Category: God’s Abiding Law

Sovereignty — Some Meaning & Implications

1.) Sovereignty is totalistic

Absolute sovereignty extends to complete rule. An absolute sovereign means that said sovereign has absolute and total government. God, being absolute sovereign rules so minutely that not even a sparrow can fall without His consent (Mt. 10:29-31). Amos teaches that God’s sovereignty is so totalistic that even if calamity comes to the city that God has done it (Amos 3:6). Isaiah teaches that God creates disaster (Is. 45:7). In Job, Satan must receive approval from God before Satan can touch God’s servant. Acts 17:29 teaches that “we live and move and have our being in God and His government.

We see the State seeking to pick up the prerogatives of Sovereignty when it seeks to create a environment where God’s revealed sovereignty is put into abeyance in favor of the States. The State longs to create a social order where we live and move and have our being in the State.

2.) Sovereignty is characterized by total planning

In the Scripture total planning is called predestination. Isaiah 14:24 teaches, “Surely, just as I have intended so it has happened, and just as I have planned so it will stand…” Elsewhere in Isaiah 46:10 we find, “I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say, ‘My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please.'” And again, Psalm 33:9, “For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast. 10The LORD nullifies the counsel of the nations; He frustrates the plans of the peoples. 11The counsel of the LORD stands forever, The plans of His heart from generation to generation.…

When God’s Sovereignty is denied, predestination does not go away. Some other agency enters in in order to provide total planning. The more godless a people become the more they will turn to some other agency to provide total planning. Typically that is the State and Obamacare is a perfect example of the State seeking to do total planning. This is a example of humanistic predestination and another demonstration of the State’s attempt to seize God’s sovereignty.

3.) Sovereignty is characterized by Omniscience

Of course total planning can not happen without Omniscience. The idea that one can predestine the beginning from the end without knowing the beginning from the end is just absurd. The Scriptures teach that God is Omniscient.

Psalm 139:4
Before a word is on my tongue you, LORD, know it completely.

Proverbs 5:21
For your ways are in full view of the LORD, and he examines all your paths.

Proverbs 15:3
The eyes of the LORD are everywhere, keeping watch on the wicked and the good.

Jeremiah 16:17
My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from me, nor is their sin concealed from my eyes.

Hebrews 4:13
And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

Of course this overturns all other teaching that suggests that God does not know the future, or that God and man are co-operating in order to create a uncertain future.

When we deny omniscience to God omniscience does not go away, but instead it seeks to find itself seized by whatever immanent god seeks to be god. We are hearing of this all the time today. We are seeing reports about NSA — a Government agency — seeking to collect all kinds of information and data on Americans.

A Congresswoman (Maxine Waters) recently noted that,

“The President has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life,” Representative Maxine Waters told Roland Martin on Monday.

“That’s going to be very, very powerful,” Waters said. “That database will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it’s never been done before and whoever runs for President on the Democratic ticket has to deal with that…. It’s very powerful what he’s leaving in place.”

Rushdoony noted here,

“When the State claims sovereignty, the logic of its position requires that a like total knowledge be acquired concerning all men and things, and the result is the inquisitive and prying state which aims at knowing all in order to govern all.”

4.) Sovereignty is characterized by claims of ownership

Deuteronomy 10:14
To the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it.

Job 41:11
Who has a claim against me that I must pay? Everything under heaven belongs to me.

Psalm 24:1
The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it;

Psalm 50:12
If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it.

Psalm 89:11
The heavens are yours, and yours also the earth; you founded the world and all that is in it.

If we belong to God that means we do not believe to ourselves or the State. However, the State does claim the citizenry as property. We are assets to be used and resources to be exploited.

Jonathan R. T. Hughes in his book, “The Government Habit,” offers this,

“It would surprise most American landowners today, as it often does those who cannot meet their property taxes, to learn that the state owns the land outright. Owners in fee simple have possession only of right in real estate: this phenomenon is part of what historians call the English Heritage.”

But it gets worse than that.

Prior to 1913, most Americans owned clear, allodial title to property, free and clear of any liens or mortgages until the Federal Reserve Act (1913) “hypothecated” all property within the federal United States to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, -in which the Trustees (stockholders) held legal title. The U.S. citizen (tenant, franchisee) was registered as a “beneficiary” of the trust via his/her birth certificate. In 1933, the federal United States hypothecated (pledge (money) by law to a specific purpose) all of the present and future properties, assets and labor of their “subjects,” the 14th Amendment U.S. citizen, to the Federal Reserve System.

