God, Law & Liberty Podcast

When Christians lose the metaphysic and cosmology of Colossians 1:15-20, we fall prey to the “empty traditions and philosophies of men.” David uses John Owen’s exposition of Hebrews 11:1, legislative testimony from the most prominent pro-life lawyer in America, and what the founder of a Christian law school said he teaches his students to show how a wrong metaphysic and cosmology turns making the argument of law into counting votes on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Support the show: https://www.factennessee.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Two weeks ago, David argued there were Fifth Commandment problems with the legal arguments submitted by Christians to the U.S. Supreme Court in defense of Tennessee’s law prohibiting the use of medicine to address a minor’s gender dysphoria. Today David looks at the briefs submitted on behalf of four Christian organizations to explain why he thinks there are problems with the first three commandments, too.

Support the show: https://www.factennessee.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Having explored the ways in which the arguments of a leading Christian legal advocate conform to the way the godless think about the world we live in, David raises two objections that might be made against his analysis. He answers them with the help of William Blackstone and a conversation between his friends at Choc Knox Unplugged. Getting a free copy of David’s short monograph, Toward Christian Nihilism-A Short Study in Contrasting Policy Approaches, will make clearer what’s going on.

Support the show: https://www.factennessee.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Is it a “legal strategy” or a Fifth Commandment problem when Christian legal advocates eschew common law and its application to current legal issues involving human sexuality? David uses an amicus brief recently filed by a leading Christian legal advocacy organization with the U.S. Supreme Court and William Blackstone to answer that question and shows how its rights-based legal argument conforms to the way the ungodly think about rights.

Support the show: https://www.factennessee.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A question about natural law from a lawyer-lobbyist about Christians embracing natural law provides a foundation for today’s look at the arguments made by Christian legal advocates to SCOTUS in defense of Tennessee’s law prohibiting medical interventions to treat a minor’s gender dysphoria. David explains how their arguments unwittingly embrace a subjective-oriented, relativistic understanding of law, not a Christian one.

Support the show: https://www.factennessee.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week friend of the court briefs were filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on a case out of Tennessee that is of civilization defining importance—whether bodies are essential to human meaning. David briefly explains the brief he submitted and compares it to one filed by the scholarly Ethics and Public Policy Council with its Judeo-Christian ethic. He explains why the latter’s brief seems to call for a return to good old bad days of the Enlightenment that undermined biblical Christianity and ushered in nihilism.

Support the show: https://www.factennessee.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today David begins to look at a third group he now sees involved in politics, those he calls neo-Theonomists. The prophet Isaiah as well as the person who prepared the soil for Abraham Kuyper’s political engagement, Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, speak wisely to those who with a Benthamite view of the Bible run to the Capitol to press for enactment of certain laws of God.

Support the show: https://www.factennessee.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today David offers a Biblical touchstone for improving on the church-state problems that contributed to our law no longer having a Christian foundation. Demonstrative of those problems are two historical situations that may explain why the Danbury Baptists may have sided with the Enlightenment-influenced, Gospel-averse Thomas Jefferson for President. There is “blame” enough for every stripe of Protestant to share in and now it’s time to move forward.

Support the show: https://www.factennessee.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Who, in David’s terminology, are the neo-Baptists that he finds involved in politics and law? Is their engagement “better” than that of neo-Covenanters? Today, David discusses the distinction between Baptistic theology and that of the “old” Covenantors and how that theology worked itself in history. He explains how that led the Danbury Baptist Association to support Thomas Jefferson for President. Did the “old” Baptists help Jefferson lay the foundation for a “wall of separation” that the neo-Baptists of today decry?

Support the show: https://www.factennessee.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

David takes today’s episode to develop a historical context for next week’s discussion of neo-Baptist engagement with law and politics. Without this context, the Gnostic nature of that form of engagement will be less clear. David uses the work of 18th-century Scottish theologian, Thomas Boston, and the Apostle Paul's first letter to Timothy to explain the role of law in non-Gnostic terms.

Support the show: https://www.factennessee.org/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.