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Looking at our world from a theological
perspective. This is the Theology Central
Podcast, making theology central. Good morning, everyone. It is
Friday, May the 28th, 2021. It is currently 1055 a.m. Central Time. Coming to you live
from the middle of nowhere, Texas. Coming to you live from the Sanctuary
of Victory Baptist Church. Coming to you live from behind
this microphone where I am all the time. I feel like I spent
a good portion of my life right here. behind in front of this
microphone. And if you're listening to me
live today, as always, hit the little chat icon on the Spreaker
app. You can say, hello, good afternoon.
You can ask your questions, your thoughts. Thank you. If you did
not hear part one of this, well, please go back and listen as
soon as you can. I think I will get you caught
up and we'll have this all make sense so that you can listen
right now if you're listening live. and I think it will all
make sense. You still need to go back and
listen to part one because there's a lot of things we discussed, all right?
So, here's what we're going to do. I know it's Memorial Day
weekend, so I hope everyone has a great weekend. I know doing
a live broadcast and doing podcasts over the Memorial Day weekend,
probably not the best idea because most likely people are not going
to be listening to that many podcasts over the Memorial Day
weekend. So it will be here whenever you come back, whenever you find
us again, whenever you come back from doing whatever you did Memorial
Day weekend. So if you hear this Tuesday of
next week, well, thank you. You're a little late to the party,
but thank you. Now, whenever you listen to this, thank you
so very much. And feel free to email me at any time. Now, I
know this is somewhat of a controversial issue. Well, you know what? Let
me take that back. This has the potential of being controversial,
but I think if people actually listen to how I'm approaching
this, I'm not being controversial in any way, shape or form. What
we are doing is we're taking, basically, if you listen to part
one, we have two concepts, theonomy and post-millennialism. And according
to the podcast that we are reviewing, critiquing and listening to,
they have stated that Dr. James White from Alpha and Omega
Ministries from Apologia Church in Arizona, that Dr. James White has come out and
has acknowledged that he now holds to theonomy and he holds
to the post-millennial view. I'm not here to argue whether
that is 100% accurate or not accurate. I'm not here to get
into that. What I want to do is use this discussion about
Dr. James White, theonomy, and post-millennialism to get us
to talk about theonomy and post-millennialism. So what we're doing is we're
taking a podcast from, I think it's called The Particular Baptist
Podcast. I found it on the Edify Christian Podcast app. I'm taking
their discussion really just as, because they're offering
their thoughts, they're listening to Dr. James White critiquing
what he's saying, so I'm taking all of that information, bringing
it here so that we can build on it and just see where it takes
us. I'm not really interested in
the controversy about Dr. James White, what he believes
or doesn't believe. That's not the issue here. The issue is
theonomy and post-millennialism. The issue is, as a Christian,
this is really the issue. As a Christian, when you look
at a world that seems to be turning its back on God, abandoning God's
law, rebelling against God, doesn't want anything to do with God,
people are leaving the church in large numbers. It appears
that I would have to look at one of the statistics. I think
there's something about more churches are closing than are
opening or being established, how many people are leaving the
church and no longer attending. All these statistics are showing
that things are going in the wrong direction. Well, when everything's
going in the wrong direction, what should a Christian do? Should
a Christian just focus on, listen to that term, focus on simply
preaching the gospel, discipling people, and living out a Christian
life? Should that be our focus? Or should our focus be on somehow
trying to fight the moral, the cultural decay, the moral decay? I've got to fight losing my voice
here. That would be bad. Losing my voice in the middle
of a live broadcast, that would be bad. Or do we focus on fighting
the moral and cultural decay by seeking to somehow impose
the divine law of God upon society through establishing through
either political means, passing laws, protests, boycotts, and
is that, do we try to establish basically God's kingdom on earth
as Christians? Do we try to establish that through
the imposition of divine law upon society? Now, clearly, my
viewpoint is very simple. I believe things are gonna get
worse and worse and worse and worse. Things are not going to
get better. I do not believe as Christians we can bring about
the kingdom of God on earth in a practical sense. The spiritual
kingdom of God is present now, and people become a part of that
kingdom by repentance and faith. When God brings them to salvation,
when God opens their eyes, regenerates them, brings them to faith and
repentance, when God does that, they transfer them from the kingdom
of darkness into the kingdom of light, and they become a part
of that kingdom of God. And then I believe if there is
a future kingdom, like if you believe in a future kingdom,
let's say a millennial kingdom, a literal millennial kingdom,
that will be future and God will establish that future literal
kingdom on earth himself. I don't believe that's our job.
I don't believe things are going to get better and better and
better. And there's going to be some golden era of Christian
dominance that ushers in the kingdom of God on earth. I don't
believe that. I reject that view completely. I know others do. So it really
comes down to these issues. Theonomy, in fact, let me just
go back and give you some basic of the definitions of theonomy.
Let me just give you some of the basics here. Theonomy comes
from theos, God, nomos, law. God's law, basically. Theonomy
is the idea of God's law. It's a hypothetical Christian
form of government in which society is ruled by divine law. Theonomists
hold that divine law, particularly the judicial laws of the Old
Testament, should be observed by modern societies. The precise
definition of theonomy is the starting presumption that the
Old Covenant judicial laws given to Israel have not been abrogated,
therefore all civil governments are morally obligated to enforce
them, including the specific penalties. And furthermore, that
all civil government must refrain from coercion in areas where
Scripture has not prescribed their intervention. This is called
the regulative principle of the state. All right, now, I went
through that really quick. We could take all of that part,
but the basic idea, for a theonomy or for someone who's a theonomist
or holds to theonomy, they want the society to be ruled by divine
laws, and this is very important, and this is very important, And
that the governments are morally obligated to enforce divine law,
including the specific penalties. So you go to the Old Testament,
you find the Old Testament law, the government should impose
it, and then impose those exact same penalties. Now, they obviously
don't believe in all of that law being imposed, because they
would usually reject the ceremonial law, saying that that was fulfilled
in Christ, but then they want to hold to somehow the moral
civil law, not just being for Israel, being for the government
today, and it should be imposed, and Christians want to somehow
re-establish that, then that will bring in a golden era of
Christian dominance, and then bring in the kingdom of God.
