Does God's Law Apply to Us? | Doug Wilson and James White | Sweater Vest Dialogues

[Music] well doug wilson uh i think from talking with you in the past you may have attended a few vacation bible school sessions when you were a kid yes i i have done so yes you haven't done so you plead guilty and um did you ever memorize psalm 119 11 as a child yeah so we all probably know the verse and we applied it to memorizing scripture your word have i hid in my heart that i might not sin against thee and so on so forth and and then at some point hopefully for me maybe even in bible college you read the context which vbs isn't always all that good at the context thing that's that's not always the first thing that's emphasized and you find out that this is a massively long acrostic poem using every possible word uh for commandment ordinance statute precepts all this stuff and you discover that you know you think about it wow that's um that's that psalmist would only have had a certain amount of god's revelation and it included leviticus and deuteronomy and all sorts of stuff like that and you discover there's the the psalmist loved a lot of stuff that evangelicals just aren't taught to love god's law right was that a similar experience to yours uh yes i grew up um evangelical christians conservative evangelical christians have a deeply ambivalent attitude toward the old testament they they love and revere it in the sense that they don't know what to do with it you know it's like it's like a picture of their great-grandma you know i know i'm supposed to honor this but i don't know where i'm supposed to hang it right so she looks a little scary too when you start looking really close yeah those old photos can be uh intimidating not not unlike leviticus right which which is the one book that has stopped more people from actually reading through the bible in a year than any other book has um but yeah we have a functional problem in a lot of evangelicalism of course given that recent survey i'm sure you saw it that said a third of evangelicals agreed to the statement that jesus is a good teacher but it wasn't god i'm not sure the term evangelical has much of a meaning right uh to be very honest with you but limiting it to actual believers um i've often said that the church is canonically challenged that we have a deutero canon we really do we have a secondary level of canonicity with the old testament and if i was looking at the old testament as a whole i would say that the law especially when you get into uh laws specifically in regards to how israelites are to treat other israelites and how israelites to treat people outside of israel issues like that that's almost tertiary that's almost a third level uh canon for a lot of evangelicals and so a number of about five six years ago or so i did something that no reformed baptist had i i can guarantee you no reform baptist before me had ever done this now given how many weird things you do like sitting on burning couches and things like that this is probably going to be really boring for you sorry um but i'm still not sitting on a burning couch but um uh i don't know what's coming up in november and i'm not going to ask for any inside stuff um but my suggestion for you is if you start getting more into pyrotechnics in the future cgi cgi okay just keep keep those things in mind they're a whole lot better than the actual flames or yeah we're thinking about burning down a federal building i i hear i hear that's okay now that's okay now that's uh as long as you you're protesting something uh that'll that'll work but uh anyway um what i did uh as a reformed baptist is i played in a sunday morning service and i'm not even sure you would do this but i played in the sunday morning service the clip just the audio but the audio from the west wing episode when the president rips into someone on the subject of homosexuality by doing the well you know the shellfish thing can the washington redskins play football because they're touching the dead pigskin and you you've heard it i'm sure a thousand times before actually played that during the service as a part of my explanation as to why we were going to spend what ended up being 38 sermons on the subject of the holiness code the law of god its applications today cetera et cetera and that like i said caught their attention uh have you ever done anything like that would you would you have ever no i don't think wilsonian line there no you you outdid me there gotcha good i've got i've got some i've got to have something uh that i can say because i'm not sitting on a burning couch someone would have to explain to me what the west wing television show was then would have to explain to me how to how to make something electronic play in the pulpit you know there'd be all there'd be all kinds of problems are you saying you've never seen that clip on i think i may have seen the clip but i've never seen the show oh no i hadn't either i had never seen an entire but it just becomes so popular and you you certainly know this because i you were prepared for all of this when you went to the university uh the argumentation of you're picking and choosing uh if you're quoting from leviticus 18 leviticus 20 then you need to be talking about shellfish and mixed fibers and all that stuff was extremely big uh as homosexuality was making his run toward a burgerfell basically right and so they had us over a barrel because most of our people don't read the hole in this code have not thought through the hole in this code don't recognize jesus quotes from the smack dab middle of the holiness code which is where love your neighbor as herself is um and as a result a lot of our people are intimidated when they're accused of picking and choosing regarding god's law right and so you you probably know i wrote i co-authored a book in 2001 called the same-sex controversy with jeff neil you know jeff neal yeah good book yeah and uh so we had had to deal with these things and struggle with these things and come up with a consistent response to these things uh years and years ago in dealing with homosexuality so i've had that challenge and you've obviously