Dr Greg Bahnsen - Theonomy and it's Critics: Law Categorization Arguments (Part 3)

Okay, I'm taking up a new approach to the criticism of my book Theonomy and Christian Ethics tonight. And this approach has to do with the categorization of the law. I'm going to be looking at arguments having to do with the categories of the law, and there'll be a few different approaches to this categorization issue that we want to consider, but that's the general rubric under which all the rest of this is going to fall. Okay? In Aiken Taylor's series of articles against my book, Theonomy and Christian Ethics.

He.

Offers some horrid examples of what happens if you follow the theonomic principle today. He says, now, if we really believe that the whole Old Testament law is binding, then we'd have to disqualify a person from coming to church or joining the church if his testicles have been crushed in an accident, if some girl's been born to an illicit union between the biological parents, she'd be disqualified from church membership and so forth. Now, in responding to this, I pointed out the ceremonial character of these laws, and then Dr. Taylor made this comment in response, saying that it was really unfair for me to disqualify some of his horrid examples as being ceremonial in character, because he said that is engaging in the very picking and choosing which theonomy condemns in others. You know, in my book, Theonomy and Christian Ethics, I say we cannot take a smorgasbord approach to the law. We can't just take the ones we like and throw out the ones we dislike. And so when Taylor sees me disqualifying some of his examples as being ceremonial, he says, I'm doing the very thing that I condemn in others by picking and choosing that this criticism is fair or accurate. Because as it turns out, when I condemn a smorgasbord approach to the law, I mean picking and choosing on the basis of just what suits your fancy. That is, if this seems like a good idea to you, you do it. And if it doesn't, then you don't just smorgasbord on the basis of taste, if you will, on what strikes you as a good idea. But when I disqualify some of his examples as ceremonial, I am saying the Bible teaches that these laws have such and such a character. It's not that I find it embarrassing to do these things today. It's that the Bible teaches me that they aren't to be followed today in the same way as they were in the Old Testament. And so the difference is between A biblically based disqualification of a literal following of a law and a disqualification based upon a your own desires or wisdom or what you think is easy or convenient today. Consequently, I think his saying that I don't have the right to categorize the law into moral and ceremonial is not a fair or well grounded criticism. Okay, I'm going to move on. I'm going through the writers. By the way, this has not been systematically organized according to topic. I've given you the general rubric, but I'm going through the various writers now as I've listed these things for you tonight in the presbytery report from Evangel Presbytery that I referred to last time we were together. And you have copies of.

I read it this week.

