The Implications of Biblical Election When Thinking About Social Order Issues

“There are doctrines of modern liberalism, just as tenaciously and intolerantly upheld as any doctrines that find a place in the historic creeds. Such for example are the liberal doctrines of the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man. These doctrines are, as we shall see, contrary to the doctrines of the Christian religion. But doctrines they are all the same, and as such, they require intellectual defense. In seeming to object to all theology, the liberal preacher is often merely objecting to one system of theology in the interests of another.”

Dr. J. Gresham Machen 
Christianity and Liberalism

Our current Cultural Marxist egalitarianism problem in the Western Calvinist Churches is a reflection of the decline of genuinely Reformed soteriology. Biblical and Historical Calvinism has always advocated for limited damnation (particular redemption), where Christ is put forth as a sacrifice for only His people. God makes distinctions when it comes to salvation and men are not equal when it comes to their determined soteric status.

In the Reformed (Biblical) understanding God’s chief passion is Himself. In the Reformed (Biblical) understanding God does all He does for His own interest. He pursues His own interests and in the context of particular redemption, this means He willfully limits His affections to His people.

Reformed folk once understood that this had implications. As God’s love was particular so Reformed folk refused both the idea of “the Father of God over all men,” and “the Brotherhood of all men.” If God restricts His love so that His love is particular so man’s love can be particular as well. In other words, God’s love and favor for His own is a communicable attribute. Like God, men can love and favor their own.

If it were the case that God did not restrict His love so that He loved all men indiscriminately then men by necessity would have to be pluralists in their affections and love all men indiscriminately and so egalitarianism would by necessity be a Christian requirement. Because of our inability to tease out the idea of God’s discriminating election we are seeing that the idea of the brotherhood of all men, when taken to its egalitarian conclusion, would be destructive of the idea of men providing uniquely for their own household (I Tim. 5:8), or positing a special love for their kin (cmp. Romans 9:3). In brief, the Arminian idea that God loves everybody equally works itself out in the destruction of family, clan, and nations and the embrace of universal love.

The connection here is that as Calvinists become weak on Limited Damnation they become strong on the Liberal Doctrines of the “Fatherhood of God over all men,” and “the Brotherhood of all men.”

In this context, it is interesting that Abraham Kuyper noted that in the late 1800s the belief in Unconditional Election with respect to natural conditions like family, nation, and race was universal in every denomination, though Arminians disagreed with Election of the Soul.  Listen to the great Kuyper on this matter,

“ Before I close, I feel nevertheless that one question continues to press for an answer, which accordingly I shall not refuse to face, the question namely, at what I am aiming in the end: at the abandonment of the doctrine of election … Our generation turns a deaf ear to Election [God’s order], but grows madly enthusiastic over Selection [encompassing everything from evolution to democracy, liberalism, imagination, and license] … The problem concerns the fundamental question: Whence are the differences? Why is not all alike? Whence is it that one thing exists in one state, another in another? There is no life without differentiation without inequality. The perception of difference, the very source of our human consciousness, the causative principles of all that exists, and grows and develops, in short, the mainspring of all life and thought … Whence are those differences? Whence is the dissimilarity, the heterogeneity of existence, of genesis, and consciousness? To put it concretely, if you were a plant, would you rather be a rose than a mushroom; if insect, butterfly rather than spider; if bird, eagle rather than owl; if a higher vertebrate, a lion rather than a hyena; and again, being a man, richer than poorer, talented rather than dull-minded, of Aryan race rather than Hottentot or Kaffir? Between all these there is differentiation, wide differentiation. Everywhere then differences, differences between one thing and the other; and that too, such differences involve in almost every instance, preference … This is the one supreme question in the vegetable and animal kingdom, among men, in all social life and it is by means of the theory of Selection that our present age attempts to solve this problem of problems …

