A Pastoral Defense of Theonomy: A Response to Theocast Part II

The Greatest Commandment and the Academy Promo

When the scribes and Pharisees asked our Lord about the greatest commandment, He replied, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.

So, why do we hear some of today's most prominent pastors saying things like this?

It had everything to do with how we talk about the Bible, and specifically, or along with that, what we point to as the foundation of faith, which for most Christians, unfortunately, is the Bible.

We need to do better. We need to love God with all our hearts, and stand unashamedly on the rock of His Word. We need to love the Lord with all of our souls, and respond to the worldview issues of our day with the wisdom and discernment that comes only from Him.

We need to love the Lord with our minds, and understand the calling of God's people in every area of life in God's world. We need to love the Lord our God with all our strength, and face the work of building a life-giving, God-honoring culture.

Join us for 10 days at the Runner Academy for Cultural Leadership, as we consider how the gospel influences all of life and culture, and the role that we have to play in applying foundational Christian thinking to every area of life.

This is the Academy. I am Eli Ayala of Revealed Apologetics, and I will be bringing a six-part series on presuppositional apologetics.

What is this called, the Apology Academy?

It's just called THE Academy.

Okay.

Opening Banter and Show Introductions

What's up, everybody? My name is Pastor Jeff Durbin, and you're watching Collision Today. I'm going to be interacting with an atheist on TikTok. So here we go.

Unsupervised and unhinged.

Welcome back to Cultus the Aftermath. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Ask Me Anything. You are watching Apologia Radio's After Show exclusively for all access.

Non-rockabotas must stop. I don't want to rock the boat. I want to sink it.

Are you going to bark all day, little doggie, or are you going to bite?

We're being delusional.

Yeah, I love you, Jeff.

Delusional? Yeah. Delusional is okay in your worldview. I'm an animal. You don't chastise chickens for being delusional. You don't chastise pigs for being delusional. So you calling me delusional using your worldview is perfectly okay.

It doesn't really hurt.

She hung up on me.

What? What? What?

Desperate times call for faithful men and not for careful men. The careful men come later and write the biographies of the faithful men, lauding them for their courage.

Go into all the world and make disciples. Not go into the world and make buddies. Not to make brosives.

Right.

Don't go in the world and make homies.

Right.

Disciples.

I got a bit of a jiggle, Nick. That's a joke, pastor.

When we have the real message of truth, we cannot let somebody say they're speaking truth when they're not.

Reconciliation, New Creation, and the Ministry of the Gospel

From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against him and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.

Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin, who knew no sin.

Sorry.

So that in him, we might become the righteousness of God. That was a lot. And that's from 2 Corinthians 5, 16 through. 21. Amen.

Praise the Lord for that verse right there.

We will definitely discuss this a little further in this episode.

I can't wait. I'm excited.

Theocast, Theonomy, and the Gospel in Public Life

What's up, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of Apologia Radio. This is Luke the Bear hosting again today. Pastor Jeff, forgive me, I'm doing everything today. So I'm trying to multitask like a maniac.

Almost everything.

Almost everything. Pastor Jeff's still in his sabbatical. So yeah, be praying for him. He's getting a lot of rest, thankfully. So today, I got myself and just old Zachary Conover.

Holding it down. Just the two of us. We can make it if we try.

Just the two of us. But we do have a special guest on today, which I'm very excited about. He's company. Let's just... Okay, before I bring in our guest, if you saw last week... Now I got that song in my head.

Come and knock on my door.

Sorry, man. Sorry.

We've been waiting for you.

So I used to love that show. If you saw last week's episode, we responded to Theocast. They did an episode called A Reformed Response to Theonomy.

Right.

We responded to their response. A lot of responding.

Response to response, yes.

And so today, we mentioned last week we were going to respond. I can't get away from that word. To their second episode they did called A Pastoral Response. Or is that what it was? A pastoral response to Theonomy.

