Most people think of the abortion debate as two-sided — pro-life versus pro-choice. In recent years, however, the abolitionist movement has resurged in America to challenge the pro-life strategy for its secular humanistic foundations, pointing out various biblical flaws in both their methods and their end goal. While we agree with pro-lifers that abortion is bad and needs to be dealt with, abolitionists contend that the pro-life establishment fails to treat abortion as sin in their legislative efforts (and elsewhere), and as a result they have adopted a false and impotent gospel to redeem our country from one of its national sins.

A key point in the debate between the two movements involves the philosophies of immediatism and incrementalism, two rival approaches to legislative change. During the abolition of slavery, incrementalism (known then as gradualism) was defended as the most practical way of abolishing slavery, giving slaves better treatment through gradual changes in legislation. However, the abolitionists came to recognize that practical impact of incrementalism was actually to cool the zeal of the anti-slavery movement, and thereby to keep slavery around indefinitely. The abolitionist approach on the other hand was and is to call for total and immediate justice for however long it takes, until it passes in legislation.

As abolitionists have reflected over the years on why incrementalism is so damaging, we’ve come to understand two basic problems that it creates for those who would legally abolish various national sins, such as chattel slavery and abortion.

1. Most incrementalist legislation embeds injustice in law to accomplish something good, similar to what modern leftists do using racism to solve racism. Pro-lifers use ageism to solve ageism, such as with a heartbeat bill that grants pre-born children with a heartbeat greater protection than pre-born children without one. The law is supposedly “better” than current legislation that allows more pre-born children to be murdered. But because the legislation itself is unjust according to biblical standards (Pro 18:5, Isa 10:1, Mal 2:8-9), abolitionists oppose it as an “unjust increment” that may not be supported by Christians and Christian legislators.
2. Some pro-life legislation is not immoral in the text itself (such as certain Defund Planned Parenthood bills), but are used by pro-life legislators as a weapon to distract their supporters from their non-support of abolitionist legislation. The typical pattern we see is that when a bill to completely criminalize abortion as homicide is put forward in a pro-life state, it is the pro-life legislators who kill the bill in committee, then author and/or pass one or more replacement bills to maintain their pro-life name and image. Pro-life lobbying organizations in turn celebrate these weak increments and the legislators who put them forward as heroes for pre-born children. Thus abolitionists generally oppose incremental legislation that is otherwise supportable because of the way it is practically leveraged for evil and deceptive purposes, as a tool to delay the total abolition of abortion.

Thus while incrementalism in the narrow sense refers to the second problem, of creating alternatives to the pursuit of justice in legislation, incrementalism in the broader sense reflects a schools of thought that also includes the creation of unjust legislation. Simply put, we face a twofold problem of “unjust increments” which are inherently immoral, and increments generally that allow legislators to save face while failing to do their duty of establishing justice before God.

As a third point, whereas incrementalism as a philosophy deals with the means of abolishing evil, abolitionists have found that we also disagree with modern incrementalists in the pro-life establishment on the eventual goal. Early in the disagreement, it was generally believed that we had the same goal as the pro-life movement, and simply differed in the means we would use to achieve it. However, pro-life leaders have come out as being opposed to abolitionist legislation on principle, in that they believe that mothers who murder their children through abortion should never be charged under homicide code. Abolitionists pursue equal treatment of pre-born children under law, which means that anyone involved in their murder will be charged appropriately, as would be done with any other class of people. Pro-lifers, on the other hand, try to use law to reduce the number of abortions, such as by holding abortionists civilly or criminally liable. But in the name of compassion they aim to always leave special murder rights in the homicide code for aborting mothers, because they view these mothers as always being victims, and never perpetrators of criminal homicide.

In the abolition versus pro-life debate, Smashmouth Incrementalism presents somewhat of a median position, which agrees with the end goal of abolition (equal treatment of preborn children, criminalization of abortion as homicide), while adopting the philosophy of gradualism / incrementalism as its means of legislative change.

It’s difficult to know whether or not to recognize smashmouth incrementalism as a distinct perspective. From an ideological / historical standpoint, it really is no different from traditional incrementalism, because incrementalism is a school of thought concerning how legislation should be changed. It says nothing about the particular goal being pursued, aside from the fact that it clashes with immediatism when pursuing the abolition of sin (i.e. there is little conflict between the two schools for issues of non-sinful legislation; it’s a disagreement over how to pursue justice in legislation).

