What Was Righteousness In 1973 is Now Sin In 2024

In 1973 a new Reformed denomination was being birthed. It eventually became known as the PCA. Dr. John Edwards Richards was one of the founders of that new denomination and Dr. Richards gave us some of the reasons why this new denomination was leaving the PCUS.

Causes of Separation in 1973

The Socialist, who declares all men are equal.  Therefore there must be a great leveling of humanity and oneness of privilege and possession.

The Racial Amalgamationist, who preaches that the various races should be merged into one race and differences erased in oneness.

The Communist, who would have one mass of humanity coerced into oneness by a totalitarian state and guided exclusively by Marxist philosophy.

The Internationalist, who insists on co-existence between all peoples and nations that they be as one regardless of ideology or history.

John Edwards Richards
One of the founders of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).

“No human can measure the anguish of personality that goes on within the children of miscegenation… Let those who would erase the racial diversity of God’s creation beware lest the consequence of their evil be visited upon their children.”

John Edwards Richards
One of the founders of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA)

“The vast majority of good thinking people prefer to associate with, and intermarry with people of their respective race; this is part of the God-given inclination to honor and uphold the distinctiveness of separate races. But there are many false prophets of oneness, and many shallow stooges, who seek to force the amalgamation of the races.” 

Dr. John E. Richards

Dr. Richards perhaps knew that Marxists were pushing for a world and social-order that was the very opposite that he believed should be supported by Christians.  When you read the above it sounds like Dr. Richards was aware of the Marxist agenda. An agenda which was clearly put forth by Marxist “wise-men.”

1.) ”What will be the attitude of communism to existing nationalities?

The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a result of this association and hereby to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of their basis, private property.”

~ Frederick Engels in “The Principles of Communism”, 1847

2.) “The equality of races and nations is one of the most important elements of the moral strength and might of the Soviet state. Soviet anthropology develops the one correct concept, that all the races of mankind are biologically equal. The genuinely materialist conception of the origin of man and of races serves the struggle against racism, against all idealist, mystic conceptions of man, his past, present and future.”

—Mikhail Nesturkh, Soviet anthropologist, 1959
“The Origin of Man” (Moscow)Mikhail Nesturkh, Soviet anthropologist, 1959:

3.) “The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into small states and end all national isolation; not only to bring the nations closer together but to merge them….”

Vladimir Lenin
The Rights of Nations to Self Determination — pg. 76

4.) “… Just as mankind can achieve the abolition of classes only by passing through the dictatorship of the proletariat, so mankind can achieve the inevitable merging of nations only by passing through the transition period of complete liberation of all oppressed nations, i.e., their right to secede. “

Vladimir Lenin 
The Rights of Nations to Self Determination 

5.) “Even the natural differences within species, like racial differences…, can and must be done away with historically.” 

K. Marx’s Collected Works V:103,
As cited in S.F. Bloom’s The World of Nations: A
Study of the National Implications in the Work of Karl Marx, Columbia University Press, New York, 1941, pp. 11 & 15-19:

6.) “Full-scale Communist construction constitutes a new stage in the development of national relations in the U.S.S.R., in which the nations will draw still closer together until complete unity is achieved…. However, the obliteration of national distinctions and especially of language distinctions is a considerably longer process than the obliteration of class distinctions.”

Nikita Khrushchev

Today it has become passe’ and nekulturny to disagree with the Marxists on this matter and to agree with Dr. Richards. It is an odd thing that a whole new Christian and Reformed denomination in 1973 could be birthed based on issues that are now seen as non Christian in putative conservative Reformed Churches.

A “conservative” church in Pella, Iowa for example just adopted a tenet that I’m pretty sure that Dr. Richards and the people who, at that time, formed the PCA — having seen this kind of conviction in the denomination they were leaving — would have strenuously disagreed.

“Furthermore, we reject Kinism, which teaches that it is consistently unwise or a sin for people of different ethnicities or races to intermarry, and that civil societies ought to take steps to remain ethnically or racially segregated.”

