Category: Apologetics

Dr. Hart,

The folks who lament the decadence of the contemporary West most (who also happen to be some of the biggest whiners about 2k) seem to think that a return to God’s law in the United States would fix our social and political woes. Aside from the problem of finding unregenerate citizens who will follow God’s law, these law lovers do not grasp a fundamental point of U.S. legal and political life (and this may explain why the so-called Religious Right is so easily ridiculed).

Bret

1.) Does this mean that Darryl does not bemoan the decadence of the contemporary West or that he does not believe that the contemporary West has become decadent? Does this mean that R2K folks think the contemporary decadent West is just fine? I mean, after all, Darryl’s first few words in that block-quote above indicates that the only bemoaners of the decadent West are “whiners about R2K,” leaving us whiners to wonder why R2K’ers don’t bemoan wickedness.

2.) I know of absolutely zero Kuyperians or other standard vanilla Reformed folks who believe that a return to God’s law, absent a turning to the Priestly work of our great High King, Lord Christ, will fix our social and political woes.

3.) However, vanilla Reformed folks don’t advocate a return to God’s law because it will, absent of Reformation in the citizenry, fix our social and political woes but rather they advocate a return to God’s law because that is how God has revealed that our social and political order should be ordered.

I Timothy 1:9 understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, 10 immoral persons, sodomites, kidnappers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, 11 in accordance with the glorious gospel of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted.

Calvin speaks on this text writing,

“(Paul) … maintains that the law of God was given in order to restrain the licentiousness of wicked men; because they who are good of their own accord do not need the authoritative injunction of the law.”

4.) So, Darryl seems to be disagreeing with both St. Paul and John Calvin who understood that the law must be advocated in order to control the lawless. Is Darryl advocating getting rid of laws against Murder (as one example) all because laws against Murder do not by themselves fix our social order in relation to our Murder problem? Is the answer to our pedophilia problems getting rid of laws that prohibit pedophilia? I mean, since unregenerate pedophiliac citizens won’t follow God’s law then obviously it is stupid for Christians to continue to advocate laws against pedophilia right?

(Is insanity accounted for by nurture or nature or belief in R2K?)

5.) Darryl refers to his opponents as “law lovers.” Does this mean that Darryl is a law hater?

6.) If we are not to return to God’s law for our social and political order problems then whose law would Darryl have us return to? To Allah’s law (Sharia)? To postivistic law (Humanist)? To Talmudic law (Jewish)? If we will not return to God’s law then whose law shall we be governed by? Or has Darryl gone all Randian on us?

Darryl continues,

For Americans, as well as the Brits before them, law is not simply the embodiment of God’s moral standards. Laws against stealing and perjury do, of course, reflect God’s righteousness. But legal documents like the venerated Constitution are not primarily about morality. They are primarily procedural. Such laws place limits on government. The Constitution, for instance, prescribes and limits the powers of each branch of the federal government. Such restraints are at the heart of the Anglo-American notion of liberty, namely, the idea that people need to be protected from arbitrary and despotic power. To enjoy a life free from a potentially coercive government, we as a people drew up a body of laws that were designed not to constrain the actions of individuals but to prescribe the power of the magistrate. Placing limits on the government for the sake of civil and religious liberties is at the heart of libertarianism and is a major theme in J. Gresham Machen’s thought and political activities. (Whether or not he was a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, he was sympathetic to the ACLU, a sympathy that would drive the likes of Doug Wilson and Greg Bahnsen batty).

Bret

1.) Darryl will be pleased to know that R. J. Rushdoony agrees with him. Rushdoony, agreeing with Darryl, wrote that the Constitution provides us with “procedural morality, not substantive morality”. I’m sure Darryl will want to re-think his position now that he has learned that the great Theonomist Rushdoony agreed with him.

2.) If Machen was sympathetic to the ACLU he was completely uninformed about the origins of the ACLU, their original purpose and intent, and their ideological commitments. This being uninformed should drive any Biblical Christian batty.

3.) Is Darryl suggesting that any law from a government that coerces is therefore evil?

4.) Is Darryl suggesting that Kuyperians or other vanilla Reformed Christians who advocate for God’s law are against civil and religious liberty?

5.) Let’s remember the restriction of Congress to make any law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, was a restriction at the Federal level. States could still, and many did at the time, have established religions.

6.) Darryl says he stands for religious liberties but does he support the religious Liberty of the Hindu to preform Sati? Does he support the religious liberty of an American Indian to smoke Peyote as part of a religious ceremony? Does he support the religious liberty of a Muslim to enter into honor killings against wayward Muslim women?

