Unfortunately, there’s a contradiction between his exegesis and his statecraft. For his statecraft moots his exegesis. So what if the Mosaic law classifies abortion as murder? So what if the Mosaic law classifies abortion as a capital offense?
For that’s relegated to instant obsolescence by his theory of intrusion ethics. By the way he dichotomizes cult and culture.
So why did he go to the trouble of exegeting this texts when his theology automatically renders the text null and void? When his theology consigns the text to utter irrelevance?
What’s the point? Why bother? Who cares? What his exegesis establishes, his theology mothballs. A purely academic, antiquarian exercise.
For, under no circumstances must we look to the Mosaic law for moral norms. That’s over and done with in toto. The expiration date has come and gone, period. Nothing to be salvaged.
For a dude named "Meredith" he sure hits hard!
ReplyDeleteIn Christ,
CD
Steve,
ReplyDeletesteve: Unfortunately, there’s a contradiction between his exegesis and his statecraft. For his statecraft moots his exegesis. So what if the Mosaic law classifies abortion as murder? So what if the Mosaic law classifies abortion as a capital offense?
For that’s relegated to instant obsolescence by his theory of intrusion ethics. By the way he dichotomizes cult and culture.
dan: How is it so relegated? Intrusion ethics involves the temporary abrogation of common grace ethics, and Kline is clear that it is part of the common grace ethic that the state has the God-given authority to punish murder. And with cult and culture, likewise; the state's authority to execute murderers is annexed to "culture."
Even so, it seems you're making the following contention (at least): because of his view of statecraft and the Mosaic Law, Kline has no warrant for appealing to the passage to argue either that abortion is murder or that it ought to be a capital offense.
Even were this so, his exegesis is relevant, since (supposing it's sound) he defangs a pro-choice argument (that the fetus is considered merely as property, of lesser value).
But I'm not convinced it's so. I don't see how a Klinean statecraft would keep one from invoking the Mosaic Law to argue either that (1.) abortion is murder (i.e., morally wrong killing) or that (2.) a fetus is a person with the same intrinsic value as an adult. One might dispute the distinction between civil norms/sanctions and moral-axiological norms more generally, on which such an invocation would rest, but that would require arguing against Klinean statecraft itself (which maintains such a distinction).
As far as the idea that (3.) abortion should be a capital offense, that does seem more tricky for the Klinean. However, I can imagine a Klinean arguing for (3) as follows. (A.) The Mosaic Law teaches that abortion is murder. (B.) And from Scripture outside the Mosaic Law proper, we know the state has the obligation to inflict capital punishment against murderers (e.g., Gen. 9, Rom. 13). Therefore (3.)
Of course, the Klinean could argue for (3.) without even invoking (A.) One doesn't need special revelation to know that abortion is murder; and Kline's exegesis can be relevant for deflecting pro-choice arguments (as noted).
steve: For, under no circumstances must we look to the Mosaic law for moral norms. That’s over and done with in toto. The expiration date has come and gone, period. Nothing to be salvaged.
dan: I'd appreciate a source for where Kline says anything like this. Here's one place where he says something inconsistent with it:
"There are, of course, life-norms found in the Old Testament which continue to be authoritative standards of human conduct in the New Testament times....Such, too, are the universally applicable individual life-norms included in the stipulations of the Mosaic covenants, regulative of a man's life in relation to his neighbor" (p. 102, Structure of Biblical Authority, 2nd ed., Wipf).
Forgive me: are you being sarcastic to make a point?
ReplyDeleteDan,
ReplyDeleteIn his critique of theonomy, Kline stakes out a position of holistic discontinuity which is the studied antithesis of opposing position (i.e. theonomic holistic continuity). For him, it's an all-or-nothing proposition:
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The contention of the Chalcedon school concerning the binding nature of the Mosaic law is sometimes expressed in unqualified fashion (for rhetorical effect?), but inevitably there are other statements admitting exceptions...What is distinctive in the Chalcedon position is that it does not regard the case laws dealing with socio-political life of Israel as another major exception to its claim of continuing and universal obligation of Old Testament law.
