The OPC and Meredith Kline

[shackleton]

I have been talking to an OPC pastor the past couple of weeks a lot about the Law, WCF 19 and Kline. Let me run this by you and see if I understand it correctly.

It seems like there are a large number of OPC churches in CA and a large Theonomic community in southern CA. WTS is in CA, Kline taught at WTS and so has a lot of followers. Since Theonomy seeks partly to put everyone under the laws laid out in Deuteronomy, both civil and moral, and Kline sees anything from the Mosaic Covenant as a parenthesis to the Abrahamic Covenant the two butt heads especially since Christ came and put and end to the Mosaic Covenant.

He also stated that the OPC is currently somewhat split according to what they want to follow, Kline, or a following of the Decalogue but not necessarily Theonomy. There is the Theonomy camp, the Kline camp and then the ones who do not fall into either camp. This guy is a strong believer that the moral law as expressed in the 10 words is valid for us to follow today, as stated in the WCF 19 but does not go down the Theonomy road.

Do I understand this correctly? Any thoughts or clarifications?

 

[timmopussycat]

I have been talking to an OPC pastor the past couple of weeks a lot about the Law, WCF 19 and Kline. Let me run this by you and see if I understand it correctly.

It seems like there are a large number of OPC churches in CA and a large Theonomic community in southern CA. WTS is in CA, Kline taught at WTS and so has a lot of followers. Since Theonomy seeks partly to put everyone under the laws laid out in Deuteronomy, both civil and moral, and Kline sees anything from the Mosaic Covenant as a parenthesis to the Abrahamic Covenant the two butt heads especially since Christ came and put and end to the Mosaic Covenant.

He also stated that the OPC is currently somewhat split according to what they want to follow, Kline, or a following of the Decalogue but not necessarily Theonomy. There is the Theonomy camp, the Kline camp and then the ones who do not fall into either camp. This guy is a strong believer that the moral law as expressed in the 10 words is valid for us to follow today, as stated in the WCF 19 but does not go down the Theonomy road.

Do I understand this correctly? Any thoughts or clarifications?

That's how I understand the situation. Note that all the Bahnsenian Theonomists I have encountered reject the view that there is a middle position here between Bahnsen's Theonomy and Antinomianism, (within which they may or may not include Kline). I haven't researched Kline in any depth nor dealt with any Klinieans who have commented on the point so I can't speak to how people holding Kline's view see the matter.

 

[TimV]

Split may be too harsh a word.

Since Theonomy seeks partly to put everyone under the laws laid out in Deuteronomy, both civil and moral, and Kline sees anything from the Mosaic Covenant as a parenthesis to the Abrahamic Covenant the two butt heads especially since Christ came and put and end to the Mosaic Covenant.

That is such an oversimplification that it really doesn't have any practical meaning. The fact that a person wants child rapists to be executed doesn't make one necessarily a Theonomist. And your view of Kline is, to be fair, an over simplification as well.

During my interview to get my membership transferred last week the subject came up as the local Session didn't approve of Theonomy (or at least what they'd heard it meant) but after about 2 minutes of discussing the subject, everyone realized there was no measurable, practical difference between the Session and myself. And when people show up for a meal or a work day, they generally don't spend the whole time talking about the subject.

 

[shackleton]

I did not mean split in the sense of church split just at an impasse, which path do they follow.

 

[shackleton]

TimV, are you a theonomist?

I only bring all this up because it seems to represent a major problem in the OPC church in my area and their choice of who to pick as a pastor.

(They already chose one but it was a point of major contention up to the choosing of one. It seems to have caused a lot of problems and led to a reduction in the number of people that go to this church).

 

[TimV]

I did not mean split in the sense of church split just at an impasse, which path do they follow.

With respect, again you're making it too simple. It's not as if there are only two choices, or that any particular choice has to be followed. The best confessional Reformed treatment of Theonomy I've seen is in a PCA position paper, which you can find on their Historical site.

I personally see a danger in Kline. I've mentioned before how revolted I was about a PCA sermon pushing his Framework Hypothesis, where the Creation account is dismissed as allegorical due to, among other things, claimed inconsistencies that keep real intellectuals from taking it seriously as history.

With Theonomy, it's more a mind set. I guess I'm a Theonomist, but if you want to have sex with your wife when she's on her period, I won't say anything to you about it. If you want to kill nesting birds I won't write your church, if you want to eat hunks of pork fat or road kill even if you were a member of my church I wouldn't speak to the Session about it. We had a staff meeting every Thursday, and Otto Scott had bacon and eggs, and Rushdoony paid for it, although he wouldn't order it himself, and never said anything about it. So I guess I'm a Theonomist.

I get called all the time in my work by people who's fruit tree has been stunted. Under Biblical law, you can't harvest fruit for the first couple years. Farmers don't let fruit trees bear for the first couple years because it can stunt the tree. I tell my customers to pull all the fruit off, as for every lemon or apple produced, the tree could have used that energy to have make 100 leaves. I tell them to do exactly what the Bible says, although naturally I don't preach to them. But if you want to let your orange tree produce the year after you plant it, go ahead. I'm not sure why you'd want to, and I wouldn't even call what you are doing sin, but I see those laws as pure and good and valuable. So I guess I'm a Theonomist.

 

[shackleton]

Allow me to interject a Dr. Phil moment. I have a history in an extremely legalistic holiness church and experienced first hand the ramifications of what that does to people in real life situations. When I see or hear some things it reminds me of this only because I have seen how that plays out practically.

Now, I would have to say that I agree with most of the particulars of the beliefs of the more ardently reformed but I can't help but be taken back emotionally to what life was like under that system. I may agree with what is being said but I have seen how people apply these things practically and how that affects the average joe who goes to church and unfortunately it usually leads to spiritual burnout for the average person who is only experiencing the affects of these beliefs. The average joe does not know the why of the rules they only hear the do's and don'ts. They get the letter of the law without the spirit of the Law, the why the law was given in the first place.

That probably does not make sense unless you have been on the receiving end of it.

So to sum up, I agree with the basic ins and outs of Theonomy, I think, but I scares me because it reminds me of how I have seen similar things played out in real life.