A Reformed Response to Theonomy | Theocast

Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, Justin and I, well, we talk about theonomy. It's a pretty hot topic, but please hear us out before you turn it off.

We are trying to be accurate in representing what theonomy has taught and is teaching today and the reform response to that, specifically covenant theology from a 1689

Federalist position. We try to be charitable and gracious. We're hoping that iron sharpens iron here and that we can all glorify and love our

Father together. Stay tuned. We are excited to announce we have a brand new podcast available called the

Kingsmen Podcast. It's where we are reclaiming biblical manhood by training and equipping men for the work of the kingdom.

You can find it anywhere you download a podcast. You can also watch it on YouTube. We have new episodes that come out every

Monday. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to trust in Christ, conversations about the

Christian life from a reformed and pastoral and confessional perspective. Your hosts today are

Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in beautiful Asheville, North Carolina. And I'm John Moffitt.

I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, where there's lots of pollen. So lots of sneezing today.

It's good to be with you, Justin. We've had the opportunity to already talk and deal with technological problems.

Praise God. As it seems, we always do these things. For his mercy and grace. That's right. He is sanctifying me,

John. Yeah, he is. There you go. There you go. A couple of announcements for you. If you didn't know,

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I don't know, stickers, stuff like that in there. If you so choose to support us in that way, a big announcement that came out recently is

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We have a reformed theology masterclass in there. Anyways, it's just an additional way for us to help provide,

I think, a lot more of an educational level. Our podcast would be definitely kind of on the pop surface level to kind of help people understand on a general and be encouraged.

If you want to go to more of like a seminary lecture style, then that's available. You can go check that out.

So, just go to theocast .org and look for Simple Reformanda. That's it, JP. That's all the announcements

I got, man. We're working on stuff. Pray for GRN. That's underway. We got talks about a conference.

No dates. Just talking about it. No dates. No dates. We're talking about it.

TBD. That's right. Well, two minutes. That's pretty good. Let's go ahead and jump into it, JP. We need every minute possible to cover something that, unfortunately, you and I aren't excited about, but it is something that we're going to have to respond to because it's rising in the ranks and it's starting to,

I think, influence a lot of people. So, talk to us about theonomy. Give us an introduction to what it is, and then you and I will do our best to respond to it in the next two episodes.

Word. As you said, this is the first of two episodes on theonomy. This first one is going to be a little bit more overtly theological.

We're going to try to talk a little bit about what theonomy is. Not at great length. We'll link you to some articles and some different things that have been written so that you can read more about definitions of theonomy and better understand it.

We'll try to briefly define it, and then we want to respond theologically in this first episode. Then in the second one, we plan to consider more of the street -level fallout of theonomy and some of our pastoral concerns with it and how we might respond as pastors of local churches.

We hope both these episodes are helpful, maybe in different ways. Let's begin by talking about theonomy and what it is.

I'm going to briefly offer this as a definition, and then

I'll read some quotes from, in my opinion, the most intentional, deliberate theonomist, Greg Bonson, who's no longer with us but wrote decades ago.

I know you're going to mention probably some more names, but there's Rush Dooney. Most of the guys who originated theonomy, the backbone of it, have passed away.

Your prominent people who are now pushing it further would be

Cannon Press, Doug Wilson, Apologia Radio, Jeff Durbin, and even

I would say James White is starting to fall into that camp as well. Some of those guys are a little bit more pop -level and pastoral -level with their argumentation, whereas the older school guys writing in the 80s and 90s were more academic and more deliberately exegetical in their attempts to argue for it, and Greg Bonson being the seminal figure amongst those.

Jon Moffitt That's right. Can I throw one more asterisk before you start reading? Justin and I, on our podcast, we're trying to be pastoral and always gracious and kind.

I know there will be theonomists who listen to this, basically because the title is here and it's a very hot topic.

My encouragement to my brothers and my sisters who are listening to this, do us a favor.

We try to read you and we try to listen to you and hear your arguments, and we try to represent you as you would like to be represented.

We're going to do our best to do that. We're not going to try and use straw men. We're going to use your words, your understandings.

Our hope would be, as Iron Sharpens Iron and as brothers who love Christ together, that you would hear us out.

Before you respond or retweet this or share this, maybe try and listen to what our feedback is so that we can start having a progressive conversation.

I just feel like we shoot shots over the bows at each other, and I just don't feel like it's beneficial for you or for us.

That would be my one takeaway on this before Justin starts reading. We try to accurately represent what theonomy is.

So my own definition to begin, and then I'm going to read a little bit of Bonson to try to support it, and then

I'll make a few other comments about how this often manifests itself, like I've said a few times, street level.

