195 thoughts on “For Doug Wilson Apparently Being Reformed Means Evangelicalism That Is Effective”

1. Daryl, I understand your concerns about theocratic politics — and I agree — but isn’t there a danger of going to the opposite extreme of Thornwellism? I have your book on order, so you may have answered this already.

   James Thornwell
   “In the first place, we would have it distinctly understood that, in our ecclesiastical Capacity, we are neither friends nor the foes of slavery, that is to say, we have no commission either to propagate or abolish it. The policy of its existence or nonexistence is a question which exclusively belongs to the state. We have no right, as a church, to enjoin it as a duty or to condemn it as a sin.”
   http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1124

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2. Thornwell was obviously a sissy and a girly man who needs to get a real dose of masculinity.

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3. So Vern, what do you do with Wilson’s apology for slavery that he co-authored with Steve Wilkins? I wonder if the Baylys have considered this when cozying up with Wilson.

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4. Doug Wilson says,

   “Calvin was a loyal son of Christendom, as am I.”

   Then how does he:

   “…reconcile his hard-line theonomic position in Fidelity with his letter to Judge John Stegner on behalf of serial pedophile Steven Sitler… [and] account for… advocating the death penalty for pedophiles on the one hand and urging Judge Stegner to limit Sitler’s sentence on the other.”

   (taken from here)

   Calvin didn’t just talk the talk…

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5. bad ju ju AND bad do do – that’s a lot of bad.

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6. Vern,

   I’m curious what you think is so repellant about Thornwell’s words. But it seems to me that what he assumes when he uses the word “slavery” is less “the moral question of man-stealing” than it is “the political question which is concerned for how we order our public lives in 19th century America.” And speaking of dangers, isn’t a danger to apply 21st century American values onto 19th century brethren and run the risk of self-righteousness? I ask as a born and bred 20th century Yank.

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7. Hi Daryl,

   I’ve written something on neo-confeds like DW. See:
   http://vernerable.wordpress.com/the-civil-war/against-neo-confederates/

   But I’m still wondering if you would answer my question. If not, hopefully you cover the subject in *Secular Faith* (which is being shipped today).

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8. Hi Zrim,
   I think the church should be able to, is morally obligated to, speak out on moral/political questions. Of course, they are obligated to speak CORRECTLY about moral/political questions, which is I think, where the real problem is.

   It is a great and grave responsibility, and must not be done lightly, but it must be done. Else, the witness and reputation of the church is undermined and mocked, as is the case with the churches of the pre-Civil War South.

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9. Is that a picture of Francis Schaeffer?

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10. Vern, on which moral/political questions should the church speak? Only the really big ones, or about all forms of unrighteousness that humiliate a nation? When you start down this road — just take a look at the Larger Catechism on the Decalogue — its a long one.

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11. Vern:

    If the church has to speak out on certain moral and political issues just to avoid being mocked, doesn’t that allow the mockers to define the scope of the church’s message, if not the very essence of the message itself?

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12. Vern,

    I’m all for contemplating great and grave responsibilities of the church, minding her witness and reputation (though mocking can be a badge of honor). But, pursuant to these shared concerns, is not the church much more obligated to distinguish between moral and political questions than she is to “speak out on moral/political questions,” lest she become a slave to the traditions of men? In other words, doesn’t your statement presume that it is perfectly appropriate to collapse the moral and political? And if that’s true, then aren’t there a lot of apology letters to write the 20th century liberals, or was their mistake collapsing the moral and political in a progressive instead of a conservative way?

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13. So you guys actually agree with Thornwell? You don’t think the church should have condemned slavery?

    Zrim, re: social gospelism, note my point about being CORRECT in what one says on moral/political questions.

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14. Zrim: I’m curious what you think is so repellant about Thornwell’s words. But it seems to me that what he assumes when he uses the word “slavery” is less “the moral question of man-stealing” than it is “the political question which is concerned for how we order our public lives in 19th century America.”

    I’m a son of the South, too, but Thornwell and <a href="Dabney too pressed the “Separation of Church and State” button when they should have been pressing the “Remove the Offenders from Among You” button.

    The fact of the matter is that the Southern Presbyterian Church used Separation of Church and State as a convenient cover to deflect attention — their own attention — away from the fact of slave ownership within their own ranks. From the blatant sin of American chattel slavery, which depended on man-theft and the fruits of man-theft; which subordinated the image of God in the black man — the black Christian man, our brother! — to property rights.

    It should have been the case that slaveowners were subject to church discipline. Instead, they were defended by a phony “separation of church and state” argument that talked about how bad those meddlin’ Yankees were. Convenient, isn’t it, that the fault is someone else’s?

    Forget politics for a moment — the church should have taken care of her own. My church, a predominantly Southern church, should have taken care of her own.

    Separation of Church and State can be virtue, but like any other virtue, it becomes a vice when co-opted in service of sin.

    JRC

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15. Jeff and Vern, you have to understand that it is pretty easy to score points on the obvious enormity of slavery. But it would also help to admit that the Great Liberator himself, St. Abe, was not necessarily opposed to slavery and for a long time favored colonization. All of this to say is that what looks so obvious today was not nearly so clear cut in the 19th century (not to mention the consequences of immediate manumission.

    I also wonder what either of you would say about Paul’s counsel to Philemon, or Christ’s healing of the Centurion’s slave in Luke 7. It doesn’t look like Christ and the apostles thought slavery was as wicked as your comments suggest. I know, there are different kinds of slavery. But you don’t seem to be saying that some forms are okay and others are not. In today’s moral certainty, that would be like saying some forms of spousal abuse are tolerable.

    None of this is to suggest that I believe slavery is good, that the treatment of African-Americans has been laudable, or that Christians in the nineteenth century were seriously misguided on race. In fact, I think questions of race have much greater moral weight than the institution of slavery. Which is why slavery is gone but the conditions of African-Americans is still troubling.

    But I would caution you against grandstanding about slavery without putting your own cards on the table about biblical teaching.

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16. Daryl, Lincoln was opposed to the expansion of slavery into the free territories. That was his political position. He thought, perhaps naively, that if slavery could be contained to the slave states, it would eventually wither away. On colonization — that was regarded as the “liberal” position of the day, i.e., freeing slaves and sending them back to their homeland. Of course, most black slaves did not want to go back to Africa — America was their home — so nothing much came of colonization, except Liberia, which isn’t much.

    Slavery in Paul’s day was not chattel slavery (i.e., cattle slavery), as it was in the slave states.

    I don’t understand the idea that race has greater moral weight than slavery.

    Just wondering how you avoid the twin dangers of theocratic politics on the one hand and Thornwellian moral/political insouciance on the other. I haven’t seen an answer yet, just questions, so hopefully your book will address this.

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17. DGH:

    Thornwell spoke of the “church.” Would you contend that not only the institutional church, but the invidivual Christian “has no right … to enjoin [slavery] as a duty or to condemn it as a sin”?

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18. Vern,

    What I am getting from you is that there is little to no need for the church to distinguish moral concerns from political ones. Ok, so who gets to say what is the correct way to socio-politicize the gospel?

    Jeff,

    I’m not naïve enough to believe the SOTC was used by some in the 19th C. to merely maintain the status quo as opposed to fighting for the purity of the church. Heck, that’s what Jerry Falwell did in the 60s wrt civil rights (the Moral Majority proved he was a fair-weather friend). But it seems to me pretty cynical to explain away a whole swath of contention this way. Indeed, it flirts with the point I made above about running the danger of one time and place looking back in abject judgmentalism at those in another. Modernity is nothing if not steeped in arrogance.

    But to ease your mind and Vern’s, what I would say is that it seems to me one thing to tell Christian Joe whether or not he may or may not steal human beings, quite another to tell him (directly or indirectly) how he may either vote or (brace yourself) make public policy.

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19. Vern, I don’t know why you characterize Thornwell as political indifference. My understanding is that he wanted the Constitution of the Confederacy to acknowledge the Lordship of Christ. That doesn’t sound indifferent to me.

    Would you mind to comment on how which forms of slavery you think are legitimate? Or how about whether slavery is a greater moral evil than blasphemy?

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20. Vern, one more thing — to regard someone as inferior simply on the basis of race I find to be much more troubling than regarding someone as inferior on the basis of their station in life. After all, the Larger and Shorter Catechisms use the language or superiors, inferiors, and equals. And if we think that women and children are subject to men, then hierarchical arrangements are not inherently sinful.

    So while Jeff and the Baylys may claim that slavery was the context for the spirituality of the church, anti-slavery was the context for egalitarianism and ordaining women.

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21. CVD, no, I think Christians have liberty to oppose a host of social and political woes as citizens. They can also appeal to the Bible if they don’t have any other language available, but I don’t think biblical language will be as appealing in our time. Myself, I would have opposed slavery on political grounds. Heck, even Jefferson knew slavery didn’t wash with American political ideals.

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22. “In your confessional church, would you vote to ordain John Knox? Would you vote to ordain Martin Bucer? Would you vote to ordain John Calvin? Would you vote to ordain Abraham Kuyper? Would you vote to ordain Jonathan Edwards? Looking over that list, I would be five for five.”

    Maybe so, but at least for RSC, being in a “confessional church” isn’t also among the hypotheticals. And Wilson’s transformationalism in practice is about as substantive as his confessionalism afaict — I have yet to meet a non-Christian from Moscow that has heard of Wilson, and from what I hear, it’s not a big place.

    Compare with Tim Keller, who’s attracted the attention of Manhattan and national publications, and transformed ‘bestseller’ sections at B&N and Borders everywhere while being winsome, within a confessional church, and without bizarre paedophile and other controversies. I agree with Clark’s view of what it means to be Reformed, with the obvious implications for Keller’s direction, but I think it nevertheless worthwhile to distinguish those that are meaningfully transformationalists, even “our” transformationalists, from the folks in armchairs, somewhere out there.

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23. Thanks for the discussion Daryl, though I’ll have to read your book for an answer to my question. Zrim, seems to me that patient reflection on the Bible’s moral teachings should provide the church with sufficient instruction in how to respond on political issues — i.e. gay marriage, slavery, racism — you do think the church should oppose racism don’t you? — abortion, etc. The Bible’s teaching on these subjects hasn’t been hidden in a corner. Perhaps you are fearful of making the wrong biblical application, but that’s also a problem with moral questions, too.

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24. Please, not another Keller discourse.
    The author of this blog should be very glad and grateful, however, that Doug Wilson didn’t throw the atomic bomb of “be relevant” debates and called him an “Anabaptist.” If Wilson is right, and I’m inclined to think that he is, when he states that “Calvin was a loyal son of Christendom” (his alleged lack of tension between celestial and ecclesial kingdom doesn’t really have much to do with that, I’d have to admit), then there is only one way that American “irrelevants” can turn to: Goshen, not Geneva. (Though the former now opts for an “instrumental version” of the national anthem before basketball games, as opposed to none at all, and the hornets nest that was hit by this is stinging back. Rightly so. Anyways)
    After all, who said that “the task of the church is to be faithful, not effective”? Alright. Google it, says this Luddite.

    On a more serious note: that Wilson would not, or could not, see the deep and intense historical and theological interrelation of pietism and activism (or “pop evangelicalism” and “historic evangelicalism”) is puzzling indeed. It does not take a very deep dive into academic religious history books re. the United States to discover that the two are, indeed, twins. In the period that I study, pre Civil War Northern “evangelicalism”, that is very obvious. And Calvin is out of the picture. Why? I don’t quite know. After all, I think Wilson is right with his “loyal son of Christendom” pronouncement. Perhaps its the difficult tensions between an inofficial and an official Christendom.

    And yes, JJ, the pic must be Francis Schaeffer. You’re right 🙂

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25. I haven’t taken Wilson seriously for years.

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26. The rich irony here is the uncanny resemblance that Moscow bears to 19th. cent. Oberlin

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27. …seems to me that patient reflection on the Bible’s moral teachings should provide the church with sufficient instruction in how to respond on political issues — i.e. gay marriage, slavery, racism — you do think the church should oppose racism don’t you? — abortion, etc. The Bible’s teaching on these subjects hasn’t been hidden in a corner. Perhaps you are fearful of making the wrong biblical application, but that’s also a problem with moral questions, too.

    Vern,

    I guess it isn’t obvious to me how the church’s moral teachings on certain matters translates so neatly into political conclusions. I know it’s in danger of being over-played but: Drunkenness is prohibited us, but does that mean we should get behind something like Prohibition (or the War on Drugs)? And do we as Reformed Protestants really want to toy with a Roman ecclesiology, where officers go around publicly disciplining members for their politics? I think what is often missed is that if we don’t make the kinds of distinctions that a doctrine of the SOTC wants to make then we end up persecuting ideologies instead of disciplining Christians, which seem to me two very different things. The question is what one does in his/her own body, not what s/he does in the voting booth or seat of political power.

    And the thing about “racism” is that it’s pretty hard to define, let alone how an institution opposes or may discipline it. Isn’t it public behavior that should be disciplined? Otherwise, it seems to me this is pretty much the formula for tyranny. Where is the concern for liberty amongst Presbyterians anymore?

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28. Jeff Cagle: I agree with your post.
    Worth noting that the Southern Presbyterian Church wasn’t too distant from the politics of Montgomery/Richmond during the war. In fact, they even apologized for it afterwards. While I appreciate aspects of the “separation of church and state,” it has often been abused to suit certain political ends. It is a convenient excuse when the church doesn’t want to criticize a dominant cultural standard that is morally wrong.

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29. DGH: But you don’t seem to be saying that some forms are okay and others are not.

    I am saying that American chattel slavery was unScriptural, was known to be unScriptural, and was defended with tendentious and transparently self-justifying arguments by its practitioners.

    Listen, I grew up in Texas. I’ve had people sit down with me and tell me that the curse on Ham means that black people should be enslaved to white people. I’ve heard the argument that black slaves were treated better than black freeman up north (falsifying fact: mortality rate among slaves).

    There was simply no Scriptural way to defend (a) enslaving other Christians (whose status, if appealing to the OT, would be parallel to a fellow Hebrew) without providing for their freedom; (b) ignoring that their presence among you was the fruit of man-stealing; (c) countenancing the forced separation of husbands, wives, and children by slave owners, and (d) turning a blind eye to mistreatment of slaves, as evidenced by higher mortality rates among slaves than in the population at large.

    Am I “freer” to see this because of my modern prejudices? Absolutely. There’s no question in my mind that generations hence will look back at me and see obvious sin that I ignored.

    But the people at the time knew this. These arguments were being made. The South has no defense in ignorance; Britain had already set an example for them, and Christians in the North had warned them about their sin.

    And we know that they knew this. All of the classic symptoms of denial were in place: re-naming slavery as “the peculiar institution”; passing off responsibility for harsh treatment to subordinates; laying blame at the feet of others.

    There was no obstacle and every opportunity for the South to police itself.

    So Zrim, while I generally accept your principle that modernity makes things overly black and white, on this, the South just screwed up.

    And with huge, lasting consequences to come. If the South hadn’t been so unwilling to give up their slaves, the Civil War wouldn’t have happened; the 14th Amendment wouldn’t have happened; and government would have been a lot more limited today. The South didn’t just lose the war. They lost the whole cause.

    DGH: But it would also help to admit that the Great Liberator himself, St. Abe, was not necessarily opposed to slavery and for a long time favored colonization.

    Duly admitted. Entirely irrelevant. The South had no excuse looking to Abe Lincoln or anyone else as a justification for their own actions.

    If God uses Assyria to punish Israel, then Israel has been punished for her sins; the faults of the Assyrians are neither here nor there.

    JRC

    P.S.: The bee in my bonnet on this issue started a decade or more ago, in reaction against the neo-Confederalism of DW as expressed in his article titled, I think, “True Grit”, in which he argued that black Confederate soldiers were the truly courageous ones. This is the reason I would care about it today. Away with all romanticizing of slavery! Away with any arguments that SOTC is an absolute principle that trumps any need to repent!

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30. The cover story of that issue of Credenda/Agenda called it ‘True Defiance’.

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31. Jeff,

    Sometimes overstatement is useful. But, I really don’t think the point of the SOTC is to cleverly construct ways to avoid repentance; that seems way too cynical. Granted, it can be twisted impiously, and I don’t doubt that it has been, but isn’t that true of every good doctrine? Again, I’m a born and bred Yank with reels of Roots running through my brain. So my point isn’t so much to somehow defend an institution and historical instance I was bred to despise as it is to champion a doctrine that is designed to protect the unfettered gospel. Indeed, it seems to me much more difficult feat to balance a natural set of cultural mores and something like the SOTC than to soapbox against potential impiety.

    But, I am glad for your more sane assessment that the “the South just screwed up.” When public schools, for example, trample parents’ rights that’s the way to speak about it, as opposed to a lot of religio-blustering about Molech or whatever. People listen to sanity, they tend to shut down when the decibels go ape. But it’s not too long before you start talking about Assyria and Israel, which I think is the sort of language that gets us back to at least part of what’s at play in questions like these: whose political side is God on? Well, since he is fantastically silent on any of it, nobody’s. Now what?

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32. Jeff, fair enough on the personal level, but your experience cannot eviscerate principles that may be at stake in the spirituality of the church. I mean, States rights was also used to justify slavery and yet the states rightsers had a point.

    So is your calculus simply to reject any idea that can be used for nefarious ends. If that were the case, then we wouldn’t have many ideas left.

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33. Zrim: But, I really don’t think the point of the SOTC is to cleverly construct ways to avoid repentance; that seems way too cynical. Granted, it can be twisted impiously, and I don’t doubt that it has been, but isn’t that true of every good doctrine?

    Right, absolutely. So the argument here is not an argument from abuse, “SOTC can be used wrongly, so let’s chuck it.”

    Instead, I’m saying, “Even when folk wrap themselves in principles that we like (say, SOTC), let’s not allow them to use those principles as cover for sin.”

    And the behavior of the South is a really, really good warning for us — for me! — that we can dig in to a seemingly spiritual principle and yet be dead wrong.

    So DGH, I would argue that the state’s rightsers were blinded by their point.

    Let’s take the Schism of 1861. As early as 1813, the New School had introduced a resolution saying that slavery

    · was a sin
    · was utterly inconsistent with the laws of God
    · was a gross violation of the sacred rights of nature
    · was totally irreconcilable with the spirit and principles of the Gospel
    · that it was the duty of all Christians…to obtain the complete abolition of slavery

    The Old School rejected this argument on Christian Liberty grounds, arguing that Abraham had slaves and slavemasters are not directly criticized in Scripture, yada yada.

    So the Old School had a technical point.

    But in upholding their point, they completely failed to introspect. Even though the 1813 resolution might have been over-broad, it still raised core questions. Those core questions,

    (1) What does it mean that my slave is made in God’s image?
    (2) What does it mean that our slaves are descendants from kidnapped slaves?
    (3) What is the right thing for me to do, coram deo?

    went unanswered.

    The New School was wrong on a lot of issues. But even Balaam’s ass was wiser than Balaam himself.

    The “SOTC” point made by the Old School paradoxically pointed the Church away from true spirituality, by giving it a cause and an enemy to rally around, focus on, and oppose. Instead, they should have reflected, repented … and remained unified.

    Even as late as 1861, the Gardiner Spring resolution could have been forstalled, had the Southern Church simply said, “You know what? You’re right. We need to give up our slaves, even though it cost us dear.”

    The damage done to the church by the Old School’s intransigence is incalculable. The results were a greater power of the federal government; the loss of moral authority to address heresy in their ranks (Briggs is reasonably seen as a long-term outcome of the loss of moral authority of the Old School); and schism.

    We have never recovered from this error, never.

    My calculus, Dr. Hart, is that each man is responsible coram deo for his own sin. It is the principle of personal theonomy: we are ruled by Christ. Never is it acceptable, or wise, or beneficial, to use another man’s sin as a cover for your own.

    Which means me; but is illustrated here by my church, unfortunately.

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34. DGH: …to regard someone as inferior simply on the basis of race I find to be much more troubling than regarding someone as inferior on the basis of their station in life.

    Right. But guess which one, race or station in life, was the justifying argument of the day?

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35. So Zrim, if one of your church members were supporting Klan legislation, you would not admonish him? Or your church would not condemn such legislation? I’m talking big, obvious issues, here, not subtle points. Seems to me the R2K project has some inner demons to deal with — which I’m hoping are thoroughly discussed in their literature (which I will read as soon as it goes through the mail).

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36. Jeff, I agree with you that slavery was an indefensible sin against God and man, and it’s a blight on the church that it failed to oppose it. You’re spot on. The SOTC is not offended when the church condemns a practice that is indefensible, in my view, and a horrifically sinful and toxic practice, for which no biblical defense can be made, is not placed off limits to the church by the state declaring it a political issue.

    If I lived in a country that declared one ethnicity sub-human and ruled that, as a matter of sound state policy that is in the best interests of the body politic, they should be rounded up and gassed, the overlap of the political and the moral should not place a gag order on the church.

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37. So Zrim, if one of your church members were supporting Klan legislation, you would not admonish him? Or your church would not condemn such legislation? I’m talking big, obvious issues, here, not subtle points. Seems to me the R2K project has some inner demons to deal with — which I’m hoping are thoroughly discussed in their literature (which I will read as soon as it goes through the mail).

    Vern,

    I know it’s bad bandwagon manners, but I like to ask questions before I jump on: What exactly is “Klan legislation”?

    But let’s assume it’s something I find quite disagreeable. I don’t see why I should admonish—or my church should condemn—someone for having political ideas that aren’t mine. And I don’t know why there would be one set of rules for “big, obvious issues” and another for “subtle points “(whatever those sufficiently vague terms might mean). It might help for you to get more specific, but you should probably know that my idea of an ideal church is one where there is at once great ideological tolerance and great theological intolerance.

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38. Jeff,

    I can see where you’re coming from. But it’s also hard to see how what you say isn’t an indictment of the doctrine instead of people. I mean, couldn’t one do with sola fide what you are with the SOTC? Sure, both can be and have been used to cover up sin, but don’t the doctrines need friends the same way sinners need exhorters?

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39. I give a hearty – and sorrowful – amen to Jeff’s 03.02 @ 11:46 analysis of Old & New School and the eventual schism of PC and of USA. It is a sad testimony to the power of the fall, and the gravitational pull of one’s culture and context, that the Presbyterian Church, and much, much more of the citizens of the new US of A had such a huge blind-spot re slavery (compared to christian values and preambles of founding fathers) . One should also factor in how many folks were against slavery – in the south – but did not find it in them to speak or act against it. Robt E. Lee himself was convinced that slavery had to go, but also knew immediate and forced emancipation was not the best to accomplish it.

    Here’s a sobering “what if / if only” to entertain. What if Presbyterians, North & South, and evangelicals (were there evangelicals in the 1840’s-50s-60s?) had rallied and published and spoken out against slavery Half as much as they have against Abortion since Roe V. Wade?

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40. Zrim: But it’s also hard to see how what you say isn’t an indictment of the doctrine instead of people. I mean, couldn’t one do with sola fide what you are with the SOTC?

    Think of it as refining the doctrine.

    Just as sola fide did not mean “believe in God and do what you want”, which took a little time in the 16th century to sort out; so also Christian Liberty means “liberty from man”, not “liberty from Scripture.”

    The SOTC provides a church a refuge from the commands of men; but it does not provide the church a refuge from its own conscience, or from the commands of God.

    (Not saying you’re arguing this — just pointing out that this idea could (should?) become a part of the standard exposition of the doctrine)

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41. “The SOTC provides a church a refuge from the commands of men; but it does not provide the church a refuge from its own conscience, or from the commands of God.”

    That can happen. It has happened. But the same thing happens in activist churches too. I know plenty of people who consider their civic duty discharged (and their conscience cleared) by their simply belonging to the right church or organization.

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42. Just as sola fide did not mean “believe in God and do what you want”, which took a little time in the 16th century to sort out; so also Christian Liberty means “liberty from man”, not “liberty from Scripture.”

