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.

R. Scott Clark Praises the Kinist J. Gresham Machen

Today R. Scott Clark, obviously having no sense of irony posted the following post on the Hiedleblog praising J. Gresham Machen, just a day after lambasting me for being allegedly guilty of the very same thing that he elsewhere exonerates Machen for being;

Machen Was Worth a Hundred of His Fellows

“We have lost a man whom our times can ill spare, a man who had convictions which were real to him and who fought for those convictions and held to them through every change in time and human thought. There was power in him which was positive in its very negations. He was worth a hundred of his fellows who, as princes of the church, occupy easy places and play their church politics and trim their sails to every wind, who in their smug observance of the convictions of life and religion offend all honest and searching spirits. No forthright mind can live among them, neither the honest skeptic nor the honest dogmatist. I wish Dr. Machen had lived to go on fighting them.’

Such was the tribute of novelist and former liberal missionary Pearl S. Buck who won both the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes. J. Gresham Machen was a critic of much of what she represented.”

BRAD ISBELL | “Some of Machen’s ‘enemies’ admired him” | March 21, 2023

Here is another quote from the Machen that Clark is affirming praise for;

“It is true some of them are ‘sticklers’ for the civil rights for negroes — it always makes me intensely angry to hear people talking glibly about equal civil rights for negroes when in many parts of the South those equal rights would mean that every legislator and every judge would be a savage of a type and white men would be more unsafe in parts of this country than in most parts of the world where at least protection of his home government is to some extent with him.”

J. Gresham Machen
Letter to his Mother

R. Scott Clark is a magnificent hypocrite because he has on his blog a whole entry defending the orthodoxy of J. Gresham Machen, despite what Clark considers to be a racist letter to his mother, while at the same time casting modern day Machen Kinists into hell by referring to them as heretics.

Machen’s Letter To His Mother Or What To Do With Dead Sinners?

Obviously, Clark would never step up to the microphone and declare that on the basis of Machen’s social order beliefs that Machen, who was a 20th century Kinist, was a “heretic.” And yet that is exactly what the arch-heretic R. Scott Clark has done with 21st century Kinists. So Clark condemns 21st century Kinists as heretics but begs for understanding for 20th century Kinists like Machen. Bottom line Scotty is that either Machen was a heretic for believing what he believed or I am and all modern Kinists are not heretics for believing the very same types of things that Machen believed. You can not have it both ways. Either we are all in hell (like Machen per Clarkian reasoning) or on the way to hell (like living Kinists) for being heretics.

After all Scott, no heretic ever made it into heaven. Now, lots of people who were in error on this or that issue are in heaven but no heretic is in heaven.

Hey Scott … does Machen’s letter above disqualify him from heaven?

The War Heats Up; Road Runner McAtee Correct Wile E. Coyote R. Scott Clark Part V

R. Scott Clark (RSC) writes,

“They (The Kinists) not only ignore the plain teaching of Colossians 3 and Galatians 3.”

Bret responds,

Galatians 3:26f & The Indiscriminate Nature of the Gospel AND the Foolishness of Social Egalitarianism

Galatians 3:28 & Egalitarianism

RSC writes,

“They (Kinists) also ignore the plain teaching of Acts 10:15, where our Lord told Peter in a vision, “What God has made clean, do not call common” (ESV).”

Bret responds,

Except Kinists don’t call other races “common.”

This statement also implies that the 9th commandment challenged R. Scott Clark doesn’t realize that Kinists come in all hues. I have black friends who are kinist, yellow friends who are kinist, brown friends who are kinists, and on and on. So, once again, Scott is dissimulating about what Kinists believe.

RSC writes,

The next thing we read in Luke’s narrative is that Cornelius, a Roman centurion, wants to speak with Peter. Ordinarily, this would not be a good thing. A Roman centurion had a lot of authority and could have made Peter’s life not only uncomfortable but uncomfortably short. Peter explained to him, “God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean. So, when I was sent for, I came without objection. I ask then why you sent for me” (Acts 10:28b–29; ESV). The point of the vision was really about how Christians are to relate to one another across ethnic barriers. Kinism defies and denies the unequivocal teaching of God’s Word about the history of redemption and our new creation in Christ (2 Cor 5:17).

Bret responds,

That whole paragraph is SKUBALA. It is just not true.

RSC writes citing the CRC,

At Synod, in 2019, the Christian Reformed Church considered overture 7 (pp. 485–505) regarding Kinism. It adopted the following declarations regarding Kinism:

A. Declare that this is a grievous deviation from sound doctrine, a heresy: the Kinist teaching that interracial marriage is sinful, and the theological reasoning supporting this teaching.

Bret responds,

1.) At least as it pertains to me, which is the person the CRC was pointing at in all this, I have never ever said that “interracial marriage is sinful,” though I have said repeatedly that it is “normatively unwise.” I have also said repeatedly that once a inter-racial marriage is contracted that the local church should do all it can to support such a marriage if such a marriage exists in their congregation while at the same time reminding the congregation that the children of the congregation should not marry along inter-racial lines. To encourage such marriages would be to adopt Marxist principles for God’s covenant seed.

RSC citing the CRC,

B. Declare that this is a grievous deviation from sound doctrine, a heresy: the Kinist teaching that God has ordained separation in a religio-ethnostate, and the theological reasoning supporting this teaching.

Bret Responds,

See

http://www.thedailygenevan.com/blog/2022/11/17/naturalvsnonnatural?fbclid=IwAR0ly5u8bXFPlA-SWWztH1PbARSnLwaAwW-rflGjL3v5152ct66dz8c6eRg

RSC writes citing the CRC,

C. Declare that any office bearer who teaches or promotes Kinist theology is worthy of special discipline in accordance with Church Order Article 83.