Hopefully my voice will hold up. I lost it last week. We'll see. So theonomy essentially asserts that the judicial laws of the

Mosaic Covenant are normative for all geopolitical entities. So civil governments are obligated, in other words, to enforce

Old Covenant judicial laws along with their penalties, and any law not included in the

Old Covenant judicial code would be out of bounds, right? So in other words, theonomy understands that God has given the universal blueprint for civil government in the

Mosaic judicial law. God has given us a template for how we do statecraft, and it's called the judicial code of Moses, right?

And so I think it's important that, before I even read Bonson, I just want to acknowledge this, that the listener needs to understand that theonomy often comes packaged with Christian Reconstructionism, kind of the rebuilding of Christendom or the building of a

Christian society. It often comes packaged with a particular kind of postmillennial eschatology that's very optimistic.

So in theory, it's possible to pull those things apart. Oftentimes, practically, on the street, boots on the ground, that doesn't occur.

They often come together. And if you are familiar with Canon Press or if you're familiar with Apologia, you see a lot of these things coming together.

That said, our aim today is to deal with theonomy historically and theologically. And let me read a little bit of Greg Bonson again, who

I would understand to be a seminal figure in the movement, in the stream of thought.

And for my money, too, I think that he is the most intentional, deliberate, exegetical guy as I've read and examined these things.

So I'm going to read a few quotes from Bonson's book called By This Standard, The Authority of God's Law Today.

He says, quote, The New Testament does not teach any radical change in God's law regarding the standards of socio -political morality.

God's law, as it touches upon the duty of civil magistrates, has not been altered in any systematic or fundamental way in the

New Testament. So there he's arguing for what I was mentioning earlier. He continues on.

We must recognize the continuing obligation of civil magistrates to obey and enforce the relevant laws of the

Old Testament, including the penal sanctions specified by the just judge of all the earth. As with the rest of God's law, we must presume continuity of binding authority regarding the socio -political commandments revealed as standing law in the

Old Testament. Last one. It is advocated that we should presume the abiding authority of any

Old Testament commandment until and unless the New Testament reveals otherwise.

And this presumption holds just as much for laws pertaining to the state as for laws pertaining to the individual.

So there's a number of things going on there theologically that we're going to try to deal with in this podcast. Last comment from me in terms of chalking the field.

I want to be fair here. Reconstructionist theonomy and a different stream referred to often as general equity theonomy are not one and the same.

And so Reconstructionist theonomy involves the establishment of Christendom in a Christian society, whereas general equity theonomy is going to argue for looking to the judicial law, finding the principles that it contains, and then seeking to apply that in geopolitical reality today, in geopolitical entities today.

And what we're going to try to do today is argue against both effectively by getting at the sort of kernel of the argumentation.

That's right. Any comments you want to add about theonomy and what it is, John, before we pivot to our responses? Yeah, I spend a lot of time interacting, reading, and I try and what

I do, I do a bake method where I kind of let it just ruminate for a long time. I don't try and make conclusions based on the first thing

I read or the first author. What you do realize, as you said, there are different applications, and there aren't agreement on all of theonomy.

Yeah, and all theonomists don't agree. They're not monolithic. Definitely not. And so to say all theonomists believe this, then that's just not necessarily true.

I do want to start with one of my interactions is when I'm on the internet or on Twitter, you can eventually start to pick out who a theonomist is.

It's because it's how they talk about the law. And this happened to me recently. There was Dr. R.

Scott Clark from Westminster and myself and another person were getting tagged into this theocast debate on whether we're antinomians or not.

And the way he was using the law, I eventually just stopped and asked him, are you a theonomist? And he eventually said, yes, he was, which made sense to me because he was using the law against us in a way that Reformed theology doesn't use the law.

It's an outside use from history. And I would say biblically, we're going to argue that. I will give this to my brothers.

They are trying to be faithful and love our Father and represent Him well.

Oh, yeah. You know what? Praise God for you. And they're concerned with faithfulness. All of those things.

I trust their motivations are good. And they rightly assess the world in that it's botrous.

It's horrendous. So we don't hate sin any less than a theonomist does. We hate abortion.

We hate homosexuality. I don't mean hate in the sense of like, I hate the person, but we don't like what the world does to the beautiful creation of God.

It's offensive to us. And this is why we proclaim the gospel and why I know theonomists proclaim the gospel as well.

So the second mistake that I have heard people who oppose. So there's a mistake from the theonomist side.

We start there. They assume we do not hold the law of God in its proper and high place.

And when a theonomist defines theonomy, they just say, well, theos, namos just means

God's law. You love God's law, right? You think you should uphold God's law. I'm not trying to say they're being facetious, but that's not the whole definition of theonomy.

