Theonomy: Sanctified by Law reconstructionism; or the Tower of Babel
The same Christ will come again to judgment, when the Wickedness of the world shall have reached the highest point, and Antichrist corrupted the true religion.
We reject all who deny the real resurrection; who teach the ultimate salvation of all the godless, and even the devil. We also reject the Jewish dream of a millennium, or golden age on earth, before the last judgment.
We therefore confess and teach with a loud voice: Jesus Christ is the only Savior of the world, the King and High-priest, the true Messiah, whom all the shadows and types of the Law and the Prophets did prefigure and promise. God did send him to us, and we need not look for another.
There remains nothing but that we should give all glory to him, believe in him, and rest in him alone.
The chiliast expectation that a converted nation of Israel, restored to the land of Palestine, under Christ will rule over the nations is without biblical foundation.
The first century church had a keen expectation for the Second Coming, an expectation encouraged by the Apostles.
Because of Satan’s deception, the faithful are marginalized, subjugated, victimized, and many face martyrdom for failure to worship the beast.
More precisely the mistake made by both premillennialism and postmillennialism is to posit a coming of the promised kingdom of power and glory foretold by the prophets before the Consummation. Both these millennial views recognize that the ultimate coming of the kingdom in heavenly glory transpires at the Consummation but they also suppose there is a preliminary realization of the antitypal theocratic kingdom in the millennium and thus before the Consummation (which of course comes after the millennium on any view of the sequence of the millennium and the parousia). Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 351.
Theonomy in its contemporary form was just beginning to emerge as Van Til’s career was ending. Bahnsen’s Theonomy in Christian Ethics did not appear until five years after Van Til’s retirement in the Spring of 1972. Therefore Van Til has no public account which permits us to determine how he evaluated Theonomy.
This surely accounts in part for the fact that both Theonomy and its detractors claim to be influenced by Van Til. The matters which we have considered indicate that, in our judgment, Van Til would have distinguished himself from Theonomy. Indeed, in private communication, Van Til indicated reticence to be associated with Theonomic ethics, at least insofar as it was manifest in his day:
Then too I am frankly a little concerned about the political views of Mr. Rushdoony and Mr. North and particularly if I am correctly informed about some of the views Gary North has with respect to the application of Old Testament principles to our day.
My only point is that I would hope and expect that they would not claim that such views are inherent in principles which I hold. Letter to C. Gregg Singer, May 11, 1972, procured from the archives at Westminster Seminary. T. David Gordon, “Van Til and Theonomic Ethics,” in Creator Redeemer Consummator: A Festschrift for Meredith G. Kline, ed. Howard Griffith and John R. Muether (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007), 277.
Further to the right exists a group that goes by several names: Christian Reconstructionism, theonomy, dominion theology, and kingdom theology. By no means is it a cohesive movement but consists of several subgroups. While its roots are in Calvinist theology, it is an uneasy alliance of fundamentalists, charismatics, and miscellaneous evangelicals on the Christian Right. It consists of Christian splinter groups that are postmillennial and desire to take America and the world back to an Old Testament ethic.
As used by the Reconstructionists, the term theonomy refers to the abiding validity of God’s law throughout history.
While they theonomists may quarrel among themselves, they come together over the big picture, namely, the need to restore the nations of the world to Old Testament principles. Or from another perspective, many of these adherents regard Christian Reconstructionism as a resurrected Puritan movement.
Theonomy reaches to the Christian’s personal life and then to the nations of the world through the church’s work and witness. On the personal level, reconstructionism strikes a welcome note against the antinomianism inherent in much of modern evangelicalism, particularly in dispensationalism. But it goes too far.
According to Rushdoony, “Man’s justification is by the grace of God in Jesus Christ; man’s sanctification is by means of the law of God” (Institutes of Biblical Law, p. 4). Again, “The law is the way of sanctification” (p. 3). These statements set law as the antithesis of grace. They present a theory of sanctification that is not by grace but by works of law. (Alan Cairns, Dictionary of Theological Terms (Belfast; Greenville, SC: Ambassador Emerald International, 2002), 367.)
For he who says: I shall be saved through my works, says nothing other than: I am Christ, since the works of Christ alone save as many as ever are saved.
Philip S. Watson, Let God Be God!: An Interpretation of the Theology of Martin Luther (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2000), 96.
Certainly the church of Christ must recognize and prepare for the fact that political powers will be opposed to the Christian community. Luther repeatedly emphasizes that the persecution of the church through the world in this sense cannot be avoided and is even the normal situation. The New Testament bears witness to the terrible battle of political religion in the form of the emperor cult against Christianity (Rev. 13).
The most serious danger remains, however: that power within the church which distorts Christ, which underlies the misleading power of false Christs (Mark 13:6, 21), that falsification of the kingdom of Christ which makes it a power of this world and the falsification of the gospel which makes it a law (the Grand Inquisitor!), and the glorious theocratic church which forgets the cross.
The words “antichrist” and “anti-Christian” are so loosely used in our own time that they need to be restored. They dare not become an expression for every power which fights against and oppresses the church and Christianity. For the original biblical sense of the terms describes opposition to Christ by imposters who seem to resemble and pretend to represent Christ.
The antichrist appears within the church itself; as such it is the most dangerous form which Satan can assume.
Paul Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther, trans. Robert C. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 421–422.
In urging the reconstruction of the righteous commonwealth, theonomists frequently proclaim their teaching as something breathtakingly new. Much of their literature is marked by a sense of novelty, as though they are addressing great questions for the first time, as though such issues had been inexplicably neglected in two thousand years of Christian history
Of course contemporary theonomists, who wish to think of themselves as conservative, resist the comparison with the liberal Social Gospel and with leftwing Evangelicals, not to mention liberation theology. But the analogies are inescapable. The policy specifics may be dramatically different, but the theological rationale is strikingly similar.
The different thing in theonomy is not its postmillennialism but its understanding of biblical law. Acts. 15 describes the convening of what might be described as the first ecumenical council in order to answer the “Judaizers” among the early Christians who insisted that non-Jewish believers must be circumcised and instructed to keep the law of Moses, or else they would not be saved. That position was rejected by the apostles, who decided,
“For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden that these necessary things: that you abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from unchastity. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well.” The Judaizers of that time claimed that the gentiles, in order to be saved, must enter Judaism under Mosaic law;
the theonomists of today claim that Mosaic law has departed Judaism in order to reconstruct, and thus save, the nations under the rule of “the saints.”
Richard John Neuhans, “Why Wait for the Kingdom? The Theonomist Temptation,” First Things, no. 3 (1990): 14–16.
To begin with, since Christians were living in expectation of the end of the world, they had neither the inclination nor the ability to initiate an ethical renewal of a world which seemed to be doomed for destruction.
As the years passed, however, everyday problems required with ever increasing urgency a Christian answer from the churches. However, the ethical directives of Jesus—the only materials of their own with which the Christians could supply the need—by no means covered all the areas of life and culture for which decisions had to be made. (Martin Dibelius and Heinrich Greeven, James: A Commentary on the Epistle of James, Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976), 3–4.)
For most early Christians from the NT era onward, the law of Moses was in some respects obsolete, and hence no longer binding, at least not in the same manner as it was before the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ (Melito).
To read the vast sweep of Torah regulations as if they were all still to be carried out literally was to commit a—or perhaps even the—capital hermeneutical error, inasmuch as to do so would be a failure to grasp the pivotal significance of the paschal event, and its aftershock, the destruction of the temple in 70 CE, for the divine economy of salvation.
Patristic authors were also inclined to underline both the limited aims and the limited efficacy of the law’s pedagogy. With respect to its aims, the morality promoted by the law was imperfect when compared to that required by the law of Christ (Ambrose).
For instance, Tertullian notes how the Mosaic law allowed for vengeance while the new law of Christ promotes peace. The law of Moses’ aims were also soteriological limited. God did not give the law in order to justify (Augustine) or to foster faith (Ambrosiaster, comm. in Gal. 3.12).
Cyril of Alexandria offers one of the most thorough patristic accounts of the manifold salvific goods that the law could not pretend to provide:
true knowledge and vision of God, intimate access to God’s presence, and sanctification.
B. Lee Blackburn Jr, “Law,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation, ed. Paul M. Blowers and Peter W. Martens, First Edition (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 563,564.
Yet when positive law has no acknowledged source and standard in divine law, civil law is perceived only in terms of regulations that influential sectors of the community welcome for themselves and try to impose on others. Men and women are elected to office or are defeated, as the case may be, if they do or do not pledge to support programs advanced by labor, by multinational corporations, by Pro-Life or Pro-Choice movements, by the Black Caucus or by proponents of the Equal Rights Amendment.
