Toby J. Sumpter's Blog, page 9

Honoring Our Fatherland

We just celebrated our nation’s birthday this last week, and this conjures up many mixed feelings and questions. How do we celebrate a nation that has murdered babies by the millions? How do we celebrate a nation full of corruption and lies and scandals? And on the other hand, should Christians even celebrate our nation, since our citizenship is in Heaven and the Kingdom of God includes many nations? 

The short answer is that is a Christian duty to honor and celebrate everything good about our nation, as an extension of our duty to honor our father and mother. Just as we are to honor the law of our father and mother, and not remove the ancient landmarks established by our fathers, so too we are to honor the biblical laws of our land, as well as the good customs and traditions and true virtues of our history and people. And it is this honor and love of our particular fathers that teach us how to honor other people and nations. We can rightly love other families and nations only when we have learned to love our own. We love our neighbor as ourselves. 

The root of the word “patriot” or “patriotism” is “patria,” which comes from the word for “father.” Patriotism is love of fatherland. In other words, the root of Christian patriotism is honoring fathers. It is no accident then that as we have become a fatherless nation, our nation has reached a crisis. You cannot despise and hate the fathers in your family and church and then magically end up with faithful fathers in the public square. You get faithful fathers in the public square and a virtuous fatherland worth honoring because family fathers and church fathers faithfully lead and lay their lives down for its virtue. It is only by honoring father and mother that it can go well with us in our land. 

So we do not honor the corruption in our land, and understood rightly, every lawful means of resisting that corruption is actually true Christian patriotism. A true Christian patriot hates the evil in his nation because he loves what she ought to be. Likewise, we do not honor the failures and sins of our fathers and mothers, but we remember and celebrate all the good things in faith, asking God that it may go well with us in the land. 

Sam & Tarez

“For the LORD God is a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. O LORD of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee” (Ps. 84:11-12).

This is the message of the whole Bible: God is good.

These days, it’s common for people to wonder whether it’s even worth it to get married. Why pay all that money and get all dressed up, when you don’t even know if it’s going to work out. What if things go badly? What if he changes? What if she changes?

The answer is because God is good. 

In the beginning, God spoke the worlds into existence. And day by day, as He saw what He had made, He saw that it was good. And when He finished the heavens and the earth and everything in them, He saw that it was very good. 

When people say that just don’t know if there’s a god, when they say, they would believe if He would only reveal Himself, it’s simply astonishing. Open your eyes. Open your mouth. Open your hands. There’s goodness piled up high all around us. It’s Christmas every day. God made everything, and He made everything beautiful in its time. 

People say, yes, but there’s really horrible things in this world: tragedies, evil, cancer, disasters. What about the problem of evil? To which we say two things: first, if there is no God, then there is no such thing as evil. If there is no transcendent standard of goodness, no north star, then there’s no right and wrong, no good or evil. But everyone knows there is such a thing as evil. We know that death and dying and destruction and loss are not the way it’s supposed to be. To which we say, and God agrees. He is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. 

And the story of the Bible, the story of human history, is the story of that perfect Light overcoming the darkness. It was Adam and Eve leaving a Garden 6,000 years ago, clothed in animal skins with a promise of a seed. It was Noah and his family in an enormous boat saved through the flood. It was Abraham building altars in a land that was not his own, and his family of 70 persons growing into a great nation enslaved in Egypt, and God brought them out by His mighty arm. It was by signs and symbols, prophets and priests and kings, that God brought His light, until He sent His only Son, Jesus Christ, into the world, the Light of the World to bind and plunder the darkness of this world. And so He did: He cast out demons, He calmed the raging storms, He fed the multitudes, and He turned water into wine. And finally, He took the darkness of our sin, and shame, the darkness of death itself upon Himself on the Cross. And when He died, all of it died. When He died, the power of darkness was broken. And when He rose from the dead, He rose like the morning Sun. He rose, bringing light to the whole world. 

But then they ask, so why doesn’t He just destroy all the darkness. Why doesn’t He just make it all right, right now? And the answer is because He is God and He is good. And He knows better than anyone. Why doesn’t the Sun just appear at the zenith? Why does it take time to rise and scatter the shadows? Because God is good, and He makes everything beautiful in its time. 

But the Scriptures also say that God is patient and merciful. He is slow to anger, abounding in lovingkindness, and He does not desire that any should perish. Why doesn’t God just swallow up all the darkness in a moment? Because that would mean all of us swallowed up in a moment. We are part of the darkness. We are the Fallen, we are the rebels. We have lied and cheated and stolen and mistreated. And He waits patiently for the rebels to surrender. He waits patiently for all the wicked to lay down their arms. And while He waits, the overwhelming method that God uses to conquer the darkness is His goodness. 

While people rage and blaspheme, He sends them sunsets and good food. He sends them symphonies and laughter and turns water into wine. He sends them goodness piled on top of goodness, and rebels turn away. The wicked call it good luck and evolutionary chance, and as they refuse His gifts, they hide in the shadows and then as if proving their claim, they point out how dark it is. To which we say, in the name of Jesus Christ, come out into the Light. They say it’s dark and getting darker, and we say, not hardly. It’s already 9am, it’s morning, the sun is coming up. It’s getting lighter every minute. 

In Romans 2, after listing so many of the evils of the human race, it says, do you dispise the riches of his goodness and patience and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?” What is it that leads sinful rebels to repentance? The riches of his goodness. Goodness is the power of God. Goodness is the omnipotence of God. This is why He requires His people not to return evil for evil, but to overcome evil with good. 

All of this is why it isn’t crazy to get married. The goodness of God brought you here today, and no matter what happens, the goodness of God will carry you through.

Sam, my charge to you is to remember the goodness of God. The goodness of God is your sun and shield. The goodness of God has forgiven all your sins and granted you eternal life in Jesus Christ. The goodness of God has brought you to this day. The goodness of God made you a man, and it is good to be a man. Your masculine strength and instincts are good gifts from the Lord. Continue to train them to imitate Your Heavenly Father in wielding them for good. God said it was not good for Adam to be alone, and so brought him a wife. And Proverbs says that He who finds a wife, finds a good thing, and so here today, Tarez is your crown, your grace and glory and blessing. She is your Lady wisdom. Listen to her and love her and lead her like Christ loves and leads His bride. This is true authority and responsibility, but remember that goodness is your power. And the standard for this love is the Word of God. Love is not doing whatever Tarez wants or whatever you want. Love is doing what God says is best for your family. 

Tarez, my charge to you is to remember the goodness of God. The goodness of God is your sun and shield, your power, and your glory. The goodness of God has forgiven all your sins and granted you eternal life in Jesus Christ. The goodness of God has brought you to this day. The goodness of God made you a woman, and it is good to be a woman. Your feminine beauty and instincts are good gifts from the Lord. You were made to make a home, to be a mother, to feed and clothe and comfort. And in God’s goodness, He has called you to serve Sam, to submit to him, to honor and respect him, to follow him. This is the goodness of God, and the goodness of God is your shield and sun. There are still many dark shadows in this morning land, but the sun is risen, and it’s getting lighter, and your marriage, your home, your family, by God’s grace, is part of the growing light.  

Scripture says, if we walk in the light as He is in the light we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin. This is how sinners walk in the light. As we confess our sins, the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. Whatever sin you confess in the name of Jesus turns to light and the shadows fade away. 

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.  

Can Young Children Examine Themselves?

As you know, it is our practice to welcome young baptized children to the Lord’s Supper under the authority of the elders. This practice is called paedocommunion or young child communion. And in this we hold a minority position in the modern Reformed Church. There is evidence that the early church practiced this, but as the Roman Catholic church became more confused and superstitious about the sacraments, the Protestant Reformers largely saw child communion as part of that superstition. 