Bret responds,

Now, the CRC may someday do this in the future but they did not do so with me.

RSC citing the CRC

D. Instruct the executive director to create, through the appropriate agencies, opportunities for education, instruction, and discussion so that church leaders and lay members can recognize and refute the heresy of Kinism in various social contexts where they may encounter it.

Bret responds,

I am looking forward to the day when someone trained by the CRC tries to refute Kinism, because it has not been done to date. R. Scott Clark certainly has not done so in is laughable and ridiculous two part series.

RSC citing the CRC writes,

According to article 74 of the Acts of Synod (pp. 818–20) for 2019, the Synod adopted those for declarations on this ground:

Ground: Kinist theology and practice is neither biblical nor Reformed. Rather, Kinism is a twisting of Reformed doctrine. The Bible makes clear that God’s ideal is a family of every tribe and nation being considered equal in every way. Kinist principles and praxis distort this truth.

Bret responds,

1.) As we have seen from the countless of quotes I have given in this series, Kinism in theology and practice is both biblical and Reformed. It is the Alienism (Marxism as applied to social orders) of R. Scott Clark and the CRC which is neither Biblical, nor Reformed, nor historical.

2.) “Equal in every way?”

Surely the CRC can’t be serious. This is pure hard egalitarianism. Surely all peoples are ontologically equal. Certainly no peoples are made of better dirt than other peoples, and so in that sense are equal. Certainly, all men are equal before God’s law. But to say that all peoples are equal in every way is just French Revolution lunacy. Superiorities and inferiorities run through all races, peoples, tribes, and nations and to suggest that all races, peoples, tribes, and nations are equal is the kind of denial of reality that is in the same league as saying girls can be boys and boys can be girls because they are equal in every way.

RSC citing the CRC,

Synod also adopted the following motion:

That synod, given the recent history of Kinist teaching in a particular church of the CRCNA, admonish councils and classes to promote confessional fidelity and mutually to pursue special discipline of an office bearer who is found to hold views contrary to our standards.

Bret responds,

1.) LOL … the CRC calls for special discipline of any office bearer who is found to be a kinist and yet when they could have tried to do that to me they passed. Is this their subtle admission that I was never an office bearer and so they had no jurisdiction over me?

or

2.) Is it an admission that they did not go after me because they knew they could not prove their case and exoneration would have been something that the Dutch Mafia who runs the CRC would have found mortifying?

RSC citing the CRC.,

Grounds:

a. The pastor who was teaching Kinist views was able to do so for several years without special discipline being successful.

Bret responds,

1.) I was never a Pastor in the CRC, though I did Pastor a CRC Church

2.) Special discipline was never successful because special discipline was never attempted. There were delegates at Synod 2019 who were asking why I was released instead of being disciplined. So far as I know they never got an answer to that question.

3.) And keep in mind that;

a.) When I was released from the CRC (though I was never in to be released) that the governing Church’s Pastor of the Church I served recommended and argued vehemently that I should be released with a “honorable release” as opposed to the “Dismissed” that released me.

b.) The Church that I Pastored unanimously voted to leave the CRC due to the CRC’s heretical stands, knowing full well who I am after ministering among  them for a quarter of a century.

RSC writes citing the CRC

b. By admonishing councils and classes to encourage confessional fidelity and special discipline when applicable, it sends a strong message from the broadest body of our denomination that Kinist teaching will not be tolerated in our churches.

Bret responds,

The CRC has no worries about Kinism in their midst. They are safely Marxist. I was the proverbial “One in a Million.”

RSC citing the CRC,

Synod adopted another overture offered from the floor:

That synod acknowledge, with lament, the historic tolerance and indifference within our Reformed theological tradition to perpetual hateful racial prejudice and the theological error of Kinism as well as the need to act as a prophetic voice on these matters in the present and future.

Bret responds,

AH… here we see the slight glimmer of admission that Kinism, or something very much like it as been part of the Reformed theological tradition. Naturally, quite to the contrary of what is written above, the kinism I’ve read of in Church history (See Achord and Dow’s Anthology, “Who Is My Neighbor; An Anthology in Natural Relations”) has never resembled hateful racial prejudice.

Maybe there has been “hateful racial prejudice” in the Reformed tradition but if it existed it would be hard to top the “hateful racial prejudice” that is being exhibited towards Kinists who are not Marxists.

RSC writes,

Make of the last clause what you will, Synod was clearly embarrassed by the existence of Kinism within the CRC for a decade and wanted to send a clear message that the CRC repudiates Kinism.

Bret responds,

1.) And yet, the CRC had every opportunity to bring charges against me and so run me through their Kangaroo court system. If the CRC really had wanted to send a clear message of their embarrassment regarding Kinism THAT is what they would have done. But they didn’t. Instead they merely dismissed me upon my request. (A strange action considering that I had never been ordained by the CRC.)

2.) Is it interesting that the “Conservative” R. Scott Clark is making common cause in these two articles not only with his arch-enemy Doug Wilson but also with a denomination that he excoriates; the uber-Liberal CRC. It seems that “Conservative” Wilson, “Confessional” Clark, and the uber-liberal CRC have all in common the desire to libel, slander, and rid the planet of Historic Christianity, which is, in the end, all Kinism is.

This has been proven exhaustively by Achord & Dow’s book “Who is My Neighbor.” It is also nicely set forth in the article linked above titled  “Natural and Non-Natural communities.”

RSC writes,

It is certainly a gross error, schismatic (as it separates what Christ has united), it is ugly and unbefitting of a Christian profession. Let no man cast asunder what Christ has joined together.

