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The Reformed Faith & The Enchantment of the World

I have always had a difficult time understanding why anybody would want to stay in Rome or Constantinople. However, this week while listening to a long interview by a couple of EO types on the subject of Feminism and the Occult they got on a side bar that helped me to understand the attraction of Rome and Constantinople.

(57) The Occult Origins of Feminism with Rachel Wilson – YouTube

It seems that Rome and EO are convinced that the rationality of Geneva (Protestantism) had the eventual effect of disenchanting the world. The accusation was that the rational approach of Protestants to the Christian faith emptied the world of its enchantment and mystery. By their lights the Reformation had led to the disenchantment of the world and by their lights Rome and EO provides the faith wherein the world can once again find re-enchantment. Actually, this makes a certain amount of sense given that the world in which Rome and EO came into was a world where the seen and unseen world did not lie as far apart as the modern world. The ancient world was one of superstition, animism, and the mysterious. Rome and EO conquered that world because they preached a doctrine of Christus Victor wherein the unseen world, while remaining real, became tamed and defanged by the victory of Christ over all comers. Early Christianity retained the enchantment of the world while at the same time announcing that Jesus Christ had conquered the enemy that lay in that enchanted world.

The mystery and enchantment was retained in the Eucharist. There in the table the mystery and enchantment of the world was proclaimed and the supplicant at the table was brought near to the very real unseen world. In the sacrament (mystery) the world remained enchanted and man was delivered from the dry rationalism that we currently find in modernity.

However, though their explanation made sense and resonated with me, I found myself thinking that Rome and Constantinople retained the enchantment of the world at the cost of embracing the irrational and the contradictory. Theirs was and remains an escape from reason. I do not believe that we have to embrace the irrational in order to own a world that is enchanted and full of mystery. I need not swim the Tiber or the Bosporus in order to have enchantment.

If the Sacrament is where man finds the Mysterium tremendum or where the believer can enter into that “Great Cloud of Unknowing,” there is plenty of that to be found in the classical explanations (Lutheran or Reformed) of the Eucharist. Calvin’s explanation of Receptionism where the supplicant, by the work of the Holy Spirit, is lifted into the Heavenlies where he dines on the real (spiritual) presence of Christ has plenty of the mystery in it and one can certainly walk away with his world still full of the enchanted. Then there is the reality of a stout Reformed prayer life that can also minister mystery. No Protestant who has known and experienced the closeness of the Holy Spirit in prayer needs to worry about a disenchanted world.

It strikes me that the Protestant world is indeed aching for the world to be re-enchanted. I think this ache explains for the rise of the Pentecostal church as the 800 pound gorilla in the Protestant world. What else is the attraction of Pentecostalism except for its promise that it can connect the worshiper with the unseen realm? Pentecostalism is Roman Catholicism on cheap without the formality of smells and bells. Pentecostalism gives a vulgar re-enchantment of the world. I have to admit that forced to pursue enchantment as between Pentecostalism and Constantinople I would begin working on my Iconography.

We should insert here that it seems to me that part of the explanation of the ancient Cathedrals with their sense of beauty and architectural transcendence is the fact that by that beauty and architectural transcendence enchantment was communicated and delivered. Those Cathedrals incarnated the magnificent mystery of biblical Christianity. We should keep in mind man’s need for the mystery in his life before we build our pole barn sanctuaries.

Having said all this though I have to admit that too many expressions of Protestantism once were guilty of disenchanting the world. Many of the works of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Dorothy Sayers and the Inklings I think were trying to provide a basis for the continuing enchanting of the world for Christians. Maybe this explains the love of many Protestants for these works?

In the end it is only in the Reformed faith where the enchantment of the world can remain consistent with a rational faith that hasn’t fallen either into a dry and arid rationalism or a irrational fanciful faith where one is kissing Icons and being swept away by smells and bells. One has only to consider the writings of a John Milton or John Buchan to find the enchanted world in the Reformed faith. The Reformed faith both delivers from the hopelessly contradictory but enchanted world of Rome and EO while at the same time able to provide both a world that remains enchanted while at the same time rational.

Doug Wilson on Christians and Anti-Semitism … McAtee on Doug Wilson

This is my 2nd post rebutting Wilson in three days. In my defense I don’t go looking for his material. I have friends that shoot me emails with links saying breathlessly… “You’ve got to listen to this. You won’t believe what he has said this time.” Sometimes those friends ask me to respond. Sometimes they know that the Wilsonian “wisdom” will be so over the top that they know me well enough to know that I can’t help but to respond.

If it was anybody else but Wilson I probably wouldn’t respond but when Wilson goes off the reservation (as he does with alarming regularity) he is taking much of the putatively conservative team with him. You see nobody with a conservative impulse really believes someone like Kevin DeYoung or Joe Carter or Al Mohler or T. Ligon Duncan are conservative. However, Wilson has positioned himself nicely as the lone conservative voice howling into the wilderness and as such Wilson needs to be taken more seriously then most of the other Evangelical Yahoos precisely because Wilson is seen as the “true blue conservative.” “Why…. he’s one of us. He’s a guy wearing a white hat.” And sometimes that is so.

And many other times it is not so.

This is another one of those times. In a recent plodcast the Pope of Moscow offered;

“I want to talk about anti-Semitism. This go round I want to begin with my basic argument against the anti-Semitic impulse…. So when I see people talking about the Jews in a snarky and critical way it is impossible for me, as a pastor, to not hear the crackle of envy in this. Now in order to believe that the Jews are, you know, the International conspirators, who are wrecking everything and destroying civilization and bringing us all down — doing awful things.

Basically it is one thing to say I have identified these people as my enemy and I love my enemy but I am going to oppose them as opposed to the kind of envious crackle I see — and it is not a matter of detecting minor traces of it (giggle) it is just all over. And I think this is about the most anti-Gospel frame of mind possible for this reason.”

Doug Wilson
Plodcast

This is wrong on so many levels it is hard to know where to start.

First, there is the issue of whether the modern “Jew” has any genetic relation to the Judeans of Jesus day. People like Arthur Koestler in his book, “The 13th Tribe” has brought up the very real possibility that those Wilson refers to as “Jews” are indeed Khazars from the Black Sea area of the world. Others believe that they are genetically related to the Edomites. If Wilson’s Jews don’t bear any relation to the Jews of the NT era then Wilson’s invoking of Romans 11 he does later in this plodcast doesn’t make much sense.

Second, it is obviously true that I can’t know the kind of blatantly envious anti-Semitism that Doug is running into. He’s in Idaho and I’m in Michigan. Might as well be two different planets. However, I have conversations with folks as Doug does and I have to say that the last thing I see in these conversations is envy. Remember, envy is more than just jealousy. Envy is wanting what the other person has and not being happy with what the other person has unless the other person is utterly destroyed at the same time. I meet any number of people who are as aware of the Jew as our Christian Fathers were and I seldom find myself looking at envy. What I find myself looking at are people who understand the natures of mega- Banks, mega-Corporations, Hollywood, Lugenpresse, Corporate-Medicine, Government etc. One who doesn’t like rattle snakes because they and their kin have been repeatedly bit is not one who should be characterized as envious — and that no matter how many possessions the rattle snake has squirreled away in his nest.

Third, one wonders if Doug is familiar with any of the recent works on this subject? Has he read E. Michael Jones material? Has he read Michael Hoffman’s “Judaism’s Strange Gods?” Does Doug know the history of Christian and Jewish interaction? Has he read Maurice Pinay? Has Doug read Luther? Calvin? Chrysostom? Is he familiar with the 4th Church Council of Toledo? If Doug has read these works does Doug think all these chaps are or were also envious? After reading some of this well documented material it becomes pretty evident it is at least possible that the folks that Doug hears are hardly envious.

Fourth, we are glad to concede that there are Semites who have contributed to the formation of civilization. We are also glad to concede that the vision of the Jews for civilization is a very different vision than the vision of the Biblical Christian. I can make these generalizations because I know what the voting patterns are of Jews in America vis-a-vis the voting patterns of Biblical Christians. Another reason I can make these generalizations is because I know the history of Hollywood and the conflict that once existed there between Jews and the Church (Hays code anyone?). Obviously, different visions exist. Are we to think, following Wilson logic, that Republicans whom Biblical Christians (unfortunately) generally vote for oppose Democrats whom Jews generally vote for because Republicans are envious of Democrats?

Fifth, there is the simple reality of history. Were the Jews cast out of so many countries so many times over the millennium because the Christian peoples and monarchs were so envious of them every single time?

Sixthly, there is the Talmud. Does Doug know what counsel the Talmud gives to the Jews in relation to their understanding of the goyim? Here, Doug would profit by reading Michael Hoffman. Is Doug aware, for example, of how the Talmud deals with the rodef (pursuer) and how the in-utero baby can be justly tortured and murdered (aborted) because Jewish Talmudic law teaches the baby is a rodef?

One frustrating thing about the Wilson piece is that he has framed it in such a way that any disagreement with him from the right automatically means that one is an anti-Semite. Well, as long as we understand that an anti-Semite is defined as someone who doesn’t love the Jews no matter what they do or say then color me Anti-Semitic.

I hope I have examined this Wilson quote without any “cackle” in my voice. I am one of those who pray along with Doug that all peoples including those we call the Jews would repent and bow the knee to Christ and so cease with the ways that they have become rightly infamous for as those who pursue Biblical Christians. However, until that postmillennial day arrives I will continue to believe my Christian Fathers about the envy of the Jews.

R2K Chronicles V — The Non-Religious Prince, The Non-Religious State

(Calvin) suggested that the Kingdom of God was already present but that it was not completely realized. ‘For spiritual government, indeed, is already initiating in us upon earth certain beginnings of the Heavenly Kingdom, and in this mortal and fleeting life affords a certain forecast of immortal and incorruptible blessedness.’ Calvin advised, ‘Let no man be disturbed that I now commit to civil government the duty of rightly establishing religion.’

And again, ‘All have confessed that no government can be happily established unless piety is the first concern.’ Calvin also stated that the civil magistrate should care for both tables of the law.

David W. Hall

The Genevan Reformation and the America Founding — pg. 95

…what sort of religious commitment, if any, should be promoted or required within the social order? The answer, I suggest, is none. A crucial consideration is the fact that God made the Noahic covenant with “you [Noah and his sons] and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you” (9:9-10). The human race generally (along with the animal kingdom) is God’s covenant partner. Not a single distinction is made between believers and unbelievers, but God promises to preserve them in their common social life.”

~ Dr. David Van Drunen, 2012 lecture

“Generally speaking, believers are not to seek an objectively unique Christian way of pursuing cultural activities.”

David Van Drunen

God’s Two Kingdoms, pg. 168

“Scripture is not given as a common moral standard that provides ethical imperatives to all people regardless of their religious standing.”

David Van Drunen
“A Biblical Case for Natural Law” – p. 53

With the quotes above that could be repeated many times over we see that any notion that Radical Two Kingdom theology bears any resemblance at all to historic Calvinism cannot be sustained.

Indeed, David Van Drunen who is the Jesuit trained guru who has completely invented R2K along the lines handed down to him by Meredith Kline has bent over backwards to maintain his insistence for a religious-free public square;

“I asked David Van Drunen a question that I believe goes right to the heart of this issue. I asked him what God would think of a nation whose magistrate and people had become overwhelmingly (and sincerely) Christian, and who decided to confess Christ in the common realm, in the formerly secular realm. I asked if God would be displeased with that, and Van Drunen said yes, he thought God would be displeased with that. “

Doug Wilson
https://dougwils.com/books-and-culture/s7-engaging-the-culture/the-bozo-over-at-mablog.html

So, clearly, what we are seeing here is that in the non-Reformed faith that is R2K what is being advocated as the very definition of the Reformed faith is that the Magistrate as well as the state is to be a-religious, non-religious, and even, we might say, anti-religious. Per R2K, only in such a manner can the Prince and the State provide the governmental boundaries for a social order that like the governing bodies are completely a-religious. In this manner and in this manner alone can the Magistrate and State be completely even-handed in dealing with the citizenry as seen in the same conversation with Doug Wilson cited above. When queried about why Van Drunen desired this kind of non-religious prince/state,

“(Van Drunen) said that it was because he wanted minorities (in this case, non-believers) to not be mistreated.”

The Bozo Over at Mablog

So, per David Van Drunen, it is only by the machinations of a non-religious state that non-Christians can find true justice in the public square. Per DVD if Christian Princes were ruling non-Christians wouldn’t get what non-Christians consider to be justice.

And, I suppose in a sense that is true. Non-Christians, as we are seeing in our own social order as run by Magistrates who believe they are R2K a-religious would not, in a social order run by Christian princes be allowed to, have men arbitrarily deciding they are women, would not allow for sodomite marriages, would not allow adultery to be a non-punishable crime, would not allow God’s name to be taken in vain in the public square.

All of the above is the result, in part, of R2K’s success (and the Anabaptist before them) in convincing us Reformed types that a-religious Magistrates creating a a-religious social order is something we Christians want.

Please understand dear reader, that what I have provided is not some extrapolation derivative of R2K thinking. This a-religious social order as governed by a-religious Magistrates is explicitly what they have stated as being desirous,

“Since membership in the civil kingdom is not limited to believers, the imperatives of Scripture do not bind members of that kingdom. These imperatives are not “directly applicable to non-Christians” (40).”

David Van Drunen
“A Biblical Case for Natural Law,” p.40.

“Scripture is not given as a common moral standard that provides ethical imperatives to all people regardless of their religious standing.”

David Van Drunen
“A Biblical Case for Natural Law,” p. 53

Of course, as we have labored over and over to point out over the years, for someone to insist that a Magistrate or a Government should be a-religious, non-religious, or even anti-religious is itself taking a religious stance. To opt for a non-religious Magistrate and Government is eliminate all religious competition from the public square leaving only the religion (the ultimate convictions/concerns) of the Magistrate to be the guiding religious impulse for the Magistrate and Government.

What David Van Drunen and R2K has not come to grips with is that religion is an inescapable category. There is no way to hit a delete button when it comes to religion. Every Magistrate has a religion and every government rules in keeping with its religion.

Now, at this point R2K wants to retreat to its Natural Law haven but as we have pointed out earlier in the book Natural Law is merely a mask to hide the religion for which it is standing in. Any morality that Natural Law finds and legislates into existence is going to be the morality that is a reflection of some religion and some God-concept.

Understand that when R2K makes this move to insist upon a religion-less Magistrate and a religion-less government that they are revealing themselves to be keeping some very interesting company. Herman Bavinck insisted that it was only Liberals (read Libertarians) who desired to denude the Christian faith from walking in the public square,

“Therefore Christ has also a message for home and society, for art and science. Liberalism chose to limit its power and message to the heart and the inner chamber, declaring that its kingdom was not of this world.”

Herman Bavinck
Dutch Neocalvinism and the Roots For Transformation

So, if Bavinck is correct what R2K offers us is not a Christian theology but it offers us instead a return to Enlightenment, Anabaptist and Pietistic politics where the religion that is Christianity is relegated to some private space where only Jesus and the individual occupies.

So, given this definition of Liberalism by Bavinck we are in the right when we insist that R2K is Liberalism as R2K limits the power and message of Christ to the heart and the inner chamber while insisting that God’s Kingdom is not of this world. It’s interesting that in the heart of White Hat Reformed Christianity we are fighting Liberalism again. Only this time it is of the R2K Escondido Liberalism variety.

But maybe R2K isn’t classical liberalism? Maybe instead R2K is a political form of neo-orthodoxy (Barthianism);

“Christian Parties? Christian Newspapers? Christian Philosophy? Christian Universities? The question must be very seriously asked whether such undertakings are in this sense necessary and legitimate.”

Karl Barth
Credo – pg. 144

R2K loves accusing Christians who dismiss Natural Law as being a legitimate tool for organizing social orders as “Barthian,” since Barth was not a big fan of Natural Law. However, here we must turn the tables and ask, “Who now is the Barthian?”

R2K, with its a-religious Magistrate and non-religious governments certainly would not disagree with the quote by Barth above. R2K insists loudly that it is not possible to have Christian Parties, Christian Newspapers, Christian Philosophy or Christian Universities and that Christians should be forever done with using Christian in an adjectival sense for any institution or discipline that isn’t the Church.

But it is not only Liberals and Barthians that R2K shares a pedigree with. The Puritan Richard Vines insisted the very doctrine that R2K advances that the Magistrate and Government should be a-religious has historical ties to the wicked heresy called Socinianism;

“For the blasphemous and seditious Heretics, both Lutherans and others of the Reformed Churches do agree that they may be punished capitally, that is for their blasphemy of sedition; but the Socinian stands out here also, and denies it; alleging that the punishment of false Prophets in the Old Testament was speciali jure but by special law granted to the Israelites, and therefore you must not look (saith the Socinian) into the Old Testament for a rule proceeding against false Prophets and blasphemers: Nor (saith Calvin and Catharinus) can you find in the New Testament any precept for punishment of Thieves, Traitors, Adulterers, Witches, Murderers and the like, and yet they may, or at least some of them be capitally punished: for the Gospel destroys not the just laws of civil policy or Commonwealths.”

Richard Vines — English Puritan
The Authors, Nature, and Danger of Heresy
Laid open in a sermon preached before the honorable house of Commons…March – 1646 – pp. 64

Liberalism, Barthianism, and Socinianism has not been the history of thinking in the Reformed Church. Especially when it comes to magistrates and governments. The historic Calvinists always believed that the Magistrate was responsible to wield and enforce God’s Law;

“For it cannot be shown that any part of that power which magistrates had under the Old Testament is repealed under the new, neither can any convincing reason be brought, why should it be of narrower extent now or then. Are not blasphemies, heresies and errors dishonorable to God, and destructive unto souls as well now as of old?”

George Hutcheson — 17th Century Reformed Theologian
The Gospel of John — pp. 158

” 1.) If there be no bodily punishment to be inflicted on false teachers and blasphemers, then must Christ by his blood repeal all those laws in the Old Testament; but the Scripture shows us all our parts of Christian liberty in these places of Scripture, Ti.2:14; Rom. 14:4; I Thess. 1:10; Gal. 3:13; Gal. 1:4; Col. 1:13; I Joh. 4:18; Acts 15:10-11; Heb. 4:14, 16; Heb. 10:19,21,22; Col. 2:15-16; 2 Cor. 3:13, 17, 19; Jam. 4:12; Rom. 14:4; Act. 4:9; Act.5:29; 1 Cor. 7:23; Matt. 23:8,9,10; Matt. 15:9; and elsewhere; in all which places nothing is hinted of the false teachers patent under the seal of the blood of the eternal Covenant, that he is freed from the Magistrates sword, though he destroy millions of souls.”

Samuel Rutherford
A Free Disputation Against Pretended Liberty of Conscience etc. — pp. 233-234

“Though we have clear and full scriptures in the New Testament of the abolishing the ceremonial law, yet we no where read in all the New Testament of the abolishing of the judicial law, so far as it did concern the punishing of sins against the moral law, of which heresy and seducing of souls is one, and a great one. Once God did reveal his will for punishing those sins by such and such punishments. He who will hold that the Christian Magistrate is not bound to inflict such punishments for such sins, is bound to prove that those former laws of God are abolished, and show some Scripture for it.”

George Gillespie — Westminster Divine
Wholesome Severity Reconciled With Christian Liberty

One wonders how many Calvinists I have to quote before someone besides me pipes up and says, “R2K cannot be an expression of Calvinism.” Believe me, I could go on for pages and pages citing quotations from the Calvinists through the centuries to demonstrate that Calvinism has consistently advocated that Magistrates and Governments are responsible to be Christian Magistrates running Christian Governments.

And why is this? Why do Calvinists desire that God’s law be upheld by Magistrates and Governments? Why do historic Calvinists desire that their Magistrates and their Governments be uniquely Christian? The answer to that is found in the Calvinist desire to walk in obedience to God and to be a blessing to the nations. The Calvinist understands that nearness to God when it comes to their intimacy with God is impossible to see. However, the Calvinist understood that what the nations could see is a nearness to God as communicated by a social-order, family-order, and church-order that was built on God’s beautiful and enlivening law order. The Calvinist has always embraced the idea that there is linkage between their invisible religious claims that God is their God for the sake of Jesus Christ and the instantiation of those claims made visible in the building of beautiful and enlivening social order. Unlike Radical Two Kingdom Theology, Calvinist theology understood that the non-Christian would only take the claim of the beauty of God in the life of the individual seriously as that claim manifested itself in a law-keeping social order that was the envy of the nations.

It was because of this that the Calvinists expected their Magistrates to be Christians piloting governments that were Christian. R2K tears all that down and embraces the silly notion that to have true Christian Magistrates means to have Magistrates who are not Christian.

If that makes sense to you, go worship at a R2K Church.

Dr. Adi Schlebusch Assaults the Gates of Hell — Part III

In Chapters IV and V Dr. Schlebusch in his book “Assailing the Gates of Hell” gives a brief primer on how the current crisis came to be and then wraps up with giving some of a game plan on how Christians and the Church can go about making war on the gates of hell.

Dr. Schlebusch insists that we are in the current crisis we are in because the Church has gone into a Babylonian captivity. It’s pulpits are given over to the enemy with the result that what is ringing from God’s pulpits across the West is a neo-Gnosticism covered in a slimy coat of “Christianity,” or failing that, the completely innovative “Christianity” called “Radical Two Kingdom Theology.”

Dr. Schlebusch’s theory on neo-Gnosticism is that it shares with ancient Gnosticism a despising of the corporeal realm as combined with a reliance on a esoteric human knowledge that is disconnected from God’s revelation. This results not only in materialism but it also yields a dramatic antinomianism. The materialism in the Church is seen in the attempt to marry theistic-evolution to Christianity such is found in such leftist “Christian” homeschooling companies like “Biologos,” as well as the denial of the visible resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead as found in your garden variety mainline liberal “church.” The antinomianism can be found in the Church by the Dispensational idiotic misinterpretation that “we are no longer under law but under grace,” so that the grace blanket can be pulled over our heads to keep us safe from any threatening reality of the ongoing validity of God’s law. Neo-Gnosticism is basically a peeling away of a new innovative “Christianity” from Christianity so that man remains sovereign on the question of “How Shall We Now Live.”

Schlebusch then spends some time on the curious avowed reality that the materialism of Cultural Marxism is running cheek by jowl with the spiritualism (anti-materialism) of Neo-Gnosticism. Dr. Schlebusch takes a stab at how these two opposite realities can be in league together against the Church. After all, these two are supposed to be mutually exclusive. His answer is to insist that a irrational dualism has entered the Church whereupon opposites kiss in their project to destroy the Church. I think we need here to invoke Dr. Cornelius Van Til’s illustration of the two washwomen who take in each other’s laundry. The anti-materialistic Neo-Gnosticism in the Church serves as a limiting concept washwoman who is checking the limiting concept materialistic washwoman of Cultural Marxism, and vice-versus. In order to have one of these irrationalities in the Church both irrationalities are required to get the Christ denying project off the ground. As such the irrationality of anti-materialistic Neo-Gnosticism is being given life by the irrationality of materialistic Cultural Marxism with the opposite being true as well.

Dr. Schlebusch then goes on to insist that this has paved the way for the entry of Radical Two Kingdom theology into the Church. I think this is one place that I would disagree with Dr. Schlebusch. I would insist that R2K is a form of Anabaptist Neo-Gnosticism and that R2K, along with German Pietism of the last 200 plus years have been the main carriers of Neo-Gnosticism in the modern Church.

