The Absurdity of Covenantal Theology

Do not add to his words, or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar.¹

Some of the tenets of Covenantal theology pertain to the slicing and dicing of Mosaic Law into three separate tranches; moral, civil and ceremonial. Moreover, a favored traditional understanding, reflected in The Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF), suggests that the whole moral component can be encapsulated within the Decalogue (Ten Commandments). This Decalogue constitutes “a perfect rule of righteousness”, which was given to Adam and “bound him and all his posterity, to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience”³. And this perfect rule of righteousness was even more perfected by Christ’s “expositions”; although the radicalism of Christ’s “expositions” stretches the semantic meaning of that term into amorphous incoherence.

No one tears a patch from a new garment and sews it on an old one. If he does, he will have torn the new garment, and the patch from the new will not match the old. And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the new wine will burst the skins, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, new wine must be poured into new wineskins. And no one after drinking old wine wants the new, for he says, “The old is better.”³

No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is made worse.⁴

I find it frustrating when I read or hear columnists, pundits, or journalists dismiss Christians as inconsistent because “they pick and choose which of the rules in the Bible to obey.” What I hear most often is “Christians ignore lots of Old Testament texts—about not eating raw meat or pork or shellfish, not executing people for breaking the Sabbath, not wearing garments woven with two kinds of material and so on. Then they condemn homosexuality. Aren’t you just picking and choosing what they want to believe from the Bible?”⁵

 Christ’s warning about new patches on old garments and new wine in old wineskins was in response to a query about the practice of fasting, which is not even part of the Mosaic Law proper. This practice arises naturally as product of common human concepts of religiousity, which even affected the Israelites after the rendering of the Law. In its universality, one could argue that this practice is evidently more written on the hearts of men than even monotheism, the worship of God without imagery, or Sabbath keeping. Thus, since Christ’s admonition was not in conjunction with Mosaic Law, it could be obtusely dismissed as not relevant to discourse on the relationship between the Old and New Covenant.

However, Christ’s argument speaks directly against the folly of grafting or superimposing a New Covenant upon an Old. The mismatch of old cloth and new patch jars the senses. The new patch, as it settles in, frays at the edges and pulls upon that to which it is sewn, until it makes the tear worse. It is illogical absurdity to destroy the integrity of new cloth in order to repair the used, the withered and the ragged. The old cannot contain the new without bursting at the seams. Each of those developments occur, when attempting to interpret New Testament injunctions onto a Mosaic Covenant paradigm.

Tim Keller can have his frustrations. However, charges of Christian inconsistency by outsiders naturally and legitimately arise out of the rational incoherence, inscrutability and appearance of arbitrariness in selectively picking and choosing which components of the Old Covenant Laws to adopt into Christianity. It not only discredits Christian arguments in the gay marriage debate. It discredits Christianity; period! For, the slicing and dicing of the Mosaic Law is both rationally and scripturally indefensible; leading to all manner of internal contradictions, conundrums and perverse absurdities; lending to the same manner of justified scorn and scathing by secularists against Protestant / Evangelical Jesuitry as that barked at Catholicism by Luther and the original Reformers. “For the name of God is blasphemed among the nations through you, as it is written.”⁶

Had I not met Christ long before having to parlay with the stupidity of many who claim to be His disciples; I, like Mahatma Gandhi would never have come to Christ. For, whereas in my solitary and monkish nature I found a God, who demonstrated an extraordinarily level of sublime and scrupulous intellectual, moral and legal rationality; I encounter the fog of befuddlement amongst His current adherents. Even, as I know now, of the limits of reason and the frailty and fallenness of my own rationality; in the whole doctrine of Justification or Sovereignty of God (and not the truncated T.U.L.I.P travesty), I experienced a sufficient appreciation of those doctrine’s pristine rigorous logic to marvel at “the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!”⁷

If this essay fails in being sufficiently irenic, it is due to not mistakenly exchanging “speaking the truth in love”⁸ for the wimpish effeminacy of Evangelical niceties. It is not the poor sod on the pews who invariably will suffer under this muddle, which these theologians inflict; to whom this dissertation is addressed. It is to the arrogant folly of theologians who “go beyond what is written”⁹; who are more beholden to defending indefensible creeds, confessions and catechisms of Catholic and various Protestant/Evangelical Magisteriums than Scriptures; who furnish metaphysical paradigms and contexts to which Scriptures do not readily fit, unless retrofitted by hermeneutical pretzelism and/or further contorted by a yeasty malignancy that the logic of their theological innovations inevitably lead. As a student of history, it is evident that God utilizes the working out of history to demonstrate the folly of those, in this case Westminster divines, who add or subtract to His counsel.

Excerpt from "The Moral Law of God Written in the Hearts of Men"
 

 

Endnotes:

1. Proverbs 30:6
2. The Westminster Confession of Faith, 1646, “Chapter XIX – Of the Law of God”, Article I & II
3. Luke 5:36-39. Also Mark 2:21-22, Matthew 9:16-17
4. Matthew 9:16. Also Mark 2:21
5. Tim Keller, “Old Testament Law and the Charge of Inconsistency”, Redeemer Report, June 2012
6. Romans 2:24. (AKJV). ‘Gentiles’ is replaced with ‘the nations’ in this rendition to keep consistent with the literal translation of the Greek text, although in the context of the passage, referring to Jews, it probably meant Gentiles.
7. Romans 11:33
8. Ephesians 4:15
9. 1 Corinthians 4:6

 

 

The Fed and Federal Government Policies of Indebtedness

In the late 1970s, after years of stagflation, I concluded that Keynesian economics didn’t work. The politicians would rarely muster the courage to retrench government spending in times of prosperity; as was mandated by the theory. In 2009, in the aftermath of the Financial Panic of 2008, Alan Greenspan gave testimony before congress concerning his loose monetary policy that contributed to the housing boom and bust that led to the Panic. After the tech bust in 2000/1 and the Twin Towers attack, the Fed contrived the lowering of interest rates to cushion the economic impact. However, Greenspan admitted that he was averse to restoring interest rates to historical norms in 2003, lest the U.S. unemployment spike to 10%. Upon hearing that testimony, I concluded that Monetarism wasn’t much of a panacea either. Non-elected bureaucrats have no greater courage than the politicians. It is not necessarily that the models are wrong. It is that good economics must take the human element into account.

The purposes of Keynesian and monetarist policy is to moderate the peaks and valleys within each business cycle. Practiced with fidelity, they ought to be, in of themselves, a sum-zero game after each cycle. However, like derivatives, the uses of that policy have dangerously proliferated well past those original intents. These policies are now seen as sources of economic growth. To give an example; the latest Quantitative Easing (QE3) on September 12, 2012, had stated intents of “to generate sustained improvement in labour market conditions”¹.

Once, one surveys beyond the dazzle of econometric statistical wizardry, the essence of these expansionist policies is the invitation and incursion of indebtedness; with Keynesian policies, government (public) debt; with Monetarist policies, private debt. And by these debt-inducing stimulants, it is believed that a moribund economy could be jolted awake; and perhaps, with all its multiplier effects, pay for itself. If the motivation is the former, then the economic theory is based on psychological “feel-goodism”. If the latter, then why hasn’t any other nation thought of just stamping coinage, printing money or granting currency credits out of thin air, into perpetual prosperity? Oh they have! The Romans debased the silver content of the denarius to 2% and a collapse of the currency and economy occurred in 268 A.D. (barter system temporarily replaced it). I met a Swede in my travels in 1978/9, who told me that his grandfather used to come over to Weimar Germany to purchase paper fiat for firewood.

(For, pedagogic purposes; monetary expansion by the Fed occurs when existing debt instruments that exist at banks are swapped out for currency. (It would seem that the credit risks will now be assumed by the Fed, enabling the banks to report a profit as funds that were set aside for such defaults are pocketed. However, I am not to sure about this.) Those new funds ought to promote new loans; since normally, idle funds in a bank lose real value with any form of inflation or in terms of opportunity cost etc. In other words, the Fed is promoting increased indebtedness.)

This produces a ‘false economy’. For, this debt must eventually be repaid. And when deleveraging (paying back of debt) occurs, that same multiplier effect will accelerate the dampening/depressing effect on the economy. In many ways, that is exactly what has happened in these last 4-5 years. However, the governments/central bankers have tendency, for sociopolitical reasons, to attempt to counter this normal state of affairs through fresh incursions of debt inducements. It becomes an addiction, which ends when a credit or deficit/debt ceiling is reached, as it surely must. At that stretched point, the state incurs a debt-deflationary spiral, which no amount of state intervention will be able to forestall, short of draconian and autocratic measures.

This has, in varying degrees, been occurring in the U.S. since the mid-1990s. Although I didn’t cop on at the time; there was a relationship between Alan Greenspan’s phrase ‘Irrational Exuberance’ in a December 1996 speech to the American Enterprise Institute and his very loose monetary policies. The loose monetary policy has largely not abated in the interim years since. At the time, Greenspan claimed that he could push interest rates lower in order to reduce the joblessness rate because international competition was keeping wage rates and pricing subdued. In that, he succeeded. The NAIRU rate, the lowest perceived unemployment rate at which it is believed that inflation rears it ugly head, was challenged. Prior to that point, the NAIRU was believed to be 6%. However, unemployment rates were brought down to as little as 4%.

However, the problem with the analysis is the overconfidence in the sufficiency of government inflation measures to indicate to the real state of inflation. Consumer Price Indicators (CPI) and similar barometers measure and take into account living expenses of the average consumer. Of that, assets, such as homes, carry little weight in its composition.