    The SOTC provides a church a refuge from the commands of men; but it does not provide the church a refuge from its own conscience, or from the commands of God.

    Jeff,

    I think that’s quite a fair point, and it’s well taken.

    At the same time, though, it sure seems like there is barely any time to make that point when the SOTC is understood from the get-go to be, categorically, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. (To wit, the sort of shock-and-awe campaign waged by the Brothers Bayly.) One imagines that uttering SOTC to today’s so-called conservative Presbyterians is not too unlike suggesting sola fide to a room full of Catholics. And, frankly, your own comments up to this point have done more to buttress instead of challenge that premise.

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43. Here’s a sobering “what if / if only” to entertain. What if Presbyterians, North & South, and evangelicals (were there evangelicals in the 1840’s-50s-60s?) had rallied and published and spoken out against slavery Half as much as they have against Abortion since Roe V. Wade?

    Chris,

    Well, to listen to the Bayly’s tell it, the stuff moderns deem as cultural goodness only came from the activism of evangelicals:

    “Think of literacy: worldwide, conservative Christians’ faith in God’s Word has led international literacy work through agencies like the Summer Institute of Linguistics and Wycliffe Bible Translators. Move on to prison reform, child labor laws, human trafficking, literacy, AIDS education and nursing for the dying, malaria and smallpox eradication, protection of the Jewish minority in the Middle East, hospitals, the dignity and equality of women, the civil rights movement–the list could go on at great length before arriving at an end to works of compassion the secular and pagan world takes for granted and has never stopped to acknowledge and give thanks to Christians of Biblical commitments for their critical leadership in each of these areas.”

    Apparently, nobody would’ve figured out how to read were it not for crusading evangelicals. Oh yeah, and don’t forget AIDS patients only have these same crusaders to thank for any humane treatment shown them (I hope you can discern my speech here, what with my tongue lodged so deeply within my cheek).

    http://www.baylyblog.com/2010/02/tim-comment-16-under-mr-kristoffs-blog-follow-up-to-the-oped-piece-he-ran-in-the-times-todayno-church-in-the-country-ha.html#more

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44. Well, that’s a fair point also: I’ve been critical of the SOTC project as articulated so far.

    Now for the other side: I am persuaded that

    (1) The magistrate is given a jurisdiction independent of the jurisdiction of the church, and that keeping those jurisdictions separate requires more than lip service; it requires some kind of firewall.

    (2) Loving our neighbor — our non-Christian neighbor most especially — requires some form of leaving judgment to God, which means that not all Christian ethical norms will be translated into legal strictures.

    (3) The current form of evangelical alliance with Randian libertarians is going to end poorly.

    So, I would like for some kind of SOTC project to succeed. My criticisms have been offered to that end; though perhaps not obviously so.

    In my mind (and speaking out of intuition, not studied certainty), the way to make obvious that the sheep is truly a sheep would be

    (A) To offer some kind of account of how a Christian magistrate would function.

    I know, I know, here he goes again. But the reason I’ve gone on about this is that this missing account is, from a “PR perspective”, the weak link in the SOTC chain of reasoning. When you hear DW saying “I couldn’t build a taco stand with it”, his real underlying objection is, “there’s no pragmatics there.”

    If one is going to be theologically narrow and ideologically broad (yes, and yes!), then one must also establish a pragmatic stance. “Christian Liberty” is well and good for man in relationship to man; but it says nothing of man in relationship to God.

    This is why I’ve pressed on the notion of “intrusion”, as illustrated in the WLC and their broad interpretation of the Decalogue into everyday life. Westminster took the decalogue and said, “What does this look like in life?”

    SOTC, by resisting pragmatics for the sake of maximizing liberty, says, “This looks like nothing in particular …”, which is far too broad a framework to be grasped.

    I’m still waiting for my copy of The Natural Law from Amazon.

    (B) Frankly acknowledge that on political theory, SOTC is not paleo-Calvinist. It just isn’t, and that’s possibly OK. The valiant attempt to correlate Calvin’s political theory with SOTC runs into this huge roadblock called Servetus in Geneva, and it makes outsiders scratch their heads and say “Hmm.”

    (C) Consider and reconsider the ways in which Aristotelian philosophy — substance/accident distinction; natural law operating through moral reason; excellence treated as virtue of itself, rather than in relation to God — are articulated in SOTC arguments.

    That’s my friendly advice, worth what you paid for it.

    If I had a wish list, then (D) y’all would lock yourselves in a room with Frame and not come out until you could say nice things about each other. 🙂

    JRC

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45. Mike K. said: “Compare with Tim Keller, who’s attracted the attention of Manhattan and national publications, and transformed ‘bestseller’ sections at B&N and Borders everywhere while being winsome, within a confessional church, and without bizarre paedophile and other controversies. I agree with Clark’s view of what it means to be Reformed, with the obvious implications for Keller’s direction, but I think it nevertheless worthwhile to distinguish those that are meaningfully transformationalists, even “our” transformationalists, from the folks in armchairs, somewhere out there.”

    Interestingly, Tim Keller touched on this briefly at his blog. It’s only one point in a post dealing with an entirely separate issue, but I found this comment interesting:

    “At the theological level, the church needs to gain more consensus on how the church and Christian faith relate to culture. There is still a lot of conflict between those who want to disciple Christians for public life, and those who think all “engagement of culture” ultimately leads to compromise and distraction from the preaching of the gospel. What makes this debate difficult is that both sides make good points and have good arguments.”

    Full post here: http://www.rcpc.com/blog/view.jsp?Blog_param=136

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46. Jeff,

    Just a couple responses:

    Re wanting specifics (“What’s a Christian magistrate look like?”), I’m going to continue the sola fide analogy. Right or wrong, it seems to me that demanding SOTC to get pragmatic is similar to preaching sola fide and then someone saying, “Sounds great. Now give me a laundry list of do’s and don’ts.” In both instances I think the responder has missed the essential point. But to the extent that the law is the structure of any believer’s sanctification (whether he rules or is ruled), it seems to me that if we want to know what it looks like, it looks like the law: he must only worship the one true God and do so truly, mayn’t dishonor his folks or bear false witness, etc. How different Christian magistrates go about their ruling will vary in the same way different Christian parents will go about their parenting.

    And does it help anything to acknowledge that the reformers, men of their Constantinian times, weren’t, understandably, always consistent in practice with their theory? But I think your mistake is to think the paleo language employed means there is a one-to-one correspondence between what 21st century 2Kers are saying and what 16th century 2Kers were doing. But since those who identify as neocalvinists seem to have little use for the SOTC, I think it’s more than fair for paleo’s to claim it.

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47. CVanDyke, would you say the same of blasphemy, idolatry, and Sabbath desecration, that it is an indefensible sin and a blight on the church? My point being, why single out slavery as THE SIN among sins? Is there a calculus to which sins are greater than others? (The Bible actually gives clues here, I think.)

    Jeff, Jeff, and Jeff,

    Station in life and blood were bound up with the English (at least) regard of non-English. Puritan Boston did not treat Irish immigrants real well and they were the servant class throughout most of the 19th c. I hear that the n-word was even applied to the pink-skinned Irish. A similar point was at work with African-Americans. It was not simply race (whatever that is — is white a race, and why are Jewish persons white?), but also civilization. Europeans considered African civilization inferior, and so Africans incapable of assuming regular stations in European society. (It’s not as if Europeans on either side of the Atlantic have escaped this.) And as much as I reject slavery, the American Ellis Island belief that you can take everyone from everywhere and turn them into a nicely ordered melting pot is naive.

    The point of SOTC (and 2k) is not to have a paradigm for a Christian magistrate any more than a Christian plumber. You keep asking for this and your question keeps begging an idea that SOTC doesn’t. A Christian who is a magistrate has liberty to execute his calling according to what his conscience will bear. All Christians have different levels of sensitive consciences. The Covenanters would not serve in American public office. That was one response. Others can hold office and manage their commitments to Christ. But there is no single model. So SOTS isn’t going to offer a position on how the xian magistrate functions other than according to Romans 13 — punish wickedness, and uphold justice, according to the powers that be (Constitution, etc.)

    Regarding paleo-Calvinism, I’ve acknowledged several times that Calvin was a Constantinian and that 2k is not. What is not admitted by the other side (whether Bayly or Wilson) is that they are not Constantinian either. We now live on the other side of 1789 and all that. SOTC is a way to adjust to that reality. Transformationalism and various forms of theonomy are ways of denying the reality in which we live, and pining for only the good parts of Geneva (the praising God side and not the killing Servetus side).

    I also need to take issue with your reading of 19th c. Presbyterian history. The Spring Resolutions were not about slavery. They were about preserving the Union, as St. Abe wanted to do until he recognized that manumitting the slaves would be politically expedient. The 1818 condemnation of slavery occurred before large swaths of the church in the south and the greater southeast were incorporated into the PCUSA (or many southern states were incorporated into the Union). So the people who passed that 1818 resolution also decided to look the other way when admitting those churches and church members.

    Aside from this apparent inconsistency there is the real problem of what to do with a situation that you oppose but cannot fix. Say I reject the grounds of American independence (which I do — I think the American revolution does not meet the Rom. 13 test). What should I do. Bring it up everytime my fellow Christian patriots want to celebrate the 4th of July and say that Christian liberty is really just a cover for wanton disregard for God’s sovereignty (in establishing King George)?

    I see the situation between American independence and American slavery, how we handle national and ecclesiastical sins, as parallel. Unless you think I should “love it, or leave it.” Short of leaving it, should I work to make the USA part of the United Kingdom? Any advice on how I make that happen? Should I get the church to address this specific sin and repent of its complicity in violation of the fifth commandment?

    In other words, we all live with a lot of bad stuff. I don’t know what good it does to wear those evils on our sleeves as if the evil on mine is the evil par excellance or as if I am more righteous than everyone else who can’t see with my moral clarity.

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48. Zrim, great minds think alike. Small minds probably do as well. I was typing when you posted. U da man!

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49. DGH, I don’t think the issue is grading sins on a hierarchy. I do think the church should condemn blasphemy, idolatry, and Sabbath desecration. Mine church condemns all these sins because the Bible and our confessions do, and I assume your church does as well. So should the church have condemned slavery.

    I take it that you mean the church may condemn slavery as a general proposition, but not make application to specific facts as existing in the common grace sphere. That is, I understand you to assert that, on SOTC grounds, the church qua church should not have advocated abolishing slavery as a legally sanctioned and enforced institution because that could bind the conscience of others on a debatable matter and the church may not speak on political matters.

    What what if an issue is not a debatable matter? And what if the political matter and the moral/biblical matter have perfect confluence, leaving no reasonable grounds to debate the policy and rescue it from biblica/moral condemnation? The conscience is free from the commands of men but not of God. If the state law or policy mandates a sinful violation of God’s law, the conscience is not free to obey the law. How does the church lose its right to condemn sin simply becaue the state has ordered it?

    So I would distinguish reasonably debatable matters from those that are not. God commands mercy toward the poor, but he doesn’t command a Medicare prescription drug benefit or state welfare. To get from the biblical injunction to the state policy requires inferential reasoning, the evaluation of means, the weighing of conflicting policy choices and priorities. The church has not Word from God on those subjects, and should not bind the conscience by advocating the drug benefit or welfare, as the mainline denominations did. But suppose instead the state policy mandated the gassing of all persons of Jewish descent. That is simply state-mandated murder, and no conscience has liberty to approve or obey such a law. It’s not a reasonably debatable matter. I would hope all churches would condemn that policy publicly. In the same way, when the state orders the enslavement of human beings, no conscience is free to approve or obey such law. To return to your hypo, I know of no state law that mandates blasphemy, idolatry, and Sabbath desecration. If a state were to do so, the courts would quickly strike down such a law as a violation of the Free Exercise clause or substantive due process.

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50. CVD, are you suggesting that the southern states mandated slaveholding? Did they require it?

    Also, do you have any room in your understanding of slavery for legitimate forms of it? What would be the exegetical case for the kind of slavery that is legitimate and the kinds are obviously wicked?

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51. DGH, yes. The southern states, as you know, required slavery of slaves by the enactment and enforcement of a complicated network of property laws, slaveholding laws, and criminal laws, including laws pertaining to transporting and liberating slaves, that enforced slavery as a matter of state policy, civil chattel law, and criminal law, all ultimately backed up by the force of law at the point of the gun and the noose. Hence “involuntary servitude.” The state also broke up slave famiilies, separating husbands and wives and children, at gunpoint. While we might debate whether certain forms of voluntary servitide pass biblical muster, it requires no complicated exegesis to recongize the evil in involuntary servitude as it was practiced in the 19th century American south. I don’t think you mean to suggest that the evil in the state laws that enforced slavery in the south is too subtle and nuanced to be recognized.

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52. The link to the video on Wilson’s transformation of Moscow wasn’t working properly and I am not sure why.

    Here is a copy of the link: http://www.notonthepalouse.com/My_Town_Video.htm

    I know this is a bit of a redirect from the slavery discussion, but it seems to be germane to the original post.

    I actually took the time to watch the video, and it is definitely angled against Wilson, but the point still stands. The language of transformationalism makes for interesting theological discussion, but when it is applied (at least Wilson’s version) things get messy quickly.

    The transformation of Moscow, inasmuch as this video reports, is more the product of migration and amassing resources to take over the town. I really wonder how much of Christ Church’s growth is attributable to relocation vs. other acceptable means of church growth (eg. evangelism and discipleship). I am not saying effective evangelism is the litmus test for every faithful church, but it should at least indicate how effective a church is in engaging the community with the gospel through both faithful testimony and sanctioned proclaimation. The migration model that has grown Wilson’s flock seems better defined as take-overism rather than transformationalism.

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53. The link is still broken, but the home page has a redirect.

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54. CVD, that wasn’t my point. The south did not require its citizens to own slaves. Israel did not require Israelites to have slaves. Both the south and Israel had laws on the treatment of slaves.

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55. DGH, that would be small comfort to a slave and is irrelevant to the moral analysis.

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56. CVD, says who? You tried to make an analogy between southern slavery and the state requiring Christians to sin. When I raise the question of whether southern states required Christians to hold slaves, you say this is irrelevant. I say it is to your point. Selah.

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57. The South did require both southern and northern citizens to give support to slavery via the fugitive slave laws.

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58. CVD,

    Doesn’t involuntary servitude mean that someone is forced to be enslaved, as opposed to someone being forced to enslave?

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59. DGH, whether slave owners were required to own slaves is beside the point. The evil in the system resided in the congeries of laws that supported and enforced slavery and inflicted grave moral evil upon vast numbers of human beings, destroying the natural order of families and marriages. The law placed the imprimatur of the state upon the institution and gave slave owners the putative right to inflict grevious harm. Accordingly, the state was committing grave moral evil and empowering others to do likewise. No policy argument, no political caluculation of prudence, can salvage the morality of the state-mandated system, and no conscience would be wrongfully bound by the church condemning the state and calling for an end to slavery.

    I wonder if there is any state action or law that your version of the spirituality of the church the church could speak out about. If the church cannot condemn slavery, presumably the church of 1939 Germany could not condemn state-ordered genocide. I’m not sure what your view is, but it seems to me on your argument produces these toxic and immoral results. Or perhaps I don’t understand your argument fully.

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60. Jeff, and the United States requires me to support a war that I find objectionable. That kind of reasoning would lead to asking Scottie to beam you up.

    CVD, the issue was whether non-slaver owners were required by law to own slaves, and that seemed to be the implication of the parallel you drew. I understand that the law enforced slavery in a host of ways. But doesn’t our current regime enforce abortion by a number of laws — especially those regulating the physicians who perform legal abortions. So what should I do about that, not as an officer in the church, but simply as a citizen who is a Christian.

    My point is that you seem to think slavery was such an obvious evil that the church’s failure was equally obvious. By that standard the church stands condemned in any age short of moral perfection, no?

    Maybe you think the morality of Germany was easy. But let me ask you — what would you do with a church member who worked at a hospital that performed abortions? Would you bring the individual up on charges?

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61. I wonder if things seem so black and white in our perspectives because we usually have two solutions offered, one from the left and one from the right. In the recent gay marriage vote in California, it seems that the Christian thing to do would be to vote against defining gay marriages as legal. However, this is certainly not the only option.

    Perhaps someone may want to point out that marriage regulation was a sham to begin with. It was introduced to stop interracial marriages. Or so said the NY Times… so I might have my facts wrong: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/opinion/26coontz.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

    My political position is that the government shouldn’t regulate marriages at all, so that way, if my church doesn’t want to recognize certain “marriages,” we don’t have to. Getting the state involved usually means coercing people to act in ways contrary to what they believe to be moral, even as Christians.

    I choose to politically oppose government licensed “gay marriages” not by changing the licensing schemes, but to oppose government licenses of marriage altogether. However, I wouldn’t say that it is unbiblical to vote in favor of the gay marriage ban. What is unbiblical is the pastor telling me it is a sin to not vote on the particular issue when it will come up in my state (very soon, I suspect). When Iowa has a constitutional amendment vote come up, I will likely abstain. I also happen to demand that my church oppose homosexuality.

    The same holds true on abortion. Right now, the two options are a federal prohibition on abortion or a federal license on abortion. If you want to obey the laws of the land (the Constitution) it seems that a federal law is illegal, and that states ought to regulate it. However, I hear moral condemnations from the Right to Life committees on anyone who wants to regulate at the state level instead of federal. They say that this would cause confusion and that it needs to be a single federal ban. But why not wait for the United Nations to ban it? They probably think that they have the authority to do such a thing. If Christians thought that a UN ban was the superior political position, I don’t know that I’d begrudge them. However, since I politically oppose both the UN’s and the federal government’s overreaches against the Constitution, I wouldn’t be in favor of a federal law (though a Constitutional amendment would be another thing). However, our churches should still oppose murder.

    There are a plethora of biblical political positions on these issues, and the church shouldn’t speak to the political issue in a single way so as to bind my conscience on a single bit of legislation. Perhaps if we talked to people that weren’t Rs and Ds more often, then we could see how much thoughtful variety there is on such things.

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62. DGH,
    Yes, slavery as practiced in 19th century America by the southern states was an obvious evil, and the church’s failure to condemn it and call for abolition was also an obvious evil and a permanent blight on the church. No Christian conscience would have been wrongfully bound by the church calling for abolition since no Christian in good conscience could have supported slavery as practiced. Accordingly, the SOTC principle remains safe from scandal. You haven’t suggested any plausible rationale that would excuse a Christian from supporting 19th century slavery as practiced in the southern states.

    I take it that on your version of SOTC/two kingdoms, churches and pastors in Germany that spoke against the well-known mistreatment and much suspected genocide of Jews and others violated SOTC. I know you’re well meaning about this and trying to safeguard a principle that is important to you, but in my view this is so over the top that it is hard to begin to formulate a response that is polite. So I won’t try.

    On the subject of abortion, your question switches contexts. You ask whether I would bring up on charges a Christian who works at a hospital that performs abortions. Now we’re outside the context of the church qua church. It’s not clear what point you’re trying to make. I don’t see the Christian in your hypothetical violating any biblical norm by accepting employment in the gift shop of Pennsylvania Hospital while abortions are performed on the fifth floor. If the Christian were a physician who is ordered to perform an abortion, I would hope he/she would decline — and use prudence and wisdom to avoid being placed in a position where the law may coerce him/her to perform an abortion. In my view, individual Christians should use their sanctified wisdom to do what they can to oppose the evil of abortion on demand and work for laws that would protect the unborn. That would include using persuasion, prayer, and the political process.

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63. In my view, individual Christians should use their sanctified wisdom to do what they can to oppose the evil of abortion on demand and work for laws that would protect the unborn.

    CVD,

    As long as we’re saying what individual Christians are obliged to, do you see any difference between saying individual Christians mayn’t have abortions and what they ought to work for in the civil arena? Isn’t there a difference between saying what Christian-Jane may or mayn’t do with her unwanted pregnancy and what she should do from the voting booth to the seat of political power? For my part, I don’t feel any need to qualify my view as mere opinion that she mayn’t have an abortion, but I’m quite ill at ease suggesting how she should use her “sanctified wisdom.”

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64. CVD, what is so obvious to you was not obvious either to Jonathan Edwards or Charles Hodge, who both held slaves. Hodge also defended slavery (not its abuses). So if it was so obvious, should Hodge have been disciplined?

    BTW, do you really think slavery and the Holocaust were equivalent evils?

    I don’t know why you think the context switches with abortion. Slavery was also outside the church. You made the point about a ton of laws that kept it in place. That was outside the church. The church didn’t require slave holding. The church as institution did not hold slaves. (to my knowledge). So the parallels between someone who doesn’t own slaves but works at a cotton gin and the person who is morally opposed to abortion but works at a hospital that performs them seem apt.

    I really don’t know what point you’re trying to make except to insinuate that SOTC is suspect because of slavery.

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65. Zrim: That’s where we differ. Political action to support abortion forms no part of Christian libery, in my view. Therefore, Christian-Jane or -Joe does not have Christian liberty to support abortion or pro-abortion laws that make the unjustified taking of human life more prevalent. I’ve heard the arguments to the contrary, but don’t find them pursuasive. There is no legitimate moral justification for a Christian to vote for or support immoral abortions (e.g., abortion on demand or as form of birth control). Yes, it would not be incorrect to bring church discipline to bear against those who do, but it’s not going to happen given that church discipline is as rare as hens’ teeth today.

    DGH: I did not state and don’t draw a moral equivalence between salvery and the Holocaust, though both are evil.

    I’m aware that many in the church of the 19th century defended slavery and owned slaves, but it’s unlikely they would have been disciplined because the church suffered a moral blind spot in that area, tragically, havinng imbibed the culture’s economic values of the day. Church history, as you know, is replete with other grevious moral blind spots and errors by churches and churchmen. The church and churchmen have erred, especially when the culture washes over into the church. We’re all men/women of our day. It’s a rare person who transcends the moral vision of his/her culture. Even Calvin, as great as he was, remained a medieval man and didn’t get it all right. Longstanding church error doesn’t prove it isn’t error.

    I don’t see the parallels you cite. I didn’t insinuate that SOTC is suspect, but the improvident application of it is.

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66. There is no legitimate moral justification for a Christian to vote for or support immoral abortions (e.g., abortion on demand or as form of birth control). Yes, it would not be incorrect to bring church discipline to bear against those who do, but it’s not going to happen given that church discipline is as rare as hens’ teeth today.

    CVD,

    In your mind, are there other political views which a believer could hold that would warrant the same action? Could a believer support or even carry out, say, a policy of pre-emptive war? Let’s try a thought experiment: presume you and I were Dubya’s elders (bare with me). As with abortion, I see no moral justification for pre-emptive war. What would you say to me as fellow elder if I were to bring charges against him the way some bishops of the RCC have done with certain Catholic policy makers over abortion?

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67. Let’s try a thought experiment: presume you and I were Dubya’s elders (bare with me). As with abortion, I see no moral justification for pre-emptive war.

    First, why should I agree with your terminology of “pre-emptive” since we were actually attacked and the attack was by rogue terrorists in a general geographical location?

    Second, Dubya was actually the Magistrate and not just a voter thus he has a higher responsibility to actually resist evil than the average voter.

    Were the Confessing Churches in Germany during WWII wrong to resist Hitler?

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68. CVD, what you consider a blindspot of Hodge suggests you have not read any of the debates about slavery. You may disagree with Hodge at the end of the day. But he was careful in the way he argued. Plus, I know of no moral defenses of National Socialism’s policies regarding Jewish people. What was a difficulty was how the church should respond to the state, not whether the church thought millions should be exterminated on the basis of race or genes. The problems that the German church faced are still with us. Why I bet Rabbi Bret thinks you’re guilty of the same sins as the German church.

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69. igasx,

    First, admittedly, my question is assuming certain things for the sake of discussion. But if the pre-emptive stuff bothers, let’s pick another thing I am morally opposed to: prostitution. What if our member-magistrate wants to legalize it (some argue that to legalize it actually is to undermine it)? I disagree, but should I bring charges against him because I disagree with his political outlook?

