Iron Ink

Iron Ink

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,— Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.

The US Constitution -- A Voluntary Compact

July 2nd 2009

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Categories: American History -- Thumbnail Summer Course

This post title is " The US Constitution -- A Voluntary Compact"

“As Virginia philosopher-statesman John Taylor of Caroline noted, if sovereignty lies with the States (or with the people of those states), the states (or their citizens) will have authority over the Federal government, but if the Federal government is sovereign, it will in the end have power over all the states.”

Kevin R. C. Gutzmen
Politically Incorrect Guide To The Constitution

Students,

As far as the Constitution is concerned the highlights we need to keep in mind are

1.) The Constitution was a voluntary compact between 13 sovereign states. The evidence for this is seen in several of the sovereign states, in their declarations upon ratification of the Constitution. Virginia, New York and Rhode Island all explicitly reserved the right to secede from the union. Evidence from Virginia’s ratifying convention makes it clear that the Virginia delegates believed they were entering into a voluntary compact among the states.

Naturally, if one state claimed the right to withdraw from the Union upon necessity that right would extend to all who entered into the constitutional compact.

Try to think of it this way. Your family has 12 neighbors and the 13 neighboring families all decide to create and employ an entity that would be given precisely enumerated and delegated duties that will serve to make the lives of the 13 families more amenable. Each of the families are their own family and yet they have a reciprocal relationship as each of them are advantaged by the creation of this entity to plow the snow from their drives and cut their grass and do the other things that their agreement said that this new entity was to do. In essence this new entity that is taking on its assigned responsibilities is in the employ of the 13 families.

This is the way that the Constitution was to have worked. 13 sovereign nation states compacted together to from an entity (Federal Government) which would be assigned precisely defined enumerated and delegated functions. In the precisely defined and enumerated functions what the sovereign states created would be sovereign but all other areas that weren’t enumerated and delegated to the Federal government the States and it’s citizens remained sovereign.

Further, if and when any of the states decided to depart from this arrangement they retained the sovereignty to do so.

All of this can be seen by the name of the new country that was formed. The new nation was called “These united States of America.” Note how the emphasis falls on the plurality of the new nation.

2.) The nation was created by the people in their respective states and not by the people as considered as a whole people of the nation. This is important to observe because if the Constitution and the country it created was created by the people in their respective states then the people in their respective states can depart from what they created if they so desire. In the original formation of the Constitution each of the states were listed as being signatory to the Constitution. This was changed in the stylistic committee by Robert Morris to read more smoothly and the opening which had read “We the people of (followed by a listing of each colony) was changed to read “We the people of The United States of America.” This was purely a stylistic change.

3.) There was a party that opposed the Constitution and though they came to be called the anti-federalists they were in reality the Federalists. Their opponents, who have come to be known as the Federalist actually were the Nationalists. The genuine Federalists were fearful of a consolidated central government that they were convinced that the Nationalists desired. The objections of the opponents (men such as Patrick Henry) to the Constitution was that phrases like “general welfare” would be interpreted to authorize practically any Federal power grab. In order to allay these and other objections the Nationalists agreed to add a Bill of Rights to the Constitution in order to make it clear how limited the Federal government would be in its scope.

4.) The Bill of Rights were written to restrict the Federal Government. Each of the first 10 amendments recite at least one area where the Federal Government would be restricted. The Federal Government couldn’t establish religion (though each sovereign state could). The Federal government couldn’t make laws to infringing gun ownership, though a sovereign state might depending upon their own state constitution. What is interesting about the Bill of Rights when compared to most of the successive Constitutional amendments that have been added since is that while each of the original Ten Amendments restricted and limited the Federal government the successive constitutional amendments have enlarged and expanded the power of the Federal Government.

5.) Keep in mind that the reason the second amendment was included was not so people could go hunting but rather so people would be armed in order to frustrate the designs of a government intent on visiting oppression and tyranny upon the people. Governments are a little more hesitant about becoming tyrannical when they know that people are armed to resist.

6.) You should acquaint yourself with the 9th and 10th amendments. They are the most neglected and ignored of all the amendments. The 9th claims that all because a right isn’t articulated in the Bill of Rights doesn’t mean that right doesn’t exist. The Bill of rights was not intended to be exhaustive. The 10th amendment states that if something was not assigned to the Federal government in the enumerated and delegated powers then that something, whatever it was, devolved to individual state authority. Most of what the Federal government does today is in violation of the 10th amendment.

In question of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down by the chains of the Constitution.

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Iron Ink

MY orders are to fight; Then if I bleed, or fail, Or strongly win, what matters it? God only doth prevail. The servant craveth naught Except to serve with might. I was not told to win or lose,– My orders are to fight. Ethelwyn Wetherald

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Introduction

“In various forms, the fundamental argument advanced by the Christian apologist is that the Christian worldview is true because of the impossibility of the contrary. When the perspective of God’s revelation is rejected, then the unbeliever is left in foolish ignorance because his philosophy does not provide the preconditions of knowledge and meaningful experience. To put it another way: the proof that Christianity is true is that if it were not, we would not be able to prove anything.”

Dr. Gregg Bahnsen
Always Ready – pg. 122
A Reformation Prayer
O God of Kirk and Clan
provide now in our want
Holy Worship in this land
And children for your font
Our sacraments are ashes
Our families are torn
And Christendom now crashes
In the justice of thy scorn

From all that ‘clever’ teaches,
From all the ‘truth’ so close,
Wrapped all in shallow speeches
That excite the shallow hosts,
From trust in the Molech god,
of circus, bread and sword,
who rules us with an iron rod,
Deliver us, Oh Lord

Breathe a Reformation
On Kirk, and King, and Clan
Awaken now a nation
One weapon in your hand
A single sword, all for thee
Your purpose as our end
Aglow with zeal, and free,
Your Kingdom to extend
Acid Ink Recidivism
Welcome to the new home of AcidInk. I didn’t really have a great deal of intent to revisit this kind of format but due to the insistence of several people that I needed to do this I decided to go ahead and resurrect AcidInk into a needed new format.

First, allow me to explain my hesitancy in pursuing this. First and perhaps most important, I was hesitant to pick up the electronic quill again because the time it takes me to write takes me away from time I use to learn. There is so much out there to master and I have so many books lining my shelves just begging me to get to them. This brings me to my second reason for hesitancy in writing and that is that is seems improper that a person who has so much to learn should be so presumptuous as to offer his writing so others can learn. A third reason for reluctance in this matter is related as well. You see, I have spent now 30 years reading and studying in a rather determined fashion and as such I have some idea of all the great material that is out there that people could access if they would. Given the wisdom of the ages that lies at our fingertips, I struggle with the idea that anybody would use up their limited amount of time to read me when they could be reading somebody that really knew what they were talking about. One of the best pieces of advice that I received early on in my ministry is that I didn’t have time to read good books, since so many great books existed that I needed to read. When people read me they are burning time that might be spent in reading those who are great. For all these reasons I have been hesitant to resurrect AcidInk again. Yet despite my previous hesitancy, I am determined to now be committed to this format since I have had more then a few people tell me that my writing was helpful to them.

There is another reason why I am picking this up now and that is a sense of obligation to my children. In other words I am writing for posterity. I want my children and grandchildren and great grandchildren and generations beyond me to have a place to go to in order to find a clear witness to Christ that defies the current ecclesiastical and cultural smog as well as the smog that no doubt will obtain even in their lifetimes. I want all that come behind me to realize that it in confused times it is proper and even necessary, out of loyalty to Christ to say, “I dissent.” If in their times they are alone in their dissenting, they will at least be able to return to what is created here and find a sense of companionship with a lonely voice who dissented before them. Because my audience is the Lord Christ and my posterity you won’t find me playing to the crowd here, in the sense of trying to say what some group of people want to hear. I have given up the idea long ago that I am ever going to be swept away by popular acclaim. There will thus be plenty here that will tick off all kinds of large segments of people.

Here readers will find what one might expect to find in a Pastors study. They will find Christian Theology in its proper sense. Here I will speak of Theology proper (Biblical, Systematic, Exegetical and Historical), Christology, soteriology, pneumatology, eschatology, ecclesiology, anthropology, bibliology, epistemology, ontology, axiology, teleology, and any number of other ‘ologies.’ Here we will examine Hermeneutics and Literary Theory. People here may learn about the distinctions between infra and supra lapsarianism and other matters that most people find arcane.

However this site will be not be merely for armchair theologians. Here folks will also find Christian Theology in its most expansive sense. Theology as it is mirrored in Literature, Music, Movies, Economics, Politics, Education, Law, family life, and a host of other areas in which Theology ends up incarnating itself. Life is about one thing and one thing only and that is the Triune God of the Bible. Some people live their lives in flight from this God and so their lives are about the attempt to develop a life Theology that denies Him with the consequence that their God denying Theology incarnates itself in their culture and their culture ‘work.’ Hosts of other people live their lives seeking to submit to the Triune True God with the consequence that their obedient Theology incarnates itself in everything they touch. Since the God they serve is good, true and beautiful beyond speaking, all that they touch ends up sharing in that goodness, truthfulness and beauty.

For those to whom labels matter, you will find here one who writes from a position that holds that Jesus in all of His saving offices must be cherished. Pursuant to, and consistent with that I am Reformed. It is my desire that all men would be as I am in that manner. In other regards I am am the most pessimistic post-millennialist that you will ever read. I call that optimistic realism. I am also strongly covenantal, moderately Theonomic (at least when compared to the rabid crowd), unashamedly presuppositional in my epistemology, and consistently paleo-orthodox in my politics (which is one part Libertarian and one part Communitarian and completely Biblical).

Now, just a brief word on why I have gone from ‘AcidInk’ to ‘IronInk.’ First, I changed formats because the previous format was getting some pretty disgusting spam in the comments, and this format gives me control over that. Second, I changed the name because ‘AcidInk’ is to ‘in your face’ for some people. Consequently, being the sensitive guy that I am to other people’s sensibilities, I have changed the name while, I hope, still retaining the sense of intent in the name. I always liked the words of C. S. Lewis in endorsing the works of his friend J. R. R. Tolkien. Lewis wrote of Tolkien’s works, “Here are beauties which pierce like swords or burn like cold iron.” I can only hope that my words will, like the greats before, be beauties which piece like swords or burn like cold IronInk.

Welcome to IronInk.
Advent Magnificat
In turning to the Magnificat we must remind ourselves to read it in the context of Redemptive History. This is a Song that fits into the unfolding of the History of Redemption and not a treatise that can be isolated from the rest of Scripture. The reason we mark this at the outset is that many have gone to this passage to justify something called Liberation Theology. Liberation Theology teaches that the Church must involve itself in a socialist agenda in order to work to release the working class from the oppression of those who have capital.

Those who believe in Liberation Theology thus go to passages like Mary’s song and from the text enlist God as being on the side of social revolutionaries. They take Mary’s words from 52-53

52He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
53He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty

and apply them to every culture where class structure is at work and suggest that God is always on the side of breaking down economic class structures. Jesus, thus becomes a bandoleer sporting Bandito crusading for a Marxist New World Order.

Such commentaries as Wm. Barclay reveals this kind of thinking. Barclay can say,

“(Where the text says that) He cast’s down the mighty – He exalts the humble this is speaking of a social revolution.”

Mr. Barclay then goes on to explain the text in classical Marxist egalitarian categories,

“Christianity puts an end to the world’s labels and prestige….The social grades and ranks are gone.”

Mr. Barclay would have us believe that Christianity is a socially leveling religion. It is not a wonder with teaching like this that Americans are notorious for having a problem with authority since authority requires ‘rank.’

And again later in his commentary when explaining “He has filled those who are hungry…those who are rich he has sent empty away", Barclay offers,

“That is an economic revolution. A non-Christian society is an acquisitive society where each man is out to amass as much as he can get. Christianity begets a revolution in each man, and a revolution in the world.”

You see this text is being drafted in order to justify a socialist order where everyone is equal in position and possessions and a egalitarian order where everyone is the same.

And while God certainly is concerned about just social order we can authoritatively say that God does not favor socialism or egalitarianism, nor does this text even deal with those issues.

