In the quote below, the Court overthrows the historic understanding of common law, but for today notice these two things. In the first paragraph, notice the assumption that the Court denies about the nature of law. In the second paragraph, which is a quotation of an opinion by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, notice what the Court says has now taken the place of that assumption:

The fallacy underlying the rule declared in Swift v. Tyson [which is about common law] is made clear by Mr. Justice Holmes. The doctrine rests upon the assumption that there is “a transcendental body of law outside of any particular State but obligatory within it unless and until changed by statute,” . . . :

“but law in the sense in which courts speak of it today does not exist without some definite authority behind it. The common law so far as it is enforced in a State . . . is not the common law generally but the law of that State existing by the authority of that State without regard to what it may have been in England or anywhere else. . . . “the authority and only authority is the State, and if that be so, the voice adopted by the State as its own [whether it be of its Legislature or of its Supreme Court] should utter the last word.”

The Court denies to law, and to common law in particular, any transcendent existence or authority and immanenatizes law completely, meaning it places the nature of law — its existence and authority — strictly in the state that alone utters the last word.

When the existence and authority of law are immanentized not only is God cast out of our thinking about law, but just an importantly, so is any doctrine of superintending providence by the Spirit of Christ, who is exercising His offices of prophet, priest, and king in relation to all things.

Moreover, all jurisdictions that the God of the Bible established independent of the civil authority that can serve as a check on civil authority, such as the family and the church, are effectively abolished. These other authorities now have only such an authority as the highest civil authority will tolerate, “whether it be of its Legislature or of its Supreme Court.”

I submit that Christians can subconsciously embrace this anti-God view of the world and of law, and that it manifests itself when politics unwittingly becomes the jurisdiction we run to thinking it can do anything more than temporarily control or influence what people in a society want to do.

Personally, I think the church is complicit in this. Some of its complicity will be explored in the second half of my interview with Jason Farley that I will publish on Friday. I hope you will check it out.

In my his comments are much needed critique of and counter to the proposition espoused by some Christians that enacting certain statutes will “end abortion” or will “change culture.”

I hope you find it helpful.

An audio version of the conversation is at this link.

The interview was made possible by the God, Law & Liberty initiative of Alliance for Law & Liberty, a 501(c)(3) public policy educational organization in and for the state of Tennessee. However, the views expressed are strictly those of Mr. Farley and me.

Introduction of Guest

Jason has been a pastor, elder, head of a classical Christian s school. More recently he has worked with Concordia’s education partners launching classical Christian schools, started a Substack page (Jason Farley’s Substack) and Loor.tv that helps various artists find an audience to fund their work, and works as a comedy writer and screenwriter.

The balance of our conversation will be published next week.

The Context for Our Conversation

Our conversation was framed around questions I received after the last two publications.

In the first I wrote that Christians “dare not substitute the enactment of laws by legislative bodies for Christ and the work of the Spirit of Christ” and proceed without a due regard for the nature of sin.

In the second, I questioned two statements by abortion abolitionists. The first statement was, “We don’t need to wait for revival before seeking to change culture through law. Passing laws creates and changes culture. We need only muster the courage to act.” The second was a claim that an enacted law charging an abortive mother with felony murder will “teach the culture” that abortion is wrong and end abortion.

The Questions the Reader Asked

Here are the questions I was asked, and I’m grateful for the feedback.

• Are biblically sound laws not a good in and of themselves?

• Should Christian lawmakers seek to pass biblical laws only if the guaranteed consequence is changing the hearts and minds of the people? Or can we pass laws that demonstrate the principles of God’s justice, in part, just because justice is good?

• Incremental changes can help avoid rebellion, but can’t lawmakers can help correct social mores as well as recognize their decline.

A fourth question was asked that Jason and I will take up next week

The Conversation with Jason Farley

David:

Some could take from my last two publications that there is just no point in politics at all or that Christian should not run for office. So, the hidden, rhetorical question question might be, “Do we just let things in politics go to hell in a hand basket?”

Jason:

Well, this is one of those discussions that I’ve been having with people for years. And a big part of the question that often goes unexamined is what do we mean when we say “culture”?

When we say we want a better culture, to build culture, to see the culture changed or redeemed, what do we mean, because culture isn’t a thing? Culture doesn’t have its own metaphysical essence, as if culture exists over here, and we need to change it. Culture is really just the summary of a lot of tiny actions that people make. That being the case, there isn’t a way to change culture directly.

So, what is often left out of this conversation is this: If culture isn’t something that we can change directly, should our goal be change the culture? Because if culture is just the sum of a lot of small actions by a lot of different people, then really the only way to change culture is to change a lot of people.

And we know that when Jesus talks about how we decide to do what we do, that the heart is what guides and directs the will, it guides and directs our choices. So we know that to change the actions of people, then the hearts of people need to be changed. That’s the way you get a different culture.

Because you can’t say, “Well, I’m going to change the culture, and then the culture is going to be the thing that changes people,” not if the culture is just the sum of the actions of lots of people over time. So I think that when we frame the question around what culture is and isn’t, I think that’s helpful and [what we are doing in politics] becomes clearer. That’s because we know that the law doesn’t change hearts. We know that’s the case.

And that’s not because the law is bad. Paul says it’s because the law wasn’t designed to have that sort of power. And if that’s the case, then we don’t go to the law to change culture.

Now, if you are called by God to be a lawmaker, to be a lawyer, or to be a politician, you have a calling from God to enact the best possible laws that you can, enact them legally, and reform the law. That might be your calling.

But it’s not because you think that the law is going to build us and better laws are going to build us a new culture. It’s because faithfulness before the Lord requires me to act in this way.

And I don’t know what the response is going to be. I don’t know what it’s going to cause, but I know that I can make a good law or a bad law, and I can reform the law in the right direction. And do it as an act of faithfulness, an act of service to the Lord and service to people.

David:

So let me try to give a picture of what I’m hearing you say about culture, because I’ve heard you say culture is an abstraction, that it’s not a “real” thing.

So, I think of an air filter or a CPAP machine filter. I can change the filter, and I get better air. And you’re saying culture isn’t really like an air filter that I just take this filter off, put in a better microfiber filter, and that all of a sudden changes the air. A culture is not a thing like an air filter that filters the culture in a different or better direction. Is that a bad analogy?

Jason:

No, no. I think that’s a good way to put it because I do often say culture is an abstraction.

It’s an abstraction the same way you study sociology. You say 80% of people do this thing. And so that’s what the culture of this people is. It’s an abstraction from observed actions.

And if you say our goal is to change the culture, you’re trying to change the abstraction. And you can’t change an abstraction directly. You have to change the thing you’re abstracting from. And that’s the 80 people acting in a particular way.

David:

I was just thinking that culture is an abstraction in that you’re looking at these 80 people and you abstract something from it, say a statistic, but you actually have to change the 80 people in order for you what you can abstract from them to be different.

Jason:

Right. And that’s where Paul’s exhortation that we don’t have a pen that writes on hearts comes in, that changing people is not something directly in our power. God has kept that power from us.

But when we think it is [in our power], it’s because we think in mechanistic terms, that you can manipulate people into doing the right thing. But we can’t because we don’t have access to the heart. But the Holy Spirit does. And Paul gives all kinds of directions to people on how to walk in the Spirit, how to walk with the Spirit, how to live in line with the Spirit.

But the word of God preached is the primary way that people are changed. And then within the church, the way that we grow is by word and sacrament and community, loving one another as the Spirit draws us towards one another and the Spirit works in and through one another in His sanctifying grace.

But thinking that or feeling that way would be like saying Jesus was a bad preacher because He only ended up with a couple of disciples at the end of His life. He faithfully preached the message that the Father gave Him, but we were told that He was going to be rejected. And it’s the same with Jeremiah and the passage in Isaiah -- I’m going to send you out to preach because it’s time to plug some ears.

Faithfulness before the Lord isn’t a matter of direct results. But we also know that the Word of God never returns void. It does what it’s going to do, and it does have a transformative effect, but it’s not a one-to-one transformative effect. It’s the transformative effect the way yeast transforms a loaf.

And so our job in a legislative body is to be faithful with what’s in front of us, knowing that the results of our faithfulness will come. But we can’t “do the math” and draw all of the connections that faithfulness will bring. That’s not our job or in our purview.

David:

So let me give an example then, and you can react to this. One of the things that I wanted to do was undermine the teaching of evolution in public schools.

So, I took an idea from a lawyer, Philip Johnson, who helped found the Discovery Institute, and I was able to pass a law that no teacher in a public school could be fired for helping students think through the implications of the origin of things. So, the teacher could say, “Okay, the beaks of Darwin’s birds -- they grew longer, they grew shorter, but does that indicate that the bird had been at some point a worm?”

And nothing ever happened. There was never any hubba-bubba over a teacher questioning evolution, and a teacher saying, “Thanks, David. So glad you passed the law.” It didn’t do anything. What I hoped would happen never happened.

And a friend of mine asked another lobbyist not too long ago, “Have you ever looked back to see if the laws you passed ever accomplished the purpose that you had intended?” And this friend said the lobbyist looked at her like, “What do you mean by asking that question? I passed the law, and the law was good.”

That, in part, goes to me to why I question whether the law itself produces the thing the law was directed at. Why didn’t the Christian teachers say, “Hey, this is my chance.” Can you talk to that just a moment?

Jason:

Well, one of the things that is revealed by a law like that is that if the Christian teachers say we’re not doing this because of the law, they weren’t telling the truth. Because when the opportunity opens up and they still don’t do it, you realize in their calling as teachers they are not being faithful before the Lord, and it’s revealed by that.

That’s one of the ways that the law inflames sin, like Paul tells us — it has that revealing effect. I wouldn’t have known my sin if it weren’t for the law. When the excuse goes away and they don’t do it, there’s some good revelation that hopefully people see, but the Lord sees even if the people don’t.

In that sense, you pass a good law and that’s good, and you don’t need to say thank you to the Lord for a good law only because it will change things in the right way. At the same time, however, we should start to say, ‘Well, if that’s the case, are we doing law right as a society?” The laws protecting freedom only matter to a people that want to live free. In the last 100 years we’ve seen a lot of degradation of the desire to be free, because laws show up, they protect freedom, and then nobody wants to be free.

Somebody else comes along and offers safety, and those freedom laws get overturned because people don’t want the responsibility of their own lives the way they should. Freedom is a blessing to people who are free.

This is where I think we need to think more clearly and deeply about what it means to be made in the image of God and what actually drives people to act as people made in the image of God. What drives us is really not what is legal and what is illegal in the way that we think that it does or the way that we like to think that it should. But, we are fundamentally legalists at heart, so we think that if you get the right laws in place, people will change and be conformed by the force and the pressure of law. But it’s really not the way it goes.

For example, you see all of the attempts to make it illegal to have guns in school zones. It didn’t make people that want to bring guns into school zones less violent. The reality of what it means to be made in the image of God is we’re not the kind of creatures that are formed by laws from the outside. We’re formed by what we love from the inside.

Coleridge wrote on this quite a bit — that the discipling of the imagination is at the center of changing people’s understanding or of changing people’s actions. What should be at the center of the discipleship of our imagination is word and sacrament. That worship should be at the center of forming our imaginations. Then, beyond that, it’s the arts that we enjoy.

Some of this he is getting from Horace, the Roman philosopher, and then Chaucer, and different Christian writers that have written on it through the years. But the arts that we enjoy end up actually teaching our imagination how we see ourselves in the world and how we interact with the world.

And the formation of our imagination ends up telling us how we ought to act, who we think we are, what we think the world is like, and what we think God is like. That is just not something that’s touched by the law. It’s touched by the stories that we tell. It’s touched by the worship that we do or don’t do. That imagination formation turns out to be at the heart of “culture,” which is just not what the law does. But the laws that end up being passed are a result of all of that.

You see throughout history the number of times that something has been changed by a novel, by a poet. Virgil reformed the Roman imagination by writing the Aeneid. Because of that, the empire survives.

Francis Schaeffer wrote about this quite a bit in his works — that a philosopher with a new idea rarely changes everyone. A philosopher with a new idea that inspires an artist has a huge impact on the world.

And the central art that should be forming our imagination is the preaching of the Word.

David:

So let me inject here, and I hope this is a good follow-up question. One of the things that I’ve been ruminating over since I read it several years ago, is Bavinck saying that an effect of the Enlightenment is that we came to think that knowing God is really sort of beyond us. So, we began to lose the concept of metaphysics — of the ground of being — and what that implies about how the world works, and we moved on to just doing the will of God.

And so a lot of sermons are telling us what to do and how to live, but theology, doctrine proper, kind of gets lost. And so as we think mostly about what to do. We think “faith, working through love,” which was one of my previous podcasts, doesn’t really change things; it’s this extrinsic stuff.

And what I think I hear you saying is that our job is to pass a good law, but don’t think you’ve failed if that good law doesn’t “change culture.”

Jason:

Right?

David

Don’t be surprised that it may accomplish nothing, which was my experience. There is this thing out there called sin operative in the largest part of our society that actually is at enmity with God. It is going to rebel against God, and hate whatever that law is, and seek to get rid of it ass soon as you get it passed or redefine all the words in the law.

Jason:

Right.

David:

So I guess my question, or my observation for you to react to, is that if we expect that the law is will change “culture,” or change the hearts of people so that culture changes, we are expecting from law a power that, in itself, it does not have.

And I’ve heard you say, if I’ve understood you correctly in the past, we get this idea about law’s power from evolution, namely that these laws are operating, and that’s what shapes the puddle. So, that’s what shapes us, too. And so we’ve really bought into a legalistic, mechanical view of the world, because we’re just mostly interested in what we are to do.

That’s a whole lot of stuff, but react as you think appropriate.

Jason:

Yeah. So what happens in the Reformation and in the Enlightenment is the shift away from discussing metaphysics as the central question. It shifts to discussing how do we know what we know. And the Reformers took the metaphysical assumptions of the medievals, and the Enlightenment dropped the metaphysical assumptions of the medievals.

Well, one of those assumptions was that things have a nature, that they act out of their nature. And the Reformers just continued that assumption. They didn’t really discuss it much because it wasn’t up for grabs the way they were thinking. But the Enlightenment did shift the question of how do we know to the forefront of their discussions. All of the confessions begin with epistemology questions, because that was what seemed up for grabs.

The Enlightenment moves epistemology to the beginning as well, but it drops the metaphysical assumptions that things have a nature. And instead, they take on mechanistic metaphors for reality, and that the laws of nature form things into their shape. So evolution becomes the central version of epistemology for the West.

So, why is the beak of the bird the length that it is? Well, it’s because the forces of the environment make the beak change. So an external force ends up changing the shape of the thing into what it is, and it changes it from species to species as the external force changes, and that change is possible because the thing doesn’t have a nature. It is the shape it is because of the forces applied to it.

