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INHERITANCE BY FIRE Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Molech; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones. And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Molech, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name. And if the people of the land do any ways hide their eyes from the man, when he giveth of his seed unto Molech, and kill him not: Then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go a whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Molech, from among their people (Lev. 20:2-5).
The theocentric principle governing this statute is God's jealousy against all rival gods. More specifically, God in the Old Covenant era held the office of "Father of the sons of Israel." The nation of Israel was His son (Ex. 4:23), adopted by His grace. So, God as Father demanded that the sons of Israel acknowledge this fact ritually by circumcising their sons.
The practice of sending children through a ritual fire was a denial of God's fatherhood and therefore also Israel's sonship. This two-fold ritual denial called forth the threat of disinheritance by God. The required means of this disinheritance was public execution by stoning, a penalty that outrages modern Christians, who regard it (and, by implication, the God who required it) as barbaric. The penalty was not execution by fire -- or, for that matter, by drinking hemlock.
Godly inheritance in history is always by fire. This fire is covenantal: placing God's people in trials and tribulations -- historical sanctions -- in order to purge them of their sins (Isa. 1:25-26). The imagery is that of metal-working (Isa. 1:22a). One pagan version of this imagery of metal-working is alchemy.(1) Another was the practice of passing children through a fire.
The sanction of execution makes it clear that this was a civil law. As a civil law, it applied to all those residing within the jurisdiction of the State. It applied equally to covenanted Israelites and "strangers that sojourn in Israel" (v. 2). If the civil magistrate refused to prosecute, or if the civil judges refused to convict, or if the capital sanction was not imposed, God threatened the practitioner with excommunication: cutting off (v. 5). Since this would be God's act rather than the priests' act, the implication is that God would intervene directly to kill him.
Here is another seed law, or so the language indicates: "any of his seed." This seed law applied to a parent's dedication of a son or daughter to a specific foreign god, Molech. First, the seed laws were part of the laws governing inheritance and disinheritance. Second, as a seed law, it was part of the laws governing the land. These land laws were necessary because of the presence of God's temple within the land. The temple had to be protected from defilement. Third, this statute was part of the laws prohibiting blasphemy: prohibiting the profanation of God's holy name. The judicial boundary around God's name was as important as the physical boundaries around the temple and its environs. This boundary extends into the New Covenant, unlike the land-based boundaries of the Mosaic Covenant.
The Nature of the Prohibited Rite Molech was the god of Ammon, the incest-conceived, bastard cousin of Israel (Gen. 19:38). "Then did Solomon build an high place for Chemosh, the abomination of Moab, in the hill that is before Jerusalem, and for Molech, the abomination of the children of Ammon" (I Ki. 11:7). His name came from the Hebrew word for king, Melek. This deity was also known as Milcom and Milcham. He was a fire god, essentially the same as the Moabites' deity, Chemosh (I Ki. 11:5; cf. v. 7).(2) Stephen referred to Molech as a god worshipped by the Israelites in the wilderness: "Then God turned, and gave them up to worship the host of heaven; as it is written in the book of the prophets, O ye house of Israel, have ye offered to me slain beasts and sacrifices by the space of forty years in the wilderness? Yea, ye took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of your god Remphan, figures which ye made to worship them: and I will carry you away beyond Babylon" (Acts 7:42-43). Molech was a major rival god in the history of Israel.
Molech required a specific form of dedication: passing children through a fire. "And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD" (Lev. 18:21). Israel ignored this law, among many others, and God cited this in His covenant lawsuit against Jerusalem. Jerusalem would pass through the Chaldeans' fire: fire for fire (Jer. 32:29, 35). This indicates that God's negative sanctions against this crime were not limited to the family that practiced it. As with all ritual abominations, if the civil authorities allowed the practice to continue unopposed, God would bring His corporate sanctions against the nation as a whole. But it was this ritual abomination that was identified by God through Jeremiah as the representative evil in the land. Their crimes were comprehensive: "Because of all the evil of the children of Israel and of the children of Judah, which they have done to provoke me to anger, they, their kings, their princes, their priests, and their prophets, and the men of Judah, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem" (Jer. 32:32). Their worship of Molech was representative: "And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin" (Jer. 32:35).
Molech required the shedding of innocent blood. The Israelites worshipped Molech as he required: "Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils, And shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and of their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan: and the land was polluted with blood" (Ps. 106:37-38). "Moreover thou hast taken thy sons and thy daughters, whom thou hast borne unto me, and these hast thou sacrificed unto them to be devoured. Is this of thy whoredoms a small matter, That thou hast slain my children, and delivered them to cause them to pass through the fire for them?" (Ezek. 16:20-21). "That they have committed adultery, and blood is in their hands, and with their idols have they committed adultery, and have also caused their sons, whom they bare unto me, to pass for them through the fire, to devour them" (Ezek. 23:37). "Moreover he [King Ahaz] burnt incense in the valley of the son of Hinnom, and burnt his children in the fire, after the abominations of the heathen whom the LORD had cast out before the children of Israel" (II Chron. 28:3). This was not an occasional practice in Israel; it became a way of life through death.
This law raises at least five questions. First, exactly what did "giving one's seed to Molech" involve? Was it a formal dedication service comparable to circumcision? Second, why did the ritual offering of a child defile the sanctuary of God? Why was this a uniquely profane act? Third, why was this forbidden to resident aliens? The specified negative sanction, death by stoning, if ignored by the judges, would be followed by God's intervention against that family and all those who joined with that family. The law here says nothing about a threat to the Israelite community at large. Why, then, should resident aliens be prohibited from performing such a rite? Fourth, was this law a law governing false worship in general, or was it confined to Molech worship only? Fifth, does it still apply in New Covenant times? Was it a cross-boundary law? Let us consider each of these questions in greater detail, one by one.
I. Rites of Dedication There is no question that some sort of cultic rite was involved in this crime. It was a formal, covenantal transgression of the first commandment: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" (Ex. 20:3). The legal question is: Did this act become a crime only when committed outside of a household? No; it was a crime for an Israelite no matter where it took place. False worship within an Israelite household was a capital crime in Mosaic Israel.
If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers; Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth; Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him: But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people. And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage. And all Israel shall hear, and fear, and shall do no more any such wickedness as this is among you (Deut. 13:6-11).
This law against intra-family proselytizing did not apply to resident aliens, who were assumed by the law to worship in private the gods of their families or their nations. Proselytizing was not a crime within a household that had not formally covenanted to Jehovah. This anti-proselyting law applied only to Israel's citizens and those eligible to become citizens.(3) It was understood that anyone who was not formally covenanted through circumcision was probably not a worshipper of Jehovah. The resident alien was not allowed to seek converts to his god in Israel, but he was also not expected to enforce the worship of Jehovah within his own household.
A Israelite father might decide to allow such idolatrous proselytizing, but the State was required by God to step in and prosecute. The father's authority in his household had limits; it was not absolute. The family member who was subjected to the lure of false worship by another family member deserved protection. The terms of God's covenant had to be enforced. If they were not, the State stepped in to protect the victim or victims. The law governing false worship within an Israelite family reveals an important principle of the Mosaic law: the State was superior to the head of an Israelite household when it came to protecting the members of his family from the lure of false worship. In matters of correct worship, the citizen of Israel was under the protection of the State in Israel. The resident alien was not. What went on ritually inside the home of an Israelite was a matter of civil law. This was not true of the resident alien's home, unless the ritual threatened the life of the child. In short, an Israelite's home may have been his castle; it was not his private sanctuary.