Now the blade of grass is not conscious of this, and the spider goes on entrapping the fly, the tiger killing the stag, and in those cases, the weaker being does not account to itself for its misery. But we men are clearly conscious of these differences, and by us therefore the question cannot be evaded, whether the theory of Selection be a solution calculated to reconcile the weaker, the less richly endowed creature, with its existence. It will be acknowledged that in itself this theory can but incite to a more furious struggle, with a lasciate ogni speranza, voi che’ntrate for the weaker being. Against the ordinance of faith that the weaker shall succumb to the stronger, according to the system of election, no struggle can avail …

For this is precisely the high significance of the doctrine of Election that, in this dogma, as long as three centuries ago, Calvinism dared to face this same all-dominating problem, solving it, however, not in the sense of a blind selection stirring in unconscious cells, but honoring the sovereign choice of Him Who created all things visible and invisible. The determination of our own persons, whether one is to be born as girl or boy, rich or poor, dull or clever, white or colored, or even as Abel or Cain, is the most tremendous predestination conceivable in heaven or on earth; and still we see it taking place before our eyes every day, and we ourselves are subject to it in our entire personality; our existence, our very nature, our position in life being entirely dependent on it. This all embracing predestination … all-dominating election. Election in creation, election in Providence, and so election also to eternal life; election in the realm of grace as well as in the realm of nature … all Christians hold election as we do, in honor, both in creation and in providence; and that Calvinism deviates from the other Christian confessions in this respect only, that, seeking unity and placing the glory God above all things, it dares to extend the mystery of Election to spiritual life, and to the hope for all life to come?”

(A.Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, pp.117-119)

Now that many Arminians have been smitten with the egalitarian infection, they’re just being consistent with their soteriology as it works itself out in social order thinking. Arminians denied election in terms of grace and now they deny election in terms of nature. In order for the Calvinists to turn egalitarian, however, they have to be radically inconsistent with their soteriology. Most Calvinists and Calvinist churches still confess Election with respect to God’s differentiation among men and so the unequal states of their persons as it pertains to salvation before God, but many Reformed are no longer sure about unequal states of nature. That is to say many Calvinists can no longer affirm an Election (Predestination) which affirms that not only does God elect some and not others in regards to salvation, but also that God predestines some people and peoples to an unequal status as compared to His predestinating of other people and peoples. Does this contradiction between what we might call spiritual inequality as taught in the doctrine of election and natural inequality as implied in the doctrine of predestination (and so a necessary denial of the foundational tenets of modern egalitarianism) perhaps hint at the idea that many Reformed don’t understand the implications of their Calvinism?

Certainly, everyone agrees that men are all brothers in the sense that all men are created by God and that all men thus are the image of God. Likewise, everyone can agree that all men are brothers in the sense that all men are responsible to God’s law. This is gladly conceded. However, all men are not brothers in the sense of having God as their redemptive Father.  That fact that God makes distinctions among men has impact all the way down the line of our thinking.

A Paradigm For A New Reformation

“I have noticed the following parallel between the fourth century and the sixteenth century, periods I consider to be times of fundamental reform for the church. In both periods the dominant theology was a kind of synthesis between biblical thought and Greek philosophy: in the fourth century, Origenism; in the sixteenth, the theology of Thomas Aquinas. In both periods there came a heresy that upset the balance; in the fourth century, Arianism, in the sixteenth, the sale of indulgences by people like John Tetzel. Then came a Reformer: in the fourth century Athanasius; in the sixteenth, Luther. Then came a consolidator, someone who rethink the whole of the Church’s theology in the light of the gains of the Reformation: in the fourth and fifth centuries, Augustine; in the sixteenth, Calvin.”

Rev. John Frame 
A History of Western Philosophy and Theology — pg. 107

I am convinced that Rev. Frame is on to something here and I would suggest applying this template to a 21st-century setting. However, instead of Greek thought being the syncretistic factor as being added to Biblical thought and categories I would suggest that the syncretistic factor as being added to Biblical thought and categories is the hybrid form of Marxism called “Cultural Marxism.”

