It is not w-w.
Mike Horton tries to make a case that support for gay marriage is a function of w-w:
What this civic debate—like others, such as abortion and end-of-life ethics—reveals is the significance of worldviews. Shaped within particular communities, our worldviews constitute what Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann coined as “plausibility structures.” Some things make sense, and others don’t, because of the tradition that has shaped us. We don’t just have a belief here and a belief there; our convictions are part of a web. Furthermore, many of these beliefs are assumptions that we haven’t tested, in part because we’re not even focally aware that we have them. We use them every day, though, and in spite of some inconsistencies they all hold together pretty firmly—unless a crisis (intellectual, moral, experiential) makes us lose confidence in the whole web.
Every worldview arises from a narrative—a story about who we are, how we got here, the meaning of history and our own lives, expectations for the future. From this narrative arise certain convictions (doctrines and ethical beliefs) that make that story significant for us. No longer merely assenting to external facts, we begin to indwell that story; it becomes ours as we respond to it and then live out its implications.
It seems to me that gay marriage is much more a function of deeply ingrained American instincts than anything Nietzsche or Hegel might cook up. Equality and fairness is one aspect of American confusion over gay marriage. Why can’t everyone have the same access to the benefits of marriage? Another is a post-Civil Rights desire to keep anyone in America from feeling inferior? If gays can’t marry, doesn’t that mean we have a 2-tier social system and isn’t that like Jim Crow? Finally, Americans have learned to sever marriage from reproduction (largely thanks to Protestants). If marriage is more for fulfillment than for procreation, why can’t everyone have access to marriage?
This doesn’t mean Mike’s piece is wrong. But I do wonder whether the invocation of w-w will help with this conflict among Americans. By invoking w-w we conceivably turn this debate into a consequence of the antithesis. And that won’t do because so many non-Kuyperians (i.e. Roman Catholics) oppose gay marriage. And if we look around and see non-Reformed opposition to gay marriage, and still cling to w-w, then don’t we need to say that Roman Catholics have the same w-w as Reformed Protestants? Say hello to the Manhattan Declaration.
Better it seems to (all about) me simply to follow what God’s law requires in our churches and think through what changes in marriage policy mean for our societies. Has it not occurred to any baby boomer, rapidly approaching Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, that we need more babies who will grow up to pay taxes that keep our senior citizens medicated and fed? Has anyone heard of what’s going on Europe? Now is a bad time in the history of the West to make permanent a divide between marriage and child-bearing.
Old Life 
“Better it seems to (all about) me simply to follow what God’s law requires in our churches and think through what changes in marriage policy mean for our societies.”
Uh-oh. Now you’ve done it, Dr. Hart. In thinking only of yourself (and the country that you love, along with its aging population), you’ve crossed the line. You are going to find out that it’s really all about THEM, THEM, THEM!
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As much as I like Horton, I’d have to say that he’s wrong on this one.
Marriage long ago ceased to be about hearth and home, and came to be about individual fulfillment infused with sappy sentimentality. Evangelicals bought into this redefinition of marriage without much of a whimper. If anything, same-sex marriage represents the triumph of individualism over sentimentalism. Evangelicals, of course, don’t object to sentimentalism or individualism. They’d just prefer that sentimentalism play the dominant role.
When Paul speaks of marriage and family, sentimentalism and individualism are far from the picture. For the past month in North Carolina, Christian transformationalists have been telling us that God’s definition of marriage is at stake in Amendment 1. The neo-Cals are wrong on two counts. First, none of God’s definitions require popular approval. God, after all, is not a contestant on American Idol. Second, evangelicals have abandoned God’s definition of marriage long ago. Their opposition to same-sex marriage isn’t rooted in a “Christian worldview” any more than their proclivity to divorce, remarry, and engage in sex outside of covenantal union.
I’d suggest that transformationalist/evangelical opposition to gay marriage is likely rooted in sentimentality. Homosexuality isn’t sentimental. It smacks of a kind of brokenness that’s not readily repaired. And evangelicals aren’t comfortable with persistent brokenness, at least to the extent that it can’t be recast as a sentimental virtue. It’s a gospel that has little place for Psalm 137. It prefers Hallmark to Matthew Arnold, Sandi Patti to Bizet, and Thomas Kinkade to Hopper.
(Of course, it’s ironic that the sentimentalist, Kinkade, died of a toxic mix of alcohol and valium. I love Fred Eaglesmith’s music. Kinkade’s death reminded me of one of Fred’s song, “Alcohol and Pills”. It strikes me that the mode of Kinkade’s death is probably a closer representation of the travails of the human condition than his paintings ever were. And for that reason, evangelicals will likely reject the man and keep the paintings.)
The error of transformationalism is that is believes that God’s free grace to us in Christ should allow us to overcome the banal and the ugly and to pursue a transformational vision of society. I see nothing of that in Scripture. Rather, God’s grace to us in Christ allows us to see his general revelation in the world around us–even in its banality and ugliness. And, in Christ, we embrace the ugly in its ugliness without engaging in idolatrous efforts to sanitize or sentimentalize it.
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D.G. Hart: And if we look around and see non-Reformed opposition to gay marriage, and still cling to w-w, then don’t we need to say that Roman Catholics have the same w-w as Reformed Protestants? Say hello to the Manhattan Declaration.
RS: It is not necessary to have the same W-W to agree on certain things, but just that they meet at one point. You (D.G. Hart) have a lot in common with those who strongly believe in w-w’s and even (gasp) pietists, but you certainly don’t agree with those undesirables at all points.
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Hmmm, seems like the ‘breeder’ argument gets marginalized by the advances in fertility science and the availability of surrogates and ‘sister’ egg donors. Just trying to think through the public square debate. As pure theoretical debate the homosexual community can overcome the procreative argument, but I would assume in concrete policy discussions you’d have to consider the actual statistical prevalence of same-sex couples who actually pursue or avail themselves of procreative opportunities. If it’s minimal or dwarfed by the ratio of heterosexual marriages whose outcome results in offspring then you could make an argument that the state is going to favor the heterosexual marriage over same-sex marriage because the one union, much more often than the other, actually ‘creates’ a tax base, workforce, and potential military force at a more reliable rate than homosexual marriage and therefore the state, in securing it’s own future is going to favor the one union over the other by granting favorable status, tax benefit and general bully pulpit type lauding for the one while ‘only’ tolerating and granting a legal, think same-sex civil union, but less advantageous classification for the other. Just thinking through what might stick to the wall.
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DA Carson: “Many of those who speak easily and fluently of redeeming the culture soon focus all their energy shaping fiscal and political policies and the like, and merely assume the gospel. A gospel that is merely assumed, that does no more than perk away in the background while the focus of our attention is on the “redemption” of the culture in which we find ourselves, is lost within a generation or two.
Carson: “At the same time, I worry about Christians who focus their attention so narrowly on getting people saved that they care little about doing good to all people. Getting this right is not easy, and inevitably priorities will shift a little in various parts of the world, under various regimes. Part of the complexity of the discussion, I think, is bound up with what the church as church is responsible for, and what Christians as Christians are responsible for: Failure to make this distinction tends to lead toward sad conclusions.”
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Consider the source. Niebuhr balanced and revised is still illiberal about what’s liberal.
http://www.reformation21.org/articles/don-carson-talks-about-culture.php
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It is hard to take these “worldview” critiques seriously. If Reformed apologists wanted to interact with and critique non-Christian worldviews, they would interact with current non-Christian (etc.) philosophers. But for the most part, they don’t, and we get nothing but pop-apologetics and Sunday school arguments. One problem is that, in my brief experience (in college and teaching philosophy in college for a little while now) most ordinary folk simply don’t have a worldview, or even basic “presuppositions” they assume. They simply don’t, they auto-pilot and play video games and go on dates, etc., all without having the slightest clue about how they know what they know. Or giving a crap. “Moralistic-therapeutic-deism” is what you get out of some people from surveys when you shake them for answers, and for all most people care those answers might be different on any given day. That’s just my observation, though.
But D.G., what do you think about the legality of same-sex marriage? What do you think are the best arguments for preserving in law traditional marriage in a pluralistic society? Could you recommend some readings?
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To follow up on patrick’s question…what is the natural law argument against same-sex marriage? And if natural law is the same for Christians and non-Christians, why is there no consensus on the morality of homosexuality?
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I wonder if those with transformationist worldviews fault the “moral compromise” of the Lord Jesus for His submission to the occupying empire. Is Christ’s rejection of Peter’s sword an endorsement of Roman power to define marriage?
Acts 2:23 “this Jesus, handed over according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.”
We should never confuse what’s “necessary” (because it’s predestined by God) with what is good. can agree that nation-states do great evil, without in any way seeing any duty for us to attempt to repair or replace these regimes . “Submit” does NOT mean that we accept suffering from them because I think their marriage laws are good. Patience, even such that we wait for the Lord Jesus to come and judge, is not necessarily cowardice, and definitely not approval of that which is evil. To do nothing when nothing wise can be done is to avoid the evils which come when we attempt to overcome evil with evil.
We cannot dismiss the commands to submit and suffer with our idea–”if it were only me suffering that’s one thing, but it’s not only me suffering, so therefore I must do something about i for the sake of future generations.”
I Peter 2:9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
The “spirituality of the church” is the politics of ecclesia. There is something very “religious” and “political” about knowing that church is more important than marriage or race or the boundaries of a nation-state.
12 Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
Unless we adopt a situation ethic (now that we have the spectacle of democracy, we can act differently than Peter commanded), since when do we aliens tell the nation in which we live how to get married. Do we say: Agreed, you surely are not going to listen to what Jesus Christ actually said, but we like our worldview better than your worldview and maybe you could listen to it?
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How will allowing gay marriage undermine our need for babies to grow up and support the older generations? Um, gay people aren’t going to be having babies anyway…
Second, marriage is not primarily about procreation, never has been. Eve was created to be a companion to Adam because “it is not good that man should be alone.” Procreation is certainly a primary element of marriage, but not a fundamental.
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“So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth…”
hmmm…
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Sean, I’m all for a public policy that says, if you want to have a baby, use your own organs and don’t let doctors in the room or the womb.
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mcmark, as if my concern for soul-winning means I don’t feed my kids (if I had any, okay my cats). As if feeding kids is not about being socially responsible or relevant.
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Patrick, I’d go to the Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society. I imagine they have some freebies at their website along with recommended books. Anything written by Allan Carlson on the family would also be good.
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Terry, you know the answer: people suppress the truth in unrighteousness. Even I do when I think God won’t forgive me.
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Alexander, if people aren’t marrying to procreate, why are they marrying? And if the state wants to encourage procreation, then make policies that discourage people for marrying for the wrong reasons. Take away the benefits that accrue to spouses who don’t have kids.
