“Beginning and ending with man, there is pessimism. Why? Because man is fallen. He is in rebellion against God, refusing to bow to God and purporting to even be God. Thus, beginning and ending with man, there can only be a compounding of evil, and matters can only wax ever worse…. The bad new, however, gets worse. As a consequence of having abandoned the supernatural and, if only inadvertently, absolutizing this age, what we will witness is death on a whole sale basis as a way of so called, “life.” That is what we have witnessed during the past century. We are so immunized against death that we have come to accept it without comment though millions and millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of people have been put to death in the name of applied social science.
That leads us, ultimately, to pessimism and despair. Ah, but the Biblical Christian is highly and eternally optimistic, in the best sense of that term. Why? Because the Biblical Christian has good news.”
Dr. Glenn R. Martin
Professor of History / Political Science
Prevailing Worldviews
Observations
1.) The failures of the 20th -21st centuries are theological failures. The deaths of the million Christian Armenians at the hand of the Muslim Turks, the death of hundreds of millions of Christians by the Communist Russians, the deaths of millions of Jews, Slavs, and Gypsies by the National Socialist Germans, the deaths of hundreds of millions of Chinese under Communist Mao, the almost complete destruction of the Khmer people by the Communist in Cambodia, the untold slaughter of Cubans by Castro Communism, and the tens of millions of deaths at the hands of American Humanists in abortuaries throughout this country have all been torture, murder and death pursued because of faulty theology.
Bad theology kills people.
2.) Sound theology requires our first and last consideration to be the God of the Bible. Should we ever start with man as our first consideration then man becomes our ultimate principle and eventually man, over the course of time, will become absolutized, and so will begin to put other men to death in the name of applied social science and with the best of intentions. If you want to make an omelet, you have to break some eggs.
3.) Scripture says, speaking of Wisdom (and the Lord Christ is Wisdom incarnate), “All those who hate me love death.” As Dr. Martin notes, the West has embraced death as seen in,
a.) Our dwindling birthrates — to the point we no longer are at replacement levels
b.) Our habits of abortion and euthanasia,
c.) Our immigration rates, which are working to replace us as a definitive people
Now as if this were not bad enough, the West is doing this dance with death, and as Martin notes, is calling it the very essence of life.
Isaiah 5:20 — “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”
When we strike out at God (and that is what the West has been doing since the French Philosophes) the result is that we kill ourselves.
4.) The “absolutizing of this age” that Martin speaks of is key. What has happened is that this age is being driven by worldview assumptions that are not Biblical. Yet, what the Church has done, by absolutizing this age, is that it has reintepreted Biblical Christianity through the grid of this present age with the result that the tenets of Cultural Marxism (the Theology informing this age) are now identified as the tenets of Biblical Christianity. That is how “absolutizing this age” happens. The result of this is that now Christian ministers, usually quite unaware of what they are doing, are committed to “helping” their people fit into this present absolutized age when what they should be doing is aiding their people in seeing that this present absolutized age stands in defiance to and rebellion against the God of the Bible and His Biblical Christianity.
5.) Martin’s beef against “applied social science,” refers to how the West has been conquered by various strands of the humanist Social Sciences like “neo-orthodox theology,” “Boasian Cultural Anthropology,” “Marxist Economics,” “Freudian – Rogerian – Skinnerian, etc. Psychology,” “Spencerian – Durkheimian – Webberian, etc.” Sociology, the “Legal Positivism” of men like Christopher Columbus Langdell and Oliver Wendell Holmes, the “Educational Theory” of men like Dewey, Rugg, and others, The theories of Kinsey on human sexuality, and The Logical Positivism of the Vienna circle passing as Philosophy. More of the applied social sciences could be listed but you get the gist.
Martin’s problem with the applied social sciences, as exampled above, was that they all were products of differing humanist theologies that were at war with Biblical Christian theology. Martin understood that the humanist applied social sciences were killing us as a people precisely because the applied social sciences, though passing themselves as being the very definition of enlightenment, were in fact, but the dust of death. Martin understood and taught that these social sciences desperately needed reinterpreted through a Biblical grid and his reward for his brilliance was often the back of the hand from his colleagues.
6.) We should on the optimistic note that Martin ended on. The Biblical Christian can remain optimistic because he knows that God is Sovereign and he has good news for those who desire to be delivered from the humanist applied social science house of death. The Biblical Christian, armed with God’s truth, can stand against the humanist social sciences that are killing us, as a people, and can say “this is the way of the abundant life, walk ye in it.” The Biblical Christian, armed with God’s truth, can say to those weary of the culture of death as built by the practitioners of the applied social sciences, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”
With all due respect, and to paraphrase the NRA, bad theology doesn’t kill people, people kill people. I certainly agree that in the last century, they were killed in unparalleled numbers, but not by bad theology or ideology. It’s now about 1/8th of the way into a new century, and so far the lessons of the last one do not seem to be sticking.
