00:02:05.360So we are keeping the conference as is with Dr. Joe Boot and Dr. James White and Dale
00:02:11.380Partridge and myself, all things theonomy and post-millennialism, but I do want you
00:02:16.780to get excited. Even if you weren't able to get a ticket, we have at least a couple hundred more
00:02:22.100people that wanted to come to this conference, try to purchase a ticket. But the good news is
00:02:26.620we've officially decided that we're going to do the conference again the following year. So in
00:02:32.2202024, probably sometime in March or April, we're going to hold the conference again. We're going
00:02:38.140to do our best to double the speaker list, double the size of the venue. It'll be bigger and better
00:02:44.240than ever before. So hang in there, hold tight. And in the meantime, you can satisfy your appetite
00:02:51.280for theonomy and post-millennialism by listening to this episode.
00:02:55.580Applying God's word to every aspect of life. This is Theology Applied.
00:03:05.640All right, welcome back to another episode of Theology Applied. I am your host, Pastor Joel
00:03:09.940Webin with Right Response Ministries, and I am very privileged to welcome back to our show a
00:03:14.460returning guest, Dr. Joe Boot with the Ezra Institute. Joe Boot, would you just introduce
00:03:19.340yourself or any of our new listeners who may not be aware of you and your ministry? Sure, Joel.
00:03:24.420Thanks ever so much for having me back on the show. It's great to be with you again.
00:03:29.060I apologize that I'm slightly dark in the background here. We've got a very complicated
00:03:35.360There's a bunch of things going on right now, so I'm not in my usual spot.
00:03:38.900But, yes, the Ezra Institute, we are a Christian world and life view ministry, cultural apologetics.
00:03:46.960We're essentially a think tank that was launched in Canada back in 2008.
00:03:54.720And since I planted that ministry, the team has grown.
00:03:58.560Our 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.
00:04:18.040And we have an office in Canada, in the Niagara region of Ontario.
00:04:27.220And 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.
00:04:42.100Well, what I wanted to discuss with you is all things theonomy.
00:04:46.320We've talked about post-millennialism the last time that you came on the show, and I'm sure that
00:04:50.640that may come up, but I really want us to focus our attention on theonomy. And I wanted to begin
00:04:55.980by kind of just addressing the elephant in the room. Not everybody tends to be a fan, Dr. Boot.
00:05:00.920It seems like some people have a strong aversion towards theonomy, or at least the term. It brings
00:05:06.800up certain connotations for people that are probably misinformed, but nonetheless, people
00:05:11.980kind of recoil. They immediately think when you say theonomy that you're going to start rounding
00:05:18.120up Muslims and publicly hanging them or whatever it might be. And so I wanted to just first start0.98
00:05:25.700with definitions. If we could just, I think there's a spectrum of theonomic thought, just
00:05:31.820like there is with any theology, not everybody who holds to covenant theology. There are multiple
00:05:37.200different expressions of covenant theology and so i wanted to talk about the different um variations
00:05:43.440of of theonomic thought but first could we just get at kind of the 30 000 foot view a general
00:05:49.320definition what is theonomy well part of the problem uh has become with with the the term
00:05:56.400is that it's a bit like if for somebody to be called a theonomist is a bit like being called
00:06:01.940a charismatic or an evangelical uh these days both of those terms need qualifying
00:06:10.200uh because of exactly as you've described it that the uh diversity of opinion that exists
00:06:18.140around these these terms um and also that the term has become pejorative really so that it's
00:06:27.760almost used as an insult uh these days uh and so i think that sort of atmosphere around the word
00:06:35.540the sort of connotation of the word uh has come about because it's almost become a pejorative
00:06:41.580expression and uh it does need qualification but very simply theonomy uh theos uh theonomos means
00:06:52.940god's law so the word itself simply means god's law and uh i think in many respects that's the
00:07:03.380that's how we should define it theonomy just means god's law and uh what what are we going
00:07:11.840to do with god's law becomes the question now what has uh tended to happen is that the that
00:07:21.400term has become associated with a movement, and it's generally tied to other terms like
00:07:28.720dominionism, which is often linked to post-millennialism, and then words like
00:07:35.820reconstruction and so on. And this all helps to generate this kind of boogeyman image for
00:07:42.800theonomy, but it really simply means God's law. And when at the beginning of creation,
00:07:52.260the place I start is at the beginning of creation, God speaks in Genesis 1, the 10 words,
00:08:00.840let there be. And this is 10 times that God speaks the creative word. And then in the book
00:08:12.880of Exodus, in Exodus 20, and of course republished there in Deuteronomy 5,
00:08:19.960the scripture actually says that God spoke the 10 words. We talk about the 10 commandments,
00:08:26.120but he spoke the 10 words and god spoke from the glory cloud it wasn't moses speaking
00:08:36.700the people drew near close to the mountain and and and they heard the the voice of god and god
00:08:45.000spoke and he and he wrote with his own finger uh the the 10 words what we call the 10 commandments
00:08:51.900And 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.
