It is only those who have quality character and who are of the leadership class who change their surroundings and don’t blend in to the social setting. It is these same people who are roundly hated by all the chameleons who want to just go with the herd.
McAtee Engages Rev. Chris Gordon on Eschatology
One problem with Amillennialism is that it ignores that with the victory of Christ over the Cross and with His Ascension Christ has brought in the age to come so that it is rolling back this present wicked age. Amillennial eschatology is old covenant eschatology inasmuch as it is front loaded with the “not yet” (this present wicked age) while ignoring that we are, because of Christ’s victory, living in the “now” ( age to come). For the Amill everything, practically speaking, is still yet to come. The Victory of Christ is only a “Spiritual Victory,” and does NOT impact planet earth except so as to save a person here or there. The Amill insists that planet earth will always be under the tutelage of the evil one until Christ visibly returns to conquer a previously untamed Satan.
Amillennialism (along with Full Preterism) are a Gnostic. Both relegate Christ’s Ascension and Victory and rule to a spiritual realm and deny any impact on culture, nations, lifespan, disease, sin, etc. All the blessings of Isaiah 65 and 66 (end of war, poverty, disease, long life) are spiritualized and relegated to the realm of paradise and the departed saints. Such eschatology is defeatist.
Gordon insists that the Postmill vision detract from preaching the Cross. He apparently assumes that preaching the Cross and preaching the visible victory of Christ and His Kingdom are mutually contradictory.
Next, the whole crap about postmill being “too American” is just beyond silly given that the Reformed Church up until the creation of Westminster was, in its majority report, postmillennial in its eschatology. Postmillennialism is stamped all over the writings of the Puritans and the Southern Presbyterians. Postmill advocates of varying proclivities include such notables as OT Allis, Athanasius, Augustine, Greg Bahnsen, John Calvin, RL Dabney, Jonathan Edwards, Eusebius, AA Hodge, Charles Hodge, J Marcellus Kik, J Gresham Machen, Iain Murray, John Murray, Gary North, John Owen, RJ Rushdoony, WGT Shedd, Augustus Strong, JH Thornwell, and BB Warfield. I wonder if Gordon notices all the non-American names here?
Gordon, being on a roll, continued,
Per your reasoning, the crucifixion of Jesus Christ would have proven that the claims of Christ were NOT true. Is that the way you come to truth Rev. Gordon? “Well, if it is popular, then of course it must be true and if it is unpopular, well, then, obviously it is not true.”
And for the trilogy Gordon adds;
Most Christians recognize that we have come to the end of Christendom in America? Even were that true, how does that alone prove that postmillennialism shouldn’t be advocated for in books? Oh, and is it your habit to come to truth by counting noses? Do you always reason in such a way; “Most Christians recognize that governments schools are good for their children therefore governments schools are good for their children?” This is a very odd way for clergy to assess truth… or maybe not so odd given the quality of our current clergy?
Tim Keller’s Preference For Democracy
4.) Tim’s statement above implies that there is something automatically wicked about Christian’s wielding power. Yet, here is Tim seeking to wield his power as a highly platformed Evangelical voice in service of keeping Christians from pursuing power.
What Matt Walsh And Stephen Wolfe Have In Common
Question from the audience for Matt Walsh;
Is it wrong to want to preserve our heritage? The country our ancestors founded — European?
Matt Walsh the cultural Marxist Answers;
“I don’t believe our unifying principle was ever race, skin color, ethnicity. Our unifying principle was essentially a doctrine. It was a doctrine of human rights… It (the questioner’s position) sounds like bigotry.”
“With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people–a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.”
For Pete’s sake, is Walsh so stupid that he flies right past the language of the Constitution where they talk about “for us and OUR POSTERITY.” Just exactly whose posterity were they talking about?
Look, while no one can doubt that Walsh has done some fine work with this response it is clear that Walsh is the enemy. Walsh is a neo-con and the kind of propositional Nation that Walsh believes in is not the unifying principle of the nation as it was founded. Walsh is an idiot and as long as he holds this view he will never defeat who he thinks is his enemy since at the end of the day they share the same foundational worldview principles.
Matt Walsh is not our friend, or is at least only intermittently our friend.