False Worship Generally
The law governing family worship was a defining law: it represented all false worship by those formally covenanted to God. This can be seen in the application of another law governing false worship:
If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the LORD thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the LORD thy God, in transgressing his covenant, And hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded; And it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and enquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel: Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die. At the mouth of two witnesses, or three witnesses, shall he that is worthy of death be put to death; but at the mouth of one witness he shall not be put to death. The hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people. So thou shalt put the evil away from among you (Deut. 17:2-7).
The phrase, "hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven," indicates that the transgressor was an Israelite. The stranger within the gate was assumed to be a worshipper of false gods within his own household. He did not go to serve them; he came serving them. What was explicitly forbidden was the breaking of God's covenant through false worship by an Israelite.
The Theology of Circumcision
In all worship, man must make a sacrifice. In biblical worship, the sacrifice is total: the whole of one's life. "And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might" (Deut. 6:5).(4) This comprehensive sacrifice is personal, not institutional. Ritual sacrifices are limited by God's law.(5) The demand for total sacrifice is based on fear. Men must fear this God: "And now, Israel, what doth the LORD thy God require of thee, but to fear the LORD thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the LORD thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul" (Deut. 10:12). Men must also obey Him: "Therefore thou shalt love the LORD thy God, and keep his charge, and his statutes, and his judgments, and his commandments, alway" (Deut. 11:1).
How is the mandatory fear of God connected to this law? Because obedience brings descendants: "In that I command thee this day to love the LORD thy God, to walk in his ways, and to keep his commandments and his statutes and his judgments, that thou mayest live and multiply: and the LORD thy God shall bless thee in the land whither thou goest to possess it" (Deut. 30:16). The covenantal blessings of God extend to the thousandth generation: "Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations" (Deut. 7:9). Here was the spiritual meaning of covenantal rite of circumcision: "And the LORD thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live" (Deut. 30:6).
As a sign of the parents' obedience to God, they marred their male heirs physically. The mark of circumcision was placed on the male heir's organ of reproduction. It was a symbol of covenantal death: anti-generation. Circumcision announced ritually that there can be no legitimate covenantal hope in the future based on mere physical generation.(6) What is needed is spiritual regeneration: the circumcision of the heart. The organ of generation was physically cut as a testimony to the need for the heart to be cut by God Himself:
Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people (Jer. 31:31-33).
Just as God had written the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone, so would He write His law in the hearts of His people. This is the meaning of the circumcision of the heart. Such circumcision is intended to produce obedience.
The Theology of Testing by Fire
Molech's required ritual was a perverse imitation of Jehovah's. Instead of physically marring the organ of generation as a symbol of physical death but also covenantal life, the child was actually passed through a literal fire. The child who survived this ordeal was therefore assumed to be blessed covenantally by Molech. He had passed the deadly initiation rite by means of supernatural intervention. This ritual was covenantal, but rather than being ethical in its focus, it was magical. Its mark of supernatural power was the survival of the child.(7) If the child died, the parents had to regard this as the god's required sacrifice. Thus, the idea of covenantal inheritance in Molech worship was magical rather than ethical. Molech religion was the archetype of power religion.
In both dominion religion and power religion, the seed is central to the rites of initiation. The seed represents the future. The seed is the means of expansion. If there is no growth, there can be no expansion. If the seed does not grow, or does not reproduce itself, the covenantal future is cut off. In biblical religion, children are seen as children of God ethically. He who obeys God's law is the true son of God. In power religion, children are seen as children of god ritually. He who observes the details of the rites is the true son of the god. Such a view is antithetical to biblical religion:
Wherewith shall I come before the LORD, and bow myself before the high God? shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? (Micah 6:6-8).
To remove the child from the covenantal authority of Molech-worshiping parents, the State was required by God to execute the parents. A child who survived this rite of fire would become an orphan when the mandatory civil sanction attached to this law was applied by the civil magistrate. God's law made it clear: better to become an orphan and live under the authority of covenantally faithful foster parents than to live under the authority of Molech-worshipping parents. The family's inheritance was immediately transferred to the child or children (if there were older siblings) for this sin by the parents. This transfer was a positive side-effect of this statute; it was not a specified goal of the law. This means that the covenantal authority of the parents was never absolute in the Mosaic economy. The parents were to be disinherited by execution because of their false theology of inheritance, ritually manifested in strange fire. The Israelite family was not autonomous. The father's authority was bounded.
II. Strange Fire: Defiling the Sanctuary A murder in Israel defiled the land, which is why God required certain rites of purification in cases where the murderer could not be located (Deut. 21:1-9). But a murder committed outside God's sanctuary did not defile the sanctuary. The question arises: Why did this ritual offering of a child defile God's sanctuary? The act took place away from the sanctuary. Why was this a uniquely profane act?
There are at least two reasons. First, because this form of ritual murder, or potential ritual murder, involved the use of a fiery altar, meaning a rival to God's altar. Second, because it was an assault on the Seed, meaning the prophesied future Messiah.
1. The Altar
From Adam's transgression onward, sin threatened mankind's survival. The very survival of Adam in history testified to God's grace to Adam, and it also testified to a future sacrifice that would atone for what Adam had done. Without such lawful sacrifice, there is only death for the transgressor.
The altar is an instrument of sacrifice. Men bring their sacrifices to the altar. It need not be an animal sacrifice. Jesus warned: "Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift" (Matt. 5:23-24).
The worshipper offers something to God that he does not expect to get back. This act of forfeiture is a testimony that God is sovereign. The worshipper may expect some sort of return in the future, but not the actual item he brings to the altar. He acts in faith: the God of the altar is sovereign and will reward him, in time and/or eternity, or will not bring negative sanctions against him.
On God's Old Covenant altars was fire. This fire was a consuming fire. It testified to God's sanctions. A slain animal sacrificed to God on that fire became a substitute for the giver. The man who offered this sacrifice acknowledged that he deserved such fire. God's fire is ethical: it is deserved because of the individual's transgression of covenant law. If there is no substitutionary sacrifice, the transgressing individual faces God's fire. To survive, the individual must bring a sacrifice.
The fire on the temple's altar was to be perpetual, i.e., as perpetual as the Mosaic Covenant itself: "The fire shall ever be burning upon the altar; it shall never go out" (Lev. 6:13). Day and night, God's flame was to burn. Day and night, God offers men a way to burn away their sins ritually. The perpetual nature of the flame pointed to the permanence of both God's grace and His final negative sanctions. Those who refuse to submit to God in history become in death the sentient sacrifices on God's perpetual altar: "For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt" (Mark 9:49). The judicial alternatives are clear: either sacrifice lawfully in history or be lawfully sacrificed in eternity. Put more bluntly: roast or be roasted. When Israel rebelled for the last time, God brought the Roman army as His agent of judgment, which set fire to the temple.(8) This ended the Old Covenant order forever. (This is why Judaism, which was developed by the Pharisees after the destruction of the temple,(9) is not and never was the religion of the Old Covenant.(10))
The law warned the priests: "They shall be holy unto their God, and not profane the name of their God: for the offerings of the LORD made by fire, and the bread of their God, they do offer: therefore they shall be holy" (Lev. 21:6). When the sons of Aaron deviated from the prescribed ritual, God set them on fire (Lev. 9:24-10:3). There could be no deviation from the required procedure without God's express permission. The reason for this was not magical. It was not the procedure that was sacrosanct. Holiness was sacrosanct: God's and the priest's. God had placed a series of boundaries around His presence in the holy of holies because to be in His presence required that the sacrifice-offerer be holy. To offer sacrifices in any way different from what God required was an assertion of man's autonomy. It was a public denial of both the absolute sovereignty of God and the absolute holiness of God.
