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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It is a grim and portentous historical fact that one of the worst phenomena of Christian church history, the rise of despotic medieval papacy, was largely inspired by quite explicitly ANTI-KINIST sentiments. You see, the strong tribal blood connections of medieval Europeans – even after their conversion to Christianity – were a great obstacle to the ambitiously centralizing, antichrist plans of Roman papacy, and its celibate monkish minions. So they began to aggressively promote forced clerical celibacy (that original Reformers saw as one of the calling cards of Antichrist) specifically in order to cut off the genetic loyalties of different peoples and clans (at least as far as church affairs went).
Therefore, the explosion of Reformation anger against this Popery was partly (although of course not entirely or primarily) caused by the wrath felt by the laity towards the anti-Kinist clerical system!
As is explained here:
https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/07/31/a-papal-revolt-created-europes-first-bureaucracy/
“The situation that prevailed up until then was one where bishops and clergymen were often chosen by laymen, with kings and feudal lords overseeing local regions in their jurisdiction. But from the standpoint of the Church, this situation was scandalous. Priests were not merely engaging in secretive sexual relations behind the scenes: they were openly marrying into the families of the feudal nobility themselves.
This meant that the feudal lords had a highly charged political interest in who should be ordained as clergymen. Given the critical role that family ties and kinship played in the feudal political system, the inclusion of the priesthood within the family structure of the nobility gave the lords considerable power over the churches in their regions. Thus, it was in their interest to pick and choose who they wanted to be in the clergy. The offspring of married clergy were also entitled to certain family inheritances, which meant that the noble families could maintain a multigenerational hold over the churches themselves, and ultimately over the Catholic Church.
Not only was this a moral and spiritual problem that contradicted the Church’s long-held ideal of priestly celibacy, but it was also a political threat: it meant that the Church throughout Europe was, almost everywhere, the vassal of secular rulers. The Church’s autonomy as an institution was at stake.”
Charles Hodge could observe that anti-flesh asceticism (the semi-Gnostic notion that marriage is a pollution for priests) was connected, in spite of its pious pretensions, to spiritual pride and worldly ambition:
https://ccel.org/ccel/hodge/theology3/theology3.iii.v.xi.html#fna_iii.v.xi-p14.3
“Although the doctrine that virginity, as the Roman Catechism expresses it, “summopere commendatur,” as being better, and more perfect and holy than a state of marriage, is made the ostensible ground of the enforced celibacy of the clergy, it is manifest that hierarchical reasons had much to do in making the Romish Church so strenuous in insisting that its clergy should be unmarried. This Gregory VII. avows when he says,335 “Non liberari potest ecclesia a servitute laicorum, nisi liberentur clerici ab uxoribus.””
That last Latin phrase is translated into English as,
The church cannot be freed from the servitude of the laity, unless the clergy are freed from their wives
In a truly clerical system, it is often not the laity who are angry at priests, but the priests who are angry at layfolk for daring to give them any lip or back-talk, like army officers are not supposed to tolerate any mutinous mutterings, or even too slow obedience to their orders, from the grunts.
In other words, the Popish system has always been implicitly anti-Kinist, and even though there have been Romish societies with strong clan ties (think of pre-modern Ireland or southern Italy), this has been merely due to prudent concessions made by the clerical hierarchy to the inevitable “facts on the ground,” in order not to annoy the RC lay-people too much (which might have made them ready to listen to heretical dissidents), in the same manner the US occupiers did not dare to shove Western-style globohomo egalitarianism right down the throats of the people of Afghanistan, even though they made some initial steps in that direction.
But in matters directly connected to church business, the ideal non-Kinist internationalism was firmly the ideal, even though they often could not prevent members of aristocratic families from getting the cushiest posts in the church hierarchy (like in pre-revolution ancien régime France). And of course, hypocrisy was always present, as seen in the way that Italian bishops so disproportionately dominated the Popish system until very recently. Some countries’ prelates were just more equal than others.
https://www.palladiummag.com/2022/07/31/a-papal-revolt-created-europes-first-bureaucracy/
“The Benedictine Order, its reformers, and Pope Gregory VII himself accomplished their work based on a shared idea of not only their own church, but of their roles in it. The domination of local lords was unacceptable to them, even as monasteries like Cluny often ruled in a similar manner. The simple reason: the lords served only their own familial interests, whereas they saw themselves as agents of a divine plan.
…
In accord with this theory, Pope Gregory VII stands as a model of the philosopher-tyrant, the monk who became a dictator, whose will was preserved in the imperial formation of Catholic Europe by way of the vast ecclesial bureaucracy which he helped to found—a system that was the translation of Gregory’s own monastic heritage from Cluny into the realm of political action. That bureaucracy became the driving force behind the Church’s spread across other continents during the colonial period and into the modern era.”