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.

Four Brief Observations Regarding Natural Law

1.) The acceptance of Natural Law (NL) as a epistemology for fallen man not only touches on the issue of epistemology but it also is a demonstration of warped thinking regarding Christian anthropology and Christian hamartiology.

Anthropology and Hamartiology because NL adherents are out of step with the effects of sin on fallen man. For NL adherents man is not quite as fallen as for Reformed folks and neither has sin affected man quite as thoroughly as for Reformed folks.

 

2.) The great unstated premise of advocates of Natural Law is that fallen man can observe the Universe and quite apart from any beginning theological premises can read the law of nature correctly by the usage of naked reason… reason unclothed with any theological a-prioris.

Of course this is a literal impossibility. Reason is never exercised as if naked. Reason always operates upon and with a theological grist. This is why it is irrational to speak of “right reason” in the context of NL because the fallenness of man w/ its noetic effects of sin upon the mind does not allow any fallen man to have this thing called “right reason.”

3.) The mind of man is at enmity with God. (Romans 8:7)

Romans 8 teaches that the mind of man is at enmity w/ God. If the mind of man is at enmity w/ God then certainly this includes being at enmity w/ God’s revelation of NL with the implication that NL is no trustworthy epistemology for ordering society.

I have no understanding how someone can say they are Reformed while at the same time holding to NL.

4.) The basic division between the Thomistic NL types and Presuppositionalists is that the Thomists believe that man reasons from man to God via right reason and natural law, while Presuppositionalists believe that man reasons from God to God via special revelation.

There is no reconciling Thomistic NL and Presuppostionalism. Those in each camp who understand there worldview will NEVER be reconciled.

Talking About Natural Law

Fallen man remains God’s man and as Gods man fallen man remains the fingerprint of God. However, fallen man hates God and by extension hates himself as the fingerprint of God. Therefore fallen man both knows God and doesn’t know God. Ontologically fallen man cannot get away from the realities of who he is. However, fallen man uses his epistemological apparatus to deny what he can’t escape ontologically. In Romans this is called “suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.” This epistemological suppressing the truth in unrighteousness is applied to all of creation and nature since all creation and nature likewise are fingerprinted with the finger of their creator and as such the real meaning and truth of them must be suppressed and denied. The further fallen man becomes consistent with his suppression the more God’s creative reality must be assaulted and denied. This explains the current perplexity where a sitting Supreme Court justice and countless others like her no longer can answer the question; “What is a woman.” Fallen man cannot answer this question because even though fallen man cannot escape ontological reality, he will, by the usage of his epistemological apparatus suppress and deny what he can’t escape from knowing.

When a whole culture is given over to this consistent denial and suppressing of Natural Law givens the result eventually will be death, because all those who hate God love death.

However, cultures strewn with the unregenerate can be stabilized by the presence of believers who are not suppressing reality and who read Natural Law aright because they are reading it through the lens of Special Revelation. In such cultures and in such cases what happens is that fallen man, being inconsistent with his self avowed God denying principles, sneaks into his Christ hating worldview capital from the Christian world and life view. This stolen capital keeps the unbeliever afloat so that, as one example, in a culture leavened with Christ (a Christian culture) they can make marriages that last and are comparatively stable.

In such a culture stabilized by a Christian ethos you would then expect there to arise a philosophy that embraced Natural Law because then the stability of the culture can be ascribed to man who reads NL aright instead of being ascribed to the Biblical beliefs of the Christians in the social order. However, all along, the epoxy of the social order is special revelation.

In such a culture, Christian thinkers themselves may well begin to talk about Natural Law as being the epoxy that allows Christians and fallen man to together create a stable social order. However, if those same Christian thinkers could live long enough lives to see the deterioration of their once stable cultures because the Christ hater began to be more and more consistent with their suppressing the truth in unrighteousness they would then realize that it was not Natural Law that was the epoxy that held the culture together but rather it was the explicit special revelation that was embraced by them and their kind that created a sturdy headwind that allowed the unregenerate to sneak that earlier spoken of stolen capital into their worldviews in order to keep stability in the culture leavened with Christ.

If the above isn’t helpful try to reverse engineer all of this. Imagine growing up in a Cannibalistic adulterous ridden culture where treachery and treason were exalted as genius and so was untouched by Biblical Christianity. Could anyone imagine that such fallen people would ever come up with a Natural law that taught the precepts found in the 10 commandments?

