May 6, 2020 Show with Dr. David C. Innes on “Christ & the Kingdoms of Men: Foundations of Political Life”

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Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday. On this sixth day of May, 2020, and I am thrilled to have back after a very long absence a guest who is a fascinating individual indeed,

Dr. David C. Innes, professor of politics and chair of the program in politics, philosophy, and economics at the

King's College in New York City, and he is going to be discussing one of his books today,

Christ and the Kingdoms of Men, Foundations of Political Life, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr.

David C. Innes. Thank you, Chris. It's good to be back. Let me right away give our listeners our email address should you have any question at all on politics.

Our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com, C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com,

and please, as always, give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside the

U .S .A. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. First of all,

David, tell us about the program in politics, philosophy, and economics at the

King's College in New York City and all that entails. Well, the King's College in New York City is a rare college.

First of all, it's a college in a major U .S. city, which you don't often find.

We also have a core for our education, a few majors, but everyone takes a core of politics, philosophy, and economics because these are what we call the ruling disciplines.

They address the fundamental questions of life, the questions that move the world, questions of who governs, how to create wealth, what ultimately is life for, and this is what's on the front of the newspaper, not the back where the sports is, and this is what moves the world.

So we prepare students to influence and perhaps lead strategic institutions with this

PPE core, which was originally developed at Oxford University about 100 years ago, but we give it a greater coherence and a biblical foundation.

All the students take several courses in Bible as well. And I know that the

King's College has a history of being a conservative college, but being in New York City, you still might have a wider spectrum of viewpoints and ideologies and worldviews than you might normally in other parts of the

United States. Are your students from a spectrum of political ideology and worldviews, or are they pretty much in the same sphere of understanding of these things or belief?

No, students come to the King's College for a variety of reasons, sometimes for our core, sometimes for the city, sometimes for other opportunities.

The college is conservative and Christian. The faculty are conservative and Christian.

The students, you come here and you will get a variety of views amongst your classmates, to say nothing of the city in which you dwell.

So it's a challenging education. The books are challenging. The curriculum is challenging.

The professors will challenge you, but also your classmates, who are of a high caliber, will also challenge you in various ways.

So it's a real privilege to be here. Well, this is an interesting title for your book,

Christ and the Kingdoms of Men. If you could please explain the exact wording of this.

Well, in the kingdoms of men politics, there's earthly kings who govern us, and they claim to be just, and they claim to be good for us.

Most times they're lying, but there's all these kingdoms.

But there is one king over them all, who is Christ. Psalm 2 says that God has anointed his son to be king of the nations.

It tells the princes of the earth to kiss him, to serve him. And so what does that look like?

Christ is the king of all nations, and yet most nations don't recognize him.

So what is the relationship between our politics and the politics God desires for us, for our good?

So that's the fundamental question. And then the subtitle, Foundations of Political Life, I focus on the fundamental questions.

And what was the primary motivation for you writing this book? There are other books by Christians, even conservative and reformed

Christians like you. And obviously you felt a need for a new volume to be added to those.

So what was the strongest motivation for you to write this? Yeah, why one more book?

Where do I get off? Maybe you are. Well, this. There are a lot of books that are policy -oriented, with brief attention to why these policies, but they don't address the foundations, the fundamental questions, in a rigorous and systematic way.

And you cannot understand the issues if you don't lay out the foundations.

And what I mean by foundations is the fundamental, what is questions, what is authority, what is politics, what is human nature, what is the purpose of government?

These things biblically. So most books don't address that. They go quickly to the issues.

And it's difficult to find anything in a politics book that talks about authority.

What is it? What gives one human being the right to tell another human being what to do?

That's a fundamental question. So how do we find that in Scripture? How does God provide that?

Well, you've got some very impressive commendations for this book by very impressive people.

Marvin Olasky, editor -in -chief for World Magazine, who happens to be a sponsor of this program, he says,

Dr. Innes is far wiser than those such as former representative

Barney Frank, quoted within as saying, Government is simply the name we give to the things we choose to do together.

Christ in the kingdoms of men shows that we have many ways to do things together.

All who read it will learn which activities should involve government and which should not.

And then also, Joseph M. Kippenberg, professor of politics at Ogle Fork University, says,

At once learned and lucid, sophisticated and accessible, the book certainly serves its principal audience, students and the reading public, exceedingly well, but teachers and Christian intellectuals should not be misled by the word foundations in the subtitle.

The book is a formidable synthesis of deep scriptural and theological learning on the one hand, and a broad and rich understanding of the history of political philosophy on the other.

We will long be in Professor Innes' debt. And then finally, Kevin L.

Clausen, director of the Center for Faith, Freedom and the Constitution at Bryan College, says,

This book is long overdue and much needed. The Lord of Heaven desires that we serve

Him in the government, political, legal realm here on earth. And this book helps us know how to do that.

In addition, it enables us to ask the important questions that might take us deeper into this most crucial subject.

Dr. Innes has given all of us, of whatever theological stripe, a critical work at a critical time.

Very impressive words by impressive men. And one thing that is interesting to me, and the same is true with theological understanding, we have a

Bible that we believe as conservative Christians, we believe that is inerrant.

We believe not only that, but it is the sole infallible authority over the church, other than God himself, of course.

And we believe in the perpiscuity of Scripture.

We believe that it is plain and understandable, although obviously,

Peter said that some of the things Paul has written are hard to understand, and we are required to have teachers.

So it is not all extremely simple, but the gospel itself and the things that we need to know are simple.

Why is it, do you think, that there is such a broad spectrum, not only of theological understanding, but even of political thought amongst brethren in Christ that might even – you might have brethren in the same denomination, and perhaps even in the same pew, who vote differently?

Yeah. Well, you're familiar with something called the noetic effects of the fall.

Right. The effects of the fall on our mind, on our noesis, our noetic faculty, from the

Greek, right? So the fall affects our ability to think, and it affects our passions, and our passions attach us to various things and cloud our minds, and that is true of our children, little children, it's true of the greatest scholars, it's true of everyone in between.