This text must be read Redemptively and Historically.

Mary is speaking as one whom is wrapped up in the the Historical fulfillment of all God’s promises to the Fathers. She is speaking from the position of one who sees that God, by what He is doing in her, is keeping His promise to Abraham and to the Church Fathers of the Old Covenant. She is not giving a socio-economic treatise here but rather is articulating her understanding of God’s covenant faithfulness.

First we want to note here the way Mary was shaped in her thinking. We note that much of what we find here in the Magnificat is typically reflective of a Hebrew mindset which includes a large familiarity with not only what the Scriptures say but also what the Scriptures mean.

Comparing this Magnificat to I Samuel 2:1-10, where we find Hannah praising God for opening her womb with the child Samuel, we find large similarities.

Hannah speaks,

5 Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread,
And the hungry have ceased to hunger.

Mary speaks,

3 He has filled the hungry with good things,
And the rich He has sent away empty.

Hannah speaks,

8 He raises the poor from the dust
And lifts the beggar from the ash heap,
To set them among princes
And make them inherit the throne of glory.

Mary speaks,

52 He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
And exalted the lowly.

Hannah speaks,

10 The adversaries of the LORD shall be broken in pieces;
From heaven He will thunder against them.
The LORD will judge the ends of the earth.

Mary speaks,

He has shown strength with His arm;
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

And these are only a few of the more obvious similarities. Clearly there is a relationship between Hannah’s praise and Marys.

But also we should realize that Mary’s song is also shaped by the Psalms. Many of the phrases that she uses are likewise found throughout the Psalms.

Now, I bring this out not just to note something interesting about the texts but more importantly to challenge us to be imbued with Scripture and to imbue our children with Scripture so that when they open their mouths they are echoing the mind of God not only in what the Scripture says but also in what the Scriptures mean. Clearly Mary understands herself and what is happening to her through a mindset informed by Biblical categories. The challenge that is brought to us through this song is that we likewise would see all of life through a Biblcially informed frame of reference.

Now we continue to try and understand these words redemptively historically. Mary says in vs. 50

His mercy is on those who fear Him
From generation to generation

These words are takes from the covenant of Genesis 17 where God says to Abraham,

7 And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you.

Which is articulated again in Dt. 7:9

“Therefore know that the LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments;

So, you see Mary is saying that God has kept this promise to the Fathers through the child that is growing within her.

And we might add here that because Mary see’s God’s faithfulness to His people in the past she can be confident that God’s people will always exist in the future and that is why she can say with such confidence that ‘henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.’ Mary could not say this w/o a confidence in the fact that God would always keep and maintain a people who would forever call her blessed. If it is revealed to Mary that all generations shall call her blessed then we can be confident that God will always have a people, throughout the generations who will call her blessed. The Church isn’t going away.

In vs. 51 we find the phrase

He has shown strength with His arm;
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

This phrase ’scattered the proud’ is a metaphor derived from putting to flight a defeated enemy.

This echoes the sentiment of Scripture where God arises to defeat His enemies.

Note here that it is God who is baring His arm. God does all the saving here and that is clearly seen in the reality that she is carrying a child that was given not by human agency.

Now, here we should say again that Mary sees the faithfulness of God in the past being brought again into the present. In the past God out of Faithfulness to His covenant did these things and in the present out of faithfulness to the covenant He is again doing these things. As God was faithful to Israel in remembering them in their bondage during the time of Moses, and as He was faithful in making covenant with David, so He is now being faithful to His people by making Mary the Theotokos.

And we should note in doing these things He is not simply setting aside the rich because they are rich but because in their wealth and station they have set God aside and are oppressing His people. Mary exalts that God is setting the rich aside because the rich have God’s people under their boots. God’s people are not to be esteemed solely because they are poor. It is not their poverty that makes them estimable but rather it is because they are God’s people who happen to be poor and oppressed that makes them estimable.

My point here is that rich are not to be despised simply because they are rich but rather because they are rich and forget God and so oppress God’s people. And similarly, the poor are not to be thought noble simply because they are poor but rather only if they are poor and are lovers of God. Wealth and poverty by themselves are not indicators of peoples value before God.

When we get to vs. 52 we see Mary’s understanding that History is the personal outworking of God’s personal involvement,

“He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
And exalted the lowly.”

Calvin notes,

“She teaches us, that the world does not move and revolve by a blind impulse of fortune, but that all the revolutions observed in it are brought about by the Providence of God, and that those judgments, which appear to us to disturb and overthrow the entire framework of society, are regulated by God with unerring justice.”

History is personal. It can not ultimately be explained by the actions of men or by the confluence of events. History is not mechanical (Enlightenment thinking) or magical (Animistic thinking) but it is personal. It has upon it the fingerprints of God.

Vs. 54f reveal that Mary has had Redemptive History in mind all along.

54 He has holpen His servant Israel,
In remembrance of His mercy,
55 As He spoke to our fathers,
To Abraham and to his seed forever.”

If the Blessed Virgin has social orders in mind at all, it is not about social orders where the poor get their share but rather it is about a social order where righteousness gets it share. But, again, social orders are not on her mind, but rather the faithfulness of God to His covenant promises and His covenant people are on her mind. God had promised to send a deliverer and now that time had come. This deliverer – this savior is the one who would rescue God’s people from God’s wrath, from their sin, and from the works of the devil. This savior would overturn social orders but only because he first conquered individual men by taking from them their heart of stone and giving to them a heart of flesh. This Messiah that Mary was carrying would crush the unrighteous, both rich and poor, and seat in their places those who would love righteousness and serve mercy.

And during the advent season we continue to magnify the Lord w/ Mary for the Lord Christ continues to oppose the proud and give grace to the humble.
Ask the Pastor -- The Problem of Evil
15 year old Freddy Foote asks,

“If God created the heavens and earth why did he create sin?”

Or

“If He didn’t create sin then why did He allow the possibility of sin?”

_________

Dear Freddy,

You’ve asked an excellent question that shows that you are thinking. This is most excellent! Your question is one that hones in on the timeless problem of evil. Since your question is so excellent I want to give it a thorough answer, but you must be faithful to this process by being willing to do the work of thinking through the answer.

This is a question that every person (not just Christians or even Theists in general – but EVERY PERSON) must face. Typically the problem is reduced to the question of how belief in a God that is both all powerful AND all benevolent (kind and good) can be sustained in the light of evil, sin, and wickedness. It seems Freddy, that the reality of evil must destroy either the omni-benevolence or the omnipotence of God – or so the protestations of the god-haters proclaim. God haters, with mindless glee catcall our problem w/o realizing their own (a subject for another time perhaps). The God haters say,

“If God is good and wants to eliminate sin, but cannot, He is not all powerful; but if God is all powerful and can eliminate sin, but does not He is not good.”

How do Biblical Christians approach this? The best answers for this Freddy that I have found during my years in the ministry come from Dr. Gordon Clark and from Dr. Greg Bahnsen. You need to know that anything I write here is from my learning while sitting at their feet.

First, we must note that any answer we give must, in the end, retain both God’s goodness and God’s Sovereignty. Resolutions of the problem of evil that leave God less than good, or less than absolutely sovereign are answers that leave us with a god who is not God. I note this Freddy, because many of the answers to the ‘problem of evil’ that you find in the Church today reduces God to a being that men must pity due to God’s lack of ability of stopping that which He doesn’t want to happen. For example, I remember going to a funeral once where the deceased had perished in a car accident and the first thing out of the minister’s mouth was “God didn’t have anything to do with this.” The implication was that, ‘God didn’t want the accident to happen but sometimes you got to feel sorry for God, because poor God doesn’t always get what He wants.’ So, whatever answer we come up with can’t end with some kind of sophistry that says that ‘God is sovereign enough to not be sovereign.’ No, our answer to the problem of evil must leave God to be that which the Scripture portrays Him and that is all good and all sovereign.

Another answer we need to avoid is the answer that posits some kind of dualism. This position, which is typical of many ancient Eastern religions holds that good and evil are equally equipoised and that they are in battle and that the good god and the bad god neither ever are triumphant. Sometimes you hear this kind of reasoning in the Church when people say speak of the Devil as if He were a being that somehow was God’s equal in the celestial WWF Wrestling match. The Christian faith has never embraced dualism if only because such a position denies the teaching that there is only One God.

Another bad answer, as we suggested above, is that God is a finite and limited deity. The advocates of this position would say that God does the best He can but darn it you can really expect only so much from a deity. If the advocates of wimpy Christianity are correct that the presence of evil in this world rules out a all powerful God we might ask them if, instead of a limited good God ruling us why it might not instead be the case that we are ‘ruled’ by a limited evil god who in reality tries to get all the evil he can but being limited sometimes good sneaks in every now and then. After all, limitedness could work in both directions.

Yet another bad answer that many offer in the Church today to the problem of evil Freddy, is that God gave man free will and that God is sovereign right up to the point of fallen men’s free will. This ‘answer’ once again, limits God’s godness by suggesting that God’s godness is checkmated by man’s godness. God wants certain things or doesn’t want certain things but sometimes man is more powerful than God and so uses his free will to trump God’s free will. Many people in the Church teach this idea trying to rescue God from from the lack of goodness and the perceived problem of God being charged with being ‘not nice’ for being in complete control of sin and evil. Often you will hear people using this kind of argumentation when they say things like, “Well, God didn’t want that to happen but He allowed or merely permitted it to happen. God gave man free will and so He can’t be blamed for evil.’ Free will in human agents has been put forth to clear God of the responsibility for sin and evil. It sounds so pious but it really is nonsense, and what is worse is that it doesn’t exonerate God in the least from the charge of being ‘not nice.’ Let’s examine why.

Those who thump for this answer will (usually) concede that while God’s power is checked by man’s free will what is not checked is this same God’s ability to know all things from the beginning (sometimes called omniscience). But those who contend that the free will of man clears God of the charge of the problem of evil, still have a problem with a ‘not nice’ God, for this God who from eternity past knew all that would happen throughout the history of mankind still decided to create despite knowing all the evil that would result from giving men ‘free will.’ God permitting evil by way of Man’s free will does not solve the problem of evil for a being giving man that free will, knowing before hand how it would be used, AND creating all the circumstances wherein it would be used, remains responsible for the actions of those using that free will. Besides, it is more than an open question whether or not, if in the end, any being who can’t do other then what God has always known he will do has free will but that is another subject for another day.

So, ‘Free will’ and ‘permission’ or ‘God allowing something’ is really irrelevant to the problem of evil.

So far we have eliminated from our consideration answers to the problem of evil that include the theories of dualism, limited god, and free will. Likewise we have poked fun at the notion of a God who is sovereign enough to not be sovereign. Now let us turn our attention to a positive answer.

First, though we won’t take the time to go into the historical precedents we should note that what is going to be given here for the answer to the problem of evil has long legs throughout Church History. It is not the only answer that has been given (we’ve just examined the others) but it is an answer with a long and storied pedigree in Church History stretching far behind the Reformation.

Second, we would say that belief in the doctrine of creation forces us to accept the reality that God is the cause (though not the author) of Sin. Creation ex nihilo implies God’s complete control over ALL things since such a creation eliminates any notion of any forces that are independent of God. Independent forces cannot be created forces since a created force would make it dependent upon the one who created it and created forces cannot be independent since their createdness would make them dependent to the one who created them. So, Freddy, if we introduce a power in the universe that can trump God’s will we have at the same time given up on the idea of God as the alone creator.

Obviously the answer to the problem of evil for the Biblical Christian is that God is sovereign over all things, which I take to include evil.

Scripture teaches that

Ephesians 1:11 in whom also we were made a heritage, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh ALL things after the counsel of his will;

Romans 11:36 For of him, and through him, and unto him, are ALL things. To him be the glory for ever. Amen.

Specifically Scripture teaches that God is in control over evil,

Isaiah 45:7

I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.

Amos 3:6

Shall a trumpet be blown in the city, and the people not be afraid? shall there be evil in a city, and the LORD hath not done it?

So Scripture teaches that God is Sovereign over all that happens and from that we hold that God is the cause of evil without being its author. More on that in a bit.

