My words are in red while Steve's comments are in bolded font.
Ed Dingess
I find Jason's comments personally offensive…What ever
happened to Christian civility and charity in these sorts of discussions? Why
do we always have to resort to harsh insults toward another over issues that
are not central to the Christian faith?
I’m struck by
professing Christians who have such a shallow, amoral conception of civility
and charity. They reduce civility and charity to rhetorical etiquette.
I, for one, have a
deeper definition of civility and charity. I think aborting babies, or allowing
live-birth babies to perish, is pretty uncivil and uncharitable. I think
euthanizing the elderly or the disabled is pretty uncivil and uncharitable. I
think forcing orphans or foster kids into homosexual “families” is pretty
uncivil and uncharitable.
This has essentially nothing to do with the fact that Jason’s
speech is offensive. That last time I checked, when you become aware that you
have offended your brother, you are supposed to go and be reconciled. I
apologized if I said anything that was offensive. It is not my goal to offend
my brother. It is my goal to get to the truth of this issue. We do that through
healthy loving dialogue.
The Bible is deeply
concerned with those who are most vulnerable through no fault of their own.
That’s a central aspect of the Christian faith.
We should be deeply concerned with those who are vulnerable.
But are we to show that concern through imposing Christian values on a godless
culture or by some other means? How did the early church deal with abortion?
How did it deal with the fact that they did not have religious liberty? How did
it deal with the homosexual issue? Did Paul tell the Roman Christians to lobby
Caesar so as to outlaw it? I don’t find Paul even hinting at such actions. He
preached repentance. He called it what it was. But he never spent time trying
to have it banned.
Hypocrisy run amok. We pound our chest in NC when we say we
stopped gay marriage but 90% of evangelical pastors do nothing when members
divorce unbiblically. (excuse the typo)
He’s very careless
(even slanderous) about how he tosses around the term “hypocrisy.”
i) As a rule,
hypocrisy refers to an individual’s personal misconduct. That’s what he has
direct control over. If a pastor himself had divorced his wife for illicit
reasons, remarried, then lobbied against sodomite marriage, that would be
hypocritical.
ii) Many pastors take
a pastorate at a preexisting church. The former pastor retires or moves on.
The new pastor isn’t
starting from scratch. He is thrust into the status quo of the preexisting
congregation.
Let’s pick a figure
out of the air. Suppose 40% of the couples in his church divorced and remarried
for illicit reasons. That didn’t happen on his watch. What’s he supposed to do
after the fact? Excommunicate 40% of the membership?
Pastors have very
limited power. The congregation generally pays their salary.
There’s not much a
new pastor can to do fix the past. He can preach against unscriptural divorce.
If, while he’s the pastor, a member pursues an unscriptural divorce, the pastor
can attempt to initiate disciplinary action. Even then, he will need the
support of the elders and the congregation. And, of course, a wayward member
can simply leave the church. Short of excommunication (which is a unilateral
last resort), church discipline requires the errant member to cooperate with
the process of counseling and repentance.
You cannot commit slander without having a specific person
to slander. Slander seeks to damage the reputation of an individual. For me to
say that this behavior is hypocritical is defensible based on the NT use of
that term. It is not ipso facto
personal misconduct. It also involves a double standard. Jesus tells them that
they strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.
Your divorce analogy is not unlike the rape scenario used by
abortionists. I am talking about the fact that church discipline is almost
non-existent for current abusers of grace who do not take God’s word nor the
Christian community seriously. These political pastors refuse to act because of
the scandal or because people might leave or whatever. I asked one pastor if he
was going to act in one case and he told me he was not their Holy Spirit.
Another pastor simply allowed the woman to resign and when that happened, even
the presbytery did nothing to address the issue. Both of these men were and are
highly vocal in their speech against gay marriage. It is hard for me to take
either one of them seriously. If they cared about the truth as much as they say
they do and the institution of marriage, they would have acted. Excommunication
is given to us by our Lord. If the person does not cooperate, you tell it to
the church and read their name publicly. The church sees that leadership takes
Christian values seriously and will obey Christ even if the process is
unpopular.
Should we not outlaw fornication and lying and stealing, and
cheating and whatever else offends God and violates His moral code? Why focus
on just abortion? Why not go for the whole ball of wax? Is it not hypocritcal
to only fight against gay marriage and not also fight to outlaw unbiblical
divorce? Your logical end is a theocracy, is it not? Where do you draw the line
and why there? If you are going to push this issue, then push it all the way
and at least be consistent. Don't stop with just half the law. Shouldn't you be
working to outlaw Sabbath labor?
This raises a host of
issues:
i) Unless a Christian
culture warrior is personally guilty of theft or fornication or unscriptural
divorce, accusing them of hypocrisy for someone else’s theft or fornication or
unscriptural divorce is quite a stretch.
This is true only if we use your very narrow definition of
hypocrisy. I reject your definition and note you did not bother to provide any
lexical support.
ii) But suppose, for
the sake of argument, that it’s hypocritical for Christian culture warriors to
pick-and-choose what to outlaw. So what?
So what? Pragmatism? Hypocrisy is just as offensive or
perhaps more so to God as the behavior the culture warrior seeks to eradicate.
So what, you eradicated sodomy, you replaced it with rank hypocrisy. Nice job!
Let’s take a
comparison. Suppose I’m a doctor who makes his living as a full-time “abortion
provider.” Suppose, driving home from the abortion clinic, I see a toddler
running out into a busy intersection.
My parental instinct
kicks in. I slam on the brakes, get out of the car, rush over to the toddler,
and whisk him out of harm’s way.
Now, you could say,
“What a hypocrite! You make your living killing babies. So why do you rescue this
child?”
And, indeed, his
actions were hypocritical in this case. So what? What practical conclusion
should we derive from that fact?
Does it follow that
because it’s hypocritical for the abortion provider to rescue the toddler, that
the he should be consistent and let the toddler get run over?
They would only be hypocritical if the doctor accepted your
presuppositions about abortion being murder. He does not! Therefore, as far as
the doctor is concerned, he is being quite consistent with his worldview. I am
going to try to frame this up more clearly using sodomite marriage and divorce.
Why is sodomite marriage wrong? It violates God’s design and
plan for the institution of marriage. Therefore, we must do everything we can
to outlaw it! Why is illicit divorce wrong? It violates God’s design and plan
for the institution of marriage. Therefore, we will turn a deaf ear when our
members divorce because it really isn’t that big a deal after all. The common
denominator is the same in terms of gay marriage and divorce. It actually comes
down to revealed truth and our claims to desire to uphold truth. When we pick
which truth we want to uphold and reject the other, even though the denominator
is the same, we play the hypocrite. Truth isn’t really that important to us.
Only the truth that we elevate is really that important to us.
Jesus is famous for
upbraiding hypocrites in the Gospels, but I can’t think of any instance where
he unbraids them for doing the right thing.
Personally, I would rather not be counted in this company.
Selective morality is
better than systematic immorality. It’s better to be inconsistently virtuous
than to be consistently iniquitous.
Romans 3:10-18 paints quite an ugly picture of the condition
of man. Is it really the calling of the church to help the godless culture be
selectively moral?
Even if someone is hypocritical
in doing right every so often, that’s hardly a reason for him to refrain from
doing right on isolated occasions.
Men will do right in terms of natural law because they are
created in the image of a holy God. That is not where our disagreement lies and
I think you should know this.
iii) Suppose, for the
sake of argument, that Christian social conservatives are hypocritical for
protecting the lives of babies, the elderly, and the disabled–while they ignore
other moral concerns Even so, their “hypocrisy” is still good for the innocent
lives they save.
The old “end-justifies-the-means” argument. How many other
sins should Christians commit in order to transform the culture? Hypocrisy of
any sort is a sin. There are thousands of supposed Christians who can argue
against abortion far better than they can argue for Christ or even articulate
the gospel. This is the consequence of a Church who has lost her focus. We are
so busy fighting abortion and sodomy that we forgot the gospel and certain we
have neglected to actually make disciples. That is part of my gripe.
iv) But is it
hypocritical? God dictated the Mosaic law to Israel. He didn’t put it up for a
vote. Israel never had a choice in the matter. God imposed his law on Israel,
and he enforced compliance under pain of severe divine punishment.
As is His right.
That’s completely
different from the situation of Christian Americans. We have to work through
the democratic process. We can only do what’s politically feasible. Our
circumstances automatically select for what we can try to outlaw.
I have no imperatives for or against voting. Scripture has
none either. You say we have an imperative to vote, and I say we don’t. You
call it a duty to our country. I say that the church’s duty to the country is
to give it the gospel, to make disciples, to baptize, and to live by Christian
values (be the salt and light), to submit to civil authorities and to pray for
them (Roman 13:1-7; I Peter 2:13; I Tim. 2:1-3; Titus 3:1).
Enacting law isn’t a
theoretical ideal, but a practical possibility. As Bill Vallicella recently
observed:
If politics were
merely theoretical, merely an exercise in determining how a well-ordered state
should be structured, then implementation would not matter at all. But politics
is practical, not theoretical: it aims at action that implements the view
deemed best…You are a utopian who fails to understand that politics is about
action, not theory, in the world as it is, as opposed to some merely imagined
world.
Okay.
v) On a related note,
there’s nothing inherently wrong with picking your battles. We don’t have the
resources to fight every battle. We can’t win every battle. So we have to
decide on some issues of overriding importance, then throw our limited time and
energy behind those issues. If you try to do everything, you won’t succeed at
anything.
So what are the guiding principles that help you pick which
batter takes the top of the list? And where is the exegetical support for that?
Where is the exegetical support for engaging in political battles to begin
with? All I have seen is an obscure statement about general principles and
logical inferences. From where? General principles from where?
vi) Moreover, some
evils are more socially destructive than others.
