EVERY system of laws is predicated on SOME philosophy of law. The Dec. is our philosophy of law. Without it our laws would be arbitrary. More later.

God bless you for putting three kids through home school! It must have been a lot of work, but fun too, I imagine (I haven't got kids yet but I used to teach kindergarten). Not everybody can do it, but I think home-school culture is a good thing and on the rise. The schools are bankrupt even in the plain sense of teaching and knowledge, I think, even more than they're spiritually bankrupt. The schools are making our kids imbeciles and (as far as compulsory public education) much of Europe is kicking our behinds. Our universities are still great and among the best in the world, but if our abhorrent public ed. continues as it has, in a generation or two these imbeciles will be running our universities too (into the ground). God bless you for keeping good books in the house too.

As far as the doctrinal level,I understand the fundamental doctrines concerning law and grace; it's just difficult sorting out where commands fit into the economy of God. Bonhoeffer, for example thinks obedience and faith are one and the same thing, and can't be effectually divided. I just mean I haven't got sorted out yet what I believe concerning the intricacies of things. And on the practical level, I just mean it's tough to find congregations (or denominations in general) which have a balanced practicalview

Point is, that goes to show you how deeply entrenched the notion was that right and wrong as categories can only be defined by a God--it was the heyday of natural law philosophy and following the ancient trajectory that England had been following--that is that kings and the laws of men are derived FROM GOD, or else they are illegitimate. Nobody thought you could have rights w/o God.

Too many people (like John Hagee) build their eschatology on the silly misunderstanding that 'nation' in the Bible means what we mean by a state or political nation today. They're always saying "the nation of such and such...this means this and this country." Nonsense. Thus the 'nation' (i.e. people) of the Perizzites, for example, means a tribe, not a 'country'. A simple enough distinction, but people come out with asinine eschatologies w/o it.

In grad school I met lots of people with perfect conservative doctrine but no desire for holiness. It's tough to find a balance.

Iraq is a recent invention--a mish-mash of Kurds, Sunnis, Shites, speakers of Farsi, Kurdish, Arabic, etc. There's no 'Iraqi' race.

Personally I think Anglican bishops are a judgment on western society

(as far as American Anglican bishops go)

...and the Medes are the modern-day Kurds, not the Iranians (who are the Persians)--different races with different languages. And Babylon isn't Iraq, it's Babylon. Iraq is a seventy-year-old fiction of the 'League of Nations'. Nations in the bible means tribes or peoples, not modern-day political states. Yugoslavia was a state, not a nation, because there is no "Yugoslav" people just like there's no 'Iraqi' people.

Should no Christians get university degrees either? No Christian lawyers, doctors, professors, etc. to witness to the world? The instinct to fly away from the public is precisely why the public (and higher education) are so liberal and secular--all the Christians got scared and ran away. Abolish, are you sure you're not a closet Essene?

As for free will and predestination, evidence for both is found in scripture because, far from being opposed, the two are compatible, which is what Calvin seems to have thought anyway, not to mention Luther (however much this has been clouded over by the nonsense of Dordt Calvinism).

Oh well, maybe I'll just go with that and reserve Muhammad/Islam for the role of the False Prophet, like John Calvin did .

http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/450392,CST-EDT-REF30b.article

That's the way terrorist outfits are created, mainstreamed, and accepted--by fictitiously pretending that that they are not the terrorists, but some rogue element is. It's the same way Islamic Jihad was created, and, for that matter "Fatah" as the military wing of the PLO--it's all the same thing. They're all terrorists.

Like Augustine put it, two cities were born of two loves; one the city of man by the love of self and contempt of God, and the City of God from the love of God and contempt of self.

Just goes to show you how fascinatingly correct Scripture is, that is in terms of the way in which the spirit of the world (that is, the spirit of Antichrist) hates the Lord and will tolerate anything other than His true gospel. It also goes to show the way in which the Lutheran/Calvinist notion of the bondage of the will outside of Christ's liberation from sin causes people to work and live according to this system unwittingly, and, in many cases, unintentionally--so strong is our fallen default setting of hatred of the Lord of the Universe and His saving gospel.