A
Comparison of President Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address with Rev. Dabney's
Anti-Biblical Theories of Rights by J. Parnell McCarter
Date 11/29/2021
It is instructive to compare and contrast
President Lincoln’s second inaugural address (see https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=38&page=transcript
) and Rev. Dabney’s article “Anti-Biblical Theories of Rights” (see https://archive.org/details/DiscussionsOfRobertLewisDabneyVol.3Philosophical/page/n21/mode/2up ).
In common, they both profess allegiance to
Biblical Christianity. Hence, Pres.
Lincoln asserts: “Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each
invokes His aid against the other.” And
hence, Rev. Dabney asserts: “When the friends of the Bible win a victory over
one phase of infidelity, they naturally hope that there will be a truce in the vrarfare and they may enjoy peace. But the hope is
unfounded. We should have foreseen this, had we considered that the real source
of infidelity is always in the pride, self-will and ungodliness of man's
nature.”
In common too, they both acknowledge
divine sovereignty over all that happens, including over the war.
Yet, from there they separate ways.
Let’s consider some of the contrasts.
Pres. Lincoln asserts the propriety of
the Northern cause in the war, whereas Rev. Dabney asserts the propriety of the
Southern cause in the war.
Pres. Lincoln analyzes the human
suffering in the war as a judgment of God against sin on both sides, whereas
Rev. Dabney would seem to analyze the human suffering in the war (at least as
it relates to the Southern Confederacy) as providential allowance at the wicked
persecution of the righteous (like the suffering of righteous Job at the hands
of Satan).
Pres. Lincoln sees the primary sin
causing the war as slavery of Africans, whereas Rev. Dabney sees the primary
sin causing the war as rationalistic Jacobin egalitarian heresy. Thus Lincoln avers: “…if God wills that it continue until
all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of
unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash
shall be paid by another drawn with the sword…”
And thus Dabney avers: “...The
radical social theory asserts, under the same name, a totally different doctrine ; its maxim is " all men are born free and
equal." ... So widespread and profound is this confusion of thought,
that the majority of the American people and of their teachers practically know
and hold no other theory than the Jacobin one...Let every
one make up his mind honestly either to reject
the Bible as a fable, and thus preserve his Jacobin humanitarianism, or frankly
to surrender the latter in order to retain the gospel..."
I share the common professions of Lincoln and
Dabney, but how would I come down on the points of their difference?
I have yet to read a sound Biblical refutation of Dabney on
the topics of female voting and slavery, in both of which Dabney takes on,
based on scripture, Jacobin egalitarianism which is a core principle of this
modern Babel. It is a sad fact that most American Christians have fallen
for these errors. Hence, along with Rev. Dabney, I reject Lincoln’s view
that the war was divine judgment on slavery.
However, unlike Dabney, I think the weight of evidence is
that the war was a judgment of God against sin
on both sides, albeit not the sin that Lincoln posited, but rather the
following sins:
-
Breaking the covenant in the Christian Articles
of Confederation, and replacing it with the humanistic, centralizing Federal
Constitution which set the USA on an inevitable course towards a modern
Babel. This sin was perpetrated by
Southern States as well as Northern States. (see http://www.puritans.net/return-to-the-articles-of-confederation/
)
-
Rejecting Biblical Christian establishment by
the civil magistrate and replacing it with anti-establishment of the Christian
religion. It should be remembered that even the Southern Confederacy did not
adopt a distinctively Christian constitution (see https://theonomyresources.blogspot.com/2013/11/james-h-thornwells-critique-of.html
). It was an abandonment of the Protestant “city on a hill” which characterized
English-speaking America at its inception.
-
Unwisely pursuing war like Old Testament Israel
did under the Babylonian empire, when State repentance and Biblical reformation
should have been the top priority even under the “Babylonian” tyranny of
Washington, DC