That's the post-millennial aspect of it. I'm not saying all, I
cannot, I'm not gonna be dogmatic about this. I will, I'm gonna
just say. Theonomy is one thing, post-millennialism
is another. How often they meet, do they
always meet, I'm not gonna get into that debate as of right
now. But the point is, the podcast that we are getting ready to
go back and listen to, they have stated that it came out that
Dr. James White now holds to theonomy and a post-millennialist,
and they say it's controversial within reform circles. I'm not
here to get into that controversy. I just wanna talk about theonomy.
I want to talk about post-millennialism, and I want to listen to them
critique Dr. James White, hear Dr. James White give his view,
and then from all of that, see how far we take this series and
build our own discussion on it, all right? So this is just starting
as a starting point. And our last broadcast, we made
it to like, what? 14 minutes and 36 seconds into
the podcast that we are reviewing. We're not going to back it up
in any way, shape or form. We're not going to back it up.
So we're just going to jump in here in the middle. And that's
what we're going to do. All right. So here we go. Hopefully
all of that makes sense. I know that was a quick review,
but I wanted that's nine minutes. So that's as quick as I can make
it. So are you ready? Here we go. And then, um, Dr. White also
brought up the fact that, um, currently in the current culture
of the West, you have things such as, um, a father in Canada,
who's, was he in jail or he's at least not allowed to call
his, um, uh, his son by, um, his proper name and proper pronouns.
And that's true with the way the culture currently is. A lot
of evil is permitted. But having a Christian or Christianized
culture doesn't prevent persecution. No. Did medieval Europe, you
could at least say, had a much more judicial law that was much more
based on the Bible than current Western culture is. But did that
prevent people like Fritz Erba from being thrown in a hole for
eight years? For those who don't know, Fritz
Erba was an Anabaptist minister that, because he would refuse
to give up his views on baptism, was thrown in a castle hole for
eight years until he died. Let's stop right here. This is
very important. Let me state it again. If you want to establish
some kind of theonomy, some kind of idea of God's law, divine
law being ruling and reigning, who gets to decide which, like
for example, if God's divine law, does that include punishment
against theological error? Does that involve the punishment
of theological error? If that also involves the punishment
of theological error, well then which Christian's view is going
to dominate the divine law that's ruling the government? Right?
In other words, if it's Catholic, then Catholics would say divine
law has to rule and that part of that divine law is the punishment
against false teachers and against heresy. And guess what? All you
Protestants? you're all false teachers, you're
heretics, you're going to be punished and you're going to
be killed. You see what happens when you try to establish divine
law like that? Which Christian group gets to establish the divine
law? The Baptist? The Church of Christ? The Charismatics? The Catholics?
The Greek Orthodox? Who gets to do it? How about
we just do this? Everyone has freedom! Civil government
rules and reign, and I just want the ability to preach the gospel.
But these are questions you have to get to with theonomy, right?
I mean, like, there's an example where you go back into church
history, whenever you merge church and state, someone, usually some
other Christian group, gets persecuted and killed. This is the way it
always works. But hey, we're trying to impose
divine law, your concept of divine law. And then you're like, here's
the divine law. And those are the heretics. Those
are the false teachers. Those are the false prophets.
And according to divine law, they should be punished and killed.
I don't ever want to go back to that. That's frightening.
And I'm not saying all theonomists would go that far, but man, once
you start down the path of wanting to establish divine law as the
law of the land, it almost always involves the punishment of those
you deem to be heretics. I bring this up because Dr. White
likes to use him as an example. But ultimately, it didn't help
him. It didn't help, say, Felix Mons, another Anabaptist who
is martyred for being a Baptist, or a Credo Baptist, at least. then move on to Puritan New England,
right? If there were any place to be
a reflection of the civil law of God applied to a culture,
you could probably say, well, Puritan New England would be
a good place to look. And yet you have people like
Roger Williams, again another Baptist, driven out from there.
Just because you have a civil law, it won't protect you against
persecution. Because ultimately, as the person
who did the tweet alluded to, that doesn't change people's
hearts. The law was never meant to change people's hearts. It
was never meant to make people righteous. Certainly, it can
prevent unrighteous things from happening, but you're not going
to be able to avoid it by putting the civil law or trying to make
the current laws that we have in our nation reflect the laws
given to the nation of Israel in the Mosaic Covenant. Yep,
and you even see this with the particular Baptists. They refused
to capitulate to the Church of England. Some of them were put
to death. Some of them were thrown in prison.
They were spied upon. There was persecution there.
And that was really a theocracy to some extent. You had a church-state
mixture. You had the state enforcing religious
practices, but it did not prevent the persecution of God's people.
And Jesus makes it very clear that it's going to be normative
for the Christian church to be persecuted. They're going to
hate you. They're going to... Stop right there. And if Jesus
said it's the normative thing, the church is going to be persecuted
and Christians are going to be hated, if that's the normative
way it's going to work, then clearly that's not a theonomy. That's not divine law ruling
and reigning. That would be No, the world is
going to be ruled and reigned by a system that hates Christianity. That's the normative system.
That's the way it works. The church is going to be the
small minority, the light in the middle of the darkness, the
salt in a world, and it's going to be hated and it's going to
be persecuted. And what is our job? Do everything we can to
submit to government as much as humanly possible, live peaceably
with all men as much as possible, but at the same time, preach
the gospel In fact, three things. I will say four things. This
is the fourfold mission, I think. To preach or teach evangelism,
baptize, bring into the church, disciple, and equip saints so
they're no longer children tossed to and fro with every wind of
doctrine. It's evangelism, baptism, bringing into the church, discipleship,
and the equipping of the saints, which would have an overlap with
discipleship. That's what we're called to do,
not running around going, we're gonna fight this cultural issue,
and we're gonna fight this cultural issue, and we're gonna fight
this, and we're gonna try to get people elected, and we're gonna
try to overthrow this, and we're gonna call for a recall for this
governor, and we're gonna run around, and we're gonna do this,
and we're gonna talk about elections, and how elections were stolen,
and we're gonna find ourselves in conspiracy theories, and we're
gonna, All of that is chasing the wind. You're never going
to catch it, and even if you caught it, you can't do anything
with it. It's going to slip right through your hands. What's tangible
is preaching the gospel. And I just think that's a very
important point. If Jesus says you're going to
be hated, why would you be hated? If what he's telling you to do
is go establish a theonomy, to establish God's divine law as
the law of the land, then you wouldn't be hated. You would
only be aided until you accomplished the theonomy, until you accomplished
the divine law ruling and reigning over everything. It's never going
to happen. And anytime it does happen, quote
unquote, people are still persecuted. People are still killed. Why?