However, because of a myriad of factors; wage pressures, which often hold the largest sway on price inflation; was weakened. The sociopolitical climate constituted one such factor. The conservative reaction since the 1980s, against the excesses of unionism and inflation-inducing policies of the prior decade, weakened public support for labour. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the credibility in socialism everywhere reduced self-interested concerns about a home-grown threat of socialist sentiment. Certainly, productivity gains from the computer / Internet revolution were starting to finally manifest themselves by the late 1990s. However, it was in free-trade globalism that domestic wages were in perpetual threat to offshore offsourcing that allowed for minimal apparent inflationary effect of otherwise inflationary policies.

In Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations” (1776), he suggests that prices of any commodity, including labour, are a function of supply and demand. Such a description can be recast as a power relationship. That is, when existing laborers must contend with an army of unemployed or other available labour resources, the bargaining leverage that these existing labourers have has diminished. Open up the borders to the floodgates of low-wage labourers, reduce the skillset required to perform the same tasks, and the organic economic power between corporations and labour becomes extremely tilted in favour of the former. Therefore, the proceeds of all productivity gains and new wealth flow largely if not totally, as has been the case in these last two decades, to the upper echelons of society.

Is there empirical proof to the charge? Because I was in I.T. until very recently; I was fortunate to benefit from the I.T. boom of the 1990s and early 2000s. My own wage / consultant rates rose much faster than compatriots in other fields; earning as an uncredentialed network admin staff more than credentialed engineers at one point. I found that the only other beneficiaries of higher than inflation rate of corporate wage advances on year-by-year basis were the highest management. The wages for the type of job I did has declined approximately 25% in absolute terms since that peak in 1999. The inordinate wage hikes for upper management never stopped. The CEO to median wage earner rate rose from 40x (1960s and 1970s) to wild swings above and below 300x in the last decade. I come across many skilled and experienced labourers, whose training gave them 10 – 15 years of credible wages before the jobs, they trained for, were lost to 2^nd and 3^rd world competitors. I have an acquaintance who subcontracted his programming project through an American agent who received $13/hour and probably paid the East European contact about half of that. The stories and artifacts can abound. However, the raging income and wealth disparity is not the subject of discourse today.

The Forbes Price Index Of Luxury Goods has risen to little less than 9.5x the 1976 price level. The U.S. CPI rise is about 4x. Fairly strong and accelerating inflation has been occurring for the well-to-do, particularly in the last decade. This gives evidence that the surplus of new wealth that is being distributed to the wealthier set is outpacing the supply of preferred goods available for them to purchase. It would also correspond with price spikes in asset values in comparison to rises in everyday living expenses for the average consumer. Assets are the favored purchases by the upper echelons with their new sources of wealth. And we have seen evidence of this inflationary spiral in overall asset values bulging into periodic bubbles and busts in different asset classes; tech stocks, derivatives, housing, gold, commodities and bonds over the last two decades. Some of the latter classes have yet to complete their bust cycles. A bond bust would probably be the mother of all busts.

To give general price level inflation indexes inordinate consideration in setting monetary policy demonstrates lack of full comprehension of all inflation threats. Much of the extra cash does not appear to be going into productive investment but into the purchases of existing assets in one speculative frenzy after another. If normal demand (without incurring extra indebtedness) is not rising because wage rates of consumers are stuck in stagnation, it is not a particularly good market to invest in normal goods and services production. Or if all the proceeds from productivity gains are going toward only one sector of the economy, which is having difficulty finding goods to purchase with the new found wealth, one lacks a consumer for the increased supply of goods and services. Monetary funds may be far outstripping worthwhile ideas and innovations to exploit. So when the banks do lend out; rather than play it safe with maintaining higher reserves in their vaults, so to speak; it is largely going to sustain spiraling asset bubbles.

The problem with asset inflation is the corresponding asset deflation; especially with borrowed funds. It can lead to the Debt-Deflationary cycle of the Great Depression that Fischer in the 1930s describes. And the U.S. government agencies, whether through Federal Government policy of surreal deficit spending or through central banker policy of reducing interest rates as low as they can pretty much go; have left no cushion room to mitigate against a Debt-Deflationary cycle without causing a credit or currency crisis in the U.S.

The problem lies in utilizing only a truncated set of indicators to measure inflation.

 

Footnotes:

1. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, “Press Release”, September 13, 2012, http://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/monetary/20120913a.htm

 

 

 

 

 

The Implosion of the Elephant

In reading about the last decades of the Western Roman Empire (“The Fall of the West” – Adrian Goldsworthy), I was struck at the unprincipled, makeshift and stopgap measures undertaken by the state as it attempted to stave off oncoming disaster. Myriad superficial and quick-fix band-aids were deployed to patch the façade. Everything, including the kitchen sink, was thrown at the fissures. However, the centuries-long accumulation of problems, which were at its roots moral, just overwhelmed even the best of a pathetic bevy of generals and their figurehead Emperors.

Reading that book in 2009/2010, it would not be unexpected to equate the futile political machinations of 5^th Century Rome with the U.S. Fed and Federal Government policies deployed to prevent another Great Depression. Emergency measures, lacking any conformity with existing economic theory and principle, might have justification in times of peril and distress. However, we are in the 4^th year of the economic gloom. Unprincipled innovations have now become the rule at the Fed as Chairman Bernanke is devising new clever contraptions (Quantitative Easing 3 – QE3) to prod the economy. Meanwhile, the politicos in Washington are ideologically deadlocked into continuing the existing regime of trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. There is terror in ending the indebtedness addiction through austerity programs, less the economy collapse and social unrest and civil conflagration ensue.

At the time of the Financial Crisis, I thought and expressed my belief that if America was prudent and moral, it would take a decade for their economy to return to normalcy. In order for normalcy to be declared, the American economy would have to recover to normal GDP growth of 2-3%, REAL unemployment of 6-7% and low to moderate inflation against the enormous crosswinds of deleveraging at both private and public levels and a return of interest rates to sounder and normal levels.

I don’t believe that America is prudent and moral; although it might not be particularly worse than any other nation on the face of the earth. In order to turn the ship around, it would require the higher noble virtues of patience and fortitude in a nation that has even lost the basic virtues. A period of moderate austerity and deleveraging would result in a long-term desultory economic environment with high structural unemployment for the first many years. It takes considerable time to turn a large ship around and there is no apparent advance during the turn. A period of draconian austerity would result in a debt and deflationary vortex that the world experienced in the first years of the Great Depression (for the U.S. and Canada – 1929-1933). (In those years, it wasn’t the public institutions that were conducive to this spiral. The complaint made by Keynes and Friedman was that the public institutions didn’t do sufficiently to arrest it.)

Any attempt at austerity, and the United States at the public level has yet to commence that program, would be quickly choked off by the voices of folly (i.e. Paul Krugman), which predominate in this Age of Folly. The European populace is beginning to shake and rattle their displeasure. The timidity of leaders is beginning to cower and retreat before the threat of social upheaval. (It is perhaps prudent timidity from the perspective of personal welfare of the civic leaders.) And one cannot blame the populace. They have the victims of a disguised impoverishment over these last many decades.

I expected and have seen fulfilled, a renewal of myopic, short-term expedient measures which attempt to further the continuance of the façade of economic health, while the overwhelming threats remain unattended. Indeed, I doubt that many civic leaders, the intelligentsia and other elites are even aware of the particulars of the underlying crisis. The current state of the U.S. economic and fiscal condition is that; with public deficits, which are at the threshold of creditor’s tolerance, and an interest and money supply policy, which cannot go much more expansionary without currency crisis; the U.S. is vulnerable to any even moderate extraneous shock. There exists little cushion for error or crises. They are on the ropes.

Fed and Federal Government policies are merely repeating the underlying conditions that repeatedly lead to financial crises (Asian Flu (1997), Long Term Capital Management (1997), Dot-Com Bubble and Panic (2000- 2002), American Housing Market collapse and ensuing Financial Crisis 2006-8). The bond and commodity market appear to be the next vulnerability by which monetary expansionism will lead to puncture, panic and crisis. While these futile and foolish policies exacerbate existing and create new problems, the underlying socioeconomic and moral problems remain unattended and worsen. The early 1930s, witnessed a surfeit of ideas to resolve the crisis, many outlandish to be sure. But there is nowadays, a deafening dearth of creativity and imagination in resolving both superficial and subterranean issues. Perhaps political correctness has truly taken its toll on the risk of promoting unorthodox and potentially unpopular notions. And I still expect the second shoe of this Financial Crisis to drop at the public level.

One need not believe in the Book of Revelation to anticipate an economic apocalypse that it foretold

Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen “‘Woe! Woe, O great city,

Alas, alas that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is your judgment come. And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her; for no man buys their merchandise any more: The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner vessels of ivory, and all manner vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, And cinnamon, and odors, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men. And the fruits that your soul lusted after are departed from you, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from you, and you shall find them no more at all. The merchants of these things, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing, And saying, Alas, alas that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls! For in one hour so great riches is come to nothing. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off, And cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What city is like to this great city! And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas that great city, wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness! for in one hour is she made desolate.

(Revelation 18:2, 10-19)

I highly doubt that the Babylon depicted pertains to New York City or America in general. However, there is now rational basis for anticipating an economic cataclysm in the United States, contributing to civil unrest and conflagration, an end to civil governance and an implosion of the American Empire. As much as I do not like Chris Hedges’ politics (socialism) and take on his predictions (Capitalist-Christian Reconstructionist coalition of tyranny), his premonitions are similar to my own. (My own belief since the early 1980s after reading Francis Schaeffer, is that the sociopolitical consequences of foundationally (civilization-level) different worldviews within the U.S. would naturally and invariably lead to the type of civil conflagrations that the Founding Fathers warned about (i.e. Washington – Farewell address, Madison – The Federalist Papers #10 concerning the problem with factions) warned about.) (See – Philosophical Sectarianism) Economic crisis and catastrophe could be the catalyst for factional fratricide.