Before we turn to how it is that God remains good while insisting that all that happens, including evil, is God’s will we want to help clarify an apparent contradiction. Those who oppose the Biblical position on this issue will accuse me of advocating that evil things are God’s will when in point of fact Scripture teaches that evil things aren’t God’s will. For example, Scripture clearly teaches that murder is not God’s will but here I am saying that all murders that happen are God’s will. How is that objection answered?

The objection is answered by being more precise in the usage of language. God’s word gives us precepts and commands that state what ought to be done by us and we often call that ‘God’s will.’ God’s word also teaches all that happens, happens according to God’s predestining will (see the texts above) and we call that also ‘God’s will.’ Consequently we confuse matters by using the same phrase ‘God’s will’ to communicate both God’s commands and God’s decretive will. We would be better served instead to speak of ‘God’s commands’ for His Law-Word to us and restrict the use of the phrase ‘God’s will’ to refer to His predestining will. In doing so we could say that it was against God’s commands for the Jews to crucify Jesus but it was the exact desire of God’s will. Now, some will object that God decreed an evil act and we will turn to that in a second, but for now we must say that is exactly what the Scripture’s teach (Acts 2:23, 3:14-18, 4:27-28). For our purposes now, it is enough to see that there is no contradiction between saying that God’s Law Word commands certain things while God wills other things and that the violation of God’s commands by the human agent, even though acting in harmony with God’s will, does not deliver the human agent from being held responsible for his actions.

Well, Freddy, this first part is long enough for you to work through. I will return to this tomorrow, Lord willing and will try to untangle a few of the problems that I have set for us thus far. These might include,

1.) How can God be the cause of evil but not the author of evil?

2.) How can humans be held be responsible by God for those things they have done that God has predestined?

3.) How can humans fail to be puppets on a string if all they do is predestined by God?

4.) And most importantly, we will answer your original question, “Why did God create sin.”

See you tomorrow,

Pastor Bret
Benedictus
It is interesting that Luke bookends a similar idea in his gospel. In Luke 2 Luke records Zechariah’s prophecy and in verse 70 Zechariah can say, in reference to the advent of the Messiah, ‘As He (God) spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets, who have been since the World began.’ Clearly Zechariah is teaching us here that the Scriptures of the Old Covenant spoke of and taught Jesus the Messiah, and that from the very beginning.

Luke makes this same observation again at the end of His gospel (24:27) when he records Jesus, following His resurrection, leading a bible study on the road to Emmaus with two disciples who had missed how the redemptive events were spoken of in the Old covenant Scriptures.

It is obvious that Luke is telling us that the old covenant Scriptures, were, in the phrase of the Puritans, ‘the cradle where one would find Christ.’ All the Scriptures, from Genesis 3:15f are first and foremost about Christ and tell God’s story of how He does all the work in redeeming a people of His own choosing to be their covenant faithful God. We do a great disservice to Scripture when we use it to cram God into our story instead of seeing that God uses Scripture to tell His story – a story that the redeemed are swept up into as so many leaves are swept up into a tornado. God’s story is objective but as men, in each generation, are placed into its storyline by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, that objective story continues to change everything in its path in each generation.

Zechariah was part of Redemptive History. His prophecy was part of God’s objective story of God’s raising up a horn of salvation for His people (2:69). His recognition that all of Scripture was teaching the story of Christ is our good news. BUT Zechariah also understands that this good news is done for a couple of purposes. The first purpose was so that God would be seen as faithful to His promises and covenant (vs. 72). The second purpose was that God’s people might serve Him without fear (vs. 74).

In God’s story when God provides salvation, one purpose of that provision is that God’s people might live in a covenantal faithfulness that echos back God’s covenantal faithfulness to His name and His people. When God’s elect are swept up into His story it is always with the consequence of having been freely saved they will now freely serve according to God’s standards.

Calvin can say at this point on this idea,

“Zechariah’s point was, that, being redeemed, they might dedicate and consecrate themselves entirely to the Author of their salvation. As the efficient cause of human salvation was the undeserved goodness of God, so its final cause is, that, by a godly and holy life, men may glorify his name.”

Calvin then goes on to talk about our responsibility to live a life of service to God, citing the abundant scripture that teaches this truth and ends by saying,

Scripture is full of declarations of this nature, which show that we “frustrate the grace” (Gal. 2:21) of Christ, if we do not follow this design.”

So Zechariah’s Benedictus (Luke 2:67-79) teaches us that God does all the saving but also that those who are saved serve God in every area that God has dominion over. We do disservice to this idea when we do one of three things,

1.) Forget that the Scriptures are first and foremost about God’s work of doing all the saving.

2.) Forget that Scripture do not end with souls saved but rather speak clearly of what the redeemed life looks like in every area of life.

3.) Invert the order so that we do not realize that #2 is always the consequence of #1 being rightly set forth and so speak as if #1 is dependent upon number 2.
Catcher's Mitt
A few thoughts from Mitt Romney’s “Faith In America” Speech.
Governor Romney said,

“Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone.”

Pastor McAtee responds,

This is a curious statement. There are a good number of countries that have religion and yet have no freedom. In those countries Freedom and religion most certainly do not endure together. Iran and Saudi Arabia come immediately to mind. Therefore it seems that it would be more accurate to say that Freedom requires a certain kind of religion. Now, as we look through History we might conclude the only religion that brings about true Freedom is Christianity and that doesn’t include Mormonism which is no more Christian then Shintoism is. Christianity alone brings true Freedom because only Christianity provides release from Spiritual bondage and without a multitude of individuals in a given culture being set free from their enslavement to sin the culture that is built can never be one characterized by Freedom. People enslaved to sin don’t build cultures of freedom.

Governor Romney should have said, “Freedom and Christianity endure together or Freedom is stillborn.”

FYI… if one wants to see the Mormon attitude towards Freedom one might want to look up the ‘Mountains Meadow Massacre’ or do a little investigation into their unique doctrine of blood atonement or spend some time researching their gestapo organization called the ‘Dannites.’ Mormonism, as a religion, can no more produce Freedom then the US government can produce efficiency.

Governor Romney said,

As Governor,… I did not confuse the particular teachings of my church with the obligations of the office and of the Constitution – and of course, I would not do so as President.

And yet a couple paragraphs later he could say,

I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers – I will be true to them and to my beliefs.

Pastor Bret inquires,

Ok, on one hand Mitt endeavors to live by his Mormon faith and has every intent of being true to his Mormon fathers and to his Mormon beliefs (does that mean he was wearing his required Mormon holy underwear during the speech?) and yet on the other hand those beliefs that he endeavors to live by and to which he will be true won’t confuse him with reference to his obligations of his office. It seems to me that there is a contradiction there and it is the same old contradiction that we hear all the time from candidates, and it goes something like this…

“Personally and privately I am against or for (fill in the blank) but in my capacity in public office I can not force my conviction on the general public.”

The simple response here is …

Given the fact that all public policy reflects somebody’s personal and private conviction could you tell us whose personal and private conviction will you be forcing on the general public since it will not be your own?

Another question might be …

How can you say that you are going to be true to your (in this case) Mormon faith when you won’t allow your Mormon faith to inform you on policy decisions?

Anyway, the whole notion that a man’s religion doesn’t guide whatever he does is a pure sophistry concocted by ambitious politicians, and itself is reflective of the true religion of most moderns. If Romney’s Mormonism doesn’t guide him in his policy decisions then Romney is not Mormon just as ‘Christian’ candidates are not Christian if their religion doesn’t inform them in their decision making process as a public official.

I suspect though that Mitt is probably like most ‘Christian’ politicians and that his Mormonism is just a label.

Governor Romney said,

I believe that every faith I have encountered draws its adherents closer to God.

Pastor Bret responds,

Mitt is not a Mormon but a Unitarian just as our current President. A vote for Mitt is not a vote for a Mormon but for a Unitarian. Mitt is a disciple for American civil religion where what is really important about God is that he can be mentioned in Inauguration addresses, invoked at football games, and enlisted in support of expanding Empire through War.

We are currently where the Romans were at in their Empire before they fell. All religions were to be tolerated as long as their adherents would pinch incense to Caesar. In America all religions draw one closer to God and are to be accepted except for those religions that insist that all religions except one leave men without God and without hope.

Governor Romney said,

It’s important to recognize that while differences in theology exist between the churches in America, we share a common creed of moral convictions.

Pastor Bret responds,

I wish he would have elaborated a little bit on what this common creed certainly is. I seriously doubt that Americans share a common creed of moral convictions.

Governor Romney said,

We separate church and state affairs in this country, and for good reason. No religion should dictate to the state nor should the state interfere with the free practice of religion.

Pastor Bret responds,

Actually, we don’t separate but rather we distinguish between church and state affairs in this country. The whole notion of separation the way it is currently understood today is relatively recent. Secondly, while we agree that no religions should dictate to the State we would say that the State’s actions always reveal that it is operating in submission to some god or god concept. A Biblical Christian would advocate that the since the State always operates in submission to some god or god concept that it submit to the Law-Word of the one true God.

Governor Romney said,

Perhaps the most important question to ask a person of faith who seeks a political office, is this: Does he share these American values – the equality of human kind, the obligation to serve one another and a steadfast commitment to liberty?

Pastor Bret responds,

Note the Governors PC speak where he references human kind as opposed to mankind.

First, the equality of mankind is not a doctrine that Biblical Christians could support UNLESS one is talking about the equality of all men before the law. Currently, equality of mankind typically means that legislation works to make sure everyone is the same – a most unbiblical doctrine.

Second, if a steadfast commitment to liberty is an American value then why does America kill 1.3 million people annually?

Governor Romney said,

The diversity of our cultural expression, and the vibrancy of our religious dialogue, has kept America in the forefront of civilized nations even as others regard religious freedom as something to be destroyed….We do not insist on a single strain of religion – rather, we welcome our nation’s symphony of faith.

Bret responds,

There is a great deal in the Governor’s speech about religious diversity. One needs to keep in mind that when this country was founded that there most certainly was NOT a great deal of religious or ethnic diversity. Oh sure, there were different flavors of the Christian faith which created what we might call broad ideological common ground but what the founders in no way attempted was to create a civilization that could embrace competing Christian, Mormon, Islamic, Jewish or Hindu faiths. A culture’s strength lies in its homogeneity and begins to weaken when it becomes to diverse UNLESS the intent is to build a culture where the homogeneity is built upon the reality that nobody takes their confessed religion to seriously, thus allowing the common religion that unites the various religions to be a commitment to the God of the civil religion who instructs the adherents of the diverse faiths that their devotion to the God of the civil religion must outweigh their devotion to their respective lesser gods.

In the end I don’t see how Governor Romney’s milquetoast Mormonism should prevent the typical American Christian from voting for him anymore then it prevented them from voting for George W. Bush with his milquetoast Christianity. Both these men, like most religious Americans today, are adherents of the same faith, and whether one votes for Tweedle-dumb-Mormon or Tweedle-stupid-Christian in the end they both belong to clan Tweedle.

Americans who won’t vote for Romney who is Mormon, but will vote for Huckabee because he is Christian are shallow in the worst sort of way. Both Romney and Huckabee are going to give us more big government. Both Romney and Huckabee belong to their respective religions only after they belong to the civil religion.

The Biblical Christian on the other hand would take a long hard look at Ron Paul.
Doctor Moreland's observations observed
Recently Evangelical Academic J.P. Moreland wrote and gave a paper before the Evangelical Theological Society entitled, “How Evangelicals Became Over-Committed to the Bible and What Can Be Done about It.” Now, normally, I wouldn’t pay any attention to this since I’ve come to regard Evangelicals the way I regard Liver and Onions but as this paper was appealed to in a positive way on a Christian Theology site that is often quite good I thought I would give this the once over.

So, I hope to examine this paper in the next several entries. If you want to read the paper in its entirety you may access it here,

http://www.kingdomtriangle.com/discussion/moreland_EvangOverCommBible.pdf

Dr. Moreland starts his paper by writing,

“… To be more specific, in the actual practices of the Evangelical community in North America, there is an over-commitment to Scripture in a way that is false, irrational, and harmful to the cause of Christ. And it has produced a mean-spiritedness among the over-committed that is a grotesque and often, ignorant distortion of discipleship unto the Lord Jesus.”