engaged that challenge as well but it's not going away and now that we're dealing with all sorts of other issues like transgenderism and things like that having a solid grasp on the centrality of god's law that goes beyond we're not under law we're under grace right right means absolutely vital today but i'm not hearing nearly as much emphasis upon as i would expect to hear yeah we threw right on the verge of battle we threw the majority of our arsenal away we jettisoned you know we jettisoned it we got rid of it and then now we're beleaguered as we are fighting with you know wooden swords and trash can lids we and and to their credit a number of good evangelical folks are still fighting but they uh in in timothy where it says that the man of god that's um uh a a statement a phrase that refers to the minister that the man of god in the old testament is the prophet or the minister or the so the man of god may be complete equipped for every good work well the all scripture is is the breath of god well what scripture is he talking about there right uh timothy didn't have a complete edition of the new testament he had certainly by by that time he had portions but he didn't have the whole thing and the scripture that paul's referring to is the old testament scripture uh genesis to malachi for us genesis to second chronicles for the for the jews the whole thing is is profitable for training teaching reproof instruction and these are times when we need to reprove people we need to instruct people we need to teach people and we've thrown away most of the toolbox we've or thrown away most of our weapons before we before we've gone into battle and that explains why we're not doing so hot most definitely and at the same time because of the theological education that most ministers receive in most seminaries looking at new testament texts like reading paul's epistle to the corinthians and being sensitive to his utilization of the old testament law um being sensitive to when he writes to timothy and how he follows the the commandments in order when laying out the goodness of the law um in rebuking those who were disputing about genealogies and and all the rest this kind of stuff and interestingly enough when he does so he includes homosexuality in the sexual sin portion and sort of expands that out and and includes that which is vitally i mean this is vitally important because the homosexual lobby and the quote unquote christian homosexual movement comes at our people and they come at them in such a way as to separate each of the primary texts out of the narrative of scripture and then pick them off one by one give them a plausible reason why each of these quote-unquote clobber passages are not actually relevant right and our people are left going why i don't know what to say i don't know what to do about this because they don't have a holistic understanding of how the apostles viewed the moral content of the law and issues like that because let's face it evangelicalism has pretty much diminished the role of the law and even amongst reformed folks we have disagreements uh we have arguments with one another and in fact anyone who would dare to say that god's law remains relevant today might be called the t word and ever since that one book came out from westminster in the 1980s you don't want to be called the t word because that's pretty that's almost being bad as being called a wilsonite so you know and that's the end of your your big conference career at that point right and one of the there are good-hearted christians who are more than happy to stand by the passages in the old testament on say homosexuality but the they're not embarrassed by that part what they're embarrassed by is what to say when you they encounter a an erudite non-believer who's got follow-up questions they don't know what to do with the shellfish question they don't know what to do with stoning the rebellious young delinquent they don't they don't know what to do with those passages and because they don't um have an answer ready to hand because they've not been taught they've not been um nobody's gone through this with them and and answered the obvious questions they are they they'd rather not open up that can of worms so if i appeal to leviticus i'll just stick with romans one because if i go to if i go to leviticus then people are going to say well god said other things to moses right and how do i how do i answer that because i eat bacon i uh how how do i uh how do i resolve this because it can be made in two two minutes by a sophisticated non-believer to look like we're picking and choosing right right so uh well i'm appealing to the old testament passages that reaffirm my bigotry and homophobia and i don't appeal to anything that would interfere with my breakfast i like the way you put things so um so let's let's go ahead and and and put the big question on the table real quick deal with it and so we can get into i think more important stuff um talk to us about how you view the term theonomy and how you would view your position in regards to for example the westminster confession where it fits historically right as to how you view the law of god and its role uh in the church today okay so when people ask me as they have periodically over the years are you a theonomist my first tongue-in-cheek answer is oh no i hate god's law and this well wait no you know what i mean and then you would say well no actually i don't know what you mean you know if if you're if you're asking me if i want to line homosexuals up in the city square and execute them with the firing squad if that's what you're asking uh me about then you've got a caricature of this whole thing running and i'm not going to say yes in response to you're posing the question that way but if if we're talking to people who've read a book people who who are really want to know honestly want to know i describe myself as a general equity theonist or a westminster theonomist so the westminster confession says that the law it breaks the law out into moral ceremonial and judicial the moral law is binding always always and everywhere the ceremonial law is fulfilled in christ and but fulfilled doesn't mean it went away fulfilled means it it's crucified and raised in christ so paul says we keep the festival not by getting rid of yeast but by getting rid of the east of malice and wickedness so christians still keep passover but we keep it in a different way it's fulfilled in christ it's so we don't offer the blood of bulls and goats because we trust in the blood of christ we you know that's the ceremonial law is fulfilled uh and then the the the bear is the judicial law uh which the westminster confession says was written for that people under those circumstances at that time and has passed away with the passing away of that nation except as the general equity thereof may require okay so when i'm looking at the judicial law i'm looking at you know something the the law i use to illustrate it is the law that requires a parapet around the roof of the house right okay so uh back in the middle east and those in those times that's where you went up in the evening to cool off you'd go up on the roof of the house and it was like everybody's second story deck and so the law required a parapet around the roof of the the edge of your house to keep people from falling off well it would be blind theonomic absurdity for someone to insist that christians today must build a deck rail around the roof of their house where nobody goes ever right um because that custom that style of architecture that state of israel that's all gone now but there is a general equity uh uh principle in in that so if i'm if i were a judge in a christian republic i wouldn't mind uh and i wouldn't mind deciding that a a homeowner was liable because he didn't shovel the ice off of his sidewalk and someone broke their leg by falling because there was a negligence there and i would say the general equity is that a homeowner is responsible for the uh to to um he's responsible for the safety of his visitors and it's a general equity principle so if if somebody or to make it a simpler uh straight line across if you didn't have a railing around your second story deck right um and someone falls off the second story deck is that an actionable item i think it is because of general equity so i would appeal to that law and saying the general equity says that you're responsible for the safety of the people there but doug i i live in phoenix so i gotta ask you why would i throw ice on my sidewalk it would immediately turn to steam i think you if you have a couple of more couple more weeks of heat you're going to be begging us to ship some ice down there you're not going to ask after a little more of what you're getting you're not going to ask that question anymore oh let me tell you something uh yeah i just i'm sorry that that your your illustration just didn't work for us here because as soon as you put the moisture on the sidewalk it's gone you you hurt you heard it here james white appealing to felt needs that's not that's not our felt need believe me we're both wearing our sweater vest and i'm dying okay i mean i i'm i'm about ready to put a sweat band on uh just simply to survive this thing here but i'm i'm all for tradition anyways now obviously the parapet example is a great example the idea is and this is what i presented in the 38 series uh sermon series that i did and that is that uh we need to look at if we can if we can and this is this is where there are differences of opinion this is where there are arguments amongst reformed people i think and you can correct me if i'm wrong i think greg bonson specifically said there's still a lot more work to be done in this area as far as fleshing out the applications as they how they work in in the world today um but the point is that our desire should be to be looking at these texts to recognize that they are just as they are nustas just as inspired as everything else is yeah and asking the question if the apostles could so quickly and easily make reference to god's law as a given representative of what his nature is and make application to what was going on the church why why are we so lazy in even giving consideration these things and asking what's the real intention here what what was the the general equity because that's that's obviously where the rubber meets the road is well what is that general equity what is that application aside from there's some laws where you go okay is that ceremonial is that judicial is it partaking of both where's the line yeah i mean there's a lot of places where probably you and i might look the same text and go and draw the line a different place but at least we're both going this is still inspired revelation and needs to be honored in that way rather than just simply hey that's all gone we're not in a lot of under grace yeah the the thing you just quoted romans 6 14 um that that verse says uh in its entirety for sin shall not be your master for you're not under law but under grace and people think that the transition from the old testament to the new testament was a matter of god going slack or god lightening up or god becoming less holy or less con you know that law thing didn't work very much and i'm not going to scold them anymore i'm going to do it by grace now and that's just a total misrepresentation of all of scripture because the the advent of grace in christ does not change the definition of righteousness it does not change what holiness looks like what it does is equips us to meet that standard it doesn't it doesn't abrogate the standard doesn't make the standard go away so for in paul's language being under law did not mean you had to keep the law being under law meant you had to keep the law and couldn't and were therefore under condemnation so the person who's under law is condemned not because they keep the law but because they can't keep the law so what grace does is it liberates us it crucifies us with christ and we're buried and raised to new life with him in him and that's why sin defined the same way according to the law of god shall not be your master sin is not your master because you're not under law you're under under grace and the thing that astonishes me in romans 13 for example paul when people say why do you