The fire of the altar was a means of both purification and destruction. Fire was representative of the final judgment. A living being was not allowed on the altar. The sacrificial animals had to be slain away from the altar before they were placed on the altar. Biblical worship is always representative. Redeemed man does not die for his own sins; someone else must die. Biblical worship in the Old Covenant made it clear that the sacrifice is representative: the altar's fire consumed that which was already dead. This is the spiritual condition of man as he approaches the altar: living death. To place a living thing on the altar is an illegitimate sacrifice. It testifies to a different condition of man. Only one living sacrifice ever possessed true life: Jesus Christ. His perfect sacrifice was legitimate for the symbolic altar of the cross, for only He did not approach the altar as a spiritually dead man.
The offer of one's child to any god was an act of moral rebellion. To make a child pass through a literal fire as a rite of initiation was the non-priest's equivalent of offering strange fire: an unauthorized sacrifice. Thus, it was a profane act.(11) It violated God's judicial boundary around His name. It violated the exclusiveness of God's sanctuary by establishing a rival sanctuary within the land. This was the worst possible boundary violation for any non-priest under the Mosaic Covenant. (The worst for the priest was offering strange fire on the altar.) God threatened to intervene directly with His fire in response. The non-priest had no access to the temple's altar; thus, he had to offer his sacrifices with strange fire away from the temple. The civil penalty was death by stoning.
2. Cutting Off the Future
The second reason why this crime was so perverse an act was that it placed the future of the seed in the hands of demonic forces. The child would either die in the flames or be initiated into the service of a false god. This was a perverse imitation of the biblical covenantal process of inheritance/disinheritance: point five of the biblical covenant model.(12) Those who would inherit were those who had been protected from the flames by occult forces: a protective boundary.
If the death penalty had been confined to Israelites, this seed law could be subsumed under the laws governing the coming of the promised seed. But this law prohibited resident aliens from participating in Molech's initiatory rites. Why? First, because of the degree of violation of God's sanctuary. Second, because human life was protected in Israel. Third, because of the possibility of adoption. Through adoption, a resident alien could become part of the covenant line, as both Rahab and Ruth did (Matt. 1:5). This offer to the resident alien of full participation through adoption into the three institutional covenants -- ecclesiastical, familial, and civil -- was unique to Israel in the ancient Near East. This was a sign of God's grace. The lives of alien children had to be preserved for the sake of the opportunity of conversion and adoption.
Residents from Ammon and Moab had the most rigorous restriction placed on this participation: ten generations (Deut. 23:3). Technically, this was probably because of their origins: born of incestuous unions between Lot and his daughters (Gen. 19:37-38). The bastard could not enter the congregation (i.e., attain citizenship) until the tenth generation (Deut. 23:2). But another reason for the prohibition may have been that Molech and Chemosh were the gods, respectively, of Ammon and Moab. This fire god was the great rival to God and His altar. The resident alien from Ammon or Moab was more unwelcome in Israel than any other nationality, and the mark of this alienation was the mandatory waiting period of nine generations. To break covenant with Molech and Chemosh took nine full generations, plus a formal break, presumably no younger than age 20 (Ex. 30:14), of the tenth-generation heir.
III. Resident Aliens and Biblical Pluralism This law specified that a stranger in the land was to be executed by the citizens of Israel if he was caught performing a specific rite of Molech worship: giving his seed to Molech. The reason why strangers were under this law is stated clearly in the statute: such an act defiles God's sanctuary and profanes His holy name. No one inside the boundaries of Israel was allowed to do this. But God regarded household false worship by resident aliens as peripheral to the national covenant. Only when the stranger ritually threatened the survival of his own child did he defile God's sanctuary. The judicial foundation of the rights of resident aliens -- their immunity from State sanctions -- was the possibility that they or their children might covenant with God. Justice in Israel was a major form of evangelism, both inside and outside the land (Deut. 4:4-8). Allowing aliens to see God's law in action was a way to persuade them of the righteousness of God. Israel's system of civil justice was unique in the ancient world: a single legal order for all residents.
Today, we call such a judicial system pluralistic, but biblical pluralism has limits. All pluralism has limits. Pluralism can never be unbounded; someone's religious principles or practices will always be threatened by one or another aspect of any society's legal order. The resident of Israel could not lawfully claim religious freedom as authorization for exposing his children to the risk of death, even though his god required such a rite. The ideal of biblical pluralism extended to the resident alien the right to worship family gods in peace within the boundaries of their homes, but it did not authorize heads of households the right of literally sacrificing their children. The seal of a household's religion could not lawfully be death or the risk of death. The household in Israel was a limited sanctuary: a place set aside, protected judicially from outside interference from the State. There was a boundary on State power. But passing a child through Molech's fire was regarded by God as strange fire: a transgression of His sanctuary's monopoly. There was no right -- no legal immunity from the sanctions of civil government -- for anyone to light a strange fire in Israel: a ritual fire that literally invoked death as a means of sanctioning a covenant.
IV. The Limits of Biblical Pluralism The State was required to intervene and execute any Israelite who could be proven to have attempted to lure one of his family members into a rival covenant (Deut. 13:6-11). "And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage" (v. 10). The general crime was false worship, but the specific reason given was God's deliverance of the Israelites out of Egypt. This clearly had nothing to do with resident aliens. False household worship was not generally a crime for resident aliens.
Specifically, false worship was a crime if they participated in a ritual offering of a child to Molech. Even if the child survived the ordeal, the parent or parents were to be executed. The crime was not murder or attempted murder; it was the profanation of God's boundary: the altar of sacrifice. The attempted sacrifice of a child on such an altar was a capital crime. It was this crime that God specified through Jeremiah as the crime of Israel and Judah, leading to their captivity in Babylon. This was the abomination that God would not tolerate when His covenant people did tolerate it (Jer. 32:35).
The modern Christian defender of religious pluralism would recommend civil sanctions against such a practice on some legal basis other than the profanation of God's sanctuary. If the child died, the law of murder can be invoked. If the child survived, the law of attempted murder can be invoked. But in no Western society is the penalty for attempted murder execution.(13) This creates a problem for the Christian pluralist. If he defends the imposition of a civil sanction in cases where the child survives, he cannot do so explicitly on the basis of biblical law. In any case, he cannot do so explicitly on the basis of this biblical law.
A defender of biblical law could argue that this law is annulled under the New Covenant because the seed laws have been annulled. Or, he could argue that the unique status of God's temple sanctuary ended when the land lost its status as judicially holy at the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. But there remains this problem: the holiness of God's name. The justification for this law was not merely that this Molech initiation rite defiled God's sanctuary; it also profaned His holy name (Lev. 20:3). Nothing in the New Covenant has removed the boundary of holiness from God's name. The question is: How serious is God in the New Covenant about defending His name? Is the defense of God's name legitimately part of a Christian civil government's code?
