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 Contra Selbrede & Chalcedon on Denial of Ethnicity & Natural Affections

Over here;

https://chalcedon.edu/resources/articles/a-stone-cut-without-hands?fbclid=IwAR0mIY-rRLYzRT2Hl6cEQAmTYC74zSDg1iPn0llvysUSbcE5r_SJje4D0ek

Dr. Martin Selbrede has a go at Dr. Stephen Wolfe.

I have always liked Dr. Selbreded though I have never met him. I have read his material. I have viewed some of his teaching online. He has always struck me as a kind and gentle man who is not interested in polemics. Further, generally speaking, the man is smart as a whip.

I cannot loudly enough sing the high praises of the first section of Dr. Selbrede work linked above where he dismantles Wolfe’s Natural Law paradigm. I wish such analysis was required reading for all those being tempted by Wolfe’s brash attempt to return the Church — and indeed all of us — to the nonsense that is Natural Law theory.

However, when Selbrede starts writing about race/ethnic issues Selbrede becomes every bit as awful as he was good previously on the Natural Law material. It really was quite disappointing to be cheering heartily reading Selbrede’s take down on Natural Law theory only to be booing every bit as intensely as Selbrede turns to racial/ethnic issues.

Below I examine the more egregiously mistaken elements of Dr. Selbrede’s writing on race/ethnicity.

Martin Selbrede writes:

That proposed deconstruction (of modern liberalism that Wolfe calls for) is a tall order. It must defang Psalm 87, which casts a multitude of nations as all born in Zion. It must explain what Japheth is doing in Shem’s tents in Gen. 9:27, account for the flowing together of nations in Isaiah 2 and the gathering of the peoples to Shiloh in Gen. 49:10. The parable of the Good Samaritan answers the question, Who is my neighbor?

Bret deconstructs Dr. Selbrede’s attempted deconstruction of Wolfe’s call to deconstruct modern liberalism;

1.) Psalm 87 is no barrier to race realism or the recognition that core ethnicities comprise cultures/social orders. Yes, Psalm 87 casts a multitude of nations as all born in Zion but that does not mean that each nation born in Zion is no longer its own nation. Here is one commentary on Psalm 87;

Verses 4-6. – The Almighty is introduced as making a revelation to the psalmist. He will cause the Gentiles to flock into his Church, even those who have been hitherto the most bitter enemies of Israel (ver. 4), and will place these strangers on a par with such as have belonged to his Church from their birth (vers. 4, 5, 6), admitting them to every blessing and every privilege. The Church, thus augmented, shall be taken under his own protection, and “established,” or placed on a sure footing, forever. Compare our Lord’s promise to St. Peter,” On this rock will I build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). (Pulpit Commentary)

The fact that it will be said that Israel’s previous enemy nations will one day be spoken of as “being born in Zion” only means that God will win those nations to Himself. It does not mean that they will cease being nations and will be swallowed up whole into a John Lennon song where we are to “Imagine there are no countries.”

Selbrede here seems to make the one and the many mistake, preferring to understand that ethnicity disappears once one is redeemed and placed in the Church. He makes the mistake, that is so common today, of not realizing that the Church is comprised not of a bunch of atomistic individuals but rather the Church is comprised of the nations in their nations. This is explicitly taught in Revelation 21 where we see the nations in their nations coming into the New Jerusalem.

Selbrede, presupposes classical liberalism in order to prove classical liberalism.

2.) First, we note that Japheth is in Shem’s tent (Gen. 9:7) as distinctly Japheth and not Shem.

Second, we note that Japheth is in Shem’s tent to have the blessings and to do the work that Shem forfeited when it was cut off for crucifying His Messiah.

Japheth, in Shem’s tent, does not prove, that the end consequence of Christ’s postmillennial triumph will be some kind of “Christian” multicultural Empire where all colors are bleeding into one.

3.) As to the flowing together of the Nations in Is. 2 and the gathering of the people to Shiloh in Gen. 49 the principle is the same as in #1 above. Yes the nations flow together to the mountain of the Lord but that does not necessitate that they do so as a polyglot reality. It merely means that the Lord Christ will win the nations in their nations to Himself. It does not mean that they lose their national identity. Because of passages like Isaiah 2 and Micah 4 and Gen. 49 I expect that people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, — each in their tribe tongues and nations — will be present at the marriage feast of the lamb. What I do not expect is that the nations will lose their national/ethnic identity all because they have been, by God’s grace alone, spiritually united to Christ.

