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.

A Response To CREC Knox Presbytery’s Proposal On Issue of Jews

“We believe the conversion of the Jews is key to the success of Christ’s Great Commission, and it is incumbent upon us to pray and labor toward that end. (1) While, apart from Christ, the Jews are as all others—alienated from God—they have remained an object of God’s care because the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. (2) God’s plan for converting them is for them to see Gentile nations under the blessings of Christ’s lordship, thus leading them to long for the same. (3) Hence, the cancerous sin of anti-Semitism has no place in God’s plan.” (4)

CREC – Knox Presbytery
December 1, 2022

1a.) This whole statement is based on a misinterpretation of Romans 11. Romans 11 was future to Paul but has been fulfilled and so is past to us. The conversion of those who are (wrongly) referred to as “Jews” has nothing to do with the success of Christ’s great commission.

1b.) It is no more or less incumbent for Christian to labor and pray for the conversion of those who call themselves “Jews” then it is to labor and pray for the conversion of any other ethnic people group.

1c.) If the conversion of Jews as a people is “key to the success of Christ’s Great Commission” it would logically imply that Jews must continue to exist as a coherent and distinct people group. The eschatology offered here demands “Kinism” for Jews, right? And yet Doug Wilson continues to derisively refers to those who champion the Ordo Amoris as “skinists.” To be “saved” as a people necessarily demands existing as a people. Given Doug Wilson’s proud proclamation of the Jewishness of his own family this sentence in this proposal sounds vainglorious.

1d.) To say that conversion of the Jews is ‘key to the success of the great commission’ would mean the great commission is a failure until those that call themselves “Jews” are converted is absurd. Further to hang the success of the conversion of all nations on them as if it didn’t hang on the conversion of other nations just as much makes nonsense of the whole question.

2a.) God converted the Jewish Israel of God by AD 70.

2b.) God divorced Israel in AD 70. There remains no special relationship between what is now called “Israel” and the God of the Bible. This divorce was promised in the OT;

2 And He said, “Amos, what do you see?”

So I said, “A basket of summer fruit.”

Then the Lord said to me:

“The end has come upon My people Israel;
I will not pass by them anymore.  (Amos 8:2)

“Behold, the eyes of the Lord God are on the sinful kingdom,
And I will destroy it from the face of the earth;
Yet I will not utterly destroy the house of Jacob,”
Says the Lord.  Amos 9:8

And the coming dismissal of Christ hating Israel as God’s chosen people for their sin of rejecting their Messiah was made clear in the NT; Luke 13:1-8, Mark 11:12-25, Matthew 21:37-43. Finally, in AD 70 with the Judgment coming of Jesus against Israel, Israel as a nation which had previously served as the chosen people of God was served divorce papers. The ruination of Jerusalem and the Jewish abomination Temple were destroyed by the Roman armies of Vespasian and Titus. According to Josephus 1million Jews were slaughtered. This was God’s final word regarding National Israel. God may and does still call individual Jews but as a nation God is done with them. God is done with Israel as a nation or people. Now any Gentile nation that God calls and which then covenants with God can be one national expression of God’s people as long as they own the graciousness of grace and then walk increasingly but never perfectly in terms of obedience to God’s gracious Law-Word.

2c.) Then there is the whole issue of whether or not those currently referred to as Jews are indeed Jews. Israel itself has passed laws making it extraordinarily difficult for the “Jewish” inhabitants of Israel to do DNA testing in order to determine ethnic heritage. Could that be due to the fact that they don’t want the hoi polloi to know that they are not really ethnically “Jewish?” The fact of the matter is that the Palestinians have more Jewish blood in them then the Khazars, Edomites, Khazars, Turks, etc. who call themselves “Jews” now living in Israel.

3.) Fulfilled by AD 70.

4.) We really need a definition of the “cancerous sin of anti-Semitism” before we can comment much on this statement. Currently, anti-Semitism often seems to be defined as “disagreeing with a Jew.” In point of fact, per the CREC, I’m pretty sure this whole post is “anti-Semitic.”

There are two major points here.