Okay. One of the arguments raised in that report is that the distinctiveness of the decalogue must be more appreciated by theonomy over against the judicial applications of the decalogue. That the distinctiveness, the unique character of the decalogue must be more appreciated. Well, okay. I'm always open to appreciating more and more insights into biblical doctrine and its implications. But what exactly are we being asked to do when it's asked that we more appreciate the distinctiveness of the decalogue? Is that to say that the distinctiveness of the decalogue has been noted in the book, but we wish that you would have talked more about that? That. Is this a pedagogical remark? Is it a statement to the effect that we wish you would have dwelt on that point more in the book? Now, if it is, all I can say is that may be true. It may have been helpful for some people to dwell on it more. But given my purposes, I dwelt on the distinctiveness of of the decalogue to the degree I thought was necessary. But as a pedagogical point, it need not detain us in terms of the theological accuracy of my insights. On the other hand, if it's being said we should appreciate the distinctiveness of the decalogue, if we should more appreciate it, meaning there are implications of it that challenge your conclusions that you haven't taken into account, then what we need to do is to see those implications drawn out. You see, it isn't enough to say you should appreciate the distinctiveness of the decalogue, because if you did, you'd see that distinctive character challenges your conclusions. It's one thing to say it and it's another thing to prove it. Alright, I don't believe the distinctiveness of the decalogue in any sense disqualifies what I'm saying in theonomy. But if somebody thinks that it does, then it's incumbent upon them the burden of proof is upon them to show what implications I have overlooked. And now that is what is conspicuously missing in this report. It's very easy to say somebody has not made some consideration central, or somebody has not given due consideration to some point, or somebody has not dwelt on some point, or somebody has overlooked implications of some point. Very easy to say those things. It's another thing to point out what the point given biblical exegesis would imply if it had been seen by the authority. Okay, now the distinctiveness of the Decalogue according to this report is that the Ten Commandments were a unique summary written by God's finger. I agree. I happen to think that the Ten Commandments are exegeted by the case law and therefore the unique summary. Just the permanence of the summary also provides for the permanence of the case laws because the case laws explain what the summary means. It is said that the decalogue has no penalties attached to it. Well, I'm having a hard time understanding that, because if you read the decalogue, penalties are attached to it and rewards in the fifth commandment, if you honor your father and mother, your days will be long upon the land. And by implication, if you don't, they won't. If you take the Lord's name in vain, the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. Consequently, there are penalties and rewards listed in the decalogue. And so I suppose what this means is that no civil penalties are listed in the decalogue. But I can't see how that, how that affects anything. The penalties are still stated by God himself outside the Decalogue for violations of the decalogue itself. Consequently, a proper understanding of the decalogue exegeted by the judicial law is that such a penalty is appropriate. So we see the kind of distinctiveness being spoken of here. For the Decalogue doesn't strike me as really having any bearing upon the truth of my conclusions in the book. Okay, let me move on to another author. Walter Chantry writes to me in response to his material in the Banner of Truth. And my response to it, that there is a clear difference between moral and civil law in the Bible. It ought to be obvious to you that there's a clear difference between these two kinds of laws. My response to that is that there is a clear difference. It's a difference of literary character. However, moral law is a general summary in nature, and civil law is an application of the general summary. So there is a difference. But if he means there's a difference in moral perpetuity, then I want to challenge what he's saying, because the fact that the civil law is given in terms of detailed illustration and the moral law in terms of general precept doesn't mean that the civil law somehow doesn't last as long as the moral law. After all, you would think the definition of the moral law, the application of it, the exegesis of it, if you want to put it that way, ought to be as binding and perpetual as the law that it's explaining. If the explanation passes away when the law being explained doesn't, then you've got a very odd situation indeed, logically speaking. Okay, let's take another author, another approach. A graduate student at Grace Theological Seminary and a dedicated dispensationalist in his outlook, makes that clear in the paper he wrote. Sent me a copy of a graduate paper he did on theonomy for a class up there, Quite a lengthy piece. And in it, one of his approaches to criticizing me is to say that the Mosaic Law is itself indivisible. You cannot draw distinctions within the law itself. You cannot categorize the Mosaic Law into moral, ceremonial, and civil or judicial, as many reformed writers want to do. Consequently, if the New Testament teaches that we're free from the law in any sense, we must be free from the law totally. You understand the argument. The New Testament says we are not under law. New Testament says we don't have to keep the ceremonial law, what's called that. And since the law is a unit, since it is indivisible, that means we are free from the entire Mosaic Law. Well, my answer is kind of a yes and no situation. Good news, bad news. The good news is you're right. The Mosaic Law is indivisible. You don't find the Mosaic Law given in chunks. You know, here's the moral chunk and now here's the judicial chunk in the ceremonial. It is all mixed together, sure enough. And so he's right. The bad news is that does not imply that you can't draw distinctions. You see, I think the man here is overlooking that there can be a distinction, even though there's not a separation. So you don't have the judicial, moral, ceremonial separated into different categories in the Old Testament, but you can certainly draw distinctions. You will not find a doctrine of justification in the New Testament. If you mean by that now we're reading along in Paul, and Paul says, and now for the doctrine of justification. Okay, now we're done with that. The doctrine of sanctification. No, you'll find Paul's feelings about justification and sanctification mixed together throughout the New Testament. But does that mean we can't distinguish between these doctrines? I don't think it does. I think you can draw a distinction even when you don't have a literary separation. And consequently, I don't think this argument of the dispensationalist is a very strong one. In fact, I don't think it's a valid one when he gets through some. Okay, I'm going to move on to the review of my book by Laird Harris in the Covenant Seminary publication Presbyterian. In that Dr. Harris points out that there is a real problem in distant laws into the various categories. He says it's difficult sometimes when you look at an Old Testament law to know its character. Is it ceremonial or moral? Is there a little bit of both? My answer to that is, he's absolutely right, it is difficult. Does that mean it's wrong to do it? As far as I know, there are many New Testament doctrines that are difficult, too. You look at 1 Corinthians 1:30, and is Paul speaking of sanctification or justification there? Well, authors, commentators have differed on that. That doesn't mean that somehow it's wrong to draw the distinction just because sometimes it's. You have awkward cases for it. Okay, let me move on. Is that the bottom line? Yes. That isn't to say that he doesn't have other objections on other scores that we'll be dealing with in other evenings together, but on this particular question of catching his objection is it's difficult. Yeah. And my feeling is, well, that's right, it's difficult, but it doesn't mean it oughtn't to be done. God asks us to do difficult things. Sometimes we still should do it. Okay. More, I think significant is the criticism made both by Dr. Klein and old Palmer Robertson in his tapes on theonomy that says that this attempt to categorize the laws into moral, ceremonial and civilization is somewhat artificial because all of the laws of the Old Testament had a redemptive and cultic dimension to them. All of the laws of the Old Testament had a redemptive and cultic dimension to them. The implication of this line of thought is, since we see that the ceremonial law is no longer literally observed today because of its ceremonial character, if all of the laws partake of that ceremonial character, all of the laws of must have a flexible application. Today we must sit loose to the idea that many of these laws aren't to be applied in a literal sense at all today. That is what we say about the ceremonial law. To rephrase, the argument can be said about all the laws. My response to that is that this is a very, very unclear line of argumentation. Theologically very unclear. In the first place, I'm not sure that all the laws of the Old Testament can justly be said to have a ceremonial character about them. For you see, when I say that a law has a ceremonial character, I mean that it is part of the restorative system for sinners. God gives a law that says you shall not steal. That has nothing to do with getting right with God. That tells you why it is we need to get right with God because we have violated his justice. His justice says don't steal. We have stolen things. We have not been honest. Consequently, we are condemned as sinners in his sight. That law does not in any sense show us the way of salvation, does not show us what saved living means and that sort of thing. What it indicates is what the standard of God always has been for all men saved or unsaved. But the restorative laws of the Old Testament, the ceremonial laws of the Old Testament are much different. Here you have laws that are foreshadowings of the person and work of Jesus Christ, foreshadowings of the redemptive economy to be brought with the coming of the Savior. You have laws about sacrifice, laws about the temple, laws about separation from the world, things which God's people must observe because of the redemptive character of these laws. These are laws given because we have violated the other kind of law, because we have violated the laws of God's justice. We need laws having to do with the way of redemption. And so I don't believe it can justly be said that all the laws of the Old Testament have to do with the way of salvation. They don't all have to do with the redemptive economy of Jesus Christ. Secondly, if this approach is taken, I think we have to point out that Dr. Klein and Dr. Robertson both prove far too much, don't they? If all the laws of the Old Testament have this ritualistic, cultic or redemptive character to them, if all of the laws do, then what they say about getting rid of the penal sanctions must be said also about the Ten Commandments, because all of the laws of the Old Testament have this character. But you see clearly they're not going to accept that. Nobody would accept that thou shalt not commit adultery is somehow suspended today are inoperative today. Consequently, their argument, if it proves anything distinct, proves far too much. And so for both these reasons, I think that this line of attack on the categorization of the law must be dismissed. Okay. Lewis Nielsen, in his book on theonomy and Christian ethics, God's Law and Christian Behavior, a critique of Bahnsen and Rushduni. There's another one who says the decalogue is more essential than the other laws and is given a unique handling. But we've already answered that criticism. We agree that the law is essential, the decalogue is essential, and it is given a unique handling. But I don't see how that distinguishes it as somehow uniquely perpetual.

I'm not familiar with that last publication. Tell us a little bit about it.

I didn't bring a copy of it. It's a booklet put out by the Mac Publishing Company in Cherry Hill. And the fellow who wrote this book on all millennialism, Lewis Nielsen, he's a lawyer, has written a book of theonomy and Christian ethics. I know for sure that I told you about it. Yeah, you've forgotten. I guess. It's a small thing, only about 60 some pages, but it's put out in booklet form and we dealt with it last time we were together. Remember, I talked about theological approaches and that Nielsen's approach is let's take away all the passages that say support theonomy and ask whether we get the impression that theonomy is supported elsewhere in the Bible. And lo and behold, when you remove the evidence, you don't find much evidence for theonomy. It's a strange line of argument, really. But I've got a copy.

Yes, I remember now. I've seen it. Just that I don't have a copy, but I do remember seeing it.

Yes.

And Carl, in fact, I read it sometime.

Yeah, I think you probably have. It came out while we were in Philadelphia. That's right. Went over and got an early copy.

That's right.

