God’s Abiding Law – Page 3

Baptist Prof Analyzes Theonomy … McAtee Analyzes Baptist Prof

“Theonomy is a facile hermeneutic that channels an eschatology of triumph. Historically undesirable, it instrumentalizes religion, blurs church-state relationships, and jeopardizes religious dissent. And it proves unnecessary because of how other covenants showcase the benefits of common grace and natural law.”

Andrew T. Walker

Associate Prof. – Christian ethics @ Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Fellow with the Ethics and Public Policy Center

The Gospel Coalition Article

1.) If the Bible teaches a eschatology of triumph (and it does) then there is no problem with having a hermeneutic that channels an eschatology of triumph

2.) Historically undesirable according to whom? According to Satanist or Humanists or Baptist? But I repeat myself.

3.) Any religion that isn’t instrumentalized is useless as a religion.

4.) Only a Baptist would complain about the blurring of Church and State relations since the Baptist religion requires the Church and State be divorced. As such anyone who disagree with the idea that the Church and State must be divorced is someone, per the Baptists, who are guilty of blurring Church and State relations.

5.) The jeopardizing of religious dissent is a good thing when that religious dissent is dissenting against Christianity. The jeopardizing of religious dissent is only a bad thing when it is Christian dissent against false religions like Baptistianity that is being jeopardized.

6.) Common grace and natural law are myths in the way Walker wants to define them.

7.) Walker is an over educated not wise man.

McAtee Contra Dewey Roberts in Defense of Bahnsen and Theonomy

What then are Bahnsen’s fundamental flaws with respect to the law? His emphasis on being obedient to the law in exhaustive detail brings about a possible conceit that such obedience is actually possible for the believer…. The moral law is the rule for the obedience of the believer, but no Christian can perfectly fulfill it. To the unbeliever, the law is a fearful threat of impending doom.”

Dewey Roberts

Federal Vision and Historic Christianity — p. 196

Roberts really jumps the shark in this chapter titled, “Federal Vision and Theonomy,” from his book “Historic Christianity and the Federal Vision.” In this chapter Roberts seeks to tie Federal Vision to theonomy and in doing so Roberts reveals that he is a clown, who on this subject is NOT to be taken seriously.

Keep in mind that I write all of the below as a adamant opponent of Federal Vision.

Regarding the quote above,

1.) Bahnsen never taught the necessity of obedience to God’s law in exhaustive detail. Bahnsen taught the necessity of obedience to God’s law in exhaustive detail in the context of the law’s general equity. Roberts is wrong.

2.) Would Roberts have clergy so emphasize the inability of God’s people to honor God’s law that it becomes possible that God’s people no longer bother even paying attention to God’s law?

3) Bahnsen never came close to teaching that the believer could keep God’s law in its exhaustive detail so that the believer ended up conceited. Bahnsen understood the necessity of the law to convict and expose as well as the necessity of the law as a guide to life.

4.) If I were to avoid preaching on every subject wherein my hearers might possibly come to carnal conclusion I would never preach a word. The same was true for Bahnsen. What people might possibly do upon Bahnsen emphasizing the truth is not the same as what Bahnsen (or anybody) intends for them to do.

5.) Is Robert’s desire that we preach the law in such a way that all believers say to themselves, “Well, since I can never keep God’s law perfectly therefore I shall never try to keep God’s law.” Clearly Roberts preaching on the law so emphasizes the believers inability to keep the law perfectly that it is possible that some people will hear that they shouldn’t ever bother seeking to honor God’s law.

6.) Bahnsen never denied that to the unbeliever God’s law is a fearful threat of impending doom.

Elsewhere Dewey Roberts writes,

“Second, he (Bahnsen) emphasized obedience to the law so strenuously that he often comes close to the dangerous Pelagian spectrum of errors. Pelagius, as we have seen, taught that mankind could live in obedience to God’s requirements. ‘Theonomy in Christian Ethics’ often makes it seem that the believer can fulfill all of God’s laws. There is very little emphasis on the threatening aspect of God’s law…. Concerning the law, Pelagius taught;

‘But we do praise God as the Author of our righteousness, in that He gave us the law, by the teaching of which we have learned how we ought to live.’

Pelagius, likewise, almost completely discounted the threatening aspects of God’s law and saw the law as a gracious act of God which revealed the way the righteous should live.”