    Second, part of my point is that I don’t see much difference between a voter and someone with real political power. CVD doesn’t either. But he seems to think that if I as an elder find out a private or public church member has choice politics s/he should be disciplined. To my mind, this is an example of persecuting an ideology instead of disciplining a Christian. The curious thing to me is that, if I recall correctly, when CVD first appeared on this blog he complained about his church giving him grief for lobbying privately against gay marriage. From his description, it sounded to me as if his liberty was being trampled. But now he wants to say that someone who politically opposes him should get the same grief.

    Were the Confessing Churches in Germany during WWII wrong to resist Hitler?

    It depends on what you mean by “resist,” I suppose. If you mean when Adolf came knocking to get some measure of churchly support (which meglomaniacs can be wont to do), of course. And that would likely earn a cracked skull. If by “resist” you mean to “actively oppose” the magistrate, no, because I see no warrant in Scripture to do anything other than submit. And actively opposing seems different from submitting. The test of obedience isn’t when we find our magistrate lovely but when we find him deplorable.

    Was Bonheoffer wrong to plot his magistrate’s death?

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70. prostitution. What if our member-magistrate wants to legalize it (some argue that to legalize it actually is to undermine it)? I disagree, but should I bring charges against him because I disagree with his political outlook?

    I believe I told you before that my personal belief is that the Magistrate is to uphold the 2nd table of the Law, which is no harm to others. So in the case of prostitution what is done between two consenting adults the State has no authority to prohibit such actions with the caveat that the State should uphold the Marriage contract and any party in a Marriage contract engaging a prostitute should be prosecuted for breaking that contract.

    If by “resist” you mean to “actively oppose” the magistrate, no, because I see no warrant in Scripture to do anything other than submit.

    I would say there are plenty of examples in Scripture of someone resisting the Magistrate such as David resisting Saul. The leaders of Zebulun and Naphtali defied Jabin, the Canaanite king. Elias, Jehu, and Naboth refused to obey King Ahab. Asa deposed his own tyrannical mother, Queen Maacah. Daniel disobeyed King Darius. The Maccabees attacked the Romans. It seems to me to be a modern hermeneutic that allows such a reading and something the Reformed have never appreciated. If the Magistrate is failing to resist evil than I see no reason in Scripture to submit to their authority. Was Paul telling the Roman Christians in Romans 13 to submit to Caesar including worshiping him as the law required? Of course not! Thus, submitting to the Magistrate is not absolute.

    Was Bonheoffer wrong to plot his magistrate’s death?

    Absolutely not. Proverbs 24:10–12: “Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter.” Judges 5:23: “Curse Meroz, says the angel of the Lord,
    curse its inhabitants thoroughly, because they did not come to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against the mighty.”

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71. igasx,

    I believe I told you before that my personal belief is that the Magistrate is to uphold the 2nd table of the Law, which is no harm to others…

    The larger point here isn’t about marriage laws (or abortion or war, etc.), but rather it is about liberty amongst believers to disagree politically whatever specifics are on the table.

    I would say there are plenty of examples in Scripture of someone resisting the Magistrate…

    As you know, two kingdom theology distinguishes between theocratic eras and pilgrim eras. The new covenant era, the one we live in now, is a pilgrim era. Wandering people without a homeland are commanded to submit to temporal powers, not rise up against them as they await patiently for their Lord to descend and establish his kingdom. It is for the Lord alone to establish justice and put down every evil.

    Was Paul telling the Roman Christians in Romans 13 to submit to Caesar including worshiping him as the law required? Of course not! Thus, submitting to the Magistrate is not absolute.

    Submitting and worshipping are two very different things. Daniel knew the difference. You fault a modern hermeneutic in 2K thinking, but I’d suggest it is modernity that nurtures such an odd understanding of what biblical submission is. Moderns have a very hard time with authority and submission, often calling it worship in order to justify disobedience.

    If DB was in the clear to put a bullet in Hitler’s head, I’m not sure what keeps anybody from doing the same to any magistrate they don’t like. And, apparently, his own repentance over it was wrong? But the problem with citing the passages you do is that you seem to ignore Jesus’ own hermeneutic: “You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me” (John 5:39). In other words, those texts are about the Lord saving his people, not his people running amok killing their authorities.

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72. And, apparently, his [Bonhoeffer’s] own repentance over it was wrong?

    Bonhoeffer’s repentance isn’t as it appears. His existential theology informed his decision to involve himself in what he himself saw as contradictory to Scriptural teaching as an act of repentance for his Church and Nation.

    In other words, those texts are about the Lord saving his people, not his people running amok killing their authorities.

    I realize that claiming the OT is all theocratic and thus we can wipe away all OT ethical teachings lightens the hermeneutical load but I’ve never agreed with the Evangelical mindset that finds a radical dichotomy between the OT and NT such that we hear ridiculous platitudes like: “I’m a New Testament Christian”.

    And speaking of Jesus, I would hope my sanctification is thorough enough to be able to withstand persecution for the sake of righteousness.

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73. igasx,

    Briefly, following classical covenantal theology where there is both dis/continuity between the testaments, 2K sees both theocratic and pilgrim era’s in the OT. But it understands the NC to be a sort of final pilgrim dispensation that awaits the final theocratic era. If Reformed 2K were the sort of radical evangelical dispensationalism you suggest we wouldn’t also baptize our children.

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74. Zrim, huh? igasx brings up the continuity of the basis of ethics between covenantal administrations and you counter that if he were right, R2Ks wouldn’t baptize their children? Huh?

    To the point of the original interchange, Wilson’s noted that modern R2K ordo salutis orthodoxy may be intact, but it misses or distorts other significant aspects of Reformed verity. The kind of Reformation theology that you oppose (dominionist, as you call it; garden-variety Reformed, as it is) built great cultures. R2K, in Wilson’s view, can’t hold a stick to those more robust forms of Reformed orthodoxy. It capitulates too much to the cultural norms and tempos generated by the cultus of idolaters – and that on principle.

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75. Tim, puh-leeze. Wilson claims to be a Constantinian. If so, the theology that you say is garden variety Reformed is also garden variety Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox pre-1789. Those churches built cultures too. After 1789 none of those churches built cultures any more because religion and politics needed to be separated for the good of citizens’ health — as in protecting them from religious princes who wanted to beat the heck out of princes with different religions.

    Plus, Wilson says that 2k is radical because it is Anabaptist. After 1789 we are all Anabaptist, unless of course anyone would favor the mayor of Philadelphia or the president of the United States appointing pastors in their respective jurisdictions. That’s what happened in Geneva and Zurich, Bern, and Basel. It’s not happening in Moscow, Idaho. So Doug Wilson is also an Anabaptist.

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76. Tim,

    igasx brings up the continuity of the basis of ethics between covenantal administrations and you counter that if he were right, R2Ks wouldn’t baptize their children? Huh?

    He was clearly implying that the hermeneutic at play in 2K is a form of Marcionism or the same one in a radical Anabaptist conception. But if that were true, it would seem 2Kers wouldn’t be such strong paedobaptists, which itself is indication of a consistent covenant theology, which is about as far from Marcionism as you can get.

    From what I can tell, when Wilson’s dominionist theory becomes practice, he has to hold town hall meetings to explain himself and his church to the larger community in which they reside. In a word, Christ Church has made itself an utter nuisance instead of a balm to the town of Moscow. But there are two kinds of offense, good and bad. The good kind is made into human candlesticks by Nero for living quiet and peaceful lives while holding fast to the gospel and refusing to worship Nero. The bad kind is by making oneself the offense and getting hanged high for trying to be important by worldly standards. You know, spiritual battle versus weapons of the flesh.

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77. DGH, I have read Hodge’s arguments re slavery that he offered at different points of time, and found them eloquence in service of foolishness. He’s been rightly criticized for his postions. As for the German church of the Third Reich, that many churchmen saw the evil of the Holocost (that was widely suspected even before its full extent was widely known) but did not speak out as the church in opposition is eloquent condemnation of their and the institutional church’s wickedness.

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78. CVD,

    It is interesting how you imply that those who would champion the spirituality of the church even in the midst of Nazi nationalism are “wicked” (indeed, what better test of the doctrine than in extreme environs). Pretty strong language, that. But, instead of charging “wickedness,” all the SOTCers are saying is that to reprimand any magistrate is a violation of the spirituality of the church. Your tactics remind of the revivalists telling the confessionalists that they were “unregenerate.”

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79. Zrim, I don’t agree that the SOTC or two kingdoms imposes that limitation on the church in all instances, and especially not when no Christian concience could endorse a state policy of murder. I agree that we are tested in extreme circumstances. And the German church of the 1930s on the whole failed the test, wickedly, in my view.

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80. CVD,

    As I understand it, the SOTC keeps the church from either reprimanding or endorsing whatever state policy since there is no biblical warrant to do so. (I realize some think to be silent is the same as implicit endorsement of something, but I tend to think that’s a bit two dimensional and overly simplistic.) I can see why a church that stayed close to that principle in 1930s Germany will get it in the neck by those in 2010 America, but does it count for much that those who strayed from the principle in 1930s Germany and endorsed (as some did) fall under the same scrutiny, or does the “silence is approval” principle win the day?

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81. Your version of SOTC (two kingdoms) is not the only version that conservative Reformed thinkers have commended. Charles Hodge, and at times James Henley Thornwell, distinguished between “pure” political matters and mixed political matters. The church had no Word from God on pure political matters and had to remain silent. But where there was substantial overlap between the political and the moral, insofar as God’s Word spoke to the moral issue, the church should speak to the state about the moral issue and was not disabled from doing so even though the moral and the political were intertwined. This is, in my opinion, a more defensible position. Where the state policy is genocide, state-ordered murder, there is a 100% overlap between the moral and the political. The church, in Hodge’s view, has a duty to speak against murder to the state.

    Your position would, perversely and with a complete moral inversion, commend the unfaithful church for remaining silent in the face of the greatest moral evil ever known to the earth, the Holocost. That fact should cause you to think a second time about your position. I submit to you that it demonstrates powerfully that your interpretation of the SOTC is both biblically indefensible and morally bankrupt. The church that remained silent has the blood of millions on its hands to its shame.

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82. CVD, where does your view of the moral and political becoming intertwined find support in Scripture? The Roman emperors killed Christians and Christian preachers as part of the regime’s religious policy. Where did Paul or any other preacher tell the Roman emperors to stop killing Christians?

    If you’re going to tell us what the church must do, you have to do better than Hodge or Thornwell (who, ahem, both defended slavery).

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83. CVD,

    I can respect the moral/political overlap argument. But I think it has its work cut out for it in an age that, to my mind, has tended heavily to moralize politics and politicize faith.

    I take your response to be something of an affirmation of the notion that silence is implicit endorsement of a thing and that it trumps the principle at the heart of the SOTC. Again, while I can see how this sometimes works, I am not sure it always works. Sometimes silence means something completely different from endorsement. And I can well imagine that Hitler, as megalomaniac fascists are wont to do, would take silence to mean implicit opposition, which wouldn’t be interpreted kindly. As long as we’re advising each other to re-think positions, does it bother you at all that both you and Adolf interpret silence in ways different but that equally end up cracking 2K skulls (one figuratively, of course, the other literally)?

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84. Hodge’s argument was that the church has a God ordained duty to speak God’s Word where God has spoken.

    In most cases the church should not speak to the political because the political predominates. For example, humanity is called to be good stewards of the environment. But it does not follow that a policy of no drilling in ANWAR is mandated by God. Application of the principle to that specific case requires complicated scientific and political judgments, the weighing of costs and benefits, the trade offs of matters political, that the local elders are not equipped to address and on which they have no sure Word from God. Similarly, we know that unjustified killing is wrong, and a good case can be made for the just war doctrine. But it does not follow that preemptive war against Iraq is necessarily condemned by God. Application of the biblical/natural law principle (and just war doctrine) to a given war requires complex military judgments that only professionally trained commanders can sort out as well as analysis of complex geo-political matters, on none of which are the elders equipped to address and on which they have no Word from God. The political predominates, and the church qua church should remain silent. Individual Christians, however, in their capacity as citizens of the state, have a right and moral duty to speak their conscience on these issues.

    But when it comes to state-mandated murder, the political perfectly converges with the moral. No weighing of policy decisions is required. No matter how persuasive the argument that elimination of those trouble Jews would advance the interests of the Fatherland, the state policy is morally wrong. We have a sure Word from God. Not only are elders equipped to make this judgment, a four year old and my pet Basset Hound could make the judgment. The church can and must speak.

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85. DGH, arguments from silence are, as you know, notoriously problematic and, I think, don’t prove your case, or for that matter, even advance it. I support the SOTC, but I believe you have extended the doctrine beyond what’s necessary to protect the church’s spiritual nature and what the Presbyterian forefathers believed. At least as I understand your view, the church in its ministerial functions has no power granted by Christ to teach on moral matters that may be issues under consideration in the public square; thus the church shouldn’t teach/preach on issues realted to poverty, systemic injustice, slavery, racism, abortion, slavery, or creation care, because those are “public” issues and the Bible doesn’t prescribe policy positions on these. You ground it in the sufficiency of Scripture and protecting Christian liberty. Or perhaps you think the Word says nothing about those issues or these are illegitimate applications?

    You know better than I, but your version of SOTC, whereby the church musts be silent on any and all matters about which government may legistate, seems far beyond what at least the 19th century southern Presbyterians would have recognized. Didn’t Thornwell and Dabney and Hodge commonly distinguish between the church qua church taking a particular policy position or advocating particular political solutions on one hand, and instructing members on the moral duties required of them on the other? Thornwell, I think, spoke on the “duties of masters and salves” (a political issue) and Dabney on “temperance” (a political issue) because both were moral issues and accordingly required the pulpit to proclaim God’s Word on those topics.

    As I mentioned, I would interpet the SOTC to precude the church qua church from presecribing particular policy positions (except where there is an indentity between the moral and political), so as not to bind the consciences of God’s people on specific policies. But I don’t see any biblical rationale for prohibiting a ministry of God’s Word to address the moral issues that such policies implicate — e.g., abortion, creation care, poverty, etc. By overextending the logic of the SOTC, I fear that pastors will fail to declare the whole counsel of God, which speaks not only to redemption but of God’s care for the poor and oppressed. Of course, one has to be careful not to move from the moral imperatives of the Word (e.g., poverty and creation care) on which we all should agree to specific applications and public policies over which we may legitimately disagree.

    You raise a good point about Hodge and Thornwell as slave owners. It’s grevious that God’s servants at a point in time fail their own biblical principles, as we all do but One. But their personal failings don’t invalidate their theology any more than King David’s personal failings invalidate the Psalms attributed to him, unless I’ve missed something. At least Hodge made an attempt to be biblical in his reasoning about slavery and in time declared it to be a great wrong. If I’m not mistaken, by April 1846 he declared slavery was morally wrong and a “heinous crime; it degrades human beings into things; it forbids marriages; it destroys domestic relations; it separates parents and children, husbands and wives; it legalizes what God forbids, and forbids what God enjoins; it keeps its victims in ignorance even of the gospel; it denies labor its wages, subject the persons, the virtue, and the happiness of many to the caprice of one; it involves the violation of all social rights and duties, and therefore is the greatest of social crimes.” And he supported such biblical teaching from the pulpit, unless memory fades.

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86. CVD, I don’t know, I thought I had learned the spirituality of the church from guys like Thornwell, who wrote:

    “The church is not, as we fear too many are disposed to regard it, a moral institute of universal good, whose business it is to wage war upon every form of human ill, whether social, civil, political, moral, and to patronize every expedient which a romantic benevolence may suggest as likely to contribute to human comfort. We freely grant, and sincerely rejoice in the truth, that the healthful operations of the Church, in its own appropriate sphere, react upon all the interests of man, and contribute to the progress and prosperity of society; but we are far from admitting either that it is the purpose of God, that, under the present dispensation of religion, all ill shall be banished from this sublunary state, and earth be converted into a paradise; or, that the proper end of the Church is the direct promotion of universal good. It has no commission to construct society afresh, to adjust its elements in different proportions, to rearrange the distribution of its classes, or to change the forms of its political institutions. . . . it is not the distinctive province of the Church to build asylums for the needy or insane, or to organize societies for the improvement of the penal code, or for arresting the progress of intemperance, gambling or lust. The problems which the anomalies of our fallen state are continually forcing on philanthropy, the church has no right directly to solve. She must leave them to providence, and to human wisdom sanctified and guided by the spiritual influences which it is her glory to foster and cherish. The church is a very peculiar society; voluntary in the sense that its members become so, not by constraint, but willingly; but, not in the sense that its doctrines, discipline and order are the creatures of human will, deriving their authority and obligation from the consent of its members. On the contrary, it has a fixed and unalterable Constitution; and that Constitution is the Word of God. It is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. . . . It can hear no voice but His, obey no commands but His, pursue no ends but His. Its officers are His servants bound to execute only his will; its doctrines are His teachings, which He as a prophet has given from God; its discipline His law, which He as king has ordained. The power of the Church, accordingly, is only ministerial and declarative. The Bible, and the Bible alone, is her rule of faith and practice. She can announce what it teaches, enjoin what it commands, prohibit what it condemns, and enforce her testimonies by spiritual sanctions. Beyond the Bible she can never go, and apart from the Bible she can never speak. . . . She has a creed, but no opinions. When she speaks, it must be in the name of the Lord, and her only argument is ‘Thus it is written.’”

    I do think that Thornwell would have thought the church could declare to its own members what God’s will might be on poverty, etc. Though your list of social ills strikes me to come more from webpages and newspapers than from holy writ — creation care? But the church can only tell Christians what the word of God says. It can’t say anything to non-Christians aside from the proclamation of law and gospel.

    Just out of curiosity, what do you think is the church’s “position” on poverty? Even though the Bible says a lot about wealth and giving, do you think you could really enforce a Christian view of poverty? Even in the church? Methinks you are someone who wants the church to be doing a lot of application.

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87. DGH, I would agree with Thornwell’s eloquent recitation of the church’s task, and I haven’t suggessted anything to the contrary. I take him to refer to the church qua church, and I would not understand him to construe the individual Christian’s role in this narrow fashion. Many of the tasks forbidden to the church are, in my understanding, proper to the invididual believer who is called to be salt and light and to show mercy and do good to all, especially (but not limited to) the household of faith — to to transform the culture, but to promote justice, alleviate suffering, do good, etc. I’m glad you agree that Thornwell would not prohibit the church from speaking to moral issues merely because they also may be impliated by pending political issues.

    I would hope that the church is doing a lot of application, and it will be if it is preaching and teaching the Scriptures (e.g., about half of each Pauline epistle roughly). I would say that the church’s “position of poverty” should be the Scripture’s position on poverty, and as you say, the Bible says a lot about wealth and giving. That’s enough for me.

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88. Sorry for the typo. — should read “Not to transform the culture…”

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89. CVD, that’s good enough? Then why all the bellyaching about the views expressed here regarding SOTC? I imagine you and I would differ on a number of politically related issues. So I don’t want the church to speak to them. Now it seems you don’t either. So why are you complaining about 2k?

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90. I haven’t complained about 2K but rather about some unwarranted extensions and applications of it. I support 2K and SOTC, but take issue with some of your and your blog guests’ applications. I don’t believe the church should pronounce on most political issues because it lacks the expertise, because the Word of God doesn’t address policy specifics, and because it would bind the conscience illigitimately to speak where the Bible doesn’t. But where the moral is coincident with the political, I would have the church speak to the moral and you wouldn’t — not ever (correct me if I’m wrong). You seem to argue that where the state has invaded the moral sphere, the church has been silenced from speaking on that moral sphere. Yet, I find it imperative that the church condemn slavery, abortion on demand, gay marriage, etc. because I don’t believe the church’s duty to speak the Bible to God’s people is silenced by the fact that the state happens to speak to the same issues. Perhaps I’ve misunderstood your position.

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91. I should have used a cleaner example. The Holocaust. The SOTC, as you understand it, barred the German church of the 1930s from condemning state-ordered mass murder. Yet, it seems a good and necessary inference from Scripture that if murder is wrong, mass murder is wrong, and it’s not less wrong because the state has made genocide a public policy for the good of the Fatherland. No Christian conscience could properly support state genocide, and therefore no conscience would be wrongly bound by church proclamation against it. And it’s a legitimate application to condemn the government’s practice of it. It’s not clear to me why the duty of the church to speak God’s Word on a moral subject is suspended as to that subject merely because public policy implicates the subject. I would not extend the SOTC doctrine to the same rigid conclusions.

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92. You seem to argue that where the state has invaded the moral sphere, the church has been silenced from speaking on that moral sphere. Yet, I find it imperative that the church condemn slavery, abortion on demand, gay marriage, etc.

    CVD,

    I’ve put it this way for others who seem to have a similar (mis)understanding of what’s being said: the church has every right and duty to be clear that her members mayn’t fornicate, adulterate, divorce, abort, or steal human beings and traffic them. What she mayn’t do is tell them (directly or indirectly) how they should specifically participate in the political process, from voting to creating public policy in seats of actual power. So, no, it isn’t true that what is being said is that the church has been silenced on speaking morally just because the state is also taking up issues where the moral and political intersect. The point is that the question of who may say what to whom how and why is a bit more complex and nuanced than seems generally assumed. How you go from careful nuance to absolute silence is baffling to me.

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93. CVD, the church speaks to murder (the sixth commandment) no matter who is doing it. Just because the state may legalize abortion or initiate a questionable (unjust) war, doesn’t mean that the church is barred from speaking about murder. Where you got that idea from my views I do not know. I am fully committed to the church declaring God’s word all the time, whatever the consequences. My problem with much of the contemprary “speaking” God’s word is that it usually fails exegetically and simply baptizes a particular side in the cutlure war with the Bible’s blessing. I am opposed to using the Bible to score political points and that is what 2k and SOTC do. That’s why Stuart Robinson was an exile during the Civil War because the North and the South baptized their causes in the triune God’s name.

    I do not know why the Holocaust keeps coming up as an argument against 2k. I don’t think that either of know enough about the on-the-gournd circumstances of pastors and congregations in that situation. Nor is it clear that everyone knew exactly what was happening in the camps. After all the U.S. also interred Japanese Americans. But you seem to cherry pick some obvious occasions of evil from the past and throw it at SOTC. Welll, the same can be done for 2k’s critics — what about Servetus and the Thirty Years War.

    History and human existence is messy. The practice of human beings in no way disproves an ideal.

    History and people from the past also deserve better treatment than simply casting them in the dustbin of wickedness. Who among us can cast the first stone?

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94. dgh: Just because the state may legalize abortion or initiate a questionable (unjust) war, doesn’t mean that the church is barred from speaking about murder… I am fully committed to the church declaring God’s word all the time, whatever the consequences. My problem with much of the contemprary “speaking” God’s word is that it usually fails exegetically and simply baptizes a particular side in the cutlure war with the Bible’s blessing. I am opposed to using the Bible to score political points …

    I am in full agreement with each of these propositions.

    …and that is what 2k and SOTC do.

    Here’s where you lose me. Just because SOTC accomplishes a “fix” for bad exegesis and illegitimate foreclosure and scoring political points, doesn’t mean that it’s the *right* fix. Or that SOTC should be elevated to the level of “doctrine” — i.e., a test for orthodoxy.

    Your argument is that 2k solves the problem, so it’s right. That’s a logically unsound argument, akin to “Dispensationalism solves the problem of antiSemitism, so it’s right.”

    DGH: I do not know why the Holocaust keeps coming up as an argument against 2k. I don’t think that either of know enough about the on-the-gournd circumstances of pastors and congregations in that situation.

    Well, because NAZI Germany *appears* to be a situation in which the mainline, “2k” Lutherans allowed Herr Hitler to do what he wanted with the culture, until Lo and Behold, he was in a position to take over the church as well in the form of Ludwig Muller.

