In A Pilgrim’s Regress, C.S. Lewis writes about a man who ordered milk and eggs from a waiter in a restaurant. After tasting the milk he commented to the waiter that it was delicious. The waiter replied, “Milk is only the secretion of a cow, just like urine and feces.” After eating the eggs he commented on the tastiness of the eggs. Again the waiter responded that eggs are only a by-product of a chicken. After thinking about the waiter’s comment for a moment the man responded, “You lie. You don’t know the difference between what nature has meant for nourishment, and what it meant for garbage.”
Here we find an example of how Rev. Lusk uses language in service of defending his Alienism. The man twists with panache the meaning of words so that when he is done they stand on their head for those with eyes to see. However, to those who don’t see his linguistic tricks and can’t measure out his piling up of contradictions he begins, if you can believe it, to make sense. Lusk was that way when he wrote on the Federal Vision heresy long ago and he remains that way now as he attacks Kinism.
We continue here our fisking of Rev. Lusk in his assault on Kinism.
RL writes
People and place do matter. Blood and soil matter. Biological and ethnic connections matter. We are not gnostics. But we are also not kinists. We are Christians, which means the blood of Christ is the ultimate tie that binds for us. The covenant is the most important connection we have.
BLM responds,
Lusk’s first three sentence above or merely a fig leaf. Except for these occasional throw away lines everything RL has written is pure on Alienism and bespeaks a hatred of blood and soil. It’s as if RL is saying that “People and place do matter. “Blood and soil matter. Biological and ethnic connections matter, as long as they don’t really matter.” How can “blood and soil” matter when RL keeps insisting that race is only about skin color. That constant refrain of Lusk’s testifies that his first three lines above are just insincere decorations to pull in the unsuspecting.
Clearly Lusk is indeed a Gnostic as we have pointed out repeatedly now. Lusk diminishes the corporeal in favor of his unbiblical ecclesiocentric paradigm where everything gets reduced according to its “spiritual” importance.
Lusk appeals to the blood of Christ but let’s keep in mind that the blood of Christ was the blood of a Hebrew who belonged to the line of David. We don’t have the blood of Christ apart from the blood and soil of Christ. In the same manner the blood of Christ which ties us does not first, in a Gnostic type manner, disembody us before it ties us — the Church together. We don’t come to Christ as atomistic individualistic integers. We come to Christ in our maleness of femaleness. We come to Christ in our ethnicity/race. We come to Christ in the context of covenant family lines that God graciously calls. The blood of Christ does not work so as to destroy nature. Grace restores nature. It does not destroy it.
Next, let it be said here that because of Lusk’s Federal Vison writings I am not confident that Lusk, by way of Doctrine, is a Christian.
RL writes,
As Christians, we are churchmen. The church is not our only nation, city, and family — but it is our first nation, city, and family.
BLM responds,
Keep in mind with this sentence we see the ecclesiocentrism that Lusk’s Federal Vision has always been known for. Practically speaking Lusk is collapsing the various jurisdictional realms ordained by God — Family, Church, and Governments — into one. The Church is so esteemed that the family and Governments fade into the background. Of course such a reading was highly disputed by Rushdoony who gave the family the pride of place. I disagree with both RJR and Lusk. The Church and the Family are as necessary in import as the right and left leg are to walking. Allow me to say again here that the Christian Church does not negate the importance of Christian family. Nor does Christian family negate the importance of the Christian Church. Lusk confuses the biblical jurisdictions in his ecclesiocentrism with the result that when push comes to shove the Church, as in medieval Rome, always trumps all.
RL writes,
Kinists like to point to the example of John Knox, who prayed, “Give me Scotland, lest I die!” Obviously Knox had a deep, natural affection for his homeland. But note a couple things. First, Knox did not equate his “people” with a race but with a geopolitical nation. He did not pray “Give me white people lest I die.” Knox understood the Bible does not categorize people according to skin color, but according to nations, tribes, peoples, and languages, which can include genetic ties, but can also be much more permeable and fluid.
BLM replies,
Knox is appealing to God for the Scottish people. Lusk is merely going all red herring here.
That Knox did not pray “Give me white people lest I die,” only proves that white people as a whole were not being sought out for elimination. If white people in the 16th century were in danger of being replaced then Knox may well have prayed “Give me white people lest I die,” as the Scots were one subgroup among white people. As it was it was the subgrouping of the Scots that Knox could plead for.
And what could possible be wrong with praying, “Give me white people lest I die?” Are white people any less in need of God’s visitation of grace and mercy right now than any other people? Why is Lusk so put out that someone might pray … “Give me white people lest I die?”
Next, as long as the Bible can talk about the inability of the Ethiopian to change his skin (Jer. 13:23) I can rightly believe that the Bible does categorize people according to races despite RL’s protestations to the contrary.
RL writes,
Second, Knox was also an ecclesiocentrist, willing to leave his homeland for Geneva to escape persecution and to get better pastoral training. He loved Scotland but he was also willing to leave it if necessary. He loved his homeland but it was subordinate to other loves. His top priority was the gospel. He prayed for Scotland not merely because of his natural affection for his national kin, but because of a supernatural affection that drove him to want to see his nation discipled in terms of the Great Commission. But precisely because he put the gospel first, Knox could find deep spiritual kinship with men from other nations, like the Frenchman Calvin and the German Bucer.
BLM responds,
Right, Knox was ecclesiocentric because he fled so he might not be killed. Everybody knows that fleeing one’s homeland in order to not be killed is proof that one is ecclesiocentric. Lusk asks us to believe that Knox, who was fighting the ecclesiocentric beast that was the Roman Catholic Church, was himself also ecclesiocentric and this despite the fact that Knox did not pray, “Give me the Church lest I die,” but rather prayed “Give me my extended kin lest I die.”
I quite believe all loves need to be subordinate to love for Christ but that is not the same as embracing the foolish ecclesiocentrism that one finds among the Federal Visionists and the CREC.
Finally, Lusk’s intimation that Kinists would never embrace spiritual kinship with men of different races is just grandstanding. I have several kinist friends who are not White. Like Lusk’s Bucer, Calvin, and Knox, my friendship circle includes a black South African kinist, and a Filipino kinist, and a S. American black kinist. My extended family also includes blacks. When we have family reunions we do just fine. None of this however need negate for any of us the realities of how we belong to both a shared faith and our respective different family kin.