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D.G., Really? No way. How would you legitimize the use of some medical technological advances and not others? Surgical and disease treatment advances, o.k. but fertility enhancement or alternatives are right out? Based on what criteria would you make such an argument that still embraces 2k and doesn’t unnecessarily capitulate to the argument that modernity is largely inhuman.
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I’m willing to bet, though I haven’t checked the stats, that the homosexual union is severly deficient in it’s ability, even with fertility advancements, to adequately sustain a populace that would be sufficient for a state, much less a state/union of our size. That argument alone would be sufficient to grant formal/state recognized advantage to heterosexual marriage while allowing for the “experiment” of domesticity for same-sex civil union, that someone like Andrew Sullivan would argue for as it regards ‘norming’ the homosexual community as it regards their morality. Essentially, make them better citizens and provide a legitimized stratification within the homosexual community between the ‘bathhouse’ homosexual and the monogamous one. We can’t hardly point to the heterosexual’s track record on monogamy for sufficient ground to argue heterosexual superiority or priority over the homosexual’s.
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To me the best arguments against the legalization of gay marriage in the context of a pluralistic constitutional democracy are more along the lines of where DGH seems to be pointing, and these are basically bound up in the philosophical underpinnings of political conservatism – namely is such a radical revision of the elemental social institution of marriage a good thing – does it promote the good of society. On the flip side, the best arguments for gay marriage are also constitutional arguments, namely, can the state impose restrictions on two consenting adults who wish to enter into marriage, which in many respects is not dissimilar to other contractual relationships that all adults are free to enter into as US citizens. Of course there are moral concerns on both sides of these arguments, but it is fundamentally a question of what sort of society do we wish to have, one that focuses on the preservation of foundational social institutions such as marriage and family, or do we wish to have a society that maximizes civil liberties even if such liberties represent serious revision (or as some would argue, threat) to traditional institutions.
The worst arguments are the ones, unfortunately, that rule the day, where private agendas, whether amongst conservative church members, or amongst the gay community that seek to foist their moral agendas on the public without laying the more civil foundations for dialogue, and to see if these communities can come to some form of amicable compromise. But, it really has become a zero sum debate, and I frankly have tired of it since the prop 8 debates here in CA (ca. 2008).
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Darryl, yes, that’s the answer I would give, but I’m not quite sure how that works in a natural law framework. How do we decide what the natural law is? It appears that the consensus in the west is that homosexuality is not contrary to natural law. Do we decide based on consensus? Do we decide based on biology–ability to procreate–is that the foundation for natural law? How does natural law speak to monogamy, serial monogamy, or even polygamy?
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I am not sure what feeding my children (or others) has to do with telling non-Christians in the nation in which we are aliens how to get married. I won’t be able to feed my children if the state does not define property rights like I want them to?
Do we say to non-Christians?— Agreed, you surely are not going to listen to what Jesus Christ said, but since we like our view of marriage better than your view, then we want you to vote with us Christians on this issue. Because if you do, then we both will be in better position to feed our children.
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Sean, it is not natural to make babies outside the — ahem — natural way to make babies. See, and I didn’t even open the Bible. The Roman Catholics, don’t, right?
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Sean, but men need women to domesticate them. Every male knows that. You really want one man to domesticate another?
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Terry, how do we make babies? That’s pretty obvious. What is the best context for making babies? It’s not a brothel or a bathhouse.
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McMark, it has something to do with what we have inherited as a civilization and how we are going to receive and pass it on. Heterosexual marriage was a very important part of the West and the way heteros have screwed it up is no reason to give up on the institution and its benefits for society. Just consider the woes of inner-city schools. We can dump all the money we want on them but if the children in those schools are coming from single parent homes, that education is not going to go nearly as far as a two-parent household. The benefits of marriage are huge even if you take them for granted. Does it mean that marriage is easy or pleasant? Of course not. But there is something about a creation ordinance that works for (all about) me.
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D. G. Hart: Heterosexual marriage was a very important part of the West and the way heteros have screwed it up is no reason to give up on the institution and its benefits for society.
RS: In like manner what is thought of as Christianity and the Church has been messed up, but that is no reason to give up on Christ and His Bride.
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Jack: blockbuster argument there. Quote one short passage from the Creation narrative, with no context, and no comment. Such a biblicist 😛
If procreation is the reason for marriage, are y’all willing to say that (heterosexual) marriages which can’t produce children aren’t real marriages? Of course procreation is part of the creational ordinance of marriage, but it wasn’t the impetus for God’s instituting it.
Also, I think the bathhouse chat is a tad insppropriate. I don’t think heterosexuals can claim any moral superiority when it comes to the area of promiscuity. And at least when homosexuals have relations out of wedlock, illegitimate babies aren’t a potential result.
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Richard, but it would be a good reason to abandon revivals.
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Alexander, you have answered you’re own question. Since sex (hetero) produces children marriage is the proper context for having offspring. Childless marriages may exist, but they shouldn’t become the norm. They should be considered abnormal (I are one). And since there will be no marriage in heaven, I’m betting there won’t be any more people, which suggests a pretty close identification between marriage and procreation.
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D. G. Hart: Richard, but it would be a good reason to abandon revivals.
RS: Aargghh. There is not a single good reason to abandon seeking the Lord to revive His people.
Psalm 85:6 Will You not Yourself revive us again, That Your people may rejoice in You?
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How about the best argument against “gay” marriage is that God’s Word condemns the behavior? God calls sodomy an abomination, the strongest word for revulsion in the Bible. God calls it a *crime*, *worthy* of death. Moreover, God in days past has destroyed whole cities for there’re homosexuality.
I’ve got a question for Hart: Is the act of Sodomy still *worthy* of the Death Penalty? Or has God changed his mind?
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Akexander,
Your self-assured sarcasm is so convincing.
You read quite a bit into that verse I quoted. I didn’t say procreation is the sole reason for marriage. But I do think it is more fundamental than your first comment asserted.
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Alexander, what does Jesus calling his people *salt* and *light* mean to you?
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Doug,
Are the wages of sin death, or has God changed his mind on that as well?
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Dgh: no argument from me that marriage is the proper context for having babies; but is having babies the reason for marriage?
Jack: thank you for the compliment:) I’m sorry but your italicising of the command to be fruitful was a tad too much, concha think? I think we agree more than we disagree 🙂
Doug: ummmm, that we taste like salt and we shine like light? I’m not sure how your question relates to the discussion… :S
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Doug Sowers: How about the best argument against “gay” marriage is that God’s Word condemns the behavior? God calls sodomy an abomination, the strongest word for revulsion in the Bible. God calls it a *crime*, *worthy* of death. Moreover, God in days past has destroyed whole cities for there’re homosexuality.
I’ve got a question for Hart: Is the act of Sodomy still *worthy* of the Death Penalty? Or has God changed his mind?
RS: Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed for sodomy and they were not part of covenant Israel. In fact, Genesis 13:13 tells us that “the men of Sodom were wicked exceedingly and sinners against the LORD.” Then we have the story of Jonath going to Nineveh: : Jonah 1:1 “The word of the LORD came to Jonah the son of Amittai saying, 2 “Arise, go to Nineveh the great city and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me.”
The two pasages from the OT above could be multiplied, but we also have Romas 1-3 which sets out that Jew and Gentile are condemned by their sin against the Law. Romans 1:18-32 tells us that God judges sin by hardening hearts and turning people over to sin, and then in v.32 speaks of those who “give hearty approval to those who practice them.” Where the perfect line is I don’t profess to know, but surely the fact that all men are sinners against God should teach us that we should warn them of the judgement to come and that we should not pass laws that lead to unrestrained sin. The fact that a person does not attend church or profess Christ does not lessen that person’s judgement for his or her sin. All sin is against God.
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Hey Doug, if I say yes, does that mean you think recalcitrant adolescents should also be executed? If so, can you believe how unfaithful the church has been since 1650?
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I Corinthians 5:9 —I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— 10 not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. 11 But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. 12 For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? 13 God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”
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Ah, the italic. My wife has often warned me about it’s use due to those who are
italic-sensitive…
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Does anyone find it ironic that President Obama when announcing his support for gay and lesbian marriage acknowledged that he is a Christian and in the same spirit that Christ sacrificed Himself for us, we should show the same kind of love and equality to gays and lesbians?
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Jed, I thought you understood that I was talking about socio-political justice. While all sins are worthy of death, not all sins are crimes. And God never asks the Magistrate to punish all crimes with Death. Isn’t that basic Christian 101? God sees a different heinousness in various crimes. And crimes are to receive just retribution, amen? We don’t take “eye for and eye” *literally*, amen? We understand that the punishment should fit the crime, amen?
Since God explicitly states:
Leviticus 20:13 “If a man lies with a male, like a women, both of them have committed an abomination, they shall surely be put to death, their blood is upon them”.
Here’s my question Jed, if engaging in sodomy was *worthy* of the death, back then; what are the morally relevant factors, that make it not *worthy* of death, today?
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Terry, it might help to think more like St. Paul who didn’t seem all too worried about “how do we decide what natural law is,” which is really more a question that flows from an epistemological framework than a biblical one. Here’s what a Pauline answer might look in this discussion: we all know homosexuality is contrary to nature and so should not enjoy the sanction of marriage. As for your concern about consensus, surely you’ve heard of majorities being wrong and minorities being right (sort of like how smart people can be wrong and dimmer folks right, or doing the right thing and getting kicked in the teeth for it and getting away with your sin).
I know raging theonomists (hi, Doug) want to execute homosexuals, but 2kers actually believe Jesus fulfilled the law and so would rather make points that might irritate some modern American assumptions but not send folks screaming for the hills.
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Darryl, my position is, that for something to be intrinsically moral, means it must be universal. Morality as well as *Justice* must also be universal. So, if God’s Law calls for the execution of recalcitrant children, then that is what we *should* do. Of course upon reading what constitutes the definition a recalcitrant adolescent, we also read of beating ones parents. I think that still against the law today, no?
But let’s face it Darryl, we give all sorts of crimes, that God says are *worthy* of death a free pass. Just look at child molesters, when caught the first time, they normally receive a few months in jail or a couple of years in prison, only to see them repeat the same offence once they are set free. If we really want justice, we would obey God’s Law, because God says that that particular sin is a crime *worthy* of death. Once again Darryl, what are the morally relevant circumstances that have changed? If there aren’t any morally relevant factors that have changed, why wouldn’t you stand up for justice?
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Zrim, in case you haven’t noticed, it doesn’t really matter what *I* or *you*, think or want. What has God said?! That is the crux of the issue. And once God has spoken emphatically, it’s binding upon mankind unless or until God either resends or modifies his commands with further revelation.
Once again Zrim, how can something *worthy* of the death penalty (like homosexuality) in Moses day be *unworthy* of the death penalty today?
What are the morally relevant circumstances that have changed???
Can morality change?
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Ooops! When I said we give a free pass to crimes, that God said are *worthy* of death, I was referring to homosexuality, bestiality, as well as adultery, and blasphemy. I apologize if I didn’t make that clear.
