Appendix A
FALSE WORSHIP IN THE MODERN STATE

Should a modern state punish false worship? If so, why? If not, why not?

Most evangelicals recoil in horror against the idea that a modern state should punish false worshipers. I believe that their instincts are sound. But we must still seek to understand the practice in Israel with respect to false worship. We must also deal with arguments purporting to show that modern punishments for false worship might have a rational, biblical basis. Recently, a viewpoint called "theonomy" has argued in favor of using Old Testament law as a precedent for the practice of modern states (see appendix B). ¹ Greg Bahnsen, one of the principal advocates of the theonomic position, has lately expressed reservations about punishing false worship.² But his earlier published position is widely known and supported; it needs to be refuted. We must also realize that Christians in other times and places have sometimes used the power of the state to suppress false worship. Only a thorough grasp of Scripture is sufficient to assure us that our instincts are better than theirs.

The point at issue: the God-given authority of civil government.

Let me first specify what the point in dispute really is. Should the state, in distinction from individual people, other agencies, and other institutions, undertake action attempting to stop false worship? In particular, should it enact and enforce laws that prohibit or penalize false worship? And should civil laws be enacted that give the state the legal power to punish those who engage in acts of false worship within its borders?

Let us carefully note what the discussion is not about.

We are not discussing whether false worship is a serious sin. Certainly it is. It is no accident that the prohibition of false worship comes first in the ten commandments. It comes first because false worship is a most grievous sin. The withdrawal of proper allegiance to the true God, and the offering of allegiance to a false god, is the most radical possible disruption of the very root of our responsibility to God. We dare not underestimate the horrible character of the consequences both in people's hearts and minds and in people's relation to God's creation around them.

Next, we are not discussing whether false worship has serious social, political, and ethical consequences of a destructive kind. It certainly does bring such consequences. Precisely because it attacks the root of what human beings are intended to be, in the long run it affects every aspect of human life. Moreover, because of the heavy responsibility that human beings have for exercising godly dominion over the subhuman world, false worship brings in addition a train of evil consequences to animals and plants and nonliving physical things. (One might think of the relationship in India running from idolatry to taboos concerning the subhuman world, and from there to India's problems in environmental management.)

Finally, we are not discussing whether we ought to work and pray for the eradication of false worship. Certainly we should. God detests idolatry and so should we. In the Great Commission in Matt. 28:18-20 Jesus instructs us not to make peace with false worship, or to leave it alone, but to "make disciples of all nations." As people hear the gospel and believe, they leave false worship behind and so false worship is progressively eradicated.

Rather, we are discussing what are the proper godly means by which false worship ought to be suppressed. Do we use the means of proclaiming the gospel? Do we follow the Great Commission? Or do we use state laws to suppress false worship by force? Do we appeal to people to repent? Or do we have the state threaten them with earthly penalties for their false worship? Do we attract people by our deeds of kindness and love, and pray for God to kill the root of idolatry in them through applying the power of Jesus' sacrificial death? Or do we have the state threaten them with bodily death, imprisonment, or banishment?

The New Testament makes it perfectly clear which is the correct means to use. The Great Commission in Matt. 28:18-20, Paul's letters, the examples of evangelism in the Book of Acts, the picture of spiritual war in Revelation, and Jesus' statement about the spiritual nature of his kingdom (John 18:36) all assert the primacy of spiritual conquest through the gospel. Moreover, as I argued in chapter 10, the holy war theology in Deuteronomy 20 and Joshua actually reinforces rather than contradicts this conclusion. The Old Testament contains abundant indications that holy war in Israel is a type and a shadow pointing forward to a final spiritual war that is deeper and greater. The New Testament reveals more fully the nature of this spiritual war as a conflict with the demonic realm (Eph. 6:10-20; Col. 2:15). During this gospel age, the proper means of conquering false gods and false worship are spiritual in nature.

Hence, it is a radical mistake to carry over the practice of holy war on a literal plane, as Islam does. Islam does not believe in nor understand the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ as the basis for salvation and the re-creation of the human heart. Hence it is not surprising that Islam should resort to the crude external pressures of physical war. But we Christians who do understand the true nature of salvation have no such excuse.

Moreover, we must beware of a widespread twentieth-century mistake about the state. Many Western humanists expect the state to cure all ills. When they see a problem, such as suicide, drug addiction, oppression, war, poverty, sexual exploitation, racial hatred, or mere ignorance, they are greatly distressed. Their feelings of distress and indignation are in a sense proper, but because they do not admit that the root of these ills is found in human sin, they look for immediately engineered human solutions. After all, if human nature is basically good, the difficulty must not really be that intractable. It must be solvable, and solvable now. Any delay is reprehensible. The state has the maximum concentration of power and resources for the job. Hence the state must institute a program to solve the problem. If the problem cannot be solved merely by throwing money at it, then a state-run educational program can do the job.