00:09:07.460Creation is the instantiation of the word of God.
00:09:14.240So God's word, God's law word, holds all of creation together.
00:09:19.340In him, all things consist, all things hold together.
00:09:23.520And 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.
00:09:36.560So 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.
00:09:44.580And God speaks 10 words again when he speaks his commandments, his law to the covenant people.
00:09:53.780And the fact that the creation word and the commandments are both 10 words spoken by God himself is very, very important biblically.
00:10:05.380And 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.
00:10:26.760And so there are different spheres of law, but God governs the totality of his creation by law.
00:10:34.040And 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.
00:10:45.200This is the law of God that binds every person, just as the creation law binds all of, the creation word binds all of creation.
00:10:54.260So God's covenant word, his covenant law that he spoke from the glory cloud, those 10 words bind all human beings.
00:11:07.200But you're wanting, I'm sure, in part to tease out some of the accretions around this.
00:11:16.360I like the way John Frame actually describes it.
00:11:18.940He 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.
00:11:40.920And 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.
00:12:08.920and uh i think that uh i mean it was very specifically we can say that theonomy in this
00:12:16.480sense within the reformed tradition is a theory within christian ethics so i like to talk about
00:12:21.660theonomy from a cosmological point of view that god's word is law his every word is law there's
00:12:27.980his creation law there's his moral law um and they're bound together and that is the way we
00:12:35.160are required to live within God's creation and we violate God's law at our peril. In the more
00:12:42.840narrow sense, we can say that theonomy is a view within Christian ethics that says we must pay
00:12:48.360particular and peculiar attention to the law of God when we not only wrestle with the meaning
00:12:56.000of sanctification as Christians, as a measure of our sanctification, but when we think about
00:13:00.960cultural, social, and political life. Amen. Yeah, I mean, it just seems to be illogical
00:13:09.840and impotent to think that God would sanctify individuals who believe the gospel and are
00:13:16.960seeking to obey his law, and yet that would have little to no effect on the societies in which
00:13:23.140they live. To me, it just seems like the logical next step in this equation that if people believe
00:13:32.360the gospel and if they're seeking to live lives that glorify God, right? Jesus says, John 14,
00:13:37.980if you love me, you'll obey me. So our response of obedience, we love because he first loved us,
00:13:45.0401 John 4, 19. So God loves us in the beloved, gives us spiritual eyes to see that love for us,
00:13:52.100that salvific love. We're born again by the work of the Spirit, regenerate, endowed with the gifts
00:13:59.180of faith and repentance, really just two sides of a singular coin, turning from sin and turning
00:14:04.400to Christ with knowledge, assent, and implicit trust. And then in that, we love God. And the
00:14:12.120very next question is, God, how do I manifest my love for you? How do you, if I'm seeking to love
00:14:20.500you in response to your great love for me, it would seem to beckon the question, well, I want
00:14:29.120to love you, therefore I want to do that which you would actually deem as loving. What do you see
00:14:34.120as loving? Obey my commands. Does Christ have any commands? Well, in fact, he has at least two.
00:14:41.080Okay, well, loving the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and loving our neighbor
00:14:44.960as ourself. So can I then take it into my own liberty that, okay, I must love God and love
00:14:52.320people, but now the onus is on me, a blank canvas for my own creative freedom and license to
00:14:59.220determine what is loving God and how I love neighbor, or does God flesh that out further?
