Apologetics – Iron Ink

Commenting on DeYoung’s Solo Foodfight Against Pope Doug

Over here;

https://clearlyreformed.org/on-culture-war-doug-wilson-and-the-moscow-mood/?fbclid=IwAR1-mGWEoz3uofTIeXG1iAu8Xqw_z1GAHxQqq_8FvZ7Rr_LYvbcWFu96t14

The Dr. Rev. Kevin DeYoung published one heck of a strange column, the explanation of which can only be that Doug Wilson is increasingly being seen as a threat to established Presbyterianism. I offer that because the minute this piece by DeYoung was hot off the press our favorite academic Presbyterian dunce (Dr. R. Scott Clark) immediately linked it and praised it to the hilt. Of course, Scott also, back in the day, similarly praised to the hilt Tullian Tchividjian. All that to say that Scott’s track record for picking winners isn’t exactly praiseworthy.

Now those who know me and/or follow Iron Ink know that I am no friend to Pope Doug. So, this ends up being a case of “a pox upon both your houses.” Still, the criticisms of DeYoung are so cringe worthy that something has to be said. I guess that in this column I am pulling a Winston Churchill who once said that “if Hitler ever attacked Hell, he put in a good word for the Devil.”

I honestly don’t understand what DeYoung is seeking to accomplish with this piece. Nobody who reads this who already hates Wilson needs to read it, and those who love Wilson will only love him more as a result of the whining that Kevin DeYoung does here.

Below find some quotes from DeYoung followed by some of my observations.

“The most important fight is the fight for faith, not the fight for Christendom. The Christian life must be shaped by the theology of the cross, however much we might prefer an ever-present theology of glory. ”

Kevin DeYoung

1.) This is straight up R2K speak.

2.) So we want to fight for a faith that is dis-attached from the Christendom that is its natural impulse and consequence? This is like saying we want to fight for sex in marriage, not fight for pregnancy in marriage.

3.) This reference to a “theology of the Cross,” is what you hear from the Protestant Clergy who have forgotten that following the Cross was the Resurrection and the Ascension and the ruling at the right hand of the father. These chaps like DeYoung love them the crucifix. One wonders if, in their world, Jesus ever gets off that cross to ascend to the throne at the Right hand of the Father?

“We could do with fewer witticisms front and center, and more conspicuous delighting in the sweetness of fellowship with Christ and exulting in the love of God our Savior.”

Kevin DeYoung

This used to be called Pietism. Now we call it “Karen-ism.” (And no that isn’t a diss at white women alone. For Pete’s sake Karen’s come in all colors, shapes, and sizes.) It is sentimental hooey… God is my girlfriend stuff. It is not the way soldiers love their great Captains. It’s the way that women think about their beaus.

“I’m all for cultural engagement, even for some culture warring rightly understood.”

Kevin DeYoung

The only culture warring that DeYoung is interested in is culture warring against those who culture war.

Clergy like DeYoung and Wilson remind me why I hate admitting to being clergy. Who wants to be associated with these nekulturny? It would be like a Bagel admitting, while visiting the ghettos, that he worked for the Reich ministry of Propaganda as Goebbels’s chief Lieutenant.

Watching DeYoung assail Wilson is like back when you were in High School and you would occasionally see the Special Ed. kid get in a fight in the hallway. You knew he meant to really bring it, but you also knew that he was at a disadvantage from jump.

“For the mood that attracts people to Moscow is too often incompatible w/ Christian virtue, inconsiderate of other Christians, & ultimately inconsistent w/ stated aims of Wilson’s Christendom project”

Kevin DeYoung

Snort …. if DeYoung only knew that Moscow was merely the blunt side of the sword. The side we use when we want to slice bread or spank the toddlers.

“The naughty part is that Wilson uses the words “wussy” and “wuss”—adolescent slang for someone weak and effeminate. These are words most Christian parents don’t allow their kids to use, since the terms probably originated as a combination of “wimp” and another word I won’t mention.”

