Dr Greg Bahnsen - Theonomy and it's Critics: Penal Sanctions Criticisms (Part 6)

Different kinds or classes, categories of criticism made of the theonomic thesis in Christian ethics. And tonight, last evening that we're going to be doing this, I've decided to come to the real nub of the issue and to talk about the penal sanctions of the Old Testament and the way these have been criticized or the way that the thesis that these penal sanctions are still binding today has been criticized. That thesis, of course, is one that I belabor in my book Theonomy and Christian Ethics. And I'd like to go through a few pages of notes here having to do with various types of criticism and then make my off the cuff remarks, responses to them in a chapter for a book having to do with Christian economics. Dr. Wayne Grudem of Bethel College has written some critical remarks about the idea of the whole law of God being binding today, especially with respect to the religious crimes of the Old Testament, the penal sanctions for the religious crimes of the Old Testament. Dr. Grudem says that Moses is the one who established and increased the number of capital crimes in the Old Testament. This undoubtedly must reflect a kind of an inference drawn by Dr. Grudem from his own view of what was happening at the time of Moses, that the capital crimes were being increased. But he offers no evidence of this and therefore it's very difficult to respond to it. His main thesis is that the death penalty for quote unquote, religious crimes in the Old Testament is not right today. It is not right to execute people for blasphemy or for blaspheming or what have you. He says the death penalty for religious crimes would not be the right thing to do today. That these crimes in the Old Testament were punished with death because of the special purity that God required of his people and because God is no longer dealing with any nation as his kingdom today, that same purity is not required of any nation today. Now we have something we can get our teeth into and discuss. First of all, you'll notice that Dr. Grudem wants to say that only the religious crimes of the Old Testament have this special purity about them and that only the the sanctions for these crimes have been laid aside today. Well, even if you agree that there were grounds for saying that the sanctions for certain crimes have been laid aside, it would first be necessary to make sense out of this thesis that one tell us what amounts to a religious crime. Now I notice often enough in those who are non theonomic in their approach to Christian ethics, this category is taken for granted. And even though, and very often people who use this category will put the adjective religious in quotation marks. Now, why do people put the adjective religious in quotation marks? Because they know there's something awkward about the use of this label. They know they're not quite using it right. It's as though people call these religious crimes. But we know that that label is not appropriate. And of course it's not. Because if you try to specify certain matters in the Old Testament as being religious matters and others as not, you're going to run into a great deal of difficulty. Is killing somebody a matter of religion? Is an attack upon the image of God a religious crime? How about violations of sexual purity? In light of the fact that God likens his relationship to his people as that of a husband to a wife, does that not have religious connotations? Just where do religious crimes begin and end? Most people that I've pressed on this issue would grant that there's a sense in which all crimes are religious in nature. But some crimes, if you will, are more religious than others. It's like in 1984. Some people are more equal than others. We grant that every crime is a crime against God, and yet some crimes are more crimes against God than others. I'm not sure that this category can be defended in any really biblical and sensible way, but let us say that it could be. Let's just grant this, if you will, to our opponent for the minute and ask, where is the New Testament evidence, even the crimes in this category, that their sanctions have been laid aside? Dr. Gruden does not offer such evidence. He simply says that in the Old Testament they were punished because of the special purity demanded of God's people. Where is the evidence for the special purity God demanded of his people? Is God such a God that he has two standards of morality, A special purity for Israel and another kind of purity for the Gentiles? Or is it not the case that throughout the Old Testament we find God holding the Gentiles accountable for the standards of purity that he laid down in Israel? See, there's no evidence. Now, even if we forget that we have no evidence of a religious category of crimes, there's no evidence for a special purity being required of Israel. And then finally, Dr. Grudem says God no longer deals with nations today as such, as he did with Old Testament Israel, and therefore that special purity would not be required of any nation today. But of course, if you hold that God was dealing with all the nations in the Old Testament and expecting them to live up to his standards, then the fact that he doesn't deal with any nation per se or in a particularistic way today would have no effect upon the legitimacy of these standards for the nations. Doctor Grudem says that only the church can punish religious offenses in this day. Only the church has the right to punish religious offenses. Now this is perpetuating the category of religious and non religious crimes, which is somewhat questionable. And the fact that, I mean the claim that only the church can punish such crimes calls for some kind of biblical evidence. Again, that biblical evidence has not been forthcoming. Coming in his explanation, Dr. Grudem says that the penal sanctions of the Old Testament anticipated the final judgment and therefore were an example of God's intrusion of his judgmental standards of the final day into history. Now we've encountered this thesis before in the writings of Meredith Klein. The idea that God is intruding his religious standards backwards from the final day into history. And you already know something of my response to that. Suffice it to say that if the penal sanctions of the Old Testament anticipate the final judgment, that doesn't mean that they can't be used during pre consummation history. After all, they anticipated the final judgment in Israel and still were used in history in Israel. And if they could anticipate the final judgment and be used in history, and they can continue to anticipate the final judgment today and be used in history during historical eventuation, if you will, pre consummation matters of crime and punishment. In a real sense, I think Dr. Grudem gets to the heart of his criticism when he says that these sanctions were given to nobody else in the Bible except to Israel. That of course, is the questionable premise that God gave these sanctions only to Israel. Now there's something hidden in this kind of claim that I think needs to be drawn out. Somebody who says this, if you bring to their attention that God's law was binding on Israel as well as the Gentiles. Moses says, all this law I give you, you see, is to be a model of righteousness to the nations round about you. The book of Proverbs says that it's sinful for any people. It's an abomination for any people to be sinful, to depart from God's standards. The prophets indict the Gentile nations for not living according to the law. In Romans 1, 2, 3, Paul indicts the whole world as being under the law and guilty before it. All of the evidence is there that the law of God is binding on Jew and Gentile alike. And so it must be argued by somebody who feels the law was not given to the penal sanctions were not given to anybody but Israel, that there is a very strong distinction within the law itself between stipulation and sanction, that God stipulates this kind of behavior and then he lays down a punishment if you don't follow that stipulation, and that the fact that a law binds Israel as well as the Gentiles with respect to stipulation does not therefore mean that the law with respect to sanctions binds Israel and the Gentiles. You see, the premise then is that there is a difference between stipulation and sanction. Now, is there exegetical evidence for this distinction? We already asked about the distinction between religious and non religious crimes. Is there a distinction between sanction and stipulation in the Old Testament? Well, we haven't been given evidence of that distinction. Nor have we been given evidence that when the universal statements of the law being binding on all men are found in Old and New Testament, that its distinction is implicit in those universal declarations. And so there's a whole lot of question begging going on here in this line of reasoning. Let me change the focus of our discussion and look now at the Evangel Presbytery Report in the PCA having to do with theonomy, especially as that report focused on the penal sanctions of the Old Testament. The Evangel Presbytery Report raises this kind of question. It says theonomy's rigid insistence on applying the penal details is somewhat strange in light of the fact that there's a radical flexibility with respect to the application of the law allowed elsewhere in theonomy. The only thing I think I need to say about that is the radical flexibility when it comes to the modern application of the Old Testament law is something that I would grant with respect to the penal sanctions too. I don't find that I'm dealing with the penal sanctions in any more literalistic or strict way than I do with the rest of the law of the Old Testament. And consequently there isn't any strangeness here. Here it's just that it's easier for people to accept the application of the law at other points and very difficult to accept the application of the law when it comes to the penal sanctions. After all, there's not a whole lot of room for flexibility when it says an adulterer must die. You may talk about different ways of dying, but death is death, whether it's in Old Testament Israel or in modern America. And it's just that that seems so