Personhood Florida expanding and reaching across the state!

Here is an encouraging note from Bryan Longworth, Director of Personhood Florida ...

The anniversary of Roe v. Wade was a very successful time of reaching out with the Personhood message all across the state of Florida! We are being asked to speak in churches, schools and to come petition in our local Care Net Walk for Life's. Glory to God for the saints working together to build the Kingdom of God and in the words of Florida's state constitution, "...to enjoy and defend life..." and extend that to the pre-born, disabled and elderly.

Soon to be published will be the nine divisions of the state of Florida with Division Contacts for each area. These will be posted on a map of Florida with the counties in each area and the cities in each county. It is now our task to find county liaisons and city liaisons. It is time to step forward and Take Your City! You need no experience -- just a burning desire to see abortion ended and for the right to life to be extended to every person in Florida! We will be posting the maps and the goals in our next email!

Over the last week and a half, Personhood Florida has received approximately 2,000 petitions in 55 large envelopes from churches across the state of Florida and many more smaller envelopes from individuals. The churches were from many denominations, including Missionary Alliance, Assemblies of God, Baptist, Roman Catholic, Nondenominational, Pentecostal and Presbyterian. We now have collected over 15,000 petitions and will be contacting the churches who responded to recruit more Personhood liaisons in cities and regions across Florida. I want to thank all who have worked to make this possible. With your help, we’re going to make history in Florida by defending all innocent human life through the Personhood Amendment.

We are now well on our way to reaching the 10 percent threshold needed for the Florida Supreme Court to review the Personhood Amendment language, but we have much work to do. Our goal is to average 1,500 petitions per day for a period of about two years to reach our 1,000,000 petition goal. (We intend to overshoot the 676,811 signatures needed by a wide margin in order to counter any challenge.) To do this, we will need to have Personhood liaisons in each region, city, and church. We will also need more volunteers for various tasks, including data entry. I look forward to working with you as we build the most comprehensive pro-life network ever assembled across the state of Florida.

- Pastor Bryan Longworth
Director, Personhood Florida

Scott Brown presents a paradox for the pro-life movement

Imagine for a moment if Senator Orrin Hatch from Mormon dominated Republican Utah said, when asked, "Are you pro-life?"

"Yes, I am pro-life. I'm against partial-birth abortions. I'm against federal funding of abortions. And I believe in a strong parental consent notification law."

Remember that position: Pro-life. That is the position of James Dobson and Focus on the Family, the Roman Catholic Bishops, Phyllis Schlafly and the Eagle Forum, Steve Ertelt and National Right to Life. They have each actively opposed or refused to endorse the Personhood initiative -- a strategy for passing state amendments that would recognize the right to life of all human beings from conception to natural death -- thinking that pushing for an outright ban on abortion would be counter-productive at this point in time. Instead, they choose the pragmatic approach of incrementalism. To be fair (and by that I mean less strident than other Personhood advocates have been) I must point out that these individuals and organizations support Personhood, but only deny that it is the correct strategy at the current time.

Meanwhile, in the current political climate, newly-elected Senator Scott Brown from Roman Catholic dominated Democratic Party Massachusetts says, when asked, "Are you pro-choice?"

"Yes ... The difference between me and maybe others is that I'm very -- I'm against partial-birth abortions. I'm against federal funding of abortions. And I believe in a strong parental consent notification law" (Barbara Walters interview, ABC News, Jan. 31, 2010).

We ought to note this paradox and its obvious solution. Politicians take their positions from their constituents. The vast majority of Americans believe that there should be some restrictions on abortion. Most favor banning late term abortions and favor these incremental restriction measures. Most are "pro-choice," however, when it comes to the various exceptions, especially rape and incest.

Thus a "pro-choice" candidate from a Democratic yet Roman Catholic stronghold may nuance his stance with words such as "strongly" and "very" opposed to certain types of abortion to underscore the exact same incremental approach held by National Right to Life, the Catholic Bishops, Focus on the Family and so on. As long as the strategy is to keep "chipping away at Roe v. Wade," they feel satisfied with the label of "pro-life.” But if a candidate pledges the same thing under the label "pro-choice," doesn't it amount to about the same thing?

I submit that the problem is not with political candidates, but with the position taken by "pro-life" organizations and individuals. The biblical adage, "You have not because you ask not," applies here in full force. For pro-life advocates to criticize Senator-elect Scott Brown misses the forest for the trees. He is not the problem. In fact, he is little different than the so-called "solution" that has thus far been an effete assault on a modern day Goliath.

I take conservative "pro-life" pundits to task for their proposed solution. For example, Fox News’ Sean Hannity is "pro-life," but holds out for the exceptions of rape and incest for the sake of political pragmatism. Ironically, these "pro-life" conservative Christians need to be reminded that is exactly the position of Roe v. Wade. In the decision, the Supreme Court sided with Jane Roe (Norma McCorvey) who argued that she needed to be guaranteed the legal right to an abortion because she was raped and pregnant.*

In the 2000 presidential primaries, John McCain said he thought Roe v. Wade should be overturned, but then said he would support exceptions to a ban on abortion in cases of rape and incest (Boston Globe, A11, Jan 22, 2000). Ironically, these are the very exceptions that Roe v. Wade provided. It was Roe's companion decision, Doe v. Bolton, that gave a legal justification to extend abortion rights through all nine months with no exceptions. To be accurate, these “pro-life” political candidates and pundits ought to call themselves “pro-Roe but anti-Doe.”

So, in effect, when we support the "exceptions," we uphold Roe v. Wade, just like Sean Hannity, John McCain and Scott Brown.

My challenge to politicians to say they are pro-life with the "exceptions" is this. If that is your conviction, then let's get this done now. If the majority of Americans are in favor of certain restrictions on abortion, then put it to a vote each session until it passes. If the majority of Americans are against abortion past the time of viability (20 weeks) then where is the legislation? If the majority of Americans want a ban on all abortions with the exceptions of rape or incest, then why not put that to an up or down vote this month? While I believe that the God-given right to life extends to all human beings without exception, I would support such an effort that would stop over 98 percent of all abortions that currently do not fall under one of the so-called exceptions.

With a Republican congress and president for six full years, there were no such bills and no such up or down votes. The problem is that politicians say what they need to say on the abortion issue to get elected. The problem is that pro-life advocates continue to support weak candidates in the primaries with the view that they are more electable. Then we bemoan the fact that our incremental approach isn't working. What we need to do is to start insisting on a vote on specific pro-life legislation in each session (up or down – win or lose) before we will support any candidate for reelection. If a "pro-life" representative shows no initiative in sponsoring or advocating such legislation, then we should support his or her pro-life opponent in the next primary election. Only then will the Republican Party take us seriously.

____________________
* Note: Miss Norma McCorvey was never raped and had her child given up for adoption. She is today a repentant Christian and proudly pro-life with no exceptions. See her website: http://www.leaderu.com/norma

Was Biblical Law responsible for the Salem Witch Trials?

Did the Puritans put witches to death in Salem?

Read the complete article at:

http://www.forerunner.com/champion/X0018_Puritans_and_Witches.html

The Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded by the Puritans in the 1630s with Salem being one of its principle port towns. It had become evident by the 1670s, however, that most of the citizens of the colony were not Puritans (or born-again Christians in today's vernacular). By the 1690s, when the Salem Witch hysteria took place, the Puritan era had pretty much waned. By this time, the Puritans were the minority.

The prevailing idea today is that it was the Puritans who killed witches in Salem. Actually, the situation was that some innocent people were accused of witchcraft by people who were not genuinely converted at all. The only real witchcraft going on was practiced by a servant of the town pastor! But because she confessed her sin and repented the townspeople, as a whole, forgave her. The resulting problem of the Salem witch trials was that you had superstitious, unconverted people using extra-biblical, unorthodox criteria by which to judge witches.

A pastor in Salem stirred up the original problem with irresponsible preaching and false accusations. But then he had to deflect guilt, because the witch hysteria was found to be emanating from his own household! The townspeople began accusing others and the hysteria spread. The civil court had plenty of nonsense to draw from, written mainly by Anglican pastors from England. These men argued that traditional, extra-biblical accounts of the occult were acceptable as information on the nature of the occult, and this side won the debate (with an enormous amount of bogus evidence).

It is untrue to say that the Puritans were responsible for the deaths of innocent people. In fact, the Salem witchcraft trials were stopped by a Puritan pastor from Beverly, Massachusetts. He charged that none of the evidence met biblical criteria. So it was a true minister of the gospel who stopped the state from executing witches in Salem. The minister who brought the charges was dismissed from his pastorate due to his role in the affair.

What should be our response to witchcraft today?

As Christians, we have two avenues of resistance to witchcraft: ecclesiastical and civil.

It is the role of the Church to oppose witchcraft with all our might, even to the point of publicly condemning certain witches (if they refuse to repent) through imprecatory prayer proclamations. Sorcery is condemned throughout the Bible [see Ex. 7:11; 8:7,18; Isa. 47:9,12]. Sanctions are imposed on sorcerers who refuse to repent [see Acts 13:6,8; Gal. 5:20; Rev. 9:21;18:23]. As the Church, our correct response is to condemn the practice of witchcraft and to preach salvation to those who would repent.

A more controversial issue is whether or not witchcraft should be made illegal by our civil government. My view is that since the civil government in our country is not a church-state ecclesiocracy, the state should not try witches. Our local community governments would be correct, however, in enforcing ordinances against private house meetings of religious groups in order to stop the undesirable effects of Wiccan rituals on the surrounding community, such as noise, parking violations, and so on.

The Mithra-buster

By J.P. Holding

Back in the Roman era, Mithraism was perhaps Christianity's leading competitor for the hearts and minds of others. Today Mithraism is religiously a non-factor, but it still "competes" with Christianity, in another way: It is a leading candidate for the "pagan copycat" thesis crowd as a supposed source for Christianity.

Our walking papers are laid out for us by over a dozen things that Jesus supposedly has in common with Mithras and, by extension, Christianity allegedly borrowed to create the Jesus character.

In not one instance has a convincing case been made that Christianity borrowed anything from Mithraism. The evidence is either too late, not in line with the conclusions of modern Mithraic scholars, or just plain not there.

Brent Hardaway: Mithra

Jamie Patrick Holding: the Mithra-buster

Jay Rogers: Camera and Editor

The Mount Olivet Discourse and Vaticinium Ex Eventu

“Vaticinium ex eventu” -- Latin: literally, “prophecy after the event”; or a prediction made after the predicted event is fulfilled.

No one in their right mind writes a false prophecy after the fact. That is, no one writes a verifiably false prediction and then delivers it to a people who are in a position to know with certainty that it is a false prophecy.

And yet this is exactly how the liberal Higher Critics interpret the Mount Olivet Discourse. They assume the Temple Destruction prophecy of Jesus (Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 21) is a tradition that developed after the Roman-Jewish War of 67 to 70 AD. The liberal critics assume that this tradition provided the source material for the three so-called “synoptic” Gospels (Mt, Mk, Lk). The synoptic writers then composed a narrative of predictive words that Jesus did not actually say, which nevertheless relate to events that already had happened by the time the accounts were composed.

On one extreme, there are atheist writers, such as Bertrand Russell in Why I Am Not A Christian, who have myopically proposed that the Mount Olivet Discourse is a failed prophecy. This was also the view of the neo-orthodox Albert Schweitzer, that Jesus of Nazareth was an apocalyptic prophet who predicted the end of the world. When Jesus’ prophecies failed to come to pass, His followers formed a new religion. Still others have made the amazingly inconsistent charge that the Mount Olivet Discourse is vaticinium ex eventu and yet contains the prediction of Christ’s near return!

There are several problems with both of these views.

Two Liberal Extremes

First, at one end of the spectrum we find a common method of dealing with New Testament eschatology – to assume that the disciples expected a soon return of Jesus.

The eschatology of liberals since the mid-19th century onward has been hyper-preterist. They interpret the Mount Olivet prophecy as entailing events to be fulfilled in the first century including the Second Coming of Jesus. They assume that the prophecy speaks of the Jewish War with the Romans, the succession of plagues and atrocities that struck the city of Jerusalem from 67 to 70 AD leading up to the destruction of the Temple.

This interpretation is used by liberals to date the first written Gospel (usually thought to be Mark) no earlier than 68 AD by which time the Roman-Jewish War had begun. Most conservatives, on the other hand, date the three synoptics anywhere from 40 to 67 AD. Early dating is the logical position if we assume that Jesus’ predictions had yet to be fulfilled.

They claim that the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD as an example of vaticinium ex eventu. But oddly, many also hold that part of the prophecy dealt with the Second Coming of the Lord as a supposed first century event, and yet the Messiah did not appear in order to redeem his people. If this was a prophecy delivered after 70, then the pseudonymous, non-eyewitness authors of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke delivered a “faked” false prophecy.

The obvious question arises: Why would anyone write such an account in the first place?

Imagine a writer in 2010 forging a book by an early 20th century writer claiming Jesus would return by 1988. We’d expect a false prophet in the 1970s or ‘80s to do that, but not a writer in the 21st century! Even more bizarre would be to find a Christian church in the 21st century that would immediately accept this as an inspired, prophetic book and even allude to it in their own teaching materials.

The vaticinium ex eventu advocates take the entire passage containing the Mount Olivet Discourse out of the context in which it was framed – the disciples’ question pertaining to the timing of the Messiah’s victory over Israel’s oppressors, “Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” (Matthew 24:3).

Second, at the opposite end of the spectrum there are those who simply call into question the possibility of fulfilled prophecy – especially prophecy as detailed and specific as described in Matthew 24. The writer of the account has Jesus making several predictive claims, “You will see … You will hear … they will deliver you up …” and finally predicting the exact date and manner of the destruction of the Temple, “Do you not see all these things? Assuredly, I say to you, not one stone shall be left here upon another, that shall not be thrown down … this generation will by no means pass away till all these things take place.”

If we assume that Jesus made this prophecy in the spring of 30 AD, then the destruction of the Temple in 70 fits the prophecy. If we take a generation to mean its usual biblical sense of 40 years, then this is remarkable. It indicates a supernatural revelation concerning a future event.

We could compare it to a Southerner in 1825 correctly predicting the general signs of strife between North and South that would lead to a Civil War. That prediction in itself would not be remarkable in that many people predicted that a “house divided against itself shall not stand.” But it would be fascinating to find a prediction of a 40 year time period and specifically that the city of Atlanta would be burned by Northern troops so that no wooden structure would be left standing. Although it is possible that someone could have made such a prediction as a wise individual with an unusual gift for foretelling, most would consider it a supernatural ability to prophesy.

In fact, Jesus in Matthew 24 applies the prophecy of Daniel to first century Judea in no less than four places. He speaks of the abomination of desolation (Mt. 24:17; Dan 9:27; 11:31; 12:11), a great tribulation (Mt. 24:21; Dan. 12:1), the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky (Mt. 24:30; Dan 7:13) and perhaps a few other allusions. That Jesus is quoting Daniel and applying it to first century Judea is not at all unusual. What is notable is that it is the prophecy is applied in such a way as to correctly predict the manner and timing of the Temple’s destruction. What is ironic here is that even if we place Daniel as being written after 167 BC, as nearly all liberals do, the stark fact remains that Jesus and the Gospel writers took the prophecy of Daniel as yet unfulfilled on these points. We cannot simply explain away the prophecy of Daniel as vaticinium ex eventu. Even if we make the argument that it was not the prophet’s intention, it certainly was applied that way by Jesus and the Gospel writers. The writing of Daniel was centuries prior to 70 AD. In fact, four copies of Daniel are found among the Dead Sea scrolls.

When the prophecy of Daniel is applied to the destruction of the Jewish Temple in the Mount Olivet Discourse, we are left with no logical objection for a pre-70 AD writing of the account in any of its three forms. The logical solution to this critical paradox can be found in looking at the shortcomings of each end of the liberal interpretive spectrum.

Two Liberal Paradoxes

Option #1:-- The vaticinium ex eventu position leaves us with the paradox that the Gospels could not have been written too early or too late. Otherwise, one is left to wonder exactly how first century Christians could possibly have accepted a Gospel with the Mount Olivet Discourse that appeared suddenly after 70 AD without any prior knowledge by the hearers.