Because whose Christianity is establishing the divine law?
Whose Christianity? Whose interpretation of Christianity?
Catholics? Again, you've got places where,
hey, we're establishing basically a theonomy here in this area,
whether it was in New England, wherever. Oh, your Christianity
is not accepted here, you're gonna either be punished, killed,
or we're gonna run you out of the town. Well, wow, what a great...
Gotta love that, isn't that wonderful the way that works? And a lot
of times it was Baptists who were being killed. So yeah, and
so if a Presbyterian was to establish a theonomy, they would probably
go after the Baptists because of our views on not baptizing
children. I would refuse to have my child
baptized. I'm like, no, I don't care if
the Presbyterians are in charge. No, I'm not following, I'm not
gonna listen to you because it goes against scripture. So yeah,
all right, here we go. speak out against you. These
things we see in Canada with these brothers who are being
arrested, put in prison because they refuse to stop religious
worship due to the COVID regulations. That is a form of persecution.
Stop right there. Okay, now I don't know if they're
referring to a different case, but in some of the cases in Canada,
they were not being arrested for refusing to stop religious
services. They were being arrested for
refusing to conduct religious services according to the guidelines
established, which was what? 20% capacity, wear a mask, social
distancing, whatever it was. They could have all the religious
services they want. They could have 10, 20, 30, 40,
50, 60, 100. They could do 24-hour-a-day church
services. You just have to maintain the
number of people. I'm so tired of that story being
told that they were persecuted for not stopping religious services.
Now, maybe there were some cases where they were are arrested
for not stopping. But in the cases I'm aware of,
they were arrested not because they didn't stop, it's because
they continued not following the guidelines. Let's just make
that clear. They could have church services,
mask, certain percentage of capacity in the room, social distancing.
They could do that. You could be having church Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. You
could be having church at eight in the morning, at eight o'clock
at night. You could be having church at one in the afternoon,
at one in the morning. You could be having church all
the time. So let's just keep that in mind.
I just, that narrative keeps getting pushed. Now there may
be cases where they came in and said, nope, no religious services
at all. Okay, now we can talk about that.
But in other cases, because we've talked about at least one of
the cases in Canada, I read you the rules and the rules were
very simple and straightforward. And there were churches all around
that one church where the person ends up getting arrested that
were conducting services and had zero problems. No issues,
and they continue to have services. When that pastor went to prison,
those other churches continue to have services. Why? Because
they just simply follow the guidelines. Now, you may not feel like the
guidelines are fair. You may feel like it wasn't right for
the government to impose those restrictions. But the point was,
just state it accurately. not arrested for not stopping
services, arrested for not conducting services according to the way
that they were told to do so. Now, you can argue that's not
right. I'm not here to argue about that. Just saying, whenever
you state the situation, state it accurately and correctly.
Now, they may be referring to a situation different. They may
be. I just want to make sure we understand that each situation
where someone was arrested, you have to look at exactly what
occurred and describe it in accurate language. because they are wanting
to continue to worship God in the way He is prescribed and
not let the state overstep those bounds. And so there is persecution. It's not going to be taken away
just because we institute God's law in the land. That doesn't
mean there shouldn't be aspects of God's law instituted in the
land, as we've said already, but it's not going to solve the
problem. We're not going to be able to squash all these problems
that we have in society just by simply changing the government
that we live around. It's just not going to happen.
We are to continue to live as peaceable Christians, submitting
in as much as it's consistent with God's commandments to the
government, living peaceable and quiet lives and telling others
the gospel as God gives us opportunity to. That is our job. And we can
certainly influence the government. We can call for the end of abortion
because they are to be upholding order and punishing those who
are evil. But we're also not to become consumed with changing
our government to the point where we miss where is our real calling.
Is it here? Are we establishing a kingdom
on this earth? Or are we looking forward to a coming kingdom in
Jesus Christ? that is really where we have
to push. And unfortunately, our theonomic
brothers seem to miss that. And you have to understand that
theonomy and reconstructionism is ultimately tied to an eschatological
worldview. It is. I don't know how you can
be a theonomist and not be a post-millennialist because they don't, they're not
consistent with one another. You have to really, if you're
going to be consistent, you have to hold to both. Alright, so
there, there, that's, that's, I was trying to avoid saying
that because I cannot be, I don't, I've tried to be very careful
being dogmatic about something that I don't feel that I have
complete knowledge about, but I agree, at least from the outside,
I don't know how you can be a theonomist, hold to theonomy, and not hold
to post-millennial. I think you have to have both.
And I'll tell you right out, I am not post-millennial. I am
not any way, day, shape, or form. Could I ever embrace post-millennialism?
I think it's a broken system. So if post-millennialism is connected
to theonomy, and if you hold to theonomy, you have to be post-millennial.
I can never hold to theonomy because I do not hold to post-millennialism. Things are not gonna get better.
We're not going to subject the world to basically a golden age
of Christian dominance. It's not going to happen. Things
are not going to get better. They're going to get worse and
they're going to get worse. The church is going to become
completely apostate. It's going to get worse and worse.
I want to say the church at large is going to become completely
apostate. Just look at what's happening. That's where we're headed. So
I, yeah, it's insane. You can sit there and yell and
scream and go stand in front of abortion clinic and yell and
scream and try to pass laws and pass laws. You go fight it all. It's a battle of futility. It's
not going to happen. It's just not. All right, let's
continue. They're not playing a lot of Dr. James White. They
only played like a few minutes, and they're 19 minutes into this,
and they've not done a lot of actually listening to Dr. James
White. I'm kind of interested to hear Dr. James White give
the other side here as why we're listening to this. Here we go.