I am gloomy and doomy, as all social prophets must cloak themselves in. Even if I had equity, I would resolutely refrain from owning American assets. I can see that our Canadian P.M. is racing against the clock to pursue other trading partners before the elephant collapses. I am not even that confident that even a wealthy man may escape considerable loss to his wealth, regardless of how prudent and shrewd he navigates the upcoming storms.

Like Douglas MacArthur, in his post-Japanese-surrender radio address (1945), I suggest the problem is spiritual and moral. Although I can imagine economic, social and political solutions, they would be undermined by the folly and immorality (in the largest senses of the word) that pervades this Age. However, some analysis and ideas will be forthcoming in the next several weeks and months.

New Testament Arguments for Marriage Licenses

(Excerpt from upcoming book "In Defense of Christian Marriage" 
Chapter on "What Marriage Is Not")

A more credible argument given by Christians regarding the necessity for legal papers in order to be married concerns their New Testament duty to civil authorities, obliging Christians to obedience as long as civic provisions do not violate explicit commandments of God or faithful and credible deductions from what Scriptures infer.¹

Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men: whether to the king, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right.²

But Peter and John replied, “Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God.³

Since, according to some Christians, civil society through its governing organs has presumed to extend its jurisdiction to include marital affairs, Christians must comply. Several questions and issues arise from this contention. Is a “couple [only] married in the eyes of God when the couple is legally married”? ⁴ This is the (pre-determined) conclusion expressed by a not atypical perspective in Christian circles. However, even the state does not demand that couples sign legal papers in order to be couples. Licenses only determine that they are legally married; recognized by the state on behalf of society, conferring certain legal protections and financial privileges upon the couple as well state-defined obligations. But is marriage in the eyes of the state the same as marriage in the eyes of God? Are the eyes of God beholden to the dictates of men?

Evidently not! For those, subscribing to this logic, become inconsistent when they repudiate same-sex marriages. That is the couple is not married in the eyes of God when the couple is legally married. Their reasoning breaks down. And if certain couples are not married just because the civic authorities say so, it is just as applicable that certain couples are married even when the civic authorities say not; as was the case in a bygone era, when interracial couples were barred from legal recognition (and even informal coupling). The eyes of God are not so beholden and bound.

What is perceived as true or untrue in the eyes of the state; of the community; of neighbours and family; or even of self; may not correspond with the eyes of God or of objective reality. Does a friend stop being a friend if state and society fail to recognize one’s friendship? Or a cousin? It requires muddleheaded thinking to perceive that natural social phenomena require sociopolitical opinion for their existence. No Presidential executive order or parliamentary vote can arrest the laws of gravity.

It was not that long ago that states and societies failed to recognize committed mixed-racial relationships as marriages.  Did that make those relationships any less marriage because state and society are frequent fools? Was there not a time not so long ago when a woman was deemed a nonperson? One must be willing to differentiate between objective reality and the many legal fictions, intellectual abstractions, and virtual realities that flutter and prevail in any age. To do otherwise, engenders a considerable degree of insanity; if insanity is to be measured by the divergence between objective reality and personal and societal perception of that reality.

Giving civil authorities default jurisdiction over conjugal matters leaves the legal onus on the individual to prove violations to conscience. Existing laws, subversive to Christian understandings and conscience are many, subtle, pervasive and insidious. The lack of hue and cry concerning these violations is largely a function of an ignorance, apathy, cowardice or rejection by modern-day ‘Christians’ of the historical Christian understandings of and practices within marriage.

There exists another Scriptural maxim that is more applicable. “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”⁵ The state must not intrude into areas, reserved as God’s alone. But what exactly belongs to Caesar and what to God? If marriage and family pre-existed the existence of state and civil polities, they must have belonged to God. If marriage and family pre-existed the existence of the church and ecclesiastical authorities, they must have belonged to God directly; and not through some mediating ecclesiastical agency. Neither civic nor ecclesiastic authorities have legitimate claims as gatekeeper or on regulating the purposes, nature, mechanics, dynamics and principles by which a couple operates. It is a private covenant/contract between individual parties and their God.

To paraphrase the aforementioned quote from Luther (“The Babylonian Captivity of the Church”, (1520), Marriage 6.3) concerning the rational absurdity of requiring ecclesiastical sanction of marriage, the same is true of civic permission and license.

Furthermore, since marriage existed from the beginning of the world and is still found among foreigners and those dwelling in locales without any and/or universally recognized civic authorities, it cannot possibly be called a civic institution and the subjectively defined possession of the State. The marriages of the ancients were no less legally valid than are ours, nor are those of foreigners less true marriages than those of citizens.

What if Christians were denied legal sanction and social recognition of their marriages? This scenario is not all that far-fetched; having happened to various other individuals and cultural groups in recent past. Would it be morally proper in the eyes of God, for the betrothed to abide by state regulations and not be joined? Would we not be dusting our Bibles and pointing to “Marriage is honourable in all”⁶, repudiating and ignoring any authority who deny Scriptures? How would we deal with such passages “But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion”⁷ or “If anyone thinks he is acting improperly toward the virgin he is engaged to, and if she is getting along in years and he feels he ought to marry, he should do as he wants. He is not sinning. They should get married”.⁸ If the state denied legal sanction, Christians would feel conscience bound to obey God’s clear instructions than civic authority. When Christ reiterated the ancient decree, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh”⁹; there was no understanding that one must obtain a ‘by your leave’ from civil authorities.

If legal requirements for marriage would mean nothing, in terms of Christian conscience, in that scenario, why does it mean anything now?

Like circumcision, civil and legal marriage is nothing in the eyes of the Christian God. One may become legally married, for extraneous reasons; just as Paul had Timothy circumcised. However, the civic legality of the union does not define the union unless the state leviathan is one’s god.

Footnotes:

1. Two points here. Those willing to disobey civil authorities must be willing to accept their punishments. Secondly, intellectual integrity is called for in determining if a civic injunction violates Scriptures. It is very easy to enlist Scriptural interpretation to support personal preferences.
2. 1 Peter 2:13-14
3. Acts 4:19
4. Mary Fairchild, “What is the Biblical Definition of Marriage?” http://christianity.about.com/od/whatdoesthebiblesay/a/marriagecovenan.htm
5. Matthew 22:21
6. Hebrew 13:5 (AKJV)
7. 1 Corinthians 7:9
8. 1 Corinthians 7:36
9. Matthew 19:5

Amanda Michelle Todd

“I have nobody, I need someone.”

The aroma of inauthenticity surrounds the suicide of Amanda Todd; a fifteen year old girl lured into exposing her goods onto the Internet at age twelve. In her case, it turned deadly because she could not bear under the natural ramifications of this and other youthful indiscretions. This is not an unsympathetic statement. However, empathy doesn’t preclude truth.

The whitewash from most journalistic reports fails to mention her attempt to win over a boyish rake, while his girlfriend was on vacation. It lessens the martyrolatry that some would like to build in the name of an anti-bullying agenda. It is too conveniently unbecoming for the mother, Ms. Carol Todd, to talk about leading a campaign against bullying, barely four days after her daughter’s suicide. It sounds like pre-emptive strike against possible social opprobrium, for reasons that we know not why.

They apparently loved her at the Coquitlam Alternate Basic Education secondary school; according to teacher Leah Pells.¹ I suppose that accounts for the continuing taunts. They must have been love bites by her adorers. And of course, the advocacy groups, all look for angles to exploit this tragedy to advance their sociopolitical agendas. NDP MP Dany Morin leads the charge with, no doubt, his pre-prepared private bill to unleash at the opportune occasion.

The only thing approaching authenticity is the girl’s Youtube statement itself.

I’m struggling to stay in this world, because everything just touches me so deeply. I’m not doing this for attention. I’m doing this to be an inspiration and to show that I can be strong. I did things to myself to make pain go away, because I’d rather hurt myself then someone else. Haters are haters but please don’t hate, although im sure I’ll get them. I hope I can show you guys that everyone has a story, and everyones future will be bright one day, you just gotta pull through. I’m still here aren’t I ? –AmandaTodd

 “Hello.”
“I’ve decided to tell you about my never ending story,”
“In 7th grade I would go with friends on webcam, meet and talk to new people.”
“Then got called stunning, beautiful, perfect etc. They wanted me to flash. So I did…”
“Then wanted me to flash… So I did one year later…”
“I got a msg on facebook.”
“From him… Don’t know he he knew me…”
“It said… if you don’t put on a show for me I send ur boobs.”
“He knew my adress, school, relatives, friends family names.”
“Christmas break…” Source: LYBIO.net