That's a definition from the Greek words. It translated into English. Theos, namos. Yeah, but that's not what they're advocating for.

And so on the surface level, in the beginning conversation, we're arguing over whether you really believe in God's law and it's sufficient and you should trust it and uphold it as being righteous.

If you do not hold the theonomist view of the law, then you basically are lessening God's holiness and you're lessening the law.

And I just don't think that's a fair argument. I'm going to start there. Guys, that's my experience. I'm not saying every theonomist says this or does this.

So I'm not whitewashing or broad brushing. I'm just saying the experience I have had, this is the debate.

Now, I'm going to defend theonomists now. One of the argumentations that has often been used is that theonomists believe that the world is transformed to be

Christian by the law. They don't. They don't teach that. And it's not fair. It's a strawman.

We got to stop saying that. I was going to say, theonomists that I know, they believe in justification by grace through faith in Christ alone and preach that.

And they don't assume that the law changes anybody's heart. So I want to be very fair. Yeah, and I think that what ends up happening is they're trying to clarify their position and they're defending off attacks that aren't true.

So I don't want to attack them where they don't need to be attacked. And I don't attack anybody. I don't want to ask for clarity where there doesn't need to be clarity.

So I'm thankful that you preach justification by faith alone. You hold the five solas. Praise God for you, men.

Theonomists tend to be theologically conservative and astute. They're wise men.

So I'm not here to tell that they're uneducated and any of that. We're not going down those roads.

It's not helpful. It's not part of the debate. So now that we've set that up on either side, we, who are

Reformed, hold very high God's law. We're going to right now get into the threefold divisions of the law.

I'll let you set that up, Justin, because I've been talking a lot. But we hold it high. And we want to try and use biblical language to define where the law is applicable and where it is not.

So Justin, unless you had other comments, we could jump into— No, I don't. We've got to get going on it.

So we're going to respond theologically to theonomy effectively in three primary ways.

The first of which, we as Confessional Reformed guys, and most everybody listening probably knows,

John and I both subscribe to the Second London Confession. And being Confessional Reformed guys, we uphold what has historically been known as the threefold division of the law.

So in our confession, it's chapter 19. There would be a corresponding chapter in the Westminster Standards as well.

And the threefold division of the law is this, that the law of God, in particular, as we think about the law of God given through Moses, can be broken down into three separate categories.

The first category is the moral law. Now, I just said the law given through Moses. Let me explain what I mean.

The moral law, as we understand it, is the law that God wrote into creation.

He wrote on the human conscience and then was given to Moses, summarized in ten words, written down on two tablets of stone.

So the moral law contains what man must do in order to be righteous in God's sight.

It is inherently moral. It is known innately. We're going to get into some of this more and more in just a minute.

And the moral law is immutable. It doesn't change because it reflects the character of God who gave it.

It is binding on all men at all times because, again, it exists from the beginning.

It exists prior to any other covenant arrangement being made. It is literally written into the world that the

Lord has spoken into existence. Part of the DNA. That's right. Correct. And so it is binding on all men at all times.

It transcends any unique era of redemptive history. And we're going to get into maybe texts more in just a minute, but we would see this in the

New Testament supported by texts like Romans 2, 14, 15, and also Romans 5, 12 to 14.

And it's very plain that the moral law of God is binding and that even the moral law is a piece of the covenant that God made with Adam is a thing.

So that's the moral law. The next kind of law, in addition to the moral law,

God gave Israel ceremonial laws. These pertain to institutions under that covenant.

They are typological in nature. They contain many commands related to Israel's worship, and they also contain moral obligations.

But they all point to the Messiah to come, the Savior who would come and fulfill them and are abrogated thereby by Christ when he comes.

So that's the ceremonial law. The third category of law would be the civil law or the judicial law. Those terms are interchangeable.

Those are the laws that God gave to govern the nation state of Israel. We would understand that those laws cease to be binding on any geopolitical entity once Israel under the old covenant ceases to be.

That's what our confession states. So that's the threefold division of law, moral, ceremonial, and civil. We can link maybe to our episode that we did last year,

Is the Law Relevant Today?, where we deal with the threefold division of the law. Let's unpack this a little bit as to how this is relevant.

Now, sometimes you will hear an argument, well, there's no inscription that makes that division. You guys are pushing, that's a reformed dogma.

You're pushing on top of the text. Is the actual division, did one of the disciples make that or Christ make that division?

No, they did not. But when you read the application of the law and you look at how the law is being used, it's easy to come to a walking away saying, okay, this is how it's being used.

Justin, specifically, we're dealing a lot with the civil and ceremonial.

Just to help someone, this might even be brand new. That word ceremonial might even just be brand new.

