DISINHERITING CANAAN'S GODS When the LORD thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their land; Take heed to thyself that thou be not snared by following them, after that they be destroyed from before thee; and that thou enquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise. Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God: for every abomination to the LORD, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods (Deut. 12:29-31).
The Book of Deuteronomy is filled with passages that warned the Israelites not to name the names of the gods of Canaan, not to adopt their rituals, not to have anything to do with them. These were all land laws. So was this one. The theocentric focus of this law is God's determination to destroy all rivals. Just as He was planning to disinherit the gods of Canaan, so would He disinherit Israel if she played the harlot with those gods.
This law should be seen as an aspect of the fifth point of the covenant: inheritance-disinheritance. In fact, this law is the very heart of point five: God's disinheritance of all rival gods. This is the model for point five. The fundamental theme of the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is this: the transition from wrath to grace. But there is no such transition for the fallen angels who joined Satan in his rebellion. For them there is no hope of redemption. Though they masquerade as gods, they know that they will be cut off at the end of history. For them, the transition is from wrath to greater wrath. They receive God's common grace in history: unearned gifts of life, power, a cause-and-effect universe, and influence over men.(1) But their end is sure: destruction. They will be disinherited in eternity.
Disinheritance in History The question is: Will Satan be representatively disinherited in history? That is, will his human disciples be disinherited? The Book of Deuteronomy is surely the testament of inheritance for God and His people. Is it also a testament of disinheritance for the gods of Canaan and their people? In principle, yes. The Israelites were told by God to spare neither the idols nor the inhabitants of Canaan. "And thou shalt consume all the people which the LORD thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them: neither shalt thou serve their gods; for that will be a snare unto thee" (Deut. 7:16). But God told Moses at the end of the book that they would not obey God in this genocidal assignment. "And the LORD said unto Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers; and this people will rise up, and go a whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land, whither they go to be among them, and will forsake me, and break my covenant which I have made with them. Then my anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide my face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall befall them; so that they will say in that day. Are not these evils come upon us, because our God is not among us? And I will surely hide my face in that day for all the evils which they shall have wrought, in that they are turned unto other gods" (Deut. 31:16-18).
This rebellion would recapitulate the Fall of Adam: the transition from grace to wrath. This transition was endemic for Israel until the time that God removed the kingdom from Israel and transferred it to the church: definitively at the resurrection, progressively in New Testament church history, and finally at the fall of Jerusalem. Jesus told the rulers of Israel: "Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof" (Matt. 21:43). This is why the church is called the Israel of God. Paul wrote: "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature. And as many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God" (Gal. 6:15-16).(2) So, the transition from grace to wrath is overcome through greater grace. "Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world" (I John 4:4).
There is a war for the inheritance in history: disinherited sons claim the inheritance. This war is covenantal. It involves all five points of the covenant. It is a war over sovereignty, authority, law, sanctions, and inheritance. As such, it is at bottom ethical. The gods that men worship are reflected in the laws that men obey. "What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it" (Deut. 12:32).
This passage begins with a prophecy: "When the LORD thy God shall cut off the nations from before thee, whither thou goest to possess them, and thou succeedest them, and dwellest in their land" (v. 29). Title to their land will surely be transferred to Israel. The question facing Israel was the question of maintaining the kingdom grant. I wrote in Leviticus: An Economic Commentary: "Leviticus presents the rules governing this kingdom grant from God. This land grant preceded the giving of these rules. Grace precedes law in God's dealings with His subordinates. We are in debt to God even before He speaks to us. The land grant was based on the original promise given to Abraham. That promise came prior to the giving of the Mosaic law.(3) This is why James Jordan says that the laws of Leviticus are more than legislation; the focus of the laws is not simply obedience to God, but rather on maintaining the grant.(4) The basis of maintaining the grant was ethics, not the sacrifices. Man cannot maintain the kingdom in sin.(5) The fundamental issue was sin, not sacrifice; ethics, not ritual."(6)
God warned them against dallying with the rituals of Canaan's gods. God warned them, "enquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise" (v. 30). But the primary issue was not liturgy; it was ethics: "Thou shalt not do so unto the LORD thy God: for every abomination to the LORD, which he hateth, have they done unto their gods; for even their sons and their daughters they have burnt in the fire to their gods" (v. 31). The great evil of Canaan's rituals was the nations' willful destruction of their children in formal sacrifice. This was ethics encapsulated in ritual.