I don’t know if Dr. Richards would have said it was sin for people of different ethnicities or races to intermarry but from the quotes above I know he would have certainly said it was consistently unwise.

There are two things that trouble me about this kind of thing.

1.) It seems to me that given enough time, truth will change because the Overton window moves to the left.  The PCA is formed because certain things they are seeing in the Churches they were leaving were understood by those leaving as being, at the very least “unwise.” Now 50 years later conservative churches are saying that the reasons why people left their previous denomination were unwise for doing so because their reasons were unbiblical and sin. This is lightning fast social change.

2.) Because of these kinds of social order changes people alive today who agreed with the convictions of Dr. Richards and those that formed the new denomination no longer can find a denominational church home. Bad theology hurts people and this theology that crept into the liberal churches in 1973 that required people to leave has now crept into what is thought of as Conservative churches and some people, who have a memory longer than 5 minutes, have no where left to attend church.

Understand when this Pella, Iowa church “rejects Kinism,” they are rejecting what the people who abandoned their previous faithless denomination believed in 1973 was standard Christianity. They didn’t call it Kinism then. They just called it Christianity.

Truth forever on the scaffold
Wrong forever on the throne 
But the scaffold sway the future
And behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadows
Keeping watch above His own

A Book Review … Rodney Stark’s ‘Bearing False Witness; Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History.’

I completed Rodney Stark’s ‘Bearing False Witness; Debunking Centuries of Anti-Catholic History.’

I can’t recommend this highly enough. Stark takes a battleax to modern embraced narratives and hacks them to shreds by  examining revisionist historical evidence and by citing the best and brightest scholars in each respective field.

This book necessitates that Protestants understand that our Church in history is the Roman Catholic church before it excommunicated itself upon excommunicating and casting out the Reformers. As Protestants we are in error when we don’t understand that the Church in History is our Church and it’s history thus should be defended. We should be careful defenders when we can be of the Church’s actions in history that goes behind the Reformation.

Stark does just that in this volume by demonstrating that the modern narratives surrounding the “guilt” of the Christian faith for this or that unconscionable activity as capture in some false narrative is pure bunkum.

Stark gives us evidence that the being based is Church history by exposing the falsity of modern narratives against Christianity in chapters dealing with,

1.) The Church being anti-Semitic.

Stark does admit that the Church did discriminate but he (rightly) insists that any social order in order to maintain its hegemony must discriminate. Stark teaches the idea that the Church was hunting down Bagels in order to kill them is just ridiculous.

2.) The Christian faith persecuted the tolerant Pagans after Constantine legalized Christianity.

Stark gives the historical account demonstrating that such a narrative is pure fairy tale. The Christian Crown was quite tolerant of pagans as long as pagans did not seek to overthrow Christianity. This chapter gives us a glimpse on the life and failure of Julian the Apostate.

3.) The idea that any thing called “the Dark Ages” ever existed. Stark explodes the myth that the time of the burgeoning Christian social order following the fall of Rome was backward and dull. Stark demonstrates that this was a time of great learning and advancement. Stark demonstrates that it was the Christ hater later writers that dubbed this time “The Dark Ages,” and then the later time periods of “The Enlightenment,” and “The Age of Reason.”

4.) Stark demonstrates that Christianity opposed slavery thus denying modernists to cast in the teeth the idea that Christian were always slavers. I do think that we need to distinguish here the sin of man stealing for slavery which requires the death penalty, and the fact that Scripture supports the idea of slavery as Biblically conducted. However, Stark’s chapter here demonstrates that the Christian faith never countenanced man stealing.