offensive to many people that adulterers should die. The presbytery report goes on to say that all human punishment is temporally conditioned. That is all human punishment has been, if you will, adjusted to the conditions of temporal history. And therefore the punishments detailed in the Old Testament for crimes are not what these crimes fully deserve. For every crime fully deserves the judgment of hell eternal damnation, since not every crime gets that punishment. In the Old Testament, all these crimes have been adjusted to temporal circumstances and in that sense they can change. The punishment can change because it is already somewhat flexible. It is already the case that the crime is not receiving what it fully deserves. Well, strange as it may seem, I think that premise needs to be questioned. It seems to me that crime does receive exactly what it deserves in terms of the conditions of society and history, that within a society, when a man steals from somebody else, restitution is the appropriate thing to do and no more and no less. When somebody says no, a thief should really deserve to go to hell for all eternity, he's not talking about socio political ethical standards. He's talking about what this crime deserves in the eyes of God for all eternity. In terms of the God man relationship, what does the crime deserve? But when a civil magistrate is punishing a thief or a murderer or a rapist or what have you, we're not talking about what it deserves in the eyes of God for all eternity. We're asking what does it deserve in the eyes of society in terms of the appropriate adjustment of the imbalanced scales of justice. And therefore I don't believe that the Old Testament penal sanctions should be seen as somehow already flexible and adjusted and not being all that they should be. I think they are representing they are representative of the very level of heinousness that is found in the crime in the eyes of society. God says that criminals receive, you see, an eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth as the level of his judgment. And therefore the Bible seems to say that this is precisely what is appropriate with respect to socio political historical affairs. Okay, the the presbytery report goes on to say that due to the close church state relationship in the Old Testament circumstance, the secular state today is not supposed to enforce civil law. All the civil law of Israel from the Old Testament. The argument is in the Old Testament church and state were so close that it turned out the state was enforcing ecclesiastical law. Today, in a secular society, the state ought not to be enforcing church law. So the state cannot enforce all of the penal sanctions of the Old Testament. Well, by this time, those of you who've been with the study for the various Sunday Evenings are going to see how I'm going to criticize this line of thought. First, the assumption is that there is such a close relationship of cult and state, or church and state and the Old Testament. But the facts of the matter will not bear out that separation or distinction. Excuse me, that lack of separation or lack of distinction. If you don't think there was a separation of church and state in the Old Testament, simply read the story of Uzziah, who took it upon himself as a king of Israel to become a priest, and God struck him with leprosy. Ask yourself why the priests are not given the sword to punish criminals. And yet the civil magistrate is why? The civil magistrate can't punish matters of the heart, can't punish cultic offenses. In the Old Testament, there was a separation of church and state. But I think a more important faux pas when it comes to theological reasoning in this report is the idea that the secular state today ought not to enforce sanctions against religious crimes. We've already looked at this idea of religious crimes and the false distinction that's involved. More importantly, where do we get the idea that the state today is supposed to be a secular state? You see, what is being assumed in this criticism is the very thing that's supposed to be proven. And that's that the state is to be a secular institution, not interested in applying God's word. Doctor Meredith Klein in the Westminster Theological Journal raises a line of criticism against the use of the penal sanctions for religious crimes today that I think we can take a moment to look at. Dr. Klein argues that if we were to punish blasphemers today or idolaters, those who would subvert a nation to idolatry, as Deuteronomy 13 calls for, that this would be inconsistent with evangelism. It would be inconsistent with the church's mission today. What is of note in Dr. Klein's approach is that he grants that capital punishment is not inconsistent for other crimes, that capital punishment is not inconsistent with evangelism with respect to other crimes. If the Bible says we should execute a murderer, the Bible says we should execute a rapist. That is not inconsistent with an evangelistic attitude. It's true that in the society there have to be standards of justice upheld. Even though the church might continue to work even with a convicted murderer to bring about his conversion. Evangelism can certainly be part and parcel of our attitude toward those that we believe should die because of the crimes they've committed. And yet Dr. Klein does think that evangelism is inconsistent. The evangelistic attitude is inconsistent with putting people to death for the crimes mentioned in Deuteronomy 13. He doesn't tell us why he changes ground at this point, why he thinks that evangelism is not a sufficient criticism of the idea of capital punishment for murder, but it is for capital punishment. With respect to blasphemers, it does seem to be arbitrary special pleading, unless one thinks that in the Old Testament people were being executed According to Deuteronomy 13 for precisely the same reason that the church is evangelizing them. Okay, why do you execute this person in Deuteronomy 13? Well, because he's an unbeliever. Why do you evangelize him? Because he's an unbeliever. Consequently, the Church is trying to evangelize unbelievers, whereas the state is trying to execute people for being unbelievers. There, of course, there would be a head on collision between the attitude of the Church and, and the attitude of the state. What's questionable in this reasoning, however, is the assumption that in the Old Testament people were executed for being unbelievers. There is not a stitch of evidence to that effect in the Old testament. In Deuteronomy 13, people are not executed for being unbelievers. They're not even executed for being idolaters. They are executed for subverting a society to idolatry. And if you look at the various modern commentaries in the book of Deuteronomy, not a one of them fails to say that this was execution for subversion. It was subverting the moral standards of the society by calling the society to follow other gods. It's idolatry of that sort that gets that deserves the punishment of execution. So it turns out that evangelism that is trying to bring people to conversion because of their unbelief is. And it's not inconsistent with holding up this penal sanction of the Old Testament any more than it's inconsistent with endorsing the penal sanction for rape or for murder, for stealing or what have you. Dr. Klein's criticism does assume something that I think should be noted, and that's that evangelism was not an attitude of God's people in the Old Testament, that evangelism was not part of God's prescriptive will in the Old Testament. For you see, if God expected his people to be evangelistic in the Old Testament, and yet everybody grants Deuteronomy 13 was binding, then, then what you have is on Dr. Klein's reasoning, which I've had reason to question, but as he understands his reasoning. You have a conflict in the will of God in the Old Testament. You have the church trying to accomplish something that the state is trying to thwart. Do we want to grant, therefore, that evangelism was not part of God's will in the Old Testament? I'd suggest that would be a very questionable theological premise. When you see all of the gentiles who are being evangelized, who are coming to faith, who are being proselytized into the fold of Israel in the Old Testament, it's rather doubtful that we could say evangelism was outside of the will of God in the Old Testament. If it was part of the will of God in the Old Testament, then the consistency, the harmony between God's will for evangelism and God's will for the execution of those who subvert to idolatry in the Old Testament can certainly be the same harmony that we are endorsing today. Let me turn to the review that was published by Laird Harris and in the Covenant seminary publication Presbyterian. Dr. Harris says that in my book Theonomy and Christian Ethics, that I should not so quickly do away with conscience, natural revelation and common grace as the standard that directs the civil magistrate today. Well, I suppose I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss that as A Standard if Dr. Harris and others were a little bit quicker to show us how they give us objective standards of morality to enforce. The difficulty is the conscience of an Adolf Hitler and the conscience of a Jimmy Carter are obviously quite different. I mean, the one would execute all number of people that ought not to be executed, whereas the other would not execute anybody. And so if conscience is to be our guide when it comes to politics, what we're asking for is relativism and sociopolitical ethics. Dr. Harris also says that unsaved men are not able to rule on and to punish religious matters. And that will lead to terrible results if we ask unsaved men to enforce religious sanctions, our sanctions against religious crimes today. Well, what is a religious matter? Don't we seem to be coming back to this over and over and over again with these critics? What is it that makes something in the category of religion and other things in the category of non religion or irreligion? And it's very difficult to see how this gulf can be established. And if it turns out that executing a man for murder is executing him for a religious crime, then Dr. Harris would say it's