Dr. Schlebush goes on to describe R2K with its inherent hard dualism between the grace realm and the common realm. He insists that R2K fails at the doctrine of man’s total depravity as seen on its complete reliance on fallen man’s ability to build social order based on a muscular pagan Natural law theory. Dr. Schlebusch rightly indicts the R2K lobby with being practitioners of a sub-Christianity. (And I think sub-Christianity is being generous.)

Dr. Schlebusch ends this chapter by giving a rousing endorsement to the fact that all of life is underneath the authority of God’s revelation. He also mentions the great hope of the Christian faith that all of life will be redeemed precisely because it is being redeemed. This is nothing but the Reformed maxim that grace restores nature — a maxim that R2K denies with its insistence that nature by definition can’t be restored since it is and always will remain “common.”

I pause here to ask once again … “When will the Reformed denominations route R2K out of their presence?” “When will Reformed Pastors grab a Jesuit trained Seminary Doctor and throw him out on his keister along with the rag tag doctorate groupies who have attached themselves to his star?”

In the last chapter Dr. Schlebusch gives us the roadmap to recovery. First, Dr. Schlebusch insists that we need to give up with the idea that because Christians emphasize the “spiritual” therefore we are not to dirty our hands with the “flesh and blood” things of life. Dr. Schlebusch explodes this false dichotomy explaining that “spiritual” does not mean “ethereal,” or “abstract,” or “physically non-existent.” Dr. Schlebusch rips the entrails out of Dr. Mike Horton’s insistence that spiritual means that there is no such thing as a “Christian nation.” (See earlier discussion on R2K and neo-Gnosticism above.) Removing the idea from Christianity that because we are spiritually renewed and that because we walk in the spirit that therefore means we don’t dirty our hands with the corporeal that God has given us is one way wherein Christians once again bring the aroma of Christ to all reality.

Dr. Schlebush then turns to the Scripture to give a rousing defense to why the Church has been called to be a storming army attacking the very gates of Hell. This was a section I was absolutely delighted with as Dr. Schlebusch examines the passage where Jesus promise that the “gates of Hell shall not prevail.” Dr. Schlebusch takes the position that the geographic reality of where the encounter took place is the key to understanding the passage.

Dr. Schlebusch ends by saying our current responsibility in the battle royal set before the Church is to attack, siege, and conquer. He offers the following advice,

1.) Keep your children … prioritize the family (This means homeschooling.)
2.) Stop engaging in commerce with the enemy
3.) Buy land and books
4.) If at all possible start your own business
5.) If there are no Biblical Churches in your area start one

I want to speak to this one briefly. Starting a Church (we actually need whole new denominations) is something that will require self sacrifice in time and money. If Christians are really going to do such a thing then they need to be prepared to start something like a circuit rider dynamic once again. Christians over vast geographic areas who are seeking to start Churches might pool their money to hire someone who would travel among the varied churches to minister to them. This will not be easy but starting denominations from scratch never are easy.

6.) Be familiar with the martial arts
7.) Try to engage the community in order to gather like-minded indviduals
8.) Be done with the long standing “College” model

I might add here that from the moment our children are born we need to be thinking about how to find godly spouses for them. Too many good children raised in good homes are limited by the marriages they end up contracting. Of course all of this must be given over to God in prayer.

Dr. Schlebusch would have the Church once again be an armory as well as a hospital and gymnasium. The Church must see and understand itself as a conquering army. It needs to quit with the quivering cowardly mindset that sees it’s self as a victim locked up here with the Christian devouring world. It needs to own the mindset that pities the world because they are locked up in this world with us. It is the pagan and Christ-hater who is to be pitied.

It is our enemies who will be assimilated and their resistance is futile.

A Michigan Hillbilly in Rural Carolina — Delmar’s and Everett’s Domestic Dispute

I had just been called to serve my first Church.

It was a small rural church in deeply rural South Carolina. Jane and I used to say that we had moved to a land that time had forgotten. It was like the area was enchanted with the permanent things not only remembered but continuing to thrive. I used to have to drive to Columbia to work at the Airport and even Columbia, which is hardly a trend setting city, seemed like a jump forward in time.