And we're going to respond to that.

And we're going to respond to that. And so again, I want to thank those brothers, Justin and John, for their charity. We're grateful for them and the work they're doing. I will say that in the first episode, I thought they did a very fair job.

For the most part, there were some issues we brought up. But for the most part, I felt like they tried to accurately represent us. I think in the second episode, not so much.

The tone was a bit more pointed. I think it was more direct. And so maybe that'll allow us the opportunity to be more direct in our fourth episode.

Yep, so we will be responding to that. Again, there's that word. Before we do though, I'm going to bring in our special guest here. I have a special song ready for our guest. So I'm going to go ahead and play this here.

Hold on.

Zach and I were very excited about this. So we were preparing for this. Sorry, I should have pulled it up a little bit further. So our guest is our dear brother.

Everybody listening right now has no idea what's happening.

Nope, we do.

Mr. Sandlin, bring us a treat.

Is that going to be my new walk-up song? Yes, please.

Yes.

I'll tell you real quickly, guys. Years ago, some people said that my followers were called. And those of you from the 80s and 90s will remember the Sandlinistas. Remember the Sandinistas, of course, in Central America.

Yes.

Yeah, I'm the Sandman. I guess that means, guys, the listeners, I'm going to put them to sleep. And I certainly hope that that is not the case.

That definitely will not be the case.

No, no, no, no, no.

I wouldn't mind being considered a Sandlinista.

I think that was before my time. I don't remember that.

No, a Sandlinista. That's a compliment.

Oh, I see.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay, I got you.

Anyways.

Sure, I'll go with that.

Andrew Sandlin, we love you, brother. We're grateful to have you back on. What is going on with you? You've been super-duper busy.

Well, I'm doing a lot of writing, as we'll get into in a minute, and speaking, and so on. I just got back from an Esri Institute event with our good mutual friend, Joe Boot, in Minnesota. His first U .S. event, or essentially second U .S. event.

Great event in central Minnesota. A Christianity and culture conference, and going to plan to do an event for high schoolers and Christian worldview in a few weeks in North Carolina, finishing a book on the Free and Virtuous Society, and of course, the book we're talking about today.

So extremely busy, just like you guys.

So let's hear about that.

Let's hear about that new book, which I have had the pleasure of reading already, and it's.

You have?

Fantastico.

You read it already?

Yeah, because he asked me for an endorsement.

Oh, okay.

Sorry.

Well, I didn't get asked for that, but I can't wait to read it myself.

Now, Zach, in defense of myself, when you get him as important as Luke, you will be.

Permitted to... I was like, you want an endorsement from me? I was honored. But it's excellent. So tell us about it, brother, because it's necessary.

All right.

So I've been told by the producers, if I put this right in front of my face...

Hey!

Here we go.

All right.

There's the book. You want to see the book instead of me anyway?

All right.

So it's Postmillennial Primer. A primer is just kind of like a basic introductory book. It's an expression. A lot of the old schools back when we used books, you know, hard copies in schools, was like an introduction to something.

This book is basically designed to lay out the three or four main views of eschatology, postmillennialism, amillennialism, dispensationalism, and then premillennialism, non-dispensational premillennialism, and make a positive case for an optimistic approach to eschatology.

And I do it in, what about... I try to do it in what's like 80 pages, 80, 90 pages, something like that. So you'll have to get the book and decide whether I did. The sales have been great thus far and appreciate your endorsement, Luke, and that of a number of other fine men of God.

But yeah, it's actually designed to give people who don't want to wade into 700 pages, not that there's anything wrong with wading into 700 pages, but this is good to put on like a church book table, give to friends, church leaders, and so on, to explain a position that often is misunderstood.

So that's basically what the book is all about.

That's what I was just thinking. I'm thinking about gentry. I'm thinking about, you know, the mission of God. I'm thinking about even, you know, Bonson's small work on post-millennialism. And I don't think that there's been a parallel for just a basic, quick hit explanation.

