"We, in the U.S., need to discern whether this tyranny is a punishment from God which we richly deserve or an evil force that must be resisted."
Save Our Nation - Attend To Sin
By Al Cronkrite
The Covenant News ~ April 18, 2009
"Do not have two differing weights in your bag-one heavy, one light. Do not have two differing measures in your house-one large, one small. You must have accurate and honest weights and measures, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you. For the LORD your God detests anyone who does these things, anyone who deals dishonestly." Deuteronomy 25: Begin at 13.
Following a recent breakfast at Cracker Barrel we saved one of their small bottles of pancake syrup. These little bottles are an attractive supplement to their breakfast fare. When we arrived home we put it in the refrigerator next to another bottle we had saved from a previous breakfast. We noted the new bottle was slightly smaller than the former. Further scrutiny revealed the label on the new bottle read "100% Pure Natural Syrup" while the label on the older bottle read "100% Pure Maple Syrup". Also, the contents went from 1.7 oz. to 1.5 oz. This subtle change was designed to deceive the public and increase profit.
The Bible maintains that all have sinned and fallen short of the mark. God's Law concerning honest weights and measures is a reliable gage to the universal mendacity of human beings. God hates transactions that fail to produce honest value for both sides. Even bargain hunting may sometimes cheat the seller. The maxim "Buyer Beware" is popular because sellers frequently cheat buyers. Dishonest weights and measures is a major evil.
Unfortunately, our society has become inured to dishonesty. Ubiquitous fine print is designed to deceive the buyer. Wal-Mart's contention that the peaches were formerly $ 2.98 a pound seldom jibes with perception. Most items that are listed as "On Sale" are not really on sale. It is dishonest to sell familiar packages at the same price when the weight has been slightly reduced without prior notification. Calling a stud 2x4 when it actually measures something less has been appropriated by the Chinese who now export 8 foot diameter rugs that measure 7'6". The cost of visits to Dentists and Doctors is purposely obscured so that billings can be administered without arbitration. Hotel rooms sell at different prices depending on where you pay; airlines are the same. Banks charge exorbitant fees for occurrences that are often not anticipated by customers. Elected officials lie to their constituents by forsaking their oath and by allowing nefarious forces to rob our wealth. Read this excellent description. Even individual proprietors have joined the fray. In my town if you fail to confirm the price of a job before having it done you will generally pay double. Dishonesty and fraud are pandemic. A little thought can add dozens of instances to this list.
As previously mentioned the Government is a major offender. It surreptitiously robs citizens of wealth and freedom by devaluing the currency and colluding to wipe out liberty by progressively moving them and their nation into a tyrannical world order. When 3 or 4 percent inflation is accepted as normal trillions of dollars are being robbed from citizens who have become so accustomed to the robbery they no longer protest. Because Democracies are easily manipulated and our Constitution restricts government our nation is deceitfully referred to as a Democracy instead of a Republic. Trade agreements and laws that entangle us in the United Nations are passed by duplicitous elected officials who either know or should know they are threatening the freedom of their constituents.
Deception itself has become a form of religion at the highest levels of our nation.
Consider what a difference it would make in our social structure if the paper money we use was backed by a steadily valued commodity that would support its worth. Think what a difference it would make if honesty was a legal requirement for public announcements. What a difference the United States of America might have made in the world if it had evolved into a nation governed by God's Commandments; a peaceful, prosperous, trustworthy nation characterized by honest weights and measures!
Instead our fall into secularism has brought us gross debauchery, endless deceit, perpetual war, and the brink of bankruptcy.
Looming over the world are elite bankers and tycoons who seek to exert their growing power. We, in the United States, need to discern whether this pending tyranny is a punishment from God which we richly deserve or an evil force that must be resisted.
The Prophet Jeremiah could have been speaking to our day when he predicted the demise of Jerusalem and victory for the Chaldeans. He told the king that if he fought against the armies of the Chaldeans he would not succeed (Jeremiah Chapter 32) and the city would be burned along with "the houses where people had offered incense to Baal on their roofs and poured out libations to other gods to provoke Me to anger".
In spite of Christian allegiance encoded in our state constitutions and considerable verbiage supporting a perceived Christian intent in our national Document, we have been a secular nation since the ratification of the Constitution. Religious freedom is a violation of God's First Commandment. Religions that elevate bogus gods are an abomination to the One True God. Under our Constitution secularists can be amoral Darwinists and ascribe to the survival of the fittest. They can lie, deceive, cheat, and collude without violating our humanistic law. Honest weights and measures are of no importance to those whose religion encourages deception, and deception is both legal and rampant.
If you had been an official in the State of Rhode Island in September 1787 it is likely you would have harbored a severe distrust of the new United States Constitution. Of the 55 delegates who attended only 39 were willing to affirm it and in spite of considerable political pressure your state would not ratify it for three years and then by a razor thin margin of two votes 32 to 34. The new Constitution formed a Federal government that robbed the individual states of sovereignty, creating another level of power over their citizens, and posing a threat of potential tyranny. Rhode Island had refused to send a delegate and the document had been crafted in secret by representatives from the remaining twelve states. It was a product of powerful men and was imposed on the states without a national referendum; in that sense it was a humanistic tyranny.
Read what our forefathers in the Faith wrote concerning our duty toward evil rulers:
"For if there are now any magistrates of the people, appointed to restrain the willfulness of kings. I am so far from forbidding them to withstand, in accordance with their duty, the fierce licentiousness of kings, that, if they wink at kings who violently fall upon and assault the lowly common folk, I declare that their dissimulation involves nefarious perfidy, because they dishonestly betray the freedom of the people, of which they know that they have been appointed protectors by God's ordinance." John Calvin's Institutes, 1536
"So then, verily, we ought not at any time to defend the tyrannical power, and say that it is of God: for tyranny is not divine, but a devilish, kind of government; and tyrants themselves are properly the servants of the devil, and not of God." Henry Bullinger, 1558
The Church of Jesus Christ has a sacred duty to defend freedom and righteousness against evil tyrants. Unfortunately, in spite of the burgeoning number of Christians in our nation we have failed to stand for righteousness. We and our pulpits have avoided confrontation. Instead we have expected to be served rather than to serve, we have engaged in self centered worship, defended faulty eschatology as an excuse for lethargy, sought blessing without obligation and peace over the conflict of righteous confrontation. While we have failed to hunger after truth the Devil has filled the void distorting and destroying it.
Few American Christians are aware of how far they have wandered from the ways of the One True God. Many are proud that United States is polluted by a religious polyglot. T. D. Jakes a popular Black preacher writes: "A country that has one national religion as its only compass is much more of a theocracy than a democracy. That kind of tyranny leads to witch burning, spiritual genocide, forced and fraudulent expressions of faith, and God knows what else. As wonderful as faith is, faith out of control can be lethal." He continues, "More wars have been fought over the name of God, the will of God and through the people of God than any other issue confronting mankind. Holy wars dominated the dark ages and filled the trenches of battle fields with the blood of young, hopeful men breaking the hearts of their parents - all for God.
Bishop Jake's opinion is a reliable measure of how far contemporary Christians have fallen. Though we claim to believe God's Word we filter the Bible through our sinful minds and allow the Devil to rescind the most important parts. Jakes professes to be more astute than the God of the Bible Who ordered the annihilation of all of the inhabitants of the Promised Land in an unsuccessful effort to protect His chosen people from the pollution of foreign religions. Jakes, and all who embrace multi-religionism, work against the clear Biblical doctrine of exclusivity. They, as well as most contemporary Christians, are heretical New Testament Christians. They dismiss God's Law which is the heart of the Old Testament and gut the Gospel of Jesus Christ as thoroughly as Samson was defanged by the cutting of his hair.
I regularly receive pictures of warships, military aircraft, soldiers in foreign lands and other information urging me to support our military. Americans are a patriotic people. However, when patriotism becomes a "kick butt" belligerence God is offended. The United States military has killed, maimed and manipulated millions of individuals; all created in the image of the One True God. The American Revolution was a just war but most succeeding conflicts were either avaricious or contrived. We began with the American Indians, continued with the wholesale slaughter of our own people in Lincoln's aggression against the South, then the Philippines', Mexicans, Japanese, Germans (twice), Koreans, Vietnamese, Serbs, Iraqis and several less flagrant. Each of these wars debased the righteousness of our culture, contended with individual freedom, and failed to fit the Christian criterion for a just war. Most Americans believe these wars were fought in defense of freedom but freedom's enemy has never been the host of nations we have manipulated, murdered, ravaged, and maimed. Freedom's real enemy is and always has been our own government.
The American people have been deceived, propagandized, under informed and misinformed. As a result they have supported government actions that did not warrant their support, actions that should have been resisted.
On top of evil military adventurism the Christian church has allowed sin to infiltrate and overrun our society. Antinomianism is the doctrine of the day. Without God's Law righteousness cannot exist. In spite of the fact that all law is moral many intelligent Americans will still contend that morality cannot be legislated. God's Law is the legal standard for a Christian society; man's law is the standard for a humanistic society. The will to obey the Law cannot be legislated but penalties for infractions can be legislated and should be carried out according to God's Word.
God's people have been nurtured on the blasphemy of improper doctrine. They have been served by leaders whose agenda is similar to that of our democratically elected government officials. Just as our elected representatives forsake their oath and the best interests of the nation by putting their personal interests ahead of the nation's welfare, Christian leaders forsake God's Will in favor of their churches, their ministries and their own aggrandizement.
Nevertheless, all blame does not rest with leadership. American citizens who claim the Name of Christ are stubborn, un-teachable, selfish, belligerent, dishonest, and often worthy of the flawed leaders they support.
Some or our leaders create confusion.
Gary DeMar is a fine Christian minister and a powerful force for righteousness. However, his position on the 2008 election is difficult to reconcile. Here is what he wrote prior to the fall election: "Many Christians are pushing Chuck Baldwin and the Constitution Party. Baldwin doesn't have a chance, and he knows it. The system is against him. Moreover, he doesn't have any electoral experience. The same goes for Alan Keyes who has no business running for president when he couldn't win a Senate seat in Maryland in 1988 and 1992 and couldn't beat Barack Obama in a Senate race in Illinois in 2004. At least Ron Paul and Bob Barr have won some elections and have a legislative track record." (The link to this piece is not longer intact.) (My comments on this statement.)
On April 6th Gary wrote this: "Christians must elect representatives who will abide by the Constitution, not only in word but in deed. All candidates running for public office should be required to take a comprehensive test on the Constitution with the results of the test published so all can see that they really know and understand the Constitution they will swear to uphold. All schools should offer courses on our Constitution's history, purpose, and application today. Citizens should understand the Constitution so they can vote intelligently on issues which confront them daily. Responsibility must return to the people while we still have some of our freedoms intact." Read the entire article here.
Pastor Joe Morecroft, another fine Reformed preacher, contended before the election that a vote for George W. Bush was not sinful. In 2009 he wrote the following: "What is the future of all politicians who refuse to obey and enforce the Word of God in submission to Jesus Christ? Answer: God will severely punish them. What is the future of all those voters who vote for, believe, and are willingly influenced by these evil politicians so that their desires and behavior are not governed by the Word of God but by the word of man? Answer: God will punish them." (emphasis mine) Read the entire article here.
It is a sad testimony when Reformed Christian leaders lend support to secular establishment candidates and fail to support candidates whose positions are more righteous. Our God is not pragmatic. It is not the perceived ability of a candidate to win that should determine our support. We are to support the most righteous candidate and leave the results to God. If Christians had been doing this over the past several decades we would be living in a far different nation.
Now, gentle reader, consider the behavior of contemporary Christians in light of Biblical Christianity and understand the need for both national and individual forgiveness. In the "Spectator" Ron Little writes this scathing indictment of the Church of England, "It has become an institution which is more politically correct even than our government; you look to it for moral leadership and it offers none whatsoever". If you live in America, measure your behavior and the behavior of your nation against the criterion God demands. If you are honest, you will find that the integrity of weights and measures has been physically and spiritually violated.
Is tyrannical messianic government a punishment from God for continuing Christian complacency with evil secular government? Can we hope that God will assist our efforts to stem losses of freedom when we are still pregnant with un-confessed guilt?
If you are a Christian leader who has attempted to redeem our nation by referring to its Christian roots or by encouraging your followers to support its military, are you no part of the problem? Are you not a Pharisee? If you are advising your followers to prepare for the end times or for the imminent return of the Savior, are you not in need of repentance for attempting to play God? Do your followers understand that Christians have been predicting the imminent return of Christ since His death and for over two-millennium, all have been wrong?
Do you leaders and you laypersons really want to know what you can do to stop the decline in America and the remainder of the Western World?
Here is what you should do: Leaders should begin their Sunday services by opening the Bible and reading God's Law as it was given to Moses. The reading should be excerpted from Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy excluding the ceremonial law but including the civil and behavioral Law. Following the reading a time should be set aside to repent from the gross disobedience and disdain of God's Law that has been pandemic in the Western World. Then leaders and lay persons alike should vow to obey God's mandates and to seek obedience throughout His creation.
If American Christians, leaders and laypersons, would follow this Biblical precedent, God might forgive and heal our nation. If we don't, our prayers and our resistance are useless and our fall will continue.
Easter (the Paschal Festival) was celebrated on Sunday. Celebrating the resurrection of Our Lord should be a daily event but that does not preclude the sweet aroma of making Easter a more specific celebration. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with bunny rabbits, eggs, and candy. When I was a boy there were Easter eggs, Easter bunnies, and Easter egg hunts but since The Hound of Heaven apprehended me all of that has been replaced by a deep gratitude that my Savior rose from the dead and now sits at the right hand of God as King of the creation. Hallelujah! He lives!
Published originally at EtherZone.com
Al Cronkrite is a free-lance writer from Florida.
He can be reached at fmsinfla@hotmail.com
More from Al Cronkrite
Sunday, April 19, 2009
The Lesser-Magistrate Doctrine:
A Sword Against Unjust Edicts and Tyranny
By Pastor Matt Trewhella
The Covenant News ~ April 07, 2009
Many Americans seem to know that America's founders gave us three boxes through which we can resist tyranny, namely - the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box. But a lesser-known tool which the founders themselves employed is the lesser-magistrate doctrine.
Simply put, the lesser-magistrate doctrine declares that - when a magistrate, who is lower in authority than another higher authority, opposes and/or resists the unjust orders or laws of the higher authority, he is justified in doing so and his actions are morally right, proper, and legitimate.
For example, if Congress or the President makes an unjust or immoral edict, a state legislature or the governor could stand in defiance of their unjust edict and refuse to obey or implement it. They could in fact actively oppose it. Or for that matter, a city council or mayor could act in defiance or opposition of an unjust edict by a higher authority.
The lesser-magistrate doctrine became important to Christian men during the Reformation, though it had been spoken of and practiced prior to that by Christians. For example, the Magna Carta was written by a group of barons (lesser-magistrates) who had the tyrant King John of England sign it in the year 1215 at Runneymede, which is located southwest of London.
This great document which stands in defiance of tyranny and oppression by making clear that the State has limitations and that all are subject to the law – people and state officials alike - was penned by Christian men.
Calvin spoke of the lesser-magistrate doctrine in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. Amazingly, he did not appeal to Scripture in his support of it, rather he appealed to pagan historical examples. But other Reformers did give a Scriptural foundation to the doctrine.
John Knox for example, in his Appellation written to the nobles of Scotland in 1558, cites many passages to support the doctrine. Knox wrote his appellation (appeal) to the nobles because the Roman church had condemned him and burned him in effigy. He wrote to declare to the nobles, as lesser-magistrates, their responsibility in protecting the innocent and opposing those who had made unjust decrees.
Knox makes it clear that it is the duty of lesser-magistrates to resist the tyranny of chief magistrates when the chief magistrate exceeds his God-given authority or actually makes declarations which are in rebellion to the law of God.
