Continuing to fisk one of the dumbest articles ever written by a Seminary prof named Andrew Walker. This article is posted on “The Godless Coalition” Platform.
AW wrote,
Theonomy Cannot Build a Just Society
But what about standards of morality for society? How can society continue unless God’s Word receives the respect it is due?
BLMc responds,
Here it comes … wait for it … the entry of Natural Law as above God’s inscripturated Law for social orders.
AW wrote,
On the one hand, no society can obtain this level of regeneracy, since all societies are penultimate and face judgment. Aside from the kingdom of God, no culture lives up to the standards of God’s Word.
BLMc responds,
1.) Walker is just giving us his pessimistic eschatology here. Scripture nowhere teaches that societies cannot become Christian because ‘no society can obtain this level of regeneracy.’ Jesus never says, “You have heard it said Cephas, that societies can be Christian but I say unto you that no society can obtain this level of regeneracy.’ Walker is just spit-balling here and making it up as he goes. Walker’s eschatology is under-realized.
2.) Scripture teaches that Walker is wrong.
I Corinthians 15:25 For He (Jesus) must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. 26 The last enemy that will be destroyed is death. 27 For “He has put all things under His feet.” But when He says “all things are put under Him,” it is evident that He who put all things under Him is excepted. 28 Now when all things are made subject to Him, then the Son Himself will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.
Notice Paul says here that,
a.) Jesus is reigning now
b.) In this reign of Jesus future enemies must yet be put under his feet
c.) In the future when all enemies are finally defeated in space and time history then the final day occurs
d.) God is all in all at that point
This passage teaches that even though all societies are penultimate and will be judged at some point in the future the world will be converted and so all be under Christ’s feet. This doctrine is the heart of postmillennialism and was championed by no less of a personage than B. B. Warfield;
“If you wish, as you lift your eyes to the far horizon of the future, to see looming on the edge of time the glory of a saved world…and that in His own good time and way [God] will bring the world in its entirety to the feet of Him whom He has not hesitated to present to our adoring love not merely as the Saviour of our own souls but as the Saviour of the world….The scriptures teach an eschatological universalism, not an each and every universalism. When the Scriptures say that Christ came to save the world, that He does save the world, and that the world shall be saved by Him….They mean that He came to save and does save the human race; and that the human race is being led by God into a racial salvation: that in the age-long development of the race of men, it will attain at last unto a complete salvation, and our eyes will be greeted with the glorious spectacle of a saved world. “
This is consistent with passages like Isaiah 2 and Micah 4 and Ezekiel 47:9
And it shall come to pass, that everything that liveth, which moveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live: and there shall be a very great multitude of fish because these waters shall come thither: for they shall be healed; and everything shall live whither the river cometh
Pessimistic theologians cannot allow for worldwide conversion. Their theology does not allow for it. They can’t accept that the second coming finishes God plan from eternity for His creation. In the death of Christ, Christ legally secured the defeat of sin, death, and the devil in the first century in space and time history. Yet, all three evils remain with us (Rom. 7:18–25; 1 Peter 5:8–9). Postmillennialism teaches in the face of Walker’s pessimism that sin, death and the devil have been vanquished legally before the judgment bar of God (Col. 1:13–14; 2:13–15). They are being vanquished in space and time history through the continuing progress of the Gospel (Acts 26:18; 1 Cor. 15:20–23). They will be vanquished eternally at the second advent of Christ (Rom. 8:18–25; Rev. 20:10–15).
Walker is just wrong which is bad enough but this error is so monumental that it warps the rest of his theology into something that is not recognizable to the Bible. Per Walker, the Gospel will not flourish and Christ will be defeated in space and time by rebellion. Per Walker, a little yeast will not leaven the whole lump, the stone in Daniel does not crush in space and time all Kingdoms that compete with Christ’s Kingdom, and the mustard seed does not become a tree that can house all the birds (nations).
Understand here… Walker needs defeat of the Church in order for his theology to work.
AW writes,
Does this mean we’re left with autonomy and human reason alone to guide our lawmaking? No. Every sound principle emanating from just human law participates, unwittingly, in both the natural law and also the eternal law. Rejecting Theonomy does not discount the fact that rightly ordered secular law can overlap with divine law.
BLMc responds,
1.) Actually Walker’s “theology” does mean we are left with autonomy and human reason alone to guide our lawmaking. Walker has rejected God’s revelational law Word and there is nowhere else to go except to some form of humanistic theonomy or the theonomy of some other human-made god.
2.) Walker writes about “Every sound principle.” This forces me to ask… “Sound by what standard Andy?” Walker wants to invoke the idea of sound principles emanating from just human law but at this point, he has to answer; “sound by what standard” and by what standard do we measure “just human law?”
The answer Walker gives is “Natural Law.” Does Walker realize that there are as many “Natural Laws” as there are different philosophical schools of thought? Does Walker realize that the second he invokes Natural Law that every pagan society that was built up until the dismissal of Natural Law with the advent of Legal Positivism embraced natural law? Natural law stood behind the pagan idea of social contract theory. Natural law provided the bedrock of Marx’s and Engels’s view of the law. Natural law sustained the Roman abandonment of babies they did not want. Natural law has been invoked for just about every societal malfeasance one can name. This is because Natural Law is a wax nose. Natural law thinking is a “blank check” that can be used to justify any legal system that is supported by one’s ideals and beginning presuppositions.
Natural law doctrine can only deduce from nature what it has first projected into nature. The putative deductions derived from Natural law are only there because the “Natural Law thinkers” have first, on the basis of their own beginning presuppositions, projected their discoveries on to Natural Law. As such Natural law only yields up what was first in the consciousness of the one making deductions from Natural law. In brief, Natural Law is a myth in terms of providing the information out of which a social order can be legally ordered.
Natural Law exists because this is my Father’s world but fallen man, being fallen, does everything he can to tune into any radio station except the radio station that feature’s God’s Natural Law on it.
The Belgic Confession of Faith teaches that Natural law exists but that its work is very circumscribed because of man’s fall;
“Since man became wicked and perverse, corrupt in all his ways, he
has lost all his excellent gifts which he had once received from God.5
He has nothing left but some small traces, which are sufficient to make man inexcusable.6 For whatever light is in us has changed into darkness,7 as Scripture teaches us, The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it (Jn 1:5); where the apostle John calls mankind darkness.”
Because of the fall and its noetic effects on man, it is not possible for fallen man to gain anything from Natural Law except to be convicted as a sinner before God — and even that truth man suppresses in unrighteousness. Walker wants to make Natural Law into this high beam light yet the BCF, following Scripture, teaches us that any light we have has been changed into darkness.
A pox upon all those who invoke Natural Law as a means of ordering society.