This criticism is starting to get wearisome from the academic community. First we heard this kind of thing from Dr. John Frame in his article, “Machen’s Warrior Children,” and now we get the same kind of from Dr. J. P. Moreland.

Before we go any further the reader should realize that I am probably one of those mean-spirited people whose over-commitment to Scripture in a false, and irrational way has left me a practitioner of a grotesque and often, ignorant distortion of discipleship. To the contrary it could be that Dr. Moreland, because of his under-commitment to Scripture, has become the kind of disciple that just makes up discipleship as he goes along and consequently he see’s the true disciples as ‘over-committed, and mean-spirited.’ The problem though with even suggesting that as a contrary option is that I probably just gave proof of my mean-spiritedness.

But I digress…

First, this kind of accusation demands something more then vague generalities. Just exactly who in the ‘Evangelical Community’ are exercising an over-commitment to Scripture and just exactly what does that over-commitment look like?

Second, given the where the Church is in the States today, is one of our major problems really that we have too many wrongly over-committed Christians? Just where is this problem creeping up in such a way that it is creating havoc in the Church?

Dr. Moreland writes,

1. American Evangelical Over-commitment to the Bible. The very idea that one could be over-committed to the Bible may strike one as irreligious. In a sense, this judgment is just. One could never be too committed to loving, obeying and promoting Holy Scripture. In another sense, however, such over-commitment is ubiquitous and harmful. The sense I have in mind is the idea that the Bible is the sole source of
knowledge of God, morality, and a host of related important items. Accordingly, the Bible is taken to be the sole source of authority for faith and practice. Applied to inerrancy, the notion is that the Bible is the sole source of such knowledge and authority. The Protestant principle of Sola Scriptura does not entail this claim. For example,
the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646) says “The Supreme Judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.”3

Similarly, the Chicago Statement of Biblical Inerrancy (1978) states:

We affirm that the Holy Scriptures are to be received as the authoritative Word of God. We deny that the Scriptures receive their authority from the Church, tradition, or any other human source. We affirm that the Scriptures are the supreme written norm by which God binds the conscience, and that the authority of the Church is subordinate to that of Scripture. We deny that Church, creeds,councils, or declarations have authority greater than or equal to the authority of the Bible.4

Clearly, the idea that from within the Christian point of view, Scripture is the ultimate authority, the ultimate source of relevant knowledge, does not entail that it is the sole authority or source. But this fact has a severe public relations problem and, as I will
illustrate below, many in our community make this entailment, or at least accept the consequent. Right reason, experience, Creeds, tradition have all been recognized as subordinate sources of knowledge and authority within the Christian point of view subject to the supreme and final authority of Scripture. The idea that Scripture is the sole such authority is widespread among pastors, parachurch staff, and lay folk. And while Evangelical scholars may not admit to accepting the idea, far too often it informs their work. To cite one example of this egregious problem, in concluding his study of the social and political thought of Carl Henry, Abraham Kuyper, Francis Schaeffer and John Howard Yoder, J. Budziszewski observes that All four thinkers are ambivalent about the enduring structures of creation and about the reality of general revelation. Although Henry vigorously affirms general revelation, he undermines it just as vigorously. Although Kuyper unfolds his theory mainly from the order observable in creation, he insists on hiding this fact from himself, regarding his theory of creational spheres as a direct inference from Scripture. Although Schaeffer acknowledges the importance of general revelation, he makes little use of any part of it except the principle of non-contradiction. No sooner does Yoder affirm God’s good creation than he declares that we have no access to it.

Bret responds,

First, the reader should notice that Dr. Moreland really sees this problem of being wrongly over-committed to the Bible as a major issue in Evangelicalism. He even describes this problem as ubiquitous.

Second, we should notice that Dr. Moreland drives a distinction between the Scriptures being the ultimate authority and being the sole authority. Dr. Moreland willingly admits that Scripture is the ultimate authority but insists that it is not the sole authority. Dr. Moreland then appeals to other putatively lesser authorities naming them as ‘right reason, experience, Creeds, and tradition’ and insisting that these ‘have all been recognized as subordinate sources of knowledge and authority within the Christian point of view subject to the supreme and final authority of Scripture.’ This is all very good unless one suspects that what Dr. Moreland is trying to do is find a way where these lesser authorities can operate independently of the authority of Scripture. You see the problem with these lesser authorities is that as authorities they are only as good as their commitment to the Scriptures.

Let us take ‘right reason’ as an example. By what standard do we measure the ‘right’ in ‘right reason?’ Can ‘right reason’ be an authority over us if ‘right reason’ doesn’t presuppose the authority of Scripture and the God of the Bible? I quite agree that ‘right reason’ is an authority but I insist at the same time that this authority can never be right unless it is beholden first to the sole and ultimate authority of Scripture. How do we determine that ‘right reason’ is right unless we go to the Scriptures as our ultimate authority on the rightness of reason. Does such an appeal to Scripture in order to determine the rightness of ‘right reason’ constitute the sin of making Scripture the sole authority?

Similarly, with ‘Experience’ as a lesser authority we find it to be the case that ‘experience,’ in order to be a lesser authority has to be interpreted before it can be appealed to as an authority. The question that begs being asked is, ‘by whose standard will we interpret our experiences in order for them to become a valid lesser authority’? You see the ‘experience’ or the ‘right reason’ of a pagan is going to be a lesser authority that informs them in quite a different way then they inform a Biblical Christian. The same is true of the nominal or immature Christian or even a Philosopher of the Academy with the wrong presuppositions who appeals to ‘experience’ or ‘right reason’ as a lesser authority upon which to base belief or behavior. The point is that while lesser authorities do exist they are only as good as ultimate authority in which they are rooted.

What Dr. Moreland has done here is basically appealed to John Wesley’s quadrilateral hermeneutic but Moreland’s mistake is the same as Wesley’s. Lesser authorities not rooted and grounded in the ultimate authority will lead to wrong conclusions every time. ‘Right reason, experience, Creeds, and tradition’ may be lesser authorities to appeal to but these lesser authorities do not and can not operate autonomously from the ultimate authority that is God’s Holy Word. Lesser sources of authority and their validity are only as good as their ultimate authority. Again we must ask if insisting on this makes one guilty of turning Scripture into the Sole authority?

Now we turn briefly to Dr. Moreland’s observations regarding general revelation. Dr. Moreland seems to want to suggest that general revelation can be rightly understood and embraced quite apart from special revelation. Now, it is true that general revelation is understood but it is also the case for the unbeliever that He suppresses that understanding in unrighteousness. Indeed, the only way that any of us can get general revelation right is by understanding it in light of special revelation. Dr. Moreland’s problem here is one that we are going to be concentrating on more in later posts. Dr. Moreland seems to think that Christians ought to embrace some kind of Natural Law framework and this no thinking Christian can consistently do. In light of this observation it is interesting to notice that 3 of the 4 thinkers (Kuyper, Henry, Schaeffer) that Moreland uses by way of illustration were presuppositionalists of one sort or another. My spidey senses suggest that this is the root of Moreland’s real problem of to many over-committed Christians. Again, we all agree that Creation has enduring structures and that general revelation is true. What we don’t agree upon is the commitment or ability of fallen men to live in keeping with the enduring structures of a God given creation. What we don’t agree upon is the effect of men suppressing the truth of general revelation in unrighteousness and how that work of suppression severely affects the validity of the information gained from the lesser authorities of ‘Right reason, experience, Creeds, or tradition.” What we don’t agree upon is Christians appealing to lesser sources of authority that operate in a quasi-independent way from Scripture.

So we agree that Scripture is the ultimate authority. We agree that there are lesser authorities. But I wonder if we agree that Scripture is the sole authority for the lesser authorities. I wonder if we agree that the lesser authorities cannot be appealed to without considering from the presuppositions that inform the lesser authorities.

We will look more at Dr. Moreland’s paper later.
Half a Lord?
“Because Salvation is a total concept, a savior has dominion and authority over every realm of life. If His Lordship is not total, his salvation is not effectual. Therefore, anyone who claims to be a savior must of necessity assert an overlordship over every realm of life and thought…. Churchmen, by withdrawing the idea of salvation to the soul, so that Jesus Christ is the Savior of men’s souls and not Lord of heaven and earth and the only Savior of all things, have thereby in effect denied that Jesus is savior. None can be savior who is not also Lord.”

R. J. Rushdoony
Christianity & The State – pg. 27

The Church in the West is in great peril. Indeed, the peril is so great and the problems so complex and varied and the hour so late in solving that peril that only my certainty of God’s sovereignty brings me peace. One of the chief problems in the Church today is the insistence by some of the Church’s best and brightest teachers and spokesmen, that there is no such thing as Christian Culture and that Christ is only Lord in a direct way over the Church while conceding that He is Lord over what they style the common realm in a indirect secret way. This Theology is what I will dub ‘radical Two Kingdom Theology,’ and it has possessed the thinking of many Reformed Churches and Seminaries.

The theory behind Two Kingdom Theology is that Christ has two Kingdoms. One Kingdom we commonly call the Church and there He rules by grace. The other Kingdom (The Kingdom of His left hand as it were) is what is commonly styled the ’secular realm.’ Christ is clearly Lord over the former Kingdom while He is ‘Lord in a different way’ over the secular realm. The nearest I can translate this is that Christ has made His sovereign will as Lord known in the Church but His Lordship in the ’secular realm’ is conducted by way of His secret eternal decrees. The implication of this doctrine is that the Church, through Christ’s spokesmen in the pulpit, is not to speak at all of Christ’s Kingly office over what is called the ’secular realm,’ instead being content to Sunday by Sunday remind God’s people of Christ’s Priestly office.

Now, the radical two Kingdom Theology, freely admits that individuals in their ’secular calling’ may seek to apply God’s Word to their callings but the Church is not to counsel them or pretend to give them God’s Word on their ’secular callings’ because to do so would be to confuse the two Kingdoms, and besides, the Bible, so the theory goes, doesn’t speak to cultural issues.

Advocates of this position insist that there is no such thing as ‘Christian culture,’ insisting that only individuals can be Christian or not Christian. Radical Two Kingdom Theology teaches that to desire a Christian culture is to want to seize by storm the Eden that God has prohibited to us until the return of Christ. Radical Two Kingdomists insist that until Christ returns we must always live ‘East of Eden.’

Now, first it must be said that this Theology insures as a consequence what it teaches by way of theory. What I mean by that is that if we convince Christians that Christ and His Lordship doesn’t directly apply to the ’secular realm’ then we can be certain that the result will be that we will always be living East of Eden and that we will never know what it means to live in a Christian culture. If the Church refuses to speak God’s Word to God’s people as to the claims of Christ over every area of life then the results will be that each Christian man will do what is right in His own eyes. If the Church will not speak Christ’s Kingly voice from Scripture making known His mind over the putatively secular realm, then individuals will be left to themselves to come up with their own theories which will lead to thousands of Christian voices hawking thousands of different ‘Christian’ positions.

Examples abound but let us restrain ourselves to just one realm. If the Church refuses to speak God’s Word as it pertains to what just Government looks like we will find ourselves with individuals insisting that there is such a thing as Christian Fascism or Christian Socialism or Christian Communism, or Christian Anarchy or Christian Tyranny, and the Church, having all these people in her bosom, must not speak to the issue or to God’s people since the Bible isn’t about these issues. The two Kingdoms must remain separate at all costs. Now multiply this example into the myriad of realms that exist and you will begin to see all the confusion this will sow among God’s people.

Now, having observed all this we must ask how is Jesus a savior in this doctrine? Ok, we grant that with this doctrine Jesus saves our souls in a very restricted sense (when we die our souls get to go to heaven) and He saves our Church lives but how does His salvation reveal itself in any of the rest of our institutions and the relationships that comprise those institutions? In short, as Rushdoony notes above, this Kingless Jesus is reduced to being a savior who really is no savior.

