My second child, a daughter, was born on July 4th! We gave her a name that we hope will point her toward the importance of generosity, service, forgiveness, and God's covenant: Lydia Jubilee. "Lydia", after the gentile seller of purple cloth who opened her home to the service of the saints, and whose entire household was saved -- a cool picture of the covenant and regeneration. "Jubilee", the backbone of the Biblical economy, forgiveness of debt and a return of everyone to their permanent inheritance, and a picture of the gospel (thinking of Isaiah 61:1-3). I'll be calling her Jube for short.

The first week has been basically sleep deprivation and a tiny bit of chores. The house wasn't quite ready for her -- we got a lot of our baby gear at the last minute because the second-hand donations that we'd been receiving up until that point were mostly actually kinda gross, so it isn't quite organized yet. Well, so I'm doing my best to get things in shape, or at least keep them from getting worse. 

Chowon suffered some more-than-typical harm during the delivery, but she's slowly getting back on her feet. I'm doing all the diapers, any soothing, swaddling, etc, so that all Chowon has to worry about is nursing and self-care. Chowon can't be satisfied by that kind of inactivity, though, and has managed to fill her time by responding to congratulations on the phone, the result of which has been a ton of meal deliveries at our house, which is really awesome.

Isaac is taking it very well. He's been very positive about having a baby sister, and he's been playing alone very well, and making himself breakfast sometimes. I'm trying to prioritize playing with him in my spare time, which also reduces the chores I can do. But family cohesiveness is more important than cleanliness in the final analysis, and I think my priorities are in the right place. The house is messy, but it's not gross, and it is slowly improving.

I have a lot of paid paternity leave. I'm nervous about getting back to work at my job after all of this.

In my progress on the book that I'm working on for Isaac (and now for Jubilee too!), I've noticed that Paul is rebutting the Circumcision party in nearly all of his letters. He's really seriously campaigning against them. That realization, and my renewed understanding of Paul's journey, has painted a more human picture of Paul in my head. 

I'm often praying that God will guide me to write what's true in my book, and not just write what I want to be true. I've definitely changed my perspective about a lot of topics as a result of this study, so that's something -- I hope, an indicator of God's activity in guiding my mind to some truth. 

I'm often back-and-forth about whether or not I will give the finished work to the guys who said they want to publish it if I finish it. Maybe I'll just pay to get the pages durably bound, and then give a copy each to my son and daughter, and call that the end of it. The more I research, the more I realize I'm a layman doing layman's research. I'm an autodidact and it definitely shows. What am I doing pretending to have answers to all of these arguments I'm taking on in my book? Who am I to lay claim to any true knowledge pertaining to scripture? By teaching, if I say anything true, I've only done what's commanded and expected of me, but if I say what's false, I have sinned and caused my neighbor to sin! I can only hope that my son will filter out the failures I present to him, and follow the Holy Spirit toward Christlikeness, becoming himself a better man than me. 

But I have to say something! I certainly can't leave my children to the wolves. I'm not merely subject to the belief that these philosophies I'm arguing against in the book are complete garbage; they really are trash and my children would only injure themselves by giving serious consideration to some of these thinkers. There are a lot of things in these writings I'm compiling about which I am firmly convinced I can't be wrong. Combing my conclusions to draw up a detailed blueprint of the structure connecting them to those primary beliefs is perhaps the work of many lifetimes, so I have to prioritize what I put my effort toward and how I do it. I can't let myself take too long, because I will age and lose my zeal (and besides, I might die tomorrow!); I can't be too quick or I will miss the important details. 

I don't want my children to waste time evaluating pop philosophy. I know it's a very common idea that people eventually have to evaluate the religious landscape for themselves and establish a personal conviction for Jesus anew after leaving their parent's household (I certainly did that), but I don't think that the activity needs to include any time wasted critically examining bullshit ideas like atheism or islam. Like, how thoroughly do we need to refute that crap before it doesn't deserve our attention anymore? Think of all the progress we can make if we rather devoted our minds to the truth! 

Don't get me wrong, apologetics is good work, and having a defense against outside arguments is important for everyone as a necessary evil, but I don't think that's the same as having a "reason for the hope that is within us". My reason for believing in Jesus is entirely compelling to me, but it isn't an argument in the common sense of the term; it's becoming more and more a blend of relational, spiritual, experiential, and rational ideas that feels increasingly bound up in my very self-ontology.

I want to present my children with something that they can use as a foundation to build-on. We're homeschooling them so that I can, by going alongside them, fill the gaps and equip them for this. I want them to skip all the trash philosophers I read, (I'll give them a cursory understanding of the history of philosophy insofar as I can make it an interesting story), and I want them to make positive progress by so thoroughly immersing themselves in the truth that the answers to outside challenges become too obvious for care. "The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord scoffs at them."

I once read the argument that people need to have an experiential understanding of "darkness" in order to know what "light" is. For example, if they only ever saw the color "white" they would never know what white was until they first saw other colors. I don't buy it. They would only know what white was until they saw other colors, and then they would know the other colors. I think contrast is helpful to demonstrate magnitudes and to build a sense of relevance by way of application, which is helpful to expedite learning, but not necessary to know truth. I don't need to go worship another god in order to know that Jesus is the true God. Nobody in Israel needs to be proselytized toward false religion in order to understand God's covenant with them. Deut 13:6-11 permits no such proselytization in Israel, while elsewhere the Bible commands repeatedly that Israel take plenty of time to learn God's words, precisely because in-depth knowledge of false ideas is not necessary. 

There are infinite falsehoods out there, and only one truth; how can I invent a falsehood in order to contrast it with the truth in order to gain knowledge of the truth if I haven't already known both the truth and the falsehood in order to contrast them with one another so as to understand the falsehood I'm inventing? The idea that knowledge must be founded on dialectical contrasts is philosophically incoherent.

My kids don't need to read Nietzsche as a prerequisite in order to know that he's not worth reading. Nor do they need to critically examine the theory of evolution in order to know that God created mankind from the dust on the 6th day, nor do they need to dabble in other religions to gain deep insight into Christianity. I want them to build on the foundation that was laid for them in God's word, and skip the crap. If I can give them that much, then I've saved them years of time, and if God graciously sees fit to give me so much of a great blessing, he may place them among those in heaven who never bowed to a false god, and to retain a man for God's kingdom from among my children for future generations. Oh God, do not permit my family to go astray, and my generations to be struck from the book of life!

"My soul is crushed with longing for your judgments at all times."

