Category: Uncategorized

It would have been just another weekday afternoon except that football summer practice had started and Lee — all 90 pounds of him — was intent on making the freshman football club.

As such, Lee had managed to go from his morning paper route to football practice to his afternoon paper route. It made for a rather full day and his practice uniform showed the long days as Lee would leave the sweat drenched uniform in the locker room from day to day since he couldn’t peddle papers and tote all the padding together at the same time on the brand new 5 speed that his brother had won recently as a prize in a local contest. Lee figured his brother would never notice that he had borrowed the bike for the day.

On this weekday Lee had finished getting beat up on the football field by his peers who didn’t have any more grit than Lee but certainly were carrying more weight. Every inch of Lee’s body felt all that extra weight that came with every extra hit. Lee was long on grit but short on brains enough so as to realize that being smaller than everyone else he should be going for the legs instead of full body contact that always left him bouncing off other people unnoticed like some unnoticed fly on the back of a grazing elephant.

That late afternoon on the way home all Lee could think about was eating since his entire nourishment that day had consisted of two pieces of toast sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. The breakfast of champions.

However, before he could scour the empty cupboards the 14 year freshman had to pedal his brother’s new bicycle the 5 miles back home. Now, keep in mind dear reader that this 5 miles was on top of the countless miles already tracked through the day in going from the morning paper-route, football practice, and the afternoon paper-route.

The trip home use to be half that distance until a few years prior the city of Sturgis Michigan in combination with the Sturgis municipal airport had decided to expand the airport with the consequence of closing down the most direct road home for Lee.  For years Lee and his brother still took that route home even though the road was closed and the extended runway built over the area that had once served as land for the now absent road. It was just that much more convenient … and safer.

You see, on that old road that had been closed down there was hardly any traffic, and as such having to navigate a busy thoroughfare was not a concern for Lee or his siblings. However, once that Airport road was closed, the routes home for Lee were not convenient or safe.

In years to come once Lee was out of the “bike riding” stage of life another road finally was open. Before that was built though Lee had only three choices. He could take the path along the rail road tracks which made havoc with his bike tires and found him more than once cheek by jowl with trains that for whatever reason thought they had the priority both on the track and ten feet on either side of the tracks. More than once when the trains were moving slowly Lee had been able to grab a hold of the train as it passed and no longer found a need to continue pedaling as the train would give him a lift. It is a minor miracle that Lee was never hit by a locomotive while riding his bicycle on those narrow trails that ran parallel with the train tracks.

The second option was to add an extra mile to his trip by going a round about way through a wooded area that would bring him out to a place where he could avoid riding US 12 — a very busy two lane highway.

The third option was riding US 12.

US 12 was a hazard and in retrospect Lee had no business riding his bike on that two lane highway. More than once semi-trucks had passed by him so close he could have reached out and touched them as they passed. (Keep in mind that Lee rode his bike as far towards the gravel on the side of the road as possible.)

Well, on that summer weekday in August of 1974, hungry from not eating all day, weary with pedaling all over the small city of Sturgis, bruised from being beat up by peers twice his weight in football practice, Lee decided to ride US 12 home has he had many times before and in a irrational fit of being responsible he had tied his practice uniform to the bike’s cross bar to bring it home to be washed.

However, the adventure this time was going to prove to push Lee’s next meal off for another 24 hours for in his making his way home that day he met a 20 year old driver in the closest quarter encounter imaginable.

Quite apart from the warning of a horn laid upon, or the sound of screeching tires, Lee on his bike was hit from behind by a car, later found to be traveling between 55-60 mph as driven by a young lady new to her driver’s license. All Lee would ever later remember was the initial impact, and rolling along the gravel side of the road. The next thing Lee remembered was that he was lying perpendicular to the road on the gravel side of the road with hands outstretched above his head. When he came to Lee’s first site was the automobile’s back tire ten inches from his eyeballs. Of course, the first instinct upon such a site is to stand up and walk away from the menace. However, Lee was having just one problem with that idea … the automobile tire in question was sitting square on top of the top of his right hand. There was no getting up and removing one’s self from that situation without getting the machine off of his hand and so quite reasonably Lee started screaming like a fool to “get this damn car off of me.” I don’t know how often Lee screamed that before his request was obliged, but after seemingly a long stretch in hell the automobile in question rolled of his right hand and Lee arose to communicate his great displeasure.