Human sacrifice is the greatest ritual evil in history, and it was widespread prior to the spread of the Christian gospel. Classical Greece and Rome both practiced human sacrifice,(7) although the textbooks do not mention this, and even specialized historical monographs ignore it or mention it only in passing. This historical blackout is an aspect of the successful re-writing of history by humanists who rely, generation after generation, on their peers' glowing accounts of a supposedly secular classical world, an academically satisfying world in which formal religion was socially peripheral and mostly for political show. The fact that a vestal virgin was buried alive as a sanction against either her unchastity or allowing the ritual fire to go out(8) is an historiographical inconvenience, and so it is rarely mentioned. Vesta was the sacred fire of Rome, a goddess. She was the incarnation of moral order, both in Greece and Rome.(9) Her ritual requirements had the sanction of execution attached to them. Where we find the imposition of the death penalty, we do not find a socially peripheral issue. Centuries later, the sacrificial bloodshed of Mexico's Aztecs in the late fifteenth century reached the limits of this ritual abomination.(10) The remarkable speed of that perverse civilization's disinheritance by the Spanish and their Indian allies, from 1519 to 1521, should give pause to the academic world, which does not take seriously covenantal cause and effect. (Modern legalized abortion more than matches the efficiency of the Aztecs' slaughter, but not as a ritual practice.)
Comparative Religion God forbade the Israelites from naming the names of the gods of Canaan. "And in all things that I have said unto you be circumspect: and make no mention of the name of other gods, neither let it be heard out of thy mouth" (Ex. 23:13). Was this a ban against historical scholarship? Was this prohibition to be taken literally?
The language here is covenantal. Naming a name of a god was in this context an act of invocation. It was an act of worship. Calling upon a god is an act of religious subordination. To invoke the name of a god is to acknowledge formally that he brings sanctions in history. The context of Deuteronomy 12:30 was historical study for the sake of covenantal subordination: ". . . enquire not after their gods, saying, How did these nations serve their gods? even so will I do likewise." The prohibition of false worship took the form of a universal prohibition of mentioning the names of the gods of Canaan, but to ignore the area of comparative religion is to ignore the possibility that false worship can be introduced in the name of progressive reform as well as the restoration of ancient practices. To be able to recognize a proposed progressive innovation as the restoration of an ancient abomination is an advantage. Without a knowledge of the past, it becomes more difficult for guardians of orthodoxy to defend its boundaries.
There is no doubt that the rulers of Israel spoke the names of foreign gods. "Woe to thee, Moab! thou art undone, O people of Chemosh: he hath given his sons that escaped, and his daughters, into captivity unto Sihon king of the Amorites" (Num. 21:29). "Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh thy god giveth thee to possess? So whomsoever the LORD our God shall drive out from before us, them will we possess" (Jud. 11:24). But Chemosh was not a god of Canaan. Its geographical area of sovereignty was outside the boundaries of Israel. Foreign gods did not pose the same degree of covenantal threat to Israel that the gods of Canaan did, for they were not perceived as exercising sovereignty inside the boundaries of the Promised Land. To invoke the names of foreign gods was a violation of the first commandment (Ex. 20:3), but for false worship to become socially significant, there had to be some basis for people to believe that cause and effect in history were influenced by the god invoked. This god had to be able to impose sanctions on behalf of those who invoked his name. Because the ancient world outside of pre-exilic Israel did not invoke the name of any finally sovereign god, the social threat to Israel came from the pre-conquest local gods of Canaan.
