Dr Greg Bahnsen - Normative Ethics: Foundations: Nomianism vs Antinomianism (Part 7)

For the seminary of Mr. George. And we decided not to have a separate course in metaethics, but rather to treat metaethical issues as part of the introductory material to each one of the three courses. And I've just finished now a summary, a very quick summary, pointed summary of the apologetical outcome of those three discussions that we've now had of meta ethics or philosophical ethics. We are proud to be Christians, proud to say that we have an approach to life and ethics that is viable, philosophically respectable, that can answer practical as well as theoretical questions. Having established that three times over now by looking at meta ethics three times, we want to go on and ask ourselves, what is our moral duty? What kind of normative ethics do we should we be developing? And here there are a number of questions that easily come to mind. What is the standard for Christian ethics? Is the law of God from the Old Testament still binding? What do we say about matters of adiaphora, the progress of history, and on and on and on? And while we aren't going to touch on all of these in a perfectly adequate way, I think the combination of the lecture material and the readings that have been given for you will give you a very good and well rounded approach to this issue. I'm going to begin now a positive development of normative ethics for the Christian with some remarks about grace and godliness. Out of all of the philosophies of life and religions expressed in the world, Christianity is preeminently the religion of salvation. By grace alone. Virtually any perspective on the human situation will propound or implicitly assume anyway some view of man's dilemma and the way to be delivered from it, that any worldview, any philosophy, any perspective on the human situation is going to have some view of the dilemma confronting man and how he can be delivered from it. That is, there are numerous counterparts to the Christian's view of sin and salvation. Christianity is, however, above all the viewpoint which clearly teaches that man's problem is ethical in character and that man's salvation comes by the unmerited mercy of the divine Redeemer. For Plato, man's dilemma was metaphysical in nature. An immaterial and immortal soul was trapped in a physical body. Moreover, the three parts of the soul were in disharmony, creating thereby a condition of injustice of the soul. Reason was not being allowed to govern man. Appetite and emotion had taken the reins. And because society, for Plato, was a macrocosm of this disharmony within man himself, society was also characterized by strange strife and by injustice. According to Plato, the three basic Types of people which are to be found in the Republic, the soldiers, the merchants and the philosophers correspond to the three parts of man's soul. And as in the soul, these three were not performing their own proper function or interrelating correctly. So also in society, the soldiers, merchants and philosophers were not performing their proper function and interrelating correctly. For Plato, man's deliverance then would come by human achievement and human ability. Very simply put, man's salvation stemmed from the proper use of reason. Education would be crucial. Therefore, teaching men the genuine good and philosophers would have to become the kings. That was essentially Plato's anthropology and soteriology. Education and philosopher kings was a key to man's salvation. A metaphysical dilemma in man was the counterpart to the biblical view of sin. And a rationalistic pattern of deliverance was the counterpart of to the Christian view of gracious atonement. I think it's helpful if we learn as Christians to begin thinking in these categories. Every philosophy is going to have a conception of man's dilemma. Our approach to life says that it's sin. Plato said it was a metaphysical dilemma, that we had a immortal soul trapped in a physical body. And he said there's an internal psychological problem in man that there's not harmony in the soul. So there isn't going to be harmony in the society. Where we believe that salvation comes through gracious atonement. Plato believed it came through rational deliverance. Philosopher, kings and education. Let's take another illustration of the same thing. For Marx, man's dilemma was part of his socioeconomic environment. The problem is environmental here, and specifically the socioeconomic environment. The worker was viewed as alienated from his work, being the mere pawn of a capitalist employer, lacking a sense of community in the labor that was being performed and not enjoying the product or the profit which resulted from his efforts. That's man's dilemma. And to rectify this problem, March prescribed political revolution for salvation. Salvation would come by man's effort again, but this time the effort to eliminate private property and to create an ultimately stateless society. So for Marx, sin is viewed in socioeconomic terms. Salvation is viewed in terms of political liberation. Now, what we see in Plato and Marx is to be found in our century as well. The leading or popular philosophies of man continue to propagate sinless conceptions of man's dilemma and graceless conceptions of man's deliverance. Jean Paul Sartre and B.F. skinner disagreed