ETA:

I've been thinking about what I wrote here, and maybe I'm being redundant by re-engaging with my self-doubt here... (I thought about making it a separate blog post, but it's too soon). I do want to clarify that I'm not going to completely leave my kids ignorant of things like OE/TOE or the various manners of approaching nihilism, so I'm not completely isolationist here, but I do intend to give thorough emphasis both in time and effort to teaching things I believe to be true (as every teacher does, right?)... but also, I'm concerned about myself. Am I deceiving myself by means of a false humility, whereas I'm actually unwilling to budge on issues about which there are legitimate challenges out there?

I won't say I am not concerned about the possibility. Indeed that's why I write here. But on the other hand, I'm not quite ready to yield to it.

One time I read a philosopher argue along these lines, "if your ideas are contradictory to mine, and aren't at least as well developed as mine; at least as thoroughly challenged and time-proved as mine; at least as comprehensive in their explanatory power as mine; at least as coherent as mine -- then I may be willing to engage with you concerning challenges you have to my own ideas, but I see no need to spend any time versing myself on your ideas.". I suppose that may seem a sort of philosophical hubris, but on the other hand, Christianity is truly the best established system in existence on all accounts. I may not be an expert in Christianity (or any other system for that matter), but I don't need to be an architect to know which building is tallest. And, let's face it: Christianity does engage in internal criticisms of outside philosophies, but it is also entirely consistent with Biblical Christianity to maintain an attitude of derision toward non-Christian perspectives. "The fool says in his heart, 'there is no god'.". "For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."

Sure, "what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?", and so some analysis of the enemy is necessary when in battle. And Christianity is a conquering ideology, aimed at ideological warfare, "We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete." But given limited time to build an awareness of the situation, whose troops should the king know better, his own or his enemy's? And should the king verse himself on armies which will not be involved in the current battle as thoroughly as on those who will? The most efficient use of my time as a teacher is to teach the truth, not to verse my kids on every untruth, nor even on those aspects of untruths which are easily refuted by things my students already know. 

If I am able to expand that category of prior knowledge effective to refute an enemy idea, so that it encompasses very much of the enemy's ideology, then there is little left for me to do by way of teaching on the enemy, except insofar as it expedites teaching the truth. Only: am I able? That is the prompt for my self-doubt. I'm not really all that worried about whether or not Christianity is subject to an undermining refutation, only whether I can prepare my kids sufficiently that they are not deceived by a weak refutation.

Trying to carefully parse the Bible, its premises and conclusions as it presents them, in order to gain a better understanding of God's law for the purpose of this book. Here's an excerpt from my notes concerning Romans 13. 

---------------------------

P1. v1. All authority is from God (no authority exists except this)

P2. v3-4. Rulers terrorize evil and promote good

P3. (implicit). Good and evil are defined by God's law, as well as the good means of terrorizing/promoting.

 = v5-6 =

Verse 6 must be read in light of verse 5. See how Paul chains together clauses using "for" and "therefore". 

In a phrase "A therefore B", A provides a basis for agreement with B.

In a phrase, "A for B", B provides a basis for agreement with A. 

Leading up to "we do it not only because of wrath, but because of conscience" in verse 5, we have a "therefore", which indicates that the prior verses form a unit which is now being used to support the idea that "we do it not only because of wrath, but because of conscience". After that, we have "for"s, indicating that verse 6a also supports verse 5, and verse 6b supports verse 6a,

So, recall, verses 1-4 can be summarized: "rulers terrorize evil and promote good because they are servants of God".

v5 "Therefore" (since they are servants of God), we obey not only because we don't want to be terrorized, but also because of our conscience, which demands that we likewise obey God. The "wrath" is something that he expects everyone to intuitively understand; his point here is that it's not only because of wrath, but also because of conscience, and so Paul's emphasis, the thing that is accomplished by his reasoning, is the additional clause, "because of conscience". 

v6. (6a) "for" it is because of "this" that you pay taxes, (6b) "for" they are servants of God. The "this" in v6a is "conscience" -- it is the emphasis of the passage, and is established again by repeating the justification from verses 1-4 in v6b.

Verse 6 reiterates that they are servants of God -- why? Remember the point of verses 1-5. "Them being servants of God" (v1-4) implies that "we should obey because of conscience" (v5). So, again, the emphasis here is that something is being done "because of conscience".

Now, isn't it remarkable that "for because of this you also pay taxes" begins with "for", indicating that it is given as a basis for agreement with the idea that we obey "not only because of wrath, but also because of conscience". We could reverse the argument: “we pay taxes for this reason [conscience], therefore we obey rulers not just because of wrath, but also because of conscience.”  So taxes are an example of something we do because of conscience, which Paul is using as support, to make the point that the rest of the law is obeyed because of conscience. 

If taxes are used as an example for support, then it is because he expects his audience to agree about them in advance. Arguments are supported by examples when the example contains common ground supporting the argument. So the reader is expected to have a prior understanding that taxes are paid because of conscience, which is so firmly rooted in their mind that Paul feels at liberty to use taxes as an example to support the idea that other laws should be obeyed "because of conscience", and not just because of wrath.

In order for the grammatical flow of this argument to make sense, the audience is expected to have had a prior inclination toward the idea that taxes are primarily paid on the basis of conscience as opposed to fear of penalty. It is no coincidence that the Old Testament law presents us with no civil penalty for failure to pay any of its taxes or tithes. Indeed, Paul's audience, on conversion, was given the gospel and the Old Testament, and they knew that their tributes to God were paid because of their conscience alone.

 = v7-8 =

This is supportable by verses 7 and 8. Pay taxes to whom taxes are due (v7). Don't owe anyone anything except love (v8). These two statements are not disconnected; verse 8 follows sequentially from verse 7, reiterates verse 7, and describes the consequence of obedience to verse 7. 

"Don't owe anyone anything except love" should not be interpreted to mean "don't pay taxes" -- Paul already said we pay taxes because of conscience. Now he frames that behavior as a debt of love. In this way, verse 8 transitions is discussion about the basis of obedience from conscience to love. Conscience and love are closely related, so that the next section (verses 9-10) is not disconnected from the prior section.

 = v8-10 =

How do we know that the point about conscience in the case of taxes (which is well established in the mind of his audience) can translate to the rest of the law, so that we should obey the rest of the law because of conscience, just like we do with taxes? Paul employs the link between conscience and love to show that it applies both ways because obedience to the law is loving, and love is a matter of conscience. Here he doubly supports his point about conscience and the law, framing the law as descriptive of love, and love as the embodiment of the law.

Applying the principle which we learned from the example of taxes to the rest of the law, Paul's point can be summarized:

"You already know that we pay taxes primarily because of [love / conscience]. In the same way, we should obey the rest of the law because of [love / conscience]."

 = e. =

So, in the final analysis: this passage does not support compulsory taxation. It doesn't say anything at all about compulsory taxation. It does not add any moral tolerability to an act of civil government to penalize nonpayment of taxes, nor to demand more taxes than what the law of Moses prescribes. It does not in any way establish compulsory taxation as a just or morally permissible behavior of government, nor establish additional taxes (not described by Moses) as morally permissible for civil government to take. 

Instead, this passage emphatically requires that the audience already know that taxes are given solely on the basis of conscience, and then uses that prerequisite understanding as common ground to build the case that the rest of God's law is also obeyed on the basis of conscience, in particular the rulers to whom God's law delegates authority, insofar as they act within the boundaries of that authority which is given to them by the law.

(Consider the way people interpret this passage without that understanding. All day long we hear the argument that this verse gives secular government blanket divine authority to terrorize evil however they want, as if the word “evil” could not describe any act of the government itself! It leads to moral contradictions and a complete overthrow of the rest of the biblical teachings on morality and justice. It’s as absurd as saying “sin is lawlessness, therefore we should make up some laws”, as though moral anarchists and degenerates were not governed by their own scruples that they just likewise made up.)

---------------------

Anyone who's read my writings on this in the past may notice that my perspective has shifted somewhat, but I think that this reading is better supported by the grammar of the passage, and I feel a better peace about verse 6 than I did prior to this particular parsing. I'll be reviewing this in the future to make sure I'm not messing anything up, as this is a particularly complex argument from Paul, but I am feeling pretty good about it.

"There were so many, I've lost count."

Slowly chipping away at a long writing project for my son. At the moment, my notes are disorganized and un-polished in the extreme, but I am not done generating notes. I have a clear end-goal for my notes; when I've achieved that I'll begin the work of seriously compiling and polishing all of this. I'm anticipating paternity leave later this year (woohoo!) and I don't think I'm going to be so crazy busy during that time that I won't be able to work on this project. So, I'm hoping to complete all of my notes by that time. 

At the moment, my notes are broken into four groups. Here are the groups, and the number of pages of notes I'm sitting on (if I just open word and paste them in; these are mostly in .txt files): 

- transliterations (76 pages)

- dialogues (42 pages)

- topical notes (111 pages)

- verse commentary (330 pages)

The transliterations are from my pocket steno notebooks, where I write down topics of interest as they come to me. The dialogues are transcriptions and copy/pastes of debates I've participated in. They'll be sifted and converted into stand-alone arguments. There's likely much overlap in the contents of the various groupings here. The topical notes and verse commentary were made using my Bible Notes application. The roadmap is to complete the verse commentary and then distill it into the topical notes, then sort everything into chapters aligned with an overall rhetorical vector.

Here's an excerpt from today's transliteration:

----

I hear a lot about people saying it's a good thing for a country to "base" its laws on God's law. What does it mean for a law to be "based on" God's law, though? Either it's the same as God's law or it's different from God's law. 

A more refined approach to this idea of "basing" laws on God's law might be to say that Christian legislators are doing the same thing that an SGE theonomist advocates -- drawing out the general equity and underlying moral precepts from of God's laws, as a judge might do if he were ruling in ancient Israel and encountered a new case, only afterwards the Christian legislators are making it into a law "based on" God's law. For starters, if this were really their intent then there would be no instance where they instituted a penalty which was not described by the law expressly, because the criminality of an action is determined by casuistry, associating it with a penalty according to the descriptions of what acts fall under that penalty in the law, but the penalty is not determined by the same kind of examination of general equity. So there's no room in the general equity to invent new penalties. Second, they cannot claim to be reaching for an underlying principle in the scripture without being able to point to some statement in the scripture which tells us that such an underlying principle can exist without its stated manifestation in the scripture -- I mean, they are looking at a law and saying that the underlying principle which motivates the law should exist without the law that describes it, so they must point out a statement in scripture to that effect, or else they are claiming that scripture is motivated by underlying principles which are not in perfect agreement with what scripture says. Finally, and importantly, it is impossible for them to legislate new laws without breaking God's law in Deut 4:2, 12:32, and so no such new legislation can claim to be drawn from the underlying principles in God's law, because those very underlying principles prohibit the legislation itself. 

If they say that they believe God's laws are perfectly just for their original audience, but not applicable to our circumstances, then they are again in the same boat — they are trying to ascertain the underlying principles in the law and generalizing them for our modern context. We need a reliable metric for determining what differences in circumstance warrant what changes to judicial procedures. Certainly, no such metric can be derived from scripture, because their very premise states that the scriptural prescriptions concerning judicial procedures are inapplicable to our circumstances. This is, first of all, in contradiction with 1 Tim 3:16-18, which says that the scripture can thoroughly equip a man of God for every good work. That being true, they cannot claim that the Bible lacks a prescription for our modern context. 

It is also in contradiction to their stated aim: They self-consciously avoid the what the Bible says while adhering to underlying principles which they claim are derived from what the Bible says, on the basis that these underlying principles motivate what the Bible says. If those principles really motivate what the Bible says, then we should see textual/grammatical clues concerning them, so that we would not need to rely on a kind of "wisdom" that reduces (in legislative practice) to "feelings" and "vibes" about how the Bible intends something other than what it says.

So, I am firmly convinced that it is incoherent for a Christian nation, believing that God's law is just and that the Bible is inerrant, to say that any laws not-identical to God's law are tolerable on the grounds that they are "based on" God's laws.

----

Maybe someone will find that edifying, or tell me why I'm wrong.

"Let's keep reforming."

 Well guys, it's been ages since my last post. For a long time, I've been doing all my writing in the book I'm working on for my son. I've been working on a law-focused concordance with notes, that I'll later distill into the contents of the book, along with records of all my favorite apologetic arguments, a whole lot of basic hermeneutic advice, and a lot of advice for regular living. The concordance exports at about 200 pages now, and I just got to the New Testament, so the book is still a ways off. I imagine making all the content is only half the battle, the other half will be organizing it -- that's why I've been trying to keep my notes as organized as possible with my homebrew organizing applications.

I've been very busy and a lot has happened since my last post. I'm working at a factory in Philly; I'm an adjunct professor now; my son is growing and impressing me ceaselessly; my wife is pregnant again. Lots of exciting stuff! I'm also deciding between several future plans -- I like the professor gig, so I would like to get a PhD, but also my engineering career would be benefitted by the addition of a PE to my name, so I should plan on the FE soon. Lots of stuff going on.

