Natural Law Conversation Continues

“For Christ did not come into the world to teach precepts about (civic) morals, which man already knew by reason, but to forgive sins, in order that he may give the Holy Spirit to those who believe in him.”

Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560)
Commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics

“Reason cannot precede faith or consist of clearer knowledge, and as such, reason cannot be the foundation of faith.”

– Gisbertus Voetius (1589-1676)

Voetius shows that reason comes after faith because reason makes inferences from one proposition to the next, and therefore reasoning cannot get started unless there is already a proposition to reason from. This includes any reasoning about any area of life since any reasoning about all areas of life is a reasoning that is faith conditioned. Once reasoning about Jurisprudence or Education or Art or Politics is a reasoning that comes after some faith commitment. So, this teaches us that Melancthon was just in error.

Now Francis Turretin, who would share Melanchthon’s Aristotelian  premises offers;

“If various wicked laws obtained among the heathen, repugnant to the natural law (such as those sanctioning idolatry, human sacrifices, permitting theft, rapine, homicide, incest), they do not prove that no light of reason was granted to men by nature… Rather they prove only that men with *leisure ill employed* have wickedly abused the conceded light and, by struggling against and striving with all their might to extinguish it, were given over to a reprobate mind.”

Turretin
IET 11.1.19

I don’t disagree that Natural Law was against the wicked laws among the heathen. Neither do I disagree that the heathen have wickedly abused the conceded light. What I do disagree with, as pushed by Natural Law afficiandandos, is that the heathen ever do not struggle against and strive with all their might to extinguish what Natural Law teaches. Now in different non-Christian social orders will fluctuate in their opposition to what Natural Law teaches due to the waxing and waning of the salt and light influence of Christianity. However, as the antithesis works itself out ever more consistently Natural Law is interpreted as as to teach the very opposite of what it does indeed teach when read through the lenses of special revelation.

The reality that Natural law is a myth, as an independent tool by which to organize social orders did not hit until the 20th century in the West because prior to that Christendom was largely presupposed. When Christendom is no longer presupposed Turretins can’t and won’t get traction no matter how much they bleat about “the light of reason.”

Wherein Joe Sobran and John Rocker Agree

“I think the target of all this (multiculturalism / political correctness) is not the white man as such. I think the target of all this is Christianity.”

Joseph Sobran

Lecture — The Bigotry of Tolerance (30:30)

I have been saying this for years now. Imagine my relief to know that a far greater mind than mine observed it 20 years ago.

Note also that there is no way that we can fight this without at the same time defending the White Christian and Western Christian civilization. We cannot defend Christ from this clever backdoor attack unless we are willing to shut the backdoor by insisting that White Christian civilization has been a singular blessing of God given in the fullness of grace.

The Baseball pitcher John Rocker was excoriated for noticing this way back in 1999. In an infamous interview with Sports Illustrated, Rocker made controversial comments about New York City. He directed abuse at the cultural and ethnic diversity that the city had and said that the presence of “foreigners” in the city was distressful:

“The biggest thing I don’t like about New York are the foreigners. I’m not a very big fan of foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?”

He would also add previously that he would rather retire than play for the city’s two most decorated teams.

“I would retire first. It’s the most hectic, nerve-racking city. Imagine having to take the [Number] 7 train to the ballpark, looking like you’re [riding through] Beirut next to some kid with purple hair next to some queer with AIDS right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It’s depressing.

Quotes From Maurice Pinay’s “The Plot Against The Church”

At this time of the year back in 2022 I was reading Maurice Pinay’s “The Plot Against The Church.” The author used a pseudonym in this volume which is committed to chronicling the history of the Christian Church and its interactions with the Jews. It was written in the context of the second vatican council by officials in the Roman Catholic church who were violently opposed to what the 2nd vatican was doing. Because it tells the truth of Jewish and Christian relations through the centuries it is considered anti-Semitic, much as E. Michael Jones’ works chronicling different historical interludes of that interaction are considered “anti-Semitic.” Below are just three quotes.

“Of all revolutionary systems, which throughout human

history have been devised for the destruction of our civilised
values, Communism is, without doubt, the most perfected, most
efficient and most merciless. In fact, it represents the most
advanced epoch of the world revolution, in whose postulates it
therefore not only acts to destroy a definite political, social,
economic or moral institution, but also simultaneously to
declare null and void the Holy Catholic Church as well as all
cultural and Christian manifestations which represent our

civilisation.

All revolutionary currents of Jewish origin have attacked
Christianity in its different aspects with particular
one-mindedness. Communism spawned from this same
revolutionary stream of thought seeks to banish Christianity
for the purpose of causing it to vanish from the face of the

earth, without even the slightest trace remaining.”