violently over the nature of man's problem. Sartre faults men for attempting to escape the anguish which comes from the conscious realization of their personal freedom and of the unpredictability of what the self will be. Such escape from this anguish is fostered by the self deceptive illusion, the bad faith that one's self, one's behavior are determined to some degree by external conditions. Skinner's outlook is just the opposite. Man's problem is not the illusion of being determined from outside himself. Man's problem is the illusion of being free and not being determined. Man is, on Skinner's terms, an animal who is subject to operant conditioning of a stimulus response, character. Rejecting all traces of Platonic dualism, Skinner external human behavior in terms of environmental causes. If man is to be saved, therefore, he must relinquish, according to Skinner, he must relinquish his illusions of freedom and of dignity and well trained controllers, which will be the counterparts now to Plato's philosopher kings. Well trained controllers must begin to manipulate the environment which makes people behave the way in which they will behave. Sartre preached a gospel of another sort altogether, of course, commending authenticity to men and instructing them to make their choices in full awareness of their individual freedom. Only in this way could they give meaning to their actions and take responsibility for what they do. Sartre extolled freedom. Skinner campaigns against freedom. And yet the differences between them, I maintain, are merely a family squabble among non Christians. The thing that is foremost, the thing that stands out about Christianity, the thing that distinguishes it among all the philosophies of men, is its view of man's sinful plight and of salvation by God's grace alone. Sartre and Skinner may disagree over many things, but they are agreed that man's problem is not one of ethical rebellion against the absolute moral standards of the Creator. They are agreed that man must improve his own lot in life, not depending vainly on the transcendent Lord and Redeemer to atone for sinful guilt and to give new spiritual life and power to man. Over against the Christian faith as defined in the pages of the Bible, all philosophies of life and perspectives on man, from Plato to Marx to Sartre to Skinner, are unitedly sinless and graceless in viewpoint. Sin and grace are not part of the view propounded now. Even when we bring non Christian religions into our picture, the contrast between Christianity and all other viewpoints remains equally clear. Some non Christian religions, to be sure, lay heavy stress upon an ethics of law and thus appear to resemble Christian teaching about sin. You have the Confucian heaven, the ancient Egyptian Maat and the mythological Greek fate. Being prominent examples of objective or transcendent law orders which are countenanced among the non Christian religionists. However, these systems of law are fundamentally different from the objective and eternal moral order set forth in the Bible. For they are all cosmic and impersonal in character. As we've seen, these law orders are beyond all persons, beyond all gods and men alike. Even divine personalities must look to the law above them for guidance or for warning. And thus mediators and experts, from the Pharaoh to the scholar to the priest, must ascertain and communicate the ethical content of this law to others. Sin necessarily becomes then disobedience to a human authority. Christianity's conception of man's moral dilemma is quite contrary to that. The objective moral standard propounded in the Bible is not cosmonomic in character, impersonal, but theonomic and personal. Being an expression of the moral character of the divine lawgiver himself. Sin is seen as defection from the law of God, who is the Creator. This moral order is known directly by each and every human creature of the Creator, for he has revealed it through the natural order and through the workings of conscience in men who are his image. Thus, sin is not so much defiance against a human expert in the transcendent law. It is defiance against the personal and divine authority of a law known to all men. Non Christian conceptions of salvation can be equally set in contrast to the Christian conception of grace. For the Christian, sin is a personal and ethical matter. Salvation comes through atonement and regeneration. But for the non Christian religions, even the ethically oriented non Christian religions, salvation is procured either through subordination of ethical concerns or through a graceless magnification of ethical concerns. For instance, in Taoism, Buddhism and Hinduism, we are taught that all realities at base 1:1, the pluralities of our experience and all distinctions are therefore actually illusory and misleading. All is really one. Everything is monistic, or this philosophy is monistic in character. In that case, ultimate reality is beyond ethical distinctions like good and evil. What becomes important is that you strive for union with the one, with the whole of reality, with rather than personal ethical growth and social responsibility. Salvation becomes trans ethical in character, involving annihilation of the individual. In such a case, the arduous discipline given to the achievement of nirvana se is actually the exploitation of