The Magna Carta of
Humanity: Sinai’s Revolutionary Faith and The Future
of Freedom – Os Guinness, IVP Books, Illinois, 2021, 272 pages.
Premise
The following refrain at the end of each chapter is a summary
of the entire book:
“America
cannot endure permanently half 1776 [the American Revolution] and half 1789
[the French Revolution]. The compromises, contradictions, hypocrisies, inequities,
and evils have built up unaddressed. The grapes of wrath have ripened again,
and the choice before America is plain. Either America goes forward best by
going back first, or America is about to reap a future in which the worst will
once again be the corruption of the best.”
He emphasizes this throughout,
“The ‘land of the free’ is foolishly switching revolutions (from the 1776 way
of freedom to the 1789 way of freedom.)” p. 173.
Praise
It brings joy to all lovers of
liberty to see a book calling America back to her roots, the Declaration, and
the Constitution. If America goes under, so does the rest of the West. As seen
in the book’s title, Sinai figures prominently throughout. Guinness points to
God’s Covenant with Israel at Sinai as the basis of the American Constitution.
Israel promised to keep the Ten Commandments, i.e., the Law of God. As Old
Testament Israel was a nation of laws, and was governed in accordance with the
Sinai Covenant, so America is a nation of laws, and is governed in accordance
with her Constitution.
Guinness clearly identifies the
opponents of American Constitutionalism. “The progressive left is deforming
America, just as the logic of their concept of force and violence has long been
a twisted feature of earlier revolutionary movements.” p. 215. He mentions the
Russian and French Revolutions, including Trotsky who says, ‘I tell you, heads must
roll, and blood must flow,’ and the French Revolution with its head-rolling guillotine.
Guinness goes on to say, “Such revolutionary language can be heard only at the
extremes in America today.” He lists some of those extremes as “among the supporters
of antifa, on the Marxist left among the supporters of Black Lives Matter, some
of the supporters of Bernie Sanders, and even in the US Congress among the ‘Squad,’
who have called for a dismantling of the system.” p. 215.
Yes indeed! Give us 1776 over
1789 any day.
Problem
I
wanted to like this book, (just as I wanted to like his previous Last Call for
Liberty), but Guinness keeps on jarring me to the point that I can hear the
gears grinding and smell the smoke coming from the gearbox as he spins his
wheels while stuck in muddy theology.
I
wish he would spell out to the reader why he did the following:
He
deals with YHWH and Elohim without even mentioning the Triune God!
Unlike
the Messiah and Paul (John 8:44-47; Gal. 1:13-14), he praises Judaism!
He
refers to “both” Hebrew and Christian Scriptures (as if the whole Bible is not
Christian! 2 Tim. 3:16-17.)
He
dedicates his book to a Rabbi, the late Jonathan Sacks, and liberally quotes
him, which may be fair enough because all truth is the Triune God’s truth
wherever it may be found.
Contra
Romans 2:11, (“there is no one who seeks God”), Guinness seems to hold a strange
view of God sitting quietly on the
sidelines waiting for people to seek Him, to which Sacks concurs. “As we saw with the great revelation,
even God limits his freedom with respect to human freedom. (“Is God everywhere”
“No,” the rabbis answered, “God is omnipresent, but he does not enter and
invade the human heart” – a truth pictured in Holman Hunt’s much-loved painting
Light of the World that hangs in Keble College, Oxford.”
I do not wish to be unkind to
Os Guinness. However, (as with his previous book, Last Call for Liberty, he
gives the reader the distinct impression that he, as he ought, holds to God’s free
offer of the Gospel to all humanity. The Gospel invitation can indeed be
construed even from the Light of the World painting, which of course is
in reference to Jesus in Revelation 3:20 saying, “Behold, I
stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I
will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.” Yes, God incarnate
invites all sinners to repent and believe in the Gospel, Mark 1:15. However, here's the rub, Guinness here and elsewhere gives the distinct
impression that he holds the erroneous view that God won’t act in a human heart
unless the human acts first.
The bottom line is that
Guinness, though he appears to have a faulty view of it, unless I’m mistaken, does not even mention the word Gospel anywhere
in this book!
Law
& Gospel
Am
I missing something about Os Guinness? Has he gone over to Judaism in his old
age?