What about local gods? Could Israelites lawfully speak their names? I think that they could, although I am not sure that this was the case. The prophet Jeremiah spoke Baal's name as part of his covenant lawsuit (Jer. 7:9; 11:13). But Baal was a god of Moab (Num. 22:41). It may be that the word, meaning "master" or "owner," was widely applied in Israel to rival gods. But as for the specific names of the gods of pre-conquest Canaan, the Bible is silent.
After the exile, there seems to have been no application of this law. The sovereignty of the pre-conquest gods of Canaan was finally destroyed by the Assyrians and Babylonians. The new world of empire was openly polytheistic. Many gods resided in the pantheon of each empire. The cultural threat of exclusively local gods ended forever in Israel. The threat of polytheism and syncretism still existed, but Israel's defensive position as a nation under foreign domination restricted the spread of polytheism. A polytheist in post-exilic Israel was a traitor to the nation, a collaborator with the enemy. He would have been ostracized. The threat to orthodoxy in post-exilic Israel was two-fold: legalism and pagan philosophy. It was the lure of Greek philosophy and culture, with its common-confession universalism and its aestheticism, that pulled cosmopolitan Jews away from Moses.(11) Meanwhile, legalists planted thickets of ritual hedges around the Mosaic law. The kernel of orthodoxy was either ground into flour and leavened with Hellenistic universalism or else smothered by the legalism of the Pharisees.
In modern times, the study of comparative religion has again become a threat to theological orthodoxy, not because the advocates of comparative religion invoke the sanctions of rival gods, but because they deny the supernatural existence of all gods. Comparative religion is a form of cultural relativism -- indeed, the supreme form. It insists that the details of theology and ritual change through time and across borders. But this academic polytheism is tempered by its universalism. Here is the supposedly universal aspect of all religion: faith in beings and forces that do not exist in the way that religious disciples believe. The universalism of religion is the universalism of error in the face of either as-yet unsolved questions or as-yet rejected scientific answers. Religion's sanctions are said to be exclusively personal and social; all of the gods invoked by their disciples are equally without power. Men, not gods, impose sanctions in history, say the advocates of comparative religion. All of the gods have been disinherited by rational men, we are told, save one: the god of humanity. To inherit in history -- the only inheritance that supposedly matters -- men must invoke the god of humanity. It is this god alone that brings predictable positive sanctions to those who invoke its name and subordinate themselves to its representative agents: consumers (economic sanctions) and voters (political sanctions). All the other natural and social forces in history are understood by humanists as impersonal.
Comparative religion in post-conquest, pre-exilic Israel posed the threat the elevation of local gods above the God of the Bible. Comparative religion in the modern world poses the threat of the de-throning of the God of the Bible and His banishment to the common pantheon of all other gods, save one: the god of humanity. This pantheon of gods no longer occupies the acropolis on the highest hill of the city. More likely, a local television transmission tower does.
The threat of comparative religion is the threat of idolatry. Idolatry invokes gods other than the God of the Bible, gods who are believed to be the most powerful sanctions-bringers in history. Ancient comparative religion invoked local gods; modern comparative religion invokes a universal god: mankind. The issue of sanctions in history necessarily raises the issue of inheritance in history. To inherit, men must ally themselves to the god who really does bring sanctions in history.
Theology and the Visible Kingdom of God The most important theological issue is theology proper: the doctrine of God. He who gets this doctrine wrong will suffer eternal negative sanctions. The early church fought long and hard to establish orthodoxy in this area of theology. It is here, and only here, that the church has come to an agreement: Trinitarianism. On the other four covenantal issues -- hierarchy, law, sacraments, and eschatology -- there has been no universal agreement.