Dewey Roberts

Historic Christianity & The Federal Vision — p. 197

1.) Look Dewey, just as a woman is either pregnant or not pregnant so someone is either a Pelagian or he is not a Pelagian. The whole idea that someone is “close to the dangerous spectrum of Pelagian errors” is like a woman being close to being pregnant. Either she is or she isn’t. Either Bahnsen is Pelagian or he is not. If he is not then shut your ignorant trap. I mean if you don’t your close to committing libel. (Did you get the joke in that last sentence Dewey?)

2.) I read Theonomy in Christian Ethics. I did not put it down upon finishing it, thinking, “Wow, now I can go out and perfectly fulfill all God’s laws.” So, I guess we should say Dewey, that when YOU read “Theonomy in Christian Ethics” that YOU wrongly came away from it thinking that it SEEMED to teach that the believer could not fulfill all God’s laws.

3.) Now, about that weasel word “seemed.” Seemed to whom? Seemed to whom by what standard? It seems to me that on this score you’re an idiot. But it only seems that way. In reality it might not be that way.

4.) There is little emphasis on the threatening of God’s law in ‘Theonomy in CHRISTIAN Ethics,’ because Bahnsen was writing to Christians. Christians have already been delivered by Christ’s work on the Cross from the threatening of God’s law and so arise as a people who are zealous for good works. Bahnsen in his book is instructing the believers who are zealous for good works as to what those good works look like. As the Heidelberg Catechism teaches Dewey;

Question 91: But what are good works?

Answer: Only those which proceed from a true faith,5 are performed according to the law of God,6 and to His glory;7 and not such as are founded on our imaginations or the institutions of men.8

Tell me Dewey, is the Heidelberg Catechism here, because it does not threaten with the law here, “close to the dangerous spectrum of Pelagian errors?”

5.) I don’t care who talked about “the law as a gracious act of God which revealed the way the righteous should live.” whether it was Pelagius, Socinius, or Fosdick, if they were talking about the law in its usage as a guide to life they were or would have been absolutely correct and for anybody to deny that makes them a full blown antinomian.

6.) And speaking of Antinomianism, honestly Dewey, these criticisms sound to my ear to be the criticisms of someone close to the dangerous spectrum of Tobias Crisp or John Saltmarsh errors.

The Stranger & the Alien/Foreigner in Israel

“I came across this quote from Gillespie in Aaron’s Rod Blossoming. It is actually from another author, John Seldon, in a book that I cannot find translated into English yet. If any one knows of a copy in English I would love to get it. The title is De jure naturali et gentium juxta disciplinam Ebraeorum.”

Online Friend

“In respect of members’ for, as Mr. Selden hath very well observed concerning that sort of proselytes who had the name of Proselyti Justitiae.” They were initiated into the Jewish religion by circumcision, baptism and sacrifice; and they were allowed not only to worship God apart by themselves, but also to come into the church and congregation of Israel, and to be called by the name of Jews, nevertheless they were restrained and secluded from dignities, magistracies and preferments in the Jewish republic, and from divers marriages which were free to the Israelites, even as strangers initiated and associated into the church of Rome have not therefore the privilege of Roman citizens.”

Gillespie
Aaron’s Rod Blossoming, pg 4

It is easy to see that Selden and Gillespie both rejected the “open borders” “easy citizenship” ideas that so permeate our culture, especially the church. No matter the religious standing in Israel, a “stranger” remained that in the civil realm, no matter their religious affiliation. Even “divers marriages” were kept from these “strangers and aliens.”

This quote tracks well from a portion of a sermon I did in 2015

So, what we see here, in this examination of the Hebrew word “ger” is that this idea of stranger, alien, sojourner requires context in order of us to understand how it is being used. Clearly in this Dt. 28 passage the word is being used in more of a discontinuity sense. We know this because God is saying that disobedience will bring the result that the alien — the one not belonging to the Israel as Israel — will rise higher and higher over them. A clear demarcation is being made between the immigrant and the native son.

The resident alien (ger) in Israel was never so integrated and assimilated into the Israeli social order that the distinction between citizen born and alien evaporated. The resident alien (ger) was held to the same law, could become part of the worship cult BUT they were always known as distinct from Israeli born. Hence they are continuously referred to as ger (stranger).

Having said this we should realize that clearly there is a immigrant class that is living among the people of God. This people are not to be oppressed. They are to be treated with justice according to God’s law and they are to be able to find a way in the land. However, they are clearly the “tail” of the social order.