ethical concerns in order to gain a salvation. Where ethical distinctions no longer make intelligence difference. You see, it's characteristic of these religions that you pursue ethics in order to escape ethics, in contrast to so tiric schemes where ethics is ultimately eliminated. There are also non Christian religions which go to the other extreme and make ethical concerns the way of salvation itself. That is, in such religion religions we find the effort to gain merit by works. Righteousness, Islam, Zoroastrianism and the cult all seek salvation through some form of good works performed by man. It may be through ritual performances or altruistic deeds, but man is encouraged nevertheless to save himself through moral growth toward perfection. The ethical concerns of such religions become a matter of law without grace. Accordingly, salvation for non Christian religions is universally a matter of human effort, either the effort to move beyond the ethical or the effort to advance oneself by following ethical demands. So when we scan the entire spectrum of human opinion, from secular philosophies to non Christian religions, Christianity, I say again standing stands out from every other viewpoint because it is preeminently and refreshingly the religion of salvation by grace alone. Man has a problem in the form of sinful disobedience against the standards of his Creator. And this problem is resolved only by the merciful work of God Himself in atoning for sin and salvation, getting new spiritual life to the sinner. The unique biblical conceptions of sin and salvation make Christianity what it is, differentiating it from all other perspectives of men. And thus to talk about Christianity is necessarily, I will contend, to talk about grace and godliness, not grace without godliness and not godliness without grace. It is not to talk about graceless godliness as though Christianity were merely another religion of ethics or another philosophy of man's effort and wisdom. Nor is it to talk about ungodly grace, as though Christianity were without any concern for ethics or a mere matter of receiving some kind of eternal guarantees. Without a consideration of godliness, God's demand that his creature man, behave in a way befitting the standards of his Creator and showing gratitude to his Redeemer, grace would be quite meaningless. Salvation by grace is necessary just because man has failed to live in a godly manner. So ethics is presupposed by the message of salvation by grace alone. Moreover, without a consideration of godliness, God's demand that his redeemed people behave in a way that befits their salvation from sin, grace would be quite powerless. Salvation by grace means deliverance from both the guilt and the domination of sin in one's life. And so ethics is the logical end of the message of salvation by grace alone. God's grace in the pages of Scripture, therefore, is always presented in an ethical context. I hope you'll catch the direction of these thoughts, and it's rather devastating in the first place Christianity is necessarily grace and godliness together, or gracious godliness, godly grace. Salvation by grace presupposes ethics, and the logical outcome of salvation by grace is ethics. Godliness or God's moral demand is set forth in the Bible. On the other hand, in the course of declaring and explaining God's gracious and mighty work to accomplish and apply redemption for men, the standards of godliness show us our overwhelming need for a divine redeemer and for spiritual empowering if we are to do anything pleasing in the sight of God. The biblical teaching on godliness over and over again drives the reader then to magnify the grace of God. So it can justly be said that grace and godliness are interdependent concepts which define the uniquely Christian message. Let me say that again. This is the point. Grace and godliness are interdependent concepts which define the uniquely Christian message. The demands of godliness came into the picture in order to serve the purposes of God's gracious promise. The demands of godliness enter the biblical picture in order to serve the purposes of the God's gracious promise. And here we can look at Galatians 3, 1722. Paul says, now this I say, a covenant confirmed beforehand by God. The law which came 430 years after, does not disannul so as to make the promise of the none effect. For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no more of promise. But God has granted it to Abraham by promise. What then is the law? It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise has been made. And it was ordained through angels by the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one. Is the law then, against the promises of God? God forbid. For is there any had been a law which could make alive, verily righteousness would have been of the law. But the Scripture has shut up all things under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. So the demands of godliness come into the picture according to the biblical presentation, in order to serve the purposes of gracious redemption. Law serves promise, therefore. And yet on the other hand, God's grace, according to the Bible, came into the picture to serve the purposes and the demands of godliness. Titus 2:11, 14. Titus 2, beginning at verse 11. For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to