have such a high view of god's law i'd say because god is love right god is love love does no harm to his neighbor paul says love is the fulfillment of the law every command and whatever and he lists a bunch of them and whatever other commandment there may be including in leviticus whatever other commandments there may be are all summed up in this love your neighbors yourself so what the law god does is it teaches me what love looks like i you know i know i'm supposed to love my neighbor i know i know i have a duty to love my neighbor but if i borrow his lawnmower and it blows up while i'm using it what does love look like right i would say if it blows up while i'm using it i owe him a lawnmower if i rented it from him i don't own a lawn norm because the contingency of it blowing up was included in the rental price as the old testament law teaches so the the bible teaches me what love looks like and then if i want or if he wants i can go beyond that seeking to love him more and more and offer to pay for the lawnmower even if i don't owe it and he can offer to let it go even if i do you know we can try to outdo one another and showing love to one another but the law of god is a reflection of god's character and god is love so the people who pit the law and love against one another are showing that they don't understand law and they don't understand love right well i'm confused though where is the option of us both suing the local university for white supremacy for the lawnmower blowing up yeah that's true and i and i i just made another cultural gap also i'd you don't have lawns down there either not only no we do have people who move down from idaho and they plant those and then they they pretty much wipe out our entire water supply during the summer trying to keep it green which is of course pretty much impossible so uh yeah no we we do have lawns just only people who've lived here for like three or four years then they give up and and and bring in the gravel bring in the gravel man that's exactly right that's that's how that's how it works that's i did the exact same thing but anyways obviously we have we have agreement on on that in regards to this concept of general equity but that's of course where a lot of the conflict ends up coming in within reform circles is making application and the cultural aspects because down through history there has been there have been christians who've made applications to the understandings they had of the world at that time and connected that to god's law in a way that we can look at that and go um that was a tenuous reading of the text that's really maybe not what was being intended and things like that so we may look almost wishy-washy when in point of fact we're trying to do is we want to make sure we're exegeting those texts properly so we have their proper background because there's been times that even great theologians like augustine would uh attribute backgrounds and meanings to texts that just are indefensible sure and yet their opinions become overblown in importance and create an entire tradition right uh we're really trying to apply toda scriptura and solo scriptura uh in this instance to adequately and properly understand what those new testament laws are about that's why i spent three weeks in that series doing something again that was i wasn't trying to win any popularity contest but i really want our people to understand what was going on i spent two or three weeks going over the gods of the canaanites assyrians any anything that would have a direct impact in light of the deep apologetic content that is found in the holiness code that whole that whole introduction in in chapter 18 where you uh have the land spewing the inhabitants out because of the things that they had they had done uh there's a lot to that that that speaks of the supremacy of yahweh over the gods of the peoples that we miss because we don't know anything about the the alls and things like that i i went to israel uh thankfully for briefly at least in 2018 and i saw one of the uh one of the high altars uh and they they had sort of put a a framework up so you can see how big this thing was there in israel uh to the to the alls and to the ashraes things like that and it was like wow that was that was really impressive you can see why there was the conflict you know going on we don't have that background and so we miss a lot of that right and miss a lot of the good application that comes from that right but the point being that when we allow the old testament text to speak for itself and put it in its proper context it's amazing the the depth of of meaning that comes out of it but for a lot of people it's just because they don't have that background they just don't don't see why it's relevant for them in their life today yeah so they just miss it so one of the things i'm fond of saying is that christians should resolve to once the careful exegesis is done they should have no problem passages and so you so you don't apologize for anything in the bible once the careful exegesis is done once you've satisfied yourself that you've understood the word of god and you've also understood that there are places that are difficult to understand peter says that about paul's letters there's some things that are difficult to understand and he says that ignorant and unstable people twist them to their own destruction they they you can twist scripture so we have to be careful with scripture and we can't just say the bible's the word of god and then just read a passage in the old testament once and then wing off and start issuing decrees to people on the basis of our one-time cursory breeze through right you simply can't do that and there are places where and so of course liberals take advantage of this need for careful study and they want to turn it into a world of nuance where you never land anywhere right but chesterton once said that an open mind is like an open mouth it's meant to close on something it's intended to close on something and so you come to the text with an open mind prepared to study work it all through and when you've worked it through and you know what god has revealed at