The Theology of the Confederacy

Part Three

C. The Fall of Man: The Key to the Present.

Because of the sin of Adam in the Garden of Eden, all men have become sinful, and we all labor under this terrible burden. In his theological treatise, Dabney quoted from the Westminster Confession's Larger Catechism,

• The sinfulness of that estate whereinto man fell, consists of the guilt of Adam's first sin, the want [lack] of original righteousness, and the corruption of his whole nature, which is commonly called original sin; together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it.

1. Man's State of Sinfulness.

Thus we see that because of Adam's sin, each person has three basic problems that causes him misery and woe. These problems are: (1) The guilt of Adam's first sin imputed to each of us. (2) An intrinsic lack of righteousness or goodness within us. (3) A corrupt and sinful nature which leads us all to do naturally that which is evil.

Major Dabney proclaimed that this corrupted nature, which each and every human inherits from their parents, is the cause of all the evils which men perform in the world. He stated,

• We see all men, under all circumstances, do much that is wrong. We see the world full of wickedness, much of it enormous. We behold, parents, masters, magistrates and teachers busy with multitudes of rules and laws, and a vast apparatus of prisons, police, armies, and penalties, striving with very indifferent success, to repress wickedness... Once more we find universally, a most obdurate blindness, stupidity, and opposition concerning the things of God... This universal prevalence of sin has appeared in man's history, in spite of great means for its prevention... Such is a fair and moderate picture of human experience. Scripture confirms it, asserting the universal and prevalent sinfulness of man.

This is the Christian view of man, and it stands diametrically opposed to the Humanist view of man so prevalent in our culture. The Humanist error begins with their faulty understanding of man's present condition and "needs." The consensus among modern Humanists is that man is basically good and his basic need is a better set of circumstances surrounding him to help him meet his needs and live up to his potential. They see man as an autonomous and sovereign individual, who can define the world around him according to his sovereign dictates.

Humanists believe that men need self-actualization to bring meaning to their lives. This self-actualization, however, is little more than a carte blanche to interpret all of life as one sees fit, and to determine one's needs for one's self, without direction from the Bible. The disastrous result has been to define things which are wants and desires as needs: love, a good job, an education, freedom, political empowerment, and now, according to President Clinton, affordable health care. This leads people to see themselves as entitled to things which are actually a reward for accomplishment and the blessings of God.

The Christian must reject all of this and realize that man needs, first of all, a restoration of the righteousness which was lost in the Garden of Eden. After this, his need is to understand and to do righteousness. He cannot achieve this without the grace of God regenerating his corrupted nature, yet, nonetheless, these are man's basic needs. After men perform the duties they need to do, then as a general rule, God grants to them blessings and the good things of the earth. Because of this, the idea of duty has always been important to Southern society.

Southerners have historically held to the view of man's intrinsic sinfulness and defiance towards God. The words of historian Richard Weaver demonstrate this,

• ... the disappearance of belief in original sin has done more than anything else to prepare the way for sophistical theories of human nature and society. Man has lost piety toward nature in proportion as he has left her and shut himself up in cities with rationalism for his philosophy... The North had Tom Paine and his postulates assuming the virtuous inclinations of man; the South had Burke and his doctrine of human fallibility...

Added to this can be the voice of another Southern religious leader, Albert Taylor Bledsoe.

Albert Taylor Bledsoe joined Dabney in preaching the necessity for a religious authoritarian government, and few issues of the Southern Review appeared without some attack upon the godless doctrines of the French Revolution. Bledsoe was chiefly opposed to the chimerical notion that man is by nature good. He argued that on the contrary no government can hope to survive which does not proceed on the assumption that man is a fallen being.

The belief in original sin, and the denial of man's intrinsic goodness, need to be two of our trademarks as Southerners.

2. The Definition of Sin.

After describing the sinfulness of the people in the world, Dabney defines sin for us as "... discrepancy from the standard of right." He takes this from I John 3:4, "... sin, therefore, is transgression of the law." These ideas are in perfect harmony with the definition of sin given in the Westminster Confession's Shorter Catechism, "Q 14. What is sin? Answer: Sin is any lack of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God."