And you see some of this discussed explicitly about people — it’s a fascinating book, but it’s awful — in John Dewey’s book, Evolution and Modern Man. He talks about how we need to get rid of the liberal arts, because the liberal arts were developed under a different set of forces — under a different kind of economic system, under different political system — and so they were forming people. But they become a force that forms people into the wrong shape for the modern world.

The modern world is a different environment, and we need the environment of the modern world to shape people into what they need to be, to be good factory workers, to fit into the machine. That’s because now the world is a machine whereas before it was organic. But we have now developed to the point where we can control society as a machine. And so you enact the right laws, the educational system applies the right force, and they will form people into the shape that we need them to be, to be the cog in this machine that they need to be.

David:

So that sort of really bleeds into the way we think about what we’re doing in politics, right? That the law is what shapes us, so we just get the law right.

It makes sense, right? If it can shape us, shape the puddle, if it can shape us, the society — that’s the kind of world we live in — we’ll just get the law, and we’ll get our power, and we’ll do the same thing. Am I hearing you correctly?

Jason:

Yep, yeah. It ends up affecting legal theory really significantly in the same sort of way, that the laws make society, shape society into what it is, because the law is the external force, or the application of the law is the external force.

That’s how you can justify the gulags, for example. In the USSR, they changed the laws and said we’ve just got to apply enough force. You have all sorts of experiments on people with psychological manipulation. Can we re-educate people into this society by force? The application of law, the application of forced education, all of those things are assuming that there’s not a metaphysical nature underneath.

It’s not that the passing of laws never is a part of that, but usually it’s the stories around the passing of the law that affect people. It’s the stories around the implementation of the laws that affect people, not the passing of the law itself, but the way the story ends up told.

The Scopes-Monkey trial is a really good example, because the law that came out of it was actually a good law. But the telling of the trial by the journalists is what actually formed society. The storytelling around it did more to form the society than the passing of the law itself. The law ended up ineffective because the storytellers that came in and told the story of how the law was passed, wrote plays about it — Inherit the Wind.

They end up affecting the culture because it changed the way that people saw themselves, and the story that they were in more [than the law], and you didn’t have pulpits pushing back against it.

This five minute audio from Ligonier Ministries is helpful too.

The Heresy Addressed in the Creed

I don’t know exactly what Craig is trying to get at, but the Creed was directed, at least in part, at a heresy known as modalism that effectively denies the Triune nature of God, the Trinity. Modalism means that God sometimes expresses himself as Father, sometimes expresses himself as Son, and sometimes expresses himself as the Holy Spirit. The distinct persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit become various modes of existence.

But God is one essential BEING (ontologically) while simultaneously, and without contradiction, being three distinct PERSONS or, we might say, personalities. The latter addresses subsistence.

Trying to explain God in human language is certainly a challenge, but it’s hard to affirm the triune nature of God, while simultaneously saying one cannot affirm the Nicene creed. Otherwise, the word “Trinity” becomes just a word in our head that has no substantive meaning. Without the distinctions that the Creed is trying to make, we wind up with polytheism (three gods) or modalism (sometimes God manifests Father, sometimes as Son, and sometimes as Holy Spirit).

This is serious stuff.

Does Craig Need a Lesson in Metaphysics?

Personally, I think Craig saying he cannot affirm or deny the Nicene Creed is an example of what I’ve often quoted from Herman Bavinck:

Rationalism considered itself sure of God’s existence and attached but little value to knowledge of his being. . . . Disregarding all so-called metaphysical questions, people rushed on to the will of God in order to know and to do it. Eternal life, they maintained, does not consist in knowing God but in doing his will.

Rationalists sometimes have a hard time living with what is mysterious in what Scripture declares.

I think Craig may demonstrate what Abraham Kuyper wrote about apologetics:

Apologetics have advanced us not one single step. Apologists have invariably begun by abandoning the assailed breastwork, in order to entrench themselves cowardly in a ravelin behind it.

“You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe--and tremble!” James 2:19, NKJV.

I think the short audio from Ligonier will be very helpful to understanding modalism.

But, having come to believe that this verse is speaking to something much more than that, I re-examined some of what I wrote last year and found I now disagree with a portion of it.

It is time to make my re-examination public and revise my book. But I want to explain why, because I think many may think the way I once did.

What I Found Questionable

The part I re-examined begins with a question based on 1 Peter 2:14 (NKJV), which speaks of magistrates being sent by God “for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of those who do good.” As you read it, my concern may not be obvious, and, in fact, my concern may be a minority position in evangelicalism today for the reasons I will explain.

What does it mean for the civil government to encourage good and punish evil?

To understand that, we should ask ourselves the question, “Why is it that the law must encourage good and punish evil?” As stated in Chapter 6, Scripture and our own experience tell us that the law must do that. The answer to why this is so is found in the nature of law as revealed by Scripture and experience.

Looking first at Scripture, two passages will suffice in our attempt to understand the nature of law1:

“I would not have known sin except through the law. For I would not have known covetousness unless the law had said, ‘You shall not covet.’”

“Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith.”

From these passages we see that the law has an educative effect. It informs our ethical judgments about right and wrong. In fact, the latter verse, found in Galatians, says that the law, by its righteous demands and its proscriptions regarding unrighteousness, is used by God to convince and convict us of our own unrighteousness and our need for a savior.

Experience also bears out this interpretation of Scripture. For example, the United States Supreme Court bore witness to the educative affect of the law in its 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In the context of upholding a right to abortion, the Court said:

“[F]or two decades…people have organized their intimate relationships and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail…. “(emphasis added).

In other words, after two decades the laws making abortion available changed the way we view ourselves. The law helped re-educate us.

While the Court did not specify the ways in which our views changed, one would have to be blind not to see that over the last 40 years our views have changed regarding the nature and purpose of human sexuality, marriage, the sacredness and value of human life, and the relative importance of childbearing and parenting vis-a-vis advancement in career, education and material well-being.

I found the same kind of thinking about the effect law has in a brochure by the Foundation to Abolish Abortion that a pregnancy resource center recently provided me. It is in the following part of the brochure’s answer to Question 5.3, “Shouldn’t cultural change and repentance come before legal change?”

When abortion is legal for anyone at all, the law teaches the culture2 that preborn children are not as worthy of protection as born people. When abortion is criminalized as homicide for everyone, the law teaches the truth that preborn children deserve the same protections of their lives that we enjoy for ours.3

Notice that in both statements law is doing an educative work. To my credit, I did note that law is “used by God to convince and convict us of our own unrighteousness and our need for a savior.” Nevertheless, like FAA, I subsequently attributed an independent educative effect to law in my reference to what the Supreme Court said in its Casey decision.

I reasoned that if enacted laws or Supreme Court interpretations of enacted law, the Constitution, works in one direction — toward a collapse of culture — logic suggests that it could work in the opposite direction, to improve culture.

Evaluating Myself

What I wrote still makes logical sense, but I think it made sense at that time for two reasons.

First, I didn’t have a sound doctrine of God, particularly of the person of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, and his essential pervasive work since the initial creation. It is in God, and particularly in external works of the Holy Spirit, that we “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28, KJV).

Thus, to think there is any light of “truth” about the unborn to be gleaned from the laws we declare apart from Christ4 and the work of the Spirit of Christ in connection with those under them seems to deny that our minds are darkened by sin.

I ask: Can we can arrive at “truth,” in the words of FAA, without Christ? I answer that Scripture assures us that some are “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7, KJV), which truth would include the truth about what it means to be human, what life is, and what it is for.5

Could not the Holy Spirit, for reasons known to God, work to prevent the conclusion we think should be drawn? God told Isaiah that exact thing would happen in response to his preaching.6

Second, and related to the first, I had a defective understanding of the nature of sin. That is why I said last week that sin must be taken into account in any effort to “abolish abortion” (such as may be possible this side the final judgment of all things) or “any other particularized problem.”7

In sum, this was my problem: I was a modern-day, evangelical-church-attending Pharisee. Why? Because I took their theology that said law is what “creates and shapes” persons and extended it to the societies those persons create and shape.

Was I Alone in My Thinking?

I don’t think so. In fact, those exact thoughts were recently expressed by a popular Christian cultural commentator who I’ve previously referenced:

Yes - Revival changes culture but we do not sit on our hands waiting for revival before seeking to change culture through law. . . . Passing laws creates and changes culture. We need only muster the courage to ACT. (Emphasis in the original)8

Interestingly, he seems to have drawn this conclusion from how it appears to him that the world works:

[T]he sexual liberationists and occult feminists . . . create culture and change it according to their whims THROUGH their political engagement. They go all-in and mobilize their relatively small portion of the public who are willing to sacrifice nearly everything on the altar of “orgasms without responsibility.” They understand and understand well that “statecraft is soulcraft.” (all capitals in the original; emphasis added by italics and bold font)9

It sounds very similar to what I wrote in 2013 about the effect of the Supreme Court’s holdings on abortion. You see, the nature of sin just doesn’t ever seem to enter into the equation when developing and advocating for public policies, only the biblical morality of the policy itself10

At meetings of Christian policy organizations, I was “inspired” to think what our law-making efforts could do by considering that our society has been changed for the worst by the engagement and advocacy of as few as 3% of a certain group of people. “What if Christians voted?” was the rhetorical question.11

Dare I suggest that looking to the world for inspiration and to its methodologies for changing society may be a case of Christians conforming their minds to that of the world, and, therefore, evidence a lack of spiritual wisdom?12

Discovering the Lost Understanding of Sin

It is easy to think of sin as something we do. For example, we find this in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, and I can’t think of any evangelical who would disagree:

Q. 14. What is sin?

A. Sin is any want of conformity unto, or transgression of, the law of God.

That is correct, but this version of sin written for children is where my childish understanding of Christianity remained into my 60s. It did so for lack of the solid food in evangelical churches that growing in maturity needs.13

On this point, John Owen, England’s greatest theologian, pegged in the 17th century what I see as the problem in our day, namely, that people “do not comprehend the metaphysical notion or nature of this pollution and defilement of sin.” Christologia, 394. I was one of them.

I was, in the words of Owen, like others — “sensible of the effects it produceth in their minds and consciences” — I knew I sinned or transgressed the law of God -- but understanding the nature of sin itself? No. Not a bit. It had not yet been revealed to me, because the depth of glory resident in the mysterious constitution of Christ and the necessity of His constitution as Jesus Christ were as yet unknown to me.

The absence of that revelation affected my understanding of sin in terms of metaphysics, and, therefore, I knew nothing of what I would call its cosmological effects. That lack of understanding explains why I reasoned the way I did about law and the effects it could have on changing a culture for the good.

I will cover that next week with a special guest, Jason Farley, but the following will suffice for now:

Therefore, declaring a “new” law on abortion or, for that matter, on any subject that contradicts or undermines the denial of metaphysics that our present guardians have declared15 and that our society has grown accustomed to must take into consideration consequences that spiritual wisdom may have foreseen but perhaps don’t.

I’ll begin to look at that next week with my special guest, Jason Farley.

I believe these statements have a substance that may not be readily apparent, so I will work them out step-by-step.

How Is ‘Faith Working Through Love” a Cosmology?

“Faith working through love” as a statement of how the world is supposed to work would have been unintelligible to me in 2013, the year I published my first book on law and politics, The Politics of Loving God. At that time I would not have understood it as a summation a Christian’s cosmology from the human (subjective) side of things1, because, for one, I wasn’t really sure what cosmology meant or why it was important to the real world of politics.

Cosmology, a passé subject even in the church,2 is simply a pursuit of knowledge about what kind of place the cosmos is and, based on that, our understanding of how it works. I’ll keep coming back to this, but I believe “faith working through love” is an application of a Christian’s foundational3 cosmology, even prior to Adam’s transgression. It’s not something new.

I say that because creation is the overflow of the love that is the Triune God, specifically, the love of the Father for His Son. And creation was to be properly stewarded by Adam and Eve by faith in the Word of God4 operating out of or living according to a love being reciprocated5 to the Triune God’s love for those He created in holiness by His image.6 Thus, from the human side, that which is truly life, has always been a matter of faith working through love.7

Why “Faith Working Through Love” Sounds Weak!

Living out of this cosmology does not appeal to the wisdom of the natural man or the regenerate who live by the flesh in this sphere. It sounds weak.

It sounds weak because our times are defined and hemmed in by a society in which a majority believe there is no given transcendent nature to anything or at least a nature derived from the mind of any transcendent creator God.

In other words, our society has embraced metaphysical nihilism, meaning there is nothing to our existence beyond the physics that we can test, measure, and manipulate. Because that is assumed to be true, metaphysical nihilism necessarily reduces everything to a power play — whoever has power, especially political power — can shape things and society into what they want it to be.8

And in this social milieu, the wisdom that Christ is made unto us about how this world works — faith working through love — is hard to swallow. Christ just seems too remote, certainly too invisible for unspiritual or carnal minds to hold onto.

So, some Christians relegate this cosmology exclusively to matters of personal piety, as I once did, or to some “spiritual reality” outside of time and space that gnostic-ly resides in our heads. That allows them to get on with politics as usual with a “clean” conscience.9

Politics-as-usual for the unregenerate, and for the regenerate living out of the flesh, means they want to see, metaphorically speaking, either “chariots” or “horses” holding elected office (Psalm 20:7).

It also means they are willing to condescend to alliances with pagan but “conservative” organizations and adopt their methodologies and rhetoric to advance an end they want, today’s version of Judah striking an alliance with Egypt for its protection.

But God assures His people that this is not wise, and all those who hold to that lie shall fall. See Isaiah 31:1-3, NKJV (God taunting Judah’s leaders by saying “He also is wise”).10 And we know “all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition” (1 Corinthians 10:11, NKJV).

The Specific Temptation to Faith

Consequently, I believe the following is the de facto temptation the Tempter and Father of lies offers to Christians:

Sound familiar?

This is when faith in Christ as the spiritual wisdom we need in politics must do as Jesus did in His wilderness temptation: Use the Word of God to remind the Tempter that “all things were created through [Christ] and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist” (Colossians 1:16-17).

And we must remember that the Spirit of Christ has told us that what will redound to His glory and that which, by faith, we know we will experience by sight eternally is not our imagined forms of “religious” service or even winning over our political rivals, but our “faith working through love.” This is the wisdom Christ has been made unto us that the natural man finds no value in.

Why Faith-Through-Love IS More Powerful Than Politics and Law

Power-play politics spawns every kind of evil. The one that most readily comes to my mind is rivalry. The only thing that can break the strong, enslaving bands of a rivalry-based society and sap their apparent strength is the love of God, and it being lived out among those who are Christ’s.

That’s because the kind of diversity that is to be in the Body of Christ and would be a breeding ground for rivalry in the world is overcome among them by the love of Christ which defines and holds together His mystical body. It is a unifying faith in one head, Christ, that works through love from Christ and is returned to Christ in their love for the members of His Body of which everyone is a part.

This is the powerful witness Jesus spoke of to His disciples that redounds to the glory of Christ and to God the Father. See John 13:35, NKJV (Jesus saying that “all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another”) and John 17:21 (Jesus praying that His disciples would be “made perfect in one” that “the world may believe” that the Father “sent” Jesus Christ”). History shows that this has changed societies bound by sin in every direction by rivalry.