He exhorts the nobles (lesser-magistrates) in his Appellation, "You are bound to correct and repress whatsoever you know him (the higher magistrate) to attempt expressly repugning to God's word, honor, glory, or what you shall espy him to do against his subjects great or small."
Some of the Scripture texts Knox cites to expound on the lesser-magistrate doctrine are Daniel 3; I Kings 12; II Kings 11; and Jeremiah 26:10-16; 36:9-31; 37:11- 21 & 39:7-10.
The lesser-magistrate doctrine had a huge impact upon the thinking of our founders, and upon our nation's people regarding government and law. We however live in the midst of a statist, slave-like people where such thinking has long been forgotten. The magistrates themselves know nothing of this doctrine today because the pulpits have long been silent regarding it.
If ever this nation needs to understand the lesser-magistrate doctrine, it is now. Immoral and unjust edicts are commonplace. The preborn are being murdered, and sodomy is being proliferated. The assault upon our freedom and liberties is a daily undertaking by those in high office. The attacks upon the law of God are ferocious and relentless.
In our nation today, the State has declared good to be evil and evil to be good. The lesser-magistrate has a duty before God to uphold the good regardless of the new definitions created by the State.
We must remember that all authority is delegated. No man who holds State office rules autonomously. The authority he has is delegated to him by God. Hence, all those in positions of authority stand accountable to God. This is why the practice of the church historically has been – when the State commands that which God forbids or forbids that which God commands, we have a duty to obey God rather than man. The Bible clearly teaches this principle.
The lesser-magistrate is to apply this principle to his office as magistrate. When an unjust edict is made by a higher authority, the lesser-magistrate must choose to either join the higher magistrate in his rebellion against God, or stand with God in opposition to the unjust edict.
As our nation sinks more and more into rebellion and depravity, the lesser-magistrate doctrine needs to be taught more than ever. May the Lord grant us the strength and favor to do so.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Matt Trewhella is the pastor of Mercy Seat Christian Church (http://www.mercyseat.net) and the founder of Missionaries to the Preborn (http://www.missionariestothepreborn.com). He and his wife Clara have eleven children. For a more in-depth look at the lesser-magistrate doctrine, you can go to MercySeat.net and listen to the sermon entitled The Lesser-Magistrate Doctrine. Click on ‘sermons' and then go to the government, tyranny, or historical sections.
More from Matt Trewhella
The Covenant News ~ April 07, 2009
Many Americans seem to know that America's founders gave us three boxes through which we can resist tyranny, namely - the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box. But a lesser-known tool which the founders themselves employed is the lesser-magistrate doctrine.
Simply put, the lesser-magistrate doctrine declares that - when a magistrate, who is lower in authority than another higher authority, opposes and/or resists the unjust orders or laws of the higher authority, he is justified in doing so and his actions are morally right, proper, and legitimate.
For example, if Congress or the President makes an unjust or immoral edict, a state legislature or the governor could stand in defiance of their unjust edict and refuse to obey or implement it. They could in fact actively oppose it. Or for that matter, a city council or mayor could act in defiance or opposition of an unjust edict by a higher authority.
The lesser-magistrate doctrine became important to Christian men during the Reformation, though it had been spoken of and practiced prior to that by Christians. For example, the Magna Carta was written by a group of barons (lesser-magistrates) who had the tyrant King John of England sign it in the year 1215 at Runneymede, which is located southwest of London.
This great document which stands in defiance of tyranny and oppression by making clear that the State has limitations and that all are subject to the law – people and state officials alike - was penned by Christian men.
Calvin spoke of the lesser-magistrate doctrine in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. Amazingly, he did not appeal to Scripture in his support of it, rather he appealed to pagan historical examples. But other Reformers did give a Scriptural foundation to the doctrine.
John Knox for example, in his Appellation written to the nobles of Scotland in 1558, cites many passages to support the doctrine. Knox wrote his appellation (appeal) to the nobles because the Roman church had condemned him and burned him in effigy. He wrote to declare to the nobles, as lesser-magistrates, their responsibility in protecting the innocent and opposing those who had made unjust decrees.
Knox makes it clear that it is the duty of lesser-magistrates to resist the tyranny of chief magistrates when the chief magistrate exceeds his God-given authority or actually makes declarations which are in rebellion to the law of God.
He exhorts the nobles (lesser-magistrates) in his Appellation, "You are bound to correct and repress whatsoever you know him (the higher magistrate) to attempt expressly repugning to God's word, honor, glory, or what you shall espy him to do against his subjects great or small."
Some of the Scripture texts Knox cites to expound on the lesser-magistrate doctrine are Daniel 3; I Kings 12; II Kings 11; and Jeremiah 26:10-16; 36:9-31; 37:11- 21 & 39:7-10.
The lesser-magistrate doctrine had a huge impact upon the thinking of our founders, and upon our nation's people regarding government and law. We however live in the midst of a statist, slave-like people where such thinking has long been forgotten. The magistrates themselves know nothing of this doctrine today because the pulpits have long been silent regarding it.
If ever this nation needs to understand the lesser-magistrate doctrine, it is now. Immoral and unjust edicts are commonplace. The preborn are being murdered, and sodomy is being proliferated. The assault upon our freedom and liberties is a daily undertaking by those in high office. The attacks upon the law of God are ferocious and relentless.
In our nation today, the State has declared good to be evil and evil to be good. The lesser-magistrate has a duty before God to uphold the good regardless of the new definitions created by the State.
We must remember that all authority is delegated. No man who holds State office rules autonomously. The authority he has is delegated to him by God. Hence, all those in positions of authority stand accountable to God. This is why the practice of the church historically has been – when the State commands that which God forbids or forbids that which God commands, we have a duty to obey God rather than man. The Bible clearly teaches this principle.
The lesser-magistrate is to apply this principle to his office as magistrate. When an unjust edict is made by a higher authority, the lesser-magistrate must choose to either join the higher magistrate in his rebellion against God, or stand with God in opposition to the unjust edict.
As our nation sinks more and more into rebellion and depravity, the lesser-magistrate doctrine needs to be taught more than ever. May the Lord grant us the strength and favor to do so.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Matt Trewhella is the pastor of Mercy Seat Christian Church (http://www.mercyseat.net) and the founder of Missionaries to the Preborn (http://www.missionariestothepreborn.com). He and his wife Clara have eleven children. For a more in-depth look at the lesser-magistrate doctrine, you can go to MercySeat.net and listen to the sermon entitled The Lesser-Magistrate Doctrine. Click on ‘sermons' and then go to the government, tyranny, or historical sections.
More from Matt Trewhella
The Warfare State
By Rev. Paul Michael Raymond
The Covenant News ~ April 16, 2009
Christianity is in a state of war! Rev. Chris Ortiz points this out in his recent piece in the Chalcedon Report quoting from R.J. Rushdoony.
"We are therefore in a state of war, war between heaven and humanism, war between the Almighty God and the totalitarian state, war between God and the scientific planner, predictors and controllers; war between God and all those who defy His infallibility."
While many mainline Christians hold to a "defeatist strategy" in which the church is destroyed and antichrist wins until the Lord's final return, still others repudiate such notions. Those who hold to the Historical Christian faith, where the Church is the ultimate Victorious Church, taking earthly dominion through the work of a Victorious Risen Christ, militant and triumphant, waiting for the rapture is not an option. Only diligent, consistent and faithful action will do, since the Church has been promised total victory in the confines of history.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn said it well. "…the world has…reached a major watershed in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will demand from us a spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life, where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon, as in the Modern Era."
A new "spiritual blaze" is most definitely needed. While the postmodern church has been asleep, hiding behind their pot-luck dinners and religious jargon, the enemy has sown its tares, and as a result, the tares are now beginning to take over the entire Vineyard.
Throughout history the church has always been given two options: Either She could go against the rising tide of secular humanism, or she could be ‘Egyptianized' into the pagan culture of anti-Christ. While the postmodern church should have been seeking to counter the Cultural Revolution of Pagan Restoration, She has embraced it instead. Since Christianity has been reduced to a set of feelings rather than a system of Divine Law and Revelation, victory seems hopeless. Therefore, in order to set this "spiritual blaze" into motion, there must be a return to the God of Scripture, obedience to His Law and its faithful application to all realms of the societal order.
God has given America her very own 21st century ‘Julian the Apostate', better known as Barak Obama. Ironically, this man could not have been elected without the assistance and cooperation of the Christian community, through their ignorance and complacency. In spite of reliable reports that Mr. Obama had forged intimate and unholy alliances with known terrorists, Marxists, socialists, gangsters, anti-Christian Muslims, homosexuals, and corrupt politicians, many in the community of Christ willfully ignored the validity of these accusations and supported him at the poles. On any one of these points Christians should have opted to withhold their vote, since the Law of God forbids any Christian to form such unholy alliances. Voting for such a man is an unholy compromise, since it is a vote against the cause of Christ.
Yet, Obama is not alone in his Marxist tendencies. The Democrats, and many Republicans also share in his worldview, many of whom were put into office by those in the Christian community. There is enough guilt to go around for both parties.
For a moment, let us consider what history teaches about Marxism. To support Marxism is to support the ideology of Lenin's murders, Stalin's Gulag, Mao's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot's Khumer Rouge, and every other historical case of shocking crimes against humanity. The machinery of Marxism is fueled by hateful violence, terror and repression, and ultimately ends in the annihilation of tens of thousands of people, all in the name of progress and change.
Today's Christian community is grossly ignorant of these historical events. The secular educators have whitewashed them. This ignorance should not be surprising at all. Since most adult Christians have been indoctrinated in the secularized system of education, they perpetuate the problem by insisting on educating their children in the same, God- hating government schools. This type of ignorance and apostasy is generational. With the Christian's involvement in secular primary, secondary and university education, all of which advocate Marxist ideology, whitewashing its horrors, we now have a community of Christians who are unable to think Biblically.
If the reports of Obama's Marxist passions were not enough to wake up the Christian community to the fearful danger of a ‘Julian Administration', the issues of abortion and homosexuality should have made it crystal clear. Not one professing Christian should accept such an individual as the leader of The United States of America. The community of Christendom should have rejected such a blasphemer out of hand. Yet, for the sake of party, race, the hope of change, the hype of hope, an historical precedence, or simply from a hatred of the prior administration, these so-called Christians turned out to be nothing but hypocrites and traitors to the Crown Rights of King Jesus.
The Obama administration essentially has declared a vicious war against both Christ, and all those that call themselves by His Name. Even many Christians who supported him initially are now finding themselves the target of his wrath. His goal is, and always was, the eradication of Christianity through government policies aimed at solidifying a Marxist, totalitarian, immoral secular statist order. This is evident by his actions to date. It is nothing short of fascism. In only a few short months Americans have seen a myriad of totalitarian executive orders and policy implementations, ranging from government central planning, to the centralization and government take-over of the banking industry, as well as the bailing out of the auto and insurance industries. Through a systematic program of blatant thievery (a direct violation of the 8th commandment), Obama has initiated the largest welfare policy and spending frenzy the world has ever experienced. Billions of taxpayer dollars have been promised as a "rescue plan" to industries that should be allowed to go bankrupt. He has resurrected the death tax laws and other larceny-fueled policies in order to strip, not only the present citizenry of their wealth and dignity, but the generations that follow. Incredibly many Christians still applaud Obama's plan to save the economy by spending money that he does not have, and which he must steal through taxation. In spite of all these things, so many continue to vehemently insist that he will be America's hero.
This administration's wicked passion for more government regulations and micromanaging power is frightening. Even now, there is serious discussion about regulating the utilities of every household in order to be more "frugal" in our energy consummation. According to economist Ned Schmidt, the last time the world has seen this was in Argentina, under the dictatorship of Juan Peron in the 1950's. The Peronists destroyed the Argentinean economy making its currency worthless. In an interview with The MoneyChanger, Schmidt observed, "Their gold was not confiscated. Their wealth was confiscated. First, they took it by inflation and destroyed the value of the currency. Second, they confiscated the bank accounts, converting them into government bonds. Third, they confiscated the private pension systems. The confiscation to worry about is wealth confiscation."
Obama's policies, along with the Democratic Congress, are directly out of the atheistic Communist Manifesto. If that is not sufficient to enrage the people of God (and anyone else with any sense of conscience), Obama has newly appointed an open homosexual activist, Harry Knox to head his faith-based program. While seeking to push through "hate speech" legislation, which would target the clergy, forbidding them from preaching against such things as sexual immorality, our lawmakers are tightening their death grip on what is held sacred by good and decent Americans. According to One News Now, Knox's task is to create a national network for 22 progressive state clergy coalitions across the U.S. It is obvious that Obama plans to enforce a pro-homosexual orthodoxy upon the American people, whether they like it or not. It is enough to make anyone with a moral conscience sick to his stomach. To think that Christians helped effectuate this mess is simply unimaginable. The floodgates of immorality are now open, and the Christian is "fair game" for censorship, intolerance and eradication. There is simply no doubt that the Faithful within the Christian community are headed for some difficult times.
The Community of Christendom needs a logistical plan of action, and the implementation of it through a networking of faithful, diligent, and courageous leaders who are not afraid to sacrifice their time, fortunes and "sacred honor". We need to discuss, and then actively apply Biblical solutions to these pressing issues. With all that is available to us through the medium of technology, we ought to be ashamed for our negligence, which has brought us to the predicament we are at present. It is time to awake out of our slumber and form intellectual action committees, and logistical workshops, galvanizing and equipping Christians to take the fight to the enemy.
Barak Obama entered a new world of Christian disorder and impotence during his campaign. It was a time of frustration over the myriad of legislative confusion and corruption. It was, and still is, essentially anarchistic. This was a good thing for him since anarchy is naturally weak and the people embroiled in an anarchistic culture welcome a despotic totalitarian ‘nanny state'. Obama's beast was well organized, and thus it was able to influence the ignorant, fearful and faithless – and as a result won the American presidency. However, as Toynbee observes, "But then there is the Christian Church…a factor to be reckoned with. It may have to undergo martyrdom in the future world-state, but as it compelled the Roman world-state in the end to make at any rate formal submission to Christ, it might again, by the way of martyrdom, conquer the world-state of the future."
The Obama Administration plan is doomed to fail, as is Obama himself, since he has shaken his fist at the Almighty in bold defiance. His policies will bring about anarchy in our time. Anarchistic societal orders are, by nature, weak, and easily influenced, provided there is a well-ordered organization ready to take the reigns of power. That organization is not an institution but a people, a righteous community of Christ-honoring souls who understand and know how to apply the Law of God to every facet of life. Pro Rege!
Rev. Paul Michael Raymond
Pastor of The Reformed Bible Church In Central Virginia @ Appomattox;
The New Geneva Christian Leadership Academy;
The Institute For Theonomic Reformation
Contact: pastor@hisglory.us
More from Paul Michael Raymond
The Covenant News ~ April 16, 2009
Christianity is in a state of war! Rev. Chris Ortiz points this out in his recent piece in the Chalcedon Report quoting from R.J. Rushdoony.
"We are therefore in a state of war, war between heaven and humanism, war between the Almighty God and the totalitarian state, war between God and the scientific planner, predictors and controllers; war between God and all those who defy His infallibility."
While many mainline Christians hold to a "defeatist strategy" in which the church is destroyed and antichrist wins until the Lord's final return, still others repudiate such notions. Those who hold to the Historical Christian faith, where the Church is the ultimate Victorious Church, taking earthly dominion through the work of a Victorious Risen Christ, militant and triumphant, waiting for the rapture is not an option. Only diligent, consistent and faithful action will do, since the Church has been promised total victory in the confines of history.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn said it well. "…the world has…reached a major watershed in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. It will demand from us a spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life, where our physical nature will not be cursed as in the Middle Ages, but even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon, as in the Modern Era."