Hence in the twentieth century we have seen the growth of huge state bureaucracies. Moreover, in many political arguments it is simply assumed that the state is the proper agent for the job. The debates tend to be confined to the question of expediency and quantity: whether the citizens are willing to foot the bill for still another program, and whether one program rather than another will be effective.

We must break out of this foolishness. The state is not god, nor is it the savior of humanity. It cannot remedy all ills. Moreover, contrary to humanist thinking, the state's legitimate authority is limited by God. The state does not have the right simply to meddle in any affair that it chooses. Only God has universal, unbounded authority. The authority of the state consists only in what has been delegated to it by God. The state must confine itself to doing those things for which it has a God-given responsibility.

Hence, when we see some difficulty in the world, we must not immediately clamor for state action to eliminate the difficulty. It is not enough merely to demonstrate that there is a difficulty, and that the difficulty is serious. We must always ask what are the just means for dealing with the difficulty. We must not blindly assume that state action is appropriate or approved by God. Prayer, individual action, action by churches, action by voluntary organizations, and other forms of action are all alternatives. State action needs to be justified as part of the legitimate sphere of authority given to the state. Such action is appropriate not merely if we can show that it might "help" in some pragmatic sense, but only if we can show in addition that it is just when measured by the limited authority that God has given to the state.

This general principle applies also to the question of false worship. False worship is a difficulty in the world; in fact, it is an exceedingly serious evil. State action to suppress false worship might "help" in some crude, pragmatic way. But does God give such authority to the state? That is the crucial question.

Theonomists have argued that in Deut. 13:1-18 and Deut. 17:2-7 God does give such authority to the state. But they have misunderstood the passages in Deuteronomy. Both Deuteronomy 13 and 17 reflect the theology of holy war in Israel. As chapter 10 argues, the punishments in these passages are particular instances of the practice of holy destruction that was inaugurated with Joshua's conquest. Moreover, in neither passage is authority given to the state, but to the congregation of the people of Israel, in their capacity as God's holy people.

The death penalty maintains the purity of Israel in the holy land by a renewal of holy war against violators of Israel's holiness. The profanation of Israel's holiness receives due recompense by an appropriately measured action in the reverse direction. The holy people of Israel is the offended party. They undertake a further act of profanation of the offender (punishment) and a purification of Israel (restoration) by the offering of the offender as an offering consecrated to destruction (Deut. 13:16-17; cf. Deut. 17:4, 7). These things foreshadow the work of Christ, who wages holy war against the demonic spirits of wickedness (Col. 2:15). Hence these verses are not applicable to modern states.

Once these primary issues are settled, there still remain a few further questions. Granted that evangelism is the primary means for overcoming false worship, might the state still have a subordinate role? Granted that the state's authority is strictly limited, might there be something in the Bible that indicates that the state does have an authority from God to punish false worship? Granted that Deuteronomy 13 and 17 are about holy war, and do not give the state any authority, might there still be a way of inferring principles from the state's general mandate to execute justice? These are the questions that we must persue. But note well: it must be demonstrated from the Bible, not merely assumed, that the state has authority to interfere in the area of worship. I claim that there is no such demonstration, but rather that biblical evidence points the other way.

State responsibilities concern offenses against human beings, not offenses against God.

We must first seek to determine the scope of state responsibilities. In the area of punishment, I maintain that modern states are only responsible for punishing offenses against other human beings, not offenses directly against God. To understand the issue, we must distinguish sins from crimes. A sin is any offense against God. A crime is a legally reprehensible offense against another human being.

Sin describes damage to our relation to God; crime describes damage to fellow human beings. The two are not identifical. Every crime is a sin, but not every sin is a crime. For example, coveting is a sin but not a crime. In the Old Testament no fixed civil penalty attaches to coveting. It is not a "chargeable offense" from the point of view of civil justice. Coveting (unless it leads to overt actions like theft or murder) does not directly damage other human beings, and so the state has no business in overseeing a process of restoration and retribution. Similarly, within the Mosaic period farming during the sabbath year was a sin but not a crime (see Lev. 25:1-7). God commanded the people not to farm during the sabbath year. But no earthly court was allowed to punish people for violating God's command.

Every crime is a sin because God commands us to love our neighbors. Hence every offense against a neighbor violates God's commandment and represents rebellion against him. But not every sin is a crime, because some offenses against God do not directly harm other human beings.