really terrible to have the civil magistrate punishment punish people for the religious crime of murder. But that would seem to take away from the civil magistrate, any kind of standard. Secondly, I think Dr. Harris should note that asking unbelievers to punish matters pertaining to religion is not something that theonomy is calling for today. It's something that God himself called for in the Old Testament. Unless one, I think, erroneously assumes that in the Old Testament all civil magistrates were regenerate men, one doesn't get the idea in reading through the books of Kings and Chronicles that that was true. However, and if all civil magistrates in the Old Testament were not regenerate men, and yet God expected them to, to enforce his law, why is it that God cannot expect civil magistrates today, who are unregenerate, to enforce his law? Okay, let me turn to the criticisms that have been made by Palmer Robertson of Westminster Seminary. Dr. Robertson says that all of Israel's law and all of the laws, commandments given to Israel had a cultic law dimension to them. All of them, if you will, were tainted with a ceremonial character, and therefore the ceremonial civil law distinction should be challenged. Now, why would he argue in this way? Well, the reasoning goes like if all laws are ceremonial in character to some degree, and the ceremonial law changes, as even theonomists must grant, then all laws can change because all laws are ceremonial in some way. Okay, if you follow that the answer to this line of thought is that not all laws are ceremonial. I mean, the fact that all laws are, if you will, in some proximity, in terms of the literature of the Old Testament, in some close proximity to ceremonial laws does not prove that all laws are ceremonial any more than the fact that the New Testament teaches justification and sanctification in the very same passage means there's no difference between justification and sanctification. I mean, we'd all be Roman Catholics today if we didn't know how to draw the difference between justification and sanctification. And the fact that in the same pericope, in the same paragraph, Paul can talk about both, doesn't lead us to think that sanctification and justification are one and the same, or that, if you will, there's only a matter of, only a matter of degree in their difference. And I think the Old Testament gives us ceremonial, civil, and, if you will, precept laws side by side. But the Old Testament clearly distinguishes between ceremonial and moral laws. After all, God in the Old Testament said that he desired not sacrifice, but he rather desired that his people's hearts would be right. Clearly there were laws that God said are there only because of the temporal and only because of the condition of sin in his people. And that he didn't really desire the sacrifices he desired. Rather they would keep his moral law, that they would show faithfulness and mercy and justice to their fellow man. Dr. Robertson argues that the penal sanctions of the Old Testament are fulfilled in the Church today and at the final judgment that we should follow these laws. But they are to be followed at the final judgment when God punishes all sinners. And he argues that they are to be fulfilled in the Church today when the Church excommunicates people from its fellowship. Well, with respect to the final judgment, that is not a fulfillment of the penal sanctions of the Old Testament. That is in fact dropping the penal sanctions of the Old Testament, changing them from socio political punishments to eternal punishments. That is to say, it's just dropping the category altogether. That's not fulfillment, that's cancellation. Secondly, the idea that the Church using excommunication fulfills the penal sanctions of the Old Testament overlooks the fact that in the Old Testament a man could be converted after he committed a capital crime and yet he would have to die. A man who is converted after he comes under the excommunicatory sanction of the Church is restored to fellowship in the Church. The punishment is not carried out. Quite clearly then, these are not the same punishments. They don't operate on the same basis. They don't have the same character at all. And so I believe it's wrong to say that the penal sanctions of the Old Testament are fulfilled in the church or that they are fulfilled in the final judgment. Okay. Turning to the booklet by Louis Nielsen having to do with the idea of theonomy or God's law in the New Testament, Mr. Neilson argues that the Lord does not require civil punishments today of outward departures from the true worship of God in the New Testament age. He does not require the civil magistrate to punish, quote, unquote, religious crimes. We're getting a little tired of this line of thought by now. We've only come back to it five times since we've begun tonight. Every critic you see wants to import this category, religious, non religious crimes. And yet none of the critics are willing to define their terms. Mr. Nielsen argues that Matthew 5, Romans 13 and 1 Peter 2 are all ambiguous and inconclusive about the penal sanctions of the law. These passages are ambiguous and inconclusive, he says, because in each case we're going to want to argue that qualifications can be made. Jesus says not one jot or tittle is to be violated today. And yet we know the qualification, qualification that the ceremonial law doesn't have to be kept in its outward form. Romans 13 says the civil magistrate used to use the sword against those who violate God's law, but we know he's not supposed to use the sword against those who violate the law pertaining to, say, interpersonal matters or just sins of the heart. So qualifications have to be read in to all of these passages. Since qualifications have to be read in, none of the passages can be conclusive. Well, that would be a fairly good argument if he had not overlooked one possibility. If you drop the theonomic possibility, all these passages are inconclusive. That's true. But if it turns out that these passages are endorsements of the moral standard of the Old Testament, then these qualifications that have to be read into the passage trans turn out to be already present in the given revelation of the Old Testament. And therefore Jesus and Paul are simply telling us that that which you expected according to the Old Testament is to be followed today with all the qualifications that that entails. Now, if you don't have the qualification of previous revelation to guide you when it comes to these passages, then we really are up in the air as to how far they apply. But I don't think we are up in the air. And consequently, this is not a good criticism of the point of view that answers the only point of view that answers this critical approach. Okay. Mr. Nielsen has an interesting line of argument at one point where he says that if we look at the New Testament emphases when the theonomic passages are removed, we will not get the impression that the New Testament teaches a theonomic ethic. And I think at this point I have to agree with Mr. Nielsen that if you remove all the theonomic passages of the New Testament, the New Testament will not very likely read as a theonomic document. The strange thing to me is that this is a man who is a lawyer who is writing these things. And you imagine a man going into court saying, well, I realize that you have a lot of evidence against my client, but if you remove all those pieces of evidence that seem to indict my client, my client doesn't look very guilty at all. Well, obviously, if you remove the evidence in favor of a thesis, the thesis is not going to appear to have very much evidence for it. And so I have struggled and struggled and struggled with the six or seven pages on which he argues this lie. And I have yet to come up with anything that does this man justice. And all I can say is it just seems to be a schoolboy error that has to be dismissed. You can't take your opponent's evidence and remove it and then say there's no evidence. You know, that's just a little too fishy when it comes to scholarship, Okay? Mr. Nielsen also argues in his booklet that the penal laws of the Old Testament were given only in a covenant context with the nation of Israel. Now, this argument we have heard over and over and over again in other areas of our discussion, and the fact of the matter is that the law of God was given even to those nations that did not enjoy the covenantal redemption of God. These laws are the very laws which will condemn all the nations on the final day of judgment. And consequently, it's simply erroneous to say these laws bind only Israel. Let me remind you, if these laws bind only Israel, what you have, what kind of situation you had in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, it was wrong to do one thing within the land of Palestine, but it would have become right if you would have taken one step over the state line. That is, if you would have stepped out of Israel into some Amorite territory, then it would have become alright to be a homosexual or not to execute a murderer or what have you. Now, do our opponents really want to be driven to that conclusion, that the law is exclusively for Israel, so that the law functions like, if you will, the laws against liquor in some of the dry counties of our nation today, where you see that you have laws against liquor traffic and in a certain county and the very first building you find over the county line is a liquor store. I mean, is that really the way the law of God operates? Or is it rather the case that God's law binds all men at all times, in all their relations. Paul seems to say in Romans 1, 2 and 3 that this law binds even the Gentiles who have not been given a special revelation of the law, and that God will judge all men on the same standard because he's not a respecter of persons. Mr. Nielsen argues that the penal laws of the Old Testament against religious crimes. Again, there's that category of religious crimes that's undefined. The penal law against religious crimes in the Old Testament was given to Israel as a church. And since no other nation today is the church of God, no other nation today can enforce those laws. The assumption is, of course, that