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R2K as Kulturkampf Deniers

There is a recent phenomenon in our ongoing saga of the kulturkampf (Culture War) and that is the denial by those Cultural Marxists waging the kulturkampf that the culture wars really exist. This follows the same technique that government school teachers were taught to employ decades ago. Teachers were taught that when parents came to them at different times about the same problem going on in the classroom that the way to defuse the parent’s complaint was by telling them, “Really? You are the first parent to come to me with a complaint on this subject.” The teacher would keep dishing out that line no matter how many parents came to her with the same complaint about the same problem. By implicitly denying the problem while at the same time sending the multitude of parents home thinking that somehow they were seeing problems that were not present the government schools were able to continue with the educational malfeasance without a problem. The teachers were winning the kulturkampf with the parents by denying that there was a problem that anybody was noticing but one complaining parent. It really was a stroke of manipulative genius.

Today that kind of denialism is happening in our broader culture. People are raising their voices in complaint but the cultural gatekeepers at the Fake News Outlets often keep saying, “problem? what problem?” These people are in denialism mode.

Culture war denialism is pursued not only by Fake News outlets but we are getting it in pulpits all across America. Whenever the clergy refuses to address from the pulpit the attack on cultural institutions that are immediately and obviously downstream from and are being informed and shaped by Biblical Christian categories there the parishioners are experiencing kulturkampf denialism. The parishioners are implicitly being told by their Clergy’s silence that they can continue to remain asleep as what little remains of Christian cultural norms burn down around their ears.

The above paragraph explains one of the dangers of Radical Two Kingdom theology (R2K). R2K insists by way of dogma that the pulpit should be silent on cultural issues. R2K insists that a man in the pulpit who preaches on abortion, Marxism, the destruction of the family unit as state policy, etc. is making Jesus unhappy. Such ministers who preach on these matters are, per R2K, at best unfaithful to Jesus and at worst are going to occupy hell forever. R2K “theology” has taught the clergy to practice functional kulturkampf denialism.

If the above observations about R2K are true (and they are) then we see how R2K with its kulturkampf denialism fits hand in glove with the agenda of the Cultural Marxists. R2K guarantees the success of the Cultural Marxists because the effect of its dogma is to both keep the church asleep or failing that convinces the church that as there is no such thing as Christian culture therefore it should not be exercised about imaginary things called “kulturkampf.” The best friend in the conservative Church in the West that the Cultural Marxists have are the R2K boys at Escondido and now salted in Seminaries all across America.

Culture war denialism, in its broadest expression, is an attempt to pretend that nothing is happening around us as Western Civilization — a grouping of social orders that are immediately downstream of Christianity — is pulled up by its roots. If the denialists say anything about the kulturkampf they merely note in an offhand way that any changes should be supported by Christians because Jesus Loves social justice. God loves everybody, the Kulturkampf denialists tell us, and if we don’t love everybody also then we are haters and deserve to be labeled as “White Supremacists.” Naturally, this means we need to open the sluice gate for the pervert, the feminist, the Marxist Academic, and the minority hordes who have become enchanted and poisoned with Cultural Marxism.

Those who are denying the Kulturkampf in the West claiming instead that there is no real culture struggle but rather that only a small percentage of reactionaries are displeased that they are losing their cultural gatekeeper status are those who are seeking to lull Middle America to sleep so that it does not wake up and see what is going on. The only way the Cultural Marxists can succeed in this endeavor to pull down what little remains of Western civilization is to make sure the great American Middle does not clue in on what is really happening, or if it does clue in, it clues in, in such a way that the great American Middle is convinced that these are only minor changes that will pursue equity for everyone. To that end, the cancel culture deniers keep denying that cancel culture exists or that it is only minimal. Only by that denial combined with the continued aggressive effort to engage in the kulturkampf can the Cultural Marxists hope to win.

Victor Davis Hanson Holding Down the Right Side of the Left

“Very important for people to realize that while the founding fathers their achievement was not because they were male but they transcended their sex. They weren’t just chauvinists or racists. They created ideas out of the enlightenment that meant that you would have woman’s suffrage, that you would have civil rights because that was the logic of “all men are created equal.” They didn’t have to do that. There is nothing in the Constitution that mentions race or gender so that they were male is incidental.”