The First Table of the Law
There are Christian pluralists who deny that the so-called First Table of the Law is to be enforced by the civil government in the New Covenant era.(14) If taken literally, this assertion would include the law to honor parents: the fifth commandment (part of the so-called First Table). Children could not be compelled by the civil government to care for their aged and infirm parents. This conclusion has been taken seriously by defenders of the modern welfare State. In the United States, compulsory, tax-financed Social Security and Medicare payments have replaced children as the sources of mandatory support of the elderly. Children in my era have welcomed this economic and judicial release from personal responsibility, despite the ever-increasing tax burden involved.(15) But I have never seen any Christian social theorist proclaim the legitimacy of compulsory Social Security as a complete substitute for the responsibility of children. I conclude that what Christian pluralists probably mean by their denial of civil sanctions to enforce the First Table is this: the first four commandments of the Decalogue are no longer legitimately enforceable by the State. The term "First Table of the Law" is shorthand for "the first four commandments" (or first three for Lutherans).
For a Christian to argue this position -- the negation of civil sanctions for commandments one through four -- he must appeal to natural law and natural revelation, meaning revelation neither secured by nor interpreted by God's Bible-revealed law. Bahnsen has challenged this interpretation of natural revelation: ". . . natural revelation includes the moral obligations contained in the first table of the decalogue (our duty toward God), just as much as it contains those of the second table. Paul taught that natural revelation condemned the pagan world for failing to glorify God properly and for idolatrously worshiping and serving the creature instead (Rom. 1:21, 23, 25). . . . The fact is that all of the Mosaic laws (in their moral demands) are reflected in general revelation; to put it another way, the moral obligations communicated through both means of divine communication are identical (Rom. 1:18-21, 25, 32; 2:14-15; 3:9, 19-20, 23). Scripture never suggests that God has two sets of ethical standards or two moral codes, the one (for Gentiles) being an abridgement of the other (for Jews). Rather, He has one set of commandments which are communicated to men in two ways: through Scripture and through nature (Ps. 19; cf. vv. 2-3 with 8-9)."(16)
The two forms of God's revelation, special (written) and general (natural), are not in conflict with each other. This means that when the Bible specifies a penalty, this is not in conflict with natural revelation. Written revelation makes clear today what was originally clear in natural revelation. This lack of clarity in natural revelation today is the product of two factors: the effects of man's rebellion and the effects of God's curse on nature. Written revelation is superior to natural revelation because it is clearer and more precise. The biblical principle of textual interpretation is this: the clear passage is to interpret the less clear. This is also the biblical principle of judicial interpretation. While the two forms of revelation are not in conflict, one or the other must be authoritative.
The theonomist insists that the Bible's revelation is authoritative over general revelation. The Christian pluralist insists that general revelation, as interpreted by the covenant-breaker, is authoritative over special revelation. There is no way to reconcile these rival principles of interpretation. Unlike general and special revelation, these two hermeneutic approaches are mutually exclusive.
Christian Pluralism's Hermeneutic
Hermeneutics is an inescapable concept. Everyone must have a principle of interpretation. The Christian pluralist insists, implicitly if not explicitly, that whatever is more generally believed or understood possesses authority over that which is less universally believed or understood. That is to say, the Christian pluralist is a defender of the methodology of democracy in hermeneutics as well as politics. The Christian pluralist, siding with covenant-breakers, who in my era vastly outnumber covenant-keepers, refuses to acknowledge that natural revelation conveys the moral principles of the first five commandments of the Decalogue. He argues instead that these commandments are unclear in, or even absent from, natural revelation. Thus, he concludes, special revelation is less universal than general revelation, and hence subordinate and secondary to general revelation. The Christian pluralist regards the Bible's judicial principles of interpretation as subordinate to the judicial interpretations of covenant-breaking natural men. For purposes of public relations within the Christian community, he does not state his position in this way, but this is his position nonetheless.
The Christian pluralist is inescapably an ethical dualist. He believes in the existence of two sets of valid moral standards, as well as two sets of valid civil laws. He says that the biblical set of laws was valid only for the nation of Israel during the Mosaic economy, while natural law is valid for every other society and every other time period. He always favors the adoption of the covenant-breaker's interpretation of the supposedly religiously neutral, "natural" civil law-order. Whatever the covenant-breaker claims to have intuited from natural revelation is what the Christian pluralist says the content of natural revelation must be: natural revelation as seen with covenant-breaking eyes. The pluralist refuses to allow Spirit-renewed Christians to use the Bible to modify the judicial content of natural revelation as understood by pagans; only other pagans are allowed to make these modifications. Aristotle is allowed to challenge Plato's communism; Moses is not.(17) Aristotle's word carries weight for the Christian pluralist; God's Mosaic law does not. In short, natural revelation regarding the so-called First Table of the Law is understood by the Christian pluralist as having been provided by God in order to enable the New Testament-era covenant-breaker to move the covenant-keeper away from the Bible in matters judicial.(18)
Blasphemy
This law is part of the laws against blasphemy. But there is no operational concept of biblical blasphemy in the worldview of the Christian pluralist. The distinguished historian of law, Leonard W. Levy, has titled his study of the history of blasphemy laws in the West, Treason Against God.(19) This is exactly what blasphemy is. As Rushdoony writes in his discussion of the Moloch State: "Because for Biblical law the foundation is the one true God, the central offense is therefore treason to that God by idolatry. Every law-order has its concept of treason. No law-order can permit an attack on its foundations without committing suicide. Those states which claim to abolish the death penalty still retain it on the whole for crimes against the state. The foundations of a law-order must be protected."(20)
The Christian pluralist is embarrassed by these biblical concepts of civil law and blasphemy. There can be no public treason against the God of the Bible in the theoretical world of the Christian pluralist, for treason implies the necessity of negative civil sanctions, and the pluralist denies the legitimacy of such sanctions in questions of religion. The Christian pluralist allows the protection of God's name only as a by-product of civil laws that protect the names of all other gods: religion in general. This definition of blasphemy is inherently humanistic: public protection for every man's concept of god. The most dangerous form of blasphemy in the mind of the Christian pluralist is biblical theocracy: the denial of the public sovereignty of any God other than the biblical God. There are as many gods to be politically protected as men choose to defend, the pluralist insists.
Consider the argument against public blasphemy presented by Christian pluralist Gordon Spykman: "I would not allow public blasphemy because it offends other people."(21) That blasphemy offends God is politically irrelevant; its offense in Spykman's view is that it offends other people. Harold O. J. Brown echoes Spykman: "Public blasphemy as well as false swearing should also be punishable by law. It would be logical to accord protection from insults to all religious groups, forbidding the mockery of things that people hold sacred."(22) Then what would Brown say about Elijah's comments at Mt. Carmel concerning the god of the court priests? "And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they leaped upon the altar which was made. And it came to pass at noon, that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked" (I Ki. 18:26-27). Could Elijah legitimately have been arrested by King Ahab at that point for having committed a verbal assault on the religious sensibilities of the priests? Was Elijah a blasphemer? Was he deserving of death? And what of Elijah's subsequent actions? "And Elijah said unto them, Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape. And they took them: and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there" (I Ki. 18:40). Was Elijah the organizer of a mob? A conspirator in mass murder? A revolutionary? At the very least, was he an ecologically insensitive polluter?
What of King Josiah? "And he did that which was right in the sight of the LORD, and walked in all the way of David his father, and turned not aside to the right hand or to the left" (II Ki. 22:2). He was the most faithful king in Israel's history. "And like unto him was there no king before him, that turned to the LORD with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his might, according to all the law of Moses; neither after him arose there any like him" (II Ki. 23:25). What did he do? "And all the houses also of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made to provoke the LORD to anger, Josiah took away, and did to them according to all the acts that he had done in Bethel. And he slew all the priests of the high places that were there upon the altars, and burned men's bones upon them, and returned to Jerusalem" (II Ki. 23:19-20).(23) Another polluter, this time of air!
Elijah, the great prophet of direct confrontation, and Josiah, the most faithful king, provide serious problems for Christian pluralists, who need a biblical principle of judicial discontinuity to defend their pluralism. Pluralists assume what they need to prove, namely, a biblical basis of this judicial discontinuity. Their failure to provide a biblically derived justification for this presumed judicial discontinuity has led them to redefine blasphemy in such a way that Elijah and Josiah have become blasphemers in retrospect. They have failed to understand that a common-ground definition of blasphemy -- "a public assault on any god" -- has placed them in the camp of the Roman emperors, who had a similar view of the sacrosanct position of the politically correct gods of the Roman pantheon. Their problem should be obvious: blasphemy is an inescapable concept. It is never a question of "blasphemy vs. no blasphemy." It is always a question of "blasphemy against which god?"
The text is clear: offering one's child to the fire god Molech was a capital crime. The justification for the law is equally clear: to uphold the sanctity of God's sanctuary and His name. Here was a crime: subjecting a child to an initiatory rite that was life-threatening. By participating in a system of inheritance and disinheritance that relied upon demonic powers to determine the survivors of the ordeal, the covenant-breaker committed a boundary violation so heinous that God required his execution by public stoning. The resident alien was subject to this law. In short, the God of Mosaic Israel was not a pluralist. This is why the Mosaic law is a profound embarrassment for the Christian pluralist -- almost as much of an embarrassment as Calvin's view of the proper civil sanction against Servetus' blasphemy is for modern Calvinists: disinheritance by fire. This is why we never hear sermons on I Kings 18:40 or Calvinist Sunday school lessons on Michael Servetus.
V. Is This Law Still in Force? What principle of interpretation would lead us to conclude that this law is not still in force? The Bible-affirming expositor who claims that there is a total judicial discontinuity between the two covenants with respect to this law needs to identify the biblical basis of this alleged discontinuity.
The covenantal principle of inheritance teaches that the heirs of covenant-keepers will inherit the earth progressively over time. "His soul shall dwell at ease; and his seed shall inherit the earth" (Ps. 25:13). This is clearly one aspect of the seed laws, which were all fulfilled in Christ. Covenant-breakers are progressively disinherited. "For evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait upon the LORD, they shall inherit the earth" (Ps. 37:9). The practice of Molech initiation reverses this principle of inheritance: infanticide, either physical or covenantal. It is therefore an abomination before God.
To the extent that the initiatory practice relies on demonic intervention to protect the child, this ritual will kill off more and more children as the demonic realm becomes weaker. When demons can protect no child from the fire, the participants will disinherit themselves. Presumably, this will reduce the number of participants over time. Also, the death of a child would subject the parent(s) and any cooperating priests to the civil law against murder. So, we would not expect to find large numbers of participants in such a religion. But the question still remains: What is the valid civil sanction against a participant whose child survives intact? If the rite really did threaten the survival of the child, what is the appropriate civil sanction?
Biblically, the answer is obvious: public execution by stoning. How much clearer could God's law be? But God's word is not taken seriously in this matter. Its very clarity constitutes an embarrassment for those who call themselves Christians. They would much prefer a bit of vagueness. Despite these preferences, the profaning of God's holy name is still the judicial issue: a special profaning far worse than mere verbal profanity. The issue is blasphemy and its appropriate civil sanction.
Citizenship and Separation Then what of religious toleration? This raises the question of the existence of civil laws that are in no way religiously intolerant -- religiously neutral laws. Such laws are not even conceptually possible, let alone practical. But if this is the case, then what happens to the concept of citizenship?
Citizenship is inherently covenantal.(24) The citizen acknowledges the legitimacy of a sovereign, subordinates himself to the agents of that sovereign, agrees to obey the laws of that sovereign, swears allegiance to that sovereign, and inherits in terms of that sovereign. The Israelites were told by God that the Canaanites could not lawfully occupy the land even as resident aliens. There could be no lawful toleration of Canaanites within the land, for this would have meant toleration of the previous regional gods of the land. Only aliens from outside the land, were to be allowed to dwell in the land. They could not become citizens except by becoming Israelites: through circumcision.
The Gods of the Land
This was a prohibition against Canaanitic gods, not the gods of immigrants. Why the distinction? Because of pagan theology in the ancient world. Except in Israel, a god in the ancient world was regarded either as a household god or the god of a particular nation.(25) There was always a danger that the Israelites would succumb to this false theology; thus, the gods of Canaan were to be destroyed, along with their representatives (once). Immigrants' gods were clearly regarded by their adherents as household gods, not gods of the land. Immigrants had left their respective homelands. They had to view their idols as possessing power only within the boundaries of the household. Immigrants were welcome in Israel, but the price of immigration was the forfeiture of the right to proselytize among the Israelites. The household gods of immigrants could not lawfully leave their households. They could not become public gods in Israel. That is, they could not lawfully take on the status of national gods. There was to be no public polytheism in Israel, political or otherwise.
The God Who Imposes Boundaries
Rushdoony's discussion of laws of separation is correct: "God identifies Himself as the God who separates His people from other peoples: this is a basic part of salvation. The religious and moral separation of the believer is thus a basic aspect of Biblical law."(26) Separation can be achieved in several ways, however. First, the believer can join other believers in a religious ghetto. This ghetto can be geographical, as in the case of certain Amish and Mennonite sects. It can be cultural, as in the case of much of modern fundamentalism and immigrant religious groups. It is always psychological, what Rushdoony has called the permanent remnant psychology.(27) Second, the believer can seek the physical removal of unbelievers from the community, either through execution or expulsion. This was God's required method with respect to the Canaanites. The problem here is honoring the biblical judicial concept of "the stranger within the gates": preserving liberty of conscience without opening the social order to a new law-order, which means a new god. The radical Anabaptists in Münster in 1533-35 and the Puritans in New England, 1630-65,(28) made the mistake of exiling residents for their failure to adhere to the community's religious and ecclesiastical confession. This practice denied the biblical legal status of the resident alien. Third, separation can be achieved covenantally: the removal of unbelievers from citizenship. This is what the New Testament mandates for covenant-keeping nations.
Intolerance: An Inescapable Concept Political pluralism suggests a fourth path: ecclesiastical separation, partial cultural and intellectual separation,(29) and civil cooperation. This requires a concept of a legitimate civil law-order that is formally independent from the revealed civil law-order in the Bible. Political pluralism requires the adoption of some version of natural law theory, either explicitly or implicitly.(30) This is a form of philosophical dualism: one law for God's covenant people as isolated (segregated) from the general culture, and another system of civil law for the judicially integrated community.
Rushdoony in 1973 denied the biblical legitimacy of pluralism's defense of toleration; a decade later, he reversed his position.(31) He wrote in the Institutes: "Segregation or separation is thus a basic principle to religion and morality. Every attempt to destroy this principle is an effort to reduce society to its lowest common denominator. Toleration is the excuse under which this levelling is undertaken, but the concept of toleration conceals a radical intolerance. In the name of toleration, the believer is asked to associate on a common level of total acceptance with the atheist, the pervert, the criminal, and the adherents of other religions as though no differences existed."(32)
His statement is accurate, but it misses the main point. It is not separation with respect to private associations which is central to biblical covenantalism; rather, it is the segregation of the franchise. The non-Christian wants access to the franchise, i.e., to citizenship: the authority to participate in the defining and enforcing of civil law through the application of sanctions. Once he gains this, he moves to the State enforcement of integration of private associations. Having gained for himself legal toleration in the sharing of citizenship, he moves on to compulsory integration. He makes toleration mandatory: the denial of others' right to separate themselves from the humanist agenda. In short, there is no neutrality. The ideal of universal tolerance is a myth; it is always a question of whose views get tolerated, whose do not, and on what terms.