Also, we should realize that while Christians work hard at making sure that culture isn’t Christian or that it is kept secular the other gods are not so shy or withdrawing concerning their intent to be Lord over all. This is just a way of saying that if the Church refuses to speak the Kingly voice of Christ as it pertains to cultural issues the consequence will not be that the culture remains common but rather the result will be that the adherents of the false gods will bend and shape culture so that it reflects the will of their false gods. In their haste to avoid the notion of Christendom the radical two Kingdomists are insuring that the tide that will come rushing in is ‘Islamadom,’ or ‘Humanismdom,’ or ‘Multi-culturaldom,’ or some kind of culture that will be beholden to a false god. This is because every culture is a reflection of and instantiation of some god or gods.

Now, having raised the warning about Radical Two Kingdom theology we should admit immediately that Reformed people have historically embraced the notion of Two Kingdoms, but they have always recognized that these two Kingdoms are interdependent and not isolated and divorced from one another. For example many if not most of the 1st and 2nd generation of Reformers held that the Magistrate was to uphold BOTH tables of God’s law. Calvin, Bucer, Bullinger, Beza, Martyr, Knox, Wollebius, A’Brakel, Voetius, Turretin, Ussher, Durham, Perkins, Cartwright, Dickson, Rutherford, Gillespie, Nye, Palmer, Burroughs, Thornwell, et.al. all hold that the magistrate is God’s minister and as such should enforce God’s law - both tables. Try advocating the position of these Reformers at Westminster West today and see what kind of response you elicit. So, we freely concede that there are two Kingdoms and that God reigns differently in one than the other (use of the Keys vs. use of the sword) but what we do not agree on is that the use of the sword should not be self-consciously and explicitly Christian and neither do we agree that we should be satisfied with God’s muteness and secret sovereignty over the what is called the ’secular realm,’ especially when God has made His mind known on many issues we find in this ’secular realm.’

A few more loose ends here and then we shall finish. Radical Two Kingdomists insist that the kingdom of Christ is concerned with spiritual and eternal affairs and advances by Word and sacrament. First, we will be glad to agree that the Church advances by Word and Sacrament but where we do not agree is the notion of the idea of ’spiritual’ here. It is true that the Kingdom of Christ is concerned about spiritual and eternal affairs but does this mean that Godly economic policy (as one example) is not a spiritual or eternal affair all because it lies in the Radical Two Kingdomist ’secular realm’? What does ’spiritual’ mean for the Radical Two Kingdomists? Does it mean ethereal? Abstract? Non-Concrete? Gnostic? Is the only spiritual part of me my soul or is all of me, both body and soul spiritual? And if all of me, body and soul is spiritual then why can’t it be that all that I do for the glory of God, under the unction of the Spirit, by the authority of the King’s Word is likewise spiritual? I do not believe that the Christian can do any of his actions as less than a pneumatikos being (Spiritual one).

To answer a final objection the Radical Two Kingdomists believe that by applying the Bible to all of life we dilute its effectiveness in its Gospel proclaiming and saving capacity. The thinking goes if you apply the Bible to everything it will not be seen to be good for anything. So, by these lights, if God has a word that applies to the family realm or the educational realm that automatically lessens the authoritativeness of God’s Word in the salvation realm, after all men can’t take serious God’s Word about their souls if they also have to listen to God’s Word about Biblical Education. First, we would say such thinking reveals, again, constricted thinking in terms of what salvation means. It is true that God’s Word is about salvation but it is not a Word that deals only with personal and individual salvation. The salvation Christ brought with him is cosmic and so when you find a word in the Scripture that applies to family life it has the intent of bringing the effects of His salvation that He brings personally to men to their larger corporate lives. There is not bifurcation here between a saving word to the individual in one place and a word that isn’t saving to a particular sphere or realm in another place. All of God’s Words are saving Words and when we live those Words out we experience the fullness of the Salvation that God came to bring.

In the words of Rushdoony, ‘None can be savior who is not also Lord.’
Magnificat
My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my Spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
For He has regarded the lowly state of His maidservant;
For behold, henceforth, all generations will call me blessed.

In Genesis it is Eve who is the main actor of the epochal event named the fall. In God’s recreation that is redemption the second Eve, Mary, is front and center. Mary, is the antithesis of Eve. Mary bows to God’s word (Lk. 1:38) where Eve questioned God’s word (Gen. 3:6). Eve bears sin into God’s garden temple, while Mary is the Christ bearer in God’s work to re-make His garden temple. Eve’s action leads to curse for all who belong to Adam while Mary’s actions leads to blessing for all who belong to the second Adam. The first Eve was taken out of the first Adam and was the source of life for all Adam’s seed. The second Adam is taken from the second Eve and is the source of life for all His people.

It is also interesting as we examine the Magnificat that Mary understands all that is happening as the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham (vs. 55). Hence we see that there is covenant continuity between Genesis 12, 15 & 17 and what is happening to and through Mary. Mary, like Zechariah, does not see discontinuity between old covenant promise and new covenant fulfillment.

Finally, a brief word regarding Mary herself. Protestants typically don’t do the saint thing and for good reason. Still, Mary should be esteemed no differently then any other saint in the Scripture. Certainly she is no co-redemptrix as some Roman Catholics believe and praying to Mary (or any other saint) would be sin but respecting and honoring Mary for her faith is perfectly fitting and proper.

** – An interesting ‘for whatever its worth’ observation.

Most scholars believe it very likely that Mary was very young (between 14-16) when all this happened. Obviously Elizabeth, John the Baptist’s Mother, was well advanced in years (Lk. 1:7). It must have been quite a study in contrast to see this young girl and this older matron both pregnant at the same time. God takes a child who has never known a man and a dried up prune who is past child bearing and takes the things that are not and makes them to bear the greatest prophet in the Old Covenant and the Messiah who gives life to the world.
More On Moreland & To Much Bible
Philosopher and Evangelical Dr. J. P. Moreland goes on is his recent paper to answer the question as to ‘Why are Contemporary Evangelicals Over-committed to the Bible.’

Moreland’s answer is to briefly describe the shift in Western thinking in the 20th century by using the University illustratively. Moreland briefly traces the demise of the University in the 20th century to its abandonment of objective categories that informed all men about the nature of reality (i.e. – Natural Moral Law). Moreland insists that the Evangelical problem of over-commitment to the Bible stems from what he considers a wrong reaction to this shift in 20th century thinking. According to Moreland, Christians abandoned natural moral law theory because academia had putatively proven natural moral law theory wrong. Moreland then contends that the only place for Christians to maneuver to was a over-overcommitment to the Bible. Moreland thus makes his analysis of the over-overcommitment to the Bible to be historical and sociological, believing that Biblically and Theologically Christians had a grand legacy in natural moral law theory. In brief Moreland surmises that the shift to a over-commitment to the Bible by Christians must be accounted for by using other categories then theological or biblical opting to use historical and sociological considerations as lenses to explain the unfortunate overcommitment to the Bible that has arisen.

Before pressing on to more core concerns we must insist that Dr. Moreland’s methodology is questionable. By insisting that historical and sociological tools of analysis are superior tools to answer the question as to ‘Why Evangelicals are over-committed to the Bible’ then Theological tools Moreland is setting up the kind of over-specialization that he later bemoans in his paper. Moreland insists that the curse of the shift in University thinking in the 20th century is that because of the abandonment of the Christian God, who was the source of all truth because He is a single unified mind, the curriculum in Universities no longer had a single integration point and thus Universities became Multi-versities. This resulted in over-specialization where there was little or no relation between one discipline and another as taught at the same University. Now, what I hear Dr. Moreland saying here is that Theology is the Queen of the Sciences and we jettison sanity when we give up the Biblical God. I agree with that but if that is true then why does Dr. Moreland insist that Historical and sociological tools are better fitted to analyze the problem he is considering then Theological tools? If History and sociology are dependent upon Theology (and they are) then the best tool to analyze any sociological or historical problem is a Theological tool. Is Dr. Moreland’s appeal to Historical and Sociological tools as means of analysis over against Theological tools not indicative that he himself has fallen into the over-specialization that he so rightly abjures? Are not sociological shifts beholden to Theological shifts? Dr. Moreland should have given us the Theological reasons why Christians shifted away from a natural-moral law theory and thus became over-committed to the Bible. Dr. Moreland insists that Christians didn’t need to shift to over-commitment to the Bible since they had such a deep history of natural moral law theory to rest in and yet they became over-committed to the Bible. Dr. Moreland gave us the Historical-Sociological reasons for the shift but the question still remains, if we believe in a unified field theory of knowledge; ‘What were the Theological reasons for this shift that has been described historically and sociologically?’ If that question would have been answered then we might have been able to ascertain whether those Theological reasons were Biblical.

Another methodological problem that besets Dr. Moreland’s paper is his failure to realize that the Universities didn’t lose a unified field theory of knowledge. The shift that Dr. Moreland Chronicles in the University life is not a shift from a God who provides a coherent integration of knowledge to no god but rather it was a shift from a God who provides a coherent integration of knowledge to a god who provides a incoherent integration of knowledge. God is an inescapable category and the fleeing from the God of the Bible is not a fleeing into nothing but rather a fleeing into the arms of some other god or god concept. So whereas the God of the Bible provided coherence precisely because every academic discipline was beholden to His interpretation of reality the new god of the University system yielded incoherence precisely because it was the god of humanism where each discipline is beholden to the law word of the sovereign individual who has the most clout in any one of the Universities departments. This kind of campus god created chaos as potentially the Romanticists could own the literature department and the Marxists the economics department and the Transcendentalists the politics department and the Existentialists the philosophy department and the Augustinians the Theology department, etc. etc. etc. It may be seen as quibbling but the University retains a unified field theory of knowledge and that unified field theory is that only in chaos can we find a genuine unified field theory. This is embraced because the god the University has embraced is the author of confusion. The chief reason I make this observation is so as to insist that Theology remains the queen of the sciences at the University today – a very bad theology but theology still.

It is at this point that we should return to Natural moral law theory. Dr. Moreland contends that Natural moral law theory should have never been abandoned by Christians but this assertion doesn’t seem to take into account a Christian Natural moral law theory only makes sense inside of a Christian World view. For example, it might be argued that the logical positivists who pushed the fact vs. value distinction had a Natural moral law theory of their own. They held that it was self-evident (a key component of Natural moral law theory) that fact vs. value was true and that no religion (except their own) had cognitive features that needed to be taken seriously. What Dr. Moreland hasn’t seemed to discover is that Natural moral law theory really didn’t go away but rather what was seen as being taught by nature was that nature taught that all there is, is nature. The point is that in many respects we have not moved away from Natural moral law theory but rather have transitioned to a Natural moral law theory that is consistent with pagan beliefs and Theology. Dr. Moreland doesn’t seem to realize that Natural Moral law theory is only as good as the presuppositions with which it begins. If Natural moral Law theory begins with the presupposition that the God of the Bible is then the Natural moral Law theory that we end up with will be broadly Christian. Conversely, if the Natural moral law theory begins with the presupposition that God is a non-cognitive value then the Natural moral law theory that we end up with will be broadly pagan. At this point, even at the cost of being over-committed to the Bible, the only point of appeal is God’s Word.

Dr. Moreland ends this section by saying,

By and large, Evangelicals responded during this shift by withdrawing from the broader world of ideas, developing a view of faith that was detached from knowledge and reason, and limiting truth and belief about God, theology and morality to the inerrant Word of God, the Bible. If I am right about this, then Evangelical over-commitment to the Bible is a result of the influence of secularization on the church and not of biblical or theological reflection.

First, it would have been helpful if Dr. Moreland could have given some names of who those who withdrew from the broader world of ideas. Second, one wonders if Dr. Moreland considers any Christian who disavowed Natural moral law theory as one who developed a view of faith that was detached from knowledge and reason. Third, it seems that Dr. Moreland defines ‘knowledge and reason’ in keeping with a Thomistic model. Fourth, any theory of Natural moral law that is disconnected to the the question of presuppositions is defective and will never get off the ground. Fifth, Dr. Moreland doesn’t seem to take into account that Christians may have retreated from Natural moral law theory because they began to realize the implications of what it means for the unbeliever to suppress the truth in unrighteousness and they began to appreciate that a proper understanding of general revelation (that which Natural moral law theory is pinned to) is only as good as a right understanding of special revelation.

