The Christian Rationalist Conglomerate World and Life View

Three major expressions of the Enlightenment and its Rationalist world and life view.

I.) French Revolution
II.) The Darwinian hypothesis
III.) The Marxist Analysis of history

Four major consequences of the Enlightenment and its Rationalist world and life view in the American colonies.

I.) The Advent of the Christian-Rationalist conglomerate epistemology

This moved the colonies from a Holy Commonwealth where God’s revelation was the cornerstone for the ordering of the whole social order to a dualistic epistemology wherein what is offered is the idea of a sacred realm and a secular realm. The sacred realm is ruled by God’s revelation while the secular realm is ruled by right reason and natural law.

II.) A shift from Biblical Christianity to Evangelical Christianity

This shift was pietistic in nature. It shifted the Christians understanding of the impact of Christianity from a totalistic world and life view to a understanding of the impact of Christianity that dealt with the inward gaze as combined with “getting souls saved.”

III.) It birthed the American “Revolution”

The American Revolution was actually a reactionary counter-Revolution against the forces of pure Rationalism in Europe in defense of a uniquely American Christian-Rationalism conglomerate. The American Revolution was also the continuation of the Christian principles of the English civil war of 1640 and 1688. Crown and Parliament had decided to pursue a illegitimate sovereignty over the colonies, as the Crown violated previous political covenant arrangements as expressed in colonial charter documents.

The American Revolution sought to Institutionalize the inherently unstable Christian-Rationalist conglomerate. It succeeded in the short term but being inherently unstable it could not (and did not) last long.

IV.) It birthed the American Constitutional Order and System

The American Constitutional Order and System when looked at closely reveals that Christian-Rationalist conglomerate worldview that made colonial America. For example the American Declaration of Independence is clearly a Lockean document that can only be understood from a Rationalist world and life view. On the other hand the US Constitution is clearly a document that has the idea of Holy Commonwealth inspiring it. The ideas contained and expressed by the US Constitution have a long Christian worldview history.

So, the Rationalist and Christian conglomerate lay cheek by jowl in the American Constitutional Order and System and as said it was inherently unstable. The two worldviews could not coexist for long. The tension found in the conglomerate make for the unfolding of America’s history for the first four score years until that conglomerate was finally ripped apart by the rise of the Transcendental worldview in America followed by the French Revolution in America sometimes called the Civil War. With America’s Civil War the Christian-Rationalist Worldview was in principle thoroughly crushed. The working out of the implications would be only a matter of time.

The reality that the American Constitutional Order and System was birthed as a Christian-Rationalist conglomerate is seen in looking at many of the founders. On one hand there are clearly Enlightenment men like Jefferson, John Adams and Franklin. On the other hand there were Biblical Christians like Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams and John Randolph of Roanoke and there were men who were themselves a conglomerate mix like James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and probably George Washington.

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

We continue to review Dr. Schlebusch’s “Assailing the Gates of Hell; Christianity at War with the Left.”

In chapter 2-3 Dr. Schlebusch turns to identifying the enemy of Christianity, Christendom and the West having given a brief history lesson in chapter 1 explaining how we have gotten to this point. In chapter 2 the enemy is identified as classical Marxism while chapter 3 the enemy has morphed into cultural Marxism. In my own reading it has been suggested that both incarnations of Marxism (classical and cultural) flow from the pen of Marx with classical Marxism being tied to Marx’s later writings while cultural Marxism is an expression of Marx’s earlier writings. The main difference between the two is that while classical Marxism focused its materialistic dialectics on the realm of the economic so that man is understood as exclusively as a economic matter in motion being, whereas cultural Marxism moved the focus away from Marx’s original dialectical materialism back to Hegel’s idealistic materialism but as focused on man’s cultural existence. Following, the Marxist Gramsci, the cultural Marxists no longer viewed everything through an exclusively economic grid choosing instead to contend that the Marxist Utopia would only be achieved by poisoning the cultural inheritance of the West. In the words of cultural Marxist Willi Münzenberg, the cultural Marxist resolved to, “organize the intellectuals and use them to make Western civilization stink.” Only then would the West fall to the Marxist vision. Whereas classical Marxists viewed man as an economic being, the cultural Marxists viewed man as a cultural being.

Dr. Schlebusch in chapter 2 first explains how the effects of the French Revolution resulted in the rise of the God-state inasmuch as the philosophes and illuminati had succeeded in tearing the family, clan, community, and church via social contract theory from having any jurisdictional authority in the life of the individual, leaving thus the vulnerable contextual-less individual with only the state as that institution providing atmospheric context to find meaning. In such a way the state became God walking on the earth. However, the project of the Masons and illuminists failed as the vision of egalitarianism became an unobtainable promise, as was planned from the outset by the architects of Enlightenment Liberalism.

This failure of Liberalism created a vacuum that was filled by the next ideological Golem, Marxism. Whereas Liberalism had gone after the Aristocratic class in order to establish egalitarianism, upon that failure Marxism went after the Bourgeoise capitalist class in pursuit of the same egalitarian reality. In order to arrive at this desired egalitarian reality the Marxists as materialists invoked their famous scientific socialism to serve as the new norm that would norm all norms. It was scientific socialism and not God’s revelation, that would usher in the new egalitarian world. Here Dr. Schlebusch uses wonderful quotes from Francis Nigel Lee, Herman Bavinck, and Rushdoony to support his argumentation. Of course this scientific socialism in turn yielded to scientism and eventually people began to clue in that scientific socialism and scientism were hardly objective given the Marxist dismissal of God as the governing reality but instead were only as good as the godless scientists like Trofim Lysenko who were jerry-rigging the results of their “science.” Meaning was now man-made.

Dr. Schlebusch points out that all of this was merely the manifestation of Marxism’s warfare with God’s revelation. Marxism, being both atheistic and materialistic having eliminated the God of the bible from their consideration were at war with God’s revelation. The contest was and remains between God’s revelation vs. man’s autonomous self-revelation.

Dr. Schlebusch then gives some space to explaining the absolute necessity of private property. Necessary, first because it is the explicit teaching of Scripture. Necessary, secondly, because private property is the only way wherein initiative to improve one’s property is secured. Being property-less in a Marxist system leaves one as existing in a state wage slave status. Marxism has demonstrated that reality everywhere it has been tried.

Dr. Schlebusch closes chapter two by giving a quick overview of the Bolshevik Revolution demonstrating how it was consistent with the tenents of Marxism. He then turns to give a foretaste of cultural Marxism which he examines more closely in the next chapter.

Dr. Schlebusch opens chapter 3 by giving the methodology of the cultutral Marxists. Whereas the classical Marxists had used a sledge hammer to seek to advance their revolution against revelation the cultural Marxists, having altered slightly the usage of the dialectic to point it at culture worked like a canker worm to hollow out from the inside Western civilization. This is sometimes referred to as “the long march through the institutions.” Cultural Marxists would change the context of modern man not via the  guillotine and gulag but would bring change by making Western civilization stink so that Western man would himself demand the change that Bolsheviks had failed in permanently bringing in.

At this point Dr. Schelbusch brings forth the fact that many names that are behind the cultural Marxist push (and it was true of the classical Marxist push as well) were and remain Jewish. Dr. Schlebush names the Jewish influence in the area of pornography, and entertainment — two major areas used in the cultural Marxist subversion of the West. Wisely, Dr. Schlebusch cites other sources (Marhoefer and Gabler) in order to sustain his argument here. Dr. Schlebusch reminds his readers that the Hollywood “Hays code” was implemented in order to place barriers on Jewish coarseness. Eventually, the Hays code fell and Hollywood returned to where it was before the Hays code was implemented complete with blasphemy of Jesus Christ and sexual debauchery at every turn. All of this is footnoted from impeccable source material. This is not nekulturny Jew bashing. This is providing the cold hard facts of the cultural Marxist deterioration of Western civilization as pursued by those, who have for centuries, hated Jesus Christ and have taken that hatred of Jesus Christ out on Christendom.

Dr. Schlebush next takes a quick look at how the Jewish media reports “the news,” by examining briefly the Nick Sandmann’s event and the George Floyd event. He could just as easily chosen the Kyle Rittenhouse event or the Ahmaud Arbrey event or any number of other events that finds the media putting the Christian white man in their sites. Dr. Schlebusch ends this chapter by next putting the government schools and Universities as well as the Churches in the West in the dock. He brings forth evidence that these institutions have also likewise fallen to the subversion of the cultural Marxists.

For those who have followed Iron Ink over the years you know that we have been banging the same drum that Dr. Schlebusch bangs in this volume. Here at Iron Ink we have chronicled the same demise of Christendom. We have put the same guilty parties in the dock. We have been screaming our lungs out to awaken the moribund West. We are more than delighted for Dr. Schlebusch singing from the same hymnbook.

If you don’t have this book… if you are new to this line of argumentation then you desperately need to read this primer and get up to speed quickly. The hour is late. We need all hands on deck to fight the enemy.

