Several years ago, I was in Auburn, Alabama visiting my son during the Mises University summer courses. We went out to dinner with one of his friends who was attending. The first question my son asked his friend was “Are you an AnCap [Anarcho-Capitalist]? The friend immediately replied “Yes!” and my son responded that he was as well. I said that I was a minarchists like former US Congressman and Presidential candidate, Dr. Ron Paul, MD. Actually, on reflection I would actually rather call myself a quadarchist. Let me explain.
Every social teaching is inextricably bound up with a big story or a metanarrative as the post-modernist philosophers like to call them. Everyone has such an overarching explanatory story. They are inescapable. Even the postmodernist, who eschews such tales, possesses one: “There are no big stories,” they would claim! Yet that in itself is a metanarrative.
Christians claim that their story is the true history of the universe. Many also state that this story is also that of the founding document of the “thirteen united States,” the Declaration of Independence. The “Creator: of all things has “endowed” only humanity and not angels or animals with inalienable rights and responsibilities. This flows out of the Scripture’s account that “Nature’s God” designed only mankind in His image. Because He has chosen to enter into covenant only with them does each human from conception to natural death possess the “right to life, liberty, and property” (the original reading) within which he or she can exercise the freedom for the “pursuit of happiness.”
In the Declaration an unspoken but virtually universally received presupposition exists, again based on the Scripture’s grand story. Every human being, save one, is and has been in rebellion against their Creator. That one exception is mentioned in the US Constitution’s closing words: “in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven.” Every human is a rebel to God the Creator yet is capable of great civic good because God originally placed that motivation to be good in the heart of every person. However, the Christian grand metanarrative also teaches that though human civic good may be outwardly pristine yet because the underlying heart desire is to be seen and praised merely by one’s fellow man, it is evil before God. Mere external righteousness is detestable before God even as our Lord Himself states in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere. Every human is fallen in Adam and hence also craves to defraud and oppress his or her fellow human, robbing them of their God-granted inalienable rights. Such robbery is what the Declaration calls “injuries,” “abuses and usurpations” the destruction of personal “future security,” “safety,” and “happiness.” This was the moral dilemma that the Founders were obliged to take into account when they seceded from George’s Kingdom.
They desired a strictly limited civil government based on the free “consent of the governed.” This, however, is only one of the divinely designed quadarchy they believed in. Such civil government derived from the consent of covenanted (or federated) families. Those families voluntarily and only temporarily yield some of their inalienable rights to mutually agreed upon civil arbitrators in the case of oppression. All other rights are held by the people as the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment states. Oppression, of course, according to our founding document is the violation of these rights. These rights include first liberty under our God whom we trust. These rights are five-fold and include not just liberty under the one true God but secondly impartial justice within due process in regular courts of law. The next right and responsibility granted by the Creator is bi-gender and sexually faithful families. He gave such families the sole right and responsibility to bear, adopt, protect and educate children, who in turn should respect and care for their parents until death. The fourth right is life from conception to natural death. Fifth, tangible private property must be responsibly protected by the covenanted families from theft, coercion, and blackmail. This Christian non-aggression principle – actually loving one’s neighbor as oneself – is fundamental to liberty and justice. It must never in any way be compromised by a jingoistic or xenophobic domestic or foreign policy.
In summary, these five rights and responsibilities are capsulized by the Golden Rule and the first great commandment to love God with all one’s heart. The consenting families set up just civil jurors to act as impartial and wise arbitrators solely to protect their God-granted equal rights. Anything beyond this is the definition of oppression and tyranny against which our Founders resisted. They saw no contradiction between this and Romans 13 as we shall see.
All five of these rights have a flip side, a responsibility to protect one’s neighbor’s covenantal rights. The right and responsibility to bear arms to protect with the strength of the “great and awesome” Lord and even to “fight for your brothers, your sons and your daughter, your wives and your homes” is a created (“natural”) right that cannot be regulated or controlled by the State (Neh 4:14). Disarmed peoples are always oppressed peoples throughout all history. These responsibility rights flow out of the Creator’s design norms (“natural law”). He has inscribed them in every man’s conscience and in the Ten Commandments. Now because of the Fall of Adam, human consciences can be twisted, bent, and broken hence the widespread need for the proclamation of the Gospel and teaching of our Lord’s total Word throughout Scripture. Only through the Gospel does the Holy Spirit truly correct these mandated instructions upon the hearts of trusting humans. This is, as the Founders generally acknowledged, “sound religion.” Only within the Christian grand story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Consummation can true liberty and justice result. Citizen-owned AR-15s and captured Abrams tanks cannot create them but can only protect them as can walls. After all, the Chinese had the presence of mind and the common will to act upon these God-created instincts for cultural preservation to build their several thousand-kilometer-long Great Wall over many long centuries. If the DC cabal refuses to build our walls, the states should take up their God-given mandate to do so just as the citizens under Nehemiah did in Jerusalem after the Exile.