God's law, as published in the Ten Commandments and expounded in the rest of the Bible, is the standard of righteousness and morality by which we as Southerners and Christians need to live. It is not our duty to attempt to live by other anti-Christian moral orders such as the Koran, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Code of Hammurabi, Hollywood morality, the Talmud, the Civil Rights of the Martin Luther King Cult, or any others.

The law of God is the Confederate standard. The Ten Commandments are:

• • (1) Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

    (2) Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.

    (3) Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

    (4) Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy.

    (5) Honor thy father and thy mother.

    (6) Thou shalt not kill.

    (7) Thou shalt not commit adultery.

    (8) Thou shalt not steal.

    (9) Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

    (10) Thou shalt not covet.

Concerning this law one of America's founding fathers, James Madison, a Virginian, made a very pertinent comment,

• We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.

D. Salvation: Personal and Cosmic.

Salvation is the process undertaken by God to undo the terrible effects of sin which were unleashed upon the world and the people in it by Adam's original sin in the Garden of Eden. Salvation is not merely a remedy for the sinful conditions of men's souls, although it certainly includes such a facet. Salvation is also to be extended to the entire earth: that is to say that all things which take place in the earth are to be done with the view of serving the Creator in their doing.

In other words, salvation is the reimposition of righteousness in every little nook and cranny of the globe. Whereas sin has been defined as "lack of conformity to the Law of God," righteousness may defined as "loving compliance to the Law of God." They are thus opposites.

1. Personal Salvation.

In matters of personal religion Major Dabney was a devout Calvinist who held that all things which take place in the universe are foreordained and directed by God's decrees and providence, yet, each individual is nonetheless free, and thus responsible to act in accordance with God's law of righteousness. Concerning human freedom and responsibility Dabney stated,

• But still, it is correct to argue, that man must be a free agent; because this is inevitably involved in his responsibility. Conscience tells us we are responsible for our moral acts. Reason pronounces, intuitively, that responsibility would be absurd were we not free agents.

Because all men are sinners and have broken God's law, all men stand in need of salvation. Each person must have the penalty for their sin paid by another or else they must pay it themselves. (Romans 5:8, "But God demonstrates His love towards us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.")

Dabney saw salvation coming to mankind through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross; this by virtue of His vicarious atonement on behalf of men who already had legal guilt imputed to them. In his treatise on the atonement Dabney discussed the various false views of Christ's atonement. He took great pains to show what was true and false about each of them. He summed up his findings with the words,

• Each of the false schemes attempts to express what is true. But ours really includes all that theirs claim, while it embraces the vital element which they omit, vicarious penal satisfaction ... If it was not a vicarious satisfaction for imputed guilt, then it was not consistently either of the others.

Major Dabney went on to define this by explaining that Christ had been, (1) "made sin for us," (2) "died for us," (3) "bore our sins," and, (4) "became our Ransom."

When we say that men are saved by faith, we are assuming that they understand that the object of their faith is Christ and the Work which He did on the cross. Dabney wrote,

• The special object of saving faith is Christ the Redeemer, and the promises of grace in Him... in justifying faith, Christ and his grace are the object immediately before the believer's mind; and that if he have a saving knowledge of this, but be ignorant of all the rest of the gospel, he may still be saved by believing this.

Thus we see that personal salvation and personal conversion to Christ are essential to the Christian religion. Weaver quotes an article which appeared in the magazine The Confederate Veteran, which says that "in the Army of Northern Virginia alone there occurred more than 15,000 conversions" to the Christian religion. As the Abolitionist controversy swirled around them, the Southern soldiers began en masse to read their Bibles to find out about its teachings on slavery. As they read God's Word, He poured out His Spirit upon thousands of them and they discovered truths for which they had not been looking.