What is this all about? And so I think that'll be very, very helpful for people.

That's basically what my endorsement said, what you just said.

So... Okay.

Well, see?

You know, because I mean, I get asked that.

Zach should have endorsed it. He should have endorsed it then.

Seriously.

I'm sure Luke did a stellar job.

As a, you know, as a pastor, I get asked a lot, like, explain to me what the difference is in these positions. And like you both were saying, there's plenty of exhaustive works out there, but not everyone wants to spend weeks reading a book, you know?

And so like, it's perfect. It's like a little quick read. It gives a great breakdown that I thought was very fair to all the positions. And so I'm just curious if you had any pushback at all from anyone in the other positions?

Not yet. It's only been out, I think, four days, three or four days. So I'm sure the pushback will come. Yeah, I was just curious. Another thing I want to mention, guys, is if you believe the Bible, and I hope everybody listening is, it's chock full of the Bible.

Quoting Bible verses.

Oh, yeah.

You might disagree with the interpretation, but no one can say that this position has nothing to do with the Bible.

Exactly.

So please read it and check out the verses.

Amen.

Exactly right.

All right.

Well, on that note, I wanted to make sure you had an opportunity to promote your book. Oh, by the way, in the description, you can go to Amazon and get it. I did put a link in the description. You can go get it.

Please do. I think it's only like 10 bucks, right?

Yeah, that's right.

So I'm actually going to order several copies today. When we get done the show, I just forgot to do it. So it's actually perfect. God timed this perfectly because the importance of Andrew's book is going to be on full display in this show today.

There's a reason why eschatology matters. And as we mentioned last week, our brothers, John and Justin, they'll get into it a little bit in this episode. I don't know if we'll get into that part, but they would consider themselves to kingdom on millennialists.

1689 Federalists.

And it's very clear right off the bat, we'll get into it, that why eschatology matters, why Andrew's book is going to be helpful in this discussion. So all that to say, we're going to get through as much as we can.

Again, there's so much to go through, but I got about three main points we're going to try to break down, and hopefully we can get through all of them. And if not, we will have an after show where we can get into the other points as well.

So all that to say, I'm going to go ahead, brothers, and just get right into this. If at any point you want me to stop, just say stop and we'll respond. I know it won't take me very long to hit.

I don't imagine we're going to get that far, but let's see.

Okay, here we go.

Theonomy Does Not Obscure the Gospel

We're going to talk more pastorally, and I would say in relation to the church and the kingdom of God as it relates to something like theonomy. Last week was more theological, but if we don't apply it to our hearts and our minds and how we live now, then all it is is head knowledge, and we don't want it to get stuck up there.

One of the things that Justin and I were being very careful in how we worded this, when we about some of the accusations that were presented to theonomists, I don't want to misrepresent them. This is where we're going to be a little bit more pointed.

We would say that theonomy often can overshadow the gospel.

I'm going to stop right there.

I guess that's enough for a springboard.

Yeah, so I think we talked about this a little bit last week, and I'm going to say this now because they get into this point later on in the show, but I don't think we're going to get to it. The one thing they say is that theonomists want to change society top-down, essentially, and they get into this overshadowing of the gospel.

Brothers, if you watch this, because I think they've been watching our responses, I plead with you to stop saying that because it's just not true. We constantly get accused of this, and I feel like if anyone's actually listening to what we're saying, that's not what we're saying.

We're saying it starts with the gospel. It starts in the individual. It starts in that governmental sphere and then works outward, and the idea is that the more that people come to Christ and love his law, the more that we should want God's standard of justice in our society.

That's what we're saying. At the same time, we're saying that civil government should uphold judicial laws according to that standard, but we're not trying to change things top-down. That's the complete opposite of what we're trying to do.

I know you're chomping at the back.