Three other “archies” of the Christian quadarchy thus exist. Freedom begins as multitudes of individuals are transformed by the Creator’s grace. Then He enclothes them with the Spirit’s martial weapons: Truth, justice, peace among all men as far as it belongs to us, trust in divine faithfulness, and the God’s victory for faith-filled men and women. The most important weapon is the Spirit’s only authorized sword for the individual acting in his or her personal capacity: The “spoken” Word of God as the original language implies. All peace, safety, and pursuit of happiness are always within the liberty of the Spirit of God. A people infused with the Gospel of God’s Spirit are the only truly free people because those who live by the oppressor’s sword will die by that sword and those who practice rebellion against God’s covenanted rights and responsibilities are slaves. Again, the Founders generally recognized these truths.
Individual freedom to pursue what one desires without coercion can only occur within the just framework of the Creator’s design norms. Self-control is the foundational archy of the Christian quadarchy. Mankind is only free within the Kingdom of the Son, not the kingdoms, nations and archies of the rebel earth. The longed-for liberty is only found under the Anointed Son’s hegemony as Psalm 2 and 110 proclaim. A true covenantal libertarian can never be a libertine.
The second archy is that of the Creator’s binary family made up of chromosomal males and females. According to His design norms, two families consent to the marriage of their children, who also give un-coerced consent. The resulting covenanted union must be recognized by the other federated families with a signed contract with two or more witnesses. The contract spells out each partner’s rights and responsibilities according as Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 7. Paul did not here invent new principles, but followed our Lord’s wisdom, who came not to abolish the “law and the prophets” but to give a culturally universal version of the old covenant’s Hebrew faith and design-norms. Free self-controlled, responsible individuals in freely covenanting families are the first and second archies.
Third is the archy of believing families covenanting together in Christian religious communities. This is the ecclesial archy or ecclesial government. This social sphere is not an ecclesiarchy, which like the term “theocracy” implies a coercive rule by turbans and collars, by mullahs, “priests or presbyters” (as Milton stated) that impose laws above or below those of the Lord. Ecclesial communities consist of families and individuals covenanted together to serve God and one another in love. Our Lord tasks this community the responsibility to teach all peoples “everything” that He commanded from the original culture building mandate of Genesis 1 to the last command of Revelation. The Greek word ekklesia does not imply a building or an oppressive hierarchy. It implies only a community of God’s people mutually responsible to one another and God with shepherds and elders as their elected representatives.
The fourth and least important archy then is the civil-archy, which so many mistakenly call “the government.” It has one purpose only, to “give . . . full time” to impartially punishing oppressors and praising those who live in the framework of five God-granted rights and responsibilities, liberties if you will: Liberty under the God whom we trust, impartial justice with truth and due process of law in regular courts, binary family, and private property. All are derived from the Decalogue and are found in Holy Spirit led consciences (Rom 9:1), historically misnamed “natural law.” Only for this single and strictly limited purpose does it exist and for which the covenanted and consenting families ought to provide finances. Romans 13, a much twisted passage, describes this sole purpose for civil arbitrators. The covenanted family-chosen (or even a brutally self-chosen) civil authority – it doesn’t matter – is never autonomous. Civil-archy is always under the Creator and His appointed “Son” as the Second Psalm teaches. The Creator holds them directly accountable as Psalm 82, among many other passages, states. Hence, he (or she) is both “God’s servant” and the peoples’ servant for “the good,” as Paul states literally. What does Paul mean by that phrase? Certainly, Paul believed that following the mandates, instructions, and witnesses of the Creator is “the good” (read what he writes immediately following in Romans 13:8-10 and also previously in Romans 7:12). Following the good, holy, and just tôranic wisdom of God is always wise and beneficial for the covenanted and consenting citizens. How am I sure of this? Paul self-described himself as a good Jew, who knew and followed the Scripture what we now call the Old Testament. All the Scripture teaches us justice and righteousness, Paul told Timothy (2 Tim 3:14-17). They were written for our present instruction, he told the Corinthian and the Roman believers (1 Cor 10:1-10; Rom 15:4). Every principle of justice inscribed in the Jewish “law and prophets” is now universalized and applied to present cultures. Jesus did not come to abolish but to fill up and universalize the meaning of the Old Testament, as he boldly states in the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5:17-21).
Second, both the Old and New Testament writers universally taught that the civil arbitrators must exercise impartial justice that does not respect the “face” that is the social position or ethnic background of a person. The Torah, the prophets, Jesus, and his apostles and prophets universally agree upon this impartiality principle. Many scholars have pointed out. See, for example, those in Christian Libertarian circles such as economic historian Gary North, social ethicist Calvin Beisner, and philosopher Ronald Nash. Even non-Christian Libertarians such a Murray Rothbard and former atheist philosopher Anthony Flew agree. But how can a civil governor, arbitrating with the free consent of the governed, be impartial if he or she coerces tax monies with the gun stuck in the belly, as Dr. Gary North is wont to say, so as to redistribute it to the favored poor or any other chosen class such as bureaucrats? A just civil arbitrator must only assess just penalties to be returned to the aggrieved and oppressed party not to himself, society, or the State. To coerce taxes for redistribution is what the Declaration of Independence defines as “tyranny,” “oppression,” “injury,” and the like. It was only for those offences after due and diligent attention to address those evils failed that the consenting families at that time withdrew their assent. “It is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
Therefore, the three rights of life, liberty, and property mentioned in the original draft of the Declaration and explicitly in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights can only be exercised within the framework of mutually agreed upon arbitrators, that is within the framework of the consent of the governed. Those who consent delegate temporarily some of their natural (“created”) rights to those who exercise impartial justice if private communication, restitution, and reconciliation attempts break down. All impartial justice is supported by truthful witnesses and lawful oaths in regular courts of law as the third and ninth commandments state. Furthermore, regular courts of law must exercise due process such as described in the divine Word and the Constitution. “Due process” means according to the Scripture and our founding documents such basic things as innocence until proven guilty, habeas corpus, no self-incrimination because multiple, cross-examined witnesses are necessary for conviction, only public-court-regulated search and seizures upon reasonable suspicion of guilt, and a public trial in front of multiple, mutually agreed upon jurors. Jurors because they are judges in their own rights have the power of nullification if they believe the law is unjust or the charge frivolous. These are concomitant rights of each person under the rubric “impartial justice” as summarized (though not exhaustively) within the Decalogue and included in the Declaration, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and our Anglo-American Christian common law. If you doubt this, please read the classic commentaries on the common law of England by the brilliant legal scholar William Blackstone,
For those who wish to further contend, Moses did indeed instruct the Israelites to choose their magistrates (judges). He placed them in a system of wider (not higher!) appellate courts as Deuteronomy describes. (This is the most quoted book, by the way, of our founding Fathers, believe it or not). This resulting Hebrew Confederal Republic sans an earthly monarch (but with the Heavenly Monarch) is the biblical ideal for the civil-archy. The later Hebrew monarchy came only because Israel rejected their divinely designed confederation for a centralized State, which they thought would “save” them. The prophet Samuel pleaded with his people not to adopt such idolatry, but God Himself, since He established the principle of the consent of the governed, reluctantly granted the people their wish. The prophet Hosea later cites God’s decisive interpretation on the matter: “I gave you a king in My anger, And took him away in My wrath” (Hos 13:11). Ron Paul correctly pointed all this out in the election cycles of the 2010’s but was ignored by most liberal and neo-conservative Christians whose real god unfortunately is the welfare-warfare State. The Israelites and our American people have adopted the State as god and hence rejected the true King. It is oxymoronic for a Christian quadarchist to be an idolatrous Statist. The willingly-oppressed in the present centralized United State (the spelling is deliberate) owe their vision more to Marx and Engle’s Manifesto – read its ten principles for socializing any country – than to the Founder’s vision of a free confederation of thirteen States set up after the Declaration of Independence.
Scripture therefore does not teach patriarchy, hierarchy, matriarchy, oligarchy, monarchy, ecclesiarchy, theocracy, or any other archy or –ocracy but solely the quadarchy as I’ve described. Hence, foundational to liberty is the personal archy that normally lives within faithful family archies and within the overarching Christarchy. The ecclesial archy is an independent sphere ruled directly by the Anointed King above yet also through the consent of the ecclesially governed families. They freely choose elder-representatives to be their teachers, shepherds, and watchers/overseers (the original meaning of episkopoi). The ecclesial republic is foundational to a civil republic. Is there any other reason why we have lost our civil republic than that our people have rejected the true God for the idols of Federal Reserve paper and the State? They have made the State to be their ersatz family and church. Their sacraments are so-called Obamacare, “free” public education, Medicare, and Social Security. The priesthood consists the unionized State school teachers and black-robed judges, acquiescing before the inquisition from the “woke” social media and tech companies. We have rejected the fact that civil government must exist in mutual respect and freedom on the same level with the ecclesial and familial governments under the King of kings. We have made the State the only source of power, authority, welfare, and indeed the only source of “the good.” These are our Idols for Destruction as Herbert Schlossberg suggests in his excellent volume by that name.