00:15:04.960Does he exposit this summary law that's later fleshed out further? And we would say, well,
00:15:11.620it is, the two tables of the law that we find in God's moral law in the Decalogue. And then,
00:15:16.360well, what about all these civil laws? Well, the civil law seems to be a further expression of the
00:15:21.940moral law of God to the nation state of Israel. And although we are not a nation state in the
00:15:27.360same sense that Israel was, I mean, it's just Reformed Confessional 101, both the Westminster
00:15:34.540and the 1689 that I would prescribe to both speak of the civil law and its general equity being
00:15:40.040applied. And for me, it's very personal. I want to defend this because I'm a pastor and I feed
00:15:44.820my family. And that's precisely what the apostle Paul does is he takes the general equity of not
00:15:49.860muzzling the ox while he treads the grain and says, God is concerned for more than oxen that
00:15:55.140in the same way, the general equity of this is the worker deserves the wages. And let's apply this
00:15:59.980to pastors. And I don't think the apostle Paul is saying it only applies to pastors
00:16:03.700and it would have no application unless I, with apostolic authority, explicitly wrote it down
00:16:08.940and scripture rated it, but no, I think he's saying, he's showing us a method of this is how
00:16:14.060to use the law of God. And I think, you know, he's making an argument from the lesser to the
00:16:19.780greater in a sense that he's saying it applies even to pastors. And certainly I think he would0.71
00:16:25.320say especially pastors, but it seems to imply that he's saying this principle applies to all
00:16:29.600vocation. Outside of vocational ministry, workers deserve wages and he's using the civil law of God
00:16:36.200to do it. And with children obeying their parents, belonging to the moral law, the fifth commandment,
00:16:41.080the crazy thing to me is that under the new covenant, the apostle Paul, this is after the
00:16:46.220life, death, resurrection, ascension, and even the outpoint of the spirit, the new covenant is here
00:16:51.700and in effect inaugurated by Christ. And the apostle doesn't blush for a moment saying that
00:16:56.580the law is still imposed. And he also, without equivocation, says that the promise, and this is
00:17:05.320the first commandment with a promise that it may go well the promise is still good and and and we
00:17:09.880start to blush i think in our gospel centered everything reformed quasi camp that that we're
00:17:15.160like well but but is that the prosperity gospel and i want to say no that's the the bible that's
00:17:20.920the bible what what is is that part of what you're getting at yeah what you've um i mean what you've
00:17:27.340done there is is taken taken the discussion a step further um beyond the generalities of the
00:17:35.040abiding authority of god's law which of course let's remember that jesus fully assumed um in
00:17:41.300fact uh there in matthew 5 17 following jesus is absolutely explicit that he came not to abolish
00:17:48.480the law but to fulfill it certainly one of the implications of that word fulfill play root
00:17:53.900is to put into force um and that's clear from the fact that he says heaven and earth isn't going to
00:18:00.600pass away not not one punctuation mark i should say of the law is going to pass till everything
00:18:05.840has been accomplished till everything is fulfilled and um and he says those who teach and do these
00:18:13.440things will be called great not in the older covenant but in the kingdom of heaven and those
00:18:19.340who teach people to disobey them and do likewise will be the least so there is you're actually
00:18:25.100talking about people now who claim to be inside the covenant who actually are believers but who
00:18:30.780actually uh teach people to disobey god's commands now you the issue of love there is that you've
00:18:37.480raised is absolutely central because of course the central the core meaning of the uh the moral
00:18:44.460aspect of our lives is love love to god and love to neighbor and jesus summarizes the law in those
00:18:50.460terms and he says if you love me you will obey my commandments and paul basically says the same
00:18:57.180thing in romans 13 when he says love does no wrong to its neighbor therefore love is the fulfillment
00:19:03.680of the law and he lifts he lists a number of the commandments from the decalogue he says love is
00:19:08.880doing this so oftentimes when we speak of loving our neighbor or especially when we think about
00:19:14.820loving our enemy we tend to have in mind as evangelicals you know working up feelings of
00:19:18.880emotional affection for people. That's not what love to our neighbor means. Love of neighbor,
00:19:25.320love even of enemy means to obey God's law with respect to them. And that's what the scripture
00:19:31.500is driving at. And so the reality of the abiding validity of the law that you've touched on is
00:19:38.900actually given to us in very much in the language of the gospel in Jeremiah chapter 31, which is
00:19:45.940quoted again in Hebrews chapter eight, where we're told that the meaning of the new covenant
00:19:50.740is that the law of God is going to, that was written on tablets of stone is now in the new
00:19:56.960covenant written on the tables of our hearts. It's written into the core of our being. So the
00:20:03.200law is not abolished. The location of the law has changed. The location of the law is no longer the
00:20:09.260Ark of the Covenant. It's in the new temple, the people of God inscribed into our hearts. That is
00:20:17.020the new covenant. And so you're right in thinking and saying that it would seem like an almost
00:20:23.120bizarre contradiction to think that now that we are in Christ, the very law that Jesus used to
00:20:31.140defeat the temptation of Satan, very law which he has said is not going to pass away, should somehow
00:20:39.020now be utterly abandoned so that my arbitrary ideas and my arbitrary thoughts about what love
00:20:44.060really looks like right um can be applied by me right well i mean that that's basically what
00:20:49.980we're saying and people wouldn't put it into those terms but that is precisely i think the
00:20:54.180heart of the matter is that people are saying god used to tell people what love is god used to be
00:21:00.580the standard and now we are the standard right that the that the law of god has been replaced
00:21:06.340by autonomy and the God of Yahweh has been replaced by demos, you know, might makes right
00:21:13.260and the, you know, the 50% plus one can impose their will on the minority. And I like what you
00:21:21.040said. I think it's really helpful that it's not that the law was abrogated, it was fulfilled by
00:21:25.140Christ, but it's not that the law was abrogated by Christ and done away with. He says precisely
00:21:30.440the opposite, but the law was just relocated. I like the way that it went from the Ark of the
00:21:38.040Covenant. It went from something outside of us to something inside of us, and that's precisely what
00:21:41.740makes the New Covenant. The New Covenant is not merely bigger or wider in its scope, but it's
00:21:46.800deeper and better in the depth of its promises, and precisely one of those is that I will cause
00:21:52.900you to walk in my statutes. I will put the fear of myself within you. I will write my law on your
00:21:58.460hearts no longer will one say to the other you know know the lord for you shall all know me from
00:22:02.980the least to the greatest and that that seems to be the the major transitioning component from the
00:22:08.660old to the new is not the doing away of god's law but the the relocation of the law of god to where
00:22:14.880we would it would be even more intimately known by god's people that we couldn't miss it precisely
00:22:21.540precisely but we're missing it dr we're we are missing it it seems uh what what's going on with
00:22:29.060that well we we we we're not seeing the the law as a gift of grace um and uh you know when god
00:22:37.620covenants 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
00:22:48.340is a greater with a lesser and therefore his covenanting with us is an act of grace and when
00:22:55.340jesus sits at the the table the the passover feast and he cuts covenant with the disciples
00:23:03.680he he is of course introducing a new priesthood we do know that the book of hebrews is clear that
00:23:12.580the Aaronic priesthood, is lesser than the priesthood and the order of Melchizedek.
00:23:19.500Of course, we're reminded in scripture that Abraham paid a tithe to the priest king of Salem.0.91
00:23:32.420And so there is a greater priesthood that has come now in and through the Lord Jesus Christ.
00:23:37.840And that's, of course, a priesthood to which we belong.
00:23:39.920we are priests uh in the prophets priests and kings in the lord jesus christ we're a royal
00:23:46.060priesthood a holy nation so there's been a change in the priesthood and uh the blood that now
00:23:53.420cleanses us from sin in a way that the blood of bulls and goats couldn't is the blood of the lord
00:23:58.140jesus christ and that's the cup of the new covenant but you'll notice that jesus doesn't
00:24:02.280introduce a new 10 commandments when he cuts covenant with his disciples what he adds is
00:24:08.660there's a new commandment i am giving to you love one another as i have loved you so there is
00:24:16.140something about the the way in which christians love and serve and treat one another uh this
00:24:22.060internalizing this radical internalizing of the reality of the gospel but uh in in this great in
00:24:28.520the in jesus is the greater moses remember that the life of jesus recapitulates the journey of
00:24:34.220Israel. So, cry out of Egypt, I have called my son. The Lord Jesus, of course, after his birth
00:24:42.140in Bethlehem because of the persecution of Herod, they're down in Egypt. They come out of Egypt.
