From The Mailbag — Randy Watkins asks; “Do You Even Understand The Gospel”

Randy Watkins, (who I don’t know from Adam) left a comment on Iron Ink in response to one of my posts on Kinism. The comment was so good I thought I would turn it into a short post. Randy wrote asking;

“My question would be – do you even understand the Gospel? Do you even know Jesus? Kinism is nothing but pseudo-sterilized racism.”

Thank you Randy for these questions. Let’s take them one by one.

First, I do understand the Gospel. The Gospel is announcement of the good news that Jesus Christ, being the long promised Messiah, came to live, die, resurrect, ascend and sit in session at the right hand of God to vindicate God’s name and to provide redemption for all who call upon the name of the Lord. The Gospel teaches, Randy, that Christ can do this because he was the penal substitutionary atonement who provided satisfaction, by the spilling of His blood, in the place of sinners who deserved God’s wrath for committing the sin(s) of rebellion against a thrice Holy God. In and by His death Christ turned away the wrath of God (propitiation) by taking away our sins (expiation) so that men could have peace with God. In this sacrifice Christ pays the ransom price required for sin committed by sinners and in doing so is the means of our reconciliation. The Gospel teaches that the elect have the righteousness of Christ imputed (put to their account) to them while their sins are imputed to Christ. In light of this finished work of Christ for the elect God commands all men (regardless of race, ethnicity, or religion) to repent and so be united to Christ and numbered among the people of God. This Gospel pronouncement is to go out to every tribe, tongue, and nation, in their tribes, tongues, and nations.

As to your second question, by God’s grace alone I have been knowing Jesus now for over 60 years. Jesus means “Jehovah is salvation,” and knowing Jesus means knowing Him as Prophet, Priest, and King sent by God to speak for God, to be the Priest who offered up Himself as the sacrifice for sins, and to rule as God’s mediatorial King in all matters. Further, Jesus was and is the living incarnation of God’s law. Jesus, as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, remains a Judahite and son of David even now and has gathered to Himself a church that is characterized as a confederated church where each national Church together comprises the one people of God. The fact that Jesus has no other Church except a confederated church comprised of different National churches is explicitly taught in Revelation 21

22 But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. 23 The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine [l]in it, for the [m]glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. 24 And the nations[n]of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor [o]into it. 25 Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there). 26 And they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into [p]it.

Finally, Randy, you say thatKinism is nothing but pseudo-sterilized racism.” I’m sure in a Cultural Marxist worldview that is an insult. However, I don’t live in a Cultural Marxist worldview. To be honest… racism, pseudo-sterilized or otherwise, really has no meaning and is just a pejorative intended to end the conversation. Randy, the word “racism” means everything and so means nothing. Water off of a duck’s back my friend.

May God bless you and keep you Randy Watkins.

Interacting With Dr. Stephen Wolfe’s Plea For Christian Nationalism

Dr. Stephen Wolfe has been one of those who has been loudly calling for a return to Christian Nationalism. No doubt, as many of my readers know, Wolfe even wrote a book on the subject. I am all for Wolfe’s desire for a return to Christian Nationalism. I have been advocating that long before Wolfe secured his Ph. D. in Political theology (or something down that line). However, the Christian Nationalism Wolfe desires is of a substantially different stripe than what I envision.

So, we are both for Christian Nationalism but as all ideas are embedded in larger worldviews and it is our worldviews that stand jabberwocky to one another. This post by Wolfe, as posted on X, begins to demonstrate our differences. I do cheer many conclusions that Wolfe champions but I cringe at the Worldview he employs in order to arrive at those conclusions. This fisking of Wolfe will reveal some of our differences and some of our agreements.

SW writes,

Another thing about this: NAPARC is talking a lot about political theology today, but in my estimation only a handful of pastors and theologians understand what Brandon describes in this article. They do not know the Reformed political tradition.

BLMc responds,

Here is the link to the article that SW references.

On Baptist Establishment, Again

I have some problems with this article as well but responding to Wolfe here does not require me to respond to Brandon, though I may do that in the future. However, one point that needs to be made against Brandon — and it is a point that touches on Wolfe’s reasoning below. That point is that all Governmental arrangement come with an established church. No exceptions. Brandon, in the article linked above, argues for a return to Establishment churches (Stated funded churches) but one cannot return to that which one never left. Establishment churches are an inescapable concept. Currently, our Federal Government supplies vast funds to government (Public) schools and Universities. These government schools and Universities are now the equivalent of established churches and fill all the functions that established State Churches once filled when overt establishmentarianism between Church and State once existed. Government schools and Universities catechize our children, provide a priestly and prophetic function via the teachers, provide a local context where worship takes place as is seen in their adoration of the state from whence their instructions come. So, contrary to the labor of much of Brandon’s article there is no need to return to state Established churches. However, there is a need to change the Established churches the state currently supports.

So, given the above I’m not sure Brandon or SW understands the lay of the land when it comes to re-establishing Christian churches as those churches which the Magistrate overtly supports.

Secondly, concerning what Dr. Wolfe writes above we would agree that not many clergy understand the Reformed political tradition. Indeed, I would argue and have argued that we are at a lower ebb in clergy ability in the West than we have been in for decades and decades. I do concede that Dr. Wolfe understands the Reformed tradition when it comes to politics. Unfortunately, Dr. Wolfe and I disagree on the 20th century corrections to some of the earlier “Reformed Tradition.” More about that to follow.

Dr. Stephen Wolfe writes,

They still think that wanting a Christian nation means “theonomy” or “theocracy” or “postmillennialism” or “transformationalism”. They still think that “two kingdom theology” requires secularism. They are stuck in the debates of the last few decades. Many think they’re combatting something akin to “federal vision”–a “menace” threatening sound doctrine. That is false, of course. They are combatting classical Protestantism.

BLMc responds

1.) SW habitually focuses negatively in on theonomy, postmillennialism and transformationalism. This is because his worldview, like the R2K worldview, abominates theonomy, postmillennialism and transformationalism. Here we begin to get at the nub of the matter. SW does desire Christian Nationalism but he desires it as existing in a Thomistic Natural Law context which is at severe variance with theonomy, postmillennialism, and transformationalism. SW is in a tight spot here. On one hand he has to battle against those who share his Thomistic and Natural Law beginning points (Radical Two Kingdom theology) but who come to 180 degree different conclusions than what SW arrives at, while at the same time SW has to battle against those who share his desire for Christian Nationalism but who have zero interest in accepting the premises upon which his Christian Nationalism is pinioned. We will not give up Reformed theology in order to have compromised “Reformed” political theology.

2.) SW also misses a point here that is cheek by jowl with an observation I have already made. Given what SW says immediately above, it seems to be the case that SW believes that it is possible to avoid “theocracy.” However, given that established churches are an inescapable category, so it is the case that theocracy is likewise a inescapable category. All political arrangements, without exception, are theocratic. It is never a case of “if theocracy,” instead it is always the case of “which God shall rule.” All governments create law. Creation of law expresses morality and morality (right and wrong) is, without fail, an expression of some god or god concept. All governments are theocracies, though I freely admit that some governments (especially in a classically liberal political order) seek to hide the fact that they are hopelessly theocratic.

3.) When SW complains about many clergy thinking that all two kingdom theology “requires secularism,” he is at this point tilting at the windmills that is now routinely known as R2K. As I said above, Stephen is in a tight spot as he is taking on both R2K and theonomy/reconstructionism. The humorous thing here is that Stephen battles R2K he is battling with those who agree with him on the primacy of Natural Law but who read Natural Law exactly contrarian to the way he reads it. So much for Natural Law being perspicuous and so obvious.

4.) Here we begin to see why those who are the legitimate inheritors of the tradition of Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Clark, C. Greg Singer, Nigel Lee, Francis Schaeffer, etc. (as opposed to  the”Libertarian theonomy” of North, Doug Wilson, A. Sandlin, Joel Boot, etc) are frustrated with SW. They certainly salute the idea of Christian Nationalism. They even salute many of the particulars that Wolfe supports. However, they choke at the idea of paying the price of accepting Wolfe’s Thomistic Natural Law worldview in order to have Christian Nationalism. It needs to be understood that if Wolfe’s vision of Christian Nationalism were to come to pass, it would only come to pass at the cost of giving up on presuppositionalism across the board. For most of us who have looked at both political theology of early Reformed thinkers as well as the political theology of presuppositionalism that is a price too great to pay. We agree with Wolfe that R2K sucks. Wolfe is convincing us that all expressions of 2K theology also sucks. The article linked above only confirms our suspicions.

It is becoming clear that there are more flavors of Christian Nationalism then there are Baskin Robbins Ice cream flavors. This reality is part of the problem in having a civil conversation on the subject. When one person says “Christian Nationalism,” ten people understand ten different conceptions of Christian Nationalism.

Is it the Christian Nationalism of Cromwell? Of the Antebellum South? Of Mussolini? Of Althusius? Of Bullinger? Of Lincoln? Of Uncle Adolf? Of Burke? Of the Reconstructionists? So many Christian Nationalisms… so little time.

