Greg Bahnsen Answers J. Ligon Duncan From the Grave

“If you sincerely try to stand against the slide into the cesspool of wickedness in our state and our culture by looking for a consistent biblical position from which you might witness against the disgrace all around us as many of us have found you’ll lose your job within the seminary community, you’ll lose your standing in the church establishment you’ll virtually become unemployable even if you’re orthodox you’ll become ostracized you’ll be called dangerous. What’s  wrong with us  that theonomists are called dangerous when we have to lock our windows at night? It’s crazy isn’t it? How many times can a man turn his head and pretend he just doesn’t see?

Of all the wicked heresies and threatening movements facing the church in our day when Westminster Seminary finally organized their faculty to write something in unison, they gave their determined political efforts not to fight socialism, not to fight homosexuality, not abortion, not crime and mayhem in our society, not subjectivism in theology, not dispensationalism, not cultural relativism, not licentiousness, not defection from the New Testament, not defection from the Westminster Confession of Faith all of which are out there and they could give their legitimate efforts to. Boy, the thing they had to write about was Theonomy. How many times can a man turn his head and pretend he just doesn’t see? We are living in the cesspool of relativism and the church doesn’t have an answer. So I praise God, not for my work, I think it’s the grace of god that allows me to have this ministry, but I praise God that the truth that the early church knew and that is found in the Bible is available to us and there are people like you who are willing to say we’ll pay the price, it’s worth it.”

The Bahnsen Institute
Taken from “Law and Disgrace”

Fewer and fewer Christians are willing to pay the price.

Will you?

Puritan Thomas Hall on the Appropriateness of Mocking the Enemy as Found in Scripture

“Mocking and slander is not a Christian way of dealing with anything.”

Dr. J. Ligon Duncan

Mocking is lawful:……”Puritan Presbyterian Thomas Hall destroys the modern tone police:

“IRONIA: ironic, taunting speeches may lawfully be used, as occasion serves.
(1) God himself used them in Genesis 3:22. “The man is become as one of us” – as one of the Trinity, whereby God declares his great disdain of their affectation of an impossible preeminence in being like to God, which is to say:

“By his sin he is become most unlike to us. See how well Satan hath performed his promise to man, is not he become like one of us? And hath not he gained a goodly measure of knowledge, both of good and evil?”

(2) So Judges 10:14. “Go, cry to the gods which ye have chosen.”

It is an ironic upbraiding them for their idolatry, which they found so comfortless, in their greatest need, their idols being no way able to deliver them.

So in Isaiah 14:4, 8-9, God himself teaches his people to deride the proud King of Babylon.

(3) Christ used it in Matthew 26:45: “sleep on,” which is to say: “Go to now, sleep on, take your rest if ye can, behold a perilous time is at hand, wherein ye shall have little list or leisure to sleep.”

(3) Elijah used it to the worshippers of Baal in 1 Kings 18:27. He mocks them, and bids them cry aloud to their drowsy or busy god, peradventure their Baal was asleep, or in a journey, etc.

(4) So Micaiah bids Ahab “go up and prosper,” which is to say: “go up and perish,” 1 Kings 22.15.

(5) So Job (17:2) taunts at his false friends, in an ironic expression: “No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you, which is to say:

“In your own conceit, there are no men in the world but you. No doubt but reason hath left us, and is given wholly unto you; yea wisdom is so tied to your persons, that her conservation and mine depends on yours.”

(6) So Amos 4:4-5: “Come to Bethel, and transgress at Gilgal, multiply transgressions,” etc., which is to say:

“Since by no means ye will be reclaimed, but are desperately set on sin; go on, and fill up the measure of your sin.”

(7) Thus Solomon, without any breach of charity, or stain of holiness, checks the young man’s folly [by saying in] Ecclesiastes 11:9: “Rejoice O young man, etc. but know,” etc.

By an ironic concession, he bids him rejoice and take his pleasure, etc., and then marries all with a stinging but, in the end.

(8) So Paul with a holy scoff, derides the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians 4.8, 10: “ye are full, ye are rich, you reign as kings,” etc. “we are fools, ye are wise,” etc. “we are nothing, you are all.” Etc.

[“Ironica est concessio, exprimens Corinthiorum de seipsis corruptam opinionem.” Aretius.]”

