Follow-up on True and Only Theocracy… I’m not familiar with the typology of Christ as Israel. I’d have to see what the Scriptural basis is and exactly what the nature of the type is because a type has parameters. The Church is the new Israel, so in whatever way Christ might be a type of Israel, it couldn’t be in the same relationship in which Christ is seen as Israel - Israel in relation to Israel?? That would appear to be an important point to resolve or be convinced of to deny the theonomic position.

Also, as I wrote some time earlier, unless one is a Dispensationalist who belives we are living in a paranthetical period in which Christ is not reigning as King right now in any way (apparently a lot of Dispy’s are today moving away from this position too), then we’re living under a theocracy now, and always have and always will be. The issue, then is not whether or not we live in a theocracy, but rather, how are Christians to apply in our daily lives the theocracy under which we and all creation exist? And in particular to the context of the current discussion, how does one apply this reality in our civil-social arrangements.

Bill, you conclude that article with: “In victory, Jesus Christ gathers to Himself a people to be a true theocracy. This nation is especially honored to submit to Jesus Christ as Her King and lawgiver. A holy nation, the New Covenant theocracy is privileged to acknowledge the constant covenantal presence of God. This nation, the first fruits of the new creation and a present experience of the Kingdom of God, is no longer tied to one geo-political entity. Rather, it is an international assembly inviting all nations to participate in her splendor. The theocracy of the new covenant is the Church of Jesus Christ. She is Christ’s holy nation and the fullness of our present participation in the Kingdom of God.”

I don’t see why that position is exclusive of the concept of establishing Biblical laws within national parameters. If a nation is a Biblically legitimate category (as opposed to one-world human gov’t) (just because the Church is a holy nation, does not mean that God has done away with the concept of nations as a lawful means by which people should order their civil-social lives - or to put it another way, nationalism is a sinful concept, but patriotism is not), then just as we want to govern our families and our churches and our personal lives by God’s law, we should also want to govern our nations in like fashion. Perhaps it’s the word theocracy that gets in people’s craw. I don’t know. We don’t call the rule of God’s law a theocracy in reference to church gov’t or family gov’t, even though one probably could, so maybe we shouldn’t in ref. to civil governance either. I don’t know. Those who oversee these governmental responsibilities: civil magistrates, elders and parents, do so as representatives of Christ, whereas the ultimate theocracy that you speak of is that overall reality which acknowledges the ultimate rule by Christ.

Also, without a dominion mandate, and responsibility for active moral engagement (which is basic to what cultural engagement is) does not exist for Christians living in this world, then exactly what does it mean to be a king? I thought good reformed doctrine said that all believers are prophets, priests and kings under Christ. We are vice-regents on this earth. Certainly as a Dispy, I didn’t know anything about being a vice-regent under Christ. (What does Luther say?)

After first being introduced to it a couple of years ago, and then putting it down for a while, though, I am re-examining the Preterism from Gary DeMar and others.

“The Mosaic precept” - so perhaps not in “minute detail” - but not without continual moral suasion or authority. I suppose one area of debate between a theonomist and a non-th. would be whether the Mosaic capital penalty for man-stealing would be binding today.

I like the rest of Pratt’s article too. Unflinchingly post-mill, and he talked about a fellow called Jehle who I think is tied in now with Doug Phillip’s work at Vision Forum and that vision for multi-generational discipleship and cultural reform.

Rather, a kind of national confessionalist? Silly to try to apply labels backwards. Yet, Ambrose certainly did believe that Christ’s Kingship made claims on the magistrate and his legacy is to be honored for his impact on Western Christendom.