1.) Modern day Jews in Israel are not likely even Jews

2.) Even if they are Jews the Scripture does not allow us to think that they, as in their unconverted Christ hating state, are still God’s chosen people, since God divorced them as a people in AD 70 — consistent with the statements of Scripture.

Rome & Eastern Orthodoxy Remain Christless

“For Presbyterians of all others to discount the perpetual danger from Romanism is thoroughly thoughtless and rash. We believe that the Christianity left by the apostles to the primitive church was essentially what we now call Presbyterian and Protestant. Prelacy and popery speedily began to work in the bosom of that community and steadily wrought its corruption and almost its total extirpation. Why should not the same cause tend to work the same result again? Are we truer or wiser Presbyterians than those trained by the apostles? Have the enemies of truth become less skillful and dangerous by gaining the experience of centuries? The popish system of ritual and doctrine was a gradual growth, which, modifying true Christianity, first perverted and then extinguished it. Its destructive power has resulted from this: that it has not been the invention of any one cunning and hostile mind, but a gradual growth, modified by hundreds or thousands of its cultivators, who were the most acute, learned, selfish, and anti-Christian spirits of their generations, perpetually retouched and adapted to every weakness and every attribute of depraved human nature, until it became the most skillful and pernicious system of error which the world has ever known. As it has adjusted itself to every superstition, every sense of guilt, every foible and craving of the depraved human heart, so it has travestied with consummate skill every active principle of the Gospel. It is doubtless the ne plus ultra of religious delusion, the final and highest result of perverted human faculty guided by the sagacity of the great enemy.”

Robert L Dabney
The attractions of Popery

Could it be that one reason people are moving to Rome and EO is because what they are envisioned as doing is pursuing a continuity with a storied past? Could the move away from Protestantism be due to the fact that such a move is the new counter-culture move? Protestantism is seen as irrelevant because it represents all that is shallow, disposable, and unworthy about our current moment.

People want gravitas again and the smells and bells of Rome and EO give them that.

Now, of course, we few Protestants who never took up the worship as a bad rock concert or the sermons as 10 minute self help talks or who never viewed the congregation as a Brothel from which ambitious ministers might have their pick have always known Rome and EO is all promise with no fulfillment and so we know there will be no fulfillment for those traipsing to Rome and EO.

But, in our hearts of hearts we understand that the flight to Rome or EO by the hoi polloi is likely not going to be any worse for their souls and lives then the rancid miasma they are fleeing from. Despite that being so we have a need to be responsible and warn people off of Rome and EO as being dangers to their souls. This needs to be said repeatedly as we now have platformed Protestants out there (Joel Webbon comes to mind) who are suggesting that Rome is a better poison than the poison of the Cultural Marxists. Poison is poison and we cannot make peace with any poison that will kill us dead.

I have no doubt that many in the confederation of Rome or EO share values with biblical Christians that many in the Evangelical/Reformed/R2K world do not share given how degenerate the Evangelical/Reformed/R2K world has become but those shared values do not translate into a shared faith, religion, or God.

Beware Rome … Beware EO.

Ordered Freedom …. Christian & Heathen

Conservatism is best defined as an ordered freedom that reflects the Christian transcendent and revealed order. Of course, there can be no such thing as an ordered freedom that is not anchored in a Biblical worldview (transcendent and revealed order) since without a Christian and Biblical worldview there would be no way to define the concepts of order or freedom. This means that there can be no consistent conservatism that pursues an ordered freedom that is Christless since such a conservatism will, by necessity, inject the need for ordered freedom with a humanism that will either find order (i.e.- Tyranny) eating up freedom or freedom (i.e. – Licentiousness) eating up order.

Because humanism is the very opposite of Christianity it cannot find the integration point between order and freedom. Instead humanism (whether Roman Catholic, Jewish, Mooselimb, “Secular.” etc,) will always in the end using both order and freedom (as subjectively defined) as limiting concepts that have no real intrinsic meaning in and of themselves. Because humanism has no objective ballast all humanism can constantly offer is a kind of warfare between the notions of order and freedom as order and freedom exist as limiting concepts. For the variants of humanism
“order” always ends up as tyranny and “freedom” always ends up as anarchistic licentiousness. For humanism either “order” ends up as Statist collectivism and/or Statist command and control social order (think Chinese Social Credit system) or it ends up with a licentiate individualism where “each man does what is right in his own eyes.”

