JUDICIAL WARFARE
Christian Reconstruction and Its Blueprints For Dominion
by Greg Loren Durand

Chapter Seven:
The Law Established "In Exhaustive Detail"

       The covenant circumscribes all men without exception. The original covenant was with Adam; the renewed covenant was with Noah. All men are either covenant keepers or covenant breakers; all men are thus inescapably tied to the covenant and its promises of love and hate, blessings and curses. Christ, in renewing the covenant, made it clear that all men are involved in it.... By becoming the sacrifice, the priest, and the divine renewer of the covenant of God with man, Jesus would draw all men to Him, i.e., become the principle of judgment and of salvation, of curses and of blessings."⁽¹⁾

       Theonomy teaches much the same error that is the heart and soul of Roman Catholicism: there is an initial justification that is by grace and through faith in Christ's atoning sacrifice, but beyond this initial justification, a life of faithful obedience to the "previously spurned pattern of holiness" (the Mosaic law) is the condition for kingdom worthiness. Christ, then, is essentially a new Moses, dispensing "curses and blessings" in accordance to a renewal of the original Adamic covenant. It is important to keep this premise in mind as we examine how Theonomists interpret Christ's words in the following passage of Scripture:

       Think not that I am come to destroy [katalusai] the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil [plerosai]. For verily I say unto you, Til heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:17-19).

       R.J. Rushdoony called this passage "one of the most important and most misunderstood of all Biblical declarations concerning the law."⁽²⁾ According to Greg Bahnsen, these verses - which constitute "the locus classicus pertaining to Jesus and the law"⁽³⁾ - affirm the "abiding validity of the law in exhaustive detail"⁽⁴⁾ and therefore, "Every single stroke of the law must be seen by the Christian as applicable to this very age between the advents of Christ" (emphasis in original).⁽⁵⁾ Lest his point be missed, Bahnsen elsewhere added the following statements: "Jesus warned against dismissing even the least Old Testament commandment.... Not a single law, word, or stroke can be violated with impunity... Christ did not intend to have the slightest stroke of that law altered... Matthew 5:17-19, for instance, teaches the abiding validity of every Old Testament precept.... Jesus bound us... to every jot and tittle of the Old Testament legislation of God's will, not allowing us to subtract even the least commandment."⁽⁶⁾
       These statements, of course, are really overstatements. If Christ established the Mosaic law in exhaustive detail, so that not one "jot nor tittle" will pass away in history, then what are we to do with the ceremonial aspects of that law? Elsewhere, Bahnsen backpedaled from his sweeping declarations and qualified his thesis by admitting that "the ceremonial system of the Older Covenant has become obsolete and grown old" and hence has been "put out of gear."⁽⁷⁾ The following quote from Gary North elaborates on this point:

       The principle of interpretation which is supposed to govern Christian orthodoxy is that Christ came to establish, confirm, and declare the Old Testament law (Matt. 5:17-18). Only if we find an explicit abandonment of an Old Testament law in the New Testament, because of the historic fulfillment of the Old Testament shadow, can we legitimately abandon a detail of the Mosaic law. The proper exegetical principle is this: Mosaic law is still to be enforced, by the church or the State or both, unless there is a specific injunction to the contrary in the New Testament (emphasis in original).⁽⁸⁾