    Meanwhile, those darn transformationalist postmills like Niemoller and Bonhoffer, who saw Herr Hitler correctly as not merely a political leader, but an antichrist, defended the church qua Confessing Church and put up an appropriate resistance, for the sake of the sheep.

    So in the case of NAZI Germany, Luther’s 2k abetted catastrophe.

    In other words, I don’t think the SOTC “fix” accomplishes the SOTC “goal”, to preserve the spirituality of the church. By encouraging a bracketing of the faith in the public sphere, it appears to discourage the question, “What is God’s will for my common calling?” By aggressively pushing the plumber example so loudly, SOTC appears to say that there is no “God’s will for my common calling”; or at least, God’s will for my common calling is limited, because of Christian Liberty, to the kinds of things one can be disciplined for.

    Likewise, SOTC appears to say that even obvious political evils are not the church’s business. This appears to deny the “extraordinary cases” clause of the Confession, to turn it on its head and make it, as Zrim has argued, a standard that can never be met. How can we ever know, Zrim says, that an extraordinary case has arisen. And in fact, the discussion of des Drittes Reiches reinforces this perception.

    If the church cannot criticize Herr Hitler, then whom? When? Likewise, if the church cannot criticize slavery, then what? when? (Of note: those SOTC heroes Thornwell and Dabney certainly found it within themselves to defend slavery.)

    In other words, the SOTC church appears to be the scribe who passes by the side of the road, instead of the good Samaritan. He keeps his hands clean, but at the cost of abdicating responsibility. The good Sam, meanwhile, appears to be the SOTC villain.

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95. Jeff,

    Frankly, I’ve gotten to the point in these discussions where I think any reference to the Third Reich is a way to elevate the discussion to a place that is unwieldy and things are stacked such that 2K just can’t win for losing, to the point of being unduly judged as the Bad Samaritan (thanks for that, bro).

    But, since it just won’t go away, the standing question which has yet to be answered is: where is the biblical warrant to openly and actively oppose any magistrate? All I see in NT ethics is a call to civil submission, I see nothing that suggests by good and necessary inference civil opposition. I see plenty of warrant for cultic opposition, but not-a-much about actively seeking Caesar’s civic down fall but only his prosperity.

    I know you think I turn WCF 31.5’s “extraordinary circumstances” on its ear, but my only point is that the language, whatever it may mean, doesn’t seem to be suggesting we are obligated to police the world. If you want the church to actively oppose Hitler (and Mao and Stalin and a rash of African despots), may I entreat the church to actively oppose Obama?

    Also, have you considered the vast differences between dictatorial arrangements and democratic ones? To break civil silence in the former is to provoke persecution. There’s no shame in being persecuted, but it should be over the right thing. And if you’re saying that persecution for moral/political causes is the same as persecution for the gospel, then how is that not a confusion of the gospel with politics and morality? Un/believers alike can be persecuted for moral/political causes, but only believers can die for the gospel. Are you really prepared to tell Chinese Christians that unless they get in Hu’s face about his family planning polices they are shirking their gospel duties? Shouldn’t we be more careful when playing chess games with believers’ lives from a distance?

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96. I don’t think you *are* the bad Samaritan! Not at all.

    I just think your SOTC is so absolute, so cut-and-dried, that it judges the good Sam as a interfering meddler. Or to put it in terms of this discussion, the folk who opposed Herr Hitler were in sin.

    I’ve gotten to the point in these discussions where I think any reference to the Third Reich is a way to elevate the discussion to a place that is unwieldy and things are stacked such that 2K just can’t win for losing

    It’s an obvious counterexample to an absolute doctrine. If you think the Third Reich makes SOTC lose, then don’t be bitter — modify the view.

    I know you think I turn WCF 31.5’s “extraordinary circumstances” on its ear, but my only point is that the language, whatever it may mean, doesn’t seem to be suggesting we are obligated to police the world. If you want the church to actively oppose Hitler (and Mao and Stalin and a rash of African despots), may I entreat the church to actively oppose Obama?

    This is a slippery slope argument, and it is fallacious. The essence of your argument is that if we allow even one extraordinary circumstance, then everything will be an extraordinary circumstance. That simply doesn’t follow. To establish that argument, you have to show additionally that

    (a) There is a process by which we fall down the slippery slope, and
    (b) That there is nothing that will stop us from falling.

    Until you’ve established those two, the “policing the world” argument is beside the point.

    Oddly enough, for a guy that values wisdom a lot, you seem to discount wisdom entirely with regard to (b). Can’t churches be trusted to exercise wisdom and discretion in their engagement with culture? Do we need a hard-and-fast rule, not found in Scripture or the Confession, to tell us to stay out of the culture-engaging business altogether?

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97. Jeff,

    Bonhoeffer was sentenced to death for his connection to the assassination attempt on Hitler, not for carrying out his pastoral duties. I don’t know enough about the history and complexity of his involvement in the resistance movement to be critical of his decision to join the conspiracy. However, Bonhoeffer was a political martyr, not a Christian martyr in the sense that he was executed for maintaining faithful testimony to Christ. Maybe his convictions were right and warranted, and I am not in a position to judge him here, but it is unfair to connect his political involvements to his churchly duties they were distinct.

    I think it’s a fair to ask whether or not he could have faithfully discharged his duties as a minister of the gospel and not joined the assassination conspiracy.

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98. Jeff,

    I just think your SOTC is so absolute, so cut-and-dried, that it judges the good Sam as a interfering meddler. Or to put it in terms of this discussion, the folk who opposed Herr Hitler were in sin.

    Yes, those who plotted to assassinate their magistrates were in sin, not heroes. Why is that a problem? But it is clever of you to keep framing this in the two dimensional “those who opposed Hitler” and “those who say they had principled reasons to say the church should remain silent but can’t see that that is only an excuse for implicit approval,” as in if you weren’t actively opposing it was as good as pulling the levers on Zyklon-B.

    The essence of your argument is that if we allow even one extraordinary circumstance, then everything will be an extraordinary circumstance. That simply doesn’t follow.

    Your argument would be more persuasive if you’d branch out a little beyond the Third Reich (and slavery and abortion). Do you have any other real-world examples of where you think the church should directly step in and oppose the civil authorities? And, again, tell me how any of it passes as exceptions to something like Romans 13. Then give me an example of something not extraordinary enough to warrant direct opposition and why the two are so different. Then tell me how any political project is equal enough to proclaiming the gospel and deserves to share that status.

    Can’t churches be trusted to exercise wisdom and discretion in their engagement with culture? Do we need a hard-and-fast rule, not found in Scripture or the Confession, to tell us to stay out of the culture-engaging business altogether?

    I’m all for exercising wisdom and discretion. That’s the whole point, it seems to me. The problem is that when one suggests that wisdom and discretion might have more to do with limits and looks like a church being a church instead of the Stars and Stripes fighting the Swastika, the counter-suggestion is Bad Samaritan.

    But I’m curious how you understand the relationship between wisdom and sin (bear with me): is a married man who secretly meets up non-sexually with an old flame guilty of sin or stupidity? Does his wife who finds out have grounds to charge him with adultery or simply a frying pan?

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99. Jed and Zrim,

    I’m not even suggesting that Bonhoffer was right or wrong with regard to the assassination plot. Clearly that was an extreme measure, and it’s a close call as to whether that was a “Jael moment” or just plain old treason. I lean towards “right” instead of “wrong”, but that opinion is not central to this argument. Just like I think the praise for Rahab includes her deception, but I recognize that I might be wrong about that.

    But Niemoller, Barth, and Bonhoffer in their different ways were actively preaching from the pulpit against NAZI policies. That’s what I’m talking about, and precisely what SOTC wants to bar.

    Zrim: But it is clever of you to keep framing this in the two dimensional “those who opposed Hitler” and “those who say they had principled reasons to say the church should remain silent but can’t see that that is only an excuse for implicit approval,” as in if you weren’t actively opposing it was as good as pulling the levers on Zyklon-B.

    I appreciate your appreciation of my cleverness, but I thought it was more along the lines of being Biblical and Confessional.

    As in: “Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.”

    And the point is, that when it’s obvious as the nose on one’s face that X policy actively encourages evil, there does come a time to speak out.

    Zrim: Your argument would be more persuasive if you’d branch out a little beyond the Third Reich (and slavery and abortion)

    Well, maybe those three are the only three. I don’t know that that’s the case, but could we at least agree that these are three pretty certain examples?

    Zrim: Then give me an example of something not extraordinary enough to warrant direct opposition and why the two are so different.

    Taking sides on the health-care debate.

    One difference between the two has to do with the encouragement to positive evil, as opposed to creating a situation where humans might do good or ill (such as free speech).

    Another difference has to do with direct threat to the church as an institution.

    A third difference is pastoral: are my congregation going to be affected or tempted by the policy? As I’ve said before, the church should police itself first. But in the cases of NAZI Germany, and slavery, and even abortion, individuals within the pastor’s care are going to be adversely affected by those policies. That raises the threshold considerably, IMO.

    Zrim: I’m all for exercising wisdom and discretion. That’s the whole point, it seems to me. The problem is that when one suggests that wisdom and discretion might have more to do with limits…

    But you don’t suggest that at all! Your plan appears to be for the church to be the church and stay out of the world, even in NAZI Germany.

    Where’s the wisdom in that? It’s just “faithfulness equals blanket policy. Draw the lines and be done.”

    If that’s not your intent, then you’ll need to pull some weight here and suggest some circumstances under which the church should speak out, also. And explicate the lines that you draw and why.

    Zrim: But I’m curious how you understand the relationship between wisdom and sin (bear with me): is a married man who secretly meets up non-sexually with an old flame guilty of sin or stupidity? Does his wife who finds out have grounds to charge him with adultery or simply a frying pan?

    With what motives? Under what circumstance? Those need to be known first.

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100. Jeff,

     I see nothing inherent in the 2k view that maintains that abortion, or killing Jews in the case of Nazi Germany represent anything less than a breach of the 6th commandment. These can be, at least in my view, addressed in the confines of the church, they can be named as sinful, and church members should be held accountable on these issues. However, the rub comes in when the church as an ecclesiastical body (or under the official auspices of a pastor/elder who speaks on behalf of the church in an official manner) ceases to uphold its call as a spiritual institution and meddles in these political affairs on an official basis. However, nothing in the 2k view, as I understand it precludes the individual believer, or even groups of believers from activism in the secular sphere. I might even be persuaded to extend this to warranted political insurrections, revolutions, etc. But mind you even the most extreme political activism, even if warranted is not the province of the church or her officers. They are to preach the gospel, administer the sacraments, and maintain the order of the church.

     In the case of Bonhoeffer’s activism, assuming his motivation to kill Hitler was righteous; I think he would have been better off to resign his post as a minister and recuse himself of any ruling capacity in the church to keep the lines between the political motivations and the role of the church separate. His role in the conspiracy should not be construed as a warranted connection to his call as a minister of the gospel. Could he have condemned the murderous, and xenophobic aspects of Nazi policy from the pulpit where he had clear scriptural warrant to do so? I would say yes. Could he have exhorted his parishoners to avoid any direct role (e.g. working in concentration camps) even at the risk of their own death in order to uphold a true and faithful witness to the gospel? Sure. Where I suspect he went wrong, is in using his righteous indignation as pretext for outright political rebellion. It is one thing to speak against blatant evil perpetrated in this case by the Nazis and to refuse to participate in the obviously sinful aspects of the regime, it is another thing entirely to seek to supplant that regime while maintaining the office of a minister of the gospel.

     On a less cataclysmic level, it is individual Christians in the due course of their vocations and avocations that are responsible for their part in promoting the civil good, even if that means addressing social evils. However, that isn’t the role of the church as an institution. I think I understand your arguments, but I think, even in the extreme examples discussed here that you are inclined to blur the lines that demarcate the role of the church in society.

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101. Jed: Could he have condemned the murderous, and xenophobic aspects of Nazi policy from the pulpit where he had clear scriptural warrant to do so? I would say yes. Could he have exhorted his parishoners to avoid any direct role (e.g. working in concentration camps) even at the risk of their own death in order to uphold a true and faithful witness to the gospel? Sure.

     OK, this is what I’m talking about.

     It would be helpful for SOTC advocates to outline the positive ways, as you have, in which a minister can or should speak out.

     …even in the extreme examples discussed here that you are inclined to blur the lines that demarcate the role of the church in society.

     Given that everything else in life is colored by Now and Not Yet hues, I can’t imagine why the church should have crystal clear markers.

     Maybe that’s just me being all Framian again.

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102. But you don’t suggest that at all! Your plan appears to be for the church to be the church and stay out of the world, even in NAZI Germany.

     Well, first, I wouldn’t worry too much about “my plan.” Your views, which write exceptions to Romans 13 and Jesus’ own claims that his kingdom is not of this world or commands to render unto Caesar his due, are clearly the majority. You’re the guys who write all sorts of position papers on every worldly debate, togetherness statements, manifesto’s and declarations. I’m just sitting in the middle pew asking questions.

     Second, I wonder what you think “be in the world but not of it” means in all this. And does it seem like utter foolishness to you to say that the response to everything from Ghandi’s to Nazi’s is Word and sacrament?

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103. Jeff, I do think that 2k does offer a clearer role of the church in the broader society. Under the oversight of our officers we call sinners to repentance and encourage the saints on their journey homeward. Not a lot of bells and whistles, or social agendas, just a simple commission from the Master. As a saint who more often than not comes to the Lord’s table beleaguered, I find this refreshing. I come from an evangelical transformationalist background where the church and her leaders were championing their latest crusades and programs while the congregation was unwittingly left starving in the pews. I think there is a grave danger in transformational circles when the congregation is told more about what Jesus would have them do about abortion, or the environment, or world hunger than they are about who Jesus is and what he has accomplished on their behalf. If 2k’s danger is antinomian, transformationalists are in danger of loosing sight of the simplicity of the gospel.

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104. Jeff, you are cherry picking here way too much for my comfort. Biblically, the parable of the good Samaritan is precisely in accord to SOTC. SOTC says what churches may do, not individuals like the good Samaritan — btw, helping someone beside the road is a long way from deciding to be a vigilante, which is what you do when you take the role of judge, jury and executioner into your own hands.

     You reference “Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins” is also an incredible abuse. This would seem to give me license to correct any parent who is doing something to a child I deem to be wrong, or to pull over any driver who is speeding. You want to put some qualifications around that?

     Also, you want to explain why Paul and Jesus did not condemn slave holders, but in the latter case he actually healed one of their underlings? Would also care to distinguish slavery from murder? In your taking shots at 2k you only seem to go for the juggular with these examples.

     Confessionally, you cherry pick when you say that SOTC is not creedal. Well, ir sure is in WCF 31.4. Churches don’t meddle. There are cases extraordinary. That may be. That doesn’t give lone ministers the green light to do what their churches do not do. Plus, the WCF is even more 2k and SOTC after 1787 in the U.S. So you’re not being confessional in taking issue with SOTC.

     Historically, you also cherry pick. Why simply blame 2k on the German Lutherans. What about the Dutch Reformed who also failed to do anything about Hitler? Or what about German Roman Catholics, or Polish Roman Catholics, or Italian Roman Catholics? Could it be that more was going on in Europe than simply the blight of 2k?

     And while I’m at the history, I don’t think Bonhoffer is the poster boy for biblical exegesis or knowing how to apply the parable of the Good Samaritan. His involvement in the Bethel Confession and its teaching about God’s abiding faithfulness to his chosen people, the Jews, might not pass confessional muster. Which means that it is hardly legitimate to appeal to someone as a model of Reformed world and life view when that person wasn’t even Reformed (maybe not even good Lutheran).

     Frankly, Jeff, while I appreciate your efforts to be reasonable and dialogue in all this, I don’t see your criticisms as understanding what SOTS means. BTW, it is only a fix for the politicization of the church because it is what the Bible teaches and prescribes what the church does. It is not a fix. It is the norm.

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105. I’m sorry that we cannot agree here. I don’t perceive SOTC as advocating antinomianism. Rather, I perceive it has having a couple of large holes or vacuums into which all manner of things (some good, some not good) might be poured. I’ve mentioned these holes in the form of two different test cases: The Case of the Christian Magistrate, and What About NAZI Germany? In both cases, the response has been that SOTC doesn’t really need to provide an answer.

     To my mind, this contrasts unfavorably with, say, the author of Proverbs who is eager to share wisdom with his son and is not reticent to put some definition on what wisdom looks like — even as he also partakes of the Ecclesiastes mindset.

     So I think the divide remains.

     For what it’s worth, my “ideal church” looks very similar to Jed’s. It’s not like I’m advocating a raging transformationalism. I just want 2k views to be well-grounded so that they can truly be “good and necessary inferences” instead of pious opinion.

     Perhaps you don’t intend this, but by labeling SOTC as “doctrine”, you make it a test for orthodoxy. Tim Keller is not merely mistaken but unorthodox because he does not hold to SOTC. That’s what it means to label something as “doctrine” or “norm.”

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106. I’ve mentioned these holes in the form of two different test cases: The Case of the Christian Magistrate, and What About NAZI Germany? In both cases, the response has been that SOTC doesn’t really need to provide an answer.

     Jeff,

     Not really. It provides you an answer, just not the one you want. The interesting thing about your litmus tests is that they seem pretty stacked with what appear to be relatively unexamined assumptions on your part: there is a Christian way to govern and the church must actively resist political tyrants, now tell me how SOTC meets those demands.

     But the other query you’ve used is “Does It Pass the Good Samaritan Test?” And your set of assumptions seem to be very much like those held in the general public, namely that the point of Luke 10:25-37 is “Be good.” But you’ll recall that what precipitates the parable is the question (meant to test Jesus), “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Then the parable is told, cinched up with the command to “Go and do likewise.” It’s not too unlike the rich young ruler parable. And if the take away from those texts is “Be good and you will show yourself approved” instead of “Woe is me, for I am a hypocrite who can never hope to inherit eternal life, who will help me?” something is askew, at least from a Protestant and Reformed point of view. These parables are about justification, they are not bare moral instructions. You seem to erroneously assume the latter as you examine 2K-SOTC, and, naturally, out pops something about 2K-SOTC engendering the Bad Samaritan.

     Which makes “I don’t perceive SOTC as advocating antinomianism” a little bit if a head-scratcher.

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107. Jeff, I also believe that exclusive psalmody is doctrinal. Reformed Protestants did not start to sing hymns until 1740. But you know, I’m a flexible guy. I’m willing to live with hymns. I am also willing to live with deniers of 2k. But it is clearly affirmed by the Confession of the PCA and OPC. Which is why most of the critics of 2k want to hold me and others to the original WCF or to Belgic Art. 36. (BTW, Zrim, there is not 31.5 in the American CF.)

     You have not established that Nazism or the Christian magistrate are holes for 2k. You have asserted that. But the wisdom that you also promote would also take into account the Roman Catholics and Reformed Protestants who went along with Hitler. How does Nazism become a hole only for 2k? This is a highly arbitrary way of looking at the history, one btw that works to your heuristic advantage. Same goes for Christian magistrate. Christian magistrate of what state? Christian magistrate of Soviet Union, Canada, Constantinople? Where? Wisdom might suggest you take account of the historical setting.

     So I don’t think you have proved anything other than reveal your own objections, which you somehow imagine commit me to something you oppose.

     So let’s make this specific: what would you have done in Germany? Would you have joined Bonhoffer (and do you really know all for which he stood)? Would you have merely spoken out against Hitler? Would you speak out against Bonhoffer taking the law into his own hands? Why Hitler and not Bonhoffer?

     And another question: Which version of the Civil Magistrate do you adopt?

     “Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven; or, in the least, interfere in matters of faith. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord, without giving the preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest, in such a manner that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full, free, and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions, without violence or danger. And, as Jesus Christ hath appointed a regular government and discipline in his church, no law of any commonwealth should interfere with, let, or hinder, the due exercise thereof, among the voluntary members of any denomination of Christians, according to their own profession and belief. It is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the person and good name of all their people, in such an effectual manner as that no person be suffered, either upon pretense of religion or of infidelity, to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever: and to take order, that all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or disturbance.”

     Or

     “Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the Word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven; yet he has authority, and it is his duty, to take order that unity and peace be preserved in the Church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire, that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed, all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed, and all the ordainances of God duly settled, administrated, and observed. For the better effecting whereof, he has power to call synods, to be present at them and to provide that whatsoever is transacted in them be according to the mind of God.”

     Both are views of the Christian magistrate. Both are Presbyterian. On whose side are you?

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108. Zrim,

     Let me retract the bit about the Good Samaritan. Clearly it has offended you, which is not my aim. But more importantly, my argument didn’t distinguish between individuals and the Church as an institution. And that distinction is obviously important, so the argument as stated fails.

     At no point have I thought of you as the Bad Samaritan.

     —

     JRC: In both cases, the response has been that SOTC doesn’t really need to provide an answer.

     Zrim: Not really. It provides you an answer, just not the one you want.

     I hate to be disagreeable, but you’ve explicitly stated that SOTC does not give an answer to the Christian Magistrate question, and cannot without violating Christian liberty. I think this is a straight-up matter of record.

     Zrim: You’re the guys who write all sorts of position papers on every worldly debate, togetherness statements, manifesto’s and declarations.

     Who’s “you”, Dutch man? Did I miss my signature on some document?

     Zrim: I’m just sitting in the middle pew asking questions.

     Yes, and I’m just sitting on a blog asking questions and being skeptical. But you *do* have cards to show. One of those cards is an account of what qualifies as an “extraordinary circumstance.”

     Zrim: Second, I wonder what you think “be in the world but not of it” means in all this. And does it seem like utter foolishness to you to say that the response to everything from Ghandi’s to Nazi’s is Word and sacrament?

     It doesn’t seem foolish at all. It’s the answer I endorse. It’s the answer I gave when the session asked me what the plan for middle-school youth ministry is.

     But now what does this mean — “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.”

     Given that James is not a moralist, what is he saying?

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109. DGH: Jeff, I also believe that exclusive psalmody is doctrinal. Reformed Protestants did not start to sing hymns until 1740. But you know, I’m a flexible guy. I’m willing to live with hymns.

     I’m glad to hear that. But how is it consistent with the RPW? Wouldn’t you pretty much have to attend a psalm-only church, given that you think that psalms are commanded and hymns are forbidden?

     I’m not doubting you, I’m just thinking back to the strong language uttered over on the psalmnody thread.

     DGH: I am also willing to live with deniers of 2k. But it is clearly affirmed by the Confession of the PCA and OPC.

     Some form of 2k is endorsed by the Confession, yes. Is it your form?

     DGH: So let’s make this specific: what would you have done in Germany? Would you have joined Bonhoffer (and do you really know all for which he stood)? Would you have merely spoken out against Hitler? Would you speak out against Bonhoffer taking the law into his own hands? Why Hitler and not Bonhoffer?

     Assuming my nerve didn’t fail, I certainly would have assisted Jews and Slavs to the extent possible. And I would have spoken out against the policies.

     Would I have spoken out against Bonhoffer taking the law into his own hands? No. His situation is not at all clear to me.

     What about you? You are dropped into Dresden in 1939. What now?

     DGH: And another question: Which version of the Civil Magistrate do you adopt?

     The 1789 version.

     DGH: Both are views of the Christian magistrate. Both are Presbyterian. On whose side are you?

     This question is revealing. It’s not merely a question of which version I adopt … it’s a question of whose side I shall be on. Shall it be Apollos’ or Peter’s or Paul’s?

     None of the above.

     Like Zrim, you take my questioning and criticism as an indicator of being on “the other side”, the guys who write position papers and sign manifestos.

     Is that where we want to be? Is your advice to me to go throw in my lot with Jim Wallis because I have criticisms of SOTC? Surely not. Surely it can be the case that questions can be asked without picking a camp.

