From The Mailbag … Conversation with Pentecostal Pastor Andy Shaver

To be honest with you Bret, there is no good fruit to come from the argument that will ensue if we continue this conversation. I used to enjoy apologetics in my early years in ministry. I have lost my taste for that and this invitation to pray was not intended to spark debate nor win in any argument anyway. I want to see the Kingdom of God come in our city. I will not convince you to ENCOUNTER Jesus in any way that you are not already expecting. And you will not convince me that what I EXPERIENCE is not valid. GREATER THEOLOGY IS NOT WHAT THE CHURCH NEEDS, what we need is Greater revelation of who Jesus is.

Blessings
Rev. Andy Shaver
Real Life Church
Charlotte Mich.
Dear Andy,
1.) You want a fuller revelation of Jesus but expect to have that fuller revelation apart from a greater understanding of our undoubted catholic Christian faith and the doctrines and theology that convey that fuller revelation? That is passing odd.

2.) I will be praying that your vision and understanding of the Kingdom of God will be kept at bay. You say you want the Kingdom of God to come to Charlotte and yet you want a Kingdom that is not theologically informed, or if theologically informed only barely theologically informed. That is a Kingdom that I am adamantly opposed to and so despite the fact that we are both Christian ministers I am fervently praying your work fails.

3.) In our discussion, I appealed to Scripture. You appealed to experience and encounter. You do realize that your appeal is classical liberal theology right? Barthian theologians have always emphasized existential encounters over theological precision.

4.) Honestly, I think I’m the only one with the different theology here. Inasmuch as y’all are coming together you express that you have unity in theology.

5.) You say you want a greater revelation of who Jesus is but how can you grasp that greater revelation of who Jesus is apart from theology? That’s like saying you want a greater understanding of chocolate chip cookies apart from chocolate chips. In brief, it is an idiotic thing to say.

6.) Andy, you are an absolute hindrance to the advance of the Kingdom of God with your anti-Christ theology. I will be praying that God rescues His sheep from your grasp.

7.) A man with an argument is never at the mercy of a man with an experience. I promise to pray for your repentance while I am praying for my repentance and while you are praying for “revival.”

Christopher Dawson — Religion & The Totalitarian State  

Christopher Dawson pursues some questions for the Christian in light of living under a totalitarian state.

1.) What then is the position of the religious man and the religious society under these new political circumstances?

2.) How far does this new political development threaten the spiritual liberty which is essential to religion?

3.) Ought the Church condemn the totalitarian state in itself and prepare itself for resistance to the secular power and for persecution?

4.)Should the Church ally itself with the political and social forces that are hostile to the new state?

5.) Should the Church limit its resistance to cases of state interference in ecclesiastical matters on in theological questions?

6.) Are the new forms of authority and political organization reconcilable in principle with Christian ideas and are the issues that divide Church and State accidental and temporary ones which are extraneous to the essential nature of the new political development?

Dawson offers a few principles to answers these questions.

1.) We must distinguish between Spiritual freedom and political and economic freedom.

Dawson insists that it is possible to be spiritually free but politically and economically enslaved while at the same time he insists that it is also possible to be politically and economically free but spiritually free.

We must agree with this. There are many Christians around the world who live in political and economic oppression but who are free because they are in Christ. Similarly there are countries which were shaped by the categories of a fading Christendom who still know something of political and economic freedom though a large segment of their population is spiritually dead.

We would qualify our agreement with Dawson by insisting that whenever a large minority in any given social order really knows what it means to be spiritually free there soon will follow a movement for political and economic freedom. Similarly we would add that wherever a social order knows economic and political freedom without a substantial minority of citizens knowing spiritual freedom that social order’s freedoms as in peril of collapsing.

So, while we concede that spiritual freedom and economic freedom do not always exist together we would insist that there is a relationship between these freedoms.

Dawson finishes this section by citing how aspects of parliamentary democracy and economic individualism were opposed to Christian principles yet managed to survive together.

2.) Distinctions must be made between different types of totalitarianism.

