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.

Turretin On Responsibility Of Magistrate To Religion and Church II

From pages 327-336 Turretin deals with heretics and especially the Servetus affair. It is a necessity to read the whole passage to guarantee all the nuances and qualifications are thought through but for the sake of time here is a sample:

XLIV. “Third proposition. “We think that incurable factious and blasphemous arch-heretics, not ceasing to scatter their poison, against interdicts often and repeated and a pledge given, disturbing both the state and church, can be punished with death.” Yet that this is not resorted to unless all other mild means have been tried without avail to cure them and restore them to a better mind. For when it is evident that such remedies not only do not cure the evil, but rather exasperate and increase it, then at length (although sorrowfully) the magistrate compelled by the necessity of his office will direct his attention to it.; like physicians, who are wont to employ extreme remedies for desperate and extreme maladies that what cannot be corrected and cured may be stopped by the knife and cautery so that the healthy parts may not be affected…

XLV. The reasons why we so determine are various, indicated already by us in Section 32 and the following, to which we add the atrociousness of the crime. for if punishment ought to increase with the greatness of the crime, no one can doubt that the blasphemy and impiety by which the majesty of God is directly assailed, is the greatest of all crimes and one which on that account ought to be visited with the greatest punishment; especially if an obstinate and pertinacious contempt of political and ecclesiastical order is joined with it as also perjury and an insane fury for corrupting others with the same poison. Such monsters of men ought to be regarded as public pests and cancers, as disturbers of the church and state whom it is of the highest importance to remove, whether to vindicate the glory of the offended supreme majesty or to conserve human society.”

Francis Turretin,
Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Vol.III 332-333

Note that Turretin views society or culture as a host that can be infected by parasites. Turretin understands that if the Host society is brought down by parasite theology in the larger culture that will lead to both church and society being brought down. This was the danger of Severtus. A little Severtus leaven would leaven the whole Geneva society loaf. You cannot cordon the Church from the culture or larger society. If the people of the church are operating in a Severtus created culture they will bring that Severtus created culture back into the Church and recreate the Church in the image of the culture.

Turretin On Responsibility Of Magistrate To Religion and Church

XI. “Although Christ did not commit his church to Tiberius, but to Peter, still he did not exclude princes from the care of religion (he called them nursing fathers); nor did he who said “Kiss the Son” repel kings as such. The ministry of the word is committed to pastors; but the care of the state no less to the magistrate; in which state if the church exists, why should not the pious magistrate as such both afford entertainment to the church and keep off the wolves, who in the name of pastors lay waste the flock? Otherwise, by the same argument, I shall have denied that the defense of religion belongs to the magistrate because he gave no commands about religion to Tiberius.”

Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Vol.III, — 319

Note in the last sentence, in the quote above, Turretin attempts an reductio ad absurdum. When he wrote that sentence the reductio was effective. Today that reductio is an argument that is actually being put forth with a straight face.

XIV.”Affirmatively there are many things which belong to the magistrate in reference to sacred things.

(1) He ought to establish the sacred doctrine and the pure worship of God in the state according to the prescription of the divine word; faithfully to conserve it when established or even to restore and reform it when declining, as is evident from the passages already quoted concerning Asa, Jehoshaphat, Josiah, Joash, Hezekiah. Hence the design of pious princes and Christian magistrates must be praised, according to which they lent a helping hand to the Reformation (which was in vain expected from the Roman court) and used all their endeavors to cherish and sustain it.

(2) He ought to protect the church according to his ability, to restrain heretics and disturbers of ecclesiastical peace, to promote the glory of God, to defend and propagate the true religion and to hinder the confusion of religions.”

(3)-(6) my fingers are getting tired…there are more good things he says – BLM

XV. “Ecclesiastical power is either internal, direct and formal, occupied with the administration and exercise of sacred things (such as the preaching of the word, the administration of the sacraments and the dispensation of the keys); or extrinsic, indirect and only objective (such as concerned with sacred things, as to procurement and disposition, that all things be done decently and in order in the house of God). The first belongs to pastors alone, to whom he has committed his church and given the keys of the kingdom of heaven; the latter belongs to Christian magistrates and princes, inasmuch as they ought to be the guardians of both tables; as in a well-regulated family the father disposes and arranges all things, the execution and performance of which belongs to the domestics.”

Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Vol.III, — 320-321

Effectual Calling and The Theater

“The great impact (of the theater)is neither the persuasion of the intellect not a beguiling of the senses…. It is the enveloping movement of the whole drama on the soul of man. We surrender and are changed. Or at least we are when the magic works. Yet the ‘magic’ in the case of effectual calling is always the result of the wisdom of the playwright (Father), the content of the drama itself (Son), and — something that cannot be duplicated by any theater company of creatures — the charisma of the casting director (Spirit), who makes sure that the Word never returns empty, without having accomplished everything for which it was sent.”

Dr. Michael S. Horton
Covenant and Salvation — pg. 225

In the italicized portion Horton is quoting Clifford Geertz’s,
“Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, — pg. 27-28

Braveheart and 2042

“The trouble with Scotland is that it’s full of Scots….If we can’t get them out, we’ll breed them out.”

English King Edward I (Longshanks)
Dialog From The Film Braveheart

Part of the theme of Braveheart was the will of the Scottish people to retain their own unique ethnic identity over against the attempt by the English to destroy Scottish culture and ethnicity. This is a theme that is likewise picked up in the film “Rob Roy.” I’ll venture to guess that when most people viewed these films they were outraged by the attempt of the English to squash Scottish identity, ethnicity and culture as it was depicted in the film.

