I'd like a call-for-reference on the stoning adulterers charge. If these people accept the New Testament, then they'd accept that the Law of Moses (which has the stoning punishment) did away with this punishment (heck, Jesus stopped the stoning of an adulterer, so I'm wondering how they'd square this if the charge is true).
In short, I'm asking for direct citations backing this claim. I don't think that CATO is above making mistakes or sloppiness when it comes to those that they disagree with.
And, for the record, I'm sure that Dr. Steven Hotze believes that I'm going to hell. He is no friend of mine, and I don't care for him. But I'm calling CATO on this.
[External Link]
"The Christian goal for the world," Recon theologian David Chilton has explained, is "the universal development of Biblical theocratic republics." Scripturally based law would be enforced by the state with a stern rod in these republics. And not just any scriptural law, either, but a hardline-originalist version of Old Testament law--the point at which even most fundamentalists agree things start to get "scary." American evangelicals have tended to hold that the bloodthirsty pre-Talmudic Mosaic code, with its quick resort to capital punishment, its flogging and stoning and countenancing of slavery, was mostly if not entirely superseded by the milder precepts of the New Testament (the "dispensationalist" view, as it's called). Not so, say the Reconstructionists. They reckon only a relative few dietary and ritualistic observances were overthrown.
So when Exodus 21:15-17 prescribes that cursing or striking a parent is to be punished by execution, that's fine with Gary North. "When people curse their parents, it unquestionably is a capital crime," he writes. "The integrity of the family must be maintained by the threat of death." Likewise with blasphemy, dealt with summarily in Leviticus 24:16: "And he that blasphemeth the name of the Lord, he shall surely be put to death, and all the congregation shall certainly stone him."
Reconstructionists provide the most enthusiastic constituency for stoning since the Taliban seized Kabul. "Why stoning?" asks North. "There are many reasons. First, the implements of execution are available to everyone at virtually no cost." Thrift and ubiquity aside, "executions are community projects--not with spectators who watch a professional executioner do `his' duty, but rather with actual participants." You might even say that like square dances or quilting bees, they represent the kind of hands-on neighborliness so often missed in this impersonal era. "That modern Christians never consider the possibility of the reintroduction of stoning for capital crimes," North continues, "indicates how thoroughly humanistic concepts of punishment have influenced the thinking of Christians." And he may be right about that last point, you know.
"a hardline-originalist version of Old Testament law--the point at which even most fundamentalists agree things start to get 'scary.'"
But think of the comedy potential!
________________________
OFFICIAL:
Are there any women here today?
CROWD:
No. No. No. No...
OFFICIAL:
Very well. By virtue of the authority vested in me--
[CULPRIT WOMAN stones MATTHIAS]
MATTHIAS:
Oww! Lay off! We haven't started yet!
OFFICIAL:
Come on! Who threw that? Who threw that stone? Come on.
CROWD:
She did! She did! He did! He! He. He. Him. Him. Him. Him. He did.
CULPRIT WOMAN:
Sorry. I thought we'd started.
OFFICIAL:
Go to the back.
CULPRIT WOMAN:
Oh, dear.
OFFICIAL:
Always one, isn't there? Now, where were we?
_________________________________
From The Life of Brian, scene 4 [External Link]
Thanks Charles. I'll remember never to lend support to Gary North and his supporters.
Posted at 2007-12-21 12:39:52 [PermaLink]