Newsletter 2: When Should A Social Confession Happen?
And why it makes a big difference for society today.
Every postmillennial Christian that I have talked to has agreed that the Bible demands (and Jesus deserves), an all-of-society confession. What we see in the Bible is that "all nations shall call him blessed" (Ps. 72:13). But what is less agreed upon (I and would say, less considered) is when this social confession should occur. Most postmillennialists say it occurs toward the end of the gospel campaign, but the postmillennialist of the confessionalist flavor says it must come early.
In this article, I ask you to consider the theology of "when" a confession occurs, and I ask you to consider the implications. If a social confession is not a result of gospel progress, but rather integral to the gospel and required to even begin societal righteousness...well, I'll just say, that that understanding has changed my approach significantly.
For those who are just tuning in (and there are quite a few of you, praise God), when I say "confessionalism," I am not talking about the confessions of the faith, like the Westminster Confession of Faith. Rather, I am talking about the practice of a society (a nation, state, county, or town) confessing sins and covenanting to follow Jesus collectively. This is done through representative, "federal" heads of family, church, and civil magistrate--God's three public institutions. There is a horizontal covenant between the three institutions, and there is a vertical covenant with God. Graphically it looks like this:
Notice the connectedness. Family, church, and civil magistrate are connected to each other and to Christ. This enables them to function as interdependent parts of the whole. And they are connected to Christ because He is the mediating king. He is a "Prince and a Saviour" (Acts 5:31; Dan. 8:24; 9:25). Side note: do a word search of "prince" in the Bible, and you will see that civil leadership is not something separate from God's decree; it's intrinsic. The ethical requirements of the decalogue cannot be separated from a covenanted civil magistrate.
With this review of confessionalism, let's return to the question, "When must a social confession occur?"
Normal Postmil and Confessional Postmil Compared
Normal postmillennialism goes something like this. Jesus is expanding His kingdom, primarily through the preaching of the Word and individual evangelism. As people are saved, their families change, their workplaces change, and the civil government is changed. The leaven (or the mustard seed) grows by individuals, families, and churches being faithful in the midst of the pagans. The civil magistrate becomes "Christian" as a result of faithful people and families. This process will continue until His law is known and followed from sea to sea. Once nations are full of many saved individuals, they will confess Christ and covenant with him as nations. This may occur nation by nation. Once the world is Christianized, Jesus returns and hands the kingdom over to the Father (1 Cor. 15:24).
Notice a few things about normal postmillennialism. First, it is primarily bottom-up. Emphasis is on personal hearts being changed. Hearts must be changed in order for people to change the culture. Second, we can't really expect a confession until hearts are changed. To be fair, the "national" element is indeed present in normal postmillennialism. It recognizes the requirement of nations to "kiss the Son." The difference is in the when. Here it is seen more as a result than something integral to the gospel campaign. In other words, covenants with God are individual now, families now, church now, and civil magistrate later.
Confessional postmillennialism is slightly different. It agrees with the preeminence of preaching and evangelism to individuals. However, it also emphasizes our standing before God as societies today. And here is the important part: our societal standing actually affects gospel progress. The presentation of the gospel is to individuals now but also to societies (as societies) now. Social confessionalism zooms in to people and families and zooms out to civilization at the same time. It says that a societal covenant is consequential today.
One example of understanding society in covenantal terms is the doctrine of land curses. The confessionalist sees land curses as levied by God against jurisdictional and geographical societies. Those curses hold back our societal progress because civil sins (murder, Sabbath-breaking, unlawful divorce, sexual perversion, public idolatry) put a society under the thumb of God until they confess those sins.
Also, in the confessional view, the church cannot secure forgiveness for the society. In other words, the church cannot pray 2 Chronicles 7:14 and obtain forgiveness for the nation. It has to be a society-wide confession because, as we say, "civil sins require civil confession." We cannot expect cultural holiness until this happens. You can see why the confessionalists harp on the need for social confession today. You can see why a confessionalist really wants to get out of corporate guilt: it's necessary for progress.
One of the most interesting distinctions (to me) is that, in confessional postmillennialism, societies are brought into covenant one-by-one and then used by God to make the nations jealous. In other words, the mountain of God in Isaiah 2 is a covenanted society that is used by God to make other nations jealous. This is an important nuance. The mountain of the Lord is not a victory parade after the gospel campaign; it is integral to the campaign.
Furthermore, in order for the mountain of God to do what Isaiah 2 says it will do in history, you have to have a distinct Christendom. You need the whole enchilada. You need all three legs of the three-legged stool. If a society is not comprehensive and covenanted, it won't be attractive. It won't be worth "running into." So here we have a motivation to create small Christendoms today as a gospel proclamation.