Today I want to respond to the Tom Hicks article on Theonomy. A lot of other people have already responded to it, and I'm not a noteworthy writer or scholar, but I do have a lot to say (as you can all well see). Here's a link to his article. I'm going to give very brief addresses to each of his 16 bullet points before I read or watch any other theonomist's response:

1. New Testament Priority

His main point here seems to be encapsulated by this sentence: He says, "If the New Testament says an Old Testament passage has a particular meaning, we should assign that meaning to the Old Testament passage."

I'm not aware of any place in the New Testament where it assigns a particular meaning to an Old Testament passage which disagrees with the plain meaning of the Old Testament passage and the Old Testament's explanations of that passage. So, I'm gonna be totally real with you guys, I have no idea what he's talking about on this point. Seems like he's just made up a hermeneutic where he can interpret the NT in ways that contradict the OT, and call it "prioritizing the NT". 

2. Gentile Nations not being under the Old Covenant

He says gentile nations weren't judged by the Mosaic judicial law, because they weren't under the Old Covenant. They were only judged by the Ten Commandments, which are the moral law.

There's some really beautiful irony here. If you scan the OT law to try to find any indication of a difference between "Moral Laws" and "Civil Laws", you'll find no such distinction articulated anywhere in the Bible. However, what you will find is that the Ten Commandments in particular are called the Old Covenant with Israel.

Deuteronomy 4:13: "And he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them on two tablets of stone."

Hebrews 10:16: “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,”

2 Corinthians 3:3: "And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts."

So, first: there's no such moral/civil distinction, or "covenant-law"/"moral-law" distinction. Second, if there were, then the Ten Commandments are the strongest and only case for what would be the Covenant Law for Israel.

3. The OC with its laws being abolished

He brings up Hebrews 7-10 — chapters I am familiar with, and which I believe do not contradict my view. They say two main things here:

- there is a change in the law
- the old Covenant is abolished

OK. So, when we read here that there is a change in the law, we should ask ourselves, "what is the change?". Are all of the old laws thrown out, or only some?

Mr. Hicks tries to help us here, "the moral law, which is summarized in the Ten Commandments, has not been abolished." 

In his article linked here, about the ten commandments, I'm very upset to see this quote: "[speaking of Matt 5:17]. What law is Christ speaking about? He goes on to list laws from the Ten Commandments: do not murder (Matt 5:21-26); do not commit adultery (Matt 5:27-32); do not lie (Matt 5:33-37).", which makes it seem as though Jesus only addresses the ten commandments in the Sermon on the Mount, and Hicks expressly uses that to justify the idea that Jesus is making the Ten Commandments unique in that they won't pass away, in contrast to the rest of the law which passes away. In fact, Jesus here talks about divorce (Matt 5:31-32, Deut 24:1-4), The Lex Talionis (Matt 5:38-48, Exodus 21:22-25, Lev 24:19-20, Deut 19:16-21), and love for neighbor (Matt 5:43-48, Leviticus 19:9-18). I'll stop short of accusing him of dishonesty here by saying explicitly that I intend to stop short of accusing him of dishonesty -- I'm interested in hearing another explanation for that one. 

But back on track -- are all the laws changed, or only some? He says, the ten commandments aren't changed, but everything else is. However, he definitely fails to establish that case. At best, in his article on the Ten Commandments, he establishes that circumcision is no longer required in the New Covenant, but that was never at stake -- Theonomists agree. 

Just read the passages in Hebrews. It explains what laws have been changed with the priesthood: it’s the priesthood laws. The laws in effect about the priests are changed, because the priest is changed.

"But what about Ephesians 2:14-15?" someone is asking -- well, that's not in Hebrews, so we should go read it in its own context, where it is talking about soteriology, and the means by which we are saved -- we are not saved by the ordinances and commandments, but by faith. Does anyone deny that the word "law" can be used in different ways in different contexts?

4. The existence of positive/natural law

He brings up Romans 2 a lot, let's walk through it: 

Verse 12-13: It's not the people who hear the law, but the people who do the law that are justified, whether they know about the law or not.

Verse 14: When are the gentiles a law unto themselves? It's when they, who don't have the law, by nature do what the law requires.

So, does this say anything about the gentiles being subject to a different set of laws? No. It says that they are by nature doing what the law (the same law) requires.

But what about these references to three of the ten commandments in verses 21-22? Every single OT law can be construed as a reference to the Ten Commandments in one manner or another. Hicks almost says so in his article about the ten commandments. Here's a quote:

The Old Testament tells us that the Ten Commandments were a sufficient summary of God’s most central laws. We see this taught in Deuteronomy 5:22, which says that after God had spoken the Ten Commandments, “he added no more.” After God gave the Ten Commandments, there was no need to add any more. The Ten Commandments sufficiently summarized the way God’s people were to express their love to Him and to one another. If God’s people obeyed these laws, then they would be keeping the heart of the law, and all other obedience would follow from it.

Notice how Hicks is careful to say "God's most central laws" and that if people love God and love neighbor, they would be obeying the "heart of the law". Whereas the Bible says, "On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.". If I wanted to quickly give examples from the law, where else would I look but the 10C? They're easy, quick, and everywhere. Just check Romans 13:8-13, "[examples from the Ten Commandments] and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: 'love your neighbor as yourself'...let us behave decently...not in carousing and drunkenness" (note, not limited to the ten commandments!).

Hicks goes on to give some narrative examples of people sinning, and God not pinning them down for it, as if God has to reiterate the law every time someone breaks it or else we're to assume it doesn't apply anymore.

In short, he doesn't successfully establish the existence of positive law by scripture, and his verses aren't even related to it.

5. Four kinds of law recognized by classical theology

He doesn't refer to any of classical theology's Biblical arguments for the existence of these categories, so there's nothing substantial to refute here.

6. Judicial laws of Israel were only to be practiced in Canaan

Does he think that Israel wasn't practicing the law on the way to Canaan?

7. Deut 4:6-8

I've never connected these premises to that conclusion, as he says theonomists do in this section. I've actually never heard any theonomist make this argument.

I can't really defend it, because I don't agree with it. I won't accuse him of making a straw man, though, because maybe he has heard this somewhere before.

8. Death penalties in OT law

I had to read this carefully to understand what he was getting at, (and I'm still not totally sure I follow). It looks like he's saying that, since capital punishment in the OT law is analogous to eternal hell, capital punishment is generally unjust, but it was applied in Israel because they were supposed to act as an analog for our spiritual state.

Is there any penalty that doesn't present a reasonable analog to hellfire and our spiritual state? When the Bible says that the law is perfectly just (i.e. Psalm 19, 119), is it wrong, or is it speaking of the spiritual thing that the law foreshadows, whereas the law itself was actually unjust?