Alas, the candidate who pledges to vote only an informed mind and a good conscience is increasingly vulnerable to elimination. This is not to say that informed minds and good consciences are incompatible with a specific stand on particular issues, or that lack of issue-commitment is desirable in the U.S. party system.
But to allow a single issue to determine political fortunes may be the first symptom of a malfunctioning democratic process on the road to fragmentation and chaos.
Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, vol. 6 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999), 452.
Their Program
The Reconstructionists want nothing less than a complete transformation of the world, beginning first in America. Their program centers on six points. They are postmillennialists and see the Second Coming of Christ way into the future. Thus, they allow for a long gradual transformation of human society that will come largely by peaceful means. While theonomy focuses on many social and political issues, its structure has a great deal to do with eschatology.
Postmillennialism has been nearly totally eclipsed since the early twentieth century. Reconstructionism represents a return to postmillennialism and insists that the kingdom is now and comes in the form of the “Church Very Militant.”
They do not deny the doctrine of the Second Coming but represent a “realized eschatology.” Neither do they reject the concept of a future millennium, as do the amillennialists, but say the millennium is now. Humankind is not living in the end times, but in the middle times and it may take hundreds or even thousands of years for the righteous kingdom to be established. Christians thus are not to pray for Christ’s return but for the world to be ready for this event.
Two, every human institution of every nation must be reclaimed from the Satanists and humanists. In this they will not compromise, as they believe the Christian Right has done. Thus, in their mind, Christian Reconstructionism is not one option but the only choice.
“Our goal is world dominion under Christ’s lordship, a ‘world takeover’ if you will,” says David Chilton. “We are the shapers of world history.”
Richard Kyle, Apocalyptic Fever: End-Time Prophecies in Modern America (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012), 212.
Suppose we pin our hopes on the next thousand years of scientific, technological, and social change (or even more optimistically upon the next century). Who does not hope that humanity will improve on its present folly? But is there any evidence that would reasonably lead one to conclude that in the year 3000 people will be morally better than in 2000?
Is there any insurance against the ever-incipient moral decline of humanity, however great the achievements of one or more generations? Will not human beings find ways in the next millennium to use innocent people to further their own vested interests, to treat people as things and things as God, and to deceive themselves in the process? The Christian hope is not an end of realism.
Its hopes lie not in a gradual improvement of human nature but in divine grace amid human self-assertiveness.
Thomas C. Oden, Life in the Spirit: Systematic Theology, Vol. III (San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), 424–425.
As most of the proponents of this viewpoint do not hesitate to say, a theonomic social order is a theocratic social order, and a theocratic social order is a Christian social order. (Some theonomists prefer “Christocracy” to theocracy.)
Bible law requires a radical decentralization of government under the rule of the righteous.
Private property rights, especially for the sake of the family, must be rigorously protected, with very limited interference by the state and the institutional church. Restitution, including voluntary slavery, should be an important element of the criminal justice system. A strong national defense should be maintained until the whole world is “reconstructed” (which may be a very long time).
Capital punishment will be employed for almost all the capital crimes listed in the Old Testament, including adultery, homosexual acts, apostasy, incorrigibility of children (meaning late teenagers), and blasphemy, along with murder and kidnapping.
There will be a cash, gold-based economy with limited or no debt. These are among the specifics broadly shared by people who associate themselves with the theonomic viewpoint. A critically important feature of theonomy is that it represents a return to postmillennialism after almost a century of its near-total eclipse. Although their analysis of the shape of the world is typically bleak,
the theonomists insist that the kingdom is now, if only the true believers have the boldness to take dominion (hence “dominion theology”).
Kline calls this covenant “the covenant of common grace.” Importantly, the covenant of common grace renews the cultural mandate. Genesis 9:1: “And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth’.” This repeats almost verbatim the language of the pre-Fall mandate but with one important difference—the word “subdue” is not repeated. This is because subduing the earth is no longer possible for fallen man. That task has been transferred to Christ as the second Adam. He has in principle subdued the earth by his death and resurrection. That’s the already. And he will finally subdue it at the end of history when he brings all things into subjection under his feet and ushers in the new creation. That’s the not-yet.
The covenant of common grace is God’s promise to keep judgment in abeyance until the appointed time. Never again will God curse the ground or destroy all living creatures as he did in the flood (Gen 8:21). In his common grace, he will preserve the order of nature, “while the earth remains” (Gen 8:22).
And this promise applies to all without distinguishing between God’s holy people and the seed of the serpent.
This is precisely what makes it a covenant of common grace, because it is common to the elect and the non-elect. It’s not an administration of the covenant of special saving grace.
Meredith Kline’s view of Christ and Culture
Never one to mince words, Finney allegedly asserted that “if the church will do her duty, the Millennium may come in this country in three years.” This led in the years before the Civil War to unprecedented evangelical social and religious reform: temperance, antislavery, peace, women’s rights, education, as well as dramatic expansion in home and foreign mission work. Steven Pointer, “Seeing the Glory,” Christian History Magazine-Issue 61: A History of the Second Coming (Carol Stream, IL: Christianity Today, 1999).
It is not the work of man, but the work of God to bring in the glorious Kingdom of God.
Jesus did not command his followers to disciple the nations qua nations (the nations as such). The clause “disciple all the nations” implicitly contains a reference to individuals; it means “disciple individuals from all the nations.” Acts 8:40 is again illustrative. Philip did not preach to cities qua cities. The clause “he preached the gospel to all the cities” implicitly contains a reference to the individuals to whom Philip actually preached.
Immediately after our Lord issues his directive to “disciple all the nations,” he expands on what he means: “baptizing them … teaching them” (Matt 28:19–20). “Them” (αὐτούς) is a masculine personal pronoun that refers not to the nations as such, since ἔθνη (“nations”) is a neuter noun, but to individuals from the nations. If the author had wanted to describe “the collective conversion of national groups,” then “αὐτά, the neuter plural pronoun, would be expected rather than αὐτούς.” The antecedent of “them,” persons, is contained implicitly in the clause “disciple all the nations.”
[See the section on omitted antecedents in Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 339–442. Thanks to Greg Thornberg for this reference.]
A nation qua nation cannot experience the personal discipleship in view any more than it can receive Trinitarian baptism.
Its Implementation
If the Christian Reconstructionists had their own way, nearly every aspect of American life would be dramatically transformed. Society will not be reformed. It will be razed to the ground and rebuilt. All government props will be gone:
social security, welfare, minimum wages, government regulation of business, public education, and all taxes except a ten percent income tax.
What will replace this government assistance? Private schools and home schooling will provide education. The elderly would be cared for by their children and a private retirement plan.
After the harvest has been completed, the poor would be allowed to glean from the fields.
America would return to a gold-and-silver monetary standard and, because the Bible prohibits usury, loans would be valid for only seven years. Labor unions would be abolished. The Reconstructionists desire to take America back to the world of radical libertarian economics, a decentralized political system, and social Darwinism. [Shupe, “Reconstructionist Movement,” 881; Martin, With God on Our Side, 352; Barron, Heaven on Earth?, 135–49; Shupe, “Prophets of a Biblical America,” sec. 1, p. 14; Rausch and Chismar, “The New Puritans and Their Theonomic Paradise,” 723.]
In respect to morals and religion, the transformation will be just as radical. The family will be run by strict patriarchal principles.
Women will be removed from the workforce to stay at home. In some cases they may lose their citizenship.
Indentured servitude will solve many problems: unemployment, prison overcrowding, and idle teenagers. Old Testament laws will be strictly enforced. Homosexuals, adulterers, blasphemers, Sabbath breakers, habitual criminals, and disobedient children will be harshly punished—perhaps by stoning. Religious pluralism and toleration will be a thing of the past.
There will be no place in America for Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, humanists, feminists, secularists, and even non-Reconstructionist Christians.
The First Amendment guaranteeing such freedoms will be gone and the government will not be neutral toward religion. Rather, it will enforce a biblical faith based on the Old Testament. [Shupe,“Reconstructionist Movement,” 881; Martin, With God on Our Side, 352; Barron, Heaven on Earth?, 135–49; Shupe, “Prophets of a Biblical America,” sec. 1, p. 14; Rausch and Chismar, “The New Puritans and Their Theonomic Paradise,” 723.] Richard Kyle, Apocalyptic Fever: End-Time Prophecies in Modern America (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012), 214–215.