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110. Jeff, I take your position as incoherent, and yet you continue to fault 2k for problems that don’t measure up to what? Your position? But your position is not at all satisfactory. You want a view of the Christian magistrate. WCF 1789 has one: “God, the supreme Lord and King of all the world, hath ordained civil magistrates, to be, under him, over the people, for his own glory, and the public good: and, to this end, hath armed them with the power of the sword, for the defense and encouragement of them that are good, and for the punishment of evildoers.” 23.1 But you want more.

     You say 2k and SOTC is not confessional, but later in ch. 23 it turns out that the confession does teach 2k, plus 31.4.

     But then you say, mine isn’t the same as the confession. huh?

     The reason for asking sides was not so you could play the Pauline tape about parties in the church. It was to try to figure out where you stand. I see you object. But I don’t understand by why criteria you object (though I think Frame’s fingerprints are on this).

     And I didn’t bring up psalm-singing for you to ding me again. (Have you been taking advice from the Baylys?) The point was to say that many of my “odd” and “provocative” and “idiosyncratic” views are in the Confession. And yet I live at a time when I don’t get all that the
     Standards teach. None of us do. Not even the divines. And so we live with that. But just because John Frame’s views on worship haven’t been tarred and feathered by all Reformed communions, doesn’t mean the RPW is unclear about Reformed worship.

     I too would like to think that I would, as much as I knew what was going on, have aided all of those designated for execution. But again, your hindsight is completely selective. Many Germans did not know what was happening in the camps. And camps are what Americans constructed during WWII for Japanese Americans. You make it seem like it was easy to know all that was going on. And yet when you do know of a plot by citizen-vigilantes to assassinate a ruler, you say it’s not clear. What is unclear about do not take the law into your own hands?

     And if you’d ever care to consider those Dutch, French, Italians, Poles, and other Europeans who went along with Hitler even though not holding 2k views, I’d sure be interested to hear. I’d be particularly interested in the case of the Dutch where dualism was always bad.

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111. Jeff,

     Re the Bad Samaritan stuff, I’m not sure why you want to retract it. I think it’s pretty consistent on your part. If you’re right, then my being offended is a good thing.

     I hate to be disagreeable, but you’ve explicitly stated that SOTC does not give an answer to the Christian Magistrate question, and cannot without violating Christian liberty. I think this is a straight-up matter of record.

     Let me try to clarify. I said “it doesn’t give an an answer” in the same way I mean “Christianity is irrelevant.” What I mean is that biblical truth is counter-intuitive, it doesn’t often answer the questions we ask because, well, frankly, we can often just be asking bad questions. I consider your question of the CM to be in the ballpark of trying to make the Bible a handbook for temporal living intead of, or in addition to, a revelation of how to inherit eternal life. If it’s a handbook for temporal living then it also contains answers for how to bake pies, in other words, answers for things that run the temporal scale from trivial (baking) to sophisticated (statecraft). I categorically deny the Bible’s project is to help us get through temporal life from baking pies or governing republics.

     Given that James is not a moralist, what is he saying?

     He is saying precisely what the third use of the law is saying: the Christian life can be summed up in one word–obedience. And in all this you’ll notice the 2K-SOTC point is all about obedience. Paul says to obey the magistrate is to obey God, to disobey him is to disobey God. I realize that’s one jagged little pill for 2010 Americans to swallow, but there it is nevertheless. But it may help to distinguish, again, obedience from worship. Daniel knew the difference. And directly civilly opposing one’s magistrate sure doesn’t seem anything at all like obedience. As you wax about just what you would have done in mid-20th C. Germany, I wonder if you import your Americanism into the opposition you imagine in the drawing boards of your mind. You do realize, don’t you, that to oppose Adolf is very different from opposing Barack? “Speaking out about the policies” in one may be embraced warmly, but in the other not-so-much. I think wisdom tells us to be careful what we die for.

     FWIW, I’d reinforce dgh’s point about hindsight. Sometimes it isn’t so much 20/20 as it is a way to cast oneself in very heroic if unrealistic colors, as well as judge others who aren’t joining you from a very safe and warm distance. When I read Anne Frank’s diary in junior high, I had nice pictures of me hiding Jews in attics, too, or sailing the Atlantic to put an angry bullet in Adolf’s head; I know what it’s like to be American. But as time marches on from adolescence to adulthood I see the folly of such self-importance and the brutal complexities of the human condition.

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112. Zrim, I beg your pardon for making the inflammatory insinuation that you are a bad Samaritan. I don’t think it, and I shouldn’t have implied it.

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113. Don’t sweat it too much, Jeff. When I say “offended” I mean it in the old-fashioned way, the one that distinguishes between people and views.

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114. , and yet you continue to fault 2k for problems that don’t measure up to what? Your position? But your position is not at all satisfactory.

     DGH: You want a view of the Christian magistrate. WCF 1789 has one…You say 2k and SOTC is not confessional, but later in ch. 23 it turns out that the confession does teach 2k, plus 31.4. But then you say, mine isn’t the same as the confession. huh?

     Well, the problem is that you have adopted the “2k” label for your position without acknowledging that there is more than one form of “2k” (for example, Calvin’s, which allows for theocracy, and yours which does not).

     So the solution to the “huh” is that I think there is an apparent confessional problem with the version of 2k we’ve been discussing; not with all versions.

     DGH: Jeff, I take your position as incoherent…

     Fair challenge. Let me express the position briefly and then you can tell me which part doesn’t cohere.

     On the negative side, I think there are some issues with the version of 2k we’ve been talking about, which I’ve taken to labeling as SOTC out of deference to Zrim, but which has been labeled as REPT in some of our previous discussions (not to mention the pejorative label R2K that we agreed to drop).

     Those issues are

     (1) The Confession requires the magistrate to “maintain piety”. By contrast, REPT calls on the magistrate to let the church alone so that the church can maintain piety.

     While this might be the path of wisdom, it is not at all obvious that this is what the 1789 revisers had in mind.

     (2) The Confession says that the magistrate is to defend and encourage those who are good, and to punish those who do evil.

     REPT accepts this function of the magistrate, but is unclear as to how the magistrate should determine good or evil. Should the decalogue inform his thinking on this matter, or should natural law suffice?

     Whichever is the case, should violations of the first table of the law count as “evil”? If not, why not; if so, then how does this fit in with the “protect the person and good name” clause of 23.3?

     (3) WCoF 19.4 says that the general equity of the Law remains as the standard for nations. REPT appears to deny this; or sublime it into the functioning of the natural law.

     On the positive side, I would say that

     (4) There are two jurisdictions, church and state, whose officers are lawfully called servants of God in their calling and to whom is given authority over men.
     (5) All magistrates are obligated to the moral Law of God, just as all men are
     (5a) But failure to acknowledge the obligation does not nullify the magistrate’s authority.
     (6) The Christian Magistrate occupies a unique position. On the one hand, he is a citizen of the kingdom of God. On the other, he is an officer of the state.

     He therefore represents an intrusion of God’s kingdom into the state. Not that the state thereby becomes an arm of the Gospel proclamation; but that the Christian Magistrate in executing his particular common calling will be operating under God’s revealed will.

     The question is then, how shall he then intrude? It appears that the revisers of the Confession recognized that the Christian Magistrate is to refrain from using the sword to prevent idolatry. But beyond this … ?

     —

     So: where’s the incoherence you have in mind?

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115. Let me say a word about method. It will help to clear up where I stand and why our conversations go in the direction they do.

     In the math world, conversation has refinement as its goal. This is typical:

     JRC: All prime numbers are odd.
     DGH: Really? What about 2?
     JRC: What about 2?
     DGH: Well, 2 has exactly two factors, so it’s prime. And 2 is divisible by 2, so it’s even.
     JRC: Huh. I guess there is an even prime. Are there others?
     DGH: I doubt it.
     JRC: No, actually there aren’t. Because any other even number is also divisible by 2 and so has at least three factors: itself, 1, and 2. So all other evens are not prime. New theorem: There is only one even prime, 2. All others are odd.

     This is de rigeur in my area of study.

     From this, I hope that you understand my goal in pointing out what I perceive to be flaws in REPT is refinement. I’m not trying to overthrow REPT or make its proponents out to be antinomians or Bad Samaritans; but rather to say, Here are some holes. If you can fill them, your view will be stronger.

     In other words, as a “something close to 2k-er”, I am aiming for an improved theory that leaves fewer open targets for the Brets of the world.

     —

     Second, I hope you can understand that I am non-plussed by some of the responses here. Imagine this conversation:

     JRC: All prime numbers are odd.
     DGH: Really? What about 2?
     JRC: You’re saying that all evens are prime?
     DGH: What? No! I asked, “What about 2?”
     JRC: But look at 13 … 29 … 91 … they’re all odd and prime.
     DGH: OK, but what about 2? You said that all odds are prime, and 2 is prime and even.
     JRC: You’re just picking examples favorable to your position!
     DGH: Gaah!

     Now, I say this not to say that either you or Steve Z is irrational, as JRC is in this example, but to say that I perceive the responses as irrational.

     Having thought about this a bit, I suspect that in the culture of history discussion, or English, or other fields, there is a different method of dialogue in which some of these responses make sense.

     For example, if it is the custom in history for two people to pick opposing sides, and then debate which side fits the data best, it might make sense to knock the opponent’s position down so as to enhance the credibility of one’s own position.

     In math, this never makes sense and is considered a logical error.

     So the upshot is this: the reason I get frustrated is not because I’m trying to push a hidden agenda and you won’t let me.

     The agenda is transparent – I want REPT to refine and improve.

     The frustration is, I think, a clash of cultural methods of dialogue.

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116. …except that 91 = 7*13. It’s 97 that’s prime. Failure to proof-read. Doh!

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117. Jeff, first, Geneva was not a theocracy. That is a poor construction of church state matters. You are correct to assert that Calvin was living with Constantinianism. But again, I don’t see how this is a problem for 2k because most of 2k’s critics don’t want Calvin’s Geneva for today, only Calvin’s Geneva to show that 2ks are Calvin. It is highly selective.

     I don’t see the Confession teaching what you do. I don’t see 23.3 telling the magistrate to maintain piety. What I do see is the magistrate being responsible to protect all citizens, believers and non-believers, a point that is very hard to do if you’re going to use the Bible as the norm for public law and policy. Where does the Bible tolerate unbelief in those institutions that use it for jurisdiction (Israel or the church).

     I don’t see 19.4 applied to the nations. Ch. 23 governs the magistrate. You may want to argue that 19.4 could apply to the state. But it doesn’t say that.

     And on the point about good and evil, this is a problem for everyone, not just 2k. We want public goodness. That goodness is not the same as ultimate goodness. Just because we know citizens can’t be ultimately good without regeneration, etc., doesn’t mean that we want to encourage citizens to live honestly and be wicked. So all Christian accounts of the state need to distinguish certain kinds of goodness from others. A magistrate in Geneva faces the same problem as Obama — a desire for good citizens no matter their practice on Sunday.

     I’m not sure I follow all the math. In the case of history, you look at a variety of factors. You have brought up lots of historical examples whose factors do not always support your points.

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118. WCoF 23.2 (1789): It is lawful for Christians to accept and execute the office of a magistrate, when called thereunto: in the managing whereof, as they ought especially to maintain piety, justice, and peace…

     What is this saying if not “maintain piety”?

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119. WCoF 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.

     Is this not saying that the general equity of the sundry judicial laws may require something of other peoples?

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120. Jeff, does 23.2 have in view non-Christian magistrates? Is that what is true for all states? Isn’t 23.3 the place to go for all magistrates?

     I don’t see 19.4 in the chapter on the magistrate. It is speaking about the laws of the OT and how they may or may not still be relevant or binding. I don’t see that as informing what the state is supposed to do.

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121. DGH: Does 23.2 have in view non-Christian magistrates?

     Fair question. We have a couple of options. Either

     (1) The Confession is speaking only of Christian magistrates. In this case, the obligations of the Christian Magistrate are different from those of the non-Christian, and we’re back to the Problem of the Christian Magistrate.

     (2) OR, the Confession is speaking of all magistrates in terms of their obligation. In this case, we recognize that “ought” does not imply “can.”

     I lean towards (1).

     I don’t see 19.4 in the chapter on the magistrate. It is speaking about the laws of the OT and how they may or may not still be relevant or binding.

     It is speaking of the judicial laws and how they may or may not still be relevant or binding. And the answer is, The general equity is still binding.

     Since we’re talking judicial law here, wouldn’t that have to involve the magistrate?

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122. He therefore represents an intrusion of God’s kingdom into the state. Not that the state thereby becomes an arm of the Gospel proclamation; but that the Christian Magistrate in executing his particular common calling will be operating under God’s revealed will.
     The question is then, how shall he then intrude?

     Jeff,

     I wonder if it would help to think more in terms of intersection than intrusion. The believer stands simultaneously between the two kingdoms. While it may be said that, in some sense, the KoG intrudes or breaks forth into the KoM, I don’t think the same can be said about the individual believer in his particular common calling. After all, the Christian life in the inter-advental age is described as pilgrimage, and pilgrims do a lot more plodding shoulder-to-shoulder than intruding and laying it upon the shoulders of others.
     But if 2k says there is no blueprint for plumbing as the believer plumbs, I am hard-pressed to see why there is one for ruling as he rules. There is, however, a two-tabled code he must live by as he does either. Maybe some consult idols or steal as they go about their common callings, but he doesn’t. I think what your view fails to do is distinguish between vocational demands and personal behavior. As long as you keep conflating these two things I don’t think what 2k is saying will ever finally satisfy you.

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123. Jeff, I read 19 as dealing with Israel’s judicial law. If the Divines were going to appeal to it for the magistrate, wouldn’t they put it in ch. 23?

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124. DGH, a reasonable question; but why mention it at all?

     At least one plausible answer is that ch. 23 fleshes out what “general equity” means.

     Any other ideas? Why mention “general equity” in ch. 17 with respect to judicial laws?

     Zrim: I think what your view fails to do is distinguish between vocational demands and personal behavior. As long as you keep conflating these two things I don’t think what 2k is saying will ever finally satisfy you.

     You’re correct that I haven’t distinguished these.

     How would you distinguish them?

     For example: Is refraining from cheating your customer a “vocational demand” or a “personal behavior”? Is plumbing to the glory of God a “vocational demand” (as in, this is my *calling*), or is it a “personal behavior”?

     When I try to sort actions into bins labeled “vocational demand” and “personal behavior”, I do pretty well on the edges, but the middle gets really squishy. Something like “accepting $100M of taxpayer’s money for my district in exchange for my vote” is hard to put into an easy category.

     I notice, for example, that John the Baptist had a lot to say to his baptizees about the way they carried out their vocations.

     But if 2k says there is no blueprint for plumbing as the believer plumbs, I am hard-pressed to see why there is one for ruling as he rules. There is, however, a two-tabled code he must live by as he does either. Maybe some consult idols or steal as they go about their common callings, but he doesn’t.

     You’ve talked frequently about “blueprint” and “handbook”, but I never have.

     Perhaps the difference is this. We can approach life in terms of rules: Do this; don’t do that. In such a case, a handbook or blueprint makes sense, because it provides a complete ethic. We know what to *do*.

     But it’s also possible to approach life in terms of strategic goals. I want to accomplish these objectives… And in that case, a blueprint is actually counter-productive, since it may or may not help me accomplish my goals.

     What I’ve been suggesting is that Scripture lays out a couple of non-negotiable strategic objectives for all Christians, objectives that cut across “vocational” and “personal.” Those objectives would be, roughly, to trust and love God; and to love neighbor.

     When I talk about Scripture informing our lives, I mean that it provides some guidance about how those goals can be accomplished (and especially some negative guidance about how they cannot be accomplished).

     But at no point do I have in mind a blueprint. Nor do I have in mind a flesh-based, “Let’s abandon the Gospel and fulfill the Law!”

     Rather, much like you, I see ourselves obligated to the two-tabled code. But perhaps unlike you, (maybe?), I don’t see that obligation entailing a detailed list of rules.

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125. How would you distinguish them [a vocational demand and a personal behavior]?

     Jeff,

     Well, in my line of work I have to carry out the decisions a client demands. Sometimes I think it’s the right decision, but sometimes I disagree. In the end, it doesn’t really matter either way because I’m bound by contractual agreements that couldn’t care any less about my personal convictions (and rightly so, I might add). In the process of carrying out these and other vocational demands with which I disagree, I don’t worship idols or bear false witness. I can easily see how civilians to my vocation looking in from the outside could construe my dealings with state departments of education as compromising my Christian duties, but they’d be confusing vocational demands with personal behavior.

     You’ve talked frequently about “blueprint” and “handbook”, but I never have…What I’ve been suggesting is that Scripture lays out a couple of non-negotiable strategic objectives for all Christians, objectives that cut across “vocational” and “personal.” Those objectives would be, roughly, to trust and love God; and to love neighbor.

     Well, what you have said is that general revelation is insufficient to inform general tasks, and that special revelation makes up for the deficiencies. To my mind, that counts as making the Bible a handbook for common living. But in all the years I’ve been at my vocation, the Bible has never been consulted by me or my colleagues in order to successfully execute our tasks. One option is to say that we haven’t been as successful as we have thought. But that seems unsatisfactory because it suggests that the Bible needs to be consulted to see where we failed, and I still have no idea what Scripture has to say about standardized student assessments. I suppose we could ask whether we have met the requirements of the first and second greatest commandments, but I think we’d be just as lost about how that helps us build a better mousetrap (er, standardized assessment, I get them confused sometimes). Besides, examining how we measure up spiritually is a question better asked each Lord’s Day in the presence of the Lord and his people. Asking that question there and then makes a ton more sense.

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126. Zrim: Well, in my line of work I have to carry out the decisions a client demands. Sometimes I think it’s the right decision, but sometimes I disagree.

     Understood. Happens in Christian education, too.

     So … are there any demands that a client might make that you would refuse out of conscience? If so, why those and not others, etc.?

     Zrim: Well, what you have said is that general revelation is insufficient to inform general tasks, and that special revelation makes up for the deficiencies. To my mind, that counts as making the Bible a handbook for common living.

     Actually, what I’ve said is that general revelation is insufficient to inform general tasks.

     The “special revelation makes up for the deficiencies” is your language.

     The only reason I point that out is that I don’t think of special revelation as necessarily making up for all the deficiencies … certainly not in any obvious way, and perhaps not in any way all.

     For example, I don’t think the Bible gives a clear answer to “Should we repeal HR3590”, the health care legislation that was signed into law today.

     But it does give some clear norms against which that legislation can potentially be measured (assuming anyone can read it)

     Special revelation provides a framework, not a blueprint or handbook.

     I suppose we could ask whether we have met the requirements of the first and second greatest commandments…

     Well, that’s a good point. You could ask those questions. Why shouldn’t one?

     …but I think we’d be just as lost about how that helps us build a better mousetrap (er, standardized assessment, I get them confused sometimes).

     🙂 We’ve started AP review. The mice are a little nervous.

     When I think about performing my job with excellence, part of what motivates that is the sense of God’s calling; and part, the sense that it is loving to my students to provide them with timely feedback (i.e., grades) and meaningful, clear, and useful lessons.

     To me, the excellence — to the extent that it obtains — and the love go hand in hand.

     That doesn’t mean that I’m always completely clear on the details, but it does mean that my work is “normed” by love.

     Why is that a problem?

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127. …are there any demands that a client might make that you would refuse out of conscience? If so, why those and not others, etc.?

     Travel on Sunday to be there for the Monday meeting, because it breaks the fourth.

     But far be it from me to fault anyone pursuing excellence in his vocation and trying to norm his work with love. Not that this is you, but I have found that those who speak a lot about “vocational excellence normed by love” don’t seem to have a way to explain those days when mediocrity and frustration lace the day, to say nothing of the fact that most days are more ordinary than extraordinary. It’s almost as if they think that excellence and love are the marks of a believer instead of that which makes a believer, namely faith. But those who speak more of faith seem to make plenty of room for excellence and failure and the whole range of human experience. So, it isn’t a problem to speak of vocational excellence normed by love, it’s just that it seems so, well, limited.

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128. You mean, like those who think of marriage as wine and roses 24/7? Sure.

     But get past the mirage, and what’s my calling as a husband? *Still* to love my wife like Christ loved the church. It’s just that the huge size of what that really entails drives one to repentance and grace.

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129. Jeff,

     Please clarify, how is general revelation insufficient to inform general tasks, if at the same time special revelation doesn’t necessarily make up for all of the deficiencies? How do you see this gap bridged?

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130. How do you see this gap bridged?

     I don’t. If the gap were bridged, we would know everything.

     One of the fallacies in this discussion is the idea that Something, Somewhere must provide all of the answers to us. But we aren’t guaranteed this.

     Hence, my objection to natural law takes on two forms:

     (1) It is urged that Natural Law is sufficient for governance, but there is no guarantee of sufficiency, and

     (2) The supposed sufficiency of Natural Law provides a basis for denying the normativeness of Scripture in common endeavors, but this is not clear either.

     So I’ve been pressing the insufficiency of Natural Law as a way of challenging (1), while pressing the universal normativeness of Scripture as a way of challenging (2).

     Zrim’s response has been that yes, Scripture is universally normative; but it is not universally normative in the same way in church and in the commons. There are bins of activities, secular and sacred; and Scripture is fully normative in the sacred, while personally normative in the secular.

     I’m trying to become clear as to what that means.

     I can see some goods points in Zrim’s response, but it doesn’t fully persuade.

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131. Jeff,

     This is actually a helpful clarification. I think you’re mistaking the notion of sufficiency with, for lack of a better term, some kind of magic. It is not a premise of mine that “something, somewhere must provide all of the answers to us.” Natural revelation is insufficient for redemptive tasks and special revelation is insufficient for common tasks, but that doesn’t mean each “provides all the answers” to their respective domains. The point has been made here at various times that if special revelation was “magically” sufficient then the church militant wouldn’t be in such disarray. In the same way, natural revelation doesn’t solve everything with absolute certitude. This is because both natural and special revelation depend on sinful human agents to read and carry out their truths. This is Paul’s argument about why the law is weak (“insufficient”), because it depends on sinners.

     In point of fact, if anything, the anti-2k outlook has the over-realizing tendency. The idea seems to be that general revelation isn’t enough because bad things happen when people use it instead of special revelation. But bad things happening in the world isn’t general revelation’s fault, it’s the fault of sinners; sinners sin because they’re sinners, not because they use the wrong book. So, until the church proves that using special revelation creates the perfect church, there’s little incentive to start breaking the rules and give the Bible to the world. If the indwelt church can’t even employ it perfectly, what in thee heck makes anyone think the unregenerate world will fare much better? It’s like saying we should give medical textbooks to untrained people who are sick: first, hello(!?!), they’d have no idea what they’d be looking at, second, even doctors get things wrong and have disagreements amongst themselves about how to treat illness. Send sick people to doctors (preferably those who consult their medical training and not the Bible to treat sick people).

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132. Jeff,

     Along the lines of Zrim’s response to your helpful clarification, I think we need to clarify between sufficient knowledge in both kingdoms, and exhaustive knowledge in both spheres. We need not know something exhaustively to know it truly. I think this upholds the Creator-creature distinction.

     For example, I am certain that God, as the author of physics, knows the laws of physics exhaustively whereas we know physics to varying degrees of sufficiency. In the case of space travel, our knowledge of physics, among several other domains of knowledge is sufficient to get us to the moon and back, however it is not yet sufficient for deep space exploration.

     The same holds true in the theological realm. Dr. Clark’s explanation of the ectypal and archetypal distinction of God’s knowledge of theology and ours in RRC and the attached link ( http://heidelblog.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/what-can-we-know-and-how/ ) is very helpful, does not diminish our ability to sufficiently understand from Scripture what should be believed and practiced.

     To me it seems that the 2k view upholds these distinctions with more clarity than the framework view that you are espousing while conceding the limits of our knowledge in both realms.

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133. I think you’re mistaking the notion of sufficiency with, for lack of a better term, some kind of magic. It is not a premise of mine that “something, somewhere must provide all of the answers to us.” Natural revelation is insufficient [sufficient?] for redemptive tasks and special revelation is insufficient [sufficient?] for common tasks, but that doesn’t mean each “provides all the answers” to their respective domains.