I am convinced that this Christian quadarchy is the sole source for what I originally described to my son’s anarcho-capitalist friend as a civil “minarchy.” Only in such a strictly limited system in which freely chosen arbitrators seek to secure the five “natural” (creational) rights and responsibilities of the people can there be a fully functioning and free market economic system. Karl Marx infelicitously termed this economic system “Capitalism” – the private ownership and control of tangible private property – in contrast to his ideal “Socialism” – the common ownership and control of tangible and intangible intellectual property. Clearly ownership is inescapable. The question is who owns and controls tangible and scarce property: The millions of individuals who have freedom to make un-coerced economic decisions and hence must take full responsibility for them or an elite owning all property in the “name” of the people? For example, quadarchic freedom only comes when the store of value for work is in the hands of the people and not in the hands of a State-authorized and semi-controlled monopolies. Currency is gold and silver and must be returned to the hands of the citizen families and taken away from monopolist bankers, who daily debase their paper substitutes for actual coinage. The Reformed confessions and catechisms termed this “debasing of coinage” and rightly demonstrated that this historically common method to produce more “money” violates the Eighth Commandment. Therefore, solely to “secure these rights” have civil “Governments [been] instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” However, contrary to what the Declaration itself and common parlance might appear to claim, civil government is not the totality of “government” and should not be called “the government.” It is only one of several governments “instituted” and designed by the Creator.
Last, a Christian quadarchist teaches that “when a civil government no longer functions within the consent of the governed and usurps the ecclesial and covenanted families’ freedoms through “a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinc[ing] a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, [then] it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such [civil] Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security” as the Declaration declares. This was the social philosophy of our Founders and is mine. My son and I argue over whether this is what an AnCap is. I don’t know. But let’s continue the dialogue.
MRK
Is Special Revelation Necessary to Regulate Culture?[1]
This key question is central to the major debate at present within Reformational circles, pitting Kuyperians, following Abraham Kuyper versus Klineans, following Meredith Kline. Kuyperians believe that the sola Scriptura principle regulates every sphere and institution of humanity, including the four spheres of government–individual, ecclesial, familial, and civil.[2] Klineans,[3] in contrast, teach that God rules every area outside of the church and family by general revelation and common grace.[4] According to Klineans, there are no specifically Christian, scriptural teachings and norms informing every area of culture outside of the family and church. Instead, natural law, general revelation, and common grace must inform culture. There are, according to the Klineans, two Kingdoms and two laws to regulate humanity reflecting the distinction between the people of God and those of the world outside of God’s people.
Kuyperians, on the other hand, follow John Calvin and the Genevan Reformation teach the opposite. There is one King, one Kingdom and one covenant of grace, which establishes one legal covenant that give norms valid for every sphere of culture and life, which norms through the power of the Spirit can and must engage and transform every area of culture.
1. Special revelation was necessary before the fall of Adam. Even in the Garden, as Cornelius Van Til taught, Adam learned truth directly from the Word of God and his voice, probably in the form of the Angel of the LORD. Certainly, within this framework they were to discover more truth in the creation and by sound deduction because logic flows out of the nature of the God in whose image he made Adam and Eve. According to the Dominion Covenant (cultural mandate: Gen. 1:28-30), the LORD was not expecting the original couple to grope about to find his plan for life merely in common grace and general revelation. He gave them direct revelation, calling upon them to rule the world under his suzerainty. This mandate commands all humans to build and now to engage and rebuild every area of culture by the special command of the Creator.
Later, the Creator gave specific revelation in the second chapter of Genesis (2:16-17). God gave our original parents the task of interpreting creation—specifically the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as well as the other trees. Adam and Eve were accountable to their Sovereign to interpret general revelation (i.e., the creation) in terms of the special words God spoke with Adam and possibly also later with Adam and Eve. This special revelation gave the framework within which creational design and creational design norms could be correctly interpreted. The first couple were indeed responsible to think God’s thought after him.
