”… it’s a good thing that we no longer live in an era where Christianity is a culture.”
~Michael Horton, R2k architect
The reasons why Horton’s statement is absurd.
1.) According to Horton and the R2K lads it is IMPOSSIBLE for Christianity to be a culture. If it is impossible for Christianity to be a culture then no one at no time as ever have lived in an era where Christianity was a culture, and this even if they were so deluded as to believe that they were living in a Christian culture. To admit that there was a time when Christianity was a culture completely eviscerates the whole theorem of R2K.
2.) This reveals that the R2K theological neophytes don’t see an intimate relationship between cult and culture. Culture is merely the living out of the belief system inculcated by the cult as embraced by the adherents of the cult. R2K gives us a Christianity that is all personal conversion with no impact by those persons converted upon the culture they live in unto a social order that could rightly be designated as “Christian.”
3.) If #2 is true (and it is) Horton is confessing that it is good thing that we no longer live in an era where Christianity is the predominant belief system. He is saying it is a good thing that other belief systems are the belief systems that have won the day and so are producing non Christian culture. Horton is saying that it is good that the God of the Bible is no longer taken as God by the West. This is treason by Dr. Michael Horton.
4.) The West was what it was, and yet remains what it is because of the (now waning) influence of Biblical Christianity on people, peoples, and then how those people and peoples incarnated the High Priesthood and Lordship of Jesus Christ into their everyday living. As the West throws off Christianity as both cult and culture, due to teachings by both R2K advocates and the cultural Marxists. (Politics does indeed make strange bed-mates. Who would have ever thought that putatively Confessional Christianity would have served the agenda of cultural Marxism?) The R2K project is guaranteed to finish off what is left of both the West and Western Christianity. R2K, in pulling down the West with this God awful theology, will pull down its own house and be as relevant to what they create as the Russian Orthodox Church was relevant in Communist Russia.
5,) Since R2k is amillennialism run amok this agenda of R2k to divorce Christian theology from culture is a self fulfilling prophecy. R2k believes and teaches a suffering Church where Christian are pilgrims in this world. This so called theological pursuit of R2K thus absolutely guarantees what their theology insists upon. They believe that Christianity is only a suffering religion and so they have created a theology that will guarantee that suffering will come to pass.
If 2/3’s of the earth’s population was say… a covenanter, would that have any affect on culture? Mike has become an antinomian, sad very sad. He seems to have lowly thoughts about God, His power and His purposes.
I like point number 1 the most. One more example of the folly of E2K theology
Every group has a culture. Their culture is the outward expression of their religion. “Culture is religion externalized and made explicit.” Henry Van Til
Horton seems to get more and more confused or just plain bad.
What kind of a culture does horton want to live in? Moslem? Secular huminist? Anarchist? These are rhetorical questions. Horton wants to live in the land of OZ, a land of neutrality whose structures are developed by natural laws that will work for all religions and atheists alike. of course, this is just his drunken dream (nightmare) of never-never land. WOW- this is ome great French Bordeaux wine in this can of Diet Coke I am drinking!
The humanists want Christians to stay out of politics as Christians. The pietists agree. The humanists deny that there are valid Biblical blueprints that apply to this world. The pietists agree. The humanists argue that Old Testament laws, if applied today, would produce tyranny. The pietists agree. The humanists say that the civil government should be run in terms of religiously neutral laws. The pietists agree. The humanists deny that the God of the Bible brings predictable sanctions in history against societies that do not obey His law. The pietists agree. The humanists deny that the preaching of the gospel will ever fundamentally change the way the world operates. The pietists agree. The humanists say that Christians should sit in the back of the cultural bus. The pietists agree. This is why both sides hate the message of Christian Reconstruction.
Gary North and Gary DeMar, Christian Reconstruction, Institute for Christian Economics, p. 75
Great Quotes Peter
The Humanists have a belief in victory by the end of history and are working diligently to implement it. The Communists/Socialists have a belief in victory by the end of history and are working diligently to implement it. The Muslims have a belief in victory by the end of history and are working diligently to implement it. But only a handful of Christians today (although this is growing) have a belief in the victory [of God’s Kingdom on earth] by the end of history and are working diligently to implement it.” — Gary North
” The church at its worst has never equalled the modern state in its tyranny. It is a mark of the self-willed blindness of our time that men profess to fear a return to Christian rule rather than the statist tyranny which prevails.”
~ R. J. Rushdoony, Systematic Theology, p. 1035f
Say, my friend wants to know the source. I, myself, have heard Horton say this before on his radio show but for my friend’s sake if you could let me have a link or something. Thanks again.
Sara,
I found it here. Turretin Fan has some videos linked where he pulled it from.
http://turretinfan.blogspot.com/2012/08/hortons-comments-on-islam-or-e2k.html