Moreover, theonomy is a “top-down” intellectual movement with the ideas being generated by a few individuals. Furthermore, the theonomists have little time for democracy and when their goals are implemented, there will be few freedoms—political, religious, or personal. Still, what modifies Reconstructionism’s dogmatism and its autocratic demeanor is its organizational structure. It is more of an alliance of like-minded individuals than a tight-knit movement. And they frequently quarrel with each other, sometimes in an acrimonious manner. Richard Kyle, Apocalyptic Fever: End-Time Prophecies in Modern America (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012), 213.
A reconstructed world ruled by future Rushdoonyites will not, needless to say, be democratic. Rushdoony is straightforward in condemning democracy as a “heresy.” He writes that he is in agreement with John Dewey on the proposition that
“supernatural Christianity and democracy are inevitably enemies.”
Nor is it sufficient to say that Rushdoony’s animus toward democracy is simply toward the absolute democracy or raw majoritarianism of the vox populi, vox dei variety. His opposition to democracy and any form of legally protected pluralism is unprincipled, as it should be in the argument of a reflective theocrat. The free exercise of religion, for example, must be only for the free exercise of true religion. As Rushdoony says,
“The right have rights,” thus echoing the Roman Catholic dictum of an earlier day that “error has no rights.”
Richard John Neuhans, “Why Wait for the Kingdom? The Theonomist Temptation,” First Things, no. 3 (1990): 18.
Christian Reconstructionism, Theonomy, Dominion theology, are postmillennialists.
Despite expectations of the description of a great final battle, as was the case with previous war scenes, no battle takes place.
Stated in terms of the principal antagonists, the church age interim is a time of continuous Har Magedon conflict between Christ and Satan. Satan opposes the advance of the gospel by persecution from without (through the institutional agency of the bestial imperial powers) and by perversion of the truth within (institutionalized in the apostate Babylon-church).
Christ, enthroned above with all authority in heaven and earth, restrains Satan and the antichrist development.
Clearly, the enormity of the surge of evil world powers at the close of the church age contradicts the postmillennial expectation that all the nations will have been theocratized under the kingship of Christ during the millennium. As we shall be further observing below, the kingdom of glory comes only after the complete and final removal of all evil from the earth.
Latent in the Apocalyptic symbolism is an even more direct contradiction of dominion theology’s postmillennial eschatology. The melding of church with the state and its coercive power,
the arrangement which theonomic reconstructionism regards as the kingdom ideal to be attained during the millennium, is precisely what is anathematized in the Apocalypse as the harlot-Babylon church, the monstrous perversion of the true church.
Meredith G. Kline, God, Heaven and Har Magedon: A Covenantal Tale of Cosmos and Telos (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 186.
In Rev 16:12–16 the kings of the east team up with demonic spirits in preparing for a confrontation at [H]armagedon. In Rev.17:9–14 a coalition of ten kings falls in line with the Beast in anticipation of making war on the Lamb, who will conquer them.
Rev. 19:11–21 depicts the triumph of Christ and his heavenly armies against the kings of the earth with their armies.
In this scene, Christ comes down from heaven riding on a horse in true warrior fashion to judge and make war. His weapon is “a sharp sword with which to strike the nations and rule them with a rod of iron” (19:15; cf. Ps 2:9; Isa 11:4). The Beast and the False Prophet are captured and thrown alive into the lake of fire. Daniel C. Harlow, “The Dead Sea Scrolls and the New Testament,” in Eerdmans Commentary on the Bible, ed. James D. G. Dunn and John W. Rogerson (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), 1585.
The relationship between deception and the dragon would hardly surprise the readers, for he is “the one who deceives the whole inhabited world” (Rev 12:9). In fact, the dragon is the one who stands behind all human agents of deception (John 7:12, 47; 1 John 1:8; 2:26; 3:7; Rev 2:20), as well as the false prophet (13:14; 19:20) and Babylon (18:23). John Christopher Thomas and Frank D. Macchia, Revelation, ed. Joel B. Green and Max Turner, The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016), 351.
As with Jewish apocalypses, the program of religious loyalty in Revelation combined with resistance to evil compromise, while convinced that the future shall involve a radical transformation that is already at work in the present (cf. Rev. 3:8).
The call to repentance is absent in only two messages, both of which are addressed to churches experiencing similar circumstances. The church at Smyrna is experiencing “poverty” (“I know your afflictions and your poverty,” Rev. 2:9) while Philadelphia likewise has few resources (“I know that you have little strength,” Rev.3:8). These two churches share a situation of social and economic marginalization. To the contrary, those who are called to repent are adhering to the “teaching of Balaam” (Rev.2:14), which likely includes what John regarded as an excessive interest in wealth and could be a reference to greed, as shown in other traditions.(2 Pet 2:15; Jude 11)
In addition, the church is warned to avoid the teaching of Jezebel, which is also related to concerns over riches and affluence. This can be seen in Jezebel’s linguistic connection with the rich prostitute Babylon through the language of sexual immorality and deceit, which in chapters Rev. 17–18 is associated with economic activity (cf. Rev. 2:22–23; 13:14–17; 18:3–4, 23). Mark D. Mathews, “The Epistle of Enoch and Revelation 2:1–3:22: Poverty and Riches in the Present Age,” in Reading Revelation in Context: John’s Apocalypse and Second Temple Judaism (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic, 2019), 13,45–46.
Closely associated with the previous categories are the idolaters. In Revelation such activity is closely associated with sexual immorality and eating meat sacrificed to idols (Rev.2:14, 20), activities that imply corruption by participation in the economic system, which is in collusion with the beast and the great whore.
Ultimately, those who worship the beast and/or join in the idolatrous activity of the great whore, even those who worship the servants of God, commit idolatry. Only God is to be glorified—all who engage in idolatrous activity betray him and forsake true worship.
The end of the list—“everyone who loves and does a lie”—would remind hearers that, when the devil lies, he speaks his native tongue (John 8:44), that the one who lies is diametrically opposed to the truth (1 John 2:21, 27), that there are those who claim to be apostles or Jews but are not for they lie (Rev 2:2; 3:9), and that all liars will have their part in the lake of burning sulfur (Rev.21:8).
Perhaps this category includes those who have believed the lie of the beast and the great whore and by their participation with them have perpetuated that lie. The contrast is stark between those who lie and the followers of the Lamb, in whose mouths no lie is found (Rev.14:5). All such ones as these (the dogs, the magicians, the sexually immoral, the murderers, the idolaters, and each one who loves and does a lie) are “outside,” excluded from access to the holy city.
John Christopher Thomas and Frank D. Macchia, Revelation, ed. Joel B. Green and Max Turner, The Two Horizons New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2016), 398–399.
In Zech. 5:11 the woman in the ephah, representing a concentration of evil (Zech. 5:8), is removed to the land of Shinar where a temple is built for her.
All of this points to a sinister significance for Shinar as being the major center for the development of a culture and civilization built on counterfeit religion, rebelliousness against the true God and his revealed word, the cradle of imperial tyranny and the enemy of God’s people, in short, the epitome of wickedness. (Cf. as well the many biblical references to Babylon.) Hermann J. Austel, in Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, ed. R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke (Chicago: Moody Press, 1999), 943–944.
Shinar carries theological significance as the land associated with rebellion against God and the dwelling place of God’s enemies—what is termed “the seed of the serpent.” This symbolic meaning emerges from the region’s biblical history rather than its geography alone.
The name evokes Nimrod, whose kingdom began with Babel in Shinar before expanding into Assyria, and also recalls the Tower of Babel narrative, which depicts an attempt to build a tower reaching toward heaven in this same region.[James M. Hamilton Jr., With the Clouds of Heaven] Both episodes represent human defiance of divine authority.
Shinar thus becomes emblematic of a civilization built on counterfeit religion, rebellion against God, imperial tyranny, and opposition to God’s people—essentially the epitome of wickedness
.[Hermann J. Austel, in Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, ed. R. Laird Harris, Gleason L. Archer Jr., and Bruce K. Waltke (Chicago: Moody Press, 1999), 943.]
What unified the men at Babel was not merely language but a single liturgical confession. The distinction between “lip” and “words” illuminates what might seem to be another poetic repetition: “Let us build for ourselves a city and a tower” Gen.11:4. Babel was a double project, including both a city, which corresponds to the “words” of common speech, and a “tower” (ziggurat) for the liturgy of international community. That the head of the tower would, they hoped, “reach heaven” is another indication of the religious character of the project.
