Bret, can you give some examples of how theonomists are suffering today?

Is it not suffering enough to see God’s Word cast aside so that in 35 years we have suffered through a holocaust almost equal to the 50 Million that Stalin exterminated in Russia? Is it not suffering enough for the person who loves the Glory of God and His Christ to see His Glory diminished in the public square? Is it not suffering of one kind to have to live with the opprobrium, ridicule and calumny heaped up upon the theonomist by both God haters and those who say they love God? How many theonomists have not been ordained because of their convictions? How many theonomist have not been given plumb positions at Christian Educational establishments because of their convictions? (Bahnsen at Westminster East comes immediately to mind)

But if your question implies that none of them are locked up in prisons (yet) I would be glad to concede that. But then suffering comes in all shapes and sizes and in varying degrees doesn’t it Todd?

“The early church, good 2k folk :-), suffered, not because they were challenging and criticizing Caesar’s unrighteous rule, but that they refused to worship him as a god. Given that choice I would hope all true Christians, whether theonomic or 2k, would suffer instead of worship Caesar.”

Part of the problem with R2Kt people, in my estimation, is that they don’t really understand what idolatry is. They seem to think that if they can avoid bowing down to a flag then they are innocent of idolatry. However, I would contend that Christians do worship Caeser as God when they send their little children to government schools. Other examples could be elucidated. So, with that expanded definition of idolatry it becomes an open question of whether or not Christians would rather suffer instead of worshiping Caesar.

Stuart Robinson suffered under Lincoln exactly because he was 2k, and even the Southern Presbyterians were suspicious of him.

Don’t know much about him. You’ll have to fill me in. Still, quite apart from the particulars I understand how Tyrants could be threatened by R2Kt types. I have read stories of the time during the war of Northern Aggression where Pastors refused the orders of the occupying Union Army to pray for the President upon 2k type principles and they were run out of town.

“The true churches under Hitler were persecuted because they would not use the pulpit to throw their support behind Hitler’s policies. Thus both 2kers and more theonomist types were persecuted. The charge that only theonomists would suffer under such regimes is unfounded.”

I never denied that R2Kt types would eventually be persecuted. I quite admit that in a dualistic system such as R2Kt that the realm of nature committed to anti-Christ principles will eventually swallow whole the common realm and then will turn on the realm of grace. At that point, persecution will come. My point was that theonomy, quite to the contrary of Hart’s assertion, does know persecution and that even more so then R2Kt types since theonomist are willing to tackle the beast before it begins to swallow the Church.

“Now, there is a sense that many theonomists will suffer before 2kers, but I would argue that this is because they lack respect for the governing authorities. Again, go to Acts 25 & 26 and see how respectfully Paul addressed his civil authorities, and remember, these were atrocious leaders. And then go to Daniel’s blog and see his headline ‘Barak Obama is a Nazi.'”

Naturally, Todd, I would disagree with the first sentences, unless you would like to add that because of their respect for the Lord Christ the governing authorities see them as lacking respect.

Also while reading Acts 25, 26 we should read Acts 16 where we find the Apostle speaking a bit more directly to magistrates. Also we have our Lord Jesus calling Herod a “Fox” which was quite a strong appellation in that culture and at that time. Finally, there is the inspired language of John the Revelator which is also quite forceful. So, I would say Scripture is a mixed bag on that score.

And, I would say that Barack Obama is more of a fabian socialist then a Nazi. So, Daniel’s error was in placing in the wrong category of Socialist. Hardly something to get worked up about.

“Now can you imagine the Apostle Paul speaking like this about Agrippa or Festus? While Daniel would consider these statements bold and prophetic, I would say they violate the clear teaching of I Pet 1:13-17. So yes, in one sense the theonomists will suffer more, but that isn’t always a good thing.”

Yes, and I imagine that if had been alive during the time of Elijah on Mt. Carmel you would have tried to take him aside when he was mocking, in very jagged language, the priest of Baal.

“Mr. Glaser, thanks for quoting that part of the confession. The use of the word “dispensations” suggests that there may actually be a place for Reformed dispensationalism. (And before the charges of Marcionism fly, please remember the hallowed Westminster divines used the word. If you have issues, take it up with them. Don’t bang me over the head with it.)”

Nobody has ever suggested, as Dr. Hart no doubt knows, that there is anything wrong with the word “dispensations.” Reformed Dispensationalism is not serious error because it has the word “Dispensation” attached to the word “Reformed.” No, the problem is that like genuine dispensationalism, Reformed Dispensationalism desires to presuppose discontinuity. This is quite contrary to historic Reformed positions that consistently presupposed continuity understanding that the covenant of grace was one.

