The Theonomist in question argues that Irons holds to an
esoteric position on the Sabbath that has no confessional status or Biblical
precedent. This begs the question as to whether or not confessional status has
any bearing or authority for those concerned with following the teaching of the
New Testament. And in terms of Biblical precedent, he's simply mistaken.
Paul implies antithesis and dichotomy between the sacred and
secular in several places, but in stark terms in 1 Corinthians 5 in his
rhetorical question – what have I to do with those who are outside?
God will judge them. The gulf which Theonomy seeks to
eliminate is permanent in this present evil age. Were it to be eliminated by
the erection of a phony Christendom or by the emergence of some Judaized
postmillennial Golden Age, then the Scriptures would no longer be authoritative
or sufficient, as large sections of the New Testament are rendered effectively
moot if not meaningless.
The Theonomist has no case. He can't argue from the Old
Testament either as the nations that fall under prophetic condemnation are
never called to account for a failure to keep the Sabbath, nor is there any
expectation that they were to obey the covenant laws given to Old Testament
Israel – which includes the Ten Commandments as plainly stated in its prologue.
They are condemned for idolatry and wickedness, not in reference to the Mosaic
Law, but in broad ethical categories such as covetousness, cruelty, pride, and
murder. Their main problem is always that they have rebelled against God and
either seek to effectively take divine prerogatives unto themselves, or they
typologically and metaphorically represent an outworking of demonic aspiration
and rebellion. We can grant that they operated under some form of natural law
but this is not to suggest that the concept becomes normative or the basis for
some kind of social order. These are questions pursued by misguided scholastic-minded
theologians. The Scriptures don't ask these questions and a proper
understanding of the New Testament reveals they are of little value or import.
Their problem isn't in the realm of law but that they are unbelievers and
idolaters. The solution is not found in Moses, or some kind of philosophically
deduced unified theory, worldview, or scholastically-inspired legislation, but
in the Gospel and its call to repentance and faith.
The Theonomist begs the question and resting on his
confessional tradition (as opposed to Scripture) he assumes the Decalogue
represents the eternal moral law and that it operates within the framework of
Westminster's contrived three-fold division of the law in moral, civil, and
ceremonial categories. The Scriptures do not teach this division as Moses is
always presented by the New Testament as a unified covenant of which the
Decalogue is a part. It's not even a coherent framework as the twentieth-century
Theonomic schism and revision exposed. A flawed thesis to be sure, it nevertheless
revealed that Westminster's categories and lines of division are hardly clear
and are in fact contrived and forced. And yet even if Westminster's teaching on
the Law was the very paragon of coherence, in no way would it mean that it was
necessarily Scriptural. It may simply be a paper castle – an impressive and
elaborate edifice but not real.
In a somewhat comic (if not absurd) manner DiGiacomo the
Theonomist turns to variables and syllogisms to make his point. This is
philosophical theology at its worst, a scholastic exercise that has little if
anything to do with the thematic, revelatory, contextual, and Spirit-inspired
apostolic kerygma of the New Testament. To no one's surprise his nebulously
defined terms produce a nebulous result which is manipulated into a self-serving
conclusion. His methods are flawed at their outset, his error at the level of
prolegomena wherein Christian thinking and predication is reduced to an
academic exercise that doesn't require the Spirit and is reduced to temporal
and finite categories of epistemology. All one needs (or so it would seem) is a
good class in post-Enlightenment logic to master the intricacies of Scripture.
Paul's apologia contra philosophia in
1 Corinthians is clearly rejected by this rationalist Judaizer.
More than a dozen years ago I attempted to introduce the
concept of Covenant Ethics to this would-be theologian, the idea that Scripture
is covenantal and the commands given by God within this context are written and
issued to His people. Not all of God's commandments are universal. The world
cannot keep Sabbath as it were. Their attempted worship is an abomination as
the Scriptures make clear. The Sabbath was a type of Christ and the Heavenly
Kingdom wherein all is reconciled, at peace, and at rest. It was never
universal, but covenantal – categories Theonomy cannot embrace or entertain, as
to do so would mark the undoing of their flawed project and paradigm.
In other words, even if you compel unbelievers to 'keep
Sabbath', they cannot and regardless such actions do not please God. In reality
the call of New Testament Christianity is of higher ethical order than what is
revealed in the Decalogue – which in its redemptive-historical context is tied
to typology and the schoolmaster role Paul discusses in Galatians. We are not
bound to a day, no more than we are bound to dietary laws or temple sacrifice.
