Govt 330 notes
Covenantal
Arrangement
The covenantal view of life affects all aspects of life.
Therefore, what would be the biblical view of
government The holy commonwealth view: God is
over all of life.
Biblical view of govt and economics.
Government is the gift of God for the orderly
procedure of man in a fallen world
Government of God, by God, for
man. Holy Commonwealth
Arrangement
This means we must base our laws upon the
scripture. For instance, the 10 commandments.
A biblical economy: based on private property
(because thou shalt not steal) Exodus 20:15
Modified by justice
Biblical Christian charity vs. welfare. Genesis 1:26-27
tells man to have dominion over the earth Luke
16:1-4.
We reject welfare by the very nature of it. Because
instead of looking to God for their support instead of
looking to man.
Biblical Christian education: assumes the root of
reading writing and arithmetic
Most of us operate on a half orbed Christianity. We
don’t mess with faith and reason
We must fully understand other worldviews fairly
and thoroughly.
To reinterpret all of life through a biblical
perspective. Biblical view of War
Defensive Wars: Imperative
Offensive Wars Prohibited, because we are claiming
to lord over that nation.
One exception: Holy wars. (the 1st crusade was to
liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims the crusades
were later perverted by both Christian and muslims
for control of the spice trade)
The government can justifiably rebelled against if it
prohibits the commands of God requires acts
prohibited by God.
Defensive and Offensive are
distinguishable You have to have
absolute truth to have justice.
Without justice, then politics just become a quest for
power.
Those who can’t work and have no means of
provision for themselves. It is the Churches’
responsibility to do charitable deeds.
Christianity is often blamed for the dark
ages. Then the renaissance went back to
greek thought
Impact of successive worldviews on government
economics and law.
-rationalism (1600-1750)
Discoveries of copernicaus and Newton used to
undermine authority of the bible
John Locke: -sociological application of Newton
absolutized.
-man should discover laws of nature that
governs human relationships
Presuppositions of rationalism
1) Man is inherently good (had the intellect to
generate the answers to dilemmas)
2) Perfectibility of Man
3) Inevitability of progress.
4) Government deemed to be creation of man
Our govt is a Republic not a democracy: Democracy
is another word for big government or more
specifically Socialism
The USA currently does not differentiate between
democracy and Republic
-in schools
-by public figures
-by politicians
-by exporting democracy to other countries
Democracy rule by 51%
Out of Rationalism comes democracy
Govt is of man by man and for man’s happiness
Economics and Law: If laws of nature as articulated
by Adam Smith in the Wealth of Nations followed man
would prosper
Market absolutized; divorced from justice
All laws to be based on the laws of nature or
principles derived from them
The French revolution and the American Rebellion
are completely different. The French revolution was
a show of rationalistic ideology by use of force.
The reflections on the revolutions of France by burke
The best critique of rationalism .. electronic on the
library of liberty.com
Utilitarianism
-Jean-Jacques
Rousseau General Will
Jeremy Bentham: Father of English
innovaton Pleasure-Pain Equation
Greatest good for the greatest number:
- majoritarianism
The will of the majority should not be impeded by
any institution
Utilitarianists believe that govt will be the
engine Their program for revolutionizing
society
-universal manhood suffrage
- parliamentary (congressional) revolutionaizing
reform
- Powerful exuctive (preferably a revolutionary )
-Compulsory public school education
Relative law (law cannot be used to impede the
majority )
Romaniicism-Transcendentalism
New ontology and new epistemology
Ontology: Man God and cosmos co-mingled and co
mixed Epistemaology intuialn man being god knows
because he is
Attempt to remae the society in romanitic
transenalist image Advent of modern warfare
The reconstruction shifts from
No Biblical Supernatural only natural – naturalism
Theocentrism to Anthropocentrism
Absolute to process
Antithetical to
Synthetical
Process Philosophy (1860-present)
-relativism: there are no absolutes
-Environmentalism = man is a product of his
material component
Darwin: biological
component Marx
economic component
Crick: chemical
component
-Progressivism : we are moving from lower to hight
simple to complex.
-Developmentalism = Using genetic method to trace
back to origin and trace to present and project into
the future and understand where we are going.
ECONOMICS : govt gains more control of economy
by means of an inflation
LAW: Advent of sociological law; law no longer based
on precedent but on whims of judges.
GOVT: The state then becomes our solution to
everything.
-state becomes redemptive agent
- power concentrated in state in order to
eliminate war, poverty disease and ignorance.
-all of life’s subsumed under the state
Marxism :
Karl Marx (1818-
1883) Triune
Doctrine
Atheism : Dispensed with question of God
Materialism: Man only and animal; matter in
motion
Economic determinism : Iman is a victim of the
economic component of his environment
Dialectical Materialism: essence of Marxism
Hegelian Dialecticism+materialism both A and
non-A are true shift from anthetical thinking to
synthetical thinking triangularlry, relativism,
synthetically
Fuerbachian materialism: man is what he eats.
Presupposition inherent in Dialectal
Materialism Progress is inherent in change
Nature acts dialectically
Conflict is the essence of change and the dynamix is
progressivism
History is moving inevitably and inexorably through
5 stages 1)primitive communalism
2)Ancient slavocracy
3) feudalism
4) capitalism
5) Socialism
Marxism believed to have come to all these
principles scientifically
Marxism-Leninism
Leninist
component –
Makes sociological additions to marx
Man could speed up the process of history by
smashing the capitalist state by force , violence and
bloodshed.
Rationalism
= balance of power system
nations will naturally aling to preserve the
peace balancer nation : great Britain (1815-
1914)
Process Philosophy = one rotten apple spoils the
barrel Nation state source of competition
conflict and war. Process philosophy say get
rid of the nation state
INternaionalism
Nation-states will gradually surrender their
sovereignty to world-state
“Collective security”
Smash the capitalist state to bring about the
internationl socialist order.
The relationship between Fabian socialism and
communists.
Any war that advances international socialism is a good war.
Any war that impedes the advancement of international
socialism is a bad war.
Fabian socialism are communists who want to bring
about the change about more peacefully
The true nature of the cold war was Fabian socialism
vs Marxism
How the far east was lost. Book on the
cold war Ww2 good war
Vietnam bad war
Suharto 1965 bad
war
Afghanistan: good war (no one
cared) Nicaragua: bad war
Gulf war (91): bad war
(Discuss marixism ) September 30
th
or
October 5
th
essay question.
The soviets overran Angola by using Cuban troops.
Because they didn’t have toovercome the racial
barrier.
The U.S. paid for ww1 and
ww2 The consequence
of ww1
Soviet controlled Russia
Consequence of ww2 = A communist
controlled Empire.
Stallin insisted on d-day because he didn’t want the
allies to invade through eastern Europe because he
wanted soviet influence to spread through Eastern
Europe.
The true cause of the cold-war is a communist
empire. Communism
International socialism (Soviet
communism) Nationalism socialism
(Nazis)
Terms become Anachronistic:
Public Welfare: In the welfare of the
state Public Interest: in the interest
of the state Public funds: nothing is
private.
Civil rights: (the founders used civil liberties) if the
state is the giver of the right then the state can
take the right away.
The greater equality the less liberty. Because people
aren’t perfect. They are fallen.
Authoritarian regimes
-Sadam Hussein
Military ilgarchies (juntas)
Latin America : brazil and argentina (1960’s)
Monacrchy vs tyranny
Aristocracy vs
oligarchy Polity vs
democracy
Constitutional
democracy
Presidential
Democracy
Parliamentary
democracy
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