It is not w-w.
Mike Horton tries to make a case that support for gay marriage is a function of w-w:
What this civic debate—like others, such as abortion and end-of-life ethics—reveals is the significance of worldviews. Shaped within particular communities, our worldviews constitute what Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann coined as “plausibility structures.” Some things make sense, and others don’t, because of the tradition that has shaped us. We don’t just have a belief here and a belief there; our convictions are part of a web. Furthermore, many of these beliefs are assumptions that we haven’t tested, in part because we’re not even focally aware that we have them. We use them every day, though, and in spite of some inconsistencies they all hold together pretty firmly—unless a crisis (intellectual, moral, experiential) makes us lose confidence in the whole web.
Every worldview arises from a narrative—a story about who we are, how we got here, the meaning of history and our own lives, expectations for the future. From this narrative arise certain convictions (doctrines and ethical beliefs) that make that story significant for us. No longer merely assenting to external facts, we begin to indwell that story; it becomes ours as we respond to it and then live out its implications.
It seems to me that gay marriage is much more a function of deeply ingrained American instincts than anything Nietzsche or Hegel might cook up. Equality and fairness is one aspect of American confusion over gay marriage. Why can’t everyone have the same access to the benefits of marriage? Another is a post-Civil Rights desire to keep anyone in America from feeling inferior? If gays can’t marry, doesn’t that mean we have a 2-tier social system and isn’t that like Jim Crow? Finally, Americans have learned to sever marriage from reproduction (largely thanks to Protestants). If marriage is more for fulfillment than for procreation, why can’t everyone have access to marriage?
This doesn’t mean Mike’s piece is wrong. But I do wonder whether the invocation of w-w will help with this conflict among Americans. By invoking w-w we conceivably turn this debate into a consequence of the antithesis. And that won’t do because so many non-Kuyperians (i.e. Roman Catholics) oppose gay marriage. And if we look around and see non-Reformed opposition to gay marriage, and still cling to w-w, then don’t we need to say that Roman Catholics have the same w-w as Reformed Protestants? Say hello to the Manhattan Declaration.
Better it seems to (all about) me simply to follow what God’s law requires in our churches and think through what changes in marriage policy mean for our societies. Has it not occurred to any baby boomer, rapidly approaching Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, that we need more babies who will grow up to pay taxes that keep our senior citizens medicated and fed? Has anyone heard of what’s going on Europe? Now is a bad time in the history of the West to make permanent a divide between marriage and child-bearing.
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Doug says; “BTW Sean, if the death penalty for murder were on trial, I would argue by the exact same standard, God’s Word. Murderers and homosexuals both deserve the death penalty “BECAUSE GOD SAYS SO”!!!!! I know that is true, because the Bible is the very Word of God.”
Sean says: Doug, you were the cat who just previously argued that even theonomists can’t agree on penal sanctions for a modern society. It’s “tricky” remember? I’ll tell you what, you produce for me the tablets written on stone by God Himself, for application outside a plot of land in Palestine well over 2000 years ago, as prescribed for the United States and throw in a new Moses and a burning bush, and give me some God given dimensions for a new temple and throw in a God-written addendum that details how Jesus Christ was insufficient and failed in his efforts as the second Adam to fulfill the law and the prophets, can’t forget those prophets, and how God is re-instituting temple sacrifice in a typical manner in anticipation of a 3rd Adam and throw in a glory theophany or two and start raising people from the dead and healing a couple people and then die a martyr’s death for your commitment to a proposed new covenant and……………………………….I probably still won’t buy off on it. Oh wait, then explain to me Daniel’s behavior in Babylon outside the promised land and how that figures into your thinking, and…………………………………….never mind. To paraphrase my favorite theologian; ‘theonomy is a misreading of scripture on a MASSIVE scale.” You’ve literally missed the entire impact of the incarnation and Jesus’ death and life by your misdirected insistence on Mosaic application this side of the resurrection of our Christ.
Speaking of favorite theologians, another one worth listening to said the following:
“Theonomy, therefore, is not merely an error, though it has manifestly been regarded as erroneous by the Reformed tradition. It is the error du jour, the characteristic error of an unwise generation. It is the error of a generation that has abandoned the biblically-mandated quest for wisdom on the assumption that the Bible itself contains all that we need to know about life’s various enterprises. It is the proof-textual, Bible-thumping, literalist, error par excellence. It is not merely the view of the unwise, but the view of the never-to-be-wise, because it is the view of those who wrongly believe that scripture sufficiently governs this arena, and who, for this reason, will never discover in the natural constitution of the human nature or the particular circumstances of given peoples what must be discovered to govern well and wisely.”
