http://reformedreasons.blogspot.com/2012/11/answering-steve-hays-on-culture.html
A systematic problem runningthrough Ed’s position is his persistent equivocation of terms. He never gets beyond slogans.
What I am against is usingthe Church as a politcal force to bring about pressure in the political processin order to impose Christian values on a godles culture that is not in theChristian group and is not expect to hold to Christian values in the firstplace.
It’s unclear what Ed isopposing.
i) Is he opposing it if “theChurch” does it?
ii) If (i), how do he define“the Church”? Does he mean pastors? Laymen? Denominations?
iii) If not (i), is he opposing what is done, regardless of who (e.g. “the Church”) is doing it?
iv) Is he opposed to the imposition of values, or just the imposition of Christian values?
Does he support theimposition of non-Christian values, but oppose the imposition of Christianvalues?
v) Why should the expectationthat people will share the values codified in law be a precondition of law?When we outlaw murder, we impose life-affirming values on would-be murdererswhom we don’t expect to share the values of the lawmaker.
It is my view that the Churchhas become too political in modern American culture.
That’s funny. Many critics ofthe American church criticize the church for being too frivolous. Tooentertainment-oriented.
Did the apostles reallyaddress the gospel to the government or individual civil authorities?
Ed keeps leaning on theargument from silence. However, as is well-known, the argument from silenceisn’t sound without further qualifications. Sometimes an argument from silenceis plausible, but sometimes an argument from silence begs the question.
When you deploy theargument from silence, you need to show why there’s an expectation thatsomething would be mentioned if it were true. For instance, someone can fail tomention something, not because it isn’t true, but because he and his readerstake that for granted.
Moreover, is it lawful to usethe Mosaic Covenant to shape the civil laws of gentile governments? I am notsaying that it is a bad idea for a government to use the law in this way if thatis what they choose to do. That is not the right question. The question lies inthe imperative. Does God issue a mandate to governments to use the MosaicCovenant as the foundation for their civil codes?
Notice how confused this is.He oscillates between suggesting it’s permissible and suggesting it’s unlawful.But it can’t very well be both.
Another good question isGod’s requirements for the individual believers living under various forms ofgovernment. Does the Christian responsibility change from one system ofgovernment to another? I don’t think it does.
But by definition it doeschange. In the nature of the case, elected officials and American citizens havedifferent legal and civic responsibilities than absolute monarchs and theirvassals.
I come to the text with thepresuppositions of a grammatico-historical hermeneutic. This hermeneuticprovides the guardrails upon which my exegetical process moves.
Let’s see how faithful Edreally is to the grammatico-historical method.
Although the emperor, orking, or governor may be the mediate source by which society is ordered, God isthe ultimate source.
That’s true under any systemof gov’t.
The right Christianperspective about civil authority is that they are ordained by God for the goodof society, even the worst of them. The NT writers never bother to tell us thatthis truth changes based on any particular system of government. Apparently, itapplies to every system.
Once again, Ed isequivocating. What truth doesn’t change? The general truth that gov’t isordained by God to restrain evil? Or the specific responsibilities ofmagistrates and citizens?
According to Paul, we aregiven an urgent divine imperative to pray for Barak Obama and every otherpolitician in Washington and the states and districts.
That’s a red herring.Evangelical culture warriors are not opposed to praying for gov’t officials. SoEd is erecting a false dichotomy, as if prayer and political activism aremutually exclusive.
That Paul is concerned withcivil authorities is impossible to miss in his writings. He is clearlyconcerned with the relationship between the Christian and Emperors, Kings, andGovernors. He understands they set the tone for society. How does he think theChurch should interact with them? Does he provide Timothy or Titus with a setof instructions for how he wants the Church to influence the civil authorities?He wants us to submit to them, all of them, and to pray for them. It is throughliving Christ’s values and through prayer that we have our best chance ofinfluencing society it seems.
Notice how Ed violates thegrammatico-historical method. He takes a NT text that refers to “kings” or“emperors,” then he substitutes the POTUS, as if Peter or Paul were talkingabout the POTUS. But that’s anachronistic. That’s putting words in the mouthsof Peter and Paul.
When you apply the Bible tothe modern situation, you ought to compare like with like. The office of POTUS isnot interchangeable with a Roman emperor. A Roman subject is not interchangeablewith an American citizen.
When you apply the Bible tothe modern situation, you must make allowance for the dissimilarities as wellas the similarities. The POTUS doesn’t have the same prerogatives as a Romanemperor. Conversely, American citizens have prerogatives that Roman slaves andplebeians did not.
Immediately after commandingthe Roman Christians to over evil with Good, Paul says that everyone must be insubjection to the governing authorities. No exceptions are provided in thetext. No qualifiers are given. Even if the government is one with which wedisagree, subjection is the proper Christian response. Why? Governments areestablished by God. This is true even in a democracy.
Under our system of gov’t,elected officials are ultimately subject to the electorate, not vice versa.
