Continuing the fisk the Humanist Manifesto III (Antioch Declaration). We start with a quote by John Calvin;
“I have had much conversation with many Jews—I have never seen either a drop of piety or a grain of truth or ingenuousness—nay, I have never found common sense in any Jew.”
— John Calvin (1509-1564)
Humanist Manifesto III (Antioch Declaration — hereinafter AD)
“We deny that scapegoating is a legitimate practice for Christians to participate in because God has already provided the final and perfect scapegoat in Christ Jesus who alone is the true sin-bearer.”
Paleocon
Agreed.
However, where is the proof that anybody is scapegoating… well, unless it is the scapegoating the Boomer-Cons are doing in making all these wild and veiled accusations.
Humanist Manifesto III (AD)
“We deny that our rejection of antisemitism requires us to ignore or minimize the destructive impact that various God-hating individual Jews have had in human history, just as our rejection of the hatred of Europeans and Anglo-Saxons does not require us to ignore the cultural devastation that many God-hating individual Gentiles have produced. Every ethnic people have members to be ashamed of, and every ethnic people have members to be grateful for.”
Paleocon
Y’all haven’t rejected antisemitism. You’ve redefined antisemitism to mean “somebody who commits the sin of noticing regarding the history of the Jews.” Also, what you have done is embraced philosemitism. Your refusal to talk in generalities proves that. If you can find one exception you suggest that proves folks who notice trends are anti semitic. For example if I say, “it is a problem that Jews, generally speaking, as a group, vote consistently for Democrats and that therefore means we have a problem,” you consider that observation anti semitic by trotting out the exceptions to that observation.
I will be glad to admit that the WASP is the one finally responsible for where we are. If we had not rebelled against Christ we would have never listened to the Bagels. So, the bad is on us before it is on the Bagels. But repentance means that we begin once again to be willing to commit the sin of noticing exactly what our Fathers noticed in all of Church history. This is something you are not willing to do and in not willing to do that you are pulling down the house of Christian civilization down around our ears.
Thanks ever so much.
Humanist Manifesto III (AD)
“We deny that Jews are in any way uniquely malevolent or sinful, that Judaism in its multifarious expressions is objectively more dangerous than other false religions, or that it represents an exceptional threat to Christianity and Christian peoples. By nature, the Jews are objects of wrath just like the rest of us, which is condemnation enough (Ps. 14:2-3), and are equally recipients of God’s grace (Rom.11:11-32).”
Paleocon
1.) Of course not everyone agrees with your interpretation of Romans 11. There is always the partial Preterist view of Romans 11.
2.)
“Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not. Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God. Then answered the Jews…”
— Jesus Christ
“…the Jews: who both killed the Lord Jesus, and their own prophets, and have persecuted us; and they please not God, and are contrary to all men: forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.”
— Paul the Apostle
“For they [the Jews] being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.”
— Paul the Apostle
“For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision: whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre’s sake.”
— Paul the Apostle
“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son. Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father.”
— John the Apostle
Finally you may not think the Bagels are any kind of extra existential threat to the Church or Christian civilization but please realize that is not the report of the Church throughout Church history.
Humanist Manifesto III (AD)
“We deny that world affairs are governed by conspiring Jews or that there is a global Jewish conspiracy to corrupt and destroy Western society.”
Palecon;
Have you ever considered the extraordinarily large percentage of Bagels who comprised the top echelons of the Soviet Union during the Bolshevik Revolution? This is especially interesting when we consider that Russia was 2-3% Bagel at the time. I suppose that was just a coincidence.
And what about this quote from Winston Churchill?
“This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia), Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxembourg (Germany), and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognizable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.”
Clearly at the time of his writing in the London newspaper, Old Winnie did not agree with you. Neither did Nesta Webster. Neither did Chrysostom, Calvin, Luther, Ambrose and countless others. I’ll stick with these guys and go right on thinking y’all are mentally unstable on this subject.
Humanist Manifesto III (AD)
“We affirm that the Jews are as all other men—alienated from God and in need of the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ. As a people they have nevertheless remained an object of God’s providential care. With the Puritans of old, We affirm that in God’s good time, multitudes of Jews will come to faith in Christ and be added to the true commonwealth of Israel, inheriting the same blessings as Gentile believers. Hence, the cancerous and counterproductive sin of antisemitism has no place among God’s people.”
Paleocon
1.) Christ made it abundantly clear in the NT that he was done with the Bagels as a people.nation in connection to the matter of redemption. He cursed the fig tree, which was representative of Israel, and said, “May you never produce fruit again.” In the parable of the barren fig tree Jesus spoke of cutting down the tree if it refused to produce fruit. It didn’t produce fruit and it was cut down.
Now, it may be the case that in God’s economy in the future individual Jews may well own Christ but the idea of a great rush of Jews coming into the Church was bad exegesis from the beginning and remains so. In AD 70 God gave Israel its divorce papers. Individual Jews may come to Christ. We pray that many do. But as a people/nation God is done with them. The Puritans were just in error here.
Now, that doesn’t mean that therefore we should take up anti-semitism. It merely means that we quit with this preoccupation with Israel. It and they are irrelevant to eschatology that has yet to unfold.
Humanist Manifesto III (AD)
“We deny that there is more than one message or way of salvation. Salvation is through Christ alone, by faith alone, and by grace alone for both Jew and Gentile, out of whom God has made one new people, removing the dividing wall of hostility (Eph 2.11-21).”
Paleocon
The dividing wall 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 expectations on his children. This arrangement grants Gentiles wide open access to enter the kingdom of God.
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 human sin. “Racism,” on the other hand, is the result of human sin and never is the result of what God commands. By applying Ephesians 2:14 to ethnic strife today you effectively turn God into a “racist.”
Third, did Christ remove by his death the various differences between cultures today? Not at all. Before Christ’s death, one culture may prefer beer. Another culture may prefer wine. After the death of Christ the first culture still likes beer and the second culture still likes wine. The death of Christ was not intended to move the needle on these types of cultural differences (except for the aspects of man’s culture that are sinful). Nor did it overturn other aspects of human relations grounded in creation and nature.
More fundamentally, the church and nation are two different entities governed by Christ in different ways–with different laws and rules of citizenship. Perhaps you should read Stephen Wolfe’s book and get these distinctions in your head rather than collapsing every institution into the church.
We affirm that God has ordained the existence of peoples and nations (Acts 17:26-28) and as such our cultural heritage is something to be grateful for so that, in view of God’s good gifts to our people, national pride, along with a healthy patriotism, are appropriate for Christians. At the same time, it is important to reject every form of identity politics, whether of the left or right—or whether the form it takes is malicious or vainglorious.