George Bush's Theology: Does President Believe He Has Divine Mandate?

Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life ^ | February 12, 2003 | Deborah Caldwell

[Polycarp]

You're blind, as usual.

[yendu bwam]

I am not surprised that you are a Bush-bot, and blame bubba for everything type. That is fitting with your other allegiences.

Bush is a far more moral man than Clinton (in every way), and takes his responsibility to protect American citizens far more seriously than Clinton ever did.

[Desdemona]

At this point, no it is not about oil. The oil fields in the actual USA, all 50 states, can produce more than Middle East - if the enviro-whackos would take a seat. That's not it.

The terrorism is the main point. We Americans are very naive when it comes to this. Terrorism networks are hard to penetrate, according to all reports. And until we neutralize the terrorism, we'll all be stocking up on duct tape, plastic, water, food, etc. Well, and oxygen. Seal off a room, like they're talking about, and suffrocation will kill you before biological warfare will.

[Maximilian]

As a frequent poster on Catholic threads, I have to take issue with your characterization. And I also seriously question the wisdom of turning this issue into a "holy war." FreeRepublic offers us an unparalleled opportunity to discuss issues and exchange ideas in an open forum. Biting the hand that feeds us is both bad policy and ingratitude.

Polycarp, this post is a good example of the sort of thing that should not be allowed. Why should Jim Robinson have to tolerate unfair personal attacks in exchange for the benefits that he has offered to us? Let me say that all Catholics are not so ungrateful. Nor do we all attribute evil motives where there is no evidence for them.

Personally, I agree with CatholicGuy's general premise that a proposed attack on Iraq does not rise to the qualifications of a just war. But that does not give me the right to cross over the line into personal assaults on the characters of everyone who disagrees with me.

Maybe we need a spell-checker that automatically flags words like "bigoted," letting us know that we are straying over the line from intelligent discussion into the realm of character assassination.

[yendu bwam]

The other thing Bubba did was completely decimate our intelligence capability rather than quadrupling it, like should have happened.

No one bears more responsibility for 9/11 than Clinton. History writers in 40-50 years will clearly see that.

[yendu bwam]

But that does not give me the right to cross over the line into personal assaults on the characters of everyone who disagrees with me.

I agree, Maximilian.

[drstevej]

***"CG, are you French?" Almost lost the keyboard with the coffee on that one,lol!***

I put a notch on my desk for every keyboard or computer screen sprayed with coffee. :0)

BTW, I have a method of cleaning coffee out of keyboards that works.

[yendu bwam]

In point of fact, it is the French and Germans who have taken the stances they have taken for the sake of countless illegitimate commercial contracts with Iraq on terms incredibly favorable to the French and Germans.

True. And the French are very afraid of their soon-to-be exposure as an illegal nuclear weapons provider to Saddam.

[yendu bwam]

The terrorism is the main point.

You're right, Desdemona. Bush simply believes (as do I) that we need to get them (and they are a form of evil - that wishes to kill us and our wives and our children) - before they get us. He is right.

[yendu bwam]

There is much more to this situation than meets the eye.

You are correct, BlackElk.

[Chad Fairbanks]

Then why not just quit yer bitchin, and be happy???? :0)

[Matchett-PI]

"In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son...". [Heb. 1:1-2]

God's speaking to us by his Son is the _culmination_ of his speaking to mankind and is _his greatest and final revelation_ to mankind.

(The exceptional greatness of the revelation that comes through the Son, far exceeds any revelation in the Old Covenant as noted over and over again in the first and second chapters of Hebrews.)

Once the writings of the New Testament apostles and their authorized companions were completed, we have everything that God wants us to know about the life, death, & resurrection of Christ, and its meaning for the lives of believers _for all time_. In this way Hebrews 1 & 2 shows us why no more writings can be added to the Bible after the time of the New Testament. The canon is now closed.

It is not accidental that the apostle John wrote that warning (about adding or subtracting to the words of Scripture) in the very last chapter of the very last book of the Bible. [Rev.22:18-19]

For many books, their placement in the canon is of little consequence. But just as Genesis must be placed first (because it tells us of creation), so Revelation must be placed last (because its focus is to tell us of the future and God's new creation). ...

Thus, it is not appropriate for us to understand this exceptionally strong warning at the end of Revelation as applying in a secondary way to the whole of Scripture.

Placed here, where it must be placed, the warning forms an appropriate conclusion to the entire canon of Scripture. Along with Heb.1 & 2 and the history-of-redemption perspective implicit in those verses, this broader application of Rev.23:18-19 also suggests to us that we should expect no more Scripture to be added beyond what we already have.

The warning God gave through John in Rev.22 shows that God himself places supreme value on our having a correct collection of God-breathed writings, no more, no less. He's quite able to see to it that we have them. The closed canon we have today is God's doing. What we have didn't depend on men.