Maurice Pinay
The Plot Against the Church — pg. 35

“Before the final establishing of Bolshevism in Russia the directors and organizers of all Communist movement in their entirety were almost solely Jews, just as the great majority of the true organizers of the revolutions were to which they gave their impetus. But in Russia, as the first land where Bolshevism finally triumphed, and where it was and still is the fulcrum of driving force for the Communizing of the world the Jewish paternity of the system of organization and of Soviet praxis also allows no doubt or error. According to the irrefutable data, which has been fully and completely proved and recognized by all impartial writers who have dealt with the theme, the Communist work of the Jews in the land of the Czars is so powerful that it would be useless to deny this disastrous as their monopoly.

This is demonstrated by statistics published in Paris by the counter-revolutionary newspaper ‘Le Russe Nationaliste’ coming after the victory of the Jewish Communists in Russia. Keep in mind when considering these stats that Jews comprised at most 5% of the Russian population. These statistics reveal that of the 554 Communist leaders in Russia at the Revolution who were of the first rank were as follows;

Jews– 417
Lithuanians — 43
Russians — 30
Armenians — 13
Germans — 12
Finns — 3
Poles — 2
Georgians — 2
Czechs — 1

Hungarians — 1″

Maurice Pinay

The Plot Against the Church — pg. 49, 51

During the bloody dictatorship of Lenin, the Committee of
Investigation under Rohrberg (Rohrberg, C.), which after the
capture of Kiev entered this city with the White volunteers in

August 1919, reported the following:

“The entire concrete floor of the large garage (this was the
place where the provincial Cheka of Kiev had carried out
executions) was swimming in blood, which did not flow but
formed a layer of several inches; it was a grisly mixture of
blood with brain and skull fragments, as well as strands of hair
and other human remains. The entire walls, holed by
thousands of bullets, were spattered with blood, and fragments
of brain as well as head skin adhered to them.

“A drain ditch of 25 cm width and 25 cm deep and about 10

m long ran from the middle of the garage to a nearby room,
where there was a subterranean outlet pipe. This drain ditch

was filled to the top with blood.

“Usually, immediately after the massacre, the corpses were
removed in lorries or horse-drawn wagons from the city and
buried in a mass grave. In the corner of a garden we came upon
an older mass grave, which contained about 80 corpses, in
which we discovered signs of the most varied and
unimaginable cruelties and mutilation. There were corpses
from which the entrails had been removed; others had
different limbs amputated and others again were cut into
pieces. Some had had the eyes poked out, while the head, the
face, the neck and the torso were covered with deep wounds.
Further on we found a corpse with an axe in the breast, while
others had no tongues. In a corner of the mass grave we

discovered many legs and arms severed from the trunk.”4

Maurice Pinay
The Plot Against the Church — pg. 37
Footnote — S. P. Nekgunov, “La terreur rouge en Russie: de 1918

Are The Ogden Lads Really That Adamantly Opposed To The Post-War Consensus?

Additionally, you have recommended John Weaver on multiple occasions as a resource members of the church should look to. There are views which we will absolutely not tolerate within the church. One of those views includes the forbidding of so-called interracial marriages, or kinism, characterizing so-called interracial marriages as sinful, even adulterous. Due to this, we will not tolerate John Weaver to be recommended to anyone in the congregation and will, if necessary, publicly warn the church against his ministry and materials.

The Elders of Refuge Church
Ogden, Utah
Letter to Disaffected Member
Circa 2021

1.) I cite this letter because I get the sense that at times the Ogden chaps want to present themselves as somehow distinct from Doug Wilson on this issue “Kinism” and are providing an alternative. If they are distinct from Doug it would be a matter of merely degrees and not of substance.

Here we are left wondering if the Ogden chaps, like Doug, are practicing a type of conservatism that Dabney once wrote of;

“American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition. It remains behind it, but never retards it, and always advances near its leader. . . . Its impotency is not hard, indeed, to explain. It is worthless because it is the conservatism of expediency only, and not of sturdy principle. It intends to risk nothing serious for the sake of the truth, and has no idea of being guilty of the folly of martyrdom.”

2.) Note the phraseology “so called interracial marriages.” This would seem to mean that the Ogden chaps don’t believe that interracial marriages are possible and it strikes me that could only be possible if there is a implicit denial of the reality of race here. Why are interracial marriages only “so-called?” Hey Ogden fellows; Are such marriages people of two different races genuinely interracial or are they not “interracial?” And if they are not interracial … then pray tell why not?