One radical fault that undermines the whole Chalcedon position is the failure to recognize that the socio-geo-political sector of the Israelite kingdom of God was a part of the total system of kingdom typology established through the covenantal constitution given to Israel in the law of Moses – just as much so as was the cultic sector.
Another major failing in the Chalcedon system is that it scrambles the biblical ideas of the holy and the common. The misinterpretation of the Israelite nations in the Chalcedon theory of the state carries with it, along with its contradiction of the redemptive-restorative nature of that nation, a denial of Israel’s distinctive holiness as a kingdom set apart by a special redemptive covenant unto the Lord...This distinctive identity as holy unto the lord was the identity of the entire redeemed nation Israel, not just of the cultus within the kingdom.
In support of this position, Bahsen makes precedential appeal to the Westminster Confession of Faith (pp. 537 f.) and, as already intimated, there is a degree of validity in that appeal. For though we may hold that on the subject of the civil magistrate the Confession, even in its original form, is non-Erastian, we must still admit that the original Chapter 23 did attribute to the state the function of enforcing the first four laws of the Decalogue. It must also be acknowledged then that in its original intent, WCF 19:4 must also have placed the “four first commandments containing our duty towards God” (19:2) under the jurisdiction of the state, whatever precisely is meant by saying that the judicial laws given to Israel “expired together with the State of that people; not obliging any other now, further than the general equity thereof may require.”
Detectable in Chalcedon’s thinking here is the influence of inadequacies and obscurities that mar the analysis of the law in WCF 19:1-4. By distinguishing “judicial laws” given to Israel as “a body politic” or “State” from “ceremonial laws” given to “the people of Israel, as a church under age” – some continuing obligation being attributed to the judicial laws (19:4) while all the ceremonial laws are regarded as now abrogated (19:3) – the Confession seems to suggest at this point that the judicial-political aspect of Israel’s life did not participate in the ceremonial-typological dimension of the kingdom of God in its old covenant form.
http://www.meredithkline.com/files/articles/Kline_on_Theonomy.html
You're welcome to claim that 2k generally, or Klinean statecraft in particular, allows for the carryover of universal life-norms exemplified in some of the case-laws.
ReplyDeleteWhen, however, 2-kingdomites contrast their own position with opposing positions, I don't find them using that argument. Indeed, that's a wedge issue which would make it very difficult for them to distinguish 2k from the traditional Reformed statecraft they oppose, viz. the 1646 WCF.
Rather, they typically appeal to natural law, allegedly revealed in general revelation, to ground "common grace" social ethics, rather than looking to the Decalogue, much less the Mosaic case-laws, for inspiration.
"Ironically, the only person who’d appreciate his exegesis is someone who doesn’t share his statecraft."
ReplyDeleteI wonder why Kline didn't realize how poorly his statecraft was.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteThe quote you produced doesn't show Kline saying the normativity of the Mosaic Law is an all-or-nothing matter. He links the geo-political dimension with the ceremonial dimension as having been temporary. That would only imply that the Law in its entirety has become obsolete if the Law consisted in its entirety of geo-political and ceremonial dimensions; which is false. And I've produced a quote where Kline denies the total obsolescence of the Law.
Whatever the (de)merits of Kline's view of what Scripture has to say about the state, I'm not seeing the inconsistency between his statecraft and the topic of the thread. When it comes to murder, Kline was clear that the state has the obligation to punish it, and no reason has been given to think that affirming the obsolescence of the geo-political/civil aspects of the Mosaic law is inconsistent with drawing on that same law for moral/axiological norms more generally (such as that a fetus is just as valuable as an adult, and that killing a fetus is morally equivalent with killing an adult). However, I did agree that it would be inconsistent for Kline to appeal to the passage to argue that abortion should be a capital offense.