The difference here in the variant Humanism (whether Statist tyrannical ordered collectivist humanism or Democratic anarchist hyper atomistic individualism) are captured in the two competing novels “1984,” and “Brave New World.” Orwell, in 1984 captured the anthill/beehive social order that exists when Humanist order loses its head. For Orwell, freedom for the individual was a myth as the picture of Orwell’s ordered future was a boot stamping on a human face – for ever.’ Orwell’s future vision of reality is a reality where the humanist limiting concept of freedom has been eclipsed as humanist order has eaten up humanist freedom. Huxley, on the other hand, gave us a vision of the future where humanist freedom had eaten up humanist order — although interestingly enough, as still in service of the totalitarian State. In Huxley’s view man is controlled by the State by giving individual men the ability to instantly satiate all their lusts. Licentiate freedom is maximized and personal / individual order and stability are absent.

This push me / pull you between humanist order vs. humanist freedom is where the West is right now as it continues to descend into its post-Christian quicksand. The Biblical Christian is forced to declare to each side “a Pox upon both your houses.”

The Biblical Christian proclaims a pox upon the house of the humanist freedom as it witnesses the excesses found in perverted sexuality, the break-down of the family, the war against the value of life, the growth of the drug culture and the open borders society. At the same time the Biblical Christian proclaims a pox upon the house of humanist order as it witnessed, in recent years, the demands of the state to be vaccinated w/ death dealing vaccines, to don masks that made absolutely no difference, to social distance, to close down and ruin small businesses by their policies and to destroy people who did not play along with their mandated “order” policies. In heathen arrangements of social order the citizenry always gets the stick of both woe-begotten notions of order and woe-begotten notions of freedom.

There are those in the Christian community who would restore the proper relationship between order and freedom by appealing to Natural law theories. The desire for placing order and freedom again on a stable definition foundation is admirable. However, Natural Law itself is a construct of ancient humanism (Greek Sophism) and as such is subjective and being subjective it does not take into account the fallenness of men to read this thing called Natural law aright. Natural law theorists promise a return to Biblical notions or “ordered freedom” but the history of Natural Law is not promising as to whether or not Natural Law can deliver Christian ideas of “ordered freedom.” In point of fact, Natural Law, if consistent can’t even speak of “Christian ideas of ordered freedom” since Natural Law is not religiously identified as being uniquely Christian.

Instead, there must be a return to the law and to the testimony (Isaiah 8:20) in order for there to be a return to a Christian social order again where order and freedom find their natural harmony of interests. Until the West returns to God’s revealed law the decline of the West will continue as order and freedom continue to be at war with one another.

A Few Distinctions on Christian Nationalism Concerning R2K, 2K Christian Nationalism & Theonomic Christian Nationalism

Below find an example of how there are a myriad of different readings of what exactly Christian Nationalism is. The below is correct as far as it goes but it fails inasmuch as it suggests that all Christian Nationalism is the Christian Nationalism that is described below by Doyle Matthews.

This from a chap (Doyle Matthews) who is correct on Presuppositionalism but is thorough-going hard core Alienist, which is to say that he is an inconsistent Presuppositionalist.

DM writes,

What do Christian Nationalists and R2K have in common?

1. They are both two-kingdom advocates.

BLMc responds

First, a wise person would understand that the very term “Christian Nationalist” has as many definitions as Carter’s has liver pills. As such making these kind of categorical unqualified statements is not profitable in the least.

It is true of the Stephen Wolfe / Michael Spangler school of Christian Nationalism that it is two-kingdom (2K). It is definitely NOT true of the Christian Nationalism that have been championed by Theonomist / Reconstructionist school of thought that began its strong rise in the 20th century.