the Old Testament had a distinction between church and state and that the church punished religious crimes in the Old Testament. Or the assumption is that there was no distinction between church and state in the Old Testament and it would amount to a church matter today where the distinction is recognized. Well, whether you take the first approach or the second, you're going to have difficulties theologically. If it's argued that the Old Testament recognized the difference between church and state, then the assumption that it was the church who punished these crimes is mistaken because it was the civil magistrate who wielded the sword. It wasn't the priest who punished such people. If the assumption is that there was no separation of church and state in the Old Testament, but today these would be considered religious matters. When we do have a separation of church and state, then what we want to say is that since it was the state in the Old Testament that punished them, it should be the state today and not the church today that punishes them. And so you see the failure to have the distinction or the insistence upon the distinction in the Old Testament eventually turn out to support the theonomic thesis. Okay, there are some other arguments that we can very quickly go over. Mr. Nielsen says the penal sanctions the Old Testament were part of the typology of the Old Testament. I agree they were part of the typology. But after all, the fact that other laws were part of the typology of the Old Testament, like marriage laws, doesn't seem to invalidate them today. It ought not to invalidate the others either, unless we're going to engage in special pleading. He says that the penal sanctions for religious matters were not seen prior to Mount Sinai in the Old Testament. Well, but we don't see any laws against bestiality prior to Sinai either. And I don't think anybody wants to argue that since bestiality, the prohibition on bestiality is revealed through Moses at Sinai, that somehow it is okay to engage in bestiality today. And even if it's true that God gave his laws against religious crimes of the Old Testament at Sinai, that wouldn't say anything as to whether those laws are binding today or not. Jesus said, anybody who slackens even the least commandment is going to be least in the kingdom of God. And I trust that the least commandment would be inclusive of matters having to do with capital punishment. Mr. Nielsen looks at the New Testament, and he tells us we should observe that the Roman government was reluctant to enforce any laws with respect to the religion of the people of the province where the Roman government was ruling. That is, there was a real reluctance regarding religious sins on the part of the Roman government. Well, I'm not sure what to make of that as a historical observation, whether it's right or wrong. But whether it is right or wrong seems to be ethically. Irrelevant. It certainly cannot be argued that the Roman government is the standard of what a Christian government should be doing. I mean, I will remind you that in Revelation, the 13th chapter, the Roman government called the beast after all. And the beast is going to be judged by God and Babylon. The harlot, you see, is going to be remembered in the sight of the nations for the great judgment that God will bring against Babylon for all of her sins. And so I don't see that this is normative for us today at all. Okay, let me turn to another line of argument. Mr. Nielsen says, with respect to Romans the 13th chapter, that this chapter is that where Paul speaks of the civil magistrate, the powers that be. He is not giving direct and precise instruction to rulers. And therefore the unqualified use of the word evil in this passage is not conclusive. The evil which the magistrate is to punish must obviously be restricted. He's not supposed to punish matters of the heart, for instance. So this verse does not tell us the precise scope of what rulers can punish. And perhaps the scope of what rulers can punish is much more restricted than we think it is. Let us grant Mr. Nielsen a step along the way in his argument and say, okay, Romans 13 doesn't establish the scope of the ruler's penal activity. Where is that scope established? Now, if it's not established somewhere in the Bible, one seems to be left with the intolerable conclusion that the magistrate can punish anything he sees fit to punish. But Mr. Nielsen is not willing to grant that. He says the magistrate must be restricted or else the magistrate is going to become totalitarian. Okay, where is the restriction on the magistrate's punishing. Where is the restriction on the penal activity of the civil magistrate? Well, obviously it's not the old testament for Mr. Nielsen, because that's what theonomy argues, and he doesn't like that. Well, what's left? The New Testament. But where in the New Testament does any writer, any apostolic writer, address the question of the penal sanctions that the magistrate can enforce? Nowhere. It turns out that Mr. Nielsen is without an option if he doesn't want to take a theonomic approach to things. You either have to say that Romans 13 gives the civil magistrate the right to do what he sees fit to do, or you must say that Romans 13 restricts the penal activity of the civil magistrate. If it does restrict the penal activity of the civil magistrate, where are those restrictions found? You can't find them in the New Testament. And I dare say, therefore, that you want it, as driven by logic, to the Old Testament. As the defining terms of Paul's view. The civil magistrate, Mr. Nielsen, comes to the argument which I think is really the heart of most arguments against the theonomic thesis today, when he says that penal sanctions for religious sins today does not seem to fit the overall impression given by the New Testament. Those of you who have studied my book will recognize this as what I call a tenor argument, that when you read the New Testament, you just don't get this feeling, you just don't get the feeling that we should be executing blasphemy today, are idolaters today. While God does not hold us accountable and does not expect us to follow our feelings when it comes to His Word, he expects us to follow every jot and tittle of His Word. And you know, it's strange, isn't it? The more and more you read the Bible, the more you find that the Bible is really quite contrary in its specific teaching to what you and your natural reason would have expected. For the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit, Paul says, for they are foolishness to him. And we in our natural reasoning would not expect God to say the sorts of things we find him saying. The whole reason God gives special revelation is because his ways of thought and our ways of thought are really quite different. And therefore it's quite surprising to find out that what God says and what we say doesn't jive. And consequently God expects us to follow the detailed wording of his revelation and not simply say, well, I get this general impression. And when I read the detailed wording of the New Testament, I find Paul saying, the civil magistrate is to avenge God's wrath against evildoers. I find Jesus saying that not one jot or tittle passes away from the law. I find Paul saying in First Timothy 1 that the law was given precisely for the lawful use of punishing the unruly in society. Okay, let me look at just a few more arguments and then I'll open it up for questions this evening. Dr. Fowler at Reformed Seminary in his book on God's law free from legalism, argues that the law of God, the penal sanctions were given given to Israel as a theocracy, and they were given only for that nation. Consequently, in 1st Corinthians 5 and 6, where we read Paul dealing with the incestuous fornicator, the penal sanctions of the Old Testament are not used against the incestuous fornicator, and the sanctions that are followed out are only ecclesiastical ones. In this day of the New Testament, in the New Testament age, only the Church Punishes an incestuous fornicator? Well, that is a form of reasoning that is called affirming the consequent. It's a fallacious form of reasoning. It says that since the church is to do something about an incestuous fornicator in its midst, and Paul writes that the church is to do so, that necessarily, necessarily, only the church is to do anything with respect to incestuous fornicators. It's certainly true that if God is displeased within the ranks of the Church to have incestuous fornicators, that there will be instructions for the church dealing with this. The fact that there are instructions for the church dealing with this does not prove that God is displeased only with incest within the church. That's a very poor line of reasoning. What if you had a convicted murderer who was coming to your church, a violent man who had killed somebody, but the civil magistrate, perhaps in a secular age as our own, would not do anything about it. Obviously there would be apostolic instruction as to the church disciplining this person until he became repentant. But the fact that the church was to discipline the murderer would not prove that the state ought not to discipline the murderer if the state were concerned to follow God's law. Likewise, if the civil magistrate in Corinth had been following God's law, it would have been concerned with the incestuous fornicator too. But as you know, the city of Corinth was. Was very well known in its day for not caring about sexual license. And consequently, the fact that Paul gives instruction to the church does not prove that Paul would not give instruction to the civil magistrate. Somebody says, why didn't Paul mention it then? Well, for a very good reason, as a matter of fact, unless they are being generated by eisegesis or projection, that is, the person comes with a preconceived notion and reads it into the text. It still requires some kind of evidence in the text to give you the impression that the text has this character. If you take away all the theonomic or theocratic passages of the Old Testament. I don't believe that you would get that impression from the Old Testament because there'd be nothing to give it to you. You'd have to have it as a preconceived notion.