Okay. Where was I now? Okay. Nielsen argues at one point that the moral law antedated the fall of man, but the penal sanctions did not. And consequently, the moral law is more perpetual than the penal sanctions. The moral law is to be found before Adam fell into sin. The penal sanctions cannot be found before Adam fell into sin. Consequently, there's a difference, possibly in the perpetuity of the two. A couple of difficulties with this argument. In the first place, the moral law is not found before Adam fell into sin. I happen to believe, because of the character of God, that the law revealed to Adam in the garden encompass the same form of life, the same duties of life that were given to Moses on Mount Sinai. But you cannot exegetically prove that. In fact, that is, interestingly enough, one of the lines of argument from the Neo Nomians in the Reformed Baptist camp is just that the Westminster Confession is wrong to say that the same law given to Moses is the law given to Adam. They say, where do you get the basis for that? Well, I think there is theologically a basis for it. But I can't take you to the first three chapters of Genesis and show all the Ten Commandments in there. You can show a couple of them, you can show the Sabbath commandment, you can show, in a sense, thou shalt not commit adultery because of the one man, one wife situation, but you can't show all the Ten Commandments. And so Nielsen's wrong in his premise, I think, because for his argument to mean anything, he's got to mean you can't show the penal sanctions explicitly, but you can't show the decalogue explicitly either. So what does that prove? Proves nothing at all. However, I also think I've already told you, I think the decalogue was implicit in what Adam was taught before his fall. I also think the penal sanctions were implicit in that, because the penal sanctions don't mean you'll actually have to use them. The penal sanctions can simply be saying upon such occasion that the law is violated. This is the way society will have to deal with it, because Adam didn't live in a society where that would be an option. There would be no explicit mention of them. But that isn't to say that that isn't what the appropriate thing would be if there were a society that lived in a sinful situation. So I don't believe that the distinction here is a very clear one in Nielsen's argumentation. Okay. He has a similar argument to the effect that the penal sanctions are not pre Sinaitic, whereas the moral law is. That is, the decalogue is. And I would repeat the same line of argument, the same way in which he shows the decalogue to have been prior to Sinai. I think we can show the penal sanctions to be prior to Sinai as well. After all, Sodom was historically judged for homosexuality prior to the giving of the law at Sinai. So we do see this historical judgment, and we do see that Cain knew his just retribution would be death at the hands of another man. We do see the Noah situation with death for murderers. And so I do believe the penal sanctions are given in seed form even as the moral law is given, if you will, the decalogue is given in seed form.

Can you have a significant moral law without penal sanctions?

I think Nielsen would probably say it makes no difference whether you consider it significant or not. As a matter of fact, there weren't penal sanctions. Maybe they didn't become socially significant until Moses, but they were still significant because men could be judged for all eternity on the basis of that. I think that's what he would answer to your line of attack.

Greg. It's interesting this line of reasoning was taken by John Sins Baptist Reformation Review and one of the letters to the editor in the following issue said this. If Romans 1 and 2 means anything, it means that in Romans 1 the man without the Bible has the moral law of God and the man with the Bible in Romans chapter two certainly has the Mosaic Law of God. And that Romans 1 and 2 is showing us the complete continuity between cosmic law, Mosaic law and Messianic law. That Romans 1 and 2 is making that point that there is no escape to the man without the Bibles 1, the man with the Bible, Romans 2 because Cosmos, Moses and Messiah is the same gnomic continuum.

That's right.

I thought it was an eloquent little piece.

It was. It was from Don Garlington. It was a classmate of mine at Westminster, by the way, and I think he's absolutely right on that. The response from Zens is very interesting. Zens does not agree that the cosmic law had the same requirements as the Mosaic Law. He disagrees with Garlington on drawing the continuum between Moses as given to all men in creation. Zen believes that the Gentiles are sinful according to a law which is different from the Mosaic Law. That's right. Law of conscience, which he doesn't think has Mosaic content to it. I think that's very hard to sustain in light of Paul's illustrations in Romans 1, all violations of the Mosaic Law. And he concludes the chapter by saying that these knowing the ordinance of God, that those who commit such things are worthy of death, the ordinance of God, clearly the Mosaic ordinance. And so I don't agree with Zands, but I think we should note that is what he responded. He didn't want to buy that continuum. But if you buy the continuum, then everything we say tonight, in one sense you've given an answer to every criticism we're raising tonight. Romans 1 and 2 show us that the Jew and the Gentile Live according to the same are judged by the same standard. The difference between Jew and Gentile is the way God revealed the standard to them. And I think that's right.

The reason I remember that letter to the editor was because two years before my first Westminster lecture, that was my major point on a relationship between law and grace. I have three points in that. Cosmic law, Mosaic law, Messianic law. This was two years before I gave the Theonomy one.

Wow.

The first of the Worcester lectures.

I wonder if this person who wrote in was aware of your lectures.

I doubt it. I doubt it.

Oh, that's very interesting.

It's funny. Years ago, long before I knew anything about theonomy, Romans 1 and 2 completely convinced me that continuum continuity is the matrix. Then we talk about discontinuity. One has to proceed that way.

See, you were an implicit theonomist from.

The start, but his whole argument to the Gentiles and to his sophisticated detractors among the Jews was this whole argument.