And do hard neo-cals ever really listen to Kuyper:
Does it follow, therefore, that the sooner we stop our observation of life the better, so that we can seek the rules of state polity outside life in Holy Scripture? This is how some mistakenly think that we reason…However, the opposite is true. Calvinism has never supported this untenable position but has always opposed it with might and main. A state polity that dismisses and scorns the observation of life and simply wishes to duplicate the situation of Israel, taking Holy Scripture as a complete code of Christian law for the state, would, according to the spiritual fathers of Calvinism, be the epitome of absurdity. Accordingly, in their opposition to Anabaptism as well as the Quakers, they expressed unreservedly their repugnance for this extremely dangerous and impractical theory.
If we considered the political life of the nations as something unholy, unclean and wrong in itself, it would lie outside of human nature. Then the state would have to be seen as a purely external means of compulsion, and every attempt to discover even a trace of God’s ordinances in our own nature would be absurd. Only special revelation would then be capable of imparting to us the standards for that external means of discipline. Wherever, thus, this special revelation is absent, as in the heathen worlds, nothing but sin and distortion would prevail, which would therefore not even be worth the trouble of our observation…However, if we open the works of Calvin, Bullinger, Beza and Marnix van St. Aldegonde, it becomes obvious that Calvinism consciously chooses sides against this viewpoint. The experience of the states of antiquity, the practical wisdom of their laws, and the deep insight of their statesmen and philosophers is held in esteem by these men, and these are cited in support of their own affirmations and consciously related to the ordinances of God. The earnest intent of the political life of many nations can be explained in terms of the principles of justice and morality that spoke in their consciences. They cannot be explained simply as blindness brought on by the Evil One; on the contrary, in the excellence of their political efforts we encounter a divine ray of light…
…with proper rights we contradict the argument that Holy Scripture should be seen as the source from which a knowledge of the best civil laws flow. The supporters of this potion talk as though after the Fall nature, human life, and history have ceased being a revelation of God and As though, with the closing of this book, another book, called Holy Scriptures, as opened for us. Calvinism has never defended this untenable position and will never acknowledge it as its own…We have refuted the notion that we entertain the foolish effort to patch together civil laws from Bible texts, and we have declared unconditionally that psychology, ethnology, history and statistics are also for us given which, by the light of God’s Word, must determine the standards for the state polity.
David R. as I have pointed out to you before, not all Mosaic penal sanctions were death penalties. So your theory falls apart! God’s law was “eye for and eye” which is poetry for perfect socio political justice. Who, other than God can tell us what punishment is perfect retribution in a fallen world? Exactly how should we view *certain* crimes-sins? When does the punishment fit the crime? Well, as some have pointed out, God hasn’t explicitly said everything, about everything, but he’s given us enough moral universals, that with his written Word, first and foremost, wisdom, common sense, the fruit of the Spirit, and God’s common grace we can govern society in a God honoring way. As long as we base it on his Law. After all, He is the King of Kings! So the general equity of the Mosaic Law is perpetual, why? Because justice and morality are coterminous. Any lasting Nation must found it laws of justice, which is the foundation of God’s own throne.
Doug,
Why didn’t Paul teach a form of political activism, to reorder the Roman government, to resemble OT Israel? And why didn’t he demand, that all those sexually degenerate members of the early Church be executed?
Doug, something tells me that you have the same discussion ad nausem everywhere you go.;)
Doug, I don’t see why civil penalties have to be capital in order to be pedagogical. But by your logic, since not all Mosaic civil laws are about punishing crime, I guess your theory falls apart. What about levirate marriage? Wasn’t that God’s law? Isn’t dispensing with it autonomy?
Doug,
Have you ever considered a doctrinal rehab? You need to get away for about 3 months before you do more damage to others who care about you.
I once suggested that to my arminian brother and he blew a gasket on me.
Zrim, nice Kuyper quote. Would you consider Kuyper to be Kuyperian? A neo-Cal? A transformationist? Maybe ad fonts is the order of the day. Don’t confuse the real thing with modern practitioners who have veered off course.
To all, would R2K’s say that the general equity of the Mosaic judicial code referred to in WCF XIX would be equivalent to natural law?
Terry, the short answer is yes. The extended answer comes from RS Clark’s “Recovering the Reformed Confession” in the conclusion of his brief theonomic critique (pg. 65):
The Mosaic civil laws do not oblige any noncanonical civil authority any more than the “general e4quirty” of the civil laws may require. Whatever “general equity” does mean, there is no evidence that it means anything like “the abiding validity of the law of God in exhaustive details” [the theomonic mantra]. The only law that does have abiding, exhaustive validity is the natural or creational law delivered to Adam and restated at Sinai. WCF 19.5 says, in part, “The moral law doth for ever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof; and that, not only in regard of the matters contained in it, but also in respect of the authority of God, the Creator, who gave it.” It is the moral law, that is, the law delivered in creation, which survives the expiration of the Israelite national covenant.”