Babel aimed to create a “gate of God” in Shinar—“gate of God” being the original meaning of the name “Babylon.” The fourfold repetition of “one” Gen.11:1,6 emphasizes that their aim was uniformity. Babel, a prototype of all the antitypical “Babels” that appear later in the Bible, was intolerant of linguistic, cultural, and especially religious difference. Not all imperial orders demand homogeneity, but those that do so perpetuate the Babel project.
Amy Chua argues that all enduring empires (“hyperpowers”) have been characterized by toleration, and sounds warnings about the revival of American nativism (Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance—and Why They Fall [New York: Anchor, 2007]). In biblical terms, her warning is directed to Babelic empires.
They also, of course, aimed for Name. This too was a religious goal, a bid for immortality. Like Homeric heroes, they hoped to overcome the threat of death by achievements that would earn them everlasting reputation. If not eternal life, at least they could achieve eternal name...Augustine recognized similar motivations behind the Roman drive for imperial mastery. Lust for glory first inspired Romans to throw off the rule of kings, but, having toppled the Tarquins, their lust was unsatisfied, and they pursued mastery over others, their desire for glory transformed into a libido dominandi.
Peter J. Leithart, Between Babel and Beast: America and Empires in Biblical Perspective, ed. Thomas Heilke, D. Stephen Long, and C. C. Pecknold, vol. 14, Theopolitical Visions (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012), 5,6
We spoke of “a global ruler and his world system symbolized by the ‘city of chaos’ in the Old Testament (Isa. 24:10) and ‘Babylon the Great’ (Rev. 17:5) in the New Testament” and observed “that world ruler has been traditionally called Antichrist.” The global city symbol of satanic human enterprise against God can also be identified with apostate Jerusalem, symbolically the apostate church, home to the temple of apostasy upon which the “Desolator” of Daniel 9:27 brings his eschatological judgment.
As such, the city of chaos/Babylon has taken over the identity of Jerusalem the temple city and become a temple city counterpoised to God (a false way to heaven). These distortions counterfeit the true and heavenly Jerusalem where the Lord dwells with his people and is himself the inclusive temple and dwelling of the redeemed—all those who are found in Christ. Agreeably, the whore of Babylon can be a spiritual home and cult-city aspect of the dragon’s Antichrist kingdom. So John records: “The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth” (Rev. 17:18).
Although she is involved with the world, her rule is spiritual—a domination of demonic torah that leads the world astray.
[Other significant affinities of ecclesiastical Rome with the prostitute Babylon are its Mariolatry and its neo-Judaizing distortion of the gospel of grace. Meredith G. Kline, Glory in Our Midst: A Biblical-Theological Reading of Zechariah’s Night Visions (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2001).]
Like the idea of antichrist, the idea of a counterfeit covenant community has found iterations at several points in human history, both in the history of Israel and the history of the church. It has included groups and leaders of groups who claimed authenticity as the people of God. (Cf. Numbers. 16; Jeremiah. 20; Revelation 2:9; 3:9.) Jeffrey J. Niehaus, Biblical Theology: The Special Grace Covenants (New Testament), vol. 3 (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2017), 267–268.
As the kingdoms of the world are represented by beasts, which rise up out of the sea, so is the kingdom of the saints represented by a human form, which descends from the clouds of heaven. The coming up out of the sea, i.e. the abyss, points to the anti-divine origin of the former, the coming from heaven to the divine origin of the latter. Emil Schürer, A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, Second Division., vol. 4 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1890), 137–138.
The fact that governments are authorized by God does not guarantee that their actions will be just. Daniel’s prophecy likens world empires to beasts rising out of the sea; the book of Revelation also depicts pagan government as a threatening Beast (Rev. 13–14). Christian obedience to the state cannot be blind. When the state commands what God forbids, or forbids what God commands, we must obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29). Jesus warned his disciples that they must suffer before magistrates for his sake (Mk. 13:9).
The church witnesses to the righteousness of the kingdom, penetrating society like leaven or salt, but it is not identified with the world it touches. The church is neither competitive nor correlative to the family, to the state, or to other societal institutions. These are the forms of life in the world, from which the church is distinguished.
It is a mistake to suppose that the invisible church finds institutional expression not only in the visible church, but also in the family, the state and various societal groups.
The church is the form that Christ has appointed for the community of those who confess his name; in the church alone, the body of Christ is made visible in this world. Edmund P. Clowney, The Church, ed. Gerald Bray, Contours of Christian Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1995), 190,191.
Common grace culture is not headed anywhere. It is headed, in fact, for termination. The Scriptures teach that “The present form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor 7:31), that “The end of all things is at hand” (1 Pet 4:7), and that, “The world is passing away along with its desires” (1 John 2:7). And in the book of Revelation, God says, “Behold, I am making all things new” (Rev 21:5).
Another way of putting it is this: common grace culture is not building Megapolis. The City of Man, even at its best, is not and never can become the City of God.
To be sure, the City of Man has legitimacy, but it does not have sanctity.
It is not holy but common. It has an ameliorative but not a redemptive function. Common grace functions as a restraint upon sin. It keeps fallen society from becoming as wicked as it would be apart from God’s restraining activity.
Pharaonic ideology obviously prefigures the spirit of Antichrist—a human who would claim to be God incarnate and rule over the world. As it was the task of Pharaoh to restore all things “as at the beginning,” one may expect the Antichrist to have some such pretentions: a promise to restore peace and prosperity in a sort of new Golden Age.
If human rulers or candidates for rule in any era often make similar promises, one can easily imagine the same ethos in a more sinister and exaggerated form than any yet seen in the government of Antichrist. Jeffrey J. Niehaus, Biblical Theology: The Special Grace Covenants (New Testament), vol. 3 (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2017), 292–293.
In this connection the relevance of the covenant of the common grace order may be noted. Along with assurances of a relative stability of the realm of nature, that covenant guaranteed equal civil rights within the institution of the state for all the peoples of the earth as long as the earth endures.
Another key point for Kline is that he sees the common grace mode of the cultural mandate in covenantal terms. He views the post-flood Noahic Covenant in Genesis. 9 as the reiteration in covenantal form of the common grace order established immediately after the Fall... We’re specifically told it is a covenant: “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you” (Gen 9:9). It is called an “everlasting covenant” Gen 9: 16, meaning a covenant that is perpetual for long ages until the appointed end. And God’s covenantal commitment is further reinforced with a covenant sign: “I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth” (Gen 9:13).
Ruled out, therefore, is the kind of theocratic enforcement of biblical religion in the common world that is advocated by the postmillennialists.
The slaying of Abel by Cain illustrates a rapid development of sin, issuing into murder in the second generation. Hence the careful manner in which Cain’s conduct before and after the act is described. Cain committed his sin with premeditation, having been warned beforehand. After the act he denies his sin, is defiant, repudiates every obligation to the law of love. Even after God has pronounced sentence upon him, he is exclusively concerned about the consequences of his sin, not about the sin itself.
When this is compared with the act committed in paradise, it becomes evident that a rapid progress in corruption of the human heart had taken place.
Sin proves powerful enough to prostitute the gifts of God’s common grace in the sphere of nature for purposes of evil. The first step in natural progress is taken by Enoch, the son of Cain, who built a city. Afterwards, in the eighth generation from Cain, the inventions of cattle-raising, of music, of metal-working appear. The inventors were sons of the Cainite Lamech, from whose song it appears that the increase in power and prosperity made possible by them only caused a further estrangement from God. The song [Gen. 4:23, 24] is a sword-song. Delitzsch well observes that it is an expression of Titanic arrogance.
It makes its power its god, and carries its god, i.e. its sword, in its hand. What God had ordained as a measure of protection for Cain is here scorned, and sole reliance placed upon human revenge through the sword. Even Cain still felt the need of help from God; the spirit of Lamech depends upon itself alone. Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2003), 46.
It was, therefore, plainly an act of grace and mercy when, after man in Adam had broken faith and covenant, God again appointed a city-structure for the benefit of the generality of mankind. This city would not be the same city that the Lord established at the beginning.
That is, it would not be a theocratic, covenant city with an institutional integration of culture and cult.
Such a holy temple-city would be provided through the redemptive program for God’s elect. The city that fallen man would build would be a common city, temporal, profane, and it would exist under the shadow of the common curse. Nevertheless, that mankind in general should in measure be fruitful and their work productive, that they should not be abandoned to chaotic lawlessness, that there should still be an urban structuring of man’s historical existence—this was, indeed, a good gift of the Creator’s common grace.