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

At 33 years of age Dr. Adi Schlebusch has revealed himself to be someone God has raised up for his generation to continue the work of post tenebras lux for Western Civilization and unto the end of counter-revolution for the current Endarkenment West. Dr. Schlebusch is the real McCoy in a time where real McCoys are uncommon.

Adi’s latest effort is a small book titled, “Assailing the Gates of Hell; Christianity at War with the Left.”  This book serves as an excellent primer that condenses a great deal of history in a general sweep for the purpose of giving the reader a birds eye view of where we currently are in the West, how we got here, who our main enemies are, and the Church’s responsibility to take the war to the enemy, hammer and tong so that the enemy is given no rest.

Dr. Schlebusch is just the right person to have written this book. He is a polymath who has read his  Groen van Prinsterer, his Kuyper, his Dabney, his Rushdooney and a host of other counter-revolutionaries from history who before us fought the long battle against the darkness. Quotes from these luminaries are sprinkled throughout the work. That Dr. Schlebusch is familiar with these heroes of the faith is important because the need to do the work of the counter-revolutionary requires being familiar with the saints who have gone before us and in the warp and woof of historical theology there are not that many anti-revolutionaries to whom we can turn.

As, already noted this book is not intended to be exhaustive on the subject. It is intended to be a primer. If someone desires to dig deep there are any number of other works that can be accessed. Allow me to list some of those for the hungry reader.  Books like Dr. C. Gregg Singer’s “From Rationality to Rationalism,” is a good history of ideas in the West book. Dr. Glenn R. Martin’s “Prevailing Worldviews of Western Society Since 1500,” is another great book that explains how we got here. Francis Nigel Lee’s “Communist Eschatology,” explains exhaustively the mindset and intent of the enemy. Dr. Groen Van Prinsterer’s “Unbelief and Revolution,” should also be consulted. Next, R. L. Dabney’s “Secular Discussions” is a must read for this subject matter. Finally, Dr. R. J. Rushdoony’s work should be consulted when trying to understand the times and what should be done. Anybody wanting to go deeper in what Dr. Schelbusch begins to explore would do well to find their big boy reading glasses and give these books their friendship.

Dr. Schlebusch works in keeping with these heroes of the faith. His book is condensed into five tight chapters following the opening Introduction;

1.) Liberalism; The History of an Idea
2.) Marxism: The Revolution Against Revelation
3.) Cultural Marxism’s Subversive Onslaught Against Christianity
4.) How the Current Crisis Came to Be
5.) A Declaration of War: Our Calling and Duty as the Church Militant

In the Introduction Dr. Schlebusch makes a connection between Leftism and Liberalism that finds him arguing that Liberalism was the chicken that laid the egg of leftism. He notes how the period of the Endarkenment is a continuous piece connecting the French Government of 1794 with the Canadian government of 2022. Dr. Schlebusch briefly teases this out to tell us that the purpose of the book is to counter the subversive strategies of the Left that have been pursued to destroy Christianity while at the same time embracing strategies that will flip the script so that the Christian church might go on the offensive to the end of utterly pulverizing the enemies of the kingdom of God. The “how did we get here” parts of the book are only prologue to the “we need to smash and grind into powder the enemies of Christ and the Church,” part of the book.

Chapter 1 finds Dr. Schlebusch connecting the history of liberalism with the lie of the serpent in the garden. In the garden the serpent told man he could be his own God by ignoring God, and so make himself the measure of all things (Homo Mensura). That same lie was at the foundation of the so-called Enlightenment project and like the triumph of that lie in the garden so the Enlightenment was the historical incarnation of the triumph of the lie in history. Dr. Schlebusch explains that the Enlightenment was in point of fact a Endarkenment of the human soul raised as it was against the previous Reformation historical epoch. Dr. Schlebusch gives us the philosophical roots of the ascent of the godless self demonstrating how that Western Philosophy was in contradiction to Biblical Christianity. Along the way Dr. Schlebusch gives us the origins of the impulse toward our current plague of egalitarianism. He also undresses chaps like Dr. Kevin DeYoung who has no business seeking to speak authoritatively on this subject preferring instead the counsel of Rushdoony, Voetius, Augustine, and Bernard of Clairvaux.

Dr. Schlebusch then fastens the French Revolution as the natural and inevitable consequence of the Enlightenment, while at the same time exposing that the Enlightenment gets far too much credit for Western civilization. Here Schlebusch invokes the help of Rushdoony, Dabney, van Prinesterer, Lee and Nesta Webster’s classic work. Dr. Schlebush lists “the Reforms” brought into France upon the fall of the aristocracy demonstrating that what resulted was a Republic set on the principles of humanism established in hatred of Christianity. Reality was sat on its head. The porn of the Marquis de Sade was esteemed. Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality only existed as informed by the structures of an anti-Christ world and life view. A anti-biblical family mindset was established and politics would always be from the left even when pursued from “the right.”

In this Introduction and first chapter Dr. Schlebusch has quickly laid down the the fact that we are where we are now because everything is being interpreted through a Mephistophelian world and life view as established by the overturning of the 1st and 2nd Reformations by the hilariously mislabeled “Enlightenment.”

Lee’s Football, Car, Train and Skin Graft Story

It would have been just another weekday afternoon except that football summer practice had started and Lee — all 90 pounds of him — was intent on making the freshman football club.

As such, Lee had managed to go from his morning paper route to football practice to his afternoon paper route. It made for a rather full day and his practice uniform showed the long days as Lee would leave the sweat drenched uniform in the locker room from day to day since he couldn’t peddle papers and tote all the padding together at the same time on the brand new 5 speed that his brother had won recently as a prize in a local contest. Lee figured his brother would never notice that he had borrowed the bike for the day.

On this weekday Lee had finished getting beat up on the football field by his peers who didn’t have any more grit than Lee but certainly were carrying more weight. Every inch of Lee’s body felt all that extra weight that came with every extra hit. Lee was long on grit but short on brains enough so as to realize that being smaller than everyone else he should be going for the legs instead of full body contact that always left him bouncing off other people unnoticed like some unnoticed fly on the back of a grazing elephant.

That late afternoon on the way home all Lee could think about was eating since his entire nourishment that day had consisted of two pieces of toast sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. The breakfast of champions.

However, before he could scour the empty cupboards the 14 year freshman had to pedal his brother’s new bicycle the 5 miles back home. Now, keep in mind dear reader that this 5 miles was on top of the countless miles already tracked through the day in going from the morning paper-route, football practice, and the afternoon paper-route.

The trip home use to be half that distance until a few years prior the city of Sturgis Michigan in combination with the Sturgis municipal airport had decided to expand the airport with the consequence of closing down the most direct road home for Lee.  For years Lee and his brother still took that route home even though the road was closed and the extended runway built over the area that had once served as land for the now absent road. It was just that much more convenient … and safer.

You see, on that old road that had been closed down there was hardly any traffic, and as such having to navigate a busy thoroughfare was not a concern for Lee or his siblings. However, once that Airport road was closed, the routes home for Lee were not convenient or safe.

In years to come once Lee was out of the “bike riding” stage of life another road finally was open. Before that was built though Lee had only three choices. He could take the path along the rail road tracks which made havoc with his bike tires and found him more than once cheek by jowl with trains that for whatever reason thought they had the priority both on the track and ten feet on either side of the tracks. More than once when the trains were moving slowly Lee had been able to grab a hold of the train as it passed and no longer found a need to continue pedaling as the train would give him a lift. It is a minor miracle that Lee was never hit by a locomotive while riding his bicycle on those narrow trails that ran parallel with the train tracks.

The second option was to add an extra mile to his trip by going a round about way through a wooded area that would bring him out to a place where he could avoid riding US 12 — a very busy two lane highway.

The third option was riding US 12.

US 12 was a hazard and in retrospect Lee had no business riding his bike on that two lane highway. More than once semi-trucks had passed by him so close he could have reached out and touched them as they passed. (Keep in mind that Lee rode his bike as far towards the gravel on the side of the road as possible.)

Well, on that summer weekday in August of 1974, hungry from not eating all day, weary with pedaling all over the small city of Sturgis, bruised from being beat up by peers twice his weight in football practice, Lee decided to ride US 12 home has he had many times before and in a irrational fit of being responsible he had tied his practice uniform to the bike’s cross bar to bring it home to be washed.

However, the adventure this time was going to prove to push Lee’s next meal off for another 24 hours for in his making his way home that day he met a 20 year old driver in the closest quarter encounter imaginable.