While the Scripture mentionsprayer as a means to possibly having a peaceful life, it nowhere instructs usto pray for the removal of civil leaders because of their ungodly views. Godestablishes civil leaders who have the most ungodly of views. Nero wasprofoundly wicked, yet God set him in the place of civil authority. He killedPeter and Paul and a host of other Christians. While God’s command to Neropersonally was repentance, from a civil perspective Nero was God’s servant.Paul tells us in v. 2 thateveryone who resists civil authority also resists God. When the Christian setsout to fight against the current leader, he cannot avoid but fight against God.God has placed the current leader in office. It matters not if you are in ademocracy. The important thing here is individual sin. We must be willing toask ourselves if we sin by engaging in all sorts of efforts to remove thecurrent leader.
i) Ed acts as though it isinsubordinate for Christian Americans to exercise their statutory andConstitutional prerogatives and civic responsibilities. Ironically, Ed is theone who’s guilty of insubordination. It’s seditious for Ed to brush aside thestatutory and Constitutional restrictions on Executive power, as well as thecivil rights of Christian Americans.
If he’s going to keepinvoking divine ordination, then, by parity of argument, God ordained ourConstitutional system of gov’t. Ed is bucking the system that God ordained byrefusing to submit himself to the nature of a republican democracy with popularsovereignty.
ii) BTW, Nero hadn’t begunpersecuting Christians at the time Peter and Paul wrote Ed’s prooftexts.
We may address the wickedpolicies as policies that contradict the holy commands of God.
That’s a striking admissionon Ed’s part. It’s hard to see how that’s consistent with his overall position.
But we are interested, not inchanging the government, but in changing the individual. We are calling BarakObama to repentance and faith in God, not in order to win the day and have ourplatform prevail, but in order that he may know life and know it moreabundantly.
i) Obama is just oneindividual. His personal wellbeing doesn’t take precedence over millions ofbabies.
ii) Why should we not beinterested in changing gov’t policies? Our system of gov’t gives citizens theright to change gov’t policies by expressing their will through their electedrepresentatives, or by direct democracy (e.g. referenda).
Civil rulers are put in placeto direct society as God sees fit. They are there to carry out God’s plan,whatever that plan may be.
American civil rulers arealso put in place by voters. God employs the medium of the democraticprocess. That is also part of his plan. God’s plan includes secondary agents(e.g. voters) to implement his plan.
God indirectly puts civilianrulers in place while voters directly put civilian voters in place. By the sametoken, when voters remove civilian rulers from office (by electing for someoneelse), God is removing them from office.
Ed’s appeal to divineprovidence is selective and one-sided.
Steve Hays has made much ofthe Mosaic Law in his remarks on why Christians should be politically active.From my perspective, his general principles moving to logical inferences arenebulous principles employing incoherent logic that result in arbitrary andcapricious applications.
Notice that Ed doesn’tattempt to demonstrate that my logic is incoherent. Ed doesn’t attempt todemonstrate that my applications are arbitrary and capricious. We’re justgetting his unargued opinion.
The Mosaic Law belongs toIsrael, to the Jew. God never gave the law to the gentile. Romans chapter twotells us that the gentiles do not have this law. Moreover, the law was givenfor a very specific purpose and to use it unlawfully is a serious matter asmany false teachers did in the NT. It is illicit use of the law to say thatsecular gentile governments “ought” to employ it in their legal process. Inaddition, it is outside the scope of Christianity for the Church to take upsuch an initiative.
i) Ed is assuming what heneeds to prove. As long as something is right or wrong, why does the sourcematter? Does the source make it right or wrong? Or does the source say it’sright or wrong because it’s antecedently right or wrong, even before that wascommitted to writing?
Is murder wrong merelybecause the Decalogue says murder is wrong? Is it the formal prohibition thatmakes it wrong? Or is it the wrongness of murder that gives rise to theprohibition? When the Decalogue forbids murder, doesn’t that acknowledge theantecedent immorality of murder? The prohibition codifies the moral status ofmurder rather than constituting the moral status of murder.
Nowhere in the Scriptures areChristians told that their mission is to produce a better, more moral culture.
This is the fallacy ofquestion-framing. Frame the issue in tendentious terms. But that skews the realissue.
Both the OT and the NT statea variety of social duties. So we need to ask ourselves how those generalobligations logically translate into specific actions.
Yet, this is exactly whatAmerican culture thinks about the Church. American culture thinks the Churchuses religion or Jesus to push a conservative political agenda. They don’t seeus loving them and simply giving them the gospel and doing good. They don’thate us because we love Christ in many cases. They hate us because we try toforce Christian values on the non-Christian group, and that is simply not thegospel and it is not how we are to be salt and light.
There’s more to lovingunbelievers than “simply giving them the gospel.” If, say, Christians lobby tohave the disabled legally protected from euthanasia, that is loving thedisabled.
If some Americans hate us forprotecting the disabled, that’s their problem. You can’t please everyone. Whatshould we most care about? Protecting the physically and mentally disabled? Orthe malicious opinion of some Americans who wish to euthanize the physicallyand mentally disabled? Which better exhibits neighbor-love?
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