Re your neo-cal comment, the Protestant Reformation was never about cultural reformation or impact but only ecclesiastical reform. As long as the point is cultural influence, neo-Calvinism is off the Reformation rails, be it the soft or hard versions. And after spending the last 15 years in your culturalist CRC, I’d say soft neo-Calvinism is quite off track.
David R. we longer have the Levirate marriage in the New Covenant but we are not to be unequally yoked. So there is a New Covenant application given to us by Paul.
To all: What I meant about the tricky part is there is some debate about the ceremonial nature of certain laws. Just what constitutes the ceremonial between the moral? How would we enforce the Sabbath Laws, in the New Covenant, and such? Should we have blue laws? That is what I meant by differences of opinion among theonomists. We still have much work to do, to form a consensus.
Sean, you poor confused man, let me try to help you out. Daniel was a true man of God, who realized the time he lived. Israel was under God’s divine judgment and captivity. Babylonian rule was God’s punishment for Israel’s idolatry. See Isaiah 10:5 to read of this form of judgment from the mouth of God. So Daniel is a poor example, today in America we live in a democratic republic. We get to vote! We are encouraged to voice our opinion. We change and modify laws all the time! Babylonian rule, was a dictorship! My question is, by what standard *should) we base our laws? Easy! We should base them on God’s revealed Word.
Christians today are not to use the *physical* sword for the advancement of our faith. We do use the sword of the Spirit, which is the Gospel, amen? The Magistrate uses the sword to punish crime. Now my point is very simple, shouldn’t we want crime punished in a God glorifying way? Shall we execute the jay walker, and let the abortion Dr free? When should sin be considered a crime? God give us some much needed guidance in these areas. And we need to look to all of God’s Word, because God has given us enough moral universals to make good God honoring laws. While we still have some work ahead of us, with humility, faith, and continued study, God will most certainly show us the way.
Luther, Paul lived under Roman rule. It was a dictatorship. To say as Paul did, that “Jesus is Lord” was an offensive slap in Cesar’s face. It was the most offensive punch that could be dealt to a Roman ruler. That statement got Paul executed. In fact it became so offensive to Romans, to verbally denounce that phrase, would save the life of any Christian. But to their credit, Christians kept the good confession, Jesus is Lord!
Jesus made clear that his kingdom is not of this world, but it overcomes the world. And what overcomes this world now? Our faith. So we must understand the times we live in. BTW read Daniel chapter two starting in verse 44; it speaks how God will one day crush the Roman Empire. God did some three hundred years after 70AD.
“and all I heard were the sounds of science.”
by Art Garfunkel and Bill Nye
Alex: don’t make everything about italics.
Now that is rich!
Cheers…
Zrim, of course, the point isn’t cultural reform, but Christians become agents of the kingdom (salt, light, yeast, mustard seeds) in the world and in their vocations. As they themselves submit to the Lordship of Christ in their lives it impacts the world. This includes all aspects of God’s Created order (which in a neo-Calvinist perspective is ontologically rich–not just physical/spiritual, church/state, but includes all sorts of social aspect–think Dooyeweerd here). Transformed people in those parts of the world result in a transformed world.
Doug says; “So Daniel is a poor example”
Sean; Doug I’m sure any argument that eclipses the argument for Mosaic civil law and penalty for all non-theocratic, non-chartered, plots of land outside of a small plot in Palestine is gonna be a poor example for you. I understand how that refutes, rebuts and otherwise renders your position impotent.
Sean; Doug I have a better challenge for you, though Daniel in Babylon is a humdinger, here’s WCF 19:4; To them also, as a body politic, he gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require.
Now the challenge is for you to render the term general equity in such a way, that it does no violence to the statement at the beginning of 19:4;
” To them also, as a body politic, he gave sundry judicial laws, which EXPIRED TOGETHER with the STATE of THAT PEOPLE. Remember general equity can’t be construed, according to the confession, in any way that assumes to itself the “various sundry judicial laws, which EXPIRED together with the STATE of that People. Why you may ask; BECAUSE they EXPIRED TOGETHER with the STATE of That People. Oh let the rhetorical gymnastics and theological contortions and the utter mutilating of WCF 19:4 begin.
Doug, please elaborate on how the admonition to not be unequally yoked is a “New Covenant application” of the law of levirate marriage. I’m afraid I’m not quite seeing the connection….
David R., please don’t ask Doug to comment more than he has. Yikes!
Terry, just how long have been in the CRC and have you really been paying attention? The point is indeed cultural renewal and reform. But I think James Hunter (T Change the World) has a better bead on the realities of the world than your simplistic transformationalist idea that more Christians means a transformed world:
If there is an exemplar whose life mission touches all of these themes and strategies—and who is celebrated as such—it is William Wilberforce (1757-1833). Wilberforce was a member of the British House of Commons and spent over forty years seeking to end slavery and “reform the manners” of his society. He was a devout Christian who believed that true personal change came through salvation by faith in Jesus Christ, and his ideals were fed by his deep faith. As an activist, he led a social movement committed to the moral reform of British society and against much opposition eventually prevailed in abolishing the legalized slave trade. Wilberforce was indeed, a great man and a model of what one courageous person willing to step into the fray can do.
