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.
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.
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 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)
“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.”
Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to dwell there, for the famine was severe in the land. And it came to pass, when he was close to entering Egypt, that he said to Sarai his wife, “Indeed I know that you are a woman of beautiful countenance. Therefore it will happen, when the Egyptians see you, that they will say, ‘This is his wife’; and they will kill me, but they will let you live. Please say you are my sister, that it may be well with me for your sake, and that I may live because of you.” So it was, when Abram came into Egypt, that the Egyptians saw the woman, that she was very beautiful. The princes of Pharaoh also saw her and commended her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken to Pharaoh’s house. He treated Abram well for her sake. He had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female servants, female donkeys, and camels. But the LORD plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. And Pharaoh called Abram and said, ‘What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister’? I might have taken her as my wife. Now, therefore, here is your wife; take her and go your way.’ So Pharaoh commanded his men concerning him; and they sent him away, with his wife and all that he had.
Genesis 20:2-7
Now Abraham said of Sarah his wife, “She is my sister.” And Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah. But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, “Indeed you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man’s wife.” But Abimelech had not come near her; and he said, “Lord, will You slay a righteous nation also? Did he not say to me, ‘She is my sister’? And she, even she herself said, ‘He is my brother.’ In the integrity of my heart and innocence of my hands, I have done this.” And God said to him in a dream, “
Yes, I know that you did this in the integrity of your heart. For I also withheld you from sinning against Me; therefore I did not let you touch her. Now, therefore, restore the man’s wife; for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you shall live. But if you do not restore her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours.”
Exodus 1:15 Then the king of Egypt told the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, 16 “When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth, look at the child when you deliver it. If it’s a boy, kill it, but if it’s a girl, let it live.” 17 However, the midwives feared God and didn’t obey the king of Egypt’s orders. They let the boys live.
18 So the king of Egypt called for the midwives. He asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?”19 The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women. They are so healthy that they have their babies before a midwife arrives.”20 God was good to the midwives. So the people increased in number and became very strong. 21 Because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.
See also Joshua 2 & Rahab’s lie to save the Hebrew spies
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Typically we fault Abraham for lying twice regarding Sarah being his sister and not his wife to Potentates. Yet, in both cases, God honored Abraham’s lie. In both cases, Abraham was enriched by his lie. In both cases, God punished the Kings temporarily to support the lie by sending sanctions upon those Kings. In both cases, God holds the Kings responsible even though they were lied to by Abraham. In neither case do we see God upbraiding Abraham for the lies.
In all three cases (Rahab, Abraham and the Hebrew midwives) they lied in order to save innocent lives. It is therefore clear that the implications of the sixth commandment trumped the ninth in these cases. This makes one also think about whether there may actually be cases where lying under oath in order to save innocent lives would be permissible (perhaps even obligatory). In such cases, wisdom would require us to weigh the intent of the law. Clearly, wisdom would dictate that lying would be preferred over against the loss of life.
Further on this score the eighth commandment requires “rendering to every one his due.” It is often said in these circumstances that we are not required to put the instrument of our death into our enemies’ hands. All protests aside, the Potentates never controverted Abraham’s assertion that he would be killed for having a beautiful wife. Abraham was also a Prophet, and the LORD used these situations to enrich the godly, bring the fear of God to pagans, and establish a boundary between a wicked race and the Line of the Messiah. This sort of ethical resolution has saved many persecuted Christians. It may also be said that the weightier matter of the Law was to preserve life, which is the positive side of the Lord’s injunction against Murder. We must realize that telling the truth, if it implies unnecessary and immoral consequences, may in the hierarchy of goods, fall subordinate to other considerations, such as the preservation of innocent life.
Looking at history Augustine and Aquinas both argue about the intent of lies. They make the distinction between jocose lies or “officious lies” and “malicious lies.” They argue that jocose lies are playful and not harmful. These officious lies have no intent to harm while malicious lies intend to do harm and as such are the only real type of lie. I would call the examples cited officious lies not malicious and thus justifiable.
Now some will object that this could be interpreted as clothing Joseph Fletcher’s situational ethics with the cloak of virtue. However, I would contend that this is NOT Joseph Fletcher because we are insisting that Abraham acted in concert with God’s law when he lied just as the Hebrew midwives did and just as Rahab did when they lied. In each case, they were being observant to God’s 6th Word. Fletcher, to the contrary, insists that right and wrong are totally determined by the person themselves without any reference to an outside standard. In the end, allowing the murder of innocents because you have to make full disclosure of all things is an ultimate example of “using the law unlawfully.”
In terms of Abraham, the text nowhere gives us any indication that God was displeased with Abraham for his words to the potentates in Gen. 12/20. In point of fact, in Genesis 20 God blesses Abram with material blessings as a result of Abram’s speech to Abimelech.
As touching Rahab she is held up as an example of faith in both Hebrews and James. Can we possibly believe that God disapproved of Rahab’s words that protected the Hebrew spies and at the same time, by the Spirit’s inspiration, hold Rahab up as an example of faith in action?
Rushdoony clinches it here;
“We do not owe the truth to men who seek to do evil. A court of law requires truth, and we must pray there for God’s justice. But when confronted by evil men, we owe them nothing, for such men want our truth to further their evil. Abraham told the truth only up to the point.”