Therefore, I think he would say, would he not, in that hypothetical case, that in the Old Testament at least you had some the ethnocentricity, one nation, one race under God, which of course is different, as you fully grant, in the New Testament. And wouldn't he say that ethnocentricity with any kind of laws, in a situation like that, one nation, one people, that church and state would have such a more intimate relationship, then surely he would say in that case it must be that the presumption would be that cult and cultists completely would be under God's law.

I believe there was a more intimate relationship of cult and state in the Old Testament than we see today. I do believe that the kingdom of God was identified with one geopolitical unit, which is not true today. I also believe that in the Old Testament itself, all the nations are told to obey the law of God and that Paul speaks even of Roman rulers as being the avengers of God's wrath, and that they bear the sword in vain if they don't avenge his wrath against evildoers. So for all of that difference in emphasis in the Old Testament to the New Testament between Old and New Testament, the fact remains that the moral standards of God have not changed, that God is not a respecter of person and he doesn't have one standard for Israel and another standard for the Gentiles. Or if he does, that has got to be shown on exegetical, explicit textual basis or evidence. And that evidence has not been given. All we're given is a tenor kind of argument. Well, for all I know that Mr. Nielsen gets this feeling about the Old Testament because there's something wrong with the way Mr. Nielsen approaches the Bible. And if I were to argue that the theonomic standards I argue for are binding and say, because that's just the feeling I get from the Bible, I would expect him to say the same of me. I would not expect him to accept any argument from me on the basis that, well, I just have this general feeling that that's the right thing to do.