Per Rev. Frame’s model, I would offer something like,

1.) 20th-century syncretistic synthesis of Christianity with the Cultural Marxism originating with Antonia Gramsci, as introduced in America by the Frankfurt School (Herbert Marcuse,  Wilhelm Reich, Theodore Adorno, etc.) popularized by the civil rights movement in the 1960’s, and embraced in principle by many young Reformed Churchmen who would later become leading light in the Reformed Church. They absorbed this thinking during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s and at the very least have said very little to overthrow this warfare on God ordained distinctions.

2.) This syncretism that developed as a combination of Christianity and Cultural Marxism begat the egalitarian heresy that currently infects all of our social order including the Church. The egalitarian heresy has given us a warfare against distinctions wherein ontology as well as roles are flattened out so as to result in a social order where all colors, differences, and distinctions bleed into one. Viva la the distinction-less society.

3.) We are still awaiting a God raised Reformer to emerge to lead the Gideon sized orthodox army to do battle with the multitudinous heretics who currently control the Church.

4.) Then comes the consolidator who will rethink the whole of theology in light of the knowledge gained in what will be a new post tenebras lux.

This is the way that God has worked historically. First, the downgrade as exemplified in one particular person, then the widespread infection, then the battle to heal as exemplified in one particular person, and finally the reconstruction, again, as exemplified in one particular person.

We might add here that with each example in each century (fourth, sixteenth, and prospectively the 21st) the issue really comes down to the Supremacy of God. Athanasius and Luther, each in their times, were contending for the Sovereignty of God vis-a-vis the desire of man to pull God off His throne. The 21st century is no less a battle for the supremacy of God. If the Egalitarian heresy is given in its head then the final outcome will be the removal of the distinction between God and man… between the Creator and the Creature.

It is also interesting here that while the Reformations in question (4th, 16th, 21st) are separated by centuries the formal cause of Reformation in each case is the issue of Scripture as Authoritative.  The material causes of Reformation may switch but it seems the formal cause of Reformation is always the issue of whether or not Scripture will be taken as Authoritative. In the 4th century, the Arians refused to come under the authority of Scripture pertaining to the deity of Jesus Christ just as the Medieval Roman Catholic Church refused to submit to the authority of Scripture pertaining to the issue of justification by grace alone just as today the modern church refuses to submit to authority on the issue of God-ordained distinctions. In each Reformation, the formal cause remains the same (the authority of Scripture) while the material cause (the occasion for Reformation) changes.

In reading what I have offered here some may think that I am involved in a kind of Hegelian dialectic where I have posited a  Thesis/ Antithesis/ Synthesis.  Allow me to note the distinction between the Hegelian dialectic and what I am advocating here.

 First, the Hegelian dialectic is man wrought in opposition to God. This is a matter of God’s providence.
 
Secondly, there really is no synthesis here because it is the previous synthesis that is being pushed off the scene in favor of God’s thesis reality.
 
Thirdly, the Hegelian dialectic presupposes that truth is always becoming. There is no absolute Truth. This paradigm presupposes absolute truth and a return to God’s reality.
 
Finally, the Hegelian dialectic speaks of historical “progress” via the outworking of the Geist. This approach is not about progress or process so much as it is about providence.
 
 In brief, while the Christian offers a Thesis (proper distinctions) contra the Thesis of anti-Christianity (no distinctions allowed) no synthesis between the two or of the two is allowed.  Orthodoxy allows no synthesis. Only repentance and then realignment to God’s thinking and reality.

Our role is to pray that God will work to bring the man and the moment together as He did with Athanasius’s opposition to Arius and as He did with Luther’s opposition to schoolmen of his time.