Kevin DeYoung

Article Criticizing Pope Doug

LOL… of all the things that Pope Doug could be justly criticized for, DeYoung chose to go after Wilson for saying “wuss” and “wussy?” I mean DeYoung could have gone after Doug’s constant trimming and equivocating, or he could have slapped Wilson upside the head for his constant usage of false dichotomy, or he could have questioned Wilson’s thinking that marriage can cure pedophilia. There are tons of things that DeYoung could have gone after Wilson for but what we get is that Kevin can’t abide Dougie’s use of a marginally and barely naughty word? It’s like a child seeing little Johnny flash someone on the playground but tattling to the teacher that Johnny cut in line.

This is why many men no longer take conservative Presbyterian clergy seriously. Personally, I never let my son go outdoors to play if he DIDN’T promise to use words like that when necessary. Personally, I never knew any Christian parents who didn’t allow their sons to use “language like that,” and if I did know any Christian parents like that, they sure didn’t want to know me.

Yeah… it’s true… Kevin DeYoung is a WUSSY.

Rev. Dr. Kevin DeYoung explains perfectly that old French proverb;

There are three sexes,

1.) Male
2.) Female
3.) Clergy

At the end of the day my complaint about Wilson is he is not enough of the things that DeYoung accuses him off. I think that Wilson is not really serious and if he is serious he has seriously underestimated what it will take to restore Christian Western civilization. In other words, Wilson takes half measures. Wilson sustained this accusation when in replying to an accusation against him that he was trying to be Rushdoony 2.0 he quipped, “And here I was trying to merely be Rushdoony 0.5.” The fact that Doug is trying to cut the potency of Rushdoony in half communicates that Doug is moving away from Rushdoony to what Doug views is a safer place. That reality shows in many of Doug’s position, from his reluctance to advocate for the death penalty for sodomites, to his reluctance to insist that sabbath laws should be implemented across the whole social order Doug wants to turn back the hands of time to when we had a peaceable classically liberal social order. However we have, in America, long passed that exit and we won’t be going back to any classical liberal social order since such a social order given our demographic composition today will not allow for the exclusivity of Jesus Christ as the unique King of the social order. Our classical liberal social order could work for as long as it did because of two reasons,

1.) Here in the states we were overwhelmingly White. The European cousins had made flight to America and intermarried and yet remained 87% white.

2.) Here in the states we were overwhelmingly Christian of one flavor or another. Those who weren’t Christian had to conform. (Think US vs. Reynolds where the Mormons were told polygamy would not be allowed.)

A classically liberal social order can not work where there no longer exists a shared demographic and a shared religion wherein harmony of interest can be shared among the populace.

Neither Wilson nor DeYoung are going to help us return to a social order that refuses classical liberalism.

Owen & Bret Chit Chat About The Possibility of Christian Nations

“Nations can’t become Christian.

Nations can be profoundly influenced by Christianity, but only people — sinners — can become Christian. This is why you shouldn’t try to coerce faith, nor force people to convert. You’ll only do damage to the gospel cause if you try.”

Dr. Owen ‘Strychnine’ Strachan

1.) If Nations can’t be Christian then neither can families be Christian. This presupposes that God only works individually and not corporately or covenantally. This is exactly the kind of “logic” one should expect a Baptist to use.

2.) All Government arrangements seek to coerce faith. In as much as all enacted legislation (law) is the residual expression of religion, any time a Government passes law it is seeking to coerce faith. Why shouldn’t Christian governments seek to coerce faith in the manner of passing Godly legislation?

3.) While people can never be forced to convert in the sense of subjectively embracing for themselves ownership of Christ, people can and should, in an objective sense be forced to convert so as to be forced to follow the strictures of a Christian social order.

4.) Such “forced conversion” would be good for any Christian nation. Forcing Christ-hating people to objectively convert and so walk in righteous laws, even if they don’t want to, is a good thing that is Christ honoring. Keep in mind that the opposite of this kind of “forced conversion” is a libertarian licentiousness where each man does what is right in his own unconverted eyes.

