St. Augustine: God’s Laws Are Permanent, Where Does That Leave SSM Proponents?

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Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript and Clip of The Day – “Augustine is saying there that no law on earth is superior to a law that has been handed down to us by God, none.  And if a man’s law is written in contravention of God’s law, then that law ought to be changed and it’s not just.  How do you conform that to the realities of life in 21st century America or 21st century United States?”  Check out today’s Clip of The Day for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  We’re all for diversity of thought and we’re all opposed to bigotry, but bigotry against Catholics is perfectly acceptable.  As a matter of fact, I wouldn’t say it’s perfectly acceptable; it is advisable today to be bigoted towards Catholics and Catholicism and the teachings of the church.  One of the things, whether you’re Catholic or not, if you study the fathers of the early church, the men that wrote basically what we call Catholic dogma or canon today, such as one of the greatest examples, St. Augustine, if you read Augustine, you can’t read the first four chapters of Augustine’s Confessions and not have it change your worldview.  If you’re reading Augustine and you’re actually reading those lines and the things that St. Augustine is saying, your first reaction is going to be: Oh, man, have I been wrong my whole life, good grief.  Let me fall down on my knees and beg for penance here.

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Augustine says that if God EVER passed to man a rule of his, that’s the rule.  It doesn’t matter what 21^st century men want the rule to be.  If he ever passed the rule, and if the rule has never been altered by, say, some counsel of vicars of Christ here on Earth, then that’s the rule.  There’s no discussion about it.  If you’re going to discuss it, then you’re going to say: Okay, that God guy is wrong.  Good thing man is here.  It’s a good thing man in the 21^st century is here to correct and to fix that bigot God and all his errors in judgment.  Boy, that Jesus and God guy were bigots.  For example, I’ll give you this.  I started carrying Augustine’s Confessions book around.  [mocking] “Mike, why aren’t you reading Thomas Jefferson?”  I’ve read a lot of Jefferson and I still read Jefferson.  Why not read some Augustine every now and then?  It’s really mindboggling.  Book Three, Chapter VIII, a very brief passage here.  Noodle on this one for a while.

[reading]

In no time or place could it be wrong for a man to love God with his whole heart and his whole soul and his whole mind, and his neighbour as himself. Therefore those sins which are against nature, like those of the men of Sodom, are in all times and places to be detested and punished. Even if all nations committed such sins, they should all alike be held guilty by God’s law which did not make men so that they should use each other thus. The friendship which should be between God and us is violated when that nature—whose author He is—is polluted by so perverted a lust. Actions which are against the customs of human societies are to be avoided according to the variety of such customs; so that that which is agreed upon by the custom, or decreed by the law, of state or people, is not to be violated at the mere pleasure whether of citizen or alien. For every part is defective that is not in harmony with the whole.

But when God orders something against the custom or covenant of a state, though it never had been done it must be done; and if it was [once done but] allowed to lapse, it must be restored; and if it was not a law before, it must be made a law now. In a state it is lawful for the reigning monarch to command something which none had ever commanded before him and he himself h ad never commanded before; and obedience in this event is not against the fellowship of that state: indeed disobedience would be against the fellowship, for it is the general agreement of all societies of men to obey their kings. How much more then may God so act, the ruler of all Creation, whose commands are to be obeyed without hesitation. For as among the powers of human society the greater power has a right to the obedience of the lesser, so God to the obedience of all.

[end reading]

Mike:  That’s Confessions of St. Augustine, Book Three, Chapter VII.  Put that in your pipe and smoke it.  Folks, is Augustine a whacko?  Are the writings of St. Augustine something we ought to put in piles outside of the former employment place of Brendan Eich, former CEO of Mozilla, for example, and burn them?  Should we?  Augustine is saying there that no law on earth is superior to a law that has been handed down to us by God, none.  And if a man’s law is written in contravention of God’s law, then that law ought to be changed and it’s not just.  How do you conform that to the realities of life in 21^st century America or 21^st century United States?  Isn’t that really the purpose and the reason why James Madison — let’s bring Madison and Jefferson into this now.

Jefferson and Madison were so adamant and so impassioned and would not be denied when they were fighting for those statutes of religious freedom and liberty to be added to the Virginia Constitution in 1786.  And then Madison similarly insisted, as did his Virginia contemporaries — Patrick Henry, George Mason, and others — that the newly-created federal leviathan must also be similarly restrained and must not delve into and meddle in the affairs of men and their religious life and faith and the way they live their lives — which they were currently living in the U.S., truth be known, according to those faiths — that the state must always have a hands-off role and must always say that it cannot establish, must not establish a religion.  What was it saying?  Look, there’s already ample religion.  We already have it.  It’s already been handed to us.  We should never be in the business of trying to establish one ourselves, and of us choosing that there ought to be one above all others.

End Mike Church Show Transcript