If theology proper is the most important issue of theology, then the Book of Genesis is the most important book in the Pentateuch. Genesis describes the origin of the universe and presents the Creator-creature distinction. The debate over origins has been the fundamental debate between Christianity and paganism from the beginning. Evolutionism has been around a long time. So has the doctrine of the eternality of matter.(12) In our day, the evolution-creation issue has dwarfed all others as the chief theological battlefield. More intellectual ground has been surrendered faster by Christianity since the advent of Darwinism than ever before in the history of the church. Even Islam's invasion of the West and its complete conquest of North Africa, 632-732, was a minor affair compared to the surrender of the modern church to a modified Darwinism: theistic evolution. The medieval church resisted Islam; the modern church has generally baptized evolutionism rather than resist it.
Why, then, elevate eschatology to the forefront? Because this is a commentary on Deuteronomy. The issue raised by Deuteronomy is the issue of inheritance in history: Who will inherit, and who will be disinherited? The debate over eschatology has become a major dividing point since the mid-nineteenth century -- again, about the time of Darwinism's appearance. The triumph of Darwinism in both the academic and political worlds has been accompanied by the triumph of dispensationalism in the Arminian pietistic Protestant world.(13) The issue of eschatology is the fifth great debate in the history of the church. The first was theology proper. It was basically settled in the fourth century. The second debate was over hierarchy: church vs. church (the East-West split came in 1054) and church vs. state (culminating in the conflict between Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV in 1076). The debate over law began in the Western church at that time: canon law vs. a revived secular Roman law.(14) Scholasticism soon appeared: the philosophical attempt to reconcile the two. It failed. The Reformation was fought mainly over sanctions: public debate over the role of indulgences (the issue of purgatory), the number and meaning of the sacraments (realism vs. nominalism),(15) vows of celibacy made by the clergy and nuns, and the judicially binding character of excommunication. Finally, in the 1800's, eschatology became a major divisive issue in Protestantism.
Eschatology is part of the covenant: point five. The church can get the last four points incorrect and still persevere in history, but it cannot inherit in history until it gets correct all five points and their applications. The progressive disinheritance of the church, which has accelerated since the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859, began long before Darwin. Modern evolutionism offers the most coherent theological system in the history of the war between belief and unbelief: from the doctrine of impersonal creation (the Big Bang) to the doctrine of the impersonal last judgment (the heat death of the universe).(16) But rival theologies have always confronted Christianity. These rival theologies have always occupied territory within the church and its allied academic agencies.
Eschatology
The most common eschatologies, premillennialism (fundamentalist churches) and amillennialism (European liturgical churches), have correctly relegated the conquest of Canaan to the Old Covenant. They have also relegated inheritance in history to the Old Covenant. But these are separate issues. After the exile, the laws of landed inheritance changed. The gentiles occupying the land were to be incorporated into the jubilee's inheritance system (Ezek. 47:22-23). This pointed to the New Covenant's incorporation of the gentiles into the covenant. It was not the conquest of Canaan that was fundamental to Israel; it was the preservation of the messianic seed line that was fundamental. The crucial eschatological issue was the Promised Seed, not the Promised Land.
This does not mean that the issue of inheritance in history was an exclusively Old Covenant issue. On the contrary, the issue of inheritance is far more a New Covenant issue. The Old Covenant inheritance centered around the Promised Seed (Gen. 3:15). Only much later did the issue of the Promised Land become intermixed with the Promised Seed (Abraham's covenant). This was a temporary mixing of categories of inheritance that ended with the coming of the Messiah, i.e., Shiloh (Gen. 49:10), and His rejection by Israel. The universalism of the Genesis inheritance (Gen. 3:15) has now been mixed with the universalism of the kingdom of God in history (Matt. 21:43). This is the meaning of the Great Commission: "And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen" (Matt. 28:18-20). So, far from being relegated to the Old Covenant, inheritance has become the fundamental eschatological issue of the New Covenant. To relegate formal eschatology to the final judgment and post-resurrection world, which amillennialism does, is a fundamental error with culturally debilitating consequences. It means surrendering civilization to covenant-breakers as a consequence of eschatological, prophetic inevitability. The same criticism is equally applicable to premillennialism's view of the church's influence as it must inevitably operate prior to Christ's eschatologically discontinuous return with His angels to take establish His new headquarters on earth rather than at the right hand of God in heaven.