I didn’t think so.

As such Darryl’s complaint about religious liberties is not consistent. Darryl wants to draw lines regarding religious liberty the same way I do. Darryl just wants to draw different lines. By what standard will we determine what religious liberty will be allowed and what won’t be allowed?

In short Pluralism is neither faithful to Scripture nor even logically coherent. (“Yes … Yes, I can here the R2K’ers saying now, “We have to live with hyphenated lives that may not seem coherent.”) Contrary to the demand that all the kings and judges of the earth, “serve Jehovah” specifically (Psalm 2:10-11), pluralism instead calls upon the rulers of the state to honor and protect all religious positions, regardless of their avowed hatred for the God of the Bible. Further, pluralism guarantees that the god of all the competing gods in the public square is the State as the State has to be the god who insures that none of the gods are allowed to get the upper hand in the public square. In the pluralist social order the God of the Bible has to be limited in His ability to be embraced by the citizenry as God over all the State. Christian Pluralists like our good Dr. Hart is advocating that God be restricted in His authority in the public square.

Darryl continues,

Those who want more of God’s law in public life do not appear to understand this basic aspect of civil society in the U.S. They seem to think that if God’s moral standards are on their side, they have the power, duty, and right to make sure that the rest of Americans know that they are deserving God’s wrath. They also apparently believe they have responsibility to condemn the state if it fails to enforce God’s law, hence the double-down point about the magistrate’s duty to require observance of both tables of the law.

1.) It is the responsibility of all those who would see men evangelized to tell those outside of Christ that they are under God’s wrath and that they must turn to the Lord Christ for salvation.

2.) The nature of the State is to enforce the law of some god. Law itself, is a reflection of the will of some religious order that is headed by a god. Whenever a State enforces any law it is at that moment enforcing the law of some God. Darryl is frightened to death of the State enforcing the God of the Bible’s law but he seems perfectly content for the State to enforce the law of some other god. Is Darryl good with the State’s recent enforcement of the law against those who refuse to use their respective businesses to help the sodomite agenda? Is Darryl good with the Canadian State’s recent prosecution of citizens for hate crimes because they were advocating Biblical truths?

3.) What does Darryl do with John the Baptist’s condemnation of the Magistrate? Let me guess … that is dispensationalized away since John was still in the old Covenant?

Ok … what about Paul’s refusal to obey the Magistrate in Acts 16?

Darryl continues,

That argument about both tables of the law is almost entirely at odds with the American notion that law restrains government from exercising power unspecified in the Constitution. It also runs up against the legal tradition of assuming an accused citizen’s innocence until proven guilty. Just because we “know” someone broke the law doesn’t mean that district attorneys and police are free from following the laws that keep us from being a police state. In fact, the appeal to God’s law by some culture warriors has the flavor of vigilantism, that is, taking the law into their own hands. The problem for theonomists and other moral breast beaters is not simply that they don’t have power to execute God’s law. They also don’t seem to understand that the “rule of law” as we understand it in the United States actually prevents government from enforcing a whole host of laws, including God’s.

1.) The powers of the Federal Government in the Constitution are enumerated and delegated. The Federal Government ought to be limited those powers. I hold no tuck with the FEDS becoming more of a National Behemoth. However, the States themselves have the responsibility to enforce Biblical moral order. Darryl will be pleased to know that many of the original State constitutions were explicitly Christian.

2.) And whoever denied the principle of “innocent until proven guilty?” Certainly no Theonomist who insists that two or three witnesses must be brought to give testimony. Darryl is giving us a red herring on this one.

3.) Every Theonomist and moral breast beater (as opposed to every anti-nomian and immoral breast beater apparently) understands the whole idea of due process. Really, Darryl is being so silly here. The implementation and following of God’s law by the States is done in conjunction with due process.

4.) Still, when the State does enforce law, it ought to be God’s law that it enforces. Not Sharia law. Not Talmudic law. Not Humanist legal positivism law. But God’s law. This is no law from nowhere. No law that doesn’t belong to some God, god, or god concept. This reality is what Darryl can’t get through his academic head.

5.) Darryl’s appeal to pluralistic law has the flavor of cowardice and treason.

Darryl then goes on to talk about the dangers of arbitrary power. What Christian in their right mind would advocate arbitrary power? And yet arbitrary power is exactly what we get when we don’t follow God’s law Word. By what standard will our laws be based if not God’s law-word? Natural law? Our country is being balkanized along ethnic and religious lines. Does anybody really believe that Hindus, Muslims, Talmudists, Humanists and Christians are all going to agree on Natural law? If they do believe that they’ve been smoking too much Peyote. If we do not follow God’s law word as our standard than all that is left is the arbitrariness that Darryl is so frightened of.

