The Basis Of Our Political & Legislative Positions … McAtee contra DeYoung

“”That is to say, our political and legislative positions cannot be determined simply by noting that the Bible calls something a sin and therefore that sin should be illegal. Further considerations about the common good, natural law, human rights, the unfolding of redemptive history, and the nature and scope of the state must come into play. I do not think the state should recognize gay marriage (so called), but my justification for this position goes deeper than merely asserting that homosexual behavior is ethically wrong.”

– Rev. Kevin DeYoung

1.) It is true that not all sins are crimes or should be legislated against as crimes but unfortunately Rev. DeYoung does not articulate that distinction which leaves his assertion confusing and open to the misinterpretation that would allow someone to suggest that all because the Scripture teaches that something is a crime that does not therefore mean that it is a crime for today. Rev. DeYoung’s statement is open to the accusation that he is saying that Scripture alone is not sufficient to define crime as crime.

2.) By what standard will Rev. DeYoung and the rest of us determine the Common good if not by God’s standard as found in the Bible? John Stuart Mill, would argue that the Common good is arrived at by pragmatism but of course Christians are not pragmatists.

3.) Rev. DeYoung invokes Human Right but Humans have no rights. Humans have only duties. Only God has rights. The whole notion of “Human Rights” as they have been sold since the Enlightenment is a complete creation by Humanist categories. I would encourage Rev. DeYoung to read “What’s wrong with human rights,” by T. Robert Ingram. All ministers need to think twice about willy nilly invoking this human rights language. It may be possible for Christians to use “Human Rights” language but the usage of it by Christians would be something completely different then what we find in a Biblical Worldview.

4.) If Nature is fallen, why should we look to Natural Law? Besides, presuppositionalism has completely destroyed the whole Natural Law position. Natural law posits a reading of reality by way of neutrality. There is not such thing as neutrality.

5.) How do we know what the nature and scope of the State should be without consulting God’s Word?

All of these other considerations invoked by Rev. DeYoung are non-sequiturs.

6.) “My justification for this position goes deeper than merely asserting that homosexual behavior is ethically wrong.” Rev. DeYoung’s justification goes deeper then the reality of relying on God’s word for what is ethically wrong?

That is a stupendous and curious statement.

The Enlightenment Nation State Myth

“If the struggle between state-building elites and other powers like the church predates the Reformation by at least a century, however, it may be that state-building process is not as innocent of the ensuing (putatively “religious”) violence as the myth of the religious wars makes it out to be. Is it possible that the state-building process is not simply the solution but a contributing cause of the violence of the 16th and 17th centuries.”

Wm. T. Vaughn
The Myth of Religious Violence — pg. 141

Vaughn is advancing the idea that the burgeoning modern Nation States of the 16th century contributed significantly to the what the bureaucrats and court historians of the modern Nation States later styled as “The Religious wars of the 16th and 17th century.” Vaughn is contending that in the contest between the growing Nation States and the existence of various expressions of Christianity (Lutheranism, Calvinism, Roman Catholicism) what the Nations States did, once they vanquished Christianity to a “private realm,” and a pietistic interior existence is to have labeled all the violence of the 16th and 17th centuries as “religious wars.” They were able to do so as victors in the contest between themselves and the Church and it served their purpose to do so because in doing so they would forever be able to use the “religious wars of the 16th and 17th century,” which they contributed to and used to advance their agenda, as cautionary tales against letting the Church ever have any influence in a public square that they now dominated with their victory over the Church. Living out of this Worldview accounts for why R2K chaps like Dr. R. Scott Clark can bring up the specter of “the Religious wars of the 16th and 17th century” to warn against Constantinianism. Later in history the Enlightenment codified this victory of the Modern Nation state over the Church and pressed ever more, over the ensuing centuries, the idea of “separation of Church and State.”

By relegating the Church to the “private realm,” in the repeated telling of the dreaded tale of the “religious wars” of the 16th and 17th century, the State is able to practice its ideology (which amounts to a masked religion) in order to conform the citizenry according to its anti-Christ ideology in as much as it owns the public square in an uncontested manner. By this method the modern Nation State has conceded to the Church the souls of the citizenry as long as they could have their bodies and minds.

Of course what we are seeing as this myth of religious wars is exposed is that the modern pagan Nation State dwarfs the “religious wars of the 16th and 17th century,” in terms of the deadly, the destructive and the life-taking. One has only to consider all the blood of the 20th century in putatively non-religious wars. Why should we be afraid of the “religious wars of the 16th and 17th century” — wars that found the burgeoning Nation State as being contributory — when one considers the piles of dead bodies in the Holdomar, of the Armenians by the Turks and of the tens of millions murdered by Mao?

