Martin Luther and his naiveté

Many protestants will be surprised to learn that Martin Luther, who is most famous for jump-starting the "Great Protestant Reformation" by nailing his Ninety-five Theses to the church door in Wittenberg, Saxony, was convinced that the Pope (at that time, Leo X1) was morally innocent in the following threat of excommunication against him. Instead, Luther honestly thought that the Roman Curia2 was the real problem. 

The Chronology of these events is actually quite simple, but they're important for grasping the significance of Luther's responsive letter to Pope Leo's threat. In 1517 Luther posted his "Ninety-five Theses" (or so they're called3). The next year, 1518, Pope Leo X ordered the Augustinians to control Luther and his teaching. Two years after that, on June 12th, 1520, Leo issued his papal bull Exsurge Domine ("Rise up, O Lord"), threatening Luther with excommunication from the Church, which Luther received in October. Under the threat of excommunication, Luther heeded some council of the Augustinians, who wanted Luther to write a letter to Leo explaining that he never intended to attack him personally. Below is a series of excerpts from his letter to Pope Leo X:

   In the midst of the monsters of the present time, with whom the affair and controversy surrounding me has now entered its third year, I am compelled from time to time to look also to you and be mindful of you, most blessed father Leo. 

   ...As far as I am aware, whenever it has been necessary to mention your person, I have said nothing but the best and most splendid things about you. If indeed I had done otherwise, I myself could by no means have approved it and would have supported wholeheartedly the judgment of those men concerning me. Nothing would have been more pleasing than to recant such rashness and godlessness on my part. I have called you Daniel in Babylon, and every reader knows quite well with what exceptional zeal I defended your well-known innocence against your slanderer Sylvester.

   ...Wherefore, most excellent Leo, I beg of you to allow that by this letter I have been cleared of all charges, and to persuade yourself that I have never thought any evil concerning your person; furthermore, that I am such a one as to wish the best things to befall you for eternity, and that I have no dispute with any man concerning morals, but only concerning the Word of truth. In all other things, I will yield to anyone, but I am neither able nor willing to forsake and deny the Word. He who thinks otherwise of me, or has imbibed my words in another sense, does not think rightly, and has not imbibed the truth.

   Your See, however, I have of course denounced the institution that is called the Roman Curia. Neither you nor any man can deny it to be more corrupt than any Babylon or Sodom. As far as I can tell, it has that kind of deplorable, desperate, and lamentable unrighteousness. I have been filled with indignation that the people of Christ should be deceived under your name and the pretext of the Roman Church, and so I have resisted, and will resist, as long as the spirit of faith lives within me. Not that I am striving after impossibilities, or hoping that any good can be accomplished in that most disorderly Babylon by my work alone, with the fury of so many flatterers standing against me; rather, that I recognize myself to be a debtor to my Roman brethren. In their interest, it is necessary for me to consider in what way fewer of them may be ruined, or how they may be less ruined, by the Roman plagues. For nothing else from Rome has flooded the world for many years now---of which you yourself are not ignorant---than the laying waste of goods, of bodies, of souls, and the worst examples of all the worst things. For these things are clearer than light to everyone. From the Roman Church---at one time the most holy church of all---there has been fashioned the most lawless den of thieves, the most shameless brothel of all, a kingdom of sin, death, and hell, so that not even Antichrist, if he should come, would be able to think of anything to add to its wickedness. 

   Meanwhile you, Leo, are sitting like a lamb in the midst of wolves, like Daniel in the midst of lions. You dwell with Ezekiel among scorpions. What can you alone do against these monsters? ...Is it not true that there is nothing under the vast heavens more corrupt, more pestilential, more hateful, than the Roman Curia? For she incomparably surpasses the impiety of the Turks. So, in actuality, she who was once the gate of heaven is now lying open as a sort of mouth of hell. She is such a mouth as cannot be blocked up. Due to the pressing wrath of God, one course alone is left to us pitiable men: to call back and save some few, if we can, from that Roman abyss, as I have called it. 

