BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 10
February, 1990
Copyright 1990, Biblical Horizons
7. Two things I asked of Thee, Do not refuse me before I die: 8. Keep deception and words of falsehood far from me, Give me neither poverty nor riches, Feed me with the food that it my portion, 9. Lest I be full and deny Thee, And say, "Who is the LORD?" Or lest I be in want and steal, And profane the name of my God
In Proverbs 30:7-9 we find the prayer of a humble man. Verse 7 hints that the Sojourner (Agur, possibly Jacob) is an elderly man, when it says, "Do not refuse me before I die." Possibly, though, this simply means that the Sojourner wants to be able to look back over his life on his deathbed, and not be ashamed.
The first thing Agur asks for is that "deception or vanity, and words of falsehood" be kept from him. If we were a bit more self-confident, we might ask God to give us a discerning spirit so that we might recognize and renounce deceptions when we see them. Humble Agur, however, does not have so much self-confidence. He prays, "Lead me not into temptation; put me not to the test, lest I fail Thee."
The deception and words of falsehood might be sheer lies told by crafty persons. Jacob certainly encountered this with Laban, and having seen how much evil resulted, might easily have composed this prayer. The word for "deception" also implies vanity or emptiness, and thus this phrase can also refer to the deceptive and false words of vain philosophy and idolatry. It is not just personal lies we have to deal with and be protected from, but also the big lies of liberal religion, secular philosophy, Baalistic evangelicalism, and the like. If we take Agur’s advice seriously, we will take Christian education seriously.
As we saw last time (chapter 3), the way to be preserved from lies and from lying philosophy is found in verses 5 and 6: total commitment to the written Word of God.
Jacob might also have prayed that God would give him neither poverty nor riches. He had grown up with greedy Esau, and had seen the destructive effects of the lust for wealth in the house of Laban, who changed his wages repeatedly. He had personally known oppression and poverty, especially in his early years under Laban, and he had personally known great wealth in his later years. Jacob, thus, was intimately familiar with the temptations that come at both extremes.
Again, if we had a little self-confidence, we might pray, "God, give me riches, and give me the wisdom to know how to use it." But this is not the Sojourner’s prayer. He wants to have a moderate amount of money. Why? Because he is afraid of himself. The humble man is a man who is afraid of himself. We need to be afraid of ourselves, and we need to be afraid of what we might do if God removed the restraints.
BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 10
February, 1990
Copyright 1990, Biblical Horizons
If the debate over Operation Rescue has proven anything, it has proven that there is absolutely no consensus among evangelicals in general, or among "reconstructionists" in particular, about how to use the Bible to judge political actions and movements. Each side of the debate claims biblical authority for its position, and criticizes the other side for what it views as unbiblical practices and views. R. J. Rushdoony has argued in several articles that there is no biblical precedent for the activities of Operation Rescue. To take direct action to stop abortion, he claims, is to try to fight like David while wearing Saul’s armor. Operation Rescue’s defenders claim that Proverbs 24 provides biblical warrant for civil disobedience, and some argue that Christians are sinning if they do not obey the command to rescue the perishing. In something of a mediating position, Gary North argues that Operation Rescue is permissible, so long as the action remains non-violent and so long as the action meets certain biblical criteria, because the Bible does not forbid direct action to save life. (See R. J. Rushdoony, "Revolution or Regeneration," Chalcedon Report, January 1989; Rushdoony, "Christians and Saul’s Armor," The Counsel of Chalcedon, December 1988; Gary North, When Justice is Aborted: Biblical Standards for Non-Violent Resistance [Ft. Worth: Dominion Press, 1989].)
Quite apart from the substance of these arguments, this debate raises important questions about how Christians are to use the Bible in matters of political judgment. In particular, this debate (and others) raise questions about the relevance of arguments from silence. An argument from silence in this context means an argument that appeals to what the Bible does not say, rather than to what it does say. Rushdoony’s and North’s positions on Operation Rescue rest on different forms of the argument from silence. Rushdoony’s use of the argument from silence is the more obvious: Christians should not take any political action for which there is not a clear biblical precedent or command. North’s defense of Operation Rescue rests on his argument that "at least" nothing in the Bible forbids direct action to save life, an argument that assumes that what is not forbidden is permissible (North, When Justice, p. 132).