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Doug, well it could be that Christ’s coming is morally relevant, and that by fulfilling the law and codes of Israel, things changed. Could Israelites have eaten meat offered to idols? No. Yet, Paul says believers can.
Doug, boo! Israel is over.
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D.G., You’re preaching to the choir here on the superiority of the heterosexual arrangement as both a creation ordinance, a procreative environment, and a domesticating vehicle. BUT, since the fall is pretty radical and set most everything on it’s ear, we all have to make accommodation. RCer’s take advantage of fertility science last I checked, but since I was an american rc, maybe it was just some more buffet line practice than strict adherence that I was observing. Or was that reference to cracking the bible you were making? Both could apply. The point of accommodation, I was trying to make was one of recognizing something less than marriage for homosexual couples, civil union, while at the same time boosting the status of heterosexual marriage and it’s benefits to society by creating a legal and monetary stratification. Homosexuals are humans and citizens as well, who make contribution to both the country’s prosperity and defense and being as I’m not homosexual, if those who are, want to argue for a potential improvement of both the civility of their own community, while, maybe unwittingly, also end up making a case for it’s ultimate bankruptcy under the guise of norming it’s morality, while exposing them to the punitive legal ramifications of separation, and the benefits of estate for fidelity( however twisted that looks between Adam and Steve), I don’t really see how that endangers the institution of marriage. We heterosexuals have done a good enough job besmirching that arrangement all on our own. My biggest concern on the issue would be the potential creep into the church as it regards performing ceremony and any potential exposure to discriminatory law suit.
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In 1967, in Loving v. Virginia,the Supreme Court struck down state laws banning interracial marriage. The case was filed by an interracial couple — Richard Loving, who was white, and his wife, Mildred, who was black. And of course this means that all churches now can be commanded by the nation-state to marry inter-racial couples. Thus you see, churches needs to tell the state what to do, or the state will tell the churches what to do.
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Doug, you’re right that what God has said is what matters. And what has God said? “It is finished.” Stop suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.
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Jack: not sensitive. One uses italics to emphasise a statement. When you italicised “be fruitful and multiply” you were implying that was a crucial point, and becaus it followed my point about marriage not being fundamentally about procreation, the clear implication is that you were disagreeing with me and using the Genesis quote to do so.
So perhaps one could say I’m improper-use-of-italics-and-badly-constructed-points sensitive 🙂
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Alexander,
I’ll stick with “italic-sensitive,” but add “-and-prone-to-read-into-italics-what-isn’t-there.”
Your quote: “If procreation is the reason for marriage, are y’all willing to say that (heterosexual) marriages which can’t produce children aren’t real marriages?”
Never said that, never implied that. Why should I defend it? The Gen. passage speaks for itself. Procreation is fundamental to marriage without being the sole ingredient that defines marriage. In the same way your quote “it is not good that man should be alone” is fundamental to marriage, but relationship alone doesn’t define the purpose of marriage.
By the way, “it is not good that man should be alone” leads up to the verse that the “two shall become one flesh” pointing to a union that is both personal and physical, the result of which was: Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the Lord.” And again, she bore his brother Abel. It seems ‘not being alone’ had to do with more than just having a companion at one’s side.
God later reissues the original mandate to Noah and his sons: And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.
By the way, I’m using the flooding technique with all the above italics.
cheers…
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I would just say you’re using italics incorrectly, but whatever. However, if you have a fear of italics the flooding technique might help you. Good luck
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When to use italics:
“Most commonly, italics are used for emphasis or contrast — that is, to draw attention to some particular part of a text.”
Of course in employing the flooding technique, I admit, I abused that rule.
cheers,
Jack
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Zrim, how dare you! When Jesus said it was *finished* he was talking about his atoning work of sacrifice, on the cross for his people, *the Israel of God. He paid the price, and obtained his people.
When our Lord was on the cruel cross and cried out “It is finished”! He wasn’t saying that Nations should no longer punish crime! He certainly wasn’t implying that we are now free to go out and sin! Furthermore, Jesus wasn’t claiming we have a new standard of justice, which is poppy cock, and philosophically impossible.
As long as God gives me strength I’m not going to let people like you, confuse Christ’s completed work on our behalf, (once for all) with society’s obligation to punish crime with *just* retribution. Morality and justice go together like a hand in a glove.
And I’m suppressing the truth in unrighteous? You’ve really got nerve. You continue to talk out of both side of your mouth, confusing God’s atonement, with society’s duty to punish crime, in a God glorifying way.
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Darryl, boo, back at you! I fully understand that Israel is gone, BUT morality and justice haven’t gone anywhere. They can’t, because they are both universal. When is it going to dawn on you, that morality and justice are coterminous? I’m praying for the day, when a light blinks on that darkened mind of yours, and you finally *get it*.
I’ll leave the light on for you 🙂
P.S. we all have darkened minds, some are darker than others
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If I can make an analytic comment without being misconstrued, I think the whole gay marriage conversation is off course. That is, people read “gay marriage” as “gay sex” but gay sex is already legal. Strictly speaking, gay marriage is about the bundle of legal rights and obligations that accompany marriage. I wonder how different the conversation would be if it was about whether two individuals should be able to contract into, e.g., certain property laws and probate laws.
As for the rhetoric of the debate, calling it “marriage” does cause more uproar but its advocates probably prefer the term because it seems to put gay unions on the same level as heterosexual unions.
So is this whole debate about a label? That’s not to say labels are unimportant, but if this is the debate, let’s be clear about it.
Let the misconstruction begin…
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I’m new to your site. In your response to Horton you use the abrivation w-w several times. What is this short hand for? Thanks.
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Doug, I think that is used for World View, but why W-V isn’t used I’m not sure, even after asking.
Other Doug, is justice something we accomplish now or something God brings at the consummation? No one said people are now free to sin. Don’t forget, there will be hell to pay.
When did God come down to American and have the founding fathers stand on capital hill and shout blessings and curses as he covenanted with them?
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Doug, I think “worldview” is a holy word on Darryl’s blog, too holy to be written out; so it is written as the first and last letter with a dash in between: w-w. Something like the practice of some to write “G-d” instead of writing out the word “God”.
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Sowers:
In one of your above comments, you suggested that God may view certain sins as less heinous, and that, for that reason, the state may not criminally punish certain sins, including those that were capital offenses in the OT. I respectfully disagree.
Your argument implicitly suggests that the Bible (i.e., special revelation) is the primary basis upon which criminal law is based. Our Anglo-American system of jurisprudence has never looked to the Bible as a primary policy rationale for criminal law. To the contrary, criminal law is generally rooted in notions of deterrence, which are justified in terms of general revelation. Moreover, we have generally not criminalized conduct that does not cause direct harm to others without their consent.
I prefer to believe that God said what he meant, and accept that the Bible says a lot that is not applicable to the conduct of those outside of the covenant community.
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Bob, when does the punishment fit the crime? Shall we cut off the hand of a thief? Shall we execute the drunk driver? Shall we cut out the tongue of the liar? Shall we *wink* at the abortion Dr? By what standard can you tell a Magistrate that he is going over the line? After all Bob, it’s not a matter of *if* we’re going to draw the line, it’s just *where*. Shouldn’t we base our laws, on the Rock of God’s commands? Since justice and morality are universal, we need to be consistent Christians who pray the Lord’s Prayer, and really mean it!
It probably didn’t look like Israel could defeat the Sons of Aniken, either lol!
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Doug, and neither am I saying that Jesus’ atoning work means there is no longer need for magistrates to punish evil doers or that we are now free to sin. I affirm the first and third use of the law. But your theonomic system makes hay out of WCF 19.3, which is to say Christ’s work. (Plus it assumes salvation is geo-political as well as personal. But it’s personal alone.) So to the extent that you undermine Christ’s atoning work by want reinvigorating the laws and codes of Israel, you are calling Christ insufficient and suppressing the truth in unrighteousness. Stop doing that.
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Man! I’ve been following some Reformed sites, for awhile now…and Doug…and I say this with as much brotherly love as I can conjure, through the internets…your intense desire to punish homosexuality by way of God’s covenant with O-T Israel, seems to border on obsession.
It’s as if God’s law lives or dies on the amount of executed homosexuals a culture can build on. You might want to get that checked. And i swear i share this more out of concern, than irony.
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I have a question about theonomy. I had no idea what this was until reading Doug’s comments. How would a western culture go about executing such judgements? This sounds like Iran.
One last question. Why didn’t Jesus stone the woman who committed adultery?
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“This sounds like Iran.
One last question. Why didn’t Jesus stone the woman who committed adultery?”
Don’t let anyone tell you you don’t understand what theonomy ultimately amounts to. You got it right.
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Hi Robin, 🙂 When America was founded in 1776 we had the death penalty for sodomy in all thirteen states! We had a strong “reformed” understanding of morality and justice. What I find shocking, is that men who call themselves reformed today, men like Darryl Hart have done a 180, and now find America’s original perspective on sodomy, repugnant. Ironically, homosexuals are on the attack in our culture, demanding not only our accepting they’re “idolatrous” form of behavior, but want it put on par with marriage.
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Doug’s gonna whisper in your ear now Robin, but just remember, you know where this ends up; with you in a burka and a rock in Doug’s hand. In truth, Doug will equivocate and talk to you about how the penal sanctions have to be accommodated for our culture, but your first impressions are right on.
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Sean, I don’t *know* you, so how are you so cock sure what I am all about? I desire that God’s people would be faithful to his commandments. And that when we live in a Nation that allows our impute, we would echo what God says in His Word. What you don’t know, is that Darryl and I have had a conversation for about a couple years. When Obama courageously (wink wink) came out *for* gay marriage I wanted to see how Hart was going to respond.
God bless you one and all!
Rest in his completed work
Doug Sowers
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Doug,
I’ve had to endure theonomists for 22 years now after leaving RC. I’ve got the t-shirt and been on all the rides. Greg Bahnsen was my associate pastor. You ain’t gonna tell me anything I haven’t heard.
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Doug,
The death penalty for sodomy was revoked in all thirteen colonies (not states) shortly after 1776, though still against the law, and in the entire 18th century only one man, a black man, was ever put to death for sodomy. Finally, how were our founding fathers reformed? That’s news to me and most church historians.
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Seriously though, how would you go about executing homosexuals? Would you arrest them and give them the lethal injection? Would you give them opportunity to repent and then let them go or still kill them? Would you stone them? I mean seriously, how would all this work out? Finally, how would you get that law to pass? If the law is never passed would it be ok to take justice into your own hands? I am not writing these things to come across as sarcastic. I don’t agree with what Doug has said but am really interested how a thenomist would hypothetically work out all of the sordid details out.
Also, if your child were found to be in gross sin would honor killings not be considered sinful? My goodness I need to stop writing because the more I type the more questions I have.