In other words, they would have to ask: “If Jesus really did say these wondrous things, then why did no one know about it prior to 70 AD?”

One could counter that the versions of the Gospels with the Mount Olivet Discourse appeared in the second century long after the first century witnesses to the ministry of Jesus and the Apostles had passed away. However, that only exacerbates the problem. If this were the case then t is even more unlikely that no one would have noticed the novelty of the passage. Furthermore, by this late date the author would have more clearly separated the Second Coming of Jesus from the events surrounding the calamity that came on Jerusalem in 70 AD.

As JAT Robinson has demonstrated in his masterful book, Redating the New Testament, none of the New Testament books ever once mention the destruction of the Temple in the past tense or as an event that has already occurred. If one wishes to see what a pseudonymous vaticinium ex eventu prophecy really looks like, one should read the Epistle of Barnabas, c. 125 AD, a later work that specifically mentions the destruction of the Temple as the judgment of God that came on the Jews for their rejection of Christ.

Moreover I will tell you likewise concerning the temple, how these wretched men being led astray set their hope on the building, and not on their God that made them, as being a house of God … So it came to pass; for because they went to war it, was pulled down by their enemies (Barnabas 16:1,4).

Option #2:-- The “unfulfilled false prophecy” position claims that the Mount Olivet Discourse was in fact written prior to 70 AD, but it was in error in predicting Christ’s soon return. Bertrand Russell wrote in Why I Am Not A Christian:

For one thing, [Jesus] certainly thought that His second coming would occur in clouds of glory before the death of all the people who were living at that time.

This position ignores a couple of points.

First, it fails to recognize the great detail in which the Mount Olivet prophecy was fulfilled. Jesus predicts the exact time to the Temple’s destruction (40 years); the wars, earthquakes, famines, pestilences, false Christs, riots and persecutions that would increase in intensity just prior to the destruction (as chronicled by the Jewish historian Josephus); the manner in which the Temple would be destroyed (Jerusalem surrounded by armies); the Temple would be desecrated (by the Titus and his Roman legions entering the Holy Place and carrying off the consecrated furniture); and even the thoroughness of the destruction (not one stone would be left upon another as evidenced by the archaeological remains of the Temple).

Second, this view neglects the entire context of the disciples’ question about Jesus’ Second Coming.

Now as He sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to Him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will these things be? And what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” (Matthew 24:3).

The disciples were not asking when Jesus would return after His death, burial, resurrection and ascension. He had not gone anywhere yet! Luke even tells us that after the resurrection the disciples were still concerned over whether Jesus would come “at this time” to Jerusalem to restore the kingdom to Israel by resting it from the Romans.

Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, saying, “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6).

The disciples meant exactly what they said. Even after Jesus rose from the dead as He predicted, they were still not understanding that Jesus was going anywhere. They were still wondering if Jesus was coming in triumph to Jerusalem “at this time.”

The “unfulfilled false prophecy” position has Jesus’ Second Coming predicted in the disciples’ generation even before they understood that Jesus was going anywhere. The paradox here is that the Gospel writer is for some strange reason portraying both a misunderstanding on behalf of the disciples, and then fabricating Jesus’ wrong answers to their questions.

On the contrary, only a genuine misunderstanding on the part of the disciples could have produced a discourse in which Jesus refutes the disciples’ expectation of the Messiah’s soon coming to Jerusalem as a revolutionary deliverer of Jerusalem with the prophecy of the Temple’s destruction within “this generation.” Therefore, the fact that the Second Coming did not occur by 70 AD is not a “failed prophecy.”

Paradox Resolved

Liberals stumble over these two extremes even while my evangelical brethren still get tangled up in yet another paradox – that of dispensationalism. This popular “end-times” theory suggests that Jesus is referring mainly to a rebuilt Temple’s destruction in our own generation even while ignoring that “this generation” in Jesus day meant the generation prior to 70 AD.

Partial Preterism is resolution to each paradox presented here. That is, while the Second Coming did not occur by 70 AD Jesus referred to that event as occurring at a time no one could know. On the other hand the fulfillment of "all these things" was to occur within one generation after the Sermon on the Mount in 30 AD.

The Mount Olivet Discourse is neither prophecy after the event that failed to come to pass – nor is it prophecy prior to the event that failed to come to pass – nor is it a passage that wrenches the plain context of audience relevance to twist the meaning of “this generation” to mean a generation in the far off future “end times.”

Jesus does, in fact, refer to eschatological events, the fulfillment of the Great Commission and His eventual Second Coming in later portions of the Mount Olivet Discourse. However, these “last things” (i.e., matters of eschatology) are not in the same context of “these things” referred to in the disciples questions or in Jesus’ answer, “when you see these things,” all of which occurred in the first century prior to 70 AD.

If the three synoptic Gospels were written prior to 70 AD, one must admit that neither the authors nor the audience at that time fully understood the fulfillment of the passage given here by Jesus. Prior to 70 AD audience relevance is even more stark. The immediate audience of Jesus’ discourse is His disciples who asked a complex question riddled with common view a militant heroic Messiah held by many Jews in 30 AD. The secondary audience is the first century Christian hearing the Gospel preached by one of the early apostles or evangelists. It is possible that many hearers and readers prior to 70 AD still misunderstood the meaning of Jesus’ predictions. However, there is no reason for us, as a tertiary audience, to assume that either Jesus or any of the New Testament writers meant to predict an imminent Second Coming.

In fact, two warnings against predicting the time are specifically given. The destruction of Jerusalem would be attended by numerous signs of the times that Jesus’ hearers would discern. It would occur in a time of strife and war. However, the Second Coming would occur at an hour that no man could know. It would occur in a time of “peace and safety” when the Lord would appear as “a thief in the night.”

In short, whether or not some early Christians believed Jesus would return in their day is irrelevant and immaterial. If they did interpret the passage that way, they were obviously wrong. Understanding that principle, we must interpret the Mount Olivet Discourse today its literary context in view of audience relevance on three different levels: Jesus' hearers, the Gospel writers' audience, and Christians today.

A big change is coming!

Conservatives and liberals alike fail to understand the full importance of the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 AD. Without a historical background of this catastrophic event and what it meant to the worldview of a first century Jew, the New Testament is not properly understood. Entire books of the New Testament are impossible to understand unless we first accept the authors’ warnings to those who would forsake Christ’s sacrifice and cling to the condemned system of Temple worship.

When scholars and students of the New Testament begin to understand the paradigm shift that occurred in 70 AD, our interpretation of these books will be radically altered. Right now, scholars ignore the importance of the seven year tribulation period (64 to 70 AD) that served as a catalyst to accelerate the shift from the shadows and types of bloody sacrifice in an earthly Temple to a right-of-passage through the veil into the Holiest of all which is in heaven.

The key to understanding the Gospels is to accept that they were written before Caesar Nero’s persecution of the Christians in the Roman Empire and prior to the onset of Nero’s military campaign against the Jews. The key to understanding passages contained in 2 Timothy, Jude, 2 Peter and the entire book of Hebrews and Revelation is to accept the idea that they were written with an impending sense of prophetic fulfillment -- not of the Second Coming -- but of the consummation of the New Covenant that would forever change all of human history. This consummation began at Calvary and was underscored with a giant exclamation point by the destruction of the Jewish Temple. This is also the reason why the canon was considered closed to all writings that appeared after this period. When we understand this, our worldview, eschatology and ability to demonstrate the reality of the supernatural Word of God will be revolutionized and greatly energized.

History vs. Theology

I was having a debate with a young Jesus mythicist (who finally admitted that Jesus probably did exist as a historical person) who made the following true remark:

Anyone can write anything they want in a book. It does not make it true.

That is correct. That is why we look to historians who are experts in ancient history to answer questions about what really happened in the first century. We ought to consult someone who knows something about methodology in determining reliable historical records and so on.

However, if we want to know if Jesus is the Son of God, historians cannot help us. That is a question for theologians. Credentialed historians should tell us if Jesus existed. Theologians should tell us if the Bible presents Him as the Son of God. They can explain to us what the scriptures actually say.

The problem, of course, is that liberals use whatever suits their argument. They often use history to comment on His deity and theology to comment on His historicity. That is backwards.