5.) Stark demonstrates that the Church has not historically supported naked Authoritarianism. He cites the experts who note that if and when the Church supported Authoritarians (such as Franco) it was because those who opposed the Authoritarians they were supporting had been trying to snuff out the Church. Here Stark cites the Church’s support of Franco against the Communist “Republicans.” Stark in this chapter also goes out of his way to explode the myth that Pope Pius XII was in any way ‘sreltiH Pope. In this chapter Stark recites the record of the oppression of the Church by the State during Revolutionary France, Spain, and Russia during their Revolutions.

6.) Stark takes on the idea that Capitalism didn’t exist before the Reformers. Stark seems to think modern Capitalism is a good idea. He can have that idea. Stark notes how interest and capitalism goes way back behind the Protestants to the 11th century. Stark insists that the early Monastic movement was quite capitalistic. Stark notes that usury was not uncommon prior to the Reformation even citing Aquinas in support of usury. (Stark does say Aquinas spoke out of both sides of his mouth on the issue. I was quite glad for this chapter because I’ve met many Roman Catholic who has insisted that usury started with the Reformation. Stark puts the lie to that idea.

7.) Stark demonstrates that the Crusades were a defensive maneuver on the part of the Church in order to defend itself from the offensive marauding and land stealing of the Muslims. Stark spends some time explaining the connection between Christian piety of the time and going on Crusade. Stark spends some time talking about the quality of the character of many of the Crusaders. He also spends time demonstrating that the Christians were not more bloodthirsty than the Muslims whom they were defending Christendom from. In brief, the Muslims were animals and the Crusaders in order to defend human life from these animals had to be brutal themselves in many instances. Stark clears the Crusaders and crusading from the false witness of the Christ haters who maintain the modern narrative.

8.) Stark demonstrates that modern science could not have existed without Christendom producing Christian scientists. Stark demonstrates that the whole idea that Christianity was and is against science is a creation of those who hate Christianity.

Stark cites medieval scientist scholar after medieval scientist scholar to demonstrate that these men were faithful and pious Christian men.

He cites;

“The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and the harmony imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics.”

Johannes Kepler

In his last will & testament, the great chemist, Robert Boyle (1627-1691) wrote to the members of the Royal Society of London, wishing them continued success in their ‘laudable attempts to discover the true Nature of the works of God.”

Rodney Stark
Bearing False Witness – p. 162

Stark reveals how only Christianity, with its concept of a personal and logical God alone could examine the cosmos. It was the presuppositions of the Christian faith that made modern science possible. In this vein, Stark notes regarding about false faiths and science;

“For Islam, the orthodox conception of Allah is hostile to the scientific quest. There is no suggestion in the Qur’an that Allah set his creation in motion and then let it run. Rather, it is assumed that he often intrudes the world and changes things as it pleases him. Thus, through the centuries, many of the most influential Muslim scholars have held that all efforts to formulate natural laws are blasphemy in that they would seem to deny Allah’s freedom to act. Thus did their images of God and the universe deflect scientific efforts in China, Ancient Greece, and Islam (as they held to pagan notions of God.”)

Rodney Stark
Bearing False Witness — p. 162-163

Stark also has a chapter demonstrating the absolute falsity of recently discovered “Gospels.” Stark does so in order to put the lie to the idea that these “new” Gospels have anything to add to the Christian faith.

Finally, Stark puts the lie to the now givens of the fantastical horrors behind the Inquisition. All that really needs to be said here is that when one compares the Inquisition (and burning of witches) to the real horrors of Secular governments like those of the French Revolution, Russian Revolution, and Mao’s Revolution suddenly one begins to understand that in comparison the Inquisition was a day at the park.

Stark has done the Church a great favor by exposing these ridiculous narratives that continue to plague the Christian Church today. Genuine Biblical Christianity has nothing to apologize to secularists, atheists and Christ haters.

A Response to “As the Fighting Moderates Mount the Lone Bulwark,”

In his article; “As the Fighting Moderates Mount the Lone Bulwark,” Doug Wilson has a gif of the character played by Christopher Plummer in the “Sound of Music” where Plummer’s character rips in half a Nazi flag.