In sum, Christians can refuse to play the rivalry game in the way that a nihilistic society insists on because Christ has broken the greatest rivalry ever — that between sin and grace.11 By faith, they know they can take any rivalry to Christ and rest in Him to make the right disposition of it on His timetable. This is politics from a place of rest, not looking to politics to give us rest. See Hebrews 3:7-4:10 regarding entering into Christ’s rest.

How Does This Apply to Laws Against Abortion and Other Wrongs

This is a huge topic, and one I will continue, but based on the foregoing, I would preliminarily offer three ways that Christ is made unto us wisdom in the sphere of politics and law.

First, spiritual wisdom teaches us that pursuit of political power that has as its end, purpose, or, in the Greek, telos, the “end of abortion” or any other particularized problem is the sin of unbelief.12 It is unbelief in the person and offices of Christ working in and through those who, by a supernatural faith in working through love, look to and pursue the glory of God above all things. I was guilty of that, and still can be tempted to think that way.

Second, with respect to the so-called equal protection abortion legislation that has divided the pro-life community, both sides must recognize abortion’s roots are deeply spiritual, and I think they do. It is a a rebellion against God and His purpose that human fruitfulness would provide a holy nation that would be infinitely and eternally blessed by faith now and hereafter by sight of the beauty of God in His holiness — His glory — in the person of Jesus Christ.13

And the wisdom of Christ teaches us that this spiritual rebellion must be fought with spiritual weapons. See 2 Corinthians 10:3-5.14 That does not exclude engagement in politics or the use of law, but even then spiritual wisdom tells us we must first define the true nature and scope of the battle for that sphere, and that leads to my third offering.

Third, Christians in a legislative office must do their work with the wisdom of Christ who, in dealing with his society, understood and took into account the nature of sin and the prevalence of its effects, particularly its perverting effects on the legal apparatus for Jews of his day, namely, the law as received with the “Levitical priesthood.”15 See Hebrews 7:11-12, 17-22, discussed more fully last week.

This aspect of spiritual wisdom requires more attention than can be given to it today, but I can say that the metaphysical aspects of sin, the effects of sin scattered throughout our legal system, and lessons from the history of law weigh against present efforts to include abortive mothers under a state’s general homicide laws.

I hope you will join me next week for a look at those considerations.

Are a number of professing Christians in our country losing touch with Christ, at least in relation to how thy think about politics and what laws enacted by the victors will accomplish?

Today I will offer a second answer to this question.

It ties into what I wrote last week, namely, that when it comes to how a better society is “created or changed,” some Christians, even prominent ones, seem to substitute law and politics for Christ and the work of the Spirit of Christ. I called them political Pharisees, having been one myself.

But I believe the reason for this substitution goes to another substitution. Because the one I offer may be particularly controversial, I will offer three justifications for my conclusion before stating it.

The Aspect of the Priesthood of Christ That Shocked Me

That we might begin to appreciate what can be substituted for Christ, consider Hebrews 7:11-12, 17-22 (KJV). As you read, notice, in order, 1) the context in which the writer first puts “the law,” 2) the reason for “a change” in the law,” 3) the consequence of that change to law, 4) why that consequence was necessary, and 5) the final glorious revelation made by that change.

If therefore perfection were by the Levitical priesthood, (for under it the people received the law,) what further need was there that another priest should rise after the order of Melchisedec, and not be called after the order of Aaron? For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law. ... For he testifieth, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec. For there is verily a disannulling of the commandment going before for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof. For the law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did; by the which we draw nigh unto God. And inasmuch as not without an oath he was made priest: (For those priests were made without an oath; but this with an oath by him that said unto him, The Lord sware and will not repent, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec:) By so much was Jesus made a surety of a better testament.

Notice that law is associated with a particular priesthood, and the change of the priesthood from those appointed by law “after the order of Aaron” to one made by God’s “oath” “after the order of Melchisedec” necessarily changed the law.1

And notice that this change was not superficial. It annulled all the “commandment[s]” that had come in with and under the Levitical priesthood. But did that include the Ten Commandments?

I know that including the Ten Commandments sounds antinomian, at best, and heretical at worst, but the answer is yes, though in a particular way, and here are my three reasons for saying so.

Why I Believe the Ten Commandments Were Included?

Personally, I begin with the fact the passage says “the law made nothing perfect” and does so immediately following the word “commandment,” as if within the scope of that word.2

But, you might ask, “Isn’t this limited to the ceremonial law composed of types and shadows representing the redemption, justification, and sanctification we have in Christ?”

No, because of what we considered last week from Romans 8:3. The moral law represented by the Ten Commandments “made nothing perfect” because, in Paul’s words, it was “weak through the flesh.” And it was weak because sin as a governing principle and power3 is resident in every person descended from Adam. It’s what theologians call “original sin. See Romans 5:12 (KJV) (“Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”)

Thus, being born again is not just a metaphor for realizing we are sinners who have a duty to our Creator to live a certain moral or ethical life. That’s just the moralism of the Pharisees within a Christian connotation. Born again is a metaphor that is objectively true and real, describing a metaphysical change in a person.

John Owen Reaches the Same Conclusion By Another Route

My interpretation is consistent with that of 17th century English theologian John Owen, though he expressed it by different reasoning (modified for modern language and syntax):

The apostle having already proved that the priesthood was to be abolished, he proceeds from there on that ground to prove that the whole law was also to be abolished and removed in a like manner. And indeed that whole system of law was of such a nature and constitution that pulling one pin out of the fabric — the priesthood —the whole must fall unto the ground. The sanction of the whole system was that “he was cursed who continued not in all things written in the law to do them.”

Therefore, to change of any one thing necessarily overthrows the whole law. How much more must it do so, if what is changed, removed, or taken away — the priesthood — was not only a material part of it, but the very hinge whereon the whole observance of it did depend and turn!

It is not just the whole ceremonial law that is intended by “the command” in this place, but the moral law also, so far as it was compacted with the other into one body of precepts for the same end, namely, the efficacy of the whole law of Moses as related to our drawing nigh unto God. That is what is here considered.4 (emphasis supplied)

Owen sums up the transition to Christ’s priesthood this way: [T]herefore the law, as a command, is opposed [juxtaposed] unto the gospel, as a promise of righteousness by Jesus Christ, Gal. 3:11, 12.”

Owen’s statements about the “moral law” could also seem antinomian if one overlooks his qualifier: It was abrogated “as it was compacted” in and under the Levitical priesthood all of which had the same end or purpose, namely, “drawing nigh unto God.” Now, those of faith have a wholly different way of drawing nigh to God.

The Apostle Paul Expands on the Subject

When read the way Owen explained these verses, including the Ten Commandments is consistent with Paul’s statement that “the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith”5 (Galatians 3:24, KJV). That law — its purpose as given to Moses — was to bring God’s people, and now Gentiles, to the knowledge of indwelling sin (Romans 3:20, 7:7). It made those to whom “the commandment came” (Romans 7:9) cry out for a remedy that went beyond that provided under the Levitical priesthood.

And that is what the verses in Hebrews tell us Christ’s blood did. It went far beyond “the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean” that only “sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh.” In other words, that part of “the commandments going before” we had the revelation of Christ allowed Hebrews who were legally defiled by sin to worship at the Temple.6 But those sacrifices could not “purge their conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Hebrews 9:13-14, KJV).

In sum, as to the regenerate, we might say the substitution of Christ as High Priest for that of the Levitical priesthood meant that the “school of Moses” was out forever!

Summarizing What the Foregoing Means

The foregoing sounded scary to the Pharisees,7 and probably does to those like them in our day.8 But it does not mean that we are “without law to God.” The change in priesthood now means that Jews and Gentiles alike “are under the law to Christ” (1 Corinthians 9:21).

And that is a “better testament” because it reveals that Christ, the Son of God, “is surety” for all of God’s covenant promises (Hebrews 7:22). They will be accomplished in every person who is part of the new humanity that Christ, by the Holy Spirit, is bringing forth.

What Is Gained But Now Seems Lost

Sweeping away the whole of the law given with the Levitical Priesthood is metaphorically nothing when compared to what was gained. The Apostle Paul often spoke of the system of law in that way. See 2 Corinthians 3:9-10.

In the list of what was gained that we find in 1 Corinthians 1:30, I think we find what a number of Christians in law, politics, and public policy have lost. As you read, think of the verse as part of an IQ test asking you to identify the one thing in the list that seems unrelated to the rest:

But of him [i.e., God] are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.

If you answered “wisdom,” you identified what I think has gotten lost in this age of, at best, rationalism, if not, irrationalism. As to the latter, one need only think of the WNBA coaches who have been busy this week destroying their league by saying biological males can be women.

What Makes Wisdom Spiritual

Spiritual wisdom is distinct from natural or fleshly wisdom even though it employs the same human faculties and processes as belong to the unregenerate. But it is distinct because it rests on a different understanding of fundamental reality from other forms and expressions of wisdom, and, therefore, it also has a different understanding of the kind of cosmos we live in and how it works.

Spiritual wisdom is rooted in having “the mind of Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:16). The natural man considers that unscientific and superstitious folly.

To demonstrate the difference, consider the fact that the unregenerate person would never believe that all things were made by and for the Second Person of a Triune God holding the office of Christ. The unregenerate would never believe that Christ holds all things together.

Spiritual Wisdom Provides a Shock to Political Pharisees

And, finally, the unregenerate would never believe that in Galatians 5:6 we find the fundamental way in which the whole cosmic organism was to work before the Fall and how it is now moving forward based on the revelation of Christ:

For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love.

We find two relevant things in this verse. First, that the old system of laws represented by circumcision — a law-based system and the legalistic view of cosmology I described last week — doesn’t avail anything in itself. Pharisees, political or otherwise, cling to the law, not to Christ, as the way forward.

Second, and this is what I find shocking:

What natural reason would ever come to that conclusion? Apart from Christ, mine never did.

But knowing and believing that this is how the world is to work is how Christ is made unto us wisdom by God.9 It is what Jesus, in his human nature, demonstrated for us. He drew sinners to God, but He sure provoked the Pharisees.

Next week I’ll explain what believing this looks like for me when I consider the dispute between pro-life abolitionists and incrementalists.

But a more serious and fundamental question has arisen in my mind. It arises from what I see from the Christian candidates currently running in Tennessee’s gubernatorial and congressional primaries, and from social media comments by a number of their respective supporters. I suspect it may not be much different in other places during election season. This is my question:

Christians losing touch with Christ sounds contradictory, but what I’m thinking of is the age-old tension between law and grace. It is illuminated most clearly in the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatians and the book of Hebrews.

Most often Christians think of this tension in the context of justification and sanctification. But because of how God has ordered the world to work, confusion about these two fundamental matters will show up in our politics and in the way we think about the law that orders society. That’s because there is a unity in all the works of God. Thus, the subjects of politics and law are simply downstream from what we think about justification and sanctification.

Today I will speak about one way I think this confusion has shown up in our politics and to another next week.

The Theological Context for Thinking About Law in General

Theologians describe this confusion and tension between law and grace as a bout between legalism and antinomianism. With respect to the former, it is a belief that keeping the law of God — its moral and ceremonial commands — is the means of justification and progress in sanctification. The Pharisees were emblematic of these legalists.

I empathize with the Pharisees. Growing up, “being a good boy” corresponded to keeping the rules laid down by my parents. If I kept them, I would be “good” in their sight and avoid a paddling. This easily translated to my understanding of God and his law — keep it and I avoided Hell — and, after walking-the-aisle at the end of a service to make a “profession of faith,” sanctification was a matter of getting better at keeping God’s law.

In other words, my understanding of the kind of place this world is and how it works was rooted in law. Law is what held things together.

Application of Legalism to Politics

I saw this same kind of thinking in the words of a popular Christian podcaster I recently quoted:

Yes - Revival changes culture but we do not sit on our hands waiting for revival before seeking to change culture through law. . . . Passing laws creates and changes culture. We need only muster the courage to ACT. (Emphasis in the original)

I think such thoughts are also rampant among Christian politicians based on the kind of promises I’ve seen coming from them, and among Christian voters based on their expressed beliefs about what their favored politician will accomplish if elected.

But, to me, this is the Pharisee’s legalism just written on a larger scale. I think it simply moves the power or agency that creates a righteous person and changes the person — law — to what “creates and changes” a society’s constitution or characteristics, again, law.

It sounds to me like this popular Christian podcaster is saying that the society we want may come from revival, but is not necessary for its creation. Law can do the job. However, in the spirit of Christian charity, maybe it only means that the work of creating and changing a society’s constitution can begin with law and then the Holy Spirit will come along at some point and top it off. Either way, this is the more specific parallel I see to Pharisees in this exhortation.

The Pharisees did not think righteousness and sanctification required a new creating act by God, a literal, though metaphysical, new creation by which the Holy Spirit implanted in a person the principle of holiness that is essential to being created in the image of God,1 which is fundamental to righteousness and sanctification in God’s sight. See Sanctification and Its Two Main Graces. That kind of thinking among Pharisees explains why Nicodemus was flummoxed when Jesus said he needed to be “born again.”

Pharisees may well have thought they just needed some help to top off their justification and sanctification and knowing and following the law was it. But for them, no essential change, no external change or change from without, was needed. They either didn’t believe or understand that Adam’s original sin had affected or polluted every human faculty to some degree or another. And that sounds to me very much like Christians who, in relation to changing society, seem to think law just needs a little help from Christ and the Spirit of Christ to finish what the law has started.

I believe that for those Christians there is a latent, even unconscious belief that what really shapes things and holds them together is law,2 and that looks and smells like the Pharisees to me.

Law and the Politics of Law in Relation to Christ

But this belief, whether conscious or not, is contrary to what we read in Colossians 1:15-19 about Christ with respect to both the whole of the old creation that is passing away and many Christians seem bent on saving, and the whole of the new creation, a new humanity and a new nation, or in the Greek, ethnos, that Christians should be bent on growing.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. [That’s the old creation]

And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, [That’s the new creation] that in all things He may have the preeminence [both in relation to the old and the new creation].

In other words, the person of Christ and what is revealed in Him is not just central to the way we think of everything, but it is to be preeminent. It is the renewal of the mind (Romans 12:2) by the “Spirit of truth” (John 14:17, 1 John 4:6).

And if that is true, and I believe by faith it is, I submit that any form of law, without Christ — without the work of the Spirit of Christ in relation to that law — is dead spiritually in God’s sight, and therefore, a vain, dead work.

This conclusion flows from the fact “we know that the law is spiritual” (Romans 7:14)3 and those “that are in the flesh” and the regenerate who are walking in the flesh “cannot please God” (Romans 8:8).

Am I Becoming an Antinomian? Are Politics and Law Unimportant?

You might think I am being dismissive about the importance of enacted civil and criminal laws, and why I might be so after spending most of my adult life trying to use them to improve society.