Stephen Wolfe writes,

They are modern evangelicals on church/state questions. They are not Reformed. I’ve found that most pastors, theologians, and academics in NAPARC don’t care about the mountains of evidence in the tradition against them. But the laymen do care, and they are reading the old books, the venerable dead. More and more, the laymen will understand classical protestant political thought better than their pastors and teachers. And, in the end, denominational leaders–being obstinate in the face of evidence–will try to wield denominational authority against them. That is the future our leaders have chosen. But it’s not too late to choose humility.

Bret responds,

1.) Here SW plays the game that I suppose all the contestants in this battle royale play. Here SW desires to be the arbiter of what constitutes being “Reformed.” If one does not agree with SW one is running a couple quarts low of Reformed oil in his engine. Though, I must say I agree with SW that most Reformed pastors are not particularly Reformed on this subject. (Honesty requires me to admit that I don’t find SW to be particularly Reformed here either.)

2.) There is certainly a mountain of evidence that supports Stephen. Just as there is a mountain of evidence from Reformed theology that supports how the theonomist arrives at his political theology. Here Stephen admits he is a neophyte having confessed many times that he is no theologian. (Actually, Stephen is a theologian… a theologian in the school of Aquinas which was not particularly Reformed.)

3.) Finally Stephen appeals to the rise of the laymen. In history at various times there have been more than a few who counted on the laymen to overthrow the “expert class.” It has happened a few times. More often it is the expert class that divides with eventually one set overthrowing the other set and the laymen then follow. Speaking only for myself, I wouldn’t bet the house on a tidal wave of laymen becoming familiar with the original sources so as to overthrow the putative expert class. There will be a few laymen, but on the whole laymen have to work for a living while raising a family and that doesn’t allow for the time required to invest in the reading and studying. I spent the first 10 years in the ministry as a tentmaker and believe me when I tell you that it was difficult to keep up with everything that needed to be kept up with in the study.

4.) I do agree with SW that the denominations will try a power play to get their way. That kind of thing is seen quite routinely. Sometimes I think that nobody does tyranny as well as clergy. I’ll go a step further than Dr. Wolfe. I see a day coming when the splits that have begun in the “Conservative” “Reformed” denominations will accelerate to the point that more and more denominations will split off and  be created. I think the name “Occidental Reformed Church” for a denomination would be grand. We are already seeing this phenomenon in micro. The RCA has a split off group. More than a few CRC churches have departed recently. The Vanguard Presbytery departed the PCA. The Bayly’s a few years ago created a phone booth denomination out of the PCA. I expect this kind of thing to continue. We are at a point where;

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst   
Are full of passionate intensity.

A Simple Definition of Kinism Offered And Defended

“Kinism is the belief that ordained social order for man is tribal & ethnic rather than imperial & universal. Mankind was designed by God to live in extended family groups. Blood ties are the only workable basis for a healthy society not subject to the ideologies of fallen man.”

Joe Sobran

Currently, there is a great deal of angst over Christians embracing Kinism or Kinism adjacent or informed philosophies. Currently, many denominations are absolutely in a roil over “Christian Nationalism.” Other labels by which Kinist thought travels under is “ethno-Nationalism” (a classic tautology) and “race-realism.” What is humorous about the Church denominations denunciation of all things Kinist is that often one finds the denunciation only to be followed by the insistence that there is a need to define Kinism. Clearly, if Kinism, or any of it’s adjacent partners needs to be defined for people how can it first be condemned?

I come across countless Christians who hate Kinism who simply have no idea what it is they hate. Recently, I knew of a particular congregation that found one of its members accusing one of its Elders of being a “Kinist.” When the Elder in question asked his accuser, “What is Kinism,” the accuser said, “I don’t know.” The accuser didn’t know what Kinism was and yet he was accusing his Elder of being a Kinist.  How could he accuse someone of being a Kinist without knowing first what a Kinist was?

And so, I offer the above definition from Joe Sobran as a stable and simple working definition of Kinism. If we are going to rail against and rend one another over this idea of Kinism and Kinism informed theories then we should all be able to operate from a common definitional foundation.

I also think it might be helpful to offer a definition of what Kinism is fighting against. Often one can understand somebody in terms of what they are supporting and what they are for if one can understand what they are fighting against and what it is they oppose.

The 2oth century was the century that will be remembered as being that century which saw the rise and then the flourishing of Marxist thought. Marxist and Marxist adjacent thought comes in a host of packaging. Most recently it has been flexing its muscle in terms of Cultural Marxism. Whatever packaging it comes in Marxism has always been that ideology which is the sworn enemy of all forms and shapes of Kinism. If we were to define the aspect of Marxism that is in opposition to Kinism we would define Marxism, in a parallel  mirror image of Sobran’s definition of Kinism above as;

“Marxism is the belief that ordained social order for man is imperial & universal rather than tribal & ethnic.  As God does not exist, Mankind, per Marxism, was designed by to live disattached from any notion of family groups. Blood ties are barriers to a healthy society as defined by the ideologies of man as god.”