     You’re correct that I hear “sufficient” in that way. So now, I have two ideas of what “sufficient” doesn’t mean. What does it mean?

     The idea seems to be that general revelation isn’t enough because bad things happen when people use it instead of special revelation.

     Ah, this is also a helpful clarification.

     I can see that certain anti-2kers are saying this (akin to “We took prayer out of schools and now we have gangs!” … never mind the discovery of cheap ways to produce coke, meth, and acid, *and* the anti-drug policies that look eerily like Prohibition 1.5).

     I’m actually coming from a completely different angle.

     When I’ve argued in the past that Natural Law has been abandoned as an ethical metatheory, what I mean is that within the philosophical community, it has widely argued that Natural Law Theory commits one of two fallacies (or both).

     First, it commits the naturalistic fallacy — arguing from what *is* to what *ought to be*.

     Second, Natural Law is often used as a cover for importing another ethical theory by means of ethical intuitions. That is: Zrim might argue that sleeping with another man’s wife is wrong, but what’s really happening is that he’s lived so long under the 7th commandment that it just seems “obvious” to him. Someone else … say, Hugh Hefner … might not have the same intuition and Now Where Are We?

     So the criticism is that Zrim’s “natural law” is really just the decalogue in disguise. Which, oddly enough, you believe.

     So now we’re on the horns of a seeming dilemma. Either NL is identical to the decalogue, in which case you are open to the charge that “natural law” is just a cover. An atheist and you don’t really see the same set of ethical norms.

     OR

     NL is not identical to the decalogue, and now it appears that you’re advocating two different ethical systems, one for the sacred and one for the common. That goes all the way back to the “heteronomian” idea from long ago.

     I’ve decided, pretty much, that the first is the case.

     Then there are two theological objections.

     (1) *if* it is the case that God requires His children to obey His Law to the full (speaking here of obligation, not ability), then it may be that NL fails to recognize the obligations of a Christian in the common realm.

     (2) The van Til objection: if we allow the existence of a Natural Law that is independent of Scripture (grasping the second horn of our dilemma), then we would have an autonomous ethical system that could both judge differently from God and judge God Himself.

     Clearly, (2) is a problem — but it doesn’t appear to apply to you if I’m reading you correctly.

     —

     But a practical concern — a slippery slope concern, in fact — is that if you really do grasp the first horn of the dilemma, it might well be that future generations might not be so inclined, and perceive of “2k” as a principled reason for grasping the second horn instead.

     And that appears to be something like what has happened in the CRC. Haven’t they, at the church polity level, substituted “common sense” — meaning gender egalitarianism — for the Scripture?

     The firewall that you erect is to say that Scripture norms the church. And that works, if you can keep the firewall standing. But does that hold up over time? In 50 years, where will the Old-Life movement be?

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134. Jeff,

     Your citation of the Naturalistic Fallacy is the product of Hume’s philosophy. I am not so sure the same can be derived biblically, or even confessionally. I am not so sure that I want to base my understanding of Natural Law based on Hume’s distinctions.

     Briefly, the biblical argument of the is/ought relationship is rooted in Gen 1-11 as the consequences of partaking from the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Some scholars, admittedly not all, maintain that the knowledge conferred in the fruit was functional. This is derived from the merism “good and evil” which connoted the sense of a working cosmic knowledge of that which was chaotic and did not work (evil) and that which did work (good). As we were able to understand the way the world is, we were able to understand what we ought to do with and in it. what Adam’s offense was that he essentially stole the knowledge of the way things worked instead of knowing in the Prov. 1:7 sense. Even in our fallen state we were able to figure out the basic implements of culture, such as music, metallurgy, and animal husbandry, and agriculture (Gen 4), this culminated in the urbanization of the ancient world (gen 11). The problem wasn’t that the knowledge contained in the fruit – it worked, the problem was how we acquired it. Therefore our knowledge is depraved and cursed with futility, however that does not negate the functionality of human knowing – it still works, and in many cases sufficiently for the current age.

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135. I can see that certain anti-2kers are saying this…I’m actually coming from a completely different angle.

     Jeff,

     What remains a mystery for me is how you can at once maintain that general revelation is insufficient to govern general tasks and this distancing of yourself from anti-2k, especially when you explicitly characterize your views as “personal theonomy.” It seems to me that a basic building block to all anti-2k of whatever degree is the denial of general revelation’s sufficiency to govern general tasks. It may be a matter of degree, but, in the end, you’re really not “coming at it from a completely different angle.”

     Deny general revelation’s sufficiency to do its appointed task and needing some supplementation from special and one is way closer to theonomy than 2k. The parallel is to deny special revelation’s sufficiency to do its appointed task and needing some supplement from general (i.e. tradition or reason) and you’re way closer to Romanism or Liberalism than Protestantism.

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136. So what do you mean by “sufficiency”?

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137. Jed:

     Thanks for the exegetical explanation. It seems like a plausible reading, but not a necessary one. A lot of weight is placed, it seems, on the City of Cain and its validity.

     Your citation of the Naturalistic Fallacy is the product of Hume’s philosophy. I am not so sure the same can be derived biblically, or even confessionally. I am not so sure that I want to base my understanding of Natural Law based on Hume’s distinctions.

     Fair point. We wouldn’t want to baptize Hume any more than Aristotle or Plato.

     But in this case, we’re talking about the Natural Law as a common moral philosophy. And my point is that the NL is not actually common at this point in history. Even if the exegesis you offer is in fact sound, it still only establishes the credibility of NL for those who accept it.

     For everyone else, there’s MasterCard an is-ought problem.

     Thus, when I argue to Hugh Hefner, “Sleeping with someone else’s wife is wrong, and you know it”, his response is, “You’re just holding on to traditional morality. What goes on between two consenting adults is a beautiful thing.” He consigns his conscience to the realm of traditional morality, and the conversation is pretty much over.

     So if the goal is to co-exist with the non-believer in the common sphere, I don’t see how NL accomplishes that.

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138. Zrim: What remains a mystery for me is how you can at once maintain that general revelation is insufficient to govern general tasks and this distancing of yourself from anti-2k, especially when you explicitly characterize your views as “personal theonomy.” It seems to me that a basic building block to all anti-2k of whatever degree is the denial of general revelation’s sufficiency to govern general tasks. It may be a matter of degree, but, in the end, you’re really not “coming at it from a completely different angle.”

     Well, because I believe there are two jurisdictions. That pretty much ends the comparison right there.

     The difference between me and, say, Elder Hoss on education is that I have (I think) a lower view of outside influence. That is, I don’t believe that public school education (or other influences) can cause my daughter to abandon the faith, any more than living in Babylon caused Daniel to abandon the faith.

     And as a corollary, I don’t see the magistrate’s job as trying to cause righteousness through influence. He’s not a social engineer, but a restrainer of the evil and an encourager of the good.

     Anyways, why is this so mysterious? Calvin argued that the magistrate is obligated to the moral law, both tables, in his magistrating. Yes, he denied the ongoing validity of the Jewish civil law; but he distinguished this from the ongoing validity of the 10 Commandments.

     So Calvin also, by your reckoning, denies the sufficiency of general revelation for governance. And yet he’s a 2k guy.

     Perhaps the “basic building block” to which you refer is not in fact the basic building block?

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139. Jeff, I don’t know what you’re reading from Calvin which says he denies the sufficiency of general revelation for governance.

     What do you make of these quotes?

     “Of the first class the following ought to be said: since man is by nature a social animal, he tends through natural instinct to foster and preserve society. Consequently, we observe that there exist in all men’s minds universal impressions of a certain civic fair dealing and order. Hence no man is to be found who does not understand that every sort of human organization must be regulated by laws, and who does not comprehend the principles of those laws. Hence arises that unvarying consent of all nations and of individual mortals with regard to laws. For their seeds have, without teacher or lawgiver, been implanted in all men.

     “I do not dwell upon the dissension and conflicts that immediately spring up. Some, like thieves and robbers, desire to overturn all law and right, to break all legal restraints, to let their lust alone masquerade as law. Others think unjust what some have sanctioned as just (an even commoner fault), and contend that what some have forbidden is praiseworthy. Such persons hate laws not because they do not know them to be good and holy; but raging with headlong lust, they fight against manifest reason. What they approve of in their understanding they hate on account of their lust. Quarrels of this latter sort do not nullify the original conception of equity. For, while men dispute among themselves about individual sections of the law, they agree on the general conception of equity. In this respect the frailty of the human mind is surely proved: even when it seems to follow the way, it limps and staggers. Yet the fact remains that some seed of political order has been implanted in all men. And this is ample proof that in the arrangements of this life no man is without the life of reason. . . .

     ” Whenever we come upon these matters in secular writers, let that admirable light of truth shining in them teach us that the mind of man, though fallen and perverted from its wholeness, is nevertheless clothed and ornamented with God’s excellent gifts. If we regard the Spirit of God as the sole fountain of truth, we shall neither reject the truth itself, nor despise it wherever it shall appear, unless we wish to dishonor the Spirit of God. For by holding the gifts of the Spirit in slight esteem, we contemn and reproach the Spirit himself. What then? Shall we deny that the truth shone upon the ancient jurists who established civic order and discipline with such great equity? Shall we say that the philosophers were blind in their fine observation and artful description of nature? Shall we say that those men were devoid of understanding who conceived the art of disputation and taught us to speak reasonably? Shall we say that they are insane who developed medicine, devoting their labor to our benefit? What shall we say of the mathematical sciences? Shall we consider them the ravings of madmen? No, we cannot read the writings of the ancients on these subjects without great admiration. We marvel at them because we are compelled to recognize how preeminent they are. But shall we count anything praiseworthy or noble without recognizing at the same time that it comes from God? Let us be ashamed of such ingratitude, into which not even the pagan poets fell, for they confessed that the gods had invented philosophy, laws, and all useful arts.” (Institutes, II.2.13, 15)

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140. Jeff,

     When Hefner gives you a wrong answer I fail to see why NL needs to be dispensed with, unless you think the point is perfection. I’m pretty sure that’s not how you respond to your students, is it? When they give you a wrong answer you don’t really say that the fundamentals of math are questionable, do you? Maybe you think of another way to explain it, but you don’t turn tail on the fundamentals.

     Again, the problem isn’t with truth, it’s with those who get it wrong. You seem to assume that just because some of us in the common sphere get things really wrong that means the idea of natural law is dubious. But co-existence means we endure with those who are pretty confused, just like you endure with your dimmer students. It may make for a messy looking classroom, world, and even church, but that’s just part of the territory east of Eden.

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141. Zrim, I explained the problem. The point, I’m told, is co-existence. We want to co-exist with the unbeliever in the common realm. But at this point in history, NL is no longer common — so that the co-existence goal is no longer achievable via NL.

     You’ve articulated a goal; you’ve articulated a means; the means don’t achieve the goal.

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142. DGH, I would say that, to get the complete picture, we should interpret Inst II.2 in light of Inst IV.20 (long quotes … sorry):

     But we shall have a fitter opportunity of speaking of the use of civil government. All we wish to be understood at present is, that it is perfect barbarism to think of exterminating it, its use among men being not less than that of bread and water, light and air, while its dignity is much more excellent. Its object is not merely, like those things, to enable men to breathe, eat, drink, and be warmed, (though it certainly includes all these, while it enables them to live together;) this, I say, is not its only object, but it is that no idolatry, no blasphemy against the name of God, no calumnies against his truth, nor other offences to religion, break out and be disseminated among the people; that the public quiet be not disturbed, that every man’s property be kept secure, that men may carry on innocent commerce with each other, that honesty and modesty be cultivated; in short, that a public form of religion may exist among Christians, and humanity among men.

     Let no one be surprised that I now attribute the task of constituting religion aright to human polity, though I seem above to have placed it beyond the will of man, since I no more than formerly allow men at pleasure to enact laws concerning religion and the worship of God, when I approve of civil order which is directed to this end, viz., to prevent the true religion, which is contained in the law of God, from being with impunity openly violated and polluted by public blasphemy.

     But the reader, by the help of a perspicuous arrangement, will better understand what view is to be taken of the whole order of civil government, if we treat of each of its parts separately. Now these are three: The Magistrate, who is president and guardian of the laws; the Laws, according to which he governs; and the People, who are governed by the laws, and obey the magistrate. Let us consider then, first, What is the function of the magistrate? Is it a lawful calling approved by God? What is the nature of his duty? What the extent of his power? Secondly, What are the laws by which Christian polity is to be regulated?

     Those who are desirous to introduce anarchy object that, though anciently kings and judges presided over a rude people, yet that, in the present day that servile mode of governing does not at all accord with the perfection which Christ brought with his gospel. Herein they betray not only their ignorance, but their devilish pride, arrogating to themselves a perfection of which not even a hundredth part is seen in them. But be they what they may, the refutation is easy. For when David says, “Be wise now therefore O you kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth,” “kiss the son, lest he be angry” (Psalm 2: 10, 12,) he does not order them to lay aside their authority and return to private life, but to make the power with which they are invested subject to Christ, that he may rule over all. In like manner, when Isaiah predicts of the Church, “Kings shall be thy nursing-fathers, and their queens and nursing- mothers,” (Isaiah 49: 23,) he does not bid them abdicate their authority; he rather gives them the honourable appellation of patrons of the pious worshipers of God; for the prophecy refers to the advent of Christ.

     This consideration ought to be constantly present to the minds of magistrates since it is fitted to furnish a strong stimulus to the discharge of duty, and also afford singular consolation, smoothing the difficulties of their office, which are certainly numerous and weighty. What zeal for integrity, prudence, meekness, continence, and innocence ought to sway those who know that they have been appointed ministers of the divine justice! How will they dare to admit iniquity to their tribunal, when they are told that it is the throne of the living God? How will they venture to pronounce an unjust sentence with that mouth which they understand to be an ordained organ of divine truth? With what conscience will they subscribe impious decrees with that hand which they know has been appointed to write the acts of God? In a word, if they remember that they are the vicegerents of God, it behaves them to watch with all care, diligences and industry, that they may in themselves exhibit a kind of image of the Divine Providence, guardianship, goodness, benevolence, and justice.

     The duty of magistrates, its nature, as described by the word of God, and the things in which it consists, I will here indicate in passing. That it extends to both tables of the law, did Scripture not teach, we might learn from profane writers, for no man has discoursed of the duty of magistrates, the enacting of laws, and the common weal, without beginning with religion and divine worship. Thus all have confessed that no polity can be successfully established unless piety be its first care, and that those laws are absurd which disregard the rights of God, and consult only for men. Seeing then that among philosophers religion holds the first place, and that the same thing has always been observed with the universal consent of nations, Christian princes and magistrates may be ashamed of their heartlessness if they make it not their care. We have already shown that this office is specially assigned them by God, and indeed it is right that they exert themselves in asserting and defending the honour of Him whose vicegerents they are, and by whose favour they rule.

     Hence in Scripture holy kings are especially praised for restoring the worship of God when corrupted or overthrown, or for taking care that religion flourished under them in purity and safety. On the other hand, the sacred history sets down anarchy among the vices, when it states that there was no king in Israel, and, therefore, every one did as he pleased, (Judges 21: 25.)

     This rebukes the folly of those who would neglect the care of divine things, and devote themselves merely to the administration of justice among men; as if God had appointed rulers in his own name to decide earthly controversies, and omitted what was of far greater moment, his own pure worship as prescribed by his law. Such views are adopted by turbulent men, who, in their eagerness to make all kinds of innovations with impunity, would fain get rid of all the vindicators of violated piety.

     In regard to the second table of the law, Jeremiah addresses rulers, “Thus saith the Lord, Execute ye judgement and righteousness, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor: and do no wrong, do no violence to the stranger, the fatherless, nor the widow, neither shed innocent blood,” (Jer. 22: 3.) To the same effect is the exhortation in the Psalm, “Defend the poor and fatherless; do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy; rid them out of the hand of the wicked,” (Psalm 82: 3, 4.) Moses also declared to the princes whom he had substituted for himself, “Hear the causes between your brethren, and judge righteously between every man and his brother, and the stranger that is with him. Ye shall not respect persons in judgement; but ye shall hear the small as well as the great: ye shall not be afraid of the face of man, for the judgement is God’s,” (Deut. 1: 16.) I say nothing as to such passages as these, “He shall not multiply horses to himself, nor cause the people to return to Egypt;” “neither shall he multiply wives to himself; neither shall he greatly multiply to himself silver and gold;” “he shall write him a copy of this law in a book;” “and it shall be with him and he shall read therein all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the Lord his God;” “that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren,” (Deut. 17: 16-20.) In here explaining the duties of magistrates, my exposition is intended not so much for the instruction of magistrates themselves, as to teach others why there are magistrates, and to what end they have been appointed by God. We say, therefore, that they are the ordained guardians and vindicators of public innocence, modesty, honour, and tranquillity, so that it should be their only study to provide for the common peace and safety. Of these things David declares that he will set an example when he shall have ascended the throne. “A froward heart shall depart from me: I will not know a wicked person. Whoso privily slandereth his neighbour, him will I cut off: him that has an high look and a proud heart will not I suffer. Mine eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with me: he that walketh in a perfect way, he shall serve me,” (Psalm 101: 4-6.)

     In states, the thing next in importance to the magistrates is laws, the strongest sinews of government, or, as Cicero calls them after Plato, the soul, without which, the office of the magistrate cannot exist; just as, on the other hand, laws have no vigour without the magistrate. Hence nothing could be said more truly than that the law is a dumb magistrate, the magistrate a living law.

     As I have undertaken to describe the laws by which Christian polity is to be governed, there is no reason to expect from me a long discussion on the best kind of laws. The subject is of vast extent, and belongs not to this place. I will only briefly observe, in passing, what the laws are which may be piously used with reference to God, and duly administered among men.

     This I would rather have passed in silence, were I not aware that many dangerous errors are here committed. For there are some who deny that any commonwealth is rightly framed which neglects the law of Moses, and is ruled by the common law of nations. How perilous and seditious these views are, let others see: for me it is enough to demonstrate hat they are stupid and false.

     We must attend to the well-known division which distributes the whole law of God, as promulgated by Moses, into the moral, the ceremonial, and the judicial law, and we must attend to each of these parts, in order to understand how far they do, or do not, pertain to us. Meanwhile, let no one be moved by the thought that the judicial and ceremonial laws relate to morals. For the ancients who adopted this division, though they were not unaware that the two latter classes had to do with morals, did not give them the name of moral, because they might be changed and abrogated without affecting morals. They give this name specially to the first class, without which, true holiness of life and an immutable rule of conduct cannot exist.

     The moral law, then, (to begin with it,) being contained under two heads, the one of which simply enjoins us to worship God with pure faith and piety, the other to embrace men with sincere affection, is the true and eternal rule of righteousness prescribed to the men of all nations and of all times, who would frame their life agreeably to the will of God. For his eternal and immutable will is, that we are all to worship him, and mutually love one another.

     The ceremonial law of the Jews was a tutelage by which the Lord was pleased to exercise, as it were, the childhood of that people, until the fulness of the time should come when he was fully to manifest his wisdom to the world, and exhibit the reality of those things which were then adumbrated by figures, (Gal. 3: 24; 4: 4.)

     The judicial law, given them as a kind of polity, delivered certain forms of equity and justice, by which they might live together innocently and quietly.

     And as that exercise in ceremonies properly pertained to the doctrine of piety, inasmuch as it kept the Jewish Church in the worship and religion of God, yet was still distinguishable from piety itself, so the judicial form, though it looked only to the best method of preserving that charity which is enjoined by the eternal law of God, was still something distinct from the precept of love itself. Therefore, as ceremonies might be abrogated without at all interfering with piety, so also, when these judicial arrangements are removed, the duties and precepts of charity can still remain perpetual.

     But if it is true that each nation has been left at liberty to enact the laws which it judges to be beneficial, still these are always to be tested by the rule of charity, so that while they vary in form, they must proceed on the same principle. Those barbarous and savage laws, for instance, which conferred honour on thieves, allowed the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes, and other things even fouler and more absurd, I do not think entitled to be considered as laws, since they are not only altogether abhorrent to justice, but to humanity and civilised life.

     A careful reading of these, taken together with your quotes from Inst II.2, reveals the following:

     For Calvin,
     (1) The seed but not the fulness of the knowledge of righteousness is planted in all men.

     (2) The magistrate’s duty is to both tables of the law, for God is a person — the primary person, in fact — whose rights are to be respected.

     (3) The laws of nations can be and are to be tested against “the law of charity” and the two tables of the law.

     (4) The duties of the magistrate include promotion of piety (this provides the interpretive background for WCoF 23.2 “they ought especially to maintain piety, justice, and peace”)

     (5) That a sharp distinction is made between Jewish judicial laws and the general equity of the decalogue.

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143. Jeff,

     I think we have to back up here to evaluate the commonality of NL. For instance, our legal tradition often cites Hammurabi’s Code as a critical movement in the history of law, some concepts are still present in our laws. Hamurabi’s goring ox, manslaughter, adultery, and talionic laws among others were also found in the Mosaic Law. Hammurabi predates Moses by several centuries. Now we can evaluate this on a couple of ways, maybe Moses was just borrowing from Hammurabi and modifying from there, or the NL was present in Hammurabi’s conscience and/or deduced reasonably from observing nature (but you are disinclined to accept the is/ought relationship. Were Hammurabi’s NL derivations perfect? Of course not, but they were sufficient to govern a just society.

     Given the fact that the lex talionis is still present in our legal system, manslaughter, et. al. gives us some reason to concede that while we come from a Judeo-Christian legal heritage, a good deal of our laws are not unique to our heritage. NL is looms even larger in our regulatory laws such as OSHA, building codes, and industry standards (ISO’s), here we are entirely dependent on regulations that astutely observe what works and what doesn’t in our natural world. These don’t carry the same moral force as the Moral Law, however they are a crucial component of our legal system, and it would be a major stretch to attribute these to special revelation.

     So, even if NL is not always interpreted or applied properly, or even accepted in our modern era does not mean that it doesn’t occupy a major place in it. If there is such a thing as Natural Law it really doesn’t matter if people except it or not, it exists independent of belief.

     As an aside, our buddy Hef is actually opposed to adultery, and every indication from his marriages suggests that he was actually faithful while married. So even the lawless pornographer holds to vestiges of morality that are aptly attributed to NL.

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144. Okay, Jeff, how do you square II.2 with IV 20, especially when Calvin introduces the entire discussion in IV 20 by distinguishing sharply along the same lines in II.2, as in between earthly and heavenly things, and that to fail to distinguish them is to commit a Judaic folly. It seems to me that Calvin is saying religion is important to a regime, and that the Christian religion is the best. I see that anti-2kers get that. But they don’t generally get the point about distinguishing between the things of the spirit and the things of the body, and so locating redemption in the former. If that premise is accepted, Calvin is on the road to WCF 1789 and a revised understanding of the magistrate.

     BTW, the French Reformed who stayed in France argued differently. They didn’t want the king enforcing the true religion because that meant killing Protestants.

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145. As an aside, our buddy Hef is actually opposed to adultery, and every indication from his marriages suggests that he was actually faithful while married.

     How about that! One learns something every day. Do you have any documentation?

     I think we have to back up here to evaluate the commonality of NL.

     Certainly, there are commonalities. And I would certainly chalk up those commonalities to the law of God written on the heart.

     …maybe Moses was just borrowing from Hammurabi and modifying from there, or the NL was present in Hammurabi’s conscience and/or deduced reasonably from observing nature (but you are disinclined to accept the is/ought relationship…

     Almost. I recognize that the is/ought relationship is no longer commonly accepted, and cannot be supported except by the additional postulate that “God made us with the law written on the heart.”

     So my contention is not that is/ought is wrong, but that it is not common and is therefore not a suitable basis for common life.