that point you don't back down i call it tom petty presbyterianism you don't back down you you lay hold of it and but but until that point you want to listen to all the arguments you want to read what different people have to say you want to study it out a good example of this would be the the marriage passage in deuteronomy 24. all right so when a man puts his wife away for uncleanness that he's found in her and then um and then he uh then she marries again and then the second husband divorces her and justice divorces her or he dies then it prohibits a marriage her remarrying her first husband okay now it'd be real easy to say oh that that prohibits uh any remarriage to your first spouse if there's been an intermedia intervening marriage and and i and that that may well be the meaning of it once we've done the study but there are some anomalies in that text that that make me want to go wait let's let's uh before we excommunicate anybody for having done that let's make sure we've done our our spade work um the first husband divorces her for uncleanness he's found in her he he divorces her for cause which means he doesn't forfeit the dowry he doesn't you know she's put away for cause and he is financially advantaged then she marries again and her husband dies or he just puts her away well if that happens the first it's possible that husband number one is not allowed to marry her again for financial benefit when he's he said she was unclean and put her away and then changed his mind once it became um financially advantageous for him to do it there so there are reasons given for the divorces you know there's a reason given in the first one and no reason given in the second one and and i want to say well this is case law let's be careful and work it work it all out before we just say uh every remarriage to an original spouse is banned forever and ever that might be but let's you know there are a lot of details here right and in fact there's many things in the law that would have resulted actually in the execution of a spouse which would have provided de facto divorces right that don't figure normally don't figure into people talking about these these types of issues apostasy and things like that i i want to make sure and you're i'm not we're not quite the same age but i'm we're both past that age where you think of something really important and then you get done with the entire interview and remember you forgot to say it and then you feel really stupid so i'll make sure to go ahead and mention this now before okay get it up it's one of the things that i i want to make sure to mention um back in 2013 i started going down to south africa and doing ministry down there in south africa and i don't know if you've ever seen um one of the most popular muslim speakers in the world man by the name of ahmed d-dot uh he died i think 2012 actually may have been no no 2005. he died in 2005. i never got a chance to to debate him um but he's probably been heard by more muslims than any other muslim in the world his videos are still incredibly popular not only online but on something that you and i remember called vhs uh something a lot of young people do not understand today but anyway um so there's a strong muslim community in south africa that likes to do debates and so in i believe was september october of 2013 we got to do a debate in the abu bakr acidic mosque in erasmia south africa and instead of just doing it in a room associated with the mosque or a building near the mosque we did it in the mosque i stood in front of the qibla where the imam stands to lead the prayers and the the muslims sat on the ground the christians sat in chairs because they're wimps and um uh because the muslims are used to being sitting in that position for hours on end and the subject of the debate allowed me to really focus upon what the reason for the need of substitutionary atonement was the need for the imputed righteousness of christ and you got to realize doug they're they're sitting literally no more than 10 feet away from me i mean this is a rather intimate contest so you can look them right in the eye and one of the strong points that i made that i think resonated with those muslims in that room was that in islam allah can simply forgive a sin without there being any payment for the for the broken law right so there was a real popular saying i'm not saying it's called a hadith amongst the muslims about a man who killed 99 people and he went to a priest and asked if his repentance would be accepted and the priest said no and so he killed the priest and so then he went to a scholar and asked the scholar and i don't know if the scholar knew about the priest or not the text doesn't say but he said if you go to such and such a city and inquire of them they will tell you how your repentance can be accepted well as he's going the time for his death comes because in islam that's written on your forehead at your birth and a law decrees that if he's one cubit closer to the city he was going to then the city he was coming from he would go to paradise and then in some versions of the story he makes the earth shrink between the man's body and the city so he's one cubit closer and so the man goes to paradise even though he's a mass murderer he's killed a hundred people and was only going to find out about repentance right and the muslims tell this story as an illustration of the grace of allah see how gracious allah was to forgive this man well i renarrated that hadith in the debate and i said here's the problem in christianity the law of god is intimately connected with who he is it's not just something he decides to put together over here and i'm going to put it in this form it represents his holy character it represents who he is and that's why there has to be atonement for the breaking of that law because it's an assault upon his very character right and so in your system god's law can just simply remain broken and there's no problem there's you don't have any problem with that but in the new testament we understand that's not a possibility right that simply can't happen and that's because in the um in the in scripture in in