It all got bleary after that. A middle aged man suddenly showed up trying to control Lee in his fevered realization that where there had once been skin on his right hand there was only blood. Blood was everywhere. Blood streamed from not only the and, it streamed from a head wound that fortunately, compared to the hand wound, was insignificant.

In due course of time an ambulance showed up and carted Lee away, still as concerned with his sitting down to his next meal as he was with his bloody appearance.

Not only was it a bad day for Lee but it was a bad day for Lee’s little brother as well. Not only had Lee been riding Carl’s new bike, but he had also thrown on Carl’s league bowling shirt. That shirt would never be worn bowling again. Once in the Emergency room the attendants wanted to slip the shirt over the mangled hand. Lee had a better idea as he started to scream at the powers that be to cut the dang shirt off as opposed to trying to slip it over his hand. Everyone agreed that wasn’t a bad idea…. except probably Carl.

Anyway, soon enough Dr. Dettman was in the ER looking at the wound. Doc Dettman was more concerned about the head wound then the hand wound. Soon enough they drugged Lee to deal with both the pain and his adolescence expressions of pain.

Doc Dettman was wrong. The head wound required just a few stitches. The hand wound required more than a few weeks in and out of hospitals in pursuit of a couple sizable skin grafts. The upside though was the necessity of Lee to miss several weeks of high-school.

The moral of the story is … if you want to get away with cobbing your brother’s bike and bowling shirt get hit by a car. It is the only way to never hear a complaint uttered against your older brother’s chic.

“Christ became a Surety for his people from everlasting; engaged to pay their debts, bear their sins, and make satisfaction for them; and was accepted of as such by God his Father, who thenceforward looked at him for payment and satisfaction, and looked at them as discharged, and so they were in his eternal mind; and it is a rule that will hold good, as Maccovius {15} observes, “that as soon as one becomes a surety for another, the other is immediately freed, if the surety be accepted;” which is the case here and it is but a piece of common prudence, when a man has a bad debt, and has good security for it, to look not to the principal debtor, who will never be able to pay him, but to his good bondsman and surety, who is able; and so Dr. Goodwin {16} observes, that God, in the everlasting transaction with Christ, “told him, as it were, that he would look for his debt and satisfaction of him, and that he did let the sinners go free; and so they are in this respect, justified from all eternity.”

Dr. John Gill
18th Century Baptist Theologian

This language of “surety” is not often used any longer in the Western Church. Because it is no longer often used in pulpits in 21st century America and because it is so frequently used above we will spend a paragraph defining this idea of Jesus as our surety.

A surety in bible-talk is someone who is legally responsible for the debt of someone else. In our language a surety would be like someone who co-signs a loan. If the person who has taken the loan out can’t meet the responsibility of the note the person who co-sign the note is legally responsible for the debt in question. In Scripture Judah became surety to Joseph for his brother Benjamin (Gen. 43:9; 44:32).  Hebrews 7:22 finds Jesus as the surety for the elect under the new covenant.

“²² by so much more Jesus has become a surety of a better covenant.”

The idea communicated in Hebrews 7 is that Jesus secures the purpose of the better covenant by being the agent who guarantees and secures the promised better covenant in light of our failure. Jesus is our surety inasmuch as by His work God’s law, which the sinful elect broke is honored, and the law’s penal demands fulfilled in our stead by Jesus — our surety.

Now as to Justification the question obtains; “When did the Son become our surety?” Was the Son only received as our Justification upon our regeneration? Was the Son only received as our Justification upon the completion of His redemptive cross work? Or, as we contend was the Son our surety from eternity as a immanent and eternal act of God accepted as the elect’s justification?