At the end of the day, the message is clear: even if not in the lofty realms of political life that he was called to, you too can be a Wilberforce. In your own sphere of influence, you too can be an Edwards, a Dwight, a Booth, a Lincoln, a Churchill, a Dorothy Day, a Martin Luther King, a Mandela, a Mother Teresa, a Vaclav Havel, a John Paul II, and so on. If you have the courage and hold to the right values and if you think Christianly with an adequate Christian worldview, you too can change the world.
This account is almost entirely mistaken.
Thus ends chapter two. Hunter then goes on to explain what one might hope would be quite obvious to the sane and sober mind. In a word, the real world works in a much more complicated way than certain wistful hearts might imagine. In another word, “Culture…is a knotty, difficult, complex, perhaps impossible puzzle.” If that is fundamentally understood it trends to cast a less-than-enthusiastic reception of ubiquitous calls to transform the world. In chapter four he suggests an alternative view of culture and cultural change in eleven propositions (which is actually the title of the chapter). He begins with one alternative assumption that “one cannot merely change worldviews or question one’s own very easily” and suggests that “Most of what really counts, in terms of what shapes and directs us, we are not aware of; it operates far below what most of us are capable of consciously grasping.” From there a handful of others follow, among which are: culture is a product of history (“It is better to think of culture as a thing, if you will, manufactured not by lone individuals but rather by institutions and the elites who lead them”); ideas only sometimes have consequences (“Weaver’s statement [that ideas have consequences] would be truer if it were reworded as: ‘Under specific conditions and circumstances ideas can have consequences’”); and cultures change from the top down, rarely is ever from the bottom up (“In other words, the work of world-making and world-changing are, by and large, the work of elites; gatekeepers who provide creative direction and management within spheres of social life…In a very crude formulation, the process begins with theorists who generate ideas and knowledge; moves to researchers who explore, revise, expand, and validate ideas; moves on to teachers and educators who pass those ideas on to others, then passes on to popularizes who simplify ideas and practitioners who apply those ideas”).
In keeping with the spirit of the others, Proposition Six is that culture is generated within networks. Here Hunter begins with what he cites as “the great man (or person) view of history.”
It is a Hegelian idea of leadership and history, popularized by the nineteenth-century Scottish historian, Thomas Carlyle…For Carlyle, heroes shaped history through the vision of their leadership, the power of their intellect, the beauty and delight of their aesthetic, and animating it all a certain inspiration from above…[from Moses to Jesus to Buddha to Aristotle to Julius Caesar to Napoleon to Aquinas to Luther to Darwin to Freud to Monet and Degas] All form an aristocracy of knowledge, talent, ability, ambition, and virtue, and so endowed have stood like switchmen on the train tracks of history; it is their genius and the genius of other heroic individuals that have guided the evolution of civilization this way or that; for better or for worse.
The only problem with this perspective is that it is mostly wrong. Against this great-man view of history and culture, I would argue (along with many others) that the key actor in history is not individual genius but rather the network and the new institutions that are created out of those networks. And the more “dense” the network—that is, the more active and interactive the network—the more influential it could be. This is where the stuff of culture and cultural change is produced…My point is simply that charisma and genius and their cultural consequences do not exist outside of networks of similarly oriented people and similarly aligned institutions.
Dr. Hart, sorry! I am curious about that connection though….
David R. you’re right, the Leverite institute became obsolete when Christ went to the cross. Jesus is now our Grat High Preist, amen? What I was attempting to point out, is that in the older Mosaic economy Jews were forbid to marry outside of their race. In the New Covenant were are no longer bound to race, but to faith.
Blessings,
Doug
Zrim, for the record–I was a faculty member at Calvin from 1986-1997. I have been a member since 2002 and just finishing up my second term as elder. I was a delegate to Synod 2010 and am delegate to Synod 2012. I’ve taught a semester long class on the history of the CRC in our church. As I’ve said many times, I’m unhappy with much of so-called neo-Calvinism in the CRC. I’d be a lot happier if we’d distinguish between what the church does and what neo-Calvinists do in their respective vocations. Neo-Calvinism does not equal CRC/Calvin College. There are significant neo-Calvinist impulses there, but I fear that we’re tilting toward social gospelism (which is not neo-Calvinism).
I’d suggest that my notion is not simplistic–just your reading of my notion. You seem incapable of making distinctions. Anyone who can’t distinguish between neo-Calvinism, theonomy, social gospelism, emergent church social action, the Christian right, God’s politics, etc. is just not thinking clearly.