And so thinking is difficult. It is a whole lot easier when you have the

Word of God, the trustworthy, perspicacious, as you said, Word of God, but even then, it requires discipline, it requires sobriety, it requires humility, it requires community, reading it with other people of good faith and serious mind.

So, you know, I didn't dive into this as, like, a 22 -year -old right out of college.

I'm 58. I've been doing this a long time. I studied at University of Toronto, a serious place,

I went off and did graduate work at Boston College, did my PhD there with very serious, very gifted people, and after teaching a couple of years,

I went out to seminary, here at Gordon -Conwell, a couple years at our Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh, then seven years in the pastoral ministry, and then back into academia, so the

Lord has been shaping me, informing me, giving me time to think in various contexts under various teachers, and with fine students to challenge me as well.

So at this point in my career, a few years ago, I thought, this book has to happen,

I'm ready to write this. So you have, this book is informed by my philosophic background, serious reading of Plato and John Locke, and I'm a minister in the

Orthodox Presbyterian Church, not a fluffy denomination, and that is also, all this training has gone into shaping how

I approach the subject. So that doesn't mean everything

I'm writing here is right, I'm convinced that it's right, and I wouldn't have put it in a book and sent it out to the public if I didn't think it was helpful, but when you write a book, it goes out and it enters into the public conversation.

That's what a book is. So this is my contribution, I think, an informed and worthy one to the public conversation.

Now, what are a Christian's civic responsibilities? Pardon me?

What are a Christian's civic responsibilities? Oh, yes, well, what does the

Bible say? God says in Romans 13, submit yourself to the powers that be, they are

God's servant for your good. And in our politics, we have the privilege of self -government, which all human beings should have, which means government of the people, by the people, and for the people, as President Lincoln said.

And so, given that we all have a hand in our own government, we should be informed, we should know our system of government, we should know what it is, we should know what it ought to be, and there's always a gap between what is and ought to be.

And we should be reasonably informed on the issues of the day, their factual dimension, their moral dimension,

I say reasonably, because we all have jobs, we have families, we have business, but insofar as one can be informed, one should be, and then hold our officers to account, cast wise votes for who our officers should be, and then in other regards, and this often goes unstated,

Chris, helping one another out. You are being a good citizen when you marry well, when you are faithful to your husband or wife, when you raise your children wisely in the

Lord to be godly and industrious people, when you help out your neighbor when your neighbor is in need, when you say a cheerful hello to a passerby, everything, this is all being a good citizen, because the more that people do for one another, as God wants us to, the less government is tempted to do.

And the more power government has, the more power it has to abuse, the less power it has, the less power it needs, the less power it has to abuse, the less it's tempted to do what

God didn't call it to do. So just by helping one another, by starting a business, by serving your customers, by raising your children as best you can, you're being a good citizen under God.

You know, that's something you don't often hear, but I'm just throwing that in there. Well I guess, even though these are not the words of Scripture, they ring true, the famous, very famous, often quoted words by Lord Acton, that power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely, this is one of the key areas of why

I believe Christians, or no one for that matter, should put absolute trust in those that are governing over us, and yet we are, to be submissive to them, and of course

I know as a Christian, you believe that it's true to a point, we are never to disobey

God, to disobey mere men who are in places of governing authority, they may be men that actually hate with a passion

Jesus Christ and everything His Word stands for. So, sometimes the areas are not clear cut though, for instance, do you think that it is within the liberty, and perhaps even the duty of a

Christian, who is a citizen of a nation such as the United States, there are some things that are very obvious that are violations of God's law, like abortion, like same sex marriage, things like that.

But sometimes, a government may be illegally, according to our own constitution, they may be violating that very constitution, which is not a

God -breathed document, but it is still supposed to be the rule book, as it were, it was really meant to restrain the power of the government.

Yes. And how does a Christian respond when the governing authorities are violating the constitution, and yet what they are insisting upon might not, according to scriptural definition, be sin?

I mean, do we still have to follow these things that mere men, sinful men, and dishonest men are commanding us to do?

Well, there's a number of things there. When you said they're not requiring us to sin, what did Paul, sorry, it was

Peter, Peter in Acts 5 .29 say the Jewish authorities, they were in authority, and they told them to stop preaching this

Jesus. And he said, with all due respect, we must obey God rather than men on this, because you tell us not to preach

Jesus, it would be sin for us not to preach Jesus, so we have to obey a higher authority.

And so if the government is not telling you to sin, you should obey it. However, in this system of self -government we have, it doesn't end there.

You know, when Luther was counseling people under the Holy Roman Emperor to obey the

Emperor and suffer for God's glory and appeal to him, they didn't have self -government.

We do. So we can petition the government, we can petition our fellow citizens to demonstrate against the government, and there are various levels of government as well.

There's the federal government, the state governments, and local governments. And there's something called the

Doctrine of Inferior Magistrates, or Subordinate Magistrates, that comes out of the 17th century, or the 16th century,

I'm sorry. And that is that all of these levels of government are appointed by God or established by God.

They all bear the sword, and that authority comes from God, and they are, all of them, governing the same people, responsible to God to protect the people's liberties, to protect their life and their ability to go about their business in godly service.

And so if the state government is oppressing you, if the state government is violating the law or violating

God's principles of right, you can appeal to higher levels of government.

Or if a higher level of government is doing it, you can appeal to a lower level of government to withstand it, to stand against it.

So there are all these things. And then, of course, amidst all of this, there's prayer, the highest power, who is

God, the king over all kings, to direct the heart of the king, to direct circumstances to protect his people, or give us the liberty that he wants us to have.

So there are all these things. I've got a chapter in the book, as you know, on the limits of power and resistance and submission, which, of course, is a very uncontroversial subject.

But it always gets more. Whenever I talk about resistance and submission, you say submission to your students, all their backs are right up.

