Saturday, July 23, 2005

Theonomy under fire-1

I’ve been asked to comment on Pastor Waldron’s “Theonomy: A Reformed Baptist Assessment.”

Because I have other priorities, I’m only going to comment on what interests me. In speed-reading about 130 pages of text it’s entirely possible that I’ve missed something important. Again, because I have other priorities, I’m not going to take time out to hunt down or document all my claims and references. I’ll just rely on memory. And the order of my comments will track the order of the original presentation.

Let me say at the outset that I respect the fairness with which Pastor Waldron has conducted his exposition and evaluation.

BTW, on the question of Jonathan Edwards, I'm happy to take my place alongside the New Lights. However, the Old Lights had a point as well. Godly seed and the regular ministry of the church is the ordinary means by which God grows the church. But we should never neglect evangelism or reject revival on that account.

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So far as I know, all of the younger Reconstructionists reject Mr. Rushdoony's Armenian (note not Arminian) view of the patriarchal family (p. 19). This is a major area of disagreement within the Reconstructionist camp. The "Tyler Group," as well as Greg Bahnsen, holds to the biblical nuclear family, where the departure of sons and daughters to set up new covenantal family units (Gen. 2:24) establishes a clear covenantal break with parents. No man will tolerate living in his father's household with his wife and children unless forced to by custom or economics.
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There was more to the dispute than this particular point. It involved a dispute over Rush’s familial, low-church, ecclesiology in contrast to the high-church ecclesiology of North, Jordan, et al.

Speaking for myself, although I appreciate high-church aesthetics, I favor a familial, low-church ecclesiology. Israel was a tribal society in which the pater familias presided over the Passover. And the NT church consisted of house-churches.

Although I think that Acts and the Pauline Epistles do teach such a thing as church office, administration of the sacraments is never assigned to the pastor or elder.

In addition, the membership of most churches consists of families, so, in that sense, the natural family is prior to the church.

Finally, if Chilton’s exposé of the Tyler church is reliable (making allowance for the fact that he suffered brain damage due to a heart attack), the Tyler church had degenerated into a mini-cult. (I believe that you can find Chilton’s exposé in back-issues of the Trinity Foundation).

Be that as it may, the whole combination of self-anointed prelacy, smells-and-bells, as well as signs-and-wonders casts the break-up in a different light since the time that Waldron wrote this piece.

And the Tyler church spun off in various directions from there, with Sutton taking the helm the REC seminary, Jordan doing his own thing, and North becoming the Jean Dixon of Xrecons.

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It is clear that one peculiarity of Theonomic postmillennialism is its emphasis on the application of Biblical law to every area of human life as the means of bringing about millennial blessing.
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As I recall, Bahnsen, for one, rejected that linkage.

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As the quote from Rushdoony makes clear the full, present applicability of the blessings described in Lev. 26 and Deut. 28 (and there promised to the obedience of Israel, the Theocratic nation), is the crucial link which connects obedience to the law with millennial blessing. North seconds Rushdoony's point.
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1.It could be argued that the blessing/bane structure is bound up with the ceremonial law a la the land-promises, and does not, therefore, carry over into the New Covenant.

2.However, theonomy is not contingent on this particular connection. It would only be a bonus point.

3.But even if you don’t have such a tight-knit blessing/bane correspondence, there is still a general connection (Eph 6:2-3).

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This age does not evolve through natural or gradual process into the age to come.
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Xrecons don’t attribute this to natural process. I also don’t know that they’re committed to gradualism, per se. You could have mass conversion, mass revival, exponential growth, &c. There are different mechanism and models.

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This age is and always will be an evil age.
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This may be correct, but, of course, both amils and postmils have their own prooftexts to prove the other side wrong.

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Postmillennialism and the Two-stage Coming of the Kingdom.
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1.This is slippery. Although amils subscribe to a basic two-stage eschatology (the already/not yet), they also subscribe to inaugurated eschatology. So, to some extent, it can be subdivided into multiple phases.

2.I’d add that all-too-often, the “already/not yet” mantra is a disguised description devoid of any real explanatory power.

