Breaking Down Bavinck

“In abandoning an absolute standard for judging good and evil, scholars attempt to utilize statistics and history to evaluate what would in the future be regarded as normative in terms of truth, law, and ethics. “The greatest happiness for the greatest number” becomes the sole norm in religion, morality, logic, and aesthetics. In itself, everything is a private matter—a matter of taste and passion or of character and education.

But because this would lead to licentious arbitrariness, individualism needs to be subdued by socialism. Science, represented by an Areopagus of scholars, must therefore prescribe to everyone, on the basis of their own analysis, what constitutes truth. They have the highest authority . . . They must now authoritatively proclaim the dogmas and norms which govern all of human life. On the basis of historical and statistical analysis, they must proclaim whether monotheism or polytheism, truth or lies, marriage or debauchery is to be preferred.

The only force, Clavel proclaims, which has the privilege of demanding faith and obedience, is science. It must prescribe, on the basis of facts, what is good for the family, the nation, and humanity as a whole. If society is benefitted more by lies than by truth, these two would have to swap places, because mankind does not exist for the sake of truth, but truth for the sake of mankind, from whom and through whom it exists. The timelessness of moral principles consists only in becoming timeless at the hand of man. And in order to ensure obedience to social dictates, the state has to enforce it by means of violence.”

Herman Bavinck

Philosophy of Science

Translator — Adi Schlebush

1.) When one rids the transcendent God who has come close to us in the eternal Word, the incarnate Word, and the inscripturated Word from one’s thinking then a new transcendent must be sought out in order to provide temporal unity to all the temporal particulars of life.

2.) Bavinck contends that the new transcendent God becomes statistics and history. The problem with these is obvious though. The problem is that in making statistics and history to be normative one has made man to be God since it is the mortal statistician who collects the “data” and it is a mortal historian who writes the history. In the former, we remember Twain (citing Disraeli) saying that there are  “There are three  kinds of lies: lies, damned  lies, and statistics.” In the latter, we divinize the historian and have embraced historicism. Consequently, in taking up statistics and history as our new norm that will norm all norms we have not rid ourselves of God. Instead, we have merely transposed the quality of godness to some man or men (statisticians and historians).

3.) The greatest good for the greatest number that Bavinck cites is the motto of pragmatism. Pragmatism is an illusion as there is no way that anybody could ever know what is the greatest good for the greatest number nor could any equation ever be established in order to determine all the variants that were possible in order to determine the greatest good for the greatest number.

4.) Apart from force, in the abandoning of God as a transcendent reality who gives objective meaning to everything what is left is pure subjectivism as those who are epistemologically self-conscious each do what is right in their own eyes. This is Bavinck’s point about everything becoming a private matter.

5.) When man becomes ultimate as the individual anarchy is the consequence. As such there must be created an equal humanist ultimate (one) for the equal humanist many. This is where socialism enters. Scientific Socialism (so-called) takes on the mantle of God walking on the earth in order that there might be a humanist order. This conflict between anarchistic humanism and humanistic Scientific socialism was the conflict that raged between Max Stirner and Marx.

6.) Pay attention here to the reality that what Bavinck wrote over 100 years ago is now what is rising in the West. Bavinck here was reading the stitches on the fastball coming. Clearly, we are living in a time where we have an Areopagus of scholars covering their authority with the fig leaf of science seeking to dictate to us as gods what mask, jab, and distancing by which we must abide. Such men have arisen and will continue to arise to do the same thing in the other areas that Bavinck mentions.  It’s all humanist bull-scat.

7.) In Bavinck’s last paragraph he predicts postmodernism in a subtle fashion. When Bavinck notes that when truth is not convenient it will be changed out for lies,  he is noting that truth will become completely arbitrary as it serves the interests of the elite in whatever way they desire. The idea of truth existing for the sake of mankind is just more humanism. Man will live by whatever truth he desires.

8.) In this scenario, we see in our situation that the FEDS have become the mercenary army (Bavincks requisite “violence”) for the Scientists with the consequence that they use their tyrannical power to ensure that everybody has absolute freedom (license-licentiousness) to pursue any deviant end while at the same time exercising that tyrannical power against anyone who insists that there is a standard about the Scientists and the FEDS by which all norms are normed — including the FEDS, their Scientists, and perverted and deviant rabble.

