Religion is an Inescapable Category; Because of that Pluralism is a Myth

“Yet, if the Two Kingdoms doctrine (dual-fold kingdom) is biblical (and that’s where my leanings are in this debate), it would seem that we might have to acknowledge that the self-avowed Satanist has a point when he says:

‘Feucht is openly a theocrat who courts the attention of politicians and seeks to proselytize through his performances,’ Greaves said. ‘He has his opinions, and we have ours, but one thing the government can not do is preference his viewpoint over ours by giving him exclusive access to perform a concert on the Capitol grounds. That stage is every bit as much ours as it is his, so, in the name of pluralism and religious liberty, there are some state capitols that are likely soon to be hosting Satanic Planet shows.’

Comment left on R. Scott Clark blog

I unwind this comment because this is, in many respects, the essence of what the R2K ‘can’t shoot straight’ gang is teaching.

The key here is the statement ‘but one thing the government can not do is preference his (the Christian’s) viewpoint over ours, (the Satanists)’ as combined with the invoking of the classical liberal’s sacrosanct principle of ‘pluralism and religious liberty.’ The reason that this is key is because the minute the government begins to not preference religious viewpoints they (‘the government’) at that very minute have violated the sacrosanct principle of ‘pluralism and religious liberty’ because the government at that point is preferencing the religious viewpoint of somebody somewhere that insists that pluralism as a religious viewpoints is his religious viewpoint that should be preferred by the government and so forced on everyone else. Indeed when any government prefers the religious viewpoint that they as the government should not preference Christianity over pagan religions they have at that very moment preferred a religious viewpoint of somebody else’s over my religious viewpoint that Christianity should be preferred as the religious viewpoint over all other religious viewpoints.

Religion is an inescapable category and because of that pluralism is a myth.

Elsewhere Clark writes,

“The secular is not our enemy. It is our friend.“

Dr. R. Scott Clark
America’s Reformed Court Jester

The word “secular” falls so easily off of people’s lips, but we must ask… ‘what is it?’

Is it the realm where no religious views are welcome thus keeping those realms clean from endorsing any one faith or is it the realm where all religious views are welcome thus keeping those realms clean from endorsing any one faith?

If it is the first of those two is it really possible to have a common realm that is clean of all faith? If it is the second of those two isn’t it the case that the faith that has been endorsed for the common realm is any faith that allows all other faiths and so a version of polytheism?

The secular is neither our friend nor our enemy because there is no such thing as “the secular.” It is a myth made up by those who are drunk with enlightenment categories. There is in now way that any realm can be faith free. No such thing as a realm that can be “all faiths” because then the faiths that insist that their faith alone is the true faith are not allowed. Those faiths must give way to the faith of “all faiths.”

R. Scott Clark is not a wise man who is really just a representative of the Enlightenment project desiring to reinterpret Reformed Christianity through the ideological lens of Anabaptist liberalism.

Clark and all his R2K ilk are enemies of the Church of Christ.

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.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *