Biblical Landmarks

Archive for the ‘Theology’ Category

A Mark of Sovereignty

From time to time there are news items explaining why some people find it necessary to leave home. Taxes — property taxes to be precise.

In a period of rising house prices, it is easy to forget that with rises in prices come increasing property taxes. And property taxes can mean financial ruin for many whose income cannot rise to meet the increased tax burden.

One resident in Massachusetts some time ago was suffering when her tax bill increased from $2,200 to $3,500, while income remained fixed at $12,000 a year. The result? Sell the family home, with all its sweat and tears (it was built by the current owner and her late husband) and memories.

While the stock market may be on the move up again and there is little evidence that the real estate market is out of the doldrums, the banking fiasco in the US, together with fevered home buying, indicated personal debt was on the increase. So, too, were home prices, since a good portion of the debt went into home buying. Property prices were bound to increase — and property taxes along with them.
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“Alfred declares that when Christ came to the Mediterranean World (or ‘Middle Earth’), He Himself did “approve” the “judgments” alias the judicial laws. Very far from ever having abrogated or destroyed them — He Himself therefore still requires that at least their ‘general equity’ be observed.” Dr. F.N. Lee, in his history of Alfred the Great.

R.J. Rushdoony said that the people who study history are the ones who are interested in the future.

And a study of history reveals a different view of the OT law than is popular today.

Dr. Lee has done a great service by writing this history of Alfred, for it provides the theological backdrop to our Anglo-Saxon culture. The shires (counties), hundreds courts, property rights,and much, much more. And Alfred, it should be said, was not the first. The political backdrop known as “federalism” has its roots in the Old Testament and is related to the word “covenant”. These are not popular facts today, because they put the Old Testament into a different light.

Now Alfred lived quite a few centuries before the words “general equity” made their way into the language of Christianity via John Calvin and the Westminster Confession of Faith. So it is drawing a long bow to suggest here that Alfred — the only English king ever called great — is referring to a much, much later view of the OT law. Perhaps Alfred was not referring to a “general equity thereof” but rather the “literal application thereof.” For that’s how his laws read.
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“Jesus gave a higher standard than the ten commandments . . . Jesus disobeyed the law.” Pastor Melissa Scott (Monday Night TV, March 15, 2010)

Rewind your time clock to the second century. Justin Martyr has just written a book, Dialogue With Trypho. In this dialogue, Justin attempts to address accusations that Christians, who claim they are the seed of Abraham, are not keeping the laws handed down to the Israelites.

Justin’s Dialogue leads to the conclusion that Christians don’t have to keep the Torah. Why not? Because those laws are for the Israelites in Israel, and if you’re not an Israelite living in Israel, then there’s a different set of laws for you.

Naturally you’re never told what these replacement laws are. There are some vague “motherhood” statements, but nothing specific. Only one this is certain: you don’t have to keep the laws found in the Torah.
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“The Old is deadly, because it can do nothing but involve the whole human race in a curse; the New is the instrument of life, because those who are freed from the curse it restores to favour with God.” John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 2, Chapter 11, Section 14.

Did the title of this e-zine get your attention. I hope so. I discovered something recently by reading . . . John Calvin, in this case. I’m not sure he got it right on this occasion. In fact, I know he got it wrong.

If you are a Calvinist, this e-zine may offend you. I apologize if it does. It is not my intention to offend. It is my intention to try to understand and draw conclusions from what Calvin says.

And on this occasion, I do not agree with Calvin. Hence, the e-zine “Why I am not (always) a Calvinist.”

Calvin is at one of his weakest moments in this chapter of Book 2, when he deals with the relationship between Old Testament and New Testament. Calvin does not mince his words. He is no milquetoast when it comes to disagreeing with those who do not agree with his viewpoint, as evidenced in his polemics against the Anabaptists and Libertines.
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When a Dad Worries His Son, The Father Better Have Some Good Answers

I have four sons and a daughter, the firstborn being Matthew. He’s a thinker. And he’s trying to give his father a hard time over some of my comments. Matt’s worried that I’m putting the Torah as a higher authority than the Person of Jesus Christ as revealed in the gospels. Here’s his question:

“What role does the person of Jesus Christ play in all of this?”

Now Matthew is concerned that his father might be going off in a wrong direction, so he’s checking up on his old man to make sure. He comments further,

” Shouldn’t it be Jesus Christ that we look to as the central revolving point of the Scriptures rather than the Torah?”

Good questions. Here’s my reply:
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WHAT IS THE CANON?

This is an important question. And confusion over the answer results in some misunderstandings.

Those involved closely in the debate look at the canon from two perspectives. Both are needed.

The first perspective is that of an authority. It can be in either written or oral form. The Ten Commandments written in stone and the words of Moses were an oral and written tradition, and they were authoritative.

The second idea of canon is that it eventually “came to refer to a perpetual fixation or standardization” (McDonald, The Biblical Canon, p. 55).

A little consideration of these two ideas shows that they are not mutually exclusive. Again to quote McDonald, “the primary debate is over when this literature” took on the status as an authoritative-scriptural manner among the Jews and the Christians. Read the rest of this entry »

Are we really justified by faith alone?

This topic has been debated for a L-O-N-G time. But consider these biblical quotations.

I’ve had some correspondence with a good friend, Mark. He’s a “justified by faith alone”, hang-on-to-the-Reformers guy who takes the Bible seriously. I’ve been a little rough on him.

Here’s how.
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HOW TO EXCEED THE PHARISEES

The words of Jesus create problems for many people. The reason? They don’t like them.

Consider this from Matt.12: 36-37: “But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

Everyone hopes that these words are somehow and somewhere modified elsewhere in Scripture. Justified by our words? No way. We’ll never make it, that’s for sure. Yet the words of Jesus are there to deal with.

Now consider this passage earlier in the book of Matthew: “For I say unto you that unless your righteousness exceeds he righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.”

For many, that sounds like a great dose of legalism.
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Living with a Reformed Baptist family, as I have been doing, has given me the chance to exercise some discussion on the topic of baptism. In that discussion it has become increasingly clear to me why Reformed Theology in general and Christian Reconstruction in particular are not really winning the intellectual war. They certainly win some of the skirmishes, but the war itself is far from over. And it will remain so until the unassailable Word of God is brought to bear on the enemy. Here’s the problem.

In my discussions with my host it was evident that he relied completely on a New Testament theology. No matter how many times I tried to get the discussion going from the Old Testament, my host would say words like, “That’s fine, but the New Testament says . . .” And off he would go quoting the New Testament.

As I thought about this, I realized something that had not been so clear before. It was the willingness of my host to hold not just to the Bible in general, but to the idea in particular that irrespective of what might be taught in the Old Testament, the New Testament now offered a “correction” to the older Testament.

Who is the wise man?

As a young boy in a small Baptist church in rural Australia, I was taught to sing:

The wise man built his house upon the rock,
The wise man built his house upon the rock,
The wise man built his house upon the rock,
And the rains came tumbling down.
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