Christians and the State

Here's a little more on Christians and the State:

…As those in whom all ardor in the pursuit of glory and honor is dead, we have no pressing inducement to take part in your public meetings; nor is there aught more entirely foreign to us than affairs of state. We acknowledge one all-embracing commonwealth – the world. We renounce all your spectacles, as strongly as we renounce the matters originating them, which we know were conceived of superstition, when we give up the very things which are the basis of their representations.

- Tertullian, Apology, chapter 38.

And now Adam Glover's gotten on board, aiming some sharp criticism at John Piper (the link is dead now):

So, love your enemies, except when they are "agents of the opposing government/system." In that case, they evidently aren't really humans, implanted with the image of God, but rather instruments of "terror" to be eliminated – brutally, if necessary. In other words, as a "private individual," the commands of Christ hold, but as a "government agent" the Sermon on the Mount is somehow suspended – superceded by a temporal power. We might as well burn the cross and raise the flag. Christ have mercy.

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