This is, in so many ways, contradictory to everything the Bible says about the law. This is so far in left-field, I'm not sure what to do with it.

9. Theonomy sees OC Israel as nothing more than a paradigm for all earthly kingdoms

Really? Nothing more than a paradigm? Nothing??? Surely he doesn't think that this is true about Theonomists? What am I supposed to say about this one?

10. works-inheritance and the covenant of grace

The particular covenantal/eschatological framework he develops here isn't a necessary component of theonomy, and I'm not totally sure I agree with it. I think this is not an argument against theonomy in particular.

He says, "In the Theonomists’s view, however, a Christian’s faithful work to build earthly civilization under God’s law is also building Christ’s redemptive kingdom because the two kingdoms are ultimately one."

I don't know what he's loading into the idea of "Christ's redemptive kingdom"... are we not supposed to obey God, because if we do then that would be too similar to acting like we're in his kingdom?

Look, Idk what he thinks theonomy is, but I just wanna obey God here.

11. Theonomy not accounting for the way the OC law was severe to preserve the line of the promise.

Ew! Yuck!

Is he saying that God was excessively harsh on Israel because Jesus was a eugenics project, and he had to keep the gene pool pure? Is he aware that Jesus has gentiles in his genealogy?

What in the world. These are the arguments against theonomy, folks. Anything to justify not paying attention to God's law.

Galatians is, like Ephesians, about how we're saved from our sin -- not just about what is and isn't sin.

Acts is not saying that the law was too harsh, but that the soteriological component of the law was a burden. If we're to believe that this means the law was too difficult (as in, obedience to it, regardless of soteriology), then Jesus's Sermon on the Mount makes it infinitely more hard. "You have heard 'don't commit adultery', but I tell you anyone who looks on a woman with lust has committed adultery in his heart." Obedience is way harder with these New Covenant clarifications (esp if they are changes), and hell is harsher than death! It’s a good thing Jesus died for our sins, so we can be forgiven.

12. The New Testament only applies OT law to the church, not to gentile nations

We agree then.

The church is obligated to the law. And, we should be getting other people to join the church, whereafter they'll be obligated to the law.

Nations? Yeah. We make disciples of them.

13. Postmillennialism

I'm not really 100% on the postmil train, so I'll leave this one alone.

14. More postmil

15. The confessional tradition vs theonomy

The confessions are only good insofar as they agree with the Bible, and the reformers said we should be always reforming to make ourselves agree better with the Bible. 

I agree the confessions contradict the Bible on this point.

16. To sum it up

Actually there aren't any distinct arguments in this section; it's a summary, so there's nothing to respond to.

Should I summarize, too? Still waiting on a serious argument against SGE. Everyone flaps their gums against it, but God’s word is unshakable.

There you go!

Now I'm going to go watch the Lancastrian Theonomist's response to it here: God's System vs. God's Law and Examining an Anti-Theonomy Article by Tom Hicks - YouTube

Let's see if Luke Saint and I have any similarities in our approach.

"But His people will be restored."

The past few weeks have been especially wild. We've traveled somewhere every weekend for about 5 weeks now, with one exception, during which we had visitors from Korea. Tomorrow we will also be traveling to stay with my family. Next weekend, we are reserving the time for nothing at all.

I suppose it's needless to say I'm stressed by the ceaseless activity. On return from work today, I found that my family has not returned form a playdate, so I have a little bit of time to blog, and just as God's providence would have it, I have something weighing heavily on my mind.

I'm presently involved in a debate with an online friend who I esteem very highly, on the topic of SGE vs WGE. I am about to rant about him and the debate. 

I think I must seem very immature for venting on my personal blog about an ongoing debate. Allow me to give my apology here before I proceed:

- I don't intend to use these as arguments against him, because they would not persuade him. Indeed, they should not be persuasive to anyone who agrees with him.
- I don't believe that I'm defaming him; I won't mention his (screen)name, and I believe that the only people who would know who I'm talking about have already sufficient respect for him, and toleration for my views, that they would not be persuaded against him personally by this kind of rant.
- Nobody reads this blog; I'm venting because I'm stressed about other things, and this debate is on my mind.
- I am quite confident that if I presented the following rant to him as though I intended it to be a legitimate argument, he would be reasonably frustrated and not ever respond. I have already presented arguments to him which I hope he'll actually respond to.

So I am coming to terms once again with the notion that I am an extreme ideological minority. For a while there, I had a glimmer of hope that I might be in a small community of likeminded people, but I misjudged the group. I think I might really be alone in my views...God help me.

It's too easy to be led around by reasonable-seeming arguments. In fact, I think the most well articulated case against my position might just be that it seems unreasonable. When I say "reasonable" here, I'm not referring to an idea being "rational", "well founded", or "defensible". I'm talking about an idea being easy to digest. For example, consider the following quote:

"It is the responsibility of the state to promote virtue, punish vice, and secure the common good."

Seems fine, right? Unobjectionable. Certainly we wouldn't want a government which doesn't do that. And isn't the "common good" essentially the same as common health, prosperity, and well-being?

This quote reads like the opening of a federalist paper on our God-given rights, and the empirical benefits of some set of conservative policies. Indeed, in the hands of a person who feels like conservative policies are wise and virtuous, conducive to the common good and the elimination of vice, this statement will take us exactly there.

Before I show my hand here, let's bolster the statement further. Add these, essentially true, delicacies to the plate, and see that they do not make this meal all the more appetizing. These are all quotes from an article by Leithart on how SGE theonomists make an "argument from silence":

"Scripture does[...]guide us in every area of life."

"The Bible is not essentially a rule book or a law code; even the rules find their deepest meaning in the light of God's revelation in Christ. For these reasons, we ought not read the Bible merely as a collection of moral rules, or as a textbook of political ethics."

"[A good argument should be] based on clear and consistent Scriptural themes, not on questionable interpretations of a single text or on the fact that Scripture is silent."

"We need to mount an argument, pro or con, on the basis of historical, sociological, and other kinds of evidence. This evidence, of course, should be biblically interpreted and evaluated. But, since the Bible in itself provides no direct answer to [a given question, e.g. whether legislatures are consistent with Biblical principles of government], we are forced to reason about biblically interpreted evidence and to apply the 'broader principles' of scripture"

The example about legislatures I bracketed above was from the original source for that quote; the Bible is exceedingly clear about whether human legislatures are Biblically supported, both in its particulars and in its broader principles.

