What Does Jeb Bush Have in Common With Stephen Jay Gould?

Antinomianism

Evolution, a headline from earlier this month explained, �is unpredictable and irreversible, biologists show.� This was hardly a new thought for evolutionists. Stephen Jay Gould popularized the notion that if one could �replay the tape� of history the world would, as Eckels unfortunately discovered, turn out differently. It is contingency rather than law that governs history. Evolutionary events are �unique, unrepeatable, and irreversible� in the words of the famous evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky. Or as Harvard�s Ernst Mayr wrote, �Laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques� for explaining evolutionary events and processes. The world turns not according to Newton�s firm and unchanging laws but by particular, unique events which are for us to explore and explain. And as Phillip Johnson described, exploring and explaining, rather than following nature�s laws, gives us control. Given a lever and the law Archimedes could move the world, but given extension and motion Descartes� could construct the world.

Antinomianism isn�t limited to theological debates. Whether in religion, science or politics, the law stands in our way. It blocks our control and so we reject it. By contrast the psalmist delights in the law. The book begins with the man who is blessed, for �his delight is in the law of the Lord.� Likewise Jesus explained that �till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled.�

This ancient law is now the basis of our current legal system and it is every bit as important to us. Yet it is routinely rejected. Descartes and the evolutionists reject natural law in favor of absurd notions of the world spontaneously arising by creating itself. And in politics, equally silly notions are not hard to find. Leading presidential candidate Jeb Bush, for example, advocates warrantless surveillance. That�s fine if he can make it legal, but Bush rejects any such requirement. He states that there is not a shred of evidence that such surveillance has violated the rights of any American. Does he also believe there is not a shred of evidence that bank robberies have resulted in theft? Of course bank robberies have resulted in theft, otherwise they wouldn�t be bank robberies. Warrantless surveillance, by definition, is a violation of rights�it is illegal.

For Christians the law is precious and antinomianism, in any form, is to be avoided.