This is part VI of one of the dumbest articles ever written by a Seminary prof. His name is Andrew Walker. The reason it is so dumb is that all of this has been answered in the past and yet he puts pen to paper to recycle all this again. This article is posted on “The Godless Coalition” Platform.
AW wrote,
While revelation is indeed supreme, the arena where those norms are proclaimed and the method for how they’re proclaimed needs careful attention. Expecting leaders to mediate divine commands sounds nice where there is cultural homogeneity, but that is not the world in which we live. Theonomy rests on the assumption of religious minorities being made second-class citizens. Nowhere in the New Testament are the governing authorities tasked with expounding God’s Word as the source of judicial standards.
BLMc responds,
1.) We agree that the method for how the norms are proclaimed needs careful attention. When is Walker going to start giving careful attention to this calling? What the man is offering is reckless methodological antinomianism.
2.) Note that what Walker is saying above. If we had cultural homogeneity then Christian leaders could mediate divine commands but since we don’t have cultural homogeneity we have to give God’s commands the whole heave-ho because after all, we have to accommodate cultural heterogeneity – we have to accommodate the gods of the non-Christians among us.
3.) So the world in which we live dictates whether or not we will own God and His Law-Word as sovereign?
4.) If religious minorities being second-class citizens in Muslim Saudi Arabia is not a problem why must it be a problem here? At the very least there is a rabid pursuit here to make Christians a religious minority and so second class citizens in America and that because America is increasingly embracing the theonomic law of pagan gods. It is simply the case that religious minorities are always second-class citizens in every social order. For example, when the Christian definition of marriage was tossed out in Obergefell v. Hodges Christians were made second-class citizens. Sodomite marriage makes me a second-class citizen because I believe that only men and women should be married. My convictions are being made second class and so I am as a Christian am being made second-class.
5.) What we see here is that Walker is in love with pluralism (so-called). Walker can’t imagine any social order that doesn’t embrace pluralism. But pluralism is not possible for social-orders since pluralism doesn’t allow for those convictions in their putative pluralistic society that does not allow for pluralism. All people who don’t allow for pluralism are second-class citizens.
6.) Notice how for Walker the NT makes the OT null and void. It it is not in the NT it doesn’t count. This is classic Baptist and now Reformed R2K hermeneutic and so not Biblical.
AW wrote,
No state can long persist in moral rebellion; nor does the New Testament’s pattern for the state rely on special revelation for its legitimacy. Christians must inhabit this uncomfortable tension. Government is a legitimate enterprise that can yield justice even apart from its leaders submitting to special revelation. Paul suggests this is attainable in Romans 13—and he does so without relying on the Mosaic covenant. Speaking biblically and even historically, it is possible for pagan rulers to rule justly (even if their understanding of justice lacks full coherence). Where this occurs, we should be grateful and see this as evidence of God’s common grace in the world.
BLMc responds
1.) As we have noted Walker’s paradigm guarantees the rise of moral rebellion. Indeed, Walker’s paradigm is rooted and grounded in moral rebellion.
2.) In terms of Magistrates and special Revelation let us consult Calvin;
“And for proof thereof, what is the cause that the heathen are so hardened in their own dotages? It is for that they never knew God’s Law, and therefore they never compared the truth with the untruth. But when God’s law come in place, then doth it appear that all the rest is but smoke insomuch that they which took themselves to be marvelous witty, are found to have been no better than besotted in their own beastliness. This is apparent. Wherefore let us mark well, that to discern that there is nothing but vanity in all worldly devices, we must know the Laws and ordinances of God. But if we rest upon men’s laws, surely it is not possible for us to judge rightly. Then must we need to first go to God’s school, and that will show us that when we have once profited under Him, it will be enough. That is all our perfection. And on the other side, we may despise all that is ever invented by man, seeing there is nothing but *fondness and uncertainty in them. And that is the cause why Moses terms them rightful ordinances. As if he should say, it is true indeed that other people have store of Laws: but there is no right all all in them, all is awry, all is crooked.”
* fondness = foolishness, weakness, want of sense and judgment
John Calvin
Sermons on Deuteronomy, sermon 21 on Deut. 4:6-9
We could provide numerous quotes from the Reformers that belie the reality that they think that Walker is all wet when it comes to his statement that justice can be had apart from God’s law as revealed in Scripture.
3.) Paul does not do in Romans 13 what Walker claims he did. In point of fact, if “good” and “evil” in Romans 13 can only be known by God’s Law-Word then Paul is teaching that Magistrates do need God’s Law Word in order to get “good” and “evil” correct.
4.) It is much more likely that apart from God’s revealed Law-Word that magistrates will rule unjustly as history repeatedly demonstrates. All because Magistrates are not as wicked and unjust as they might be that doesn’t mean that they are giving “justice.”
