Some evangelical “thought leaders” today seem to think that the New Testament introduced a sort of new world order, new principles of social and political life. Now Christians can shake the dust of the old world off their feat. Hence, “religious liberty,” secular government and all the rest. These things are rarely argued for on the basis of mere prudence or preference; they are almost always inserted as New Testament commands, baptizing our current socio-political assumptions and status quo. By blessed Providence we have finally, in the 21st century, finally arrived, freed of “sacralism,” etc.
I was long ago disabused of the hope that confrontation with our Protestant tradition would dislodge such juvenile reasoning from the presentist minds of “thought leaders,” but such confrontation does benefit the reasonable people who have no financial or reputational investment in never being wrong. So, here’s something to help combat the newness of the New Testament (in this regard) claim.
In his Vindiciae Legis lectures (1647)—which should be read as a commentary on chapter 19 of the Confession—Anthony Burgess (Westminster divine) answers several objections to capital punishment for moral and religious offenses, including heretics. Isn’t this “against charity and love of men’s souls” to put unrepentant offenders to death for something “which is presently to send them to Hell”?
First, he says that this duty and function is inherent in the office of the magistrate, especially the Christian one. (Burgess has already by this point argued that the care for religion by temporal authority is a dictate of natural law and recognized by pagan antiquity.) Christ did not preach a new law nor reform the old, as Socinians and Anabaptists claimed, but perpetuated the moral law as given to Moses and corrected the errant pharisaical glosses—a point that also refutes Antinomianism.
Therefore, what “the common Law of Nature, and the perpetual Law of God requires,” is not abrogated. (When Burgess says “perpetual Law of God” he means the Decalogue and the moral aspects of the ceremonial and judicial law derived therefrom. See Franciscus Junius, Mosaic Polity, 59-164 for detailed treatment.) If the natural law requires care of religion by the temporal authority and that law has not been explicitly abolished by the New Testament—as it could not, being concreated with man himself—then nothing has disrupted its exercise and application.
Peter Clarke, preaching in Boston in 1736, had one of the best explanations of this point:
“Let me observe, That there is no Alteration made in those Things that are founded on the Law of Na|ture or Nations, by the Religion of the New Testament of our Saviour. It being very remote from the Design of Christ, or of the first Preachers of the Gospel, to erect a new civil Polity in the World, or to abolish any Ordinance of Man for the Preservation of the Peace and Order of civil Society.”
(See also Clarke’s election sermon of 1739.) Bolingbroke said something similar in his Philosophical Fragments, Essay 4, if I recall.
An interesting, perhaps counter intuitive, case Burgess cites as proof for the continued capital punishment of religious crimes even under the New Testament is Ananias and Sapphira. “[T] o put to death men for faults, is not repugnant to the spirit of the Gospel.” In that case, “You cannot read of a more severe expression under the Law, then that was of the Gospel; so that as we are indeed to labour for the meekness and patience of a Christian, yet we are not to forget zeal for God’s glory, and the publick good.”
Burgess adds that it is a “cruelty to the good to spare the bad: and if we would pity such a man offending, we must much more pity the common-wealth.”
“[A]ll Magistrates, they are to take care for the salvation of the malefactors souls, as much as in them lies; but if they do perish in their sins, this arises not from justice done, which is rather to bring them in mind of their sins, and to humble them, but it cometh from the forwardness, & obstinacy in their own hearts. And in that, we see a Magistracy confirmed in the Gospel, we need not require an express command in the New-Testament for the putting of some malefactors to death.”
The Apostle instructs Christians not to seek their own vengeance, but simultaneously speaks of the magistrate as, in Burgess’s words, “the avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil.” These things are not incongruent. For “the revenge that the Magistrate inflicts may well be called the vengeance of God, because it’s God’s appointment.” And this not for private gain but for public good, which includes the due honor of God and the protection of souls, none of which is a burden to the righteous.
When you chose to go along with the mob to slander Dr Ortlund, you lost your credibility.
Cline, editor of American Reformer, begins his 12-post thread attacking Dr Ortlund, most of which contain a cute meme or demeaning GIF, trying to take down Ortlund’s rebuttal with a claim that it will be “easy.” The boasting, memes and GIFs signal how unserious Cline is. He concludes, contrary to the actual reviewers we surveyed, “There’s no factual inaccuracies” from Basham about Ortlund.
The fact is he didn’t once even touch on the actual factual claims Ortlund made about Basham’s book. I liked Timon before his descent into this insanity. I hope he can recover his integrity.