Sins and crimes must each receive the appropriate punishment from the appropriate person. Sins are offenses against God, and hence they are always punished by God. Every sin intends to destroy God's authority and his claim on all of life. Hence it merits punishment in a corresponding form: the offender, or a substitute, must be destroyed by God. All people who sin must either go to hell or have Christ bear hell for them on the cross. Thus every sin receives a punishment from God.

Crimes are offenses against other human beings, and hence they always ought to punished by restoration and retribution paid to other human beings and supervised by human courts of justice. In typical legal cases in the Old Testament, like theft, murder, or false worship, the fundamental system of recompense involves the principle "As you have done, it shall be done to you," by the offended party. Governmental authorities supervise the procedures leading to penalties, but in the typical case they are not themselves the offended party. Moreover, the offended party in view is always another human being or a group of human beings. God is of course offended by every sin whatsoever. But not every sin merits state punishments. Nor is the kind of penalty determined by how God is offended, but by how other human beings are affected. Hence the provisions of the law point away from the idea that the state is responsible for offenses against God as such. The legal punishments supervised by earthly judges make sense only when they are viewed as the fitting payment for offenses against human beings.

In addition, the Law of Moses includes cases where unqualified people touch holy objects or perform ceremonies in an unlawful manner. In many cases the text specifies that God brings death on such people (Exod. 28:35; 30:20-21; Lev. 8:35; 10:2; 16:13; Num. 18:3, 32).³ The distinction between these situations and situations where human beings execute the death penalty is intelligible if we make the distinction that I am advocating, but is otherwise difficult to account for.⁴

Suppose, on the other hand, that we claim that the state is indeed responsible to punish offenses against God. We get ourselves into several difficulties:

(1) How do we any longer distinguish between a sin and a crime? All sins that are legally demonstrable would appear to be the state's responsibility. But such an approach clearly does not correspond to the nature of Old Testament penal law.

(2) How do we calculate the appropriate penalty? Since sins against God are infinitely offensive, it would appear to follow that every sin merits the death penalty in civil courts.

(3) How do we explain the key role of the offended party in the Old Testament system? If God is always an offended party, then recompense must be made to God, or perhaps to the state as the representative of God. In actual fact, in the Old Testament law animal sacrifices represent the payment to God, while the penalties of other kinds deal with offenses of a "horizontal" kind, offenses against other human beings.

Rom. 13:4 says that "he [the state authority] is God's servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer." Superficially, this text might appear to provide warrant for a very broad view of the state's responsibility. In fact, if it were taken in isolation, it could imply that the state must seek to punish all sins and to bring down God's wrath on sinners in the most thorough way that it can. Then every publicly provable sin becomes a crime, and presumably every sin would merit the death penalty. But no Christian with any sense interprets the verse in this extreme way. Clearly state responsibilities are not simply identical with God's responsibilities; rather, they are limited. The state is rightly God's servant and God's agent for wrath in the particular sphere of responsibility that God has delegated to it (Rom. 13:1-2, 7; 1 Pet. 2:13-14). The limiting phrase is crucial. The rest of the Bible must help us to determine how the state's responsibilities are fixed. Hence verse 4 of Romans 13 is in fact compatible in principle with my view of the limits of state authority.

In sum, state authority is limited to crimes, that is, offenses against fellow human beings. The state has responsibility to supervise acts of restoration and punishment for crimes but not for other types of sin. Offenses against fellow human beings are within its jurisdiction, but offenses against God are not (except, of course, if they are also offenses against human beings).

Now we are ready to apply this general principle to the case of false worship. False worship is an offense against God, but not against other human beings. Hence, it is not within the state's legitimate sphere of authority. Hence, it ought not to be punished by the state. And so we have reached the conclusion we already anticipated when we observed that evangelism through the gospel was the primary means for eradicating false worship. Prayer and evangelism are the appointed means of God, and the state must not try to "supplement" these God-sanctioned means by enacting a law penalizing false worship.

But we still need to deal with two possible arguments that attempt to show that false worship comes within the state's sphere of responsibility in a less direct way. One argument claims that false worship is in fact an offense against other individual human beings. The other argument claims that false worship is an offense against the state. Let us consider each of these two arguments in turn.

Is false worship an offense against other human beings?

Is false worship an offense against other human beings? In a broad, vague sense, false worship may "offend" other people, both people who worship the true God and people with competing forms of false worship. Muslims and Hindus are often "offended" by each other's presence and practices. But disgust or emotional repulsion or deeply rooted principial disagreement do not count as a legitimate basis for formal legal action. In Israel, if you did not like your neighbor's ugly house or cantankerous wife or his field overgrown with weeds, you had no basis for legal action. A legal offense must be some much more definite, concrete damage to a person or property, not merely a matter of "being offended." The word "offense" must be understood in a specifically legal sense.

