Reading through Robert Lewis Reymond’s Systematic Theology recently,
I was struck by what seemed to be an out-of-place cheap shot at Theonomy and
Christian Reconstruction. When I looked at a footnote the author provided,
things got interesting. It revealed not only how poorly many reformed
theologians have processed the teachings of Theonomy, but also once again how
in doing so they keep blaming Theonomy for the problems caused by their own
views of “two kingdoms” and the “spirituality of the Church.”
Given
also my recent work on slavery, the connection which appeared also
contained the ironic connection between Reymond and an earlier Robert
Lewis—i.e., Dabney.
The Spirituality of the Church
In
his section on the nature of the church’s authority, Reymond teaches the
traditional American Reformed emphasis. Because the “authority of the church”
is “exclusively spiritual and moral,” the church can give no endorsement of any
secular, civil, or legislative act of the state. In explanation of this,
Reymond opines,
The
medieval church was dead wrong when it endorsed, under Innocent IV’s bull Ad extirpanda (1252),
the use of torture to break the will of heretics and to extort recantations
from them, and penalize the unrepentant with confiscation of goods,
imprisonment, and their surrender to the “Secular arm,” which meant death at
the stake.
Of
course, on this point every Theonomist would agree. The problem, however, as we
shall see, is not the content so much as the rationalization of how and why one
arrives at it.
To
begin with, there is a contradiction inherent in this process. Reymond says the
church was dead wrong to endorse the surrender of such alleged criminals to the
state—but by what standard does he says this? Does he say it because it is
wrong for the state to
execute heretics? If he says that from the pulpit, as a representative of the
church, he immediately violates his own standard: for the spiritual authority
cannot pronounce upon the legislative authority of the state. If the state
decides it will burn heretics, the church has no authority to say otherwise.
But
if he gives the obviously righteous answer that, yes, indeed, the pulpit should
decry this conduct by the state, then two things must follow:
1.
He must admit that his former standard is wrong: the pulpit does indeed have
not only a right but an obligation to pronounce upon civil, secular, and
legislative matters, and
2.
He must provide the exegesis for the content of that proclamation (either for
or against the execution of heretics
Reymond
feels this tension, and cannot remain consistent, as we will see. He has
further such spiritual judgments upon legislative affairs, this time not
against “the church,” but directly against the king and queen:
The
Spanish Inquisition in 1479 under Ferdinand V and Isabella, in particular, was
aimed at Jews, Muslims, and later Protestants, and under its first Grand
Inquisitor, Tomas Torquemada, burned some two thousand people for heresy and
expelled from the Holy Roman Empire Jews who refused to be baptized.
Then
back to the church, but the points on the state’s side still stand:
The
church was wrong when in the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries it
launched the Crusades (eight or nine in all) to recover the Holy Land from
Islam. Martin Luther was wrong when he called for the German Princes to use the
sword against the Anabaptists. The Protestant leaders at Geneva, including John
Calvin, were wrong when they burned Servetus as a heretic. The English
Reformers under Henry VIII, Edward VI, and Elizabeth I were wrong when they
employed the secular authority to persecute Roman Catholics,
Then
comes the final stroke:
And
the theonomic reconstructionists of our day are just as wrong when they call
upon the state to execute false prophets, witches, adulterers, and homosexuals.
When
Reymond repeats his explanation for why this is the case, however, he again
creates tension with its own point:
The
church is to address the spiritual and moral needs of men and women who are,
prior to their salvation, by nature slaves to sin and Satan, and who are, after
their salvation, in need to instruction in the details of living out their most
holy faith before a watching world.
Then,
the obligatory caveat:
This
is not to say that the church must not speak out against political injustice
and moral abuses by the state—it must be willing to speak out against moral
abuses wherever they occur. But the church’s officers must never resort to
physical force in order to establish a beachhead for the church within the
human community it seeks to reach for Christ.1
Well,
which is it? “Must” the church speak out on issues of the civil state, or is it
“dead wrong” when it does so? Is it only “dead wrong” on certain issues? If it
must, but must not on certain issues
and penalties, then by what standard does it determine?
Further,
who in the world ever said the church’s officers must use physical force? This
is the greatest of strawmen, and the worst of dishonesties if applied to
Theonomy or Christian Reconstruction, which is the implication here.
Reymond’s
“must,” however, is also not taken very seriously by its author. After stating
that, he goes on for a 25 page section on the “duties” (read “musts”) of the
church, and never mentions it once. Instead, we get page after page about
worship, liturgy, etc.
