God’s Abiding Law – Page 8

Ask The Pastor — Are Christians Who Oppose Sodomy Inconsistent Since They Don’t Oppose Shellfish?

Dear Pastor,

I find your criticism of gays to be mean, homophobic, and cruel. You fundamentalist Christians are so inconsistent in as much as you don’t take your own bible seriously. You tell those of us who are gay that God finds sodomy to be an abomination and yet you seem not to care about the other things in Scripture that God finds to be an abomination. Shrimp, crab, lobster, clams, mussels, all these are supposed abominations before the Lord, just as gays are a supposed abomination. Why stop at protesting gay marriage?

Bring all of God’s law unto the heathens and the sodomites. We call upon all Christians to join the crusade against Long John Silver’s and Red Lobster. (LOL). Yup, even Popeye’s shall be cleansed (LOL). We must stop the unbelievers from destroying the sanctity of our restaurants. (LOL)

I’m not going to analyze the bible for you I believe what I believe. I do not listen to what a man has to tell me on Sunday. I also do not believe everything in the bible.

Habib,

Already this objection raised by sodomites is becoming a worn out old canard. I’ve heard it raised as a “insightful and devastating protest” on talk shows. I’ve seen it put into scripts for television and movie dramas. I think among the sodomite crowd it is beginning to be seen as some kind of silver bullet that instantly kills the werewolf that is Christianity.

But you’ll excuse this werewolf if he just laughs at your silver bullet fired.

It is easy for those without knowledge on the Scriptures to knee-jerk when it comes to the issue of how the Scriptures are read. We don’t read the Scriptures without hermeneutical pre-understandings that help us to see how God’s revelation as a whole is to be understood Habib.

However, among those with a little background in the reading of Scripture we understand that there are distinctions that have to be made for them when we present God’s word on different subjects. One of those distinctions is that whatever God says remains in force for man unless in later revelation God alters what He said earlier on a matter.

The classic example of this is the Sacrificial system you find in the Old Testament. This is a system that God required by His Old Testament revelation. However, with the coming of Jesus Christ, who was the sacrifice about whom the Sacrificial system was proclaiming, the sacrificial system is no longer practiced by Christians. Jesus Christ was God’s fulfillment of all sacrificial offerings therefore Christians no longer offer bloody sacrifices of animals, even though you find the requirement for it in the Old Testament.

Another example of God altering earlier revelation is regarding foods consumed. Now, you will be interested in knowing that some Christians do still follow the OT dietary Law believing that the law regarding foods that you cited is still in force.

Leviticus 11:9-12 says:

9 These shall ye eat of all that are in the waters: whatsoever hath fins and scales in the waters, in the seas, and in the rivers, them shall ye eat.
10 And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you:
11 They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcases in abomination.
12 Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.

Deuteronomy 14:9-10 says:
9 These ye shall eat of all that are in the waters: all that have fins and scales shall ye eat:
10 And whatsoever hath not fins and scales ye may not eat; it is unclean unto you.

So, for these Christians your criticism that Christians are inconsistent in their application of God’s Word is completely absurd.

However, your criticism remains absurd for those Christians who do eat what is forbidden in those Scriptures you cited because they can turn to Acts 10 and find that what God once called “Unclean,” has been lifted so that He now, in the New Covenant calls it clean. So, just as Christians no longer preform sacrifice because God’s requirement for sacrifice has been met, so Christians eat shellfish because God lifted His prohibition against it in later revelation.

However, what God has not lifted is His abomination of Sodomy. In point of fact, in the New Testament, God says again what He says in the Old Testament that Sodomy is an abomination, thus reinforcing those passages that were cited earlier to you. Here are the New Testament passages that agree with the Old Testament passages,

I Corinthians 6:9-10 — Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor [a]effeminate, nor homosexuals, 10 nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God.

Romans 1:26 For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is [r]unnatural, 27 and in the same way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman and burned in their desire toward one another, men with men committing [s]indecent acts and receiving in [t]their own persons the due penalty of their error.

Obviously God has not altered His stance on the abomination that is sodomy.

Now, I understand that it is unlikely that this explanation will probably make little difference to your continued embrace of Sodomy but I wanted you to see that there is no contradiction in the Christian position on this matter. Christians can consistently refer to Scripture regarding the vileness of sodomy without being inconsistent because they don’t hold shellfish to be vile as well.