It is not dismissive, but I have now come to know and understand from Romans 7:6 (KJV) that, apart from Christ, the law of God itself “did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death,”4 and “being dead” because of the law that “held” us, we were “delivered from the law . . . that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter.”5 ***

When that revelation came, then these words from Paul recorded in Galatians 3:1-3 seemed appropriate, which I’ve adapted to what I once thought and what other Christians may think politics and law can “create and change”:

And Paul’s next words are most important. This is what happens when we get law wrong: “Christ is become of no effect unto you.” And that means “ye are fallen from grace” (Galatians 5:4, KJV).

What I am Saying

In saying the foregoing, I am not ignoring the fact that a public official holds an office distinct in its duties from those of the private person. But a Christian public official should never be less Christian or think less than Christianly about law as related to his or her duties.

I am not saying that the moral law of God, summarized and transcribed as the Ten Commandments, is irrelevant to a rightly ordered society. See Romans 12: .

I am saying that if “righteousness exalts a nation” (Proverbs 14:34), it must be gospel righteousness, not just people engaged in moral motions out of fear or out of their own strength and resources.

And I’m saying (1) law can be unconsciously substituted for Christ in our understanding of what holds all things together, and (2) our national and economic purposes can be substituted for God’s “eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Ephesians 3:11, KJV).

Application to Me and More Generally

I understand how this substitution can happen. That substitution characterized most of my time in politics. I often felt like the weight of government in Tennessee was upon my shoulders, not those of Christ, and that governing society in the right direction depended more on my zeal than “the zeal of the Lord.” See Isaiah 9:7.

That burden has been lifted by Christ, but as I’ve written before, the unrighteousness in society can seem so great and the situation so dire that Christians can begin to think there is no time to heed Hosea’s counsel:

Sow to yourselves in righteousness,6 reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground: for it is time to seek the LORD, till he come and rain righteousness upon you. [Hosea 10:12 KJV]

I fear that some think Hosea’s counsel seems too much like “sitting on our hands,” and I think that’s especially true of those with a legal spirit that I must still guard against. Of course, it’s possible that some of them don’t know anymore of the glory of Christ and in relation to law than I did the first 60 years of my life.

And it is these thoughts that bring me to Psalm 25:14 that I discoursed on last June, “The secret of the LORD is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant.”

That covenant, not just different elected officials enacting new or even facially “better” laws, is God’s secret to changing a society that has lost touch with Christ. It is Christ who brings about “reformation” in persons and in the society they organically constitute. (Hebrews 9:10; see also Acts 3:19-217) And believing by faith in the fullness of who Christ is in relation to the law “given by Moses” (John 1:17) will move us from the vain legalism of mere moral motions to the wisdom we need in our times for law. And that is what we will begin to look at next week.

The image below from an email I received on Tuesday makes Kuyper’s “social question” timely for us.

This was the accompanying text:

What Is “The Social Question” and What Gives Rise to It?

This is how Kuyper spoke of “the social question,” which I’ve modified slightly for the sake of brevity and to conform better to modern vocabulary and syntax:

The social question means, in the most general sense, that serious doubt has arisen about the soundness of the social structure in which we live [and] that in consequence, public opinion is divided as to the type of foundation on which a more appropriate and more liveable social order may be built.

But a social question exists when a person realizes the untenability of the present situation and that this untenability is not one of incidental causes, but one that involves the very basis of our social association.

This doubt about the “soundness of our social structure” “is born of the relation between our human life and the material world which surrounds us.” And it is fomented from the fact that “there has never been a government in any land of the world that did not in various ways dominate both the course of social life and its relations with material wealth.”

It dominates this relation “through civil laws and trade laws; indirectly through its criminal law and penal code; and more particularly through inheritance laws, systems of taxation, regulation of exports and imports, and much more.”

In other words, when it appears that the civil government has created a material or financial imbalance between members of society, a social question begins to arise. And when it appears that the culprit in this imbalance is the civil government, and it seems incapable of change, serious debate begins about what new forms of government could better order that relation.

As the email above demonstrates, the social question has been birthed; it exists in our country, and socialism is being pressed as the answer. That answer would openly and definitively cement a change in the “basis of our social association” as established 250 years ago.

How Did the Move Toward Socialism Get This Far?

Kuyper also provided an insightful description of why my generation, and the one or two before me, didn’t recognize the growing social question that now exists, and why some still don’t (modified):

One does not acknowledge a social question if he or she thinks that the evil can be exorcised through an increase in piety, through friendlier treatment, or kindlier charity. For them, only a religious question and possibly a philanthropic question may exist, but not a social question.

A social question does not exist until a person exercises an architectonic critique of human society itself and, having done so, desires and thinks possible a different arrangement of the social structure.

That architectonic critique has been performed by a growing number of Americans, and, for them, socialism is their answer.

On the other hand, I think Kuyper’s description of imagined remedies - more piety, friendlier treatment, and kinder charity — sounds a lot like the “compassionate conservatism” espoused 30 years ago in the Republican Party.

I don’t mean to impugn those who espoused compassionate conservatism, but I think it tended to obscure for many that a social question was on the rise.

Perhaps my assessment is wrong, but it seems to me that compassionate conservatism failed as a political solution to reconcile the material ostentatiousness and extravagance of some that increases the discontent of others whose best and most conscientious efforts leave them financially pressed on every side. It did not deter the underlying “social question” that is now visible and demanding an answer.

Why Didn’t Compassionate Conservatism Arrest the Rising Social Question?

I think compassionate conservatism failed for three reasons, and I believe a consideration of them will provide an answer to the question, “What can stop the spread of socialism in the United States.”

Failure No. 1

First, Christians over the last three generations or so did not engage seriously and thoroughly enough in “an architectonic critique of human society itself” such as I found in Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer and Abraham Kuyper. They saw the changes in Europe as a consequence of their society “losing touch with Christ.”

In fact, Kuyper warned the seminarians at Princeton in 1898, then our leading seminary, that the changes in Europe were coming to America. But that warning didn’t reach me or, I fear, many others. I didn’t even know of van Prinsterer’s insightful work, Unbelief and Revolution, or of Kuyper’s speech in 1891 until about 5 or 6 years ago!

But what is instructive to me is that these men were not speaking of Christ as simply the one who saves us from the Hell merited by our sinful deeds and thoughts. They weren’t just speaking of Christian moral motions. They were speaking of the knowledge of Christ that, by a supernatural faith, believes two things about Him. First, He is the revelation of the fundamental reality from which all things come into existence. Second He is the one who, by His Spirit, the Holy Spirit, holds all things together and superintends the works of men to ensure that God’s eternal purposes for creation are fulfilled.1

When Christians live by faith according to this knowledge, the new creation and the Kingdom of God advance; bare politics and laws can’t do that.

Failure No. 2

Second, and related to the first, I believe it failed because it was not expressly and publicly grounded in bringing society back in touch with the person of Christ and what is revealed in Him regarding the true nature of human beings and society, specifically that we form and are to work as a social organism. That relation is described in Ephesians 5 and was last week’s topic. Rather, it was presented in the context of being another political solution.

Failure No. 3

Third, and related to the first two, Christians did not present a living demonstration of a different kind of humanity to those engaged in an “architectonic critique of human society.”

Like the failure of ancient Israel, the new “Israel of God” (Galatians 6:16) did not live in such a way that those outside the mystical Body of Christ, which is the new humanity and a de facto new “nation” ([1 Peter 2:9, KJV),2 would say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people” (Deuteronomy 4:6) or ask us to give a “reason” for the “living hope” that so obviously defined our lives (1 Peter 1:3 and 3:15).

These are hard words, and the Holy Spirit had to preach them to me in recent years before I ever thought of publishing them.

How Do Christians Answer the Today’s Social Question?

With all my heart I do not see a legislative solution to the social question we are faced with.3

In fact, if Christians think, as I once did, that there is such a solution, I believe they have embraced, in principle, the same beliefs as those pressing for socialism, namely, a belief that the social order, society itself, can be shaped and held together by the force of laws, even though it has been revealed to us that the very law of God itself was “weak through the flesh” (Romans 8:3).4

On the contrary, the entire scope of history moves according to the providential actings of the Spirit of Christ according to the seldom considered covenant of redemption in eternity between the Father and the Son as Christ.5 That is the truth underlying how the world works.6

I believe the only way out of the cosmic merry-go-round turning toward socialism is the one Kuyper gave, and I previously wrote about: “The consequences of revolution ideas” - the architectonic overthrow of Christ in society’s thinking — “cannot be combated with any success unless one places himself outside their influence.” In other words, success depends on turning our society back to Christ.

Thus, the way off this socialist-moving merry-go-round is for the church to be the church, exercising sound doctrinal teaching (Titus 2:1) and discipline (see, for example, Matthew 18:15-17, 1 Corinthians 5:11-13, 2 Thessalonians 3:14-15). I believe the fruit of that will be more appealing than the fruit the Serpent still offers, and the kingdom of God will be seen as a “pearl of a price” (Matthew 13:46), one “better than gold, yes, than fine gold” (Proverbs 8:19).

That means preachers and laymen alike must put more emphasis on coming to an “understanding” and “acknowledgment of the mystery of God, of the Father and of Christ” (Colossians 2:3), and let the Democrat and Republican parties that have lost their way save themselves. The church being the church, not political parties built on sand, is the only bulwark against the rising tide of socialism.

So, as Nehemiah said, “Let us arise and build” (Nehemiah 2:20).

I believe a sober consideration of these two declarations, in light of intervening history, will point us to a corrective I think is needed in the church if there is to be another 250 years under our present Constitution.

The Two Declarations to be Considered.

The Reason Governments are Instituted

The Declaration states that governments were “instituted among men,” and the reason was to “secure” certain “unalienable Rights,” among which were “life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Alternatively, we learned that Abraham Kuyper told Princeton’s seminarians in 1898 “that God has instituted the magistrates by reason of sin,” more specifically, a certain doctrine of sin holding that Adam’s transgression had polluted a human nature originally created in the image of God, turning our focus and passions from God to ourselves.

That doctrine was probably assumed by most of the Declaration’s signatories, but we saw previously how John Locke and the 18th century enlightenment thinkers using John Locke had eliminated objectively real sin and guilt from their thinking. It spread to America;1 now we just need mental health services, not Christ.

Equality Among Men

The Declaration further declared “that all men are created equal,” but it did not define that equality in the context of the “doctrine of creation.”

Again, that doctrine was probably assumed by most of the Declaration’s signatories, but remember that 18th century philosophers were already replacing it with a cosmos run strictly by scientifically discoverable “laws of nature.” We have seen that they were substituting the principle behind Newton’s universal law of gravity for God.

Now modern man no longer needs propositional revelation, and by those laws, the cosmos operates without any personal exercises of dominion by the Triune God on the order of what Christians call providence.

True Equality Needs the Doctrine of Creation and Christ

The Declaration is correct that there is an equality among human beings created by God, but it is true only if we believe 1) every person lives before the face of a personal (Triune) God and 2) Christ is the only mediator between God and man. Then, in Kuyper’s words,

it follows that all men or women, rich or poor, weak or strong, dull or talented, as creatures of God, and as lost sinners, have no claim whatsoever to lord over one another, and that we stand as equals before God, and consequently equal as man to man. (Lectures on Calvinism, p. 20 ).

Why are these two beliefs necessary? Because if there is another mediator between one human being and another or between one group of human beings and another not rooted in offices ordained by God with Christ as their head such as in the family, the church, and the magistrate, a door is opened to an human-created and -interposed hierarchy among men. “Hence,” Kuyper said, “we cannot recognize any distinction among men, save such as has been imposed by God Himself, in that He gave one authority over the other.”

The Doctrine of Creation Provides Inequalities

However, the doctrine of creation also gives rise to a form of inequality among men. All things were created to reveal the glory of God. Thus, God may “enrich one with more talents than the other,” again quoting Kuyper, without creating any inequality in our shared essential being.

How can this true? Because these distinctions reveal the expression of the distinct persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in God’s internal works and His external works of creation and providence, but they do so without compromising the infinitude of His one essential being.2

But the doctrine of also tells us all creation exists for the glory of God. Thus, this “enrichment” was “in order that the man of more talents should serve the man with less, and in him serve his God” (Kuyper).

In sum, these doctrines

condemn not merely all open slavery and systems of caste, but also all covert slavery of woman and of the poor; it is opposed to all hierarchy among men; it tolerates no aristocracy save such as is able, either in person or in family, by the grace of God, to exhibit superiority of character or talent, and to show that it does not claim this superiority for self-aggrandizement or ambitious pride, but for the sake of spending it in the service of God.

What Happened to Equality on the Way to the Present?

In 1891, Kuyper’s speech at the opening of the First Congress for Social Action in the Netherlands contrasted the principles of Christianity with the Enlightenment principles that led to the French Revolution. Two of them especially bear on today’s topic.

First, “[t]he Christian religion taught us to understand life on earth as a subordinate part of an eternal existence — the French Revolution denied and opposed everything which fell outside the horizon of this earthly life.”

Second, “the Christian religion has, as fruit of divine pity, brought into the world the pity of a love springing from God — the French Revolution placed over against that the egoism of the passionate struggle for possession.”

The First Consequence of the Enlightenment’s Philosophy

This is how Kuyper put the effects of these two exchanges, which I’ve modified for the sake of abbreviation while retaining as much of his prose as I could:

The French Revolution could not but become the cause of a deep-seated social need — a struggle for money ensued and set every man against every other.

But, it was not as if the quest for money had an official place in the Revolution’s program. In fact, some tried to coax more noble tones from their harps. But the theory, the system, had to come to fruition in a kneeling before Mammon, simply because it cut off the horizon of an eternal life. It impelled men to seek happiness on earth, and thus in earthly things. This created a sphere of lower drives in which money was the standard of value, and everything was sacrificed for money.

The thirst and the chase for money, the holy apostle taught us, is the root of all evil. And as soon as this angry demon was unchained at the turn of the 19th century, no deliberation was sharp enough, no cunning sly enough, no deceit shameful enough not to be employed to acquire, through superiority in knowledge, position, and basic capital, ever more money at the expense of the socially weaker.3

As a result, a new aristocracy, an aristocracy of money, set itself up, to lay down the law, to put its foot on the people’s neck.4 In this new way, the Revolution restored in principle the same evil that had earlier been overthrown by the almost unbelievable exertions of the Voltaires and Rousseaus and the heroes of the Bastille.

But, the very theory of the French Revolution -- liberty, equality, and fraternity5 -- had given the people a voice in affairs, and it became, “We will out-vote you.” By that means, they could supply a wholly new social order, which would finally give a death blow to privilege forever, and finally, have for themselves what the beautiful theory of liberty, equality, and fraternity had promised but the aristocrats had never granted them.

Sounds eerily familiar to me.

What is the Way Out?

Well, Kuyper said he “could not see” how anyone embracing that theory could “bring anything to bear on logically good grounds against” a “demand” for a “Social Democracy. . . . From that standpoint, I must agree with the Social Democrat. Once the false theory is granted, Social Democracy and it alone is consistent.”

Then he added these sobering words:

It is using a double standard, it is hypocrisy and self-deception, for those who themselves were born of the Revolution, yes, from regicide, to count it mortal sin in their own spiritual children when they too dare speak of ‘forceful means.’

Kuyper’s Sums Up the Situation

This is how Kuyper’ summed up the situation in his day:

Our society is losing touch with Christ; it lies bowed down in the dust before Mammon, and from the relentless goad of the most brutal egoism, the very foundations of the earth stagger, as the Psalmist would complain (Ps. 82:5, 11 :3).

Every tie-beam and anchor of the social structure is disturbed; disorganization brings demoralization; and in the increasing wantonness of some contrasted with the steadily growing want of others, one detects something of the decomposition of a corpse rather than of the fresh bloom and muscular strength of sound health.

Again, it seems eerily similar to the social milieu now in the United States.

The Way Forward in Our Day

Our nation’s people are being suffocated by “the dust of death” (Psalm 22:15). Most don’t realize it because evolutionary theory has so crept into our consciousness that the forms of death we see in every direction, even in Protestant eschatology, seem so “natural,” almost like an inviolable “law of nature.”

But Christ “hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Timothy 1:10). Death is not natural to our original state, and in Christ it is seen as unnatural.6

However, if the smell of decomposition in our nation is to be reversed, I believe our pulpits must again be inflamed with a certain kind of preaching and teaching.

People need to know the incomparable riches that come from a “full assurance of understanding” the “mystery of God, of the Father and of Christ” (Colossians 2:3). Jesus Christ is “the light of the world,” and He must be “shinned in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God” (2 Corinthians 4:6). In the knowledge of God’s being and the person of Christ, so seldom taught,7 the Holy Spirit changes people and renews their minds.

But those of us in the pews, Christ’s disciples, must communicate that as well. We need to seek after that knowledge regardless of what others do. And may the Holy Spirit use these four 250th anniversary publications to that end.

Early voting in state-office primaries begins in Tennessee tomorrow, and Owen’s comment made me think of the importance so many Christians often put on electing those who can change our laws, and think that will change society. I once thought this way.

Am I the only one who, reading Owen’s comment, believes thinking this way sounds like the way the Jews in Jesus’s day thought of law?

Long after the promise [of the Seed] was given and renewed, the law is in a solemn and glorious manner delivered unto the church, as the rule of their worship and the means of their acceptance with God. Hence the generality of the people did always suppose that this was it which would make all things perfect.

Something, indeed, they thought might be added unto its glory, in the personal coming of the Messiah; but the law was still to be that which was to make all things perfect.

And we may easily apprehend what a surprisal it was unto them, when it was made manifest that the law was so far from effecting this promised state, that there was a necessity for taking it out of the way, as a thing "weak and unprofitable," that "the better hope," perfecting the state of the church, might be introduced.

Such appearances are sometimes presented unto us of means highly probable for the delivery of the church, which after a while do utterly disappear, and things are rolled into a posture quite contrary unto the expectations of many.

When there is an appearance of what God hath promised, of what believers have prayed for, it is no wonder if some do earnestly embrace it.

But when God hath laid aside any means, and sufficiently declared that it is not his holy pleasure to use it in such a way, or unto such a length as we would desire, for the fulfilling of his promises, it is not duty, but obstinacy and selfishness, to adhere unto it with any such expectation.

I believe there are many confused notions today about what Franklin meant and even more about what the word, “state” means. If “state” doesn’t refer to territory within a certain border or the assemblages of various elected and bureaucratic officers, what is it?1

Lamentably, I have been among the confused, and for a reason I believe reflects our times. It showed up in the “No Kings” protests. It shows up in the words “democratic republic” that political conservatives like to use. I believe they have something important to teach us, particularly as we consider where Christians are to go from here.

Introduction

I believe many think Franklin’s statement refers only to a particular form of government administration. For example, in Federalist No. 10, published in 1787, James Madison contrasted a republic against what he called a “pure democracy,” a form of government administered directly by the people. More on that follows.

What Was Franklin Responding To?

In this regard, consider the question Franklin answered: “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”

The question was drawing a distinction between a republic and a monarchy, not a republic and a democracy!

Guillam Groen van Prinsterer’s book, Unbelief and Revolution, helped me understand the crucial difference between a Republic and what Madison was talking about. Appreciating the difference will help us understand if our republic has been preserved, and give us some insight into some things that I think must change.

What Is a Republic? Van Prinsterer’s Fundamental Principle.

To appreciate the question Franklin was asked and his answer, begin by considering the first of four points van Prinsterer made in his outline of “the basic principles underlying the constitutions” that existed in several European nations prior to the various revolutions in 1848:

“The essence of the state, its sovereignty,” he wrote, “was defined as independency of power and authority.”

He’s speaking of the state, and a state having an essential nature, not about its form of administration!2

Who is Frightened by Van Prinsterer’s Fundamental Principle?

I believe van Prinsterer’s statement would likely frighten most today. I can hear them say, “An authority in state or government independent of our votes? Independent of the ‘mutual consent of the governed’ as it says in the Declaration of Independence? How horrifying!”

I have also seen professing Christians frightened by such a thought as van Prinsterer’s. To me it is an indication that they have an underdeveloped view of the glory, wisdom, knowledge, and goodness of God that is revealed in the face of Christ.

But developing that understanding is not my present concern. I’m simply drawing a contrast between how a nation or we might equally say, a state, was understood to have been constituted before and after 1848; that’s what van Prinsterer meant by “constitution.”

What Did Van Prinsterer Mean?

After 1848, the word “constitution” began to be looked upon as a collection of positivistic statements declared in writing by men instead of a description of the principles and applications of them worked out over time that already constituted a particular society as a state or nation.

For example, Magna Carta was not a statement of the philosophic, abstract thoughts of various English noblemen on their theories of government. It was a reduction to writing of what they already understood their nation’s constitution to be.

Or, perhaps think of van Prinsterer’s independency as analogous to the Ten Commandments. It was just a transcription of what had always constituted the law of a righteous person in God’s sight.

These examples demonstrate the way in which any written constitution was once understood.

Van Prinsterer’s Two Kinds of Christian Government

Having defined the essence or true nature of a state, van Prinsterer next explains the historical development of “the various forms of government”:

They were known to have evolved in time from [1] patriarchal authority, [2] through power and dominion based on military conquest, [3] expansion of landholdings, or [4] people’s recognition of justice and wisdom, [5] to either Monarchies or Republics.3

As to monarchies vis-a-vis republics, as in the question asked Franklin, van Prinsterer wrote:

In the former case a King is the center and soul of government; in the latter, association resulted in a Commonwealth,4 in which the sovereignty belongs to the community.

Notice that van Prinsterer equated a Republic, mentioned in the first quote, with a Commonwealth, mentioned in the second quote.

But with respect to a Republic or Commonwealth, van Prinsterer added that its “administration is entrusted to an elected magistracy,” instead of in one person, the monarch or king.

In other words, in a monarchy, one person has both the sovereignty of the state and the administration of the government. In a republic, sovereignty and administration are split.

So, Franklin was not being asked if we had a republic because we “elected people” to represent us in administering the state. He was being asked about the essential nature of the state itself: Did sovereignty vest in a monarchy or republic, meaning the community as a whole?

Application to the United States

In our nation-state, the magistracy of elected administration is divided between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Moreover, the “atom of sovereignty” in our nation-state was further “split.” In the older view, we would say it was split between the federal government and various other states with their own sovereignty and forms of elected administration. Alden v. Maine, 527 U.S. 706, 751 (1999).

This should have kept us from confusing our elected form of administering our state — a national Republic — with the older understanding that in a monarchy, both the sovereignty that forms the state and it administration are resident in one person, a King.

Application to the “No King” Rallies

Failure to understand the distinction between a republic and a monarchy has led some to think of President Trump as a king. He may look and sound to them like a monarch or king, but until our written Constitution and those of the state governments are overthrown, there can be no king. And it’s not just because the President is elected.

But notice that these protestors see “King Trump” as a threat to democracy, not a Republic. And many others, including political conservatives and Christians of all stripes, often think of our nation and states as a democracy. The U.S. Supreme Court have even said States can be “‘laboratories’ of democracy.” Evenwell v. Abbott, 36 S.Ct. 1120, 1141 (2016)

What Are These Protests Telling Us?

These protest and associated fears for the future of democracy mean too many people no longer believe in any independency of sovereignty. They have begun to believe that sovereignty rests in the individual.5

That leads to thinking that the state’s sovereignty is formed out of an aggregation of our individual sovereignties.6 The state’s sovereignty is no longer deduced from a pre-existing sovereignty outside of ourselves, namely, the sovereignty of God and of His Christ as “King of kings” (Revelation 17:14, 19:16).

In sum, people would rather live under the fear of man than the fear of God, because they don’t know the goodness of God revealed in the person of Christ!

What About the Term “Democratic Republic”?

I believe that same spirit of democracy explains why even political conservatives and even many Christian use the phrase “democratic republic.” I’ve used it, because adding “democratic” to “republic” seemed to be more acceptable to the modern democratic ear than just republic.

But I have come to believe that using that term comes across to others as an unacknowledged concession to the present belief that authority and power are really resident in the individual.

By it, I think many believe we are agreeing with them in principle — that we have a democracy —and, by our consent, we have all democratically allowed our individual sovereignty to be represented by executive and legislative branches of civil government, with a judicial branch to settle disputes.7

Do We Still Have a Republic?

Such thinking is foreign to the kind of republic van Prinsterer was speaking to. To me, that kind of thinking is a sign that, generally speaking, we have lost the kind of republic he spoke of.

We seem to have fallen into a democracy or at least ,the democratic view of authority and power that Madison spoke of. As van Prinsterer said, a revolution of unbelief in God has taken place in our nation.

Where Do We Go From Here?

I don’t believe this revolution can be reformed or reversed by legislation. Revival will required, no matter what some Christian political podcasters8 of late have said. However, that is not to say law and politics have no place in that process, but I think their role must change. Van Prinsterer wrote:

The consequences of revolution ideas cannot be combated with any success unless one places himself outside their influence.9

In other words, doing law and policy advocacy work according to the revolutionary ideas of unbelief now entrenched throughout every branch of federal and state government won’t be successful. Working that way means our thinking has conformed to that of the world.

How have we done that? I believe we do that when our leading advocates bow the knee to science on every legal or policy question pertaining to human anthropology — to human meaning as male and female. That, to me, is employing the Revolution’s principles for what constitutes “true” knowledge. Not to insist on proper definitions when words like “state,” “democracy,” and “gender” are thrown about is to allow the revolutionary principles now behind those words to go unchallenged and our acceptance of them assumed.

Those are two practical suggestions for beginning a counter-revolution, but there is more.

The “More” We Need from Ministers and Those in the Pews

At bottom, I believe that law and the concept of sovereignty that necessarily underlies it must be reconciled back to Jesus Christ.

He is the only sovereign who is “outside the influence” of the revolutionaries’s ideas, and by God the Father has armed him in God the Holy Spirit with a sovereign strength to combat their influence and “reconcile all things unto Himself” (Colossians 1:20)

God has given this ministry of reconciliation to every Christian. This ministry must take place in courtrooms and legislative chambers, but it must start in the church, with its elected ministers and those in the pews talking with their neighbors. It’s a daunting task that I suspect many will not want to take up.

The Good News

But there is the good news for those who take up this ministry:

However long this work takes and however far the sovereign Christ has been purposed by the Triune God to carry it, its success rests on the fact that God the Father “hast put all things in subjection under his feet,” and “though we do not yet see all things put under him,” (Hebrews 2:8, KJV), “we see Jesus” (Hebrews 2:9).

May God grant that my generation would begin to walk by faith in Christ toward this end and bring the next two generations along with us.

If you have time to read or listen, I pray you will find it most helpful.

During my years in politics, I've often wondered, "What exactly is 'the state' other than its geographic borders or a civil government's administrative apparatus?

As a Christian, I wondered what relationship, if any, that term has to the revelation of God that we have "in the face of Christ" (2 Corinthians. 4:6).

I now have an answer to both questions.

MY PROBLEM:

I couldn't get my head around what "the state" is if I distinguished it from its geographical border and the apparatus that "administers" it (governor, legislature, judiciary). “The state” became an abstraction, just an idea in my head.

THE REASON FOR MY PROBLEM:

I came to see that this happens when "the state” is divorced from the objective, real, personal Triune God and Jesus Christ as mediator between God and man.

When that divorce happens, “the State” does become just an idea. It is attached to, drawn from, or flows from a particular and broader philosophic ideology (idea), as with the various strains of Marxism. It is a gnostic concept — something just in our heads. Gnosticism is a Christian heresy.

TWO MAJOR CONSEQUENCES OF DETACHING "THE STATE" FROM JESUS CHRIST:

1. It makes the concept of “the state” impersonal, like a machine or apparatus. We "fight city hall" whatever that is, right?!

2. It makes any form of hierarchy (e.g. police officer to citizen, President to citizen) seem to take on the character of master and slave in our eyes.

A RESULT OF THESE TWO CONSEQUENCES:

We understandably rebel against that form of hierarchy, and I think the reason is not just that its unbiblical, but it is not true to the God-man relation revealed in the person of Jesus Christ as God and man in one nature.

WHAT WE FIND IN JESUS CHRIST:

1. Jesus Christ, in his divine nature, is the fount through which all power and authority (sovereignty) flows to mankind. However, remember that Christ, as the Divine Son of God, took on a human nature in the person of Jesus, demonstrating or revealing the relation between all forms of sovereignty and mankind.

Thus, Jesus Christ gives rise to "the state." And Christ, as head of all things, is head of the state. This gives rise to hierarchy as an essential aspect of the kind of place in which we live, our cosmology.

2. Biblically, hierarchy is formed by covenant bonds in which there is a mutuality of submission, the head for the good of the subject and the subject for the good of the head, and both for a purpose: The good of the larger organism of humanity.

Essentially, an office is created. Thus, the relation between head and subject is personal, not impersonal or mechanical.

3. A covenantally formed hierarchy also means the subject is not, by nature (ontologically) inferior to the head.

That is why the marital relation is expressed in scripture as a covenantal relationship. There is an ordering of the "work" to which God calls man and woman in marriage, but the relation is not that of superior or inferior in terms of human nature (ontology). The same applies to all offices: police officers, elected officials, elders, etc.

To confirm to us that head and subject reflects a covenanted office and does NOT make a head superior in nature to a subject OR a subject as "less than" the head, consider 1 Corinthians 11:3, "the head of Christ is God."

This is NOT THE SAME as an hierarchy with an ASCENDED master over others who are also called subjects but, in Aristotle’s words, “natural slaves.”

I HUMBLY SUBMIT THREE THINGS FOR CONSIDERATION:

1. EVOLUTIONARY THEORY, not the knowledge of God in Christ, gives us an ascendent, one-person-is-better-than-another, form of hierarchy.