Palm Sunday 2024

34 And they said, “The Lord has need of him.” 35 Then they brought him to Jesus. And they threw their own clothes on the colt, and they set Jesus on him. 36 And as He went, many spread their clothes on the road.
37 Then, as He was now drawing near the descent of the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works they had seen, 38 saying:
“ ‘Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!’
Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”
39 And some of the Pharisees called to Him from the crowd, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples.”
40 But He answered and said to them, “I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would immediately cry out.”
41 Now as He drew near, He saw the city and wept over it, 42 saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.43 For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side,44 and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

As we consider the background of the text we should be reminded that the raising of Lazarus lies in the immediate background. Also, spectacular miracles have taken place in Luke’s immediate context with the healing of blind Bartimaeus (Luke 18:35-43).

As you know the context here is also the time of the Passover feast which yearly drew pilgrims from all over Israel to celebrate Passover in Jerusalem. Some have suggested that Jerusalem could swell to a million inhabitants during this time of year. This accounts for the varying crowds we see here.

It is important to note here that the crowd that initially accompanied the Lord Christ as He descends the Mount of Olives does not remain the only crowd of people. Another crowd, having heard that Jesus was headed their way came pouring out from the Eastern gate to meet Him. John’s account reveals it is this crowd which is bringing the Palm tree fronds to welcome Jesus. This action compliments the providing of a royal carpet made of cloaks to adorn his path provided by the first crowd coming with Jesus.

The spreading of cloaks and branches is an image of enthronement in the line of King David, hearkening back to 2 Kings 9:13 and 1 Maccabees 13:51: “The Jews entered the citadel with shouts of praise, the waving of palm branches, the playing of harps and cymbals and lyres, and the singing of hymns and canticles, because a great enemy of Israel had been crushed.”

The delirium upon the crowd is driven, as the text notes, “by the mighty works they had seen.” The reasoning here behind the excitement seems to be “surely this is the promised King who the OT speaks of as having healing in his hand. This being the Messiah that we have waited for for millennium will he not also now work to throw off the yoke of Rome and once again return us to be the great and independent nation as we were under David?

This is the anticipation animating this large press of people and this is under-girded by their quoting of Psalm 118:26

“ ‘Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord!’
Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

This snippet comes from one of the Hallel Psalms sung during Passover. The idea of Peace in heaven and glory in the highest meant that God was at peace with the human race, especially Israel, and that would in turn redound to God’s glory.

From this we see that these pilgrims are right for all the wrong reasons. It is true that Jesus is the Messiah King. It is proper that He should be greeted with the fanfare and hoopla surrounding the arrival of the King. Jesus Himself by entering into Jerusalem in just this way is enmeshing His Kingship in the prophecies of the OT, Jesus arrives riding a colt on which no one has ever sat. This is a fulfillment of Zechariah 9:9, which Matthew’s account quotes directly;

Exult greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout for joy, O daughter Jerusalem! Behold: Your king is coming to you, a just savior is he, humble, and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey” (see Matthew 21:5).

So, Jesus is displaying kingship, but He comes as a different kind of King. He is a King displaying humility and bringing peace.

Using a wider scope lens we see also in the Old Testament, it is often specified that an animal meant for a sacred purpose must not have been put to any ordinary use before. This stipulation can be found in Numbers 19:2, Deuteronomy 21:3 and 1 Samuel 6:7.

It is difficult for us to understand the thrill and the tumult that finds this crowd going senseless. The closest I can come is to talk about a ticker tape parade that is given for some returning war hero.

However Jesus response to this is other than what we might expect. His response is to weep. The Gospels take as a whole tell us why He is weeping. He has predicted His death many times in the Gospel before this event. The Mt. Of Transfiguration lies in the immediate background where even there what is spoken of is Jesus Exodus (death). Jesus weeps because the crowd is so misguided and blind. The mobs wants all exaltation and no humiliation. The mob desires a theology of glory and cannot comprehend a theology of the cross that lies ahead for Jesus.

So, one dynamic that we find in the Palm Sunday account is the misunderstanding of the person and work of the Messiah. This exuberant crowd would have Jesus be King now so they may drink the cup f blessing, quite absent His necessity to drink the cup of woe. Theologies of glory would excuse the sufferings, hardships, and humiliation that comes with bearing the cross. Theologies of glory desire the Kingdom without the Cross.
And yet Jesus is on His way to the Cross and this flash mob, while getting matters right that the King is in their midst, get it wrong as to the type of King that they are praising.