       This all sounds like double-talk. What difference does it make whether we view the ceremonial laws as abrogated, or "obsolete" and "out of gear"? The result is the same: they are no longer in operation. We cannot observe them, or teach others to observe them, without nullifying the sacrifice of the cross. Therefore, Christ's words in Matthew 5:19 cannot apply to the Christian today as Bahnsen sought to apply them. Furthermore, if we can indeed "abandon a detail of the Mosaic law" if "there is a specific injunction to the contrary in the New Testament," then "every single stroke of the law" is not applicable in this age after all. The Theonomists have merely succeeded in arguing themselves out of their own argument.
       However, the Bible does not allow us to thus separate the Mosaic law. While there were certainly moral, ceremonial, and judicial duties prescribed in the law, it was a complete package.⁽⁹⁾ According to Paul, he who received the ceremonial rite of circumcision was a "debtor to the whole law" (Galatians 5:3). Therefore, it either stands as a covenantal whole "in exhaustive detail" or it was abolished as a covenantal whole. One may not arbitrarily interpret the phrase "the law" to mean one thing (i.e. the moral law) in one passage of Scripture and something completely different in another (i.e. the ceremonial law). Furthermore, the Old Testament itself does not clearly categorize the 613 laws of the Mosaic code; some laws have both moral and ceremonial characteristics and even the Theonomists are not completely agreed amongst themselves on what is of continuing force and what has been "put out of gear."⁽¹⁰⁾
       Greg Bahnsen's claim that plerosai, which is translated "fulfill" in the King James Version, should instead be translated "establish" or "confirm"⁽¹¹⁾ is disproved by how this word is used elsewhere in the New Testament. In Mark 1:15, we find Jesus' first recorded words in the preaching of the Kingdom: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent ye, and believe the gospel." Here, the word pleroo clearly means that the time of anticipation was over and that the prophesied Kingdom of "Messiah the Prince" (Daniel 9:25) was then being inaugurated.⁽¹²⁾ Bahnsen's definition of pleroo as "to establish" would render this proclamation nonsensical. Likewise, in Luke 21:24, we read that "Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." We must interpret this as "until the times of the Gentiles be completed," not "until the times of the Gentiles be established." In Acts 7:30, the King James Version translates this word as "expired" in reference to the time of Moses' sojourn in the wilderness. Indeed, nowhere in the New Testament does pleroo mean "establish" or "confirm"; the same is true of the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament. Matthew 5:17-19, therefore, teaches that Christ came to accomplish the purpose of the law, not to establish its observance for all time: "For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth" (Romans 10:4). "For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God" (Galatians 2:19). If it was truly Christ's purpose "to confirm or establish" the law, rather than to fulfill it and bring it to an end, the words sterizo, histemi, or bebaioo would have been used, not pleroo (see Romans 3:31, 15:8; 1 Corinthians 1:8; 2 Corinthians 2:8; 1 Thessalonians 3:2).
       Following Bahnsen's lead, many Theonomists ridicule the above interpretation as a "not so subtle contradiction."⁽¹³⁾ The "strawman argument" is set up which has the critics reading Christ's words as "I came not to abrogate the law, but to put it to an end." However, with very few exceptions, katalusai does not mean "abrogate," but "destroy," just as the word is translated in the King James Version. W.E. Vine's Expository Dictionary gives the definition of this word as follows: "KATALUO, kata, down, intensive, and [luo], to destroy utterly, to overthrow completely.... See DISSOLVE, NOUGHT (come to), OVERTHROW, THROW."⁽¹⁴⁾ This same word is used in Matthew 24:2, Mark 13:2, and Luke 21:6 to describe the violent destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, in Romans 14:15 of the ruination of a weak Christian's faith, in Acts 5:36 of the ultimate bringing "to nought" of the purposes of men, and in 2 Corinthians 5:1 of the dissolution of the physical body. Christ did not come to do any of these things with regards to the law; He came to submit to it and to thereby fulfill its purpose. His obedience is reckoned by God as our obedience (Hebrews 5:8-9) and we are therefore free from the letter of the law and delivered into the obedience of the spirit:

       Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth? For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man.
       Wherefore my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit to God (Romans 7:1-4).

       The Theonomists interpret the phrase "til heaven and earth pass" to be the time frame in which the Mosaic law continues to be valid: "[The law] extends to the minutest part and will hold until the universe passes away."⁽¹⁵⁾ However, when read in the light of Luke 16:17, this interpretation is shown to be inadequate: "The law and the prophets were until John: since that time the kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into it. And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, then one title of the law to fail." In other words, Christ was telling His audience that it was impossible for even the smallest detail of the law to fail in its purpose before it had found its fulfillment in Him. Theonomists are so focused on the time frame supposedly given at the beginning of Matthew 5:18 that they seem to ignore the actual time frame at the end of the verse: "till all be fulfilled." Christ said, "My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work" (John 4:34), and "...[T]he works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works I do...." (John 5:36). These works were clearly the works required by the law. When Christ declared on the cross, "It is finished" (John 19:30), we cannot conclude otherwise than that the law's fulfillment of which He formerly spoke had come, that He had accomplished what He had been sent by the Father to do (cf. John 17:4), and thus entered into His rest (Hebrews 4:10). Those who are in Christ Jesus also enjoy this rest from the works of the law, of which rest the Old Testament Sabbath was but a shadow: "There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief" (Hebrews 4:9-11). To look to the dead works of the law rather than to the saints' rest in Christ is equated by the writer of Hebrews as unbelief, and yet this essential doctrine of the Gospel is obscured by Theonomy very much as it was by the scribes and Pharisees in Christ's day.
       Following His resurrection, Christ said, "These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me" (Luke 24:44). This idea is also repeated in the epistle to the Hebrews:

       For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect.... Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: in burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God. Above when he said, Sacrifice and offering and burnt offerings and offering for sin thou wouldest not, neither hast pleasure therein; which are offered by the law; then said he, Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second (Hebrews 10:1, 5-9).

       An attempt may be made to deflect the force of this passage by claiming that only the ceremonial law is being referred to here. While it is true that the sacrifices of the Levitical priesthood are the topic of discussion in this passage, it should be remembered that such priesthood was inseparably connected with the rest of the Mosaic covenant. Therefore, if that priesthood has been "taken away," the rest of the old covenant has passed away as well: "For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law" (Hebrews 7:12). It should again be stressed that the law of Moses was a unit, and could not be divided: "Neither Christ nor the apostles ever distinguished between the moral, the ceremonial, and the civil law, when they speak of its establishment, or its abolition."⁽¹⁶⁾ Even Greg Bahnsen gave the sense of kataluso in Matthew 5:17 as "the destruction of something by separating its pieces,"⁽¹⁷⁾ and then noted that ton nomon "comprises more than simply those aspects of the Mosaic legislation (i.e., 'the Law') which have permanent moral application and sanction; the class of commandments traditionally termed 'ceremonial' or 'ritual' is also within the scope of the term. Nothing in the text supports a restriction of this term's referent to the moral law. Jesus is saying that He did not come to abrogate any part of the law" (emphasis in original).⁽¹⁸⁾ Again, if this interpretation of Matthew 5:17-19 is correct, then we cannot avoid the conclusion that, not just the moral and civil aspects of the law, but the sacrifices themselves have been established for all time by Christ and therefore are equally obligatory under the New Testament as under the Old. Bahnsen apparently sensed the corner he was backing himself into, for he wrote that "the meaning of the ceremonies is eternal, while their outward form and use are temporal" and "only the pre-incarnation use of these ceremonial procedures is removed for the Christian in the New Covenant" (emphasis in original).⁽¹⁹⁾ Further on in his book, he continued:

       According to the foregoing thesis, every jot and title of the Lord's law is binding upon God's people in all ages. Does this mean that New Testament Christians are required to observe the Older Testament ritual? The answer to this question is yes and no. Yes, Christians under the New Covenant are still responsible to offer blood atonement for their sins and tend to the obligations of the temple, etc.; however, we must be mindful of the fact that the way or manner in which Christians do these things under the New Covenant is not identical with the Older Testamental observation of the ritual and ceremony.⁽²⁰⁾

       This teaching sounds dangerously close to the Roman Catholic doctrine of the perpetual offering up of Christ in the "sacrifice of the Mass." Nowhere in the New Testament are Christians instructed to offer up any other sacrifices than "spiritual sacrifices" (1 Peter 2:5). These sacrifices are the Christian's own body "as a living sacrifice" (Romans 12:1), which means that we are to "mortify the deeds of the body" (Romans 8:13), and the "sacrifice of praise," which is "the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name" (Hebrews 13:15). There is "no more sacrifice for sins" (Hebrews 10:26) because "Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many" (Hebrews 9:28); our sins are now to be confessed (1 John 1:9), not propitiated by sacrifice. Furthermore, there are no longer any "obligations of the temple," for Christians are themselves the "temple of the living God" (2 Corinthians 6:16).
       Of course, Bahnsen again back-pedaled by writing, "Christ is the once-for-all sacrifice for Christians.... The purpose of the ceremonies, then, was realized in the New Testament. Christ released us from the relative and provisional bondage of which the Mosaic ritual was the instrument. The ceremonial observations were stop-gap and anticipatory; Christ and the New Covenant are the fulfilled reality. Therefore, all Christians have had the ceremonial laws observed for them finally and completely in Christ" (emphasis in original).⁽²¹⁾ Thus, on the one hand, Bahnsen made the sweeping claim that "Christians under the New Covenant are still responsible to offer blood atonement for their sins," but on the other hand, he informed us that we do not have to do this anymore because "Christ released us from the relative and provisional bondage of which the Mosaic ritual was the instrument." This sort of contradictory argumentation is wearisome, to say the least. It should also be noted that Bahnsen resorted to his dissenters' interpretation of the word fulfilled here, which raises the question, If Christians are no longer under the ceremonial aspect of the Mosaic law because it has been fulfilled "finally and completely in Christ," why cannot the same be said for the rest of the law, which Christ also fulfilled? That being the case, the real issue has still been avoided by the Theonomist: the law demanded not only belief in the substance, but actual performance of the ceremonies. The establishment of "every jot and tittle" of the law "in exhaustive detail," simply cannot be qualified so as to apply only to the inner substance and not to the outward performance. John Frame rightly noted that the theonomic theory "dies the death of a thousand qualifications."⁽²²⁾