Criticism on Moreland’s Third and final point later.
The Huckster
huck·ster (hkstr) – (n.) One who uses aggressive, showy, and sometimes devious methods to promote or sell a product.

“Huckabee is on a roll, he has gotten an enormous amount of publicity and he is doing very well with conservatives, who at least for now appear to have found a candidate.”

John Zogby
Pollster

Captain Obvious here reporting that Mike Huckabee is no conservative. Huckabee is just another neo-conservative, big government, tax and spend, pro-immigration, pro-global warming, felon loving politician, who embarrassingly enough is an ex preacher who ‘loves Jesus.’

Huckabee is a piece of work who is to clever for his own good. First, he ‘innocently’ asks, ‘aren’t Mormons the ones who believe Jesus and Satan are brothers(?),’ thus sending a subtle message to all the Jesus people that they don’t want to vote for a Mormon stupid guy when they can vote for a Christian stupid guy. Following that number he runs a Television add where in 30 seconds he mentions Christ or God or Christmas four times while a cross is subtly displayed in the background, thus, once again shouting to people, “I’m the Jesus candidate, I’m the Jesus candidate.”

Would anyone mind telling me how this guy gets counted as a conservative, never mind a ‘Christian?’ Ok, Ok … I can accept that he is a really immature Christian who doesn’t yet realize that biblically speaking the State has the unique role of providing Justice and not subsidizing the poor, releasing rapists, or stopping carbon emissions.

Quite beyond the problems of Mike Huckabee would anyone care to further explain why Christians get taken in by this pablum? Some guy rolls into town, proclaims he is a former Baptist minister, and suddenly his poll numbers spike because many of the local yahoos – I mean ministers – return back to their churches telling the pew sitters they should vote for the Jesus candidate. It’s all very depressing.

Finally, to top things off you have an organization like HSLDA who is supposed to know better come out and endorse the Huckster. I still can’t figure out why this organization would do that and makes me sad that I’ve paid good money to support this organization over the years. Don’t all home-schoolers teach that Big Government is bad? Don’t all home-schoolers teach that government isn’t the solution but rather government is the problem? Can’t HSLDA connect the dots between what might be best for them short term and might not be what is best for the country long term.

Please don’t vote for Huckabee because he is the Jesus candidate. Give Jesus a break and find some other nonsense reason to vote for the Huckster.
The Myth of Multi-culturalism and the Myths That Support It
“Every culture and society exudes a certain convictional glue, an undergirding outlook on life and reality that preserves its cohesiveness. When that adhesive bond deteriorates, the sense of shared community tends to come apart at the seams. Recent modern thinkers define this bond of conceptualities or value-constellations as myth, that is, man’s representation of the transcendent or divine in human or earthly terms.”

Carl F. H. Henry
God, Revelation, and Authority
Vol. I, pg. 44

And herein is found the lie of multi-culturalism if by multi-culturalism one believes that one contiguous society can be sustained by a plethora of competing outlooks on life and reality which preserves its cohesiveness. The great lie of the push of all things multi-cultural is that in point of fact multi-culturalism is an attempt to create a mono-culture with all the attendant adhesive bonds and convictional glue that all shared communities share. The current multiculutural project in the West is every bit as homogeneous as the shared Muslim culture of Saudi Arabia or the shared Shinto culture of Japan. There is no more tolerance in the mono-culture of multi-culturalism then there is in the mono-culture of say Pakistan or India.

This reality explains why clear expressions of Christianity are so hated by the multi-culturalists. Epistemologically self-conscious Christians (herein after referred to as Es-cC)are a threat to moderns who desire a mono-culture built upon the myths of multi-culturalism. Es-cC attack the convictional glue that holds together the multi-cultural project identifying and labeling it as the idolatry that it is. The great problem with the Church in the West today is that it doesn’t understand that it is defining its Christianity within the pagan paradigm and by the unbelieving parameters of multi-culturalism. This is not the first time that this type of thing has happened in the history of the Church. B. B. Warfield commenting on the first century Church and its penchant for the superstitious noted,

“The fundamental fact which should be borne in mind is that Christianity, in coming into the world, came into a heathen world. It found itself, as it made its way ever more deeply into the world, ever more deeply immersed in a heathen atmosphere which was heavy with miracle. This heathen atmosphere, of course, penetrated it at every pore, and affected its interpretation of existence in all the happenings of daily life. It was not merely, however, that Christians could not be immune from the infection of the heathen modes of thought prevalent about them. It was that the Church was itself recruited from the heathen community. Christians were themselves but baptized heathen, and brought their heathen conceptions into the church with them little changed in all that was not obviously at variance with their Christian confession. He that was unrighteous, by the grace of God did not do unrighteousness still; nor did he that was filthy remain filthy still. But he that was superstitious remained superstitious still; and he who lived in a world of marvels looked for and found marvels happening about him still. In this sense the conquering church was conquered by the world which it conquered.”

The point of contact between Warfield’s observations about first century Christianity and its culture of superstition and the observation about 21st century Christianity in the West and its embracing of the ethos of multi-culturalism is that in both cases the Church was guilty then and is guilty now of re-enforcing, instead of challenging, the prevailing idolatry du jour. A genuinely muscular Church would in no way countenance official faith pluralism, or political polytheism as the means by which the mono-culture of multi-culturalism is built and sustained in the West. Those who are Es-cC will sense that they are pilgrims and strangers in this current culture and will struggle in finding a cultural harmony with those (’Christian’ or otherwise) who have embraced the adhesive bond and convictional glue that binds the adherents of the multi-cultural cult together.

When considering the mono-culture of multiculturalism we should ask what are the adhesive bonds and convictional glue that holds this culture together. Phrasing it another way, per the quote of Henry, we are asking what is the guiding myth that provides cohesion for multi-culturalism. There might be several ways to answer that question but this is what I see as the elements of stickiness in the convictional glue that hold the multi-culturalism of the West together.

1.) All gods are welcome and indeed beckoned as long as they know and keep their place. Any gods (save the god of multi-culturalism) who intends to create a culture that is consistent with his tenets and precepts is a god that must be banned as intolerant.

2.) Because all gods are equal, therefore all individuals are equal and because all individuals are equal therefore all ethnicities are equal and because all ethnicities are equal therefore all cultures are equal. In the multi-cultural myth there is no better or worse. No shade of differences in ethnic or cultural or individual inherent talent or ability. All are inherently equally smart, inherently equally athletic, inherently equally verbal, etc.

3.) Because order must be maintained all the gods must have a God who define the limits of how far the gods can go. This god of the Gods is the State in whom we live and move and have our being.

4.) People do not belong to a place or time but are interchangeable parts who can be shifted around on the global chessboard without consequence or damage to them or the place or time where they are transplanted. Nationality or ethnicity is not a reality but is only an idea that can be changed like eye-shadow.

5.) The ultimate destination is a world-community utopia where people are all of one tongue and one lip.

6.)Freedom and democracy are the ultimate values but it is a freedom and a democracy defined in a multi-cultural pagan paradigm. This leaves us a freedom to serve our gods as long as we don’t take them seriously and a democracy that is defined as voting for the kind of freedom just defined.

All of this needs to be kept in mind by Americans who are Christians. We believers need to realize that when we mindlessly support American domestic and international policy we are very likely supporting the advance of a culture that is in anti-thesis to the culture that would be normally created by a stoutly informed Biblical Christian faith.
The Problem of Evil II
Dear Freddy,

I hope to be able to wrap up answering your question regarding the problem of evil with this post. I have been laboring to show how Scripture sets forth God’s absolute sovereignty. Today I am going to try and show how God’s absolute sovereignty neither makes God the author of evil (though we admit He is the cause of evil) while at the same time making the case that God’s absolute sovereignty doesn’t take away human responsibility or human free agency.

Now we turn to the issue of the will. Libertarian ‘Freedom of the will’ (the ability to choose or not choose options based quite apart from any consideration of God’s predestining will)was introduced into Christian Theology in the attempt to rescue God from the charge of being ‘not nice’ or ‘not fair’ as well as to try and make room for human culpability. We have seen already that the problem with absolute human free will is that where humans have a freedom that is independent of God the result is that God’s Freedom is sacrificed with the further result that man is given a sovereignty over God’s sovereignty.

Some contend that it is better to craft a theology that denies what Scripture teaches on God’s omnipotence if the cost of following what Scripture teaches on God’s omnipotence is that men can not be held responsible for their evil actions. Those who reason this way, reason that it is better to degrade God to a finite level who, like Mick and the boys, ‘can’t always get what he wants’ then it is to have a theology that putatively undermines human responsibility.

So Freddy, how do Biblical Christians avoid the charge that the Biblical doctrine makes puppets out of men? Well first we contend that God’s work of predestination upon men is not physical in the way that that planets are predestined to follow their orbits. Biblical Christians do not believe in a kind of materialistic determinism. Biblical Christians do believe that the natural liberty of the will consists in freedom from this kind of physical necessity. Our wills and the choices arising from our wills is not determined as the planetary motions are. However, their are other kinds of determinism then materialistic determinism. We can speak of a psychological determinism that allows us to deny free will while at the same time speaking of a natural liberty. This observation frees us from any idea that Biblical Christians believe that men are stocks and stones who act by compulsion, though we are still able to embrace the idea that all that men do they do by necessity.

Let us discuss that distinction for a moment. Remember this is all in pursuance of embracing what the Scripture teaches concerning the absolute sovereignty of God while answering at the same time how this affirmation leaves men as free human agents (which is different than saying that men has free human wills).

We have said that Biblical Christians deny the idea that all things happen by compulsion while affirming that all things happen by necessity. What is the difference? Necessity is defined as that by which whatever comes to pass cannot but come to pass, and comes to pass in no other way than it does. The reason that we introduce this distinction between compulsion and necessity is so that we may see that predestination can be affirmed while at the same time affirming that men remain free human agents who are not puppets. To say that all things happen by the infallible certainty of a predestining necessity gives us both a high doctrine of God’s sovereignty while at the same time allowing that humans can be held responsible for their actions. Such a distinction allows us both to affirm that Judas acted voluntarily and without compulsion in betraying Jesus and yet remains the son of perdition who was predestined from eternity past to be the traitor that had to be present in order for prophetic Scripture to be fulfilled (John 17:12).

So, what we are seeking to do here is to make a distinction between free human agency and libertarian free will, the former which we embrace the latter which we reject as un-biblical since it teaches that there is no determining factor, including God, which operates on the human will. Free will means that either of two incompatible choices are equally possible while free human agency acknowledges that all choices are inevitable and yet the choices made are made by agents who themselves desire what they choose.

You see free agency teaches voluntary action and this every Biblical Christian believes. Every Biblical Christian believes that all men make choices wherein they consciously initiate and determine a further action. A choice is a deliberate and conscious volition on the part of the chooser even if the chooser could not have chosen differently. Biblical Christians believe that Judas acted voluntarily without the kind of compulsion by which a puppet acts, while at the same time believing that what Judas chose happened by necessity and was predestined from eternity past. Judas had a will. Judas used his will in a way to make a choice. Judas’ will however was not acting independently of God’s will, though it was acting contrary to God’s commands and as such Judas is responsible to God for his sin against God’s command because Judas was the sole author of his action – a action that in God’s sovereignty could not have been other than it was. Judas’ choice (like all human choices) was a deliberate volition on the part of the chooser, even if it could not have been different.

Now in protest some will object against the idea of necessity at this point claiming that they know that their will is absolutely free because they do not sense any necessity informing it. This is a short-sighted protest. There are many common things that influence our will without us being conscious of it. When we have been up 36 hours straight our wills are affected by exhaustion. The actions of our wills are different after going 4 days without food then they would be if we were making choices after a Thanksgiving feast. All education is predicated on the reality that the will is not absolutely free and can be trained and molded. Do we really believe that our wills are free from all outside influence? Do we really believe that we have enough knowledge of what outside influences are working on our wills in order to bend them in the direction that they are bent? If little matters like lack of sleep, or lack of food, or training, or external conditions can delimit the notion of libertarian free will then why are we so insulted at the notion that the sovereign God delimits our free will, when scripture clearly teaches that He does (Proverbs 21:1)?