The quotes that Gill offers are convincing.

“that as soon as one becomes a surety for another, the other is immediately freed, if the surety be accepted;”  — Maccovius

“(the Father) told him (the Son), as it were, that he would look for his debt and satisfaction of him, and that he did let the sinners go free; and so they are in this respect, justified from all eternity.”   Thomas Goodwin

We continue to demonstrate the grave and serious deficiencies of R2K theology as expressed in this interview with Dr. David Van Drunen done with a view of hawking his upcoming book, “Politics after Christendom: Political Theology in a Fractured World.”

https://reformedforum.org/ctc633/?fbclid=IwAR2RPcamfPPkxuj7P-QdiRY-uI-jMPZhjXXGum2McMtlqu28N92wVdiDAP8

In this entry we first demonstrate R2K’s manipulation of the Noahic covenant as accomplished by the chief R2K guru, David Van Drunen. We then go on to look at other covenant malfeasance championed by R2K so as to refashion and reshape Christianity in a R2K direction.

The reader should not miss that what R2K does to Christianity by its various doctrinal shifts is to create a Christianity that has never existed before. What R2K does to Christianity is not dissimilar to what Liberalism did to Christianity inasmuch as the resultant faith is something completely dissimilar from what it was before R2K got its interpretive hands on it. I am hopeful that this look book exposes that just as Machen’s book exposed the lie of Liberalism being Christianity in his book, “Christianity and Liberalism.”

We start by quoting the Karl Barth of the R2K movement, Dr. David Van Drunen;

 

https://reformedforum.org/ctc633/?fbclid=IwAR2RPcamfPPkxuj7P-QdiRY-uI-jMPZhjXXGum2McMtlqu28N92wVdiDAP8

 

The above quote is taken from the 37 minute point of the interview with Dr. David Van Drunen (DVD) that is linked above. DVD returns to a central theme in his “theology” and that is his insistence that the Noahic covenant has zero redemptive significance. This position has, in the past, been challenged repeatedly by other Reformed theologians of note. DVD however can not give this position up because it is the lynch pin of his innovative system called R2K. The Noahic covenant was not a redemptive covenant for DVD and so must be common and universal. This position allows DVD to pivot to say that the Noahic covenant is the covenant that all mankind as mankind (considered as neither regenerate or unregenerate) operates and functions in during their lifetime. This appeal to the Noahic coveannt as a common (non-redemptive) covenant gives DVD room to establish a common (nature) realm that is dualistically distinct from his church (grace) realm. Because of the way DVD handles the Noahic covenant it gives him space to create a realm that is not ruled by God’s law but by natural law.

One implication of this for DVD and R2K is that the Church and the Kingdom are identified as exact synonyms. There is nothing outside the Church realm as existing in the public square that is an expression of the Kingdom of God. Everything outside the church realm as existing in the public square is a common realm reality relating back to the common Noahic covenant. The common Noahic covenant teaches us that there is no such thing as Christian politics, Christian economics, Christian Education, Christian family, etc. since all these function within the common Noahic covenant and not as ancillaries to the Kingdom of God. Indeed, this common realm created by DVD’s innovative work with the Noahic covenant is a realm where all man’s civil-social institutions exist. Because all these institutions (except for the Church) exist in the common realm they are not and can not be associated with the kingdom of God. Again, I emphasize that the whole R2K project fails if the Noahic covenant is a redemptive covenant and not a covenant that is generic for all creation and mankind.

That DVD is in error regarding his assertion that the Noahic covenant “doesn’t make any promises of Redemption,” can be seen inasmuch as the Noahic covenant is in point of fact highly redemptive, both in looking back to creation and looking forward to Christ. DVD is in error when he insists that the Noahic covenant was a common realm covenant that had no redemptive significance.