I think it would be healthy just to stop. So people, when we keep using these phrases, if this is a new term for you,

I think it would be helpful. Give an example of what a ceremonial law would be. Ceremonial laws, I can rattle off a number.

You have the priesthood and its function. You have the sacrificial system in total.

You have particular days that are related to sacrifice, like the Day of Atonement.

You have the feasts. You have all of those sorts of things, food laws, laws related to jubilee, etc.

God's using a system to set the nation apart, right? To set them apart.

And so they are given these laws. Go ahead. And the ceremonial law, in particular, teaches the people a lot about how they would be saved and reconciled to God.

Because atonement needs to be made for sin. They need a mediator. Their sin needs to be atoned for and taken away from them.

There's all of that stuff. So when you said typology or a type or a shadow, something that's pictured.

Typological, yeah. Typological. God gave the ceremonial system so it would show them what atonement looks like, what cleansing looks like, what being set apart looks like.

So it's important to understand the nature of that section of the law. Yeah, and those laws served a purpose in their context.

So you were ceremonially clean through the sacrifices of goats and cats, right?

But we read in the New Testament that those things could never take away sins, and ultimately they were pointing to something other and greater, which is

Christ for us. That Jesus came to die and to make atonement, to cleanse us in a way that those sacrifices never could.

Right. Civil law. So that's an example. Right. So civil law. How would we describe civil?

Go ahead. Civil law is all of the things related to how Israel as a nation state would govern itself.

That's right. So there's a lot of stuff there regarding laws pertaining to inheritance, particular codes in terms of how certain disputes are to be settled, how this issue is to be addressed, et cetera, that has to do with just civil society and its arrangement as the nation state of Israel.

How do you rectify that? Sure. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So those are all... That was related to that particular...

And to get into this, those particular ceremonial and civil laws were related specifically to a unique nation that had a unique purpose, which we're going to get into in just a minute.

Right. So now we're going to get a little bit nerdy. Hey, look, this is fun. But, Jostin, do we want to now explain the moral and positive?

Okay. Yeah. So another prong of our response, and these are all kind of building on each other, and I trust that will become plain.

That's right. Is the distinction between moral law and positive law. Or let me be clear here.

In this portion of the pod, when we say moral law, that should be understood to be synonymous with natural law.

So we're talking about the distinction between natural law and positive law, between moral law and positive law. And so what we mean by natural or moral law...

Do not steal. Do not kill. In this instance, is this... Again, it's summarizing the

Ten Commandments. That's right. It is this law written into creation, written on the human conscience that is known innately by all.

That's the moral. It's the light of nature that we can appeal to, whereas positive laws are different. They are posited by decree or by kingly fiat.

They are not dealing with things that are inherently moral or immoral, but once the command, the decree is attached to them, they become so.

Examples. Eating the fruit of a tree is not inherently sin. That's right.

But when God says, don't eat the fruit of that tree, it becomes sin. That's right. Circumcision, right?

Not inherently moral or immoral to cut the foreskin off of your eight -day -old boy, but when

God says you must do it, that decree makes it an issue of faithfulness. It makes it an issue of morality, and we can go on and give a number of other examples.

I trust those two will suffice. Right, so that's a positive law. It's a weird way of saying it if you're not...

I remember the first time I heard it, I'm like, was there a negative law? Correct. So what it means,

I think, is a good definition. By divine fiat, it's being decreed. You could even say decreed law.

That's right. And that's important to understand that those two... Because, all right,

I'll just kind of jump into some of the theonomy argumentation, Justin, is that one of the biggest one is that there is a struggle to believe that the moral law is sufficient to accomplish what it has been presented to do, which is to govern the heart of men and the minds of men.

And this is why even Bonson's book says, by this standard, you know, the question is often asked in his book, by what standard do we tell someone they are right or not right before God if we're not using the law, is what typically has been given.

Yeah, and we would absolutely say that regarding the moral law. That's right. Again, known innately.

People know to kill someone is wrong. Right. People know to steal something is wrong. That's what's unique about the moral law or in the natural law, right?

The light of nature. We can appeal to it. Whereas, when it comes to the positive laws, nobody would know innately.

Nobody would know that they should obey it unless they're told to. That's right.

Again, remember, nobody would know that I don't eat the fruit of that tree unless I'm told that. Nobody would know that I need to circumcise my son unless I'm told that.

Nobody would know that I'm supposed to let my, you know, pick... I'm kind of collapsing some categories here, but in terms of positive laws, nobody would know that I'm supposed to rest my fields on the seventh year.

Nobody would know that this is how we're to handle an issue of a kinsman redeemer. Like if my brother is married, you know, under the old covenant, right?

If my brother's married to his wife and they don't have children and he dies, then I, as his brother, am to marry her and have children for my brother's sake.

