Sometimes we talk about our theology as if we live in a vacuum of hypotheticals. I remember speaking with Rube over and over again about the magistrate. He always wanted to insist that magistrates have no way of being able to understand or comprehend God’s law since it is to be spiritually discerned. Some of his sentiments of that nature are found on his post: "Paul Was Not a Theonomist." I bring this up because is speaks of the world as if it were a sterile experiment in some glass tube. It’s as if the world isn’t made up of people with brains that can read. As if Christians and the bible haven’t been to practically every land on the face of our planet. Plus it imports the pre-conceived commitment of the false W2K view of the world.
Well, I wish I had more energy, less physical pain and fatigue and so forth, so that I could do justice to the effort needed to correct these views that are so prevalent in the church today. But, I don’t. So, I’ll write what I can, and respond to comments as much as I can, and hopefully there will be others to help join in with the defense of the [reformed] faith, over against the new [so-called] reformed faith. (I’m feeling very testy today).
Psalm 24:1 tells us:
The earth is the LORD’s, and all its fullness, The world and those who dwell therein.
So that is where we will start. God is the beginning and the end. He started the world and put man on it in the context of a covenant (Hosea 6:7). Man broke the covenant and suffered the curse because of it. At the same time, God graciously provided a promise of salvation, and shadowed this promise even as early as the day man was thrown out of the garden. We see hints of this in what could have been the sacrifice of an animal to clothe Adam and Eve. In Cain and Abel, we see the two lines. One line of covenant keepers, and the other line of the covenant breakers. God gave Eve Seth as a replacement for Cain. The line goes on. We have Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David.So we see from the very beginning of human existence, we have this idea of covenant, and one’s standing with regard to it. These are not two kingdoms, but simply two states of relationship to the one King, Jesus Christ, who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
Isaiah 24:5
The earth is also defiled under its inhabitants,
Because they have transgressed the laws,
Changed the ordinance,
Broken the everlasting covenant.
Isaiah supports this fact that all of the earth’s inhabitants have broken this covenant. Paul supports this when he gives us a short history of the earth’s beginning in his letter to the Romans:
Romans 1:18-23
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, 21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.
We see this when God judged the earth with the flood. Scripture confirms this with His judgement upon Sodom and Gommorrah. And keep in mind that this is after God called Abram out from among the covenant breakers and gave him a new name, Abraham. Also, we see that Moses gave his people God’s law written on stone and assumed that the [other] peoples would hear these and recognize that observing this law makes a nation "wise and understanding."
David tells us in Psalm 119:46 that he "will speak of Your testimonies also before kings, And will not be ashamed." He wasn’t concerned with keeping to himself or preaching some pietistic, individualistic gospel to the common man but not to magistrates. He was obviously not talking about Israelite magistrates since he was the magistrate of the day. He also tells us in 2 Samuel 23:3 that "‘He who rules over men must be just, Ruling in the fear of God." Let’s not forget the many references in the Psalms. The second Psalm is enough for this brief treatment where kings and judges are told to fear the LORD and kiss the Son. That must include present day kings and judges since it is referencing the son. There is also Psalm 9 verse 5 & 8.
Solomon gives us much wisdom in this regard as well. Proverbs 16:12 tells us "It is an abomination for kings to commit wickedness, For a throne is established by righteousness." Huran, king of Tyre, recognized the divine appointment of Solomon (2 Chron. 2:11-12), and the queen of Sheba acknowledged Solomon’s appointment by God as well as his just and righteous government (1 Kings 10:9).
The list goes on. Daniel ruled by God’s law for Darius. Ezra praised the LORD for putting it on Artexerxes heart to rule by God’s law (Ezra 7:11-28). Jonah preached to a non-Isralite city repentance.
Jesus called Herod a fox (Luke 13:32). Peter says we must obey God rather then men (Acts 5:29). Paul says that the magistrate is appointed to be the minister of God (Romans 13: 1 & 4).
The point is that there is one Kingdom, Christ is the king, and you are either a good standing citizen or a citizen in bad standing. If you are in bad standing, there is good news! Christ has provided a way out from His judgement. Just have faith in His promises and repent of your sin against Him. Join the covenant keepers and proclaim His good news.
