Law and order

A quick follow-up to my post on Darryl Hart. Among other things, he said:

If I break the civil law, I should be punished. God gave us authorities to uphold the law and maintain order and peace.

Problem with Hart's justification is that Paul doesn't use that rationale in Rom 13. Paul doesn't frame the issue in terms of law, order, and domestic tranquilly. He doesn't appeal to legal categories, but moral categories. Paul talks about the duties of a magistrate in reference to those who do right and those who do wrong, including the magistrate's duty to facilitate the ability of constituents do right, and punish those who do wrong. 

So Hart is using an argument that Paul doesn't use. Hart is oblivious to what he's interjecting into the text from outside the text. He's transplanted an extraneous justification into the text. 

Moreover, while there's a sense in which I'm sure that Paul believed in law, order, and domestic tranquility, that doesn't mean Paul is operating with Hart's legal positivism and totalitarian concept of the state. Paul doesn't absolutize legality or social control. Rather, it's about incentivizing good and disincentivizing evil. Hart, by contrast, turns Paul's priorities on their head. 

Two-kingdom fascism

Darryl Hart is a leader of the 2-Kingdoms position. Here are some comments he left on a very long thread: 

D. G. Hart says:
Nero did not violate God’s law if he executed Christians who obeyed God rather than man. If Paul continued to preach after the emperor said he may not, then Nero was doing what God ordained government to do. Christians don’t get a pass from civil law just because they follow a higher law. 

The question wasn’t whether Nero should light up his gardens with Christians. It was whether Nero executed Christians. 

That is what God ordained the magistrate to do, right? Just because a believer has a special relationship with God doesn’t let the believer disobey the magistrate’s laws. Christianity is not a license for civil disobedience. 

If a law is unjust or if we must obey God rather than men, then we suffer the consequences of disobedience. That’s what the apostles did. They didn’t form political action committees to overturn Roman laws.
Paul doesn’t mention justice. He doesn’t mention God’s law. He doesn’t qualify the magistrate’s authority. They are God’s ministers – period. 

So you disobey God’s word. You refuse to do what Paul says. Submit to the unjust emperor. 

I am saying that I follow what Paul said in Rom 13. God wants his people to submit to those in authority, those whom he has established. 

If I break the civil law, I should be punished. God gave us authorities to uphold the law and maintain order and peace. It’s disorderly and unpeaceful if you think you can pick and choose which laws to obey because you have Jesus in your heart. 

https://oldlife.org/2017/01/04/is-donald-trump-mainstreaming-apostasy/

i) That's the reductio ad absurd of 2K. Hart's fascist interpretation of Rom 13 represents a moral inversion of Rom 13. 

ii) As I've pointed out in the past, it's naive to suppose that in Rom 13, Paul is stating everything he thought about the issue at hand. Paul is writing to Christians in the capital of the Roman Empire. What if his letter was intercepted by the Roman authorities? For the sake of Roman Christians, he has to be guarded in what he says. That doesn't mean he says things he doesn't believe, but it does mean he probably leaves some things unsaid. 

iii) In addition, that's more than sheer speculation. He was a firm believer in the OT. He surely didn't believe Ahab, Jezebel, and Athaliah had a civic duty to punish Jews who refused to worship Baal. And he certainly didn't believe Jews had a civic duty to submit to the idolatrous edicts of Ahab, Jezebel, or Athaliah. Likewise, Paul would surely endorse the civil disobedience of the Jewish midwives (Exod 1). So there are unstated caveats in Rom 13.

iv) Hart acts as though the divine institution of government means God has delegated absolute, autonomous authority to the state, so that rulers are entitled to do whatever they see fit. Hart has an amoral conception of civil authority, by separating law from justice. 

But in Paul's understanding, the duty of the civil magistrate is to punish wrongdoers, not simply lawbreakers. The civil magistrate isn't merely or primarily a law enforcer, but an agent of justice. As such, he has no duty to act unjustly. Indeed, he has a duty to act justly and refrain from injustice. 

v) Hart says "Paul doesn’t mention justice. He doesn’t qualify the magistrate’s authority. They are God’s ministers – period."

