Mr. IronInk has responded once more. He is so kind to do so.
He refuses to answer the basic questions I have asked. Until he does so....take note, he has lost the argument.
Here's his latest post. He has shown his true colours. He won't post my comments and is obviously not interested in interacting, which is fine. I wrote a short note in reply.
He may go away or he may declare war. Either way, his arguments and lack thereof only demonstrate the failure of the system know as Theonomic Reconstructionism.
I willingly post anything, any of them write against me, so convinced am I their system is bankrupt and anti-christian.
Here's IronInk.....
This post title is "A Series of Conversation with a Psuedo-Protestant -- I"
Psuedo Protestant (hereafter – Pp)
“In responding to my rejection of the WCF 3-fold, you argue that my view implies there is no reason to keep the moral law since all has fallen. This will be a recurring theme. Law…what is it? You’re all over the place in how you use the term. No one is suggesting there is no moral law…what I’m saying is, the Decalogue isn’t it. That was preamble to the Mosaic Law Covenant. So it too, has passed. There is the Law of Christ, but since you seem think grace and truth came by Moses…..it won’t mean much to you.”
Bret responds (hereafter
I really don’t need to say anything here Pp. Your own words are your millstone.
What we see here in your words is the same hermeneutic that the dispensationalists have appealed since their cult began. You have a hermeneutic of radical discontinuity. You have a hermeneutic that refuses to see that grace and truth genuinely existed in Moses day, failing to realize the emphasis in John 1:17 is not that in Moses’ day God’s people were without grace, but rather that with the coming of Christ grace and truth are fully realized. Your reading of John 1:17 necessitates a belief that God’s people in Moses that were saved were saved by law since grace and truth, according to your pearls of wisdom, did not exist in the Mosaic covenant. However, for anybody using any hermeneutic other than a dispensational one would understand that law and grace-truth cannot be viewed as compartmentalized counterpoints in the periods before and after Christ respectively. With such reasoning you reveal your classic R2kt telltale sign of repeated dualisms. the proper contrast in John 1:17 is not between law and grace-truth, but between the “given through” and “realized” found in the passage.
17 For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.
The absolute contrast in the passage is between the given law, which did not belong to Moses, and the grace and truth which were, as belonging to Jesus, essential attributes of Jesus (cmp. John 1:14) and so were realized through our Lord Christ. The contrast in John 1:17 is that the law as given through Moses only manifested God indirectly while grace and truth realized through Jesus Christ manifested God directly.
Bahnsen offers a trenchant comment here that will resolve all dispensational confusion – both Reformed and otherwise.
“In the same verse which says that Christ was full of grace and truth (John 1:14), it is also said that He tabernacled among us. We do well to remember that just as the law was preserved in the Older Testamental tabernacle (Dt. 10:2-5), so also the Messiah preserved the law in His life and person (as Ps. 40:7f said He would). Therefore, just as grace and truth were present in the age before Christ, so law remains in the age following Christ.”
Secondly, concerning your comment above, it is good to know that here I am the one defending the WCF confession while you are the one being the innovator.
“As far as Edom and Moab…how would they come under Mosaic Law? Without a central-shrine, priesthood, divine mandate….how could they hope to worship Jehovah? They have no covenantal Theocracy. They can try and create a ‘theocracy’ but it’s not a real, God didn’t institute it. That’s what happened in the Northern Kingdom. They lost their Covenantal status, couldn’t replicate it, being impossible, and under Jeroboam set up a pseudo-Theocracy, an imitation of God’s Kingdom. This is Sacralism, the idolatrous attempt of every nation and culture to make the City of Man into the City of God. It’s as old as Babel. I wasn’t calling Beza pagan, though indeed he is the author of many foul things. But the Sacralist ideal…..that’s as old as Babel, and that’s exactly what he tried to do.”
That the Nations were held to God’s law-word standard is so clearly seen in Jonah’s trip to Ninevah that it is mind numbing that you insist that God’s law-word standard didn’t apply to the nations. God told Johah to cry out against Ninevah for Ninevah’s “wickedness had come before Him.” Now, what other standard was that wickedness of Ninevah measured except God law standard? But according to your hermeneutic it was not possible for God to hold Ninevah responsible since the decalogue did not apply to pagan nations and since the “law of Christ did not yet exist.” At best, by your hermeneutic the only way that God could complain about Ninevah’s wickedness is that He read Natural law and by His reading natural law He determined that Ninevah had wickedness that was coming before Him. Should I laugh now or later?
Now earlier you made it clear that you were not in compliance with the Westminister confession on the three-fold use of the law and now you admit that you have no use for Reformed men who believed that God’s law applied to the civil realm and the civil magistrate. So, I ask you Pp, who is the Reformed person in this discussion?
More anon Pp,
Mr brief response....which probably won't appear on his site....
Pseudo indeed.
You have failed to recognize the comparative and chronological interplay between the OT/NT.
Your comments regarding Ninevah, and John 1 exhibit this. You have not understood what I have said, and I don't believe you are interested.
Too dualistic I guess. Pity the NT is replete with such examples. But I increasingly realize that with people like you, Biblical argument means little. The philosophical construct is supreme.
As I've pointed out...your hermeneutic is more akin to Dispensationalism by placing the NT in light of the OT.
Theonomy also makes a significant departure from the WCF, but I see in the end, it's more about tradition with you.
I argue the Reformation was both good and bad..and I care little for adhering to a specific tradition which is hardly monolithic in any case. If the label Reformed is what you desire above all else...I happily give it to you. Enjoy.
Beware you do not elevate a system and a tradition to the point of overthrowing Divine Revelation...
And your thirty years of study and investigation have obviously taught you much in the way of maturity and wisdom.....
John A.