The eschatological issue of headquarters should not be ignored. Eden was to serve Adam as his headquarters in the conquest of the world: the dominion covenant.(17) Adam was forcibly removed from headquarters after his rebellion. Headquarters for Noah was the ark, but only for a few months. After that, geography played no role until Abram was called out of Ur of the Chaldees. Ur could not serve as headquarters for Abraham; no place else could, either. Abraham wandered. After him, Israel wandered. Geographical headquarters was re-established only with Israel's conquest of Canaan. But the same threat existed for Israel as had existed for Adam, as Deuteronomy constantly warns: removal from headquarters. This happened at the time of the first exile, and then culminated with the removal of geographical headquarters with the fall of Jerusalem.
Dispensational premillennialists assume that headquarters will be reestablished in Jerusalem by Jesus when He returns to set up His earthly kingdom.(18) Historic premillennialists remain silent regarding the place of earthly headquarters during the premillennial kingdom. Amillennialists and postmillennialists insist that kingdom headquarters in history has been transferred to heaven.
The main differences between amillennialism and postmillennialism center around the degree to which history will visibly manifest the judicial inheritance which Jesus Christ obtained through His death and resurrection, and which He announced to His disciples in Matthew 28:18. Will this legal title to all things, which was granted to Jesus by God the Father after the resurrection, progressively manifest itself culturally in the work of Christians in building up the kingdom of God on earth and in history?(19) Whatever is judicially definitive in history must be extended progressively in history. This process is analogous to Jesus' sin-free final and perfect sanctification, which is judicially transferred to believers definitively at the time of their redemption,(20) but which they must work out in history (Phil. 2:12). God gave Abraham legal title to the Promised Land, but actual possession had to wait (Gen. 15:16). Is the church operating under an analogous grant of lawful title? What Abraham received definitively by promise was achieved by his covenantal heirs, although they subsequently surrendered geographically for a time (the exile) and then covenantally in Christ's day. Eschatologically, Old Covenant Israel moved steadily toward apostasy and defeat in history, beginning with the incomplete conquest of Canaan.
Is the church also moving progressively toward final defeat, though not apostasy? Why should the church be defeated in history? Israel was defeated because Israel apostatized completely. No conservative Trinitarian theologian argues that the entire church will apostatize completely, yet most Christian theologians believe that the church will be defeated culturally. So, the cultural history of the church will supposedly be found on the last day to have recapitulated the cultural history of Old Covenant Israel.
This raises a very embarrassing question: Is the post-ascension church always in the same eschatological condition as pre-ascension Israel? The amillennialist seeks to evade this question, but when pressed, his answer is yes. He believes, but refuses to say in public, that the bodily ascension of Jesus Christ in history and the sending of the Holy Spirit in history are insufficient to empower the church in history to break out of its sad pathway to visible cultural defeat. Amillennialists have an implicit but unstated conclusion with regard to the doctrine of the bodily ascension of Christ: the cultural power of sin is greater in history than the cultural power of redemption. They relegate the prophesied victory of the church in history to the realm of personal victory over sin, while affirming the church's inevitable visible defeat. The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ took place in history, but for all the good it does the church culturally, it might as well never have happened. The ascension's impact is internal and individual, not external and cultural, insists the amillennialist.
Theological liberals have been far more consistent in their view of the resurrection and ascension: they have relegated both historical events to the realm of the spirit. To them, the bodily ascension of Christ is a phrase testifying to the spiritual optimism of the early church, not a visible, verifiable historical event. Amillennialists believe the same thing regarding the promised victory of the church in history. When the Bible repeatedly predicts that covenant-keepers will inherit the earth in history, the amillennialist says, "Spiritual, not literal!"