the intent that, denying ungodliness and worldly lust, we should live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world, looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all lawlessness and purify unto Himself a people for his own possession, zealous of good works. God's grace came into the picture to serve the purposes or the demand for godliness. So you see, grace enters the picture to serve godliness. Promise comes in to serve the law, and yet the law comes in in order to serve serve the promise. God's grace. The two mutually serve each other. Talk of the proper priority or the right starting point in this context for Christian theology and ethics is bound to be muddled. For one way or another, the entire circle must be traversed. You can't talk about grace without talking about God, and you can't talk about grace without beginning with the talk about godliness. I mean, grace leads to godliness. Godliness is presupposed by the message of grace. These are interdependent concepts in the Bible. And without just that unique interdependence, I'm saying you don't have the uniquely Christian message. You have one form or another of the various non Christian philosophies or the non Christian Christian religions of man. Some form of Platonism, Marxism, existentialism, behaviorism, lawless grace, graceless law, what have you, the non Christian faith. And yet so many writers today, it seems to me, when all is said and done, want to reduce the debate over Christian ethics to what is the proper emphasis in Christian ethics. And I'll use one illustration. My friend John Zen has made quite a point of saying that Christian ethics begins with Jesus Christ. You must begin with the new covenant. You must begin with the promise with God's grace, that any other starting point, the starting point of the law or of the Old Testament or somehow not beginning with Jesus Christ is completely improper. You know, it's very difficult to respond to that because it's not as though I think it's wrong to start with Jesus Christ or wrong to start with the promises of God, or wrong to start with the New covenant. But what does it mean to start with Jesus Christ if you don't first understand the promises of God in the Old Testament and the law of God? What does it mean to talk about grace when you don't first understand the law? Likewise, what does it mean to start with the law when you don't understand grace? These are interdependent concepts and you can't come to them Piecemeal. You can't begin by saying, well, now I understand grace, I'm going to have a new course on law, or now I understand everything about the law. Let's go on and understand something about grace in a biblical setting. You can't have law without grace or grace without law. Grace and godliness are interdependent concepts which define the uniquely Christian message. Christianity, in its full stature as presented in the Bible, has both a distinctive ethic, its concept of gracious godliness, and a distinctive salvation, its concept of godly grace. The two must not be confused as though one were saved through ethical behavior, and yet the two must not be divorced, as though the saved had no interest in ethical behavior. Such confusion or such divorcing of the concepts of grace and godliness inevitably produces a distortion of biblical Christianity. And Scripture plainly says, as salvation comes from the gracious hand of God, and not by the ethical efforts of man. Titus 3, 5 not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us. Ephesians 2:8 9 for it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. Nevertheless, salvation by God's grace naturally leads to a proper interest in godliness, of life, an interest in Christian ethics, as Titus 2 has said, for the grace of God has appeared, instructing us to deny ungodliness and to live soberly and righteously and godly in the present world. Zealous of good works. A stress upon moral duty and ethical living, therefore, is necessary to any Christian teaching which is to be true to God's word, provided that stress upon ethics and godliness does not become a false way of salvation which pushes the grace of the Redeemer to the side. Now because because Christianity is uniquely the religion of salvation by grace alone and not in spite of that fact, the Christian must pay attention to questions of ethics, and that means being careful to think correctly, which is to say biblically about the moral duties which define godliness of behavior. Full orb Christian profession and teaching which is faithful to the whole counsel of God in the Scripture, includes taking a stand on the standard of Christian ethics apologetically. The presentation of the distinctive message of Christianity over against the secular philosophies of men from Plato, the Skinner and the religions of the world, from Greek mythology to Islam, requires pointing to the distinctive demands of the biblical ethic. You can't do apologetics without doing ethics. Accordingly, believers are not true to Christianity with this message of salvation by grace alone, when they remain indifferent to their moral duties and to how these should be portrayed to others about them. In this way, by failing to be true to moral duties, being indifferent, they fail to appreciate just what their Christian theology itself stands for and what it offers