“Knock at my door at 4
It was the police… my photo was sent to everyone.
I then got really sick and got…
Anxiety major depression panic disorder
I then moved and got into Drugs & Alcohol
My anxiety got worse… couldn’t go out
A year past and the guy came back with my new list of friends and school. But made a facebook page.
My boobs were a profile pic…
Cried every night, lost all my friends and respect
people had from me… again…
Then nobody liked me
name calling, judged…
I can never get that Photo back
It’s out there forever…
I started cutting…
I promised myself never again…
Didn’t have any friends and I sat at lunch alone
So I moved Schools again….
Everything was better even though I stills at alone
At lunch in the library everyday
After a month later I started talking to an old guy friend
We back and fourth texted and he started to say he…
Liked me… Led me on
He had a girlfriend
Then he daid come over my gf’s on vacation
So I did… huge mistake
He hooked up with me…
I thought he like me…
1 week later I get a text get out of your school.
His girlfriend and 15 others came including hiself…
The girls and 2 others just said look around nobody likes you
Infront of my new School (50) people…
A guy than yelled just punch her already
So she did… she threw me to the ground a punched me several times
Kids filmed it. I was all alone and left on the ground.
I felt like a joke in this world… I thought nobody deserves this
I was alone.. I like and said it was my fault and my idea.
I didn’t want him getting hurt, I thought he really like me
but he just wanted the sex… Someone yelled punch her already.
Teachers ran over but I just went and layed in a ditch and my dad found me.
I wanted to die so bad… when he brought me home I drank bleach…
It killed me inside and I thought I was gonna actully die.
Ambulence came and brought me to the hospital and flushed me.
After I got home all I saw was on facebook – She deserved it, did you wash the mud out of your hair? – I hope shes dead.
nobody cared.. I moved away to another city to my moms.
another school… I didn’t wanna press charges because I wanted to move on
6 months has gone by… people are posting pics of bleach clorex and ditches.
tagging me… I was doing alot better too. They said…
She should try a different bleach. I hope she dies this time and isn’t so stupid.
Why do I get this? I messed up buy why follow me.
They said I hope she sees this and kills herself..
Why do I get this? I messed up but why follow me.
I left your guys city… Im constanty crying now..
Everyday I think why am I still here?
My anxiety is horrible now. never went out this summer
All from my past.. lifes never getting better.. cant go to school
meet or be with people… constanly cutting. Im really depressed
Im on anti depressants now and councelling and a month ago this summer
I overdosed … In hospital for 2 days.
Im stuck.. whats left of me now… nothing stops
I have nobody …
I need someone
my name is Amanda Todd”²

In her own words is admission of youthful follies, drug and alcohol abuse, physical effacement, mental and emotional distress and desperation. It was far more revealing than the pubescent breasts that she flaunted at the flattering pedophile and blackmailer. What is haunting by her truthful confession and attitude was that she was so very redeemable!

As societies morally decay, tell-tale signs of that decay abound, though not likely to be picked up on by the chattering elites. Quality of thought and culture degenerates into vulgarity and irrationality. Selfishness and narcissism breeds alienation, isolation and loneliness. If everybody wants but no one gives, who is there to satisfy the wants; except through Randian mercenary transactions? A litigatious society is barometer of faithlessness. Crudity, meanness and brutality burgeon from the bottom. Unscrupulous cunning proliferates at the top. Negligence and indifference sprawls downward from elites, who have turned their backs on their neighbours; consequently finding themselves needing to hide behind gated communities, wondering why their hired help are disloyal and apathetic. This indifference sometimes comes packed with moralistic and capitalistic self-righteousness.

These realities hardly register among the top echelons of opinion. Isolated in physical, social and cultural, cosmopolitan cocoons, they are blind to the subterranean forces that are undermining the societal facade from bottom up. If aware at all, theirs is mostly disdain. Occasionally, one perceptive wag like, Peggy Noonan (WSJ), will express a faint apprehension of the rumblings from beneath. And superficiality of mind will promulgate simple-minded analysis and solutions to events and problems; often wide of the mark. Amanda Todd is case in point.

Bullying, in the final analysis, bears minor cause in this girl’s suicide. Yes. Mocking taunts and mean-spirited scorn were incessantly tossed at her in both reality and virtuality. However, this is and has been the predominant way of the world, universally and historically. Spartan society made civic and military virtue out of brutality and cunning. Roman mores were similarly brusque and harsh, except for a brief couple of centuries amongst the upper class effetes.

Kindness, gentleness, genuine concern for the other, elements of altruism; predominantly Christian virtues; their predominance is not normative in human history. Genteel 19^th Century Britain and America’s Age of Innocence has long come to an end. We dwell in an uncouth; an intellectually and culturally illiterate age, with dearth of intellectual and moral integrity, vision, creativity and concern for the common good.

I observe in my children’s generation, a widening chasm between an effeminate metrosexual culture that prevails amongst the up and coming; against a deepening coarseness and brutality of a growing lower class. This is not to suggest that the upper echelons are immune to vileness. They are just subtler as to how they catch and crush their prey; utilizing the organs of civil society rather than methods apart from it.

I have more acquaintance with the underside of society than the topside. I have been guest and worked for those with industrialized kitchens in their luxury apartments; which they hardly know how to use. At the same time, I have needed to take job positions and dwell amongst barely coherent grunts. One of my children associates with the lawyers and doctors. Another is attempting to escape from the riffraff of Orangeville. What I recollect and observe is that the lower echelons are rapidly declining and falling off the edge, not only in their economic welfare, disguised by ever increasing indebtedness; but in their personal attitude and conduct. Amanda Todd’s academic struggle placed her in the Basic stream of education. It is a more brutal class of people; very detrimental for one with tender sensitivities.

In this light, it almost constitutes child abuse not to prepare one’s offspring to the moral and social climate of our times. It is one thing to inspire our young to noble and cultivated aspirations and visions. However much we aspire to move the world into the vision, we desire it to be; such desire must be conditioned with how the world really is. All too many 20 – 30 year olds exit the schools, with la-la land expectations of reality; let alone naïve gullibility about the mendacity and venality, permeating our society. Those diagnosed with mental disorders in their late teens and early twenties might be found, with honest science, to be victims of shock at the variance between their subjective perceptions of what is, with what is.

The world is harsh and growing harsher as times becomes less bountiful and more economically constrained. And Amanda was unprepared by her parents; who were either so self-absorbed with their own lives or clueless about preparing their daughter for objective reality. However, one cannot dispense great criticism upon the parents. If they prove to be genuinely loving parents; the Lord knows how many sleepless hours in the wee hours, they will ruminate whether they could have done things differently. Nevertheless, if Norm Todd is genuine, expecting a failing system of educational hirelings to vigilantly protect one’s child’s interest is half-witted at best.

“I have nobody, I need someone.” How can such a girl say this if her parents were truly there for her? Failing to advocate and pursue with fierce and ferocious vigilance and determination, even by unlawful means; the elimination of the original source of horror and pain of one’s supposedly beloved daughter, emits an odour of parental callousness, cowardice or cluelessness. I have had to fight schools, universities, arrogant doctors, psychiatrists and wife to protect my children from the bullying of bureaucrats; even being an utter prick about it. Perhaps I have had more personal success than expected. Nevertheless, even were I or any parent to lose on every occasion; at least the child knows that their parents are on their side.

Too many parents buy into the propagated delusion by boastful civic officials that one’s children can be safely left alone in their hands. To be fair, education officials cannot give the practicable commitment required to pursue a pedophile and blackmailer, the bullying, especially off-campus or the anonymous Internet viciousness. The material resources are not there. And even if they were, the price would be cameras in every shrub and monitoring of every web access. The economy cannot bear taxation too much greater than exists at the present moment. (There might be some room.) However, at some point, the truth of Laffer’s Curve would manifest itself.³ And state officials are warned against granting too great an emotional involvement with their clients. The drain in harboring the world’s evils would overthrow their own constitution.

Nevertheless, state officials are hirelings. They have their own turf, interests and loved ones to protect, which often conflicts with the needs of their clients. And for those parents, with worldviews contrary to the education and state establishment, such officials are the wolves, from whom we must protect our children. Parents must be their child’s best advocate. (However, be fair!)

And educators, which are after all, mere reflection of the larger society, are reckless in their promotion of a libertine attitude towards sexuality. In their superficial simple-mindedness, they seem ignorant of how deep to the core of our psyche, our sexuality pierces. Allowing that tender and vulnerable erotic component of our nature to be cavalierly treated as a toy engenders devastating psychological dangers. As much as I believe that state school systems are inappropriate places to teach sexuality; the problem is exacerbated by obtuse psychological insight of the so-called experts; unaware of the dangers of broken psychological ties and abuse which sexuality without commitment engenders.

There exists an autobahn between our genitalia and hearts. Many persons, especially males, attempt to build Berlin Walls to segregate and compartmentalize each sector. If successful, insensitivity of heart is one consequence. A wilting libido, lacking the nourishment of emotional connectedness, resulting in pursuing more deviant sexuality to maintain the excitement, is another. Sexual profligacy hurts all. But females are even more constitutionally incapable, at least in their more innocent stages of life, of handling the hookup mentality. Even liberally-approved sociological studies bear that out. They are at clear disadvantage in the power politics of the heart than their male counterpart. And those females who do master the insensitivity of heartless sexual intimacy are less appealing than a sow to any man with self-respect and virtuous passion.

There are extant pictures of Amanda Todd, at very young age, voguing in seductive pose, published by the parents themselves. This is not to say that Amanda’s youthful curiousity, sensuality and susceptibility to flatterers would not have conspired to make a devastating indiscretion. But in overall probabilities, how much does this pervasive sensuality contribute to the psychic distresses of our children?

The girlfriend and fifteen tagalongs, who punched Amanda into a ditch, were not the bullies that are being portrayed. They were enforcing a time-honoured code of behaviour. Girls do not steal other girls’ boyfriends. Even if Amanda’s narrative is true, and I believe it is; the scumbag is the boyfriend. Amanda, in her desperate bid for love and be made alive through connectedness, was merely foolish. To her credit, she acknowledged such. In the harsh sexual battlefield, young girls have anxieties and terrors of their own to bear with. Boys and men in this culture have become more cavalier with their women. And those men, who are men; feminist-controlled family courts punish unjustly, unduly and cruelly for being men. They make masculinists and misogynists of up and coming generations.

