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.

McAtee On The Rosebrough vs. Mahler Debate V — Christians & The Authority of the State

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31nfDvZgTlQ

As we start part V we note that in the introduction of the debate Rosebrough went out of his way to say this interview was not a debate.  Rosebrough’s protestations at the beginning that this was not a debate with Mahler are irrelevant. This was a debate and the reason Rosebrough later wanted to insist that it wasn’t a debate is because Mahler wiped the floor with Rosebrough. It was bad and the real badness of it begins to be seen in this segment.

I will give Mahler this… he excels at what Lawyer’s excel at. He is a master at argumentation. We see in Mahler the classic example of lawyer advice on how to argue;

When the facts are against you, argue the law.
When the law is against you, argue the facts.
When the facts and the law are both against you, argue policy

I would also say Mahler’s ability to keep his composure in light of Rosebrough’s obvious exasperation and incredulity were points in favor of Mahler’s presentation. There were times when Mahler was clearly wrong but his ability to calmly drive his errant points home worked in his favor.

In this segment Rosebrough is exposed pretty badly by Mahler. In this segment we learn that both Rosebrough and Mahler are Statists. Though Mahler does not state it I’m pretty confident that he would contend that the colonists were in unbiblical rebellion for rising up against King George. Meanwhile, Rosebrough insists that the Colonialists were correct for rebelling against King George as following their lesser Magistrates. Yet, Rosebrough also said here that he would obey Stalin and Hitler. Rosebrough would obey Stalin and Hitler but not King George III? That is more than a little arbitrary. It seems that Rosebrough picks and chooses on his own authority what rules of Caesar he will obey and what he will not obey.

Actually, he and Mahler agree here seen in Mahler’s clear inference that Stalin should not have been obeyed. (Mahler references Solzhenitsyn’s counsel.) Mahler and Rosebrough just have different standards for what should and should not be obeyed. As for myself, I would have counseled Christians to disobey all these tyrants.

There was argumentation here on the meaning of Romans 13. Rosebrough was clearly in the wrong here as he seeks to suggest that Romans 13 teaches that Christians must submit to tyrants. In fairness to Rosebrough he seemed to be confused here. At one point he said that Christians should submit to tyrants on matters like speed limits and where they can. At other points he said things like, (paraphrasing) “if the Magistrate wants to kill me as a Christian the Lord will take care of him,” suggesting that the Christian should passively accept his unjust execution.

We’ve written a great deal here on Romans 13. Here are just two of the posts. There are others that can be found by putting “Romans 13” in the search engine here at Iron Ink.

Romans 13:1f … Then and Now

Romans 13 & The Possibility of Civil Disobedience

Rosebrough clearly stated that he would obey Hitler and Stalin but not George III. I would say that Christians had no business obeying Stalin, George III, or Hitler. Especially when Hitler said… “Bring your lame, halt and blind so I can kill them.” Roseborough actually said that it is sin to resist a murderous magistrate.

I would contend that if the Emperor wants to kill you for preaching the Gospel and you willingly surrender to the Emperor to be killed you have just violated the 6th commandment. Rosebrough is confused on this subject as seen in this statement;

“I am not called to armed insurrection on the basis of the fact that the state is opposing Christianity.”

So, the fact that the State is killing millions of babies does not allow us to rise in armed insurrection to oppose the State? The links posted above explain my reasons for so thoroughly and adamantly disagreeing with Rosebrough here.

Rosebrough does allow for a seeming exception with the Colonialists rebelling against George III suggesting that it was not sedition for the Colonialists to rise up against George III since the Colonialists were following lesser Magistrates.  I am pretty sure that King George III and British Parliament would have still called the Colonial rebellion “sedition.”

This section is very important in my opinion. I am of the conviction that pulpits across our land ought to be reverberating with the same kind of counsel that Reformed and Lutheran pulpits reverberated with when the clergy at that time was referred to “the Black Robed Regiment.” We live in a time when pulpits should ring with the counsel of rising up against the tyrant state that we are currently living under. Guys like Rosebrough counsel passivity in the face of the most God-awful and dishonoring behavior as coming from the State. God’s people need to be told by God’s spokesman while speaking from God’s holy desk that tyrants have no license from God to destroy the weak, to persecute Christians, or to tyrannize the public as they are currently doing and have been doing for quite some time. Debate can be had as to how best go about this and the timing of this but the necessity for it can not be disputed.