Ambrose
In A.D. 390, a riot occurred in Thessalonica and the Roman governor, Botheric, was killed. Theodosius, the Roman emperor at the time, invited the people of the city for games and entertainment in the Hippodrome, and then had 7,000 of them slain. Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, rose to the role of the good shepherd ready to lay down his life for his sheep. He wrote to Theodosius and told him to publicly repent for the evil he had done. Roman emperors were not in the habit of humbling themselves, and Theodosius refused Ambrose’s demand. That set the stage for the high drama that ensued. As Theodosius attempted to enter the church he attended, Ambrose literally interposed himself between Theodosius and the entrance (and hence the people, the church). Ambrose firmly believed that the emperor was under God’s law and should humble himself and serve that law. By the grace of God, Theodosius yielded. He stripped himself of his imperial insignia, entered the church and publicly called upon the Lord to forgive his sin in the matter. And the good news kept coming–Ambrose became an unofficial counselor to Theodosius, and was thus in a position to have a hand in rewriting Roman law to provide for what we now call due process. Ambrose believed, and happily Theodosius concurred, that the law of God is over the king because the King of kings of every realm is King Jesus, the one to whom the nations of the earth have been given. Who was Ambrose in the eyes of the world to stand up to the emperor of Rome? Yet Ambrose knew that God uses the weak things of the world to manifest His might. Ambrose did not know ahead of time the outcome of the stand he took, but he knew that he had to be faithful to God who is in charge of all circumstances. Because there are still influences of the common law in the United States, we are still being blessed by what Ambrose did centuries ago.

From:
The Christian Statesman - September - October 2001
Thy Kingdom Come
by Larry Pratt

Commentary - German cases illustrate the threat of Secular Humanism

There’s no shortage to the reports which expose the true ruthless nature of the Secular Humanist ethic and agenda. You can see some more examples in the “Views and News” section of this newsletter.

One of the most astonishing examples of Secularism’s threat to liberty and civilization in recent months has been the German State’s attempts to enforce Hitler’s legislation against home schoolers, particularly against the Busekros family, kidnapping one of the children from her parents. Even after the issue was somewhat resolved and civil government officials backed off, the Prosecutor was still reported as wanting to throw the parents in jail.

This is a diabolical example of the State illegitimately interfering in the rightful jurisdition of family government. These parents were not guilty of assaulting their children or depriving them of the necessities of life. In terms of Biblical ethics, no lawful basis has been reported for the civil government to interfere in this sphere of family government whereby the parents are accountable directly to God for the training, nurture, discipleship and education of their children.

That’s why I call the State’s action kidnapping. Many people may feel uncomfortable accusing the State of kidnapping, but that’s exactly what took place - because the agents of the civil magistrate took the child out from under the lawful authority of her parents for no lawful reason. Not only did they do that, but they put her in a more high risk and threatening environment than what they took her from. Such is the blindness of ideology, especially anti-God, Secular Humanist ideology.

(Keep in mind that Hitler’s Nazi government was also known as national socialism. Hitler and his gang were a bunch of leftists, notwithstanding the massive political myth that has developed around the Nazis that identifies them as far-right. That’s pure, unadulterated hogwash. Hitler was a socialist. That shouldn’t be surprising.)

I’m not done yet! In the context of the unfolding of this outrageous story of the German government persecuting home schoolers, I came across another story which, when contrasted with this home schooling story, makes you wonder whether Germany deserves to be recognised as part of the civilized world today.

On March 26, I came across an article distributed through the Christian Worldview Network. It was titled “Citing Islamic law, a German Court Rejects a Petition by an Allegedly Battered Woman,” and was written by Steven T. Voigt of Foundations of Law .

This is what he reported (also footnoting a March 23 Associated Press article titled “Judge Tells Battered Muslim Wife: Koran Says ‘Men are in Charge of Women’”):

“Earlier this year, citing the Koran and Moroccan culture as bases for her decision, a German judge denied the petition of a German of Moroccan descent married to a Moroccan citizen for an expedited divorce proceeding on grounds that she was abused by her husband. In rejecting the petition, Judge Christa Datz-Winter reasoned that in Moroccan culture it is common for husbands to beat their wives and the Koran provides that ‘Men are in charge of women.’

“Understandably, Germans have expressed outrage over this decision. One German lawmaker commented ‘The legal and moral concepts of Sharia [Islamic law] have nothing to do with German jurisprudence.’ Nonetheless, in this instance, the German court’s socialist zeal to display inclusiveness toward all cultures and practices, no matter how barbaric, caused the court to effectively sacrifice its own values at the courthouse door.”