     Which leads to So, even if NL is not always interpreted or applied properly, or even accepted in our modern era does not mean that it doesn’t occupy a major place in it. If there is such a thing as Natural Law it really doesn’t matter if people except it or not, it exists independent of belief.

     Well, it depends on what we’re trying to do with it. If we’re trying to create a just society, then Calvin at least says that some common laws are wrong, and some are right, and they should all be measured against the decalogue.

     If we’re trying to live in a common sphere with unbelievers, then NL won’t help in a society that doesn’t accept NL.

     So that brings us back to

     Were Hammurabi’s NL derivations perfect? Of course not, but they were sufficient to govern a just society.

     How do we know this? That is, what pronouncement of “just society” do we have on Hammurabi’s accomplishments? Just as we don’t want to baptize Hume, so also we do not wish to baptize Hammurabi unwarrantedly.

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146. The point, I’m told, is co-existence. We want to co-exist with the unbeliever in the common realm. But at this point in history, NL is no longer common — so that the co-existence goal is no longer achievable via NL.

     I don’t follow. If, as Paul argues, it is written on every human heart, how can natural law no longer be common? Are you disagreeing with Paul, as in, “Sure, Paul, that was true in your day, but you have to understand that the modern world is different now”? Are you saying that Hugh Hefner trumps Paul? Do you mean to be so modern?

     If we’re trying to live in a common sphere with unbelievers, then NL won’t help in a society that doesn’t accept NL.

     Again, I don’t buy the premise that just because anyone denies what is true about what is internally written that it means he’s right and it isn’t there. But let’s assume you’re right. So natural law is rejected, and, presumably so is special revelation because unbelievers by definition don’t subscribe it. So, what are we left with, Jeff, to govern society? What is anyone going to appeal to in order to make his case about anything?

     I know you don’t like me saying that to deny general revelation to govern general society means you have to use special revelation to supplement, but special revelation is really all you’re left with when you claim general is insufficient (because there are only two books). And then you’re left saying unbelievers must subscribe a book they by definition deny. When was the last time “Because it’s in the Bible” settled any disagreement you had with an unbeliever? Isn’t that like the Muslim telling you “Because it’s on the Koran”? The point is that we all, in our brutally divergent religious devotions, must have a common book we can appeal to get anything done. And you keep taking it away.

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147. Jeff,

     The Hef info was on an A&E biography I watched a few years back, and as I recall there was adultery in his first marriage, which he viewed a very damaging. In his second marriage he maintained that he remained faithful to his wife until after their separation. I am sure there is a wealth of information about this online, however it is probably best that I do not link to it for conscience’s sake. Suffice to say, I don’t think he was an adultery proponent, even with his disdain for monogamy.

     The flipside to your Mosaic Law assertion, is that many in our society do not hold to it, so it is not common, so it shouldn’t govern modern society. If we apply that on either side of the argument it quickly breaks down. The most common feature in modern society is individual autonomy, and many (I would include you here) see this as highly a highly problematic paradigm to govern a society from. Even if you look into the most radical postmodern constructs, I doubt that these (theoretical) interpretive communities and cultures would maintain that stealing, or murder, or contractual mischief are okay, so though they might deny it until they are blue in the face they can’t escape some of the fundamental tenets of NL.

     The OT Law and NL has a lot of overlap, which I don’t think any would contend here. NL arguments however do not carry the same religious import as the Mosaic Law. In a secular society it is probably less imposing to make a case for NL than for a code that is steeped in religious and spiritual mandates.

     As to the effectiveness of Hammurabi’s laws in bringing order in the Ancient Near East, I would commend the scholarship of John Walton (his bibliography is here – http://wheaton.edu/Theology/faculty/walton/ ) from a Christian perspective, and from a secular perspective Amelie Khurt’s two volume history – The Ancient Near East is a fantastic resource. His laws were not perfect, nor was his society, however they have had a massive impact on the history of jurisprudence. If you would like actual citations I will have to take some time to dig them up.

     I definitely don’t want to baptize a pagan king, however his political and social philosophy of Hammurabi is much closer to Moses’ than Hume was, and for that he is a valuable figure to have some familiarity with, especially in OT studies.

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148. Zrim: Are you disagreeing with Paul, as in, “Sure, Paul, that was true in your day, but you have to understand that the modern world is different now”?

     Goodness no!

     But Paul doesn’t say anywhere that Natural Law’s use is to build civil society. Rather, he says that the Law written on the heart convicts men’s consciences.

     I’m saying that *if* your goal is to press Natural Law into service as the basis for a common society, then you will find that our society is not willing to play along.

     I know you don’t like me saying that to deny general revelation to govern general society means you have to use special revelation to supplement, but special revelation is really all you’re left with when you claim general is insufficient (because there are only two books). And then you’re left saying unbelievers must subscribe a book they by definition deny. When was the last time “Because it’s in the Bible” settled any disagreement you had with an unbeliever? Isn’t that like the Muslim telling you “Because it’s on the Koran”? The point is that we all, in our brutally divergent religious devotions, must have a common book we can appeal to get anything done. And you keep taking it away.

     Again, define “sufficient.” I’m not trying to be pedantic here. The problem is that you’re asking me to accept that Natural Law is (warm fuzzy word) without telling me what it means.

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149. Speaking of sounding modernist, what’s up with insisting that there has to be a common book to which we can appeal?

     I think we’re working at cross purposes. My question is, “To what standard am I as a Christian accountable in my common endeavors?” Yours appears to be, “How can we build a common society?”

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150. But Paul doesn’t say anywhere that Natural Law’s use is to build civil society. Rather, he says that the Law written on the heart convicts men’s consciences.

     Paul also doesn’t say the Bible’s use is to build society. So, if neither one builds society, what does? But are you saying the law on the human heart has only the pedagogical use? What about the first use? I assume you affirm the first use as defined in Reformed (and Lutheran) orthodoxy. If so, how can it not be said that the law builds, and maintains, civil society?

     I’m saying that *if* your goal is to press Natural Law into service as the basis for a common society, then you will find that our society is not willing to play along.

     Jeff, my goal isn’t to press anything on anybody. The point is that the law is written on the human heart. And it makes not one iota of difference if anyone denies they know right from wrong. Any parent knows this, and it is common knowledge that ignorance of the law is never an excuse for breaking it. You bring up Hugh Hefner as an example of not playing along. You realize, of course, that Hefners existed in Paul’s day; Corinth alone proves this. Yet, there is no argument by Paul about how we can’t tell men who take their mothers-in-law they shouldn’t because they’ll dismiss us by saying we’re fixated on traditional morality and the conversation is over. Fubar. He says that even the pagans know this is evil. It’s not complicated.

     Again, define “sufficient.” I’m not trying to be pedantic here. The problem is that you’re asking me to accept that Natural Law is (warm fuzzy word) without telling me what it means.

     Pardon the potential but unintended put-down, but now you’re sort of behaving a little sophomoric, like my children when they claim they have no idea what I’m talking about when I point out their misdeeds: “you’re telling me to behave, but you haven’t defined that.” More fubar. It is sufficient to tell children, “You know how to behave, so do it.” Something tells me that I could do all sorts of contortions for you in defining things but that it still won’t suffice because you fundamentally deny the tenets of general revelation.

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151. Speaking of sounding modernist, what’s up with insisting that there has to be a common book to which we can appeal?

     I’m Presbyterian. We like books, polity, rules, order, institutions, etc. You are now sounding like the modern spiritualist who has Jesus in his heart and wonders what gives with organized religion. Have you heard that phrase “people of the Book”?

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152. DGH: Okay, Jeff, how do you square II.2 with IV 20, especially when Calvin introduces the entire discussion in IV 20 by distinguishing sharply along the same lines in II.2, as in between earthly and heavenly things, and that to fail to distinguish them is to commit a Judaic folly.

     OK, but take a look at where he goes with it. The “failure to distinguish them” is leveled against Anabaptists, who wrongly imagine that there is the same degree of liberty in the civil government as there is in the gospel.

     So how do you get from there to REPT?

     It seems to me that Calvin is saying religion is important to a regime, and that the Christian religion is the best. I see that anti-2kers get that. But they don’t generally get the point about distinguishing between the things of the spirit and the things of the body, and so locating redemption in the former.

     OK, I can understand that criticism towards those who confuse service with redemption.

     But that’s not where we are…

     If that premise is accepted, Calvin is on the road to WCF 1789 and a revised understanding of the magistrate.

     Possibly so. But since I’m not arguing against WCoF 1789 …

     BTW, the French Reformed who stayed in France argued differently. They didn’t want the king enforcing the true religion because that meant killing Protestants.

     Yes, well, freedom of religion always looks better to the minority and not so good to the majority.

     A positive feature of REPT is that it asks the majority to restrain itself in this regard.

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153. Zrim: Pardon the potential but unintended put-down, but now you’re sort of behaving a little sophomoric, like my children when they claim they have no idea what I’m talking about when I point out their misdeeds: “you’re telling me to behave, but you haven’t defined that.” More fubar.

     This would be an appropriate response if you were my parent.

     But between peers, asking for and giving definitions of terms is standard procedure.

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154. Jeff,

     I’m a bit confused by your use of “modernist.” It seems that you’re criticizing any realist notion of truth. In so doing, you seem to be equating epistemic realism with epistemic foundationalism. Because of the fall, any Christian would have to reject a theory of NL that rested on a foundationalist view of truth. But a Christian can appeal to NL based on a coherentist view of truth, as evidenced by the work of Anscombe, Plantinga, Wolterstorff, etc.

     In contrast, you seem to deny the possibility of coherentism. In doing so, you appear to believe that the Christian must elect between two options: (1) a foundationalist NL approach, and (2) a type of Christian antirealism. We both agree that the former is untenable. Therefore, you suggest that your Christian antirealism wins by default.

     But here’s the rub: You never explain why a coherentist approach to NL must fail. Instead, you skirt the issue by pretending that Zrim’s coherentist arguments are actually foundationalist arguments. Well, I think that he’s made clear what he means.

     Sorry for not using the language of 2K. Maybe, as an Anglican, I’m just not comfortable with the terminology of covenant theology. But it seems to me, that this debate revolves around whether natural revelation can provide a sufficient or coherent basis for a just society, or whether the fall renders us incapable of having a just society in the absence of divine command. Jeff, I won’t begrudge you if you believe that the divine command is necessary for justice. But at least explain why you believe that it’s necessary without resorting to straw-man arguments.

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155. Jeff, you wrote, “My question is, ‘To what standard am I as a Christian accountable in my common endeavors?” Yours appears to be, “How can we build a common society?'” Sorry but it seems you are working at cross purposes. At some points you’ve been saying what is the Christian magistrate to do. That involves governing a common society. Now you shift ans say it is about the standard you use for common endeavors.

     You also say that you are not arguing against the American revision of the WCF. But by denying the sufficiency of NL you are implicitly, since the only way that the work of governing a religiously diverse society proceeds is by using NL. Again, you seem to exist in some sort of Roger Williams land of your own making, neither 2k nor 1k, neither NL nor biblicist, neither Clark nor Frame. But where it is no one can say.

     I also don’t think that Calvin was simply arguing against Anabaptists when he wrote “whoever knows who to distinguish between body and soul, between this present fleeting life and that future eternal life, will without difficulty know that Christ’s spiritual kingdom and the civil jurisdiction are things completely distinct. Since, then, it is a Jewish vanity to seek and enclose Christ’s Kingdom within the elements of this world, let us rather ponder that what Scripture clearly teaches is a spiritual fruit, which we gather from Christ’s grace . . . ”

     Funny how he says that recognizing the difference between earthly and spiritual things makes it easy to deny the kingdom theology implied by looking for the kingdom in the city, the United States, or the right side of the culture wars. But it is precisely that distinction, easy for Calvin, that neo-Calvinists reject as fundamentalist dualism.

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156. But between peers, asking for and giving definitions of terms is standard procedure.

     Jeff, my pointed point was that it has indeed been done, over and over. Your procedure has been to act like it hasn’t. This is because you essentially deny that the law is written on the human heart. As Bob suggests, and as I have indicated, this is the key difference between us. And I am stumped as to how you don’t see yourself at odds with Paul and the Reformed understanding of the first use of the law.

     And to reinforce dgh’s point, it seems to me that yours is a sort of no-man’s land. It’s a bit like that fellow who wants to straddle soteriologically between Calvinism and Arminianism, but neither Gomarus nor Arminius would know what to do with such a creature. Sometimes moderation works, sometimes it just doesn’t make much sense.

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157. Bob: I’m a bit confused by your use of “modernist.” It seems that you’re criticizing any realist notion of truth.

     No, I was just yanking Zrim’s chain a bit. Previously, he had leveled the charge of “modernism” at me; I was just pointing out that the desire to build the city of man on a common denominator is essentially the modernist project.

     I have no problem with cohericist theories of truth; Frame, for example, would probably count as a kind of cohericist, and I’m comfortable with his epistemological approach.

     DGH: Jeff, you wrote, “My question is, ‘To what standard am I as a Christian accountable in my common endeavors?” Yours appears to be, “How can we build a common society?’” Sorry but it seems you are working at cross purposes. At some points you’ve been saying what is the Christian magistrate to do.

     My concern is, a Christian magistrate walks into the office on Monday. His goal is to love God and neighbor and to glorify God in his common calling. He is accountable to God for this goal. How does he accomplish it?

     I don’t see that I’ve moved away from this concern.

     Zrim: Not sure what to say. On this side of the keyboard I’m seeing evasion, not repeated definition. It’s just wrong to say that I “deny that the law is written on the human heart.” I *do* deny, at this point, that Scripture teaches that the law written on the human heart is sufficient for governance.

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158. Jeff,

     If the Law written on our hearts is insufficient for governance, that is to tell humans how they should live, why is it sufficient to condemn those who do not have the privilege of special revelation? It seems that you arguing that this general revelation is insufficient to inform men through their consciences as to how they should behave as individuals and as corporate groups. How do you square this with Romans 1-3?

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159. Again, define “sufficient.” I’m not trying to be pedantic here. The problem is that you’re asking me to accept that Natural Law is (warm fuzzy word) without telling me what it means.

     Ok, Jeff, here is the definition of natural law per Van Drunen:

     “Natural law refers to the basic moral obligations that God makes known to all people through his natural revelation, even apart from Scripture. This law is made manifest in creation itself and is perceived through the testimony of conscience. All human beings know this law of God, though as sinners they also actively suppress its truth. See for instance passages Romans 1:9-20, 32; 2:14-15.”

     And per Reformer Girolamo Zanchi:

     “Natural law is the will of God, and consequently, the divine rule and principle for knowing what to do and what not to do. It is, the knowledge of what is good or bad, fair or unfair, upright or shameful, that was inscribed upon the hearts of all people by God himself also after the fall. For this reason, we are all universally taught what activities should be pursued and what should be avoided; that is, to do one thing and to avoid another, and we know that we are obligated and pushed to act for the glory of God, our own good, and the welfare of our neighbor both in private and in public. In addition, we know that if we do what should be avoided or avoid what we should do, we are condemned; but if we do the opposite, we are defended and absolved.”

     And according to Webster-Merriam “sufficient” means “enough to meet the needs of a situation or a proposed end.” It is synonymous with “enough” and “adequate.”

     The natural law, as defined above, is enough or adequate to build a civil and just society. And by civil or just I don’t mean perfect. I mean something adequate, proximate, enough. And if you believe that the natural law is indeed written on the human heart, I fail to see why it is inadequate to do its job, unless you are presume something different from me by civil and just, which is to say, perfect or exact. That is what I think you mean, which explains why we are at odds. Special revelation is sufficient to create and maintain a fallible church, and natural revelation is sufficient to maintain a fallible world.

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160. Jed, what exactly does Rom 1 – 3 teach? As I read it, Paul says

     (1) That men are without excuse because God’s divine nature is clearly seen from what is made.

     (2) That conscience condemns and excuses us, so that we are without excuse.

     Where in here is “natural law is sufficient for governance”?

     The purpose of the natural law, articulated in Rom 1 – 3, is condemnation. And the condemnation happens because men have some sense that they have an obligation to God, to worship him. And they suppress this truth.

     Further, Paul goes on to say that

     (3) God has given mankind over to foolishness.

     So what remains is a reason to believe that Paul is intending to say that this natural law is a sufficient basis to construct the laws of nations.

     I just don’t see it. And Calvin, at least, appears to deny it, since he requires that laws be tested against the two tables of the law.

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161. Jeff,

     Thanks, these are some tough questions, and warranted. Simply, if the NL is sufficient to condemn the whole of humanity in their sin, then it seem reasonable to infer that it is sufficient to govern them, otherwise it looses all juridical power.

     As I understand it, God gave his law to Israel to give further clarification, and legal definition to his kingdom that was irrupting into the fallen kingdoms of men. It gave the legal perameters whereby His Kingdom was to be governed, and despite it’s new covenant modifications, it continues to govern his kingdom today and beyond. The NL attests in a general way to the special revelatory specificity of how God’s creation is to be governed. Post-fall, and pre-judgment however, the Law seems to be the effective rule for his kingdom.

     As for the fallen kingdoms of men, it is not as if they have descended into utter chaos, otherwise we would have killed each other off a long time ago. There is a law present and active in civil government that keeps some semblance of order and civility in the kingdoms of men that enables God’s kingdom to grow as he in-grafts some from every nation to be his pilgrim people until he consummates his kingdom visibly and without resistance. The very fact that we have not nuked this planet into a level sheet of molten rock testifies to the effectiveness of the NL to serve it’s purpose. Maybe NL hasn’t been perfectly applied, but we live in a fallen world, but it has been sufficiently applied for God’s purposes for redemption to be accomplished through it.

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162. Simply, if the NL is sufficient to condemn the whole of humanity in their sin, then it seem reasonable to infer that it is sufficient to govern them, otherwise it looses all juridical power.

     I sensed that this is where you were going, and it is the strongest argument in favor of natural law that I can think of.

     Two objections spring to mind, and I’ll try to give your comments some more thought this weekend.

     (1) The argument makes a jump from individual governance — conscience — to corporate governance. Perhaps this is justifiable, but it needs to be justified, especially since we tend to make a lot of personal / corporate distinctions in this conversation.

     (2) If the natural law written on the heart is sufficient for governance according to your argument, then why is it not also sufficient for the common-life behavior of individuals?

     And yet, we find that Paul and others find it necessary to give Christians additional instruction about common-life topics.

     This fact suggests that perhaps the natural law is a minimum floor, but not necessarily “good enough” or “sufficient.”

     Thanks for the thoughts.

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163. Zrim, just noticed yours … gotta run, but thanks for the definition.

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164. Jeff,

     Some more food for thought:

     Re: Objection 1) In Romans Paul is not speaking to individuals standing under the wrath of God, he is speaking to the whole of humanity. So we have it reversed if we are trying to make the flow of his argument individual->humanity; we derive our individual predicaments by unpacking it humanity->individual. The presence of conscience or NL is a collective phenomena.

     Re: Objection 2) You have a point here, common life issues under the universal authority of the NL to both individuals and humanity collectively, since this is going to be the basis for God’s judgment of any non-Israelite. How the NL ought to be applied in our fallen system is the real hornets nest. Rest assured theonomists and everyone in-between faces the same challenge though. NL and Moses address adultery, many ancient governments recognized this and the modern state is one of the first to ignore this. Do we outlaw adultery, place it in our penal system? Do we outlaw blasphemy? The stance that I think the 2k-NL rightly maintains is that we do not expect perfect application of the NL in a fallen system, otherwise we wouldn’t be in a fallen system. Frankly, how society is ordered is not a hill I will die on, now if we don’t seriously think rightly through how the church should operate in a secular society that might be a hill we might all die on someday.

     I absolutely agree that Paul gives Christians additional common-life instruction, that’s why his letters are addressed “to the saints who are in ______” and not “To all individuals living in the Roman Empire”. It would be a bit silly, and absurdly anachronistic to insist that a pagan must lay his life down for his wife like Christ did for the church if he had not first come to faith in Christ. I think that Paul eschews the notion of imposing a distinctively Christian morality on pagans, he seems very astute however in instructing Christians how they should live out their faith in the common sphere.

     I think Zrim’s definitions of sufficient suggests a minimum standard (BTW – thanks Zrim). It seems to me that you have a vaguely defined inclination to have that bar raised in the common realm through an infusion of biblical madates, I am not sure to what though. If there are bars to be raised under the auspices of NL, such as the abortion issue, the due process of law needs to be employed, not a carefully crafted religious argument, as we all know all too painfully, all that the latter results in ineffective preaching to the choir, or Christians pining like Don Quixote for a bygone era when their self-understanding was culturally relevant, always meddling in affairs that are not their immediate concern.

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165. Jeff,

     While you’re chewing on Jed’s comments, throw this in for good measure. Muller describes the first use of the law per Reformed (and Lutheran) formulations thus:

     “The civil use (usus politicus sive civilis). That is, the law serves the commonwealth or body politic as a force to restrain sin. This falls under the general revelation (revelatio generalis) discussion in most of the scholastics as well as natural law (cf. Rom 1-2).”

     In everything you are saying it doesn’t seem like you have much use for the first use; in point of fact, it suggests you are at relative odds with the greater balance of the Reformation tradition on this score. Maybe not, but maybe you could take pains to explain how exactly do you understand the first use in light of your explicit denial that the law is sufficient for civil governance.

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166. Jeff,

     While you’re chewing on others’ related questions, please give additional consideration to my comment regarding a coherentist approach to NL. I found your response, above, to be a bit coy and evasive.

     You’ve only acknowledged that coherentism is useful. That doesn’t answer my question. You appear to aver that natural (or general) revelation–alone–cannot serve as a sufficient or coherent basis for corporate justice. Because of this alleged insufficiency, you suggest that we also need to interject some measure of divine command, and to apply that divine command to society as a whole. To the extent that I’ve accurately restated your views, please help me understand why you’ve arrived at this conclusion.

     My real concern here, Jeff, is whether your view doesn’t implicitly undercut the need for Christians to pursue wisdom. Attaining wisdom is hard; it is an incremental enterprise that takes diligence, patience, experience, humility, and the like. In my observation, too many in the PCA are prone to rely on biblical mandate as a sort of faux wisdom. See, e.g., World Magazine, BaylyBlog, etc. We recognize (with Paul) that wisdom based on general revelation cannot explain the redemptive significance of Christ. But nowhere does Paul make the Barthian leap and further suggest that Christ’s uniqueness somehow renders all natural reasoning suspect. Yet too many in our communion (I am now in the PCA) have joined with the Barthians in proclaiming the need to “speak truth to power” without regard to how unwise or poorly reasoned their messages are. Whether they intend to or not, these messengers imply that objective reality is altogether untrustworthy, and that we can never hope for any realist notion of truth. What they pander might aptly be called “Christian antirealism”.

     I give World Magazine as an example. In years past, I would direct comments to individual journalists at World to alert them to factual misstatements in their stories. In many cases, the these misstatements were pretty egregious, such as misquoting key portions of a judicial opinion. When I did get a response, there was never a retraction of the false statements. There would just be some rambling statement that made generic appeal to Kuyper’s rejection of purely objective fact. I fear that this highlights the dangers inherent in your view. You appear to believe that general revelation is reliable in a very limited way, while World’s editors seem to suggest that it is almost wholly unreliable.

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167. Hi Bob,

     Thanks for the thoughts.

     The nature of the discussion here can lead to some one-sidedness, and if I were step back and evaluate all of my comments by themselves, they would probably suggest a kind of “Christian antirealism” — or what I would call, “incipient Gnosticism.”

     In real life, this is not my view. When I taught ethics, for example, to high schoolers, I challenged them to make robustly wise decisions (and actually, I found Frame’s work helpful in doing so).

     So I share with you a recognition of and abhorrence of faux wisdom in the form of superficial exegesis.

     You appear to aver that natural (or general) revelation–alone–cannot serve as a sufficient or coherent basis for corporate justice. Because of this alleged insufficiency, you suggest that we also need to interject some measure of divine command, and to apply that divine command to society as a whole.