Widening the scope of this concern, it is evident that arguments from silence are used, particularly by "reconstructionists," in discussions of everything from education to welfare to prison reform. Several illustrations will show how pervasive this type of argument is. On education, Gary DeMar writes:
DeMar argues that there should be no tax-supported schools because the Bible nowhere commands civil rulers to educate children.
R. J. Rushdoony notes that "The prison appears in Biblical law only as a place of custody, pending trial. There is no direct reference to prisons." After distinguishing the biblical emphasis on restitution from the pagan emphasis on punishment, and detailing the evils associated with modern prison systems, Rushdoony concludes: "According to Leviticus 18:24-30, every departure from God’s law is a defilement of men and a defilement of the land: it is the basic pollution of all things. The prison system is an important aspect of the defilement of our times." (Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law [Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1973], pp. 514-22. Note well that, in addition to pointing out that ancient Israel had no prisons, Rushdoony also makes a historical and theological case against modern criminal "justice.")
More generally and simply, David Chilton writes:
It can be seen that much of the "reconstructionist" social agenda rests on an appeal to the silence of Scripture. Indeed, this willingness to appeal to silence as conclusive evidence of a biblical position seems almost to be the distinguishing characteristic of the "reconstructionist" political hermeneutic. Other evangelical groups, such as Charles Colson’s Prison Fellowship, also point out that the Bible does not prescribe prison as a form of punishment, but they do not draw the conclusion that therefore prisons are inherently ungodly. Colson’s arguments against modern prisons rest (as do Rushdoony’s in part) on general biblical principles of justice and restitution.
I
Arguments from silence usually conceal unexamined assumptions about the nature of Scripture and the nature of civil government. What assumptions make the appeal to silence persuasive? First, arguments from silence tend to assume that the Bible provides explicit guidance in all possible matters of public policy; they assume, in short, that the Bible provides something like a legal "code." The implicit argument is something like this, "If God had wanted us to do X, He would have told us." Second, arguments from silence assume that the civil ruler must remain within the explicit limits of Scripture. That is, it would be sinful for a civil ruler to propose a public education system, or a program for poor relief, precisely because God has not told civil rulers to do such things.
Another way to formulate the assumptions of these arguments from silence might be as follows: The Bible delegates certain responsibilities to certain persons: parents have the power of the rod, Church elders the power of the keys, and civil rulers the power of the sword. Because God has delegated the sword, the civil ruler is responsible to God for his use of the sword. He may use the sword, that is, coercion, only in those ways explicitly permitted by Scripture. From this conclusion are drawn a number specific consequences: If the ruler kills someone for a crime that is not a capital crime in the Bible, he has committed murder. If the ruler imprisons someone without biblical warrant to do so, he is guilty of kidnapping. If the civil ruler collects taxes for transfer payments, which the Bible nowhere commands him to do, he has committed theft.
Putting these assumptions together, arguments from silence assume a rather tightly formulated "regulative principle" of political action; civil rulers and politically active citizens ought not do anything that the Bible does not command them to do. What is not commanded is forbidden. These, and only these, assumptions can make arguments from silence persuasive. But are these assumptions valid?
II
It must be admitted that these are not obviously fallacious assumptions, and in fact there is much truth in them. The civil ruler is responsible to God for his political actions, as are all citizens who engage in political activity. In particular, the civil ruler is responsible to obey God as He has revealed Himself in His Word. Moreover, the Bible does claim to be useful for the godly man in "every good work." Finally, the Bible does delegate various responsibilities to various offices and institutions. I even agree with some of the specific consequences that are drawn from these assumptions. I agree that the civil ruler may not impose capital punishment except with God’s permission; in this case it is clear that a civil ruler who imposes the death penalty for, say, reading Biblical Horizons , is guilty of murder.