Their back is up. What do you mean, submission? It's always the wildest class.

So, of course, I put it in the book. Yeah, well, that very often divides the worldview of people in this world as to their understanding of the level of submission that we are to give to earthly authorities.

And we are seeing that now during the

COVID hysteria going on. I mean, when

I say hysteria, obviously, the COVID -19 virus is a real thing, and people are dying.

But at the same time, there is hysteria, I believe, attached to it. And you have people in the media speaking with authority, who the very next day sometimes are contradicting themselves 180 degrees, and we don't know how to behave.

And you have people being very angry over the level to which their fellow citizens and neighbors are obeying some of the...

It varies between requests and commands by the governing authorities, how we are to, and if and when we are to assemble in public, and what we are to be wearing, and all those things.

And right now, it tends to be those on the left who are infuriated with many of our conservative brethren and fellow citizens who are more leery, typically, of governing authorities, and they're the ones being more involved in protests and so forth.

How do you view that as far as we have gatherings of those who are demanding that their places of business being opened, and they're even gathering in public in defiance of some of the rules that have been laid out on how far you are to be from the person nearest you, and wearing face masks and so on.

They're defying those regulations and so on. How do you respond when you see that as a

Christian who has a deep understanding of politics?

Yeah. The first thing you have to know is that the federal government is a government of delegated powers.

The federal government can do only what the Constitution says it can do. State governments have what they call police powers.

They have broad latitude in protecting life, health, and morals.

And so in the case of a pandemic, they have the power to respond appropriately for the public good.

And so there's a pandemic, and what do you do about it?

And one idea was to confine, quarantine all the most vulnerable people, people in nursing homes, people over 80 years old and so forth, and everyone else, go about your business.

And if you get sick, we'll deal with it. We chose a different approach to quarantine the whole country, except for essential workers and so forth.

And people submitted to that because it seemed reasonable. But at some point, people started saying, okay, now the curve has flattened.

Now the cases are dropping off. We can come out, right? And oh, no. And at some point, the measures start looking to ordinary people, or a significant number of people.

I don't want to say who's ordinary and who's not. But to a significant number of people, the measures start looking disproportionate to the problem they're intended to address.

And they start saying, well, we'll suffer some temporary constraint on our liberties for the sake of this, defeating this pandemic for the sake of our neighbors, particularly the elderly.

But then at some point, they say, no, this is going too far. And they start suspecting those in power of having an agenda.

Chris, you mentioned earlier about trust. We don't put our absolute trust in government.

You do put some trust in government. You entrust power to them, right? But it's never an uncritical trust.

You have separation of powers. You divide power between federal and state governments, between different houses of legislature and so forth.

And you hold them to re -election because you don't fully trust them. And if they're wise, they will say, good, don't fully trust me.

So at first, there's a lot of trust. They're doing what's good for us. But then at a certain point, people start saying, you're up to something.

You're going too far. You're just enjoying this, or something like this. So what these people are doing is,

I can't speak for every one of them, is they are practicing civil disobedience and making their thoughts known to their elected representatives.

I didn't think going into the Michigan legislature with the AR -15s was necessary.

I thought it was threatening and provocative. And if you're going to be crowding around like that, does it kill you to put on a mask, right?

So that seemed irresponsible. Actually, when large crowds gather like that, especially when they're angry,

I think masks make them more intimidating. This is another problem, people walking around with masks.

But we deal with that. But at the same time, people were also appealing to the federal government.

And so Attorney General Barr got involved and said he's going to start looking into some of these state government measures to see if they're violating people's civil rights.

And so that's ongoing. So this is how free people deal with these questions.

There are always tradeoffs in liberty and security. And it's a political question how we work through that and where we lean regarding which tradeoff on life and security.

I mean, if life was the most important thing and not liberty at all, then we could just all shut down forever, eat beans and rice and maybe cabbage, and forget cars.

And then we'd help the environment and we'd help nobody. Nobody would die ever.

But we don't. Life has to go on. And it pleases the Lord that we generate wealth and enjoy the dignity of some reasonable level of prosperity for no other reason than the love of our neighbors and mercy on the weak.

So this is what we're working through as a free people. And that's what it looks like.

And when we come back from our first break, which we are going to now, I want you to explain the difference between a democracy and a constitutional republic under the rule of law.

It seems that the vast majority of people in this country believe we are a democracy when that is not the case.

Perhaps you could distinguish between the two. And then after that, I'd like you to move on to tell us what activities should involve government and which should not.

And if anybody would like to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you've just tuned us in, our guest today for the full two hours, with less than 90 minutes to go, is

Dr. David C. Innes, Professor of Politics and Chair of the Program in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics at the

King's College in New York City. We are addressing the theme, Christ and the

Kingdoms of Men, Foundations of Political Life, which is also the title of one of his recent books.

And if you have a question, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com. chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

We already have a number of listeners waiting to have their questions asked and answered by Dr.

Innes. But before that, I wanted you to go into the difference between a democracy and a constitutional republic under the rule of law and express which best reflects what we are as a nation.

Okay, I'm glad you asked that question. I'm glad you've got a lot of time left. I don't want to bore you with my answers.

I'm not in the business of boring people. And I'm going to use the name Aristotle, and you're not to think, oh, that's going to be boring.

Because just wait. Democracy. Aristotle, back in 400

B .C. or so, he described different forms of government, and he described democracy as one of the unjust forms of government.

Now, why would he do that? Because he lived back then, and he's not as smart as us? No. Right? No, democracy is ruled by the people.

And when he said ruled by the people, he meant ruled by the majority, who tended to be the poor.

And what that looked like, just democracy, was what

Alexis de Tocqueville, in the 19th century here, described as democratic despotism, tyranny of the majority.

That's the rule. It's just the majority gets to say what's going to happen, and the minority loses out, the numerical minority.

