So I was driving in to work today, and the news/traffic/weather station I listen to on the commute every day comes up with this story about the 9-1-1 call Corey Haim’s mom made to the police when she found her son unconscious and not breathing. They actually played the tape the police released.

I turned the radio off. That’s not news: it’s voyeurism.

I could turn this into a post about justice vs. liberty, but that’s just being part of the problem. I’m not interested in being part of the problem.

This is just sort of an excursis, given the progress of my discussion with Dr. John Mark Reynolds. As I was reading today here at Evangel about this and that, the point about abortion seemed to be very well made by Dr. Beckwith in the comments — and good on him for getting it essentially right.

But here’s what I’m thinking: when we make the case regarding what to think about abortion politically, is the more-formidable case against abortion, “We deplore abortion because it is an abrogation of the liberty of the fetus?” Or is our case — the right case for the sake of the life of the child — “We deplore abortion because it is injustice against the innocent, and it is the state’s role in this life to protect those who are innocent from violence?”

It seems clear to me that the “liberty” argument is plainly the pro-choice argument, and the “flourishing” argument is the pro-choice argument. The argument for justice and for the sake of rightly dealing with those who are both innocent and helpless is the case for the life and protection of the unborn child.

This is an issue we all agree on, isn’t it?

We’ll see.

Continuing with my reply to JohnMark Reynolds’ original response, JMR said this:

My view of the forms of government described in the Bible follows this pattern. The Bible gives us no sanctified form of government for this life.

See: I think that JMR has made a somewhat-obvious oversight here: the Bible certainly gives us one form of government which is sanctified “in this life”: the government of the local church. And the really-stunning thing about that form of government is that it is primarily concerned with what? Maximizing the liberty of the individuals who opt in? Prolly not.

Not sure anyone can make that case. But even if that was the only example, and JMR’s response was, “well, I mean ‘civil government.’ We can’t apply how God wants the church run with how God thinks we might run the world,” (which, to be certain to say it, overlooks even the most rudimentary ability to reason on the part of those who might read the Bible) is a full-fledge constitution or political road-map even remotely necessary to apply moral principles in such a way that we can then rightly deduce how to work them out in a political philosophy?

My opinion is that this is the right application of liberty in this context: applying the relevant moral presuppositions necessarily in Scripture in order to obey as we ought to obey.

The government God established on Mount Sinai was for that people, at that place, at that time. Some laws were as shadows for the rest of us (dietary laws) to teach deeper theological truths and have no relevance to me today. (I can eat ham!) Other laws were the best that could be sustained in poor and nomadic cultures. Our much richer and non-nomadic culture can, for example, establish prisons.

It would be good here to make sure we re-establish my original complaint to Dr. Reynolds – because if we do that, and then look at his approach to dismissing it, we will find an instructive lesson.

What I said to him back when this exchange started was:

Let me suggest 3 things:

1. Liberty is not, in and of itself, a virtue. Demanding that any government be restricted to minimizing the “loss of liberty” is not a principled requirement — let alone a biblically-principled requirement.

2. It’s interesting what the Bible says about who runs a government and therefore how much lordship over goods they ought to have. I would be interested to see JMR work that out over any period of time he’d like to invest in it.

3. As a convinced member of the vast ring-wing conspiracy (and also the subversive cult inside that conspiracy comprised of right-minded Calvinists), I don’t invest much in what either the right or the left forget daily about politics, economics, and sociology. Since all of these ought to be informed in some way by theology — that is, the right place of God, and the right place of man when compared to God — I expect that the secular left and the secular right will find themselves in the same place quickly since they are excluding the same necessary premise for all things.

The argument track he consistently works toward to responding is this: we have more stuff than they had when the books of the OT were written, so those books don’t speak directly to our experience. That is certainly what he has done here.

Now: what’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with saying, as above, that we are not nomadic goat-herders? The problem with this reasoning is that no one is advocating that we need to be nomadic goat-herders. What I am saying, and have said, is that Liberty is not the primary objective or limiting factor of government. Justice is the primary ministry of civil Government. To keep the one-hit wonders from countermanding this thread on church authority, I’ll give a little Luther on this subject rather than the WCF:

You might say: “Why then do we have so many laws of the Church and of the State, and many ceremonies of churches, monastic houses, holy places, which urge and tempt men to good works, if faith does all things through the First Commandment?” I answer: Simply because we do not all have faith or do not heed it. If every man had faith, we would need no more laws, but every one would of himself at all times do good works, as his confidence in God teaches him.

