This was
abhorrent to the Puritan authorities, an unacceptable manifestation of
Pluralism, and as a result some of these Baptists were arrested, fined and for
those who refused to pay... whipped.
This sparked
some letters of outrage from both North America and Britain. Not a few voices
were critical of the New England Puritans. Had they learned nothing? They had
despised Archbishop Laud and his treatment of them and now they seemed quite
keen to treat others in the same fashion. And to this the Puritan John Cotton
replied:
"You
think to compel men in matter of worship is to make them sin. If the worship be
lawful in itself, the magistrate compelling him to come to it, compelleth him
not to sin, but the sin is in his will that needs to be compelled to a
Christian duty. If it do make men hypocrites, yet better be hypocrites than
profane persons. Hypocrites give God part of his due, the outward man, but the
profane person giveth God neither outward nor inward man."
Please note
the most important phrase in this statement.
"...better
be hypocrites than profane."
In other
words, it's better that people be forced to outwardly conform, even if their
hearts are in rebellion, than the alternative which is to let them go on in
their sin.
Now at this
point being a paedobaptist, I actually disagree with the Baptists on many
points of their theology. But I also just as strongly disagree with the Puritan
stand regarding the state and society.
Please do
not confuse the Pilgrims with the Puritans. While similar there are essential
differences that cannot be overlooked.
The Puritans
were heirs and perpetuators of the Christendom ideal. They believed in a so-called
Christian society. They were Sacralists that believed all aspects of a society
were mandated to be sanctified or Christianized (whatever that means). We've
written extensively about this error and how it ends up distorting the theology
of the New Testament and ultimately distorts the Gospel message itself. It
warps the doctrine of the Church and actually ends up creating a Pseudo-Zion, a
false Church and ends up persecuting the true Christian faith.
But to put
it simply the Puritans had no problem with an enforced Christian society. They
weren't opposed to the state going after 'heretics'. They just wanted to be the
ones calling the shots.
What Cotton
missed is this and it is fully applicable to our own day...
When people
are forced to outwardly conform, saving them from profaneness (he would argue)...
they are still profane. Forcing
people to outwardly conform to the Christian faith and its spiritual ideals can
at best create hypocritical Pharisees who though outwardly conforming to
something, in their hearts they are still children of the god of this age, the
devil.
Unlike the
Baptists we ought not to reject God ordained visible and temporal means. But it
is critical to grasp these means are God ordained, not man-made. God never ordains
the state to sanctify, he never ordains the state to participate in the
building of the Kingdom of God. The state will perish in the fires of the
Parousia. It's a temporary man-made labour and all such models are doomed to
fail. There is no such thing as a 'Christian' state.
In terms of
worship, we are given some outward forms, but ultimately worship is a matter of
the heart. Those that approach God must believe that He is and they must
worship Him in spirit and in truth. Outwardly conforming, ostensibly sanctified
pagans cannot do this.
The
Scriptures are explicit: God rejects the worship of the heathen. Forcing people
to behave and speak in a certain way does not make them less heathen. The very
notion of Christianization is extra-Biblical. There is no evidence for it (even
on a conceptual level) in the New Testament. It is the fruit of speculative
theology and the child of Constantinianism.
This view
reduces the commandments of God and frankly His Kingdom to an earthly level
when in truth it is a heavenly Kingdom, not of this world, not one that
unregenerate eyes can see or grasp. The Kingdom is participation in and
fellowship with the Holy Spirit. You can't bring that about through legislation
and compulsion. There is no way that men through the state can bring about this
relationship.
By applying
the Covenant (as it were) to society at large you're not Sacralizing or
Sanctifying the society, you're actually profaning the covenant. You pulling
the covenant down to a base level and stripping it of its spiritual and
heavenly foundations. The Puritans were guilty of profaning the New Covenant or
the Covenant of Grace, to speak of it in its trans-historical or eschatological
sense.
The
sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord (Proverbs 15.8)
God rejects
the faux-worship of the wicked. Compelling people to 'serve' or worship God is
futility, does not glorify God and overthrows the Great Commission.
The
Sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination (Proverbs 21.27)
If we
attempt to utilize legislation (the force of law) to compel people to worship
God then we actually are encouraging them to sin. Their false worship just
brings judgment on them and by compelling them to do so (under threat) we
harden them to the true gospel.
In addition,
the Great Commission commands that the Church venture out to the nations
(outside Israel) to bring the gospel message and create Christians or
Disciples.
There have
been some incredible attempts to pervert this passage. Many Dominionists argue
that we're to disciple 'the nations' by which they mean school societies and
bring their political and cultural spheres under the sway of Christian power.
This is basically the Sacralist reading of the passage. Modern Dominionism is
just a more focused and elaborated Protestant re-casting of the old
Constantinian/Theodosian project.
Making
disciples of the nations simply means reaching out to the peoples of the
gentile world and converting people. The power of Satan to deceive the nations
(the people of the world) is limited during the time of the Last Days, the period
between the 1st and 2nd Comings of Christ. In that sense
he is indeed bound. This does not mean he has no power whatsoever. Knowing the
time is short, he's still a roaring lion seeking to devour people and all those
who are not in Christ are in fact bearers of Satan's mark.
But, unlike
the time of the Old Covenant, Satan cannot stop the progress of the Gospel. He
cannot hold the entire world in his sway. In the Old Days, in the ancient
world, with the exception of one tiny Middle Eastern nation, he did hold the
whole world under his power. That changed with the Resurrection and Ascension.
The gospel
goes out but this does not mean the 'nations' become reconstituted versions of
Old Covenant Israel in any sense. There are degrees of expectation on the
theological spectrum from the Theonomists who would make the Old Testament the
constitution of the land to positions like what is found in many of the
Protestant confessions that seek to emulate (in a general sense) the laws of
Old Testament Israel.
This too is
contrary to the teaching of the New Testament. The Law has been fulfilled. Its
temporary purpose was served and thus it has been eradicated and annulled. To
return to it is (according to the New Testament) a rejection of Christ and His
work. It's saying that we are not under the ministration of the Spirit, i.e.
the eternal/eschatological Kingdom of God. Instead we are under a temporal
pre-Messianic system that was rooted upon and rested in the physical forms and
in a system of sacrifice and priesthood, the veil still being whole and
covenantal discipline was that of the sword.
Old Covenant
Israel being a picture of Jesus Christ showed through forms the pictures of Redemption
(the Tabernacle/Temple) and Judgment (wars of conquest and penal laws). These
acts of blood would be murderous under normal circumstances. They were right
because they were in the context of God's ordained and just judgment. They were
pre-pictures or foreshadows of the Final Judgment. The Israelites as a type of
Jesus Christ were bringing Judgment on the earth and breaking the delay that
the rest of the world enjoyed. It has been rightly called an Intrusion of the
Judgment in the days of the pre-Parousia. In that sense the wars of Israel were
truly 'Holy' wars. Man cannot ordain that for any nation today.
And in terms
of ethics, the Church is not called to bear the sword but to turn the cheek, suffer
and live the lives of martyrs... even if we don't actually experience
execution. We are called to mortification, self-denial, a living death as it
were... so that we might live unto Christ.
Nations
cannot be baptized and the unregenerate (let alone societies) cannot be taught
to observe Christ's commandments.
Romans 8 is
explicit.
Because the
carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, not
indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God. (vv. 7-8)
CONTINUE READING PART 2
CONTINUE READING PART 2