In my estimation the Reformed Dispensationalism (synonymous with R2Kt) does leave itself open to the charge of Marcionism. This can be seen when many Reformed faces go ashen when it is suggested that the penal sanctions of the Old Testament should be followed. Does the horror of their response lie in their idea that God was somehow mean to require those penalties enacted in the Old Covenant age but now in this age God has dropped His severe mien and has become kinder and gentler? One thing is certain and that is Natural Law certainly can be easily (and wrongly) perceived by Reformed Dispensationalists as kinder and gentler than what God’s Law requires.

That part of the confession also seems to fly in the face of good, women’s ordination-tolerating, pastor Bret.

God’s judgments against His people are all together just. Part of His judgment against us is the reality of the ungodly practice of ordaining women. Similarly, part of His judgment against us is the reality of the ungodly theological system that is R2Kt. Until God lifts his hand of judgment against the Church we must labor under those judgments as faithfully as possible. I don’t like women being ordained. I don’t like R2Kt. But each are part of the terrain of the current Church in which I must be as faithful as possible.

“The WCF says that with the church the gospel is “administered with more simplicity, and less outward glory” than the old dispensation. It seems to me that theonomy is not content with the simplicity and lack of glory in the current arrangement of the church. But then take a number on that discontent. Plenty of Presbyterians are not content with the churches spiritual weapons. They seem to want the outward glory of universities, cities, nation-states, modern medicine, art — you name it — to carry the name Christian.”

And that simplicity was seen in the Churches that the puritans built as well as the style of speaking they developed. Nobody disagrees on this.

But in the other spheres the Gospel isn’t being administered, so I am not quite sure what Dr. Hart’s point here is in raising this part of the WCF. Nobody from the theonomy school has suggested that the civil or familial realm should be administering the Gospel in Word & Sacrament. All we have contended is that what Dr. Hart styles “common realm” is not neutral. For my part I am quite satisfied with the more simplicity and less outward glory of the administration of the Gospel in this dispensation. I would join Dr. Hart in locked arms in the admonishing of those who desire a gospel that partakes of a theology of glory in the Church.

Dr. Hart’s complaints about Christians desiring “the outward glory of universities, cities, nation-states, modern medicine, art, is just another example of his presupposing that the common realm can only be neutral. Hart makes a curious and unwarranted jump in his reasoning from the administration of the Gospel being less outwardly glorious to both the idea that education, nation states, modern-medicine and art can’t be Christian and to the idea that having Christian education, nation state, modern-medicine and art is somehow glorious in a sinister and God dishonoring kind of way.

“Please be clear, Bret, I never said the state doesn’t exist. I said the Christian state doesn’t exist, and if we had a Christian state, it was Israel. Israel as a Christian state no longer exists.”

Of course a thousand years of Christendom gives quite excellent contrary testimony to the wrong headedness of Darryl’s assertion.

If you populate a region with Muslims you will get a Muslim state. If you populate a region with Jews you will get a Jewish State. If you populate a region with Secular Humanists you will get America. Similarly, if you populate a region with Christians you will get a Christian state. Any denial of that simple premise is just a determined stubbornness in the face of “self-evident” truths. (A little Natural Law lingo there.)

You’re living in denial if you want to reclaim it. You’re living what Calvin called a Judaic Folly.

You mean the same Calvin who said,

“But this was sayde to the people of olde time. Yea, and God’s honour must not be diminished by us at this day: the reasons that I have alleadged alreadie doe serve as well for us as for them. Then lette us not thinke that this lawe is a speciall lawe for the Jewes; but let us understand that God intended to deliver to us a generall rule, to which we must tye ourselves…Sith it is so, it is to be concluded, not onely that is lawefull for all kinges and magistrates, to punish heretikes and such as have perverted the pure trueth; but also that they be bounde to doe it, and that they misbehave themselves towardes God, if they suffer errours to roust without redresse, and employ not their whole power to shewe a greater zeale in that behalfe than in all other things.”

Calvin, Sermons upon Deuteronomie, p. 541-542

I should add that the Christian state that does exist is the Church, which practices the only Christian form of government in this age, jure divino Presbyterianism.

Calvin doesn’t agree with you on that point Darryl,

Psalm 2

“…without a doubt he is speaking of the kingdom of our Lord Jesus. He admonishes all kings and authorities to be wise and to take heed to themselves. What is this wisdom? What is the lesson He gives them? To abdicate it all? Hardly! But to fear God and give homage to His Son…Furthermore, Isaiah prophesies that the kings will become the foster fathers of the Christian church and that queens will nurse it with their breasts (Isa. 49:23).I beg of you, how do you reconcile the fact that kings will be protectors of the Christian Church if their vocation is inconsistent with Christianity?”