We know this because the text teaches that the roles will be reversed for disobedience. They who were once the head will become the tail and those who were once the tail will become the head.

Some one judgment of God upon Israel’s disobedience is that God’s people will become strangers and aliens in their own land.

We should note here also that this text does away with notions of egalitarianism. All peoples in all settings are not equal. God speaks here of one people being a tail and one people being a head and says that He is the one that makes that to be the case and in here we learn that obedience to God’s Law results in being the head.

It is not Christianity that teaches egalitarianism but rather it is Liberalism as Machen noted,

“… one thing is perfectly plain—whether or not liberals are Christians, it is at any rate perfectly clear that liberalism is not Christianity. And that being the case, it is highly undesirable that liberalism and Christianity should continue to be propagated within the bounds of the same organization. A separation between the two parties in the Church is the crying need of the hour… The modern liberal doctrine is that all men everywhere, no matter what their race or creed, are brothers.”

J.Gresham Machen
Christianity and Liberalism, p.133

Of course we have come to the point that we no longer think in terms of categories like stranger, alien, foreigner, and sojourner which means we no longer think in terms of family. If we take Deuteronomy 28 seriously and see our delight with the stranger being lifted above us we must at least ask ourselves if we are under God’s just punishment for our disobedience.

When we think of our own immigration issues we see that the result here is also that the head is becoming the tail and that the tail is becoming the head

I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends; A Different Theonomist Takes Walker to the Woodshed

Andrew Walker wrote here;

American Culture Is Broken. Is Theonomy the Answer? (thegospelcoalition.org)

AW writes,

“The eternal law, evident in the natural law, comes to be expressed in divine law. While the Decalogue is, I believe, a timeless representation of natural law, its contents existed before they were formally codified.”

Mark Chambers responds,

What exactly does that say? There is

(1) Eternal Law

(2) Natural Law

(3) Divine Law

Since there is one God, the creator of all things, who is both timeless and omniscient

(1) exactly what is the distinction/difference between “eternal law” and “divine law” and for that matter “natural law” whatever one conceives that to be since each is the product of the One Divine Mind?

(2) And being that Divine Law it is evident in natural law [I hate even writing the term] what is the need for codification?

The Decalogue, he suggests, is a timeless representation of natural law.

(1) Codification abrogates any idea of timelessness since codification is temporal having come about at some point in time. He makes it sound nifty but he’s just being stupid. See the next point.

(2) Since he suggests, by implication if not explicitly, that the codified Decalogue functions differently in different times and places one wonders what change codification made in the “ostensible” natural law which is the evident reflection of “The Eternal Law”?

(3) If one were to codify the natural law, which is the reflective evidence of the eternal law, for today’s times, how would it differ from the Decalogue, whose moral content was timeless therefore prior to its codification, as written by the Divine hand on Sinai?

(4) ** How are the moral contents of the Decalogue, which according to him are timeless, to be applied differently in different times and places? What did “you shall not murder, commit adultery, take the Lord’s name in vain” mean then and what does it mean now?

(5) And, just to help me out, how does one get the Decalogue out of natural law which is the evidence of eternal law which the Decalogue is also eternal since its moral content is timeless
.

(6) Has he been reading Ricouer?

He’s a logical dolt and a moron.

** = And if the meaning changed between then and now how do we know that the meaning changed and how do we know what the new meaning is vis-a-vis the old meaning? (BLMc)

Covenantal Succession … Covenantal Nurture

It is the assumption of Scripture that infants are genuine members of the covenant. That is the reason why in the text before us this morning parents are commanded to nurture their children in terms of Christian covenantal thinking.

There is no debate on that point when we consider the Old Testament. All concede that Circumcision was the sign and seal that indicated membership in the Covenant. It is only in the New Testament where we begin to find widespread and sometimes heated disagreement that NT infants, just as their OT counterparts, are to be branded with a brand that indicates that they are genuine members of the covenant. In the NT, so the reasoning goes of those who go their own way on this matter, infants are not members upon birth, of the covenant.

Of course, if those who demur with us on this point are correct this means that one of the purposes of Jesus death and resurrection was to the end that infants of covenant parents would be expelled from a covenant in which they had previously been a party too before the death and resurrection of our Lord Christ. This is an odd way to think about a “New and Better” covenant.

Covenant succession merely holds that God’s general way of collecting the Church is via His gathering into the Church the children of His children.