Most Reformed and presbyterian denominations require baptized children to wait and make some kind profession of faith at an older age before coming to the Lord’s Supper. Their central argument is taken from 1 Cor. 11 where Paul warns against eating and drinking unworthily and becoming guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. It says that a man ought to examine himself as he partakes of the bread and wine, otherwise he may eat and drink damnation, if he does not discern the Lord’s body. 

These are very serious warnings, and so we can appreciate why some would say that children should wait to make sure they are eating and drinking in a worthy manner. However, in context, the particular abuses that Paul is addressing are people who are getting drunk at the Lord’s Supper and others who are forming factions and excluding others. We do believe that children must be taught to understand that this is not just some kind of snack in the middle of church, and they must come in faith believing that this bread and wine represents the death of Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and that they have been made part of Christ’s body. But if you can discipline your child and teach him to pray and confess his sins, then there is no reason why we should doubt that young children can examine themselves and so come in a worthy manner. 

Finally, the warnings in Scripture generally run in the other direction regarding children. Jesus warns adults against excluding them, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. And so one of the most important ways we discern the Lord’s Body is by welcoming the littlest members of His body into full fellowship with us at this table. So come and welcome to Jesus Christ. 

Photo by Jelleke Vanooteghem on Unsplash

Putting the Patria back in Patriotism

Introduction
Well, a very Happy 4th of July to you and yours. I trust you are grilling something tasty, gathering with friends and family, and shooting off fireworks, hopefully at least a few that are a tad bit illegal. In honor of the holiday, I wanted to interact with a clip I saw floating around of my friends Joel Webbon and Stephen Wolfe talking about the fact that a constitutional republic really only works for a people who know how to govern themselves. As Benjamin Franklin said, it’s a “Republic – if you can keep it.” The verdict is in, says Joel, and clearly, we haven’t kept it. And, when you don’t have a virtuous people governed by the Holy Spirit, you will get the iron fist of stronger government, rulers, and laws.

Descriptive or Prescriptive?
The question I have is whether the point here is descriptive or prescriptive. It’s certainly true that a morally enslaved people will become a politically enslaved people, sort of like that one bumper sticker: “Gravity: It’s the Law.” You cannot have political liberty apart from spiritual liberty, and sometimes, when your nation is sliding into enslavement, the only choice you have is between an Ahab and a Jehoram. And if Jehoram is a little less evil than his father, and would suppress Baal worship just a little bit, you might cast your vote for that guy because, hey, that’s a little better – maybe he buys you a little bit more time (cf. 2 Kgs. 3). And I suppose there comes a time when your constitutional republic is so corrupt that you defect to the pagan empire, like Jeremiah counseled at the end of the nation of Judah. There may also come a time when famine, war, or persecution drives you into an Egypt of necessity where the slave food happens to be pretty decent. And sometimes Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar converts, and there’s a measure of justice and liberty that comes with that. 

But while we still have a little bit of room to breathe, what do we hope for? What do we pray for? What are we working for? Do we actually want the firm-hand of a monarch? Is that what we’re aiming for? Or are we just saying that if we’re not careful, our French Revolution could end up creating a Napoleon? I completely agree with the latter description, but I want to do everything I can to avoid it. And even here, a lot depends upon what we mean by “the firm hand of a monarch.” Do we mean the firm hand of true, biblical righteousness? Do we mean a George Washington striving to establish or re-establish the republic? Do we mean the firm hand of a Moses meekly striving with the slave-mentality of a nation to establish representative judges, due process, and true natural liberty? Or do we mean a “king like the other nations?”

Politics is always a matter of approximating true justice. And sometimes your choice might be between a Saul (who is more like the other nations than we might wish) and more of the tribal chaos of the judges (when there was no king in Israel and everyone did what was right in their own eyes). And no doubt there were some in Israel arguing for the necessity of that king given the constant violence of Moses’ failed Israelite republic. And by the time we get to that chopped up concubine, I’d say they had certainly failed to keep that republic. But clearly, while God allowed Israel to anoint a king like the other nations (and the law certainly intimated a king), it was not the best choice in that moment because Israel was rejecting God as their king (1 Sam. 8:7). It could have looked like the best option at that moment. But it wasn’t.

The Patria in Patriotism
It’s certainly true that God may give us what we deserve, which is a globalist regime of Klaus Schwab’s wet dreams, all of us eating bugs in our climate-controlled incubators. And yes, our current constitution is largely a dead letter. But our constitution is dead like my grandfathers are dead. Don’t get me wrong, a written document is in many ways not like a human being, made in the image of God. It does not have a soul that will never die. It will not rise at the resurrection. But what I mean is that what those men wrote and signed and lived out and died for (however haltingly) happened on this soil, in this place, and I am the recipient of that virtue, those blessings, in a similar way to the fact that I am the recipient of the virtues and blessings of Richard Lee Stites and Orville Edmond Sumpter. In other words, there can be no patriotism without a fatherland. “Patria” means fatherland, the land of our fathers, and patriotism is loyalty and love of our fathers’ land. 

One of the things I’ve most appreciated about Stephen Wolfe is his insistence on the particularities of a people, a nation. What binds us together is not primarily ideas but shared experiences, places, family, worship, language, convictions, and customs. While I think “ethnicity” is a challenging way to describe all of that (because we’ve been programmed by our current overlords to think of that as largely racial), I understand that complex synthesis of concrete realities to be what he is getting at with the word “ethnos” or “ethnicity.” 

But this means that the constitution is part of our ethnos. Representative, constitutional government is part of our ethnicity, our American way of life. And if that is the case, we really have to be careful to distinguish between “the firm hand of strong rulers” as the descriptive judgment of God on a wayward people – almost always in the form of some kind of empire (Nebuchadnezzar, Napoleon) on the one hand, and the “firm hand of strong rulers” as a prescriptive means of salvaging and rebuilding and repenting as a nation, as represented by the likes of Moses, David, Nehemiah and Ezra, George Washington, Davy Crocket, and Wyatt Erp. There really is a world of difference between contemplating a “Protestant Franco” and the ensuing Spanish Civil War and celebrating the Declaration of Independence and the War for Independence. The ethos and (dare I say) ethnicity (in Wolfe’s sense of the word) of the two paths is monumental. I suppose many believe that the “Protestant” adjective can do enough heavy lifting to salvage the image, but that is to slip into the very “universalism” that Wolfe has so helpfully criticized.

Our nation was built largely on a Scotch and Anglo-Saxon Protestantism, rooted in the history of Alfred the Great, the Magna Charta, Scottish independence, the English Civil War, and a great deal more of the same sort of rugged representationalism, limited government, and constitutional checks and balances, resulting in the famous derision of King George, referring to our War for Independence as the “presbyterian revolt,” largely due to the high number of Scottish presbyterians in the American colonies and the long standing tensions between the Scots and the English.

It’s no accident that “presbuteros” means “elder” or “old man.” Presbyterianism is church polity organized around the representative rule of elders: older, wiser men, our fathers in the faith. Again, it’s no accident that the “black-robed regiment” was disdained by the British during the War for Independence. They knew that it was the presbyterian pastors and elders leading the charge for independence, and that for deeply Scottish and Anglo-Saxon Protestant reasons. It has been said that what you win them with is what you win them to. And so the same is true for us politically. The American republic is in shambles, like many of our families and churches. We have become a fatherless people, bastards all. And so we act like it: angry, impulsive, bitter, and wildly insecure, especially on social media. The temptation in a moment like this is to call for strong leaders who will defend us, but that can very easily mean gang leaders, thugs, and personality cults with varying degrees of beneficence. But the need of the moment is fathers. The need of the moment is biblical patriarchy. Faithful fathers are bound by covenants, by oaths of loyalty, to their marriages, children, parents, churches, and nations. Those covenants bind us together in shared experiences, places, people, customs, and obligations. Biblical covenants are the framework of family, church, and state, with their overlapping duties and responsibilities. 

Conclusion
A constitutional republic is for a religious, self-governing people, and it is not fit for any other kind of people. Witness America’s various attempts at sharing “democracy” with other nations that do not share those cultural values. But now we are witnessing the same insanity with our open borders policies. America is on a path to the same kind of failed states we have already witnessed, only in reverse, with the foreign cultures streaming in, without any human means or hope of assimilating them. 

I do not know if we are Cicero witnessing the crumbling of the American Republic, and some Trumpian Caesar will cross some Rubicon and what appears to be an emerging American Empire will take its place for a few hundred years more, perhaps even with a King Saul of sorts who might seem relatively better than warring tribalism. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. And I don’t mean that as some kind of pietistic Jesus-juke. I mean that like Joshua did at the end of his life, with the Mosaic Republic teetering on the edge of the era of the judges. 

There is no absolute moral necessity for a constitutional republic over a constitutional monarchy. But love of our particular fathers, love of our fatherland, means a love of our constitutional republic because despite all the rot and filth and weaponization, it is the land where our fathers died. And it is a way of life – an ordered liberty under Christ – for which they lived and died.

As the old patriotic hymn goes: 

“Our father’s God to, Thee,
Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing.
Long may our land be bright
With freedom’s holy light;
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God, our King!”

The cry of the early patriots was “No King but Christ.” And I intend to hold that ground. No King but Christ, not even a Protestant one, if it can be helped. Many factors would play into how one can and should hold the ground of a burned-out constitutional republic, but it strikes me that Davy Crockett holding the Alamo works, whether literally or figuratively. 

God could certainly raise up a Constantine, which would be better than we deserve, and three hundred years into a thoroughly pagan empire that was probably the most many Christians could hope for. But if the choice is between a Constantinian regime and a slowly crumbling empire that leaves room for a new medieval Christendom of decentralization and a growth, it is not at all clear to me that we ought to hope for Constantine. I’d rather rebuild our republic in the ruins. I’d rather deal with roving bands of Huns than whatever Diocletian the European Union dredges up. 

Happy 4th, y’all.

Photo by Thomas Bormans on Unsplash

The Glory of Submission

A Brief Take On Head Coverings

Introduction
Women wearing head coverings in church seems to be making a bit of a comeback. And some of my friends are part of the resurgence, and I’m quite sure that a whole bunch of it is driven by an honest repudiation of every vestige of feminism (and good riddance), and a sincere desire to recover a truly biblically-obedient patriarchy. On which principles, we whole-heartily agree. However, on the question of whether the Bible requires women to wear shawls or some sort of hat or veil in church on Sundays, I believe that wide-spread ancient custom was a pious tradition that is permissible but not required by Scripture in the New Covenant. 

All of Scripture
As always, we must take all of Scripture into account, and one of the rules of interpreting Scripture is interpreting the less clear passages in light of the clearer passages. Of particular interest is the fact that the Bible clearly teaches that women ought to be silent in church (not teaching or leading the service) and adorn their hair modestly: “In like manner also, that women adorn themselves in modest apparel, with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with broided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works. Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence” (1 Tim. 2:11-12). Clearly, women are not to teach or preach or “share” or lead men in worship, and this would have been a very easy place to remind the women to make sure that their hair was covered by a shawl or veil. And that would certainly have put a major damper on braided hair and ostentatious gold flakes or pearls woven into the hair. But that was not mentioned. The clear command is modesty, especially with the hair (which apparently everyone can see), and not leading or teaching or having authority over men in church. 

The one passage that can certainly seem like it may be requiring head coverings in worship is 1 Corinthians 11. But before landing there, one more clear text from later in the same letter: “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law” (1 Cor. 14:34). So once again, the clear instruction (from the law) is for women to remain quiet, and I take this together with the passage from 1 Timothy 2, to mean that they are not to lead out loud, upfront. Women may pray and sing with the whole congregation, but they may not speak out since they are to be in submission to their own husbands and fathers and the male leadership of the church. 

Honoring Headship
This brings us to 1 Corinthians 11, and we should note that Paul defines his terms at the beginning rather carefully: “But I would have you know, that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor. 11:3). So, the primary “head” that Paul is says he is talking about is what we would call “headship” – the office of “covenant head.”

Then, as he turns to discuss covering or uncovering “heads,” he begins with the man: “Every man praying or prophesying, having his head covered, dishonoureth his head” (1 Cor. 11:4). Except, in this first instance, it doesn’t actually use the word “cover.” The Greek simply says “having against (or down) head.” It is a reasonable translation given what follows, to suggest that he means “cover,” as in, “having something on his head,” but it’s also striking that having defined his terms so carefully (“head” means “covenant headship”), that he initially uses a phrase that suggests being in some way opposed to or against your head (and not the same word “cover” used elsewhere in the text).

The question is: in the next verse when Paul describes a woman praying or prophesying “with an uncovered head” is he now suddenly talking about a woman praying or prophesying without a veil or shawl? If so, that’s a bit of a lurch, since to this point, “head” means “headship/submission.” Given the rest of Scripture regarding how women are supposed to be quiet in worship and not taking on leadership roles, I believe the most straightforward reading of this verse is that Paul is saying that any woman who leads in prayer and prophesying (or teaching or preaching) in public worship is doing so “against” her head and therefore without a “covering,” and that is dishonoring and shameful, just as shameful as if she had her head shaved. In other words, the central driving point is not whether there is fabric covering a woman’s head; the central driving point is whether women are worshipping as women under their heads (husbands/fathers/pastors). Are they honoring that creational and redemptive order or are they defying it or going against it by speaking out in worship? 

Sometimes it is suggested that with the outpouring of charismatic gifts in the first century, it was likely that many women were speaking out in tongues and prophesying in the Christian worship services, and perhaps some were *trying* to do that, and I believe Paul is correcting that misconception. Just because a woman may have a charismatic gift (and some certainly did, cf. Acts 21:9), doesn’t mean she may overturn the natural order. She is still to remain silent in worship as the law says (1 Cor. 14:34). It’s possible that the original custom was for a prophetess to cover her head with a literal shawl or veil while prophesying outside of worship to underline the fact that she was not attempting to act like a man or usurp the authority of her head. Perhaps that pious tradition was imitated by other women and spread into the church as a sign of modesty and submission. 

An obvious question would be: but then why does a man dishonor his “head” if his head is covered? Well, again, it doesn’t initially say that. Our English translations make it sound like verse 4 and 5 are the same words but they aren’t. A man dishonors his head if he prays “against his head,” if he prays or prophesies “being insubordinate” to his head. This is what Paul means by “uncovered.” He means insubordinate, rebellious, and rejecting God’s creational and redemptive order. This is why he presses this point: if a woman is being insubordinate, trying to take the role of a man, especially in worship, she ought to shave her head so her hairstyle matches her actions. She’s acting butch, so she ought to get a butch haircut. Which of course, many modern women have done, but it’s still shameful. But if you realize that a woman with a shaved head is shameful, then she ought to be “covered.” She ought to cheerfully acknowledge and be submissive to the male authorities in her life and not take on a leadership role in the church. 

Because of the Angels
Now at this point, Paul begins playing with this imagery, pointing out that a man’s head is Christ and the image and glory of God (1 Cor. 11:3, 7), and therefore a man should not “cover his head,” and here, Paul finally uses the same wording for the man, and I take that to mean that a man ought not to act or dress like a woman in worship. This prohibits all effeminacy in church, especially breathy male worship leaders. But Paul is also moving into describe the differences in the creation of man and woman and yet their mutuality or mutual dependence. Man was not created from the woman, but the woman was made from the man and for the man, and for that reason, she ought to have “authority (or power) on her head because of the angels.” 

Side note: I’ve sometimes said that perhaps we ought to more commonly explain things this way. Why do I park my car that way? Because of the angels. 

But seriously, why the angels? At least two reasons. One reason is that in worship, we really do come into the heavenly presence of God and all of the angels (Heb. 12). Angels are God’s holy ministers that guard and uphold the laws of nature and providence. And so we honor their ministry to us and for us, when we honor the order of nature. When women worship as women, in submission to the men God has placed over them, they honor the authority and power that God has established in the world. 

