The young new church nazis find the Imago Dei troublesome because it reflects the unity of humanity in God’s created order: all humans are created in the image of God. That unity is a threat to white nationalism, just as white nationalism is a threat to the gospel of Jesus Christ (read Galatians). And it is more than marginally ironic that many of these same younglings that champion “nature” are at war with God’s created order.
P. Andrew “Andy” Sandlin
Theologian — A Really Bad One
1.) If the Imago Dei stamps out white nationalism suggesting that all men are the same then it stamps out differentiation between the sexes. Andy can’t have it both ways. Either the Imago Dei allows for distinctions among peoples to exist or it requires that we lose the distinctions between men and women.
In the end, Sandlin is not arguing for unity. The idiot is arguing for uniformity. He has lost the diversity in the idea of “The One and The Many.” Sandlin is advocating for social order monism. Sandlin might as well just find a good Unitarian church to place his membership.
2.) In the end here, Sandlin has baptized the doctrine of egalitarianism. The suggestion here is that because all men equally bear the Imago Dei therefore all men are equal in terms of abilities and predispositions. Further, Sandlin is suggesting that anyone who disagrees with his kindergarten theology is a “Nazi” (insert gasp).
Christianity has always taught that men are only equal inasmuch as they are all equally made of dirt and inasmuch as they all stand as responsible before and are obligated to God and His law and inasmuch as they all have a sin nature.
3.) Even the unity in the Christian faith that Sandlin might appeal to is squashed in terms of meaning all converted peoples are the same. Converted Urdu people will not be the same as converted Mongolian or Intuit peoples. Grace does not destroy nature but restores it. Sandlin’s appeal to “unity” because of the Imago Dei does not even work if cast in the context of converted people groups. Neither the common ground of the Imago Dei, nor the common ground of conversion drives the uniformity that Sandlin aims at. In terms of putting all this in the context of the Church even St. Paul notes that different people (and we would say peoples as well) have different gifts to bring to the body in order to help the body to excel.
4.) By denying these very real racial/ethnic distinctions Sandlin is a functional Gnostic. He does not believe in the material reality that God has created us with. He seems to think that the spiritual reality of being Imago Dei complete negates our creaturely humanness in all its variegated expressions. Have these people never read a weighty book on the Church’s first heresy called Gnosticism?
5.) Understand where all this is going for Sandlin. This appeal to the “unity” of the human race because of Imago Dei is greasing the rails for normativity of inter-racial marriages, cross-racial adoptions and multicultural “social order,” driven by saluting open borders. It is a theology hellbent on completing the destruction of a once Christian people.
Now, I’ll grant that Andy doesn’t realize the implications of his position but his inability to think consequentially does not mean what I’ve observed is any less true. At best Andy’s inability to connect dots means he’s merely stupid and not instead just plain wicked.
6.) Pray tell what is Andy going to do with me. I am no youngling and so he can’t cast that implied aspersion at me. Honestly, except for a few old timer chaps like Chambers, Mahan, and I, it is the younglings who are spot on in resisting this Nietzschean will to death that we find so prevalent among the Sandlins, Doug Wilsons, Al Mohlers, etc.
7.) Honestly, the sting of being called a “Nazi” has lost its bite. Like the accusation of “racist” it means very little to those who have eyes wide open to the Babel project. Call me a “Nazi?” Shrug … it’s like calling me a “edofix.” It means nothing to me. I know in your world Andy it is the greatest insult you can find but those who have gotten past the post-war liberal consensus just don’t give a rat’s arse about your slurs.
“It is just as erroneous — and pernicious — to equate culture with race as it is to equate intelligence with race. Culture’s characteristics are shaped by religion, not by race, easily proven by the fact that virtually all races have at different times and locations reflected godly religion and its wholesome characteristics, as well as ungodly religion and its unwholesome characteristics.
Theologian — A Really Bad One 1.) I don’t know of anybody within the Ogden Utah group, among the Kinists I hang with, among the Natural Law Nationalist who try to equate culture with race as if there is a one to one correspondence.
2.) However, there is an understanding among many that race is a contributory factor to culture along with race. Indeed, a good definition of culture is theology poured over ethnicity. To deny that genetics have anything to do with culture, and arguing instead that all culture is, is what goes on between someone’s ears is to, once again, profess allegiance to a Gnostic faith. Scripture teaches “as a man thinketh in his heart, so he is,” but notice that there is a man who is thinking here and that thinking man is the repository of generations of genetics. The material/corporeal is real people. God’s grace does not make who we are in our creaturely genetics disappear.
3.) To argue like Andy does here (and it’s not just Andy of the Boomer Evangelicals who are arguing in this fashion) leaves one arguing that nature means nothing in the nurture vs. nature debate. Sanlindism looks to mean that if men can just be programmed to believe the right things then nature means nothing. Again … Gnosticism.
4.) I think it is disputable that all ethnicities at one time or another have embraced Christianity to such a degree that whole civilizations were built. However, for the sake of argument let us grant Sandlin’s premise. Is he really trying to argue that a Pygmy Christian culture is going to look the same as a Japanese Christian culture or a Hottentot Christian culture? It is mind-boggling to think that the man might actually be arguing something like this.
5.) Of course race alone is not equated to culture… but neither can it be said that religion alone is equated to culture. Culture is the interplay between religion and genetics — between theology and who God created us to be in all of our corporeality. Culture is the outward manifestation of a peoples’ inward beliefs. However, as different peoples are, well, different, then even if different peoples’ embrace the same theology there cultures will not be or look the same. A Christian Peruvian people are never going to look the same as a Christian Ndebele people are never going to look the same as a Christian Cornish people. To think otherwise puts one on the wrong side of Babel.
6.) St. Paul destroys Sandlinism when he talks about the particular besetting of the Crete people. All peoples do not look the same in their rebellion against God and His Christ. Different peoples will express their fallenness each in their own unique way as peculiar to their own people group.
I am a postmillennialist and so I know that the ideas of these chaps will be put down. Still, I pray that God might be gracious to them before they die and grant them repentance. I have no doubt that they may well be Brothers but even as Paul had stern words at times for Brothers so stern words are required here.
I think this post put it well, in a concise nutshell:
https://x.com/jamesawhiite/status/1834959365897322855
“Imago Dei is not the gotcha subversives think it is.
It’s not a right to a certain life; It establishes that people are not animals and will be held accountable for their actions in a way animals will not be.
This does not bode well for people who act like animals.”
Liberals and Leftists always like to talk more about their RIGHTS than about their DUTIES. And being an “Imago Dei” is a very heavy position of honor this brings along with it a crushing sense of duty – that is, if you take that idea seriously at all, instead of merely using it as a rhetorical gimmick while begging for material goodies (which is the norm in “Leftist Christian” politics).
It is because of Imago Dei that men can be sentenced to Hell, instead of being subjected to annihilation like creatures that perish. That is why thoughtful infidels ABHOR that doctrine and would like to think themselves as nothing but animals!
“All peoples do not look the same in their rebellion against God and His Christ. Different peoples will express their fallenness each in their own unique way as peculiar to their own people group.”
Yes, all the peoples of the earth have their own ways of showing the repulsive side of their character – for example, post-Christian White people like the modern Swedes are a revolting sight, and the Anglo race has, besides its great and glorious side, also the tendency towards repulsively materialistic “shopkeeper” mentality. As one dissident writer once put it:
“Sorry, but we all have our share in the decline of human civilizations. Blacks with their violence, Jews with their insidiousness, and us with our soul crushing rationalism. The reign of the anti-Christ has need of subjects, and those will belong to all races. The devil is thoroughly multicultural.”