Of course the problem here is never with God’s natural revelation of which Natural Law is a subset. The heavens do indeed declare the handiwork of God. All of creation screams the truth of God. However, fallen man is like the chap who is constantly pushing the buttons in order to find a radio station that doesn’t play “the truth of God’s revelation.” Fallen man, becoming increasingly consistent with his enmity against God (Romans 8:7) would go as far as to rip his own eyeballs out in order to not see the truth contained in Natural Law.

Because of this Natural Law is a weak reed in order to lean on to make law for a particular social order populated by a large majority of people who are being ever more increasingly consistent with their hatred of Christ. We are seeing this daily in the West.

For Christians in the West then, the appeal is not to Natural Law. The appeal is to the politicus usus of God’s perspicuous Law in order to order social order aright. This, in combination of heralding the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only way to pull back anti-Christ social orders from the edge of the abyss. Appeals to Natural Law will only hasten our nearing, ever nearing, to the final fall.

The Theology Behind, “Race is Not Real.” A Primer

It seems a point that should be made against this notion that recognizing that race is real is “racist” should be made. The modern refusal to recognize race strikes the close observer as a kind of perverted spiritualism. This denunciation of “race is real” looks to be an incipient embrace of Manicheanism/Gnosticism where the material and the corporeal are denied reality. So far as I can understand it, the claim that race is not real involves the notion that since realities are at their bottom all spiritual, therefore all embracing of the reality of race is seen as some kind of serious and even heretical departure from this new modern Manichean interpretation of Christianity. This argument, then, rests on the ideal of the godlessness of all the corporeal categories of mankind that God specifically created. Indeed, given its head, the natural consequence over time of this argument that “race is not real or important” as put forward by people like Sandlin, Wilson, Strachan, James White, J. Ligon Duncan, Baucham, etc. seems inevitably to be that one day high profiled Reformed Clergy will not be able to answer the question; “What is a woman?” I mean, if “race is not real or important,” and/or if “race is only a social construct,” or if “race is only about melanin levels,” then how far is that from “gender is not real of important,” and/or “gender is only a social construct,” or “gender is only about different chromosomes.” Those who contend that race is not real can only be seen as a seeking of spirituality purely in abstraction from the corporeal. This is a reversed denial of the incarnation and the physical resurrection. Whereas the early heretics just came out and denied the corporeal in Jesus birth and resurrection, thus bollixing up the implications for the corporeal in the life of men, our latter day heretics are moving in the opposite direction effectively denying the corporeal in the life of man (“race is not real”) and over time that will work its way backwards to effectively denying gender realities and so one day eventually denying the corporeal in the birth and resurrection of Jesus. All of this is logically destructive of the Incarnation and the Resurrection of the Body.

In brief the denial of race as a biological reality is heresy of Docetism where Jesus only appeared to be a man, as seen in its early stages.

Ideas have consequences.

Biden’s First 2024 Campaign Ad … White People Beware

Biden’s first campaign ad for 2024 has just been released and it is clear that the man is running a racial campaign.

So much cynicism.

1.) Biden is asking everyone to vote for him to support “Democracy,” and yet this Republic was built by men who often commented on how much they hated Democracy.

2.) Biden is the one who stole election 2020 and yet in this ad he is the one who is saying he is going to protect 2024 election so that everyone can vote “fairly.” He is going to make sure every vote counts. This is a twist on Alinsky where you imply you’re going to protect the electorate from what you were guilty of doing last election cycle.

3.) This is a purely racial. Note at the beginning of the ad when it talks about protecting people’s votes that the ad shows minority faces or a single mother w/ two children voting. However at the 31 second mark when Biden says “There’s something dangerous happening in America” suddenly all we see are white faces. White people are the danger.

4.) There is a flashback to MLK “I have a dream speech.” More dog whistling communicating that Biden is running an anti-White campaign.

5.) At 50 seconds Biden tells us that our children are watching and we flash to a picture of two minority children on a bus who are front and center in the photo.

6.) There is a flash photo scene of white people marching in a Nazi parade.

Watch this video scene by scene. You will see that Biden is campaigning on the need to stop White people.