   Behold, Leo my father, with what intent, with what cause I have raged against that seat of pestilence. I am far from having raged against your person. I even hoped that I would win favor and establish your safety, if I were to strike energetically and sharply at that prison of yours, or rather at your hell. For whatever assault contrived by any gifted men that can be mounted against the confusion of this godless Curia will be beneficial to you and to your safety, and to many others with you. They do their duty to you who do harm to her. They glorify Christ who in every way curse her. In short, they are Christians who are not Romans.4 

1.  Giovanni de' Medici of the famous Florentine Medicis
2.  The Roman Curia was the council of cardinals and officials upon whom the Pope depended for making plans and implementing decisions for the bishops, abbots, parish priests and laity.
3.  The real name of the "Ninety-five Theses" was Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences
4.  Martin Luther, Christian Freedom: Faith Working Through Love [St Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2011] selections from pp. 27-32

Christian Political Witness: Peter Leithart's Lecture on "Violence"

Ask and you shall receive. Wheaton College has posted all of the audio and video from their 2013 Theology Conference, "Christian Political Witness." You can check out all of the audio and video from that conference here. 

The audio from Peter Leithart's lecture on "Violence" can be found here. 

The video recording of that same lecture can be found here. 

A link to the audio and video of a separate panel discussion with Peter Leithart, George Kalantzis, Mark Noll, David Gushee, and Jana Bennett can be found here and here.

Render unto God the things that are God's

"200k professing evangelicals a year render unto butchers that which bears Caesar's image in order to render unto Moloch those who bear God's."
-- R. C. Sproul Jr.   (from a Twitter post on April 12, 2013)

Hypocritical American Ideals

In his book, A Free People's Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future, Os Guinness concludes his thoughts about America under judgment:

   As I said and will say again, America stands before the world today under the judgment of her own ideals. Again and again it is Montesquieu and Madison, rather than Marx and Muhammad, whose principles boomerang back on America in world reactions to America's superpower actions. As I have heard argued by foreign admirers of the U.S. Constitution at universities in Europe, Asia and the Middle East, it is hypocritical for Americans to pride themselves on checks and balances at home but to ride roughshod over international opinion, institutions, laws and other checks and balances abroad, or to talk of free-market capitalism and impose it on others in a coerced, lopsided manner favorable only to American corporations and investors.

   ...Ironically, American liberals and radicals who attack American aggression abroad often espouse the same negative view of freedom at home that they deplore abroad. In fact, what unites an otherwise disparate group that would include most liberals, almost all libertarians and most postmodern radicals is that freedom is largely a question of escaping the power of others over them. It is all about dismantling the structures of oppression and liberating the victim. 

  ...But then we are back to the core conundrum of freedom. Freedom requires a framework of order, which means restraint, yet the only restraint proper to freedom is self-restraint, which freedom undermines. 

   Whatever positions we take on such issues, these old debates about freedom are a valuable corrective to naivety and utopianism. The passion for freedom is simple and strong, but freedom itself is subtle, complex and demanding. Its defense is never simple and easy, never a matter of arms alone. While the world still turns and the boot of the powerful still grinds into the faces of the weak and poor, the human cry for freedom will never be silenced and the bell of freedom will always ring out along with the cries of suffering and anger. 

   Equally, cries for justice and for order will always blend with cries for freedom, and it will always be harder to be free than not to be free. Freedom's work is never alone and never done, which is why the founders' confidence in the prospect of a freedom that could remain free forever is so audacious and so deserving of greater attention than it is given by a free people grown complacent through the privileges of freedom.1

1.  Os Guinness, A Free People's Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press; 2012] pp. 67-68

Two Concepts of Liberty

Commenting on Isaiah Berlin's four famous essays on liberty, but particularly his 1958 lecture titled "Two Concepts of Liberty," Os Guinness makes a few interesting observations:

Negative freedom, as Berlin defines it, is freedom from--in essence, freedom from interference and constraint. Positive freedom is freedom for--in essence, freedom for excellence according to whatever vision and ideals define that excellence. 

...[I]n reality the choice between the two freedoms in never either/or. Negative and positive freedoms can be distinguished in theory, but if true freedom is to flourish, they must never be divorced in practice. Indeed, one of the most difficult challenges of the modern world is to create societies that allow diverse faiths and ideologies to have the maximum of both positive and negative freedoms for each faith and ideology. No nation has so far achieved full success in this test, though some have done better than others.  