In many respects this exultant reception presents again to Jesus the Temptation in the Wilderness where Satan showed to Jesus all  the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. 9 “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”
Jesus, on this Palm Sunday, is again being offered a Kingdom without a cross.
For this jubilant, raucous, delirious crowd the thought of a carnal Kingship blinds them from the primary purpose of the coming of Christ and that is to vindicate God’s Holy name from the charge of not dealing with sin the way He had promised that He would. Christ would restore Justice. A secondary purpose of Christ’s Kingship was to make a way for His people to have peace with God. Those purposes could not be achieved in the conceptual framework of these poor misguided groupies.
And so we ask ourselves do we really believe the crowds would have been in this delirium if they knew what was a few days in the future of their King?

Summarizing;

The Jews desired a Kingdom without a Cross. They desired glory without suffering. But Jesus has another agenda. The Jews desire that Jesus turn away from them the wrath of Rome. Jesus is intent on a far greater agenda. Jesus’ work is to turn away from God’s people the wrath of God by taking upon Himself the just wrath that they and we had so certainly deserved. The Jews desire Jesus to overturn Roman law which they saw as burdensome. Jesus intends to completely satisfy the just demands of God’s law by His perfect sacrifice.
Only by the curing of the sin problem could men be right with God and this necessity for men to be right with God is the requisite precursor for any attempt at just government. The Jews wanted what they envisioned as just government apart from man’s sin problem being dealt with. Jesus going to the Cross was the only way all of man’s broken relationships might be one day healed.

It is interesting here that despite the frenzy that all of this, this is part of the sufferings of Holy Week that we can trace. Jesus’ anguish and suffering here is anchored to the misconception of the Jewish crowds and where that is going to eventually lead for some of these same people. It is celebration and festivity for the clueless, but it is suffering for our Lord Christ.

We have said that the crowd was right for all the wrong reasons. Now Luke introduces us to another group who we will note is wrong for all the right reasons. This next group are the bad guys who wear the black hats throughout the Gospels. Enter the Pharisees.

Of course you remember that the Pharisees were those group of men who were the keepers and interpreters of the religions of Talmudism. They were not the protectors of God’s Word but were the protectors of their twisting of God’s Word.

Here the Pharisees are intent on raining on everybody’s parade. They insist that all this exuberance be brought to an immediate end. They demand that Jesus “rebuke His disciples.”

What is driving all this is of course envy. The Pharisees would die for this kind of adulation and they can not handle someone else — no less one considered a commoner – to have this kind of praise. These fools are not interested in the claims of the crowds. Indeed, John tells us that they had already planned to kill Jesus. Even if Jesus were the Messiah (and He was) these lizard people intended to hoist Him up on a cross. These people and their types in every generation are the most vile people on the planet. Not only are they not interested in truth, they have a vested interest in making sure nobody else comes to truth with the purpose that they themselves would be seen as the wise ones.

The Pharisees had no more love for Rome than the crowds had. They had the same desire for Independence as these crowds. However, their drive for Israeli Independence found them in the drivers seat and not some worthless Nazarene. Not to put too fine of a point on it but they were the elites who were horrified by the notion of a populist movement offering up a man of the people to be King.

God’s irony finds the Pharisees being the agents through which He accomplished His intent to provide a sin offering wherein His people might be saved. In their maniacal efforts to make sure Jesus was not the Messiah King, they did the work that found Him being raised to the right hand of the Father to the end of ruling the nations.

This demonstrates to us that old Dutch saying that God draws straight lines with crooked sticks. These enemies of Jesus who hated Him because He claimed to be God, would be used to the end of being owned as God by scores of billions of people over the course of history.

Jesus rebukes their request to silence the children and the crowd by saying that if they were silent the rocks would cry out.

Is this not the way of the truths of God? They must be published. All God’s truths must be published and especially those which men would cover up just as the Pharisees sought to cover up the truth of Jesus being the Messiah-King. Should we keep silent on any of God’s truths the stones will instead cry out in light of our being mute.

We have examined the dynamics of the crowd. We have examined the disposition of the Pharisees. Now we turn to examine Jesus description of the future.

