The NXR Podcast - THEOLOGY APPLIED - The Theonomy Controversy ｜ with Dr. Joe Boot

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00:00:40.320 Hi, and welcome back to Theology Applied.

00:00:42.640 I am your host, Pastor Joel Webin

00:00:44.140 with Right Response Ministries.

00:00:45.800 I hope that you and your family

00:00:47.280 had a very merry Christmas,

00:00:49.020 and I hope that in celebrating Christmas,

00:00:52.040 because December 25th fell on the Lord's Day this year,

00:00:56.120 I hope that part of your celebration involved you going to a biblically faithful church in worship.

00:01:02.420 We have one true holy day as Christians, and that is the Lord's Day, the Christian Sabbath,

00:01:08.680 the day that Christ rose from the dead.

00:01:10.580 I think it's entirely permissible and even proper in many regards to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ

00:01:17.380 with Christmas, but not at the expense of worshiping on the Lord's Day.

00:01:21.880 So I hope that you are in church.

00:01:24.160 That being said, today's episode deals with the law of God.

00:01:28.580 We talk about theonomy and why many in the body of Christ fiercely oppose it.

00:01:34.740 Our guest is none other than Dr. Joe Boot, who will be speaking at our upcoming conference.

00:01:40.360 Now, many of you have already registered and many of you have tried to register and sadly

00:01:44.480 were unable because our conference has sold out.

00:01:48.000 We have had to cap our conference at 550 people, which is already a little over our seating

00:01:54.720 capacity for the venue that we have.

00:01:57.220 We have given it our very best to try to find another venue, and in the Lord's providence,

00:02:02.820 that has not been able to occur.

00:02:05.360 So we are keeping the conference as is with Dr. Joe Boot and Dr. James White and Dale

00:02:11.380 Partridge and myself, all things theonomy and post-millennialism, but I do want you

00:02:16.780 to get excited. Even if you weren't able to get a ticket, we have at least a couple hundred more

00:02:22.100 people that wanted to come to this conference, try to purchase a ticket. But the good news is

00:02:26.620 we've officially decided that we're going to do the conference again the following year. So in

00:02:32.220 2024, probably sometime in March or April, we're going to hold the conference again. We're going

00:02:38.140 to do our best to double the speaker list, double the size of the venue. It'll be bigger and better

00:02:44.240 than ever before. So hang in there, hold tight. And in the meantime, you can satisfy your appetite

00:02:51.280 for theonomy and post-millennialism by listening to this episode.

00:02:55.580 Applying God's word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.

00:03:05.640 All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied. I am your host, Pastor Joel

00:03:09.940 Webin with Right Response Ministries, and I am very privileged to welcome back to our show a

00:03:14.460 returning guest, Dr. Joe Boot with the Ezra Institute. Joe Boot, would you just introduce

00:03:19.340 yourself or any of our new listeners who may not be aware of you and your ministry? Sure, Joel.

00:03:24.420 Thanks ever so much for having me back on the show. It's great to be with you again.

00:03:29.060 I apologize that I'm slightly dark in the background here. We've got a very complicated

00:03:35.360 There's a bunch of things going on right now, so I'm not in my usual spot.

00:03:38.900 But, yes, the Ezra Institute, we are a Christian world and life view ministry, cultural apologetics.

00:03:46.960 We're essentially a think tank that was launched in Canada back in 2008.

00:03:54.720 And since I planted that ministry, the team has grown.

00:03:58.560 Our focus is teaching, writing, speaking, publishing on a Christian philosophy, Christian world and life view, and an effective cultural apologetic to address the challenges of our time in terms of a comprehensive gospel and in terms of the reality of the kingdom of God.

00:04:18.040 And we have an office in Canada, in the Niagara region of Ontario.

00:04:27.220 And this year, we are in the process of launching an office in the United States, in Tennessee, and the United Kingdom, just north of London in the UK.

00:04:40.640 Great. Praise God.

00:04:42.100 Well, what I wanted to discuss with you is all things theonomy.

00:04:46.320 We've talked about post-millennialism the last time that you came on the show, and I'm sure that

00:04:50.640 that may come up, but I really want us to focus our attention on theonomy. And I wanted to begin

00:04:55.980 by kind of just addressing the elephant in the room. Not everybody tends to be a fan, Dr. Boot.

00:05:00.920 It seems like some people have a strong aversion towards theonomy, or at least the term. It brings

00:05:06.800 up certain connotations for people that are probably misinformed, but nonetheless, people

00:05:11.980 kind of recoil. They immediately think when you say theonomy that you're going to start rounding

00:05:18.120 up Muslims and publicly hanging them or whatever it might be. And so I wanted to just first start 0.98

00:05:25.700 with definitions. If we could just, I think there's a spectrum of theonomic thought, just

00:05:31.820 like there is with any theology, not everybody who holds to covenant theology. There are multiple

00:05:37.200 different expressions of covenant theology and so i wanted to talk about the different um variations

00:05:43.440 of of theonomic thought but first could we just get at kind of the 30 000 foot view a general

00:05:49.320 definition what is theonomy well part of the problem uh has become with with the the term

00:05:56.400 is that it's a bit like if for somebody to be called a theonomist is a bit like being called

00:06:01.940 a charismatic or an evangelical uh these days both of those terms need qualifying

00:06:10.200 uh because of exactly as you've described it that the uh diversity of opinion that exists

00:06:18.140 around these these terms um and also that the term has become pejorative really so that it's

00:06:27.760 almost used as an insult uh these days uh and so i think that sort of atmosphere around the word

00:06:35.540 the sort of connotation of the word uh has come about because it's almost become a pejorative

00:06:41.580 expression and uh it does need qualification but very simply theonomy uh theos uh theonomos means

00:06:52.940 god's law so the word itself simply means god's law and uh i think in many respects that's the

00:07:03.380 that's how we should define it theonomy just means god's law and uh what what are we going

00:07:11.840 to do with god's law becomes the question now what has uh tended to happen is that the that

00:07:21.400 term has become associated with a movement, and it's generally tied to other terms like

00:07:28.720 dominionism, which is often linked to post-millennialism, and then words like

00:07:35.820 reconstruction and so on. And this all helps to generate this kind of boogeyman image for

00:07:42.800 theonomy, but it really simply means God's law. And when at the beginning of creation,

00:07:52.260 the place I start is at the beginning of creation, God speaks in Genesis 1, the 10 words,

00:08:00.840 let there be. And this is 10 times that God speaks the creative word. And then in the book

00:08:12.880 of Exodus, in Exodus 20, and of course republished there in Deuteronomy 5,

00:08:19.960 the scripture actually says that God spoke the 10 words. We talk about the 10 commandments,

00:08:26.120 but he spoke the 10 words and god spoke from the glory cloud it wasn't moses speaking

00:08:36.700 the people drew near close to the mountain and and and they heard the the voice of god and god

00:08:45.000 spoke and he and he wrote with his own finger uh the the 10 words what we call the 10 commandments

00:08:51.900 And I think the reason that that's interesting is that the 10 words of creation and the 10 words from the glory cloud are both directly the word of God.

00:09:07.460 Creation is the instantiation of the word of God.

00:09:10.980 Every word of God is a law word.

00:09:14.240 So God's word, God's law word, holds all of creation together.

00:09:19.340 In him, all things consist, all things hold together.

00:09:23.520 And so the let there be is both a command, it's God's law, and it's a promise that what God has spoken into being is going to be maintained.

00:09:35.720 Let there be.

00:09:36.560 So there's the creative command, and then there's a promise inherent in that, that what God has created, he's going to maintain and sustain.

00:09:44.580 And God speaks 10 words again when he speaks his commandments, his law to the covenant people.

00:09:53.780 And the fact that the creation word and the commandments are both 10 words spoken by God himself is very, very important biblically.

00:10:05.380 And I think fundamentally, that's what theonomy is about. It's about a recognition that God governs his world, his creation by law. And there are, of course, a variety of spheres of law. God distinguishes and separates in the book of Genesis, he differentiates and separates different spheres of life and creation.

00:10:26.760 And so there are different spheres of law, but God governs the totality of his creation by law.

00:10:34.040 And we're reminded of that with the 10 words in the book of Exodus, that this is, we might call it the standing law, the decalogue.

00:10:45.200 This is the law of God that binds every person, just as the creation law binds all of, the creation word binds all of creation.

00:10:54.260 So God's covenant word, his covenant law that he spoke from the glory cloud, those 10 words bind all human beings.

00:11:04.180 To me, that's what theonomy is.

00:11:07.200 But you're wanting, I'm sure, in part to tease out some of the accretions around this.

00:11:16.360 I like the way John Frame actually describes it.

00:11:18.940 He says that, you know, theonomy, this emphasis on the law of God in the history of the church, and there's nothing new about it, to differing degrees, different thinkers, different church fathers, different reformers, different Puritans, focused attention on the law of God.

00:11:40.920 And so John Frame describes theonomy, if you want to think of it in terms of a movement, as a tendency within the Reformed tradition, as an emphasis within the Reformed tradition, when we think about social life and the political life of man, to emphasize the relevance, the centrality, the importance of the law of God.

00:12:08.920 and uh i think that uh i mean it was very specifically we can say that theonomy in this

00:12:16.480 sense within the reformed tradition is a theory within christian ethics so i like to talk about

00:12:21.660 theonomy from a cosmological point of view that god's word is law his every word is law there's

00:12:27.980 his creation law there's his moral law um and they're bound together and that is the way we

00:12:35.160 are required to live within God's creation and we violate God's law at our peril. In the more

00:12:42.840 narrow sense, we can say that theonomy is a view within Christian ethics that says we must pay

00:12:48.360 particular and peculiar attention to the law of God when we not only wrestle with the meaning

00:12:56.000 of sanctification as Christians, as a measure of our sanctification, but when we think about

00:13:00.960 cultural, social, and political life. Amen. Yeah, I mean, it just seems to be illogical

00:13:09.840 and impotent to think that God would sanctify individuals who believe the gospel and are

00:13:16.960 seeking to obey his law, and yet that would have little to no effect on the societies in which

00:13:23.140 they live. To me, it just seems like the logical next step in this equation that if people believe

00:13:32.360 the gospel and if they're seeking to live lives that glorify God, right? Jesus says, John 14,

00:13:37.980 if you love me, you'll obey me. So our response of obedience, we love because he first loved us,

00:13:45.040 1 John 4, 19. So God loves us in the beloved, gives us spiritual eyes to see that love for us,

00:13:52.100 that salvific love. We're born again by the work of the Spirit, regenerate, endowed with the gifts

00:13:59.180 of faith and repentance, really just two sides of a singular coin, turning from sin and turning

00:14:04.400 to Christ with knowledge, assent, and implicit trust. And then in that, we love God. And the

00:14:12.120 very next question is, God, how do I manifest my love for you? How do you, if I'm seeking to love

00:14:20.500 you in response to your great love for me, it would seem to beckon the question, well, I want

00:14:29.120 to love you, therefore I want to do that which you would actually deem as loving. What do you see

00:14:34.120 as loving? Obey my commands. Does Christ have any commands? Well, in fact, he has at least two.