And there is consensus on this, right? Who gets to say which
ones are more destructive? The PCA? This opens the can of worms around who
decides which issue to attack. And that will be one long list. By the way, isn’t
eradicating evil from the world God’s role? I thought He was going to do that
when He returns, you know, like a lion, a fierce judge.
vii) Likewise,
there’s a difference between punishing mutually consensual misconduct, where
the parties are voluntarily wronging and harming each other, and aggressive,
oppressive misconduct where one party is harming innocent, defenseless victims.
There’s a fundamental
difference between protecting someone from himself or from mutually consensual
harm, and protecting an unwilling victim from an aggressor.
Take the difference
between a private fight club and mugging. There’s a principled reason why
lawmakers might make a priority of cracking down on muggers while they allow
consenting adults to form a fight club.
viii) Not all
Biblical obligations are absolute or equally obligatory. For instance,
Sabbath-keeping is a means to an end rather than an end in itself. It exists to
promote human flourishing. But there are situations in which wooden adherence
to Sabbath-keeping would be detrimental to human flourishing. That’s why the
Bible itself makes exceptions for works of mercy and necessity.
I wonder how far you push Sabbath-keeping. And surely this
has to be on the list, albeit a little lower than say, sodomy.
xi) Biblical laws are
not all of a kind. Some laws were contingent on Israel’s unique cultic
holiness.
Other laws involve
the kinds of laws (e.g. sex crimes, property crimes, bodily injury) which any
law code for any nation-state would have to cover. Any nation-state will have a
penal code with laws regulating certain kinds of typical human behavior and
typical human interactions.
Other laws are
adapted to the socioeconomic situation of the ANE. A tribal society. An
agrarian economy. That’s not directly applicable to 21C America.
Yet some of those
laws may still exemplify basic principles which do carry over into NT ethics.
Some biblical laws
are grounded in creational ordinances (e.g. heterosexual marriage).
Some laws are laws of
utility rather than morality.
We need to ask the
underlying rationale for a given law.
xii) The NT indicates
degrees of continuity and discontinuity between OT ethics and NT ethics. It
isn’t always easy to draw the line because the NT itself doesn’t explicitly
draw the line for us. But the NT doesn’t give us the luxury of an easy
all-or-nothing position. No doubt that would simplify things, but that’s not
the actual position of the NT. In the NT, there’s some carryover between OT
ethics and NT ethics, while other things are rendered obsolete.
Ah yes, the continuity-discontinuity issue.
xiii) As for some of
Ed’s specific examples, I don’t have a problem with blue laws. However, there’s
an exegetical dispute on whether some Pauline passages nullify the Sabbath
ordinance.
Modern Sabbath-keeping in the church is wrought with
problems. There is no mandate moving the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday, etc.
etc. Not going to chase this rabbit other than to say that I have heard the
best arguments and none of them satisfy, or even come close to a satisfactory defense
of a Sabbath mandate in the new covenant.
xiv) As for
fornication, how does the OT handle that? Well, if a guy impregnates a girl, he
has to marry her and support the child. If he fathers a child, he must help
with raising the child.
I don’t have a
problem with that. The shotgun wedding was a good institution.
Ed’s other examples
are odd. “Stealing”? But theft is a crime, both in modern law and OT law.
“Lying”? Lying, per
se, wasn’t an OT crime. Only perjury was a crime.
“Cheating”? Certain types of cheating are
illegal.
xiv) What Ed calls
“hypocrisy” is a built-in tension in law. Due to sin, sinners need good laws.
But due to sin, sinners resist good laws. The very fallenness which renders
good laws necessary is the same fallenness which makes it difficult to pass or
enforce good laws. The tension is a presupposition of law. Even OT law, which
was divinely inspired as well as divinely enforced, sets a moral floor rather
than a moral ceiling.
I used the term adultery in place of fornication for that
reason. Since adultery is the cause of so many divorces, it can only help the
institution of marriage to outlaw it.
In addition, lying was not a violation of the covenant?
Leviticus 19:11 clearly commands the Jew not to lie to one another. Hence,
lying is a violation of the covenant. In Jer. 9:3-5, lying is characterized as
evil.
Romans 2 makes a great case for natural law as the
foundation for civil law. “For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do
instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves,
in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience
bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them.”
I am going to provide a direct exegesis of passages that
actually deal with the question of the relationship between the Christian and
civil authorities. The NT does have something to say about it and I think this
document has to serve as the final authority that informs us on Christian norms
for political activity. To operate on grounds as nebulous as “general
principles to logical inferences” is, in my opinion, far to obscure and
provides too little by way of guidance, not only for how we should behave but
how we should think about the issue.
I have nothing but respect for the Triablogue team and will
continue to make this point. People should read their blog often because they
have a lot to say and in my view, the are right most of the time. This subject
is one that we will have to agree to disagree on.
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