I agree, and that's very good. Okay, I'm going to turn now to a lengthy paper written by Dr. Paul Fowler at Reformed Theological Seminary entitled God's Law Free from A Critique of Theonomy and Christian Ethics. We've heard that. We've heard that term legalism thrown about in this debate from time to time, haven't we? Okay. And it's. What is it, about a hundred pages? As I recall, if you take all the appendices and so forth, double spaced for the most part. A lengthy critique of my book, Theonomy and Christian Ethics. And I'll be looking at this in some detail when we come to our discussion of exegetical arguments against theonomy. But there is a lengthy diatribe in this booklet against my point of view that says that we must draw a sharp distinction between the judicial law and the moral law of God because separate treatment is given to the decalogue in the Old Testament. Well, we've already said now three times over. That's right. Separate, unique treatments given to the decalogue. But just because the judicial law defines the decalogue, you have to agree that what is true of the decalogue is true of the definition of the decalogue as well. The judicial laws. Now, Dr. Fowler argues that the moral law in our confessions, in our own point of view, should be seen as the decalogue only. Should be seen as the decalogue only. The moral law is only the Ten Commandments. And the judicial law, he says, was given primarily for Israel in its historical context. The Judicial law is only for Israel. The decalogue is moral and perpetual. He says we are to apply the principle of the Ten Commandments today, but not the specific judicial laws. So we apply the principle of the Ten Commandments today, but not the specific judicial laws. Now that reminds me of a charge made by Walter Chantry in the Banner of Truth that theonomy is legalistic because it binds on the conscience of men laws that God never intended to be binding for New Testament Christians. That charge is repeated by Donald Dunkerley and quoted in fact, from Chantry. That charge is repeated by the dispensational student that wrote his graduate paper on this subject that I've told you about. And that charge is repeated and quoted again by Fowler in his booklet. What I'm getting at is that this is a persistent charge against theonomy, that it is legalistic in the sense that it binds on the conscience laws that God never intended to be bound on the Christian's conscience. And in every case, the author of the charge of legalism means that we ought not to bind of God's people anything beyond the decalogue. That same point of view is found in the Lectures in Systematic Theology by DeWitt at Reformed Theological Seminary, as found in the polemical paper by Robert Strong against theonomy as it was distributed in the South a year and a half ago. And it's found in the polemical paper by Donald Dunkerley as well. So over and over and over and over and over again, we are hearing that that the decalogue can be said to be binding, but not the judicial law. And to say that the judicial law is binding today beyond the decalogue, is to be legalistic in the sense of telling God's people they are bound to something to which they are not in fact bound. Well, let's first talk about the charge of legalism. Legalism historically and most commonly has been taken to be the doctrine that man is saved by keeping the law. Legalism means men save themselves by the works of the law, by the merit that they accrue through obedience. Now it turns out the Chantry, in answering a letter that I sent to the Banner of Truth, grants that I do not teach this doctrine. And the other people who have quoted him have been WILLING to say Dr. Bonson does not believe we are saved by the law. I'm glad, you know, they'd be honest enough to admit that. But they want to use the derisive term legalism anyway, in what is a less customary sense for holding that Men have to keep laws that God doesn't think they have to keep. Well, now, if I teach that we have to keep laws which God tells us we aren't to keep, I'll be glad to take the derisive term legalism as applying to me. But now, before we do that, however, before. Before we engage in name calling and putting people down with this kind of linguistic slur, wouldn't it be nice to have it proven that God doesn't want us to keep these laws? See, it's one thing to claim it, it's another thing to show it. And I don't mind them making the claim if what they mean is, this is the program of what I'm going to try to demonstrate over the next few pages that God never intended for these laws to be kept. But that's what's conspicuously lacking in the people who are charging me with legalism. They don't show that God doesn't intend these laws to be kept. They assume these laws are not to be kept. And because they assume the laws are not to be kept, if I say they are, then I'm being legalistic. Could it not just be that they are, in fact antinomian? Now, that wouldn't be a nice thing to say. That's a derisive theological slur, isn't it? But to say that they are antinomian would not be fair, because an antinomian, you see, dismisses the law without sufficient biblical warrant. I think these people believe there is sufficient biblical warrant. The difficulty is they are not producing it. I also happen to think through the study that I've given over these years of the subject, that they will not be able to give it. However, I don't want to say that they are unwilling, that they don't think that it's there. All I want to say is they are not producing it. And until they produce it or what appears to be warrant for these claims, they ought not to be using the language of legalism in this way. Let's go on. Now, however, beyond the linguistic or the labeling element of all this, to look at the claim itself that we are to keep the decalogue today, but not the judicial law. We are to keep the Ten Commandments, but not the specific judicial cases. Well, there's any number of ways, I think, to reduce this to absurdity. The first way is by looking at the function of the decalogue in the Old Testament. The decalogue in the Old Testament shows how the. Excuse me, the judicial law in the Old Testament shows How the decalogue was to be applied to specific cases in specific illustrative situations. What we are to do Now One of the things the decalogue teaches is that we are not to commit adultery. What does not committing adultery mean when it comes to the possibility of having sexual relations with animals? It is not a very polite subject in a mixed audience, I realize, but this is the sort of thing that happens and the Bible says something about it. In the Old Testament, it says any person caught engaged in bestiality should be put to death. Now that is one way in which the commandment you shall not commit adultery, the commandment calling for sexual purity, is defined in the Old Testament. Do the people who tell us that we are to observe the decalogue today, but not the judicial law, mean that it is now moral or at least not condemned to engage in bestiality? Stop and think about it. Let's say that they do say that. They say, well, that's right, it would have been wrong in Israel to have sexual relations with animals, but it's all right today. Well, if they say that, I think there's something of reductio ad absurdum just from the conscience of any Christian. He knows very well there's something wrong when you say that God doesn't condemn sexual relations with animals. But let's say they claim that we keep the judicial laws only to the degree that they're repeated in the New Testament. Well now search your memory for a minute here and tell me, does the New Testament condemn bestiality? I'm not a perfect by any means or infallible Bible scholar, but to my reading thus far, I can't find anything in the New Testament that condemns bestiality. The issue just doesn't arise. And by the way, that's the key. The issue doesn't arise. And that's why it's not mentioned. Not because it's not binding, but just because the issue doesn't come within the scope of the occasion of New Testament moral instruction. But now, even more going further than the fact that this is just a reductio ad absurdum, to think that we don't have to keep that judicial law. If it's true that a person has to keep the decalogue today, but doesn't have to keep the defining explanation of the decalogue in the judicial law today, is it true that he is keeping the same decalogue today? Let's say that we have the same moral standard in Old Testament and New Testament in the form of the decalogue that the decalogue is requiring the same thing today as it was requiring in the Old Testament. Let's say it's the same decalogue. Proceed on that assumption. Now, if somebody says that when you come up against a particular situation and this decalogue is applied to that situation, and we are to do X in the Old Testament, but when you come across an identical situation in terms of all the morally relevant features in the New Testament, and the same decalogue is applied, and we come out with non X or Y or something different must be done or is prohibited, then you know that even if you understand any elementary algebra, there's something screwy about that. If you have the same standard, the same situation, but a different application, when it comes down to what we actually have to do in the concrete case, then there is something that really is different. Either the situation is different, but that, according to our illustration, is not being granted, or as a matter of fact, the decalogue is different. The commandment you shall not kill, the commandment you shall not commit adultery, the commandment you shall not steal is being understood differently in the Old Testament than it is in the New. But to say those things is simply to say that we are not keeping the decalogue in the Old Testament form today at all. What am I getting at? Let me put it very simply. The bottom line is if you are to keep the decalogue today, but you don't have to keep the judicial law, as a matter of fact, you've changed the content of the decalogue, so you're not really keeping the decalogue today either. If somebody says, well, it's morally permissible to engage in sexual relations with animals, I'm saying that he's violating the decalogue and not just the judicial law, as he's violating what the decalogue was getting at all along.

Address yourself to the last objection that bestiality is still immoral, but no longer capital. Address yourself to that, please.

Okay, let's say somebody says, well, it's true that bestiality is wrong today, but it's no longer a capital offense, something that the state has to deal with.