How could Hart miss that? Perhaps Hart is committing the word-concept fallacy. Does he imagine that if Paul doesn't use the word "justice," then the idea can't be present? Yet Paul says the role of the magistrate is to reward or facilitate those who do good and punish those who do wrong. What is that if not the essence of justice? 

vi) Paul doesn't say or imply that Christians have a duty to submit to rulers in virtue of their sheer, unconditional authority. To the contrary, Paul specifically qualifies the legitimate mandate of civil authority. 

vii) In addition, as one commentator notes:

The authority is a servant of God, but it has the purpose of serving its constituents in the accomplishment of their good actions (Rom 13:4)…The authority is a servant for the constituent so that the person can accomplish what is good. This reconceptualizes authority…[It]  has the just purposes not of perpetuating its own power and authority but of serving its constituents by enabling them to do what is good. S. Porter The Letter to the Romans (Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2015), 246.

The fact that God ordained government is not a blank check for any specific exercise of power. Hart's inference is like saying God ordained sex, therefore any kind of sexual activity is divinely sanctioned. In Hart's Looking Glass world, God ordained the magistrate to execute those who are doing God's will, as if God is acting at cross-purposes with himself. 

vii) Does Hart think Christians have a divine obligation to commit evil if the state commands what God forbids? He makes statements to that effect. Does he think 1C Christians had a divinely-imposed duty to submit to emperor worship? 

viii) Perhaps Hart would concede that there are situations where Christians have a higher obligation to break the law. If so, Hart seems to be saying the magistrate has a duty to punish Christians for breaking a law which Christians have a duty to break. 

To take a concrete example, Hart either thinks German Christians had a duty not to protect their Jewish neighbors, or if they had a duty to protect their Jewish neighbors, Nazi authorities had a duty to punish Christians who sheltered Jews. 

ix) Of course we need to be prepared to face the consequences of civil disobedience. But that's beside the point. That hardly means the state has a right or duty to punish civil disobedience when the state commands what God forbids or forbids what God commands. 

Does Hart think the state is supposed to punish people in situations where people are supposed to defy the state? How coherent is that? 

“Judging by history, the natural state of things is warfare with Islam”

Regarding the attacks in Paris: This is one side of the discussion:

I don’t see how any American can have any sympathy with the notion that the magazine “provoked” the attack. Our constitution enshrines the right to make fun of the prophet and anyone else. Of course there are limits, as the court has said, but making fun of the prophet or Mormons or Christians is well within the freedoms protected by the constitution. That’s why I used the category of “taste” rather than “right” earlier. One may find the magazine distasteful but that’s quite another thing than saying that they had no right to provoke Islamists.

The notion than free persons in the west can avoid “provoking” Islamists betrays significant naïveté about what Islam (the Qur’an and the Hadith) and Islamists expect from the rest of us. They will not be satisfied with not making fun of the prophet. They cannot be pacified. Read the history of Islam. Read the Qur’an for yourself (start at the back then go toward the front'; it’s an odd book, disconnected with no coherent narrative really). They will not be satisfied until we are all in submission to Allah and to them. There is a small handful of reasonable Muslims who are willing to live in peace with the rest of us. All the polls tell us, history tells us, that the vast majority of Muslims want Sharia to be imposed on the rest of us. We must not assume that they are just like us except for a different god. They are not.

As to the history, [keep in mind that] the West resisted Muslim/Ottoman military advances in the 16th century, ending 8 centuries of warfare with Muslims. The colonial powers then crushed and colonized Islamic countries. The violence we’ve seen since the revolution in Iran in 1979 is all post-colonial. Whatever evils may attend colonization it did keep them from doing what they’re doing now.

Judging by history, the natural state of things is warfare with Islam. As best I can tell it was never an enlightened culture. Most of the alleged cultural artifacts are now thought, by some historians anyway, to have been appropriated from the West. In other words, we’ve been fed a good bit of nonsense about what is even possible relative to Islam. It is an inherently violent, dangerous, threatening movement now and that is its natural condition.

If this is true, then those who value civil liberties (as the relative absence of restraint) should be truly wary about Islamic immigration to the USA and the growing number of mosques that are being established even in surprising places (e.g., TN). Mosques traditionally (and today) are not mere places of worship. They are places where social revolution are plotted. This is certainly what is happening in Nigeria where Christians live in terror. I have first hand-testimony of what happens in Nigeria, what happens in the mosques there, and what the consequences have been for Christians across Nigeria. The news is that Boko Haram has murdered another 2,000 people there.