Dr. Joe Boot Joins The Stupid Brigade … McAtee Defends Wolfe

The confusion on the relationship between man as both a spiritual being and a corporeal being continues to flex its muscle among those reputed to be pillars in the Church. If this confusion were a disease the fatalities among the inhabitants of the Evangelical/Reformed/Lutheran Church would be so catastrophic that people would be thinking the church would never recover from this pandemic.

The most recent example of someone showing all the symptoms of diapslama-ia is Dr Joe Boot. I find this most disappointing since I’ve profited by the writings and speaking of Boot. I’ve read many of the man’s works and though I’ve had a quibble here or there, (like being too influenced by the Amsterdam philosophy school) on the whole I have recommended his writings.

Now I will have to explain to people, to whom I recommending reading Boot, that he is not trustworthy on the issue of the man as a dichotomous being.

Before we get to the Boot quote, allow me to interject that I am no apologist for Dr. Stephen Wolfe. I offer that because the Boot quote comes as lodging a complaint against Wolfe. My problem with Wolfe is his reliance on Natural Law theory. However, this complaint by Boot as little to do with that aspect of Wolfe’s thinking.

So, here is the monstrously stupid quote from Dr. Joe Boot;

“Wolfe seems oblivious to the fact that, had his course of making a given country the absolute cultural possession of its people – simultaneously absolutizing a ‘natural right’ of ethnic and cultural particularity – been taken seriously by missionaries to the Anglo-Saxon world, none of us would be Christians today, but would still be drinking the blood of the dead! Nor would William Carey, the remarkable British missionary to India, have worked against his host culture to abolish the heinous custom of Sati (burning the living wife on the funeral pyre of her dead husband). In his enthusiasm to preserve the remnants of the Anglo-European Christian culture of America, Wolfe fails to grasp its religious, not ethnic root (incredible in itself, since America is a new nation of immigrants) and cuts a re-paganizing America off from the possibility of godly transformation by incoming Christian missionaries from around the world calling the nation to repentance.”

Joseph Boot
“Christianity Versus Racism”

1.) Boot’s accusation here, boiled down to its essence, is that Wolfe is a ethno-cultural particularist to such a degree that Wolfe is saying that if we really took seriously the necessity of every people to have its own cultural particularity then we would not take up the Great Commission in order to herald Christ to heathen anti-Christ cultures for fear of changing their cultural particularity.

The problems with that assertion by Boot against Wolfe are;

A.) Nowhere, have I read Wolfe propose any such nonsense.

B.) The accusation that Wolfe would not be interested in Missions endeavors in no way follows the idea that Wolfe favors cultural particularity for people of a particular country, who are the absolute possessors of its culture. It does not follow because when the Gospel works to redeem Christ-haters from their empty way of life as handed down to them from their ancestors it does not mean they lose their cultural particularity. What redeemed cultures lose, is the sinfulness that characterized their culture. Boot seems to forget that grace restores nature and the nature that grace restores is what makes for the particularity of any given people. Now, to be sure, there will be changes in those cultures but those changes that come from being redeemed will not eliminate the particularity of any given people. Wolfe can hold to cultural particularity of any given people and still believe in the necessity of the Great Commission, knowing that a redeemed people and so culture will still be unique vis-a-vis other redeemed people’s and cultures.

2.) Basically, Joe Boot is arguing that to believe ethno-cultural preservation and separation precludes receiving the Gospel and repenting as corporate national salvation would require giving up the sinful expressions of an ethnicity’s identity. Boot is saying that Wolfe so favors nature that Wolfe’s position requires the refusal of grace to restore nature.

So, this accusation despite 2000 years of Church history that teaches that the Gospel changes people, peoples, and cultures while still leaving them a particularly ethnic people. Does Boot think that if different people groups become Christian therefore all cultures lose their particularity and so are going to be the same across the board?