00:24:48.740Christ goes through the waters, just like Israel, at his baptism. Then he goes out into the
00:24:54.260wilderness, just like Israel, to be tempted, to be tested. Unlike Israel, he defeats temptation.0.93
00:25:02.400he overcomes in the wilderness then he goes up onto the mountain as the greater moses
00:25:07.340he doesn't contradict moses he doesn't say you've heard moses said but i'm i need to correct that
00:25:13.580and tell you this he says you have heard that it was said but i say to you and what jesus does is
00:25:19.880the greater moses is interpret that's right the law over against the distorted interpretations
00:25:26.380of the scribes and pharisees and he every time he raises the bar he's yeah exactly he is it's
00:25:30.920expositional preaching. Jesus' Sermon on the Mount is, he's taking Old Testament texts,
00:25:35.400the Word of God, and not doing away with it and saying, well, the Word of God is no longer
00:25:38.720relevant, and so I'm going to give you a topical sermon of my own fancy. No, it's an expositional
00:25:42.980sermon. Here is the Old Testament text, and this is its meaning because Jesus was coming into a
00:25:49.180context where it had been stripped of its meaning, and it had been reinterpreted by the scribes and
00:25:58.900And 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.
00:26:08.560And Jesus comes and shows how the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the scribes were actually not keeping the law.
00:26:17.080And 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.
00:26:24.800That's precisely what Jesus accuses them of.
00:26:26.880he accuses them of neither knowing the scriptures nor the power of god so often christians tend to
00:26:33.540think that oh you see jesus rebuked the pharisees because they were such law they were all focused
00:26:37.700on law no jesus actually accused them of breaking the law uh in fact in uh in i think it's um
00:26:45.840uh i think it's mark 7 maybe um matthew or or the other way around matthew 15 somewhere there
00:26:52.920where jesus is dealing with parents caring for parents and uh he actually rebukes the pharisees
00:27:01.300for setting aside god's commandments and he says many other such things you do um so that was jesus
00:27:10.060rabbi jesus's issue with the pharisees was their faulty uh interpretation of the law right not that
00:27:17.320they were legalistic but they were actually a antinomian they were against law they were lawless
00:27:21.780Real 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,
00:27:50.840but the man of lawlessness who sits in the temple that this is before the temple fell in 80 70 and
00:27:57.280the destruction of the temple and that it was a jew that was perhaps even the high priest that
00:28:01.840the apostle was saying that guy who represents all the law of israel is actually he himself the
00:28:07.720lawless one what do you think about that interpretation yeah i i'm myself impartial
00:28:14.820preterist so i i would uh i would broadly go along with that i think what's what's significant
00:28:19.960is that uh when the bible speaks when when the bible speaks about sin it defines sin is defined
00:28:27.240in the bible as lawlessness and satan is the lawless one and antichrist is the man of lawlessness
00:28:36.980so those things should immediately alert us to the issue that there is a problem with lawlessness
00:28:44.200Lawlessness is the essence of what it means to be anti-Christ.
00:28:48.920And, of course, the Apostle Paul, you took us to Thessalonians there.
00:28:53.580You've mentioned the Apostle Paul's use of the case law.
00:28:58.020His application, of course, about you mentioned parents and honoring our parents.
00:29:08.600And interestingly, he changes, he adapts the promise at the end.
00:29:12.580He 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.
00:29:18.520So you see the expansion of the implication of the law there from a local promise in Canaan to this cosmic promise.
00:29:28.860And 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.
00:29:39.700And he was equally unashamed of taking the law and applying it to the civil context.
00:29:45.980In 1 Timothy chapter 1, I think this is one of the most important texts for a proper understanding, a truly theonomic reading of Scripture.
00:29:54.620In 1 Timothy 1, 7, well, starting at verse 8, he says,
00:29:59.380We know that the law is good, provided one uses it legitimately.