General Robert E. Lee was a man who knew God and His salvation. Lee looked to the day when the toils of life would be over and he would find rest in Heaven above. In a letter to his wife, from the field in which he was carrying on a military campaign during the Civil War, he wrote,

• Do you recollect what a happy day thirty-three years ago this was [their wedding day]? How many hopes and pleasures it gave birth to! God has been very merciful and kind to us, and how thankless and sinful I have been! I pray that He may continue His mercies and blessings to us and give us a little peace and rest together in this world, and finally gather us and all He has given us around His throne in the world to come. The President has just arrived, and I must bring my letter to a close.

2. Cosmic Salvation.

According to Dabney, the salvation which Christ delivered to mankind was not of a personal nature only. In His resurrection the Lord Jesus Christ demonstrated His kingship over all creation. Thus we are to look for the salvation of the world along with that of our own souls. Major Dabney wrote,

• That doctrine which we hold, and which we assert to be the Apostolic and Church doctrine, teaches... the literal and personal second advent of Christ, and we hold, with the Apostolic Christians, that it is, next to heaven, the dearest and most glorious of the believer's hopes... Before this second advent, the following events must have occurred. The development and secular overthrow of Anti-christ... The proclamation of the Gospel to all nations, and the general triumph of Christianity over all false religions, in all nations... The general and national return of the Jews to the Christian Church... And then a partial relapse from this state of high prosperity, into unbelief and sin... During this partial decline, at a time unexpected to formal Christians... the second Advent of Christ will take place...

Jesus Christ is going to return to earth one day. And when He comes He will judge the world and set all things right. Until He returns, however, those of us who are His loyal subjects are to acknowledge this victorious view of the future of the Kingdom of God on earth, which is assured to us by Christ's resurrection from the dead. This should give us confidence that as we seek righteousness and to do God's will, our efforts will be fruitful and will achieve much good.

The idea of the worldwide conquest of the Christian religion has been the belief and testimony of the Church in America and has been stated and affirmed by many of our Southern heroes from the past. The words of the Princeton scholar, B. B. Warfield, written around the turn of the century are pertinent,

• Are not the saints to inherit the earth? Is not the recreated earth theirs? Are not the kingdoms of the world to become the kingdom of God? Is not the knowledge of the glory of God to cover the earth as the waters cover the sea? Shall not the day dawn when no man need say to his neighbor, `Know the Lord,' for all shall know Him from the least to the greatest?

The work of the Christian is ultimately tied to undoing the terrible things which Satan accomplished in the Garden of Eden. Not only God's people are to be saved, but the entire creation is to be liberated from sin as well. We are assured by God in His Holy Word that all of this will occur. The Kingdom of God has a glorious future on this planet. Psalm 86:9 states, "All the nations whom Thou hast made shall come and worship before Thee, O Lord; And they shall glorify Thy name." The Southern nation can be the leader among nations if we will walk in the statutes of the Lord, diligently keep His precepts, and work to evangelize the other nations of the earth.

E. Christian Ethics: The Validity of God's Law.

The basis of Christian ethics, in Dabney's view, is one of obedience to the law of God. This law is expressed in the Ten Commandments and explained throughout the rest of the Bible. Concerning the law of God, Dabney wrote,

• ... the Law must remain, under every dispensation, the authoritative declaration of God's character... the believer's sanctification can only be attained in practice, by giving him a holy rule of conduct. Such a rule is the Law.

As previously stated, the law of God is the Southern standard.

1. Personal Ethics.

One of the greatest problems facing the Church today is the notion that holiness and spirituality can be attained without respect to the moral law of God. Unfortunately, a large number of Southern Christians erroneously believe this. Evidently, this was a problem in Dabney's day as well,

• It has been asked, if the Law can no longer be a covenant of life to fallen sinners, what place and use can it properly have in a plan of salvation by grace? You are aware that there have been, in the Church, errorists called Antinomians, who, in fact, sought to exclude the Law from their system, asserting that since it is no longer a term of life... it can have no binding force upon, and no application to him. But the view I have given of the Law, as the necessary and unchanging expression of God's rectitude, shows that its authority over moral creatures is unavoidable.