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Todd, thanks for making my point! Our Nation still had the death penalty for sodomy, after 1776 and kept it illegal for a couple centuries. Has something ethically changed? What does God say? Are you looking to “special revelation”, or Natural Law? And if your looking at General revelation, how do you know you’re reading it aright?
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Robin, hi 🙂
God’s Law (the general equity of the Mosaic Law) is never going to be the law of our land, until there has been a reformation in our culture starting with His Church. And no, I don’t take the law in my own hand, and I don’t hate the homosexuals I have met. I witness to them, and the ones I’ve met know intrinsically they are in high defiance to God. And will even admit they *know* what they’re doing is worthy of death. But no Theonomist I know (which I don’t know a great many) thinks if a sodomite repents that he should be retroactively put to death. “Such were some of you”, says the Apostle Paul.
And Robin, in all seriousness, when sodomy is considered a death penalty crime in a Christian society, that particular sin-crime, is going to be kept w-a-a-a-a–a-a-y in the closet and not even spoken about in polite civil discourse. That is what Christians need to be praying for, a change in the heart in Christ’s church,(first) and for the greater cultural transformation in our Nation as a whole. Thy kingdom come, they will be done, even right now, and tomorrow like it is in heaven. We are commanded to be people of faith, not those who scoff and say, society will never submit to God’s revealed Word of God.
Psalms 72 shows King David’s heart, that all Nations would serve God and God’s enemies would lose clout. Christ is King in all areas of life, encompassing individual, family, Church, and State. All must bend the knee to God’s revealed Word, the Christian Scriptures. That Jesus would be the King of Kings in every realm. And that is what Machen believed as well. That even our federal Government would submit to the Gospel.
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Is divorce punishable by death? Or just the Gays?
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Why are we debating theonomy? This feels like 1990 all over again.
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@Luther Perez: There were a few more “sin” crimes that God found worthy of death for both the Israelites and the (Sojourners who were not circumcised), nor members and partakers of the CoG, yet they still had to keep the moral Law. Jew and Gentile alike. What else did God’s Law constitute a civil death penalty action for both Jew and Gentile? Rape, blasphemy, (stubborn outlandish blasphemy) adultery, beating ones parents, kidnapping or man stealing, bestiality, witchcraft, sodomy, child molesting, and murder.
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Doug: so you’re advocating hypocrisy? We should all just ignore what’s going on because of the shame? Maybe you should lead by example and stop talking about homosexuality.
The reason there’s so much promiscuity amongst evangelicals is because the evangelical/conservative Christian culture is obsessed with sex. It is possible to be Reformed, conservative, have Church cultures where people follow Biblical morality: don’t make everything about sex.
Jack: don’t make everything about italics. There’s a whole world of grammar and associated techniques out there. Exercise your Christian liberty brother 🙂
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@Alexander: No, I don’t advocate hypocricy. As to point two, I didnt bring this subject up. Check upove, it’s what this post in about 😉
Bob, we’re not debating theonomy, although a few people asked some questions. I was just trying to shed a little light. BTW, as to the debate on theonomy in the ninties? Theonomy won!
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So why are you so focused on homosexuality, when adultery (and having sex with your second/third/fourth wife is an act of adultery) is rampant in the US?
It seems a bit, unnerving, that you immediately demand God’s justice for same-sex desire, while the sexual sins of heteros seem to be off your specialized God given gaydar. Mind you, I’ve read your spirited debates with 2k folks, and same-sex desire seems to be your specialized focus.
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Doug: what Luther said. This topic is actually about gay marriage, not gay sex per se. No one was debating whether gay sex should be legal. Also, you jumped right into this debate. I don’t remember reading any posts by you on this blog in the past couple of years, certainly not regularly. And yet you’re all over this. That suggests obsession to me.
And what exactly did theonomy win? It’s kinda like Gaelic over here in Scotland and the attempts to promote it through the media: everyone who speaks Gaelic is on TV speaking it. I.e. the only theonomiss are those speaking at theonomy conferences. I.e. No one’s a theonomist and there’s a reason! It’s craaaaaaazaaaaaaaay!!!
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D. S: But no Theonomist I know (which I don’t know a great many) thinks if a sodomite repents that he should be retroactively put to death. “Such were some of you”, says the Apostle Paul.
Me: So do repentant murderers not get the death penalty?
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What does w-w mean?
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Thomas, great question! A murderer is in a different category, because of the dead body. Bahnsen went on over that very issue in Theonomy #14.
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@Erik, it means “worldview”.
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Alexander, theonomy means a lot of different things to people. Applying theonomy (God’s Law) in a new covenant context in today’s modern society is the tricky part, on which even most theonomists are not in full agreement. The Church has much work to do on the matter.
But calling theonomy crazy doesn’t make it so. People of your ilk, tend to mock and deprecate God’s penal sanctions from the Mosaic Law as if they were horrible. Like executing young men who curse and beat their parents. That’s Darryl’s favorite OT penal sanction to mention, because *he thinks* it’s a great example of how riculous and “out there” theonomists are.
I haven’t heard anyone to date explain how homosexuality, or rape, or kidnapping, or child molesting or murder is now suddenly no longer a death penalty offence, *ethically*. When the death penalty for these exact sin’s (crimes) was considered *justice* a couple hundred years ago. Has morality and justice changed? Is that even possible? I think not.
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Doug says;
‘Applying theonomy (God’s Law) in a new covenant context in today’s modern society is the tricky part, on which even most theonomists are not in full agreement. The Church has much work to do on the matter.’
Sean: Robin I just want you to remember what I told you about ‘he will start to equivocate’. In the very same response where he blusters about God’s law never changing and how it was deserving of death just a couple hundred years and how it’s not even possible for morality and justice to change….’I think not’. Well apparently it’s ‘tricky’ and this ‘unchanging’ standard apparently can’t receive unanimous agreement even in “theonomist’s” circles.
Robin, just remember what I told you; ” you pegged it from the start.” Think Iran, Islamists, burkas (sp) and rocks. Except when it comes down to it, they don’t actually have the stomach or don’t really believe their own rhetoric, as they bluster about. All hat, no cattle.
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Doug: I’m not denying that crimes which received the death penalty under
Moses no longer deserve it ethically. I’ve long read Jesus and the adulterer as Him saying that whilst her crime may, ethically, deserve death it is not for other sinners to dole out. But I never said anything about how God, objectively, views these crimes. And after all: ALL aim results in death.
What we’re talking about is how we, as fallen humans, relate to other fallen humans, in light of our own sinfulness and the grace that has come in Christ. It was said in an episode of The Good Wife that Christ’s Incarnation, Life and Atoning Sacrice has tempered the need for punishment, but that the substance- the moral nature- of the Law still stands. That seems right to me and it seems to accord with Jesus teaching re:the adulteress.
Yes we should be salt and light; not judge and executioner.
Vengeance is mine, saith the LORD.
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Doug, I don’t see sabbath breakers on your list. Don’t they get the ax too?
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David R. don’t blame me, it’s not “my” list, that’s God’s list. I’m just the messenger! I think I pulled that list from 1 Tim 1:8-13. That’s the Law that according to Paul was still *good* when it’s used in a lawful way i.e. by the civil Magistrate. Also notice that when the Law is applied to those crimes, all were given the death penalty except for stealing, Paul says that is in accordance to the Gospel of Christ.
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Sean, Sharia law? burkes, Iran? I am not advocating Sharia Law, where they cut off the hand of the thief. I’m advocating God’s Law, where the punishment fits the crime. Unless you’re intimating that God’s Law is equal to Islam. I hope you don’t really feel that way, for it you do; you have a completely different religion.
BTW Sean, if the death penalty for murder were on trial, I would argue by the exact same standard, God’s Word. Murderers and homosexuals both deserve the death penalty “BECAUSE GOD SAYS SO”!!!!! I know that is true, because the Bible is the very Word of God.
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Alexander, do you believe in the death penalty for murder? And if so, then by what standard?
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Sean, do you believe in Capital Punishment for murder? If yes, by what standard?
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Doug, not to answer for Alexander or Sean, but the divine ordinance arming civil magistrates with the sword for the avenging of innocent blood is found in Genesis 9:5-6.
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Hi David R 🙂
So you go to special revelation? Gasp! I thought that was a no no for you “new” 2K types? I thought the new *Hart* agnostic Christian method to govern, was to look to Natural Law or General revelation, because that is sufficient, no? Because of your going to say you *peaked* at the Bible, for the justification of Capital Punishment for murder, then I will too, for justification of Capital Punishment for sodomy 🙂
And don’t be shy David R. you can jump in anytime 🙂
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Doug,
And those who engage in divorce.
Do they get your ax, as well?
Premarital sex?
Off with their head?
You seem to want death, for sexual acts unfamiliar to you.
I understand the “ick” factor…but I’m willing to admit that I should not confuse my prejudices with God’s vengeance…and then justify my sins by claiming God’s grace.
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Doug, we all agree sodomy is a sin and that like all sins, is punishable by an eschatological curse. But the issue here is one of Hermeneutics 101. You’re misguidedly claiming universal applicability for typological ordinances. You realize the Mosaic economy was a pedagogue unto Christ, right?
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Sorry my questions led to all of this…
I have never heard of such! So, since we have the death penalty we should also execute homosexuals? Ok, fine but, if we do it as the bible tells us we have to stone them correct?
This is really disturbing me Doug. What if I am a homosexual and am imprisoned. Then, I repent of my wickedness. Do I still die because if I murder someone and then repent I am still on death row.
Also, punishment for murdering someone isn’t distinctly a Christian thing. Christian or not societies don’t work out when murderers get to roam the streets doing what they please to whomever. I assumed the reason why stealing and murder were the two commandments western society punished if broken were because those two have an effect on lots of people, random or not so random. So that coveting something or being in an adulterous relationship just don’t mean the same thing when talking about keeping a society relatively safe. But, I am pretty sure you have an answer to this so I am interested to hear.
However, I believe Doug is also operating from the notion that we were a Christian nation until when exactly? Doug, how many homosexuals were executed in this country in its beginnings? I didn’t know it was illegal and you seem to know everything about Levitical law which is really astounding and maybe frightening. I am not sure yet.
One last thing. Can you give me a list of prominent theologians who are advocates of theonomy? Thanks.
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Luther, I’ve read the Law very carefully, and while out of wed-lock sex is most certainly a sin, it’s not given the death penalty, except in some extreme cases. Divorce? No, that is not a Capital crime either.
David R. the *ceremonial law* was a tutor unto Christ. Not the DP’s for rape, murder, sodomy, child molesting, beating up ones parents, bestiality, kidnapping, blasphemy, and adultery. And I have yet to hear any exegesis that would infer that perspective. As in none
But, let me play alone: How is executing a murderer a tutor to Christ? How is executing a rapist, a tutor to Christ? How is executing a child molester a tutor to Christ. And now that Christ has come, what are we to do?