00:14:41.080 Okay, well, loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and loving our neighbor

00:14:44.960 as ourself. So can I then take it into my own liberty that, okay, I must love God and love

00:14:52.320 people, but now the onus is on me, a blank canvas for my own creative freedom and license to

00:14:59.220 determine what is loving God and how I love neighbor, or does God flesh that out further?

00:15:04.960 Does he exposit this summary law that's later fleshed out further? And we would say, well,

00:15:11.620 it is, the two tables of the law that we find in God's moral law in the Decalogue. And then,

00:15:16.360 well, what about all these civil laws? Well, the civil law seems to be a further expression of the

00:15:21.940 moral law of God to the nation state of Israel. And although we are not a nation state in the

00:15:27.360 same sense that Israel was, I mean, it's just Reformed Confessional 101, both the Westminster

00:15:34.540 and the 1689 that I would prescribe to both speak of the civil law and its general equity being

00:15:40.040 applied. And for me, it's very personal. I want to defend this because I'm a pastor and I feed

00:15:44.820 my family. And that's precisely what the apostle Paul does is he takes the general equity of not

00:15:49.860 muzzling the ox while he treads the grain and says, God is concerned for more than oxen that

00:15:55.140 in the same way, the general equity of this is the worker deserves the wages. And let's apply this

00:15:59.980 to pastors. And I don't think the apostle Paul is saying it only applies to pastors

00:16:03.700 and it would have no application unless I, with apostolic authority, explicitly wrote it down

00:16:08.940 and scripture rated it, but no, I think he's saying, he's showing us a method of this is how

00:16:14.060 to use the law of God. And I think, you know, he's making an argument from the lesser to the

00:16:19.780 greater in a sense that he's saying it applies even to pastors. And certainly I think he would 0.71

00:16:25.320 say especially pastors, but it seems to imply that he's saying this principle applies to all

00:16:29.600 vocation. Outside of vocational ministry, workers deserve wages and he's using the civil law of God

00:16:36.200 to do it. And with children obeying their parents, belonging to the moral law, the fifth commandment,

00:16:41.080 the crazy thing to me is that under the new covenant, the apostle Paul, this is after the

00:16:46.220 life, death, resurrection, ascension, and even the outpoint of the spirit, the new covenant is here

00:16:51.700 and in effect inaugurated by Christ. And the apostle doesn't blush for a moment saying that

00:16:56.580 the law is still imposed. And he also, without equivocation, says that the promise, and this is

00:17:05.320 the first commandment with a promise that it may go well the promise is still good and and and we

00:17:09.880 start to blush i think in our gospel centered everything reformed quasi camp that that we're

00:17:15.160 like well but but is that the prosperity gospel and i want to say no that's the the bible that's

00:17:20.920 the bible what what is is that part of what you're getting at yeah what you've um i mean what you've

00:17:27.340 done there is is taken taken the discussion a step further um beyond the generalities of the

00:17:35.040 abiding authority of god's law which of course let's remember that jesus fully assumed um in

00:17:41.300 fact uh there in matthew 5 17 following jesus is absolutely explicit that he came not to abolish

00:17:48.480 the law but to fulfill it certainly one of the implications of that word fulfill play root

00:17:53.900 is to put into force um and that's clear from the fact that he says heaven and earth isn't going to

00:18:00.600 pass away not not one punctuation mark i should say of the law is going to pass till everything

00:18:05.840 has been accomplished till everything is fulfilled and um and he says those who teach and do these

00:18:13.440 things will be called great not in the older covenant but in the kingdom of heaven and those

00:18:19.340 who teach people to disobey them and do likewise will be the least so there is you're actually

00:18:25.100 talking about people now who claim to be inside the covenant who actually are believers but who

00:18:30.780 actually uh teach people to disobey god's commands now you the issue of love there is that you've

00:18:37.480 raised is absolutely central because of course the central the core meaning of the uh the moral

00:18:44.460 aspect of our lives is love love to god and love to neighbor and jesus summarizes the law in those

00:18:50.460 terms and he says if you love me you will obey my commandments and paul basically says the same

00:18:57.180 thing in romans 13 when he says love does no wrong to its neighbor therefore love is the fulfillment

00:19:03.680 of the law and he lifts he lists a number of the commandments from the decalogue he says love is

00:19:08.880 doing this so oftentimes when we speak of loving our neighbor or especially when we think about

00:19:14.820 loving our enemy we tend to have in mind as evangelicals you know working up feelings of

00:19:18.880 emotional affection for people. That's not what love to our neighbor means. Love of neighbor,

00:19:25.320 love even of enemy means to obey God's law with respect to them. And that's what the scripture

00:19:31.500 is driving at. And so the reality of the abiding validity of the law that you've touched on is

00:19:38.900 actually given to us in very much in the language of the gospel in Jeremiah chapter 31, which is

00:19:45.940 quoted again in Hebrews chapter eight, where we're told that the meaning of the new covenant