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Properly understood, no more complete or clear teaching on the coming of the kingdom occurs in the NT than that of the seven parables of the kingdom found in Matthew 13.
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The problem with appealing to the parables is that different sides appeal to different parables since some emphasize imminence, while others emphasize progressivity or delay.

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This growth of evil in this age is also the explicit teaching of other passages in the NT (2 Thes. 2:7, 8; 2 Tim. 3:1, 12, 13; Rev. 20:7-9).
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I’m not sure that you can cobble together verses written by different men to different churches occasioned by different concerns under the assumption that they all have the same historical referent in view. Waldron is assuming what he needs to prove.

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Theonomists like North and Rushdoony refuse to accept the Biblical paradox of the parallel growth of good and evil in the present age.
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If true, that would not be a paradox.

I do regard parallel growth as a live interpretive option.

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There is a theological logic behind the parallel growth of good and evil in the present age. This theological logic, once understood, will tend to corroborate it. Simply stated, it is this. Biblically, both good and evil are capable of maturation individually, corporately, and historically. Evil matures as it rejects light and is progressively hardened. Good matures as it progressively recognizes and rejects evil. It is in the very interaction of light and darkness that this maturing process takes place. In a certain sense it is the very growth of good, the more brilliant shining of light, which is responsible for driving historical evil to its wicked consummation.
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There’s some truth to this. However, it is also consistent with the possibility that the forces of evil atrophy over time.

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Their dialectic sees only two alternatives: "pessimillennialism" or postmillennialism, optimism or pessimism.
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That’s because they’re taking aim at the dominant eschatology, which is the Lindsey/LaHaye variety.

It’s true, though, that North, for one, over does this. And, ironically, he often sounds like Chicken Little.

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The first is the meaning of the passage cited by North, Isa. 65:17-25. This passage is arguably the classic locus of postmillennialism.
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1.Is it the locus classicus? A gross oversimplification.

2.I agree, though, that North’s interpretation is off-base. He fails to make due allowance for hyperbole as well as the open-textured perspective of typology, which can have more than one historical referent.

<< It ignores the NT interpretation of this prophecy. >>

Up to a point, I agree with the general principle that the NT interprets the OT.

1.But unless you’re a hyperpreterist, you believe that some OT and NT prophecies remain unfulfilled or in process of fulfillment, so although we know how the NT interprets OT oracles which are, in fact, fulfilled in the first coming of Christ, we don’t know in advance of the fact how certain other OT and NT prophecies are being fulfilled or to be fulfilled in the course of or at the end of the church age.

2.The NT, itself, is one part of the prophetic arc of. So there’s still the question of how the NT itself fits into the larger pattern of promise and fulfillment.

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3) It forgets the OT character of this passage.

It is a recognized principle of the interpretation of OT prophecy among Reformed commentators that in the OT the blessings of the age of resurrection were much less clearly revealed and were often spoken of in terms familiar to OT Israel. So here in Isa. 65 the blessings of eternal life are held out under the shadow of extended longevity of earthly life and blessing as we know it in this age.
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1.Here he (Waldron) and I simply part company. I would not archaize OT prophecy in that manner.

2.In addition, the problem is that all millennial schools appeal to the OT golden age prophecies, but fit them into different time slots. Premils apply them to the Jewish millennium. Augustinian amils apply them to the whole church age. Some contemporary amils (Hoekema, Poythress) apply them to the Consummation. Classic postmils apply them exponentially to the church age while preterist postmils…well…preterize them.

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Theonomic postmillennialism must produce a skewed and imbalanced view of the Christian's relative responsibilities in the world. There is visible in their writings a depreciation of "soul-saving" and the church in favor of the dominion mandate with its emphasis on the familial, economic, and civil spheres of life.
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1. Perhaps. But as I’ve said before, churches are mostly made up of families, so the natural family is the fundamental unit of the church in particular as well as society in general.

2. In addition, unless Waldron happens to be a universalist, it is simply untrue that soul-saving is the solution to all social ills for the simple reason that all sinners shall not be saved. So what do we do about the reprobate?

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