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.

Dr. Richard Gaffin On Eschatology … Rev. Bret McAtee on Dr. Richard Gaffin

“This period between Christ’s resurrection and return, the period of the church, is distinctively and essentially eschatological; it is, in fact, as we have see, a phase in the coming of the eschatological kingdom. That kingdom significance of the church is apparent by reading Mt. 16:18-19, in the light of the great commission (28:19-20); the keys of the kingdom are to the doors of the church.”

Richard Gaffin
In The Fullness of Time — p.80

On the whole I agree w/ this quote by Gaffin but there is something subtle here that is going on that I do not agree with in the least. You will note, if you read carefully, that what Dr. Gaffin is doing here is that he is compressing into one reality the idea of the church and the Kingdom making those ideas to be synonymous.

I do quite agree that the times we live in — the times between Christ’s ascension and His return — are indeed eschatological times. Indeed, it can be rightly said that we have been living in the last days since the Ascension of Christ and the last days of the last days since Christ’s AD 70 judgment return. We wait only now for the final day. However, all of our living now is eschatological. The kingdom has come and while the fullness of the Kingdom awaits we, who have been united to Christ already have the fullness of the Kingdom in principle as we have died with Christ, been resurrected with Christ and are seated in the heavenlies (ascended) with Christ. The “not-yetness” of the kingdom should not eclipse the already and nowness of the kingdom. Like Tolkien’s elves in his trilogy we Christians live in two worlds. We live now in the age to come and yet we still live in this present wicked age.

Returning to the idea of church and kingdom we would note that while the Church is part of the kingdom the church is not the whole kingdom. The kingdom is expansive. An argument might be made that the Church is to the Kingdom what the hearth fire is to the home or what the armoury is to a battle but the kingdom is far more expansive and broad than the church. When we limit the kingdom so that it is exactly synonymous with the Church what we do is cut off the leavening power of the Christian message from every other area of life.

This is the difference between postmillennialism and amillennialism. Amills typically want to limit the kingdom to the church while postmills see a dynamic relationship between kingdom and church but do not limit the kingdom to be 100% identified only with the church.

A Few Words On The Relationship Between Old Testament and New Testament

Whereas in the Old Covenant the progress of Redemption covers over a millennium and is concerned with the ongoing process that repeatedly points to the growing understanding of the Messiah and His work, the New Testament is not about process but is concerned with revealing that end point of the progress of Redemption.

It’s the difference between reading a novel in its beginning chapters and discovering and working through the inciting incident (Genesis 3), and the rising action (conflict between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman (Gen. 3 – Malachi), and the climax of the novel where all is resolved (Gospels). Yet, even in the New Testament there remains a progress of Redemption inasmuch as we read and see the movement of the incarnation and humiliation of Christ to the exaltation/ascension-session of Christ. Then from there the progress of Redemption continues with the growth of the body of the ascended Christ (Acts-Revelation).

The OT, thus has a different kind of progress of Redemption theology than the NT because it is process, while the NT progress of Redemption is end point or climax, though as we have seen the idea of redemptive progress is not completely absent from the New Testament. However, it is the progress of Redemption accomplished and applied as opposed to the progress of redemption anticipated.

And yet because the Scripture is written with a proleptic dynamic (the reality is in the anticipatory events) even the progress of Redemption retains a end point feel. Because the Gospel is part of one story that begins in Genesis and because all men throughout history have been saved by the same blood of Christ the Gospel climax that is most illuminated in the New Covenant is already present in the Old Covenant like the promissory spark that will eventually become a five alarm fire.

Top Down, Bottom Up, or Inside Out?

Is the Christianization of America more likely to happen from a Spirit-wrought revival of the populace that seems to arise from nowhere? Or from a Christian prince who seems to pop up from nowhere and uses political power to impose his views on the people? Or is some third option most likely?

Rev. Rich Lusk
Question Raised on X

Just to be clear from the outset here. While I do think that Rev. Lusk can be quite insightful from time to time on the whole, since he is one of the worst practitioners of what is now known as “Federal Vision,” I consider him at the very best heterodox and at very his very worse heretical.

However, he asks a good question here that has been bandied about a good bit by folks lately so I thought I would weigh in on the matter.

If we could reduce the question to its essence it amounts to this;

“Will Christian renewal/reformation be top down or bottom up?”

My answer to this question finds me ripping off from the black Marxist Van Jones who was Obama’s Green Jobs Czar at one time. Van Jones likes to talk about “change being top dow, bottom up and inside out.” And honestly, this is a maxim that has been pursued by Marxists for generations — often quite successfully. It’s also been pursued by Christians in history as well. In point of fact I would argue that it is a biblical principle.

So, my answer to Lusk’s query is that it must be all at the same time. At various times I suppose one will lead and the other follow but on the whole I look at history and I see all three happening whenever a nation pivots from its previous historical/theological/worldview antecedents.