Of course, when I say it was the land time forgot that is intended as a compliment.

However, that is not to say it was perfect. I could not have been there more than a month when I was called to help with a domestic dispute.

One of the chief families in the congregation had adult sons who owned land that was contiguous with one another and were thus neighbors. One day some kind of disagreement arose and I was called by one of the wife’s of these brothers to referee the dispute. She told me on the phone that “Everett and Delmar are fixin’ to quarrel and it looks to be blowin’ up a storm.”

I was pretty sure that meant there was tension in the air.

“Surely,” her reasoning was, “this is one reason why we have a minister. Ministers help out with these kinds of problems.”

“No problem,” I thought. This shouldn’t take to long.

I arrived and the two brothers were out on their property line yelling at each other. I don’t even remember what the dispute was about. After about an hour of the passage of time I was still trying to interject and call for calm when Delmar just pivots and leaves. I naturally thought that Delmar had finally just had enough of Everett and had given up in frustration. Turned out that I was wrong about that. I remained trying to talk calm into Everette by giving sound pastoral counsel;

“A soft answer turneth away wrath.”
“The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.”
“Do not let the sun go down on your wrath.”

I was just beginning to launch on our duties according to the sixth commandment per the Westminster larger catechism when suddenly, I hear the front door open loudly at Delmar’s place and Delmar, with a determined look on his face, is returning boldly to our position.

Carrying his deer-hunting rifle in his hands.

Not to be outdone Everett instantly skedaddles to his house and quickly returns with his own deer-hunting rifle firmly in tow. Now, they are arguing vociferously once again, only this time as equipped with state-of-the-art deer rifles.

My abilities to defuse a hostile situation was working perfectly.

By this time the coon hounds had suspected that something was afoot with their masters and they were baying intermittently as I pled with both Delmar and Everett to calm down and take their rifles back home.

Johnny Cash lyrics suddenly swept through my head,

“Don’t take your guns to town son
Leave your guns at home Bill
Don’t take your guns to town.”

I was pretty sure that I had not skipped class the day in my Pastoral theology class from Seminary wherein we young wannabe ministers were instructed on how to handle such a situation where two brothers were vehemently and irrationally arguing nose to nose while holding their loaded firearms.

Now keep in mind that I was not stranger to domestic disputes. I had seen more than a few ugly ones of my own in the home I grew up in. But what I was witnessing now with the dueling loaded deer rifles was taking domestic dispute to a whole new level for me.

Also keep in mind that I couldn’t have been more than 5-7 years older than these arms wielding siblings. It’s not like I was some kind of generational font of wisdom that they would naturally respect. I was just the new “what does he know” minister in town.

And they were right … I didn’t know nothing. At least nothing about how to bring calm between a Hatfield and McCoy type family feud. In retrospect I knew nothing about a lot of things that ministers should know. I was a true green-horn rookie.

I was sure this was going to end badly. You would’ve had to have been there to understand why I felt that bloodshed was imminent. Let’s just say sturm und drang does not do justice to what I was witnessing. I was confident that my first ministerial attempt at resolving a domestic dispute was going to end up with me in some witness stand for a future murder charge against either Delmar or Everett.

I honestly don’t remember what finally found Everett and Delmar returning to their respective corners. I do remember saying something to the Father of the sons some time later. His laconic reply was first a hearty, “I declare,” followed by a “Yes, they do get ginned up that way from time to time.” That was it. The boys were just ginned up a bit.

I’m pretty confident that when my head hit the pillow that night I was more restless about the incident than either Delmar and Everett who very likely slept the sleep of the innocent that night. In retrospect, for them it was just another incident of sibling rivalry. For me it was, “I could’ve been killed.”

I also remember thinking … “Umm, nobody prepared me for this kind of thing.” And of course the charm of the our new environs was tarnished for awhile.

And naturally enough there were many more future surprises — good and not so good — that were in store for the Michigan Hillbilly in Rural Carolina.