But in fact false worship is likely to lead to specifically criminal offenses, offenses in the technical sense. Because of its radical character of rebellion against God, it tends to generate all kinds of immorality. If a man worships a murdering and lying god, or a god who cares nothing for morality, he and his family will likely become murderers and liars themselves. Moreover, such people set a bad example and tempt others around them to slide into false worship and immorality.

But once again one must respect the limited scope of state courts. The state is not given authority to punish human actions on the basis of distant indirect effects that those actions might have. For example, the state has no authority to punish covetousness, even though this sin of the heart leads to all kinds of other sins and crimes (Matt. 15:18-20; Eph. 5:5; 1 Tim. 6:10). Nor does it have authority to punish fools or bad examples merely because they are bad examples. The state must restrict itself to the human acts that actually cause damage to other human beings; it is not given authority to meddle in the more inward precursor acts that feed the heart of sin.

Is false worship an attack against the state?

Now we must consider the claim that false worship attacks the state, and should be punished as a crime against the state. In what way might false worship constitute an attack on the state? If the state is pagan or godless, false worship does not attack the state in any clear way. Some pagan states have even required worship of their leaders as an act of allegiance (a problem for Christians in the Roman empire). Only if the state is in some way Christianized does false worship become a possible issue.

For the sake of argument, let us suppose that a modern state has in some way acknowledged that its authority is derived from Christ and that its actions are accountable before him. Several types of argument might try to show that false worship attacks such a state. (1) The spread of false worship among the citizens of a state threatens in the long run to lead to a repeal of the laws expressing the state's allegiance to God, and hence to an overthrow of this specific form of state. (2) An attack on God is in itself an attack on a state owing allegiance to God. (3) An act of false worship is an act of treason because it in principle sets up a rival source of authority, namely the false god. Similarly, seduction to false worship is seduction to treason. (4) An act of false worship or seduction to false worship within the bounds of a state's territory profanes the holiness of a state devoted to God. Let us consider these possibilities one by one.

(1) False worship leads to repealing laws.

When we speak of the possibility of repealing laws, we are viewing the state from the standpoint of modern democratic elections rather than in terms of authority given from God to the rulers. But let us temporarily operate within this perspective. If the current laws of a modern state allow for the repeal of a law by action of the citizenry, the citizens are within their technical legal rights when they try to repeal the law. Citizens who repeal a just law are acting foolishly and sinning against God, but they are not thereby made liable to civil punishment.

For example, suppose that citizens elect an ungodly lawmaker. The lawmaker in turn repeals a law requiring thieves to pay back double their theft, and replaces it with a law that gives prison sentences for thievery. What the lawmaker did was sinful, unwise, and unjust. The citizens were unwise to elect such a person. But the state cannot justly punish the citizens who voted for the lawmaker, nor could it punish the lawmaker for changing the law. Again, the distinction between sin and crime must operate here. The sins of the lawmaker and the citizens are in this case not crimes. No statute explicitly forbids them from altering the law.

On the other hand, suppose that current laws prohibit everyone from altering or repealing at least certain crucial statutes. Then no matter whom the citizens elect, the lawmaker would have no legal power to change matters. Only a violent overthrow of the government, or a kind of violence by those in authority, in which they deny their constitutional obligations, would be capable of doing violence to the state. It would be just to punish the violent act intending overthrow of the state. But voting as such does not directly imply such violence, and so would still not be punishable.

These general principles can now be applied to the specific case in which voters or lawmakers attempt to change a statute specifying that the state owes allegiance to the God of the Bible. If the law allows for changes in this statute, a change is a sin but not a crime. If the law does not allow change, the actual overthrow of the statute is treasonous. But the overthrow as such, not the mere presence of false worship somewhere among the citizenry, is what is punishable.

(2) An attack on God is an attack on the state.

Rom. 13:1-7 indicates that an attack on the state as such is an attack on God's authority. But the reverse does not follow. Every sin is in one way or another an attack on God's authority, but not every sin is liable to civil punishment (not every sin is a crime). Of course, false worship expresses disagreement with a specific, basic element of the state's commitment. But citizens may disagree with many basic elements in a state's constitutional basis without thereby attempting to destroy the state as a whole.

(3) False worship sets up a rival authority.

