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by Raymond Patton Joseph

Obedience to the Laws of God The Sure and Indispensable Defense of Nations, Ashbel Green, D.D., (1798), Reformed Presbyterian Press, 1992.

Today's church is beginning to wake up from its two-hundred-year-long Rip Van Winkle slumber regarding its obligations toward Christian civil government. More Christians are beginning to realize just how far today's "political pluralism" has infected their thinking. And more and more this realization is being substantiated, buttressed, and fortified by resurrected treatises such as the one by Ashbel Green, D.D., the former pastor of Second Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia. When you read his treatise, Obedience to the Laws of God, you should note well the time of his preaching and writing--an outstanding date which should trigger amber flashers for anyone who cares about history (shouldn't we all?): 1798.

You know what happened eleven years earlier in that same city of Philadelphia; it was the year our national Halfway Covenant was written, the United States Constitution (a government-forming document which appeals to We the People for its legitimacy). Every fourth grader knows that. Or, at least they used to.

But something else was going on across town in that same city of Philadelphia where Ashbel Green would later be preaching. While the studious Framers were diligently framing away in Independence Hall at the Halfway Covenant, the Presbyterian Church was just as diligently tampering with the Westminster Confession in order to make it (you guessed it) a "pluralistic" Confession. Thus, a monumental theological obstacle to one of the newest and trendiest Enlightenment novelties was quietly being removed: the Westminster Confession of Faith was having its Christian civil government teeth pulled. From now on, as far as the Presbyterian Church was concerned, the Westminster Confession would be truly "user-friendly," in a nasty, Enlightenment-centered kind of way. The theological lifeline to the Law of God for the societies of men would be surreptitiously severed, with the full blessing of the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America.

In this manner, quietly, oh so quietly, one of the most influential colonial denominations, in which Ashbel Green was a minister, would now fling open the floodgates which had heretofore prevented Enlightenment humanism from taking over civil government. Consequently, ever since, the claims of "King Jesus" over civil government have been under attack from not just one source, the State, but two sources: State and Church.¹

Was Dr. Ashbel Green aware that his denomination was busy selling out Christian civil government to the fresh breezes of the humanistic "Enlightenment," which was even then finishing its bloody run over in France? Every schoolboy knows (or, at least, they used to) about the infamous French Revolution of 1789. Scotland adopted the "right wing" part, France the "left wing." Eager to build a new nation which would please the French (it was not for nothing that Jefferson and Franklin had visited France before 1787) and solidify our victory over King George III, the Founding Fathers of our Constitution single-mindedly followed Enlightenment thinking. "Man" now became the center of civil government, and Jesus Christ as King of nations was downgraded to mere Divine Spectator status. Yes, the Church said, Christ is still King of nations . . . theoretically. But, that title would forever become hollow and toothless, because, you see, we had ditched the Law of God. From now on, We the People would assume the exalted status of final court of appeal, with the former "King Jesus" looking on from above (supposedly approvingly); We the People would be the only ones necessary to lend legitimacy to the new American Government; We the People would be the ultimate arbiter of all disputes. The wonderful promises of the coming Redeemer-King of nations revealed in Genesis 3:15 would be removed to make way for Genesis 3:5 to find its fulfillment. And Dr. Ashbel Green knew that.²

This was a revolution in thinking, to be sure, to exalt We the People over King Jesus, and we managed to do it without the use of a bloody guillotine. America's Jefferson was not France's Robespierre, so, yes, we missed the bloody part. Our War for Independence was a mere tea party compared to what was to take place in France. When we wrote our truly revolutionary Constitution it was, oh, so peaceful. And the Presbyterian Church approved of it all.

[One Church that did not, of course, was the Covenanter Church. For two hundred years the RPCNA maintained a virulent protest, founding the National Reform Association in 1864 during the bloody War Between the States (the "Civil War"), and beginning the publishing of this magazine, The Christian Statesman, three years later in 1867. The Statesman is the oldest continuously publishing Christian magazine in existence. The Christian Observer is older (1813) but has not been continuously published.]

Ashbel Green was one of those remaining Presbyterian ministers who realized what had happened in Philadelphia eleven years before. In reading his treatise, Obedience to the Laws of God, we think that he must have viewed the manipulations of the Constitutional Convention in dropping "King Jesus" as King of the American nation with keen disappointment. He had been observing what appeared as a virtual stampede in Philadelphia to be fashionably "politically correct" in exalting Man at the expense of recognizing God's appointed Ruler of Nations and His Law as its law base. All this could not have been a matter of mere indifference to Dr. Green as he preached and wrote this noteworthy sermon.

A final aside on "natural law" as we close: Ashbel Green seem to have avoided (at least in this limited edition) the philosophical and semantic trap of "natural law" as representing the source of God's Law. The term "natural law" has been a thorn in the side of Christian thinking for at least a millennium, and has prevented the Church from recognizing that God's Law as revealed in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments is to be the foundational source for civil law, not "natural law" as found outside of the Bible. Dr. Green refers to the Law of God as found in Scripture.

And yet, we find some non-Christians, who in no way can be accused of being Bible students, nevertheless living according to a law standard derived from some source. Where do they get their law for their living? From their own skulls? From history? From tradition? From Aristotle and Plato?

Well, if it is a true law standard, it comes from the Triune God. If the term "natural law" is ever used in a manner which implies that it arises from any source other than the Triune God of the Bible, then it must be recognized as humanistic, not theistic. To help to clear up the confusion over the term, I present this definition of "natural law": Natural law is that portion of biblical law which is written on the consciences of all men. This definition avoids the unwarranted assumption that "natural law" arises from any other source than the Triune God of the Bible, and that somehow we do not need biblical law to build Christian civil governments. What is there in true "natural law" which does not come from the God of Scriptures?

Ashbel Green has given us a focusing tract which helps eliminate Christian confusion over the true source of any nation's civil laws. He speaks to us over a time span of two hundred years, pointing us to the only source for a nation's laws: the Laws of God as found in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. We are thankful to Reformed Presbyterian Press for republishing it. May today's church heed its message.

End Notes

1 Cf. Political Polytheism, Gary North, Institute for Christian Economics, 1989, pp. 546-547.

2 See The Institutes of Biblical Law, Rousas John Rushdoony, Craig Press, 1973, p. 448.

--Raymond Patton Joseph

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