June 25, 2024 Show with Dr. Glenn Sunshine on “Slaying Leviathan: Limited Government & Resistance In the Christian Tradition”

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Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth. We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Tuesday on this 25th day of June, 2024.

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Send me that registration to chrisarnzen at gmail .com and put Pastors Luncheon in the subject line. But today we have a first-time guest joining us. I'm very excited to have him on. And I'm very excited that so many of you listening seem to be equally as excited as I am to have this brother on, according to your responses in social media.

Salvation Testimony and Journey into Reformed Theology

Today my guest is Dr. Glenn Sunshine, and we are going to be addressing his book Slaying Leviathan, Limited Government and Resistance in the Christian Tradition. Dr. Sunshine is former professor of history at Central Connecticut University and a senior faculty member of the Colson Fellows.

He's also founder and president of Every Square Inch Ministries and the author of a number of books, including the one we are addressing today, Slaying Leviathan. It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sherpa n's Iron Radio, Dr. Glenn Sunshine.

Well, thank you for having me on.

And we have a tradition here on Iron Sherpa n's Iron Radio, Dr. Sunshine, whenever we have a first-time guest on, we have that guest provide for my listeners a summary of their salvation testimony, which would include any kind of religious atmosphere in which you were raised, if any, and what kind of providential circumstances our sovereign Lord raised up in your life that drew you to himself and saved you.

So let's hear a summary of your story.

Well, I grew up in a household that it would be generous to call it nominally Catholic. My parents would take me to and my brothers to church on Sunday morning and then would go home. We would attend church, then go to Sunday school, and then they'd come pick us up.

They didn't even attend church on Christmas and Easter. So they, like many Catholic families, they wanted to have us go through the process through confirmation, and then after that, we were kind of on our own.

In my case, I was really quite interested in, I suppose you would call it spiritual things. In junior high, I was actually starting to look into the occult and things like that. Well, fortunately, at that point, it was not easy to find material.

If I were doing that today in junior high, I would have been in a lot more trouble. I couldn't get into a lot of trouble at that point because there wasn't a lot of stuff available back in the early 1970s.

But then one of my brothers came to faith. He became a believer, and we were at his house on my mother's birthday, September 19th, 1971. He started trying to evangelize my mother. He was talking about the Bible.

I thought that sounded interesting, so I sat in and started listening. My mother walked away. Barry still had an audience, so he kept talking and explained the gospel to me. I heard it in terms I understood then for the first time, and I just accepted it.

I believed it because one thing I got from the Catholic Church is I'd always been taught to believe that the Bible was the word of God. Nobody suggested that I read it, but I had, you know, I believed that that was God's word.

And when Barry showed me what was actually in it, I said, OK, well, this has got to be the truth. And I went with it.

Yeah, that's interesting. I was from a very religiously Roman Catholic household and had the same kind of reverence for the word of God. And even before I was a born-again believer, I always believed that Jesus existed.

I believed that he was and is God. But the same also experience of having the idea that, hey, the Bible is a very important book and it's the word of God, but, you know, you don't really need to go crazy about reading.

It.

I understand. I mean, we do have priests, after all, to explain things to you. But thank God I was saved by the grace of Jesus Christ in the mid -1980s. But tell me how you came to discover and embrace Reformed theology.

Well, from there, I actually passed through a whole succession of different types of churches. I've actually, at one time or another, been in every major branch of Western Christianity except the Anabaptists, because whenever I moved, I found myself a good church.

I was preaching the gospel and just settled in there. But really, I started landing very heavily in the Reformed camp in college. I was at University Reformed Church at Michigan State. And from there, I moved into an Orthodox Presbyterian church when I graduated in Maryland.

My wife was Lutheran. So when I went to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School for my MA degree, we were Lutheran for a little while. But then I was in Christian Reformed Church in grad school and at my first job at teaching at Calvin College.

And by this point, I was really rather thoroughly steeped in the Reformed tradition. I did my doctoral work on the Huguenots, so again, in the Calvinist world. And it was just a matter of, as I learned, as I grew, as I was exposed to solid expository preaching from a Reformed perspective, it just seemed obvious that that was the most biblically faithful thing I could run into.

Well, praise God. And just to let our listeners know, who may be wondering, our guest is a member of a congregation in the Presbyterian Church in America, also known as the PCA. Have you ever written a book on the Huguenots?

Because I would love to do an interview on that topic. I don't believe I've ever dedicated a two-hour interview specifically to the Huguenots.

Yeah. Unfortunately, it's out of print. I'm trying to get it back in print. It was called Reforming French Protestantism. The theme, the topic of the book, it was actually my doctoral work. It turns out that Presbyterian Church government was invented by the French.