Calvin, Treatises Against the Anabaptists and Libertines, p. 79

Anyway, all theonomists, hard or soft core, living in the United States are functional 2k Christians, unless they are trying to overthrow this current regime.

I would say that praying that the current regime might be overthrown counts as trying to overthrow this current regime.

The Covenanters even knew this and that’s why they forbade their members from voting or holding pubilc office. (The RPCNA also capitulated sometime around 1980 and reversed these positions.) But if you vote, pay taxes, say the pledge of allegiance, stand for the Star Spangled banner an an MLB game, you are submitting to an idolatrous and illegitimate regime. Even more, if you use the means of this constitutional republic to secure a Christian state in America, you are also committing a form of idolatry (by your logic) because by running for office or passing laws or voting within the structures of a government that does not recognize Christ as Lord or the Bible as the basis for law, you are feeding the beast.

I don’t stand for the Star spangled banner and I don’t say the pledge of allegiance.

When I vote I vote for those who are committed to overthrowing the current regime that has overthrown the constitution.

I don’t make enough to pay taxes so that is not a concern, and if I did I’d pay taxes because the state can beat me up and so I choose to be wise as a serpent on this score.

I have no intent to feed the beast but earnestly desire to give it a belly ache.

“So which is it, Bret, are you against King George or are you for him? If you’re against, as you suppose in trying to out me as not being a supporter of the American revolution, then you are for the godless U.S.A., a nation conceived in the idolatry of the Enlightenment (as Daniel argues), a nation that will not recognize Christ as Lord.”

I would disagree with whoever argued that America was conceived in the idolatry of the Enlightement though I would concede that the Constitution is a synthesis document between Enlightenment and Christian ideas. I read it as a Christian and so I believe it is a Christian document. I would say that the War for Independence was a conservative counter revolution born of Christian beliefs on the consequences of violated covenants.

So, I quite disagree with your premise that being against King George is being for the godless U.S.A. as she was originally constituted.

Next, as the 9 of 13 colonies at the signing of the Declaration of Independence had established Churches I don’t know how anyone could say that these United States were godless in their origin.

You’re premise, as many of them are in general, is, once again, mistaken here.

So once again the $64k question: how do you live with yourself? Your infidelity is legion by your own logic. (Reed and other moderators, I am not trying to call names. I am trying to get the theonomists to come clean and see how they are implicated in the very names they call the 2k advocates. Daniel encouraged me at one point to “shut up.” I’d reiterate that point a little more politely and ask the theonomists to keep their convictions a little more quiet until they have the nerve to use their vitriol against the very state they honor and to which they submit.)

You keep asking about this $64.00 question and I keep answering it. You somehow seem to think it is some type of clincher. I assure you it most certainly isn’t.

The answer is that we submit until God raises up lesser magistrates to lead against this current regime, such as he did in the War for American Independence. This is a idea with long historical Reformed legs and one that makes your $64.00 question not worth a plug nickel in terms of somehow being a clincher argument.

But there is one more thing I want to note here before moving on. Recently I went to a play titled “The Rose Of Treason.” The thrust of the play was resistance to the German government in 1943 by young university students. There was one scene in the play where the students, having been captured, are tried. During the trial one of the judges severely lectures the students for their treason in light of all that the National Socialist system had provided for them. Sometimes Darryl you sound like that Judge in the play. You constantly insist that it is inconsistent to take advantage of a culture that one is praying that God would overthrow. You mistake, like the Judge in the play, the difference between loving your country and loathing the State.

“Word of warning: theonomists be careful how you react here. The Patriot Act is still in effect and the FBI could be looking for expressions of sedition.”

Well, the state only need to worry about me if they think that praying for its overthrow is something that they seriously need to be worried about.

“This is the difference between theonomy and Christian orthodoxy, one of continuity and discontinuity between the OT and the NT. For a good statement of the discontinuity I suggest you read WCF ch. 7. God’s people no longer have a state.”

The first sentence is so correct that some (not originating with me) have referred to Hart’s form of Reformed thinking as “Reformed Dispensationalism.” The discontinuities in the R2Kt school seem to be every bit the equal of the discontinuities you find in Dispensationalism.