In fact, some of the earliest writers CLEARLY distinguished the difference between what they wrote and the writings of the apostles. In A.D.110, Ignatius said, "I do not order you as did Peter and Paul; THEY WERE APOSTLES, I am a convict; they were free, I am even until now, a slave".

Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would see to it that the disciples would be able to remember and record without error all that he had said to them when he was with them. [John 14:26; 16:13. See also: 2 Pet.3:2; 1 Cor.2:13; 1 Thess.4:15; and Rev. 22:18-19].

So in compiling the canon of Scripture, the work of the early church was not to bestow divine authority or even ecclesiastical authority upon some merely human writings --- but to RECOGNIZE the divinely authored characteristics of writings that already had such a quality.

This is because the ultimate criterion of canonicity is divine authorship --- (as Jesus promised) --- NOT human or ecclesiastical approval.

In A.D. 367 the Thirty-ninth Paschal Letter of Athanasius contained an exact list of the twenty-seven New Testament books we have today.

The Apocrypha is not divinely authoritive.

If the sovereign God thought that the Apocrypha should have been included in the canon of Scripture, it would be there.

Even though Jerome included those books in his Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible (A.D. 404) he specifically said himself that they were not "books of the canon" but merely "books of the church" that were helpful and useful to believers.

The Roman Catholic Church didn't even declare the Apocrypha to be a part of the canon until 1546. In affirming the Apocrypha as within the canon, RC's held that the RCC had the authority to constitute a literary work as "Scripture".

The Apocrypha CONTRADICTS the Scriptures, but they do serve to support Rome's teachings -- such as prayers for the dead and justification by faith _PLUS_ works, not by faith alone.

REFORMERS deny that Rome can make something to be Scripture that God hasn't already caused to be written as his own words. The Apocrypha are not "God-breathed" words, and they weren't even considered to be Scripture by Jesus or the NT authors.

Roger Beckwith writes: "On the question of the canonicity of the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha the truly primitive Christian evidence is negative."

(The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church and Its Background in Early Judaism - London: SPCK, 1985, and Grand Rapids: Eerdman's, 1986 - esp. pp 436-437)

The preservation and correct assembling of the canon of Scripture was an integral part of the history of redemption itself. Just as God was at work in creation, calling his people Isreal, in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and in the early work and writings of the apostles, so God was at work in the preservation and assembling together of the books of Scripture for the benefit of his people for the entire church age.

God's greatest revelation to mankind was written down by the apostles. We have everything we need to know about the life, death and resurrection of Christ, and its meaning for the lives of believers for all time.

No more writings can be added to the Bible after the time of the New Testament.[Heb 1:1-2 Rev.22:18-19]

Only those who don't believe that God is sovereign would doubt his faithfulness to his people and think that he would allow something to be missing from Scripture for almost 2,000 years that he thinks we need to know for obeying him and trusting him fully. The canon of Scripture today is exactly what God wanted it to be, and it will stay that way until Christ returns.

The apostle Paul: "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man (one of "the brethren" in whom is the Holy Spirit) makes judgements about all things, but he, himself is not subject to __ANY__ man's judgement". [1 Cor.2:14]

CAVEAT reiteration: Unless one has "the mind of Christ" he will consider the infallible Word of God (Scripture) as "foolishness" and won't be able to discern spiritual truth from error, so what I wrote above is only for those who have "ears to hear".

[ultima ratio]

Of course the Pope opposes this war. He is a liberal, blind to the suffering of the Iraqis under Saddam, adverse to whatever the US proposes to the contrary. Not surprising at all.

[Matchett-PI]

"Cute. On par with your usual anti-Catholic histrionics." ~ Polycarp

On the contrary. I am pro-catholic church.

The universal church is the only Christian church.

Unfortunately, you don't understand that there is a huge difference between the tyranny that is in Romanism and the freedom that is in the holy catholic church.

America's founding fathers were Calvinist *Christian* libertarians, believing in INTERNAL (self) restraint.

"In terms of population alone, a high percentage of the pre-revolutionary American colonies were of Puritan-Calvinist background. There were around three million persons in the thirteen original colonies by 1776, and perhaps as many as two-thirds of these came from some kind of Calvinist or Puritan connection" (Douglas F. Kelly, The Emergence of Liberty in the Modern World — (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992), p. 120.

"The U.S. Constitution is a Calvinist's document through and through."

And because of that, they made sure that in America, one man’s liberty will not depend upon another man’s (religious) conscience (as in Europe)!

