Hart & McAtee — No, they’re not a Law Firm

“Mr. Glaser, thanks for quoting that part of the confession. The use of the word “dispensations” suggests that there may actually be a place for Reformed dispensationalism. (And before the charges of Marcionism fly, please remember the hallowed Westminster divines used the word. If you have issues, take it up with them. Don’t bang me over the head with it.)”

Nobody has ever suggested, as Dr. Hart no doubt knows, that there is anything wrong with the word “dispensations.” Reformed Dispensationalism is not serious error because it has the word “Dispensation” attached to the word “Reformed.” No, the problem is that like genuine dispensationalism, Reformed Dispensationalism desires to presuppose discontinuity. This is quite contrary to historic Reformed positions that consistently presupposed continuity understanding that the covenant of grace was one.

In my estimation the Reformed Dispensationalism (synonymous with R2Kt) does leave itself open to the charge of Marcionism. This can be seen when many Reformed faces go ashen when it is suggested that the penal sanctions of the Old Testament should be followed. Does the horror of their response lie in their idea that God was somehow mean to require those penalties enacted in the Old Covenant age but now in this age God has dropped His severe mien and has become kinder and gentler? One thing is certain and that is Natural Law certainly can be easily (and wrongly) perceived by Reformed Dispensationalists as kinder and gentler than what God’s Law requires.

That part of the confession also seems to fly in the face of good, women’s ordination-tolerating, pastor Bret.

God’s judgments against His people are all together just. Part of His judgment against us is the reality of the ungodly practice of ordaining women. Similarly, part of His judgment against us is the reality of the ungodly theological system that is R2Kt. Until God lifts his hand of judgment against the Church we must labor under those judgments as faithfully as possible. I don’t like women being ordained. I don’t like R2Kt. But each are part of the terrain of the current Church in which I must be as faithful as possible.

“The WCF says that with the church the gospel is “administered with more simplicity, and less outward glory” than the old dispensation. It seems to me that theonomy is not content with the simplicity and lack of glory in the current arrangement of the church. But then take a number on that discontent. Plenty of Presbyterians are not content with the churches spiritual weapons. They seem to want the outward glory of universities, cities, nation-states, modern medicine, art — you name it — to carry the name Christian.”

And that simplicity was seen in the Churches that the puritans built as well as the style of speaking they developed. Nobody disagrees on this.

But in the other spheres the Gospel isn’t being administered, so I am not quite sure what Dr. Hart’s point here is in raising this part of the WCF. Nobody from the theonomy school has suggested that the civil or familial realm should be administering the Gospel in Word & Sacrament. All we have contended is that what Dr. Hart styles “common realm” is not neutral. For my part I am quite satisfied with the more simplicity and less outward glory of the administration of the Gospel in this dispensation. I would join Dr. Hart in locked arms in the admonishing of those who desire a gospel that partakes of a theology of glory in the Church.

Dr. Hart’s complaints about Christians desiring “the outward glory of universities, cities, nation-states, modern medicine, art, is just another example of his presupposing that the common realm can only be neutral. Hart makes a curious and unwarranted jump in his reasoning from the administration of the Gospel being less outwardly glorious to both the idea that education, nation states, modern-medicine and art can’t be Christian and to the idea that having Christian education, nation state, modern-medicine and art is somehow glorious in a sinister and God dishonoring kind of way.

“Please be clear, Bret, I never said the state doesn’t exist. I said the Christian state doesn’t exist, and if we had a Christian state, it was Israel. Israel as a Christian state no longer exists.”

Of course a thousand years of Christendom gives quite excellent contrary testimony to the wrong headedness of Darryl’s assertion.

If you populate a region with Muslims you will get a Muslim state. If you populate a region with Jews you will get a Jewish State. If you populate a region with Secular Humanists you will get America. Similarly, if you populate a region with Christians you will get a Christian state. Any denial of that simple premise is just a determined stubbornness in the face of “self-evident” truths. (A little Natural Law lingo there.)

You’re living in denial if you want to reclaim it. You’re living what Calvin called a Judaic Folly.

You mean the same Calvin who said,

“But this was sayde to the people of olde time. Yea, and God’s honour must not be diminished by us at this day: the reasons that I have alleadged alreadie doe serve as well for us as for them. Then lette us not thinke that this lawe is a speciall lawe for the Jewes; but let us understand that God intended to deliver to us a generall rule, to which we must tye ourselves…Sith it is so, it is to be concluded, not onely that is lawefull for all kinges and magistrates, to punish heretikes and such as have perverted the pure trueth; but also that they be bounde to doe it, and that they misbehave themselves towardes God, if they suffer errours to roust without redresse, and employ not their whole power to shewe a greater zeale in that behalfe than in all other things.”