False gods are indeed rivals to the true God. Hence they represent attempts to destroy God's authority. But false gods are not direct rivals to the state in the same way. A rival government or guerrilla activity within the territorial bounds of a state is a very different kind of rival from false worshipers who still obey all the state laws. Of course, if the state puts in place laws directly forbidding false worship, some people may violate those very laws because of their strong allegiance to a false god. But the question is whether such laws do indeed express legitimate state authority.

(4) False worship profanes the holiness of the state.

But is a state giving allegiance to God holy? All state authorities derive their authority from God and are the representatives of God in giving retribution (Rom. 13:1-7). In a loose sense, then, they represent a certain presence of God. But this fourth argument presupposes that a state has received a special holiness by explicitly giving allegiance to God.

We must first of all remember that human action does not in itself create holiness. God must declare people and things to be holy, and any human actions involved in the process of consecration are subordinate to this divine initiative. In the case of the modern state, we do not have biblical warrant for believing that there is a divine initiative resulting in consecration of a state at a particular time. In addition, a holy state would necessarily share some of the same basic attributes as the church: it would be a "holy nation" (1 Pet. 2:9), whose actions embody the presence of Christ's reign in such a way that it becomes a temple of God. The same arguments used above concerning excommunication would appear to imply that banishment would be the proper penalty for profanation of the state. Purification of the state by a "whole burnt offering" (Deut. 13:16) has as its fulfilled form purification by the continuing presence of the life-giving power of Christ's resurrection.

In the final analysis the situation created by a holy state is only hypothetical. Not only the absence of positive biblical warrant but Christ's statement to Pilate about the distinctive character of his kingdom (John 18:36-37) exclude this route. Even theonomists, by their maintenance of a church/state distinction, appear to agree with me in principle at this point.

We have considered four possible ways in which false worship or seduction to false worship might represent an attack on the state. There may be more possibilities that I have not thought of. The very multiplicity of possible modes of attack expresses the fact that I am not at all certain how an attack occurs in any definite form. By contrast, an assassination attempt or an attempted coup is an attempt of a quite definite and direct kind to destroy the existing state. Since it is analogous to attempted murder and may involve literal attempted murder, the appropriate penalty is destruction of the persons involved by the representative(s) of the state who have been attacked. Such a conclusion follows from principles of just reciprocity. But no such conclusion follows in a case when we cannot see clearly that there has been an attack.

We must beware of extending the idea of treason to an unreasonably wide area. Because of human sin, states love to extend their powers and their claims to allegiance to unwarranted lengths. In the past, worship of the state's gods has sometimes been positively required in order to avoid the charge of treason (cf. Dan. 3; 6; Rev. 13:8). If the state's authority is very closely tied with the authority of God, why shouldn't such a conclusion follow? But our consideration of possibility (3) shows the fallacy in the argument. If the state's authority derives from God, an attack on the state is one form of attack on God. The converse result, namely that an attack on God is one form of attack on the state, would follow if God's authority is derived from the state. When states idolatrously confuse their authority with the authority of God, they begin to make just this mistake, and draw the conclusion that they must enforce worship of their god.

The whole argument about attack on the state also looks implausible when we return to the situation of ancient Israel. Israel did have a holy state in certain respects. The kings in the Davidic line were specially marked out by God as the predecessors of the Messiah and received a rule analogous to the Messiah's (Gen. 49:10). In this situation Israel knew what it was to have plots for seizing the throne. But it seems implausible to claim that false worship and seduction to false worship were to be viewed on the same level with seditious plots. False worship was not a special attack on the rulers but merely an attack on the holiness of the people as a whole.

Even Jeroboam's false worship in 1 Kings 12:25-33 confirms this viewpoint. Jeroboam feared not that false worship would lead to rebellion but rather that true worship would lead to allegiance to the Judean king. Jeroboam was simply working with the maxim that accepting the authority of God implies accepting the authority of the state, as we have seen in (3) above. Of course, Jeroboam's fears were mistaken, because he had been given legitimate authority by God (1 Kings 11:31-39). But Jeroboam did use false worship in hopes of furthering the division. He was attracted not mainly by some superficial feature of false worship (false worship also occurred in the southern kingdom), but because false worship over which he had control (cf. 1 Kings 12:31-32), which was physically located in his territory, and over which he was the acknowledged leader (1 Kings 12:33; 13:4) could be exploited to consolidate his power. Jeroboam illustrates the point already made about the tendency of the state to extend its powers and use religion for its own purposes.