Score one for Captain Von Trapp.

However, the usage of this gif by Doug to adorn his article indicates that Doug really does think that he is standing on his lone bulwark fighting Nazis. In brief, everybody who doesn’t agree with Doug’s views of natural affections, Kin, race, or tribe is a Naziwhowantstokill6millionJews.

But it’s just not so and no matter how hard Doug tries to paint the Samuel Francis and Joseph Sobran battalions in his movement as Nazis it is clear by now that it is not going to work.

Doug’s history is as bad, in places, as his sociology. For example here;

“When Hitler double-crossed the Soviets, invading Russia,”

Historical context requires us to realize that it was a race between the Communists and the Nazis as to who was first going to double cross whom. Recent evidence has been put forth in books like “Icebreaker” that Hitler double-crossed the Communists before the Communists double-crossed him. It was a race to see who would double cross whom first. Read, in that light it hardly seems like double crossing.

Next, in the category of terrible history, Doug offers;

So while Churchill was certainly a great man, we still have to say that, great man or not, history still has a way of unfolding and/or unraveling on you.”
Doug Wilson
As the Fighting Moderates Mount the Lone Bulwark

Blog Mablog

Anybody who suggests that Winston Church was a great man is clueless about WW II history. Was Churchill a great man as a result of his Gallipoli campaign? Was he a great man in conjunction with his work to make sure passenger liners carrying war ordinance were torpedoed by German U-Boats? Was he a great man because of the copious amounts of alcohol he consumed during critical times of decision during war? Was he a great man because of his acquiescence at Teheran and Yalta to the Soviets taking over Eastern Europe? Was he a great man because of the Quebec conference? Was he a great man because he was all in on the Morgenthau plan to murder countless German civilians after the war? Was he a great man because of his demand for the firebombing in German cities or even just the routine bombing of civilian centers? (Churchill was doing this to Germany long before Germany responded in kind against England.) Was Churchill great when he stood on the roof defying the German bombers to bomb him knowing all the time because of intelligence reports that the German Bombers were not going to come near his location? Was Churchill a great man for how he starved out India? Was he a great man for conspiring with FDR to get us into a war we had no business being involved? Was Winston Churchill great because his leadership in both World Wars resulted in the end of the British Empire and the Communist take over of half of Europe?

You see… Doug Wilson is not a wise man. He calls one of the greatest villains of the 20th century a great man. Someone should tell Doug that it is possible to think Hitler a villain while at the same time thinking that Churchill was a villain as well.

So, we see that not only is Doug’s sociology dreadful but his 20th century history is dreadful as well. As a result, he puts the wrong chaps in the dock.

Now, we should say here that Doug’s concern that there may be people who are crypto-Nazis among white Christians in America is understandable but having been around and knowing a good number of Kinists it is not the Kinists who want to “Heil” them some “Hitler.” How does Doug figure that the Filipino Kinists I know, or the Hispanic Kinists I know, or the Black Kinists I know, or the sub-continent Indian Kinists I know are going to look going around going all “sieg-heil all the time?” As I have said countless times it is just ridiculous to suggest that Kinism = Nazism. But that is what Doug does and what Doug continues to do in this most recent piece.

Doug seems to take some exception to Dr. Stephen Wolfe’s recent tweet stating;

“White evangelicals are the lone bulwark standing between us and the disaster of moral insanity.”

He admits that it is a true statement but that whiteness has nothing to do with the observation. He notes that it is equally true that;

“Zionist dispensationalists are the lone bulwark against moral insanity in America.” If we were to offer this up as a demographic observation, it makes the same kind of sense as does the white evangelical version because, in North America, white evangelicals really are overwhelmingly Zionist dispensationalists.