So, let me get this straight: At the same time that the German civil government is sending new-styled “Gestapo” agents after home schoolers, it is surrendering its legal and moral authority to an uncivilized Islamic law code that says a man has absolute authority over his wife, accusations of physical assault notwithstanding - because such assault happens to be part of their ethnic tradition!?!?

As Mr. Voigt noted, this decision flows out of a socialistic ethic. Secular Humanism lacks the energy to inspire faith and vision in its adherents. It’s an ideology of spinelessness. That’s why it has such a short life-span and you see it succumbing today to the multiculturalistic notion of cultural equivalency and the subsequent rise in influence of Islam in many Secularist nations and even the rise of occultism in places like England (cf. two of the stories in the “Views and News section”).

Somebody energised by a genuine Christianity moral impulse would not have succumbed to Islamic ethics, perceived or real, in this court case. Mr. Voigt noted in the conclusion of his article: “we must acknowledge that this incident in Germany is shocking to us as Americans and as Christians only because our sense of morality springs from Christianity, just as the Christian faith is the cornerstone upon which our civilization was built and today rests.” Christianity, including a Christian model for civil governance, is the only solution against the immoral and destabilising pressures from Secular Humanism and Mohammedanism.

Some may try to argue that a model which esteems family authority high enough to charge the German government for kidnapping when it takes a home schooled child away from her family would also be likely to rule in favour of an abusing spouse such as in the case noted here. But that is not true. Religion is not generic. And the theological and ethical nature of Christianity is markedly different from that of Mohammedanism. I conclude with some specific references to the Christian ethic listed by Mr. Voigt that are pertinent to the Moroccan divorce case: “See 1 Corinthians 7:3 (’The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband.’); 1 Corinthians 13:5-7 (Love ‘is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.’); 1 Peter 3:7 (’Husbands … be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect …’); Proverbs 31:30-31 (’Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her the reward she has earned, and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.’).”

That’s the ethic against which Atheist extremists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have declared war. Do we really want to experience the “neo-barbarian” ethic they want to put in its place?

Where do you get the typology of Christ as Isreal in Matt. 4:1-11 - from your True and Only Theocracy post?

The link you gave me had a few blog submissions listed prior to the one titled “True and Only Theocracy” and I read and comment below in the order of the articles listed.

Very interesting article and helpful insights for me in “Solidarity W. H. Chellis My Brother’s Keeper? Wh…”. From a different direction, you arrive at the same principle I argued as necessary to “Christian theocracy” - division of authority - as God divided man by language, race and geography. I came at that via the principle of the Sovereignty of God and, therefore, by derivation, the claim that it would be wrong to have a political system that was hierarchical (just as we Presbyterians argue in terms of ecclesiastical structure - though I know that’s not our only argument, and perhaps not the primary one).

I will slip in here that a very helpful book I read by Gary North made a strong case for a federal relationship between nations as the alternative Biblical model to the centralization, UN structure and one-world government mentality that dominates today. I had to read the book twice to grasp much of the argumentation and should read it again, but it is certainly a model and argument that Christians in vocations where this issue is relevant should examine seriously.

You say that the example of Achen’s sin and the way it was dealt with was extraordinary because of Israel’s theocracy, but then you go on to point out that the representative nature of civil magistrates (CMs) to the people, and vice versa is an abiding principle (cf. Nineveh) - and here again I have personally benefited greatly from numerous articles and studies by Gary North where he talks about the various ways in which the principle of representation works in civilisation and does so by virtue of being a Biblical principle - so in what way, then, is the handling of Achen’s sin extraordinary?