The most fundamental error involved in the extension of state prerogatives is a confusion between heaven and earth, between Christ's reign from heaven and the state's reign on earth. Christ does exercise authority over both heaven and earth, according to Matt. 28:18. Hence all earthly obedience to God's standards is obedience to Christ, empowered by his heavenly power. Conversely, all earthly disobedience to Christ simultaneously attacks his heavenly prerogatives. All sin is sin against Christ. But what about false worship in particular? False worship endeavors to attack heaven in a most blatant way by substituting a false god for the true one and undermining at its foundation human commitment to God's holiness. By doing so it does not, however, institute an immediate attack on any state's earthly powers, even though these powers derive from God.

Ancient Israel was profaned by false worship not because it carried state powers but because it was an earthly replica of God's heavenly holiness. The church is profaned by false worship within it not because it is a social organization on earth containing Christians but because it is the body of Christ, united with him in heaven. Christians are exalted to heaven with Christ, according to Eph. 2:6, but the state never is. It remains a kingdom of this world (John 18:36). It cannot grant forgiveness on the basis of Christ's death, and neither can it raise the spiritually dead to life. Modern states should indeed practice the principles of God's justice, but they always do so within the limits of their earthly powers. The life-giving powers of the gospel do not belong to the state as such, but to the church, to which the gospel is committed (Matt. 16:16-19).

My conclusion, then, is that false worship as such does not injure the state in any direct and fundamental way. Hence no reciprocal retribution from the state is called for. Some forms of false worship, such as human sacrifice, Satanic sexual rituals, and slanderous blasphemies, involve crimes against other human beings, and are punishable as such. But they are not punishable merely because they are forms of false worship.

Of necessity, my arguments above have been based almost entirely on general principles of justice rather than on specific texts. The texts Deut. 13:1-18, Deut. 17:2-7, and other texts concerning false worship do not make a pronouncement on whether there is any injury to the state. Their silence concerning injury to the state might be taken as negative evidence, but arguments from silence are precarious. When we leave aside these texts, neither side, pro or con, can present texts that make direct pronouncements on the question at hand.

Since the arguments are all based on general principle, there is greater possibility for disagreement. It may be that I have overlooked something. But I can do no better than set forth my present position. I do believe that we should not seriously advocate state punishment of false worship unless we can find a clear biblical basis for it. And no such basis is forthcoming. On the contrary, the limitations of state authority in the Bible argue against it.

Practical reasoning

In addition to all these reasonings, we may also look at some practical difficulties likely to arise from instituting penalties for false worship. Practical difficulties can never constitute the primary grounds for rejecting a position with biblical sanction. But they may nevertheless suggest that we need to reexamine whether we do indeed have biblical sanction for a position.

For the sake of argument, then, let us envision a situation in which the population of a particular nation has become largely Christian. Suppose that by legal, constitutional means the state expresses its allegiance to Christ. The laws are altered so that the state will now inflict a penalty on those engaging in false worship or seducing others to false worship.

The first practical difficulty is in deciding what penalty is appropriate. According to my arguments above, we cannot safely base ourselves directly on an Old Testament text. Neither can we easily determine the exact nature of the violation of state authority involved in false worship. Without these controls, it is most difficult to establish what would be a just penalty. With respect to the issue of deterrence, a minor penalty would almost certainly function mostly as a nuisance and would not thoroughly deter false worship. Those who are committed to worshiping other gods often make that commitment as part of their ultimate allegiance, so that even the death penalty might not deter them from practicing false worship until they are caught.

The next practical difficulty is in specifying what counts as false worship. In Israel, cases of false worship involved clear-cut devotion to "other gods" (Deut. 13:2; 17:3), that is, gods like Baal, Ashtaroth, Molech, and Marduk. But we cannot use Deuteronomy as a direct model for the modern state. Hence many questions remain open. Are we to say that modern Jews and Muslims worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob because they claim to do so? Or are we to say that they are engaged in false worship because they do not properly know the true God through Jesus Christ? What are we to say about Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, whose doctrine of Christ is defective? What are we to say about some Roman Catholics who may get involved in the worship of images? What are we to say about secularist worshipers, worshipers of money, power, sex, fame, comfort, and self?

Obviously no form of false worship could rightly be punished by the state unless it were legally demonstrable. Worship of Baal that is confined to mental prayer is not punishable (unless later confessed). But what is legally demonstrable depends on how specific the legal statutes are. Statutes could in principle be formulated that would quite narrowly confine themselves to easily identifiable cases like worship of Baal. But such statutes would be irrelevant to the typical forms of false worship in modern Western society. May the statutes legitimately be formulated so as to cast their net more broadly? Why or why not? As long as we are unclear about how false worship attacks the state, we have all too little guidance. In principle we can imagine advocates of some particular Christian theology, Roman Catholic or Reformed or Arminian or Baptistic, writing their theology into the constitution of the state and then claiming that all worship contrary to their theology is an attack on the state. I know of no modern Christian who advocates such a procedure, but once we open the door to broad state inference in religious worship, just how can we forbid such religious tyranny?