Because what they tend to do, if it's just that, they will make laws suit them at other people's expense, whether it's at the numerical minority, like typically the rich, or a regional minority, or an ethnic or racial minority.

That's what we mean by democratic despotism. And the framers of this country, the founders of this country, the framers of our

Constitution understood that, and they said that they did not want to found a democracy, a democratic government, to be sure, of the people, by the people, for the people, but with the people as the fount of authority, under God, of course.

But they looked back at the democratic city -states of ancient

Greece, they say, with horror, the tumult, the oppression, the chaos that would end up in the rise of a dictator, and they were always short -lived that a dictator would arise.

They said, we don't want that. We want a stable, sustainable, and just form of government that was nonetheless democratic.

So they formed what we call a modern republic, with its roots in the people, and the active participation of the people, but you take that popular authority, and you put restraints on it, you have ambition, countering ambition, the separation of powers, which check each other, and you take the most popular branch of government, the legislature, and you divide it between a

Senate and a House, a populous House, which is close to the people, a Senate, which is more distant, elected every six years, and then only one -third at a time.

So it's supposed to find the sober judgment of the people, and then you put legal restraints of a written constitution, a

Bill of Rights, so that the people say what the laws are going to be, through the government, an elected government of representatives, right?

But at the same time, they cannot violate the rights of the individual, the rights of people who happen to be in the minority.

So that takes a democratic government, and it forms it for the common good.

And even Aristotle said, democracy can be a good thing if it's under law, if it governs by law, and if there's a large middle class, so it's stable, and it's got its eyes on something like the common good.

So that's what our system is. It's a republican form of government, which is democratic in nature, but it aims at the common good through these structural means.

And inseparably linked to that, is it not, is the

Electoral College. Ah, yes. Yeah, I had that in mind. Yeah, the Electoral College, so that you don't just have a popular vote, and so -and -so is president.

The Electoral College, I think it was supposed to be deliberative originally, but the advantage that it serves now is that it takes this large, diverse country, and it takes into account what each individual voter wants, but also takes into account states and regions and so forth.

Because we are the United States of America. And so if we just had one person, one vote, a direct popular vote for president in this case, small states would be forgotten.

The large states would carry it, and then the cities would be the sole focus of attention, and flyover country would be consistently and universally that.

So it's a way of uniting the country, making sure the whole country is taken into consideration, and no one is forgotten.

Okay, now we can move on to the differences of what a government should be involved in and what it should not be involved in.

Yeah, and this is the great controversy of our times. One of the reasons

I wrote the book, I told you, because there wasn't another book like it. There wasn't a book that was sort of systematic and rigorous and addressed the fundamental questions.

Another reason I wrote the book is that we're living in a time when we have fundamental disagreements about what government is for.

And we have fundamental disagreements about what government should be doing, what it's for, because we have fundamental disagreements about God, man, and the universe, about what a human being is.

It's what I call the great unraveling. There's been a great unraveling in our society. We kill babies as a point of principle.

Digest that. And we have things like transgenderism, gender fluidity, same -sex marriage, things that have never been heard of since the beginning of time, and now they're embraced as obvious goods.

Even just think of drag queen story time at the public library.

And drag queen television programs being advertised on Fox News. Oh, dear.

I haven't noticed that. I don't know if Fox has anything to do with that, though, to be honest. It could be the local cable company that has a sales team that have the liberty to...

Yeah, that's just stuff that goes on in Pennsylvania. All this is called liberty, right?

Noble liberty. And all of this is supported by the media, public schools, universities, major corporations.

It's public. It's not something that's happening out there. It's public orthodoxy. And yet it's madness, and it's unsustainable.

You can't sustain a society with this sort of stuff going on. And this is what

I call the crisis of liberalism, and this is one of the reasons I wrote the book, to address this unraveling, this crisis in our liberal democracy.

And so I begin the book, as you have to, with an orthodox, robust theology of creation, because that tells you the what -for of everything.

God made the heavens and the earth and all that is in them. And if he made them, he made them for a purpose.

He made the universe for a purpose. Whenever you make something, you make it for a purpose, right?

A chair, a desk, a dresser, you make things for a purpose. God made the universe.

He made us, therefore, for a purpose. And he gave us government to assist us in that purpose.

And so government itself has a purpose. So what's that purpose? It must be knowable.

It must be identifiable. And it must be knowable. And he says in Romans 13, he gave government for our good.

Well, so we must have a good. And you know the difference, the good of a dog is not the same as the good of a salamander, and the good of a salamander is not the good of a human being.

We have a particular good because we're human beings. And God made us in a certain way for a certain purpose.

And that is what's unraveled. We can't agree on what a human being, on what a man or a woman is, on what a human being is.

We have abortion controversy because we can't agree on what a human being is, or when you become a human being.

So this is why I give so much attention in the book to the purpose of government.

If it has a purpose, it can be used or it can be misused. If it's used for its purpose, this can be done well and wisely or not.

But if it's misused, then what happens when you misuse anything,

Chris? If you misuse a tool, you're going to hurt people and break things, whether it's a hammer or a screwdriver or what have you.

You're going to hurt people, break things. And government is a tool that God gives us for our good. And if we use it for purposes that it's not intended to serve, damage, destruction, suffering, oppression, these things will happen.

So it's critically important to understand the purpose of government. In fact, we're going to have you get more in detail involved in that when we return from our midway break.

We have to go to our longest break right now because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of our show because they have to localize

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I've had the privilege of opening God's Word from their pulpit on many occasions, have led youth retreats for them, and have always been thrilled to see their members filling many seats at my

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Solid -Ground -Books .com We will be returning to our discussion with Dr.

David C. Innes momentarily. If you've just tuned us in, we're discussing his book Christ and the

Kingdoms of Men, Foundations of Political Life. But before we return to that discussion,

I just have a couple of announcements to make. Tomorrow, a very close mutual friend of both

David Innes and myself, Rev. Bill Shishko, he is our guest tomorrow.