But the divine provision of the common grace city had been made known in the old world long before the Flood. Indeed, the disclosure concerning some of the necessary components of this common city took place immediately after the Fall. For as we have seen, implicit in the word of God’s curse addressed to the generality of mankind at the judgment in Eden (Gen. 3:16ff.) were intimations of the continuance of the marriage institution and of the task of subduing the earth.
And shortly thereafter the foundation of the judicial authority structure of the city was established in a remarkable divine communication to the one who was to become the founder of the city of man. Genesis 4:15 records God’s reply to a complaint-appeal of Cain and in this word of divine response we have the oracular origin of the city, or state.
In particular, under the contemplated judicial order an act of murder was to be met with full divine vengeance. In the language of Genesis 4:15a, formulated in terms suited to the immediate occasion: “If anyone kills Cain, he will be avenged sevenfold.” In verse 15b this asseveration of God is referred to as a solemn commitment, an oath that has been given to Cain (the text does not have in view any “mark” of Cain). Paraphrased the verse says:
Thus the Lord gave Cain an oath assuring him that it would not be the case that anyone who came upon him would be free to kill him with impunity. God declared that the anarchical situation Cain had described would not actually obtain. God’s face would not be hidden; it was rather his purpose to establish a judicial office to execute vengeance sevenfold, that is, complete divine retribution (cf. Lev. 26:24; Psa. 79:9–12).
The subsequent actualization of the sevenfold divine enforcement of justice in a human agency is reflected in the designation of the human agents of judgment as “gods” (cf., e.g., Psa. 82:6). Also, the Scripture identifies the state’s avenging function as an execution of God’s wrath (cf., e.g., Rom. 12:19; 13:4). Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 163–166.
Particularly significant in the altered identity of the common grace city is the corrective function now performed by it as a governmental structure. Positive regulation of societal order and direction of cultural endeavor must now be supplemented by an enforcing of justice through penal sanctions. As a major means used in his common grace to restrain the manifestation of man’s depravity, God assigns to city government the responsibility to act as his agent for the protection of the community by repressing and punishing evil-doing.
He appoints the city as the minister of the temporal sanctions of justice until the world comes to the hour of God’s final judgment with its eternal sanctions.
It has the authority to kill the body until the Judge comes who can destroy both body and soul in hell. Thus the city is invested with the sword, and so heavily preoccupied does it become with this enforcement of justice, with policing and punishing, that it is known in this present evil world as preeminently a judicial order. Its distinctive hallmark is that it bears the sword.
Bestial but Legitimate: Abuses of the city result in urban malformations, like the slum, the ghetto, the gulag. But beyond the city’s malaise of social-economic-political injustice is an evil more central to the concerns of biblical revelation.
There is in the city a spiritual malignancy, the fatal consequence of the usurpation of the world kingdom by Satan and the prostitution of the city to demonic service.
In the lurid exposé found in the apocalyptic mode of Scripture, the satanically perverted urban power structure is seen as a beast savagely turned against the citizens of the city who refuse its mark. The conflict thus depicted is not that of class struggle or racial strife. The victims are not those disadvantaged in things temporal. It is rather a matter of religious antithesis, an ancient diabolical enmity.
It is against the redeemed of the Lamb that the controlling powers of the world kingdom direct their hellish hostility.
Yet, in the face of the bestial aspect assumed by the city and the ensuing religious warfare that rages within it, Scripture affirms the legitimacy of the city. One thinks of the historical context of Romans 13. The legitimacy of the city is affirmed not because the bestializing of the city is a relatively late historical development. As a matter of fact, the Beast-power is not just a phenomenon of the present church age. The founder of the city was himself the slayer of the first martyr-prophet.
In particular, he established the institution of the state as a nonholy structure under the principle of common grace.
The sphere of the state, though not exempt from God’s rule and not devoid of the divine presence (indeed, though it is the scene of God’s presence in a measure of common blessing) is, nevertheless, not to be identified as belonging to the kingdom of God or sharing in its holiness. We may not deny to the Creator his sovereign prerogative of creative structuring and restructuring and authoritative defining and redefining. And least of all should we venture to do so in the name of honoring the universality of his kingly rule. Meredith G. Kline, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 167,172.
Ruled out, therefore, is the kind of theocratic enforcement of biblical religion in the common world that is advocated by the postmillennialists.
This conclusion could be supported by various other lines of exegetical and theological evidence. We might recall the statement of Jesus concerning the similarity of the days of Noah and of the Son of Man (Matt. 24:37–41; Luke 17:26, 27). Or we might show the likeness of the present church age to the patriarchal interim by pointing to the use of the patriarchs’ mode of life as a model for the Christian life.
A particularly pertinent example of this is Peter’s identification of Christians as pilgrims and strangers in the world (1 Pet 1:1; 2:11; cf. Heb 11:9, 13). At a deeper, spiritual level there is also the similarity of the Spirit’s presence and working in the patriarchal and present ages—invisibly present but working mightily within for the transformation of individuals and the edification of the covenant community. Meredith G. Kline, God, Heaven and Har Magedon: A Covenantal Tale of Cosmos and Telos (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 170–171.
Har Magedon—well named, this heavenly mount, the mountain of God. For it is the mount of gathering in multiple senses. Primarily and forever it is the temple-mount, the assembly place of the worshipping, celebrating entourage of the King of glory, a myriad congregation of angels and men (cf. Heb. 12:18–29; Psa. 47:9; 48; 102:21, 22 ). Here is the council chamber where God assembles the heavenly elders for deliberation (cf. Psa. 82:1). This celestial mount is the paradise to which God’s exiled people of every nation are regathered (cf. Deut. 30:3–5; Isa 27:12, 13; 43:5; Jer. 32:37–41; Ezek. 11:17–20; 36:24).
Har Magedon is the palace-fortress against which Satan’s antichrist, aspiring to the throne on this mountain, gathers his hordes in the final battle of Har Magedon (cf. Ezekiel 38–39; Rev. 16:14–16; 19:19; 20:8), an event which, from the perspective of God’s sovereignty, is a divine gathering of the nations to Zion for their final judgment (cf. Joel. 3; Zech. 12:3; 14:2; Matt. 25:31, 32). This Mount of Assembly is the heavenly hearth to which the Lord gathers his elect, one by one in their passing from the earthly scene (cf. Isa. 26:20; Luke 16:22; Rev. 6:9–11) and as a resplendent multitude raised from the dust in resurrection glory at his final harvesting of the earth at his Parousia (Dan. 12:2; Matt. 13:30; 24:31; Mark 13:26, 27; 2 Thess. 2:1; Rev 14:14–16). Meredith G. Kline, God, Heaven and Har Magedon: A Covenantal Tale of Cosmos and Telos (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2006), 56–57.
Har môçed/magedon is then the place of God’s royal presence, whether heavenly archetype or earthly archetype, where he engages in judicial surveillance of the world (Lookout Mountain); where he gathers the gods (cf. Psa. 82:1) for deliberation (Council Mountain); where he musters his armies for battle (Marshal Mountain); where he assembles the company of his holy ones, spirits of just men made perfect with myriads of angels (Ecclesia Mountain). Echoing Psalm. 48, Heb. 12:18–29 displays these varied facets of Har Magedon, Mount of Gathering, and identifies it as Zion, heavenly Jerusalem, city of the living God, the Great King.
The story of the earthly Har Magedon goes back to the beginnings of human history when this mountain of God rose up as a cosmic axis in Eden. There the battle of Har Magedon was joined as Satan challenged the God of the mountain and overcame the first Adam, the appointed guardian of the garden-sanctuary. In redemptive history Zion was a typological renewal of Har Magedon, the setting at the dawning of the new covenant age for an other momentous encounter in the continuing warfare, this time resulting in a decisive victory of Jesus, the second Adam, over the evil one.
The typo logical Zion/Jerusalem provides the symbolic scenery for prophecies of the climactic conflict in the war of the ages. Through his antichrist beast and his allied kings gathered to Gathering Mountain, Satan will make his last attempt to usurp Har Magedon. But the Lamb, the Lord of the mountain, and his assembled armies will triumph in this final battle of Har Magedon, the battle of the great day of God Almighty (Rev. 16:14–16; 19:11–21; 20:7–10). MEREDITH G. KLINE, JETS 39/2 (June 1996) 207–222, n.d.
The Greek language had no letter ‘h’ and so instead used this mark to convey that sound. As a result, the correct (Hebrew) term John uses to describe the climactic end-times battle is harmagedon. This spelling becomes significant when we try to discern what this Hebrew term means. The first part of the term (har) is easy. In Hebrew har means “mountain.”