I think they acknowledge as much. Later on in the episode, they affirm that this is part of what we believe, that the gospel transforms from the inside out. As new hearts are made, as people come to the Lord, they desire righteous law and just social public policy.

I mean, this is part and parcel to the witness of the Christian church, which kind of—that's where the heart of the matter lies, is what is the role of the church in society, and what expectation do we have of the gospel's success in history?

But even there, we can't even move beyond that point, because they've just brought it.

Up.

They've said theonomy obscures the gospel, so we have to define what the gospel is. Now, from their framework, they're dealing with a two-kingdom framework, and they define salvation, right? They have a reformed soteriology, so they believe in justification by faith, they believe in the new birth, they believe in calling upon sinners to turn and to receive the forgiveness that Jesus offers, and that's the gospel.

Which, the gospel is that. It's not less than that. It's not less than right soteriology. However, if you look at the gospel that the apostles preach and that we find in the prophets and in the Psalter, it was about much more than just personal forgiveness.

It was about peace and justice for the nations. That's what was promised. When the Messiah came, he was going to bring justice in the earth, in the civil sphere, whether or not men believed. That was part of his mission, is that the coastlands were going to wait for his law, and that he was going to bring forth his justice in the earth.

That's part and parcel to his mission in the world, and I would say, by extension, to the witness of the church as we partner with him in this great work of reconciliation. So, I'd like to hear that from Andrew, maybe.

How, if at all, does theonomy obscure the gospel?

Well, I think you really touched on it there, Zach. The gospel is not identical to soteriology. Certainly not individual soteriology. Individual soteriology is a vital aspect of the gospel. But the gospel is the good news, literally.

Well, what is the good news? That God in Christ is undoing and reversing what happened in Genesis 3 with the fall of man, and he is restoring God's truth and justice and righteousness in the earth. God's law is one aspect of that gospel, and that's why a false law gospel distinction is very dangerous.

It's true that we're saved entirely by grace through faith in Christ and not of our own works, but that's not quite what the so-called law gospel distinction wants to say. It wants to keep them very, very far apart, thus that if you talk about the authority of God's law, particularly in society, you somehow undermine the gospel.

But that's a very truncated and emasculated view of the gospel of Jesus Christ. So, that assertion is just false. And, Luke, I really appreciate what you said about opposing this top-down approach. Those of us that believe in the authority of God's law in the civil sphere, and by the way, all true historic Calvinists should believe that.

It's in our confession. That's not something new. We don't believe in simply capturing politics so we can sort of impose God's law on everybody. In fact, if we had our way, the civil sphere, the state would be a lot smaller than it is now.

It would be radically small. Yes, God's moral law, including how it applies in the judicial sphere, would apply in all areas of life. But that's actually, if you read the Bible, very, very narrow. Most of God's law in the Bible does not apply in the civil sphere.

It does apply there. But the problem is that often our critics, and perhaps those whom we just played, they tend to buy into liberal or leftist premises, which is that if you believe in getting involved in politics, then you obviously must believe in a very large state.

Well, that's what leftists believe. But when Bible believers, knowledgeable Bible believers, get involved in politics, they're not trying to do that. They're wanting to reduce the size of the state to its biblical limits.

So this assertion is wrong on several counts.

That's a great point about that. Maybe just one verse to touch on with that, too. And they quote this, actually, later on in the episode. I remember now. 1 Timothy 2, verse 2. The apostle Paul is urging his protege that, "...for kings and all who are in high positions, prayers are to be made, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way.

This is good, and it's pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all people to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.".

So the apostle's urging Timothy that prayers are to be made for kings and those in high positions.

Why?

So that they'll leave the people of God alone, so that they can propagate the evangel, and live in terms of it, and proclaim the reality that there is only one mediator between God and men.

Notice there, the job of the state is not to make people good Christians. The job of the state is to leave the church and the family alone, so they can get the gospel so people become Christians. That's an important distinction to make.