Bret responds,

Quite to the contrary it is the Alienism that condemns all the Church Fathers who were Kinist just by their virtue of being Christian. By abandoning the idea and truth of Kinism Clark and the rest of his ideological brood of vipers is abandoning the Christian faith. It is they who are vile and ugly beyond all recognition. It is they who are in gross error (and in Clark’s case not only on this count but also on the count of his heretical R2K). It is they who are the schismatics dividing the Church from its Christian past. It is they who are touting beliefs that are not befitting Christian men. It is they who have cast asunder what Christ joined together opting for some red stew because they were tired from hunting acceptance of the world.

And keep in mind this all started merely because R. Scott Clark wanted to smear my book, “Saved to be Warriors; Exposing the Errors of Radical Two Kingdom Theology.”

The War Heats Up; Road Runner McAtee Corrects Wile E. Coyote R. Scott Clark IV

R. Scott Clark (RSC) writes,

“The CRC Is Right”

Bret responds,

I’m sure that the Reformed Alliance, the OCRC, and the URC, who all left the CRC in the 90’s forward would find it interesting that Scott says “the CRC is Right.” I’m sure NAPARC who kicked the CRC out of their Reformed organization would find it interesting that Scott says “The CRC is Right.”

I admit that I find it fascinating that Clark hates orthodox believers, who (Kinists) are merely embracing what the Reformed Church has embraced for 500 years, so much that he would affirm the CRC and even get in bed with Doug Wilson, a man he has loathed for years. All of this just in order to smear the author of a book (me) who wrote a irrefutable take down of R2K. Clark holds hands with Wilson and the CRC in the attempt to deny my book or me credibility.

The logic goes… “McAtee is a Kinist heretic therefore it is obvious that his book exposing R2K can’t be accurate and should be shunned.”

RSC writes,

Over the 15 years that the HB has been published, I have had occasion to criticize the drift of the CRC toward broad evangelicalism. This, however, is an area where confessional Reformed Christians can learn from our brothers and sisters in the CRC.

Bret responds,

Broad Evangelicalism?

When I began to pastor a CRC Church in 1995 I was assigned a “pastoral mentor” who was through and through Neo-Orthodox (Barthian). When he came to the text he presupposed that the supernatural could not be true. The denomination knew what he was when they ordained him decades prior to that. His was a famous case involving his denial that snakes could talk. During my time associated but never ordained in the CRC I heard ordained men make appeals on the floor of Classis for Homosexuals to be members and officers in the CRC. On those occasions I was the only one who stood up to protest. The silence of the other delegates was deafening. During my time associated but never ordained in the CRC I heard on the floor of Classis theologians of the Anabaptist stripe (Yoder) quoted approvingly as support against US going to War in the Middle East. On those occasions I was the only one standing and asking why Reformed men were quoting Anabaptist theologians in order to protest against War. (And I was even against the war myself.) On those occasions I was the only one who stood up to protest. The silence of the other delegates was deafening. During my time associated but never ordained in the CRC I saw men ordained who denied infant baptism, who denied justification by faith alone, and who thought my asking them what the three imputations in Scripture were, “a trick question.” All of this is only the tip of the iceberg of what I saw during my time of being associated by never ordained in the CRC. Believe me when I tell you that if the CRC is merely tacking in a broadly Evangelical direction then Trannyism is merely a tacking towards a more inclusive gender mindset.

If Scott wants to call the CRC’s growing denial of the authority and divine inspiration of the scriptures as summarized in our confession (cf. Belgic Confession Articles 5 & 7), then by all means let him do so. To do so only demonstrates his own incipient liberalism. If Scott wants to say women in office is only a “broadly Evangelical problem” then let him say so. I think such a move tears at the fabric of patriarchy which in turn undoes all of Scripture and so instead is a “decidedly Liberal problem.” Then there is the issue of question 80 of the Heidelberg Catechism, which the CRC has voted to have no binding validity anymore (that question says that the Roman Catholic Mass is an idolatry). Per Scott this is only a “broadly Evangelical problem.”

Clearly, with the “thinking” that Clark demonstrates we can see where the URC will soon enough follow the CRC.

RSC writes,

As Reginald Smith notes, the Kinists,

look at Old Testament examples to demonstrate how God forbade interracial marriages between Israel and other nations, and they use this to justify the statement that God must also forbid interracial marriage today. Kinists use Genesis 1:25 and 11:7–9 to state that God mandated life based on kinship or relationships with people of “the same kind.”

Bret Responds,

Some hard kinists will teach that inter-racial marriages are sin and that therefore God forbids them. Other kinists will say instead that Scripture clearly demonstrates that inter-racial marriages are not normatively wise and so should not be entered into. It is possible that people do not like that but it is not possible to say that some form of those kind of views have been the norm in Church History. For example,

  • “The vast majority of good thinking people prefer to associate with, and intermarry with, people of their respective race; this is part of the God-given inclination to honor and uphold the distinctiveness of separate races. But there are many false prophets of oneness, and many shallow stooges, who seek to force the amalgamation of the races.” ~

    Dr. John Edwards Richards
    The Racial Problem Facing America (1964)
    One of the Founders of the Presbyterian Church of America
    Professor of Reformed Theology — Reformed Theological Seminary

    “I don’t believe [racial integration] is what the Bible teaches. Even though we may have transgressed the boundaries of nationhood and of peoplehood, it seems to me that God did create man of one blood in order that he may dwell as different nations throughout the world. But after the fall, when sinful man cosmopolitanly – meaning by that, with a desire to obliterate separate nationhood, with a desire to build a sort of United Nations organization under the Tower of Babel…attempted to resist developing peoplehood…[God confused the tongues of men]…because men had said, ‘Let us build a city and a tower which will stretch up to heaven lest we be scattered’… Pentecost sanctified the legitimacy of separate nationality rather than saying this is something we should outgrow… In fact, even in the new earth to come, after the Second Coming of Christ, we are told that the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of the heavenly Jerusalem, and the kings of the earth shall bring the glory and the honor—the cultural treasures—of the nations into it… But nowhere in Scripture are any indications to be found that such peoples should ever be amalgamated into one huge nation.”