From a sociological standpoint, smashmouth incrementalism presents itself in legitimate competition with abolitionism (a broader school of thought that includes immediatism) and pro-lifeism (a broader school of thought that includes incrementalism). Because these are groups with whom people are associating, we will treat smashmouth incrementalism as a distinct school of thought for the purposes of this article and website. But it should be understood that the viewpoint is entirely equivalent to the philosophy proffered by the fountainhead of western incrementalism, Henry Dundas, to compete with William Wilberforce’s call for immediate abolition of the slave trade. It isn’t a new perspective; it is simply an older perspective which disagrees with the end goal of other modern incrementalists found in the pro-life movement.

A refreshing aspect of smashmouth incrementalism is the willingness of its proponents to use scripture as support for their viewpoint. Whereas pro-lifers tend to defend incrementalism on pragmatic or humanistic grounds, Smashmouth incrementalists generally defend it on biblical grounds. Furthermore, they agree with abolitionists that principles derived from the law of Moses can evaluate the morality of Gentile civil law codes, making the conversation very easy and focused.

To boil it down, the essential smashmouth argument is, “Because God used incrementalism in the law of Moses, therefore Gentiles can use incrementalism in their own law codes.” The essential abolitionist response is, “God did not use incrementalism in the mosaic law; the law is perfect, and had no need to be modified to become more just.” Pastor Jeff Durbin (abolitionist) gave a more complete description of the disagreement in his debate with Doug Wilson (smashmouth incrementalist), Toby Sumpter (smashmouth incrementalist), and Bradley Pierce (abolitionist).

In debates on this subject, the abolitionist’s powerful opening salvo that Christians must never create or support unjust legislation is followed by the smashmouth incrementalist positing various places in scripture where God did just that. A classic example that is thrown out is Moses’ toleration of divorce. Whereas Jesus views no-fault divorce as immoral (Mat 19:4-9), Moses allowed husbands and wives to divorce, regulating it with a certificate and a prohibition against remarriage. The smashmouth claim is that this is an example of incrementalism, where Moses contained unjust legislation that regulated a wicked practice until Jesus would later improve the law to follow God’s true standard of justice.

The various scriptures used to defend smashmouth incrementalism in its support of unjust legislation are addressed in a series of answer articles listed below. The remainder of this article will focus on an achilles heel of the smashmouth system that applies to every example they bring, their claim that God included unjust law in his divinely-inspired civil code given through Moses. The problem is that if Moses contains injustice at any point, the whole Bible explodes into a collection of incohesive and contradictory opinions of men.

The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes; the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether.

More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward.

Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults. Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me! Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression. Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer. (Psa 19:7-14)

In the above psalm, David meditates on the perfection of the law, which in his context was clearly the law of Moses. Moreover, he broadly states that all of the Lord’s rules, precepts, and commandments are good and righteous, in whatever context he speaks them. The divine origin of the law of Moses rules out the possibility of finding injustice in it that must be later corrected by man, because the author of morality is the very one giving the commands, and he does not give commands against his own nature.

It would be wrong to say that Moses can serve as a drop-in law code for any culture in any historical context. But certainly it fulfills the requirement of being just. As such, it is able to serve as a model and example of applied morality, and we can derive from it the principles by which people and other law codes are judged. Jesus, for example, relied on the perfection of Moses in his critique of the man-made laws of the Pharisees.

When someone makes a truth claim about what should or shouldn’t be done in a particular context, theonomists like the smashmouth group are famous for asking the question, “By what standard?” Yet the smashmouth system erodes any foundation for arguing that Moses or any other body of legislation in scripture (the standard they use in other discussions) can judge the rightness or wrongness of a law or behavior. The law is no longer perfect, reviving the soul. It can no longer make wise the simple, because it teaches us bad precepts. Eyes can no longer be enlightened by it, for the law is no longer pure. It is no longer more desirable than gold, but is tarnished silver at best.

Because God himself is now willing to give unjust, immoral commands in the standards that he gives to us, the best standard on which we can base any law is now the highly fallible conscience of the Christian, if indeed the Spirit does not compromise the standard he writes there. Because God’s written word is no longer reliable, Jesus can no longer say to the Pharisees that they’ve left God’s word to establish their own commands as law. On the smashmouth view, God’s word must be left or amended, because it is riddled with injustices to be corrected by man.

Fortunately, smashmouth incrementalism is wrong at its foundation. Moses has no need of abolitionists to examine his law for errors to correct; it is correct by virtue of the fact that it was given by God. Perhaps the most compelling proof of this is Jesus’ own explicit refutation of smashmouth incrementalism in his sermon on the mount.

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished. (Mat 5:17-18)

From his own mouth, Jesus aims to abolish neither the law of Moses collectively, or even a single dot or iota of it. He views it as perfectly just, and so should we.

With the justice of God’s law restored, what remains to be done is to address the many passages of scripture cited to support smashmouth incrementalism, which we will do in the articles below.