Gary responds to a recent article that claims to “deconstruct” the understanding of the Dominion Mandate in Genesis 1:28.
A Christian civilization will have as its foundation the basics of the Christian faith. The majority of the people will be professing Christians. They will adhere to their faith in a self-conscious manner and will practice it with little hypocrisy. Those who do not embrace the tenets of the Christian religion will still benefit by its effects on the culture. Alexis de Tocqueville points out:
It may fairly be believed that a certain number of Americans pursue a peculiar form of worship from habit more than from conviction. In the United States the sovereign authority is religious, and consequently hypocrisy must be common; but there is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America; and there can be no greater proof of its utility and of its conformity to human nature than that its influence is powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation on the earth.[1]
Notice that Tocqueville states that “the sovereign authority is religious.” What did he mean? Religion, and here we mean Christianity, permeated and pervaded all aspects of the society, though no one ecclesiastical institution did. Neither the church nor the State was sovereign, but religion, Christianity, was the foundation for both. While a man might not belong to a church or profess the Christian faith, he would have been considered an outcast if he did not at least follow the rules laid down by the “sovereign authority” of religion.
The “sovereign authority” of religion ought to prevail today. As Christians, we’re not looking for a church/state or a state/church. The prevailing set of presuppositions, however, should be Christian.
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Buy NowGary responds to a recent article that claims to “deconstruct” the understanding of the Dominion Mandate in Genesis 1:28. The idea is not for one group of people to dominate another group of people, but to have authority. The author mistakes “dominion” for “domination,” and the article gets only more muddled from there.
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[1] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 2 vols. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, [1834,1840] 1960), vol. 1, pp. 303–4.