Obama and the “Morning After Pill.”

“Exquisite little creature!” said the Director, looking after her. Then, turning to his students, “What I’m going to tell you now,” he said, “may sound incredible. But then, when you’re not accustomed to history, most facts about the past do sound incredible.”

He let out the amazing truth. For a very long period before the time of Our Ford, and even for some generations afterwards, erotic play between children had been regarded as abnormal (there was a roar of laughter); and not only abnormal, actually immoral (no!): and had therefore been rigorously suppressed.

A look of astonished incredulity appeared on the faces of his listeners. Poor little kids not allowed to amuse themselves? They could not believe it.

“Even adolescents,” the D.H.C. was saying, “even adolescents like yourselves …”

“Not possible!”

“Barring a little surreptitious auto-erotism and homosexuality–absolutely nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“In most cases, till they were over twenty years old.”

“Twenty years old?” echoed the students in a chorus of loud disbelief.

“Twenty,” the Director repeated. “I told you that you’d find it incredible.”

Aldous Huxley
Brave New World
Chapter 3

With Obama’s decision to allow the “morning after pill” to be available over the counter for all ages without question or Identification we find ourselves pushed one step closer to Huxley’s “Brave New World,” where sex is a indiscriminate past-time and casual recreation.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/11/plan-b-morning-after-pill?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20main-3%20Main%20trailblock:Network%20front%20-%20main%20trailblock:Position1

Random thoughts on the Obama administration allowing children to access the “morning after” pill.

1.) The State pushes indiscriminate sex because such sex destroys the ability of young people to properly bond and form familial loyalties. It is in the interest of the Totalitarian State to destroy all loyalties that might compete with loyalty to the State. By pushing casual sex the Progressive Marxists ensure that no interpersonal loyalties will be formed that will challenge their ability to rule.

2.) The end effect of encouraging meaningless sex is to destroys the whole idea of attached intimacy and dehumanizes the participants by reducing sex to a physical and animal act. The spiritual component of sex being destroyed, the destruction of man’s spirituality is significantly advanced. Man himself begins to think of himself only in terms of his physical lusts and desires. Men who have lost the sense of their spiritual significance are men who think of themselves as no more than cattle. Cattle are easily herded and controlled by the Elite Farmers.

3.) When sex becomes meaningless, and emotion drained out of the act by virtue of the impersonal nature and randomness of the sex act the sense of moral oughtness is seared so that the State can advance other immoralities that will go un-protested by those whose emotional life is barren. It does not take much to convince those, for whom unattached serial sex is morally inconsequential, that any number of other moral outrages as endorsed by the State are acceptable.

4.) The casualness of sex that is being pushed communicates the idea that everyone belongs to everyone. There is a strong strain of communalism in all this. But of course if everybody belongs to everybody then nobody belongs uniquely to anybody. The sense of belongingness is not accentuated but is diminished in the pursuit of sex as a meaningless function of reductionistic human physicality.

5.) Keep your eyes peeled for an increase of rape in our culture because of these kinds of actions. We are already seeing rape on the rise in our military,

http://truth-out.org/speakout/item/16823-rape-culture-at-the-us-naval-academy

If it really is the case that everybody belongs to everybody then it can hardly be considered a crime or even unusual if some begin to take that idea seriously.

6.) The advocacy of normalizing random, regular, and routine sex has the advantage of keeping the Goyim’s mind preoccupied with where he or she will find their next sex opportunity. Minds that are preoccupied with sex are minds that are not preoccupied with thought that is not approved by the State. Fixating the minds of the citizenry on sex is part of the bread and circuses routine that insure independent thought does not arise.

7.) Of course this is all about the Transvaluation of values. The time is coming when being monogamous or perhaps even heterosexual will be seen as pornographic and obscene. Taboos will be reversed so that a young lady who holds her virtue will be mocked and a man who respects women will be lampooned.

8.) A significant part of what makes for Christian categories of Male and Female gender roles is the idea that men are to respect women and women are to be protected by men. When sex is a random commodity men have no incentive to either respect or protect women. Protect them from what? Respect them for what reason? Indiscriminate sex thus goes a long way towards destroying gender roles thus again ensuring the destruction of Christian culture in favor of the unitary Marxist God State.

