Contrasting Gnostic Spiritual With Scriptural Spiritual

“The spiritual is that which is of or by the Spirit. It is not the same thing as spirit, which is invisible and non-physical (i.e. like “breath”). Spiritual is that which is empowered by or shaped by the Spirit. The original creation was spiritual in this way in that Spirit of God hovered over the face of the deep and formed and filled the formless and empty world. The creation which comes under the effects of the curse of sin is re-created by the Spirit so that it might fulfill God’s original intentions for it as creation. So, for instance, when God promises to Abraham that in him all the families of the earth will be blessed (Gen 12.3), I believe that he is promising that families as families will be brought into a state of blessedness. They will have to go through death and resurrection through the waters of baptism (cf. e.g., Rom 6.1ff.), being transformed as a families. But they will be transformed as families, fulfilling God’s intention for the family in creation. Spiritual, in my understanding, is not, then, the opposite of or to be sharply distinguished from physical or material creation. It is not that which parallels but stands outside of the physical. Rather, spiritual has to do with the Spirit empowering and shaping and transforming a very material creation.”

Bill Smith
INFANT BAPTISM, THE NEW MAN, AND THE NEW CREATION: A Response to Stephen J. Wellum’s “Baptism and the Relationship Between the Covenants” in Believer’s Baptism: Sign of the New Covenant in Christ

Given Smith’s observation above we can seee that “Spiritual” in the NT does not mean ephemeral, invisible, or incorporeal. A spiritual reality is not a non-corporeal reality. Conversely, when we are told that “our weapons are not carnal” we are not being told there that our weapons are not corporeal. We are being told that our very real corporeal weapons are to be handled in a way that is in keeping with the Spirit empowering and shaping and transforming a very material instrument — whether that instrument is a protest sign or a evening gown.

“Spiritual” thus has more to do with that which animates the behavior or actions of the actor. Spiritual is the afflatus that animates the Christian in whatever they do in this corporeal world. The Christian, when animated by the Holy Spirit, so as to be walking according to God’s precepts, while full of faith in Christ, is at that moment the “Spiritual Man” — and that status of Spiritual applies whether the Christian is on their knees in prayer or in a foxhole fighting God’s enemies.

That “Spiritual” has to do more with the divine afflatus that animates us then it has to do with some kind of gnostic connection to matters non-corporeal or invisible is articulated by Sinclair Ferguson in his book on the Holy Spirit,

“Energy rather than immateriality is what is in view… While in the natural order ruach may occasionally denote a gentle breeze (as in some translations of Gn. 3:8), the dominant idea in the Old Testament is that of power. The parallelism in Micah 3:8 well illustrates this: ‘But as for me, I am filled with power, with the Spirit of the Lord.’ When used of God (around one third of the Old Testament uses), therefore, ruach does not connote the idea of divine immateriality (spirit, not matter), although doubtless that is implied in the general biblical perspective. The emphasis is, rather, on his overwhelming energy; indeed one might almost speak about the violence of God.” (Sinclair Ferguson, The Holy Spirit (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996).

The attempt to make “Spiritual” mean something pietistic so that we are passive or so as to support a quietistic disposition in the Christian life, or something disconnected from our daily living in the public square has been one of the most successful tools at castrating the modern Christian. It’s time we started re-thinking this idea of “Spiritual” so as to be better equipped for the times God has given us.

VanDrunen Taken To The Woodshed In Venerable Westminster Theological Journal

As a minister, one spends his share of time reading Theological Journals and thick theological tomes dealing with theological minutia. Often one comes across in these readings in house debates over particular subject matter between different camps. Usually (though not always), such debate in the Academic tomes is muted in terms of criticism. When an Academic says something like, “my opponent perhaps has not been as thorough as they might otherwise have been,” what one has just read is an explosive polemic for the Academic journal world. Typically Academic Journals and Tomes are not known for their polemical food-fight nature. They are typically restrained and dry as dust.

However, in the Fall 2013 publication of the Westminster Theological Journal ones finds one of the most pointed and denunciatory articles that I’ve ever seen in a Academic Journal. It is still pretty mild by Iron Ink standards but by the standards of Academia it is red hot. I’ve extracted just a few of the quotes below in order to reveal how sizzling this peer review article is.

And of course, the reason I’m doing this is that the peer review article under consideration is an unraveling of Radical Two Kingdom Theology. This peer review article especially zeroes in on R2K guru David VanDrunen’s, “Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms: A Study in the Development of Reformed Social Thought.” The peer review article is written by William D. Dennison, Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Covenant College.

For those who are keeping track, this is now at least the third devastating major academic peer review article written surrounding the pseudo-theology called “R2K,” by eminently qualified people. There was a peer review by Kerux. There was a peer review by Dr. Cornelius Venema. And now there is this peer review by Westminster Theological Journal. One can only hope that R2K is running out of friends.

What this post is concerned with is exposing the repeated frustrations of Dr. Dennison at how inadequate Dr. VanDrunen’s work has been. Later post’s here at Iron Ink may go into the substance of Dr. Dennison’s critique. Keep in mind I have been far from exhaustive in noting every expression of frustration by Dr. Dennison in his column in the WTJ.

NL for Dennison = Natural Law. NL2K = R2K (Natural Law Two Kingdom).

“How effectively does VanDrunen accomplish the enormous task he has set out in this volume? The breadth of VanDrunen’s volume and the scholarly material selected convey impressive intentions; the depth of his scholarly analysis, however, remains elementary and exhibits a number of shortcomings ….

In spite of these intentions, however, VanDrunen provides no indication that he grasps the methodological issues gripping the field of interdisciplinary scholarship over the past century. In fact, the work unfolds in a typically amateur manner; it yields to the popular outlook that any study involving more than one area within the academic curriculum qualifies as an interdisciplinary study. In light of this attitude, he exhibits no comprehension of how an approach of interdistiplinarity (moving from particular disciplines to integration) must be viewed and implemented into a final integrated interdisciplinary study. This failure results in serious limitations in his producing a profound academic integrative study….

Although VanDrunen mentions that classical non-Christian writings had an influence on the tradition of NL, nowhere
does he unpack the substance of their effect, a critical omission. VanDrunen teaches at an institution that states her continual devotion to the work of Cornelius Van Til and, yet, in his writing, he exhibits little understanding of Van Til’s transcendental technique….

This latter domain of natural rights is crucial in connecting NL from the medieval period to the Enlightenment, but VanDrunen ignores it entirely in its medieval construction. Simply put, natural rights are sometimes attributed by scholars solely to the seventeenth century (e.g., rights of property, permissive rights of government, rights of self-protection, marriage rights), but these rights in fact have their roots m the medieval era, specifically the canonists of the twelfth century. In this regard, VanDrunen provides no evidence that he has any scholarly comprehension of the patterns of constitutional thought that tie together the canonists (twelfth century), the conciliarists (fifteenth century), and the constitutionalists (seventeenth century)….

… VanDrunen’s volume provides no credible reason to adopt his thesis that NL is a necessary canon to relate to the civil kingdom (culture). After all, nowhere in the volume does VanDrunen provide his reader with a precise and concrete definition of NL from the Reformed tradition….

With this explanation of sin missing, VanDrunen’s study has done nothing to differentiate itself fully from medieval Roman Catholic scholasticism and what Van Til calls “less-than-consistent Calvinism,” a form of Calvinism that traces its theological roots to a classical synthesis between reason influenced by antiquity and Christian revelation (e.g., Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield at Old Princeton). VanDrunen may try to deny this, but any close reading of the corpuses of Kuyper, Bavinck, and Van Til will clearly demonstrate that VanDrunen’s construct of NL fails to sidestep the pitfalls described by these three premiere Dutch thinkers regarding the extension of medieval scholastic thought through Old Princeton. In fact, this reviewer is certain that Van Til would view VanDrunen’s assessment of NL serving as a common point of contact to discuss ethical responsibility in the context of a common culture as having compatibility with Roman Catholic Scholastic thought….

VanDrunen has failed to display the transcendental or interdisciplinary work necessary to claim that the Reformed tradition only accepted from the pagans those ideas that, through common grace, had affinities with the truth of biblical revelation. Until VanDrunen exhibits that he has done this work in examining the concepts of reason and nature in Greek and Roman thought, his claim that autonomy has had no place in the Reformed tradition with respect to NL is, at best, worthy of skepticism (p. 133)….

VanDrunen’s failure to contend with the inner effects of sin within the construct of NL in the Western tradition leads to two further problems in his work….

Although VanDrunen realizes that the present conception of NL functions within a fallen world, ironically he does not seem to grasp the practical interdisciplinary ramifications of that fact….

Only one who is truly enclosed within an academic ivory tower or who naively isolates the immediate life of the church could suggest that the 2K doctrine can truly serve as a serious directive for the Christian’s relationship with culture. In the providence of God over four centuries, we have already witnessed the horrifying results of this doctrine in the hands of sinful believers. To even suggest that a consistent application of principles found in Meredith Kline’s view of the covenant as well as his view of common grace—whether correctly or wrongly represented by VanDrunen— can present the Christian with a fitting path to follow in responding to culture is further evidence of a naive understanding of a fallen world….

VanDrunen is either ignorant of this state of affairs or willingly avoids the issue which would challenge the theoretical construct of his 2K thesis….

Specifically, VanDrunen’s study shows no familiarity with Kuyper’s Romantic appeal to the Calvinistic appeal to the Calvinist roots of the Republic….

Again, VanDrunen’s failure to apply a transcendental critique upon the historiography in Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment thought prevents him from elucidating the dynamics a” work in Kuyper’s philosophy of history….

Surprisingly, however, VanDrunen’s volume never really deals with this key figure (Herman Bavinck — BLMc) in the contemporary agenda of his thesis. Finally, perhaps, one of the most serious and problematic contentions of
VanDrunen’s thesis appears in his assessment of the 2K doctrine as an essential component of confessional Reformed orthodoxy as portrayed in the West minster Confession of Faith (pp. 189-92)….

In the overview of this section of the Confession (chs. 20-23), however, VanDrunen makes some questionable dogmatic statements…

In the judgment of this reviewer, VanDrunen is here superimposing his understanding of the 2K doctrine on the
Confessional Standards….

As VanDrunen superimposes his dogmatic view of the 2K upon the West minster Standards, his evaluation and interpretation of the Confession for the life of the church should raise enough alarm that anyone intending serious
scholarly use of his volume should proceed with grave caution.
This review has offered serious questions about whether VanDrunen truly understands the concrete historical, cultural, and interdisciplinary context of the thinkers and writers to whom he refers in his analysis of NL2K. Although he has shown adequate dependency upon English editions of primary texts, questions remain about whether he grasps these authors’ intentions. In addition, doubts linger as to whether VanDrunen has examined enough of the corpus of various individuals’ writings to present a fair and correct assessment of those investigated. From Augustine and the Epistle to Diognetus to Van Til and the Van Tilians, VanDrunen to a certain degree has imposed upon almost every individual with whom he deals his own analysis of NL2K. For this reason, anyone consulting VanDrunen’s work must add their own primary document investigation to test VanDrunen’s often revisionist scholarship. We still await, therefore, a definitive work on NL2K in light of Reformed orthodoxy; at best, VanDrunen’s study serves as a minor footnote to any sincere historical study of the subject.”

The French Revolution & The Modern Church

“By Revolution I do not mean one of the many events whereby a Government is overthrown. Nor do I just mean by it the storm of upheaval that has raged in France. Rather, by Revolution I mean the whole inversion of the general spirit and mode of thinking that is now manifest in all Christendom.

By Revolution ideas I mean the basic maxims of liberty and equality, popular sovereignty, social contract, the artificial construction of society by common consent, — notions which today are venerated as the cornerstone of constitutional law and the political order….

The consequences of the Revolutionary ideas cannot be combated with any success unless one places himself outside their influence, on the ground of the anti-revolutionary principles. This ground is beyond reach, however, so long as one refuses to acknowledge that the foundation of justice lies in the law the ordinances of God. Bonald has expressed this truth in the concise and pregnant words, ‘The Revolution began with the declaration of the rights of man; it will end only with the declaration of the right of God.'”

Groen Van Prinesterer
Unbelief and Revolution — Lecture I — Introduction

The Revolution that Gr.v. Pr. speaks of we call “modernity.” It is the unfolding of a whole scale skepticism wherein God’s Word and Law are overthrown in favor of autonomous man’s fiat word and law. Modernity, is the social order and cultural filth that all of us have been swimming in for our whole lives, as our Parents, Grandparents and Great Grandparents swam in it for their whole lives. Because we have swam in it our whole lives we cannot envision anything else. Indeed, when someone comes to us championing the overturn of modernity we rail and scream because modernity, as Van Prinsterer describes it as become our mother’s milk and our way of life. Indeed, it is so much our way of life that it is actually championed as the norm in most “Christian” Churches. This is evidenced by the fact that most of our clergy corps dedicate themselves to helping the rank and file laity fit in and adopt to Modernity as if the worldview of Revolution is the norm of the Christian.