According to Ephesians 2:14-16, the portion of the law which has been abolished by the death of Christ is the ceremonial part of sacrifices and offerings. The entire range of moral laws detailed in the Old Testament are still binding upon the Christian in the New Dispensation. In Ephesians 6, the Apostle Paul actually quotes the fifth commandment and enjoins children to obey their parents because of it. Throughout Romans 7, Paul defends the moral system of the law in detail, summing up his argument with these words in verse 22, "For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man."

The Apostle John ends his first epistle with an appeal for Christians to keep the second commandment.

There is no ethical righteousness apart from the law of God. This was Dabney's position and it is also the opinion of the Westminster Confession of Faith:

• The moral law doth for ever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof... Neither doth Christ, in the Gospel, any way dissolve, but much strengthen this obligation. Although true believers be not under the law, as a covenant of works, to be thereby justified, or condemned; yet is it of great use to them, as well as to others; in that, as a rule of life informing them of the will of God, and their duty, it directs and binds them to walk accordingly... Neither are the aforementioned uses of the law contrary to the grace of the Gospel, but do sweetly comply with it; the Spirit of Christ subduing and enabling the will of man to do that freely, and cheerfully, which the will of God, revealed in the law, requireth to be done.

Herein lies the essential error of yesterday's Abolitionists and today's Civil Rights advocates - they seek righteousness according to a standard separate and distinct from the law of God. They have reduced the Ten Commandments to two dissimilar commandments: (1) Thou shalt have toleration for all viewpoints which oppose the Christian religion, and, (2) Thou shalt gladly give all of thy possessions so that everyone around you attains equality.

In stark contrast to the Abolitionists and the Civil Rights proponents, there once walked through the South a giant of a man named Robert E. Lee. His perspective and his ethics were those of a Christian soldier, and these beliefs guided him no matter how grave the situation. After the Battle of Gettysburg had been lost, General Lee called for a day of "Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer." Among the words of his order were,

• Soldiers! we have sinned against Almighty God. We have forgotten His signal mercies, and have cultivated a revengeful, haughty, and boastful spirit. We have not remembered that the defenders of a just cause should be pure in His eyes ... and we have relied too much on our own arms for the achievement of our independence. God is our only refuge and our strength. Let us humble ourselves before Him. Let us confess our many sins and beseech Him to give us a higher courage, a purer patriotism,, and a more determined will; that He convert the hearts of our enemies; that He will hasten the time when war, with its sorrows and sufferings, shall cease, and that He will give us a name and a place among the nations of the earth.

Let all who seek to stand up for the South in our day and time heed these words from our beloved commander. We want no war, but righteousness is enough for us. We desire our independence and our rightful place among the nations of the earth, but we should pray that God would change the hearts of our enemies so that He would be glorified by their obedience to Him and also that our tether to them would not be so distressing. Nonetheless, whatever fate God chooses to bestow upon us, let us humble ourselves before Him and walk humbly according to His statutes.

2. Corporate Ethics.

In addition to personal ethics Christians are also interested in corporate, or civic, ethics. There must be some principles which guide people in their civic relationships. As the Virginian Thomas Jefferson once said, "It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million human beings collected together are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them separately."

a. The Covenant Between God and Civil Governments.

Dabney argued that ultimately, civil governments derive their powers from God for the protection of the people under their care. After arguing against the "Social Contract" theory of civil government, Dabney made the following remarks,

• The other theory may be called the Christian. It traces civil government to the will and providence of God, who, from the first, created man with social instincts and placed him under social relations... If asked, whence the obligation to obey the civil magistrate, it answers: from the will of God, which is the source of all obligation... Hence, civil government is an ordinance of God; magistrates rule by His providence and by His command, and are His agents or ministers.

Concerning the purpose of civil government he wrote, "The proper object of it is, in general, to secure to man his life, liberty, and property, i. e., his secular rights."

b. The Nature of Political Power.

Dabney also realized that from a human perspective, the political power of the civil government came from the people being governed, and did not reside in the rulers themselves,

• ...while we emphatically ascribe the fact of civil government and the obligation to obey it, to the will of God, we also assert that in the secondary sense, the government is, potentially, the people. The original source of the power, the authority and the obligation to obey it, is God, the human source is not an irresponsible Ruler, but the body of the ruled themselves, that is, the sovereignty, so far as it is human, resides in the people, and is held by the rulers, by delegation from them.