2. Special revelation is still necessary after the fall. Unlike Adam before the fall, Adam’s now fallen children seek to rule his life by so-called neutral and autonomous wisdom springing from general revelation and common grace. When Adam obeyed the Deceiver’s voice instead of the Creator’s Word, he was contractually agreeing to live and interpret all areas of life in his own wisdom, to be like God, knowing and determining good and evil, justice and injustice, truth and falsity on his own without any reference to the Lord God’s interpretative words. When any person does this, he or she must necessarily suppress God’s specially given truth according to Paul in Romans 1:18. Adam and his children all exchange special revelational truth for “the lie, worshipping and serving the creature rather than the Creator. Therefore, any use of common grace and general revelation is used in order to reject the knowledge of God and to push him further and further out of his mind. This leads to idolatry, hetero- and homosexual impurity, and then to a totally disapproved mind that sees truth in the exact mirror image of God’s reality.[5]
3. Special revelation is necessary for salvation. Ps 19, Rom. 1:18-21, and Acts 17 claim that general revelation in the creation tells humanity that there is indeed a Creator, that his divine nature is eternal, and that everyone everywhere must glorify and thank him. The created conscience possesses a specific knowledge of the moral standards of the Decalogue. However, as all the Reformational confessions agree, general revelation does not reveal in what way real and permanent forgiveness can be obtained and how man’s broken relationship with their Creator can be restored because every person is a continual violator of the Creator’s norms.
4. Special revelation is necessary for pleasing God in any sphere. Because general revelation is not designed to nor is it capable of restoring the broken relationship between God and mankind, humans will always pervert, twist, and break the norms and revelation found in creation. Only through the Holy Spirit working through special revelation alone can any person please their Creator.[6]
5. God’s grace in King Jesus through the Spirit is the sole cure for humanity’s perversion of both general revelation and special revelation. In Romans Three (3:23-26), the Apostle writes, I paraphrase the tenses and the sense: “Everyone everywhere has never done anything but sin in the past, and presently they lack God’s glory, hence all are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus . . . in his blood, through faith.”
6. Humans only discover this grace through the unique biblical revelation, specifically the Good News concerning King Jesus (Rom. 10:14-17). Saving faith means trusting in Christ alone through that special gospel message, which reveals that God wills to save all mankind through Christ the sole mediator between God and mankind (1 Tim 2:4-7).
7. Therefore, no human is able to understand general or even special revelation without distortion, except he or she observes everything through the whole lens of the Scripture as one reads it in the fullness of the Spirit. As Calvin writes in the Institutes (1.1.6) biblical revelation is the only means to bring the true meaning and application of Scriptural revelation into sharp focus, like a pair of glasses clarify otherwise blurry sight.
8. God has never authorized any social institutions or activities to govern themselves without the use of his spoken and written words. Kline and others—ironically especially Dispensationalists—assert that a common grace order existed from the fall to Moses administered with only general revelation. From Moses to Christ a new theocracy began ruled by the inscripturated word of God. This new type of society was unique for Israel and pictured the coming eternal state. This is similar to that of Dispensationalism—ironically—except that they believe the theocracy pictured the millennial state. Both Klineans and Dispensationalists believe that God governed all the nations outside of Israel through general revelation and common grace. During the present new covenant age, Scripture gives no specific word for the engaging and transforming of culture except a few general words (e.g., Rom 13:1-8) and natural law.
This dichotomy does not come from the biblical covenants but is an alien dualist concept read into Scripture. There is no record in Scripture of any nation or society divinely authorized to govern itself by special revelation alone. This was true from the beginning. God gave Cain direct revelation after murdering his brother (Gen. 4:8-16). In the same way, God revealed to Noah (Gen. 8:20-9:17) and Abraham (12:1-3, also chapters 15 and 17) direct revelation relevant to familial, ecclesial, and civil governments. For example, the Noahic covenant gives God specific revelatory mandate to human collectives to maintain order and justice, forbidding murder and authorizing humanity to execute both animals and men who take a human life (9:6). The prophets of the Mosaic and Davidic Covenants, speak to every people, kingdom, language, and nation of earth with condemnation of idolatry, sorcery, murder, disregard for the poor and helpless, not honoring the Davidic Son, and so forth (see, e.g., Ps 2, 81, 96, Is 10-24; Jer 46-51, etc.). These all are specific revelational norms for non-Israelite peoples. Moses even says that the Mosaic covenant was an example to the peoples of what a wise and just legal system would look like (see Dt 4:5-8). Because creation revelation is not sufficient as I mentioned previously, we shouldn’t be too astonished by these and many other OT passages.
