A response to a garden
variety sermon called 'The Cruelty of
Piety'
N.B. - The Sermonaudio link seems to be dead and so I've provided a substitute.
Though I am convinced the New Testament stands in diametrical
opposition to Theonomy I cannot but help and have a certain affinity with some
of its advocates. I share in their anti-Establishment attitude and frustrations
with regard to the Reformed mainstream. I too have no love for the OPC or PCA
and have been at times angered by their bureaucracies and frankly with the
deceit of some of their officers. At one time I was on a course to be ordained
in one of these denominations and yet today, I wouldn't even consider attending
one of their congregations.
That said, apart from a conflict with bureaucracy and
institutionalism I have no commonality with Theonomists and their wayward and
even twisted interpretations of Scripture.
Within minutes of starting to listen to this sermon I knew
where it was headed and I shook my head, marveling at yet another display of
Judaized and inverted hermeneutics which utterly fail to take the New Testament
into account... or rather read the New Testament in light of Judaized assumptions
regarding the Kingdom of God. These are the very assumptions that are utterly
dismantled and dispensed with throughout the New Testament. From Christ to the
Apostles, the triumphant geopolitical and cultural kingdom envisioned by the
Jews is rejected and what was a temporal and political order is replaced by the
Kingdom of Heaven. Like the Dispensationalists, the Theonomists can't let the
Jewish vision go. The two factions go in different directions but both
stubbornly refuse to submit to and completely reject the teaching of Christ and
the Apostles and how they teach the Church to read and understand the Old
Testament. Both factions insist on reading the New Testament through the lens
of the Old. The Theonomists at least understand that Jewish Israel is done but
they would replace it not with the New Covenant Church but rather with
something more akin to a gentile version of the Old Covenant accompanied by a
Jewish reading and understanding of the Kingdom. Their vision is but a more
extreme version of the Constantinian heresy which became dominant in the fourth century.
I was waiting for it and wasn't disappointed. Before the
sermon's end the now conventional twisting of Matthew 28, the Great Commission
was once more proclaimed. Instead of a command to 'make disciples of all
nations', we're told the commandment is to 'disciple the nations'. Do you see
the difference? The King James translation is perhaps more ambiguous on this
point (than say the NKJV) but a careful study of the passage will reveal that
the commandment is in reference to the universal trans-national nature of New
Covenant Israel (i.e. the Church) as opposed to some kind of imperative for
Christianisation. The latter is assumed by Dominionism but begs the additional
question regarding the validity of Christianisation. The concept itself is
bogus, absent from the New Testament and requires a virtual redefinition of
Christianity (in cultural terms) in order to make it functional. If this alternative
Christianity, this other form of gospel cannot be demonstrated then the
Matthew 28 assumption collapses and those who teach it are in grave, even
heretical and anathematised error.
The preacher would have us be Samson's by which he means we
are to be out and about fighting for world and cultural conquest. It's the
Church's task (we're told) to defeat the world and establish a global dominion.
Any preaching that doesn't emphasize this sort of 'action' and call to conquest
is preaching that 'lacks application'. There's a great deal of what I refer to
as pronoun confusion. 'Our' society is confused with the Church. And yet the
New Testament is abundantly clear, and on multiple occasions at that, that
society and the world are not part of
the Church, nor can they ever be.
We're told that pulpits haven't been faithful and that they
preach a defeatist eschatology. While we all use generalisations, at times this
Theonomist paints with a brush so broad that he discredits his argument and
harms his own credibility. Clearly he doesn't understand what Pietism is, nor
Marxism for that matter. His blanket condemnations are a jumbled mess as there
are many who disagree with him and yet do not embrace the cultural liberalism
and relativism he decries. He critiques those within Reformed circles that
he would reckon to be pseudo-Kuyperians and yet seems to miss that though they
break with him on a few points, they still nevertheless share in his overall
Dominionist posture and agenda. They're still (for the most part) advocates of
Right-wing politics and few of them are advocating the race theory he accuses
them of, let alone the gender-bending ideology of the day. I'm certainly no fan
of Tim Keller but he's not the apostate John Shelby Spong and while I'm less
than thrilled by the (essentially Lutheran) 'Two Kingdom' Theology of
Westminster Seminary in California, they cannot be thrown into the same basket
as Joel Osteen or Andy Stanley.
As far as 'victory' or 'success' (as opposed to defeat), just
how are these things defined? Are they defined in worldly terms? That's all I
heard in the sermon. Apparently success is wielding worldly power, by
conquering and subjugating the Philistines.
It's always been interesting to me how the more zealous forms
of Postmillennialism must (necessarily) dismiss large portions of the New
Testament and all the language concerning antithesis, persecution and suffering
must be relegated to an earlier sub-epoch of the New Covenant, one done away
with in the fourth century. Since that time, since the advent of
Christendom they (seemingly) no longer apply or carry any kind of authoritative
weight.