Perhaps, but it is also true that Zionist dispensationalists are overwhelming white people and so Stephen Wolfe’s statement remains true. As a whole we could say that “White evangelicals, many, but not all of whom are Zionist Dispies, are the lone bulwark against moral insanity in America.” However, the one constant between these two groups (White Evangelicals in America and Zionist Dispensationalists in America) is that they tend to be overwhelmingly white.  All Doug has proven here is that some of those white people who are part of the Bulwark against moral insanity in America are eschatologically insane when it comes to thinking that modern Khazars in the Middle East have anything to do with the return of Jesus. However, that point does not negate Stephen Wolfe’s point that white Evangelicals are the lone bulwark against moral insanity in America.

Now, we would reassure Doug here that we are convinced that the reason that White Evangelicals are the lone bulwark against moral insanity in America is primarily because White Evangelicals are Christian. However, those White Christians remain White, as much as that seems to bug Doug.

Now, the question arises; “If White Evangelicals are the lone bulwark against moral insanity in America, where do we find the corps of moral insanity arising in the West against which White Evangelicals have to serve as the lone bulwark?”

However, in answering this question Doug would vigorously protest because a certain bone would get stuck sideways in his throat could he be dispassionate about the answer.

Doug next manages to call many of those who oppose his Churchillian vision of reality of being mangy dogs. In this context the Pope of Moscow writes,

“Now I have been maintaining for a long time that any conservative Christian minister who is not routinely accused of racism and misogyny is a minister who is not doing his job. I have also maintained that if the charges are in any way true, as determined by the scales of the Temple, he is also not doing his job. Got that? Faithful Christians are slandered as racists and misogynists, and secondly, the slander is in fact a slander.”

1.) Yes, but should faithful conservative Christiana (be they ministers or otherwise) be slandered by Doug as being dogs (mangy or otherwise) or as being “racists” or as being “Kinists” with the innuendo being that Kinism = racism? Et Tu Doug?

2.) I’m all for going by the scales of the Temple as long as Doug Wilson isn’t the one operating the scales while the weighing is going on. Got to watch that thumb on the scales routine.

3.) I know many Kinists and I have to tell you I am dancing with rage over the constant hinting by Doug that this group of men I know are racists, Anti-Semites, or misogynists. Now, I suppose there may be Kinist men I don’t know who are secretly racist (whatever that might mean), Anti-Semites, and/or misogynist but if those men exist they are buried pretty deep. I mean, after all, I have been called “The King of the Kinists.” You would think I would know my subjects. (I say, I say, I say, that’s a joke Son.)

To put a fine point on this matter. I don’t know all the men out in Pella, Iowa but I know some of them and I am hear to tell you those men are racists the way that Aunt Jemima syrup is a brand of Kaopectate. It is just ridiculous the way that Pella CREC church — modeling so well as it does the idea of a Christ centered community of faith — should have to put up with the slings, arrows, and denunciations coming from Moscow and the CREC Pope.

In this context Doug writes,

I want to fight for the truth in such a way as to make people accuse me of being a bigot. I also want to fight in such a way as to make it manifestly clear to all the sensible observers that I am not a bigot.

And here we find irony because I would 100% agree with that sentiment and yet Doug tries to cleanse himself of the bigot accusation by pointing his gnarly finger at ethno-nationalists/Kinists and in good Commie fashion denounces them as … “Bigots,” “Racists,” and “Anti-Semites.” I know… I have come under Doug’s examination myself in the past. So, to be clear here, I am accusing Doug of cleansing himself of the accusation of bigot by putting other men in the dock and falsely charging them with being a bigot. In such a way Doug can say to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal neo-con crowd, “See, I’m not a bigot like these filthy bigots.” That kind of behavior can tend to make people resent you.

Doug includes in his irrational diatribe,

“that doesn’t keep the situation in Pella from being a real pastoral mess.”

I know some of the men in that Pella Church. I know them as good men. I also know what it means to be a Pastor and I can guarantee you that when the Pope of the denomination one is attached to says things like the sentence above it makes your job as Pastor a giant 5 alarm migraine headache. I don’t know Rev. Michael Shover of Pella CREC. I have never talked to him. But, I can still sympathize with the headache that Doug has created for him in Doug’s authorial petulance.

Doug then talks about the stupid proposed Memorials that the CREC is fixing to adopt. Personally, I applaud those Memorials because they are going to serve to make the CREC irrelevant in the fight that is ahead for the survival of Christendom in America. Really, what Doug is trying to build now is a soft-multicultural ecclesiastical reality. The CREC, when it comes to multiculturalism, metaphorically speaking, objects to the rock group “Black Sabbath,” but they are perfectly fine with Ozzy Osbourne.

Doug finishes his article with this rhetorical flourish;

The edgy brethren, let us call them, think that they are the real threat to the regime. They believe that they are the lone bulwark. They have seen through all of the lies. They took one of the red pills, and then six of them, and then they emptied the bottle. They believe that years ago the Moscow gang started down the right road with our little putt-putt reformation, but they have come into the brutal truth. They, and they alone, have faced up to the stark realities.

Moscow, with its worship services, and psalms, and feasts, and wedding ceremonies, and conferences, and publishing, and Canon plussing, and small business start-ups, and education work, and so on and furthermore, is simply LARPing. They, by way of contrast, know the truth about the Jews and the start of the Second World War.

1.) Clearly, they have seen through the WW II lies that Doug has embraced. They are more likely to read David Irving or Patrick J. Buchanan while Doug is reading the court historians on the subject.

2.) Praise God there are people left who are emptying the red-pill bottle while swallowing rapidly. It is simply the case that seeing through all the lies and smog of this culture requires a hefty consumption of red-pills. Would that Doug tried swallowing a few more.

3.) Count me as one of those who believes that Moscow started something good but then got sidelined by bad theology (Federal Vision), bad history, bad sociology, and bad ecclesiology (Ecclesiocentrism). I am glad that a corrective to their corrective arrived on the scene. Doug is not the final word on Ecclesia semper reformanda est. Doug refuses himself to face historical stark realities. Shrug … God will raise up someone else who isn’t fearful of these stark realities.

4.) Doug finishes with what, in my opinion, looks to be insecurity. He cites the great might of his Empire and implies… “how dare you suggest that I could possibly be wrong?”

We tip the cap to all that Doug has accomplished and praise God for that work. However, Doug is not the end of the road. There is more road ahead and if Doug does not want to travel it, some of the men of Pella and others like them will travel further down the road.

 

 

Doug Wilson & The Book He Finds So Desperately Objectionable

“There is a difference between talking to someone who wrote an objectionable book and offering a toast at the book release party for said objectionable book.

Doug Wilson
As the Fighting Moderates Mount the Lone Bulwark
Blog & Mablog

1.) The objectionable book that Wilson is referencing is Achord & Dow’s Anthology; “Who is my Neighbor.”

2.) Doug brings it up because a few men in the CREC church in Pella, Iowa had the unmitigated gall to actually sit around on a porch and have a conversation with Achord & Dow. Does Blake Callens know what they were talking about? Does Doug know what they were talking about? Maybe the men of the Church were indeed agreeing with them on everything in their book. On the other hand maybe the men of the Church were telling Achord and Dow why they should repent. The photo doesn’t tell us, but it seems that Doug is doing some mighty fine jumping to some mighty big conclusions.

3.) Technically, Achord and Dow didn’t author a book. Technically they were the editors who gathered a ton of quotes from men throughout history proving that the Church and Christendom has embraced some kind of kinsim/ethno-nationalism/natural affections from the beginning of recorded history.

4.) #3 means that Doug, if he was the master wit that he portrays himself at being would spend some time — any amount of time — trying to discredit all those quotes in Achord & Dow’s Anthology. Doug seemingly hates the “objectionable book” but he has given us ZERO reasons as to why “Who is My Neighbor” is objectionable. Me thinketh the lady doth protest too much.

5.) So, Doug Wilson needs to put up or shut up about this “objectionable book.” Either give us your objections Doug or “shut the blarney up.” Go ahead Doug… tell us why “Who Is My Neighbor” is objectionable. Discredit all those quotes. Tear it to shreds. Demonstrate how Achord and Dow are being disingenuous by finding all those quotes and then placing them all in one place.

6.) In my opinion Doug finds this book so objectionable because it overturns his Alienist worldview. It does not allow him to keep spewing all his verklempt at all the critics who pound him on the issue of race and Talmudists. The book sinks Wilsonism. Wouldn’t you hate a book you couldn’t overturn and was instead caught like a chicken bone going down your gullet sideways?

Doug is a fighting moderate indeed, but what kind of bulwark he is, looks to be a Boomer-con bulwark fighting for the post WW II consensus. Buckley sought to be this kind of bulwark against the likes of Sam Francis and Joseph Sobran. Didn’t work for Buckley and Doug’s attempt to read Achord & Dow’s objectionable book out of being accepted as reality isn’t going to work for Doug either.

More Firepower Against Natural Law Theory … Part I

Deuteronomy 30:11 “For this commandment which I command you today is not too mysterious for you, nor is it far off. 12 It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend into heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 13 Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, ‘Who will go over the sea for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’ 14 But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.

15 “See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil, 16 in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, His statutes, and His judgments, that you may live and multiply; and the Lord your God will bless you in the land which you go to possess.

“To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”      Isaiah 8:20

Here we have it explicitly said that God’s law is to be the standard by which all other standards are measured. We are responsible to God’s law. I should not have to say it, but the point here is not that we are saved by the law, or that we use God’s law as a ladder to climb into God’s presence or to curry His uncertain acceptance. The point here is that as Christians, who have been saved from the curse of the law’s demand that we could never meet and has been met for us in Christ, we should govern our lives consistent with God’s revealed law Word as found in Scripture or as arrived upon by good and necessary consequence as reasoning from God’s law.

This is the clear teaching of the Heidelberg Catechism;

Question 91: But what are good works?

Answer: Only those which proceed from a true faith,5 are performed according to the law of God,6 and to His glory;7 and not such as are founded on our imaginations or the institutions of men.8

Scripture and the catechism clearly point to the reality that we are to be governed in our daily lives by God’s law as revealed in Scripture. In the 21st century should Christians desire to know what it means to have the conversations of our life be pleasing to God then we need to have those lifestyles reflect walking in harmony with God’s law. This explains why the Psalmist delighted in God’s law both day and night.

However, another theory holds increasingly holds sway among platformed Christians, both of the R2K ilk, and of the Christian Nationalist ilk. That other theory is called Natural Law and it has a long and storied history. There is no use in denying that many throughout Christendom have appealed to Natural Law as a mechanism by which Christians should govern their life. This alternative theory to what we find commanded in Scripture finds Christians insisting that we are not to be governed by God’s explicit written law but rather we are to be governed in our living by a reading of Natural Law, which is a law written in God’s structured reality and stamped upon all men’s hearts. This Natural Law is to be the governing structure for fallen and redeemed men alike. As such what is posited is that fallen man can and will read Natural Law the same as men who are Redeemed and are now increasing, per their individual sanctification, epistemologically self-aware.

On the theory of Natural Law Christians and Non-Christians alike are to make a individual hunt for God’s law, by the usage of right reason interpreting this abstract Natural Law. Natural Law theory insists that men fallen and redeemed, can together use reason to arrive at truth that can then be crafted into public policy as social order guidelines for all people. Natural Law as mediated by the usage of right reason by all men — fallen and redeemed — is the foundation for all legal infrastructure in all jurisdictions (save the Church, which still uses the law found in Special Revelation) for the structuring of our living. In this theory God’s Special Revelation is not necessary for social order structure. Natural Law can do all.