A new "spiritual blaze" is most definitely needed. While the postmodern church has been asleep, hiding behind their pot-luck dinners and religious jargon, the enemy has sown its tares, and as a result, the tares are now beginning to take over the entire Vineyard.
Throughout history the church has always been given two options: Either She could go against the rising tide of secular humanism, or she could be ‘Egyptianized' into the pagan culture of anti-Christ. While the postmodern church should have been seeking to counter the Cultural Revolution of Pagan Restoration, She has embraced it instead. Since Christianity has been reduced to a set of feelings rather than a system of Divine Law and Revelation, victory seems hopeless. Therefore, in order to set this "spiritual blaze" into motion, there must be a return to the God of Scripture, obedience to His Law and its faithful application to all realms of the societal order.
God has given America her very own 21st century ‘Julian the Apostate', better known as Barak Obama. Ironically, this man could not have been elected without the assistance and cooperation of the Christian community, through their ignorance and complacency. In spite of reliable reports that Mr. Obama had forged intimate and unholy alliances with known terrorists, Marxists, socialists, gangsters, anti-Christian Muslims, homosexuals, and corrupt politicians, many in the community of Christ willfully ignored the validity of these accusations and supported him at the poles. On any one of these points Christians should have opted to withhold their vote, since the Law of God forbids any Christian to form such unholy alliances. Voting for such a man is an unholy compromise, since it is a vote against the cause of Christ.
Yet, Obama is not alone in his Marxist tendencies. The Democrats, and many Republicans also share in his worldview, many of whom were put into office by those in the Christian community. There is enough guilt to go around for both parties.
For a moment, let us consider what history teaches about Marxism. To support Marxism is to support the ideology of Lenin's murders, Stalin's Gulag, Mao's Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot's Khumer Rouge, and every other historical case of shocking crimes against humanity. The machinery of Marxism is fueled by hateful violence, terror and repression, and ultimately ends in the annihilation of tens of thousands of people, all in the name of progress and change.
Today's Christian community is grossly ignorant of these historical events. The secular educators have whitewashed them. This ignorance should not be surprising at all. Since most adult Christians have been indoctrinated in the secularized system of education, they perpetuate the problem by insisting on educating their children in the same, God- hating government schools. This type of ignorance and apostasy is generational. With the Christian's involvement in secular primary, secondary and university education, all of which advocate Marxist ideology, whitewashing its horrors, we now have a community of Christians who are unable to think Biblically.
If the reports of Obama's Marxist passions were not enough to wake up the Christian community to the fearful danger of a ‘Julian Administration', the issues of abortion and homosexuality should have made it crystal clear. Not one professing Christian should accept such an individual as the leader of The United States of America. The community of Christendom should have rejected such a blasphemer out of hand. Yet, for the sake of party, race, the hope of change, the hype of hope, an historical precedence, or simply from a hatred of the prior administration, these so-called Christians turned out to be nothing but hypocrites and traitors to the Crown Rights of King Jesus.
The Obama administration essentially has declared a vicious war against both Christ, and all those that call themselves by His Name. Even many Christians who supported him initially are now finding themselves the target of his wrath. His goal is, and always was, the eradication of Christianity through government policies aimed at solidifying a Marxist, totalitarian, immoral secular statist order. This is evident by his actions to date. It is nothing short of fascism. In only a few short months Americans have seen a myriad of totalitarian executive orders and policy implementations, ranging from government central planning, to the centralization and government take-over of the banking industry, as well as the bailing out of the auto and insurance industries. Through a systematic program of blatant thievery (a direct violation of the 8th commandment), Obama has initiated the largest welfare policy and spending frenzy the world has ever experienced. Billions of taxpayer dollars have been promised as a "rescue plan" to industries that should be allowed to go bankrupt. He has resurrected the death tax laws and other larceny-fueled policies in order to strip, not only the present citizenry of their wealth and dignity, but the generations that follow. Incredibly many Christians still applaud Obama's plan to save the economy by spending money that he does not have, and which he must steal through taxation. In spite of all these things, so many continue to vehemently insist that he will be America's hero.
This administration's wicked passion for more government regulations and micromanaging power is frightening. Even now, there is serious discussion about regulating the utilities of every household in order to be more "frugal" in our energy consummation. According to economist Ned Schmidt, the last time the world has seen this was in Argentina, under the dictatorship of Juan Peron in the 1950's. The Peronists destroyed the Argentinean economy making its currency worthless. In an interview with The MoneyChanger, Schmidt observed, "Their gold was not confiscated. Their wealth was confiscated. First, they took it by inflation and destroyed the value of the currency. Second, they confiscated the bank accounts, converting them into government bonds. Third, they confiscated the private pension systems. The confiscation to worry about is wealth confiscation."
Obama's policies, along with the Democratic Congress, are directly out of the atheistic Communist Manifesto. If that is not sufficient to enrage the people of God (and anyone else with any sense of conscience), Obama has newly appointed an open homosexual activist, Harry Knox to head his faith-based program. While seeking to push through "hate speech" legislation, which would target the clergy, forbidding them from preaching against such things as sexual immorality, our lawmakers are tightening their death grip on what is held sacred by good and decent Americans. According to One News Now, Knox's task is to create a national network for 22 progressive state clergy coalitions across the U.S. It is obvious that Obama plans to enforce a pro-homosexual orthodoxy upon the American people, whether they like it or not. It is enough to make anyone with a moral conscience sick to his stomach. To think that Christians helped effectuate this mess is simply unimaginable. The floodgates of immorality are now open, and the Christian is "fair game" for censorship, intolerance and eradication. There is simply no doubt that the Faithful within the Christian community are headed for some difficult times.
The Community of Christendom needs a logistical plan of action, and the implementation of it through a networking of faithful, diligent, and courageous leaders who are not afraid to sacrifice their time, fortunes and "sacred honor". We need to discuss, and then actively apply Biblical solutions to these pressing issues. With all that is available to us through the medium of technology, we ought to be ashamed for our negligence, which has brought us to the predicament we are at present. It is time to awake out of our slumber and form intellectual action committees, and logistical workshops, galvanizing and equipping Christians to take the fight to the enemy.
Barak Obama entered a new world of Christian disorder and impotence during his campaign. It was a time of frustration over the myriad of legislative confusion and corruption. It was, and still is, essentially anarchistic. This was a good thing for him since anarchy is naturally weak and the people embroiled in an anarchistic culture welcome a despotic totalitarian ‘nanny state'. Obama's beast was well organized, and thus it was able to influence the ignorant, fearful and faithless – and as a result won the American presidency. However, as Toynbee observes, "But then there is the Christian Church…a factor to be reckoned with. It may have to undergo martyrdom in the future world-state, but as it compelled the Roman world-state in the end to make at any rate formal submission to Christ, it might again, by the way of martyrdom, conquer the world-state of the future."
The Obama Administration plan is doomed to fail, as is Obama himself, since he has shaken his fist at the Almighty in bold defiance. His policies will bring about anarchy in our time. Anarchistic societal orders are, by nature, weak, and easily influenced, provided there is a well-ordered organization ready to take the reigns of power. That organization is not an institution but a people, a righteous community of Christ-honoring souls who understand and know how to apply the Law of God to every facet of life. Pro Rege!
Rev. Paul Michael Raymond
Pastor of The Reformed Bible Church In Central Virginia @ Appomattox;
The New Geneva Christian Leadership Academy;
The Institute For Theonomic Reformation
Contact: pastor@hisglory.us
More from Paul Michael Raymond
Monday, February 23, 2009
Pondering the Simple
Well, I've still got a lot to learn on this topic of theonomy, but thanks to an old friend who recently sent me an E-mail, I want to point out a short observation.My friend asked if I was now 100% sure about theonomy. I responded by saying that I continue to lean toward the theonomic position because of all the "simplest" reasons. The simple flow and logical conclusions of Covenant theology, the foundation of Reformed thought, always points to a theonomic perspective in my own thinking no matter how many dazzling arguments either side presents to me...so far.
For example, if you ask any Reformed Christian, be they a theonomist or a non-theonomist, "whose law do you strive to pattern your life by?", and both will answer, "God's law". So, in this respect, both the non-theonomist and the theonomist, are, …theonomists. Both agree that the standard for their lives is the will of God as is established by His law.
However, when asked the same question to both these camps about the non-Christian, the non-theonomist insists that non-Christians are not to be held accountable to the law of God. And the theonomist, in simplest terms says, "but God holds the non-Christian accountable to His law, so why wouldn't you?".
And that's where all the mental gymnastics begin.
To me it seems that the above scenario only begs another question: Who on this earth, since the beginning of time and throughout all of scripture, has had the most contempt for God's law, and who is it, on the other hand, that has had an extreme love for God's law?
The answer is obvious, and, ...simple, right?
And this begs my final question here: Who would naturally have the strongest and most obvious motive, and, be the most likely by any stretch of the imagination, to say that the unbeliever is not accountable to the law of God? The unbeliever, or the believer?
Again, the answer is obvious and simple.
It would appear to me, that it is the unbeliever who would be the non-theonomic Christian's biggest ally and most ardent supporter.
Should I bend over backwards formulating convincing arguments that both relieve the Church of any responsibility to hold unbelievers accountable to God's standards, and thus, cement the resolve and rebellion of the unbeliever?
...oh wait, I guess that was my final simple question.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Ideas Have Consequences
By Rev. Paul Michael Raymond
The Covenant News ~ February 12, 2009
Ideas Have Consequences. Every human decision, every individual action and every political, economic or social policy is generated by a predetermined idea, or presupposition. Philosophically speaking this may be called ‘presuppositional analysis’. Every living human being analyzes the world around him or her from an already existing preconceived conception. The most common label for this approach to understanding the world around us is called “a Worldview.” Everyone, without exception, has a world view based upon what they believe. While ideas in general have consequences, and therefore become the determining factor of individual and social life, theological ideas have tremendous consequences.
In the life and structure of our nation, and even in the life of our local community, theology is the foundation of law and public policy. It is now, it always was, and will forever be, the determining factor of every decision, both public and private. Every human being holds to some theological form or structure. From the atheist to the orthodox Christian, including every belief-system in between, mankind is bound by his religious presuppositions and thus acts accordingly. It is man’s religious presupposition which determines his ideas. In turn, those ideas result in his actions. This is also a basic fact in the realm of the national and political realm. Politicians and legislators will always vote according to their theological presupposition and particular worldview. All positive, man-made law and public policy is, therefore, a direct reflection of man’s theological belief. A culture’s law is the public testimony of that culture’s god. To know a nation’s laws, is to know that nation’s god.
To serve any god is to obey his laws. Since every religion holds to a god, or a variety of gods, it follows that every religion holds to the laws of its particular god or gods. In the ancient world of paganism these gods would not only dictate laws, but also the society’s governmental and political structure. These gods would also furnish all commercial codes, loyalties, sexual practices and family laws. To accept a god was to follow that god’s set of laws. If a nation were conquered by another nation the subjugated nation would be forced to accept the gods of the stronger nation. Thus, when a nation was conquered, the gods of that nation were also conquered. If there were alliances forged between two nations the gods and the laws of those god’s would be merged to form a new “cultural blend”. There has never been, nor will there ever be a separation between religion and state since every law structure is a testimony of the establishment of religion. At issue is not whether religion or God should be factored into legislative policy but rather which religion or god should be factored in as valid in the affairs of societal life and governmental structure.
The question then must be asked. “Which god does our nation actually serve?” “Which god does America seek to set upon the throne of Sovereign Authority so as to obey his laws and bow to his jurisdiction?” It was the original intent of the colonist, our true Forefathers, the Puritans, to establish a God fearing, Christ honoring society which would not only regard the Holy Scripture as true, inerrant, infallible and finally authoritative in matters of life and public policy, but to establish Him as the only legitimate, universal Sovereign in all matters of life and faith. The God of early America was the God of the Holy Scriptures, the Christian God of History. It was this God Who’s Law was supreme in the spheres of economics, politics, social action, family and individual life, science, faith, domestic and international affairs, and especially education. And it was upon the Laws of this God, and this God alone, that our nation became a nation of Godly Liberty and prosperity.
So again it must be asked, “Which god does our federal, state and local government serve?” While the overall population of America claims allegiance to some form of Christianity, and while the majority of this group claims some affiliation with a local church, it is the application of Biblical jurisprudence which is rarely sought in matters of public policy. Christian orthodoxy as well as Christian ethics is now being overtly, even violently suppressed in the realm of society, and a modernistic, postmodernism is replacing it. It is time to understand why, and to embark upon the means to remedy this malady if America is to be assured of God’s blessing and her freedom from tyranny.
Throughout every age, the church had to confront its culture. Any and all tensions brought by the culture, when a departure from orthodoxy evidenced itself, had to be swiftly and Biblically addressed. The church could not ignore its culture, for to do so, would mean its certain doom to Ecclesiastic irrelevancy. Moreover, the church had been called by God to co-exist with the state in matters of sovereignty. It was not to rule over the state, neither was the sate to rule over the church, but they were to rule together with various spheres of jurisdiction that would not conflict, but rather harmonize with one another. This sphere authority jurisdiction is what is actually meant by the idea of “separation of church and state”. Historically, the church either advanced the cause of righteousness and equity in the Name of the Crown Right of the Lord Christ, or it succumbed to the cultural shift, only adding in the culture’s demise and disintegration. What America must understand is that once the church either apostasies from the Truth of God’s Word, or retreats from her juridical role of theological and ethical oversight; the culture begins its swift decay.
According to G. Edward Veith, “Every age has had its eager-to-please liberal theologians who have tried to re-interpret Christianity according to the latest intellectual and cultural fashion. Enlightenment liberals had their rational religion and the higher criticism of the Bible; romantic liberals had their warm feelings; existentialist liberals had their crises of meaning and leaps of faith; there is now a postmodern liberalism.”
And yet throughout every age, historic Christianity, (the Christianity we now call Protestantism, Calvinism and Puritanism), countered their erring culture by clearly and boldly proclaiming the Righteous Truth of God’s absolute Law and Gospel to society’s inadequacies and rebellion.
It is time for every Christian layman and every church leader to Biblically, and honestly analyze the day in which they live; firstly, by calling the liberal church into account; secondly, by Biblically assessing the cultural data; and finally by refusing to accept this culture uncritically. To accept an anti-Biblical culture, and the policies and practices of its elected leaders without critique, is to fall headlong into . . .
Rev. Paul Michael Raymond
Pastor of http://www.reformedbiblechurch.com/;
The New Geneva Christian Leadership Academy;
The Institute For Theonomic Reformation
Contact: pastor@hisglory.us
The Covenant News ~ February 12, 2009
Ideas Have Consequences. Every human decision, every individual action and every political, economic or social policy is generated by a predetermined idea, or presupposition. Philosophically speaking this may be called ‘presuppositional analysis’. Every living human being analyzes the world around him or her from an already existing preconceived conception. The most common label for this approach to understanding the world around us is called “a Worldview.” Everyone, without exception, has a world view based upon what they believe. While ideas in general have consequences, and therefore become the determining factor of individual and social life, theological ideas have tremendous consequences.In the life and structure of our nation, and even in the life of our local community, theology is the foundation of law and public policy. It is now, it always was, and will forever be, the determining factor of every decision, both public and private. Every human being holds to some theological form or structure. From the atheist to the orthodox Christian, including every belief-system in between, mankind is bound by his religious presuppositions and thus acts accordingly. It is man’s religious presupposition which determines his ideas. In turn, those ideas result in his actions. This is also a basic fact in the realm of the national and political realm. Politicians and legislators will always vote according to their theological presupposition and particular worldview. All positive, man-made law and public policy is, therefore, a direct reflection of man’s theological belief. A culture’s law is the public testimony of that culture’s god. To know a nation’s laws, is to know that nation’s god.