The penalty has been mutated.

Okay, now my. Does this person. Then grant. Let me make sure I'm addressing the same thing you're thinking about. Is this person granting we have to keep the judicial law as the definition of the decalogue today?

No, he's one who believes that judicials went with the ceremonials.

Well, then how does he know the bestiality is wrong.

Because it is a moral extension of the seventh commandment.

Oh, that's what I'm saying. If it's a moral extension of the seventh commandment, then it's binding today. Just because the seventh commandment is binding today.

Why must the specific penalty be binding?

Well, we'll get to that in just a minute. Is it wrong to have sexual relations with animals?

He would say yes, because that's a.

Moral extension of the seventh commandment.

That's correct. Okay.

Now, is it not also an extension of the seventh commandment that we should execute those who commit bestiality?

I would say no because of the typological nature of Israel's penalties, For example?

Well, is it not true that Israel's law was typological as well, of the perfect kingdom of God?

In other words, your approach is not merely typological?

My approach would be that. But I think more importantly, my approach would be to say that you're engaged in special pleading. The very argument you use to keep bestiality as an immoral act today is the same argument I may use to show that it is a capital crime today. And the argument that you would use to say it's not a capital crime today is an argument that I may use to show that it's not immoral today. That you can't pick and choose like this.

But he has not shown why the penalty should cease.

That's right. He has not given us a wedge by which we can theologically unprecedented principle draw a distinction between the immorality of it and the proper civil approach to it. If it was right to execute those who engaged in bestiality in the old Testament, why is it wrong today to do so? And I'm suggesting that any reason he gives for why it's wrong today but right then can also show that it's all right to commit bestiality today. And therefore, I continue to use consistency and a reductio out of survival against my argument, against my opponents on that point. But now let me show you an interesting thing Dr. Fowler attempts to do. It's almost. It's almost something that makes you chuckle when you look at it. Dr. Fowler recognizes this difficulty, I think implicitly. And so he says at one point, how does he put this? I want to get it just right, okay? He says that the moral law is the deca law, and yet we must keep the moral law with a larger scope today. We must keep the decalogue with a larger scope today than just apparently the explicit things mentioned in the decalogue. Does this really help him out? Using my counter illustration, he could say, well, there is a larger scope to the decalogue today because here we see the application of sexual purity to the relationship between men and animals. Alright, now what I want to know is he's changed the terminology. He doesn't want to keep the judicial law, but he does want to expand the scope of the decalogue. How is that different from keeping the judicial laws except that you've got a different label for it now, now it's called keeping the enlarged scope of the decalogue. But don't you see, my whole point is that the decalogue, that the judicial law is the enlarged scope of the decalogue, that the judicial law, to use Dr. Kikasola's phrase, is the moral extension of the decalogue. Now if Dr. Fowler means that by keeping the enlarged scope we must then do these things which are required by the decalogue by application and extension, then I maintain he's simply saying we must follow the decalogue. Or, and this is where you see the real rub comes theologically with this scholar. Does he mean that there's another definition for the decalogue that extends its scope today? Does he mean that something outside of the Bible extends the application of the decalogue for us today? Now you see, that would be not just a mistake of philosophical silliness, that is to say holding your opponent's position but opposing it with a different label. You know, I don't keep the judicial law. I keep just the scope of the decalogue in enlarged form. That, you see, would just be trivial, wouldn't it? Not even worth mentioning. Or is he really saying at heart that we have a new definition of the decalogue today, that the scope is enlarged according to Christian conscience in the leading of the spirit or something like that? Well now you will not find those words and I don't want to misrepresent him, but I suggest that if his criticism has any teeth at all, that that is the way it has teeth, that that's the way it has significance. Because he means the scope of the decalogue is understood in a way other than the judicial law. But now if he means that, if he means that, and I don't want to pin it on him, I want to be fair here. But if he means that, then I want to know why it is of God. God has once defined the application of the decalogue, why God would find it necessary to redefine it today. And if God finds it necessary to take this a step further to redefine it today. Why would he leave it in the hands of sinful people like us to redefine it? Do you get the impression when you look at the Christian church as a whole today, do you get the impression when you consider what Christians themselves do in their own lives, so they are somehow objective, impartial, morally pure and infallible when it comes to applying the general precepts of the decalogue to the instances of their lives where they have to apply it? No. You find all sorts of controversies and arguments and rationalizations and impurities, don't you? So is it true that God wants to redefine the decalogue, and is it true that if he wants to redefine it that he would leave it in our own hands to do so? Well, I'm going to add one more thing, and then we'll close here tonight. Dr. Fowler says at one point that theonomy is legalistic, because if we have to keep the judicial laws of the Old Testament, then it is going to be very hard for us to figure out the application these laws to concrete situations, and we're going to have to depend upon extra scriptural reason, and that will make us just like the Jews. Putting a Hedge around the Law here's how the argument let's say that you believe you have to have a railing around the roof of your house today. Now, if it's true that we have to keep that judicial law today, Dr. Fowler says, then we're going to get involved in quibbles about how the roof has to be before you put a railing around it. We have to keep that judicial law today, Dr. Fowler says, then we're going to get involved in quibbles about how high the roof has to be before you put a railing around it, what kind of railing it has to be, how soon you have to put the railing up. You have to start asking all these detailed questions of application. And the minute you start asking those questions, those little picky, detailed questions, you're becoming just like the Old Testament Jews, the Pharisees who were legalistic. The implication being that if we don't have to worry about the judicial law, we can define the application of the decalogue ourselves and not get involved in those picky details. Anybody who's done a little elementary mathematics can see the fallacy of this argument. See, Dr. Fowler says, if we have to put a railing around the roof of our house, then we're going to have to ask 10 more questions. How high? Just where how soon? What kind? All these sorts of things. I want to suggest to you that if we don't have the judicial law saying we have to put a railing around the roof of our house, we not only have to ask those 10 questions, when all is said and done, we have to ask a lot more questions too. Like what does it mean, thou shalt not kill? When I'm building my house, does that mean I have to put a railing there? Do I have to put a railing there? And on my porch, do I have to put a fence around my swimming pool? You see, instead of 10 questions about the application of the railing, now you have 20 questions about where does God expect me to protect human life and in what ways does he expect me to do so? You see, Dr. Fowler doesn't escape asking these questions by cutting off the judicial law. He just makes it more legalistic, quote unquote, by forcing us to ask even more questions. What does God mean, after all, when he says, protect human life? Now, that's my answer to his criticism that if we keep the judicial law, we're going to get tied down to details. You're going to get tied down to details one way or another. It's just a question of whether you'll receive graciously and thankfully from God's hand the fact that he has defined the decalogue for you. Or has God now left it to us to define the decalogue? You're on your own. Figure out what it means not to kill you. Figure out what sexual purity means today in the midst of this fallen world in which you now live. Well, I praise God. He hasn't left it to us to figure out what it means not to kill or not to commit adultery. I'm glad he's given us the details. I think that's a sign of his love for us because he loves us in every detail of our lives that he shows us how to live. But now I want to come back to the original point, and that's that Dr. Fowler says we keep the decalogue today, but in large scope, but we don't keep the law. The illustration he gives of the legalism involved in keeping the judicial law, the alleged legalism, does seem to suggest to me that he doesn't want God to define the decalogue according to the judicial law of the Old Testament. And that in some sense, in our Christian maturity, led by the Spirit, today in our Christian liberty, we define the application and scope of the decalogue. Now, I don't want to pin that on Him But I think this line of criticism at least suggests that. And to the degree that it suggests, say that this is in fact legalism, ironically enough, true legalism, going beyond the word of God and engaging in will worship, letting man tell us what our moral obligations really shall be. That is what the Pharisees were prone to do. And I praise God, that in that sense theonomy keeps us from genuine legalism. Ironically enough, it's the one protection against going too far that we say sola scriptura after we've said tota scriptura. Okay, questions?