He saw the city and wept over it, 42 saying, “If you had known, even you, especially in this your day, the things that make for your peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.43 For days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment around you, surround you and close you in on every side,44 and level you, and your children within you, to the ground; and they will not leave in you one stone upon another, because you did not know the time of your visitation.”

Jesus is here speaking to the leadership who had rejected Jesus so that it was true that Jerusalem had officially rejected their Messiah. Jesus wept over that fact thus demonstrating His great compassion for those who chose to drink the Hemlock as opposed to drinking the elixir of eternal life. Jerusalem had sewn the wind and now Jerusalem will reap the whirlwind and Jesus weeps over that eventuality.

Note, also the divine imposition of blindness mentioned here. Jerusalem had scorned and rejected their Messiah-King and the consequence was that things that make for peace is hidden from their eyes. There will be no national repentance. Jerusalem is in the chute for destruction and nothing can change that.

The coming days that Jesus speaks of, of course refers to His judgment coming in AD 70 where He serves His divorce papers to faithless Israel. There in AD 70 Rome builds an embankment, surrounds Jerusalem and closes in on Jerusalem on every side. All of this come to pass in AD70.

Read the record written by Josephus of the destruction of Jerusalem, and see how truly our Lord’s words were fulfilled. The Jews impiously said, concerning the death of Christ, “His blood be on us, and on our children.” Never did any other people invoke such an awful curse upon themselves, and upon no other nation did such a judgment ever fall. We read of Jews crucified till there was no more wood for making crosses; of thousands of the people slaying one another in their fierce faction fights within the city; of so many of them being sold for slaves that they became a drug in the market, and all but valueless; and of the fearful carnage when the Romans at length entered the doomed capital; and the blood-curdling story exactly bears out the Savior’s statement uttered nearly forty years before the terrible events occurred.’
Geneva Study Bible,

‘The destruction of Jerusalem was more terrible than anything that the world has ever witnessed, either before or since. Even Titus seemed to see in his cruel work the hand of an avenging God.’ (Commentary on Matthew, p. 412-413).

What might we say in light of this? We would note that

1.) God deals with men not only individually but corporately. Not every individual inhabitant of Jerusalem had rejected the Messiah but Jerusalem as a corporate entity had and God deal with Jerusalem as a corporate-covenant unit.

Elsewhere in Scripture we see God deal with corporate-covenant units. For example in Revelation Churches are warned that God is going to come and take their lamp-stands if they do not repent. This is another way of saying that God is going to extinguish the Church.

We as Americans often forget that God deals with men not only individually but in corporate-covenant units. For example, God blesses families who walk in His ways and visits justice upon those who forsake him. God blesses Churches and Nations in the same way.

2.) We learn here that God is patient and long-suffering with generational disobedience but there does come a time when God’s patience ends and God’s judgment and discipline will visit. We should be wise here to resolve to not tempt God.

3.) Finally on this score we would note that repentance is always in order. The Jews were a stiff-necked lot and refused to repent. Would that God would deliver me and all of us from being stiff-necked. May we be a people conversant with repentance.

As God’s redeemed people we know that God will not reject those who are lowly and contrite in heart. We know that a bruised reed He will not break and smoldering flax he will not snuff out. We know that God’s wrath has passed us by in Christ and that we have peace with God. These realities should be the realities that propel our forward to be a repenting people who do not miss, like Israel of old, the things that make for peace.
__________
Subsidiary principles

1.) There is a necessity to go on a brief rabbit trail here. A subsidiary point to the larger point. That point is that mob crowds are not to be trusted. They invariably get matters wrong. Gustav LeBon in his classic work “The Crowd” convincingly demonstrates that the last thing one wants to do is to be driven by the emotions of the crowd.

2.) We must read Scripture in light of Scripture and not in light of our experience. We must beware giving Scripture a false gloss that serves our ends. Note how often this is done in the events surrounding the death of Christ (See Schilder)

The crowd manipulates the Scripture to serve their ends. It plays with the prophets. It employs their texts and the Psalms in the doxology shouted as Jesus comes to Jerusalem. However, what we see is that the people accept Scripture as it fits into their preconceived notions. Praising Jesus as the Christ comes easy when intoxicated by numbers agreeing but how much quoting of Psalm 118 occurs when the pressure upon Jesus begins?