    Dr. Francis Nigel Lee (1934-2011)
    Reformed Theologian

    “Love imagines that it can overleap the barriers of race and blood and religion, and in the enthusiasm and ecstasy of choice these obstacles appear insignificant. But the facts of experience are against such an idea. Mixed marriages are rarely happy. Observation and experiences demonstrate that the marriage of a Gentile and Jew, a Protestant and a Catholic, an American and a Foreigner has less chance of a happy result than a marriage where the man and woman are of the same race and religion….”

    Dr. Clarence MacCartney
    Presbyterian Minister

    “Again, if diversity is God’s revealed way for mankind, one wonders about any program that advocates the intermarriage of the diverse races in a way which will eradicate the differences that God has established.”

    Morton Smith
    The Racial Problem Facing America

    “What do ye call natural affections?

    “Such as be among them of one blood and kindred, as between parents and children, husbands and wives, kindred, country, heathens, yea Christians also void of these.

    (How) does it differ from human and Christian affection?

    Human affection is that whereby we embrace all men as men; natural affection is that where by we embrace them which are nearer unto us by blood; Christian affection is that whereby we love good men because they belong to Christ.”

    Thomas Wilson
    Puritan
    A Commentary on the Most Divine Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans
    3rd ed. 1653, Chapter 1 — p. 54

    And of course these are just a few of the quotes that sustain that Kinims is merely vanilla Christianity 101 and that despite what either Reginald Williams or R. Scott Clark whines about.

    But there is a flip side of this that needs to be considered and that flip side is the position that both Clark and Reginald Williams are embracing. That position is called Alienism which is just the social order intent of Marxists.

    Reginald Williams, a black man married to a white woman (a point he has labored publicly to make known), and R. Scott Clark a white man who says Kinists are heretics because they don’t agree that normatively that inter-racial marriage is a good idea both agree as Alienists that Kinists should be run out of the Reformed Church. With that idea that “Kinism is evil” they are in agreement with the Marxists throughout history;

    1.) ”What will be the attitude of communism to existing nationalities?

    The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a result of this association and hereby to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of their basis, private property.”

    ~ Frederick Engels in “The Principles of Communism”, 1847

    2.) “The equality of races and nations is one of the most important elements of the moral strength and might of the Soviet state. Soviet anthropology develops the one correct concept, that all the races of mankind are biologically equal. The genuinely materialist conception of the origin of man and of races serves the struggle against racism, against all idealist, mystic conceptions of man, his past, present and future.”

    —Mikhail Nesturkh, Soviet anthropologist, 1959
    “The Origin of Man” (Moscow)Mikhail Nesturkh, Soviet anthropologist, 1959:

    3.) “The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into small states and end all national isolation; not only to bring the nations closer together but to merge them….”

    Vladimir Lenin
    The Rights of Nations to Self Determination — pg. 76

    4.) “… Just as mankind can achieve the abolition of classes only by passing through the dictatorship of the proletariat, so mankind can achieve the inevitable merging of nations only by passing through the transition period of complete liberation of all oppressed nations, i.e., their right to secede. “

    Vladimir Lenin 
    The Rights of Nations to Self Determination 

    5.) “Even the natural differences within species, like racial differences…, can and must be done away with historically.” 

    K. Marx’s Collected Works V:103,
    As cited in S.F. Bloom’s The World of Nations: A
    Study of the National Implications in the Work of Karl Marx, Columbia University Press, New York, 1941, pp. 11 & 15-19:

    6.) “Full-scale Communist construction constitutes a new stage in the development of national relations in the U.S.S.R., in which the nations will draw still closer together until complete unity is achieved…. However, the obliteration of national distinctions and especially of language distinctions is a considerably longer process than the obliteration of class distinctions.”

    Nikita Khrushchev

    And with this entry we see that it is the Alienists like Reginald Williams, the CRC,  R. Scott Clark, and Doug Wilson, and just about all the rest of the fallen Church in the West today who are the heretics. Call this my McAtee Contra Mundum moment. It is true that I and my handful of Kinist compatriots are standing against today’s world but we are the ones who are perfectly in alignment with the Church Historical. It is people who are harassing us (and keep in mind it was Clark who lobbed grenade at me) who are outside what the Church has confessed in all times and all places where God has been pleased to grant the Church orthodoxy.

     

 

The War Heats Up … McAtee Corrects Clark — Part III

RSC writes on the R2K (Thomistic) theory of Nature & Grace;

The distinction between nature and grace is a Christian basic. It is, however, one of the many distinctions that we seem to have lost during the theological chaos of the twentieth century. Christians have distinguished between nature and grace since the beginning of the post-apostolic age and the Apostle Paul assumes it through the book of Romans as a basic, evident truth. There are some things we know by nature, e.g., that God is (Rom 1:19–20) and his moral, natural law (Rom 2:12–15).

Bret responds,

I have written so much on Natural Law theory on Iron Ink that my finger tip pads are worn out on the subject. Briefly let it be said here again,

1.) Natural law was popular among the pagan Stoics and other philosophers.
2.) They in turn picked it up from Aristotle. Aristotle was a pagan.
3.) Natural law is an especially peculiarly Roman Catholic method of reasoning
4.) Thomas Aquinas refined Natural Law providing a unbiblical synthesis between Natural Law and Gods Law.
5.) Natural Law has come in hot and heavy in R2K as a result of the Jesuit trained Dr. David Van Drunen being the R2K guru.