In return, the Federal Reserve System agreed to extend the federal United States corporation all the credit “money substitute” it needed. Like any other debtor, the federal United States government had to assign collateral and security to their creditors as a condition of the loan. Since the federal United States didn’t have any assets, they
assigned the private property of their “economic slaves”, the U.S. citizens as collateral against the unpayable federal debt. They also pledged the unincorporated federal territories, national parks forests, birth certificates, and nonprofit organizations, as collateral against the federal debt. All has already been transferred as payment to the international bankers.

So, the idea of ownership inherent in Sovereignty, doesn’t go away when one denies it to the God of the Bible. Instead the idea of ownership is transferred to an immanent god.

5.) Sovereignty is characterized Law

In any social order Law is always reflective of the Law giver. God takes to Himself the authority to establish the boundaries of man’s rule. This includes, of course the issue of taxation (Ex. 30:11-16), (I Sam. 8:7-8). With God as law giver the tax is a tithe. When the State seeks to be sovereign it seeks a far higher percentage rate.

When it comes to the broader idea of the Law, we see that what the State invokes is called Positive Law

“There is no logic to the law in the “traditional” sense: it does not reflect in any meaningful way a constant standard of right or set of moral absolutes. Rather, the “path” of the law is historical in nature, weaving and winding through changing cultural norms and varying political circumstances. Thus judges (and now executives) who alter the law by fiat only hurry along the next stage of progress.” Oliver Wendell Holmes

When you rid yourself of God’s transcendent law you don’t rid yourself of Law. Instead what you get is legal Positivism. The key to legal positivism is in understanding the way positivists answer the fundamental question of jurisprudence: “What is law?” The word “positivism” itself derives from the Latin root positus, which means to posit, postulate, or firmly affix the existence of something. Legal positivism attempts to define law by firmly affixing its meaning to written decisions made by governmental bodies that are endowed with the legal power to regulate particular areas of society and human conduct. If a principle, rule, regulation, decision, judgment, or other law is recognized by a duly authorized governmental body or official, then it will qualify as law, according to legal positivists. Conversely, if a behavioral norm is enunciated by anyone or anything other than a duly authorized governmental body or official, the norm will not qualify as law in the minds of legal positivists, no matter how many people are in the habit of following the norm or how many people take action to legitimize it.

Bret Lee on Brian Lee

“Focusing perhaps too much on the civil laws of the old covenant, as if they were still in effect in the new covenant era, the book (Tim Keller’s “Generous Justice”) gives too little attention in my view to Jesus’ explicit “new commandment” for his followers to “love one another as he has loved them” (John 15:12-17; 1 John 2:7-10; 3:11-24). Jesus even says that it is by this special love that his followers will be known in the world. How does this command relate to Israel’s calling to manifest God’s justice societally?”

Dr. Brian Lee
Minister — URC
Article From Modern Reformation Publication

http://www.modernreformation.org/default.php?page=articledisplay&var1=ArtRead&var2=1285&var3=main&var4=Hom

1.) I don’t agree with Tim Keller. I think Keller advocates a kind of soft Marxism as Christianity. Whatever will be written here is not in defense of Keller. Instead I am defending the idea that the Old Testament law is not obsolete per Lee’s reasoning.

2.) The Westminster Confession insists that the civil law remains in effect in terms of its general equity.

“To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging under any now, further than the general equity thereof may require…”

The fact that the last phrase is placed in the WCF 19:4 suggests that Lee is in error about the civil laws no longer being in effect today. The civil laws as they pertained to OT Israel, as the Old Testament saints existed in their National existence, have expired, however, the general equity of those civil laws abide on and remain in force. When we attempt to just throw out God’s civil law without paying attention to the general equity that remains we eviscerate the applicational use of the Moral law as the civil law was merely the moral law as interpreted into case law. When we whimsically toss out the general equity of the civil law we make the moral law toothless. It is true that we have to do interpretive work here to find the general equity of the civil law but upon doing the interpretive work the heart of the civil law continues to live.