I see it, for example, in a book I finished last month on the Spanish Civil War. Both the Nationalists and the “Republicans” were fighting for a renewal/reformation for their nation as understood as coming from their different beginning points. Both sought top down solutions. The Roman Catholic Nationalists had their Franco and others. The Republicans had their Francisco Largo Caballero and others. However, both parties also sought the support of a bottom up constituency and they both fought for hearts and minds (the inside out component).

If you want to go behind that to consider how Charlemagne would use the sword to convert tribes in his orbit of rule one sees again the top down approach being married to a bottom up approach. After these pagan tribes were “converted” Christian missionaries would then swarm over them to knead Christianity into the individual lives of those previously pagan but now, because of Charlemagne’s sword, Christian tribes.

If one reads their Old Testament Scriptures one finds that both Reformation and Deformation come and go with the coming and going of Righteous or Un-Righteous Kings leading the way. The OT Scriptures indeed seem to support more the idea that Reformation and Deformation come from a top down matrix.

Part of the problem behind people accepting that Reformation could come down in a force manner as being led by a Christian Prince is the fact that the American mind is so infected with the Democratic mindset. We want to insist that Reformation will only come as a bottom up “Spirit led” revival. Certainly, with God all things are possible, but consider that God marries means to ends and currently the means that would lead to an end of a “Spirit led” revival are not present. There is very little proclamation of the whole counsel of God in pulpits today in even putative conservative churches. The enemy has completely captured the places where the most intense catechism occurs; the Government schools and the Universities, as well the media industry (entertainment and “news”) as well as most of the Churches in the West today. Then there is the fact that the publishing houses are almost all captured territory as well as the gaming industry. In light of that could bottom up Spirit led revival still happen? Sure … because God is sovereign all things are possible. However, when we look at history, history suggests that a bottom up Spirit led revival is not going to happen apart from a movement that is also top down and inside out.

And most pietistic Christians don’t want to hear that. They would prefer to think that God always works His ends without means that He Himself has raised up. A Christian magistrate has often been the top down means God uses to prompt bottom up Spirit led revival.

Dawson & McAtee On The One & The Many & The Loss of Meaning

“The Western mind has turned away from the contemplation of the absolute and the eternal to the knowledge of the particular and the contingent. It has made man the measure of all things and has sought to emancipate human life from its dependence on the supernatural. Instead of the whole intellectual and social order being subordinated to spiritual principles, every practice has declared its independence, and we see politics, economics, science and art organizing themselves as autonomous kingdoms which owe no allegiance to any higher power.

And these tendencies were not confined to the secular side of life; they made themselves felt in religion also. Religion came to be regarded as one among a competing number of interests of life, which had no jurisdiction over the rest. And as it lost its universal authority, it lost it’s universal vision; it became sectionalized and rationalized with the rest of European life. The ancient unity of Christendom fell asunder into a mass of warring sects, which were so absorbed in their internecine feuds that they were hardly conscious of their loss of spiritual vision and social authority.”

Christopher Dawson
Christianity & The New Age – p. 59
Published 1931

1.) When Dawson notes that the Western mind is preoccupied with the particular and contingent over and against the universal and eternal he points out a huge problem. The Western mind preferring the particular and contingent over the universal and eternal is like someone stumbling upon a 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle scattered all over a house with no box top in order to know what the various pieces are supposed to construct. One cannot know particulars without knowing the universal. Neither can one know the universal without knowing the particulars. Only Christianity can answer this with its teaching of God being both One and Many (Trinitarian) so that the One and the Many condition one another (the doctrine of perichoresis). This idea of the One and Many is both eternal and temporal. Because God is eternally one and many the temporal order is likewise it be understood as one and many. However, if the God of the Bible is not presupposed then modern man has an epistemological problem as the temporal one and many (universals and particulars) have no way of coming into a proper relationship with one another. When the Western mind gave up, as Dawson notes, its dependence on knowing the particular and contingent by knowing the universal and eternal the Western mind gave up knowing. Now, it took time for that agnosticism of knowing to reach full bloom but philosophically the rise of Nihilism, Existentialism, Post-modernism, and post-post Modernism all have been expressions and outcomes of what Dawson was seeing already in 1931. Indeed, Existentialism was in its heyday in the 1930s.

2.) When Dawson notes that “politics, economics, science and art organizing themselves as autonomous kingdoms which owe no allegiance to any higher power,” we find the foundation of why our University system is no longer worthy of the name “University.” When began, the University (as the word indicates) insisted that there was a unity that could make sense of the diverse disciplines one could find at University. Modern man has abandoned the God of the Bible and His revelation as being that which gives unity to a diversity of knowledge. Because of that abandonment Western man has become schizoid man – he has no unity. Because there is no longer a unifying field of knowledge (i.e.- Theology) If one goes to modern Universities one will find the different departments at each other’s throats. For example the Mathematical department and the Science departments are at war with one another over the issue of whether biological evolution is even possible.