And yet the New Testament would say that faithfulness is
success. Faithfulness is victory. It is therein that God is glorified and the
world is condemned. It's foolishness to be sure. The world cannot understand
those who would choose the cross over the sword, the wilderness over the city,
the bitter cup over the gold and jewels the world has to offer. Faithfulness is
not fighting the culture war in order to make Babylon into Zion or to build the
Tower of Babel crowned with a cheap cross. Faithfulness is obedience and trust even
in the face of the sword and the fury and wrath of the world.
If he wants to criticise theological liberalism then I say 'amen'.
If he wants to criticise the ever-compromised and worldly strains of
Evangelicalism I will happily sign on. I will even happily criticise the
misnamed and distorted forms of Dominionist Two Kingdom theology advocated by
the Kuyperians of Westminster California, conservative Lutherans as well as the
culture-friendly Dominionism and pop-Postmillennialism of folks like Tim
Keller.
But it's odd to me that this Theonomist is so upset with
them. In reality they all share in his Dominionism. Contrary to the near
constant assertions of many pulpits and leaders it is the default position of
our day, the orthodoxy of the hour. They rage and rail about the many churches
which are 'disengaged' and closed up in their walls, that refuse to be politically
active and fight the culture war. Where are these churches? I would love to
find them. But for the past twenty years I have not been able to find them and
I never hear such doctrines advocated by teachers on the radio. Even old J
Vernon McGee who said you 'don't polish brass on a sinking ship' was still as
Right-wing as they come. Not everyone shares the Theonomic vision and yet an
overwhelming and dominant majority of Evangelicals, Confessionalists and
Fundamentalists hold in some form to the very Dominionism advocated by
Theonomy.
Their differences are in the end, pragmatic. They are debates
over minutiae and questions of implementation.
Feminism is certainly a problem in the Church, as is
worldliness in general but these things have all resulted from the very cultural
engagement advocated by the Sacralists and Dominionists who have dominated the
Visible Church for the past seventeen centuries. The Theonomists remain
idealists and yet the hosts of Evangelicals who have imbibed the teachings of
Kuyper, Rushdoony and Schaeffer, the groups that have the real numbers, that
are out in the world and know that to function in society, in academia, in government
and so forth... certain compromises must be made. And so in the end, the doctrine,
the ideology promoted by Theonomy – ends up leading to compromise and
worldliness.
He may lament a lack of vigorous and consistent
Postmillennialism but it doesn't matter as virtually everyone at this point has
embraced Dominionism. At that point whether one still retains elements of Premillennial
Dispensational eschatology or if one professes to be an Amillennialist, they
still (in terms of the day to day) function as Postmillennialists.
The Apocalyptic Amillennialism I advocate, despite its deep historical
roots, is a minority position that barely even registers in terms of numbers
and influence within Confessional and Evangelical circles.
What he calls defeatism is the eschatology and outlook of
Christian life found in the New Testament. Though we are sent as sheep to the
slaughter we are more than conquerors. Though the Postmillennialists would eliminate
the import of many New Testament verses and concepts through the implementation
of their Golden Age transformationalist vision of the Kingdom, students of the
Scripture know that the Kingdom of Christ is not of this world and that all who
follow Him will suffer persecution. Paul too was a defeatist (it would seem)
when he proclaimed to the Corinthians that he had nothing to do with those who
are outside the Church, let alone when he encouraged Timothy to avoid
entangling himself in the affairs of this life.
The whole premise and foundation of the sermon was flawed and
it was sad to listen to. Why? Because there was a congregation listening to it
and it gets played and listened to on SermonAudio... and people praise such
preaching. Why? Because it tickles their ears. Because it affirms them in their
lives of pursuing wealth and power and dominance over others. Sure, there are
plenty of Evangelicals who waste their money and time at the golf course but
most Theonomists I have encountered are actually far more likely to be
frequenting the golf course or spending time on their yachts then those who
reject their doctrines. Why? Because though he calls on his congregation to
fight the Lord's battles like Samson, he has misunderstood Samson and his
antitype Jesus Christ. We are called to take up the cross, something
Dominionism despises. That may sound harsh but it's absolutely the case. They
seek wealth and power and many of them find it, and then all too often they are
distracted by it and what Paul calls its deceitfulness.
Would he fight the Philistines? Would he destroy the
Canaanites? Then read the New Testament to find out how. And just what will one
find? The battle is spiritual not carnal, and neither are our weapons. We are
soldiers engaged in a spiritual and seemingly eternal conflict. But victory is
not won with the magistrate's sword, the legislator's pen nor with numbers or
the power that treasure can buy.
And so in the end I won't call him unloving or unkind but
instead I will call him what he is... a heretic and one who twists the
Scriptures and teaches God's people to sin. He teaches God's people to seek
another kingdom, a counterfeit Zion.
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