The second reason is because in the New Covenant, Christ has ascended far above the angels, “being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they” (Heb. 1:4ff). After the Fall, Adam and Eve were exiled from the garden and were under the angels, as symbolized by the cherubim that guarded the entrance back into the Garden, and the cherubim engraved over the Ark of the covenant and woven into the veil of the Most Holy Place in the tabernacle and temple. And the Bible says that the law was given by angels (Acts 7:53, Gal. 3:19). So in Christ, we have been raised into the heavenly places, and seated with Him above all principality and power, above the angels. Both men and women share in this great glory, but we still share in it as men and women, male and female. Therefore, when a woman joyfully accepts her glory as a woman and the authority over her, that is a picture of the curse of the Fall being removed and is even a testimony of the gospel to the angels. Alternatively, but related, Jason Garwood suggests that this is a reference to Christians judging the angels (cf. 1 Cor. 6:3). 

No doubt in the first century there were proto-feminists who thought that since both men and women shared equally in the inheritance in Christ, that meant that women could pray and prophesy and preach and lead worship just like men. Which incidentally, is still what many claim today: if a woman has the “gifting” why shouldn’t she use it? Paul says, yes, we have the same inheritance in Christ and many similar spiritual gifts for mutual edification (there is no distinction of male or female in forgiveness and eternal life), but the distinctions between men and women are still important, still part of the created order and are still to be honored even in redemption, even in the church and worship. And Paul appeals to nature and custom to underline this point: it just isn’t proper/appropriate for a woman to lead in worship like a man, in the same way that it’s unnatural for a man to have long hair or for a woman to have very short hair like a man. But God has given a natural sign of a woman’s glory in her long hair. For a woman to have longer hair is a glory for her and it is given to her for her natural covering (1 Cor. 11:15). And here, Paul suddenly uses a new word for “covering” – it is her mantle, her garment, her veil – something literally that is thrown around you, like a royal robe. 

Conclusion 
Putting all of this together, it is understandable why it appears to have been customary in many places and many times for women to wear a hat or scarf or handkerchief or shawl in worship: to picture or signify the true “covering” of submissive glory. And so long as it is done in true modesty of heart and submission, it is a perfectly fine tradition. But it is not required by the law of God. What is required is a submissive heart and a quiet, joyful submission to the order of nature which persists even in redemption. 

In seems to me that in some ways an insistence on a shawl or veil is a sort of mild Judaizing, a sort of ceremonial law imposed in the New Testament. For example, in the Old Covenant, priests were required to wear literal head coverings when they went into the Holy Place (Lev. 10:6). And that seems to have represented the veil that separated God and man (because of the angels), but now in Christ, we all with “unveiled faces” behold the glory of God (2 Cor. 3). Men and women both approach with unveiled faces (and heads) in that ceremonial sense because Christ has torn the veil in two. To require an extra veil or symbol of submission beyond long hair seems like a subtle return to the ceremonial symbols and shadows of the Old Covenant. 

But – and running back around the other side – this doesn’t mean that our male/female differences evaporate, and that is why God has given women longer hair to symbolize in a modest but glorious way that they are the glory of man. 

[For more, and variations on all of this, see Lusk and Wedgeworth, and for a very different approach, which was stimulating but ultimately not convincing to me, see Garwood.]

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Temperance and the Price of Liberty

Introduction

Apparently, a number of founding fathers are credited with saying, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” And we still didn’t listen. 

Christopher Rufo reports on the many layers of corruption emanating from and around Texas Children’s Hospital. Beginning with a transgender program serving children as young as 11, defiantly continuing quietly even after laws were passed and promises made, culminating now in the involvement of the FBI and federal prosecutors intimidating and charging not the corrupt doctors and administrators but the courageous whistleblowers who reported on the unethical, criminal, and fraudulent activities surrounding the permanent maiming of healthy bodies. You can even watch a video of FBI agents questioning one nurse from Texas Children’s. 

The same thing has already happened to Paul Vaughn, a peaceful prolife activist and homeschooling father of seven whose home was raided by FBI agents with drawn weapons after a peaceful protest of an abortion clinic eighteen months prior. Vaughn and several others now await sentencing in a federal court on July 2, facing up to eleven years in prison. Meanwhile, if you burned down a police station during 2020 it was a “mostly peaceful protest,” but if you burn out on a PRIDE flag painted on a crosswalk, you’re a dangerous criminal.

The New Right

Many on what might be called the new Christian Right have begun arguing for a more forceful resistance to this neo-Marxist jihad. Not a call to vigilante violence, but a call to take up political power and wield it for good. Some hear these calls as no different than Boromir urging the Council of Elrond to take up the One Ring of power. And I have to admit that some of the voices have occasionally sounded that way to me. There is a kind of worship of political power that our radical progressive adversaries have which is utterly immoral, ungodly, and therefore, not an option for conservative Christians. We absolutely need to be on guard against the flesh, and the offers of power from the Devil. That is always a trap. Don’t take the bait.

But others are simply pointing out that someone will run the FBI. Someone will make the rules. Someone will decide whether to prosecute or not. Wouldn’t it be better for hard-headed Christians to hold those positions of power than the current regime? And since the public square clearly cannot actually be neutral or naked, and some God or gods will be honored and some form of blasphemy will be penalized, shouldn’t Christians stop making Faustian bargains with unbelief? Of course the cries come up that this will entail “Christofacism” and Mosaic Sharia Law and a Handmaid’s Tale of bigotry and oppression. But the fact of the matter is that Puritans founded and built this country. And while there were certainly some abuses in some places, it was that Christian conscience and commitment to all of God’s Word applied to all of life that made room for the most religious and political liberty in modern history. Sodomy was illegal in many states until about fifteen minutes ago, and somehow we managed to build the freest and most prosperous nation in the history of the world.

Edmund Spenser & Sir Guyon

Book 2 of Edmund Spenser’s Fairie Queene is the story of Sir Guyon the Knight of Temperance – no, it’s not some kind of moralistic fable against the dangers of alcohol. Spenser’s Knight embodies the classical and Christian virtue of temperance. While in some cases, temperance means moderation and avoiding excesses and extremes, what becomes clear over the course of the tale is that Christian temperance is something more like the love of and execution of “appropriate action or force.” Temperance resists the enticements of excessive physical pleasure, but it also resists the repulsion of physical pain or emotional discomfort. Temperance desires and does what is right and good and appropriate despite what it feels like.  

Some evils a temperate man flees, repudiating the discomfort of what might appear to some as cowardly; other evils a temperate man stands his ground and fights, resisting the temptations to ease or comfort. In the face of some evils, a temperate man is slow and subtle, opposing an impulsive or wrathful spirit; in the face of other evils, a temperate man is fierce and fiery, rejecting the seductive spells of apathy, laziness, or fear. Temperance in this way is not really “moderate” in the sense of mediocre or average. Temperance is appropriately trained desires and action suited to the needs of the moment. The name of Spenser’s Knight of Temperance even points to this: “Guyon” means something like “lively struggle.” Temperance wrestles with every moment, seeking what is good and what is best. Temperance is lively and assertive thoughtfulness, desire, and action well-tempered to the occasion. 

In this view, Jacob’s wrestling with the angel of the Lord was temperate. Joseph’s flight from Potiphar’s wife was temperate. Moses’s pleading before the Lord for Israel was temperate. David’s challenge of Goliath was temperate. Daniel and his friends exemplified temperance in their defiance of evil decrees and endurance of persecution. It was the temperance of Christ that caused Him to endure the suffering of the cross, despising its shame, for the joyful crown and conquest that was set before Him.

Temperance is the virtue that combats every form of gluttony, including the gluttony of comfort, peace, and respectability. Temperance is self-control, wise self-government but going all the way down into the soul, into the bones: instincts and desires trained for action and appropriate force. Like “meekness,” it is strength under control. It is power wielded with virtue. 