Do we have time for that?

Sure, go ahead.

I'd like to make a couple observations. And I asked the question. The first one I'd like to make before I forget it, is on this point of the blessed specificity of judicial law in the Old Testament. A couple years ago I invited Yara Friedan, formerly the American Board of Missions to the Jews, then of Khihilit Mashiach in Cincinnati, to offer a course in the Mishnah and the Talmud and Jesus the Messiah at the Ashland Seminary. It was a superb course. And about halfway through the course our students were reading Danby's translation of the Mishnah. And it's very, very wearisome, you know. And about halfway through the course, someone expressed a sentiment that seemed to sum up the class. How wretched all of these deductions the Jews drew from the loss and the rail. Freedom objected to that. Now here's a born again Christian who is not bound by Talmud, but he blessed the Jews at that point and he said, my dear brother in the Lord, God did give the commandments, did he not? Yes. God said, you have to live by them, didn't he? And by them you shall live. Yes, he says. Well, I would say that's pretty serious. In other words, the Mishnah, the good side of the Mishnah, not the will work and not the soteric implications of it, but the sanctuary tried that. God made this commandment. Now you go figure it out. How many other 10 questions you may ask. But God has answered the main one. Here's one way it applies, and that answers a hundred other questions. So the blessed side of the Mishnah is they took God's commandments seriously and Jesus was better at that even than they. He did not diminish that aspect. And every now and then I'll get a blue book and an examination on the question of law and grace, that we ought to obey the Lord because we love him and not because we have to. And I always cross out the word. But and I always write in the margin, duty, sweet duty, duty. Because unless I'm mistaken in my perception of God, it is just as honorable to feel duty as it is to feel affection.

It is in fact recognizing the lordship of God when you recognize your duty, isn't it?

Yes. To me, duty is one of the sweetest words in Scripture. I've come to realize there's no tension between loving him and feeling ought toward him. In fact, I see them almost indistinguishable at times.

John says in First John 5, 3, that love is keeping his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome. I think that's the saddest thing in all of this controversy over the law of God is that so many writers portray the law of God as somehow a big pain right where you sit. And it's just the opposite. It's something that ought to be in the heart of man. And by it we ought to govern our steps.

I urge evangelicals to read the missionaries and to see what the social blessing that is in there. I mean, without talking about sociological chaos, we're talking about order and design and real care for your neighbor. I'd like to make a second observation, if I may continue to speak. And that is that we've been talking about a big hermeneutical problem, the distinction between moral, ceremonial and civil. On the one hand, we say it is true in the normal parlance, in the normal way of speaking in the Torah, the Lord does not overtly distinguish between moral, ceremonial and civil. They're constantly intertwined and convoluted. On the other hand, we say moral law. The Ten Commandments is clearly the moral law. So it's not only possible to make the distinction, but God clearly does make it. Moses is self consciously distinguishing moral from other laws. That's an observation. I would like to just say in the defense of the fact that we can make categories is the Ten Commandments is self consciously doing that also. You have the offices of prophet, priest and king in the Old Testament. That is roughly moral, prophetic, ceremonial and civil. Because the prophet largely concerns himself with moral righteousness, the priests with ceremonial righteousness, and the king with judicial righteousness. That would also defend it. Now, I'd like to ask a question. What would you say to this? How would you respond to this statement? All right. We grant the point that not only can moral law be conceptually distinguished from judicial and civil. We not only grant the point that Moses, by the inspiration of God overtly did that in the Ten Commandments, but We would note that it is the moral, not the ceremonial, uncivil, that he distinguished. Therefore, we conclude, says this line of thinking, that just as the ceremonial ceased, so the judicial ceased with the ceremonial. That is to say, the judicial and the ceremony are those that are not distinguished apart from the moral. The whole question, the Westminster Confession, Chapter 19 and other confessions is this. Does judicial like the moral have perpetuity, or does the judicial, like the ceremonial, largely cease? Now, unfortunately, from my perspective, the way it is worded in chapter 19, it states it in the negative and it says the judicials have ceased apart from the general equity thereof, which is required. One would assume from that wording. Now, the larger catechism would go the other way, but one would assume from that wording that God did have moral on one hand and he kind of lumped together or failed to distinguish ceremonial and judicial. And that would kind of suggest that judicial did not go the way of moral, but did go the way of ceremonial. Would you kind of respond to that line of thinking?

Well, in terms of the confession, the writing of Chapter 19, Section 4, if I say that that's unsatisfactory, I want it understood that it's unsatisfactory only in the sense that, that we are debating it hotly today and that if it had been written another way, then it would have been a little bit clearer to the disputants here today. But you see, somebody on the other side ought to say the same thing. They'd say, well, now look, theonomists are making something of this section that we don't want them to make of it. So if it had been written a little more clearly from our perspective, it'd make it clear that the judicial law is not binding. So if you mean that they were unclear in the sense that today we are arguing over the interpretation of it, I have to grant that we are arguing over the interpretation to that degree. It's unclear. However, I don't think in terms of the context of the day, there should be any question what they meant, although they say that these laws have expired because the polity of Israel has expired, because that nation has expired. It's no longer the Constitution or the civil law of any nation. Nevertheless, the general equity of those laws is required of all of us. And that is what Puritans were saying in the century before and after the Confession. And consequently, I think the theonomists are right in their interpretation of it. But I think the clincher to this argument is that in the very next chapter of the confession on Christian liberty. The confession states the degree to which the liberty of the Christian today is enlarged vis a vis the law of God. It says that we have been released from the yoke of the ceremonial law to which the Jewish church was subject to period. It does not go on to say we have been released from the judicial law. You see, chapter 20 is precisely the chapter that answers the question that is troubling us today. How much of the law is no longer literally binding today? And the chapter answers only the ceremonial law. Now, the word only is not there, so I want to be careful. It mentions ceremonial law and only ceremonial law. It does not mention judicial law. Consequently, the statement about the perpetual general equity of the judicial law in chapter 19, along with the interpretation given in the larger catechism, where those laws are cited pervasively, I think nails down very clearly that they held the same view, or essentially the same view that is being put forth in theonomy.