The theory of the Natural Law aficionados is that while God’s revealed special revelation law  was obviously the standard for the Hebrew people of the Old Testament, something happened with the coming of Christ, followed by His finished work, whereby that law became obsolete. That law, so the Natural Law experts insist was ended when Israel as a people ended, with the consequence that mankind had to repair to the Natural law model.

Now, we should interject here that God’s word clearly teaches that all the law that prefigured, announced, and shouted Christ in the OT (called “ceremonial Law”) was fulfilled in Christi and since that was fulfilled that expression of the Law was no longer requisite and so we as Christians, for example, no longer sacrifice animals. However, there is never a word in Scripture that what is now called the civil (or judicial) law  given in the Old Testament became obsolete in the new and better covenant. Indeed, our Master Himself said;

Matthew 23:23 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone.”

So today, those who raise mint, anise, and cummin should be tithing on the increase of their mint, anise, and cummin.

The Westminster Confession faith affirms this when it offers in Article XIX,

To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the state of that people, not obliging any other, now, further than the general equity thereof may require.

 

Anti-Natural lawists today insist that the phrase “general equity thereof” proves indisputably that the heart and stuffing of God’s civil (judicial) law remains applicable today.

That St. Paul thought the same as seen by his appeal to the law;

8Do I say this from a human perspective? Doesn’t the Law say the same thing? 9For it is written in the Law of Moses: “ Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” Is it about oxen that God is concerned? 10Isn’t He actually speaking on our behalf?

Paul, as inspired by the Spirit of the living God is doing the very think that the Westminster divines wrote in Article XIX. St. Paul is taking the general equity of that passage and applying it today, communicating thus that God’s Special Revelation and not Natural Law remains the standard by which all standards are measured.

So, for the Natural Law fanboys Israel was a caterpillar surrounded by the jelly of Special Revelation but when the caterpillar emerged from its cocoon as a butterfly in post Cross New Testament mankind sloughed off the necessity of Special Revelation and the Butterfly is nourished not by the special Law jelly in the cocoon but is now nourished by Natural Law and right reason. The Special Revelation of the OT has passed and the new has come with Natural Law.

David Van Drunen of R2K invention notes of Natural Law,

“The moral order inscribed in the world and especially in human nature, an order that is known to all people through their natural faculties (especially reason and/or conscience) even apart from supernatural divine revelation that binds morally the whole human race. “

[2 I believe the last clause, “that binds morally…” is intended to describe the moral order = natural law, rather than its nearest antecedent (“supernatural divine revelation”). I think that to make this clear Van Drunen should have put a comma after “revelation.” Or, better, he should have put a period after “revelation,” then written “This moral order binds…”]

Dr. Stephen Wolfe in his book Christian Nationalism writes similarly on pages 244 & 245;

“Societies, need, in other words, an ordering of reason — reason expressed as civil law.”

And again,

“Law is an ordering of reason by an appropriate lawgiver for the good of the community.”

“The Natural Law is an ordering of reason, consisting of moral principles that are innate in rational creatures, given by God, who is the author of nature.”

For Van Drunen and Wolfe (each Natural Law fanboys who are not happy with one another) God only authors Special Revelation law for OT Israel but not for contemporary man. Instead God authors nature which in turn authors a law that fallen and redeemed man together, starting autonomously from themselves, quite without presupposing God, reasons to by an act of the human will (fallen or unfallen).

The autonomy of man in all this is seen in Dr. Wolfe saying,

“A Christian nationalist must have the strength of will to affirm what is true, even if it doesn’t feel good to him. This is the main reason why I emphasized the will throughout this book…. we have to retrain the mind by the strength of will.”

As implausible as it seems, Wolfe is arguing there, that fallen man, with his fallen mind, must read a fallen nature and then by strength of his fallen will act in an unfallen way. And remember, this is done quite independent of the Spirit of God. This completely obliterates the truth of Romans 8:7f

Because the [a]carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.