04-06-2024, 04:18 PM
My thoughts weren't requested, but it was an excellent talk (yes, I watched the whole thing) and I hope to read the paper when I get time. The Q&A questions are missing the point, as usual. Higgs doesn't directly answer the first question because he wants to be polite to that audience member and not just rip it to shreds, but there's really nothing else you can do with the inevitability argument.
Let's suppose we were all trapped in a foreign POW camp, like in The Great Escape. And let's suppose that someone proposes an escape plan. "First, we secretly remove a floorboard and dig a little dirt from under the barracks every day, then we begin tunneling. After several weeks by my calculation we will be able to escape." But someone else raises their hand to object: "Yeah, but once we escape the POW camp, then what? Someone among us is just going to start their own POW camp and imprison us all over again. So what's the point of trying to escape?!" Yes, the inevitability argument for the State is that stupid. "They're going to hunt us down and we will be on the run" is at least a true objection, but it also shows that there is absolutely nothing inevitable about the State, so long as we have the courage to truly leave it, once and for all. If we're serious about escaping the POW camp, we can escape, and there's nothing they can do to stop us. But once we escape, obviously, the same agents who imprisoned us in the first place are going to hunt us back down and try to imprison us again. The solution is to plan for it. Once we're outside the POW camp, we can fashion or steal weapons, and we can fight back. And with proper planning, the chances of success are not zero. So no, the State is not inevitable.
In addition, even if it were true that the State cannot be defeated by any means (and it's not true), it is still right to oppose it. Higgs rightly points out that it is foolish to make yourself an especially ripe target for the State to obliterate because... they will. Nevertheless, because we have eternal life through the Gospel, if we believe, we ought to reject the State's crimes as crimes, and we ought to reject any State that is not in submission to the lordship of Jesus because it is therefore antichrist -- even on pain of death. In short, this is ultimately a spiritual matter, it is not a purely material calculation. "No Lord but Jesus. No Kingdom but God's." Or, as Dale Gribble eloquently put it, "I am not questioning your authority. I'm completely denying its existence."
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