This message is basic to the scripture. But somehow man’s sinfullness constantly finds a way to creep back in and take away some of the progress that the church has made in spreading the kingdom like leaven or that mustard seed. Rest assured. It is always temporary. The world today is "better" than it ever has been and will continue to progressively get "better." God has always implemented covenental sanctions on this earth, both positive and negative, and He has never stopped. If a nation will not rule in righteousness, He will blot it out, still today. If the church will ignore, or explain away (and I’ll add to this description the adverb "SINFULLY") then the church will also suffer the temporal sanctions of God in history. We will suffer the destruction of our nation if we won’t speak up and declare God’s Word to our nation. All of God’s word, not just the pietistic message of God’s salvation for you and your family. (See my post: "Preach Only to Some?").
Jesus is going to continue to rule until He returns. His rule will continue to grow. When He returns there will only be one enemy left to conquer: death.
1 Cor 15:24-25
24 Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power. 25 For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet. 26 The last enemy that will be destroyed is death.
Christ right now has ALL authority and ALL power. As we, His disciples, go about, we are to make the nations, ALL PEOPLES, HIS DISCIPLES (take it corporately or individually, the end result is the same). Christ will accomplish this through His church. Don’t get left behind.
Matthew 28:18-20
18 And Jesus came and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen.
The Reformed Standard 
So I guess you’ve finally realized you’re postmil?
So Christ will not return until sin and misery have been conquered on earth — everybody alive has a happy, full, elect life and has no worry but an impending painless natural death?
Oh wait, now you’re PREmil! (Just kidding)
OK, but if that means what you seem to want it to mean, you must have stopped sinning by now, right? Otherwise Christ doesn’t have authority and power over your life, and we know that can’t be the case, because the Bible says he has ALL authority and ALL power.
So if you are still sinning, ever (indeed, if anybody is sinning, ever) then we need to step back and ask how Christ has ordained to exercise his absolute authority and power. Which brings us back to square one.
One friend responded via e-mail:
Kingdom of the Amalekites is one and the same as the Kingdom of Israel in the Old Testament?
I think that settles it.
anonymous
Another friend responded:
Definitions of terms might first be in order.
All I believe would agree that God is soveriegn over all the kingdoms of the world.
So in that sense, there is only one King and thus one kingdom.
That is not to say there is not a distinction between subordinate earthly and unseen spiritual realms.
To anon’s point, yes there are both goat and sheep nations.
The fact that we distinguish between them presupposes God as the Judge of them both, as it is his standards that determine their status.
There is the “god of this world” and the “spirits of anti-Christ” that we are subduing in the name of our King.
So the answer is yes, there is one transcendent King and yes we are in the business of seeing the kingdoms of this world become the Kingdoms of our God and of his Christ.
Col 1:16
For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers.
All things were created through Him and for Him. NKJV
anonymous
Then Rube responded:
The proper place to hash this out is not over email, but on Jeff’s blog (which I haven’t read yet!), but I couldn’t resist:
No, there are sheep and goat individuals. There is only, and has ever only been, one ‘sheep nation’, which is the church (which stretches back into the O.T. as God’s chosen people).
And I reply to the first anon:
The point of saying there is ONE kingdom is over against Westminster’s TWO Kingdom view largely attributed to Kline. If you want to say that there was Egypt, and Rome and Greece, and Persia, therefore there isn’t just ONE kingdom, then you defeat Kline with the same logic, i.e. there isn’t just TWO kingdoms. So, that doesn’t work.
The point is, there isn’t a “kingdom of man” that has some sort of autonomy wrt the church. We don’t live in a vacuum and the kingdomS of this world MUST and WILL be submitted to our reining King. AND the church has the mandate to go further than our walls and speak to these kingdoms. 🙂
Yes, leaning toward a posty view more and more. Christendom is a reality we are called to work towards!
Kazoo
Didn’t Augustine “invent” 2K with his City of God and City of Man?
So I guess Job’s friends were right after all?
Rube,
WRT Augustine, does it really matter? How about dealing with the argument? 🙂
WRT Job, how about some examples?
Kazoo
The whole point of Job, at least as I understand it from our bible study going through it with Pastor, is to dissociate earthly blessing from God’s favor. Throughout the whole book, each of Job’s three friends took turns saying “You’re being punished, therefore you must have sinned — so fess up!”, between which Job says “did not!” The three friends are all working from a presupposition of “obedient=blessed; cursed=disobedient” In the final chapter, God condemns the three friends for how wrong all their words were. Starting in ch 38, God silences everyone with his awesome power; “Where were you when I created the world” = “What makes you think you know how I operate?” So the message of Job is God rebuking Job’s three friends for their presumption that “God has always implemented covenental sanctions on this earth, both positive and negative.”
What makes you think that God has not always implemented covenental sanctions on this earth? And, what is your defintion of covenental sanctions? Is God so non commital that we don’t know where He stands in relationship to His creation?