A good book that demolishes R2K’s love affair with Natural Law is Dr. Robert A. Morey’s, “The Bible, Natural Theology and Natural Law: Conflict or Compromise?”

Below is just one piece on Iron Ink that labors to demonstrate the theory of Natural Law the way R2K develops it. Plugging “Natural Law” into the Iron Ink search mechanism will provide many more entries on Natural law.

Observations On Natural Law Theory

RSC writes more on Nature and Grace;

From nature, we learn the arts (e.g., grammar), arithmetic, and science. We learn the doctrines of the Trinity, Christology, salvation, and the church from grace (i.e., Holy Scripture). When we fail to acknowledge this basic distinction, confusion follows.

Bret responds,

R2Kt Virus, Natural Law, And Attacks On Biblical Christianity — Part I

R2Kt Virus, Natural Law, And Attacks On Biblical Christianity — Part II

Let it be said here that the Three Forms of Unity do not allow someone who subscribes to them to teach Natural Law the way that R2K teaches Natural Law. I am not dismissing the reality of Natural Law. I am dismissing Natural Law the way that R2K advocates for Natural Law.

RSC writes,

One of the reasons the church taught this distinction was to combat the Pelagian heresy. Pelagius was a British monk who appears on the historical radar, in Rome, in the AD 380s. He was worried about the state of Christian morality. He was offended by Augustine’s emphasis on divine grace. In reaction, he denied that Paul taught a federal theology (wherein Adam and Christ are the heads of humanity). He held that we are not born sinners, but we become sinners when we sin. When we sin we imitate Adam. Pelagius denied the necessity of grace and he taught the possibility of perfection before death. Perhaps his most fundamental error was confusing nature and grace. Arminius and the Remonstrants did the same. Thus, the Reformed were traditionally quite clear about this distinction.

Bret responds,

The implication that only Thomists/Natural Law types get the above paragraph is so ridiculous that it is not worthy of a response. Is Clark saying that all presuppositionalists have been latent Remonstrants?

I’m fine with making a distinction between nature and grace. I am not find divorcing nature from grace so that we are forced to live the “hyphenated-life” (Dualistic) such as some in the R2K school have advocated for repeatedly.

RSC writes,

The Kinists seek to leverage grace with nature. They claim that people naturally congregate in ethnic/racial people groups, and they seek to use their analysis of nature to leverage grace. This is flatly contrary to the plain teaching of God’s Word.

Bret responds,

The Kinists teach that grace restores/renews nature, just like the Reformed have taught through the centuries. As such, since race/ethnicity is a part of nature Kinists understand that when men are visited with grace, that grace does not destroy their nature so that upon redemption they are cleansed of their race/ethnicity just as they are not cleansed of their biological gender. Being rooted and grounded in Christ does not mean I cease being WASP.

Unlike Scott, I actually read and learned from my Calvin;

“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].”

John Calvin
Sermon on 1 Corinthians 11:2-3

When Calvin impugns the “flighty and scatterbrained dreamers” he is impugning the Anabaptists. I think (as I suggested in my book) that R2K is latent Anabaptist.

Matthew Henry also agrees with me;

“Note, It is the will of God that mutual love and affection, converse and communion, should be kept up among relations. Those that are of kin to each other should, as much as they can, be acquainted with each other; and the bonds of nature should be improved for the strengthening of the bonds of Christian communion.”

Matthew Henry Commentary
Numbers Chapter 2:1-2

Charles Hodge agrees with me too;

“The Bible recognizes the validity and rightness of all the constitutional principles and impulses of our nature. It therefore approves of parental and filial affection, and, as is plain from this and other passages, of peculiar love for the people of our own race and country.”

Charles Hodge
Commentary Romans 9

RSC writes;

Under the Mosaic law, there was a clear distinction between Jew and Gentile. The latter were to be regarded as ritually unclean. For Christians, however, that “dividing wall” (Eph 2:14) has been broken down by the death of Christ. Paul writes:

Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands—remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility (Eph 2:11–16; ESV).

According to Paul, the Gentiles (that’s everyone but the Jews), who have trusted Christ are no longer separated from Jews who have trusted Christ. The old ethnic and religious barriers that had separated them are done away with in the body of Christ. This is true in two senses. The church of the body of Christ no longer observes such distinctions but second and more profoundly, Christ literally broke down those barriers when his body was, as he said at the institution of the Holy Supper, “broken for” us. He abolished the ceremonial laws that separated Christian Jews and Gentiles. The old enmity is gone—it must be. Our enmity with God is abolished in and by the crucified body of Christ.

Bret responds,

Sigh… that a teacher of Israel could read Ephesians 2 through a Cultural-Marxist grid like Red Scott does is just breath-taking. When I read stuff like this I’m reminded of the old Bobby Goldsboro song, “Watching Scotty Grow;”

There he sits with a pen and a yellow pad,
What a confusing lad, that’s our boy
BRLFQ spells mom and dad,
Well that ain’t too bad, ’cause that’s our boy

Let me help you out Scotty on Ephesians 2;

The dividing wall in Ephesians 2 is a reference to the Mosaic Law. Christ tears down the “dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances” (Eph 2:14b-15a). When Christ died, God no longer imposed on Jews the rules that once separated them from Gentiles. The purpose of those aspects of the law has now been fulfilled. The laws that specifically divided Jew and Gentile are now done away with. It is not just the ceremonial laws that are now gone, but the old covenant to which they were intricately attached has been replaced by the new covenant. Under the new covenant God no longer imposes these ceremonial expectations on his children. This arrangement grants Gentiles wide open access to enter the kingdom of God. Gentiles do not need to become cultural Jews in order to be Christians.

Further, Paul is not talking about generic ethnic divides but specifically the aspects of the law-covenant that divided Jew from Gentiles. Therefore, someone cannot impose ethnic distinctions onto Paul’s words. The apostle has something uniquely covenantal in mind.

Second, the dividing wall was originally the will of God. To take the word “hostility” in and apply it to racism is dangerous. The dividing wall to which Paul is referring is the Mosaic Law, and the Mosaic Law was God’s idea. He made the wall; then he removed it in Christ. The division was God’s will, not the by-product of the human sin today called “racism.” “Racism,” if and when someone can define it, on the other hand, is the result of human sin and never is/was the result of what God commands or commanded. By applying Ephesians 2:14 to ethnic strife today R2K effectively turn God into a “racist.”

Third, did Christ remove by his death the various differences between peoples/cultures today? Not at all. Before Christ’s death, one people/culture may prefer beer. Another people/culture may prefer wine. After the death of Christ the first people/culture still likes beer and the second people/culture still likes wine. The death of Christ was not intended to move the needle on these types of ethno-cultural differences (except for the aspects of man’s ethno-culture that are sinful). Nor did it overturn other aspects of human relations grounded in creation and nature.

Charles Hodge likewise affirmed this truth;

“It cannot be denied that there is a great difference in men in this respect. Some are morose, irritable, and unsocial in their dispositions, others are directly the reverse … They may be born with these distinctive traits of character, and such traits beyond doubt are in numerous cases innate and often hereditary … It is admitted that nations as well as tribes and families, have their distinctive characteristics, and that these characteristics are not only physical and mental, but also social and moral. Some tribes are treacherous and cruel. Some are mild and confiding. Some are addicted to gain, others to war. Some are sensual, some intellectual. We instinctively judge of each according to its character; we like or dislike, approve or disapprove, without asking ourselves any questions as to the origin of these distinguishing characteristics. And if we do raise that question, although we are forced to answer it by admitting that these dispositions are innate and hereditary, and that they are not self-acquired by the individual whose character they constitute, we nevertheless, and none the less, approve or condemn them according to their nature. This is instinctive and necessary, and therefore the correct, judgment of the mind …

The Irish people have always been remarkable for their fidelity; the English for honesty; the Germans for truthfulness. These national traits, as revealed in individuals, are not the effect of self-discipline. They are innate, hereditary dispositions, as obviously as the physical, mental, or emotional peculiarities by which one people is distinguished from another. And yet by the common judgment of men this fact in no degree detracts from the moral character of these dispositions.”

(Charles Hodge, Syst.Theo.Vol.2, pp.112-113)

” [The] differences between the Caucasian, Mongolian, and Negro races, which is known to have been as distinctly marked two or three thousand years before Christ as it is now. . . . [T]hese varieties of race are not the effect of the blind operation of physical causes, but by those cause as intelligently guided by God for the accomplishment of some wise purpose. . . . God fashions the different races of men in their peculiarities to suit them to the regions which they inhabit.”

Charles Hodge (1797-1878)
Systematic Theology, Volume 2, Chapter 1, Section 3 (1872–73)

More fundamentally in Ephesians 2, the church and nation are two different entities governed by Christ in different ways–with different laws and rules of citizenship.

R. Scott Clark and R2K are unwise people with little discernment. The historic Reformed Church while traditionally teaching forms of 2K have never taught R2K. This R2K theology is a completely innovative “Reformed” “Theology” coming to us from the chaos of the second half of the 2oth century.

Be careful who you listen to. Only simpletons and knaves listen to other simpletons and knaves.

The War Heats Up — McAtee Corrects R. Scott Clark #2


Quoting from Scott’s Libel against McAtee and Kinism piece;

Some are now also entertaining the heresy of Kinism, which is a feature of the darker corners of the Reconstructionist/theonomic/postmillennialist sub-cultures. The central tenets of Kinism, as given by one of its proponents are these:

Bret Responds,

Kinism a heresy?

“The ancient fathers… were concerned that the ties of kinship itself should not be loosened as generation succeeded generation, should not diverge too far, so that they finally ceased to be ties at all. And so for them it was a matter of religion to restore the bond of kinship by means of the marriage tie before kinship became too remote—to call kinship back, as it were, as it disappeared into the distance.”

Augustine – (A.D. 354 – 430)
City of God, book XV, Chpt. 16

“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].”

John Calvin
Sermon on 1 Corinthians 11:2-3

“Fourthly, mutual love serves the purpose of mutual refreshment. Animals of the same species frequently walk together and citizens of the same nation stay together when they are in a strange country.”

Wilhelmus a’Brakel

17th Century Dutch Kinist Theologian

” [The] differences between the Caucasian, Mongolian, and Negro races, which is known to have been as distinctly marked two or three thousand years before Christ as it is now. . . . [T]hese varieties of race are not the effect of the blind operation of physical causes, but by those cause as intelligently guided by God for the accomplishment of some wise purpose. . . . God fashions the different races of men in their peculiarities to suit them to the regions which they inhabit.”

Charles Hodge (1797-1878)
Systematic Theology, Volume 2, Chapter 1, Section 3 (1872–73)

“Brethren according to the Flesh.”

Romans 9:3

Paul had two classes of brethren; those who were with him the children of God in Christ; these he calls brethren in the Lord, Philip, i. 14, holy brethren, &c. The others were those who belonged to the family of Abraham. These he calls brethren after the flesh, that is, in virtue of natural descent from the same parent. Philemon he addresses as his brother, both in the flesh and in the Lord. The Bible recognizes the validity and rightness of all the constitutional principles and impulses of our nature. It therefore approves of parental and filial affection, and, as is plain from this and other passages, of peculiar love for the people of our own race and country.

Charles Hodge
Commentary Romans 9

Causes of Separation in 1973 (PCA separates from PCUS) 

  • The Racial Amalgamationist, who preaches that the various races should be merged into one race and differences erased in oneness.
  • The Communist, who would have one mass of humanity coerced into oneness by a totalitarian state and guided exclusively by Marxist philosophy.

    John Edwards Richards
    One of the founders of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).

    Look, I could go on with these quotes from the Reformed Fathers for dozens and dozens of pages. The snippet I have given above is enough to demonstrate the idea of Kinism and kinist like convictions completely eviscerates R. Scott Clark’s individual declaration that Kinism is heresy. One would think a Church historian would be more familiar with, well, er, uh … Church history.

    RSC next complains about a couple Kinist convictions listing them first;

    1. That sin is a universal deformity in human nature, and that no perfect society is possible this side of Heaven. That Christians should work to limit human error by seeking those conditions which are inherently productive of a harmony of interests, both in marriage and in society at large. That a harmony of interests naturally exists between people who are similar.

      Bret responds,

      Can there be any disagreement that a harmony of interests naturally exists between people who are similar? Dr. Clarence McCartney, co-worker with Dr. J. Gresham Machen, didn’t think so.

      “Love imagines that it can overleap the barriers of race and blood and religion, and in the enthusiasm and ecstasy of choice these obstacles appear insignificant. But the facts of experience are against such an idea. Mixed marriages are rarely happy. Observation and experiences demonstrate that the marriage of a Gentile and Jew, a Protestant and a Catholic, an American and a Foreigner has less chance of a happy result than a marriage where the man and woman are of the same race and religion….”

      Dr. Clarence MacCartney
      20th Century Presbyterian Minister

      Next RSC complains about this Kinist tenet;

    2. That the God of the Old Testament, who forbade interracial, interreligious marriages to His covenant nation, is the same as the God of the New Testament. That marriage between parties who are not naturally congenial is unequal yoking. That unequal yoking in marriage or in society at large is destructive of Christian harmony, association, and growth.

      And then RSC critiques,

By “congenial” the author means “of the same race” and the “yoking” to which he refers is marriage. This was previously known as segregationism. Anyone old enough to remember or able to read a history text knows who George Wallace, Orval Faubus, or Hendrik Verwoerd were and what they did.

Bret responds,

They could also possibly be educated enough to read a history text and so know who E. Earl Ellis was;

“Segregation has the potential to develop into a partnership of mutual respect … Southerners often wonder whether integrationists are as interested in good race relations as in forcing a particular kind of race relations. The unfortunate fact is that ardent Christian integrationists, however conscientious, are one cause of the worsening race relations in the South today. Their moral superiority complex, their caricature of the segregationist as an unchristian bigot and their pious confession of the sins of people in other sections of the country have not been wholly edifying.”

E. Earl Ellis
1957 Christianity Today Article

And maybe Scott has heard of Dr. F. H. Henry? Dr. Carl F. H. Henry wrote that civil rights legislation ending segregation would be morally problematic,

“Forced integration is as contrary to Christian principles as is forced segregation.  A voluntary segregation, even of believers, can well be a Christian procedure.”

Dr. F. H. Henry
1957 Christianity Today Article

And maybe Church Historian RSC has heard of Church Historian Phillip Schaff?

“Wherever the governmental idea holds the mercenary so completely in check and yields to the influence of Christian morality, it may be a wholesome training school for inferior races, as it is in fact with the African negroes, until they are capable to govern themselves.”

Phillip Schaff
Slavery and the Bible, p. 24

So, whether RSC likes it or not, what Kinists defend is not so much this strange thing called “Kinism” as it is a defense of Biblical Christianity and its impact on peoples and social orders as held universally by the Reformed Fathers prior to the middle of the 2oth century or so. If RSC wants the Reformed Church after 1950 he can have it. I’ll take the Reformed from 1518 forward.

RSC next writes,

This is not to suggest that all Christian Reconstructionists, theonomists, or postmillennialists are Kinists. That is not true. Indeed, Joseph Morecraft, a leading theonomic Reconstructionist, and postmillennialist, has publicly denounced Kinism. It is also true that outside of those sub-cultures, one is not very likely to encounter Kinism, however,  inside those sub-cultures, it is more common. I learned about the existence of Kinism while researching the doctrine and practice of Doug Wilson, who has engaged in dialogue over the years with Kinists. The Anti-Defamation League has a helpful who’s who of the Kinism movement….

Bret Responds,

I’m sure that RSC has heard of the Gordon H. Clark quote that “we don’t come to truth by counting noses.” That Morecraft or Wilson or any other who are counted among those reputed to be pillars within the Church have abandoned the Biblical Christianity of their fathers in an attempt to do what RSC is doing in his desire to deny nearly all of Church history on this score really shouldn’t surprise anyone. There is a long historical record of Christians seeking to trim their sail in order to fit into the zeitgeist.

Next, we would note the utter astonishment that RSC would go to the ADL, an organization known to oppose the advance of Biblical Christianity to critique Christians is almost as insane as a boy saying that he is a girl.

RSC next writes,

The first I remember seeing anything about Kinism was on the website Little Geneva, which published a 2003 correspondence between Harry Seabrook and Wilson on slavery, racism, and Kinism. The former was an advocate of Kinism, and the latter has criticized aspects of Kinism. He has also engaged another notorious advocate of Kinism, who was removed from the Christian Reformed Church in 2019 for teaching this heresy. (Here RSC links to a Lansing State Journal article that references the Church I serve.) Charlotte Greco writes in the Lansing State Journal that this minister was dismissed from the Christian Reformed Church in 2019 for impenitently teaching Kinism. The CRC became aware that he was teaching Kinism in 2016 and finally declared it heresy, at Synod, in 2019. Rod Dreher has recently documented other examples of Kinism in connection to certain so-called Christian Nationalists.