00:30:04.220ultimately we know that the law is not meant for a righteous person but for the lawless and
00:30:08.700rebellious for the ungodly and sinful for the unholy and irreverent for those who kill their0.99
00:30:14.620fathers and mothers for murderers for the sexually immoral and homosexuals for kidnappers liars0.99
00:30:20.760perjurers and for whatever else is contrary to the sound teaching and listen to this based on1.00
00:30:27.320the glorious gospel of the blessed god which was entrusted to me paul actually says there
00:30:33.440not only is he citing multiple commands out of the decalogue and applying it in a civil sense
00:30:39.300who is the law made for he actually says that this is based on the gospel this isn't some law gospel
00:30:46.180radical dualism this is this is rooted in the reality of the gospel of the kingdom and the
00:30:52.000gospel of the kingdom is about the rule and reign of the lord jesus christ if you ever ever heard of
00:30:56.020a king who has no kingdom and a kingdom with no law. Christ is the king. He has a kingdom and his
00:31:04.780kingdom is governed by law. It's the rule of law. And it's the same law for the stranger and the
00:31:09.480alien, as well as for the covenant member, for the true Israelite. And so Paul is totally
00:31:20.020unashamed of making direct applications of the law to the civil sphere. And he's saying that this
00:31:26.940is in accordance with the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then he takes the case laws
00:31:31.280and he applies the general equity of those laws into a variety of circumstances. So in some
00:31:36.660respects, we could look at it in saying that God, who is the giver of his law, of course, God is
00:31:43.620above law god is god is the law giver he's not subject to law but he binds himself to his covenant
00:31:50.380with us and in history all law is temporal law and of course this is where the tomists and the
00:31:57.240natural law theorists and the natural theologians go wrong they want they want an eternal uh abstract
00:32:04.580principle of law that everybody's reason somehow participates in and they think that they can
00:32:09.660they don't really need god's revealed law because the men of right reason will participate it's
00:32:15.960somehow in eternal law through natural law but god's law is actually god positivizes makes
00:32:25.980concrete applies the law of love in giving the decalogue and then it's the responsibility of
00:32:34.180magistrates and the of course Moses and those who are going to govern the people to then take
00:32:43.400minimal cases in these where the law of God is actually applied and so of course that is where
00:32:52.560we get to the nitty-gritty of all of this and this is often where great offense is caused by
00:32:57.420God's law because it's not left in the abstract as sort of eternal rational principles in the
00:33:03.880Greek sense, but it's concretized and it's positivized. And the first positivization
00:33:10.820of the law of love is God himself in the Decalogue. And then human beings have the
00:33:18.100responsibility and obligation to take God's revealed law, to look at all of the cases where
00:33:25.680faithful people, especially what we see revealed in scripture, not just what maybe Alfred the
00:33:32.120great did with it that's the first codification of of um common law which of course is all of
00:33:37.520our tradition in in the uh england america canada um you have the the uh it's it's alfred the great
00:33:46.000who who embarks on the first codification of uh common law uh and uh and and it builds up case
00:33:54.840by case over year after year after year and of course that's the the beauty of the of the
00:34:01.260inheritance of the common law and of the tradition that we have in the West that's given to us
00:34:07.020directly from Israel. It comes to us from Israel, this duty to positivize and apply the reality of
00:34:14.960God's law. We've come to a point in our history, probably mainly because of the cultural pressure0.55
00:34:20.860all around us, where it is a tragedy to see so many Christians who either, we can have sympathy,
00:34:30.020we should say, with those who have not been exposed to the reality of God's law anymore.