Thank you
“…these views that are so prevalent in the church today.”
I hate to break it to you, Kazoo, but the W2k view is certainly not prevalent. I realize there is a certain sense of underdog power that comes with casting the other guy as the one who is in the majority that helps a speaker both gain a sense of self-confidence and suasion over his audience, etc., especially within an American context where underdogness feeds into our natural sense of righteousness. But 1) this doesn’t apply to your side of the table but to ours, and 2) real confessionalists don’t really care that much about this American sense of ascendancy. That’s why they hang out in Outhouses.
Live large, you are squarely in the majority. The collapsing of kingdoms into one is what is common across various traditions from Fundamentalism to Liberalism to neo-Kuyperianism to Roman Catholicism to Reformed Covenanters too broad Evangelicalism.
Zrim
Zrim,
Boy oh boy, do I feel better now! 😉
Can you tell me if there are any reformed seminaries here in the US that takes my approach (in this post)?
How about any seminary?
I don’t know the answer to this, but have always been under the impression that the answer is now “zero.”
Kazoo
Rube,
Was Job an individual or a nation? So, your argument doesn’t really comport with at least part of mine, right?
Now, to the individual, when considering other parts of God’s word using the “Analogy of Faith” I think it becomes clear that the lesson learned from Job can’t be quite as strong as you suggest.
One example I think should be enough. How about excommunication? That’s a sanction doled out in history as a result of disobedience. Surely you wouldn’t say that the excommunicated one isn’t cursed, right?
kazoo
No, one example is not enough. You missed the point; “dissasociation of earthly blessing from God’s favor” means that, at all times, we will find on the earth a mixture of all combinations of {earthly success, earthly failure} X {good guys, bad guys}. So yes, sometimes the bad guys (or bad nations) receive earthly punishments. And sometimes, the bad guys live long, happy lives. And vice versa, sometimes the good guys have long, happy lives; and sometimes the good guys can’t catch a break, and live lives that are filled with pain, frustration, and woe.
(Another point; excommunication is not a curse in this age, but in the age to come. The excommunicated may well get over the emotional trauma of excommunication, find new friends, watch more Sunday morning football, and enjoy his sin for the rest of his life. And for the elect, excommunication is a blessing, because it will be the ordinary means God uses to drive him to repentance.)
You speak as if God is a blessing/cursing machine — “you put your obedience in here, or your disobedience in there, pull the lever, and out comes the blessing or cursing!” First of all, no one person or group of people can be obedient “enough” to merit reward from God. Strike that — one individual was obedient enough to merit reward from God! So I’ll grant you that if an entire nation could be perfectly obedient, they could pull the lever and get a kibble of blessing from God. Short of that, Job shows us that God doesn’t operate that way.
The problems societies face are due to sin, and no earthly government can fix that problem. The only solution to sin is the sanctification that flows from justification, so the church’s energy would be better spent promiscuously preaching the gospel and discipling the flock, rather than training magistrates.
But your assertion that a nation could collectively proclaim “We are a good nation, and we expect blessing from God” sounds to me entirely parallel to Mr. Worky McCovenant, who has zero understanding of the gospel, and assesses himself as “I’m a good person, and I expect to go to heaven when I die.”
OK, this was long, but that’s all from me for now. To keep things at a reasonable pace, I’m going to try to stick to a rule of one comment per day.
This is completely unbiblical. Job is a story of trial, but God rescued him from that trial because Job was faithful. And then God blessed him and returned to him twice as much as he had lost (42:10-17). Job’s story is not a tragedy. It is a comedy.
The LORD blesses the righteous and surround them with favor. (Psalm 5:12)
There is great reward (aka blessedness) in keeping God’s Law. (Psalm 19:11)
[…] It is found Here […]
Also, I would like to quickly point out an inconsistency of the amil/w2k paradigm wrt biblical interpretation.
When Jesus commands us to make disciples of nations, it is quickly dismissed as a command to disciple individuals among the nations. But granting for the sake of argument that a command is directed to individuals only, if the theonomist wants to say that this command applies to nations as well as individuals, we are suddenly committing a non sequitur.
Further, nations are extended families. Do I have the right to keep my children from idols? What about my grandchildren? The word “patriot” comes from the Latin “patri” meaning father. A patriot is one who honors his country (fathers). So the ruling authorities are fathers and the people are their children and all the exhortations directed to fathers in scripture apply in some way to rulers.