Quite to the contrary I would contend that our Christian Churches should be training centers for identifying the Revolution worldview that Van Prinsterer puts his finger on. As ministers we need to be teaching God’s people the anti-Revolutionary principles that Gr. v. Pr. speaks of. This can not be done apart from returning to the foundation of justice which lies in the ordinances and law of God. As ministers we need to be teaching God’s people the art of successful protest and resistance against the Revolutionary principles that have seized the day.

Gr. v. Pr. was not the only one who recognized this problem. Writing over 100 years later after Gr. v. Pr, Erik von Kuehnelt Leddihn could write in a very similar vein,

“The French Revolution is still with us in every way. Not only are its ideas ever-present, but there is much in its historic evolution that can teach us — in North America no less than in Europe. Its initial period began with the undermining of traditional values and ideas, coupled with the demand for moderate reforms. With Voltaire a whole series of scoffers, facile critics, and agnostics in the literal sense of the term made their appearance. They subverted religion, convictions, traditions, and the loyalties on which state and society rested. The process of decomposition and putrefaction always starts at the top — in the royal palace, the presidential mansion, among the intellectuals, the aristocracy, the wealthy, the clergy — and then gradually enmeshes the lower social layers. In this process it is interesting to notice how the high and mighty develop a sense of guilt and with it a readiness to abdicate, to yield to expropriation, to submit to the loss of privileges, in other words, to commit suicide politically and economically. For this masochist act, however, they are well prepared by the ideological propaganda coming from their own ranks…. The members of the nobility who took active part in the intellectual or political undermining of the ancien regime and then participated in the Revolution are very numerous, without their support the French Revolution is well-nigh unimaginable…. One is inevitably reminded of the fact that, statistically speaking, the natural death of states and nations as well as of classes and estates, is not murder but suicide. However, this act of suicide is usually preceded by a period of delusions and follies. Quen deus vult perdidi prius dementat.

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
Lefism — pg. 88

I would only add here that before political and economic suicide can be committed that theological suicide must first be committed, since politics and economics descends from Theology. I would also observe that when Leddihn speaks of “ideological propaganda,” as Christians we should understand that such ideological propaganda is but a form of theological propaganda.

Leddhin’s observation in this quote supports Christopher Lasch’s, inked 20 years after Leddihn, in his book, “Revolt of the Elites.” In that book Lasch lays the deterioration and decline of the West squarely at the feet of the cultural elite. Lasch cites chapter and verse on how the cultural elite had become the cultural despisers of Western tradition and values. Lasch contends that the overthrow of the West was not orchestrated by the masses, contra Ortega y Gasset’s, “Revolt of the Masses,” but that we have been damaged from within by our cultural gatekeepers.

Morris Berman’s book, “The Twilight of American Culture,” also factors into this theme. Berman, like both Lasch and Leddihn, sees the unraveling of American culture although Berman is inclined to lay the fault at the feet of mass-produced cutlure. Still, that mass-produced culture that Berman speaks of, I would contend, comes from those elites that Lasch excoriates and that Leddihn puts in the dock and which first started with the French Revolution.

Our problem in the West today is that our best and brightest no longer believe in what made the West the West. Groen van Prinsterer, and Leddihn teaches us that the “Un-Westing” of the West began with the French Revolution and has continued unchecked as Biblical Christianity has lost its power to challenge the various incarnations of the French Revolution that have propelled its agenda of “anti-Reformation,” for each subsequent generation.

The Christian church in the West is failing its calling when it refuses to identify at every turn how our current culture is but the successful incarnation of the anti-Christ principles of the French Revolution. That the Church has not figured this out is seen in its inviting the enemy into its bosom via the music we play during worship, its embrace of the whole concept of “social justice,” the way we divide up our families in worship and in a host of other ways.

If we desire Reformation we must first understand that it will never come to pass until we first put off the worldview of the French Revolution.

The Common Bond of Theonomic Alienism and International Marxism

Lately a debate has arisen in some quarters from Bulgaria, wherein it is denied that Marxism, in its quest for a NWO for all of mankind, requires the elimination of all familial, ethnic and racial distinctions. Here are a few quotes from Dr. Francis Nigel Lee on the subject. This is followed by a couple short quotes from prominent Reformed Theologians in History who insist that the distinctions that men are created with are normative and God honoring. Many more quotes like these are peppered throughout Iron Ink.

“Already in his First Draft of the ‘Civil War in France’-The Character of the Commune, Marx approvingly recorded that “loudly announcing its international tendencies … Paris announced the admission of foreigners to the commune as basic policy, immediately elected a foreign worker [Leo Frankel] (a member of the international) in its executive committee. [and] decreed [the destruction of the] symbol of French chauvinism-the Vendôme Column!””

– Dr. F.N. Lee

“In the final rendition of his Civil War in France, Marx wrote that “if the Commune was thus truly representative of all the healthy elements of French society, and therefore the truly national Government, it was, at the same time, a working men’s Government, [and,] as the bold champion of the emancipation of labor, emphatically international …. The Commune annexed to France the working people all over the world … The Commune admitted all foreigners to the honor of dying for the immortal cause … The bourgeoisie had found time to display their patriotism by organizing police hunts upon the Germans in France.

The Commune made a German working man its Minister of Labor … The Commune honored the heroic sons of Poland by
placing them at the head of the defenders of Paris.””

– Dr. F.N. Lee

“And as Lenin pointed out in his Paris Commune, the Commune “was able to eradicate ‘common national’ and ‘patriotic’ aberrations in the ranks of the young proletariat.””

– Dr. F.N. Lee

“Lenin’s 1918 Constitution of R.S.F.S.R. (art. 22) proclaimed that: “The Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, recognizing that all citizens enjoy equal rights without distinction of race or nationality, declares that it is contrary to the fundamental laws of the Republic to grant or tolerate any privileges or advantages based on race or nationality, and to oppress national minorities or impose any limitations whatsoever on their rights.””

– Dr. F.N. Lee

“Well known are the words of the Manifesto of the Communist Party: “The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality. The working men have no country. National differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing … The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.” Thus too Lenin.”

– Dr. F.N. Lee

“Clearly it is the case that you can’t have Socialism/Communism without Alienism’s desire to break down natural familial affections and ties. This is so because the goal of all International Marxism is a muscular egalitarianism whereby even man’s heritage and lineage is so equal that the heritage and lineage is irrelevant. International Marxism, with its Anti-Christ desire to eliminate all distinctions as ordained by God, even eventually pushes to the point where distinctions between men and women, and children and adults begins to fade away.

Of course Reformed Theologians have always held that God delights in inherited and God given distinctions.

“Paul had two classes of brethren; those who were with him the children of God in Christ; these he calls brethren in the Lord, Philip, i. 14, holy brethren, &c. The others were those who belonged to the family of Abraham. These he calls brethren after the flesh, that is, in virtue of natural descent from the same parent. Philemon he addresses as his brother, both in the flesh and in the Lord. The Bible recognizes the validity and rightness of all the constitutional principles and impulses of our nature. It therefore approves of parental and filial affection, and, as is plain from this and other passages, of peculiar love for the people of our own race and country.

Charles Hodge
Commentary Romans 9

“It is admitted that nations as well as tribes and families, have their distinctive characteristics, and that these characteristics are not only physical and mental, but also social and moral. Some tribes are treacherous and cruel. Some are mild and confiding. Some are addicted to gain, others to war. Some are sensual, some intellectual. We instinctively judge of each according to its character; … admitting that these dispositions are innate and hereditary, and that they are not self-acquired by the individual whose character they constitute, we nevertheless, and none the less, approve or condemn them according to their nature. This is the instinctive and necessary, and therefore the correct, judgment of the mind.”

—Charles Hodge
Systematic Theology, Vol. 2.5.6

Origin of Man: the “differences between the Caucasian, Mongolian, and negro races, which is known to have been as distinctly marked two or three thousand years before Christ as it is now…. these varieties of race are not the effect of the blind operation of physical causes, but by those cause as intelligently guided by God for the accomplishment of some wise purpose… God fashions the different races of men in their peculiarities to suit them to the regions which they inhabit.”

Charles Hodge
Systematic Theology Pt II Chapter 1

“Nationalism, within proper limits, has the divine sanction; an imperialism that would, in the interest of one people, obliterate all lines of distinction is everywhere condemned as contrary to the divine will. Later prophecy raises its voice against the attempt at world-power, and that not only, as is sometimes assumed, because it threatens Israel, but for the far more principal reason, that the whole idea is pagan and immoral.

Now it is through maintaining the national diversities, as these express themselves in the difference of language, and are in turn upheld by this difference, that God prevents realization of the attempted scheme… [In this] was a positive intent that concerned the natural life of humanity. Under the providence of God each race or nation has a positive purpose to serve, fulfillment of which depends on relative seclusion from others.”

~ Geerhardus Vos
Biblical Theology

Guelzo On Lincoln & Gettysburg … McAtee on Guelzo

In a New York Slimes piece on 17 Nov. 2013 Alan Guelzo wrote a piece lauding the cult figure Abraham Lincoln and Lincoln’s Gettysburg address. Now, it should be known before I take on Guelzo here that I’ve read Guelzo’s, “Abraham Lincoln; Redeemer President.” As such I’ve given Guelzo a fair shake on his take on Lincoln. It should also be known that Guelzo has connections to the Claremont Institute which is a Think Tank that has, as part of its purpose, keeping alive the Lincoln myth.

The piece I’m dissecting can be found here,

Guelzo writes,

“The warning Lincoln issues is his admission that the Civil War was testing whether or not democracies are inherently unstable — “whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure.” Today, many take democracy for granted as the endpoint of political development. But it did not look that way in 1863. The French Revolution, which promised to be the American Revolution’s beachhead in Europe, swiftly circled downward in the Reign of Terror and then the tyranny of Bonaparte; democratic uprisings in Spain in 1820, in Russia in 1825, in France in 1830 and across Europe in 1848 were crushed by newly renascent monarchies or subverted by Romantic philosophers, glorying in regimes built on blood, soil and nationality rather than the Rights of Man.”

McAtee corrects,

1.) Guelzo refers to us as a “Democracy.” We were never intended to be a Democracy. America’s Founding Fathers warned earnestly against a Democracy. James Madison, in Federalist Paper No. 10, said of a pure democracy, “there is nothing to check the inducement to sacrifice the weaker party or the obnoxious individual.” At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, Edmund Randolph said, “. . . that in tracing these evils to their origin every man had found it in the turbulence and follies of democracy.” John Adams said, “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” Later on, Chief Justice John Marshall observed, “Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.”

In point of fact the US Constitution’s Article IV, Section 4 itself offers,

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…”

We were never intended to be a Democracy though by the actions of Abraham Lincoln our Republican form of government was utterly destroyed in favor of an ever increasing Democracy.

2.) Lincoln, by his unconstitutional and anti-constitutional actions himself destroyed Old America. There was one Nation fighting to be self governed by the parameters of the Old Constitution and that was the Confederates States of America. Those who died on the Union Side of Gettysburg died, in order that the principles of the American Nation which our Founding Fathers conceived and to which they were dedicated, would be forever eliminated.

3.) The beach-head which Guelzo talks about was never the American experiment exported to France. Many have been the scholars who have clearly limned out the differences between the American Revolution, which was a conservative counter-Revolution, and the French Revolution which was the first Revolution of the coming of Modernity. No, Guelzo has it backwards here. The beachhead that was established was in 1861 by the French Philosophes with their World and live view as France exported the French Revolution to American via Lincoln’s Red Brigades (48’ers), assorted radical abolitionists, and philosophical Transcendentalists. The American experiment, that Guelzo appeals to, was crushed between 1861-1865 by those who hated all that Founding Fathers had created and envisioned America to be.

4.) Guelzo writes so glibly about “the Rights of man” without informing us that the whole French idea of the “Rights of man,” (has Guelzo forgotten the “Declaration of the Rights of Man” as that was inspired by those inspired by the likes of Robespierre and Danton?) was inspired by a Worldview that was opposed to the whole idea of the Creator as found in the US Constitution? Guelzo rails against blood and soil and nation while implicitly supporting a European mob who was seeking to remake Europe into a Internationalist Socialist Utopia. Guelzo relishes in the whole “Rights of Man” tradition but fails to mention that his cherished “Rights of Man” has now become “the Right to Abortion,” and “The Right to marriage your same sex partner.” The whole Right of Man fantasy was a disaster to begin with. Only God has rights. Man only has duties.