Let’s pursue the “general equity” = natural law idea a bit more. I have some sympathy with Doug’s concern about how we define natural law. I don’t really have sympathy with his belief that penal sanctions are part of the general equity. I think penal sanctions are part of judicial code specifics that are expired. Nonetheless, where do we find out about these things? This is where your neo-Calvinist/Kuyperian quote comes in handy. It’s Creational revelation. We learn it by studying the world, human behavior, successful political systems, statistics! but with those empirical studies undergirded by a Christian worldview, Christian presuppositions informed by the theology of scripture about the nature of God, the nature of man, the nature of the world, eschatology, etc. This is neo-Calvinism pure and simple. If natural law is God’s law (Is it?), then we best understand it by having Christian perspective on the world as the backdrop of our thinking.
To all my brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus; our subject is “The problem with Gay Marriage” take a listen to Douglas Wilson’s latest effort. It’s well worth the reading
Marriage is a political act, and not an individual choice. How you marry is a way of testifying to what city you belong to. Who defines marriage? The difficulty we are having in our generation in answering this question shows how theology shapes and drives everything.
If God created the world, and put one man and one woman in it, married them to each other, and established that as a pattern for the rest of human history, then marriage should be defined in accordance with that reality. If He did nothing of the kind, and we actually evolved out of the primordial goo, then we get to shape and define it however we would like it to go.
One other item of Christian theology has to be taken into account, and that is the reality of the fall into sin. The Christian approach to marriage in the context of mere Christendom deals with both of these realities — the creational given of male and female, and the sinful propensity we have to hump the world. Creational sexuality and sinful sexuality are both factors.
Our laws about marriage must therefore do two things, not just one. They must honor what God has established in the first place, and they must restrain (by not honoring with the recognition of marriage) any of the other forms of sexual congress that sinful men have come up with.
When Jesus taught on divorce, He appeals to the creation pattern.
“And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Matt. 19:4-6).
Reasoning by analogy from this, we can see other expressions of sexuality are excluded. A man should not be allowed to marry himself. It is not good that man should be alone (Gen. 2:18). A man should not be allowed to marry multiple wives. God said that He would make a helper suitable to him (Gen. 1:18). Bestiality is excluded. Adam did not find a helper suitable to him among the animals (Gen. 2:20). Homosexuality is excluded because God brought Adam a woman, and not another man (Gen. 2:22). And divorce is excluded because God is the one who brought the man and woman together (Matt. 19:6).
But of course if none of this happened, and our ancestors climbed down out of the trees circa 15 million years ago, then evolutionary shape shifting is the order of the day, and there is absolutely no reason to not let people marry whoever or whatever they want.
The marriage debates are a prime illustration of why governmental neutrality on basic religious issues is an impossibility. He who says A must eventually say B, and now that we are getting to the end of this seamy chain of syllogisms, we are confronted with the demand to allow homosexuals to marry. But this is not the end of it, and shows why it is so important to get down to first principles.
The secularists want to say that in addition to straights, we have a range of options with the fetching label of GLBTQ. Anybody who thinks that list of letters won’t grow just isn’t paying attention. Pederasty, bestiality, hetero-polygamy, hetero-polyandry, and bisexual-polyoptions are all waiting in the wings.
The reason why homosexual marriage won’t end the debates (and the hate crimes of those who take up the wrong side of the debate) is that these marriage “reforms” clearly have not solved the problems of the bisexuals. With our arbitrary limitation of marital status to two and only two people, we are plainly telling the bisexual that he must choose between a heterosexual marriage or a homosexual marriage, but that he can’t do both. “But I am both!” he wails . . . suppose this poor little buster wants to express all of his sexual yearnings within the holy bonds of matrimony, and the clerk down at the county courthouse, just seething with hate, won’t give him a license with a place on it for three signatures. And then the Muslim guy, next in line, wants one with a place for four signatures.
This is all perfectly irrational, of course, but the real problem with rational consistency lies with those Christians who want to fight this latest onslaught without resorting to Genesis and the foundational authority of God’s Word (in short, without fighting for mere Christendom). What these secularists (or sexularists, that works too) are advocating is perfectly consistent with their premises, and with the sexual history of the human race (a sinful sexual history). This is why Christians can’t fight this on the basis of “traditional values.” The sexual traditions of humanity, considered apart from God’s Word, have contained way too many child brides, harems, serial polygamists, and concubines to provide us with the appropriate guidance here.
If you want a knock down argument for mere Christendom, look no further than a marriage referendum on a state ballot near you.
Terry, don’t get me wrong. Even as the CRC is on a trajectory toward broad evangelicalism, there is still a lot more Reformation in neo-Calvinism (at least the sort with which I am familiar) than in broad evangelicalism. To be a Refomed culturalist requires a better sense of creational goodness. But the project takes an unfortunate left turn in its eventual confusion of creation and redemption.