All of this reminds me of some analysis that I read by Darrell Dow when wrote an article that in part was dedicated to explaining Stephen Wolfe’s view of Christian Nationalism. Dow’s analysis of Dr. Wolfe offered this;
“In two additional chapters, Wolfe discusses the Christian nation. Rather than a historical analysis he offers a phenomenological approach to the nation, focusing on the lived experience of everyday life. Ethnicity is therefore something primarily (but not exclusively) experienced subjectively through shared manners, stories, and rituals rather than defined by blood. Common social norms and customs along with attachment to place are foundational, says Wolfe, to the highest aspirations of earthly life. What “…is most meaningful to our lives and what is required to live well is particularity and sharing that particularity with others.”
Now, if Dow’s analysis is correct in the paragraph above, we see Wolfe making the same kind of mistake that Matt Walsh makes above. Walsh would have no problem saluting the idea that “ethnicity is therefore something primarily (but not exclusively) experienced subjectively through shared manners, stories, and rituals rather than defined by blood.” Indeed that is the very point that Walsh is making above. Walsh insists the shared point of unity is allegiance to common propositions, while Wolfe insists that the shared point of unity is shared manners, stories, and rituals. However both agree that the point of unity in a nation/ethnicity is not blood.
Now, we can agree that blood relations as being the foundational point of unity for a nation/ethnicity can indeed be and has been in history fetishicized and/or idolized. But it is no fetishicizing or idolizing to recognize that the primary point of unity that makes a people a people and a nation a nation is having a common blood inheritance in conjunction with a shared faith. To place blood relations in a secondary role as if it is an afterthought to other considerations like shared propositions or shared experiences is to give up the idea of ever living in a nation or sharing an ethnicity.
It really is no different than family. Nation/ethnicity is merely family said at a broader level. If someone were to ask what was the shared foundational point of what makes my family my family the answer is a shared blood inheritance in conjunction with a shared faith. Now, there might be exceptions to that idea but it serves as the general rule. My family finds unity not primarily in shared propositions nor in shared experiences (though those will likewise be present in a secondary manner). My family finds its primary unity in having a common ancestor.
Wolfe and Walsh are just in significant error.
Natural Law Conversation Continues
“For Christ did not come into the world to teach precepts about (civic) morals, which man already knew by reason, but to forgive sins, in order that he may give the Holy Spirit to those who believe in him.”
Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560)
Commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics
Voetius shows that reason comes after faith because reason makes inferences from one proposition to the next, and therefore reasoning cannot get started unless there is already a proposition to reason from. This includes any reasoning about any area of life since any reasoning about all areas of life is a reasoning that is faith conditioned. Once reasoning about Jurisprudence or Education or Art or Politics is a reasoning that comes after some faith commitment. So, this teaches us that Melancthon was just in error.
Now Francis Turretin, who would share Melanchthon’s Aristotelian premises offers;
“If various wicked laws obtained among the heathen, repugnant to the natural law (such as those sanctioning idolatry, human sacrifices, permitting theft, rapine, homicide, incest), they do not prove that no light of reason was granted to men by nature… Rather they prove only that men with *leisure ill employed* have wickedly abused the conceded light and, by struggling against and striving with all their might to extinguish it, were given over to a reprobate mind.”
Turretin
IET 11.1.19
I don’t disagree that Natural Law was against the wicked laws among the heathen. Neither do I disagree that the heathen have wickedly abused the conceded light. What I do disagree with, as pushed by Natural Law afficiandandos, is that the heathen ever do not struggle against and strive with all their might to extinguish what Natural Law teaches. Now in different non-Christian social orders will fluctuate in their opposition to what Natural Law teaches due to the waxing and waning of the salt and light influence of Christianity. However, as the antithesis works itself out ever more consistently Natural Law is interpreted as as to teach the very opposite of what it does indeed teach when read through the lenses of special revelation.
The reality that Natural law is a myth, as an independent tool by which to organize social orders did not hit until the 20th century in the West because prior to that Christendom was largely presupposed. When Christendom is no longer presupposed Turretins can’t and won’t get traction no matter how much they bleat about “the light of reason.”