In the end, humans assert libertarian free will, but it is an assertion quite beyond their ability to know. In order for men to know they have this kind of freedom of the will they would have to know and be conscious of every kind of influence in the entire universe and this would require omniscience. Their assertion of libertarian free will is really a manifestation of God’s determining will that they would believe that which is not possible.

Now, we move on to the issue of responsibility. Some would contend that free will is the basis of men being responsible to God but Scripture seems to teach otherwise. Romans 1 seems to indicate that one foundation of men being responsible before God is that they acted against a better knowledge,

“For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they(AN) became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools…”

But Freddy, Scripture also teaches that we are responsible to God for reasons beyond our actions and beyond the suppressing of what we know to be true and are yet held responsible for knowing. Scripture also teaches that quite beyond our choices (free or otherwise) men are held responsible before God because Adam’s sin has been imputed to them (reckoned to their account). Men are accountable to God because of Adam’s sin as Romans 5 (esp. vs. 19) teaches. Adam was our covenant head and when Adam acted we acted in Adam, and so when Adam sinned we sinned in Adam and became guilty with our Father Adam, so that it is just and proper for God to be displeased with us and hold us responsible if only because we are Adam’s seed. Now, typically, most Christians will insist that this is not any more fair of God than not giving men libertarian Free will but fortunately truth isn’t arrived at by counting noses.

So, we have seen a couple reasons why God’s predestining will is not inconsistent with human responsibility. Humans are still free agents even if they don’t have absolutely libertarian free will and consistent with that we have seen that the necessity of something happening is not the same as those necessary things happening by compulsion. Free human agents earnestly and genuinely pursue what God has willed and so remain the author of their evil decisions.

Let us press on to look at another reason why it remains just for God to judge those who have necessarily walked contrary to His divine commands. It is just of God to hold men responsible for their actions simply because God is God. Scripture teaches that God is just in all His ways (Psalm 145:17). Whatever God does is just, if only for the reason that He does it. Was it unjust of God to harden Pharaoh’s heart? Was it unjust of God to hate Esau before He was born? Was it unjust of God to plague Job? Was it unjust of God to carry Joseph to Egypt by way of slavery, bondage, and mistreatment? Was it unjust of God to ordain the cruel death of His Son? Why should we think that the sense of justice that belongs to fallen men has a right to condemn He who is by definition always just all the time? Scripture teaches us that God is just. How could we ever charge Him with injustice? Shall the clay say to the potter, ‘you’re not just because you made me this way?’ So, we are saying that it is just of God to hold men responsible for their actions of necessity because God says that all of His ways are righteous.

There is another thing we might say at this point Freddy that could help with our sense of outrage over the very real cruelties we see in this world. All of us at times struggle with evil. There have been times in the ministry where I have seen it face to face. The funeral of a infant killed by its parents. The death of a suicide victim. The long misery of an ugly cancer. The abuse of a child or woman by a man. I have seen, wept, and agonized over a great deal of the evil for which men rage at God, and the sum of what I have seen has not left me without scars nor has it left me unchanged. By God’s grace, however, I don’t rage at God and charge Him with fault, but trust in His goodness, for He has taught me, and I accept by Faith, that God has a morally sufficient reason for the evil that exists. Now, I don’t know what that reason is but I accept, because of the testimony of Scripture, that God is good and just in all of His ways and so I believe, by faith, that God has a morally sufficient reason for all the wickedness and evil that people can name. In the end Freddy, if, in order for God to be just, His sovereignty must be limited, why would I worship or trust such a divine being? If God isn’t absolutely sovereign than I would be better served by arming myself to the teeth and trusting myself since a non-sovereign God isn’t much help in a tight situation.

I hope we have said enough to show that God is not the author of sin while still remaining the cause of sin. What I mean by this Freddy is that since God is the cause of all that is (Romans 11:36) we affirm that God must be the cause of all evil. However, all because God is the cause of all evil, does not mean He is the author of all evil. We can say that because Scripture clearly teaches the idea of secondary causes. If I knock a cup of Tea off my desk and it spills into my computer thus destroying it I might hold gravity accountable (dumb gravity, if it didn’t exist the cup would not have fallen) or I might hold whoever placed the cup on my desk accountable (dumb person put that tea in a place it didn’t belong) or I might hold myself accountable (dumb me, I should have been more careful). All of these realities were causes but the most natural idea is to hold myself responsible as the author of my spillage. Similarly when we say that God is not the author of sin we mean that God is not directly responsible for the wicked actions of free human agents. Men themselves remain the immediate cause of their sins and so remain the author of their sin but all because men are the author of their sin doesn’t mean that there aren’t other causes and since God is the ultimate cause of everything and nothing could exist except that God caused it we must say that God is the cause of evil without being the author of evil.

Now, we have spent some time on this and perhaps I have given you more then you could have wanted. Still, in order to be direct let me turn to your questions one last time and give you a direct answer the brevity of which can be understood in light of all that has now been said.

You asked,

“If God created the heavens and earth why did he create sin?”

The answer is that God created the Devil who instigated sin because He determined that by creating such a being as the Devil He would gain more glory than by not creating a being such as the Devil.

You also asked,

“If He didn’t create sin then why did He allow the possibility of sin?”

The answer is that He not only allowed for the possibility of sin but He also determined that it would exist and He did so in order that men might marvel at His greatness.

Please forgive me if I have given you to much. If you have any further questions I would be pleased if you would ask them.

Pastor Bret
There is no 'I' in Ego
“Plagued by anxiety, depression, vague discontents, a sense of inner emptiness, the ‘psychological man’ of the twentieth century seeks neither individual self-aggrandizement nor spiritual transcendence but peace of mind, under conditions that increasingly militate against it. Therapists not priests, or popular preachers of self-help or models of success like the captains of industry, become his principal allies in the struggle for composure; he turns to them in the hope of achieving the modern equivalent of salvation, ‘mental health.’ Therapy has establish itself as the successor both to rugged individualism and to religion; but this does not mean that the ‘triumph of the therapeutic’ has become a new religion in its own right. Therapy constitutes an anti-religion, not always to be sure because it adheres to rational explanation or scientific methods of healing, as its practitioners would have us believe, but because modern society ‘has no future’ and therefore gives no thought to anything beyond its immediate needs. Even when therapists speak f the need for ‘meaning’ and ‘love,’ they define love and meaning simply as the fulfillment of the patient’s emotional requirements. It hardly occurs to them – nor is there any reason why it should, given the nature of the therapeutic enterprise – to encourage the subject to subordinate his needs and interests to those of others, to someone or some cause or tradition outside himself. ‘Love’ as self-sacrifice or self-abasement, ‘meaning’ as submission to a higher loyalty – these sublimations strikes the therapeutic sensibility as intolerably oppressive, offensive to common sense and injurious to personal health and well being. To liberate humanity from such outmoded ideas of love and duty has become the mission of the post-Freudian therapies and particularly of their converts and popularizers, for whom mental health means the overthrow of inhibitions and the immediate gratification of every impulse.”

Christopher Lasch
The Culture Of Narcissism – pg. 13

Several things to note regarding this quote,

1.) Lasch’s point denying that the triumph of the Psychological, while replacing religion, is not a religion, is based upon the observation that Therapeutic man has no teleology. Whereas religions and ideologies speak of future conditions to which man is moving (be it Heaven, or Nirvana, or Utopia, etc.) therapeutic man embraces a substitute religion whose goal is not some future state, but rather, teleologically speaking, only has the modest goal of making its worshipers properly adjusted to the here and now. Now, Lasch is correct about Therapeutic man having no teleology, classically speaking, but He is wrong in suggesting that the absolutization of the Therapeutic is not a religion or is, in his words, an anti-religion. Lasch would have been more correct to note that ‘Psychologicalism’ is the anti-religion religion. Because it has no transcendent, its teleology is completely imminent with the results that man needs not to move towards a higher and better destination because this life is the higher and better destination. Teleology has not been removed from the religion of Psychologism, but rather it has been realized. Psychologism is the religion of modern man, it’s Priests, as Lasch notes, are the ubiquitous therapists, it’s Temples masquerading as local Schools, Universities, Corporate Headquarters, area Churches and Government buildings, it affords its sacraments in its confessional booth and in its personality tests, it provides catechism sessions to countless Freshman orientation classes across the country, as well as the employee meetings that corporate Human Resources organizes for its company employees, and its salvation – the same salvation that the serpent offered to Eve, is found in the ascendancy of the sovereign self.

2.) Lasch subtly suggests that Psychologism is not as rational nor as scientifically grounded as it holds itself to be. Indeed, Psychology is a faith discipline that originally, in its modern embodiment, was developed in order to provide insights into the individual quite apart from the reality of God. The denial of God is the presupposition that it was originally rooted in, and any rationality that it aspires to, is only the rationality of a system that defines the beginning of rationality as being apart from God. Except in a few rare cases, Psychology remains a anti-Christ discipline, to often propped up as legitimate in the Church by Christian practitioners who have not understood the anti-theistic basis of their chosen discipline. The real danger of Psychologism is that it is ever seen as being ’scientific.’ It’s lifeblood of existence is its sundry personality tests which by their very design makes man, in his corporate expression, the measure of what is normal, which is a most curious thing for any Christian to accept. The Science of Psychologism amounts to taking subjective surveys and turning those subjective results into objective measuring standards by reifying the abstract numbers and pretending that they have concrete existence and that they mean something. In short, the tests and their results become the transcendent point of reference by which Psychologism measures people. This is nothing but finding truth by counting noses, and it is an embarrassment to God’s people that the church has so readily glommed on to this idolatrous humanistic methodology as seen by the introduction of Psychologism into the ordination process and the missionary candidate schools. Lasch was correct to hint that Psychologism is neither rational nor scientifically driven. It remains today as legitimate as it was when it started with phrenologists feeling the bumps on peoples heads in order to gain personality insights.

3.) It’s ascendancy, as Lasch hints at, is to create a culture of self-centered, childish, whiny and weak people whose greatest goal in life is to be seen as a victim. Out of its concern for personal health and well-being it has contributed to our culture of political correctness where the apex of propriety is to be sensitive and so not offend anybody by saying anything that anybody would find offensive for any reason. Those who will not play by its rules will discover that like all Worldviews it will destroy others in order to protect itself.

Anyway … I have only finished the first few chapters of Lasch’s work, and already I would recommend it for those who desire insights into our current culture. I have read several of Lasch’s work, and I have not found him yet to be disappointing.
They left this out of Uncle Tom's Cabin
They belong to us. We also belong to them. They are divided out among us and mingled up with us, and we with them in a thousand ways. They live with us, eating from the same store-houses, drinking from the same fountains, dwelling in the same enclosures, forming parts of the same families. Our mothers confide us, when infants, to their arms, and sometimes to the very milk of their breasts. Their children [grow up with us] and then, either they stand weeping by our bedside, or we drop a tributary tear by theirs… There they are– behold them. See them all around you, in these streets, in all these dwellings; a race distinct from us, brought into God’s mysterious providence from a foreign land, and placed under our care, and made members of our households. They fill the humblest places in our state and society; they serve us, they give us their strength, yet they are not more truly ours than we are truly theirs.

~ quoted from James O. Farmer The Metaphysical Confederacy pg. 210

The history of the ante-bellum South is a complex matter that our history has simplified to the point of painfulness, and the reason it needs to be re-examined is that as long as we mindlessly excoriate the ante-bellum South in our thinking we end up missing that which was virtuous from the culture those Americans built.
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Culture

Christopher Dawson -- Religion & The Totalitarian State -- Part II
Dawson now pursues some questions for the Christian in light of living under a totalitarian state.

1.) What then is the position of the religious man and the religious society under these new political circumstances?

2.) How far does this new political development threaten the spiritual liberty which is essential to religion?

3.) Ought the Church condemn the totalitarian state in itself and prepare itself for resistance to the secular power and for persecution?

4.)Should the Church ally itself with the political and social forces that are hostile to the new state?

5.) Should the Church limit its resistance to cases of state interference in ecclesiastical matters on in theological questions?

