Featured Cultural Interaction pt2

Therefore every distinction between general moral ordinances, and more special Christian commandments is unknown to him Can we imagine that at one time God willed to rule things in a certain moral order, but that now, in Christ, He wills to rule it otherwise? As though He were not the Eternal, the Unchangeable, Who, from the very hour of creation, even unto all eternity, had willed, wills, and shall will and maintain, one and the same firm moral world-order! Verily Christ has swept away the dust with which man's sinful limitations had covered up this world-order, and has made it glitter again in its original brilliancy. Verily Christ, and He alone, has disclosed to us the eternal love of Christ which was, from the beginning, the moving principle of this world-order. Above all, Christ has strengthened in us the ability to walk in this worldorder with a firm, unfaltering step. But the world-order itself remains just what it was from the beginning. It lays full claim, not only to the believer (as though less were required from the unbeliever), but to every human being and to all human relationships. Hence Calvinism does not lead us to philosophize on a so-called moral life, as though we had to create, to discover, or to regulate this life.

Calvinism simply places us under the impress of the majesty of God, and subjects us to His eternal ordinances and unchangeable commandments. Hence it is that, for the Calvinist, all ethical study is based on the Law of Sinai, not as though at that time the moral world-order began to be fixed, but to honor the Law of Sinai, as the divinely authentic summary of that original moral law which God wrote in the heart of man, at his creation, and which God is re-writing on the tables of every heart at its conversion.



The Calvinist is led to submit himself to the conscience, not as to an individual lawgiver, which every person carries about in himself, but as to a direct sensus divinitatis, through which God Himself stirs up the inner man, and subjects him to
His judgment.

He does not hold to religion, with its dogmatics as a separate entity, and then place his moral life with its ethics as a second entity alongside of religion, but he holds to religion as placing him in the presence of God Himself, Who thereby embues him with His divine will. Love and adoration are, to Calvin, themselves the motives of every spiritual activity, and thus the fear of God is imparted to the whole of life as a reality–into the family, and into society, into science and art, into personal life, and into the political career.
A redeemed man who in all things and in all the choices of life is controlled solely by the most searching and heart-stirring reverence for a God Who is ever present to his consciousness, and Who ever holds him in His eye thus does the Calvinistic type present itself in history. Always and in all things the deepest, the most sacred reverence for the ever-present God as the rule of life–this is the only true picture of the original Puritan.

 

on page 66 ...Mission of God;
1st, since God's saving activity is accomplished through sending his Son, His Spirit, and in turn His called out people, God's mission is not limited to any one institutional expression.
Notice that God's covenant is made with families and acts 2: 39 so the Kingdom of God is not 1st institutional, but an individual and family movement that grows and develops through personal conversion and familial obediance to God. The starting point of our mission today as God's people it's not with political or social reform, or even with ecclesiastical structures of the church important as all those are, but with the gospel, the renewed covenant in Christ, and it's personal and familial application to life.
The number one priority is consequently self government meaning a regenerated and thus free man's personal obedience on the Christ, and this can only be accomplished as christians rid themselves of false humanistic assumptions about neutral areas of life and thought and see all things in the light of the good news of Christ's salvation and Lordship.

 

On page 80 the comment is made there is a popular relativism invading the church it is also manifest in the escapists mentality among the Christians then later on he says; All time, all of Earth, all of life is His. Psalm 24:1 and this is sustained by his ordination.
The division of sacred and secular is an artificial and unbiblical distinction.
We are accustomed to associating spirituality with Heavenly mindedness; the modern pietism and quietism concerned with eternal verities of the inner life and soul, the beatific Vision, not the Practical realities of laundry, raising children, education,law, culture making, and gardening!
The very term spiritual retreat implicitly conveys a non-biblical orientation concerning the nature of the Christian Life .
But for Kuyper and the Puritans, true spirituality meant recognizing the sanctity of all time in the government of God over all life in all creation. Though a fallen order Christ is now reconciling all things to himself both in heaven and in Earth, through his Redemptive work and by his serving people, his new humanity – the kingdom of the redeemed.
This was the faith of the biblical writers and many of our Evangelical forbears.

 

The division of sacred and secular is an artificial and unbiblical distinction.

The number one priority is consequently self-government meaning a regenerated and thus free man's personal obedience on the Christ, and this can only be accomplished as Christians rid themselves of false humanistic assumptions about neutral areas of life and thought and see all things in the light of the good news of Christ's salvation and Lordship.

Therefore every distinction between general moral ordinances, and more special Christian commandments is unknown to him Can we imagine that at one time God willed to rule things in a certain moral order, but that now, in Christ, He wills to rule it otherwise?

A shift in or a wrong end times view can affect how you see things playing out in your life. Nevertheless God's purpose is not subject to change.

 

pg84.
Puritans looked for great success for the gospel in History.
They looked for the age foretold by the prophets when the earth would be full of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.[isa.11:9]
Christians saw themselves as privileged participants in the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth.
Puritan John Cotten declared the "millennium" would be not through Christ's bodily presence on earth but through faithful preaching, of unprecedented dimensions. and revivals.
In other words as the church faithfully preaches and lives the gospel, the Holy Spirit would be poured out upon the world and a time would come when the diffusion of the gospel would be so widespread in the earth that the words of Isa.11 would be manifest.

All of the premillenial fever of the 1800's derailed this view....presenting counter-perspectives to the dominant viewof history itself.
Protestant theologians did not find adequate scriptural grounds in this manner, they were looking for fruit in the lives of those who held the new doctrines and were often horrified at what they saw.

 

pg89;
1] To whom does history belong?

2]Is history truly of spiritual relevance or is real spirituality reserved for the parousia and heaven?

3]Does history truly matter, or is the material world and its events inconsequential compared to heaven?

4]Who will be victorious in history-God or Satan?

5] Is God committed to the redemption of His creation, or the abandonment of it?

The widespread teaching that the end of the world is imminent and that the Kingdom of God refers almost exclusively to a future millennial order at the end of history centered in a reconstituted geo-political Israel after the return of Christ has without a doubt contributed significantly to a dualistic view that Christs reign is only spiritual for church history, in the sense that His rule is presently restricted to the private heart of the Christian

 

pg90;
As faithful, integrated biblical faith has waned in the western churches,
so biblical morality, education, and thereby culture have all but disappeared in western society.
When churches RETREAT or abandon the task of engaging culture by the application of Christ's Lordship and word to all things, they are not taking a neutral view of culture but rather subordinating the faith.

91;Puritans believed God willed and commanded what they called the reformation of the world.

92;replacement of biblical law with mans law was a product of deism and the enlightenment tradition, both hostile to Christianity.

95;
This theological amnesia has opened up a gulf between old and new evangelism with respect to the relationship between law and gospel and as a consequence the relationship between the gospel and culture.

 

96,97;
God's law has been central in the family, church, society.
Churches and church members are turning away from the law word of God.

Then this statement is made;
Western Christians complain vigorously about the state of society, the dramatic moral decline since the 1960's, the rampant criminality and the dereliction of much modern truth. Yet should we be surprised at this?
If the church is ambivalent with respect to the law of God, will not the culture follow suit?

 

Matthew Henry is quoted on mt.5:17-20.

Then the false understanding of OT. is law, NT> is grace is explained.

Titus 2:11-15 is offered;
11 For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men,

12 Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;

13 Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;

14 Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.

15 These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke with all authority. Let no man despise thee.

 

I am only partway through this book, I would recommend it to everyone as a thought-provoking work that forces a person to re-think the gospel itself as a fuller revelation of what we are to proclaim, rather than the shallow fragmentation that we have seen in the last half a century.

https://www.amazon.com/Mission-God-Manifesto-Hope-Society/dp/0994727909

in pages 100-102, he begins to present a solid and healthy view of law and grace.

 

onpg110;
An observation is made that throughout Church history there was no artificial dichotomy or duality posited between law and gospel, Old and New Testament,the God of the Old Covenant and the God of the New.

and then;
A reformed missiology must therefore repudiate dualism in all its forms, bringing heaven and earth, past, present, and future, world, and church, under the authority of all God's total word.
Only in this way can we hope to see a recovery of gospel effectiveness and the extension of the Kingdom of God in our justly judged generation.

 

Dr. Joe Boot of the Ezra Institute on Two Kingdom Theology - YouTube

 

Joe Boot: The Road From Eden: Understanding Culture (with Spanish subtitles) - YouTube

 

pg 115;
only two alternatives;
Chance, or Predestination?
God or fate?
He goes over a portion of the 1644 confession of faith showing how God is in total control of all that comes to pass.
He shows God is active in history and all nations.
Romans 11:33-36

He points out if we exclude God from History we discover we are unable to find meaning in it, and become incapable of affirming anything about history or time.

 

on page 125;
So then, Over against the humananistic myths of a "Dark Age and Enlightenment or other contemporary myths of today's "post colonial theology" if history is governed by God, His covenant law and Providence then social histories are successes and failures in the varied areas of cultural building, will be a reflection in large degree ,of human beings obedience and disobedience to God's purposes and word in any given era.
This view is the biblical vision of God's act of work in history to bless and person terms of his covenant proverbs 14 verse 34 in Deuteronomy 28. This is a covenant reading of history that characterize the puritan mine. The puritans were themselves industrialist's scientists, adventurers, educators, and pioneers who believe that God required them to turn creation into the culture of Christ.

 

The modern iteration of Two Kingdoms theology is an artificial and unbiblical distinction between sacred and secular. Christ is reconciling all things to himself, and at the end, will hold all men accountable for their works.

Ezra Institute;

 

The Two Kingdoms Doctrine: What's The Fuss All About? Part One

Not everyone agrees. People approach this differently-

Review of David Van Drunen’s A Biblical Case for Natural Law

 

Although God did single out Israel in many ways, it does not mean He does not deal with all nations;
Isa24:
5 The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant.

6 Therefore hath the curse devoured the earth, and they that dwell therein are desolate: therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men left.
Genesis 15:16
But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.