,
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because they were offended
by an opening illustration.
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But that really was not
what his speech was about.
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He put out the idea
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of a certain religious violence,
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and then he said that
Christianity was once violent,
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which you and I
would disagree with,
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because it was
passive in the early days.
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Well, it was
once it became violent
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in the Middle Ages, right.
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The early Christianity
was very pacifist...
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And the Roman... Peace oriented.
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That were persecuting them,
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thought they went
too easily to the lions.
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But you accept his view,
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he says, they were once violent,
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but he said what
made them nonviolent
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was accepting reek rationality,
Hellenistic rationality,
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which I think is a
compromise that's when...
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Right, things went bad.
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The paganism crept in.
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But then he gave for the
rest of his speech three points
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as to where we're heading
back to that violent potential
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for Christianity, two
of them were secularism,
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which he had a burden on.
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The first start
item was this, he said,
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"The reformers
by their insistence
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on Sola Scriptura
expose Christianity
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again to violence."
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Yeah, that's quite
a charge, isn't it?
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Yeah, I thought it was rude.
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Well, and, in fact, if
you go with Sola Scriptura,
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you have to take seriously
Christ teachings about peace,
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about turning the other cheek.
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And I think it's not an accident
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that those
elements of the Reformation
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that took the
Bible most seriously,
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the radical reformers,
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the Anabaptists
were the most peaceful.
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Absolutely.
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It was those
reformers that took along
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some of the church
tradition from Middle Ages,
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that actually continued
using the sword in some manner.
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And what I think Benedict's
intent was has been borne out
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in later
statements, not just pope's
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but particularly, now
three popes have told us
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to beware of
extremists and fundamentalists.
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And that's what he's linking to.
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The idea was to
posit the Reformation view
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of Sola Scriptura
only as fundamentalism,
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which it is, in the best sense.
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A kind of fundamentalism.
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And it has become
an extremist view.
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Well, I think we
have to differentiate
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there is a American
historic fundamentalism,
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which is a strain of
evangelical Christianity,
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which has committed itself
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to a verbal
inerrancy view of inspiration,
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which actually
Seventh-day Adventists
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historically haven't embraced.
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But to take scripture seriously,
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even without verbal inerrancy
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in the secular eyes
of the secular world,
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is to be fundamentalistic.
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So we're fundamentalistic
in that latter sense,
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but not in relation to the
verbal inerrancy of scripture
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which we don't...
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Yeah, this is what all devolves
into definitions and words.
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Like gay, for example,
used to mean something,
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it means something else now.
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And I think extremist
and fundamentalist are words
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that are being shifted around
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and presently as
most people see them,
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very threatening words.
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Well, they're being used
to marginalize certain groups,
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aren't they?
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And I think we
were wanting to bring
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to bear our earlier discussion
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where we talked
about Protestants
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didn't view morality
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as being
separated from the state.
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And a good
example is the violence
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you're talking about.
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We think that the
state should be able to guard
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against the immoral
use of violence, right?
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But what other things
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can the state
legitimately get involved with?
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And since the 1970s,
we've had a growing movement,
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the sexual liberation
movement, the sexual revolution,
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raises questions
about things ranging
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from abortion to pornography,
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to prostitution, to LGBT
rights and same sex marriage.
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Can Christians say anything
about any of these topics
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without violating
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the separation
of church and state?
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Well, I hope we
can say something.
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Christians can say
something about everything.
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Well.
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There's a different between
saying and doing or enforcing.
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Can we say anything in
relation to public policy?
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Of course, we have a teaching
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within the church
on all of these topics,
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most conservative
Christian churches do.
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But is it
appropriate to speak in any way
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as a Christian citizen
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in relation to public
policy on these questions?
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And requires that
public policy incorporate...
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These Christian
views. And allow the state.
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to somehow reward
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or penalize your
approach to these questions.
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Well, it's fraught
as you probably know
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for Seventh-day Adventist
because in the early days
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of our church one of
the Adventist Pioneers,
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with a capital P in this case,
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Ellen White was
front and center on the...
