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Theological Theses on Christian Civil Government
W.H. Chellis
This set of Theses has been a work in progress for a number of years. Versions have been published in the Christian Statesman and Semper Reformanda. I thought they might be helpful to focus the debate.
I. The Adamic Kingdom:
1. Jesus Christ is fully God, and equal in power and glory with the Father and the Holy Spirit.
2. Jesus Christ, as God, has absolute authority over the whole of His creation.
3. As the God-man, Jesus Christ is the only mediator between God and man.
4. As the only mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ has fulfilled the terms of the eternal Covenant of Redemption between the Father and Son, as well as the terms of the Covenant of Works between God and mankind in Adam.
5. The telos of Jesus Christ’s mediatoral work is the glorification of a holy catholic church.
6. God created Adam as the vicegerent of a covenant creation.
7. God created Adam as the federal representative of the human race.
8. As vicegerent and federal representative, Adam exercised the offices of Priest and King.
9. Adam exercised the office of a Priest by leading his wife, and the race that would spring forth from their union, in the worship of God.
10. Adam exercised the office of King by exercising dominion over the creation, headship over His wife and defense over the Garden of Eden.
11. Civil authority, represented by the lawful use of the sword, existed in the unfallen state of Eden.
12. Hypothetically, Adam, as a King, should have exercised the sword against the serpent that sought to deceive Eve.
13. The Garden of Eden was a holy theocratic covenant kingdom.
14. The covenant binding the Adamic Kingdom was a covenant of works summed up by the principle “do this and liveâ€.
15. The covenant of works was enacted on the basis of God’s condescension, but does not include a principle of saving grace.
16. Saving grace, properly speaking, is either unmerited favor, or favor in the face of demerit.
17. The Garden of Eden was a law Kingdom based on the principle of merit.
18. The fall destroyed the holy theocratic nature of the Adamic kingdom.
II. The Kingdom of Christ:
19. In Genesis 3:16, God introduced a new holy theocratic kingdom of grace.
20. The kingdom of grace is called the holy catholic Church.
21. As a reward for His perfect obedience to God the Father, Jesus Christ has earned the right to rule over all things in heaven and on earth.
22. It is necessary to distinguish between three aspects of Jesus Christ’s mediatoral kingship: His Kingdom of Power, His Kingdom of Grace, and His Kingdom of Glory.
23. Christ’s Kingdom of Power is His universal authority over the whole of creation.
24. Christ’s Kingdom of Power includes all of providence.
25. Christ’s Kingdom of Power includes all of history.
26. Christ’s Kingdom of Power includes all human institutions including political authorities.
27. The purpose of Christ’s Kingdom of Power is to ensure the calling, preservation, and glorification of His Church.
28. Christ’s Church militant is His Kingdom of Grace
29. Christ’s Church triumphant is His Kingdom of Glory.
30. In the period between fall and consummation, Christ’s Kingdom of Power is a secular (or common) kingdom operating on the principle of law tempered by the principle of common grace.
31. Common grace is God’s merciful goodness to the whole of His creation.
32. Common grace is God’s merciful restraining of human depravity.
33. Common grace is not redemptive.
34. The foundation of God’s common grace is the cross of Jesus Christ.
35. The fountain of God’s common grace is Christ’s mediatorial rule over His Kingdom of Power.
36. In the period between the fall and the consummation, Christ’s kingdom of grace is a holy (or sacred) kingdom operation on the principle of law and the principle of saving grace.
III. The Kingdom of Israel:
37. The Kingdom of Israel was a type of the Kingdom of Glory unique in human history prior to the consummation.
38. At Mount Sinai God established Israel as a holy kingdom of law and saving grace.
39. Holiness refers to either cultic separation unto God, or moral righteousness.
40. The Kingdom of Israel was holy in both a cultic and moral sense.
41. The principle of saving grace operated in the Kingdom of Israel, both, on the level of corporate redemption (i.e. “I am the Lord you God which has brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage…), and on the level of individual salvation.
42. The principle of law operated in the Kingdom of Israel on the typological level (i.e. Israel as a type of the Kingdom of Glory in the new heavens and new earth) providing the merit-inheritance principle for the retention of the land of promise (i.e. “Do this and you shall live…â€)
43. The principle of law operated in the Kingdom of Israel on a normative level providing a standard of duty for God’s redeemed people.