others. Moreover, by default, the soteric schemes of rationalistic education, political revolution, personal freedom and cultic good works gain protection preeminence in the societies where Christians live, where they ironically should be a light scattering the darkness of sin. The indictment brought against the evangelical church of the 20th century will surely be that it has defaulted in the area of Christian ethics. The proof lies all around us. Even worse, the proof is found in our very midst. Serious, reasonable and biblical attention to the question of our moral duties as believers has not been welcomed. It has even been shunned, often supposedly so that the message of salvation by grace alone might be guarded. In fact, that message has become instead a sub Christian message in our day. And the Christian has, excuse me, the church has surrendered its reforming influence in the process. Where Christian ethical studies have been academically pursued, they have often paid greater attention to the course of the secular society than to the guidelines of the Holy Bible. And when biblically sensitive and trained teachers have introduced serious issues about ethical theory and practice into evangelical and reformed churches, they have frequently been maligned and persecuted as upsetting the status quo. Yet the ethical debate must be pursued lest the church drift along with the world, lest the full and distinctive message of Christianity be drowned out by the clamor of opposing philosophies of life. To be saved by grace is to take an unrelenting interest in genuine Christian godliness. It is to strive after the biblical alternative to the ethical schemes of Plato, Marx, Sartre, Skinner and the pagan religions. It is to pray that the Christian worldview come to full expression. And that is to pray that God's will be done on earth even as it is done in heaven. We have observed that genuine Christianity proclaims man's moral duties in the context of setting forth the good news of salvation by grace alone. The Scripture teaches that the entire Bible, including the Old Testament, is the inspired word of God. And therefore it natural for us to say that our approach to ethics is a biblical approach to ethics. Our approach to ethics learns what our duty is from both the Old and the New Testaments. However, the Old Testament is predominantly a revelation of law. The approach to ethics in the Old Testament lays great emphasis upon stipulations of God's covenant. Place great emphasis upon commandments from God is that to Say therefore that the Christian ethic is an ethic of law. If Christian ethic is a biblical ethic, do we then have an ethic of law? The very posing of that question has been an emotional turmoil for many people because we. We obviously are not addicted to the law. We are not saved by the law. We don't want to be legalistic. However, George Wolfgang Forell points out in his History of Christian Ethics that the society than to the guidelines of the Holy Bible. And when biblically sensitive and trains teachers have introduced serious issues about ethical theory and practice into evangelical and reformed churches, they have frequently been maligned and persecuted as upsetting the status quo. Yet the ethical debate must be pursued lest the church drift along with the world, lest the full and distinctive message of Christianity be drowned out by the clamor of opposed philosophies of life. To be saved by grace is to take an unrelenting interest in genuine Christian godliness. It is to strive after the biblical alternative to the ethical schemes of Plato, Marx, Sartre, Skinner and the pagan religions. It is to pray that the Christian worldview come to full expression. That is to pray that God's will be done on earth even as it is done in heaven. We have observed that genuine Christianity proclaims man's moral duties in the context of setting forth the good news of salvation by grace alone. The Scripture teaches that the entire body Bible, including the Old Testament, is the inspired word of God. Therefore, it's natural for us to say that our approach to ethics is a biblical approach to ethics. Our approach to ethics learns what our duty is from both the Old and the New Testaments. However, the Old Testament is predominantly a revelation of law. The approach to ethics in the Old Testament lays great emphasis upon stipulations of God's covenant, lays great emphasis upon commandments from God. Is that to say, therefore that the Christian ethic is an ethic of law? If Christian ethic is a biblical ethic, do we then have an ethic of law? The very posing of that question has been an emotional turmoil for many people because we obviously are not addicted to the law. We are not saved by the law. We don't want to be legalistic. However, George Wolfgang Porel points out in his History of Christian Ethics that the Old Testament has, through the history of Christian ethics, at least in the early Church, been assumed to be of authority to provide guidance for the life of the Christian. His book the History of Christian Ethics describes the basic beliefs which undergirded the concrete standards found in New Testament ethics and among Them. He identifies the following and I'm going to quote at some length here. He says, the Old Testament is authoritative. It is very obvious in the Gospels that the Mosaic Law in its