6.) Are the new forms of authority and political organization reconcilable in principle with Christian ideas and are the issues that divide Church and State accidental and temporary ones which are extraneous to the essential nature of the new political development?

Dawson offers a few principles to answers these questions.

1.) We must distinguish between Spiritual freedom and political and economic freedom.

Dawson insists that it is possible to be spiritually free but politically and economically enslaved while at the same time he insists that it is also possible to be politically and economically free but spiritually free.

We must agree with this. There are many Christians around the world who live in political and economic oppression but who are free because they are in Christ. Similarly there are countries which were shaped by the categories of a fading Christendom who still know something of political and economic freedom though a large segment of their population is spiritually dead.

We would qualify our agreement with Dawson by insisting that whenever a large minority in any given social order really knows what it means to be spiritually free there soon will follow a movement for political and economic freedom. Similarly we would add that wherever a social order knows economic and political freedom without a substantial minority of citizens knowing spiritual freedom that social order’s freedoms as in peril of collapsing.

So, while we concede that spiritual freedom and economic freedom do not always exist together we would insist that there is a relationship between these freedoms.

Dawson finishes this section by citing how aspects of parliamentary democracy and economic individualism were opposed to Christian principles yet managed to survive together.

2.) Distinctions must be made between different types of totalitarianism.

Communistic totalitarianism has an obvious and apparently irreducible opposition to Christianity. This is due to the philosophy that lies behind communism which amounts to a religion that is in competition to Christianity. Dawson cites a communist poster that read,

“Jesus promised the people Paradise after death, but Lenin promised them Paradise on earth.”

Analysis – Dawson begins well with this observation but he fails by not applying this observation all across the line. All totalitarian governments offer the people its totalitarian arrangement as a religion and all totalitarian governments offer the Kingdom of man in lieu of the Kingdom of God. Dawson suggests that Fascism, unlike Communism, has not always been overtly hostile to religion. Dawson seems to realize though that while Communism sought to crush Christianity through overt opposition, Fascism has sought to crush Christianity through co-opting it through a process whereby the Fascist State re-defines Christianity in the Fascist totalitarian direction.

In a paragraph worthy of being proclaimed a spot on analysis in 2009 in America, Dawson commented on what he saw of the future in 1934 saying,

“What attitude will such a (Fascist) state adopt towards Christianity and the Christian churches? I do not believe that it will be anti-Christian in the Russian sense, or that it will be inspired by any conscious hostility to religion…. The new (Fascist) state will will be universal and omni-competent. It will mold the mind and guide the life of its citizens from the cradle to the grave. It will not tolerate any interference with its education functions by any sectarian organization, even though the latter is based on religious convictions. And this is the more serious, since the introduction of psychology into education has made the schoolmaster a spiritual guide as well as a trainer of the mind. In fact it seems to as though the school of the future must increasingly usurp the functions that the Church exercised in the past, and that the teaching profession will take the place of the clergy as the spiritual power of the future.

Dawson goes on to say,

“Nor will the state confine its education activities to the training of the young. It will more and more tend to control public opinion in general by its organs of instruction and propaganda in this country….It is obvious that a Totalitarian State … cannot afford to leave so great a power of influencing public opinion in the private hands, and the fact that the control of the popular press and of the film industry is often in unworthy hands gives the state a legitimate excuse to intervene. The whole tendency of modern civilization is to concentrate the control of opinion in a few hands.”

Dawson goes on to say that here is where the danger to Christianity lies. The danger to Christianity lies not in the possibility of violent persecution but rather the danger to Christianity lies in the possibility of such a pervasive and subtle control of the state crushing historic Christianity from modern life by the sheer weight of state inspired and controlled public opinion and by the mass organization of society on a basis that is not in the least Christian.

Dawson quotes Julian Huxley who noted that the coming conflict is not one between religion and secular civilization but rather ‘between the God religious and the social religious’ – in other words between the worship of God and the cult of the state or of the race or of humanity.

Analysis – Dawson writing in 1934 has described where we have come to today. The church has been subtly put off her game and has, for the most part, become a pale reflection of the culture created by the Fascist state. Christian who now rail against the state are now in the position of having to rail against the church as well.

Dawson insists that Christians cannot combat this reality through politics. Dawson insists that Christians must combat this via a spiritual strength. Dawson suggests that the totalitarian state will only be brought down as Christians realize that their attack on the social order created by the totalitarian state must be indirect. Christians must understand the problems created by the totalitarian state can only be solved by reorienting men religiously. The Church’s essential duty towards the State and the world is to bear witness to the truth that is in her.

Analysis – The totalitarian state can only be brought to its end by introducing a King who has superior claims over men then the state does and who is sovereign over the state. One ripple effect of the Gospel successfully going forward is when men give all their allegiance to Christ as they understand that Christ has provided a full salvation that the state can only promise. Preaching the Gospel is what it means to indirectly attack the totalitarian state. If the Holy Spirit frees men from their spiritual bondage and slavery men will desire the physical shackles and slavery to the state come to an end.

A biblical evangelism then is the answer to the totalitarian state. However, it must be an evangelism that identifies the false gods and calls people to give up the false gods for the one true God. The largest idol (false god) in our age is the totalitarian state. The totalitarian state is a reified, magnified, and idealized version of the individual and when as such when people comply with the totalitarian state they are in essence worshiping themselves. Only Christ can cause the idols to fall.

Dawson ends by saying,

“A secularist culture can only exist, so to speak, in the dark. It is a prison in which the human spirit confines itself when it is shut out of the wider world of reality. But as soon as the light comes, all the elaborate mechanism that has been constructed for living in the dark becomes useless. The recovery of spiritual vision gives man back his spiritual freedom. And hence the freedom of the Church is in the faith of the Church and the freedom of man is in the knowledge of God.”
Label-phobia, Non-Labelism, or Un-Labelism
Recently, I am interacting w/ one of the Ph.D’s at my college Alma Mater. Dr. Schenck and I are about as polar opposite as one can imagine in our belief systems and our notions about the nature of reality. Recently, he wrote a brief bit about the dangers of “labelism” that you can read below. It suspiciously reads like it was a treatise born of a liberal and post-modern agenda. Now, certainly some of what Dr. Schenck wrote was true. It is absolutely true that we all need to be careful about hasty generalizations, false compositions, and false divisions. However his piece struck me as one that could as easily been written concerning the opposite dangers of “Label-phobia” (my new word to be submitted to the Webster Dictionary people) to describe many of Dr. Schenck’s positions.

I interact w/ Dr. Schenck’s material because I still have a soft spot for the Wesleyans in my heart. Nothing will ever change how much the Wesleyans did for me in my first 22 years of life. As such, I’d like them to be as orthodox as it is possible for Wesleyans to be. Dr. Schenck is dragging them away from that Wesleyan orthodoxy.

I am coming to have a growing admiration for Dr. Schenck for I find him to be a person who can get my creative juices flowing. Perhaps, I am finding in him a muse?”

Dr, Schenck wrote,

I have a suggestion for a new word for the dictionary:

labelism: The tendency to skew diverse particular ideas, events, people, and so forth by grouping them under overly generalized labels in the service of argument.

Examples:

* Those who favor women in ministry are liberals because radical feminists push for equal rights and pay for women.

* True conservatives are opposed to gun control because gun control is generally pushed by Democrats.

* Allowing the government to manage some area of its citizens’ life shows that we are becoming socialist like China.

* Taxing us to support the health care of the elderly shows that we are becoming communist like the Soviet Union.

* Making decisions that are unpopular shows that President Obama is a Fascist like Hitler.

* You can’t believe in the idea that Mark was a source for Matthew and Luke because that is an idea that comes from higher criticism.

* The students at Oberlin were transcendentalists like Emerson who didn’t believe in a personal God because they put a high emphasis on religious feeling like the Romantics.

All these statements are logically fallacious, even though they are the stuff of common rhetoric. They take diverse realia and oversimplify them because the human mind has difficulty processing complexity.

Logical fallacies involved: 1) hasty generalization, where differences between one observation and a general conclusion are ignored in the midst of argument; 2) fallacy of composition, where a whole is assumed to have certain characteristics because some parts have certain characteristics; and 3) fallacy of division, where all parts of something are assumed to all have certain characteristics because of some characteristic of the whole.

Explanation: The human mind is generally unable to process large amounts of particular facts without grouping them together into schemata, as Piaget called them. In deductive reasoning, where all the data can be accounted for and where all the data is usually of a simple nature, universal groupings can be fully coherent.

In inductive thinking, however, which is the nature of our lives in the world, all the data can rarely be accounted for, and the data is almost never a simple nature. People, events, and various other particular data are extremely complex and interwoven together. Simple ideas thus can hardly represent them without skew of some kind.

Beware of generalizations bearing fallacies! The Devil is in the details.”

Bret responds,

I have a suggestion for a new word for the dictionary:

Label-phobia: The tendency to skew related particular ideas, events, people, and so forth by refusing to properly generalize them in order to put them in the service of argument.

Further, this would be the state or condition of refusing to see patterns or the refusal to speak in generalities unless 100% compliance was held in each and every generality. Un-labelism or Non-Labelism or Label-phobia would flinch at Universals preferring instead to see the world only in terms of mass and total differentiated individuation. Label-phobia, Un-labelism or Non-labelism would be something consistent w/ a kind of post-modern reading of reality where, if universals exist, they only exist on a (you guessed it) an individual by individual basis.

Examples of such would be,

* A refusal to label those who hold to women in ministry as “liberal” since the un-labelists refuses to see that generally speaking people who embrace women in office also embrace a confluence of other liberal positions.

* A refusal to label Obama as a Marxist even though his past associations, his past employment, his administration appointments and his current actions all testify that Obama is a Marxist.

* A refusal to label the current government as socialist even though there has been a long and decided trend in US government (which has displayed Fabian waxing and waning) for 100 years. This refusal to label is defiant even in the most egregious of evidence to the contrary such as the State taking over much of the Financial infrastructure, the Auto industry, the health industry and the student loan industry.

* A refusal to identify and label neo-orthodoxy and higher criticism even when people clearly embrace a distinction between geschicte and heilgeschicte.

* A refusal to label the Oberlin College of the 19th century as Transcendentalist even though Finney had clearly drank deeply from the Transcendental / Romanticist zeitgeist. (Indeed, so deeply had the man quaffed from the spirit of the age that when you read his systematic theology you realize that it is all ethics and no grace. All what man does and none of what God does. There is no personal God in Finney’s theology.)

All this refusal to label might be seen as endemic to the post-modern mind which refuses to see universals or organize material into universal universals. Indeed, label-phobia might be seen as the mark of the post-modern.

Beware the refusal to generalize, and to label and recognize the presence of the Universal. The devil would love for us to be forever knowing but never coming to the Truth.

Beware of non-labelists or Un-labelists who create words like “labelism” in order to demonize those who do not have a post-modern bent mind.

Simple ideas such as label-phobia can hardly represent truth without skewing of some kind.
Rice Christians ... Rice Americans
Historically, in the history of Christian Missions, any individual or people groups of an indigenous culture that the Missionaries were serving in that converted to Christian just for the advantages that Christianity brought were often referred to as a “Rice Christians.” Often times these conversions were in name only as attachments to the previous religion that they were thought to have left was retained in subtle ways and so the label “Rice Christians” became a pejorative. Basically the reality of “Rice Christians” was that their loyalty to Christ was purchased at the price of social or material advantage. Once that social or material advantage went into eclipse so did their loyalty to Christ.

Today in our current climate I am convinced that something like this is happening in America in reference to the religion of statism. Legion are the name of those whose loyalty belongs to the state so long as the state can provide them with material or social advance. But what is to happen when the state runs out of provision for these Rice Americans? What will it mean for our nation when people lose their loyalty to the state because the state can no longer provide – especially when there is no religion for them to go back to with which they are already familiar? I am fairly certain that families who have been Rice Americans for several generations are not going to deal peacefully if their god and their religion can no longer provide for them.

But I suppose this scenario could never play out since the states supply for Rice Americans is doubtless inexhaustible.

Iron Ink

The US Constitution -- A Voluntary Compact

July 2nd 2009

This post title is " The US Constitution -- A Voluntary Compact"

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