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???"