Theonomists / Recons tend to talk about God’s complete sovereignty over every area of life while acknowledging that God has ordained different Jurisdictions (typically Church, State, Family – though other areas have been designated as well) and in those different Jurisdictions God has appointed Stewards in order to govern in the name of the great King of Kings, Jesus Christ. Those Stewards over the respective Jurisdictions have been Fathers over families, Elders over Churches, and Magistrates over Civil Order offices. The governance of these stewards of these different Jurisdictions must be consistent with God’s revealed Word.

So, it is just not true, as Mr. Matthews wrongly asserts that all Christian Nationalism is 2K. It is not even close to being true.

DM writes,

2. They are both natural law advocates.

BLMc responds,

It is true that both 2K and Christian Nationalism, as it falls from the hands of 2K advocates that their version of Christian Nationalism is based on Natural law. However, again, 2K doesn’t own the idea of Christian Nationalism.  Theonomy/Reconstructionism has long advocated for Christian Nationalism before the recent revival of Thomistic Natural Law Christian Nationalism.

So, Christian Nationalism of the Theonomy/Recon schools abominates the methodology of 2K Christian Nationalism though at the same time it is certainly the case that there are conclusions that 2K and Theonomy can agree upon in their mutual but distinct advocacy of Christian Nationalism. Whether or not there can be some kind of rapprochement between these two schools of thought as pursuing the same goal is yet to be seen.

DM writes,

3. They both believe that “right reason” is how one arrives at natural law.

BLMc responds;

Again, it is true that the Thomistic Natural Law school that is informing the 2K version of Christian Nationalism does indeed insist upon the fatuous idea of “right reason.” However, all because 2K Christian Nationalism is Thomistic does not mean that all Christian Nationalism is dependent upon the idea of “right reason” as dependent on Natural Law categories. The theonomic understanding of Christian Nationalism looks to God’s Law-Word to inform of laws that should govern a social order. The theonomic understanding of Christian Nationalism realizes that fallen men starting from himself as his own point of reference in order to name and understand the very real reality of Natural Law (Psalm 19) will always twist Natural Law in order for it to reveal his beginning presuppositions. This is because the Natural man following natural law is suppressing the truth in unrighteousness (Romans 1) and due to the fact that his carnal mind is at enmity (warfare) with God (Romans 8). The presuppositions of 2K Christian Nationalism are extremely flawed but those presuppositions of 2K Christian Nationalism does not define the Christian Nationalism movement as a whole. (And there are many more disagreements to hash out besides this one we are concentrating on in this thread.)

So, one can advocate for Christian Nationalism while not advocating for 2K Thomism.

DM writes,

4. They both reject Biblical law as the standard for civil law.

BLMc responds,

This one corresponds to #3 above. Natural Law Christian Nationalists are just terrible on the issue of what the standard for civil law is or will be. The Christian Nationalism is shut up to their subjectively arrived at conclusions about the standard for civil law as based on their subjective beginning point presuppositions. Natural Law Christian Nationalists have no “thus saith the Lord” for their positions, though admittedly some of them will try to stitch together premise upon premise from one of the Ten commandments in order to arrive at legality and illegality, or in order to arrive at the penalty that should be declared upon for crimes committed.

However, Christian Nationalism doesn’t need 2K Natural Law theory in order to get off the ground.

DM writes,

So when you come right down to it, there isn’t much difference between Christian Nationalism and R2K advocates.

BLMc responds,

This is monumentally jejune.  R2K anti-Christian Nationalists and 2K Christian Nationalists fight like dogs and cats on the issue of Christian Nationalism. My desire is for a pox to fall upon both houses (though I pray daily for a more destructive pox to fall on R2K) but despite that there are vast differences between 2K Christian Nationalists and R2K anti-Christian Nationalism.

Mr. Matthews is really exposing his ignorance with the last statement.

As bad as a Wolfean 2K Christian Nationalism would be it shines as beautiful in comparison to the R2K vision of social order.

So to be clear here …. there are three categories in this small slice of debate

1.) 2K Nationalism following Stephen Wolfe who has resurrected the errant thinking of Thomism and many Reformed lights who quit Reforming when it came to epistemology.