Once upon a time, in New York city, one could visit various ethnic enclaves and yet remain in New York city. In the same way the new Heavens and the new Earth will not be populated by a coffee latte Christian people but will be a place where you can find the one and the many in technicolor and while remaining nationally/ethnically distinct there will be a harmony of interest because Christ is King over all and all have sworn oaths of fealty to their one great King, and because of that they will love one another with the love of Christ.

5.) Nobody denies that the good Samaritan teaches who is my neighbor. Further, it would only be relevant to this discussion if anybody was denying that Christians of varying ethnicities/races were not neighbors.

Dr. Martin Selbrede writes,

Ethnocentrists have pointed to Isaiah 19:18-25 as proof that nations remain discrete nations in the future. This is true, but it is only part of what the passage teaches. Yes, Egypt and Assyria are both intact, but verse 23 says “there shall be a highway out of Egypt to Assyria, and the Assyrian shall come into Egypt, and the Egyptian into Assyria, and the Egyptians shall serve with the Assyrians.” Both nations are fully converted at this point in the future, yet their border is remarkably porous.

Bret responds,

Why would we be surprised that each ethnicity/race as converted to Christ would have good international relations with their neighboring Christian nation? That fact does not change the reality that they remain the same distinct nation after conversion as they were before conversion.

Dr. Martin Wyngaarden makes my point for me here;

“Now the predicates of the covenant are applied in Isa. 19 to the Gentiles of the future, — “Egypt my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, mine inheritance,” Egypt, the people of “Jehovah of hosts,” (Isa. 19:25) is therefore also expected to live up to the covenant obligations, implied for Jehovah’s people. And Assyria comes under similar obligations and privileges. These nations are representative of the great Gentile world, to which the covenant privileges will, therefore, be extended.”

Martin J. Wyngaarden, The Future of the Kingdom in Prophecy and Fulfillment: A Study of the Scope of “Spiritualization” in Scripture (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2011), p. 94.

And again,

“More than a dozen excellent commentaries could be mentioned that all interpret Israel as thus inclusive of Jew and Gentile, in this verse, — the Gentile adherents thus being merged with the covenant people of Israel, though each nationality remains distinct.”

“For, though Israel is frequently called Jehovah’s People, the work of his hands, his inheritance, yet these three epithets severally are applied not only to Israel, but also to Assyria and to Egypt: “Blessed be Egypt, my people, and Assyria, the work of my hands, and Israel, mine inheritance.”

Thus the highest description of Jehovah’s covenant people is applied to Egypt, — “my people,” — showing that the Gentiles will share the covenant blessings, not less than Israel. Yet the several nationalities are here kept distinct, even when Gentiles share, in the covenant blessing, on a level of equality with Israel. Egypt, Assyria, and Israel are not nationally merged. And the same principles, that nationalities are not obliterated, by membership in the covenant, applies, of course, also in the New Testament dispensation.”

Martin Wyngaarden

The Future of the Kingdom in Prophecy and Fulfillment: A Study of the Scope of “Spiritualization” in Scripture — pp. 101-102.

Dr. Martin Selbrede quoting Wolfe writes,

Dr. Wolfe says, “Try to imagine how you would view the world if you had no comprehension of the concept ‘human,’ no universalizing concept of man.”51 This is a high price to pay to arrive at ethnocentrism: imagine making “human” an empty, meaningless concept, i.e., First, dehumanize man.

Was it truly both natural and good to prefer one’s own52 and neglect the Grecian widows in Acts 6:1? This is the likely reason Dr. Wolfe drives a wedge splitting reality: a wall of separation to keep the Word of God confined to the church.

Bret responds,

Selbrede is imputing here to Wolfe some things I doubt Wolfe would say he is doing. Wolfe asks us to do a thought experiment in what Selbrede is quoting. No one (including Wolfe) believes that in order to arrive at ethnicity one must first de-humanize man. Selbrede is way over-interpreting here. Man is man and part of being man is having an ethnic identity that makes one prioritize one’s people. Jesus demonstrated this ethnic reality and prioritization when He wept over Jerusalem and not over Rome or Nineveh. Jesus demonstrated this ethnic reality and prioritization when He asked the Syrophoenician woman if the children’s bread should be given to the dogs. Jesus demonstrated this ethnic reality and prioritization when He sent His disciples first to Judea and only then to Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth.