The Christ event also sheds a new light on demonic powers. The NT recognizes these (cf. Mt. 24:29). These are cosmic but also angelic powers. They have lost their force with the resurrection of Christ and will be publicly stripped of it at his return. Between these two events, there is tension. The powers are disarmed, for the new life of believers derives from God and is set under his rule (Eph. 1:20–21; Rom. 8:38–39). Yet they still fight (Rev. 13:2) and have to be brought to submission (1 Cor. 15:24).
The antichrist will come with power and spread deception; only Christ’s coming again will finally destroy him (2 Th. 2:9).
Gerhard Kittel, Gerhard Friedrich, and Geoffrey William Bromiley, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Abridged in One Volume (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1985), 190.
In Jesus’s day Israel expected a tangible, earthly, messianic kingdom whose conditions were depicted in the forms and images of Old Testament prophecy.
From within that community he will rule over the world and usher in a period of spiritual florescence and material prosperity.
Israel was unique among the nations because the Lord was its King, governing his covenant people by his gracious presence, righteous laws, and saving power. (Psa. 24:7–10; 68:24; Isa. 33:22; 43:15; 44:6.) Though some secularists mistakenly apply the label of “theocracy” to any attempt to apply biblical law and wisdom to civil government, theocracy requires the claim of direct involvement by God to constitute and rule a community through leaders to whom he gives special revelation and possibly also miraculous power.
Even a nation with a state-sponsored religion is not necessarily a theocracy. [Josephus knew that the Roman imperial government was very religious in its devotion to the Roman gods, cultic rites, and the adoration of the emperor, but he saw theocracy as unique to Israel]. The attempt by radical Anabaptists to turn Münster into a new Jerusalem (1534–1535) may be considered a tragic example of pretended theocracy.
Today, a leader claiming to be divine or a prophet might try to set up a theocratic community, but it would be considered a cult. The New Jerusalem is in heaven (Gal. 4:26; Heb. 12:22). True theocracy will not come to earth until Christ returns to make all things new (Rev. 21:1–5). Joel R. Beeke and Paul M. Smalley, Reformed Systematic Theology: Church and Last Things, vol. 4, Reformed Systematic Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2024), 252–253.
The idea of “pressing for the King’s laws to be obeyed” makes many people, including Christians, uncomfortable. They object that it will lead to theocracy (God-rule) or theonomy (“God’s law”). So some careful distinctions need to be made. Theonomists believe that the Old Testament law as a whole, including penalties like stoning, is still in force today unless the New Testament has explicitly stated otherwise.
Theonomists want Gentile nations to use the Old Testament to establish their laws.
(Greg Bahnsen, By This Standard: The Authority of God’s Law Today (Nacogdoches, TX: Covenant Media Press, 2008), 3–6.) Leading theonomist Greg Bahnsen has written, “We must recognize the continuing obligation of civil magistrates to obey and enforce the relevant laws of the Old Testament, including the penal sanctions specified by the just Judge of all the earth.” (Ibid., 4.)
Despite the number of Judaeans who opposed the war, it appears only Judaean followers of Jesus stayed the course of pacifism and in essence were conscientious objectors to the war with Rome.
For Paul the Mosaic law reached an end in Christ (Rom. 10:4). The word telos here can also be taken to mean that Christ is called the goal toward which the law was directed in the providence of God. This idea may be present, too, but it does not rule out that with Christ’s coming the age of the law has ended. This, at least, is where the main accent lies.
Why did the law come to an end with Christ’s coming? Because in Jesus Christ, namely, in his vicarious death for sin (Rom.3:25), God demonstrated his covenant righteousness, and we can respond only by faith, not by works of the law (Rom.3:22). Hence we are (now) righteous before God only by faith, not by works of the law (Rom.3:28; cf. Gal. 2:16).
Those who reject faith in God’s action in Jesus Christ cannot profit from any works of the law because they refuse obedience to the righteousness of God,
not responding to it, then, by what they themselves do (Rom. 10:3). (Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991–1998), 61–63.)
A Jewish Christianity that does not live by grace alone has in fact returned to Judaism in its rebellion against God: “But of Israel he says, ‘All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people’ ” (Rom.10:21, Cited from Isa. 65:2). J. Christiaan Beker, Paul the Apostle: The Triumph of God in Life and Thought (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1984), 91.
For the promise to Abraham or to his seed that he would be heir of the world was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if those who are of the Law are heirs, faith has been made empty and the promise has been abolished; Romans 4:13–14
lit. ‘the uprightness of faith’, i.e. that uprightness which is precisely the act of believing with a living faith.
The inheritance is conferred not to reward people for observing the clauses of a contract (a law), but to fulfil a promise.
The promises, Gen. 12:1a, having been offered to faith, the fulfilment of them can be known and welcomed only by faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ, 9:4–8; 15:8; Jn 8:56; Ac 2:39; 13:23; Ga 3:14–19; Ep 1:13, 14; 2:12; 3:6; Heb 11:9–10, 13. Compare 3:27. Henry Wansbrough, ed., The New Jerusalem Bible (New York; London; Toronto; Sydney; Auckland: Doubleday, 1990), 1873.
Clearly, God’s promise to give the whole earth to Abraham and his descendants was based not on his obedience to God’s law, but on a right relationship with God that comes by faith. If God’s promise is only for those who obey the law, then faith is not necessary and the promise is pointless. Rom.4:13–14 NLT
How should such Men be Mistaken? which is a poor Argument; and a great Reproach it is to such Persons:
For their Faith, it seems, stands in the Wisdom of Men, and not in the Power of God, or certain Testimony of his holy Word.
Benjamin Keach, The Ax Laid to the Root, Parts I & II (London: John Harris, 1693).
Totally wrong, therefore, is the chiliastic view according to which the New Testament, along with the church composed of Gentiles, is an intermezzo, a detour taken by God because Israel rejected its Messiah, so that the actual continuation and fulfillment of the Old Testament can begin only with Christ’s second coming. The opposite, rather, is true. Not the New Testament but the Old is an intermezzo.
The covenant with Israel is temporary; the law has been inserted in between the promise to Abraham and its fulfillment in Christ, that it might increase the trespass and be a disciplinarian leading to Christ (Rom. 5:20; Gal. 3:24ff.). For that reason Paul always goes back to Abraham (Rom. 4:11ff.; Gal. 3:6ff.) and links his gospel to the promise made to him. Abraham is the father of believers, of all believers, not only believers from among the Jews, but also from among the Gentiles (Rom. 4:11). The children of the promise are his offspring (Rom.9:6–8). In Christ the blessing of Abraham comes to the Gentiles (Gal. 3:14). Those who belong to Christ are Abraham’s offspring and heirs according to promise (Gal. 3:29).
Therefore the New Testament is not an intermezzo or interlude, neither a detour nor a departure from the line of the old covenant, but the long-aimed-for goal, the direct continuation and the genuine fulfillment of the Old Testament. Chiliasm, judging otherwise, comes in conflict with Christianity itself. In principle it is one with Judaism and must get to where it attributes a temporary, passing value to Christianity, the historical person of Christ, and his suffering and death, and it only first expects real salvation from Christ’s second coming, his appearance in glory.
Like Judaism, it subordinates the spiritual to the material, the ethical to the physical, confirms the Jews in their carnal-mindedness, excuses their rejection of the Messiah, reinforces the veil that lies over their minds when they hear the reading of the Old Testament, and promotes the illusion that the physical descendants of Abraham will as such still enjoy an advantage in the kingdom of heaven.
Scripture, on the other hand, tells us that the true reading and interpretation of the Old Testament is to be found with those who have turned in repentance to the Lord Christ (2 Cor. 3:14–16). It tells us that a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and that circumcision is a matter of the heart (Rom. 2:29). It teaches that in Christ there is neither man nor woman, neither Jew nor Greek, but that they are all one in Christ Jesus (1 Cor. 12:13; Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:11). The Jewish person who becomes a Christian was not a child of Abraham but becomes such by faith (Gal. 3:29). Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: Holy Spirit, Church, and New Creation, vol. 4 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 662–663.
builders of the wall and the daubers of plaster
Christian Reconstructionism, Theonomy, Dominion theology, are builders of the wall and the daubers of plaster (cp. Matt 23:27–28; Ezek. 13:10–12, 22:28; Lam 2:14). False preachers—“windbags”— “Speak to us falsehoods”, a Demonic Torah, (Isaiah 30:10). Builders of The Tower of Babel.