Postmillennialists believe that Christ's bodily ascension to heaven and the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost empowered the church in history to recapture lost territory in every realm of life. Amillennialists believe that such reconquest cannot take place in history; the church will surrender territory, should it ever actually recapture it. The church's cultural inheritance supposedly will go the way of the Mosaic land inheritance. Christ's ascension plays no role in amillennial social theory. As I wrote in the conclusion of Chapter 6 in Leviticus:
There is remarkably little discussion of the ascension of Christ in modern orthodox theology.(21) This topic inevitably raises fundamental historical, cosmological, and cultural implications that modern premillennial and especially amillennial theologians find difficult to accept, such as the progressive manifestation of Christ's rule in history through His representatives: Christians.(22) In a world in which grace is believed to be progressively devoured by nature, there is little room for historical applications of the doctrine of the historical ascension. Covenantal postmillennialism alone can confidently discuss the doctrine of Christ's ascension, for postmillennialism does not seek to confine the effects of Christ's ascension to the realms of the internal and the trans-historical.(23) That is to say, postmillennialism does not assert the existence of supposedly inevitable boundaries around the effects of grace in history. On the contrary, it asserts that all such boundaries will be progressively overcome in history, until on judgment day the very gates (boundaries) of hell will not be able to stand against the church (Matt. 16:18)."(24)
Both amillennialism and premillennialism teach the inevitable disinheritance of the church in history and the illegitimacy of the ideal of Christendom as applying to civilization prior to the bodily return of Christ. Eschatology shapes social theory.
Conclusion God told Moses that He would disinherit the gods of Canaan. He would do so by enabling the Israelites to disinherit the Canaanites. But He warned them not to worship the gods of defeated Canaan.
While the ancient world believed that the gods of a city that lost a war were also defeated, the fact is that the Israelites were sorely tempted to worship the gods of Canaan. The presence of a remnant of surviving Canaanites would be interpreted by Israel as though the gods of Canaan had overcome the God of the Bible, despite the fact that Israel had overthrown the idols of Canaan. Despite the fact that the losers had lost, the Israelites were tempted to worship the losers' gods. The losers became the winners in Mosaic Israel. Foreign agents had to destroy the remnants of Canaan's gods: Assyria and Babylon.
Israel's military defeat of Canaan should have meant the defeat of Canaan's gods. Only because Israel was ethically rebellious did traces of Canaan's old culture and old theology survive. These remnants of evil then served as evil leaven, just as Moses had warned. Only after the second defeat of Canaan's gods, as a result of the defeat of Israel by Assyria and Babylon, were the gods of Canaan finally disinherited. Israel had to be temporarily disinherited in order for Canaan's gods to be permanently disinherited.
Footnotes:
1. Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), pp. 34-35.
2. Traditional dispensationalists are forced to come up with highly creative interpretations of this passage. John F. Walvoord insists that "the Israel of God" in verse 16 refers to "Israelites who in the church age trust Jesus Christ." Israelites? What Israelites? Ever since A.D. 70, there have been no Israelites. There have been only Jews. Israel is gone. From the Orthodox Jewish viewpoint, there can be no biblical Israel until the messiah returns. According to Walvoord, Paul wrote that peace and mercy are upon gentiles and "Israelites" who are inside the church. This means that God distinguishes two kinds of Christians, Jews and gentiles. Yet verse 15 insists that there is no such distinction. Walvoord calls his obviously forced and convoluted exposition "natural and biblical." He calls it "the simplest explanation," despite the fact that no one except dispensationalists have ever argued for this supposedly simple explanation of this verse. All other Christian expositors have understood that the church is the New Covenant inheritor of Mosaic Israel's title, in both senses: name and covenantal promises. Walvoord devotes one brief paragraph to his refutation of almost two millennia of Christian interpretation of the passage. Walvoord, "Does the Church Fulfill Israel's Program?" in Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck (eds.), The Bib Sac Reader (Chicago: Moody, 1983), p. 41. ("Bib Sac" refers to Dallas Theological Seminary's quarterly journal, Bibliotheca Sacra.) What is really amusing is that he dismisses rival views as "determined by theological presuppositions rather than proper exegesis." Ibid., p. 49. Such a lack of self-awareness is remarkable, even among theologians.