Because they go hand in hand, although there might be theonomists
who aren't post-millennials and vice versa. But yeah, so we have
to be careful to make these proper distinctions. All right, so he
did acknowledge there may be those who hold to theonomy who
are not post-millennialist, but I guess he seems to say that
that's an inconsistent perspective. All right, so, but I could not,
look, I can't be a post-millennialist, that's just guaranteed. There's
no way, I just don't see it, I don't get it, don't understand
it, just no way. Theonomy I'm willing to at least
consider, but if theonomy releads you to post-millennialism, then
I cannot become a theonomy because I can't get around the post-millennial
view, I just can't. when we're talking about God's
law and how Christians are to relate to the state. I would push back a little on
that. I can understand how somebody could be post-millennial without
being theonomic. It's just a different type of
post-millennialism. Because all we see in the modern day is a
lot of the theonomic post mill. So that version, I completely
understand why it's consistent. But more of the pietistic, Postmills
would not necessarily have to be theonomic theonomic. Although
I will agree that to be a theonomist it almost requires postmillennialism
Mmm, okay Because otherwise, what are you? Well, I don't know. Yeah That general light of nature
thing ain't working too good because here's the problem That
nature needs to be understood in light of God's revelation
as to who man is. We now live in a society that
has secularized to the point where you have a majority of
people who view us as ugly bags of mostly water. As stardust. And those people, again, are
suppressing the truth that they already know through God's law
written on their hearts. As fizzing chemicals, whatever other terminology
you want to use. All right, just to me, put this
all back together in case you missed part one. Dr. James White is arguing that the
law of nature, God's law written in nature, God's law that's just
kind of there, that general kind of revelation concept, it's not
working. It's not sufficient. In other
words, it's not working to stop the moral decay and the cultural
decay around us. So therefore we need something
else. And his solution is not the preaching of the gospel.
If he's going with theonomy, which it appears that's where
he's going, then you need to then impose God's divine law
upon that society because just simply the law of nature is not
cutting it. Well, I don't think the New Testament
has ever caused the church to try to fix the cultural demise
other than simply preaching the gospel. That's what we're called
to do. I don't get all the cultural
battles that Christians engage in. I don't get it. What do you
hope to accomplish? Hey, we're going to impose divine
law. So that means, look, no more
movies that takes God's name in vain. We're going to stop
artistic freedom. We're going to stop freedom in
music. And if you make these kind of
movies or music, you're going to be punished. You're going
to be condemned. You're going to be thrown in prison. You can do
that all day. But that's not saving anyone. In fact, you're going to create
a bitterness against the gospel, because you're forcing them to
live according to God's divine law. So when he says it's not
working, he's saying, and I agree that that doesn't ultimately
work, because the Bible says that they're going to always
repress the law written on their hearts. They're going to push
it down. They're going to fight against it. and they're gonna have a
downward spiral. That's where society goes, a
downward spiral. But our job is to preach the
gospel. It's the power of God unto salvation. That's what we
are to do. We're not to fight it on a cultural level. I don't
know why Christians get into all these cultural battles. I
don't get it. What do you hope to accomplish?
Force lost people to live like they're saved? What does that
accomplish? It didn't do much for Israel,
did it? By the way, I preached a sermon Sunday night. And it
was a tough sermon. It wasn't a fun sermon. It's
not a happy, clappy sermon. It's not a, I feel so much better
about myself sermon. I don't think anybody felt very
good about themselves over that sermon. But I would direct you
to it if you have been thinking about what foundational work you can
be doing to try to be prepared to deal with horrible, persecution in the future. Especially
persecution where you would be separated from other believers
and from everybody. Because they're doing that to
believers in China. Isolating them. That's what communists
do. That's what we did in the Stasi
prisons. They're doing it in China. And if you can't see that
there are many people in our society and in our government
today that would say it's best for the public health that we
help these people by re-educating them, then you're missing it. Because that's what they're gonna
do. So at this point, I would want to ask, okay, so what's
the solution to that? Because the solution in my mind
is preach the gospel, that they would turn from their sin and
be saved. It's not, well, we need to institute a culture based
on God's law. Yeah. Yeah. That's not the answer. Right. Yeah. Not only that, if
the culture is persecuting you and going to do all these horrible
things and we're going to be isolated, thrown in prison, and all these
warning signs that people are keep warning us that it's coming
and we're going to be all locked up, how do you fight against
that from a theonomy point of view? How are you going to impose
divine law upon a society that is persecuting you? Do you take
up arms? What do you do? Do you fight
a war? Do you take guns? I mean, what do you do? How are
you going to impose it? Hey, you're persecuting us. I
want you to know that you're wrong. God's law, that's what
you should be following, and we're going to fight you, and
we're going to impose God's law upon you reprobates. I mean,
how does it even work in a theonomy system? How are you going to
impose it if they're persecuting you? Are you talking an actual
war, an actual physical altercation so that you overcome and then
rule and reign? I don't know what the solution
would be. Certainly to some extent part
of it, but not going to solve the problem. That shouldn't be
the first thing we think of when we are thinking about persecution,
right? Yeah. It shouldn't be the first
response. First response should be, we
should seek to teach them the gospel. And even, you know, a
lot of this, a lot of this stuff came, from the Constantine era,
right? Before this, and Mark Knoll,
in his book, Turning Points, it's a book on church history
and different events in church history. He talks about this,
that before, for the first three centuries of the church, there
was this pilgrimage mindset, right? We're living in this world,
we're not of this world, and we're looking forward to what's
to come. It was after Constantine, mixed church and state, that
you started to have this mindset that the church and state must
go together, There's this emphasis on the here and now with regards
to government and law and how the church's relation to the
state is to really play in. Now let me just again state my
position. I 1 billion percent oppose the
merging of church and state. When church and state merges,
people die. I hold to the view that we are
pilgrims and strangers here. This is not our home. We are to live out our Christian
faith here, but my citizenship is in heaven. I am to preach
the gospel, be salt and be light. And that, but that the way my
job is, is again, evangelism, baptism, bringing them into the
church. discipleship and equipping, not
trying to fight the cultural decay through the merging of
church and state and trying to overcome the state's rejection
of divine law to the point that then I can impose divine law
upon the state and then the state imposes divine law upon all of
its citizens. I reject that completely from
a biblical ground, philosophical, every way. I completely reject
it. Completely, completely, completely
reject it. Before that, the church was just
living, at least generally speaking, they were living with a pilgrimage
mindset. We're looking forward to what's
coming, we're not of this world, we live as Christians quiet in
this world. So I think that's important to
point out as well. Anyway, I dealt with that Sunday
night, Anthropology at Church, so you can find that on their
YouTube channel while it's still there. And I gave five foundations of
things to work on, five things you can focus upon in the darkness,
in your solitude, if you are isolated as a believer, to attempt
to stay strong when someone's attempting to break your faith.