Victor Davis Hanson

On Tucker Carlson show

Victor Davis Hanson is billed as a conservative. The quote above demonstrates that he is merely holding down the right side of the left. Davis, in point of fact, is a classic Renaissance Humanist. There is very little that is conservative about the man.

Critiquing the quote we would note;

1.) The founding father’s transcended their sex? What does that even mean?

2.) While they were chauvinists and racists “they weren’t JUST chauvinists and racists.” Well, that is a relief to know.

3.) I guran-damn-tee you that very very few, if any of those founding fathers would have supported women’s suffrage or civil rights in the way women’s suffrage and civil rights occurred.

4.) The majority of the founding fathers were not operating out of an Enlightenment worldview. The founding documents (Constitution and Declaration of Independence) can only be understood in the context of a Christian World and life view.

5.) The founding fathers did not believe that all men were created equal in the modern egalitarian sense. They believed all Englishmen were equal. That was the issue at hand. The issue at hand in the American counter-Revolution was whether Englishmen in the colonies were equal to Englishman in England. The fact that they did not believe that all men were created equal in the modern egalitarian sense is seen in the fact that in the Declaration of Independence they refer to the Indians as “savages.” That is an odd thing to say if you believe all men are created equal in the sense that Hanson is using it.

6.) I suppose that they were white is incidental as well. I mean, just as women could have as easily produced the same document (after all the men transcended their gender) so nonwhite men could likewise have produced that same document since race and gender are incidental.

What a maroon.

You Might be a Conservative Presbyterian if…

You might be Conservative Presbyterian if….

12.) You cannot find it in yourself to be outraged by the grossest perversity creeping into your denomination preferring instead to chatter on endlessly about the need to find unity.

11.) You oppose abortion by supporting side-B sodomy.

10.) You believe “a woman can do anything a non-ordained man can do,” forgetting that unlike non-ordained men a woman cannot impregnate another woman. Well… not usually.

9.) You support gay culture, being gay, and the ordination of gay ministers as long as they don’t practice that thing that defines the meaning of being gay.

8.) You believe complementarianism needs to move more towards egalitarianism allowing egalitarianism to move towards an androgyny social order… all the while planning to move towards androgyny for the next General Assembly.

7.) You believe in “good faith subscription” which means your confession is a moving target.

6.) You use women Elders but you just call them “Women Leaders.”

5.) You pee sitting down.

4.) You are just now opening your church from the Deep State Virus scare but are doing so making sure the cousins don’t sit too close together.

3.) Your Elders passed out the Sacraments with masks and gloves on and could do so by tossing the elements as contained in a two-sided handy dandy peal-back styrofoam container.

2.) Your minister said more than once from the pulpit that loving our neighbor as well as obeying the magistrate required everyone to wear a mask in Church.

1.) You sing the Battle Hymn of the Republic every Sunday prior to 04 July and you recognize all your veterans by having them stand on the Sunday prior to Memorial Day.

Dickensian Characters — Mr. Doubt

If you’ve ever read a few Dickens novels you know what a Dickensian Character is. He or she are the kind of person you meet who could’ve walked straight out of a Dickens novel. This is not an insult. It is merely to recognize that some people are so unique or live with so much flair that you think that “only Charles Dickens could’ve created that person,” when in point of fact these types often walk among us. So, this is a new category I’m starting On Iron Ink. The Dickens people I’ve known in my 3 score years of being a Dickensian character myself.

______

After getting out of school in the Junior high years it was straight on my bike to head a few blocks over to the Sturgis Journal — the community newspaper. In 1972 local small-town newspapers still aspired to carry the same kind of news you’d find in big-city papers combined with news of more local interest. The newspaper outlets of these small cities though still had their own ideological flavor depending on who the local Editor was.

My Brother and I for a few years had the largest paper route in the city. We delivered over 220 papers daily in a city of 8K. Every delivery day started in the basement of the Sturgis Journal — a two-story brick building on the corner of E. Chicago and John Street. As paperboys, one would enter the building from the John side of the building, take a sharp left down a flight of stairs and arrive in the basement of the building where the presses were.

I can still hear the debilitating sound of those presses as they daily chunked off each daily edition. The paperboys would congregate there awaiting our respective newspaper bundles to be tossed across the counter at us so we could grab the bound papers, run upstairs and back outside to fold, rubberband, and bag the newspaper so we could be off on our various routes.

However during the time between being downstairs in the press room and being upstairs folding papers we all came face to face with Mr. Leo Doubt. Mr. Doubt was the man who ran the press room. He was likely two generations older than the paperboys but he treated us like little men. Mr. Doubt was probably 5’10” and nearing retirement. His air was thin but his demeanor was large. He seemed to be always yelling, but only later I realized that was because he was seeking to be heard over the sound of the presses. The thing I remember most clearly about Mr. Doubt is that he was always — ALWAYS — drenched with sweat. He always wore a button-up shirt but the shirt was always wet whenever I saw the man — doubtless from working among the presses as he did. When he spoke it always seemed a matter of urgency much like one sees in old films when someone starts yelling, “STOP THE PRESSES, STOP THE PRESSES.”

He knew his boys by name. There was the McAtee boys, Mark Pigeon (who had the extraordinary ability to deliver his daily route on his unicycle), Mark King (who kept his energy up by having a handy container of vodka and orange juice on him at all times), Jim Wiederman  (who passed on his route to me), and a cast of scores. As each bundled stack came out, Mr. Doubt would yell our names out and we would step up and grab our bundle.

Mr. Doubt had a small office in the Pressroom but I seldom remember the man using the office. Maybe he did when the paperboys were not present but when the presses were running Mr. Doubt was on the floor barking out orders.

This is the only context I knew Mr. Doubt in as a boy until I ended up in the hospital — a locale I became somewhat familiar with between 13-16.  While in the hospital Mr. Doubt showed up one day to pay me a visit. I was as flabbergasted as a 13-year-old could be. Mr. Doubt was visiting me in the hospital? Would he be as loud here? Would he still be dripping with sweat? Would all that intensity show up?

The Mr. Doubt that showed up that day in the hospital was diametrically other. He was a kindly grandfatherly aged man who was concerned about one of his boys and he came to see how that lad was doing bearing gifts. He had brought with him magazines — reading material for me. He had remembered me as someone who was always reading the paper before I would be on my way delivering the paper. He had chastised me for it more than once, insisting that paying customers wanted to read those papers and that I could read the paper after I was finished with my route. His magazine gift was very logical for a man who ran presses to bring to one of his lads. They were magazines that dealt with the strange and unusual in natural life. Funny, almost 50 years later I still remember the magazines that Mr. Doubt brought to me while in the hospital.

We visited a while but he actually spent more time talking to my Father than me. He had communicated his concern and it wasn’t like a man born in 1900 and a boy born in 1959 had a great deal in common. I do remember though the tenderness of this man for one of his “boys.” I had always associated Mr. Doubt with a heavy masculinity and his visit impressed me so much it is still dancing with me almost 50 years later.

I don’t know what happened to Mr. Doubt. By the time I was 16, I no longer delivered the Sturgis Journal and I lost contact with him. I suppose he soon retired, collected his social security, and hopefully died surrounded by his family.

Perhaps I haven’t done justice to the Dickensian nature of Mr. Doubt there in his Pressroom shouting out orders in his perpetually sweated up button-up shirt always bearing an air of intensity about him… until he showed up in a boy’s hospital room, hat in hand (men always wore hats then) on a mission of kindness.

Post-Modern Hermeneutic Taught At A Wesleyan University

“One can very well hear God’s voice through Scripture just fine without the AHA, but you will never understand Scripture as it actually is if you think the meaning you see in it is ‘in there.’ Meaning is not ‘in’ a text. Meaning is a function of the way words are used by readers. The meaning of the Bible is not in the Bible. It is in the reader of the Bible.

If the reader of the Bible reads the words with the assumptions of common Christian faith, they will read it as Scripture. They will read it Christianly. If a person reads it with their denominational assumptions, they will read it and see the teachings of their denominations. And if one reads it in terms of the assumptions of the original contexts of each text, then one will read in it in terms of what it actually and originally meant.”