The goal of Marxism has always been the universal Soviet man who has no attachments to anything except the universalizing State. This universalizing necessarily includes the destruction of the kind of tribal and ethnic family dynamic upon which Kinism (and Christianity) is based. So, for epistemologically self conscious Kinist the choice is between a Christianity that teaches the tribal and ethnic familial particularity vs. a Marxist informed “Christianity” that teaches a universalistic idea of family, and by extension global nation.

The Kinist sees in those Christians abominating Kinism an agreement with Marx;

“Even the natural differences within species, like racial differences…, can and must be done away with historically.”
 
K. Marx’s Collected Works V:103,
 
As cited in S.F. Bloom’s The World of Nations: A

Study of the National Implications in the Work of Karl Marx, Columbia University Press, New York, 1941, pp. 11 & 15-19:

The Kinist hears in the agenda of any church that would vilify Kinism the echo of Marx’s partner, Friedrich Engels;

“Only when we have led every woman from the home into the workplace will complete equality be achieved, by the destruction of the institution of the family, which is the basis of capitalist society.”

Friedrich Engels,
Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State

Kinism believes, following Christianity, that the destruction of the institution of the family is accomplished by advocacy for a universalization of marriage that does not respect the tribal and ethnic lines that Sobran speaks of in the above opening paragraph.

If one considers the historical embodiment of Marxism via their Revolutions in places like France, Russia, China one sees a two-fold destructive thrust. What Marxists seek to destroy first is the Christian faith  as well as the tribal and ethnic understanding of family – built as it is from categories provided by the Christian faith.

Having explained all this allow me to say that it is my knowledge and so hatred of all forms of Marxism, including Cultural Marxism, that fills me with so much reproach for those who oppose Kinism. Kinism is the Christian elixir that cures the disease of Communism. The fact that so many in the institutional Church are fighting a central plank (Kinism) of the Christian faith in favor (whether they realize it or not) of a central tenet of the Marxist faith leaves me apoplectic.

What the enemies of Kinism have to do in order to relax the tension that has arisen over this issue is provide a social order theory that is an alternative to “tribal and ethnic” that isn’t at the same time Universalist. I don’t think that can be done. I think that one either follows God’s design that arcs towards tribal and ethnic or one follows the Marxist design that arcs towards the destruction of the Christian family in favor of a Universalist (Babel) impulse towards a global nation state social order. When this Kinist looks at this debate he sees either a movement towards cosmopolitan internationalism (the passion of Marxism) or a movement towards “Honoring our Fathers and Mothers.”

John Reasnor’s Definition Of “Kinism” Examined

“Kinism – A system that theologically supports racial or ethnic separatism. The degree of which varying Kinists support separatism or supremacy will vary.”
 

John Reasnor

Often I will complain that people who condemn Kinism have themselves no working definition of what Kinism is. However, Reasnor here takes a stab at a definition. Let us consider what he offers here.

1.) Keep in mind that the chap who is faulting a theological support for racial and ethnic separatism is a chap who employs theological support for egalitarianism. If one is going to fault a system of thought because it theologically supports racial or ethnic separatism, in any degree, then it must be the case  that said person has a theological system that desires no racial or ethnic separatism and the desire for absolutely no racial or ethnic separatism is egalitarianism. Indeed, it is the same exact theological system that was pursued by the builders of Babel.

So, if an Egalitarian like Mr. Reasnor is going to accuse Kinists of not being Egalitarian then, speaking only for myself, I admit my guilt. It is true … not being someone who supports egalitarianism, I am a Kinist. Indeed, by the definition above, anyone who thinks that races are real and so distinct and should be honored as real and distinct is a Kinist. In point of fact by Mr. Reasnor’s definition anybody who is not an egalitarian is ipso facto a “Kinist.”

2.) With this quote Reasnor has put a vast multitude of our Church fathers in the dock as being “Kinist.” Here are four Church Fathers (and their are multitude more) who are guilty of believing “a system that theologically supports racial or ethnic separatism.” and so by Mr. Reasnor’s definition were Kinists when they were alive.

“Hence, I question very much the wisdom of any attempts to ‘integrate’ the church. Making our Negro brethren in Christ welcome when they voluntarily come to worship with us is one thing; seeking to attempt integration for the sake of a witness may do more harm than good.”