Watchful Men

“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” might have been another way to say what the Apostle John says: “Watch yourselves, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward” (2 John 8). In fact, the exhortations to watchfulness come regularly in the New Testament. Stay awake. Be alert, sober, vigilant. But like the first disciples, we are prone to get tired and fall asleep.  

George Washington warned, speaking of the Constitutional order, that, “It is important … that … those entrusted with its administration … confine themselves within their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department any encroachment upon another…. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create … a real despotism.” Limited government does not happen automatically because someone swore an oath of office. Power is limited by opposing power. The different spheres or jurisdictions were meant to be balancing powers. But they only work if those who occupy them exert the appropriate powers of their offices and rein in the encroachments and excesses of themselves and others.  

Thomas Jefferson believed he was already seeing that consolidation and encroachment in his own lifetime: “Our government is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit, by consolidation first, and then corruption…. The engine of consolidation will be the federal judiciary; the two other branches the corrupting and corrupted instruments.” And here we are. 

Constitutional checks and balances only work when there is intense protection of jurisdictions, justice, and morality. In other words, inappropriate and evil exertion of political power must be met with and restrained by appropriate and righteous exertion of political power. This is part of temperance. Conservatives have sometimes feared confident and assertive political action because of how the liberals might weaponize it next time around. But on the one hand, we don’t have the luxury of worrying about what the liberals *might* do when they are already weaponizing everything against what is true, good, and beautiful. It is not weaponizing political power to actively restrain and prosecute evil men.

On the other hand, a lot depends on what it is we are talking about. I agree that expanding the Supreme Court is fraught with dangers. Do we really want to (re)start that game? At the same time, the number of Supreme Court justices is most certainly not a matter of transcendent morality or specified in the Constitution, and if that becomes the game, shrewd Christians must apply biblical virtue to the needs of the moment and not necessarily be constrained by the number nine, our venerable tradition since 1869. I say “restart the game” since history reveals that it was already a game leading up the Civil War and that Abraham Lincoln appointed a 10th justice during his presidency to ensure a repeal of the Dread Scott decision. The political polo continued with the number of justices wavering between 7 and 9 following the war. As recently as 1937, FDR only barely failed to increase the number of justices to as many as 15.

But the more I think about all of this, the more I believe that our nation is as corrupt as it is for the same reasons our churches are so corrupt and weak. Our churches are full of soft, cowardly pastors who are intemperate not only in their lusts and excessive pleasures, but perhaps even more so in their intemperate refusal to stand up to evil because of the blowback, persecution, and unpleasantness that will follow. Church leaders were intimidating and making examples of faithful men long before the FBI. J. Gresham Machen was defrocked and excommunicated in the mainline presbyterian church in the 1920s for his faithfulness. In 2020, many pastors were caught cowering before tyrannical edicts one week and then marching in BLM protests the next. The fruit of all of this is the persecution of prolife protestors and whistleblowers who expose the medical abuse of minors. 

Conclusion

I’ve often pointed to the nine and a half tribes of Israel going to war with the other two and half tribes because of the altar they had built on the other side of the Jordan in Joshua 22. When the elders of Israel heard that an unauthorized altar had been built, they gathered for war and confronted their brothers. As it turns out, it was only an altar of memorial, a testimony for their children to remind them they were truly part of Israel. And when the other elders of Israel heard this, they were satisfied and went home. This is a glorious illustration of the strength and assertiveness of temperance. And no doubt some of the sons of Belial wrote editorials about hot-headed Phinehas and the growing Nietzschean impulses on the other side of the Jordan. But temperance doesn’t care. 

Christians are required to be watchful, intense, and strong like men (1 Cor. 16:13). There is such a thing as intemperance that is drunk on power, drunk on rage, drunk on pleasures. And all of that must be utterly repudiated. Temperance puts that “old man” of the flesh to death. But there is another intemperance that is lazy, apathetic, fearful, weak, and addicted to the pleasures of comfort, respectability, and ease. We must repent of both forms of intemperance. As has been said many times, the only thing necessary for evil men to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Temperance repudiates the discomfort of obedience. Temperance despises the shame of wielding godly power. 

We still speak of a blades being tempered – the process of heating up metal in order to make it more durable. In fact, a tempered blade is made slightly less hard in order for it be made tougher. A tempered blade is less brittle in order to be stronger. We are in dire need of well-tempered men, sharp and strong men.

“A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls” (Prov. 25:28). Literally, it is a man who cannot “restrain his spirit.” We are a nation without walls because we are a nation of intemperate men. The Ring of Power must always be destroyed, and it will be destroyed through the faithfulness of many playing their different parts in the great struggle. But there will be princes, senators, judges, sheriffs, pastors, and parents, and God has entrusted limited power to each of these offices, and temperance teaches us to wield that power in obedience and joy so that we may remain free.

Biblical Patriarchy

“Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything” (Eph. 5:24). 

The Bible teaches that husbands have true authority over their wives, just as Christ is the Lord of the Church. Some Christians want to downplay this, saying things like: headship means that if there’s a disagreement, the husband has the tie-breaking vote. But if the model is Christ and the Church, this immediately becomes absurd. The authority of Christ is not merely a tie-breaking vote; it is true authority in everything. In 1 Peter 3, Sarah is identified as an ideal wife, calling her husband “lord.” This pushes back against what we might call squishy-complementarianism. 

At the same time, what Christ does with His authority is simply astonishing. He uses His authority to love His Bride, the Church, laying His life down for her, making her pure and holy and without any blemish. Christ does this and so lifts up the Church to sit with Him in heavenly places, to reign with Him. Christ invites the Church to speak, and through our prayers in particular, Christ has determined to listen and answer and so grant us true authority in the world. This pushes back against what we might call bluster-patriarchy. 

Husbands have been given true authority, and reflecting the authority of Christ, it extends to everything in the home and in his wife’s life. There is no area of marriage where a wife may say to her husband, that’s none of your business. He is responsible before God for all of it. And yet, a wise man uses that authority not to micromanage or belittle, but to love, to lead, to honor, and to lift up. We call this biblical patriarchy. 

God made the world to reflect His glory, and so it is that glory, in creation, is always reflected glory. As we glorify God, He glorifies His people. The Bible says that man is the glory of God, and woman is the glory of man. This means that one of the best ways to make sure that women are cherished and honored the most in a society is by honoring the fathers, husbands, and brothers in their lives.

River & Elaine

“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this” (Is. 9:6-7).

I realize that it might seem kind of strange to read these verses at a June wedding, but hey, we’re almost half-way to Christmas. And my kids, with River leading the way, have insisted on singing and playing Christmas carols year round in my house for many years. There’s almost a sort of Sicilian-mafia loyalty to Christmas in my home, in which my kids sometimes even snitch on the kids and teachers in their classes at school that refuse to sing or listen to Christmas carols at other times of the year. I don’t know what my kids think I can do about it. I’m just a pastor. 

While this is one of the great prophecies of the coming Messiah in the Old Testament, I assume it’s Handel’s Messiah that has drilled these verses into our culture: “unto us a child is born; unto us a Son is given…” But the Prophet is speaking in the midst of significant cultural and political turmoil. And He’s talking about a Virgin giving birth, and a Child being born and then lions laying down with lambs, and a child playing with vipers, and then for many chapters God’s government of the world is pictured in stars and trees and mountains and wind and rivers. Here Isaiah’s Child King is specifically said to have a “government” on his shoulders and a government that continually increases. And if you’re a good conservative, you might be a bit concerned: don’t we want less government? And why is Jesus carrying Washington D.C. around on His shoulders?

I stopped by the CrossPolitic Studio before I left Moscow, and as I was leaving, I said goodbye to my good friend David Shannon (AKA “Chocolate Knox”), and he said, “so you’re going to form a new government.” And after a brief pause, I said yes. So, yes, I’ve come to the Commonwealth of Virginia to form a new government. I sort of hope the FBI is listening.