Now, all of the above sentiments are basically fine, when taken a certain way. They're reasonable. But read the fine print. The above statements are buildup to a Westminster General Equity politic. Here's one more -- the cherry on top, which functions as a premise disguised as a conclusion (because it is utterly baseless, and proves itself the foundation for the whole framework):

"There may be a country which, if murder were not visited with fearful punishments, would instantly become a prey to robbery and slaughter. There may be an age requiring that the severity of punishments should be increased. If the state is in troubled condition, those things from which disturbances usually arise must be corrected by new edicts."

This last quote was from John Calvin. The prior block of quotes was from Leithart.

The follow-up (in the Leithart article) is to effectively limit the clear teaching of scripture on the duty of government to Romans 13: promoting good and punishing evil. The author asks, "but how should we promote good?" (a rhetorically significant question, because asking "how should we punish evil" would be too easy to answer). And he goes on to suggest that there may be many different ways to promote good, and that the scripture is silent on it. (Mosaic law does actually include some great promotional activities for itself : the festivals, the teaching of the law, etc)

Imagine you're WGE. You read Romans 13 and say, "Paul must be talking generally about good and evil, as my own Holy-Spirit-indwelt scruples define it." -- as though the sanctifying power of the Holy Spirit would lead you anywhere except directly toward God's law. Now, what if God said, somewhere in the Bible, "X is good, promote it Y way. P is bad, punish it Q way"; would it be ok to use that to contextualize Romans 13? No! How do I know? Because God did say that in the Bible, and I am told we shouldn't use it to contextualize Romans 13.

The most glaring problem with the article is that scripture isn't silent on..... any of the examples he gave. But I intentionally abstain from mentioning most of his examples because I don't want this post to be a case-for-case walkthrough of his article. I have more lofty goals in mind. (And I'm not going to even start on some of the surprisingly nescient takes in Leithart's article. They're so bad that I wonder if he put them in on purpose to draw the attention of would-be-detractors away from his actual point. For example, "Christians do countless things today, without a qualm of conscience, that have no direct warrant in scripture", as though this is the same thing as legislating a new civil law.)

In any case, the simplest and most direct rebuttal to the article is Deuteronomy 4:2, 12:32 (interestingly, he quotes something like these verses in the article, but so distorts them that I think he must have intended it as a reference to Revelation 22:18-19 instead), every verse telling Israel not to stray from the law, nor imitate the governments and religions around them, every verse describing the law as completed, eternal, perfect, etc., and the clear explanation by God for how, when Israel felt that their temporal circumstances warranted a change in government style (from judges to a king), they were rejecting God as king. I mean, if we're gonna pit Biblical themes against potentially misinterpreted verses, the verses I mentioned above are not equivocal, and the themes I mentioned exist throughout the Bible. If we're going to talk about the law finding its ultimate realization in Christ -- how about God fulfilling His promise to Israel by granting them a human king, like they asked, but simultaneously restoring Himself to the throne by taking on flesh, so that His law will go out from Zion to all nations, His kingdom come, and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Why isn't the above impassioned paragraph a sufficient rebuttal? I talk about themes don’t I? It's because WGE has an even more impassioned paragraph that disagrees with it, and also Leithart's article was probably longer than mine, or he's published more, so he's got street cred. So much for determining which legal ideas are more wise by reference to "general themes" in scripture! 

Suppose I want to focus on more clear teachings in the Bible. I ask, what's unclear about Deut 4:2 and 12:32? Those are plain verses, not just “themes” and "broad principles". The response is really incredible: those verses don't even get interpreted away! They're not called “questionably interpreted”, or, "difficult to understand", or, "subject to debate". Worse! Since WGE have proved by reference to the general themes that additional legislation is permissible, these verses, clear enough though they are, simply cannot be relevant to us. They're just for Israel! We can't apply the OT law directly to us, because we can't interpret it; we must instead turn and work with natural law, gaining wisdom from the themes in the Bible without taking its particulars seriously. And since that's true, any clear verses in the OT law which are easy to interpret, which disagree with the above, must just be irrelevant. 

But then, imagine thinking, "We can't take an overly literal approach to the law; SGE also has difficulty in bounding the scope of the general equity of the law. Therefore we should stop trying to interpret the scope of the general equity in terms of the stated law for all cases, and just make justice up! If it works, practically, and improves everybody's material station, then isn't it wise and good?"

Here we're getting nearer my aim. Behold, the end of law: material prosperity, gained by the practical consequences of a wise institution. We reject God's law and do this ourselves, using the natural faculties God gave us, and call it God's law. That’s why we are told to look to historical examples rather than to Biblical prescriptions — because the goal isn’t to make an obedient state, but to make a state that works, and we’re convinced that God’s law doesn’t work. The nations who were supposed to look at it and say “who else has laws so just?”must have been confused.

Here is the slippery slope that I watched my dear and precious friend descend. If only I were as eloquent as he is, so that I could make it sound reasonable! I can't even make this post into a decent reductio ad absurdum, because the conclusion is so utterly absurd that, by addressing it partially I make myself a failure at dispassionate analysis, but by addressing it fully I make myself as foolish as the conclusion itself. A normal person will read and call me a fool for making a big deal about it, themselves not believing that this is a real danger; a person who has already succumbed will read and call me a fool for not addressing their statistical arguments in the manner they prefer (by showing that my position is more probable than theirs); a WGE who takes the warning seriously will think he can simply safeguard himself by doubling down on his own "more wise interpretations of the Biblical themes". Silent corner of the internet, receive and ignore me.

Let me emphasize that I don't subscribe to the train of thought I'm about to represent -- this is the argument as I perceived it: Different people have different capacities and limitations, some of which are inherited. We should seek to accommodate one another's limitations, and to provide for the needs of those vulnerable people who lack the capability to provide for themselves (nothing objectionable yet, right?). Now imagine we place that vulnerability on a scale, where people with greater or lesser inability received greater or lesser help; kinda sounds like an argument for a particular healthcare scheme, but this is more broad -- this help might come as money, accommodating job opportunities, or any other thing a wise WGE ruler might conceive that could be encouraged with some tax money and a committee. Hang on to that idea, and let's return to an examination of the abilities of individuals. The extent to which a person's capacities and limitations are inherited can be distinguished at the familial level, and can be distinguished more broadly by tracing back the family tree, as a statistically significant presence within a clan, a tribe, even a race. See where this is going yet? Biasing redistribution of national assets in terms of race. But it goes further. If it's really true that these incapacities are divided along the lines of race, and that they diminish the quality of life of those individuals affected, then a wise ruler, seeking to help his people will take steps to improve the overall genetic quality of his populace. Don't worry! The argument only went so far as to say that a good government should provide positive eugenics (like, incentives i.g.?). You might rebut that these policies have been tried with disastrous consequences. The argument is that those policies were destructive in the past because they weren't implemented by Christians, basing their ideas on wise Biblical themes. The proof of the danger here was the responses among members of the group; the more dispassionate WGE thinkers among us accepted the premises and admitted an inability to rebut it; accepted it even. Again, let me bookend this by reasserting that I disagree with the above train of thought vehemently. This argument was delivered by the same person who I quoted at first, saying "it is the responsibility of the state to promote virtue, punish vice, and secure the common good," and without allowing himself to use scripture as the clear reference point for what is "virtue", "vice", and "the common good", he descends to these depths.