Christian ethics are of a higher cross-bearing order and though often not
codified in the pedagogical manner of Old Testament Law meant to frustrate and
condemn, their implementation requires wisdom and often transcendent
Spirit-shaped reasoning which the world is wont to reckon as reckless, foolish,
and often insane.
Returning to article at hand, the Theonomist accuses Irons of
begging the question. In truth the Theonomist's entire methodology and his very
assumptions about the nature of theology are guilty of petitio principii. He assumes his method but has no basis for it
from Scripture, but instead must rely on the syncretic Western philosophical tradition
and in doing so undermines his very Theonomic premise. This is why the exercise
can be described as both comic and absurd. Strutting like some sort of
theologian peacock, he's simply making a fool of himself and in the course of
his argument he is effectively sawing off the branch upon which he sits.
The universal call to repentance is not fulfilled by
compelling unbelievers to keep Sabbath – assuming for the sake of argument that
the Sabbath continues under the New Covenant. There are many problems here, not
least of which is the fact that the eternal claims regarding the commandment
have been changed, not just in switching days but in essential meaning – and
without warrant in the New Testament. In other words if the Sabbath were still
valid, it would be on Saturday, the seventh day. The case for the transformed Resurrection
Sabbath is absent from the New Testament and is the product of inference and
deduction not exegesis. The Church meets on the first day of the week but this
is never connected to the Sabbath in the New Testament or in the writings of
the Early Church. In fact, it's warned against in both.
The gospel call is universal to be sure – which includes
repentance. For Christians the change in status and allegiance also implies a
new set of ethics, wedded to the concepts of rebirth and a transformed mind. In
that context we can have the discussion about obligation, days, or whatever the
topic might be. But nowhere does the New Testament assume that it's the task of
the Church to try and enforce some kind of conformity on the unbeliever. His
use of Acts 17 in this manner smacks of eisegesis.
His reasoning goes off the rails when he starts in on the
Fifth Commandment and child obedience. The question is not whether non-covenant
children are under obligation vis-à-vis the Decalogue to obey their parents.
This is a question the Scriptures don't ask – one generated by philosophical inference
and driven once again by his scholastic-theological method. The New Testament
repeatedly describes and condemns such disobedience but it's not a call for the
Church to apply covenantally-rooted law to these people and their situation.
They're lost and as lost people they are under the power and
domination of sin and are children of wrath. That's all we really need to know.
Teasing out regulatory applications of the Decalogue vis-à-vis the lost world
is an exercise unknown in the New Testament. Paul in 1 Timothy chapter1 is not
setting out a Christian use of the Law or even more specifically the Decalogue.
In fact his vague and somewhat loose reference to it implies the point I'm
making, that under the New Covenant it is no longer active and/or applicable to
those in union with Christ. Divine Law nevertheless retains a function in terms
of condemning the world – but again, there's no specific mention of the Sabbath
or any of the so-called First Table commandments. Thus it's not the Decalogue
per se that Paul is appealing to but Law in general of which the Decalogue was
a contextual, typological, and covenantal expression – hence the parallels and
conceptual overlap.
The Law of God in the broadest sense condemns the unbeliever
but the Mosaic order (specifically) is not binding on Christians. Lest this be
completely misunderstood, we could state it this way – The form of the Mosaic
Law (including the Decalogue) is fulfilled and thus annulled and yet that form
revealed (in a specific typological context and for a specific
redemptive-historical purpose) a glimpse or reflection of a broader substantive
concept we can call God's Law, which still condemns the world and convicts sin.
The Sabbath was typological and temporary and as the New Testament reveals was
never about the hallowing of a twenty-four hour period. That was part of the typological-pedagogical
framework meant for the pre-Incarnation, pre-Resurrection people of God and
thus is no longer required. With the author of Hebrews we can extrapolate
warnings and lessons from its context and form. In the end, the unbeliever's
problem is not about a failure to acknowledge and sanctify a twenty-four hour period
within a heptadic cycle, but rather their godlessness and failure to
acknowledge God and order their lives accordingly. Their problem is a lack of
faith without which it is impossible to please Him.
The kind of regulatory applications all too often suggested within Theonomic debate represent the very kind of vain jangling, idle, and meaningless speculation the apostle is condemning in 1 Timothy.