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Scripture proofs: it starts in Adam's mandate to rule and have dominion over the earth. I would say that it is everybody's right to contribute to society. That is a foundational American principle: we couldn't survive without it. If pagans can contribute to change culture to how they think is best, then certainly Christians can do so as well. And what are Christians but the Church of God?
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The command to have dominion had nothing to do with Adam's religious status except inasmuch as he was created by God to that end. I think this command is not just for Christians but for all men, regardless of their faith or no-faith. It refers not to social or cultural hegemony except inasmuch as these are natural byproducts of human mastery of the earth and the organization of human communities. As such it might imply ordered government and a social contract but it certainly needn't imply any particular form of Government or Social Contract as specifically mandated as an abiding form for the Christian Church to impose or implement on the public scene.
Your inference of 'a foundational American principle' being the right to contribute to society is similarly beside the point. I am not particularly interested in American principles, at least not in the context of this discussion. You might not be surprised when I tell you that I do not consider the US to be now, or ever to have been a "Christian Nation". This comes not from any anti-patrotic sense, I am as profoundly sensible of the 'blessings of liberty' as the next man; rather my rejection of the idea stems from a conviction that states, whatever their form, cannot really be Christian in any meaningful sense even though they be stocked to the rooftops with individual Christian people.
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"Go and make disciples of all nations." "Preach the gospel to the ends of the Earth." Preaching Christ and him crucified has all kinds of everyday implications. Christ can be preached in schools, in the work place, in media, in social activities. But it is not just saying the name of Christ when we preach him. When we preach Christ as the wisdom of God, we are making claim to all areas of life. Christ can be preached by the astonomer by him having a worldview that the universe was created. Christ can be preached by the mathematician who believes that math points to an ordered universe. Christ can be preached by the medical doctor when he offers hope to a suffering patient. Christ can be preached by the artist who paints a picture that adequately expresses a correct view of the world. Christ can be preached by the musician who seeks to write songs that proclaims harmonic balance. When someone visits the elderly, they are impacting the elderly with Christ's love. All these things reveal Christ.
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This also is beside the point. I agree with everything you've said here. Christian politicians, scientists and artists knowingly give glory to God while their atheistic counterparts do the same ignorantly. It is meet and right for Christians so to do.
You will recall that I have fully endorsed the belief that Christians are to be salt and light. What we are about here is establishing whether the Church, or even individual Christians acting singly, or in congress can have any real and transformative impact on society, or indeed whether there is any requirement by God of them that they work to do so. My answer is that they cannot and do not, yours is, apparently that they can and do.
With all due respect, I do not see that you have carried your point.
Some have argued that the Reformation is the perfect example of the church impacting the world for good. With it came widespread public education, more equitable social welfare and, eventually, egalitarian representative government. These are all good things, but I have never seen it established that they didn't have as much if not more to do with an humanistic impetus than with a specifically Christian one, nor can it be established that any of them are supportable as specifically Christian or biblically grounded things.
All through history, what advances we have seen in 'culture' have been mirrored elsewhere by corresponding drawbacks; two rough examples: the Industrial Revolution resulted in the effectual paid enslavement of many thousands of people. Advances in medicine are always a step behind the development of new and more powerful diseases, etc. etc. etc. Furthermore, none of these advances can be shown to have had a specifically Christian origin even though many of the individuals to have come up with them and have implemented them were devoutly Christian in their own religious convictions.
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Communisism is not Christian. We are to reform it, and have a Biblical government (not communism). Darwinism is not Christian. We are to reform it, and have a Biblical view of this. Essentially, what I am saying is, that Calvinism embraces all areas of life, and not one piece of it can go undone.
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Inasmuch as I do believe there to be a biblical mandate for the ownership of property and that this can and necessarily does infer the ownership of capital and it's means of production I would certainly agree that Socialism and Communism are antithetical to a biblically responsible economic position. However, I am not at all convinced that there is such a thing as a 'biblical government' and if there is, it can only be either 1. A tribal rulership by 'judges' and prophets, or, 2. An absolute monarchy. There don't appear to be any other models although at the time Paul wrote Romans 13, the empire was still maintaining a pretence of republicanism.
As for darwinism, I am with you that it stinks of pride and folly and is antithetical to a Christian perspective on natural history.
But again, the idea that the church has a responsibility to reform either communism or darwinism is beyond me. Why would we expect reprobates to affirm Christian principles in these regards? Why would we expect pagans to behave like anything but pagans?
As for your last remark, I don't deny that every place where humans congregate and interact is impacted by religion. What I am saying is that in the Bible we have no blueprint for a Christian society overlaying the secular. We have a model for community, in but not of the world, and charged with the gathering of the elect from every nation, tribe and tongue.
I just don't see any basis for anything more than this.
So, to summarize:
1.The command to 'subdue the earth' had to do with the essentially human (and not specifically Christian) responsibility to be fruitful and multiply, to garner the earth's resources, to make cities, form governments etc. This command was given to Adam and is his bequest to all humanity, elect and reprobate alike.
2. The charge to go and make disciples of all nations [i:e7aa6927bb]is[/i:e7aa6927bb] specifically Christian and [i:e7aa6927bb]does[/i:e7aa6927bb] imply the cultural and social working of these Christians, but does [i:e7aa6927bb]not[/i:e7aa6927bb] imply that the church has any mandate to transform that culture or society.
3. There is no specifically Christian form of government except that which will result from Christ's return and the establishment of His Kingdom, but this is the eschatological hope and is not for the church to implement but Christ, again, when He returns. Paul wrote Romans 13 in reference to a pagan autocracy pretending to be a republic and said that it bore the sword bv God's institution. It was not Christian. No form of government can be Christian because Christ's Kingdom "is not of this world".
4. Things happen in history, the union of church and state under Constantine is something that may have been inevitable, that it did happen manifestly demonstrates that it was God's will. But even as God called Assyria to punish Israel and to subdue her, it does not necessarily imply that God approved the forms following as eternally abiding for His people. The idea of "Christendom" that ensued from this has been both culturally profitable and at the same time deleterious of social order since as often as not the church and state were at eachother's throats and countless human lives churned up in the melee.
In closing, I am just not so sanguine about the church's powers in this age. She has the authority to judge herself as to doctrine and purity, she has a mandate to preach Law and Gospel to a fallen world, she has guarantees that this preaching will be efficacious and she has the hope of Glory. I just don't see that she has much more than this culturally or socially speaking.