And no further amount of anti-bullying legislation or regimen is going to produce a gentler society. As noted above, societal and state resources to coercively rein in society’s ills are overstretched. Further legislation gives only appearances of action. Education sensitivity sessions were scorned in my day. They will be scorned in this day; especially because feminist dogma permeates the program. Even if school grounds could be monitored, the wilds cannot. Besides, bullying legislation has taken on the appearance of political correctness and repression of sociopolitical viewpoints, which are contrary to liberal shibboleths.

Friendship with authorities will not likely grant a person like Amanda the fulfillment of her needs. What she needed was a champion amongst her peers. And as society becomes increasingly decadent, there is hardly any hope of that, especially in secular schools; where graciousness is in rare supply and moral and social courage is undermined by the nihilism; promulgated by the educational experts. Amanda’s ‘friends’; if they did not stand by her; if the girlfriend and 2 others could say “look around nobody likes you”; they are not the kind of friends worth having. She needed a Christ-figure who could repudiate the religious and secular Pharisees of our age; declaring. “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” (John 8:7)

I risk unfair opprobrium, because I have no designs upon the young. But was I a lad of sixteen, having seen this YouTube video, if this confession was true to her character, there would have been much to attract me. There is brutal frankness, perhaps because it was her last will and testament. And conscience! She retained her sensitivity, so short in supply in women of this age; especially in the up and coming generation. Therein her soul belies a deep and desperate passion, which would have lathered her champion with overwhelming loyalty and all consuming love. Perhaps as we age, amassed with a quill of our indiscretions and moral travesties, we are far more forgiving of the flaws and moral failings in this girl. Youth are exacting in the failings of others while astonishingly blind and dismissive of their own. Young and even old fools do not know the genuine article; cannot see past the foibles of our humanity to ascertain quality of character.

This was her suicide note. It is all written on the cards. It is odd that this had not been picked up. When I backpacked in Europe, whenever hooking up (in the old fashioned sense of the word) with another fellow traveler, I found that the conversations became deeper and more honest in the day or two before we departed from each other. Though she hoped against hope; she had made her confession and declaration. An exit strategy was that remained.

This testimony of Amanda resonates in many because of its frankness. There appears little self-justification. There screams hollowness in the soul in desperate yearning for connectedness to escape the deadness of isolation, the desolation and the cold. She became a cipher in the snow, thinking herself only worthy of the ditch, internalizing the insignificant opinions of Lilliputians to which she gave too much regard. She got caught by the cruelty of others for merely committing a few moral travesties. Those who are honest with ourselves know how unfair this seems; when we can count upon quite a few more in number in ourselves. She was so very redeemable!

By the grace of God, go I.

 

Footnotes:

 

1. Gillian Shaw, “Amanda Todd’s mother joins call for B.C.-wide effort to end online bullying”, Vancouver Sun, October 15, 2012,
2. Amanda Todd, “Amanda Todd – My Story – Struggling – Bullying – Suicide – Self Harm”, Lybio.net, http://lybio.net/amanda-todd-my-story-struggling-bullying-suicide-self-harm/people/
3. Laffer’s curve is reference to a truism that after a certain point, increasing the marginal tax rate actually reduces the amount of actual tax revenue received.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keeping the Terry Jones out of the Country

On October 11, 2012, the border guards stopped self-styled hillbilly prophet, Terry Jones, at the Detroit-Windsor crossing by clever pretext. Mr. Jones, as missionary in Germany, had some technical legal problems; cases which he won. However, until completing a criminal check with English transcript of the German proceedings, he remains barred from the country. ¹ It is dishonest and violates the spirit of the laws. However, one must admire the chutzpah.

However, the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney is advancing amendments (Bill C-43) – Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, which would give legal sanction to such state discretion. And it is to that which this blog entry focuses.

Terry Jones, pastor of a 50-odd member Dove World Outreach Center Charismatic Church in Gainesville, Florida is a publicity-seeking, pompous ass who thought promulgation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is best promoted by burning the paper, upon which contains the ideas of another ‘faith tradition’. It naturally instigated the convenient wrath of rabble, half way round the world, who couldn’t even locate Florida on a map. It led to the unnecessary deaths of U.N. personnel.

Anyone who has visited the church and associated sites will soon notice that Herr Doctor Jones really has a bad case of politicized ‘Christianity’. Indeed, there is significantly more mention of Islam, even if in a negative manner, than on Jesus Christ or Christianity.

The best response to nobodies who seek public stage through outlandish assertions and outrage is to ignore them. In this, Doctor Albert Mohler, head of the Southern Baptist Church concurs. His point is that negative criticism, even by the Christian community, simply reinforces the importance and self-importance of these charlatans. ² Those who receive such reproof will simply categorize their Christian counterparts as being in cahoots with the Devil and the World. (Sometimes this might be true. The question is when such characterizations are valid.) It is the frustrating Parable of the Tares.³

The problem of Terry Jones is irresponsible journalism. Some post-menopausal crank, worried about not leaving a legacy, who stages outrageous symbolic acts, is not newsworthy, even on a slow news day in the dog days of summer. He plays into the prejudices of elements of the secularist liberal media, who will traverse West Virginian back country and Louisiana swamps to pull out simple-minded bumpkins, snake charmers, unscrupulous snake-oil, ‘anointed’ Apostolic leaders and their gullible congregants, in their campaign to discredit Christianity and religion in general.

Arguments that media ought not to be selective upon what is covered are full of hypocritical flatulence. What constitutes the ‘news’ is largely governed by the agendas of these priestly media gatekeepers. My first realization occurred when reading a British tabloid in a Barcelona sidewalk café on the outbreak of Chinese-Vietnamese hostilities, which had the potential of superpower struggle (Viet Nam was client to the U.S.S.R.) The war was placed on the very back pages of the paper, while some minor bomb scare in a 2^nd tier British city monopolized the front page. Don’t tell us that selectivity doesn’t figure in the contents of our media output. If Terry Jones has responsibility in the deaths of U.N. and other Western nationals, so does his media accomplices.

The best way to put this man out of our misery is not to give him a camera or microphone. Suicides are not reported on Toronto subway stations for similar reasons; to discourage the self-abuser from obtaining ‘importance’ in leaving a mark in this world while he/she leaves it.

“Islam is not compatible with Western society.” One need not be prejudicial to see that a faith tradition, which in its purest form, subscribes to a theocratic state; where religious principles and regulations are sacrosanct above the whims of popular sovereignty and individual autonomy; is diametrically opposed to Western pluralism. Those who sweep the clear logic of the contradiction under politically correct rugs discredit their credibility.

The question is, so what of it? Muslims constitute less than 3% of the Canadian population, less than 1% in the United States. So long as they constitute a small minority of the population, the prospect of Sharia Law, beyond their own community, is an Atwood-type dystopian fantasy. Islam is not a particularly attractive and appealing religion. Its spread has consistently required conquest and soft and hard coercive sociopolitical measures. In consideration of the relative intellectual, cultural and social backwardness and political and military powerlessness of Muslim nations, Islam does not pose real threat to Western independence and survival. Amongst their numbers, there is a small Fifth Column; which might periodically take occasional lives. However, as has been generally the case beyond the 8th Century; except for when reversals of fortune occur, the zeal of the typical Muslim is moderated by objective reality and the desire for everyday enjoyment of life. Islam, in itself, does not threaten Western civilization. Western civilization is more threatened by the moral decrepitude of its people; such that threats like Islam could actually become real.

This brings me back to the main theme the day; forbidding rabble-rousers like Terry Jones or Louis Farrakhan (Nation of Islam) from entering the country on pre-emptive speculation of potential and real civil disturbance, especially in light of its absence in times past. It sets precedent that invariable proliferates into the abusive exclusion of mere sociopolitical adversaries of the current powers-that-be. It is curious that under an administration that had just eliminated an HRC power that progressed from prosecuting the extremes to selectively persecuting the more mainstream (i.e. Ezra Levant (Western Standard), Mark Steyn (Macleans)); this government would erect another regimen that will, no doubt, follow along the same path.

In March 2010, a conservative firebrand (Ann Coulter) was politely threatened by a University of Ottawa provost, Francois Houle; no doubt with consent and even urging of a former Liberal Cabinet Minister, Alan Rock, who is President of that University.

I would, however, like to inform you, or perhaps remind you, that our domestic laws, both provincial and federal, delineate freedom of expression (or “free speech”) in a manner that is somewhat different than the approach taken in the United States. I therefore encourage you to educate yourself, if need be, as to what is acceptable in Canada and to do so before your planned visit here. You will realize that Canadian law puts reasonable limits on the freedom of expression. For example, promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges. Outside of the criminal realm, Canadian defamation laws also limit freedom of expression and may differ somewhat from those to which you are accustomed. I therefore ask you, while you are a guest on our campus, to weigh your words with respect and civility in mind.

Another leaked private communiqué from Alan Rock about her was not so polite. In a politically charged environment, more like the U.S. milieu then Canada currently, is there any doubt that Coulter might have been the recipient of cross border shenanigans, if Alan Rock and his Liberals were still in power? When one institutes laws, it would be a little politically astute to consider their potential for blowback in the hands of one’s political adversaries!

It is bad law unless circumscribed with extremely explicit particulars as to what constitutes a threat to civil disturbance.