He is the pastor of The Haven, a congregation of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Deer Park, Long Island, New York.

He's most well -known for being the pastor of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Franklin Square, Long Island, New York, where he served since the 1980s before retiring from there.

But in fact, he was David's pastor for many years. But he will be on, and the plan is, we haven't had, we didn't receive 100 % confirmation yet, but he is supposed to be on with an

Orthodox Presbyterian colleague in ministry, Dr. Gregory Reynolds, who I've had on this program before, and they are both supposed to be discussing something in the area of an appropriate

Christian use of the media, but I don't have the exact title. I hopefully will have that soon.

If I get it from Bill during this live broadcast, I'll try to announce it later. And then

Friday, we have Dr. James R. White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. He is interrupting our weekly coronavirus update with Pastor Joe Jacobs because we had to accommodate

Dr. White's busy schedule, so he will be our guest tomorrow, and then we will resume the regular

Friday airing of the coronavirus updates that we've been doing. But Dr. White is also going to be speaking on a topic that we don't have completely lined out for us yet, so that topic will be announced very shortly,

God willing. And then I'll jump all the way to Monday, the 11th of May. Dr.

Kurt Daniel is our guest once again for the third time to discuss his monumental book, 900 -page hardback,

The History and Theology of Calvinism, and I'll give you a heads -up, the first six people who submit very good questions, good enough to be read and answered on the air, the first six will receive a free copy of this very expensive and very valuable book, and that's

The History and Theology of Calvinism by Dr. Kurt Daniel. And then we have phenomenal guests the rest of this month as well.

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Innes at chrisarnson at gmail .com chrisarnson at gmail .com We're talking about Christ and the kingdoms of men, foundations of political life, and before we go to our listeners,

Laszlo, Grady, and the others waiting, if you could continue on distinguishing those spheres of life where government should be involved and where they should not be involved.

Yeah. And you understand the purpose of government if you understand the purpose of all things.

And that we get from a doctrine of creation. God created us, as I said, for a purpose. And what was that?

He gave us His marching orders. Have dominion over the earth. Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth.

And have dominion over the earth. Bring out all its creational potential and so that the knowledge of God covers the earth as the waters cover the sea.

That's the goal. And government has a supportive role in that. It has a subsidiary role.

From the Latin, subsidium meaning help, right? So the government is to help us do what

God created us to do. And certainly after the fall, that means protecting us in our life.

The government's basic, most fundamental purpose is protecting people in their lives.

And this, by the way, is why abortion is a doubly monstrous thing.

In itself, it's monstrous. Killing your own baby. But when the government makes it a legal right to kill the most helpless among us, government should be helping the helpless.

The despised people, the overlooked people, but the unborn in the womb, certainly.

This is part of the monstrosity of abortion. So government, we're not going to take dominion over the earth if we're dead.

If we're afraid to come out of our hovels for all the marauding and so forth. So it protects us in our life.

And then beyond that, there is prosperity, morality, and piety in three words.

But the government, the purpose of government is not to make you prosperous and to give you property.

The purpose of government is not to make you moral or make you Christian. It can't do that.

But what it can do and what it ought to do is provide the conditions suitable for material prospering.

For moral flourishing. For spiritual flourishing.

So for example, the government establishes private property, protection of people's property.

If you have no security in your property, you're not going to develop it for your neighbor's benefit or God's glory to protect people and their property.

Enforcing contracts, patent laws, and this sort of thing provides the infrastructure, the legal and physical infrastructure for our material flourishing.

And then moral flourishing. It can't make us moral. You can't legislate morality in that sense.

But it can protect the environment, the moral environment, for people to pursue a moral life.

And this is uncontroversial. You consider your own neighborhood. Are you allowed to open a liquor store out of your garage?

No! You mean I should stop doing that? Can people open up liquor stores or things like this beside a school?

Do we say, well, my body is my property. I can do what I want with it. I'll sell it on the street. Sexually?

No! This is uncontroversial. Generally uncontroversial. Because the government there is protecting the conditions for people under which people can cultivate their own moral life and the moral lives of their children.

In other words, make it so that it isn't too hard. And it's the same with piety as well.

The religion, it can't make people Christians, but it can establish and protect.

And God establishes government for our good, right? And that includes our spiritual good. Not that it makes us

Christians, but it can protect the conditions under which it is easier rather than more difficult to cultivate our souls, to worship

God freely, to spread the gospel freely. So we don't allow, um, we don't tax churches, for example.

Chief Justice Marshall 200 years ago said the power to tax is the power to destroy.

So we take away that temptation so that churches are free to do the business of churches.

And maybe Sabbath laws used to be unquestioned. But, you know, will somebody be given a permit to have a foot race through the middle of town on Sunday morning making it difficult for people to get to church?

No! You don't get that. Because that burdens people's ability to get to church. Things like this.

This is the purpose of government. Because this supports us in the freedom we have, and the ability we have, to fulfill

God's creation mandate. To be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth, and have dominion over the earth for His glory and righteousness and rule.

So, and there's very little written in this way, but I explain it all in the book.

And I relate it to our creational purpose. I don't just say, I like this, so I'm going to put this in the book.

It's got to be what God says. God's purpose for government. If government is

God's servant for our good, that good must be our creational good.

What He created us to be. And I argue that in my book. And let's go to our first listener question.

Laszlo in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, who I think is a first -time questioner, if I'm not mistaken. Laszlo says, do you think that the church is being salt and light to the world, to include our government?

Do you, do enough Christians have a sufficiently mature biblical worldview to affect change on our nation?

If not, why not? He has something else to say, but I'll wait before I read that. Well, if I understand the question correctly,

Jesus says we should love our neighbors. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Love your neighbor as yourself. Well, how do you love your neighbor through government?

How do you love your neighbor with your vote? How do you love your neighbor by these means? So if I read him correctly,

Christians can be salt and light by doing citizenship in a godly way, by discussing politics, by thinking through political questions in a godly way, by taking their citizen responsibilities seriously as under God and out of love for neighbor.