Not only do the Historical Critics deny Jesus was divine, but they deny that the Gospel writers themselves thought of Him as divine. The convolutions they have to go through to get the Gospel writers to say what they want them to say are astounding. If my skeptical friends were simply to study this without an agenda, or without setting out to prove or disprove Christian doctrine, they'd realize how bad liberal theology really is.

To get some background in this, I'd like you to watch two videos we made:







If you like the videos, you might consider ordering The Real Jesus DVD.

Obviously, I haven't read every work by every liberal critic from the Enlightenment onward. I have read a good deal of the Church Fathers who wrote closest to the time of the New Testament to see what they thought about the writings that were penned very close to their own generation.

The skeptical scholars almost ignore the Church Fathers. I would think they would at least say Jesus was an observant rabbi who convinced His followers that He was the Messiah and then Jesus' theology was preserved in the form of Gospels and Epistles.

But they don't even go that far.

Instead they say that the Gospels were written too late to be by people who knew or heard Jesus. That makes no sense. In fact, I consider this to be absurd. It would be like a church group today not being able to personally know their founders who lived in the 1950s and '60s. Obviously, some would be alive still who would remember them well. But the liberals pretend that there is a vast wall of ignorance that can be erected over a 40 to 50 year period.

I simply don't get the logic of this argument.

They treat a few decades as though there were centuries of darkness between the time of Jesus' disciples and the writings of the New Testament that were then delivered to the next generation.

Conservatives have often conceded to dates for New Testament books that are a decade or two later than the traditional view of 20 to 35 years after Jesus, simply because it matters so little to our case. Forty to sixty years later is still fairly close.

But in fact, the liberals offer no shred of evidence against the idea that most of the New Testament could not have been written very early on by the very authors whose identities were known and agreed upon by all who received the writings.

In the 1800s, liberal Historical Criticism emerged with the presupposition that the New Testament was written in the second century -- even the late second century. That view has since been shattered by real documentary evidence. Now the latest they can go and still be taken seriously is a window of 70 to 100 AD -- usually placing the three synoptic Gospels prior to 85 AD.

Unbiased liberals who have looked at the internal, external and documentary evidence have often come to the conclusion that the entire New Testament could have been composed between 40 to 70 AD. There is certainly no evidence against it.

And yet some still act as if those few decades were a wall of silence that denies the possibility of much factual transmission of history.

John Dominic Crossan of the Jesus Seminar, for instance, proposes that Jesus was a nobody who just happened to stumble into Jerusalem one day with the idea of revolution and that He accidently got crucified and had no idea upon His death that He had founded what would become a world religion. The Gospels then developed somehow as a collection of Jesus' sayings -- 80 percent of which He never said -- and Jesus himself would be startled and upset if He knew what His followers had come up with.

I don't claim to be a scholar, but I recognize this as some of the worst and most biased scholarship ever concocted. It is not convincing because there is not a shred of literary evidence for this in any of the New Testament writings and even among the surviving works of the church fathers up until 115 AD, which is fairly voluminous.

In my world, if I read a book that says that Ronald Reagan was shot near the heart early during his presidency and emerged from the ordeal thinking that God had spared his life in order to defeat communism, I would believe the testimony. If this story were to be reported by a PBS special I saw on television, I'd believe it all the more since it has the quality of being "admission against self-interest" since PBS is not known for their pro-Reagan ideology. I might reserve judgment about whether God really spoke to Reagan, but I'd at least believe the external evidence that Reagan fought communism and the Soviet Union fell.

In their world, Ronald Reagan's fight against communism was the imaginary quest of a B-Movie actor in the 1950s, who never really became president. The myth of the fall of communism in the Soviet Union was a symbolic narrative composed by a committee of politicians in the Kremlin in the 1960s who admired American movie stars. The later books and television specials that contain the history of Reagan's presidency were produced and edited by Reaganites who lived after his death. In retelling these fictional romance stories, they developed the myth among their cult.

That in a nutshell is essentially the conservative vs. the liberal view of Jesus.

Further, like those who would want to discredit Ronald Reagan for any positive achievement, the liberals simply hate Jesus.

It would be as if there were a large group of Elizabethan scholars who hate Queen Elizabeth and William Shakespeare and who never write anything except extreme skepticism portraying these legendary figures as fools who somehow got credit for building an empire and penning the greatest dramas ever written.

Occasionally, there is a scholar who still insists Shakespeare never wrote any of his plays or that Elizabeth was an incompetent villain, but these are the minority simply because no one goes into Elizabethan studies with a hatred for the major figures. Despite their obvious flaws, the scholar usually finds quite a few admirable qualities in these personalities.

But there are liberal scholars who detest Jesus of Nazareth. The contempt drips from their writings. I noticed that when I was quite young and I found it odd.

Skepticism serves a purpose in study. However, these people have set out not as scholars, but as fundamentalist atheists with an ax to grind. When I first saw the obvious bias as a college student, it actually served to pique my interest a bit.

Could it actually be that they despise the Son of the Living God, the King of kings, precisely because He is shrouded in the heavens in glory and when they lift their eyes to view His majesty it only exposes their pride-ridden hearts?

I thought it was a distinct possibility. Today I find much of what liberals say either comical or sadly shameful.

It's the reason why I don't usually have conversations with too many young postmodernist Jesus mythicists. Not only are they biased, they are also ignorant. They believe the "scholarship" of hack writers who take positions that are even more extreme than the "uber-liberals" of the Jesus Seminar.

Occasionally I will have an extended conversation with someone who is reasonable and is willing to look into the rich cache of Christian literature, which is uninterrupted and consistent from the time of the first Gospels and Epistles to the time when Christianity took hold of the Roman Empire.

I tell them that I cannot "prove" God to them any more than the Word of God has already proved Him. But I think it would be impossible that Christianity could have become so wildly successful so quickly if the Gospel were not true at the core.

It's an unlikely story, but it is much more unlikely that it did not happen.

The Personhood Movement – A Multi-Pronged Pro-Life Strategy

The Personhood movement is a pro-life strategy being waged on all fronts throughout the United States. We are advocating for state constitutional amendments that would recognize the personhood of all human beings from the beginning of life to natural death. We are evangelizing, educating and changing hearts. Thus far almost 40 states have begun a Personhood strategy through legislative and voter initiatives.

Georgia Right to Life president, Dan Becker, recently shared with some of us here in Florida the "before and after" data on how the pro-life movement in the whole state has been activated and energized. Since the Personhood initiative began in Georgia ten years ago, every prong of the pro-life movement has been reinvigorated -- from the street activists, to public opinion, state government and every pro-life ministry in between. We won't "fail" if we don't get Personhood initiatives passed on the first try. We will only make forward progress toward an eventual long term victory. As John F. Kennedy said, "A rising tide lifts all boats."

One of the co-sponsors of the Personhood voter initiative in the state of Florida. Patricia McEwen of Life Coalition International (LCI), recently told us a story about her pro-life missionary work in Africa. LCI went to train sidewalk counselors among the Zulu tribe. The problem, of course, is they have no sidewalks in Zulu territory, so they decided they were "Eleventh Hour Counselors." When the time came to bring the volunteers to the clinic, they had to turn people away because there were too many people to fit on the school bus. They crowded into the bus three to a seat for the two hour drive to the abortion clinic with no air conditioning in the African heat. A few months later after returning to Florida, Pat asked them how the counselors at the abortion clinic were doing. She was simply told, “There is no abortion clinic."

Abortion is legal in South Africa. But the Zulu people are warriors. When they become Christians, they understand that this is now spiritual warfare. Now they are being trained to shut down all the abortion clinics in the continent of Africa and beyond by going directly to the gates of hell and confronting the powers of darkness through prayer, acts of compassion and preaching the Gospel.

At the moment, the Catholic Bishops, Steve Ertelt, Phyllis Schlafly – and a few others who are usually solid on the pro-life issue – are engaging in negative publicity claiming that the Personhood initiative would be a setback for the pro-life movement if it fails. They are simply not seeing the forest for the trees.

Eventually, the battle will be won at the clinics on the ground where the killing takes place through imprecatory prayer, evangelism and acts of mercy. More abortion clinics have been closed directly due to street activism than by any other means. The legal battle is a secondary outcome that will be naturally affected by evangelistic efforts toward individual regeneration, ecclesiastical revival and societal reformation. It's not rocket science. A famous Oscar winning director once said, "Eighty percent of success is showing up." When the church community simply shows up and does its job, abortion will stopped in America.