And so what I did is I traced how and why that happened. It covers the period from about 15—well, there's some background here, but really 1557 through 1572. And during that period, the French really come up with the first systematic Presbyterian form of church government.

And like I said, I look at the how and why that all that happens.

That's interesting, since they did drive Calvin out of France. But that is an interesting concept to know. In fact, I think very often that credit is often given to Scotland, if I'm not mistaken. But it's interesting to know that that's where you have discovered the origins are.

Well, I do have a couple of publishers I will let you know about off the air. And who knows where that may lead? Because I would love to see that book come into print. Well, we are discussing your book, Slaying Leviathan, Limited Government and Resistance in the Christian Age.

Leviathan, Hobbes, and the Christian Case for Limited Government

Tell us why you used this figure found in the Old Covenant Scriptures, the Leviathan, to picture what we are addressing today. There's a lot of disagreements, even amongst Bible-believing Christians, even amongst Reformed Christians, as to the importance or meaning of the Leviathan, whether it is a dinosaur, whether it is a beast that is common to even the 21st century Earth that we now live in, or whether it is more symbolic.

Even Satan has been suggested. Tell us, why did you use this term?

Well, actually, it has nothing to do with the Old Testament, or only indirectly. It's actually a reference to a book by Thomas Hobbes called Leviathan. Leviathan was a book that Hobbes published in the 17th century, 1600s, in which he was arguing for absolute government.

The king is an absolute monarch. The term Leviathan, he picked Leviathan as a term to describe this, and it came from the idea that people in this period thought that the name Leviathan referred to the idea of something that is made up of a monster that had scales that were very tightly compacted.

Together.

And so, the idea here that Hobbes was using is that the state is Leviathan, the country is Leviathan. All of the people are like the scales of Leviathan that are pulled together into a tight, unified whole, with the king as the head.

So, the king is the head of the state, and just like the head of a creature controls everything that happens in it, so the king should control everything that happens in the state, up to and including deciding matters of religion.

So, that was what Hobbes was arguing in Leviathan. And, in fact, when you look at the Christian tradition, that kind of absolutist notion of how government should operate really is antithetical to the church going all the way back to the days of Jesus.

And so, the title slaying Leviathan has to do with the idea that the church has always stood in opposition to this idea of absolute government, of totalitarianism, of any idea of that sort, that the state is unlimited in its power.

Now, I was not even aware of how strongly, vociferously, and adamantly Christians disagreed over this issue, even within the same theological circles, even within sometimes the same denominations, and even within the same congregations, until the whole COVID crisis came to be.

And we began to see local and federal governments mandating things that made our lives more miserable, and sometimes even tragically caused people to lose their livelihoods, even lose businesses that their families owned for centuries.

And to this day, we continue to feel the repercussions of this. And I had Christians on this program who took opposite sides of just to what extent do we follow Romans 13. Now, obviously, every Bible-believing Christian believes that Romans 13 is God-breathed and we are to obey it.

But how are we to exegete these passages is something that is disagreed over. And in fact, let me just read the relevant passages to what we're discussing here. Every person is to be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.

Therefore, whoever resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God, and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves, for rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil.

Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same, for it is a servant of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid, for it does not bear the sword for nothing, for it is a servant of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices it.

Therefore, it is necessary to be in subjection, not only because of wrath, but also for the sake of conscience, but for because of this you also pay taxes, for rulers are servants of God devoting themselves to this very thing.

Pay to all what is due them, tax to whom taxes due, custom to whom custom, respect to whom respect, honor to whom honor. And this is a passage that you had brothers in Christ from the same churches vehemently disagreeing, how we apply that, and before I even have you discuss that in more detail, that very passage I cited, was the COVID situation what provoked you to even write this book, and the way that governments even globally were reacting to this crisis, or was it something else, something perhaps even prior?

Well, actually, I had studied resistance theory in grad school, and, well, I did a podcast, I'm on a podcast called The Theology Podcast with two other guys, and we did an episode fairly early on on this topic, and for quite a while it was our most popular episode, and that led me to think that people were really hungry to get some information on this, so I wrote it, and the book was actually published on Election Day 2020, so I had been working on it well before COVID hit.

Wow, that's providential. And so then you have this providential occurrence that is creating turmoil all over the globe, and really disrupting the lives of multitudes, and we have people of opposite political persuasions arguing, and we have people within the same political persuasions arguing, so the Christians, of course, immediately, those who are familiar with their scriptures, go to Romans 13, and how does a person who believes that this is God-bereaved truth, how does one simultaneously also say, well, we can resist government when it is surpassing or overreaching the spheres of their duties and responsibilities?

Well, in a lot of ways, that's really the theme of the book. The reason why I would argue that people read Romans 13 in a frankly rather simplistic way is they don't know the long discussions that have been taking place over literally centuries trying to come to grips with understanding the relationship between church and state, and what exactly are the limitations on government power and things like that.