In “RE: Agreeable to the Natural LawW.H. ChellisI h…” you mention leading a study in Proverbs in the context of your moving away from a theonomic ethic. Interestingly I was reading in Proverbs this morning as well. And there are lots of genuine equity principles there. A false witness will not go unpunished (19:9). But who should punish him? Nobody? Leave it up to God? Scripture interprets Scripture. We learn earlier that in the context of court cases, a witness who lies in court, if found guilty, must be punished with the same punishment that the person he was lying about would have received for the crime he was charged with if found guilty. Now, just because that is in the Mosaic section of the Bible, do we shun it as an inherently illegitimate application for today, or do we say, OK, we have a justice system in Canada that also depends in part for its integrity on the honesty of witnesses, so we should establish the same law to punish lying witnesses? And if not, why not? Or is the real issue simply the theoretical matter of not asserting that such an approach is THE ONLY Biblical application of the principle of punishing witnesses today? Sometimes one gets the impression from some Christians that, if an application of the moral law is found in the Mosaic law, then by definition, that is a necessarily inadmissible application outside of Israel. I’d like to put an armour-piercing bullet right the heart of that notion.

I also get the impression that some critics of theonoy, when they approach theonomy, and they see, for example, the law about putting a fence around the edge of your roof so people don’t fall off - often criticism of theonomy that I have heard suggests that those critics think that such a law requires all Christians to live in flat-roofed houses. Of course, that is nonsense: that law would apply only to those who happen to live in flat-roofed houses, which perhaps is everyone in that part of the world, and further, it is an application of a broader moral law related to our responsibilities to, with the best of our knowledge and ability, take measures to enhance safety. Most people, including Christians, would argue that such an application flows properly out of God’s moral law, hence those who don’t take such a measure deserve to face criminal sanctions and lawsuits, and probably even church discipline if they’re church members, if someone has an accident due to the lack of such a safety measure.

What about insurance? The kind of insurance options available today didn’t exist when the Bible was written. But what ethic does the concept of insurance flow out of? I know some fundamentalist Christians who think insurance is wrong because you’re not supposed to worry about tomorrow, blah, blah, blah. Yet does not the principle of insurance flow out of a recognition of the fallenness of creation and, perhaps more particularly, our human inability to know the future and, therefore, a voluntary - well, it used to be voluntary - agreement among people to attempt to manage risk? A similar realm of ethics out of which flows the previous point. I expect a theonomic and “general moral equity” reasoning process would look pretty similar on this issue and would arrive at a similar application, although there may be debate as to whether any or all insurance should be enforced or voluntary and how much insurance is “enough.”

I find your comments about the risk of a theonomic ethic being too strident and disruptive for civil governance application interesting. I suspect that such concerns flow primarily out of the hot-headed language and behaviour of some of the early recons. like North and Rushdoony than out of what they actually said. And I say this for several reasons:

1. The Recon. theonomic ethic probably advocates less civil government involvement in society than any other model of civil governance except libertarianism so it isn’t about imposing a whole bunch of laws on people that they don’t want. The only exception is the exception that divides Christians from Secular Humanist “theocrats”, and that is sexual ethics. (Sure, there are a few other things too, like the decriminalisation of some drug use, but the real conflict today and in recent decades has been over sexual permissiveness). And in this area, Christians wouldn’t find much objection from non-Secularist non-Christians - Muslims, for example. But for the most part, the theocon ethic places a primacy on self-government, and it also defines the legitimate spheres for family gov’t and church gov’t too so that a society with sufficient people committed to this ethic wouldn’t leave a whole realm of morality ungoverned (which I think is the primary misconception by Christian and non-Chr. alike, but rather governed by non-CM governmental authorities.

2. The Recons. never talk about imposing their vision on society. If someone advocating such a vision articulates it honestly in an election campaign and he wins office, he has the moral obligation by way of the ninth commandment to advocate for the values he told his electorate he would promote. And if enough people with this vision get elected to impact legislation and public policy, then they have the democratic right and responsibility to do so. In practise, in reality, this development would typically happen gradually and probably only in conjunction with a re-Christianisation of culture by way of Revival and Reformation, and that’s what Recons. who I have read suggest, so I don’t get where this spectre of tyranny and bull-in-a-china-shop approach comes from.