In other words, when we really start seeing that kind of forward motion in the churches, by the time we get a Personhood Amendment or a reversal of Roe v. Wade, most of the abortion mills in America will already have been shut down.

Jesus himself assures us, "The gates of hell shall not prevail against the church." A gate is a defensive weapon that does not attack anyone. The image here is of a militant church knocking down the gates. Yet we have people who are afraid to fight because they fear the gates of hell might go on the offensive. We cannot lose the long term struggle if we understand we are warriors and abortion is a gate of hell. Pro-life street activists closed the clinic in Melbourne, Florida because several church groups led by their pastors each came out to pray one Saturday a month to cover the ground with prayer each week. This went on for several years.

When Aware Woman abortion clinic finally closed (partially due to an eminent domain highway widening that took their property) another clinic bought their business and reopened in another location. The few churches with their small bands of prayer warriors followed and continued to pray, preach and engage in daily sidewalk counseling. Eventually their lease was cancelled. They moved to another location and the church followed. Eventually they were forced to move out again. That was almost ten years ago. Since then there has been no abortion clinic in all of Brevard County. Abortion is a business and clinics can't stay open if they can't make money and if no one will lease to them. No fledgling abortion clinic should ever get to the point where it is profitable enough to buy a building. If the church just did its job, there would not be room for an abortion clinic and a church in the same city.

If the Catholic Bishops of America wanted to stop abortion in our country, they could do it in a short period of time. If the Southern Baptist Convention wanted to stop abortion in America, they could do it. The same goes for the Assemblies of God or any other network of evangelical churches who oppose abortion in word. We know what we believe. Now we simply need to add deeds on a consistent basis.

In Brevard County, Florida, this occurred with limited participation of about 40 people and about four or five pastors who took leadership of prayer gatherings at our only out-patient abortion clinic. If there were hundreds involved -- as there should have been on an ongoing basis -- then it probably would have taken months rather years. We should not be disheartened to know we need to fight in the long term with a “Gideon band.” But we need to be certain of one thing from the outset. This is all-out-war. It's no Sunday school picnic.

We do need to work on all types of strategies -- legal, political, education, sidewalk counseling, CPCs, and so on. There are many battlefronts. However, like any war, the conflict between the church and abortion is going to be won on the ground by our foot soldiers. By the time we get the support we need to pass the Personhood Amendment in Florida, there will likely be no more abortion clinics in Florida -- or very few -- because they will all be shut down by the Church. This is the strength of what a voter initiative can do. The legal solution will follow practical change on the grassroots level. This change must begin in the churches.

Once we have the support to pass Personhood, there won't be a lack of volunteers for other vital ministries.

The advantage of having one individual sign a petition is that it takes almost no sacrifice of time or effort on their part. But in the process, we are identifying some who are dedicated to a greater level of commitment. Every time we circulate petitions, we are meeting potential activists. In 2007, I attempted to call together a "Central Florida Pro-life Network" with the idea that a new wave of pro-life activism was coming. Now it is here. Simply what we need to do is network with other pro-life activists throughout our region and state and harness the energy of this burgeoning move of God. It is revival that we are after, not simply man-made political strategies. Our goal is to see a change of heart on the mass cultural scale through another Great Awakening.

Don Kazimir, coordinator of the diocesan Respect Life Office for the past 14 years, who has been in the pro–life movement since 1976, recently said, "I have never seen so much stuff going on all over the nation. The Obama election has energized the pro–life movement."

There will be many new volunteer "foot soldiers" coming into the Personhood movement. What we need to do now is to set a big net to catch all the new fish. But the church still needs to be evangelized on the abortion issue. That was the number one mistake of the pro-life movement in the 1970s and '80s. We asked people to get involved, but we didn't take the time to make sure that everyone agreed that abortion is legalized murder and therefore the church must act like it is murder.

Who is Scott Brown really?

The excitement that conservatives felt over newly-elected Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown comes from his pledge to oppose President Obama's government health care, federal deficit spending, runaway economic stimulus expenditures, and backroom earmark deals to Democrats supporting the health care bill.

However, Brown's state record on some of the same issues is not as stellar as conservatives have trumpeted. He supported Mitt Romney's health care bill that requires all workers to carry insurance. He also supported a bill for a regional cap and trade, but has since said he regrets that vote.

Brown opposes "same-sex marriage," but supports civil unions. He says he believes that marriage is "between a man and a woman," the same position taken by President Obama, as he pointed out in the campaign.

On the abortion issue, he supports the various restrictions, such as parental notification and the ban on partial birth abortion, but has said that Roe v. Wade is "settled." In the uncompromising sense of being "pro-life," there is not much to get excited over here. Brown will probably support the Republican platform, while downplaying any support for pro-life measures that would upset the status quo.

Brown's real position on these issues remains to be seen. I am willing to concede that Republican candidates from Massachusetts must often take a "stealth" approach to some conservative issues if they hope to be elected. The leftist supporters of Martha Coakley believe that is the case and have tried to paint Brown as "anti-abortion" and "anti-gay." In fact, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann called Scott Brown, "an irresponsible, sexist, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, tea-bagging supporter of violence against women and against politicians with whom he disagrees."

You can know a man by his enemies. Since Olbermann hates Brown so much, I wanted to know whether he might secretly be an evangelical Christian.

Is Scott Brown an evangelical Christian?

Technically, yes.

I was surprised by this.

Brown and his family are active members of the New England Chapel, which is part of the Christian Reformed Church in North America. The denomination is Calvinist and evangelical, although NEC has a flavor that reminds me of a "seeker-friendly" Bill Hybels style congregation. In other words, they are soft on preaching the Gospel and instead concentrate on "meeting needs" -- tending toward a warm, pietistic experience of "spiritual formation," rather than boldly calling sinners to salvation and repentance.

On the other hand, NEC is networked with a regional Christian organization called Mission E4 that works solely with evangelical churches. The senior pastor, Chris Mitchell is a graduate of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, which teaches biblical inerrancy and has a Reformed bent. You can hear several of the pastors' sermons on the NEC website if you want to investigate further.

The Brown's also financially support a local Catholic mission called Mt. St. Mary’s Abbey in Wrentham.

Obviously, Scott Brown doesn't wear his faith on his sleeve, but it's also apparent that the family has a commitment to a flavor of Christianity that includes evangelical missions and works of social compassion. Regarding the nude centerfold spread, Cosmopolitan's "sexiest man in America" will get the benefit of the doubt from those of us who also did some stupid things in college.

Brown's family of four have each achieved great personal success. Scott is a real estate lawyer and a champion long-distance runner, bicyclist, and swimmer. He is married to WCVB-TV reporter Gail Huff. They have two daughters, Ayla Brown, an American Idol semi-finalist and star basketball player at Boston College, and Arianna Brown, a competitive equestrian and pre-med student at Syracuse University. The family owns a 3,000-square-foot home in Wrentham, a 2,000-square foot summer home in Rye, New Hampshire, three condos in Boston, and a timeshare in Aruba.

In short, as far as left-wing Massachusetts goes, Scott Brown a political miracle. He's right of center on fiscal issues and a moderate on the so-called social issues. He's far better than anything we could have expected when the deceased Ted Kennedy's seat opened up last August. In this case, we ought to take what we got thankfully.

Frank Schaeffer, will you PLEASE shut up! (part 6)

In a recent blog post, Frank Schaeffer offers a diatribe entitled:

“If America wanted to prosper and compete instead of waiting for Obama to walk on water and fix everything, we would …”

Conservatives will agree with most of the list here. One of the bullet points is:

“Child molesters and rapists would be locked up for life without parole.”

This is what makes Frank Schaeffer so perplexing and infuriating at the same time. Sometimes he makes complete sense. He often stands up for positions that conservative Christians must applaud. I think that many other conservative icons I admire fare about as well when we apply their positions to a rigorous biblical perspective. But here is the difference. Frank often does an about face and contradicts everything he said just weeks before. Each contradiction is yet another example of the existential malaise he celebrates and laments in his writings. Frank is constantly telling “fundamentalists” that they err because they fail to embrace the paradox. The problem is that a “paradox” is a “surface contradiction that reveals a deeper truth when it is examined more closely.” When I examine Frank's contradictions more closely it just makes me more confused as to where he stands. He seems to take any old contradiction and assume there must be an underlying, deeper truth or else he simply denies that truth exists altogether – depending on what week it is.

