Dr Paul Allen

The New Testament gives us some broad principles on how we are supposed to respond to government. For example, Romans 13 elaborates on the origin and institution of government as something that God ordains. The great theologian Augustine said that government is a necessary evil, that it is necessary because of evil. And most theologians in the history of the church have said that human evil is the reason even corrupt government is better than no government at all. The function of government is to restrain evil and to maintain, uphold, and protect the sanctity of life and of property. Given this function, the Christian understands that government is ordained of God, and so Christians , first of all, are called to respect whatever it is that God institutes and ordains. For God's sake we are called to be model citizens. We are told to bend over backwards to honor the king or be obedient to the civil magistrates. That doesn't mean a slavish obedience to the civil magi...

Portrait of Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale in 1800. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Revelation 13:1–10 “The beast…was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And authority was given it over every tribe and people and language and nation” ( vv. 5–7 ). Separation of church and state within the context of the founding documents of the USA is a principle that has been grossly misunderstood for many decades and passed around the world as Biblical. Judicial decisions and legislative actions have both looked to the so-called “wall of separation” in order to prohibit any reference to God in a public setting and to deny the church any kind of meaningful voice in society. Yet the Founding Fathers of the United States did not desire a state devoid of theism altogether. These men only wanted the government to have no established church , and we can see why this is the case if we consider the example of the Church of England , the established church of Great Britain . Histori...

English: Peresopnytsia Gospels. 1556-1561. Miniature of Saint Matthew. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Romans 13:3–7 “He is God ’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he…carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” ( v. 4 ). We would probably resolve many of the controversies surrounding the state’s relation to the church if both church and state remembered their distinctive functions according to God’s Word. The Lord gives the church and the state specific roles, and trouble arises when the church tries to do the work of the state or the state assumes the church’s authority. In  Romans 13 , we find the primary vocation to which the Lord has called the state. Human government, Paul tells us, “does not bear the sword in vain.” In other words, the state is given the right to use force for a specific end — to inflict God’s wrath upon wrongdoers ( v. 4 ). Basically, the ruling authorities are to use the sword to promote ri...

Portrait of Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale in 1800. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) In Acts 14, Luke sets forth for us the events that took place on Paul's first missionary journey, a journey on which Barnabas accompanied him. We've seen this pattern emerge over and over again. The apostles would come into the synagogue or the public square known as the  agora . They would proclaim the gospel openly. And there would always be some people who responded in faith by the power of the Holy Ghost while others in attendance would stand up in outright hostility and oppose them. Indeed, it was through great tribulation that the gospel bore fruit in places like Antioch and Iconium. And everyday Paul and Barnabas were subjected to threats, insults, hostility and even physical danger. We can see how things degenerated to such a degree here in the latter part of chapter fourteen: the Jewish leadership actually convenes a kangaroo court and imposes the death penalty upon Paul! A riot...