But now there are four kinds of men: the first, just mentioned, who need no law, of whom St. Paul says, I. Timothy i, “The law is not made for a righteous man,” that is, for the believer, but believers of themselves do what they know and can do, only because they firmly trust that God’s favor and grace rests upon them in all things. The second class want to abuse this freedom, put a false confidence in it, and grow lazy; of whom St. Peter says, I. Peter ii, “Ye shall live as free men, but not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness,” as if he said: The freedom of faith does not permit sins, nor will it cover them, but it sets us free to do all manner of good works and to endure all things as they happen to us, so that a man is not bound only to one work or to a few. So also St. Paul, Galatians v: “Use not your liberty for an occasion to the flesh.” Such men must be urged by laws and hemmed in by teaching and exhortation. The third class are wicked men, always ready for sins; these must be constrained by spiritual and temporal laws, like wild horses and dogs, and where this does not help, they must be put to death by the worldly sword, as St. Paul says, Romans xiii: “The worldly ruler bears the sword, and serves God with it, not as a terror to the good, but to the evil.” The fourth class, who are still lusty, and childish in their understanding of faith and of the spiritual life, must be coaxed like young children and tempted with external, definite and prescribed decorations, … until they also learn to know the faith. [Treatise on Good Works, XIV]

Note that carefully: Explicitly, Luther says that rules/laws are established to curtail the abuse of freedom. That is: because men are, at best, not followers of their faith in God, Luther appeals to Rom 13 to underscore the work of Government. Luther’s view was that if we live outside of grace and faith, we deserve the law. It is made for us. And it is Government’s cause to make sure this happens.

And we should think carefully about this: this is the model of the government God declared at Sinai, and the first act of the government which will be headed by Christ upon his return. This has nothing to do with agrarian cultures: it has to do with the way God has ordained government for us – and for our own good.

We also have a richer political and philosophical vocabulary. This is partly because we have learned the lessons (however imperfectly) from the wilderness government.

that’s an interesting assertion. I’d like to see up to three lessons we have learned “from the wilderness government” which ought to be useful in the interpretation that more liberty and less government is the right political philosophy.

Of course, the wilderness government did not last . . . and Israel was ruled by judges and later by kings.

I think it’s important to note that “the wilderness government was ruled by the Law from Sinai, and in that respect it was adjudicated by Moses and the men appointed by him to judge according to the law.

That is: the chief social objective of “the wilderness government” was justice. It certainly had the soteriological objective of setting a people apart for God’s purpose, but the way that worked out daily was the civil judgment to settle grievances among the people and the covenantal judgment against sin which was settled at the temple by sacrifice.

Here’s a bit to ponder, though:

There is much to learn in each period from Israel’s sacred history. We get ideas about the nature of man and some ideas about government, but not a full blown political philosophy or anything like it.

Interesting, right? “much to learn”?

What we should do is, again, go back to my original statement to Dr. Reynolds and see if I was pleading for a “full-blown political philosophy”. I was pleading for setting the right thing as first and foremost in our political philosophy. Liberty is not, in and of itself, a virtue. Demanding that any government be restricted to minimizing the “loss of liberty” is not a principled requirement — let alone a biblically-principled requirement. This is my main and central point. Arguing against a demand for a “full blown political philosophy” simply rushes past my point to make sure the philosophy department gets to have its say after all.

There is much of value to glean, but doing so is not simple. Our rulers are not David. They don’t have God’s special promises to David . . . so when our fallen rulers compare themselves to David (as one governor recently did) to justify staying in power, they are wrong. Governors are not monarchs!

I am certain I didn’t say they were. If Dr. Reynolds kept his eye on my actual concern rather than the concern that we should treat elected officials who are established by “we the people” as if they were established by Yahweh’s anointing through the prophet, a lot of the dust-up here would be eliminated.

Liberty is not, in and of itself, a virtue. Demanding that any government be restricted to minimizing the “loss of liberty” is not a principled requirement — let alone a biblically-principled requirement. That is my main point, and it is a wholly-Biblical point. I’d like to talk about that rather than the sins of stupid political panderers who give the Christian faith a bad name.

Again: there are principles, but they must receive modern application.

Let’s talk about one: liberty is not the chief end of government – justice is.

Israel’s sacred history is God’s unfolding plan of redemption, not a political guidebook!

And it happens to speak about the main end of government as God intends it for his people whom he is redeeming. It is an “also”, not the “only”. There’s no way to construe what I have said anywhere ever as saying otherwise.