As my British friend Henry Plantagenet said in a conversation concerning this monstrously stupid Boot quote;

“It’s as insane as saying that if we believe gender is fundamental to being human that we are precluding the Gospel from redeeming men and women because to do so would change the particularity of their gendered expression.”

3.) Joe Boot’s presupposition here is that to believe that blood relations have inherent and defining characteristics upon the nature of man, as Wolfe and all sane people do, is to reject the spiritual power of the Gospel. Boot is accusing Wolfe of absolutizing the corporeal side of man so that it would be impossible to own spiritual impact. As such, Boot is accusing Wolfe of being a materialist in this accusation, which I find interesting because it is the kind of accusation one might expect to find a Gnostic make against someone who claims that man’s material (genetic) side is really real. Is Boot laced with Gnosticism?

4.) Boot’s accusation that Wolfe prioritizes a people’s ethnic over religious root is insane. Indeed, some of us have been saying that Wolfe prioritizes man’s religious root over his ethnic roots. Wolfe has gone out of his way to insist that his theory of “Nationalism” does not absolutize, nor even necessarily prioritize ethnicity/race.

5.) We need to realize here that culture is merely the outward manifestation of a people groups belief. Culture is theology poured over ethnicity as existing in a particular place. Given that definition of culture (theology made manifest) when Boot accuses of Wolfe of what Boot accuses him of, Boot is saying that Wolfe is not interested in seeing a people’s theology changed to be Christ honoring. This is a serious accusation to make against a fellow Christian. Does Boot really believe that Wolfe desires for the unconverted to remain unconverted?

6.) Boot raises the old canard, that just isn’t true, that America was a nation of immigrants as if it never had a ethno-racial base, but was solely founded on ideas (propositional nationhood). I have demonstrated so often here, with quotes from the founding fathers, that the founders would have said that Joe Boot was full of fertilizer when he insists that we are a nation which has not ethno-racial base. If anyone happens to be reading this and wants me to reproduce the quotes once again, I’ll be happy to do that.

Let’s here from Henry Plantagenet again;

“I don’t get why everyone today fails to recognize that the redemptive order is simply the original Creation order cleansed from the power of sin.”

So, unless Boot repents, count him as just another platformed Reformed scholar who is stupid when it comes to the issue of basic Christian anthropology.

Vox Day, Vox McAtee

Over here;

MAILVOX: In Defense of Doug Wilson

Vox Day answers a letter defending Rev. Doug Wilson. It is a magnificent response. Still, despite that I can’t help but wanting to have my own go at this letter defending the Pope of Moscow.

Doug’s Defender (DD) writes to Vox Day,

Firstly, I acknowledge your critiques of Doug, and recognise that he has some enormous Boomer tendencies.

McAtee responds,

Is this like acknowledging that FDR was a cripple? I mean, Captain Obvious much?

DD writes,

But.

He has a growing appeal to disaffected young evangelical men (of whom I belonged).

McAtee responds,

Nobody can disagree with that sentence above. However, Doug should be to disaffected young evangelical men what marijuana was to druggies in the day, and that is only a gateway drug to the real narcotics. Doug is the wine cooler that opens the way someday to Tennessee Sipping Whiskey. If one doesn’t move beyond Doug, one remains stunted in their Christianity.

DD writes,

He spearheaded an enormous push towards Classical Christian schooling, founded on Western Civilisation (including the Greco-Roman underpinnings).

McAtee Responds,

Not to be too technical, but you do realize, don’t you, that the Greco-Romans were pagans? Classical Education has some real merit but unless it is reinterpreted through a Biblical Grid all it produces is pagans who now how to argue. I’ve seen my share of graduates from the Moscow Greystoke Manor who embody my observation.

DD writes,

It’s a huge movement, that is reintroducing the youth to the Good, Beautiful, and True.