00:19:50.740 is that the law of God is going to, that was written on tablets of stone is now in the new

00:19:56.960 covenant written on the tables of our hearts. It's written into the core of our being. So the

00:20:03.200 law is not abolished. The location of the law has changed. The location of the law is no longer the

00:20:09.260 Ark of the Covenant. It's in the new temple, the people of God inscribed into our hearts. That is

00:20:17.020 the new covenant. And so you're right in thinking and saying that it would seem like an almost

00:20:23.120 bizarre contradiction to think that now that we are in Christ, the very law that Jesus used to

00:20:31.140 defeat the temptation of Satan, very law which he has said is not going to pass away, should somehow

00:20:39.020 now be utterly abandoned so that my arbitrary ideas and my arbitrary thoughts about what love

00:20:44.060 really looks like right um can be applied by me right well i mean that that's basically what

00:20:49.980 we're saying and people wouldn't put it into those terms but that is precisely i think the

00:20:54.180 heart of the matter is that people are saying god used to tell people what love is god used to be

00:21:00.580 the standard and now we are the standard right that the that the law of god has been replaced

00:21:06.340 by autonomy and the God of Yahweh has been replaced by demos, you know, might makes right

00:21:13.260 and the, you know, the 50% plus one can impose their will on the minority. And I like what you

00:21:21.040 said. I think it's really helpful that it's not that the law was abrogated, it was fulfilled by

00:21:25.140 Christ, but it's not that the law was abrogated by Christ and done away with. He says precisely

00:21:30.440 the opposite, but the law was just relocated. I like the way that it went from the Ark of the

00:21:38.040 Covenant. It went from something outside of us to something inside of us, and that's precisely what

00:21:41.740 makes the New Covenant. The New Covenant is not merely bigger or wider in its scope, but it's

00:21:46.800 deeper and better in the depth of its promises, and precisely one of those is that I will cause

00:21:52.900 you to walk in my statutes. I will put the fear of myself within you. I will write my law on your

00:21:58.460 hearts no longer will one say to the other you know know the lord for you shall all know me from

00:22:02.980 the least to the greatest and that that seems to be the the major transitioning component from the

00:22:08.660 old to the new is not the doing away of god's law but the the relocation of the law of god to where

00:22:14.880 we would it would be even more intimately known by god's people that we couldn't miss it precisely

00:22:21.540 precisely but we're missing it dr we're we are missing it it seems uh what what's going on with

00:22:29.060 that well we we we we're not seeing the the law as a gift of grace um and uh you know when god

00:22:37.620 covenants with man uh it's it's a it's a it it's a form of of treaty uh of an ancient kind um that

00:22:48.340 is a greater with a lesser and therefore his covenanting with us is an act of grace and when

00:22:55.340 jesus sits at the the table the the passover feast and he cuts covenant with the disciples

00:23:03.680 he he is of course introducing a new priesthood we do know that the book of hebrews is clear that

00:23:12.580 the Aaronic priesthood, is lesser than the priesthood and the order of Melchizedek.

00:23:19.500 Of course, we're reminded in scripture that Abraham paid a tithe to the priest king of Salem. 0.91

00:23:26.320 And Levi in his loins.

00:23:29.240 Exactly.

00:23:30.300 We're the Levi in his loins.

00:23:32.420 And so there is a greater priesthood that has come now in and through the Lord Jesus Christ.

00:23:37.840 And that's, of course, a priesthood to which we belong.

00:23:39.920 we are priests uh in the prophets priests and kings in the lord jesus christ we're a royal

00:23:46.060 priesthood a holy nation so there's been a change in the priesthood and uh the blood that now

00:23:53.420 cleanses us from sin in a way that the blood of bulls and goats couldn't is the blood of the lord

00:23:58.140 jesus christ and that's the cup of the new covenant but you'll notice that jesus doesn't

00:24:02.280 introduce a new 10 commandments when he cuts covenant with his disciples what he adds is

00:24:08.660 there's a new commandment i am giving to you love one another as i have loved you so there is

00:24:16.140 something about the the way in which christians love and serve and treat one another uh this

00:24:22.060 internalizing this radical internalizing of the reality of the gospel but uh in in this great in

00:24:28.520 the in jesus is the greater moses remember that the life of jesus recapitulates the journey of

00:24:34.220 Israel. So, cry out of Egypt, I have called my son. The Lord Jesus, of course, after his birth

00:24:42.140 in Bethlehem because of the persecution of Herod, they're down in Egypt. They come out of Egypt.

00:24:48.740 Christ goes through the waters, just like Israel, at his baptism. Then he goes out into the

00:24:54.260 wilderness, just like Israel, to be tempted, to be tested. Unlike Israel, he defeats temptation. 0.93

00:25:02.400 he overcomes in the wilderness then he goes up onto the mountain as the greater moses

00:25:07.340 he doesn't contradict moses he doesn't say you've heard moses said but i'm i need to correct that

00:25:13.580 and tell you this he says you have heard that it was said but i say to you and what jesus does is

00:25:19.880 the greater moses is interpret that's right the law over against the distorted interpretations

00:25:26.380 of the scribes and pharisees and he every time he raises the bar he's yeah exactly he is it's

00:25:30.920 expositional preaching. Jesus' Sermon on the Mount is, he's taking Old Testament texts,

00:25:35.400 the Word of God, and not doing away with it and saying, well, the Word of God is no longer

00:25:38.720 relevant, and so I'm going to give you a topical sermon of my own fancy. No, it's an expositional

00:25:42.980 sermon. Here is the Old Testament text, and this is its meaning because Jesus was coming into a

00:25:49.180 context where it had been stripped of its meaning, and it had been reinterpreted by the scribes and

00:25:58.900 And the leaders in Israel, the men of the law, reinterpreted in such a way that it could be kept by them but could not be kept by the common people.