Now, it might be common to recoil a little from this because of the historic prevalence of destructive policies geared around this kind of reasoning. But reader, don't recoil simply because you've been conditioned to recoil by schooling about past genocides! 

No, recoil because the Bible lays out a law incompatible with this, and says, "you shall not add or subtract from my statutes"! Recoil from this, and recoil with the same vehemence from the Republic, the human Monarch, the Commune, the Constitution, the Democracy! Recoil from sin, and turn to Jesus, a King with a Law!

"If God wanted us to believe in Evolution...why'd he make the Earth look so young???? Eh???"

On the computer at home today for the first time in a long while. I was hoping to make a new Windows 7 x64 boot disk, but the only working laptop I have is windows 7 x32. I'm going to have to use my wife's laptop. But since I have this PC open already, I can check more things off my list.

This is a poem I wrote for my mom for her Christmas gift. I have been meaning to post it here for posterity.

-----

The Lord is in the Heavens,
   He does all that He pleases.
He gives and takes away;
   He grinds the grain to pieces.
And what can good Job say?
   From his home he clears all leaven.

Man prepares a sacrifice,
   Precious Jesus to observe.
Greeting his savior in this way
   A mystery he learns.
By pain, contentment suffering stays.
   Prays he God to make him wise.

The rich man and the lowly,
   God is maker of them both.
Each depends on every word
   God's messengers have wrote.
"Light has come into the world"
   To make believers holy.

-----

The abcbca rhyme scheme is intended to mirror the thematic structure of the poem. The line, "by pain contentment suffering stays" has an intentionally awkward sentence structure; the next line is also awkward and is intended as a clue to how we should read it. Contentment is the subject, suffering the object, and "by pain" a prepositional phrase. The missing comma leaves it open to a more pessimistic interpretation, which I hoped would cause the reader to consider the difference between Christian and non-Christian interpretations of the theme; Jesus's sacrificial pain, and the way he was content to give himself for us, diminishes our suffering and gives way to our mutual contentment with him.

I'm pleased to report that the latest version of the ChatGPT website has made me able to access it on this old Win7x32 laptop.

Considering the current trend in AI, where people train the AI on their own biographies, has me considering the option to eliminate this blog -- maybe to buy a bound, print version of it and then delete the online version. I don't really want anyone training an AI to imitate me (although given the time scale for this blog, the AI training will likely average out to a much less mature version of myself; and then again, maybe since these are all essays, it won't be noticeable). At any rate, I've not put very much actual autobiographical information here, and most of what I've written here has been intended to vent stress, an AI trained on this data would probably be a real drag to communicate with.... but he at least would have my writing style, I suppose. Too many commas; run-on-sentences; excessive use of self-qualifying clauses (perhaps, I suppose, I guess, I think, etc etc etc)..

Anyhow, I have a lot to do today, so I'd better get off the blog.

"Are you intentionally misinterpreting our position?"

I might legitimately be unhinging myself with the study I've been doing of God's personhood. I generally want to parameterize everything I learn -- discover it's rules, etc., ("This is how it works... if A then X"). But it seems all existence is a divine conversation between characters who are so far above my intellect that I can't even begin to expect them to take anything I say seriously. I've got so much material to dump here about what I've been studying, but I really can't seem to articulate any of it. It's all so complicated, and there are so many holes in my knowledge that I'm not sure whether it'll ever be possible for me to organize these thoughts. And yet, having an organized thought life has been a high priority for me ever since middleschool! How can a person live without knowing his own mind? It might be decades before I get enough free time to meditate and get anything particularly lucid out of it.

Lately I'm discouraged a little in the campaign for theonomy. I find myself feeling exhausted at the thought of rebutting articles about it, which is something I used to really enjoy... so I'm gonna rant about it. Here we go!

I think, overall, theonomy is not a complicated sell. The objections are many, but generally it seems like people come into agreement with theonomy as soon as they're able to accurately represent it. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen an argument against theonomy which had both (a) a clear dependence on some obviously scriptural teaching, and (b) a lack of dependence on some misunderstanding about what theonomy entails or requires. But then, even after people become theonomists, they still carry with them all these reservations and wild ideas about God's law -- eliminating these, you might think, should be as simple as a read through the book, but that is not quite the case. 

What's really getting me is...Why is it so hard to convince Christians that they should obey God's commands? It feels like (and, if we're gonna be nuanced, it probably isn't like) the excuses from theonomists and non-theonomists alike are basically the same. It goes like this: 

Eventually you can convince just about every Christian that the Bible teaches us that God is concerned about our behavior, and that justice is morally relevant, and that politics are consequently relevant to Christians. So, after concerns about soteriological implications are resolved, the discussion begins about which of God's commands He actually intended us to follow.

Initially, the proceeding conversation revolves around covenants, and, since no participant is able to yield any clear passages linking the whole law to either covenant, except insofar as both covenants describe means of forgiveness for our breaking the whole law, the conversation may turn toward the uniqueness of Israel's particular circumstance. We all agree that the law is given as case law, where the case law illustrates principles and establishes a scope of general equity that the judges are expected to understand well enough to rule against them in broader contexts than what is literally described. And, nobody denies that the case laws are tailored to Israel's circumstances (e.g. Exodus 22:1). Finding, as before, that there are zero passages in scripture indicating that the aforementioned "tailoring" should be taken to mean that changes in location or technological advancement would obsolete the principles or general equity of the law, it usually takes quite a bit of effort to make someone realize that, consequently, the actual quality of that tailoring doesn't in any way imply that modern judges aren't expected to execute Mosaic civil law. 