But I don’t see why natural law needs the help of the Bible. That’s what it sounds like when you say, “…but with those empirical studies undergirded by a Christian worldview, Christian presuppositions informed by the theology of scripture about the nature of God, the nature of man, the nature of the world, eschatology, etc.” If both books are God’s then why does one need the help of the other? That makes it sound like one of God’s books is insufficient for its ordained task. Sure, they can compliment each other, I’ve no problem with that. But the way neo-Cals speak it’s almost as if God’s natural revelation makes no sense without the Bible. Sure it does. If it’s sufficient to eternally condemn (per Paul) then how can it not be sufficient to provisionally guide?
Doug, if you are confused about why 2k doesn’t execute a kidnapper by now it’s because you keep suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.
“undergirded by a Christian worldview, Christian presuppositions informed by the theology of scripture about the nature of God, ”
Terry, isn’t the concept of a Christian W V, aside from the theonomy malaise, the very thing that is under contention. What is a Christian worldview divorced from the church proper, and the normal means of grace. I understand that from Kuyper’s persp. he wants to push the Augustinian antithetical back from Augustine’s religious (cultic) and moral moorings to the epistemological but is that legitimate? It’s certainly not a move that the reformers were doing. Even Kuyper only established four special revelation principles, very broad in scope, and then only if the culture was adrift. Then once those 4 very broad principles were re-established, the book of special revelation was to be removed and the book of general revelation took back over. So, I’m not sure where Kuyper helps the neo-cal’s in more narrowly or specifically defining natural law specifics as it regards anything that has ‘feet on the ground’ per se. The very contention seems to be what are; “Christian principles” apart from ecclesiastical concerns. That’s why the charge of mere platitude gets levied against neo-cal’s. The minute you attach ‘Christian’ as a modifier to the action or endeavor you’ve necessarily granted it a mantle of authority that a faithful believer’s response to needs to be to obey. So now we are trafficking in the realm of christian liberty and ‘thus sayeth the Lord’. But has He said?
Doug, amen. And the Mosaic civil code expired, amen? Christ (not David or Solomon) is our great King. BTW, levirate marriage was designed to provide an heir for a deceased man. It had nothing at all to do with intermarriage. (Speaking of BS, the smell here on the west coast is currently pretty awful….)
Sean, “Christian”, as I’ve tried to explain before is merely applying your Christian faith to life. It’s in the realm of liberty since there’s no specific “thou shalts”. You all must have grown up or been discipled by some real domineering pastors. I’ve never in 35 years of interaction with this type of thinking experienced the kind of conscience-binding that you all seem to have had. The closest might be Calvin College’s requirement that my kids be in a Christian school. Even there homeschooling counted. And, of course, no one forced me to accept the conditions of employment–I did so quite willingly.
Zrim, I don’t really understand why you keep saying that I say that natural law needs the help of the Bible. The only sense I do so is when I say that all thinking requires “help”. We call it the noetic effect of the Fall. Our minds are darkened about all sorts of truth, not just “spiritual” truth. But God allows the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. He restrains the wicked for the sake of his creation and especially for the church and it’s gospel-preaching task.
I was just asking “is natural law, God’s law?” I think all laws of nature are God’s law. His divine Word by which he governs the universe at all levels: physical, biological, psychological, social, moral, etc.
There’s an interesting essay by CVT on how both books need each other. You might want to check it out. The Bible doesn’t include a lexicon, for example. Apparently, it relies on the other book to provide that. Reformed people including Calvin and the confessions speak of special revelation as being the spectacles through which we see creation aright. I think you’ve adopted an extreme version of 2k to say that the two books don’t need each other.
Doug, as I said earlier. I don’t see how specific penal sanctions are necessarily part of general equity.
But, Terry, Paul says that the Gentiles who do not have the law do what the law requires and thus show that it is naturally written on the heart, evidently without any aid from the Bible. Is Paul being extreme? Does anyone really need the Bible to know stealing and adultery are wrong? Abimelech didn’t. But I’m not denying sinners need help, I’m questioning whether God’s revelation needs help. Sinners are deficient, to be sure. But are either of God’s books? I say no. Both are sufficient for their respective tasks. How is that extreme, as in “boo!”?
Sean, “Christian”, as I’ve tried to explain before is merely applying your Christian faith to life. It’s in the realm of liberty since there’s no specific “thou shalts”.
So it does devolve down into platitudes and feel-goodism’s. Which is fine as far as it goes, sorta. So when one says I want to distinction between ‘Christian’ school and otherwise, one means he’s earnest about his faith in a very non-specific way but with particularlity to education but in a nebulous way, but it’s important, and this is distinct from catechesis, but still in service to the antithetical but one isn’t sure how, other than it’s earnestness to be distinctly Christian as opposed to being not, because the lack of specifity to public education or the lack of a ‘Christian’ moniker renders public education as what?
