I could write a full rebuttal of all the things I heard in
this episode of Iron Sharpens Iron, but what I found necessary was to (at the
very least) provide a real response to the hypothetical question asked by
Arnzen (the host) to Joe Boot at around the forty-one minute mark.
For those unfamiliar with him, Boot is probably one of the
better known Dominionist-Evangelical activists within the UK. His profile in
the US seems to be growing. I've written extensively about Arnzen's show in the
past and the many errors it promotes and perpetuates.
Arnzen asks Boot to explain why so many Christians react with
what he sees as a kind of irrational hostility to Postmillennialism and
Theonomy. Why are they so opposed?
Boot launches into a multi-faceted explanation, touching on
cultural history – the World Wars and Western secularisation, as well as
questions of nature-grace dualism. He also touches on the influence of
Dispensationalism and the like.
But I was struck by the fact that in addition to not
understanding the Bible's fundamental structure, he doesn't understand the
reason that people like me are so opposed to his teaching.
Again, I could write extensively about this but for the sake
of brevity I offer the following.
The reason such views are opposed is because they are in
fundamental opposition to New Testament teaching regarding the nature of the
Kingdom. It's a Kingdom that does not come with observation, one that a person
has to be regenerate to see and discern, one that is righteousness, peace and
joy in the Holy Spirit (Luke 17.20-21, John 3.3, Romans 14.17). It is therefore
not part of a wider cultural dimension as Boot would have it. He attacks those
who by his estimation conflate Kingdom and Church and yet he fails to
distinguish between Rule and Reign (Col. 1.18, Eph 5.23) and does not
understand that the Kingdom is in Heaven – not on Earth, apart from where the
Holy Spirit is active in the role of an earnest (John 18.36, 2 Cor 1.22, 5.5,
Eph 1.13-14).
The Holy Spirit is associated with the Church-Temple and as such is not given to the arts, politics, and
culture – that which Paul refers to as those who are outside (1 Cor 5.12). The
Kingdom is not one of the sword and the coin, of mine and thine, a way of glory
and power. Caesar's realm is not the province of the Holy Spirit or else the
words of Christ are meaningless (Mark 12.17).
It's a Kingdom that on Earth is represented by the Church,
the Temple-domain of the Holy Spirit where the Word and Sacraments are found. It
follows the way of the cross. It is a Kingdom not of this world – the very
antithesis of what men like Boot propose. The kingdom Boot offers is just the
Tower of Babel with a cross planted on top.
The reason people get upset is because under the system Boot
proposes, the very identity of the Church is lost in a fog of cultural
confusion. It is conflated with politics and with the tokens of civilisation,
and history testifies to this sad truth. As a sword and coin entity the Church
(contrary to New Testament imperatives) becomes entangled in the affairs of
this life, and adopts a new set of ethics thereby (2 Tim 2.4). This was seen
with the advent of Constantine and the century of transformation he launched.
By the time the Church emerged from it, it had embraced new values about
everything from wealth, and power, to its attitudes toward cultural tolerance
and syncretism.
Boot's Dominionism is another gospel in the end and that's
why people get upset over its doctrines and claims. He and those like him have
misread the Scriptures on a massive scale and instead of presenting the vision
of New Testament Christianity and its eschatology – we are given a
Judaized-Babel counterfeit. It has a form of godliness but denies the power
thereof, finding instead its hope and glory in the sword and coin, and alliance
with the powers of this world.
Further, he decries the nature-grace dualism of Rome and how
Evangelicals have embraced it. He and those like him speak in these sweeping
terms of how the Evangelical world holds to Two Kingdoms, nature-grace schemes,
and the like. I wish I could find a church that opposed his views. The
situation he's describing existed forty or fifty years ago. It no longer is the
case today. The congregations that are less than enthusiastic about his message
in our day are not principled in their opposition. Rather they are
market-driven worldly Evangelical groups that are about numbers and therapy.
They don't want to divide and offend and so everything is watered down. That's
hardly opposition as much as it is simple apathy and a Laodicean-inspired
pragmatism – the fruit of an acculturated Church in a context of decadence –
the rotten harvest of an earlier generation of leaders of which Boot is a
descendant.