the christian faith god reveals himself god gives himself in islam god reveals his will right right so god tells you what to do you don't know what god's thinking you don't know how god actually feels about this he he reveals his will and you do it or you get squashed like a bug and his his will basically what they're pointing to is the grace of allah is actually the capriciousness of allah right so he can turn on a dime he can change his mind his will is sovereign and muslim means the one who submits basically one who submits to the will of allah when in the christian faith we are being sought by a person when we surrender and repent we're giving ourselves to a person and that person is eternal and unchanging and this is simply the way he is and and so consequently his holiness is not negotiable it's not up for grabs god can do anything that's consistent with his own nature and character but but his but the law is an expression of that nature and character right and the problem is from their perspective that law as you said is capricious it's arbitrary um it's not necessarily intimately reflective of who allah is and therefore to break it and to leave it broken for all of eternity isn't really even considered within the scope of at least the quran that obviously becomes an issue in later islamic theology but uh given that they had already rejected new testament revelation or to be pronounced with you the author of the quran didn't know what new testament revelation contained they don't have that they don't have a meteor they don't have any mechanism of having atonement within their system which interestingly enough i'm not sure if you've ever studied a lot of these things but that that's part of what gave rise to shiaism uh the shiite movement has an atonement in it because of the death of its founder and so it's a it's it's interesting that there are ways to get the the atonement into a discussion with the shiite that you don't have with the sunni um but that's a that's a whole different issue but the point of law and the the consistency of law with grace in a full-orbed christian understanding but many christians don't have that full or understanding to be able to present it in the first place right there's one of the problems with a lot of people who we send over to try to deal with other systems and other religions if we don't have a full orb understanding of what our own faith is talking about yeah many years ago i i this is something i learned from my dad i asked him does the old testament apply unless the new testament says it doesn't or does the old testament only apply if the new testament says it does so for a lot of christians the old testament is sort of like the word of god emeritus or the word of the word of god is semi-retired you know he's sitting on the porch in his rocking chair and then the new testament will take it from here so if the new testament reiterates something like you shall not steal or reiterate you shall not murder which it does then that has a continuing obligation but we if there's something that's only addressed in the old testament and and we don't have anything in the new testament on it you know bestiality or you know something like that or uh cross-dressing in deuteronomy 25 or you know if some issues then somebody's going to say well the new testament didn't reiterate that so consequently we're not under the law we're under grace that that would go back to the previous confusion we addressed but i would prefer to say the old testament applies unless the new testament expressly abrogates it so if we don't offer up the blood of bulls and goats because christ died for our sins those sacrificial laws are fulfilled in christ and the book of hebrews tells us that they're fulfilled and done away that whole apparatus is done okay but everything that's not addressed that way is part of my instruction book on on how to love other people right so let's do some application here uh as we look toward wrapping up um obviously many christians today well all christians today if you're going to have any conversation at all with people in the world you're going to be addressing old testament law application issues right um for example uh the hebrew term confusion is directly applicable to what we're seeing take place in regards to transgenderism the whole insanity of uh the poor boy in texas whose dad is being forced to pay money to have him in essence neutered the poor girl in canada whose dad is in risk of going to jail uh because he doesn't use uh the proper pronouns for her right this kind of stuff these are this is confusion this is a violation of the categories of creation that god has given to us yes and it's just these but but these foundational realities are assumed by the new testament writers they are they don't give any indication that they are under some necessity to repeat all of these things for it to be a given that that's how we are to believe right so the only way to give a full orb response to the world today concerning the issue for example of of human sexuality and gender and everything else is to start with the god who made all of these things yeah and where is that narrative i mean the old testament does say that i mean jesus says it in matthew 19 but he's quoting from the old testament right he's providing a divine inspired interpretation from genesis right uh that's the only place we can go yeah and and then we start to see all the uh delayed time bombs that were planted over the last century so when we go back to genesis 1 male and female created he them in the image of god he created them then we say oh wait a big chunk of the church is enthralled to darwinism and we've been applying monkey business to genesis 1 and 2 for for a long time and now when we want to go go there for something fundamental like mankind created in the image of god male and female that's how god represents his image and so this whole transgender confusion is an assault on the image of god right you know god is in his heaven and rebellious man can't reach him so when the peasants in the valley can't get to the king on the cast and the king on the hill in the castle