9. Special revelation is necessary for our public dialogue with non-Christians. A Kuyperian position would put off too many non-believing people, according to the commonly received wisdom. Merideth Kline’s perspective—and that of Dispensationalism—many believe, would provide a real benefit in the public discourse because natural law and natural revelation are a common ground between believer and unbeliever. Better, some say, to appeal to what all know about nature and science than to string Scripture passages together when speaking to unbelievers, who are hostile to Evangelicals. I grant that in the present agnostic and atheistic public arena, many feel that this is a wiser position to take. However, we lose a unique possibility to address issues from God’s perspective shared in Scripture if we reject the classic biblical position that the OT prophets used. They spoke in the name and with the words of the Sovereign Lord. That alone transforms through the power of the Spirit. Notice that even though Paul does not cite chapter and verse in his two discourses to idol worshippers in Acts 14 and 17, he still directly quotes some Scripture and cites many biblical concepts including the Creation of a single man from whom all nations have descended.
In Romans 1 Paul writes that the Creator manifest with absolute clarity norms for worship, sexuality, family, and justice in creation revelation. In Romans 2 he writes that these norms are written in the very heart and conscience of humanity leaving them without excuse. Roman Catholic theologians such as Thomas Aquinas and those who follow him in Protestant academia believe that this revelation comes through the ability of humans to make sound deductive and inductive arguments. I don’t think so. Creational revelation, according to the Apostle Paul, is universally valid among every people and language of earth (see Rom. 3:10-20). Not everyone such as mentally handicapped and children have the ability to construct such syllogism. Psalm 19 suggests that every person has the ability to read—probably given in the image of God—the “letters” written in and on the creational data from which we can then later make logical arguments.
Logical syllogisms and arguments constructed from natural revelation are hardly ever clear and compelling. Roman Catholics theologians and philosophers believe that all forms of birth control must be forbidden because of the obvious God created correlation between coitus and conception. Certainly this relationship is inescapable but can we argue from what is in nature to what ought to be morally? Again I don’t believe so. It would be like stating that because bulls copulate with many cows, human males ought to do the same with many females!
Coherent yet convincing analyses of social-ethical problems are founded upon transcendent norms for judgment and a divine perspective upon the universe. To be universally valid both of these must come from Scriptural revelation and not from creation in and of itself. This a Christian social philosopher, of course, must demonstrate to unbelievers in a manner that is both irresistible and inescapable because most will not easily acquiesce to a biblical worldview and ethic. In other words, Christian philosophers show that the opposite of their biblical epistemological and metaphysical presuppositions are impossible.
In some areas of public dialogue, every now and then it may be advantageous to discuss a social ethical perspective without direct reference to the Bible. For instance, it is wise to demonstrate the point that China’s policy on forced abortions for a second child has drastically affected the Chinese culture, or that the child abuse rate increases in cultures with abortion-on-demand, or the cultural effects of evolutionary materialism. Some unbelievers may be convinced through arguments like these. Especially in Western cultures most people have some residual knowledge of the biblical worldview, which they haven’t completely repressed. However, if an unbeliever questions us why, for example, human life is more valuable than that of animals, then we must share what God says in Scripture, where we get our values and judgments from.
10. At present, King Jesus is sovereign over every people-group and all areas of their various cultures (Mt 28:18), certainly not excluding law, economics, and politics. As the Supreme Monarch and Lord over everything, he is the King above all the kings of the earth (Rev 1:8, 17:14, 19:16; 1 Tim 6:15). When the early church proclaimed “Jesus is Lord” (Rom. 10:9, 1 Cor 12:3, Php 2:11), the Roman government knew that this was a political statement as well because “Caesar” claimed to be supreme Lord and Savior of humanity. Just as the Roman emperor cult had political and legal ramification, so the biblical faith in King Jesus did and does. The State was not threatened by an escapist mystery sect or a semi-Christian Gnostic cult, but was threatened to the core of its legitimacy by the proclamation that Jesus is both Lord and Anointed King of the Universe (see Acts 2:36). It was not the use of the steel sword but that of the Gospel word-sword, establishing the tôranic wisdom of the prophets that won and transformed the Empire. This biblical Word remains the only means to engage and transform our present world cultures. We must not reduce the power of the Word to the inner spiritual life or to the eventual consummational transformation at the Second Coming.
11. The Gospel will transform the whole creation. This includes even the inanimate creation. The special order “waits with eager longing for the manifestation of the sons of God” (Rom. 8:19). In Christ, all things will be reconciled to God (Col. 1:20). This makes even less likely the view that the word of God governs only the institutional church, and not the general culture.
