Robin,

I presume by "Christian values" you mean those that Christians find either in the Bible, or that are entirely in accordance with the Bible? or like Dr. Ligon Duncan seems to suggest, are we able to invent Christian value as something new as we go along, using the Bible as an ideas generator?


re "merging Church and State as some so-called Theonomists would do;" Your statement suggests that you may be unaware that Theonomy, while advocating Mosaic law and Old Testament precedence as the foundation for the civil law of any nation, does not by any means promote the union of Church and State. God's law is universally true because truth is one, isn't it? When our countries pass laws that say murder is a crime, is just a little bit of mixing of Church and State? Or is the Church still separate? Would it be a mixing of Church and State if blasphemy against the true God is a crime? Or could the governance of our State still be separate from the Church? Let's not equate "Church" with "morality" as if they mean the same thing. If a Theonomist does advocate a union of Church authority with State authority, then you are quite right that they would be only "so-called" Theonomists.....or maybe my blurbage above is what you meant already. I digress.

re "....or creating a pure Libertarian state with no civil penalties for immoral behavior is appropriate in a society like that of my own, with a rich Christian heritage abandoned several generations ago" I wonder, where would a pure Libertarian state with no penalties for immoral behaviour ever be appropriate in our God's world? Again, your statement seems to suggest that righteous law-making is only appropriate for countries that used to have a lot of Christian influence. Would it be an evil thing, a wrong thing, or inappropriate if today Somalia passed laws honouring to God?

re "The answer is a God-sent revival among the remnant of His people, who should influence the culture ". If everybody was a Christian, there would be no more "influence" necessary, am I right? We would all be on the same page, so to speak. To talk of influencing the culture still presumes a situation of Christians in a culture full of, or containing, non-Christians in which case, wouldn't your influence be an imposition to the non-Christians there? Your statement also seems to suggest that we have no right to control the culture, only influence it, that we must abandon real authority to non-Christians and come at them obliquely with our "influence." If that's your belief, 'm not sure where you'd get that.

So if the predominant philosophy/culture of a society is indeed non-Christian, and by our great bulk of numbers in a revival we add our overwhelming influence, would this not mean that our Christian influence is being imposed upon people who are not Christians? And is this not just the sort of behaviour you condemn theonomy for?

If "influencing" the culture does not mean the actual establishment of anything formally "Christian", ie Biblical, in the civil law of the State, then do you envision a society where immorality is entirely legal by the Government but people aren't choosing the immoral way because they're all Christian? Abortion is payable on demand because governments do evil, but nobody has an abortion anymore because they don't believe in it? I wonder if that's the acceptable version of a non-theonomists ideal state.

Is it acceptable for a country's laws to be evil simply because there are no Christians in it? Or should a country's laws be in line with "Christian values" and thus honouring to God whether or not there are Christians there? Is it more appropriate to have evil laws now if a country has no rich Christian heritage such as yours?

People think that it's only ok to be a Christian country because you have Christians in control, or because in some opinions it once was Christian. But I don't believe it is ever right, objectively true and proper before God, for any country to be immoral just because it lacks a Christian head-count, or used to. Our presence does not create the rightness of God's law in society, God's presence does and when people make assumptions that we only have the moral right to insist on moral right just because we're there, we commit the sin of relativism committed by the empiricists.....that a tree does not exist when no human eye sees it, that there is no propriety to enact a God-honouring law when there are no Christians to follow it, to which I respond as I have responded elsewhere on this site recently, and which I now amend to suit our discourse;


There once was a man who said God
must think it extremely odd
when he finds that the rules continues for fools
when no Christians are here in the Quad.

The rely came;

Dear Sir,

Your astonishment's odd
for I am always about in the Quad
and that's why the rules continue for fools
since observed by

Yours Faithfully,

God.

Remember, God annihilated Sodom and Gomorrah not because the communities were immoral in spite of a 51% majority of Godly men who testified to the truth, but because the cities were evil. Period.

-Barry