God Views The Church And The Nations As Moral Persons

God Views The Church And The Nations As Moral Persons

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What Is A Moral Person? How God Views the Church and the Nations

He turned the sea into dry land; they went through the flood on foot: there did we rejoice in him. -- Psalm 66:6

Yea, he [Jacob] had power over the angel, and prevailed: he wept, and made supplication unto him: he found him in Bethel, and there he [God] spake with us. -- Hosea 12:4

But before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster. . . . Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage under the elements of the world. -- Galatians 3:23-24; 4:3

1. Ecclesiastical and national societies are moral persons. By a moral person I mean that each of these kinds of society has an understanding and a will of its own, by which it perceives, deliberates, determines and acts. An individual person, is one that has the power of understanding and willing; the name moral person is therefore applied to a society, having an understanding and a will common to the whole body, by which, though made up of a vast number of individuals, it possesses the power of knowing, deliberating, determining, and acting. A moral person may enter into contracts and covenant obligations; and these are as valid when entered into, as the covenant obligations of individual persons. Being moral persons, churches and nations are capable of entering into covenant with God; and that it is their duty to do so, I have demonstrated in the preceding section. Such obligations, when constituted agreeably to the will of God, are necessarily perpetual; for it is not the individuals merely of which the society consists, but the society itself, as a moral person, that covenants. In the case of personal covenanting, no one will question that the covenant obligation extends throughout the whole life of the individual; the same principle prevails in relation to social covenanting: the obligation extends throughout the duration of the moral person.

2. The church is a permanently existing body. It has undergone, indeed, several changes in its external administration, but it is the same now that it was when first constituted. The church in the wilderness of Sinai is identical with the church in the days of Adam and Eve, and continues still the same moral person in the nineteenth century. The removal by death of individual members, does not destroy the identity of the moral person, which remains unaffected by the removal of a thousand generations. Covenant obligation entered into by the church, in any given period, continues of perpetual obligation throughout all succeeding generations, and that too, on the recognised principle that the church continues the same moral person. --David Scott, "Distinctive Principles of the Reformed Presbyterian Church," pp. 61-63.

In days long posterior to the time of Israel's deliverance from Egypt, the Church sang, "He turned the sea into dry land: they went through the flood on foot: there did we rejoice in him" (Ps. 66:6). The Church, posterior to the advent of Christ, is represented as a house in which Moses had served, but which Christ had built, and over which, as well in the days of the patriarch as in the last times, He ruled as a Son (Heb. 3:2,6). And to the church existing in all times, unquestionably belongs the inimitably beautiful description,--"Christ also loved the Church, and gave himself for it; that he might present it to himself a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish." Since the Church, then, is a body, her standing is independent of the individual members who may be in her communion; as a responsible agent, even as an individual, she may come under obligation [i.e. by covenanting -- SWRB] and fulfil it; and through every age of her existence, be held bound to duty by her engagements. The same principle which is applicable to the Church as a whole, behoves to be contemplated by every Section of her in given circumstances. If the whole Church might enter into covenant engagements, as in Abraham, which would entail obligation throughout successive sages, ought not every community thereof, as a part of the whole, to bind itself before the Lord to services to be performed by its successors? If a whole society may Covenant, ought not an individual of that society to do so singly? And if the obligations come under by the one person, not less than those of the whole body, ought to be discharged, ought no t those of a given Section of the visible Church to be fulfilled by it, as a body forming a part of the general community, even as the covenant duties of the whole. --John Cunningham, "The Ordinance of Covenanting," pp. 191-192.

The State, considered in its corporate character, is A MORAL PERSON, with a moral standing and responsibility. It is not the creation of the so-called social compact or of the popular will, but a divine institution based on natural religion. It coheres by a moral and religious bond; and its rulers are the lieutenants of God. If the State is a moral person, capable of performing duty, of committing sin, and suffering punishment, which every one must own who traces the fate of nations according to the divine word, it follows that a nation, acting by its rulers, can accept Christianity and make a public profession of it as the national rule and guide. It had been held together previous to the recognition of Christianity by some form of religion however impure, without which it could not have existed. And the first duty of the civil ruler when brought in contact with Christianity and persuaded of its divine origin is to RECEIVE THE BIBLE AS A REVELATION in a national way. The immediate effect of this is that it constitutes the State a Christian State, and pledges it to purge out its previous religion in the same way as Pagan and Mahommedan nations constituted themselves, according to their false religions, or as the atheistic state was constituted, or rather attempted to be constituted, by the French Convention. A nation must have a religion, and the only question is, which it will adopt. And when Christianity comes to the nation, or to the family, it does not frown on either of these institutions, which also are divine in origin, but enters into them with an elevating purifying power, and sweetly coalesces with all that is purely human in both. These ordinances of God now became vessels by which Christianity is diffused. The national recognition of the Bible as a revelation subjecting the nation to its authority, though a great step gained, does not exhaust the nation's duty, as widely diverging views prevail upon the right interpretation of the Bible. The State must by the necessity of the case ADOPT A CREED which will commonly be prepared by the Church. The same duty that devolves upon an individual Christian confronts a Christian State, and it naturally appends the civil sanction to the Church's creed. It must distinguish between scripture truth and its perversion. The State, by the adoption of a creed, gives utterance to the self-consciousness of a Christian community. It confesses the Christianity it has adopted. . . . The nation, acting by its rulers, must needs adopt a creed, and so distinguish between truth and error in the confession which it makes. It must be Trinitarian or Unitarian, Protestant or Popish, Calvinistic or Arminian, by the necessity of the position. These diverging lines of profession cannot be ignored. More than that; the responsible rulers must proclaim a Christian constitution and adopt a legislation all through the nation's history upon the principles of revelation. A Christian State is competent to make the same confession of its faith that an individual makes. -- George Smeaton, "The Scottish Theory of Ecclesiastical Establishments," pp. 4-6.

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About the Author:
Still Waters Revival Books (SWRB) has been publishing and distributing (free and at discounts) classic and contemporary Christian (Puritan, Reformation, Reformed, Presbyterian, Baptist, Covenanter, Calvinistic, etc.) books, audio (lately MP3s), and videos, worldwide, for over 25 years.



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