And it's something I've thought about. And every time I talk
to my fellow pastors and stuff, they've thought about it too.
And so I addressed it. Sometimes I address stuff that
isn't a whole lot of fun to address, but there you go. Okay, anyway,
so as people are recognizing that the church's ceasefire with
culture has not worked, we need to have a word from God. I would like to know what he
means by church's ceasefire with culture. I don't, if he's talking about
in the sense of his, in light of his theonomic worldview, I
think that's not a very good argument because if a church
is preaching the gospel and we're engaging the culture in that
sense, then you're obviously not ceasing fire with culture.
We're seeking real ultimate change with culture through the gospel
of Jesus Christ. So I would like more clarification
on what he means by that, but I think he's probably going with,
you know, not engaging the worldview that the scripture gives with
the culture, and not necessarily just the gospel. Yeah, I don't
get that either. Like, what do you mean, you know,
the church's ceasefire with culture? I don't care to fight with culture
about anything other than to preach the gospel. Now, I will
stand against, now, when I say I don't care about fighting culture,
let me make it very clear. I will stand against some of
the things culture believes and what it does, but I'm not trying
to get the culture to live like Christians. This is not a perfect
example, but let me give you an example. When I was a teenager,
the rock band Poison was playing at the Taylor County Coliseum.
Now, there's a part of me that wanted to go to the concert,
but I thought, well, there's going to be all these kids lined
up in front of the Coliseum because back then it was general admission.
If you don't remember how that works, you bought your ticket
and it just gave you the ability to get inside the building where
you stood or where you decided to find a seat. That was up to
where you were in line. If you were up in front, you
could choose wherever you wanted to stand or sit. If you were
at the back of the line, then who knows? No guaranteed seat,
so guess what? No guaranteed seat, so guess
what? No guaranteed place. In other words, you were guaranteed
to get into the building and have some place to stand or some
place to sit, but which seat was not on your ticket? Like,
hey, you're gonna be on row two, seat three. Some of you may remember
this, some of you may not. Okay, but so as a result of general
admission concerts, you always got to the concert, like, I mean,
literally, like, I would get to the concerts, you know, Noon,
one o'clock in the afternoon, two in the afternoon, and the
concert, the doors wouldn't even open to six or seven at night.
And why did you want to be there all of those hours so that you
could get in and pick where you wanted to sit? Because if not,
it was crazy. Well, a lot of times it led to
a lot of bad things, people trying to rush in, people getting, you
know, trampled and dying, a horrible thing. I think it was in Ohio
where it happened, a Who concert, it was horrible. But the point
is, people got there in line and had no place to go. So I'm
like, okay, well, all these teenagers are gonna be standing in line.
This'll be a great chance to go and try to hand out tracks
or present the gospel to them, just talk to them about religious
things and fine. So we get there and we're gonna
start talking to people. And the next thing you know,
we have a news team saying, hey guys, what are y'all doing? We're
like, well, we're out here to witness. Oh, you're here protesting
the concert? No, we're not protesting the concert. Oh, you're here
condemning rock and roll? No, we're not here condemning
rock and roll. Oh, do you think the band is satanic? What are
you talking about? We don't care about the music.
We're not here to protest the music. I'm not here to fight
the evils of rock and roll. I'm not here to condemn music.
I'm not here in any way, shape, or form. I'm just here to talk
to the kids about spiritual matters, handing them a track if they
want to talk. If they don't, we're going to leave them alone. We're
not going to bother them. You know, maybe offer them a Bible.
And that's it, we're just gonna move on. We're not gonna bother
them. We're not here to protest. We're
not walk around going, you know, poison is a bad group. But see,
they viewed that we're there for a cultural fight. I'm like,
no, we're not there for a cultural fight. We're not. These are human
beings creating the image of God, who are many cases are not
Christians, are not saved, and we wanna present the gospel to
them. It's not about fighting about music or rock and roll
or cultural battles. That's the difference. I'm not
there to fight cultural battles. I'm not there to overcome that.
Now, I may have to stand against what the culture is teaching.
I may have to say that we disagree with it, that we're wrong. I
may have to say, I believe homosexuality is a sin and culture may not
like that. So in that sense, I haven't declared
a I haven't declared a ceasefire with culture, but I'm not gonna
be running around fighting cultural battles going, oh, I gotta get
this person elected, we gotta do this, we gotta impose this
law, we need this bill, we need to do this, we need to, I'm not
there fighting those cultural wars trying to overcome the culture
through political force. I don't wanna overcome the culture
through political force. If I'm gonna overcome anyone
in culture, it's through the preaching of the gospel. Very
different approach. So when he says a ceasefire with
culture, yeah, what does he mean by that? so so all right let's
continue to a society that has completely
lost its collective mind and certainly its way and so the
question of theonomy is unfortunately has been inappropriately um framed 30 years ago Man, I wish I had this. I need
to make a note to myself somehow. I need to track down Bonson's
response to Westminster's book, because I've never seen, I've
never seen Bonson spit flame like he did in this. And basically
what he said was, given what's happening in our society, given
what's happening in regards to homosexuality, and issues like
that, isn't it astonishing that when Westminster Theological
Seminary can finally get all its professors together to write
a book, to take a stand on one issue, it's not about homosexuality,
and it's not about marriage, and it's not about any of those
things, it's against God's law. That's the one thing they can
all get together and say, that's a bad thing. Now, I have a problem
with this. Yeah. So, as mentioned before, the
real issue of this discussion is not whether or not someone
who criticizes a theonomy or a particular view of theonomy
means that they believe God's law is a bad thing. The brothers
at Westminster, I highly doubt when they wrote, and I think
I know what book he's talking about. I think he's talking about
the book, Theonomy, a Reform Critique, which came out in 1990,
which was a critique of Bonson. And I think maybe Gary North,
but I could be wrong, but I think it was at least Bonson. But it
was a critique of theonomy. as this issue of Reconstructionism
was swirling in the church at the time, and Westminster thought
it would be a good idea to do some writing on it, critique
the position. But to say that these brothers had a view of
God's law, they thought it was a bad thing, I think is probably
not true. I mean, Westminster Theological
Seminary is a reformed, confessional, conservative, Christian seminary
who obviously believes God's law applies for the day. I don't
think that they would say that God's law itself was bad. And
this is the distinction that I think our Theonomic brothers,
at least Dr. White here failed to make is
it's not about whether or not God's law is bad, it's about
the application of God's law. How is God's law applied to today? I think it's very important.