It is indeed natural and good to prefer one’s own.

As to the issue in Acts 6, we would ask Dr. Selbrede to note that the resolution to the problem there with Grecian widows was to appoint Grecian men to be Deacons. In such a way there were be no failure to provide for the Grecian widows. It looks to me to be a solution that favored natural affections.

However, I do end by agreeing with Selbrede that Wolfe’s Natural Law idea of creating “a wall of separation to keep the Word of God confined to the church,” is complete hooey. All of life is to be governed by God’s Word and the notion that we are to be ruled by a ill-defined subjective Natural Law in the common realm is completely contrary to Christianity. At that point Dr. Selbrede and I are in full agreement.

Commenting on DeYoung’s Solo Foodfight Against Pope Doug

Over here;

https://clearlyreformed.org/on-culture-war-doug-wilson-and-the-moscow-mood/?fbclid=IwAR1-mGWEoz3uofTIeXG1iAu8Xqw_z1GAHxQqq_8FvZ7Rr_LYvbcWFu96t14

The Dr. Rev. Kevin DeYoung published one heck of a strange column, the explanation of which can only be that Doug Wilson is increasingly being seen as a threat to established Presbyterianism. I offer that because the minute this piece by DeYoung was hot off the press our favorite academic Presbyterian dunce (Dr. R. Scott Clark) immediately linked it and praised it to the hilt. Of course, Scott also, back in the day, similarly praised to the hilt Tullian Tchividjian. All that to say that Scott’s track record for picking winners isn’t exactly praiseworthy.

Now those who know me and/or follow Iron Ink know that I am no friend to Pope Doug. So, this ends up being a case of “a pox upon both your houses.” Still, the criticisms of DeYoung are so cringe worthy that something has to be said. I guess that in this column I am pulling a Winston Churchill who once said that “if Hitler ever attacked Hell, he put in a good word for the Devil.”

I honestly don’t understand what DeYoung is seeking to accomplish with this piece. Nobody who reads this who already hates Wilson needs to read it, and those who love Wilson will only love him more as a result of the whining that Kevin DeYoung does here.

Below find some quotes from DeYoung followed by some of my observations.

“The most important fight is the fight for faith, not the fight for Christendom. The Christian life must be shaped by the theology of the cross, however much we might prefer an ever-present theology of glory. ”

Kevin DeYoung

1.) This is straight up R2K speak.

2.) So we want to fight for a faith that is dis-attached from the Christendom that is its natural impulse and consequence? This is like saying we want to fight for sex in marriage, not fight for pregnancy in marriage.

3.) This reference to a “theology of the Cross,” is what you hear from the Protestant Clergy who have forgotten that following the Cross was the Resurrection and the Ascension and the ruling at the right hand of the father. These chaps like DeYoung love them the crucifix. One wonders if, in their world, Jesus ever gets off that cross to ascend to the throne at the Right hand of the Father?

“We could do with fewer witticisms front and center, and more conspicuous delighting in the sweetness of fellowship with Christ and exulting in the love of God our Savior.”

Kevin DeYoung

This used to be called Pietism. Now we call it “Karen-ism.” (And no that isn’t a diss at white women alone. For Pete’s sake Karen’s come in all colors, shapes, and sizes.) It is sentimental hooey… God is my girlfriend stuff. It is not the way soldiers love their great Captains. It’s the way that women think about their beaus.

“I’m all for cultural engagement, even for some culture warring rightly understood.”

Kevin DeYoung

The only culture warring that DeYoung is interested in is culture warring against those who culture war.

Clergy like DeYoung and Wilson remind me why I hate admitting to being clergy. Who wants to be associated with these nekulturny? It would be like a Bagel admitting, while visiting the ghettos, that he worked for the Reich ministry of Propaganda as Goebbels’s chief Lieutenant.

Watching DeYoung assail Wilson is like back when you were in High School and you would occasionally see the Special Ed. kid get in a fight in the hallway. You knew he meant to really bring it, but you also knew that he was at a disadvantage from jump.

“For the mood that attracts people to Moscow is too often incompatible w/ Christian virtue, inconsiderate of other Christians, & ultimately inconsistent w/ stated aims of Wilson’s Christendom project”

Kevin DeYoung

Snort …. if DeYoung only knew that Moscow was merely the blunt side of the sword. The side we use when we want to slice bread or spank the toddlers.