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Temperance Reform.
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Well, it became known
as the Prohibition Movement
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and resulted in the prohibition
amendment of the constitution.
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So it wasn't
just about persuasion,
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this was actually
about passing laws,
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a constitutional amendment
to impact the moral choices
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that some people were making.
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And yet I could make a,
you know, I'm a contrarian
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and I try to, and on this side,
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I see that while
she was coming at it
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from a religious point of view,
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there was a
matter of public safety,
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and crime, and the
integrity of the family
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which was
threatening the stability
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of the society and so on.
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Well, this is a very
important point because...
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So I don't think it was a purely
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doctrinal religious campaign.
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No, that's absolutely right.
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She felt that it did
have a spiritual element,
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but in her
writings you'll discover
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that she talks about men
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who drink alcohol being abusive
to their wives and children.
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Which was true then and now.
And continues to be true now.
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Using money for liquor
instead of the education,
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and clothing, and food
for the children, so it was...
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Her social activism
was based on the belief
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that these had very
real impacts on the family,
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and on society.
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Yeah, so, you
know, I threw that out
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to get it out of the
way, but as a generality,
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I really do not think
that Christians have a right
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to impose their particular moral
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or behavioral
viewpoints into state law.
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But secularists do. Well, maybe.
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This is what
you're saying is that
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because those
with the secular point
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of view can impose there is...
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Well, if their
secularism is atheism or,
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you know, we say secularism,
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but more and more these
are people that are like
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Newdow and Freedom
from Religion Foundation
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that's what they want,
no religion, no morality.
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That's not the same as
Paul says with the state
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that they exercise the
sword for public order.
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Well, what if you
could make out the argument
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that many of those things
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which we call
Christian views of sexuality,
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or the family, or
morality, or even abortion
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are actually also
views that are supported
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by general
philosophical moral arguments
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and many non
Christians in the past
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and the present
hold those views as well.
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So conceivably you
could argue as a Christian
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for a public policy in relation
to say sexuality or marriage,
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and as long as you
weren't making the arguments
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based solely on scripture,
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but you were
making the arguments
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based on empirical research
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about the impact of
sexuality on teens and children,
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and the impact of two parents,
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a mother and father on children.
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You could construct
arguments that were legitimately
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moral arguments and
not biblical arguments,
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and you would be
okay, wouldn't you?
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Right, and I think
that's why it's so important,
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still important, to have
people of spiritual morality
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or even if they're a secularist
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of a moral
sensibility in public positions.
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You don't want
someone there that is just,
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you know, absent without leave
and have no moral guidelines.
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So a person of faith clearly
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should be admirably
suited for public service.
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It's not a
negative, you cannot...
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You want to have a
morally serious person.
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But you can't divorce,
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you know, as a
Christian or as an atheist,
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you can't take
away your worldview
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when you enter
into public service.
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Of course, it affects it.
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And I think the
framers of the US Constitution
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expected the moral baseline
that made-up this society
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to be present in
their leadership.
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Because they start
that it was supported
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by both the natural moral law...
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They didn't see a contradiction.
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As well as a biblical law.
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And Ellen White, who
you've invoked earlier,
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in a statement once
said, "There's three things
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we should
especially teach to students."
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And the first thing she mentions
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is moral philosophy.
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And then she says the
Bible and then physical health.
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Well, most of us don't
know what moral philosophy is.
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Some of us may think
it's morality from the Bible,
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but in actuality
Protestant universities
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always had a course
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on moral philosophy
in the 19th century.
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It's a good point,
I never thought of it.
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And it was a course on
learning about morality
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from non scriptural
sources, human nature,
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human experience,
human intuition on reason.
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It's that book by
Fulgrim, isn't it?
00:09:56.16\00:09:57.69
Everything I learned about
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something I
learned in kindergarten.
00:09:59.63\00:10:02.13
So you can learn a lot
about moral philosophy...
00:10:02.16\00:10:04.17
You don't throw sand
00:10:04.20\00:10:06.13
in the kid's face
or steal their toys.