Charlottesville … A Post-Mortem

It has now been two weeks since the Charlottesville Chaos and while I’d like to think this is a postmortem after the dust has settled, I know that is just not true. There is plenty of dust that is yet to be stirred up. All the same, I want to get on the record as to my observations in relation to Charlottesville. So, in no particular order,

1.) This conflict is not ultimately about race

It may be argued that race is the occasion of the conflict but in no way is race the cause of the conflict. If it weren’t about race it would be about something else. In the past, the faux issues have been worker oppression by the bourgeoisie, oppression of women by an evil patriarchal system, and oppression of students by the system.

What is this conflict is about is the Revolution. Most Americans believe that Communism died with the USSR  and so their knowledge about the reality and techniques of Communism is virtually nil. Most Americans do not realize that for the Marxists the issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution. The conflict in Charlottesville was never primarily about race. The conflict in Charlottesville was about advancing the Revolution.

In order for the Marxist Revolution to be successful unto the seizing of power conflict, division, and chaos must be generated by any and all means necessary. In this most recent rendition of Revolution, the issue chosen is the issue of race. In order for the Revolution to be successful envy and distrust must be created and accentuated with the result of an intense conflict wherein a totalitarian regime can come to the fore.

In the end, the Marxist Revolutionaries must create a stampede in the social order. The stampede exists in order that some Marxist tyrant can step forward in order to stop the stampede.

All of this is classic Marxism 101.

2.) Unite the what?

The rally was called, “Unite the Right.” The problem is that a good deal of what showed up in Charlottesville was not “right,” but instead was an expression of National Socialist beliefs of one degree or another. In other words, the “Unite the Right” rally found genuine elements of the right coming together to unite with leftist organizations.

It has been a myth long concocted by the left that expressions of National socialism is a “rightist” expression. This myth has been created in order for the left to have a bogey man on the right but the truth of the matter is that a degree of the violence that we saw in Charlottesville was between varying factions of the left. It was the same kind of violence that was seen in the Weimar Republic Germany and was characteristic of the Spanish Revolution. In all cases, it was and is just variant expressions of the left seeking to grasp power.

Because of the above, I think it was a mistake for the leaders of organizations that attended Charlottesville who are legitimately of the right as defined by support for limited and decentralized government to attend this rally. This is especially so if those leaders knew the other organizations who were going to show up were suspect.  There is no “Uniting the Right” with organizations that are left and neo-nazi and the attendance by the genuine right in a rally with pagan left organizations only ends up delegitimizing those who are genuinely on the right.  This is even more true for organizations who characterize themselves as Christian. These organizations need to be reminded of the prohibition of being unequally yoked.

3.) Even John Lennon had this figured out

In his Revolution soundtrack, Lennon wrote,

But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao
You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow

In the same vein, we might write,

But if you go carrying the Nazi flag 
You’re just going to make people gag

No organization is advancing their cause by waving a Nazi flag. Similarly, no organization is advancing their cause by associating with those carrying a Nazi flag.

4.) All because I am convinced that it was a mistake for Christian organizations to attend a rally where they were asked to unite with the left  — and this because of the Scriptures command to not be unequally yoked —  this does not mean that I don’t believe that the Christian men in attendance were not demonstrating a heroic bravery. My Grandfather fought in the Battle of the Bulge. He was a brave man as seen by the Bronze Star that he earned in that battle. However, I still think it was a mistake for him to be there and it was a mistake for these united States to have been involved in that war. The men at the Charlottesville rally may be faulted for their decision to attend but they can not be faulted for a lack of courage or bravery.

5.) Note the qualifier

President Trump was correct when he said,

“You have some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group — excuse me, excuse me — I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name.”

There were many fine people who attended this rally to protest the taking down of the Robert E. Lee statue. I am honored to know several of them and double honored to call them friends.  The fact that the organizations they were aligned with made a mistake in supporting such a rally does not diminish the fact that many people in attendance, who were part of the legally permitted protest are upstanding Christian people.

6.) But they chanted, “Jews will not replace us.”