Nobody would know that. That's right. You know, unless you're told to do it. And I don't want to jump the gun here.

We're going to get into this in a minute, but we would understand that the ceremonial law and the civil law of Israel are positive law.

Right. Whereas the moral law is moral and it is natural law in that regard.

You can appeal to it as such. Right. Which has a ton of implication for what is binding on people today in a different era of redemptive history.

So for those of you that maybe have lost, you know, we've been going through something, we bring this back so you understand.

Part of the debate here is, should nations be required to live under positive law and then be punished by their corresponding judgment that God puts upon it?

That's the debate that theonomy is about. So we wanted to take this time to appropriately represent them and also set up the situation and say that, okay, there's some collapsing and confusion of categories here.

And a really important, really important, like flashing red light, important thing to say at this point, and it makes sense now to say it.

Theonomists, in terms of the traditional argumentation, like Greg Bonson, for example, they see not a threefold division of the law, but a twofold division of the law.

That's right. Rather than seeing moral, ceremonial, and civil, they see only moral and ceremonial.

And what they do, and what Bonson says, is that the judicial law of Moses is moral law, just illustratively applied.

So in that sense, the theonomic argument is that the judicial law is moral law.

And we would say, no, the moral law stands on its own, the ceremonial law we agree about, and the civil law of Moses was a particular set of commandments, particular laws given to a particular people in a particular place, at a particular time, for a particular purpose.

That's right. They're positive law, not moral. Right, and the argumentation, to be a theonomist at the moment and defend my brothers in this area, their argumentation is that what your guys are saying is that the whole law is not good, it's not holy, it's not right, we shouldn't love it.

And they'll use passages, old and new, to defend the twofold division of the law, in that the ceremonial side of it should be...

Abrogated. Right, right. Which we agree on. We agree on. But the civil side of it, they would say, no, we need to look at that as good and right for all humans in all places, just like...

The blueprint for civil society. Right, so we're collapsing something that was positive, that was given to a nation for a specific purpose and a reason.

And the argumentation is, well, the Bible references the law as good, and therefore, if it's good and right and holy and loved, all people in all times should love the law and obey the law in that particular way.

Right, and we absolutely agree that the law of God is good and holy and upright. And in particular, we're going to say that about the moral law.

But we would say the same thing about the ceremonial and civil law, rightly understood in the context of biblical revelation, rightly understood via the biblical covenants, which is the arguments that we're trying to make today.

And I want to be very plain to say that the civil law of Moses or the judicial law of Moses is circumstantial, does not mean that it's arbitrary.

No. It was intentional, purposeful, good, right, and perfect for Israel. That's right.

And that has everything to do with the purposes of God in and through Israel, which is effectively where we're going to go in just a moment.

I think a couple more comments of clarification while we're on this distinction between moral and positive law are good to make.

So we are going to appeal to not only the light of nature, the natural law, but we're also going to appeal to the covenant

God made with Noah in a number of ways when it comes to the establishment of civil society and the governing of those societies.

So the Noahic covenant establishes proportionate retributive justice, right, that if you take the life of a human being, your life is required.

So in that regard, it's not the law of Moses that establishes such a thing. It's the covenant

God made with Noah that applies to all human beings at all times. And the reason that is, is that wasn't made to a specific nation.

Correct. That was made to all humanity because Noah, basically, they restarted humanity. Represents, effectively, represents all of us in that regard.

And God makes a covenant with him. I'm going to sustain the creation and there are going to be things that are going to be upheld that I am saying you should uphold.

The building of civil society, procreation, and proportionate retributive justice is good in this fallen world because if you take someone's life, then your life should be required of you.

If you harm another person in terms of their life, their property, then the civil magistrate should step in and in an act of proportionate retributive justice, act on behalf of the victim.

That's Noahic covenant principle. And so we would absolutely uphold that and affirm it in every way.

But that is different than what the theonomists are appealing to. That's correct.

So I trust we've said enough for now. And let's pivot to our kind of last prong. So our threefold response, theologically, to theonomy.

One, threefold division of the law and what that means today. Then the distinction between moral and positive law and what that means today.

Now we're going to talk about covenant theology, particularly from our perspective as 1689

Federalists and how this really helps us see the unique purposes that God has in and through Israel under the

Old Covenant. And then what that's going to mean, how God deals with them, how he gives them the law, the covenants that he makes with them, how that's going to affect what we carry over from the

Old Covenant into the New Covenant era. So all that hopefully in the next 15 minutes. So typically at this point we would stop, and this would be the end of the podcast, and we would carry over into Semper Riformanda.

But once in a while we like to stop and just let you guys in on what does Esar look like, which tends to be a little bit more heady and lively.