McAtee On The Rosebrough vs. Mahler Debate IV — Ham’s Curse, Penalty for Theft, Constitutional Oaths

Before listening to Mahler and Rosebrough debate I spent time listening to Deace goosestep Ray Fava through a struggle session. Having listened to those two back to back I was reminding how far ahead of the curve we Kinists were on these Christian Nationalism and “the Bagels are a problem” issues. We Kinists were debating these same exact issues against the proto-“Christian” Maxists 15-20 years ago. Even now you can go to the Iron Ink search engine and plug in “Bojidar Marinov” and find now dated and considerably  heated debate on the same subjects that Deace and Fava and Mahler and Rosebrough were debating. 15-20 years ago it was Kinists like myself, Dan Brannan, Mark Chambers, Davis Carlton, Justin Cottrell, Adi Schlebusch, and Colby Malsbury going hammer and tong against the “Christian” Marxist crowd of Stephen Halbrook, Bojidar Marinov, Daniel Ritchie, Joel McDurmon, R. C. Sproul Jr. and others. Back then those discussions were fierce fire fights between the same two camps now represented by Rosebrough/Deace on one side and Mahler/Fava on the other side. In the past I’ve gone at it with clergy like Joe Morecraft, Chris Streval, Doug Wilson and others on these subjects. The Kinists were here manning the walls on these subjects long before Spangler, Hunter, Garris, and other really good men showed up to lend support. We have been paying the same price for years that the more recent arrivals have sadly been having to pay also. That isn’t to say that all the folks arguing for Christian Nationalism or Kinism agree on everything, rather it is too note we have had the same enemies.

That was an observational aside. As far as the Mahler vs. Rosebrough debate I thought it was funny that at one point Mahler accused Rosebrough of being “Reformed.”  Mahler made it clear that, like all Lutherans, he believes that God knows the future without determining the future.

At one point Rosebrough wanted to dismiss nearly all of Church history on the subject of race and the Jews. Rosebrough noted that one can find all kinds of errant beliefs (he used the example of the perpetual virginity of Mary) held by Church fathers in history. Therefore, all because one can quote Church Fathers (and even Lutheran Church fathers like Luther, Walther, Maier and others) that doesn’t mean that their or the Christian Nationalist is correct. This of course is true. However, the problem Rosebrough has with this line of reasoning is that the testimony of the Church Fathers on this subject is so thick and so long-standing and so prevalent that it beggars the imagination that they were all in error. We have two anthologies out now that demonstrate that this doctrine of Kinism is one of those doctrines that has been believed by all people of all times in all places by the Church. If this subject is disputed let the Alienists produce a couple volumes of anthologies giving us quotes from the Church Fathers through history supporting the egalitarianism and the support of the Jews that is now characteristic of the Alienists. Anabaptists don’t count as Church Fathers and the quotes have to be older than 1960.

Next, Rosebrough demonstrated that he doesn’t understand the possibility that Scripture uses Canaan as a synecdoche for Ham when it came to the curse of Ham. Personally, I don’t have a settled position on the cursing of Ham but I recognize that it can play into this debate. Having said that I think one has to say it is possible that Canaan serves as a synecdoche for all the descendents of Ham. I would also add that merely because those from the lines of Shem and Japheth have themselves been enslaved over the centuries that does not negate the possibility that Ham and his descendants are uniquely cursed by Noah to that end.

Rounding off this section, there were a couple points that Mahler looked bad on.

First, Rosebrough was right in the whole hand amputation debate. If one takes Scripture as their standard it would be unbiblical to chop off of somebody’s hand for theft. Scripture does not teach that as a penalty for theft choosing instead restitution plus penalty for the crime of theft. Mahler was in error in arguing that the amputation of the hand for theft was a perfectly legitimate option in a Christian law order.