How would you respond to the decalogue observation? Let's go back to Exodus. God kind of like lumped together judicial, ceremonial, but he did isolate the moral. Therefore, judicial didn't go the way of moral, it went the way of ceremonial in the New Testament. How would you respond to that?

I'd say that's not the way the New Testament treats the judicial law. And consequently the inference is mistaken. For you see, the New Testament has definite statements about every jot and tittle of the Old Testament being binding and not just a certain section of it. Secondly, I'd point out the New Testament refers to judicial laws as binding today. James cites the laws about not oppressing your workers, for instance, and he makes it very clear that's binding on rich employers today. And so the New Testament use of the Old Testament judicials points out that they are still binding in the same way that the immoral law is. Moreover, I'd say that the difference between moral and judicial law must be recognized to be the difference between general precept and judgmental application, that a judgment is the mishpatim in the Old Testament. Here's how you draw an application, a particular application of these general precepts. And if the application defines the precepts, you can't have one without the other. You can't have it all right today to commit bestiality, but wrong to commit adultery, if adultery is defined in one way anyway, according to the prohibition of bestiality in the Old Testament. And so I'd say literarily in terms of inductive use and in terms of general statement of the New Testament. It's impossible to draw the distinction that is attempted here.

And lastly, would you accept my defense of the way the Lord did it? I believe that the Lord lumped together judicial and ceremonial because I do see them both as. As sharing the fact that they are explications of the moral law. Do you accept my hypothesis that there is a moral nucleus behind not only every judicial law, but every ceremonial law? Are you willing to go that far? I personally can find in the ceremonies that I've studied a moral nucleus. I admit I'm straining at points. Could you.

I can think of some interpretations of that metaphor, moral nucleus that I would accept. Yes. For instance, the moral. Excuse me, the ceremonial law is used. The language of the ceremonial law is used in the New Testament to teach moral duties. For instance, purge out the old leaven. Avoid the garment spotted by the flesh. Don't be unequally yoked together. These sorts of things show us the purity required of us. Let us offer the sacrifices of praise. We still offer sacrifices today. Offer your body a living sacrifice. Okay, so there may have been implicit in the ceremonial law of the Old Testament a general call for purity and dedication to the Lord in addition to the redemptive focus and restorative focus of those laws. And I'd be willing to accept that.

Not only that, I would say there is not one ceremonial law that is unhygienic. Not one of them breaks the commandment thou shalt not kill. Everything that God does has a built in health or a built in life giving force to it.

Well, that may be. I don't think that's presented as the key feature in the Old Testament, but.

I think it's a concomitant blessing. But it is a.

A side bed.

It's an inference that I cannot resist. I just do not find anything unhygienic in the Bible. I would say even by most of our modern standards.

That may be. Yeah, that may be.

So God has lumped judicial and the ceremonial as expressions of the moral. They really share that commonality.

Well, I think you have to distinguish between the expression of the moral law found in the judicial and the expression implicit in the ceremonial. And that the judicial is taking the moral and applying it to specific cases, whereas the ceremonial is going beyond the decalogue and giving us laws how to be restored because we violated the decalogue. But in that they also show us the need for purity and utter dedication to God and that sort of thing. And so the extension of the. There's a different kind of extension of the moral Law, I should say, but.

The commonality, it appears to me, is there.

I agree that the decalogue is a summary of the covenant and all that. Yeah, it gets distinct treatment in the Old Testament. But we must remember the distinct treatment doesn't in any sense prejudice the perpetuity of the judicial law. And the New Testament proves that point. After all, part of the law was, you shall not diminish this law in the slightest. Okay? And so if the law says we can't take anything away from it, we do not have the right to draw the inference that the difference between decalogue and judicial law means you can somehow kind of turn your nose up or ignore the judicial law.

I'd like to make one comment on Fowler's response. The last thing you mentioned out of Fowler, if I'm understanding him correctly, he's saying we wouldn't want to, for instance, I think his example was get involved with debating all the details of a ruling because that would make us like these horrible, nasty Pharisees that were nitpicking and very detailed in their observation of the law. But as I understand the New Testament, that is maybe the one feature of the Pharisees that Jesus compromised. Is that right? In other words, he's saying, okay, here they are trying to be really careful in their observation of the tithe.

He said, this is great.

Now there are other problems with the Pharisees. One thing the Fowler says is undesirable. It seems to be the one thing that Jesus points out and the only.

Time he compliments, yeah, Jesus condemns their outwardness. They don't really take to heart the requirements of the law. They are really externalistic. He condemns their hypocrisy. He condemns their attempt to save themselves their self righteousness by the law. But when Jesus talks about their failure to see the law in its proper perspective, you notice he compliments that they do keep the details. He says, this you ought to have done without leaving the other undone. And so the very thing that Jesus is willing to say the Pharisees were right about is what, In a sense, Dr. Fowler is trying to get us to do away with. In a sense, that's really a good insight, I think. Any other questions before we stop tonight? I hope this is turning out to be profitable to you to see how others see the issue of the law and how we must make response. And it's forcing you to consider more realistically your commitment to the law of God as well as helping us to understand more in depth what God requires of us.

Today I can just think of an addendum I did this week reading the Oak Park Presbytery Evangel Presbytery.

It came from the Oak Park Church. Church on Oak Park Avenue.

In the light of the controversy that's been around, I was extremely impressed of the tone of the document. I thought it was very conciliatory, very much a caring document. And I even missed several of the details. I was so swept up by the caring nature of it. I just want to say I'm rejoicing in that.

Right. And it's all the more dramatic in light of the year previous to when that. It was in June. I think that report was made the previous June is where the very atmosphere was. Theonomists are not welcome here. They sent a letter out to the various seminaries saying that these men would not be acceptable in that presbytery. And so it's all the more dramatic that the Lord should have given this graciousness and open mindedness after a year's study.