     There are two points I’m trying to get across.

     First, the version of 2k represented here has immediate application to Christians working in government. It directs their attention to the natural law as the source of their norms in their work.

     I’m questioning whether this is an appropriate, Biblically grounded approach to the Christian magistrate.

     My own current take on the question is the Scripture provides a normative framework, within which we have the freedom to use natural wisdom.

     As far as this point goes, I’m not concerned with sufficiency but normativity: ought we to step away entirely from Scripture’s framework of right and wrong in making decisions in the common realms, OR are we bound by that framework in all of our decisions, sacred and common?

     Zrim and Dr. Hart have assured me that in personal matters, Scripture remains normative in both realms, and I believe them.

     But in public decisions, we appear to disagree.

     Here’s an example: suppose a pediatrician is morally opposed to abortion. If the federal government passes a law requiring her to refer for abortions (such a law was in fact in one of the many iterations of the health-care reform bill), should she obey or quit?

     In my view, the Scriptural norm against murder is controlling here. Thus, obeying is simply not an option. Since quitting *is* an option, there’s a solution at hand.

     So if the pediatrician is asked “why did you quit?”, the answer would be, “Because the government ordered me to do something contrary to God’s word.”

     Zrim, I think, would probably choose the same option; but if asked, his answer (if I understand) would be, “Because the government ordered me to do something against my conscience.”

     The problem I have with that is that it makes the conscience the determiner of right and wrong, when in fact Scripture is supposed to train and inform our consciences.

     The second argument about sufficiency is really the subordinate argument. Unlike flaming transformationalists, I don’t view the church’s job as the reformation of society, so I’m not concerned as to whether NL or Scripture is the best tool for that fool’s errand.

     But the argument came about because I pointed out (about a year ago?!) that the natural law is not ever affirmed in Scripture as the proper basis for civil law; and that in Calvin’s writings, he believes the magistrate and laws in general to be obligated to the decalogue; and that in the Confession, the “general equity” of the moral law is said to be still binding.

     Zrim in particular sees in my line of reasoning a threat to the “sufficiency” of the natural law.

     And my response is to ask, “Well, what reason to we have to believe that the natural law is sufficient?”

     —

     I hope this answers your question. To sum up: I’m not afraid that the Christian will adopt natural law and then have an inferior tool for the job. Rather, I’m afraid that the Christian will adopt natural law and never notice that he’s denying the norms of Scripture, because he’s created two separate worlds of thought: sacred and secular. It’s normativity, a la van Til, not sufficiency, that has me worried.

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168. Bob, more about realism, foundationalism, and cohericism:

     I hold that truth is seeing things as God sees them. That is, truth is relative to one particular reference frame, namely God’s.

     Because we are created in His image, we have a reflection of truth within us, limited by (1) our creatureliness, and (2) sin.

     Because of this, humans are limited in their ability to grasp truth, and must approach the question of knowledge with a recognition that their best efforts are going to be approximate. For example, in the physical world I conceive of the scientific enterprise to be creating models that provide predictive power against empirical evidence. This is the best we creatures can do.

     Scripture occupies a special place here because it is given to us to guide us first and foremost, with regard to salvation; and secondarily, in regard to what is good and wise. Its function is distinct because it speaks in sentences, over against natural revelation that requires us to formulate sentences about it.

     As we approach Scripture we also employ a method of trying to account for all of the data, to provide maximally cogent accounts of the meaning of the text. Here I’m appealing to the Old Princeton method, as well as the Vosian harmony between systematic and biblical theology.

     Nevertheless, our creatureliness and our sin imply that our exegeses also are approximate. In this regard, I reject Gordon Clark’s approach and endorse van Til’s, if that makes sense. As a result, we have a need not only for Scripture, but also confirmation of our exegeses through the wisdom of many counselors — namely, the Confession.

     From this, I hope that you can see that I take a stance that is staunchly in the “correspondence” camp; partakes somewhat of a foundationalist axiom in terms of Scriptural inerrancy (and also of the validity of the laws of logic); and partakes somewhat of a cohericist method in terms of bringing together multiple lines of evidence to come to a best inference.

     Does that answer your question?

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169. Zrim: The natural law, as defined above, is enough or adequate to build a civil and just society. And by civil or just I don’t mean perfect. I mean something adequate, proximate, enough. And if you believe that the natural law is indeed written on the human heart, I fail to see why it is inadequate to do its job, unless you are presume something different from me by civil and just, which is to say, perfect or exact. That is what I think you mean, which explains why we are at odds.

     This is helpful. The reason that I’ve pressed the question about the Christian magistrate is this: Is the job of the Christian magistrate to build a just society, or to glorify God in his common calling?

     The assumption I’ve been bringing to this is not that we must build an ideal society, but rather that the Christian magistrate has an obligation as a minister of God to glorify God.

     And the question now is, does deriving one’s sense of Good from the natural law satisfy that obligation?

     It seems to me that Calvin moves in a radically different direction from this. On his account, we know how to glorify God from the Scripture; as a consequence, he glorifies God as a magistrate by testing his laws against the decalogue and the law of charity.

     So yes: I think we have been talking about different goals. NOT “good enough” v. “utopia” but rather “building a city” v. “glorifying God in one’s common calling.”

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170. Jed: Objection 1) In Romans Paul is not speaking to individuals standing under the wrath of God, he is speaking to the whole of humanity. So we have it reversed if we are trying to make the flow of his argument individual->humanity; we derive our individual predicaments by unpacking it humanity->individual. The presence of conscience or NL is a collective phenomena.

     Interesting. I’ve never read Romans in quite that way. I see the collective as obtaining for all individuals taken together, not for the whole of humanity, distributed.

     Or put another way, it appears to me that the role of conscience, the judgment, and the imputation of Adam’s sin occur to each human individual; not to humanity as a group.

     Certainly, it is an important feature of Reformed soteriology that Christ died for individuals, not for the collective whole.

     I think that Paul eschews the notion of imposing a distinctively Christian morality on pagans, he seems very astute however in instructing Christians how they should live out their faith in the common sphere.

     I agree. This is what I’m getting at with the notion of “personal theonomy”: each individual is responsible coram deo for his own life.

     Notice that this therefore means that the Bible has something to say to the Christian plumber, and to the Christian magistrate. NOT exhaustive somethings; probably not enough to decide between resoldering a joint or replacing the whole fitting. But the norms in Scripture apply, to the extent that they have anything to say, to both the personal behavior AND the business decisions of the Christian plumber.

     It would be a bit silly, and absurdly anachronistic to insist that a pagan must lay his life down for his wife like Christ did for the church if he had not first come to faith in Christ.

     Does he lack the obligation or does he lack the ability? That is, when the judgment comes, will the pagan be judged by the Law, or by something else?

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171. Thanks, Jeff.

     I would agree with you that Scripture should play a role in informing the conscience of the Christian. For example, consider gossip. NL does not seem to suggest that we should have laws that punish people who gossip (as long as the subject matter of the gossip is true). But that hardly means that Christians are at liberty to gossip. Because Scripture universally condemns gossip, the Christian ought not to do it…whether it pricks the conscience or not.

     But when it comes to proposing public policy initiatives, I see no reason why we should reason from Scripture with non-Christians. In some instances, when there is no good NL argument in favor of a proposed law, then it’s a likely signal that such a law is not a good law. For example, that’s why I’m not petitioning my state legislators to criminalize gossip, even though I’d expect my session to discipline an unrepentant gossip within the church.

     I’m not sure how this related to inerrancy fits into this. The so-called doctrine of inerrancy rests on epistemological principles that did not even arise before the early modern era. Certainly the Bible can speak clearly and infallibly in the arena of ethics without having to satisfy the tests laid out by Lindsell.

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172. The reason that I’ve pressed the question about the Christian magistrate is this: Is the job of the Christian magistrate to build a just society, or to glorify God in his common calling…So yes: I think we have been talking about different goals. NOT “good enough” v. “utopia” but rather “building a city” v. “glorifying God in one’s common calling.”

     Jeff, I don’t see these as separate questions. The Christian’s mandate is to do both. Plug in any common calling and it’s the same. Is the job of the Christian doctor to help sick people or glorify God in his common calling? Is the job of the Christian parent to make human beings or glorify God in his common calling? I don’t understand the need to bifurcate these things. Maybe you could elaborate on why you think these are distinct concerns. For my part, I understand that every believer glorifies God in all s/he does because all that is needed to do so is faith.

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173. Zrim: Jeff, I don’t see these as separate questions. The Christian’s mandate is to do both. Plug in any common calling and it’s the same. Is the job of the Christian doctor to help sick people or glorify God in his common calling? Is the job of the Christian parent to make human beings or glorify God in his common calling? I don’t understand the need to bifurcate these things. Maybe you could elaborate on why you think these are distinct concerns. For my part, I understand that every believer glorifies God in all s/he does because all that is needed to do so is faith.

     I fully agree. So now, walk down this road a bit with me.

     An unbeliever can build a city. But only the believer can glorify God in doing so (cf. WCoF 16.7). The difference between the two is, as you say, faith.

     Both the unbeliever and the believer alike have access to general revelation. So the general revelation is sufficient, adequate, for the building of the city…but not for the glorifying of God therein.

     If we glorify God in our common callings by performing them excellently out of faith, it therefore follows that both common-grace wisdom and Scriptural wisdom will be relevant to us in the common sphere.

     What this means is that our proposed separation of life into two spheres, sacred (ruled by Scripture) and secular (ruled by natural law) breaks down for the Christian living in the commons. Rather than two separate spheres, he experiences the convergence of two different kinds of knowledge in the same sphere.

     So the question is not, “Which sphere am I in? … ah, I should use the knowledge appropriate to that sphere.”

     BUT

     “How do I coordinate natural wisdom and Scriptural knowledge in one unified manner, so that Scripture remains normative and general revelation remains valid?” (and not Gnostically suspect, as Bob reminds us).

     Does this make sense?

     In other words, saying that the believer requires faith to carry out his common calling implies that he is to be guided by Scripture in that common calling.

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174. Both the unbeliever and the believer alike have access to general revelation. So the general revelation is sufficient, adequate, for the building of the city…but not for the glorifying of God therein.

     Wait. I thought you’ve been maintaining that GR isn’t sufficient for general tasks?

     If we glorify God in our common callings by performing them excellently out of faith, it therefore follows that both common-grace wisdom and Scriptural wisdom will be relevant to us in the common sphere.

     Well, what I am saying is that faith alone glorfies God, not performing excellently. Indeed, performing excellently, or poorly or somewhere in between, as long as it is done in faith, glorifies God. So when the Christian magistrate or parent or baker or teacher screws up s/he still glorifies God (I am tempted to say weakness glorifies God more than excellence, but it would actually defeat the point of faith alone glorifying God). The unbeliever doing things very well can never glorify God, he can only do things relatively well or not.

     But I do agree with you that the believer takes into his common calling both GR and SR. It is as inevitable as it is impossible for the unbeliever to employ SR. But, by definition, SR isn’t immediately relevant to temporal tasks because it is meant for eternal tasks. This brings us back to our fundamental disagreement, I think, which I don’t really want to belabor. What I find interesting is that you seem above to now be saying that GR is sufficient for general tasks. Is this correct? I also find interesting this notion of glorifying God to be faith plus excellence instead of faith alone. Those are two very familiar formulations, if you know what I mean.

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175. Well, we’re both amazed by this turn in the conversation: you because I’m saying that GR is sufficient to build a city; and I because you are saying that the believer will draw on both GR and SR.

     I can explain my half. The issue for me is not, has never been, that the Bible provides additional information about city-building or about plumbing that provide the “secret key to building better cities.”

     Rather, the issue for me has been that a Christian magistrate sits in the position of being normatively obligated to Scripture, and this normative obligation may well include his common calling in addition to his personal life.

     Thus, there fails to be a clean separation between the sacred and secular.

     But, by definition, SR isn’t immediately relevant to temporal tasks because it is meant for eternal tasks.

     This isn’t true, and it has an uncomfortably Gnostic ring that you probably don’t mean. There is special revelation that directly addresses a variety of temporal tasks.

     I think what you mean is that SR doesn’t provide detailed how-to’s about temporal tasks, but that’s different from “being relevant.”

     (By way of analogy: the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus doesn’t provide detailed how-to’s for engineers, but it’s pretty darn relevant…)

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176. I also find interesting this notion of glorifying God to be faith plus excellence instead of faith alone.

     Think “excellence” in the 3rd Use of the Law sense. As in, “diligent labor in all our callings” (WLC 138). So it’s not being the best under the sun, in the worldly sense, but being the best before God that one can be. This is still entirely compatible with strength being perfected in weakness; the energy for the diligent labor is not of ourselves, but of the Spirit.

     Right?

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177. Jeff,

     Well, we’re both amazed by this turn in the conversation: you because I’m saying that GR is sufficient to build a city; and I because you are saying that the believer will draw on both GR and SR.

     Sorry to be so dense, but if you want to say that GR is sufficient to build a city (which I presume we both agree is a general task) then I don’t understand the relentless need to explicity state that GR is insufficient for general tasks. Huh? But it has never been my intention to say that the believer is somehow hermetically sealed off from holy writ as he goes about his common calling. Maybe I somehow implied that or you inferred it or some combination of the two, but at least I never said “the believer is hermetically sealed off from holy writ” and kept on saying it the way you kept on saying GR is insufficient for general tasks. But wasn’t my point about not worshipping idols or stealing as one goes about his common task enough to show I don’t have the hermetically sealed off sort of view?

     Think “excellence” in the 3rd Use of the Law sense. As in, “diligent labor in all our callings” (WLC 138). So it’s not being the best under the sun, in the worldly sense, but being the best before God that one can be. This is still entirely compatible with strength being perfected in weakness; the energy for the diligent labor is not of ourselves, but of the Spirit.

     What happens when I’m not “the best that I can be”? After all, sin still clings, my works are but filthy rags and the holiest amongst us (which I am not) make but the slightest advance in this life. Am I still glorifying God? But I don’t see much difference between being better than another and being better than the worst me. They both seem pretty worldly to me.

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178. Jeff, I too am lost in your thoughts. You seem to say that GR is sufficient for building a bridge. But without SR you can’t build a bridge to the glory of God. I don’t see how this in any way is at odds with 2k. GR pertains to the building of bridges and states. SR has to do with the heavenly kingdom. You also write: “Thus, there fails to be a clean separation between the sacred and secular.” Well it depends. For the function of building a bridge there is a clean distinction, and that is why the church is not called to oversee the building of bridges. But the Christian bridge builder does have obligations to GR for getting the bridge right and SR for glorifying God. But just because there is overlap in the being of the believer doesn’t mean the Bible speaks to the mechanics of bridge building. So it looks to me this earthly existence and the one to come are pretty distinct.

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179. Zrim and DGH: Sorry to be so dense, but if you want to say that GR is sufficient to build a city (which I presume we both agree is a general task) then I don’t understand the relentless need to explicity state that GR is insufficient for general tasks. Huh?

     The unbeliever builds a city to his own glory. The believer builds a city to the glory of God (hypothetically … sin clouds the picture, I realize).

     The difference between them is faith, we agree.

     The rule of faith is, of course, the Scripture.

     It follows therefore that the GR is sufficient for the unbeliever’s building, but not for the believer’s because building by faith will entail obedience to God’s commands in the building.

     So we could address this situation either by making the building and the glorifying two distinct actions (which DGH wants to do); or we could address the situation by saying that the building and the glorifying occur together (which Zrim wants to do). But either way, the building of the city is going to be the occasion for which the Christian is going to employ SR in order to build by faith.

     I actually prefer Zrim’s approach here: that the glorifying occurs in the action of building by faith. That seems to be where Scripture and the Confession take us. If we do take that road, the this earthly existence for the believer is in fact a working-out of what the existence to come means, just as sanctification is a working-out of what justification has already declared to be true of us.

     That working-out may or may not be obviously different from an unbeliever’s at every point. If I eat to the glory of God, I’m still pretty much eating. But at some points, “eating Christianly” will be obviously different (see for example Ken Meyer’s piece More than Meets the Mouth).

     —

     Where we’ve arrived is interesting, because we all agree that there is some distinction between cult and culture, and there is some overlap as well. Zrim agrees that SR is not hermetically sealed off from the believer in the common realm. I agree that GR is much more widely used in the common realm.

     The problem is describing the nature of the overlap, the circumstances under which SR and GR are jointly used. REPT tends to minimize the importance of the overlap; I’ve tended to magnify the importance of the overlap (once more with feeling … “What about the Christian Magistrate?” 🙂 ).

     The question is, are we looking at black, white, and lots of gray in the middle OR black, white, and a relatively sharp and narrow band of gray in the middle OR something else?

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180. Jeff, I’m not sure about this. You seem to want to conflate the aspects of Christian bridge building so that Scripture is necessary for building a bridge — hence Christian ways to build a bridge. This seems the typical move of Frame. Because something is involved in the other, then you have something other.

     But where does the Bible talk about engineering, materials, weight loads, etc.? It doesn’t. And that is why you don’t study the Bible to learn how to build a bridge. Yes, you do study the Bible to learn how to glorify God. But that pertains to every legitimate activity, from building bridges to farming soy beans. In which case, Scripture is necessary for glorifying God. It is insufficient for building bridges to the glory of God because it doesn’t talk about both parts of Christian bridge building.

     BTW, the link to Myers didn’t work.

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181. DGH: But that pertains to every legitimate activity, from building bridges to farming soy beans. In which case, Scripture is necessary for glorifying God. It is insufficient for building bridges to the glory of God because it doesn’t talk about both parts of Christian bridge building.

     Precisely.

     And if Zrim is correct, and I think he is, that the activity of building the bridge is inseparable from the glorifying of God, then we arrive at

     P: Scripture is necessary for building a bridge to the glory of God, which is the only kind of bridge-building Christians ought to pursue.

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182. And if Zrim is correct, and I think he is, that the activity of building the bridge is inseparable from the glorifying of God, then we arrive at

     P: Scripture is necessary for building a bridge to the glory of God, which is the only kind of bridge-building Christians ought to pursue.

     Jeff,

     I think I can live with this. But only after reams of exchanges trying to make it clear that nobody, un/believer alike, needs the Bible to build a bridge, which, I think you understand. But I’ve had enough conversations with others who don’t really seem to. They actually seem to think the Bible really is necessary to getting common tasks done, for both un/believer alike. They explicitly say that the Bible should be on the syllabus to medical training, for example.

     So, when it is said that “Scripture is necessary for building a bridge to the glory of God, which is the only kind of bridge-building Christians ought to pursue,” I think it means different things to different people. I think some think this means there really is such a thing as Christian bridges. Again, I know what a bridge built by a Christian is, but I’ve no idea what a Christian bridge is. That may sound torturous, but I think that sort of distinction is pretty important. It is not too unlike distinguishing between living the gospel and living the law in response to the gospel, or saying that while it necessarily has a way of life resident to it, Christianity is nevertheless not a way of life. One is a categorical confusion of law and gospel (and subsequently sola fide) and the other isn’t, which is really the point of being Reformed in the first place. You know?

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183. Jeff, so a Christian college that offers a degree in engineering needs to include a Bible scholar in the engineering department?

     And what about the illiterate construction worker who is a Christian? He can’t read the Bible. Should he not build bridges?

     I myself would rather have a bridge built by Christians who paid more attention to materials and stress loads than to a small group Bible study during lunch break.

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184. But I would ask that he put church reform higher on his list.

     If the historic reformed were theocrats, then church reform is precisely what Wilson is engaged in when he exhorts the church toward Christendom.

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185. Ron, pssssst. Christendom wasn’t a theoocracy. It separated the powers of pope and emperor. So what exactly is your point?

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186. My point wasn’t to argue over what qualifies as a theocracy. So, if you will sir, please allow me to rewind and rephrase.

     If the historic reformed would reject secularism (had they ever even encountered such a thing), then church reform is precisely what Wilson is engaged in when he rallies the church to reject secularism. My point is that from Wilson’s perspective, the rejection of Christendom/reception of secularism is at least on the list of “[infidelities] among churches that claim to be Christian”, if not pretty high on that list. So, the way I see it, you essentially said, “You shouldn’t be so concerned with x. You should be more concerned with x.”

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187. Ron, so you push the definitional issue to another place. What is secular? Why is it something that needs to be opposed? What if secular society makes room for the church in ways that Rome’s tyranny did not, you know, the pagan Roman authorities to whom Peter and Paul said Christians should be subject.

     In which case, if Wilson is Reformed and holds to the sufficiency of Scripture, he needs to find the biblical warrant for opposing secular society or the powers that God has ordained. I’m still waiting for that shoe to drop. Please be advised, “Jesus Christ is Lord” is not an exegetical argument. Jesus Christ was Lord of Iraq before and after the U.S. invaded.

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188. Sorry Dr. Hart, but every man has to decide in any given situation whether to obey the fifth commandment (be he subject to authorities ecclesiastical, civic or other), or obey some *other* commandment. Surely you wouldn’t accuse the reformers or the founders of America with 5th commandment violations. Further, rejection of a secular (or pagan) state is not in and of itself a violation of the 5th commandment. Wilson isn’t telling people to engage in anything illegal here. Paul told Agrippa who was King and prayed for Agrippa’s conversion. How did this violate the fifth commandment or its child, Romans 13?

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189. Oh and a secular society is no more equipped to “make room for the church” than a pagan society. They both oppose the Lordship of Christ.

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190. Ron Smith, how exactly were Americans submitting to the power that God had ordained, namely, King George? Now I like the US and all, but if you’re going to say that Americans were right to throw off the rule of the British monarch and did so with biblical warrant, then I’ve got a very long book on George Washington’s orthodox faith to sell you.

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191. Darryl,

     I think it’s “sleight” in “…Wilson’s slight of hand…”

     And have you read “Ought the Church to Pray for Revival?” by Herman Hanko?

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192. Dr. Hart,
     You have easily dodged the question again. Well done and shame on me. 🙂 Let us take the founding of the US which you like and all out of the question. I notice you didn’t address Paul or the magisterial reformers. Was Calvin in violation of Romans 13 for soliciting monarchical support in protecting the purity of the gospel throughout Europe? Should Paul had been preaching the gospel to the king in a public, civil trial? How do these actions square with the modern two kingdom approach?

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193. htm, I’ll fix that. Is Hanko worth reading? What does he say?

     Ron, you brought up the US framers and the fifth commandment. Sorry for taking that where you find it uncomfortable.

     Where exactly did Calvin seek the aid of the state in the reformation? You seem to have a magisterial reformation mixed up with a theocratic reformation. The magistrates led the reform and hired pastors like Calvin and Zwingli. So the state started the reformation, and without the state’s support, Calvin and Luther would have gone down in history like Wycliffe and Huss.

     Technically, I don’t think Paul was preaching in court. I think he was explaining himself. Yes, he disobeyed the state when the state told him not to preach. That should be the reaction of any minister of the gospel. To preach the gospel in violation of a state command is hardly warrant for a revolution.

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194. The magistrates led the reform and hired pastors like Calvin and Zwingli. So the state started the reformation, and without the state’s support, Calvin and Luther would have gone down in history like Wycliffe and Huss.

     Exactly. If that sort of thing went on today, wouldn’t you see it as an improper mix of church and state? It’s not as if the magistrates protected any and all religions. They picked one and ran the others out. Imagine a state’s lawmakers legislating all the false religions out of their state. This wouldn’t fly. But this is what happened during the Reformation, and this is in part what Wilson is talking about when he speaks of Christendom: the State bowing the knee to King Jesus, and doing its duty to protect the peace of the Church and the purity of the Gospel by suppressing blasphemies and heresies, calling synods, etc.

     I have appreciated this exchange. I am sure you are busy and I am happy you have taken the time to respond. Thank you. The last word is yours, sir. Grace and peace to you in Christ. I am sure I will bother you again some time, but I’ll save it for anothe post 🙂

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195. Ron, like I said, you want Obama appointing ministers? May, you theocrats are wild and crazy guys.

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