Replicate & Restore

I highly recommend Vern Poythress’ monograph on the Christian understanding of the Old Testament Law, The Shadow of Christ In the Law of Moses. I remember reading it many years ago.  It was the first book I had ever read on the Law of Moses that pointed out that justice in the Law turns on the principle of replication & restoration.  When an injustice is done, the Law demands that the crime be revisited & replicated & restoration be made.   For example, the maximum penalty for murder is the life of the murderer.  For theft, if a thief steals a chicken, then mercy allows the first theft to receive a warning - but if it happens again, a chicken or its equivalent is to be paid to the victim of the crime as a matter of remuneration.  

This carries over today in a number of areas that seem to be hot button issues.  From time to time, race relations & the matter of reparations comes up in the course of conversation.   Since the people alive today whose forebears were slave owners & their enablers don’t agree with slavery, reparations are off the table - or so the rationale goes.

Nope, that’s not how this works, that’s not how any of this works.   How so? 

The Bible includes a robust doctrine of corporate guilt & repentance.  It also teaches the 3 uses of the Law.  Since the Law exposes sin, the Tripartite Justice & Mercy (aka Blessing & Sanctioning) Principle means there are 3 levels (spheres) of exposure, guilt, condemnation, & death.  In addition the Bible enjoins those who are not guilty of an offense to, in cases of systemic offense, forego their rights & paraclete those who are guilty & identify & stand with them in covenantal solidarity as a means to help the guilty to repent &, together with them, remember & renew covenant with the guilty just as Christ did throughout His ministry which publicly began with His baptism. 

When the Children of Israel departed from Egypt, the Egyptians loaded them with material goods as they left (Exodus 12:36).   When Ezra & Nehemiah & the People returned to Egypt, they did so with the support of the King of Persia who returned the inventory that Nebuchadnezzar had stolen from the 1st Temple. When women in Corinth & Ephesus & Paul’s other churches engaged in disruptive practices like coming to church with their hair exposed like Aphrodite’s prostitutes, the other women who were not guilty of the offense were expected to paraclete & teach them while forgoing the offices of elder & deacon (I Timothy 2, Titus 3). Thus reparations are a community affair. 

The American churches are failing multiple communities at present.   The heart of the Paraclete has been replaced by “I know what’s mine!”  This has to stop. If we give stones & serpents to people whom we have failed repeatedly; then God will surely exile us too (Matthew 7). 

The churches are failing women.  Here’s a prime example. 

One of these days, the people in the SBC are going to wake up about this issue the way that they are waking up about the Doctrines of Grace.    The sad state of soteriology in the Convention resulted in several generations of people who think “Whosoever will!” is a refutation of Calvinism.  The article serves as reminder that there comes a point at which all the people in the wrong can muster is a string of proof texts like 1 Timothy 2:11 - 15 and a quick statement that amounts to “isn’t it obvious” instead of an substantive exposition that interacts with the text itself.

It isn’t as if there isn’t a plethora of theologians in Baptist History who have written on this and other issues.  This is all to say that there is a history to this issue, and when you get right down to it, it seems like there are 2 camps now - the one who actually does grammatical-historical exegesis and avoids the Is-Ought fallacy and consciously or not understands the 3 Spheres & 3 fold use of the Law & Gospel and those who reduce 1 Timothy 2:11 - 15 to a genetics test, which results in epistemic, logical, & exegetical fallacies.  

Let’s take a look at this: 

“Not one of these women served in the office of pastor as it is defined in the New Testament. Regarding Deborah (the usual suspect), the office of pastor in the New Testament is not comparable to a judge in ancient Israel, nor is the time of the judges a model to emulate. The exegetically responsible position on the subject of women pastors is the recognition that the New Testament does not provide an example of women in authority over men in the local church.”

1. The Bible analogizes between Israel as a nation and the local church all the time.  

2.  If she is going to argue that the nation of Israel is disanalogous to Israel in the days of the judges she needs to provide a supporting argument.   The church today, including her own denomination, is, according to its own leadership, composed of people going their own way doing what is right in their own eyes.

3.  Every one of the Judges was a Prophet, and that includes Deborah.  Samuel was Israel’s last major Judge.   Just because he was male & part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, it does not therefore follow that he was analogous to a pastor while Deborah was not.   

4.  She might want to reconsider the 3fold use of the Law before she writes or speaks about this topic.  

Deborah was a prophet who exercised military authority over men.  That is the equivalent to exercising a kingly set of prophetic keys, and since she was allowed to do that, she exercised authority with respect to 2 offices - king/ruler and prophet .  

Every one of the writer’s theological forebears among the 19th Century Baptists rolling backwards to the days of John Spilsbury would remind her that the 3 Offices, 3 Keys, 3 Spheres, and 3 Uses of the Law & Gospel all entail harmonious relations so that to deny women authority in one sphere, office, etc.  is to deny them authority in all 3, and to allow them authority in one office, sphere, etc. is to allow them in all 3.   That is why women in 1701 in Britain were denied authority unless they were the Queen.   Even then, all you have to do is read John Gill on this subject to know that if he had his way, there would be no Queen of Great Britain ever again.

In an earlier article, we observed how the Is-Ought Fallacy is used to assert that sexual ethics are properly warranted via human anatomy & physiology.  When it comes to women in ministry, the same phenomenon is at work.  All we have to do is know & understand that the ordinand is female in order to rule against her & over her in order to exclude her from membership. She could be Lottie Moon herself, so her morals don’t matter - what matters is her sex/gender.  

5. Dear writer, you think that 1 Timothy establishes a genetics test for elders to pass before being considered for an elder candidate, & since you ultimately derive this from the created order, please demonstrate that either (1) in 1 Timothy 2:14, God, in whom the principles of both hermeneutics and logic inhere, gave us an exception to the laws of logic grounded in His existence, or (2) that the Is-Ought fallacy is not involved in your own line of reasoning on this subject.

In John Gill’s day, women were barred from rulership over men in the home, church, and society, insofar that theologians believed that the 3 Uses ought to be harmonious (true). On that view, denying women churchly authority also meant they were denied in the home and in Government.  

Given your POV, you have two choices.  You can affirm the 3 Uses of the Law & Gospel agreeing with John Gill, the old world, and the pagan view of women in the Greco-Roman world, or you can assert that the 3 uses are to be disharmonious (false), and women are allowed moral & legal authority over men in Government but not the Church. In order to make that stick, you have to argue *for* not against Is-Oughtness not *against* it and that the 3fold Use includes some ad hoc exceptions to the rule relative to Moral Government.

The churches & society is also failing the LGBTQ Community.  How so? 

If the Christian community paracleted the LGBTQ community more, Target and Bud Light wouldn’t be as strident with respect to what they are doing.   We should ask ourselves why, in the age in which gay people can legally marry, it is still legal in some states to discriminate against people with respect to sexual orientation with respect to employment, housing, and public accommodation. 

We should remember that Christians have a checkered history with respect to these issues.  In the 80’s, Tom, Carol, Ted, and Alice were swinging while Jerry Falwell pointed fingers at gay men with respect to HIV/AIDS.   In the 90’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was controversial while Christians were openly lying about the efficacy of latex condoms and instituting purity culture and abstinence only sex education programs that excluded gay people from discussions except to send the message that that sort of behavior kills and is otherwise unacceptable. 

In the 2000’s the BSA decided to allow openly gay students into its ranks.  Christians in the churches, while saying that gays need Jesus and that the BSA chapters they sponsored were part of their outreach ministries, cut ties with the BSA and decided to do their own thing in order to exclude gays, thus sending the message “No Jesus for you!” to gays.   That happened concurrently with the standing in line at Chick Fil’A to oppose the gay agenda.   Did anyone who bought Combo 1 for Christ buy one for their gay friend?  

About a decade ago in ATL, a group of local mean girls banded together and falsely accused the ATL Eagle of allowing drug sales on premises and turning their speakers onto the neighborhood illegally.   A paddy wagon appeared on a week night and violated the rights of staff & patrons alike in a raid of the bar that turned up no evidence whatsoever of the Women’s Temperance Union’s allegations. 

In NC, when the GOP took over the General Assembly, they decided not to honor a gentlemen’s agreement between the GA & LGBT lobbyists in which they had agreed that in exchange for continued funding of NC ADAP, they would do their best to keep the marriage issue out of NC.   After saber rattling by some Republican legislators who wanted to severely curtail or end ADAP, the LGBTQ community retaliated, and that act went all the way to SCOTUS, and now gay marriage is legal.   In NC, Conservative ideologues helped build the monster they feared.  

TN is targeting drag queens in the public square and censuring African-American legislators in the State House for being agitators while cutting the Nashville Metro area government in half for brazenly political reasons - and all of this while their legislature is reliving another cycle of sexual harassment by one or more legislators.  

In FL their legislature forbade matters  touching on these issues into an American or British literature class for high school juniors and seniors unless reading material that touches on these issues is mandatory.  Within the past few days, they have revisited the issue and it appears they are at least attempting a reproachment.

In addition, if an employer uses Matthew 5:41 as the basis for a continuing education module that touches on race relations and an employee feels guilty, that is now an actionable offense, regardless of whether or not CRT is involved.  As we observed in an earlier article, their anti-guilt legislation has the potential to curtail speech that is exclusively religious with respect to its epistemic foundation.  

Reformation Charlotte & others like them like Justin Peters consigns homosexuals to hell. According to Justin Peters, the people who died in the Orlando shooting all went to hell because they were homosexual, &, if not, Christian people don’t go to those kinds of places. 

Matthew 5:41 - If the jackbooted Roman soldier (who is equivalent to any of these people whom we have failed for so long) comes to your door & requests or otherwise demands that you walk a Roman stadia with them, then you are to walk the stadia (replicate) & walk another stadia (restore).  Matthew 5:41 is a fixed, immovable object that stands in the path of the American churches, theologically Evangelical Christians & their Roman Catholic & Orthodox counterparts, & American & other societies around the world. 

Thank you for reading, God bless you all & “Go & sin no more.”