Quite apart from the warning of a horn laid upon, or the sound of screeching tires, Lee on his bike was hit from behind by a car, later found to be traveling between 55-60 mph as driven by a young lady new to her driver’s license. All Lee would ever later remember was the initial impact, and rolling along the gravel side of the road. The next thing Lee remembered was that he was lying perpendicular to the road on the gravel side of the road with hands outstretched above his head. When he came to Lee’s first site was the automobile’s back tire ten inches from his eyeballs. Of course, the first instinct upon such a site is to stand up and walk away from the menace. However, Lee was having just one problem with that idea … the automobile tire in question was sitting square on top of the top of his right hand. There was no getting up and removing one’s self from that situation without getting the machine off of his hand and so quite reasonably Lee started screaming like a fool to “get this damn car off of me.” I don’t know how often Lee screamed that before his request was obliged, but after seemingly a long stretch in hell the automobile in question rolled of his right hand and Lee arose to communicate his great displeasure.

It all got bleary after that. A middle aged man suddenly showed up trying to control Lee in his fevered realization that where there had once been skin on his right hand there was only blood. Blood was everywhere. Blood streamed from not only the and, it streamed from a head wound that fortunately, compared to the hand wound, was insignificant.

In due course of time an ambulance showed up and carted Lee away, still as concerned with his sitting down to his next meal as he was with his bloody appearance.

Not only was it a bad day for Lee but it was a bad day for Lee’s little brother as well. Not only had Lee been riding Carl’s new bike, but he had also thrown on Carl’s league bowling shirt. That shirt would never be worn bowling again. Once in the Emergency room the attendants wanted to slip the shirt over the mangled hand. Lee had a better idea as he started to scream at the powers that be to cut the dang shirt off as opposed to trying to slip it over his hand. Everyone agreed that wasn’t a bad idea…. except probably Carl.

Anyway, soon enough Dr. Dettman was in the ER looking at the wound. Doc Dettman was more concerned about the head wound then the hand wound. Soon enough they drugged Lee to deal with both the pain and his adolescence expressions of pain.

Doc Dettman was wrong. The head wound required just a few stitches. The hand wound required more than a few weeks in and out of hospitals in pursuit of a couple sizable skin grafts. The upside though was the necessity of Lee to miss several weeks of high-school.

The moral of the story is … if you want to get away with cobbing your brother’s bike and bowling shirt get hit by a car. It is the only way to never hear a complaint uttered against your older brother’s chic.

Series on Justification from Eternity — Part VIII

“Christ became a Surety for his people from everlasting; engaged to pay their debts, bear their sins, and make satisfaction for them; and was accepted of as such by God his Father, who thenceforward looked at him for payment and satisfaction, and looked at them as discharged, and so they were in his eternal mind; and it is a rule that will hold good, as Maccovius {15} observes, “that as soon as one becomes a surety for another, the other is immediately freed, if the surety be accepted;” which is the case here and it is but a piece of common prudence, when a man has a bad debt, and has good security for it, to look not to the principal debtor, who will never be able to pay him, but to his good bondsman and surety, who is able; and so Dr. Goodwin {16} observes, that God, in the everlasting transaction with Christ, “told him, as it were, that he would look for his debt and satisfaction of him, and that he did let the sinners go free; and so they are in this respect, justified from all eternity.”

Dr. John Gill
18th Century Baptist Theologian

This language of “surety” is not often used any longer in the Western Church. Because it is no longer often used in pulpits in 21st century America and because it is so frequently used above we will spend a paragraph defining this idea of Jesus as our surety.

A surety in bible-talk is someone who is legally responsible for the debt of someone else. In our language a surety would be like someone who co-signs a loan. If the person who has taken the loan out can’t meet the responsibility of the note the person who co-sign the note is legally responsible for the debt in question. In Scripture Judah became surety to Joseph for his brother Benjamin (Gen. 43:9; 44:32).  Hebrews 7:22 finds Jesus as the surety for the elect under the new covenant.

22 by so much more Jesus has become a surety of a better covenant.”

The idea communicated in Hebrews 7 is that Jesus secures the purpose of the better covenant by being the agent who guarantees and secures the promised better covenant in light of our failure. Jesus is our surety inasmuch as by His work God’s law, which the sinful elect broke is honored, and the law’s penal demands fulfilled in our stead by Jesus — our surety.

Now as to Justification the question obtains; “When did the Son become our surety?” Was the Son only received as our Justification upon our regeneration? Was the Son only received as our Justification upon the completion of His redemptive cross work? Or, as we contend was the Son our surety from eternity as a immanent and eternal act of God accepted as the elect’s justification?

The quotes that Gill offers are convincing.

“that as soon as one becomes a surety for another, the other is immediately freed, if the surety be accepted;”  — Maccovius

“(the Father) told him (the Son), as it were, that he would look for his debt and satisfaction of him, and that he did let the sinners go free; and so they are in this respect, justified from all eternity.”   Thomas Goodwin