It was armed men, convinced beyond all doubt of the correctness and imperative of their actions, and given the industrial force of a state that backed and commanded them, that actually performed the killing. The leaders of those states are best held responsible and accountable for their actions in this life; I think we can agree they understand and accept no other authority. We are at least a little better at that recently.
I believe there are many paths to God. Perhaps you do not agree with this, but again, we can agree with the existence for evil in systems that do not recognize any higher system of ethics and morals than the collective needs and desires of individuals. In those environments that lack this, the rule of law had been replaced by someone’s word, and that person is very often (or becomes) a Hitler or Stalin. We have been witness to terrible suffering at the hands of similar personalities in our lifetimes, and it stems in no small part from putting oneself above any path to God.
Thank you Robert for your comments.
Let us examine our disagreements that stem from our worldview differences.
1.) RB assertion — “People Kill People”
Bret responds,
Yes, but the reasons that people have for killing people, are, at their base, theological. People are not merely matter in motion but people are biological idea containers and as such the ideas they have (hence their “theology”) animate their actions and so when people kill people for unrighteous reasons it is their bad theology that is animating them to do so. At the base of every evil behavior is wrong thinking about God.
2.) So, contrary to your assertion all the people of the last century murdered were murdered because of Bad theology. Many of those people killed were killed by states that sought to be god walking on the earth. That is bad theology.
3.) We are no better than that recently as the scourge of abortion worldwide puts us well on pace to exceed the death toll of the 20th century.
4.) You have the one belief that there are many paths to God. I have the one belief that there is one path to God through Jesus Christ. We both have one belief on how to get to God. Our difference is merely how. The Scriptures disagree with you when Jesus says, “I am the way and the truth and the life no one cometh to the Father except through me.”
5.) I believe it is the utmost of evil to believe that there are many paths to God.
6.) All systems that are not ruled by the God of the Bible through His legislating law-word become systems that do not recognize any higher system of ethics and morality than the collective needs and desires of individuals. Our current social order is a perfect example of that.
Thanks for the conversation Robert.
All actions are preceded by thoughts. It can not be otherwise, for what man has acted out that which had not first entered into his mind as that which was desirable to act upon? What manner of man could first rise up out of bed without having the thought as to do so? He does not climb out of bed and yet wonder at how it is that he came to be out of the bed and thereupon think of his actions as to rising out of bed. No, he first thinks to rise out of bed and so acts upon that thought. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
Misty,
Precisely.
Yes, Misty’s point is straightforward and correct, absent madness, people do not do things without thinking of them first; it is very hard on some level to surprise ourselves. However, this point does not say anything about what goes into a decision, what we use to start thinking about something.
My contention is that people are responsible for their own actions. I also sense that I separate theology and ideology, but I do not think you make this distinction. Along with this contention goes the notion that “theology” may not play a meaningful role in how these people determined what their actions ought to be. I sense that numerous 20th century dictators mostly didn’t account for “theology” in their plans, they were too busy deciding how to walk their bloody road to power and beyond. The end result is often similar, climbing over the corpses of many victims to reach their goals. This certainly may apply to Stalin as well as the Crusaders.
Stalin had a love/hate relationship with all religion (and despised all theology); he eventually arrived at a very simple rule: “Where there’s no person, there’s no problem”. No theology was going to restrain him. He was attracted to Marxism because it rejects religion, but it seems he never really “believed” in it; he mainly believed in himself. He subverted existing cultural mores and at first cast himself like unto God, because it was felt that would be effective, but this was abandoned as quickly as possible, and he simply defined himself as the man in charge. I can understand that from your point of view, he may have invented a theology, but I don’t think God had presence in it. Others have done similarly, from time to time, before and since.
Having read “Mein Kampf”, a translation of Mao’s “Little Red Book”, “Das Kapital” and “The Communist Manifesto”, I can say that despite exposure to all of the ideas (maybe you would say “bad theologies”) in these books, I feel no desire or need to act out any of them. I’m not going off to create Lebensraum or try to reanimate the Soviet Union. I am, in many ways, immune to the ideas presented in these books; there is no chance I’m going to become an adherent (or practitioner) of any of these ideologies.
What was the vaccine? I can say it is a sense of ethics and morals. It is wrong to starve people to death, herd them into gas chambers, line them up and shoot them down into mass graves, burn them alive in their cities, or fly airplanes into tall buildings full of innocent people. It is even worse to do so because of some facet of their character, or who their parents were, or because of what they believe. Some of the reasons for these behaviors are theological, but some are not. I don’t need a particular theology to feel this way, there are a great many that rear people to object to these horrors.
I don’t get my values that from the particular theology that you advocate, but I don’t happen to think that is too important. The theology I was brought up with shares cultural roots with yours, but even if it didn’t, it has still left me with those values.
There are many people who may agree with those who have acted out toxic ideologies or theologies, but they do not act them out. Are they guilty of something? I can’t say they are, mostly because I do not believe in thought crimes. My view is that people are free to believe and think whatever they want; to me, crimes only take place when someone takes an action we find abhorrent and is illegal. Wanting something to be a crime doesn’t make it one. Conversely, we all need to respect the law and conduct ourselves in a manner that may not allow all of our ideas to be acted out.
