The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Is compatibilism the only true Calvinist response?

Pilgrim said, Here's a quick and dirty attempt at clarifying what I'm wrestling with:

(1)Regarding whether "Analogy of Faith" is a biblical principle or a hermeneutic: I don't have any stake in insisting on it being one way or the other. To me, it's another terminological issue. I called it "hermeneutic" only because Daniel Fuller has (eg., "Gospel & Law: Contrast or Continuum? The Hermeneutics of Dispensationalism and Covenant Theology", p. 25) and John Piper has (back cover of same book). Calling it a "biblical principle" instead of a "hermeneutic" suits me fine.

(2)I in no way want to intentionally sidestep Christ's admonition to "search the scriptures". Like Pilgrim says, "A text out of context ...". As far as I can tell, it's the insistence on keeping context that drove Fuller to write "Gospel & Law: Contrast or Continuum?" (GL/CC) in the first place. In that book, he claims that exponents of the "face-value" hermeneutic (what he calls the hermeneutic used by dispensationalists) have claimed that the "analogy of faith" hermeneutic "allowed the mind, in its desire to see oneness, to ride roughshod over some of Scripture's intended meanings" (GL/CC, p. 26). He suggests a remedy: Fuller may agree completely with Ryrie on this "literal" interpretational policy. My studies have led me to agree with the "literal" policy in part, and to disagree in part, all for the sake of keeping context. I have little to no interest in defending Fuller. I bring him up only because he defines a problem that is crucial to what I'm "wrestling with".

(3)If I genuinely love Jesus Christ and the Bible He teaches me to revere, then when I feel outrage about the secular laws that other people impose on me and mine, about the rates of taxation and kinds of takings they impose on me and mine, and about the manner in which those taxes and takings are disbursed, then I should be able to go to Scripture to find guidance, help, and comfort.

• If I listen to Arminian lawyers, they point to Romans 13 and say, "Obey! Obey!".
• If I listen to theonomists, I hear them claim to be Calvinists and adherents to covenant theology, while their "rhetoric sometimes suggests total continuity between Mosaic law and our present situation" (John Frame's Toward a Theology of the State, #21 of "Hermeneutical Prolegomena") and they "sometimes underestimate the complexity of the continuities and discontinuities" (Frame's Prolegomena, #20).
• If I turn to this website's article by John Frame, I find an apparent Calvinist who proposes basing the State on the family, which tells me that he doesn't understand biblical jurisdictions well enough to avoid inadvertently proposing another nanny state.
• If I read John Witherspoon and other Presbyterian pastors from the American Revolutionary era, I find Christians who are strangely both Calvinistic and "libertarian" (the latter word meaning different things to different people, the same way "free will" has different meanings in different schools of theology).

--- So if I love Jesus and the Book He teaches me to revere, then I'll find guidance, help, and comfort for this problem by sticking as close to the Book as I can, ignoring all the noise as much as possible, and appreciating wisdom wherever He shows it to me. --- The core problem that I'm wrestling with is the same one that Frame addresses in Toward a Theology of the State, i.e., defining a theology of the state.

(4)It's reasonable to wonder how this theology-of-the-state problem relates to the problem I marked above in Tiessen: not the "free-will" problem, the "compatibilism" problem, or the "middle knowledge" problem, but the "the traditional Calvinist model that God is absolutely timeless" problem. Rather than address this [i]timelessness issue directly, I'll address it in passing by getting really brazen, and issuing a call for rotten eggs, putrid vegetables, and brickbats to be hurled in my direction (If only I could stir up that much interest!); by writing here an abridged, alternative "Hermeneutical Prolegomena":

• First six points are identical to Frame's first six points.
• In deference to Pilgrim's description of the "Analogy of Faith" biblical principle (I find no reason to doubt that his description if accurate.), I'll abandon following Fuller's use of this term. Nevertheless, I've learned something from Fuller. Specifically, I've learned that it's important, for the sake of keeping context, to take great care with time-sensitive passages. I have no reason to doubt Pilgrim when he says,
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  the New Testament ... is comprised of nearly 85% of Old Testament quotes and references.
  But all of these are either not time-sensitive, or they are treated with the care that time-sensitive material demands. Here's an example of what I mean by time-sensitive: Genesis 9:6 says,
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  Whoever sheds man's blood, By man his blood shall be shed, For in the image of God He made man. (NASB)
  If we think we can apply the "Analogy of Faith" biblical principle without being careful about chronology, then we might assume that we should apply this mandate to events that happened before the flood. After Cain killed Abel,
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  Cain said to the LORD, "My punishment is too great to bear! Behold, You have driven me this day from the face of the ground; and from Your face I will be hidden, and I will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me." So the LORD said to him, "Therefore whoever kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold" And the LORD appointed a sign for Cain, so that no one finding him would slay him. (4:13-15; NASB)
  So if we apply Genesis 9:6 to Cain the murderer, then we're asking God to take vengeance on us sevenfold. This clearly doesn't make any sense. It makes sense to understand Genesis 9:6 as applicable to post-diluvian humanity, but not to antediluvian humanity. So one of the crucial points in this "Hermeneutical Prolegomena" is that time-sensitive material needs to be distinguished from timeless material. Since God doesn't change (Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8, etc.), God, God's attributes, God's eternal law and eternal covenant, God's basic relationship with His creation, the Trinity, and many other issues fall into this "timeless", topical category. I call this approach to exegesis "topical" because it's possible to focus on one topic at a time, and largely ignore chronology, and reach fairly reliable conclusions. Calvin certainly did that in his Institutes when he "outlined his systematic theology in categories". But the fact that at the beginning of the 21st century, Christians are still trying to define a "theology of the state" tells me that Calvin and Calvinists have failed to adequately do so, and I'm convinced that this failure relates in part to a failure to sufficiently harmonize "Biblical Theology" and "Systematic Theology". Admittedly, Fuller has gone to an opposite extreme that has serious limitations. But by studying some of what he had to say, I learned how time-sensitive human-oriented passages in the Bible are. Positive law as it appears in the Bible is extremely time-sensitive. --- Conclusion: This hermeneutic proposes to distinguish God-centered issues (best approached topically, because God doesn't change) from man-centered issues (best approached chronologically, because mankind does change), using the results of the God-centered topical exegesis as a "control" in the man-centered chronological exegesis.
• Based on common sense, accept the ancient classification of law into eternal, divine, natural, and positive. Positive law is law imposed by humans upon other humans. Who can claim that there is no such thing in the Bible? Divine law is law communicated to humans through divine revelation, and recorded in what reformed people accept as our canon of Scripture. Natural law is God's law that humans, by the light of reason, are able to perceive. Any denial that natural law exists is tantamount to a denial that science exists. It's obvious foolishness. Since these three kinds of law exist by common sense, and since God is sovereign and supreme over all of creation, it's unreasonable not to believe that there is an overarching category of law, eternal law, that encompasses these three lower forms of law.
• Assume that Scripture has rational integrity.
• Assume that every passage needs to be taken at face-value, and comprehended on its own terms, before integrating it into a larger literary unit.
• Search for the author's intended meaning.
• Distinguish biblical law from biblical fact, and use biblical law as a "control" in the chronological exegesis. The distinction between law and fact is crucial to any kind of jurisprudence that attempts to be righteous. It's foolish to think that Biblical jurisprudence is an exception. So the distinction between Biblical law and Biblical fact is crucial to deciphering a reliable theology-of-the-state. The distinction between a Biblical fact and an ordinary fact lies in the mechanisms relied upon to establish the fact. Ordinary facts are established as true, i.e., they are verified, through physical (and perhaps other) data. In other words, the combination of reason, raw perception, and testimonies of trusted witnesses establishes what humans accept as ordinary facts. But a Biblical fact isn't primarily about reason, raw perception, or testimonies of witnesses. Instead, it's about taking truth-claims made by Scripture at face value. Scripture does not posit such truth-claims primarily as law. They are posited primarily as historical facts. A Biblical fact is a subset of the divine law.
• Divide Biblical law into constitutional law, statutory law, and case law; and divide constitutional law into the organic constitution and its amendments. --- For anyone who lives in a constitutional republic, this should be common sense. It is no more an imposition of extra-biblical material than the categories that Calvin used in his systematic theology. --- Biblical facts contribute to the understanding of Biblical law in a manner that's analogous to the way ordinary facts contribute to a court's deciding ordinary case law (At the common law, the judge decides what laws apply to a case. The jury decides the facts of the case. If necessary, the judge massages the law in the light of the jury's decision.). So Biblical facts are an essential aspect of the divine law, but Biblical law is the divine law's control for understanding Biblical facts.

This is quick and dirty, and it obviously needs a lot of work. But this is what I've been wrestling with.