For example, compare Frank's wise statement above about pedophilia and rape with what he writes a few weeks later:

http://frank-schaeffer.blogspot.com/2009/12/will-rick-warren-go-to-hanging-killing.html

Nothing illustrates the danger we face from our own Taliban better than the way American "Christians" are now tangled up with the homophobic—now potentially gay murdering – Ugandan Christian/political leadership. The Ugandan Parliament is considering a bill that would impose the death penalty on gays.

Note that the Ugandan bill does not call for the death penalty for homosexuals. In fact, the Ugandan bill has since been softened in its call for the death penalty in favor of prison terms. Several well-known American ministries have opposed the UN’s push for special rights for homosexuals in Africa. Other laws are now being considered where the UN has promoted the “gay agenda” in several socially conservative African nations. The bill, which criminalizes homosexual rape, is seen as a backlash against the UN and other such groups seeking to impose social change from the top-down.

Further, the Ugandan bill does not criminalize all homosexual behavior. The bill instead calls for criminal sanctions against those homosexuals who rape and molest young children. It also imposes penalties on known AIDS carriers who engage in homosexual behavior and knowingly infect their victims with a deadly disease.

Now let's compare again Franks’ diatribe against the Ugandan bill to the more recent statement:

“Child molesters and rapists would be locked up for life without parole.”

A contradiction? Yes. But such contradictions don’t bother great minds of renowned “Christian existentialists.” The Ugandan law is all evidence of a hidden world-wide theonomic conspiracy. According to Frank:

Others with ties to violent groups are also striving to turn America into our version of a “Christian” Iran. Reconstructionism, otherwise known as Dominionist Christianity, and the Republican Party are one and the same thing these days….

Rushdoony who [Erik] Prince, [Mike] Huckabee and others follow said the Bible must replace civil laws and constitutions with the Old and New Testaments, including the revival of the death penalty for homosexuality, incest, adultery, losing virginity before marriage and apostasy…. These are core beliefs among several leading figures including Huckabee, Sarah Palin and the inner core of George W Bush’s far right "crusader" religious circle….

George Grant is one of the far right/theocratic mentors. He appeared with Rushdoony in the video, “God’s Law and Society.” Grant was the co-author for Huckabee’s 1998 book, Kids Who Kill: Confronting Our Culture of Violence. That was the book where Huckabee and Grant said homosexuality and pedophilia, sadomasochism and necrophilia were all “institutionally supported aberrations.”

But wait … didn’t Frank just say that pedophilia ought to be criminalized with the sanction of life imprisonment? Again, to this Christian existentialist, “that was so last week!”

R.J. Rushdoony: The Liberals’ “Bogeyman”

In my last post, part 5 of this series, I showed that the charge that Huckabee, Bush, Palin and others are “Dominionists” or “Reconstructionists” is impossible. They simply don’t adhere to any of the major tenets. The insistence that they are nevertheless “secret Rushdoony-ites” shows that Frank Schaeffer either has a huge gap in his understanding of the foundation of Reformed theology (and especially Puritan Covenantal theology) in the Christian Reconstructionist movement, or he is simply lying through his teeth.

The usual ploy of the detractors of theonomy is to emphasize the case laws of the Old Testament that call for capital punishment (as Frank does here) with the idea that these are outmoded, harsh and barbaric. The problem for the Christian making these claims is that this necessarily implies that he believes the God of the Old Testament is outmoded, harsh and barbaric. It puts the detractor in the position of using scriptural truth to attempt to refute scriptural truth. I have always been at a loss to understand how well-intentioned Christians can live with this level of cognitive dissonance. While I myself struggle with the implications of theonomy, I have never been able to accept the arguments against it.

Whenever I see an argument opposing the validity and relevance of biblical law, it has always come off as sounding pagan and anti-Christian. That is why it is of great concern when I see Christians railing against “theonomy,” which is in fact just the idea that the Law of God has abiding validity and relevance in the life of the Christian and the society at large.

Confronting the Detractors of Biblical Law

To be intellectually honest, theonomists should not downplay the specter of capital punishment as described in the Old and New Testament that frightens liberals so much. We need to address this issue head on. A few years back, I wrote a “Frequently Asked Questions on Theonomy” article entitled Theonomy FAQ, in which I dealt with the questions of capital sanctions quite frankly. These questions and answers grew out of numerous debates and discussions I had had on various email discussion groups in the mid- to late-1990s. This dialectical exercise later became the basis for the God’s Law and Society video, which Frank Schaeffer also lambastes, but has probably never seen, although I’ve offered to send him a review copy if he promises to review it. Later I was asked to do an on-line Theonomy Debate sponsored by the Caledonian Fire website.

Theonomy FAQ was written in a few minutes “on-the-fly” although I later revised and expanded it. I don’t consider it to be a definitive or scholarly piece, but more of a polemic. When I posted it on my website back in the 1990s, it quickly got noticed by hundreds of websites – mainly anti-Christian liberal groups – and more importantly by the search engines. Now many years later, if you Google “theonomy,” this is the first web page that comes up (after Wikipedia's entry, that is, the bane of serious researchers!)

Just try it: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=theonomy

Here I want to address what I consider the major points of the theonomic viewpoint. These are important to understand no matter what side of the argument one comes down on.

The Whole Bible is the Law of God

Orthodox Christians don’t believe that the only last one-third of the Bible is the Word of God or that the New Testament causes the Old Testament to become invalid. The Old Testament does need to be interpreted in light of the New, however, so in one sense the revelation of the New Covenant is superior to the Old. Yet this does not make the Old Testament Law invalid or wrong.

In addition, it is important to understand that the Law of God is also revealed in the New Testament. Theonomists are not those who would enforce the Law of Moses in society. A theonomist is one who believes in God’s Law – all the statutes of both the Old and New Testament. We look as well to the numerous case laws and examples of how the Law of God was applied throughout all of scripture.

Covenantal Shift

Jesus himself said, “I have not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it” (Matthew 5:17). However, there has been a “covenantal shift” in the manner in which the Law is fulfilled. For instance, since Jesus died on the cross it is no longer necessary to sacrifice animals for atonement for sin as the Old Covenant required. Since the Gentile nations have been grafted into the covenant people of God, there is no longer any reason to observe the ceremonial law that was in place to distinguish between the clean and the unclean. The law was not abolished in these instances, but fulfilled by Jesus who fulfilled the ceremonial and sacrificial laws in our place.

So when detractors begin to spew this nonsense that theonomists advocate the death penalty for eating lobster or wearing polyester (as Barack Obama once did when he mocked the Old Testament in a campaign speech) we simply need to point them to the book of Hebrews and emphasize that the Law of God includes the filter of the New Covenant.

Now one could apply this principle of “covenantal shift” to the moral law as well and argue that it is no longer necessary to execute those who commit murder, kidnapping, adultery, homosexuality, incest, bestiality and a few other crimes. Whether or not we ought to judge these offenses in the civil sphere under the dispensation of the New Covenant, it is obvious that the moral law has not been rescinded. The just penalty is still the same – death.

In the New Testament, the Apostle Paul lists some of the crimes of the Mosaic law and writes that “those who practice such things deserve death” (Romans 1:32). It is significant too that Paul mentions not only the capital offenses enumerated by Moses, but also lesser sins such as gossip,

So whether or not a court should impose the death penalty on an adulterer or a sodomite, if we accept the New Testament, then we must agree that those who practice such things at the very least deserve death even if we do not impose it by a civil sanction. In other words, a law can be imposed “on the books” to remind us of an eternal truth –  that we deserve death every time we disobey even if God is merciful and does not enforce the death penalty through a civil magistrate.

Christians also need to grapple with another logical question that arises from the question of theonomy. If we don’t have God’s Law on the books, then whose law do we have? For instance, if we put man and man’s reason as the all-wise lawgiver, then by what standard do we judge man’s law when it becomes tyrannical. How can we judge a Muslim country that executes “infidels”? How can we judge an atheistic communist nation that seizes land and puts landowners who resist to death? How can we judge a fascist regime that decides that homosexuals, Jews, communists and other” anti-German” minorities can be put to death? How can we judge the nation of Uganda for deciding to execute child molesters?