Causes of the decline of Covenant succession

1.) Social Contract theory as applied to the Church

According to this understanding of social order theory long established in the Enlightenment West, each person is by nature an independent locale of sovereign self-authority, having full legal capacity to act on their own behalf and so not subject to the authority of another. In this theory, each atomized individual is absolutely equal to every other atomized individual and so by sovereign “right” authorized to act upon his own determination.

With this theory, man’s natural liberty was held as being the privilege to do whatever he wanted to do. In this theory man himself determines what shall be given up in order to live in civil society. Man, as the individual sovereign is everywhere supreme.

Well, you can see how this social contract theory, when adopted by the Church would lead to the idea that it is the individual man himself who does or does not consent to belong to this community of faith.

Whether as pertaining to a broader social order or as pertaining to the Church an objection must be raised to this theory that we believe has had such a baleful influence upon both the social orders of men and upon the Church of Jesus Christ. Men have never existed as sovereign atomized individuals using their own sovereign free will to determine whether they will or will not be a party to a social contract or to being claimed by God in Baptism. Instead, men are born as members of peoples, as well as Churches as ordained by Him. So, just as men do not choose their own civic obligation but are born to it so men who are born to believing parents do not choose their belonging to the Church but are ordained by God to that end.

2.) Revivalistic Assumptions vs. Scriptural Assumptions

With the first great awakening as followed by the 2nd great awakening, the emphasis as it relates to speaking about conversion moved from the covenantal nurture of children in the covenant to having a dramatic personal emotional experiential encounter with Jesus.

Louis Bevins Schenk in his book on “The Presbyterian Doctrine of Covenant Succession writes,

“The presumption of regeneration in the case of children of the covenant, based upon the covenant promises, was largely displaced by the Church’s practice of recognizing as Christians only those who gave ‘credible evidence,” satisfactory to themselves of regeneration.”

This is the conversion mindset in which most of our churches think today. From evangelism programs like “Romans Road,” “Evangelism Explosion,” or the “Four Spiritual laws,” this is the contemporary Church’s understanding of how conversion occurs. Before this time the whole idea of “altar calls” that have become famous with Charles Finney, D. L. Moody, Billy Sunday, and Billy Graham would have been a curious phenomenon.

However, while never denying that God deals with some people like this — particularly those who come to Christ as adults — this isn’t the model that we find emphasized in Scripture as it pertains to covenant children. In Scripture, the parents are to lay hold of God’s promises that God will be God to us and to our children for a thousand generations and then are to train their children up in the faith in light of God’s promises. In this model, the whole idea of a dramatic conversion experience slips away in favor of covenantal nurture.

3.) Datable Conversionism vs. Covenant Succession Conversionism

Consistent with what was just mentioned the whole ascendancy of a datable conversion became the be all end all for much of the Church. The idea is that “every Christian knows the day they were ‘born again.'” This stands in contrast to the idea of covenantal succession where God

4.) The failure of Covenantal Nurture

⁶And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:

⁷And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

Too often the cash value of baptism to many who are party to the contemporary Church is that they have kept their religious responsibility to their children. They have had them Baptized.

This is why the form distinctly says, in the charge we just read that parents

“must, therefore, use the sacrament for the purpose that God intended and not out of custom or superstition.”

While we are of the persuasion that in Baptism God has placed His claim upon us we are not of the persuasion that Baptism entered into apart from covenantal nurturing laid upon us as parents guarantee our child is right with God.

Listen to the 19th century Southern Theologian R. L. Dabney on this point,

The instrumentalities of the family are chosen and ordained of God as the most efficient of all means of grace—more truly and efficaciously means of saving grace than all the other ordinances of the church. To family piety are given the best promises of the gospel,.. How, then, should a wise God do otherwise than consecrate the Christian family, and ordain that the believing parents shall sanctify the children? Hence, the very foundation of all parental fidelity to children’s souls is to be laid in the conscientious, solemn, and hearty adoption of the very duties and promises which God seals in the covenant of infant baptism. It is pleasing to think that many Christians who refuse the sacrament do, with a happy inconsistency, embrace the duties and seek the blessing. But God gives all his people the truths and promises, along with the edifying seal. Let us hold fast to both.