The error of DVD’s is seen in first one finds the flood being presented in similar terms as the chaos of Gen. 1:2, and the ark’s landing on dry land and Noah’s commission by God to be fruitful and multiply both echo the original creation narrative. Noah is a new Adam with the responsibility to take dominion of the earth as God’s sub-regent. God’s work with Noah has zero common or universal connotations.

Second, the rescue of Noah was a Redemptive rescue and this is hinted at when God rescues only someone who had found favor in the eyes of God. In and through the flood God rescues His people and not a common humanity in revolt against Him. Then, Noah offers sacrifice to God upon being released from the Ark. If the Noahic covenant was truly common would we see a blood sacrifice associated with it?

Third, the Noahic is Redemptive if only because it ends in a “new creation — restoration.” The Noahic covenant is a proleptic and typological event that portrays the final and ultimate redemption to be found in Christ. Noah, a type of Christ saves His people in the ark of the Church and pilots them unto the promised land. The Noahic covenant is thus, contrary to DVD’s assertion, Redemptive.

Also we have the fact that the Noahic covenant is Redemptive being pointed to in I Peter in such explicit terms it is difficult to believe that anybody could hold the Noahic covenant as common. The flood water symbolizes Baptism which is the sign and seal of Redemption by Jesus Christ.

I Peter 1:20 – “to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, 21 and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God.[e] It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.

Eight were saved (Redeemed). The flood water symbolizes Baptism which is the sign and seal of Redemption by Jesus Christ.”

Now, no one would argue that the Noahic covenant didn’t have implications for what R2K calls the “common realm.” For one there is the certainty we find in the Noahic covenant that mankind will continue with the purpose that out of that sustained mankind the elect will be brought into the Church. However, clearly the Noahic covenant is a Redemptive covenant. Noah points us back to creation and speaks of its renewal, but points us forward to the ultimate renewal in Christ. It is thoroughly redemptive, and not merely “common,” contra DVD and R2K.

If the Noahic covenant made promises of Redemption, contrary to DVD, then his whole R2K project fails.

R2K also does funky things with covenant theology in general beyond their reworking of the Nohaic covenant.

When it comes to covenant malfeasance however, R2K not only fiddles with the Noahic covenant. R2K also fiddles with covenant theology in general. For example Westminster-Cal (R2K’s home base) insists that the Mosaic covenant was at the same time both a covenant of Grace and a covenant of Works. This is accomplished by introducing language of “upper” and “lower” register into the Mosaic covenant while insisting that the idea of typology sustains that “in some sense” the Mosaic covenant was a covenant of works for Israel. Understand this “upper register,” and “lower register” language is a recipe for complete confusion. Who determines how the upper register and lower register in the same covenant operates? Are there set rules for what constitutes the upper register and what constitutes the lower register and are these rules explicitly drawn from Scripture?

 

Of course theoretically, one could use this reasoning not only in the Mosaic covenant but also in any of the other covenants which represent the continual maturing and flowering of the one covenant of grace. For example, one could go back to Genesis 17 and say much the same thing about God’s command/stipulation to Abraham to “walk before Me and be blameless” (Genesis 17:1 ). Given that stipulation language in Genesis 17 one can’t help but wonder, given Westminster-Cal’s predilections for a hyphenated Mosaic covenant,  how is it that the Abrahamic covenant also is not an example of a mixed (hyphenated) covenant? In point of fact Dr. Meredith Kline taught that Noah and Abraham were themselves under a legal-works covenant. One thus wonders, if, according to Westminster-Cal, whether the covenant of works was republished to Abraham and Noah as well? The point here is that if we are going to go all arbitrary by establishing that the Mosaic covenant was both one of grace (upper register) and one of works (lower register) than what disallows us from doing the same with any other of the covenants that make for the one covenant of grace?