3. James B. Jordan, Covenant Sequence in Leviticus and Deuteronomy (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), p. 8.
4. Ibid., p. 9.
5. Ibid., p. 11.
6. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), p. 9.
7. Lord Acton, "Human Sacrifice" (1863), in Essays in Religion, Politics, and Morality, 3 vols. (Indianapolis, Indiana: LibertyClassics, 1988), III, ch. 19.
8. 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 III, Chapter VI, p. 147.
9. Ibid., I:III, pp. 30-32.
10. Serge Gruzinski, The Aztecs: Rise and Fall of an Empire (New York: Abrams, [1987] 1992), pp. 49-56.
11. Martin Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism: Studies in their Encounter in Palestine during the Early Hellenistic Period, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Fortress, [1974] 1981), I, p. 313.
12. Aristotle, Physics, VIII.
13. The one major exception: the Church of Christ (Cambellite).
14. Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983).
15. Covenantalism is implied by Calvin's rejection of Roman Catholicism's realism (real presence) and also Anabaptism's nominalism (remembrance). But his invocation of "mystery" did not solve the problem.
16. Gary North, Is the World Running Down? Crisis in the Christian Worldview (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1988), ch. 2.
17. Gary North, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), ch. 3.
18. While this is almost universally believed by dispensationalists, the movement's theologians rarely mention it.
19. Because of confusion on this point, let me clarify: the New Covenant kingdom of God was established definitively in history by Jesus prior to His death and resurrection. "But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you" (Matt. 12:28). Title to the earth was transferred to Him by God after the resurrection. Jesus transferred title to the church, His bride, no later than Pentecost (Acts 2). Thus, the New Covenant kingdom of God began before title was transferred. The church lawfully invokes its legal title, but this title is reclaimed from Satan progressively, through Christian reconstruction, i.e., working out our faith with fear and trembling (Phil. 2:12), in every area of life -- matching Christ's transferred title to everything -- through service to others: "But Jesus called them to him, and saith unto them, Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and their great ones exercise authority upon them. But so shall it not be among you: but whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister: And whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all. For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many" (Mark 10:42-45). The dominion covenant is progressively achieved by Christians in history on a culture-wide basis by means of the church's division of labor (Rom. 12; I Cor. 12).
20. "But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, Saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered" (Rom. 4:5-7).
21. Gary North, Millennialism and Social Theory (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), pp. 227-29.
22. No theological or eschatological school denies that there can be prolonged set-backs in this manifestation of Christ's rule. Conversely, none would totally deny progress. I know of no one who would argue, for example, that the creeds of the church prior to the fourth century were more rigorous or more accurate theologically than those which came later.
23. This is why amillennialism drifts so easily into Barthianism: the history of mankind for the amillennialist has no visible connection with the ascension of Jesus Christ. Progressive sanctification in this view is limited to the personal and ecclesiastical; it is never cultural or civic. The ascension of Christ has no transforming implications for society in amillennial theology. The ascension was both historical and publicly visible; its implications supposedly are not. The Barthian is simply more consistent than the amillennialist: he denies the historicity of both Jesus' ascension and His subsequent grace to society. Christ's ascension, like His grace, is relegated to the trans-historical. See North, Millennialism and Social Theory, pp. 111-13.
24. Kenneth L. Gentry, Jr., He Shall Have Dominion: A Postmillennial Eschatology (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1992), chaps. 12, 13.
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