~ R.L. Dabney

So, if we are to return to a time where covenantal succession is again the norm in our families and in our churches and among our people we must once again practice covenantal nurture. We must teach our children the Scriptures. We must catechize our children. We must anticipate and answer their objections before they have those objections that we know will arise. As we are teaching our children God’s judgments, statutes, and laws we must point out to them how the culture and too often the visible Church wars against those judgments, statutes, and laws. We must introduce our children to systematic thinking because there is nothing non-systemic and non-systematic in the thinking of God. We must dip and saturate our children in a Christian Worldview that they will see non-Christian worldviews as strange, exotic and ugly. As parents, we must love them, and not provoke them. We must live out before them the majesty of God’s grace that has redeemed us for the sake of the finished work of Christ alone.

Some areas to keep an eye on in order to practice covenantal nurture,

a.) Protect your children from the culture,

Media

The media is a messaging machine and that messaging is seldom based on a Christian world and life view. As such children need not be exposed to Media until they are far far older and have the ability, as coming from covenantal nurturing, to identify and sniff out the false theology behind the false messaging.

Neil Postman in his now classic work warning against the danger of modern Media wrote,

“But it is much later in the game now, and ignorance of the score is inexcusable. To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple.”

If we are going to practice covenantal nurture in hope of covenantal succession we must understand that technology is, as a rule, no friend of Covenantal succession.

Public Schools

“I am afraid that the schools will prove the very gates of hell unless they diligently labor in explaining the Holy Scriptures and engraving them in the heart of the youth.” ― Martin Luther

I am as sure as I am of the fact of Christ’s reign that a comprehensive and centralized system of national education separated from religion, as is now commonly proposed, will prove the most appalling enginery for the propagation of anti-Christian and atheistic unbelief, and of anti-social, nihilistic ^4. ethics, individual, social, and political, which this sin-rent world has ever seen.

Dr. A.A. Hodge

b.) Protect your children from unexamined friendships

From the youngest of ages, it is your role to be the portal that all must pass through in order to get to your children. You must be aware that other children of other families may not share the same Christian confession that you own. This means you must be sharp to watch out that friendships are not cemented with those who will, perhaps quite apart from malicious intent, challenge the truths that you are seeking to instill within your children from Scripture. You are seeking to nurture and disciple your children in the Christian faith. If you allow your children large swaths of “playtime” with other children — even other children from Christian homes of a different confessional stripe — you are courting a bad result in your efforts of covenantal nurture.

The Message of Covenantal nurturing

The message to our children that we must start with in terms of covenantal nurturing is that God provided Christ as the one who would fulfill all the law’s obligations as laid upon the sinful children of Adam and who would give to those same children the righteousness of Jesus Christ to those who would in faith rest in Christ’s righteousness alone as their acceptability to God.

The covenantal nurturing message to our children is that God is at war with unbelieving man and has reconciled Himself to unbelieving man by the finished work of Jesus Christ. It is only by the reconciling work of Jesus Christ in His work on the Cross whereby we and they can have peace and blessing with and from God.

We must nurture our children in the way of a faith that rests in Christ’s work alone in Justification but then also teaches them that in Sanctification their faith is to work as they turn to the law and to the testimonies for God’s word on how they shall live as Christians.

We must remind our baptized children that God’s claim is upon them and so they are to grow in the Christian faith. Our challenge is not that they might decide to become Christian but that they would know God’s eternal claim upon them and become what they have already been freely declared to be in Baptism.

We must nurture them to learning of God’s character. His Sovereignty, His Justice, His Wisdom, His Holiness, His Goodness, His Mercy, and His Grace.

We must nurture them to trust in God’s Word and God’s promises as opposed to their experiences, emotions, and mystical revelations. We must nurture them what it means to be a kind and caring people while at the same time warning them against the dangers of a suicidal altruism.

We must nurture them in the ways of taking godly dominion to every area the sovereign God calls them and of the great truth of our postmillennial hope.

We must nurture them in the truth that repentance is a life long project. But then that even our repentance needs repenting over. We must model before them a humility that seeks to shed every ounce of that ugly sin of self-righteousness. We must demonstrate to them what it means to not think more highly of ourselves than we ought and to consider not only our needs but the needs of others. We must pray that they will see us on our knees praying for Wisdom and that they will hear us honestly attest ourselves to as being not yet wise.

God grants us His grace for what parent could possibly think themselves sufficient unto such a calling?

But God is Faithful and being faithful we anticipate that even in all our failures with our children He will be to our seed and their seed the God who calls them to Himself.