Frank Schaeffer claims child molesters should be put in prison for life. Christians in Uganda say that death is fitting. Who is right?

Capital sanctions of the Old Testament were rarely enforced

According to the Talmud, which is an ancient Jewish commentary on the law, a death sentence had to be approved unanimously by a panel of 24 judges (or jurors). Death was not a standard penalty, but a maximum one. Further, there had to be “two or more witnesses” in order for case to be heard. In other words, the standards for actually imposing the death penalty were so stringent as to be nearly impossible to achieve in cases when there was no physical evidence. The death penalty for “invisible crimes” – such as sorcery, necromancy, soothsaying, idolatry, and apostasy – was probably rarely if ever imposed. At least there is no record of it in scripture.

In fact, whenever we see a capital case being judged in scripture, we always see a lesser penalty than death imposed. When David was found guilty of adultery, he suffered loss of his rulership, but was not executed. When several of the kings of Israel judged the homosexual temple prostitutes, they did it through banishment, not execution. When the woman caught in adultery was brought to Jesus, the witnesses who sought to try her did not see fit to bring charges against the man as well. As a result, Jesus forgave her and commanded her to “go and sin no more.”

However, we do see God’s sovereign judgment in the book of Acts bringing swift judgment in the form of sudden death against Herod’s idolatry and the false witness of Ananias and Saphira.

We have to take the capital cases in context. Human government is limited in wisdom, scope and power, but God’s government knows no bounds. While it is true that it would be difficult to prove a case of homosexuality “in the closet” without the testimony of two or three witnesses, it is not wrong to remind sex offenders who violate the sanctity of marriage that such behavior is deserving of death, and they could in fact be subject to the sovereign judgment of God himself through some fatal disease or sudden accident. In fact, we see this so often among celebrities whose brazen lifestyles bring them to an untimely end. Sadly, the church rarely speaks of the connection between unrepentant sin and death.

Theonomy is imposed through voluntary self-government

Theonomists believe that all sin is eventually dealt with in some way by God – sometimes through forgiveness provided by Christ’s sacrifice and sometimes through temporal judgments – but we do not believe that all sin must be punished by the civil government. Some sin is dealt with by private institutions, some by churches and some by families. Ultimately we want to see a society where each individual is self-governing under the Law of God. We want the individual to examine himself and to be dealt with directly by the Holy Spirit who is able to lead sinners to repentance. We don’t ever want the civil government to move beyond its role of punishing evil doers described in scripture with specific limits.

In fact, if we followed the Bible, the civil courts would have far less to do than they do today. We create the potential for tyranny whenever we exalt the role of the civil state through man’s law beyond what God's law prescribes.

For instance, everyone agrees that our state and federal prison system is a mess. For years, conservatives and liberals have been calling for the reform of the prison system. If we used the standard of theonomy, we could actually do it. There were no jails or prisons in ancient Israel. Those convicted of non-capital crimes were instead forced to pay double restitution to the victim. Who wants non-violent convicted felons serivng long prison terms at the taxpayers’ expense exposed daily to the example and tutelage of other criminals? Such institutions do little to rehabilitate. But someone who is forced to work to pay for his crime is given the satisfaction of knowing he has satisfied both his victim's restitution and for his own rehabilitation. This is one example of a theonomic reform regarding crime and punishment that most people would agree with if it was ever put on state ballots. It is just one of the numerous examples of how God’s Law is just, merciful and wise all at the same time.

Theonomy is imposed in a covenantal context

Another point that is often overlooked is the voluntary aspect of theonomic community government. God imposed a system of law with potentially fatal consequences on a nation that nevertheless came willingly and embraced the law with all its postive and negative sanctions. In Deuteronomy 28 and 29, Jehovah spoke through Moses all the blessings and curses that came as sanctions on Israel for obeying or disobeying the Law.

While I understand the animosity that non-believers have toward God’s Law, I have always had a difficulty understanding why believers -- who supposedly know Jehovah's goodness, wisdom, mercy and love -- would oppose a civil law system based on God’s Word. Since God knows everything, He certainly knows what is best for us.

Further, we are told in the Bible that if we study the Law and approach it with an attitude of love and submission, then God will bless us. When Israel covenanted with God, they were given also a promise of the blessings they would receive when they kept the Law.

‘If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments, and perform them, then I will give you rain in its season, the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. Your threshing shall last till the time of vintage, and the vintage shall last till the time of sowing; you shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely. I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none will make you afraid; I will rid the land of evil beasts, and the sword will not go through your land. You will chase your enemies, and they shall fall by the sword before you. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight; your enemies shall fall by the sword before you. ‘For I will look on you favorably and make you fruitful, multiply you and confirm My covenant with you. You shall eat the old harvest, and clear out the old because of the new. I will set My tabernacle among you, and My soul shall not abhor you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you shall be My people. I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves; I have broken the bands of your yoke and made you walk upright (Leviticus 26: 3-13).

If we believe that this was the case for Old Covenant Israel, then it is not too big of a stretch to think that New Covenant believers can expect to receive an even greater blessing. In a covenantal context, this is how theonomy works: When we become Christians, we share the Gospel with those around us. Our neighbor might become a Christian. Even our whole neighborhood might become Christian. Even our whole state might become predominantly Christian. Even in fact the whole nation! To take a quote from Frank Schaeffer’s father: “How should we then live? What laws should we then have?”

If we follow the Law prescribed by God himself, then we can expect to have the blessings of God as well. Heathen nations get the law system they deserve, which is man’s law. To the nation of Israel, it was far more attractive to live by God’s law than to live under the yoke of the laws of a pagan nation. Why should we desire to live under laws that are essentially pagan, that not only allow, but encourage and provide subsidies for behaviors that defy God and bring curses on the whole society?

Theonomy is imposed in a postmillennial context

Likewise, theonomists do not expect to impose the whole law of God as it applies to civil sanctions on Americans within the next election cycle. This is the point that fear mongers such as Frank Schaeffer too often miss. True theonomists are necessarily postmillennial in their worldview. That is, we are not expecting the soon return of Jesus Christ in our lifetime. We expect things in our culture to get better and better as we are obedient to God. But this cannot happen overnight. It happens little by little. We don’t seek to seize control of the federal government and impose drastic social change with legal penalties imposed through the courts for non-compliance. That is what liberals do. We believe in peaceful social change that comes voluntarily and progressively over many generations. Although we must self-consciously work for that change to the best of our ability within our own generation, we do that by the pattern of God’s Law-Word -- as individuals, families and local communities progressively come to a better understanding -- not through a top-down imposition of judicial tyranny.

Theonomy is imposed in an eternal context

To so-called “progressive Christians” such as Frank Schaeffer, I ask a simple question. Do you believe there is punishment for sin in the afterlife? Christian orthodoxy teaches that there is an eternal penalty for sin, which is eternal separation from God and all the suffering that hell entails. It is a contradiction to suppose that God imposes a penalty in the afterlife for living a life of disobedience and yet to suppose theonomists are “hateful” or “dangerous” merely because want to stand for God’s moral law and even punish those who disobey.

Currently our political, educational and entertainment culture his teaching an entire generation that living in gross sexual immorality is a normal lifestyle choice. However, the moral law of God codified in civil law and taught through schools and cultural institutions, such as the arts and entertainment, may actually serve to impress on our culture a knowledge of own own sin and in turn lead some toward salvation. In an eternal sense, God’s Law is the "law of love." The Law will serve to lead many to a knowledge of a loving, gracious, merciful and kind God whenever and wherever we properly apply it.

Frank Schaeffer, will you PLEASE shut up! (part 5)

Several months ago, in part 4 of this series, I promised I'd write a part 5 and look at whether Frank Schaeffer ever understood Reformed orthodoxy to begin with.

In a recent blog entry, Frank Schaeffer links R.J. Rushdoony, Rick Warren, Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, George Grant and the speakers who appeared in the God's Law and Society video (which was produced by me, by the way) as conspirators who advocate the dismantling of American democracy in favor of a theocracy that would warrant the execution of homosexuals.