9.) All of this is suggestive of the anarcho-tyranny that Samuel Francis warned about years ago. In anarcho-tyranny states the FEDS encourage anarchy for libertine and criminal behavior while punishing the law abiding for non-criminal actions. As such we live under the rule of an anarcho-tyrannical Government that desires to, and in some cases has successfully criminalize(d) the ownership of guns, hemp, raw milk, and eggs, while at the same time encouraging and making provision for Mothers killing their babies by a pill and a glass of water.

Of course if your religion is R2K you can’t speak to this as a minister because these kinds of matters are not within the bailiwick of the ministers calling. Instead, you must tell your people that the Christian faith was never intended to transform or impact culture.

R. Scott Clark … “The Constantinians are Coming … The Constantinians are Coming.”

Surrounded By Constantinians

In this article Dr. R. Scott Clark hyperventilates about the dangers of Constantinism. (It is interesting that the term “Constantinian Shift” was popularized by the anabaptist Theologian, Dr. John H. Yoder, and that many of his complaints against Constantinism are the same complaints that are raised by R2K advocates.)

Now Constantinism is the process by which Christianity became the Roman Empire’s official religion in the 4th century. Dr. R. S. Clark (RSC) believes that Constantinism is a bad thing and goes on from there to advocate for a social order setting where no religion has primacy for our social order. What RSC desires is religious pluralism.

Of course if RSC achieved the pure religious pluralism he desires at that very point there would be a non Christian Constantinianism that would be in place. You see, Constantinianism is an inescapable category. It is not possible to have a social order that is not reflective of some prior religious commitment. It is not possible to have a social order that is not serving some God, gods, or god concept. RSC’s desire for religious pluralism finds him championing for a State that would serve as God, with the god-like authority to dictate to the other gods how far they can go in the public square. RSC’s god (the State) will not allow any other God to displace its authority in the public square.

Right now the name of the god in Charge, were we to put a name on this god, is “Demos.” The people are God and the voice of the people is the voice of God. The State makes Demos’ will known and Demos controls all the other gods in the public square dictating to them how far they can and can not go.

I affirm that a people can have a Government that is not controlled by any one denomination but I note that the nature of reality does not allow one to have a Government that is a-religious and that is not controlled by some god or God concept.

RSC thinks we live in Pluralism. Does anyone agree with that? Isn’t it past obvious that multiculturalism and multi-creedalism and pluralism is a mono-cultural and mono-creedal expression that confesses that the only gods are welcome in the public square are the gods who know their place before the Unitarian God-State? All this multiculturalism, multi-creedalism and religious pluralism is giving us a new mono-culture that we will all be forced to subscribe to or else we will be put in the closet or worse. Does a Christian insist that the God of the Bible should be the God who rules over the public square? Well, then the R2K god of religious pluralism must shut the God of the Bible down so that all the Gods can bow before the rule and sway of the R2K god.

Scott and the other Enlightenment Democratic R2K’ers can not be allowed to get away with the argument that something called pluralism exists. It doesn’t. We are living through times that prove that Pluralism is a myth. Are you a Christian who owns a bakery or a florist shop and you do not want to service sodomite customers? Then the R2K god of religious pluralism must teach the God of the Bible that He has to make room for the god of the sodomites.

http://gawker.com/gay-couple-files-discrimination-complaint-against-color-511814443

http://www.worldmag.com/2013/04/florist_fights_lawsuit_for_refusing_gay_wedding

Hard pluralism, which RSC thumps for, is a myth and has been used as a cover and invoked for nearly the entire 20th century as a smokescreen to overturn a increasingly receding Christian social order in favor of a pagan social order that by means of and in the name of pluralism has successfully accomplished their long march through the Institutions.

Soft religious pluralism worked here as long as it did because even though the colonialists were people of many assorted denominations there existed a sweet spot among them where they could all find guarded agreement. That sweet spot was the fact that they all were generically Christian. R2K is trying to recreate that anabaptist vision (go read your Roger Williams). The Enlightenment vision, the anabaptist vision, and the R2K vision for social order have great overlap.