I can’t see how this doesn’t denigrate at least to some degree the sufficiency or even excellence, for what it’s for, of general revelation as it serves the public interest apart from religious particularity. Especially if the religious particularity renders no ‘specifics’ as to execution of the same task. In fact the tendency of such use of the term ‘Christian’ is going to serve only to water down it’s particularity and sanctioned use in the church as the church goes about it’s official and exclusively warranted role. To say nothing of the implicit and often time explicit stratification which occurs often between those who educate their children in a ‘Christian’ way, and those who avail themselves of a religiously nonspecific form.
Zrim, so what’s happened in the case of homosexuality? Has nature suddenly become less clear? Also, I’d be a bit hesitant to refer to Romans here. If you read on, you find that no one does it. And, we see from the previous chapter that truth gets suppressed. How do you know which is which? Sure you can find examples of unbelievers recognizing God’s law…neo-Cals recognize common grace–sometimes God gives pagans clear vision, but it’s a work of grace.
You may not think your “separation of books” view is not extreme, but it’s not really historic Reformed theology.
Sean, you’re really stuck on the notion that “Christian” means redemptive or churchly. The way I’m using is that “Christian” means thinking about or doing something self-consciously according to God’s Creational norms. Check out Section 5 here: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Physical%20Science/Gray1999.html
That just isn’t going to happen in the public classroom. I can’t build my education system up around the fundamental confession that God is the Creator of the heavens and the earth and ought to worshiped and served as Creator. In a Christian school I can do that. Sure the details of my chemistry course at Calvin College might look very similar to the details of my chemistry course at Colorado State. That’s because the discipline of chemistry is rooted in Creation and for the most part reflect a Christian perspective in the details.
I’m with Van Til in not granting to the unbeliever a true knowledge of the world that doesn’t included the fact of its God-createdness and the necessity of a doxological response. They get along “after a fashion” but they knowledge is fundamentally darkened.
You can call that a platitude if you want. I consider a profound difference in the fundamental way of looking at the world.
Terry, I take it you mean that because homosexuality enjoys a seemingly widespread acceptance that natural law has let us down. So we need the Bible to make it clear that it’s not. But haven’t you ever heard of lots of people getting it wrong? If most of your students think cheating is acceptable does that mean the law on their hearts is deficient? But how will the Bible help? Lots of people deny the gospel and no matter how much Bible you give them they still suppress the truth in unrighteousness. The problem isn’t either one of God’s books-it’s us.
Terry, perhaps you’ve heard of Will and Grace? Once many people realized that homosexuals were not as bizarre as we were led to believe, then homosexuality didn’t seem all that bad. The same has happened with evangelicals and Roman Catholics. Gee whilickers, that John Paul II sure was a great and smart guy, how could Rome ever be a synagogue of Satan?
This is where some natural theology might help. Sinners are still people. Sin doesn’t turn them into monsters even if it sure would help if life was more like a cartoon than a dilemma.
BTW, I know that confessionalism is on the wane in the CRC, but surely you know that the Belgic Confession makes plausible Zrim’s separation of two books:
Darryl, I know the BC well. I like to think of it as the 37 points of Calvinism. Seems to me BC holds the two books together as means by which God has revealed himself. What!?! Creation is revelatory! Seems like something that should only happen in church.
I make no monsters out of homosexuals. That’s my point to some degree. Homosexuals are in all other respects normal, functioning, productive people. I’m not sure that I would think anything of it if it weren’t for scripture. I think the argument goes somewhat like 4% (or whatever number you wish) of people are homosexual by nature. Why not just accept that as nature (not against nature) and live with it. Some evangelicals are making that argument. Your appeal to making babies is overly simplistic, etc, I don’t see how natural law helps you here.
Terry,
I guess I am looking for a lot more specificity in the use of the term Christian. I get your point about a doxological response but I resist the use of the antithetical as it gets pushed back to the epistemological and than rendered as foundational to a reformed world-view. It’s a view that actually obscures the truth of Rom 2:14-15 and ends up proving too much by obscuring the reality of the Imago Dei. I get it, I’m not dutch. I’m much more comfortable with the reformers spirituality and it’s churchly orientation. Luther and Calvin end up revolving around the church, it’s form, and the sacraments, the ‘dutch’ around worldview and transformation . The former does a better job of protecting and offering a particularity to their religious expression, that the latter, unwittingly and unintendedly no doubt, does not IMO.
Terry, but all 2kers say that everything is revelatory. The question is what the books reveal. You can’t find Christ in nature, hence the 2k insistence on a strong distinction between creation and redemption. The idea of redeeming culture or kingdom work makes havoc of a distinction that paleo-Calvinists took for granted.