Does that help? Yes, and I'm going to take a different tack at it and ask the question from a perspective that he may have meant.

I don't know for a fact. In fact, Laszlo, if you want to chime in and send another email to clarify this, but he may have been asking how the church is to be salt and light to the government.

You know, how are we to behave as followers and disciples and lovers of Christ to those who are in authority over us?

I'm just guessing that that may have been what he was intending to mean by that. Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is that when you have a broadly

Christian society, the government is constrained by that.

The government plays to that. There are certain social expectations and the government tries to meet those expectations because it wants to get re -elected.

And there are certain sort of broad political -cultural limitations on what people know they can do.

So, to the extent that we are building a Christian culture, evangelizing, living out consistent

Christian lives, godly homes, and the salt and light of the

Gospel is spreading through the whole dough and transforming it as God wants it to be into a

Christian society, then that will influence and restrain government.

Just think of... How things have changed in the last 50 years as far as government's expectations for itself are concerned.

Beyond that, you are a Christian. You have a certain moral universe.

And when you call your... when you speak to your representative, you say, listen, this is the way

I think. This is what I expect of you. And I'm speaking as a voter. And when a thousand other people do that, when 10 ,000 other

Christians do that, and don't just sit at home but make their opinions known, their

Christian opinions, which come out of their Christian cosmology, then that will be salt and light to the representatives.

And then how you protest as well. You know, you see Antifa protesting.

They're violent. They're nasty. And the liberal media says little criticism about them.

And yet they'll go crazy about as intimidating as some of the pro -Second

Amendment gatherings have been. Some people carrying AR -15s. There's never been, or very rarely that I know, violence there.

And the media is lying when they describe them. I didn't see any footage of swastikas flying anywhere.

No, no, no. I'm not here, I'm not in Long Island right now, but no,

I'm in Manhattan. And before the King's College moved down to Lower Manhattan into the

Financial District, there was something called Occupy Wall Street. Very far left.

Very secular. And oh, they were filthy. Filthy. But when

Christians protest when they come out and make their views known, they should be civil.

They should be remarkable in their difference. Civil. Clean. Leave the place tidier than you found it.

This sort of thing. And respectful. And everything you would expect from a

Christian gathering, making its voice known. So there's a way that you can witness to and be salt and light to civil magistrates.

Many of whom may be Christians, right? But some of whom we know are not. So they should be struck by this.

Now, Laszlo, in the second half of his email, says, subsequently, should the condition of our government then surprise us?

I guess he is insinuating that the Church is failing in being salt and light to the government.

And that's why they're in the abysmal state that they're in. Let me notice this.

This is a majority Christian country. You take a poll and most people confess

Christ. Most people say they believe in God. There's more to being a Christian than believing in God. But most people will make a

Christian profession of some sort or another. And there's certain attendance in church and so forth. But you look at advertising.

You look at television shows and movies, and it's as if it were an atheistic country from one coast to the other.

Now, why is that? This is something worth considering. What sort of salt and light are we being?

What sort of Christian presence are we being to the media industry, to corporations, to nothing of government?

If you look at government and say boy, they're very... And I think they're more respectful of Christianity than corporations and media are.

I say they, I mean many of them. The...

What is it about the church that the country can be so comfortably secular with such a large

Christian presence? Maybe we hold them. We've slowly come to hold them to a lower and lower standard.

How you change that is another question. And his final word in the email is, although the

Lord is sovereign, he does use means, should then not a revival of the church precede the awakening of our nation?

Well, we should always be praying for reformation and revival. Revival and reformation.

It takes both. If you don't have reformation, you have a revival of the church with one foot still in the swamp.

Contagion spreads, and then you need revival again. You need reformation as well, so that the

God's means of grace are rediscovered and sustain the church. But they'll always be waxing and waning.

But the amazing thing, Chris, is that after 2 ,000 years, there is still a church.

There is still a vibrant witness. And that is because the Lord is

God, and Christ is the Savior. Amen. By the way,

Laszlo, since you are, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, a first -time questioner, you have not only received a free copy of Dr.

Innes' book, Christ and the Kingdoms of Men, Foundations of Political Life, compliments of PNR publishing, but you have also received, since you're a first -time listener, a new

New American Standard Bible, compliments of the publishers of the NASB. So, thank you for contributing to the show with such excellent insights.

And we have a very loyal listener, who is also a loyal financial supporter of this program, Grady, in Asheboro, North Carolina.

And Grady says, Great show, Chris and Dr. Innes. The last few years a movement has arose in the church, pushing social justice, which originated in Marxism.

The brethren pushing this have also pushed a political party that pushes for the murder of babies and the homosexual agenda, which are abominations to the true and living

God. How do you respond to those doing this? Yeah.

In 2011, I co -authored a book with somebody from the

Sojourners group, called Left, Right, and Christ, and we went back and forth on these questions.

And this is a more rigorous book, Christ and the Kingdoms of Men, and it simply speaks from the scriptures.

They need to get their...

They don't understand the purpose of government. They too often think that government is the means by which to address things such as poverty, and it's not.

I mean, there's things that government can be doing to get out of the way of wealth creation, to be encouraging wealth creation, but often the redistribution of wealth is a big theme of theirs, and that is not

God's plan for prospering His people and the population. There's this creation, and it was to be unfolded, developed, and wealth can be created.

Just think of a fallow field, right? And with, you know, grass and some nuts, and you plow the field, and you increase the wealth of the field a thousand -fold, and if you're secure in your property, a ten -thousand -fold.

And that feeds the world, and then the rising tide lifts all boats, especially if the government is protecting people's lives and protecting people from oppression from each other, so that it's not just a democracy, but a republic, and everyone is secure regardless of their race, ethnicity, region, or what have you.

yeah, they typically trust the government to do things as though the government had no sin.