3.) When Lee appeals to Jesus’ new commandment and plays that off as superseding God’s eternal law as codified in the OT how is Lee not making a Dispenstional move here? Is Lee here suggesting that the amorphous idea of “love” is supposed to be the ethic by which New Testament Christians are to live? How is Lee’s approach any different than Joseph Fletcher’s approach in his book, “Situation Ethics: The New Morality?” Fletcher posited an ethic of “Loving concern” as the beacon by which all decisions are made. Is this what Lee is suggesting as well?

4.) When Jesus commanded his people to love one another, He did so in the context of upholding the law of God at every turn. The point here is that love as an ethic, cannot be defined without a transcendent law structure to inform it. When Jesus said “love one another,” they could only know what love was and looked like by referencing and accessing God’s transcendent law. Jesus Himself loved His people by fulfilling God’s law in relation to them. If they were to love one another as He had loved them then in order to do so they would have to love one another by respect to and fulfillment of God’s law word just as Jesus had loved them in respect to and fulfillment of God’s law word.

5.) So, Keller makes the OT speak soft Marxism, while Lee makes it speak antinomian Dispensationalism. Neither approaches are particularly satisfying.

Postscript,

For a good article reviewing Keller’s “Generous Justice” as soft Marxism see,

http://freedomtorch.com/blogs/3/2762/tim-keller-and-social-justice

Why Rape Is A Capital Offense Per Scripture

“Third, the reason the rapist in Deuteronomy 22:25 is put to death is not because the woman he raped was betrothed, but because rape is a crime equivalent to murder. Verses 26b and 27 read: “For this case is like that of a man attacking and murdering his neighbor, because he met her in the open country, and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no one to rescue her.”

Francis Nigel Lee writes

‘Why precisely death to this rapist? God says: “For it is as when a man rises against his neighbour and slays him, even so is this matter” (Deuteronomy 22:26b). Rape is thus like a case of premeditated murder, where God says also the murderer is to get the death penalty’ (Genesis 9:6). [4. Lee, Rape!!!, 10.]

The reason rape is equivalent to murder is because the woman is forced against her will: “because he met her in the open country, and though the betrothed young woman cried for help there was no one to rescue her.” This can and does happen to betrothed and non-betrothed women alike. Since forcing a woman to have sex against her will is the basis for executing the rapist, then rape always warrants capital punishment—regardless of whether the victim is betrothed or not. Just as murder is always a capital offense, regardless of who is murdered, so rape is always a capital offense, regardless of who is raped.

Fourth, one might still ask, “Why then does Deuteronomy 22:25-27 deal only explicitly with a betrothed woman?” Michael H. Warren, Jr., believes it
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speaks of a betrothed virgin because it is continuing the theme of Deuteronomy 22:23-24 in which a betrothed virgin consents to sex with a man not her husband, not because the latter was meant to limit the death penalty for rape to betrothed virgins. The distinction that is the focus of the section is between betrothed virgins who consent (Deut. 22:23-24) and unbetrothed virgins who consent (Deut. 22:28-29). [5. Michael H. Warren, Jr., e-mail message to author, January 3, 2010.]
—–

Moreover, while Deuteronomy 22:25-27 deals explicitly with betrothed women, it does deal implicitly with unbetrothed women. As noted in the previous point, rape in and of itself is equivalent to the capital crime of murder.

Fifth, the interpretation that Deuteronomy 22:28-29 deals with a man committing rape is counterintuitive, since the man is required to pay the woman’s father fifty shekels of silver and to marry the woman. But how many fathers would even want to see a man who raped his daughter, let alone permit him to marry her? How can he even look at the rapist without wanting to kill him? Moreover, “And what if the man rapes five virgins seriatim? Should he then marry all five?!” [6.Lee, Rape!!!, 11.] Or, what if five men gang rape one virgin? Should they all marry her? Finally, the requirement for the woman who is raped to marry “would lay a burden and penalty on the woman who had no part or consent in the act, which is as unfair and senseless as punishing the victim of attempted murder.” [7. Bahnsen, Pre-Marital Sexual Relations.] The Bible requires punishing the criminal, not the victim. Eye-for-an-eye means “you take an eye, you lose an eye”—not “you lose an eye, you lose another eye.”