Since I’m not a theonomist, I obviously believe that rules are made to be broken…
What is the error of Job’s three friends that God rebukes so strongly? All they were saying through the whole book was “If you were faithful, you wouldn’t be in this mess”
And they were wrong. Job was just being tested.
Do you reject the numerous scriptures that link obedience with favor and blessing? I only cited 2, but you know there are many. What do those scriptures mean?
Kazoo,
Assuming you are correct, what do you make of the fact that your views are not those of any seminary? Were I you, that would bother.
From what I hear, Greenville seminary is crawling with theonomists.
Ron,
Seems to this W2Ker that the kind of hermeneutics that render the “all men” rule might help here. When God says the Gospel is for all men it is meant to be all men without distinction (i.e. all tribes and tongues, colors and ethincities, etc.) as opposed to all men without exception (i.e. universalism). Where we disagree is over the whole notion that the KoG breaks into the individual first and moves out from there. Nations, and famiies are made up of individuals. The Gospel is not a trickle-down theory, working from the outside in but rather the other way around. Does it not bother any theonomist here that the Phraisees had the exact same assumptions you do, expecting institutional salvation instead of one that is hidden in the hearts of men?
I agree with that, but it does not refute Theonomy. The Kingdom of God broke into the disciples, and Jesus told them to take it to the nations, baptizing them, and teaching them to obey His Law. Why are civil magistrates excluded from that commission? God uses the civil authorities for the benefit of His people, to protect them from the evildoers, not to convert the evildoers (cf Shepherd’s Call of Grace where he details God’s historical twofold attack on sin: the guilt of sin (Church) and the spread or corruption of sin (State)). The question of Theonomy is this. Should the ministry of politics conform to God’s Word, or man’s word?
What bothers me is that you think the Pharisees had the exact same assumptions I do. There is Phariseeism on the one side (outward, political salvation only, inside the heart is dead), and you have w2k/amil on the other side (the gospel is hidden in the hearts of men, the world around them continues to die and they are ok with that because they think that is how it is supposed to be). Then, in the middle, you have biblical incarnationalism. Words become flesh. God says, “You are righteous” (justification), and then He goes about making it a temporal reality (sanctification). Faith works in love which produces more faith in others. The salvation of a man leads to the salvation of his family, and the salvation of families leads to the salvation of a culture, and the salvation of cultures leads to the salvation of a nation, and the salvation of nations leads to the salvation of the world. How’s that for a gospel that is “not a trickle-down theory”?
Zrim,
Hmm, on reflection, it is bothersome. I see what you’re getting at but don’t have the juice to process properly at this time of night. Didn’t want you to think I was ignoring you all though. It has been a very long 48 hours with work.
Kazoo
God exercises his sovereignty over the whole creation by putting enmity between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.
Since Christians participate in both the church and the state, the distinction between church and state is not the same as the distinction between seeds.
But in the context of the enmity between seeds, cooperation between the two must take place in the state, or rather, the state must have a restraining effect on the war between the two by administering justice according to common grace.
So the job of the state is to uphold justice (blood for blood, eye for eye, tooth for tooth), in order to provide for general equity between people, so that the seed of the woman will not be utterly destroyed.
As Paul said in Romans 8, only Christians are capable of submitting to God’s law.
The difference between the church and state is this: in the church, justice is established once and for all thanks to Christ, while in the state, justice must be striven for.
As such, the church’s governance is based on mercy and forgiveness, while the state should be governed based on justice: retributive justice of blood for blood, etc.
In short, God governs the two kingdoms, both HIS kingdoms, in different ways. God has established salvation in the church via Christ, which upholds his justice perfectly, eternally (active and passive obedience of Christ). In the state, justice has not been established once and for all. As such, the state must continually battle against injustices of all kinds. But perfect justice cannot ever be achieved in the state. We must be content with a general equity, a state of relative peace, relative justice, TEMPORAL justice. Namely blood for blood etc.
The keys of the kingdom, the eternal, everlasting kingdom that was given to Christ, as pictured in Dan 7:13-14, is given to the church, not the state. The church, is the visible representation of the eternal kingdom of God, while the state is merely temporal. It doesn’t have the keys to heaven and hell, but it bears the sword.
The church cannot put anyone to death, but the state can. The state cannot deny anyone church membership or the sacraments, but the church can.
Here’s a great lecture on the topic, if you want to argue against the 2K view:
[audio src="http://www.netfilehost.com/wscal/WSC_Events/08.02.19.VanDrunen_Inauguration.mp3" /]
That’s by David Vandrunen. If you want to have an informed argument against the 2K view, this is a good place to start, for a minimal cost of time and energy.