Something I would like us to do if we can, and certainly not tonight. But one of the questions that is raised there is, if I may use the word, this Bahn Senianism. Is this Binsenianism a contradiction of our confession of Chapter 19? The Judicial Law has ceased. Apart from the general equity issues, that question has to be faced. There is ambiguity there. Would you like to sometime in the next few weeks give us a hunch? I'm sure that's all it would be. As to why the confession is worded in the negative there, can you give us a historical. I know you're not an expert in this area, but can you give us a historical rationale as to why, in the light of the larger catechism and the reverence in chapter 20 that you speak of, why they would put that in the negative? Do you have.

Well, I don't think it is in the negative. I think that. I think what it says is it's expired and yet the general equity is required. There's a negative and a positive.

They don't say about that, about the moral. They do say that about the ceremonial. It has expired. It has expired. Apart from.

Actually it says it's been abrogated. As I recall, there's. That's been a question in my mind is why they use expired in one case and abrogated in the other. If they meant ceremonial, it says abrogated. Yeah, and I'm wondering. I have wondered. This is only speculation. I have no theory on it. But why is it that if they meant abrogated as My opponents say in Section four they used the word expired instead. I think that goes along with the idea that the Jewish nation has expired. It's passed away as a historical entity, and so it's lost code passes away. And we are bound by the laws of the various nations to which we belong. But nevertheless, the general equity of those laws should be found throughout the various law codes of Christian nations.

So what you're implying is the historical obviousness of the demise of the ethnocentricity that was now among the nations.

Yeah, I think that expired expression maybe is made a lot more of by my opponents than ought to be. But I don't want to take that away from them. Obviously, that's the leg they want to stand on. And to try to deny it in that way would not be found acceptable to them. But I tend to really think in my own heart that they used the word expired because the Jewish nation expired. Expired with the state of that people.

That's impressive. I for one, was not aware that abrogated was used. In fact, now I'm wondering why they would use abrogated. Jotuntil, you think they would have sought some other word that would not linguistically appear to challenge the way Christ phrased it?

Yeah. Although you do have the word abrogated used in Ephesians and maybe in Hebrews, but in Ephesians you have luo, the loosening of the law with respect to the ceremonies. And so I think what we have to say, if we're going to be true to New Testament usage, that it is that the ceremonial law is in one sense not abrogated vis a vis or according to Jesus statement. And yet in another sense it is abrogated. Given Paul's statement. Look at Ephesians 2. I think it's verse 14 and 15 there. The word abrogated I think is found. Well, wait a minute. Is it kataluo there or luo? Do you have your Greek with you tonight?

I have it, yes.

Okay. Why don't you. You can answer that.

What is it? 214.

I believe it is 2. 14 here, I got my bond. Look it up myself. What do you have in the confession, am I right that the word abrogated is used for the ceremonial law, but.

Expired is used all which ceremonial laws are now abrogated.

Yeah, yeah. And the others have expired with the state of Israel.

Yes.

Isn't that right? Now again, I certainly don't want to make a mountain out of a molehill here. I don't know how significant that is, but it is certainly interesting. It's arresting of the attention. Why they used word abrogated in the one case but not in the other. And I think the reason obviously has got to be that they thought the general equity was required. And to say abrogated would give the impression perhaps that you didn't have to pay attention to it.

May I speak now? Ephesians 2:15 is Katar ghetto in his flesh. The enmity which is the law of commandments commanded in the ordinances. Abolishing that to me is more along your lines of disengage.

Yeah, that's what I say in theology.

Has a legal connotation. It has a relevance connotation.

I'm sorry, I've been caught off guard here. I didn't come with this note. There is some place in the New Testament uses abrogate, though, I'm almost sure. Do you have a Greek concordance available? We could find it quickly. I'm sorry for that. But if that's true, you see, what I would want to say is, in one sense abrogate is possible. I mean, is appropriate. In another sense, abrogate is not. And you have to take both these into account. But. But you don't have that set of the judicial or moral law.

A good analogy would be justification by faith, the Pauline way it is used. And then the Jacobean sense, James using it.

That's right.

You must not level them.

That's right. You've got to do justice to the full linguistic scope of the New Testament. Well, I think we've begun to meander a little bit and some of you are going to want to get on and do other things. If you have any questions, I'll wait just a minute more or else we'll.

Stop the confession did say abrogate. You have it there?

Yes, that's right. There is that difference. Expire and abrogate.

And what chapter was that? 19 ceremonial.

19.

19.

19 four says expire. 19 five says abrogate.

Oh, I see. The very next clause.

Okay. Oh, Ross.

We're in something behind all the different objections to theonomy and there is using all these different objections in order to maintain the theme. It seems to me that the judicial laws are not in effect and we really don't really think they ought to be in effect because our way of thinking, they just don't seem right. They just don't seem fair. I mean, we live in a culture.

Where everyone.

A democracy, where we determine what the laws are and we don't impose our morality on others. And we feel that it is right not to impose our morality on others. We even feel it's right not to say that other people are wrong. Now we can say, yeah, they're wrong according to our standards.

Well, we say we believe that, but after all, we believe in imposing our morality on thieves, don't we? We don't say that it's wrong to tell thieves. That's true.

But the general society believes that that's wrong.

Okay. And theonomists say that when the general society thinks that bestiality is wrong, we'll have laws against it.

But isn't that more or less behind it? If all of these judicial laws were in effect in society today, they wouldn't have this.

Oh, that's true. They'd be unenforceable today because the general society is not willing to abide by them. I grant that we have to be realistic in terms of our historical circumstance.

They have a fear of pure culture.

That's right, they do. And what we're saying is that Puritan culture will be the natural outworking of revival. That is, the Great Commission is kept and Christians are. More and more people are becoming Christians and growing in their faith that the natural lot working will be a society that keeps the theonomic principles. We're not talking about imposing them somehow on a society that is unwilling to have them. The society, by its very nature is going to have to be willing to have them or else it won't. Even Israel didn't keep the judicial law, even though it was the law of the land. We are saying that there is an absolute standard. They are responsible to it. But whether they're going to do it in our lifetime is another question altogether. And we're not interested in going and forcing people to do it by the sword. That's right. We're not saying you've got to vote for our laws or else we're going to cut your head off or something. What we are saying is that the judicial law will be kept when Christians have influence and are the salt of the earth. We are to be the salt of the earth. And when we aren't wearing, then we're subject to God's judgment for it. Okay, well, thank you very much. We'll in a couple of weeks try to do this again with another approach to criticism.