2. EVOLUTIONARY THEORY has poisoned our society. As a result, and in relation to the focus of my writing, it has

A. Turned politics into a master-subject, power-based climb to the top in order to control others and make society the way we want it, and

B. Led us to assume that is how the world works, so we live with it and live according to it. (More on that tomorrow)

I personally reject that view of the world, and that leads to Point. No. 3

2. When Christians think of hierarchy in any of the above ways, I believe they have CONFORMED THEIR THINKING TO EVOLUTIONARY THEORY and have been "cheated "out of the "treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden" in Christ "through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ" (Colossians 2:3,4, 8, NKJV).

CONCLUSION:

"Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!" We can't even begin to plumb the depths of them! (Romans 11:33 NKJV).

When we lose touch with who Christ is, we lose touch with reality. And it really shows up in our politics.

This is the statement: “That to secure these rights’ — the previously articulated right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Given the Apostle’s warning and the effects of ignoring it, namely, that we can be spoiled of the “treasures of wisdom and knowledge” we have in Christ (Colossians 2:3), it is important that we consider whether this statement is more in accord with the philosophies of men than “after Christ,” which is the revelation we have in Him of God and of what kind of place this cosmos is, how it works, and what it is for. In other words, is that statement in accord with a Christian’s fundamental metaphysic and cosmology.

Laying out such a vision is part of our heritage as recorded by William Bradford, leader of the English Pilgrims who founded the Plymouth Bay colony:

[T]hey had a great hope and inward zeal of laying some good foundation, for propagating and advancing the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world; yea, though they should be hut even as stepping-stones unto others for the performing of so great a work.

The goal is to enter into their work and to move it forward.

The Two Claims the Declaration Makes About Government

There are two parts to this statement in the Declaration that need to be considered, stated in reverse order. First, the source of its “just powers.” Second, the reason given for why governments are “instituted.”

To aid in our understanding of these claims, I will turn to Abraham Kuyper. But for the sake of comparison, I first offer two statements from John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, published in 1689, and two about him by Carl Becker in his book, The Heavenly City of the 18th Century Philosophers.

John Locke

Political power then I take to be a Right of making Laws . . . for the Regulating and Preserving of Property... (p. 118) (emphasis supplied) [There is his stated purpose for the political power.]

The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of Nature for his rule. The Liberty of Man, in society, is to be under no other Legislative Power, but that established by consent. (emphasis supplied)

Carl Becker

What Locke aimed at no doubt, what the eighteenth century acclaimed him for having demolished, was the Christian doctrine of total depravity (reformed doctrine), a black, spreading cloud which for centuries had depressed the human spirit.1 (emphasis supplied)

This was Locke’s great title to glory, that he made it possible for the eighteenth century to believe with a clear conscience what it wanted to believe, namely, that since man and the mind of man were shaped by that nature which God had created, it was possible for men, “barely by the use of their natural faculties,”2 to bring their ideas and their conduct, and hence the institutions by which they lived, into perfect harmony with the universal natural order.

By the end of the 18th century, it might have been said that reason could bring all things “into perfect harmony” with the universal law of gravity and of gravity’s God. See “The Seduction of Today’s Christian Political Advocates” published June 18th.

Abraham Kuyper

The following is my adaption of a longer statement by Kuyper that you can read at this link, pages 98 and following, along with my comments on them.

You will see his fundamental metaphysic is the God revealed in Scripture, and you will see his cosmology. I have left in his references to Calvinism, simply because it was the dominate theology at the time of our nation’s founding and, as you’ll see, Calvinism has a meaning — a “root principal”— that is broader than the doctrine of election that it is now often reduced to.

Kuyper’s View of the Source of Government’s “Just Powers”

No political scheme has ever become dominant which was not founded in a specific religious or anti-religious conception.

In order that the influence of reformed theology expressed by Calvin on our political development may be felt, I must show what fundamental political conception it opened the door to, and how these political conceptions sprang from its root principle.

This dominating (root) principle was not soteriologically (justification by faith), but, in the widest sense, cosmologically, namely, the Sovereignty of the Triune God over the whole cosmos, in all its spheres and kingdoms, visible and invisible.

This primordial Sovereignty irradiates in mankind in a threefold deduced supremacy: 1. The Sovereignty in the State; 2. The Sovereignty in Society; and 3. The Sovereignty in the Church. Allow me to point out to you that these are deduced Sovereignties.

I won’t go into how he proves his three deductions are true, or whether I find his categorizations of them the best expressions possible. My concern is that we understand the important difference between the deductive reasoning he employed and inductive reasoning that is associated with “self-evident” truth claims.

Kuyper does not root the idea of sovereignty in the sphere of government in what might be induced from observable facts — what we would call “self-evident” truths based on “reason and fact”3 — but in what is revealed as true about the nature of God and his relation to all things.

Inductive reasoning, on the other hand, may conclude that it is self-evident that a sovereignty exists in some kind of “Creator,” but inductive reasoning can only lead to probabilities, not an objective truth claim. And inductive reasoning cannot assure us that any claims it arrives at about God’s being and character are objectively true. Many look at the evil in the world and conclude that, if there is a god, he must be either evil or powerless.

On the other hand, deductive reasoning means that if the premises are true, conclusions rightly drawn from them are guaranteed to be true.

For now we will assume (1) his premise — the sovereignty of God over all things as revealed in Christ — is true, and (2) that what can reasonably be deduced from it, and is consistent with the rest of scripture, will be true in an absolute sense, not a mere probability. For more on this topic, see “How Deductive Reasoning Died” published January 11, 2025.4

Thus, Kuyper’s metaphysic and cosmology led him to conclude that civil government’s “just powers” must be deduced from our understanding and acknowledgment “of the mystery of God, of the Father and of Christ” (Colossians 2:3), both the truth of God in Jesus as the “image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15) and the truth of man in Jesus as a person also having a human nature. (Ephesians 4:21, 245).

For Kuyper, government’s just powers are not “derived” from the “consent of the governed,” though God may allow the distribution of those powers to be allocated in different ways such as monarchial or republican forms.6

Kuyper’s View of the Reason for Civil Government

A true conception of the nature of the State and of the assumption of authority by the magistrate, and on the other hand all true conception of the right and duty of the people to defend liberty, depends on what Calvinism has placed in the foreground, as the primordial truth — that God has instituted the magistrates by reason of sin. [Locke dispensed with this relation by pointing to the reasoning of man from the facts of nature and protection of property.]

This was demonstrated when God drowned the first degenerate race in the deluge. The deep conception of sin it laid bare showed the true root of state-life,7 and has taught us two things: First, that we should gratefully receive the institution of the State with its magistrates from the hand of God, as a means of preservation, now indeed indispensable. Second, and related to why it is indispensable, i.e., sin, we must ever watch against the danger which lurks for our personal liberty in the power of the State.

In other words, it was not to secure “rights” to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that civil governments “are instituted” (Declaration), but because of sin and its dominion.8

Man, after Adam’s transgression, has a “right” to the “wages of sin” — death — not “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” But to keep the ravages of sin in check, it is civil government’s first duty under God to recognize and protect the three “absolute rights” (not unalienable) at common law belonging to every person.

My Comparison of the Two

Personally, I find it easy to see why Becker said Locke’s “title to glory” was demolishing the reformed doctrine of sin. That doctrine said sin had two related consequences.

First, it deprived man of his right reason which is to (1) thank God for his intellect and reason (Romans 1:21)9 and (2) submit them wholly to Him for His purposes.

Second, and as a result of the first, sin directed man’s mind away from the revelation of God in the eternal Christ, in his office as prophet, to what was evident within himself and to his evaluation and interpretation of the bare objects and facts around him for truth rather than to what was objectively “outside” of himself and what he observed: The invisible Triune God and His glory.

Application to the Present

I will defer to another time what I think has resulted from this statement in the Declaration,10 along with its view of equality divorced from the doctrine of creation.

But what seed could we plant today for future generations of Christians to keep an aspirational eye on as they advocate for or against proposed legislation or frame arguments in litigation that might reach the U.S. Supreme Court?

How about something like this?

Yesterday I looked at the European and American history leading up to the Declaration of Independence and asked a question about this familiar statement, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

The question was whether “this is a Christian statement, or an irreverent one more influenced by the hubris of 18the century Enlightenment philosophers than Christians want to admit?”

Today I offer my answer. To be honest, I didn’t like my answer when it came to me, because it exposed my pride. But it also increased my understanding of the glory of God and my thankfulness for Christ. I hope that’s true for you.

I hope, too, you find worthy of Christ the seed that I propose my generation plant in our present wilderness for future generations to bring to fruition some day.

Is Creation Self-Evident?

No doubt many who were part of the Continental Congresses leading to the Declaration of Independence were Christians and held a high regard for Scripture. The same was true for many of those who signed the Declaration of Independence.

But they, too, like Reverend John Witherspoon, along with more “enlightened” signers like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, were men of their times and influenced by them in subtle ways, even as we are (See “The Seduction of Today’s Christian Political Advocates”).

For example, you’ll recall from yesterday’s publication that Nancy Pearcey, along with those authorities she cited, said Witherspoon helped introduce the Scottish Enlightenment’s Common Sense realism of self-evident truth into the late colonial period. Remember, too, that Newton’s universal law of gravity, with the help of Immanuel Kant’s popular Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755), was fast becoming “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” among influential enlightened thinkers.

So, when the term “self-evident” is joined in the same sentence with a “Creator” who “endows rights” and creates people “equal,” I believe we would do well to take into consideration Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck’s statement in God and Creation: “The doctrine of creation is known only by revelation.”

What Does Nature Teach Us?

A few years ago Bavinck’s words stopped me in my tracks. How could that be true? It seemed to repudiate what Paul wrote in Romans 1:19 and 20: That what “may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.”

With respect to those verses, I first came to see that I had passed over the word “doctrine” in Bavinck’s statement. According to Hebrews 11:3, the doctrine of creation is held “by faith,” not natural reason.1

That doctrine is spiritual because it holds that creation is strictly from the mind and by the word of God and reveals the glory of a personal (Triune) and invisible God, which explains why it is held by faith. And with respect to grasping the revelation of this glory of God, it is the “God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness” at creation who also “hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6). The Apostle Paul is not describing a self-evident natural knowledge of God or his glory as revealed in creation itself!

But secondly, I had overlooked the fact that the Bible’s history and that which followed its transcription repeatedly record what ideas natural reason give us about God and the cosmos: They are always variations on the same themes2 and are far removed from the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo by a personal God for the glory of God.

Has Any Noteworthy Theologian Affirmed My Point?

Yes. John Calvin wrote on this point and in the context of Romans 1:19-20 in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (p. 69):

When Paul says that that which may be known of God is manifested by the creation of the world, he does not mean such a manifestation as may be comprehended by the wit of man (Rom. 1:19); on the contrary, he shows that it has no further effect than to render us inexcusable . . . .3

For no sooner do we, from a survey of the world, obtain some slight knowledge of Deity, than we pass by the true God, and set up in his stead the dream and phantom of our own brain, drawing away the praise of justice, wisdom, and goodness, from the fountain-head, and transferring it to some other quarter.

Moreover, by the erroneous estimate we form, we either so obscure or pervert his daily works, as at once to rob them of their glory and the author of them of his just praise.4 (Emphasis added)

The only other “quarter,” or metaphorical room, into which we could place a self-evident belief in a doctrine of creation is in natural reason unaided by any illumination by the Spirit of the Christ,5 who is the person by whom and for whom all things were made that were made. See Colossians 1:16; John 1:3. But an attribution of truth to self-determination robs Christ of his just praise in revealing the Father as the fountainhead of all wisdom and knowledge.

What Does Scripture Say?

Consider the revealed truth we have on this question from the Apostle John. In verses 9-11 of the first Chapter of his Gospel, we see an unequivocal repudiation of natural reason alone as that which can teach or provide the spiritual doctrine of creation.

In verse 9, Christ is said to be “the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world” (NKJV). This is an absolute and universal affirmation. But it is only a clearer revelation of the truth previously declared by David, “In your light we see light” (Psalm 36:9, NKJV). As the prophets and Jesus said in quoting them, apart from Christ we “walk in darkness.”6

But, in verse 10, we read that Christ “was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.” This is an absolute and universal negative regarding the knowledge of Christ, and therefore, of the God He revealed, and in the context of remarking on what we call creation

Worse yet, we read in verse 11 that Christ, “came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.”

This is an indicative statement driving home that those who don’t know and receive Christ are fooling themselves if they think they have light about the true nature of reality apart from him.

They may have intelligence and an ability to reason, but they have no light leading to a knowledge of the spiritual doctrine of creation, and it is only in such a belief that persons could be “endowed” with anything, much less rights7 that we could consider unalienable or absolute, or be created equal. Aristotle proved the latter was not self-evident by holding that “on the grounds of reason and fact” some are born “natural slaves.”8

Arrogance and the Decline of the Reformation’s View of Sin on Display

To claim that something objectively true is evident to us — self-evident — without or apart from any work of the Spirit of Christ enlightening the mind is hubris of a Pelagian variety according to John Owen.9

Why? Because it assumes we can put ourselves in an independent, objective position regarding both ourselves and an object that we observe and can know an objective truth about either one. But in 1 Corinthians 4:3, Paul admitted that he couldn’t even do this with respect to himself! He deferred to God’s judgment of him.10

The reason a Christian would agree with Paul is that the Triune God’s perspective and knowledge of a thing is the only truly independent and objective kind of “self-knowledge” that exists. And that’s because his knowledge is without end and He creates all things ex nihilo, from nothing but His word according to His mind. But that knowledge must be revealed to us, and if we deny this, Christianity, as a revealed religion, no longer exist except in name only.

This view of knowledge and dependence on God, as with the very existence of our intelligence and reasoning capacity, is what it means to be a wholly dependent, created being.

This relational view is fundamental to reformed theology, and the state of darkness John describes is fundamental to its understanding of the consequences sin levied on the employment of those two faculties. Yet, as we saw yesterday, reformed doctrine was beginning to pass away in the 1700s in Europe and, following the Great Awakening, the seed for its present-day demise had already been imported into America through Common Sense realism.11

A Vision Toward a New Declaration of our Foundation

Given the foregoing, where might Christians go from here? We are clearly a long way from home biblically speaking

I suggest this, or something like it, as an aspiration we could provide for future generations of Christians to write if God is bringing an end to a nation in which even many of His people think they can reason to Truth independent of any work of the Spirit of Christ in them:

We hold that all things, whether visible or invisible, were created by and for Christ, as the Son of God, who is one with the Father and the Holy Spirit, but has now been made manifest in the flesh for our sakes.

I based it on Colossians 1:15-17 and 1 Timothy 3:16, because, as I said last week, it is the Christian’s fundamental metaphysic and cosmology. It is not self-evident.