Gary Demar has pointed out that in early America, the dictionary listed as the first definition of the word “government” as simply self-government. Other definitions listed referred to family or church (or businesses or schools). But when referring to the state, it was almost always designated as “civil government” to distinguish it from the other, more ordinary forms of government (self-government, family. or church). It is almost entirely inverted today. If I say government, you think Washington D.C. or maybe state or local, but almost without question, you think of the civil sphere. You think of modern politics. Which tells you something about what most orients our modern society. In early America it was individuals ruling themselves virtuously, and then forming families and gathering together as churches that formed the most essential governments for human flourishing. 

This was based on a far more biblical understanding of the world. In the beginning, God created Adam and Eve, and He blessed them and told them to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and have dominion over all the animals. And ever since, well-rounded human beings spend their time working and eating and laughing and singing and dancing and creating and inventing. And right away this suggests other people, communities, and this is why the early Americans thought of family and church as the centers of that fruitful community life. You eat with the people you live with, and you tell stories and you laugh and you work and you sing and you rest. And that is multiplied as families gather for worship at church and gather as extended families and neighbors to celebrate holidays. Families have shops and businesses, gardens and pets, hobbies and traditions. And in the older biblical view, this was the center of government. This was the primary politics: human dominion. People governed their time and money and property and animals in order to care for their families and neighbors. And then if some large threat loomed on the horizon, we agreed to band together to defend that way of life. 

But that is a very different vision from one in which government and politics is primarily something that happens on C-SPAN (which is about as exciting as watching paint dry, and then you find out you owe thousands of more dollars in taxes). Even when civil government tries to do good, it’s like asking the DMV to run a soup kitchen. It’s inefficient, ugly, and impersonal. A Christian vision for government begins with individuals and marriage and families, and gathering for worship every Sunday. But if your idea of government is ugly office buildings and cubicles, and bills that are thousands of pages long that nobody has actually read, well, that kind of government will be radically dehumanizing and tyrannical. But the government and Dominion of Jesus Christ is a truly humane government: Isaiah describes that government as centered on marriages and children, animals and trees, mountains and music, and a little bit of law enforcement and keeping us safe on the side.

But how is that kind of world even possible? We have crime and terrorism in our world. The answer the Bible gives is that this kind of life is only possible through faith in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, orienting your entire life to the Child born at Christmas. Human flourishing is not possible apart from the forgiveness of our sins and being born again, being made into a new kind of human being. The more our nation has turned away from Christ, the more bureaucratic and inhumane it has become. And of course, ironically, always in the name of being “humane.” But God made us. We are made in His image, and He knows what we are for. He knows what is wrong with us, and most importantly: He knows the solution. He sent His only Son to become the solution: to save us from our sins so that we might be made new. Apart from orienting everything to Christ, all government tends toward coercion and force and becomes obsessed with markets and militaries. But in Christ and by His Holy Spirit, we come to love what is true and good and beautiful, so that we might form better governments, more humane governments, beginning with marriage and family. Which is why we are here today. 

River, my son, in whom I am well pleased: My charge to you is to never lose your commitment to celebrating Christmas all year long. You are becoming the head of a new government today, a new family, and in our world, this is a gloriously counter-cultural event. My charge to you is to run your government like Christmas is true. Run your government in imitation of the One who was announced by angels singing, born in a manger, turned water into wine at a wedding feast, walked on water, healed the sick, and died and rose again to make all things new. That sort of government seems inefficient to bureaucrats and petty tyrants, but it is far more beautiful, far more humane, and ultimately far more powerful. You are a man, and you are made to be strong, to lead, to protect, to provide. You have been made to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and take dominion. Elaine is your Eve, your queen. Honor her highly, receive her wisdom gladly, and love her and lead her like Christ loves and leads His Bride, the Church. 

Elaine, my new daughter, you are altogether lovely. We live in a world that has lied to women for many decades. And you are the kind of wise woman who is well aware of those lies. The world has said that unless you compete with men or take up some public or corporate role, you are not living up to your full potential. But you know that your glory and power is found in building a home with your husband full of well-loved people. Your power is in making people who will live forever: people full of laughter and creativity, stories and inventions, music and art and feasting. And as it turns out, this is all very political and governmental, but it’s a lot more interesting than CSPAN and lot more lovely than the DMV. You are a woman made in the image of the Triune God, and your glory is your beauty. So fill your home with that beauty, and do it like you’re going to war with every form of tyranny. Because you are. You are being charged today to respect your husband, look up to him, and obey him in the Lord, and so be his crown of glory, in imitation of the Church, the Bride of Christ. 

And, River, just in case you’re wondering, it’s exactly 200 days until Christmas. 

In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. 

We’re All Incrementalists

Introduction
We here in the Moscow Mood have been celebrating and implementing a particular tactic for ending legal abortion in our land that we like to call “Smashmouth Incrementalism.” This is a full-throated recognition of the humanity of preborn babies from the moment of conception and the insistence that God’s law provides equal protection for those human lives and so human laws should do the same, along with a deep commitment to embracing all of God’s Word for the wisdom, tactics, and principles necessary to do so in full obedience to Christ. I recently had the opportunity to have a discussion about this here, although I had written most of this article prior to recording that, so this is not a direct response to that conversation. 

We stand on the shoulders of our faithful pro-life fathers and mothers with deep gratitude for the way that they stood in the gap for decades, some of them sacrificing significantly, ultimately leading to the overturn of that bloody monstrosity of Roe v. Wade. At the same time, we do not mind calling out some of the rot that has developed in the Pro-Life Industry, the suits and haircuts that show up at any relatively successful ministry in order to shrink wrap and sell it, creating various perverse incentives along the way. It’s one thing for a pro-life ministry to decline to be at the tip of the spear for some particular bill (different parts of the body of Christ with different strengths and tactics); it’s another thing entirely to actively campaign against lawful attempts to end legal abortion. Pro-life organizations that have actively teamed up with abortion-supporters to kill bills of abolition should be ashamed of themselves. 

Smashmouth Incrementalism
Smashmouth incrementalism is happy to cheer on all lawful attempts to end legal abortion as quickly as possible in our land. We support heartbeat bills and bills of complete abolition because a left jab to the gut is just as much part of the battle as a right hook to the jaw. And wherever possible, we should run one or the other bill and not both at the same time. Politicians will tend to take the less courageous route, but if you live in New York or California, I doubt very much that they would conflict. Every opportunity to proclaim the full humanity of the unborn is to be celebrated. We are incremental in that we believe it is biblically permissible to advance the cause of equal protection by passing laws that stop short of full justice for the unborn, not because we’re OK with injustice but because God’s Word allows for some regulation of immoral practices as steps towards discouraging and limiting immoral practices. Several biblical examples of that in a minute. 

We are “smashmouth” in the sense that we are committed to not resting until the laws of our states and nation provide equal protection for the unborn. While we will celebrate minor victories along the way, we are committed to working for the eradication of all laws that protect the murder of any unborn person for any reason. 

In the midst of this conversation, other brothers have responded by calling themselves “immediatists.” I’m not identifying anyone in particular; I’ve just seen the term bandied about. And so what I want to do here is explain why basically everyone is an incrementalist of some sort, and true or consistent “immediatism” is either impossible or immoral and possibly both. 

So the very purist form of “immediatism” – the immediate end of all abortion – is not humanly possible because that would seem to require a Thanos-like snap of the fingers, ending all human abortion in the world. We are not God, and we do not have that power. Speaking of which, clearly, God is an incrementalist. We are two thousand years out from the resurrection, and God is making slow but steady progress on putting all of His enemies beneath His feet. Death will be the last enemy, and then will come the end (1 Cor. 15). But God is the only One who has the power to end all suffering and injustice immediately, and in His infinite wisdom, He has chosen not to. This is no excuse for apathy or laziness on our part, but it does form the context in which we labor night and day for justice to be established. We labor at His pleasure. We labor as His servants.  