Communistic totalitarianism has an obvious and apparently irreducible opposition to Christianity. This is due to the philosophy that lies behind communism which amounts to a religion that is in competition to Christianity. Dawson cites a communist poster that read,

“Jesus promised the people Paradise after death, but Lenin promised them Paradise on earth.”

Analysis – Dawson begins well with this observation but he fails by not applying this observation all across the line. All totalitarian governments offer the people its totalitarian arrangement as a religion and all totalitarian governments offer the Kingdom of man in lieu of the Kingdom of God. Dawson suggests that Fascism, unlike Communism, has not always been overtly hostile to religion. Dawson seems to realize though that while Communism sought to crush Christianity through overt opposition, Fascism has sought to crush Christianity through co-opting it through a process whereby the Fascist State re-defines Christianity in the Fascist totalitarian direction.

In a paragraph worthy of being proclaimed a spot on analysis in 2021 in America, Dawson commented on what he saw of the future in 1934 saying,

“What attitude will such a (Fascist) state adopt towards Christianity and the Christian churches? I do not believe that it will be anti-Christian in the Russian sense, or that it will be inspired by any conscious hostility to religion…. The new (Fascist) state will will be universal and omni-competent. It will mold the mind and guide the life of its citizens from the cradle to the grave. It will not tolerate any interference with its education functions by any sectarian organization, even though the latter is based on religious convictions. And this is the more serious, since the introduction of psychology into education has made the schoolmaster a spiritual guide as well as a trainer of the mind. In fact it seems to as though the school of the future must increasingly usurp the functions that the Church exercised in the past, and that the teaching profession will take the place of the clergy as the spiritual power of the future.”

Dawson goes on to say,

“Nor will the state confine its education activities to the training of the young. It will more and more tend to control public opinion in general by its organs of instruction and propaganda in this country….It is obvious that a Totalitarian State … cannot afford to leave so great a power of influencing public opinion in the private hands, and the fact that the control of the popular press and of the film industry is often in unworthy hands gives the state a legitimate excuse to intervene. The whole tendency of modern civilization is to concentrate the control of opinion in a few hands.”

Dawson goes on to say that here is where the danger to Christianity lies. The danger to Christianity lies not in the possibility of violent persecution but rather the danger to Christianity lies in the possibility of such a pervasive and subtle control of the state crushing historic Christianity from modern life by the sheer weight of state inspired and controlled public opinion and by the mass organization of society on a basis that is not in the least Christian.

Dawson quotes Julian Huxley who noted that the coming conflict is not one between religion and secular civilization but rather ‘between the God religious and the social religious’ – in other words between the worship of God and the cult of the state or of the race or of humanity.

Analysis – Dawson writing in 1934 has described where we have come to today. The church has been subtly put off her game and has, for the most part, become a pale reflection of the culture created by the Fascist state. Christian who now rail against the state are now in the position of having to rail against the church as well.

Dawson insists that Christians cannot combat this reality through politics. Dawson insists that Christians must combat this via a spiritual strength. Dawson suggests that the totalitarian state will only be brought down as Christians realize that their attack on the social order created by the totalitarian state must be indirect. Christians must understand the problems created by the totalitarian state can only be solved by reorienting men religiously. The Church’s essential duty towards the State and the world is to bear witness to the truth that is in her.

Analysis – The totalitarian state can only be brought to its end by introducing a King who has superior claims over men then the state does and who is sovereign over the state. One ripple effect of the Gospel successfully going forward is when men give all their allegiance to Christ as they understand that Christ has provided a full salvation that the state can only promise. Preaching the Gospel is what it means to indirectly attack the totalitarian state. If the Holy Spirit frees men from their spiritual bondage and slavery men will desire the physical shackles and slavery to the state come to an end.

A biblical evangelism then is the answer to the totalitarian state. However, it must be an evangelism that identifies the false gods and calls people to give up the false gods for the one true God. The largest idol (false god) in our age is the totalitarian state. The totalitarian state is a reified, magnified, and idealized version of the individual and when as such when people comply with the totalitarian state they are in essence worshiping themselves. Only Christ can cause the idols to fall.