Endnotes

1. Greg L. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1984), pages 655-656. page 39.

2. Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law, page 698.

3. Bahnsen, ibid., page 39.

4. This is the title of Chapter Two of Bahnsen's Theonomy in Christian Ethics.

5. Bahnsen, ibid., page 82.

6. Greg L. Bahnsen, No Other Standard (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1991), pages 99, 121, 165, 221.

7. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics, page 209.

8. Gary North, The Sinai Strategy: Economics and the Ten Commandments (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1986), pages 242, 255.

9. The nineteenth chapter of Leviticus is a good example. All three characteristics of the law — moral, ceremonial, and judicial — are found represented in this passage of Scripture with no differentiation made between them; they are referred to indiscriminately as "all my statutes, and all my judgments" (verse 37).

10. For example, in his Institutes of Biblical Law, Rushdoony taught the continuing force of the law prohibiting the mixture of clothing, crops, and livestock (Leviticus 19:19; Deuteronomy 22:11) which he applied to all forms of "hybridization," including interracial marriages, desegregation, and even organ transplants:

       To bring diverse things together in an unnatural union is to despise the order of God's creation....
       Deuteronomy 22:10 not only forbids unequal religious yoking by inference, and as a case law, but also unequal yoking generally. . . . The burden of the law is thus against inter-religious, inter-racial, and inter-cultural marriages, in that they normally go against the very community which marriage is designed to establish.... Unequal yoking means more than marriage. In society at large it means the enforced integration of various elements which are not congenial....
       [H]ybridization and unequal yoking involve a fundamental disrespect for God's handiwork which leads to futile experimentation, such as organ transplants, which represent sterile and limited gains in some areas, and a basic loss of moral perspective in every area.... Hybridization is an attempt to deny the validity of law. Its penalty is an enforced sterility. In every area, where man seeks potentiality by a denial of God's law, the penalty remains the same, limited gains and long-range sterility (pages 87, 256-257, 262).

       Few other Theonomists have agreed with Rushdoony on this point (Greg Bahnsen, for example, received the transplant of the valve of a pig's heart in the 1990s), preferring instead to assign these laws to the ceremonial category which was "put out of gear."

11. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics, page 70.

12. For compelling reasons to believe that Christ was referring directly to the prophecy of His Advent in Daniel 9:24-25, see Philip Mauro, The Seventy Weeks and the Great Tribulation (Dahlonega, Georgia: Crown Rights Book Company, [1921] 2000).

13. Bahnsen, ibid., page 54.

14. W.E. Vine, Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words (McLean, Virginia: MacDonald Publishing Company, n.d.), pages 304-305.

15. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics, page 44.

16. John Kitto, A Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature (New York: American Book Exhange, 1880), article: "The Law."

17. Bahnsen, Theonomy in Christian Ethics, page 47.

18. Bahnsen, ibid., page 48.

19. Bahnsen, ibid., page 49.

20. Bahnsen, ibid., page 207.

21. Bahnsen, ibid., pages 207-208.

22. John Frame, essay: "The One, the Many, and Theonomy," in William S. Barker and Robert W. Godfrey, Theonomy: A Reformed Critique (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1990), page 89.