Yes, amen to that. Okay, excellent. I'm just going to keep going here because we're just getting started.

Here comes the predominant message. You know, Justin, I don't want to steal your illustration, so I'm going to just ask you this. If someone were to say to a theonomist, define Christianity for me.

Yeah, go ahead.

The way I might frame it, yeah, the gospel ends up being obscured or obscured. If theonomy wins the day, and here's what I mean. If you were to listen to a theonomist talk about Christianity and what we are called to, and you were to ask a non-believing person sitting and listening to that theonomist talk, what would that non-believer conclude Christianity is about?

Is it about the forgiveness of sins, the imputation of righteousness, and eternal life through Christ alone, or is it about that and something else? That's big for me as a pastor.

It is. And that's not to say that there's more in the Bible than the gospel. There is, right? There's church politics.

I'll just stop there real quick. So again, brothers, I don't know theonomists. I know none of my friends that hold the theonomy sound like that. And so when I hear that, I'm concerned that you're not listening to what we're saying.

I'm concerned you're not listening to our sermons and our podcasts.

I don't know.

Maybe you know some people that would claim to be a theonomist that sound like that, but I don't know anyone that sounds like that and doesn't sound like anything we're trying to teach. So I don't know if you guys want to jump on that.

I think it's a minor point. I just wanted to address that quickly.

Well, I'd like to jump in here. What you say is correct. There's another problem, too, historically. Now, while a number of Calvinists historically may not have used that term theonomist, of course, there are different variations on how much of the law is applied in society.

I think they're really writing off a vast majority of the Calvinistic and reformed tradition. Let's take John Calvin in Geneva. Are you saying that he obscured the gospel because he believed in the authority of God's law and society?

What about the Puritans in England? What about the New England Puritans? What about Kuyper? What about a vast majority of before the 20th century and some cases 19th century? What about all these Calvinists that did believe in the authority of God's law?

Are they in society and not just in the church? Are they prepared to say that all of them were obscuring the gospel? I think that that view is embarrassingly stupid.

I think that maybe just one thing before we press on here to keep coming back to, if you listen to this whole podcast from them, their entire framework, again, this view, unfortunately, I believe conflates the institutional church with the kingdom of God.

This is a great point. So in their view, the only manifestation of the kingdom of God in the earth is the institutional church, which of course comes to regional expression in the forms of local churches, but that's where the administration of the sacraments is given, the ministry of the word, the exercise of church discipline, all of that, right?

The manifestation of the kingdom, where our focus ought to be is within the walls of the institutional church. And you'll hear them draw the discussion back to that over and over and over and over again.

What's our responsibility in the church? For life in the church? How do we be obedient in the church? And I think it just highlights something that we need to put our finger on here, is that while these gentlemen, these brothers, remain Calvinistic in their soteriology, they do not possess a reformational world and life view.

Yeah, I think, by the way, we ought to point out too, Zach, the position you described as them holding, that also for centuries has been the Roman Catholic view too. It's rather ironic when we hear Reformed brothers champion the equation of the institutional church for the kingdom of God, when Rome has believed that long before the Reformation.

And you're referring to, of course, Aquinas' influence and the Greek thought that reality is divided into two stories or two realms. So you have the upper story, the lower story, the scholastics of Roman Catholicism called it the nature-grace distinction.

That's right.

They believed that in the higher realm was this supernatural existence. And then in the lower realm, you have this common area, which is what they're articulating in their formulation of the common kingdom, this area, this neutral sphere where all of us hang out in and do business in and conduct affairs that are common to all of us.

And then you have the institutional church, which is in the redemptive aspect of reality.

Kingdom theology is the Protestant version of the Roman Catholic nature-grace distinction. I think people really need to understand that.

Yes.

Excellent. And I'm glad you brought that up, Zach. We were talking about this earlier this morning. And they get into this discussion later on. But again, I don't think we'll get to it. So it's important to have this now.