ethical intention continues to be authoritative for the people of the New Testament. To the man who asks Jesus, what must I do to inherit eternal life? He answers, you know the commandments. Do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not defraud, honor your father and mother. Even Paul the Apostle to the Gentiles insists the law is holy and the commandment is holy and just and good. While the law in all its forms does not save man, it is a help for the guidance of the Christian. In his exhortations to a responsible Christian life, Paul frequently refers to the Old Testament. For instance, beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord. But in his Gentile environment, Paul does not make a distinction. Excuse me, Paul does make a distinction between the ceremonial law and the moral law of the Old Testament. Ritual concerns about clean and unclean are irrelevant for the Christian. And he quotes, I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in its circumcision is a physiological operation of no consequence. In response to the Galatian desire to be under the law of circumcision, Paul writes, for freedom Christ has set us free. Stand fast, therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. The New Testament use of the Mosaic Law is positive and constructive. Freedom from the law is the road to slavery. Salvation is simultaneously freedom for the law as a commandment with a specific content. While by no means the only source of New Testament ethics, it is an important and respected source. And there I end the quote. Porel's description would point us to the truth that the New Testament itself endorses an ethical perspective of law. But there have always been teachers in the church of Jesus Christ who, as can be explained, maintain a theonomic or pronomian approach to ethics in the face of those who would teach that the law is not binding any longer on us. For the pronomian the law of God delivered through Moses, is a welcome gift of ethical instructions, instruction, and guidance for God's people in all ages. The early fathers of the Church frequently appealed to the Old Testament law when giving ethical admonition and direction to believers. For instance, Clement of Alexandria was so convinced that the Mosaic Law was the ultimate source of all proper ethical standards that he even apologetically argued that whatever was sound in the moral teaching of the Greek philosophers had to have derived earlier from the Jewish law of the Old Testament. Through the centuries of theological development in the Christian church, the positive and submissive attitude toward the Old Testament law has come to be associated especially with the teachers of Reformed or Calvinistic persuasion. Nearly every systematic treatise of theology and every ecclesiastical confession authored by Reformed scholars from the 60s and 17th centuries discussed the moral duties of the Christian life under the organizing device of the Ten Commandments, revealed by Moses as a summary of the moral demands of godliness. In fact, this aspect of ethics was so important that a document like the Westminster Larger Catechism went to the effort of laying down rules to be observed for the right understanding of the Ten commandments that's in question. 99 Although greatly weakened today, this pronomian or theonomic approach to the Old Testament law is and must be recognized as part of our Calvinistic tradition, and this is observed by none other than Addison Leach in his Layman's Guide to Presbyterian Beliefs, where he says, the law as law has its place. The law is the framework within which and upon which love may work. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, I came not to destroy the law. He also said, with regard to the law, not one jot or one tittle shall pass away. The law is not to be dismissed. The Christian is free, but he is not free to be lawless. We cannot mean we have the right as Christians to do something less than the law recognizes or allows. The Christian rejoices in the law. So Addison Leach points out, in terms of even a Layman's Guide to Presbyterian Beliefs, that the law must be accepted by those who are Calvinistic. Nevertheless, there have always been those within the Church of Christ who did not rejoice in the law of the Old Testament but took a position against the law's validity. Today, instead of being pronomian or theonomic regarding the Mosaic Law, such believers have been in the broadest sense antinomian against the law. The label of antinomianism must be carefully used, however, because it has been used over the years to denominate many forms of of opposition to the law of God. Many reference works in theology or church history evidence that some who are called antinomians teach that there is no necessity of good works at all in the life of the Christian, so that naturally the Old Testament law has nothing to do with the New Testament Christian. But the point is that the Christian has no moral obligation. He is not to do good works at all, and that might be called licentious antinomianism, an antinomianism that says we can live even in a licentious way. There are other forms of antinomianism, however. There's a form of antinomianism that might be called spiritual antinomianism. The view that while we must live by some kind of standard of good works, that standard