How is making just restitution a tutor to Christ? Quick answer, it isn’t!! All those punishments exhibit perfect socio political justice. In fact, God’s Law is to be a light for all the Nations, the very model of justice, and how a just society should govern.
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Robin, check out “By This Standard” by Greg Bahnsen. It’s well thought out, and a good read. Theonomy just means God’s Law. And some theonomists are said to be cranky and mean. We all have bad days, amen? Check out Covenant media foundation, they have a bunch of Greg Bahnsen’s tapes, as well as some other excellent resouces.
Blessings,
Doug
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Doug, the judicial penalties were a type of eschatological judgment, revealing God’s righteous wrath against sin and pointing forward to the eternal punishment awaiting all who refuse to trust in the Mediator who endured that punishment on our behalf.
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Doug says; “BTW Sean, if the death penalty for murder were on trial, I would argue by the exact same standard, God’s Word. Murderers and homosexuals both deserve the death penalty “BECAUSE GOD SAYS SO”!!!!! I know that is true, because the Bible is the very Word of God.”
Sean says: Doug, you were the cat who just previously argued that even theonomists can’t agree on penal sanctions for a modern society. It’s “tricky” remember? I’ll tell you what, you produce for me the tablets written on stone by God Himself, for application outside a plot of land in Palestine well over 2000 years ago, as prescribed for the United States and throw in a new Moses and a burning bush, and give me some God given dimensions for a new temple and throw in a God-written addendum that details how Jesus Christ was insufficient and failed in his efforts as the second Adam to fulfill the law and the prophets, can’t forget those prophets, and how God is re-instituting temple sacrifice in a typical manner in anticipation of a 3rd Adam and throw in a glory theophany or two and start raising people from the dead and healing a couple people and then die a martyr’s death for your commitment to a proposed new covenant and……………………………….I probably still won’t buy off on it. Oh wait, then explain to me Daniel’s behavior in Babylon outside the promised land and how that figures into your thinking, and…………………………………….never mind. To paraphrase my favorite theologian; ‘theonomy is a misreading of scripture on a MASSIVE scale.” You’ve literally missed the entire impact of the incarnation and Jesus’ death and life by your misdirected insistence on Mosaic application this side of the resurrection of our Christ.
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Speaking of favorite theologians, another one worth listening to said the following:
“Theonomy, therefore, is not merely an error, though it has manifestly been regarded as erroneous by the Reformed tradition. It is the error du jour, the characteristic error of an unwise generation. It is the error of a generation that has abandoned the biblically-mandated quest for wisdom on the assumption that the Bible itself contains all that we need to know about life’s various enterprises. It is the proof-textual, Bible-thumping, literalist, error par excellence. It is not merely the view of the unwise, but the view of the never-to-be-wise, because it is the view of those who wrongly believe that scripture sufficiently governs this arena, and who, for this reason, will never discover in the natural constitution of the human nature or the particular circumstances of given peoples what must be discovered to govern well and wisely.”
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And do hard neo-cals ever really listen to Kuyper:
Does it follow, therefore, that the sooner we stop our observation of life the better, so that we can seek the rules of state polity outside life in Holy Scripture? This is how some mistakenly think that we reason…However, the opposite is true. Calvinism has never supported this untenable position but has always opposed it with might and main. A state polity that dismisses and scorns the observation of life and simply wishes to duplicate the situation of Israel, taking Holy Scripture as a complete code of Christian law for the state, would, according to the spiritual fathers of Calvinism, be the epitome of absurdity. Accordingly, in their opposition to Anabaptism as well as the Quakers, they expressed unreservedly their repugnance for this extremely dangerous and impractical theory.
If we considered the political life of the nations as something unholy, unclean and wrong in itself, it would lie outside of human nature. Then the state would have to be seen as a purely external means of compulsion, and every attempt to discover even a trace of God’s ordinances in our own nature would be absurd. Only special revelation would then be capable of imparting to us the standards for that external means of discipline. Wherever, thus, this special revelation is absent, as in the heathen worlds, nothing but sin and distortion would prevail, which would therefore not even be worth the trouble of our observation…However, if we open the works of Calvin, Bullinger, Beza and Marnix van St. Aldegonde, it becomes obvious that Calvinism consciously chooses sides against this viewpoint. The experience of the states of antiquity, the practical wisdom of their laws, and the deep insight of their statesmen and philosophers is held in esteem by these men, and these are cited in support of their own affirmations and consciously related to the ordinances of God. The earnest intent of the political life of many nations can be explained in terms of the principles of justice and morality that spoke in their consciences. They cannot be explained simply as blindness brought on by the Evil One; on the contrary, in the excellence of their political efforts we encounter a divine ray of light…
…with proper rights we contradict the argument that Holy Scripture should be seen as the source from which a knowledge of the best civil laws flow. The supporters of this potion talk as though after the Fall nature, human life, and history have ceased being a revelation of God and As though, with the closing of this book, another book, called Holy Scriptures, as opened for us. Calvinism has never defended this untenable position and will never acknowledge it as its own…We have refuted the notion that we entertain the foolish effort to patch together civil laws from Bible texts, and we have declared unconditionally that psychology, ethnology, history and statistics are also for us given which, by the light of God’s Word, must determine the standards for the state polity.
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David R. as I have pointed out to you before, not all Mosaic penal sanctions were death penalties. So your theory falls apart! God’s law was “eye for and eye” which is poetry for perfect socio political justice. Who, other than God can tell us what punishment is perfect retribution in a fallen world? Exactly how should we view *certain* crimes-sins? When does the punishment fit the crime? Well, as some have pointed out, God hasn’t explicitly said everything, about everything, but he’s given us enough moral universals, that with his written Word, first and foremost, wisdom, common sense, the fruit of the Spirit, and God’s common grace we can govern society in a God honoring way. As long as we base it on his Law. After all, He is the King of Kings! So the general equity of the Mosaic Law is perpetual, why? Because justice and morality are coterminous. Any lasting Nation must found it laws of justice, which is the foundation of God’s own throne.
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Doug,
Why didn’t Paul teach a form of political activism, to reorder the Roman government, to resemble OT Israel? And why didn’t he demand, that all those sexually degenerate members of the early Church be executed?
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Doug, something tells me that you have the same discussion ad nausem everywhere you go.;)
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Doug, I don’t see why civil penalties have to be capital in order to be pedagogical. But by your logic, since not all Mosaic civil laws are about punishing crime, I guess your theory falls apart. What about levirate marriage? Wasn’t that God’s law? Isn’t dispensing with it autonomy?
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Doug,
Have you ever considered a doctrinal rehab? You need to get away for about 3 months before you do more damage to others who care about you.
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I once suggested that to my arminian brother and he blew a gasket on me.
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Zrim, nice Kuyper quote. Would you consider Kuyper to be Kuyperian? A neo-Cal? A transformationist? Maybe ad fonts is the order of the day. Don’t confuse the real thing with modern practitioners who have veered off course.
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To all, would R2K’s say that the general equity of the Mosaic judicial code referred to in WCF XIX would be equivalent to natural law?
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Terry, the short answer is yes. The extended answer comes from RS Clark’s “Recovering the Reformed Confession” in the conclusion of his brief theonomic critique (pg. 65):
The Mosaic civil laws do not oblige any noncanonical civil authority any more than the “general e4quirty” of the civil laws may require. Whatever “general equity” does mean, there is no evidence that it means anything like “the abiding validity of the law of God in exhaustive details” [the theomonic mantra]. The only law that does have abiding, exhaustive validity is the natural or creational law delivered to Adam and restated at Sinai. WCF 19.5 says, in part, “The moral law doth for ever bind all, as well justified persons as others, to the obedience thereof; and that, not only in regard of the matters contained in it, but also in respect of the authority of God, the Creator, who gave it.” It is the moral law, that is, the law delivered in creation, which survives the expiration of the Israelite national covenant.”
Re your neo-cal comment, the Protestant Reformation was never about cultural reformation or impact but only ecclesiastical reform. As long as the point is cultural influence, neo-Calvinism is off the Reformation rails, be it the soft or hard versions. And after spending the last 15 years in your culturalist CRC, I’d say soft neo-Calvinism is quite off track.
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David R. we longer have the Levirate marriage in the New Covenant but we are not to be unequally yoked. So there is a New Covenant application given to us by Paul.
To all: What I meant about the tricky part is there is some debate about the ceremonial nature of certain laws. Just what constitutes the ceremonial between the moral? How would we enforce the Sabbath Laws, in the New Covenant, and such? Should we have blue laws? That is what I meant by differences of opinion among theonomists. We still have much work to do, to form a consensus.
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Sean, you poor confused man, let me try to help you out. Daniel was a true man of God, who realized the time he lived. Israel was under God’s divine judgment and captivity. Babylonian rule was God’s punishment for Israel’s idolatry. See Isaiah 10:5 to read of this form of judgment from the mouth of God. So Daniel is a poor example, today in America we live in a democratic republic. We get to vote! We are encouraged to voice our opinion. We change and modify laws all the time! Babylonian rule, was a dictorship! My question is, by what standard *should) we base our laws? Easy! We should base them on God’s revealed Word.
Christians today are not to use the *physical* sword for the advancement of our faith. We do use the sword of the Spirit, which is the Gospel, amen? The Magistrate uses the sword to punish crime. Now my point is very simple, shouldn’t we want crime punished in a God glorifying way? Shall we execute the jay walker, and let the abortion Dr free? When should sin be considered a crime? God give us some much needed guidance in these areas. And we need to look to all of God’s Word, because God has given us enough moral universals to make good God honoring laws. While we still have some work ahead of us, with humility, faith, and continued study, God will most certainly show us the way.
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Luther, Paul lived under Roman rule. It was a dictatorship. To say as Paul did, that “Jesus is Lord” was an offensive slap in Cesar’s face. It was the most offensive punch that could be dealt to a Roman ruler. That statement got Paul executed. In fact it became so offensive to Romans, to verbally denounce that phrase, would save the life of any Christian. But to their credit, Christians kept the good confession, Jesus is Lord!
Jesus made clear that his kingdom is not of this world, but it overcomes the world. And what overcomes this world now? Our faith. So we must understand the times we live in. BTW read Daniel chapter two starting in verse 44; it speaks how God will one day crush the Roman Empire. God did some three hundred years after 70AD.
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“and all I heard were the sounds of science.”
by Art Garfunkel and Bill Nye
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Alex: don’t make everything about italics.
Now that is rich!
Cheers…
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Zrim, of course, the point isn’t cultural reform, but Christians become agents of the kingdom (salt, light, yeast, mustard seeds) in the world and in their vocations. As they themselves submit to the Lordship of Christ in their lives it impacts the world. This includes all aspects of God’s Created order (which in a neo-Calvinist perspective is ontologically rich–not just physical/spiritual, church/state, but includes all sorts of social aspect–think Dooyeweerd here). Transformed people in those parts of the world result in a transformed world.