Postscript

For reasons beyond common sense, many in the Christian community are taken with this threat of Islam. Some still seem to believe that we remain a member of Christendom, which Islam apparently threatens. The far greater sociopolitical threat to Christianity and Christians in the West is a creeping secularism that is turning totalitarian and tyrannical. But as Christ said, “the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.”⁴

In dealing with Muslims, (or persons practicing homosexuality etc), the Scriptures give better counsel in the name of the Gospel of Christ. Instead of moralist opprobrium and alienation of such persons; it is written “Show proper respect to everyone”⁵ and “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.”⁶ Yes; we believe them to be wrong in their beliefs and praxis. And in that error, they are hurting themselves foremost and others and God’s creation as well. But Muslims, homosexuals, secularists, etc. are just people like us; from whom we were called “out of darkness into His wonderful light”.⁷

Footnotes:

1. Stewart Bell, “Koran Burning Site’: Signs seized from anti-Islam pastor Terry Jones during failed Windsor border crossing”, National Post, October 11, 2012
2. Albert Mohler, “What He Wanted All Along: The Real Scandal of Pastor Terry Jones”, April 8, 2011, http://www.albertmohler.com/2011/04/08/what-he-wanted-all-along-the-real-scandal-of-pastor-terry-jones/
3. Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43
4. Luke 16:8
5. 1 Peter 2:17
6. Colossians 4:5-6
7. 1 Peter 2:9

Exegesis on Romans 2:14-15

Exegesis on Romans 2:14-15

A purely theological endeavour; the attachment expounds on a highly significant passage currently controversial in the nursery rooms of theological academia. I dispute that the Scriptures teach that humanity was given an innate knowledge of the contents of any form of Law of God. Certainly history and sociology would find that thesis contrary to artifacts. I think the reason is because that Scriptures doesn’t teach it. The sophistry of some and misunderstanding of others believes this assumption whose roots go back to the Greek Stoics, Cicero (De Legibus – On the Laws –  51 B.C.) and resonates in natural man’s concept of spirituality.

Although admitting that we might not understand the Truth of God, because of our limitations, prejudices and the sinful nature, I have found considerable confirmation of Scriptural truth with objective realities external to Scriptures. Modern Evangelicalism seems to lack that confidence (“I wrote for them the many things of my law, but they regarded them as something alien.” Hosea 8:12)

Other arguments made are that Romans 2:14-15 does not refer to converted Gentiles, before or after Christ. The primary purpose of the passage is to anticipate Universalism (i.e Rob Bell – “Love Wins”) by showing how God judges those who have never heard of the Law or Gospel. You will find that I disagree with the argument of imputed guilt for sin from Adam. It is unjust, not only by standards of human justice. Even the Scriptures, including the Mosaic Law, finds it unjust. However, this theme is not well unpacked. We are sinners, not because of guilt, but because we inherit the sin principle and nature from our ancestors.

Exegesis on Romans 2:14-15

Euthyphro Dilemma – A False Dichotomy – Revised

“It is written:

      I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.

Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For, since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.”¹

I have always disdained the dialogues of Plato for their format. Recognizing similar tendencies from my own childhood Walter Mitty fantasies, the protagonist and hero, in this case Socrates, always seems to have the equivalent of bowling pins for interlocutors. Euthyphro certainly constitutes one such lame antagonist; noticeable when one isolates his responses from the great Socrates. Euthyphro might have even been a real person and therefore, a real pushover. But in my experience, one’s ideological adversaries tend to have a more substantive and detailed rationales for their opinions, even if their reasoning will be found to be fallacious and spurious.

“The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy; or holy because it is beloved of the gods.” [Socrates] ²

To put the question posed in modern vernacular, “Are moral acts willed by God because they are good, or are they good because they are willed by God?”³ One of the common sophist tricks and deceits is to contrive a question with presumably only two equally abhorrent options, suckering the respondent into not thinking beyond this box of the dichotomy. But, there just might exist alternatives beyond the snare. Even coin flips sometimes can land on its side (1 in 6,000 for the U.S. nickel).

The other problem behind these rational inquiries is the presumption that Reason can, if wielded by a pristinely competent and honest practitioner, can ascertain all answers and understanding. As much as I believe in and enjoy the use of reason, I have come to realize its natural limits. (And our and my natural limits to reason!)

Through reason’s natural proclivity for infinite regress, Richard Dawkins thinks he can disprove the hypothesis of God. If God created the universe, who created God? And by extension, who created the person, who created God? And who created the person, who created the person, who created God…? The problem with the argument is that the alternative is no less rationally absurd and inexplicable. How did something come into being from nothingness? The naturalist might like to obfuscate the question by reducing existence, through the Big Bang theory, to a singularity. However, the existence of that singularity cannot be explained through reason. Whether we live in a theistic or a non-theistic universe, they are both rationally absurd and incomprehensible. (There are other theories of existence, less rationally credible. But they don’t escape from the rational conundrum.) And yet, here we are! Our existence is an empirical fact. And it is categorically impossible for such existence to derive from reason.

Another one of those paradoxes, (and I thank fellow madman Nietzsche (‘Beyond Good and Evil”) through which the conundrum was conceived), is that the virtue of truthfulness (intellectual integrity) cannot be derive through reason. For, in order to incontrovertibly arrive at the conclusion that truthfulness is a virtue, one must employ it in the first place. In other words, truthfulness must be an axiomatic epistemological attribute (one must, as a necessary foundational value, be truthful in one’s inquiry of such matters), in order to reason that truthfulness is a necessary foundational value. It becomes a circularity and therefore, rationally incoherent.

This is not to suggest throwing out reason and living out one’s life through leap of faith, apart from reason. Christ and the Apostle Paul certainly deployed its use. ⁴ The framework of civilization, let alone civilization itself, would soon regress to the proverbial caveman all-against-all existence. Law and moral authority of civil authorities requires rational consistency; a dearth of which is undermining the credibility of the judiciary. However, it is an inescapable conclusion of the insufficiency of Reason alone to explain all; even were the thinker pristine in virtue and acumen.

Behind this sophist snare, of the kind that Christ was not unfamiliar (Luke 20), include the apparent conundrums.

If the Good is whatever the god or deity commands, all that which constitutes the Good is an arbitrary value. (Even Good itself, has been argued is of arbitrary validity.⁵) If the Good is to be defined as an objective measure beyond God’s edict, then God is not omnipotent. He is subject to that which is greater. Secondly, God cannot be both virtuous and omnipotent. For omnipotence, in the minds of these detractors, means being able to do even what is evil. The underlying heart of these questions intends to demonstrate that morality can exist apart from God.

“What is right and wrong depends on God’s commands such that his commands alone are what make actions right or wrong. There is no reason for what is right and wrong and morality is arbitrary.

God commands us to perform certain actions and refrain from others because certain actions are right and others are wrong and being fully rational he knows what is right and wrong and being completely good he issues commands to humanity that conform to his moral knowledge. Yet morality is autonomous from God’s commands and is something to which God must conform. Thus God is not omnipotent over morality.”⁶

There is a “quarreling about words”⁷ quality to this discourse. However, current Evangelical nostrums on this matter, significantly detract from their relevance in the wider world. And these shibboleths do not even correspond to the arguments contained within Scriptures to which they allege allegiance. One response is to suggest that His commands emanate out of His own nature and character, which is presumed Good.

The third option is that good is based on God’s nature.  God appeals to nothing other than his own character for the standard of what is good, and then reveals what is good to us.  It is wrong to lie because God cannot lie (Titus 1:2), not because God had to discover lying was wrong or that he arbitrarily declared it to be wrong. This means that God does not arbitrarily declare something to be good (ignoring his own nature) or say that something is good by nature (recognizing a standard outside of himself).³

This perspective (Modified Divine Command Theory⁸) attempts to avoid the charge of caprice and arbitrariness by moving goodness from mere will of God as from that emanating from the character of God. God will not command evil because it is unthinkable or overwhelmingly abhorrent for His to do so because of His nature. It doesn’t succeed on the former and makes worsens the conception of God.

Humanity, at least the larger and saner part of it, abhors the idea of being determined; of lacking Free Will. In the few arguments that I have had over Calvinism, what is the core heart cry of my interlocutors over the Doctrine of Sovereign Grace is the primal dread of only being a programmable robot.⁹ The thought of the mecha David in A. I. destroying all his duplicate copies because it violates his primordial need for uniqueness encapsulates the horror about such a reality. Although neuroscience and psychiatry, and those who occupy the Commanding Heights of philosophy of mind subscribe to the idea of physiological determinism (genetics and neurotransmitter), the belief system by which they operate are disguised and muted; knowing that their reception would be as repulsive and repudiated as that of religious determinism.

If humanity bears the image of God; that is, if we share a common psychological structure as our Maker, however that is constituted; why would we ascribe to God features, which we would find in ourselves, abhorrent? Would not God similarly find the idea of lacking true Free Will reprehensible? This philosophical god would be the god of the algorithm. And indeed, if this determined god ultimately lacks genuine choice, the qualities of morality, good and evil lack intrinsic coherence and meaning.

“Since there was no one greater for him to swear by, he swore by himself.”¹¹

The problem with the paradigm ‘moral acts are willed by God because they are good’ is that of adjudication. Those who suggest an external standard of Good could exist apart from God could very well be correct. However, the question yet remains, who is worthy in virtue and wisdom to determine what that external standard is and whether God complies. Those who believe they could fill such shoes, are foolishly arrogant and/or ignorant of the difficulties in ascertaining such. Any such self-appointee would quickly find themselves targeted under the same skepticism and scorn by others who have their own ideas of the ‘ought’. The history of humanity attests to this reality; with incessant rebellion and disobedience to civil and other authority; whether justified or unjustified.

