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Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI190422B
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00:04 Welcome back to the Liberty Insider.
00:07 Before the break with guest Dr. John Reeve. 00:11 We were holding forth, John, on all sorts of stuff 00:15 that related to American exceptionalism, 00:17 divine right of the church, 00:19 and civil history that lay behind that. 00:23 During the break, you mentioned, Charles I. 00:27 And that's the period of English history 00:30 that really gets my attention. 00:32 Tell me the point you want to make about 00:33 divine right of kings there? 00:34 Well, you know, when his father took over from Elizabeth, 00:39 James I of England, James V of Scotland, 00:42 he comes into England with the idea 00:45 that now he can do what he wants 00:47 because he is king of a country that actually has a treasury. 00:52 And so he's going to be able to do what he wants to. 00:54 Yeah, 'cause Scotland was sort of the poor neighbor 00:57 to the north. 00:58 Right. 01:00 The mountain men, some of them, the highlanders, 01:02 you know, going wild and wooly, 01:05 and I even laughed sometimes at our current president. 01:08 They make a lot of his German ancestry, 01:10 but I'm part Scots or half Scots. 01:13 I think we can explain a lot by the Scots 01:15 about the layered and his whiskey jug here. 01:20 He's like do this, do that, ordering the hands around. 01:26 So Charles is raised in a family 01:28 where it is understood that the king has absolute power. 01:31 And so he that's what he was winged on, 01:34 king has absolute power, now I'm king, 01:36 so he just starts making dictates. 01:39 And when the Parliament starts arguing against him, 01:42 he says, I dissolve Parliament, I'll run without them. 01:45 But what he didn't realize is that 01:46 if he doesn't have Parliament, he can't tax, 01:49 and he can't run wars. 01:51 So he needs Parliament, so he calls them back, 01:53 and they disagree with him, they disbands him again, 01:56 so then they squabble, ends up in the civil war. 01:59 And he only called them 02:01 because he wanted money to wage a war. 02:03 Correct. And a war, not a wall. 02:07 Yeah. 02:11 And this was so big 02:13 that they started murmuring against him. 02:16 And then he decided he would arrest the speaker, 02:19 you remember that. 02:20 And he comes in with his own private guard 02:24 to arrest the speaker 02:25 'cause they've gone out the back door. 02:28 From that moment on, the revolution or the civil war 02:30 was pretty much certain. 02:33 And so then how was the civil war decided 02:36 once it comes to fisticuffs, 02:38 and battles, and guns, and such. 02:41 A war is decided on the battlefield. 02:44 But in the case of Charles I, he says, "It can't be." 02:49 He says, "You can defeat me, you can defeat my armies, 02:52 but I'm still the king. 02:54 God put me here, you can't change that." 02:56 Yeah, it was an interesting argument, 02:58 and it was the standard argument 02:59 but he did it more vigorously, and more in your face to. 03:03 Once he lost his military cause, 03:06 he still persisted in this. 03:08 He pretended that whatever he said they should still obey 03:11 not because they won a war, 03:13 but because God put him in as king. 03:17 God's man, therefore, everybody must obey. 03:20 And very few people sort of connect this, 03:23 but this was the direct origin of the modern day 03:26 constitutional monarchy. 03:27 They basically trimmed all of the grand claims away, 03:31 and he became a hereditary figurehead. 03:35 Well, he was shot. 03:36 Well, not he, but I mean the monarchs of England. 03:39 Right. 03:40 And it took a few generations to work that out, 03:42 but eventually the monarch... 03:44 Glorious Revolution and all the rest. 03:45 Yeah, yeah, but clear up to the time 03:48 where Charles I was actually beheaded. 03:52 He did not think they would actually kill him. 03:55 Yeah, and, you know, I feel pity for the guy to 03:59 read his speech just before the axe came down. 04:05 I mean he was looking forward to heaven and clear conscience, 04:08 and he felt that he was the wrong party. 04:12 And, of course, many people at the time treated him 04:14 as almost a saint. 04:15 So there was a spiritual patina over this affair of state. 04:21 And this is the parallel I'm trying to draw. 04:25 You know, messy and wooly things happen 04:28 in political affairs, and especially in conflicts 04:33 that might even come to a civil war. 04:34 But to inject religion turns the whole thing greatly. 04:38 It makes it very, very messy. 04:40 And the United States, 04:44 you know, I'm a long term resident of the US, 04:47 but a young man that grew up in Australia, 04:51 and I came here and I've studied it carefully, 04:52 and I've come to really love the United States. 04:55 Its aspirations are unequaled. 04:57 But more and more 04:59 I see the ghosts of the past rise up, 05:01 and at the moment that troubles me greatly that 05:04 well meaning Christians 05:06 have chosen this present administration. 05:09 And even this President is God's man, 05:12 and their religious agenda is now to be run forward 05:16 with through a political means. 05:19 And I think they're falling into the errors of the past, 05:22 big time, with good intention as of Charles. 05:25 Hey, the worst mistakes always are made 05:27 with the best intentions. 05:29 And that's one thing 05:30 I've always learned in history is that, 05:32 nobody makes a mistake on purpose. 05:35 They always make a mistake with good intentions. 05:37 And the good intentions here 05:38 are to try to get a more Christian nation. 05:41 The good intention's here 05:42 to try to get a more moral nation. 05:44 It's the same push 05:45 as the moral majority of last generation. 05:48 The idea that we put in God's Man, 05:51 and then God gets to rule through that person. 