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Originally Posted by Backwoods Presbyterian  Quote:
Originally Posted by timmopussycat Quote:
Originally Posted by Daniel Ritchie There is a difference between moral law=Decalogue, and moral law=Decalogue alone; the latter is ridiculous and unworthy of reply. | As the evidence cited in post 85 shows, Calvin, Perkins, Gouge, Burgess, the WLC, Witsius and Brown of Haddington all took the position that the moral law=the decalogue alone. Whether they were right or wrong in doing so may be debated; that they held that view is a certainty. That it was these individuals who held this view puts the idea that the moral law=decalogue alone squarely in the mainstream of Reformed Confessionalism.
Attempts to dismiss it without refutation by calling it "ridiculous and unworthy of reply" will prove counter-productive for Theonomy's advocates, since all a critic then will then have to do is point inquirers to the primary sources, which will quite nicely demonstrate to the inquirer that any Theonomist who belittles the view that the moral law=decalogue alone in the Westminster Standards or other key figures in the Reformed tradition simply does not know what he is talking about. When fighting for a cause, one is well advised to use a gun that shoots the enemy not oneself. | I must disagree about Witsius and Calvin thinking the Decalogue alone = the Moral Law, take a look at Benjamin Farley's on Calvin's Sermons on the Ten Commandments. Moreover, Jesus' own teaching in the Gospels does not say that. Look at Mark 7:1-13 where Jesus in speaking of the 5th commandment verifies Moses teaching in Exodus 21:17 and Leviticus 20:9. | To claim that since the NT or later writers hold that that some Mosaic stipulations apply today, therefore Bahnsen's version of Theonomy must be accepted as true is to fall into a longstanding misunderstanding of what is at issue in the theonomy debate. Just because Mosaic outcomes are affirmed does not mean that Bahnsen's way of justifying those outcomes is correct; there may be a different rationale between the two camps as to why particular statements continue valid in the NT era, or there may be, as here, the complicating factor that the statement made was made by one living under the then still operative old covenant to people then living under that same covenant. The statement made only verifies the applicablity of the teaching to them and says nothing about its application to us. In this instance, a few verses later vv. 18,19 Christ does make the application to us of these Old Covenant Scriptures, but that application is not change but the implied abrogation of that particular stipulation, as Mark realizes.
Look at what Matthew Henry has to say concerning Exodus 21:17: Quote: |
II. Concerning rebellious children. It is here made a capital crime, to be punished with death, for children either, 1. To strike their parents (v. 15) so as either to draw blood or to make the place struck black and blue. Or, 2. To curse their parents (v. 17), if they profaned any name of God in doing it, as the rabbies say. Note, The undutiful behaviour of children towards their parents is a very great provocation to God our common Father; and, if men do not punish it, he will. Those are perfectly lost to all virtue, and abandoned to all wickedness, that have broken through the bonds of filial reverence and duty to such a degree as in word or action to abuse their own parents. What yoke will those bear that have shaken off this? Let children take heed of entertaining in their minds any such thought or passions towards their parents as savour of undutifulness and contempt; for the righteous God searches the heart.
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Yet this excerpt says nothing about how Henry would see such a crime punished, nor the justification he would employ for doing so. He might have been a Bahnsenian Theonomist, holding all the law valid in exhaustive detail save only where the Lawgiver had amended it, or he may have followed the WCF in requiring that only such laws as could be demonstrated valid according to their general equity and believed that this stipulation could be demonstrated valid by the test of general equity.
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In Christ's love and service
Mr. Tim Cunningham, Dip. CS (Regent College)
Member, First Baptist Church
Vancouver, BC
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"The Reformation was a time when men went blind, staggering drunk because they had discovered, in the dusty basement of late medievalism, a whole cellar of 1500-year-old, 200 proof grace—a bottle after bottle of pure distillate of Scripture, one sip of which would convince anyone that God saves us single-handedly. The word of the gospel—after all these centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your own bootstraps—suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home-free before they started. Grace was to be drunk neat: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale." – Robert Farrar Capon
Last edited by timmopussycat; 06-02-2008 at 03:00 PM..
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