Bret responds,

1.) Only a man with the stature of Bret L. McAtee could serve as a bridge in order to bring Doug Wilson and R. Scott Clark together so that they can stand on common ground. Clark loathes Doug Wilson and yet I have brought them together in a common cause. Who says I am not a peacemaker?

2.) Clark is in error. I was NEVER removed from the Christian Reformed Church because,

a.) I was never in the Christian Reformed Church per their own standards

b.) Upon my request for release I was merely released from the Christian Reformed Church. This means I was NEVER disciplined by the Christian Reformed Church in ANY sense. A release means merely that a minister is released from the denomination.

Now, how one can be released if they were never part of the denomination is something you’ll have to ask the CRC. At the time I was told this was the way to go, so in order to get out that is the way I went, repeating all the time…”But I’m not in the CRC.”

Bottom line is I was NEVER removed if by removed one means I was disciplined by the Church. There was never any discipline in my case. Never any Church court trial. Never any pronouncement of guilt or innocence because I WAS NEVER TRIED.

Now that the CRC used me in order to try and cleanse itself and that the CRC wanted to give the impressions that they disciplined me there is no doubt.

But let it be said again and loudly… I WAS NEVER “REMOVED” FROM THE Christian Reformed Church.

NEVER NEVER NEVER

I was merely released from their ministry upon my request. They called that release a “dismissal.”

3.) No Church counsel has ever declared Kinism to be heresy, unless you count a neo-Marxist denomination a Church counsel. Besides, even if they did they would be merely declaring themselves to be heretics since Kinism is, prior to WW II, what the Church has believed in all times and in all places where the Church has been orthodox.

Now as it pertains to RSC’s claims about the Lansing State Journal;

1.) Does Scott always believe everything he reads in liberal fish wrap Newspapers?

2.) I was NOT dismissed for impenitently teaching kinism.

a.) Dismissed here deceptively implies disciplined. All it means is “released.”

b.) I was released (dismissed) because I requested a release from that bat skubala crazy heretical denomination.

c.) Even the Pastor who was assigned to be the head of the governing body that was supposed to be overseeing the Church I STILL serve argued passionately that I should be given a honorable release, but the Classis in its infinite heretical wisdom instead of giving me a honorable release gave me a dismissal release.

However, my release was per my request and not due to the Classis saying… “Hey, we need to discipline this guy.”

R. Scott Clark is desperately confused. Are we surprised given what we have seen already?
Am I going to have to finally sue somebody over all this? McDurmon a year or so ago cast the same libel.

RSC Writes next,

This issue was put before me in recent months as a couple of friends contacted me to ask about it or topics related to it. There is a self-published paperback volume that is being shared, in some small circles, devoted to attacking any sort of two kingdoms or (as I would rather say) twofold kingdom approach to Christ and culture and Christian ethics. Never mind that the phrase “twofold kingdom” is a direct translation of Calvin’s expression, duplex regimen.

Bret responds,

1.) The paperback volume in question that Scottie refers to is my paperback volume demolishing R2K. The title of my little book is, “Saved to be Warriors; Exposing the Errors of Radical Two Kingdom Theology.” You can buy it at Amazon. If my book is causing Scott this much heartburn you know you have to read it for yourself.

2.) It is a lie that my book was self-published. I wouldn’t know where to begin to publish my own book. My book was published by the Academically respected, and promising contender, “Pantocrator Press,” an imprint of World Bridge Publishing located in the Netherlands. The publisher is the world renown Reuben Alvarado.

3.) Scott lies when he says my book attacks all expressions of Two Kingdom theology. In point of fact in the second sentence in my Introduction to this book reads;

AND I QUOTE

“There is little argument here with historic Reformed 2K theology.”

Look, I’m trying to be not to over the top regarding RSC but one has to wonder if the man even knows how to read or failing that perhaps he has ZERO reading comprehension skills?

4.) The book may be running in “small circles” but the circle is obviously a circle that has enclosed Scott much like the flames of old encircled heretics at the stake.

We close with another expression of vanilla Reformed Kinist theology as before the rise of the neo-Marxist Civil Rights movement.

 

“If from this we may conclude that ethnic pluriformity is the revealed will of God for the human race in its present situation, it is highly questionable whether the Christian can have part in any program that would seek to erase all ethnic distinctions. That such distinctions may be crossed over by individuals may be granted, but it is at least questionable whether a program designed to wipe out such differences on a mass scale should be endorsed by the Christian. It is this line of argument that the average Christian segregationist uses to back his view. He fears that the real goal of the integrationist is the intermarriage of the races, and therefore the breakdown of the distinctions between them. Many who would be willing to integrate at various lesser levels refuse to do so, simply because they feel that such will inevitably lead to intermarriage of the races, which they consider to be morally wrong. . . .

The mass mixing of the races with the intent to erase racial boundaries he does consider to be wrong, and on the basis of this, he would oppose the mixing of the two races in this way. Let it be acknowledged that a sin in this area against the Negro race has been perpetrated by godless white men, both past and present, but this does not justify the adoption of a policy of mass mixing of the races. Rather, the Bible seems to teach that God has established and thus revealed his will for the human race now to be that of ethnic pluriformity, and thus any scheme of mass integration leading to mass mixing of the races is decidedly unscriptural.”

Dr. Morton H. Smith (1923-2017)
(For more see: Dr. Morton H. Smith on Christianity, Race, and Segregation)