Many more difficulties arise because of a possible tension between state punishment of false worship and the evangelistic purposes of the Great Commission in Matt. 28:18-20. Many bad effects might result from a state-imposed punishment for false worship, but I will concentrate on two.

First, the gospel may be less well heard. Because of their spiritual blindness unbelievers have a great inclination to misunderstand and distort the message of the Christian faith (2 Cor. 4:4). State punishment for false worship is likely to make things harder. Because they overrate political power to begin with, unbelievers are likely to believe that Christianity is fundamentally a political power play. Christian religion looks like a weapon for coercion or political manipulation rather than a gospel of grace.

Next, Christians are likely to have fewer opportunities to proclaim the gospel to non-Christians. Suppose that the state imposes the death penalty for certain types of false worship. Just before the penalty goes into effect, citizens who are committed to these types of false worship will face hard decisions. Do they continue living where they are? If so, do they give up their previous commitments? Do they confine themselves to mental acts of worship that are not legally punishable? Do they continue to worship secretly and run the risk of being discovered? Do they worship openly and become martyrs for their cause? Do they leave the country so that they can practice their religion freely in some other place?

Some people, perhaps a good many, would probably decide to leave the country under those circumstances. To the extent that exile results, the Christians living in the Christian state cut themselves off from natural contact with unbelievers. Moreover, non-Christian states are more likely to raise severe barriers against Christian evangelization if they think that the result of such evangelism in the long run may be the take-over of Christianity and consequent suppression of other worship.⁵

The net results of such processes of misunderstanding, exile, and barrier-raising would seem to run contrary to the means that God normally uses for discipling the nations during this age. He scatters his people among the nations and thrusts them out (Acts 8:4; 11:19) into situations where they are truly in the world but not of it. A radical difference exists between the geographical purity of Israel as a physically separated, holy nation and the heavenly purity of the church as a spiritually separated, holy nation (1 Pet. 2:9-10; 1:1). Hence, state attempts to suppress false worship confuse what is appropriate in these two distinct circumstances, with their two distinct kinds of purity.

In any case, our priorities as Christians are determined by Christ our King. In Matt. 28:18-20 he commands us to wage spiritual war in his name against the peoples of the world in order to subdue them to his allegiance. We do so through the proclamation of the gospel and the process of discipling. We may well be highly suspicious of operations of state power that tend to interfere with the accomplishment of our primary task.⁶

Now let me consider some further objections to my position.

Objection 1: the possibility of renewal of holy war

Postmillennialists might foresee another possibility concerning the applicability of Deuteronomy 13. Suppose that the world is largely converted to Christ before his second coming, as postmillennialists believe will be the case. It might be argued that the church will then come into possession of the whole world and that such possession should subsequently be maintained by holy war waged against violators. But there are some insuperable obstacles to such a conclusion.

First, in this scenario the mode of carrying on holy war seems to change in mid-stream. The initial achievement of conquest uses the means of spiritual union with Christ's death and resurrection. The maintenance of conquest then uses a difference means, namely physical separation and the death penalty. It is difficult to justify such a shift in the nature of holy war other than on the basis of a pronounced shift in the presence of Christ when he appears bodily to judge the world. As we have observed from Deut. 13, the manner of initially conquering Palestine is fundamentally the same as the manner of preserving the conquest by eliminating idolatry. In like manner, in our day conquering and preserving conquest use the same rules. We should not undertake to alter Christ's rules for conquest given to us in Matt. 28:18-20.

Second, the above conclusion still depends on the supposition that the church would be profaned by physical proximity to false worship. Since the true holiness of the church consists in its access to and presence in heaven, and since John 17:14-19 makes a clear distinction between being in the world and being contaminated by it, physical proximity to false worship does nothing to profane the church, whether or not we are in a postmillennial situation.

Third, even those Christians who advocate the most thorough-going use of Old Testament law recognize the unique and unrepeatable character of holy war in Israel. In particular, theonomists deny that holy war is to be renewed within this age.⁷

Objection 2: false worship incites God's anger against the whole society

We must also consider the possibility that false worship incites God's anger against the whole society in which it occurs. False worship is a most grievous sin, an abomination in the sight of God. In God's eternal reckoning, at the Last Judgment, this sin and all other sins deserve the punishment of hell. But God also inflicts punishments within history, sometimes in the form of war, famine, pestilence, or captivity (Rev. 6:1-8; Amos 1:3-2:3; Isa. 13:1-19:25; Ezek. 25:1-32:32; etc.). It could therefore be argued that the practice of false worship within any society threatens the whole society with historical destruction, and that therefore the fitting penalty is destruction of the offenders.