If your position is theonomy, then you can't just immediately,
I guess you can, but I think it's just disingenuous to say,
oh, if you don't hold to my view of theonomy, then you hate God's
law. You're opposed to God's law. I mean, what you should
be doing is out there saying we need a divine law imposed
against homosexuals, which I guess results in them being locked
up and I guess what, put to death? I guess that's what you want?
Well, before we start going after homosexuals, how about we go
after fornicators and adulterers? Why don't we go after all the
people in the church? I guess we're going to have them
round up and killed? What do you want? How about maybe people
are like, wait a minute, we're going to deal with homosexuality,
how do we deal with it? Now, theonomy wants to impose
divine law upon society and then bring the punishment with it.
I think that's crazy. So, that doesn't mean I hate
God's law. That just means I don't believe
that that civil law that was imposed upon Israel is to be
imposed upon people today. And I don't believe Jesus ever
called for that or the Apostle Paul or anyone in the New Testament.
They don't seem to say that. Just go preach against that sin. and call people to repentance
and faith. So, I don't believe it means someone hates the law,
I agree with them. It just means that you have,
here's the law, what do you think we should do with this? How should
this law be applied to today? And should these Sabbatarian
laws, should the Sabbath law be instituted as a divine law
and then people are punished for working on, I guess we go
back to a Saturday, so people are punished for violating the
Sabbath? Or, no, that one doesn't count.
See, so you impose which law, who imposes the law, what penalties
are associated with it, and who gets to determine how that works.
And then you just start making a list of all the people who
are getting ready to be put in prison and killed. I guess, I
don't know. But it doesn't mean that someone
hates God's law. It means we may have a difference in opinion
on what to do with God's law. And I think that means that demonstrates
all sides probably try to love God's law. It's like, what do
we do with it? And so I think an argument like
this misses the point of the entire discussion. God's law
is absolutely applicable for today, and every true Christian
who is a Christian believes that we must obey God and submit to
his law. If you don't, you aren't a Christian. John makes this
very clear in 1 John, 1 John 2, 3, by this we know we have
come to know him if we keep his commandments, right? Whoever
says, I know him, but does not keep his commandments is a liar,
and the truth is not in him. Keeping the commandments of God,
keeping God's law is absolutely crucial for the Christian. But
it's how it's applied from the judicial sense, primarily, that's
really where the sticking point is. How is that to be applied
for today? This is where you have to get covenant theology
into the discussion. This is where you have to understand
the tables of the law, right? Or the, as we would hold the
three tables of the law, the moral, the judicial, the ceremonial.
How does that all apply for today? You mean the threefold division
of the law? Yeah, the threefold division
of the law. Yes, yes. So the threefold division of the law.
So that discussion is key to understanding this. And I think
that our brothers who are theonomists tend to broad brush the issue.
It tends to be God's law in general, and then it's not very clear
on what they mean by that. You know, Dr. White, I know he
doesn't believe the ceremonial applies for today. Otherwise
he would be a heretic if he believes that the ceremonial applies for
today in the sense that it did back then. is still, when you're talking
about these other aspects of the law, it's not very clear
on what it's meant. And we see this historically with theonomists
as well. Rush Dooney, who is the father
of theonomy and reconstructionism, was like this as well. He is,
in his introduction on the Institutes of Biblical Law, which I have
right here, He's not very clear on what God's law is. He just
talks about God's law versus antinomianism, but there's not
really a distinction made between the ceremonial, the moral, or
the judicial. It's just God's law in general. And I think that's a problem
because even if you say somewhere else that the ceremonial doesn't
apply for today, But then you just, in your primary writings
on the subject, you talk about God's law, God's law, God's law,
without making those proper restrictions, I think it creates confusion
and can lead to people misunderstanding you, or it could lead to other
implications that are not good. Bonson was known for this, for
not being consistent on this. For instance, he talks about,
I think it was either a lecture he gave or a radio show he was
on or something like that. It's called The Law to Criticize
or Obey. He says, so basically what I'm suggesting, it's the
thesis of my book, and I think it's the way the Bible would
have us break down the commandments of the Old Testament. I'm suggesting
that we have moral and ceremonial law, moral and restorative law,
and that all laws of God are binding today. The substance
of every law given in the Old Testament is binding today. This
is what Jesus teaches in Matthew, the fifth chapter. Jesus says,
every jot and tittle, and he doesn't allow us to draw lines
and seams and divide God's law up into what we'll accept and
what we won't. I do not believe the restorative
law as we're aggregated. So when you read that on its
face, it seems like that Bonson is saying all of God's law, including
the ceremonial applies for today. He's very explicit about that.
But then in other places, he'll make distinctions in God's law. that doesn't seem to be this
all-exhaustive, all-inclusive language that he was using elsewhere.
So even among Bonson, there's this lack of clarity and, quite
frankly, inconsistency in his view of God's law. So this seems
to be a general theme from our Theonomous Brothers. There's
just this lack of clarity with what God's law is, and this broad
brushing of God's law without making the clear distinctions
that need to be made. One, so you're clear on what
you believe, and two, so others don't go down the road that they
shouldn't with regards to God's law. And you know, to be fair,
this is an ongoing issue within American Christianity, and it
has been forever, and it always will be. Here's the Old Testament,
you have all these laws, thou shalt do this, do you don't do
this, don't do this, if you do this, this punishment, this, this,
this, you can't do this, you can't, la, la, la, la, la, and then you
get to the New Testament, and you're like, okay, now what does that
still apply? Okay, well, we always throw out
the ceremonial, okay, so no more animal sacrifices, no more this,
no more that, okay, we throw that out, we say that was all
fulfilled in Christ. Okay, now, now we have two laws, Two more,
and again, divisions of the law, not tables of the law. Divisions
of the law, because when we say tables of the law, we refer to
the Ten Commandments, and the Ten Commandments, we refer to
them as the two tables of the law, one dealing with our relationship
with God and others dealing with their relationship with other
people. threefold division of the law. Again, I would challenge
you to go to the London Baptist Confession of Faith, read its
section on the law. I really would, and I think that'll
give you a broader perspective on this discussion. But this
is a relevant discussion because every one of you who listen to
this, you have some view on this. You may not know what theonomy
is, you may not know any of these theological terms, but you have
a view of what Old Testament law is applicable today and how
it should be applied. Not only is it applicable, how
it should be applied. Some people believe the Old Testament law
about, say, homosexuals being killed should be applicable today. But then they will say, well,
wait a minute, these other laws about maybe a child who does
this should be killed or an adulterer should be killed. All of a sudden,
they don't want those same laws applied. So everyone does this.
