The origins of modernism go back to the early attacks on Genesis 1-11, and on the Mosaic law. These were seen as evidence of primitive myths and primitive law. The nineteenth century saw much interest in ancient legal codes; these supposedly showed common elements with Mosaic law, and thus it was held that Mosaic law was derivative, not original. Similarly, worldwide myths of creation, of a universal flood and the like, supposedly proved the mythological nature of the Biblical account; it apparently did not occur to these scholars that the Biblical account was true, and these others derivative.
We see today a similar development in evangelical and Reformed circles. Earlier, God’s law was dropped as pertinent only to the Hebrew tribes and therefore “primitive” and rural in orientation. But law is the sovereign’s will for his people, and to abandon God’s law is to deny him sovereignty. It is thus no surprise that many circles within fundamentalism, having denied God’s law, have denied any present Lordship to Jesus Christ. If he has now no law, he cannot be Lord. The logic of God’s world has thus led many antinomians, if not virtually all, to deny Lordship to Jesus Christ.
