Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

Francis Turretin — Does the care and recognition of religion belong in any way to the Christian Magistrate?

Thirty-Fourth Question: The Political Government of the Church

“What is the right of the Christian magistrate about sacred things, and does the care and recognition of religion belong in any way to him? We affirm

I. After having treated of the ecclesiastical government of the church, we must add something about the political. Concerning this, a grave question is moved in the examination and decision of which it is sinned in different ways, in excess as well as defect.

II. They sin in excess who claim all ecclesiastical power for the magistrate; who oppressed by the liberty of the ministry, deliver the thurible into the hand of Uzziah and think that no power belongs to pastors except what is derived from the magistrate.

They sin in defect who remove him from all care of ecclesiastical things so that he does not care what each one worships and allows free power to anyone of doing and saying whatever he wishes in the cause of religion Or who, although they ascribe to him the care of nourishing and defending the church, so that he may kindly cherish and powerfully defend it, still leave nothing of recognition and nothing of judgment concerning religion save the execution alone to him. They rest upon this foundation – that this knowledge and judgment about matters of faith is proper to the ecclesiastical order, whose decrees the magistrate is bound to respect and perform. This is the opinion of the Romanists, which Bellarmine sets forth.

III. The orthodox (holding the mean between these two extremes) maintain that the pious and believing magistrate cannot and ought not to be excluded from all care of religion and sacred things, which has been enjoined upon him by God. Rather this right should be circumscribed within certain limits that the duties of the ecclesiastical and political order be not confounded, but the due parts be left to each. this we embrace in two propositions.

IV. First proposition. “A multiple right concerning sacred things belongs to the magistrate.” It is proved (1) from the divine command. To him was committed the custody of the divine law; on this account he ought to care for the piety and worship of God, which is commanded by the first, no less than for justice and love, which is commanded by the second table: “And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites: And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes” (Dt. 17:18,19)”

Francis Turretin – (1623-1687)
Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Vol.III, pgs. 316-317

Here Turretin gives a balanced two Kingdom approach. He recognizes extremes in Two Kingdom Theology and navigates between them. The R2Kt virus would have been, according to Turretin “a sin in defect.”

Notice also that Turretin doesn’t eliminate scriptural teaching all because it is somehow connected to Israel’s Theocratic embodiment. Turretin does not practice a intrusion ethic.

I have to quit blogging…. I’ve just received a sign from heaven

I am sorry to have to announce I have to quit blogging. The Lord severely chastised me when in looking at my hits for the day I saw that I had 666 hits for the day.

I reckoned it as a sign of the anti-christ giving objective proof of my evil, and so I am repenting in dust and ashes by giving up blogging.

The end is near. The end is near.

Knox … What Standard Shall The Magistrate Use To Punish Vice?

“It is evident, that principallie it apperteineth to the King, or to the Chief Magistrate, to knowe the will of God, to be instructed in his Lawe and Statutes, and to promote his glorie with his hole hart and studie, which be the chief pointed of the First Table. No man denieth, but that the sworde is committed to the Magistrate, to the end that he shulde punishe vice and meinteine vertue. To punishe vice, I say; not onelie that whiche troubeleth the tranquilitie and quiet estat of the common welth, by adulterie, theft, or murther committed, but also suche vices as openly impugne the glorie of God, as idolatrie, blasphemie, and manifest heresie, taught and obstinatly meinteined, as the histories and notable actes of Ezechias, Josaphat, and Josias do plainlie teach us,…”

John Knox, The Works of John Knox, ed. David Laing, 6 vols. (Edinburgh: James Thin, 1895), 4:398

Post Conversion Sin … Reformed, Keswick, Holiness

“If we enjoy union with Christ, not only we ourselves but even our works too are just in God’s sight. This doctrine of of the justification or works (which was developed in the Reformed Church) is of the greatest consequence for ethics. It makes clear that the man who belongs to Christ need not be the prey of continual remorse. On the contrary he can go about his daily work confidently and joyfully.”

Wilhelm Niesel
Reformed Symbolics: A Comparison of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism

The Reformed faith deals with the problem of remaining sin in all that we do by teaching this truth that not only our persons but also our works are justified. When this teaching is combined with the ongoing necessity to be conformed to the image of Christ in our daily walk both the dangers of despair over one’s lack of conformity to Christ and the danger of an attitude that concludes that since sin is inevitable in our works why bother contending for righteousness are eclipsed.