Here's the link and a snippet from Frank's blog:

http://frank-schaeffer.blogspot.com/2009/12/will-rick-warren-go-to-hanging-killing.html

Others carried on where Rushdoony left off.

George Grant is one of the far right/theocratic mentors. He appeared with Rushdoony in the video, “God’s Law and Society.” Grant was the co-author for Huckabee’s 1998 book, Kids Who Kill: Confronting Our Culture of Violence. That was the book where Huckabee and Grant said homosexuality and pedophilia, sadomasochism and necrophilia were all “institutionally supported aberrations.”

George Grant wrote The Changing of the Guard: Biblical Principles for Political Action. He called on a “holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ – to have dominion in the civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness.... It is dominion we are after. Not just influence. It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time. It is dominion we are after. World conquest. That’s what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish. We must win the world with the power of the Gospel.”

What is a Christian Reconstructionist?

First, we ought to address the bizarre notion that Huckabee, Warren and Palin are anything close to being followers of R.J. Rushdoony, that is, Christian Reconstructionists. It's a popular tactic of the far left to paint Reconstructionists as the "truly scary ones" and then to weave a theory that places Rushdoony, Francis Schaeffer (Frank's dad) and Cornelius Van Til at the top of a vast right wing conspiracy that includes the Republican Party, all politically active evangelicals, and of course, the Fox News channel.

Frank is taking a page from Jeff Sharlet's playbook, a writer who published an article advancing this conspiracy theory several years ago in an article in Harper's Magazine, "Through a Glass, Darkly: How the Christian Right is Reimagining U.S. History." I critiqued (or rather lampooned) this article here on this blog in an entry called: "That Swiss Hermit Strikes Again." Sharlet has since expanded the article into two books.

Without retreading old ground, I refer you to my review of the article. Here I will only laugh at the naïveté of Sharlet's thesis and quote one of the imprecatory curses of scripture: "The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion" (Proverbs 28:1).

Frank's mantra is to refer to Sharlet's writings and to claim something to the effect of: "Sharlet is right on! I was there and helped found the Christian Right and the Reconstructionist movement. I know all these people and their agenda is exactly what Sharlet describes. Leaders like Warren, Huckabee and Palin won’t admit it, but they are all secret Reconstructionists who would like to execute homosexuals."

I know some of these people too. All I can say is that if Frank Schaeffer was really there at the beginning, he was either:

a. Not paying enough attention.
b. Not intelligent enough to understand the foundation of Reformed theology in Christian Reconstruction.
c. Half understanding; but by now has come to a distorted view due to his self-deceptive years when he resorted to alcoholism, drug abuse and shoplifting (as described in his autobiography).
d. Fully understanding; but is now intentionally distorting the facts and lying.

If I had to guess, I'd be stuck between "c" and "d." It's a clever bait and switch tactic. The Reconstructionist agenda is first caricatured as that of an ugly "hate-group" and then people who could never be mistaken for Reconstructionists on any level are tarred with the "guilt-by-association" brush. Liberals who want to believe this nonsense only have to point to Frank Schaeffer's standing as an expert corroborator.

Just for the record, two of the pillars of Christian Reconstruction as described by some of the real founders of the movement, such as Gary North and R.J. Rushdoony, are Calvinism (Reformed theology) and postmillennialism (victorious eschatology). Warren, Palin and Huckabee are each Arminians and premillennialists. In other words, on two key points, they fall on the opposite end of the spectrum. So they cannot be correctly labelled as Reconstructionists.

The key error of Sharlet and liberals like him is that they understand civil government and social change as being imposed from the top-down. This is the opposite of what Christian Reconstrucion teaches. In fact, this is what they do to enforce social change. Reconstructionists instead believe in law-based liberty and reformation from the bottom-up through redemption and regeneration over a long period of time in history. The best analysis of the factual errors in Sharlet's writings is by Chalcedon's Chris Ortiz, who has also commented on the liaison with Frank Schaeffer. Some of Ortiz's critiques are here, here, here and here.

What is a theonomist?

Second, we need to examine the third pillar of Christian Reconstruction, the one that has liberals most concerned, theonomy.

Here I have to cover some old ground. Theonomy simply means "God's Law." All Calvinists are to a certain extent theonomists because John Calvin taught that one of the uses of God's Law is as a guide for civil law. In other words, we say murder, stealing, and lying under oath are illegal because God's Law says they are illegal. In a broader sense, all Christians, and in fact all people, are theonomists whenever God's Law appeals to them. A true theonomist is simply one who tries to obey God's Law even when he doesn't like it or fully understand it.

One of those caught in the web of conspiracy woven by Frank Schaeffer is George Grant, an orthodox Christian and Calvinist. As a Presbyterian (PCA) pastor, Grant is supposed to hold to the doctrinal standards of the Westminster Confession of Faith. This document teaches the threefold delineation of the Law espoused by Calvin. To anyone who opposes God's Law, or to anyone who opposes Christian orthodoxy in general, Grant is going to appear to embrace an extreme theonomic position even though his view is no more or less than that of historic Reformed theology.

Further, a true theonomist diverges from the likes of Warren, Palin, Huckabee and Schaeffer (both Sr. and Jr.) because we also take seriously the application of the ecclesiastical and civil sanctions of the law. We believe we need to look to the whole Bible as God's Word that addresses every area of life. We see that in many cases the penalty of death is not universally imposed by God on those who committed capital crimes. Mercy is an option both for God and through the ruling of a civil judge. (I'll deal with this idea more in part 6.) However, we see the moral law of God (including the sanctions) as eternal and relevant for today. While we might interpret and apply it differently depending on the context, as Christians we should never be inclined to say that God's Law is evil, barbaric or somehow culturally irrelevant.

To understand the theonomic position espoused by Rushdoony, Ortiz and others is to know that we are not advocating a top-down tyrannical system that seeks to enforce God's Law through capital punishment. The theonomist begins with the idea that the Law brings knowledge of sin, which may then result in the regeneration of the individual by the Holy Spirit in salvation. Then the Christian applies the knowledge of the Law as a useful measure of sanctification in his or her individual life. This extends into the family, church, business, education, civil government and all areas of life. The Law finally gives us a prescription for civil sanctions as it acts as a curb or deterrent to sinful behavior. But the important thing to understand is we must stress regeneration and reformation first. The disciplinary function of the Law is an after effect of spiritual awakening on the societal scale. We do not believe that society can be reformed by executing people we do not agree with. All the sanctions of the Law are to be dispensed with an attitude of mercy and redemption.

But we also stand firm on the inerrancy of scripture. When we see that God in the Old Testament commands the death penalty for violent rape, adultery, acts of homosexuality or bestiality, we must affirm with the Apostle Paul in the New Testament that although the wicked "know God's righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them" (Romans 1:32).

The debate here is not between Frank Schaeffer and the "religious right" or "Christian Reconstructionists." The debate is between Frank Schaeffer and the Lord Jesus, the second Person of the Triune God. All scripture, both the Old and New Testament, is inspired and is the standard for our righteousness in Christ. Yet autonomous man wishes to live in a world in which evil can be accepted as "good" and those who would define sin according the rightful biblical standard are branded as "hate-mongers."

I'll leave the reader with the following comments that were left at Frank Schaeffer's blog by a level-headed Christian:

Yours is simply an untenable position. You claim a system of “hate” so as to draw on the emotions of the readers. However, this emotive type of argument has no bearing upon the truth; it is simply subjective opinion with no foundation or force. God has given His Law, a Law that is an extension of His character and is therefore immutable. Hence, it is still valid to this day and all of those with affection for Christ should attempt to guide the civil magistrate to enact this Law.

We offer love through the God of love. You look for tolerance for your unrighteous actions or the actions of others. We offer an objective ethical system and a God that can both change the individual and save them from their unrighteousness. You ask for special benefits within the church and society. We offer the sure cornerstone of Christ Jesus. You offer the fruits that result in Hell fire.

So Mr. Schaeffer, please either provide for us an exegetical argument that would allow homosexual conduct (an argument that you well know cannot be provided) or simply proclaim that the Law of God is old-fashioned and wrong. The latter of these two propositions is at least honest.