Regarding your 4th point, I have a lot more than one belief, and it comes from observing the world as it works, people as they are, and history as it has unfolded. If you claim to have one belief or one point of view, that’s fine with me, I don’t think many people reach that level of faith or commitment to something in this world, and it is good to the extent it gives you comfort and strength. I am sure that a lot of people can quote something from different sources with which I do not comply, I’m used to that, and I have reconciled myself to that always being true. Where I come from, the book you’re quoting from isn’t even “Scripture”; this is one way the different religions divide us.
Now, as to your 5th point, I am surprised that you can bear to live in any pluralistic society. It must be very challenging for you to participate, even indirectly, in anything you consider to have such pervasive and unrelenting evil, and frankly, I am surprised you put up with it. Would you be tolerant of other systems of belief if you came to a position of power or authority? Would you impose your own ideas as a theocracy? Would you have your own reign of terror (or virtue)?
On your 6th point, there are problems with our social order that do not rely on any of these things; dwelling on them could be content for other threads. I suspect we may agree about what’s wrong, but disagree on what’s needed.
Thanks for Conversing.
I never denied that people are responsible for their actions, just as they are responsible for their beliefs that drive those actions. I only insist that a persons actions are in direct correlation to what they think about God. “As a man thinketh in his heart so he is.” “Out of the abundance of the heart a man speaks.”
Jesus said,
“No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.”
All that man does is a serving of his master (God) so that all of man’s actions are theologically driven.
The theology that Stalin loved was the theology that allowed him to be his own god. He did not despise all theology Robert.
1.) No person, no problem, was Stalin’s theological creed, thus proving he had a theology.
2.) Marxism does not reject religion. Marxism only rejects religion that isn’t Marxist.
3.) Of course the God of the Bible had no presence in Stalin’s theology just as the God of the Bible has no presence in any anti-Christ theology.
1.) I would say “bad theologies.”
2.) But you have become an adherent to the theology called Robertism that refuses to bow the knee to King Jesus.
1.) I always thank God (and I mean this) for felicitous inconsistency among people who refuse to bow the knee to Christ. You refuse to bow the knee to Christ Robert, and yet you still retain a hangover of Christian morality. You can not account for that morality by your own belief system but I rejoice that you have it all the same.
Why is it wrong to starve people, or herd them into Gulags, or employ an Einsatzgruppen against people? Just on your say so? On your parents say so? On the say so of a majority of living people? What if the majority of living people decided it was ok? Would it be ok then? Why not?
1.) You have those values but you cannnot account for those values beyond the subjective whims of your parents in their raising of you. Is that really the foundation you want to set transcendent ethics upon?
2.) There is a distinction between sin and crime. People who have errant thinking who don’t act out on that errant thinking are sinners but not criminals.
3.) Only God saying what a crime is makes it a crime.
4.) Why should anyone respect the law? On whose say so?
1.) You have the one belief that many beliefs and gods are acceptable. You told me that in your last post.
2.) All people have the same faith commitment that I do, though who that faith is lodged in varies from person to person.
3.) It is good because it is the truth. The fact that it gives me comfort and strength is merely a byproduct of it being true. (Though to be sure I am glad for the comfort and strength it gives.
4.) My faith commitment is to someone outside this world.
5.) Your autonomous word says the Bible isn’t Scripture. God’s authoritative word says it is Scripture. Hmmm … whose word shall I accept?
6.) Right, your religion that rejects God, definitely does divide us.
1.) It is difficult navigating in a anti-Christ culture. The more the culture throws overboard its Christian capital the more difficult it will become. But there remain faithful people like David Ehnis with whom I have great fellowship.
2.) I believe that those in authority must and always rule consistent with the God they confess. When these united States were formed there were any number of different expressions of Christianity present. I would be comfortable with that kind of social order once again. I don’t think it is possible to build a stable social order that allows for various faith expressions. Such an arrangement always leads to the Totalitarian State that we currently have. If you have many gods in a social order you need a god (the State) to control all the gods.
Robert already had to admit one inconsistency on his part when arguing that there is something in back of thinking when I argued that thinking is in back of action. Robert first argued that man acts and used that as his first premise, but has now had to admit that it is not an acceptable axiom. That there is something in back of thinking only proves the point that there is something in back of action all the more, so I’m thankful that Robert has proven my point. That which is in back of thinking is the ability to reason and that which is in back of that ability is the One who gives the ability otherwise known as the Logos. Robert has to borrow from Christian capital in order to try to argue against it which is irrational on his part thus causing all of his arguments (which begin from faulty premises) to fall flat. All of man’s thoughts presuppose a theology, even if that theology is false. Man is either autonomous (thinking himself to be a god) or bends the knee to the One, True and Living God as presented in Scripture. Both these are indeed theologies, though only one is correct. What is in back of thinking then are presuppositions based upon one’s theology, be it proper or not.