Guelzo writes,

“The outbreak of the American Civil War only gave the monarchs further reason to rejoice. The survival of the American democracy had been a thorn in their royal sides, unsettling their downtrodden peoples with dreams of self-government. That this same troublesome democracy would, in 1861, obligingly proceed to blow its own political brains out — and do it in defense of the virtues of human slavery — gave the monarchs no end of delight.”

McAtee Responds,

1.) In 1861 America was NOT a Democracy. It was a Republic of Republics. In 1865 America was something different. In 1865 America was a Democracy. But contra Guelzo, Democracy did not survive in America because it had never been in America. Democracy was forced upon the American people with Lincoln’s impersonation of Robespierre on the American people. Robespierre used the guillotine. Lincoln used the bayonet and the canon ball.

2.) The American “Civil War” put to the end of one people’s vision of self government. The Confederates States desired to be self governed but instead Lincoln, seeking to create a proposition nation, where blood and soil and nationality did not matter, was responsible for the deaths of almost 600,000 Americans, not to mention the man who sanctioned Total War against Southern Civilians with all its accompanying criminal activities.

3.) The war was not fought in defense of the virtues of slavery without at the same time being fought in order to enslave men. Mr. Lincoln’s war did more to enslave far more people than it ever did to release people from slavery. The war only accomplished taking some slaves from the Plantation Owners while empowering the State to make even more men slaves to the Federal Government. Repeating the same old canard that the war was fought over slavery is intellectual laziness on Guelzo’s part. Slavery was the occasion of the War but it was not the cause of the war.

Guelzo writes,

“Lincoln’s task at Gettysburg was to persuade his hearers, on the evidence offered by three days of battle, that democracy’s sun had not set after all. Gettysburg was not only a victory, but a victory won with the Union Army’s back to the wall, and its news came, appropriately, on July 4.”

1.) Lincoln’s task at Gettysburg was to fool his audience, by his rhetorical smoke, that the nation was founded upon the French Revolution idea of equality. Equality was never spoken of in the US Constitution which was the covenant compact of the nation. Equality as referred to in the Declaration was not the equality of Mr. Lincoln and the French Revolution but the equality of Englishmen. That this was and remains true is seen in the reference in the Declaration to Indian Savages. Does Guelzo really believe that, given that “savages” language in the Declaration, the Founders would have agreed with Lincoln, in his Gettysburg address, that the Founders formed this nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal? This is just an example of Guelzo, along with Lincoln, trying to read egalitarianism back into our origins.

2.) Oh … and Americans in 1863 were smart enough to know they were not a democracy.

Guelzo writes,

“Above all, the victory was the product of self-sacrifice — 3,155 Union dead, 14,529 wounded and 5,365 “missing,” rivaling British and Allied losses at Waterloo. These casualties were not professional soldiers, Wellington’s “scum of the earth” who had taken their shilling and their chance together, nor were they dispirited peasants, driven into battle by the whips of their betters, but precisely those ordinary citizens whom the cultured despisers of democracy had laughingly doubted could ever be made to do anything but calculate profit and loss.

McAtee responds,

1.) Well, I should hope that when one Army has the high ground, and the material advantage, they would be able to beat back those who are sacrificing themselves take said high ground.

2.) The New York draft riots occurring about 10 later suggests that men were being driven into battle by the whips of their “betters.”

3.) These men died to destroy the Constitution.

4.) Guelzo writes some variant of “Democracy” 15 times in the last few paragraphs. We were not and are not a Democracy.

Guelzo writes,

Looking out over the semicircular rows of graves, Lincoln saw in them a transcendence that few people, then or now, have been willing to concede to liberal democracy. And he saw something all could borrow, a renewed dedication to popular self-government, “that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion.” Like the jeremiad, it would point toward a renewal, a new birth, not of freedom from sin, but political freedom.

The genius of the address thus lay not in its language or in its brevity (virtues though these were), but in the new birth it gave to those who had become discouraged and wearied by democracy’s follies, and in the reminder that democracy’s survival rested ultimately in the hands of citizens who saw something in democracy worth dying for. We could use that reminder again today.

McAtee responds and ends by quoting H. L. Mencken,

“… let us not forget that it (the Gettysburg Address) is oratory, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it! Put it into the cold words of everyday! The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination — “that government of the people, by the people, for the people,” should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, i. e., of the people of the States? The Confederates went into battle an absolutely free people; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision and vote of the rest of the country—and for nearly twenty years that vote was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely any freedom at all.”