But this people who knoweth not the law are cursed. Jn. 7:49
Increasingly, the term served to express the religious and theological pride of the sects, who tried to draw a strict line of demarcation between themselves and the people, and whose attitude is typically depicted in the NT in the dealings between Pharisees and publicans. In Gk. ὄχλος is used for “people” in this disparaging sense, Jn. 7:49.
Certainly ἔθνη-people conveys a negative judgment from the Jewish standpoint. Yet even in the OT this judgment has no final validity in face of the promise of revelation to all peoples, and this is particularly so in the NT in face of the direction of the everlasting Gospel ἐπὶ πᾶν ἔθνος (Rev. 14:6) and the missionary command: μαθητεύσατε πάντα τὰ ἔθνη (“make disciples of all nations,” Mt. 28:19).
The princes (“commander”) of Judah are become like them that remove the landmark: I will pour out my wrath upon them like water. Ephraim is oppressed, crushed in judgment, because in self-will he walked after the commandment of man. Ho 5:10–11. Darby Bible
The builders of the wall who followed (literally, “walked after”) the “commander.” The “commander” is the preacher about whom He (God or the prophet) said (Micah 2:6), “They shall surely preach.” ( Zadokite Fragments 4:19–20)
Who are the builders of the wall? Who is the commander or preacher? Clearly, they are the villains. Buried in the text are two biblical allusions that make these references clear. One is to Hosea 5:10–11: “The commanders of Judah have acted like shifters of field boundaries. On them I will pour out My wrath like water. Ephraim is defrauded, robbed of redress.” A different passage states, “ ‘Stop preaching!’ they preach. ‘That is no way to preach’ ” (Micah 2:6).
The commanders of Judah are equated here with Ephraim, a sectarian term for the Pharisees.
They are the builders of the wall who follow the teachings of the commander. This same commander is the one who preaches improperly, hence defrauding his listeners. The sect regarded the Pharisees as preaching falsely and misleading their followers.
Thereafter appears a series of laws with which the sectarians disagreed, constituting the views of the preacher who here again refers to the Pharisaic leader and the “builders of the wall.” The designation “builders of the wall” apparently derives from a concept found in the mishnaic tractate Avot, generally known as Ethics of the Fathers, which instructs, “Build a fence around the Torah” (M. Avot 1:1).
To “build a fence” refers to the Pharisaic-rabbinic concept of creating more stringent laws than those found in the Bible in order to safeguard biblical laws from violation.
We find another mention of the Pharisees’ lack of understanding, here again referring to them as “builders of the wall,” later in the Zadokite Fragments:
All these things the builders of the wall and the daubers of plaster (cp. Matt 23:27–28; Ezek. 13:10–12, 22:28; Lam 2:14) did not understand. For one who raises wind and preaches falsehood preached to them, because of which God became angry with His entire congregation. ( Zadokite Fragments 8:12–13; cf. 19:24–26)
As a result:
Since He hated the builders of the wall, He became angry. ( Zadokite Fragments 8:18; cf. 19:31)
When false preachers—“windbags”—stirred up the people with their false message, God’s anger blazed against them, causing the people of Israel to suffer.
Over and over again in the scrolls, the sect characterizes Pharisaic halakhah by its tendency to derive laws not directly from scriptural sources but through their own interpretations.
In this spirit the Pharisees are called dorshe ḥalaqot, literally “seekers after smooth things,” but correctly translated “interpreters of false laws.” This phrase is based upon the biblical expression “smooth things,” referring to lies or falsehood, as in “Speak to us falsehoods” (Isaiah 30:10).
Lawrence H. Schiffman and Chaim Potok, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: The History of Judaism, the Background of Christianity, the Lost Library of Qumran (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1994), 249,250.
On the first page of the Admonition, the Zadokite Fragments clearly refers to the Pharisees when speaking of the followers of the Man of Scoffing, apparently some Pharisaic leader:
… they interpreted false laws (dareshu be-halaqot) and chose delusions, and sought out breaches (opportunities to violate the law), and chose luxury, and declared innocent the guilty and declared guilty the innocent; and they violated the covenant and annulled the law, and banded together against the soul of the righteous. ( Zadokite Fragments 1:18–20)
For our purposes here, one phrase in this text is extremely important. In the course of interpreting Nahum 3:4, “Because of the countless harlotries of the harlot … who ensnared nations with her harlotries,” cf. (Rev 17:1, 2; 18:3) Pesher Nahum states:
[Its] interpretation [con]cerns those who lead Ephraim astray, whose falseness is in their teaching (Talmud), and whose lying tongue and dishonest lip(s) lead many astray. (PESHER NAHUM 3–4 II, 8)
Elsewhere in this text we discover that Ephraim is a code word, symbolizing the Pharisees. (Menasseh represents the Sadducees.) There is no question that our author is referring to them in this passage.
At the beginning, the text refers to “those who lead Ephraim astray,” that is, the leaders and teachers of the Pharisees. The text likens them to the harlot mentioned in Nahum 3:4; their offense is teaching falsely.
The text refers to their teaching by the Hebrew term “talmud,” the same word later used to designate the “Talmud,” the rabbinic work also known as the Gemara, the commentary and discursive discussion on the Mishnah.
Lawrence H. Schiffman and Chaim Potok, Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: The History of Judaism, the Background of Christianity, the Lost Library of Qumran (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1994), 251.
For it would have been better for them never to have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn back from the holy commandment that was handed on to them. It has happened to them according to the true proverb, “The dog turns back to its own vomit,” and, “The sow is washed only to wallow in the mud.” 2 Peter 2:21–22
Peter thus casts the false teachers in the role of Gentile nations who taunt Israel, in the place of the persecutors who taunt the faithful, and in the place of false prophets. Jewish false teachers, who claim to be Jews but are not, have become “Gentiles,” while the Christians are the true Jews.
Mockery is also a theme of wisdom literature, found in the Psalms and Proverbs, where the “mocker” or scoffer is one who despises all wisdom and instruction. Righteous men do not “sit in the seat of the scoffers” (Ps. 1:1), and wisdom calls to scoffers to turn from their scoffing (Prov. 1:22). Denying the promise of the Parousia brands Peter’s opponents as fools and scoffers, like dogs who return to their vomit (Prov. 26:11). Peter J. Leithart, The Promise of His Appearing: An Exposition of Second Peter (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2004), 85–86.
If Peter is indeed condemning Judaizers and Jewish opponents of Christianity, his descriptions of them are sharply ironic. Reversion to the “world” (2 Pet.2:20) is a reversion to the world of the Old Covenant order, to a world of corruption that is about to be destroyed, to the practices and life of the “fleshly” covenant of the Jews.
Far from being a clean and holy people, Peter is describing Judaism as a polluted and polluting world—whitewashed tombs that appear harmless but spread contagion of death. Phthora connotes physical corruption and again is an ironic description of Jews who believed that through keeping Torah they were avoiding contamination of decay. The references to dog’s vomit and pig’s mire reinforce this theme of the pollution of Judaism (2 Pet. 2:22; cf. Prov. 26:11), particularly since dogs and pigs were peculiarly unclean in the eyes of first-century Jews. Far from holding to the “holy commandment” by reverting to Judaism, they are turning from it (2 Pet.2:21).
Peter J. Leithart, The Promise of His Appearing: An Exposition of Second Peter (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2004), 63–64.
To be sure, the apostle Paul notes that despite the knowledge that even the Gentiles possess of God’s severe justice, and despite their awareness that transgressors “deserve to die,” humans filled with “all manner of wickedness” (he details a catalogue of vices from malignity to murder) “not only do them but approve those who practice them” (Rom. 1:32). The reminder that death is the penalty for a vast array of crimes and other sins anticipates the final consummation of all things when God will confront human injustice and unrighteousness with irreversible penalties.
But neither Paul’s teaching about Gentile conscience nor about civil authority provides a sound argument for reimposing theocratic jurisprudence in present-day society. The New Testament leaves to both rulers and the ruled the responsibility for formulating positive law and appropriate sanctions in the light of the revealed principles of social ethics. The task of civil government is to interpret God’s transcendent law, as expressed in universal principles, into political particularities.
Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation, and Authority, vol. 6 (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1999), 448–449.
But theonomists have made a grave mistake: not even Christians, much less the unsaved, are bound by the Mosaic law today as their covenant. The Mosaic law has been replaced by the New Covenant (cf. Rom. 7:4–6; 1 Cor. 9:21; 2 Cor. 3:3). It is therefore wrong to seek to impose the Mosaic Covenant with its penalties on Gentile nations. Theonomists are also too optimistic about Christians’ ability to transform the world. The New Testament promises suffering and persecution for God’s people in the present age (cf. 2 Tim. 3:12).