Dr. E.J. Young
WTS professor and OPC minister – 1964

Page 130 of the October 1964 edition of The Presbyterian Guardian

Difference of race or condition or sex is indeed taken away by the unity of faith, but it remains imbedded in our mortal interactions, and in the journey of this life the apostles themselves teach that it is to be respected, and they even proposed living in accord with the racial differences between Jews and Greeks as a wholesome rule.

St. Augustine on Galatians 3:28

“Regarding our eternal salvation, it is true that one must not distinguish between man and woman, or between king and a shepherd, or between a German and a Frenchman. Regarding policy, however, we have what St. Paul declares here; for our, Lord Jesus Christ did not come to mix up nature, or to abolish what belongs to the preservation of decency and peace among us….Regarding the kingdom of God (which is spiritual) there is no distinction or difference between man and woman, servant and master, poor and rich, great and small. Nevertheless, there does have to be some order among us, and Jesus Christ did not mean to eliminate it, as some flighty and scatterbrained dreamers [believe].”

John Calvin
Sermon on 1 Corinthians 11:2-3

“Love imagines that it can overleap the barriers of race and blood and religion, and in the enthusiasm and ecstasy of choice these obstacles appear insignificant. But the facts of experience are against such an idea. Mixed marriages are rarely happy. Observation and experiences demonstrate that the marriage of a Gentile and Jew, a Protestant and a Catholic, an American and a Foreigner has less chance of a happy result than a marriage where the man and woman are of the same race and religion….”

Dr. Clarence MacCartney
Presbyterian Minister

Indeed, the definition that Mr. Reasnor gives us above could have been written by a Marxist, as Marxists have been the ones who have denied that there should be any racial or ethnic separatism.

”What will be the attitude of communism to existing nationalities?

The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a result of this association and hereby to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of their basis, private property.”

~ Frederick Engels in “The Principles of Communism”, 1847

Or we might consult one Nikita Khrushchev on the matter.

“Full-scale Communist construction constitutes a new stage in the development of national relations in the U.S.S.R., in which the nations will draw still closer together until complete unity is achieved…. However, the obliteration of national distinctions and especially of language distinctions is a considerably longer process than the obliteration of class distinctions.”

Nikita Khrushchev

Or perhaps Marx himself,

“Even the natural differences within species, like racial differences…, can and must be done away with historically.”
 
K. Marx’s Collected Works V:103,
 
As cited in S.F. Bloom’s The World of Nations: A

Study of the National Implications in the Work of Karl Marx, Columbia University Press, New York, 1941, pp. 11 & 15-19:

So, we do have a definition here from Mr. Reasnor but it is a definition as provided from a Marxist worldview. By Mr. Reasnor’s definition all Christians should be Christian and indeed the only reason that the idea of “Kinism” as a distinct theological discipline has arisen is because the church has adopted a Marxist mindset when it comes to race and social order. Kinism advocates a return to Biblical Christianity as combined with an honoring of our Fathers who were better and wiser men than either myself or Mr. Reasnor.

The Suffering Of Modern Theology

“In my experience, the number of degrees one has in theology has no bearing on his knowledge of Christian politics. In fact, the more theology degrees the more committed he is to some form of modern liberalism.”

Dr. Stephen Wolfe

Wolfe’s experience is my experience as well. When I meet a Ph.D. in theology I pass on by without comment. I’m sure exceptions exist. I just don’t meet many of those exceptions.

However, the problem here is not so much the earning of theology degrees as it is the fact that precious few (including Wolfe) see politics as derivative of theology. What we are seeing in the West today is the lack of ability to see all knowledge as being organically integrated. For ages the maxim was well understood that “theology is the Queen of the sciences,” which was to say “show me a man’s theology and I will tell you, if he is consistent, his politics, educational theory, historiography, sociology, anthropology, etc. Today, theology has been sundered from the other humanity disciplines with the result that theology is still the queen of the sciences but it is a theology that insists that theology has nothing to do with the other subjects.

One must view theology as an artesian well out of which many founts may flow. Those founts may be in other locations but they all draw their water from the same artesian well. Instead theology as well as a myriad of other disciplines are all seen the same way the guy views the tupperware in his refrigerator when he considers what leftovers he will have for supper. In one tupperware container he finds politics, in another tupperware container he finds cultural anthropology, in a third tupperware container he finds theology, in a fourth tupperware container he some moldy psychology. Each container promises a distinct meal unrelated to the meal he could have if he warmed up the other container contents.

The way we treat theology now, as sundered from other disciplines, makes theology, which should be the most fertile of disciplines, to be sterile. In the current way we teach theology, theology becomes abstraction unrelated to the concrete affairs of life.