Dawson ends by saying,

“A secularist culture can only exist, so to speak, in the dark. It is a prison in which the human spirit confines itself when it is shut out of the wider world of reality. But as soon as the light comes, all the elaborate mechanism that has been constructed for living in the dark becomes useless. The recovery of spiritual vision gives man back his spiritual freedom. And hence the freedom of the Church is in the faith of the Church and the freedom of man is in the knowledge of God.”

The Most Important Yardstick For Judging Events In Our Time

“Thus the fear of concentration camps and the resulting insight into the nature of total domination might serve to invalidate all obsolete political differentiations from right to left and to introduce beside and above them the politically most important yardstick for judging events in our time, namely; whether they serve totalitarian domination or not.”

Hannah Arendt
The Origins Of Totalitarianism – pg. 442

If there is one thing that Christians need to realize it is that the greatest threat from outside of us is the totalitarian state. The totalitarian state is the idol of our age. It is the idol around which men are marshaling themselves in league against the Lord Christ. It is the idol that would usurp the crown rights of King Jesus and would claim for itself the sovereignty of God. The totalitarian state is Babel reincarnated. The totalitarian state aspires to be God walking on the earth. The totalitarian state is content to build itself on the blood of peoples conquered and Empire extended. The only rationale of the totalitarian state is to become increasingly totalitarian. The totalitarian state brooks no challenges. It hears no reason. It knows no mercy.

Standing for Christ today means standing against the totalitarian state.

Apologetics From the Time Capsule … Synod & The Gender Inclusive Language Issue — How I Spoke (2010)

The CRC has decided to gives its confessions a soft gender-inclusive makeover.

I rose to speak against this noting that there were many times where the word “man” was replaced by the word “Humans,” or “Human beings.” I noted that I had done some etymological spadework on the word “Human” and had discovered that it literally means “pertaining to man.” I then made the point that I did not understand what was accomplished by deleting the word “man” or “men” in favor of a word (human) that literally means “pertaining to man.” I also noted that I thought such gender-inclusive language “played with” our covenantal understanding of men having federal headship.

I had thought about proposing that instead of the word human we should require those who are re-working the confessions to use the words “human and huwoman,” but as this was the first issue that I spoke to I was a bit nervous and wasn’t sure that my humor would be appreciated. (Now, in retrospect, I am quite sure it would not have been appreciated.)

A female delegate spoke after me insisting that deleting man was important since her 12-year daughter had heard some scripture read where only the word man was used (as being inclusive of both men and women) and the 12-year-old daughter couldn’t figure out why women were left out.

I sat there thinking, after this comment, that we are spending an untold amount of money to revise these confessions in a soft gender-inclusive direction because people either don’t know or have not yet learned what words mean? All because a little girl and apparently many like her do not know that the word “human” is just as insulting to them as the word “man” means that we have to change the confessions? What happens then if these people ever wake up to the reality that the word “human” means “pertaining to man?” Will we have to change them again?

Look, the whole pursuit of gender-inclusive language – soft or otherwise – is nonsense driven by the attempt of feminists to escape what they can not escape and that is that their identity is derivative of the identity of man.

Does Sheltering Under the Gospel Mean We Can Flaunt Our Shame?

I Used to Hide My Shame. Now I Take Shelter Under the Gospel.

This is the tag line on the Christianity Today article where Rev. Dr. Greg Johnson (he of sodomite but celibate PCA Pastor fame) tells “his story.”

It is an interesting tag line for a few reasons. Remember that the shame that Johnson is speaking of is the shame of same sex attraction.

1.) While the Gospel delivers us from the shame of sin and so is a proper place to find shelter the unique thing with Johnson is that as he is finding shelter under the Gospel he now flaunts what he used to hide.

2.) Is it really the case that taking shelter under the Gospel allows us to no longer have shame for partaking in the same sin that we once were ashamed of before we were taking shelter under the Gospel?

It’s almost as if the man is saying, “I used to hide my shame but now I take shelter under the Gospel and so I can now flaunt my shame.”

Just one question … “Shall we go on sinning that grace may abound?”