00:26:08.560 And Jesus comes and shows how the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes were actually not keeping the law.

00:26:17.080 And in some sense, they were keeping the letter, but denying the very spirit and the heart of the law, the equity of the law, and also convicting the people.

00:26:24.800 That's precisely what Jesus accuses them of.

00:26:26.580 Right.

00:26:26.880 he accuses them of neither knowing the scriptures nor the power of god so often christians tend to

00:26:33.540 think that oh you see jesus rebuked the pharisees because they were such law they were all focused

00:26:37.700 on law no jesus actually accused them of breaking the law uh in fact in uh in i think it's um

00:26:45.840 uh i think it's mark 7 maybe um matthew or or the other way around matthew 15 somewhere there

00:26:52.920 where jesus is dealing with parents caring for parents and uh he actually rebukes the pharisees

00:27:01.300 for setting aside god's commandments and he says many other such things you do um so that was jesus

00:27:10.060 rabbi jesus's issue with the pharisees was their faulty uh interpretation of the law right not that

00:27:17.320 they were legalistic but they were actually a antinomian they were against law they were lawless

00:27:21.780 Real quick, would you agree that 2 Thessalonians, so as I've been evolving in my doctrine of post-millennial eschatology and these kinds of things, I've come to where I would now stand that the man of lawlessness in 2 Thessalonians 2 is probably, although I may not be able to pinpoint the precise individual, but I would see this as a partial preterist, as something that's already been fulfilled, and that it's not some Roman emperor, not some Gentile pagan,

00:27:50.840 but the man of lawlessness who sits in the temple that this is before the temple fell in 80 70 and

00:27:57.280 the destruction of the temple and that it was a jew that was perhaps even the high priest that

00:28:01.840 the apostle was saying that guy who represents all the law of israel is actually he himself the

00:28:07.720 lawless one what do you think about that interpretation yeah i i'm myself impartial

00:28:14.820 preterist so i i would uh i would broadly go along with that i think what's what's significant

00:28:19.960 is that uh when the bible speaks when when the bible speaks about sin it defines sin is defined

00:28:27.240 in the bible as lawlessness and satan is the lawless one and antichrist is the man of lawlessness

00:28:36.980 so those things should immediately alert us to the issue that there is a problem with lawlessness

00:28:44.200 Lawlessness is the essence of what it means to be anti-Christ.

00:28:48.920 And, of course, the Apostle Paul, you took us to Thessalonians there.

00:28:53.580 You've mentioned the Apostle Paul's use of the case law.

00:28:58.020 His application, of course, about you mentioned parents and honoring our parents.

00:29:06.580 Let it may go well with us.

00:29:08.600 And interestingly, he changes, he adapts the promise at the end.

00:29:12.580 He says, instead of saying that it may go well with you and live long in the land, he says that you may live long in the earth.

00:29:18.520 So you see the expansion of the implication of the law there from a local promise in Canaan to this cosmic promise.

00:29:28.860 And Paul, as you said, was totally comfortable with taking a case law about the ox treading out the grain and applying that to Christian ministry.

00:29:39.700 And he was equally unashamed of taking the law and applying it to the civil context.

00:29:45.980 In 1 Timothy chapter 1, I think this is one of the most important texts for a proper understanding, a truly theonomic reading of Scripture.

00:29:54.620 In 1 Timothy 1, 7, well, starting at verse 8, he says,

00:29:59.380 We know that the law is good, provided one uses it legitimately.

00:30:04.220 ultimately we know that the law is not meant for a righteous person but for the lawless and

00:30:08.700 rebellious for the ungodly and sinful for the unholy and irreverent for those who kill their 0.99

00:30:14.620 fathers and mothers for murderers for the sexually immoral and homosexuals for kidnappers liars 0.99

00:30:20.760 perjurers and for whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching and listen to this based on 1.00

00:30:27.320 the glorious gospel of the blessed god which was entrusted to me paul actually says there

00:30:33.440 not only is he citing multiple commands out of the decalogue and applying it in a civil sense

00:30:39.300 who is the law made for he actually says that this is based on the gospel this isn't some law gospel

00:30:46.180 radical dualism this is this is rooted in the reality of the gospel of the kingdom and the

00:30:52.000 gospel of the kingdom is about the rule and reign of the lord jesus christ if you ever ever heard of

00:30:56.020 a king who has no kingdom and a kingdom with no law. Christ is the king. He has a kingdom and his

00:31:04.780 kingdom is governed by law. It's the rule of law. And it's the same law for the stranger and the

00:31:09.480 alien, as well as for the covenant member, for the true Israelite. And so Paul is totally

00:31:20.020 unashamed of making direct applications of the law to the civil sphere. And he's saying that this

00:31:26.940 is in accordance with the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then he takes the case laws

00:31:31.280 and he applies the general equity of those laws into a variety of circumstances. So in some

00:31:36.660 respects, we could look at it in saying that God, who is the giver of his law, of course, God is