And finally, the only way I can think of, the only way that any of those tenor arguments can be defended is this way. I think they've got something that in terms of the bulk of literature, very little of the New Testament is given to legislation as compared with the Old Testament because so much of the Old is presupposed. We've got continuity all over the place. So if one means tenor in the sense of counting statistically the number of literary genres in the Old Testament, there's far less legislation, that sort of thing.

I fully agree. But now one has to account for that. Why is there this great statistical difference, all this civil legislation in the Old Testament, hardly any civil legislation of any notable sort in the New Testament. How do you account for that difference? Well, you can account for it in this way. You can say God doesn't care about civil righteousness today. You can say God cares about civil righteousness but he leaves it to ourselves to decide what it is. Or you can say God continues to care for civil righteousness and he assumes that we're going to read the Old Testament when we want to find out what he means. And okay, I think that the New Testament doesn't give a lot of civil legislation because the assumption is the Old Testament was adequate and the New Testament emphasis is upon the accomplishment of redemption, not upon reaffirming everything that is said in the Old Testament. There's no need to repeat everything because man should live by every one word that proceeds from God's mouth.

Jesus said so the statistical tenor is valid because of continuity.

Sure.

Because of presupposing the old.

Well, or somebody could say there's the statistical differential between Old and New Testament on civil legislation and the reason for that is that God doesn't care for civil legislation today. There are those who say that there are some in the banner of truth circle that give the definite impression that they don't think God cares for social justice today, that he's biding his time waiting for the final judgment and that we're to be concerned with the reform of the church and its worship. But the reform of society, world and life view affairs is none of our business. In fact, I've had people associated with that organization tell me to my face that that is what God expects of us today. Yeah, a little clarification on religious sanctions of religious crime. I said religious sanction at some times and I was not being cautious in my expression. What I meant is a sanction for a religious crime. Yeah, there are those who say that with respect to religious crimes no sanction is appropriate on the part of the state today. And I think it may have been before you came in. I was arguing earlier that I don't know how to stay distinguish between religious crimes and non religious crimes. I mean, I know the kind of intuitive feeling our secular society gives us for it. Anything having to do with worship or getting very close to God, quote unquote. But it seems to me that murder is one of the most religious crimes imaginable because it's an attack on the image of God. And if that's true, then I really don't see any firm or legitimate distinction. Other questions this evening? Such a nice afternoon that you're all anxious to get back outside. Mike, I wanted to read something From.

Hebrews, chapter 10.