As for homosexuals, if not natural law what have you got? The Bible? An established church and Christian law? I don’t think natural law is going to solve everything. But Christendom didn’t work out so well either. I’m all for limping along until our Lord strides back.
Doug: I’m not sure if this is still relevant but I don’t agree with (civil) death penalty for murder.
Jack: I did not italicise that sentence! You italicised them! I don’t know how to italicise on here. I’m just a poor ill-educated Scottish Presbyterian. You big city types are trying to confuscate me!
Doug Sowers
Doug Sowers
Posted May 17, 2012 at 7:03 am | Permalink
Luther, Paul lived under Roman rule. It was a dictatorship. To say as Paul did, that “Jesus is Lord” was an offensive slap in Cesar’s face. It was the most offensive punch that could be dealt to a Roman ruler. That statement got Paul executed. In fact it became so offensive to Romans, to verbally denounce that phrase, would save the life of any Christian. But to their credit, Christians kept the good confession, Jesus is Lord!
So you do believe that God’s law is relative to political trends.
Alex, poor in italics but so rich in irony!
You’re a good sport.
cheers…
Zrim says: Doug, if you are confused about why 2k doesn’t execute a kidnapper by now it’s because you keep suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.
Huh?! Zrim, that is disingenuous at best, and probably more like a big fat lie. I have ask our radical 2K expert Dr Hart what he thinks is an appropriate punishment for a kidnapper, with his *keen* knack for interpreting Natural Law, and you know what he said? He doesn’t even know if his wife or Pastor knows the answer to that question. So Darryl is hopelessly confused himself. In other words, natural law is as clear as mud, when it comes to informing society how to punish crime. Instead of accusing me of suppressing the truth, how about just telling us Zrim? What’s a just penalty for kidnapping in a radical two kingdom world?
Doug, as suggested by the Clark quote above, I take natural law to be synonymous with the moral law of God (per WCF 19.5). So when you say that natural law is as clear as mud, I take that to be a rejection of the clarity of God’s natural revelation. More suppression in unrighteousness.
But I’m not a legal jurist, so how should I know what a just penalty is for kidnapping? That it should be punished is clear, how is another matter and one best answered by those fit for the task. I know you’ll say that’s a wicked dodge, but it’s really a way of saying I know my place. Do you know yours?
Darryl, I’ll probably get in big trouble for this but I’m all for clarity in the church on the issue of homosexuality, but less certain about how to handle it in a pluralistic society. I don’t really expect unbelievers to follow God’s law especially with respect to 1st table issues or consensual sexual matters, drug use, etc. Sounds almost 2k, eh?. A pillarized, worldview informed society seems much more neo-Cal consistent that a natural law or theonomic based morality. I lean toward the APJ model where government allows and supports free exercise of religion including morality. I understand that this gets fuzzy on some moral issues like abortion, liberal government theft by taxation. But I’m not sure natural law helps. Politics is inherently give and take and involves a diverse group with multiple underlying interests. Politics is about how to work together to have functioning society. And in this common grace era is pluriform in supporting worldviews. It seems to me that natural law arguments only work when you some kind of common culture/heritage–say western Protestant thought–as you ably outline in A Secular Faith. But without that common ground there’s little agreement and it’s harder to make the case.
Terry, whatever APJ may embrace, Jim Skillen has written many times about pursuing a biblical political philosophy. I don’t know where the Bible argues for pluralism either in Israel or the church. So if the Bible is going to be the norm for political theorizing (or for some other w-v’s), then I still don’t know where you get gay marriage.
Beware, Doug Sowers is going to go recon on you.
Zrim says: But I’m not a legal jurist, so how should I know what a just penalty is for kidnapping?
Thanks for the humor Steve; I haven’t laughed that hard in a couple weeks. You’re (answer?) personifies why Natural Law says nothing as to how *we* should punish crime in this fallen world. Even you have no idea what Natural Law says to a specific question. Every time your *theory* gets put to the test, it fails. I will gracefully bow out of the conversation. I do get an odd feeling reading this blog; like watching a train wreck.
Doug,
Get back to us when the theonomist cabal works out all the “tricky” stuff. Let’s not do Tyler Texas all over again. Even Greg was aghast.
Darryl, you seem to want proof-texts. I prefer to think in terms of broad theological principles based on scripture. Couldn’t you argue that pluralism is based on the “common grace” in between character of the present situation where the kingdom (in the neo-Cal sense) is side by side with the old age. Thus a Christian perspective embraces pluralism in the state. If any worldview supports same sex unions then a “Christian” political philosophy could endorse protecting that worldview’s place in a pluralistic society without necessarily endorsing it as a moral position. We already do that with non-Christian religions. It seems pluralism is already partially incorporated into our political system. Why homosexual unions or polygamy or marijuana use or … Is a problem, I don’t really get.