00:31:43.620 above law god is god is the law giver he's not subject to law but he binds himself to his covenant

00:31:50.380 with us and in history all law is temporal law and of course this is where the tomists and the

00:31:57.240 natural law theorists and the natural theologians go wrong they want they want an eternal uh abstract

00:32:04.580 principle of law that everybody's reason somehow participates in and they think that they can

00:32:09.660 they don't really need god's revealed law because the men of right reason will participate it's

00:32:15.960 somehow in eternal law through natural law but god's law is actually god positivizes makes

00:32:25.980 concrete applies the law of love in giving the decalogue and then it's the responsibility of

00:32:34.180 magistrates and the of course Moses and those who are going to govern the people to then take

00:32:43.400 minimal cases in these where the law of God is actually applied and so of course that is where

00:32:52.560 we get to the nitty-gritty of all of this and this is often where great offense is caused by

00:32:57.420 God's law because it's not left in the abstract as sort of eternal rational principles in the

00:33:03.880 Greek sense, but it's concretized and it's positivized. And the first positivization

00:33:10.820 of the law of love is God himself in the Decalogue. And then human beings have the

00:33:18.100 responsibility and obligation to take God's revealed law, to look at all of the cases where

00:33:25.680 faithful people, especially what we see revealed in scripture, not just what maybe Alfred the

00:33:32.120 great did with it that's the first codification of of um common law which of course is all of

00:33:37.520 our tradition in in the uh england america canada um you have the the uh it's it's alfred the great

00:33:46.000 who who embarks on the first codification of uh common law uh and uh and and it builds up case

00:33:54.840 by case over year after year after year and of course that's the the beauty of the of the

00:34:01.260 inheritance of the common law and of the tradition that we have in the West that's given to us

00:34:07.020 directly from Israel. It comes to us from Israel, this duty to positivize and apply the reality of

00:34:14.960 God's law. We've come to a point in our history, probably mainly because of the cultural pressure 0.55

00:34:20.860 all around us, where it is a tragedy to see so many Christians who either, we can have sympathy,

00:34:30.020 we should say, with those who have not been exposed to the reality of God's law anymore.

00:34:35.380 The law of God used to be hanging on the walls of crown courts in England and Canada. It used

00:34:43.160 to be part of our Sunday liturgies. The Ten Commandments would have been displayed in most

00:34:47.340 of our churches. Many of those things have slowly disappeared. We can have sympathy with the

00:34:53.880 Christian who's not really been taught God's law. What is more difficult to understand is where 0.60

00:34:59.200 evangelicals who should know better have an antipathy towards this law of liberty as james

00:35:06.480 calls it the law of love uh this this law that um is the god's gift to us as not the source of life

00:35:16.560 that's the lord jesus christ through the regenerating power of the holy spirit but the

00:35:20.320 way of life that's why god says this is the way walk in it that's really really helpful

00:35:26.240 real quick addressing i know that we need to come to a close here in a moment but addressing the

00:35:31.760 the concept of natural law and guys like john locke and those kinds of things so if if i were

00:35:37.780 to borrow that term for a moment i would i would apply that term and i'm sure it'd be more helpful

00:35:42.820 to use another term but i would say that natural law if i find it anywhere in the scripture it

00:35:47.260 would be romans chapter not one being natural revelation but romans chapter two that the

00:35:52.280 Gentiles, even those who have received no measure of special revelation, God's revealed law in his

00:35:58.700 law word, they've still received a measure of God's moral law simply by virtue of being

00:36:07.260 fallen creatures, yes, but a vestige of the image of God still remaining, creatures made in the

00:36:12.380 image of God living in God's world. By virtue of living in God's world with God's order and God's

00:36:17.180 rules for his world, working as they do, and the law of God being written on their hearts

00:36:22.360 and the conscience of man, even though he lies and attempts to suppress the truth and 0.97

00:36:27.000 deeds of unrighteousness, there's still a sense in which the Gentile who's never received

00:36:31.840 a missionary, never received an apostolic message or a scroll or anything else, he is 0.76

00:36:36.860 a law unto himself so that he is rightly judged.

00:36:40.140 He's without an apologia, and I'm going back and forth between Romans 2 and 1 here, but

00:36:44.180 he has no excuse because this is what i always say to people when they get upset about god's

00:36:49.700 law really they're upset that they're they're upset about the fact that there's a god in heaven

00:36:53.340 that he has a standard they don't think that the god who created the entire world and created them

00:36:58.220 has the right to have a standard and and what i always say is well do you have a standard

00:37:03.860 and you impose your standard not oh this is the rule that i live by no you no nobody does that 0.85

00:37:09.860 that's hypocritical. That's not honest. You have a standard and you impose it on others. That's 0.84

00:37:14.900 why you get offended, right? When others do to you what you would say that I would never do to

00:37:22.060 anybody else. That's why you're horribly offended because they did not uphold your standard. You

00:37:26.980 didn't make them. You didn't create them from the dust of the ground. You didn't knit them together

00:37:31.340 in their mother's womb or anything. And yet you think that you have the right to impose a standard

00:37:35.300 to them without even being able to objectively determine whether or not your standard is

00:37:40.320 actually moral, whether or not it's actually good.

00:37:43.200 Your standard is very likely flawed.