is not expressed in written scripture. It's not put down in rational propositions. But rather, the standard for living must be the subjective and mystical direction of the Holy Spirit in my life. So you have licentious antinomians who say we don't have to do any good works, but you also have spiritualistic or mystical antinomians who say that we have to do good works. But they aren't works that can be written down in propositions or dictums. They are the good works that we are subjectively led to do by the direction of the Holy Spirit. Now you have another form of antinomianism that denies these two premises that says, no, we must do good works. And those good works can be inscribed in written propositions. However, the they are not the written propositions of the Old Testament. This is what I would call dispensational antinomianism. A dispensational antinomian doesn't have to be licentious or spiritualistic, but he's dispensational because he doesn't want to follow the law code of the Old Covenant. And then finally, there are those who would deny all three forms of this antinorianism and yet would be antinomian in a latent potential way. What I call latent antinomianism. Latent antinomianism says we must do good works. As Christians, those good works can be written down in scriptural propositions. Those scriptural propositions are found even in the Old Testament. However, we can pick and choose which of those Old Testament laws we will keep without scriptural direction. That is, the Old Testament lays down certain stipulations that we can today ignore. Even though we cannot justify the ignoring of those particular propositions or prescriptions, we cannot justify that on the basis of some New Testament teaching. And that's what I would call latent antinomianism. Because ultimately, the ultimate, ultimately the moral judge is still the individual using his own feelings, evaluations, reasoning, what have you. Okay, so we have four different forms of antinomianism. We have licentious antinomianism, spiritualistic antinomianism, mystical antinomy, or we have dispensational antinomianism and finally latent antinomianism. The question that obviously stands before us is whether the Christian should take a pronomian attitude toward normative ethics, thereby endorsing the Old Testament law in some way, or whether the Christian should take an antinomian attitude toward the Old Testament law. The history of the Christian church has seen plenty of both kinds of teachers. Now my own personal opinion, just as an aside here, is that licentious Christianity is self contradictory. It's really out of the question. I think mystical antinomianism is philosophically flawed and can, as I will try to show in my next lecture, must be reduced just by a consideration of its internal logic and scriptural teaching to written propositions. And therefore the question becomes the key question becomes that of dispensational antinomianism. In his book Dispensationalism Today, Charles Ryrie indicates that dispensationalism makes it an essential point that the Mosaic law, which is the key to its own dispensation, is no longer binding upon the Christian who lives in the separate dispensation of grace and the Church. In an article entitled the End of the Law, published in Bibliotheca Sacra, Ryrie further explains that the dispensationalists views the entire Mosaic code as done away with in Christ and replaced by the law of Christ. The only portions of the Old Testament law which are binding today are those which happen to be repeated in the New Testament injunctions or moral duties for the Christian. In short, the believer bound only to the New Testament ethic. Of course, the dispensationalists aren't the only ones who are presenting this kind of perspective today. There is, as a matter of fact, a great tendency around us to try to rid Christianity of an ethic of external rules, as the tendency, even more, even broader than the dispensationalists to rid Christian ethics of external rules altogether. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in his Letters and Papers from Prison, God is teaching us that we must live as men who can get along very well without him. Wolfmann, the existentialist theologian, wrote in his Theology of the New Testament that Jesus ethic was based upon the false expectation of history's imminent termination and for that reason is not relevant today. H. Richard Niebuhr, in his book Christ and Culture, has written that because of the relative of our actions, God's will cannot be identified with any one ethical answer. Everything is relative and objective. Uncertainty must be something that we live with along with the relativity of all of our values. Joseph Fletcher, as you will know, has written that law ethics is still the enemy. Paul Altais, the Lutheran scholar, has written in his book the Divine Command, the Christian ethic is an ethic of the Spirit. This guidance by the Holy Spirit implies that God's concrete commanding cannot be read off from a written document. An inherited scheme of law. The living and spiritual character of the knowledge of what God requires of me in the present moment must not be destroyed by rules and by regulations. E.J. carnell wrote in his book Christian Commitment. The law of love is not a religious summary of the Ten Commandments. Indeed, the New Testament