Darryl writes,

Maybe the Anglo-American tradition of law and constitutional liberties is wrong (though it finds expression in Presbyterian government). Maybe the West if fundamentally flawed and should follow political patterns and traditions established by the Persians and Turks. Or maybe theonoomy and the original Reformed confessions’ teachings about the magistrate lost when the Reformed and Presbyterian churches embraced the politics associated with a certain eighteenth-century republic founded in North America.

1.) At least we are getting an admission here that R2K is a innovative reading of the original Reformed confessions. Darryl’s views and R2K are historically innovative.

2.) Darryl isn’t advocating the tradition of law and constitutional liberties. Darryl is advocating some kind of Randian objectivism or a kind of anarchism.

3.) Theonomy wants nothing to do with the Persians and the Turks. It is the Theonomists of all people who are screaming the loudest about the FEDS overstepping their constitutional boundaries as established by enumerated and delegated powers. It is the Theonomists who are trying to remind people that there is such a thing as a 9th and 10th amendment. Darryl is just being silly when he tries to combines Totalitarianism and Theonomy. After all, it is Theonomy that talks about Jurisdictionalism and Sphere sovereignty, which is hardly a recipe for Totalitarianism.

3.) What Darryl wants is not a return to a certain 18th century republic founded in North America. What Darryl wants, it appears, is a return to the Enlightenment. There is more of French Revolution and “The Rights of Man,” in Darryl’s reasoning then there is historical traditional Reformed understanding of the relation of Church and State.

Darryl writes,

Over at Matt Tuininga’s blog, the inveterate critic of 2k, Mark Van Der Molen, makes an interesting point. In response to the charge of theocracy that came from his assertion that the state needs to be subject to God’s law, he wrote: “theocracy is the merging of church and state into one power.” In other words, anti-2kers are never guilty of theonomy or theocracy as long as they affirm a separation of church and state.

BLM responds

This is accurate. No Theonomist, nor any Kuyperians believe that Church and State should be rolled into one. Darryl shows he is out of his element and his naiveté by not understanding the distinction between an ecclesiocracy and a Theocracy. No Christian desires an Ecclesiocracy while all Christians understand that Theocracy is an inescapable category.

Classic Reformed theology has always stated that God is Sovereign over both Church and State and yet Church and State remain distinct institutions with distinct roles and authority for distinct, though interdependent spheres of authority. Even in the Old Testament there is no Ecclesiocracy as Church and State were distinct in the Old Covenant. Kings were not Priests and Priests were not Kings. (Remember the story of Uzziah.)

Darryl writes,

This is an important admission since many critics of secularism, as anti-2kers are, deride Jefferson’s language of a wall of separation between church and state. Whether it’s a wall dividing church and state, or simply a constitution, the separation of church and state puts anti-2kers in the awkward position of affirming a fundamental point of 2k, namely, the separation of ecclesiastical and civil powers. It is a good thing for them that they do since in Western Christianity only Roman Catholics have taught the unity of church and state.

BLM responds,

Yes … it puts us in the same awkward position of the Old Testament where there existed an affirmation of the Separation of roles and functions of Church and State. The same Old Testament that R2K insist was naught but a “intrusion ethic.” So, we anti-R2K’ers agree with the Old Covenant that there must exist a distinction between ecclesiastical and civil powers. The civil power holds the sword and the ecclesiastical power holds the Keys but both are obliged to handle their instruments of power consistent with God’s revealed word.

Darryl continues,

At the same time, in the United States we have the language of the separation of powers within the federal government. The judicial is separate from the legislative, which is separate from the executive, and so on. But this separation is not really a separation in the way we think about separation of church and state. The reason is that Congress, the Presidency, and the Supreme Court are all part of one government.

BLM responds

Actually it is much the same. All three branches of the Government are distinct and yet all are under the same Constitution. Each of the three branches have their own roles but neither of the three Branches may violate the authority of the Constitution. Just so, with Church and State. Each are under the Same God. Each have their own roles but neither Church or State may violate the authority of God.

More of Darryl,

And this appears to be the case for critics of 2k who pine for Calvin’s Geneva where the Company of Pastors were an agency of the city’s government. The pastors handled spiritual matters and reserved the right of excommunication, a spiritual capital penalty. But Calvin was an officer of Geneva’s city government since the city council appointed him, paid his salary, and gave him his legal status.