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Doug says; “So Daniel is a poor example”
Sean; Doug I’m sure any argument that eclipses the argument for Mosaic civil law and penalty for all non-theocratic, non-chartered, plots of land outside of a small plot in Palestine is gonna be a poor example for you. I understand how that refutes, rebuts and otherwise renders your position impotent.
Sean; Doug I have a better challenge for you, though Daniel in Babylon is a humdinger, here’s WCF 19:4; To them also, as a body politic, he gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require.
Now the challenge is for you to render the term general equity in such a way, that it does no violence to the statement at the beginning of 19:4;
” To them also, as a body politic, he gave sundry judicial laws, which EXPIRED TOGETHER with the STATE of THAT PEOPLE. Remember general equity can’t be construed, according to the confession, in any way that assumes to itself the “various sundry judicial laws, which EXPIRED together with the STATE of that People. Why you may ask; BECAUSE they EXPIRED TOGETHER with the STATE of That People. Oh let the rhetorical gymnastics and theological contortions and the utter mutilating of WCF 19:4 begin.
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Doug, please elaborate on how the admonition to not be unequally yoked is a “New Covenant application” of the law of levirate marriage. I’m afraid I’m not quite seeing the connection….
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David R., please don’t ask Doug to comment more than he has. Yikes!
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Terry, just how long have been in the CRC and have you really been paying attention? The point is indeed cultural renewal and reform. But I think James Hunter (T Change the World) has a better bead on the realities of the world than your simplistic transformationalist idea that more Christians means a transformed world:
If there is an exemplar whose life mission touches all of these themes and strategies—and who is celebrated as such—it is William Wilberforce (1757-1833). Wilberforce was a member of the British House of Commons and spent over forty years seeking to end slavery and “reform the manners” of his society. He was a devout Christian who believed that true personal change came through salvation by faith in Jesus Christ, and his ideals were fed by his deep faith. As an activist, he led a social movement committed to the moral reform of British society and against much opposition eventually prevailed in abolishing the legalized slave trade. Wilberforce was indeed, a great man and a model of what one courageous person willing to step into the fray can do.
At the end of the day, the message is clear: even if not in the lofty realms of political life that he was called to, you too can be a Wilberforce. In your own sphere of influence, you too can be an Edwards, a Dwight, a Booth, a Lincoln, a Churchill, a Dorothy Day, a Martin Luther King, a Mandela, a Mother Teresa, a Vaclav Havel, a John Paul II, and so on. If you have the courage and hold to the right values and if you think Christianly with an adequate Christian worldview, you too can change the world.
This account is almost entirely mistaken.
Thus ends chapter two. Hunter then goes on to explain what one might hope would be quite obvious to the sane and sober mind. In a word, the real world works in a much more complicated way than certain wistful hearts might imagine. In another word, “Culture…is a knotty, difficult, complex, perhaps impossible puzzle.” If that is fundamentally understood it trends to cast a less-than-enthusiastic reception of ubiquitous calls to transform the world. In chapter four he suggests an alternative view of culture and cultural change in eleven propositions (which is actually the title of the chapter). He begins with one alternative assumption that “one cannot merely change worldviews or question one’s own very easily” and suggests that “Most of what really counts, in terms of what shapes and directs us, we are not aware of; it operates far below what most of us are capable of consciously grasping.” From there a handful of others follow, among which are: culture is a product of history (“It is better to think of culture as a thing, if you will, manufactured not by lone individuals but rather by institutions and the elites who lead them”); ideas only sometimes have consequences (“Weaver’s statement [that ideas have consequences] would be truer if it were reworded as: ‘Under specific conditions and circumstances ideas can have consequences’”); and cultures change from the top down, rarely is ever from the bottom up (“In other words, the work of world-making and world-changing are, by and large, the work of elites; gatekeepers who provide creative direction and management within spheres of social life…In a very crude formulation, the process begins with theorists who generate ideas and knowledge; moves to researchers who explore, revise, expand, and validate ideas; moves on to teachers and educators who pass those ideas on to others, then passes on to popularizes who simplify ideas and practitioners who apply those ideas”).
In keeping with the spirit of the others, Proposition Six is that culture is generated within networks. Here Hunter begins with what he cites as “the great man (or person) view of history.”
It is a Hegelian idea of leadership and history, popularized by the nineteenth-century Scottish historian, Thomas Carlyle…For Carlyle, heroes shaped history through the vision of their leadership, the power of their intellect, the beauty and delight of their aesthetic, and animating it all a certain inspiration from above…[from Moses to Jesus to Buddha to Aristotle to Julius Caesar to Napoleon to Aquinas to Luther to Darwin to Freud to Monet and Degas] All form an aristocracy of knowledge, talent, ability, ambition, and virtue, and so endowed have stood like switchmen on the train tracks of history; it is their genius and the genius of other heroic individuals that have guided the evolution of civilization this way or that; for better or for worse.
The only problem with this perspective is that it is mostly wrong. Against this great-man view of history and culture, I would argue (along with many others) that the key actor in history is not individual genius but rather the network and the new institutions that are created out of those networks. And the more “dense” the network—that is, the more active and interactive the network—the more influential it could be. This is where the stuff of culture and cultural change is produced…My point is simply that charisma and genius and their cultural consequences do not exist outside of networks of similarly oriented people and similarly aligned institutions.
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Dr. Hart, sorry! I am curious about that connection though….
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David R. you’re right, the Leverite institute became obsolete when Christ went to the cross. Jesus is now our Grat High Preist, amen? What I was attempting to point out, is that in the older Mosaic economy Jews were forbid to marry outside of their race. In the New Covenant were are no longer bound to race, but to faith.
Blessings,
Doug
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Zrim, for the record–I was a faculty member at Calvin from 1986-1997. I have been a member since 2002 and just finishing up my second term as elder. I was a delegate to Synod 2010 and am delegate to Synod 2012. I’ve taught a semester long class on the history of the CRC in our church. As I’ve said many times, I’m unhappy with much of so-called neo-Calvinism in the CRC. I’d be a lot happier if we’d distinguish between what the church does and what neo-Calvinists do in their respective vocations. Neo-Calvinism does not equal CRC/Calvin College. There are significant neo-Calvinist impulses there, but I fear that we’re tilting toward social gospelism (which is not neo-Calvinism).
I’d suggest that my notion is not simplistic–just your reading of my notion. You seem incapable of making distinctions. Anyone who can’t distinguish between neo-Calvinism, theonomy, social gospelism, emergent church social action, the Christian right, God’s politics, etc. is just not thinking clearly.
Let’s pursue the “general equity” = natural law idea a bit more. I have some sympathy with Doug’s concern about how we define natural law. I don’t really have sympathy with his belief that penal sanctions are part of the general equity. I think penal sanctions are part of judicial code specifics that are expired. Nonetheless, where do we find out about these things? This is where your neo-Calvinist/Kuyperian quote comes in handy. It’s Creational revelation. We learn it by studying the world, human behavior, successful political systems, statistics! but with those empirical studies undergirded by a Christian worldview, Christian presuppositions informed by the theology of scripture about the nature of God, the nature of man, the nature of the world, eschatology, etc. This is neo-Calvinism pure and simple. If natural law is God’s law (Is it?), then we best understand it by having Christian perspective on the world as the backdrop of our thinking.
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To all my brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus; our subject is “The problem with Gay Marriage” take a listen to Douglas Wilson’s latest effort. It’s well worth the reading 🙂
Marriage is a political act, and not an individual choice. How you marry is a way of testifying to what city you belong to. Who defines marriage? The difficulty we are having in our generation in answering this question shows how theology shapes and drives everything.
If God created the world, and put one man and one woman in it, married them to each other, and established that as a pattern for the rest of human history, then marriage should be defined in accordance with that reality. If He did nothing of the kind, and we actually evolved out of the primordial goo, then we get to shape and define it however we would like it to go.
One other item of Christian theology has to be taken into account, and that is the reality of the fall into sin. The Christian approach to marriage in the context of mere Christendom deals with both of these realities — the creational given of male and female, and the sinful propensity we have to hump the world. Creational sexuality and sinful sexuality are both factors.
Our laws about marriage must therefore do two things, not just one. They must honor what God has established in the first place, and they must restrain (by not honoring with the recognition of marriage) any of the other forms of sexual congress that sinful men have come up with.
When Jesus taught on divorce, He appeals to the creation pattern.
“And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder” (Matt. 19:4-6).
Reasoning by analogy from this, we can see other expressions of sexuality are excluded. A man should not be allowed to marry himself. It is not good that man should be alone (Gen. 2:18). A man should not be allowed to marry multiple wives. God said that He would make a helper suitable to him (Gen. 1:18). Bestiality is excluded. Adam did not find a helper suitable to him among the animals (Gen. 2:20). Homosexuality is excluded because God brought Adam a woman, and not another man (Gen. 2:22). And divorce is excluded because God is the one who brought the man and woman together (Matt. 19:6).
But of course if none of this happened, and our ancestors climbed down out of the trees circa 15 million years ago, then evolutionary shape shifting is the order of the day, and there is absolutely no reason to not let people marry whoever or whatever they want.
The marriage debates are a prime illustration of why governmental neutrality on basic religious issues is an impossibility. He who says A must eventually say B, and now that we are getting to the end of this seamy chain of syllogisms, we are confronted with the demand to allow homosexuals to marry. But this is not the end of it, and shows why it is so important to get down to first principles.
The secularists want to say that in addition to straights, we have a range of options with the fetching label of GLBTQ. Anybody who thinks that list of letters won’t grow just isn’t paying attention. Pederasty, bestiality, hetero-polygamy, hetero-polyandry, and bisexual-polyoptions are all waiting in the wings.
The reason why homosexual marriage won’t end the debates (and the hate crimes of those who take up the wrong side of the debate) is that these marriage “reforms” clearly have not solved the problems of the bisexuals. With our arbitrary limitation of marital status to two and only two people, we are plainly telling the bisexual that he must choose between a heterosexual marriage or a homosexual marriage, but that he can’t do both. “But I am both!” he wails . . . suppose this poor little buster wants to express all of his sexual yearnings within the holy bonds of matrimony, and the clerk down at the county courthouse, just seething with hate, won’t give him a license with a place on it for three signatures. And then the Muslim guy, next in line, wants one with a place for four signatures.
This is all perfectly irrational, of course, but the real problem with rational consistency lies with those Christians who want to fight this latest onslaught without resorting to Genesis and the foundational authority of God’s Word (in short, without fighting for mere Christendom). What these secularists (or sexularists, that works too) are advocating is perfectly consistent with their premises, and with the sexual history of the human race (a sinful sexual history). This is why Christians can’t fight this on the basis of “traditional values.” The sexual traditions of humanity, considered apart from God’s Word, have contained way too many child brides, harems, serial polygamists, and concubines to provide us with the appropriate guidance here.
If you want a knock down argument for mere Christendom, look no further than a marriage referendum on a state ballot near you.