Other than an omnipotent, omniscient Creator of the heavens and the earth, what other legitimate and workable alternative is there? Once one begins to go down the road of charging arbitrariness behind any form of authoritative ethics, no one need morally respect any ethical system or those who impose it. The French Revolution highlighted the implausibility of attaining a universal consensus through Reason as faction after faction cannibalized each other. And even if a consensus could be reached, it doesn’t necessitate that it knows the Good. Other than subjectivism, relativism and moral nihilism, whose practicable effects are lawlessness, chaos, misery and destruction; any who dares to define the Good will be similarly charged with caprice and arbitrariness by their peers and inferiors. This does answer the central dilemma. However, it illuminates the unwinnable sophistry in the question.

There is a third option, although it might appear as mere modification of existing options. That is, that God embodies the Good (“I am the way and the truth and the life.”¹²); both in being God and concurrently, in an objective sense. That is, God never required discovering the Good. But from eternity past, He always knew and embraced the Good. And that Good will prove objectively, with the light of omniscience, intellectual and moral integrity and virtue to be the Good. Reason might scream, from the argument of infinite regress, when did God determine that objective Good. But like the absurdity of existence without possibility of rational theistic or naturalist explanation; it just is.

A mere assertion hardly constitutes rational proof of this proposition. However, it does show that the Euthyphro coin can land on its side. It does resolve the respective charges of arbitrary caprice on the one hand and lack of omnipotence on the other.

And reason is like Newtonian Physics. It breaks down at the infinite extremes.

Postscript

In response to one conjury that denies the possibility of God being both omnipotent and virtuous; this argument works only if God be a god of the algorithm. That is, by His internal constitution; His programming, so to speak, He cannot categorically sin. And many a Christian adherent have made such claims themselves; possibly to secure themselves in His reliability for goodness, as if by logical supposition. However, our God is a personal god, with Free Will to sin at any time. In this, He remains omnipotent. It is just that He constantly elects to do the Good. This is a personal universe and our safety and security lies ultimately in the virtue, wisdom and power of a personal God, not in a logical deduction.

From the perspective of insignificant, weak mortals, dependence on a overwhelmingly powerful God, who theoretically could drop or abuse us

Footnotes:

1. 1 Corinthians 1:19-21
2. Plato, “Euthyphro”, c. 380 B.C., Transl. Benjamin Jowett
3. Matt Slick, “What is the Euthyphro dilemma?”  http://carm.org/euthyphro-dilemma
4. Matthew 23:16-22, Romans 2
5. Nietzsche makes such argument in his book “Beyond Good and Evil”. However, he seems not to realize that he has substituted the Good in Judeo-Christian and Classical sense with as standard of good of his own; that of life-affirming. As judgment is an inherent psychological component of sentient beings, it is impossible not to judge by some criteria.
6. Mark Timmons, “Moral Theory: An Introduction”, 2002, pp 28-29.
7. 2 Timothy 2:14
8. Robert Merrihew Adams, “A Modified Divine Command Theory of Ethical Wrongness”, From Religion and Morality, 1975, pp 318-347
9. Sovereign Grace issues
10. Sam Harris, “Free Will”, 2012 gives a sophomoric and simple-minded overview of the thesis. However, all extant sub-hypothesis as to how this works are contradicted within their own ideological community and the Benjamin Libet family of experiments is profoundly flaw on their philosophical (and non-scientific) conception of ‘Free Will’. However, that is a topic of another project.
11. Hebrews 6:13
12. John 14:6

My Equivocation about Critics

Though a concern, likely far off into the horizon; the specter of self-regarding critics haunts me every time, I see a hatchet job by a  third-rate mind or a self-serving heart on a work. The self-serving heart is almost certain if the critic is also an author or has an ideological ax to grind. There is something unbecoming about the self-anointed, who exalt themselves on the Moses seat of whatever discipline they deign themselves Supreme Court justice. In the Christian milieu, moral opprobrium and stridency of personal conviction will be conveyed through the most subtle and tactfully polite put down. It is almost European.

However, we cannot be without our critics. The necessity for them became evident when my wife and I went across the Ottawa River into Hull, Quebec in 1981 to see the movie Caligula. I love all things historical. Although I would despise living in that society; all things Roman piques my intellectual interest and forms the historical panoply upon which many of my seminal ideological themes have been formed. And the cast of that ‘historical’ saga included a who’s who of British thespians; Malcolm McDowell, Peter O’Toole, John Gielgud, Helen Mirren.

In those days, Ontario still retained a censorship counsel that often resulted in banning the showing of certain films or the deletion of scenes not considered suitable for wide scale viewing. Quebec lacked those provisions. Having just moved into Ottawa the prior year, this was not known to us. I did not consider looking at the movie reviews.

In a late summer’s evening, we are lined up in a long queue outside a suburban movie house. My wife is about 7 or 8 months pregnant and evidently showing. The man in front of us just looks at my wife’s bulge and at me with the most curious glance and gaze. I don’t comprehend.

When we enter the theater, I volunteer to obtain the snacks while Annie seats herself in the crowded auditorium. The line up is long and the movie has begun and I am getting anxious at missing the beginning. I slip out from the back of the line to view through the window slit into the theater to see the screen start with a quote from Scripture “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” I am licking my chops with anticipation.

I finally get to seat with popcorn and pop, having missed about five minutes. I recall my Suetonius (“The Twelve Emperors”) as it depicts salacious scenes with Emperor Tiberius at his Capri resort or the incident where a soldier is punished, by tying up his member while they pour wine down his gullet and then release it through a slashed stomach.

However, I wasn’t prepared for the five or ten minutes of hardcore orgy scene, which we sat through, more dumbstruck than disgusted. Again, Suetonius speaks of such scenes and thus being historically accurate, we didn’t yet budge from our seats. My problem is that as much as it was lurid and lewd, it was also true. Recalling my Suetonius, I didn’t anticipate an equivalent repeat. Nevertheless, when Caligula led away fellow mail teen-age heir to the throne, Gemellus, presumably for a tryst; we just knew that it wasn’t going to get much better.

Recently married, somewhat green, my mind is haunted in and out of dreams for the next week. I begin to fathom the prurient curiosity behind that most peculiar glance and gaze from the man in the queue in front of us.

Needless to say, I, henceforth, always checked movie reviews.

New Covenant Theology – The ‘Moral’ Law of God

God gave to Adam a law, as a covenant of works, by which He bound him and all his posterity, to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience, promised life upon the fulfilling, and threatened death upon the breach of it, and endued him with power and ability to keep it.

This law, after his fall, continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness; and, as such, was delivered by God upon Mount Sinai, in ten commandments, and written in two tables: the first four commandments containing our duty towards God; and the other six, our duty to man.

Besides this law, commonly called moral…¹

That a Righteousness, an universal and immutable ethic and ethos of God exists, I have no doubt. However, to suggest that such a complete, universal and immutable moral law has been delivered to humanity in the Scriptures is neither Scriptural nor rational. Scriptures repudiates Mosaic Law as that universal, eternal and immutable moral law. “Till heaven and earth pass, one stroke or one pronunciation mark shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”² But heaven and earth shall pass. ”Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.”³ Therefore, the Mosaic Code cannot be that universal, eternal and immutable moral law; since its jurisdiction explicitly ends.

Neither is the Christian rendition of ethics, that universal, eternal and immutable moral law. There exist several injunctions and expositions by Christ and Paul concerning marriage. However, Christ notes that “At the resurrection, people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven”.⁴ Because the Estate of Marriage ends at some future point in time, laws governing marriage and sexuality become obsolete and irrelevant. Although laws concerning such could theoretically remain on the books, a different environment in the next age nullifies their effective force and utility.

A complaint might arise that sophistries are being played out here. But of course, a common understanding of “universal, eternal and immutable moral law” is one whose shelf life is the End of History. In other words, it must be acknowledged that these renderings of the ‘Moral Law of God’ do not represent the universal, eternal and immutable ethic and ethos of God; the Righteousness of God. The Righteousness of God transcends anything literally written upon the earth; whether upon tablets of stone or papyrus manuscripts. Any Divine law code upon the earth will be a partial implementation and application of the transcendent Righteousness of God, which takes into account the physiological and psychological nature of humanity, including social dynamics, the physical environment in which humanity dwells and the purposes (telos)of that law code; amongst other considerations.

The nature of objective reality and everyday existence requires a corresponding body of laws to govern within such realities. The Mosaic regulations concerning menstruation would be inappropriate to apply against the male ‘subspecies’ of the human race. Social regulations concerning children must differ from those of spouses. Technological advances (i.e. genetics revolution à designer babies) pose moral quagmires, which existing ethical codes are strained to fashion a judgment, consistent within their existing paradigm.

A good universal, eternal and immutable moral code would have principles, equipped to deal with all such exigencies, along with the necessity of a faithful and competent interpreter to relate such principles to those particulars. Nevertheless, as noted, even Scriptures deny itself the status of constituting universal, eternal and immutable law. All covenantal codes are expressions of the transcendent, imposed upon particular objective realities with particular ends in mind.

If the purpose (telos) of the law changes, so must the law code, in order to reorient towards and optimize those purposes. If the same industrial robot switches the part that it is producing, the set of computer instructions required to produce that different part must change. A completely different code routine is selected if the part is radically different. It would be absurd to legislate and implement a body of law meant to fashion and optimize a capitalist society for use in a socialist society. It certainly is possible to construct a law code sufficiently generic to allow for the fostering of either a capitalist or socialist society. However, if the community and/or the powers-that-be that rule that community are deliberately aiming toward encouraging one economic framework with hostility toward the other, the body of laws will reflect that.