Second, Mahler is playing games when he says he has vowed to uphold the Constitution but then turns around and says there is nothing for him to uphold in his lawyer oath to uphold the Constitution since the Constitution has no meaning. If the constitution has no meaning and didn’t have any meaning when Mahler, as a lawyer swore to uphold it, then the man should not have taken an oath to uphold something that by his own definition can’t be upheld. Mahler kept insisting that “An oath to a document (Constitution) that can change doesn’t mean anything,” has to be met with two responses;

1.) Is that what they taught you in law school?
2.) Then how is it you weren’t bearing false witness when you took the oath since obviously the people requiring the oath believe that the Constitution has meaning?

Points for Mahler on the Ham curse possibility explanation. Points for Rosebrough on the discussion of penal sanction in the case of theft and for his exposure of Mahler’s weak position of taking an oath to uphold the Constitution.

McAtee On The Rosebrough vs. Mahler Debate III — Fascism Is A Marxism Variant

Rosebrough and Mahler next go back and forth on whether or not German Fascism was a form of Marxism. Here I score a point for Rosebrough because German Fascism was a form of Marxism. Now, certainly it was a different form of Marxism as expressed among the Communists but they both embrace shards of Marxist thought. Even Hitler admitted this;

“National Socialism derives from each of the two camps the pure idea that characterizes it, national resolution from bourgeois tradition; vital, creative socialism from the teaching of Marxism.”

Adolf Hitler
Interview with Hanns Johst in Frankforter Volksblatt
January 27, 1934

People need to realize that there have been countless variants of Marxism and that the various Marxists disagreed with one another hammer and tong over the decades.

In terms of Marxist variants I offer these just off the top of my head. More could be adduced;

1.) Syndicalists
2.) Mensheviks
3.) Bolsheviks
4.) Nihilists
5.) Max Stirner’s Libertarian Marxists
6.) Anarchists
7.) Cultural Marxists (Originating with Italian Antonio Gramsci)
8.) Trotskyites
9.) National Socialism
10.) Bundism
11.) Maoism
12.) Leninism
13.) Stalinism

Marxist thought has spawned countless movements much like larva spawn flies and if one has studied Marxism at all one realizes that they all hated one another like water hates oil, and yet, once one expression had reached an ascendency often people from the other elements would join that expression which had become hegemonic. This explains, why so many rank and file German communists eventually joined the National Socialist movement. It just wasn’t a stretch for them to enter into this slightly different expression of Marxism. Hitler hinted at this;

It is not Germany that will turn Bolshevist, but Bolshevism that will become a sort of National Socialism. Besides, there is more that binds us to Bolshevism than separate us from it… The petit bourgeois Social-Democrat and the trade-union boss will never make a National Socialist, but the Communist always will.

Adolf Hitler

The reason that a Communist always would make a National Socialist is because Communism and National Socialism has Marxism in common.

Look at it this way. There are a myriad of expressions of Christianity and among those different expression exist real and substantive differences. However, there also exist real and substantive agreements. In the same way the Marxist religion had all kinds of variants but in the end they all claimed Marxism.

Roseborough was correct, as against Mahler, that Fascism is an expression of Marxism. Communism and Fascism are merely variants of Marxism. Marxism, had TONS of variants, of which Fascism was one.

Score 1 point for Rosebrough.

Current tally …. Rosebrough 1.5 …. Mahler 1.5

McAtee On the Rosebrough vs. Mahler Debate II — On The Individual vs. The Collective

Rosebrough grilled Mahler regarding Mahler’s insistence that there is no such thing as the individual. Instinct rises here to agree with Rosebrough but when Mahler makes clear what his definition of “the individual” is one has to agree that Mahler is correct. Mahler is not saying individuals do not exist and all that exists is a hive. Mahler is saying that no individual can claim that he or she are what they are independent of any other considerations. All of us, as individuals, are what we are because of descent as well as the multitude of interrelationships that we develop over the course of our lives. Mahler is merely saying that no man can claim to be sui generis in his individuality.

Mahler, given his definition of individualism (which is admittedly incredibly atomistic) is correct that individualism doesn’t exist.