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Terry, don’t get me wrong. Even as the CRC is on a trajectory toward broad evangelicalism, there is still a lot more Reformation in neo-Calvinism (at least the sort with which I am familiar) than in broad evangelicalism. To be a Refomed culturalist requires a better sense of creational goodness. But the project takes an unfortunate left turn in its eventual confusion of creation and redemption.
But I don’t see why natural law needs the help of the Bible. That’s what it sounds like when you say, “…but with those empirical studies undergirded by a Christian worldview, Christian presuppositions informed by the theology of scripture about the nature of God, the nature of man, the nature of the world, eschatology, etc.” If both books are God’s then why does one need the help of the other? That makes it sound like one of God’s books is insufficient for its ordained task. Sure, they can compliment each other, I’ve no problem with that. But the way neo-Cals speak it’s almost as if God’s natural revelation makes no sense without the Bible. Sure it does. If it’s sufficient to eternally condemn (per Paul) then how can it not be sufficient to provisionally guide?
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Doug, if you are confused about why 2k doesn’t execute a kidnapper by now it’s because you keep suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.
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“undergirded by a Christian worldview, Christian presuppositions informed by the theology of scripture about the nature of God, ”
Terry, isn’t the concept of a Christian W V, aside from the theonomy malaise, the very thing that is under contention. What is a Christian worldview divorced from the church proper, and the normal means of grace. I understand that from Kuyper’s persp. he wants to push the Augustinian antithetical back from Augustine’s religious (cultic) and moral moorings to the epistemological but is that legitimate? It’s certainly not a move that the reformers were doing. Even Kuyper only established four special revelation principles, very broad in scope, and then only if the culture was adrift. Then once those 4 very broad principles were re-established, the book of special revelation was to be removed and the book of general revelation took back over. So, I’m not sure where Kuyper helps the neo-cal’s in more narrowly or specifically defining natural law specifics as it regards anything that has ‘feet on the ground’ per se. The very contention seems to be what are; “Christian principles” apart from ecclesiastical concerns. That’s why the charge of mere platitude gets levied against neo-cal’s. The minute you attach ‘Christian’ as a modifier to the action or endeavor you’ve necessarily granted it a mantle of authority that a faithful believer’s response to needs to be to obey. So now we are trafficking in the realm of christian liberty and ‘thus sayeth the Lord’. But has He said?
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Doug, amen. And the Mosaic civil code expired, amen? Christ (not David or Solomon) is our great King. BTW, levirate marriage was designed to provide an heir for a deceased man. It had nothing at all to do with intermarriage. (Speaking of BS, the smell here on the west coast is currently pretty awful….)
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Sean, “Christian”, as I’ve tried to explain before is merely applying your Christian faith to life. It’s in the realm of liberty since there’s no specific “thou shalts”. You all must have grown up or been discipled by some real domineering pastors. I’ve never in 35 years of interaction with this type of thinking experienced the kind of conscience-binding that you all seem to have had. The closest might be Calvin College’s requirement that my kids be in a Christian school. Even there homeschooling counted. And, of course, no one forced me to accept the conditions of employment–I did so quite willingly.
Zrim, I don’t really understand why you keep saying that I say that natural law needs the help of the Bible. The only sense I do so is when I say that all thinking requires “help”. We call it the noetic effect of the Fall. Our minds are darkened about all sorts of truth, not just “spiritual” truth. But God allows the rain to fall on the just and the unjust. He restrains the wicked for the sake of his creation and especially for the church and it’s gospel-preaching task.
I was just asking “is natural law, God’s law?” I think all laws of nature are God’s law. His divine Word by which he governs the universe at all levels: physical, biological, psychological, social, moral, etc.
There’s an interesting essay by CVT on how both books need each other. You might want to check it out. The Bible doesn’t include a lexicon, for example. Apparently, it relies on the other book to provide that. Reformed people including Calvin and the confessions speak of special revelation as being the spectacles through which we see creation aright. I think you’ve adopted an extreme version of 2k to say that the two books don’t need each other.
Doug, as I said earlier. I don’t see how specific penal sanctions are necessarily part of general equity.
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But, Terry, Paul says that the Gentiles who do not have the law do what the law requires and thus show that it is naturally written on the heart, evidently without any aid from the Bible. Is Paul being extreme? Does anyone really need the Bible to know stealing and adultery are wrong? Abimelech didn’t. But I’m not denying sinners need help, I’m questioning whether God’s revelation needs help. Sinners are deficient, to be sure. But are either of God’s books? I say no. Both are sufficient for their respective tasks. How is that extreme, as in “boo!”?
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Sean, “Christian”, as I’ve tried to explain before is merely applying your Christian faith to life. It’s in the realm of liberty since there’s no specific “thou shalts”.
So it does devolve down into platitudes and feel-goodism’s. Which is fine as far as it goes, sorta. So when one says I want to distinction between ‘Christian’ school and otherwise, one means he’s earnest about his faith in a very non-specific way but with particularlity to education but in a nebulous way, but it’s important, and this is distinct from catechesis, but still in service to the antithetical but one isn’t sure how, other than it’s earnestness to be distinctly Christian as opposed to being not, because the lack of specifity to public education or the lack of a ‘Christian’ moniker renders public education as what?
I can’t see how this doesn’t denigrate at least to some degree the sufficiency or even excellence, for what it’s for, of general revelation as it serves the public interest apart from religious particularity. Especially if the religious particularity renders no ‘specifics’ as to execution of the same task. In fact the tendency of such use of the term ‘Christian’ is going to serve only to water down it’s particularity and sanctioned use in the church as the church goes about it’s official and exclusively warranted role. To say nothing of the implicit and often time explicit stratification which occurs often between those who educate their children in a ‘Christian’ way, and those who avail themselves of a religiously nonspecific form.
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Zrim, so what’s happened in the case of homosexuality? Has nature suddenly become less clear? Also, I’d be a bit hesitant to refer to Romans here. If you read on, you find that no one does it. And, we see from the previous chapter that truth gets suppressed. How do you know which is which? Sure you can find examples of unbelievers recognizing God’s law…neo-Cals recognize common grace–sometimes God gives pagans clear vision, but it’s a work of grace.
You may not think your “separation of books” view is not extreme, but it’s not really historic Reformed theology.
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Sean, you’re really stuck on the notion that “Christian” means redemptive or churchly. The way I’m using is that “Christian” means thinking about or doing something self-consciously according to God’s Creational norms. Check out Section 5 here: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/topics/Physical%20Science/Gray1999.html
That just isn’t going to happen in the public classroom. I can’t build my education system up around the fundamental confession that God is the Creator of the heavens and the earth and ought to worshiped and served as Creator. In a Christian school I can do that. Sure the details of my chemistry course at Calvin College might look very similar to the details of my chemistry course at Colorado State. That’s because the discipline of chemistry is rooted in Creation and for the most part reflect a Christian perspective in the details.
I’m with Van Til in not granting to the unbeliever a true knowledge of the world that doesn’t included the fact of its God-createdness and the necessity of a doxological response. They get along “after a fashion” but they knowledge is fundamentally darkened.
You can call that a platitude if you want. I consider a profound difference in the fundamental way of looking at the world.
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Terry, I take it you mean that because homosexuality enjoys a seemingly widespread acceptance that natural law has let us down. So we need the Bible to make it clear that it’s not. But haven’t you ever heard of lots of people getting it wrong? If most of your students think cheating is acceptable does that mean the law on their hearts is deficient? But how will the Bible help? Lots of people deny the gospel and no matter how much Bible you give them they still suppress the truth in unrighteousness. The problem isn’t either one of God’s books-it’s us.
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Terry, perhaps you’ve heard of Will and Grace? Once many people realized that homosexuals were not as bizarre as we were led to believe, then homosexuality didn’t seem all that bad. The same has happened with evangelicals and Roman Catholics. Gee whilickers, that John Paul II sure was a great and smart guy, how could Rome ever be a synagogue of Satan?
This is where some natural theology might help. Sinners are still people. Sin doesn’t turn them into monsters even if it sure would help if life was more like a cartoon than a dilemma.
BTW, I know that confessionalism is on the wane in the CRC, but surely you know that the Belgic Confession makes plausible Zrim’s separation of two books:
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Darryl, I know the BC well. I like to think of it as the 37 points of Calvinism. Seems to me BC holds the two books together as means by which God has revealed himself. What!?! Creation is revelatory! Seems like something that should only happen in church.
I make no monsters out of homosexuals. That’s my point to some degree. Homosexuals are in all other respects normal, functioning, productive people. I’m not sure that I would think anything of it if it weren’t for scripture. I think the argument goes somewhat like 4% (or whatever number you wish) of people are homosexual by nature. Why not just accept that as nature (not against nature) and live with it. Some evangelicals are making that argument. Your appeal to making babies is overly simplistic, etc, I don’t see how natural law helps you here.
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Terry,
I guess I am looking for a lot more specificity in the use of the term Christian. I get your point about a doxological response but I resist the use of the antithetical as it gets pushed back to the epistemological and than rendered as foundational to a reformed world-view. It’s a view that actually obscures the truth of Rom 2:14-15 and ends up proving too much by obscuring the reality of the Imago Dei. I get it, I’m not dutch. I’m much more comfortable with the reformers spirituality and it’s churchly orientation. Luther and Calvin end up revolving around the church, it’s form, and the sacraments, the ‘dutch’ around worldview and transformation . The former does a better job of protecting and offering a particularity to their religious expression, that the latter, unwittingly and unintendedly no doubt, does not IMO.
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Terry, but all 2kers say that everything is revelatory. The question is what the books reveal. You can’t find Christ in nature, hence the 2k insistence on a strong distinction between creation and redemption. The idea of redeeming culture or kingdom work makes havoc of a distinction that paleo-Calvinists took for granted.
As for homosexuals, if not natural law what have you got? The Bible? An established church and Christian law? I don’t think natural law is going to solve everything. But Christendom didn’t work out so well either. I’m all for limping along until our Lord strides back.
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Doug: I’m not sure if this is still relevant but I don’t agree with (civil) death penalty for murder.
Jack: I did not italicise that sentence! You italicised them! I don’t know how to italicise on here. I’m just a poor ill-educated Scottish Presbyterian. You big city types are trying to confuscate me!
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Doug Sowers
Doug Sowers
Posted May 17, 2012 at 7:03 am | Permalink
Luther, Paul lived under Roman rule. It was a dictatorship. To say as Paul did, that “Jesus is Lord” was an offensive slap in Cesar’s face. It was the most offensive punch that could be dealt to a Roman ruler. That statement got Paul executed. In fact it became so offensive to Romans, to verbally denounce that phrase, would save the life of any Christian. But to their credit, Christians kept the good confession, Jesus is Lord!
So you do believe that God’s law is relative to political trends.