But in many areas, the sinfulness of a ruler’s act is not so easily established. Let us take the example of transfer payments. Are transfer payments sinful? If so, precisely why? Civil rulers clearly have the right to exact taxes. They clearly have the right to transfer tax money from some people (citizens) to others (government employees). Someone attacking transfer payments with an argument from silence would admit this point, but would argue that the Bible gives the civil ruler no authority to transfer money from some (richer) citizens to other (poorer) citizens. This reply assumes that a civil ruler must have specific and explicit biblical warrant for his every activity and program. But is this a standard that can be consistently applied? If not, is it a useful standard? I am not defending transfer payments, but any persuasive attack on transfer payments must have a firmer basis than the mere silence of Scripture.
This standard, in fact, cannot be, or at least has not been, consistently applied. Christians do countless things today, without a qualm of conscience, that have no direct warrant in Scripture. This is true not only in daily life (where we use computers, electric lights, and flush toilets), but also in the political sphere. Modern legislatures are characterized by at least three features: 1) elected representatives who 2) make laws and 3) control the public purse. There is no explicit biblical warrant a body with these three features. Are Christians who run for legislative office or who are engaged in lobbying legislators involved in an unbiblical institution? Strictly speaking, yes, they are, since there are no legislatures in the Bible. Is there anything inherently wrong with this? Almost no one would say so.
(One reply to this line of argument would be to attempt to prove that there was in fact a legislative branch in Old Testament Israel. J. B. Shearer argues, for example, that ancient Israel had a bicameral legislature, and claims that the representatives not only interpreted laws, but also "provided for new and exceptional cases by new legislation." The only texts he provides as evidence for this conclusion are Numbers 27:1-11 and 36:1-12; but in both passages, the "new legislation" came directly from God, not by the majority vote of the elders. It appears to me that Israel’s civil rulers operated mainly as judges and military commanders. In their judicial capacity, they applied God’s laws to new situations, thus in a sense "making new laws," but I find no conclusive evidence that there was a separate department or branch of Israel’s government dedicated to legislative activity. And one key element of modern legislative governance — the power of the purse — is wholly lacking in Scripture. It seems that Shearer’s argument is more an effort to read the American Constitutional system back into Scripture than an effort to understand Scripture on its own.)
But a more central problem with arguments from silence is the assumption that the Bible provides specific guidance on all possible policy questions. This assumption, it seems, is at the core of the argument from silence, yet is, paradoxically enough, the weakest assumption. Without this assumption, a simple appeal to an argument from silence lacks logical and biblical foundation.
Scripture does, as I emphasized in the previous section, guide us in every area of life. If we walk in the way of the law, our way will be blameless (Psalm 119:1). But two qualifications must be made. First, Scripture’s purpose is to reveal God and to tell us of His mighty acts for us, as well as to direct us in the way of righteousness. Even the Old Testament law’s purpose is not merely legal, but revelational. Christ is the heart of the law and the prophets. As James B. Jordan has put it, "God’s Word comes to us first as a Tree of Life, giving us grace, and then afterwards as a Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, giving us rules." (Jordan, Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World [Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1988], p. 120.) The Bible is not essentially a rule book or a law code; even the rules find their deepest meaning in the light of God’s revelation in Christ. For these reasons, we ought not to read the Bible merely as a collection of moral rules, or as a textbook of political ethics.
Second, to insist that Scripture is a guide for all of life, including political life, does not in itself answer the question of how the Bible should be interpreted. Those who make use of simplistic arguments from silence fail to recognize the various levels of generality in God’s commands to us. They search for specific answers to every political question, and distort texts if no suitable answer is immediately forthcoming.
John Frame presents a more defensible form of a regulative principle for all of life. He rejects the notion that "whatever is not forbidden is permitted" as unbiblical, and instead defends the formulation, for both worship and life, that "whatever is not commanded is forbidden." Frame’s application of this principle, however, is more satisfactory than that of the proponents of arguments from silence. He distinguishes between various levels of specificity in the commands of God. The Bible provides both absolutely general principles and very specific guidance. Frame, explaining the qualifications on the "regulative principle of worship" that are found in the Westminster Confession of Faith, admits that "there are some `circumstances’ not specifically mentioned in scripture which we seek to arrange wisely, in accord with the broader principles of the word." (John Frame, "Some Questions About the Regulative Principle," unpublished paper, p. 11.) Thus, a civil ruler may propose a program that has no explicit biblical warrant, so long as the program conforms to the "broader principles" of Scripture. This is not to say that Scripture cannot possibly provide specific guidance in the area of public policy; it may, and the only way to determine whether or not it does is to study Scripture in detail. But it is possible that, having made an effort to find some guidance for a specific problem, we find that Scripture does not speak explicitly to a particular issue. It is this latter possibility that arguments from silence do not take account of.
Moreover, Frame argues, there may be many different, equally legitimate, ways of fulfilling a command. God sometimes commands without telling us specifically how we are to obey that command (ibid., pp. 4-5). We are commanded to show mercy to poor people, but there are a variety of legitimate ways to obey that command, from making donations to relief ministries to moving into a ghetto to minister directly to the underclass. The way we obey is not neutral; but we do have some freedom to decide specifically how we may obey God.
What is true in personal ethics is true in political ethics: there may be more than one legitimate way for a civil ruler to fulfill his duty to God. Civil rulers ought to promote the good (Rom. 13:3). The chief way in which a civil ruler fulfills this command, according to the text of Romans 13, is to be a terror to the evildoer and conversely a protector of the good. But might there be other ways for a civil ruler to "praise" the good? Does this mean that the civil ruler gives public recognition to outstanding citizens? Should the ruler provide financial or other incentives for good behavior? Should fertile, law-abiding citizens get a tax break? All of these questions, of course, must be examined in the light of Scripture. But the point is that there may be many possible ways for a civil ruler to fulfill God’s command.
Frame’s explanation of the "regulative principle of all of life," combined with his emphasis elsewhere on the need for careful exegesis and the necessity of multiple perspectives on ethics, provide a starting point for re-thinking "reconstructionist" political theory with greater clarity.
A final way of thinking about this problem is to consider what we mean when we say something is "unbiblical." In a weak sense, something is "unbiblical" when it is not mentioned in the Bible. While it may be historically interesting to note that there is no mention in Scripture of, say, the combustion engine, it is not very helpful in resolving political ethical questions. In a strong sense, something is "unbiblical" when it violates positive biblical principles. Arguments from silence systematically confuse these two senses because an institution or practice is condemned simply because it is not mentioned in Scripture. A related problem occurs with the use of the word "biblical." Is polygamy biblical? In a weak sense, yes (that is, it is mentioned in the Bible). In a strong sense, polygamy is contrary to God’s will for man and woman, and therefore unbiblical. I am suggesting that our use of the Bible would be improved if we were to use "unbiblical" and "biblical" only in the strong sense. In this way, we could avoid forcing Scripture to say more than it does. Adding to Scripture is, after all, condemned equally as much as subtracting from it.
(Concluded in the March 1990 issue of Biblical Horizons .)
Biblical Chronology
Vol. 2, No. 2
February, 1990
Copyright © James B. Jordan 1990
By James B. Jordan
Although nowadays gap theories are associated with dispensationalism, it was not always so. In the nineteenth century, scholars from a variety of backgrounds (Anglican, Reformed, and proto-fundamentalist) seem to have become fascinated by gaps. If you are not familiar with what I am talking about, this newsletter will acquaint you with the problem.
Primeval Gaps
The first gap proposed was between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. It was argued that God would not have made a "formless and void" world, so clearly there must have been some kind of fall of the cosmos between these two verses: God had created the heavens and the earth. This was supposedly a finished and glorious universe. Also, supposedly there was either a pre-Adamic human race or else a race of angels who ran this world. This race fell into sin and God destroyed the world, leaving it "formless and void." God then remade the world during the six days of Genesis 1.
One can find this notion in numerous older Bible commentaries, including such Presbyterian works as George Bush, Notes on Genesis (Minneapolis: James & Klock, 1976 [1860]), and J. G. Murphy, Commentary on Genesis (Minneapolis: James Publications, n.d. [1865]). It is also found advocated in Martin Anstay, Chronology of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1973 [1913]), and of course in the notes of the Scofield Reference Bible and in most commentaries issuing from the dispensational camp.
The supposed evidence for this is Isaiah 45:18, which says that God created the world "not a waste place: He formed it to be inhabited." This verse proves nothing, however. It would be just as proper, and better in context, to render it in English, "He established it and did not create it to be a waste place." I recommend the discussion in E. J. Young, The Book of Isaiah (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972) 3:211.
Not content with straining out a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, theologians next set about tossing in gaps in Genesis 5 and 11. Supposedly the chronologies in these chapters were not to be taken as complete because of "gaps in the genealogies." We shall take up Genesis 5 and 11 more fully later on. For now, I simply wish to make the point that nineteenth century theologians were fascinated by gaps, and that Reformed and Presbyterian theologians were as guilty as anybody in inventing them. In this case, as I’ve mentioned before, it was two Princeton theologians, B. B. Warfield and W. H. Green, who bear primary responsibility.
These primeval gaps made room for superficial accommodations with then-current secular science. The dinosaurs, it was argued by some, existed during the ages of the gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. Indeed, others argued, this gap accounts for all the billions of years required for evolution. Before the six days of re-creation, the earth was shrouded in clouds, they proposed, and what happened on the fourth day was merely that the sun, moon, and stars became visible to observers on the earth — an interpretation that strains lots of gnats and swallows more than one camel.
Naturally, adding lots of years into the chronologies of Genesis 5 and 11 enabled evangelicals to accommodate secular Egyptologists, who were saying that the first dynasties of Egypt arose between 6000 and 5000 B.C. Of course, the secularists have had to revise this opinion repeatedly, drawing the first dynasty ever closer and closer to a Biblically-acceptable date.
Problem? It isn’t in the Bible, Charlie. There’s no evidence for any of these gaps.
Eschatological Gaps
While Presbyterian theologians tried to make the history of the world longer than the Bible says it is by stuffing gaps into Genesis 1, 5, and 11, the proto-fundamentalist scholars, who today are known as dispensationalists, took to gap thinking with a vengeance. Integral to their system of thinking was the notion that Daniel’s seventieth week (Dan. 9:24-27) had been postponed until the end of time, so that the entire Christian era falls into a gap in prophetic chronology.
Other gaps had to be pushed into place as well. For instance, consider 1 Corinthians 15:23-24, "But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ’s at His coming, — [gap] —, then the end, when He delivers up the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power." Well, there’s no millennium in those verses. It sure looks as if the Kingdom comes to an end right at the "rapture" of the saints, since the Son gives it to the Father at that point. Guess we’re going to have to stuff in a gap, as indicated, where we can put the millennium! There are lots of other places in the Old and New Testaments where either millennial gaps or "Church Age" gaps have to be forced into the text in order to make it jibe with millennial systems.
It wasn’t just premillennialists who were zapping gaps into the text right and left. Other forms of gaps also were being entertained. For instance, some Lutheran and Calvinistic theologians came up with the idea that in Old Testament prophecy there is a "foreshortening of the eschatological horizon." This means that the Old Testament prophets combined the events of the first and second comings of Christ into one event. Now that the Gospel has arrived, we can see that there is in fact a gap between the first coming of Christ "in humility" and His second coming "in glory."
Calvin Theological Seminary professor Louis Berkhof puts it this way: "The element of time is a rather negligible quantity in the prophets. The prophets compressed great events into a brief space of time, brought momentous movements close together in a temporal sense, and took them in at a single glance. This is called `the prophetic perspective,’ or, as Delitzsch calls it, `the foreshortening of the prophet’s horizon.’ They looked upon the future as the traveler does upon a mountain range in the distance. He fancies that one mountain-top rises up right behind the other, when in reality they are miles apart. Cf. the prophecies respecting the Day of the Lord, and the twofold coming of Christ." Louis Berkhof, Principles of Biblical Interpretation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1950), p. 150.
Berkhof and others fall into this trap because they are committed to a "literal wherever possible" approach to prophecy (p. 152), which ignores the true character of ancient language and literature. On this, see my remarks in Jordan, Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World (Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1988), chap. 1. We need to let the Bible interpret itself, and not bring to it an artificial and rationalistic rule such as "literal wherever possible."
In my opinion, there is no good reason for this notion of foreshortening. It was at Christ’s first coming that He not only suffered and was buried, but also rose again, ascended to sit enthroned at the Father’s right hand, sent forth the Spirit to inaugurate His reign, and poured out wrath on His enemies in A.D. 70.
Problem? It isn’t in the Bible, Charlie. If we understand the imagery of the Bible properly, there is no need to see anything being postponed, and no evidence that any Old Testament prophecy "foreshortens" anything.
Spiritual Gaps
Gaps at the beginning and gaps at the end. All we have left are gaps in the middle of history, and nineteenth century evangelicals were happy to provide these as well.
Another manifestation of gap thinking, found not only in dispensational circles but in others as well, is the suggestion that some of the chronological statements of the Bible only pertain to "spiritual years," with "years of carnality" left out. Thus, 1 Kings 6:1 says that the fourth year of Solomon’s reign came 480 years after Israel came out of Egypt. This seems clear enough, until we count up the number of years in the books of Judges and Samuel and find out that the total figure is 594 (according to Anstay). The explanation offered is that if we subtract the years that Israel was under foreign rule ("carnal years"), we are left with 480 "spiritual years." As you can imagine, a great deal of ingenuity goes into making this system work. "Spiritual versus carnal years" were also used to explain the seeming chronological discrepancies between the books of Kings and Chronicles. This approach mars the usefulness both of Anstay’s book, and of Philip Mauro, The Wonders of Bible Chronology (Swengel, PA: Reiner, 1970 [1933]).
It is far simpler and more obvious to take note of the fact that some of the judges of Israel worked at the same time. For instance, Samuel, Jephthah, and Samson were contemporaries. The years given in the book of Judges do not require us to take them all in chronological sequence, and thus we are not obliged to do so. From the time Israel conquered Canaan to the time of Jephthah was 300 years (Jud. 11:26). That leaves 140 years to the fourth year of Solomon. Subtract 40 for David’s reign and 40 for Saul’s, and we have 56 years left. There were 40 years of Philistine oppression at the beginning of this period, eighteen of which are included in Jephthah’s 300 years. During the first 20, Jephthah, Samuel, and Samson were growing up. During the second 20, Samuel and Samson judged Israel. The battle of Mizpah took place at that point, which was the year Samson died and right at the time Elon the Zebulunite, the northern judge, also died (Jud. 12:7-12). Abdon judged after Elon in the north, but only for eight years (Jud. 12:14), after which Samuel judged all Israel. This leaves 34 years between the battle of Mizpah and the call of Saul (1 Sam. 8). By my reckoning, Samuel would be about 74 years old at this point, an "old man."
Now, this is just a rough sketch. As we go along, I’ll try to refine the chronology of this period as much as possible. Some of the numbers may change. My only point now is that gap-thinking is unnecessary and pointless in accounting for the period of the Judges. (In a later essay, we shall take up how this harmonizes with Acts 13:17-21.)
Problem? It isn’t in the Bible, Charlie. There is simply no evidence for this "spiritual years" approach.
Conclusion
I don’t know how to account for the rash of gap-thinking that broke out in the nineteenth century among evangelicals. I do know that it was a fairly pervasive phenomenon, not something limited only to dispensationalists. Part of the reason why Biblical chronology has fallen out of consideration during this century is because gap-thinking became so entrenched during the last. It became easy to imagine all sorts of chronological gaps between events, because supposedly there was evidence for many of them. Thus, Biblical chronology became less trustworthy, and the speculative constructions of secular scholars became more trustworthy.
In fact, however, there is no evidence of any gaps anywhere in the Biblical chronology. Harmonizing apparent discrepancies is not difficult, and there is no foundation for such notions as the "foreshortening of the eschatological horizon" or "spiritual chronology."
There is no evidence for a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2. All these verses say is that God made the world shapeless and empty to start with, and then as a Potter works with clay, He made the world we know in six days. Nothing could be simpler. There was no pre-Adamic race, and angels were never given charge of this earth. That is man’s job.
And there is no evidence of any gaps in the chronologies of Genesis 5 and 11. These passages show us that the Flood came 1656 years after the creation of the world, and that Abram was born 2008 years after the creation.