The venerable Dr. G. I. Williamson underscored this thinking recently in a comment he left at Dr. Nelson Kloosterman’s blog,

“Since the American experiment in the political sphere both Reformed and Presbyterian bodies have modified their historic Confessions (Belgic Art. 36 & WCF Ch. 33). I could be wrong, but I think the dazzling success of the U.S. in earlier history was the catalyst for these Confessional Changes. And the longer I’ve lived the more I’ve been driven to wonder if we did not err in making this shift as great as it has been. The Reformation itself was promoted (one could even say ‘made possible, humanly speaking’) by the actions of favorable Civil Government. The Synod of Dordt and the Westminster Assembly were both brought into existence by (or at least with the cooperation of) civil rulers. Even then there was a care to see to it that these civil rulers kept their hands off the word, sacraments and discipline, but, at the same time, they were told (by the Reformed churches) that they had a duty to God (the true God) and his church. And I find it difficult to see why it was necessary to reduce the right of the church to tell them what their duty is, or of their sacred duty to protect and even promote the honor of the name which is above every name. Furthermore, even in the OPC/RCNZ version of the WCF we still say the magistrate is “under him [the true God, and] for his glory and the public good.” Well, now, who is to define these terms? Is it good to approve of the homosexual lifestyle? The WCF further says “they [civil rulers, that is] ought especially to maintain piety, justice, and peace” – well, how on earth can they do that if they are not helped to understand what these words mean? The problem is, of course, that the revision of 23:3 seems to me to open the door to complete pluralism.

It worked well when Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians etc., all had a lot in common. But just look at the chaos now!

I have been strongly influenced by two fine studies by Dr. Gary North, in which he shows (1) that 12 of the original 13 colonies that became the USA originally required those who would serve in civil office to acknowledge the triune God; (2) that this was discarded at and by (in the secret meetings of) the Continental Congress, because of the strong influence of the Free Masons (one of which was none other than George Washington himself); and (3) the result was a Constitution which – at best – is Deistic, and in principle paving the way for the present total pluralistic chaos. [I urge you to read Dr. North’s book entitled ‘Political Polytheism.’] For nearly 200 years the USA still ‘looked like’ – and in many respects was – a Christian Nation. Why? Because there was a strong Bible believing presence – Protestant Churches that preached and (by discipline) enforced the Word of God. But when that began to crumble (big time about of my birth in 1925) there was nothing to hold back or restrain the inherent wickedness of the Adamic nature. So the question is: What are we to do now? And it seems to me that there is only one possible answer. We must speak. We must say to all men of our generation – high or low, small or great – that the day of judgment is coming, and that what they are doing is wrong and that those who have served as civil rulers will one day be judged by the Lord Jesus Christ who is – whether they like it or not – the King of kings and Lord of lords…”

We can not go back to the Pluralism of Colonial America. That magic lamp has been busted by the influx of Rapacious Humanists, Muslims, and “Secular” Jews and that pluralism — the pluralism of the Enlightenment project — lies shattered in the nation’s past.

Elsewhere in RSC’s article RSC complains about those who, “want to go back to Constantinianism, the arrangement whereby the magistrate establishes a state church and enforces Christian orthodoxy.”

In response to this let us note,

1.) One does not have to support Establishmentarianism in order to believe that the magistrate has a responsibility to rule in keeping with God’s revelation. The legislating of law does not necessitate the creation of a State Church.

2.) RSC is opposed to the magistrate enforcing Christian law. As that is so, what law would RSC have the magistrate enforce? Is there an law from nowhere that can be successfully enforced? What now of your Van Tillian “no neutrality” RSC? Is it possible to have law that is not reflective of some God or god concept? If not law reflective of the mind of God then law reflective of what other god’s mind?

RSC, in his article, writes, “As modernity leavened the culture, Christianity was gradually displaced as the reigning paradigm.” I agree but what RSC doesn’t ask is, “as Christianity was gradually displaced as the reigning paradigm what new religion replaced Christianity as the reigning paradigm?” Remember, Van Til does not allow us to answer that it was replaced by “neutrality.” Some other religion replaced Christianity as the reigning paradigm and that religion and the god of that religion became the source of law.

RSC presses on in his article by citing Kuyper on the dangers of Constantinianism because it often returns upon the heads of the non-heretics. The problem with that “insight” is that RSC misses that his current religious pluralism has its own version of “heretic” that it murders by the millions. The heretics of RSC’s religious pluralism are called “unborn babies.”

Elsewhere in his article RSC waves the bloody shirt of religious wars. I would recommend to RSC, as a corrective on this point, William T. Cavanaugh’s “The Myth of Religious Violence.” Cavanaugh goes to great lengths to expose how religion has been blamed for bloodshed by the modern Enlightenment State that desires to keep itself in the ascendancy in order to keep religion at bay. RSC’s invoking of this myth ends up supporting the true god of his R2K … the modern State. (I highly recommend reading Cavanaugh’s book.)