00:34:35.380The law of God used to be hanging on the walls of crown courts in England and Canada. It used
00:34:43.160to be part of our Sunday liturgies. The Ten Commandments would have been displayed in most
00:34:47.340of our churches. Many of those things have slowly disappeared. We can have sympathy with the
00:34:53.880Christian who's not really been taught God's law. What is more difficult to understand is where0.60
00:34:59.200evangelicals who should know better have an antipathy towards this law of liberty as james
00:35:06.480calls it the law of love uh this this law that um is the god's gift to us as not the source of life
00:35:16.560that's the lord jesus christ through the regenerating power of the holy spirit but the
00:35:20.320way of life that's why god says this is the way walk in it that's really really helpful
00:35:26.240real quick addressing i know that we need to come to a close here in a moment but addressing the
00:35:31.760the concept of natural law and guys like john locke and those kinds of things so if if i were
00:35:37.780to borrow that term for a moment i would i would apply that term and i'm sure it'd be more helpful
00:35:42.820to use another term but i would say that natural law if i find it anywhere in the scripture it
00:35:47.260would be romans chapter not one being natural revelation but romans chapter two that the
00:35:52.280Gentiles, even those who have received no measure of special revelation, God's revealed law in his
00:35:58.700law word, they've still received a measure of God's moral law simply by virtue of being
00:36:07.260fallen creatures, yes, but a vestige of the image of God still remaining, creatures made in the
00:36:12.380image of God living in God's world. By virtue of living in God's world with God's order and God's
00:36:17.180rules for his world, working as they do, and the law of God being written on their hearts
00:36:22.360and the conscience of man, even though he lies and attempts to suppress the truth and0.97
00:36:27.000deeds of unrighteousness, there's still a sense in which the Gentile who's never received
00:36:31.840a missionary, never received an apostolic message or a scroll or anything else, he is0.76
00:36:36.860a law unto himself so that he is rightly judged.
00:36:40.140He's without an apologia, and I'm going back and forth between Romans 2 and 1 here, but
00:36:44.180he has no excuse because this is what i always say to people when they get upset about god's
00:36:49.700law really they're upset that they're they're upset about the fact that there's a god in heaven
00:36:53.340that he has a standard they don't think that the god who created the entire world and created them
00:36:58.220has the right to have a standard and and what i always say is well do you have a standard
00:37:03.860and you impose your standard not oh this is the rule that i live by no you no nobody does that0.85
00:37:09.860that's hypocritical. That's not honest. You have a standard and you impose it on others. That's0.84
00:37:14.900why you get offended, right? When others do to you what you would say that I would never do to
00:37:22.060anybody else. That's why you're horribly offended because they did not uphold your standard. You
00:37:26.980didn't make them. You didn't create them from the dust of the ground. You didn't knit them together
00:37:31.340in their mother's womb or anything. And yet you think that you have the right to impose a standard
00:37:35.300to them without even being able to objectively determine whether or not your standard is
00:37:40.320actually moral, whether or not it's actually good.
00:39:43.980And then Paul explicitly cites many of the laws regarding neighbors, such as murder in0.99
00:39:49.460Romans chapter two with the Gentiles.0.90
00:39:50.380So 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.
00:40:02.920And 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.
00:40:13.060so so my i guess my point is to say that the guy who tries to get away from from moral law and adopt
00:40:21.360natural law he seems to be doing it as a deist or agnostic to somehow lower the bar but i don't see
00:40:27.820how it would what how would you respond to that yeah no i think that um the the part of the
00:40:34.400challenge with the the expressions natural law um um natural theology is of course they do tend
00:40:41.280to mean different things to different people. And because of the Western tradition and the influence
00:40:48.220of the very powerful influence of Greek thought in the Western tradition, even in the Western
00:40:52.920theological tradition, sometimes the word nature comes with a certain freight that the Bible
00:40:59.120doesn't actually bring with it that you and I wouldn't carry. So I prefer to use terms like
00:41:03.760creation uh law creational law or um uh creational norms uh because i as i expressed at the beginning
00:41:14.080or every word of god is law and every aspect of creation is governed by his law yes the paul says
00:41:20.560the work of god's law uh is known in man it's part of the very the fact that we're creatures of god
00:41:28.160There 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.
00:41:48.800The prophet Isaiah points out that God teaches the farmer.
00:41:52.460So there is an encounter with God's normative structure.
00:41:56.220Right. 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.
00:42:09.280There was always, from the very beginning, verbal revelation.
00:42:13.160And 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.
00:42:22.520So the man's knowledge of what God requires is also going to be orally passed on and spread in those terms.
00:42:32.020So 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.
00:42:43.540And that's what the, I think, Ten Commandments represents.
00:42:46.840I 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.