The second statement is of course nonsense. WCF ch. 7 does not say of what Hart thinks it says. In order to find Hart’s conclusions of WCF ch. 7 you must begin with Hart’s presuppositions for the text itself gives him no support. This statement by Hart also reveals his inability to understand that every nation is a theocracy of one type or another. If justified, regenerated people who are being transformed by the renewing of their minds gather together to live in community what they will produce, by God’s grace, under the Spirit’s illumination, as guided by the Scriptures is a Christian nation. This is no different then saying, on a smaller scale, that if a justified, regenerated people who are being transformed by the renewing of their minds are gathered together by God to live under one roof what they will produce, by God’s grace, under the Spirit’s illumination, as guided by the Scriptures is a Christian family. If Christian families can exist then so can Christian nations.

It is only Hart’s presuppositions that force him to say that the common realm is neutral and so cannot be Christian. The reality of like minded people of the undoubted catholic Christian faith gathering and organizing together to build a Sate and live in concert with God’s Word suggest that the common realm is not neutral. Certainly the reality of this simple idea can be seen in differences in common realms as built by Muslims, Hindus, Secular Humanists as compared to those built by Christians.

“The only Christian state in the history of the world was Israel. When Christ rose from the dead, that state ended and transferred her rule to the church, an institution that knows no national boundaries or governmental regulations. The church is a spiritual institution with spiritual weapons for enforcing her standards and prosecuting her mission. I know some don’t like that loss of outward glory. The Corinthians were among the first. But since we are called to be content, being content with the church’s means is what we should do.”

First, note is admitting that the Old Covenant had a greater outward glory then the new and better covenant brought in by the Lord Jesus. This constant denigrating of the quality of the new covenant is passing strange in light of the reality that it is described in scripture as a new and better covenant. (See a previous post that examines how public square ethics in the new and better covenant are of an inferior nature to the public square ethics in the old and worst covenant according to R2Kt thinking.)

The next problem is how Hart uses the word “spiritual.” For Hart the Church is superior because it is spiritual while the realm of nature (common realm) is inferior (yucky) because it is not spiritual. This sure sounds gnostic to me.

Third the state did not end with the resurrection of Christ. Where is the scripture that would ever suggest such a thing? Israel, as God’s people had a Church and State (among other institutions). When Christ died He insured that His redeemed Churched people would organize redeemed cultures, part of which is laboring to build states that are infused with the spirit of redemption precisely because they are animated by a redeemed people. Hart, quite apart from any textual considerations, simply asserts that “the State ended.”

Fourth, no one disagrees with Hart when he says that the church is “an institution that knows no national boundaries or governmental regulations. The church is a spiritual institution with spiritual weapons for enforcing her standards and prosecuting her mission.” I would merely say that when by God’s grace a spiritual institution (Church) is successful at prosecuting her mission so that the elect are brought in by droves to King Jesus one result will be that the elect will want to build Christian culture which includes building Christian states. In other words the spiritual presence that empowers the Church for its mission when successful always incarnates itself into the corporeal world thus revealing that while the spiritual is always prior and primary the incarnation of the spiritual as seen in the corporeal cultural outworking remains God’s working and so is not “yucky.” Just as God gave dust the spiritual breath of life and so it lived, so when God makes a people spiritually alive in great enough numbers in any given culture so they live and that living is seen by their building of culture that is in obedience to King Jesus. Neither the dust or the culture is anything in itself until God breathes in in the breath of life and then it is to be prized as being touched by God.

Finally, nobody is arguing against being content with the means that the Church has been given for its spiritual work as Hart implies. Conversions do not happen by the sword.

“But you also seem to suggest that we should live quiet and peaceful lives only under Christian magistrates. Is that correct? But Paul and Timothy weren’t living under Christian magistrates. The rulers the Bible is concerned with raging against are the Christian ones, first in Israel, now in the church. So if you have a bad pastor, rage away. But a bad magistrate? Submit. Having to endure non-believing rulers reminds me of Gaffin’s great piece about theonomy, that it had no room for suffering because of its inherent theology of glory.”

Christians should live quiet and peaceful lives under magistrates of any faith as long as those magistrates don’t insist on them obeying man rather than God.

Second, Gaffin was quite wrong in his piece that Hart references. Theonomy has tons of room for suffering since those who desire the rule of God suffer, among other things, the calumnies of those like Gaffin and Hart. Further, they suffer physically with persecutions when they refuse to pinch incense and say “Caesar est Kurios.” To be quite honest I would say given our times it is only theonomist who suffer because it is only theonomists who are resisting wickedness in high places and so represent a threat to the anti-Christ authorities. The R2Kt crowd doesn’t worry about suffering because nobody has any reason to persecute them because they are not a threat to anybody. You want suffering? Come be a theonomist.

I am beginning to wonder, given Dr. Hart’s advice to submit, if he isn’t descended from a long line of Tories. King George III would have loved to have had him in a Presbyterian pulpit around 1775.