The next most pure form of immediatism would seem to require some kind of armed and violent uprising. If abortion is murder, why don’t immediatists take that seriously and go to war? Incidentally, this is why I do not care for the name “abolitionist,” though I do not mind its technical meaning. Of course we want to “abolish” abortion, but “abolitionism” has a sordid and violent past at least in America. It connotes the abolitionist movement to end slavery, and despite the laudable desire to see race-based chattel slavery ended, that movement was radically infected by deeply anti-biblical sentiments and ultimately violence. The Bible addresses the evils of slavery, and it outlines a distinctly Christian means for ending it, violence and war not being one of the biblically sanctioned means. Lincoln’s invasion of the South and the subsequent 600,000 lives lost was not biblical or constitutional, despite true evils that needed reforming.

There are several good answers to the question of why armed confrontation is not a biblical solution to abortion, the most basic being that wide-spread commitment to murdering your own babies is not the kind of soul cancer that can be solved that way. When faithful kings in Israel sought to end child sacrifice, they destroyed the pagan altars on which the children were offered. We have a radical spiritual problem, an idol problem. The worship being offered in many of the Christian churches in our land is corrupt and diseased. The desire, fear, or in some demented cases, delight, that drives the killing of our own offspring is a demonic, psychopathic judgment that God has given us over to and therefore requires something far deeper than a military solution: repentance. As we have already begun to see, if you outlaw abortion in one place, we have the kind of madness that drives these people to other states where abortion is legal or at least more easily assessable. 

The Bible also generally requires lesser magistrates to lead and conduct defensive wars, and it generally prohibits guerilla style vigilante justice – not to mention the massive tactical blunders involved. Nothing like mafia or militia-style assassinations of abortion doctors to set back the prolife movement for another five decades. Magistrates bear the sword of God’s justice; it is their God-given responsibility to protect all human life within their jurisdictions. They must be called upon to use their authority to protect the most vulnerable and to punish those who brazenly take it. 

But I suspect that most “immediatists” would agree with me on all of this, to which I reply, “and welcome to incrementalism.” Obedience to God’s law means we are required by God to take incremental steps in ending the atrocity of legal abortion in our land. God requires incrementalism. But of course the immediatist comes back and says, ‘sure, I have no problem with “lawful” incremental steps, what I object to is the regulation of evil.’ It’s one thing to standby waiting for God to give us the clear shot; it’s another thing to pass a law that says you can kill your baby so long as it’s before 6 weeks or 12 weeks or after an ultrasound or something. The immediatist says he will not participate in that kind of “compromise.” Now, let me be clear that I certainly appreciate the skepticism and the scrutiny of prolife motivations and measures. I’m truly grateful for the pressure of the immediatists. A great deal of prolife reluctance to ending abortion is a failure of nerve. At the same time, I don’t think the immediatist has solved the purity problem. 

So you have your equal protection bill – fully biblical as far as you can tell. Now what? You get a sponsor for the bill, and the sponsor agrees to introduce it in some legislative committee. But look here: you are playing by immoral rules. The murder of babies should end immediately, and there are a million bureaucratic boobytraps designed to bog your bill down in committees. Now, don’t misunderstand me: I do not object at all. I believe this is the way to end abortion. But you are playing by the rules of their immoral game. They are saying that you must submit your bill in this way, run the gauntlet of these bureaucratic shenanigans, and maybe, just maybe, it will see the light of day on the floor of the full legislature. But we are talking about the murder of babies, and you are participating in ducking, spinning, weaving, and all manner of twister moves to get your bill to the floor of the legislature. Now, I think there are very good reasons to do so, and if I were to bring all of this to your attention, double-checking to make sure you didn’t actually agree with all of that bureaucratic red-tape (e.g. “you’re not saying that it’s ok to protect the murder of babies by these bureaucratic machinations, are you?”), you would simply say, “no, of course not.” But you’re playing the legislative game? And, I assume you would say, “Yes, that’s what you have to do to get a bill passed.” Great. And I would say the same thing about a heartbeat bill or 12 week ban in certain states. 

While you may have a tidy category for the purity of your “bill,” you are working in an entirely impure system, built on the blood and bodies of babies. I deny that a heartbeat bill is necessarily any kind of compromise, any more than working within the corrupt system designed to defend the bloodshed is approving of the corrupt system. None of us are saying, “and then you can kill the baby.”

A Brief Review 
We have used these examples before, but it’s worth mentioning them again. In Biblical law, we find that some regulation of immorality and injustice is designed to communicate disapproval and works to dismantle and discourage those practices. It is simply not biblically accurate to assume that if there are regulations of a sinful or unjust practice that is somehow an implicit approval or participation in the iniquity. 

For example, slavery was regulated in Scripture. God permitted the purchasing of chattel slaves under certain conditions and for those same slaves to be part of the inheritance passed down to descendants (Lev. 25:44-46). Some folks might be tempted to conclude that this is therefore a good thing since it is regulated, others are tempted to explain it away since it is part of the Israelite law code, but I want to argue that this was a regulation (among others) that was actually designed to slowly eradicate man-stealing and chattel slavery. The New Testament repeatedly gives instructions to slaves and masters for their mutual respect and care (Eph. 6, Col. 3, 1 Tim. 6). The fact that Paul returned Onesimus to Philemon is pretty striking. The regulation itself does not mean that if you meet the law’s requirements, God necessarily approves of what you are doing. Civil permission is not the same thing as being morally upright. 

Another example of regulation of sinful practices in the Old Testament would be polygamy and divorce (Ex. 21, Dt. 24). Is polygamy or divorce sinful? The biblical answer in both cases is usually. 

In the case of divorce, we can say that God “hates” it, and that it covers those who participate in it in “violence” (Mal. 2:16). Not only that, God hates divorce because it destroys our “godly seed” (Mal. 2:15). Jesus also clearly taught that most divorce causes adultery (Mt. 19:9). And adultery was the kind of civil crime that could require the death penalty in certain circumstances (Dt. 22:22). So in the case of civil law regulating divorce, we have the authoritative teaching of Jesus that Moses permitted divorce more broadly because of the hardness of Israelite hearts (Mt. 19:8). But that law was part of the Torah, the holy law of God, the most perfect law for a human society ever devised, a light for the nations, and the foundation of our Christian common law tradition. And that law included in it some regulation of practices that God hated, that crushed little ones, and often led to adultery. That regulation did not approve of the practice of divorce, it was a God-inspired regulation aimed at limiting and discouraging divorce.

Likewise, God regulated lynching through the introduction of cities of refuge. The blood-avenger had some right to seek justice for the wrongful death of a close relative. God was also in the process of establishing normal courts of law and a primitive justice system. But in the meantime, God regulated some measure of vigilante justice in order to slowly end it. 

God sometimes regulated sinful practices in order to discourage, reduce, and limit them, with the goal of ultimately ending their legal protections. 

Conclusion
So we are all incrementalists. The faithful abolitionist who preaches at the abortion mill and sees one baby saved and goes home for the day is not saying, “it’s OK for the rest of you to keep killing babies.” He has done what he can do for today, and he will be back soon to save more. The faithful smashmouth incrementalist who works to get a heartbeat bill through a hard-hearted, mostly pagan state legislature (like New York or California), is not saying that it’s OK to murder babies if you do it before a heartbeat can be detected. 

Obedience means you cannot do all good things at once or immediately. This is not a utilitarian argument. This is not pragmatism. This is looking at the law of God and submitting our tactics and strategy to His Word. Good and faithful kings in Israel and Judah were sometimes described as doing what was right in the eyes of the Lord except that they did not remove the high places. You can have laws and magistrates that are good in the sight of the Lord that do not fully establish justice, that do not do everything that might have been done. 

In broadly conservative and predominantly Christian states I would advocate for bills that simply outlaw abortion. Full stop. Period. Prior to Roe being struck down you had *some* additional challenges with convincing Christians to defy Roe (which I previously argued that we should do). But now that Roe is struck down, conservative states should simply exercise their authority to protect all human life under their jurisdictions. Idaho is an interesting case because we are actually heavily Mormon. We have a near ban, but we still need to chip away at the exceptions, etc. 