Guinness
is on the right track with the Sinai Covenant and the US Constitution. But it seems
as if he’s blindly driving down all these back roads, backfiring, and getting
bogged down in the deep potholes of Arminianism (including Dispensationalism?)
as he tries to get us there. There’s quicker and better way. It was the way of
the Founding Fathers. It’s called Calvinism, and Covenant Theology is the
high-octane fuel it runs on. Let me elaborate:
Indulge
me. Picture, if you will, rows of newborn babies in those little plastic bassinettes
in a maternity ward. You have no idea who any of these babies belong to. Which
baby is more equal? Which baby does not deserve life? Which baby does not
deserve liberty? And which baby does not deserve to pursue happiness? Ponder
that as you read the following:
I
find it astounding that a Christian (e.g., Os Guinness) can trash the following
words found in The Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to
be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable [sic] Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
“Sadly, Jefferson
himself, and many of the American founders, failed to live up to their own
declaration. But the problem is deeper than hypocrisy. As Sacks comments,
‘“These truths” are anything but self-evident. They would have been considered
subversive by Plato ... and incomprehensible by Aristotle.’ Plato held that
humanity was divided into gold, silver, and bronze people so that society was
inevitably hierarchical, and Aristotle taught that some people were born to
rule and others to be ruled. The plain fact is that ‘these truths’ would have been
anathema to people as diverse as Nietzsche and to the creators of the Hindu
caste system. ‘These truths’ are self-evident, Sacks concludes, ‘only to one
steeped in the Bible.’”
Back
to the maternity ward. If these truths are not self-evident, then which baby is
not created equal? Which baby has not been endowed with certain inalienable
rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Do you need the
Bible to help you figure this out? The self-evidence of “these truths” are
certainly spelled out in the Bible, yes indeed. But would you judge the value
of a child because of skin-tone, hair, lack of hair, hair-colour, chubbiness,
or what? If so, why? What are your biases based upon? By what standard?
Surely,
you can see that these truths are indeed “self-evident”; contrary to the biases
of Guinness, Rabbi Sacks, Nietzsche, and the Hindu caste system.
What
makes a truth self-evident? I’m not sure about all truths, but I believe that
“these truths” (i.e., Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness) are obvious
to all, i.e., self-evident.
Interview
the inmates of the Barlinnie prison. The reason they are in prison means that
they have obviously negatively and criminally affected the Life, and/or
Liberty, and/or pursuit of Happiness of innocent others. Yet while behind bars
they too yearn for “these truths” that are self-evident.
Talk
to genuine refugees. They flee from oppressive regimes. E.g., the flow
invariably is from Communist North Korea to the Capitalist Christian-influenced
South Korea.
Why
is the southern US border being swamped by one-way traffic? Sure, not all of
the thousands upon thousands coming north are genuine refugees, and are
perhaps mostly economic refugees, but they want to enter into “the land of the
free” so that they too can enjoy Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”
Why
do people not want to go to prison? Why do people not want to stay in
oppressive countries? It seems to me that it is self-evident.
Also,
a truth is not a truth because 51% of the people say it is. This is the point
where we bring the Bible into it…
However,
before we actually go to the sixty-six books of the Bible, let’s consider the
context in which Jefferson wrote.
Historically,
there were 56 signers of the Declaration, all who had read it and had given input.
None of the 56 were Judaists, as in practicing Jews. They were primarily
Christian men, men who had come under the influence of Calvinist Christians
such as George Whitefield and the rest of the Calvinist “Black Robed Regiment”.
Their influence was so much that the War for Independence was also referred to
as “The Presbyterian Rebellion.”
One
of the 56 signers was the Princeton theological professor and Presbyterian,
i.e., Calvinist, John Witherspoon. Therefore, the Founders were not a bunch of
Deists with a Third Degree Masonry worldview. Nor did they hold an Arminian
view of the Law and the Gospel, or a Dispensationalist view of Old Testament Israel. No!
Sure, some of these men perhaps may have backslid and even apostatized in later
years, but these signers were predominantly Bible-believing Trinitarians. (Detractors
tend to pick the low-hanging fruit of, e.g., Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin
Franklin who, though greatly influenced by Calvinism, went on to hold
and express some strange views of Christianity.)
Now
back to context. Notice the preamble to the words, “We hold these Truths to be
self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty,
and the Pursuit of Happiness”, for literary context is important to our
understanding of the hyphenated “self-evident”. Again, which truths are
self-evident? – “among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”.
The preamble to that includes the words, “the Powers of the Earth, the separate
and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them”.
Do
you see that? Self-evident has to do with the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s
God. What is meant by Laws of Nature? Neo-Darwinism? Evolutionism? Gravity?
Quantum Theory? Deism? Freemasonry? Postmodernism? No! The Laws of Nature are those things that can be known about
the God of Nature before reading the Bible to study the God of Nature. In other
words, the Laws of Nature is the revelation of God in Nature.
How
does God reveal Himself in Nature? Through the things He has made, the heavens
and the earth and all therein. But here’s the really important part. God
reveals Himself through the things He has made including our conscience. The
word "self-evident" therefore means that we each know in our own heart, i.e., that it is by our conscience, that “We hold
these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”.