“The naughty part is that Wilson uses the words “wussy” and “wuss”—adolescent slang for someone weak and effeminate. These are words most Christian parents don’t allow their kids to use, since the terms probably originated as a combination of “wimp” and another word I won’t mention.”

Kevin DeYoung

Article Criticizing Pope Doug

LOL… of all the things that Pope Doug could be justly criticized for, DeYoung chose to go after Wilson for saying “wuss” and “wussy?” I mean DeYoung could have gone after Doug’s constant trimming and equivocating, or he could have slapped Wilson upside the head for his constant usage of false dichotomy, or he could have questioned Wilson’s thinking that marriage can cure pedophilia. There are tons of things that DeYoung could have gone after Wilson for but what we get is that Kevin can’t abide Dougie’s use of a marginally and barely naughty word? It’s like a child seeing little Johnny flash someone on the playground but tattling to the teacher that Johnny cut in line.

This is why many men no longer take conservative Presbyterian clergy seriously. Personally, I never let my son go outdoors to play if he DIDN’T promise to use words like that when necessary. Personally, I never knew any Christian parents who didn’t allow their sons to use “language like that,” and if I did know any Christian parents like that, they sure didn’t want to know me.

Yeah… it’s true… Kevin DeYoung is a WUSSY.

Rev. Dr. Kevin DeYoung explains perfectly that old French proverb;

There are three sexes,

1.) Male
2.) Female
3.) Clergy

At the end of the day my complaint about Wilson is he is not enough of the things that DeYoung accuses him off. I think that Wilson is not really serious and if he is serious he has seriously underestimated what it will take to restore Christian Western civilization. In other words, Wilson takes half measures. Wilson sustained this accusation when in replying to an accusation against him that he was trying to be Rushdoony 2.0 he quipped, “And here I was trying to merely be Rushdoony 0.5.” The fact that Doug is trying to cut the potency of Rushdoony in half communicates that Doug is moving away from Rushdoony to what Doug views is a safer place. That reality shows in many of Doug’s position, from his reluctance to advocate for the death penalty for sodomites, to his reluctance to insist that sabbath laws should be implemented across the whole social order Doug wants to turn back the hands of time to when we had a peaceable classically liberal social order. However we have, in America, long passed that exit and we won’t be going back to any classical liberal social order since such a social order given our demographic composition today will not allow for the exclusivity of Jesus Christ as the unique King of the social order. Our classical liberal social order could work for as long as it did because of two reasons,

1.) Here in the states we were overwhelmingly White. The European cousins had made flight to America and intermarried and yet remained 87% white.

2.) Here in the states we were overwhelmingly Christian of one flavor or another. Those who weren’t Christian had to conform. (Think US vs. Reynolds where the Mormons were told polygamy would not be allowed.)

A classically liberal social order can not work where there no longer exists a shared demographic and a shared religion wherein harmony of interest can be shared among the populace.

Neither Wilson nor DeYoung are going to help us return to a social order that refuses classical liberalism.

Social Orders and the Divine

All social orders presuppose some kind of divine. From there a Priestly class of some sort exists that is charged with interpreting the divine, a Political class that legislates into law the divine, a military class that protects the divine, an artist class which incarnates the divine, an educator class that teaches the divine to the upcoming generation, and then the working class which lives out the divine in their families, workplaces, and living.

For example in our humanist culture that which is presupposed as divine is man. That Priestly class which interprets that divine is typically today found among the Psychologists, Psychiatrists, Counselors and all wannabees of that variety. The political class rests in Washington and the State capitals who believe they are God walking on the earth. The military class of global humanism is the US Military which demonstrates its protection of the divine by the welcoming of the pervert and the tranny into the officer class of the US Military, the artist class is seen all around us in the ugliness and slovenliness in which we live, move and have our being. The educator class exist in our school from Kindergarten to the University level. And our working class reflects this humanism to its very core.

Calvin & Dr. Thomas Taylor — Proving that Grace Restores Nature

The West has for a couple centuries has ever increasingly gone from egalitarian excess to egalitarian excess. What started in the French Revolution as an elimination of all class distinctions in the name of equality has burgeoned fatter and fatter with each subsequent incarnation of logical consistency. From the Sans-culottes work of pulling down the French Aristocrats in the name of equality, to the elimination of slavery by violence in America in the name of equality, to the elimination of titles as replace by “comrade” in the Bolshevik Revolution in the name of equality, to the muscular Feminism embodied by Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, Alexandra Kollontai, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and countless others to the accepting of sodomy, trannie-ism, and now in the chute, pedophilia, equality has been the cancer that ate the West.