In
the process, Reymond cites his namesake, Robert Lewis Dabney, as support of his
critique of theonomic reconstructionism. He references Dabney’s Lectures on Systematic Theology (1878,
reprinted in 1985), pages 869–875. Dabney’s Lectures here differ from most
systematics in that they contain a dedicated treatment of the civil magistrate
and religious liberty—two separate chapters spanning 25 pages (862–887 in my
1976 edition). It will come as a surprise to many who have assumed or been led
to believe that Dabney was in some way theonomic that Dabney squarely supports
the view laid out by Reymond.
Sorting out the confusion
The
problem in all of this is at least two-fold. First, Theonomists have always
held to the separation of church and state and the purely spiritual nature of
the church’s authority. The church and state are separate institutions under
God. The church’s “sword” is the Word of God only, and the state,
institutionally speaking, has exclusive right to the literal sword. The problem
for Reymond is that no theonomist has ever said otherwise; no theonomist has
ever taught that the church should have “a police force or battalions of
soldiers” as Reymond suggests, or to carry out torture, punishments, fines,
etc., as he lists.
Second,
however, the system which
undergirds Reymond’s and Dabney’s doctrine of separation is not biblical, and
as such it leaves them in logical contradictions and moral dilemmas. It leaves
them, quite frankly, with no biblical basis
or standard for confronting any particular injustice in society or state. They
may be able to make vague affirmations about the church’s duty in this area, as
Reymond does, but they cannot provide an biblical application in any particular
case.
Dabney’s
case is, of course, the clearest here. His defense of slavery rested, as most
of them did (Thornwell, et al), firmly upon the exclusively spiritual nature of
the church. By this doctrine the defenders of the American atrocities held the
churches’ mouths closed on the subject, except to support the states’ laws and
read them, dutifully, from the pulpits every year. Any injustice that was
mentioned was quickly silenced by the claim that that’s a civil, secular, and
legislative matter—outside the church’s spiritual authority. We cannot
pronounce upon that. It must be left to God’s providence in history.
A
reader of my book The Problem of Slavery in Christian America told
me the other day that the greatest takeaway she thought was the reality of how
damaging and dangerous this “spirituality of the church,” or “two kingdoms”
doctrine, as it has been taught and applied, really has been. This is only one
illustration. When critics like Reymond or Michael Horton or others try to make
the connections they do between theonomy and coercive evils in church history,
they miss the mark. It was precisely the lack of God’s law that allowed the state
to run rampant in each case, and it was precisely the emphasis on the exclusive
spiritual nature of the church’s authority with held the churches’ mouths shut
from saying any differently, while everyone stood by watching the rape, murder,
plunder, torture, and all manner of evil.
Yet
another part of the problem here is that while Dabney and Reymond are correct
on the limited point of the state not enforcing death penalties for heresy,
blasphemy, etc., they have done so on the weakest, most faulty premises. They
have provided no biblical, exegetical support for their positions. To appeal to
the spiritual nature of the church creates all the problems so far discussed.
But there’s more.
When
you read Dabney’s lecture on religious liberty and church and state, to which
Reymond refers, you will be treated to an exclusively rationalistic and
pragmatic basis. In his 15-page essay, there are only seven Scripture
references, and these are mere prooftexts. There is not a shred of exegetical
work anywhere. So, if a person agreed with him, they would only have his
rationalistic arguments for why. This leaves them unequipped when it comes to
new instances of injustice and tyranny. Worse than unequipped, they are
actually sharing the humanistic presuppositions that bring about the very
tyrannies they would wish to end. So what standard is the church going to
preach then?
One
of the reasons I wrote The Bounds of Love was to
provide what I saw to be a gaping whole in the exegetical work in this context.
The New Testament system does provide for religious liberty, but if you do not
approach it from a biblical, exegetical basis, you will build one more
rationalistic tyranny. This was true for Dabney and the American slave culture.
It was true for the modern statist tyranny, police state, fiat money, wars,
etc., for which the Reformed churches a la Reymond and Horton either silence
themselves or enjoin. It was true for the entire Constantinian tradition which
was responsible for every persecution Reymond mentioned above.
It
will always be true until the churches embrace the preaching of biblical law on
social issues, and then start doing it. So, what we need, really, is far more
work on exegesis. Instead, the height of prominence for Reformed theologians is
to publish yet another thousand-page systematic theology which ignores almost
entirely the doctrines of the family and the civil, “secular” spheres. This
needs to change.