“Just as all truth rests upon the truth that is from God, so the common foundation of all rights and duties lie in the sovereignty of God. When that sovereignty of God is denied or (what amounts to the same thing) banished to heaven because His kingdom is not of this world, what becomes then of the foundation of authority, of law, of every sacred dutiful relation in state, society, and family? What sanctions remain for the distinctions and rank in life? What reason can there be that I obey another’s commands, that the one is needy, that the other is rich? All this is custom, routine, abuse, injustice, oppression. Eliminate God, and it cannot longer be denied that all men are, in the Revolutionary sense of the words, free and equal. State and society disintegrate, for there is a principle of dissolution at work that does not cease to operate until further division is frustrated by that indivisible unit, that isolated human being, the individual – a term of the Revolution – naively expressive of all destructive character.”
Guillaume Groen Van Prinsterer
Unbelief & Revolution
Lecture 9
1.) R2K is one of those errant theologies that banish the sovereignty of God to heaven because God’s Kingdom is not of this world. This is why it must be so strenuously rejected.
2.) Those who banish the sovereignty of God in the Christian community most normally turn to Natural Law to provide the foundation of authority required for every sacred dutiful relation in state, society, and family. However, the beginning presupposition of Natural Law is that man, starting from himself via his own sovereign authority can, while being totally depraved, use his unfallen reason in order to discern every sacred dutiful relation in state, society, and family.
3.) The elimination of God is the elimination of all distinctions. If there is no God, then distinctions are completely arbitrary. That “class does not exist” yields to “race does not exist” yields to “gender does not exist” yields to “age does not exist.” All of these become social constructs. (What Van Prinsterer calls arbitrary “custom, routine, abuse, injustice, oppression.”)
4.) When Kinists see NAPARC churches disciplining Kinists they see this Revolutionary (Jacobin/Marxist) agenda being pursued.
5.) This explains the horrors of egalitarianism. The presence of egalitarianism is horrific because its presence means the absence of the God of the Bible. Denominations that are practicing egalitarianism as seen in the claim that races are equal are diminishing the Christian faith. Denominations that are practicing egalitarianism as seen by putting women in positions of leadership are testifying they don’t believe in the sovereignty of God. Denominations that are practicing egalitarianism as seen in insisting that congregations which are racially integrated are automatically superior to congregations which are not have signed up for the egalitarian agenda.
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“If there is no God, then distinctions are completely arbitrary. That “class does not exist” yields to “race does not exist” yields to “gender does not exist” yields to “age does not exist.””
The cunning, great prophet of “the god of this world,” Spinoza, saw that Creator-creature distinction was the spot to which the first great revolutionary blow would have to be aimed at – namely, denying that distinction between God and man, or the divine Absolute and the world, exists:
https://archive.org/details/worshippingstate0000wike/page/144/mode/2up?view=theater
“God isn’t above creation or above history; he IS creation, he IS history. In direct contrast to Christianity, an immaterial God never became flesh. For Spinoza, all flesh (that is, all matter) always was and is God.
The implications of Spinoza’s pantheism are far-reaching. First of all, Spinoza collapsed creator and creature, destroying the essential distinction introduced at the very beginning of the Bible. Pantheism makes a god of this world and thus completely undermines the entire Judeo-Christian understanding of reality that flows from the creator-creature distinction in Genesis. Removing that creator-creature distinction allows for a reintroduction of pagan animism and idolatry, the worship of the divine in creatures. Spinoza’s “monism” was a radical rejection of the First Commandment.”
If not an actual Antichrist, Spinoza would deserve the title of “Anti-Moses” at least, as he brought the new godless law (of totally unbreakable, self-evolving natural laws) to the mankind. His uncompromising materialistic monism set the stage for the whole Radical Enlightenment underground movement (that became visible for all with the great French Revolution).
The Marxist cognoscenti, like Plekhanov here, have been aware their philosophical debt to Spinozism:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1917/idealism-materialism/index.htm
“The idealist monism of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel arose out of opposition to Spinoza, who with his doctrine of the substance allegedly ‘abolished’ the freedom of man. Feuerbach, with his materialist monism, returned to the viewpoint of Spinoza. In general he valued Spinoza very highly, and called him the ‘Moses of modern freethinkers and materialists’.”
In my opinion, the Reformed folks should be especially interested on the subject of Spinozism, since it was in the very bosom of Dutch Calvinist culture that this cunning serpent first began to spread his evil wisdom which was to have a world-historical impact. For Holland was the original “incubation area” of Spinozism, and from that country it spread to England, France and Germany, and from those countries to the rest of the world.