The Christian church has not been inure from the infection that is egalitarianism. For example where Churches have not embraced women officers by way of official policy and pastors they have embraced women officers and Pastors for all practical purposes. Yes, exceptions exist. Now, egalitarianism is pushing for accepting sexual pervert members and officers. Eventually, the sexual perverts will win out because egalitarianism is a conclusion that will only continue until its fullest implications are embraced by all.

But this is not the way the Christian church has always thought. There was a time that the church spoke loudly and clearly that being a Christian did not mean God created distinctions (inequalities) ceased to exist.

Consider, for example this treatment of Titus 2:9 by Puritan, Dr. Thomas Taylor,

“Exhort bondservants (slaves) to be obedient to their own masters, to be well pleasing in all things, not answering back, 10 not [a]pilfering, but showing all good [b]fidelity, that they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things.”

“Hence we note that religion and the doctrine of gospel frees no man from any duty, but rather fastens it upon him. In Christ, all are indeed one, but in regard to (1) the spiritual and inward man, and (2) The means of leading men to happiness. But in respect to the outward man, they abide master and servant, prince and people, bond and free.”

Dr. Thomas Taylor

Puritan Preacher/Theologian

Gary Lee Roper

Antebellum Slavery; An Orthodox Christian View — p. 253

Taylor here, was only agreeing with John Calvin who had preceded him in the previous century.

“Regarding our eternal salvation, it is true that one must not distinguish between man and woman, or between king and a shepherd, or between a German and a Frenchman. Regarding policy, however, we have what St. Paul declares here; for our, Lord Jesus Christ did not come to mix up nature, or to abolish what belongs to the preservation of decency and peace among us….Regarding the kingdom of God (which is spiritual) there is no distinction or difference between man and woman, servant and master, poor and rich, great and small. Nevertheless, there does have to be some order among us, and Jesus Christ did not mean to eliminate it, as some flighty and scatterbrained dreamers [believe].”

Calvin

Sermon on 1 Corinthians 11:2-3

These men understood that regeneration/conversion does not relieve slaves from being slaves, nor does it relieve men from submitting to their employers, nor does it release wives from submitting to their husbands. They understood that grace restores nature. It does not destroy nature.

Much of the modern church now longer embraces this principle. For much of the modern church being born again means you lose your race/ethnicity, or like Doug Wilson, “race doesn’t really exist,” or like Voddie Baucham, “race is only about melanin levels.”

Elsewhere more and more the modern church agrees that a man can be a woman and a woman can be a man. All of this clown world stuff emanates from the fact that the egalitarianism which begin to wax with the French Revolution continues to wax and wax and wax.

The historic Reformed position, as seen by the quotes above, has never given in to the absolutely insane idea that race is a social construct — a theory that is the laxative that gives way to the diarrhea that insists that gender and sexuality is a social construct.

Because of egalitarianism the world has gone stark raving bonkers. The Reformed knew where this egalitarianism would end up.

Owen & Bret Chit Chat About The Possibility of Christian Nations

“Nations can’t become Christian.

Nations can be profoundly influenced by Christianity, but only people — sinners — can become Christian. This is why you shouldn’t try to coerce faith, nor force people to convert. You’ll only do damage to the gospel cause if you try.”

Dr. Owen ‘Strychnine’ Strachan

1.) If Nations can’t be Christian then neither can families be Christian. This presupposes that God only works individually and not corporately or covenantally. This is exactly the kind of “logic” one should expect a Baptist to use.

2.) All Government arrangements seek to coerce faith. In as much as all enacted legislation (law) is the residual expression of religion, any time a Government passes law it is seeking to coerce faith. Why shouldn’t Christian governments seek to coerce faith in the manner of passing Godly legislation?

3.) While people can never be forced to convert in the sense of subjectively embracing for themselves ownership of Christ, people can and should, in an objective sense be forced to convert so as to be forced to follow the strictures of a Christian social order.

4.) Such “forced conversion” would be good for any Christian nation. Forcing Christ-hating people to objectively convert and so walk in righteous laws, even if they don’t want to, is a good thing that is Christ honoring. Keep in mind that the opposite of this kind of “forced conversion” is a libertarian licentiousness where each man does what is right in his own unconverted eyes.