Therefore,
the study of Scripture simply verifies these self-evident truths to be truly
true. See, e.g., Psalm 19, Romans 1:18-25; 2:13-15.
And
notice that the Calvinists also mention the Creator, i.e., Triune God, another couple of times,
as the “Supreme Judge”, (i.e., the One who judges every thought and intent of
the human heart, i.e., conscience),
“We, therefore, the
Representatives of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, in General Congress,
Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our
Intentions” - and also the One Who providentially guides the affairs of men,
even in making a Declaration of Independence - “And for the support of this
Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we
mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
Solution
God’s
Covenant revealed to Israel at Sinai with the giving of His Decalogue and the
bringing of Israel into that Covenant, is indeed the template for America and
her Constitution. Guinness spells this out and urges America to get back to her
Constitution or perish. Says Guinness,
“The two principles are addressed generally in the
notion of the rule of law and more specifically in the notion of the
separation of powers and checks and balances – whether in the three
crowns of Jewish governance (king, priest, and prophet), the separation of
powers discussed by Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws, or the
intricate system of checks and balances set in place by the American founders.
James Madison, who had been a student of the Presbyterian pastor John
Witherspoon at Princeton, wrote famously in Federalist 51,
‘It
may be a reflection on human nature that
such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what
is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If
men were angels, no government would be necessary. In framing a government
which is to be administered to by men over men, the great difficulty lies in
this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the
next place oblige it to control itself.’” p, 222.
Throughout the Declaration the founders mention the word "laws" numerous times. It is these “laws” that the signers are claiming to be self-evident. Guinness
mentions many times that God made human beings in His own image. He does not
mention that the founders believed that the image of God included the Ten
Commandments, i.e., God’s Law, written on the heart of every human being. It
was these inherent laws that the founders were calling “self-evident.”
The
Ten Commandments are the revelation of God’s character. The summary of the Ten
Commandments is to love God, and to love your neighbour as yourself – just like
God, the Triune God, does from and to all eternity. The Father loves the Son and
the Spirit. The Son loves the Father and the Spirit. And the Spirit loves the
Father and the Son. Thus, each Person in the Godhead loves God, and He loves
His neighbour as Himself. God loves God, and He loves His neighbour as Himself. Mankind was created to reflect God by loving God and loving
His neighbour as himself. But something went wrong with mankind. Sin!
This
is why the founders insisted on all their checks and balances for government. Unlike
when God created us, humans are now inherently evil by nature. Thus, the Law
and the Gospel. The Law shows us up as sinners. And the Gospel reveals the way
of salvation for sinners - which is only and exclusively through Jesus Christ: “Behold, I
stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I
will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me.”
Jesus
is the Mediator between God and men. Therefore, He, as the middle person in the
Trinity was the One who handed the tablets to Moses on Mount Sinai. It was
through Him that God covenanted with Israel and Israel with God. God identifies
Himself and His grace (i.e., Gospel grace) towards Israel in the preamble to
the Sinai Covenant, i.e., the Ten Commandments. And having done that, He
presents them with His Law written in stone, (i.e., the same Law that was written in mankind's heart upon our creation), which Law was to be applied in every sphere of
activity in Israel, from king, priest, and prophet, rich and poor.
The
Law can be defined as Moral, Judicial or Civil, and Ceremonial. The Judicial
component was for how Israel was to act and interact in civil life, with judges
to judge in civil disputes, and the Ceremonial Law was how Israel was to act
religiously towards God and each other. The Ceremonial Law was the Gospel in
the Old Testament, all of which pointed to THE King, Prophet, and Priest, Jesus
Christ (who was with them at the exodus, Sinai, and the wilderness etc.
Guinness fails to touch on any of this, and thereby misses how the founders
understood Sinai, the Law and the Gospel.
Conclusion
Therefore,
Guinness needs to write another book to follow on from this one, showing that
the original intent of the Founding Fathers was to emulate Israel and Sinai,
not as understood by a bunch of unconverted rabbis, (though there is a wealth of good
material to be found in their numerous quotes!), but rather in the Calvinist
understanding of Israel and Sinai, and therefore of the Law and the Gospel as applied
in the Declaration, of which the same principles were subsequently applied to the Constitution
and its Bill of Rights.
Whenever
God converts any individual, He grants them repentance to turn away from their
sins, and He gives them the gift of faith so that the individual will believe
in the Gospel. When converted, God writes His laws anew on His new creation’s
heart, just as He did when He first created mankind without sin in the
beginning. See e.g., Jeremiah 31:33 with Hebrews 8:10.
Only
the same Gospel that was proclaimed by the “Black Robe Regiment” pre- and
during the Revolution can save America from her present demise. May the Triune God be pleased to raise
up preachers of this Gospel before it is too late.