In which case, an affirmation of the separation of church and state doesn’t really get us very far if the church is merely going to be a branch of government.

BLM responds

1.) Darryl is saying Calvin was wrong and that Geneva was a unbiblical model. Sinful Calvin. Sinful Geneva. I’m sure glad we have a clearly superior model working for us now in these uSA that we can look to for an example.

2.) In an ideal social order the Pastors serve God by obeying God’s revelation for the Church and civil magistrates serve God by obeying God’s revelation for the Civil realm. The Pastors don’t work for the Government and the Magistrates don’t work for the Church. Both, however are subject to God in His revelation. This isn’t that difficult.

Sigh … that we live in an age where even putative College professors can’t understand the simplest of matters.

Periodically I get requests for just the highlights of R2K. Here is a list I compiled. Mark Van Der Molen gets a hat tip for some of the language below. This could be refined even more and sharpened in terms of the sequential outworking of R2K, but it provides a tolerable beginning for rookies trying to get up to speed.

1.) Posits that there are two Kingdoms here on earth in which the righteous dwell.

2.) Those two Kingdoms are referred to as the Church realm (grace realm) and the common realm. Grace does not restore nature and nature is never mixed with Grace

3.) For R2K those two realms are hermetically sealed off from each other. Still, Christ rules each realm, but in a hyphenated manner. In the common realm (The Kingdom of the Left hand) Christ’s Lordship is put on display indirectly via Natural law. In the realm of grace (The Kingdom of the Right hand) Christ’s Lordship is put on display directly via special revelation. Because this is true, Natural law is the norm that norms all norms in the common realm, and special revelation is the norm that norms all norms in the realm of grace.

4.) The Grace realm (The Kingdom of God’s right hand) is ruled by Christ via God’s special revelation (Bible) and is reflective of the Abrahamic covenant. The church alone is the present institutional manifestation of Christ’s redemptive kingdom.

5.) The Common realm (The Kingdom of God’s left hand) is ruled by Christ via God’s Natural law and is reflective of the Nohaic covenant. As the Noahic Covenant makes no distinction between believers and unbelievers, the state should not require nor promote any particular religious commitment to norm participation in the social order in the common kingdom. The state has no duty or goal to aid the advancement of the spiritual kingdom, and indeed it would be wrong for it to do so.

6.) Since the Church as its own realm it is not ever to speak of matters pertaining to the common realm. That is not the Church’s business, domain, or calling. The Church cannot and must not speak to issues that exist in the common realm. The Church must only speak to the redemptive realm and to individual personal morality that does not coincide with the public square. This means that ministers have no business praying at Town Meetings, writing Letters to the Editor about public square issues, or officiating at common realm events. Ministers as ministers belong to the Church and must not speak beyond the Church as ministers.

7.) Because the common realm is common it is non-sensical to speak of “Christian culture,” “Christian family,” “Christian education,” Christian law,” or Christian anything. The common realm can not be animated by the Christian faith. If it could be it wouldn’t be “common.” R2K denies that there is or ought to exist such a thing as Christian culture. In point of fact, R2K denies any and all ideas of Christendom. One of the practitioners of R2K has even said “that Christendom was a mistake.” and with a parting shot adding, “good riddance.”

8.) Some R2K advocates will even say that Christians in the common realm should not appeal to the Bible in their discussion with the pagan about policy matters for the common realm social order. We as Christians should instead appeal to Natural law which all men in the common realm have in common. So, from a Natural law view we might say incest is wrong, when arguing on policy in the common realm, but we cannot say it is wrong from a general equity Biblical case law view.

9.) The Old Testament Moral law applies to believers in their personal private lives, and though it might apply to the common realm, the Church cannot do the applying. That is left to the believer alone to do. R2K advocates individual Christian involvement in common realm affairs, but it refuses to give a “thus saith the Lord” declaration on any of that involvement. So in practical terms, this means that one set of Christians could start a Christian Marxist club, and another set of Christians could form a Christian Limited Government club, and both sets of Christians would be equally honored in the Church, because the Church does not get involved in these common realm issues. Indeed, it is even possible that members of both clubs would be members of the same Church.

10.) The moral law from the ten commandments applies to all men in all places at all times but the ten commandments do not. This is accomplished by abstracting the meaning of the ten commandments from the ten commandments themselves. (Don’t ask me how they do that. I don’t know how they do that. I just know that they do that.) Moral law becomes largely synonymous with Natural law.