Verse 28 says, Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of courtsy witness. How much severe punishment do you think he will deserve with trample under foot the Son of God? On and on and on. Point is, it doesn't say anyone who has set aside. It seems to me he's saying that that is something that is active at that point. The only comment on that. Doesn't that seem what it says to you? Okay, you're in chapter 10, verse 28. 28. Okay. Well, two things have to be said. First of all, I'd have to check the original. I think Dr. Kikosola might have. Seems to me that the translation implies that it's in the present continuous sense, a man who sets aside. A man who has set aside Moses law dies.

One aorist. One who has set aside.

The dies is present tense then. However, I wouldn't think that that is necessarily a strong argument because the writer of Hebrews, it could be said, is simply thinking in the mindset of the Old Testament. Okay. What I would say is a strong argument is that he's assuming. Assuming the justice of the penal sanctions in the Mosaic Law as the foundation for the justice of God against apostates. He says, if it's true that with respect to Mosaic Law, anybody who sets it aside dies to death, how much more is God just to take those who reject the Son of God and they die eternally? Now, if you say it's no longer just of God to have the state execute these people, then you have to say, is it just of God then for him to send people to hell? Because the argument here is that God's justice is never violated, either in the Mosaic Law or in the eternal judgment. Now, that, I think becomes a very strong argument, and you might be interested to know I've used that often. I have yet to hear any critic of theonomy answer that. I mean, even propose an answer to that. Because it does seem that in Hebrews chapter 2, verse 2 and Hebrews 10:28 that the author of this book is assuming that the justice of God of the Old Testament should convince us that God is just when it comes to the final judgment. That's the foundation of his argument. Take away the foundation, he loses his argument.

Would you summarize that argument?

Again, it's an au fortiori argument from the lesser to the greater. If we grant that God was just in having those who violated the Mosaic Law executed, how much more do we have to Grant that he's just and having apostates die eternally in hell. The justice of God in his eternal judgment against sinners, apostates in particular. In the Book of Hebrews, the justice of God is seen in precisely that. We know God is just when it comes to the Mosaic Law. So if somebody says that law is no longer just today, it's not right to actually people according to the Mosaic Law, then one has to say what becomes of the argument of the author of the Book of Hebrews. For he says, on the premise of the Mosaic Law's justice in its penal sanctions, how much more is God just when it comes to his eternal judgment against sinners? Do you have a question? Yes, I wanted to know, do you.

Make any distinction between ceremonial law and moral law?

Yes, very definitely. The ceremonial law was instituted by God as a way of dealing with the sinfulness of man, as defined as violations against the moral law. Okay. So God says, you shall not steal. That's a moral law. When you violate that law, you're a sinner. You're unjust in his sight and deserving of damnation. God takes care of your guilt by giving a ceremonial law, a restorative law. It says, if you offer animal sacrifice and go through this ritual of cleansing and so forth, then you can be made right in the sight of God. So there's clearly a difference between sin defining law and redemption defining law. The way of redemption is defined and illustrated in the ceremonial law. So Christ comes as the Lamb of God, Christ comes as the true temple of God and so forth. But Christ, in fulfilling, or if you will, laying aside the ceremonial law by keeping it once for all, does so in order that his people would have the strength of the Spirit to keep the moral law that was the law defining our sin all along. I was also wondering, how would you.

Recommend that we return to the. I believe there are 818 crimes that were worthy of capital punishment. Do you know if that's not correct?

I'm not sure how many there are. Approximately 18.

I believe Dr. Llewellyn, who wrote an article in Christianity Today, specified that number. How would you recommend we return to that? Especially when homosexuality is running rampant, how it is practically.

I think first thing we need to do is to be very active in evangelism, so a large majority of our society will be Christians and willing to submit to the word of God. Secondly, we must be educating our society as to what the word of God teaches in these matters. See, I'm convinced that if the whole nation were to profess Born again Christianity today, the whole nation would nevertheless be, given the current literature available, very confused as to what Christians should do in society. So we need to be educating people as to what the law of God really teaches in these matters. And then we must be asking Christians to live up to their standards when it comes to the ballot box. We must be electing legislators who promise to use the law of God as their guidance. And as you can see from all that, it's a grassroots type of kingdom emerging procedure that I'm talking about. And it's going to take many years for us to bring about this reform. Now along the way, I think we should be encouraging young people to go into the practice of law. People should be going into politics with Christian standards, even as I encourage people to go into science with Christian standards and into the ministry of Christian standards so we can have people doing reform work along the way. Well, that has to be added in this day. I mean, you understand the church isn't all that it's, you know, cracked up to be in our day. Some of them that are not. Yeah, I've seen a few. There are a few ministers of God in the state that aren't acting as ministers of God and quite a few ministers of God in the church that are not acting as ministers of God. But anyway, we can have people working on reform along the way, but the long term effect is going to come by us bringing people to conversion, trust in Jesus Christ and then progressive sanctification, learning what God requires of them in all areas of their lives. Yes, sir, we were listening to Dave's.

Play on Reverend Rush Jr. And Marshall Foster.

Yes. And he mentioned that what we need is not so much the armies, but the officers, people that will have the.

Knowledge and be able to get the groups and execute things that are going on. Where does a person go to get this kind of training?