Well, given these kinds of statements as below it is not a wonder. Start at the 38 second mark,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFE0qAiofMQ&t=8s

Start at the 5:50 mark

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Jg-Es2PNUg&t=4s

Some people do not want to become culturally or racially other than what they are culturally and racially or other than what their Christian forebears were culturally or racially. Some people don’t want to be genocided. Such people are apt to chant what others find to be edgy.

I will grant it would have been much more effective for those carrying the Tiki torches to be singing “Christ shall have Dominion.’

7.) The reason that this event exploded

It exploded because the antifa attended. The “Unite the Right” folk had a permit to march. If they had been permitted to march without being harassed there would have been no incident.  The antifa attended with the purpose of injuring people. They were launching bottles of urine and feces. They were launching soda cans filled with cement. They were spraying mace, bear spray, and who knows what other vile liquid. If you want to ask who brought the violence it was not the “Unite the Right” folks. It was Antifa. The fact that the “Unite the Right” folks may have used violence in order to defend themselves is perfectly normal.

8.) There is no serious threat from the Fascist left though there is a huge threat from the Bolshevik left.

It wasn’t the Fascist Nazi left who blew up in violence in Berkley when Milo Yiannopoulos showed up to speak. It wasn’t the Fascist Nazi left who blew up in violence at Middlebury College when Charles Murray showed up to speak. It wasn’t the Nazi Fascists who threatened such violence that Ann Coulter had to cancel her speaking engagement at Berkley for the threat of violence. It wasn’t Nazi Fascists whose violence canceled the Trump Rally in Chicago in 2016. It wasn’t Nazi Fascist who rioted in Baltimore and Ferguson. It wasn’t the Nazi Fascists who rioted when Heather MacDonald showed up to speak at Claremont McKenna College. How many have I missed?

There is no serious threat from the Fascist left though there is a determined effort by the Marxist Bolshevik left to rend the social fabric of America.

9.) The Establishment is the left

The response of the Media being breathless over Trump’s correct assessment of the Charlottesville in terms of guilt proves that the Media is Bolsheviki. The same goes for the Republicans who couldn’t get to a microphone fast enough to denounce Trump’s accurate representation.  This social order is Bolshevik. The Media is Bolshevik. The Political class is Bolshevik. The Juridicial class is Bolshevik. The Clergy is Bolshevik. The therapeutic Psycho-shrink class is Bolshevik. The academic class is Bolshevik. Exceptions in each exist but speaking, on the whole, our civil social order is Bolshevik. To do anything to fault the Bolsheviks will result in outrage as Trump saw.

10.) Karl Marx knows antifa?

“We make war against all prevailing ideas of religion, of the state, of country, of patriotism. The idea of God is the keynote of a perverted civilization. It must be destroyed.”

11.) Why Right Wing Protesting Seldom works

Why does left-wing street activism work, and right-wing street activism does not? As Carl Schmitt explained in Theory of the Partisan, street activist, guerrilla or partisan warfare is never effective on its own. The street activist working from below is only effective in tandem with working with those from above. Schmitt taught that the street activist is only successful as an interested third party (military, political force, bureaucrat) is operating from positions of entrenched power. This teaches us that successful street activism happens typically only when it is already in power and not when it has no sponsor from above.

Right-wing street activism in the modern world is cargo-cult street activism where the ‘from below’ participants on the right believe that if they just copy the empowered left activist they will get the same result. The problem though is that without the hammer from above the anvil below can’t succeed in shaping the social order in a “right” direction.

12.) The “Church”

Exceptions notwithstanding, the pop Church seemingly lines up just short of “Black Lives Matter.” A great number of the Clergy seem to just assume that the current “racism” narrative is true. (Nevermind that the whole notion of racism was popularized by Trotsky in order to create the sense of social displacement and injury that Communism thrives upon.) In their own version of “Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh my,” the Clergy give us ubiquitous denunciations of “White Supremacists, White Nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and KKK members.” There are 330 million people in America. I would be impressed if you wouldn’t have room to spare for all the Neo-Nazis and KKK members to fit in in a modest sized Synagogue in America.