12. Scripture commands every follower of King Jesus to diligently search for and live out God’s glory in every cultural endeavor (1 Cor. 10:31). The Good News is a comprehensive power from God to reach and transform every nook and cranny of human life. Nothing is hidden from God’s sight or the reach of God’s biblical wisdom (see e.g., Heb 4:12-13). God’s word changes and rebuilds every aspect of life. That, then, is our mandate from our Lord and King (Mt 28:18). Every thought must be brought captive under the justifying and transforming obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10:5).
13. Therefore, biblical special revelation is both sufficient and necessary in our word proclamation of our King’s suzerainty over all of life. In our discussion in the marketplace of culture, our King mandates that he be exalted as Supreme Lord. This is exactly what Psalm 2 and 110, the two most cited Psalms in the New Testament, proclaim. This is what the Great Commission mandates: “Teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you.” Does that not mean that a Christian legislator or judge must ignore the words of their Lord? Certainly not. In our public proclamation and application of the Word, general revelation is of some use just as Paul demonstrated in his two sermons to the idol worshippers of Athens and Lystra (Acts 14:15-17 and 17:22-31). However, when Paul began to approach the culmination of his message to the philosophers of Athens he did not appeal to some common ground general revelation but to the special revelation of the resurrection.[7]
Conclusion
It is a sad fact that when Evangelicals address the important social-ethical issues of modernity and postmodernity, they more often than not fall into the trap that Satan laid at the beginning: Eat of this tree and you will be wise, knowing and determining good and evil for yourselves. Human reason, apart from the foundation of Christ and his words, is foolishness to God and visa versa (see 1 Cor 1-3; Col 2:4-7). God did create humans to be morally or even rationally autonomous—creating one’s own wisdom and ethics. When we try to argue our ethical points using general revelation and natural law without any reference to Christ and his word, we give the impression to unbelievers that we are just like them.
All moral and ethical reasoning must be founded upon Christ, who in turn establishes the wisdom of the OT and gives wisdom to his NT apostles and prophets. Only in that framework can we correctly understand, research, explore, and apply common grace and general revelation to culture. Therefore a comprehensive discussion of any social ethical matter must take into account the explicit words of God in Scripture. This is what Kuyperians are attempting to do and what Klineans have a tendency to explicitly deny.
Now when I apply the foundational insights of the Kuyperians and of Anglo-American Puritans to social ethical issues, I am not urging a sort of theocracy that merges church and state. The Puritans and Huguenots, especially, would see that the Israelite confederacy and even the their monarchy practiced a very strict separation of the eccesial and civil offices. When Saul tried to offer sacrifices as a Priest-King, Samuel as God’s spokesman took away the right of the kingdom from his family. Both ecclesial and civil governments in Israel, by the way, were not autonomous or neutral but under the tôranic wisdom of their King of kings! Therefore when Klineans such as David VanDrunen, Scott Clark, and Michael Horton[8] claim that the Kuyperian path leads to such church-state union or a rejection of the spiritual gospel, they are sadly mistaken. Clearly Scripture teaches that the foundation of a godly society is Christ and a people, the majority of whose families bless and serve King Jesus. His Word in both Testaments regulates, gives guidelines, yes even sometimes fairly explicit blueprints for all of life. This has always been the Reformational way begun especially in Calvin’s Geneva but not limited exclusively there.
Now certainly many believers have misused these biblical principles but that does not mean we must now give up engaging culture and seeking to apply Scripture to every area of life. Yes it was true that Luther killed Anabaptists and Calvin acquiesced to the execution of Servetus (but not to his being burned at the stake). It is true that after the Glorious Revolution Cromwell overstepped biblical grounds to serve as virtual dictator, adding many human laws to God’s laws. It further true that putting to death the witches of Salem was wrong—not because Satanism and witchcraft should now be normalized as victimless crimes—but because the Salem clergy themselves showed how the civil magistrates were not following biblically taught due process principles and laws of evidence. Granting these errors, we must not come to the conclusion that these believers made an error by applying God’s word to politics, law, and jurisprudence. Their error was in incorrect exegesis, incorrect application, and/or simple rebellion against God’s words. The sins and misapplications of our forefathers ought then to motivate us to more gentleness and careful, patient dialogue with each other and the Scripture, but not to give up. That would be disobedience to our Lord’s clear command to “Occupy,” or “Do business until I come.”
© M. Kreitzer, D.Miss, Ph.D. 2013
[1] This article is based on one by John Frame in Christian Culture (Aug., 2006), 1-3 but using an opposite perspective.