And this starts all the way with Jesus. I mean, the render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, we look at that and we say, well, that was a genius statement that got him out of trouble, and it basically says, yeah, we should be paying our taxes.

But there's a lot more to it than that. When you look at what he's saying, give to Caesar what's Caesar's and give to God what's God's, what that says is that Caesar has legitimate authority. There are things that properly do belong to Caesar, but not everything does.

And the distinction between what is Caesar's and what isn't is actually not a decision Caesar makes, it's a decision God makes. So whenever we're in a situation in which there is a question, one of the first things we need to ask is, is this Caesar's responsibility or is this God's responsibility?

So when Caesar says something like you can go to the casino, but you can't go to church, is it Caesar's job to tell you you cannot meet together corporately for worship? Or is that something that belongs to God?

Amen. Well, we're going to pick up, I was going to say we're going to pick up right where you left off there, which is an extremely important point after we come back from our first commercial break. So if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question for Dr. Glenn Sunshine on his book Slaying Leviathan, Limited Government and Resistance in the Christian Tradition, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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When purchasing their jewelry at royaldiadem .com, go to royaldiadem .com today and mention Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. We're now back with our guest, Dr. Glenn Sunshine. We're discussing his book, Slaying Leviathan, Limited Government and Resistance in the Christian Tradition.

And our email address again is chrisarnson at gmail .com. If you have a question, give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. Before I have you pick up where you left off when exegeting Romans Chapter 13, I was so eager to dive into this book with you that I forgot to ask you about Every Square Inch Ministries.

If you could explain in more detail that ministry where you are the founder and president.

Every Square Inch Ministries is an outlet really for me for the creative work that I do in writing and teaching. For writing and teaching that I do for myself as opposed to for the Colson Center or Reflections Ministries or the other groups that I work with.

Anytime I do a podcast or whatever, those show up there. I write a regular newsletter. I have essays that go up there, videos, all of these kinds of things. It provides me an outlet for teaching. And it's going to increasingly, because of the circumstances in some of the ministries that I do work with, it's going to increasingly be a way that I am going to be making my living as time goes on.

But for now, it is simply, like I said, an outlet for the writing and teaching that I do. And it's called Every Square Inch because it really is an echo of a quote by Kuyper, who said that there is not a single square inch in the whole domain of human experience over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry out, mine.

So, the idea here is that literally anything that is within the range of human experience is under Christ's authority. And this gives me the opportunity to pursue all kinds of different areas. The political that we're talking about here, certainly, but I've got things on spiritual formation, economics.

I've got arts, all kinds of different areas in there.

Yes, and for those of our listeners who are unfamiliar with Abraham Kuyper, he was a great 19th century hero, early 20th century as well, who was a former prime minister of the Netherlands and a very strong Christian and Reformed Christian.

And everybody should know more about Abraham Kuyper. But if anybody wants more details about Every Square Inch ministries, go to esquareinch .com, esquareinch .com, and God willing, we will be repeating that towards the end of the program.

Now, going back to Romans 13, you were saying that many people, in your opinion, many Christians, have an overly simplified understanding of this. And the last thing that you said before we went to the commercial break is that, yes, we are not to be rebels against the government unless, of course, we are commanded, in your opinion, I believe, to resist government when it is, in essence, demanding that we sin.

And you even went into an example of how, during the COVID crisis, there were government mandates that prohibited people from gathering in their local assembly to worship God during this time, and yet casinos were open.

So if you want to pick up right where you left off.

Yeah, well, that's a simple example. Again, the point being that Jesus tells us that we're to give to the government, to give to Caesar what's Caesar's, but not everything belongs to Caesar. There are things that belong to God.

And we see this even in the early church, where the fundamental confession in the early church is that Jesus is Lord. And that contrasts with the de facto confession of faith in Rome, which was that Caesar is Lord.

Jesus is Lord is an inescapably political statement, because what it is saying is that government exists under Christ's authority. And in Rome, that was really the thing that got the Christians in trouble.

Their refusal to acknowledge the emperor's authority, their refusal to recognize the emperor's supreme authority, their refusal, therefore, to recognize him as a God, burn a pinch of incense to a statue, that kind of thing, was really the thing that triggered the persecutions more than anything else.

It was written in Rome, the idea of a deity, of a God. God was the supreme being in a particular area of life. So, for example, the easiest one is Neptune. Neptune is the god of the sea. Anytime you went out on the sea, you would perform a sacrifice to Neptune.

That's a way of acknowledging his authority there and asking him not to take it badly that you're going out on his turf. Since the emperor is the supreme authority in the political world, that sort of makes him a god.