Dr. George Bancroft, arguably the most prominent American historian of the 19th century — and not a Calvinist — stated:

"He who will not honor the memory and respect the influence of Calvin knows but little of the origin of American liberty"

The 55 Framers (from North to South):

John Langdon, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Nicholas Gilman, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Elbridge Gerry, Episcoplian (Calvinist)
Rufus King, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Caleb Strong, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Nathaniel Gorham, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Roger Sherman, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
William Samuel Johnson, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Oliver Ellsworth, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
Alexander Hamilton, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
John Lansing, Dutch Reformed (Calvinist)
Robert Yates, Dutch Reformed (Calvinist)
William Patterson, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
William Livingston, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Jonathan Dayton, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
David Brearly, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
William Churchill Houston, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Benjamin Franklin, Christian in his youth, Deist in later years, then back to his Puritan background in his old age (his June 28, 1787 prayer at the Constitutional Convention was from no "Deist")
Robert Morris, Episcopalian, (Calvinist)
James Wilson, probably a Deist
Gouverneur Morris, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Thomas Mifflin, Lutheran (Calvinist-lite)
George Clymer, Quaker turned Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Thomas FitzSimmons, Roman Catholic
Jared Ingersoll, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
John Dickinson, Quaker turned Episcopalian (Calvinist)
George Read, Episcopalian, (Calvinist)
Richard Bassett, Methodist
Gunning Bedford, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Jacob Broom, Lutheran
Luther Martin, Episcopalian, (Calvinist)
Daniel Carroll, Roman Catholic
John Francis Mercer, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
James McHenry, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Daniel of St Thomas Jennifer, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
George Washington, Episcopalian (Calvinist; no, he was not a deist)
James Madison, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
George Mason, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Edmund Jennings Randolph, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
James Blair, Jr., Episcopalian (Calvinist)
James McClung, ?
George Wythe, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
William Richardson Davie, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Hugh Williamson, Presbyterian, possibly later became a Deist
William Blount, Presbyterian (Calvinist)
Alexander Martin, Presbyterian/Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Richard Dobbs Spaight, Jr., Episcopalian (Calvinist)
John Rutledge, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, III, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
Abraham Baldwin, Congregationalist (Calvinist)
William Leigh Pierce, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
William Houstoun, Episcopalian (Calvinist)
William Few, Methodist

The founders identified the 13 colonies of their union as "Free Protestant". As Protestants, their Declaration in 1776 that "all men are created equal (in authority) " was consistent with the doctrine of their founder, the man who first openly protested the hierarchy of men (the pope and priests in the Roman Chatholic Church) over Christians. His name was Martin Luther. He was a Roman Catholic priest from Germany who began the "Protestant Reformation". He stated the following:

"I say, then, neither pope, nor bishop, nor any man whatever has the right of making one syllable binding on a Christian man, unless it be done with his own consent.

Whatever is done otherwise is done in the spirit of tyranny...I cry aloud on behalf of liberty and conscience, and I proclaim with confidence that no kind of law can with any justice be imposed on Christians, except so far as they themselves will; for we are free from all."

INTRODUCTION TO THE LIBERTY PRINCIPLES IN AMERICAN POLITICS
by Stephen L. Corrigan - http://w3.one.net/~stephenc/fun.html

[Siobhan]

Podiatry is not a thriving practice in third-world countries.

This may be one of the most idiotic things you have ever posted. I imagine in part it comes from your lack of experience in third world nations as well as your desire to belittle and demean Polycarp.

[Siobhan]

Your cut and paste is woefully wrong as it relates to the Episcopalians on the list.

[sinkspur]

It looks as though only Divine Intervention will straighten out the moral sewer this once great nation has become.

Maybe you could start your own nation, with you in charge.

Then you, at least, would be happy.

Hoping for some kind of cataclysm to teach your fellow citizens a lesson is, frankly, sick. Some of that hellfire could splash over in your back yard, too.

[conservonator]

BTW, I have a method of cleaning coffee out of keyboards that works. M

How 'bout beer?

[sinkspur]

I imagine in part it comes from your lack of experience in third world nations as well as your desire to belittle and demean Polycarp.

It comes entirely from my desire to belittle Polycarp's Fallwellian-Robinsonian notion that God needs to hurl down some hellfire to teach sinners a lesson.

It's a childish notion that is human in origin, not divine.

[Siobhan]

Most of the world is anti-Catholic. Get used to it. I've never seen Catholics complain more about it than I have here.

FreeRepublic is here to supposedly act as a forum for those who love the Constitution and the Republic in which we live. It does not have a secondary heading that says "except for you Catholics". Where Catholics live in large concentrations we rarely encounter the kind of hostility that comes out on internet forums like this one. And encountering the hostility means making a choice to fight it or to roll over and play dead.

"Getting used to it" or "rolling over and playing dead" is not the answer. And if you recognize that most of the world is "anti-Catholic" are you suggesting that we should shut up and accept the back of the bus or second-class citizenship?