20th century Dutch theologian Klaus Schilder put it this way;
“It is a great grief to our highest Prophet to notice that multitude takes from the Scriptures what it pleases and ignores the rest. Such distortion is unwarranted, for the canvas of the Scriptures is woven of one piece and is seamless. Those who divide the word of God into parts do precisely what the soldiers did with their garment of Jesus…. Depend upon it that as often as someone dismembers the Scripture, Jesus’ perfect soul suffers. It is the same as tearing Him apart…. Whoever looks at the Christ in his own light withdraws himself from the influence of Jesus proceeding through the Word…. To see Christ in our own light is to sin terribly, for it is to deny Him the right to minister His threefold office to us.”

Christ In His Sufferings – p. 121

This danger of reading Scripture in light of our experience or of our errant presuppositions as the Crowd does in this account is to flatten Scripture so that it flatters us. It is to turn Scripture into talisman that can be used to try and manipulate God to fit our agenda. It is a dangerous temptation and one I suspect we all easily fall into. I know I do.

Holy Week — Monday

With the acknowledgment of Christ as the Messiah King on Palm Sunday Holy week continues with Christ leaning into His role as the Messiah King. On Monday morning Jesus returns with His disciples to Jerusalem. On the way the King curses the fig tree because it had failed to yield the fruit that was expected. Here we see the Messiah King taking up the prerogative to banish faithless servants. In many respects what the Messiah King is doing here is removing the chaff from the wheat of His Kingdom. The fig tree represented faithless Old Covenant Israel, who had rejected their prince and now the prince returns service by rejecting faithless Old Covenant Israel.

This cursing of the fig tree has been anticipated in Luke 13

6 He also spoke this parable: “A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. 7 Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, ‘Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down; why does it [b]use up the ground?’ 8 But he answered and said to him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. 9 [c]And if it bears fruit, well. But if not, after that you can cut it down.’ ”

In the cursing of the Fig Tree on Holy Monday we find a consistency with the resolve to cut down the Fig Tree in Luke 13 if it does not produce.

We get the same theme again in Matthew 21 with the parable of the wicked tenants. What connects all these is that Old Covenant Israel as been faithless and the consequence is that God is going to divorce them. Of course, the Israel of God remains but official Israel has been faithless and is cursed, promised to be slain, and is going to be cut down. God is done with faithless covenant Israel as His people. The promise of divorce is made here and the divorce papers are finally served in AD 70 as Titus utterly demolishes the infrastructure of faithless Old Covenant Israel.

Christ is King and the King has the royal duty to bring rebels to a proper end.

Also on Holy Monday the Messiah King comes to His Temple palace where He finds worshipers being fleeced in their desire to worship God by the Jewish bankers/money changers. Here the King, out of zeal for the glory of the Father, forms a whip and runs the Jewish bankers/money changers out of His Temple. The Messiah King has the authority to do this in order to protect the honor of His Father, with whom He is one (John 10:30). The Holy Messiah King shouts out;

“The Scriptures declare, ‘My Temple will be a house of prayer,’ but you have turned it into a den of thieves” (Luke 19:46).

Observations

1a.) God is done with faithless Old Covenant Israel as a people. Israel has been replaced in God’s economy by His Church, all the while understanding that the Church is merely an extension of faithful Israel in the OT. The invisible Church is to God what Israel was responsible to be.

1b.) This is turn means that what happens in the Middle Eastern country called Israel is irrelevant to God’s eschatological clock, and that would be true even if they were related to OT Israel and not instead of Khazar and Edomite stock.

2.) If the God-Man Jesus Christ was so animated to protect the honor the Father’s name from being defaced by Jewish bankers/money changers shouldn’t we be animated by concern for the Father’s name?

2b.) Note it was a matter of economics that found the Messiah-King cleaning out the Temple. The Lord Christ was angered by the fact that worshipers were being cheated by Jewish bankers/money changers in their desire to worship God.

3.) There are times when righteous anger is the proper response.

Is Christ King or is He only Kind of King? — McAtee vs. Duncan & Hart

In the biblical worldview, the believer’s redemption in Christ is not limited to personal salvation from sin guaranteeing him entry into heaven at death. It must also include a universal perspective. Otherwise redemption reduces to anthropology, nullifying the material order created by God. Such reductionist theology truncates Christ’s saving work accomplished in the cross-resurrection-ascension event, which undermines the ultimate new creation age to come.