44. The moral law of God, summarized in the Ten Commandments, universally binds all man as creatures made in the God’s moral image.
45. The judicial laws of the Old Covenant were of two types: laws of general equity and laws of particular equity.
46. Laws of particular equity were typological shadows.
47. Laws of general equity reflect the moral nature of God and are part of the universal natural law.
48. Theocratic Israel reflected an overlapping unity between cult and culture that typologically pointed to the Kingdom of Glory.
IV. The Christian Nation:
49. The Church is the only holy Kingdom (in the cultic sense) between the day of Pentecost and the day of final judgment.
50. Under the New Covenant the Church owes allegiance to Jesus Christ and must submit to His will as revealed in the Holy Scriptures alone.
51. Under the New Covenant nation-states owe allegiance to Jesus Christ and must submit to His will as revealed in nature and summarized in the Ten Commandments.
52. Because political nation-states are part of Christ’s common kingdom (i.e. the Kingdom of His Power), and the Church is part of Christ’s holy kingdom (i.e. the Kingdom of Grace) the separation of Church and State is a biblical necessity.
53. Because the Kingdom of Power and the Kingdom of Glory have the same King and the same ultimate purpose, these Kingdoms’ are not contrary but complementary.
54. The separation of Church and State does not necessarily condemn an established Church system.
55. Christ’s Kingship over the nations does not necessarily demand an established Church system.
56. The State has no right to interfere with matters that are entirely holy.
57. The Church has no right to interfere with matters that are entirely secular.
58. Both Church and State must look to Jesus Christ as King and Lawgiver.
59. The “Theonomic†ethic does not take sufficient account of the Kingdom of Israel’s unique theocratic and typological structure.
60. A Christian nation (i.e. one that confesses Christ’s Kingship) is a not holy nation (in a cultic sense.)
61. A Christian nation may, improperly, be called a holy nation (in a moral sense).
62. A Christian nation benefits from the covenant of grace, but does not enter into it.
63. Jesus Christ governs Christian nations on the basis of law and common grace, but not on the basis of saving grace.
64. Unlike the Kingdom of Israel, Christian nations have no typological significance.
65. Nations are moral persons responsible to God for their corporate obedience to Jesus Christ
66. As moral persons, nations are more than the aggregate of each living individual.
67. As moral persons, nations reflect a covenant community of souls binding together the living, the dead and the unborn.
V. The Kingdom of Glory:
68. In the Kingdom of Glory, the realm of the common (i.e. secular) will be subsumed into the holy theocratic Kingdom of Glory.
69. Christians should not expect a universal acknowledgment of Christ’s Kingship over the nations prior to the Kingdom of Glory.
70. Christians should expect, and pray, that the Kingdom of Grace will positively, but organically, transform cultures and nations as Christians live out their common (i.e. secular) callings to the glory of God.
71. At the consummation Christ’s Kingdom of Power will be subsumed into His Kingdom of Glory.
MarkPele
July 22nd, 2006 at 2:19 pm
This is a relatively good set of points! However, I think I disagree with a few…
8-10. I agree that Adam was a King - he was given dominion over creation, but I think that is separate from his role as a husband. For example, if I’m the President of the United States, I have two separate authorities over my wife, one as president and one as husband. It is illogical to equate those two. If Eve had daughters in the garden, would Adam, by default, be their husband, since he was King?
Also, Hebrews 5:1 talks about the role of the priest: “For every high priest taken from among men is appointed on behalf of men in things pertaining to God, in order to offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.” Without sin, there is no need for a mediator to represent us before God, which is the role of the priest. Job is also used to imply the priesthood of the father; however, Job was the priest of his family because he was a priest appointed by God, not because of his role as a father. Here’s what Moses says about the establishment of the Levitical Priesthood in the land of Israel: Deut 12:8-9 “You shall not do at all what we are doing here today, every man doing whatever is right in his own eyes; for you have not as yet come to the resting place and the inheritance which the LORD your God is giving you.”