The kingdom is bestowed on the saints in Dan 7:27. This is a prophesy of what was to come, and has now been fulfilled in an already/not yet way.
So when Satan whispers the lies of Job’s friends in my ear, “you have problems because you are guilty, guiiilty!”, should I respond:
(a) Don’t be silly — I’m a faithfully obedient covenant member, and as soon as I pass the test by remaining faithfully obedient for an unknown amount of time, my trial will be over, and everything will be great! If I’ve learned anything from Job, it’s that, as long as I’m faithful, I must accept not only good from God’s hand, but also evil (for a short time).
(b) Don’t be silly — There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus! But, as an inhabitant of this cursed earth, I have my allotment of misery to endure before Christ returns and God brings perfect and complete justice for the non-elect because of their sins, and resurrects me to incorruptibility because of Christ’s obedience.
Too bad Paul didn’t know that (a) is the correct answer, or he could have faithfulled away that pesky thorn!
Rube,
I guess that pastors shouldn’t counsel people who are sick and in pain to inquire to God if maybe they have a sin they need to repent of. I mean, it’s impossible that the trial in a Christian’s life can be a result of temporal sanctions of blessing and cursing, right? If you agree, I know a great Word of Faith church you might want to look into. You know, one where sickness is NEVER God’s will.
kazoo
Pastors should counsel people who are alive to inquire to God maybe if they have a sin they need to repent of. People who are sick and in pain should see a doctor, and be reminded that God’s strength is revealed in our weakness.
God, can’t you see that I am a faithfully obedient postmillenialist? Why am I still receiving temporal sanctions? Why aren’t you giving me the covenant rewards I’ve merited by my faithful obedience?
BTW, see also this comment, since the same discussion is going on with some of the same people over at the Outhouse.
[…] Theonomist Friend A fellow blogger stumble upon my latest post and tracked back to this my "ONE Kingdom" post. He has a very well written post on "Theonomy and Natural Law." I highly recommend […]
What a ripoff! No response to my post!!
Sorry Echo. Patience. I read it but want to give you more than a quick reply, which is all that I have tonight.
Maybe Ron will leave you a response before I do.
k
Right on.
This is BS. Rube, please quote a prominent postmillennialist that says the Christian merits rewards. If you cannot, you prove that you have mischaracterized the position of some of your Christian brethren, in violation of the 9th commandment. We have discussed this before, so I know you know we reject your characterization. This is the sort of refuse that has fueled the recent controversy.
Either way, you have made it plain that you are at odds with yet another point of the confession. The confession says we may expect blessing and reward in this life for faithful obedience:
And again:
I never caught this before, but the confession says the Law of God has promises! [see quote above] So much for Law/Gospel…
[…] So much for Law/Gospel… […]
Ron,
Your charge of the 9th commandment violation against Rube is unfounded. He is describing the logical conclusion of an argument, arguing for the absurdity of the implication. He is not saying that anyone actually says this. There is a certain hostility in your comments that is unbecoming a Christian in civilized debate of the Word of God.
But regarding the promises in the law, you have to be careful with how the word “law” is defined. A covenant has parts to it. There are terms, and there are blessings promised for obedience to the terms, and there are curses for disobedience to the terms – at least in most covenants. The covenant of grace is different according to some.
At any rate, when people talk about distinguishing the law from the gospel, they are distinguishing between the terms of the covenant of works on the one hand, the law, and the covenant of grace on the other. However, some, as in this portion of the Confession, may also use the term “law” more broadly, to encompass not just the terms of the covenant of works, but the entire covenant, to include the promised blessings and curses. Some might also define “law” as the entire Mosaic economy.
It is a general principle of wisdom that if for example, you don’t tell lies, there is a certain blessing inherent to this. This is not rewards and punishment according the covenant of works, this is a general principle of God’s common grace. I mean, if we just think about it, someone who lies all the time will be looked down upon by all those around him, resulting from his inevitably being caught in those lies. Living a moral life is rewarded in this world because of the way God has set it up.
This does, by no means, mean that there is no distinction between the law and the gospel. The law says, “Do this and you will live” and the gospel says, “Christ did this, and therefore you will live.” I don’t know how anyone can read Romans or Galatians and still conclude that the distinction between law and gospel is invalid.
Putting the continuing relevance of the law aside for the moment, surely you can understand that the law is saying one thing, while the gospel is saying another. The law is telling us what we must do, while the gospel tells us what Christ did for us. Is there no difference between these two things? Didn’t Christ say that his blood inaugurated a new covenant? If so, can’t we say that there’s a difference between what the law demands of us and what the gospel promises to us?
If not, then what is the significance of what Jesus DID?
If I believe the logical conclusion of amillennialism is that the Messiah and His gospel fail (which I do), then if I were to go around saying that amillennialists believe Jesus is a failure (which I don’t), would I not be misrepresenting my brethren in violation of the 9th commandment? Yes I would be. Not only that, I would be demonstrating myself incapable of handling what they actually say.
If discussion is going to be fruitful, we need to relay one another’s’ positions in a way they themselves would accept. Otherwise, we are just arguing at our respective straw men.
I am sorry you think so. I would say spreading slander about the brethren is hostile and unbecoming a Christian in civilized debate of the Word of God. Again, Rube and I have had many discussions like this, so he knows full well that his characterization is a false one.
I agree the rewards/punishments are not according to the covenant of works. The whole question is whether they exist in the covenant of grace. The confession says yes, and it even qualifies the affirmative for folks who worry about importing the CoW into the CoG:
So, even though we are not operating under a covenant of works, the confession states that we are still directed and bound by The Law of God.
In case it is unclear, I should note that the above cited confessional passage is from Chapter XIX: Of the Law of God.
To be bound by the law in the covenant of grace is a vastly different thing than being bound to the law in a covenant of works.
We are bound to the law in the covenant of grace according to the new nature we have been given. As believers in Christ, our new nature dictates that we obey the law. However, as Paul says, we are not under law, but under grace.
An analogy can be drawn to God here. God cannot lie. Why? Is there some law that binds him, some power that governs him? No, but rather, his nature is such that he never WOULD lie. He cannot lie because he does not want to lie, because he is by nature truth itself.
In a similar way, Christians are being conformed through sanctification to the image of God, to the character of Christ. According to this new nature, sin does not become us. So it is our new nature that drives us to submit to the law of God, and in that sense we are bound to it; not as slaves, but as heralds.
Anyway, if you went around saying that Amillennialists think the gospel is a failure, you wouldn’t be guilty of slander, but you’d just be wrong. Being wrong is also out of character according to the Christian, new nature.
I know that you, especially, want to avoid saying that anyone could ever merit any reward from God — to the extent that even Christ does not merit the reward of our redemption, but is a recipient of God’s grace! But (as Echo correctly points out) the exaggerated and absurd words that I put in your mouth are the ironic consequence of your stance on ‘covenant blessings’.
The plain fact of life in this fallen world is that not all the faithful experience the blessings of health and wealth in Deut 28, nor do all nonbelievers (not even all apostates!) experience the devastation of the cursings of Deut 28. For you to assert that blessings and cursings are deterministic consequences of faithfulness and unfaithfulness, differs from the prosperity gospel only in degree. What does your theology have to say about a faithful Christian who lives and dies in financial and medical impoverishment?
Or how about the puniness of the faithful Reformed church across the world, in the face of Evangelicalism, Roman Catholicism, and even fast-growing Mormonism? How is it possible for the true, faithful church, not to grow? I’m sure you would say that the Reformed truth is held back from an explosive trajectory to global dominion because of continued pessimistic, amillenial defection from postmillenial faithfulness. But how could that be? How could faithful postmillenialism become only a remnant in the Reformed church, if God always prospers faithfulness?
Finally, as for WCF, there is a difference between “may expect”, and “will receive”.
And again, what we “may expect” refers to the general operations of life under common grace, which operates to restrain the common curse.
Echo, you can call it “general operations of life” if you want to. The confession calls it “blessing”. I’ll stick with the confession.
Rube, do you believe there will be any difference wrt eternal rewards that various believers will receive? If so, then you believe in meriting rewards (according to your logic).
On the puniness of the “faithful reformed church”, your amillennialism is showing. This is why postmils tend toward FV. We expect this age to be one of unhindered progress wrt the gospel (and overall, it has been), and we believe the reformed faith to be the purest expression of Christian doctrine, so the “puniness” of the reformed wing of the Church means that we are doing something wrong. I know that possibility is precluded in amillennialism, but that’s the problem. We shouldn’t hold to a view that prevents us from identifying our weaknesses and trying to come up with remedies.
One of the things we suck at is keeping our children in the covenant. This is probably due to our hyper emphasis on election to the downplay of covenant obligation. That way, when our children leave the church, we can just throw up our hands and say, “That’s election for ya!” But God promises to love our children if we are faithful. This is why the FV has such a heavy emphasis on covenantal promises and succession. They have identified a problem in the reformed churches and they are addressing it. We have yet to really see how this will play out generationally, but I am hopeful. I already see the effects of FV on my own children.
?? So are we puny, or not?
Oh, OK, so you agree, we are puny. And you say it is because we are doing wrong; so again my question: If the Reformation started out just like FV, and God blesses us when we’re not “doing something wrong,” (and in particular, blesses by “keeping our children in the covenant”), how is it mathematically possible for the “right” (Postmil/FV) to have dwindled to a remnant? (And for the Reformation to have dwindled from “strong” to “puny”?) Wouldn’t it be a mathematical certainty that Amil would be bred out of the church, because of their lower retention rate?
I see your point with regard to the “math” and I have to agree that this is where God has ordained we be in our sanctification process as the Body of Christ. That said, I believe we can still identify historical errors and work toward rectifying them. God’s sovereignty is not antithetical to man’s responsability.
There are numerous factors that go into why the Church in America is the way she is today. Among them are the revivals that went on in the 18th-19th centuries where people were called away from the Church to an individual Christianity. Also, the American frontier expanded faster than equipped ministers could fill the need. So we had illiterate revivalists pitching tents and calling ordained ministers unconverted because the ordained ministers had the gaul to say that one should be educated to be a minister. Look at any dispensational hero list and you will find folks from the 1800s that gloried in their lack of education. The educated minister was seen as a dead minister.
Another conflict between revivalists and ordained ministers was that the ordained ministers affirmed that one’s religious experience needn’t be radical to be true. The religious experience of a covenant child is obviously going to differ from that of Saul of Tarsus. But if one is told that they need a radical experience, as the revivalists were saying, they are going to doubt the validity of their relatively common experience. But as the gospel reaches down to the second and subsequent generations, the more commonplace it will become.
The Psalms are a great example of this. In contrast with our modern worship songs, the Psalms don’t have any songs about conversion to God (e.g. Amazing Grace). The children of God were taught to believe and sing that they were God’s from birth. The psalmist sees no conflict with this and the fact that he was also sinful from birth. This is easily resolved by the fact that God was his savior from birth. As the gospel progresses in time, there will be less and less radical conversion stories and more and more covenant children growing up in Christ and being able to relate more to the experience of the Psalms than Amazing Grace. And if you think this will lead to a dry, dead religion, just read the Psalms.
Rube & Ron,
In history we only see the life of a stalk of grass. But the life of the church ebbs and flows. Reformed churches in America and in the World may have dwindled, but the optimism for the future is about the Church whole, not just reformed. Theology isn’t everything. Being God’s special people is what is important. The church as far as I know is bigger and more influential today than ever before. That should count for something.
Now, if the reformed churches want to start growing in number again, then they need to hold on to the confessions, become conservitively charismatic, and embrace Theonomy. 🙂
kazoo
Excellent point, Jeff. At times, I lose that point somewhere between the propositions.
Well, not all that excellent. Perhaps the Reformed church as a whole could use more “worship” in addition to its emphasis on “proclamation” (see a couple of recent posts at the Outhouse ), but to my mind, a Reformed church is the only possible option for a good church; everything out there is some flavor of Arminian, and that’s just bad.
Side note: from today’s Daily Confession, WLC 45, asks How doth Christ execute the office of King? One answer is rewarding the obedience of his elect, with these scripture proofs
I didn’t think we got rewards, Rube 🙂
Joking aside, I agree fully with what you said on worship. This is why there has been so much written on liturgy within the FV camp. We believe that for the Church to be the salt and light that our Lord established her to be, we must start with worshipping Him aright.
Ron (and the rest of the slimy FV folk),
Gal 5:12 I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves!
If the shoe fits…
E
Ahh! The old E is back. I knew your recent Christ-likeness was too good to be true.
Echo,
And I find the accusation of “unsettling” a bit one-sided. Who is going after whom and calling them heretics without due process, after all? Who is trying to ruin the ministry and life of whom? Who is writing volumes of accusations without even calling a brother up on the phone to clarify or to make a one on one brotherly call to repentance a la Matt. 18? No FV men have brought charges against any anti-FV men because we understand that their views are within the realm of historic reformed orthodoxy.
I know, I know, all this is in defense of the gospel (as you see it). But if it is not, which I maintain that it is not, then the anti-FV men are the ones unsettling the Church.
“But if it is not…” Well, good thing for us it is.
Justification is by faith alone, not faith and works. Rome teaches faith and works, which is why they declared faith alone to be anathema. Pick a side.
Define faith. If your definition does not include that it is living or that it works in love, then your definition is unbiblical and unconfessional.