3.) In this quote above the Ogden boys commit the same tomfoolery as their arch-enemy Doug Wilson does inasmuch as they both are giving a very narrow definition of Kinism. There are many Kinists who don’t say all interracial marriages are sinful though they may well consider many of them as sinful and most of them as unwise. That such a Kinist view is seen as outrageous is testimony to how liberal the Ogden boys are on this subject, for such a view was, before 1950 or so, the position of nearly all of Christendom. See the two anthology books … “Who Is My Neighbor,” and “A Survey of Racialism in the Christian Tradition.”

The quotes in these books vary. Some are less racially charged, and others more. There are writings that are often about the unity of all races (in their calling to follow Christ) but yet distinguish by race. Some of these make very clear distinctions even between what we can now understand and define as ethnicity (a select stock of descent; Irish versus Breton), nation (a body of members derived from the same ethnicity), country (a collection of members either of closely related ethnicities or of one ethnicity), and race (a broad grouping categorized by a general descent, especially as defined by continental region). Saint Isidore of Seville goes so far as to include the prohibition of miscegenation under the natural rights of nations.

Before 1950 or so, no one would have labeled someone who said that miscegenation is sinful as being beyond the pale of the Christian faith. Yet here is the Ogden group … a group who style themselves as reaching back to champion an older Christianity staining someone as upright as John Weaver trying to make him persona non-grata. This highhandedness is neither Christian nor conservative. It makes one wonder if the Ogden chaps are, like so many other clergy, just playing the tune that they think will resonate with their audience.

4.) When Weaver, and Rushdoony before him, talked about interracial marriages being “adulterous” they were pointing to a legitimate meaning of the word “adultery.” The word “Adultery” also retained the meaning of “to water down.” When someone mixes whiskey with water they are adulterating the whiskey. When someone mixes blue paint and yellow paint they are adulterating both the blue paint and the yellow paint. And when a Japanese marries a Cherokee they are each adulterating their races. This is not a controversial statement. It is an objective fact. So, when Weaver, or Rushdoony makes the statement about interracial marriages being adulterous they are really merely proclaiming a tautology.

5.) I know John Weaver a wee bit. I have good friends who know John Weaver very well. For anybody to indict John Weaver like this is just unconscionable and I take more than a little umbrage at this.

6.) I must tell you also that I find this correspondence very Doug Wilson like in tone. I mean who are they to tell people who they can or cannot read? Now, as a Pastor, if I know someone is pushing views that I believe are contrary to Biblical Christianity I may write a blog post or preach a sermon exposing the problems as compared to Scripture but then I would tell them to go ahead and read so and so if they must and see whether or not my warnings are correct.

Think about this … these chaps at Ogden have been screaming ruddy murder about Wilson’s “gate-keeping,” and yet is not this “gate-keeping” at its best? So it seems gate-keeping is not proper for Doug but it is proper for them.

7.) In the end my problem here is that these chaps are going on and on suggesting that they are opposed to what is now called “the post-war consensus” but in this letter from 2021 they are gate-keeping for the post-war consensus that Weaver had been rightly attacking.

Now, it may be possible that the Ogden blokes have moved in their thinking on this matter since 2021 and as such would not write this letter again in 2025. If that is the case it would be good to know because if they still hold the above position then they are really still invested in maintaining one important aspect of the post-war consensus.

I say all this as someone who does not believe that all interracial marriage is always sinful, while still believing that interracial marriage is the chief tool being used to make the post-war consensus eternal.

Economics Is A Tricky Business

True story;

It’s the 18th century in British ruled India. In Delhi, the Brits have a problem. It seems that there are far too many Cobras in the streets of Delhi and these Cobras are presenting a health crisis.

So, the Brits, always so wise in their administration of their colonies, arrive at an idea. They decide to offer a bounty for every dead Cobra that is turned into their designated Cobra centers.

This works great … for awhile. Dead Cobras are being turned in. People are making some money from the exchange. Delhi is becoming comparatively pestilent free of Cobras. However, during the period in which there was a bounty on cobras, the number of rats in Delhi increased and with it an outbreak in the bubonic plague. When the bounty ended, the number of rats significantly decreased.

Also, someone gets the idea of breeding Cobras as a lucrative option. The reasoning went like this …. “We will breed Cobras which have monetary value, and then once they reach a certain maturity we will kill the Cobras and turn them in for the English bounty.” The English bounty was working as a subsidy on Cobras and whatever a government subsidizes it gets more of.

Suddenly the English offices were flooded with dead Cobras and the British realized that it was necessary to end the “dead Cobras for money” program.
The problem was though that the Cobra breeding farms had mushroomed throughout Delhi. Now, these farms had a product (live Cobras) which had no monetary value. Who wants to keep all kinds of live Cobras around? So, the Cobra breeding farms just released their formerly lucrative product, with the end result that Delhi’s Cobra problem was greater after the English “Cobras for Cash” program than it was before the program.

The moral of the story …. Beware the law of unintended consequences.