However, even in the Church realm there is strong advocacy that matters like politics, economics, science, and art should organize themselves as autonomous kingdoms which owe no allegiance to any higher power. Dooyeweerd’s school for example insists that none of the various disciplines are dependent upon the common discipline. Likewise, Radical Two Kingdom theology insists that disciplines like those mentioned (politics, economics, etc.) should not even ever be considered “Christian.” They are their own realities that are absent one organizing unitary principle that gives them a stable transcendent unity. Indeed, R2K goes so far as to say that because there is no unitary principle that brings all disciplines under the God of the Bible’s authority that Christian ministers are wrong (in sin) to speak a “thus saith the Lord” in the realms of politics, economics, science, art, education, etc.

3.) In the mad rush to disenchant the world the results has been there is no longer any sacred authority to speak to all of life and all the parts of life. What the “conservative” “Christian” “faith” of the first part of the 21st century has done is to have emptied the world of God’s authority, and having emptied the world of God’s authority the world has become disenchanted and completely desacralized. By insisting that the Church alone is the realm of the sacred and the enchanted the modern Christian Church has created schizoid man — a man divided against himself. Dualistic man. Instead of speaking of the Church as the “holy of holies,” with everything else outside of the Church finding itself “holy” in light of the Church faithfully holding forth the Word of God over every area of life the Church now insists that it alone is Holy (sacred — realm of grace) while everything else is non-holy (unclean).

Of course, as the saying goes, nature hates a vacuum. Consequently, where the Church has abdicated its role in providing a unitary field of truth, other contestants have sought to provide that role. If the Church will not provide a unitary field of truth based on the theology that overflow from God’s Revelation then sex or science or meaninglessness, or currently, the push towards Artificial Intelligence and Transhumanist constructs, will seek to provide that unitary field of truth. Christians retreating from the idea that Christian theology is the Queen of the Sciences will find that other ugly bitch Queens will arise to steal the sceptre and rule in a vile way.

All of this explains why we are seeing such a departure from the conservative Church. The conservative Church has no answers for modern man. It is completely irrelevant and to be honest I don’t know who I feel more sorry for … for those who don’t attend or for those who do attend.

Machen Was Right In 1935…. And He is Even More Right Today

“America has been no exception to this decadence (experienced by Europe since the end of WW I). Liberty is being threatened and, there is coming before us in the near future, the specter of the hopeless treadmill of a collectivist state.

Certainly when we take the world as a whole, we are obliged to see that the foundations of liberty and honesty are being destroyed, and the slow achievements of centuries are being thrown recklessly away.

In such a time of kaleidoscopic changes, is there anything that remains unchanged? When so many things have proved to be untrustworthy, is there anything that we can trust?

One point is at least clear – we cannot trust the Church. The visible Church, the church as it now actually exists upon this earth has fallen too often into error and sin.”

J. Gresham Machen
The Christian View Of Man
Published 1936

Matters were very bad in Machen’s time. However 90 years later the fruit of the theology that Machen was witnessing is now being harvested by the tractor-trailer loads. Most of us would rightly think that it would be an incredible blessing to only have to deal with the error and sin that Machen was dealing with in 1936. Yet, Machen was not in error here. He lived to see the beginning rot and of understanding where it was going. Because he had that kind of prophetic insight to understand “ideas have consequences” he was hated like very few men of his time. Such is a prophet’s reward.

Machen’s observation remains sadly true. We cannot trust the visible Church… especially those church denominations that were once touted as “conservative.” Conservative denominations no longer exist. There may be conservative… (better to say Dissident) Christian congregations exist but denominationally there is nowhere to place one’s trust.

Machen though, was not only right about the Church of his era he was correct about the collectivist government that was descending upon Americans. He lived through the Wilson administration and while most Americans don’t know their history, the Wilson administration was a time of the great restraining of liberty in the US. Things had been relaxed somewhat in the intervening 17 years between the end of the Wilson administration and the time of Machen’s writing this but there is no doubt he could begin to see what was bubbling up around him. FDR had come to power and had introduced the alphabet soup legislation which was all about ushering in a collectivist state. Machen was no fool. He could read the times. Others writing about the same time, such as Christopher Dawson, were saying similar things to what Machen is saying here.

The world changed during these men’s lifetime. World War I had ended old Christendom and they were insightful enough to know that massive change had settled upon them.

We now live in the continued stream of that change. We have gone, since the time of Machen, from Revolution to Revolution as pursued incrementally. Because we live in that incremental Revolutionary change most people don’t notice it. Some do and some see that the foundations were long ago destroyed. The message today is not “the end is coming.” The message today is, “the end has come and we have to reverse and rebuild.”

And as Machen notes above… the Church will be that Institution that will provide the most opposition to re-fashioning a new Christendom. It already is proving that all the time.