What more glorious objective could be laid before God’s generationally covenantal12 people to pursue, even to “a thousand generations” if necessary?13

I can’t think of one, but discipleship will have to become our priority and our main strategy, not enacting better statutes. Of course, that’s the priority and strategy Jesus gave to his disciples. See Matthew 6:33, 28:18-20.14

Specifically, I want to consider an expression in the Declaration of Independence that is often proudly repeated by many Christians in our day:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights . . . .

Is this a Christian statement, or an irreverent one influenced by heretical hubris of 18th century Enlightenment philosophers?

I ask the question because I agree with what Abraham Kuyper of the Netherlands told Princeton’s seminarians in 1898, namely, that they should “never forget that the historic cradle of your wondrous youth stood in our old Europe, and was most gently rocked in my once mighty Fatherland.” An historical religion such as Christianity should not forget historical contexts, and Scripture repeatedly enjoins on God’s people a duty to remember.

And it is in the context of remembering the history of thought leading up to the Declaration that I want to examine the afore-quoted statement.

The Historical Context Leading to 1776

The quoted words from the Declaration were written over 100 years after the revolution in which King Charles of England was beheaded and a commonwealth was ushered in. And they were written 88 years after the “Glorious Revolution” in 1688 that re-established a from of monarchy in England by crowning a King from the Netherland’s House of Orange, Kuyper’s “Fatherland.”

But during that 88 years, philosophers began to build on earth what historian Carl Becker in the 20th century called their “heavenly city.” See Carl Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-Century Philosophers (all quotations in the next section are from his book). In his words, “the Heavenly City” of the Bible “shifted to earthly foundations.”

Sorting Through This Shifting Worldview With an Eye on 1776.

Becker summarized the first consequence of this shift as follows:

It was inevitable that God should be differently conceived and more indifferently felt. . . . [T]he Creator as a first premise no longer needed those rich and all too human qualities of God the Father. . . . [H]e ceased to be personal and inconvenient.”

However, more importantly, the shift signaled that these philosophers

“were prepared to dispense with [God’s] revelation to men -- the revelation through Holy Writ and Holy Church. This was, indeed, the whole point of their high, offensive gesture. Renunciation of the traditional revelation was the very condition of being enlightened.” (Emphasis supplied)

The belief of the enlightened was that “God has revealed his purpose to men in a far more simple and natural way, a far less mysterious and recondite way, through his works.” In sum:

To be enlightened was to understand . . . that it was not in Holy Writ, but in the great book of nature, open for all mankind to read, that the laws of God had been recorded. This is the new revelation. . . . This open book of nature was what Jean Jacques Rousseau and his philosophical colleagues went in search of when they wished to know what God had said to them.

But Wasn’t There a “Competing” Christian Worldview?

Becker rightly notes that in Europe “theologians still made much of” certain theological words in Scripture, “but even they felt called upon to offer a rational apology1 for doing so. Bishop [Joseph] Butler’s famous Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed (1737) was only one . . . of many exercise of this kind.”

Butler wrote the following in a letter dated November, 1713:

I have made it, sir, my business, ever since I thought myself capable of such sort of reasoning, to prove to myself the being and attributes of God . . . not only more fully to satisfy my own mind, but also in order to defend the great truths of natural religion, and those of the Christian revelation which follow from them, against all opposers.” Introduction to his book, viii (Emphasis supplied).

An admirable objective, but perhaps, in hindsight, the better course would have been to concede that knowledge of an infinite, independent being of God is impossible for finite, contingent, wholly dependent beings like us except by revelation, and declare that such revelation was ultimately made manifest to human beings in the constitution of the person of Jesus Christ.

But this is not just Becker’s opinion of the shift that was taking place to earthly, more natural, foundations.

Other Noted Theologians Confirm Becker’s Assessment

One hundred years earlier, Herman Bavinck, in the early 19th century, wrote the following about theology at the end of the 1600s: “Already in the seventeenth century, . . . the principles were present that undermined Reformed theology and brought about its decline” (more on this decline follows). Bavinck, Prolegomena, p. 183

In a word, the “relation between reason and revelation now became the most crucial issue. Reason emancipated itself from revelation and attempted to regain its independence.” Id. at 185 And, “[a]round 1750 Reformed theology everywhere fell into decay.” Id. at 189.

Before him, 17th century English theologian John Owen had noticed the same thing. His comments are worthy of consideration because of how he ties this decline to a de-emphasis on the doctrine of Christ (from Christologia, first published in 1679, p. 32) (modernized for today’s readers):

Many who won’t expressly deny Christ’s divine person seem to grow weary of being concerned about it. A natural religion, or none at all, pleases them better than faith in God by Jesus Christ.

Too many now believe that nothing more is necessary in religion than what natural light will discover and lead us in. What is beyond the line of nature and reason is rejected as unintelligible mysteries or follies. The common notions of the Divine Being and goodness will guide men sufficiently unto eternal blessedness.

But What About the Great Awakening?

In America there was a great awakening. But the course of its run needs to be remembered. To that end, Dr. George Grant recently wrote that it occurred “in the period between 1720-1750, reaching its zenith toward the end of 1746 or the beginning of 1747,” almost three decades before the Declaration was written. “The Great Awakening,” Jun 16, 2016.

But Nancy Pearcey does an excellent supplemental work for us in explaining how the “Scottish Enlightenment was probably the most potent single tradition in the American Enlightenment.” Pearcey, Total Truth (to avoid repetition of page citations, all quotations are from Chapter 11). She writes:

To give philosophical expression to their faith, most evangelicals of the eighteenth and nineteenth century called on the services of a philosophy imported from Scotland called Common Sense realism.

Important to today’s specific inquiry is the fact that it was “imported to America by John Witherspoon,” a noteworthy signer of the Declaration of Independence who left Scotland in 1768 to become president of what is now Princeton University, then the nation’s leading seminary.

What Is Common Sense Realism and Its Implications for Us?

Pearcey explains the origins of Common Sense realism, and its implications, which tie to the sentence in the Declaration we’re considering:

Common sense realism was crafted by the Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid in response to the radical skepticism of fellow Scot, David Hume, . . . that Immanuel Kant famously said . . . roused him from his “dogmatic slumbers.” The way to avoid skepticism, Reid proposed, is to realize that some knowledge is “self-evident” -- that it is forced upon us simply by the way human nature is constituted.

The core claim of Common Sense realism was that these undeniable or self-evident truths of experience provide a firm foundation upon which to build the entire edifice of knowledge -- like the foundation of a house.

In fact, Pearcey wrote that the “central concept” in Common Sense realism “was even enshrined in the Declaration of Independence: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident?” Where did the idea of self-evident truths come from? From Common Sense realism.”2

Now we are ready to answer today’s question, but more specifically stated as follows:

Is “self-evident” in relation to a “Creator” who “endows rights” a Christian statement, or an irreverent one more influenced by the hubris of Enlightenment philosophers of the 1700s than Christians want to admit?

And that will be the specific focus of tomorrow’s publication.

I’m passing it along because I thought it tied into the theme of recent commentaries about what whether and how our knowledge of Christ informs our political thinking. You can judge for yourself.

When, therefore, we cease to inquire with all diligence into all the revelations made concerning Christ or his offices, or any thing which belongs unto them, we do really cease to be Christians.

And there can be no greater evidence of our want of faith in him and love unto him, than if we neglect a due consideration of all things that the Scripture reveals and testifies concerning him.

Have a blessed day in Christ!

David

To appreciate the subtlety of this captivity, which I have admitted I fell into, I will explain why law lost its mooring in Christ in three sweeping steps. It was completely lost in our country by the early 1900s.

This made ample room for Machiavelli’s political philosophy and Nietzsche’s will to power to take hold of our political thinking. And it has shown up among at least one prominent pro-life advocate.

Step 1: Van Prinsterer Exposes the Early Political Shift Away from Christ

In a book I recommend to every person interested in understanding our times, Unbelief and Revolution, published in 1846, the Dutch historian and politician Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer effectively predicted the wave of revolutions in governments that roiled across Europe in 1848.

Surveying the growing insignificance of the Netherlands in world history since the French Revolution, van Prinsterer wrote, “Deterioration so widespread suggests the presence of a general cause.”

In searching for the cause, he noted that “[o]ur men of theory are skeptical and our men of practice are hesitant.” They were “content to deal only with matters imposed by the events from day to day.” And he added: “The same skepticism is apparent with respect to the foundations of religion, morality and justice. On these question our generation is hopelessly divided. Every view is subjective and individual.”

The general cause? “The unfolding of a wholesale skepticism in which God’s Word and Law have been thrust aside.”

Step 2: Using Einstein and Eddington to Bring Us to the Present

In the 2008 movie, “Einstein and Eddington,” a critical conversation takes place between physicist Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge and Arthur Eddington regarding the scientific theory being proposed by Albert Einstein in early 1900s relative to light, now known as the “theory of relativity.” It’s importance to law will be demonstrated.

The context for the scene is the relevance of Einstein’s theory to long-established and then definitive theory of gravity expounded by Englishman Issac Newton. Sir Lodge, speaking to Eddington about Einstein’s early theories, asks what Einstein says “about gravity.” Eddington quietly replies: “Nothing.”

However, what is important to our thoughts about law is a rapid-fire series of questions by Sir Lodge to intimidate Eddington into rejecting Einstein’s “theory” of light as more fundamental to physics than Newton’s theory of gravity:

What [Eddington] holds everything together? What dictates the motion of the planets? What controls the life of the universe as a whole?

Eddington, knowing the expected answer, timidly replies, “Gravity.”

Lodge concludes the scene with his answer to the questions he threw at Eddington and a final question:

Newton’s laws. Our map for everything. So this Einstein, in other words, has nothing to say about the real world? (pause) Eddington?

And Eddington, with the look of a man who knows his shifting thoughts about gravity are going against the established tide — the English “climate of opinion” in his day — says, “That’s right, no.”

But, in the end, Einstein’s theory about light and Eddington’s experiments proving the correctness of the theory established that there is something more fundamental in physics than gravity.

This scene is a dramatization of why Carl Becker, in his book The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers, published in 1932, could write:

“It has taken eight centuries to replace the conception of existence as [a] divinely composed and purposeful drama by the conception of existence as a blindly running flux of disintegrating energy.”

Einstein theory of light was the final exit ramp off the providential history that had come before.

Step 3: Einstein and van Prinsterer Applied

Sir Lodge’s exchange with Eddington about gravity and Becker’s statement of the change in cosmology describe the deeper meaning of what the enlightened man prior to Einstein thought, namely, that “[p]hysics . . . had dispensed with the need of metaphysics,” which is a belief that there is a nature to things beyond physics, thus the word “metaphysics.

Physics substituted gravity in place of the God of the old “cosmic drama.”

But no sooner did light displace gravity as fundamental than physicists began to peer into light, finding it simultaneously waves and particles. These studies eventually introduced what became known as “contingency in physics,” meaning that some things they observed did not appear to strictly conform to a mechanical-type law of cause and effect,” as was thought following Newton’s discovery of gravity as a universal principle, not longer encompassing just the heavens, but the earth as well.

The Importance of These Unfolding Discoveries in Physics for Law

Roscoe Pound, of Harvard Law School, put what had happened this way in 1940, in his book, Contemporary Juristic Theory:

Nothing has been so upsetting to political and juristic thinking as the growth of the idea of contingency in physics. It has taken way the analogy from which philosophers had reached the very idea of law.

It has deprived political and juristic thought of the pattern to which they had conceived of government and law as set up. Physics had been the rock on which they had built.” (Emphasis supplied)

In other words, van Prinsterer’s view of the underlying cause he identified — a “wholesale rejection of God” or unbelief replacing belief in God as the “pattern” — had reached its final destination in law.

For 100 years lawyers have been taught by omission, if not outright, that there is no first premise upon which law can rest. And, in the absence of an unchanging foundational principle, deductive logic upon which one could say, “This is a good and just law,” was gone.1 Law was now about power.

Where Do We Find the Christian’s Metaphysic and Cosmology?

In Colossians 1:15-20, we read that the eternal Christ, who was finally manifested “in the flesh” (1 Timothy 3:16), is “the firstborn of every creature” (v. 15) in two ways.

First and originally, “by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist” (v. 16-17).

This is the Christian’s metaphysic.2

Second, “he,” meaning Christ, “is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead” (v. 18). In this way, it was the Father’s good intention and pleasure that “in all things he might have the preeminence” (v. 18). “For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell” (v. 20). This is the Christian’s cosmology, where the cosmos is headed falling the Fall.

In sum, when physics replaced Christ in how we thought about the kind of place the cosmos is and how it works, metaphysics and cosmology had to die with him, metaphorically speaking. And they did, as Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck noted in the early 1900s.

Consequently, metaphysical nihilism has become our controlling worldview narrative.

Not grasping this means one won’t understand our times. And, the person who doesn’t will also get wrong what makes the world work, what puts things in order, what forms society.

Seth Gruber Comments on How the World Works

I’ve tried for a while to reach Mr. Gruber, a popular Christian podcaster, with these thoughts through someone who knows and works with him, but I’ve been unsuccessful so far. So, I can only read what he has put out in a couple of places and comment on it for the edification of my readers.

On May 11th, he posted the following on Substack:

[T]he sexual liberationists and occult feminists . . . create culture and change it according to their whims THROUGH their political engagement. They go all-in and mobilize their relatively small portion of the public who are willing to sacrifice nearly everything on the altar of “orgasms without responsibility.” They understand and understand well that “statecraft is soulcraft.”3 (all capitals in the original; emphasis added by italics)

On May 20th, he posted a similar comment on Substack:

Yes - Revival changes culture but we do not sit on our hands waiting for revival before seeking to change culture through law. . . . Passing laws creates and changes culture. We need only muster the courage to ACT. (Emphasis in the original)

I trust Mr. Gruber does not think that enacting statutes is what creates and changes culture, as I once did. But for those who do, I offer the following thoughts.

My Thoughts on Mr. Gruber’s Comments

I’ve come to believe that thinking enacting laws (statutes) creates or changes the prevailing worldview in a society seems akin to what the Apostle Paul, as Saul, once thought: Adhering to God’s law made him righteous.

But, as Robert Haldane makes clear in his Commentary on Romans, Chapter 7, it was only when the Spirit came that he realized God’s law, let alone man’s, was too weak to effect any real change in him beyond mere moralism at best. And this was so because of the “weakness of the flesh” (Romans 8:3).

Saul, like the majority in our nation, and even in our individual states, was under an objective, real, enslaving “dominion of sin” — a metaphysical reality with a cosmology of its own moving in only one direction, a cosmological form of merry-go-round always turning toward death.

We only have to look at how well the criminal laws on fornication and adultery that remain in a number of states have restrained those sins. While not a comparison of states with such laws to those without them, the reported percentage of women having an abortion who are unmarried increased from 46% to 86% between 2014 to 2021! Seventy percent of women who have had abortion “self-identify as Christian” according to Lifeway study.4

Non-enforcement of the death penalty against abortive mothers will only hold “mere morality” for so long, if at all, if women know they won’t be indicted. And it’s a pipe dream to think they will.5

And history shows that unenforced criminal laws, even those for which there is a death penalty, will not change that direction.