McAtee responds,

If that is true, than certainly enough, these youths will see that Wilson and the CREC is still not that for which they are looking. If these youths are getting a taste of the good, the true, and the beautiful than soon enough they will push on from the holding tank that is not quite the good, the true, and the beautiful that is the CREC.

Imagine if you will a large room of painting canvases all set next to one another. The very first painting canvas is covered with a very watery red. The very last painting canvas is covered with a bold fire-engine red. All the canvases between the first one and the last one are canvases that each are a little more red then the previous one but a little less red then the next one in the series. Pope Doug and the CREC represents the entry level red canvas. It has introduced you to the idea of “red.” However, if you are really captivated by Red you will push on from the entry level red and eventually you’ll look back at the entry level red and see that it really isn’t that red at all.

DD writes,

They have cleaned up church liturgy, and recaptured theological maximalism, with many offshoot ministries pushing phrases like ‘Rebuilding the New Christendom.’

McAtee responds,

Cleaned up church liturgy and taken us back, in many cases, to a liturgy that goes back to smells and bells. Further, your CREC has taken up the cursed cause of Ecclesiocentrism and the fact that you may not even know what that word means, means that you have miles to go before you sleep.

And in terms of Wilson’s vision of “Rebuilding the New Christendom,” let me just say that if Wilson is successful in doing so, then I’ll be praying that the New, New Christendom will soon come to replace Wilson’s version because Wilson’s “New Christendom,” looks an awful lot like the old Liberalism of 1950. Tell me, please, how is Wilson going to build a New Christendom while holding on to the idea of “principled pluralism?”

DD writes,

This is all important foundational work to waking up Christians. It has led to me creating a homeschool co-op teaching the Classical method, and we are exposing our children to the glorious things that the Christian West has to offer.

McAtee responds,

And now someone has to come along and shore up the cracks on Wilson’s foundational work. I promise you there is something much larger than a pea under all those mattresses.

If you want your children exposed to the glorious things of the Christian West make sure you teach them about Lepanto, the Crusades, Jon Sobieski, Jan Valjean, etc.

DD writes,

Ministries like G3 ministries are on the warpath against ‘kinism’ which has significant sway over the Reformed Conservative movements.

McAtee Responds,

Have you been sleeping? Wilson’s warpath against Kinism makes the G3 look like a bunch of boy playing cowboys and injuns.

DD writes,

Guys like Doug want more mainstream appeal, so they have opted to go soft on the racial issue. They have ousted guys like Thomas Achord, which shows they mean business.

McAtee responds,

It’s clear to everybody who has eyes that Pope Doug is going for the neo-con/New York Times crowd.

And you think “outing guys like Thomas Achord” is a recommendation for Wilson and his peeps? This is like saying that Sherman should get a medal for raping and pillaging his way to Atlanta.

DD writes,

But it is worth noting that there are more guys like Thomas Achord in these organisations who will eventually start speaking out. The time doesn’t seem to have come for that yet.

McAtee responds,

And Pope Doug is the one we are all supposed to be waiting on to give the signal when the time has come for all that? Trust me… the time will never come because Doug is merely a gatekeeper interested in pushing his brand.

DD writes,

I’m sure you’re aware that racism is perhaps one of the most unforgivable sins in the Evangelical church and will get a robust and powerful reaction from the Evangelical base (especially the Boomers). He is pushing young men in the right direction, and Christian Nationalism, as promoted by Stephen Wolfe, is gaining significant traction.

McAtee responds by quoting Vox Day,

“Stephen Wolfe’s Christian Nationalism is fake nationalism. It’s a religious form of civic nationalism that substitutes Christianity for US citizenship. He’s just another gatekeeper.”

Refuting the Idea that Hate is Bad Form for Christians

Have to be blunt: if you harbor hatred in your heart for Muslims (please recognize the difference between the Muslim people and Islam as a religion) you are sinning. Period. Full stop. As a follower of Christ, hatred is NOT an option, and if your “theology” gives you a place for it, you have been led astray. Repent.