stands in judgment over the Old Testament ethic. He went on to hold that degrees of moral peace measure the degree to which our affections conform to the will of God. Two authors, DeGraaf and Searveld, in their book Understanding the Scriptures, tell us that the great Commandment relativizes every other commandment that the Scriptures contain. The Bible does not contain any moral lessons. The Bible is not a book from which we can even deduce some moral applications to keep. The law is not a matter of rule. And in the famous Christian Reformed Report 44, dealing with the authority of Scripture, we read that commandments and exhortations given at a certain time and place are not universally applicable. The entire legal structure of the Old Testament applied then and there, but after the fulfillment in Christ, no longer, now and here. Hendrick Hart, in his book the Challenge of Our Age, has written, biblical living can never be summed up in rules for faith in conduct or faith in morals. We mustn't have rules. FF Bruce has written an article in the anthology God and the Good, in which he says, the man in Christ lives a life of love not by outward dictation, but because love is the spontaneous expression of the Christ nature produced within him by the Spirit. This was the principle of Christian ethics Paul laid down for his converts. Paul's way was not to impose the Mosaic law on them, but to emphasize the law of Christ, to insist that the gospel which had brought them salvation had ethical implications. The precepts of the new life are not imposed by an external code. They are the outworkings of what is already implanted within. To try to keep the desires of the flesh in check by submitting to a strict discipline of rules and regulations is an alternative way of bondage. To walk by the Spirit is the way of release from bondage. Lewis Smedes has written in the reform journal for 1975. Moses was writing a rule book that specified precisely what men could or could not do. But Jesus was not writing a rule book. What was Jesus doing? He was proclaiming the will of God. Jesus was not making rules. He was not establishing Christian policy. In Moses time, however, life was directed by rules. In Christian time, life is not directed by rules. My point has to do with the ethics of Jesus within grace. The days of rule books have passed. One final climactic declaration to get my point across here, one more illustration in the Reformed Journal for December of 75. A letter from a liberated woman states very bluntly, but says it all. She says, I thank God that as a reformed Christian I worship a God of grace and not a God of rules. A God of grace and not a God of rules. While antagonism to external rules is not new to the Christian church, the ancient Gnostics were antagonistic to rules by which we should live. And that led some of the gnostics into asceticism, I.e. to rules that went beyond the Bible calling for depriving yourself of the comforts of life and the needs of the body. And the denial of rules led other Gnostics into a libertinism. The idea that you could just live your life in an excessive way, just do whatever you want to to do because it didn't make any difference. And we're seeing the same effect in 20th century Christianity. The Old Gnostic dialectic has returned in 20th century Christianity, where there is this pervasive desire to get rid of external rules, to get rid of the law of God and ethics. You see the Christian church being torn in two opposite directions. On the one hand you have those who are adding more and more more rules than even what you find in the law of God will worship. Rules that are founded in the thinking of men, rules that have to do with avoiding cultural matters. Don't drink, don't smoke, don't dance, don't chew gum, whatever it is, don't wear certain clothes, all of which rules you see rest in the opinions of men and are a form of bondage, a form of legalism, will worship that go beyond the word of God. And then on the other hand, you see in Christianity loose living, licentious living, a kind of libertinism that says since we're saved by grace, we don't have to worry about any rules whatsoever. So what I have presented in this hour's lectures is first the all that Christianity is uniquely the religion of salvation by grace. And that within the unique understanding of Christianity, salvation by grace, there is a mutual an interdependent relationship between the concept of grace and godliness, law and promise, grace and godliness, salvation and ethics go hand in hand. You have to have them both. We don't have graceless law and we don't have lawless grace. These two must be kept together. However, in the history of the Church, we see that there are those who favor the law, pronomian or theonomic in their outlook. There are those who are antinomian. The antinomians can be either licentious antinomians, mystical antinomians, dispensational antinomians, or latent antinomians. And in this particular century, in our own day, antinomianism is undoubtedly the prevailing order. The character of Christianity in the 20th century is for the most part antinomian. In one of these ways, there's a real antagonism to the law, and especially the Old Testament law of God. And after we take a break and come back, our next lecture will begin to deal with that attitude and hope to rectify it.