And yet the pop Church is absolutely consumed with that bogey man narrative.

As far as White Nationalism goes, there was a time when White Nationalism was not seen as any more suspect as Chinese Nationalism as it exists in China.

“Cosmopolitanism gives us one country, and it is good; nationalism gives us a hundred countries, and every one of them is the best.”

G. K. Chesterton

“One of the very reasons that Paul desired that the Gentiles become Christians was not only so that the Gentiles themselves may be blessed but also so that the Gentiles, then as Christians, may proceed to provoke his own Israelitic nation to jealousy and thereafter to faith in Christ. Accordingly, I think we must judge that every Christian who does not love his own nation is either an ungrateful cosmopolitan rascal and a rebuilder of the tower of Babel or otherwise is woefully ignorant of Scripture. And, I am sorry to say that the world is full of these kind of people today.”

Dr. Francis Nigel Lee
Sermon

“Nationalism, within proper limits, has the divine sanction; an imperialism that would, in the interest of one people, obliterate all lines of distinction is everywhere condemned as contrary to the divine will. Later prophecy raises its voice against the attempt at world-power, and that not only, as is sometimes assumed, because it threatens Israel, but for the far more principal reason, that the whole idea is pagan and immoral.

Now it is through maintaining the national diversities, as these express themselves in the difference of language, and are in turn upheld by this difference, that God prevents realization of the attempted scheme… [In this] was a positive intent that concerned the natural life of humanity. Under the providence of God each race or nation has a positive purpose to serve, fulfillment of which depends on relative seclusion from others.”

-Geerhardus Vos,
Biblical Theology

Look, if you’re in a Church that cannot find it within itself to see the problem of growing Bolshevism in this country and instead is only feverish about denouncing the National Socialist Lilliputians while ignoring the Bolsheviki Giants you need to think long and hard about where you are attending.

I highly recommend this article for a more thorough analysis of what the author refers to as “The Kalergi Clergy.”

Charlottesville and the Kalergi Clergy

13.) What I pray for

I pray that the Church and Christians could just despise both National Socialism and International Socialism… both Fascism and Communism. I pray that we would have nothing to do with either one of them. What I fear is that we are being stampeded into choosing one or the other. We would be better served to just let them duke it out and pray that they might destroy each other.

This means I’m hated on much of both sides. The racial Marxists hate me because I won’t back their play for a return to a Christless White Nation. The class Marxists hate me because I find ridiculous their view that Christianity means an imagining their’s no nations where all colors bleed into one.

Ah well, I’ve got big shoulders. I can handle all that hate.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dr. Rev. Joe Morecraft’s Curious Argumentation

Peter was a racist because he was a coward….

So and so what do you think finally and ultimately defines a man; his race or his religion? 

He said, “I really don’t know,” and I said, “then you really don’t know the Gospel of Jesus Christ, for what finally defines a man is not the color of his skin, nor his social level, nor his educational level, nor his financial level. What finally defines a man is his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ….
 
“But racism has crept in (to the Church) in other ways. There is a new movement called “Kinism,” and it is basically a new word for racism that says the races should be kept separate, There is a superior quality to the white race. The color of your skin does make a difference. If a white man and a black woman should marry the black woman is guilty of adultery. In the Reformed world, there is a lot of Kinists. They’re smart. They know how to use the internet. They can out argue you. They know how to twist scripture.
 
Rev. Dr. Joe Morecraft
Excerpt from Sermon — 30 July 2017

The Battle for the Gospel

Just today someone pointed me to this excerpt from Dr. Morecraft’s most recent Sunday morning sermon. I am going to interact with it a bit below but first some prologue,

1.) I think that Dr. Morecraft has done some fine work over the years. Overall, he has been on the side of the angels. I’ve listened to much of his work and have read some of his material. The Reformed Church is all the richer for Dr. Morecraft’s work over the years.