“God is Just”

The Basis Of Our Political & Legislative Positions … McAtee contra DeYoung

“”That is to say, our political and legislative positions cannot be determined simply by noting that the Bible calls something a sin and therefore that sin should be illegal. Further considerations about the common good, natural law, human rights, the unfolding of redemptive history, and the nature and scope of the state must come into play. I do not think the state should recognize gay marriage (so called), but my justification for this position goes deeper than merely asserting that homosexual behavior is ethically wrong.”

– Rev. Kevin DeYoung

1.) It is true that not all sins are crimes or should be legislated against as crimes but unfortunately Rev. DeYoung does not articulate that distinction which leaves his assertion confusing and open to the misinterpretation that would allow someone to suggest that all because the Scripture teaches that something is a crime that does not therefore mean that it is a crime for today. Rev. DeYoung’s statement is open to the accusation that he is saying that Scripture alone is not sufficient to define crime as crime.

2.) By what standard will Rev. DeYoung and the rest of us determine the Common good if not by God’s standard as found in the Bible? John Stuart Mill, would argue that the Common good is arrived at by pragmatism but of course Christians are not pragmatists.

3.) Rev. DeYoung invokes Human Right but Humans have no rights. Humans have only duties. Only God has rights. The whole notion of “Human Rights” as they have been sold since the Enlightenment is a complete creation by Humanist categories. I would encourage Rev. DeYoung to read “What’s wrong with human rights,” by T. Robert Ingram. All ministers need to think twice about willy nilly invoking this human rights language. It may be possible for Christians to use “Human Rights” language but the usage of it by Christians would be something completely different then what we find in a Biblical Worldview.

4.) If Nature is fallen, why should we look to Natural Law? Besides, presuppositionalism has completely destroyed the whole Natural Law position. Natural law posits a reading of reality by way of neutrality. There is not such thing as neutrality.

5.) How do we know what the nature and scope of the State should be without consulting God’s Word?

All of these other considerations invoked by Rev. DeYoung are non-sequiturs.

6.) “My justification for this position goes deeper than merely asserting that homosexual behavior is ethically wrong.” Rev. DeYoung’s justification goes deeper then the reality of relying on God’s word for what is ethically wrong?

That is a stupendous and curious statement.

The Law Is Holy, and Just, and Good

“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 at 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

“Then let us not think that this Law is a special Law for the Jews; but let us understand that God intended to deliver us a general rule, to which we must yield ourselves … Since, it is so, it is to be concluded, not only that it is lawful for all kings and magistrates, to punish heretics and such as have perverted the pure truth; but also that they be bound to do it, and that they misbehave themselves towards God, if they suffer errors to rest without redress, and employ not their whole power to shew greater zeal in their behalf than in all other things.”

John Calvin, Sermon on Deuteronomy, sermon 87 on Deuteronomy 13:5

In a treatise against pacifistic Anabaptists who maintained a doctrine of the spirituality of the Church which abrogated the binding authority of the case law Calvin wrote,

“They (the Anabaptists) will reply, possibly, that the civil government of the people of Israel was a figure of the spiritual kingdom of Jesus Christ and lasted only until his coming, I will admit to them that in part, it was a figure, but I deny that it was nothing more than this, and not without reason. For in itself it was a political government, which is a requirement among all people. That such is the case, it is written of the Levitical priesthood that it had to come to an end and be abolished at the coming of our Lord Jesus (Heb. 7:12ff) Where is it written that the same is true of the external order? It is true that the scepter and government were to come from the tribe of Judah and the house of David, but that the government was to cease is manifestly contrary to Scripture.”

John Calvin
Treatise against the Anabaptists and against the Libertines, pp. 78-79

“But it is questioned whether the law pertains to the kingdom of Christ, which is spiritual and distinct from all earthly dominion; and there are some men, not otherwise ill-disposed, to whom it appears that our condition under the Gospel is different from that of the ancient people under the law; not only because the kingdom of Christ is not of this world, but because Christ was unwilling that the beginnings of His kingdom should be aided by the sword. But, when human judges consecrate their work to the promotion of Christ’s kingdom, I deny that on that account its nature is changed. For, although it was Christ’s will that His Gospel should be proclaimed by His disciples in opposition to the power of the whole world, and He exposed them armed with the Word alone like sheep amongst the wolves, He did not impose on Himself an eternal law that He should never bring kings under His subjection, nor tame their violence, nor change them from being cruel persecutors into the patrons and guardians of His Church.”

John Calvin
Commentaries on the Four Last Books of Moses – p. 77.