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) than 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.

Continued Observations on the Protestant Regnant Folly’s Nazi Fever

1.) For those not in the know, recently there was a rather successful conference held by the Ogden, Utah chaps. However, since this rather successful conference was not sanctioned by the Reformed powers that be the Reformed powers that be hit the overdrive button to find fault and “boy howdy” did they ever uncover a fault in the conference. It seems that there was a book vendor at the conference that was selling books not approved of by the powers that be. They were selling books that had the speech of Adolf Hitler in them and books that were trying to cast National Socialism in a positive light. That was bad enough for the Reformed cognoscenti but the coup-de-grace was when this same publishing house passed out, with every purchase, a little flyer that listed other businesses that this publishing house supported.

First, as to the books being sold, it is not being more than suggested that this vendor proves that there are Nazis in the Christian Nationalism movement and, worse yet, those Nazis are coming into the Reformed church. It’s the whole guilt by association thing. The Ogden lads have admitted their mistake of not looking more closely at the vendors they were hosting. Suave and Conn both said that their desire was to only have vendors who were explicitly Christian. The book vendor in question admits they are not explicitly Christian but rather are pro-white. Personally, I’m not a big censorship kind of guy. I don’t have a problem with a book vendor selling books that put forth ideas I don’t agree with. Second, these kind of Christian conferences happen all the time and there are books being sold that are far worse than anything being sold by Antelope Hill. I’ve been to several Christian conferences selling books by chaps promoting R2K ideas and I am here to tell you that the heresy that is R2K is right now far more dangerous to the church than Nazism is and yet nobody (except me) is screaming about how R2K heresy is being pushed at Christian conferences. So, as for me and my house, we see this aspect as a tempest in a teapot. I don’t agree with the philosophy of some of the books they were selling and with other of the books they were selling I do agree with. I highly recommend their “The Sword of Christ,” by Giles Corey. Tell you what. I’ll propose a deal. If all Christian conferences will get rid of all R2K literature at their conferences then I will support all Christian conferences getting rid of any material that seeks to allow National Socialism to explain itself in a different light than the post-war consensus narrative has anchored it in.

Now the second leg of this matter is another thing. The flyer being handed out by Antelope Hill should not have been handed out. As reported by the Ogden chaps, that flyer had some rank pagan businesses on it as well as a rather risque men’s magazine. One doesn’t expect that one is going to find at a Christian conference a vendor handing out a flyer that lists businesses that are explicitly anti-Christ. As Christians we have to be aware that the pro-white community has a good deal of Odinism and other non-Christian pagan ideas that is actually oppositional to Christian Nationalism.

2.) Having said all that, we must realize that the attempt by many who are raging at the Ogden chaps is just at attempt to control what can and cannot be said in the Reformed world. The Ogden blokes do not have the Reformed Institutional Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval and so they must be destroyed no matter what. Not only do the Ogden chaps have to deal with the “official Reformed world” nipping at their heels they also have to deal with the unofficial and barely Reformed world of Doug Wilson and the CREC nipping at their heels. Ogden seems to be carving out a place for themselves and those who are currently the “King of the Hill” don’t want any unapproved competition.

3.) Back to Hitler

In this context the whole “Hitler was a Christian Prince,” and “What we need is a Protestant Hitler” as uttered by good Christian me has arisen again. In my estimation the whole purpose of such statements is to be an Edgelord while attempting to move the Overton Window increasingly to the right. I get it that these statements make all just the right people go crazy. I admit I love seeing the angst in those who froth at the mouth at such statements. I also understand that such statements are intended to force people to once again question the post-war consensus and to quit forcing history into simple equations like, “Hitler = evil,” and “Allies = good.”

Full disclosure here …. my conclusions on this matter are Stalin was the worst of all, followed by Churchill and FDR. Hitler, while being no Christian Prince was probably no more or less evil than Churchill and FDR.  Any deep dive into the various sources (both revisionist and court historians) reveal this to be true. Also here it should be said that I don’t believe the six million number, though I don’t pretend to know what the actual number was. I fully understand why the Germans elected Hitler. I think Hitler and his actions were the inevitable outcome of the Versaille treaty. I think the “knife in the back” theory surrounding WWI has legs. I think that one can only understand the Germans and Hitler in light of the disaster that was the Weimar Republic and Magnus Hirschfeld with his Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, not to mention the growing Communist menace in Germany during the same time. If Christians today had been living in that Germany they may likely have found themselves concluding that a vote for Hitler was the way out.