To serve any god is to obey his laws. Since every religion holds to a god, or a variety of gods, it follows that every religion holds to the laws of its particular god or gods. In the ancient world of paganism these gods would not only dictate laws, but also the society’s governmental and political structure. These gods would also furnish all commercial codes, loyalties, sexual practices and family laws. To accept a god was to follow that god’s set of laws. If a nation were conquered by another nation the subjugated nation would be forced to accept the gods of the stronger nation. Thus, when a nation was conquered, the gods of that nation were also conquered. If there were alliances forged between two nations the gods and the laws of those god’s would be merged to form a new “cultural blend”. There has never been, nor will there ever be a separation between religion and state since every law structure is a testimony of the establishment of religion. At issue is not whether religion or God should be factored into legislative policy but rather which religion or god should be factored in as valid in the affairs of societal life and governmental structure.
The question then must be asked. “Which god does our nation actually serve?” “Which god does America seek to set upon the throne of Sovereign Authority so as to obey his laws and bow to his jurisdiction?” It was the original intent of the colonist, our true Forefathers, the Puritans, to establish a God fearing, Christ honoring society which would not only regard the Holy Scripture as true, inerrant, infallible and finally authoritative in matters of life and public policy, but to establish Him as the only legitimate, universal Sovereign in all matters of life and faith. The God of early America was the God of the Holy Scriptures, the Christian God of History. It was this God Who’s Law was supreme in the spheres of economics, politics, social action, family and individual life, science, faith, domestic and international affairs, and especially education. And it was upon the Laws of this God, and this God alone, that our nation became a nation of Godly Liberty and prosperity.So again it must be asked, “Which god does our federal, state and local government serve?” While the overall population of America claims allegiance to some form of Christianity, and while the majority of this group claims some affiliation with a local church, it is the application of Biblical jurisprudence which is rarely sought in matters of public policy. Christian orthodoxy as well as Christian ethics is now being overtly, even violently suppressed in the realm of society, and a modernistic, postmodernism is replacing it. It is time to understand why, and to embark upon the means to remedy this malady if America is to be assured of God’s blessing and her freedom from tyranny.
Throughout every age, the church had to confront its culture. Any and all tensions brought by the culture, when a departure from orthodoxy evidenced itself, had to be swiftly and Biblically addressed. The church could not ignore its culture, for to do so, would mean its certain doom to Ecclesiastic irrelevancy. Moreover, the church had been called by God to co-exist with the state in matters of sovereignty. It was not to rule over the state, neither was the sate to rule over the church, but they were to rule together with various spheres of jurisdiction that would not conflict, but rather harmonize with one another. This sphere authority jurisdiction is what is actually meant by the idea of “separation of church and state”. Historically, the church either advanced the cause of righteousness and equity in the Name of the Crown Right of the Lord Christ, or it succumbed to the cultural shift, only adding in the culture’s demise and disintegration. What America must understand is that once the church either apostasies from the Truth of God’s Word, or retreats from her juridical role of theological and ethical oversight; the culture begins its swift decay.
According to G. Edward Veith, “Every age has had its eager-to-please liberal theologians who have tried to re-interpret Christianity according to the latest intellectual and cultural fashion. Enlightenment liberals had their rational religion and the higher criticism of the Bible; romantic liberals had their warm feelings; existentialist liberals had their crises of meaning and leaps of faith; there is now a postmodern liberalism.”
And yet throughout every age, historic Christianity, (the Christianity we now call Protestantism, Calvinism and Puritanism), countered their erring culture by clearly and boldly proclaiming the Righteous Truth of God’s absolute Law and Gospel to society’s inadequacies and rebellion.
It is time for every Christian layman and every church leader to Biblically, and honestly analyze the day in which they live; firstly, by calling the liberal church into account; secondly, by Biblically assessing the cultural data; and finally by refusing to accept this culture uncritically. To accept an anti-Biblical culture, and the policies and practices of its elected leaders without critique, is to fall headlong into . . . - syncretism,
- unfaithfulness and,
- perdition.
Rev. Paul Michael Raymond
Pastor of http://www.reformedbiblechurch.com/;
The New Geneva Christian Leadership Academy;
The Institute For Theonomic Reformation
Contact: pastor@hisglory.us
Commentary Index Back to The Covenant News
Covenant News Pro-Life News Freedom of Speech Politics Aboms.com Court News Report
Monday, February 16, 2009
Let's Thank Our Lucky Stars, Shall We?
Yes, I am re-posting from my other blog again...and my own article too! I am thinking that I don't like my other blog that much any more. I like this one. This blog just seems a lot simpler and less gaudy. I think that is even suggestive in the name of the template I'm using here, "Minima". Anyway, I was re-reading Gary North's article on Calvin, (previous article posted), and was reminded that I too have recently written on the subject of random history. I was reminded because Gary North's article has a section called, "Ethically Random History: A Non-Calvinist Theology". So once again I'm thinking, "Wow, I think I'm on the right track". . . You think? Well, who ever you are, don't take my word for it, you need to compare what I say, what Gary North says, and what John Calvin says, or what anybody else says for that matter, with the word of God. Sure it's a lot of work, but it is "Godly" work. That makes it a pleasure. So here is the re-post. Comments are welcome and desired.There are Only Two Views of History
I just read a piece by Gary North titled, "WAS CALVIN A THEONOMIST?". Since I call myself a theonomist, (though not as defined by most Reformed leadership these days), I found this title intriguing as I have always wanted Calvin's help on this. After all, I have been repeatedly 'corrected' by well meaning non-theonomists (antinomians), for a number of years now, and they like to try and correct me by quoting Calvin. Considering the prolific volume of Calvin's works, I've never had the energy or the sense that I had enough time, to research Calvin in any depth to make my own conclusions about Calvin and the theonomist position, (pronomians).
So a special thanks to the Castlemans, both 'He' and 'She' Castleman, my lovely daughter and her tenacious husband, for coming across this article and sharing it with me. It is kind of like a breath of fresh air or drink of cool water in this desert of lawlessness that the "church" has forced us all to endure for far too long now.
Anyway, upon reading this article, although it does not necessarily talk about "conspiracy", it sure made me think about it and the ridiculous idea that any history at all could be possible without it. So, some of what I will comment on here is a direct result of Calvin's theonomic expression, which you could read for yourself. I went back into time and posted it myself right here. The rest of this writing is my own analysis of men conspirators in conjunction with the greatest conspirator; God Himself.
This term conspiracy has gotten a very absurd and bad rap, as it is just a word, and a good one too. It's sole use is simply to define what people are doing when they agree to perform together, and usually means performing something illegal, wrongful, or subversive, and is therefore secretive. After all, how will they perform what they want if they are stopped by those who know what they're up to? What they are doing, is "conspiring". What is so 'kooky' about that? People have done this ever since the fall. God's word makes it clear that conspiracies exist "in" history, but does it make it clear that conspiracies "make" history? I am not going to attempt to take this word apart in detail here, but if you're interested, there is a very good article for that here, by Richard Wall.
So usually, conspiracy denotes something evil, but I think this word is appropriately used when people agree to perform something good as well. In that sense, the Church has historically been a group of people who have been conspiring for centuries to perform the will of God as defined in the word of God. The big difference, and the 'key' difference, between good conspirators and evil conspirators, is that the evil conspiracists, in order to achieve their goals, must keep their plans secret, at least until they have accomplished the majority of what they've set out to do. John 3:19 I say "the majority", because, if their goal was to obtain unlawful power, and they had achieved most of their goal without anyone knowing, by the time their goals were almost completed they probably would have enough of that power by then to be strong enough to resist any attempts to stop them. They are then no longer quite so concerned about any light shining in their dark hiding places, or under their rock.
So as a side note, this should point out the urgency of exposing evil conspiracies as soon as possible. Like a cancer, if they are not stopped quickly, the larger they get and the more difficult and destructive they become. Let this also be of relevance to those of you who seek to love your neighbor. Exposing evil conspiracies is no different than a good radiologist exposing a patient's disease in time to save that patient's life. The unprofessional doctor would note all the symptoms of his patient's disease, and yet take no steps to expose the cause. Likewise, the unloving neighbor will watch the demoralization and destruction of his society and culture, which is full of neighbors, and will not care enough to expose what is at the root of it all. The unloving "Christian" neighbor simply shrugs his shoulders and says, "We KNOW what the root is. It's sin! My neighbors need Jesus!" That's like the bad doctor shrugging his shoulders while watching his dying patient, and then says, "I KNOW what's wrong with you. You're sick! You need a doctor!" Both somehow think they've made some sort of "helpful" diagnosis and have solved the patient's problem. They are self-deceived, because in reality, they have done nothing at all to love their neighbor, or, help their patient. They have delusionally relieved themselves of any responsibility to anyone else in their respective situations.
All right, what in the world does any of this have to do with Calvin and theonomy? Well the main point of that article was to prove that Calvin was indeed, at least in terms of Social Ethics, a theonomist. My attempt here is to say that I've noticed Calvin's arguments also make a very good case for history as conspiracy. Although Calvin makes a case for 3 views of history, I am sticking to what I can understand, and I think we can condense that down to only 2 views. History is either random events, happenstance in occurrence with no rhyme, reason, or order, at least as our finite minds could comprehend, or, it is the unfolding of very carefully conceived plans designed to have eternal consequences, or at least, consequences which extend to the end of time. (However, you Christians know that consequences in time extend beyond the grave, and are therefore, eternal.) Thus, you either believe history to be random, or conspiratorial. Some may try to hold both positions simultaneously, but I hope to show here that these positions effectively cancel each other out and makes that idea untenable. Calvin makes a distinction for a third view; that of Deism, but I have, perhaps erroneously, combined Deism with the conspiratorial view. Deists might not agree that this is their position, so that is where Calvin may have put them in a category all their own.
My first observation, even without the help of Calvin, is to note the contradiction of history being random, with the providence of God. If you are a Christian, and especially if you are a Reformed Christian, it should be obvious to you that a "random" universe and its history, is in direct opposition to God's providence, and thus, His sovereignty.
To say that history is random, should, to the Christian, be a statement based on "superstition", and thus, idolatrousness. "What has caused this? Nothing. Just dumb luck." A random history is either an unlucky history or a lucky history. Nothing is more unregenerate than that. Even if you were a Deist, and wanted to claim that God in His providence simply wound up the universe like a mechanical top and let it go to the whims and mercy of "nature", you could not call the resulting history from that, as being "random", or "luck". Every move of that top is determined by the laws of that nature and thus the infallible mind of that nature's God. Even then we see no room for randomness or luckiness.
I will always remember a loving rebuke from one of my other lovely daughters, Susan, when a few months ago as she was getting ready to drive somewhere, I said, "Don't get in any accidents!" She smiled real big and quickly responded, "There ARE no accidents!" Wow! From the mouth of babes. I said, "Oh yeah! Of course! Thank you! Drive carefully please."
So, if there are no accidents, then what are there? There are conspiracies damn it! Excuse my O.Fr. (Old French). What else could they be? Every effect has a cause from either the mind of man, or from the mind of God. This also points out the fact that there are conspiracies within conspiracies that are within conspiracies ad infinitum. All of the conspiracies of men are within the workings of a larger and more purposeful conspiracy of God; Genesis 50:20. They are also within the conspiratorial workings of other men who are at a better vantage point then are they. These positions that people exist in that give them differing vantage points could better be described as "compartmentalism". God's position and vantage point is the ultimate position for observing how things really are, and so God is the only "person" in existence who has the without-a-question-true, view of history, and therefore, is the only one who is NOT compartmentalized. Everyone else; compartmentalized.
A fair analogy of compartmentalism would be the way an average business would operate. The field man, or "worker" on the job somewhere, has his training and plan, (conspiracy), about how to do his job. He has a limited understanding about how he fits in to the plans and goals, (conspiracies), of his immediate supervisor(s). His understanding is limited by his direct relationship to his supervisor, but not so much so about his supervisor's relationship to upper management or the owner or CEO above that. All are involved in the same conspiracy, but all have a different understanding of it, and all have a limited understanding of it to one degree or another due to their compartmentalization. This is proven over and over again when CEOs conspire to get cheaper labor, and convince the hired labor to train their replacements! How ironic is that? The compartmentalized laborer thinks that if he "does a good job" by training who he is instructed to train the best to his ability, he will be rewarded for his effort. But his lack of understanding has only caused him to participate in a conspiracy to eliminate his own job! And of course, the upper-level compartments kept this little piece of the puzzle "SECRET" from their victim so that he would not confound their conspiracy in any way. So, this worker could probably paraphrase Joseph in Genesis 50:20 and say, "You conspired evil against me, but I was conspiring for good in order to bring about a different result than this, damn it!" Sorry, there goes my O. Fr. again, but I'm sure that guy must be p.o.'d.
This kind of history resulting from conspiracy is not only probable or theoretical, but it is the proven very nature of history. It is the only viable Christian position for anything that has ever happened in the history of the world, is going on now, or will continue to go on until the end of the age.
All men conspire to change the course of history to one degree or another, and are involved in many conspiracies throughout their lives, some knowingly, and some unknowingly. And why wouldn't we? Even unregenerate men bear the image of God. They too will bear His image with respect to shaping history, but they do it without any consideration of what God has in mind for His own conspiracy. And what about the Church, or regenerate men? Are we not supposed to conform to God's image, and everything He is conspiring to accomplish? Aren't we in some sense, coconspirators with God?
And, to make things even more conspiratorial, what about other entities and principalities that influence and conspire the earth's history? There are more "compartments" that contain a position of view and play a part in this grand conspiracy other than just man and God. Yes, the angels, Psalm 91:11, Matthew 4:11, and demons, 1 Peter 5:8, Revelation 12:7, are also compartmentalized participators in shaping history. Depending on the translation, angels are referred to from 294 to 305 times in the Bible. Not sure how many times Satan and demons are referred to, but we know it's a lot. But the important thing to note here is, that these beings are always involved in one conspiracy or another. In Job's case, Satan conspired with God in a wager. Jesus was tempted by Satan in the wilderness during a Satanic conspiracy to thwart the plans of God in something no less than God's own conspiracy of redemption! If Satan would try that with the very Son of God, what else on earth do you think he's been up to over the millennia? 1 John 5:19. He's got a lot of help too.
We see all these Biblical celestial battles of conspiracy taking place all around us all through history, so why would we be surprised to find out that human beings have been participating in the same battles? And, with the help of the angelic coconspirators with God, for those that love God and are called according to His purpose, and likewise, evil men receive their 'help' from demons conspiring with Satan. This is a no-brainer if you ask me. Conspiracy "theory" is no longer an accepted term in my glossary of terms that are unrelated to anything that smells like an oxymoron. No matter what angle you look at it, conspiracy is the force of history…it IS history.
The problem with political or governmental conspiracies, or any conspiracy with an evil agenda, is that they cannot be proven unless somebody involved breaks rank and offers themselves as a witness to the conspiracy. Otherwise, any "proof" will be strictly circumstantial. Often times, especially in our day, this circumstantial evidence can be overwhelming and irrefutable. For instance, Constitutional law allows for circumstantial evidence to be proof, if in fact, it is known that the only way something could possibly have taken place, (effect), is if there could have been only one possible cause. If there is more than one possible cause that could make this effect during those circumstances, then the circumstantial evidence would have doubt cast upon it. A law dictionary I just looked at specifically says, "Effects are known by their causes, but only when the effects can arise sole from the causes to which they are attributed. When several causes may have produced one and the same effect, it is, therefore, unreasonable to attribute it to any particular one of such causes."
This is how the domonization of "Conspiracy Theories" has taken root. First, a misconception of the nature of history itself, and second, a total disregard for the validity of circumstantial evidence. The first should be obvious to at least an honest Christian, and the second only needs a basic understanding of acceptable circumstantial evidence.