The problem, this is what we call the political problem. The political problem, Grady, is an age -old problem, and it is how do you enable the government to protect the governed, and at the same time oblige them to constrain themselves.

Right? To protect us from each other, you need to give government power. But that government is full of people like us.

They're selfish, they're unwise, and so forth. We try to put the best in power, but they're still human, all too human.

Like Lord Acton said, power tends to corrupt because they're human like us. So how do you constrain them?

Well, by a republican form, by the rule of law, and so forth.

But the social justice warriors typically think the government could do no wrong. We just give them lots of power, and then they'll rearrange everyone's property, and then everyone is happy.

And they vastly underestimate the sinful nature. So a doctrine of creation involves a doctrine of the fall, and taking that seriously as the founders of our country did.

And so I think that's one of their big problems, is they entrust government to do what

God never intended it to do, and they underestimate the sinful nature of those in government.

And they seem to prioritize things that are far less evil than the murder, the brutal torture of unborn children.

You have... Yeah. And it's also a straw man, because you have the left saying that we who are conservatives do not care about the poor.

And Jesus said, such great compassion and interest in the poor, and commanding his disciples to care for them.

And what they are either ignorantly misunderstanding, or purposely avoiding, is the fact that we are not saying that the poor should just be left to starve and die without any assistance.

We are just saying that it's not the government's role to be assisting the poor in the way that these folks believe it is.

Yeah. And you know, in their... in all fairness, in their defense, they tend also to be very concerned about oppressed minorities.

And there is oppression. And sometimes in conservative circles, sometimes, we don't give that enough...

give it the attention that we should. And the poor... the government needs to have its attention on the vulnerable, whether they're a vulnerable racial minority, or a vulnerable religious minority, or the vulnerable poor.

Because rich people... rich and privileged people... and you know, there is privilege.

You're born into a rich family, you have certain privileges. You're born a poor family, you've got to work for everything, and against people's suspicions, and so forth.

But the rich and privileged can take care of themselves. They've got their gated communities, they've got their stable families, they've got their great wealth, and that carries them and protects them.

Whereas people who are more marginal in one way or another are more vulnerable to abuse by the powerful.

So the government needs to have a special concern for those who are especially vulnerable.

And of course, the most vulnerable are the babies in the womb, particularly these days. But not only them.

And yes, that's a monstrous thing, and I've underscored that in my time with you. But there are other things which the social justice warriors are concerned about, but I would say very often in the wrong way.

They think that government can come in and just give money to the poor.

But this is problematic in all kinds of ways. It's not biblical. When Jesus said, in the

Psalms and so forth, blesses the one who cares for the poor. He was talking about private giving.

There's no trace of government welfare programs in the Old Testament or in the words of our

Lord. He's talking about you, your responsibility to help the poor. And we've learned that we can help the poor not only by our crisis pregnancy centers and Bowery Mission in New York City and things of this sort, but also by wise growth economic policies which provide jobs for people and hopeful futures of profitable labor.

And the social justice warriors vastly discount that. Yes, and they have also just switched the object of racism.

They haven't really sought to eliminate racism.

They've just switched the target, which is old white men. It's fascinating to me to watch anchor men and women on major media outlets disparagingly speak of old white men and not see that as being a racist commentary and even disparaging against the aged.

It's just amazing to me. It's an uncharity. It's a failure of charity of its own sort.

People talk about white privilege. My response to talk about white privileges is, in America, it's difficult to be black.

There are burdens you face and suspicions and cultural hurdles you have to face that white people generally don't have to face.

I say generally because life is diverse, but there shouldn't be white privilege.

There should be human privilege. The sort of privileges that they resent some people having should be universally enjoyed.

These things are difficult to say in public because there's a lot of shouting. And, Grady, you've also won a free copy of the book we are addressing,

Christ and the Kingdoms of Men, Foundations of Political Life, thanks to our friends at PNR Publishing, and thanks to our friends at CVVBS .com,

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who will actually be the ones physically shipping that book out to you.

We are going to our final break. It's going to be a lot quicker than the last breaks, so if you would like to join us on the air with a question, if you want to get in line behind those waiting, do so immediately so we can squeeze you in before we're out of time.

Chris Arnzen at gmail .com Chris Arnzen at gmail .com, and don't go away, we'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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That's l -i -y -f -c .org. Welcome back.

This is Chris Arnzen. And if you just tuned us in, our guest today for the entire program has been

Dr. David C. Ennis. And we have been discussing his book, Christ and the

Kingdoms of Men, Foundations of Political Life. And our email address, if you have a question to send in quickly, because we're rapidly running out of time, is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

chrisarnzen at gmail .com. We have John in Bangor, Maine, who wants to know, do you agree with the statement that government is a necessary evil?

I'm sorry, I laughed. I laughed because there's debate over whether government is a function of the fall.

If there had been no fall, would there still be government? And there's debate over that. So if government is a necessary evil,

I assume that's something to do with, that relates to the fall. God says,

God gives, again, God gives government for our good.

Civil magistrates are God's servants. So, I mean,

Luther calls civil magistrates God's hangmen. That sounds like an evil thing, but a necessary evil thing.

The sword, God gives the sword to the civil government, which is a grisly and bloody affair, the wielding of the sword and all lesser punishment.

So that sounds like a, it's a fair question, is government a necessary, is it an evil thing, punishment?

No, but it's more than just punishment. It also gives praise. In 1 Peter chapter 2, it says that to pray for those in authority so that they, oh, no, that's something else.

Peter says that the purpose of government is to punish evil and praise what is good.

So it's not just punishing evil, the grisly part, but also praising what is good, commending well -doing, encouraging love and sacrifice among us.

So that's not an evil. And even though if there weren't the fall, would there still be government?

And I come back to things like, you know, your homeowner's association, your condo association or student government, you have these governments of organizations, not because people are evil and they need a firm hand, but because we have a shared life and government helps us carry out that life, organize that life.

