1.) The idea of a naked “secular” posits an impersonal world, with an impersonal deity concept that requires a personalism that is autonomously created by man’s fiat will. If “secular” means that God’s Law-Word does not govern the secular realm, then the secular realm is both impersonal in terms of divine presence and autonomous. Secularism thus slides easily into the absolutizing of fallen man over the Secular realm and by necessity yields humanism.
2.) The idea of ‘the Secular’ radically (can you say R2K?) separates public and private, and secular and sacred, as a transitional move towards the secular swallowing whole the putative sacred realm into a single unitary realm ruled by man’s experience (Existentialism), emotion (Romanticism), or autonomous reason (Rationalism). This is done by the ever expanding work of the “secular” realm eating up the “sacred” realm. The “Secular” realm of secularism gets larger and larger at the expense of the ever shrinking sacred realm. So, Secularism starts as dualistic but only as a feint to the end of creating a Unitarian reality that finds the Christian sacred completely eclipsed. (For example, when is the last time you’ve heard a sermon on Scriptures teaching on the right to keep and bear arms? You haven’t. Why? because that topic does not belong in the sacred realm.)
3.) Secularism cleverly denies its own religious essence and does so as a means of controlling the public square. By the means of its disguised religious assumptions it destroys the religious givens of all other religious competitors. Secularism thus creates a solely political religion, due to the putative absence of a Theological Word, and so creates a totalitarian impulse to the end of creating Utopia.
4.) Secularism then co-opts all religious competitors by forcing those former competitors to reinterpret their religion in light of the religion of Secularism. This accounts for the rise of R2K in the Reformed World. It accounts for the vicious return of the Baptist doctrine of “soul freedom” in Baptists “churches.” It accounts for the complete sell out to the Holiness movement and an ever increasing number of Reformed Churches to Cultural Marxist categories.
5.) There is no way in which to create a society that is not pinioned upon some faith, worldview, or religious foundation. Even the denial of all religion is a deeply religious tenet and faith commitment. Secularism is a faith commitment that sells itself as neutral regarding faiths.
For a ‘sermon’ on the right or obligation to keep and bear arms see Samuel Rutherford’s ‘Lex Rex’ or scroll through John Weaver’s sermons on Sermonaudio. Otherwise, your points are well taken.
This post reminds me of two small boys who were walking through a cemetery in the Florida panhandle, when they saw a headstone that said, “He is not dead, but sleeping.” One of the boys turned to the other and said, “He ain’t foolin’ nobody but hisself.”
Bret, if believing such total nonsense makes you feel better, then you just keep right on believing it. But you ain’t foolin’ nobody but yourself.
Actually, Greg, all kinds of people believe “such total nonsense.” They are called preusppositionalists. Check them out when you have time to expand your understanding of the spectrum of ideas current.