Now, there are implications though here that need to be examined. Is Mahler saying that because there is no such thing as the individual, given his definition of the individual, that therefore Government arrangement that only emphasize the collective are therefore the best. Corey Mahler did say that he believed in property rights and if that is the case it does strike me that Mahler allows for the existence of what most people would call “the individual” in this political theory. Having said that, Fascism as a political system, which Mahler seems to prefer, has had as a weakness the loss of the individual as that is commonly understood in Western political history. The loss of the individual in a political ecosystem would be a severe loss. To be honest this is one of my concerns about any collectivist political system, but this concern has to be set against the fact that our system of so called individual freedom has, for whatever reason, failed and because of the collectivist agencies in our culture (public schools, churches, media) the rugged American individual largely no longer exists. Our population is as characterized by mindless bots (cogs in a machine) as any collectivist political system you’d like to name. Because of that, Fascism becomes less scary though one could still like to daydream about a system, influenced by the Christian categories of the temporal “One and the Many,” based as it would be on the eternal one and the many could still predominate so that a genuine individualism could exist alongside a healthy collective impulse.

Because, we as a people are no longer Christian, and as such have surrendered how belief in the Trinitarian God permeates a social order, we have surrendered the Trinitarian idea of God’s plurality as expressing itself in our social order/culture in favor of a Unitarian conception of God as located in our State organs. Having given up the God of the Bible in His One and Many expression, we have embrace a Oneism in our social institutions that is no longer complimented by a genuine plurality of authority in our various other institutions. As such we are a collectivist people who believe that in the State we live and move and have our being. This is not a whit different than what one can find in collectivist social orders. The idea that Americans, speaking generally, know anything about true biblical individualism is a joke. This is because all our cultural mediating institutions that once existed in order to drive a true individualism because they were not beholden to a Statist arrangement have been co-opted by the state.

There is no use in Rosebrough arguing for a Democracy where the individual can exist because those days are long gone with the advent of the government schools as combined with the constant conditioning that comes from pulpits and media outlets. All of these work in harmony to collectivize the American mind so that no individual really does exist today. Rosebrough himself, in this debate, reveals over and over again that he is just another collectivist clergy bot reinforcing the collectivist narrative.

Give Rosebrough 1/2 a point for valuing the individual. Take 1/2 point away from Rosebrough for not realizing that the individual no longer exists. Give Mahler a point for being able to read the tea leaves on this subject. Take 1/2 point away from Mahler for not valuing the individual enough.

Final analysis … Mahler + 1/2 point.

Total so far … Rosebrough 1/2 point …. Mahler 1.5 points.

McAtee on The Rosebrough vs. Mahler Debate I — Touching Democracy

Recently there was a debate between two Lutherans here on the subject of political governance. Rosebrough was taking the “Democracy is good” side while Mahler was taking the “Democracy needs to be replaced with Fascism” side.

Overall, I think I was able to be an objective observant because I want nothing to do with either Democracy or Fascism. However, to be fair, I hate Democracy as it is and I can envision a Fascism that would be superior to the Democracy we currently have, though I can also easily envision a Fascism that would be worse than the current Democracy we have.

A few observations;

1.) I am not usually able to sit through these long podcast interviews/debates because they can get so tedious and tendentious. However this one I made through the whole 2 hours 40 minutes. I guess I was captivated by both Rosebrough’s density and Mahler’s unflappability.

2.) Since these chaps were both Lutherans there were times when I, as a Biblical Christian, did not agree with either one. At those points I was completely left agog.

3.) My comments follow the order of the debate. So, if my comments seem disconnected to you you will have to go to the point of the conversation between Rosebrough and Mahler to see what I am getting at.

Turning to my comments on the debate;

1.) Rev. Chris Roseborough faults Corey Mahler for opposing Democracy and yet our founding Fathers viciously opposed Democracy. Idiot points for Roseborough.

Here are Founding Father on Democracy;

“Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to Say that Democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious or less avaricious than Aristocracy or Monarchy.”   -John Adams

“Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.” ~ James Madison

“It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.” ~ Alexander Hamilton

To put pure and simply, “Democracy sucks.” Americans were never given a Democracy but rather were bequeathed a Representative Republic wherein the franchise (vote) was, generally speaking, (exceptions existed in the states) limited to free white men who owned property. Further the US, when it voted to instil the 17th amendment went even further in its embrace of wicked Democracy.

Indeed, all wise men now oppose this Democratic form of Government the US currently has because it is not anywhere near consistent with what we find in the US Constitution. Corey Mahler is correct in opposing Democracy.

Score this point for Mahler.