There are other ways to deal with the reality of the sin that remains in all that we do after being declared right with God. The Keswick’s contend that sin can be so suppressed that one can have victory over sin and so not sin anymore. The holiness folk contend that sin can not only be suppressed but that it can be eradicated by a second work of grace called entire sanctification or perfect love. My examination of and my experience in these movements though has lead me to believe that what happens in such a move is a defining of sin downward so that people can convince themselves that they really are done with sin.

This is a case where different theology makes a radical difference in personality. The Keswick and Holiness view when seriously embraced by people leads to a incredible self-righteousness. Obviously, if someone has been delivered from sinning there is a incredible temptation to look down on other people who haven’t yet been delivered. Also people who embrace this view end up as people who take sin lightly. Just try convincing someone that they may have a sin problem who is convinced that they have reached a point where they no longer sin.

In the Reformed faith we both hate and yet at the same time recognize that we continue to sin and yet we are neither in despair about that nor are we casual about it since we believe both that all of our works are justified and that out of gratitude for all the Christ has done for us we must continue to seek to ever increasingly be conformed to the character of our Lord Jesus.

Hence being Reformed keeps us from being twisted in our personality by either living in constant despair about the always present sin in our obedience or by living in a wicked presumptuousness that since the lack in our obedience is always forgiven therefore we have no need to be concerned about the lack in our obedience, or by redefining sin as the Keswick and Holiness people do thus creating personalities inflated with self-righteousness.

Being Reformed — it makes for stable personalities and quality character.

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p.s. — An autobiographical word.

I grew up in the holiness movement and was taught entire sanctification. I earnestly sought it but never achieved it — praise God. It is one reason why I left the movement. I just couldn’t convince myself, that I had reached moral perfection. Many of my classmates did make sudden discoveries of their moral perfection in their senior year in college as they could not accept a call to the ministry unless they had been entirely sanctified.

From undergraduate school I went and did my seminary work at a Keswick school. In both my time in the Holiness movement and my time among the Keswicks you could cut with a knife the self-righteousness.

In classes both in undergraduate and in Seminary, in institutions separated by 800 miles, I heard Professors say at the front of classes that I took that “they hadn’t sinned in 30 years.”

Wollebius On Relation Between Magistrate & Church — God’s Law & Civil Law

(4) Such is the government of the church. We come now to civil authority, by which the church is subject to the magistrate.

Propositions

I. The magistrates are protectors [nutritii] of the church, in that they enforce both tablets of the law, protect [conservere] churches and schools, and defend the truth.

Wollebius: Compendium Theologiae Christianae as found in Reformed Dogmatics edited by John W. Beardslee p. 148

Calling of councils

I. The calling of a council is the privilege of the magistrate, if he is a believer; if he is an unbeliever, either it must be obtained by a petition, or, if he is actively hostile to a council, then as a matter of necessity it must be held with the general consensus of the church.

II. The persons who ought to be present at a council are civil and ecclesiastical presidents, clerks, suitable men chosen for the purpose…

VII. The duty of the civil president is to convene the council, to defend it after it has gathered, to prevent all violence and disorder, to promulgate the regularly adopted decrees by his authority, and to use force against those who are unwilling [to comply].

ibid. p. 149

Chapter IV: The Works Connected with the Second, Third, and Fourth Commandments in General

V. Religion ought to be the concern of everybody, but especially of magistrates and ministers. The former are indeed the guardians of the church. They are responsible, therefore, for the maintenance of churches and schools, the support of ministers, and so on.

VIII. Religion is not to be forced [upon people] but taught.

IX. Religion is not to be spread by arms, but nevertheless it is to be defended by them.
Examples are pious kings, like the Maccabees, and emperors, especially Constatine the Great and Theodosius the Great.

X. If any abuse enters religion, it is to be reformed by the prince or magistrate.
Examples are Moses, Joshua, David, Asa, Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah, Josiah, Constatine the Great, Theodosisus, etc.

ibid. 201-202

Chapter VII: The Duties Connected with the Fourth Commandment

XIV. The sanctification of the sabbath is the duty of everyone, but especially of magistrates and pastors.

The magistrate should give heed to Nehemiah’s example, lest the sabbath be persistently violated (Neh. 13:15ff.). It is also his duty to moderate the strict obersavation of this day when necessity requires, in order that considerations of love may also be effective. Examples were given by the Maccabees (I Macc. 2:41), and Constantine the Great, who permitted farm labor whenever weighty necessity required it.

ibid. 223

Johannes Wollebius – 1586-1629