Oh, and I am on the Lord’s side. He prayed in John 17 that catholics and protestants and all others who believed in Him through the word of the apostles would be one as He and the Father are one.
First, in John 17 he prayed for the union of the elect, not the union of the visible church. Rome is a Gnostic sect of Christianity. They have declared the gospel of justification by faith alone to be anathema. Case closed.
Now, as for faith. Faith is, as Turretin explains, knowledge, assent and trust.
That’s what faith IS. Faith PRODUCES works, but faith IS NOT works.
James says that faith without works is dead. What that means is that if you have faith, it will necessarily yield the fruit of works. And of course I absolutely agree with that.
But we must distinguish. Paul said that justification is by faith alone, not by works. Works are excluded from justification for Paul.
James uses the word “justification” differently. Where Paul means “declared righteous”, James means “shown to be righteous”. There’s a difference between God saying of you that you are righteous based on the merits of Christ alone, on the one hand, and your works showing the world that Christ is at work in you on the other. In the one, God is SAYING of us that we are righteous, in the other, the results of what God has said are manifested.
E
Echo accuses Rome of being gnostic and then defines the Church as gnostic, that is, bound together by propositions, rather than by a Person.
That’s what ya call ironic.
The confession defines justifying faith as that which is no dead faith (that means “living faith”, btw) and that which works by love. Those attributes are given to justifying faith itself. The framers then cite James 2 as scripture proof in the chapter on justification. So, it is unconfessional to say that James has something different in mind than Paul with his usage of the word “justification”. If you don’t believe that, take an exception to the confession. But please don’t tell me the FV is unconfessional for just rattling back to you what the confession says.
What are you talking about? I didn’t state the basis of unity in the church, I clarified who Jesus prayed for that they would be unified. I didn’t say why, I said who.
And about justifying faith, again, what are you talking about? I affirmed that faith produces works. I distinguished between what faith DOES and what faith IS. What’s the problem?
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Echo, let me spell it out for you. You said that since Rome denied Sola Fide (a proposition), the “case is closed” with regard to whether or not they are elect. You thereby *in effect* made the union of the elect Church a union centered on a proposition (sola fide) rather than a Person (Jesus). But election is found in Christ, not in getting an A on a theological exam.
If someone has been engrafted into Christ in baptism, and they continue in faith to the end, how have they not met the requirements for eternal salvation? Because they aren’t clear on a proposition concerning the faith they have? If that is true, you’ve denied sola fide. We are not justified by our faith in justification by faith alone. We are justified by faith in Jesus alone.
Ron,
I’m sorry I confused you. Rome, as a church, is a false church because they deny the truth of the gospel. The proclamation of the gospel is what makes the church the church.
Whether someone is elect or not is an entirely different thing altogether.
Someone may confess that justification is by faith alone, and yet their profession is false, they don’t really believe, but they’re just saying what you want to hear. Not a true Christian.
Meanwhile, someone may confess that justification is by faith and works, like your FV friends (yes, I know that they insist that that’s not what they’re saying), and yet they might not really believe that in their heart. It may be perhaps that in their heart, they’re just trying to articulate what the Bible says and what they believe, but perhaps in their heart, they really are looking to Christ to do it for them, because they know they’re a miserable failure and a sinner.
Only God looks on the heart, only God knows who is elect or not.
By the way, I’m not sure I understand what you said about baptism engrafting people into Christ. Do you believe in baptismal regeneration?
E
Really? What truth of the gospel do they deny? If your answer is “Sola Fide”, then you own the critique I gave you.
The truth is, whatever else the Roman Church teaches, they still teach people that they are sinners in need of God’s forgiveness and that forgiveness only comes by grace. They wouldn’t say “only by grace through faith in Jesus Christ”, because they understand that no one can be saved without good works. They may equate this with being saved in part by good works, which would be wrong, but they still teach people to trust in the work of Jesus for the forgiveness of their sins. But they take the gospel further and proclaim the transformation of all of creation by the blood of Jesus (cf. Col 1; Rom 8).
So, you believe that because they fudge a bit on the distinction between justification and sanctification, their gospel is smaller than yours, but it is actually bigger. It’s as big as the whole of creation.
You acknowledge that “FV guys” can be saved because they might not really believe what they are saying (aka their propositions). Again, you believe in propositional salvation. This is not Sola Fide. Union with Jesus in baptism and abiding in Him to the end by faith – Personal salvation, not propositional salvation.
Perhaps this confusion of yours comes from equating faith and knowledge, I am not really sure.
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