The last bit will have to wait until Monday for a further treatment; may you all have a good weekend, and spend the Lord’s day in the Lord’s house with the Lord’s people.

My friend Doug Wilson has a great post today about American Exceptionalism. Here’s a piece of it:

If anyone could believe in exceptionalism, and have actual verses to point to, it would have been the Hebrews. And yet note that God warns them of this pattern, which is as old as dirt. He included them. Nothing is as ordinary and boring as nationalistic hubris. Displays of this sin with the stars and stripes waving in the background are just as obnoxious and just as wicked as when anybody else does it — and everybody else has done it.

Read the whole thing, including the comments.

From John Knight:

God does not fit into easy categories because only God is free and righteous and just and holy – all in infinite proportions. When he says he creates some who are disabled, he is speaking and acting out of his infinite depths of knowledge and righteousness, not our time-centered, sin-filled, finite perspective.

HT:@JohnPiper.

read the whole thing.

For the record, one of the reasons I’m a fanboy of apologetics is that I am a former atheist and former Roman Catholic – and, of course, I like a good argument. I like it when ideas clash and people have to engage in something other than a passive way to get to the resolution – especially when the refrain “agree to disagree” is shown up to be the sham that it is.

So I buy books which are trying to make a case for themselves – especially books which deal directly with the question of God and the question(s) of how we best serve him.

Which brings me to an ironic inner conflict: I have come to hate what passes for the average apologetic encounter. You know: it’s like the bell tower scene in the original Michael Keaton Batman movie – flamboyant adults sort of fighting past each other, trying to avoid the blame for their own failings and weirdness by pointing out the other guy’s purple pants or inane black cape. “I made you? You made me. What now?”

So I’m a wary fan of apologetics. Too many people get into the field with a love for the fight and a lack of real love for people – and they spend their time thereafter trying to win fights rather than people.

With that in mind, I have already recommended James S. Spiegel’s new book, The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief. It’s an extremely-interesting psychological history of atheism by looking at the personal histories of some watershed atheist thinkers, and in many cases letting their own observations about themselves speak for the pre-philosophical reasons they may or may not have for believing (or not believing) in God.

And I recommend it for several reasons:

Not for nothin’, but it’s a short book – about 130 pages. As I told Jim in an e-mail, every author who says exactly what he means to say in the number of pages it takes to say it is a hero in my book. Fluffing up your manuscript to 200 pages because the acquisitions editor says you have to points directly to the problem of evil I have been talking about for a week now here at Evangel, and it inflicts pain on the reader to make him read your 40 pages of padding when he would have been extremely pleased to stop, along with your point, at 130 pages. (Nb. Dear Fellow Authors, fellow authors-in-preparation, and publishers of all stripes)

It’s also an insightful book. Prof. Spiegel didn’t invent his thesis: he learned it from Scripture. He takes seriously the Bible’s own apologetic toward unbelief, and while I think it’s a great insight into the problem of rank anti-theism, I think the mindful reader will see his own heart in the text even if he’s a full-blown Christian megapastor. That is: the roots of our unbelief are always found in the soil which Jim turns over here for us to see, so while we may gain an insight into how atheists are thinking or are being guided in their unbelief, we should in good conscience run our fingers through the clods of ground there to see the roots of the reasons we ourselves suffer from unbelief in all manner of contexts.

Lastly, it’s also a charitable book, in spite of the foundational issue being spelled out. It’s a hard thing to do to tell people, “you know: when you love your moral failings more than you love God, you’re going the wrong way.” But Prof. Spiegel does this with clarity, charity, and fact-based exposition. And he doesn’t fly over anybody’s head. But Jim makes the point that our inclination away from morality is an inclination away from God – and that historically, leading atheists really concede this point.

So in reading this, I give a firm thumbs-up to this book and to Prof. Spiegel’s effort here.

What I’m worried about, frankly, is you.

See: I think that people reading this book will go one of three ways:

The atheists reading it will be offended because it seems to be an ad-hom argument – but if it is, it turns out to be one they live on against the Christian faith. Reading Jim’s exposition of this is one of the better moments of the book, but that notwithstanding it will put atheists off.

Another group will receive this book and consider it’s implications on evangelism and the life of the church – and may these folks’ tribe increase. This is the audience Jim clearly had in mind in writing this book, and may this be the largest group affected by this book.

But my experience tells me that the third group will be the largest – the cottage industry of apologetic hobbyists who frankly make a lifestyle (and many: a living) misconstruing valid presuppositional and theological points and using them as clubs against unbelievers.