But you're exactly right. I noticed towards the end, they start to conflate the institutional church with the militant church, essentially, or the kingdom of God, like you're saying. And fail to see a distinction, fail to look at it in different categories, which is what our friend Joe Boot calls churchianity.

They talk about the mission of the church, which we'll hopefully get into later on. Which, by the way, I meant to mention this while we're mentioning Dr. Joe Boot. And Andrew, you probably know this. We are officially partnering with the Ezra Institute to bring you ReformCon 2024.

So that's in the works. We're trying to lock down location and date right now as we speak. Exciting. Spring, probably May-ish of 2024, we will be having ReformCon. We are officially partnering with the Ezra Institute and hope to do that as long as we possibly can and bring it to you guys every year.

So that's in the works. Very excited about that. We want to make it the premier Reform Christian conference. So you know my brother, Andrew, will be there as well.

You heard it here.

Yes.

I'll be there just to see you guys, if nothing else.

Well, you'll be speaking, Lord willing. So okay, let's keep going. I'm getting off track here.

But what ends up happening is the good news gets collapsed into that, that this is the good news.

There's some clutter thrown on it.

That's right.

Yeah, there's some obscuring of it.

Yeah, that's right. And there's a burden, to use your word, Justin, there's a burden that's placed on the believer that the expectation is that there is this heavy expectation that we need to be a part of this social transformation that's happening, that we need to be in the civil sphere and really pressing in on our leaders to make these changes.

And that's expected of all believers to be a part of that.

You are obligated as a Christian to be involved in the building of a Christian society broadly. And I would argue that really matters for the saints in the pew, because that's a burden that we were never meant to bear.

No.

Okay.

Man, so much to jump in there.

I know, there's like three or four points.

You bet that it does matter for the saints in the pew. It just might not matter in the exact same way. Yes, every single Christian is a missionary. Yes, every single member in the church pew has a responsibility to take part in the restoration and the reconciliation and the recreation of all things in Christ Jesus, which by the way, is the hope of Christianity, right?

That's the good news of Jesus's kingdom and what he's doing. He is bringing all things and uniting them to himself. And that is what he has enlisted us to take part in, the partnership with him, right?

As his vice gerants, right? Those who are working with him in partnership with him, those who are the co-heirs of his inheritance. That's our responsibility. Will that look the same for the mother of six children at home, as it will for the pastor going to address city council meetings for trying to make allowance for drag queen story.

Hour?

No, it won't. Because there is one body, many parts. There are different roles within, of course, how the church functions, the responsibilities that we have and the unique and various spheres that we occupy of family and state and church and all of these things.

So that's what I would say to start off.

Andrew, thoughts on that?

Yeah, so this is a severe verdict, but it actually is, and I think Zach was implying this, a denial of the lordship of Christ in all of life. I make this point when speaking to audiences a number of times and I say, is Jesus Christ Lord of all things?

Raise your hand if you believe that. Oh yes, everybody raises their hand. Is there any area of life over which Jesus Christ is not Lord? Now the hand goes up. Well, if that is the case, then how is it possible to say that it's too heavy a burden to bear to ask Christians to press his claims in all areas of life, including in politics?

Zach, of course, makes the point that not every Christian is called to do that all the time. Not every Christian is called to run for office or get involved, but Christianity as a whole is called to relentlessly press the faith in all areas of life and thought.

Politics is one of them. Education, also music and literature and art and science, technology, all of these other areas. So really, this is a functional denial of the lordship of Jesus Christ. I would also add very quickly that it's also a denial of the first commission in the Bible and the fundamental commission, and that is the stewardship or dominion commission in Genesis chapter 1.

Now they talk about the great commission and it is a great commission, but it's not really man's first commission. Man's first commission is under God's authority. Vicegerent's a good word that Zach used, to steward the earth, to exercise dominion, not in their own name, but as deputies.