00:37:46.000 And my point is that the apostle Paul seems to say that the Gentiles, they themselves 0.96

00:37:50.460 have a standard and they can't even keep their own standard. 0.95

00:37:53.620 How in the world do they think that they could stand before a thrice holy God?

00:37:56.940 And so therefore they are guilty whether they've ever received a single page of scripture or

00:38:01.760 not, simply by natural revelation and the law of God. It's two components. It's God revealing his

00:38:07.900 eternal power and divine nature by what he has made, that which is physical, the cosmos outside

00:38:13.460 of them, but then also within them and the way that God has created them in his very image,

00:38:18.880 that image tarnished by the fall, but a vestige of the image of God remaining nonetheless. And so

00:38:24.340 my point is, I would want to say that if natural law is anything, it's that. It's Romans 2,

00:38:30.060 what Paul's getting at. But then what I would say is that the natural law that Paul's getting at in

00:38:34.580 Romans 2, there seems to be no distinction between that and moral law, the 10 commandments found in

00:38:40.240 the Decalogue. It seems that there's not one commandment, and I would include even the Sabbath,

00:38:44.380 again, by virtue of natural revelation. There are people who rejected God, they were deist or they

00:38:49.780 were agnostic, who still recognize that just with agriculture, farming the land for six years and

00:38:56.400 then giving it a break on the seventh was good for producing more crops, right?

00:39:00.640 That just the fabric of the world and the way that God designed it spoke to a Sabbath

00:39:05.860 rest and a one in seven principle.

00:39:09.000 And so my point is, I really think that if there is natural law that comes apart from

00:39:13.340 special revelation, it would be the 10 commandments, that there is a God and therefore we should

00:39:19.920 love him and worship him and have no other gods before him.

00:39:22.900 And that this God, no one has seen him.

00:39:24.880 That seems apparently obvious, natural that we could conclude no one's seen him.

00:39:28.840 Therefore, we shouldn't try to construct visible images, but rather worship through faith.

00:39:33.000 Faith does not come by seeing, but rather by hearing and hearing the word of Christ.

00:39:36.900 And that we should worship this God, not in a trivial or trite manner, but with sincerity,

00:39:40.660 not taking his name in vain.

00:39:42.100 The Sabbath principle I've already addressed.

00:39:43.980 And then Paul explicitly cites many of the laws regarding neighbors, such as murder in 0.99

00:39:49.460 Romans chapter two with the Gentiles. 0.90

00:39:50.380 So my point is, if there is natural law, I would see it as synonymous with moral law revealed by two parts, natural revelation and the Imago Dei.

00:40:02.920 And then that's simply, in my assessment, simply confirmed through revealed special revelation in the Decalogue, in the law, the moral law given to Moses on the mountain.

00:40:13.060 so so my i guess my point is to say that the guy who tries to get away from from moral law and adopt

00:40:21.360 natural law he seems to be doing it as a deist or agnostic to somehow lower the bar but i don't see

00:40:27.820 how it would what how would you respond to that yeah no i think that um the the part of the

00:40:34.400 challenge with the the expressions natural law um um natural theology is of course they do tend

00:40:41.280 to mean different things to different people. And because of the Western tradition and the influence

00:40:48.220 of the very powerful influence of Greek thought in the Western tradition, even in the Western

00:40:52.920 theological tradition, sometimes the word nature comes with a certain freight that the Bible

00:40:59.120 doesn't actually bring with it that you and I wouldn't carry. So I prefer to use terms like

00:41:03.760 creation uh law creational law or um uh creational norms uh because i as i expressed at the beginning

00:41:14.080 or every word of god is law and every aspect of creation is governed by his law yes the paul says

00:41:20.560 the work of god's law uh is known in man it's part of the very the fact that we're creatures of god

00:41:28.160 There is that abiding testimony, not just within the creation of Psalm 19, of course, speaks about and talks about the way in which even though there's no verbal speech, there is knowledge that goes forth from the reality of creation.

00:41:48.800 The prophet Isaiah points out that God teaches the farmer.

00:41:52.460 So there is an encounter with God's normative structure.

00:41:56.220 Right. The problem, of course, is that in a fallen and a broken world where man is a sinner, God never left man simply to look at nature in a neutral, autonomous way and interpret it for himself.

00:42:09.280 There was always, from the very beginning, verbal revelation.

00:42:13.160 And I don't think we can underestimate either the way in which the spread of the, I mean, don't forget, we're all descended from one human family.

00:42:22.520 So the man's knowledge of what God requires is also going to be orally passed on and spread in those terms.

00:42:32.020 So there's both a cultural transmission, but God has to, of course, call out a special people for himself where he's going to republish the reality of that law.

00:42:43.540 And that's what the, I think, Ten Commandments represents.

00:42:46.840 I think the danger, and I think sometimes this is what's happened with some Christians, some evangelicals, some even reformed people today who are uncomfortable with or hostile towards discussion around God's law and its abiding validity and its applicability, is they almost sort of see natural law as a place that they could retreat to that's going to be more neutral.