11.) Christians, as such live as “hyphenated beings” in this world. When reading R2K one has to watch for this dividedness (i.e. — dualism) in everything they write. Because of this dividedness you will find their speech full of contradictions that can be maintained because of their inherent worldview dualism. One example of this dualism is when we hear R2K practitioners saying things like, “according to this dual ethic, namely, the natural law-justice ethic governing life in the common kingdom and the grace-mercy ethic governing life in the spiritual kingdom, ours is a divided existence.” (Quote in italics is a paraphrase.)

12.) Not all amillenialists are R2K but all R2K are militant amilleniallists. Their amillennialism informs them that Christ can not and does not have an embodied, temporal, corporeal victory that mirrors the submission of all Kingdoms and disciplines to the authority of Christ in and over this world and so their theology is designed to ensure that embodied victory can not come about. To understand R2K one must understand something of militant amillenialism.

13.) R2K was developed and honed as the antidote to theonomic postmillennialism.

14.) Because of this “theology” some R2K types will tell you that they can and would not discipline a Church member who advocates for (as an example) same sex marriage in the common realm because the Church has naught to do with the common realm.

15.) R2K employs a “intrusion ethic” in order to dismiss the continuing validity of the general equity of the Old Testament Judicial laws. The idea of the R2K “intrusion ethic” is that the ethic of Old Testament Israel, as based upon the Judicial laws (and the Judicials were the case law applying the Moral law) was a ethic that reflected the theocratic Kingdom of God come near. When that Theocratic Kingdom failed, because of Israel’s unfaithfulness, that theocratic Kingdom, with its Kingdom ethic, was taken off the earth and won’t appear again until the consummation. Therefore, we are, according to R2K thinking, immanentizing the eschaton, when we appeal to the abiding validity of the general equity which belongs to the Judicial law. The Law delivered at Sinai under the Mosaic Covenant was a republication of the Covenant of Works in effect only during the time of the Israel theocracy.

16.) R2K advises to obey Caesar in every situation and policy UNLESS Caesar decrees that the redemptive realm must be shut down and worship must cease. Only then can the Church tell Caesar to take a hike. If Caesar mandates homosexual marriage, as one example, then Christians must support Caesar in this and only work against such policy within the confines of what Caesar determines to be law.

17,) Principles of mercy and forgiveness do not govern the common kingdom. The common Kingdom is governed by the Lex Talionis (eye for an eye … tooth for a tooth).

Recently, discussion has occurred (again) at certain environs on how ridiculous it is to make a distinction between a Christian plumber and a non-Christian plumber.

However, I protest.

The reason I protest is that when we concede that Christian plumbing and non-Christian plumbing are exactly the same since both the pagan plumber and the Christian plumber are turning the same pvc pipe, using the same tools, and patching the same leaks we fail to comprehend how it is the case that the pagan plumber has stolen huge amounts of Christian capital in order to even think about plumbing in an orderly fashion. Remember, if the pagan plumber was being consistent with his Christ hating worldview there would be no order nor structure, nor rhyme nor reason to anything, including plumbing. Non Christian worldviews, if consistently thought through and acted upon would be complete and total, time plus chance plus circumstance random chaos. A Christ hating plumber, who was consistent with his worldview, could very well run your plumbing so that every time you turn on the stove water spurts forth, or alternately he could charge you for making your problem even worse.

At this point someone might protest and say .. “But that wouldn’t really be plumbing.” To which I would respond, “Apart from a Christian worldview what is plumbing?” “Apart from a Christian worldview what is a wrench?” “Apart from a Christian worldview what is a leak?” “Apart from a Christian worldview what is pvc pipe?” You see, before the plumber can even begin to plumb he has to make certain assumptions about the world and his plumbing role in it. If he is a Christ hating plumber, who is consistent with his Christ hating worldview, you’re going to get a far different finished repair job then the Christian plumber who is consistent with his Christ affirming worldview.

Now, I’m glad to concede that non Christian plumbers often do Christian plumbing, in the sense that they borrow capital from a Christian worldview in order to approach plumbing needs with a sanguinary amount of skill. However, to deny that, in principle, there is no difference between Christian plumbing and non Christian plumbing is to misunderstand the powerful influence that worldviews have on every facet of life — including plumbing.

If we lived in a world where the antithesis between Christianity and non-Christianity had arrived closer to a terminal point I think we would see more easily how it is legitimate to speak of Christian and non Christian plumbing.

Maybe if the former Soviets had had some Christian plumbers on hand Chernobyl would have never happened?