If I've convinced you in any way whatsoever, look out! Because now, you're going to see a "demon under every bush" so to speak. Don't worry though, because you will then be immune to propaganda most of the time. After all, isn't that what our Lord wants from us? To seek the truth and to reject lies? Well, that's what we should be doing any way. We are salt and light. We have the truth and we expose the darkness. It's getting much darker these days my friend. What does that tell you about those who are called to illuminate the darkness?
The Greatest Depression in History
Download MP3
2 Cor 10:4-6
We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Was Calvin a Theonomist?
by Gary North
This essay appears as my "Publisher's Preface" to John Calvin, The Covenant Enforced, edited by James B. Jordan (ICE, 1990). I had several goals in publishing this collection of John Calvin's sermons on Deuteronomy. The first was to provide primary source evidence to answer the question: "Was Calvin a theonomist?" These sermons reveal clearly that the answer is yes. Second, I am interested in Calvin's social theory. This question interests me both as an historian and a social theorist. Was there something unique about Calvin's social theory that separated him both from the medieval theorists who preceded him and the Lutherans who were his contemporaries? Third, and less relevant to the broader social and historical issues, I wanted an answer to the question: Is theology as taught in contemporary Calvinist seminaries consistently covenantal and Calvinistic, or has it drifted off into other paths? I say less relevant because contemporary Calvinism is today a minor institutional eddy in the broad stream of evangelicalism, a movement identifiable by the shrunken condition of its seminaries and also of the denominations that still profess and enforce the historic Reformed creeds.
I note the title of the book, The Covenant Enforced. Where is the covenant enforced — the covenant preached by John Calvin? The answer is clear: almost nowhere. The systematic and self-conscious unwillingness of Calvinists to both preach and institutionally enforce covenant theology, beginning in the 1660's1 and escalating ever since,2 is at the heart of the spiritual crisis of the West.
Calvin and Theonomy
Because Calvin wrote the single most effective theological handbook in the history of the church, Institutes of the Christian Religion, readers have tended to ignore the enormous compendium of writings that constitute his life's work. The 22 volumes of Bible commentaries published by Baker Book House only skim the surface of his total output. Most of his writings have yet to be translated from the Latin. His 200 + sermons on Deuteronomy appeared in English in the late sixteenth century and were promptly forgotten.3 Yet it is here, in his sermons on Deuteronomy, that we find the heart of Calvin's covenant theology. It is in Deuteronomy that God's covenant is presented most comprehensively.4
What Is Theonomy?
The question, "Was Calvin a theonomist?", obviously demands a definition of theonomy. Theonomy, as Greg Bahnsen uses the term.5 is a view of the Bible that argues for the continuing validity of God's revealed law in every area of life. Bahnsen argues that unless a specific Old Testament law has been abrogated by the New Testament, either by specific revelation or because of an application of a New Testament principle, its authority is still morally and/ or judicially binding. "The methodological point, then, is that we presume our obligation to obey any Old Testament commandment unless the New Testament indicates otherwise. We must assume continuity with the Old Testament rather than discontinuity. This is not to say that there are no changes from Old to New Testament. Indeed, there are — important ones. However, the word of God must be the standard which defines precisely what those changes are for us; we cannot take it upon ourselves to assume such changes or read them into the New Testament."6
This position has produced a certain amount of exegetical bobbing and weaving. "There are," Bahnsen writes, "cultural discontinuities between biblical moral instruction and our modern society. This fact does not imply that the ethical teaching of Scripture is invalidated for us; it simply calls for hermeneutical sensitivity."7 "Hermeneutical sensitivity" allows a degree of latitude — how much, no one can say in advance. But every intellectual and judicial system eventually adopts a similar qualification; the human mind is neither digital8 nor unfallen. Nevertheless, theonomists are at a comparative disadvantage in terms of creating a systematic apologetic system, since they assert that the Bible is relevant for every area in life, not just in great shining platitudes, but specifically. This makes for a complex, detailed, and difficult apologetic.9
In general, however, the precision of the definition of theonomy supplied by Bahnsen has led to an extensive output of theological works that apply it to a whole host of biblical-theological issues, including social theory.
John Calvin, Theonomist
I have already given my one-word answer: yes. Now I need to prove it. The following extracts from sermons reprinted in The Covenant Enforced make his position plain. I begin with his view favoring the continuing validity of the Decalogue (ten commandments), the words of the law. He cites Deuteronomy 27:26: "Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them. And all the people shall say, Amen." His comments do not indicate any doubt on his part regarding the comprehensive claims of God's law:
For this cause, therefore, it is said, "Cursed be he who does not confirm the words of this law." He is not here speaking of one or two commandments, or of some part of them, but of the whole law, every part and parcel thereof without exception. And indeed, we ought to think of how St. James says that He who has forbidden to steal, has also forbidden to commit adultery; and that He who has forbidden to murder has also forbidden false witnessing. We must not rend God's justice in pieces. In whatever way we offend, we violate God's law, and despise His majesty. But He will be acknowledged in His law throughout in all points, and not just in part, as I have told you before. [Covenant Enforced, p. 64.]
But here is a dreadful sentence, and such a one as ought to make the hairs stand stiff on our heads: "Cursed shall he be who does not perform all the words of this law." Who says this? It is God Himself. It is, then, a definitive sentence, such as admits of no appeal beyond itself. God will have all men confess it so, yea He will have every man confess it with his own mouth. What, then, remains for us to do? Where is the hope of salvation? From this we see that if we had only the ten commandments of the law we should be utterly undone and perish. It is necessary for us to have recourse to His mercy, which outstrips His justice, as St. James says (Jas. 2:13). God's goodness, then, must be manifest towards us to deliver us from the damnation all of us would experience if this curse should stand and there be no grace to overcome it. [Covenant Enforced, pp. 66-67.]
Did he take the details of the case laws seriously? Yes. He went to Leviticus 18 and 20 in search of the definition of incest. He writes that "these degrees of consanguinity should be observed. For without such order, what would become of things? How would we differ from bulls and asses?"10
This comparison of a brute beast and a man without God's law is a familiar one in Calvin's ethical theology:
How are we made the people of God except by being His Church, and by having the use of His sacraments, and that is all the same as if He appeared among us? For we may not expect that God should come down from heaven in His own person, or send His angels to us. Rather, the true mark whereby He will be known to be present among us is the preaching of His Word purely unto us, for there can be no doubt but that then He bears rule in our midst. So then, let this thing profit us, that we know that our Lord receives us to Himself and will have us to be of His own household. Seeing it so, let us take pains to obey Him in all our life, and to keep His commandments. Let us not wander like brute beasts as the wretched unbelievers do, because they never knew what it was to be of the house of God. [Covenant Enforced, p. 33.]
Calvin believed in the primacy of obedience. This is why his theology is intensely ethical.
And we can see that the promise is not empty when we continue reading, "Keep the commandment I set before you this day," says Moses, "that You swerve neither to the left nor to the right to go after strange gods and to worship them." We see how God continually reminds us of obedience to His Word so that we should serve Him, though not in that hypocrisy to which we are so much inclined. Let us remember therefore this lesson: That to worship our God sincerely we must evermore begin by hearkening to His voice, and by giving ear to what He commands us. For if every man goes after his own way, we shall wander. We may well run, but we shall never be a whir nearer to the right way, but rather farther away from it. [Covenant Enforced, p. 128.]
Biblical law served the basis of Calvin's ethics. This is why he should be classified as a sixteenth-century theonomist. But it was more than simply his commitment to the requirement of obeying God's law that made him a theonomist. He also held a social theory that was essentially theonomist in approach.
Calvin's Social Theory
What is the nature of social change? This is the question of modern social theory.11 Humanist scholars usually focus on the perceived dualism between mind and matter: ideas vs. history as the primary basis of social development. The Bible, in contrast, focuses on the question of ethics: covenant-keeping vs. covenant-breaking. This raises the key issue in biblical social theory: God's sanctions in history.12
Calvin's view of history was straightforward: God brings His sanctions — blessings and curses — in the midst of history in terms of each man's obedience to His law. Each man reaps what he sows in history. Calvin did not qualify this statement in any significant way, and he repeated it over and over:
For if any one of us should reckon up what he has suffered all the days of his life, and then examine the state of David or Abraham, doubtless he will find himself to be in a better state than were those holy fathers. For they, as the apostle says (Heb. 11:13), only saw things afar off, things that are right before our eyes. God promised to be their Savior; He had chosen them to be, as it were, of His household; but
meanwhile where was He who was to be their promised Redeemer? Where was the doctrine that is made so clear to us in the gospel concerning the resurrection? They knew the same afar off, but now it is declared to us in the gospel in such a way that we may indeed say, as our Lord Jesus Christ gives us to understand, that blessed are the ears that hear the things that are told us concerning Him, and the eyes that see the things that we see, for the holy kings and prophets longed for the same, and could not obtain it (Matt. 13:16f.).
We therefore have a much more excellent estate than they had who lived under the law. This is the difference of which I speak, which needed to be supplied by God because of the imperfection [lack of completion] that was in the doctrine concerning the revelation of the heavenly life, which the fathers only knew by outward tokens although they were dear to God. Now that Jesus Christ has come down to us, and has shown us how we ought to follow Him by suffering many afflictions, as it is told us (Matt. 16:24; Rom. 8:29), in bearing poverty and reproach and all such like things, and to be short, that our life must be as it were a kind of death; since we know all this, and the infinite power of God is uttered in His raising up Jesus Christ from death and in His exalting Him to glory of heaven, should we not take from this a good courage? Should not this sweeten all the afflictions we can suffer? Do we not have cause to rejoice in the midst of our sorrows?
Let us note, then, that if the patriarchs were more blessed by God than we are, concerning this present life, we ought not to wonder at it at all. For the reason for it is apparent. But no matter how things go, yet is this saying of St. Paul always verified: that the fear of God holds promise not only for the life to come, but also for this present life (1 Tim. 4:8). Let us therefore walk in obedience to God, and then we can be assured that He will show Himself a Father to us, yea even in the maintenance of our bodies, at least as far as concerns keeping and preserving us in peace, delivering us from all evils, and providing for us our necessities. God, I say, will make us to feel His blessing in all these things, so that we walk in His fear. [Covenant Enforced, pp. 100-1.]
Blessings in the Small Things
Calvin was not speaking merely of the great sweeping movements in mankind's history. He was speaking of the small things of each man's life. There is orderliness in a man's life because there is a coherent, predictable relationship between obedience and blessings. God does not limit His covenantal blessings to the afterlife:
Let us therefore be persuaded that our lives will always be accursed unless we return to this point whereto Moses leads us, namely to hearken to the voice of our God, to be thereby moved and continually confirmed in the fact that He cares for our salvation, and not only for the eternal salvation of our persons, but also for the maintenance of our state in this earthly life, to make us taste at present of His love and goodness in such a way as may content and suffice us, waiting till we may have our fill thereof and behold face to face that which we are now constrained to look upon as it were through a glass and in the dark (1 Cor. 13:12). That is one more thing we ought to remember from this text, where it is said that we will be blessed if we hearken to the voice of the Lord our God.
This is to be applied to all parts of our lives. For example, when a man wishes to prosper in his own person — that is, he desires to employ himself in the service of God and to obtain some grace so that he may not be unprofitable in this life but that God may be honored by him — let him think thus to himself: "Lord, I am Yours. Dispose of me as You will. Here I am, ready to obey You." This is the place at which we must begin if we desire God to guide us and create in us the disposition to serve Him, so that His blessings may appear and lighten upon us and upon our persons.
So it is concerning every man's household. [Covenant Enforced, p. 107.]
The same thing is true concerning cattle, food, and all other things. For we see here [in this text] that nothing is forgotten. And God meant to make us to perceive His infinite goodness, in that He declares that He will deal with our smallest affairs, which one of our own equals would be loath to meddle with. If we have a friend, we should be very loath, indeed, and ashamed to use his help unless it were in a matter of great importance. But we see here that God goes into our sheepfolds and into the stalls of our cattle and oxen, and He goes into our fields, and He cares for all other things as well. Since we see Him abase himself thus far, shouldn't we be ravished to honor Him and to magnify His bounty? [Covenant Enforced, p. 108.]
A Covenantal Promise
God promised the Israelites that they would be blessed, so as to confirm His covenant with their fathers. "But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day" (Deut. 8:18). Calvin echoed this view: God's blessings in history point to His faithfulness in eternity:
Let us conclude, then, that when God says that He shall bless us in the fruit of the earth, and that He shall bless us in the fruit of our cattle, it is a most certain argument that He will not forget the principal thing. These things are lowly and of little count, and many times men despise them, and yet we see that God takes care of them notwithstanding. Since this is so, will He forget our souls, which He has created after His own image, which also He has so dearly redeemed with the sacred blood of his Son? Surely not. First of all, therefore, let us acknowledge God's favor toward us, in abasing Himself so far as to direct and govern everything that belongs to our lives and sustenance. And from there let us rise up higher, and understand that He will not fail us in the things that surpass this present life, but rather that in the chief things that belong to our life, indeed even in this world, God will stretch forth His hand to furnish us always with all things that are needful. [Covenant Enforced, pp. 108-9.]
A Visible Testimony to Our Enemies
These blessings of God will be visible to pagan enemies of God. He cites Deuteronomy 28.' 10: "And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the LOAD; and they shall be afraid of thee." The point here is: these blessings are not merely internal, "spiritual-only" blessings; they are public blessings. They are blessings that differentiate covenant-keepers from covenant-breakers, not merely in eternity, but in time and on earth.
Now He says moreover, that other people shall see that we are called by God's name, and they shall fear us (v. 10). It is not enough that God promises to make us feel that we are safe in His keeping; but He also says that even the pagans, our mortal enemies and the despisers of His majesty, shall be made to know the same. Now it is certain that the infidels do not know the arm of God in such a way as it ought to be known to us. They come far short of it. For though they see, they do not see. How then can it be possible for them to perceive that God has blessed us, that we live by His favor, and that we are nourished through His provision? After all, they are blockish, and do not recognize that anything comes to them from the hand of God ....
They will not know it through any persuasion of mind or through any such true understanding of it as we ought to have. But Moses says that they shall have it proved to their faces; as for example, we see the wicked grind their teeth when they behold the faithful prospering, and when they see that God upholds and keeps them. And how does this come about? Truly they will be astonished at it, and they will not be able to think otherwise but that God does indeed favor their adversaries — not that they take it to heart or have a proper attitude about it, but in that they are at least confounded in their own selves. [Covenant Enforced, pp. 117-18.]
Can Such Things Really Be?
Men who receive the blessings of God, even faithful men, will have doubts about the relationship between obedience and historical blessings. Calvin recognized this fact of life and warned against it. Unfortunately, his warning has not been taken seriously by those who profess to be his disciples today.
Now Moses repeats again what he had said concerning the fruit of the womb, of cattle, and of the earth. Surely it would have been sufficient to have promised once that all bodily blessings come from God. But on the one hand we see the mistrust that is in men, how when God speaks to them, they ceaselessly argue and reply, saying, "Yes, but can I be sure of it?" And therefore to give us better resolve, God confirms the matter He had previously spoken of. Again we see our unthankfulness to be such that we attribute things to "Fortune" or to our own skill and craft, which are actually done for us by God. Therefore He calls us to Himself, and shows that it is He who does it.
And on the other hand, He would have us to understand that if we intend to prosper in all points, we must hearken to Him and obey Him. For all men, yea even the most wicked in the world, desire to have issues of their own bodies, increase of cattle, and great revenues. But what? In the meanwhile we despise God, the author of all goodness, and seem as though we labored purposefully to thrust His hand far from us, which is as much as if I should ask a man for an alm and then reach up and box his ear, or as if he should come to my aid and I should spit in his face; even so deal we with our God. [Covenant Enforced, p. 119.]