 

In all this I wonder if there isn’t some covenant confusion that was articulated by a Baptist named Philip Cary in 1640 in a debate with John Flavel and other Reformed luminaries. This debate surrounded the issue of the validity of infant Baptism but some of Cary’s “reasoning” sounds a great deal like Westminster-Cal reasoning on covenant republication. Cary treated Genesis 17 (Abrahamic), Exodus 20 (Sinai) and Deuteronomy 29 (Mosaic) together under a covenant of works. In doing so, the Baptist, Cary, could treat all these passages as discontinuous in nature, purpose and extent with the covenant of Grace. For the Baptist Cary, no commands from the covenant of works could affect the covenant of grace. For the Baptist, Philip Cary, this meant that Abraham, as well as all the elect in the Old Testament were in both covenants at the same time. This sounds strangely familiar to some of the writings of Westminster-Cal adherents on the Mosaic covenant.

 

Keep in mind though that if covenant are both law and gracious at the same time, it is also the case that people living under those hyphenated covenant arrangements lived and moved  by both law and Gospel at the same time. Escondido would have us believe that the Mosaic saints earned, via congruent merit, their stay in the land while at the same time those same saints were saved by unmerited grace. This seems to me to be a “Glawspel” arrangement. If so, it is ironic that the very people (Klinean republicationists) who complain that those who don’t accept their republicationist paradigm are guilty of not distinguishing properly “Law and Gospel,” with the consequence that “Glawspel” obtains are themselves guilty of not properly distinguishing “Law and Gospel” so that “Glawspel” obtains.

 

Think about it. If you’re living under the Mosaic covenant how do you determine if your obedience to God’s law is motivated by earning congruent merit in order to stay in the land as opposed to an obedience that is motivated by gratitude for God delivering your from your enemies and putting you in the land?

 

Second, in light of the constant disobedience of Israel under the Mosaic, how can we speak of going back under a covenant of works in the Mosaic when the covenant of works required absolute perfect obedience? If the Old Testament saints under the Mosaic covenant were put back under a covenant of works it was a very different covenant of works then what Adam was under in the Garden where one violation was all that was required to be cast out of the garden. Are we to believe, per Westminster-Cal, that the covenant of works was more gracious in the Mosaic covenant then it was in the garden?

As we have seen already while looking at soteriology, epistemology, and the matter of dualism R2K with its completely innovative work of reinterpreting Christianity leaves a finished product that nobody in Church history, would have recognized as Christianity. Now, to be sure R2K has borrowed elements from the Anabaptists (Dualism), the Dispensationalists (covenant discontinuity) and Lutherans (absolute equating of Kingdom and Church) but as a whole system R2K is not anybody’s father’s Christianity.

Were the 21st century Reformed church healthy it would do to R2K and its acolytes what the Reformed church should have done in the 20th century to Dispensationalism if the Reformed church would have been healthy in that century. To speak without horns or teeth, R2K should be cast out by the Reformed church.

Justification is one of those spiritual blessings wherewith the elect are blessed in Christ according to election-grace, before the foundation of the world, #Eph 1:3,4. That justification is a spiritual blessing none will deny; and if the elect were blessed with all spiritual blessings, then with this; and if thus blessed according to election, or when elected, then before the foundation of the world: and this grace of justification must be no small part of that “grace which was given in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world was”, #2Ti 1:9. We may say, says Dr. Goodwin {14}, of all spiritual blessings in Christ, what is said of Christ, that his goings forth are from everlasting–in Christ we were blessed with all spiritual blessings, #Eph 1:3 as we are blessed with all other, so with this also, that we were justified then in Christ!

Dr. John Gill 
18th Century Baptist Theologian

^{I Timothy 1:9} who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began

Grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began. Understand that St. Paul is saying that before the elect took on flesh and blood the elect were given grace in Christ Jesus, the Elect One. Someone please tell me how it is the case that it is a stretch, based on this passage alone, to embrace eternal Justification. What — we were given a grace before time began that did not include the grace of Justification? What kind of given grace doesn’t include Justification?

Look, if you want your Justification time bound, I’m not going to hiss at you. I mean, I think that it is inconsistent but I’m not going to cast you outside the circle of faith. Can you make that kind of space for those of us who want to be consistent in our Reformed theology?