00:43:11.080 it's going to be more acceptable to non-Christian people because it's just nature and it's man's

00:43:15.820 reason that engages with it whereas this this um how can a specific concrete positivized law like

00:43:23.580 the decalogue and the case law that comes with it be in any way universal and of course what you

00:43:29.140 find though with the rationalistic philosophers and the natural law theorists is they actually

00:43:33.060 can't agree on what natural law really is what what what is it actually teaching what is the

00:43:39.000 body of laws that natural law is actually delivered to man and in a in a in a darwinist

00:43:45.780 framework and you look at you look at a a hindu framework or pantheistic framework you look at 0.97

00:43:51.060 the law structures that have been present in indigenous cultures and so on i wouldn't want 1.00

00:43:56.540 to live in one right the the the you know idolatrous idol worshiping child sacrificing 1.00

00:44:03.500 um uh sexually promiscuous uh cultures that it took the evangelization of the world to bring 0.77

00:44:12.400 to bear the reality of god's law and that's an inheritance we can't squander left only to our 0.57

00:44:17.860 own reason because of our fallen state as paul says in romans eight man is an enmity with god

00:44:23.560 he cannot submit himself to the law of god he won't do so that's why we need the regenerating

00:44:28.520 work of the of the holy spirit amen well this has been wonderfully helpful dr boot i there's so much

00:44:35.460 more that we could talk about um but i think the best solution is to call it quits for today and

00:44:39.860 just have you back every single week from here on can i get your commitment no but we'd love that

00:44:45.260 in the future we'll have you back on again and and take some of these that because there's so

00:44:50.220 much more we could say we've just kind of scratched the surface and we could talk about many scriptures

00:44:53.860 And I think a helpful discussion would be to talk more about, okay, why is there, what's behind some of the hostility and so on?

00:45:01.780 I think that would be a very interesting discussion to have.

00:45:04.560 I think so.

00:45:04.880 Because when you consider Psalm 1, Psalm 19, Psalm 119, the longest chapter in the Bible, which is a song, a celebration of the beauty, the wonder, the gift, the privileged gift of God's law.

00:45:19.760 When you think that the role of the prophets was to call people back to God's law, to remind them of the covenant law.

00:45:26.780 When you think about Proverbs and the wisdom literature, and you see that that's a father teaching his son God's law.

00:45:33.540 And then when you think about the Lord Jesus on the mountain of transfiguration and who appears with him on the mountain to speak about the exodus that he was about to accomplish.

00:45:42.920 That's the word there. The exodus. It is Moses and Elijah.

00:45:48.160 it's the unity of the law and the prophets with the lord jesus christ and i think when we start

00:45:52.960 to see the beauty and the glory of this and and the gift of the gracious gift of of god's law to

00:45:59.840 us as his people we don't take the we don't when we when we wash when we're when we go to do our

00:46:06.240 ablutions we don't take that the law functions in many respects for us like a mirror and we don't

00:46:11.600 pull the mirror off the wall as christians and wash our face in the mirror no we we when you go

00:46:16.720 go to the washroom you wash with water but the mirror shows you your condition and the the law 0.72

00:46:23.740 of God is not that which washes us the blood of Christ washes and cleanses us but the mirror

00:46:29.300 that the law functions as that mirror for us even as believers to guide our sanctification

00:46:34.940 and we're obligated to teach it and instruct not just our children not just our churches but the

00:46:41.120 culture all the nations in the gift of god's law and look what's happened joel in that culture now

00:46:48.140 in the west where we have neglected that as goes the church so goes the world amen and i i think

00:46:54.640 just landing the plane with with what you said earlier the law being synonymous with love um

00:47:01.340 you know we say well don't impose the law on unbelievers it's not universal this is just the

00:47:06.560 law for Christians. But if we see the law as loving, then it simply raises the question,

00:47:11.640 what am I called to do with my unbelieving neighbor? Am I called to love him? There would

00:47:16.140 be no qualms, no pushback if we said, but we're called to love our brothers. The scripture talks

00:47:22.880 about that. First John talks about if anyone hates his brother, fellow Christians must love

00:47:26.500 fellow Christians. That's one of the signs that we've truly been born again and that the love of

00:47:29.800 Christ abides in us, but are we called to love unbelievers? And every gospel-centered Tim Keller

00:47:37.340 loving guy would come out of the woodworks and say, yes, we're called to love not just Christians,

00:47:41.680 but love the culture is pointing the culture and society and even unbelievers back to the law of

00:47:49.860 God loving. But we don't see that. And I think that reveals, that shows our hand. We don't see

00:47:54.740 the law of God as something that is loving, that brings about flourishing and life and prosperity.

00:47:59.800 but rather binding and oppressive. 1.00

00:48:02.440 And that's why we don't want to share it with the unbeliever 0.91

00:48:04.440 because we want to love the unbeliever and not hurt him. 0.91

00:48:07.680 And we see the law of God is harmful.

00:48:10.060 That's really what I think it comes down to

00:48:12.480 and it's destroyed churches

00:48:14.540 and it's destroyed society and culture.

00:48:16.580 Yeah, thank you so much for coming on the show.

00:48:18.920 Dr. Boot, God bless you.

00:48:20.640 Please continue with your ministry.

00:48:21.940 We're praying for you.

00:48:23.140 My privilege.

00:48:23.740 Thanks for having me.

00:48:24.380 God bless.

00:48:24.920 Thanks so much for listening.

00:48:26.140 But real quick, before you go,

00:48:27.840 do us a small favor.

00:48:29.160 take a moment and leave us a five-star review if you enjoyed the show. This is undoubtedly

00:48:34.500 the best way that you can help us get this biblically faithful content

00:48:38.620 to as many people as possible. Thanks so much.

The NXR Podcast - January 03, 2023

THEOLOGY APPLIED - The Theonomy Controversy ｜ with Dr. Joe Boot

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