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.
Okay. But even God's eternal law has temporal aspects; for example, murder was not possible outside of time and before creation, nor was the sanctification of one day in seven, nor the worship of idols nor the taking of God's name in vain, etc. These laws are eternal not so much because they exist outside of time, but because they are reflections of God's
eternal (unchanging) character, and this is where their foundation lies. For a man to murder or break the Sabbath or worship idols or dishonor his parents or lie is to distort and break the image of God in which he was made--but he can't do any of these things except
in time.
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.
My confusion then was your use of Tiessen, since his concern about God's timelessness (how does a timeless God relate to human beings?) seems quite different from your concern. I'm not convinced you can translate Tiessen's concern into these categories of law.
However, as far as I'm aware (and granted I'm no seminarian), covenant theology has always been concerned with temporal issues as well--necessarily, since the covenants play out in time. The Covenant of Works was promulgated in time to Adam, the Covenant of Grace was promulgated in time to Abraham, the Covenant of Redemption was fulfilled in time in Christ's death and resurrection, etc. The eternal is the foundation of the temporal; God's eternal decrees are realized temporally.
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.
This is not terribly surprising if we believe in progressive revelation. Do we refuse to understand the didactic meanings of the Mosaic religious ceremonies because they are chronologically earlier than the writing of the Book of Hebrews? Later revelation frequently sheds light on earlier revelation.
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.
Evidently you misunderstand the hermeneutic; or, perhaps, the "theologians" of whom you speak do. It is not as simple as "the later interprets the earlier." We don't reinterpret Gen. 9:6 in light of Lev. 20:13 because the latter has nothing to do with murder.
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.
No doubt; but I can't see this as a legitimate complaint against covenant theology.
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.
Perhaps it will help if I explain more fully my reasons for moving the thread out of "Compatibilism." You were taking the discussion of compatibilism (likewise, timelessness) towards becoming a subordinate part of a larger discussion on a "theology of the state." But that thread's larger discussion
was compatibilism in itself. So I created a new thread for discussion on a "theology of the state."