So you have student government, you have a president, a vice president, treasurer, events organizer, helps bring people together and lead them to the most flourishing relationship, the best carrying out of their common purpose.

That's not necessary, but it's not evil. Just like in the Old Testament, there were requirements for buildings to provide safety.

And although I believe that the government oversight of the construction realm has gone crazy and has become micromanaging and so forth, there are still things that preserve the safety of those in the community around these people who are building either office buildings or their own homes.

And also protecting the lives of those in that family itself. And the fall, although it brought total depravity to the human race, even if the fall had not occurred,

I don't believe humans would be omniscient and that would mean that we don't know everything about what keeps a building safe and so on.

Yeah, in my book I distinguish between the purpose of government for human beings as fallen and the purpose of government for human beings simply as created.

So there is a good of government simply as... I mean, if there were no fall, we would still need government to help us build interstate highways and establish which side of the road we're going to drive on and things like that which are just common to human affairs.

Now there is a debate over that. There are a lot of people, especially in the libertarian realm, that believe that the private sector would be providing better solutions because there is competition involved to things like the roads and the bridges and things like that.

Yeah, and it's amazing what human beings can sort out on their own. Like you have a crowd in New York City, like right outside Penn Station, you got a crowd of people on one corner, a big crowd of people on the other corner and the light changes green and they head for each other.

And you go, oh my, it's going to be a disaster. They're going to hit each other, right? But they don't. And nothing bad happens.

And if anything does, people say, oh, excuse me. Yes, in New York. Oh, excuse me. I'm sorry. But at the same time, even

Milton Friedman, I mention this in my book, even Milton Friedman, the great libertarian economist, said that there's a certain role for government in establishing certain limited monopolies and so forth and providing common goods in terms of infrastructure and so forth.

So even unless you are a radical sort of anarcho -libertarian, which is way out there.

By the way, I know some who are orthodox Presbyterians. They're probably in the minority there, though.

Yeah, yeah. But so, yeah, there's always disagreement, but that's basis for spirited debate and iron sharpening iron, if you've ever heard that phrase.

Well, thank you, John Bangermane. Make sure we have your address there. So that CVBBS .com

can ship you out a free copy of the book by Dr. David C. Ennis. We are addressing

Christ and the Kingdoms of Man Foundations of Political Life. And we thank, once again, P &R

Publishing for providing these giveaway copies. And if you want to find out more about what

P &R Publishing offer, go to PRPBooks .com, PRPBooks .com.

We have Susan Margaret in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, who says,

Can you please, with precision, tactfully refute the notion that is constantly regurgitated by the left that abortion is an issue only between a woman and her doctor?

That's, you know, one thing to butt in here on that question. It's interesting how the left says that all the time, but they want the government to fuel this infanticide with billions of taxpayer money.

But anyway. Yeah, yeah. With precision, tactfully.

I like that. To be precise, government is to protect the lives of the innocent.

And behind that statement, that formulation that she quotes, glosses over the humanity of the baby.

What is perfectly obvious to every common sense, the common sense of every mother.

She doesn't say, I'm carrying a fetus. She says, I'm carrying my baby. If she loses the baby, she says,

I lost my baby, and she weeps. She doesn't say, I lost my blob of tissue, and, oh well, the way you lose a tooth.

No, everyone knows what's going on, and that is just using lips and speech for deception, whereas God gave us lips and speech for elucidating and communicating the truth.

And the left will often talk about science. Oh, Christians don't believe in science.

They're science haters, which is, of course, absurd. But when it comes to abortion, they don't want to look at science.

The baby has a separate blood type, a separate DNA. It is scientifically a separate human being.

And to say that it should be treated as though there's no third person involved between a woman and her doctor is just somewhere between willful ignorance and outright deception.

Right. You have my body, my choice, except when it comes to hydroxychloroquine. You know, it's very bizarre how they contradict themselves so frequently.

Well, thank you so much, Susan Margaret, and you have also won a free copy of the book, Christ and the

Kingdoms of Men, Foundations of Political Life, compliments of our friends at P &R Publishing.

And we have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, and Arnie in Perry County says,

How do we maintain a Christian manner with which we disagree with those on the opposite side of the political aisle and sometimes even from the opposite side of the theological aisle when it comes to having our disputes over issues that we vitally disagree on that are even as serious as the murder of infanticide?

That's an excellent question. It starts in your personal relationship with God, of course.

You take what God is cultivating in you, what you cultivate by the means of grace, in the prayer closet, in the worship hall, in your spiritual growth, into the public square.

And if you neglect it in the prayer closet and in the place of worship, don't expect a good

Christian character to show up when the battle is fierce and the flames are flying in public debate.

So there's that end of it. The other end of it is to remember who your

God is. Remember what is ultimately true, who is ultimately in charge, who is reigning over the universe and is not troubled.

He governs the universe in unruffled calm.

Why do the nations rage in vain? Psalm 2 again. The Lord, they say, let's break his chains and overthrow his government.

And he laughs because he's established his son in Zion. It's much easier to address people in disagreement calmly and winsomely when you've internalized these truths to the marrow of your bones.

The knowledge that God is God and he reigns and he is good and he is your

God and he loves the unborn, he loves your country, he loves the 30 million unemployed in our country right now more than you do, though it is right for you to love them.

And you are an instrument of his grace, an instrument of his love, and you're not out doing it on your own because he's not watching or something like this.

Well, I apologize. To internalize those things is the answer, I think. Yes, and I apologize to all of those who I could not address your questions because we're out of time.

And I want to make sure that you remember to go to prpbooks .com to find out more about this book and other publications of PNR Publishing.

And I would actually ask you, after you visit prpbooks .com, to order your books at cvbbs .com,

our sponsor, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, who carry all of PRP Books' titles.

And for more information on all of Dr. David C. Innes' books, go to dcinnes .com,

that's d -c -i -n -n -e -s .com. I want to thank you so much,

Dr. David C. Innes, and I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who wrote in today. I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater