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I wasn't actually making a dispensational argument in the sense of setting aside the Old Testament. Rather, I was arguing that the theonomic arguments from the Old Testament assume conditions that no longer exist -- this is not a majority Christian nation, we don't have a theocratic form of government, we don't have prophets with direct lines from God to tell the civil leadership what God's will is, etc. None of these are true in our day and none of them has been true for a very long time. Further, the writers of the New Testament were well aware that times had changed and the assumptions implicitly found in their writings, which I detailed in my previous post, indicate that.

1. No, I'm not advocating anarchy; I'm arguing for minimalist government. There is a crucial difference. Under the system I advocate, government does the minimum necessary to maintain peace and order so people can get on with their lives. And my question about __your__ theonomy wasn't directed at you personally as much as what makes you think __Christianity__ would prevail in a free-for-all fight among competing sects for power.

2. A theocratic monarchy would only prevent sectarian violence if it were strong enough to suppress any rival sects and had the stomach to use the mullahs' methods on their own people whenever a rival sect arose. You might try asking those who deal with suicide bombers how easy it is to maintain a homogenous theonomy when not everyone agrees with your particular faith.

3. A theocratic monarchy would, of necessity, be a state church or its functional equivalent. Maybe not a denominational church, but by making Big-C Christianity the official state religion and the basis for the civil laws, you've given us a state church. As to church attendance numbers, my broader point is that the free market almost always does things more efficiently than does centralized power. Here in America, churches don't get government subsidies (unless you consider being tax exempt a subsidy); churches have to go out and compete in the free market of ideas for worshippers and gifts. So of course they do better than their European counterparts who preach to empty churches and then go back to their offices to cash their government checks.

4. I'm saying all power corrupts, civil and religious, and when you mix the two the corruption level goes up exponentially. I'm sure exceptions can be found, but I'm equally sure that that is the general rule.

For sake of argument, a theocracy would be superior to what we have now if the conditions for theocracy existed. It's a little like arguing that if I had a gold mine in my back yard it would be preferable for me to mine gold rather than grow roses. Ok, but I don't have a gold mine in my back yard so I shall continue to grow roses until such time as I do.

1. But the whole point of minimalism is that __nobody__ should make laws beyond what is bare-bones necessary to protect life, liberty and property. A government whose only function is to maintain order needn't concern itself with whose morality is right. (And if you are going to argue that maintaining order is itself a moral value, no it isn't. It's a utilitarian method of keeping the machinery running.)

2. My point on Middle Eastern theocracies wasn't about who is right; it's about whether any one sect has the raw muscle to forcibly impose its will on the rest of society. If God makes a personal appearance then this is all moot; until he does, any theocracy is only as stable as its ability to smash dissent.

4. My argument was not about the relative merits of Christianity and atheism; it is about the nature of power. Power is just as corrupting among religious leadership as it is among governmental leadership; if you don't believe me, just observe the control freaks that run the church. Give the same group of people both religious power and civil power and you're courting disaster. And the reason it is appropriate to compare a Christian theocracy to an Islamic theocracy is not because the theologies are similar but because the human natures are similar: The late Dr. Bahnsen and the late Ayatollah Khomeini shared the same fallen nature.

If you want an example, I can give you one from the a Christian theocracy -- the United States 70 years ago. I have a dear friend who is now 82 who is Jewish. When he was attending public schools in the 1920s and 1930s, students were required every morning to recite a prayer that was explicitly Christian. He wouldn't; it violated his conscience. So, every morning he would be sent to the principal's office to be paddled for refusing to recite a Christian prayer that offended his deeply held religious faith. Imagine being a child, knowing every morning that your school day would begin with corporal punishment and there wasn't a thing you or your parents (or in those days the ACLU) could do about it.

Jews weren't the only ones; in Massachusetts schools Protestant children were forced to recite Catholic prayers and in Ohio Catholic children were forced to recite Protestant prayers, and in both states the courts rejected challenges to those policies.

Frank tells me that he got used to it and after a while it didn't bother him any more. Then when he was 40 he heard on the news that the Supreme Court had ruled that school prayers were unconstitutional, and he broke down and wept and cried like a baby because he knew -- his words -- that Christian bullies could never hurt Jewish children in that fashion again. That is exactly how he put it, and as a Christian it put a knife through my heart.

So, if you want to know why lots of people, including some Christians, are less than enthusiastic about mixing church and state, it's because we know from experience that theocrats can't be trusted with power. I'm sorry if that offends you.

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My point is that you can't point to some time when there were abuses and call that a "Christian theocracy." This is akin to pointing to the divided kingdom under Rehoboam and Jeroboam, and saying that was an example of a "theocracy." While the people may have claimed to be serving God, it is plain that they were not actually doing so.

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But it's too easy to point to abuses or anything else we don't like and say, They're not really Christians or They weren't really doing God's will or They misunderstood how theocracy can be practiced. Ultimately you end up with a "king can do no wrong" situation where theocracy (or for that matter the Christian church) can never be blamed for anything that goes wrong since you just define true Christianity or true theocracy or true Gospel so narrowly that problems are defined away.

It's kind of like the guys who posted here a couple of days ago claiming that Arminians aren't really Christians. Well, yes they are; we just don't agree with them on that point.

I agree with you that public schools should not exist. But so long as they do they, like the rest of government, should not be an arm of the church.

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You have elsewhere asserted that you believe in God's sovereignty. Why then do you have a defeatest attitude when it comes to his ability radically to alter human governments and societies?

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Oh, I have great faith in the sovereignty of God, who sets up kings and removes kings. I have no faith in entrusting great power over the lives of individuals to fallible mortals who, in addition to being fallible, would also be operating under the assumption that since they were doing God's work they couldn't possibly be wrong and the ends would justify the means. (If you think that's an inaccurate characterization of theocracy in practice, just look at famous theocracies that have existed in recent and not so recent times.) I'll be delighted to submit to God's theocracy just as soon as Christ returns to earth and sets it up; until then the less power sinful men exercise over each other, the better.

On who determines what is a bare-bones necessity, I think most of them are fairly obvious: murder, theft, fraud, the assurance that contracts will be enforced and that those who injure others will be held responsible. In other words, the cone of certainty applied to civil law. There may be room for debate around the edges.

Now, as to Rod's points about my anecdote, Jesus dealt with a similar argument as follows:

"Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye . . . say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets."

To every abuse I cite, you have a ready response: "That was them; this is us. We're right; they were wrong." But historically, a marriage of throne and altar has inevitably had as its progeny the Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, and an elderly Jewish man who hates Christians with every fibre of his being because he remembers them as bullies who beat him for refusing to violate his conscience. (I am deliberately using examples of Christian theocrats although Jewish and Muslim theocrats have historically acted pretty much the same.)

Even in the Old Testament where God actually had installed a theocracy what do we find? We find the sons of Eli and Samuel abusing the people through the offering system; we find Ezra and Nehemiah requiring families to be split; and ultimately we find a Sanheidren so thoroughly corrupt that they threw every principle to the wind to effectuate the death of Jesus.

Our central point of disagreement is that I believe any theocracy set up by sinful, fallen man will be the heirs of all that -- the children of them that killed the prophets. You disagree.

Oh, morally I think it's murder, and I doubt you would find many people, Christian or non-Christian who would disagree. The question is whether civilly and legally it should be murder. Those are separate inquiries.

For a general principle to be valid there is no requirement that there be unanimous agreement as to the details; if that were the standard then you would have to toss Christian doctrine since there are few if any doctrinal details on which Christians are unanimously agreed.

It's true there would be some disagreement, but the central premise of a libertarian system is utilitarianism, not morality. For example, we enforce contracts, not because it's the morally right thing to do (though I happen to think it is) but because commerce will become impossible if word gets out that we don't.

On this German cannibal, find me a utilitarian reason to lock him up and I'll help shut the door behind him.

I use Biblical assumptions to the extent that Biblical conditions still exist.

One of the major problems with theonomy, as I see it, is that God did not make a covenant with America as he made one with Israel. Simply put, the law of Moses was given to a nation with which God had specifically entered into a covenant (these days we would call it a treaty). God said that Israel would enjoy a special relationship with God in exchange for making God's law the law of the land.

So, any attempts to refer to the Old Testament for authority that this is or should be a Christian nation is simply apples and oranges. The major circumstance of the time -- a covenant made with the nation itself -- does not exist.

By the time Paul writes, Christians are living in a secular culture, as are we, so he doesn't tell them to seek political power; he tells them to live quiet and godly lives and pray for those in authority.

That doesn't mean that Christian faith is completely irrelevant or that Christians should be forbidden to enter public discourse. It just means that the Christian faith is more concerned with saving souls than it is with whether the pagans are acting like pagans.

I can't really come up with a good rationale for why we should make God's law the civil law on some issues but not on others.

Do you want to make laziness or gossip a criminal offense? That's not a rhetorical question; I'm curious about how far you take your position. What about heresy; if you became supreme dictator would you shut down all churches that you deem heretical?

And if not, then by what rationale do you make Divine law the civil law on some issues but not on others?

For me that's an easy inquiry (though as I said earlier there may be disagreement on specific applications): To the extent that Divine law and utilitarianism intersect, it is a matter of interest for the civil law. To the extent they don't, I leave Divine law to God. As Gideon's father pointed out to those who wanted to kill his son for tearing down a sacred grove, if your God is God he can deal with infractions of his law without my help.