However, having said all that, I don’t believe that it is wise or prudent to be going around saying that “Hitler was a Christian Prince,” or that “What we need is a Protestant Hitler.” First, that Hitler was most certainly not a Christian Prince is seen, if in nothing else, his embrace of the Aktion-T4 program. This program was state sponsored euthanasia of those deemed so crippled or broken that they were not worthy of life. Estimates suggest that between 100K and 250K blond aired, blue eyed Germans were murdered by the State. Now, like all else in the reporting of the Nazi actions there are exaggerations about this program but despite the exaggerations of the Commies pursued to pile guilt on the West, the program really existed and Hitler knew about this. There is no ability hear, as there is with the so called “final solution” to say “Hitler never knew.” He knew and approved and finally called the program off in 1941 when being met with resistance by the German people. Look, if we are going to be honest about all of this history and finally give up on the Communist inspired “history” that we call the “post-war consensus” then we need to admit ourselves where the problems were. The Aktion T-4 program was a problem. A problem that is once again being embraced right now in the West with the MAiDs program in Canada and the embarrassing euthanasia laws in the Netherlands. All this to say that like FDR, and Churchill, Hitler was no Christian Prince. (Stalin did go to Seminary though for awhile so maybe he is the Christian Prince we need?)

Next the phrase, “We need a Protestant Hitler.” Well, if Hitler was Protestant he wouldn’t be Hitler and a Protestant would never be Hitler. So, that’s kind of a silly statement.

However, by biggest problem with these slogans is not that it makes the Libtards go ape crazy. I love that. My problem is not the idea contained in the phrases is that we need to get rid of the liberal post war consensus that is driving us into the New World Order that intends to eliminate all nations, ethnicities and races. My problem is not that I disagree on the overall agenda of the people using the phrase. My problem here with these phrases, beyond what I’ve already limned out is that they are counterproductive to the number ONE goal of rescuing our people. Our goal here isn’t to rehabilitate Hitler. A non-Jewish interpretation of the 20th century may well come but for now our number one goal is delivering the Christian White man from being replaced and/or genocided. Most of our people have been propagandized for four generations now into the Jewish myth that is the post-war/civil rights historical myth.  Because that is so, I ask how wise is it to throw these people into the deep end of the pool by invoking Hitler? The knee-jerk reaction, because of generations of Jewish media propaganda, is for our people to recoil from such statements. I am contending that it is better to demonstrate how it is that White Christians are being incrementally eliminated across the globe so as to rally them around a pro White and Christian message. It is better to demonstrate that the purpose of migration movements in the last 40 years are so is to the end of canceling white people than it is to rehabilitate Hitler. It is better to demonstrate that Critical Race theory and WOKEis and Cultural Marxism, political correctness, and diversity, inclusion and equity, are all about snuffing out the Christian white man over against rehabilitating Hitler. It is better to talk about books like “White Girl Bleed A Lot” and “Don’t Make the Black Kids Angry,” than it is to try and rehabilitate Hitler if we want to rescue the Christian White man from genocide. It is better to point out the decline of the total percentage of white people in the world today compared to 50 years ago than it is to rehabilitate Hitler if we believe that there is an agenda to snuff out the Christian White man. It is better to point out how these united States have dropped from 88% white Christian to 63% white since the Hart Cellar act than it is to rehabilitate Hitler if we are burdened for our White brothers and sisters in Christ. It is better to point out how it is the case that according to United Nations definitions the white man is being genocided than it is to rehabilitate Hitler if we want to save kith and kin.

Genocide is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) as,

“any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part 1 ; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Our #1 goal is to stop the New World order with its necessary agenda to delimit and destroy the White Christian Man. It is true that the post-war consensus has lied about the 20th century and those lies will one day, I pray, be exposed as the lies they are, but right now prudence and wisdom requires that our first priority is to insure a future for our white Christian children and grandchildren. The White man cannot continue to be a light to the nations if he continues to be extinguished.