We see from these words the Confederate realization that civil governments derive their authority from God's ordinance for their existence, and also that, on a human level, governments derive their right to rule from the consent of the governed.

c. The Source of Law.

The main civic question which confronts Southerners today is, What is to be the source of our laws and legal precepts? For Dabney and his Confederate cohorts, this question was elementary: They looked to the Bible as the source of their legal ideas. Concerning the legal right of self-defence, Dabney wrote,

• The Scriptures expressly confirm us. The right of slaying the house-breaker clearly implies a right of self-defence. (Exodus 22:2)... The effect of this permission is evaded, indeed, by the pretence that Moses' legislation was imperfect and barbarous, and is corrected by the milder instructions of our Saviour (Matt. 5:39). But I have taught you the falsehood of this notion, and showed you that the Old Testament teaches precisely the same morality with the New.

Concerning capital punishment Major Dabney stated,

• As to the delegation of the right of capital punishment for flagrant crimes, the feeble attempt has been made to represent the injunction of Genesis 6:6 as not a precept, but a prediction; not as God's instruction of what ought to be done to the murderer, but His prophecy of what human vindictiveness would do. The context refutes this. The command for the capital punishment of the murderer, having been given to Noah... is of course, universal... Capital punishments are also authorized in the New Testament. Romans 13 assures us that the magistrate "beareth not the sword in vain," but in bearing it he is God's minister to execute wrath upon the evil-doer.

In 1862 the Confederacy countenanced the strange practice of delivering mail on Sundays. Every Southerner's hero, "Stonewall" Jackson, found this morally repugnant and he thus mounted a charge against the offending procedure. In his letter to a Colonel Boteler, Jackson wrote, "I do not see how a nation that thus arrays itself, by such a law [allowing the delivery of mail on Sundays] against God's holy day, can expect to escape His wrath. The punishment of national sins must be confined to this world, as there are no nationalities beyond the grave."

Thus we see that General Jackson sought to have our people draw their laws from the text of the Bible. Weaver the historian discovered the tether between the religion and the politics of Southern life. This is demonstrated in his tacit statement,

• For although the South was heavily Protestant, its attitude toward religion was essentially the attitude of orthodoxy; it was a simple acceptance of a body of belief, an innocence of protest and heresy which left religion one of the unquestioned and unquestionable supports of the general settlement under which men live... A religious solid South preceded the political solid South.

Today we need desperately to recapture this religious solidarity. We have been scattered amiss across the theological countryside and are wandering around like lost sheep. We need to worship the Lord Jesus Christ with all of our hearts, minds, and souls. We need to recognize His kingship over us and diligently seek to order our personal and civic affairs according to the precepts of our King's laws. This alone will give us a social and political solidarity against which none of our opponents can stand.

In addition to Dabney's pronouncements, James Thornwell also weighed in heavily on the Christian nature of the laws of the Confederacy. He stated,

• The State realizes its religious character through the religious character of it subjects; and a State is and ought to be Christian... As every legislator is bound to be a Christian man, he has no right to vote for any laws which are inconsistent with the teachings of the Scriptures. He must carry his Christian conscience into the halls of legislation. In conformity with these principles, we recognize Christianity today as the religion of our Commonwealth. Our standard of right is that eternal law which God proclaimed from Sinai, and which Jesus expounded on the Mount. We recognize our responsibility to Jesus Christ.

So, the legal, political, and moral precepts of the Bible are to be the civic framework for the Southern nation. We need a body of criminal law based on the Bible. We need a body of tort law based on the Bible. We need a gold-based monetary system based on the Bible. We need a body of law relating to religious liberty based on the Bible. Indeed, every idea we think and every action we undertake, both personally and governmentally, needs to be based upon and derived from the Holy Bible.

This is the essence of Christian civilization!

The Theology of the Confederacy

Part Four

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