So instead of pausing here, welcome to Semper Riformanda. We're just going to continue the conversation.

And basically we're continuing the convo today. That's right, that's right. Yeah, Justin, this next section

I think is important. Now, if you're new to the podcast and the whole idea of covenant theology might be new to you, and 1689

Federalism might be new to you, we have some material on this, a lot of it available. I did something on 1689

Federalism on YouTube. We've got multiple things we've done on covenant theology. So we're going to try our best to keep this at a high level so you can follow us.

And we're going to link to an article that I wrote recently, kind of an essay for a journal that's going to have an overview of 1689

Federalism as a part of it as well. So there's a number that you can read. That link's in the comment, right? All right, so Justin, I feel like we have been flying by.

We could have done probably hours on this, but this has been complicated. So here's where the table's at.

And then I'm going to toss it to you to help us look at this from a covenantal Federalist position.

The playing field we're dealing with is we've got a people of God that he has selected.

And in drawing these people to himself, he gave them a specific promise. And in those promises he gave them, he posited to them laws, right?

On top of the moral law, he posited to them these civil and ceremonial laws.

And those particularly in the theonomist view, they believe that they go past Israel and they go on to all nations for all people.

The civil part, right? We agree with them on the ending, the abrogation, the ceremonial, but the civil side of it moves forward, right?

So we're going to take that argument here and move that now into covenant theology and say, actually, there's an answer to what the civil law was intended for.

And we're going to show from covenant theology that there isn't a continuation past Israel.

Here's why, Justin. So I'm going to be super, super quick, and I'm going to probably feel remiss because there's so much

I'm going to leave out for our purposes right now. A few high, high level comments before we dig in a little bit on some of the finer points.

So as covenantal theologians, historically defined, we uphold the man alive, the tri -covenantal framework of scripture, right?

We've got the covenant of redemption and eternity past, right? Made between persons of the Godhead, pointedly between the father and the son, where they're going to save and elect people.

And in particular, it's the work of the son that's going to do that. And he, for his part, he will be rewarded with these people as his inheritance who will live resurrected in the new heavens and the new earth with him forever.

So that's the covenant of redemption. Then the covenant of works God makes with Adam, right? Where Adam represents the entire human race.

He can earn eternal life through obedience. He can earn death, spiritual, temporal, and eternal through disobedience, right?

We know what happened there. Then upon Adam's fall, you have the covenant of grace, right? Which is promised in Genesis 3 .15.

There's going to be the seed of the woman who will come and crush the serpent's head. And then we understand that that promise of the covenant of grace or the covenant of grace promised in Genesis 3 .15

is revealed by farther steps throughout the Old Testament through the covenants that are subservient to it, namely

Abraham, Moses, David. And then that covenant of grace is established and accomplished in the coming of Christ in the new covenant.

So that's an overview of our theological framework. What I will say right now for our purposes is that we would see a level of discontinuity between the old and the new covenant that's going to be really important when it comes to what is carried over directly from the old covenant into the new.

We uphold one covenant of grace in all of Scripture. And we also, as 1689 Federalists, uphold the newness of the new covenant.

So it is not, and with all due respect to our paedobaptistic covenantal theologians who listen to us, we love you and respect you and we appreciate you guys putting up with us and kind of holding your noses while you do that.

But we would say that one covenant, two administrations is not what the

Scripture teaches. We would understand one covenant of grace that is promised and revealed in the

Old Testament and the old covenant established and accomplished in the new. And so that slightly higher level of discontinuity in our covenantal theological framework is significant when it comes to this conversation.

So let's talk a little bit more about Israel and God's purposes through them. Yeah, and I'll jump in here and say our paedobaptist friends are going to agree with what

I'm about to say. So that's the encouraging part here in that our arguments against theonomy are going to be in agreement here.

There was a specific promise and fulfillment made with Israel.

We know this to be true because, you know, I'll throw it back this way.

Theonomists say that Christ says, I have not come to abrogate or to do away with the law, but I've come to fulfill it, which means some would argue that there's this ongoing fulfillment of it, meaning that it's not like it's filled and done, but there's this ongoing fulfillment of it, which means the world then becomes under the fulfillment of the law, which means the whole world is under the civil law, right?

We would say that when you're reading the New Testament, you don't see a re -institution or even a hope of a re -institution of a civil -like government with Israel.

You even have Paul and Peter telling the church that they are to submit to their governing bodies, not in waiting and expectation for there to be another nation because that particular prophecy and promise to type in shadow was fulfilled in Christ.

So therefore, that's when he says the old is gone, the old is done away with. That means it fulfilled its purpose in sign.