There can and must be mutual toleration in history, God has announced, but the rival definitions of what constitutes toleration are irreconcilable. Toleration always means: "Toleration of my system's definition of toleration." Rival definitions of sovereignty cannot be reconciled. God's Bible-revealed law establishes that covenant-keepers and covenant-breakers cannot lawfully join in a covenantal civil bond; at best, they can honor a temporary cease-fire.(33) This is why those who defend Christian political pluralism invariably reject the continuing authority of biblical civil law.
Covenant-breakers eventually refuse to submit to God and His kingdom in history. This is why Satan's representatives rebel against God's people at the end of history (Rev. 20:7-9). Covenant-breakers cannot abide by the legitimate rule of covenant-keepers and the Bible's definition of civil toleration: the judicial concept of strangers within the gates. Biblical toleration is based on the necessity of biblical covenantal separation. Covenant-breakers must be separated from the civil franchise.
Intolerant Humanists
Biblical covenantal separation is not tolerated by covenant-breakers, who correctly perceive that God is going to separate them from the post-resurrection New Heaven and New Earth: the eternal second death in lake of fire (Rev. 20:14-15). This ultimate separation is an affront to them. Separation in eternity is based judicially on the rival theological content of men's faiths and their public confessions in history. Saving faith divides men from each other in history because it divides men from God in history and eternity. Saving faith is therefore an affront to covenant-breakers, who deeply resent the Christian doctrine of separation based on God's ethical terms and by His eternal sanctions.
The nineteenth-century atheist, Ludwig Feuerbach, clearly understood this Christian doctrine of mankind's separation by God's covenant, and he assailed it. This doctrine, for the humanist, is the unforgivable sin: the Christian denies that man is God, and as a direct result of this blasphemy against man, the Christian begins to make distinctions between those who believe in God and those who do not. Feuerbach wrote: "To believe, is synonymous with goodness; not to believe, with wickedness. Faith, narrow and prejudiced refers all unbelief to the moral disposition. In its view the unbeliever is an enemy to Christ out of obduracy, out of wickedness. Hence faith has fellowship with believers only; unbelievers it rejects. It is well-disposed towards believers, but ill-disposed towards unbelievers. In faith there lies a malignant principle."(34) Frederick Engels reported over four decades later that with this book, Feuerbach converted an entire generation of Hegelians to materialism, he and Karl Marx included.(35)
Biblical Tolerance
Toleration is biblically mandatory, but our definition of toleration must be biblical. There is no neutrality in language; Christians' definitions must be based on the Bible, not on some hypothetically neutral language. The Bible is intolerant of covenant-breakers' definitions disguised as supposedly neutral definitions. A Christian civil order should tolerate non-Christians in the same way that Israel was required to tolerate resident aliens: strangers in the gates. In response, non-Christians are required by God to show toleration to Christians, who progressively extend their rule over non-Christians until judgment day. That is, covenant-breakers must remain tolerant of the kingdom (civilization) of God in history.
Furthermore, if covenant-breakers remain merely tolerant, God will send them into His eternal torture chamber forever. God does not tolerate them beyond the grave. They must remain content in history to be non-citizens, living under the civil sanctions of the holy commonwealth. For the sake of receiving the positive sanctions of a godly civil order, they are required by God to tolerate their subordinate position as strangers in God's land. If covenant-breakers remain tolerant of God's kingdom in history as it extends its rule over them in every area of life,(36) His people are supposed to remain tolerant of them. Christians will progressively rule; non-Christians must progressively obey God's civil laws. This is the only toleration that God authorizes in history. This statement is an affront to every rival religion, as well as to Christian pluralists.
Conclusion The law prohibiting the dedication of children to Molech through initiation was a seed law. It was a law that governed inheritance and disinheritance, for it dealt with a pagan rite governing inheritance and disinheritance. Because of the presence of the temple sanctuary in the holy land of Israel, this law was also a land law. It was required to restrain the creation of alternative centers of worship: specifically, it prohibited strange fire. Strange fire defiled the sanctuary, even at a distance. Next, this law reduced the likelihood of the profanation of God's name. It was therefore a blasphemy law. Finally, because the child's life was placed at risk, it was a law against attempted murder. As a seed law and a land law, it is no longer judicially binding in New Covenant times. As a law against blasphemy, it is still judicially binding. But if the law is still binding, so is the biblically specified sanction: death by stoning.(37) The blasphemy aspect of the law takes precedence over attempted murder. God is the intended victim of blasphemy: treason against God. The victim of attempted murder can refuse to press charges. He can specify a lesser penalty than God's law allows. Not so with blasphemy. The mandatory penalty is clear.
The sanctions attached to this law were sufficiently severe to reduce the likelihood of its widespread practice, if the law was enforced. It was not enforced, so God delivered the nation into the hands of the Assyrians and the Babylonians. It is worth noting that the negative sanction that was imposed by the pagan Nebuchadnezzar on the three youths who refused to obey his blasphemous law was a fiery furnace.
Now if ye be ready that at what time ye hear the sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of musick, ye fall down and worship the image which I have made; well: but if ye worship not, ye shall be cast the same hour into the midst of a burning fiery furnace; and who is that God that shall deliver you out of my hands? (Dan. 3:15).
The result was the opposite of what the king expected: the youths survived inside the fire, but their escorts perished when they drew near to the fire: "Therefore because the king's commandment was urgent, and the furnace exceeding hot, the flame of the fire slew those men that took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego" (Dan. 3:22). The king, seeing this, repented:
Then Nebuchadnezzar spake, and said, Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, who hath sent his angel, and delivered his servants that trusted in him, and have changed the king's word, and yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor worship any god, except their own God. Therefore I make a decree, That every people, nation, and language, which speak any thing amiss against the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, shall be cut in pieces, and their houses shall be made a dunghill: because there is no other God that can deliver after this sort. Then the king promoted Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego, in the province of Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar the king, unto all people, nations, and languages, that dwell in all the earth; Peace be multiplied unto you. I thought it good to shew the signs and wonders that the high God hath wrought toward me. How great are his signs! and how mighty are his wonders! his kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and his dominion is from generation to generation (Dan. 3:28-4:3).
Christian pluralists have yet to advance theologically as far as Nebuchadnezzar did. He saw who had inherited by fire, and then drew the proper conclusion: men should not defy the God of Israel. Christian pluralists do not believe that God's predictable historical sanctions are still in force. Therefore, they do not believe that the Bible's mandated civil sanctions are still in force. In short, they do not believe in inheritance through covenantal fire. The result of the triumph of Christian pluralism in religious thought and in the political theory of the West after 1700 has been the progressive disinheritance of Christians.(38)
Summary Sending a child through Molech's fire was a denial of the child's adoption by God, a denial of Israel's sonship.
The mandated sanction was disinheritance by stoning.
This penalty applied to all those who performed this ritual act: citizens, foreigners, resident aliens.
God threatened to kill the violator directly if the State refused.
This was a seed law: inheritance, land.
This was also a blasphemy law: the boundary around God's name.