00:43:11.080it's going to be more acceptable to non-Christian people because it's just nature and it's man's
00:43:15.820reason that engages with it whereas this this um how can a specific concrete positivized law like
00:43:23.580the decalogue and the case law that comes with it be in any way universal and of course what you
00:43:29.140find though with the rationalistic philosophers and the natural law theorists is they actually
00:43:33.060can't agree on what natural law really is what what what is it actually teaching what is the
00:43:39.000body of laws that natural law is actually delivered to man and in a in a in a darwinist
00:43:45.780framework and you look at you look at a a hindu framework or pantheistic framework you look at0.97
00:43:51.060the law structures that have been present in indigenous cultures and so on i wouldn't want1.00
00:43:56.540to live in one right the the the you know idolatrous idol worshiping child sacrificing1.00
00:44:03.500um uh sexually promiscuous uh cultures that it took the evangelization of the world to bring0.77
00:44:12.400to bear the reality of god's law and that's an inheritance we can't squander left only to our0.57
00:44:17.860own reason because of our fallen state as paul says in romans eight man is an enmity with god
00:44:23.560he cannot submit himself to the law of god he won't do so that's why we need the regenerating
00:44:28.520work of the of the holy spirit amen well this has been wonderfully helpful dr boot i there's so much
00:44:35.460more that we could talk about um but i think the best solution is to call it quits for today and
00:44:39.860just have you back every single week from here on can i get your commitment no but we'd love that
00:44:45.260in the future we'll have you back on again and and take some of these that because there's so
00:44:50.220much more we could say we've just kind of scratched the surface and we could talk about many scriptures
00:44:53.860And 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?
00:45:01.780I think that would be a very interesting discussion to have.
00:45:04.880Because 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.
00:45:19.760When you think that the role of the prophets was to call people back to God's law, to remind them of the covenant law.
00:45:26.780When you think about Proverbs and the wisdom literature, and you see that that's a father teaching his son God's law.
00:45:33.540And 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.
00:45:42.920That's the word there. The exodus. It is Moses and Elijah.
00:45:48.160it's the unity of the law and the prophets with the lord jesus christ and i think when we start
00:45:52.960to see the beauty and the glory of this and and the gift of the gracious gift of of god's law to
00:45:59.840us 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
00:46:06.240ablutions we don't take that the law functions in many respects for us like a mirror and we don't
00:46:11.600pull the mirror off the wall as christians and wash our face in the mirror no we we when you go
00:46:16.720go to the washroom you wash with water but the mirror shows you your condition and the the law0.72
00:46:23.740of God is not that which washes us the blood of Christ washes and cleanses us but the mirror
00:46:29.300that the law functions as that mirror for us even as believers to guide our sanctification
00:46:34.940and we're obligated to teach it and instruct not just our children not just our churches but the
00:46:41.120culture all the nations in the gift of god's law and look what's happened joel in that culture now
00:46:48.140in the west where we have neglected that as goes the church so goes the world amen and i i think
00:46:54.640just landing the plane with with what you said earlier the law being synonymous with love um
00:47:01.340you know we say well don't impose the law on unbelievers it's not universal this is just the
00:47:06.560law for Christians. But if we see the law as loving, then it simply raises the question,
00:47:11.640what am I called to do with my unbelieving neighbor? Am I called to love him? There would
00:47:16.140be no qualms, no pushback if we said, but we're called to love our brothers. The scripture talks
00:47:22.880about that. First John talks about if anyone hates his brother, fellow Christians must love
00:47:26.500fellow Christians. That's one of the signs that we've truly been born again and that the love of
00:47:29.800Christ abides in us, but are we called to love unbelievers? And every gospel-centered Tim Keller
00:47:37.340loving guy would come out of the woodworks and say, yes, we're called to love not just Christians,
00:47:41.680but love the culture is pointing the culture and society and even unbelievers back to the law of
00:47:49.860God loving. But we don't see that. And I think that reveals, that shows our hand. We don't see
00:47:54.740the law of God as something that is loving, that brings about flourishing and life and prosperity.
00:47:59.800but rather binding and oppressive.1.00
00:48:02.440And that's why we don't want to share it with the unbeliever0.91
00:48:04.440because we want to love the unbeliever and not hurt him.0.91