That's what it fulfilled. If I may briefly insert, I think this is helpful here. The institutional form of the people of God on earth in the old covenant was the nation of Israel, a geopolitical entity.

The institutional form of the people of God on earth in the new covenant is the church, which is not a geopolitical entity in any sense.

It's actually made up of people from every tribe, language, people, nation. And so that alone, and Presbyterians and Baptists and Reformed church folks all agree on this.

That logic alone is reason enough to rethink how we would apply civil judicial law to any geopolitical entity in the new covenant era.

That's right. That said, here's the overarching thing that I would want to emphasize in this conversation pertaining to covenant theology.

The purposes of God in and through the nation of Israel are redemptive, primarily. That is the main thing

God is doing. It is a redemptive purpose with Christ at the center. And so all of the work that God does in and through Israel is to accomplish the redemption of God's people through the promised

Christ that would come from the people of Israel who lived in the land of Canaan. That's right. And so the laws even that God gives to govern that people need to be seen in light of that reality.

That these laws were given to a stiff -necked and stubborn people. We're the same way, but given to a stiff -necked and stubborn people to protect them, to preserve them, to preserve the line of promise so that the

Christ could come and accomplish God's eternal plan to save. That's right. That's huge.

Well, even the Abrahamic covenant foretells of this. Sure. So the

Abrahamic, this is cool, really quickly. The old covenant is made up of three covenants, Abrahamic, Mosaic, Davidic.

That equals the old covenant. So in the covenant God made with Abraham, he establishes a people and he's going to give them a land.

Then he gives, through Moses, gives the law that's going to, there's the moral law, there's the ceremonial, and then there's the civil that's going to govern them.

Then he's going to make the covenant with David where he's going to promise that there's going to be a Davidic king who's going to sit on the throne forever.

And then we learn most pointedly in 1 Kings 9 that that king is going to represent the people according to the law.

If the king obeys, it will go well for the nation. If the king disobeys, the nation will be cut off, right?

So all of that is what we mean when we say that the promise of the covenant of grace is made in Genesis 3 and revealed further and further through the pages of the

Old Testament, through those subservient covenants, so that we're learning all the time who the

Christ is going to be and what he's going to come and do. That's right. And so if we ever lose that focus, we're going to tend to misinterpret the laws that are contained uniquely within these particular covenants.

That's right. That's right. Well, you can even think about the nature of the new covenant, right? We look at Jeremiah 31 or Ezekiel 33 or 36, sorry, where they're talking about there's a whole new nature, a whole new side of it, and there's a whole new interaction with it.

And that new nature, new side, new interaction, we are no longer governed by law, we're governed by the

Spirit, right? The Word of God is put in our hearts. And then when you come to the day of Pentecost and the

Holy Spirit's poured out on the disciples, you see an advancement of God's kingdom. And this is why sometimes when

I bring this up to the Theonomist, they use the interesting language like, well, yeah, that's before Christ's resurrection.

Like when Jesus says, my kingdom was not of this world because if it was of this world, we would be fighting. And we're going to get into this in the next episode,

Justin, but I'm going to just tip the hat to it There is a pilgrim -esque nature to our interaction here in this world where you're not seeing the kingdom of God physically taking form in the form of civility, meaning that like civil government, and you're not seeing the writers,

Christ or the writers of the New Testament, expecting that. And that's that part of it we're saying, there's an already not yet factor where God is already redeeming sinners, but the redemption of the world is not yet, along with our glorification.

And that's where we would agree, we would say like in post -millennialism, this optimism where the world is gradually moving in that direction.

That's hard to argue for that, especially if you're going to argue it from a reinstitution of the civil government of the

Mosaic law. So we're going to be governed by these regulations. And some of them, I'm just going to say, the view of death, the death penalty for, there's a lot of death penalties going on.

Yeah, so Israel is governed by moral law and Israel is governed by positive laws that are ceremonial and civil.

That's right. And our argument effectively is the moral law transcends based upon things we've already argued for. The positive laws related to the

Mosaic covenant need not necessarily be carried over into the new covenant era. Because when a different covenantal arrangement is established, the laws that were uniquely situated and tethered to the older covenant are not necessarily carried over.

That's right. So that's an important argument that we want to make. Let's talk a little bit about typology, though, related even to the death penalty, like you said.

So the Mosaic civil code, the Mosaic judicial law demands the death penalty.

Just give a couple of examples. Yeah. Generally speaking, in situations of adultery, not in every one, but in most cases of adultery, death penalty, breaking the

Sabbath. Right? Breaking the Sabbath, death penalty. What's going on there? We would say that God is not giving a blueprint for civil government today, where, let's just say in the

United States of America, we need to legislate the law in this way, that if you have sex outside of marriage, you should die.

