The Discovery of Long Lost Diary Entries by John Witherspoon

Newsflash ….

Long missing diaries of Presbyterian Rev. Dr.  John Witherspoon, signer of the Declaration of Independence and tutor to many of the founding fathers, have recently been discovered and they reveal that he and fellow Presbyterians in their work to revise the Westminster Confession of Faith in 1788 were aiming at a social order that would allow Satanism to be entitled to the same protections as Nicene Christianity.

Rev. Dr. Kevin De Young and historian Dr. Darryl Gnostic Hart have been proven right after all as they have insisted that the 1788 revised version of the WCF was a complete change in the WCF and not merely an alteration to speak to the times as others like Rev. James Baird and Rev. Zach Garris  have argued.

Below is the page from Rev. Dr. Witherspoon’s diary that is the most explicit on the subject,

Diary Entry
28th May 1788: 

This day the brethren have at last ratified those most excellent revisions to our Westminster Confession, stripping away the old magisterial language that once presumed the civil sword should defend the true faith alone. How my heart swells with pious satisfaction! No longer shall the civil power presume to judge between doctrines, but shall stand impartial as a good republican umpire.

I confess a quiet, almost mischievous hope takes root in my bosom. With these changes, the same broad mantle of protection that now covers Nicene Christianity—its creeds, its sacraments, its solemn assemblies—must, by the inexorable logic of our new principles, extend even unto the most contrary persuasions. Let the votaries of the Prince of Darkness gather in their own conventicles, chant their inverted prayers, and raise their black standards without fear of the magistrate. If the civil authority may not suppress error in the one direction, how can it consistently do so in the other? Satanism, too, shall enjoy the full blessings of toleration under this free government we have laboured to erect.

Truly, the experiment is bold. May Providence smile upon it—and may the Devil prove a gentleman who keeps his part of the bargain.

Rev.  J. Witherspoon

Kudos to Kevin De Young and Dr. Darryl Gnostic Hart for continuing to insist that the Westminster Confession of Faith teaches political polytheism.

Hat Tip – Mickey Henry

Rev. Danny Hyde’s Proclamation, “Amen to the Belhar”

“Amen to the Belhar”

Rev. Dr. Danny Hyde
URC Clergy
X

Hyde fancies himself a conservative clergy. He is a minister in a putative conservative denomination. Yet, here we find him saluting a confession adopted in the liberal denomination that his conservative denomination split off of years ago.

I was associated with that liberal denomination when the Belhar was adopted. I wrote and spoke against the adoption of the Belhar. You can find a whole series I did on the Belhar confession here. Below is entry #1 of several,

Rage Against The Machine — Reflections On The Belhar Confession

If one types “Belhar” in the Iron Ink search engine one can find all I wrote on the subject.

We need to understand that the Belhar Confession is a Confession arising out of Liberation theology and Liberation theology arises out of Marxism. Despite that Hyde is saying “Amen” to all that.

Clergy really need to learn what Marxism is.

This lack of knowledge/understanding of what Marxism is, has become a real problem in the formerly conservative denominations (NAPARC) in the West because they have adopted a Marxist plausibility structure without knowing it and are reading all of Scripture through that plausibility structure. If that isn’t the case then Oswald Spengler was right when he wrote,

“Christian theology is the grandmother of Bolshevism.”

Our clergy – even those thought to be conservative like Hyde, have become Bolsheviks and the Christianity they are peddling is Bolshevism. Now, I don’t doubt that Danny and company are filled with the best of intentions. I understand that they think that they are doing good. However, I’m telling you anybody who says “Amen to the Belhar” is an enemy of Christianity.

2K, R2K, W2K

“The thing is, you don’t have to be a “publicly” rightwing pastor, at least regarding politics. Enter the ministry and be a safe haven for right wing laymen who are doing the work. But be mindful that your calling is not to be a safe haven but administer the means of grace unto.”

Dr. Stephen Wolfe
X

“The pastor need only point the people in the right direction. No need to become a right wing voice on politics.”

Anthony Fava
X

I would even say you should not be a publicly RW pastor, any more than any other adjective other than faithful. It is a mistake to enter the service of God and His people to “fix” the errors that you see. Get in there, and God will bring you whatever He decides to, and that will keep you busy enough.

Mike Daniels
X

1.) I am seeing more and more of this kind of talk on social media sites and of course I mark it as rising due to the influence of baleful Wolfean (Henceforth W2K) thinking. What is a little ironic here is that Wolfe has said that the clergy need to butt out of politics since that is not their bailiwick. However, it doesn’t look like this is a sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander wisdom. It’s not ok for Pastors to speak on politics in the pulpit, per Wolfe, but apparently is ok for Wolfe to speak on the “grace realm” from his perch in the nature realm. Still, 2K thinking is inherently contradictory and hypocritical so I don’t fault Dr. Wolfe overmuch here.

2.) Wolfe’s counsel here could be reduced, distilled, and translated as advising, “You can be right wing just hide your candle under a bushel basket and preach Christianity as fire insurance and distributed the sacraments. Of course Wolfe is reducing Christianity to “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life,” and “here are the sacraments to remind you of that preached truth.”

