Our illustrious and highly esteemed king, President Barack Hussein Obama, has in time past and continues to the present to regard the Constitution of the United States of America as merely a list of restrictions on government. Therefore, so much of the Constitution does not work for the people because of the limitations it places on government. Still his Eminency, through a form of post-modern receptor oriented textual criticism, has managed as Senator Obama to locate the right to murder an unborn child in the 14th Amendment which ensures a U.S. citizen's right to her property [one's body being one's property]. Even further our president and his attorney general have found that the Constitution supports Universal Healthcare under the governments responsibility to "promote the general welfare" as found in the preamble of the Constitution.
Now those of you who tend to be liberal politically, the points to follow will hardly resonate with you, but for those of you who maintain a more conservative political bent and perhaps call yourselves part of the Tea Party, these assaults on the U.S. Constitution seem unconscionable.
So who is right? Does the Constitution defend the unborn or does it defend the right to murder the unborn? From this point most launch into rhetoric on interpretation or perhaps a discussion on the nature of the Constitution and its authors. I intend to do neither. Rather let us consider the motivation of present parties. When engaging a pro-abortion individual the question is not about what they do but why they do it. What is the motivation behind such abuse of our nation's founding document? The words of the U.S. Constitution are important to U.S. citizens because our lives, families, and religion are protected or at risk through these words. Anyone who says that the Constitution allows for the murder of babies is strongly resisted in thought and word. Why? Because murder of the innocent is a terrible injustice.
Now to the point, the U.S. Constitution [c. 1776] and the present day King James Bible [c. 1769] both use old language, but for some reason we need a new Bible and not a new Constitution. In fact we are so bent on a new Bible that there are hundreds of versions of it. So why don't we be intellectually consistent and have hundreds of versions of the U.S. Constitution, and probably one that allows for the murder of babies? But that would bring our nation to ruin, you say. Oh, and doing the same thing to the Bible hasn't brought our churches to ruin? Can't you just see it, hundreds of versions of the Constitutions leading our nation and hundreds of versions of the Bible leading our churches. Wait, we already have half of that ridiculous scenario. You say, "No one can change the Constitution unless the states [millions of people] ratify it.", but five scholars in a room can make the call as to what words in the Bible are God's words and the vast majority of the Church's leaders are happy to jump on the band wagon. In conclusion, so many in the Church have seen fit to give more respect and care to man's flawed law [U.S. Constitution] than to God's law [the King James Bible].
The purpose of this post is to sharpen the iron of my brothers and sisters who have given more respect to man's law than God's law, by challenging them to be intellectually consistent. Either allow for changes in the Constitution by a select few [Obama&Holder] as you do with the Bible or stand against changes in the Bible by a select few as you do with the U.S. Constitution.
Thank you for your post Brother Van Emmerik. While apples and oranges do not agree with regard to accidents; they do according to certain essential properties e.g. they both participate in the what-ness of fruit. It is within this sphere of essential and accidental properties that I proposed the above question. So then Scripture and the Constitution both participate in document-ness i.e. written proposition-ness. The only accidents under consideration are the respective authority and perfection i.e. completeness of each document. In short the accidents you have proposed are outside the scope of the present discussion, and I would be delighted to deal with them on another occasion, so long as our Lord does not return between now and then.
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Thank you for your post Brother Hall. The purpose of your post in unclear, still there are certain portions of the post that are questionable. I believe most would agree with me that the Constitution is more than just a "great help" to our nation, rather it is the foundation of our nation.
With regard to the Standard Sacred Text position as being extreme or held by extremists, in your fourth "paragraph" you chose to make a logical connection between a small group and extremism. The one does not necessitate the other or else a family or a small church would be considered extreme under that reasoning.
Furthermore, the Standard Sacred Text position can be observed throughout the history of the Church in exegetes and theologians such as Augustine, Musculus, Andrew Willet, William Whitaker, the Westminster Divines, and most notably in Francis Turretin who wrote the standard Systematic Theology for the academic community which remained with the Church through the mid-19th century. There are even those in the recent past and present that have maintained this same historic position. Men like, Dr. Black from Southeastern Theological Seminary who in a conference I attended, defended the findings of Burgon. There are more, Dr. David O. Fuller [ a Princeton grad], Dr. Edward F. Hills [ a Harvard grad], and Dr. Theodore Letis [a University of Edinburgh grad]. Then there is the P.J. Zondervan Professor of Historical Theology - Dr. Richard Muller who maintains in his Post -Reformed Reformed Dogmatics the certainty and authority of the Standard Sacred Text. Then there is Dr. Richard Gaffin Jr. who taught Theology at Westminster (East) and espoused the synecdoche of Holy Scripture, which flies in the face of Modern Scientific Textual Criticism.
These are only the ones in my experience. There are hundreds of others and hundreds of thousands of pages that maintain a similar position but remain inaccessible to most because these writings are in Latin. I say all of this to say that the Standard Sacred Text position is by no means small or extreme. Old and time-tested, yes, but not extreme. Any position has its extremists, and I do not count myself among them. Things like double-inspiration and "people can only be saved out the KJB" I reject. Still, the presence of extremists in the Standard Sacred Text discussion does not make the Standard Sacred Text position extreme.
Ontology Precedes Epistemology.