They grab an Old Testament law and go, see, it's applicable
today. You have to follow that. And then over here, they're like,
well, that one doesn't apply. How do you determine that? So if
you're a theonomy and you want divine law instituted, you've
got to be very precise on exactly which laws you believe should
be instituted as the judicial law of the land, and you have
to explain why you are throwing out other laws. For example,
how about the Sabbath law? Well, the Sabbath, that doesn't
apply anymore. Okay, well, so the Sabbath doesn't
anymore, but what else does? What other laws do? I could argue
that Christ is our Sabbath, that we have perfect rest in Him.
I could argue that. I believe the Old Testament,
even the moral law, is ultimately fulfilled in Christ. He fulfilled
the moral law on my behalf, so I'm not condemned by that. That
moral law condemns me, but in Christ, I am not condemned by
the moral law because that's fulfilled for me in Christ Jesus. We can do a lot of discussion
here about law and a lot of ways of looking at it, but I'm just
saying, if you're going to be out there saying, hey, we need the divine
law instituted, Because the general law written in nature doesn't
work. You've got to give me that list.
And again, does it involve heretical or does it involve theological
error as being punished? What are the laws that you want
instituted and what are the punishments? I think it's very fair to ask
those questions. All right, here we go. And those distinctions
have to be made within the law of God. Yeah, I guarantee you
that of all the people that were teaching at Westminster Seminary
at the time, if somebody had gone to them and said, hey, we
as Christians need to make sure that the culture is circumcising
its children, or we as Christians need to make sure that there's
a temple system in Jerusalem that's offering Levitical sacrifices,
And obviously every single one of them would have condemned
that immediately as is inappropriate and at worst legalistic. And not a single theonomist would
go to them and say, well, don't you love God's law? Because ultimately,
it's not about whether or not it's not about loving God's law
or not. It's about how is it applied? And we know that God's
law or that aspect of it, what we call the ceremonial law, Was
for specific people and a specific time. So, when we talk about
the judicial laws, we view that in a similar way that that was
also for specific people. For specific time, and that's
it is not binding in the same way today that it was back then. And, um, there's, uh. I don't know, it's just, it seems
that theonomists seem to treat it in the same category as moral
law, whereas we would treat it more in the category of ceremonial
law, something that's a positive law, a.k.a. it's not universal,
it's for a specific covenant, in this case the Mosaic covenant.
And once that covenant is done away with, that doesn't apply
to us, at least in the same way. Because ultimately, we would
say that the way the New Testament treats judicial law, it does
apply within the context of the church. But we may get into that
discussion a little later. But it truly is just a matter
of how does this law apply today? It's not about, oh, you don't
like God's law. Yeah, I think that's really probably
a red herring argument. It distracts from the real issue,
right? Yeah. It's not really dealing with
the problem. It's more going around the problem and trying
to put up some other argument to try and deal with something
that really isn't the issue. Yeah. There is a distinction made between
moral law and positive law in the scriptures. We don't equate
the ceremonial law with the moral law, or we would have to obey
the ceremonial law. We don't equate circumcision
with moral law, or we would have to obey, we would have to continuously,
in a moral sense, be circumcised, but we don't have that. And actually,
Dr. James Renahan talks about this
distinction. He did a lecture at, I think
it was a Founders Conference, on the law of God in the 1689. And he used 1 Corinthians 7 to
prove his point of this distinction between moral and positive. It's
1 Corinthians 7, 17 through 19. It says, only as the Lord has
assigned to each one, as God has called each, in this way
let him walk. And so I direct in all the churches.
Was any man called when he was already circumcised? He is not
to become uncircumcised. Has anyone been called an uncircumcision? He is not to be circumcised.
Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. But what matters
is keeping the commandments of God. So the context here is talking
about marriage, whether to pursue marriage or remain in singleness.
and he uses the principle of circumcision to prove his point.
But he makes a distinction here. In verse 19 he says, So he makes
a clear distinction between the commandments of God, which would
clearly be the moral law, and circumcision, which was commanded of God, but is no longer binding upon
the people of God. It's positive law. It's extra
law that's in addition to the moral law. So even Paul was making
this distinction in other discussions. So if we keep that proper distinction,
the failures that our theodemus brothers make are much harder
to fall into. And if we are consistent with
it, you won't fall into it because you'll understand that there
is a distinction in category between the two and to conflate
them is to lead to all sorts of problems. And these brothers
will make those distinctions to some extent in positive law,
like for the ceremonial. James White will say, absolutely,
the ceremonial does not apply for today. And that's positive
law. That's not part of the moral law. But when it comes to judicial
law, it becomes a little bit more difficult to make that distinction. And those tend to be equated
with the moral law, or they're emphasized to an extent that
they really shouldn't be. And for, if you were to ask any
reformed person, where's the moral law summed up? They immediately
know the Ten Commandments. Ten Commandments, right. Ten
Commandments is the summation of the moral law. Now, while
the Ten Commandments does lay out some of the law that we would
see in the judicial law in the sense of what's to be punished.
It doesn't lay out the punishments. It says adultery is wrong. It
doesn't prescribe what the government is to do in regards to adultery. So there's a distinction there.
And so the judicial punishment is not necessarily part of the
moral law itself. Ultimately, we do know that while
adultery is worthy to be punished, if it doesn't happen in this
life, if a government fails to punish adultery, at least by
execution, Is the people, are the people responsible for not
carrying out that punishment? Are they gonna be on the day
of judgment held accountable that? I would say, no, it wasn't
part of the moral law. It wasn't part of the law written
on their hearts. And they weren't given in the moral law a specific
punishment for adultery. They won't be held accountable,
at least for that aspect. We are to be held accountable
for the moral law today. And the judicial law is a guidance
for us, but it is not necessarily binding. Right. Positive law
was really just a specific way in which the moral law was applied.