Calvin, Sermons upon Deuteronomie, p. 541-542

I should add that the Christian state that does exist is the Church, which practices the only Christian form of government in this age, jure divino Presbyterianism.

Calvin doesn’t agree with you on that point Darryl,

Psalm 2

“…without a doubt he is speaking of the kingdom of our Lord Jesus. He admonishes all kings and authorities to be wise and to take heed to themselves. What is this wisdom? What is the lesson He gives them? To abdicate it all? Hardly! But to fear God and give homage to His Son…Furthermore, Isaiah prophesies that the kings will become the foster fathers of the Christian church and that queens will nurse it with their breasts (Isa. 49:23).I beg of you, how do you reconcile the fact that kings will be protectors of the Christian Church if their vocation is inconsistent with Christianity?”

Calvin, Treatises Against the Anabaptists and Libertines, p. 79

Anyway, all theonomists, hard or soft core, living in the United States are functional 2k Christians, unless they are trying to overthrow this current regime.

I would say that praying that the current regime might be overthrown counts as trying to overthrow this current regime.

The Covenanters even knew this and that’s why they forbade their members from voting or holding pubilc office. (The RPCNA also capitulated sometime around 1980 and reversed these positions.) But if you vote, pay taxes, say the pledge of allegiance, stand for the Star Spangled banner an an MLB game, you are submitting to an idolatrous and illegitimate regime. Even more, if you use the means of this constitutional republic to secure a Christian state in America, you are also committing a form of idolatry (by your logic) because by running for office or passing laws or voting within the structures of a government that does not recognize Christ as Lord or the Bible as the basis for law, you are feeding the beast.

I don’t stand for the Star spangled banner and I don’t say the pledge of allegiance.

When I vote I vote for those who are committed to overthrowing the current regime that has overthrown the constitution.

I don’t make enough to pay taxes so that is not a concern, and if I did I’d pay taxes because the state can beat me up and so I choose to be wise as a serpent on this score.

I have no intent to feed the beast but earnestly desire to give it a belly ache.

“So which is it, Bret, are you against King George or are you for him? If you’re against, as you suppose in trying to out me as not being a supporter of the American revolution, then you are for the godless U.S.A., a nation conceived in the idolatry of the Enlightenment (as Daniel argues), a nation that will not recognize Christ as Lord.”

I would disagree with whoever argued that America was conceived in the idolatry of the Enlightement though I would concede that the Constitution is a synthesis document between Enlightenment and Christian ideas. I read it as a Christian and so I believe it is a Christian document. I would say that the War for Independence was a conservative counter revolution born of Christian beliefs on the consequences of violated covenants.

So, I quite disagree with your premise that being against King George is being for the godless U.S.A. as she was originally constituted.

Next, as the 9 of 13 colonies at the signing of the Declaration of Independence had established Churches I don’t know how anyone could say that these United States were godless in their origin.

You’re premise, as many of them are in general, is, once again, mistaken here.

So once again the $64k question: how do you live with yourself? Your infidelity is legion by your own logic. (Reed and other moderators, I am not trying to call names. I am trying to get the theonomists to come clean and see how they are implicated in the very names they call the 2k advocates. Daniel encouraged me at one point to “shut up.” I’d reiterate that point a little more politely and ask the theonomists to keep their convictions a little more quiet until they have the nerve to use their vitriol against the very state they honor and to which they submit.)

You keep asking about this $64.00 question and I keep answering it. You somehow seem to think it is some type of clincher. I assure you it most certainly isn’t.

The answer is that we submit until God raises up lesser magistrates to lead against this current regime, such as he did in the War for American Independence. This is a idea with long historical Reformed legs and one that makes your $64.00 question not worth a plug nickel in terms of somehow being a clincher argument.

But there is one more thing I want to note here before moving on. Recently I went to a play titled “The Rose Of Treason.” The thrust of the play was resistance to the German government in 1943 by young university students. There was one scene in the play where the students, having been captured, are tried. During the trial one of the judges severely lectures the students for their treason in light of all that the National Socialist system had provided for them. Sometimes Darryl you sound like that Judge in the play. You constantly insist that it is inconsistent to take advantage of a culture that one is praying that God would overthrow. You mistake, like the Judge in the play, the difference between loving your country and loathing the State.

“Word of warning: theonomists be careful how you react here. The Patriot Act is still in effect and the FBI could be looking for expressions of sedition.”

Well, the state only need to worry about me if they think that praying for its overthrow is something that they seriously need to be worried about.