3&21. Either Christ became mediator because He was the God man, or he became mediator because of His perfect obedience. You can have 21 and 3, but not 3 without 21. This also doesn’t seem to explain the sense that the world rebelled against God and that Christ conquered the powers of darkness to bring the world back in subjection to God the father. The Bible states that Jesus will hand the kingdom back to His father when all is brought under subjection. We didn’t need a mediator before the fall. God could communicate directly with His creation. If He needed Jesus as the mediator before the Fall, who mediates for the angels who are in His presence?
45,47. I think it is a great mistake to put the judicial laws in two categories. As the WCF states, “To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require.” To artifically categorize the law itself as “general equity”, you create the opportunity (and I’ve seen it done from the pulpit) for a pastor to say a law is binding with absolutely no rationale other than saying it is “moral in nature”. All of the laws were for the nation of Israel, and they were all binding on the nation of Israel. They are only binding on us as they correctly interpret the moral law for a specific situation. For example, judicial laws demonstrate the positive aspects of the moral law - protection of life, protection of property - and the negative aspects - rebellion against parents, rebellion against authority, etc.
56,57. I deny the distinction between holy and secular. Murder carries both a moral and civil penalty. Any infraction of God’s law is punishable both by the church and the state. I think this is a false dichotomy and is why our nation struggles so much with religion vs. the state. The state thinks it can be neutral by having an entirely secular purpose, but the secular purpose itself denies the duties of the Christian in all of life. Churches that limit themselves to personal, private practice of religion for all intents and purposes deny their responsibility to be salt and light in the fallen world.
+67.5 Christian nations have no special claim to the promises of God to the cultic kingdom of Israel. (e.g. 2 Chron 7:14)
W.H. Chellis
July 25th, 2006 at 7:26 am
Mark,
Thanks for the interaction.
First, no Adam would not have been his daughters husband (yuck) but he would have been their king.
Second, your citation of Hebrews provides insight into the nature of priesthood but does not say everything. Of course, a federal head also is something of a mediator who represents us before God. Adam was such a mediator, such a federal head,and because of his role of defending the holiness of the Garden and teaching his family God’s covenant word and leading them in worship he was, in fact, a priest. Of course this should not be that surprising as our theology tells us that every husband/father is a prophet, priest, and king over his household.
I do not believe that Jesus Christ was the mediator of salvation before the fall. I do believe He had an active role in representing God to man and had an important role in creation. Although His mediatorial work will never come to its completion, it is my believe that it began at the fall and was officially inaugurated at His return to the Father, and will be perfected at His return.
More on the judicial laws later.
Finally. you deny the distinction between holy and secular, do you deny the distinction between church and state?
MarkPele
July 25th, 2006 at 11:20 am
What theology would that be? It is not in the WCF, it is not in the RP Testimony, and it is not in the Larger or Shorter Catechism. You may try to stylize my relationship with my family as prophet, priest and king, and maybe the roles are somewhat similar, but to call them that completely mischaracterizes them. A prophet spoke the words of God - words that could be written down as scripture. “THUS SAYS THE LORD.” Any father who claims to be a prophet is a liar. A priest is a mediator between man and God. The priest represents his people in a way that they cannot represent themselves. The primary purpose of the priest was to offer sacrifices for his people to appease God’s wrath. The people under the priest were helpless in their own salvation, requiring the work of the priest to make atonement on their behalf. Any father who calls himself a priest over his family is a liar. A king primarily wields the power of the sword in punishing wrongdoing. He praises those who are upright and punishes those who do wrong. He has the power and the responsibility to put people to death for capital crimes. Do you seriously say that I have that power over my children? Should I put my children to death who rebel against me? Any father who calls himself the king of his family is a liar.
Thus, you cannot equate these offices as offices of the family. I teach my family, I pray for my family, and I am the head of my wife and discipline my children. Those roles are similar to, but distinct from the roles of prophet, priest and king.
I don’t deny that Hebrews 5:1 is not the sum total of the priests’ role, but it is an essential part. It says EVERY. Thus a person who is not able to offer sacrifices for sins is not a priest. Again to say that anyone but Christ in the new covenant can offer sacrifice for sins is heresy. In fact, it was heresy under the old covenant, since the priest was merely a visual foreshadowing of the redemption found in Christ alone.
