DeYoung’s Painful Book Review on Reparations

I’m not a fan of Kevin DeYoung. He loses no sleep over that. In fairness, I’m not a fan of anything that is stamped with “The Gospel Coalition,” and as DeYoung is the board chairman of “TGC” I am hostile to him and it.

Yesterday (22 April 2021) Dr. Rev. DeYoung penned a piece reviewing a book calling for Reparations. You can find the review here;

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/reparations-a-critical-theological-review/ 

In the end, DeYoung comes out largely disagreeing with the book and for that, we can be thankful. However, following DeYoung’s path to that conclusion is painful as one can feel how much it hurts DeYoung to have to disagree with the authors who are two of those who sit at the cool kid’s table.

Below are just two examples that made me grimace in DeYoung’s review.

___

Dr. Rev. Kevin DeYoung  writes,

“I don’t believe the White church has been especially patient to listen to their African American brothers and sisters, nor particularly open to seeing sins in our national or ecclesiastical histories.”

Bret responds

Jeepers… imagine me not being particularly open to listening to a bunch of crypto-Marxists who are too stupid to know that they are channeling Karl Marx & Herbert Marcuse and calling it Christian theology. It might be worse though. It might be that they know they are channelling Trotsky and Gramsci while calling it Christian theology and they just don’t care.

Imagine me not listening to the intellectual descendants of James Cone even though it is even money they have never heard of James Cone. Why would I listen to Kwon and Thompson spouting black liberation theology?

People who believe the tripe that Kwon and Thompson believe are not my Christian brothers or sisters and I am under no obligation to listen to them — patiently or otherwise. These people are not writing within the context of a Christian weltanschauung unless we define “Christian” consistent with the writings of St. Horkheimer, St. Ordono, or St. Bell.

DeYoung tries to lay a guilt trip on the “White Church” by saying stupid things like the paragraph above. I am under no compulsion to listen to these people any longer than it takes to realize that they are of their father the Devil.

And as I am so busy seeing my own sin Kevin DeYoung will excuse me if I don’t focus on the sins of my Fathers. And if DeYoung wants me to see national and ecclesiastical sins how about we start with the sins of people like DeYoung who think it is virtuous to call our Fathers sinners and who doesn’t realize that Critical Race Theory even in diluted amounts, is sin?

DeYoung writes again,

“I want to listen. I don’t believe 350 years of injustice are erased in 50 years of improvement. “
Bret responds,

350 years of injustice? You mean the injustice found in not leaving the black man in Africa so he could be some cannibal’s next dinner? Hey Kev, do you mean the injustice found in Southerners buying slaves who if not bought found their next stop being sold into the cane fields of Cuba and Brazil where their life expectancy was 9 months? Do you mean the injustice of being made part of the Southern household?  Hey, Kev are you talking about the injustice of being evangelized and taught the Christian religion by the Southerners who owned their labor? Kev, are we talking about the injustice that found the black man reproducing and flourishing here in the South so that his numbers grew? Is that the kind of injustice you’re talking about Dr. DeYoung?

Were there injustices? Who could ever doubt it? Were there injustices done to all the white slaves taken over the centuries and enslaved in Arab and Muslim lands? Pretty certain there was. Were there injustices done to black men in Africa enslaved by other black Africans? Were there injustices done to black men in America enslaved by other black slave owners?

So much of what DeYoung writes is premised on the false narrative of slavery in the US.

And improvement? I guarantee you if an inner-city child in Chicago could choose to go back to the antebellum South slave plantation where he could get three hots and a cot or stay in the rat-infested gang banger hoodlum Chicago he would choose 1851 Charleston overnight.

DeYoung needs to quit reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin as if it is a history book and pick up a real history book. I can give him some recommendations if he likes.

Anyway, there is a good deal more like this that makes one cringe. However, as I said, DeYoung finally comes out on the side of the angels but the path he takes getting there makes me wish he’d just suit up for the other team.

Author: jetbrane

I am a Pastor of a small Church in Mid-Michigan who delights in my family, my congregation and my calling. I am postmillennial in my eschatology. Paedo-Calvinist Covenantal in my Christianity Reformed in my Soteriology Presuppositional in my apologetics Familialist in my family theology Agrarian in my regional community social order belief Christianity creates culture and so Christendom in my national social order belief Mythic-Poetic / Grammatical Historical in my Hermeneutic Pre-modern, Medieval, & Feudal before Enlightenment, modernity, & postmodern Reconstructionist / Theonomic in my Worldview One part paleo-conservative / one part micro Libertarian in my politics Systematic and Biblical theology need one another but Systematics has pride of place Some of my favorite authors, Augustine, Turretin, Calvin, Tolkien, Chesterton, Nock, Tozer, Dabney, Bavinck, Wodehouse, Rushdoony, Bahnsen, Schaeffer, C. Van Til, H. Van Til, G. H. Clark, C. Dawson, H. Berman, R. Nash, C. G. Singer, R. Kipling, G. North, J. Edwards, S. Foote, F. Hayek, O. Guiness, J. Witte, M. Rothbard, Clyde Wilson, Mencken, Lasch, Postman, Gatto, T. Boston, Thomas Brooks, Terry Brooks, C. Hodge, J. Calhoun, Llyod-Jones, T. Sowell, A. McClaren, M. Muggeridge, C. F. H. Henry, F. Swarz, M. Henry, G. Marten, P. Schaff, T. S. Elliott, K. Van Hoozer, K. Gentry, etc. My passion is to write in such a way that the Lord Christ might be pleased. It is my hope that people will be challenged to reconsider what are considered the givens of the current culture. Your biggest help to me dear reader will be to often remind me that God is Sovereign and that all that is, is because it pleases him.

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