James White

This is magnificent claptrap. This is the kind of stuff that either brain injured people come up with, or people who have been raised as modern Christians. It is the simpering speech used by derelicts, drug addicts, or people with Ph.D’s in some kind of “theology.”

1.) No man can truly love anything without also hating that which has as its animating spirit the annihilation of that which he loves. For example, as James White loves His wife, I suspect that he would hate anybody who assaulted or even degraded the man’s wife.

2.) The idea of “hating the sin, but loving the sinner,” while communicating a wee bit of Biblical thought isn’t the whole word on the matter. After all, God’s Word explicitly tells us that “there is a time and a season for everything under the sun. A time to love and a time to hate.” Do we really believe that Solomon in Ecclesiastes was thinking while writing, “A time to love and a time to hate the sin but love the sinner?”

3.) If we are to hate the sin but love the sinner then why are we not to love the righteous works but hate the righteous?

4.) If we are to be “like our Father in Heaven,” then it would seem that we absolutely must hate the sinner as well as his sin. Throughout revelation God does indeed hate the sinner, along with and because of their sins (Lev. 20:23, Ps. 5:4-6, 11:5, Prov. 6:16-19, Hos. 9:15, Mal. 1:3, Rom. 9:13). Indeed God hates the sinner so much that He casts the sinner with their sin into hell for all eternity (Mt. 10:28).

5.) God hates His enemies so thoroughly that He;

a.) Closed the door of the Ark so His enemies would drown
b.) Showered Sodom & Gomorrah with Brimstone and fire
c.) Totally obliterated the Egyptians in plague and water

6.) Further the saints of old — our Fathers — hated sinners

a.) Joshua’s work on the Canaanites
b.) David’s work on the enemies of God
c.) Samson’s work on the Philistines
d.) Elijah’s work on the Prophets of Baal
e.) Phineas’ Javelin throwing contest
f.) Moses’ dispatching of the Egyptian overseer
g.) Jesus Christ peeled skin with a whip against the Jewish Bankers

7.) Scripture informs me to

a.) “Hate that which is evil, love that which is good.” Rm. 12:9
b.) “Hate evil, O you who love the LORD!” Psalm 97:10
c.) “Hate evil and love good; establish justice in the gate.” Amos 5:15

On the Amos 5:15 passage the Puritan commentator Matthew Poole offers;

“Slight dislikes will do little in this ease, you rulers and judges must heartily hate, and show that you hate, the evil, both ways, doings, contrivers, and abettors of the evil among the people and yourselves;”

Now, those like Dr. James White who insists that Christians are not to hate those enemies of God who hate God and His Christ will instantly run to Matthew 5:39;

39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.

This passage refers to just what it says, as it only applies to some kind of petty insult coming from a personal enemy. It seems past obvious that one can’t make this walk on all fours, and yet that is what we get from any number of those reputed to be pillars in the Church. Think about it for a second. Does making this text walk on all fours make any sense at all?

” But I tell you, whoever rapes you in one bodily orifice, offer him another,”

” But I tell you, whoever bludgeons you with a pipe on one side of the skull, turn to him the other side of the skull to bludgeon.”

” But I tell you, if someone abducts one of your children, give him another child to abduct.”

“But I tell you, if someone rapes your wife, give him your daughter to rape.”

Now, all of the above does not mean that we don’t do good to those who are our personal enemies or who dish out to us petty insults. If my neighbor hates me throws paint balloons at me, I may well still bring them some hot chicken soup when they are ill and so show them a kindness. However, if that same neighbor goes after my grandchildren to harm them, they can be sure that fire and sulfur is going to rain down on them.

If you can’t find it in your heart to hate Muslims, Hindus, Jews, or Atheists as they seek to continue to bury this culture is Christ dishonoring laws and customs, you are indeed not right in the head. A lack of hate here communicates that you don’t really love Christ and His Law-Word.