Negative Sanctions, Too
There are not merely positive sanctions in life, but also negative sanctions. We can expect to receive these if we do not honor God as the sanctioning Sovereign in history:
It is certain that God will threaten often before He finally comes to execute judgment. Let us therefore consider His long patience in tarrying for us (Ps. 86:15; Rom. 2:4). For if we abuse the same, it will result in nothing other than a heaping up and doubling of God's wrath toward us, so much so that it would have been better for us if He had rooted us out the first day than to have borne with us so long. Let scoffers say that respite is worth gold. There is no respite that we would not redeem with a hundred deaths, were it but possible, when we have been so stubborn against our God and so disobedient to His Word that we have made into a laughing matter His giving us some token of His anger.
Let us therefore consider that as long as God is sparing us He is giving us leisure to return to Him, and that if our enemies have left us alone, it shows His favor to us, that we might act to prevent His wrath. But if we will neither hear Him when He speaks nor receive His warnings, then we will need to give ear to these His threats here set forth, and it becomes necessary for Him to send us off to another school. It is of the wonderful goodness of our God that when we have thus provoked Him (as we see we do), yet He forbears us and does all to recover us to Himself, not by forcing us with many strokes, but by attracting us after a loving fashion, being ready to receive us to His mercy, not standing as a judge to vex and to condemn us.
But what? When we have shown contempt for all this, it must come to pass in the end (as I have said before) that our Lord will stir up against us other masters, so that the wicked will rise up against us and seek to make a slaughter of us by butchering and murdering us, being in very deed the executors of God's vengeance — of which we were warned long beforehand, though we chose to laugh at it, continuing in our sins and wickedness. That is why I said that as long as God speaks to us, and we condemn ourselves and acknowledge our sins and seek atonement with our God that we may live in peace in this world, then even if it is God's will that we should have enemies and be kept occupied with wars, yet notwithstanding He holds us still in His keeping, and we are maintained and defended by His power and goodness. [Covenant Enforced, pp. 152-53.]
There can be little doubt that Calvin believed in a covenantal view of history in which the ethical character of men's lives affect their outward conditions. The judicial content of Calvin's ethical system was explicitly biblical. Without this belief in covenantal cause and effect in history, there could be no possibility of creating an explicitly biblical social theory. That such a view of history is rejected by most Protestant theologians today, and has been rejected as far back as 1700, explains why no Protestant group other than the Christian Reconstructionists have attempted to devise a uniquely biblical social theory. It also helps to explain the enormous hostility of modern Calvinist theologians and fundamentalist church leaders to Christian Reconstructionism: they hate Old Testament law with a passion. Even more than this, they hate the idea of God's sanctions in history in terms of this law, for such a view of sanctions would make Christians morally responsible for applying His law to the details of life, preaching the conclusions publicly, and enforcing them wherever legally possible. In short, it would make Christians responsible for what goes on in society. Responsibility on this scale is what modern Christianity for over a century has desperately sought to avoid.
Ethically Random History: A Non-Calvinist Theology
We now come to the third aspect of this inquiry: the concept of history taught at Calvinist seminaries. Before beginning this inquiry, let us once again consider Calvin's view of the covenantal nature of God's sanctions. He insisted that this covenantal relationship did not end with the New Covenant era:
Now Moses says that this people shall be an astonishment, a proverb, a byword, and a ridicule among the nations in which they will be dispersed. Here our Lord shows that as His goodness should be displayed among the people of Israel, so that every man should rejoice in the seed of Abraham, so should the very same people be abhorred and detested. The promise to Abraham was thus: All nations shall be blessed in thy seed. Of course, it is true that we must look to our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the very bond of the seed of Abraham, or else this blessing has no place or ground to stand upon. Yet notwithstanding, they who were descended from the race of Abraham should have been blessed by God so that they might have been an example, that everyone desiring grace might say, "O God, take pity on me, as upon the children of Abraham," whom He had chosen and adopted. Such was the promise.
Behold here the threat that was laid against it: When men see how fiercely God smites the people whom He had chosen, they will be astonished at it and think thus with themselves, "Is it possible that they whom God chose should now be cast off and be persecuted and thrown under foot with all manner of reproach?" And upon this, men may say, "O God, keep me that I not fall to such a case as this people is in." Or else when they intend to curse, they might say, "God do to you as He did to those vile Jews." This much is to be understood from this place.
Now let us mark that just because the Holy Spirit spoke thus by the mouth of Moses, it was not His intention that this doctrine should serve only for two thousand years or thereabouts, which was the time the law lasted until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but that we at this day must apply the same to our own use. Insomuch as God has come near to us, we must walk in His fear in spite of Satan, so that His goodness may shine in us and be perceived to remain upon us. And on the other side, when we are unthankful, and our God is as it were mocked by us, it is needful for us to think thus: "Well, we may shrink back from the way, but we shall gain nothing from all our plans, for in the end we shall surely come to shame."
In truth we see how it is said that the name of God will be blasphemed among the unbelievers because those who were counted faithful earlier have been so cast down that God may seem to have falsified His promise and to have deluded them, so far forth must the vengeance of God extend. Now, seeing that this is so, let us learn to submit ourselves to our Lord while He allures us to Himself with gentleness, and so hold ourselves under His obedience that we may not become a byword and a ridicule to all the wicked, who seek nothing but to blaspheme God and to make a mock of us. Let us, I say, look well to that. [Covenant Enforced, pp. 190-91.]
His language could not have been any plainer. Because of this, we can say without question that what parades itself as modern Calvinism is a far cry from Calvin in the area of the doctrine of the covenant. In fact, it is the opposite of Calvinism, covenantally speaking. It is one long denial of the ethical cause-and-effect relationship in history that Calvin insisted on, again and again.
Modern Calvinism is generally either amillennial or premillennial. It denies that covenant-keepers in history will receive sufficient external blessings of God to overcome the efforts of covenant-breakers to suppress the gospel and the civilization that springs from it. Similarly, they deny that God's negative sanctions in history will weaken the covenant-breakers sufficiently to make their resistance to the gospel successful in the long run. In short, they deny Calvin's view of the covenant.
Calvin was a postmillennialist. He may not have been one with the consistency that Bahnsen alleges,13 but there was definitely a postmillennial strain to his theology, although he sometimes made amillennial-like statements.14 The Puritans adopted his postmillennial views, while continental Calvinism after 1700 adopted his amillennial elements. But there is no doubt that his views on God's sanctions in history tended toward postmillennialism: the inescapable triumph of covenant-breakers in history, before Jesus returns in final judgment.
Meredith Kline vs. John Calvin
Calvinist theologian Meredith Kline, a consistent amillennialist, is an equally consistent opponent of Calvin's ethics-based social theory. He has fully understood the inescapable connection between Calvin's covenantal view of historical sanctions and postmillennialism. He therefore rejects Calvin's covenantal view of historical sanctions. He adopts a view of ethical cause and effect in history which is essentially random — "largely unpredictable," in his words — in the name of the doctrine of common grace. "And meanwhile it [the common grace order] must run its course within the uncertainties of the mutually conditioning principles of common grace and common curse, prosperity and adversity being experienced in a manner largely unpredictable because of the inscrutable sovereignty of the divine will that dispenses them in mysterious ways."15 Compare this view with Calvin's view of non-random, providential history:
Thus you see how we may possess and enjoy the blessings of God, which are set forth for us in His law. And when we see that our Lord interlaces these blessings with many afflictions and corrections, as though He had cursed us, we must realize that His purpose in this is to provoke us day by day to repentance, and to keep us from falling asleep in this present world. We know that our pleasures make us drunken and unmindful of God unless He constrains us by pricking and spurring us forward. Thus you see how things that at first sight seemed contraries agree very well in fact. And in that respect does Moses say that these blessings shall light upon us and encompass us round about, as if he had said that we will always be certain of God's favor — so certain of it that it shall never fail us if we serve Him.
For the word "encompass," or to light upon us ["overtake," Dt. 28:2], indicates that the grace of God is not fleeting, as though it fell at random and as though we would not be able to catch it. No, says Moses, you shall be surrounded or encompassed with it. And therefore let us assure ourselves that the goodness of our God shall never fail us, so that we can never come to that goodness unless He draw us to Himself. And since we are subject to so many infirmities and vices, He, by bearing with us, shows us that we must have recourse to His free goodness for the forgiveness of our sins by the reconciliation that He has made in our Lord Jesus Christ, and that we, in straining ourselves to do His will, shall perceive that the goodness of God does not cease to be free to us, without owing us anything at all. [Covenant Enforced, pp. 93-94, emphasis added.]
To see the world in terms of ethically (covenantally) unpredictable events necessarily involves the adoption of either a deistic view of the world — a wound-up clock — or else the rule of chaos. Calvin understood this, and he rejected both views, but especially Deism's view:
You see then how we must understand that all the afflictions and miseries we endure in this world are indeed strokes from God's own hand. And along these lines it is said by the prophet Amos, "Is there any evil in the city that God has not done?" (Amos 3:6). That is to say, "Can there happen either war or pestilence or famine or disease or poverty or any other calamity whatsoever, that does not come to you from God? Wretched people, are you so foolish and beastish as to imagine that God, who created the world, has left it at random and has no care to watch over His creatures, or to bestow on them what He thinks fitting for them? Does He not sometimes show His goodness and sometimes make them feel Him as judge, punishing the sins of men, and making men know what His office is? Do you think that He lives idle in heaven, and that He does not set forth His power, or that the world is not guided and governed by His providence?" [Covenant Enforced, p. 140.]
Calvin's view of history was that the basis of history's unfolding is neither gnostic (hidden principles) nor Deistic (mathematical-mechanical principles). He did not think that we should despair of finding God's hand in history, either because of its supposedly hidden nature or because of its replacement by scientific laws. I wish that we could say as much for Kline's view.
Calvin also did not adopt an interpretation of Genesis 1 that denied its historicity — seven literal days — even though such a reworked interpretation (the "literary framework hypothesis") makes it appear that Genesis 1 can be conformed to pagan evolutionary scientists' very different timetable. He clearly recognized that scientific cause and effect is not valid substitute for God's revealed causes and effects.
Now finally it is here declared to us that the course of nature, as we call it, is nothing but the disposition of the will of God, and that He bears such rule over both heaven and earth and over rain and fair weather, that He changes them at His own pleasure, and yet does not send either without cause. If there were a permanent order in nature, it would seem unto us that God never meddled with it; we would grant that He made the world, but we would then say that He does not govern it. We would think thus: "What? When the springtime comes, we see that the rest of the year goes on in the same course as did the year before. It is always the same." But in fact we see one winter is longer, and another winter later, and another earlier yet longer; we see one winter rainy, and another dry; we see abundance of snow in one year, and another year none at all; one year is hot, another cold. Now, does not such inequality make it manifest that God is at work? For the sun performs his office in one year as well as in the next, and always keeps his just course better than the best clocks in the world. How, then, do we get such variety of weather? It is God's doing, to call us to Himself.
Truly the philosophers (and scientists) do seek out causes as they term them. There is such a meeting of stars (say they), and this proceeds of such and such a conjunction. But where does all this come from, if not from the hand of God? We must always resort to the first cause. And indeed, such men are nothing more than beasts if they will not admit that!
Yet it is not sufficient to know that God guides all His creatures, and that He holds them bridled in order to make them bow, just as a horseman makes his horse to turn on this hand and on that, to stop, and to run. It is not enough to know that God looses and binds and sends such changes as He likes; rather, we must also understand that God does nothing without reasons. For if we say that God governs the world and do not know why He plagues us, we shall quickly be inclined to murmur against Him. And meanwhile we shall not profit under His chastisements and corrections, but continue dulled in our sins. So then, let us mark that in shutting up the heavens that it yields no rain, and in drying up the earth as if it were iron, He is showing us our sins and that He is our judge. This is what we have to bear in mind concerning the course of nature, as it is here declared to us. [Covenant Enforced, pp. 143-44.]
Calvin paid more attention to the biblical concept of providence than he did to science. I wish that we could say as much for Kline.16 On the question of historical cause and effect, to speak of Meredith Kline's Calvinism makes about as much sense as speaking of Calvin Klein's Calvinism.
Conclusion
The Covenant Enforced could have been called The Forgotten Calvin. John Calvin's theonomic legacy has been neglected by his spiritual heirs ever since the restoration of King Charles II in 1660. English and colonial American Puritanism became increasingly pietistic after the Restoration. Continental Calvinism also became pietistic. Both wings abandoned Calvin's respect for Old Testament law. Both wings abandoned Calvin's view of ethical cause and effect. Both wings abandoned his postmillennialism.17
There were ambivalent aspects of Calvin's thought. Like his postmillennialism, Calvin's theonomy was not rigorous. He did make statements against the legalistic, communistic Anabaptists that made him appear to be hostile to the Mosaic law, leading Rushdoony to criticize him for having taught "heretical nonsense."18 We need to recognize that the social and theological issues of the sixteenth century were less developed than today's discussions in many respects, despite the far greater intellectual rigor of the theological discussions of that era compared with ours. But this should not blind us to the obvious: John Calvin's covenant theology was in fact biblically covenantal in structure. He believed in 1) the sovereignty of a Creator God, 2) a God who reveals Himself in history, 3) a God who lays down fixed laws, 4) a God who brings predictable historical sanctions in terms of these laws, and 5) a God who (probably) raises up His people to victory in history. He did not adopt the six loci of seventeenth-century Protestant scholasticism, with its narrow definition of theology. His Calvinism was not narrowly theological; it was cultural in the broadest sense.
In this sense, Calvin was a Christian Reconstructionist. His is a legacy worth recovering or suppressing, depending on one's agenda. (When you find a Calvinist who appears to be involved in suppression, ask yourself this question: "What is his agenda?" Then seek the answer.)
Footnotes:
1. The Restoration of Charles II in England in 1660 marks the beginning of the decline.
2. See my forthcoming book, Rotten Wood: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.
3. These have been reprinted in the original small print by the Banner of Truth, Edinburgh.
4. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987).
5. I told him in 1977 that theonomy must be a composite of the Greek words for "reduced sales." I was wrong, though not about the level of sales. It is a composite of theos (God) and homos (law).
6. Greg L. Bahnsen, By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1985), p. 3.
7. Greg L. Bahnsen, "The Reconstructionist Option," in Bahnsen and Kenneth L. Gentry, House Divided: The Break-Up of Dispensational Theology (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), p. 32.
8. Modem computers "think" digitally; they are in fact giant morons, not giant brains. A. L. Samuel, quoted by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegan, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 92.
9. It also leads to the multiplication of critics who do not read it before they go into print with their criticisms.
10. Covenant Enforced, p. 54.
11. Robert A. Nisbet, Social Change and History: Aspects of the Western Theory of Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969).
12. Sutton, Prosper, ch. 4.
13. Greg L. Bahnsen, "The Prima Facie Acceptability of Postmillennialism," Journal of Christian Reconstruction, HI (Winter 1976-77), pp. 69-76.
14. Gary North, "The Economic Thought of Luther and Calvin," ibid., II (Winter 1975), pp. 102-6.
15. Meredith G. Kline, "Comments on an Old-New Error," Westminster Theological Journal, XLI (Fall 1978), p. 184.
16. At least some of those of us who were attending Westminster Theological Seminary in the early 1960's recognized that Edward J. Young's Studies in Genesis 1 was a rejection of Kline's view, although Young politely used Nic Ridderbos as a stalking horse. It is sad that Young's son Davis did not follow in his father's footsteps.
17. The postmillennialism of Jonathan Edwards and His followers was not theonomic; it was pietistic and emotional rather than cultural. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), ch. 7, subsection on "The Great Awakening." The postmillennialism of the Princeton tradition was also unconnected with considerations of biblical law. See Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), Appendix.
18. R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1973), p. 9.
Copyright 1990, Institute for Christian Economics
P.O. Box 8000, Tyler, TX 75711
Donations are fully tax deductible; checks should be made out to Institute for Christian Economics.