The attempted destruction of a set people and culture may raise the ire of movie goers but it seemingly barely raises the blood pressure of Americans as life imitates art in America. This week Americans were given a view of our end as a unique culture and people. News outlets reported that,

White people will no longer make up a majority of Americans by 2042, according to new government projections. That’s eight years sooner than previous estimates, made in 2004.

By 2050, whites will make up 46 percent of the population and blacks will make up 15 percent, a relatively small increase from today. Hispanics, who make up about 15 percent of the population today, will account for 30 percent in 2050, according to the new projections.

Asians, which make up about 5 percent of the population, are projected to increase to 9 percent by 2050.

People need to realize that this diminution of white people in the West is not some kind of freak accident. Indeed, it is not not anymore accidental then the plan of Longshanks in Braveheart to destroy the Scots. Ever since the Teddy Kennedy inspired immigration bill in the 1960’s there has been a concerted effort to destroy white ethnicity in America and the culture that is attendant with it.

This attempted destruction has not only been pursued through immigration policies but also it has been pursued through the government schools which have inculcated a mindset, through its educational and curriculum dominance, that embraces both cultural-cide and ethnocide. This idea has now likewise been picked up in Churches which have embraced the multi-cultural assumptions that are driving the elimination of the ethnic makeup that has made and makes the West, the West. The Church has taken it all one step further by wrapping the multi-cultural agenda in Christian jargon.

This drive towards the death of the West that we are heading for serves the agenda of globalist who are intent of building a uni-culture that reduces and flattens out all cultural, ethnic, religious and racial distinctiveness. What is coming in the West with the reduction of its historic majority population will either be a new mongrel ethnicity that results from the combination of intermarriage, or more likely what will occur is a balkanization where different people groups will cordon themselves into regional and demographic pockets with the peace being kept between disparate people groups by a strong centralized government.

It’s an odd thing that many Christians can watch Braveheart and cheer like wild when the Scots defeat the English attempt to crush their ethnicity and culture, and yet they get all contemptuous when some Americans desire to keep their ethnic and cultural identity accusing them of silly things like racism. Similarly, people would have understood that any ending of Braveheart where the Scots lose their ethnic, cultural and national identity would have been unsatisfactory but yet they have no problem with the prospect of America losing its ethnic, cultural and national identity.

The trouble with America is that it is full of Americans. If we can’t get them out we’ll breed them out.

Meandedring Thougts On Regeneration

When the US military took action in Iraq there were different ways of reporting it depending on where you were sitting. If you supported the US action you saw the Iraqi people in bondage to Saddam Hussein and so spoke about the action of the US military as one of liberating Iraq. No doubt there were others who spoke about that same action of the US military as one invading Iraq. The way the nomenclature is crafted reveals ones position on the action.

Something similar happens in discussions on regeneration. The Reformed will look at what God does in regeneration and they see a will in bondage and the action of God as liberating the will. Others see the Reformed doctrine of the Father speaking the Son as an illocutionary act with the Spirit accomplishing perlocutionary comprehension in the listener as an invasion.

How one sees regeneration, whether as invasion where God violently coerces the person or whether as liberation where God releases the person from brutally coercive and oppressive forces will depend on their worldview. Those who see regeneration as God’s violent act are those who see God’s regenerating work just as Muslims sympathetic to Saddam Hussein saw US military operations in Iraq. Those who see regeneration as God’s liberating work are those who see God’s work just as Frenchman saw the Allies arrival in 1944 in Paris.

Now we drop into the equation that those whose wills are in bondage and so are being brutally coerced are people who love their bondage, and insist that bondage is freedom. The effectiveness of their enslaved wills is seen in how they love their chains. Arminians then insist that these people who love their bondage and call slavery freedom should renounce, quite apart from God’s regenerative illocutionary Word and perlocutionary act, their spiritual captivity, and further Arminians agrees with those in captivity that God’s locutionary liberating speech act is an invasion. So on one hand Arminians agree that people in bondage need to be liberated but on the other hand they squeal when Reformed people insist that the Spirit of Christ is the sui generis liberator.

Next the question arises as to how it is that people in bondage are held responsible for the slavery that they can’t help but want. The answer to this question is that they are held responsible because they freely will out of their bonded will to call their bondage freedom all the while retaining the natural faculties to choose to the contrary even if they don’t retain the moral faculties to choose to the contrary. The fall and their shared identity in Adam hasn’t delimited any of their natural capacity or physical ability to choose God. This is why they are held culpable for their God hating leanings. We must understand that because the natural power remains intact in those who bear the image of God that they are rightly held responsible for using that natural power in defiance against their better knowledge.

However natural ability still has to reckon with moral inability. Though the natural and physical functions remain whole they are only as good as the moral dispositions that govern them. Those moral dispositions are given over to an agenda that seeks to dethrone God in favor of the self, all the while insisting that God has done them wrong by denying them full throated autonomy. In this state and condition man will use his natural faculties to attack God’s Godness at every turn and hence he is responsible. He can only recognize this bondage and be rescued from it by being liberated. Indeed, the first glimmerings of being liberated is recognizing the bondage for what it is. Before God can be seen to be anything but a repulsive and cruel enemy the human will must be set free, the heart of stone must be vivified to flesh, and the person must be brought out of their wastrel wanderings to the safety of covenant and the peace of home.