And if you break the Sabbath, you should die. That's not what God means for the

United States. What is he teaching his people, Israel, uniquely? He is teaching them through that civil code that violations of the moral law deserve death.

That's right. To commit adultery, that's the breaking of the seventh commandment, right? To break the

Sabbath is the breaking of the fourth commandment. And so if you break the moral law, you deserve to die, not just temporarily, but eternally.

And God's teaching his people that. The curses of the Mosaic covenant and the blessings of the

Mosaic covenant, Deuteronomy 28, are applied uniquely to Israel under that covenantal arrangement.

We ought not apply them to people holistically today, like prosperity preachers do. And we should not seek to overlay those principles onto nation states today, like theonomists attempt to do.

That's right. And that's important to understand typology, even within the biblical covenants. Right, and there is a confusion in typology, because, well, we can get into this in a whole nother idea.

But another way of describing this is a shadow. So you have something that's reflecting.

It's pointing you towards the image of the substance of it. But when you have the actual substance, you don't need the type.

You don't need the shadow anymore. And what theonomists are doing is holding on to both.

We're holding on to the type and the substance at the same time and saying they're required. And I use this illustration a lot.

It's not a perfect illustration. But when you go to a restaurant, they're giving you a type and a shadow of the food to come. And when they bring you your food, what do you no longer need?

And they take it away from you. They take away the menu. That's exactly what's going on. But it's complicated.

And I think it's, at times, frightening to think about. And I think our theonomic friends agree with you regarding the ceremonial law.

Right, exactly. And even regarding keeping the moral law for righteousness, they're going to agree with us completely.

Where they're going to disagree is they're going to seek to apply the civil code and say, that's not been clearly abrogated.

And we are saying, yes, it has, because of all of these arguments we've been making. There's a threefold division of the law.

There's the moral and positive law distinction. Positive laws do not transcend. Moral law does.

And then finally, we've got the covenantal argumentation. What was God doing in and through Israel? Those judicial laws served a specific purpose for a specific people at a specific time in a specific era.

And now that that purpose has been accomplished, i .e., Jesus came, those laws no longer bind a nation -state today.

And the newness of the new covenant protects us from necessarily carrying over old covenant categories directly into this era.

That's it for me, buddy. You wrap it when you want. Yeah, Tom Hicks had a really good argument. We'll put his article in the link.

But he was talking about how sometimes theonomists will make the argumentation that Israel enforced justice on nations that didn't uphold to the civil code.

And the argument there was that, no, they weren't upholding civil code. That's positive. They wouldn't know to uphold it.

That's a problem. But they're enforcing the moral law. That's right. They're enforcing the moral law, which is written on the heart.

And apparently to God, it's sufficient for justifying his retribution.

I said I was done. Last super quick comment. So we want to be really plain that the appeal, from our perspective, the appeal we make when it comes to the government of civil society, we appeal to the moral law and we appeal to the light of nature.

And that, we think, is how you should do civil government. And in particular, when it comes to the moral law, you appeal to the second table, commandments five through ten, in terms of the things that we need to be doing for the good of our fellow man.

And that, I just don't want to be misunderstood. We appeal to the moral law, especially the second table. We appeal to the light of nature and we do civil government that way.

That would be our position on that. And I would add this because we're going to really, we're going to go deeper into this next week.

And we might grab in a couple of things we've left here, but I'll make this last comment and then we'll move on to our next episode.

But when we're thinking about the law, God didn't,

God wasn't silent in the New Testament era about our involvement with civil government. He says that He is the one who institutes them.

He is the one that governs them. And we, our response to them, is then to submit to them.

And some of the arguments of the theonomists is, would you want to, do you want to submit to God's law or man's law? And I'm telling you, that's exactly what

Christ has done through use of the moral law and God's governing sovereignly nations. We are called to submit to the law of men, unless it contradicts the

Bible. And I know that it sounds super unspiritual. It sounds better to say, no, I'm going to submit to God's law.

Well, in God's law, in His command, He has told us to submit to the governing authorities. And that is His design for the

New Testament era as He advances the kingdom. That is a conversation we're going to have next week as relates to the church, believers, and the advancement of the gospel, to kingdom, the whole thing.

Hey guys, thank you for listening. I know it was long. We're going to provide more material. Justin and I are working on a

TheocastU class. It's going to be multiple hours with a syllabus that should be connected to this. This is simply an introduction.

Please be gracious with us. We're trying to introduce people to the subject and have some responses that are gracious and kind.

We seek to be gracious to you. We ask you to do the same. Thank you guys for supporting us. If you'd like more information about this, you can go to theocast .org,

join Semper Firmanda, go into the app, and we can do some conversations there as well. We'll see you next week.