[2] Some Kuyperian who are disciples of Herman Dooyeweerd, especially at the Toronto Institute for Christian Studies but would agree with Meredith Kline in that Scripture does not define the boundaries and content of the spheres of life. Instead, Scripture teaches the good news, which leads to regeneration through the Holy Spirit. Second, it gives a foundational Redemptive-historical world and life view of creation—fall and redemption and third provides only instruction for the specific matters of personal faith. Faith is a distinct sphere separate from the other spheres of life, which Dooyeweerd analyzes. The Bible, thus, does not give norms applicable to culture outside of personal piety, the church, and the family. Norms for the social spheres comes from general revelation and natural as led by the regenerating Spirit and the redemptive-historical world and life view. “So in fact,” John Frame writes, “ the Dooyeweerdian movement holds to a natural law position in ethics, politics, the arts and other cultural matters, more characteristic of the Klinean-Lutheran view than of the Kuyperian.”
[3] See Meredith G. Kline, Structure of Biblical Authority, and Kingdom Prologue. Klineans (e.g., M. Horton and D. VanDrunen) believe that Kline’s intrusionist ethical perspective is quite similar to Luther’s division between the law and the gospel and with Luther’s “two kingdoms” doctrine. Walter Kaiser actually even pegs Kline’s view as almost neo-Dispensational. John Frame believes that Kline’s position are similar to the Thomist “nature –grace” dualism. I agree. See John Frame, Doctrine of the Christian Life, forthcoming, chapter 12; Walter Kaiser, Jr. 1990. God’s promise plan and His gracious law. Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 33:3 (September): 289-302
[4] “General revelation” is revelation from God perceived in the creational design and information found in nature. “Special revelation” is found only in Scripture See Ps 19 and Rom 1 for teaching on general revelation. The knowledge of the Good News of the person and work of King Jesus only comes in special revelation that is the Bible. “Common grace” cannot deliver from sin or give any human the knowledge or experience of Christ’s delivering work, which only comes through verbal, Scriptural revelation. Common grace, in other words, can restrain the external manifestation of rebellion against God but cannot save.
[5] Creational revelation is not “general” in the sense of vague. As C. A. Van Til points out that it is specific, perspicuous, authoritative, and necessary, taking away every opposing argument and closing every excuse in our mouths before Christ’s throne of judgment (Rom. 1:20, 3:19). Creational revelation proclaims the truth concerning God’s justice (in conscience), his power, and his glory. Rebels know this in the inner recesses of their being that is created in the image of God, yet expend an inordinate amount of mental energy suppressing and distorting what they know. This suppression demonstrates their guilt and supports their full responsibility before God’s judgment. This mean in practice that modernity and postmodernity, as well as the major world religions, twist creational revelation to justify their rebellion and sin even though they know inside the true God and his justice
[6] Every person is totally depraved according to Scripture, but this does not mean that we all do all the evil we are capable of. It simply means that every one of man’s deeds is sinful before God even those that appear good before men (Mt 6:1ff) because God knows the selfish motivation and hostility against him that is each person’s fleshly heart (see Rom 3:9-19, 8:7-8). Certainly our Lord’s common grace restrains many of the external manifestations of human rebellion even though the heart rages against him (Prv 19:3). If it didn’t, then God would have destroyed us all ages ago. What total depravity does mean is that apart from the special grace in union with Christ, no one is capable of doing any good thing (Jn 15:4-5) to please God (Rom 8:8).
[7] Probably if he had more opportunity in the sermon in Lystra, he would have also proclaimed the crucifixion and resurrection as was his custom.
[8] See John Frame’s critique of Horton’s position at http://www.christianculture.com/cgi-local/npublisher/viewnews.cgi?category=3&id=1145485285.
Summary of Covenantal BL1K Ethics:
Redemptive Historical movement
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Minority-Child Status Ethics |
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Majority-Adult Status Ethics (Gal 4:1-7) |
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Some Pictorial ethics |
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Fulfillment ethics |
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Family Covenantal ethics (tied to one family-people-group) |
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Family Covenantal ethics (still patrilineal & extended family involved but with diversity but now tied to all people-groups)
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Material and spiritual blessing |
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Spiritual and material blessings
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Built in promises |
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Same promises though not totally fulfilled |
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Single ethnic group |
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All ethnic groups receive redemption & law |
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Individuals and families adopted into Abraham’s lineage |
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Individuals and all peoples adopted into Abraham’s lineage |
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Mono-ethnic ethic with universal application |
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Multi-Ethnic ethic = particular universalized |
mark r. kreitzer 