2.) I am not a Kinist and the reason I disavow Kinism is sermons like this. If this is what Dr. Morecraft honestly thinks that all Kinists believe there is no use trying to rescue the word or identify with the label. This is why I have chosen my own word. I am a “familialist.” By choosing my own word I get to define it and I don’t have to keep correcting over and over again the relentless and constant freaking out over the word “kinist.”

Now on to the matter at hand.

1.) In this sermon on Galatians 2 Dr. Morecraft calls Peter a “racist.” This charge is pretty standard fare in the pc post-modern Reformed Church today and Galatians 2 is often brought forward as an example of racism.

However, I am convinced that Dr. Morecraft is not exegeting the passage properly. Peter’s sin in Galatians is not that he was a racist. Peter’s sin in Galatians is that he was an Alienist. This is seen in the fact that he gave into the Judaizing demand that the Gentile Christians Peter had been having table fellowship with had to become culturally Jewish before they could be considered Christian. The Gentiles had to eat like Jews, and be circumcised like Jews in order to be considered Christian. The desires of the Judaizers in Galatians 2 was that all would be put into the Judaizer blender to become culturally one. Peter’s sin was Alienism… not racism. If the Gentiles had agreed to all the Jewish stipulations to lose their Gentile culture and identity than the Judaizers would have had no problem with Peter having table fellowship with those Gentiles. It wasn’t the fact that Peter was having table fellowship with Gentiles that bothered the Judaizers. (If that had been the problem then perhaps the accusations against Peter that Peter was a racist might be sustained.) No, the problem with Peter was that the Gentiles were not culturally Jews. It wasn’t their ethnicity of the Gentiles that bothered the Judaizers. It was their culture. Peter fell into their trap and was guilty of Alienism … of refusing to insist that the Gentiles had to be just like the Jews culturally before they could be considered Christian.

Dr. Morecraft is in error in this passage on this point.


2.)
Dr. Morecraft asked his friend,

“For what finally and ultimately defines a man; His race or his religion?”

To be honest this is a bit reductionistic. Dr. Morecraft knows that man is a being that is composed of body and soul. A man is not ultimately defined by either his soul (religion) or his body (race). A man is finally and ultimately defined by both. Would Dr. Morecraft seriously ask, “what ultimately and finally defines an airplane, the wings or the engine?” He wouldn’t ask this because of how obvious such absurd reductionism is in error. 

Dr. Morecraft knows we can’t divide a man in two and say only one part ultimately defines him any more than we could do the same type of thing in regards to the person of Christ without falling into major heresy. The similar error here would be asking, “What finally defines the person of Christ, his God nature or his man nature?”

Obviously to answer that question is to fall into heresy. In the same way, it is to fall into heresy which ever way Dr. Morecraft’s question is answered. To answer Dr. Morecraft’s question by saying, “his race” would have the respondent fall into the heresy of materialism. To answer Dr. Morecraft’s question by giving the answer “his religion” would find the respondent falling into the heresy of Gnosticism.

Dr. Morecraft hasn’t thought this through as well as he usually thinks matters through.

But if we were forced to answer this question there are several alternatives we might offer up,

a.) “The answer is obviously religion Dr. Morecraft, but if you’re going to suggest now that such an answer means that the way God created men… the way God enfleshed men isn’t worthy of paying attention to or honoring, why then Dr. Morecraft, I can’t help but wonder how you escape the Gnostic briar patch.

b.) “Well, Dr. Morecraft, for the black man what finally and ultimately defines him is his religion and for the White man what finally and ultimately defines him is his religion. Every man regardless of what people group that man belongs to is finally and ultimately defined by his religion. You ask about a man in the abstract but man doesn’t come in the abstract. A man comes in the concrete and it is the concrete man that we must deal with.”

Now let me ask you a question, Dr. Morecraft,

Isn’t it Gnostic of you to suggest that the way our Creator God created a man is unimportant and that all created differences can be whisked away by appealing to the “spiritual?”

c.) “Dr. Morecraft, I’ll answer that question if you will answer this question; What finally and ultimately defines a person? Their gender or their religion?”