Examining D. Gnostic Hart’s Claim that Christian Nationalism is Worse Than Communism

“The CN position then is that magistrate enforces laws prohibiting envy. And you thought Communists were bad.”

Dr. Darryl Gnostic Hart

Hart has to attempt these absurd arguments because his position has him defending the idea that the Magistrate is to NOT criminalize blasphemy, not criminalize violation of Lord’s Day, not criminalize adultery, not criminalize idolatry. In point of fact the only 2 of the 10 commandments that it is possible that Hart would criminalize is Murder and theft.

R2K, of which Hart is a practitioner of, has explicitly said that the Magistrate has no responsibility to the first table of God’s law. The reason that R2K makes this move is that if the Magistrate had any responsibility to the first table of God’s law that would be the end of R2K’s cherished principled pluralism, and necessary political polytheism. R2K, in order to get off the ground, MUST teach that the Magistrate has no responsibility to the 1st table of God’s law.

Consider also, the implications of this for R2K as Hart’s position. What Hart has to argue here is that God’s Natural Law teaches that offense against the 1st table of God’s revealed law, is not to be criminalize and enforced by the Magistrate. Hence, for R2K, God’s Natural Law contradicts and limits God’s revealed Law.

However, as we have seen, once the camel’s nose is under the tent the camel begins to own the tent because now most R2K chaps insist that the Magistrate has no responsibility to criminalize and adjudicate the second table violation of adultery.”

Of course the whole “Communists” thing as written by Hart is a classical example of the logical fallacy called “red herring.” Hart knows this but when you have a weak hand you play all the cards you can. As there are exactly ZERO case laws where God tells His people what the punishment is for envy, it is clear that the Magistrate is not responsible to adjudicate or criminalize envy, though envy certainly remains a dreadful sin.

Hart in the quote above exposes his antinomian bona-fides. That is natural enough since R2K is, by definition, public square antinomianism.
R2K really is heretical theology that is not particularly Christian.

Recommended must read here — Martin Foulner’s “Theonomy & The Westminster Confession.”

Dr. Alan Strange’s Strange Jeremiad … A Response

“Something has happened, particularly in the post-covid world and I’ve been dealing quite a bit with this. There is a general populism, anti-establishmentarianism, anti-elitism, anti-intellectualism that is taking aim at our churches and your leadership, our governments and every sort of thing and it’s a lot of people on the right joining into this… this is something on the far right. And it particularly pertains to us. It is confessional Reformed churches of all sorts of churches that need to address this kind of thing Mr. Chairman. So, I think we are in a moment where other churches have been dealing with these matters.. and they (ARP, PCA, OPC, RPCNA) have kind of given this to us on a plate….
 
This (CN & Kinism) is something very much on the right. Let’s not deceive ourselves. This (ARP statement on race) is something that in God’s providence falls to us and I think we need to see it and we need to seize the occasion and stand with our fellow churches that have gone before us in NAPARC.”
 
Dr. Alan Strange
President Mid-America Seminary
Begging URCNA to Adopt Ben Glaser’s Napkin notes

1.) Let’s consider what the something is that has happened that President Strange so strongly laments. The something that has happened is that the Boomer world (of which Strange is a member) no longer exists. The Boomer world was a world of tightly controlled information that allowed massive amounts of propaganda to become “group think.” That tightly controlled information matrix shaped and conditioned the Boomer mind. What happened post-covid is that the lid was blown off the managerial group think because it became easily reported and detectable the amount of mass deception that had occurred to create the covid scam. Once people clued in to that deception all other previous deceptions began to be exposed. The greatest of these deceptions — and a deception that accounts for people on the right becoming anti-establishmentarian and anti-elite was the deception that has been dubbed “the post-war consensus.” (Personally, I prefer “the post-enlightenment consensus.) Strange, being a sold member of the Boomer era cannot wrap his mind around the intellectual shift that has occurred in those a generation or two younger than he is.2.) The anti-establishmentarian mindset that Strange complains of is the consequence of increasing numbers of people learning what some of us have known for decades and that is the absolute corruption and fraud of the establishment — including that in the Church. People are increasing anti-establishment because they have come face to face with the contribution of the visible church to the the lie that was the post-war consensus. Strange’s posturing, advocating, and thumping against the Ordo Amoris and Christian Nationalism only reinforces the very anti-establishment mind set that he so earnestly wars against. Strange, in this speech, and in other speeches he has done provides the very foundation of anti-establishment that he so earnestly laments.

3.) Much the same could be said of the anti-elitism that is in the air that Strange complains of. Ironically, Strange is exhibit A for the reason people are becoming anti-elite. There is Strange with all his education, and all his status, begging people to become as elitist as he is. One would think that by now the Church officials would get a clue that the only reason people are edging towards anti-elitism is because the elite are so damn frequently wrong.

4.) Next up is Strange’s wringing his hands of “anti-intellectualism.” This accusation is especially choice if only because the anti-intellectuals right now are the very elites who are accusing everyone else as being “anti-intellectual.” It is the very marrow of anti-intellectualism to ignore all that has been written by Reformed Fathers of the past on the subject of Race and Christian Nationalism. Blokes like Strange keep making pronouncement as if they are Moses on Mt. Sinai, but the pronouncements they make are against centuries and centuries of church theologians and intellectuals. Come, come, Dr. Strange, who are the real anti-intellectuals here? Physician heal thyself.

5.) Yes, all this is indeed a “general populism.” But where else is there to turn when the putative “thought-leaders” are so abysmally clueless because they are stuck in a propaganda fog that is now being blown away by the winds of reality?

6.) Strange is correct when he suggests that those of us who are done with the classical liberal worldview that he is trying to establish are “taking aim at our churches and your leadership, our governments and every sort of thing…” As counter-revolutionaries we plan to restore Biblical Christianity and if that takes tearing down your house in order to once again honor Christ as King over every nation we have no problem doing so. Strange mentions “taking aim at your leadership.” I’m here to tell you that somebody needs to do a mercy killing by taking aim at the current inept and bogus leadership. Not since the Reformation as the clergy been so utterly torpid and jejune, while at the same time being intoxicated with their own sub-Christian authority. Dr. Strange, you would grow to be an old man by listening to all my stories about clergy abuse. It’s about time someone took aim at the current leadership.

7.) Next up, Dr. Strange claims all this challenge is coming “from the right.” Allow me to suggest that only a man on the left would ever suggest that what the right is seeking to accomplish is somehow sinister. Strange, strangely says not only that all which he denounces is from the right but he goes on to say it is from “the far right.” Allow me to suggest that Dr. Strange would absolutely loosen his bowels if he ever really came face to face with someone on the “far right.” As it is, he is safe because what is being proposed from me and my mates is not from the right or even the far right. What is being proposed is merely Biblical Christianity.

8.) Next Strange dares refer to how God’s providence has brought to them this historically unique moment. While I recognize God’s providence in all things, I would say that this is an example of God using Satan to accomplish yet unknown divine ends. Strange’s dirge noting God’s providence is more akin to God’s providence that gave Paul a thorn in the flesh. Yes, it was from God but it was all still born of Satan’s messenger. What Strange and his Jacobin hordes are promoting is nothing but that which is baked in sulfur and frosted with the coals of hell. If Strange’s vision (and NAPARC’s) is successful Biblical Christianity will go into abeyance until God is pleased to let Strange’s generation die in the wilderness.

9.) What else can all this NAPARC folly be except an example of how “God is turning us over,” for our folly? And, we deserve it! We in the West have sown the wind and now God has been pleased to force us to reap the whirlwind. We have no reason to complain. We have only to cover our mouths and say, “All the ways of the Lord are just.”

Yet, there are a few … a remnant, who are prophets in the wilderness lifting their voices so as to be shut down by the elites and by the establishment. We will continue to cheerfully take up our crosses, find ourselves experiencing the joy of battle, and press on for the crown rights of King Jesus … even as over the visible”conservative” “Reformed” “churches.”