I mean, if he has nothing, where do you start? Well, we're really at the initial stages of this procedure of reform in our country today. You could have gotten this a hundred years ago or 150, 50 years ago, but we have been so secularized over the last century and a half that right now there are very few people who are even interested in seeing how the Bible applies to politics and society, much less being convinced that the Bible applies in the way that theonomy is arguing. And sadly, I cannot tell you any particular school you can go to to get this kind of training. Right now. The Christians who are going to be doing this work are going to to be pioneers and they're going to have to be people who know how. I think one of the best things for a Christian lawyer to do is to go to seminary, first of all, learn how on his own to use the Bible, get a good solid theological context and foundation, and then he goes to law school and he's going to be pioneering there. But what he learns in law school, he's going to have to do double work. He's going to have to learn everything that all the secular students are learning. And then he's going to have to, in addition, try to relate every bit of that to the Bible and try to think through the principles and try to then write up things to help guys coming behind him so they can stand on his shoulders trying to apply this even further. Right now, I don't know of any law school or any graduate school of theology for that matter, that will give you very much help when it comes to these things. You're going to have to be a self starter and a pioneer. But having said that, I do believe that the spirit of God is adequate to help a graduate student through that. I don't know of any graduate student, any graduate school, I'll say it right, of Christian philosophy available today. But I believe that God was adequate to my needs as a student of philosophy in graduate school. And it just takes a lot of double effort. Well, I think I've probably worn you out enough for tonight, unless somebody has some burning question you want to get in before we end. Okay.

I was doing a paper in college on capital punishment and I was going to a very humanist college. And one of the things that I got thrown in my face more than 50 to 100 times was the Puritans.

Burning of the witches.

And I was wondering how, in this type of theonomic attitude do you face this issue intellectually and yet come out a winter?

First of all, I found most people who bring up the witch trials don't know anything about the witch trials, just press them. Any witches were eventually killed and Salem, do they know hundreds of them? No way. A handful of them at the most. Okay. In addition to that, you can ask people after they find out the factual matters, do you believe it was wrong, what took place there? Well, of course. That's the reason I'm bringing up. You say, I think it was wrong too. Why do you think it was wrong? Well, he's going to give you some moral standard that's humanistic and relativistic. Right. He's going to say, well, because, you know, it doesn't seem to be the right thing to do. Given this, the way we feel today, I'm saying. Yeah, well, given the way they felt in those days, it was right. I mean, given your moral standards, whatever's right for the majority is right for, you know, for all time. Miss. Different strokes for different folks. Why should you be upset that they burned a few witches back then? That was a different day and age. I was a different culture. It was different people. You happen to believe, by the way, if you want to go out and commit adultery, it's all right for you. But if I don't want to, then that's what I should do. You believe there's this fluctuation in moral standards, don't you? Well, if you believe that, why should it be wrong for the puritans to have not liked witches? Big deal. That was the way they saw it. That isn't the way you see it. You see what I mean? What you can say is the only way you can criticize the witch trials at all is. Is to hold to the law of God. And where the puritans were wrong, and they were. When the puritans were wrong, they were wrong because they violated the law of God. You see, the witch trials were not a result of trying to keep the law of God. The witch trials were a result of violating the law of God. They actually allowed accused witches to testify against each other. It's the most flagrant violation of the law of God. An accused cannot. His testimony is not credible in court, especially against another person. And so they would lighten the punishment of one accused witch if she would testify against somebody else accused to be a witch. Well, now, look, if you know very well that you're going to suffer terribly if you don't cooperate with the state, you can come up with a lot of good stories about other people, can't you? Now, we don't in any sense take pride. The puritans allowed that to happen only a very few times, I'll remind you. But nevertheless, when it did happen, we don't endorse it. And we don't endorse it because we have an objective moral standard by which we can say it's wrong. And so the witch trials turn out historically not to be the embarrassment most people say they are. That's made to be such a huge thing. And it wasn't at all characteristic of the puritans that they burned witches. Secondly, when they did do wrong in the conviction of witches, then I believe that we can say they were wrong on the basis of the standard of God's law. They weren't wrong because they followed God's law, but just because they didn't follow it. And then finally, I think this will not be acceptable to our secular age. I happen to think it's a sign of love for your neighbor that you want to see which is executed. You just read a little bit on witchcraft and you find out apart from all the stories and Ouija boards and all the childish nonsense we can make of the supernatural, witchcraft is a wicked, terrible thing. And in the middle Ages, people executed witches because they were a threat to the society. I mean, witches brought evil omens upon people. They had people killed. I mean, when a witch actually has demonic powers, I tell you, it is out of love towards your neighbor that you believe that witch should be put to death.

One of the answers that I got was that I could understand the puritans being somewhat confused because I actually believe that some of those girls may actually have had demonic problems.

Oh yeah.

First of all, the puritans were not a stupid people. And these trolls that they went into must have been very convincingly, you know, come Cotton Mather was around that period of time and then he was a brain.

Cotton Mather tells us of a time he went into a room and a girl was being made to levitate up to the ceiling and that five or six ministers could not pull her down. Now we're not talking about just some kind of sensationalism. We're talking about level headed men seeing the power of Satan manifest in that room.

I might say that these people.

Probably.

Had their armor down and they should not have ever listened to a demon telling them what to do.

That's right. They made their mistakes. But the fact of the matter is that the execution of witches is something that's for the good of society. And it's only done properly when it's done according to the law of God and not contrary to the law of God. After all, the standard for us today is not the Puritans. They may be an encouragement to us, but they're not our standard. The standard is the law of God. And when the law condemns what the Puritans did, then we're against the Puritans too.

I would just think about. I believe it's the next to the last issue of the Journal of Christian Reconstruction. There's a rather thorough article on the Salem Witch Institution.

Yes, very good one. Discussing the pros and cons of the whole situation. I forget now. Oh yeah. My guess is the people criticizing would not be all that concerned that the burning was not the man, or they would say that you were concerned with witches at all. Show superstitious mindset. Superstitious mindset. And that you believe in religious persecution.

It did make the point that we're talking about a half a dozen people.

Yeah, Just a handful, as I recall. That's right. And it's not at all characteristic of the Puritans. It was during one short period in the Puritan period in our history, and only with half a dozen witches at that.

It's also interesting to note that they accepted one of the girls into. Back into the church when she made a confession that she had been deluded by Satan.

Yeah. We're not. We're not seeing people who are of such an intolerant mindset that they didn't care for the conversion of people and the restoration to the church.