False worship within an Israelite household was a capital crime.
The resident alien could not seek converts inside Israel.
His worship was protected inside the boundaries of his home.
In Mosaic Israel, the State did have the legitimate authority to punish pagan worship inside Israelite households (Deut. 13:6-11).
God threatened Jerusalem with fire because the people passed their children through the fire (Jer. 32:29, 35).
This was the representative act of rebellion in the land.
It became a way of life in Israel.
Circumcision was a mark of faith in God rather than faith in biological regeneration.
The heart was to be circumcised by God's law.
Molech's fire ritual was an imitation of the rite of circumcision: risking total sacrifice.
Molech religion was power religion.
The seed is the earthly future, and so is central to initiation rites.
In biblical religion, the basis of the expansion of the seed is ethical.
In pagan religion, the basis of the expansion of the seed is magic-ritual.
The parents of the child who was passed through the fire were to be executed.
The inheritance went to the surviving children: a legal side effect.
This crime used a substitute altar: a consuming fire.
God's holiness, not ritual procedure, is sacrosanct.
It was illegal to place a living thing on God's altar.
Molech's fire placed the future of the family name (inheritance) under the authority of demons.
This crime violated God's sanctuary.
No one in Israel was allowed to violate God's sanctuary.
Biblical pluralism has limits; this law was one of them.
The holiness of God's name remains in the New Covenant era.
Man's rebellion clouds his perception of biblical law in natural law.
The clearer revelation (special revelation) should govern the less clear natural revelation).
The modern Christian pluralist defends democracy against biblical revelation.
The Christian pluralist is an ethical dualist: two kinds of law for two kinds of people.
This law prohibits a form of blasphemy: treason against God.
Every society has a concept of blasphemy: treason against society's god.
The pluralist defends the right (legal immunity) of any person to proclaim the sovereignty of any god.
The pluralist has no concept of treason against the God of the Bible.
He has a concept of treason against the god of the State: theocracy.
The laws of inheritance are still in force: Christians will inherit the earth.
There is no indication that this law and its required civil sanction are no longer required by God.
Every civil law is intolerant of someone's religion.
There is no neutrality.
Citizenship is covenantal: one god or another.
There was no religious toleration in Canaan of the former gods of Canaan.
This is why genocide or total expulsion was required by God.
The land was made sacred by God's promise and Israel's conquest.
God mandates the separation of His people: a boundary between covenant-keepers vs. covenant breakers.
The question is: What form should the separation take?
Three forms: residence in a ghetto; expulsion of aliens; denial of citizenship to aliens.
The third approach is what God requires: segregation of the franchise.
Intolerance is an inescapable concept.
Political pluralism officially denies this.
Every operational definition of toleration specifies: "Mandatory toleration of my system's definition of toleration."
There is no ethical neutrality in language.
Christianity preaches an eternal separation of covenant-keepers from covenant-breakers.
Covenant-breakers resent this doctrine.
Covenant-breakers are required by God to remain tolerant of the triumph of God's kingdom in history.
This is an affront to unbelievers and Christian pluralists.
The Molech fire law was a seed law, land law, blasphemy law, and a law against murder and attempted murder.
Nebuchadnezzar understood which God was in charge in Babylon after the fiery furnace incident.
Christian pluralists have not advanced as far as Nebuchadnezzar in their public theology.
Footnotes:
1. Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible: The Origins and Structures of Alchemy (New York: Harper Torchbooks, [1956] 1971).
2. "Molech," in Cyclopaedia of Biblical, Theological, and Ecclesiastical Literature, edited by John M`Clintock and James Strong, 12 vols. (New York: Harper Bros., 1894), IV, p. 437.
3. This includes families that would not be eligible until the tenth generation (Deut. 23:2-3).
4. Any commitment other than the commitment to God is the demand of a false religion. This is why Communism was a messianic false religion. It was a school of darkness, to cite the title of ex-Communist Bella V. Dodd's 1954 autobiography. It demanded the whole of their lives, to cite the title of ex-Communist Benjamin Gitlow's 1948 autobiography. It was ultimately the God that failed, to cite the title of Richard Crossman's 1949 collection of autobiographies by ex-Communists.
5. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), ch. 30: "God's Limits on Sacrifice." See Exodus 25:3-8; 36:5-7.
6. The Greeks and Romans placed their personal hope for their future beyond death in the maintenance of family rituals down through time. The eldest son was the priest of these family rituals. He had to administer them properly in order to sustain peace for his departed ancestors. The family was therefore central to religious life in the classical world. Private family law existed prior to the city and its laws. This is why fathers had the legal authority to kill their sons. See Numa Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City: A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor, [1864] 1955), Book I, chaps. IV, VIII. Fustel writes: "For when these ancient generations began to picture a future life to themselves, they had not dreamed of rewards and punishments; they imagined that the happiness of the dead depended not upon the life led in this state of existence, but upon the way in which their descendants treated them. Every father, therefore, expected of his posterity that series of funeral repasts which was to assure to his manes [surviving spirit] repose and happiness" (I:3; p. 49).
7. In modern times, the peculiar practice of fire-walking has again become a popular initiatory rite, this time among business executives. Certain management training programs end with the participants' walking over hot coals as a sign of their confidence in themselves and their new-found ability to manage other people through techniques of power. The fire-walkers never attempt to walk on sheet metal placed on top of the hot coals; metal is a very efficient heat transmitter.
8. David Chilton, The Great Tribulation (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987).
9. Jacob Z. Lauterbach, "The Sadducees and Pharisees" (1913); reprinted in Lauterbach, Rabbinic Essays (Cincinnati, Ohio: Hebrew Union College Press, 1951); J. H. Hertz, "Foreword," The Babylonian Talmud, Seder Nezikin (London: Soncino Press, 1935), p. xiv. The standard Jewish work on the Pharisees is Rabbi Louis Finkelstein's study, The Pharisees, 2 vols (3rd ed.; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1963).
10. This is openly acknowledged by Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner, the author of 43 volumes of commentaries on the Mishnah, the Pharisees' post-temple text regarded as sacred by Orthodox Jews. Neusner writes: "While the world at large treats Judaism as `the religion of the Old Testament,' the fact is otherwise. Judaism inherits and makes the Hebrew Scriptures its own, just as does Christianity. But just as Christianity rereads the entire heritage of ancient Israel in light of `the resurrection of Jesus Christ,' so Judaism understands the Hebrew Scriptures as only one part, the written one, of `the one whole Torah of Moses, our rabbi.' Ancient Israel no more testified to the oral Torah, now written down in the Mishnah and later rabbinic writings, than it did to Jesus as the Christ. In both cases, religious circles within Israel of later antiquity reread the entire past in light of their own conscience and convictions. Accordingly, while the framers of Judaism as we know it received as divinely revealed ancient Israel's literary heritage, they picked and chose as they wished whatever would serve the purposes of the larger system they undertook to build. Since the Judaism at hand first reached literary expression in the Mishnah, a document in which Scripture plays a subordinate role, the founders of that Judaism clearly made no pretense at tying up to scriptural proof texts or at expressing in the form of scriptural commentary the main ideas they wished to set out. Accordingly, Judaism only asymmetrically rests upon the foundations of the Hebrew Scriptures, and Judaism is not alone or mainly `the religion of the Old Testament.'" Jacob Neusner, Judaism and Scripture: The Evidence of Leviticus Rabbah (University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. xi.