And the way you acknowledge the emperor's authority is you, therefore, do a religious act. You burn incense to him. In Rome, this is almost like saying the Pledge of Allegiance, except it is a religious act because of the way they understood gods.

Christians couldn't do that because they're monotheists. There's only one God, and we are not going to do a religious act to anyone other than God, the triune God. They were quite willing to obey the law where they could.

They were quite willing to acknowledge the emperor's authority where they could, but they were not going to acknowledge his supreme authority. There were limits. And, in fact, you find, you know, the early Christians would not rebel against the government.

They didn't do that. But you do find them, by the fourth century at least, you find them engaging in acts not just of civil disobedience but of active law-breaking. As a simple example, we find cases where Christians will—St. Augustine, I believe it is, talks about this.

A slave ship ran aground near Hippo, and Christians broke onto the slave ship at night and freed all the slaves. This was illegal, but Christians were adamantly opposed to the slave trade because of what Scripture says about the slave trade.

Scripture unequivocally condemns the slave trade. So, they went in and they freed the slaves. That was actually a crime. That was theft. And yet they would do it because they knew that this was the right thing to do, even breaking the law.

They also engaged in civil disobedience and things like that, acting in ways that were consistent with Christian principles while generally behaving within the legal structures of the empire. Now, I need to add at this point that the strict reading of Romans 13 ignores one or two other facts.

When you read Romans 13, when you read 1 Peter, when you read these things that are discussing obedience to the government, it tells us what the government is for. The government exists to reward the good and punish evil.

What happens when government rewards evil and punishes good? What do we do then? Those passages don't address that question. And yet that is exactly the situation we all too frequently find ourselves in.

And that ends up being one of the key issues that the church over the centuries had to wrestle with.

And just for the sake of our listeners who may have bought the lies of the leftists who constantly regurgitate that we can't trust the Bible. In fact, we should have great disdain for the Bible because it promotes slavery.

They are promoting the false idea that the Bible, the God-breathed words of Scripture, are actually promoting chattel slavery, which it does not. And even to the point that my guest, Dr. Glenn Sunshine, just brought up that the Bible teaches in opposition to the slavery that we are more familiar with that existed even in this country up until the 19th century.

We read in the Scriptures some very chilling warnings in Exodus chapter 21 verse 16. Now, one who kidnaps someone, whether he sells them or is found in his possession, shall certainly be put to death.

And of course, many slaves were kidnapped from their homeland in Africa and then found themselves on the slave trade. So, that's just one example of why we should not believe the lies of leftists in this certain area.

But—.

Yeah.

Can I throw in something on this?

Oh, sure, sure.

So, that verse by itself condemns the entire African—transatlantic African slave trade, period. I mean, and, you know, that's—it seems to me that should be the end of the story. Slavery in ancient Israel where—was actually, oddly enough, a form of social welfare where a poor Israelite who was, for whatever reason, destitute and actually in danger of starvation typically would sell himself or maybe his family as a slave.

The reason they did that is it was then the master's job to feed them. But the provision was that they would then be set free on the seventh year. And when they were set—they were supposed to be treated well.

And when they were set free on the seventh year, they were also supposed to be provided with goods to get them back on their feet. So, it was a way of taking care of them and then sort of resetting things so that they would be able to take care of themselves afterwards.

When you look at the New Testament where Paul is giving instructions for behaviors of slaves and masters, there are—these are called household codes where they talk about the responsibilities of members of the household.

In the secular world, there were household codes, but they were always codes that talked about the responsibilities of subordinates to their superiors, never the superiors to the subordinates. Paul turns that around.

It's not just wives' responsibilities to husbands, but husbands to wives. Not just children to parents, but parents to children. Not just slaves to masters, but masters to slaves. And in the process of doing this, you also get Paul teaching that in Christ, there are no slaves nor free.

We're all one. Why doesn't Paul explicitly call then for the abolition of slavery? He certainly hints very strongly to Philemon that he ought to set Onesimus free. I think the reason is pure practicality.

Rome was a slave-based society, and there had been slave revolts in Rome that the Romans put down with extreme brutality. Had Paul called for the freeing of slaves at that point, it would have been understood by the Romans as a call for a slave revolt.

And as a matter of fact, many people might have taken it that way themselves and revolted. Had that happened, it would have not only caused a complete discrediting of Christianity, but it would also have resulted in a lot of people dying very ugly deaths.

That's right.

Instead, what you see is the statement that people who engage in the slave trade cannot enter the kingdom of God. They are under permanent condemnation. As a matter of fact, when you look at the destruction of Babylon in Revelation, where the merchants of the world are lamenting Babylon and they're listing all of the things that Babylon did, the ultimate, the capstone of the whole thing is that they were selling the bodies and souls of men.