Read Jim Spiegel’s new book, but don’t use it the wrong way. Use it to get the right-sized compassion you ought to have toward people whom God is calling with the free offer of the Gospel. Be an ambassador and not a terrorist.

The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief is a new book out by James S. Spiegel. I received it this week and read it last night.

This is an interesting take on the foundational issues surrounding the apologetic for atheism, and the Theist/Christian response.

I’ll have a review up in a few days, and what I suspect will be a multi-part interview with James in the near future. You can visit James’ book’s web site here, and James’ home blog here.

From CBSNews.com:

Ten Americans were detained by Haitian police on Saturday as they tried to bus 33 children across the border into the Dominican Republic, allegedly without proper documents.

The Baptist church members from Idaho called it a “Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission,” meant to save abandoned children from the chaos following Haiti’s earthquake. Their plan was to scoop up 100 kids and take them by bus to a rented hotel at a beach resort in the Dominican Republic, where they planned to establish an orphanage.

Whether they realized it or not, these Americans – the first known to be taken into custody since the Jan. 12 earthquake – put themselves in the middle of a firestorm in Haiti, where government leaders have suspended adoptions amid fears that parentless or lost children are more vulnerable than ever to child trafficking.

“In this chaos the government is in right now we were just trying to do the right thing,” the group’s leader, Laura Silsby, told reporters at the judicial police headquarters in the capital, where the Americans were being held.

You should read the whole story. The web site for one of the churches with people who were arrested gives this brief statement:

A ten member church team traveled to Haiti to help rescue children from one or more orphanages that had been devastated in the earthquake on January 12. The children were being taken to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic where they could be cared for and have their medical and emotional needs attended to. Our team was falsely arrested today and we are doing everything we can from this end to clear up the misunderstanding that has occurred in Port au Prince.

It’s an interesting tension — a small group of Christians want to give the aid they are equipped for because there are many orphans, and many abandoned children. The Haitian government wants everyone to make sure that the completely heinous crime of child trafficking is thwarted.

I think they both want the same thing in theory, but they are using different powers to combat what is broken in this world. In a real way, this is a parable about the Christian life — if you read it closely.

So go back and read it closely. You might offer up some prayers about it from all sides.

This is actually a post about the Gospel, but it may do one of these things to you:
– it may offend you (it ought to offend you a little at least)
– it may confuse you
– it may cause you to take the rest of the day off because you are utterly bewildered

I’m almost too squeemish to post this note, so you can imagine what kind of atrocity the link takes you to, so be forewarned. But as reported all over the the internet in the last week, The Boston Herald posts its take on Doug Hines’ new invention, introduced this weekend at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas.

The least to say about this is that it is utterly un-nerving and particularly vile. And most people will let it go at that, except that those people aren’t thinking about the fact that someone is going to buy one of those things.

Listen: in the last two or three years there has been a bizarre trend — people are trying to invent robots to be home companions. One guy in japan has invented a manequin which is a servicable receptionist; another guy has been prototyping robot runway models. I am sure many teen-aged boys and comic-book shop owners are thrilled about the future happening today, but those of us who love people ought to be very concerned about this.

I could write about 1000 words about this topic today, but I am (again) snowed at work. Instead, I’ll let y’all talk about this issue under this umbrella: doesn’t this prove in some way that the church has failed to preach the Gospel, believe it to be true, and live as if there are necessary consquences to the work of Jesus Christ? Asked another way, how can robots possibly be better at loving other people than the people of God?

Think about that and discuss it in the comments.

My dear colleague JMR –

Thanks for your responses overall, including your exchange with my friend and fellow subversive Steve Hays. It’s good to see the extent to which you are willing to defend your position.

A clarification before I continue on the topic of this letter — in your reply “Men Should Crucify No Man”, you said:

Generally he thinks I am not Christian in my reasoning.

Let’s make sure that if this is how you are receiving what I have said, the other readers of this exchange will understand me to have said this:

While I think you are at best failing to show some of your moral calculus here, at worst you may be missing the point of the Bible itself by missing the key matter of the scope and force of justice in God’s economy. There’s much more to be said here, but I look forward to your response to this.

The status of the Christianity of your reasoning is not my concern: whether or not you’re referencing even broadly the Bible and its moral reasoning is. Let’s not derail this into a discussion about whether or not you are a follower of Jesus Christ. I’m willing to take that at face value and simply point out that your reasoning in this matter doesn’t include all the relevant citations from the OT, the Gospels, and Paul.
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