Here is the context.

Recovering the Reformation: A Response to Sam DeSocio

I’m just a common tater. I don’t hold a church office; I’m not an elder or a deacon or a scholar. In fact, I couldn’t have made it limping through the last year, while my wife was ill, without the help of the elders and deacons of my own PCA church.

It wasn’t long ago that I was working with Sam DeSocio, then the Assistant Pastor at our five-year-old church plant, setting up chairs and toting heavy things in order to prepare for worship services in our rented gymnasium.

Given that history, I was surprised to see that Sam, now the pastor of a start-up church himself (two years old?) has made the big time, getting response blog posts from both Darryl Hart and Scott Clark for his suggestion that it may be practical to think about dividing up the PCA into three smaller denominations.

He gives a couple of reasons:

“Family Feud”; or, “Our American Christian Heritage”

Steven Wedgeworth has posted a brilliant review of John Frame’s The Escondido Theology: A Reformed Response to Two Kingdom Theology.

It’s brilliant not merely because he addresses (in an irenic way) the substance of all the contentions that are made in that book, not least of which is Two Kingdoms theology. He discusses the issue of who is the proper bearer of “the Reformed tradition”. He brings a sharp focus to bear upon “Christless Christianity” (and it’s “Gospel-Driven” counterpart, the “Lost Soul of Protestantism, and more). He discusses Protestant Scholasticism and Richard Muller (the real heroes of this story); and lots, lots more. (The whole thing is more than 7500 words, but still, I highly recommend giving it a look).

But beyond the issues, he talks about something that’s a lot deeper:

Michael Horton, who ends up bearing the brunt of the critique, described the book as “a new low in intra-Reformed polemics.”

To be the nastiest and most unfair polemicist in the Reformed community would be quite the accomplishment. Prof. Frame would have to outpace several of the Escondido men themselves, along with any number of Clarkians and theonomists – and that would only take into account the American cranksters! As biting and even sometimes inflammatory as some of Prof. Frame’s writing may be, this book does not take the prize for nastiness. And it is certainly a long way off from the battles of those golden years of Reformed confession-writing. We should never forget that the debates carried out by our Reformed ancestors, even the men now idolized by the Reformed gatekeepers, at times involved literal hatchet jobs.

Wedgeworth is spot-on when he says “We should never forget that the debates carried out by our Reformed ancestors, even the men now idolized by the Reformed gatekeepers, at times involved literal hatchet jobs”.

I’ve been hanging out at D.G. Hart’s blog recently because of his fun interactions with Bryan Cross. I came to Reformed theology largely through Hart’s books about Machen, whom I came to regard as the heir of Calvin through “Old Princeton” (though I tend to tune out Hart’s disagreements with Turretinfan over 2K views). While I agree with Steve Hays that “natural law” fails to address some very difficult moral issues, I don’t think anyone is going to hell over the Westminster “Two Kingdoms” theology, either.

I’ve known Scott Clark for about as long as there has been an Internet through which we could email. I’ve met Michael Horton. I write for a blog where Steve Hays, who calls himself a Biblicist, has been strongly influenced by the writings of John Frame (and presumably his “Something Close to Biblicism), which I like a lot, and with which I fundamentally agree. Clark writes scathingly about Frame. Clark is not well-regarded by Hays, but I’ve learned more about historical theology from Scott Clark than anyone else, I think.

Cyril of Alexandria was apparently a pretty good theologian. But he was just simply a thug as well. He can be a lesson for folks today.

Yes, I cringe when I watch Joel Osteen. But I found the graphic nearby on the front page of his website. I can honestly say, I know someone who has turned to Christ because of Joel Osteen. And while Osteen’s particular messaging is, I think, not helpful in ways that have been amply described, what would happen if he were to do a sermon series on, for example, “the history of the Reformation”? His audience is probably bigger than several whole Reformed denominations.

American Christianity certainly has its problems. But Christianity has always had problems. And despite the problems in American Christianity, it is our Christianity now.

I’m no fan of things like “bishops”, but I’m a very big fan of an old fart who goes by the handle “Embryo Parson”. There was a time when I despised him, but our more recent friendship shows us how (“in the Lord”) such transformations are possible. And I do think he has a very healthy attitude toward American Christianity.

Wedgeworth does not simply point out the problems. He points to a solution:

Instead, we do need a Reformed ressourcement. It needs to move forward by building upon the tradition. It should be a Reformed irenicism that is really Reformed, having clearly-stated and definitively Reformational principles. It should be an irenic catholicity that achieves peace through courageous and rational dialogue and debate, charitable but assertive. And it must always be truth-telling, with regards to itself and its opponents. Prof. Frame possesses the latter qualities of peace and honest integrity. The Escondido men aspire towards the former qualities of consistency with the great Reformed tradition, ….

Closing:

We think we have begun to point to a way beyond the dead ends and impasses of ultra-confessionalism on the one hand, and a Neo-Calvinism so “neo” it is no longer really Calvinist on the other. And we are finding that many young pastors and churchmen, seeing the problems of the two opposing camps which have so far dominated the American Reformed world, are quite ready to step out onto that road.

D.G. Hart: “Maybe Called to Communion should be renamed Called to Confusion”

I think he’s wrong about this, but only in the “maybe” part. They definitely are a call to confusion. They definitely have gotten themselves into something they don’t fully understand. And they’re treating it as if they do.

In their call to find infallible certainty over “the proximate object of faith”, and in their enthusiasm to proclaim that they have found such infallibility, the Called to Communion gang have embraced their own worst nightmare – the fact that there are multiple “Roman Catholicisms” that have existed over time and across the religious spectrum today. Hart has isolated one, but there are many. The claim is that these are all “under” the same authority structure, but many of them mock it and are still called “Roman Catholics”. They all hold to the “same Catechism”, but how many of them pick and choose (and the Pope says he’d rather these would leave), whereas, how many hold to the Catechism with the same “correct interpretation” and with the same purity that the Called to Communion gang hold it?

Since Hart is talking about councils in conflict, some time ago, I wrote about some other councils that are in conflict: Vatican I and Vatican II.

Consider Michael J. Buckley, S.J., “Papal Primacy and the Episcopate: towards a relational understanding,” New York: Crossroad Herder, © 1998, from the “Ut Unum Sint” series. Some comments from Buckley:

The development from Pastor aeternus (Vatican I) to Lumen Gentium (Vatican II), from speaking of the bishops as the episcopate to speaking of the bishops as “a college...or a college of bishops” (collegium ... seu corpus episcoporum), is far more considerable than a simple semantic shift. “Episcopate” is somewhat more abstract than “college of bishops,” and it fails to express the dynamic relationship of the bishops among themselves… (pg 77).

Then there are the vital relationship between the bishop and the local church within which he is to represent the leadership and the sanctifying presence of Christ (81) … and the Apostolic Tradition which insists that the bishop is to be chosen by all of the people and that this selection is to be approved by the assembled [local] bishops and elders (86). Buckley writes, in summary:

Two questions arise in this context. Whether the present settlement actually detracts from the full vigor of the episcopate and whether papal restoration of ancient legislation on the selection of bishops and their stability within their sees could contribute significantly to the strengthening of the episcopate and the local churches today. Could the apostolic See further effectively its responsibilities simply by restoring what has been taken [or, what the papacy has usurped for itself] over the centuries? This would be to retrieve in a very different way that papal leadership whose bent was the strength and freedom of the local church. Neither problem is an easy one to resolve, but both merit serious study and each touches upon both components of this essay (94).

After 1800 years, they still cannot agree on what the definition of a bishop should be. But believe with the assent of faith any way, because whatever it is they do agree on surely must be infallibly so. 

In reality, these guys are not called to communion with the one true faith that was preached by the Apostles. They are called to share the communion of noumenality that exists between Bryan Cross’s ears, under that fine-looking hat that he wears. It is not the communion of Paul and the martyrs and the untold masses of saints who have existed in union with Christ through the ages. It is the call to the communion of a faith that’s shaped by Bryan’s made-up definitions of monocausalism and ecclesial deism and whatever new concepts he can dream up.

They are not “called to communion”. What they are called to is quite different. They are called to a cult.

What’s at stake

At our house, today is the last day of summer. My older three sons have already started their various college programs, and the younger three kids start school tomorrow.

And what goes along with that, of course, are the speeches and admonitions about doing your best and what kinds of things are at stake.

At times like these, I’m reminded of something that Alister McGrath said at the beginning of his work, “Christian Theology: An Introduction”. (I have the third edition; McGrath is famous for re-writing earlier versions of his work, and re-issuing them at a higher price. Currently, I believe, he is on the fifth edition of this work.). My edition begins with these words “To the Student”:

Christian theology is one of the most fascinating subjects it is possible to study.

Over the years, I have come to agree with that statement. My own study began as a response to a generalized feeling of creepiness that I experienced while going to Mass every week; it led first of all, to my search for reasons why I should go or stay; it led further to discussions with Roman Catholics to the effect “how could you leave”, and the need to “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have”.

What began as a deeply personal struggle has introduced me to this absolutely fascinating world of church history and Christian theology.

I am of course, not a professional theologian. Many of you will have noticed this (and I appreciate your kindness not to say so… :-)

But I am deeply committed to the search for truth in this “sphere”, the sphere of church history and Christian theology. I am so for its own sake, and I am so because I believe that truth in this sphere will enable us to understand and better deal with the world going forward – a world that seems as if it will always have larger and larger challenges.

(And I’m getting older, so it would seem easy for me simply to avoid those challenges, and leave them for “the next generation”, except that “the next generation” involves children whose lives and well-being I care for more deeply than my own).

That’s why I do what I do, and while things may get difficult at times, there are always reasons for hope.

* * *

In that vein, a discussion between Jeff Cagle and Bryan Cross at Darryl Hart’s “Old Life” site merits a look.

Jeff seems really to have gotten Bryan’s number in that discussion. But what I find more hopeful are some of Hart’s comments.

For example, Hart is (if even metaphorically) incited to war:

Bryan, the peace of Christ may be war.

He identifies the problem:

Bryan, your response to Jeff begs the question. You define faith a certain way and so Jeff’s claims don’t follow. But since you are the great dictionary in all these matters, these discussions always must run through your paradigmatic definitions.

Is it possible to find a definition of faith on which you and Jeff agree? I doubt it. It seems that your understanding of reason ends when you cross the Tiber. At that point, you have reasons for your reason, but you have no capacity to show someone else they are wrong if they don’t accept your definitions.

This is no call. This is a demand for submission.

In this, he identifies (as Turretin did in his time) that Rome seeks to win by defining itself as the winner (see the first few pages of Turretin’s third volume). He correctly has identified that the “call to communion” is really a call to “bend the knee to Rome”. Later he clarifies:

It is good to be reminded of what Roman Catholicism was before Vatican 2. For all of the human face that John Paul 2 put on Rome, the same impenetrable and unreformable foundation exists. I don’t think many evangelicals would actually go to Rome if they thought the church was so inflexible and defensive. Of course, your problem is that Rome is not nearly as air tight — there are the Jesuits and the nuns after all. Still, it is good for potential converts to receive a dose of reality from the incomparable logician and dogmatician, Bryan Cross.

And when Bryan “bows out” of the discussion, Hart vows to carry on the fight:

Bryan, you may withdraw but you cannot hide. CTC will be an object of future posts.

At this point, I am very grateful that notable blogs like Green Baggins and Hart’s Old Life are taking up this issue, and determining to re-examine the issues that marked the Reformation.

My wife asks me why its better for Christians to fight among themselves than, say, for us all to call a truce and focus our energies on something like Islam.

I agree with her that Islam is an important factor in our world, and it needs to be addressed. But a large portion of Christianity (i.e. Roman Catholicism) has crumbling foundations built on falsehoods, and it is not is not going to be able to the world with the Gospel, and it’s ultimately doomed to fail.

That, again, is why I do what I do. The Reformation brought up issues that haven’t been solved for 500 years. But that doesn’t render them unsolvable. We are closer today to resolving those issues than at any time in the last five hundred years.

Sure, it’s a long-term project. But we have tremendous resources at our disposal. And more and more people are beginning to see what’s at stake.