Sinclair Ferguson's chapter is better than the rest of the book combined.

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Chris Stamper
Park Cities PCA
(Dallas, TX)

I don't think ethical systems are things we should be hunting down in our spare time. The church should be teaching these things. That the church is apparently not doing this is a bad sign.

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Chris Stamper
Park Cities PCA
(Dallas, TX)

Theonomists tend to be antonomians about the church. The published ones repeatedly deny the Sabbath, the regulative principle of worship, the prohibition of images and the like. They call these things baptistic innovations.

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Chris Stamper
Park Cities PCA
(Dallas, TX)

except for Bahnsen

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J. B. Atken
John Knox PCA
Layman, M.A. student at Louisiana College

never mind...you win. I'm out.

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J. B. Atken
John Knox PCA
Layman, M.A. student at Louisiana College

[quote=Spear Dane;317939]" The dominance of Scripture in the civil sphere" is not theonomy. FYI. I am a zero percent theonomist. I want to live in a free republic, based in Anglo-American traditions like common law and constitutionalism. If it was good enough for 450 years of English-speaking Reformed people, it is good enough for me.

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Chris Stamper
Park Cities PCA
(Dallas, TX)

except for Bahnsen[/quote]

"Institutes of Biblical Law," which started all this, repudiates the Sabbath.

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Chris Stamper
Park Cities PCA
(Dallas, TX)

So now you'll be taking up John Milbank or John Frame? I worry about the church that left you swinging in the breeze like this.

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Chris Stamper
Park Cities PCA
(Dallas, TX)

What's wrong with Frame? Are you disagreeable for the sake of being disagreeable?

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J. B. Atken
John Knox PCA
Layman, M.A. student at Louisiana College

No. I got along with Frame personally in my handful of dealings with him. He is a decent man. Still, he continues Van Til's project off into the rabbit trails of fideism. All of this stuff is an unintentional reinvention of the Calvinist philosophy of Peter Bayle, who was a father of enlightenment skepticism.

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Chris Stamper
Park Cities PCA
(Dallas, TX)

And I believe that there is Biblical warrant for this (we need roads to get to cities of refugee and towns for court cases); however, there is no Biblical warrant for driving licences etc., it is just more state power.

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Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)

Sadly, there is some truth in this. But that does not mean Theonomy is wrong, any more than the fact that infant baptism is the position of the Roman Catholic Church. However, being a Theonomist myself I have written a book on the regulative principle which also defends the Sabbath and condemns images.

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Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)

True, Paul tells the church to excommunicate him; but he was not writing to civil magistrates empowered with the sword (see John Calvin's commentary on the verse in question).

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Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)

Why be a Theonomist? You can be Reformed instead!

You have a perfectly good, if broken, legal system in the UK. Our forefathers fought so you could have it. Why would you want to lose it? The Anglosphere is not the Ancient Near East. We weren't made to live there. The Mosaic Code was not made for us, any more than the Code Napoleon or the Roman Law was.

I have the familiar theological objection to theonomy. I also don't like the anti-conservative and downright revolutionary aspects to that doctrine. I want to see the old political traditions upheld on both sides of the Atlantic.

Our liberties are based in a long tradition going back to the Magna Carta. I'm not interested in throwing that out because Anglo constitutionalism and common law aren't based on Moses. Nor has any Reformed denomination for the past 450 years.

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Chris Stamper
Park Cities PCA
(Dallas, TX)

Actually, modern Theonomy is the only epistemologically Reformed view of civil ethics, as it alone asserts that only God has the right to determine what sins constitute crimes and to stipulate how they should be punished in a manner which is just and equittable. All other views undermine the Sovereignty of God in civil law. Moreover, since I am a psalm-singing Covenanter, I think I have as much right to be called Reformed as anyone. Before I was a Theonomist I had no idea of what was a coherent, Biblical, Christian political philosophy. However, when I became a Theonomist I stopped asking "By What Standard?" and started saying "By This Standard".

We have a perfectly good legal system in the UK!!! Really?? Our laws are capracious and unjust; not to mention the fact that the civil government is basically totalitarian. Are you really saying that a legal system which men have invented is better than that which has been "breathed out by God" in His infallible word.