2.) Theonomic/Reconstruction Nationalism following Van Til, Gordon Clark, Bahnsen, Rushdoony and others who championed for God’s law being the standard in the Law-Order realm as being the norm that norms all norms.

3.) R2K Anti-Christian Nationalism following the heretical Escondido Westminster-West Seminary school. Westminster-West features chaps like David Van Drunen, R. Scott Clark, Michael Horton, and other historical misfits. (I say historical misfits because nobody until these descendants of Meredith Kline ever suggested the kinds of things these blokes champion in terms of Christianity and social order.)

From The Mailbag … How Has Jacobinism Infected The Reformed World?

Dear Pastor

What is Jacobin Reformed theology and what are Jacobin Reformed clergy?

Billy F

Hello Billy

Thanks for writing. First, we should note that most clergy today in the Reformed world are Jacobin. There are, of course, greater and lesser degrees of this Jacobinism to be found in our Reformed clergy but the tendency is ubiquitous. More about that after a definition;

A.) A Jacobin Reformed clergy embraces (often, quite w/o knowing it) the principles of Jacobinism. Jacobinism was a radical political group during the French Revolution known for advocating egalitarian democracy and engaging in extreme measures. During the French Revolution those extreme measures included the Reign of Terror, but in our context today extreme measures for Jacobin Reformed clergy means hunting down via inquisition type means men who do not agree with their Jacobin egalitarianism often with the purpose of defrocking and/or destroying by means of cancel culture clergy and/or members that are NOT Jacobin. Most frequently this happens by means of violation of the 9th commandment because very few men are guilty of what the 6th commandment violations they are being charged.

The term today has come to represent left-wing radicalism in the pulpit and ruling centers of what is unfortunately thought of as “Conservative” “Reformed” denomination. This kind of revolutionary politics is evidenced in the Church in its embrace of Alienism, egalitarianism, the Post-War (actually Enlightenment) consensus and the conviction that Democracy is God’s plan for social order arrangement.

We see it with the denial in denominations like the PCA, RPCNA, CRC, ARP, and CREC of the reality of race. More than a few clergy from these denominations have said things like, “there is no such thing as race,” or, “race is only about melanin levels,” or, “race is a social construct.” To hold to such views is a window into egalitarian convictions, and so represents Jacobin convictions. Another piece of evidence of how the majority expression of Reformed clergy are adopting Jacobin egalitarian convictions is the rise of female leadership in the Reformed Church. Michael Foster has recently exposed all the other Jacobin congregations in the PCA with his outing of congregations in the PCA that are operating with Defacto female elders. The irony is pretty thick here as Foster himself is likewise Jacobin given his expressed hatred of the anti-Jacobin belief system of Kinism. Foster’s exposure of Jacobin PCA congregations while being Jacobin himself demonstrates that there are different degrees of Jacobinism existing in the Reformed denominations.

Doug Wilson of the CREC is another high profile example of Jacobinism in denominations that are thought of as “Conservative,” and “Reformed.” Wilson has denied the reality of race while still embracing the reality of “ethnicity,” despite the fact that one can’t get to ethnicity without first traveling through race as ethnicity is a subset of race. Insisting that ethnicities exist but races don’t is like saying that Terriers and Retrievers exist but differing dog breeds don’t.

But Michael Foster and Doug Wilson should be understood to be the less excessive norms of today’s Jacobinism. There are many other clergy who are even more extreme in their Jacobinism today. Clergy like Ben Glaser, Rich Lusk, Andy Webb, Andrew Sandlin, Peter Leithart, Al Mohler, Uri Brito, Jeff Durbin, James White, etc. are all further examples of clergy who have been infected with one degree or another of Jacobinism.

The answer to this of course is a return to Biblical Christianity with all the implications of the doctrine of the Trinity (the One & the Many) for this discussion.

Please pray for the Reformed Church in America that God might either grant it reformation and renewal or failing that God might close its doors and raise up new ecclesiastical organizations which will not fall into the trap of Jacobinism.