But for those who may think along the lines of Mr. Gruber’s comments or may be influenced in that direction by them, I believe they may be waiting a long time for culture to change. Law created by the kind of political power envisioned by Mr. Gruber’s other comments is the way Machiavelli and Nietzsche think the world works.

But that kind of thinking is not “according to Christ” in the words of Colossians 2:8. It’s just not how the world works.

Our job is to rebuild a Christian metaphysic and cosmology so that, as I said last week, the laws we enact will even make sense.

The question is what might that look like?

I offer today’s publication to that end, and it will also serve as a precursor to a consideration of the legal and political worldview recently espoused in regard to abortion by popular evangelical podcaster Seth Gruber to the 10s of thousands who follow him.

In sum, I believe 1 Corinthians 9:20-21, coupled with an Old Covenant/New Covenant insight by 17th century English theologian John Owen and Paul putting those verses into practice on Mars Hill, will help us recover a way of thinking about the “gospel of Christ”in relation to political issues that I think has been lost. It was lost on me until a few years ago.

And I will offer two applications for its use when engaged in legal and public policy advocacy, even if it is just with our neighbor, not a legislative body.

First Corinthians 9:20-21 (KJV)

And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; to them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ) that I might gain them that are without law.

From Christologia (p. 103) by John Owen:

(Modernized for the way we now write and notice how he uses the word “evangelical”)

The universal moral law was given unto the church under the Old Testament in the hand of a mediator; that is, of Moses, Galatians 3:19.

But note that this moral law had an original power of obliging all mankind unto obedience from its first institution or prescription in our creation; which it never lost.

However, the church [under the Old Testament] was obliged to have a respect unto it as it was given unto them, “ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator.” See Malachi 4:4 (“the law of Moses”). They were not obliged to observe the moral law itself, except as given to them in the hand of that mediator, who was Moses, which gave it the formal reason of a covenant unto that people.

But the same moral law still continues in its original authority and power it had from the beginning to oblige all indispensably unto obedience.

Similar to the church under the Old Testament, the Evangelical Church, as such, is not obliged by the original authority of that moral law except as it is confirmed unto us in the hand of our Mediator, Christ. This renders all our moral obedience evangelical.

In other words, there is no duty in the original moral law of creation but such as Christians are obliged to perform in faith through Christ, on the motives of the love of God in him, of the benefits of his mediation, and the grace we receive by him. Whatever is otherwise done by us is not acceptable unto God. Consequently, those who talk so loudly about moral duties are often deceiving themselves.

In other words, if the obligation these loud talkers owe to the moral law is only the original power of the moral law, or the law of our creation, and they are performed in the strength of that law1 unto the end of it, they are in no way accepted of God.

But if they intend the duties which the moral law requires proceed from and are performed by faith in Christ, upon the grounds of the love of God in him, and grace received from him, then are the performance of these moral duties purely evangelical.

And although the moral law has never lost, nor can ever lose its original power of obliging us unto universal obedience, because we are reasonable creatures, our obedience unto it as Christians, as believers, is immediately influenced by its confirmation unto the Evangelical Church in the hand of our Mediator.

I believe we see the distinction Paul makes and Owen describes being played out in real time in Acts 17.

Moral Law in Context: Acts 17 — Synagogue and Mars Hill?

In the church under the old covenant’s mediator, Paul “reasoned with them out of the Scriptures” (v. 5), presumably about the change in mediator. See Hebrews generally and, in particular Hebrews 7:12 (“For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law.” i.e., now “under the law to Christ”)

But, on Mars Hill, Paul addressed what was common to all thinking persons assembled there, Stoics and Epicureans, namely, their metaphysic and resulting cosmology (v. 17, 24).

I believe that only by speaking to these things first could his subsequent discussion of the resurrection of a particular man and a coming judgment of all persons “by that man” make any sense to anyone.

Some turned away, but others wanted to know more (v. 32). And in this way the Kingdom of God on earth grew.

APPLICATION NO. 1.

Paul’s approach to those on Mars Hill “without law” as a mediated covenant is “evangelizing,” though some today might disagree.

I believe those who would disagree mistakenly think that a society’s metaphysic and cosmology is just so much philosophical poppy-cock and that entering into the millennia-long discussions of those subjects is of no value. For them, it would not be “preaching Christ.” (More on that Friday)

The metaphysic and cosmology of our day is philosophical nihilism or, in the words of 20th century historian Carl Becker, quoting Aristophanes of the 5th century B.C, “Whirl is King,” not Christ. Our “moral law” makes no sense to our society. So it is rejected or, as previously explained, eventually repealed.

APPLICATION No. 2.

Perhaps Christian policy and legal advocates should take their cue from how Paul about how to approach those in our society who are “without law,” which is most people, and learn how to press them on their metaphysic and resulting cosmology before proposing our application of the moral law. It might take away the appearance of being engages in a moralistic political spitting contest?

In other words, I believe “understanding our times” means we will appreciate that the present reigning worldview denies any metaphysical and cosmological realities, leaving all “law” a matter of political force and will. (More on this Friday) Isn’t that understanding— that the prevailing metaphysic and cosmology is devoid of Christ—what will allow us, like the sons of Issachar, to know what to do?

Perhaps only with Paul’s Mars-Hill-approach will the moral laws we propose and advocate for have a foundation that some, like those on Mars Hill, might want to know more about. Pressing these considerations on nihilists would be a way for legal and public policy advocates, even the Christian discussing politics with his neighbor, to evangelize those without Christ as their metaphysic and cosmology. (More on this Friday)

FAA legislative proposal seems to be its response to the fact that abortifacients can be dispensed by mail in one state to women in another state that has made dispensing them a criminal act.1 The drug itself is not a new issue, but its availability by mail delivery into states where, post-Roe v. Wade, the drugs have been prohibited, is a new one. Mail-order abortion significantly undermines the reversal of Roe in 2022.

I’ve already expressed the reasons for my reservations about the wisdom of Mr. Klusendorf’s counsel, but what about that of FAA? As I wrote last week, its response concerned me because I saw a lot of my former self in the nature of its counsel and rhetoric.

What Is Commendable in FAA’s Response

FAA, to its credit, calls Christians to consider a number of scripture verses that it believes bolsters the logic of its argument against Klusendorf. I believe FAA made a conscientious attempt by to use those Scriptures in support of its conclusion, laid out under the next subheading.

But, as I’ve written previously, we must ask where the wisdom we need in this matter is to be found and where is what is being offered coming from? (I will provide what I would offer in coming weeks)

Scripture tells us “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” the Christian (regenerate) need are to be found in a “full assurance of understanding . . . of the mystery of God, of the Father, and of Christ” that leads “to the acknowledgement” of that mystery in their their soul and its various out-workings. Colossians 2:2-. I explained why that is so last week.

While a number of things in FAA’s response merit a closer examination, my present focus is to apply the standard I used last week to evaluate Mr. Klusendorf’s “prudential counsel”:

Looking for Christ in FAA’s Response

The following is the only place in FAA’s 2,100 word response in which I found the words “Christ” or “Jesus Christ.” These three sentences sum up FAA’s argument.

The reality of abortion in our nation is an affront to our Triune God, and a stench in the nostrils of the risen, ascended, and enthroned Lord Jesus Christ. The only question is whether we will fear our King more than we fear the culture. Instead of cowering before our wicked culture and crafting reactionary strategies of surrender, Christians must call upon our culture to bow before King Jesus and abolish abortion in obedience to Him.

The first sentence is certainly true. The third sentence is also true, with two caveats.

First, certain things2 I’ve seen from FAA have led me to wonder if its legislative response to the availability of mail-order abortifacients has also been a bit “reactionary.” Five decades of Christian policy and legal advocates arguing against directly challenging Roe v. Wade for pragmatic reasons can evoke that kind of response.

Second, it seems as if FAA thinks the only way to “bow before King Jesus . . . in obedience to Him” is to support its proposal that abortive mothers be indictable for felony homicide. That seems to me somewhat of a pridefully prescriptive understanding of what obeying King Jesus looks like in this situation.

This second caveat brings me to my focus on FAA’s second sentence. For the following reasons, I am far less certain that the way FAA framed the issue in that sentence is sound, particularly in view of the new covenant.

Evaluating FAA’s Framing of the Issue in Light of Christ’s Mediation

My first thought about second sentence in FAA’s summation, the tenor of which sounds to me like a taunt to fear God or else,3 is one I expressed previously:

We ought not forget that some, “desiring to be teachers of the law,” may only have “the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law” (Romans 2:20, KJV). They may not yet have an experiential acknowledgment of the metaphysical truth that the regenerate —

have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant.” (Hebrews 12:22-24, KJV).

If metaphysical considerations are absent in our thinking, this easily becomes only a metaphor without a reality.

I am not saying this describes those at FAA, because I don’t have a personal relationship with its personnel. But what I said may be a needed corrective for those following FAA’s lead who think putting the moral law of God in statute is the sum of a Christian metaphysic regarding what Paul calls the “end of the commandment.” See explanation of 1 Timothy 1:5 in “What May Be the Most Overlooked Consideration in Christian Politics.”

Why This Corrective Would Be Meaningful to Christians

The manifestation of the Seed promised in Genesis 3:15 only after several thousand years4 should assure Christians who, in the words of Isaiah 28:16, “believe” in the fulfillment of all of God’s remaining covenant promises that they need not “make haste” in charting a political solution to abortifacients simply because this particular “device” of the “workers of iniquity” seems to be “prospering” in the moment (Psalm 37:1, 7).

The Christian can work toward a solution from a place of rest as they look on Christ, because they know that “[k]nown unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world” (Acts 15:18, KJV). We ought not be as the Hebrews who, by lack of faith in God’s covenant promises, failed to “enter [Christ’s] rest” (Hebrews 3:16-19).

Are We Walking in Fear of Being a Disobedient Antinomian?

Another issue that might arise from the way FAA framed it summation is a fear of being antinomian if its legislative solution is not fully embraced. As I’ve written previously, those who are Christ’s, who have the Spirit of Christ, and are walking in the Spirit don’t need to fear that the Spirit of Christ — Christ being the “telos” of the law (Romans 10:4) — will lead them in a way that eventually and finally has them disregard the law of God, what is called antinomianism. See Philippians 1:6 ("Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”).

Therefore, I believe Christians should be slow to fear5 (be anxious about) what the wicked are doing, because knowledge of God’s perfect covenantal love revealed in the person and offices of Christ “casts out fear” (1 John 4:18). See also Psalm 73 generally. They are at peace with God (Romans 5:1), and “know all things are for their sakes” (2 Corinthians 4:15, emphasis supplied), even the present contention among those who are pro-life. If it brings us back to knowing more of the glory of God resident and manifested in the person of Christ and loving Christ more, I believe that is a very good thing!

What About “Bowing Before King Jesus”?

God certainly “now commandeth all men every where to repent (Acts 17:30, KJV) or, in FAA’s words, “bow before King Jesus.”

However, it is not surprising to me that the remnants of sin in Christians might lead some to see the prospering of “wicked devices” and frame the “problem” in such simple terms as whether we will (1) “cower before our wicked culture” or “bow before King Jesus” and (2) abolish abortion “in obedience to Him,” presumably done only by enacting FAA’s legislative proposal. I’ve taken the same damning approach before.

However, we are assured by Scripture that the real, objective, enslaving dominion of sin — a metaphysical and cosmological reality — must be broken before anyone will repent and bow the knee to King Jesus. See 2 Timothy 2:25 (stating that “perhaps [God] will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth).

Am I Suggesting We “Fiddle While Rome Burns”?

Urging contentious Christians to slow down and seek the Lord until they can tie their counsel back to the source of all wisdom stated in Colossians 2:2-3 is not doing nothing. Historically, it has been called “seeking the Lord” (Hosea 10:12) or “waiting on the Lord (Psalm 37:1).

And the first principle for finding “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” we need is to understand well and acknowledge in our thinking the Triune nature of God, specifically, how His essential unity and the economic distinctions in His being as persons and in His external works might bear on a matter.

The second, and related to the first, is the glory of God represented in the mysterious constitution of the person of Christ and his mediatorial offices. See 2 Corinthians 4:6.

We are told that this is the only sure foundation on which to lay our labors if we want to to build anything enduring, not just win in the moment, as some want to do. See 1 Corinthians 3: 11 and following.

Is the Foregoing That Important Since “Abortion Is a Stench in God’s Nostrils”?

I can’t today go into why some might think slowing down for this intentional, Christ-focused deliberation is not “doing something.” We are told to “seek the Lord” (Hosea 10:12) and seek from an “abundance of counselors” (Proverbs 11:14, 24:6) “that which every joint [in the Body of Christ] supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part” (Ephesians 4:15).

However, not taking time to do that seems a bit reactionary to me. Taking time to do that might just keep us from being “children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes” (Ephesians 4:14 ESV).

We dare not forget that the treasures of wisdom Christ is “made unto us” by God (1 Corinthians 1:30) can be “spoiled [lost, carried away] through philosophy and vain deceit” when it is “after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” (Colossians 2:8, KJV).

I have certainly been guilty of the latter in my political days. I pray the same isn’t true of FAA.

Why I Once Thought My Counsel was “Doing Nothing”?

To this most important question I offer one of the passages from John Owen’s Meditations and Discourses on the Glory of Christ; it jarred me out of the comfort zone of the evangelical, moralistic smugness I lived in:

[O]ne of the greatest privileges and advancements of believers [from those under the old covenant], both in this world and unto eternity, consists in their beholding the glory of Christ. (emphasis supplied)

As I’ve said, I had no idea why that would be so, or what this “beholding” would consist of, but he explained why: [T]he truth is, the best of us all are woefully defective in this duty.”

That was comforting. I wan’t alone. But he also called it a “duty.” That’s when these words sobered me up:

[W]e are loath at any time seriously to engage in it, and come with an unwilling kind of willingness unto the exercise of our minds in it.

Thoughts of this glory of Christ are too high for us, or too hard for us, such as we cannot long delight in; we turn away from them with a kind of weariness: yet are they of the same nature in general with our beholding of the glory of Christ in heaven, wherein there shall be no weariness, or satiety, unto eternity.

With his next words, the Holy Spirit nailed shut the coffin into which Christ’s mediation was placing my “zeal of God, but not according to knowledge” (Romans 10:2):

Is not the cause of it that we are unspiritual or carnal, having our thoughts and affections wanting to give entertainment unto other things? For this is the principal cause of our unreadiness and incapacity to exercise our minds in and about the great mysteries of the Gospel, 1 Cor. iii. 1–3.

I was one of those persons for upwards of 60 years of faithful and active involvement in “evangelical churches.” So, of course, the counsel I offer today never previously entered into any “political wisdom” I had to offer.

As I’ve written before, my obedience in relation to politics was not a fruit of becoming more conformed to the image of Christ.

I pray that any reading who are as I once was might not remain in that posture as long as I did.