Ok, I think it is time I started asking some questions of Sam. You’ve been falling back on the institutional/organic distinction in order to maintain a positive ontological separation or distinction between the church and state. So, I want to return to this question in a more material way.
What, more specifically, is the purpose of government and its consequent tasks?
What, more specifically, is the purpose of the institutional church and its consequent tasks?
Even more importantly for both, why is that the purpose of the government or the church? This is not so much an epistemological question as a question of why those purposes must be separated into separate institutions. What is the ontological necessity, or the ontological sense, of the separation of their tasks? Is it merely historical? Was Israel as a theocratic worship and governing institution really just an antecedent form that needed to be historically diversified?
kstarkenburg
Sep 29 2002
10:36 am
Ok, I think it is time I started asking some questions of Sam. You’ve been falling back on the institutional/organic distinction in order to maintain a positive ontological separation or distinction between the church and state. So, I want to return to this question in a more material way.
What, more specifically, is the purpose of government and its consequent tasks?
What, more specifically, is the purpose of the institutional church and its consequent tasks?
Even more importantly for both, why is that the purpose of the government or the church? This is not so much an epistemological question as a question of why those purposes must be separated into separate institutions. What is the ontological necessity, or the ontological sense, of the separation of their tasks? Is it merely historical? Was Israel as a theocratic worship and governing institution really just an antecedent form that needed to be historically diversified?