Released for informational purposes to allow individual file transfer, Usenet, and non-commercial mail-list posting only. All other copyright privileges reserved.
This essay appears as my "Publisher's Preface" to John Calvin, The Covenant Enforced, edited by James B. Jordan (ICE, 1990). I had several goals in publishing this collection of John Calvin's sermons on Deuteronomy. The first was to provide primary source evidence to answer the question: "Was Calvin a theonomist?" These sermons reveal clearly that the answer is yes. Second, I am interested in Calvin's social theory. This question interests me both as an historian and a social theorist. Was there something unique about Calvin's social theory that separated him both from the medieval theorists who preceded him and the Lutherans who were his contemporaries? Third, and less relevant to the broader social and historical issues, I wanted an answer to the question: Is theology as taught in contemporary Calvinist seminaries consistently covenantal and Calvinistic, or has it drifted off into other paths? I say less relevant because contemporary Calvinism is today a minor institutional eddy in the broad stream of evangelicalism, a movement identifiable by the shrunken condition of its seminaries and also of the denominations that still profess and enforce the historic Reformed creeds.
I note the title of the book, The Covenant Enforced. Where is the covenant enforced — the covenant preached by John Calvin? The answer is clear: almost nowhere. The systematic and self-conscious unwillingness of Calvinists to both preach and institutionally enforce covenant theology, beginning in the 1660's1 and escalating ever since,2 is at the heart of the spiritual crisis of the West.
Calvin and Theonomy
Because Calvin wrote the single most effective theological handbook in the history of the church, Institutes of the Christian Religion, readers have tended to ignore the enormous compendium of writings that constitute his life's work. The 22 volumes of Bible commentaries published by Baker Book House only skim the surface of his total output. Most of his writings have yet to be translated from the Latin. His 200 + sermons on Deuteronomy appeared in English in the late sixteenth century and were promptly forgotten.3 Yet it is here, in his sermons on Deuteronomy, that we find the heart of Calvin's covenant theology. It is in Deuteronomy that God's covenant is presented most comprehensively.4
What Is Theonomy?
The question, "Was Calvin a theonomist?", obviously demands a definition of theonomy. Theonomy, as Greg Bahnsen uses the term.5 is a view of the Bible that argues for the continuing validity of God's revealed law in every area of life. Bahnsen argues that unless a specific Old Testament law has been abrogated by the New Testament, either by specific revelation or because of an application of a New Testament principle, its authority is still morally and/ or judicially binding. "The methodological point, then, is that we presume our obligation to obey any Old Testament commandment unless the New Testament indicates otherwise. We must assume continuity with the Old Testament rather than discontinuity. This is not to say that there are no changes from Old to New Testament. Indeed, there are — important ones. However, the word of God must be the standard which defines precisely what those changes are for us; we cannot take it upon ourselves to assume such changes or read them into the New Testament."6
This position has produced a certain amount of exegetical bobbing and weaving. "There are," Bahnsen writes, "cultural discontinuities between biblical moral instruction and our modern society. This fact does not imply that the ethical teaching of Scripture is invalidated for us; it simply calls for hermeneutical sensitivity."7 "Hermeneutical sensitivity" allows a degree of latitude — how much, no one can say in advance. But every intellectual and judicial system eventually adopts a similar qualification; the human mind is neither digital8 nor unfallen. Nevertheless, theonomists are at a comparative disadvantage in terms of creating a systematic apologetic system, since they assert that the Bible is relevant for every area in life, not just in great shining platitudes, but specifically. This makes for a complex, detailed, and difficult apologetic.9
In general, however, the precision of the definition of theonomy supplied by Bahnsen has led to an extensive output of theological works that apply it to a whole host of biblical-theological issues, including social theory.
John Calvin, Theonomist
I have already given my one-word answer: yes. Now I need to prove it. The following extracts from sermons reprinted in The Covenant Enforced make his position plain. I begin with his view favoring the continuing validity of the Decalogue (ten commandments), the words of the law. He cites Deuteronomy 27:26: "Cursed be he that confirmeth not all the words of this law to do them. And all the people shall say, Amen." His comments do not indicate any doubt on his part regarding the comprehensive claims of God's law:
For this cause, therefore, it is said, "Cursed be he who does not confirm the words of this law." He is not here speaking of one or two commandments, or of some part of them, but of the whole law, every part and parcel thereof without exception. And indeed, we ought to think of how St. James says that He who has forbidden to steal, has also forbidden to commit adultery; and that He who has forbidden to murder has also forbidden false witnessing. We must not rend God's justice in pieces. In whatever way we offend, we violate God's law, and despise His majesty. But He will be acknowledged in His law throughout in all points, and not just in part, as I have told you before. [Covenant Enforced, p. 64.]
But here is a dreadful sentence, and such a one as ought to make the hairs stand stiff on our heads: "Cursed shall he be who does not perform all the words of this law." Who says this? It is God Himself. It is, then, a definitive sentence, such as admits of no appeal beyond itself. God will have all men confess it so, yea He will have every man confess it with his own mouth. What, then, remains for us to do? Where is the hope of salvation? From this we see that if we had only the ten commandments of the law we should be utterly undone and perish. It is necessary for us to have recourse to His mercy, which outstrips His justice, as St. James says (Jas. 2:13). God's goodness, then, must be manifest towards us to deliver us from the damnation all of us would experience if this curse should stand and there be no grace to overcome it. [Covenant Enforced, pp. 66-67.]
Did he take the details of the case laws seriously? Yes. He went to Leviticus 18 and 20 in search of the definition of incest. He writes that "these degrees of consanguinity should be observed. For without such order, what would become of things? How would we differ from bulls and asses?"10
This comparison of a brute beast and a man without God's law is a familiar one in Calvin's ethical theology:
How are we made the people of God except by being His Church, and by having the use of His sacraments, and that is all the same as if He appeared among us? For we may not expect that God should come down from heaven in His own person, or send His angels to us. Rather, the true mark whereby He will be known to be present among us is the preaching of His Word purely unto us, for there can be no doubt but that then He bears rule in our midst. So then, let this thing profit us, that we know that our Lord receives us to Himself and will have us to be of His own household. Seeing it so, let us take pains to obey Him in all our life, and to keep His commandments. Let us not wander like brute beasts as the wretched unbelievers do, because they never knew what it was to be of the house of God. [Covenant Enforced, p. 33.]
Calvin believed in the primacy of obedience. This is why his theology is intensely ethical.
And we can see that the promise is not empty when we continue reading, "Keep the commandment I set before you this day," says Moses, "that You swerve neither to the left nor to the right to go after strange gods and to worship them." We see how God continually reminds us of obedience to His Word so that we should serve Him, though not in that hypocrisy to which we are so much inclined. Let us remember therefore this lesson: That to worship our God sincerely we must evermore begin by hearkening to His voice, and by giving ear to what He commands us. For if every man goes after his own way, we shall wander. We may well run, but we shall never be a whir nearer to the right way, but rather farther away from it. [Covenant Enforced, p. 128.]
Biblical law served the basis of Calvin's ethics. This is why he should be classified as a sixteenth-century theonomist. But it was more than simply his commitment to the requirement of obeying God's law that made him a theonomist. He also held a social theory that was essentially theonomist in approach.
Calvin's Social Theory
What is the nature of social change? This is the question of modern social theory.11 Humanist scholars usually focus on the perceived dualism between mind and matter: ideas vs. history as the primary basis of social development. The Bible, in contrast, focuses on the question of ethics: covenant-keeping vs. covenant-breaking. This raises the key issue in biblical social theory: God's sanctions in history.12
Calvin's view of history was straightforward: God brings His sanctions — blessings and curses — in the midst of history in terms of each man's obedience to His law. Each man reaps what he sows in history. Calvin did not qualify this statement in any significant way, and he repeated it over and over:
For if any one of us should reckon up what he has suffered all the days of his life, and then examine the state of David or Abraham, doubtless he will find himself to be in a better state than were those holy fathers. For they, as the apostle says (Heb. 11:13), only saw things afar off, things that are right before our eyes. God promised to be their Savior; He had chosen them to be, as it were, of His household; but
meanwhile where was He who was to be their promised Redeemer? Where was the doctrine that is made so clear to us in the gospel concerning the resurrection? They knew the same afar off, but now it is declared to us in the gospel in such a way that we may indeed say, as our Lord Jesus Christ gives us to understand, that blessed are the ears that hear the things that are told us concerning Him, and the eyes that see the things that we see, for the holy kings and prophets longed for the same, and could not obtain it (Matt. 13:16f.).
We therefore have a much more excellent estate than they had who lived under the law. This is the difference of which I speak, which needed to be supplied by God because of the imperfection [lack of completion] that was in the doctrine concerning the revelation of the heavenly life, which the fathers only knew by outward tokens although they were dear to God. Now that Jesus Christ has come down to us, and has shown us how we ought to follow Him by suffering many afflictions, as it is told us (Matt. 16:24; Rom. 8:29), in bearing poverty and reproach and all such like things, and to be short, that our life must be as it were a kind of death; since we know all this, and the infinite power of God is uttered in His raising up Jesus Christ from death and in His exalting Him to glory of heaven, should we not take from this a good courage? Should not this sweeten all the afflictions we can suffer? Do we not have cause to rejoice in the midst of our sorrows?
Let us note, then, that if the patriarchs were more blessed by God than we are, concerning this present life, we ought not to wonder at it at all. For the reason for it is apparent. But no matter how things go, yet is this saying of St. Paul always verified: that the fear of God holds promise not only for the life to come, but also for this present life (1 Tim. 4:8). Let us therefore walk in obedience to God, and then we can be assured that He will show Himself a Father to us, yea even in the maintenance of our bodies, at least as far as concerns keeping and preserving us in peace, delivering us from all evils, and providing for us our necessities. God, I say, will make us to feel His blessing in all these things, so that we walk in His fear. [Covenant Enforced, pp. 100-1.]
Blessings in the Small Things
Calvin was not speaking merely of the great sweeping movements in mankind's history. He was speaking of the small things of each man's life. There is orderliness in a man's life because there is a coherent, predictable relationship between obedience and blessings. God does not limit His covenantal blessings to the afterlife:
Let us therefore be persuaded that our lives will always be accursed unless we return to this point whereto Moses leads us, namely to hearken to the voice of our God, to be thereby moved and continually confirmed in the fact that He cares for our salvation, and not only for the eternal salvation of our persons, but also for the maintenance of our state in this earthly life, to make us taste at present of His love and goodness in such a way as may content and suffice us, waiting till we may have our fill thereof and behold face to face that which we are now constrained to look upon as it were through a glass and in the dark (1 Cor. 13:12). That is one more thing we ought to remember from this text, where it is said that we will be blessed if we hearken to the voice of the Lord our God.
This is to be applied to all parts of our lives. For example, when a man wishes to prosper in his own person — that is, he desires to employ himself in the service of God and to obtain some grace so that he may not be unprofitable in this life but that God may be honored by him — let him think thus to himself: "Lord, I am Yours. Dispose of me as You will. Here I am, ready to obey You." This is the place at which we must begin if we desire God to guide us and create in us the disposition to serve Him, so that His blessings may appear and lighten upon us and upon our persons.
So it is concerning every man's household. [Covenant Enforced, p. 107.]
The same thing is true concerning cattle, food, and all other things. For we see here [in this text] that nothing is forgotten. And God meant to make us to perceive His infinite goodness, in that He declares that He will deal with our smallest affairs, which one of our own equals would be loath to meddle with. If we have a friend, we should be very loath, indeed, and ashamed to use his help unless it were in a matter of great importance. But we see here that God goes into our sheepfolds and into the stalls of our cattle and oxen, and He goes into our fields, and He cares for all other things as well. Since we see Him abase himself thus far, shouldn't we be ravished to honor Him and to magnify His bounty? [Covenant Enforced, p. 108.]
A Covenantal Promise
God promised the Israelites that they would be blessed, so as to confirm His covenant with their fathers. "But thou shalt remember the LORD thy God: for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant which he sware unto thy fathers, as it is this day" (Deut. 8:18). Calvin echoed this view: God's blessings in history point to His faithfulness in eternity:
Let us conclude, then, that when God says that He shall bless us in the fruit of the earth, and that He shall bless us in the fruit of our cattle, it is a most certain argument that He will not forget the principal thing. These things are lowly and of little count, and many times men despise them, and yet we see that God takes care of them notwithstanding. Since this is so, will He forget our souls, which He has created after His own image, which also He has so dearly redeemed with the sacred blood of his Son? Surely not. First of all, therefore, let us acknowledge God's favor toward us, in abasing Himself so far as to direct and govern everything that belongs to our lives and sustenance. And from there let us rise up higher, and understand that He will not fail us in the things that surpass this present life, but rather that in the chief things that belong to our life, indeed even in this world, God will stretch forth His hand to furnish us always with all things that are needful. [Covenant Enforced, pp. 108-9.]
A Visible Testimony to Our Enemies
These blessings of God will be visible to pagan enemies of God. He cites Deuteronomy 28.' 10: "And all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the LOAD; and they shall be afraid of thee." The point here is: these blessings are not merely internal, "spiritual-only" blessings; they are public blessings. They are blessings that differentiate covenant-keepers from covenant-breakers, not merely in eternity, but in time and on earth.
Now He says moreover, that other people shall see that we are called by God's name, and they shall fear us (v. 10). It is not enough that God promises to make us feel that we are safe in His keeping; but He also says that even the pagans, our mortal enemies and the despisers of His majesty, shall be made to know the same. Now it is certain that the infidels do not know the arm of God in such a way as it ought to be known to us. They come far short of it. For though they see, they do not see. How then can it be possible for them to perceive that God has blessed us, that we live by His favor, and that we are nourished through His provision? After all, they are blockish, and do not recognize that anything comes to them from the hand of God ....
They will not know it through any persuasion of mind or through any such true understanding of it as we ought to have. But Moses says that they shall have it proved to their faces; as for example, we see the wicked grind their teeth when they behold the faithful prospering, and when they see that God upholds and keeps them. And how does this come about? Truly they will be astonished at it, and they will not be able to think otherwise but that God does indeed favor their adversaries — not that they take it to heart or have a proper attitude about it, but in that they are at least confounded in their own selves. [Covenant Enforced, pp. 117-18.]
Can Such Things Really Be?
Men who receive the blessings of God, even faithful men, will have doubts about the relationship between obedience and historical blessings. Calvin recognized this fact of life and warned against it. Unfortunately, his warning has not been taken seriously by those who profess to be his disciples today.
Now Moses repeats again what he had said concerning the fruit of the womb, of cattle, and of the earth. Surely it would have been sufficient to have promised once that all bodily blessings come from God. But on the one hand we see the mistrust that is in men, how when God speaks to them, they ceaselessly argue and reply, saying, "Yes, but can I be sure of it?" And therefore to give us better resolve, God confirms the matter He had previously spoken of. Again we see our unthankfulness to be such that we attribute things to "Fortune" or to our own skill and craft, which are actually done for us by God. Therefore He calls us to Himself, and shows that it is He who does it.
And on the other hand, He would have us to understand that if we intend to prosper in all points, we must hearken to Him and obey Him. For all men, yea even the most wicked in the world, desire to have issues of their own bodies, increase of cattle, and great revenues. But what? In the meanwhile we despise God, the author of all goodness, and seem as though we labored purposefully to thrust His hand far from us, which is as much as if I should ask a man for an alm and then reach up and box his ear, or as if he should come to my aid and I should spit in his face; even so deal we with our God. [Covenant Enforced, p. 119.]