“Now, be careful Dr. Morecraft, because if you answer religion I am going to take that as meaning that you’re contending that just as race doesn’t make any difference between people neither does gender make any difference between people. After all if skin color doesn’t make any difference why should plumbing?

d.) Dr. Morecraft, God created man with both a spiritual and physical nature and while we are spiritually united with all the Elect in Christ, we retain our unique, diverse identities in our physical attributes: gender, ethnicity, disposition, etc so that both man’s race and his religion finally and ultimately define man.

Obviously, the import in all this is that Dr. Morecraft is practicing a danger anthropological reductionism here that isn’t consistent with our Christian theology.

Dr. Morecraft ties his answer of “religion” to knowing the Gospel of Jesus Christ but I can’t help but wonder how his answer doesn’t tie him to some kind of creeping Gnosticism; that first great heresy that the Church had to contend with. Man remains a modified unichotomy (the integrative reality of body and soul) and to suggest that his soul is finally and ultimately more important than his creaturely fixity is a curious position for such an esteemed Pastor as Dr. Morecraft.

Now to end just an observation. Much of what Dr. Morecraft says about Kinism just isn’t universally true. As one example, most kinists I know insist that all the diverse races have both superiorities about them and inferiorities about them. Kinists are not White Supremacist. This is just one example of why I no longer claim the kinist label. When esteemed men like Dr. Morecraft spread this kind of libel and slander it is just not possible to rescue the term.

Another observation to end that is only related to Dr. Morecraft’s comments in a tertiary fashion. Those One Worlders out there are the hardest on those who still insist that ethnicity and race matters. Yet at the end of the day, One Worldism is its own kind of KINISM. Their allegiance is to their tribe of an ethnically coffee cream colored people who have the racial distinction of not being racially distinct. This One Worlder Kinism will support a universal non-descript dishwater nondistinct culture which will find it’s distinction in its being universal. Likewise, the One Worlders have the religion of no religion which is unique to their tribe. One Worlders are, without a doubt KINIST, in every way. So the One Worlders attack a form of Kinism they don’t like while at the same time advancing a form of Kinism they do like.

Kinism or something akin to it thus is an inescapable category.

I’m not advocating for it. Remember … I’ve disavowed the label. I’m merely saying that something like it is impossible to escape.

Montezuma II or Rev. Dr. Albert Mohler … Which One is Live, and Which One is Memorex?

One of these quotes is true and one of them is a made up quote which really wasn’t said. Can you guess which was really said and which is made up?

“The Aztec nation is on course to have no racial or ethnic majority group by 1610. That year, the country is expected to be 86% mestizo and 10% Hispanic, with Incas representing 3% of the population—surpassing Aztecs, who will account for 2%….And one of the things that we Aztecs must keep in mind is that this new data is indicating a massively transformed mission field right before our eyes, right here in our Aztec nation and we’re looking at the very good news that the world, in the person of Cortez and his men is coming to us. From Quetzalcoatl’s perspective, this is indeed very good news…Now make no mistake here, from Quetzalcoatl’s worldview perspective, this is undeniable good news. The mission field is quite actually coming right to us. That is good news”

 
Montezuma II
King of the Aztecs

“The U.S. is on course to have no racial or ethnic majority group by 2055. That year, the country is expected to be 46% white and 24% Hispanic, with Asians representing 14% of the population—surpassing blacks, who will account for 13%….And one of the things that Christians must keep in mind is that this new data is indicating a massively transformed mission field right before our eyes, right here in the United States of America and we’re looking at the very good news that the world is coming to us. From a great commission perspective, this is indeed very good news…Now make no mistake here, from a great commission worldview perspective, this is undeniable good news. The mission field is quite actually coming right to us. That is good news”

 
Rev. Dr. Albert Mohler
President Southern Baptist Seminary