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R. Scott Clark
R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.
More by R. Scott Clark ›
That Hobbesian “war of all against the all” is the rule and the normal condition for the world in its fallen condition, isn’t it? There is no truth for the blind and deaf fallen and reprobate world. So christian motto must be “Nil admirari”. But I didn’t decide, must a christian of our age be a “laughing Democritus” or “crying Heraclitus”.
We do believe in the restraining providence of God and in what Perkins and others called “common grace,” i.e., those gifts with which God endows unbelievers for the general good of society. We recognize them as coming from God. Graciously he restrains evil so that life is not always “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” nor a “war of all against all.” Hence, we’ve not usually looked to the Leviathan, the great central state, to restrain evil (since everyone who serves the state is equally capable of abusing their authority) but to God.