3. You say, “Theonomy is strong medicine. Instead of calling us to shore up a weakening Christendom it calls for radical reconstruction.” Yes and no. It advocates capital punishment - but for some crimes that still hold such a punishment at least in some states in the U.S. It advocates the criminalisation of stealing, rape, etc. that most Canadians and Americans already think should remain against the law. I know Bahnsen argues that child sexual assault should be a capital offence. I don’t know if that is universal thought in recon. theonomy, but I can hardly imagine a general uprising in either of our countries if such a penalty was imposed on child sexual assault. Particularly if it was implemented in stages, applying first to the most heinous offences. If theonomists started deregulating numerous areas, getting rid of minimum wage laws, getting out of the way of landlord-tenant relations, repealing KKKalifornia’s anti-emmissions regulations, gutting building codes, etc., they will raise the ire of a massive “anti-poverty” lobby, but any observer of politics knows that if politicians show backbone, these people soon back down. If you cut their gov’t funding, they have no grassroots support to generate the money they need to keep organising protests and shouting into the media.

Other things they could do early on that would generate far less and less broadbased opposition would be to cut spending of taxpayer dollars in all kinds of areas and reduce taxes - terminate all taxpayer funding of abortion and other services that subsidise sexual pervesion with tax dollars, including HIV-AIDS drugs (that would quickly cut the # of people practising homosexuality too), cut taxpayer funding for business, for education, for gov’t-to-gov’t foreign aid. Cut their donations to the UN. There are lots of non-theonomic people advocating for these things too. Such moves would engender new opposition, but also new support. And you don’t just do these things haphazardly. You do them progressively and thoughtfully. Just because theonomists talk the way they do, at least among what is supposed to be friendly circles, doesn’t mean they would go out and apply their ethics in the same blunt manner. Maybe some would. They probably don’t have the public face necessary to win the support in an election anyway. Critics of theonomy need to project all this discussion of theory into the real world just as much as some theonomists do instead of taking the exact subtance, tone and nature of internal theoretical debate and plonking that down conceptually in the middle of Congress and thinking that that’s how it’s going to be realised. Of course, critics and others would flee from the kind of image that conjurs up. But most people are very weak at converting theory into real world scenarios. I spend an extensive amount of time doing this and I think I do a pretty good job of thinking through and fleshing out what a real world working out of different theories, including those that may seem radical and extreme, would work themselves out in the real world and what is necessary to accomplish such goals. I think my book does that within the framework of the subject matter, and the broad-based compliments on the material and presentation from many non-reformed and certainly non-theonomic people I think attests to that fact.

I almost forgot the most important application of a family-government-respecting civil-social order: the complete elimination of all measures that impede firearms ownership.

And an additional point: consistent with the decentralised vision of recon. theonomy, many of the possible reforms I have highlighted above probably wouldn’t take place at a national level at first anyway. Fleshing out a real-world scenario, they would far more likely to take place at a state or provincial level and a local or municipal level. This is good because it would provide real-world case studies for neighbours to examine to see if they like what they see. I want to see the concept of gov’t-controlled health care rot in hell. As one who had to take his wife to the U.S, and pay out of pocket for health care because the diabolical and hellish gov’t monopoly system we have here couldn’t diagnose a double-hernia after 13 months of tests, etc., advocacy for free market health care is one of my hobbyhorses and probably will be till I die. (Another good application of Biblical ethics.) But you see ex-Soviet states in East Europe experimenting with low- and flat-taxes and seeing the benefits of it, and others seeing the benefits and competing for lower taxes because they see how they attract more business and revenue.

So, all that to say that while there may be theological concerns about the theonomic model and how theonomy understands the applicability of Mosaic law in the civil-social arena (which is still an area I have to do more study of myself and which I haven’t interacted with here), I think a strong case to counter those for whom a theonomic approach to civil-social reform strikes terror into the core of their being can be made and I think I have indicated this with my comments here.

I may say more later, I still haven’t read your actual submission titled: “The True and Only Theocracy W. H. Chellis America…”

Or just search True and Only Theocracy

To Darryl: Not necessarily.