Bavinck was a genius. He is someone you should be familiar with along with Dabney, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Gordon H. Clark, Christopher Dawson, Chesterton, to name only a few.

ATT Commercial

I couldn’t help but comment on this 39 seconds commercial.

1.) ATT brags that everyone gets the same great deals. However, if everyone gets the same great deals nobody is getting a great deal.

2.) Note the little girl complains “hey, that’s not fair,” after her brother receives a free larger lollipop than the free lollipop that she received.

How American.

In reality, as it is the giver of the lollipop’s prerogative to give freely whatever size lollipop they desire how can it be unfair if they, as the owner and distributor of the lollipops decide to give different size lollipops to different people? What would have been fair in the scenario was for neither of the children to receive a lollipop.

3.) ATT is selling envy with this commercial. The consumer is being taught to be envious of what someone else has that has been freely given to them as opposed to being content with a gift.

R2K a First Order Heresy? McAtee Disagrees with Wilson

Over here,

Doug Wilson gives a good thumbnail summary of R2K. However, I do take exception with Wilson when he says, “R2K is not a first-order heresy.” I will get into that below but allow me to say here that this is really quite generous of Doug given the way he has been pilloried by the R2K lads. I’m not sure they would be as generous with Doug as he has been with them here.

Below we find the dialogue I’m interacting with;

Doug Wilson — “It (R2K) is not a first-order error… I believe this is erroneous teaching. It’s not heresy.”

Interviewer — “You wouldn’t excommunicate over it then?”

Doug Wilson – “No.”

In my estimation, we need to qualify as to whether or not R2K is a first-order heresy. Certainly, we could extend the judgment of charity to laymen who haven’t thought through the implications of R2K and so admit them to non-office-bearing membership. We even could say something like, “While there is no doubt that there are people who are R2K who doubtlessly are Christians, it certainly is the case that R2K is not Christianity.” In short, I think for some people R2K is not first-order heresy.

However, for R2K types who are epistemologically self-conscious about their R2K I do think this is a first-order heresy that would require if the Church in the West were healthy, ex-communication of the epistemologically self-conscious would be warranted for both individuals and congregations.

Keep in mind that R2K effectively strips the Lord Jesus Christ of one of His three offices. R2K denies Jesus Christ, except in a very Gnostic-like tenuous fashion His office as King. For the R2K lads, the Kingship of Christ is “spiritual” and only is applicable in the public square in a barely implicit manner. Their explanation of this doctrine has no historical Reformed legs except for the nomenclature and is a complete innovation pushed on us by Westminster-Cal. @ Escondido and now taken up by every man Jack who holds a terminal degree and teaches at a Reformed Seminary.

And it gets worse because these scofflaws are training a-historical lemmings to bring this R2K bilge into pulpits all across the land thus guaranteeing the absolute evacuation of Jesus from His office as King in hundred if not thousands of churches with the consequence that God’s people are left confused at how they should engage in a culture that is becoming increasingly explicitly anti-Christ. Should the Church speak to sodomy? R2K says that there is not enough of Jesus’ Kingship that allows them to speak to the subject. Should the Church speak to men competing with women as trannys?  R2K teaches that Jesus’ office as King does not extend to allow them to preach on that subject. If this isn’t first-order heresy then first-order heresy doesn’t exist. Maybe we can excommunicate for madness? Maybe gaslighting?

Don’t get me wrong. I am under no delusion that any church court is going to go after David Van Drunen, R. Scott Clark, M. Scott Horton, D. G. Hart, Sean Michael Lucas, and their ever-burgeoning ilk. However, let history record that some Reformed gadfly ministering in the hinterlands of Michigan said … “Throw the bums out.”

So, Doug is just wrong. R2K is a first-order heresy as it is taken up by those reputed to be pillars in the Reformed Church who are epistemologically self-conscious about what they are doing. A pox upon them until they repent.

Of God not Being a Respecter of Persons — Some Qualifications

“Of a truth, I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: but in every nation, he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him”

Acts 10:34-35

“My dear brothers and sisters, how can you claim that you have faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ if you favor some people more than others? For instance, suppose someone comes into your meeting dressed in fancy clothes and expensive jewelry, and another comes in who is poor and dressed in shabby clothes. If you give special attention and a good seat to the rich person, but you say to the poor one, ‘You can stand over there, or else sit on the floor’—well, doesn’t this discrimination show that you are guided by wrong motives?…

“Yes indeed, it is good when you truly obey our Lord’s royal command found in the Scriptures: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ But if you pay special attention to the rich, you are committing sin, for you are guilty of breaking that law”

James 2:1-4, 8-9

Romans 2:11 because God does not show partiality.

How many times have I seen this idea that God is no respecter of persons made to walk on all fours? “Because God is no respecter of persons,” the argument goes “I am required to let my daughters marry scofflaws.” “Because God is no respecter of persons,” they say “I am required to have a derelict babysit my children.”

Clearly, we have to make distinctions between different senses if only because we see in Scripture that God requires us to be respecters of persons. God requires us to be respecters of persons when we don’t allow women to be preachers.

I Timothy 2:8 I desire then that jin every place the men should pray, klifting lholy hands without anger or quarreling; 9 likewise also mthat women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, 10 nbut with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works. 11 Let a woman learn quietly owith all submissiveness. 12 pI do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. 13 qFor Adam was formed first, rthen Eve; 14 and Adam was not deceived, but sthe woman was deceived and became a transgressor. 15 Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in ufaith and love and holiness, with self-control.

Likewise, God requires us to be a respecter of persons when it comes to family responsibilities.

But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.  I Tim. 5:8

Obviously, God commands favoritism when He insists that we provide for our own households vis-a-vis providing for everybody else’s households.

We have a need to realize that texts can have different senses wherein they are true and wherein they are false. God is no respecter of persons when it comes to commanding all men everywhere to repent. However, God is a respecter of persons when it comes to who we choose to be Church officers. God commands we are not to show favoritism when it comes to how we treat the rich and the poor in the congregation. However, just as clearly God commands us to show favoritism when doing good as we are to concentrate “especially to the Household of faith.” (Gal. 6:10)

4th Worldview Level; Conglomerate Thinking

“The fourth worldview level is the level at which most people find themselves. I call it the conglomerate level. Most people do not have a consciously held consistent worldview that they have thought through and therefore could propound. Rather most people operate fragmentally, on the basis of contradictory bits and pieces (from such sources as family, cultural traditions, customs, teachers, politicians, peers at school, Hollywood, media, Church), or on the basis of the already predominant current worldview.”

Dr. Glenn Martin — (1935 – 2004)
Chair; History Department — IWU

Another way of saying this is that the lion’s share of people are not epistemologically self-conscious. They have no self-awareness regarding their belief system. What this means, for many Christians, is that while they hold to orthodox Christianity in the abstract, concretely speaking they operate with a worldview that allows them to fit into and operate in the pagan culture that we are currently awash in.

One glaring example of this is how Christians insist that God is Sovereign but then operate day to day supporting the current God -State as it seeks to take up God’s prerogatives of Sovereignty. They say that they affirm that they live and move and have their being in God when in all concrete everyday life they support a system that insists that man live and move and have their being in terms of the God State.

Another glaring example of this is how the overwhelming majority of Christians support the egalitarian project. Christians, in cooperation with the utopians now share the goal of the utopians to replace non-ideal humanity with new and improved substitutes who would be model citizens, as the planners define model citizens. Alienist “Christians” who are conglomerate-level worldview thinkers have joined this old song and dance because despite being Christians they are egalitarians who despise God-ordained diversity. They hate that God has made people naturally unequal. They hate that inequality will never be cured or legislated out of existence cursing the promised inequality in Scripture that “the poor you will have with you always.” They hate it that a man’s children mean more to him than the children of another man. They hate that bonds of loyalty are proportional to consanguinity. They hate that nations have exclusionary borders. They hate it that races exist, and they long for the day when the races of men are bred out of existence and all people share the same race. This is why they like to say that “there is only one race, the human race.”