Contrary to Boot, the Scriptures speak of a creation groaning
in futility (Romans 8), the body as a vile tent (Phil 3.21, 2 Cor 5, 2 Peter
1.13-14), a present evil age ruled over by the god of this world (Gal 1.4, 2
Cor 4.4, John 12.31, Eph 2.2, 1 John 5.19, Matt 4.8-9). And to revisit a key
passage, Paul speaks of those who are outside and how we have nothing to do
with them in terms of judgment (1 Cor 5.12).
Boot makes an interesting argument. He always points back to
philosophy and appeals to basic questions and a kind of grand coherence. He
wants to argue for a comprehensive system, or unified theory that is
functional. Such a worldview has the answers and applications to all questions.
It's a candid admission in some respects. His arguments
always trend in this direction. Why? Because there are no Scriptures for him to
appeal to. The few references to the New Testament were easily refuted
distortions – such as his reiteration of Bahnsen's thesis regarding the law in
Matthew 5, or Paul's supposed civil application of the law when writing his
first epistle to Timothy.
I've written more than once about my own wrestlings with
Theonomic claims back in the 1990's. As a new Christian I struggled to interact
with the arguments and the barrage of materials I was presented with. But I was
never convinced. Why? It's very simple. I was deeply committed to reading the
Scriptures and did so actively, even voraciously. Their arguments were
compelling at times, but they just didn't line up with what was being presented
in the New Testament and reading it daily, I intuitively resisted their
arguments. In time I came to understand not just that they were wrong but
profoundly so.
The system Boot presents is a philosophical package. It's
coherent but it has a fatal flaw. It's not Scriptural. It can't be demonstrated
by exegesis. It's a castle in the air. In fact the New Testament repudiates not
just his system but the Judaizing way in which it appeals to, utilizes, and
misuses the Old Testament. If not in detail, then certainly in spirit – it is a
reiteration of the errors being addressed in books such as Galatians and
Hebrews.
He tickles ears to be sure – people love to be affirmed in
their worldly aspirations for fame, fortune, and power, but his religion is not
that of the New Testament. From another vantage point, it's also the Old
Testament scenario condemned by the Psalmists, as well as prophets such as
Isaiah and Jeremiah. It's a case of God's people confusing the holy and
profane, strengthening the hands of the evil doers, and confusing wealth and
power (worldly glory) with the Kingdom.
By the time of the prophets and the exile, the typology of
wealth and worldly glory exhibited in part by earlier figures like Abraham and
ultimately with the failed and apostate picture of Solomon, was dispensed with
and apart from some of the idiomatic Kingdom visions (elucidated by Christ and
the apostles), the prophets already anticipated the ethics of the Kingdom, as
well as its vision and relationship to wealth and power made explicit in the
New Testament.
And those glory-visions Boot wants to see realized in this
present evil age – we learn in the New Testament that they are fulfilled in the
eschatological or heavenly Kingdom. And the Kingdom language put forward by
Christ is repeated in the epistles under the aegis of the Church – the Church
called to suffer as cross-bearing martyrs.
Boot is to be pitied because he is pouring his life and
energies into a house of cards, a counterfeit Zion – and he's leading people
astray.
He dares to suggest that those who reject his system are
perhaps afraid because of the cultural cost. That's really something coming
from someone who aligns with the powerful and seeks to use their power to impose
his paradigm on society. On the contrary, those who reject his sword and coin view
embrace the way of the cross, knowing that the New Testament teaches that all
who are in Christ Jesus will be persecuted (2 Tim 3.12). That is but one of
many, many verses and passages that (were Boot's eschatological vision to be
realized) would be negated and rendered moot. Those New Testament passages
would have no meaning in the context of his chiliastic über-Christendom, his
golden age millennium. Some of the Theonomists in their darker and more candid
moments have acknowledged this. Christians won't be bearing the cross in their
time of ascendancy but persecuting the heathen. They won't be turning the other
cheek but striking out. Such a theology is not only an ethically subversive expression
of vengeance-driven over-realised eschatology, it is straight from the pit. It
turns the teaching of the New Testament on its head.
People who understand the issues get upset because Theonomy
and Postmillennialism are not innocent teachings as Arnzen ignorantly suggests.
They represent views of the Kingdom in diametric opposition to New Testament
teaching. They are at war with it. They do not read the Scriptures as
Christians but as Judaized Hellenistic philosophers, imposing paradigms on the
Scriptures that are not found, challenging their opponents with dilemmas that
do not exist, and presenting imperatives that God nowhere commands.
See also:
https://proto-protestantism.blogspot.com/2016/08/a-pseudo-two-kingdoms-debate.html