In 1 Corinthians 9:20, Paul indicates that as a Christian he was not under the Mosaic law. Hebrews 8:13 teaches that the New Covenant made the old Mosaic Covenant “obsolete” and “ready to vanish away.”
But neither Paul nor the author of Hebrews (if he was someone other than Paul) is teaching that the Christian is free from all law. Paul hastens on to say that he wasn’t “outside the law of God, but under the law of Christ” (1 Cor. 9:21). And the New Covenant in Hebrews quotes God’s promise, “I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts” (Heb. 8:10).
Mark Ward, Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption, ed. Mark L. Ward Jr. and Dennis Cone (Greenville, SC: BJU Press, 2016), 276,277.
The Law Prepares Sinners for the Gospel. No one can receive eternal salvation by works of the law (Gal. 2:16) because none perfectly keeps the law (Rom. 3:23), and violation of any part of it makes one guilty of the whole (James 2:10; cf. Rom. 2:25; Gal. 3:10). Instead, salvation is a gift obtained by faith, not works (Rom. 4:4–5; Eph. 2:8–10; Phil. 3:9). Nonetheless, the law was meant to lead us to Christ (Gal. 3:24). It makes the sinner conscious of sin (Rom. 3:20; 7:7; 1 John 3:4). It provokes and incites rebellion (Rom. 5:20; 7:13), thereby making one fully accountable before God for violation of God’s moral requirements (Rom. 3:19; 4:15; 5:13; 7:8–10).
By this means, the law shows sinners their need for a mediator to redeem them from the law’s condemnation (Gal. 3:13). Hence, the law is an essential prerequisite in preparing sinners for the gospel.
Joe M. Sprinkle, “Law,” in Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology, electronic ed., Baker Reference Library (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1996), 470.
Kline’s exposition of covenant theology suggests that an appropriate place to begin a biblical-theological formulation of the doctrine of God is John 4:24, where we read of Jesus instructing the Samaritan woman in the true nature of God and in the worship of God.
“God is Spirit, and they who worship him must worship in Spirit and truth” (cf. Jn 6:63).
The eschatological contrast is between the provisional Aaronic institution of Israelite worship and true (“abiding”) worship in the Spirit (cf. Jn 15:4, 26 and 14:15–17): the contrast is between old and new economies of redemption, between types and shadows on the one hand and truth (in the Johannine sense) and reality on the other.
The restoration of man’s communion with God is explained in terms of the substance and reality of the new covenant, namely, Jesus the Christ (cf. Lk. 24:13–47). Jesus portrays this (“Spiritual”) blessing of redemption as the satisfying of man’s thirst with the water of life flowing from him who is life-giving Spirit (cf. Jn. 7:37–39; 1 Cor. 15:45; and 2 Cor. 3:18).
Mark W. Karlberg, “Reformed Theology as the Theology of the Covenants: The Contributions of Meredith G. Kline to Reformed Systematics,” in Creator Redeemer Consummator: A Festschrift for Meredith G. Kline, ed. Howard Griffith and John R. Muether (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2007), 241.
What is that righteousness, which in the spiritual armor answers to the cuirass-coat of mail? Many say it is our own righteousness, integrity, or rectitude of mind. But this is no protection. It cannot resist the accusations of conscience, the whispers of despondency, the power of temptation, much less the severity of the law, or the assaults of Satan.
What Paul desired for himself was not to have on his own righteousness, but the righteousness which is of God by faith; Phil. 3:8, 9.
And this, doubtless, is the righteousness which he here urges believers to put on as a breast-plate. It is an infinitely perfect righteousness, consisting in the obedience and sufferings of the Son of God, which satisfies all the demands of the divine law and justice; and which is a sure defense against all assaults whether from within or from without.
Charles Hodge, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1858), 383–384.
How infinitely does the glorious Gospel of God transcend the impoverished thoughts and schemes of men! How immeasurably superior is that “everlasting righteousness” which Christ has brought in (Dan. 9:24) from that miserable thing which multitudes are seeking to produce by their own efforts.
called everlasting, or the righteousness of ages, of ages past; the righteousness by which the saints in all ages from the beginning of the world are justified; and which endures, and will endure, throughout all ages, to the justification of all that believe; it is a robe of righteousness that will never wear out; its virtue to justify will ever continue, being perfect; it will answer for the justified ones in a time to come, and has eternal life connected with it;
But Israel is saved by the LORD
with everlasting
salvation;
you shall not be put to shame or confounded
to
all eternity. Is 45:17.
Trust in the LORD forever,
for in the LORD GOD
you have
an everlasting rock. Is 26:4.
John Gill, An Exposition of the Old Testament, vol. 6, The Baptist Commentary Series (London: Mathews and Leigh, 1810), 344.
Greater far is the difference between the shining light of the midday sun and the blackness of the darkest night, than between that “best robe” (Luke 15:22) which Christ has wrought out for each of His people and that wretched covering which zealous religionists are attempting to weave out of the filthy rags of their own righteousness
I will greatly rejoice in the LORD;
my whole being shall exult in my God,
for he has clothed
me with the garments of salvation;
he has covered me
with the robe of righteousness... Is 61:10
It is not that the justified soul is now left to himself, so that he is certain of getting to Heaven no matter how he conducts himself—the fatal error of Antinomians.
No Indeed. God also imparts to him the blessed Holy Spirit, who works within him the desire to serve, please, and glorify the One who has been so gracious to Him.
“The love of Christ constraints us … that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:14, 15). They now “delight in the law of God after the inward man” (Rom. 7:22), and though the flesh, the world, and the Devil oppose every step of the way, occasioning many a sad fall—which is repented of, confessed, and forsaken—
nevertheless the Spirit renews them day by day (2 Cor. 4:16) and leads them in the paths of righteousness for Christ’s name’s sake. (Arthur Walkington Pink, The Doctrine of Justification (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2005).
His sacrifice has introduced the age of the Holy Spirit, when all acceptable worship must be spiritual, that is, Spirit-inspired (John 4:23–24; Phil. 3:3), and the ‘spiritual sacrifices’ of Christians (1 Pet. 2:5; cf. Rom. 15:16) include acts of worship, such as praise and prayer (Heb. 13:15; Rev. 5:8; 8:3),
but also acts of witness and service, such as evangelism, gifts to the ministry and gifts to the poor (Rom. 15:16–17; Phil. 4:18; Heb. 13:16), and comprehensive attitudes and expressions of devotion, such as faith (Phil. 2:17), the consecration of one’s life to the will of God (Rom. 12:1) and the laying down of one’s life for the sake of the gospel (Phil. 2:17; 2 Tim. 4:6; Rev. 6:9).
The priests who present these sacrifices are those who give them, i.e. Christians (1 Pet. 2:5, 9; cf. also Is. 61:6; Rom. 15:17; Rev. 1:6; 5:10; 20:6), and the sanctuary where they present them is not the temple in Jerusalem, but heaven, to which after the rending of the veil, those who are in the Spirit already have access (John 4:21–24; Heb. 10:19–25).
R. T. Beckwith, “Sacrifice,” in New Dictionary of Biblical Theology, ed. T. Desmond Alexander and Brian S. Rosner, electronic ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 761.
Your opening statement is flawed: {Rushdoony} “The law is the way of sanctification” (p. 3). These statements set law as the antithesis of grace. They present a theory of sanctification that is not by grace but by works of law. (Alan Cairns)
ReplyDeleteWhat is sanctification? Answer: it is the work given ‘by the Holy Spirit by Christ’ to the spiritual cleansing IE; prayer, loving/lifting others up and our ‘Spiritual Gifts’ given to us ‘from Him (1 Corinthians 12:4-11!’ 🔥👑❤️
Just as there is no works performed (even our faith) in our Rebirth (John 3:3, 5&6) it is the same as the ‘Resurrection of the Believer.’ IT IS ALL BY THE HOLY SPIRIT, Even to the Obeying of God’s Law! (Theonomy)
Thank you for your comment: you replied Your opening statement is flawed: it's not my belief its there's (Theonomy). They present a theory of sanctification that is not by grace but by works of law. Not sure what you mean by "Even to the Obeying of God’s Law! " But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not subject to the law. Gal. 5:18; I don’t turn my back on God’s undeserved kindness. If we can be acceptable to God by obeying the Law, it was useless for Christ to die. Gal. 2:21;
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