What we are saying is that Christian societies, in the confessional view, are an integral part of the gospel campaign...not a result of it. This may seem strange to you, but it's actually part of our heritage. You can see this type of thinking in the early American settlements. They were interested in gospel advance by individual evangelism but also by societal example.
The Crucial Question of When
Let me present a chart. And please understand I am simplifying for illustration purposes. I understand you can't really put the work of the Holy Spirit on a graph. He's too mysterious. But still, graphs can be helpful.
First, normal postmil. Notice that the social covenant comes at the end.
Confessional postmil, on the other hand, sees our societal progress as depending on our covenantal standing as societies before God. Notice the location of the confession and the social covenant below.
Why I Hold to the Second Graph
There are a number of reasons why I hold to the second graph.
First, land curses restrict societal progress until they are removed. God will not bless a society that has, for example, civil government-sanctioned idolatry. Heretical worship of churches and mosques allowed (even celebrated) today cause land curses. Joshua could not go forward until the curse of Achan was removed. This is highly applicable today because Canaan was a geographic type of the geographic world, the world we are supposed to go into and make disciples of nations. It's actually in greater force today because Jesus is reigning and the times of ignorance God is no longer winking at (Acts 17:2). An example of this type of thinking in New Covenant terms is Paul's address to the "men of Athens" in Acts 17. The repentance called for by Paul was not just individual. He was addressing societal idolatry.
Second, God always deals with man in terms of covenant, and that includes nations. Covenants are kept or broken resulting in conditions of curses or blessings. Here's a good example from Deuteronomy. Keep in mind the following passage is given to a nation. The broader context of Deuteronomy chapter seven shows this is a national covenant because Israel is being contrasted against other nations that broke covenant such at the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, etc.1 Anyway, what I want you to see here is how God deals with nations by way of covenant:
“But because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the LORD brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations; And repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face.” (Deuteronomy 7:8–10)
So God sees nations as having a distinct covenantal standing.
And, (very important for us in the United States) God also sees smaller societies as having their own covenantal standing. "Nations" can be small civilizations. Think of Sodom and Gomorrha and Tyre and all the "nations" condemned in the major and minor prophets. All of them are condemned as societies. In the New Covenant, Jesus said to pronounce a curse on a city that does not accept the gospel (Matt. 10:14-15). So God's view is a covenantal one toward nations and smaller civilizations. By “smaller civilizations” I mean states, counties, and towns.
Third, and this is where the good part comes in, the biblical and historical examples show God's favor upon covenantal societies. I think it's important to see that in Deuteronomy 28 to 30 that blessing is presented as the intended path. If there is departure from this path, with confession, God will restore the blessing (Deut. 30:1-10). When Israel was right with God, it was good livin'. They were an example to all nations as Deuteronomy 4:7-8 says.
We see social confessionalism practiced repeatedly in the Bible. When things go sideways as a nation, the Bible shows a way to get back on the road. God provides a way. There is an all-of-society assembly, confession by representative heads, and a covenanting with God (Josh. 24:25-25; 2 Kin. 11:17; 23:3; 2 Chr. 15:9-12; Neh. 9:33-10:29). And blessings come upon the civilization. These are examples for our learning, and I love them. I'm excited to lead my family and church into them.
Executable
So what should we do? I think we need to become experts on the lost doctrine of social confessionalism. We have been so blessed with a revival of postmillennialism and especially reconstructionism over the past four or five decades. God helped us recognize the necessity of building society upon God's Word and looking to His ethical system. He helped us rediscover an eschatology suitable to the promises of the Bible for worldwide progress. But I think we missed something. We missed God's view, the covenantal view of societies in current time.
I hope to write another article about why I think we lost this view. I've got some ideas. I'll also talk about the challenge set before us: to become a Christian society when the culture is not remotely interested in that.
One of the selling points (humanly speaking), of social confessionalism is that it leads you into action. There is a way to "do" this. There are historical confessions you can pull up. Instead of just calling the civil magistrate to obey God, you show him how. When you say "kiss the Son," you can help him do that. You put him on a good path of confession and covenanting. He'll also be reminded of the connected-ness of the civil magistrate to families and to the church.
Confessionalism is the old way of thinking. In my reading, it is the way Reformed Christians used to think. Thankfully, God is bringing it back. I think it will change our approach dramatically, and I believe we'll see some very good results. But if we see all-of-society confession as coming at the end, we miss the very essence of it.
The covenant these nations broke is what John Frame calls the universal covenant. It has relations to creation and also to Adam’s sin.