“Since, the Mosaic covenant, as noted, was designed in part to highlight the ultimate penalty that every sin deserves, under the protological law of the covenant of Creation (and will be administered at the final judgment). God willed that some sins be met with punishment that can not be accounted for in terms of intra-human relations. These sins are abhorrent to God even if they may strike people today as insignificant (such as gathering sticks on the Sabbath) or as strange but basically harmless (such as sex with animals). In contrast to the Mosaic covenant, the Nohaic covenant explicitly ordains civil penalties only in terms of intra-human relations, and points to the Lex Talionis as the standard for human retributive justice. Thus the fact that contemporary civil law should rest on the Noahic Natural Law again has significant ramifications for thinking through the contemporary relevance of particular civil penalties under the Mosaic law.”
David Van Drunen (DVD)
Divine Covenants & Moral Order – p. 511
1.) Note the hermeneutic of a hard discontinuity between the Nohaic and Mosaic covenant. Hermeneutics of discontinuity are a hallmark of Baptist theologies.
2.) The idea of turning the Noahic covenant into a “common grace/Natural Law” covenant is completely innovative to Reformed theology as pursued first by Meredith Kline and later by David Van Drunen and the R2K fanboys. Nobody of any consequence, prior to DVD sought to bleed off the redemptive continuity found in the Noahic covenant vis-a-vis the other epochs of the one unfolding covenant of grace.
3.) By introducing a fracture here in the one unfolding covenant of grace, Kline and later DVD introduces a dualism into their theology whereby the Abrahamic covenant is seen as gracious, the Noahic is seen as common, and the Mosaic is seen as a return to the covenant of works, except when it is not. (R2K fanboys are forever dividing the Mosaic covenant into one of grace for the nation while at the same time being one of works for the individual.) This is a kind of subservient covenant but it is a complete innovation of subservient covenant theology prior to Kline.
4.) For DVD (the disciple of Kline) and for all R2K fanboys, the Mosaic covenant is like a scaffolding that falls away from the building once the New and Better covenant arrives. The Ten Words, particularly as applied to the public square, are eclipsed in a return to the Noahic common grace/Natural law covenant. The dualism remains as the Church is ruled by God’s special revelation while the public square is cordoned off from the Church and its representatives, and is ruled by Noahic Natural Law. These two realms (church and common) are sealed off from one another and the Church has no business speaking to the common realm and the magistrates in the common realm are to be hands off regarding the regulation of the Church within the Church.
5.) Notice, in the quote above, the playing off of the Mosaic covenant with the Noahic covenant. The Mosaic covenant, both in its Moral law and in the application of the Moral law is completely bypassed as a standard for the public realm in favor of Noahic Natural Law.
6.) Notice the Marcion move in the above quote. God wanted His people ruled one way in the old and worse covenant but now in the new and better covenant God has lifted those previous standards and now what was penalized in the old and worse covenant are now bypassed in the new and better covenant. God’s standard has changed and so we are dealing with a different God in the new and better covenant.
7.) DVD does look bad in this quote because God’s abhorrence for gathering sticks on the Sabbath and for bedding farm animals only applies as under the Mosaic covenant. We are now ruled by Noahic covenant & these sins are no longer so abhorrent to God so as to require the death penalty in the non-sacred realm. DVD, is saying here, that since the Mosaic covenant is no longer applicable and since we live under the Natural Law Noahic covenant when active in the public square therefore the civil realm is not required to make laws forbidding bestiality since such action is not a intra-human relationship.
8.) The whole appeal here is to Natural law, in the common square, as established, per DVD, by the Noahic covenant. Noahic Natural law does not necessarily require any kind of civil penalty for bedding farm animals, though if people bed farm animals and don’t repent God will visit their alone and intimate time with farm animals with judgment. God can and will exact penalty. The civil Magistrate shouldn’t exact penalty.
9.) One wonders if DVD himself finds bedding farm animals to be “strange but basically harmless.” It is a curious way to put the matter.
