Not Singing From The Same Sheet of Music

Michael Horton:

"Not only must our interpretation and application be a good inference; it must be a necessary one. Abortion-on-demand is an obvious example of a 'good and necessary inference' from Scripture: namely, the prohibition of murder. Surely opposition to the modern slave-trade, whether in early America and the antebellum South or in current forms around the world, finds multiple sources of good and necessary application. Sound preaching and teaching over the years should shape people who think of creation as neither divine nor something to devour and destroy, but as the work of God’s hand. On many other issues, Christian preaching will shape the worldview that we bring to our lives and policy decisions."

David VanDrunen:

"To put it simply, the church finds the state’s business foreign. As an institution that forsakes the lex talionis and refused to take up the sword in judgment or even self-defense, it can have in some sense no cognizance at all of what the sword-bearing state does. The church can acknowledge the state’s existence, thanks God for its work, and blesses her saints as they submit to its authority and join in its work, but how can the church itself dare to participate in or contribute to the state’s work? What a strange thing for an institution defined by its peacefulness and mercy to tell the state how to do its work of coercion....How wise were our Reformed forebears who spoke of the spirituality of the church and the solely ministerial character of ecclesiastical authority."