Now, would you like to talk about this more over a dinner on Red Lobster? I love crab-meat and I would love to explain you how it is you can give up your sodomite lifestyle and embrace life abundant.

Dickson on Calvinism and the Magistrate

“[W]e ought to pray for kings, and all in authority, that under them we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness, and in honesty, which end cannot be attained unless the civil magistrate bridle and tie up heretics, 1 Tim. 2.2. These words, in all godliness, concern religion, or the first table of the moral law, as the following word, honesty, or civility, hath a respect to the commands of the second table, and the duties which we owe to our neighbour and to one another. For true magistrates are keepers and defenders of both tables of the ten commandments.”

~ David Dickson

Gillespie on Calvinism and Heretics

‎”The third opinion (of Calvinism) is, that the Magistrate may and ought to exercise his coercive power, in suppressing and punishing Heretics and Sectaries, less or more, according as the nature and degree of the error, schism, obstinacy, and danger of seducing others, doth require. This as it was the judgment of the orthodox Ancients, (vide Optati opera, edit, Albaspin. pag. 204, 215.) so it is followed by our soundest Protestant Writers; most largely by Beza against Bellius and Monfortius, in a peculiar Treatise De Hareticis à Magistratu puniendis. And though Gerhard, Brochmand [de magist. polit. cap. 2. quæst. 3. dub 2.] and other Lutheran Writers, make a controversy where they need not, alleging that the Calvinists (so nicknamed) hold as the Papists do, that all Heretics without distinction are to be put to death: The truth is, they themselves say as much as either Calvin or Beza, or any other whom they take for adversaries in this Question, that is, that Heretics are to be punished by mulcts, imprisonments, banishments, and if they be gross idolaters or blasphemers, and seducers of others, then to be put to death. What is it else that Calvin teacheth, when he distinguisheth three kinds of errors: some to be tolerated with a spirit of meekness, and such as ought not to separate betwixt brethren: others not to be tolerated, but to be suppressed with a certain degree of severity: a third sort so abominable and pestiferous, that they are to be cut off by the highest punishments?”

~ George Gillespie

http://www.covenanter.org/GGillespie/wholesome_severity.html

A. A. Hodge … on Christian Social Order

“It is our duty, as far as lies in our power, immediately to organize human society and all its institutions and organs upon a distinctively Christian basis. Indifference or impartiality here between the law of the kingdom and the law of the world, or of its prince, the devil, is utter treason to the King of Righteousness … The Bible, the great statute-book of the Kingdom, explicitly lays down principles which, when candidly applied, will regulate the action of every human being in all relations. There can be no compromise. The King said, with regard to all descriptions of moral agents in all spheres of activity, “He that is not with me is against me.” If the national life in general is organized upon non-Christian principles, the churches which are embraced within the universal assimilating power of that nation will not long be able to preserve their integrity.”

~ A. A. Hodge

Vanilla Confesionalism

“4.) Distinguish betwixt the moral, and ceremonial, and judicial law; the first concern manners, and the right ordering of godly conversation: and because these things are of perpetual equity and rectitude, the obligation of this law, as to that, is perpetual; and therefore in expounding of it, these two terms, moral, and of perpetual authority, are all one, and to be taken so. 2.) The judicial law is for regulating outward society, and for government, and doth generally (excepting what was peculiar to the people of Israel) agree with moral law; this, as given to them, is not perpetual, their policy being at an end. 3.) The ceremonial law is in ceremonies, types, and shadows, pointing at a Saviour to come; this is also abrogate, the substance being come; But their is this difference, that the judicial law is but mortua, dead; and may, where it is thought fit, with the foregoing caution, be used under the New Testament; but the ceremonial law is mortifera, deadly, and cannot, without falling from grace, Gal. V. 2, 4 be revived.”

James Durham – 1622-1658
Westminster Divine
The Law Unsealed; or, A Practical Exposition Of The Ten Commandments

Note, in Durham’s #2 that what we have here is the basic theonomic explanation of “general equity.” Durham, as a Westminster Divine, would have had no tuck with the idea that the Mosaic judicials were simply to be considered “expired.” This will be seen over the next few days as we continue to post quotes from this Westminster divine on the subject of the application of the OT judicials.