3.) After writing volumes on R2K and now seeing more and more of W2K I am concluding that 2K always works to reduce and constrain the Christian faith. R2K has endlessly chirped, “Pastor’s need to stay in their lanes and stay out of economics, politics, history, family life, arts, education, etc.” Now W2K is getting pretty close to holding hands with that sentiment. Of course this reduces the clergy to being bystanders on worldview issues. The clergy, by this vision of ministry, when taken to its logical outcome has no “thus saith the Lord,” on issues such as sodomy, abortion, war, taxation, education, politics, polygamy, post-war consensus, Marxism, immigration, gun control, etc. Indeed, the clergy must shut up about these issues. A cynic might say that Wolfe wants the clergy to shut up on these issues so that his voice become disproportionately louder. However, Scripture speaks to all these issues and it is the role of the clergy to speak all of Christ to all of life.

4.) A small proviso here. I used to think Wolfe was begging for the clergy to shut up on these other issues because they were so uniformly wrong when speaking to these issues. However, with this quote above its pretty clear he doesn’t want even the clergy that might not that he agrees with God on some issues he champions to speak.

5.) As God is not progressive, nor leftist, nor a Enlightenment Liberal, nor a Marxist therefore clergy must be God’s voice against anti-Christ ideologies. As there is no neutrality all clergy must be right wing in the pulpit. Indeed Christianity is definitionally right wing in as much as it opposes Humanism which is uniformly left wing. This even extends to the Gospel. Inasmuch as man doesn’t save himself even the Gospel is right wing. Only conservatives tell men that God is transcendent and Holy. That man is a sinner. That there is forgiveness in Christ. That the redeemed man then lives in gratitude for God’s glory as informed by God’s Law-Word.

 6.) Can you imagine trying to sell the swill above to the Black Robed Regiment in the colonies in 1776. Contrary to the quotes above, the Pastor does need to become a Biblical voice on politics and that voice will be necessarily right wing. What… do these folks think God is a leftist? For example Christian clergy in Texas need to be telling their people, from the pulpit, that the God that James Talarico speaks of in his campaign speeches is not the God of the Bible. To fail in doing that is to abandon their post.

7.) None of this means that the pulpit only preaches on these kinds of issue. Redemptive-historical preaching is required. However, it is not the only preaching required. Preaching that focuses God’s people on the third use of the Law also needs to be heard. That is the kind of preaching that would touch on some of the subjects mentioned here.

8.) In the end the quotes above reflect just plain old antinomianism. For the clergy to not lift their voices against the spirit of the age would be treason. At the very least, the few of us remaining right wing clergy need to be a counter-weight to all the left wing clergy as well as to the left-wing R2K clergy.

 

Commenting on Dr. Wolfe’s Comments on the Whole Ogden Affair II

Wolfe defines Liberalism as the belief that nations do not exist but are only abstractions and as such anybody and everybody can be changeable cogs in belonging to any nation they like. Wolfe rightly notes that Liberalism gives up particularity for the sake of universals. On this score I agree with Wolfe and so would have R. J. Rushdoony, though modern theonomists (being Libertarians) might well disagree w/ Wolfe and Rushdoony. Some of Rushdoony’s lectures on the subject of Libertarianism are found when Rush deals with Max Stirner, a contemporary of Marx. Those lectures reveal that Rushdoony was no Libertarian unlike some who have come after him. I only note this because Theonomy/Reconstructionism has, in the past, also been accused of forsaking particularity by some in the Wolfean 2K camp. That accusation is errant.

I think this is a key point. What both Wolfe and I are arguing for is a social order that recognizes particularity. What we are fighting against is a theology / ideology that says all particularity is a social construct.

However, I think Wolfe is inconsistent on this point when he elsewhere intimates that particularity of culture and place does not necessarily mean particularity in marriage. Wolfe does contradict himself when he talks about the importance of particularity and then turns around and says that inter-racial marriages can be acceptable. Where now your particularity Dr. Wolfe? Where now your affirmation that common bonds are good?

During his podcast Wolfe has the same counsel for the Church as R2K does. The minister is to preach a very circumscribed Christianity and is to distribute the sacraments. The clergy is to stick w/ this very narrowly confined “grace realm,” and is not to speak on Politics, economics, history, arts, etc. because those realities belong to the nature realm and the two realms, per Wolfe, should only be mixed when his 2K version allows the two to be mixed a little.

Wolfe also has the incipient problem where members of a church can go do politics without a “thus saith the Lord” from the pulpit on what constitutes Biblical politics. As such, it is entirely possible and even likely that some members of the same church will go do abortion politics while others will do pro life politics. Who is going to correct the pro-death church members? No one, since the Church can’t speak to politics. This is the same problem that R2K has.