00:10:06.17\00:10:08.40
But in the, yeah.
00:10:08.44\00:10:10.57
And in his day, Thomas Jefferson
00:10:10.61\00:10:12.97
really entails the same thing.
00:10:13.01\00:10:14.34
He challenged the
idea that common law
00:10:14.38\00:10:17.45
was based on
religion and he went back
00:10:17.48\00:10:19.18
to the beginning in
Anglo-Saxon culture.
00:10:19.21\00:10:22.62
And yet it always
had a moral component.
00:10:22.65\00:10:25.55
There's a morality
to human interaction.
00:10:25.59\00:10:27.29
God speaks through
two books, doesn't He?
00:10:27.32\00:10:29.06
And the problem was is
that this fundamentalism
00:10:29.09\00:10:33.29
I mentioned earlier
in the 20th century said,
00:10:33.33\00:10:35.90
"Oh, we only get
morality through the Bible,
00:10:35.93\00:10:38.00
we can only study it there."
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And they
rejected all philosophy.
00:10:39.40\00:10:41.47
And
unfortunately, as Adventists,
00:10:41.50\00:10:43.34
we did some of this ourselves.
00:10:43.37\00:10:44.97
So we woke up in the
1970s with a flood of abortion,
00:10:45.01\00:10:48.64
and pornography,
and sexual revolution,
00:10:48.68\00:10:51.35
LGBT issues,
00:10:51.38\00:10:53.11
and we didn't
have the vocabulary...
00:10:53.15\00:10:55.28
Yeah, it's a good point.
00:10:55.32\00:10:56.65
..to deal with it
because we only had our Bibles
00:10:56.69\00:10:58.95
which we can't
use in church state...
00:10:58.99\00:11:01.82
And I think we need
to speak, we Adventists,
00:11:01.86\00:11:04.79
we Christians,
and people of faith,
00:11:04.83\00:11:06.86
and a religious
morality, of course,
00:11:06.90\00:11:09.70
we need to speak to the society.
00:11:09.73\00:11:12.10
We just can't
demand it with separation
00:11:12.13\00:11:15.70
of church and state by law
00:11:15.74\00:11:17.37
that they obey us automatically.
00:11:17.41\00:11:18.77
But if, you know, a
modern society like us,
00:11:18.81\00:11:24.68
if the public mood changes
00:11:24.71\00:11:26.82
within their agreed
upon framework constitution,
00:11:26.85\00:11:30.09
they can change the
law even if its origin
00:11:30.12\00:11:32.85
was of a religious sensibility,
00:11:32.89\00:11:35.06
but a person has no right
to force religion on others.
00:11:35.09\00:11:38.29
So as Christians were citizens
of both the earthly kingdom
00:11:38.33\00:11:42.00
and the heavenly kingdom.
00:11:42.03\00:11:43.50
We can't take spiritual rules
00:11:43.53\00:11:45.13
and impose them
as public policy.
00:11:45.17\00:11:47.24
But as citizens of this
world, we do have a role
00:11:47.27\00:11:50.14
in studying
morality, human nature,
00:11:50.17\00:11:52.64
and informing
the laws of our state
00:11:52.67\00:11:55.58
and our nation.
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Lately I've been working
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with the Liberty
Magazine designer
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to put Luther on the
cover, Martin Luther,
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the great reformer
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of the
Reformation 500 years ago.
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It amazes me how
dated those pictures are,
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they seem to be so
few pictures of him
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and the few that we
see are not accessible.
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He doesn't seem
like a man of today,
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of course, he wasn't.
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But when I look
at Luther's ideas,
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when I look at
what he accomplished,
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I think he's every man,
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he's as real as
the reformer today.
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He's as real as the
spiritual challenges
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we face in society.
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And I'm
positive if Martin Luther
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were here today, he
would be to the fore,
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as his namesake was in
the Civil Rights Movement,
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he would be to the
fore in any moral endeavor
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and challenge to
the established order,
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and to a lack of spirituality
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which is the
prevailing sin of our age.
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For Liberty Insider,
this is Lincoln Steed.
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