Does God hold a whole society responsible for the offense of some? In a sense yes, but in another sense no. The judges and leaders of a society commit sin not only when they practice private wrong-doing but when they refuse to reprove and to punish unjust acts (cf. Isa. 1:16-28; Micah 3:9-12; etc.). Sometimes a society has become so wicked that even the presence of a few righteous people does not suffice to turn away God's judgment (Ezek. 14:14, 20). But even then, God in his judgment is capable of discriminating between the guilt of society as a whole and the innocence of the righteous people within it. For example, in the story of Abraham's intercession for Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. 18:22-33), God promised not to destroy the towns if he could find even ten righteous people there. In the end, ten such righteous people could not be found, but God still rescued Lot and his family. Though Lot was far from a perfect model of righteousness, 2 Pet. 2:6-9 says concerning the incident,

If he [God] condemned the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes, and made them an example of what is going to happen to the ungodly; and if he rescued Lot, a righteous man, who was distressed by the filthy lives of lawless men (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)--if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue godly men from trials and to hold the unrighteous for the day of judgment, while continuing their punishment.

Similarly Ezek. 14:14, 20 mentions that if Noah, Daniel, and Job were in a wicked country, "they could save only themselves by their righteousness." In fact, Noah, Daniel, and Jeremiah were each righteous people whom God preserved in times when God's judgments came against the great wickedness of their society.

From biblical passages like these I infer that Christians within a wicked society have several types of obligations before God. First, God commands them to abstain from personally practicing the sins of the surrounding society. Second, God obliges them to warn non-Christians and reprove them for their sins. Noah, Lot, Daniel, and Jeremiah all warned their contemporaries concerning God's standards and his judgments (2 Pet. 2:5; Gen. 19:7, 9, 14; Dan. 5:22-28; Jer. 26; etc.). Of course, such reproof ought to be done in love. Christians should always be ready to speak to non-Christians about the gospel, which is the only proper remedy for their wickedness. Christians must pray for the conversion and repentance of non-Christians.

Third, when Christians are in positions of authority, they must exercise their authority in accordance with God's standards, and make sure that they discharge the obligations belonging to their offices--no matter how wicked the surrounding society or even their co-workers may be. In particular, Christians ought to work for the establishment of just laws and their enforcement. We ought also to pray for God to put a stop to wickedness. Ultimately wickedness is destroyed through the second coming of Christ. But in a less comprehensive fashion wickedness is destroyed both through the repentance of wicked people and through the establishment and enforcement of just laws.

Do we therefore have an obligation to act against the practice of false worship within the surrounding society? We must certainly warn against it and reprove it. We must pray for its abolition. But does God also command us to set up state laws against it? If so, then God will certainly hold us responsible for failure. But if not, we who are Christians do not anger God by not doing so.

God certainly does abhor false worship. But we can deduce a civil penalty from this fact only by using a circular argument. The argument may be summarized as follows. If indeed a civil penalty is warranted, then guilt falls on a whole society for not maintaining the penalty. Hence the false worshipper is guilty of bringing potential destruction on the whole society. Hence he ought to be punished for his damage to the society. Hence a civil penalty is warranted. This argument in favor of a penalty only succeeds by assuming at the beginning what it ought to prove, namely that God requires all societies to suppress false worship by means of civil penalties.

In conclusion, then, I believe that no civil penalty ought to be used to suppress false worship. The arguments that have been used in favor of such a penalty are not sound. God wants us to eradicate false worship using his proper means, the means of prayer and evangelism. Obedience to the Great Commission constitutes the proper fulfillment of Old Testament holy war, and of the principles of justice in Deut. 13:1-18. The Old Testament is indeed to be applied today. But we shall not really understand Deut. 13:1-18 and we shall not really obey it unless we take into account its relation to Old Testament holy war against Canaan, holy war against Israel through substitutionary sacrifice, and holy war in Christ.

In the deepest sense, we shall not understand what it means unless we understand that God intends the passage to point forward to the fulfillment of justice and recompense in Christ. Christ's victory over the principalities and powers of wickedness (Col. 2:15) forms the basis for our deepest insights into Old Testament holy war. And his victory gives us our foundation for confident proclamation of the gospel. Through Christ's power, and using his means, we can combat false worship in a just way.