For one thing, neither positive nor negative freedom is complete without the other. They each describe complementary sides of the same full freedom, which always rests on two conditions: the complete absence of any abuse of power, which is the essence of positive freedom. In a free society understood in this way, free citizens are neither prevented from doing what they should (the denial of positive freedom) no forced to do what they shouldn't (the denial of negative freedom).1

1.  Os Guinness, A Free People's Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press; 2012] pp. 61-61

America's Nihilism

I recently started reading Os Guinness' new book, A Free People's Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future, and so far it is outstanding. Below are some clips from the first chapter which caught my eye:

"...freedom always faces a fundamental moral challenge. Freedom requires order and therefore restraint, yet the only restraint that does not contradict freedom is self-restraint, which is the very thing that freedom undermines when it flourishes. Thus the heart of the problem of freedom is the problem of the heart, because free societies are characterized by restlessness at their core."1 

"America's nihilism of untrammeled freedom has so far been a soft and banal nihilism that flowers and fades harmlessly within the confines of the consumer paradise of the shopping mall, the online catalog, and the video game. ... no one is fully consistent to his or her own philosophy, and there is always a long stretch of the downhill slope from the adolescent stage of soft nihilism to the delinquent and then to the decadent. But such ideas in such a society will always have consequences, and when the causes of disordered freedom also spread to such vital spheres of American society as the government, the economy, law, education, medicine, science and technology, the consequences will at some point become lethal and unstoppable. The gap between the lightning and the thunder may be delayed, but such disordered freedom will one day prove disastrous when taken to the very end. It is literally irrational and irresponsible, for untrammeled freedom has no need to justify itself either by rational criteria or by any moral standard outside itself. It just is, an untrammeled will to power that is self-evident, self-justifying and self-destructive, and a mortal menace to the society that harbors it. The conclusion for American freedom is inescapable. It is not enough to espouse freedom as the essence of America and to keep mouthing its matchless benefits. Freedom must be guarded vigilantly against internal as well as external dangers. However soft and however banal it is, unbounded freedom simply cannot restrain itself by itself..."2

1.  Os Guinness, A Free People's Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future [Downers Grove, Il: IVP Books; 2012], p. 20
2.  Ibid., p. 23

McDurmon on "Markets"

Joel McDurmon, author of The Bible and War in America and Biblical Logic: In Theory and Practice, has recently released another comprehensive, easy-to-digest strategy for implementing a Biblical worldview. The title and purpose of this unique book is self-explanatory, and is called Restoring America One County at a Time. Here McDurmon presents a thorough and thoughtful treatise which, as the back cover reveals, focuses "on practical steps, local solutions, personal sacrifice, and a multi-generational vision." So far I have devoured 244 pages of this 400-plus page book, and when I finally finished his chapter on "Markets" I couldn't help but quote a lengthy excerpt from it because I found it to be somewhat of a missing link among arguments presented by critics and advocates of modern-day "Capitalism."

McDurmon is one of those authors that you either love or hate. He's either loved or hated because he writes in such a logical, biblical manner that the reader knows his overall argument is either absolutely right or dead wrong. There isn't much wiggle room for neutrality. He will challenge your presuppositions about education, welfare, local government, state government, taxation, money and banking, "free" markets, court systems, foreign and domestic war, the military, and executive power. And yet, he doesn't do so like a bull in a china shop, leaving you with an overwhelming mess of worldview-pieces to pick up on your own. In this book he actually provides a step-by-step program for reform that can and will work if implemented with thoughtfulness and consideration of what's really going on in the world around us.

This brings me to the lengthy quote I mentioned before, which I would like to post below. The post below is stripped from 232 pages of previous context, and so I don't expect the entirety of it to sink in to every reader. But it is explicit enough to demonstrate a fascinating misunderstanding among "liberals" and "conservatives" today who have some opinion about the "free" market. When discussing the history of big "conservative" business at the turn of the 19th-20th century, McDurmon notes:

    The Big financiers -- J. P. Morgan & Co., etc. -- would not give up their quests for total domination simply because they could not win fairly in a free marketplace. They had no qualms at all about turning to government intervention and regulation. Thus, in the period immediately following the failed merger movement -- the beginning of the twentieth century -- we saw a rise in Progressive government domination. Indeed, "The dominant fact of American Political life at the beginning of this century [20th] was that big business led the struggle for the federal regulation of the economy."1 So we return to our earlier statement about covetousness and greed armed with the guns of government. Big business interests simply have used the government coercion as a means of gaining a market advantage forcing out smaller competitors.
    And the big business was not shy about admitting their agenda clearly. For example, J. P. Morgan owned the agricultural machine company International Harvester. After Teddy Roosevelt established the Bureau of Corporations -- designed allegedly to investigate and expose any monopolistic powers on the part of big corporations -- IH came under suspicion and an investigation was ordered. The matter was a joke, for IH already had a back-room deal with the administration that an informal warning would give time to correct any "illegal" activity in the meantime. Indeed, IH's lawyer told the administration that the company welcomed exposure showing actual losses on the Company's behalf, "for then they would have just ground for raising American prices."2  The Company was quite serious, and it raised prices with sanction from the Federal Bureau's reports "to prevent attacks from less friendly parties, and as a general shield."3
     Noticeable also in this respect were the massive railroad companies. Not only had they used "federal and local governments for subsidies and land grants" from early on, but "railroads themselves had been the leading advocates of extended federal legislation after 1887."4 Indeed, the railroads wanted to use Federal authority to guarantee their pooling agreements and thus free them from the disruptive pressures and temptations of the market.5
    What has been said so far is a large part of the reason it is such a joke when modern leftists rail against free market principles as the historical cause of inequality, class warfare, and all our economic woes. There has been very little "free market" to begin with; this country hasn't had free markets very often at all, historically speaking. And the "capitalism" of the big bank-government collusion that we have today is hardly free-market capitalism. It's rigged state capitalism, which is to say it's socialistic to a large degree.

And then, a few paragraphs later, McDurmon begins a ten-page long explanation of how to put "free" back into free markets. I really admire his pastoral candidness in the opening words of this section. He writes:

If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the road to freedom is rocky, uphill, and lined with thieves lying in wait. The path to restore freedom in markets and even to arrive at a totally free marketplace is the straight and narrow way indeed. Traveling it to its end will require personal integrity, fortitude, sacrifice, patience, and endurance. It will require these qualities in society -- not just a few scattered individuals.
In simple terms, the road to free markets requires a personal and society-wide return to the principles that headed up this chapter: non-violence to a person's life or private property and enforcement of contracts. We must personally embrace these principles, and structure our lives, work, and businesses accordingly. More importantly, we have to maintain this discipline: we must absolutely refuse to depart from God's laws even when it is more profitable, more convenient, and more socially acceptable to do so. We won't have a moral leg to stand on until we practice fiscal integrity ourselves. We can't demand of society what we are unwilling to abide by ourselves. The model here is the Messiah, of whom David said in Psalm 15: 

                              O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent?
                              Who shall dwell on your holy hill?
                              He who walks blamelessly and does what is right
                              and speaks truth in his heart;
                              who does not slander with his tongue
                              and does no evil to his neighbor,
                              nor takes up a reproach against his friend;
                              in whose eyes a vile person is despised,
                              but who honors those who fear the Lord;
                              who swears to his own hurt and does not change;
                              who does not put out his money at interest
                              and does not take a bribe against the innocent.
                              He who does these things shall never be moved.6

1  Cited from Kolko, Triumph of Conservatism, 57-58
2.  Ibid., 119-120
3.  Ibid., 120
4.  Ibid. 59
5.  Cited from Stephen Skowronek, Building a new American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 129.
6. Joel McDurmon, Restoring America One County at a Time: How Our Freedom Was Lost And How We Get It Back (Powder Springs, GA: The American Vision Inc.,  2012), pp. 232-235

Magdeburg Confession of 1550

A new English translation of a very important historical confession has recently been released for sale: The Magdeburg Confession of 1550. Until this edition was published in the fall of 2012, I believe it has only been available in Latin and German. It may not be in print for long, so make sure to get it sooner than later.

The pastors of Magdeburg issued this confession on April 13th, 1550, as a response to the tyranny of Charles V.

• What constitutes a tyrannical government?
• How ought Christians to behave when faced with conflict from their own tyrannical government?
• Are Christians supposed to obey a tyrannical government without limitations? 
• If so, what are those limitations?