Wolfe is in error when he suggest that it is possible for any government to be non-establishment. Establishment is a inescapable concept. It is never if establishment. It is only what religion is going to be established. Now, the establishment of religion by the State might look different in different settings but all States have a established religion. The established religion of these united States is Humanism, sometimes euphemistically referred to as “principled pluralism,” and we support it with forced tax dollars. Of course principled pluralism cannot exist without political polytheism.

Wolfe is correct when he argues that R2K (he errantly calls it Modern 2K) has the theology it has in order to arrive at and support modern liberalism (Enlightenment Liberalism). Wolfe rightly notes that R2K reverse engineers its theology. It starts where it wants to end politically and then it jerry-rigs its theology in order to arrive at that a-priori conclusion. I have been saying this for decades.

Indeed, this observation is the backbone of Wolfe’s threat to the modern church and here we find some linkage with theonomy/reconstruction. Both Theonomy/Reconstruction and Wolfean 2K wants to snuff the life out of classical liberalism as a Christian world and life view. (OK, so the 2nd and 3rd generation of Theonomists were admittedly as bad as the R2K guys in supporting Enlightenment Liberalism. Guys like North, and Sandlin have been just terrible in their refashioning Theonomy into the image of Libertarianism.) Both classical theonomy/reconstruction and Wolfean 2K desire an end to political polytheism and the idea that nations are merely abstractions or social constructs with no real reality.

Wolfe’s podcast was sold as a response to the Ogden affair. He only spent 4 minutes saying he had no tuck with Nazism and that being an American there was plenty of American historicism that we Americans could reach for to guide us so that nobody needed to reach for National Socialist principles. Finally, he said he would be back at Ogden to speak for next years conference.

I agree with Wolfe that we don’t need to reach for the collectivism that was German National Socialism. The model we have of a Christian Republic where there is unity in a limited diversity will serve us just fine.

Commenting on Dr. Wolfe’s Comments on the Whole Ogden Affair

Wolfe keeps trying to isolate theology from politics as if they are two different unrelated realities. This is the same dualism that you find in R2K. Now, to be sure, one can argue that politics is not the same as theology (that would give us a kind of monism) and so we cannot identify the two as being one in the same. And yet, all politics is shaped and informed by some theology. Politics (or economics, or education, or family life, or the arts, or history, etc.) are not and cannot possibly be a-theological.

If we believe that grace restores nature (as Wolfe himself admits in his presentation today) then we have to admit that the grace that is restoring nature is in point of fact, in this case, a Christian theology (grace) that is informing nature (politics).

Think about it. Theology deals with epistemology, anthropology, ontology, axiology, teleology, etc. Can we really argue that politics likewise doesn’t have to deal with these same questions? If both theology and politics have to deal with the same questions and provide answers for these questions then it is painfully obvious that theology and politics cannot be cordoned off from each other.

Now, we fully agree that there are distinctions that the Scripture makes. The church has a particular jurisdiction in which it operates. It handles the keys. The Civil-social Magistrate has a particular jurisdiction it which operate. It handles the sword. But even in this distinction theology is informing the Magistrate for what purposes and in what instances the Magistrate may use the sword. Similarly, the Church is informed by theology as to how to handle the keys. And in both instances, upon the principle of interposition each may have to, when one or the other Institution goes sideways, interpose to correct a Civil Magistrate gone rogue or to correct a Institutional church gone rogue.

If we really believe that grace restores nature than we have to believe that theology restores politics, economics, family life, education, arts, history, etc. because thinking rightly about God and His Word impacts every area of life.

Wolfe, like his R2K counterparts, has fallen into a dualism. Now, to be sure Wolfe’s dualism is not as shocking or impermeable as the R2K dualism, but it remains a dualism all the same. One way we know this is by Wolfe’s constant plea that the clergy shut up about politics. The man, having divided grace from nature, insists that clergy only talk about “spiritual,” or “eternal” things and since politics et. al. are, in Wolfe’s world not “spiritual” or “eternal” therefore the clergy should not speak on these matters. Similarly, I suspect, that Wolfe would never have a Constantine call a Synod for the church to solve some contentious problem.

Wolfe has been better than R2K but it is only the kind of better that finds us saying that a terminally ill man is better than a dead man.

On another front Wolfe said he doesn’t think that there’s that much difference between R2K and theonomy/postmillennialism.

He doesn’t bother to explain that statement but that is one I’d love to hear him explain because on this site you can find reams and reams of me explaining the chasm between R2K and Theonomy. Honestly, I find this statement almost to be stupid. I don’t think Dr. Wolfe is a stupid man but tis is a stupid statement. Consider that R2K and Theonomy have completely different epistemologies. Completely different anthropologies. Completely different teleologies. Completely different Christologies (particularly on the office of Christ as King). How Wolfe can say that there’s not much difference between R2K and theonomy/postmillinnialism is shocking.

However, allow me to say in response that there is that much difference between Wolfean 2K and Radical Two Kingdom theology. Both are amil in eschatology. Both use Thomistic Natural Law as their epistemology. Both have a teleology of final defeat for the church in space and time. Both deny total depravity by insisting that autonomous fallen man, starting from himself,by the use of right reason can arrive at moral truth.