But in states like California and New York, you don’t have a Christian majority to appeal to. Obviously preach the gospel, but if you can get a fetal pain bill onto the floor of the New York legislature, I think that would likely be a marvelous opportunity to explain the full humanity of all unborn babies to a room full of pagans who might not otherwise ever hear it. Likewise, a heartbeat bill may be all you are likely to get a hearing on for many years, and I think it tactically wise to try to get that passed as a means to arguing for the full human rights of preborn babies, while we preach the gospel, testify against the bloodshed, and wait upon the Lord for the Reformation and Revival that will change the hearts of our nation. 

Photo by Christian Bowen on Unsplash

Will the Real Nietzscheans Please Stand Up?

Introduction
Carl Trueman is not wrong that there is always a temptation in the flesh of man to grasp for power like the Devil. And to the extent that Nietzsche’s “will to power” is making any kind of comeback on the conservative right (e.g. Andrew Tate? Nick Fuentes?), consider me a fellow and enthusiastic objector. The early Reformers had the Anabaptist anarchists and peasants’ revolts, and the founding fathers were very concerned about the French revolution bleeding onto American soil.

But imagine writing in praise of what Trueman calls “The Calvary Option” in 1760s colonial America and not clearly identifying Rousseau and Robespierre as his targets (even if Robespierre was still in short pants in the 1760s). As a fellow Reformed minister, I agree that ordinary gospel ministry remains essential, but something about Trueman’s apercu of ministerial life reminds me of the Anglican bishop who said, “Everywhere Paul went riots broke out; wherever I go, they serve tea.” 

No doubt, many modern evangelical Christians need to be reminded of the potency of ordinary gospel ministry, but when the Persian regime declared lawfare on the Jews, Mordecai wasn’t warning Esther against the temptations to worldly power. Haman was the real Nietzschean in that story. 

A Biblical Social Ethic
The New Testament ethic unashamedly leads with kindness, generosity, willingness to be wronged, and costly forgiveness. Christians are commanded to love their enemies, do good to those that persecute them, and practice radical hospitality to strangers, widows, and orphans. This much is clear. But what has often been missed, forgotten, or obfuscated is the rest of the New Testament’s witness. There are other instructions and examples. The same Christ who taught us to turn the other cheek, called the religious leaders of His day “snakes” and “hypocrites.” The same apostle who insisted that we return blessing for cursing, cursed those who preached another gospel and suggested that the Judaizers castrate themselves. Clearly the fruit of the Spirit is a bit more complex and earthy than Trueman lets on. 

Certainly, Trueman cites Nathan the prophet’s courageous confrontation of David’s sin, but it is a bit unclear what this “prophetic voice” amounts to. He says, “calling anyone and everyone to faith and repentance, no matter the social and political exigencies of the day,” which is true enough. But then he explicitly objects to “engaging in an apocalyptic culture war” and “crudity, verbal thuggery, and… the destruction of any given opponent’s character.” Is Trueman talking about when Jesus destroyed Herod’s character by calling him “that fox?” Obviously, not all tactics are morally acceptable for Christians, but if we are going to talk about a “prophetic voice” we cannot then ignore the actual biblical prophets who engaged in the original “apocalyptic culture wars” and resorted to vehement denunciations and obscenities more often than your average seminary professor. While prophetic ministry must not be belligerent; it is militant and often apocalyptic and sometimes crude. 

We certainly have rules of engagement from our Lord, but the point that many on the new Christian right are making is that certain extra-biblical standards of etiquette and propriety have been used to muzzle Christians from faithfully confronting evil in our culture. Lopsided descriptions of Christian ethics have played their part in feeding the alien “social imaginary” that Trueman has so helpfully exposed elsewhere. Even “ordinary ministry” bromides are being weaponized against modern Ezekiels and Jeremiahs, Hezekiahs and Josiahs seeking to destroy contemporary idols. No doubt there were some pietistic Israelites reminding Elijah on Mt. Carmel that real ministry is “unglamorous,” while denouncing his crude mockery and trying to fight Baal with “worldly forms of power.” 

For example, Keith Markley, a public school bus driver from a small town in Idaho was fired last year for putting up a sign in his yard objecting to obscene materials in the school library. Turns out several of the leaders of the public school were evangelical Christians who accused him of being divisive and stirring up trouble. Who are the Nietzscheans in that story? It was not Nietzschean for Josiah to tear down the houses of the sodomites, any more than it would be Nietzschean for a current Christian magistrate to enforce obscenity laws against Drag Queen story hour in a public library. 

Paleo-Kuyperianism
Part of what often seems to be missing is an appreciation for different roles in society by God-fearing Christians. As Ben Crenshaw noted in his reply to Trueman, Augustine grappled with this reality in City of God, and the Magisterial Reformers extended his work with their “Two Kingdoms.” The Dutch Reformed statesman and pastor Abraham Kuyper called the notion “sphere sovereignty.” The point is that all authority is derived from the Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore, family government, civil government, and church government are all under Christ and have particular assignments and responsibilities from Him. While later Kuyperians sometimes seemed to seal these spheres off from one another, a paleo-Kuyperianism recognizes overlapping responsibilities with Christ and Scripture speaking authoritatively to all of them. True Christian liberty is the freedom to perform our duties under Christ.

While Trueman refers primarily to “pastors” and “the Church,” he does not seem to admit different roles and responsibilities, and therefore the possibility of somewhat different tactics depending on the role and sphere and moment. For example, it could be fully appropriate for a minister of the gospel to accept martyrdom under certain circumstances, but a husband or father ordinarily has a responsibility and duty to defend his family. If a man fails to provide for and protect the physical well-being of his family, Scripture says he is worse than an unbeliever. Likewise, a Christian magistrate sometimes has a duty to execute murderers and wage defensive wars. And these duties are his “ordinary” ministry of Christian justice. The sun also rises on a Christian sheriff refusing to enforce COVID lockdown tyranny.

Conclusion: The Presbyterian Revolt
As Gary Steward has argued in his book Justifying Revolution, the American War for Independence was not a moral lapse into Enlightenment rationalism or revolutionary radicalism but rather in a large part, the fruit of faithful pastors preaching the limits of civil power and the biblical grounds for Christian liberty, resistance to tyranny, and just war principles. Recognizing the age-old specter of “negative world” looming over their colonies in the 1760s, American ministers like Gilbert Tennent and John Witherspoon looked back to the Magna Carta and Protestant Reformers like Junius Brutus, John Knox, and Samuel Rutherford, to preach religious and political liberty grounded in Scripture and the Reformation tradition. 

Given the pervasive Scotch-Irish Presbyterianism of the colonies, it is understandable that King George referred to the American Declaration of Independence as a “presbyterian revolt” and denounced the clergy as the “black-robed regiment” (alluding to the widespread practice of Presbyterian pastors preaching in black robes). The prime minister of England, Horace Walpole said in Parliament that “Cousin America has run off with a Presbyterian parson,” apparently referring to Witherspoon, also a Presbyterian minister, signer of the Declaration of Independence and president of the Presbyterian college Princeton. And when the British General Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown all but one of the American Colonels were Presbyterian elders. 

The first generations of American preachers would beg to differ with Trueman’s limited vision for their ordinary role. Yes, it was a prophetic voice. Yes, it was embedded in the ordinary ministry of Word and Sacrament, but it was a clear prophetic voice that extended far beyond isolated ethical violations or what might have been considered appropriate etiquette. An ordinary prophetic ministry discerns the times and calls all men everywhere not only to repent of their sins and trust in Christ, but also to resist tyranny and embrace true Christian liberty in every sphere using every lawful tactic. This isn’t Nietzschean Revolution; this is Magisterial Reformation.

Photo by Alex Moliski on Unsplash