what do they do well they burn his image in effigy down in the village they can do that they can't get the king in his castle but they can burn his effigy they can strike at his image and that's what this whole transsexual transgender movement is burning god's image in effigy we're trying to get rid we're trying to scratch it out trying to get rid of it and it's not going to work the the the tragedy of it is not going to work you're going to mar it further but we bear the image of god this side of judgment like it or you know like it or not after the fall in genesis 9 when capital punishment is required for someone who kills a man it's because man is made in the image of god that's the reason that's given so the fall and christ came to restore the image of god in us which means that the image was defaced and marred but not eradicated right and so christ is restoring it and even though it's broken and marred we must still respect it well darwinism and secularism and all the hermeneutical monkey shines that people have been applying to scripture have been knocking weapons out of our hands and we and we it finally comes down to it and we say okay we need to we need to engage and we look around and we don't what do we have right um well god's god's people need to be equipped with god's word well and i'm we're talking we're preaching to the choir here but uh i think there's something appropriate in people hearing other people encouraging one another and doing the same thing this is this is what ministers are supposed to be modeling from the pulpit on a regular basis in properly handling the word of god teaching the whole counsel of god is showing our people this is how you do this and that's why that's why when when we live in a day like today where christian worldview issues are the first thing they see on their facebook feed their email their rss feeds whatever it might be television it's everywhere i i mean this is not this is not 1950. i'm not saying there were christian worldview issues irrelevant 1950 ignoring them got us into a lot of trouble but now it's it's on signs being carried in the streets right and so we should be the first ones who are already raring to go but that's not normally the case because so many ministers do not present a christian worldview and and they don't present the the beautiful harmony that exists between all of god's word between all of god's purposes his his covenantal actions and yeah we can even you and i will someday i may have to drive up there to do it but we will someday even get to debate on how you make exact applications of all those things but the reason you and i can debate this is because we both have the same source of authority we both have the same commitment that when we hold the scriptures in our hands we're holding god's very word it's consistent with itself you try to hold me to that i try to hold you to that that's the only way you can meaningfully have a christian debate a christian debate can exist because we share the premises right right we share the premises and part of the reason why we're not able to debate out in the culture anymore it's not it's just shoving it's not debating you know it's sumo wrestling because there's no [Laughter] there's no shared premise um i don't know so you know i'm not the only one who wonders exactly what goes on in your mind though uh you know where you come up with analogies that's um that make all of us go ah i never would have thought of that pg woodhouse once said that some mines are like the soup in a bad restaurant better left unstirred yeah yeah i i i get that okay so a lot of people are gonna watch this video i'm not sure what we're titling it right but a lot of people watch this video and they've got questions about they they've heard bad things about that term theonomy and you called yourself a general equity theonist um we know that theonomy means god's law the rulership of god's law over against autonomy self rule right would you agree that there is at least a term of truth in or where would you draw the line for those who would say those are really the only two choices you have is either god defining the namas or mankind defining the nominee i would agree with that i would embrace that so i would say ultimately at the meta level it's either god's law or man's law it's either god's word or man's word at the meta level um after that once we every christian in the room is going to say yeah whatever god wants us to do we should be doing that right right so that means that we're all in a generic sense theonist after that the debate is exegetical so what does god's law in fact require us to do every christian believes that we should do what god wants and god expresses his will and his word and and so we should obey that so uh we all agree on that and then then the question is exegetical does god does god's law in fact require us to outlaw um usury you know does god's law require us to not have interest bearing loan interest bearing accounts at the bank does god's law prohibit that well that's an exegetical question not a theological question so so the theological question is i want to say that every christian at bottom must be a theonomist after that we should debate exegetically what we you know we're going to have different camps and different opinions and different denominational distinctives as we seek to apply what we believe god wants us to do right um and i think that there as a party the capital t theonists there were things that they proposed that i wasn't i didn't agree with but i i so i would not call myself a party a card pick car a card carrying party theonomist but i i do embrace the ongoing authority of the old testament law as as filtered through the new testament and applied by the new testament and i'm i'm a theonist in that sense let's real quick go ahead and touch on penology because that's really really important that was an issue i did address in my series as well because as a baptist um historically elements of a theonomic understanding were a part of the death sentences for my forefathers and i'm not talking about the anabaptists here i'm talking about orthodox people um and so it's very easy to see how a state once you have a sacral system right the state can utilize god's law to its own ends correct rather than god's law being a limitation upon its power right so and so let me just jump in there it is quite true that the the history of the christian church is filled with people who thought they were doing the will of god who weren't who who were doing destructive things in the name of serving christ you know and you spanish inquisition you know you could come up with any number of examples of that um that is in in christian ethics and in christian history that is a bug not a feature when you have autonomy the abuse of other people is a feature not a bug okay self self law my my um reserving to myself the right to define righteousness the right to define reality the right to define everything once you grant grant autonomy and everything follows right anything follows if if um if you grant theonomy then the grand inquisitor might come and put you on trial but a courageous christian with an open book can say hey man that's not right that's not right there's a there's a basis for a challenge of abuses of the system there have been abuses of the system but i don't think that we should jettison god's word for the sake of man's word when abusing the system is the point of man's word so um i very much appreciate that uh especially the bug and feature thing though that really wouldn't have communicated anything until somewhere in the 1980s no one no one understood exactly how that works but um real quickly on the penology issue how do you um obviously on an on a university campus someone's going to come up to you and say do you think it is just that god's law said this yeah obviously leviticus 20 homosexuals stoning right that's that's the big one um how do you how do you deal with that so the i would do in two steps i would answer the person and say first answer me this do you think that it's just that over a million prisoners are incarcerated today in uh dog kennel cages is that just well that's man's law right so don't don't come up to me saying oh there might be this negative thing that might happen there are negative things happening right now on a grand scale and and you're not and and you're fine with it you're not protesting or you know you're bothering me um so that's the first that's the first thing is look at look at what your your people are doing look at what your system your penitentiary system is currently doing is there need for prison reform uh look at secular penology that's that's the first thing so uh and then on conservative in conservative circles there'll be people who say uh you should have the death penalty for drug smuggling and your people are worried about the death penalty for homosexuality and they're not afraid to advocate for the death penalty for drug smuggling and they don't mind the death penalties just so long as no biblical case could be made for it right um so if but then if they turn around say okay your point taken we've got some things to answer now would you answer my question about what do you believe about the bible teaching about penology and and punishments and whatnot um i would say in in scripture you've got corporal punishment beaten with rods you've got execution you've got fines and you've got exile ba you know banishment uh those are the you don't have a penitentiary uh system and one of the things that would happen if we adopted a biblical approach to these things is that we'd find the first thing we'd find is out of those penalties that are assigned they are maximum penalties not minimum penalties so so for example david committed adultery which was a capital crime david committed murder which is a capital crime but he was not executed asa and jehoshaphat um conducted reforms where they basically closed all the bath houses and you know they exiled the sodomites asa and jehoshaphat both and are commended for being godly kings and they executed no one there's no executions mentioned anywhere um but they were reformers and they cleaned up they cleaned up the city so i believe that there are circumstances under which someone could receive that penalty if we brought that penalty across there would be circumstances where that would be applied okay um let's say uh priests and young boys right someone there are there are certain offenses that that in the modern era get simply get you transferred to another diocese and i think in a godly system would be solved with a tall tree in a short row it's all treated a short rope but that would require christian judges right and christian laws and christian theologians reasoning through the laws and us having the humility to postpone acting on any of these things until we made sure that the exegesis was right you know we we want to do our work carefully and one of the things the history of the christian church shows is that many people have assumed on a cursory reading that they knew exactly what god was requiring and i think we need to be a lot more careful when it comes to to issues of coercion penalties i think we have to make triple check quadruple check our exegesis well i was about to say thank you for a stimulating conversation and then everything froze up so uh i'm gonna go ahead and thank you for that and uh look forward to the next time we can get together and discuss another important subject so thank you doug and thank you for watching as we've discussed god's law [Music] today

Channel: Canon Press

Views: 29,388

Rating: 4.8965516 out of 5

Keywords: law, bible, christian, theology, doug wilson, douglas wilson, james white, dividing line, sweater vest dialogues, canon press, sweater vest, dialogue, sweater vest dialogue, debate, theonomy, controversy, conservative, liberal, politics, christian politics, Christian nationalism, calvinism, calvinist, reformed theology, political, biblical law

Id: ETm_wdEnLTA

Length: 58min 48sec (3528 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 10 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Reformerluthercalvin]

I'm just here with popcorn for the comments that are sure to come after posting James White on this sub.