These questions and others are answered by the pastors of Magdeburg in their Confession. In response to Charles the fifth's tyranny, they declared, "Divine laws necessarily trump human ones."

This English translation is translated by Dr. Matthew Colvin, who holds a Ph.D. in Latin and Greek Literature from Cornell University. It contains a detailed historical introduction by Dr. George Grant, Pastor of Parish Presbyterian Church, Founder of New College Franklin, President of King's Meadow Study Center, Founder of Franklin Classical School, and author of dozens of books in the areas of history, biography, politics, literature and social criticism. The foreword is by Matthew Trewhella, Pastor of Mercy Seat Christian Church, Milwaukee, WI.

None has clean hands

As I was researching some commentaries regarding Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and the subject of mammon (an Aramaic word which Jesus used to describe material possessions), I came across some interesting comments by Herbert Schlossberg. In his book, Idols for Destruction: The Conflict of Christian Faith and American Culture, Schlossberg spends an entire chapter discussing "Idols of Mammon", and I thought his insights about its destructive pathologies shed a lot of light upon a number of concerns I have with America's moral decline. He writes:

When Jesus told his disciples they could not serve both God and mammon, the reason he gave was that the two were rival loyalties and that if one were loved the other would be despised (Matt. 6:24). This admonition came in the midst of a portion of the Sermon on the Mount that warned against the preoccupation with wealth and material possessions...  Instead, the disciples [of Jesus] were to seek the kingdom of God first... The mammon described here as the rival of God, therefore, is the idolatrous elevation of money and the material possessions it will buy...  Like idolatries, it finds ultimate meaning in an aspect of creation rather than in the creator. And like all idolatries it finds outlet in destructive pathologies that wreck human lives. 

Those pathologies cannot simply be subsumed under such labels as liberal, conservative, or radical. The ideologies common to American politics all have a share in them; none has clean hands...  If that contention seems odd, it is only because political rhetoric, the media, and the educational establishment have badly distorted the political and economic landscape, making it appear that the only alternatives to liberal idols are conservative idols. 

Those whose loyalty is to mammon quite naturally cast anxious eyes on the property belonging to others, and that is why the apostle called covetousness a form of idolatry (Col. 3:5; Eph. 5:5)... It often accompanies envy, which is a discontent at or resentment of another's good fortune. Envy precedes covetousness and is itself the object of sever biblical censure. The chief priests demanded that Jesus be condemned because they were envious of him (Mark 15:10). In the long list of wicked acts by which Paul described the conduct of the reprobate, envy comes directly before murder (Rom. 1:29)...  

On the other hand envy may act in a more straightforward, less devious, way by simply striving to take what it desires from those it envies. In most cases, this action is associated with the idolatry of mammon, and it accomplishes its end by practicing one of many forms of theft. That is why the command "You shall not steal" (Ex. 20:15) is not only an ethical injunction but also a warning against practicing the idolatry of mammon.1

Outright stealing is widely recognized as an expression of idolizing mammon. But aren't there other ways -- less obvious ways -- to accomplish the same thing?

What about political programs which monopolize your capital investment and redistribute to others without your approval or sanction? Is that not legalized theft?

What about the continual debasement of "money" and its purchasing power through inflationary policies? Is that not another direct product of the idolatry of mammon?




1.  Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction: The Conflict of Christian Faith and American Culture [Crossway Books: Wheaton, IL. 1990] pp. 88-89

Between Babel and Beast: A Brief Review

In his latest book, Between Babel and Beast: America and Empires in Biblical Perspective, Peter Leithart provides a strong theological and historical case against the idolatry of what he calls Americanism, an "inherently expansionist faith" and ideology which "often sounds like Christianity, but does not."1 From beginning to end, Leithart defends his case that through the faith of Americanism, "the American nation takes the place of the church as the sacred community". One of the consequences of that faith, Leithart argues, is that they "read the Bible looking for types and shadows of America, and view the constitutional order as the novus ordo saeclorum, an eschatological form of social and political order."2

