The Highway Forums General Discussion Theology Discussion Forum Towards a Theology of the State

This is a reply to CovenantInBlood's post, (8/25/06) at 7:00pm:

When you say, if you peruse the four kinds of laws that are addressed in the first post above, and especially if you look at Proverbs 8:22-30, I think you'll agree that eternal law has the same attribute that God does with respect to time, specifically, "His existence outside the boundaries of time". So eternal law overarches chronology, whereas divine law, natural law, and positive law exist within time, and are subordinate to eternal law. Some theologians complain that traditional covenant theology has been overly focused on timeless or eternal categories, like the character and attributes of God, the Trinity, Christology, and topics like that, at the expense of subjects that exist in time. Seeing this complaint by such theologians through the template of these four laws, their complaint translates into a belief that traditional covenant theology has been too focused on eternal law, and has not given sufficient consideration to the three time-bound categories of law.

The way I understand it, the "State" is strictly about positive law, because without laws that people enforce against one-another, the State would not exist. If the complaint of these theologians about traditional covenant theology is true, then it appears to me that in order to develop a reliable theology of the state, it's necessary to find harmony between eternal law and these three categories of time-bound law. The complaint of some of these theologians that relates directly to the problem of finding a reliable, Bible-based theology of the state, is that traditional covenant theology has been prone to applying doctrines, precepts, principles discovered late in the biblical chronology, to interpret passages early in the biblical chronology. For example, Genesis 9:6 is clearly a command from God mandating that humans execute retribution against perpetrators of bloodshed. Leviticus 20:13 indicates that homosexual acts warrant the death penalty. Does the latter mean that we should reinterpret Genesis 9:6 so that instead of taking it in its plain meaning, the shedding of human blood, we take it with the expanded meaning it might have in light of Leviticus 20:13? If we have little regard for chronology, then we're not as likely to see a problem in applying later passages to earlier passages. I see this as a problem. Theologians like Tiessen may have their own reasons for speaking of a problem with the "timeless". I'm convinced that we can learn a lot more from Scripture by honoring both (i)the time-sequence of biblical events and (ii)the eternal in Scripture, than we can by honoring one at the expense of the other.

I hope this answers your question. I did not mean to offend. Please pardon me if I did. I'm new here, prone to being clumsy, and still getting my bearings.