05:53 The problem is, is the man is still a man. 05:57 Well, let me connect this, I mean, 05:59 my line of logic often leaps that, 06:02 you know, the church, the Medieval Church, 06:06 Roman Catholic Church, but for hundreds of years, 06:08 it was the only real game in town, 06:11 at least in an organized sense, 06:13 you know, they run with an idea that you can sort of half 06:18 get out of some of the statements of Jesus, 06:20 but that they had the authority to establish things on earth 06:23 and to make dictates and so on. 06:26 I don't think that's consistent with the way that God 06:29 has dealt with mankind in general. 06:32 But they picked up on that, 06:33 and I think we're seeing through American exceptionalism 06:38 that sort of a transference of that troublesome assumption, 06:43 even into somewhat secular, political landscape. 06:48 Well, to follow that logic back to where I think it came from, 06:51 you've got the very good intentions of Irenaeus of Leon 06:56 in the late part of the 2nd century 06:58 to try to get the scriptures back from the Gnostics. 07:02 The Gnostics had interpreted scriptures very, very strict. 07:05 Maybe some of our viewers don't know 07:07 who the Gnostics were. 07:09 Well, I'll tell you that. 07:10 The Gnostics are the ones 07:12 who figured that that Jesus left us with knowledge, 07:15 and there's secret knowledge still coming, 07:16 and that secret knowledge is the basis 07:18 for the ascent of the soul back to divine form. 07:20 They were the hyper spiritualists, 07:21 weren't they? 07:22 Everything became spiritual rather than real. 07:24 Correct. 07:25 And the point at which Irenaeus said, 07:27 "We must bring the scriptures back home 07:31 is when they started arguing 07:32 that the creator, God," 07:34 you know, they had this dichotomy 07:36 between materiality is necessary evil, 07:41 therefore anything with a body 07:43 or anything with materiality is evil, 07:45 which is way beyond replayed or ever thought. 07:49 But anyway, the Gnostics are going that direction, 07:52 so they argue that the bad guy 07:54 in the Old Testament is the Creator, God, 07:58 and the good guy in the Old Testament 08:00 is one urging them to eat the knowledge, so... 08:03 Or it's another variation on dualism which long existed. 08:05 Sure, sure. 08:08 So then the serpent in the garden is the good guy, 08:12 and the Creator is the bad guy. 08:14 And Irenaeus says, 08:15 "No, you can't read scripture that way. 08:16 There's no way that that's what Moses meant. 08:18 So you have to come back and have 08:20 only one right reading of scripture, 08:22 and that right reading is the reading of the church." 08:25 Now it's a correction to pull scripture away 08:29 from the Gnostics, 08:30 but then to say whatever the church teaches is now 08:33 the only thing you can interpret from scripture 08:36 is bringing the pendulum way over, 08:38 and it's starting a dangerous trend 08:40 that says the church resides... 08:42 The truth resides with the church, 08:44 rather the truth resides with scripture. 08:46 Well, I was being a little more particular. 08:47 Remember, Jesus says that 08:48 whatever you bind here on earth will be banned in heaven 08:52 or loosed in heaven, and depending what you do. 08:55 But is that meaning that people that are acting for God 08:58 will act according to God's will, 08:59 or is that meaning that people 09:01 acting on earth force God's hand? 09:03 I think that's really what was intended 09:08 that we don't need to reference God directly or way, 09:11 you know, and the rulers don't need to reference God, 09:14 whatever we do is God's will by definition. 09:17 And so God is now our puppet, I think, 09:19 and that's not a good way to approach it. 09:21 And then that's unfortunately the way 09:24 the sacerdotal view of salvation. 09:27 We do the right things, and God must give us salvation. 09:31 You better explain that word to our viewers. 09:33 Some of them are not even English speakers. 09:35 Okay, well. Sacerdotal. 09:38 The sacerdotal idea of salvation 09:40 is simply saying that 09:43 when the Holy Church does holy things, 09:46 then holy salvation happens. 09:48 Its sacerdotal has to do with holiness. 09:51 And if you have the understanding 09:53 that if we offer the sacrifice 09:57 of the Eucharist freshly here now, 10:01 and then we have everybody eat it, 10:03 we are providing salvation. 10:06 If that equals salvation, 10:08 then the church is in charge of salvation 10:11 rather than Jesus Christ in charge of salvation. 10:14 So it seems to me, we're back to the point. 10:16 Look at your own salvation with fear and trembling. 10:19 Yes, yes. 10:21 So now you have it that 10:23 if the truth resides with scripture 10:26 rather than in God's Word, 10:29 then whoever's in charge of scripture 10:32 is in charge of truth. 10:36 The most of the past 100, 150 years or so in America 10:42 and in England, the standard Christian, 10:46 the standard Protestant Christian 10:47 would have in their library the Bible, of course, 10:51 Pilgrims Progress, 10:53 and John Milton's magisterial work, 10:58 The Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, part two of it. 11:05 That was written shortly 11:07 after a grand experiment in England with religious rule. 11:11 But when I go, and when I read, 11:13 and you can read too, Paradise Lost, 11:16 there in grand poetic terms, 11:18 he lays out God's plan for mankind, 11:23 which didn't seem to go well for much of the term. 11:26 But as the poet says at the beginning, 11:28 his aim was to justify the ways of God to man. 11:33 The ways of men are hard to justify, 11:36 and the ways of godly men are often hard to justify 11:40 or at least God intention men 11:42 and false kingdoms of earth on earth, 11:44 but ultimately, the ways of God for men 11:48 are for salvation, for restitution, 11:50 and for ultimate religious, personal conscience. 11:56 For liberty Insider, this is Lincoln Steed. |
Revised 2019-03-11