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Alex, poor in italics but so rich in irony! 😉
You’re a good sport.
cheers…
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Zrim says: Doug, if you are confused about why 2k doesn’t execute a kidnapper by now it’s because you keep suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.
Huh?! Zrim, that is disingenuous at best, and probably more like a big fat lie. I have ask our radical 2K expert Dr Hart what he thinks is an appropriate punishment for a kidnapper, with his *keen* knack for interpreting Natural Law, and you know what he said? He doesn’t even know if his wife or Pastor knows the answer to that question. So Darryl is hopelessly confused himself. In other words, natural law is as clear as mud, when it comes to informing society how to punish crime. Instead of accusing me of suppressing the truth, how about just telling us Zrim? What’s a just penalty for kidnapping in a radical two kingdom world?
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Doug, as suggested by the Clark quote above, I take natural law to be synonymous with the moral law of God (per WCF 19.5). So when you say that natural law is as clear as mud, I take that to be a rejection of the clarity of God’s natural revelation. More suppression in unrighteousness.
But I’m not a legal jurist, so how should I know what a just penalty is for kidnapping? That it should be punished is clear, how is another matter and one best answered by those fit for the task. I know you’ll say that’s a wicked dodge, but it’s really a way of saying I know my place. Do you know yours?
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Darryl, I’ll probably get in big trouble for this but I’m all for clarity in the church on the issue of homosexuality, but less certain about how to handle it in a pluralistic society. I don’t really expect unbelievers to follow God’s law especially with respect to 1st table issues or consensual sexual matters, drug use, etc. Sounds almost 2k, eh?. A pillarized, worldview informed society seems much more neo-Cal consistent that a natural law or theonomic based morality. I lean toward the APJ model where government allows and supports free exercise of religion including morality. I understand that this gets fuzzy on some moral issues like abortion, liberal government theft by taxation. But I’m not sure natural law helps. Politics is inherently give and take and involves a diverse group with multiple underlying interests. Politics is about how to work together to have functioning society. And in this common grace era is pluriform in supporting worldviews. It seems to me that natural law arguments only work when you some kind of common culture/heritage–say western Protestant thought–as you ably outline in A Secular Faith. But without that common ground there’s little agreement and it’s harder to make the case.
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Terry, whatever APJ may embrace, Jim Skillen has written many times about pursuing a biblical political philosophy. I don’t know where the Bible argues for pluralism either in Israel or the church. So if the Bible is going to be the norm for political theorizing (or for some other w-v’s), then I still don’t know where you get gay marriage.
Beware, Doug Sowers is going to go recon on you.
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Zrim says: But I’m not a legal jurist, so how should I know what a just penalty is for kidnapping?
Thanks for the humor Steve; I haven’t laughed that hard in a couple weeks. You’re (answer?) personifies why Natural Law says nothing as to how *we* should punish crime in this fallen world. Even you have no idea what Natural Law says to a specific question. Every time your *theory* gets put to the test, it fails. I will gracefully bow out of the conversation. I do get an odd feeling reading this blog; like watching a train wreck.
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Doug,
Get back to us when the theonomist cabal works out all the “tricky” stuff. Let’s not do Tyler Texas all over again. Even Greg was aghast.
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Darryl, you seem to want proof-texts. I prefer to think in terms of broad theological principles based on scripture. Couldn’t you argue that pluralism is based on the “common grace” in between character of the present situation where the kingdom (in the neo-Cal sense) is side by side with the old age. Thus a Christian perspective embraces pluralism in the state. If any worldview supports same sex unions then a “Christian” political philosophy could endorse protecting that worldview’s place in a pluralistic society without necessarily endorsing it as a moral position. We already do that with non-Christian religions. It seems pluralism is already partially incorporated into our political system. Why homosexual unions or polygamy or marijuana use or … Is a problem, I don’t really get.
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“And if we look around and see non-Reformed opposition to gay marriage, and still cling to w-w, then don’t we need to say that Roman Catholics have the same w-w as Reformed Protestants?”
This is very poor reasoning. You are saying that unless two groups agree on exactly every point, then they can’t even be said to be holding to the similar worldviews. So, unless they are perfectly identical, they must be 100% different. But this is simply not true. The Reformed Christian worldview is quite different than the Roman Catholic worldview. Indeed, RC theology goes very wrong on many points. But, that does not mean that Roman Catholics are absolutely wrong on everything. In other words, they still hold to some vestiges of the Biblical worldview. And if they oppose gay marriage, then they are following a true, Biblical worldview on that particular point.
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“As for homosexuals, if not natural law what have you got? The Bible?”
Wow. How flippantly you dismiss the Bible from any relevance to the world around us. Amazing.
“An established church and Christian law? I don’t think natural law is going to solve everything. But Christendom didn’t work out so well either.”
Christendom didn’t work out so well in a previous example, therefore it will never work out well. Can anyone spot the logical fallacies?
“I’m all for limping along until our Lord strides back.”
Amazing. Where does the Bible teach limping? Chapter and verse? Where is the victory? Where is the triumph? Reading these comments is literally depressing. I don’t think this is how our savior wants us to live. Sad, pathetic lives of “limping.”
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Jon,
How about pilgrims living in tents, waiting for a better city. Living quietly, minding our own business and praying for the peace of the city and submitting to those in authority. Suffering indignity for the name of Christ. If your triumphalism looks like that, then we can go celebrate our triumph over a pint.
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Jon,
Where is the victory? Where is the triumph? Reading these comments is literally depressing.
Isn’t that the kind of stuff, Roman Pagans would tease the early Christians with?
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Terry, not proof texts but some kind of acknowledgement that you don’t find the Bible approving of diversity among God’s people. If you want to find an affirmation of diversity, you can’t find it is accounts of redemption. Accounts of creation may be another matter.
But now I really don’t get you. You’re a tranformational libertarian? Anything goes in society, drugs, sex, rock ‘n’ roll? Wouldn’t you at least concede that driving on the same side all the time is good for the welfare of society? Or may people do whatever they want as in the time of Judges?
Even unbelievers seem more of a need for order than you do.
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Jon, it is not reasoning but description. Have you not heard of evangelicals and Catholics together? You don’t think that unity in the culture wars has prompted both sides to think that their religious disagreements are trivial?
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Jon, last time I checked Peter called us strangers and aliens. Breast beat about that.
I don’t disparage the Bible. I’m only trying to get Terry to own up to his theonomic leanings if he abandons some sort of general revelation. Now I learn he’s a full blown libertarian. What was I thinking?
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Darryl, why do you come up with the most ridiculous responses. Do you really think that I make the jump you suggest or that it’s a necessary jump.
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Terry, how is this ridiculous. All immigrants figure out ways to maintain group identity. The Dutch made Christian schools part of the mix. Nothing wrong with this at all, except once assimilation happens and the Dutch become Anglo. Back when I was in the CRC, I heard alot about how Anglos (ie the Dutch) needed to reach out to the Vietnamese and Mexicans around Chicago.
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Darryl, in this thread “ridiculous” referred to your accusation that my “libertarianism” (pluralism) would lead to driving on the wrong side of the road. (The Christian school discussion is part of the other thread.) I still think that’s ridiculous and just a ploy not to engage.
Surely you don’t think I abandon general revelation. I am a theistic evolutionist after all. Where do you get that in the Bible? I’m just not so sure how you get anti-homosexual civil unions out of general revelation. Many of my colleagues in the American Scientific Affiliation (Christians in Science) who think about the genetic and neurological aspects of homosexuality have concluded that homosexuality is a God-created, natural orientation. They argue that the political/social/cultural ought to flow out of such an understanding. It doesn’t seem that far from what the pro-homosexual movement has been saying all along. The biological arguments (the parts don’t fit, difficulty of pro-creation, etc.) are secondary to the “higher” phenomenon of the human mind and human person. It seems to me that’s where general revelation and natural law arguments lead.
Alternatively, you can advance a pluralistic view of things, where different religions/worldviews will end up with different moralities. In our common grace age the political reality (notice how this is rooted in a Christian theological perspective) is that different groups need to be respected and allowed to develop side by side. This is where public education becomes so offensive. The secularizing of education is itself a consequence of a worldview. I would aim this critique at R2K in general as well. R2K embodies a worldview that’s different from a neo-Cal worldview. Your R2K vision imagines a world where religion is unimportant for functioning in the world. Imaging a neo-Cal wanting that to be taught in the school where their children attend when they fundamentally believe that “life is religion”.
I’d guess in Kuyper’s pillarized world in the Netherlands that the R2K’s would side-up with the secularist/Jewish/atheist pillar and leave the neo-Cal’s to their own devices. I wonder why would couldn’t do that here.
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Darryl, what about every tribe and language and people and nation? Sounds like diversity to me.
Actually, I don’t think I was really talking about diversity among God’s people. I was talking about pluralism in the world. We have a pluralistic society and don’t know how to deal with because we try to imprint American civil religion on everyone. I just finished A Secular Faith and as I suspected I agree with much of your recounting of history and it’s analysis. One theme there is the anti-Catholic sentiment in the majority Protestant/American civil religion faith base. The Catholic school/American public school debate is a foretaste of an even more fragmented and multicultural America. If we insist on anything than a principled pluralism then we’re going to have one faction Lord it over the rest and the kind of Balkanization that has occurred elsewhere result. I’m not so sure we’re far from it in the red/blue divide. Okay, you may recognize some Jim Skillen influence there.
One thing I want to make clear is that this pluralism that I’m advocating is not as contrary to the transformational vision as you might think. I would suggest even that it is a bridge of sorts to R2K thinking in recognizing that one’s Christian commitment doesn’t necessarily lead to a theonomic or even Christian ethic informed political view.
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Terry, first you argue for the Christian basis for scientific reflection and then you say that Christian scientists share a similar view of homosexual marriage that non-Christians do. You may understand my confusion. As for your colleagues in ASA, why not apply a little w-w magic on them and ask if they get their view of gay marriage from Christian convictions or from their colleagues at State U.? (In other words, why are you so cynical of 2k but not of your ASA colleagues who are likely not even Reformed?)
And then you make matters worse by saying that my religion has nothing to do with the world. Hello! Ordering my week in order to keep the Lord’s Day holy takes some effort to try to arrange my activitites in the world, as does budgeting our finances so we can tithe, as does figuring out what texts and hymns to use in family worship, not to mention distinguishing how my duties as a husband or professor differ from my responsibilites as an elder. Guys like you run rough shod over such deliberations and then on top of it all insinuate that I am worldly or indifferent to religion.
This is what’s wrong with neo-Calvinism — the self-righteousness it engenders against those who actually try to be devout. Sorry to sound snarky and all, but you hit a nerve and it the one that neo-Cals constantly bludgeon with overwrought claims about w-w.
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Terry, the point stands. You don’t get a model for a pluralistic kingdom of Christ from the Bible. Israel got in trouble for tolerating diversity and the church fathers tried to eliminate departures from one faith, one baptism, one Lord.
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