That, I think, is very important to keep in mind. It is not the
moral law itself. The law of the parapet is not
the law thou shalt not murder. It's an application of that law
to a specific place and time. which is where we get the concept
of general equity from. But we can maybe have that discussion
a little bit. And I've admitted I was influenced
by that book. I graduated from seminary right
at that time. And so I heard all this stuff and I imbibed
all that stuff. Now we're living in a day where we literally are
in a culture that wants to make it evil to use words like father,
mother, husband, wife, child, family, male, female. All the common grace stuff is
gone. Okay, that ain't working. All the natural law stuff, you
have to have a mind that recognizes there can be a source of coherence
to have natural law. We're past that. That source
of coherence, again, is already there. It's written on the hearts
of men, that men suppress it. Men know that they should not
be engaging in homosexual behavior, but they do it anyways because
they twist the created order of the creature. They have that
coherence. They don't have every, maybe every, metaphysical implication
worked out about it, but they have the basics. God's law is
written on their heart, they know what they should and should
not do. That influences their actions, and they are held accountable
for that. And this seems to be a common
theme that he harps upon in this video. the pushing away from
natural law and focusing more on this prophetic word for the
culture that we need. And because he's distinguishing
himself from non-theonomists here, right? I can't imagine
he would say that non-theonomists don't preach hard against homosexuality
or adultery or abortion or whatever the evil of the culture is. We
do. Not everyone, obviously. There
are people that let these things slide and they shouldn't. But
I come hard against those things because they are evil. I have
no problem saying that. But coming against those things,
hopefully, immediately after that, what I'm gonna do is give
a gospel presentation, because it's not enough to just leave
them with the law and expect them to like, okay, well, there's
the law, go fix yourself. It needs to be followed by a
gospel presentation. and that is the only way that
we change if the hardest change they will if if you are in Christ
you're going to try and keep the law not perfect you're not
going to be able to do it perfectly but you will try to keep the
law and that's the only means the only prescribed means that
God has used in order to better I guess the nation if you want
to say it like that yes God hasn't told us to institute the judicial
law around in order to make our nations better. I don't see that
command anywhere. I don't see any Old Testament
example of the Jews were to go forth into the pagan nations
and bring the law with them. Their law was to show the Gentiles
the goodness of their God. It's true, absolutely. But I don't know. Yeah, no, and I
think it goes back to having a solid covenant theology, which
Dr. White has made very clear in the past, it is not an overly
important topic for him to invest his time in, is a solid covenant
theology. Back in October, Dividing Line Highlights posted a clip
where he critiqued 1689 federalism, And he made it very clear in
that clip that he did not, and this was from a Dividing Line
episode, he made it very clear that covenant theology was not
something that was overly important to him. And I think that shows.
And Rush Dooney and I think Bonson, Rush Dooney especially, they
had a high view of covenant theology. And Rush Dooney tied his covenant
theology to his view of God's law. And I think that is very
important because they saw the connection there between God's
law. In Rushduni, he even called God's law a covenant, really
with man, that God has made. And so there's this understanding
that covenant language is necessary to this discussion. don't really
see that here with Dr. White. He may very well take
a covenant theology view, but that doesn't seem to be front
and center when he's talking about God's law. But underneath all
of that, there is assumptions about God's law, which is tied
specifically to the Old Covenant. that you have to make in order
to hold to a theonomic worldview. Whether or not you overtly talk
about covenant theology, you are talking about covenant theology
to some extent. But that's important in not falling
into some of these pitfalls, or to the pitfall of theonomy
in general, is having a solid covenant theology. All right, we'll stop right there.
We're 44 minutes into this. I'm gonna write this down. I
don't know if we're gonna come back to this. What I may do, 44 minutes,
13 seconds. What we may do is I may take,
embed this podcast at the TheologyCentral.net blog. Go to TheologyCentral.net,
look at the blog section. I will try to embed this podcast
there. So it'll come from their feed
because the Edify Christian Podcast app gives you the embed code.
So it'll be pulled from there. So they'll get the count and
they'll get the download. In other words, we're not going to take their podcast and
just steal it. We'll, we'll just, it's going
to bet it with the embed code, either from YouTube or from edify. It'll be right there. and then
you can listen to the rest. You'll want to fast forward to
the 44 minute, 13 second mark, 44 minute, 13 second mark. You
will have 48 minutes left. So there's a lengthy discussion
left. I think we've kind of done a pretty decent job at letting
kind of know what theonomy is. And, you know, there's probably,
there's a lot more we can say about this. We will return to
the subject of theonomy and post-millennialism some way, some shape, some form.
somehow, I don't know when, but we will turn back to that and
hopefully we can really add to this discussion. I'm going to
do a lot of waiting to see what questions you have. If you're
confused, what you understand, what you don't understand, that
will kind of show me what I need to cover and what I shouldn't
cover or don't need to cover, and then we will proceed from
there. But I wanted to bring this to everyone's attention.
Again, the issue is not Dr. James White. The issue is not
Dr. James White. That's not my focus here. My
focus is on every Christian who reads the Bible sees God's law.
What do we do with it? And how do we understand it?
And how do we respond to the world in which we live? What
do you think the way the approach is? My approach is God's law. is not to be imposed upon the
world in some judicial sense. I don't believe that. I believe
God's law ultimately is to point us to Christ, that God's law
was fulfilled in Christ. He fulfilled it all. He fulfilled
every bit. He fulfilled the moral. He fulfilled
it all. And I think the civil law was
for Israel. And I just think that the Christian
focus is not fighting cultural wars, not changing culture through
force, through politics, through policy, but our job is to simply
preach the gospel and live out the Christian life, and that's
what we're called to do. There's a lot more we could say,
but I think we'll stop right there. We're over an hour. I'll
look forward to hearing from you. You can email me at newsifatyahoo.com. Be checking the Theology Central
pod page throughout the weekend. I'll probably be adding stuff
to the blog all weekend. Just anything I think is interesting,
I will embed it, you know, podcast and different things there so
that you can listen. Remember, I post things that
maybe I agree, maybe I disagree, but they're there, and there's
a good chance if it ends up there, we'll be talking about it here.
Thank you for listening, everyone. Have a great day. I'm going home
because I'm starving, so I need food. So, everyone have a great
day, and look forward to hearing from you, and everyone have a
great Memorial Day weekend. God bless.
Theonomy and James White Pt 2
| Sermon ID | 630211728124478 |
| Duration | 1:06:04 |
| Date | |
| Category | Podcast |
| Language | English |
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