Van Prinsterer did not yet know Marx, but I am sure that as an educated Dutchman of his era, he knew all too well Spinoza’s thought, and its connection to the principles of the French Revolution.
And this case might interest you especially, Mr. McAtee, because it deals with the subject that much concerns you – the infiltration of Christian pulpit by an egalitarian heretic. For this Dutch clergyman was two or three centuries ahead of his times when he started to preach Spinozist materialism from the pulpit, disguising his message with Biblical-sounding code speech. There was a major scandal when he got exposed at the beginning of the 18th century:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederik_van_Leenhof
The Jewish academic Jonathan Israel (who is well worth reading, as a learned expert on that Enlightenment radicalism that succeeded in politically overthrowing Western Christendom) gave much attention to the Van Leenhof furore, seeing it as a harbinger of things to come. He credits this wily clergyman for his cunning in being able to present Spinoza’s thoughts in a Biblical guise to unsuspecting audience:
https://archive.org/details/radicalenlighten0000isra/page/430/mode/2up?view=theater
“The chief significance of the Leenhof furore was that it demonstrated more clearly than any comparable episode the feasibility of distilling from Spinoza a complete system of social, moral, and political ideas built of philosophical principles totally incompatible with authority, tradition, and revealed religion, which could be effectively popularized and infiltrated into the consciousness of the non-academic reading public, without readers necessarily even realizing they were imbibing Spinozism.”
But Israel also gives credit to the Dutch Calvinist authorities for being clear-sighted enough to be able to see well what exactly was at stake in the conflict between Christian orthodoxy and Spinozist heresy, with its egalitarian or levelling implications:
https://archive.org/details/radicalenlighten0000isra/page/416/mode/2up?view=theater
“The Zwolle Articles of Satisfaction in 1704 represent a remarkable attempt to fortify religion against radical philosophy by erecting a high wall between the Churches’ teaching and Spinozism. Defining ‘Spinozism’ as a movement or quasi-religion engaged in universal conflict with Christian belief and values, the admirably concise ten articles, submitted to the Zwolle city government on 1 September, represent a remarkable feat of intellectual compression. In particular Article 3 is noteworthy, listing as it does seventeen core Spinozist tenets identified as fundamentally at odds with Christianity. The first five are that there is only one substance which encompasses everything, including God, that there is no God distinct from Nature, that all creatures belong to this single whole, that there is therefore only one infinite order of causes which determines everything that occurs, necessarily, so that Nature is an independent and separate cause of itself which, through a fixed necessity, produces and creates itself.84 Sixth is the doctrine that body and soul are not separate entities but one and the same thing, and that there are no anima separata, that is, spirits separate from bodies, and thus no ghosts, apparitions, angels, or Devil.85
Seventh is the doctrine that there is, in the human understanding, no natural innate distinction between good and evil, these notions being human inventions designed to ‘keep the common, ignorant people in obedience.’86 Eighth is the concept that everything derives from nature, following an eternally necessary order, so that there is no moral responsibility ‘whereby the reasonable creature stands under the Law of God as his true Lord and Lawgiver.’87 Ninth comes the doctrine that the power of nature, irrespective of the Fall, governs all men under the same play of passions, so that the moral status of mankind is always the same. Next follows Spinoza’s teaching that the human will is exclusively determined by natural causes and always determined necessarily – a point heavily emphasized in the Redenkundige Aanmerkingen.88 Eleventh is the doctrine that the ‘highest good’ is the pure understanding of God’s eternal order, leading to ‘mastery of passions and self-conservation in joy and cheerfulness.’89 That death is the end of the individual with no resurrection of bodies, or Last Judgement, follows next; after which, thirteenth, comes the doctrine that there is ‘no divine Revelation and that it is the political authority which institutes all organized religion, Holy Scripture accordingly having no more authority than the writings of Hermes, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Cicero, Seneca, and other such moralists’ and being ‘written according to the understanding of the common people to inculcate obedience.’90 Next is the claim that Biblical prophecy and other Biblical books were written on the basis of ‘imagination’ and confused ideas. Fifteenth is the concept that there is a philosophical ‘general religion’ (Algemene Gods-dienst), superior to revealed religion, which permits the free expression of all views and which has few or no points of doctrine other than love of God and one’s neighbour, the pursuit of salvation without Christ, and obedience to the secular law and the State.91 Penultimately comes the doctrine that grace is the innate tendency of our nature towards acceptance of God’s eternal order;92 and finally, seventeenth, the claim that it is permissible to tell lies to preserve oneself.”