I don’t have an opinion either way on the mediation, but two theses claim to know the basis of Christ’s mediation. Is it that He is the God Man, or is it that He obeyed perfectly? Obviously they can both be true, but they can’t both be the sole cause. The third point I made is that Christ purchased the universe through His redemption of us at the cross, so another aspect of the mediation is that Christ owns us and thus mediates also as a slave-owner (where, of course, slavery in Christ is freedom indeed!)
The church and the state have different roles in dealing with sin, but I’m not sure that it’s holy vs. secular. In looking up the definition of secular, I think it is only the modern connotation (absence of religion) that I think inappropriate. I would say that the distinction is eternal/holy vs. temporal, which does jive with the technical definition of secular. The point that I was trying to make is that all law is moral in nature, and thus the state cannot have an areligious purpose in law. The purpose must be to bring the moral law to bear on all aspects of public life. Also, the church is only over those who are in covenant with God, while the state is over all in its land. So, a covenantal Christian who commits murder would potentially be judged eternally (excommunicated) by the church and temporally by the state. (Obviously, the church may see signs of true repentance and restore the member later)
W.H. Chellis
July 29th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
Hi Mark,
Well, let me back you up one step. Do you agree that there is a sense of Christian vocation in which we are all prophets, priests, and kings in Christ?
MarkPele
July 30th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
Bill, I believe in vocation, and I believe that all Christians are representatives of Christ to the world in some extent.
What I also think is that the prophet, priest, king analogy is vastly abused in Reformed circles. For example, calling the pastor the prophet, the elder the king and the deacon the priest in a church just doesn’t seem Biblical. Prophet, priest and king were shadowy pictures of Christ that existed primarily in the Old Testament. Just as I don’t feel required to force our church liturgy into the terms of temple worship, I don’t feel required to force every God-given vocation into the terms of prophet, priest and king.
The same can be said for the Passover and communion. It is helpful to explain communion using the terms of the Passover, but the Passover has significance that communion doesn’t, and communion has significance that the Passover doesn’t. It’s not a perfect fit
That’s why I think that we can find it helpful to use the OT pictures of prophet, priest and king to explain the responsibility of the father, I find it incorrect, and often downright heretical to say that the father IS the prophet, priest and king of the family.
MarkPele
July 30th, 2006 at 8:15 pm
I think I can say it a little better. I believe that a father is LIKE a priest, but I don’t believe a father IS a priest. Here is an example of how this can be abused…
A priest prays for his people.
A father is a priest.
Therefore, a father prays for his family.
Okay, maybe this is a reasonable statement, but how about this one?
A priest offers blood sacrifices for his people.
A father is a priest.
Therefore, a father offers blood sacrifices for his family.
So, now you should see my problem with the statement. A pastor merely has to assert the second statement to conclude the third. Anything a priest does can now be explained from the pulpit as a duty of the father.
Here’s a quote from Brian Schwertley that explains my point:
After Noah offered sacrifice, God blessed him and his sons and then restated the dominion mandate (Gen. 9:1). Both Abraham and Jacob offered sacrifice as the heads of their households (Gen. 22:13; Gen. 31:54; 46:1, 5, 6). Job’s role as the covenant head of the family in worship is also evident. “Job…would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all. For Job said, ‘It may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.’ Thus Job did regularly” (Job 1:5). Not only were the heads of the households (the husband and father) responsible for family worship, Jehovah Himself dealt with families through the heads of households.
http://www.reformedonline.com/view/reformedonline/family.html
As you see, the only stated reason for family worship is the priesthood of the father, and the fact that certain pre-Mosaic fathers were appointed priests by God, having responsibility for their families. In other words:
Priests hold worship services in their consituencies,
Fathers are priests of their family,
Therefore, fathers hold family worship.
MarkPele
August 2nd, 2006 at 11:50 am
As a clarification, the the first sentence in the Schwertley quote (before “After Noah…”) is:
The head of the household acted as the priest of the family. Noah offered sacrifice for himself and his family (Gen. 8:20-22).
So, the implication is that, without needing any additional proof, the fact that some Biblical characters were chosen by God as a real priest over their families means that all fathers today are, by default, priests over their household.
Look at Baus’ current article on neocalvinism and you see the same logic. A corporation is part of the family, my boss has authority over me, therefore my boss is a father.