The justice/equity of the Mosaic penal code was not just made for Israel (Deut. 4:5-8). If you assert that it was then you have to maintain the absurd proposition that it was just for God to call for sodomites, kidnappers etc to be executed in Israel, but one yard over the border it would have been unjust to have upheld the same holy, just, righteous and God-breathed law.

Theonomy is anti-conservative? Really? From what I have read, Reconstructionists appreciate the praiseworthy aspects of the conservative and classical liberal positions; however, they are not enough, we need Biblical law, not human traditions.

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Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)

Tell me, did David have a "neurotic unhealthy obsession with law" when he wrote Psalm 119? God's statues are my delight and my meditation. If that is unhealthy then so be it.

As for your comments about the Orange Order, I had a real laugh at these ; it is true that I used to be an Orangeman, but left it when I became a Covenanter 5 years ago. Though I still respect the noble things it stands for.

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Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)

Someone please deal with I Cor 5.

To say, "well Paul was talking to the church, not the civil gov't" does not cut it. The NT does not give any demands to civil gov't in the NT.

Israel was both gov't and church and had rules regulating both, but the NT only says to obey civil gov't.

Inside the church, like in I Cor 5, the civil laws of Israel was applied and death was changed to excommunication.


THis is a Biblical example of how Paul deals with the law in NT context. THis too should be our example by which we define general equity.

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Pergamum


"If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?"
-- David Livingstone

Actually, Paul tells us that civil goverment is God's servant that is to adminster God's wrath on the evil-doer. Where do we go in order to find out how the servant of God (civil government) is to adminster God's wrath on criminals in a manner which is just and equittable? The answer is to the penal sanctions of the judicial law of Moses which deal with issues pertaining to civil justice. It is true that the NT has little to say on the role, functions and limitations of civil government; but this should not surprise us as the matter has been extensively dealt with in the Old Testament. To argue that we cannot appeal to the Old Testament is to adopt a Dispensational hermenuetic.

This is a sphere sovereignty issue; the church is required to excommunicate scandalous sinners, the state is to punish criminals. Paul's argument in 1 Cor. 5 is that since this individual had committed a crime worthy of death, then at the very least he should be excommunicated from the church. However, to argue that this means the state should no longer apply the appropriate civil penalty is to build an argument from conjecture. Should the state no longer execute murderers, but just leave it to the church to excommunicat them?

While it is true that Israel was church and state, the two institutions were distinct (though not entirely separate). The argument that excommunication has replaced the death penalty is one that is contrary to how most Puritans understood it (this was the argument of the tolerationists like Roger Williams in New England). Moreover, it was the Erastians who argued that the death penalty was OT excommunication. So the argument that this is what the Westminster Divines meant by general equity is historical revisionism.

Furthermore how are we to deal with incestous persons outside the church. We cannot excommunicate them, can we?

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Daniel Ritchie
Saintfield, Northern Ireland - Queen's University, Belfast:History/Politics
Member of Dromara Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland (Covenanter)

I follow the likes of Roger Williams on this. I would have moved to Rhode Island with him. The irony is they left mother england becasue of not wanting to part part of the "state church" there, avoid persecution of the King, and then impose a theocracy in my country.

The arrogance in the way they attempted to erect a "City on a hill" and they themselves were guilty of stealing, and covetousness, not to mention murder, and false testimony in their dealings with the Indians, overwhelms me. And the thought of not only preaching the Gospel, but legislating it is absurd. . Human beings can't legislate as to what is in a person's heart. Only God can do that.

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N. Robert; Trinity Reformed Church RCA, Holland MI

Once in a while you can get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right."

Rhode Island was a moral cesspool. Williams didn't even remain a Baptist.

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J. B. Atken
John Knox PCA
Layman, M.A. student at Louisiana College

He was a nut job himself. He argued for arguement sake. As far as a moral cesspool, history disagrees with this assertion..

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive...CF&oref=slogin

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N. Robert; Trinity Reformed Church RCA, Holland MI

Once in a while you can get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right."

Well, the NY Times has their own agenda. I guess you got your sources and I gots mine.

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J. B. Atken
John Knox PCA
Layman, M.A. student at Louisiana College