RSC then invokes a argument from silence in the NT to prove that Constantinianism is wrong. I wonder how RSC reacts when Baptist invoke the argument from silence in the NT to prove that babies should not be baptized? There is also no words in the NT prohibiting necrophilia. Does RSC believe that necrophilia as such is acceptable today? Then there is always Belgic Confession #36 that does say that the Magistrate has a role in promoting the Kingdom of God. RSC is always chattering about recovering the Reformed Confessions. Maybe he would like to recover Belgic #36? To suggest that the NT must repeat OT truths or else the silence proves the OT truths are no longer truths is a strange way for a putatively Reformed person (and Doctor of the Church to boot) to argue.

RSC then, in his article fretting over the Constantinians, invokes Calvin in support of his position. Well, let’s see what Calvin had to say about these matters,

The French Confession

XXXIX. We believe that God wishes to have the world governed by laws and magistrates,[1] so that some restraint may be put upon its disordered appetites. And as he has established kingdoms, republics, and all sorts of principalities, either hereditary or otherwise, and all that belongs to a just government, and wishes to be considered as their Author, so he has put the sword into the hands of magistrates to suppress crimes against the first as well as against the second table of the Commandments of God. We must therefore, on his account, not only submit to them as superiors,[2] but honor and hold them in all reverence as his lieutenants and officers, whom he has commissioned to exercise a legitimate and holy authority.

1. Exod. 18:20-21; Matt. 17:24-27; Rom. ch. 13
2. I Peter 2:13-14; I Tim. 2:2

And again,

“But this was sayde to the people of olde time. Yea, and God’s honour must not be diminished by us at this day: the reasons that I have alleadged alreadie doe serve as well for us as for them. Then lette us not thinke that this lawe is a speciall lawe for the Jewes; but let us understand that God intended to deliver to us a generall rule, to which we must tye ourselves…Sith it is so, it is to be concluded, not onely that is lawefull for all kinges and magistrates, to punish heretikes and such as have perverted the pure trueth; but also that they be bounde to doe it, and that they misbehave themselves towardes God, if they suffer errours to roust without redresse, and employ not their whole power to shewe a greater zeale in that behalfe than in all other things.”

Calvin, Sermons upon Deuteronomie, p. 541-542

RSC, is just wrong. Dreadfully, painfully, and perspicuously wrong.

But we’ve come to expect that from R2K.

The Contemporary Western Church’s Handling of “God’s Love.”

“Verses like John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but have eternal life,” give abundant proof that the redemption which the Jews thought to monopolize is universal as to space. God so loved the world, not a little portion of it, but the world as a whole, that He gave His only begotten Son for its redemption. And not only the extensity, but the intensity of God’s love is made plain by the little adverb “so,” — God so loved the world, in spite of its wickedness, that He gave His only begotten Son to die for it. But where is the oft-boasted proof of its universality as to individuals?

This verse (John 3:16) is sometimes pressed to such an extreme that God is represented as too loving to punish anybody, and so full of mercy that He will not deal with men according to any rigid standard of justice regardless of their deserts. The attentive reader, by comparing this verse with other Scripture, will see that some restriction is to be placed on the word “world.” One writer has asked, “Did God love Pharaoh? (Romans 9:17). Did He love the Amalekites? (Exodus 17:14). Did He love the Canaanites, whom He commanded to be exterminated without mercy? (Deuteronomy 20:16). Did He love the Ammonites and Moabites whom He commanded not to be received into the congregation forever? (Deuteronomy 23:3). Does He love the workers of iniquity? (Psalm 5:5). Does He love the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction, which He endures with much long-suffering? (Romans 9:22). Did He love Esau? (Romans 9:13).”

~ Loraine Boettner

The Great Heresy of the church in the West today is the heresy of the “Love” of God. Countless times, when the character of God is presented people will say, “My God would never be that way,” or, “My God would never do that.” But regardless of who the god of such people is, the God of the Bible is a God who is just and who is angry with the wicked every day and who hates workers of iniquity. The fear of God is absent from people precisely because there is nothing in God, as He is typically represented, over which anyone should have any fear. Why should a god who’s love is the love of a whore be a god whom men should be in awe of? Why should a god who’s love is all sentimental pious gush be a God whom men should honor?

It is the current doctrine of the “Love of God,” that is destroying the Christian faith. Because of this salacious “love of God” doctrine I have read articles recently that speak about the necessity of the Church to rethink accepting Transvestites and Transgender people into the Church as members. Through the invocation of this “love of God” doctrine I’ve read articles that apologize because the early Church adopted a creed that found God damning people for not believing in Him as He reveals Himself in Scripture.

The chanting of John 3:16 and similar type texts, as if they are some kind of Hindu mantras that prove that God is love the way a whore is love has destroyed the Church in the West.