Ken Gentry

We are one day removed from Palm Sunday 2024 with its ringing endorsement of the fact that Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. However, 24 hours later we are left asking many of those who insist they are Reformed  what they think the Kingship of Jesus Christ concretely means.

There is a large branch out there in the Reformed world who want to recite that Christ is King right up to the point where the idea of Kingship has any teeth. At that point the idea of “Kingship” is suddenly redefined in a very Gnostic direction. “Christ is King,” they say, “just so long as He is not intent on actually ruling as the alone King.” “Christ is King,” they chant “just so long as King Christ has no legislative Law-Word that we have to pay any attention to in our family order, social orders, and law orders.” “Christ is King,” they dutifully recite, “just as long as Christ has no territorial claims over any nation or over any footage on planet earth.” The Kingship of Jesus Christ for this group is esoteric, abstract, and invisible. The best that they offer for the impact of Christ’s Kingship is the insistence that Christians should demonstrate their belief in Christ’s Kingship by being nice and making room for a pluriform of competing gods in the public square.  “Christ is King” for these crypto-Gnostics means a pluralistic social order where Christ as King as to compete for the table scraps of recognition from the God-State, along with the demon gods of Islam, Molech worship, Talmudism, and Salt Lake city fantasies. The Gnostic Reformed insist with us that “Christ is King,” but then turn around and define Kingship to mean “not Kingship.”

We are seeing this all over the Reformed world today. Most recently it came out in spades with an interview of Establishment figures Dr. J. Ligon Duncan, and a podcast including Dr. Darryl G. Hart. If you  listen to these back to back it will take your breath away in turns of the animated hostility for traditional and historic Reformed views. Duncan goes especially after Theonomy and Reconstructionism. Hart has a wild hair growing over the possibility of Christian Nationalism, though he manages to make clear his loathing for theonomy type movements.

Duncan’s approach to the issue is almost comical.

He opens by insisting that mocking and slander are not Christian ways to deal with issues and then proceeds to slander fellow Christians who take Christ’s Kingship seriously all the way through the section he speaks on that subject.

Next Duncan tell us that King Christ was not a mocker and yet in His ministry Jesus mocks Herod by calling him a “she-fox.” The Pulpit Commentary offers here;

“The epithet “she-fox” is perhaps the bitterest and most contemptuous name ever given by the pitiful Master to any of the sons of men.”

Ellicott’s commentary reveals,

The word was eminently descriptive of the character both of the Tetrarch individually, and of the whole Herodian house. The fact that the Greek word for “fox” is always used as a feminine, gives, perhaps, a special touch of indignant force to the original.

We learn thus, that a Chancellor of a flagship seminary does not know what he is talking about on this particular mocking issue as it relates to the life of Jesus, and we haven’t even bothered to consider the treatment Jesus gave to the Pharisees. If all that is too complex for Dr. Duncan as it touches the issue of the appropriateness of mocking, perhaps he might consider Who is speaking in Proverbs 1:26; “I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh;”

Duncan goes out of his ways that the bible teaches that there are different ways to be faithful, and that is true. However, Duncan doesn’t mention that the Bible also teaches that there are different ways to be unfaithful. It is my opinion that Duncan’s work in this interview is one example of how to be unfaithful.

As one continues to listen to Duncan boast of his creating a Christ, Culture, and Contextualization course that he taught one realizes that Duncan has embraced the contextualization model of Christ with culture. This paradigm can be understood by accessing Niebuhr’s book on “Christ and Culture” where Niebuhr gives different paradigms for Christians engaging culture. “Niebuhr’s five views are: 1. Christ Against Culture, 2. Christ of Culture, 3. Christ Above Culture, 4. Christ and Culture in Paradox, 5. Christ the Transformer of Culture.” Clearly Duncan’s “Christ of Culture,” paradigm is one that liberals have embraced for quite some time. Duncan’s offense at the Reconstructionist paradigm indicates that Duncan is for appeasement. This is diametrically opposed to Scripture which finds Jesus teaching, “He who does not gather with me, scatters.”  We know that Duncan is for appeasement given the tongue lashing and the slander he visits upon theonomy and reconstructionism.

Duncan insists that those who disagree with him are doing what they are doing because “a lot of it is ego and envy,” and a lot of unimportant people trying to be important. Yet, in my estimation Duncan’s ego and self-importance is just dripping off the interview. Honestly, I don’t mind being critiqued but the mean-spiritedness of Duncan in his words against those who take God’s Law-Word seriously was palpable.

Something else here that doesn’t ring true. Duncan says he gave up on critiquing Theonomy in 1996 or so because it was dead. However, in the archives on Iron Ink you can find a piece from 2009 where Duncan was again slamming theonomy. In this interview Duncan says that theonomy has risen from the grave like a zombie. Yet another slander from Duncan comparing a Reformed movement with the living dead.

Here is the fact of the matter. As much as he might like to, Duncan cannot kill the Theonomy/Reconstructionist movement. (Though Moscow aberration of it might kill it.) The Theonomy/Reconstruction movement may be dead for the Boomers and those over 50 even. At 64 I am a relic and a Dinosaur … one of the elder statesmen of the movement. However, I am seeing the rise of a 20-40 somethings who are never going to accept Reformed-Surrender theology. They are not going to be taken off to the gulag camps without a fight. They are no longer going to salute the post-WWII consensus that Duncan and Hart (and most of those reputed to be pillars in the Church) cherish with their whole beings. The Enlightenment version of the Reformed faith with its bastardized version of the Westminster Confession of Faith is in a nursing home and the prognosis is not good for its long term health.

Ducan, Hart and their ilk are wedded to pluralism but let’s consider what pluralism has done. I’m old enough to remember the residuals of Christian America. I’m old enough to remember the theonomic blue laws that found every business, park, and amusement shut down on Sundays. I’m old enough to remember how on good Friday every year all the businesses would close at 12noon in order to attend noon good Friday services. I’m old enough to remember distinct male and female roles that were premised upon Christianity. I’m old enough to remember the necessity to refer to your elders as “Mr.” and “Mrs.” I’m old enough to remember Sunday being enforced as a day of rest. And remember, these were only the residuals of a Christian American that was already in its death throes. Darryl Gnostic Hart in his conversation asks, “what could it possibly mean for a nation to be Christian” and I offer the above as a partial answer.

At appx. the 49:40 point of the interview with Duncan he begins to mock fellow Christians. Irony much Lig? From there Duncan goes on to say that the Reconstructionist understanding of Christ’s Kingship has no possibility of being implemented in any possible world. First of all we would ask, “Lig, not being God how could you possibly know that?” Second we would ask, “Even if you could somehow know that is true would that mean therefore that Christians should cease to continue to advocate for the crown rights of Jesus Christ?” Third we would ask, “If it is possible for Sharia to be the law of nations why is it impossible to think that God’s better law could not be the law of nations? Is the Allah stronger than King Jesus Lig?”

Next Duncan trots out the old canard that Reconstructionism/Theonomy is not a Reformed view. These chaps have been trying to sell that nonsense ever since this ker started to fuffle. A book that came out early in this debate was “Theonomy; An Reformed Critique,” and in that book the authors try to sell the bilge that Theonomy/Reconstructionism was not Reformed. The fact of the matter is, is that it is the surrender monkeys found among the Reformed Establishment who are the ones holding to a Reformed faith that isn’t particularly historically or traditionally Reformed. Can anyone look at the original Westminster Confession on the Civil Magistrate or the original Belgic Confession of Faith on the Civil Magistrate, and tell me with a straight face that either the Westminster Divines or Guido de Bres would have recognized the pablum that Duncan and Hart are trying to sell as “historic Reformed Christianity?” To suggest that the Divines or de Bres would have agreed with Duncan and Hart is just gaslighting at its best.

Much more could be said but others have probably already said it. I come to this, as I said earlier, as an Elder Statesman to this debate. I’m a year older than Duncan. I wasn’t following the debates at ground zero but I was pretty close to ground zero. I know the players. I have read around all sides. I know Duncan and Hart are peeing on us and trying to tell us it is just rain. Don’t you believe them.

My fellow believers in Jesus Christ, either Christ is King with all that Kingship means or He is a the Gnostic King of Duncan and Hart and most of those reputed to be pillars in the Church.

Palm Sunday tells me that Jesus Christ is King and that His  Kingship is tangible.