11. Acts are profane: sacred boundary violations. Things or places can be profaned by profane acts; they are never inherently profane. Only sacramental places can be profaned. Common places cannot be profaned. See above, Chapter 6.
12. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), ch. 5. Second edition, 1992.
13. As a high-handed sin, it should be a capital crime, if the prosecution can prove that the accused did attempt it. But because the victim is still alive, he has the right to declare mercy or demand a lesser penalty, such as the payment of a fine. The reason why murder is always a capital crime is that the victim is not alive, and hence cannot extend mercy to the criminal. The State must impose the maximum penalty. North, Tools of Dominion, pp. 306, 308.
14. For a refutation, see Greg L. Bahnsen, No Other Standard: Theonomy and Its Critics (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1991), pp. 202-5.
15. Gary North, The Sinai Strategy: Economics and the Ten Commandments (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1986), ch. 5: "Familistic Capital."
16. Bahnsen, No Other Standard, p. 206.
17. I have noticed that whenever scholars discuss the communism of the Socratic dialogues, Plato gets the blame. Western scholars prefer not to consider the possibility that the "divine Socrates" was a communist. But it matters little whether we begin with Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle; we wind up with statism: salvation through political participation. R. J. Rushdoony, The One and the Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy (Fairfax, Virginia: Thoburn Press, [1971] 1978), ch. 4. On the tyrannical implications of both Platonic philosophy and Aristotelian philosophy -- culminating in Hegelianism -- see Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 2 vols. (4th ed.; Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1963).
18. Fundamentalist Christians who see the threat in the area of geology and biology, or even psychology, give away the case when it comes to civil law. They reject Darwin and Freud, but they accept John Locke and James Madison. In this, they agree with Leonard Levy, who begins his book Blasphemy with a citation from Madison. Levy, Blasphemy: Verbal Offense Against the Sacred, from Moses to Salman Rushdie (New York: Knopf, 1993), p. ix. The same citation appears on page xii of his earlier book, Treason Against God: A History of the Offense of Blasphemy (New York: Schocken, 1981).
19. For some reason, the updated book, Blasphemy (1993), received far more attention from book reviewers than Treason Against God (1981) did.
20. R. J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1973), p. 38.
21. Spykman, "Questions and Answers," in God and Politics: Four Views on the Reformation of Government, edited by Gary Scott Smith (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1989), p. 274.
22. Harold O. J. Brown, "The Christian America Position," ibid., p. 141.
23. Also worth noting: "And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the house of the LORD, where the women wove hangings for the grove" (II Ki. 23:7).
24. Sutton, That You May Prosper, ch. 12.
25. We can see this false theology of local divinities in the disastrous analysis of Ben-hadad's advisors: "And the servants of the king of Syria said unto him, Their gods are gods of the hills; therefore they were stronger than we; but let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they" (I Kings 20:23). "And there came a man of God, and spake unto the king of Israel, and said, Thus saith the LORD, Because the Syrians have said, The LORD is God of the hills, but he is not God of the valleys, therefore will I deliver all this great multitude into thine hand, and ye shall know that I am the LORD" (I Ki. 20:28).
26. Rushdoony, Institutes, p. 294.
27. R. J. Rushdoony, Van Til (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1960), p. 13.
28. A 1662 letter from Charles II to Massachusetts established liberty of conscience. It was not read in the Massachusetts General Court until 1665. In that year, the General Court repealed all laws that limited the vote to Congregational church members. The Court determined that citizens in the colony henceforth did have to be "orthodox in religion" and "not vicious in conversation," but they could be "of different persuasions concerning church government. . . ." Cited in Kai T. Erikson, Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance (New York: Wiley, 1966), p. 135.
29. Though not much: consider, for example, that virtually all American neo-evangelical colleges and seminaries willingly subordinate themselves to humanistic accreditation associations, humanistic professional associations, and so forth. There is no question who is in charge and who is subordinate in these relationships. On the lack of separation, see James Davison Hunter, Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation (University of Chicago Press, 1987).
30. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989).
31. Ibid., Appendix B: "Rushdoony on the Constitution." It is worth noting that Rushdoony after 1973 progressively emphasized his view of the continuing New Testament authority of the Mosaic dietary laws, which was the same period in which he progressively abandoned his earlier views on the original, orthodox American ecclesiastical tradition as theocratic, anti-revivalist, anti-pluralist, and anti-independency. On the shift, 1964-1979, in his views on the American ecclesiastical tradition, see Gary North, Westminster's Confession: The Abandonment of Van Til's Legacy (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1991), p. 80n. A separate diet, rather than participation in the Lord's Supper, became the basis of his personal segregation, not only from pagan culture but also from local church membership. In 1992, he declared the Chalcedon Foundation a church and began celebrating communion after a lapse of over 20 years.
32. Rushdoony, Institutes, p. 294.
33. Gary North, Healer of the Nations: Biblical Blueprints for International Relations (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987), ch. 9.
34. Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, translated by George Eliot (New York: Harper Torchbooks, [1841] 1957), p. 252.
35. Frederick Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy (1888), in Marx and Engels, Selected Works, 3 vols. (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969), III, p. 344.
36. Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., The Greatness of the Great Commission: The Christian Enterprise in a Fallen World (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990).
37. God's mandated method of execution -- public stoning by the witnesses whose words condemned the criminal -- is regarded as perverse even by those few Christians who still defend the legitimacy of the death penalty. They do not believe that God requires the trial's hostile witnesses to cast the first stones. But He does: "The hands of the witnesses shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people. So thou shalt put the evil away from among you" (Deut. 17:7). Like twentieth-century humanists, Christians today regard God's mandated sanctions as barbaric; in this case, public execution by citizens. Why is this regarded as barbaric? The critics do not say. They do not think that have to say. "Everyone can see that such a thing is barbaric!" And such a God.
This law, if enforced, would place enormous responsibility into citizens' hands, both literally and figuratively. Christians today want to avoid such a fearful responsibility. They want the execution performed by some faceless bureaucrat behind closed doors, which is what God's law prohibits. Christians do not want the witnesses -- those whose public words condemned the person to death -- to suffer the psychological pressure of having to enforce their own words of condemnation. The witnesses' public judicial words are not to be enforced by their public judicial sanctions. Their words killed the person judicially, but the work of their hands is not supposed to kill the person biologically. The witnesses must not be burdened by the enormous emotional pressure of having to act out in public the judicial implications of their words. Word and deed are to be kept radically separate. The dirty work is to be done by a hireling, a professional executioner paid by the State.
God's law identifies the witnesses as God's agents, as well as the victim's agents. They are His agents both in their capacity as bringers of a lawsuit and as public executioners. They are to deliver the condemned person into God's heavenly court. In contrast, modern jurisprudence sees the witnesses as agents solely of the State. Then the State hires its own sanctions-bringer to execute judgment. The State consolidates its power by relieving the citizenry of their responsibilities. Not all of these responsibilities are economic.
Once the citizen is relieved of his judicial responsibility to cast stones against criminals, the State can then take the next step: confiscate his weapons. Step by step, humanism's civil authority lodges at the top of the hierarchy. First, stoning by witnesses is eliminated. This removes the mark of judicial sovereignty from the citizen-witness: God's mandated sanctions-bringer. Second, God is eliminated by removing self-maledictory oaths under God by the witnesses. This makes the State the new god: defender of the oath. Third, gun control laws are legislated: the visible monopolization of sovereignty in the State. The State is no longer confessionally in between God and the oath-bound citizen. It is over the citizen and under no one.
38. North, Political Polytheism, Part 3.
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