Included in the above discussion is usually a long list of questions about particular laws, where a certain mode of thinking has to be established so that the person involved will know how to reach their own conclusions about other laws. For example, a common stream of objections comes from the notion that "land is an important theme in the OT". That's true, but let's get into the particulars. They ask how we apply the command for Israel to take Canaan from the Canaanites -- the answer: we distinguish between commands of the form, "you, go accomplish X task right now", and commands of the form, "whenever you are in Y circumstance, you should perform Z task". The command to take Canaan was of the former sort, and was actually already accomplished by Israel, such that even if someone were to argue that it is still obligatory for us (because all commands from God reflect moral imperatives of some sort), we would be left saying that the task has already been done (there are a few other good ways to approach it; in just giving quick examples here). So they move on to ask about the general equity of the allotment of the land to the tribes, the jubilee laws, and the mode by which we expect the theonomic state to grow on the earth; each having a different sort of answer, but all following from the same hermeneutic approach and so dictated by the contents of the text. (I'll reiterate that the theonomic state expands peacefully, without initiating war).

There might also be some conversation about what is meant by Jesus in Matt 5 (where he clarifies and affirms the law), or in Matt 19:8 (where he clarifies a proper understanding of adultery as it pertains to reasons for divorce by citing and affirming Mosaic law), etc. etc... Those are generally not hard to get through with a bit of discussion (making a non-theonomist into a theonomist doesn't happen overnight).

Then, when the person has finally accepted that God expects them to do justice as God defined it, and that God didn't redefine it without telling us the new definition in the NT, the conversation turns to fulfillment. I suppose that most theonomists have a poorly worked-out understanding of the actual means by which Jesus fulfills parts of the law, making those parts unactionable for us. This deficiency is the root of all kinds of disagreements among theonomists, and I think that it should be the focus of argumentation before praxis.

But then, even after all of that is basically agreed upon, one last hurdle remains, and crops up over and over and over. There are always several laws for which the theonomist knows no clear reason why it should not be followed today, but which the theonomist believes should not be followed, and these can be identified easily by their failure to conform to that Theonomist's understanding of the mode of fulfillment mentioned in the immediately prior paragraph. The reasons given for why those laws are abrogated or inapplicable to us boil down to terribly arbitrary divisions in the law -- excuses, really, to squeeze in their own notions about what kind of government would or wouldn't work in reality. Some of my favorite examples of this (which I've encountered) include:

• That law can be seen as symbolic of a particular act Jesus did, and so it was a shadow of the work Jesus did, therefore it doesn't apply to us after Jesus's death.
• Israel did it this or that way, therefore that's what the law meant, regardless of what the law actually said.
• The law was given on two tablets, and the second table of the law is abrogated in a different way from the first, because if you look at them separately, you can construe them in such a way that there is a thematic difference between them.
• This law was intended to protect the seed of Israel from genetic impurity, (as if Jesus's body was a divine eugenics project), and so is not relevant to us.
• This or that law was needed for Israel's cultural/sociopolitical atmosphere, but it isn't needed for ours.
• Moses was speaking as a chieftain, not as a prophet, when he issued this or that law (e.g. the judicial structure). Therefore that law is not necessary for us to follow. 
• The NT says that Jesus performed X act in obedience to that law, and so it was a shadow of the work Jesus did, therefore it doesn't apply to us after Jesus's death.

Some of these sound reasonable on their surface, but they get really "fun" to sort out when their proponents try to justify them using any scripture at all. The irony here is, most of the above bullets come from conversations I've had with people who I suspect are the most well-read about theonomy and legal theory among all of my theonomist friends.

I feel like the formula I most often encounter from theonomists goes something like this:

The Biblical Law does contain a prescription on X topic, but that prescription is not relevant to us because [reason from above bullets], and yet we do evidently need an answer for X topic today, and the Biblical one might work if not for [extra-Biblical argument for favored secular political theory], and so the real answer must be derived from [feel-good-general-principle drawn from broad slashes at some Psalm or random quote from the NT or something], and therefore we should do [proposal for some random secular policy, but willingness to budge toward literally anything else except what the Bible prescribes, given a regular, secular-style political argument].

Political legitimacy, for example, was an issue recently discussed in the theonomy forum. Several options for political legitimacy were examined and found epistemically difficult -- from my perspective, it was nearly impossible to qualify the political and physical boundaries of an entity fitting any of the proposed definitions. I offered the idea that, basically, a government was legitimate if it was elected according to Biblical procedure, conforms to the Biblical model, and carries out Biblical law. This makes legitimate governments more-or-less easy to identify, given some basic terms of agreement on what makes for a reasonable attempt at obedience to scripture. The objection to this was that it was unconscionable that all secular governments were illegitimate, and so any group hoping to follow Biblical law could erect a legitimate political authority at any time simply by obeying God's command to set up a government, and that they would be morally justified in defending that authority from violence in accordance with Biblical laws concerning just (defensive) warfare. Basically, it would be shocking if anyone obeyed God!

But suppose we agree on a theory for how, precisely, Jesus fulfills the law (we don't, and that is a problem, but I don't think it affects my aim here, because I have a hard time imagining even a hypothetical theory which would preserve laws dictating judicial activity without preserving the laws dictating that we should have judges who carry out those activities). After that, the first step toward obedience should be pretty simple. We have some positive commands in scripture requiring that God's people have judges who carry out certain activities. We should be able to agree that the first step in obedience is to simply elect some judges to carry out those activities! And, if we have disagreements about what precisely those activities are, we can at least all agree that "trying to obey some interpretation of scripture" is better than "avoiding scripture altogether". Different denominations all are accepted as "saved", and so I see no reason why different interpretations of scriptural law can't all be seen as "attempts to be obedient" (or maybe "faithful"), and therefore carrying some form of Biblical legitimacy.

But then again, building on the confusion about legitimacy, I keep seeing the existing governments mentioned in people's plans to move forward. It's almost as if people are getting hung up on the idea that we already have judges, and they just aren't acting right, so we need to change the judges or the laws to match scripture. There are a ton of problems with that idea -- first of all, that there's no legislative structure in God's law, and God's law actually includes commands saying that we shouldn't add or remove from it (so no making or changing laws). But second, and more relevant, the judges in scripture are defined in no terms other than that they perform the duties which scripture describes -- if a judge isn't performing those duties, then he isn't a "judge" as scripture defines "judge". We have no judges even attempting to comply with scriptural law over and above secular national laws. That is to say, we don't have judges at all; we have something else with the same name, and so we are simply disobeying God's command to select judges.

Call me obtuse, but I can't help thinking that the Bible isn't all that unclear on this topic. In fact, I have a hard time understanding how we've reached a place where we can look at plain scripture and interpret it to mean something other than what it plainly says -- God gave some commands, and didn't tell us to stop obeying them. This should be pretty simple, I think. It's as plain as Deut 30:11-16. We're just disobedient.

"Note then the kindness and severity of God"