Similarly, as the purposes of the Mosaic Covenant and the New Testament Covenant differ, so must the orientation and set of commandments change and alter. This understanding is confirmed by Scriptures, particularly in the Book of Hebrews, noting the need for different blood to seal the covenant, a different priesthood to mediate it, different regulations of worship and different participants that are party to the covenant.⁵

A primary purpose of the Mosaic Code was to fashion an earthly society, conquered by force, implemented by coercion, emphasizing necessary justice for the common good, bounded in a geographical location, largely for one particular human tribe. The primary purpose of the New Testament Covenant is to recruit foreign aliens for immigration into a “kingdom [which] is not of this world”⁶, conquered by persuasion, implemented by consent, emphasizing mercy and grace (founded upon and not repudiating justice), for a virtual nation dispersed throughout the earth and including every human tribe. How is it plausible that even the contents of the written component of New Testament law could remain the same as the Mosaic code?

However, Reformed Covenantal Theology, as reflected in The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), which founds the basis of other Protestant confessions (i.e. Baptist Confession of Faith – 1689), expresses that a ‘moral’ “law of God”, ”a perfect rule of righteousness” was delivered unto Adam and Eve, “as a covenant of works”, “written in their hearts” and in the hearts of every soul of man. Furthermore, it is proposed that Christ and the Gospel does not in “any way dissolve, but much strengthen this obligation” of the Christian to this Mosaic code.⁷ That is, Christ did not initiate a new covenant, with a new and altered set of commandments to reflect the different purposes (telos) of God. Rather, the Reformed tradition suggests that Christ merely expounded upon existing Mosaic provisions in regard to the ‘moral’ division of the Law. New Testament principles are merely interpretative extensions of the supposedly universal and perfect moral law of God, best represented by the Ten Commandments (Decalogue).

Catholicism has a parallel rendition of this paradigm; whereby through human reason, “the natural law is written and engraved in the soul of each and every man”. “The natural law is immutable, permanent [and universal] throughout history”.  “Its principal precepts are expressed in the Decalogue.” “The Law of the Gospel fulfills the commandments of the Law. The Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, far from abolishing or devaluing the moral prescriptions of the Old Law, releases their hidden potential and has new demands arise from them: it reveals their entire divine and human truth. It does not add new external precepts, but proceeds to reform the heart, the root of human acts, where man chooses between the pure and the impure, where faith, hope, and charity are formed and with them the other virtues.”⁸

Because of the assumption that this universal natural law or ‘moral’ law of God is written and engraved in the soul of each and every man, it gives rational justification and psychological sustenance for the imposition of such moral laws upon society by civil authorities. It encourages a Theonomic impulse in many that purport to Christian sentiments; even if they do not fully subscribe to the theonomy of Christian Reconstructionism. It gives impetus to the transformation of Christ into cultural warrior and to political Christianity. It lays the ideological basis of the religious form of social conservatism. These dynamics provoke the heart basis behind critics of this theology.

Though not denying similar grave concerns, I observe other detrimental consequences of a psychological, social, pastoral, evangelistic and theological/philosophical nature. Because of the assumption that this universal ‘moral’ law of God exists in the heart of every man, Christians and social conservatives perceive their ethical and social adversaries as willfully violating their own consciences. This lends toward self-righteous indignation; often reflected in the mean-spiritedness by which many Christians interact with their interlocutors and adversaries. But what if this natural belief, given Christian imprimatur, isn’t true?

If Christians assume innate knowledge of the contents of right and wrong in the heart of every man, efforts to rationally and morally demonstrate the rightness and superiority of Christian ethics will suffer neglect. This occurs. Although New Testament Scriptures warn against investing too heavily into morality, Christian ethics does provide an avenue of witness for the truth of the Gospel. Furthermore, how can a person be convinced of sin, as defined by the Christian God and His Christ, if the person doesn’t recognize the validity of Christian ethics? How sane is it to impose Christian ethics in the sociopolitical realm, if those ethics are alien and incomprehensible to one’s adversaries?

Focus on the Mosaic revelation of law and justice, or seeing the New Testament precepts through the prism of the Old Covenant ethos, at best, conflates and confuses. Dispensationalism encourages Grace and Love at the neglect of Justice and Principle, for reasons as yet rationally incoherent to me, but definitely evident.⁹ (Those attracted to Dispensationalism forgive as if it were justice, lending to faulty perceptions that the mercy and grace is a legal and moral obligation of God.) Whereas, Reformed Covenantal theology is prone to produce a coercive Gospel, legalist streaks, intellectual sourpusses and lack of graciousness.

Although most precepts between the Mosaic (Old) covenant and Christian (New) covenant are identical, the context and ethos under which they operate differs. The former harangues and threatens into submission, the latter persuades and woos. The former demands justice and fairness. The latter, recognizes injustice and unfairness, but defers the demand for justice unto God, in the name of gracious forgiveness and reconciliation. This differentiation in the ethos becomes obscured if one perceives the New Covenant as extension of the former; ‘one covenant with two administrations’.

The problem, my perfectionist soul has with Old Covenantal Theology is that, from first to last, it is rationally, hermeneutically, morally and judicially indefensible. It supports its contentions, short of Scriptural standard of proof. “Every matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses¹⁰, unless one enlists hermeneutical pretzelism and sophistry. It habitually violates the Scriptural warning “Do not go beyond what is written.“¹¹ It reads into Genesis narrative a covenant that the Genesis narrative itself negates; much as Jerome and Augustine read into the Genesis narrative an absence of sex or frenzy of sex respectively. It attempts to suggest that those of Christ’s admonitions in the Sermon of the Mount which are in complete contradistinction to Mosaic precepts are mere expositions.¹² It would require a marking up of the 613 Mitzvot laws of the Mosaic Code, striking out ‘ceremonial’ and ‘civil’ provisions as well as the punitive subcomponents of ‘moral’ provisions, while pasting in New Testament amendments; an exercise only CIA censors could appreciate and love. Some advocates would unjustifiably and capriciously lift the Ten Commandments (minus One) out from the whole of the ‘moral’ component of the Old Covenant.

It leads to all manner of rational conundrums and absurdities, potentially giving a theological Jon Stewart, years’ worth of comedic material. It justifies scornful accusations of irrationality, inconsistency and disingenuity on the part of unbelievers. There exists scant empirical evidence that the moral law of God permeates the souls of men; in the biographies of individuals, histories of societies or the particulars of legal codes of those nations; who have had scant acquaintance with Judeo-Christian ethics. Those, who suggest a universal Tao, require a glossing over of the underlying intents and details of the behaviours and laws.

Covenantal theology violates both Scriptural and human principles of Justice; principles that even God and His Christ explicitly acknowledge. Contracts, covenants and constitutions, without an amending formula, by definition are broken if one violates a provision or alters a provision unilaterally in order not to officially violate it. Christ, in His condemnation of the Pharisees concerning Corban¹³, confirms this understanding. In the required markup of the Mosaic Code in moral, civil and ceremonial aspects, with the further excising of punitive aspects of the moral components, the endeavour produces inconsistent and inscrutable results. Foundational attributes of justice include scrutability and consistency. (“But sin is not taken into account when there is no law.”¹⁴ “For, there is no respect of persons with God”¹⁵.) And how scrupulous God is with regard to the keeping of His law!¹⁶ “I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”¹⁷

The underlying presuppositions underlying Reformed Covenantal and Catholic theology is unduly influenced by Hellenist philosophy; by a Platonic/Aristolean conception of perfection in their philosophical One and his promulgations require stasis. The Jewish Scriptures represent a God who remains the same¹⁸, who “is the same yesterday and today and forever”¹⁹, yet is dynamic. He can feel intensely, yet His Sovereign Will and Righteousness is not jeopardized by His passions. His ethic and ethos remains consistent; but its implementation must correspond with the particulars of the objective reality into which it is applied.

The paradigm, represented by Covenantal theology, misunderstands the problem with mankind. In representing the Genesis narrative as Covenant of Works, it frames the central problem as being one of disobedience. Biblical analysis, uncorrupted by the Reason and Traditions of men, suggests that the central problem is that man doesn’t believe and trust God. It is ultimately through unbelief that led man to sin and total and utter depravity. In symmetry, it is through faith that he is restored; “faith from first to last”.²⁰

 

Footnotes:

1.  The Westminster Confession of Faith, 1646, Chapter 19 – “Of the Law of God”, Article 1, 2, 3a
2. Matthew 5:18 (AKJV)
3. Revelation 21:1
4. Matthew 22:30
5. Hebrews 7-10
6. John 18:36
7. The Westminster Confession of Faith, 1646, Chapter/Article 4.2, 19.2, 19.1, 4.2, 19.5
8.  Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part Three (Life in Christ), Section One (Man’s Vocation Life in the Spirit),  Chapter Three, (God’s Salvation: Law and Grace), Article 1, VATICAN (English Version), Items 1954, 1979, 1955, 1968
9. The relationship between Dispensationalism and neglect of justice may not be causative or correlative. It might be coincidental. Nevertheless, I find, for instance, a neglect of the principles of justice, upon which the Grace of God unto salvation must be founded. I don’t yet understand the why.
10. 2 Corinthians 13:1
11. 1 Corinthians 4:6
12. Matthew 5:33-34, Matthew 5:38-39
13. Mark 7:9-13
14. Romans 5:13
15. Romans 2:11
16. 2 Samuel 6:6-7
17. Matthew 5:18
18. Psalm 102:27, Hebrews 1:12
19. Hebrews 13:8
20. Romans 1:17