Leithart's views also prove to not be simplistic, but yet not overly complex either, which is a healthy balance for people new to this subject or new to Leithart's writing style. He makes numerous statements which will raise eyebrows among both fans and critics, but Leithart demonstrates that behind every raised eyebrow is a calculated attempt towards clarity, not ambiguity or exaggeration. Throughout the book, Leithart says things like "Insofar as we [the United States of America] want to make the world into our image, we are a Babel. We are not a beast, but we freely consort with beasts if it will serve our political ends. I wonder how long we can stay in the cage without taking on bestial habits ourselves."3 Leithart doesn't mince words, and so any reader should know what they're in for when statements like that are made. For those who are interested in the typological emphasis which is characteristic of Leithart's polemics, they certainly won't be disappointed either. One whopper of an example that raised my eyebrows the first time, is his contention that "Americanism is the monstrous Nephilim that people the earth when the sons of God intermarry the daughters of men. Americanist Christians are Joktanites who uncritically join Nimrod in building Babel."4 Them's fightin words.

Leithart is also very engaging in his presentation of both American history and world history. He discusses Egyptian, Israelite, Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian and Roman history. He provides detailed records of men and events in early American history as well, from Benjamin Franklin's "defensive imperialism" to the "expansionist republicanism" of James K. Polk's war against Mexico in 1846. And when discussing current events, the reader is left with a much more honest and transparent representation than the major media likes to present on the ten o'clock nightly news. How many Christians today take notice of publications such as the 1922 inaugural issue of Foreign Affairs (the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations), or the cooperation of Americanism with the IMF and World Bank? I don't know of many, and so, in my mind, Leithart presents a uniquely insightful angle from which to view current events.  

Leithart also discusses the relationship of Americanism with current events in Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Israel, Yemen, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. By no means would it be credible to charge Leithart as not knowing his history well. And it's because he knows his history very well that he can sort through all the clutter of liberal theology and media, but still contend for the optimistic eschatological form of social and political order taught in Holy Scripture. For instance, he is not shy about presenting an argument in favor of historic biblical patterns of social order and justice, particularly patterns pertaining to Christian leaders. Leithart calls Christian leaders to grow in maturity and influence to the degree that they hold public officials accountable to the "officers of God's imperium".5  He asks such bold questions as "When was the last time an American politician was excommunicated? When was the last time an excommunication had any effect on American politics?" St. Ambrose would be proud of Leithart's faithfulness.

But in order to avoid misunderstanding Leithart's case, it's important to recognize that before presenting those kinds of ecclesiastically-charged questions, he first establishes a strong theological argument about the primacy of God's imperium over the American imperium. According to Leithart, God's imperium consists of communing Christians around the world. And because it is God's imperium, and no one else's, Christians have an effect upon American politics whether they like it or not. But their effect will only be a blessing upon American politics if they are faithful witnesses of God's truth. Sadly enough, I believe his assessment is accurate in that "Christians do not try to check American power because American Christians are usually devotees of Americanism."6 "American Churches", Leithart contends, "cannot critique and confront American power because promotion of Americanism is what American churches stand for. Individual Christians do not have the virtues necessary to function as citizens of God's imperium because American churches have discipled them to function as citizens of the American imperium instead."7

Between Babel and Beast is, in my opinion, one of Leithart's most polemical contributions (and he has written quite a few, to be sure). But in the end, Leithart accomplishes with great precision what he set out to explain in the introduction:

Between Babel and Beast is written for Christians, and my main practical message is a simple one: Remember who you are, and to whom you belong. Remember that you belong to Jesus first and last; remember that the church, not America, is the body of Christ and the political hope of the future; remember that no matter how much it may have served the city of God, America is in itself part of the city of man; remember that the Eucharist is our sacrificial feast. It is good for Christians to be salted throughout our polity--in the White House and bureaucracies, in the military, in international institutions. But Christians in those positions are called to be salt. American churches have too long discipled Christians in Americanism, and that makes Christian involvement in the American polity far smoother than it ought to be. Churches must repent of our Americanism and begin to cultivate martyrs--believers who are martyrs in the original sense of "witness" and in the later sense of men and women ready to follow the Lamb all the way to an imperial cross.8

1.  Peter J. Leithart, Between Babel and Beast: America and Empires in Biblical Perspective [Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012] p. xii 

2.  Ibid.

3.  Ibid. p. xiii

4.  Ibid. pp. 82-83

5.  Ibid. p. 110

6.  Ibid.

7.  Ibid. p. 111

8.  Ibid. p. xiii