Wesleyan University Professor (WUP)

1.) WUP has given us a text in which, according to his own testimony, has no meaning in it. There is no meaning in this text. The only meaning in the text that WUP has given us here is a meaning of how I, the reader, use the words. Though it should be kept in mind that given WUP ‘s understanding, WUP has not really given us any meaning but only words in which we bring meaning.

So given that reality, the meaning I, the sovereign reader, find in this text is that “there is a need to pick up some Hairspray for Cinco-De-Maya day festival, condoms for party favors, hair glue for that stand up finish, and horses for pool dipping excuses.”

Now, of course, everyone thinks that silly but there is a point that I am making here and that is that in order for WUP’s postmodern interpretive process to get off the ground he is assuming what he denies to be the case. He is assuming some kind of static meaning in what he writes that is decipherable and yet he wants to deny that same static meaning to be found in other texts.

Second, on this score, clearly, as an author trying to communicate with a reader, WUP  would not want someone to do such interpretive damage to what he has written and yet that is a legitimate outcome according to his hermeneutic. Once the author is dead, there are no limits on where the sovereign reader can take a text.

2.) WUP denies that there is meaning in the text but still insists that God’s voice can be heard in Scripture. Clearly, the question is, “How.” Whatever voice of whatever god that WUP is hearing in the text is a God and a voice that has no connection to God as the author of the text. The advocacy of hearing God’s voice through Scripture in such a theory can only be the hearing of a completely objectively unknowable god. WUP has given us the mystical hearing of god’s voice that one might find in the writings of Meister Eckhart.

3.) Note that WUP still writes about “understanding Scripture as it actually is,” as if the text of Scripture has some stable objective meaning that can be appealed to. And yet such a statement is in clear contradiction to everything else WUP writes in these two paragraphs. If meaning is what the reader invents and has no correlation to any authorial intent then there is no understanding Scripture as it actually is because there is no Scripture that objectively is apart from a plethora of potentially differing sovereign readers.

4.) For all I’ve said so far, it must be conceded that meaning is not isolated to the text. In order for meaning to be realized, there has to be a confluence of the author’s intent w/ the reader’s understanding. The text does have objective meaning but if the subject who is reading the text never arrives at that meaning, meaning has not been achieved for the subject and remains dormant in the text and unrealized in the reader.

5.) It is curious that WUP would admit that “Meaning is a function of the way words are used by readers,” and yet not simultaneously realize that meaning also is a function of the way words are used by writers. Still, we have to realize that for WUP, the author is dead.

6.) WUP tells us that we must get to the assumptions of the original contexts in order to get to what was actually and originally meant. This is either subterfuge or ignorance on WUP ‘s part for it it simply is the case that according to WUP’s own paradigm it is impossible to get to the assumptions of the original contexts since it is only by means of texts that have no inherent meaning that one can explore the assumptions of the original contexts. If only texts can give original contexts and if no text has meaning that the reader does not bring then how can original contexts give us assumptions that informed texts?

7.) Note that for WUP that God as the author has completely disappeared. One can read the text w/ Christian assumptions and so come up w/ Christian meaning. One can read the text with Denominational assumptions and so come up w/ denominational meanings. And in a contradictory voice (see #6) WUP writes that one can read the text with originalist assumptions and come up w/ originalist meanings. However, what WUP never says is that the text can be read w/ God’s assumptions and so one can come up with God’s meaning of the text.

8.) Now having said all this, I would insist that arriving at God’s meaning in the text is not a “science.” I do think that arriving at God’s meaning in the text can at times be as much intuitive as it is following some kind of 10 step method. However, in order for the intuitive to work our intuitions have to be trained by an ordered process. Much like before an acclaimed artist can break the boundaries of his art, thus creating true masterpieces, so the Maestro Biblical interpreter will break the boundaries of his circumscribing methodologies and discover truths in God’s word that others will never see because he follows intuition that was formed by years of ordered process.

WUP wants to skip all the ordered processes and go straight to the Masterpiece. This is like thinking that a 5-year-old just beginning to learn the violin will create some masterpiece.

WUP ’s methodology is going to give us a generation of men in the pulpit that are just as dangerous as he is.