Negative Sanctions, Too
There are not merely positive sanctions in life, but also negative sanctions. We can expect to receive these if we do not honor God as the sanctioning Sovereign in history:
It is certain that God will threaten often before He finally comes to execute judgment. Let us therefore consider His long patience in tarrying for us (Ps. 86:15; Rom. 2:4). For if we abuse the same, it will result in nothing other than a heaping up and doubling of God's wrath toward us, so much so that it would have been better for us if He had rooted us out the first day than to have borne with us so long. Let scoffers say that respite is worth gold. There is no respite that we would not redeem with a hundred deaths, were it but possible, when we have been so stubborn against our God and so disobedient to His Word that we have made into a laughing matter His giving us some token of His anger.
Let us therefore consider that as long as God is sparing us He is giving us leisure to return to Him, and that if our enemies have left us alone, it shows His favor to us, that we might act to prevent His wrath. But if we will neither hear Him when He speaks nor receive His warnings, then we will need to give ear to these His threats here set forth, and it becomes necessary for Him to send us off to another school. It is of the wonderful goodness of our God that when we have thus provoked Him (as we see we do), yet He forbears us and does all to recover us to Himself, not by forcing us with many strokes, but by attracting us after a loving fashion, being ready to receive us to His mercy, not standing as a judge to vex and to condemn us.
But what? When we have shown contempt for all this, it must come to pass in the end (as I have said before) that our Lord will stir up against us other masters, so that the wicked will rise up against us and seek to make a slaughter of us by butchering and murdering us, being in very deed the executors of God's vengeance — of which we were warned long beforehand, though we chose to laugh at it, continuing in our sins and wickedness. That is why I said that as long as God speaks to us, and we condemn ourselves and acknowledge our sins and seek atonement with our God that we may live in peace in this world, then even if it is God's will that we should have enemies and be kept occupied with wars, yet notwithstanding He holds us still in His keeping, and we are maintained and defended by His power and goodness. [Covenant Enforced, pp. 152-53.]
There can be little doubt that Calvin believed in a covenantal view of history in which the ethical character of men's lives affect their outward conditions. The judicial content of Calvin's ethical system was explicitly biblical. Without this belief in covenantal cause and effect in history, there could be no possibility of creating an explicitly biblical social theory. That such a view of history is rejected by most Protestant theologians today, and has been rejected as far back as 1700, explains why no Protestant group other than the Christian Reconstructionists have attempted to devise a uniquely biblical social theory. It also helps to explain the enormous hostility of modern Calvinist theologians and fundamentalist church leaders to Christian Reconstructionism: they hate Old Testament law with a passion. Even more than this, they hate the idea of God's sanctions in history in terms of this law, for such a view of sanctions would make Christians morally responsible for applying His law to the details of life, preaching the conclusions publicly, and enforcing them wherever legally possible. In short, it would make Christians responsible for what goes on in society. Responsibility on this scale is what modern Christianity for over a century has desperately sought to avoid.
Ethically Random History: A Non-Calvinist Theology
We now come to the third aspect of this inquiry: the concept of history taught at Calvinist seminaries. Before beginning this inquiry, let us once again consider Calvin's view of the covenantal nature of God's sanctions. He insisted that this covenantal relationship did not end with the New Covenant era:
Now Moses says that this people shall be an astonishment, a proverb, a byword, and a ridicule among the nations in which they will be dispersed. Here our Lord shows that as His goodness should be displayed among the people of Israel, so that every man should rejoice in the seed of Abraham, so should the very same people be abhorred and detested. The promise to Abraham was thus: All nations shall be blessed in thy seed. Of course, it is true that we must look to our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the very bond of the seed of Abraham, or else this blessing has no place or ground to stand upon. Yet notwithstanding, they who were descended from the race of Abraham should have been blessed by God so that they might have been an example, that everyone desiring grace might say, "O God, take pity on me, as upon the children of Abraham," whom He had chosen and adopted. Such was the promise.
Behold here the threat that was laid against it: When men see how fiercely God smites the people whom He had chosen, they will be astonished at it and think thus with themselves, "Is it possible that they whom God chose should now be cast off and be persecuted and thrown under foot with all manner of reproach?" And upon this, men may say, "O God, keep me that I not fall to such a case as this people is in." Or else when they intend to curse, they might say, "God do to you as He did to those vile Jews." This much is to be understood from this place.
Now let us mark that just because the Holy Spirit spoke thus by the mouth of Moses, it was not His intention that this doctrine should serve only for two thousand years or thereabouts, which was the time the law lasted until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but that we at this day must apply the same to our own use. Insomuch as God has come near to us, we must walk in His fear in spite of Satan, so that His goodness may shine in us and be perceived to remain upon us. And on the other side, when we are unthankful, and our God is as it were mocked by us, it is needful for us to think thus: "Well, we may shrink back from the way, but we shall gain nothing from all our plans, for in the end we shall surely come to shame."
In truth we see how it is said that the name of God will be blasphemed among the unbelievers because those who were counted faithful earlier have been so cast down that God may seem to have falsified His promise and to have deluded them, so far forth must the vengeance of God extend. Now, seeing that this is so, let us learn to submit ourselves to our Lord while He allures us to Himself with gentleness, and so hold ourselves under His obedience that we may not become a byword and a ridicule to all the wicked, who seek nothing but to blaspheme God and to make a mock of us. Let us, I say, look well to that. [Covenant Enforced, pp. 190-91.]
His language could not have been any plainer. Because of this, we can say without question that what parades itself as modern Calvinism is a far cry from Calvin in the area of the doctrine of the covenant. In fact, it is the opposite of Calvinism, covenantally speaking. It is one long denial of the ethical cause-and-effect relationship in history that Calvin insisted on, again and again.
Modern Calvinism is generally either amillennial or premillennial. It denies that covenant-keepers in history will receive sufficient external blessings of God to overcome the efforts of covenant-breakers to suppress the gospel and the civilization that springs from it. Similarly, they deny that God's negative sanctions in history will weaken the covenant-breakers sufficiently to make their resistance to the gospel successful in the long run. In short, they deny Calvin's view of the covenant.
Calvin was a postmillennialist. He may not have been one with the consistency that Bahnsen alleges,13 but there was definitely a postmillennial strain to his theology, although he sometimes made amillennial-like statements.14 The Puritans adopted his postmillennial views, while continental Calvinism after 1700 adopted his amillennial elements. But there is no doubt that his views on God's sanctions in history tended toward postmillennialism: the inescapable triumph of covenant-breakers in history, before Jesus returns in final judgment.
Meredith Kline vs. John Calvin
Calvinist theologian Meredith Kline, a consistent amillennialist, is an equally consistent opponent of Calvin's ethics-based social theory. He has fully understood the inescapable connection between Calvin's covenantal view of historical sanctions and postmillennialism. He therefore rejects Calvin's covenantal view of historical sanctions. He adopts a view of ethical cause and effect in history which is essentially random — "largely unpredictable," in his words — in the name of the doctrine of common grace. "And meanwhile it [the common grace order] must run its course within the uncertainties of the mutually conditioning principles of common grace and common curse, prosperity and adversity being experienced in a manner largely unpredictable because of the inscrutable sovereignty of the divine will that dispenses them in mysterious ways."15 Compare this view with Calvin's view of non-random, providential history:
Thus you see how we may possess and enjoy the blessings of God, which are set forth for us in His law. And when we see that our Lord interlaces these blessings with many afflictions and corrections, as though He had cursed us, we must realize that His purpose in this is to provoke us day by day to repentance, and to keep us from falling asleep in this present world. We know that our pleasures make us drunken and unmindful of God unless He constrains us by pricking and spurring us forward. Thus you see how things that at first sight seemed contraries agree very well in fact. And in that respect does Moses say that these blessings shall light upon us and encompass us round about, as if he had said that we will always be certain of God's favor — so certain of it that it shall never fail us if we serve Him.
For the word "encompass," or to light upon us ["overtake," Dt. 28:2], indicates that the grace of God is not fleeting, as though it fell at random and as though we would not be able to catch it. No, says Moses, you shall be surrounded or encompassed with it. And therefore let us assure ourselves that the goodness of our God shall never fail us, so that we can never come to that goodness unless He draw us to Himself. And since we are subject to so many infirmities and vices, He, by bearing with us, shows us that we must have recourse to His free goodness for the forgiveness of our sins by the reconciliation that He has made in our Lord Jesus Christ, and that we, in straining ourselves to do His will, shall perceive that the goodness of God does not cease to be free to us, without owing us anything at all. [Covenant Enforced, pp. 93-94, emphasis added.]
To see the world in terms of ethically (covenantally) unpredictable events necessarily involves the adoption of either a deistic view of the world — a wound-up clock — or else the rule of chaos. Calvin understood this, and he rejected both views, but especially Deism's view:
You see then how we must understand that all the afflictions and miseries we endure in this world are indeed strokes from God's own hand. And along these lines it is said by the prophet Amos, "Is there any evil in the city that God has not done?" (Amos 3:6). That is to say, "Can there happen either war or pestilence or famine or disease or poverty or any other calamity whatsoever, that does not come to you from God? Wretched people, are you so foolish and beastish as to imagine that God, who created the world, has left it at random and has no care to watch over His creatures, or to bestow on them what He thinks fitting for them? Does He not sometimes show His goodness and sometimes make them feel Him as judge, punishing the sins of men, and making men know what His office is? Do you think that He lives idle in heaven, and that He does not set forth His power, or that the world is not guided and governed by His providence?" [Covenant Enforced, p. 140.]
Calvin's view of history was that the basis of history's unfolding is neither gnostic (hidden principles) nor Deistic (mathematical-mechanical principles). He did not think that we should despair of finding God's hand in history, either because of its supposedly hidden nature or because of its replacement by scientific laws. I wish that we could say as much for Kline's view.
Calvin also did not adopt an interpretation of Genesis 1 that denied its historicity — seven literal days — even though such a reworked interpretation (the "literary framework hypothesis") makes it appear that Genesis 1 can be conformed to pagan evolutionary scientists' very different timetable. He clearly recognized that scientific cause and effect is not valid substitute for God's revealed causes and effects.
Now finally it is here declared to us that the course of nature, as we call it, is nothing but the disposition of the will of God, and that He bears such rule over both heaven and earth and over rain and fair weather, that He changes them at His own pleasure, and yet does not send either without cause. If there were a permanent order in nature, it would seem unto us that God never meddled with it; we would grant that He made the world, but we would then say that He does not govern it. We would think thus: "What? When the springtime comes, we see that the rest of the year goes on in the same course as did the year before. It is always the same." But in fact we see one winter is longer, and another winter later, and another earlier yet longer; we see one winter rainy, and another dry; we see abundance of snow in one year, and another year none at all; one year is hot, another cold. Now, does not such inequality make it manifest that God is at work? For the sun performs his office in one year as well as in the next, and always keeps his just course better than the best clocks in the world. How, then, do we get such variety of weather? It is God's doing, to call us to Himself.
Truly the philosophers (and scientists) do seek out causes as they term them. There is such a meeting of stars (say they), and this proceeds of such and such a conjunction. But where does all this come from, if not from the hand of God? We must always resort to the first cause. And indeed, such men are nothing more than beasts if they will not admit that!
Yet it is not sufficient to know that God guides all His creatures, and that He holds them bridled in order to make them bow, just as a horseman makes his horse to turn on this hand and on that, to stop, and to run. It is not enough to know that God looses and binds and sends such changes as He likes; rather, we must also understand that God does nothing without reasons. For if we say that God governs the world and do not know why He plagues us, we shall quickly be inclined to murmur against Him. And meanwhile we shall not profit under His chastisements and corrections, but continue dulled in our sins. So then, let us mark that in shutting up the heavens that it yields no rain, and in drying up the earth as if it were iron, He is showing us our sins and that He is our judge. This is what we have to bear in mind concerning the course of nature, as it is here declared to us. [Covenant Enforced, pp. 143-44.]
Calvin paid more attention to the biblical concept of providence than he did to science. I wish that we could say as much for Kline.16 On the question of historical cause and effect, to speak of Meredith Kline's Calvinism makes about as much sense as speaking of Calvin Klein's Calvinism.
Conclusion
The Covenant Enforced could have been called The Forgotten Calvin. John Calvin's theonomic legacy has been neglected by his spiritual heirs ever since the restoration of King Charles II in 1660. English and colonial American Puritanism became increasingly pietistic after the Restoration. Continental Calvinism also became pietistic. Both wings abandoned Calvin's respect for Old Testament law. Both wings abandoned Calvin's view of ethical cause and effect. Both wings abandoned his postmillennialism.17
There were ambivalent aspects of Calvin's thought. Like his postmillennialism, Calvin's theonomy was not rigorous. He did make statements against the legalistic, communistic Anabaptists that made him appear to be hostile to the Mosaic law, leading Rushdoony to criticize him for having taught "heretical nonsense."18 We need to recognize that the social and theological issues of the sixteenth century were less developed than today's discussions in many respects, despite the far greater intellectual rigor of the theological discussions of that era compared with ours. But this should not blind us to the obvious: John Calvin's covenant theology was in fact biblically covenantal in structure. He believed in 1) the sovereignty of a Creator God, 2) a God who reveals Himself in history, 3) a God who lays down fixed laws, 4) a God who brings predictable historical sanctions in terms of these laws, and 5) a God who (probably) raises up His people to victory in history. He did not adopt the six loci of seventeenth-century Protestant scholasticism, with its narrow definition of theology. His Calvinism was not narrowly theological; it was cultural in the broadest sense.
In this sense, Calvin was a Christian Reconstructionist. His is a legacy worth recovering or suppressing, depending on one's agenda. (When you find a Calvinist who appears to be involved in suppression, ask yourself this question: "What is his agenda?" Then seek the answer.)
Footnotes:
1. The Restoration of Charles II in England in 1660 marks the beginning of the decline.
2. See my forthcoming book, Rotten Wood: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.
3. These have been reprinted in the original small print by the Banner of Truth, Edinburgh.
4. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987).
5. I told him in 1977 that theonomy must be a composite of the Greek words for "reduced sales." I was wrong, though not about the level of sales. It is a composite of theos (God) and homos (law).
6. Greg L. Bahnsen, By This Standard: The Authority of God's Law Today (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1985), p. 3.
7. Greg L. Bahnsen, "The Reconstructionist Option," in Bahnsen and Kenneth L. Gentry, House Divided: The Break-Up of Dispensational Theology (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), p. 32.
8. Modem computers "think" digitally; they are in fact giant morons, not giant brains. A. L. Samuel, quoted by Nicholas Georgescu-Roegan, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 92.
9. It also leads to the multiplication of critics who do not read it before they go into print with their criticisms.
10. Covenant Enforced, p. 54.
11. Robert A. Nisbet, Social Change and History: Aspects of the Western Theory of Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1969).
12. Sutton, Prosper, ch. 4.
13. Greg L. Bahnsen, "The Prima Facie Acceptability of Postmillennialism," Journal of Christian Reconstruction, HI (Winter 1976-77), pp. 69-76.
14. Gary North, "The Economic Thought of Luther and Calvin," ibid., II (Winter 1975), pp. 102-6.
15. Meredith G. Kline, "Comments on an Old-New Error," Westminster Theological Journal, XLI (Fall 1978), p. 184.
16. At least some of those of us who were attending Westminster Theological Seminary in the early 1960's recognized that Edward J. Young's Studies in Genesis 1 was a rejection of Kline's view, although Young politely used Nic Ridderbos as a stalking horse. It is sad that Young's son Davis did not follow in his father's footsteps.
17. The postmillennialism of Jonathan Edwards and His followers was not theonomic; it was pietistic and emotional rather than cultural. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), ch. 7, subsection on "The Great Awakening." The postmillennialism of the Princeton tradition was also unconnected with considerations of biblical law. See Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), Appendix.
18. R.J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1973), p. 9.
Copyright 1990, Institute for Christian Economics
P.O. Box 8000, Tyler, TX 75711
Donations are fully tax deductible; checks should be made out to Institute for Christian Economics.
Released for informational purposes to allow individual file transfer, Usenet, and non-commercial mail-list posting only. All other copyright privileges reserved.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)